Malfisto's Conquest | By : JohnDoe Category: -Misc Video Games/RPGs > General Views: 1300 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I do not own Demon Conquest and I make no money from this work. No offense is intended or religious or other grounds. Please do not imitate the acts depicted. I did not make the CYOA. |
Acrid smoke. It cloys in my nose. My lungs burn. My eyes sting.
Head splitting noise. Heralds shouting to make way. Lesser demons hawking their wares. The screams of victims in the wrong place at the wrong time. Innumerable demons pressed together in a state that can only be called “Pandemonium” – the capital city of the Demon Realm.
My home.
I push my way past the thronging masses. My father, even my mother, have heralds who walk ahead of them, clearing the way. But we don’t get on: they’re too concerned with court. With prestige and the meaningless games we asmodeans play. They don’t think it’s befitting for a high devil to devote themselves to the study of magic with the abandon I show for it. So, I make my own way in the hells, which means walking the filthy streets. Streets packed with sneering lesser devils and lower creatures – simpleton orcs, ambitious succubi, and the other gutter-trash of the demon realms.
I see her on the other side of the street. How could I miss her? She might only be a lesser devil, but there’s something about her. Her bearing. Her wings. Her horns. The dress she wears that covers no part of her waifish form.
Carriages and chariots thunder between us. She pretends to not have seen me. It’s irritating, but somehow it makes me want her more. I spread my wings and beat them just once. Air rushes past my face as I swoop into the air and drop in front of her path.
“Astathia,” I snarl her name as I advance on her. A flicker of fear appears in her eyes for just a moment… and then its gone, replaced with a look of bored indifference. I wrap tendrils of my power around her, stopping her from fleeing.
“What do you want, Mal?” She says examining her claws distractedly. She pretends not to notice me, but I know better: my chest is bare, my cock covered only by a loose loincloth, my horns polished, wings magnificent – she doesn’t trust herself to look at me.
“I was hoping to pick your brains,” I leer at her inwardly chiding myself: a greater fiend should make demands of his lessers – especially females – not make such timid requests. I advance on her, closing the distance between us to an uncomfortable degree, before continuing, “You’ve heard of my upcoming campaign on Eldermire, no doubt?”
She snorts derisively. I feel ashamed. Like a child presenting a clumsily mauled victim for approval. “You don’t stand a chance. Hanbi will tear you limb from limb.”
“Humbaba thought as much, you remember how that duel went?” I smile at her: a genuine smile of smug superiority and I feel my pulse quicken. I take another step forward. I’m pressed against her now. Her scent threatens to overwhelm me. How I want her.
The Eldermire is a vast swamp that defines the boarders of the demon realms. The deadliest of beasts call it home, but it is also rich in mystic reagents and powerful alchemical ingredients. Ruled over by Hanbi for longer than I have drawn breath. And for as long as I have been conducting my research into the dark arts, Hanbi’s tribute to our emperor – the Demon King Asogoroth III – has been late.
I had been complaining about this, loudly, and in my cups, in one of Pandemonium’s seedier establishments when a belian, one of the hounds of hell, took exception to my disparagement of High Lord Hanbi.
I might lack the prestige of my father, but I am a greater fiend. It is rare to see another demon of my caliber. Especially, a belian – the hell hounds rarely come to the capital. This was Humbaba – Hanbi’s son, and heir apparent. Come to grovel at the demon king’s feet to pray indulgence for his useless father. The speed of the belian is legendary, as is their mastery of fire magic. Humbaba attacked me. I attacked him back.
The memory still brings a smile to face. He threw a fireball at me. I ripped his body apart from the inside with dark energy. I survived. He didn’t.
And that’s what gave me the idea – leave the comfort of the capital and conquer the Eldermire. Technically, treason. To raise arms against a High Lord? One of the Demon King’s chosen? Madness. To say nothing of the legendary resistance to magic supposedly possessed by Hanbi. But his son fell easily enough. And the Demon King’s displeasure was well known. Why shouldn’t I set the affairs of Eldermire in order? My rule would be a gift to the demon realms?
Astathia’s response pulls me back to the present, “You don’t have what it takes. Now get out of my way, Mal – I’m on the way to see a high devil deserving of the title.”
I grab her and push her roughly against the wall of the nearest tenement, “And what makes you say that?” I feel bile rising in my throat. Her casual laughter is like ice down my back. It’s the same laugh she used the first time we fornicated.
She wraps her arms around my waist and pulls me close to her. She whispers in my ear, her magic silences all of Pandemonium to my senses, “You want me, but you won’t do anything about it. I think it’s because you’re too weak. Because all your talk of war on Eldermire is just that – talk. But even if you’re stupid enough to go through with this moronic plan, you still won’t do anything. Because I am on the way to see Ashmedai. A real asmodean. Our High Lord. And if you displease me, you displease my master. And if you displease my master…”
She places a hand on my chest and pushes, oh so gently – as if she were trying to push away a human. I stagger back as if a malphan knight had battered me away. Astathia walks away from me, heading for High Lord Ashmedai’s palace, giggling.
Shame burns inside me. Hotter than hellfire. She’s right, of course, Eldermire is on the other side of the Realm. Hanbi is a High Lord. Until this moment, all my plans of conquest were nothing more than idle daydreams. And even now, at this moment when my will has turned to iron, I don’t dare make an enemy of Ashmedai.
I watch her go and the crowd swallows her.
****
“Forward you stinking brutes!” I bellow at my massed legion of tauros shock troops. The bone mask over my face expands my perceptions of the Eldermire: I can feel the battle unfolding around me. I am winning.
The body of Therin, my oldest friend, staunchest ally, and greatest general lays at my feet, convulsing as the deadly poisons of Eldermire wrack his body with disgusting convulsions.
We’ve fought for months against Hanbi’s forces. Therin at my side the entire time. He has a woman, a succubus I think, back in Pandemonium. Or had, before we left on campaign, every night he’d wax lyrical about the length’s he’d go to in order to reclaim her when we returned to Pandemonium in triumph. His bawdy stories had been good for morale. He was the only one who didn’t laugh at me when I began this campaign and now here we were – on the verge of victory – and there he is spasming to death as elderblight kills him.
I focus my unholy power into a single point and blast a fist-sized hole in Therin’s head. The thrashing was distracting. It half-occurs to me that I might have been able to use my power to drive the poison from Therin’s body. Oh well. As I said, the thrashing was distracting.
I sight Hanbi, driven out at last. I step into the swamp and the shadows cloak me. Illusionary doubles of my appear around Hanbi, mocking him. The stupid belian charges at them, ripping them apart with hoof-and-claw.
I focus my power. I’ll only have one shot at this.
I see Pazuzu, Hanbi’s remaining son. Even as my crawler legions drag Hanbi’s winged fiends to their doom, Pazuzu ignores the battle raging around him as he ploughs into his demonic concubines, seemingly oblivious to the war.
I don’t know whether to be grateful or insulted.
A lesser sorcerer, a mortal perhaps, follows rules. They draw mystical power though carefully rehearsed formulas. I am a high devil. I write the rules of magic. I pull together the most destructive energies of the demon realm: an attack ten times greater than the one that felled Hanbi’s son.
I take aim.
I fire.
Hanbi reels backward, staggering under the force of a blow that would level a building. He shakes his head to clear it, shrugging off my most powerful magical attack as if it were nothing more than a minor inconvenience.
I grit my teeth. Hanbi tears another of my illusions to shred. A keening shriek pieces across the battlefield. In the air, my wyrms wheel and disengage from Hanbi’s flying fiends. Hanbi’s fiends return to the ground, kneeling in submission. My wyrms flee. Even Vulfen, the alpha wyrm, perhaps the most important ally won in this campaign – the only reason we have got this far, the one who led me to the crawler god, and tamed his kin so that my troops could ride them. Vulfen flees. Pazuzu stops mid-thrust. He pulls the concubine from his throbbing cock and tosses her into the brush before taking a knee. My illusions disappear, dispelled by some unfathomable power.
Hanbi smiles.
And then I see him: Asogoroth The Third, Corrupter of Heroes, Demon King.
“Come out Malfisto!” The King’s command is irresistible. Invisible tendrils of power snake around my shadow concealed body. My flesh burns where they touch me. I am dragged from the brush before my king.
Asogoroth turns to Hanbi and smiles. The demon king is the last pure blooded cambion – the most powerful being in any realm – his smile is terrifying. “My dear Hanbi, is this the rebellion you requested my aid with?”
Hanbi returns the smile, “Yes, my liege. Though I am honored that you attended personally. I would never have presumed upon your person.”
Asogoroth slaps Hanbi congenially on the shoulder, “When one of my High Lords requests assistance, that is a matter that requires my personal attention.”
I find my voice to object, “Your majesty, this is not a rebellion against your illustrious rule. So-called ‘High Lord’ Hanbi-”
“Silence.”
The king’s command doesn’t carry the weight of magic behind it, at least, not enough magic to quell a high devil. But it’s still the king’s command. I fall silent.
“The High Lords serve by my appointment, Malfisto.” Asogoroth admonishes. I don’t know whether to feel proud or terrified that the king knows my name. Even after all this time, I don’t think Hanbi does. “I will not be gainsaid. I have removed the High Lord of Eden. I had hoped you might fill that position. I see now that was a misplaced hope. Call off your crawlers.”
My bone mask whispers the secrets of the swamp to me. All the fighting has stopped, save for my mindless crawlers engaged in battle with the king’s legions of orcs. Crawlers are mindless, living weapons, no high devil, no High Lord can command them. They are beyond control, corralled only by strength of arms and frequent culls. No-one can command them. Except for me. I give the command and the crawlers disengage and head back into the swamp.
The demon king’s terrible gaze turns from me to Pazuzu, “Pazuzu, the Realm of Eden is a dangerous place: the land is stricken with terrible energies and the corrupted angels require constant sexual attention. Is your lust up to the task of taming them? Will you renounce all claims to the Realm of Eldermire?”
“It is and I do, my liege!” Pazuzu grins from ear-to-ear and in a heartbeat I can see why he never fought to defend his father’s swamp. All he cares for his slaking his carnal lust. Eden is a better fit for him than a swamp filled with mystic secrets.
“Then rise, High Lord Pazuzu!” Asogoroth clasps Pazuzu with his other hand, and the trio leer at me – still held fast by the demon king’s magics.
I grit my teeth, “Your majesty, High Lord Pazuzu is a fine appointment. But the fact remains that Eldermire is filled with reagents precious, nay, vital to the-”
“Silence.” Asogoroth warns again. The king’s eyes twinkle with danger as he removes a hand from Hanbi’s shoulder. “Do you really presume that your paltry magics are vital to the health of my kingdom?” He taunts.
There’s enough slack in my bonds for me to hang my head in shame.
“Look at me when I am talking to you.” Asogoroth commands.
I obey. Behind my bone mask, my face burns with shame but I keep my voice level, “No, your majesty. But my magics are not the only ones in Pandemonium that depend on the resources of this swamp.”
“That,” Asogoroth rounds on Hanbi, his smile fixed and without mirth, “Is a good point. Pandemonium does depend on the rarities of the Eldermire. And those rarities have stopped flowing into my kingdom, Hanbi.”
“My liege,” Hanbi speaks carefully, and I see his eyes burning with fury, “The Eldermire is a difficult territory to manage. The crawlers menace our every action and the feral wyrms-”
“Do not seem to be a problem for him!” Asogoroth does not turn to look as he points a finger at me. The mystic bonds holding me go slack. It’s true – I have mastered both the crawlers and the wyrms and I’ve won a great number of the native tauros to my cause to bolster those devils I brought from Pandemonium.
“With respect, my liege,” Hanbi spits, clearly infuriated, “This traitor is part of the reason why-”
“Malfisto is new to this realm. Yet his devils have been able to extract its treasures. And send them back to Pandemonium.” Asogoroth’s terrifying smile finally falls. Pazuzu draws back. I think it’s an improvement.
“By raiding my-”
“Silence.” Asogoroth’s command brings a smile to face – I can’t help it. But fortunately the mask hides all sins. “You are a High Lord of Hell, and yet an outsider with a handful of devils has brought your Realm to its knees. He has mastered the swamp that has bested you, slain your kin, and driven you to me on your knees. Because you have failed to kill him, I have to act personally.”
The king approaches me. I remove my mask – it seems fitting – and hold his terrible gaze with defiance.
Asogoroth the Third, the demon king, stares deep into my eyes and asks, “Can you do better?”
I don’t see him decapitate Hanbi (I barely register the former High Lord’s body hitting the floor). I just remember my answer.
“Yes.”
****
The first few weeks of my rule were tempestuous. Devils, even lesser devils, love courtly intrigue. They don’t, as a rule, love the swamp. Those who followed me in a quest to win the magic of the swamp filled their boots and departed back to the capital. A few, those with vision decided to stay and ingratiate themselves into the new order.
I’d brought no women with me on my quest.
The swamp had something to say about my appointment.
The night after my promotion, I heard a voice in my head. My might and magic availed me not against its siren song. I walked out into the mire. The noise. A riot of color inside my mind. A scream of sensation wracking my body. The land warped around me even as my senses twisted and I found myself in a part of the swamp I’d never found before nor since.
The Eldermire had chosen me: it recognized me as a leader worthy of dominion but decreed that a Duke of Hell must have a bride.
The waking dream that assailed my mind was an erotic vision beyond imagining. A twisted nightmare of the finest pleasures filtered through the eye of madness. For how long I wandered in this psychedelic state, I cannot say – I could not keep track of time, nor ever let my subjects know that I was not in total control the entire time. But when I awoke, it was in my Duchess’s bed of leaves.
My bride, my Lilly, is the Eldermire incarnate. She is the wild of the realm. Carefree and curious, with no memory before waking at my side, she showed me the greater secrets of the realm. How to move with the swiftness of a swamp predator. Where to find the ancient Sagewood Staff – carved by the elves of the mortal realm, a powerful tool to enhance my magics. And, perhaps most importantly, how to shape the crawlers under my command into pliant brood daughters – betentacled, writhing creatures of sexually pliant slime. Though the brood daughters can be as capricious – and ravenous – as my Lilly, they are an ever pleasant distraction both for myself and my cadre of nobles.
My new order of Eldermire sits the devils as first among the nobility. By hell magic, my lesser cousins burn out farmland from the swamp and lord over the rotting castles in the swamps. By treaty with my ally Vulfen, wyrm riders and their mounts serve as the knights of the nobles. Beneath my knights are my citizens: the fiends and tauros native to this land. Both have their roles to play – as warriors, of course, but also keepers of the peace and enforcers of my law. The might of the tauros ploughs the fields the devils clear. The speed of the fiends hunts alongside their wyrm rider masters, bringing the meat for our banquets. Then the serfs – my orcs. Orcs are a favorite of our king. I don’t see it. They’re numerous, but thoroughly useless. Fortunately, I have a great need of serfs – though I wonder if mortals might serve better.
What? Others?
I suppose the crawlers are animals under my dominion. Useful in battle, but even with my control of them they require culling like any other animal.
Brood daughters? Succubi?
You mean females? I suppose they’re beneath the serfs but above the crawlers. I suppose, mortal slaves would go there too. If they could survive in the swamp.
They are useful, though.
I’d won my first ally before my Duchess. Before my elevation even. There is a reason the demon king new my name, and her name was Namaaru. A succubus in the king’s court – the friend of a cousin of a friend. She had heard of my campaign and needed reagents from the swamp for her own mental magics. A vision of carnal delight, she put the right whispers in the right ears. And I pay my debts… well… sometimes. All Namaaru wanted was a place in court and with her assets and abilities, that was no great hardship. My Lilly isn’t the jealous type. Or maybe she is? She can be cruel… and Namaaru does seem to avoid her. Hmm.
The point is that Namaaru is perhaps my greatest asset. A mistress of espionage and breaker of slaves, Namaaru is practical where my Duchess is flighty. She relishes the tasks I am perfectly capable of but am bored by. And all she cares for is status – the chance to worship me in public and the authority to command those who should be lords over a lowly succubus. A small price to pay.
Namaaru is my left-hand. My demon general. It’s a pity she’s not a better strategist. But then, there’s no-one like…
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