Well, he did it. The Cuban Missile Crisis, the SALT talks, heck, the break
up of the Soviet Union all seemed to show that a Third World War just wasn't
going to happen.
And then... it did. Nobody thought to where the USSR's nuclear weapons had
gone to. Everybody, in the west at least, seemed to think the world
situation was just peachy.
All it took was one madman, a 'dirty bomb' and a bad decision from NORAD.
And Belial just laughed his infernal butt off.
He came up to Earth when it began, the first strike was stabilized as a
tether almost immediately. The other's soon followed. Eventually, Belial
noticed that entire nations were starting to come under his domain as the
nuclear fire burned away entire land masses. It was a sweet victory for
him.
But the best was yet to come.
He met HER a few days after the first strike. His power was growing
geometrically, HERs was starting to slide on the same scale. When the sun
was blackened out SHE appeared, ready at last to throw herself at him in a
final suicidal frenzy.
Belial was amused that just before he started burning away HER Celestial
Forces, she became a hideous bat winged creature. It didn't stop him, but
it did bring a slight smile to his face.
With the source of his years of annoyance gone, he finally accepted full
control of the word of Fire. And for a week he reigned supreme. No one
could possibly challenge him. Not even Saminga. The world was finally on
fire.
And then it stopped.
When the world's shattered governments finally ran out of nuclear weapons to
toss at one another, the Earth was a mess, but as every science-fiction
reader will tell you, it doesn't end there. The skies, after boiling with
radioactive heat, had finally cooled down and were almost a solid mass of
darkness. No light was shining through to the Earth. Belial laughed,
though even to him it was sounding a bit hollow, and tried to journey to HER
former tether, in the Sun. He couldn't. The tether had been destroyed when
SHE was soul-killed. He hadn't taken the tether then... and now he had no
way of getting there.
Then he noticed the effect on the Earth. There was no more fire. Nuclear
winter had begun to settle in, slowly freezing the Earth. Belial clutched
to his suddenly dissipating word-forces, realizing that he had to find some
means of bolstering his power. He realized there was still fire, deep
within the Earth. This was fine for him, but he had to convince others of
this, convince them to seek it out, to survive and use it.
He had to inspire humans.
Belial traveled over the Earth until he found one settlement, a group of
people struggling to live in the wasteland that was once Iceland. He showed
them the hot springs, showed them what that there was still hope, still life
for them to live. Showed them that fire still existed and that the cold
wouldn't be forever.
But the people took little notice, too wrapped up in the end of the world
they couldn't see that there was a reason to go on with life.
And so, frustrated by their lack of interest in going on, Belial incinerated
them.
When the last one died, Belial realized that he was alone. Alone on an
Earth that could no longer support life. Alone with no one caring about his
precious Word. No one caring about Fire.
And as his last Word-force disentegrated, and his soul with it, Belial found
himself, for the first time in 20,000 years, crying.
And as his last Celestial Force broke apart, Belial's last thought...
running over and over in his mind...
was of a wheel of fire, forever turning in the warm light of Heaven.
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