God's Demon

case—and remembered the enormous surprise at his first sight of the two-legged Abyssal, a young Skin-peeler. The Knights had captured it, filed down its teeth and spines, clipped its blade-hands, bound and gagged it carefully, and covered it in thick skins so that its luminous spots would not give it away in the darkened room. He could still hear their peals of laughter when, as they had pulled away the skins, he had jumped. Now that he thought about it, the room had been perfumed with the acrid aroma of the beast, a whiff of the Wastes. The Knights had honored him with this present, and he felt so much emotion toward them that his mind raced. They would have to be rewarded, not immediately and obviously, but in ways that were significant to each one. And there would be surprises. Just to make them jump, as well.

He lay in the dark, reconstituting himself, gathering himself for another assault upon the creature’s quivering silver-scaled body. What would he do this round? Compel it to come to him with a potent, irresistible glyph or bludgeon it with his fists until, resigned to its fate, it surrendered? He heard it mewling, and he felt himself growing powerfully aroused again. He sat upright on his pallet, and just that movement alone caused the creature to let out an anguished shriek. This really is too delicious, Adramalik thought, a grin twisting his bony features.

A light suddenly appeared, casting an odd glow upon the chamber’s contents, and in the farthest corner, amidst an overturned table and chairs, he could now see the beast cowering, its eyes wide, both battered mouths agape and drooling blood. The serpentine tendrils of an approaching glyph had entered the suite, finding him in its deepest recess, his sleeping chamber. It formed into a fiery, purple glyph of summoning—Agaliarept’s curious handiwork—and its urgency was not to be ignored. Adramalik closed his eyes and shook his head, feeling his passions—as well as his fearsome erection— dwindling. The Skin-peeler would have to wait.

What could Agaliarept be about, summoning me to him so late? It was a thought Adramalik repeated bitterly as he swung his cloak about his shoulders, as he latched his door behind him, and as he walked the corridors toward the Conjuring Chamber. His mood further darkened as he found himself traversing the tubular, offal-strewn corridor beneath the Rotunda, a place he was never pleased to venture. At the threshold he felt the chamber’s stagnant, hot air and discerned a faint and echoing twittering as from a hundred tiny throats.

He heard, too, the Conjuring Chamber’s occupants before he saw them, and when he entered he saw that not only was Beelzebub present along with Agares, but they had been joined by the Prince’s greatest general, Moloch. Different from a Demon Major by his former status, he was the most powerful of Those Forsaken, the Pridzarhim, a relatively small and especially feared community of sullen former seraph-turned-lesser-gods who had been forgotten or discarded by their subjects. Moloch, like his brethren, was mighty and proud and bitter. Adramalik feared him and was no stranger to the tales of his savagery both upon the battlefield and in his administration, as Imperial Mayor of Dis and as Prince of the County of Tears that ringed the city. He bore upon his scarred chest the Grand Cross of the Order of the Fly, a decoration shared only by Adramalik in his role as Grand Chancellor General Knight of the Order.

^MOLOCH

As he spoke with Moloch, part of Beelzebub’s face peeled away to watch Adramalik make his way through the orbiting bricks and glyphs, toward the chamber’s depressed center.

“What is it, my general? You seem distracted,” the Chancellor General heard the Prince say to Moloch. Adramalik saw their dim forms in the gloom, the broad corona of symbols, ancient and unglyphlike, slowly rotating around and lighting the old god’s head. Moloch, giant in stature, shifted uneasily upon the crutchlike wing bones that twisted out of his back, spindly substitutes for his burned-away legs. Their seeming fragility, Adramalik knew, belied their strength and agility. He had seen Moloch upon the battlefield, a veritable cyclone of carnage.

“Prince, I am disgusted by the refugee demons that pour forth from Astaroth’s wards into your wards… and, indeed, into Dis… by the hundreds of thousands. There are no Demons Major among them and only few Demons Minor have been seen. They were mostly petty officials and as either lower functionaries or common laborers would be useless, never having been properly trained by their incompetent lord. I think that, like a cancer, their very presence will corrupt those around them.” Moloch paused, clenching his jaw. “What would you have me do with them?”

“Why, Moloch, I would have you do whatever you please with them,” Beelzebub said agreeably. “Be as creative as you like; pry away any information they may have. But, in the end, I want them as part of my city. Gather what is left of them, turn them to brick, and brand them with my Seal.”

“As you wish, my Prince.”

Adramalik stopped before the Prince and bowed. Beelzebub nodded and solidified his face to look fully at his Grand General. The towering god’s head was lowered, deep in some dark thought. Charred flakes fell away as he rubbed his jaw.

“Do you miss that place, Moloch? The Above?”

“No, my Prince, never. There was weakness there, as there was in the realm of men. Men are fearful and wretched, and watching over them when I was a seraph was… tedious,” he snarled. “That is why I played with them… why I lost favor and why I,” he indicated his missing legs, “was burnt. But I do miss their offerings… their children. Their hopeful, futile burnings. They had no idea how much I enjoyed the smell of that smoke! Had they but known, they would have stopped in a day. If I could get them to do that with their own children, imagine what I could have done with more time.”

Adramalik felt something brush past his foot, but when he looked down he had only an impression of a small, vague shape heading toward the center of the chamber. Others, too, were converging there.

'He yearns for the Above,” the Prince buzzed.

“Who, Prince?” asked Moloch.

“Sargatanas. I have heard that he sits on his throne staring through the hole in his dome, staring upward… toward the Above. He has spent all these long millennia here and yet, as dim as it must be, he can still see the Light. He is stirring the same feelings in others among the Fallen. I cannot let this continue. Minister Agares and I have been hard at work drawing up plans for ridding Hell of him, plans that you, my general, will execute. You will take up those grievous Hooks of yours and with them tear away his dreams!” The Prince’s form shifted and billowed with anger. “With you victorious, I will take back Astaroth’s wards and Sargatanas’ as well. And I will wear him around my neck, crushed as you leave him, as a reminder to all that the line between Hell and the Above shall never be crossed!”

Adramalik had not seen Beelzebub this agitated since the early times—not since the wars of territory that had carved up Hell so long ago. He looked then at Agares, who had been silently listening. Why was I not brought in on the earliest discussions of battle plans? Why Agares… why is he so favored? I will have to watch him.

A growing commotion drew the demons’ attentions toward the center of the room, where they saw a gathering of many-legged, chittering creatures scrabbling in a flailing mound to climb atop one another. Each one’s body was unique in shape and looked like an animated chunk of flesh, ragged and moist. Only a few bore single pallid eyes. In a frenzy of many-jointed legs they clawed themselves upward into a roughly demonic shape, a shape that, after a series of shudders and ripples, smoothed its form and became the Conjuror General, Agaliarept. He gave one more spasmodic twitch of his many arms— arms that had been legs moments earlier—and turned to confront the demons.

Adramalik heard his sibilant voice, a hissing like the venting of steam, issuing from the mouths of a hundred suspended bricks.

“Look,” the Conjuror said, and pointed at the floor. A pattern of bricks was already in place, and when he touched the closest brick it began to whine, setting off its neighbor, until the entire line, which disappeared into a wall, was noisily active.

“While I have not yet found her, I have finally found Faraii, my Prince. His domicile lies deep within a glyph- guarded building atop the central mount of Adamantinarx. Just as you suspected. It would seem that he has been confined to his chambers after his actions at Maraak,” Agaliarept added. “I summoned you because I have, just this hour, found a way in.”

Even in the gloom, Adramalik could see the Prince’s smile.

“That is welcome news, Agaliarept. The Baron has always been my insurance against the day that Sargatanas became difficult. With his help we will open up a second front on the Lord of Adamantinarx.”