Belphegor I

As loathe as Iskra was to leave the garden of contentment, she had a lot of work to do. It was important that she build up her own clan and city and fighting forces so that she could protect people and things that she found beautiful like that elderly man and his garden. Though she was sure it was the work of a kami, there wasn't really anything about the kami themselves that she opposed on a conceptual level. It was simply that whenever she found herself around one who wasn't a hybrid, she was overcome with the desire to simply eat it. There wasn't really any malice behind her intent in wanting to do so.

But the sun had moved considerably in the sky and she had to pick the scent that the large hound had left behind so she could finish containing him. She was surprised to find a bit of the scent in the upper north of the old man's garden. This meant that she had a bit further to go around than she'd immediately assumed because the hound had claimed five miles instead of the assumed two.

[ EXP: 200 ]

She continued to walk a bit further when her nose was assaulted by a gradually strengthening offensive smell.

Now it takes a lot to offend a hyena's nose. After felling an elephant, such creatures have been known to stick their heads into the unfortunate prey's anus and tug out its bowels from the inside. Such creatures consume rot and live putrid bits of sick and dead animals on a daily basis when they can't acquire fresh, young things. So much more spirit hyenas, who preyed on the vilest demons comprehensible to man. Yes, an animal that was perfectly comfortable sticking its head into the sloughing remains of a devil's poop chute found even this smell worrisome.

As she continued, she even began to cough every few minutes. It wasn't anything severe, simply an annoyance caused by a smell that would have killed any normal human being by now.

Indeed, her walk took her past several corpses, their eyes rolled back in their head and their hands covering the remains of their noses.

[ EXP: 200 ]

It was a peculiar thing, this filth that filled the air and soon became a visible miasma. The corpses all around were in later and later stages of decay as she walked inwards. Her tracking abilities told her that much, at least. The corpses further in the cloud were older and the ones on the outside were the freshest. This meant that the cloud was growing. The thought made the hyena uncomfortable. If this miasma was simply growing and killing people who didn't flee the further it spread, then it might soon come to the garden she'd just decided to protect and kill everything there.

The trees further in began to look as though they'd been eaten away by an acid of some sort, twisting in on themselves before finally shriveling and dying under the influence of this foul, green haze.

Iskra stopped trying to smell her way around. It was useless and apparently deadly. As a spirit, she simply had the option to simply not breathe and it was one she'd exercised on her occasional excursions to Barathrum Regnum.

[ EXP: 200 ]

Eventually, the haze grew its thickest and she came upon a village.

It was no ordinary village, however. This was a richly appointed place, for one. This stood in stark contrast to all the villages at her back, which had been built with sticks and stones and scraps. The buildings in this place seemed to be alive and very much like the once-living building that birthed Leodak. It was unsettling to her.

Everything in this large area was almost sickeningly unnatural, and there were demons riding around in chariots of fire.

Or at least she decided that's what they were. The carriages had no horses and propelled themselves by coughing miasma into the air, two glowing white eyes on their front ends to pierce through the miasma with their illumination and two red eyes in the back, ostensibly to scare off predators. They were made of something shiny.

And they moved at an incredible speed, blowing past her.

She couldn't really keep up with them visually, but they were obviously evil.

[ EXP: 200 ]

The buildings were freakishly, unnecessarily tall, and Iskra found herself getting a bit dizzy with the immensity of it all.

At some point, she decided to scent mark here as well. Might as well, she thought. There was a percentage chance she wouldn't make it out of this anomaly alive, but she considered the man and his garden to be part of her clan and territory, and she'd be a horrible matriarch if she didn't at least attempt to destroy any threats as severe and ominous as this one before it had a chance to wipe out her land.

Who knows? Maybe the leader of this freakish area would be easy to defeat. She hoped as much as she ran forwards, past all of the strange, ghostly humanoids who walked along in suits and briefcases. Past the devils who tormented them remoreselessly, keeping them from their eldritch routine. Past the honking, roaring cars. Past it all to the North where the highest spire stood against the green-and black sky.

Odd that there would be such a hell on Terra.

[ EXP: 200 ]

Land Grabbed! Sort of... I'm claiming a large tract, so it's a multi-part RP