Grim stepped through the Hell Spike portal and into… chaos.
Dozens of imps, robots on treads, and large lumbering bots that looked like they walked out of the scrap heap were moving rapidly back and forth. Several men and women in dark red jumpsuits holding clipboards were directing the madness.
Then someone noticed him.
“Master on Deck!” screamed the nearest man, and instantly the chaos slammed to a halt. The yelling man ran over to Grim. “Master, Sir! A pleasure to meet you! My name is Jim, I am the manager for the Hell Spike floor. It is an absolute pleasure and honor to finally make your assistance!” he yelled loudly over the noise, accompanied with a deep bow at the waist.
Grim took a nice long look around the cavern, noting that a lot had been done in the three days he had been gone. The cavern was fully reinforced with concrete and steel plating. The single elevator he had come down in was still there, however there were now two full sized freight elevators easily five times the size of that one on either side.
“Wow, a lot happened in 72 hours. Where the hell did Tetra find you guys?” Grim wondered, taking in all the changes.
Jim nodded as he straightened and led the way to the elevator. As they stepped inside, the doors closed dimming the immense amount of noise the manager had yelled over earlier. He looked a bit confused as he said, “Indeed Master, there have been many, many changes over the time you were gone. Miss Tetra and Madam Stella have enacted many changes, not the least of which was the absorption of every usable gang and criminal entity within the industrial district. They now control the outskirts of the city here in their entirety.”
Grim was impressed that they had done so much in such a short amount of time. As Jim hit buttons on the elevator and they began to rise, he noticed that there were a half dozen buttons now that were below the Hell Spike cavern.
“How deep does this go? You all couldn’t have excavated six more floors in the time I was gone,” Grim said, annoyed. Why he was so bothered he didn’t know, but something was off. And that bugged him.
“Uh yeah, sorry Master. Stella asked to have whoever was down there bring you up to the main floor as soon as you arrived back,” Jim said, stuttering. “Please don’t kill me.”
Grim shrugged. It didn’t bother him that everyone thought he was some kind of crazy homicidal asshole. He was absolutely a crazy homicidal asshole. If that was the temperament and persona the ladies were laying down for him he would lean into it whole heartedly.
“Just don’t fuck up. Then I wont have a reason to,” Grim said in a bored tone, as if discussing the weather.
Jim nodded rapidly as the elevator slowed to a stop and the doors opened to reveal a large room with multiple people working at computers and phones. As the two stepped out and into he room, heads swiveled towards them and the noise died to a silence that was slightly unnerving.
Tetra came out of an office on the far end. Her wings were folded tightly behind her, leather straps holding them in place. She was wearing a white lab coat with a pink blazer over it, and blue jeans that were torn at the knees. She wasn’t wearing any shoes.
“What the hell is going on out here? We have things to do people! Places to…” her tired staggered off to silence as she stared at Grim. “You’re… not wearing your helmet,” she observed.
“Nope,” he replied.
Tetra opened her mouth, taking a moment to respond. Then simply repeated herself, “You… are not wearing your helmet.”
Grim smiled at the repeated question, sending shivers down the spines of everyone in the room. “No. No I am not,” he agreed. “Why don’t we head into a meeting room or something. We can chat there. I seem to be making people… uneasy,” he said, swiveling his head with his too wide smile on full display.
The woman at the desk closest to him fainted.
“Lead the way,” he said, gesturing for Tetra to move. Jim tried to back out, but Grim caught him by the shoulder. “Oh no, you’re coming too. Stick close to me, this is going to be fun.”
Swallowing audibly, Jim did as he was ordered to. He didn’t mind working for Tetra and Stella, but the big boss was fucking terrifying. The rumors alone were scary, but seeing him in person struck fear into people on levels that many never experienced it.
Their very instincts were screaming at them to get away.
Grim and Jim followed Tetra through the open floor office and into a hallway. Dual sliding doors closed behind them, cutting off the explosion of talking and gossiping over his return.
“Tetra, what the hell happened? I was gone for three days, but its like I was gone for a month!” Grim growled, still annoyed that no one had told him what was going on. Joe recoiled from his boss, terror writer across his face in cold sweat.
The scientist shrugged and looked back over her shoulder. “Three days? That explains a bit. But you weren’t gone for a month Boss,” she said as Grim relaxed slightly. “You were gone for four months.”
Grim blinked in confusion that.
They trio walked into a large office that help three large desks. Two on either side of the room and a particularly large one in the back center of the room. Immense screens covered the walls and were currently showing the skyline views of Elysium City.
“Fancy,” Grim said, whistling.
Stella stood up from one of the desks on the side and said, “Well, I designed them for maximum power projection. Afterall, it wouldn’t make do to have the Demon Don have anything but the best. Not that, you know, we plan on having visitors in this location anytime soon,” then she inspected him. “You look nice. Handsome even, I wouldn’t have guessed you were hiding that under that wretched helmet.”
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“Liar! Hes fucking gorgeous! A total dreamboat!” sighed Tetra.
“Sure,” Grim said, clearing his voice uncomfortably. He walked over and sat behind the largest desk and changed the subject, “This is a seriously comfy chair. Nice pick,” he complimented.
“Are you talking with your armor?” Tetra asked, putter her face a few inches from Grim’s. She smelled like cinnamon.
He pushed her back, “How could you tell?”
“You get all spacey, like you’re staring at something in the distance but aren’t quite sure what to make of it,” the winged feline demon explained. “Its fascinating.”
Grim blinked at that, unsure of how to respond. So he didn’t. Turning to Stella he asked, “So are you going to tell me what the fuck has happened? Apparently I was gone a lot longer than I had planned on being. So tell me. Now. Or Jim is getting a demotion.”
“I’m getting demoted? Why? To what?” the middle manager asked incredulously, then remembered who he was talking to and shut his mouth with an audible click of teeth.
Grim shrugged, “Your middle management. They get blamed for everything. And I was thinking the demotion would be to something useful, like an imp,” he explained.
“Shut up or you’re going into the closet,” Grim warned, causing the overcoat to go silent.
Stella laughed, “He won’t do anything to you Jim. You haven’t messed up that badly, so stop worrying,” she said playfully. Then she grew serious. “After you had been gone for a week, we were concerned. After two we decided we weren’t going to wait for you and moved to fortify our position. Rat was essential for that while Tetra worked on her robots. Without you, we weren’t getting any more imps. But it turns out they are solid works and fighters,” she explained.
“Yeah, they make good fodder in numbers,” Grim agreed, but was caught off guard when Stella shook her head.
“No. They make solid fighters. I don’t know what standards you are judging them by, but they are nearly bullet proof. They have at least Class II strength. Their biggest weakness is they’re about as intelligent as a coffee maker. But I digress,” she said as Tetra snorted. “Rat set about absorbing all the gangs in the area, bringing in their leaders and lieutenants. Turns out I have some kind of… mind reading ability. The second I started asking questions I could immediately tell if they were lying or not.”
Grim nodded, “That’s going to get stronger over time. Eventually you will; be able to implant thoughts and control people like puppets. It’s a solid set of abilities to have. They wont work on me, but they should work on nearly anyone else who doesn’t have telepathic defenses.”
“That’s… that’s really good to know. I was worried,” Stella sighed. “Back on track though. We took in nearly five-hundred people that first week. A little over two hundred survived or stuck around when offered employment. After that we had gangs coming to us to join. Apparently we pay more and treat them better.”
Tetra interjected, “And we told them that you can upgrade powers!”
Grim grimaced at that. It wasn’t something he was positive he could do yet, and he certainly didn’t want that advertised. An ability like that could, very quickly, make him a target for every faction out there. He was sure they could survive one or two faction team ups… but for something that could increase everyone’s literal superpower? No way. They would drown him in bodies if necessary.
He gestured to continue, so Stella did. “After that first month we had close to a thousand people. Tetra got her first bots going. Their entire purpose was to… build more bots?”
“Yeah! Those things were awesome! I am on like, the fifth iteration of those. The first ones were soooo clumsy,” she said excitedly.
“Yeah, clumsy. Pretty sure one of them tried to rebuild an imp, but I digress again,” Stella said with a hand over her face at the memory. “We didn’t have enough space, so I set the imps to expanding the base here and setting up outposts. We have a dozen of those by the way. Month two, though, the Heroes attacked us in mass. It was… it was a bloodbath. I don’t like that level of fighting and carnage. No one was taking prisoners… on either side.”
Grim quirked one pale eyebrow. “Fuck. What brought that on?”
“Our good friend Retribution. He certainly lives up to his name. We lost a quarter of the outposts before we knew what was happening. They simply… killed everyone,” Stella said. “Then we rallied and threw everything we had at them. The imps massacred them.”
Grim was stunned at that. Imps, for as long as he had known of them, used them, and employed them, had always been grunts used for hard labor. To hear them spoken of in such positive terms was surprising. Perhaps there was more there to look into. If they had untapped potential… well he wanted it.
Stella continued with her recount of what happened, “It took a full month before the fighting died down. Based on what Jeeves could find out, it was the longest, most ferocious fight that the city had seen between groups. Ever. Even the villains stayed out of it.
“Those nasty bastards at the League of Villains sent us a parley Boss. Who the fuck does that?” Tetra said, tossing her hands into the air. “Rat didn’t even know what the word meant! He thought they were asking him to lunch.”
Grim chortled at that. Rat seemed about that smart at times.
“They stayed out of it. Fighting the Guild was hard enough. But when the dust settled, we had staked out territory, made a name for ourselves… and you got a new moniker. Because apparently no one liked The Man Who Wears Demons. It’s too damn long, and it didn’t stick. At least with the public. Although a lot of our people still refer to you as that,” Stella admitted. “Most everyone outside of our organization calls you something else.”
Grim sighed, “What was it you called me? The Demon Don?”
“Yeah that. It was… well we went with it. The public seemed to latch onto it anyway, so its too late to change,” Stella admitted. “Often times its either just Demon or Don. People are simple and dislike complexity.”
Grim shook his head, “This planet has horrible fucking naming conventions. Fuck. People here suck.”
“I won’t disagree with that,” the succubus agreed. “Now, the last month or so we have been fortifying, consolidating, and recruiting. We have, for the most part, claimed the entire industrial district up to the sea. Including the port. The Port Authority pays us a tithe to keep operating without interference. We also protect them from both Heroes and Villains alike.”
Grim was intrigued at that last bit. “Why would they need protection from the Heroes?”
“Well Boss, apparently the Council that led the Guild of Heroes vanished at some point,” Tetra explained, hoping up to sit on top of her desk. “Retribution took over, and the government didn’t give a shit. So yeah, he’s in charge now and running that place like a total asshole. A lot of Heroes’ quit, and the ones still sticking around are acting like a bunch of hopped up thugs. Might as well call it the Thug Guild now.”
Grim sighed, “So a cease fire with the Heroes, and non-aggression with the Villains, and our own territory. What does this mean for us?”
“It means, Boss, that we have accomplished something no one else has since the founding of Elysium. And we did it in four fucking months,” Tetra said, clapping her hands together. “We founded a third faction.”
“Oh?” he responded, quirking an eyebrow. “And just what is our faction called?”
Stella laughed, long and lightly. Eventually she stabilized and returned to a basic, if happy, state of being. “They are calling us the Hallow Syndicate. Rather fitting if I don’t say so myself,” she said, smiling.
Grim grinned, his far too wide smile on full display. As amusing as the situation was to everyone, it still sent shivers down their spines. “Hilarious. I like it. As good a name as any I suppose. At least it wasn’t something crappy, like shadow something or other.”
They shared a collective laugh, then Jim tentatively raised a hand.
Grim gestured at him, “Go ahead Jim. You’ve been patient enough.”
“Um, this was great and all. But can I go now?” he pleaded. Grim shooed him out the door, and the man took off at a run.
No one in the room could blame him in the least.