Burn, Beautiful Soul

by William J. Donahue

  “I think I’ll take your head,” Lubos says to Basil. “Bow.”

  In a blur, a massive object falls from above.

  The tentacle mashes the troglodyte into the wall. Basil turns onto his back to see Lucifer dragging the kraken by one of its remaining tentacles—no more than five, whereas its body once sprouted a dozen or more. Lucifer tightens his grip and whirls the kraken over his head, three full rotations, and then hurls the beast toward the ceiling. It smacks into the rock and stays there for just a moment, either because of its suction-cup tentacles or because of the tackiness of the blood leaking from its many wounds. Slowly, the cephalopod peels away from the ceiling and free falls, smacking into the center of the lake of blood. Waves drench the shoreline. The kraken lingers on the surface for a moment and then sinks into the depths.

  Having witnessed his precious kraken defeated, Lubos stands in silent awe, so he seems surprised when the tip of a spear pokes through his belly. He drops to his knees, and behind him stands an unsteady Kamala, holding the other end of the spear. Basil bolts forward and grabs Lubos by the throat.

  “Your false reign has met its end,” he says.

  He places his right hoof on the spear tip and kicks down. The blade tears Lubos, from the belly down through the pelvis. Intestines snake onto the floor. The breath leaves Lubos’s lungs. Basil then takes Lubos by each hoof and holds him upside down. He pulls one hoof east, the other west. The flesh along the big white scar rips, a zipper coming undone, until Lubos once again finds his body halved.

  His voice strained, Lubos uses his remaining strength to curse Basil’s name.

  “I promise you a long and painful demise,” Lubos utters.

  “Some day my heart will beat its last hollow thump,” Basil says, “but not at the hands of a callow fool like you.”

  Basil takes Lubos’s head between both hands. He squeezes until bone cracks and the skull collapses. The body goes limp, and dark liquid leaks from the sores of Lubos’s eye sockets, now eyeless. His palms slick with blood, Basil drops the body to the floor, where it settles in a pile, like an obscene rug.

  Basil feels the floor shake beneath him, and he turns to see Lucifer clopping toward the nursery, the Hardened Womb, where Our Fiery Home’s youngest demons and their mothers reside. Lucifer bends toward the opening and reaches inside, seeking easy victims.

  “No more,” Basil says.

  He picks up the spear, takes careful aim and lets the weapon sail. The spear arcs across the cavern and pierces the tender flesh of Lucifer’s wrist. The monster yelps and backs away from the nursery. As he studies the new wound, he seems fascinated that something so primitive might have caused such pain. Lucifer brings his wrist to his mouth and yanks the spear free with his teeth, spits it toward the floor. The spear snaps against the red rock.

  Lucifer turns toward Basil.

  “Reclaim,” Lucifer says.

  “You have no claim here,” Basil says.

  Kamala steps behind him. Others fall in line behind her.

  “Then I shall start over,” Lucifer wheezes.

  Lucifer brings his massive claws together and whispers a Locuri grammar Basil does not recognize. Vapors of sapphire rise from cracks in the cavern floor and form an electric-blue orb between Lucifer’s palms.

  Basil feels his skin cool as the temperature drops. He does not know the grammar Lucifer speaks, but he can guess at its destructive power—energy pulled from Earth’s core, to be used as a nuclear blast to wipe the slate clean. He must act. He sees an ax nestled in the rigid hand of a fallen demon.

  In one fluid motion, he dives for the ax, wrenches it free from the dead demon’s grip and hurls the weapon toward Lucifer. The blade strikes the glowing blue orb and turns to metallic dust.

  Basil exhales in defeat. He takes a step toward Lucifer.

  “This kingdom is ours,” he tells the Eternal One.

  Lucifer cackles as the orb gains strength, his torso glowing blue. His expression changes abruptly and, for a second, Basil thinks he sees fear in the Eternal One’s eyes. A thick black cord snakes around Lucifer’s throat and pulls him backward, taking him off his hooves. The glowing blue orb falls to the ground, and its energy disperses, harmlessly, like spilled water.

  Lucifer glides backward across the cavern floor, the revitalized kraken dragging him toward the Pool of Infinite Perdition. He fails to grip the tentacle’s slimy flesh. Instead, he digs his claws into the hardened earth. There the twin behemoths remain, locked in a standstill—Cthaal at the edge of the lake of blood, its hard-as-steel tentacle straining to hold on to its prize, and Lucifer, strangled and wheezing, the muscles in his arms taut, claws fastened to the rock.

  Basil approaches the Eternal One. He eyes the kraken’s tentacle, the barbs biting deep into the flesh of Lucifer’s throat. An uncommon prickling stirs in Basil’s belly. Despite the threat Lucifer poses, despite the horrors this ancient beast has committed, Basil pities the monstrous brute—a god, beaten and deposed, then revived and set free. He feels a sense of profound debt, of thankfulness, for what the Eternal One created far below the surface, and for his role in unseating Lubos.

  He wonders, for a moment, if Lucifer can have a place here.

  The tentacle tightens around Lucifer’s throat.

  “You have my gratitude,” Basil says.

  He eyes a young demon standing near Kamala, a too-heavy ax clutched in its hands. Basil extends his arm and shows an open palm. He utters one word: “Please.” The young demon scurries to Basil’s side and hands over the ax. Basil nods to the young demon and offers an appreciative smile.

  Basil tests the ax’s weight as he eyes his target. He then hoists the weapon above his head and brings down the blade. The blade bites through two of the three fingers on Lucifer’s left hand on its way to striking rock. Lucifer’s eyes bulge. The marred hand loses its hold, and Cthaal does the rest.

  Lucifer slides across the pane of rock toward the shoreline, where the rest of Cthaal’s hungry tentacles coil around Lucifer’s torso, arms and throat. One tentacle blankets his eyes, its barbs blinding him, and pulls him into the sludge of the shallows.

  A moment later the two titans disappear beneath the surface.

  The lake roils and ripples. Then, after rising bubbles pop in the humid air, the surface goes still.

  Basil shifts his weight, trying to excise the adrenaline from his body. His right hoof nudges one of Lucifer’s detached fingers. Best to leave no trace, he knows, so no parts of Lucifer can take root and grow into something else. He bends to collect both fingers, each nearly as long as his forearm, and tosses them into the Pool of Infinite Perdition. One of the fingers twitches as it sinks. The rational part of Basil knows it’s merely the nerves in their death throes, but the rest of him believes every molecule in Lucifer’s body will keep fighting, even though the fight has reached its undeniable end.

  Basil feels a soft hand on his right shoulder.

  “Welcome home, Basil.”

  He turns to see Kamala.

  A ragtag army surrounds him, the demons warming to their leader, newly reborn.

  He embraces Kamala and rests his chin atop her scabbed head.

  “I beg your forgiveness,” he tells her.

  “I’ve missed you, believe it or not,” she says. “I’m glad for your return.”

  “I will be better. We will be better, from now until eternity.”

  “The walls still stand,” she adds. “Everything else we can rebuild.”

  They have nothing else to say, so they survey the carnage in silence, the quiet broken only by the faint crackle and hiss of so many bodies smoldering in the fire.

  Chapter 37

  Redemption in the Dreamless Sleep

  The modest horde gathers at the access to Basil’s chamber. The young demons fail in their attempts at stealth, as Basil, supine on the slab, lifts an eyelid. He could stop this nonsense before it goes any further, but he pretends the ruckus has not disturbed his sleep. He will let the chil
dren have their fun.

  “Poor old King Basil, sleepless on his bed,” they sing. “Toothless King Basil, curse his ugly head.”

  Basil roars as he chases the juvenile demons from the chamber lobby. They halt their teasing and scurry off, laughing from the safety of the shadows, singing the same tune as they scatter.

  He’s happy to hear the laughter of youth, to see the most vulnerable of his people playing in the open. The constant threat of death in Our Fiery Home has vanished.

  Basil the Toothless, he considers. When his life reaches its end and his people choose a sobriquet to commemorate their fallen king, Basil the Toothless would be just fine with him.

  He stretches the sleep from his body. He scans the walls, scrawled with lines from newly borne poems. He settles on a short poem he once loved, taking in every word of every line.

  The villains come to plunder

  The innocent come to bruise and bleed

  The beautiful souls come to be set free

  The words somehow feel different on his tongue. Part of him wishes to paint over these words and replace them with new ones, but they serve a purpose: to remind him of a once vile place he abandoned and then remade. He decides to keep the lines in place, though he adds three more beneath the last.

  Should their hearts find calm

  Amid ash and war and the crack of broken bone

  Let them find redemption in the warmth of the fire

  There’s no way for him to know how much time has passed since his return—six months, a year, perhaps longer. Regardless of the number of Earth days that have ticked by, a new era has dawned in Our Fiery Home. With Lubos gone, and with Kamala’s vision of peace having taken hold, the underworld remains tranquil, more or less. He can recall no killings in recent memory—none pointless or undeserved, anyway.

  Almost as if to spark memories of his tribulations, Boothe appears at Basil’s hooves. The imp looks tired, its skin scuffed and scabbed. Boothe bears a package of human origin: something rectangular wrapped in brown paper, the edges seared.

  “Bring it here, little one,” Basil says.

  Boothe skirts the perimeter, hesitant to part with its prize.

  “What have you brought me?”

  Boothe zigzags toward Basil and then holds up the package for Basil to take, but the imp won’t relinquish. Basil gives a firm tug and lifts the imp off the ground. He holds his open palm beneath the imp’s feet. The imp relaxes its grip and falls into Basil’s palm, then skitters off to find some other way to be useful. It crouches in the corner and defecates noisily, and then darts away like a frightened cat. Intestinal fumes linger.

  “Thank you kindly, little one,” Basil says to the empty chamber.

  Basil considers the new covenant he formed with Boothe, shortly after the demise of Lubos and the disappearance of Lucifer: to serve as Basil’s link between worlds, above and below. For Boothe’s first mission, the imp would return to the surface with a note of thanks etched into a slab, to be delivered to his friend, Herbert Teak. Although Boothe had been gone for what seemed an age, the resourceful imp succeeded in its quest.

  Basil drags a talon across the corner of the package’s brown paper and gingerly peels back the lacerated edge. He finds a cherry-wood plaque beneath, so he abandons any restraint. Tatters soon litter the floor of his chamber. The plaque bears a logo for something called the Midwest Advertising Impact Association. Five uneven lines of copy beneath the logo read: “‘Devil Smoke’ by Teak Demon Communications, Chicago, winner of the 1998 Gold Award for Most Impactful Print Campaign – Consumer.”

  A postcard flutters to the floor. As Basil bends to retrieve the card, he recognizes Herbert’s familiar scrawl. Herbert’s note explains his move to Chicago, where he founded his own advertising and public-relations agency, taking with him a handful of paying clients poached from the now-defunct Savage Communications. He thanks Basil for his work on Devil Smoke—and, again, for saving his hide more than once. He says he hopes to see his old friend again someday, jokes about how difficult it is to find a good copywriter. And, he writes on the last line, he’s seeing someone.

  The note does not mention Herbert’s ailing father or Melody K. Mulroney, Esquire.

  The sound of hooves against loose rock pulls Basil away. He looks up to see Kamala lurking in the doorway.

  “What do you have there?” she asks.

  Instinct compels him to conceal the plaque, which he holds behind his back.

  “Doesn’t anyone knock?” he says. “No one knocks.”

  “Perhaps if you had a suitable door,” she replies. “Listen: The exploration team is just about ready to set off. I thought you’d like to come along, at least for part of the way.”

  “I’m sure you have everything under control, my dear,” he tells her. “It’s your vision, after all—‘Expand out and not up,’ you said. Our people should see you out front. Besides, I have work of my own to do here.”

  Everything must be written down—the history of Our Fiery Home, as he sees it, as much as he can remember, or at least as much as he can piece together. The prohibition on the past has reached its end. With the deaths of the Elders so much of Our Fiery Home’s history has been lost, so he considers it his burden to explain all that has happened, from the kingdom’s beginnings, when Lucifer carved a path toward Earth’s core, to the triumphs and tragedies of each of the seven successors, to Lucifer’s return and supposed demise in the bloody depths of the Pool of Infinite Perdition. Basil will line his walls with these stories, among others, for the enlightenment, horror and entertainment of his people—his peers.

  “I shall return only when I have suitable news to share,” Kamala says. “You’ll manage without me?”

  “Of course. Be careful.”

  She smiles and backs away from the entrance, leaving him alone in his chamber.

  Basil waits a moment, anticipating further interruption. When none comes, he returns his attention to the plaque—the award that he and Herbert earned, or, better put, the award Herbert earned with a little help from Basil’s pen. He admires the plaque’s glossy surface, how it catches the firelight. He steps toward the wall and places the award on an outcropping at eye level. He backs up a pace, then another, to study the shiny black face. He’s done it. He’s made his mark on the world.

  More importantly, his friend has found his way.

  A wave of sadness dulls Basil’s mood, so he tries to lighten his grief by envisioning Herbert sitting by a sunlit window, massive computer on his desk, the picture of a smiling couple framed on an unused sliver of space next to his telephone. Basil knows his time in Herbert’s life has concluded. Each will die without seeing the other’s face again, except in memory.

  Heaviness builds in the center of Basil’s barrel chest. A sigh parts his lips. To stem his loneliness, he beckons his newfound companion.

  “Harmony,” he calls.

  In reply, something stirs.

  The bipedal creature, seemingly feminine, emerges from the shadows. She stands before him, swaying. She does not utter a word, because she cannot.

  He has only himself to blame.

  Not long ago, he used a Locuri grammar to animate this creature—this golem—her body shaped from ash, the maggot of a dung beetle and a drop of his own blood. He did his best to make her resemble Melody Mulroney, and the golem does bear a slight resemblance in terms of body shape, but she’s poor company. All she does is shamble about and follow him around like a brainless puppy. She cannot disagree, cannot challenge him and certainly cannot inform his view of the world.

  Prior to his time on the surface, Harmony’s silence would have pleased him. Now, her shortcomings serve only to remind him of her flesh-and-blood better, Melody.

  He decides his memories of Melody are more than enough.

  “Come to me, Harmony,” he mutters. His voice cracks.

  She stumbles toward him in short, jerky steps. Her right foot trips over air, and she falls on her face. As she gets up, he se
es the damage from the impact of the fall, her nose flattened, absent. She feels no pain, he knows, but he cannot help but pity her. He takes her ashen chin between his thumb and index finger.

  “It’s time,” he tells her. “Thank you for your companionship.” He whispers the Locuri grammar for disintegration, and she collapses into a column of ash and slag.

  He pokes through the ash pile with the tip of his hoof, just to make sure. Rather than try to distract himself with remembrances of the things he has let go, he will focus on maintaining peace in Our Fiery Home, on promoting civilization and, per Kamala’s vision, on broadening his kingdom’s loose borders. He recalls the recent exchange with Kamala, who now shares his duties as ruler.

  “We can expand, not to the surface but beyond our walls,” she told him. “The promise of a wider kingdom is all around us, far beneath the crust. We can branch out, build down, toward the core. We can carve new tunnels and have more room to rove.”

  “Then let it be so,” he said in assent.

  Another decision: Every newborn demon shall receive a name—liberty as a birthright. Every demon will have the freedom to explore, to do as Basil once did, if he or she wishes. But their first priority is to fortify, to improve upon the world in which they belong. Any demons already on the surface can stay there, as additions to humankind’s ever-growing list of problems to solve.

  Although he knows he has seen the last of Melody, Herbert and Chester—his humans—he will permit his mind to return to them and the moments they shared. His spare minutes will pass foolishly, fondly, imagining how to import the wonders of wind and moving water and the feathery branches of willow trees, even though the realist in him knows he cannot recreate any of those miracles here, so far from the fertile crust. No, he can never go back. If he did, he would find a changed world, and changed people, so there would be no point in attempting to duplicate the experience. He can only abide, savor the small joys each moment brings.