Lady of Pain

Level-50

(from Episode 7)

The view changes to blackness. Then a spotlight shows an elegantly-robed man with deep red skin, a black goatee, and two long, curling horns. The party feels an intuition they could not have imagined, a sense that the cliche before them is The Original, a temporal abyss in fashion form to a time before the Wheel. This is an image of Asmodeus.

Another theater spotlight shows a womanly figure covered my silk scrolls embroidered with unknown texts. Her face is a stone mask with a mute and somewhat severe expression, surrounded by some kind of spiky ornamentation; The Lady of Pain.

"Desire changes," says Eepiy.

Asmodeus steps forward, and their spotlights just touch. He says, "My love, I have returned."

When The Lady replies, the vision turns black with lines of white text like a voiceless movie, using the Exocent font from the Planescape books, then returns to the scene.

¹My love, I have followed you to this place, and

²I have waited, and in honor of our grief

³I have brought suffering to those that would deny that grief

⁴To them I have shown that form is subject to rending

⁵To them I have shown that thought is subject to eternity They both step forward, close enough to reach each other. Asmodeus says, "My love, I have fashioned of this world a road home." She replies,

⁶My love, these people to whom I have shown light

⁷They have shone upon me, too

⁸For they have shown me Time, and knowledge thereof

⁹And they have shown me Cause, and knowledge thereof

¹⁰And thus do I taste the sin they call justice And Asmodeus's head explodes backwards like a comet's tail. It's still an imploding head in a certain sense, you see, because the inside of the Great Devourerer, and the Old Abyss he swallowed from beneath, were now inside-out beyond the horizon of the cosmos.