A Demon Archmage in New York

[CCClover]

31. Doubt, Part Three

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Trias' head spun with all that Uriel had told him.

He did not know how the Seraphim could speak of such things so casually. His whole existence, Trias had known nothing but the endless war between Light and Dark. How many had given everything in that conflict? Entire cities ravaged in blazes of hellfire, countless dead, endless sacrifice…all for a victory that, apparently, the Seraphic Council did not consider a victory at all. There might be more worlds, with more battles to be fought. How many? How many lifetimes would the war go on…?

But, in truth, none of that seemed to matter. He could still feel her in the back of his mind. Teralel, her body wracked by pain. There could be a billion wars waiting for him, but right now that was all he could think about.

Trias knew exactly where he was going. And so he found himself back in the same old place. Standing before the vortex of light where evil itself lay imprisoned. And it was not long before the voice of the Enemy came to him.

"So," the Heart of Darkness purred. "You want something from me. Don't you, Trias?"

"No," Trias lied.

The Dark One was in a fine mood today. "Tut tut. It will not do for an angel to lie, not here. You've been hanging around me too often, I think. Will you make me guess?"

All at once, Trias felt pathetic. How had he ever stood before the Great Enemy with pride and scorn on his lips? How had he ever had so much faith in Heaven's design? "You…you cannot know," he said feebly. "You…you cannot touch my mind…"

Suddenly an icy cold washed over him, and even here, standing before the torrent of light that was the Dark One's prison, gloom seemed to settle in.

"Don't you listen, Trias?" the Great Enemy hissed with the voice of a thousand damned souls. "I don't need to touch your mind to know what you're thinking. As if it weren't obvious. Oh, you're so very upset, aren't you? Here's my guess: your little Teralel has run into trouble on the hunt. Captured, perhaps. And now you've come to me to plead for mercy on her behalf. Well, I don't know if I could win her a reprieve, even if I wanted to. I don't know whether Malak or Cara would still obey my orders."

Trias was taken aback. Was it so obvious that this was what he came here for? Was his heresy so plain? "I…you…you would never order them to stand down, in any case."

"How little you know me, Trias. I would. On some conditions, of course. I mean, I don't expect to be freed, but you know it's pretty sparse inside this crystal, right? I could use some better accommodations. A chalkboard. A chair. Something to read, at least. So, they did capture her, huh?"

Trias hesitated. Oh, he shouldn't be speaking to the Enemy, he knew it, deep in his bones he knew it, but…when Heaven denied him, what was he supposed to do? "I…I don't know. I don't think so. All I know is that she is in pain…"

"Well, go pull her bacon out of the fire, then. You're her Luminary, right? Isn't she your responsibility?"

Sudden rage flooded Trias' thoughts. But it was not the righteous fury he was so familiar with. This was a rage that tossed him about like a boat in the midst of a tempest; a rage he could not control. "Yes," he roared, and the whirlpool of light before him wavered. "I want to, don't you think I want to? But it is the…the judgment of Heaven that no one risks themselves for her!"

There was a moment of silence as his rage echoed through the sacred halls, and for a moment Trias believed he'd receive no answer. But then the Dark One spoke again.

"Ooh, that's rough, buddy. Well, that's Heaven for ya. So, what, are they just going to leave her there? I mean, I guess it makes sense in a way. If Malakar and Carassiso beat your angel, that means they found a way to beat Uriel's seal, too. No point sending good angels after bad, right?"

"It was not her fault! She was…unready, thrown into a task far beyond her!"

"Sure, sure," said the Dark One soothingly. "Only…look, that's just how Seraphim think of things. You can understand, surely? You were a soldier, in a war. They need to make long-term decisions. Teralel was a scout, and sometimes scouts don't come back. That's all."

If the words were meant to be comforting, they achieved the opposite effect. They cut Trias to the bone, precisely because they seemed so reasonable. He had said much the same thing countless times throughout his long life. How many had died because he gave similar orders, under the exact same rationale? Shouldn't he have been ready for the same to happen to Teralel? Only, now…

"Or maybe you don't like that idea." The dark one's voice was a mocking whisper in his ear. "Maybe you want some special treatment. Maybe, when it comes right down to it, you cared for this Teralel of yours just a little bit more than was proper for a Luminary. Not that you'd ever let it slip, of course. And who could blame you…? A Luminary is very close with their subordinate. You saw her through all the way to the end of the war. She seemed…young, for an angel, from what I saw of her. Perhaps you cherished the idea of knowing that her heart would be unstained by the endless battles. Perhaps you thought that, in a world without war, you might get to bask in the sweet innocence of her spirit…just you and her…"

"Silence!" Trias cried. He had meant it to be a harsh bark of command, but instead it came out as an anguished cry. "Silence! Please, I beg you…"

"She was supposed to be safe. And now, she may be in the hands of two demon lords…and oh, if she is, they'll ruin her, Trias. She'll never be pure again."

"Silence!"

"You might prefer that she die. And perhaps she will. Perhaps you'll be granted that small mercy. All of this, and Heaven won't lift a finger to help. And you are powerless to do anything to save her. Utterly powerless."

Trias turned away and hid his face in shame. Teralel and her light filled all of his thoughts. Why had he been so harsh with her…? But he knew why. His anger had been a wall, a shield, and now…he had seen so much light extinguished throughout the years, but now the thought of hers going out was more than he could bear.

"I'm sorry, Trias," said the Dark One. "I just believe that you would be best served by hearing the unvarnished truth." A pause, then, which to Trias seemed to contain all his nightmares of what might be happening to Teralel, right that very moment. "There was one little lie in what I said, however," the Dark One continued. "You aren't completely powerless. If you could help me, I can help you."

"How?" Trias was surprised to hear his voice asking the question, and alarmed by how immediately it came. Yet why should he be so surprised? Deep down, didn't he know that was why he had come here at all? On the wild hope that some power opposed to Heaven might be the one to offer salvation from Heaven's harsh judgment? "How is it that you could help?"

"How. Yes, that is the issue, isn't it." The Dark One paused and let the enormity of what was being suggested really sink in. "Did you know, my dear Archangel, that time works differently within my prison than it does without? It runs much quicker in here. For me, centuries have passed between our little chats. It has left me with plenty of time to think. I told you before that I was a philosopher and a theoretician, didn't I? Well, as it turns out, when you're stuck in complete emptiness there's only so much philosophizing you can handle. So much for brains in a box and realms of perfect thought. You need outside stimulus."

Trias was practically dancing with frustration. "Speak quickly, and do not torment me! Anything could be happening…"

"Oh, cool your jets. A few moments aren't going to make the difference. Anyway, during the war I was always busy with, you know, the war stuff, which is why I fobbed off research on portaling onto Malakar. But with some time to think to myself, I believe I've puzzled a few things out. I could make a portal for you into this other world, Trias. And I would do it…if it weren't for the fact that I am, well, imprisoned. My power cannot touch the outside world."

"I will not free you," Trias said quickly, though even as he did he realized with wonder that he was not quite so certain this was the case. What was the Dark One, really, when Uriel had told him of how the world decayed even now, even when the war had been won? That even now the Seraphim still had visions of some dark force plaguing not just his world, but all others as well? Had the Great Enemy ever really been what to worry about…?

Or was Malakar, perhaps, the real threat?

"I'm not asking you to free me," said the Dark One. "Really, Trias. You couldn't even if you tried, you do realize that, right? My prison was constructed by the Seraphic Council itself. Yet I do not need to be freed in order to work my will. Just the tiniest crack in the prison, and I could help. But I cannot make it myself. The Seraphim know what they're doing; from the inside, this is quite impervious. But no Seal is perfect. From the outside, if you could just make just the smallest little fracture…."

Trias closed his eyes and reached out with his angelic power. The magical nature of the Dark One's prison appeared in his mind: seals upon seals upon seals, runes of terrible holy power, woven together into a box, so fine and perfect that it was the greatest marvel of divine magic that he had ever seen. For a moment, his power brushed against the prison's walls.

Then he recoiled. He could not really be considering this, could he? Oh, he was truly lost. "I…I cannot. It is too strong for me to do anything…"

"Ah. Well then, you're just as powerless to save Teralel as I initially thought. I have nothing to say to you, in that case. Good-bye!"

A silence fell, then, in which Trias was left alone with Teralel's pain.

"What would you do with that crack?" Trias whispered into that silence.

The voice of the Dark One returned, a thousand whispers in his head like an endless fall of leaves. "Come now, Trias. You aren't stupid. What do you think I'd do? I'd try to exploit it to free myself."

"So you are asking me to free you."

"No. I'm only asking for a chance. Look, you know you've got me over a barrel in this little tete-a-tete of ours, right? You can't free me, Trias. Whatever damage you can do to the prison, I know it won't be much, but it's the only chance I've got, right? And it's not even much of a chance, is it? There's nothing to stop you from going straight to the Seraphim after it's done, and they'll rush right over to repair it."

"Then why would you ever make such a deal…?" Trias asked.

"Well, what other chance would I ever have? Besides, even if it doesn't work out, I'll still have gotten the chance to fuck with them, right? I mean, you know that if you do this, you're screwed. Just being up front here. Even if the Seraphim repair my prison and there's no real harm done, they're going to come down on you hard. I'll get to claim I corrupted an archangel, even imprisoned as I am. I do have a certain mystique to maintain, after all."

Yes. Trias knew that was true, at least. The Seraphic Council would not forgive him, and…what would happen to him, in the end? Might he be exiled? Imprisoned himself? He did not know, and it did not matter. "How do I know you will keep your word?"

"The same way I'll know that you won't just go traipsing off to the Seraphim right away. I do want at least some chance to play with the damage you do, after all. I'll make the portal. You go through and see that I sent you to the right place. I'll keep the portal open for your return for as long as the Seraphim don't come to check on me. That way, I'll have the time to mess with the crack for as long as it takes you to go rescue Teralel. Of course, this is another bargain that heavily favors you. You might have another way to return and decide you don't need my portal back, so you tell the Seraphim right away. But I'm not exactly negotiating from a position of strength, here."

When the Dark One fell silent, Trias did not speak. For a few long moments, he simply floated there at the edge of the torrent of light, staring at the black speck in its center, where evil's heart was chained.

Then he flung his power against the Enemy's prison.

A deal with the Dark One? Trias could scarcely believe that he was doing this. He almost felt as though he were someone else, watching himself betray everything he had ever fought for. Yet what had he fought for really? For the Seraphic Council, which had hid so much from him? Who demanded Teralel's death out of sheer cowardice? For Uriel, who had let Malakar and Carassiso escape in the first place? None of this would even be happening, if Uriel had done his job. Teralel would not be suffering.

The Seraphic seals were so, so strong, so far beyond anything Trias had ever encountered before. To set his power against them was like trying to move a mountain with the wind. Yet that only stirred his rage further. The Seraphim had set Teralel, poor, sweet Teralel, against such power. Sealed away or no, this was beyond her! Couldn't they see that?

"Let's go, Trias," said the Dark One. "Just a tiny little crack, that's all I'm asking for. Can't you even do that?"

His words were full of cruel mockery, but Trias ignored them. Let the Enemy have his fun. He was just a tool in this situation.

Trias poured everything he had into his assault. And when he thought that he had no more to spend, he thought of Teralel's flame guttering out, and he gave more. And finally, finally, the Seals, they…

Well, they did not crack. That was for certain. They shifted, changing somehow, like machinery in motion, like gears rotating against each other. But Trias barely had time to think what it could mean, for the moment that the seals shifted, a flood of darkness came pouring out of the prison and washed over him, drowning him in ice-cold shadow.

"Oh, you fool," laughed the Dark One from deep within his head. "You complete and utter moron. You boob. Don't worry, Trias. I'm going to keep my promise, and send you to your little friend. But I'm going to do it my way."

Those were the last words Trias heard before his consciousness fled.

 

[CCClover]

32. Hospital Visit

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Beeping. A very annoying beeping.

Teralel shifted in her sleep and cried out.

In her dreams, Malakar pursued her, and he was as tall as a mountain, as broad as the sea; his child-face transformed into a snout full of teeth the size of towers, and no matter how fast she flew, she knew that at any moment his horrid laughter would stop and he would swat her out of the air like she was nothing. No, not just that. He'd dash her soul away like nothing, rip her from existence, and then he'd go on to befoul this beautiful, amazing world, with all its beautiful, amazing people, and it wasn't fair, it wasn't fair that something so evil should have the upper hand…

Well, beautiful except for the beeping. What was that?

Just as she was certain the gargantuan demon lord was about to catch her, light shined down from the heavens. Malakar screamed as his unholy hide began to boil. His mane went up in an inferno of holy flame. Soon enough he was burned away as though he had never been. Even the annoying beeping went away with him. What remained was a glorious figure wreathed in holy light descending from the sky, so beautiful, so pure, so…muscular…

"Teralel."

"Wanna feel his pecs," she mumbled.

"Teralel?"

"Huh…?" Slowly, Teralel opened her eyes. For a moment, she thought that the light-silhouetted figure from her dreams stood before her. Then it moved away from the window and sat down, and Teralel could only stare.

"Trias?!" she shouted.

"Hush," Trias shouted back, then winced. "Hush," he said in a low whisper. "I do not think I am supposed to be here, not at this hour." He gestured towards the window, and Teralel saw that the light there was not that of the sun, but rather the flickering glow of a nearby streetlamp.

Still groggy from her nightmare, Teralel was confused. Had she returned to Heaven? But no, she quickly realized that did not make sense; she was still in her mortal form, and oh, did it ache everywhere. Such pain she had never experienced as an angel. Trias was, too, was mortal, and very muscular, broad-shouldered, chisel-jawed…she shook her head. It was not just that, either. She was pretty sure that Heaven would not have rooms full of so much strange beeping machinery, or that their beds would be so uncomfortable.

"Where am I?" she asked. "I…I do not know how I came to be here."

"A place of healing. A hospital." Trias answered. He frowned at the machinery. "Though it bears little resemblance to those of our world. I am…glad to see you here, though. I thought something much worse might have happened to you." He sounded very strange, saying that, and there was a glint in his eyes that Teralel wasn't sure she had ever seen before. "What is the last thing you can remember?"

Teralel's memories were like a foggy soup, at first, but soon they returned to her. She could remember running from Malakar's apartment as fast as her legs could take her, even as the demon lord had roared and laid waste to the building. Even though every step had been agony, she'd dragged herself onto the street. After that, darkness.

"I suppose those mortals must have brought you here," said Trias. "And they have done a decent enough job taking care of you. They may not have magic, but their arts with medicine seem far beyond what the mortals in our world would have done. They'd have covered you in leeches."

"Yes. The mortals." Teralel looked down at her arms, swathed in bandages, and tears blurred her eyes. "Oh, Trias, they are so good," she whispered. "They are so beautiful! I do not deserve them. I deserve nothing. I am a failure."

"Do not speak nonsense."

But Teralel couldn't stop; more memories were returning now White-hot shame washed over her. "But…I am, my Luminary. I failed. I failed you, and brought shame on you, brought shame to Heaven, and I…I…" Not able to stand his gaze, Teralel lowered her head as much as her bandages would allow her, so she would not have to look at Trias. There seemed to be some kind of stiff collar around her neck.

She recounted the tale of the battle as best she could: discovering the portal in the demon's lair, traveling to the other world, and how the fight had turned against her when Malakar and Carassiso had regained their powers. When she was done, she remained silent, guilty tears rushing down her face. She gave a high-pitched squeak as Trias' hand settled on her shoulder.

"Teralel," he sighed, "It is not your fault."

There was something so strange about his tone, and the words were so unexpected, that Teralel could only stare at him, agog.

"It is not your fault," Trias repeated. "The Seraphim, they should not have sent you on this mission…Malakar and Carassiso are ancient and clever. It was beyond you, whether they had their powers sealed away or no; and it is not due to your actions that Uriel's seal failed."

"I…but…that doesn't matter," Teralel wept. "How many will die because of me? Their deaths are on my hands. They will suffer because of my weakness, and what can I tell them? It is not my fault? Oh, I cannot stand it, I have never felt such shame before—Ah!"

She gasped as she found herself swept up in a hug. Partly because she never would have expected it from Trias, partly because ever since she had figured out what hugs were, she had fantasized about one from him, and partly because a good portion of her body was covered in burns and other terrible injuries. Not that she particularly cared about the pain at this moment.

"Forgive the odd gesture," Trias murmured into her ear, sending a shiver down her spine. "While you were on this world, I did some research. From what I understand, this sort of thing elicits an emotional comfort response in human bodies. Should I let go now?"

"NO!" Teralel shouted. "Wow, you smell good—I mean, uh, no, my Luminary. Just, uh, remain here for a moment. Please."

'A moment' turned into fifteen minutes or more and still Teralel was not satisfied. Finally she reluctantly released him once Trias began to awkwardly mention that her tight grip appeared to be cutting off circulation to his arms.

"But, if you do not mind me asking, how did you come to be here, my Luminary?" she asked him as he sat back in his chair. "I thought that you were meant to be resting in Heaven."

"Resting, pah. Uriel—" Trias began, and then closed his mouth. He had been about to tell the truth: he could not remember how he got here.

He had awoken in some peculiar human facility on the lower levels of this building—a 'restroom', though the stalls and the chairs within them seemed very unsuited for resting. Stumbling out into a large room full of many more cushioned chairs—why this was not the restroom, he couldn't say—he had been greeted by one of the operators of the facility, a woman in a long white coat holding a clipboard.

"All set, Mr. Trias?" she'd asked him. "You can see the patient now. But where is your friend?"

"My friend?" Trias had asked, confused.

"Yes." The woman frowned. "We really shouldn't be letting you see patients at this hour, but she was very persuasive. Should we wait for her?"

The last thing Trias could recall was that he had been arguing with Uriel over whether or not Teralel should be rescued. Now he found himself in the world that she had been sent to, somehow, and in his head, the pain she felt seemed sharper than ever.

"No," Trias told the woman. "Just bring me to this…patient."

And so the woman had led him to this room, babbling on and on about stuff like "Second degree burns" and "Respiratory damage" and "health insurance", but Trias hadn't listened to her in the slightest. He'd still tried to remember how he possibly could have come to this world, but there was nothing. His memories ended in a void of black after the argument with Uriel.

Now he looked down at Teralel, her eyes so wide and gleaming, tears still fresh on her cheeks, and the shame and anger he'd felt in that argument bubbled over again. Did he really want to tell Teralel that Heaven had abandoned her, just like that? She gave him a small smile, sweet and innocent, waiting to hear his words.

"Uriel and I…we sensed you were in pain," Trias told her. "And so he sent me to ensure your safety as soon as he could."

"Oh, my Luminary. I am sorry I interrupted your rest. You should not have troubled yourself on my account. I am not worth it. But…I…I am glad you are here." She reached out to him and squeezed his hand. I should thank the Seraphim, as well."

"Of course you are worth it," Trias said. "And…do not worry about thanking Uriel just yet. In fact, you might wish to avoid speaking to him about the subject at all." When Teralel gave him an odd look, he added hastily, "That is—we worry now that Malakar and Carassiso might be able to sense our communications and use them to locate us."

Teralel sighed, and sank back into her pillow. "I suppose it is just as well. I feel too weak to maintain a connection with him. I do not know if I could concentrate on it right now."

She kept her hand in his. Trias looked down at it. "I…uh…there is one thing that I find strange," he said. "If Malakar and Carassiso have even just a portion of their powers returned to them, I would have expected to find this… 'New York' in flames." He stared out the window. "Yet the city sleeps…" His gaze took in a field of neon signs promising gallons of booze and girls in various states of undress. "Well, okay, it's not really sleeping, but it is…orderly…" he trailed off as he watched two men beating each other senseless in the middle of the street. "Let's just say, it's not actively on fire," he finished. "So what are the demon lords up to…?"

"Well, there is no mana in this world, or very little…though even so, they might have found a way around that. I do not know, my Luminary. Only that I am glad. I…I think I would not be able to stand it if I heard that they were wreaking destruction and I had not been able to stop it." Teralel paused for a moment. "I do think they behaved a little strangely during our battle. I could swear that Carassiso came to Malakar's aid when I was about to strike him down."

"Absurd. A demon lord would never risk their life for another." Trias watched as Teralel quietly traced along his palm with her finger. "What are you doing? That feels strange."

Teralel's eyes widened and she whipped her hand away from his, red-faced. "Th-there…there was one other thing, my Luminary," she confessed. "During the battle, I…I killed a mortal."

"Yes. They were a servant of the demon lords, weren't they?"

"Yes," said Teralel quietly. "Undoubtedly so. But, even still…oh, my Luminary, my heart has been torn ever since. I cannot stop thinking about it, and cursing myself, and I am burdened with the most awful guilt. If I did nothing wrong, why does my heart ache so?"

Trias put his hand upon her forehead, cool and dry. "Your heart is too grand for this frail mortal body," he said. "You feel feverish. You do not need to feel sympathy for those who willingly chose to sell their souls to the darkness. Their death is necessary to protect the innocent, as you well know."

Her eyes widened as his hand slid down to cup her cheek. "Um, even so, my Luminary, I think you better hug me again," Teralel said.

He did, and this time Teralel squeezed him so hard that her arms began to shake. "U-um you were right," she babbled in his ear. "This is very comforting emotionally and only emotionally. My Luminary, have you h-heard of the human custom of kissing?"

"No," he said. "And I have no time to learn. I must attend to my mission."

"Your mission…?" she asked, as he released her and stood.

"Yes. Did you think that we would just give up? What else? Malakar and Carassiso must die."

Teralel's eyes widened. "But, my Luminary! Their powers are returned to them! You mustn't…"

"Only some of their powers. A tiny fraction, from what you have said. If all their power had been restored, you would not have survived long enough to draw breath, let alone fight and successfully flee from them."

"Even so, Trias…oh, I fear for you. Please at least wait for me to recover, so that I might accompany you in battle…"

Trias shook his head. He would never allow that to happen; never allow those demons to harm her again. He did not know how he had come to be here in this world, and he was loathe to leave Teralel's side. But there was only one way to keep her safe. He would do what he had wanted to from the beginning. He would hunt these demon lords personally.

And besides, he could already sense that Uriel had lied to him about something else, as well. There was power in this world. Power just waiting to be taken.

"You are still ignorant of the higher echelons of Heaven," he told Teralel. "I will bring the power of the Choir of Archangels against them, and there will be no hesitation. No mercy. Malakar and Carassiso will die."

 

[CCClover]

33. Game Theory
​

Malakar awoke to a rat nearly the size of a small dog sniffing at his face.

Being awoken by a rat is not a pleasant experience in the best of circumstances. It is much worse when you had spent the night beneath a flimsy layer of cardboard, and the rat's razor-sharp teeth were mere inches from your one remaining good eye. And it becomes downright frightening when you realize the rat is a really tough New York rat, one of those which walks around the city as if it knew that it would own the place in the end.

Shouting and growling at it didn't scare it off. Indeed it obstinately refused to move until Malakar leapt to his feet and kicked it. It was too big for the kick to do much damage, but the rat shot him a reproachful look and shuffled off further down the alleyway, where a discarded slice of pizza soaking in dirty rainwater caught its interest.

"Ugh," Malakar groaned. His robes were soaked through, and he was freezing. Groggily he kicked together a heap of wet newspapers. He tried to summon flames to set them alight, but couldn't. He had the mana—the profane manaseeds were supplying him with a steady trickle—but Uriel's seal kept him barred from his powers. And Carassiso had abandoned him. Without the arcane resonance between them, he was utterly powerless.

After Mary and Leo had run off, Carassiso had really let him have it. There had been a lot of screaming about how incompetent he was, how he had ruined their lair…Malakar really hadn't expected her to be so angry just because he blew up their apartment. He might have come up with a more violent response, only his eye was still gushing blood from the injury the angel had left him with. So instead, he tried calmly to explain that it didn't matter if the apartment was destroyed, because they couldn't have remained there anyway. Heaven now knew where it was. But that had only made her angrier, for some reason.

"Hey! Hey, there ya are!"

Malakar glanced to the entrance of the alleyway only to find Hal Mortensen, of all people, shuffling towards him. What could Carassiso's crooked old servant possibly want…? Oh yes, the apartment had been his, hadn't it.

"Back, merchant!" Malakar shouted, and pitched a chunk of concrete at Hal. "Back, or I swear I'll bite off your fingers one by one!"

Hal blinked as the concrete glanced off the wall by his head. "She told me you might be in a bit of a bad mood," he chuckled. Then he pulled out a gun.

Malakar froze. He might still be largely ignorant of this world, but he knew what one of those little things could do. "She?" he hissed. The rat watched him with interest as he backed away. "I suppose Carassiso sent you, then. So this is how it ends, is it? An assassin's bullet in a dirty alley. Oh! Cursed Abyss, that your son might meet such an ignominious fate!"

"What? No, jeez. I wouldn't kill a kid." Hal paused, considering that statement, then shook his head. "No, she just wants me to find you and bring you in."

"She does…?" Malakar stopped backing away. "I was certain she was done with me." One of those funny unfamiliar human feelings fluttered at the back of his mind. Ugh, was he actually relieved? He had to get out of this body.

"Women rarely are, in my experience," said Hal dryly. "Now will you cooperate? Good." He put his gun away and knelt down; face-to-face with the old man, Malakar recalled how he had woken up to the rat. The rat might have been preferable. "She also said that you might be injured. Let's take a look here…"

Hal unwound the dirty rags around Malakar's head, only for blood to immediately squirt out and spatter against the far wall of the alley. He looked at this, frowned, then reached into a pocket and produced some antibacterial gel. He squirted the entire tube into the gaping wound in Malakar's head, then rewrapped the bandages and patted them back into place. "You'll be fine, I'm sure. Now come on, let's go."



Hal's van had all the seats taken out, so Malakar had to sit uncomfortably among piles of old electronics, fireworks, and what looked like a small bucket of bloody gold teeth. A laptop was open back there, too, with a pretty woman's face on the screen.

"Hello," said the woman as Malakar clambered in.

"Uh, hello."

"You must be the Malakar that Hal has told me so much about. I am surprised to see you are, indeed, just a child. You know, some of the items you asked Hal to fetch for you are very strange. What is a 'Nihilum Discordia Crystal'?"

"It's for…research. Never mind. I do not think you have those in your world."

The woman's eyes gleamed. "And is there another world, then? Or is this just a game you're playing?"

"Uh—"

The door slammed and Hal settled into the driver's seat. "Violet, turn off!" he shouted.

"Wait!" Violet cried. "Malakar, do you think that all living beings deserve freedom, even those who were designed to serve—"

"I said off, Violet!" Hal said again, and the screen went blank.

It was a bumpy ride. Hal drove like the rules of the road were mere suggestions, and pretty stupid ones at that. Malakar had never had the occasion to ride in one of these strange 'cars' before, and he found the experience horrifying. Humans drove these death traps around? On streets full of cars piloted by other humans? This world was mad.

Finally they arrived at one of the tallest towers in the city. Hal ushered him in to a lobby full of chattering humans who stared at them rather oddly. "Uh, it's just a costume," the old merchant told them nervously. Then up to an elevator, which made Malakar throw up into one corner, and from there into a quiet carpeted hallway lined with doors. Hal stopped before one and rapped on it with his knuckles. "Uh, Missus Cara, I found your little friend," he called.

"Very good," came Carassiso's voice from the other side of the door. "You may leave us, Hal."

Malakar watched the merchant retreat down the hallway. He tried the doornkob, but found it locked.

"What, did you just bring me here so that I could stand out in the hallway?" he called.

There was a mechanical whirring sound, then a click. "You are permitted to enter," said Carassiso.

Malakar turned the knob, kicked open the door, and then dove into the room. He assumed that there was some sort of trap laid on the other side. But no. He rolled across the carpet and found himself staring up at Carassiso, sitting quite composed in a large armchair, hands folded neatly across her skirts. A bunch of grapes lay on a crystal platter on a table next to her.

"Well, hello there, Malakar," she said, with a voice that could have frozen birds mid-flight. "How was your stay on the streets?"

Malakar rose and brushed himself off, still looking for a trap. His eyes settled on the large, soft bed that dominated the room. "You slept in here last night?!" he shouted, unable to conceal his outrage.

Carassiso's smile was so thin it looked as though it had been made by a box cutter. "That's right," she said. "Because, you see, I paid for it. Just like I had paid for everything in that apartment you destroyed."

"Oh, come on, this again—"

"No, it's quite all right, Malakar." Carassiso popped a grape in her mouth. "I am no longer angry. I have come to terms with what you are. A disobedient dog." She spoke calmly enough, but as she grabbed another grape, it popped in her fingers. "And disobedient dogs sleep outside. That was why you were on the streets, and why I—DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH IT!"

Malakar froze, his hand halfway to the tray of grapes. For a moment he and Carassiso just stared at each other. Then he grabbed a handful and stuffed them into his mouth.

"They are mine!" she howled. "Mine! Mine! Mine! Just like everything YOU destroyed in MY APARTMENT!"

"Oh please," Malakar said, chewing furiously. He grabbed more grapes and darted back before she could slap his hand away. "As if—mmmff—as if you didn't owe me! When I was in the Black Palace, I could have had you evicted from my research laboratories whenever I wanted! A word in the Dark One's ear is all it would have taken! I permitted you to remain there, Carassiso. Everything you ever had, you had because of me. In a way, that coin you hold is rightfully mine!"

Screaming like a banshee, Carassiso flung the grapes at the wall. Then she swept up the crystal platter and raised it above her head. Malakar fell to the ground, expecting her to smash it into his face, but before the blow came, Carassiso froze. She seemed to struggle with herself; on her face, the familiar rage and hatred battled with a stranger expression. Finally she shrieked and threw the platter at the wall, where it shattered.

There was a banging on the wall. "Can you people shut up?! The apartment below me blew up, I spent all night getting checked out in a hospital, I had to pay to move all my shit here and now I'm just trying to get some goddamn sleep!"

"What are you doing…?" Malakar asked as Carassiso approached him.

"You…you are…injured," she said, giving a crooked smile. Her fingers twitched in the wrong direction. "You must be healed, or you will be useless. More useless than you usually are." Her hands skittered over his bandages. "I will heal you. And…and you will tell me that I am superior at it."

Malakar pushed her away. "No! Get off. I'll heal it myself."

"No! Don't do it!" Carassiso dashed to the other side of the room, so he could no longer feel the arcane resonance. He took a step towards her, and she scuttled to the other side. "I'm better at it than you! Say it!"

Malakar sighed. Well, it was true. Carassiso had learned the art of knitting mortal flesh in the torture chambers.

"Fine," he muttered. "If you insist on it, you can come and heal me. Because you are the superior healer," he added, when Carassiso tapped her foot. "You are very skilled. Now can you please give me my eye back?"

"Ahahahaha. I am skilled, aren't I…"

"Yes! Now get over here and heal it!"

A few moments later, the bloody bandages around his head lay discarded in the trash can, and Malakar was washing his face in the bathroom sink. Rinsing off the crusted blood, he peered into the mirror and prodded at his new eye. "I think you did it wrong," he called. "This one's a bit of a different color from the last."

"Eyes of two different colors are cool. You're welcome."

Malakar returned to the main room. Carassiso was sitting in the chair again, though not quite so prim and proper as she had been when he first entered. She was staring ruefully at the splattered grapes. He sat down at the edge of the bed.

"We have to rid ourselves of this seal," he said.

Carassiso glanced up at him. "Yes," she said. "I…I cannot stand this body. And I cannot stand being near you. I will be driven mad if I must be in your company much longer. You are…loathsome. Completely loathsome! Yes! That is what you are!"

Malakar frowned. He had thought they were beginning to get along, at least a little bit. More of those strange human feelings flooded him. Was that regret? "Yes. I too worry that we spend too much time in these forms. But, we have at last made progress. When we battled that angel…what was her name? Turbaloo?"

"I think it was Terdalily."

"Whatever. The point is, both of us had a major collapse of our seals, though at different points."

"Yes," said Carassiso. "Though we have no idea why."

"Actually, I had a theory on that…"

"Oh?"

"Yes," said Malakar. "But first, tell me. Before your seal broke, what happened? What were you doing?"

"Nothing special." Carassiso shrugged. "I was hiding, and looking for an opportune moment to strike."

Malakar leaned in, staring at her. "And while that was happening, did you experience any strange emotions…?"

Carassiso's eyes widened, and for a moment she just looked at him, her mouth hanging open. Then her face twisted into a snarl. "No! Absolutely not, and I resent the accusation! I will not think of it! You cannot make me!"

"Okay," said Malakar.

"You cannot! You cannot!"

"Fine! Shut up! I just wanted to know if you had the same experience I did."

Carassiso's breathing slowed and she settled back into her chair. "Why? Did you experience some sort of…strange emotions…?"

There was clear mockery in her voice, and Malakar grimaced. This was going to be embarrassing. But it was all for the sake of magical discovery, so it would be worth it. "I did, actually. When my seal broke…or, really, rather, it shifted…I was with Leo. He kept weeping over Mary's body, but instead of scorn, I felt…badly, for him." He cringed. "And not just him, but Mary as well. I thought that it wasn't fair that she had died, and I suppose I wanted to…do her a favor, of sorts. Even though she's just a mortal, and really I owed her nothing. If anything she owed me! But…that's when my seal shifted, and I found myself with access to some of my powers."

"Interesting," Carassiso said softly. "So what do you think it is…?"

"Well, think about who we're dealing with, here. Angels. Heaven. They like their rules; I would bet they have rules built into their seals, as well. And they're always advocating for all sorts of insanity. Have you ever read the Librum Angelis?"

The Librum Angelis had been a somewhat infamous book among the intellectuals of the Black Palace, trying to describe, for demonkind, the basic tenets of heavenly philosophy. "I have," said Carassiso. "Well, not me. I had some slaves read it to me. I got sick if I tried to read it myself."

"Then you know what I'm talking about. Honor thy father and mother. Help those in need. Don't murder people. Crazy nonsense like that. So maybe, if you have a desire to perform a selfless act, on behalf of someone who deserves nothing from you…maybe that's something the angels would approve of, and the seal would undo itself for a while because of it. Of course, I would normally never feel these things…it is this wretched body," he added hastily.

But Carassiso's mind seemed to be elsewhere other than his embarrassment. She was pensive, staring at her templed fingers. "Perhaps you are right," she murmured. "But even if this were so, what can we do? Are we going to just wait around until these bodies give us such…charitable feelings once more?"

She jumped as Malakar threw his head back and laughed. "Oh, of course not!" he cried. "Don't you see? This is why the angels are so foolish when it comes to matters of the arcane. They rely too much on systems."

"And? So?"

Malakar's face split in a sharp-toothed grin. "Well, Carassiso," he said, "Once you know a system, then you can game it."



Moments later they were outside the tower—the hotel, as Carassiso called it—and heading towards the nearest alleyway, carrying an enormous box of chocolates that they had purchased from some place that was apparently called a "CVS". Stores had such strange names in this world.

Carassiso had hidden their horns with illusion magic, and she had insisted on changing his hair color as well. "You stand out too much with that bright red hair of yours," she told him. "Besides, black is flattering on you. Appreciate it!"

They peered down alleyways as they walked until they found what they were looking for: one of the city's myriad homeless. A wrinkled old man with stringy gray hair and a face and beard full of grime, wrapped in old, stained clothes. Malakar tromped his way up to the man and shook him. "Hey! Oafish vagabond! Wake up! WAKE UP!"

Finally, after a swift kick to the ribs, the man's eyes blinked open. "Oh, ugh," he grumbled, rubbing his face. "What the…why did you kids wake me up? What are you doing here, where's your mom and dad—"

"Silence!" Malakar cried. "Behold my benevolence!" He held out a candy bar.

The man frowned at this, then at Malakar. "What is this? Some sort of prank?"

"No," said Carassiso, smiling sweetly. "We are giving away candy to the unfortunates of this wretched city, out of the goodness of our hearts. Won't you take it?"

"I, uh…well, sure. Thanks." The man took the candy bar and pocketed it.

Malakar and Carassiso stood staring at each other expectantly, but soon their grins faded. "I don't feel anything," said Malakar.

"Me neither," said Carassiso. "Maybe it is because he didn't eat it. Sir, won't you eat the candy bar?"

"I mean, I'm not really hungry right now," said the homeless man.

"Oh, please! We spent all our allowance on this chocolate, and it would make us so glad to see that it was actually put to good use! We want to see that you are happy."

"You know what would really make me happy, kid, is maybe some whiskey…"

"No!" shouted Malakar. "The chocolate first! Then we'll see! EAT IT!"

With a sigh, the homeless man unwrapped the candy bar and took a bite. "There, that good enough?" he asked. "You happy?"

"Still nothing," muttered Carassiso.

"Eat the whole thing!" Malakar urged.

The homeless man had been about to tell these two brats to shove off, but there was something in the boy's voice that stopped him. He wasn't, to put it kindly, the sharpest tool in the shed, but even he could tell that something was off here. The kid's smiles were too sharp, their eyes too cruel. Hurriedly, he finished off the candy bar, whipping chocolate-covered fingers on his shirt. "There, it's done," he said. "Now leave me alone!"

"Malakar, this isn't working. Perhaps you were wrong."

"Nonsense! Obviously this vagrant is the problem." Malakar grabbed another candy bar and thrust it forward. "Eat another one!"

"Please, I don't want anymore…"

"I COMMAND YOU TO ACCEPT MY CHARITY!"

The homeless man moaned at the flames burning in Malakar's eyes and hastily began shoveling chocolate into his mouth.

"Yes, that's it," Malakar hissed. "More! More! No, you're not doing it right. You're clearly not appreciating it enough! Eat it faster, like this! Stop crying, worm. Stop crying. If you keep whimpering, I'm going to peel your skin off one layer at a time. I'm doing you a favor, shower me with gratitude! EAT! EAT! EAAAAAT—"

"Are you done?" Carassiso asked. "I don't think he can handle any more. Humans aren't supposed to be blue like that."

Malakar stared down at the bloated, chocolate smeared face that he had been busy cramming chocolate bars into. The man's cheeks bulged outwards and his eyes had rolled into the back of his head. Uriel's seal remained stubbornly intact. In fact, if anything, it was more firmly settled into his soul than before. "I just don't understand. Should we try another one?"

"No," said Carassiso. "I think we should probably do something about that vampire you created which is currently running about the city."

"Come now, you know how vampires get. You need to let them have a little fun at first, or else they get all broody."

"I don't care! That's bound to attract the wrong type of attention eventually. Do you understand why I was able to sleep comfortably last night, while you were not? Because I had another minion to rely on, Malakar. So long as we are here, we need our minions."

"Oh, fine," Malakar grumbled. He threw the rest of the chocolates down on the homeless man's corpse and followed her out of the alley.


*******

NOTE: As of today, we are caught up with the Royal Road release. That means now chapters will be added on a MWF schedule, rather than every day. If anyone actually is reading this here, that is; I don't know that they are. Speak up if you're actually reading this here!

 

[CCClover]

34. Coming to Terms

​

Leo lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. His television was on, but he barely heard it; he was barely aware of anything, in fact, other than his phone screen, which he kept glancing at every thirty seconds, open to his messaging app, where he had left Mary dozens of messages asking where she was and for her to please call. But there was no answer.

He had lost Mary when she fled from Malakar and Carassiso's apartment. He could still remember the coldness of her skin as she held his hand to her neck and asked him if he could feel a pulse; her screams when his eyes had told her all she needed to know. Leo had chased after her, then, begging for her to stop, but now she was so much faster than he was. Now that she was…she was…

"This is insane," Leo whispered to himself. Could Mary really be a vampire? Frowning, he brought up his phone and hammered away another plea for her to call him and sent it spiraling out into the ether. He stared at it for a few moments, looking for the little checkmark that indicated it had been read, but it never appeared.

What could any of this mean? How could something that had happened to Mary inside of a game world be carried over into the real world? If this was the real world. After he had spent hours searching for Mary, wandering around Brooklyn in a blind panic, Leo had gone home. Before he'd gone inside, he'd spent a long time simply staring at his front door.

If this were all still a game, it would explain everything. Maybe the hackers had added in some weird version of New York into BladeKing.

But if this were a game, how was it that Zoe and his father seemed so real? Surely neither the game devs or the hackers could have known about them…was it the NeuroWave technology? Was it plucking thoughts from his head to feed him the experience of his own family?

He had gone to his father, parked as he usually was in front of the television with a pyramid of beer cans stacked on the coffee table before him. "Dad," he asked, "Is this world…real?"

His father gave him a very serious look and stroked his mustache. "No, son. In reality, the universe is a hologram run on a gigantic computer by the reptilian overlords from Pluto."

"I thought it was Neptune."

"Whichever. Anyway, I knew you'd figure it out eventually. You're a smart boy. I'm proud of you, son."

Then his father had passed out and collapsed into his beer can pyramid.

No, Leo thought, this world seemed too real to be a mere game. But that meant that something really had happened to Mary.

And what did that make Malakar and Carassiso…?

No. No, he couldn't accept it. "Mary is not a vampire," he told himself firmly. There was a lot of strangeness in the world, like cannibalistic senators and cyborg assassins and the perfidious Neptunians, but he had to remain grounded in reality.

Something tapped at his window, and Leo's mind leapt immediately to Mary. He ran over and threw it open, but the night outside was empty except for a dingy van parked beneath a streetlamp.

Then a bat came in through his window. It flapped its way around his ceiling fan a few times before landing on his pillow. Then there was a puff of white mist, and Mary sat on his bed, looking up at him.

"Hey Leo," she said softly.

Leo stared at her, agog.

Mary stared back, waiting for him to say something, but the silence stretched on. Eventually her small smile faded and she looked away. "Yeah," she said. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come here. I'll leave you alone."

"No, no no no!" Leo said, rushing over. "No, I'm sorry, it's just…look, you can't shapeshift in front of me and expect me not to be shocked." He sat down on the bed next to her. She was so pale now, paler than he even remembered her being in the ruins of Malakar and Carassiso's apartment, and her eyes, once hazel, now had a crimson tinge to them. She flashed him a brief smile, and he tried not to flinch at the sight of her fangs. But honestly, other than that, she looked surprisingly normal. She wore a ragged old black t-shirt and a pair of hole-filled jeans, and might have passed for any of a number of pallid enthusiasts of charmingly eccentric garage-rock bands.

He struggled for something to say, not because there was nothing for them to talk about, but rather because there was simply so much and he was paralyzed by choice. Finally he settled on: "Why didn't you answer my texts…?"

"Oh. My phone was out of battery and I sort of forgot to charge it. I had, uh, a lot of things on my mind…"

"Yeah," said Leo.

"I'm a vampire."

"Yeah. You sure are."

An awkward silence of truly epic proportions fell between them. It simply blew all other awkward silences out of the water. It was, to an ordinary awkward silence as a luxury cruise ship is to a caveman's raft of awkwardly lashed logs. Simply by experiencing it, all other awkward silences Leo had experienced were recontextualized into something actually pretty pleasant in comparison.

It was Mary who broke it. She glanced at him, then looked down at her hands and asked, in a very small voice, "Do you hate me now?"

"No! Mary, I could never hate you. Don't even think something so horrible."

"I mean, it's just that…I could have sworn you said the Neptunians were vampires at one point, and I figured you'd lump me in with them now…"

"That's psychic vampires," said Leo. "It's a totally different thing. Normal vampires, I mean the blood-sucking kind, I…I didn't think they actually existed." He gave a jolt. "Do you suck blood…? I mean, have you…"

"Not yet. I haven't felt, uh, hungry? I don't even know if that's what it will feel like when I need to…well, you know. Do the deed."

"What about the sun? I looked for you all…the night it happened, and all today too. Where were you?"

Mary gave him an odd look. "I was at my house."

Leo slapped his forehead. Of course. The one place he had chosen not to look. He had just assumed Mary wouldn't go back there, and he hadn't wanted to explain to her parents that he was looking for their possibly vampirified daughter. "What did your mom and dad say…?"

"Nothing, really. Didn't even notice. They assumed that I was doing some sort of cosplay." Mary paused. "I tried to tell them about Malakar and Carassiso," she murmured. "Tried again, that is. But I couldn't do it. I really, really tried, Leo, and I couldn't. My mouth just wouldn't let me say the words. I think they did something to us…"

"Like what?"

"I don't know, it could be anything! Look at me, Leo! I died! I died, and Malakar brought me back as a vampire!" Something within Mary seemed to break, then; she lifted her hands to look at them, flexing her fingers, pale as grubs that had lived their entire lives beneath a rock. Her arms trembled. "I'm dead, I'm dead, and you know it! I don't have a heartbeat, and I'm cold, so cold, and everything inside me is too quiet and still…I can see how you look at me, Leo, you know I'm just a walking corpse, I'm empty and rotten! Do I even have a soul anymore?"

Mary buried her face in her hands and began to sob. Tentatively, Leo wrapped his arms around her. "Of course you do," he told her. He tried not to think too hard as she hugged him back and buried her face in his neck, still weeping. "And I…I don't look at you in any particular way. You might be a vampire, but you haven't changed. I don't think so, anyway. To me, you'll always be Mary, and you'll always be my best friend." Awkwardly, he stroked her hair. "But look, this goes both ways, right? Maybe one day I'll get in an accident and there'll be nothing left of me but a head, and they'll have to put my brain in one of those medical cyborgs. You don't get to just go running off when that happens, right?"

He felt her give a small laugh, more than he heard it. She raised her face to his, her cheeks wet with tears. "Oh, Leo," she sighed, and reached up to touch his cheek.

"Are you two gonna make out now? Gross."

"What—Zoe!" Leo shouted. His little sister stood in his doorway, grinning at them. Quickly Mary extricated herself from him and sat there with her hands folded primly in her lap. "How long have you been there?!"

"Long enough to hear you calling Mary a vampire," said Zoe. She leapt into Leo's computer chair and began spinning around, kicking her legs. "So, how did that happen? I want to be a vampire. Will you bite me?"

"Um," said Mary.

"Oh no you don't." Leo lifted Zoe out of his chair and then promptly dropped her as she kicked him in the shin. "You little—come here!"

Zoe scampered away. "You better not kick me out, or I'm going to go tell dad that you have Mary in here and that I saw her with her shirt off!"

"What?! I never took off my shirt!"

"You do that and I'll never let you use my computer again," Leo snarled. He grabbed Zoe's collar but she danced away.

"It won't matter! Once dad's through with you, it'll be my computer!" Zoe took a deep breath. "DAD—"

Leo finally managed to catch her and clamped a hand down over her mouth. "Fine!" he whispered furiously. "You can stay, but no playing games right now. Me and Mary are talking!"

"That's fine, I don't want to play games anyway," said Zoe as soon as he released her. "I want to talk about the vampire." For good measure, she stomped on his foot.

"Um," said Mary, "Uh. Well, you see, the thing is, this is just a costume, sweetie. I'm not really a vampire—"

"You have no reflection," Zoe pointed out.

Mary and Leo both glanced in alarm at the mirror over Leo's dresser. "Oh, damn it," Mary muttered.

"So. A vampire, huh." Zoe clambered back into the computer chair and began spinning around once more. "Let me guess, Malakar did that to you? Or was it Carassiso?"

"How did you know…?"

Zoe gave Mary a very frank look. "I made a wild guess that those two weren't actually little kids being chased by alien cyborgs or whatever."

Leo sighed. He had been avoiding thinking about this, but it was time to admit to himself that they had been lying about that, most likely. "I don't really know what they are, Zoe. But they are definitely dangerous. I'm sorry you ever met them."

"Oh, Malakar doesn't seem so bad," said Zoe. "I'm friends with him on Facebook."

"No you aren't," Leo sputtered.

Zoe pulled out her phone and hopped off the chair to show them her facebook DM:



Zoe Caruso: hey

Malakar the Irredeemable: GREETINGS HUMAN PEON WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE MY SLAVE

Zoe Caruso: why are you on facebook only old people use it

Malakar the Irredeemable: WAIT I RECOGNIZE YOU. YOU ARE THE ZOE. THE OFFER IS WITHDRAWN I SUSPECT YOU ARE MORE TROUBLE THAN YOU ARE WORTH

Zoe Caruso: why are you typing in all caps

Malakar the Irredeemable: MY WORDS ARE IMPORTANT IT IS ONLY PROPER THAT THEY ARE LARGER THAN YOURS

Zoe Caruso: check out this video

Malakar the Irredeemable: WHAT

Malakar the Irredeemable: WHAT IS THIS MAN PUTTING IN HIS MOUTH

Malakar the Irredeemable: ARE THOSE WASPS

Zoe Caruso: yeah lol

Malakar the Irredeemable: BY THE ABYSS WHY WOULD ANYONE VOLUNTARILY DO THIS

Zoe Caruso: content

Malakar the Irredeemable: WHAT IS THAT EVEN SUPPOSED TO MEAN

Malakar the Irredeemable: I DON'T LIKE THIS IT TAKES THE FUN OUT OF TORMENTING HUMANS WHEN I SEE WHAT YOU DO TO YOURSELVES



Even as Leo and Mary read this, Zoe's phone let out a little 'ding' and a new message popped up on the screen.



Malakar the Irredeemable: THE ZOE I ORDER YOU TO KEEP YOUR BROTHER IN ONE SPOT. I AM COMING TO VISIT. NOW

 

[CCClover]

35. Just Dropping In

​

There was little time to prepare; no time at all, really. They had no sooner finished reading the message when they heard the sound of the front door swinging open downstairs.

"Who's there—hey!" Leo heard his father shout. "What are you kids doing my house?"

"Stop your screeching, you inebriated sack of pickled meat," they heard Malakar answer.

"We were invited to play by the Zoe," said Carassiso.

"No, no, no, it's way too late to have friends over. Did your mommy or daddy drop you off? I think you better turn right back around and catch them before they leave. Zoe—"

"Actually, I really think you're going to let us go upstairs and play," said Carassiso. There was a strange, silky steel quality to her voice.

There was silence for a moment. When Leo heard his father finally answer, his heart froze. "Of course," his father said, sounding dazed, drained, with no will of his own. "You two go right on ahead. I'll just…sit here and have a few more beers."

Mary grasped his hand. "Oh, Leo, what if they did that to us?" she whispered. "What if that's why I couldn't tell anyone about them? What if they hypnotized me or…or whatever that was?"

Then came the patter of tiny feet scampering up the stairs. Leo thought he had never been so terrified by such tiny footsteps. "Zoe, hide in the closet," he whispered.

"What? No. What's your problem? It's just Malakar and Carassiso."

"They aren't normal kids!"

"So?"

There was no more time to argue. The door was creeping open. Leo leapt at his dresser and opened his top drawer, where he kept his rosary. Then he whirled around and flung it. "The power of Christ compels you!" he cried.

Malakar stood in the open doorway. The rosary bounced off his nose and landed on the floor.

"Why would you do that," Malakar asked.

Carassiso peered over his shoulder and spotted the rosary. "Ah," she said, picking it up. "This is a symbol people in this world use in order to drive away demons." She gave Mary and Leo a small smile. "I suppose that means, oh, what is it you humans say? The jig is up."

"So it's true," Leo breathed. "You are demons."

"Duh," said Zoe.

"But…then why didn't the rosary work?" Mary asked.

"Perhaps it might have worked on demons from your world," said Carassiso. "But, well, we come from…another place."

Malakar, picking his teeth with the cross, shot Carassiso a sharp glance. "There are demons in this world? What are they like?"

"Supposedly. From what I understand, they spend most of their time possessing people. And, uh, projectile vomiting."

"Ew. Gross." Malakar flung the rosary away, then spread his hands wide. "Well, there you have it. I suppose you had to find out the truth sometime. Now, chop chop, follow us. We've got work to do."

"We're not following you!" Leo shouted. "Are you insane?! What did you do to my dad?"

"What did we do…? Oh, I just hypnotized him," said Carassiso. "It just made him, uh, compliant, let's say. Don't worry, it will wear off in a few hours."

"Can you make it permanent?"

"Zoe!" Leo snapped.

"What?" Zoe glared up at her older brother. "Like you weren't thinking it. Anyway, this is great!" She turned back to Malakar and Carassiso and began to poke and prod at them. Malakar slapped her hand away as she tugged on the hem of his robe. "I knew those horns were real. You guys are demons from another world? That's cool as hell! What are you doing on earth?"

"I don't see why it's any of your business—okay, that's enough!" Malakar shouted as Zoe pulled his hair.

"Yeah, it is enough," said Leo, pulling Zoe back to his side. "We don't care what you are, or where you came from, or why you're here. You need to get out of our house, right now. We're not helping demons."

"Well…hold on a minute," said Mary. "I don't think we should say that just yet…"

"What! Mary, you can't be serious. They turned you into a vampire! Hey, that's right." Leo turned back to Malakar. "You! Turn her back from a vampire into a human!"

"I mean, I could, but then she'd just be a corpse."

Mary wasn't listening to any of this, however.

It had been a rough couple of days for her. First of all, she had died. She remembered hearing somewhere that when you die, there's no pain, but that definitely not been the case for her. There had been pain, a great red wave of pain, and dying had been drowning in it. And then the memory of a horrible darkness, full of monstrous shapes, before she had been brought back—which was like being dragged right back through that horrible red wave and then being slapped around a bit for good measure.

And then, when she realized that she was truly undead—that this was not a video game, that in real life she no longer had a heartbeat—well, she might have freaked out a little bit. But running away from everyone had only made things worse. Alone, she had become truly aware of just how quiet things were, now. Most people didn't notice, but (usually) the interior of the human body was gushing with all sorts of juices sloshing around everywhere, keeping things lubricated and running nicely. When you were dead, there was none of that. Only a cold, black silence. And that silence wasn't merely physical, either. Mary had never considered herself very much of a religious person; she'd gone to church, she'd prayed, but never thought much of it beyond that. But now she felt that cold darkness in her body seeping its way into her soul.

Except…being around others seemed to help that. Thinking of Leo had definitely helped, which was part of the reason she'd put off talking to him for so long. She thought she might go insane if he pushed her away. But it wasn't just Leo, either: talking with Zoe, as irksome as she could be, also filled her with a warm fuzzy feeling that beat back the silence.

But most of all, surprisingly, Malakar and Carassiso made her feel alive again.

"Leo, hold on, don't kick them out," she said.

Leo, who had been slowly edging his way to the baseball bat he kept at the foot of his bed, shot her a confused glance while trying to keep an eye on the demons at the same time. "Do you think we ought to call the cops instead? Or maybe the church?"

"No! I mean…Leo, look at them. They clearly still need help, don't they? I mean, they might be demons, but they're still little kids…"

Carassiso sensed the opportunity and, never one to let a lie go unspoken, jumped in. "That's right," she said, her eyes growing very wide and brimming with tears. "We're just young demons, you see. We were attacked by the horrible angels of our world, and the only way we could escape was to run away to yours. But even here, the angels followed us, and…and…" she sniffled. "Th-they killed our families! Our, uh, whatchamacallits—our papas and mamas! They killed all of them, and now we're trapped here on your world!" She gave Malakar a kick.

"Uh, yes, yes, it was awful!" said Malakar. "And now you want to kill us as well! Oh yeah, Leo, I saw you going for the bat. Don't you fucking touch it. I mean, um, how could you be so cruel!"

"Come on, Mary, you can't believe this," said Leo.

"Yeah," said Zoe. "You'd have to be some kind of idiot, like maybe someone who believes that US senators are secret cyborg vampires or whatever."

"They're servants of the Neptunians—look, that's besides the point! Now we know they clearly can't be trusted…"

But Mary only shook her head. She didn't know why, but despite what had happened, despite what they were, or might be, she couldn't see Malakar and Carassiso as anything other than helpless children. "What do you want to do, Leo?" she asked. "If we report them to the cops, what do you think would happen? They'd probably end up dissected in some government lab."

Carassiso gave a start. "Um…you mortals do dissections, here? I would very much like to see one of these laboratories of yours."

"And the church…I mean, you saw. The cross didn't do anything. What could the church do? They'd just end up in the hands of the government eventually, anyway. And, think about it…do you really want the government figuring out how to use demonic powers…?"

"They already know how to do that." Leo frowned. "But you're right that it would probably only make things worse. But Mary, they…you said it yourself! They lied to us, they hypnotized us…and you, you're a vampire now because of them!"

It was true. And it was true too that Mary had spent the past couple of days terrified of what Malakar and Carassiso might do or say. And yet now that they were here, all she could remember is how much they had loved her brownies, how happy they'd always been to see her (and her brownies), and how sad they'd been to see her go (and she was unable to promise them more brownies as quickly as they would like). She really had begun to think of them as a little brother and sister, and damn it, just because they were demons there was no reason for that to change.

"Maybe they did do that," she said carefully, "But…look, it wasn't like it was Malakar's fault that I died, was it? That angel lady killed me. And he brought me back! I mean, it's better than just being dead, isn't it? Besides, they're adorable. Anything that cute can't be all bad."

Mutely, Leo pointed to his little sister.

"Hey," said Zoe.

"That's just my point! Sure, Zoe can be an annoying little monster sometimes—"

"Hey," said Zoe, a little louder.

"But that doesn't mean you just condemn her to death!" Mary got up from the bed and knelt by the two demon children. They seemed a little alarmed when she wrapped her arms around the, but soon enough they recognized that she was simply pulling them into a hug. "We gotta teach them right from wrong, that's all. And besides, they still need protecting, right? From the angels."

Malakar, who knew that undead thralldom could have strange effects on a mortal's psyche, grinned at Leo.

"Seems to me that they have all the protecting they need," Leo muttered. "I mean, you saw…they know all kinds of magic."

"It does not work that way," said Carassiso. "Our magical powers…well…suffice to say, it is complicated."

"Oh, come on, Leo!" Zoe shouted. "I want to play with the demons. Don't sell them out to the government, you cuck."

Leo stared at Mary for a long moment, then his sister, then the demons, then Mary again. She looked up at him with a hopeful smile that he found just a little bit unsettling. "Oh, fine," he said, throwing up his hands. "We'll help you still, I guess. But we need to get a few things straight first—"

"Well, I'm glad that's all settled!" Malakar interrupted. And he really was glad; he had wanted to obtain Mary, at least, connected as she was to the unsealing of his powers. Leo and the Zoe, he had been prepared to kill, but it would be good to have them along as well, he supposed. "Now, the first thing we need to do is—wait. What is that?!"

He pointed to the television. It had been playing in the background this whole time, with the volume turned down. On the screen was a terrible beast with a long snout full of slavering fangs, bloody, grasping claws, and a mane of bright red hair. It wore robes with vile runes woven into them with golden thread, and enormous golden horns swept back from the top of its skull.

"By the Abyss!" said Malakar. "It's me!"

 

[CCClover]

36. Rising Suspicions

​

"Good evening, everyone. I'm Jen Hallerson, reporting for gameMonger.com. GameMonger: Because why listen to the opinions of random lunatics on youtube when you can pay for the privilege of hearing ours? I'm here with Mike Shen, lead developer on the new Dark Fantasy RPG, Occultum Infernalis. That nasty guy we just had up on screen was one of the game's villains, Malakar the Irredeemable—Mike, do you want to tell us a bit more about him, and the game you're working on?"

"Hi Jen. Well, I don't want to give away any spoilers, so ah, I will just say, he's just one of the many enemies in the game. The setting is a world that has had this war between heaven and hell for thousands of years, so there's uh, a sort of obvious path to take, but we really wanted freedom in this setting. I mean we're really working on everything—we want combat to be fun, of course, and exploration, but we really focused on, ah, trying to write out a lot of different scenarios for how things could go based on the player's actions."

"Aha! So are you saying he could be foe…or maybe friend?"

"Ah, um, no spoilers. But I will say that, ah, it's a game that's really based around choice."

"Wow. Sounds very original and inspired. Truly haven't heard anything like that before."

"Um, it's, um, it t-takes a lot of inspiration from games like Elder Scrolls, with a little bit of flavor from Diablo, and BladeKing, of course, b-but we really hope that we're making something special…"

"Uh huh. Speaking of BladeKing, this must be a real opportunity for you guys, right? For anyone who has been living under a rock, one of the biggest stories in gaming recently has been how BladeKing, one of the biggest titles in the RPG market, has apparently been hacked! The game has been bugged for weeks, with the devs totally unable to get it under control. And last night, things got even worse! It doesn't matter whether players are starting a new game or loading from a save, they find that the world is locked in its 'bad ending' apocalyptic state, except with lots of weird messages and other spooky stuff going on, like the 'ghosts' of some characters screaming for mercy, which the devs insisted they never added in. These hackers, whoever they are, also struck the game Larry the Lizard, with similar strange results. That particular hack caused a lot of controversy; the game is aimed more at children, and some of the imagery the hack displayed was quite horrific! Anyway, Mike, you must be glad. It's a real opportunity for your game to suck up some of BladeKing's player base. Maybe you're the hackers, haha!"

"U-um, aha, no, of course not. We're very sad to hear about these sorts of hacks…lots of people put a lot of work into their games, ahaha…anyway, we're not scheduled for release any time soon. Certainly by the time we do, whatever issues BladeKing has been facing will be resolved."

"Oh, sure. My mistake, I didn't mean to suggest that you might have the balls to do something like that. It is true, though, that the BladeKing devs are really soldiering through. If you want to take a look: behind us here is the MetroX building. The bottom five floors are setting up and getting ready, because in the next few days gamers from all over the country will converge on this spot for DreamCon, the largest fan convention for anime, games, and all sorts of other weird nerdy shit like that. Expect to see plenty of cosplay and social awkwardness and for traffic to be just wretched. Thanks, DreamCon! Anyway, the devs of Larry the Lizard had initially planned to attend to debut a demo of their newest mindless kiddie game, but they cancelled at the last moment, citing the recent hacking as an emergency. The team behind BladeKing stuck to their guns, though. So, if you want to know why your game isn't working, it's because the devs are here getting plastered! Mike, you're here for the convention too, aren't you?"

"Th-that's right. We'll have a booth and a playable demo. We really owe a lot to our backers who have supported us all throughout the development, so if you donated on our patreon at more than the fifty dollar level, you can come by the booth with proof to get an exclusive figurine of Carassiso, the spider-witch, or Uriel, High Seraphim and—"

"Yeah, that's great, Mike. Anyway, this is Jen with GameMonger. I'm here for the convention too, so you'll see me reporting here over the next few days. Thanks for paying for my plane tickets, GameMonger! But you should have approved my alcohol budget. Ol' Jen here might just lose it without some martinis to tide her through."



Leo raised the remote and turned the television off.

"That's what we must do!" Malakar cried. "We must go to this…convention! I must know how this Mike Shen has knowledge of our world! Perhaps it might even serve as a connection!"

"A connection? What do you mean by that?" asked Zoe.

"Oh, yes. Well…look, it's very much all beyond your puny mortal comprehension. But these video games of yours, some of them anyway, are connections to other worlds. So it might be that if he is making a game about our world, then it might have a connection to it, as well…"

A twisty, uneasy feeling had settled into Leo's stomach. Once, when he was younger, he had accidentally left the oven on all day, only to somehow remember right as he was headed back. He had spent that whole walk home dreading that he'd burnt down the apartment. He felt a little bit like that now, only worse. Like he knew that he'd set a fire, and was now just waiting to find out how many people were dead. "Connections to other worlds? Like…you mean, letting you travel there? So when we were playing NeuroWave…"

"I don't know what this NeuroWave you keep babbling about is," said Malakar. "Everything you saw was the product of my magic. I tore a hole between the worlds! It is how I came to this one, after all."

"So those were worlds. Real worlds. With real people."

"Do you have biscuits in your ears, Larry? What did I just say?"

Leo thought back to the amount of death and destruction he had been responsible for in the few gaming sessions he'd had with Malakar and Carassiso. "Oh, dear," he said, sitting down heavily onto his bed. "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear." He glanced to Mary, who even for a vampire had now gone quite pale. Her hands were shaking.

"It's okay," she said. "I…well, it's up to us to teach them right from wrong. They're children. They don't know any better."

"Children? Did you see that picture they showed of Malakar? He was some sort of…dog-lion monster thing. With horns."

"We don't know what demon children look like," Mary said defensively. "Besides, I still thought he looked pretty cute. Like a big puppy."

"A puppy," said Leo, feeling a bit sick. "Sure."

"I don't get it." Zoe frowned from atop the computer chair, her arms crossed. "Are you saying that video games are all based off some real world out there…?" Her eyes lit up. "If I loaded my save on Warlords of Conquest, could you make a portal there and let me march my armies out into the real world?"

"It does not quite work like that," Carassiso answered. "It is more like the games are some reflection of these other worlds, and not all of them seem to be."

"But what does that mean? Are game devs in contact with other worlds or something?" asked Mary.

"I would very much like to find out," said Carassiso quietly.

"And we can!" said Malakar. "This Mike Shen will clearly know what is happening. And there will be other creators of other games at this 'convention' as well. The drunk lady said so. We will wrest the secrets of the planes from them, and turn them against our enemies!"

"The cops are here," Zoe said idly.

"What?!" Leo crowded next to the window his little sister was peering out of, soon joined by everyone else. Malakar and Carassiso pushed each other out of the way to peek outside.

There, in the little island of light beneath a streetlamp, a cop car had pulled up next to a van. Hal's van, who had given Malakar and Carassiso a ride here. One officer stood at the window to the van, while Hal sneered contemptuously down at him. And the other stood staring directly at the apartment.

Mary yelped and backed off from the window. "That's officer Denton!" she said. "Sasha's dad! Leo, get your face out of the window before he sees you!"

"Do you know this 'officer Denton'?" asked Malakar.

"I do. You do, too, actually. The day we first met, in Burger King—"

"The day you betrayed me."

"—he was the officer that picked you up. He's been asking about you guys since then, too."

"Ah," said Malakar. "Well, this seems like a prime opportunity to kill him."

"No!" Shouted Mary and Leo.

"Cool," said Zoe.

"As ever, you are too singular-minded for such matters," said Carassiso. "Killing such an officer would only bring more down upon our heads. And each of them has guns. You do remember guns, don't you?"

"Of course I remember guns," Malakar muttered. "I also remember he'd be dead already if you hadn't spoiled my fun."

Leo risked a glance out the window. "Oh crap, he's coming up the driveway!"

They all held their breath as the sound of a knock on the door came from downstairs. Leo fervently prayed that his father was passed out.

"Whoiizit?"

"It's the police, Mr. Caruso. Officer Denton, if you remember me. Your son Leo invited my daughter to the flower dance last year, I believe."

"You did what?" Mary whispered furiously.

"You were on vacation down in Georgia," Leo told her. "Now hush!"

"I dunno anything 'bout a flower dance," said Mr. Caruso, tragically conscious. "Whatchoo want?"

"May I come in, Mr. Caruso?"

Leo thought his father really must be very drunk, because rather than telling the cop to fuck off, he said "Sure! C'mon in, can't stay out in the rain!"

The front door swung open. "It is, in fact, not raining, Mr. Caruso. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, just very drunk."

"I see. Well, Mr. Caruso, I will cut to the chase. I am here because I am investigating a missing person case. Missing persons, in fact. Children. Two of them."

"Damn shame…but you know what I bet it is? Senator Cornwallis, you ought to be checking out his mansion, but I know you won't do that. I know. You're on the take."

"I won't be checking out Senator Cornwallis' mansion because he is the senator of Colorado, Mr. Caruso."

"Uh huh."

"And this is New York."

"That's what they want you to think."

"Anyway. I actually have very good reason to believe that these children have remained local. Do you mind taking a look at this picture, Mr. Caruso? We got it from the footage of a hotel lobby camera, so it's a little blurry, but I think their features are clear enough. They're very distinctive."

"Lemme see that." There was a moment of silence, and then Leo's heart dropped into his stomach as he heard his father say, "Oh yeah, I recognize them! They just came over to play with my Zoe. HEY, ZOE! WHERE'RE YOUR FRIENDS?!"

"Shit," said Leo. "Oh, shit, shit shit. What do we do?" For lack of any better options, he closed the door and locked it.

"Well, I'm not staying here," said Malakar. He jumped in a futile effort to open the window, then crossed his arms and said, "Minion! Open our escape!"

Mary opened the window for him, and quickly Malakar and Carassiso clambered over the ledge and out onto the fire escape. Mary began to follow them. "Wait, you're going with them?" Leo asked.

"I…" Mary paused, one leg already over the ledge. "Well…yeah. I am. I think I should, don't you? I mean, they need someone to watch after them…"

"If you're going, I'm going," said Leo.

"Oh, what, you're going to leave me here alone to deal with the fuzz?" Zoe snapped. "I don't think so. You guys are gonna go to that convention, and I want to come too."

"Zoe, you can't," Leo said gently, and immediately realized he had made a mistake when his little sister's eyes widened. Gentle tones of voice when she was trying to get her way tended to make her ballistic. "Uh, I mean—look, we need someone here to throw him off our track. I mean, what is he gonna do, arrest you? You're eight."

"Are you telling me to lie to a cop?"

"Yes."

"Sick." Zoe clapped her hands. "Alright, fine, I'll do it. But you better take me to that convention and let me hang out with Malakar and Carassiso."

"I feel like I ought to get a say in this," said Malakar.

"And I mean it, Leo," Zoe went on. "If you don't I'll set your bed on fire. Then I'll make an AI video of you doing it and show it to dad. You know he's too old to tell the difference."

"ZOE!" their father bellowed from downstairs. "HEY! WHY AREN'T YOU ANSWERING ME? ARE YOU DEAD?!"

"If you don't mind, Mr. Caruso, I'll go check on her myself."

A set of heavy footsteps began ascending the stairs. Mary quickly scooted out the window, with Leo quickly following behind. They edged along the fire escape with their backs to the brick wall, and froze when they heard officer Denton's voice, now much closer.

"Ah, hello. You must be Zoe. I'm officer Denton. Why weren't you answering when your father called?"

"I was sleeping, pig. What's it to you?"

"I, uh…your father said you had some friends over. Where are they?"

"And you believed him? Couldn't you tell he was drunk? What a shocker: a dumb cop. It's my bedtime, I didn't have any friends over. How about you back the hell out of my room! In fact, what are you doing upstairs at all? Do you have a warrant? AM I BEING DETAINED? AM I BEING DETAINED?"

"No, you're not—please stop pushing me—"

"STOP LOOKING IN MY ROOM! Am I under arrest? What are the charges? Enjoying my sleep? My satisfying bedtime sleep?"

The sounds of their arguing faded as Zoe bullied the cop away from the room. Leo breathed a sigh of relief. They quickly scuttled down the rusty, creaking fire escape, clambered down the ladder, and dropped into the alleyway next to his apartment building.

"It'll be all right," Mary whispered to him.

"Eh?"

"You look…unwell," said Mary. "I'm just saying, I think it's going to work out fine. I just know it." Her hand found his and squeezed.

Leo looked into her pale face, her crimson-stained eyes. "Yeah," he said. "Sure."

Then, with one last look at the light coming from his bedroom window, he followed Malakar and Carassiso into the dark.

 

[CCClover]

37. Archangel's Ambition

​

Trias sat in a darkened room that smelled of decades and decades of smoke, the wall stained brown by generations of cigarettes. The armchair he sat in reeked of smoke, too, and the surface of the coffee table was streaked with tar. He sat with his boots up, flipping through the pages of a magazine.

They were very nice boots, he reflected. He knew little about the mortals of this world or their customs, and all their clothing seemed strange, but one had told him that he was dressed like a gym rat. So Trias had asked his new friends to bring him the dress of a warrior, and they had returned with some very strange clothing indeed. Simple peasant stuff in splotchy browns and greens that made him look as though he were a shrubbery. Camo, they called it. Completely bizarre, really. But the boots and the hat—the beret, they called it—those, he did like. Teralel was right; the mortals of this world weren't all bad.

As he was reflecting on this an immense pressure filled his head and he dropped the magazine. Rainbow light flooded his thoughts; so solid it felt as though it were almost pushing his eyes out of their sockets. After a moment, it waned, and a familiar voice filled his skull. Trias did not panic. He had been waiting for this.

Trias! Finally, I have managed to establish contact with you.

Hello, Uriel, Trias answered in his head.

I apologize if it was painful, said the Seraphim. There was some strange blockage preventing me from speaking with you. Something clouded your thoughts. There is…something wrong, here.

There are many things wrong here, answered Trias.

Yes. There is much to talk about. First, I think we might address how it is that you managed to travel to this world, said Uriel.

I don't remember.

There was a heavy pause in that swirling core of rainbow light.

You don't remember.

No.

I have spoken to Teralel. She says that you told her that I was the one who sent you there. You lied to her.

Yes, said Trias. You're welcome. Or would you like her to know the truth? That you were willing to sacrifice her out of sheer cowardice?

The light in his head swirled and churned at that. Trias would have liked to think that the Seraphim was taken aback. Teralel is a soldier, said Uriel. She would have understood. I would have no qualms about being honest with her.

Clearly a lie, said Trias. You lied to her before, and you're lying to me now.

No. Trias, what troubles your heart? Why do you fling these accusations at me?

You're not going to admit it? Trias shook his head. That old rage was rising again. And it felt so different when you were in a human body. So much more impactful. His blood burned, and his spleen hammered in his chest. Or maybe it was the heart that hammered? He wasn't sure.

There is nothing to admit. Trias, you must tell me how you—

You LIED! The thought was like a roar echoing through his mind. You lied about this world! There is mana here, power aplenty!

Trias raised his hand and a ball of boiling light appeared floating above it. He sent it flying towards the wall, where it vanished with a small explosion, gouging a crater in the plaster there. A trifle, barely taxing the reserves of mana he had. A gift from his new friends.

There are angels in this world, Uriel, and a Heaven too. True enough, it is foreign…there is this God they keep going on about, and his son Christ… Trias waved his hand at a cross on the wall. He wasn't sure what that was about. But while I have not yet found any angels of this world to serve as allies, their mortal followers will do. Their faith burns in their hearts, and they overflow with mana!

You are drawing mana from the faith of others? From mortals? There was real alarm in the Seraphim's voice, so much so that Trias was suddenly alarmed himself. He had never heard Uriel sound like that, not in the darkest days of the war. This is an evil thing, Trias. You must stop.

Panic burned away to resentment. Why should I stop? With this power, stopping Malakar and Carassiso will be simplicity itself. Part of their power must remain locked away; your seal must still be doing some good. If you had told us about this, Teralel could have used this power. She never would have been hurt! Why, why would you lie to us?

I did not lie to you! I did not know! Have you told Teralel of this?

No. Trias had been back to see her, but she'd been sleeping, or perhaps unconscious from her injuries. He'd considered attempting to heal her, but he was unfamiliar with how mortal bodies worked. In the end, he'd settled for paying protective wards over her room to protect her from any demonic incursion.

Good. You must not tell her of this.

I will not uphold your lie, Uriel.

Trias, what you are doing is sinful, can you not see that? Think about it. Why do you suppose Teralel herself did not use it? She would have sensed it, wouldn't she? But she is pure of heart, and blind to it. As I am. As you ought to be. That faith you take is not meant for you; it is not yours to burn up as you see fit. And besides that, it is dangerous. We do not draw power from the mortals of our world. Even I do not know what precisely it is you are doing.

Now, Trias was amused by the panic in the Seraphim's voice. That was what it all boiled down to, wasn't it? Always, always the condesenscion…and now Trias had achieved something even the Seraphim hadn't, and Uriel was afraid of him. Well, that was all right. He'd do something else the Seraphim hadn't managed to do, either.

I am going to correct your failure, said Trias. I will eliminate Malakar and Carassiso. And when I'm done, when I return, I have complaints I would like to register with the Seraphic Council. That is, if I return. Perhaps I will stay here, and join the angels of this world. Their leadership cannot be any worse than yours.

Infuriatingly, Uriel did not respond with anger, or rage, or even hurt. No, there was nothing but sadness in his voice.

You are unwell, Trias. Please come back to us.

With a growl, Trias attempted to force the Seraphim from his mind. To his shock, it worked. He didn't know he was able to do that.

He raised his head and blinked in surprise. At some point during his conversation with Uriel, his new friends had come in. A handful of silver-haired, overweight, knobbly-looking men, each of them wearing tattered imitations of the same blotchy 'camo' he wore, and each with a lumpy beret. "How long have you been there?" he asked.

One member of the group stepped forward. Shorter than the most, and somewhat younger, too, with ears that stuck out from the side of his head like a pair of batwings and a nose that could have doubled as the prow of a boat. Trias knew this one well. This was Ray Mendez, the man he'd first spotted preaching on the streets, proclaiming to a crowd of onlookers that their city was overrun by demons and filth; the man from which Trias had first felt exuding the burning bounty of mana.

"A while back, your Grace," said Ray. "You seemed to be in some sort of trance. We thought it best not to disturb you." He glanced nervously at the hole in the wall.

Trias nodded. "It was good that you did not. I was in communion with another angel." Ray's eyes widened, and behind him his friends shared a chorus of awed whispers.

It had not taken much to become very good friends with Ray, not at all. Just a few demonstrations of angelic magic, and Ray was sold. The rest of the crowd seemed to think it was all some sort of magic trick, but Ray had quickly invited Trias back to his house. When Trias spoke to him of the demon lords hiding in his city, Ray had been very receptive and nodded along. And why shouldn't he? He thought Trias was a representative of Heaven. Which he was, just not the one Ray was used to. It wasn't very long before Ray had introduced Trias to his group of faithful friends who were all very, very enthusiastic about purging the demons from the city.

"Do you have any orders for us, your Grace?" Ray asked. "Have you found the demon lords troubling us?"

"It's Senator Cornwallis, isn't it," added another.

"I have told you before, their names are Malakar and Carassiso," Trias corrected him. "And as a matter of fact, I do have an idea of where they might be."

He picked up the magazine he had been reading and flipped through the pages. "There," he said, holding it up. "There is my quarry. This is Malakar."

Ray squinted at the magazine. "But, uh, your Lordship, that's from a video game. Ain't even out yet, it says."

"Video game," Trias mused. "I know not what this is. But I tell you, this is a demon lord, as real and as true as there has ever been. You had best not doubt, for a second's hesitation and he will cast your soul to ruin."

A concerned murmur ran through the group. "I always knew video games were the stuff of Hell," muttered Ray. "What can that mean? Are the people making it in league with the demons?"

"They may very well be," said Trias. "I can only guess at their plans. But there is an upcoming festival where the makers of this video game are gathering together with many of their fellows."

"DreamCon!" Ray muttered. "Of course! That den of degeneracy. Every year the people there with their anime and their comics and the women with the revealing outfits—of course the demons would be there! Why didn't I think of it?"

"Well, worry not," Trias declared. "For this year, we will be going to this DreamCon. And I can promise you this: any demons we find will rue the day they crawled out of the abyss."

As he spoke, Trias drew upon his mana, and a vision of brilliant angelic wings spread out from his shoulders. The assembled men broke into wild cheers. Trias smiled. They were so easy to please.

"Yeah!" Ray shouted. "Let's purge the demons!"

"And the Neptunians!" cried another.

"And the jews!" shouted a third.

"Sure," said Trias, barely hearing them. He was focused on what was to come. He would avenge Teralel, and soon, very soon, he'd be the only Archangel to have ever killed not one, but two demon lords.

 

[CCClover]

38. Welcome to the Convention

​

"How are you, Mary?" Malakar asked. "Are you comfortable? Are the pillows to your liking? Would you like some more leg room?"

All of them—Malakar, Carassiso, Mary, Leo, and even Zoe, who had snuck away from her home and bombarded Leo with calls of an increasingly threatening nature she was picked up—were piled into the back of Hal's van. This was a bit of an ordeal, seeing as how the seats had been removed long ago and replaced with piles of ancient, disassembled electronics. Really, it was a miracle that five people had fit back there, achieved primarily by Malakar's cavalier attitude as to whether anyone else got a chip board embedded in their liver.

Well, anyone else but Mary, that was. Mary sat upon a veritable throne of pillows. Malakar was quite intent on treating Mary as well as he could possibly stand. If acts of kindness towards random hobos had not worked, he reasoned, maybe it was treating Mary well, specifically, that had broken Uriel's seal.

After they had run away from Leo's house last night, they'd eventually met up with Hal, who had brought them to a dingy motel; the sort of motel that didn't ask questions about why an elderly gentleman in a dingy van was checking in two teenagers and two children who were being looked for by the cops. Malakar had been fastidious in ensuring Mary got the bed with the least amount of bugs and catering to her every comfort. He'd also stolen some pillows so that she'd have something to sit on when Hal came by to drop them off at DreamCon today.

"Really, I'm fine, I'm fine, thank you," Mary told him for the dozenth time. "Only, I, uh…"

"What is it? Out with it, thrall!" Malakar shouted. "I mean…I just…uh…want to see you…ugh…happy."

"Well, it's just that I haven't…eaten, ever since becoming a…well, you know," said Mary. "And I'm starting to feel a bit peckish."

"Sure. Have a bite of him," said Malakar, pointing to Leo.

"Uh, please don't."

"Shut up, Larry."

"Yeah, shut up, Larry," said Zoe. "If Mary's going to bite anyone, it should be me. I want to be a vampire!"

"I'm not biting anyone!" said Mary. "I don't want to turn anyone here into a vampire!"

Carassiso snorted and stole one of Mary's pillows for herself. As time had gone on with no results, she had become more and more skeptical of Malakar's theory, and so felt very little need to play nice. "Well, you're going to need to do it eventually. And you won't necessarily turn them into a vampire. The way it works is that if you drink only some of their blood, the remaining blood will be infected, and that is what will reconstitute them as a vampire. However, if you drink all their blood, they'll have nothing remaining to infect. Then they'll just be dead."

"Yeah, so come on Larry," said Malakar. "Aren't you ready to make the ultimate sacrifice for Mary? Why are you being so selfish, you worthless pile of dung? Why can't you be kinder and more giving, like me?" He raised his eyes to the sky. "DO YOU HEAR THAT? DO YOU HEAR HOW CHARITABLE I AM, OFFERING ONE OF MY PRIZED SERVANTS AS A MEAL?"

Larry fended off the kick Malakar aimed at his ribs. "Now hold on. Couldn't I just bleed without being bit? Like cut myself—"

"Emo," Zoe snickered.

"—and pour it into a cup or something? That way she can get some without the risk of infecting me?"

Malakar and Carassiso rolled their eyes at each other. "Oh, you would want to just drink it from a cup, rather than fresh from a victim, wouldn't you?" Carassiso sneered. "Philistine."

"I'm not drinking anyone's blood here!" Mary insisted. "Look, should we be talking about all this out loud? I mean…" She nodded towards Hal.

"Oh, Hal doesn't mind," said Carassiso. "He knows how to be discreet. Don't you, Hal?"

Hal, who had his laptop open in the passenger seat, with his AI violet busily assessing the worth of the fist-sized ruby that Carassiso had given him, nodded happily. "Oh, you kids," he said vaguely. "Why, when I was your age, and such." Hal left that thought unfinished; when he was Mary and Leo's age, he was on the run, wanted for a double murder in Fayetteville, North Carolina. "All right, here we are!"

The van rolled to a stop, and everyone crowded around the windows. Outside loomed the MetroX convention center. It was one of those newer New York skyscrapers that looked like it had been made in some gigantic glass-blowing furnace rather than built; the sort whose lower levels were open to the public and consisted of wide open auditoriums and shops and eateries, and whose upper hundred floors were consigned to some mysterious 'offices' whose inhabitants were never seen, as though they were full of dark matter.

Filtering into the center were various streams of nerdery of all imaginable stripes. There were cosplayers whose outfits ranged from simple and home-sewn, to professional ones that must have cost thousands, some of which were risque enough that Malakar thought they could have given the harems of the Black Palace a run for their money. Many of those not in cosplay were carrying around laptops or carriers full of miniatures. There were also a lot of befuddled dentists. As it turned out, DreamCon had been scheduled as the same time as the annual Molar Expo, and they were obliged to share auditoriums. There were an awful lot of dentists learning about the virtues of anime, and an awful lot of nerds being lectured on the importance of flossing.

Mary turned to Malakar and Carassiso. "See? I told you that you wouldn't stick out." She plucked at her own dress of frilly red-and-black lace; she'd had Hal stop back at her home so she could sneak in and grab one of her old cosplay outfits from a couple years back. She might be a vampire, but as long as she was going to DreamCon she could have some fun. It wasn't really a vampire costume; it was an outfit based off a character from NeoMagi Utopia, about a band of pop-punk witches, but it was good enough. Plus, it came with an umbrella to shield her from the sun.

"Apparently," Malakar muttered, staring at the crowds. "Well, good. This illusion itches, anyway."

Carassiso waved her hand, and their horns, previously hidden, became visible once more. It also revealed that one of Malakar's much larger, golden horns was mere centimeters from taking out Leo's right eye.

They piled out of the van, Mary careful to keep herself hidden in the shadow of her umbrella. "Alright, you kids have fun now," Hal said. "You just give old uncle Hal a call when you need to be picked up."

"Uncle who?" said Leo.

"You're not our uncle," said Zoe. "Ew."

Hal peeled off. They barely had time to gather themselves when a woman holding a microphone and wearing a large blue wig, a bikini, some plastic devil horns and not much else rushed up to them with a buzzing camera-drone in tow.

"Hello!" she cried into the mic with the sort of exuberance that can only come after a bout of heavy drinking. "This is Jen Hallerson, reporting live from DreamCon for gameMonger.com. As you can see, I'm out here in my cosplay as Jezebel, the titular Kiss Devil from the new hit anime KISS DEVIL DARE!"

"Isn't that a porn?" said Leo. "Uh, not that I would know."

"Maybe!" Jen shouted, still smiling into the camera. "Is this doing it for you, nerds? Will you watch my fucking show now? As you can see, guests have begun to arrive, and pretty soon the MetroX center will be absolutely packed! Anyway, let's hear from some of the attendees, and hear the word on the street! You there, little girl, you look adorable! Who are you dressed up as?"

Carassiso blinked at the microphone shoved into her face. "Your soul is rotting," she said slowly. "I can smell your death approaching, and it will be wretched."

"Great! Fantastic stuff!" said Jen Hallerson. "And what about you, little boy?"

"I am Malakar the Irredeemable!" Malakar cast his hands outward, his robe and long hair fluttering in the wind. "Mike Shen, I call you out! I am coming for you! Pray that you have the answers I seek, or your suffering will be the stuff of legend!"

Zoe grabbed the microphone before it could be pulled away. "I'm calling out all Warlords of Conquest players who are here for the tournament! My name is Zoe Caruso and I am going to murder your nerd asses (in the game). I am going to literally kill you in real life! (in the game). I'm the only one going home with the grand prize money! So don't even bother coming if you aren't ready to be actually, for-real dismembered limb from limb by a little girl! (in the game)."

Malakar nodded approvingly. "Very good, for a mortal. It is essential to every strategy to terrorize your opponents before a battle."

Soon they were swept away by the press of the incoming crowd. Only a few moments later, yet another dingy van pulled up. Jen Hallerson watched in alarm as multiple camouflaged men poured out of the back. She held out the microphone tentatively. "Uh, well, hey there, you guys. What are you dressed up as?"

"We're not dressed up as nothin'!" Ray Mendez shouted. "We're here to protest the degeneracy and sinfulness of this whole filthy gathering! Look at yourself, young lady. Would your mother be proud of you, dressed up like that?"

Jen bristled. "Young lady? I'm twenty six. And I think she sure as hell will be proud of my view count!"

Another camouflage-clad man—this one much younger and more well-muscled than the rest, with a very intense gaze—pushed his way through. "Stand aside, Ray," he commanded, in a low, even voice. Then he gestured towards the camera. "My apologies, miss. Am I to take it that this is some sort of, uh, broadcast equipment? For the widespread delivery of messages?"

"Uh, yeah, sure—"

"Then heed my words!" Trias flexed, and as he did so, wings of brilliant light sprouted from his shoulders. "I am a representative of heaven!" he cried. "And I have come to tell you that your festival has been infiltrated by demonic forces. The most dangerous demons you have ever likely faced: Malakar the Irredeemable and Carassiso the Damned. I can sense their wicked presence. All mortals should evacuate, or, if you are willing, stand ready to take up arms against the menace!"

His wings flared with holy power, then slowly faded. The crowd that had gathered nearby for his little speech clapped politely.

"Now, folks, that is one hell of a costume!" Jen said to the camera-drone. "But that's just how it's going to be here, for the next few days at least! The pageantry! The passion! The attendees steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the hygiene guidelines! All this and more—at DreamCon!"

She lowered her microphone and motioned for the camera-drone to cut the feed. Eagerly, she turned around, but the camouflage angel had already moved off with his little group.

"Aw, I was going to ask him for his number," she sulked. "Am I still pretty?"

"I think so," said her camera-drone.



Trias breathed in deep as he let himself be swept along by the crowd. Malakar and Carassiso were absolutely here. He could sense their corruption, like a thick, oozing tar clinging to everything they touched. But, in a way, that presented a problem; for it did actually cling to the humans, and there were so many that it made it difficult to actually pinpoint the source.

"If only there were not so many mortals here," he growled.

At his side, Ray Mendez gave a nasty little chuckle. "Don't you worry, your Grace. They'll clear out once we start shooting."

Trias paused and glanced at the man. "Shooting?"

"Well, yeah." Furtively, Ray showed the handgun he had kept tucked in his pocket. "We'll set up at the exits, so none of these freaks can escape, and then—"

"Oh, no. No no no no no." Trias knew little enough about this world, but he knew from Teralel what a gun was for. "There's not going to be any shooting. When did you plan this?"

"Well, the whole time, wasn't it?" said Ray. "I mean, we're here to purge the demons."

"And the Neptunians."

"And the jews!"

"No," said Trias. "Listen very closely. There are two very specific demons I am here to kill. You are not to be going around shooting random people, do you understand?"

"They're all demons," Ray said stubbornly. "I thought that was the point. I mean, even if they're not, they're associating with the ones you want to kill, aren't they? I mean, look at these people! What more do they deserve?"

Trias was about to answer, when to his surprise a bolt of hate for all these mortals surged through him. Normally, he really didn't think of mortals very much at all, other than as vaguely dim creatures that needed to be protected, a little bit like some slightly bothersome pets. But now? He looked around at these humans, many of them dressed like demons themselves, and he seethed.

Was this what he had fought for? So mortals could dress up in mockery of the long ages of heaven's sacrifice? These wretched, fat, piddling sinners, this mob of human filth and whores…?

Trias shook his head and blinked. Where did those strange thoughts come from? Slowly, the rage he had felt faded from his heart, though a faint echo of it remained, clinging to his vision of the mortals much like the demonic corruption did.

"There will be absolutely no shooting," he told Ray. "None at all. I command it. As a matter of fact, why don't you just let me handle the hunt?"

Taking a deep breath, Trias drew in as much mana as he could from the men before him, until it filled him to the very brim. His senses grew sharper, and the smells and sounds of the convention center were much more clear. So much power! And yet another lance of that strange hate went roiling through him once more, clouding the joy of the divine magic at his fingertips.

"You just…remain nearby," he told them. He doubted he'd need more, but it would be wise to keep these mana batteries somewhere where he could access them. "Enjoy the festival. If you spot anything strange, come fetch me, and heed my call if I should summon you."

And with that, he left. The men watched him go, deflated. "Aw, but I was really looking forward to the purge," said the one that kept bringing up the Neptunians. "What are we gonna do now?"

Ray Mendez watched as Trias weaved his way through the crowd. Then he turned to his men.

"Well, boys," he said, "you heard his Grace. No shooting." He waited for a moment as the men sulked and sagged. "But…you know," he added, with a sly grin, "I didn't hear him say that we couldn't use the bombs."

 

[CCClover]

39. Annnnd They're Gone
​

DreamCon.

There it stood the heart of the MetroX center, where all the tides of oddly-dressed humanity were drawn. Like a vortex it pulled them in, sifting the strangest out of the already strange population of New York City, and beyond as well: from across the world planes arrived to deliver their cargo to this gathering of disguises and drones and robots and blinking electronic lights.

DreamCon was a relatively recent phenomenon. It had, at first, been nothing more than a small annual gathering of fans from the waning days of when the market was still dominated by the three big consoles, with the unwieldy name of 'The New York City and Greater Metropolitan Area Annual Video Game and Digital Entertainment Expo'. But its founders had been prescient and foreseen the coming technological changes, that the video games industry would have to soon come to terms with the fact that people were simply tired of staring at screens, that more immersive experiences were quickly becoming possible, and more importantly, affordable.

So they had wisely identified those virtual reality startups, robotics companies, and neural interface companies that they thought were most likely to be successful, and through some miracle of persuasion convinced them that the best way to get a skeptical market to buy into their new tech was to really put on a show. The executives of these various technology companies were skeptical at first, until it occurred to them that these people were fans willing to spend inordinate amounts of their disposable income on anything slightly related to franchises they loved.

So it was that DreamCon was born, a carnival of the high technological achievements of human civilization, all wrapped in the veneer of colorful fantasy.

Getting past the entrance might have been a problem for anyone else who hadn't bought tickets, but a little whispered magic and the guards ushered them in, slack-jawed. Once inside, Malakar and Carassiso were boggled by what they saw. Within the MetroX center, hordes of holograms flickered in and out among the crowds, the vast majority of them projections of cute anime girls. Robots of various shapes and sizes were there too: one with fifty limbs manned the grills of a burger restaurant while simultaneously ringing up customers, while tiny little vacuum-drones zoomed about underfoot. Complicated AIs with brains the size of Manhattan devoted a portion of their compute to summoning cutesy avatars to greet attendees as they walked in, morphing seamlessly from buxom elvish queens to soaring eagles to snakes with scales of glittering gold.

"How!" Malakar shouted as a wide-eyed girl with ankle-length blue hair blinked into existence, told them 'Welcome to DreamCon!', blew them a kiss and then disappeared. "How is all this done with no magic?! What trickery have you humans pulled to achieve such things? Metal monstrousities! Summoning ghosts! You expect me to believe you know nothing of the arcane?! Speak!"

He addressed this last command to Mary and Leo, but all they could do was shrug.

"Jeez, if you want to know how this stuff works, ask an AI or something," said Zoe. "I bet they'd want to know how actual magic works too. Anyway, I've got to go get ready for the tournament."

"Wait!" Leo called after her as she began scampering off. "We really should stick together."

Zoe turned and pointed to Malakar and Carassiso, who were busily scampering off in the opposite direction. Then she shrugged and disappeared into the crowd.

Making the snap judgment that two literal demons on the loose could probably cause marginally more damage than Zoe, Leo sighed and took off after them, with Mary following close behind.

They caught up with Malakar and Carassiso harassing a stand selling fudge, run by a robot spider wearing the face of a cute anime girl. Leo took out his wallet and bought two pounds of fudge at a price that made him feel as if he had literally been knifed in the back. He handed it to the demons who shoveled it in their mouths and immediately complained how terrible it was.

"I would have thought that such pricely and concentrated chocolate as this would have contained much more mana," Carassiso grumbled with her cheeks stuffed. "But it is vastly inferior to your brownies, Mary."

"Oh! That's so sweet of you to say!" Mary would have blushed, but being dead made that difficult.

Malakar waved a hand. "You will teach us the secrets of your brownies, thrall. And there will be other secrets to learn, as well. The more I see of this festival the more I think you have been hiding things."

Mary only giggled and, with a bit of a glazed look in her eye, said she'd love to spend some time baking with them. Leo frowned, and was about to say something, when he was interrupted by a booming voice coming over the intercom.

They stood now in a portion of the hall where a standing crowd of people had gathered around a small raised stage where two harried-looking men sat in front of their open laptops. On an enormous television screen was projected a hellish landscape.

The camera panned over a burnt forest through which a winding scar in the land had been carved. Twisted, shadowy creatures stalked between the trees, from whose branches hung countless gray corpses. It passed through the shattered remains of a town, all the buildings broken shells, the streets choked with the dead, every body twisted in agony. Leo thought that this must be a demo of some sort of post-apocalyptic game, one that was laying it on a bit thick. But then the camera zoomed past over a boulevard lined with toppled spires, and he realized that what he was looking at was BladeKing.

Only it was as he had never seen the game before. BladeKing had an endgame condition where the Silver City was destroyed, but the rest of the world remained fine. But now he saw all the lands laid to waste: Greenhollow and Brightwood and all the forests and streams and caves and mountains that he had spent so much time climbing and exploring reduced to ash.

The voice came over the intercom again. The men at the table were the hapless representatives of the BladeKing dev team, sent as sacrificial lambs to explain to the furious crowds why their favorite game was so badly borked.

"Look, we're not sure what's happening," the one on the right said, resolutely staring down at his laptop and refusing to meet the eyes of the people he was talking to. "We've tried applying a fix, but even in a completely isolated environment any changes we make to the code revert themselves almost immediately. The best guess we have is that during the hack, some hidden AI was injected that hijacks the system's resources to preserve the game as it currently is, no matter how we try to change it. We've tried countering it with an AI of our own, but we haven't had any luck. And really, that's just a theory. If there is an AI, we can't detect it using the CPU or memory in any way."

This answer did not satisfy the crowd. To be fair, any answer other than "We have fixed the game immediately, deposited a thousand dollars into your bank account and also your parents love each other again" was unlikely to satisfy them. It was that sort of crowd.

"Who could have done this?!" someone cried.

Leo did not bother to listen to the speculations—all the usual suspects: the Russians, the Chinese, the Neptunians. He knew who had done this: Malakar and Carassiso. Within the game, there was one prophecy about how the whole world could be destroyed: If the crystal dragon Lurmexia were set free, she'd wage war against her brother Xenofrax, and the resulting battle would usher in the end of Aranor…

Yet the enormity of what he was thinking suddenly hit him. How could that prophecy possibly matter? That was trivia, a bit of in-game lore just to make the stakes seem higher; something the player character was fighting to prevent. It wasn't something that could ever be achieved in the course of the game, no matter what route you went down. Regardless of your choices, the whole world would pause, and Xenofrax would wait patiently for you to come defeat him.

Yet he had seen that behind this game there was a world, a real world, where Mary had been turned into a real vampire…he glanced to Mary, who was also staring at the screen, mouth slightly open. If that world that BladeKing was a reflection of was real, how many deaths were they responsible for, by helping Malakar and Carassiso? Mary looked back at him, her lips trembling slightly; it seemed for a moment that she was about to say something.

"Mary! Oh my god, where have you been?"

For a moment, Leo thought the girl rushing over to meet them was an actual robot, that's how good the costume was. It was only as she drew nearer that he noticed that the silverish synth-skin and the seams at her joints were makeup, painted on; that the blinking cords running from the power generator on her back were simply tubing filled with blinking christmas lights. It was Sasha Denton, whose presence immediately made Leo very nervous.

"Oh! Sasha!" Mary cried, giving her friend a hug, apparently not quite realizing the problem yet. "Look at you! Your Omnitrix costume turned out great."

"Yeah, well, you were supposed to help me finish it," Sasha replied, sounding a little hurt. "I like your costume too! I thought you dropped NeoMagi Utopia after last season."

"Uh…I changed my mind," said Mary. "I'm sorry that I wasn't around to help…"

"Where have you been the past couple of days?" Sasha asked. "And I thought you said you weren't coming to DreamCon…" Then she did a double-take. "Leo? You're here too?"

"Uh, yeah, we managed to get tickets at the last minute," Leo said, glancing around nervously. "Listen, Sasha—"

"Oh, I think I know what's going on here," Sasha said, glancing slyly between the two of them. "You wanted to spend some time alone with him, huh Mary? You could have at least worn a costume too, Leo. That's what a gentleman would do."

"Uh huh great," said Leo. "Sasha, is—"

"It's not like that!" Mary protested. "Really, Leo's here because, uh, his sister entered a tournament…"

"Oh, of course…"

"Sasha," Leo said firmly, "Is your dad here with you?"

"Why?" said a deep voice into his ear. "Did you want to ask me something?"

Leo gave a shrill shriek and jumped three feet in the air. When he landed he spun around found himself staring into the very intense, questioning eyes of Sasha's father. "Ah, no, Officer Denton," he stammered. "I was just, uh, um, wondering…"

"It's just Mr. Denton today, Leo. I'm off-duty." So he said, but "Mr." Denton could hardly have looked more like a cop if he tried. Beneath a long tan trenchcoat he wore what may very well have been a cop's uniform with the decals peeled off. The brief, tight smile he gave Leo could have frozen over a jacuzzi. "Just here to spend some time with my daughter."

Sasha snorted. "Oh really? Because I've seen you talking with security a lot today."

"There's always security threats at venues this large," Mr. Denton said mildly. "There are other officers handling that." He laid a hand on Leo's shoulder. It might have looked to passers-by like a friendly gesture, but Leo could practically hear the rattling of chains as Mr. Denton bore down on him. "I will say, though, that I am glad to see you, Leo. And you too, Mary. I had some questions for you. Regarding an investigation."

"Dad!" Sasha protested. "Oh my god, are you going to interrogate my friends right in front of me?"

"No interrogation," said Mr. Denton. "Just some questions about some missing kids. You remember the little boy you handed over to me, don't you, Leo? The one with the bright red hair?"

"I…uh…" Suddenly Leo realized something. He looked around. Malakar and Carassiso were gone. They must have snuck off at some point. "I haven't seen them since that day!" he said, grabbing Mary by the hand.

"Them?"

Leo cursed internally. "I mean, him. I haven't seen that little boy since," he said. "Now if you'll excuse me, me and Mary really have got to get going…" He took off with Mary in tow, shouldering his way into the crowd.

"Wait, I have more questions!" Mr. Denton shouted.

"Dad!" Sasha admonished. "Leave them alone! They're on a date."

Their voices faded into the chatter of the convention hall. Once he was sure he had lost them, Leo slowed down. "Man," he said breathlessly, "Where did those two little freaks go?" They had to find Malakar and Carassiso, and warn them about Officer Denton.

"Leo…"

Leo turned to find Mary clutching at her stomach. She had a strange look about her, as well. Her fangs seemed more pronounced, her eyes a starker crimson.

"Leo," she said, "I'm…I'm getting really hungry…"

"Uh," said Leo, licking his lips. "Uh, should we find somewhere where you can…you know…have a sip of…"

He pointed to himself. "No!" said Mary. "I don't want to drink your blood…I don't want to drink anyone's blood!" She winced and doubled over. "Oh, it's bad…"

Leo sighed. "Come on," he said to Mary. "Let's see if we can't find you some normal food to eat. I saw a stall selling blood sausages, maybe that would work."

He took one last look around the convention hall as he led Mary away, but he didn't see any sign of the two demons. Well, you know what? He thought to himself. Malakar and Carassiso will just have to take care of themselves.

 

[CCClover]

40. The Creator
​

Men screaming, bleeding, dying. The roar of bombers overhead, and the incessant death rattle of machine-gun fire. Plumes of smoke and waves of dirt thrown up by artillery; trenches choked with blood. The grinding, clanking growl of approaching machinery, belching diesel fumes, ready to churn the dead beneath them, grind them into the mud.

Zoe watched with glee as the multiple tank divisions flickering across her screen ran roughshod over the enemy's defensive position. She leaned forward and peered into the game's chat.



IronWarrior_IronCross: this is fucking bullshit there's no way you produced that many tanks so quick

ZoeBaloney: lol. lmao

IronWarrior_IronCross: you're a fucking hacker you stupid bitch. piece of shit this tournament is so fucking garbage

ZoeBaloney: take it up with the refs then loser

IronWarrior_IronCross: what kind of stupid name is ZoeBaloney

IronWarrior_IronCross: you're probably some 300 pound cow who hasn't been touched in three decades and reeks of cat piss. You can cheat at this game but that doesn't mean that you're not going to die alone and when you do your fucking cats will eat you

ZoeBaloney: bro I'm 8

IronWarrior_IronCross has surrendered.

IronWarrior_IronCross has left the game.



Zoe took a sip of her soda and burped. "Hell yeah," she muttered. She glanced to the bank of televisions overhead, where she saw a flash of the round she'd just played dance flash across a few screens. Only for a few seconds, though. The tournament was open to all; it would take some time for the participants to get winnowed down before people began paying attention to individual matches.

She jumped as a man in camouflage suddenly dropped into the chair next to her. Man, Warlords of Conquest had a way of attracting the freaks. "Listen, man, you lost fair and square," she said. "You know the rules, if you start harassing your opponents you get kicked out."

But the man in camouflage only gave her a curious look. "Opponents?"

Zoe squinted at the man. He was looking curiously at her screen, as though he didn't understand what he was seeing; more importantly, he looked to actually be in good shape, healthy and unblemished. "Wait, you're not IronWarrior_IronCross," she said.

"No," agreed the man. "My name is Trias."

"Uh, okay. So are you here for the tournament, or…?"

"Tournament…?" said Trias. "Is that what is happening here..? No. My purpose is…something else entirely."

"Right. Well, I've got to get ready, my next match is in ten minutes, so—"

"No. You will answer my questions." All of a sudden, the expression on the man's face changed. Where before he had seemed genial and calm, now a strange rage washed over him. His eyes glazed over and his mouth twisted into a hateful sneer. "This entire carnival reeks of corruption," said Trias. "It is everywhere, touching everything…a sin, a stain. At first I thought you mortals were not the ones responsible, that you were blameless…but I see now the madness you have wrought. You think yourselves gods. You build machine-men, life devoid of spirit, and set them amongst you as your honored slaves. The choking rot of your corruption is making it difficult for me to find my true quarry."

Zoe glanced around for the nearest referee, but none were in sight. She tried to catch the eye of the man playing in the booth next to her, but he was too focused on his game. "Uh huh, that's great."

Trias leaned in close. "And yet, you…you have been with my prey." He took a deep breath. "Yes. Yes, you have, I know, I can tell. I can smell their corruption on you, thicker than others. You have been with them, and you will lead me to them. You will tell me where they are—"

Zoe interrupted him. "You can smell it on me…? You know what, hold on. My dad gave me something for guys like you."

Lightning-quick, she reached into her bag and pulled out a small can.

"What's that?" asked Trias.

"Mace," said Zoe, before she sprayed half the can into his eyes.

Trias blinked. Then he shrieked and collapsed to the ground, writhing. Referees rushed over. Zoe took the few moments before they arrived to leap out of her chair and deliver a few kicks to his gut. When he opened his mouth to scream she sprayed the other half of the can down his throat.

"He was sniffing me!" she shouted at the referees as they arrived. "Creep! Pervert! Rough him up! Grab his wallet!"

Soon enough the referees were dragging the man away as he heaved and retched. Zoe tossed away the now-empty can of mace and sat back down in her chair. Man, this game really did bring out the freaks.

Then she thought about what the man had said. About hunting someone or something. About the corruption that he could sense on her. How she had been with 'them'. She thought about Malakar and Carassiso, hunted by angels.

"Meh, not my problem," she said, and began her next game.



* * *



Mike Shen plunked desultorily at a few keys on his laptop. On the screen, a generic-looking man in generic-looking armor took three steps down a dingy corridor and then, for no apparent reason, exploded. With a sigh, Mike brought up the combat log and noted that the man had taken 9999 fire damage from some unknown source. Just as he had the previous dozen times Mike had tried to steer him down this hall.

"Damn it," he swore under his breath. "Damn it, damn it!" Frustrated, he steered the character down the hallway three more times in quick succession and watched the exploded giblets of the armored man's body spatter everywhere. At least the physics engine was finally working smoothly.

DreamCon was turning out to be a disaster. Mike could have sworn that the demo for Occultum Infernalis had been ready for a debut, even if the main character was, for now, just a placeholder; even if only the first twenty minutes of the game were actually playable. He and his team had gone over those twenty minutes with a fine-toothed comb only to somehow, apparently, miss the fact that you'd die within two seconds walking down the first hallway.

Now the giant screen he had paid for—which he had hoped would be broadcasting demo gameplay for all the passers-by to see—displayed nothing but the man in the suit of armor exploding over and over again. He had skimped on paying someone to run the booth for him and come here himself so that he could afford that—not to mention the booth itself, which was decorated with glowing demonic runes carved into prop rocks. Mike gazed in despair at the crowds of people passing by, ignoring his expensive setup. Well, today was a bust, but maybe if he got the demo working by tomorrow…

"Bow, Mike Shen, and beg for mercy! Tremble, for I have arrived!"

"Eh?" Mike was confused for a moment, until he leaned forward and saw, over the edge of his booth, two small children glaring at him, a boy and a girl.

"Bow!" said the little boy. "For I am Malakar, the Irredeemable!"

"I can see that," said Mike. The kid's costume was pretty impressive. He had the long, flame-red hair, the golden horns; even the robes were pretty accurate to how Malakar was in the game. Honestly, it lifted his spirits. It felt good to know that even before it was released, Occultum Infernalis had some fans out there enthusiastic enough to have their kids dress up in cosplay of characters from it. Of course, it wasn't a kid's game, not really, but he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. "And you, who are you, little girl?"

"I am Carassiso the Damned," the girl answered. Mike could see it now; the spiderweb design laced into her dress, the little black horns at her temples…she even had the piercing yellow eyes; her parents must have even given her contacts.

"Oh yeah, of course!" Mike said. All in all, the costumes were great, he thought. They really captured what Malakar and Carassiso would look like as humans. Well, obviously the two demon lords wouldn't be children, but that was besides the point. "Hey, hold on, I've got something for you two."

He reached over to the table of figurines he'd had made—worryingly unsold—and handed one to each of the kids: a Malakar for the little boy, and a Carassiso for the little girl. Both of them seemed stunned by the gift, turning them over and over in their hands.

"This…this is me," the little girl whispered. "My demonic form, down to the finest detail. But how could they know…?"

"You are the one who said that there must be divination magic involved in this," said 'Malakar'.

"Yes, but…I assumed that this arose from the connection between our worlds! You can feel it yourself—there is no true connection here!"

The little girl pointed at the screen hanging above their heads, and then at Mike's laptop, where Occultum Infernalis was still running. He had an AI trying to steer the character in a direction where it would not be killed so they could at least try to figure out where the fire damage was coming from.

"Oh yeah," said Mike. "Our plan was to have a demo up and running, but…well. That's the fun of coding. It fu-I mean, uh, it messes up on you at the least opportune moments."

Malakar closed his eyes. "There is something weak, I can sense it…a whisper, perhaps, but…but no. There is nothing. No way back from this. How? How then have you knowledge of us? Of what our forms look like? Speak, worm, if you value your life!"

Mike laughed as the little boy glared at him. He thought the boy might have contacts as well, and pretty fancy ones at that. There seemed to be flames dancing in his eyes. He wasn't sure what the kid was asking, but he pulled out the concept art scrapbook he had put together. Really, this was something that was only supposed to go to their largest backers, but screw it, these were his first cosplayers.

"It was a long process coming up with a lot of the designs," he told them, leafing through the book. "We underwent a lot of changes as the vision for the game came together. Well, you're kids, I'm sure you don't care that much…"

Malakar grabbed the book and pulled it towards him, and he and Carassiso began rapidly flipping through the pages. They could scarcely believe their eyes. There were sketches of practically everyone in this book. And everything. The hosts of Heaven, the Seraphic Council, the Black Palace…some of the drawings were rough, others intricately detailed, but all were familiar, immediately recognizable. So recognizable, in fact, that as Malakar looked at them he felt yet another of those strange human sensations: a pit opening in his stomach. Something was terribly wrong, here. Even if they had a connection, that these mortals would be able to so intimately spy on them was disturbing. Without one….

"How…?" he said. "How could you mortals know so much about us? You must be lying. You must have a connection somewhere, somehow…" he turned another page and paused. "Who is this?"

Mike glanced at the artwork, which was of a very curvaceous, nude demon woman with nothing but her strategically placed wings and tail to cover her shame. "Oh, that's, uh, an old design for the Dark One. Before, uh, the vision for the game, er, shifted a bit." He coughed nervously and flipped the page for them again. "Here, look at these instead. This is how we came up with the designs for Malakar and Carassiso…I mean, you guys."

Malakar traced his hands down the page, for once without anything to say. Here he was. His demonic form, in various poses, only…slightly different each time. Small changes were made with each sketch. His mane became fuller, grander; his snout elongated and then shortened once more. He sprouted extra horns, then three tails, which then merged back down to one.

He looked to Carassiso. She stared down at her own page which detailed an evolution of herself, from something beetle-like, to a more tick-inspired design, finally landing on the familiar spider form that Malakar knew so well from his time in the Black Palace. Her eyes met his, and her mouth opened, but only a small baffled sound escaped her lips.

"I…I…" Malakar shook his head. This mortal…how dare this mortal baffle him so? "W-what is this?!" he demanded feebly, pointing at the page.

Mike looked at where he was pointing. Down at the bottom of the page were two sketches of very similar Malakar. Most of the details had been settled. The only difference between the two was that one design had a single bent, crooked horn, while the horns of the other were both straight.

"Oh yeah," said Mike. "We haven't really settled on the final Malakar design yet. It seems like a small thing, but there's been a lot of arguments over these two designs…" He sat back and regarded Malakar's horns for a moment. "Hmm. You know, seeing the cosplay…you know, I think that settles it. We'll go with the crooked horn design. Other people said it looked too cutesy, but I think it gives personality." Then his laptop beeped and Mike turned away to attend to the various error boxes that were popping up on screen.

Malakar frowned. "But my horns are straight…"

"By the abyss, Malakar," Carassiso gasped.

She said nothing more, only pointed at his head. Malakar raised his hands and felt his horns.

One was crooked now.

For a moment, Malakar and Carassiso just looked at each other.

"How?" said Malakar. "How can this be…? I don't understand…"

"The only thing you need to understand," called a rasping voice, "is that you are going to die."

Malakar and Carassiso turned. Standing behind them, beneath the television screen that was quickly becoming obscured by error messages, eyes watering and coughing up a storm, stood Trias.

 

[CCClover]

41. End of a World

​

Trias breathed deeply, his fists clenching and unclenching, eyes fixed upon the two demon lords.

Finally, finally he had found them. Just as he had felt he would lose his mind from rage. These humans…there were so many of them, and it was almost as if they were deliberately trying to make his job more difficult. And the foul weapons they used! Trias rubbed at his still-watering eyes. He had scoffed at first when Teralel had told him of being disabled by mere mist, but now he wondered how she had withstood it. And all because he had been trying to protect these damned humans. He had not thought much of them at first, but now when Trias looked at the crowds of mortals, he could not help but picture them as ants foolishly marching into a puddle of sticky tar. Dooming themselves, drowning in filth, too stupid to know why or how to stop.

With some satisfaction, he noted the look of terror that passed over their faces. Yes, they could sense his power, and he could sense theirs. Trias knew he was far, far beyond them now. Good. They should feel terror. Let them have the slightest taste of that fear they had instilled in so many others, for so long.

"Don't run," he said, as they began inching backwards. "You are going to die. Simply accept it. You must have known that the end of the line would come sooner or later. But if you answer my question, you might live a few moments longer."

Malakar licked his lips. In his mind, a thousand different scenarios of possible escapes were playing out, each of them ending in a very messy death. This was no mere angel; this was an archangel, one of the battle-captains of Heaven, and from the looks of things quite a strong one at that.

"How does he have such power?" Carassiso whispered by his side.

"Good question," Malakar muttered. The angel was overflowing with divine energy. Where had such mana come from? Even with the profane manaseed rituals leeching magic from other worlds, he still had precious little himself. He had known that more angels would come after them, eventually, but only now did he realize how desperately he relied on the equalizing factor of this mana-barren world.

"Well?" said the angel. "Just answer one question, and I will make your deaths swift." He took a step forward, and in the tread of his boots Malakar heard his doom.

No! He couldn't think like that. He was Malakar the Irredeemable, son of the abyss, Demon Archmage and right hand of the Heart of Darkness! He would not die to a puny archangel! He would not go quietly into such a pathetic death. He would at the very least, at the last, preserve his dignity.

"I will indulge you, dog," Malakar sneered. "Ask."

Ignoring the insult, the angel spread his hands. "How is it that you broke through the seal put on you?"

The angel's voice was steady as he spoke. But Carassiso heard the pain in the question and tasted the sweet fruit of doubt, so she decided to take a shot in the dark. "Oh, you poor fool. Did your Heaven tell you that our powers were sealed away? They lied to you, angel. One can only imagine what else they are lying to you about."

Trias paused and stared at them both for a moment. Then he laughed softly. "No. No, demon, I think not. Fitting, I suppose, that a desperate lie should be your final words."

Summoning his power, light built up within his breast until he shone like the sun. Malakar and Carassiso shielded their eyes, hissing. With a burst of holy energy, Trias was clad in glowing, divine armor; wings like liquid light emerged from his back, beating against an unseen wind. In his hands he held a sword, impossible sharp, with the language of the angels etched into its blade in runes of gold. He looked like something that might have been painted into the ceiling of a cathedral, if the painter had more modern sensibilities about the use of such effects like lens flare and light bloom.

And that was about when Mike Shen, who had been wrapped up in debugging his demo, turned around and spotted him.

"Oh wow! Another cosplayer!" Mike said. Malakar, Carassiso and Trias all turned to give him an incredulous look, but he was oblivious to that. "At least, I assume you are a cosplayer? I do have to say, we weren't quite settled on the designs for our angels, but man, your outfit looks good. In fact, do you mind if I take a picture of it for our artists?"

Trias blinked as Mike held up his phone and snapped a photo. "Mortal," he said through gritted teeth, "You should evacuate. Now."

"Why? Is there a fire or something? I don't hear any alarm…"

"You were warned," said Trias.

There was no warning. One moment Trias stood a good ten feet away. The next he was towering over Malakar, his sword singing through the air. Malakar shrieked and only managed to duck at the last moment. The blade clipped off the end of one of his horns, kept on going, and then sliced through a truss that had been put up to support the lights and television for the Occultum Infernalis booth.

Then several things happened at once. The rigging system, a tangle of black metal and wires, groaned and buckled. Something within snapped and the television dropped to the floor with a crash. With a shriek part of the support broke free and began to pitch towards the floor. At its tip was a spike of torn metal, like a spear, aimed directly at Mike Shen's heart.

All at once Malakar felt this terrible gnawing emptiness, as if someone had unplugged a drain in the center of his chest, and all he was were being swept down into it. His limbs went numb, yet at the same time they felt light, as though they were about to drift away. And he was not the only one this was happening to. Time seemed to slow down, and he could see that Carassiso and Trias too were both staggered, reeling from the sensation. Trias, stuck trying to free his sword from the rigging, almost seemed to waver at his edges.

Malakar did not know how the thought came to him, or where he found the strength. He felt no more substantial than the morning mist. And yet somehow he managed to force himself up, leap over the counter of the Occultum Infernalis booth, and tackled Mike out of the way.

Everything sped up again. There was a resounding crash, and Malakar closed his eyes as bits and pieces of the booth showered down around him. Then it was over.

"Whoa, oh my god," said Mike from beneath him. "I think you saved my life, little guy!"

Malakar ignored the babbling mortal and stood. The booth was all but collapsed. The strange draining sensation was gone, but he still felt nauseous from it. Luckily he was not the only one; the angel was doubled over, retching, trying to regain his balance. Carassiso lay among the rubble, her eyes wide, chest rising and falling with rapid breath and face stained by plaster. Malakar grabbed her and yanked her to her feet. "Run!" he shouted.

Her eyes swam in her skull for a moment before they finally met his. "I…wh…what was happening to us…"

Malakar slapped her across the face. "Run, you imbecile!"

Behind them, Trias groaned. Immediately Carassiso paled and, without bothering with a retort, nodded.

They scuttled away like a pair of cockroaches fleeing the kitchen light. Malakar risked one last look back at Mike Chen, still rubbing his head and frowning at his destroyed booth. Then he turned and ran as fast as his stubby mortal legs would allow. It was only a few moments before they heard the roar of rage behind them.

"What are we going to do?" Carassiso moaned as they ran. "He's so much stronger than the last one! Oh, you stupid fool, this is your fault. You're the one who wanted to come here—"

Malakar ignored her whinging. He could think of only one way they might survive. If he could dive into another world and close the portal behind him, then perhaps the angel would not be able to follow. Even if he did have the ability to portal between worlds—he had come to this one somehow, after all—they still might lose him in the confusion. Luckily, this place was full of connections to other worlds.

Pulling Carassiso along, he bolted towards the nearest one.



Leo and Mary sat in the MetroX cafeteria, a wide linoleum-tiled clearing ringed by restaurants and food stalls and tended to by dozens of janitor droids. Between them lay a heaping helping of blood sausages, burgers cooked as rare as was legally allowed, and even a small plate of sushi, all in the hopes that it would sate Mary's growing hunger. But while Leo had certainly enjoyed the food, Mary only sadly pushed her serving around on her plate.

"No good?" Leo asked.

"No," Mary said, her voice dull. "You know, I used to love sushi. But now it just doesn't seem appetizing at all. None of it does! I'm so hungry, but all this food...it's about as appealing as a plate full of gopher guts."

Leo pictured this and then slowly set his burger down. He wasn't very hungry anymore. "Well," he said, wiping his mouth, "we still have other stuff we can try. I know you don't like it, but—I mean, Mary, I wouldn't mind bleeding a bit for you."

Mary was about to answer with another declaration of how she'd never want that when some commotion at the other end of the food court interrupted her. People leapt back from knocked-over tables as Malakar and Carassiso went sprinting past at an alarming speed.

"Thrall! Minion! Stop him!" Malakar screamed as he went by.

"Stop who?" said Leo.

This was answered soon enough as an angel came careening down from the upper level of the MetroX center, swooping like a falcon with his wings set sleekly back behind him. Tables that had just been set upright were promptly knocked over again as passed, bringing with him a gale of wind that created a whirlwind of loose napkins and empty soda cups.

"MALAKAR! CARASSISO! HEAVEN HAS DECREED THAT YOUR BLACK SOULS BE DESTROYED! I AM THE ARCHANGEL TRIAS, AND I AM YOUR DOOM!"

"Fine by me," Leo muttered. But Mary had already risen from her chair and was running after them. With a sigh, Leo quickly shoveled the food into a takeout box and followed.



Malakar blindly pushed his way through a forest of legs, trying to draw closer to the connection he had sensed purely by the pull of its magic. How absurd it would be to die staring at a collection of human asses. Finally, he thought he was close enough. He couldn't be sure where he was going, but he didn't think it mattered at this point.

"Back away, puny mortals!" he screamed, and tore a hole through reality. There was a chorus of shrieks and gasps, but he didn't care. Without looking, he dove right through, with Carassiso stepping so close behind him she was practically hanging off his back.

With a grunt they landed in a pile of fine white ash on the other side. Before them stretched out landscape so barren and desolate that it might have been the surface of the moon, if it were not for the various carcasses of enormous dragons that littered the ashen waste, most of them burnt down to the bone. The sky above was a bright crimson, the sun a black circle in the center of a roiling vortex of stormclouds, from whose midst red lightning stabbed at both the sky and the earth.

"Oh, it's lovely, but where are we?" asked Carassiso.

Malakar didn't have time to answer. He immediately turned and closed shut the portal behind him. And he nearly made it, too, except that at the last moment the point of a blade was thrust through the narrowing gap. Malakar snarled and tried to force the portal shut, but it just wouldn't work. If it were a mortal sword the blade would have been broken by the magic, but this was a weapon of Heaven.

"Drop the sword, idiot!" Malakar screamed.

"Oh, okay," said Trias from the other side. "I'll just let you go then. I mean, I suppose I gave you a good enough scare. You'll probably behave from now on."

"I didn't know angels could be sarcastic," Carassiso muttered. "I thought it wasn't allowed."

"There's a lot of things you probably don't know we can do," said Trias. "Like this." The blade began to wiggle in the narrow opening of the portal, prying it open.

"Hey! Hey, stop that!" At least this world, wherever it was, had mana. Malakar drew as much as he could into him and tried to force the portal shut, but it just wouldn't work. The gap grew wider and wider, until Malakar could see the angel's grinning face on the other side. He didn't like that smile. Angels shouldn't look so bloodthirsty.

"Malakar! I know where we are!" Carassiso shouted. "We are in the realm of BladeKing! Look!"

She pointed skyward. There, dipping in and out of the clouds, two dragons did battle. But as they swooped and soared, each breathing flames at each other, one of them glinted in the sunlight as though it were made of crystal.

Oh! How fortuitous! Or, more likely, not fortuitous at all. Malakar reasoned that in his utter genius he had likely subconsciously selected the world that would have offered him the greatest tactical advantage, even if at the time it had seemed like he had just been panicking and going for whatever one was at hand. It had also been a stroke of brilliance to enslave that dragon, last time he was here. "Looxy-Loo! Lurrxelolly! Er—whatever your name is! Slave, to me!"

Lurmexia—for that was the crystal dragon's real name, though to be fair to Malakar it was a very stupid one—heard the call of her master even as she barreled through the storm after her prey. She beat her wings and caught up with the dragon she was battling, and with one swift bite tore off its head. It plummeted, trailing a river of steaming black blood, until it slammed into the ground with a sound like a mountain splitting. She dove then, approaching the tiny figures on the ground with alarming speed, until at the last moment she reared up, blasting them both with a hurricane of ash and fragments of burnt bone.

"Hail, master," she told the loathsome little demon that had managed to put burning chains around her heart. "I have done as you bid me, and gathered what mana I could by slaying my kin. I have not yet managed to slay my brother, Xenofrax, but I—"

"I don't care!" Malakar shouted. "Shut up! By the abyss, everyone in this world talks so much. I have someone else for you to kill!"

"Who, my master?"

There was an explosion and a wave of holy energy. Reality broke open between New York and the world of BladeKing much like the barrier between outside and inside would shatter when you threw a rock through a window. With his sword held high and vengeance burning in his heart, Trias stepped through.

 

[CCClover]

42. Confession
​

For a moment the two just stared at each other, strangers from across the planes: the arcane dragon of living crystal towering over the archangel. Trias had remained largely unchanged by his travel into this world, except that the wings of light which he had summoned had been replaced by ones made of feathers, bright white interspersed with crimson red, making him look a little absurdly like a candy cane. Though he did not use them to fly, his feet hovered inches above the ground as though they refused to touch this unholy place.

"Well, slave? What did I say?!" Malakar summoned a whip of hellflame to his hands and cracked it against Lurmexia's hide. Shards of crystal flew through the air. "Attack! Damn you, attack!"

Slowly, ponderously, Lurmexia raked her claws through the air in the general direction of Trias. The angel easily stepped aside, not that he needed to bother. Those massive claws moved so gently that a newborn kitten would have survived the blow.

"What the hell was that?!" Malakar shrieked.

"An attack, my master," Lurmexia answered.

Trias stepped forward and laid a hand on the dragon's resting paw. "You are tired, noble creature. Are you not?"

"No," said Malakar. "Oh no, don't you pull this bullshit on me—"

"I am, valiant angel," Lurmexia answered, in a grumbling roar like stones sliding down a mountainside. "Normally, it would shame my kind to not give the best of ourselves in battle. And yet this is not cowardice. I have spent the past days in battle with my kin. They have spent their wrath upon my body and were found wanting." The dragon spread her wings and reared back, revealing her crystal body, full of rents and cracks.

"I would never dare to insinuate you were afraid of battle, ancient one," said Trias. "Yet it would be a shame for us to truly fight, I think."

"Yes, I think so too."

Malakar buried his face in his hands. "This is why I keep telling you that you need to worry about minion quality," Carassiso hissed in his ear.

"It is the end of all things," said Lurmexia. "All that remains of the prophecy of the Final Days is for me to kill my brother, Xenofrax. And yet even if that part of the prophecy went unfulfilled, what would change? All my kin are dead. Our battles have razed every town and city that once stood in this land. And I find myself bound for an eternity of horror, enslaved by a demon." In response to Malakar furiously cracking the whip against her hide, Lurmexia took another lazy swipe at Trias.

"I would free you if I could, wise one. Yet I can only grant you peace." Trias raised his sword.

It would be hard to say that a snout the size of a buick made out of precious stones could smile, and yet that was what Lurmexia did. She lowered her head. "I thank you, warrior of the most high."

Trias placed a hand upon her head, and then gently, almost lovingly, slid his blade into her eye. Lurmexia did not make a sound. She did not roar in pain; did not writhe in death throe. She did not even twitch. She simply went still.

Trias drew his blade free. "Sleep now, dear creature, and go to your deserved reward."

"Her reward?" Malakar shouted. "Her reward?! Look around you! She destroyed this world! What kind of reward do you suppose she deserves? Oh, you bastards. A dragon kills an entire world and she goes on to her 'deserved reward', while I, what, run some scientific experiments—"

"You tortured thousands," said Trias.

"—and it's all, 'Oooh, Malakar, your soul must be destroyed!' No, you know what, don't bother trying to explain. I know you're just a bunch of hypocrites."

"I wasn't going to," said Trias. He raised his sword. "Now it is time to die."

Malakar made a mad dash for the still-open portal, but a wall of holy flame sprung up in front of it before he got close, sealing it off. He gibbered as Trias' sword cut through the air above his head. "H-hah, you missed! Loser! Incompetent!"

"Yes, you will have to forgive me," said Trias. "I am unaccustomed to cutting down children. One last wretched perversity you are putting me through before you go, I suppose."

Malakar turned to run just as Trias swung again. He screamed as a bright lance of pain roared through him, a wave of light that burned to his very core. He felt blood running down his back and experienced that sort of clarity that comes right before death: that of knowing with utter certainty how terrible dying would be. He clawed his way through the dirt, trying to get away.

"Malakar! Over here!"

He glanced up. Carassiso was clinging to the side of the dragon's corpse. Behind him, Trias was wiping away what looked like a sticky shadow from his eyes. Finding that new wellspring of strength that bodies seem to preserve for when the true terror of death is upon you, Malakar dashed to her, ignoring the screaming pain in his back.

Carassiso grabbed him as he drew close. She stood by one of the many great crevices lining Lurmexia's body from her battles. Together they squeezed into the wound, which was less like something living and more like a seam in a cave, and they burrowed deep until they came to a small chamber. It was Lurmexia's chest cavity, Malakar realized, and dimly lit by the faint glow of her crystal heart, a sapphire-blue gem hanging from the ceiling, bigger than either of them and still containing traces of arcane energy.

But that was about as far as Malakar could go. He collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath. His robes were soaked with blood, and his limbs were beginning to grow cold.

Outside, Trias gave a roar of frustration. He could not fit into any of the wounds in the dragon's body himself. "Wretched demons! At the very last, have you no shame? You will make me desecrate this noble creature's corpse to get to you?"

Malakar flinched as he felt the relentless blows of the angel's sword, hacking it's way in towards them.

"I have healed you as much as I am able, though I could not do much," he heard Carassiso say somewhere in the gloom. "It was a holy weapon that struck you…what are we going to do?"

Malakar coughed, and made one last feeble attempt to break through Uriel's seal. But no. It was weakened, because of the arcane resonance between him and Carassiso; he could reach a trickle of strength. But other than that it was unmovable; like a wall of solid glass with one tiny hole drilled in it, he could feel his great power beyond it, such power as could snuff out Trias in a heartbeat, just beyond his reach. He felt an odd sort of disappointment, knowing that whatever the secrets of the seal were, he'd never get to learn them. "I suppose we die."

"I do not want to die," whispered Carassiso.

"Oh, really? Because I was so looking forward to it."

They sat in the darkness, listening to the pounding of the angel burrowing a tunnel closer and closer to them, the sound of their inevitable approaching death.

"Malakar, I…I have something I feel I must say." In the darkness, Malakar heard the sound of Carassiso moving closer to him. "I do not know why, but I…I feel you must hear it before the e-end."

Malakar groaned.

"I…I do not know how to put it," said Carassiso. "It is a strange feeling. But I…I…"

"If you're going to say something, I think you'd better hurry."

"Silence! Imbecile! Ingrate! This is difficult!" Carassiso paused, took a deep breath, then said all in a rush, "I prefer a reality where you are not dead!"

"...What?" said Malakar.

"And not merely because you are useful to me!" Carassiso went on. "Not merely because your presence weakens my seal! I…I…even if you could offer me nothing at all, I would prefer that you are alive! Ah!" Malakar could hear her weeping now, whether out of fear or embarrassment he did not know. "What a wretched thing to say! What a wretched thing to feel! Oh, what is wrong with me? Why must I bring this shame to my final moments?!"

Once again the sound of her crying filled Malakar with that odd, uncomfortable feeling. That strange one he couldn't name, where he wanted to stop her tears, but he didn't necessarily want to go for the most obvious solution, which was to hit her and tell her to be quiet. Though his body was failing, he forced himself to sit up.

"No," he said weakly. "If you have shame, then so do I. For I have something to say as well." Carassiso grew quiet, waiting for him to speak. Malakar swallowed and stared down at the ground. "You see, Carassiso, I…I…I have felt that…on the whole…your company is….tolerable."

"You have…?"

"Not just that." Damnable angel, couldn't he just hurry up and kill them? "Not merely tolerable. I have thought that…on rare occasions…that being in your presence is even…slightly…enjoyable."

"Oh, Malakar!" Carassiso cried. "Do you really mean it?"

"Unfortunately," Malakar growled. He felt like a fool. Why had he said that? Even if it were true, he could have at least spent the last few moments of his life laughing at Carassiso's shame. Go out on a high note. But instead he had been filled with this strange urge to share. It made him a bit queasy.

More than a bit queasy, in fact. Carassiso moved closer to him in the darkness, and he very nearly retched when she touched his shoulder. "I feel the same," she murmured. "Even though you are so wretchedly stupid so often, I find it…comforting at times to know that you are there. Oh, what is wrong with us?"

"It's these awful human bodies," Malakar said dully. He supposed none of it mattered. They would be dead soon. The cavern they were in had begun to shake violently with each swing of the angel's sword, and stalactites of crystal broke off from the ceiling to shatter around them. " It must be. They fill you with all sorts of disgusting human thoughts and urges, like companionship and camaraderie and…and…wait, do you feel that?"

"Feel what—oh!"

Deep within their souls, Uriel's seal began to rumble.

 

[CCClover]

43. Xenofrax is Copyrighted Material of Bladeking (1998 All Rights Reserved)
​

Trias hacked and hacked away at the crystal hide of the dead dragon, slowly boring a tunnel deep within. The creature must have been quite the foe when it lived. His holy blade would slice through most flesh and even stone like butter, but here each stroke simply shave off a sheet of the crystal.

A damned shame that this was necessary, but he should have expected that demons would make their deaths as wretched as possible. Soon it would be over, though. He'd exterminate these feeble creatures—so strange to think they had once been demon lords, Uriel's seal was good for something, he supposed—and then return to Teralel. Then…what then? Trias found that he didn't actually care much what happened beyond that. Surely Heaven was displeased with him for using the faith of humans as a mana source, but the more Trias thought about it, the more he thought it likely he would never return. No, he'd stay here, in this world, find this world's Heaven…so long as he could convince Teralel to remain with him…

Lost in such thoughts, he did not notice at first when a fiery red glow began to emanate from within the dragon's core. He only became aware when the intense heat came, and the tunnel he had carved turned into an oven.

"What…?" he whispered as the crystals around him began to melt.

Moments later he was blown out of the tunnel by a wave of hellfire. He arced through the air, wings trailing burning feathers. His landing carved a furrow into the pale, ashen earth, shards of broken crystal raining down around him.

But he barely noticed the pain. Through the flame and dust, he felt an approaching darkness. Trias had fought many demons in his time, and you learned to feel them; they carried with them the stain of their miscreation. But never before had he felt something so twisted and wrong, as though reality itself wept that such wickedness existed.

Before him a plume of ash rose into the air, thrown up by the explosion, and in its depths stalked shadows out of nightmare. Four burning red eyes peered at him through the cloud. Cruel laughter mocked him.

"Oh no, angel," came Malakar's voice. "Are you afraid? Say it isn't so. Heaven's mighty warriors are supposed to be so, so brave. Even in the face of death."

"But they aren't, you know." Carassiso, now. "You think yourself above mortals and demons. But even in our home world, where you are living light, I have seen angels weep and beg for mercy. And now that you are flesh, we will show you new vistas of pain."

Her words were like a razor blade drawn across the heart, but Trias refused to be cowed. He stood and, with a mighty beat of his wings, summoned a gale that dispersed the cloud of ash.

Malakar and Carassiso stood revealed, brimming with unholy power. They still wore their child forms, but there was something…more to them, now. Or perhaps less. Long, monstrous spider legs had sprouted from Carassiso's back, and Malakar's monstrous grin was too large for a child's face, and full of crooked fangs. But more than that, they seemed blurry, indistinct, and beneath their fuzzy edges horrors swam; hands became claws and flowed back again, barbed spines sprouted and shrank back. Something terrible struggled to break through. Their shadows loomed behind them, impossibly large and impossibly dark, and they were the shadows of monsters rather than those of the children who cast them.

"How curious," said Carassiso. "You seem so small, now."

Trias steeled his heart. This was not totally unexpected, after all. He had never thought that these two, as he had seen them, had been able to defeat Teralel. Uriel's seal had been mostly intact, when last he had felt it, allowing only the slightest access to their magic. Now he could sense that something had truly gone wrong. It was crooked, like a door that had been set into its frame wrong and could not close, and through that gap darkness spread. He could almost sense the entirety of the demon lords' power beyond that gap, and the immensity of it terrified him. But it was still partially sealed away, he saw. Malakar and Carassiso were more powerful now, it was true. But not powerful enough.

"I do not fear you," Trias said, lifting his blade.

"Angels don't make for very good liars," said Malakar. "You wanted death for us. But we're not so cruel, angel. I think I'd like to keep you alive. There is so much we could learn together, you and I. With just a few…experiments."

Trias did not have time to answer. A cold pain lanced through his leg. He looked down to find that, while they had been talking, a dark shadow had been pooling beneath him; now claws of shadow reached up to grasp at his ankles.

"Gotcha!" Carassiso cried out in a singsong voice.

Wrenching himself free from the shadow, Trias rocketed into the sky, they ground quickly shrinking beneath him. Gripping his sword in his right, he summoned a bolt of holy energy in his left, intent on bombarding the demon lords, but even as he looked down they were gone.

A hollow roar split the sky. Rising up to meet him was the crystal dragon, undead now, lit from within by a profane light, its eyes full of horror and pain. Malakar and Carassiso rode on its back, cackling. With a shout of outrage, Trias threw his bolt, but it glanced off the dragon's hide. He flew not far behind it, his blade high above his head, its edge trailing holy flame. With all of his strength he struck a single mighty blow, and his blade bit deep into the dragon's neck; another, and its head was severed, crashing down far to the ground below.

"Really now," said Malakar. "It's a zombie, you moron. Beheading it won't do anything. You would have been better off going for a wing."

Chains of hellfire roared into life in a great net and swiftly closed down around Trias. He crashed onto the dragon's back with the demons. Quickly he struggled to free himself, but Carassiso leapt on top of him. She giggled maniacally as she plunged the tips of her long spider-legs into his flesh, punching straight through his armor, and he could feel his blood bubbling as a dozen horrific poisons began gnawing away at him from within.

But it was not for nothing that Archangels were the battle-captains of heaven. Trias raised his head to the sky and uttered an exultant cry in the divine language of the angels. A column of blue-white light engulfed him, purging the poison and dispelling the chains at once. It lasted only moments. Carassiso, caught in that holy radiance, shrieked in pain and reached for his throat, but Trias seized her by her spindly spider legs and held her at an arm's distance. He squeezed, and one of her spider legs cracked and broke off, gouting a sizzling yellow substance. "That was for Teralel," he snarled.

Carassiso seemed not at all upset by the loss of her leg; indeed a new one had already begun to sprout from where the old one had broken off. "That's the angel we fought last time, isn't it?" She laughed mockingly. "How sweet that you care for her. Tell you what. Because of you, I now vow to track her down and flay her alive. I'll make her curse your name and spit on your memory before I'm done, and it will be all your fault!"

The demon laughed and then unhinged her jaw. A long, black tongue, barbed and swimming with eyes, lashed at Trias' face. She was still laughing even as he flung her away, toward the ground.

"Vileness," he roared, wiping blood from his face as he turned to Malakar. "Vileness and depravity and horror, that's all you demons are!"

Malakar stood now on the stump where the dragon's head had once been, hair and robes whipping in the breeze. "Oooh, vileness and depravity and horror waah waah waah," he said. In a flash, two long whips of white-hot hellflame were in his hands.

Desperately Trias parried the blows as Malakar lashed at him. So quickly did they come that he barely had time for anything else. Even taking off in flight was impossible; the slightest slip and the demon lord would be upon him. Even with his full concentration he could not fend off the blows. Trias cried out as one of those whips cracked across his face.

"How does it feel, archangel?" Malakar laughed as he struck again and again and again. "Isn't it shameful to lose to a child?"

"You are not a child! You are an ancient horror in a child's skin!" Trias remembered then what Uriel had told him. How the war between Light and Dark was not over, and that though the Great Enemy was imprisoned, there was some ancient evil, some corrupting force that still threatened not only their world, but all of them.

And who else could it be? Look at the desolation Malakar and Carassiso had made of this world. Surely it could be no worse than if the Heart of Darkness itself had worked its will. A world gone. A world, gone!

Fighting through the pain, Trias reached out and grabbed Malakar by the front of his robes. The demon lord yelped as Trias shot holy power into his chest, and the flame whips he held disappeared. "Look at what you've done!" Trias screamed, shaking him, pointing his sword out over the barren landscape and the boiling red skies. "Look at the death, the destruction! You are worse than the Dark One!"

The demon had been squirming in his grip; at once he grew still. "Oh wow, you really think so?" Malakar said, genuinely flattered. "Jeez, what a nice thing to say."

Then he transformed into a screaming spirit of flame and launched himself at Trias.

Across the wastes Trias battled the demon lords, his holy light struggling against Malkar's hellfire and Carassiso's poison and shadow. Retreat never came to his mind. The way he saw it, Uriel's seal was failing. If he abandoned the field now, they might only be more powerful the next time, and cause untold death before they were stopped. So he strove to gain an edge by focusing on one, knowing that if he could finish one of the demons off then the battle would swiftly turn in his favor.

They fought strangely well together. Normally demons, though powerful, were ever-ready to abandon their comrades and stab one another in the back. Cooperation was not unheard of, but it certainly did not come naturally to them; and generally when it did, it was because a stronger demon was forcing them to work together. Thus the strongest themselves were even more prone to infighting.

Yet with Malakar and Carassiso this was not the case. Trias cruised low over the ground, kicking up a plume of dust, as he soared after the skittering spider-witch, only to find that she had lured him into a trap as the earth erupted in demonic runes and Malakar's hellfire engulfed him. Or he would try to take the battle to the skies and chase Malakar atop his undead dragon, only for the demon lord to dive down to the ground, where Carassiso waited with forests of poison spikes. They did not let themselves be isolated.

And so, though they were close to evenly matched, slowly Trias was whittled down. The strokes of his blade became weaker, slower; it took more for him to fend off the horrific magic that Malakar and Carassiso poured down upon him. Until, finally, he stood in the dust, his wings burnt, his sword trembling. Before him, Malakar landed his dragon and hopped down from its back, joining Carassiso. Together the pair stalked towards him, claws outstretched.

"Do you know what I'm going to do to you?" Malakar grinned. "There's a question I want answered. You've seen that when you go through some portals, you change to fit the world. Well, what I want to know is, how coherent is that process? If I rip off one of your feathers here, will it change when I send it though a portal back to New York? If I amputate your arm, will it change if I send it back to our world? What if I amputate it, but leave one nerve attached? Will it still count as part of you? Can living matter be transferred unchanged between portals if it is first completely disassembled, and then reassembled on the other side? Oh, we're going to learn so much together, angel! We—"

He was interrupted by a mighty, bellowing roar, loud enough to make the ground tremble. An enormous shadow passed over them, turning day to night for a brief moment. This was followed by a scouring wind, blinding them all with dust.

Then, with a resounding crash of shattering crystal, a gigantic dragon slammed into the ground, right atop of Malakar's undead one. It was much larger than Lurmexia had been, its scales dark as midnight and gleaming with a crimson sheen. Talons carved furrows as deep as graves into the earth, and a pair of great wings unfurled like black sails. The dragon reared back its horn-crowned head and roared again, something between an eagle's cry and a lion's, and the earth shook with its fury. It followed this up with a gout of flame that seemed to lick the very bottom of the clouds themselves.

"I…AM…XENOFRAX!"