Devourer

I drank from the bottle as I tuned out the briefing unfolding before me. I had already memorized the map; I knew every contour, every choke point. More importantly, I knew that Janus and the Crowfather were listening. They would update me if anything was out of the ordinary.

Looking over the map again, it was obvious: there was only one natural way to approach the mine. The terrain boxed you in; head-on attacks were suicide. Mines like this were basically fortresses built into the earth, surrounded by steep cliffs and narrow paths, impossible to take down with brute force. In a weird way, this worked to our advantage. If I blew the mine, the fortress would go down with it, turning their strength into a pile of rubble and dust.

The problem with mines and fortresses like this is that they’re designed for sieges. They’re nearly impenetrable unless you're playing the long game. So, the same predictable strategy unfolded. Someone would launch a diversion, something big enough to force the main force to leave and deal with it. Then we’d slip in, raid the place, disrupt production, and slip out before anyone knew what hit them.

The so-called geniuses who came up with this plan didn’t want to destroy the mine; they wanted to capture it later. The ones defending wouldn’t scorch the earth either because, of course, they wanted to take it back eventually. And on and on it spins.

When the briefing was finally done, the commander started acting all authoritative and self-important.

“Now all of you listen up, you aren’t taking the real risk. As far as you’re concerned, it’s an easy payday,” the commander said.

Oh, so he was lying too. How nice.

How the hell are we not taking the real risk when we’re the ones breaking into an excessively fortified fortress? Low risk? As if sneaking through narrow tunnels, bypassing security, and taking on whoever hadn’t been deployed to deal with the diversion was nothing more than a casual stroll. Sure, the main force might be gone by the time we got there, but this place wasn’t going to be empty. There’d still be guards—those poor bastards who had the unlucky job of staying behind to protect the mine. They wouldn’t be pushovers either. These guys would be on high alert, even without the bulk of the forces, knowing something was off when the diversion started. And we were supposed to waltz in, raid the place, and slip out as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

If I were actually a demon on this job, I’d be pissed. But luckily for me, I’m not. This body was fake, and even if it got destroyed, I could just make another one.

“We head out in an hour. Get ready and earn your redemption,” the commander said, and the demons all gave him an unenthusiastic response.

“Well, I’m fired up,” I said with a grin as I turned to look at Janus. He just scowled at my shit-eating grin.

“That was not that bad as far as these briefings usually go,” the Crowfather mused as he stroked his chin.

“See? He gets it,” I said, and Janus gritted his teeth as he stood up and marched out of the room, following the crowd of mercenaries.

“I think he’s warming up to me,” I said, and the Crowfather just nodded amicably in response.

Our ride over was in this weird mechanical war engine. It wasn’t exactly a subtle vehicle, but they dropped us quite a distance from the mine.

Then came the walk. The long trek across the desolate plains was quite the sight. The Plains of Eternal Conflict, the stage of the Blood War, really do live up to their name.

This ancient battlefield in Hell was vast and desolate, the sands scorched black from the fires of a thousand wars. The details were long forgotten, but the grudges were well remembered. The ground itself seemed to pulse with a faint, evil energy, as if the very earth remembered the bloodshed it had soaked up over the ages. That wasn’t just a manner of speech, I could sense the ether pulsing from the ground. Demonic blood, much like angel blood, was ether-rich, so if you spill enough of it over a long period of time, it’s not inconceivable that you might get some weird effects.

Case in point: that crystal over there. It jutted from the ground like a twisted fang. Its surface was slick and jagged, with sharp edges catching the dim light of the infernal sky and casting deep crimson glints that danced along the blackened sand. The heart of the crystal pulsed faintly, casting shadows that twisted and writhed like tortured souls. The ground at its base was cracked and blackened, as if scorched by the heat that radiated from the crystal. That was a blood crystal, you get one of those when you condense a hundred thousand years of hatred and rage into the ground. Apparently, it was just some kind of evil rock; no one knew how to use it for anything. Like an ether crystal, if you cracked it, it exploded.

However, I’m not so convinced. I had Adhaya grab a few, and we’re testing them now. Malegaros has communicated that it might serve as a core for some kind of Hive Beast.

As for the rest of the plains, scattered across the landscape were countless discarded weapons rusted swords, broken spears, and shattered shields—all half-buried in the scorched sand. They jutted from the earth like gravestones. Some were covered in layers of ash, while others were stained with dark, dried blood, the remnants of an endless, brutal conflict.

“War eternal,” the Crowfather said as he glanced at the desolate landscape.

“This is supposed to be tame, right?” I asked as I turned to look at him, and the Crowfather’s expression shifted to one of disgust.

“You have no idea. The Firstborn’s wars left the soldiers fighting on mountains of corpses,” the Crowfather said.

“Sounds wasteful,” I replied with a shrug.

“Yes, if only the old gods were as pragmatic as you. Alas, competition and rivalry are all they ever knew,” the Crowfather said.

“Sounds petty,” I replied, and the Crowfather just shrugged.

“They existed in a time before virtue, before compassion, before even language. Love did not exist, only ceaseless, all consuming hunger,” the Crowfather said.

“Tell me…” the Crowfather switched to mental communication.

“Do you have that hunger?” he asked.

“Of course,” I replied through the mental link.

“What is it like? As an Heir, I have my own hunger, of course, but I wonder what the original was like. It must truly be a terrible thing,” the Crowfather asked.

“The hunger? Well, if you want to know what it’s like, the best answer I can give is that it’s always there. And knowing what your minds can handle, if you were exposed to the full measure of it, you’d go mad,” I replied.

“And yet you manage it well,” the Crowfather said.

“Hunger is an old friend,” I replied as my mind drifted to my old life. I suppose, yes, hunger was an old friend. Food was scarce, and I often gave what little I had to my little sister. It didn’t do much good in the end, but I suppose all that suffering paid off in the next life.

“I suppose that’s true, but it’s true for all of your kind,” the Crowfather said.

“My kind stand alone. We are all different. Assuming any form of consistency is a foolish assumption,” I said, and the Crowfather nodded.

“An old piece of wisdom that’s easily forgotten. Everything else that breathes is locked into our forms. We crave consistency, stability. It’s difficult for us to fathom a creature of living change.”

“Then you all have much to learn,” I said as I spotted the access point.

The access point was a well-concealed tunnel dug into one of the fortress’s hidden passageways. One of the things about these fortresses is that each time they change hands, the new owners often add secret passages. The end result is that the space beneath these fortresses ends up looking like some kind of underground maze. The mines themselves offer weird points of entry, which doesn’t help either.

This meant infiltrators like us could get in relatively easily, but the downside was that these places usually had large standing garrisons.

The path through the tunnel was uneventful, and just as the plan had stated, we emerged in a storage room. I looked around the dusty room filled with sandbags.

“Alright, as agreed, we split into two groups. One group goes into the mines, and the other group raises hell in the garrison to distract them so we can kill as many of the miners as we can,” the leader said.

Our group was assigned to the mines. Most likely, there was some string-pulling behind that decision. Technically, my group would be better suited to holding off the guards, yet here we were, being assigned to the mines. Oh well, I’m not complaining.

Luckily for us, the mines were nearby, so we were able to get there quickly. When we finally reached the door of the mines, the group of guards readied their weapons.

“[Harbinger Scythe],” I intoned, and a large ethereal scythe shot out of my hand, spinning toward the group of guards. It cut the entire group of guards in half at the waist, and we hurled ourselves toward the large black steel door.

“How do we get past this?” one of the demons asked.

“Shit, this wasn’t in the plan,” the group leader hissed.

“[Power Word: Force],” I said, and a wave of raw kinetic force shot out of my hand, slamming into the door. The metal warped and screamed as the force hit it. The large door was blasted clean off its hinges and went hurtling into the main shaft.

“Damn… you can use a Power Word?” one of the demons muttered.

“That explains why the Warmaster is working with you,” another demon added.

They were right to be shocked and impressed. Power Words were ancient magic. In fact, they were based on the original principles of magic created by the Firstborn. Most other kinds of magic involve the caster persuading or requesting the ether around them to form a desired effect.

But persuasion and requests were not the way of the Firstborn. They take what they want and destroy everything in their way. When you utter a Power Word, you do not ask. You do not plead with the magic. You command. With a single word, you grasp the very fabric of reality and force it to obey. There are no complex sigils or runes, no material components to channel the arcane. The power flows directly through you, as though, for one fleeting moment, you hold the same authority as the gods. They say when you speak the Power Words, you command and reality listens.

The irony of all this so-called fancy grandeur was that the Firstborn never even needed the Power Words. It was just an adapted technique from the lesser races in an attempt to mimic the Firstborn’s powers. I didn’t need to use it, but I had a disguise to uphold, so…

“I can do a lot more than that. Let’s go,” I said, and we charged in. The door had made quite a mess. I could sense pulped bodies under it, and a few guards and workers had been impaled by the shrapnel.

As we moved forward, I spotted a group of guards already forming a defensive line.

“Not one step closer!” one of the guards spat.

“[Widen Magic], [Power Word: Eviscerate].”

The word was spoken, and the flesh obeyed.

The guards couldn’t even scream as their bodies were torn apart in an instant. Their armor fell to the ground into the puddle of pulped mush that was once their bodies.

“What the fuck…” one of the demons muttered, his face turning pale.

“Cool, ain’t it? I got a whole library of words to use,” I said with a grin, and the demon went even paler, his red skin turning almost pink.

The next half hour was rather eventful. The rest of the group went around killing everything in sight. Some miners tried to resist, but they didn’t do much. One miner was valiantly holding off two members of the team with nothing but a pickaxe. Honestly, this miner was doing quite well, but he was holding up the schedule.

[Power Word: Kill]

Okay… now that’s settled. The rest of the team moved on to kill the ones cowering behind. Honestly, it didn’t matter how or what they did in here. They were all going to die anyway.

“My King, preparations are complete. Awaiting your command,” Adhaya said as we moved toward the meeting point. “My hive has planted explosive charges and shaped the caverns around it to detonate and cave in the mine. All the Infernis ore will ignite, blasting the mine and the fortress above it open, while leaving the lower levels intact.”

When we reached the intersection toward the lower levels, it was just me, the Crowfather, Janus, and one other demon.

“I think this leads to the lower levels. Should we wait for the rest?” the demon asked.

“Nah, we’ll go ahead first,” I said with a grin.

“Alright, let’s go,” the demon said, taking a step forward into the tunnel.

[Power Word: Kill]

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