The Heavenly Host (Demons of Astlan Book 2) (48 page)

“Okay, how the hell did that just happen?” Tom asked raising his hands above his head as he paced nervously in the room. “This has got to be the most insane thing yet! I am in so far over my head!”

“Demon, your ruses are getting tiresome. Why do you insist on this charade? Clearly this was all part of your plan to regain your powers!” Talarius stated.

Tom spun and stared at the knight. “Are you serious? You have been with me this entire time, heard everything I have said, seen everything I have done, and participated in the process. You chose many of the passages we followed!”

“You are cunning, I give you that,” Talarius said.

“Seriously? Seriously! You think I got enslaved by Lenamare, trapped in Freehold and was then forced out only to have you shoot down Rupert and need to come rescue him and then end up battling you?” Tom waved his hand.

“Next, I would have had to know that you would cheat! You recall my shock at your methods? So I
knew
that the virtuous Knight Rampant of Tiernon would be outside the city ready to trap Rupert as bait for me, we would end up dueling and you would cheat to almost defeat me, and then I would have to pull a rabbit out of a hat! I had to do something no one even conceived of as possible—intercept a god’s mana stream and possess a bunch of priests—then defeat you and reverse the dagger and store up a ton of extra god mana for later use?”

Tom was pacing in circles around the knight, clearly frustrated. He tossed his mace on the very large bed and watched a cloud of dust rise up and then settle before resuming his pacing. “I then wait for you to rest up and get healed, and somehow get Boggy to take us all to a spa for massages and heated lava, as well as some lich-slaying on the side for some of us. Then I somehow get us to ALL agree to a long hike through the Abyss to the Crystal Caverns, without saying much of anything. I then convince
you
to stock up on gems and arrange it so we all start on an underground trip to get more gold.”

If Tom had hair, he would have been pulling it out. “I then manage to get us lost and have us all nearly eaten by hydra hounds as we randomly run around corridors. I knew that by random chance we would wander into a lair of D’Orcs who would think we were invaders and chase us along the passageway
you
chose that led to a dead end.”

Tom pointed a claw at the knight. “As I recall, it was you and your armor that allowed us to see the runes. Runes put there by Etonians. Runes that no demon should have been able to open. So I just reused some tricks I’d learned fighting you, along with mana I stole from your god, to activate the runes and open a magical doorway that let us escape.

“When we then found the vault, we
all
agreed to see what was inside, even though we were under time pressure.” Tom started pulling on his horns. “We got into a room no one in the Abyss could have gotten into, using mana that no demon should have been able to steal, but that I had been able to, thanks to your cheating! I then use it to free a rod or staff thing, which when I charge it up, starts a volcano. We then march out into an auditorium, through a portcullis that again, no one in the Abyss can open. Where all the D’Orcs are kneeling with the belief that the guy who stole the rod and relit the volcano is their messiah returned!”

Tom let out a loud breath and collapsed into a very nice renaissance-era French chair of his size. “And you seriously think I planned all this?” He stared at the knight.

Talarius was silent for some time; they were all silent. The others were probably surprised by Tom’s outburst, but also reflecting on the improbabilities of the current insanity. Finally, Talarius sighed.

“Well… when you put it like that, it does seem to be outside the range of what a greater demon could do. It’s a bit too devious for a fourth-order, I admit.”

“Thank you!” Tom raised his arms in the air as a sign of victory.

“However, clearly the D’Orcs’ god must be a demon prince, and certainly such a series of events is not outside the range of the devious machinations of a demon prince. And since you’ve now revealed yourself to be their long-lost master, you have therefore admitted to being a demon prince!” Talarius said with a note of triumph in his own voice.

Tizzy started laughing uproariously. Tom let out a soft wail of despair. Boggy also started laughing and Antefalken was shaking his head with a broad grin on his face.

“Have you ever thought of going into politics, Talarius?” Tom asked wearily.

The knight seemed puzzled. “No, why?”

“Because you would make an excellent politician. You can twist any absurd set of facts around until they fit your idea of how the universe should be, without so much as batting an eyelash,” Tom said. “Look, you know that Rupert and I were in the city; you saw us come out over the wall. You scanned the city; did you see any demon princes in your mirror?”

Talarius was quiet for a moment. “No, but you could have been in disguise, hiding your power.”

Tom looked at him. “So you are saying that your mirror, powered by your god, was not infallible? That it could or can make mistakes?”

Talarius was silent and finally cursed. “You demon princes are truly masters of confusion.”

“For the last time, I am not a demon prince. I am a greater demon who really hasn’t been around that long compared to say, Tizzy, Antefalken or Boggy.” If Rupert were not in the room, he would have gladly told Talarius the truth—not that he would have believed it.

“So, the rest of you? What do we do?” Tom asked.

Boggy was the first to pipe up. “Well, we need to work with Zelda’s lot to arrange the party. Out here in the middle of nowhere, that could get challenging. However, Tizzy and I should be able to figure something out.” Tizzy nodded in agreement. “Bard? You know how to throw a good party; you need to be on the committee as well.” Boggy started rubbing his chin in thought. “Got any idea how to get hold of some Denubian traders?”

“Out here?” Antefalken slowly shook his head, thinking. “It’s going to be rough.”

Tom was staring at the three of them in shock. “Are you three serious?”

Boggy looked at him in surprise. “Of course. This is the hinterlands; you expect them to have good food and drink clear the way out here? No, they are going to need professional assistance.”

“You do know that planning the feast was just a way to buy time before they all try and swear eternal allegiance to me?”

Boggy looked puzzled. “Buy time? Why would you want to buy time? I mean the celebration, and having some prep time for such a big event makes sense. But otherwise, why try and put it off?”

“Because that makes me their leader? I end up taking over a giant demonic horde?” Tom asked rhetorically.

“And the problem with that is…?” Estrebrius asked.

“Yeah, I agree. Sounds like a great gig,” Reggie added. “Why would you pass such a sweet gig up?” Reggie’s hands started to drift towards his crotch. “Think of all the big D’Orc booty you could get! Dark lords always get the hottest groupies!”

Tom twisted his head back and forth, trying to stare incredulously at all of them. He finally turned back to Talarius. “You do understand what I’m saying? I can’t go through with this, right?”

Talarius shrugged. “Why do you ask me? This was your plan, right? You led us here, why would you back out now? Are you still trying to convince me that you did not intend this? Obviously, as a spokesman for the Forces of Good, I cannot recommend you form a new evil horde, or for that matter, re-form an evil horde.”

Tom put his head in his claws. “I am surrounded by crazy people!” He lifted his head and looked around at everyone. “You do all realize that I am not a demon prince, Talarius’s paranoia aside. If I pretend to be their reborn dark lord, and take their allegiance, then everyone in the Abyss and beyond is going to think I’m a demon prince and will therefore come after me and my horde!”

They were silent for a moment. “Well, technically they already are,” Rupert said. Tom looked at him askance.

“The boy’s right,” Antefalken said. “We are hiding down here in the Abyss, worrying about a Heavenly Host descending on Freehold in pursuit of us out of vengeance for your actions. In addition, we were just talking about hiding in the Crystal Caverns because Lilith is on the lookout for us. She really wants to know your secret so she can do it herself. You can bet all the other demon princes will be thinking the same thing.”

“Really not seeing a downside, my lad,” Boggy said, shaking his head. “You were already in over your head; a horde of D’Orcs might be able to keep you afloat. It will certainly give people pause before they attack you.”

“Not to mention there’s a crapload of money downstairs in the caverns,” Rupert said.

Tom looked around, feeling completely beaten down by this crazed reality. “I need some rest; I am going to lie down. There are other rooms in the suite; if you want to rest and heal from the hounds, that would probably be a good idea.” He looked at Boggy. “If you want to go help plan the party, go ahead. Just don’t make any major commitments for me beyond the party.”

Antefalken nodded. “Good point. As Tom’s closest advisors, people will come to us trying to get an ‘in’ with Tom. Be very careful.”

“Hmm, there were quite a few hot warrior babes out there in the crowd. Might go see if any of them want to party now, so to speak,” Reggie said, making a lascivious face. Tom just shook his head.

“I’m going to explore the suite and then take a nap. I’m beat, and still have dog bites I need to heal,” Rupert said.

“I’ll go with you guys,” Estrebrius said to Boggy.

Talarius simply marched out of the room, presumably to find a place to rest.

Tom stood and went over to the giant bed, grabbed his mace and lay down on his side, curling up as tightly as he could. He had used a lot of mana on the various runes and charging the mace, but it was not just that; it was this whole sudden crush of responsibility coming down on him.

He had somehow blundered into agreeing to take on responsibility for a few thousand down-on-their-luck D’Orcs looking for a savior. He was teenager, for God’s sake. Suddenly becoming Rupert’s fake dad had seemed like too much responsibility; now he was going to take on responsibility for a giant horde of demonic orc warriors out for vengeance?
Agghh.
He just wanted the world to go away for a while!

DOF +5

Period 1 16-02-440

Bess surveyed the gardens as Usiris climbed the steps to the villa’s terrace. She smiled and gestured to the pitcher of fruit juice and glasses on the table beside her.

“Greetings. It’s been some time,” Usiris said, sitting down in the other chair.

“Too long, my dearest.” Bess smiled back at him as he poured himself some juice.

“May we live in interesting times.” Usiris raised his glass in their traditional toast, to which Bess joined with her glass.

“Indeed, we are.” Bess laughed lightly. “I can feel the electric tension in the air. The Wheel of Life has the entirety of New Nyjyr practically jumping out of its skin.”

Usiris gave her a quick grin. “Well, we have a lot of souls needing bodies to incarnate into, so every fertile adult needs to get busy! We shall have a bumper crop of babies in a few months!”

“Unless you are planning on a lot of multiple births, I’m not sure we have enough people,” Bess replied, looking worriedly across the valley below.

Usiris smiled again, more broadly. “True. However, our faithful agent Merit-Ptah in Natoor”—he pointed vaguely upward in the direction of the continent of Natoor on the giant planet that provided the light over the valley this evening—“has been hard at work.”

“Really? Do tell,” Bess said.

“She has summoned, or rather created, a brand-new incubus,” Usiris said.

“An incubus? If she wanted to get laid, she should have just come here.” Bess shook her head and gestured at the recently extra-fertile valley around them.

“No.” Usiris laughed. “Although I am sure she is enjoying this young incubus’s services. No, we shall load the incubus with a serum I am deriving from the Wheel of Life’s energies.”

“You are planning on using an incubus to seed followers in Natoor?” Bess asked curiously. “How will we shepherd them in the faith? We have not been able to keep a priest alive down there for a very long time. And we don’t have that many followers left there for secretly home schooling that many.”

“I have some ideas that I’m working on,” Usiris said.

“Go on…” Bess purred.

“The key is that we need someone to run interference with the Etonians to keep our priests alive while we get them established in communities. Our problem has been that just having an experienced priest, pretending to be of any profession, suddenly move into these communities gets suspicious. Etonian church officials notice and arrest our priests,” Usiris said, pausing to take a drink. “So we need to keep the Etonian hierarchy occupied and allow our priests to slip in more gradually during a period of confusion.”

“I assume you have a plan for distracting them?” Bess asked.

Usiris chuckled. “I am counting on a cloud to obscure the Etonians’ view of what’s happening.”

“A cloud?” Bess was completely puzzled.

“From the Grove.” Usiris grinned wickedly.

“Ahh,” Bess said. “But they turned down our priests’ request for help last time.”

“This time, we are not asking . Their own nosiness, this insanity in Freehold with the Rod being spanked by that demon, sprinkled with some visions I have been seeding to various parties for the last half a year or so, shall position them where we need them to be.”

Bess smiled, feeling good for the first time since the debacle at Freehold. The idea of using that to their advantage brought her a warm, satisfied feeling. She leaned back in her chair, gazing up to the beautiful planet of Astlan dominating the sky above her. New Nyjyr, now on Uropia, had a much better view than those stuffy old outer planes they had had to maintain at such cost. Yes, it was much smaller, and thus a bit crowded, but as they grew, they could expand to Anuropia easily enough. With control of the two moons, their oversight of Astlan would be solidified. Add in the power of the book, and the Etonian pestilence could be eliminated from at least one plane of the multiverse. From this secure base, they would eventually take back other worlds and return themselves to their rightful place in the scheme of things.

~

DOF +5

Dawn 16-02-440

Tom woke suddenly, realizing he had dozed off. Boggy and the others were in the main room, talking rather animatedly; perhaps that was what had woken him. In any event, he was feeling better. That was the one indispensable thing about sleep; it gave one a break from consciousness. It made the world go away for a while and when you woke up, things often seemed better.

At least they did for a few minutes, until he heard the name
Vaselle
. He closed his eyes again. Today was supposed to be the day the wizard turned himself over to Tom. He had somehow forgotten about that in all the insanity of yesterday. Why was he doing this again? Why couldn’t he have just said no? It would be nice to blame Vaselle; the wizard seemed so needy, so desperate, as if he needed love and acceptance. Tom suspected that the wizard had what his stepdad called a codependent personality. It probably was not a good idea to be mixed up in a relationship with such a person.

Except that he could hear the guys talking; they were planning a shopping list of items for Vaselle to buy for the party. Seriously? The wizard was in a city under siege! Where was he going to find supplies for a party for two thousand plus D’Orcs!

Enough!
Tom decided. He could not worry about everything; he needed to delegate. Maybe a warlock was not such a bad idea; Vaselle could be sort of like a personal delegate, or a personal assistant. He did not know. At the moment, he did not want to think about it.

Tom stood up and grabbed the mace by the ball. It poked him. That was weird; he looked at the amorphous metal ball head of the mace. Odd. It was not quite so amorphous anymore. It was still rather putty shaped, but it now had two sharp little points about twenty degrees down from the top of the sphere and about halfway from the center to the front on two sides. They were curvy points coming out from the side of the sphere and then pointing up. On each side of the sphere with a point, another point more towards the center and a bit down was also forming.

The sphere was also not that spherical anymore. If he rotated the sphere so that the big points were on opposite sides, the space between them had gotten bumpy and had some dimples and almost a little mesa or something. He rotated the sphere to look at it from different directions. It was starting to look like a head. In fact, if he did not know better, he’d think it was a very blurry version of a demon head! Horns, ears, muzzle, brow… was it supposed to be
his
head? It was too hard to tell yet, but it was changing.

Given that he was rather intimately connected with the rod, it would not be completely unreasonable that the top would shape itself to look like him. Just a bit weird. A little narcissistic perhaps, but not completely out of the realm of possibility. Tom shook his head and walked over to the doors to the parlor. Opening the doors, he found Boggy, Antefalken, Tizzy and Estrebrius sitting around a table scratching away at various papers with pencils or something.

The sitting room was opulently furnished, if dusty. There were a few formal chairs and a sofa for his size, and another set that was perhaps small D’Orc or large humanoid size. The three demons were sitting on high stools around a table suitable for Tom’s height. It was near a large set of French doors with actual glass panes.

The French doors opened onto a balcony overlooking the volcano platform. If he were to guess, it was just inside the upside-down pentagram. The light from outside was rather unusual for the Abyss. Tom moved to the doors to look out and up at the sky.

Black and purple storm clouds were starting to swirl around the top of the volcano. That was very strange; he had never seen clouds in the Abyss before. Actually, how would you even get clouds in the Abyss? It was too hot and dry. There was no real moisture.

“You guys notice the clouds?” Tom asked.

“Yep,” Boggy said, still scribbling away.

Antefalken looked up briefly. “Tizzy says they were extremely common back in the day.”

“Really?” Tom asked the octopod.

Tizzy nodded. “Sure. Only place in the Abyss I’ve ever seen it rain.”

“It rains here?” Antefalken looked up in surprise. He finally stopped scribbling.

“Yeah, and when it does it’s like a giant steam sauna. Water sizzling on lava. Gets downright chilly here, in fact. Sometimes drops to a third of the boiling point of water.”

“You mean like 33 Celsius?” Tom asked incredulously.

“Not often, but on occasion as I recall,” Tizzy agreed.

“So humans could actually survive here,” Tom said.

“Not sure about the acidity of the rain, but presumably,” Tizzy said.

“Actually, that would be a very comfortable temperature for orcs,” Antefalken mused.

“Do you know, that would be helpful with the refreshments,” Boggy suddenly added, looking up from his paper. “We’re not likely to be able to get our hands on any Denubian Choco-Coffee
TM
, nor any blood wine, so we’ll probably need to whip up some x-glargh, which boils somewhere near the same point as water. It’s best served cold, around a quarter of the boiling point of water.”

“X-glargh?” Tom asked.

“It’s an extra-potent form of glargh, a favored intoxicant of orcs according to Hezbarg, the quartermaster.” He gestured to Tizzy. “X-glargh has some extra ingredients that increase the potency so that it affects demons.” Boggy frowned. “It’s nowhere near as potent as blood wine or Denubian Choco-Coffee
TM
, though, so we are going to need a lot of it.”

“Anyone know what the X is?” Antefalken asked the room. “I know how to make glargh, but I’m not sure about the X part. We are going to need to let it sit and ferment for a while.”

“I do,” Tizzy said. “It is mainly nightshade and arsenic. The amount is sort of to taste. Oh, and a good bit of nitro-glycerin—that’s what gives it a kick—plus a few other slightly more esoteric things, like a splash or two of mercury.”

“The fermentation is going to be a problem,” Antefalken said.

“Not if you can find a thaumaturgist to speed it up,” Estrebrius said.

“I don’t suppose Vaselle is a thaumaturge?” Boggy asked the smaller demon.

“No, don’t think so. But he could probably hire one for a gem or two,” Estrebrius said.

“Jenn’s a thaumaturge,” Rupert said, entering the room from a side chamber.

“Something tells me she might not want to play cocktail waitress at a D’Orc party,” Tizzy said.

“Okay, here’s my count, assuming x-glargh,” Boggy said. “If we assume two quarts per demon times 2,000 demons, that’s 4,000 quarts or 1,000 gallons or about seventeen barrels. I think we should really assume at least twenty barrels in case the count is off. So I think a nice two dozen barrels should be perfect.”

“I don’t know that we can make that many barrels,” Antefalken said worriedly. “If I could get a hold of some of my Denubian contacts, that would help. No one could possibly drink two quarts of Denubian Choco-Coffee
TM
. A quart and you’d be well beyond passed out.”

“Plus, the Denubians are equipped for mass production and distribution of the stuff. You can get it by the barrel, and you do not have to keep it cold. Just heat it up when needed,” Boggy said.

“Unfortunately, Hezbarg has said that it’s not safe for D’Orcs to go to the Courts, where we could, with enough cash, buy what we needed,” Antefalken said. “And I don’t know how the rest of us could lug everything we need.”

“Speaking of which,” Boggy said, turning to look at Tom, “we are going to need you to pop open some gateways for some cattle, goat and pig raids for the food.”

“Huh?” Tom asked, puzzled.

“Well, it will not be a problem for a D’Orc hunting party to round up the groceries, so to speak, if you can open a portal to a plane that has the aforementioned grocery items,” Boggy said.

“And how am I to do that? I need someone summoning me, or some other summons I can intercept,” Tom said.

“Well, your predecessor used to contact orc shamans all the time to do that sort of thing, according to Hezbarg,” Boggy said.

“Okay, first, I don’t know any orc shamans, I’ve never even met an orc, and I don’t speak orcish,” Tom told the demon.

“Shouldn’t be a problem, given that we are all speaking Universal,” Tizzy said.

“What?”

“What, you never noticed that demons can talk to people who summon them, no matter the person’s language?” Tizzy began shaking his head. “And you didn’t think that odd? How else would they command us? If they can contact demons, they can communicate with us. Seriously, who would want to learn Denubian the mundane way? You need at least two mouths to speak it natively; Universal takes care of it for us.”

“Is that why the D’Orcs don’t sound like orcs?” Rupert asked suddenly, as if he had just realized something.

“What do you mean?” Antefalken asked.

“Well everyone knows that orcs always talk funny with really stilted, mangled vocabulary. Very brutish like, but the D’Orcs sound like normal people.”

Antefalken laughed. “Orcs only talk like that when speaking foreign tongues. Their jaw structure and tusks make speaking most of the human or alvaren tongues rather tricky. If you talk to them in orcish, they sound very normal.”