by Shad N Freud
Imperial jade mosaics, golden statues, thousands of gold and silver coins…and at the very back, in a climate-controlled glass case, was an egg. An egg with what appeared to be a solid gold shell. A glint of silver caught his eye and he saw a trio of perfectly circular coins. He smiled as he picked them up and placed them in his pocket. He pressed a button and the case opened, the gold dragon egg within warm to the touch. He could feel the warmth within, and the egg seemed to still be alive, but he could almost feel that it wasn’t ready to hatch yet. As he carried it out of the container, a small familiar looking box whispered to him.
“Pardon me, good sir, but have you a moment? I’d like to tell you the good news! Our scaled lord and savior, Bahamut? He’s not dead! In fact, he shall return in the days to come! What was lost shall be reborn! And you, good sir with the egg, can be among the first to help prepare his way home! For the small pittance of a few thousand dollars, you can…”
Jin stopped on a dime and turned back towards the box. “Oh, Carl is just going to love this.”
Chapter Nineteen
In the depths of the Abyss, Marduk grunted in frustration. Letting Legion die had seemed like a good idea at the time, especially after his minions failed to kill Beaumont’s filthy spawn, or his pretty little wife. He snorted as he pondered his next plan of attack.
While the group were nominally working together, so as to avoid their Dread Lord Sleeping’s wrath, they tended to work at cross purposes. At least, he did. His porcine appearance was greater than skin deep; he wanted so much more than a fair share of the spoils. He swirled cognac in a snifter as he recalculated the expenses he’d incurred in this venture and snarled as the number came up deeper in the red than he’d accept. No, for his plans to work, he’d need to remove at least one other Demon Prince from the board. Probably that prick Malak.
Demogorgon had, after all, been a tyrant. An asshole, a true fiend, and the undisputed ruler of most of the Abyss. But he’d also been so very entertaining. Granted, Marduk hadn’t been anywhere close to a threat to Demogorgon’s power but a scant eighty years ago, but he’d been in possession of a small parcel of the Gray Marches. Then, he’d set up the Spaniard to fight Beaumont and spent a large amount of time incorporating the duelist’s territory into his own, not knowing precisely how the duel ended other than that the bastard was no more. He shrugged as he set his musings to the present.
There was a lot of work to do, and Marduk smiled as he thought about his ace in the hole. There was more than one way to skin an orc, after all, and Marduk laughed, his squealing glee echoing off the walls of his personal chambers as demons in the fields below labored to ensure their master’s appetites were fulfilled, if for no other reason than to escape the lash.
∞∞∞
Off the western coast of Africa, a diver surfaced, his diving suit full of blood-stained holes. He threw his spear on the deck in frustration as he ripped off his diving gear. It was the fifth time he’d tried to get to the bottom, where he’d been searching for coins. The man’s short, curly hair was heavy with salt water and he groaned as he stretched, his lithe muscles flexing under his mahogany skin. He checked his watch and nodded to one of his deck hands, who saluted before making his way to the kitchen.
It was supper time, and they’d held the meal until their employer returned to the surface. Another deck hand brought over a carafe of coffee, set it down on a table a few feet away, then sat in a deck chair to wait. The man sighed before he felt the tell-tale signs of the bends settling into his joints, then fell to the deck, screaming in agony as he felt his joints lock up, large pockets of nitrogen in his blood inflating his veins and arteries. His lungs began filling up with blood as the smaller vessels inside them burst. His eyes became severely bloodshot as blood flowed out of his nose and mouth and his heart stopped, causing him to go into cardiac arrest, and die.
The man in the deck chair sighed, then looked at his watch. The pool for how long it would take this time had grown to five hundred dollars, so he started the stop watch on his smartphone after hearing the wet gurgle from his boss, signifying his death. He opened his book and began reading, looking up occasionally to see if the man had woken up yet. At five minutes, he heard a cough and marked down the time of revival on a clipboard to note who’d won the pool.
The man on the deck vomited up a large gout of blood, then took the towel offered to him to clean himself off. “So, who won the pool this time?”
“Smitty. He had it down at five minutes.”
Darnel Christian shook his head with a smile, then stripped off the ruined diving suit. The corresponding wounds from the injuries he’d sustained on his dive were fading quickly, the damage to his tattoos also fading. He was covered with tattoos, some Latin phrases, others military themed. One in particular was a magnificent landscape that stretched across his shoulders, a very detailed depiction of the death of Medusa at Perseus’ hands. He grabbed the dry clothes handed to him, a loose pair of pants and tunic, and put them on before strolling leisurely to the kitchen. He could smell the chef’s choice for the evening and licked his lips. He loved Shawarma, especially lamb.
Smitty cheered as he was handed his winnings and walked back to his bunk after grabbing supper. Darnel shook his head as he smiled mirthlessly. He’d try again tomorrow, and the next day. The coins were important, and it’s not like he needed to work. Hopefully something would come along to break up the monotony, however.
Immortality was boring.
∞∞∞
In a bar in the town of Golgotha, Indiana, a junior Inquisitor drowned his sorrows. He hated babysitting duty and would literally do anything else if he could. The fact that they were keeping an eye on a nine-block area surrounding a Grand Inquisitor’s wife and kid did little to aid his irritation. Golgotha was a pissant suburb of Indianapolis and the bars in the area all sucked. He knocked back yet another shot of the “top shelf” whiskey, some small batch mule-piss made in Wisconsin, as he watched the barflies mill about in the dive bar.
Suddenly, someone new walked into the bar. Like a breath of fresh air for a gasping man, the radiant beauty strode into the bar and walked up to the bar, immediately getting the bartender’s attention. “Chablis, please.”
“On my tab,” the Inquisitor slurred as the young woman sat down a couple seat away. She turned and looked at the man with a predatory gleam in her eye. “What’s your name, gorgeous?”
“My friends call me Ink,” the woman said with a smile. “What brings you to town?”
“Baby sitting duty for…uh, sorry, it’s a secret.”
“Really? Must be someone important, if they got a big, strong man like you to watch over them. Can’t you give me a hint? Just a little hint? I mean, I’ve been lonely lately, and could use some company…but not if you’re going to be so tight-lipped.”
The Inquisitor was drunk enough not to notice the burning sensation on the back of his hand and was a little too busy being led by his libido. “What’d you have in mind as far as company?”
The woman smiled as she leaned in, gently breathing on the moron’s ear. “Whatever you want, big boy. But first, who are you babysitting?”
He stared down at her large breasts as his mouth watered slightly. It had been a while since he’d gotten any trim, after all. “Cardinal Beaumont’s wife, and his brat,” he whispered as he grabbed her ass. She smiled saucily as she grabbed the offending appendage and led him to the men’s bathroom. As soon as they walked into the bathroom, she locked the door, cast silencing spells on the room, then turned to look him in the eye. He reached for his fly and missed the faint look of irritation on her face before she punched the nearest mirror, grabbed a shard of glass, and slit the idiot’s throat.
Before he could use his healing to seal the wound, Ink shoved an ersatz knife through the wound and severed his spinal cord. He dropped to the floor like a marionette with its strings cut and stared at her in horror as she allowed her glamor to fall, revealing her horrifically burned and mu
tilated form. She then dipped a withered finger into the pooling blood and began drawing a sending circle on the remaining mirror. She smiled as she licked the blood off her hands and grabbed the soul as it tried to flee the body, devouring the Inquisitor’s essence before he could escape to Hell, and potentially warn those down below.
The sending mirror shattered and darklight replaced the glass, revealing a room in an obsidian palace. Malak smiled as he saw one of his favorite princes smiling at him. “Hello, Ink. Got anything useful for me?”
She grinned with a sinister glint in her eye. “Beaumont’s wife and brat are in Golgotha, Indiana. Assemble the troops. Be a dear, though, and leave Marduk out of it.”
Both Malak and Ink laughed darkly as night fell on Golgotha, a lightning storm punctuating the night as portals to the Abyss opened in the sewers beneath the city streets, groups of demons gathering for the coming assault.
Chapter Twenty
Pope Impious VI of the Satanic Church rolled his eyes as he watched his car careen off the track thanks to a well-timed bump by his opponent. He turned to glare at the Archduke of Purgatory who sat next to him, smoking a cigar under his hood as he finished the race. Baal puffed the fine Cuban as Impious sighed, then packed a bowl of the newest strain out of the Vatican’s hydroponics labs. While the stuff in Amsterdam was top notch, the Pope’s new personal greenhouses produced some of the world’s best cannabis. Baal put down his cigar and picked up a piece of flexible tubing that led downward into a cask of rum, taking a long sip.
Laughter came from a table twenty feet away, where eight Pitlords sat around a table with a much smaller but no less lethal bipedal honey badger who was taking them to the cleaners playing poker. The guttural, grunting laugh of the Pope’s bodyguard as he collected a large pot was interrupted when the Pope’s “secretary” came bouncing into the room, pushing a beverage cart laden with food and drink, as well as a variety of chemicals to alter mood, state of mind, and one’s ability to perform.
One of the Pitlords, we’ll call him Denis, decided that the jiggly tiefling was on the menu and groped her as she served another Pitlord his drink. Her perpetually bubbly demeanor dimmed slightly for a moment before her arm flashed upward, cleaving the offending appendage from the fool’s body with a shotel she pulled seemingly from nowhere. She caught the arm with her other hand and whipped the blade around, resting the inner curve against the idiot’s neck as he clutched his wound in pain, glaring at her with coal-black orbs of hate.
“Wench, I’ll have your horns for-” The Pitlord’s words died in his throat as he was held suspended in the air by Baal, who had seemingly teleported from where he’d been sitting. He lifted the Pitlord to eye level and hissed angrily.
“You will apologizzze. Now. Or, I’ll rip your tongue out of your mouth by reaching up your assss for it.”
The Pitlord bared his teeth in challenge and Baal tightened his grip, cutting off the flow of blood to the Pitlord’s brain. He relaxed his grip just before the archdevil passed out, then repeated himself in infernal, the hissed cadence of his voice brooking no argument. The Pitlord, nodded and Baal set him down gently. He turned to apologize to Trixie but the tiefling giggled coquettishly and showed him her phone, displaying the aetherweb site for exotic taxidermy. She’d placed an order to have the severed limb stuffed and mounted.
The Pitlord’s eyes flashed in fury and he lunged forward, stopped only by the insurmountable grip of Baal’s hand on his shoulder, and the searing edge of the Archduke’s blade pressed against his jugular. Baal leaned in and hissed in his ear. “Ssshe earned her trophy. It’sss not every day that a greater devil showsss sssuch a lack of ressstraint, much lesss disssplaysss sssuch terminal ssstupidity. Look down.” The seething Pitlord looked down and saw Trixie’s shotel was a bare millimeter from gelding the fool. He brought his gaze back up to meet hers, and she quirked an eyebrow in question. “Keep thisss up, and I may decide you need more time in the oven, asss the firssst time ssseemsss not to have ssstuck. Underssstood?”
“My apologies. I was…foul in my dealings with you,” the Pitlord ground out as he stepped backwards with his remaining hand up in a placating gesture. Baal resheathed his blade and walked back to where the Pope was sitting, picking up his cigar and relighting it with a match, the acrid scent of sulfur preceding the rich tobacco. Trixie’s weapon had disappeared to gods knew where while “Denis” growled in frustrated pain, his severed arm slowly regrowing as he channeled hellfire into the stump. He glared at the back of Baal’s head, trying to burn a hole through the cowl with his eyes alone.
While Baal’s title as Archduke of Purgatory commanded respect from those beneath him, Hell had always been, and always would be, a snake pit. Granted, Purgatory was the least desirable plane to become the Archduke of, but even the snootiest of archdevils would give their eyeteeth for a chance to dethrone a standing Archduke of any plane. Unfortunately for most hopefuls, Baal had an edge on nearly every devil in Hell because he possessed the ability to control the black flames of Pandemonia, the lowest level of Hell. Only a handful of other beings were known to be able to achieve such a feat, one such being Lucifer himself.
The Prince of Darkness rarely used the stuff and the requirements to gain a mastery of the Baneflame were far too dire for most to seek it out, despite its lethality. The flames were able to burn the soul of its victims, utterly destroying them, consuming the very essence of a person. Only death could stop the burn and that was a luxury granted only to mortals. For truly immortal beings, there were few ways to end the Baneflame and most were worse than the burn. Lucifer reserved such power for those that truly offended the Profane Host’s sensibilities, which is why it was such a surprise to find out that the Archduke of Purgatory possessed such power. As such, few were foolish enough to act against Baal.
After his arm finished regenerating, “Denis” flexed his wrist and elbow, trying to get some of the numb stiffness out of the newly grown appendage. He resumed paying the honey badger to play cards. It certainly beat the alternative. Baal was feared for good reason, as his history was shrouded in secrecy from the lowest levels of Hell. The favorite rumors flying around the underworld were that Baal had once been a twinned soul. There was no real evidence to back it up, but many felt it would help explain his ability to generate the Baneflame. Others thought he was an alternate universe’s Lucifer working his way to the top, to supplant the Dark Father. Lucifer himself laughed and laughed when that bit of spilled tea reached him in the depths of Pandemonia, pausing to catch his breath and shake his head and simply saying “no” before going back to laughing, kicking his heels up and down on his footstool, Joseph Stalin.
Despite how silly the rumors were, no one had been able to get even a glimmer of truth from the Archduke as to his origins, his lips sealed tighter than a Faither’s asshole when minorities tried to join their country clubs.
Baal laughed darkly as his car ran over a crowd of people that had been foolish enough to stand on the sidewalk as they’d watched the death race the game was based around. He and the Pope were trying to blow off steam, as tensions in the Vatican were at an all-time high. It had been two months since Baal had arrived and while Carl’s status reports had been good, they still hadn’t nailed down the location of the last of the coins. There were rumblings that they were in the hands of a private collector, but said man was proving difficult to find. That being said, the Archduke had been confident in Carl’s ability to find them, so Impious did his best not to snap at the various Eye members that brought in the daily reports.
A shrieking hole opened on the Popes balcony and a well-dressed being strode out. He was wearing a crisp pinstriped three-piece suit and the face of…well, it’s been said Ghallorican had the face of a wise being, but the truth was far more unsettling. He strode forward, whistling cheerfully - a neat trick, as he had no lips to whistle with, nor did he breathe - as he handed Trixie a bone white envelope. The stiff vellum was sealed neatly with black wax, a large gothic G the seal’s
stamp. He looked over at the Archduke and dipped his head in greeting, receiving a likewise nod of respect as the note was brought over to the pope.
Trixie wiggled her rear as the pope absently smacked her on the behind and she giggled as she bounced her way out of the room to go get the Pope and his guests their afternoon drinks. Ghallorican tilted his head as he watched her depart. “Where she hides those shotels of hers, I’ll never fully figure out. And I’m supposed to be a god.” The Elder God of deals shrugged as he watched her bound away with an appreciative eye. Despite having absolutely no libido whatsoever, he could still appreciate beauty in all its forms. Which might explain his interest in humanity, and art in general.
“Anywho, I’ve come to let you know where the gun is. Pass that along to Carl, would you? I’ve got a bet going with Lucy as to who actually pulls off the heist. And I’ve even agreed not to cheat and just talk to myself a few weeks from now.”
“How very…magnanimousss of you. I hope you win. Lucccifer can be sssomewhat… ungraccceful when he winsss. Wait, what’sss the wager?”
Ghallorican waved his finger as he tsk-tsk’d at the Archduke. “Now, now, now…that would be telling. Besides, you don’t quite have the ante to join that running table I’ve got going with the various pantheons. Hell, the buy in is a minimum of fifty thousand souls and you need to prove a retainer of at least another hundred thousand just to make sure you can cover your debts. And you’re not even deity level. Close, certainly, and maybe in a few centuries, you might be able to take old Lucy. But, in the interim…sorry, kid, can’t disclose with anyone not playing the game.”