Of Body and Blood....
Soon..... they slavered......Soon.
They had begun to arrive en masse from the bowels of an old funerary crypt below the small church - many miles beyond the forest of Myrken. Down in the darkness, where the light of the morning sun would not - dared not - go, yawning chasms of fire and shadow had begun to spring to life. Ambient energies released had begun to alter the very stonework, warping and distorting religious parephenalia into a mockery of their former glory. The servitors had heeded an ancient call to arms in the wee twilight hours, before the sun's golden rays had peaked through the Eastern windows in the church, bathing the blood-slaked tiles and pews in a strangely ethereal glow. They were the butchers of Hellrock. Ancient warrior demons that had waited in service to the Demon Prince for uncounted lifetimes, breath baited in askance to continue their slaughter upon the World of Men. Amidst the strewn bodies that were heaped about, most in various states of dismemberment or disintegration, small carrion imps scavenged the flesh left in the wake of their Master's passing. The jackals of the Underworld.
Whence the night had still dominion over the land, the Demon had flown through the darkness of the night - pain gnawing at his mind, blinding him through a red haze and bloody tears that streaked a face now ashen gray with the distortion of the Demon's Being itself.
He had come upon this small farming town's church, where all those gathered ushered their songs up in elation and cries for salvation. Those songs had turned abruptly into screams as the wood of the door splintered and a beast wrought death and destrution among them. It would seem that the only greater powers to hear their cries was the one who wished to feed his hunger upon their body and blood.
As it was, in ancient days he had rebelled against the intrinsic hatred and fury that was within his very core. The Demon, Seranos, had spent millenia honing a facade of structure and order. Walls and a strong mental mask to hold his emotions at bay and keep the seething darkness burried down inside of his very core, where as such they could not provide any sort of weakness to him. Or so he thought. Over the years, like ice enclosing an open flame, it had begun to crack and melt under the growing heat and pressure from beneath.
He couldn't have told anyone what the original catalyst was to begin such deterioration. He had spent his entire life strengthening this to the point that not even the damnable Tehridel could actually get much of a rise from him. What anger did show, was always a cold and slow burn.
The cracks had begun to grow, and the run-off had gradually quicked.
It was then, that a fateful encounter barely a sun's passing prior, had finally broken the ordered malice that was Seranos - his lawful evil was shattered in a growing maelstrom of seething Chaos.
Even as his hunt had been interrupted by Pyra and Tehridel, saving the elfling from what could have been a gruesome fate, last vestiges of the old Demon clung desperately to hold back the growing tide that threatened to overwhelm him. Perhaps it would have been better had he been killed that night. For in his flight, his cries of anguish had woken beasts of ancient malice, and eldritch evils. Some would fight against him. Some would bow before the might of his Will.
Seranos had been a wicked man. He was a Demon, after all. He had committed murder, genocide and other acts of depravity. It was however, different, from what had grow hungry in the depths of his heart. It had grown fat off three and a half millenia of anger, rage, hatred and fear.
And now....if any remnant of Seranos still existed, he would have known fear. For in one moment of weakness, he had become strong. The brutality of the Demon would be umatched. It appeared that in all the hatred and anger - there was an untapped strength.
Amidst the blood slaked pews of that church, a metamorphosis had begun. Physically and spiritually he was changing. In his breast a heart of burning Chaos thrummed. In his elegant features, once-silver eyes - now black as a cold void - looked up to the dawning sun, and supple lips twisted into a fanged smile.
Seranos the Demon Prince....was no more.
Seranthyum the Angel of Chaos was born out of the ashes of the old - to feast on body and blood.