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"None of you seems to understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with *ME*!"
- Rorschach (Watchmen)
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<(Omniscient POV)>
"What the...?" Natasha Romanoff, who was currently under the alias of Natalia Romanova, couldn't help but blurt out with wide-open eyes as she stared at the scene in front of her with disbelief written all over her face.
She had seen a lot of stuff in all her years of working as a spy and secret agent. From aliens and super soldiers to magicians and mutants, she had met a lot of beings who weren't exactly ordinary humans. She even knew Atem, Thor, and Loki, who were all supposedly gods from mythologies. However, despite all that, this was the first time she had seen a demon. No, even if it was just a single demon or a couple of demons, Natalia could have easily controlled her reaction but what she was seeing in front of her right now was what could easily be called a goddamn army of thousands of demons, maybe even tens of thousands calmly standing in the middle of a desert covered with barren red sand.
Hell, there were so many demons that Natasha couldn't even see an end to them. To her, it was akin to seeing a sea of inhuman creatures within an ocean of red sand. She was so taken by the scene in front of her that she didn't even realize the sky above them no longer had its normal blue color. No, the sky in Hell was purple with thin, veiny patterns running through as if the sky here was the roof of some tall, mysterious cave and not just empty space like it is on Earth.
"Hey Victor, I thought this "ritual" to challenge Mephisto was supposed to be some grand secret that very few people knew about. But when were you going to tell us that almost every demon in Hell already knows about this solstice challenge thing?" Atem inquired while surveying the hordes of demons, who had hungry looks in their eyes and appeared to be patiently waiting for something.
"It is indeed a tightly kept secret that only a handful of human sorcerers and practitioners of the mystic arts on Earth know about. As a matter of fact, Mephisto himself does his best to keep it a secret from most of his demons as well. And considering that there are said to be hundreds of billions of demons in the dimension of Hell, Doom has to admit he is doing a very good job at it. However, there are no actual secrets in this world. Mephisto might have been able to hide it from most of the demons under his rule, but even for him, it's impossible to keep this information hidden away from the higher demons who desire to take his place. It's inevitable that some of them find out about this every year and challenge him.
So, the Lord of Hell gladly takes this opportunity to pit his enemies against each other before killing the final survivors himself at the end of the day. This way, not only do his enemies get tired on their own before they fight him, but also Mephisto himself doesn't have to worry about fighting too many strong enemies at once." Victor answered his voice laced with bitter scorn, making it clear that this was one of the prime reasons why he had been losing every year regardless of how much he prepared, "Doom has even heard rumors that Mephisto has started using this event as a form of entertainment and a strategy to get rid of ambitious demons who covet his position. Sometimes, he leaks the information about the Solstice ritual to his enemies himself so that he has an excuse to get rid of them... although I agree this year, the number of demons seems to be a little more than normal."
"Mephisto is no doubt the most cunning of all the Hell Lords, one of the prime reasons why he has been able to maintain his position for so long without losing it even once in so many years. In fact, now that I think about it, I don't think I have ever heard him go all out against an enemy. He has never needed to. He prefers to ruin his opponents using his cunning and tricks rather than defeat them with absolute power like the rest of us. And as for the opponents against whom he can never even hope to win, he just escapes." Hela threw in her own two cents as well.
