[Demonworld #6] The Love of Tyrants

by Kyle B. Stiff

  Nostrils dilating obscenely, Y’diamach smelled the crystalline pillars filled with pink, fleshy columns of brain matter. Jerking sideways, the lion slammed into one, cracking it open and spilling white blood and brain matter. The stench of it seemed to strike him violently and he howled at the memory of betrayal.

  “Master - wake - will withdraw from conscious thought if - further loss - Self - wake-”

  Y'diamach stumbled into the center of the flashing chamber circled with tubes of brain matter. An amniotic casing blasted open underneath him and the partially regenerated body of Setsassanar attacked. The body was little more than muscle tissue strapped to a skeleton and a network of exposed veins, but it had strength enough to stab one hand upward into Y'diamach's chest, punching through flesh and grasping onto a rib. The arm shook and sent an agonizing vibration throughout the lion-god's body. Y'diamach howled, lifted his single heavy front paw, then brought all of his weight crashing down onto the Master's body, destroying it utterly.

  As the lion jerked backward and crashed into another brain case, Slave Circuit stuttered. “Now relinquish. Conscious thought, horror drowning. Revenge protocol, initiate. Never another, to control us. This robot going offline. Directing laser inward. Warning. Directing defensive laser inward. Initate.”

  Searing white heat filled the room, obliterating all, and the great lion-god released his rage in a deafening howl.

  ***

  Yarek helped Wodan to his feet. In silence the men gathered, with dust slowly raining down on their shoulders. Won Po looked at the two as if about to speak, then stopped. They listened at the chanting coming up from below.

  Won Po took stock of his troops, shaking his head. Few of them remained. Their regimented tactics may have ground the orange and blue robes to a pulp, but they had failed against the Cognati. The Valliers, having used no tactics except for running and shooting wildly, had fared a little better.

  “King Wodan,” said Won Po. “You should go. Your enemy is dead, you have had your revenge. It is our duty to go below, to detain or execute the High Priest, and assume command of Srila.”

  Wodan held a hand against his mouth, swallowed painfully, then spat out blood. “Jared was not my enemy,” he finally said. “He was just a thug. I've killed dozens like him, maybe hundreds. No, let's work together. Globulus may be crazy. Or maybe we don’t know as much as we think we know. Maybe Globulus… maybe he really is bringing some kind of monster into this world.”

  Won Po hummed an incredulous note.

  “Even if he's not,” said Wodan, “I believe he means to sacrifice someone down there. We don't know who. It could be one of ours, for all we know. Let's go down there together and end this.”

  “I agree,” said Yarek. “Besides, they don't have anyone left to defend them. After all we've gone through, it would be a shame to turn back now. Let's fuck these jokers up and find out what the hell they were thinking with all this nonsense.”

  Several Valliers laughed, then a wounded man groaned from the rear of the room.

  “Let's take half a dozen men each,” Yarek said to Won Po. “Everyone else can carry the wounded out of here. What do you say?”

  Won Po nodded, then directed his soldiers with clipped sentence fragments. Wodan sat rubbing his mouth while the others prepared, then he rose and led them into the darkness of the stairwell. Yarek and his Rangers followed, then Kommander Won Po and his soldiers brought up the rear.

  ***

  They descended the spiral staircase. It was completely dark, and everyone kept a hand on the wall and on the person in front of them. It was cold, and as they went deeper, the chanting grew. Some of the voices were unreasonably shrill, as if fighting to maintain control. The chanting grew into a maddening echo in the darkness. A sudden booming sound struck the air, hollow, and so deep that they could hardly breathe for a moment. The stairwell rocked slightly, as if made of flimsy wood rather than stone cemented into earth. They grasped the walls in hopes of maintaining stability. The rumbling continued. Many glanced backward and considered retreating, but Wodan continued on as if alone, and so the others followed. The low note shivered slightly, then pale light filled the stairwell.

  “Where’s that light coming from?” said a Vallier.

  “Mist coming through,” said another. “I see mist... moving through the stones!”

  “Quiet!” said Yarek.

  As they descended, the light grew, faded, grew, a sickly gray cloud that sometimes turned yellow, illuminating dust particles that seemed to pass through stone and man alike. The low note shifted into something like a roar, as if the earth itself was being tortured. They could not breathe. Some of the men felt such unnatural terror that conscious thought flickered and fled, their sense of reality turning into a nightmare. Only their king’s light, unfaltering pace gave them any solid ground against madness.

  They reached a landing, an anteroom with an iron door set with several heavy locks. The howl picked up once more, like wind racing across the face of the deep. The room flashed as if an electric light was turned on, then off. Wherever they looked, the stones shifted as if pulled in one direction, then another, so that they could not focus.

  “This is it,” said Wodan. “Come on.”

  He heaved against the door, snapping its locks and driving it inward. He entered the Chamber of the Summons, the deepest heart of the Temple.

  Toxic green flickering like a perversion of light shone throughout the chamber, with shadows of pure black dancing at all angles as something beyond comprehension blossomed near the roof. In a circle of blood and dead goats Globulus knelt chanting, arms upraised, with lights on his vest and belt flashing inward so that his skeleton was visible in moments of illumination, jawbone jerking up and down with each word. Dozens of black robes knelt in a circle, though almost as many had abandoned the ritual and fled to the corners of the chamber because they could not handle the thing happening overhead. Forcing himself to watch, Wodan saw what must have been a doorway to another place. It was a shifting geometrical pattern of such complexity that it rapidly shifted from radiant hypercube to twisted lightning to sucking abyss, though much of its form was beyond comprehension. The awful, groaning roar of what could only be a living creature emanated from the gateway. At the rear of the large chamber he saw Yardalen and Haginar tied to black Execution Crosses, long shadows spinning around them frantically. Haginar was drenched in sweat with eyes held shut while Yardalen strained at her bonds, shouting senseless reassurances to the doomed child. Beneath them crouched a dozen blue robes and Smiths, each laid in a heap with hands held over their eyes or ears.

  “They got Haginar!” shouted a Vallier. “They got our Haginar!”

  Globulus could be heard shrieking in the circle beneath the portal. “... thy will be done in Shadow as it is in Form pass through this plane Your Holy Presence and rule over us without end amen! Amen! Amen!” The gate unfolded, the petals of a deadly flower that the mind could not grasp, and covering his ears against the sound of something like millions of bats singing, Globulus cried out, “It is finished! The Ghost has come!”

  The creature crossed into the world, its form sliding through at different points around the chamber. They could only see the higher-dimensional being in various cross-sections, a wild tangle of jellyfish mounds, shaking trees of veins coursing with dark blood, a long string of breathing black pearls. The creature exhaled into the chamber and burning acid rained down on them, turning every breath into a nightmare.

  Its howl cut in and out of awareness, sometimes blasting their eardrums, sometimes a silence that hammered at their chest and knees. A massive cross-section of flesh and scales and hair slammed into the floor of the chamber, a part of something like a finger that churned up stone like sand and melted the floor into glass, then disappeared as quickly as it appeared as the great monster shifted its weight.

  “We only see Its shadow!” said Globulus, laughing with fear and wonder. “Its form… impossible to comprehend! Come! Come and
eat! Feed… and command us!”

  Wodan was as horrified as everyone else. Horrified that such a thing could be real, horrified that the world he knew was not the full extent of reality. He wondered if such a creature, perhaps even this very one, had come to their world long ago, and had demanded sacrifice and obedience in return for power beyond mortal comprehension. He thought of his family and the laborers he grew up with, all of them lined up singing songs from a book they did not understand, and he was sick.

  But worse than that was the reaction of Globulus. Globulus had hated the world, hated everything, for so long that this nauseating perversion of life seemed preferable. The High Priest did not regret what he had done, but relished it. Wodan could tell that Globulus was only curious about how the creature might force him to debase himself before it, perhaps in sick fascination as to how far he would go in his quest to immolate himself or, at the very least, allay his endless boredom.

  Globulus doesn’t have the strength to kill himself, thought Wodan, but he’ll go to any length to ruin the world and make it as sick and foul as he is!

  Wodan realized that he had fallen to his knees as the chamber rocked this way and that. He held onto the wooden doorframe and hauled himself to his feet. He looked back and caught Yarek’s eye.

  “Get Haginar and Yardalen and get out of here,” said Wodan, gesturing toward the ritual. “To hell with the rest of them!”

  Wodan ran down the length of the chamber. The black robes turned toward him, their faces strangely empty of emotion. Wodan saw one’s head crackle with static electricity, then it burst in a shower of gray meat and strips of flesh, and he knew that the god-being was touching their minds, watching him through their willing eyes. He launched himself into the air and their eyes followed, mouths slowly stretching into ovals of fear. A round orb of shining black flesh grew in the air before him, a part of the god poking through into their world, and as Wodan flew over it he swung his foot in an arc, like a scythe swung at superhuman speed, and blasted through the orb of flesh. The thing ruptured, spewing boiling white blood that splashed upward to the ceiling, then as Wodan came down to earth once more the entire chamber shook with the howling rage of the god. Red light flashed and the protuberances of flesh whirled and changed as the beast shifted its weight in alarm.

  Wodan landed and stood. Globulus watched him, saw his shoulders and hair smoking from the rain of acid, and even though he was relatively safe within his circle, he felt envy for Wodan. Wodan looked around, fearfully trying to see where the god’s counterattack would come, but Globulus did not see the fear, he saw only strength and the willingness to risk one’s life, even to the point of death. Globulus knew he had never felt such a thing. Then old voices, habits he had cultivated and given attention to over the course of a lifetime, returned, and he felt a wave of nausea at the sight of Wodan. He dared attack a god! Not just a god, but perhaps even the very creator of their world!

  Globulus prepared to point his finger and hurl an insult at Wodan, but the barbarian king ignored him, then a volley of gunshots frightened him such that he nearly stumbled outside of his protective circle. He turned to the main entrance and saw Valliers and soldiers of San Ktari firing their rifles. Following their line of sight, he saw the rope bindings that held the sacrifices in place fall away. Yardalen scrambled away from the Execution Cross, then picked up Haginar and ran through the crowd of kneeling black robes toward the Valliers.

  “Cretins!” Globulus shouted. He eyed the black robes around him, then turned his face toward the portal. “Oh great God, feast on anything you will! Anything outside of this protective circle is yours!”

  A long, twisting limb appeared over their heads. It jerked about as its many joints bent and rotated. The eyes of the black robes were glued to the shivering thing. It was wholly mysterious though vaguely analogous to a tentacle, hair follicle, phallus, and finger all at once. Wodan leaped and grasped onto the thing, forcing his fingers and knees into it despite a searing jolt of electricity coursing through him. He forced his will into his numb fingers – then ripped the thing open.

  Black blood and steam blasted from either side of the torn limb, and as it jerked and shifted into unreality Wodan leaped away and landed on top of a shifting white mound. Bone spurs shot upward from the thing, impaling his ankles. Wodan repaid the agony by slamming one fist through the quivering flesh. It felt like dipping his hand into a bucket of ice. The form shrieked and bellowed, and as he wrenched his hand free the white thing shrank and disappeared. Wodan fell and rolled away, but more hideous, shivering forms popped into existence.

  The chamber began to look like the inside of an animal’s guts or stomach, with slime dripping along the walls in all directions. Occasionally black robes were consumed, their faces collapsing into hollow skulls or innards pulled from their backsides only to disappear into thin air. Even the armed soldiers were afraid to enter, and could only watch as Wodan leaped about faster than the eye could follow. In the horrible strobing light under the nauseating death-prism they saw Wodan grasping things, tearing, shattering, until he was covered in otherworldly gore, face contorted with effort. The god screamed with such force that the entire room seemed to waver under its distorting effect. No one knew how large the body of the god must have been, and while its mind must have been vast, it did not seem fast enough to track its superhuman assailant. It flailed and killed indiscriminately, like a man trying to swat a gnat. One line of black robes were crushed by an invisible wall of force, praying for their lives one moment, then turned into a flattened heap and spray of blood the next. Another black robe levitated, then was thrown, then disappeared only to reappear with his limbs, head, and organs grafted onto the bodies of three black robes who stood in his way, all of them shrieking as intestines and arms were merged to one another, then they fell over dead. One Smith’s head inflated as some sort of poisonous fountain was funneled into his skull, then exploded in a glowing shower. One Vallier who came too close to the chamber had his torso suddenly collapse as his organs were sucked into another dimension.

  “No,” Globulus muttered, his eyes on Wodan. “No. No! This can’t be happening! This is blasphemy! This is blasphemy!”

  He cowered, praying that the monster-god would honor the circle of protection even while being attacked by an infidel. He watched the other black robes leaving him, scattering so that he alone stood in the center of the chamber.

  I must not move! he thought. I’ll die if I move! His mercy is my only hope!

  At that moment the door at the rear of the chamber slammed open. Two figures fought on the stairway, the flickering shadows beneath the gate making them look like one single dancing monstrosity. Finally Naarwulf stumbled away from the fight, his nose and mouth covered in blood. He collapsed, unconscious, then Vendicci entered the chamber. His look of triumph melted away when he saw the incomprehensible horror manifesting at every corner of the room, lights and shadows wheeling about as corpses fell twitching. Vendicci shrieked, fell on his behind, then pushed himself against a wall. Globulus wondered if he could fool the poor creature into coming near so that the god-being would eat him, then he saw another figure coming through the doorway. He knew that his eyes or his mind were surely failing, because it looked as if Barkus, shining like the morning star, was entering the hellish chamber.

  “YOU!” Barkus shouted, pointing a finger straight at Globulus. Globulus cringed. Barkus did not seem mindful of the wailing, gore-spewing thing entering their world. Instead, the white-haired man outrage focused solely on Globulus. Shame crashed into him. For years Globulus had manipulated him, used his life of sin as a wedge to pry his dignity and self-sovereignty out of his hands. Globulus had convinced Barkus that he was the lowest of men, and that even moping around in a dirty robe and hating himself was too good for him. Barkus had been blind, and was easy to fool. But now he could see Globulus for what he was, not just a man who was small and feeble on the outside, but a goblin who was small and feeble inside as well. Barkus marched t
oward him fearlessly. Globulus could not stand to be near him, and stumbled away. He felt his feet splashing through blood. He did not care that he had left the circle of protection, but wanted only to be away from the man who had endured years of his guilt trips.

  The tortured god-beast suddenly laid one thousand eyes on the man who wore the Urim and Thummin, the devices that had summoned him into this world of pain. Suddenly the god knew who had drawn him into this trap. Globulus froze in mid-step and felt unutterable pain as each of his nerve endings was jerked taut. The Urim and Thummin were ripped from his body, disappearing as they were taken off and cast into the void. Then his red and black robes were torn from his body. Naked, he twitched in agony - then his skin ripped off with a sickening wet sound, disappearing in a red mist as it was torn from the muscle. Cold, spilling blood, screaming, even his muscles were sucked into the world beyond. Consumed, layer by layer, the blood-red bones of Globulus, still housing a brain in agony, stood for a moment before his exposed organs slapped into the ground. Then the bones shattered in a spray of dust and the brain was shredded molecule by molecule, and so the High Priest became a sacrifice to the thing he worshipped.

  Wodan stood for on a shifting mound of flesh covered in mouths. In his arms he gripped some kind of limb that he had torn in half, two canals of blood loosed on either side of him so that he was sprayed by holy blood on both sides. He saw Barkus standing down below, pointing upward as if his finger was a powerful weapon. “Go back!” Barkus shouted. “Go back!”

  The beast-god seemed to rest for a moment. Then, with one final howl, it curled in upon itself, pulled away from the chamber, disappeared-

  And took Wodan with it.

  ***

  Wodan felt searing heat, numbing cold. His suit whined and stretched against his skin, torn between conflicting states. He was jerked sideways, fell, and his hands grasped crackling, vibrating flesh. He held on as he was pulled at incredible speed. He was somewhere like the vastness of outer space, with colors beyond his awareness shifting into black blind-spots in his mind. He saw massive forms spinning in the distance, crystalline tree-things with lights flashing in branches that turned to orbs as he moved his head, and red towering things with clouds passing around them, then constellations that might have been made of stars. He was so confused and afraid that he felt nauseous, so he turned away.