In Stygia, the fifth layer of the Nine Hells.
Several blue-white-skinned, horned devils trudged across an ocean strewn with ice floes and icebergs, following an old man with miserable looks on their faces.
These devils felt as though they had met the devil himself.
When the portal opened, they had not even had time to travel to the Main Plane before this Magician, whose name they did not know, came through. Without a word, he seized control of them and forced them to surrender their True Names.
True Names were a trait possessed by some beings in the Multiverse. A True Name represented a being's essence and its unique identity.
Once someone learned a being's True Name, that person could exert influence over it.
And devils happened to be among the beings with True Names.
They resisted with all their might, but after being tortured, the devils had no choice but to hand over their True Names and become his servants.
Ioulaum, whom the devils saw as a devil himself, strolled through this realm ruled by cold and ice, his purple pointed shoes treading on a solid iceberg.
To anyone else, he stood on a frigid ocean. But in his own eyes, he stood on the back of an immense, twisted Serpent beyond description.
The giant Serpent lay in the Void with its eyes shut tight. Scales stood up along its body like little mountains, and dark, insubstantial feathers drifted from them. Tiny wings grew from its back, trembling gently. Each tremor stirred an energy storm in the nearby Void.
"So this is the true nature of the Hells," Ioulaum murmured.
According to certain ancient legends told on the Main Plane, the Nine Hells were a Plane created by the gods to fight the Bottomless Abyss.
The gods had used