Apostles of Doom

“Of course, but I often fight alongside my mortal warriors! At least, I do when it is a critical battle. Obviously, given that we have operations on multiple worlds, I cannot be in every battle,” Sekhmekt said.

“Omnipresence is much harder to achieve than omniscience,” Phaestus joked, grinning.

“Well, given that you fall disastrously short on the omniscient thing, you might want to stick to working on just one of them,” Völund snorted. Phaestus gave him a mock glare of outrage before taking another swig of beer. Phaestus had restocked their beer supplies from his brewery on Uropia.

“Well, there have been no major battles for Tiernon in my lifetime.” Talarius sounded rather defensive.

“Not since the Rod slaughtered our people.” Phaestus nodded.

Talarius glared at Phaestus. “The Rod does not slaughter people!”

Sekhmekt and Phaestus both snorted. “Apparently they don’t teach history in your schools! What do you think they did in Natoor, Najaar and Noajar? You think all of our people converted willingly? That Tiernon’s and Torean’s forces were welcomed as liberators?”

“Uhm, well…” Talarius said, trying to remember.

“There was bloodshed, murder, and yes, rape, on a truly epic scale,” Sekhmekt said. She gestured to the air above the table, and suddenly a vision of soldiers wearing centuries-old Rod uniforms appeared above the table. They were breaching the walls of a large city. And there was, as Sekhmekt had said, bloodshed and violence.

Within moments, the visions of battle spread from the table into the minds of those in the room. They were all suddenly there in Memphis, each person in the room sharing memories of someone who had been in the city when the Rod had attacked. Each viewer suddenly knew what the person whose memory they shared knew. They could remember the events of the last several days — the fear, the siege. They saw firsthand the soldiers of the Rod swarming through the city, slaying all those who stood against them. Time shifted and it was a few days later; tribunals, executions, conversions… all of the horror.

Suddenly the memories stopped and all in the dining room were left gasping. Sekhmekt, standing at her chair, shook her head, realizing that she had overshared. She sat down suddenly. “I am truly sorry; that was uncalled for.”

Phaestus rested his right hand on Sekhmekt’s shoulder. “It’s okay. I know it is hard.”

The goddess’s eyes were moist and it took her a moment to regain her composure.

“Again, my apologies. I have had too much beer. I had meant to simply display a two-dimensional image of the memories I have in my trust, but the memories spun out of control. They are still too fresh.”

Reggie shook his head, trying to recover and reorient himself to the present. “So that happened in Memphis?”

“Those memories were from people in Memphis,” Phaestus replied, “but similar battles took place all over our lands in Astlan, as well as the rest of the localverse and some other parts of the multiverse. It was a very coordinated attack on our land and people roughly a thousand years ago.”

“It started out innocently on most planes,” Sekhmekt said. “We have no problems with people of other faiths living around and about our lands; thus we were not prepared for the uprisings, the hidden armies that seemed to come from nowhere.”

“By the time we, the Nyjyr Ennead, were fully aware of what was happening and that it was happening on multiple planes at nearly the same time, our mortal forces were already nearly overwhelmed,” Phaestus added.

“But enough; I think it best if my husband and I retire for the evening. Again, my apologies. None of you deserved that.” Sekhmekt looked around at the others and nodded in particular at Talarius, who was sitting in stunned silence like many of the others.

Mount Doom: DOA + 2, Mid First Period

Tom trudged down the corridor towards his suite. He was exhausted. The battle, the second allegiance ceremony, and getting the newly sworn demons (and their detached body parts) safely inside Doom and quartered had made it a long day. The majority of Lilith’s old forces had all sworn to him and he had links to each, but trust still needed to be earned, so they were all on probation.

He had assigned Delg Narmoloth, his D’Orc commander from Earth, and his D’Orcs to keep an eye on their new recruits. He figured if Delg could lead orcs against the Æsir during Ragnarök, then keeping an eye on fewer than two thousand demons should not be a problem.

He had checked on Vaselle and the rest of his people in Astlan shortly before swearing in the new recruits and shown them the balling of the battle over their campfire. They were camping outside of Murgatroy to avoid having to stable Schwarzenfürze in the wargtown and cause further problems.