ENTRY 016//PSEUDOMONARCHIA//DAEMONUM
> There are ten spheres of existence; eight of which culminate into thrones vested with power over their respective spherical strata. Two are crownless, one of which cannot be reached. And so, nine Legions of daemons there are, eight of which are ruled over by archdaemons—personifications of virtuous vice and vicious virtue.
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> Decarabia is the ether at the center of the sun. The daemons that dwell within the tartarus of sol are monstrous and despicable things, but where Misophaes is weak, Decarabia is strong. Its archonic daemon is that of Adonaios—whose pseudonyms number Samael the Blind G-d and Lucifer the Conflagration, the Fallen Star of Apollo. Daemons of this Legion are commonly called devils for they are borne in the holocaust of Damnation.
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> Leliouria is the ether beyond the moon. The penultimate-highest sphere of existence, second only to the empyrean realm where helium devils swim on currents of plasma. Leliouria is the void of space where the most alien of daemons ebb and float on nothingness itself. Known as the Abyss Above, the Empty Legion is the smallest in number with Abrisene’s archonic familiar at Its helm—Abbadon the faceless Doom Herald.
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> Lunalia is the ether of the moon. Heaven is on the moon and so are Its fallen angels; agathodaemons roam the barren asteroid shards of the fractured satellite. With the shattering of Luna, none may ascend to Heaven, the promise of paradise lost forevermore. This is the unreachable sphere of existence, pearly gates not so much barred but excised from the rotunda. Shibbolethes’ archdaemon is, aptly, the shattered moth of Mammon. The Legion of Lunalia is known as the Parabola, for the disparate shards of Heaven orbit the desolate earth in such a fashion.
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> Aeria is the ether below the moon. It is the air and the clouds, where spirits flit and fornicate about on diaphanous beetle’s wings. Aeriae daemons, called luxuries, are the spawn of Astaphaios’ cardinal known as Morrigain. One of the three Luciferines, this archdaemon shares the pseudonym of Lucifer with the Conflagration and the Judas Daemon; Morrigain’s luciferian epithet is that of the Morning Star of Venus. The Aeria Legion is called the Erotes, the mating butterflies, and is arranged as a dichotomy between male and female; pain and pleasure; incubi and succubi.
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> Enalia is the ether of the sorrowful sea. Daemons of living silver swim through the mercurial ocean; a gaping wound on the side of reality, spilling the lifeblood of the lexical universe into its physical counterpart and vice versa. The second greatest of the Legions in number alone, Enalia is known commonly as the Flood. Wodenaios holds sway over the archdaemon of the Melancholera whose spawn are known as sorrows. This cardinal is the larval stage of a begamoth, a silverfish; but where Shibbolethe’s beast is fractured with senescence, Wondenaios’ is sorrowed with youth—two sides, same coin.
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> Chthonia the ether of the face of the earth. Daemons inhabiting the land, the Chthonia Legion is the salt of the earth; its dorsal spine. Abraxas, archon of archons, claims the throne to Malkuth with the archdaemon Bahamut the Behemoth upon whose back rests the Eighth Principality of Neo Penuel—the Wandering City. Chthonia is the Legion of beasts; the Duidain.
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> Bypochtbonia is the ether within the bowels of the earth. Bloodstained daemons of iron and steel wander in the labyrinthine intestines below the surface, harbingers of war whose standards are marked with the Effigy of Razors—Escariotes holds no throne but a crown of ferric thorns; the Judas Daemon of Asmodeus. Wrath made flesh, this archdaemon shares the pseudonym of Lucifer, the Evening Star of Mars. The abominations of the Iron Legion are known as executioners, the Esau—those who inherit the sword.
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> Hyraia is the ether of the fathoms. The sun has long since devoured all bodies of water; in their place are oceans of methane, bubbling and scouring and sublimating. Known as Dudael—the boiling cauldron—Hyraia holds within itself leviathans whose scales are the faces of every devoured soul. Sabazios, the Archon of Consumption, holds sway over the archdaemon Barbatos the Leviathan; tied within the knots of its beard are the last twelve stars of the dead universe.
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> Misophaes is the ether below the earth. The lowest type of daemon rests in this festering pit, blind and almost senseless in the lowest sphere of existence. Daemons of this Legion do not transcend horn-class. Deeper than the waters of the abyss, this Legion has no archon but instead just a measly autarch—Haguel—whose daemon is Tophet, the Spit-Upon-Effigy. Known as the Fester, the Pariah Legion has no throne much less a crown. Its daemons are the misbegotten lexical equivalent of prokaryotes and they are legion; greatest in number, lowest in ontological strata, the bacteria of the Pandaemonium.
—Post-Pandaemonium syncretic excerpt, Pseudomonarchia Daemonum; a compiled repository for common knowledge pertaining to 96th Millenium daemonics.
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The second compound was the one that fomented the most hate in Levi’s heart. People, most of them markless, were corralled into cells and used as fodder for daemon incubation. The syndicate was impregnating their souls with mammonic moth-seeds to generate more shards. Some even had been implanted with weapons-grade daemons to be sold on the black market.
Through the ever-shifting, ever-breaking pollen of the myrrh-flower daemon [Narcissus] Killjoy’s soul flitted through the ether into the Mulligan daemon mill. The wards had been spec'd for containment, to not let any daemonlings escape; as a consequence, it couldn’t protect the mill from a sub-ether invasion as well. Specialization traded breadth for depth, afterall.
Levi had the access-tokens from the last compound, making this a properly geared and prepped op. Word on that front wouldn’t spread fast given his sabotage of the weapons-cache’s lexical infrastructure.
As a disembodied tendril of soulstuff, Levi witnessed human depravity in all its ugliness: men, women, and androgynes alike were afflicted with daemonic growths. Thousands of flitting moth’s wings grew from their skin, fractal-like. Their eyes bore cysts in the shape of compound, insectoid organs that pulsated with silver neon. Shards, shekels, were embedded into their hair follicles, growing in their place and picked like grotesque fruit once ripe enough.
Catatonia and agonized screams.
Killjoy would be sure to make their captors suffer the same, if not a worse, fate.
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With the place scouted-out, Levi crawled along the plascrete underside with claw and sucker invoked from [Glasya-Labolas]’s true-form. The daemon mill was plastered as a horizontal bridge in the alley in between two arcologies; it ran a legal market as cover, abducting the unwitting as they passed through.
Killjoy had the daemonic welder [Crying-Weevil] strapped to his lower back with an invoked tentacle—the bloodshed had further warped the cherub hound, allowing the hyraia-splice to find root within the daemon’s lexical architecture. He took the welder and bore through the underside of the Mulligan mill, crawling through the amalgam like a parasite.
Levi reached the sensory cortex of the compound, shabiri veils having hidden him in the ether along with [Narcissus]’s infiltration subroutines and the access-tokens.
-////Designation: [Predation] - [Digits 1//6]////-
-////Lexical energy reserve: [86%] {Construct sublimation in effect.}////-
Below a metal folding-chair, a breach opened up through the amalgamated plascrete. A clawed tentacle reached up and around the shaman’s ankle, pulling her down into the non-newtonian liquid quicksilver.
There she met her end, suffocated and insensate from a host of daemons working in concert within the soul of a single man.
Levi crawled up from the amalgam and it quickly set, cemented back into plascrete with a homunculus entombed within. Killjoy had captured the woman’s soul and fed it to [Narcissus], jailing her ego to stop any emergency signals from being sent through the local sub-ether.
There, in a liminal space of saccharine sulfur liquid and lotus myrrh flowers, the shaman lost herself within her own reflection; enamored recursively and trapped within.
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Levi walked boldly out the shamanic cortex, shabiri seals ripped off. His ego was not his own, radiating the dead soul of an accomplice to abject horror. He wore the shaman’s eidolon like a cowl, their psyche skinned and worn over his own.
The thin, labyrinthine hallways of the mill were claustrophobic. Blood sigils lined the walls, their fuel harvested from the people that the Mulligans had treated no better than old-world cattle.
Ichor, the sympathetic art, made use of blood as a means to set subliminal ligature. Transparent lines of neon hung taut in the ether, drawing upon the souls on the other side of the fulcrum. If the physical bondage weren’t enough, their egos served to create their own prison.
Death was not the escape; they would be assimilated into the wards to fuel its prolixity and further entrap the rest.
When Levi reached the cells, people so tightly packed that their limbs hung outside the bars, he vomited. His stomach ulcer was acting up.
As he wiped-off the blood from his mouth and the pseudo-daemon eels swam away into the ether, fury smoldered in his sulfur eyes. It was as blind and all-consuming as the leviathan below; so consummate, so intoxicating.
Levi did not remember when he called upon the cherub hound yet its claws were in place of his nails, suckers lining his palm and the underside of his digits. Worse still, his schematics had no history of interfacing with [Glasya-Labolas].
This was a direct connection between his soul and the daemon. Within his mind’s eye, he could see two forward facing eyes opening; they were xanthene-yellow like his own, with ever-burning sulfur unconsumed.
The coldness of the dread gave way before the baleful heat of rage and Levi sprinted toward the closest Mulligan ego-sig, neon constructs in the form of tentacles pulling him forth unbidden. The serpent’s maw within his mouth opened, howling mutely as the world did the same in sympathy.
Blood called to blood.
The man was a warden of sorts, daemono-leather overalls covered in occult glyphs and fractals. Syringes and tubes and ampoules, all to best keep the cattle alive long enough to incubate daemons and shards.
Around a blink was all it took. A clawed hand with its digits held together like a spear pierced through and eviscerated a heart; a suckered palm grabbed and pulled, twisting off a head. The dead skull was stuck to Levi’s hand as he came to, a spinal column swaying beneath, streamers of flesh spasming along with occult circuit implants.
The cherub hound did not let go of the head, tentacles wrapping around it and consuming it to fuel further bloodshed.
-////Designation: [Predation] - [Digits 6//6]////-
-////Lexical energy reserve: [Null%] {Construct sublimation disabled; pseudonym: [Glasya-labolas], subroutine: [Bloodlust] active; pseudonym: [Glasya-labolas], subroutine: [Ego-Radiation], protocol: [Clarion] active.}////-
So that was where the ringing in his ears was coming from.
Levi got back to stalking, walking through the compound in search of more of his kin. The cherub hound, at least, was polite enough to bring any more of its prey along its tentacles instead of commandeering the palm of his hand.
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Five more souls snuffed out before Levi found his first real pocket of resistance. He’d gone unopposed for so long that the defiance came as a surprise. A welcome one to be sure; more bones to break.
Egos bloomed in the ether, daemons propelling them through lexical universe like wind carrying spores from a fruiting body. The ego-radiation broke upon his soul like waves on the rocks. Daemons whispered promises of everything being alright so long as he pulled the trigger of his gun between his eyes.
Shoot yourself, honey. It’ll be all over soon.
Oh, if only they knew. If only.
No different than the prisoners, he was trapped and death was not the escape.
The tunnel-like hallways twisted this way and that to limit line of sight; great for defending against an invading force that didn’t know about the blind spots.
Two assassins dropped down from hidden alcoves once Levi turned a corner, his momentum on full tilt. Simultaneously, shots rang out, daemonic fire-arms producing a cacophony fit for Ambduscias Himself.
Levi wasn’t quite in full control of himself and his daemons. Thoughts came and went, most discarded; he acted on instinct and training, electrical signals striking down his spinal cord to puppet his body. His perception of the world came in sharp relief, every detail vivid yet transitory—false, a simulation.
Killjoy felt a pulling at his back muscles, of something going taut, before he was pulled back and his momentum reversed. He flew back the way he came, not questioning the seemingly divine intervention.
Tentacles, covered in clawed suckers and maroon quills, shot out from behind his back and grabbed every surface imaginable. They had a mind of their own—a pseudo-ego, a daemonic nous—and they dragged Levi along for the ride.
The two ambushers had alighted on the solid ground by the time he came back to where they’d tried to kill him. Thugs in the Mulligan colors of black and blue rushed him, blades in hand.
Old-world sensibilities would have you believe it was the height of stupidity to bring a sword to a gunfight. And they were right in this case.
Levi exhaled the [White-Jackal] from his soul in a flash of azure neon. He shot once, hoping to conserve fuel; best to use the already-invoked constructs than to waste more lexical energy. His grimoire was acting up with [Glasya-Labolas]’ awakening.
The asbestos-laced bullet grazed the leftmost Mulligan. The Chthonic gun needed only a scrape to be effective as its payload magnetically buried itself into the ganger, spreading out filaments of amphibole like the hairs of Barbatos itself; they fell convulsing to the floor while their counterpart reached Levi. She was dressed in occult armor, plates of abyssal steel covered in glyphs bound together with mummified stomach lining; a Gen-V Leliouria [Grinning-Carapace], it was faceless and eyeless, only a single cleft going from nonexistent ear to nonexistent ear.
Killjoy’s bracer came to life, splitting apart to leave only a cast, metallic crucifix. The shards orbited around him, intercepting sword-slashes. Iron filings were shaved off, igniting in the open air as embers of thermite.
-////Designation: [Convergence] - [Sequence 8//8]////-
When the [Iron-Judas] proved wanting, the autonomous Hyraia-spliced tentacles whipped up a frenzy, throwing themselves into the line of cutting to protect Levi from the swordswoman. She used a daemonic armament in the form of a zweihander—a two-handed old-world sword known for its reach. It was made entirely of contiguous black metal as if cast from the substance and then filed down. The weapon’s only discerning characteristic was the Bypochthonia sigil emblazoned just above the crossguard on the flat.
Low ceiling and small maneuvering space did nothing to stop her as she partially dematerialized the blade and manipulated its length; here it became nothing more than an unwieldy shortsword with a long handle, there it turned into a spear with a hilt.
She wove the weapon with skill, her reflexes augmented by a daemon of Chthonia if Levi wasn’t mistaken on its pseudo-ego signature—[Alloces], third gen Desolation cultivar. Slowly but surely the Mulligan knight pushed back Killjoy; he couldn’t counter attack at all, just wasn’t fast enough—already she had taken three of his fingers with that black blade of hers. Bullets were deflected or dodged. Claws were trimmed down no better than those of an old-world pup. Tentacles were diced into calamari. The orbiting, iron shards proved no better than buzzing, daemonic flies.
As a gambit to break her momentum, Levi shot three times and then rushed after her, emitting a clarion ego-pulse simultaneously. The radiation stunned her for the briefest of moments, just enough for two bullets to graze and a claw to scratch before she stabbed Levi through the heart.
It was then that Levi discovered he had three of them.
Ever since the nameless alley, his heart didn’t pound in his chest all that strong anymore. He’d often wondered why the thing was callous to adrenaline but had chalked it up to being desensitized to fear as death no longer held any real sort of consequence. But, now that a single one of the trinity had been taken out of commission, the remaining two beat all the much stronger to compensate.
He hadn’t asked the soulstitcher for specs on his homunculusfor fear of them suspecting he was a lab rat for experimental daemonics given the Decarabia-like eyes. It was a common thing for Legions to test cutting edge war-tech in the ganger demographic; the perfect enviro, really.
Whole lotta violence.
Killjoy lashed back with a claw through the swordswoman’s spine, paralyzing her but not snuffing her out—the engrams within her soul were valuable and would otherwise require her alive to transfer their ciphers and access-tokens. She had a daemon or two that interfaced with her salt-principle-substrate so she’d survive the fiberglass tearing its way through her body long enough for Levi to finish the fight.
It was a pleasant sort of irony sugared with schadenfreude that Killjoy would treat the Mulligan no different than the prisoners; an incubator, a temporary surrogate for daemons and nothing more. Not a human, not a person, but an object to be thrown away once it lost its usefulness.
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