"Is this hell?" Lilith whispered softly to herself.
"No. It's something worse." Paimon's voice came from behind her as she touched the back of a large dromedary. The large creature was dead, its blood having formed a vast lake around them, and Paimon was floating on top of it.
This was her companion of many years, the creature that had been chosen to be her mount.
Far off in the distance, everyone was fighting each other. Those who had managed to escape the range of that senseless slaughter were either shaken or broken.
A man looked at his sword and the blood on it. He had joined the final battle alongside his brother. They had survived everything together, yet with his own hands, he had struck down his brother, consumed by the madness of war.
No one could see what was causing it, but even here, Lilith could feel it. She could see a red energy rising in the air, many hundreds of miles away from where they were. It fed off the very conflicts that drove them.
