Infiltration

     As I walked up the road, I observed the many demons I could see along the way. I had wondered what they did with their days. Humans needed food and shelter and wanted to start families, but demons didn’t need any of that. So what did they do? Did they pursue a higher purpose? Pursue strength?

     From what I could tell, they seemed just as varied as humans. Some did nothing. They simply sat around vacantly staring, allowing time and boredom to consume them. Some were performing work. Brick makers were the ones I saw the most of, with others digging up the ground and grinding it into a kind of usable powder. Some were clearly just seeking entertainment, playing some kind of game or even harassing others just for fun.

     This wasn’t the hell I’d learned of back on Earth, at least, not this settlement. I would’ve thought the demons would be facing eternal punishment, either committing or enduring, but I didn’t see any of that here.

     Before I realized it, my feet had carried me to the castle gates where one guard, larger than the gate itself, stood in front.

“WHO?” The guard’s voice boomed.

I responded, “I’M DURUS, RETURNING FROM MY MISSION UNDER LORD SERO.”

“HM. DURUS. YES. IN.”

     The guard stepped aside and pushed one of the gate doors open with a single massive three-fingered hand.

     As I stepped inside, I was surprised by how different it was from everywhere else I had seen. While the walls were made of the same bricks as the others, they walls were actually covered with some kind of paint, or something like it. They were painted a pale blue, while the floors were a smooth, darkened red. There were even rugs, though they seemed to be made of some kind of leather, rather than whatever fabric Earth ones were made of.

     The ceiling was high and made use of arches unlike the other buildings, and the hallways and each doorway were quite spacious, though not spacious enough for the guard outside. Each room I looked into seemed to be for something different. One looked like it was for sculpting with the material the bricks were made of. Another seemed to use large scales and shells for etching art into. There was even something that looked like a reception room with furniture made of a combination of body parts and brick. I came upon an intersection and nearly bumped into another demon as I did.

     They were a terrible husk, having what looked like a moose skull and antlers for a head. Rather than legs, they moved around on six long arms with palms planted on the ground. It had no lower body, just a spine that ran down to nothing, and skin that seemed mummified against its skin all over.

     “Wha-! DURUS!” It chattered, “Finally back are ya!? Where have ya been?! We heard from the wall guard that ya’d returned, why didn’t ya come straight here?!?”

“THE, UH, GREEN PLAGUE. SHE PULLED ME ALONG TO THE, UH, BAR? AND I WAS...KEPT THERE FOR AWHILE.”

“Ah, ye? I did hear they kept ya alive. Fine! Cm’on! The others have been waitin’! Let’s report in!”

     And before I could answer, it had scampered off down the hall it came from, and I had to jog after it to keep up.

     Through that doorway was what I had only seen in shows and movies, what looked to be a large banquet hall with a long, singular table made of a long, singular piece of scaled skin. Numerous chairs surrounded the table with ten demons occupying the seats and four more that were too big to fit within them and simply sat on the ground. They each turned their heads to me and called out “Durus!” in their surprise or frustration.

     As I found a seat of my own with the boney moose demon taking a seat next to me, I was assailed with multiple overlapping, interrupting questions of where I’d been and what I was doing and how dare I make them wait and other such frustrations.

     I slammed my fist on the table, which didn’t make nearly as much of a ‘bang’ as I would’ve hoped, but still I shouted, “SHUT YER TRAPS! ONE AT A TIME! SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT’S GOING ON!!!”

     There was a moment of silence, some grumbling and clearly wanting to shout back, but one demon spoke up first. It was some kind of one-eyed scaled demon with two long fingers and no thumbs on each ‘hand’ that it idly rubbed together as it spoke, “Where have you been? We were all killed so quickly, yet you weren’t. Why not then? Why are you here now?”

“I WAS CAPTURED. THEY KILLED YOU ALL BUT KEPT ME ALIVE. THAT GREEN PLAGUE USES THIS SKIN TO TORTURE ME. LIBERO WANTED ME TO LEAD THEM BACK TO THE LORD, SO HERE I AM. HERE WE ARE. AND? WHERE IS LORD SERO?”

     There was some chatter about my admittance to leading them here, but they concluded they would have done the same. It seemed there was no loyalty to their lord to be found here. There were plenty of other mutterings of ‘Libero’ as if in disbelief.

     Another demon answered my question, this one did not have a body like the others, but seemed more like a hazy black mass. I could not see its eyes, but I could feel its gaze as it spoke with an echoing whisper, “Lord Sero has been summoned by King Caedes along with the other lords that serve him. We do not know when he shall return. The object that was summoned, what was it?”

“THE GREEN PLAGUE SAID IT WAS A HUMAN.”

     Before I could say anything more, the clamoring became too loud for me to answer over them. The mention of a human in the demon world seemed to disturb them greatly, but that they had to ask me means that none of them had seen a human and likely had never been to a world with humans. The black mass continued to speak, “And what became of the human?”

     I thought about what to say. I can’t have them go looking for me, let alone to have me end up searching for...me.

“IT DIED. APPARENTLY HUMANS CAN’T SURVIVE HERE IN THE DEMON REALM. THEN THE GREEN PLAGUE DID SOME, I DON’T KNOW, SOMETHING TO IT AND THE CORPSE DISAPPEARED. I THINK SHE ATE IT. WHY WAS THERE A HUMAN THERE TO BEGIN WITH? I DON’T REMEMBER LORD SERO MENTIONING ANYTHING ABOUT A HUMAN.”

     Next to speak was the largest demon in the room, a mass of limbs and masks all converging on a central glob of sagging leathery flesh. The masks seemed to speak in unison, but each with a different voice, and their mouths moved much like a puppet’s, “Lord Sero did not say anything of a human. We were merely ordered to retrieve whatever was to appear at that location. I have received a similar order before, but what appeared was not a human, but some kind of rock.”

     Similar order? Have they been trying to pull something from other worlds before this? Did they mean to summon a human, or was that merely an accident? I don’t think these demons will have the answers.

“SO? NOW WHAT? ARE WE JUST GONNA SIT AROUND AND WAIT FOR LORD SERO TO RETURN?”

     “No,” spoke a demon that was covered in rigid bumps that looked like stitches all over its overly-muscular body, “We must kill Libero and capture the Green Plague. Then we can cover our failure to obtain the human and present them to our Lord.”

     The other demons seemed to be in agreement on this plan. I hesitated. Libero and Siti were able to wipe out those demons outside the walls with ease, but what about that lightning that kept striking Libero? And these demons seemed different, more intelligent than the mindless monsters.

“YOU WANT TO FIGHT THE DEMON OF FREEDOM? DON’T YOU KNOW HE CAN SWALLOW YOUR WHOLE TERRITORY??”

     “Yes,” replied the same muscular demon, “But if we fail or do nothing, Lord Sero will do the same through the brand. So we must try. Come. Let us waste no more time.”

     So all of these demons, all of them in this settlement, were living with an effective gun to their heads. And even if that trigger is never pulled, they’ll have to make ‘tributes’ anyway. This isn’t a settlement, it’s a farm. They’re exploited or slaughtered.

     As the other demons rose to make their way out, I had no choice but to follow them, lest they suspect me. I tried to think of some kind of excuse to stay, or some ration to make them stay away, but I couldn’t think of any. My mind blanked as fear gripped me. Am I going to have to fight Libero? Fight Siti?