CH25 – Savages, Savages, Dirty Little Demons

Grim came to in a large, very comfortable bed. Blinking awake, he took stock of his physical condition. A careful analysis of his body told him that he was sore, stiff, and had been thoroughly cleaned. Bag was probably the culprit on the last bit.

He also sensed remnants of healing magic, that told him that the last thing he did while he was aware of his surroundings resulted in immense damage to his body. Afterall, healing magic was absolutely anathema to demons. It hurt them. Immensely. So that was also probably Bag.

He heard a door open and turned his head, not quite ready to move his body yet. The chambers he was in were ornate, being built to a level of splendor fit for a royalty.

Or a Prince.

Grim watched as Bag entered through the door and closed it softly behind him. The demons inverted legs gave him the ability to walk soundlessly across the carpeted floor with great finesse… and when necessary speed. Seeing that he was awake, his assistant vanished from one side of the large room to appear at his side.

“Master, I am happy to see you awake,” Bag said gleefully.

Grim nodded slowly. “What happened?”

“You overextended Master. Plain and simple. While you should have been able to handle the amount of energy passing through your body, activating the pit at the same time was too much. You were overloaded with energy and Mana and fell into deprivation,” the demon explained. It pulled out water in a cup and handed it to him. Grim sat up slowly and sipped the cool drink as the demon continued. “This led to immense physical damage to your body. However, Master, you were successful. The pit is now active.”

Grim nodded. “How many are spawning?”

“With the limited energy the Palace provides, two imps or one Daemon per twenty-hour period,” Bag replied instantly. “You were asleep for three days, so I took the liberty of spawning four imps to being maintenance on the Palace and a single Daemon to begin rebuilding the rank and file.”

This was good news. Grim had been worried that the Palace wouldn’t provide any energy at all. The fact that could get a single Daemon warrior a day out of it? Much better than he had thought. The pit, however, was designed for so much more. When provided with raw biomass, particularly mass from other creatures, it had the ability to take traits, features, and abilities from those creatures and store them. They could then be used to design entirely new species of demon.

“This is great. I think I have been laying around too long, I’m feeling fucking pleasant. And its disgusting,” Grim grumbled, frowning. Bag just chuckled as his Master’s annoyance. “Regardless. I am home, what’s left of it that is. And here I can forge new armor. Granted it may only be Daemon armor, but their strength and resilience will be much welcome over the rags I had before.”

Bag tisked at him, “Master, Hephaestus Armor is not to be dismissed. It is the standard light armor for the Legions. Powerful and imbued with abilities you used well. This new universe… it simply is not up to par with fighting those empowered humans.”

“Agreed. Which is why when my armor is complete I will be giving Tetra the wonderful opportunity of designing new, far more capable armor sets as we rebuild those Legions,” Grim said. Then he smiled a smile that was just a bit too wide for his face. Bag, even as powerful as he was, shivered slightly at that.

Grim had been, for the entirety of his life, Bagdana’s ward. Then his servant. Then his friend and protector. However Grim had always seemed a bit off to the demon. While his good friend Samael swore up and down that Grim was his son… Bag wasn’t seeing it. Particularly the odd tattoo that the boy had been born with. Something Sam certainly lacked. But that was neither here nor there. Grim was as much his nephew at this point as he was his ward.

Grim got out of bed and walked over to the nearby, and just as ornately carved and gilded, wardrobe. Pulling it oven he selected plain black breeches and shirt. Throwing them on, he padded barefoot over to the door Bag had come through, the demonic assistant following him out and into the hallway.

Grim knew the entire Palace like the back of his hand. He had spent the first thirty years of his life here. He had been trained by the mightiest, smartest, and trickiest of the demons who lived and worked here. Then he had received training from his father, Sam, directly. That training had made the prior set of trials seem tame in comparison, and was a level of suffering that Grim never wished to repeat.

But it had made him strong.

One of his favorite places, however, was the forge room. The room where he had crafted each of his sets of armor, as was tradition of the natives of Inferno. Each set imbued with the chose demons, crafted for specific purposes, and stored on their persons in a series of runic compression bags. Grim had six full sets of armor on him when he had been coopted into traveling to the prison dimension. One away from graduating to a full Lord. Like his father.

Having lost all of that, yet experienced the mystery that this new universe seemed to contain he was sure that he could create something new. Something more powerful, and more flexible, than his previous armor was every capable of being. And that… that would allow him to fight nearly anything.

Grim stepped into the Forge. The title and purpose of the room were exactly the same, and for good reason. Outside of this facility, barring the one on the heavenly planes, there existed no single manufactory more powerful, precise, or immense. Inside stood The Anvil made of the bones of numerous gods, crafted by Samael himself. The Hammer was forged and wielded by his greatest rival and friend, the Lord of Heavens. The Bellows, one of a pair, were crafted by Odin and Zeus, Gods of the two most powerful Pantheons within the Prime Twelve.

Next to the deceptively simple layout of The Forge knelt twenty-two Daemons and the two Patriarchs. Grim knew why they were there… and so did they. And each had volunteered.

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It took time for a demon spawned from a pit to become a true demon. They gathered, condensed, and grew stronger over time through the abortion of the energy that infused Inferno. Without that, and with the current output of the Palace being dedicated to the creation of more infant demons, there would be no more true demons unless the Inferno was retaken.

A true long term goal if Grim had ever heard one.

“My Prince,” said the first Patriarch, “We stand ready. Our power and abilities may be lacking compared to the Lords of Inferno… but please use our essence to rebuild your abilities and get vengeance on those who ended out world.”

A collective growl from all the true demons assembled rose, giving a powerful, reverberating tone that sounded across the utterly silent Forge. Grim stepped forward and raised a hand, “I accept your sacrifices,” he said softly. This part was never easy, not even for him.

Inferno demons were split up into a hierarchy based on their age, species, and power. While none were mutually exclusive, some demons took far longer to acquire the energy to become anything like a Lord. However, all demons started at the same level when they were born.

Minor Demon, Major Demon, Patriarch, Arch Demon, Duke, Demon Lord. There was one more, unofficial ranking for the leader, the absolute monarch of Inferno. Lord of The Abyss. Only Samael had ever held that one.

Before he had been bestowed his name, having earned it on the field of battle, he had tested his abilities in every way conceivable. During these tests he found that any demon he extracted the essence of to create armor from who was below the rank of Lord was killed. Those at the rank of Duke or above became pieces of living armor. Much as Bagdana was.

These demons in front of him were sacrificing their lives to empower his armor. To become his eternal weapons until they were destroyed, exercised, or removed from existence entirely. They were devoting their all to him.

With a gesture The Forge lit, The Bellows pumped, and The Hammer rose and sped into his hand. Turning to the group on their knees before him, he raised the hammer and pointed it at them. With terrible, soul wrenching screams, the demons began to melt. Their bodies purged of such useless things as flesh, blood, and bone. The very energy of Inferno that powered such husks, their essence itself, was infused into the hammer as it was absorbed from their corpses.

All too soon The Forge was once again quiet.

Turning from the grizzle and gory scene, Grim got to work. Raising The Hammer high, he swung it down on the apparently empty anvil… only for a bright flash of smoking crimson to explode outward in a way of pure energy.

Bag didn’t flinch as he watch Grim work and marveled at his efficiency. Very few entities could swing such an imbued tool once and create a full piece of armor as his ward had done. As the energy and smoke cleared the demon could clearly see a gauntlet lying on The Anvil.

Deep black with lines of magma flowed through the gauntlet, giving the illusion that the hands were made of fire. The black metal like material stretched far enough up that it could cover the forearm up to the elbow. Power radiated off the single piece of armor. Power and danger.

Setting The Hammer down softly, Grim gingery held his hand over the gauntlet. Watching in curiosity, Bag was startled when the man ripped open his hand on the piece, spilling a large amount of blood on it. The gauntlet soaked up his life blood, and before Bag could intervene to help him he slammed his hand down on the hot Anvil, cauterizing the wound.

Grunting in pain, he torn his hand away leaving small bits of flesh caked to the divine metal object. Reaching down with his hurt hand, he slipped it into the piece. The demonic assistant watched in wonder as it molded itself to Grim’s arm, flowing upward and settling into the form of a long black leather glove. Nodding Grim drew back The Hammer and repeated the process, forming a second magma gauntlet baptized in his blood.

Grunting as the second piece of armor formed to his hand and arm, he raised The Hammer and third time… and paused. Closing his eyes, Grim took a huge deep breath and held it for nearly a full minute. Then, without warning he expelled it in one massive and primal scream, bringing down The Hammer with as much for and power as he could.

That was when Bag, with his many millennia of life, saw something that he had never seen before since the create of The Forge. The Hammer struck The Anvil, splitting it in half. The release of energy smashed the demon back into the wall with such force the Sulfur Stone behind it cracked.

Shaking his head, Bag dropped to the floor. He rose quickly to his feet, looking for Grim. Standing in the remains of The Forge, shattered Hammer in hand, Grim stood resolute. He bled from multiple wounds across his body. Blood that was, even as Bag watched, being fed into the great leatherlike overcoat that covered his body.

The coat radiated a malice and hatred that made the demonic guardian uneasy. Demons were far from strangers to violence, but that single article of armor made his fiery hot blood run cold with uncertainty. Uncertainty that should that thing go out of control, he may not be able to stop it. Weapons made within The Forge were things of terrible might, but Grim may have just created the apex of such items.

“Master,” Bag began hesitantly, but Grim wasn’t listening. He drew back the handle of the shattered Hammer and plunged it directly into the remains of The Anvil.

The world went white.

It was as if someone had dropped a flashbang grenade into each of Bag’s eye sockets. He couldn’t imagine how painful that had to be for Grim, who had been standing so close to the epicenter. Tentatively, he blinked his eyes, bringing his vision back to normal. Looking at where his master and ward had been standing, he was shocked at what he saw.

The flash had, apparently, been immensely hot. Grim was covered in third degree burns, his blackened flesh hanging in tatters from what remained of his body. Doing such immense damage to him demonstrated the powers that he was playing with, and the results of misusing that power.

Contrary to Bag’s worries, Grim smiled at his demonic assistant… and slowly raised an arm. In his hand was The Hammers handle, and attached to it was a three-foot-long piece of The Forge. Somehow, Grim had combined the two into a savage looking demonic weapon of might. One that Bag could immediately tell rivalled even Lord Samael’s chosen weapon Hellbringer, a seven foot bastard sword of immense power.

Before his eyes Grim’s flesh began knitting together, the charred chunks being pushed off his body in bloody sort of molting. Fresh, pink skin replaced the charred chunks that fell away. Grim shivered as it happened. “That is… it’s always so itchy when that happens,” he grumbled to no one in particular.

He turned to Bag, “I’m going to grab some clothes. Tell the first Daemon that came out of the pit that in my absence it is in charge. We have what we came here for and can readily return. Its time to head back and start causing some real chaos in the prison universe,” he said, smiling ferally.

Grim walked out of what remained of The Forge, leaving Bag to tend to his instructions. The gauntlets were on his arms, however the leather like overcoat and blade were cradled in his arms. Even he had misgivings about putting the coat on immediately. He had even greater reservations about the blade. Both were forged with more demonic essence than he had ever used before, and in conditions that shouldn’t have allowed them to be made in the first place.

They were dangerous.

He made his way back to his rooms, not encountering a single demon, imp, or Daemon along the way. He didn’t know where the couple that had rolled out of the pit had gone ad he could care less. He had what he came to this place for.

As he stepped into the room he had awoken in, the last bits of burned flesh fell away. He scratched as his scalp as his hair and eyebrows began to regrow. Whistling, he sang as he got dressed. Black Hell Silk pants, a white shirt, black vest and tie tinged with red, and a gold pocket watch rounded out his clothes. He selected black, shined, Hellhound hide boots for his footwear. Examining the overcoat he had just created, he shrugged… and threw it over his shoulders.

That was when his clothing decided it was time to fight back.