CHAPTER 2
"The demon rose up and fell as quickly as a blooming rose. Red was his life and death. A bloated corpse! Like every other fool from that country, he preyed upon famine, death and misery. A vulture he was! A harpy! Some say a gargoyle wearing human skin..."
He gazes upon the fire "The scourge of the north, of the Heretical Gulbeb, grasped at him. But the creature did nay care. You thought the demon cared about anything except his joy? To see every house stomped by the cloven hooves of his horses and boots of his men? The women raped and the men quartered?"
"Some say, because we still do not know where they sprung up. From the earth perhaps, aye, but they say the madman conjured from the depths of his mind an army. Millions died under his command, but he thought up more! They called them the gray palls. From every pore of the earth, from soil and mud they cleaved and followed him! Beasts bowed to him! Aye, endless empires fell! Minos...Gael...Egyptia! Empires forgotten now, after so long...The nubians enslaved and twisted, the egyptians made into soil eating dogs, minotaurs crushed under his thumbs like grapes!"
"You are saying he destroyed the empires of mankind?"
"He destroyed most of them, except for those who wielded weapons capable of mass death...Catopeblas...The weapons of old, firearms."
"Tell me more"
"Aye...They say he wielded lashes of fire, and hurled plagues and swarms of locusts, and from his hands sprung up orsenmen and from his eyes he leered and armies bowed...And from his mouth a deep breath of flame he instilled upon machines of reaping fire, Dragons! And in his hand was the blade of Massacre. A blood-red blade of raping death, of demon aroused gut wringed flame. Of basilisk breed and of godsfire! Of wombsplitting cowardice, a rebellion against the Gods...Coiling, sweeping...Grim Reaper!"
He grabs his head. The fire almost seems to laugh at him.
"He is dead. The gods had mercy on us. Now he lays forever with Death."