Published at 31st of August 2023 9:55 am

Chapter 20

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After working nonstop on remaking the Crown Prince’s body for almost an entire day after preparing the materials he needed, Jakob found a corner of the study-turned-laboratorium and slept for a few hours.

When he awoke, the Prince still lay unconscious on the workbench and the remains of the people whose muscles, bones, skin, and hair that had been used to remake him crowded the floor near one of the large mosaic windows.

As he stood watching the sunrise through the window, munching on a gooseberry tart and sipping calendula tea, he wondered if Sirellius would actually let the Daemon go hungry.

The minutes passed and the blazing orb cast its light across the metropolis as it followed its ponderous journey through the sky. He concluded that the Advisor had dutifully fed Guillaume a gallon of blood, when the Prince’s remade body continued drawing breath, albeit shallowly. Whether out of self-preservation or loyalty to the royal family, Jakob could not say, though his bet would be on the latter.

While he stood in his own thoughts, there came a knock on the door.

“Enter,” Jakob answered.

After a few hesitant moments, the door to the room pushed open and Sirellius entered. His flawless white-and-purple robe was now adorned with a splatter of crimson droplets on the sleeves and skirt.

“Your future King yet lives,” Jakob announced amusedly. “I see that you personally fed the Daemon.”

“You said yourself the duty was mine,” he replied sombrely. His once-haughty expression was now one of defeat and resignation.

“Our deal has now concluded.”

“I did not ask you to practise your heresy on my Prince.”

“Consider it a gift,” Jakob replied, though, from the expression on Sirellius’ face, he clearly did not. “He is stronger than ever and will be able to pass on his genes.”

“What do you mean?”

“Given the circumstances of his death, procreation would not have been possible without my intervention and correction.”

A look of surprise crossed Sirellius’ face. “I did not realise… Thank you.”

“May it ameliorate the enmity between us, so that the urge to track me down will not compel you in the future.”

The Old Advisor laughed, but there was no humour in it. “If I had known I was making a deal with a Demon, I would have considered my contract more thoroughly.”

Jakob grabbed a jar he had prepared the day before and passed it to Sirellius. The syrupy brown soup within sloshed as he took it.

“Once he drinks that he will awaken. I will take my leave before then.”

Immediately, the Advisor leant over the body of his Prince and forced the concoction down his throat. Jakob had already left the study when the sound of coughing-and-sputtering could be heard from within. Moments later, the unmistakable voice of the Crown Prince was scolding the Old Man.

With his hood drawn and a hand on Tchinn within his pocket, Jakob quickly left the castle behind and sought out the quickest route to the Noble Quarter.

_______________________________________________________________

Kabel wiped blood off his cheek, though it only smeared his dirty face more. A spindly hand-like creature lay before him, its midsection rent with the force of one of his attacks with the bone gauntlet. It unsettled him that this creature of nightmarish design had moments prior been vaguely humanoid in shape.

“These are nothing like the ones in the sewer,” he commented.

Sig kicked the creature with a gold-embellished boot. “The Underking seems to really want the Giant returned to him.”

“Heskel? Why?”

“Why should I know?”

Kabel shrugged. He had found a strange kinship with Sig the Golden, though friendship was not the right word for it. He had no illusions that she would not gut him the moment the Demon Lord believed his usefulness had reached an end.

I seemed to have traded ownership without being informed… he mused to himself. Of course, he could always make the attempt to escape, though his intuition told him that way lay only death. Kabel had been called many things, but suicidal was not one of them, in fact, he had most often been likened to a roach or rat, given his proclivity for self-preservation at all costs.

“Did he give you that weapon?”

“I think it’s more on loan than anything,” Kabel answered. “I’m generally better with a bow though. This is the first bit of magic I’ve been able to use, and I feel like even a toddler could use this thing…”

“Why don’t you ask Lord Mammon to gift you a bow then?”

“Are you suggesting I ask a Demon for a favour?”

Sig laughed, realising the insanity of her advice. “We are doomed either way. You may as well, I figure.”

“My soul is still my own,” Kabel replied.

“Are you entirely sure?”

Now it was Kabel’s turn to laugh. “Not exactly…”

Golden glitter suddenly rained down in front of them and a demon manifested itself in a haze of shiny mist.

“Salutations, Hoardlings!” it called cheerfully as its full visage stepped from the obscuring mist. It had a static smiling mask of grey stone as a face and a lopsided body with thick legs and skinny arms and torso. Its body was made of spongey orange gelatine that was partially translucent and twin cores shone with an orange glow where its belly and heart would normally have been located, had it been human. It seemed neither male nor female, though Kabel already had seen enough of Lord Mammon’s cohort to know that such was the norm.

“New orders?” Sig asked.

“Indoodily! My name is Sarll, follow me or I’ll eat you!”

The gel demon took off in a merry skip as it moved down the streets and alleyways that snaked around Mammon’s demesne.

Sig and Kabel followed closely behind in a steady jog.

“I swear each is more unhinged than the last,” Sig commented. They had been fighting for what felt like days, each new opponent announced by the arrival of a demon. However, more often than not it was the tiny Greedling imps who guided them, so the arrival of a true demon was a worrying sign of the sort of resistance they would meet.

From one moment to the next, Sarll vanished around a corner and they had to break into a sprint to keep up. Given that demons did not seem to be wont to empty threats, the prospect of being eaten by Sarll, if they fell behind, seemed a very real possibility.

As they rounded the corner, they emerged into a small park full of well-trimmed hedgerows and trees, where a fountain with statues of chubby angel children, who danced around the eager stream of water in petrified glee, stood as its centre. On one of the benches that surrounded this sculpted structure, sat a man with the pelt of a bear draped over his body to cover his naked skin.

“Return it to me,” he demanded as he noticed Sarll opposite the fountain from him.

“You smell strange,” Sarll replied happily, its cheerful demeanour unflinchable.

The man stood from the bench, which Kabel immediately noticed was bent and fractured from his immense weight.

“Another one of these…” he complained.

His blank eyeless face was smooth and drawn back so that his skull was close to a crescent shape when viewed from the side. As the humanoid rose to his full height, which was close to three metres. his face started elongating from jaw to upper lip.

“Return it,” it droned on again, its throaty voice garbling the words as though they were a foreign language. As the creature started ambling towards Sarll, its malformed stumpy feet cracked the flagstones underfoot.

Sarll skipped towards the humanoid with not a care in the world. The Gelatine Demon jumped over the fountain with a powerful kick and slammed its arm into the head of the man-thing, its body shifting the mass on its chunky legs to its arm mid-motion.

The impact folded the humanoid giant onto itself, so that its smooth forehead snapped against the lip of the fountain.

As Sarll landed, its body was once again the weirdly-proportioned shape it had started with. No sooner had the Greed Demon landed than a spindly limb like a five-metre-long eight-digit finger had shot from the back of the humanoid’s spine and pierce it through the glowing heart core. The finger continued ripping through the Gel Demon’s body, before pivoting back and penetrating the belly core on the return-strike.

With a burst of light, Sarll’s body imploded and vanished in spatter of gloopy gelatine.

“I think we might be fucked,” Kabel commented uneasily, as the giant man spun on them and his body unfolded like one of the paper decorations they made in his hometown to the west.

_______________________________________________________________

Sig nudged his body with her gold-trimmed boot and sighed.

I kind of liked him…

She knelt and with a careful grip on his wrist, pulled the bone gauntlet from Kabel’s broken body. Blood-flecked spittle bubbled from his mouth as he tried to utter some final words to her.

“Just close your eyes,” she told him. “I will take your pain away.”

Most of his body lay some metres away, but his torso and left arm were still attached to his head. In the end, the Chimera had not been too strong, but the fool had simply gotten unlucky. It was nothing new for Sig who had seen many of Lord Mammon’s other slaves fall, and yet she felt a tinge of guilt when she put her golden prosthetic to his temple and sent spike of blood through his skull, destroying his entire brain with an internal explosion. The final bit of light was snuffed from Kabel eyes.

“They won’t have their way with you,” she promised in a solemn whisper.

Glitter and mist pre-empted the arrival of yet another Demon, and she stood up and attached the bone gauntlet to her left hand as she awaited its arrival. The gauntlet fit her as though it had been made to her exact measurements. Somehow, it did not seem too far-fetched an idea that these had once been designed with her in mind, despite the fact that Jakob openly despised her and had only kept her alive because it amused him.

When the lightshow vanished, there was no Demon to greet her nor a Greedling with its big bulbous black eyes.

“A shame, to lose such an amusing toy,” commented the voice of Lord Mammon from behind her.

Sig immediately spun to face him. He was standing over Kabel’s body, neck bent and looking down at the lightless eyes.

“M-my Lord,” she stammered, “I apologise for this outcome.”

Without breaking his gaze with the corpse’s dead eyes, he simply replied, “It matters not. Gather his remains and come home. The Young Master has returned from his errand and is eager to fulfil his promise to me. Your compliance in his endeavour is expected.”

_______________________________________________________________

The mansion of Lord Mammon had continued its reality-defying internal expansion and now was like a town on the inside, with mounds of gold and piled treasure stretching into the horizon. A strange sluglike Hoardbeast, not too unlike the one that safeguarded the Tungsten Scroll, carried Jakob from the grand entrance to a central open spire where many winged demons and creatures frolicked and played, their Master lounging at its peak.

When their eyes met, Mammon vanished, only to reappear before the beast that bore him, a cloud of golden flecks falling away from him like the scales of a moth. Jakob dismounted the slug by stepping down its soft body and the Demon Lord graciously offered him his hand so that he landed safely on the coin-strewn ground.

“Might I possibly learn such magic as this?” Jakob wondered. “With the ability to transform a building into so vast a space, any place may become the perfect laboratorium.”

“If I possessed the knowledge of how to pass on such a skill, you would be deserving of it, but alas.”

“A shame, but I suppose even a minor Greed Demon can be enticed to provide me with such utility as this.” It was certainly something he intended to investigate.

“Nowhere near as grand, but similar, possibly. I am unsure what powers my weaker brethren possess however, and it may be that I alone amongst my species wield this ability.”

“I shall have to experiment and find out,” Jakob muttered.

“For a price, I may offer my expertise again.”

Jakob considered the proposal. Greed Demons were the least destructive to human civilisation as they seemed perfectly able to coexist with a materialistic capitalist society that revolved around bartering and trade. But prolonged exposure to Lord Mammon would no doubt corrupt his faculties and steer him down indulgent paths that he had no desire to explore.

“I will consider it, but, for now, show me where Heskel has set up, so that I may begin work on making the new visage you wish to inhabit.”

Heskel grunted with satisfaction upon seeing his Ward.

“You have been hard at work, I see,” Jakob commented.

“Much to prepare.”

“Indeed. Where is Kabel and Stelji?”

“Kabel is dead, I’m afraid, and I have taken the Lightning-Tamer for my own.” Mammon answered from behind him, his unnerving ability to observe and traverse every square-metre of his demesne with ease showing Jakob that there would be no room to circumvent his contract with the Demon Lord and live. Though he also had no intention to renege on their deal, given the, albeit-perilous, usefulness such a connection would prove to any person of his trade. Besides, this was an opportunity to craft something of mythical eminence and not one he would pass up on just to retain some of his freedom.

“Make good use of her, she is only going to get stronger with every fight, and, in time, she will no doubt be the strongest tool in your arsenal.”

“She has already distinguished herself, as has your Blood-Witch, but I will heed your wisdom and not squander their capabilities.”

“Has Kabel’s body been retrieved?”

“Yes, dismantled already, but brain cannot be salvaged.”

Jakob frowned. “No matter, we will make use of him nonetheless, though I would have loved to study his grey matter.”

“The Blood-Witch was the one to blow out his flame. It seemed to be out of compassion,” Mammon explained, the latter sounding like a half-formed accusation.

“Sig once declared herself Eyeless, and though you say you have reformed her and returned her to the fold of the Watcher’s grace, an ember of perfidy is sure to still smoulder in her chest.”

The Demon Lord’s eyes narrowed at the implied scepticism in Jakob’s words. “You are my guests, Jakob, but do not forget your place.”

“I believed we spoke as equals.”

“No Proud Demon am I, but I am above your kin, this is obvious to all observers. You are useful to me, but, ultimately, I am indulging you and your craft. Call it fascination with a lower species.

“Look around you. This is a sanctuary for all that ails and hunts you. Without me, where would you be? You are beholden to me until our contract has concluded. Do not forget that.”

Jakob weighed the benefit of retorting, but ultimately conceded the point in favour of staying on good terms with the Lord of the Shining Hoard and lowered his head.

“My apologies Lord Mammon, I shall learn to bite my tongue when my words are of no benefit to my betters.”

When he lifted his head, the expression on the Demon Lord’s face marked satisfaction that his status was secure. After all, within Helmsgarten, he was perhaps the most powerful entity present, bar the Crown in its totality.

Mammon turned on the spot and evaporated into golden mist and Jakob breathed a sigh of relief.

Thank the Watcher that Demons are such gullible fools.

Heskel grunted disapprovingly, but knew enough to not give words to his thoughts as well.

“We must play nice,” Jakob told him. “Patience is a virtue, didn’t you know?”

Frustrated, the Wight kicked a pile of coins, sending them clattering down and away from their estrade upon which their makeshift laboratorium was erected.

“You are honest like a Demon,” Jakob noted with amusement.

He grunted in what could only be described as offended outrage.

“We are the heritors of this world, Heskel. The pen of history will be in our hands, not theirs, rest assured.”

Jakob finally had the time to look through what tools they had to deal with. Unsurprisingly, every blade, saw, needle, and thread was of the purest most-brilliant gold. Given that the tools were infused with the essence of a Demon, a powerful one at that, they would not break nor chip, but he thought the level of ostentation was frivolous.

As for their materials, they had a healthy sampling with half-a-dozen men and seven women, though he could already tell that they would require more, since the Flesh-Hulk had required eleven adult bodies and the Dragon corpus that they aspired to make would dwarf even that monstrosity. Also, they were starting to turn gold instead of decaying, which he found an irritating challenge.

“Where is Loke?”

“Hunting materials.”

“Excellent. We will require thirty bodies, split two-to-one between men and women.”

“Thirty-five,” the Wight argued back. “Fifteen men, twenty women.”

Jakob considered it, but did not understand the logic. “Explain.”

“Women possess flexible lighter bodies, better for large construct.”

“You believe that will be necessary?”

Heskel grunted affirmative, as though his verbosity had suddenly rendered him mute.

“We could counteract the weight of male muscle-mass with expanded skeletal support.”

“No. Mobility essential.”

“Very well, I’ll concede in favour of your experience.”

The Wight regarded him coolly.

“Alright, fine! It’s not just your experience, clearly you’ve given it more thought than I.”

Heskel nodded once and that was that, the debate had ended. It was a nostalgic feeling to Jakob, who could not help but relax as he recollected similar arguments from before they ventured out of the sewers. It was the rare few arguments that were settled in his favour, but he always felt like he learned more from every time he was showed the flaws in his logic.

And now that he considered it more dutifully, there was a simple irrefutable sense in focusing on making a lithe dragon for a Greed Demon to inhabit, as opposed to a heavy well-armoured corpus. If a soul shaped the vessel it occupied, then surely a vessel must fit the shape of the soul it intended to inherit.

“While we await the return of Loke, I have another task I’d like to complete.”

His Lifeward tilted his head with an unspoken question.

“I need new trousers, apron, gloves, and boots.” As he saw Heskel turn to the pile of bodies yet to be disassembled, he grinned beneath his scent-mask. “Not of human flesh, Heskel. You see, we find ourselves in a Garden of Plenty. If our Host is willing to lend us his subjects, we may make for ourselves robes of their durable pelts.”

A gruff pulsating thrum was elicited from the Giant of sown-together parts. Jakob had never before heard such a sound. It was unsettling and dangerous, making his bones ache and heart quake.

Heskel was laughing.

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