Chrysalis

In the centre of the basin stand the three biggest, ugliest, most vicious-looking demons I’ve ever clapped my thousands of lenses on. Torrifex looks much as I remember him. A brutal, gigantic monster who towers over the rest of us, even Tiny, smoke billowing from his back and curling around his feet.

Now that he isn’t moving around as much, I can see a little more detail of the big guy. His skin kind of looks cracked, with burning light shining through, as if he’s got lava running through his veins. Those jackalish features aren’t any more appealing than they were before, and his wickedly curved claws tipping each of his four arms don’t look any nicer than they did before.

His sisters, if anything, are worse.

Pyrixan is hard to even look at. Not because of her terrifying appearance, but because of the slowly revolving cloud of ash that covers her at all moments. I can catch glimpses of the demon within, and what I see isn’t great. My impression is of a withered blob of flesh covered in eyes, each of them weeping black ichor.

Lovely.

Somonax, on the other hand, appears in her full glory, not bothering to conceal herself beneath cloaks of ash or smoke.

She’s… terrifying.

The first thing I see is the blades. I mean… there's a heck of a lot of blades. Thousands of the damn things. They swish and swirl through the air in elegant motions, like a dance… of DEATH. Thanks to their movement, I can make out the wire-thin threads that link them back to their host. In the middle, Somonax stands like a spider in the centre of a web.

Of the three, she’s the most humanoid, two arms, two legs, one head, boring, standard stuff. She’s still huge, of course, as a powerful tier eight monster should be.

Her face is… well… let’s just say she looks happy! Half of her head is taken up with a wide rictus grin of needle-like teeth, the other half is pretty much just red eyeballs.

It’s… a unique look.

intrudes

appears to be in a fine mood, bellowing across the mindbridge the moment I

the last time I saw you. As I recall, you scurried away after

this description of events, but his arrogant

were. I had not been sent to kill you, that

alive. And now what? Arconi-butt wanted me tested, and I passed, naturally, and then you drag me down here and trap me with your

to their level. I don’t know exactly why, but they actively try to create claimants to that vacant throne. The Call is just one tool they use, sticking this damn hook in my guts to ‘encourage’ me to descend and grow stronger. The various monster cults were literally created by the Ancients for this purpose, putting members of the surface races to the task as well,

sense that I, as one they’ve put their greedy eyes on, would be tested. What doesn’t make sense is that after passing the test with flying colours, Arconidem would then want to lure me down here for a rather uneven three vs one battle to

that Torrifex and his merry crew are no longer acting on the orders

ordered this stratum be made clean for his return. You and

true. But he didn’t order you to kill

fire beneath his skin growing brighter until flames begin to lick through the cracks in

attention to someone else. As heralds, they were supposed to be the special children, the favourites, but

Be the second demon to ascend to Ancient. Would be a rather special achievement, sure to

I sigh.

sacks of experience and Biomass, just waiting for me to claim.

separate message, I speak