“It’s time to go,” he said, laying a hand on Eliza’s shoulder. She reclined in a beach chair, looking out over a small inland sea. It was technically a lake, but as it was hundreds of miles wide, calling it a sea was more accurate.

  “Really?” she asked, turning back to look up at him. “It feels like we haven’t even been gone an hour. I wish we could do this for longer.”

  Jonathan sighed. “So do I. But if we wait any longer, I’ll drop below the leveling curve. The only way I could defeat the Great Farmer was because I was at the same level. Other Circle Lords won’t be as easy to defeat.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” In a blur of motion, Eliza packed up her chair, and donned her armor. “I’m ready.”

  Jonathan snapped his fingers, forming a dark purple portal before them. Holding hands, they walked through.

  ***

  Edgar and Eva peered out from behind a shadow draped tower, watching as a small platoon of armored soldiers trudged by. Bloodspill, the sixth circle of the Hells, was a dreary land of constant, half hearted war. The Circle Lord, Baroness Avarana, entertained herself by watching armies fight and die for her pleasure. It was a circle defined by inertia, of a world torn by war, but without the impetus to stop it. Millions died every week in the meat grinder of battle, their lives completely without purpose, given that they fought not for meaning, but against their families at the whims of a tyrant.

  Over the last week, the two warriors had surveyed the circle, mapping out strategic points and other weaknesses. Security was surprisingly low, because in a world of war for the sake of war, there was no point in preventing death when the purpose was death itself.

  The circle was dominated by eight fortress cities, each large enough to house tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of people. Maybe even billions. Each was the base of one of the armies, with the Circle Lord, Avarana, presiding over her own favored soldiers in her own citadel. Each army had a name, patterned after a type of mythical beast. Her army was called the Crimson Dragons, but there were many others besides, from the Argent Griffins to the Azure Krakens.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  All of them, with the exception of the Dragons, were led by one of Avarana’s lieutenants. She possessed a unique ability that allowed her to bring back allies from the dead with the sacrifice of a million times the lives that had been lost. It was a part of a larger talent letting her channel her kills into her other powers.

  It only worked within a day of death, so she frequently made personal appearances to resurrect her favored servants. She had to make the sacrifices herself, meaning that she was probably the Circle Lord with the highest kill count that had been seen yet.

  Just the other day, Edgar had watched in horror as a pillar of crimson light descended from the heavens, torching an entire forest along with everyone inside. All that had been left for fifty miles in every direction was ash and bone. Shortly after, another pillar of light had erupted from the center of the battlefield, with a single figure walking out, newly returned to the land of the living.

  All he had seen of the Circle Lord herself was a pair of dark wings flapping away through the clouds. Avarana was quite well known, and her appearance even more so. Just like the name of her faction, she was a red dragon. With four wings, and scales the bright crimson of arterial blood, she was hard to miss if she ever did enter the fray properly, and not just bombard the battlefield from afar. She rarely did so, mainly because she was an order of magnitude stronger than most of the soldiers in her employ.

  Normally, this would have triggered the laws of the Infinite Hells relating to power dynamics between Circle Lords and those they attacked, but in this case, all of the soldiers were treated as her property, and with them fighting one another, they were technically stealing from her. It was exactly the sort of twisted logic and cunning that defined the Hells in their entirety. Laws only applied as much as their makers wanted them to. That was why there were so many loopholes.