Belphegor II

She might have run for days through the maze that were the twisted streets, restored to their original, black, hot glory by the ghosts of construction workers that seemed to dot the land, working with twisted and wicked machines of a strong, yellow metal. They roared and knocked over buildings. They roared and picked up great pawfuls of rock and threw them in a pile. They thundered over the black rock.

These she carefully avoided. These and the banshee streetcars that shrieked along the rails, as though in horror that they were unable to leave their course through this filthy city.

At ground level, she couldn't see much in front of her except for the buildings that poked above and the massive machines, but that might've been attributable to the fact that all of the people and their tormenting spirits were oddly translucent. It was unsettling, but she was sure all of the entities around here were merely deceased and somehow still acting. The entire place had an aura of dark magic.

[ EXP: 200 ]

At length, she came upon the actual spire that she sought as though it were a bad dream. Most relic-places like this weren't new-looking, for lack of a better term. They had overgrowths of vegetation that obscured the original purpose of the building. They had rust and decay. Cracks.

However, this building was standing as sturdily as the day some fiend presumably built it. The spire stabbed the sky and she wondered how long it would take to scale it.

However, looking and wondering wasn't going to get her any closer to actually ending this abomination, and the haze itself seemed to be primarily emitting from the top of the building. At least it looked so from the green cloud that snowed black up at the top.

She made one last scent mark at the base of the building, taking her time to carve the symbol as best she could into the steel of a nearby fire hydrant before she stepped towards the building, slowly, achingly, gradually, as though she didn't want to climb it at all...

[ EXP: 200 ]

Like most bad dreams, it seemed nothing impeded her progress. There were some guards, but they were ethereal things that simply stared forward at her passing, the same direction they had been staring and would continue to stare long after her passing. They didn't have lances and they looked somewhat inhuman... rather, their goggles made them look more like bugs and their clothes were camo and bulky in a way that kept any skin from showing at all. Their shiny insect boots and their fake-skin gloves only enhanced the effect. She bristled slightly with each group she passed.

Nothing about this place was natural. The hallways were straight, weirdly so. She couldn't recall anything that straight in her life. All surfaces, rocks, trees, the ground, had some texture to them, but these grey walls had absolutely none. Just maddening flatness.

There was an elevator that she somehow ended up in... somehow because she couldn't recall consentually taking the ride to the top of the spire.

[ EXP: 200 ]

The claustrophobic enclosure was frightening to her, like a trap, but she was unable to move. It seemed that something stronger than her resolve was edging her forwards, though perhaps her resolve to ensure the safety of the garden helped her keep her courage about her and not go crazy from the frightfulness of it all. She was sure some torment, some horrific hurt laid around every corner in the lifeless fog where not even grass grew.

But thus far she had been safe.

On the other side of the elevator was a very fat demon, sitting on a toilet, tinkering away at some device. The green haze curled from beneath his seat in undulating waves, but he didn't seem to notice. His white eyes were focused on the device before him. The screen of it was alight with symbols, and it chirped and beeped with his interventions.

Just beyond his horns, the hyena could spy a kami captive in a cage, though she was asleep, it seemed. Rather, she slept with her eyes open and the life had gone from them.

[ EXP: 200 ]

Finally, Iskra snarled out. "Who are you and why are you killing everything?"

The horned fiend looked up, the sound of a fart ripping the air and a fresh wave of the green gas flooding over the floor and out of the windows, filtering down to the city below. Iskra wanted to vomit. She was sure she heard screams.

"I'm Belphegor." The name meant "Lord of the high place". She knew this already, as demons knew what each others' names meant. He turned his eyes back to his device. "You're the one who came into my city. Pretty advanced, is it not? I tried to use time magic to restore a large relic, but I've instead created an... anomaly. There were people who didn't live again when the Dawn chose us, you know? It seems I'm trapped among those dead I've revived. I can't be happy with that. I'll simply have to kill everything in this realm again so we can start over."

An uncomfortable moment of silence passed.

"Not that you can do anything about it. Go ahead and claim your little land here. Everything ends in destruction; everything you do is meaningless."

[ EXP: 200 ]

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