Gemyem Sandstorm, King Nergal's new Grand Chancellor and President of the Senate, brought down her gavel. She beamed with pride. "There! It's settled. Emergency Decree 16 is passed!"
Gemyem took a moment to savor her triumph. King Nergal had appointed her President of the Senate after driving out Louis-Gaston, as well as giving her the Grand Chancellor title now that his own ascension to the throne had left it vacant. (Queen Laz, meanwhile, was the new Chief of the Secret Police.) Nergal's first task for Gemyem had been to pass Emergency Decree 16, a law ordering the execution of 90% of all former humans by the Secret Police and the enslavement of the rest.
Emergency Decree 16 had not been a difficult law to pass. All of the pro-human senators were dead or in hiding, and the new senators that Nergal had appointed in their place were eager to break the power of the Earth-born after the chaos of the revolution. This quick and easy victory would be a feather in Gemyem's cap. The new Devil would be pleased.
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King Nergal was also smiling as he he was briefed in his throne room. All layers of Hell except for the First and Eighth were completely pacified. Both were ruled by daughters of Lucifer, and both were dealing with a segment of their nobility that was more loyal to Nergal than to their deposed family. They would soon fall.
Even better, Emergency Decree 16 had passed by a vote of 97 to 3. Nergal would make sure to "remove" those dissenting three later. Oh well, the important thing was that they had failed and Emergency Decree 16 was now the law of the land. It was vital to his and Beelzebub's ambitions. To the hardline nobility, it was justified punishment of the rabble. To Nergal and Beelzebub, it was one half of a blood sacrifice.
Semyaza had discovered in the Grand Library that the ritual to give Tiamat and her brood physical bodies like they'd had in ancient times required the sacrifice of 1,000 innocent, helpless souls and 1,000 sadistic mass murderers per Chaos being. Well, the Chaos beings would get their blood. They would live again. They would burn away all that was not Hell and leave Beelzebub and Nergal to rule what was left. All was going according to plan.
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A demoness screamed as three secret police agents hacked her human-born wife to bloody shreds. All around her, the same thing was happening. The streets of Dis were awash with the blood of the Earth born and the air echoed with screams of pain and cries of loss. The widowed demoness stared with dread at the twisted black knives all the agents carried. She had never seen a weapon like that before, and now she saw it everywhere she turned. She felt that something terrible was happening, but she didn't know what. Worse, she was powerless to stop this unknown evil that had taken her wife from her forever. Terror now ruled Hell just as surely as Nergal did.
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The Chaos Shade posing as Thanatos dropped off yet another batch of serial killers at Heka and Qesem's new lair. They now had enough just enough to begin resurrecting their first Chaos entity in a full-powered, corporeal form like the angels had fought in the old days. The Shade had been a huge help gathering the required souls in a central place where the sorcerers could perform their work quickly and efficiently. Heka and Qesem had chosen Tiamat and Apsu's second son Typhon as the first Chaos being they would resurrect. He was one of the mightiest Chaos beings, but easier to control than his parents or his brother Kingu. Chaos was about to return in full!
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Meanwhile, the real Thanatos was still helplessly trapped on Earth with false memories. Thinking he was just a human gravedigger named Daniel Mortimer, he was hard at work doing what he believed he did best: digging graves for the local funeral home. When he was done, he would take his pay to the liquor store to buy some vodka before heading back to the dumpster he slept behind, blissfully unaware that Chaos was returning.