[Demonworld #6] The Love of Tyrants

by Kyle B. Stiff

  So those tough-looking commandos I saw outside aren't here to kill demons, or that lion, or break Langley out, or even help with the conquest of Srila. They're internal affairs agents!

  Wodan hid his surprise by wiping sweat from his eyebrows.

  Would Mallery be able to stop himself from dancing or doing backflips if I gave him his own unit of special forces Slayers and told him he needed to keep Enforcers and Rangers away from drugs, gambling, and prostitutes? How much would he start making in bribes if the agents in charge of “investigations” had the power to exert pressure – or even kill – the people they were investigating?

  It seemed like a terrible joke. He already had it easy keeping his police and military under control because there weren’t enough black markets to tempt them into going dirty. Beyond that, he made sure whistleblowers got a few coins for informing on one another. If necessary, he moved Enforcers and Rangers around so that clannish attitudes didn't have time to fester and grow. It was easy.

  He could see the layers of the power structure in San Ktari growing like a thicket of thorny vines. It was a shame that people were trapped in it and easily torn apart; otherwise it might be interesting to watch the thing develop, a fascinating accident in slow motion. It would have been impossible if the citizens weren't indoctrinated into believing that it was “wrong” to be born, to exist, to do all the strange things that humans do. Just as they believed that a powerful state was necessary to “keep them in line,” so they must also, on some level, believe that flesh demons were necessary to keep humans from getting out of control.

  Wodan could only imagine what sort of veiled threats and condescending gestures this Colonel Sin had made toward Won Po. Thousands of miles away, one man had shaken another man's hand, allegiances shifted, and now Won Po had a goon from the urban battlefield making him lose sleep. Wodan felt sorry for everyone involved. They were children.

  “Colonel El Sin,” said Won Po, “he displayed some curiosity concerning the absence of die Engelen. You see, he was under the assumption that they would be here, busy with an in-depth study on the nature of foreign religion...”

  Wodan hid his alarm. “It was unfortunate that I was too late to give the Colonel some insight into the matter. I would not worry, sir. They have their affairs under control.”

  A lie. As soon as Wodan had left the Tower and approached the San Ktari encampment on the Fields of Epimetheus, Matthias had run toward him, shirt undone, reeking of incredibly potent alcohol. Wodan had tried to explain the situation in scattered snatches of words even as he dodged Matthias's awkward lunges. Though his senses were dulled, Matthias intuited betrayal, accusing Wodan of doing nothing to free Langley. Many times during the pathetic struggle Matthias reached down to his holsters, found them empty, then spat in rage - only to repeat the process moments later. Finally Justyn had arrived, only slightly drunk himself, and held Matthias down on the ground.

  “Kill him!” shouted Matthias.

  “That’s not fair to Wodan,” said Justyn, searching Wodan’s face for a reassuring sign. “I’m sure he’s doing everything he can to get her out. Right, man?”

  “I am,” said Wodan, forcing himself to keep his eyes on Justyn’s. “The thing in there, the being in the Tower - I’m negotiating with it. It’s not… entirely unreasonable.”

  “Kill him!” Matthias shouted, a line of saliva dripping onto the sand. “Justyn, he’s gone over to its side! Kill him!”

  “It hasn’t hurt Dove at all. I promise. I’m going to run and errand for it, but I promise I’ll be back.”

  “Promise? Promise?!”

  “Alright, man,” said Justyn, lowering his head sadly. “We’ll be here.”

  Wodan looked away from the pair. He saw a line of soldiers and flags against the horizon. Dark silhouettes against the harsh light, they willfully ignored the spectacle, pretending everything was normal.

  Wodan forced the memory aside. “Kommander Won Po, may I ask a question?” Won Po only stared at Wodan’s cheek. Taking this to be an affirmative, Wodan said, “Why would a leader of internal affairs forces take an interest in a foreign land that has few resources to offer the Empire?”

  Won Po was silent for a long time, and Wodan thought that he had not heard the question. Finally the Kommander said quietly, “There are men in San Ktari who believe that Srila is focal point for a power beyond this world. They believe that conquest of this world is only shadow of power. That true form of power lies beyond.”

  “I see,” said Wodan. “But they do not all think that, do they?”

  “No. Many disagree. Some even believe that Srila should be bombed from far above, or that it is a mistake to come here at all.”

  “Gods,” said Wodan, unable to hide his shock. “Is there anyone in power in San Ktari who believes that Srila should just be left alone?”

  Won Po smiled tiredly. “Ah, King Wodan... do men with such inclination often seek a position of power?” He let the question hang in the air. Won Po's mouth opened slowly, closed just as slowly, then all at once a quiet stream of slowly, carefully controlled words spilled out of him. “But Ktari has many legends concerning the power of the land of Srila, and not all of them are good, and not all of them are holy. Some say that the dream of controlling such nexus of otherworldly power can turn men into monsters, and little by little waking life becomes an unreal nightmare. With no solid thing to grasp, and no idea that can free men... Heaven and Earth upended, confused, a mixture of chaos and void. Do you see? Mn. But what do I know, King Wodan? I am only a servant. Sometimes such stories and rumors are made only to appeal to simple man, a small man. Sometimes a story like that is spun so that a small man will feel he understands the world. He will feel fear under the shadow of the story, true, but at least he will have a sense of control over the world. Simply by his judgment of it. What need has he of letting go of control and being happy? Perhaps control, of any kind, is preferable to happiness.”

  ***

  Wodan made his way through the village of Temple Grounds, surprised at how many more Valliers had arrived. Even a few off-duty San Ktari soldiers mixed with the pale foreigners and the villagers selling trinkets and philosophical insights. He could not tell who was conquering who.

  Wodan realized that people were openly staring at him. At first he was confused. His clothes most likely hid any increase in muscle mass he'd developed. And it wasn't as if they could see the hundreds of hours he'd spent fighting and defeating robotic monsters.

  Or maybe they can, he thought. In the past few weeks, he'd learned more than he had in all his years before. His knowledge of history and the various workings of the world far exceeded that of any man or woman alive today. He'd been stripped of illusions and lazy habits that he hadn't even realized weren't an intrinsic part of human nature. Who or what could challenge him? He wondered if all of that was evident in his posture.

  Most looked at him with curiosity or a welcoming nod. Only one differed. A Wright, Srila's version of a Smith, stood leaning against an open doorway with arms crossed. His face was scrunched and lined from years of scorning anything that passed under his gaze. His scorn was now focused on Wodan.

  Do they know we fought a war against the Smiths and destroyed them? Wodan wondered. Or do they simply hate seeing people not taking them seriously?

  Wodan looked at the man's eyes. Small, pig-like, wrinkled things like bellybuttons. As soon as their eyes met, the man twitched as if startled awake and slid against the doorframe, nearly falling on his back. Wodan laughed a little. The Wright recovered his dignity by yelling at someone nearby that Wodan could not see. Wodan offered the Wright a smile and a nod, which the Wright pretended to ignore.

  That's how it will be with demonkind. Our children will see the last of them in cages. They'll write papers speculating on why they were consumed by such hatred… such awe-inspiring, small-minded stupidity.

  He heard shouting in the distance, but since the villagers did not seem concerned, he assumed it meant
the drama had been going on for a long time. He took his time walking through the residential area, where the children ran out from under houses built on stilts and wrestled with a pair of lean dogs.

  On the edge of the village, where the muddy path stepped onto a rocky outcropping at the foot of a gray boulder, Magog sat staring off into space. His winter gear was unzipped and pushed down to his waist, revealing a big hairy belly and surprisingly lean arms.

  “Magog!” said Wodan. “What have I missed?”

  Magog blinked, then smiled. “It's a good thing. You came back just in time.”

  “Why? What news?”

  Magog scratched his chin. “I'll tell it to you straight. The bad news is… there is no good news. But the good news is that the bad news was just something about the good news.”

  Wodan laughed. “What brought you here, then?”

  Magog nodded back the way Wodan had come. “You can smell them cooking broth or soup in the village, and the sound of the protest is kind of calming at this distance. Like white noise, I guess. Or kind of like looking at a forest and seeing how nice it looks, and you're so far away that you can't see all the little things fighting to live. Plus, I was tired and just needed a place to sit down.”

  Wodan waved and returned to the path.

  He arrived at the wide stone avenue and saw the source of the sounds of struggle at the base of the stairs leading up to the Temple. Rows of orange robes sat or stood with arms extended at their sides, blocking the path to the stairs. San Ktari soldiers stood against them, pushing or shouting directly in their faces. Some of the orange robes chanted in an endless OM that rose or dropped in pitch, and the hum was pierced by the high-pitched barking of soldiers who went to the front and shouted abuse. But loudest of all were the Valliers. They kept their distance, but they were obviously outraged, hurling insults or begging the orange robes to fight back.

  Wodan noted that none of the soldiers had drawn their firearms. Just as he breathed a sigh of relief, one of the red-armored soldiers raised a club and cracked an orange robe in the head. The man fell and a ribbon of silence was interwoven through the humming, screaming wall of sound, then the sound intensified as the orange robe was picked up by his brothers, ushered away, and replaced by another who stood and calmly extended his arms.

  Wodan felt eyes on him. He turned his face to the mountains. At the entrance to the Temple he saw black robes watching the subdued battle. The Cognati Jared stood at the front, as still as stone, his black and green robe fluttering in the wind. The fact that Jared did not descend and scatter the soldiers sent a chill through him.

  He couldn’t help but notice the cowardice of the black robes. The orange robes most likely did not care whether or not foreign soldiers entered the Temple, and yet they stood ready to confront aggression. The black robes, apparently too good to come down from their Temple, also seemed to be too good to defend it. Wodan shook his head. He had seen such things before.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  The voice was cold and sharp. “General Clash,” said Wodan, “since when do you address your king in that tone?”

  Yarek stood before him, large and immovable by human standards, his gaze poisonous, wiry beard drawing his face out like a carnivore's muzzle.

  “You look different,” said Yarek. “Bigger. What's been going on?”

  Wodan extended a hand toward the battle. “This got you stressed, General?”

  “No. These idiots can do their dance until the end of time for all I care. The fact that some of our civilians might get involved has my subordinates worried. Again, I don't really care. This is what has me stressed, your majesty.”

  Yarek smacked a stack of papers into Wodan's hand. Black Valley newspapers, five weeklies from various towns. Wodan could guess what they were about.

  “Looks interesting,” he said. “I'll take a look later.”

  “Mm. I'll wait.”

  “I read stuff like this in private.”

  “Well I wouldn't want to inconvenience you,” said Yarek. It was clear that he had guessed that Wodan somehow already knew. “We do have some latrines set up side by side. You could do your reading and never even know I'm right beside you, waiting to hear your input.”

  “Don't bother,” said Wodan, hiding a smile. “You know, I would read it right here, but I don't have a place to sit down.”

  Yarek sighed loudly. With jaw clenched he gestured to someone in the distance. He and Wodan stood in awkward silence for nearly a minute, both staring into space, then finally a young Ranger approached with two wooden chairs in either hand and two pillows stuffed under his arms.

  “That'll do,” said Yarek, waving the young man away. “The-e-e-ere now, how's that for convenience? Just like home, isn't it?”

  “Awful considerate.”

  “Well I try.”

  Seeing that Yarek would not let the matter go, he sat and glanced through the papers. They were filled with self-congratulatory pieces on how the Black Valley was improving. One story was about how Representative Reverend Dorcas instituted a tax on vice, which only the worst elements of society protested against. Another highlighted Representative Mallery's program to place people in jobs as soon as they arrived in the Black Valley in order to stop the ever-growing tide of citizens desperate to return to Pontius. He read about plans being drawn up for the construction of one prison per town, and how the cutting-edge facilities would put an end to the barbaric sideshow of public beatings.

  He read how an “ordnance” was passed to keep children from breaking up packages of smokes and selling individual cigarettes on the street, which had a terribly corrupting influence on the youth.

  They have to restrict a young person's ability to take care of themselves, if they want power to stay in the hands of authorities and institutions, he thought. Next they'll have the kids lined up in rows for mandatory schooling. Instead of learning carpentry, people skills, and farming from their families, they'll be pretending to be scholars, memorizing the dates of battles from the Smith War that I don't even know myself, even though I was there.

  He saw strange news stories seemingly unrelated to the moves the Representatives were making. Warnings about this or that product or business, and glowing stories about other businesses. It was obviously orchestrated, someone taking money from businesses, then pushing ads through the media in the form of “news”. Either that, or the Representatives were shaking down businessmen for money, and anyone who wouldn't play along had their reputation smeared in the papers.

  Wodan felt gross, and wondered why the Representatives would want to live in such a world.

  Puppets, he thought. Puppets of their own misunderstood inner lives, sleep-walking and leaving trash in their wake.

  But look at how the media is working for them! Wodan thought. I liked it better when the weeklies ran stories about so-and-so's new batch of strawberry jam, or the miner who saved someone from drowning, or the two-headed goat that a farmer claimed he had. There was no overall narrative, no moral imperative for people to think or act in a certain way. The news was simply a snapshot of the chaos of real life. This makes it seem like society is marching toward a goal.

  Glancing through the papers, he finally came to the oldest. He read about how complete financial collapse was avoided by temporarily bailing out a bank that was put at risk by a lot of shady investors within the King's circle of known associates. In addition, a murky plot dreamed up by the miners and the mining union, who wanted to stifle the industry and keep the wealth of the mines in the hands of a very few people, had been exposed and put right. Mallery and his dream team of socially conscious public servants had stayed awake for days on end negotiating against the forces of destruction that threatened to swallow the Valley whole. Wodan's flipped through the pages quickly even as he memorized names. He did not need to wallow in the stories. He had already seen Pontius, Sunport, Haven. He already understood the end goal.

  What really interested him was how easily
he could switch from the position of student to teacher. In the Tower, the idea of abandoning the Black Valley, whether permanently or temporarily, was incredibly difficult to accept. He'd fought for the Valley, suffered for it, defended it, shaped it. Now cretins who had never made anything of their own used the lives of others as playthings. It was horrifying. But now, seeing Yarek's anger and confusion, he realized that there was nothing to worry over. They could take back the Black Valley whenever they chose. Or they could abandon it and begin again somewhere else. Or they could do any number of things. What they could not do was pretend that the Black Valley was an accidental creation within a spiteful universe that could take it from them whenever it wanted. The Black Valley was not the end goal for them. It was a shadow cast by something bright within its creators, and nothing could snuff that light within them.

  We are the gods who create, thought Wodan. Not slaves who beg for crumbs. I understand it now. There never was anything to lose.

  “I already knew about this stuff,” said Wodan, tossing the papers aside. “I know it seems awful. But we're not going back yet.”

  “You're not going back yet,” Yarek said darkly.

  Wodan understood the implications in an instant.

  “We, Yarek,” he said. “We, together, are fully dedicated to a relaxing vacation. If you went back with some Rangers, but without me, and killed anyone responsible for this little coup, you would end up installing yourself as temporary representative. At night you would lie awake resenting the fact that you fought for the people while the so-called King enjoyed his relaxing vacation. You would grow to hate me. When I returned bright-eyed and rested while you were overworked and exhausted, you would not let me take my throne easily. You would kill me. And it would be justified in your mind. Completely justified.”