Out of the ruins of broken Atlantis I came; wounded and hungry and screaming
The great black army came pouring out of the north, crushing all in its path. Milan and Verona were destroyed in the same day; the following day they were at the gates of Rome. At their head was the mad and raving Galgus Forbes, instrument of death throughout the world. This was to be his last great trial; when - inevitably - it fell, all Europe would moan beneath his iron-booted feet. He could see no defeat.
And there would be no defeat; for Galgus knew what no other man or woman could know; he knew all the oldest truths and most of the ancient lies; he knew the secret paths through the sea and under the mountains; he knew where he could seek shelter (which is to say, nowhere) and where he could destroy (which is to say, everywhere). To stand against him would be a madness of an order of his own.
Behind Galgus, his five lieutenants, Harik Sharl, Mandwen Chulitel, Khavesh Tirion, Samuel Hargreaves and Mashlek Navoorn. Behind each of them, twenty captains; and behind each of those, a million screaming demons, each committed to the utter destruction of all that Galgus loathed.
In proud Illium, nine years I fed; yet my ancient enemy stood victorious again
For a week, the invaders pounded the city, with modern artillery and the foulest magic; only the ancient secrets of the Vatican - two thousand years of forbidden knowledge - kept it from the unspeakable fate of Berlin and Paris. Thought the city was nearly empty, it defied Galgus and his insane, obscene sorcery and his black murderous guns for seven days before it fell.
For the Church has not survived two millennia with its eyes shut, nor with its ears stopped. In the deepest vaults under the city, the very truths and lies that Galgus so purposefully hurled against them were recorded in minute detail, and thus deflected, neutralised or even hurled back at the destroying hordes, dealing them that which they had only given before - death and destruction.
On the first day, Galgus used only sorcery, and it was hurled back at him a thousand times stronger. So on the second day, he hurled great shells into the city, disposing one quarter of his armoury; but it was insufficient.
On the third day, screaming at the clouds, he sent his demons against the city; and one fifth of them were destroyed, and they were repulsed. On the fourth day, his demons rested and Galgus insulted Rome with both guns and sorcery; but the defenders entrapped and subverted the sorcery, and rained the shells down around Galgus himself; in this manner did he expend a third of his remaining armoury.
On the fifth day, his demons were rested; and so he sent them into battle once again, and continued to fire his guns into the city; but the defenders were yet uncowed, and called down his shells - fully half his remaining stock - onto the demons, killing one of them for every four that lived at dawn.
On the sixth day, Galgus launched his greatest attack yet, throwing spells blacker than ever before seen on the world's fair face against the now crumbling buildings of Rome; and in through the windows crept his demons, to kill and kill again. But they were not strong enough, and one third of those that still remained were themselves slaughtered before the sun set.
On the seventh day, the day that Rome would fall, Damned Galgus hurled all his remaining resources against the beleaguered city, casting his deepest and most putrid spells, landing his last shell in the very heart of the Vatican itself, and spending half of his surviving demons in order to breach its defences. And it was in this manner that - before noon - Rome fell for the last time in its long and noble history.
In fledgling Rome found I shelter; and Carthage fell, a feast of souls
The suburbs had been reduced to rubble; as he ran howling through this landscape of despair, Galgus declared that they were henceforth the ruburbs; for such is the humour of the damned. His lieutenants (all but Harik Sharl, who had been killed on the third day of the siege) could not see the joke, because Galgus had blinded them in Paris, in expectation of this very moment; for such, also, is the humour of the damned.
Not for this army, as it flowed into the city, the pillage and rape that so often accompanied such victory; death was their only device, murder their only method. But so many had fled; they found nothing to satisfy their leader's hatred of life.
Upon realising this Galgus flew into a rage greater yet than any other; his earlier madness was sweet reason in comparison. He must have death, for otherwise what, he reasoned, would be the purpose of life? Casting around him for an answer to his dilemma he saw that he had only one choice; so with a single word he destroyed his remaining demons, completing the task that the now dead defenders of what had been Rome had begun so efficiently.
Imprisoned by belief, I was despondent; but they gave me more than they knew
Deeper into the city he stalked, sneaking up on statues before reducing them to sand with an eyeblink, then laughing insanely at his joke for a day or more before moving on. At length he came to the broken ruins that had for so long been the focus of that once great but now so broken religion. Into the remains he crept, giggling occasionally, perhaps carving an incomprehensible obscenity into a wall now, perhaps lecturing corpses on their despicable laziness then.
Down into the ground he went, following those ancient and secret tunnels to the strange knowledge that the Church had kept from the world for all those centuries, only using it - too late - when Galgus finally came to soak the world in blood.
Death in God's name they wrought; the crusades, ah, the crusades
The door was solid stone; to an ordinary mortal it would have been immovable, but Damned Galgus barely noticed it, so lightly did he cast it aside. Beyond, he found those few men who had survived his destruction of the city, who - perhaps - could tell him why he was so compelled, why it was so necessary that he bring death into the world on such a scale. These were men of learning, men who more than anyone else understood the world and its secrets, men who had very nearly defeated him.
"Why am I damned? Why must I seek out life wherever it may hide and sacrifice it so? Why can I not end myself, make myself my own ultimate sacrifice? Why must I be my own god?" These were the questions that so wracked him; and answer to even one would suffice, though he hoped to understand them all.
"We cannot answer," replied one of the wise men. "It is beyond our knowledge," said another. Galgus slew both of them instantaneously, and repeated his questions to those remaining. But they could tell him nothing, and so he destroyed them also.
Hitler and Stalin came and went; and it was a century of gluttony
As the last of them fell to the ground, his life seeping darkly across the floor, the chamber began to shake, and a deep rumbling sound came from all around. Galgus hastily made his way back to the surface, somehow aware that what was about to happen would answer all his questions.
On reaching open air once again, he found his remaining lieutenants and captains awaiting him. He turned his back on them and watched the ruins he had just emerged from as they slowly sunk, soon revealing a deep and growing pit in the ground on which they had been built.
From the pit crawled a man-sized figure; but as it came close enough to be seen in detail, it became obvious that it was no man. Galgus' remaining minions died frothing at the mouth and howling for mercy merely at the sight of it; its shifting, rounded, slimy, smooth, sharp, desiccated, static image burning through their eyes, insinuating itself deep into their mad, mad minds and driving what was left of their selfhood out of the world and into the deepest pits of Hell.
Galgus himself found the ancient, evil creature beautiful beyond all his understanding; it was this that he had been driven by, tortured into insanity, welded into murder. This foul horror from the dawn of civilisation - this thing, that had been so often devastatingly defeated or cruelly entombed in its long recovery from those long-distant battles in Atlantis and Troy - this was what he had been feeding.
Rejoicing with the fulfilment of his purpose, Galgus knew without a shadow of a doubt what he must do next. There must be one last sacrifice, and all that was left was himself.
Freedom