⛧ INFERNAL ARENA ⛧

[Zonty 995]

 

 

 

Spoiler

🎶🎶🎶

 

[Birds beyond normalcy, warped afar from their once cherished serenity, fluttered through realms, trilling insidious tunes. They borne parchments along, loosing them, whether unfurled or scrolled, for all to glean.]

 

Infernal

 

Arena

 

 

 

 

“Ra’drakurz raht roknoth kuul ra’vaznan amol tul.”

 

 

 

 

A gargantuan, many-pearled beast—its hide like burnished bronze strewn with opals—howled flame and fury into the blood-warm air. Smoke wreathed its hulking limbs as it thundered across the broken stones, rending and reaving with weapons too massive for mortal hands. Each blow cracked the earth, each roar a tempest of wrath given voice.

 

 

 

 

Opposite him moved a figure pale of gaze and quiet of soul—a demon cloaked in ash and ember. He danced, not fought, weaving between ruinous blows with an elegance born of death. His motions were fluid as drifting smoke, untouched by the crimson cyclone that raged before him. Not once did his single, ashen blade rise to strike, nor his countenance shift beneath the veil of soot.

He waited. Patient. Poised.

Until, at last, the moment balanced—perfect and terrible. Then came the strike. Silent as falling dusk, swift as the shadow between heartbeats. Steel kissed flesh, and the giant's fury faltered. The beast fell, its roars silenced in a final plume of fire.

 

And now, only one remained.

 

 

=+=

 

 

Thus is the fate of all who tread the soil of Mundus: to rise by strength or perish by weakness. To stand unshaken amid the storm, or to falter and be swallowed by the dust. The craven veil their eyes from this unflinching truth, weaving for themselves a shroud of lies and broken vows, clinging to illusions like children to fading dreams.

 

 

But you—if you would cast off the chains of their feeble sanctuary, if you would remain untouched by their petty cowardice and empty boasts—then seek me.

 

 

Through stone and storm, through wind-swept peaks and sunless chasms, find me. Call me forth with steel in your grip and resolve in your heart, and meet me in the sacred clash of duel.

 

 

Should you prevail—not by luck, but by the clarity of will and the edge of your soul—I shall lead you beyond the veil, to a place hidden from the eyes of the many. Cloaked in secrecy, carved in silence. There, the true trials await. Battles not for glory, but for truth. There, you will be tested—not only in strength, but in spirit.

 

 

And there, the fight shall bloom.

 

 

 

 

[Beneath, at the very verge of a parchment, seen only by vigilant eyes, more words splay: “Beneath Silasia, where water meets murk, glean a chasm in the pond; and delve below stone crust.”]

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Mescaffier 6197]

One Helena Casimira squinted at the parchment found in some alley of the Empire, frowning at the words scrawled upon it. "Is this written by automaton intelligence? Bah, the schizophrenics are back!" she spat to the figure behind her, crumpling it and moving past to the next road.

[Chimeraof1999 1194]

The demon below continued his infernal climb, screaming and shouting as he chanted with the fellow climbers. He waited in such arena, wishing to see such futile endeavors end so poorly. The demon screamed out with his fellow inferi, as the climb continued.