by R. W. Holmes
The imp gasped as Gael suddenly pulled the plate up and ended the ritual.
“Oh!” she exclaimed shrilly. “No no no! He's going to be so upset!”
“I'll see a priest and confess my sins” replied Gael. “It'll be fine, he can't get me.”
“But what about me!?” the imp wailed fearfully.
“Well, if he's right about someone being out there who wants to hurt me then I'll just have to go ahead and keep you around, won't I?” said Gael. “And then you'll just have to try real hard not to die after I'm gone.”
“But how am I supposed to protect you?” asked the imp. “Do you know how to teach me?”
Gael sighed and dropped his head into his hands, before an idea struck him and brought a smile to his tired visage.
“Hey, how about we name you?” he said instead. “You can't just be 'Imp' or 'Familiar' or 'Demon Monster Girl Thing' if you're going to stick around, right? Think about it, what kind of name would you like?”
The imp frowned, unsure of how she felt about the change of topic. Eventually, she shrugged and said, “I don't know very many names.”
“Do you have anyone you respect, maybe?” offered Gael. “Or someone you admire? A friend or... Well, you were born at the Chasm of Belial, but I don't think it'd be right to call you Belial. Maybe it'd work as a surname, if you even need a surname...”
“Also, Angelica sounds like angel, and angels terrify me, so I really wouldn't like one like that” the imp said thoughtfully.
Gael smirked as the imp continued thinking, her ghostly white skin almost fuzzy in the dim light of the room.
“You know, you do have the palest, whitest skin I've ever seen in my life” said Gael. “It's actually kind of unsettling, but you could go by Zinerva. My grandmother was named Zinerva, and she was an albino. She even had red eyes like you, but they weren't as vibrant as yours.”
“That's her name, though” said the imp.
“She died of a heart attack a year ago” replied Gael. “Saddest damn moment of my life, too. I think I'd like to have someone close to call Zinerva again.”
The imp stared up at Gael confusedly, unsure of what exactly was rumbling through her body. Without any recourse on how to rationalize, she spoke up instead.
“I feel prickly.”
“Those are called goosebumps” replied Gael. “And if it's alright with you, Zinerva, I'm going to take that as you accepting your name.”
Zinerva blinked, unsure of how she actually felt about anything, but fairly confident the unnamed feelings bouncing around inside her weren't bad ones.
“Okay” she said plainly, as she was want to do. “What now?”
“Well, I'm kind of hoping War told you about some of the stuff he'd teach me to do” replied Gael. “Because I have absolutely no idea where to start.”
“Oh, he did” Zinerva said reassuringly. “I think he likes to hear himself talk.”
On the opposite side of the dormitories, a very nervous, very apprehensive young woman fed a list of eclectic things to her own matter printer. It had taken a short while to figure out what she'd need, and a whole lot longer to figure out what a baphomet was by memory of the image alone.
Angelica knew what she was doing would probably earn her nothing but angry words from Gael, but the temptation had been too great.
“He said he put things from himself in the bowl” she murmured excitedly. “It gave him his demon, and that means I might have one too.”
Angelica's matter printer dinged to signal that it was finished, and she quickly hurried to get everything set up. With a precision in mimicry that suggested a latent talent in forgery, Angelica went about the task of precisely laying out her wax baphomet symbol, candles, and offering bowl in exactly the way Gael had.
She then took her seat before it, and eyed up the ingredients she'd selected.
“Okay” Angelica whispered to herself. “The feather of a dove, for peace and love. A bit of salt, for hospitality.”
Angelica paused as she got to the next ingredient. She found it hard to acknowledge her own flaws, and considered the next bit an extreme example of the one she struggled with most.
“Fur from a lion's mane, for wrath...” she murmured sheepishly. “And finally, a sapphire for sincerity. Oh, and the bad part...”
Angelica looked away as she raised a pair of open scissors to her palm and ever so carefully nicked herself with them.
“Ow, ow ow ow ow ow” she whined as several drops of her blood dripped into the bowl. “I swear to... someone, this better work now.”
It was then that the ridiculousness of what Angelica was about to do struck her, and a deep, shameful need to make sure no one else was somehow in the room watching overtook her better senses.
“D-Demon!” Angelica started, her tone trembling with anxiousness. “Recognize my offering to you. See myself as it is, and you who are equal, appear!”
Angelica failed to contain a startled, “Eep!” as the lights in her dorm flickered, before finding herself woefully without any other results from her attempt.
“Oh... I did it wrong” she murmured disappointedly. “Was it the music? No, that was just part of the offering. Oh! That's right, we're supposed to meet at the crossroads!”
The lights in Angelica's dorm flickered again, and the flames on her candles turned red.
“Umm,” she managed, before being hurled forward all at once by some supernatural force and finding herself launched across the incomprehensible spacescape of existence itself.
Angelica's screams, like Gael's, were stolen by the wondrous sights that rushed forward to meet her. They came and went as her first shockingly long journey took its course, before finally she found herself floating between the great, celestial iris and the terrible, unending void.
A short ways off, she spied the victim of her meddling in Hellish affairs.
He was taller than Gael's imp, and far less human looking. His feet were hooves, cloven and goatlike, as was his baphomet-esque head. His lower body was coated in dark, brown fur, but his upper body and arms were bare, and the muscles that adorned him were chiseled with a strength and athleticism that made his seven feet of height all the more intimidating.
Despite his monstrous appearance, Angelica couldn't deny the deep, welling need to make her way over, and neither could the goat. Flailing wildly in the celestial abyss, they clawed with everything they had, gaining mere inches at a time, until Angelica's hand reached out and finally managed to clasp the demon's.
The same instantaneous draw of supernatural force that had sucked Gael back to reality gripped Angelica, and like with Gael, it refused to let her release the demon she'd grabbed hold of. In mere moments, the two were drawn all the way back to Angelica's dorm, and upon arrival, Angelica found herself unprepared, and therefore thrown against the far wall of her dorm so violently that she knocked herself unconscious.
When Angelica came around again some time later, she found herself on her bed, relatively unharmed, and with a tall, goat-faced demon looming over her and staring down at her expectantly.
“You talk, right?” Angelica said feebly.
“Yes.”
Angelica flinched as the deep, booming voice of her demon hit her with the same weight that any fist could have mustered. Never before had she experienced something so powerfully weighted, and she quickly came to realize that if this creature were half as strong as its voice, it'd probably be capable of ripping her apart with its bare hands.
“Y-You have to do what I say” she said to it, her voice still feeble. “Those were the rules. Gael's imp couldn't break his commands.”
The goat demon furrowed his brow for a moment, before lashing out and catching Angelica by her neck.
“Very well” he boomed. “If that is the case, then you will not speak.”
The goat squeezed, and Angelica's body went limp to the loud, sickening crack of her neck snapping.
“Ever.”
Chapter 4
&
nbsp; The Sins of Angelica Jackson
Sleep came more easily to Gael than he'd expected it to that night. For Zinerva, sleep came for the very first time. She felt no fatigue in hell, and whether this was because she died too often to get tired or not she didn't know, but with her first true rest came a first true dream. The dream wasn't in any way long or complex, though. If anything, it was brutally short, and transpired more in feeling than in any image her mind made up for her. It was Gael's death, how she didn't know, but it was there, and the cold reality of what it meant hit the small imp with every bit the harrowing force of consequence that one felt when they lost their first pet or loved one.
Gael would never come back to life.
Zinerva would never see him again.
And then, Zinerva would die as well, and she'd be left in Hell to waste away for the rest of her days.
Zinerva gasped as she sat upright, her body wracked with a cold sweat that was all the more unbearable for how poorly acclimated she was to the 76 degree temperature of Enterprise Island. Her eyes immediately turned to the lump of blanket and quiet breathing on the opposite side of the bed that was Gael, and thanked anything that would listen that her dream had only been just that: a dream.
“G-Gael” she rasped. “Gael! Wake up!”
Gael stirred under his covers and sat up.
“What?” he asked groggily. “Is something wrong?”
“I-I think I had a vision” replied Zinerva. “It came to me while I slept. It was horrible, you were dead, and-,”
“That's a dream” said Gael. “Good ones are just dreams, bad ones are nightmares. Glad me dying was the latter, now go back to sleep.”
Zinerva frowned, her eyes struggling with the darkness of the room.
“There's no night in hell” she said next.
“I'll call the church in the morning and tell them to stop calling you creatures of darkness, then” Gael replied humorously.
A mutual desire to find the morning sent Gael and Zinerva back in search of the slumbers they'd previously been enjoying, until a new sound came from outside the door.
It was loud, like someone stomping down the hall in wooden shoes. A curious sniffing seemed to accompany it, and with all the oddities surrounding the past day, Gael couldn't simply let it go.
“Lights on, please” he said as he got up.
“What are you doing” Zinerva whined.
“That sound is strange around here” replied Gael. “And let's face it, we're responsible for most of the strange right now.”
A chill went up Gael's spine as he realized just how much he hated the accuracy of his own statement. Hell was in his home now, and it was becoming impossible to imagine a catastrophe he wasn't a part of.
“So what?” Zinerva queried innocently. “It's probably just a goat walking down the hall.”
“What!?” Gael exclaimed hoarsely.
“Yeah, it sounds like a goat's hooves” explained Zinerva. “You know, like the demons I told you about? They're really big, and they have a goat face, and goat hooves. Oh, and they like to kill. Like, a lot more than normal.”
“And you think there's one in the hall right now!?” asked Gael.
“Yes” Zinerva replied nonchalantly. “So what?”
“Zinerva! Why the fuck would there be a goat demon in the halls of my college dormitories in the middle of the night!?” hissed Gael.
The slow, dawning realization of why Gael might be as upset as he was crawled over Zinerva, and with it came the realization that an unbound goat demon roaming as it pleased would be liable to kill anything he set its eyes on.
Including Gael.
“We should call War” said Zinerva.
“I'm not calling him” Gael said as he inched over to the door of his room. “Just... hold on.”
Zinerva held her breath as Gael cracked his dormitory room door open and peeked his head out.
Gael was first treated to the sight of several other students also peeking their heads out through their doors, and upon following their combined gaze he finally got a sight of what was making all the racket.
“Yep!” Gael said as he pulled his head back in and silently shut the door. “It's a goat demon. There's a goat demon on campus and he's out for a leisurely walk. Zinerva?”
“Y-Yes?” Zinerva queried fearfully.
“Come here” said Gael.
“I don't want to.”
“I'm ordering you to” insisted Gael, his lips now curled up into an unsettling smile.
Zinerva did as she was asked, before being scooped up all at once and violently shaken by Gael as he furiously whispered, “WHY IS THERE ANOTHER DEMON AT MY COLLEGE!?”
“I-I-I-I don't know!” Zinerva whined back honestly. “I mean it! There weren't any goats around either time you summoned me. I swear!”
Gael continued to glare at Zinerva accusingly, his mind trying to work its way through what he was certain to be a lie, until he realized that he wasn't actually the only person who knew how to summon a demon.
“Angelica saw me summon you” he said in horror.
“Oh okay” Zinerva said in relief. “It's Angelica's then.”
“If Angelica summoned a demon, she wouldn't let it just walk around like this, Zinerva!” snapped Gael.
“Oof!”
Zinerva reeled slightly as Gael suddenly dropped her, the swift two foot fall catching her off guard and leaving her to stumble back onto her rear end. “Ow...” she said as she watched Gael pick up his computer and tap at its screen furiously.
“Call Angelica Jackson” he said to it. “She's here in the dorms.”
“No life signs detected in Angelica Jackson's room.”
Gael and Zinerva exchanged a pair of alarmed looks after hearing the computer's message.
“Well where is she then?” asked Gael.
“That information can be accessed by law enforcement personnel only.”
“What about her matter printer history?” asked Gael. “Is that public?”
“Matter printer history can be accessed by campus technicians and law enforcement personnel only.”
“IS THERE A DEAD BODY IN ANGELICA JACKSON'S ROOM!?” Gael roared frantically at his computer.
The computer paused for longer than he was used to then, before spitting out an ominous new message.
“Thank you for your concern. Please stay put. Law enforcement personnel have been notified of the situation, and will be by to question you and collect the body of 'Angelica Jackson' shortly. If you attempt to leave the campus before then, you will be treated as a hostile witness and charged with obstruction of justice.”
Gael's jaw fell slack as the computer's eerily calm, monotone voice relayed the message. Angelica was dead, and it was unequivocally true that his meddling in the supernatural had caused it. The crushing force of the guilt was unlike anything he'd ever seen, and it wasn't until Zinerva slapped him that he realized she'd been trying to shake him back to his senses this entire time.
“Are you okay!?” Zinerva asked frantically.
“What? No!” Gael exclaimed fretfully. “Angelica is dead, Zinerva. We killed her. We killed her. I killed her! I killed her the moment I got her involved. Don't you see what happened? She summoned that demon out there, because of me, and it killed her!”
“Well that was stupid” Zinerva said with a snicker. “How's he going to come back when he's sent back to hell?”
“That's not the point!” Gael seethed at the imp. “Fuck! We have to hide you. No, wait, we have to deal with that goat before it kills anyone else, and then we have to hide you.”
Zinerva scoffed indignantly at Gael's demands and asked, “Why do we have to deal with it? And why do I have to hide? This isn't our problem.”
“Shut up, these are orders now” Gael replied stoically. “We're going to kill that thing to send it back, and then we're going to send you back too until the police are done asking me about all of this. If we're lucky, I won't go to jail when conventional
science can't figure out what the fuck happened here tonight.”
Zinerva scowled, clearly not okay with Gael's plan, before a thought struck her. “But if we go out there and fight that thing, everyone is going to see that you were prowling the halls” she said triumphantly.
Gael scowled back at Zinerva and her second attempt to avoid getting involved, but couldn't deny the wisdom in her words. He needed to hide his identity, and while it was against the law for the college to record what he was doing in his room at all times, it was perfectly legal for the police to look in once they'd arrived.
“We have to be quick” he said as he began matter printing a long strip of black cloth. “There was an incident at the campus when I first got here, so I can say with some certainty that the police response time around here is about fifteen minutes. That's how long we've got before I need to be back in my room.”
“Ugh, this is so stupid...” Zinerva groaned in dismay. “What am I supposed to do to a goat alone? Or what are you supposed to do?”
“Well what did War say you were supposed to learn to protect me?” asked Gael.
“I don't know, something about 'projecting the fires of hell itself into reality'” said Zinerva.
“Alright, sounds good” Gael replied pessimistically. “Start practicing, and we'll figure it out when we get there.”
Zinerva stared up at Gael incredulously, slack-jawed, as he wrapped the black cloth he'd just printed around his head to obscure his face.
“I'm serious” said Gael.
“That's an interesting way to pronounce stupid” replied Zinerva.
“Enough sass!” snapped Gael. “Angelica is dead, we're responsible, let's go!”
The harsh thumping of goat hooves being driven into the floor by nearly six hundred pounds of stompy muscle echoed throughout the dormitories and kept its occupants hidden in fear. Calls had been made though, and Academy Nine's perfectly adequate campus security was en route to deal with the disturbance.
The goat demon, nameless as he was, turned to face the sudden array of bright, LED flashlights as they illuminated the hall around himself. Of the campus police called, there were a mere three in total who had showed up, and while each was armed with a taser and a stun baton, they lacked any real sort of weaponry.