Wisdom's Beginning; Tower's End
"Being undead might not be so bad-"
Osk began an attempt at comfort, but Lisma screamed at him in pain and rage. "I will not be anything like that bastard!" She began throwing a tantrum between fits of anguish, as her leader sought to calm her down and find a solution.
Back in the heavens where the Most High kept watch, the Demon King's eyes flashed with a mischievous glare as he gazed intently at Rygald's bones. He aimed his crooked expression in Triac's direction, and spoke with a teasing voice. "Since you don't want to intervene, I may as well make some waves." He winked at the Most High.
"Mind your place, fiend. If you overstep your bounds, I will be there... and I won't hold back." Triac warned in a grave tone. He displayed the slightest hint of eagerness at the idea of going full tilt to punish the Demon King, making Asmodeus shudder.
"I know my work, keep your advice to yourself!" Demon King Asmodeus spat irately. He forced himself to calm down as he kept his thoughts focused on the upcoming event he had planned. "Just you watch, Most High. I'll have your children wallowing in despair." With that, the Demon King wrapped himself in his wings and plummeted from the skies, dropping through the clouds like a heavy stone thrown in a lake.
"Mad fool," Triac muttered after him, slight tears springing to the corners of his eyes. "Can't you see they already are?" He shook his head at the world wrought by the Demon King, the one that lead his beloved to suffer. A steely glint flashing through his eyes, Triac authoritatively declared, "I will save them. I will illuminate this world once more, and wipe away the darkness and corruption you've carried over. You watch, Demon King, watch as, at every turn, your evil twists and works instead towards my purpose." With this declaration, the heavens surrounding Vinetum shook, trembling in awe at the mighty declaration made not just as a promise, but with authority. Unfortunately for the Demon King, who had already descended past the planet's atmosphere, nobody of the world below could perceive this anomaly.
A thunderous crash resounded as a figure wreathed in flame landed heavily in the crater where Rygald's bones resided, cracking the earth beneath his feet. The Demon King brushed away the soot and sparks that had gathered on his person during the descent and skipped over to the bones of the now dead god. "My appetite hasn't been so whetted since I found the original Asmodeus..." The Demon King muttered to himself while drooling, looming over the blackened skeleton. He wiped his draconic jaws with his scaly hand, before stretching his palm out over the decayed corpse.
"Hey, Demon King!" Osk abrasively bellowed, rushing towards the highly recognizable entity in the crater. "What did you do to us?" His eyes were awhirl with seething waves and frosty darkness.
The Demon King halted, twisting his head around at an unnatural angle. "I gave you exactly what we agreed on. Power for you, some assurances for me." Asmodeus grinned wickedly and flicked the air, halting Osk's forward momentum in an instant. "Now, back off." The Demon King cranked his twisted neck back around to gaze hungrily at the bones of Rygald. "I'm eating." Drool dribbled from his slowly parting lips to the dirt beneath his hooves, and the darkness in his eyes whirled with anticipation.
Osk tried to step forward once more, but was stopped by a mental transmission from Lisma, 'He'll destroy you if you persist. Calm yourself.' Her thoughts of wisdom permeated his mind, even as she struggled with the pain of Rygald's final spell. Osk took a deep breathe and used his reason. His fate was now bound to the whims of the Demon King, that much was clear. Whatever the fiend had done, it was too late to change anything.
Hands held outward, a powerful suction force emitted from the Demon King's palms, pulling at the rotted corpse of the undead god. Dust rose from the skeleton, and a shade with the shape of the god of spirits and undead was pulled from within the corpse, straining against the attractive gravitation of the Demon King. Streams of green and blue smoke trailed upwards from the stretching shadow, vacuumed into the Demon King's palms. The bones clattered as they slowly rose up, drifting ever closer to the Demon King's palm, carrying the shade along with them.
The Demon King let out an involuntary whimper as the object of his gluttonous desire drew near. "And now, the second." Asmodeus whispered to himself through his drooling razor teeth in a satisfied growl. The veins on his draconic, scaly hand appeared ready to burst with tension, tinged with necrotic blue and green colors representing the power of undeath and dead things. The black silhouette approached under the vacuum force of Asmodeus' palms, writhing and twisting in vain efforts to break free, while also shrinking ever smaller due to its leaking green and blue smokey energy.
The shade shrank to the size of a melon, filled with power, the Demon King's knuckles resounded with cracking, the veins his muscles pulsing and swelling with necrotic power, and his crown of antlers growing higher and sharper. Suddenly, bursting from the entrance to the tower with Horchal hot on his heels, Gehain sped past where the Demon King stood, snatching Rygald's corpse from his clutches along the way.
His physical prowess unrivaled amongst gods and men, Gehain easily outpaced the pursuing Horchal, who shouted hoarsely after him, "Come back here, bastard!" The flame god fired several blazing bolts in the direction of the fleeing god of fertilization, farming, and physical strength, only for various crop-plants to shoot out from the ground, serving as shields against his attacks.
The Demon King stared at the empty air before him, lips twitching and eyes frozen in perfect orbs, they were stretched so wide. "My name..." He whispered to no one. His body began to shudder, starting with his winged arms, down through his human torso and beyond, so wracked with rage was he. Saliva turning to foam on his lips, he turned to Osk, "After him! Catch my prize!" His swollen eyes turned red and crazed as he screamed at his new subordinate.
Osk hesitated before sheepishly responding, "I can't. He's far faster than me." His head drooped in fear and shame.
The Demon King snorted, leaking sulfurous emissions from his nostril. "Later." He growled, the single syllable promising unique horrors for the now trembling Osk. Without another word Asmodeus kicked off the ground with his dense hooves, darting after the fleeing Gehain in the air, not even bothering to put on the show of flapping his arms.
Lisma watched on, clenching her palm over her bleeding eye-socket, the flesh around the gaping wound turning mottled green and grey. She felt in her heart a sparking ember of wrath and blind hatred towards all living things threatening to overwhelm her rational mind. "Damn him." She cursed Rygald. The influence of Divine Undeath threatened to overwhelm her natural propensity for sound decision making. She knew Rygald didn't want to simply end her living existence; there was some way out he left, which would save her life and also achieve his own goals. The hint would be in the effects of his spell, and what she knew of his purpose.
Looking up to the still growing tower, now trembling with the resonant wails of the wrathful spirits, Lisma tried to think clearly through the influence of those turbulent emotions. What would he want? 'Who cares what he wants?!' She instinctively lashed out in her thoughts, seething and clutching her eye even tighter, worsening the pain and bleeding.
"Agh! Get ahold of yourself, Lisma!" The goddess berated herself, "Be wise, you shouldn't hurt yourself so easily over petty feelings." Listening to her own words, the goddess of wisdom froze. She looked down at herself with her remaining eye, spinning ever on as always. She felt the chilling weight of the Demon King's favor within herself, a result of the spirits' feelings of betrayal giving bloom to hate. She felt the hatred in her as well, gifted by her brother, the kind of hate dead things have. It was more familiar than she would admit.
"I always hated him..." Lisma whispered, "...but why?" She thought back to the first time she killed him, as a newborn resting on a moon. She recalled the way she felt at the time. This godling was born under auspicious heavenly signs, designating a life of power and glory rarely seen amongst existences of their level. She, the firstborn, was now regarded somewhat lesser. In her childish mind that meant she was no longer loved. When she slipped past her parents and shattered his fragile, newly formed body into fragments, she hoped it would change. His destiny would never be, and everything would revert to how it was.
For a time, she did get her wish; gods such as they were often dispassionate about early existences snuffing out. They moved on as though nothing happened. However, a mere three years after, Rygald came back as an undead deity, with a full adult-sized form. This drove Lisma to an obsessive hatred of her brother, while he had no memory of his murder, and only ever reached out for her companionship.
A tear dripped from Lisma's remaining eye as she thought back on her relationship with Rygald. "I never even tried, I-" She shuddered, and lowered the hand covering her eye, "I was so wrapped up in petty feelings, I only hurt myself." Lisma stared up at the winding tower, stretching ever higher, with tears streaming from her eyes. "Rygald, I was a fool." She declared mournfully. For the first time in her life she completely embraced wisdom; commencing from the starting line for all budding philosophers, the acknowledgment of her own ignorance.
As soon as these words left her lips, the fog of necrotic energy infecting her body flooded out from the open socket and into the ground. Lisma, now drained of the corrosive power, collapsed where she stood, completely unconscious. The foggy energy Rygald had used his last spell for, and spent his dying moments concealing, rushed into the ground, in the fissures left behind by his summoning of undead. The earth beneath their feet began to tremble, and a deafening tearing sound echoed from below. Massive ruptures of earth, bone, and fog exploded upwards in a circle surrounding the tower, the space within the newly formed caverns glowing a sickly green, Rygald's green.
"What did you do, Lisma!" Osk finally snapped out of his visions of future terror with the Demon King to notice his surroundings. "What's happening to the tower!" His voice squeaked in panic. Obviously, the unconscious goddess couldn't reply.
The spirits fueling the mystical extension of the tower felt an attraction to these caverns, and many began to strain against the bonds of the ritual tower, pushing their misshapen forms to escape from the upward winding torture instead of chanting their verse of revenge. The fog emitting from below coiled around the tower, flickering with electric crackles of the energy of undeath and darkness. The black fog flickering with green strained against the solid tower, pulling downwards. Rygald, with his last spell, didn't just cast the typical Divine Undeath. He, with his own death, channeled the power of the Demon King himself from the clouds above into his body, integrating it into his last, postmortem attack.
With a thunderous 'CRACK', the tower split in two diagonally, conceding at last to the demands of the demolishing fog. As the tower broke, the swirling light above and within flickered and streams of unfortunate students sacrificed in this ritual poured into the inviting, green-glowing caverns below as spirits. Finally, the mystical elements ceased; all that was left was rubble and corpses.