by Kelne » Wed Mar 24, 2004 9:49 pm
Aekold was, to put it mildly, pissed. Firstly, he'd been killed. Always guarranteed to put a crimp in one's day.
But, by the time he'd regenerated in his own little corner of hell, matters were infinitely worse. So far, the demon had had to deal with five separate attempts on his life. He'd taken refuge in Lord Yisal's realm in the fifth circle. Nobody would expect to find him here. After all, the fifth circle of hell wasn't the sanest of realms at the best of times, and as for that portion of it that Yisal claimed...
How, Aekold wondered, shivering bitterly in the icy wind, could anyone put up with this sort of weather? Ice and snow as far as the eye could see. Heavens, Yisal's castle was built out of solid blocks of ice.
Yisal's plan, as Aekold understood it, was to freeze the entire fifth circle, so that mortals would be forced to do things that they'd promised to do only when hell froze over.
Aekold wasn't entirely sure that such promises were binding, and they certainly weren't worth enduring this sort of discomfort for. The Hells were meant to be roasting infernoes. Anything that fell from the sky should be soot.
Not that he had any intentions of relaying these sentiments to Yisal. At the moment, the somewhat eccentric (The powerful weren't referred to as crazy by anyone who knew what was good for them) demon lord was standing (albeit unwittingly) between him and Malachias, and Aekold wasn't going to antagonise him.
Yisal was vaguely aware that there was a war on, but had no interest in taking a hand himself. 'It'll never last, you know. If demons could conquer Gaera, we would've done it milennia ago,' was his attitude. Others were adopting a 'wait and see' attitude, with a bit of surreptitious military build-up in case Malachias decided to strike at them from his new power base.
Aekold certainly hoped Malachias would be occupied for a good long time. As the 'architect of a treacherous plot to assassinate Lord Malachias', a phrase that screamed of the involvement of his old rival Egrimn, his head was rather valuable to people other than himself.
It had taken him some time to piece together what had happened. Apparently, a group of demons, led by someone who had stolen his face, had infiltrated the castle, gained an audience with Malachias, and set some kind of furry ball of death on him. And they'd actually gotten out alive, impossible as it might seem.
When he found out who had destroyed his (relatively speaking) good name, there was going to be Heaven to pay. Assuming that he ever dared leave this frozen wasteland.
A few seconds later, Aekold was rather forcibly introduced to the concept of the 'snowball'. A concept he could very happily have gone eternity without discovering. <p>"80% of my so-called friends would happily push me in front of a bus. Of course, the next time I saw them, I'd be driving the bus." - David McPhale, as Rob Muldoon</p>