War of the Realms

Abaddon could see Beezeel’s mouth calling to him, but the shrieks and moans of the condemned drowned out his assistant’s words. “I can’t hear you, you idiot,” he bellowed. For a moment, Abaddon’s disciple was obscured by the sticky, choking, polluting mist wafting up from the core of the Bottomless Pit. But, vigorously sweeping both chubby arms in front of him, Beezeel cleared a path for himself. Coughing and breathing hard, he finally found himself by his lord’s side.

“They’ve absconded with your olianthian, Your Hideousness!” Beezeel informed him. Excitedly, the words poured out of mouth. “All your good work—all those delicious diseases you inspired—Sir, it could all be wiped out!”

“My olianthian!?” his red, furious eyes threatened to reduce Beezeel to ashes. “Who dared---!?”

And then he “saw.”

In the way an angel has the powers to see almost everything, past and present, he realized that the Uzzians had outwitted his accomplices on Earth.

“Oh, bother,” he mumbled to himself as he paced moodily through the wailing effluvial misery, dismissing heavy vapors that trailed him with waves of his hand. They had been clever, those Uzzians, and they had the backing of even more powerful allies, he mused.

Had they pulled it off legally, Abaddon pondered? Intergalactics stealing a plant from Earth humans; he quickly constructed a formal protest he could bring to the angelic hierarchy. Oh, they’d just love me to register a formal protest, he gnashed his teeth as he pictured Zhong’s rebuttal. There was no way Abaddon would walk into an angelic trap that would open up issues of Draconian involvement in the brain-eating virus and the murder of Jannelle Roberts. In fact, he had seen Jannelle Roberts only recently; she was getting on quite nicely with a number of the Light Angels. No thank you, he’d stay away from that scenario for the time being.

It was all part of the game, he admitted to himself as he paced back to Beezeel. But the agony of defeat- if only temporary- still pained Abaddon. However, no one knew as well as The Destroyer himself, how much sweeter victory would taste once he struck back.

“Have you ever been to Earth, Beezeel?” he asked his apprentice somewhat reflectively while dusting effluvia off his hands.

“Not yet. It’s not one of my sectors, Most Macabre,” Beezeel responded in a respectful voice.

“You’re lucky,” his master smiled ironically, “it’s a hornet’s nest down there. Very messy. Up here, it’s much simpler. We have our delightful, rewarding work— reinforce guilt, validate shame, encourage self-loathing—“

Now he was talking about something Beezeel understood well. The small rounded creature rubbed his hands together enthusiastically. “Punish…punish…punish...,” he chanted.

“Yes, yes,” the Destroyer waved him silent. “Here we’re always quite within the rules. We give these creatures exactly what they ask for.”

“How is it different on Earth?”

A twisted smirk crossed his master’s cadaverous face. “It can become a verrry confusing place, Beezeel. Sometimes that’s fun, and other times…”

The dense clouds of doom formed by souls demanding Punishment collected around the two demons like flies driven mad by half dry blood. Abaddon easily dispersed the souls by stirring them with his wand in a certain way that made them focus on Blame. That way they became a vortex descending into the Bottomless Pit chasing themselves.

“You know, Beezeel, I love a certain amount of unpredictability. What I don’t love is surprises,” the Destroyer continued musingly. “There is a difference. Also, Earth is consumed with too much bureaucracy. It can drive one mad.”

“That sounds awful,” Beezeel said in a hushed voice, taking a step back.

“So it can be, little rodent. The Angelic Realm has Earth Committees. The Intergalactic Council has Earth Committees. Those committees have to meet each other. New rules all the time. It used to be more fun, Beezeel.”

Beezeel shuddered. “Maybe you can get transferred, Beastmaster?”

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Sat, November 22, 2008 5:36 PM