Chapter 141: Divine Betrayal and Imperial Ascension
But at that precise moment, cosmic authority made itself known.
Ao's will descended upon the Celestial Realm with the force of absolute law. His commands reached those gods who had remained in the divine sphere - Selûne, the Moon Goddess; Jergal, the God of Death; Mystra, the Goddess of Magic; and Helm, the Neutral Guardian. Without hesitation, they sealed every passage between the Celestial Realm and the Prime Material Plane.
The gods who had descended to challenge the Emperor found themselves severed from their divine source, forbidden from returning to their realm of power. Worse still, they could no longer draw upon the Celestial Realm's infinite energies that sustained their godhood.
As the cosmic pathways closed and their divine essence began to ebb like blood from mortal wounds, the assembled gods experienced terror beyond mortal comprehension. The sky itself seemed to collapse around them.
The Emperor received another surge of cosmic knowledge at this moment of divine desperation.
[Fate Node altered by over 30%. Acquiring: Crystal Sphere Principles, Essence of Divinity and Divine Spark, Soul Reincarnation Mastery.]
The gods' invasion had shattered predetermined destiny beyond the thirty per cent threshold. Primordial knowledge flooded the Emperor's consciousness, secrets of creation itself, the fundamental nature of divinity, the architecture of reality's boundaries.
He now understood how Crystal Spheres were forged to isolate star systems, how divine sparks ignited into true godhood, and how faith itself could be weaponised into instruments of conquest.
Most intriguingly, he grasped the mechanics by which souls could be bound to eternal service.
A terrible smile touched the Emperor's golden features as new possibilities crystallised in his transhuman intellect.
"We can now forge legions from the souls of the faithful," he declared to Raven, "just as these false gods command their heroic spirits."
Raven's eyes widened in recognition.
This- This was the basis of something that would happen in ten thousand years in future, the cursed legions that would one day be unleashed when the Imperium faced its darkest hours. Silent warriors donned in hellfire, appearing when hope seemed lost, vanishing after victory was secured.
'That's a brilliant idea, Big Guy,' Raven said, then produced a crude drawing from his robes. 'But can we use this for the legion's banner?'
The Emperor stared at the McDonald's fries doodle with the expression of one witnessing a cosmic joke.
'What do you think?' he asked with dangerous calm.
Raven nodded enthusiastically. 'It's perfect! I'll tell Malcador to rush production immediately. When you create the heroic spirit legion—'
'My meaning,' the Emperor interrupted, each word said slowly as if told to a child, 'is that it's impossible. Absolutely impossible.'
'Come on, Big Guy, it looks great!'
'Absolutely not.'
Their telepathic argument remained invisible to the watching gods, who could only observe the Emperor's power continuing to crescendo, waves of ultimate destruction radiating from his golden form.
With the Fate Node shifted beyond the critical threshold, he was approaching the full magnitude of his true capabilities.
The assembled deities finally understood the trap they had walked into. They had come expecting to humble an upstart mortal, instead finding themselves facing something that made even gods seem small.
After concluding his debate with Raven, the Emperor rose into the air above the divine assembly, his sword blazing with fires that could erase divinity itself.
Even gods would find no resurrection from such annihilation.
"I heard you wanted me to kneel?" Raven called out from his perch on the Emperor's shoulder, his voice dripping with mockery. "He-he-he, Called him a tyrant, did you?"
Ao's command severed the divine forces from their source of power, leaving them trapped in an impossible position.
Cut off from their celestial realm, every moment in the Prime Material Plane weakened them further. Their heroic spirits and angelic legions withered as divine energy bled away like water through cracked stone.
The once-magnificent celestial army lost all its grandeur, reduced to desperate beings clinging to fading glory.
"Just moments ago, they were shouting 'tyrant' 'tyrant' " Raven observed with gleeful satisfaction, "now it's all 'Your Majesty' and 'please forgive us.' The Big Guy was right, turns out gods are just bullies who pick on those they think are weak."
The assembled deities burned with impotent rage but dared not express it. The Emperor's displayed power transcended their comprehension, making resistance not just futile but suicidal.
"Where's that arrogant attitude from earlier?" Raven planted his hands on his hips and addressed the gods like a disappointed teacher confronting unruly students. "Who among you dares to fight me now?"
"Gods cannot suffer such insult," growled a hot-tempered dwarven deity, stepping forward with more courage than wisdom. "I will answer your challenge."
This was no ordinary dwarven god. His frame was stocky, even by dwarven standards, his skin bearing the pallid, blue-white hue of something that had never known sunlight. His sickly yellow-brown hair framed features marked by pupilless eyes that stared with blank malevolence.
Clearly, this was a deity of the Duergar, the grey dwarves whose cruelty and hatred of surface light had shaped their patron into something equally twisted.
"I demand single combat," the Duergar god declared, raising a black battle-axe toward Raven with ceremonial formality.
Raven immediately opened telepathic communication with the Emperor. 'Big Guy, you see this? He's bullying me. Go beat him up.'
'Why don't you handle it yourself?'
'This raven isn't built for fighting - that's your department.'
'Weak and wanting to showboat,' the Emperor replied with mild exasperation.
After delivering this assessment of his companion, the Emperor stepped forward. One moment, he stood beside Raven; the next, he materialised directly before the Duergar god. His flaming sword swept out in a casual arc that pierced divine flesh as easily as mortal skin.
The god's death shriek echoed across multiple dimensions before cutting off abruptly, actual death, complete erasure of divine essence, beyond any possibility of resurrection.
Raven stared in stunned silence.
This golden Big Guy was getting too arrogant for his own good. Today, he called Raven weak and lazy; tomorrow, he'd probably try to use him as a mount.
Absolutely intolerable. The next universe would definitely be Zhietian, where the Red-Haired Calamity could teach this guy some humility.
The spectacle of genuine divine death sent shockwaves through the assembled pantheon. They instinctively retreated, each step acknowledging their complete defeat.
"Who else?" Raven shouted with renewed confidence. "Anyone else feel the need for this fist, huh?"
Silence answered him.
The gods understood their position with crystalline clarity. Ao had chosen sides, and it wasn't theirs. Any deity who had come under the pretence of fighting demons while actually targeting the Emperor had been abandoned by their supreme leader.
The realisation struck them like a physical blow. Their own cosmic overlord actively supported these Outsiders against them.
The gods' downfall lacked any epic grandeur. No titanic battles, no heroic last stands, just the simple reality of absolute power differential combined with political abandonment.
"Big Guy," Raven suggested with cheerful malice, "let's banish these guys to the Ice Plane to grow potatoes."
The Emperor considered this with the gravity of one weighing matters of cosmic importance. "Acceptable."
The gods' faces drained of what little colour remained, but none dared voice objection. Compared to complete annihilation, agricultural labour represented mercy beyond their expectations.
Their fate was sealed, stripped of divine authority and divinity itself, they would be exiled to cultivate tubers in frozen wastelands. Their accompanying heroic spirits and angels received even less consideration, reduced to ordinary souls destined for eternal slumber in the Realm of the Dead.
The vacant divine portfolios would be redistributed according to the Emperor's agreement with Ao, marking the beginning of a new cosmic order.
Across Toril, the siege's outcome sent shockwaves through every level of society.
The nobles who had lost wealth and status to Imperial expansion had initially celebrated the gods' intervention, seeing it as their path back to power and privilege.
"The tyrant must die!" they had proclaimed in hidden gatherings. "I'll reclaim my throne, my lands, everything that was stolen from me!"
"Those commoners who dared seize my property and my wife will pay with their lives!"
The common people, meanwhile, had trembled with terror. Having recently participated in the redistribution of noble wealth and wives at Imperial decree, they faced the prospect of brutal retribution should the old order return.
But as news of the gods' complete defeat spread across the continent, these emotions reversed entirely.
"Useless trash!" the disenfranchised nobles raged in private. "They couldn't even handle one tyrant!"
"Faerûn descends into darkness! Who can possibly end this madman's reign?!"
Their despair was absolute; mansions, fields, and wives all permanently lost to Imperial redistribution.
The commoners, conversely, erupted in celebration. "Quickly, offer tribute to the great God of Fries and Ketchup! Surely He protected us in our hour of need!"
"Praise the mighty Human Lord! Please don't let those noble bastards return!"
The Emperor turned his attention to Hell's ongoing invasion of the Kara-Tur continent with the divine threat neutralised. Demonic hordes continued pouring through Hell Gates, seeking to transform Toril into another infernal stronghold.
Imperial armies could not permit this expansion of Hell's influence to continue.
Imperial forces assembled with mechanical efficiency, magical war engines prepared for deployment, and the Emperor himself prepared to lead the campaign personally. The demons would learn what the gods had discovered too late, that some battles should never be started.
"The wise and great Emperor of the Empire has come to save us!" The cheers erupted from every city-state across Kara-Tur as news of Imperial deployment spread like wildfire.
The irony was not lost on those with longer memories; these same populations had recently branded the Emperor a Demon Lord. Such was the fickleness of mortal nature, swaying with whatever wind seemed most favourable.
Zariel, Archduke of Hell's first layer, received these reports with contemptuous amusement. Her gaze swept across the distant city of Neverwinter, a predatory smile twisting her infernal features.
"Toril belongs to Hell," she declared to her assembled legions. "Let this so-called Human Lord come. He shall taste the bitter ashes of defeat."
Unlike the Celestial Realm's passages, the Gates of Hell remained beyond Ao's direct authority to seal.
The Archdemons harboured no fear of mortal rulers; at worst, they would drag all of Toril into the Abyss with them. The collateral damage meant nothing to beings who fed on suffering itself.
"Attack," Zariel commanded with casual malice.
The demonic tide surged toward Neverwinter like a plague given form. The scent of mortal life drove them into feeding frenzies, their razor-sharp teeth eager to rend flesh from bone.
"Hold the line!" The human general's voice cut through the din of battle from atop the city's ancient walls.
The great battle erupted with apocalyptic fury. Professional adventurers fought alongside ordinary soldiers, their combined efforts barely containing each successive demonic wave.
Among the defenders was Lena, a sixteen-year-old apprentice priestess of the Moon Goddess. Her magical knowledge remained rudimentary, but the battlefield demanded only one skill from her, healing magic to mend the endless stream of wounded.
With ancient incantations flowing from her lips, moonlight manifested as ribbons of restorative energy, knitting flesh and bone back together with divine power. Naïve enthusiasm initially drove her efforts as she threw herself into the sacred work of preservation.
But enthusiasm crumbled before the relentless reality of war.
The wounded seemed infinite in number, carried in screaming, patched up with her magic, then sent back to fight until they returned as corpses. The cycle repeated with mechanical inevitability.
"Thank you, little sister," whispered a beautiful female druid after receiving healing.
She pressed a gentle kiss to Lena's cheek and bestowed a blessing of nature before returning to battle.
Hours later, Lena found that same druid's remains, torn apart by demonic claws, beyond any power to restore. Such deaths occurred every moment, each one chipping away at Lena's faith in the meaning of her efforts.
Her smile faded. The cheerful girl grew silent as war's true face revealed itself.
After days of desperate fighting, Neverwinter's walls finally cracked under demonic assault. Hell's invasion had already reduced numerous city-states to scorched wasteland, sending floods of refugees into Neverwinter for sanctuary.
Now they all faced the same fate, becoming prey for the demon hordes.
Desperate screams painted the sky crimson. Blood flowed in rivulets through the streets, forming streams that fed the earth with mortal anguish.
"This way, children!" Lena shepherded a group of terrified youngsters through the chaos, protected by a handful of soldiers whose resolve was already cracking.
Demons converged on their small group with predatory focus. The soldiers fell quickly, torn apart like parchment, leaving Lena alone between the children and certain death.
Terror turned her limbs to water. Tears streamed down her face as she spread her arms wide, using her own body as a shield for the innocents behind her. She could have fled, but kindness anchored her feet to the bloodstained ground.
"What wonderful fear," one demon purred with sadistic pleasure. "Cry louder for us."
They were in no hurry to kill; the slow cultivation of terror always improved the flavour of mortal souls. Only when their victims reached complete despair would the feeding begin.
Lena closed her eyes, waiting for death's embrace in the darkness of her fear.
The expected agony never came.
Instead, a thunderclap of displaced air nearly knocked her from her feet, followed by the demons' shrieks of pain and surprise.
"Scream now, demons, for I am the Lord of Steel, and I have arrived!"
Lena's eyes snapped open to witness something beyond her comprehension, a giant in baroque power armour crushing a demon beneath his armoured boot. No matter how the creature struggled, it could not break free from Perturabo's inexorable grip.
The remaining demons gazed upon the Primarch with expressions of genuine terror, perhaps the first time in their immortal existence they had felt true fear.
"Return to your Hell," Perturabo commanded with the authority of one born to rule. "Humanity is not prey for your kind."
His war hammer descended with tectonic force, reducing the trapped demon's skull to paste and fragments.
The surviving demons howled their rage and charged as one, a coordinated assault that would have overwhelmed any mortal defender. Against a Primarch, it proved laughably inadequate. Each swing of Perturabo's hammer created new craters in the street, each filled with demonic remains.
After the slaughter concluded, the Lord of Steel turned toward Lena and her charges. His voice, filtered through his armour's vox-grille, carried unexpected gentleness.
"Run in that direction. No demons remain there, and Imperial forces are establishing a safe zone."
Lena stared up at the towering figure, and suddenly the dam burst. All her accumulated terror, grief, and desperate strength poured out in wracking sobs. The constant strain of maintaining composure before the children, the endless cycle of death and healing, the brush with her own extinction, it all overwhelmed her at once.
Perturabo paused, his first instinct to command silence and strength. The words died in his throat as he truly observed her, a half-grown child who had shown more courage than veteran warriors, a fragile mortal who had chosen to shield others with her own life.
After a moment's hesitation, the Lord of Steel placed one massive gauntleted hand upon her shoulder with surprising care.
"It's over now," he said softly. "You're safe."
A tremendous horn call echoed across the sky, its clarion note carrying promise of salvation.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Above Neverwinter, the heavens filled with Imperial magical warships, massive constructs bearing the Aquila banner, their hulls bristling with arcane cannon batteries.
Beams of pure destruction swept down into the demon ranks, each impact creating explosions that shook the earth itself.
Massive magical golems deployed from the fleet's cargo holds, their bronze, adamantine, and magically-enhanced frames powered by Mythallar cores that pulsed with barely-contained energies.
Where they landed, the impact cratered the streets and reduced any demons within the blast radius to component atoms.
Then the Emperor himself entered the battlefield.
He moved through the demonic horde like death given form, his blade describing arcs too swift for mortal eyes to follow.
Where his sword passed, enemy formations simply ceased to exist. Dismembered limbs traced ballistic arcs through smoke-filled air as he carved through Hell's finest with casual efficiency.
Dis Pater, Lord of Hell's second layer, emerged to face this golden destroyer personally.
Nine meters of corded muscle and infernal might, his crimson wings spread wide as cloven hooves struck sparks from broken stone. Crimson armour enhanced his already formidable frame as he raised weapons forged in Hell's deepest foundries.
The contest lasted mere moments.
The Emperor's blade severed the Archduke's head with surgical precision. Something far worse occurred: the golden fire that wreathed his weapon consumed Dis Pater's very essence, erasing him from existence itself.
No resurrection, no return to Hell's depths, only absolute void.
The remaining Archdukes witnessed their peers' complete annihilation and experienced the same terror that had paralysed the gods. This Emperor possessed power that transcended their understanding of mortal limitations.
"How can this creature be so powerful?!" Zariel's voice carried notes of panic she had never known before. Now she understood why the gods, even stripped of their divine might, had not dared resist.
"Continuing this engagement means death for us all," Asmodeus, Lord of the Nine Hells, declared with uncharacteristic pragmatism. "Toril is not destined for our dominion."
"This should not be happening!" Zariel raged against the retreat order. She had envisioned the Human Empire crumbling before the might of Hell, imagined the Human Lord weeping and begging for mercy from the infernal ambassadors.
Instead, Hell itself fled in disgrace.
Asmodeus ignored her protests and ordered full withdrawal. Better to lose Toril than lose every remaining Archduke to this golden destroyer.
Supported by magical technology that exceeded anything in the known spheres, the Imperial forces routed Hell's legions completely. The Gates closed one by one as the Archdukes abandoned their conquest.
Before the final Hell Gate, the Emperor commanded his armies to halt. Pursuing the enemy into their home realm would be strategically inadvisable without long-term commitment to occupying Hell itself.
"Such a waste," Raven observed with mock disappointment. "If we'd pushed through, we could have grown potatoes in Hell, too."
The Emperor ignored his companion's commentary, his strategic mind already calculating the resources required for such an undertaking.
Unless he were prepared to remain in the Toril system indefinitely, Hell's conquest would have to wait.
The immediate threat had ended.
Magical technology would continue its rapid development across the conquered territories, and the Empire's influence would spread to encompass realities the inhabitants could not yet imagine.
[End of Chapter]
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