Lament of the Willing Damned

The characters involved here may be familiar to those reading my storyhour, and this story takes place seperate from that. Some of the same characters, but a wholly different timeline/continuity, especially with respect to events in Carceri.

“And so why do I constrain myself here within this prison of words and deeds? It is as much iron and gaoler as it is by our own choices. This red-litten prison is now my home, myself as much a prisoner of my own making as I am soon to be the overlord of all I behold. But the blade of betrayal cuts both ways, and here in the depths of Tartarus I know not yet which side of the cutting edge I shall be upon when I whisper my orders and wait for bloodshed.” – Shylara Akt’Atarm

            The fiend leaned forwards near to one of the ears of the Altraloth seated before her who gazed across the flat marble tabletop at the Maralith coiled there upon the floor of his audience hall. An Arcanaloth, she was but one of a handful of advisors to Bubonix, overlord of Carceri and master of the Tower of Incarnate Pain. She lifted the gaze of her emerald green eyes to glance at the Tanar’ri, here to negotiate the passage of a contingent of Abyssal forces through a portion of the first layer of Carceri claimed and held by the Yugoloths in order to avoid Gehreleth and the suspected ambush of a Baatezu army.

            Rasilliath Fleshfeaster gazed across the table at the two Yugoloths, tightening and releasing her coils in thinly veiled frustration. Why did the damned ‘loths have to talk and discuss and bargain when only a stretch of three hundred miles of swamp and barren rocky planes separated her armies from the portals they required to plunge into the Waste and meet an army of the hated Lord of the 1st at the Field of Nettles. The filthy mercenaries, they saw only profit when the headlong plunge into raging fury against the Baatezu awaited. Why did they have to delay her inevitable bathing in the entrails of her enemies the most hated Baatezu…

            The Arcanaloth whispered into the ear of her liege, the contrast between the two Yugoloths immense in both sheer physical size and in appearance alike. The jackal headed female was dressed almost plainly in robes of black and silver, and save for a few jeweled piercings in either of her ears, was adorned plainly and without flair. Her lord however, nearly double her size or larger, was dressed in an elaborate and decorative military uniform and cloak that trailed out upon the floor behind him. Bubonix, the Yugoloth potentate of Carceri appeared as a massive humanoid, some twelve feet tall, covered in a mass of black pustules, the plague of his namesake. The ichor oozing from some of the ruptured boils spread a dull miasma into the air surrounding him, but for all of the stench and running ooze, the Altraloth’s cloak and robe remained untouched by stain or scent.

            As she whispered mundane and banal words into the ears of the Lord of the yet uncompleted tower, their minds linked and shuttled back and forth a staccato fire of telepathic sendings of both words and concepts.

            “Tell her the Lord of the 1st has amassed an army twice that of what she has been led to believe, she will seek to reinforce herself with your mercenaries, or avoid travel through the area surrounding the Tower altogether. In either case she is neither near to, or can be led away from the protected region and shall not blunder upon it…”

            “What makes me curious though is not the obvious solution you parrot into my minds eye, but rather why she even thinks that an army of Bel’s control is in the Field of Nettles currently… There is none. However in roughly the time it takes the Tanar’ri bitch’s forces to transit, forces in the employ of Geryon are bound for the region… explain…”

            There was a distinct pause felt in the mind of Bubonix and Shylara hesitated, thinking of what words to speak, “Geryon’s forces within the region may be allied with the mercenary forces of a number of Ultraloths from Khin-Oin including Koriarix and Vuulstanid. They have been belligerent towards you in the past my lord, and their power waxes within The Waste. Would not now be the time to play the Tanar’ri into ravaging their forces before they see to the success of Geryon elsewhere? They lose forces and the prestige of a successful campaign with the Baatezu. By proxy you blunt their ambitions while your own rise. The overall battle is unimportant, an army of Mephistopheles will ravage them all in under a month if the information granted to us by The General is correct. What say you my lord?”

            A flicker of both ambition and suspicion flared within the Altraloth’s mind as he turned to face the Maralith. “Your intelligence is perhaps suspect, armies of my allies within Gehenna report that Bel’s forces en route to the Waste number fully twice what you have been led to believe. Do you trust your superiors to have not sent you upon a suicidal foray? If you pursue your original intent I can provide you with thirty thousand Scerraloth and a nearly equal number of Mezzoloth, Derghaloth, and Piscaloth. If you wish to ponder my offer, I will keep it valid for a ten-day before I move the troops to other matters.” He leaned forwards to the Tanar’ri and behind him a gleam of triumph burst like a falling star in the brain of his advisor.

            Fully an hour later an agreement was reached, and Shylara stood to one side as the terms were dictated between the Maralith and Bubonix. Before her stood the pitted iron frame upon which she had stretched the tortured and flayed hide of a still living petitioner, nailed to the corners of the frame. With a white-hot steel stylus gripped in her hand she scorched the contract into the body and mind of the mindless wretch that was her living parchment. And inside, with every word scribed, she smiled with another minor triumph in a long string of them. The lord of the unfinished tower suspected nothing. So concerned with betrayal from his rivals in the Grey Waste, his warlord Cholerix, discovery of his tower by the Tanar’ri, Baatezu or even the Celestials, or yet another siege of the Tower from without by the Gehreleth he was all but blind to a threat from within if it were not from one already suspected. In a few words, anyone but her.

            She reached up to scratch in vain at an itch crawling over one tan furred ear before pausing to glance at Bubonix as the Tanar’ri was escorted away by a group of four Mezzoloths. As the Maralith left he looked to her, a smile passing over his ravaged features. “Well done. You have other duties to attend to, and I do not require you for the rest of the day. You are dismissed. I will have you summoned if I have need of you.”

            She bowed in obeisance to her superior, took hold of the twitching, softly moaning contract nailed to its frame, and left the chamber. Bubonix watched her as she leaved, his eyes observing details lost to the Maralith and indeed most of the Yugoloths in his employ. Where most observed her as a confident and supremely talented scribe and spellcaster, with a quick mind for negotiations and a subtle insight into the minds of the Tanar’ri, his own eyes saw past the skills and the physical beauty of the young ‘loth. Peeling away the layers of illusion she had habitually cloaked herself in, and even many of the shapechanging spells that were her birthright as an Arcanaloth, she was a wasted wretch of a thing, her fur ravaged by mange, and nearly bald in places from where the flesh had festered and bled or where she had torn it off, scratching in vain to cull the itch and irritation.

            A plague of her own, personal misery to match his, and she revealed it to none. Whatever bitterness she undoubtedly had at all times, nearly boiling over, was snuffed utterly by the vainglory she was possessed by.

            Bubonix chuckled and glanced out of his current chamber to gaze upon the spell obscured foundations of the Tower of Incarnate Pain, built from the living husks of the planes petitioners, subdued and molded into place as tormented bricks and agonizing mortar. It would only be a matter of time before it was finished and he came into his glory…

            Far away from the chambers of her lord, Shylara sat in near pitch darkness and closed her eyes, shutting off thought and the distraction of her maddening pox, listening with keen intent to the distant, muted wails and screams of the petitioners that composed the foundations of the same tower her master now stared out upon. Another thread woven, another link in the chain, another step closer to the nature of Carceri. The tower would be finished, but it would never see Bubonix as its lord, not if she was true to her nature and he to his. She grinned in the darkness and with a shudder cast her mind to the planes, seeking out her counterpart, mentor and liege upon The Waste. He would be happy with her this day.