; tell your friends to sharpen their teeth
Between each beat of the drums, and the proud cry of battle horns, he can see the field painted crimson, the ground soaking up both tainted and divine blood. It's a neutral ground, where there had once been a promise to stand side by side in peace, a treaty that had been kept before Vetis' time.
Below him are thousands of loyal legions, serving the kingdom of the damned, for souls with broken morals and black ichor flowing through their systems.
Corruption bears no loyalty to the realm of such evil and suffering. Born a creature free from shackles of obedience, it's a free society that he has crafted himself and his creators, a careful planning of alliance and power play. The golden streams of such the Sins protects him from the iron grip of the Inferno. But it's a soldier's instinct to serve a kingdom, to have the quiet need to keep his fingertips warm with the touch from distant brothers and sisters, which causes him to offer his services to the bastardised motherland.
The higher demons of rank stay behind the thick shield of devoted legions, their spines forged by decaying ivories of fallen soldiers and pearls of overdue prayers. To save the best for last, a tradition strategy used by both kings and savages in the past.
Let no saint escape with their hands clasped around prayers like rosary beads, but with marks of their defeat carved into their flesh.
-- And then there's the finally blow of the horn.
The soldiers stop marching, black and red eyes beneath skeletal armours gazing intently over the horizon in anticipation. There's a low murmur between the regiments, and Vetis shifts his attention towards his comrades.
"Any day now." A sigh escapes between ancient lips, resisting a silver of snarky comments to roll of his tongue, and it's before faded green eyes meet a face he manages to recognise.
"-- We've met before, but I never caught your name."
