Chapter One- Into the Abyss
His body burned with a pain that tore at him with a mad fierceness that dwarfed the Lake of the Dead. He crumpled limply on the sand that cradled him, and he raised his head and found himself free.
The sharp stench of sulfir and acrid air burned his nostrils, and he had but one thought "No… this isn't where heroes go, where messiahs come to rest for their sacrifice."
Casting his gaze to the "heavens" flights of demons winged through the hell dry air and perched on impossibly high rock formations that looked down on those below with savage cruelty. In the distance, ground loving demons or monsters roved about in chaotic hordes. And even further in the distance a terrible battle, it's combatants to far away to see. But all around him squirmed and wriggled sickly man-sized grubs.
Slowly the ragged blue skinned creature struggled to his feet and prodded one of the larvae with his cloven foot, like lightening it struck back at him with its sharp teeth and drool drenched maw. He leapt back as a terrible revelation hit him, these grubs with anguished heads of men and women are the condemned souls of those who held chaos and evil in their hearts. Perhaps these "larvae" are even the larval form of the demons that ravaged the land around him. But these larvae called to him and he knew that these were souls in corporeal form.
He stared down at those soul grubs until his eyes blurred… "This was the afterlife without my master's wheel, impossible anguish. Was I as terrible as these?"
Below him the larva hissed and gnashed "her" teeth at him, and he felt as if a small blessing had been granted to him. Surrounded by corporeal souls he only needed to break them and feed, and then all the hunger, pain, and weakness would be a memory. The larvae, he found, were easy enough to kill and as their physical forms colapsed and died putried green spectral mist rose up into the Abyssal air.
Strength filled his bones where moments before there was only weakness. His soul burned with damnation and his mind reeled. Why was he not in the Reaver, and was this his punishment for all of his murders and rebellions? Was he dilluded in thinking he had held good and integrity close to his heart, or at least as close as Nosgoth had allowed him? Had he been a servant of chaos and evil all along? No, impossible. What he had learned of the Saraphan was it had been an order of ruthless law, not chaos. So why was he here?
Sleenking from shadow to shadow of the pitted landscape, he skirted acrossed demons that bullied, beat, and raped each other. From his shadowy concealment he watched as an innocuous conversation between two demons devolved into a deadly blood soaked duel. And as he watched its conclusion he had one thought, this was a place worse than Hell and he was all alone, unarmed and vulerable.
Hey kids. I haven't written a story in a long time so have patience on me, and half the time I was thinking about how great it would be if I had a bowl of chocolate pudding in front of me. So in this story I'm talking about a lower plane in the dungeons and dragon cosmolgy called "The infinite layers of the abyss". This is the home plane of the demons. Three major demon races live here the most ancient are the obyriths that are slowly going extinct and have forms offensive to the senses that they cause somesort of madness. The most numerous race of demon are the tanar'ri, they are made from the souls of chaotic evil people, they also rule the Abyss. The final race are called loumaras and they were created from the dreams of dieing chaotic evil gods. Then there is the demons that don't have a race they just are- we'll just say they aren't cool enough to belong to a race.