by Shad N Freud
Carl looked Francois right in the eye as he pulled a single kernel of popcorn out of the bucket and popped it into his mouth, slowly chewing and relishing the taste as the Templar was castigated by a true master of ass-chewing. He could barely contain his glee, watching as the elf’s face slowly turned an unhealthy shade of white. St. Croix glared at Carl as he hung up with his superiors and then commanded his men to stand down. Carl casually put away his things and gave the Gendarmes the finger as he strode away, his crew following like ducklings being led to the water. A limousine waiting at the gate welcomed them, and they quickly filed their way into the luxurious car.
Two hours later, they found themselves standing in a train station, waiting for the train that would take them into the mountains and their next destination. After staring at a fire for three hours, Jin had pinpointed the locations of the remaining coins by tapping into the divine conduit all oracles shared. As was normally the case, the gnome was wearing dark glasses afterwards, the Sight having temporarily blinded him. He was sitting on Zeke’s shoulders as the lizard fought the urge to assault yet another Parisian that had the temerity to bump into him without so much as a sorry. In fact, many of the elves of Paris tended to look down on everyone that came to visit and didn’t get out of their way.
At least, that was the stereotype, one that the Homo sylvanae of Paris did little to correct.
Zeke was distracted, however, when his nose twitched right around the same time Carl and Cenere hissed, ripping their gloves off to look at their brands. Dark red, and lots of it, converging on their location from every direction, as well as one particularly powerful signal that set Cenere’s teeth to grinding from the uncomfortable burning sensation in his left hand. Carl snarled as he looked in the direction of the largest source of abyssal energies. At the other end of the train station, panicked passengers fled from the entrance, trying to evade the vile demons that were walking in lockstep, a small horde of zombies leading them with familiar red arm bands, holding rifles.
“Oh,” Cenere growled as he grabbed a handful of throwing knives from his belt.
“Hell,” Carl ground out as he drew his baton and pistol.
“No!” the rest chimed in as Zeke pulled the gnome from his shoulder and handed him off to a fleeing civilian trying to get his family to safety. The Oracle cursed loudly in Japanese, in such a way that Sachi gasped; vulgarity was something she’d grown used to, hanging out with Camilla, but that little gnome had an impressively filthy mouth. The crowds dispersed rapidly as Carl lit up a smoke, then took aim at the lead Nazi’s ocular sinuses.
A bare moment later, the doorway leading into the train station exploded inwards and a behemoth made of the screaming souls of thousands of demons glowered at the group. It was followed by the ugliest pile of muscles Carl had ever seen. Legion took a step forward with Marduk grunting in glee behind him as the tasty mortals all around them.
Carl’s eyebrows went on holiday in the glossy black fields of his hairline as his eyes widened in surprise. He shot a zombie negligently. “Bloody Hell, those must be Demon Princes! Bollocks! We’re a bit out-gunned, mates!”
“No shit, old man. Got anything else to tell us in your capacity as Obvious Sage?”
“Yeah, get buggered,” Carl sniped back as he took a step back from the gnashing hillock of demonic souls. “That giant bastard is going to be trouble.”
“You have no idea,” Carl heard in the familiar soprano of his least favorite demon. He groaned and turned towards the women’s restroom where Ink strode out with dozens of shades, all chittering in an annoying fashion. Carl looked back at his people, then turned back to the task at hand.
It was going to be a long day.
∞∞∞
In the deepest bowels of Hell, Lucifer glared at the Helevision screen in front of him, the room growing colder as Lucifer absorbed all the heat in the room. He picked up his princess phone and called the mortal realm on the rotary dial. “What isss thy bidding, my massster?”
“You went with Empire? Really? Never mind that. Get to Paris, at the train station with our operatives. The Cathedral of Notre Dame is already on alert and will have men on scene in minutes, but they won’t get there in time. We can’t afford to lose those people, since over the last week and a half someone’s been dropping anti-scry fields strong enough to block my sight before offing gestalts left and right. Also, an old…friend of yours is at the station. Feel free to dig that thorn out of Our side.”
“We shaaaaaall depart at onccce. Alssssso, Graahl wishesss to join ussss. I’ll be taking him along. He could ussse the exercissse.”
“Good idea. Do try not to get him killed, would you? He’d wreak havoc down here as soon as he arrived. Also, and I really can’t stress this enough, do not let the cat out of the bag, or you’ll be the figurehead on a garbage scow cleaning up the river Styx with your teeth.”
∞∞∞
“Right.” Carl paused for a moment to light a fresh cigarette after he and his squad pushed back another group of the undead. “I’m wondering what they’re bloody waiting for. After all, they’ve got us surrounded. Poor bastards.”
“Probably waiting for Notre Dame’s clergy to stop darning socks and get their dainty knife-eared asses down here to fight,” Cenere ground out as he slammed his shoulder into a support pillar, popping it back into the socket and nearly screaming. He then rested his hand on his newly relocated shoulder and the searing green flames of Hellfire went to work, inflicting horrific pain as it healed his injuries.
Zeke was using his sword to hold himself up and Camilla was taking pot shots at the more distant demons while Sachi set up the M240 that Carl had pulled out of his coat and handed over to her. Jin was concentrating on maintaining the barrier that the undead Reich were slamming into. He’d come running after his eyes had finally cleared and marked his re-entry to the fight with a couple of well-placed fireballs before erecting the barrier to give his comrades some breathing room.
The shades refused to touch the barrier and shied away from it, hiding in the pockets of shadow nearby, their purple eyes flashing furiously as they looked for a weakness to exploit. Ink was watching from forty feet away, behind a wall of meat shields, cackling with malign glee as she watched the zombies wallop the barrier, their cracked and rotting skin smoking on contact as it singed their desiccated, fetid flesh. Suddenly, the door to the men’s bathroom behind Legion became lined in Infernal runes and the door burned away, revealing a portal to the Pope’s palace. Before any demons had the chance to capitalize on this fact, however, the spinning barrel of a 25mm minigun poked out of the portal and sprayed a wall of Infernal Iron slugs into the assembled mass of eldritch monstrosities, created a light fog of various colors of blood and viscera as eight-foot-tall pit lords stepped forth in a semi-circular formation. They opened fire, spraying hate in the general direction of their enemies. Holes opened up in Legion’s ‘body’ as the bullets passed through harmlessly.
Marduk, on the other hand, ducked behind a column and watched as the burning iron slugs tore up the concrete, the undead, and demons of every persuasion. Even the shades could not escape unmolested. Finally, two last figures emerged from the portal. One towered over even the pit lords, drawing a greatsword inscribed with runes and sigils that were designed to severely curtail a demon’s life expectancy, the black iron of his armor lighting up red. The power of that armor became quite clear as he backhanded a demon negligently and it burst into black flames, disintegrating before Marduk’s very eyes rather than simply dying or being disrupted.
His eyes widened as he realized who the iron-clad being was: Baal, Archduke of Purgatory, his Ducal ring gleaming in the glare of the emergency lighting. His companion leaped over the heads of the pit lords with fire in his eyes as he barreled into the nearest knot of demons, rending, tearing, and devouring everything unfriendly that he could get his teeth around.
Ink was glaring at the new arrivals who had already made a noticeable dent in their forces. She
snarled at Marduk, “Any time now, you lazy swine!”
“Haste makes waste, my dear. Legion, old friend, would you care to do the honors?” Marduk smiled sadistically as the silence dropped and unearthly screams filled the air. The demonic souls slid off of Legion as they sank into the floor, through the cracks and into the catacombs of Paris, each soul racing for the ossuaries down below. The screaming faded as the enormous golem made from the bones of thousands of demons spread his flaming wings, opened his massive dagger-tooth filled maw, and roared like a Balrog going to war. He drew a broken sword that sprouted a purple blade arced with actinic light and flicked his other wrist to summon a whip of darkness that radiated darklight. His cold, empty eye sockets burned with heatless fire as he met his challenger, the bipedal honey badger that lunged at him with his mouth wide open, and his claws spread wide.
“I dinnae ken who the Hell they are,” Camilla smirked as she fed a fresh magazine of high explosive rounds into her 25 mm launcher before popping off a few rounds, “bit I’m sure glad tae see ‘em!”
“You and me both, sugar lips. You and me both.” Cenere smiled rakishly as he drew his new whip from his belt and ignited it. Jeeves had found the braided mithril wire whip while the airship was repaired and they had time to kill, floating in the Atlantic. Jin used a newly translated tome a la Greggory to enchant the whip in no time at all, infusing it with the ability to channel Hellfire. So now the whip was singing the song of its people as it seared, lashed, and severed limbs from the tide of vicious demons and ravenous Nazis.
On his backswing, Cenere turned and was struck by a flying badger-kin, bowling them both over and knocking Cenere silly for a brief moment. Stars danced before his eyes in a decidedly festive pattern to distract booger-eating stupidity long enough for common sense to entice him into a cage, self-preservation and pragmatism working on getting his motor functions back under control. Graahl stood, shook off the cotton wool in his head, then snarled as he leaped back into the melee, demons and undead alike shrieking as he bit off body parts and ate them on his way to the right big bastard in the center of the room.
Cenere tried to shake off his concussion as Carl locked his baton against Marduk’s blade and was trying his damnedest to not die while fighting against the Demon Prince. Ink saw her opportunity and lunged for Carl’s unprotected flank, only to pause momentarily as she felt a strange sensation in her midsection. She looked down and saw a black line slowly form across her belly as acrid black smoke poured out of her mouth, a gentle hiss in her ear.
“That wasss for my wife, you bitch.” She turned to face her killer, trying to see under his hood. Her face contorted in rage as she tried to claw at him, but she was utterly consumed by black flames and crumbled to dust. Everyone paused as Mistress Ink turned to a fine black silt, her entire being erased from existence. Baal brought his greatsword up into a mid-guard position. “Thisss isss a sssoul burning blade. Who elssse wantsss a tassste?”
Marduk looked up at Legion and they nodded to each other before they each took a step back. The floor shook and the trains were knocked over by the cracking, broken earth below their feet. Sections of the floor caved in while grasping skeletal hands thrust their way upward as several million partially formed skeletons from the ossuaries beneath Paris burst forth from their collective tomb. The demonic souls screamed as they flew to their master, their job completed, and a rear guard erected to allow the two to escape. Marduk and Legion both disappeared in a flash of purple light, leaving the remaining demons to fend for themselves, only to be cut down by the concentrated fire of the pit lords and Sachi’s machinegun.
Carl’s face contorted into one of shock, rage, and exhaustion. He sighed, pulled out his pack of Blackjacks, and lit one up before reaching into his coat and pulling out a bandolier of disruption grenades. He began pulling pins as he walked to the edge of the sink hole and let the spoon fly from the first one, dropping it down the hole. The rapidly expanding burst of bright, pure white light banished the darklight, and thus restored the reanimated bones to their natural, dead state.
An iron gauntleted hand snatched the cigarette out of his mouth and snuffed it.
Carl’s eyes started to turn red as he glared up at the Archduke. “Your grace, I appreciate the assist. I certainly want you to know how grateful me and me mates are. But touch my fags again, and I’ll take that hand of yours to display on my mantle.”
The Archduke’s hissing laugh at the casual threat disturbed Carl a bit. Normally, most folks would at least give pause when he threatened violence, but the Archduke treated it like a joke. “You really ssshould quit smoking…or you’ll die with one in your mouth.”
“Your interest in my health is touching, your grace, but kindly fuck off,” Carl snarled as he lit a new smoke, glaring up at the archdevil as he blew a smoke ring up at the robed figure. The Archduke sighed and shook his head before motioning his men to follow, the intra-planar portal opening to the Pope’s palace in the Vatican and the lot of them disappearing from sight as the door to the men’s room reappeared.
“He wasn’t wrong, you know.” A voice from behind him caused Carl to roll his eyes as he turned to face a scarred elf with red hair, wearing the white and blue vestments of an Archon of the OWF, much higher ranked than the Templariate under his command, with eyes the same shade of blue as Carl’s wife and daughter. His brother in law shook his head as he looked down into the new fissure where the number nine platform had been, the fissure stretching roughly three quarters of the way to the number ten platform. He then looked up and nodded at his men who efficiently set up rappelling lines and descended into the gloom. “But then, you tend not to care what others think, do you Carl? You just charge right in and do whatever you damned well please. Like marry someone’s sister. Or cheat to get a position and beat out the far more qualified applicant. Or, decide to apprentice under a Grand Inquisitor and miss the birth of your first born. How is Sophie, by the by?”
Before Carl even had a chance to reply, there was a loud crack and the Archon’s blue sash fell off his person, the top neatly severed without harming the rest of his uniform. Cenere smirked as he coiled his whip back up and hung it on his belt.
Alexander de la Plage looked at his shoulder then over it to look Cenere squarely in the eye. “I accept, pup. Prepare yourself.”
“Name the place and time, you stupid frog-” Cenere managed to snark before finding himself suspended a foot off the ground, being held aloft by Carl who had seemingly teleported and lifted his protégé with a single hand.
“Apologize. Now.” Carl’s voice was rather insistent, a little fearful even, as he stared Cenere down. Cenere opened his mouth to protest but Carl closed his eyes and shook his head before he leaned in and whispered into Cenere’s ear, “That man is the third best duelist in the world. I’m number eight. I might be able to take him in a straight fight but you, lad, don’t stand a chance. Now, apologize.” He lowered Cenere back down to the ground.
“I apologize. You were insulting my mentor, and I felt it necessary to defend his honor.” Cenere said with his palms up and head bowed.
Alexandre spat on the floor at Cenere’s feet. “That’s what I think of your apology, little man. Your ‘mentor’ has no honor, so there was nothing for me to insult. He soiled my sister, saddled her with a half-breed he refuses to raise, and is acting just like his filthy traitor of a father. Obviously, his swine of a mother gave him his best genes, and that’s saying very little.”
In the blink of an eye, Alexandre had drawn his sword, blocked the baton strike that threatened to evict his brains from his head, and smirked at Carl as he glared right back at him, blue into deepening red. Carl could feel his tusks threatening to push his altered teeth out again as he stepped back and spat out his cigarette.
“Grand inquisitor of Greed and Sloth? Pah, how like a pig to rut around in the mud. Perhaps it’s for the best that you stay away. I’ve heard swine eat their young if they get hungry enough.”
“Enough
,” came the gentle voice of a woman from behind Cenere who reeled in shock from her sudden appearance. The veil covering the woman’s eyes was completely opaque and under her hood there was movement. Her slightly serpentine nose and fine scales denoted the need of the veil, as the woman was clearly a gorgon. “I refuse to believe that the two of you can act like such children while Paris is under siege by the undead. We need to work on your priorities, Templar la Plage.”
“Templar? Madame Hierophant, I-,”
“I don’t care what your reasoning is. Baiting your brother in law at a time like this? Keep it up, and you will no longer be an Archon. As it is, we shall have to talk about your rather… dated opinions about other people. There are more than just elves in Paris in case you’ve forgotten, la Plage, and I refuse to see you spreading bigotry.
“As for you,” Hierophant Katerina Galanos continued quietly, turning her head to look at Carl, “Grand Inquisitor Beaumont…I know that the attack was not your fault, and that you tried to contain the mayhem to this location. I also know that your people are on a vitally important mission, and please accept my apology for the reception you received upon entering France. But I cannot permit your petty arguments to muddy the waters. You and your people are hereby instructed to leave. We shall handle the remaining undead here, as it is a Parisian matter. I believe that the train on track twelve shall be able to accommodate you. Come along, La Plage. We have work to do.”
Hierophant Galanos turned on her heel and strode away calmly, the snakes that made up her hair writhing angrily under her veil, hissing quietly; the only outward sign of her considerable anger. Archon la Plage followed behind her at a respectable distance, glaring over his shoulder at his brother in law.
