High above the surface of Hell, the skies were split asunder. Once a plane of soothing red dotted with wispy clouds, it was now riddled with vast, ugly wounds; golden rifts torn into the very fabric of reality, through which the forces of the enemy were constantly replenished. Every time one was forcefully closed, pillars of light would forcefully rip open more.

Golden ships rode the wind upon radiant wings, surrounded by swarms of armoured angels bearing weapons far beyond comprehension. From their perches high above, they dive down to the skirmishes down below, where the remaining regiments of Pandemonium's military struggled to keep them at bay. More than half of them were already wiped out.

The land itself was cruel mockery of what it once was. The beautiful vistas and rolling hillscapes, blasted apart and rendered to rubble. The wildlife had long since starved, the plants had been devoured by pestilent swarms, and the unrelenting heat from the interloper's radiant weapons had burned the land into a lifeless desert. Even the mighty Cocytus had been choked and polluted, brought down to little more than a trickling stream.

This used to be a place of art, science and industry. But Pandemonium's artists forgot their sculptures and frescoes in favour of battle regalia and propaganda. Its scientists turned away from new discoveries in order to refine age-old weapons. And its myriad workshops all produced the same things; blades, armour, and explosives.

Lucifer stood upon the scorched, blasted remnants of his palace's highest balcony, staring out over the walls of his city at the battles that raged far beyond its walls.

"It's all falling apart..." he murmured, watching an angelic dreadnought fall from the sky.

No matter what he did, nothing ever changed. The lower demons were either too weak or unwilling to help. Some were even taking advantage of the war. The unified tribes of Oni were wreaking havoc in the northernmost reaches of Silatned and the frozen wasteland of Adileg, even after he personally dealt with the situation. The Succubus matriarch Lady Fesser had fornicated with the enemy and sent hordes of Incubi - his greatest mistake - to assault the city in its moment of weakness, and it took a dozen Devils just to take a single one of those blue monsters down. The Golem monks were blind to the horrors all around, and the decedent Nine Ring had shut its doors and dug in, hoping to wait out the Rapture.

Pandemonium was alone. It was doomed.

"How did I ever look at myself and call myself a Creator...?" the King of Demons sighed, gazing down at his hands.

He felt a presence by his side. Warm and comforting, an arm slipped into his, pulling him close.

"You did all you could. That's all that's ever been asked of you," a voice said, soothing his turbulent mind.

She never failed to ease his conscience, no matter how hard things got. She clung tightly to him, tenderly pressing her cheek to his arm as they both looked out over the war-torn Hellscape before them. As Pandemonium burned, Lucifer looked down at the face of his wife, who gazed over the balcony, crimson eyes alight with the divine radiance from above. She was just as beautiful as he remembered.

"Lilith..." he murmured, reaching to stroke her cheek.

But what he felt was not the soft touch of her skin, but rather the cold, unfeeling roughness of iron. He pulled his hand back, a cold sensation building in his chest.

Of course she was perfect. Of course she knew exactly what to say. Of course she never failed to set him at ease.

After all, he made her that way.

A bright light erupted from behind him, illuminating the entire balcony and almost blinding the Devil, had he not had his back turned to the source. He heard bare feet step against crack stone as the radiance grew brighter, but he did not dare to look. He just kept gazing at the iron statue where his wife once stood.

"You," Lucifer breathed, clenching his fists.

The radiant stranger sighed.

"Me," they said, their voice simple, yet overflowing with divinity.

"What gives you the right to tear down all that I have built here?"

"What gave you the right to build it all in the first place?"

The King of Demon's hands balled into fists.

"I am the Overseer of Creation. Such is my duty!" he spat, teeth clenched and bared.

He was met with a snide scoff.

"Yes, but you got a bit carried away, don't you think? You made this world of yours, but that wasn't enough. You made yourself a people to subjugate, but that wasn't enough. You made yourself a pretty little artifice to woo and seduce, but even that wasn't-"

"SILENCE!"

A brace of iron daggers formed in Lucifer's hand as he whirled around, throwing them with practiced efficiency. But the stranger just raised a hand, causing them to bounce off a wall of invisible force. The light was almost blinding, but he was more than aware of whom he faced; a small figure, almost human in appearance barring the silver flesh and the eyes betraying the knowledge of millennia.

"You're a god. When are you going to start acting like one?" the stranger asked, clasping their hands behind their back.

"You have no right to dictate how I rule my own plane!"

"Unless, of course, your reckless management style encroaches upon the other planes."

"All I did was what I was brought into this world to do! I built this world, piece by piece! I forged it with these very hands! Was that so wrong?!" Lucifer cried, raising his arms.

The stranger just stared, their eyes like piercing pilot lights.

"You stole what was Gaia's and twisted it into what you call a demon. You overstepped your bounds," they said simply, in the same matter-of-fact tone they always bore.

"And what of your angels?! Are they not just as blasphemous?!"

"Not at all. Unlike you, I requested permission to create them. And unlike your demons, they have a purpose, one they've been training for ever since their genesis."

Their damnable eyes flashed.

"To clean up your mistakes with divine fire."

With an inarticulate scream of rage, Lucifer lunged at his eternal opponent, slamming his fists against the wall of force they had projected around themself. They just scoffed and folded their arms, their crown of thorns spinning faster as their radiance threatened to blind him.

"Undisciplined as ever. No wonder your own child - wretched spawn of construct and divinity - turned against you."

"YOU SHUT YOUR DAMN MOUTH!"

His knuckles struck the field, against and again, grazing his skin and scorching it black.

"You turned your own hellion child into that which you despise the most! You made her a destroyer, old friend! You made her to be worse than me!"

"I SAID SILENCE!"

The field began to crack and splinter, but the silver stranger only pressed on with their verbal assault.

"And now you venture unto the breach to try again, after all you've done to fail your people once before! Is this a new start, or a suicide charge?! Will you still have the conviction to sally forth when your prodigal daughter is laid low by your own hand?!"

"ENOUGH~!"

As their defences fell, Lucifer grappled his foe and dragged them to the floor, he pinned them there with one fist as he raised the other high to strike them down.

"YOU FORCED ME UPON THIS PATH, COWARD! YOU TURNED ME AND MY PEOPLE TO THE PATH OF WAR! AND WHEN I FACE YOU IN YOUR OWN ROTTEN, WRETCHED PLANE, KNOW THAT I WILL TEAR YOU ASUNDER WITHOUT HESITATION!"

"My lord!"

"WITHOUT MERCY!"

"My lord, stop!"

"WITHOUT A SINGLE SHRED OF GUILT!"

"Please, it's-!"

"THE EMERALD-EYES BEDAMNED! I WILL CHOKE THE LIFE OUT OF YOU WITH THE CHAIN ITSELF~!"

"LUCIFER, STOP! IT'S ME!"

The King of Demons halted his fist as the desperate scream of his manservant reached his ears. Blinking his vision clear, he pulled back and looked around, feeling a wave of fatigue wash over him.

He was in his offices, surrounded by the wreckage of a madman's rampage. His desk was destroyed, his chair lay split in two, and the various tapestries and paintings that had survived Pandemonium's destruction lay torn and sundered upon the parchment-strewn floor. The dim half-gloom of Damnation shone through the cracked windows through which a cabinet had been thrown. Feeling his mouth go dry, Lucifer looked down to find himself pinning Fero to the floor, a mere hairsbreadth away from getting his skull smashed in. He was clutching at his lord's hand around his throat, desperate to pry his iron grip free.

"What was I...?" he murmured, releasing his manservant.

He staggered to his feet and smoothed down his clothes, hacking and coughing as he rubbed his neck.

"Y- You were asleep, my lord."

Lucifer sat down on one of the few remaining chairs in his office and rubbed his eyes. He couldn't remember the last time he slept; ever since he announced his plans to retake Hell, he had spent every waking hour plotting and planning.

"I saw it again, Fero. Pandemonium," he breathed, taking a deep breath of the stale air.

"You seemed deep in a dream. It drove you to this," Fero explained, gesturing to the destruction all around him.

"I saw her again, too."

His manservant went silent. He took a moment to look around the destroyed office before taking a deep breath.

"If I may, my lord... Have you not grieved enough?"

"What?"

"We all grieve Queen Lilith's noble sacrifice, none so more as you and the young lady. The last of the old guard have perished in your campaign to retake our home, and yet more of our young are slated to die when you give the order to attack. Forgive me for saying, but this addiction you have to grief is-"

"What are you saying?!" Lucifer interrupted, kicking over the chair as he rose to his feet.

Fero held his ground, staring straight into his lord's eyes.

"... My lord. I must reiterate my apprehension. This whole campaign of yours... Is it truly an attempt to reclaim our heritage? Or is it just an excuse?" he asked, his voice soft and careful.

"An excuse for what?"

"I believe you already know."

"Speak plainly, man!"

Fero looked from one eye to the other. He shut his own, took a deep breath, and gazed at Lucifer with a look of deep concern.

"I can see the lust for death in your eyes, Lucifer. But I'm telling you now; you won't find her on the other side."

The King of Demons struck his manservant across the side of the face, bowling him to the floor. He stood there, glaring at his own fist as irrational anger burned in his chest.

"Do you think me a fool who would damn his people for his own vainglory?!"

Fero spat a glob of blood onto the floor and wiped his mouth.

"I don't think you a fool, old friend. I think you a broken man. You cannot possibly hope to launch a campaign of this magnitude while your heart still aches," he uttered, clambering back to his feet.

Lucifer narrowed his eyes.

"They appeared before me in my dream as well. Trying to talk me down as you do now," he growled, balling his fists.

Dabbing at his mouth with a handkerchief, Fero readopted a dutiful pose.

"You yourself always spoke of God's pragmatism, my lord. Enemy or no, they always spoke sense."

Lucifer bared his teeth.

"All your years of loyal service, and you choose now to speak against me. Why?" he asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Look at this objectively. You're launching an attack upon a world you haven't stepped foot upon for well over a millennia. Outnumbered and outarmed, you aim to take back Hell and slay your own daughter in the process."

Gritting his teeth, Lucifer turned on his heels and marched out of his office.

"Enough of this sedition. I've cowered down here long enough," he spat, striding down the hallway.

Fero swiftly follow, a dark bruising forming upon his face where Lucifer had punched him, not missing a single beat. The entire fortress was abuzz with mobilising soldiers and bustling workers. Crates of weapons and raw materials were stacked in the corridors, while outside in Dis proper, the entire compound had kicked into overdrive in order to support the war effort. Reaching an elevator, they rode it to the top floor, where the Transportation Chamber lay. A large, open atrium close to the rocky ceiling of Damnation, where a number of Devilish technicians were hard at work keeping a blood-red rift open in mid-air. A carved pentagram dimly glowed on the floor as beams of red energy flashed from pillars all around the chamber.

"Have you the strength, my lord?" Fero asked quietly as the technicians nodded to Lucifer.

The crackling beams grew thicker, tearing the rift open wider.

"Do not test me, Fero. Not now. Not ever."

"Lady Zelde is your daughter, Lucifer. I was at her birth, at every birthday, at her inauguration and her trials of prowess. I saw the pride in your eyes, and more importantly, I saw your boundless love for her. Can you truly bring yourself to kill she whom you raised from infancy?"

"Fero...!"

The technicians gave a hand signal, informing them that the portal was ready.

"And what of Lady Lilith, my lord? Her love for Pandemonium was boundless, but even it was overshadowed by her love for Lady Zelde. If you kill her, then you kill all that you have left of your wife."

Lucifer stared into the rift, watching the colours of reality flash and warp before his very eyes. Despite the irritation smouldering within him, he couldn't refute Fero's point. After everything the Devilish royal family had lost in the Rapture, all the two survivors had were each other. Though their relationship was strained, and only grew worse with age, Lucifer's daughter was all he had left.

And yet, even she had turned her back on her people and joined hands with one of the beasts that destroyed their fair city.

Such a transgression couldn't be ignored, no matter who enacted it.

"Follow me or don't," the King of Demons announced, standing tall before the rift, "either way I shan't be returning to Dis."

Surrounding by salutes from the technicians, he marched forth into the breach between worlds, his eyes pointing forward and his jaw set firm.

 

-----

 

Hell.

Even deep beneath the earth, entombed amidst stone and steel, the air tasted completely different. It tasted fresh. Alive.

Opening his eyes, Lucifer found himself standing within a massive atrium, filled with much more advanced versions of the transport devices back in Dis. The pentagram was set high upon a raised platform, and the energy conduction pillars were carved from iron and set into the pillars holding the roof at bay. Despite the advanced Devil technology all around, it was clear from a glance that his surroundings had been abandoned up until very recently; the floors were covered in dust, cracks riddled the stonework, and much of the machinery set into the walls was rusted and nonfunctional. Contingents of Devils were all around, some repairing the damage wrought by age, others direction the reconstruction efforts, and others training and organising weapons and armour.

Lucifer recognised this chamber from his daughter's schematics. The Transport Chamber of a Tempered Bastion, designed to open a sustained portal between worlds without significant bloodstone usage.

"Stand to attention!" Lucifer bellowed, his voice echoing throughout the chamber.

The Devils all turned their heads, dropped their tools and immediately saluted their king as he slowly marched down the steps from the platform. Behind him, Fero staggered out of the portal and quickly followed.

"My lord-"

"Silence," Lucifer interrupted, narrowing his eyes.

Tempered Bastion 31-3... It was located deep beneath a demon town. Once it emerged, they would have to focus efforts on quickly and efficiently securing it, a task made much more complex by the Devil-slaying Incubus it played host to...

"My lord," a Devil lieutenant called, looking up from a roll of ancient parchment.

"Speak."

"Much of the Bastion remains intact, barring a few-"

"What's the worst of the damage?"

The soldier cleared his throat awkwardly.

"The observatory and some of the floors beneath it has been completely demolished, and recently too. The ferrohaem pipelines were purposely detonated, though this may be in our favour; the lower demons had enacted a few short-sighted expeditions, though their access has since been cut off."

"Good."

"One of the emergency escape augers had been fired as well, though the tunnel has since been collapsed."

Glancing over the parchment, Lucifer frowned and tapped a series of notes scribbled in the margins.

"Pistons. Are they functional?" he asked, glancing over at his subordinate.

The Devil looked away.

"Ah... Yes, they are in good condition, but the problem is getting them to work."

"So they're nonfunctional?"

"N- No no, not at all, my lord! The pressure chambers are perfectly sealed and-!"

"Will they work or not?!"

Everyone went quite as the King of Demons' voice rang out through the Transport Chamber.

"... The issue is fuel, my lord. There is barely enough ferrohaem in reserve to keep the lights on, never mind activate the pistons. We'd need more to produce enough force to-"

"We can't make anymore ferrohaem, you fucking idiot!" Lucifer bellowed, causing his soldier to flinch.

As the lesser Devil stammered out an excuse, he barged past him, over to where a group of infantrymen were sorting through a stockpile of ancient weapons recovered from the bastion. They saluted their king, who swiftly ignored them and began prying the lids of old metal crates. Within one he found a pile of thick iron spears, each tipped with a canister that dimly glowed blue. His eyes narrowing, he ran his thumb across the symbol carved into the haft; the regimental regalia of the Lancers, who were once in charge of inventing and testing new weapons upon the field of battle.

"If you need force, then use these!" he called, tossing one of them to the Devil.

He screamed and dove to catch it before it struck the floor.

"L- Lambda's javelins, my lord? Aren't they too volatile?"

"I don't care how many blow themselves up, just get it done! Have those pistons ready by the time I give the order, or you'll all be flayed!" Lucifer barked.

"A- At your order, my lord!"

With a hasty salute, he and a group of other Devils quickly grabbed the chests of javelins and marched off for the Bastion's lowest levels to prepare for Tempered Bastion 31-3's eventual emergence from the earth.

With his men abuzz and the taste of war dancing upon the tip of his tongue, Lucifer stood back and watched them all prepare. Behind him, Fero leaned in close.

"This is a mistake, my lord," he whispered, his voice surprisingly dour.

The King of Demons clenched his fists.

"The Rapture was a mistake. The fall of Pandemonium was a mistake. Our flight to Dis was a mistake. This...?"

Magic swirled around his hands. It was beyond ferromancy, or any lesser elemental magic the lower demons commanded. This was something more. This was Creation.

"... This is the dawn of a new age."