Horrors of the Dancing Gods

all.

'Don't worry about it,' Irving sighed. 'We've lost. I don't see how it's possible with everybody assuring us that the McGuffin wasn't gotten, but it was. It's a phony. A fake. Your wish wouldn't have done a damned thing.'

A strange, eerie, yet commanding voice, an inhuman voice, said, 'I assure you that it is as much a surprise to me as it is to everyone else here. And in this case, at least, as much of a relief. I certainly didn't go through all that I have endured to bow down ultimately to that!'

The troll-like soldiers appeared from all points of the forest, swords and bows at the ready. They were not particularly menacing, but they made it very clear that there was no escape. It was also clear that the one thing they feared and no other was the entity who spoke to them all now and who was in every sense their master.

It was a large creature, perhaps three meters high and in perfect proportion for its size. It had a hideous demonic face, blazing red eyes, and dark sickly purple skin that seemed somewhat reptilian. The mouth was permanently twisted into an insane smile that barely disguised the rows of sharp teeth within, and from its head grew two huge, grotesquely curled, and oversized ram's horns. From the waist it was covered with dense purple hair that made it almost seem as if it were wearing bizarre pants, down to thick legs that ended in granite hooves. It was a satyrlike creature but one from a nymph's nightmares. The arms and hands were huge and powerful and ended in razor-sharp claws a good seventy-five millimeters long. But what struck Marge was the genitalia, which were overly large even in proportion to the gigantic body.

'Where did you come from?' Marge asked him.

'You would not believe,' the creature responded. 'However, in the immediate term I have been not very far from right here. You have no idea of my power, but you will. Not even I ever dreamed of such power, and it is only the beginning. You may try your wiles on me all you like, Succubus, but you should be aware that I am not like other creatures in this world and I will drain any energy I deem irritating. Don't worry, though. I have plans for you — for all of you. That's what all this has been about. I left the McGuffin right there, where it was, and ordered that none be allowed to approach it, since I knew that if anyone did take it, you wouldn't come. And you had to come. It isn't perfect justice without you all.'

'Justice? What in hell are you?' Marge screamed at him. 'Who are you to speak of justice?'

The entity shrugged. 'Revenge, then. Justice for one is always revenge for another, in any event, is it not?' The sinister eyes went over them all.

'Ah! Poquah! I had so hoped you would be along. It would not be complete without you,' the creature said. 'And you, little Irving, all grown up! And Marge — shorn of all that diabetic-inducing happy fairy nonsense and more gorgeous than ever. And a bonus!' He looked at Larae. 'My heavens! That is a creative job there! I didn't know there was that much creativity left in all of Hell! There certainly wasn't when I was dealing with them. Why, such a combination might well be quite amusing. Makes cross-dressing seem rather passe, doesn't it? Perhaps we'll make you a true matched set. Give Irving here a groin more like the one Marge has. Like father, like son, eh?'

Irving started to rush the creature and to hell with the consequences, but even as the soldiers brought up their weapons, the entity held up a hand casually and Irving found himself unable to push any farther forward.

The entity looked down and gave the boy a hideous smile. 'Well, you're close enough now. I will think on the rest. It will be sufficient, I believe, for now to simply have your own father, such as she now is, cut off the one you were born with. Don't worry; you won't bleed to death. I'll see that it's quite clean.'

'Who are you, you bastard?' Irving cried.

The creature paused, frowned, then gave that strange smile once more. 'Oh, I'm sorry! I forgot to reintroduce myself, didn't I? We all seem to change so much these days. This used to be such a static place! I am Esmilio Boquillas, of course. Who else could I be?'

'You can't be the Dark Baron,' Marge said at last. 'He fell into a lake of lava, stabbed through the heart by a great sword whose destiny was to do just that.'

'Precisely. Hurt like hell, too, but only for an instant,' the creature replied. 'You, however, leave out part of the story. Before I fell into that lava lake, surrounding a tree very much like that one over there, Joe here fell in as well. Fell in and was not consumed but instead was transformed. If Holmes survived the falls, why not Moriarty, eh? Even then I had more power in my little finger than any of you and more than sufficient power to have preserved my faerie soul.'

'Come to think of it, you do look like Boquillas' soul would look,' Marge agreed.

'I was forced into this form, for, you see, I was trapped, awakening in the Sea of Dreams itself. It took an incredible amount of nonstop salesmanship to talk the entities trapped there into aiding me.'

'How did you get out, you monster?' Poquah challenged him. 'Not even the alternate gods of that place can escape!'

'Not individually, no, but first of all, I was not a god. It's not nearly so much on the overhead, and I do match the mathematics of this world. The trick was to have them influence their vast and mostly hidden followers here — hidden until now — to become aware of me and to bring me through. In a sense, you can say I was prayed back into real existence. My soul was incorporeal, my faerie self was in flux, and it flowed into the vessel that they used for their prayers. This is a personification of a statue of a child-servant of Shub Niggurah, the Goat with a Thousand Young. It is quite imposing, is it not? Ah, I can see that you are impressed.'

'What is with you, Boquillas? It's bad enough you won't stay dead, but you started off as a handsome, charming SOB who at least cared about people, who justified what he did as a rebellion against the system here and for the betterment of most.' Marge felt she had nothing to lose, so why not say it all? 'Now the only thing that's left is the SOB part.'

'I finally learned the truth,' Boquillas responded. 'That it's all for nothing. That everything is, in the end, totally meaningless. That pleasure and power are the only things that matter, and then only because you should have what you will. Think of it! I have beaten all of you! I have beaten Hell itself! There is nothing I cannot do or have!'

'You haven't won a damned thing except a little petty revenge,' Irving spat at him. 'You're nothing, Boquillas. You're lower than whale shit, and that's on the bottom of the ocean! What have you accomplished? Revenge on a bunch of people who beat you at your own game several times when they couldn't have beaten a competent sorcerer even once? So you can be a big monster around here until those things you made the deal with show up. Then you're right down there lickin' their boots just like you would be if you'd stuck with Hell. And if you don't bring 'em through, Hell and the Council will just quarantine you here and eventually gang up and crush you unless the little creatures you betray around here get you first. You got nothin', Baron! Nothin' that means anything at all! You're still a loser! You'll always be one! That's your destiny. Troublemaker, misery maker, but endgame loser! And somewhere around there's the real black bird, 'cause there's got to be. Somebody — maybe Ruddygore or Lothar or somebody — is gonna get hold of it, and then you are really toast There ain't no way of gettin' around it. You got nothin'!'

'Perhaps, the Baron responded coldly. 'But I have all of you.'

That was a heck of a lot harder to argue with, Irving had to admit to himself.

'Now, I believe we will start with a bit of fun,' Boquillas said almost to himself. 'While the rest of you watch, I shall allow Joseph here to emasculate the son. Then a rather simple spell, and we can load an entire functioning vagina into the space thus vacated, using the same creative model of a curse visited upon the lovely lady here, only, of course, reversed. Then everyone — friends, companions, father — can watch as I none too gently rape the new daughter right here, then let you roam the forest for a while, with an unbreakable desire only for women, with even