Chapter 64: The God Of Pain

We were thrown onto the floor of Blitzkrieg's throne room; myself, Goth, Abdiel and Turk, our spread arms chained to beams and held just above the ground by Devils. Patches stood beside Blitzkrieg's grisly throne with his hands behind his back and his head cocked pridefully upwards. Big as he was, he was dwarfed by the others gathered in the room.

The throne was made of the slain, plasticised as the corpse heap in the Board Room had been. The arm rests were antagarthans, and his hands clutched their tortured faces, while his back rested comfortably against a bouquet of wingspread tyflochs. He himself was nearly as tall as Belial, who was there as well, reforming slowly in the center of the room.

Blitzkrieg leaned forward. His armor was an enormous contraption, whirring mechanically every time he bent a knuckle. It's collar was a massive bowl with finger like latches lining the rim, and from within was a sea of thich, greasy wires. His head was in the center of those wires, a pale vulture's egg being held as a holy relic by a clergy of scorpions, their tails the arms, their stingers the pillow for their profane omphalos to rest upon. There was smallishness to his face that unnerved me, like he was wearing a child's face over his own.

"He will grow more quickly if he's fed," the Pit Lord said. I shuddered when I heard his voice. The booming volume, the odious pitch, the contemplative cadence, the earthen rumble, the lingering salival affect; it was wrong, like a voice coming out of a grave in a stumbled upon cemetery. He lifted a massive hand, twice the size of those mits Patches kept tainting my shoulder with, and gestured toward the writhing ruin of Belial. 

A lame Devil was prodded forward by guards holding staves. His armor had been peeled, and he shrieked with every step. 

"You served me well, my son." He nodded ever so slightly, his clouded eyes shifting behind the shrunken dermal facade, and I then noticed his guard. They were nearly his height, but not quite so broad, though they were made fearsome by their gauntness. Their backpacks were crowned by crests of crimson spears, each shaft draped with a black banner. On each banner was a blazon; a red Sunburst within a blue circle, surrounded by an olive wreath in white thread. One of them stepped forward and hoisted his weapon. It was a massive cannon with a humming power generator attached beneath the barrel. Tubes ran from it to the Devil's back, and he held it at his hip. I could tell that even for him it was heavy. The barrel, like so many other things in Pandemonium, was wrong. It was an oval, horizontal, and instead of a long, shadowy tunnel for its projectiles to travel through, within its rim was screen striped with bars of oscillating yellow light.

"I won't let you suffer," said Blitzkrieg.

One of the Devils manning the prods drew a knife from a sheath built into his chest,  and cut a slice into the lame Devil's leg. My sabaton fell out. The guard sheathed his knife and flicked my boot to me with his toe. Then the royal guard squeezed his weapon's trigger. There was a gradual increase in the volume of the generator's hum, and I saw a ripple in the air form around the barrel. Then, suddenly, the hum became a whine, then a keen, and the ripple became much more intense, then a shock split the air between the guard and his lame brother. Lame Brother's face turned to slag, and he slumped over, brittle as a crystal figurine. The guard with the prod dragged Lame Brother to Belial while the royal guard resumed his station behind Blitzkrieg's throne. Belial inched forward, spreading outward so he could encompass the dead Devil, then covered the corpse in a creeping fashion.

I wanted to retch, but something stopped me. I think I wanted to hide any sign of weakness, so I remained still and quiet, faceless behind my shroud, watching Belial's face appear stretched over his viscous body. Soon he looked like the opposite had happened to him from Blitzkrieg; rather, he was too large a face hung on too small a peg. But then Blitzkrieg took off the miniscule face and threw it on Patches.

"Feed that to him, Colonizer."

Patches stood still for a moment.

"Kharn," rumbled Blitzkrieg, "I'll see he eats you with it. Go on, feed it to him."

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Patches walked towards Belial carefully, and, keeping his hands still, made a motion like a head butt, and flung the flesh mask onto the ground near Belial. I recognized that it was Matoya's, the hapless merchant who unleashed a Devil into our very midst. Belial stretched of finger of unshaped flesh over it and dragged it under his outer mass.

"He needs a little more," said Blitzkrieg, "to make it interesting." 

A nod of the head, and Goth was flung onto Belial, chains, beam and all. He screamed, oh he screamed, and when it was over Belial had enough of a head to spit out the beam and chains. Stumpy arms protruded from the sides of his mass, and he began creeping more quickly towards me.

"Let them down," said Blitzkrieg.

We were set down, unchained, and given our weapons.

Blitzkrieg leaned forward. His shell whirred, the bed of scorpion tails dripped oil, and his real face smirked faintly. "What do you say? A little sport before the real fight?"

I cocked my head, and in my peripheral vision I saw that Turk and Abdiel di the same.

"I know what you planned," said Blitzkrieg. "And I agree. It's time Regis and I settled things. No more foreplay. I'm taking my whore to bed. But first..."

He waved an impatient finger at the creeping mass stalking towards as he leaned back. We looked at each other, then at Belial, and began to circle him slowly.

"Come on!" shouted Blitzkrieg. "I'm not surfacing til you kill him! I'm sick of this whinging puddle of quim. Always oozing back to me every time he's butchered. Do it. Kill him! Here." He pointed at a stool near his throne and one of the Devils gathered around the walls of the throne room and pounded it with her fist. The floor in the center parted, exposing a grate over a sweltering furnace. Belial squealed and began to squirm off the grate, though bits of him melted off and fell in.

"Do it, or join Goth! He'll eat all three of you at once. I've seen him do it. I've seen him gulp whole families down. Look, he's already got arms. I'll push you into him myself and he'll make you his balls and cock. He'll eat you and I'll have to keep feeding him prisoners and we'll be stuck with him. Is that what you want? For this lab rat to keep on living, so he can spin his little wheel forever, hurting people? Hurting himself? Can't you see he's in pain and wants to die? You, Victor thirty- whatever, clean this mess up. Your mad scientists made this thing. He's your responsibility. And you, Ottoman, Bantu- whoever you are, you made this Victor what he is. And the bird, too. You corrupt everyone around you. You turn them all into senseless killers. This Batch Boy here, he had a wife, a pretty one, and you went and had the, the dakine, the nelumbo codex, you had it sent there, so he'd wake up. And then he went and killed my employee when I sent him to get it back. You know how many mimics are left, Bantu? None! You woke this Batch Boy up and he killed the last of a species. He could have lived a quiet little life. You can't let anyone sleep, Bantu. You woke up all the future stock, all of it, and for what? So they could follow you around and play wargames? How many samples are left? You're playing paintball with the future, getting it killed so you can feel important. You're a horror! You've stirred things up, got Jadus and Victor 33 all riled at each other, got the Board at Haven all talking about reform. And my parakeet. You took my parakeet and made him mean! He was so happy to sit on my shoulder and say all the words I taught him. My little budgie. You ruin everything and everyone around you, Bantu! I was gonna leave Haven alone, but you-"

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