Tehomeia, that was the name of the Paradise Leaf.

The season of magic impregnated the air with boundless energy, roiling forests of crystal-leafed, silver trees covered hills and mountains with their brilliance. Between them played the animals. Albeit predators needed to hunt the less fortunate members of the ecosystem, when there was no hunger, there was peace between all of them. They were brilliant beings, evolved to blend into the fantastic landscape. Silver sparkling scales and fur, teeth like gemstones, eyes that saw the flow of magic. The animals were well-nourished and happy, the plants practically shot out of the fertile soil, and the oceans were overabundant with the fruits of the sea.

The local population of humanoids knew little of shortcomings. Certainly, they experienced the ups and downs of life, death, drama, love, care, friendship, betrayal, injustice, and family, but the hardships which nature usually piled onto the sapient experience they were spared. Outside problems, they encountered rarely. Few people could step into the thick magic unprepared and survive for long. What the inhabitants of the world had been acclimated to from birth was a deadly miasma to most beings. So concentrated was the power.

In that isolated garden of divine creation, full of brilliance, in a flat valley between black mountains covered with white snow, festered a scar. Silver wood and crystal leaves, the colour of the four regular seasons, were scattered about. Hacked into pieces by thralls, the magically rich material was tossed into massive furnaces. Blood red fire consumed them, boiled chunks of the mountains and turned it into proper Blackstone.

The ash spewed forth from the chimneys settled in the exposed soil, tainted what once was fertile brown a leaden grey. Infused with hellfire, the ash sent out sparks of blood red and bright green whenever disturbed by the thralls that stomped eagerly from one point of the scorched earth to another. The grey scar grew, made larger by the endlessly falling ash and every tree chopped down to fuel it.

At the centre of the scar, toiled yet more thralls. With metal and magic, they fashioned blocks from the Blackstone. Each was a work of art, the surfaces carefully smoothed and polished. Runes, sigils and decorations were chiselled into the hard stone. Each block had its place and mistakes were unforgivable. The master’s house could be nothing short of a monument to his glory.

A crowd of fervent worshippers were granted the tiniest pause, observing what was happening on a podium near the centre of the scar. A man was on his knees, tears streaming down his ash-covered face. He begged for another chance to be useful. That he regretted rebellion. That he should have never raised his hand against her master’s work.

Above him stood the empress of this place. A beauty above all beauties, beyond compare. Her alluring figure was covered by black satin. Not a speck of ash or dust dared to settle on her hourglass figure. Auburn hair framed her gentle face, each feature aligned with perfect symmetry. Most outstanding of all were her emerald green eyes. They gazed at the man with deep vice. Five slender fingers and a warm palm were gently placed on the rebel’s head.

With the ease an adult would have torn paper with, the Empress of Blood tore open the top of the man’s skull. Pain and doom dominated the consciousness of the man in his last moments. His screams were drowned out by the crowd. Adoring, with voices deep and ecstatically shrill, they shouted her name: “Jolene! Jolene! Jolene!”

The local population of humanoids had known little of shortcomings. Certainly, they had experienced the ups and downs of life. Now they no longer cared for them. They were truly free of all worries of nature, even their own. They were nothing but thralls to the whims of their empress. The whims of the empress were in service of her master.

While the empress relished in the blood dripping from her hand, while the crowd worshipped her, around the execution stand the work continued. With rope, wheel, crane and magic, they moved the finished Blackstone blocks to the centre of the scar – the very centre of this world.

Bit by bit, they erected the master’s house. The mansion was finished, a luxurious and cyclopean, circular structure, but it was a mere base for what he needed of them. A tower, tall enough to part the clouds, that was what he needed. The centre of a summoning circle that would span the entire world.

From the third and uppermost floor of this mansion, Apotho looked down at the execution. Jolene looked up to him, waved innocently with her bloody hand. The Warlock made a gesture with his head, commanding her return to the insides of the house. She nodded and started to move. Apotho turned away from the filth outside and faced the clean luxury of his home.

He was dissatisfied with the current state of affairs. They had running water, heat and energy for their operations, all drawn from the enriched air and soil, but the state of decoration wasn’t enough for him. Blackstone, good as it was as a conductor, was hardly pleasing to look at on its own. The Deathhounds had been sent out to slaughter nearby wildlife to fill the rooms with furs and other trophies. Something to break up the black and decorate the walls with splendour befitting of their master.

The room he was currently in benefitted the most from these developments. It was one of the many bedrooms and the one he currently preferred to use. The mountain of cushions and furs didn’t meet his standards of a bed, but it was a start. Once they had properly established themselves here, he could send out raiding parties to bring him what he deserved.

‘Have you no shame?’ his voice whispered into his mind.

‘The only shame here is how inept those thralls are,’ the Warlock responded, while sitting down on the fur of a Greatwolf. It was situated in front of a fireplace. Although the season of Sorcia kept temperatures at a pleasant balance, the Warlock always kept a fire crackling. It comforted him. The flames had the same colour as his long, crimson hair. It was neatly combed. His muscular, lean body was clean and naked. He hadn’t yet been offered tribute that he deemed worthy of wearing outside of protecting his skin from the muck. ‘I give them the chance to contribute to greatness and this is all they achieve in a month.’

Finding a proper base of operations hadn’t been an easy task. Even with all of the tools Apotho had at his disposal, navigating the Branches took time. As a Master of the Roots whose level 50 Art had been Ritualist, he could open portals between demonically tainted worlds. For that, he just needed an adequate amount of lifeforce to sacrifice. Thanks to Deathless Greed that was not an issue. He had infinite energy to sacrifice within himself.

Finding the first tainted world, however, that had taken some time. Apotho even considered transforming one himself. If it hadn’t been for the Church, he would have considered. Staying stationary near Ctania would have been risky. Slow as the response of the Church would be, the Warlock needed to delay the confrontation for as long as possible. They had more resources than he could hope to gather even in a thousand years. Engaging them had to be carefully weighed.

Ultimately, after two months, he found what he needed. As far as tainted worlds went, it wasn’t an impressive one. Apotho would have rather taken the time to dethrone a halfway powerful overlord than take the time of building up his own infrastructure there. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, as they said, and so Apotho established himself as ruler there. He wouldn’t stay, but the children he had abducted from Ctania would. At worst, this place would serve as a distraction. At best, it would be an outpost for future operations.

Many of the corrupted Leaves that Apotho once knew had since been cleansed, eliminating his first choices. Rather than a specific place, the Warlock came to travel to an area he found the Church wasn’t particularly influential around. There, after several more months of search, he finally found, close to the tip of the Branch, a Paradise Leaf. Only the most powerful of Adventurers could even breathe the air without choking at the raw magic. A perfect barrier between him and the scouts of the Church.

Enslaving the local people and putting them to work had been the easiest part of all of this. They wouldn’t serve him for long. Much as regular folk couldn’t enter, those born in this atmosphere couldn’t leave. They had their temporary use as builders and slaves, but Apotho needed warriors if he was to build an empire. The gods had denied him his right of creation and so he would carve out of their worlds what he wanted.

Tehomeia, that had been the name of the Paradise Leaf. The Warlock did not care for what the divine had ordained a place to be called. He was his own master, he was the master of these people and this Leaf. It would be called Fell Seed, the place where his reign over the Omniverse blossomed from.

Apotho turned his head as Jolene reached the current floor. Stairs were beneath people of their status, so magically lifted stone platforms brought them up or down instead. Along with the meticulously clean Empress of Blood came the four Deathhounds.

They were roughly humanoid in shape, albeit none would have ever thought of them similar to even the most monstrous of the ‘proper’ humanoids. Their skin was dark and leathery, and glistened as if oiled. Their heads were neckless and elongated, with four black eyes. They moved independently from each other, the red of their scleras shifting around. Two slits between the eyes served as the nostrils. Their maws extended halfway down their long heads, filled with nothing but canines, developed to rend flesh.

One of the Deathhounds tasted the air with his pointy tongue, while he tapped around Jolene on his six limbs. Each of the demons had four arms, ending in three long claws and two, comparatively short, thumps. Their four-taloned legs could support upright walking just as well, but they knew better than to raise their head above their superiors. The one that kept running around Jolene’s legs wagged his prehensile tail.

“Purlesk, out of my way,” Jolene scolded him. “Master called for me.”

“Yes, Empresssss,” the demon hissed obediently and made his way to the corner of the room where a pile of bones from various lesser animals had been piled up.

The other three Tharnatos class demons followed their enthusiastic brethren. Soon, they fought over who got to sharpen their teeth on the human skull. As always, Kurlesh was the one to win that fight. “Know your place!” the leader of the pack scolded the rest.

“I know my place, yes I do,” Purlesk amusedly responded. “I serve Master and Empress, not a show-off like you.”

“Grrrrrrr,” Kurlesh growled, pulling his lips back. He only stopped when he was about to salivate on Apotho’s gleaming floor.

“Can’t even growl right…” Terlash chimed in, quiet for a monstrosity of his size. Next to him, Turlesh looked for the Ice Drake bone that he preferred to gnaw on. Anything else just didn’t taste right.

Kurlesh tensed up, ready to assert his dominance, when Apotho said a simple word, “Quiet.” The entire room obeyed. The Deathhounds didn’t even dare to touch their bones, in case their rattling annoyed their Master. Apotho stared into the flames and thought. “Jolene, strip.”

“As you wish, Master,” the Empress of Blood swooned, sliding out of her dress with supernatural elegance. Even if he was only looking from the corner of his eyes, she put all of her sinful lust into the motions. She wore nothing under the dress. Her pink nipples were already erect and her cunt overflowing. “Do you wish to take me, Apotho?” she asked. “I’m yours and yours alone, do with me as you wish, Master!” The execution had left her excited and serving him would please her greatly.

“Get on the bed and play with yourself,” he gave her another command and the outwardly perfect woman obeyed with crazed haste. While ecstatic moans and the wet dancing of fingers filled the black mansion, Apotho directed his gaze at the Deathhounds. It had been a while since he last attempted to solve a certain matter. “Turlesh.”

“Yes, Massterrrr?” the Deathhound asked, having finally found his favourite bone.

“I want you to…” he pressed against mental resistance – and broke though, “…to find that pesky slime.”

The moans from the bed spiked in intensity. Jolene’s excitement only grew, witnessing the Master she had helped create inch closer to his old glory. There was a gap, when she brought herself to a first climax.

“If that issss your wish, Master,” Turlesh obediently bowed his head and made his first steps towards the elevator. Kurlesh grabbed him by the leg and pulled him back.

“Only to find him, Master?” the leader of the pack asked. “Shall I bring him back? Unharmed?”

Apotho knew what he wanted to say, but those words refused to leave his lips. The remains of Gizmo struggled, still strong enough to protect the few people that he had come to care for. “Just find him… and…” it physically strained the Warlock to speak, his commands changing to an angry growl. “You useless splinter of my mind, shatter already…” he inhaled and stood up, crossing the room.

His aggression found its outlet in Jolene’s throat. With both hands, he gripped her and strangled the Empress of Blood. Her ecstatic sounds were silenced, her eyes rolled up, their white surrounding turning as red as the other demons. Her flaming locks of auburn hair shook wildly, as her body spasmed. “Yessshhhh,” she managed to press out a wanton cry. Her spine curved, black wings, like a bat’s, extending from it. Still, her beauty remained peerless.

“Hurt – him!” Apotho shouted. “Remind that creature that his life is mine to take!”