Angel howled in joy. Her jaw unhinged, her maw opening wide like a python about to swallow a pig. She stuffed the dead tribesman into her mouth, gulping him down, chewing, swallowing, until her belly extended like some obscene pregnancy. Her limbs grew longer. Her head ballooned. She laughed as she grew taller, sprouting to twice her old height, then growing even further. She spread her wings wide like midnight sails.

"Rise, demons of the Abyss!" Angel shouted. "Rise and feast upon the flesh of Eteer!"

She beat her wings, rising, ringed in fire, a woman of stone and lava the size of a dragon. From the palace windows and doors, they burst out, a thousand abominations of the Abyss. They spread through the city streets. They crashed through the doors of homes and shops. And they fed. And they grew.

Screams and blood filled the city of Eteer that day.

Raem watched from the palace roof, a thin smile on his lips.

Before him, the demons grew, extending like boils about to burst. Globs of flesh. Scaled creatures of hooks and horns. Unholy centipedes of many human heads and limbs. All rose before him, growing to the size of dragons. They hovered before the palace roof, swallowing the last bits of human flesh.

It was an army of darkness. It was an army to purify the world.

Upon the roof, Raem raised his arms. He shouted out for them all to hear.

"I have fed you, my children! And you have grown strong. Now we fly! We fly north. We fly to Requiem. We fly to kill dragons!"

They shrieked, howled, sneered, laughed, roared. Their voices rose into a single cry, a thunder that shook the city, that shattered towers, that sent burnt trees crumbling. Raem's mount—the twisted woman broken, cursed, and stretched into a bat—flew toward him. Once the size of a horse, the deformed creature was now as large as a dragon, and the blood of men stained her lips. Raem mounted the beast and stroked her.

Hiding the sky behind their wings, leaving a trail of rot, the demon army flew across the city and over the sea, heading to the land of dragons.

BOOK TWO: REQUEIM'S HOPE

BOOK TWO: REQUEIM'S HOPE

ISSARI

 
ISSARI

A white dragon, she flew across the wilderness, a thousand demons of the Abyss flying in pursuit.

Issari panted and her wings ached with every beat. Jabs of pain shot through her belly, and fire blazed in her maw, blasting out smoke that blinded her. She had been flying for days, barely resting, as they drew closer behind her—shrieking, roaring, clattering, hissing—the creatures of nightmares.