by M.C. O'Neill
***
Deep inside the capstone of Royal Duck, Commander Mammon was pacing back and forth, not out of nerves, but out of an annoyance of his own. What a dreadful assignment in the first place, he moaned to himself, but to lose a battle was downright disgusting.
“I am a devil!” he announced in a calm purr to the nervous demons surrounding him at their alien consoles. “Not an entitled goetic, not some worthless thrall like the lot of you, but a full-fledged DEVIL!”
Said thrall stiffened in fear at his surprise explosion and continued to look busy before their interfaces. With a beefy fist he smashed a bone vial next to his command throne into powder. All morning long, ever since the Thuless’in forces had arrived, he had been screeching and boasting of his pedigree and accolades.
“I’m not even supposed to be here!” he grabbed at his golden, slick hair. Bald, blotted patches were forming with each tug and he had been at that violent habit for hours.
“I’m certainly not supposed to lose, but just look! We just lost our behemoth to…to mortals!” His scream seemed to shake the monumental structure from its bass tones alone. “How dare you idiots allow this to happen? ANSWER me!”
On one of the viewscreens, flights of elven combat limmers were inbound to engage with the demons. Mammon screamed again, but this bellow was high-pitched, like a child. “Look, fools! FLANK THEM-UH! Try something NEW for once! LEARN from all the mistakes your lowly kind LOVE to make!”
With a gnarled finger, capped with a golden spine, he thrust at the glowing blue triangles which represented the enemy. Dystemperus, the fallen cherub helming that console was petrified by Mammon’s grim proximity.
“See those little blue shapes?” he hissed into the demon’s pointed ear. “Those are the BAD guys! Direct our GOOD guys to hit them from the LEFT and RIGHT sides! Then, sabotage their stupid flying saucers with imps and you plebeians will be golden! Got it?”
“Yes, Commander Mammon!” Dystemperus barked with dutiful terror.
“GOOD! Hail Satan!” He smacked the chubby infernal about the side of his curly head. The little fiend’s eyes cocked for a second from the swift force of the blow.
“Remind me NEVER to play chess with Lucifer ever, EVER again!” he belted to no one in particular. Lucifer had punished his fellow devil for cheating against him during a game of imp chess. His sentence was to oversee the backwater Vrillian city. Mammon had refuted such accusations, but with him being the greed lord, Lucifer knew he was lying. Mammon also knew he himself did indeed cheat at that, but gold made him crazy; as did food and flesh and any other kind of material acquisition. When he saw a solid angle against his opponent, he couldn’t resist but to snatch it.
Tears of frustration welled in his golden eyes as he saw every glint of the red dots on the screens, which depicted his flights, disappear one by one against the elven limmers. His jaws were locked in an unbreakable gnash and his subordinates could feel the imminent explosion of rage about to re-erupt.
“Aw…we’re LOSING!” the devil shouted to the pointed roof of the capstone chamber. “By the Adversary, what is WRONG with you!”
Red was the only color he saw at that moment and he directed his crimson gloat at the back of Dystemperus’ head. What a bobbling fool, he growled deep in his mind as he saw the demon’s puffy hair wobble in the gloom of the chamber.
It was a perfect target, and an apt source of his rage. Somehow, or in some way, Dystemperus was culpable for their assured defeat. Ever closer, the blue symbols drew toward the Royal Duck and Mammon became even angrier.
When the greed lord clutched his pudgy neck from behind, Dystemperus didn’t know what had hit him. Every one of his systems had failed as his earthly form was being snuffed out from under Mammon’s incredible strength. Within seconds, the plush console chair was no longer occupied by a demon, but abysmal grue that stank of the Hells.
Around him, the attendant demons gasped in shock from the devil’s harsh actions. Fearing for their earthly existences, they stifled their terror in perfect unison and returned their attentions to their screens. Mammon rushed his massive frame to his control pedestal and paced again.
“This is a defeat I cannot bear,” he moaned, almost as if he had resigned himself to his fate. “Ark by ark, nation by nation, we have been losing these battles, and it’s quite apparent that this whole campaign is also lost.”
He raised a mighty, pointed claw. “I am better than that! I will not allow this ark to be breached and I will not allow our captives to be liberated! Lucifer will not have their souls, this is true, but neither will these foul mortals!”
Every demon in that capstone ceased their duties upon his declaration. In collected attention, they turned toward his showboating. His silence was only trumped by the glinting music of the consoles.
“We are all going to be destroyed either way this very day,” he paused with a dramatic pose. “Unlike the rest of you demons who fight almost as if on autopilot until there are none of you left, we are going to try something different.
“If Lucifer cannot have these elves body and soul, no one can,” the devil smirked with fatal anger. “What I’m describing is a dire tactic that involves us all!”
Gleaning the numbers of another console, he saw that his ark had appropriated the bodies of almost one million elves from the region. Deep down in the ark’s belly, they were suspended; comatose in thelemic bladders. Immersed in that filthy, black goop until Mammon would deliver them to the Nine.
“Seeing how we have a fair amount of the mortal beasts, I would safely say that their loss would be quite profound if we…”
Wide-eyed, his crew had begun to gape their mouths at the plan they knew was about to come from out of his lips. Again, for the hundredth time that day, the tension was assaulting their senses. How they all hated Mammon.
“…blew up the ark.” His self-pleased chuckle was insane, even to an infernal.
“I want it all!” he gloated. “I win all or I lose all. The former is obviously impossible with your inept lot, so, today we do the latter. You stupid blobs of snot.”
Cries from demonic maws surrounded the devil. He relished, without shame, their woe as he figured they had deserved it for their inability to adapt. Lucifer would be faced with the mixed emotions of loss and smug defeat from a scorched-earth victory. At least no one would win this battle as far as the mortals were concerned.
“It won’t even hurt…much,” he chortled. “Let’s be true infernals here and make a power move! Say goodbye to your flesh as you will be back home again in an instant. Back home in the Hells where you all belong!”
“Infecta!” the devil barked at the demoness helming a bristling logistics console. Her doe eyes were tearing without restraint or control. She didn’t know if it was worse to be destroyed or to be the focus of the greed lord’s deadly attention.
“Yes, Commander!” she chirped through a sob.
“Overload the Thelemic motor,’” the smile on his face was final and maniacal. “We should have sucked enough of a surplus of their mana by now to do that. Or are you incompetent too?”
“On your command,” she choked an affirmative to the suicidal order.
He couldn’t contain his wheezing laughter as his six dusky, crimson wings fluttered. “Group hug, you idiots!”
