The Cost_An Introduction to Demonology, Part 1

by R. W. Holmes

  Artemis would have felt his eyes water up if the constant, burning fire that comprised his body would allow for it, but the sense of duty he'd inherited from Sauriel's blade insisted upon something else anyway.

  “How much longer until they're upon us?” he asked Zinerva.

  “There's a big, black cloud coming up with them now” Zinerva answered in trepidation. “It's just showed up, but it's moving really fast, and the air is starting to get cold. I think Death is coming.”

  “Debra! Grim!” Artemis called out. “Death will be upon us soon.”

  “Okay” Debra called back fearfully. “What do we do that information?”

  Artemis ignored Debra, and instead turned to Kiki to shout the same message.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! I think they're right” Jacobs grumbled as he spied the coming cloud and shivered against the growing cold. “This is it then. There was never a way for us to stop any of it after all.”

  “Remember the part where War told us to run as far away from here as we can and just let it happen?” asked Kiki. “I'm starting to think we should just give them the scroll and run.”

  “It might not be a terrible idea to leave one of us with the scroll so the others can get away” admitted Father Jacobs. “You're all young, so it may as well be me.”

  “I am the actual cause of all this, though” said Gael. “I summoned the first demon, which is why Angelica summoned Artemis, and when he killed her she became Death's pawn. It is, and always has been, my fault that all of this happened.”

  Father Jacobs sat back in his seat and looked to Gael in consternation. “Why were you trying to summon a demon anyway?” he asked him.

  “Honestly?” Gael queried with a nervous laugh. “I wanted to write a paper about how peoples' experiences with superstition could affect their reasoning. I wanted to do that because I thought getting caught up in some nonsense demon summoning would be fun, and all I had to do was let myself get carried away and believe it. I didn't think for a moment that I'd actually summon a demon.”

  “So it was an accident?” asked Father Jacobs.

  “Succeeding?” queried Gael. “Yeah, but I still tried to summon a demon, so eternal damnation is my reward anyway.”

  Father Jacobs sighed and shook his head. “I refuse to see only the bad in this” he declared rebelliously. “Before your calamity took Enterprise Island, I was a nobody who filled in for other priests. Now, I am a man who's had the privilege of walking beside an actual angel! To Hell with your regret, because for that, I thank you.”

  Gael scoffed aloud at Father Jacobs and moved as if he were going to say something, but found himself beaten to the punch.

  “You got me out of being stuck to what was easily my worst ever summoner” Kiki said next. “And I've had a lot of summoners. Also, now that the world really is ending, I'm super happy my baby went out this way” she added as she slapped a wart-covered hand on her vehicle's dashboard. “A car chase with the four horsemen of the apocalypse? That's a way to go.”

  “Hey!” Zinerva called from Artemis's back. “While we're all doing this, I'd like to say thank you for summoning me, Gael. I wasn't going to last much longer in Hell anyway, and these last few days have been amazing.”

  “I was a beast of base emotions and little else” Artemis added next. “Because of your meddling, I am so much more.”

  Gael failed to contain a smile as he looked at everyone around him. “Fine” he conceded. “My only regret is that this has to end now. I really, really enjoyed all of this, and... Actually, I should-,”

  “Ugh” Zinerva gasped, her breath stolen from her as cold, grainy steel split her rib cage and penetrated her heart. Looking up in surprise at her attacker, she couldn't believe how quickly it had arrived. In the blink of an eye, there was the flicker of a pale horse on the horizon, and the next instant, Death was there.

  “ZINERVA!” Gael cried out in horror.

  Zinerva looked down at the where the blade had skewered her, and then at the ominous, wispy black flames that crept up it. Glancing back to Gael, she quickly felt herself slipping away as the flames crawled over her. For every piece of her that was burned away, not even specks of ash remained.

  “I-It's okay” she managed. “I meant what I said earlier abou-,”

  Gael's voice made no sound as the last of Zinerva burned away with the flames. His world began to spin, and a sudden rush of lightheadedness stole his ability to think clearly.

  Artemis, though, spun and swung at Death itself in an attempt to bat the attacker away, but found himself caught by the breastplate as Death's bony hand calmly clasped hold of it. With no effort at all, the horseman hurled Artemis back and into the waiting arms of the three other horsemen, who quickly and unceremoniously stabbed their blades into him all at once.

  Kiki and Debra screamed together as demons descended into the road before them, forcing them to slam on the brakes and bring their long, perilous chase to an end. They weren't the owls from before, no, they were more humanoid than that, but just as tall. They wielded tridents, and were horned, with great, gargoyle-esque wings protruding from their back. They stood in a way that almost looked regal, and exuded both the temperament and appearance of Hell's strongest and most intelligent demons.

  The spawn of Beelzebub had arrived.

  Gael, still too stunned to grasp what was happening around him, quickly focused on summoning Zinerva once more.

  But there was no response.

  He closed his eyes tight and clenched his fists as he mumbled, “Zinerva! Recognize my offering to you! See myself as it is, and you who are equal, meet me at the crossroads!

  Again, there was no response.

  Without warning, Gael reached over to Father Jacobs and took his pistol from him. A fresh chorus of horrified screams erupted next when, with the gun in his right hand, he shot through the palm of his left. Frantically, he held his bloody hand aloft and tried once more.

  “Zinerva! Recognize my offering to you! See myself as it is, and you who are equal, meet me at the crossroads!” Gael bellowed helplessly. “PLEASE! YOU CAN'T BE GONE!”

  “She is.”

  As Death's voice boomed, everything around it became silent.

  “Give me my scroll” Death said next. “Do it without fighting, or I will see to it that all of you face oblivion like she did.”

  Grim hopped over to Debra and draped a protecting arm around her, and Kiki swelled up in size as she did the same for Father Jacobs and Gael as well.

  “Look around you” said Death, its skeletal hands fanned out and pointing to the Beelzebub spawn encircling them, to a growing vortex of demons circling overhead, and to the hordes of other, lesser demons as they continued their charge from the heart of Eiffel. “You have cried the last gasp the world has to offer, and it was loud, but the end times have come. For your bravery, and your compliance, I will give you one last chance to accept a quiet, peaceful end.”

  “Oh, how magnanimous of you!” Father Jacobs spat indignantly.

  “Yeah, I say we fight” Kiki added wickedly. “Eternal afterlife is overrated anyway.”

  Debra feebly raised her gun at Death, and Grim clenched his fists in solidarity.

  Despite being hooded and covered in a veil of pure darkness, everyone could feel the wry grin coming from Death as it shrugged apathetically. “If you must...”

  Kiki charged, Grim charged, and Father Jacobs and Debra opened fire, but before any of them could reach Death, a final call rang out.

  “STOP!” Gael shouted. “I SAID, STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!”

  Everyone froze. Debra and Jacobs found their fingers held fast, and their bodies unresponsive, while Kiki and Grim hadn't just come to a stop, but were suspended in midair. The Beelzebub spawns were the same, and the entire vortex of swirling bubs and Stolas spawn above were equally frozen in midair.

  Even War, Pestilence, and Famine were unable to move.

  Death, meanwhile, craned its hood this way and that to survey th
e spectacle around it.

  “Impressive” it mused. “Even Lucifer would have had trouble with you. If there were yet time, I might have hoped to see you challenge an archangel as well.”

  Gael, meanwhile, had ignored Death and instead taken a moment to pull out his cellphone. He dialed the only number he cared for, and waited for an answer.

  It never came, and went to voice mail instead.

  “Hey, it's Emily. You just missed me, or I passed out watching soaps again, but if you leave a message I'll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  Gael grimaced as the phone beeped, and cleared his throat.

  “Hey Emily” he said, almost nonchalantly. “I know we were supposed to meet up when this was all over, but I don't think I'm going to make it anymore. I just want you to know that I really appreciated our time together, even though it wasn't for very long. I really hope your friend is okay, and... I love you.”

  Death stared on in silence as Gael hurled his phone aside and stepped directly up to itself.

  “Okay” said Gael.

  “Okay?” Death queried curiously.

  “I'd like to go see my imp now” said Gael.

  Father Jacobs, Debra, Grim, and Kiki all began fighting their supernatural hold furiously as they realized what Gael was doing, but were unable to do anything. The most control they could wrestle back to themselves was the movement of their eyes, but even that was only fleeting.

  Death, though, laughed the gravelly, otherworldly laugh only it could muster. Like a sound of chalk being crushed and sticks clacking in the wind, it sent a shiver up everyone's spine.

  Except Gael's.

  “Very well” said Death, its sword already aglow with the brackish black flames of oblivion.

  Gael flinched as Death stabbed him through the belly. The world around Death and himself remained eerily silent as it happened and, Death, hidden beneath its hood, kept a cool glare on Gael to see his reaction.

  It was not prepared when Gael reached out and grabbed it by the wrist, pinning the blade within himself.

  “It's cold” Gael said as he felt the flames creep over himself. “So, so cold. Real cold, an actual negative, and not just the absence of heat.”

  Death felt an oddness it couldn't quite explain, and decided enough was enough. It pulled back, away from Gael, but found that the human before it was somehow holding it fast.

  “Release me” Death commanded.

  Gael smiled as the flames crept up his hands, and then onto Death's.

  “That's exactly what I'm doing” he whispered back to the horseman.

  “No...” Death groaned, unable to stop the flames as they surged up its arms and over its body. “You can't do this! I AM death. I cannot be-,”

  Sound fell on the Mars highway once more. Demons' wings flapping, the soft thuds of Kiki and Grim coming to a stop after their leaps amounted to nothing, and the ragged, fearful breathing of everyone present; human, demon, and otherwise alike; filled the air.

  Gael and Death were gone.

  “What did he do?” Famine rasped from atop her horse.

  “They're gone” Pestilence said in shock.

  “He killed it” War declared finally. “Death has died.”

  Father Jacobs felt his eyes light up, and he sprinted forward a few steps to hold the scroll aloft.

  “This is nothing to you now!” he screamed at the unnerved trio of horsemen. “Isn't it? Death was the fourth seal, and it would take all of you to open the fifth. It's over!”

  Famine and Pestilence exchanged thoughtful glances, before Famine asked, “Should we kill him?”

  “That would be in incredibly poor taste” War interjected. “Besides, he's right, and now we have an eternity with broken seals ahead of us. Let's go home and discuss what to do with our freedom.”

  “What, just like that?” Pestilence queried confusedly.

  “I marshal the armies of Hell” War replied as he raised his sword high up into the air. “Continue your madness if you must, but I'm taking them home with me.”

  Debra, Grim, Father Jacobs, and Kiki all fell backwards as a ring of bright, red energy surged out of War's sword. It swept outward, catching every one of the surrounding demons in its dark luminescence and erasing them back to Hell. It stretched outward for miles, all the way back to Eiffel, before the ring that started at War's sword somehow shrank back to a close at the portal hovering over where Olmstead's warehouse skyscraper used to be.

  With the demons gone, War calmly turned away from the others and marched his horse towards an open space in the highway where a pair of cinnabar pillars had risen up out of the ground. Vermilion flames illuminated the entryway the pillars created, and War vanished between them.

  Famine and Pestilence exchanged another pair of curious glances, before looking back to War's portal and following him through it. Then, the opening collapsed on its, and they too were gone.

  “Mother of God, it's over” Father Jacobs murmured in disbelief.

  “HOLY SHIT!” Debra screamed, quite a bit more enthusiastically. “WE'RE ALIVE!”

  Kiki collapsed to the ground and pressed her head between her knees into a fetal position as she shrank back down to her usual size. “Would one of you mind killing me?” she asked.

  “What?” Father Jacobs asked in bewilderment. “We just survived all of that, and now you want to die?”

  “I'm a spriggan, priest” Kiki replied through a shudder. “I want to go home, take a decade to think about things, and then maybe find a new summoner. I'll look you up if I'm back before you pass on, okay?”

  Father Jacobs stared Kiki incredulously, unsure of what to do, before throwing his arms up in defeat.

  “You know what, sure!” he exclaimed with a smile. “But we're all getting a drink together first. Where's the nearest pub that hasn't been apocalypsed? I'm buying.”

  Chapter 21

  With Strange Aeons...

  “Could you ever have imagined it, grandfather? Everything that he'd said would come to pass has, and Al Azif is awake with his ramblings. It's all happening.”

  The cold, slimy, fish-frog monster that was Allen Olmstead's grandfather stared back at its grandson and smiled a toothy, unnerving grin.

  “It has always been our way to see our enemies suffer for their overconfidence” it garbled. “Even I could not have imagined we'd live to see Death itself do the same...”

  Argyle sat opposite Allen and his ancestor as they chatted excitedly about the imminent coming of terrifying things and tried to survey his surroundings.

  They were underground, that much Argyle could gather, and probably on Earth considering the limestone nature of the cavern the R'lyehan had set up shop in. Were the situation not so tire, he might have found the large, limestone table they were sitting at interesting.

  “And most importantly, we have him!” Allen exclaimed with a gesture to Argyle. “Nothing will satisfy Alhazred like seeing his descendant healthy and alive after all this time. And with his favorite shoggoth too, no less.”

  “Who?” Argyle queried confusedly.

  “Abdul Alhazred” said Allen's grandfather. The creature raised the bizarre, flesh-bound book that had allowed it to so easily deal with Emily and Shay and added, “He's the man who wrote this.”

  Allen laughed giddily, before suddenly and without warning standing up straight, as if to give a speech.

  “That is not dead which can eternal lie,” he started. “And with strange aeons even death may die. Do you know what that means, Argyle?”

  “N-No” Argyle replied fearfully. “What does it mean?”

  “It's a message” said Allen's grandfather. “Abdul was an incredible being, one who learned so much that he moved beyond the realm of a natural death. But Death itself could take him, in the way Death has a talent for taking things in such a complete and irrefutable way. So Abdul is waiting. Sleeping. Lying, till eternity's end, when death has passed and there is none to oppose him.”

  “And now Death
is dead” Allen added triumphantly. “Death is dead, Argyle! Death is dead!”

  Far far away, between the boundaries of reality and not, where creatures turned whimsical by their own hedonistic nature called home, there stood a court. Here up high, where the grass was greenest and wind serenest, the court was held. Nary a building stood to mar the emerald and dream, but there did stood a placement of stone not unlike a floor, and a great, round table for the court to call home.

  It was a place for fairies, the wisest and eldest of them all, and the few they deemed equally wise to join them as they discussed the goals of the realm.

  And Shay. Shay was there too, because the great winged socialite she called mother was very happy to have her taking her place at was considered by many to be a woefully boring event.

  At the table sat all manner of distinguished guests, most kings or queens in their own right. For Shay, they were arranged around the circle in this order: ErlKonig the Elf King, Aeval the Celtic Fairy Queen, Kubera the Yaksha King, Mab the Ellyllon Queen, Clancy the Leprechaun King, and in what Shay could only describe as an extremely bizarre twist of events was Kiki, who had been sat directly next to her for reasons she did not understand.

  Everyone, save for Kiki, had come in their finest, most colorful dress: deep browns for ErlKonig, soft green for Aeval, lavish reds and golds for Kubera, deep, soulful blues for Mab, cheery, vibrant greens for Clancy. Kiki wore rags, and Shay was in blue jeans and a hoodie because they were hard to come by in Fairyland and finery was subjective.

  “Well!” exclaimed Aeval, her eyes alight with a forced, friendly glimmer. “I see the Ferrishyn still have a sense of humor. Did you ask them to let you represent them Kiki, or did they simply not care enough to send one of their own?”

  “I was there when the world nearly ended” Kiki replied with a shrug. “I think they just wanted me here in case the rest of you suggested doing something incredibly stupid. Again.”

  “Aren't you considered a criminal right now?” added Kubera. “I seem to recall you stealing several artifacts from the outcasts with your summoner.”