God's Demon - Barlowe, Wayne - God's Demon

He entered, stood up, and the door constricted behind him. The twilight of Beelzebub's chamber took a moment to adjust to, and Adramalik tried to see whether any significant changes had been made to the vast, circular room. Eons of attendances had imbued him with a familiarity and practiced eye that missed very little.

He was used to the suffocating closeness of the place but always thought it ironic that the largest building in Hell was also one of its most cramped. Few standing in the Rotunda's center would have guessed at its monumentality. As he looked about, all looked as it should.

Adramalik slowly made his way toward the gathered demons, careful not to trip over the chunks of raw-looking meat that floated in the ankle-deep puddles of blood. He was used to this as well. One had to get used to everything one saw in this chamber, he reflected, or one would go insane and find himself cast out naked upon the Wastes. He enjoyed watching demons from outside of Dis when they entered this chamber. They would look forward, never down, rarely up, and focus upon the distant, towering throne. Their eyes would adopt a haunted look, and their jaws would clench. Their loathing was as clear as it was amusing to him, and their need to leave as quickly as possible was just as evident. No, he thought, those Outlander demons could never get used to this environment as he had. That always gave him a wonderful sense of pride.

He stepped up to the gathered demons. There were about twenty of them—petitioners mostly—and Adramalik noted that not only was his lord not seated upon the throne but that the Prime Minister Agares, a great duke and personal advisor to Beelzebub, was also absent. What could he be doing that is more important than this? Adramalik looked at the gathered demons and then focused on the initiate.

Adramalik knew everything about this fellow. Lord Agaliarept and he had left no stone unturned in their investigation of him. His had been a truly remarkable journey, beginning with an impact in Hell that put him far from every other demon who had landed. He had landed so far out on Hell's fringe that, after wandering alone for millennia, he had taken up with the enigmatic Salamandrine Men. There he had learned to survive in the Wastes, to hunt Abyssals of all description, to adorn himself with their glowing stalks and pelts, and to use them as a native would. His weapons skills, which drew heavily on patterns and moves from the Waste dwellers' craft, would be far beyond those of the other Knights. And he had a look to him that was intelligent and more than a little wild, due in part to a single, glowing Abyssal stalk that he'd thrust into his smooth skull. He was highly adaptable and had learned the ways of the court quickly and was quiet at the right times. Adramalik, who thought of him as something of a personal protege, knew that he would serve the Order well.

SALAMANDRINE MAN - (Painter IX) - I discovered a reference to the Salamandrine Men or Men of Wrath in an old book and was immediately intrigued. I decided to transform them into the indigenous peoples of Hell, there long before the demons Fell and the Inferno was populated by the damned. I see them as fierce fighters, tribal and semi-nomadic, hunting Abyssals and waging a constant battle against not only the extreme elements of the Wastes but, also, the demons and souls. Aware that their era is coming to a close, their heightened bitterness compels them to acts of wanton aggression against any intruders who stray into their territories.

This "painting" is a first for me. It is rendered entirely in Painter IX and represents my very first effort with that marvelous program. Starting as nothing but an experimental sketch, it took two days to render - a time that would have probably been double or triple that if I had used actual paint. For a very long time now I have been relatively skeptical about the ability of any computer rendering program to emulate the personal handwriting of an artist. I stand corrected.

Coinciding with Adramalik's arrival, the gathered demons began to hear a faint buzzing that seemed to emanate from between the thousands of skins that hung from the domed ceiling. These skins hung from an intricate webwork of sinew, swaying as if caught in a gentle breeze, but no breeze, no cleansing balm, had ever filtered through the windowless chamber. The movement was created by the soul-skins themselves, rippling and contorting and trying futilely to free themselves from their captivity. Adramalik had sometimes come upon Beelzebub as he sat gazing up at their rustling dance and giggling softly, unaware that he was being watched.

The buzzing grew louder; in moments Beelzebub would assume his throne. Some of the demons shifted uneasily, but the initiate looked upward without a trace of apprehension. Adramalik thought again that he had chosen well.

Chapter Three

ADAMANTINARX-UPON-THE-ACHERON

There could be no day or night in Hell. What was regarded as day would have been as twilight in any other place. Only red Algol, which some regarded as the Above's Watchdog, could be used as any true measure of Time. It scratched its lonely path through the blackness at intervals regular enough to be measured and useful, and it was the wan star's pallid rise that heralded the day. Its light affected nothing.

When Algol finally rose over Sargatanas' finished palace, many millennia had passed. Its spire-ringed dome, now empty of the thousand winged workers, reared up over the city like a mighty mountain peak. The Audience Chamber within had no rival for its dark architectural beauty. Sargatanas' aesthetic had been so sublime and its execution by Halphas so deft that when he first entered the chamber Eligor nearly forgot that he was in Hell. Mineral resources from all over Hell had been brought together, floated on barges down the Acheron, and used with such craft and subtlety as to strike dumb all who saw the chamber for the first time.

It was a hundred spans wide and the domed, pale-obsidian ceiling above soared half again more than that. Sargatanas took each visiting demon dignitary around himself, pointing out details, like the carved smoked-crystal capitals atop each of the five hundred gold columns or a particularly eloquent vein in the polished bloodstone floor. While the palace's shell was built traditionally of bricks, there was not a soul-brick to be found in its core; all the materials used in the arcade, the Audience Chamber, and the dome had been painstakingly quarried from veins of native rock. That, alone, made the edifice unique. Sargatanas had had no desire to incorporate the suffering of souls into the heart of his great building-of-state. Some might have called it a monument to ego, but Eligor knew that it was a sincere attempt to keep the memory of the Above close at hand.

He, Valefar, and sometimes Valefar's lieutenant, the Demon Minor Zoray, were frequent guides to the sights of the palace. When the great Earl and Demon Major Bifrons arrived with his large entourage, his three eyes widened with the sheer size of the chamber. As befit Sargatanas' Prime Minister, Valefar took the lead, showing them the splendors of the new palace. Gasps came from the corpulent earl—gasps of admiration, Eligor was sure, and not due to the demon's bulk.

"My lord," Eligor said, dropping back with Sargatanas, "if Earl Bifrons, whom none could call abstemious, is impressed, everyone who enters here will be awed. You will be known across all of Hell for this marvel."

Sargatanas stopped and cast his gaze up toward the distant oculus. Dark clouds slid above it. "I am sure you are right, Eligor. But what he will not realize is that I built this place as a symbol for Them—so that They can see that some of us still have our ... dignity. Even now."