The number of souls that existed was incalculably vast. Every living thing more complex than pond scum had a soul – humans, animals, even grass and trees. The Wheel of Death and Rebirth turned at an incredible scale, too large to so much as guess the number of its spokes.
But there was one thing that even the most ignorant theologian knew: more souls ascended towards Heaven than fell towards Hell.
Song liked to think that this was proof of a base goodness to reality, that not only humanity but the Earth itself had a disdain for evil. More materialistic philosophers preferred to argue with a more utilitarian reasoning; that a creature with an excess of compassion was less likely to kill itself off than one with an excess of malice.
Cooperative life lived longer, and so retained more dregs of personality through reincarnation, and so souls had a bias towards cooperation.
But whatever explanation one used, the fact remained: Hell was comparatively desolate, nearly empty. It took a soul that chose evil over and over, against all reason and circumstance, to break through that sulphurous bedrock and transform into a true demon. But even knowing that fact, the thing speared to the ground by Hun’s priestly implement somehow drew pity from her.
It was hideous in a way nature never was; even crawling things and parasites required a certain level of form to achieve function. A tapeworm was ugly, but you didn’t look at it and wonder how it managed to exist.
The demon did not follow those rules. Its body had no logic to it, exposed organs and veins that came from and led nowhere were the least distressing aspects of it, the empty half-skull and horns sprouting from its orifices much more difficult to look at.
Worst was the point where its lower torso transitioned into a sort of… bristle was the only word she could think to describe it, of genitals. There were dozens of them, packed so tightly together they couldn’t possibly be used for any actual mating, and the sight was so grotesque it was almost easier to look at than the thing’s more human eyes.
“Good work, brother Hun.” Fong’s voice, weakened with age, was steadier than usual as he gripped his own golden staff. “Do you want to do the honours?”
The demon spoke in a low tone, it’s voice at odds with its appearance. Deep, and human; she was sure that if she closed her eyes, she would easily be able to picture an aging villager with a similar voice. She did not understand it – it must be speaking some ancient dead language – but its tone did not seem overly bothered despite the shaft of gold going directly through its throat.
Hun ignored its mysterious words. “I’m feeling a bit winded. Song?”
She looked deep into the thing’s eyes. They were blue, startling mundanity embedded in a grey-green face with a texture like buttered toast.
She raised her staff, the rings on its head clinking together, and called on Heaven’s light. “Demon, in the name of Heaven I implore you to renounce your sin and return to the Wheel. You are not beyond redemption.”
The thing laughed, its mouth rigid and unmoving even as a deep chuckle echoed against the walls of the old barn. Perhaps it understood her, or perhaps it simply reacted instinctively to pity with amusement.
Her staff went down with all the strength of her arm, right into one of those too-human eyes. The old straw and farming tools disappeared under a curtain of black smoke.
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It had lived countless lives, and died countless deaths. It had been kings and peasants, mighty dragons and feeble carp. Ten thousand blades of grass, innumerable varieties of insect, every creature that stood or crawled or flew or swam.
But all of that was merely a prelude, the setting of the stage. A one-paragraph prologue to an endless epic.
The demon had reached Hell before humans invented agriculture. It had no name then – or rather, it had so many names that no one of them held meaning over the others. It was neither particularly early nor late in this regard; many demons were born before it, and many after it.
The first thing it did when its soul reached the terminus was… nothing. It had no body, no sensation, and the vast majority of its lives had been spent as immobile plants. Why would its instinct be to move?
But then something brushed against it, warm and alive, and all of Earth’s predators that lived inside its memories urged it to pounce. It whirled, feeling muscles strain for the first time, and-
The presence passed it by. The nameless demon was no more than a bodiless soul; it could not actually pounce, had no fangs to bury into flesh and bone.
It felt anger, then, a frustration so intense it would have cooked its own brain in its skull if it had possessed either of those things. I exist, it thought, in mingled anger and wonder. I exist, I exist, I exist.
It took a very long time to form its first body. It was not impressive; merely a puddle of slime with enough strength to flex itself slightly.
But it was a body. It could move, and it had senses. The demon looked out with something too crude to call an eye, and saw Hell for the first time.
It was puddled in a slight depression, a crag in a great stone expanse that curved subtly upwards in all directions until the horizon was obscured by clouds and distance. The ground was hard, rough, and nearly boiling; the air pressed it down with enough force to flatten it, yellow gasses drifting strangely slowly against strong winds.
The environment was harsh, but it was not worried; it had lived in the middle of burning deserts, on frozen tundras, at the barren depths of the lightless ocean. This place was no worse than average.
That resolve was tested the moment it met another demon. They fought, of course, each hungry to double their mass in an instant rather than spend uncountable hours condensing soul-stuff into matter, and it found itself worse off.
Its opponent was not markedly different from it; it too was a puddle of slime, but slightly larger, slightly firmer. They grappled until the nameless demon realised it was losing decisively, and at that moment it spit its body in half to escape.
Better to lose half its work than all of it.
But its opponent was not stupid. It ignored the decoy and pursued it across the uneven stone, eventually catching up and expelling the demon’s soul from its slimy vessel completely.
Again, a frustration that only a pure soul could make. It flew far away from the victorious slime, and began again.
The nameless demon would lose many times, and win many times before it became anything more than a quivering slime. When finally it had enough substance, it chose a form reminiscent of a housecat, sleek and sharp-limbed.
It did very well against other slimes with its new body, but very poor against anything else. Over countless fights, it learned: the instincts of a living creature were no longer applicable.
Here in this place it did not need the trappings of life. It did not need to breathe, so lungs were useless. It could change its flesh at the speed of thought, so a rigid, permanent internal skeleton only weighed it down.
It returned to the primordial ooze, but more refined. Its eyes were now better than any living creature’s at piercing the acidic fog, its sensory fronds scenting the air all the way to the horizon. It became an apex predator, consuming every squirming thing that crossed its path, and one day it realised that it had grown to be a thousand times larger than its first body. It could not recall a time when it had lost, that terrible frustration a distant memory.
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But then, with a great flapping of wings, something descended from the sky. It looked up, into the bony face of something a bit like a bird and a bit like a lizard. It was massive; the demon’s huge body was no larger than the bird-lizard’s eye. There was zero chance of survival.
It was that first thing. The demon did not know how it knew, but this was that same warmth that had snapped it from its torpor so long ago.
In an instant it was swallowed down, and as the flying thing returned to the skies the once again bodiless demon realised the truth: those thousands of years had amounted to nothing more than turning from a slime to a worm.
Rage boiled up, hotter than ever before. It swelled like a boil filling with pus, new flesh condensing from the air under the weight of its hate.
It grew more quickly than before, and this time it did it with a name – or perhaps a promise.
Death To All Flying Things lost his body many times, always to demons larger than himself. But each time his emotion would surge forth, and his soul would grow.
He became the size of a fly.
He became the size of a mouse.
He became the size of a rabbit.
As he continued to grow, the rules regarding efficient body construction changed again. No longer was firm muscle enough to support his weight alone, so bone saw a return. Lungs and a voice as well, though these were for more personal reasons; he wanted to humiliate his enemies with language as well as violence.
He learned a hundred languages through the medium of exchanged death-threats. He traded skin for fur for scales and back again. He dissected his slain enemies and stole their secrets, those little tricks of biology that they had stumbled over during their own long evolutions.
And always, always, it watched the sky.
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Memories filtered it as Death’s soul returned to Hell. It bobbed, sluggish for a moment after its death, but then strings of viscera condensed out of the air.
The body it built was mostly hollow, inflated like a pufferfish; at this level the appearance of strength was almost as important as actual strength. No advanced demon wanted to risk their body unnecessarily, after all, since even the powerful would take years to return to true human size.
He stopped condensing after a week, satisfied. The body would be filled out properly in time – for now, he had a message to deliver.
Hell was no different than the last time he had seen it; clouds of sulphur and metallic vapour hung in the air in opposition to the hurricane-like winds, the upwards-curving horizon comforting in its familiarity. The ground was cratered almost fractally, smaller impact marks hidden inside larger ones, the smallest of them glistening with thin coatings of protean slime.
As always he stumbled under the immense gravity for a minute before regaining his Hell-legs, but then he was off, his currently four-limbed body prioritising speed. The occasional demon challenged him, but he continued without stopping even to banter. The only allowance he made was to jump up and pluck a crow-like thing from the air.
He went up and down a mountain, then another. A demon’s entry point was almost entirely fixed, and he had the good fortune – or some would say poor fortune – of always descending near the palace.
The third and final mountain, this one spewing magma from its base to form a moat, came down from the horizon. Giant bricks of obsidian alternated with smaller ones of pilfered yellow gold to form a patterned road, one of very few that existed, all the way to the drawbridge.
He crossed, his paws burning on the magma-heated steel, ignoring the pain with practiced ease. And then, after a flight of stairs, the throne room.
Nothing on Earth could compare to the throne of Hell’s Emperor. There was a weight to it that Death had never felt anywhere else, a majesty. The only thing that Death respected was in this room, lounging on a darker-than-black throne, twirling a simple wooden staff in one hand.
Death’s proportions shifted so that he could properly kneel. “Emperor. Your servant Death To All Flying Things returns.”
The Emperor twirled his staff again. “Hmm, does he now? I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.”
His hollow skull cracked against the obsidian tiles. “Unfortunately, great Emperor, I was waylaid by the slaves of the foul Heavens.”
“What has it been, not even a month?” Suddenly gravity quintupled, and Death’s fragile half-built body turned to slurry against the floor. “Can you not lay low in a backwater village for just a little while? I am disappointed, my Duke, that you are the first of my servants to fall.”
Displeasure bubbled up, and his head reinflated. “I promise, my liege, I was careful.” Almost involuntarily teeth sprouted from his jaw, as respect turned to festering resentment. “The humans stumbled upon me through divine intervention. I smelled it on them!”
“Do you think me so rich I can throw endless amounts of gold at those damnable Wardens? It wasn’t cheap to smuggle you out, you know; I could have sent your weight in lesser imps and gotten more out of it.”
Death was lifted up and dashed against the ground by an irresistible force, even his bones turning to liquid. And yet the abuse only tempered his soul, and he condensed into a ball of teeth and eyes.
“I tried!” Acid spewed from his maw, pulled down before it reached the throne. It sublimated as it hit the tiles, not leaving even a stain on the glassy floor. “I did exactly as you asked, killed no one, was seen by no one!” A spine sprouted from the back of his head, ribs, wicked claws. He lunged, fangs long as swords pointed at Wu Kong’s throat. “You think you can treat me this way, you ape?!”
He was dashed once again, this time against the ceiling, the Emperor not even deigning to look away from his lazily spinning staff.
“Hm, good effort. Love the energy.” His smashed flesh dripped down in chunks, his soul incandescent with the continued humiliation. “But seriously, did you not learn a single thing? I really am disappointed in you, my Duke.”
A sack of flash emerged from the slurry like a slug, just large enough to blow air through a voicebox. “Names. Fong. Hung. Song. Old man, old man, woman. Together. Unusual.”
The Emperor’s voice followed him as he was flung out of the throne room, down the stairs, landing on the other side of the drawbridge. “Ah, there we are. Still disappointed, but I suppose you were worth something.” The soul bobbed, rage going through it like air through a bellows, looking down at a week’s work smashed into unrecognisable slime. “But next time make a better body. I know it’s been a while since you were alive, but that was terrible, just embarrassing. At least put the guts on the inside, I know you can remember why that’s important.”
For a day, the soul worked itself into a froth. It spat curses at the black castle, none of them penetrating past the gate, and its rage and frustration built with each failure.
But it could only do this for so long without a target in sight. Eventually it became calm, and like transmuted gold turning back into lead its hate gave way to renewed respect.
The Emperor was truly a monarch among monarchs; who else could stir such terrible resentment in their underlings? Death, with a single beating, had condensed enough malice to grow as much as ten lesser humiliations. Wu Kong hadn’t even taken his body, something no other demon would have been able to resist, and yet Death felt even more degraded rather than thankful.
It was a glimpse at perfection, a power so ultimate that it could inflict cruelty with its mercy. If Death had eyes, he would be shedding tears at the terrible majesty.
For the next week, it sat to the side of the road and rebuilt its body. Only a single other demon crossed him, a tiny thumbnail-sized imp, and he successfully restrained himself from crushing it for its hubris of flight – the Emperor had few rules, but fighting near his palace was an iron-clad law, and Death had little desire to be dunked in the moat.
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When the smoke cleared, there was no body. Even the blood from the demon’s punctured throat had disappeared; it was like it had never existed. Hun pulled his staff from the floorboards, leaving only a circular indent in the wood to serve as gravemarker.
Don’t be dramatic. You didn’t kill it; it was never alive. She let out a laboured breath and turned to Fong.
“Is there anything else we should do?”
The old priest bobbed his head. “We should bless the area, make sure it’s safe for cattle.” His eyes were surrounded by wrinkles, but still gold-bright where they peeked out from behind his veil. “Your first time?”
“Yes.”
He hummed, leaning on his staff. “This was a pretty strong one. It must be Heaven’s will we stumbled into it like this.”
Both she and Hun made appreciative noises at that. Demons were rare; that one had been hiding in the exact spot three holy servants had decided to bed down for the night couldn’t be anything other than providence.
Hun’s fingers played over the spot where his staff had pierced the demon; he looked so disturbed, she thought that maybe he too had never encountered something so foul. “I’ll take care of the blessing, then. If you could take my pack?”
She helped him shrug off the heavy sack, and within the hour they were all set. She and Hun went to their bedrolls, while Fong took first watch as usual – the old man had a terrible time in the early morning chill, so one of them always took second watch.
As she lay, a crack in the barn’s roofing allowed her to gaze up at a small patch of starscape. The night was clear, illuminated by the glowing moon, and in two day’s time it would be the first day of winter.
By then they would have left this small village behind, properly entering Mt. Steadfast Heart. What would have happened to these people if we hadn’t taken this path? Or even just accepted their generosity and slept in a home?
This village doesn’t have a single priest. Would the cultivators have managed to find the demon before it struck? That it would have eventually killed was not a question on her mind; no demon could resist feeding on the innocent for long. That was what made them demons.
She slept fitfully, but at dawn’s light they returned to the road with renewed confidence.