The spectral glow radiating from Thea's body—converted from wandering ghosts she'd harvested—sent the demon stumbling backward in panic. Hell and the Underworld weren't far apart, and the occasional undead archmage wandering over from one to the other was perfectly normal.
"Talk. Who's the local lord?" Thea didn't bother asking for directions directly. The way she figured it, most demon lords maintained a direct portal back to Earth. She just needed to pick one who wasn't too powerful.
"It's… it's Lord Nebiros, ma'am." The demon's voice shook.
She sized him up: five-foot-seven (170 cm), red skin, no wings, no spell-like abilities. His combat power was thoroughly unimpressive—but the fact that he rode a horse in Hell meant he was at least elite tier by grunt standards.
She looked him over several more times. Nothing remarkable. Barely stronger than an average human. And if the soldiers were this underwhelming, Nebiros himself probably wasn't much better.
Wasn't the demon who tangled with Blue Devil named Nebiros? The name was awkward and tongue-twisting enough that she wasn't entirely sure.
"From now on, you serve me." The demon bristled—but then Thea tossed him a fingernail-sized chunk of adamantine, and his displeasure evaporated into delight. He couldn't nod fast enough.
As a servant, naturally, he couldn't ride while his master walked. The demon—whose name was Tuth—surrendered his horse without further prompting. Thea cradled Raven and swung into the saddle.
As for the esteemed Mr. Phantom Stranger? He could keep hoofing it.
With her new servant in tow, Thea asked about the state of Hell. The power struggles among the archdemons were beyond Tuth's pay grade, but the one thing he could tell her—through an endless stream of complaints—was that Hell was desperately short on basic supplies.
A shortage? A critical shortage? Thea blinked. How had this plotline developed? Surely the Almighty hadn't learned she was loaded and sent her down here to stimulate Hell's economy and boost domestic demand?
Her original plan had been to find a portal and leave. But the situation made her think twice. She had money. She had obscene amounts of money. That included every category of supplies imaginable: daily goods, raw minerals, weapons, rare equipment. Kerrigan's Zerg didn't produce anything—they'd simply conquered two sectors' worth of alien civilizations and piled the spoils on their hive world.
The Zerg only cared about reproduction. Their demand for material goods was the lowest of any species in the universe. Everything belonged to the collective, consumption was negligible, and there was no "six percent of the population consuming fifty percent of the resources" problem. Over millions of years, after plundering hundreds of planets, their accumulated wealth had reached a staggering figure.
To demonstrate her loyalty when defecting, Kerrigan had handed over seventy percent of the Zerg's collective treasury. Thea's dimensional storage was now stuffed to the point of bursting.
Her stockpile of adamantine and mithril alone could be measured in thousands of tons. It was simply too much.
As if confirming her suspicions, she carved a golden trail of bribes across the landscape. By the time they reached the nearest small town, she'd recruited over three hundred demons and twelve Hell-horses. The Phantom Stranger said he didn't want one, but his body was considerably more honest than his mouth—he took the reins the moment she offered.
Three hundred thugs, all acquired at an absurdly low cost. A few metal scraps, a handful of Zerg talons—that was the entire transaction.
Of course, flaunting that kind of wealth also attracted plenty of hostile attention.
But every attacker had their soul ripped out and was reanimated as a walking corpse. The undead were now shuffling mechanically along at the rear of the convoy.
Tuth tossed two coins to the gate guards, and the whole entourage filed into the town.
Paying the gate tax meant acknowledging the local lord's authority—and in return, they gained access to the market for rest and trade. Refuse, and you stayed in the wilderness.
They weren't the only group traveling like this. The roads were full of similar bands—chaos held together by a thin thread of order. Thea fought off two more ambushes along the way. Both attacking leaders died on the spot; a bit of coin changed hands, and the enemy forces became her forces. Her total headcount broke a thousand.
Winner takes all. The demons switched allegiance with the casual ease of changing clothes, as though they'd been hers all along.
And with the demons came slaves. Intelligent beings reduced to property. Human slaves.
Men and women, hunched and broken, wrapped in filthy rags, their expressions hollow. They trudged alongside the demon footsoldiers, shuffling into her column without a word.
"You can't save them. They're already dead, technically." The Stranger spoke up, clearly worried she'd fly into a righteous fury and leave demon corpses everywhere.
Thea thought he was overthinking it. How many of the humans who'd ended up in Hell were genuinely good people? These were souls who'd eagerly signed demonic contracts in life, seduced by promises of power or pleasure. Now they were here to pay the bill.
That was how the bargain worked. She changed the subject. "Why are you still following me, anyway? Hasn't your boss given you any orders?"
The mention of this depressed him visibly. He hadn't received a single prompt—not a hint, not a whisper. He shook his head in silence.
"What do they call the being you serve?"
"The Voice. And I don't serve Him—let me give you some advice: don't judge Him by the standards of your New Gods."
Thea smirked. What's with the attitude? If it weren't for the fact that his boss was absurdly powerful, she'd have dealt with him ages ago.
"Nebiros is holed up in a castle to the northwest. I'm going to take him out and see if he has a portal back to Earth. If you haven't received your mission prompt by then, come find me." With that, Thea led her army into a small fortress—formerly the base of one of the attackers, now seamlessly under new management.
Spears and armor were distributed. Whatever her demons' actual fighting ability, once they were kitted out, they looked almost respectable from a distance.
The Stranger was speechless. You're here to conquer territory, aren't you? Didn't even hesitate—just went straight into warlord mode? He couldn't begin to understand what Thea was after.
Confused and unsatisfied, he waved goodbye. He had a feeling the Voice would only speak to him once he was away from her group.
And sure enough—the Phantom Stranger, that loyal toy to his divine master, had excellent instincts. Barely five minutes after separating from the main force, a voice vast as the horizon itself echoed through his mind:
"Find yourself. Find your family."
"No! My family is innocent—You can't drag them into this!" His face went white. It was as if someone had plucked the deepest string in his soul. He screamed at the blood-red sky, but Hell remained indifferent, its crimson canopy a silent testament to his wretched fate.
"They're all innocent! They're ordinary people—they don't even know what I am! Please, leave them alone!" He kept crying out, but the world around him had frozen. Time and space collapsed into stillness. He could see the malicious eyes of nearby demons, could see Thea's army filing into the fortress—but no one noticed him. He'd been slipped into the cracks between moments.
"Fine. I'll look. I'll go right now!" After an indeterminate stretch of frozen agony, the Stranger steadied himself. The flow of time resumed.
He searched like a man possessed.
Not here. Not them. Through one demon city after another, for longer than he could say, until at last—three familiar figures came into view.