by Stuart Slade
“Thank you, Prime Minister. The great advantage of a hereditary monarchy is that there are plenty of us spare should something happen to someone further up the line of succession.
“Anyway, where are my manners, how is your family?”
Chapter Thirty Five
Palace of Asmodeus, City of Dis. Hell
“Explain yourself.” Asmodeus’s voice was unforgiving.
The subject of his displeasure was cringing on the floor, trying to think of some good reasons why the situation had ever got to this point. The problem was that, while Kinathroses could think of some very good reasons indeed, speaking any of them would get him killed. Instantly.
“Sire, I was betrayed by my subordinates…”
“That goes with the territory. This is hell you know.” Asmodeus spoke in an almost friendly manner, giving Kinathroses some vague hope that he might survive this session. “Your subordinates are supposed to try and betray you. It is your duty to detect their treachery and deal with it. If you are so stupid and incompetent that you cannot do that simple thing, then you are obviously unfitted to hold the position that you presently occupy. Perhaps the subordinate who betrayed you might better be suited to your present responsibilities.”
Kinathroses’s hopes of survival took an immediate downturn. Even if he survived the interview with Asmodeus, he would be demoted to the lower ranks and left to serve one of those who had once served him. And his new lord would promptly have him assassinated to avoid any attempts to reverse the situation. Better to try a different approach. “Sire, it is the humans who are at the root of this trouble.”
“Ahh. Human magery.” Asmodeus was enjoying himself immensely. “You claim human magic is so powerful that your armies could not stand against it. Abigor claimed that you know. It cost him everything.”
May your talons rot thought Kinathroses. You have no idea what the humans are capable of. You come here, throwing your weight around without understanding anything of what has been happening. Well, you can learn the way we are learning.. “Sire, human magery is much over-rated. Oh, they have some special tricks that it true but they are of little significance compared with other factors.”
“What other factors?” Asmodeus was genuinely intrigued. This was a cut on the situation he hadn’t expected.
“Sire, it is not what the humans have to fight with, it is how they fight. Or rather how they do not fight. They do not seek out our armies to face them in combat. They hide in the rocks, the mud and the caves. They wait until they have a demon alone, or perhaps a small group, then they strike from concealment, killing without warning. Then they fade away again. With all the demons leaving to join the armies for the invasion of Earth, we have too few under arms down here to stop them. By the time the message gets back of the attack, the humans are long gone. Mostly. Sometimes, we send a rescue column out and the column itself is attacked. And again by the time we react, the humans have gone. We cannot get messages around quickly enough, there is too much space to cover.
“And then there are the mage-blasts. Nobody knows where or when the next one will be. Our demons can be on the walls, marching along a road, or resting in their outposts when a mage-blast wipes them out. No warning, no challenge to combat, just a mage blast from out of the mists and darkness. Those that survive are horribly wounded. That is the factor that we cannot fight Sire. How can we fight those who will not stand and fight.”
“Trap them so they have no choice but to fight.” Asmoedeus’s mind turned to the problems he had just heard. He had ten full legions coming down, 66,666 trained veteran demons. That would swing the force level problem decisively his way. The communications problem was one he hadn’t thought of, in his military experience, mostly limited to the formalized, choreographed skirmishes in Hell, commanding units had been no problem. The troops had always been in range of his voice or mind-masking power. It had never occurred to him that wouldn’t be the case here. But he did have enough troops to overcome that problem.
The picture of the rebellion suppression campaign started to form in his mind. He would start with a single main operational base on the edge of the 5th circle segment where the rebellion was concentrated. Then, he would start to spread across the segment, establishing each outpost within sight of another. If one was attacked, support would be immediate because other outposts would see what was happening. And, even better, they could relay mind-masked messages from one to the next, allowing the great rear base to be informed quickly.
Asmodeus mulled the concept over, It seemed to work but he could see one flaw. If he pushed out from one point, he would force the rebels back. That’s where Hell’s strange topography cut in. It was an odd fact about Hell that if one set out in a straight line, in any direction, one ended up in the same place one had started. Left, right, forward, backwards, up, down, it made no difference. Keep going long enough and one ended up where one had started. Heaven was the same. Unless one created a portal, there was no way out because there was nowhere to go out to. Thinking about that made Asmodeus’s head hurt. Still, there was a solution, start from two bases, one at each end of the segment of the 5th circle and close in on the middle. That way the rebels would be trapped between them and eventually, they’d have to fight in the open.
Throne Room, Palace of Satan, Dis, Hell
Count Belial watched Satan rage at Hell’s inability to immediately destroy the impertinent humans, his own mind boiling with thoughts of how he could exploit this unprecedented situation. It had been a scant five millennia since he had clawed his way back to a place at Satan's court, a singular feat among dukes who had fallen so far from their lord's favor. His presence here was still something of a joke; as yet he commanded but a single legion and his domain could muster only a meager tribute of human essence. Most of Hell's nobility thought of him as little more than the court jester, but a few understood the influence that the great mines and furnaces of Tartarus gave him.
Those were the dangerous ones. He had to go from beneath notice to beyond challenge in a single stroke, or he would inevitably lose his domain to one of the dukes. This could be the perfect opportunity, but the timing had to be exquisite. As Belial watched, Satan scooped up another unlucky minor demon and crushed it into paste, squeezing the creature's remains out of his clenched fist before whirling to seek another target. Too early and he would only draw Satan's wrath as the unfortunate ogre had. Too late and his proposal would be seen as a challenge to Satan's preferred course of action – dangerous even for once as favored as Abigor had been, probably fatal for one as lowly as him. Belial waited for the instant that Satan's terrible eyes turned from rage to cold calculation, then spoke.
"Your Eminence…"
Every eye was on him. Satan's gaze bored into him and he dropped groveling to his knees in the expected manner.
"Your Eminence, my demons can strike back at the humans immediately. At your command I will reward their insolence with fiery annihilation. Of course my lord recalls the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah."
There was a murmur of suppressed laughter around the room. Sodom and Gomorrah had been essentially party tricks. They had occurred at a time when Satan and Yahweh were engaged in an informal competition to visit the most creative 'punishments' on the lower planes. The humans had become so pathetic, so despairing at the demons presence that there was little scope for honorable warfare against them; they simply ran screaming or lined up and waited to be hewn down like crops. The demons were always ready to appreciate new forms of suffering and Belial's creative use of magic had been quite spectacular, not to mention entertaining enough to gain his return to the palace. However his suggestion that such tricks be considered a legitimate means of waging war was ridiculous. Surely their lord could not be seriously considering it?
In fact Satan was doing just that. It would take weeks, perhaps months, to prepare another attack on the scale of Abigor's, and much as he wanted to believe that this was simply due to the incompetence and treachery of his forme
r favorite, he knew this was not the case. He had Asmodeus away dealing with the rebellion down in the fifth circle and Yahweh was in the wings. There was another possibility that was on his mind as well, if one attack had failed he had to consider the possibility that a second would also fail. The humans had undoubtedly taken horrible losses, but Abigor was doubtless proclaiming that he would lead them to victory and instructing them how best to resist demonic powers. Combined with their strange and seemingly powerful magic, Satan had to agree with Abigor about one thing; he had to know what forces the humans could muster, what it would really take to crush them. That would take time, as would dealing with the chaos resulting from Abigor's fall.
Already Satan's informants reporting skirmishes between the forces of dukes trying to add chunks of Abigor's domain to their own. That situation was confused, sometimes it was hard to tell whether the demons who had been found brutally murdered or had just disappeared without a trace were the victims of that internecine skirmishing or had been the victims of the human rebellion. Satan was sure that the assassinations had been carried out on the direct orders of his dukes, testing each other's defenses, each preparing to take advantage of any opportunities the way Belial was. An interesting question, was the human rebellion actually the work of a Duke who had seen human magery as a new way of fighting a war? It didn’t really matter, with Asmodeus and his Army moving to crush the rebellion, the status quo would return soon enough, but in the mean time Satan had to be seen to take decisive action. Belial's suggestion was perfect; it was fast, if it worked it would kill enough humans to claim a major victory, and if it didn't Belial was completely expendable.
"You want to act like a human, cowering in your own realm, killing with magic instead of rending your enemies?" Satan spat contemptuously.
He's playing with me, Belial thought with some relief even as he continued to abase himself. Those words stated flatly would have spelled his doom. Phrased as a question, Satan was just forcing him to justify himself.
"Your Eminence, of course your glorious armies will grind the humans into dust, Abigor's failure will be of no consequence in the long run. But it will take time to muster fresh legions, the humans may falsely believe that their resistance has won them a respite. Please sire, let me erase that hope, command me to make them burn and suffer even as they await their final extinction."
Belial Kornakat raised his head and a silent understanding passed between him and Satan Mekratrig. He would get a chance. Success would mean elevation sufficient to ensure his survival in the court. Failure would result in a fate even worse than Abigor's.
"Very well. I see no reason to allow the apes the luxury of hope. You will choose two of their largest cities and destroy them utterly as you destroyed Sodom, as you destroyed Gomorrah."
Belial thrashed his tail and licked at Satan's talons, resembling for a moment a gigantic, monstrously disfigured dog. All for show of course; mentally he was weighing the risk of asking for more resources and looking weak against the risk of the attacks failing. He had heard that the humans had multiplied greatly since the time of Sodom, and this had to be a most spectacular defeat.
"Thank you your Eminence, we will begin at once, the suffering will be glorious… but sire… the bigger the coven, the more humans we can burn. If I could have more naga for the effort, our blow will be that much more crushing for the humans."
A fresh murmur passed around the throne room. Satan merely snorted. Belial's admission of weakness was pathetic. There was truth in his words though. With the grand portal to Earth already open, the naga would not be needed for the counter-strike, so the other dukes might complain but could definitely spare them. If his plan was successful, such reliance on others would prevent him gaining too much glory.
"Attend me. Each grand duke will send a party of portal-mages to Tartarus such that he deems fit to compensate for Belial's inadequacy."
Satan's gaze returned to Belial, who was writhing in fresh paroxysms of abasement. "You are right to bask in my generosity, Belial. I will allow you twelve days to destroy two great human cities. Fail me and I will have you baked alive in one of your own furnaces. Now leave us."
"Of course your Eminence! I will begin the preparations immediately!" Belial scrabbled to his feet and fairly sprinted from the throne room; meeting Satan's schedule would take a minor miracle.
DIMO(N) Headquarters, Crystal City, VA
Lugasharmanaska looked up at the moon and stars overhead, marveling at their beauty. She was relaxing on a long bed-like something that, like the roof garden she was in, was a left-over from the time this building had been a luxury hotel. The bar in one corner was closed but the furniture was still here. Not wood or stone but the curious dead material the humans called plastic. They used the plastic for almost everything it seemed. And there was an awful lot of everything, that was why Lugasharmanaska was thinking so hard.
The problem was quite simple, her original defection had placed her in a position where she could benefit no matter which side won the war. The more she had learned, the more she had seen, the more she had become convinced that the humans were not going to lose. They were wealthy beyond any demonic dream of avarice, they had machines to do their work for them and they had an unlimited number of those machines. And that was the problem because they used those same machines to do their killing. Lugasharmanaska shuddered slightly to herself. Humans were so good at killing, when they couldn’t find demons to kill, they practiced on each other.
It wasn’t just that they were good at killing, they were good at understanding as well. If they met something they didn’t understand, they didn’t write it off as “magic” or “magery”, they didn’t consider it to be “the will of something or other”. They set people to work studying it and those people would nibble away at the mystery until they had worked out what it was all about. Then they would hammer away at what they had learned some more until they not only understood the mystery but had worked out practical applications for it. Applications that were far more useful than the mystery itself.
In a flash of insight, Lugasharmanaska suddenly understood why Yahweh had abandoned this world. For millennia, humans hadn’t thought that way, they’d accepted what they had been told, treated “divine revelation” as something sacrosanct that it was death to dispute. Suddenly, that had changed, humans had stopped accepting what they were told and started asking questions. And, when they didn’t like the answers, they’d started arguing. They’d found their own answers and realized there was no place for “magic” and “magery” in the world they were learning about. There were only things they understood and things they didn’t understand – yet. Their plastic, their machines, their terrible efficiency at killing, all came from that same desire to understand what they didn’t understand – yet.
And that was why Hell and all its demons were going to lose this war. They accepted things the way they were, they didn’t ask questions about why. Things were what they were and that was it. Humans didn’t agree with that, things were there to be understood and used. They even had names for these arts. Understanding things was called “cyunse” and using things was called “enjunyrin”. Lugasharmanaska almost fell into the trap of believing they were new religions but she’d been saved from that error by a fluke.
She’d been in one of the buildings devoted to trying to understand Hell when she’d seen two men arguing in front of an audience. An old man, obviously of great importance and a younger man, probably his follower. They’d been arguing furiously, shouting at each other, waving their arms around and making marks on a great black board. Lugasharmanaska had expected to see the young man struck dead for his impudence, what Satan or Yahweh would do to a follower who argued with them in public defied even Lugasharmanaska’s devilish imagination. But the young man had made some triumphant marks on the board and the old man had looked at them for a minute or so then said, simply ‘he’s right you know”. And the room had burst out into applause and the old man had clapped
the younger one on the back and shaken his hand. That was when she had understood, when cyunse said something was so, that was only the case until somebody proved otherwise. Then the old truth was dropped and a new one put in its place until that too was disproved.
That was why humans would win this war. Whatever Satan and his armies did, humans would understand it, improve it and then use the improved thing against their enemy.
The question was, what should Lugasharmanaska do now? She’d already modified her original plan quite drastically, her intent had been to tell the humans as little as possible and distort what she did say to them in ways that would benefit her. She’d nearly been caught, had only escaped by pure luck. Humans had taken what she had told them and used their cyunse on it. They’d proved that some of the things she’d told them contradicted others. She’d pretended ignorance, said that was the way she’d understood it and acted bewildered. And she’d made a vow to be much more careful for she knew her survival depended on being useful.
That was why she was up here on the roof. She’d accepted that mind-masking didn’t work on humans any more and that they were aware of her miasma and on their guard against its effects. Her ability to communicate with home had also gone. But she had to try, she had to warn her liege-lord Deumos of the danger she faced. For Lugasharmanaska understood humans and how they regarded their enemies. As long as the enemy fought, the humans would kill without mercy. If Deumos was to survive the oncoming destruction, she would have to find a way of not being an enemy of the humans without being slaughtered by Satan as a traitor. Somehow, Lugasharmanaska had to get a warning through. So she lay on the plastic chair, apparently relaxed and resting but in reality, screwing every ounce of mage-power she could muster in an attempt to contact Deumos. In the middle of the fierce concentration, she found herself wondering what her mage-power really was.
