Zac was lost. Not just "took a wrong turn" lost, but "existentially adrift in a gothic nightmare" lost.
He didn't know how long he had been wandering. The keep had no clocks, no windows to the outside world other than the occasional slit revealing the eternal red gloom of the Pit. Time felt elastic here, stretching and compressing in the silence. Had it been hours? A day? His internal rhythm was gone, swallowed by the endless succession of identical black stone corridors, soaring arches, and silent, judgmental suits of armor.
His mouth was dry, his tongue feeling like a piece of sandpaper stuck to the roof of his mouth. The spicy aftertaste of the jalape?o cheese MRE lingered like a bad memory. His legs ached, the heavy black robes dragging on the floor with every step.
He slumped against a cold stone wall, sliding down until he was sitting on the floor.
“Okay,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “This is fine. I live here now. I am the Ghost of Corridor 47-B.”
He looked at a small, delicate side table across the hall, holding a vase of dead, black roses. He contemplated smashing it. Not out of anger, but utility. ‘If I break a few of those,’ he reasoned, ‘I could make a small fire. Get some warmth. Sleep on the floor until Bune’s cleaning crew sweeps me up with the dust bunnies.’
He closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the stone. The silence of the keep pressed in on his ears, a heavy, suffocating blanket.
Then, the sound tore through the quiet.
"AVATAR!"
It was a howl. A furious, resonant sound that vibrated through the stone floor, up Zac’s spine, and rattled his teeth. It was pure, distilled authority. It was Marchosias.
Zac’s eyes snapped open. His ears perked up, a phantom sensation, really, but he felt like a dog hearing its master’s whistle. The sound had bypassed his fear center and gone straight to his 'Oh thank god' center (which was located suspiciously close to his libido).
“Wolf Daddy,” he whispered, scrambling to his feet.
He looked left. He looked right. The echo of the howl bounced off the stone walls, making direction difficult to pinpoint. But a faint, lingering vibration seemed to hum from the corridor to his left.
“Eeny, meeny, miny… left,” Zac decided. He pushed off the wall and started jogging, his exhaustion momentarily forgotten, drawn like a moth to the angry, howling flame.
Zac turned the corner, fully expecting to see another endless expanse of empty hallway. Instead, he nearly collided with Bune.
The butler was standing in front of a pair of double doors, clearly agitated. The Left Head was shouting into the room beyond. “You’ll eat when everyone is seated! Put that leg down!”
The Right Head spotted Zac and let out a sigh of relief that was mostly smoke. “There you are! Where did you run off to? We’ve been looking everywhere! Come, it is dinner time.”
Zac didn’t need to be told twice. He cast one last, shuddering glance back at the labyrinthine darkness of the House of Usher hallways and decided that exploring solo was officially off the itinerary. He hurried to Bune’s side.
“Sorry,” Zac said. “I got… turned around. The castle is big.”
“It is designed to confuse intruders,” the Left Head sniffed. “It works, evidently.”
Bune ushered him through the doors and into the dining room.
The room was exactly as Zac remembered it from his earlier lunch quest… long table, gothic windows, dripping candles, but now it was occupied. And it was chaos.
At the far end of the table, Nock was weeping openly. The lion, now cleaned up but still looking disheveled, pointed a trembling, dramatic finger across the table at Andras. “You crushed my spirit!” he wailed. “And my soldiers! And my grooming vanity desk! How could you?!”
Andras sat opposite him, leaning back in his chair, casually picking his talons with a silver dinner fork. He looked bored. “Do you have any proof, poof?”
Further down, Halphas was making whoosh noises and moving his hand like an airplane, recounting a war story to a very disinterested Marchosias. “-so I banked left, dropped the payload right down the chimney, and boom! Bunker buster!”
Marchosias sat at the head of the table, staring into a goblet as if wishing it were hemlock. He looked like he had heard this story a few times already.
Then, Skarg spotted Zac.
The wendigo, who had been sulking over an empty plate, perked up instantly. His ears swiveled, his nostrils flared, and a wide grin split his face.
“Avatar!” he bellowed.
Skarg rushed over, covering the distance in three massive strides. He didn't ask. He didn't hesitate. He simply scooped Zac up in his arms like someone would do to a puppy that did not have a collar on and was very cute.
Zac smiled, going instantly limp and boneless in the caribou’s embrace. He rested his head against Skarg’s broad, furry chest, inhaling the scent of musk and cold air. “Take me away,” he whispered dreamily. “To the dungeon. Or the bedroom. Dealer’s choice.”
“Put him down, Furfur!” Bune shrieked from the doorway. “That is not proper etiquette!”
Skarg ignored the dragon completely. He carried Zac over to the table and unceremoniously plopped him down in the empty chair next to his own. He then sat down heavily, pulling his chair unnecessarily close so their legs were pressed together under the table.
Zac looked over at Skarg, fluttering his eyelashes. “You could have kidnapped me, you know. Human trafficking smut is super hot right now. Very trendy.”
Skarg paused, a frown creasing his brow. He looked genuinely concerned. “Are… are humans okay?”
Before Zac could explain the nuances of dark romance tropes, a crystal clear ding cut through the noise.
Bune stood at the head of the room, holding a small silver bell. The sound silenced the table instantly. Even Nock sniffled and quieted down.
“Dinner,” the Left Head announced formally, “is served.”
The double doors to the kitchen swung open, and a procession of zombie waiters and waitresses shuffled in. They moved with the jerky, uncoordinated gait of cheap animatronics, their dead eyes staring vacantly as they carried massive silver platters.
They placed the meals with varying degrees of clumsiness.
Skarg received a raw, bloody haunch of meat that looked like it had been ripped off a centaur five minutes ago. He immediately picked it up with both hands and bit into it with a wet crunch.
Nock was served a delicate arrangement of songbird tongues and roasted grapes on a bed of gold leaf. He picked at it daintily with a silver fork, still sniffling.
Andras got a bowl of what looked like live, squirming grubs in a spicy broth. He winked at the zombie who served him.
Halphas received a literal mountain of protein. Steaks, whole roast chickens, and a pile of hard-boiled eggs…. He began inhaling it with military efficiency.
Marchosias’s plate held a perfectly seared, medium-rare steak with a side of charred vegetables. It was sensible, nutritious, and deadly serious.
A zombie shuffled up to Zac and placed a covered silver platter in front of him. Zac stared at the domed lid, his hands trembling slightly. He reached out, gripped the cool metal handle, and lifted.
Steam curled up. The sweet, artificial scent of blueberry and preservatives hit his nose.
Zac slowly grinned. Waffles.
Then, his eyes narrowed. He looked up at Bune, who was overseeing the service. “You two-faced snake,” he whispered. “You said there were no waffles in Hell. If I bite into this and find out it’s just textured crepes masquerading as breakfast perfection, I’m gonna-”
“Avatar.”
The bark cut off Zac’s angry rant instantly. His head snapped toward the head of the table, his expression shifting from rage to adoration in a nanosecond. “Yes, Captain?”
Marchosias was watching him, looking surprisingly pleased with himself. “I heard you are a picky eater. I had this meal procured for you specially. As we do not have much, uhm…” He frowned, glancing at the butler. “Bune, what Earth is this one from?”
Zac froze, his fork halfway to his mouth. “Which Earth?” he questioned slowly. “As in… more than one Earth?”
Bune pulled a clipboard from his coat, flipping a page with a claw. “Earth designation 3c88XT0o, Captain. A rather noisy, polluted variant. We don’t recruit from there often.”
“So, there are a few Earths then,” Zac said, his voice small. He suddenly felt very tiny in a very large, very complicated universe.
“Ah, yes,” Marchosias continued, breezing past the existential crisis. “We do not have much of that Earth’s food stock, but,” he gestured magnanimously to the plate where four very overcooked, slightly burnt frozen waffles sat sad and dry, “we are resourceful. We managed to get some sent over via courier imp.”
The wolf leaned back, crossing his arms, looking undeniably proud of his logistical triumph. He waited for the praise.
He didn't get it.
Zac had stopped listening long ago. He was already eating. Or rather, he was unhinging his jaw like a snake. He didn't bother with a knife or fork. He picked up the first waffle and shoved half of it into his mouth, chewing frantically. It was dry. It was burnt. It was the best thing he had ever tasted.
Marchosias frowned, his ears twitching. “Uh, yes. We can have another box prepared for you.”
Zac didn’t respond. He was currently licking the plate clean, chasing a crumb of blueberry with his tongue.
The wolf looked a bit upset. He had expected gratitude, perhaps a poetic declaration of thanks like Nock would offer. Instead, he was being ignored for a toaster pastry. He put his hands to his temples, rubbing away the onset of a headache.
“Halphas,” he barked. “Make another box. The Avatar looks like he hasn’t eaten in days.”
Zac immediately dropped his plate with a clatter. His attention snapped to the eagle. Make a box, he could make frozen waffles right here?
Halphas grinned, wiping grease from his beak. “You got it, Cap.” He stood up, pushing his chair back. He began to roll up the sleeves of his grey uniform.
Zac watched, mesmerized. The fabric strained and then yielded, revealing forearms that were thick, corded with muscle, and dusted with fine feathers.
‘So dense,’ Zac thought, biting his lip. ‘So thick. I bet he could crush a watermelon with those forearms. I bet he could crush my head. Please crush me.’
Halphas held his hand out over the table, grinning. “Lucky we got the crates shipped in after the pantry burned down, eh? Supply chain resilience, baby.”
“SKARG IS NO LONGER ALLOWED IN THE KITCHEN!” Bune’s Left Head shrieked, pointing an accusing fork.
The caribou man slammed his half-eaten, bloody haunch down on the table with enough force to splatter droplets of gore onto Zac’s cheek. “If you let me take care of the Avatar, I wouldn’t need to light things on fire to keep him warm!” he yelled, bits of raw meat flying.
Andras flicked a spicy grub across the table. It bounced off Skarg’s antler. “Not a bad idea,” the owl drawled. “The human would seduce you within minutes, the wards would trigger, and then the rest of us would be free of you after the Captain boils your marrow for disobeying orders.”
“Shut up, you!” Nock sniffled, dabbing his eyes with a silk napkin. “I had all of my custom boar-bristle brushes in that desk! They were imported from the Seventh Circle!”
Halphas glanced over at the tearful cat, shaking his head. “Shoulda had things checked in through inventory, bro. If it’s not logged, it’s not protected.”
As he spoke, Halphas’s hand began to glow with a dark, pulsating light. The air around his fingers warped. With a sudden puff of black smoke and whitish-grey feathers, a pristine, yellow box of Blueberry Waffles materialized in his grip.
Zac didn’t hesitate. He half-dove across the table, snatching the box right from the eagle’s grasp before the smoke had even cleared.
‘He has guns AND creation magic?’ Zac thought, hugging the box to his chest like a baby. ‘That is so cheating. He’s a walking cheat code. I love him.’
“You would ruin the market if you copied my treasures,” Nock said, blowing his nose loudly into the napkin. “If Purson or Marbas learned of my regimen, they would copy it in a heartbeat! The exclusivity is half the value!”
“No one cares about how you brush adrenochrome into your facial fur for thirty minutes every morning,” Andras muttered around a mouthful of grubs.
“It’s for wrinkles!” Nock defended hotly, his anger toward the owl momentarily breaking through his waterworks. “Stress lines are the enemy of beauty!”
“Or how you soak your paws in angel blood every week,” Bune sighed, looking pained. “Do you know how hard that is to source? And it stains the basins terribly.”
“It keeps my pads soft!” Nock declared, holding up a paw to inspect the beans. “A knight must have a firm grip but a gentle touch!”
“Your furniture was quite extensive, Nock,” Marchosias rumbled from the head of the table, cutting in. “We had to clear three storerooms just for your wardrobe.”
Nock turned to the wolf, his expression wounded. “You said ‘only the necessities,’ Captain! And on such short notice, too! I’m sure there are many vital things I forgot. My exfoliating salts! My velvet capes!” He turned his gaze to Zac, his eyes softening. “But… our new charge is so fragile. I understand why you want to keep him… kenneled for now. A prize must be guarded.”
Zac looked up. A frozen waffle was slowly disappearing into his mouth as he chewed, unheated and unrelenting. He locked eyes with the lion. “Kennel me please,” he mumbled around a mouthful of blueberry cardboard.
“Yeah,” Skarg laughed loudly, spraying more meat. “And you look like a total queermo with all those dresses, Nock. ‘Necessities,’ my ass.”
“They are post-battle garments!” Nock spat at Skarg, bristling. “Not that you’d understand the difficulties of creating a proper silhouette. Or the strain of besieging a fortress for months on end!”
Skarg scoffed, tearing another strip of flesh from the bone. “Months?... ... Slow bitch.”
“Ah!” Nock hissed in outrage, rising from his seat. “You uncultured-”
“Shut up, you ingrates!” Marchosias growled, the vibration rattling the silverware. “We are here to watch the battle. Now eat. Bune won’t start the broadcast until the table is clear.”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Ooh, a show after a meal?” Zac grinned, waving his waffle. “Y’all classy A F, really know how to romance a guy.”
His words trailed off as a giddy chill ran up his spine. The Captain was looking at him. It was a look of profound, weary disapproval, the kind a parent gives a child who just tried to eat a battery. It was confusingly hot.
“Did you not procure a high chair yet, Bune?” Marchosias asked, finally tearing his gaze away from the radiantly pure yet somehow diabolically thirsty human. “The Avatar is… surprisingly mobile. At least restraining him would be easier than the other imbeciles...”
“I was a bit preoccupied!” Bune wailed from his spot near the door, where he was trying to supervise the zombie waiters. “The fire! The loss of inventory! The eagle crying! The caribou crying! The multiple ceiling collapses! The bug infestation! Multiple dead! Blood everywhere! Architectural instability! The lion crying! The stains! The horrible, horrible stains!”
“I didn’t ask for an itinerary of your failures,” Marchosias growled. “I asked if you got a high chair. Or at least… maybe a gag.”
Zac’s eyes went wide.
“YES! GAG ME, WOLF DADDY!”
Before his brain could catch up with his mouth, Zac found himself standing on his chair and attempting to crawl across the table toward the Captain, scattering Nock’s gold-leafed grapes.
“Hey!”
Skarg’s massive hand shot out, grabbing Zac by the back of his robes and hauling him backward. He spun Zac around until they were face-to-face, the wendigo’s icy breath washing over him.
“You don’t want that total stick in the mud!” Skarg snarled, his eyes wild with jealousy. “He fucking irons his clothes! He probably schedules his morning wood!” Skarg’s eyes hardened, a dangerous, primal light igniting in them. “Don’t you want a guy who’s gonna keep plowing your hole even when you’re crying? Huh?!”
Zac just nodded, completely mute with desire.
“Put the Avatar down, Skarg.”
Marchosias put his face in his hands. He took a deep breath. When he spoke again, the gravel was gone, replaced by the terrifying, melodious resonance of the Compelling Voice.
“NO TALKING UNTIL YOU ALL FINISH YOUR MEALS.”
The silence was instant and absolute.
Zac’s mouth snapped shut. Skarg dropped him back into his chair with a grunt. Nock choked on a grape. Andras stopped chewing a grub mid-bite.
The only sound in the cavernous dining hall was the scraping of forks, the tearing of meat, and the frantic beating of Zac’s traitorous heart. Discipline me Mr. Big Bad Wolf.
The rest of the meal went surprisingly fast without the constant side conversations and threats of violence. Zac, having finished his own surprisingly filling allotment of waffles, was now eyeing the goblet in front of him with intense curiosity. It was filled with a liquid so dark red it was almost black. It looked a little thick, viscous, but after eating eight processed breakfast food products in under five minutes, his mouth felt like a desert.
He was just about to risk it, his hand reaching for the stem of the goblet, when Bune clapped his four hands together, a sharp, echoing sound.
“Dinner is concluded!” the Left Head announced.
A zombie waiter, moving with unsettling speed, materialized at Zac’s elbow and snatched the plate and goblet away just as Zac’s fingers brushed the cool metal.
“Hey!” Zac protested, but the zombie was already shuffling away. He slumped in his chair, stewing in his thirst.
Marchosias coughed, a dry, pointed sound that drew all eyes. He looked around the table, a flicker of satisfaction in his amber eyes. “Good. You complete failures finally shut up for once.” He gestured to the far end of the room. “Now, we are here to oversee tonight’s battle, since we are not there in person to participate.”
A low grumble went around the table.
“We should have gone,” Skarg growled, slamming his fist on the table. “The Avatar would have seen how I’m the only one who does anything of value.”
This declaration did not sit well with the other demons, they all rebutted at once.
“Ha! You do something?” Nock flipped his perfectly conditioned mane. “All you do is make the paladins cry. You corrupt their pure eyes with your disproportionate, ass-faced nudity.”
“Taking care of a bunch of fodder soldiers on the front line is the simplest job,” Andras sneered, lighting a fresh cigarillo. “Any of us could do it. You just enjoy simple things, like hitting rocks with other rocks.”
“Someone must protect the home and hearth from incursions!” Bune’s Right Head huffed. His Left Head turned to the owl. “And someone has to fix all of your ‘security auditing’ before the Captain impales himself on a tripwire.”
“You may run out there and knock some paladins around, but you’re no one-man army,” Halphas squawked, puffing out his chest. “Even you’d fall with enough swords beating on you for long enough, herbivore.”
“And you hold yourself back,” Marchosias added, his voice cutting through the cacophony of indignation, silencing them all. He stared down Skarg until the wendigo looked away. “You don't even need to use your antlers...”
The Captain’s gaze swept over all of them, a silent rebuke.
“But it does not matter. We all stay here until I can be certain the Avatar’s existence has not been leaked. Is that understood?”
Zac blew a loud raspberry, slumping down in his chair. “Lame. If no one knows I’m a virgin but us, then why can’t we just pretend like I’m not? The plans wouldn’t have to change, and if you wanted to zip off to the battle, you could.” He winked at Bune. “I’d just stay here with the butler… he’s a leaker, that one.”
“No!” Bune’s Left Head said sharply. “When I said you made me leak, it was a purely physiological hoarding response triggered by your unique-”
“NO,” Marchosias barked, cutting him off. His gaze was fixed on Zac, hard and unyielding. “Why else would Ose choose you? Out of the infinity of possible choices, out of every damned soul in every hell, why you? You were sent to be used by me for this war.”
“Oh, he wants to be used, alright,” Andras murmured to his cigarillo.
“Maybe he chose me because he wanted to fulfill my wishes,” Zac said, puffing out his chest. “Like I was the infinity-and-first person to die while thinking about being mating-pressed by a minotaur, so… I win the grand prize?”
Zac looked around the table, glad to see the demons smiling at his 'joke'. He felt a little less good when they burst into full-throated, uproarious laughter.
“Contracting with a demon isn’t a door prize, you twerp!” Halphas managed to choke out, slapping Marchosias on the shoulder so hard the wolf stumbled. “A grand prize! Hah!”
Marchosias was the only one, other than Zac, who wasn’t laughing. He just looked so very, very tired. Zac flashed another smile at the wolf, his resolve hardening. ‘There’s always a white whale,’ he thought, sizing up the Captain. ‘The real grand prize. The one you take home to meet the folks and show off at the high school reunions because he’s classy and professional and drives a sick-ass convertible that somehow keeps his hair perfect. Yeah, those other losers are still paying off their student loans while I’m getting pumped full of pups in a penthouse.’
“Avatar. Pay attention.”
Zac shook his head, a heavy hand on his shoulder jostling him from his fantasy. It was Skarg.
He looked around. Everyone had stopped laughing. They were all looking up.
Zac tilted his head back, following their gaze.
The world dropped out from under him.
The high, vaulted ceiling of the dining hall was gone. In its place, swirling with impossible clarity, was a perfect, bird’s-eye view projection of the battlefield. It was a dizzying, terrifying perspective. He saw ranks of gleaming, silver-armored paladins clashing with hordes of monstrous, chittering demons on a blasted plain under a blood-red sky. He could see individual sword swings, bursts of holy fire, and the splash of black ichor.
The projection was so sharp, so real, that for a terrifying moment, Zac felt like he was falling. Vertigo seized him, and he gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles white, convinced he was about to plummet a thousand feet into the very real, very high-definition battle below.
“Whoa,” he whispered, his earlier bravado completely gone, replaced by a profound, gut-wrenching sense of scale. “What's that?”
“Oh, it’s just a projection,” Bune’s Left Head said calmly, as if this were the most normal thing in the world.
“Using necromantic energies, I can reassemble the memories of the recently deceased,” the Right Head explained, sounding like a museum tour guide. “Think of them like a network of disposable cameras. They are a bit like goldfish, though… very short attention spans… so what we are witnessing are the memories of those who have most recently fallen, on a five-minute delay.”
Zac nodded, dumbstruck. He stared up at the impossible vista, his vertigo slowly subsiding. He could see what Bune meant. There were fuzzy patches in the celestial battle, areas of static where the memories of the fallen couldn’t fill in the gaps coherently. It was like watching a live broadcast with a few dead pixels.
His concentration was shattered by a loud screech of iron on stone.
“NO!” Marchosias barked, shooting to his feet and pointing a claw at the ceiling. “The flanking Capras commandos should be covering for each other! I said bounding overwatch, not a full-frontal charge! IDIOTS!”
Zac couldn’t help but smile. The terrifying Captain of the warband, the brooding wolf daddy, was acting like an old guy getting passionate about a football game, yelling at the players on his TV. It was absurdly, unbelievably endearing. ‘Oh,’ Zac thought, a wave of warmth spreading through his chest, ‘I would so celebrate with him if his team won. Or console him if they lost. I would console him so hard.’
The rest of the demons watched with the detached interest of jaded sports commentators.
“Sloppy,” Halphas grunted, picking his beak with a chicken bone. “They’re letting the paladins dictate the pace. I would have hit them with a pincer movement thirty seconds ago.”
“Look at that one,” Andras chuckled, pointing with his cigarillo at a particularly brutal skirmish where a massive, horrible, ape looking demon was tearing a knight in half. “Gusion’s boy. Good form. Messy, but effective.”
Nock sighed dramatically. “All brute force and no finesse. A truly elegant commander would have broken their supply lines and forced a surrender through attrition and poetry. Far more civilized.”
Skarg just grumbled. “Why are we even watching this? It’s just grunts killing other grunts. What’s the point? We should be down there.”
“The point, Furfur,” Marchosias growled, sitting back down heavily, “is to assess the enemy’s new tactics. To see what this ‘detection system’ is capable of.” He gestured up at the swirling chaos. “We are looking for anomalies. Anything that deviates from their standard doctrine.”
The demons grumbled but fell silent, their eyes once again turning to the ghostly battle unfolding above them. The only sounds in the room were the distant, spectral clash of steel and Skarg still noisily chewing on a piece of centaur gristle.
The longer Zac watched, the more uncomfortable he became. At first, it had been a spectacle, a movie, a game. But the sheer, unrelenting brutality began to wear on him.
The two tides of armies crashed against each other like waves, a roiling sea of silver and black. Where the waves broke, bodies piled up, forming gruesome new terrain that the next wave would climb over. Blasts of holy light rained down from paladin formations, lances of pure sunlight that vaporized demons where they stood. In response, shadows on the ground writhed and stretched, and gouts of hellfire erupted, swallowing knights whole.
It wasn't a battle with a clear beginning or end. It was just a continuous, grinding process of mutual annihilation. This was the eternal war Ose had spoken of, and it was horrifying.
"Is it… is it a bad thing that you all are here?" Zac asked quietly, his voice barely a whisper in the echoing room. "If the demons lose the fight… is it all over? Will we have to retreat from the Pit?"
The question was met with a ripple of confused, amused, and mocking reactions.
"This is just a skirmish," Marchosias rumbled, his eyes still glued to the battle, never once looking at Zac. "A fight over tertiary vantage points that won't even be relevant in a week. The front lines we are watching are for posturing. We cannot allow them to move without inflicting losses. It is a matter of principle."
Zac swallowed hard. He watched a demon with too many arms and a paladin with a flaming sword violently stab each other in the face, collapsing together in a tangled heap. Posturing.
"But the demons," he said, correcting himself, "I mean… we… are incurring losses too. A lot of them."
"They will lose more," Marchosias said, gritting his teeth. "They will lose more if those idiots would just follow my fucking plan!" He shot to his feet again, leaning over the table as if he could physically will the ghostly troops to obey. "You illiterate hellspawn! Go to the fucking left! PINCER! PINCER!"
Zac sighed. He didn't really know the rules of this particular game, but from where he was sitting, it looked an awful lot like Marchosias's team was losing. And losing badly. The silver tide of paladins was pushing forward, slowly but inexorably, their holy light seeming to gain ground with every wave.
The battle just seemed to continue on endlessly. ‘I guess that's why they call it the eternal war,’ Zac thought, his initial shock already fading into a profound sense of boredom. The hunky, dysfunctional demons around the table were far more interesting than some epic, large-scale battle between good and evil.
As Marchosias continued to yell tactical advice at the dead, Zac began to ship the demons together in his head. Skarg and Nock were the obvious hate-fuck couple, all repressed tension and violent foreplay. Halphas and Marchosias were the power couple, with Bune as their overworked, underappreciated polyamorous partner who did all the emotional labor. Andras was the mysterious ex who was still secretly in love with all of them and caused drama out of jealousy. Zac’s mind, he had to admit, was a dangerous and deeply degenerate place.
He was just about to cast himself as the plucky newcomer who breaks up the established couples to form a new, chaotic harem when a sharp, surprised hoot cut through the air.
“What in the hells was that?”
Andras had pulled the cigarillo from his beak and was pointing its glowing tip up at the aerial, necrotic hologram. The owl’s usual lazy amusement was gone, replaced by a look of sharp, predatory focus.
Zac and the others all looked up, trying to find what the owl had spotted amidst the swirling chaos of the battle. For a moment, there was nothing but the usual carnage.
A sharp squawk sounded out next.
“What?!” Halphas said, slamming his taloned hands onto the table and shooting to his feet. His eyes were fixed on a small, seemingly insignificant corner of the battlefield.
Zac’s eyes darted across the projection, trying to focus, but he didn’t know what he was supposed to be looking for. On a battlefield filled with fire-breathing demons and knights wielding swords of pure light, what could possibly be out of place?
Bune was the next to spot it. The Left Head leaned forward, its eyes narrowed in analytical focus. The Right Head gasped, a small puff of violet smoke escaping its nostrils. "But that's… that's against the rules!"
Zac looked around the table. The mood had shifted from jaded commentary to genuine alarm.
Skarg snorted out a cloud of frost. "I told you we should have been there."
“Those scallywags!” Nock roared, his chivalrous demeanor replaced with outrage. “This is a flagrant violation of the Accords of Carnage! Outrageous!”
Amidst the growing indignation, Marchosias was now utterly silent.
The Captain stood slowly, his knuckles white where he gripped the back of his chair. His amber eyes were fixed on the projection, but the anger was gone. In its place was something Zac had never seen before, a look of raw, undisguised, almost... longing.
Zac looked up one more time, his gaze following the Captain's. And then he saw it.
It was a figure, tall and serene, moving through the heart of the chaotic battle. Its skin was stark white, seeming to cast its own soft, internal light on the blood and mud around it. It carried a massive war hammer made of dark, polished wood, inlaid with what looked like gold. Zac couldn't make out the details of its face from this distance, but he knew he was looking at the anomaly when he saw the wings.
Six of them.
They weren't feathery appendages. They were vast, sharp, geometric constructs that looked like they were made of stained glass depicting scenes of divine judgment. They floated behind the white figure, not flapping, but held in a perfect, celestial array, catching the light of holy blasts and hellfire and refracting it into a thousand tiny rainbows.
The figure was not fighting. It was… proceeding. It moved in a slow, straight, inexorable line directly through the battlefield, a calm island in a sea of violence. When a demon lunged, it would swing its war hammer in a graceful, almost lazy arc. The impact was silent, but the demon would simply… cease to be, dissolving into a cloud of dispersing motes. When a paladin tried to salute, it ignored them.
It was heading directly for their side of the battlefield, a being of such profound power and alien grace that it made the war itself seem like a petty squabble.
‘Is that an angel?’ Zac thought, his mind struggling to process the serene, terrifying figure. ‘Of course there are angels if there are demons. Duh.’ But this was different from the cherubs and robed figures from Sunday school paintings. This was a weapon. A living siege engine made of light and glass.
But what did Bune and Nock mean, ‘against the rules’? Zac had assumed an eternal war between Heaven and Hell would be a no-holds-barred affair. Were there weight classes? Prohibited moves? A referee he couldn't see?
His train of thought was derailed by a sudden chorus of savage, triumphant howls from the demons at the table.
Zac looked up at the projection. The mood had shifted from shocked outrage to a kind of bloodthirsty glee.
“Get ‘em, Glasya!” Halphas squawked, slamming a fist on the table.
“Tear its wings off!” Skarg roared.
Zac scanned the battlefield, trying to see what had them so excited. He found it. Another figure, this one moving with brutal speed and purpose from the demonic side of the front lines, was cutting a path directly toward the white-winged angel.
It was a doberman pinscher man.
Tall, lean, and corded with muscle, his fur was a sleek, glossy black. Massive, leathery brown wings, more like a bat's than a bird's, beat powerfully, propelling him over the battlefield in short, brutal bursts. He wore no armor, only a complex harness of dark leather straps that crisscrossed his chest and torso, studded with silver rings. He was the picture of raw, disciplined violence.
‘Rough doggy daddy,’ Zac’s brain supplied instantly. ‘Oh god, the leather harness. That looks so good. It would look so good on…' His eyes involuntarily flicked to Marchosias. He tried to imagine the stern, dignified wolf captain strapped into a similar, suggestive outfit, all that grey fur and muscle bound in black leather… Zac felt a bead of sweat trickle down his temple.
He forced his attention back to the projection. The doberman demon was working his way across the battlefield, not with a hammer, but with his bare hands and teeth, a whirlwind of claws and fury. He wasn't ignoring the battle; he was reveling in it, ripping through paladins with a savage joy that was the complete opposite of the angel's serene detachment. He was on an intercept course, a black dog of war sent to meet the pale seraph in the heart of the battle.
As Glasya-Labolas tore across the battlefield, a fine, crimson mist began to emanate from his body. It was an aura, a veil of pure bloodlust. Where it touched, order dissolved. Paladins dropped their shields, their eyes glazing over, and began manically attacking their own comrades. Demons forgot their formations, turning on each other in a frenzy of mindless violence. The doberman demon carved a trail of pure, self-sustaining chaos as he rushed toward the angel.
Zac watched, mesmerized, as the demon closed in on a phalanx of heavily armored knights. Glasya didn’t slow down. He just swung his claws in a wide arc in front of himself. The attacks didn't even seem to connect, but the paladins in his path were eviscerated nonetheless, their plate armor peeling away like fruit rind as they collapsed into bloody shreds.
“He’s just flying in a straight line,” Andras sighed, sounding unimpressed. “That mutt should at least try to be a little sneaky. No artistry.”
Skarg laughed, a harsh, guttural sound. “That mutt is too old to learn new tricks. He’s wasting time with the blood mist, if you’re asking me. He could just kill them himself in less time.”
“Yeah, he looks shorter than Marchosias, too,” Zac added, his mind obviously elsewhere as he continued to compare every demon to his new gold standard.
Zac watched as the demon and angel finally met.
As Glasya’s red mist of bloodlust washed over the angel, the stained-glass wings seemed to absorb it, the light within them glowing a fraction brighter. The chaos-inducing aura had no effect.
Glasya moved in to attack, his claws flashing in another invisible, armor-shredding arc. But this time, as they neared the angel’s wings, the invisible became visible. The air itself seemed to warp and shimmer, revealing the ghostly, shimmering outlines of wicked, three-pronged tiger claws extending from the demon’s knuckles.
Glasya’s eyes widened. He faltered for a microsecond, his forward momentum slowing just the slightest bit, surprised at having his ultimate trick revealed.
The angel didn't even try to block.
Its hands, which had been resting on the massive wooden war hammer, lifted the weapon high. It brought the gavel down in a slow, graceful, unstoppable arc.
CRACK.
The sound was not an explosion. It was the sound of something ancient and brittle breaking.
The mighty Doberman demon, the great and terrible President of Hell, shattered. He didn’t bleed. He didn’t scream. He simply broke apart like a clay pot, dissolving into a million shards of black ceramic and dust that were instantly scattered by the wind.
The projection flickered. It went dark.
The dining room was plunged into a heavy, shocked silence, the only light now coming from the flickering candles. The show was over.
Zac broke the silence, his voice a small, confused whisper.
“Did… did that angel thing just, uh… turn off the BDSM dog man’s magic powers?”
Favorite Demon
