Ok, here's one of those...what do you call them? I can't seem to remember... Oh, yes! An update! That's what they're called.
Well, all I can say is that I didn't let it go a whole year. But, if between updates you find that you need a shot of vileness, check out my None so Vile line from Blackdirge Publishing and Skeleton Key Games. Each one has a short fiction peice that's too nasty to reprint here, but should fully satisify your hankering for blasphemy and evil.
BD
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Part XX
It cannot be said that Hedrenatherax, former balor major domo to the fallen demon lord Pyrak, was easily impressed. In his dozen or so millennia dwelling in the endless chaos and despair of the abyss, he had beheld sights that were mind boggling to say the least, sights that made even a hardened demon, now
demon lord, quake with apprehension or even outright fear. This was the stock and trade of the abyss: horror, death, and chaos. But such things were not without their majesty, for who could deny the grandeur of Ungorth Reddik, the boggy fortress of the great Demogorgon, or the opulent jewel of misery that is Graz’zt’s plane spanning metropolis of Zeletar, or even Hedrenatherax’s own sand scorched Vrack, the abyssal layer of eternal wind. All these things could captivate even the most stalwart and stoic soul, but the sight that filled the demon lord’s gaze presently made beggars out of each and every one of them.
Like a great iron tooth, castle Oin Drok spiraled up into the murky heavens of Hades, casting a shadow that blotted out even the thick gloom of the gray waste itself. Formerly the seat of daemonic power, the great iron edifice was abandoned when Yaghur Hod was imprisoned in Elysium, eons and eons ago. The ruling seat of Hades then moved to its current position of Khin Oin, the bone tower, where the current Oinodaemon ruled. Hedrenatherax’s bestial face creased in a tusked grin as he imagined what a frantic state the ultrodaemon prince Mydianchlarus must be in. The demon lord could imagine even the featureless mask of an ultrodaemon twitching in consternation at the news of Yaghur Hod’s return.
“Are we to wait outside like beggars?!” Hedrenatherax spat over his shoulder at the hulking shape of Gemnez, his recently promoted paeliryon major domo. The rogue devil waddled up close to his lord, his rouge painted cheeks uncommonly drab in the unholy gloom of Hades.
“I am certain that Yaghur Hod knows that we have arrived, my lord,” Gemnez whispered, his voice a sibilant hiss the clashed absurdly with his immense body, scaled skin, and wide fanged mouth. “He most likely views us from the comfort of his throne room, sizing up our… your worthiness an ally. Would you not do the same, my lord?”
Hedrenatherax hawked and spat a great glob of sticky red phlegm in reply, and marched up to the cyclopean doors of Oin Drok, drawing
Deadskewer from the sheath across his back as he approached. The demon lord handled the great enchanted spear with his left hand, as his right had had been replaced with a meter long bone scythe during his transformation from balor to arch-fiend. His left hand bore a scaled glove sewn from the skin of a bearded devil, allowing him to handle
Deadskewer, a weapon designed by devils to slay demons, without danger.
“My lord, perhaps it is best we wait until…” Gemnez was cut off in mid sentence at the ear-shattering clangor of
Deadskewer’s iron butt cap being drive into the gates of Oin Drok smartly, once, twice, thrice.
The silence that followed Hedrenatherax brash announcement of his arrival was cavernous and complete, and the demon lord took a step back in spite of himself. Flustered by the lack of attention shown by his host, Hedrenatherax felt the chaotic storm of his anger begin its whirling ascent to the inevitable glut of destruction it always heralded. But, if Hedrenatherax had learned anything from his predecessor, it was that senseless rage, was just that, senseless. He choked down his ire with palpable effort, swallowing it bitterly like a man might choke back a rising tide of bile. Hedrenatherax needed this, and he knew it well. In the years since his ascension, powerful and established abyssal rulers such as Graz’zt and even the dread Orcus himself had made it no secret that they coveted the windswept planes of Vrack. Hedrenatherax lacked both his predecessor’s influence and physical might (although not by much on the second account) to ever hope of driving off demon princes of the likes of Orcus or Grazzt. Yaghur Hod, and the great daemon’s own rather desperate situation, afforded Hedrenatherax an opportunity that could not be overlooked, no matter how much it wounded his pride to depend on another creature for his own well being.
Newly released from his imprisonment in Elysium by an unknown benefactor or perhaps even his own hand, Yaghur Hod sought only one thing, the restoration of his dominion over all daemon-kind. Not the flimsy lip-service that daemons paid to the current Oinodaemon as they went about their business of corruption and mercenary extortion, but the true worship and solid allegiance commanded by the Oinodaemons of old, first among them Yaghur Hod himself.
Yaghur Hod must be furious at having to even entertaining the idea of allying with me, an upstart, a usurper, Hedrenatherax thought, his own anger cooling just knowing that he was not the only one to dine on the bitter fruit of impotence.
Hedrenatherax was about to rap the doors of Oin Drok once more with the butt of
Dreadskewer, when the whole tower shook with a thick grating rumble as the massive aperture suddenly swung open.
Hedrenatherax fell back to stand beside Gemnez, his gloved left hand clenching the haft of
Dreadskewer tightly. Darkness so thick that it seemed to be partially solid flowed out from the open doors of Oin Drok, a thick soup of shadow that made even the perpetual gloom of Hades pale in comparison. Both demon lord and devil, squinted into the inky black, and both were surprised to find that their vision, normally unimpeded by darkness of any kind, was unable to pierce the gloom.
Hedrenatherax glared over at gemnez, who met his lord’s ire with gaudy red-lipped grin. “What is this Gemnez?” the towering demon lord hissed. “I came here to talk alliance, not to be delayed by this mummers farce.” Hedrenatherax pointed his scythe-arm at the coalescing blackness that still poured forth through the doors of Oin Drok.
“Yaghur Hod is an ancient and powerful fiend, my lord,” Gemnez said. “Such pomp and ceremony may be very important to him. I suggest we play along.”
Hedrenatherax was about to loose a torrent of obscenity with particular emphasis on what
he though about Yaghur Hod’s “pomp and ceremony”, when a hunched figure abruptly ambled out of the blackness.
Hedrenatherax sucked in a breath, the air whistling past his tusks in a disgusted shriek. “This is what he greets us with?” He shouted. “This!?”
Most fiends had little respect for night hags, the loathsome race of planar merchants that dealt exclusively on the souls of the damned. The tattered from of the night hag that shuffled fro the darkness of Oin Drok’s interior was not a sterling example of her race, a fact that only added to Hedrenatherax’s outrage. Like most night hags, Yaghur Hod’s herald was tall and emaciated with warty gray-blue skin and a visage so foul it could make an otyugh flinch.
“My master sends his apologies for not greeting you himself.” The hag croaked, her voice a sepulcher grate. “But he is unable to leave the safety of Oin Drok for the moment.”
Hedrenatherax stomped up to the hag, his twenty feet towering over the wretched herald and smothering her in hiss own twisted shadow. “What does your master fear, wretch?” The demon lord hissed menacingly.
The hag looked up at the seething Hedrenatherax, her face a passive mixture of irritation and disgust. “Yaghur Hod has many enemies, my lord. I would except you to understand my master’s circumstances, beleaguered as you are, and begging at his door”
The hag’s words smote Hedrenatherax’s ears with a ringing bite that threatened to drive him firmly over the edge of homicidal fury. His left hand clenched around the haft of
Dreadskewer and his mind suddenly filled with the most delectable images of Yaghur Hod’s night hag servant writhing impaled and gasping on the weapon’s end. Such an event surely would have transpired if not for Gemnez.
Sensing the impending disaster that was about to unfold, Gemnez managed to slide his awesome bulk in between Hedrenatherax and the night hag. “My lady, please forgive my lord’s ire, he is under much strain and means no disrespect to you or your great master.” The baatezu’s voice dropped an octave into a pleasing sultry purr that calmed even the seething rage of Hedrenatherax.
Hedrenatherax drew in a deep ragged breath, and again forced his natural demonic fury down. “Yes, much strain.” The demon lord whispered through clenched teeth. “Please…forgive my brusqueness.” The demon lord’s feeble words of appeasement died on the thin Hades air, so alien where they to his tongue, but they had the desired effect.
Mollified for the moment the hag rewarded both demon and devil with a wide smile, ghastly enough to make the air shimmer in front of her face. “This way my lords, my master has much to say to you.” The hag turned, beckoning Hedrenatherax and Gemnez to fellow with a wave of one bony hand.
“In to the lion’s den, my lord.” Gemnez said ruefully, and held out one flabby arm, motioning for Hedrenatherax to precede him. The demon lord simply scowled at his major domo and stalked into the enveloping darkness of Oin Drok, the lurid green glow of
Dreadskewer’s barbed point lighting his way into blackness of uncertainty.
