Before Fenris Ironfist took up the very promising career of a major slave owner, he had been a captain of the guard at the Brass Fortress. Needless to say, anyone who'd risen to that position had fought their way through mountains of corpses and rivers of blood.
Even so, when he led his own slaver crew into Abyss City, the terrifying sight of the burning city still shocked him.
The first underground level of the Abyss was laid out in a ring. As the thousand-year-old capital of the goatmen, it covered a vast area. Given the goatmen's level of civilization, they obviously couldn't just dig a hole and call it home. In fact, besides working hard to climb the ranks of sorcery, the goatmen also considered wine, women, and song essential to everyday life.
These creatures, hailed as "incarnations of darkness," knew how to enjoy themselves. For a long time, Abyss City had been a major customer of the sin-dwarf slave owners.
Slaves of every race were sent here to entertain the goatmen. But now, every building that had once represented pleasure and debauchery looked as if it had fallen straight into hell.
Everywhere the eye could see, the district was filled with the fires of war and death. The dried blood covering the walls had likely been left by goatmen killed by the bugs when the city fell. But there weren't many corpses in the city, because the hive had harvested all the biomass. Even so, the flames burning along every street now gave off the sickening smell of roasting meat.
It was the strange stench of piles of bugs burning after they'd been killed.
Ironfist led his warriors through the deathly silent first level. He knew that the Transians were still fighting their way through the second underground