High risks for an ineffective end.

As Twilight was laying down the last of her plans she began to grow concerned that perhaps the risks were not worth the reward. She was putting a lot on the line to help someone who isn't even from her own kingdom and the reason she was helping him was not sufficient in its benefit to her kingdom. The mission in itself had a high chance of failing for she was about to place it upon an individual who was highly unstable. It was even more complicated then that though. Twilight knew being in her kingdom that were even more unstable but still predictable. This individual was extremely difficult to predict. The only reason Twilight had chosen her was because she was expendable. She was extraordinarily selfish and didn't have much of a life. If fact it would be put her out of her own self inflicted misery should she die. This individual did have a strong sense of duty to her own kind which what Twilight was going to use to insure she ensnared upon the trap Twilight was setting. The only reason Twilight was following through with this is because Twilight was stubbornly defiant something she cursed herself for.

When Tedranog and its people were created and Twilight decided to accept it she couldn't help but take favor on the races of Iota. She bestowed upon them amazing gifts that mortals in all universes would envy. Despite Twilight's acknowledgment that Iota's current state of affairs was wrong Twilight still favored them, particularly the dragons.

Only one being on Tedranog knew of Twilight's existence and that was a specific dragon named Neidr Twilight had revealed herself to. She offered him mastery over portals and in exchange he would dedicate his life to make sure none of Tedrango's residence learned how to make portals that actually went were they had intended. Her people already learned how to conjure portals that was unfix able, but she could make sure they never learned how to accurately use them. The last thing Twilight needed was her people opening portals to other realms and letting things in that could really hurt her own realm.

Twilight appeared in a dream to one of Neidr's hatchlings and told it what Neidr must do. Upon waking the hatchling ran to its father. "Dady I had a dream about a winged elf only it wasn't an elf. Is there something wrong with me?" It asked. Neidr questioned his child and learned it was Twilight and what he must do of course Twilight made that easy telling him exactly what he needed to do and how to do it. "She really is a blunt one." He thought to himself.

Neidr arrived at the clearing Twilight said Astral would pass by here as long as she didn't change her mind. He created a portal to the realm where Alex was held but he didn't know that he was just following orders. He was disguised with magic as a crazy old man. According to Twilight Astral should have been here by now. She was late.

Astral was leisurely on her way to a village to burn it down. Fire was Astral's favorite form of magic. She needed a break from her search. Thus far she had found no cure to her condition and no purpose to pursue. Then Astral's eye caught the sight of a portal. Astral quickly landed on the ground to scold whatever foolish person did this. Astral was shocked to see it was an old man. Astral figured the ability to create portals was beyond the imagination let alone capability of the Megalo races. "What do you think your doing!" She yelled at the old man. "You have no idea where this might lead. It could bring in things that do not wish us a good time." Astral needed to report this immediately to the council of dragons but who would stand guard and make sure nothing came through. She certainly couldn't warn her kind about and guard it at the same time.

It was between Sklira and Draconis that the powerful Dragon's portal was created. It was portal to another world in its entirety, ever shifting and sleepless. It had only been there for a few hours, taunting the prisoner within the underworld as his hungry eyes stared longingly at it, begging for a way out. It was heralded by the gusting of the wind, the rustling of leaves, and a quiet wail. The smell of sulfur hung in the air, clinging to the bark and the grass that the air would not pry it from its mother. A soft, eerie light spilled forth from this void, and those who looked into it would see something that lingered beyond the gate. A tower, twisting and tail, defying architecture and reaching past a point of visibility.

From this gate crafted under orders from a God, it was just a single step into this realm of the dead. Beyond that, a straight shot on a path that defied reality and bent gravity, spiraling out of control towards the tower's base, and towards the Great Prisoner. A fallen king with his arms bound in chains, his metallic arm gleaming in the underworld's acidic lighting. His other arm was deformed by different chains that wrapped around it and seemed to melt into his very flesh, dangling from his wrist yet more chain connected to the hilt of a sword bearing a gleaming black blade like the fangs of a dead predator.

His hair hung in mated clumps and stood frayed, slick with grease and dust. From beneath that mess of tangled hair was one glowing eye, and a defeated empty expression sat upon his brow. After everything that had happened, his journey ended in darkness and defeat. This was no fairy tail, and heroes did not exist. Only happenstance and extraordinary situations, and right this moment the outcome of these events seemed clear: the protagonist of the story will fall, no matter how noble. He was more than humbled; Alexander was utterly broken. Everything he had cared for was gone. Only weeks had passed since his imprisonment, and every moment seemed to weigh. Every second, a heartbeat. In fact, he had been counting them since his sentence was cast, so that he could have some semblance of sanity left to him.

His jailers were absent, having already emotionally battered him. Eris was a trickster, a powerful God of Chaos. She drew upon Alexander's turmoil and weaponized it against him, torturing him with powerful and heart-wrenching visions of his friends dying, becoming desensitized slowly though it had not yet taken effect upon him. Probably, Izanami was the worst of the two thus far. Alexander was in a terrible state still, unable to accept his role as a monster. While Eris preyed on that, Izanami preferred to inflict pain. She hardly seemed like a god. Her appearance was more desiccated, like that of a corpse. She called herself a devil, and when she visited Alexander inflicted terrible physical torments upon him. Her favorite thing was to bind his mouth with a thin layer of his own skin, melded over it. She liked to inflict as much pain as it took for him to rip his own mouth open to scream.

Izanami would peel his skin from his muscles, slowly, and made delicate paper thin cuts in his eyes. She would break his jaw, nail his tongue to the roof of his mouth, and slice off his eyes lids so that he would have to watch while she ripped his kneecaps from their joints, and bashed him in the skull with them, only to have to watch his body reconstruct itself from the torture to be repeated just a few days later, when he had fully recovered. She told him her story too. Her sad, twisted story each time that she did it. Each time, it was the same spiel.

"My husband, Izanagi," she would say while hacking up his body, "was a good man. He and I together gave birth to many, many gods that even still to this day protect many, many worlds. I, however was an agent of Fate, and he an Agent of Eternity." Alexander didn't know these names, or these places, but he had heard them quite a few times. Izanami went through the motions now, and torturing Alexander was her new favorite pastime. "Then one day, I died," she said solemnly. "To this day, I don't know how, but I died. Izanagi was distraught, and he came to this very place to free me. The condition for my leaving was that he had to make it all the way up Tartarus, to the exit of the Underworld into the Void without looking back at me, and only having faith that I was there behind him. He agreed, placing his faith in me," she swooned while disemboweling Alexander, and tying his intestines into knots.

"As we neared the entrance my heart began to flutter-- I would be free. I would be with my love again! But... it was not to last. Because at that moment with only a few feet away he turned and looked at me and... I was rotting. He shrieked and I attacked him, because I wanted so badly to go back and he failed me when I needed him. So, I told him that I would be an agent of Death from this moment forward, and return one billion of his precious sparks to The Core a day. I couldn't see him from the otherside of Tartarus shut door, but I knew he was shaking his head. He said, "'Then I will have to return life to a billion and one sparks daily that they may prosper.' Can you believe that?"

Alexander couldn't die from Izanami's torture, because she always avoided his one weakness: his heart. It was difficult to get to already, with a nearly impenetrable chest plate wrapping around it instead of ribs. Even gods would have a time of cracking it, but Izanami was purposefully avoiding it. She would even mock him. "Ironic, isn't it," she would say. "I could tear away the rest of your body, pick apart your brain and bones, and as long as that little organ stayed intact you would simply be forced to regenerate, doomed to live until it is destroyed." She cackled and harldy held back on the torture. Avoid a heart was not a problem.

The opening of the portal was the first real light Alexander had glimpsed in almost a month. He stared at it wearily, wondering if it was just another trick of Eris.

"Shhhh," he told her, "shhhhhhhh." He brought his finger to his mouth as his gaze fixed itself evenly with hers. "Can't you hear the gate's lament?" He broke eye contact and turned his head towards it. "Something sleeps inside. Something powerful. Something frighting." He turned his eyes back to her, the tears starting. "I can feel it. I felt it for so long. It's so simple... the rawest speck of hope coming from these ancient lands. All the voices danced in my head, and I couldn't drown them out."

The man's face made these words seem like the ravings of a mad man, which in honesty they were. His facial hair had grown unkempt and wild, and was caked in the blood of animals. His teeth were yellowed and chipped, and beyond that hair covered the rest of his face. He pushed away from the woman and and huddled against the tree behind them, pressing so hard against it he seemed to be trying to enter into it.

"Just a nightmare," he spat as he clutched his hair and pulled. "Nightmares! Nightmares! The screaming of the world of the dead!" He looked at the two, almost as if he didn't see them. He pointed at the portal behind them and cried, "Gaze upon the twisted tower! Within the confines of hell itself lies something so horrible..." he crawled forward suddenly on his hands and knees, beginning to sob. "...even the gods are afraid of him, and for what purpose?!"

Astral instantly knew this man was crazy. There was no such thing as gods. The only gods that existed where dragons making the Megalo people unknowingly serve them from vast distances. What ever the case Astral had made up her mind. She was going in to make sure there wasn't anything that could be harmful to her land. If there wasn't then she would leave the portal unguarded and tell her kin of the portal. If there was she would have no choice but to stand guard till something intelligent arrived that could carry a message for Astral.

Astral entered into the portal and what she saw she didn't really know how to describe at the moment. Not that Astral cared. This was obviously a different dimension so one had to expect it to be unlike anything they had ever seen before.

So far Astral could see only one thing that appeared to be possibly intelligent. It was chained up a distance away so Astral flew right to it. "Greetings, are you the only one here and if not would you consider the others aggressive or dangerous?" Astral asked very bluntly. She was only here to get a little bit of information and then get out. Astral knew nothing of cross dimensional travel nor did anyone on Tedranog (to her knowledge) and she wished to return back as soon as possible.

She must have expected a strange response from Alexander. She must have, as no man bound and beaten, and hung within chains would ever be able to give her such direct answers. Alexander had seen her silhouette from the light, and stared in disbelief. He felt it-- a real soul. A living, breathing being was here in the underworld of all places, and were in not for the fact that he could feel its very existence he would have shrugged off her coming as his broken mind scrambling to give him false hope to live for another day. But, in the light, he saw wings of the creature spread and new that she was not human in an instant. A twinge of fear enveloped him and he gasped as she approached, prophesying his own immediate end. It would not have been so bad to have been free of this torment, but he had wanted his death to come after his freedom, that he may see the son a final time.

He looked upon the figure before him now-- a girl, apparently different than he had expected as he became somewhat relieved. His mind was still fatigued however, so when she spoke to him he completely ignored the question, only able to sputter, "Beastkin," before nearly fainting, and falling to his knees. His metallic arm scrapped against the chains and the metal noise made him grind his teeth as he looked up to her, and his eyes began to plead. The strange, glowing eye on his left scanned her form, and he realized that this was no beast-kin, but some kind of hybrid. He could see the humanity in her, and almost asked what she was to confirm. Instead, he saw opportunity for freedom. He almost spoke out about that as well, nearly pleading with her to free him. Instead, he found those words trickling down his throat like poison.

"You have to flee," he told her. "I'm not the only one here, but if they think that you've been contaminated by me they'll try to contain you. If they see you here, they'll chain you up with me." He told her that much, before adding, "I am the only thing that poses a threat to your world," in a somber and defeated tone of voice. "Please, before you too must suffer my punishment."

The man appeared mostly human and Astral ignored his warnings to leave. Astral didn't consider a threat to a human to be any threat to herself. Her dragon heritage made her fell invulnerable and in many ways she was but this was no mortal affair. Astral had no idea she was tempering with gods. Astral didn't even believe there was a such thing as gods. The people of Tedranog worshiped gods that were actually dragons and the other two major Iota races.

Astral didn't understand how this man could be the only threat to her world and be chained up at the same time. Either way Astral learned there were others and this human didn't seem so bad so she figured the others were the real dangers. Astral decided if she freed him then he would keep the others busy long enough for Astral to find someone to close the portal. Astral snapped her fingers which was her just showing off and using magic the cuffs on his wrists melted off but they were not hot. They just fell off like really soft silly putty. With that Astral made her way out of the portal. She didn't expect the man would do the same.

All he heard was the snap of her fingers, then the sensations on his arms seemed to fade. He looked on in both confusion and fear as the chains seemed to pour off of him, before looking back up to the girl with bewilderment carving itself into his expression. She flew off before he could question her quietly, and instead he shouted after her. "Why," he called out as she vanished beyond the portal, fearing the answer would never come. He knelt there on the cold his knees trembling while he stared into the obsidian void before him, feeling overwhelmed with fear.

Before he could think about it, he made a selfish choice and began to run towards the portal. He was propelled by fear and desperation to exit this horrible place, the drive to survive the ordeal a part of his wish, while the other desire he held onto was to see the sun one more time. In no time at all the void was drawing closer, his footsteps echoing through the darkness.

As Alexander neared the portal, he appeared before the man who clutched at his literal freedom, holding it within his grasp. He stood between the man and the portal, his acidic eyes staring into the man's glowing blue orb and searching for something within. Then, he nodded silently at the creature before him, stepping aside. "Go," he whispered, and moved past to boy towards Tartarus.

Alexander could only stop as a massive figure blocked his path. The man towered a few feet above him, leaning over him and searching his figure for something. His eyes were all that could be made out, with the rest of him concealed within a thick, black cloak. The air became thick and tense, and Alexander almost choked. The seconds that their eyes met felt like months of waiting before the man stepped aside. "Go," came a whisper from the giant, and returning the man's nod a fearful Alexander bolted through the gate, only to be blinded and trip headfirst into the grass.

He rolled and slammed into a tree, knocking himself unconscious for a time.

As Alexander passed through the gate, Cain willed it to close and it did so. No evidence of such a portal existed, save for some scorched earth where it stood in the grass in Tedranog. Cain kept walking towards the base of Tartarus, and when he arrived knelt down to the chains that lay melted on the floor. Beneath his hood, he cracked a smile. Well played Twilight, thought the Dread God. He stood up form his position as his massive, hidden form seemed to become darker than hell itself and bellowed in a tone that shook the world, "Izanami! Eris!" His voice resounded amongst the caverns and darkness, before he could here a skittering.

He turned his head, and Izanami's desiccated body appeared from the shadows, her exposed bones clacking against one another with each movement she made. He her hung in mated clumps, and in place of eyes were two, deep voids of darkness. In her most innocent and sweet voice she called out, "Cain, what a nice surprise. We don't receive many visitors in the Underworld," came her coo. Her voice was molded and cast the smell of sulfur in the air with every breath she expelled, causing Cain to curl his nose up in disgust. Then, he saw her eyes shift to the spot where Alexander was bound and her entire demeanor changed. She began to hyperventilate and panic, and a bony, rotting grasped for her throat as she shrieked.

Eris arrived just a moment later, floating from the sky as though her cohorts shrill screams where a fanfare for arrival. She was a goddess who wore long, flowing togas and a crown of golden flowers, a soft and tempting gaze layered with bright blue eyes enough to send most hearts into disarray. She was born to be a temptress, a manipulator-- her body and face revealed these truths, yet neither of these pathetic creatures could affect Cain. She lazily rolled her eyes as she too saw that Alexander had left them. "Oh boo, there goes Izzi's boy-toy," he replied with a sexual tug on her lip.

Cain's response to the two of them was an intense shaking of the underworld, the entire realm briefly feeling as though it would fall apart. "You two are Jailers," he proclaimed, "not torturers." He indicated the bloodstains on the floor where Alexander stood. "You couldn't even perform your duties correctly to begin with it seems. Death was foolish to place you two in charge of this situation."

Izanami wandered away from Cain and Eris, wailing loudly. Eris paid her little mind. "Well, what did you expect? I love inflicting psychological torment, and she loves inflicting pain. We were a match made in hell," she stated, attempting to be both silly and clever in her best sensual tone. Cain seemed to be upon her before she could react and finish her sentence.

"We're meant to be better than that," he declared.

"Now, now, Cain," Eris backed away from his imposing form, shaking her head. "The Doctrine says nothing about us torturing mortals, now does it?" She chuckled. "And isn't it strange that you show up here today of all days?"

Twilight couldn't believe the plan succeeded. It appeared as if Astral was going to live after all. Twilight didn't actually expect to get this far so she hadn't come up with a plan to get him out of her realm. She noticed that Astral hadn't noticed Alex followed her out. He was now free in Twilight's realm and that was not going to fly. Twilight had a plan to get him out of her realm but she need to do it when he wasn't on his guard. She was after all toying with someone that could actually hurt her.

Cain's brow furrowed, Eris' implication plainly obvious to him. He stared at her from under his hood, seething. "That thing we had down here," Cain began, "Is far from Mortal. You've spent a month torturing something so dangerous that even Eternity was afraid of it. Does that escape your fragile, broken mind? And yet you have the gall to imply that I'm the one who has committed a crime? Death wanted him imprisoned, not tortured. I already know that you are a manipulator, Eris," Cain accused, "and I already know Izanami is psychotic."

Eris merely laughed in his face. "Oh, Cain. You're always so tense and serious," she teased. She ran her hand suggestively across his cloak while talking. "Maybe I should teach you to unwind?" Cain's hand caught Eris' the moment it tried to strain lower, and he hoisted her into the air as she cackled. "Oh, touchy subject," she mocked. Cain pulled her closer and growled, while Eris kept a twisted smile planted firmly upon her face.

"There are no replacements," Cain hissed. "Not one. Not you. Don't even suggest such things to me," his voice turned into a blender, and it shredded her as he tossed her aside. "I will locate Alexander," Cain declared. "You fools will just further alienate him from us. if he can be befriended, he can be made to understand why people fear him," Cain explained as he faded from existence. "Perhaps, he already knows."