by Eric Vall
“You are more like Jar-Jar,” Liby sighed.
“What?” Todd gasped.
“You know,” Liby cleared her throat. “All cute and lovable.”
“Ohh, yeahhhh,” Todd said after he pondered Liby’s words for a moment. “All the girls wanna buy the Jar-Jar toy. That’s why it always sold out.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow,” Ziminiar sighed.
“Oh, right,” the imp retorted, “I suppose Disney hasn’t gotten their tentacles into the flaming tombs quite yet. What I’m trying to say is that Lucifer is Jakey’s father.”
I could see Todd’s words processing behind Ziminiar’s dark, pupil-less eyes. His expression was a mixture of intrigue, skepticism, and confusion, but he finally spoke up after a few seconds.
“So, you are a Nephilim?” he asked. “Lucifer’s Nephilim? I’ve never met one of you before. He always killed them before they could become a threat to his throne.”
“Welp, for some reason I’m still here.” I shrugged.
“It’s because his mom is a milfasaurus rex,” Todd whispered loudly to the demon scholar.
“Who I am or how I got to where I am isn’t important,” I noted, “all that matters right now is a question. Will you, Ziminiar, scholar and historian of Hell, join my ranks? We could use an advisor with your experience, and I sure as hell could use more Demon Lords on my side.”
“Demon Lord?” Ziminiar chuckled and shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t help you there. I’m just a lowly scholar. Nothing more.”
“Not if you join me,” I promised. “I treat all of my demons equally, and I trust them to do what needs to be done. That’s why everyone you see standing before you is currently a Demon Lord.”
For the first time since we’d met him, Ziminiar let go of his serious demeanor, and a warm smile stretched across his face.
“A Demon Lord? Me?” he chuckled. “I suppose I can’t turn down an offer as good as that one. Not to mention, helping the son of Lucifer in his conquests is the perfect way to get back at my old boss.”
“That sounds like a ‘yes’ to me!” I exclaimed and outstretched my hand. “Welcome to the team.”
Ziminiar reached out, shook my hand, and adjusted his coke bottle glasses. Then he turned around and plopped down onto the side of his opened tomb.
“Me, a Demon Lord … ” he muttered to himself in disbelief.
“Do you know who are in the other two tombs?” I questioned the scholar. “We’re trying to figure out if we should open them, or if it’s too risky since, well, my father considered them a threat … ”
“One of the tombs was already sealed when I arrived,” Ziminiar explained and pointed to the one a few feet away from his. “That is Caorthannach. It would be wise not to disturb her tomb.”
“Why’s that?” I asked. “Is she hard to control?”
“There’s no female demon you can’t tame with the Power of your Penis, bro,” Todd reassured me with a nod.
“I don’t know what that power is, but I’d imagine you don’t want to use it on Caorthannach,” Ziminiar chuckled. “That would be Jacob’s stepmother. Lucifer’s first and only bride.”
“I dunno, Lamb Chop,” the imp shrugged, “there’s a whole genre of internet videos out there that would say otherwise.”
“Lucifer had a wife?” Eligor gasped. “Lilith has never informed me of this.”
“That’s because she wouldn’t know,” the sheep-faced demon retorted. “Lucifer had me expunge her from all of Hell’s official records.”
“Sounds like a messy divorce,” I admitted, “but that also sounds like the perfect candidate to let out of her tomb and send after my father.”
“Trust me, King Ralston,” Ziminiar warned once more, “Lucifer did not lock her away simply because he grew bored of her company. She was put in there because she wanted to wipe out the entire universe. All of Heaven and Hell, the mortal world, and all worlds in between. And, unlike so many other demons who speak a big game, she actually was powerful enough to do it.”
“Holy fuck … ” I muttered in awe, “so you’re telling me she’s more powerful than Lucifer or the Exalted One? Why don’t we just--”
I reached out toward the tomb, but Ziminiar smacked my hand like I was a small child reaching for a candy bowl.
“I am not afraid to speak out against my King,” he reiterated. “If you release Caorthannach, the universe as we know it will end, and we will all perish along with it. I will advise you against it, King Ralston.”
“I’m with him on this one, Jacob,” Libidine admitted. “If Lilith doesn’t think we’re strong enough to take on Beelzebub, then we would be the equivalent of an ant to this creature.”
It was a hard choice to make. On one hand, this Caorthannach demon could be our trump card against Lucifer. It seemed like she was one of the few creatures in this universe my father feared, and she could help us squash him into a gory paste in no time.
Then again, Liby and Ziminiar had a point. If she really was strong enough to wipe out the entire universe as we knew it, we wouldn’t stand a chance at stopping her.
It wasn’t worth the risk. At least, not right now.
“Alright,” I sighed, “I won’t fuck with that one. Then that just leaves door number three … What does it say, Eligor?”
The blonde knight inspected the inferoglyphs on the final tomb for a few moments, and she mouthed the words to herself as she read them.
“Condemned for his motor mouth,” she chuckled.
“That definitely has to have a double meaning,” Eclipse spoke up, “there’s no way Lucifer locked this demon away in a high-security location just because he talked too much.”
“Well, let’s open it and find out.” I nodded. “Just be on the lookout for fire breath or ectoplasm breath or anything that might shoot out of this guy’s mouth.”
“I’ll get this one, if you don’t mind,” Eclipse begged. “I’ve been meaning to test out my new powers for a while now. Gula, boost me!”
Gula nodded and encased Eclipse’s tattooed body with brown Hellfire. At the same time, the dark-haired succubus summoned roaring black flames into her hands. She clapped them together vigorously and then launched a giant, nebulous blob of black fire over the last tomb.
The blob floated in the air as if it were a blown bubble, but it stopped when it reached the midpoint of the sarcophagus. Then it began to swirl and twist in midair, until it became a tiny black hole.
The black tomb rumbled for a second, and then tiny fragments of the lid began to snap off and disappear into the black flames, one by one. Finally, there was a loud crack, and the entire top of the brimstone sarcophagus snapped off its base and was sucked into the abyss.
Eclipse cancelled her spell, and the air was filled with an eerie silence.
“Maybe somebody already liberated this one?” Eclipse suggested with a shrug.
“That’s impossible,” Ziminiar mused, “it was still sealed. There has to be--”
“Ziminiar, my man!” a high-pitched voice called out from inside the sarcophagus. “Is that really you?”
Instantly, the scholar’s face went slack with horror.
“Oh no … ” he gasped. “Not him. Anyone but him.”
Suddenly, a tiny green demon hopped over the side of the tomb, somersaulted across the ground, and then popped up with his hands in the air as he let out an enthusiastic “tadaa!”
It was like looking into a funhouse mirror. This dude was the spitting image of Todd, only with green skin and black hair.
“Ahhh!” he chuckled and cracked his neck. “After ten thousand years, I’m free. Time to conquer Earth! But seriously, what’s poppin’, my guys?”
Nineties pop culture references? Jesus, this guy really was bizzaro-Todd.
“Hello, Barlos,” Ziminiar sighed, “did Lucifer finally grow tired of your antics?”
“Nah,” the little demon scoffed, “we’re just playing a game. Luci-boy told me if I could sta
y in that giant box for a few millennia, he’d finally promote me from Court Jester to Master of Ceremonies. But when I heard your voice, Zimmy, I had to come out and say hello.”
“What the fuck is going on?” Eligor whispered to the rest of the group as we watched the scene unfold.
“I dunno,” Todd hissed, “but I don’t like this dude. Never trust somebody who can’t call you by your real name, Goldilocks.”
Eligor shot Todd an unamused glare, but it was lost on the imp. He was too focused on his bizzaro self to notice.
“Uh, Barlos?” I said as I cleared my throat. “My name is Jacob Ralston. I’m--”
“Ohhhhhh, I know you!” The little imp grinned as he turned and put his hands on his hips proudly. “You’re the son of the milf Lucifer was always talking about. Lucifer likes to come by here every now and again to whisper sweet nothings into my sarcophagus, and he made sure he spared no detail when talking about porking your sexy mamma. Woah mamma!”
“Told you!” Todd exclaimed smugly.
“Right,” I grumbled as I tried to get the conversation away from my mother. “Look, I don’t have time to give you the whole spiel right now, but I’m currently the King of the Fourth Circle, and my allies and I are trying to take over Hell and eventually overthrow Lucifer.”
“What?” The imp’s tone changed as the smile disappeared from his face. “You--You want to kill my master?”
“He locked you in a fucking tomb for all eternity!” I argued. “He has no loyalty to you, why should you have any to him?”
“Because he’s the fucking Prince of Darkness, my man!” Barlos growled. “There is nobody in the universe I’d rather serve than Lucifer.”
“So, I take that as a ‘no?’” I questioned as I wrapped my hand around the hilt of the Unhallowed Sword. “You won’t join us?”
“Is it unwise to wear two condoms?” the imp shot back sarcastically.
“Uh … yes?”
“What? No!” Barlos scoffed and summoned red Hellfire into his hands. “You always gotta double-wrap your package, especially when you’re banging demon chicks!”
The tiny demon tossed out a handful of red fireballs, but I quickly dispelled them with a wave of my glowing purple hand.
This guy was severely underpowered, and I almost felt bad we were going to have to curbstomp him into the ground.
Almost.
Eclipse, Liby, Sia, and Eligor all unleashed their attacks on the fleeing green imp, but he was running at nearly ten times the speed of a normal demon.
Barlos dodged all the attacks acrobatically, flipped up into the air, and took a bite at Eligor.
Luckily, the Knight of Hell was able to get her sword up in time, and all Barlos caught was a mouthful of her blade.
The tiny green demon made a growling sound like a rabid dog as Eligor tried to shake him loose, but he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Get. Off. My. Sword!” the blonde woman roared.
Suddenly, the imp began to move his arms up and down in a quick motion, and he rapidly unleashed fireballs into Eligor as he did so. The attack caused the knight to release her weapon and fly back into the trunk of the fallen Lacerating Lamph.
“Hyakuretsukyaku!” the imp cackled mischievously, and then he began to dart around with the speed of a cat at three in the morning.
“I’ll tend to her!” Sia called out as she ran over to the fallen knight.
“I’m done playing games, bro,” Todd growled. “This fucking casual doesn’t even realize the Hyakuretsukyaku is a kick, not a fucking fireball attack!”
Todd took to the sky as Eclipse, Liby, and I continued our assault on the blur of green in front of us.
Finally, I got an idea. If I couldn’t hit the bastard, I could at least slow him down.
I summoned red Hellfire into one hand and yellow into the other. Then I clapped them together, combined the flames, and launched a series of shuriken into the ground in front of his trajectory.
“Missed me, bitch boy!” Barlos cackled.
No, I didn’t.
I snapped my fingers, and the shuriken began to explode in rapid succession.
The blast caught Barlos off guard, and he was tossed up into the air like a ragdoll. As he tumbled through the sky, Libidine hit him with a handful of glowing yellow darts and sent him careening backwards. The imp’s body tumbled across the grassy landscape violently until it finally came to a halt against one of the empty tombs.
Just then, I heard a rumbling in the sky, and we all looked up to see Todd’s small frame charging straight downward with red Hellfire all around his extended right arm. There was a small pocket of fire all around the front of the imp’s body, almost as if he were a space shuttle re-entering the atmosphere.
“Falcon … Paaaunnnchhhh!” the imp cried out as he landed directly on top of Barlos’ position.
There was a giant flash as a shockwave of red flames shot out in every direction. I tossed up a shield of purple in front to block the wave just before it struck, and I was nearly tossed to the ground from the impact.
The tombs in the immediate vicinity of Todd’s attack cracked, and then the red-skinned imp flipped up into the sky and darted back over beside us.
“I think I got him,” he panted as he landed. “There was enough juice behind that punch to take out a fucking tank, bro.”
“The only thing that could take out is your limp dick, you unkempt, sorry excuse for an imp,” Barlos’ voice exclaimed from the wreckage.
The demon reappeared on top of a nearby tomb and threw his arms out in challenge.
“Excuse me?” Todd shot back. “Oh, no … you might be fast and nearly invincible, bro, but nobody out-jokes the Toddster.”
“Is that a challenge?” Barlos mocked. “Because I’m about to bend you over and rip you a new asshole. No homo.”
“I say ‘no homo,’ you fucking poser!” Todd growled, and then he hovered over to where Barlos was standing. “Jakey, I need you to be my Wilmer Valderrama, bro.”
“Your what?” I asked with absolutely no idea what was going on.
“Ya know, Fez?” Todd retorted as he did a few over the top stretches to get himself nice and loose. “He did that ‘Yo Mama’ show forever ago, and that’s what I need you to do now.”
“That’s not fair, my man,” Barlos shot back, “your buddy over there isn’t a neutral party. Ziminiar, get your sheepy-ass over here! You can be our judge.”
“Is this--Is this really how it’s gonna go down?” Eclipse asked curiously.
“Apparently,” I sighed.
Todd and Barlos were about to have a fucking joke-off.
“Millenia of scholarly research, for this?” Ziminiar grumbled as he hobbled over beside the two imps.
“Aright, it’s a simple game, Lamb Chop,” Todd explained. “We both take turns roasting each other until you decide who had the sickest disses. Loser has to lock themselves in the tomb.”
“I’ll do you one even better,” Barlos laughed, “loser has to commit seppuku.”
“You’re on, bro!” my friend growled as he cracked his knuckles in anticipation. “I’ll be generous. You go first.”
“Fine … ” Barlos shook his head and tried to get into the right frame of mind. “Yo mama so fat, she jumped up in the air and got stuck!”
“Wow,” Todd shot back. “The last time I heard that one, I fell off my fucking dinosaur.”
“Don’t talk about your mama like that,” Barlos snorted. “What species is she? A triceratops? Because I heard she can take three dicks in her mouth at the same time.”
“That’s not even humanly possible, bro,” Todd scoffed. “At least she keeps it classy, unlike your madre. Did you know she can suck a basketball through a straw? Because I do.”
“Pfffft,” Barlos said with a wave of his hand, “please. Your dick is so small, it probably only tickled her incisors.”
“Alright, I’ll give you that one,” Todd admitted, “but my schlong-a-dong’s bigger than anythin
g you’ve ever seen. Probably bigger than anything you’ve ever taken, too. Tell me, does the skin of your asshole drag on the ground when you walk? Or does it just kinda crinkle up like a scrunchie?”
“You tell me,” Barlos shrugged, “you’re apparently the expert at identifying men’s assholes.”
“I mean, I’m kinda staring at one right now,” my friend reminded him. “Like seriously, if you were any more of an asshole, I think you’d be inside yourself right now.”
“Is that all you’ve got?” Barlos crossed his arms over his chest. “Gay jokes? What fucking year is it?”
“According to the Chinese calendar, it’s the year of the Cock,” Todd retorted, “aka the thing you’re supposed to have instead of the droopy, sad-looking fish diffuser you’ve got down there.”
Ziminiar shook his head, let out a large sigh, and raised his hand above his body.
“I declare the winner is--”
“My man,” Barlos interrupted, “you look like Shaggy fucked Scooby and then tried to drown the baby in the toilet.”
“Ha!” Todd snorted. “Tough talk, coming from a guy who looks the way a colonoscopy smells.”
“Again with the asshole talk!” Barlos shook his head. “You need to get more original, or your guts are gonna be spilled out on this ground, my man.”
“Oh, you want original?” Todd warned. “How about this--Lucifer never loved you. He only kept you around because he wanted to make fun of you, and he got some sort of sick pleasure from watching you be abused.”
“Ouch,” I hissed, and the succubi beside me nodded in sympathy.
“W-Wait … ” Barlos protested as his face fell. “That’s not funny.”
“I think it’s fucking hilarious, bro,” Todd shrugged, “cause you see that dude over there? The one with the brown hair, surrounded by steaming-hot ladies? He keeps me around because we’re bros. Fuck, he even made me a Demon Lord. A Demon Lord, bro! Meanwhile, your ‘master’ is making you torture yourself for hundreds of thousands of years just to get a promotion? And he probably didn’t even mean it. He just wanted to get rid of you, Barfos.”