Demonic Magician

Despite my affinity for the demonic, I was starting to share Ren’s chagrin for potentially being subject to another nine or ten Domains. Mostly because at present, I had managed to touch myself in three further places accidentally, all of which now also continuously bled.

Both Ren and Wolf traveled well out of my reach. Perhaps for the best, as I seemed to catch myself on a protruding branch or thick amount of foliage every so often. Wouldn’t do for me to grab out at them for stability.

“I’d be more impressed if we were actually just attacked,” Ren said, perhaps for the third time.

Another point in which she was correct, however. These higher level Domains that were meant to just torment us to death were rather boring given that we weren’t exactly pushovers. Blood and gore had been completely normalized to us. We’d almost frolicked in the stuff at this point.

I stopped and looked around us again. Didn’t seem like we were making much progress, or had come across any different terrain in our travels. A landmark or some manner of guide toward what we were meant to do would be swell. I’d even accept… a giant snake to fight? Or a gargantuan tarantula?

“Can we not just do the piercing attack thing again?” Ren stopped and crossed her arms, scowling off at the unchanging scenery.

“Hmm. The answer isn’t no, but it might not work here without a way to stretch the power of the Domain.” I sighed and rubbed at my head, causing further blood to run down my face. “Shit.”

“Huh, I was worried I might have to eat your corpse after you bled yourself to death, but I don’t want to catch whatever dumbassery disease you clearly have.”

I shrugged and resisted the urge to put my hands on my hips. “We both know you’d have caught it by now, no matter the manner that it was transmitted.”

“I’d still eat you,” Wolf offered.

There was perhaps some reflection to be done on the fact that I found that statement reassuring. I would still be palatable, even in my current state. Perhaps the bear had something going there though - my current act was rather tasteless.

I drew out my deck from my belt and had the mundane cards flutter out to orbit around me. Closed my eyes and relaxed. There was always more than one way to pull a rabbit from a hat. No point sitting around waiting for the opportunity to be dazzled when I was most than capable of creating my own show.

A Domain was a pocket dimension created by a demon's power. To be a part of this System, there must be some manner of underlying magic to them. I was a master of manipulating magic - to some degree. I just needed to find the tethers or whatever.

In my mind, I sunk away from current proceedings. Cold blood ignored. Cards rotating around me, barely an inconvenience. My two partners in demon-crime silent mannequins on a dark gray workspace.

I took a deep breath and white outlines came into view. The power of the Domain… looked like an onion. Spirals of System tethers ran around us in a large sphere. More powerful than I had imagined, it would be nigh impossible for me to stick a hand in and just switch off the power of the Domain. Shame, but perhaps doing so would have been anticlimactic, anyway.

There were thinner threads that ran from me and to outside this sphere, but they were faint. The connection to my own demons. No ability to pull them through or us out, unfortunately. As my mind tried to focus, the wispy lines faded and shifted away like trails of smoke.

Unacceptable.

It did lead me to a realization, however. This spiraling line that had constructed this faux sphere representing the Domain… it was all one line leading to one entity. The demon himself.

I opened my eyes as the swirling cards turned to ash.

“Ignoring us is rather rude, dickbag.” Ren scowled at me, as they had probably been speaking to me while I was away in my mind.

“I do apologize, my dear.” A wide grin went across my face as I raised my arm. Purple electricity started to arc around it. “Let me get the manager for you.”

A whisper of demonic went through my ears as I clawed the new ability from the fabric of the System itself. I deserved it, after all - I was going to be the demon king.

Ahead of where my bloody hand pointed, a tear in reality cracked and hissed, before the Domain's progenitor appeared before us.

His eyes were at first filled with surprise, then pure contempt, as he growled in my direction. “Festering shit, who are you to summon me in my own-”

Then one of his eyes was filled with a high-caliber sniper bullet, glowing with holy light.

With a pop, the Domain washed away, putting us back in the banquet room. Only a new kind of feast was in progress as Roger led the hounds and Imps in devouring the killed demons.

“Changed your mind on if shooting the demon with little ceremony is a knock on your ego yet?” Ren asked, stepping down from the table we were on.

“That was like a kick in the balls,” I complained. “Cliches and tropes are there for a reason.”

“I did warn you.” She rolled her eyes. “Next time I’ll let you monologue a bit and get injured? Oh, you’ve stopped bleeding at least?”

Hands went out, and it seemed as though the injuries remained, but the persistent blood loss had ended. I touched my hands together, and no further wounds bloomed into existence. Splendid. My eyes went over to the larger demon missing part of his head. Another crown for the taking.

“Dibs!” Ren called out.

“Ah!” Roger stepped out in front of her. “Not a good idea, Mrs Boss. Wearing the crown would make you in line for the throne above Boss, so you’d have to kill him. Or he you.”

The elf stopped and pouted at me. “Seriously? That’s like the one thing I wouldn’t do to him. Not for a drab accessory like that, anyway.”

With a shit-eating grin, I stepped over and picked the crown up and placed it on my head. There was a flash of demonic energy, and the two merged.

“Ah, I was going to say not to do that either, Boss.” The large rabbit crossed his arms.

I gave him a blank expression. “You had plenty of time to warn me.”

“Did I though?” He tilted his head.

Ren narrowed her eyes and walked toward the demon slowly. “I’ve been wondering, Max… if I killed Roger, would his body vanish, or could we use it for stuff?”

The rabbit twitched. “What kind of stuff?”

I nodded my head slowly. “Oh, like feeding to Wolf?”

The bear shook his head. “I’d prefer to eat him while he was still living, if that’s an option.”

“No,” Ren continued, “like if we could carve out his insides so only the fluffy skin part was left.”

“You’re thinking we could build a giant prop top hat and dress me up in the skin of Roger, so that you could pull me out of the hat like a trick?” I furrowed my brow and rubbed at my chin.

“Sure... we’ll go with that.”

Roger stepped back away from the persistent elf, knocking over a couple of chairs. “Alright, I’ll come clean!” He tried waving her away, and she paused. “With one crown, you’re free to move about as you please. Once you bind two or more… well, it puts a beacon on your head.”

“Demons will start hunting me down?” I smiled, despite myself. The Demon Hunter became the Hunted Demon. Absolute shivers down my spine.

“Yeah… and I want that, coz maybe if you die, Boss… then I can be free.”

“What if Max becomes king?” Ren asked, finally racking the bolt on her rifle to eject the empty bullet casing.

“Yeah, that sounds better.” The rabbit ran his tongue around the bloodied fur on his upper lip. “I meant I want you to become king sooner, so you can free me.”

My right eye twitched. With my sensible self long eroded down to a nub, there was a temptation to pop the demon through the skull for being so brazenly indignant. How could he act like that toward a prince? Regardless of if it made me a threat or a target, I could feel my demonic power growing.

I had cobbled together my own ability to make a demon show themselves in their Domain. Checking my System menus, it wasn’t there - in the same way as my Domain itself wasn’t.

Our little side-quest in taking over this hell dimension had turned into a way for us to gather more undue power - once we returned to the surface we’d be beyond compare. The Lady wouldn’t know what hit her.

Of course, I ran the risk of overshooting. Raining down hellfire on her troops as the very loud and proud Demon King of Hell would just as soon get a throng of willing adventurers hunting me down. There would be some steep irony in ending the constant violence by sinking us into further violence, just from the other side.

“Leave him be,” I decided.

Not particularly because I cared for mercy, but I felt his continued existence was part of my demonic puzzle. He was partly created as a stand-in for the patron I used to have back in my previous life. Would be foolish to end his life and then find out that the System considered him my tether to any demonic power I wielded, and I was cut off from it.

“Dropped a legendary item,” Wolf muffled, the arm of the previously-princely demon in his mouth.

Ren scoffed. “Bet it’s some bullshit for Max the Main Character over there.”

“Unfair! You have a literal sniper rifle.”

“We’re in demon-hell fighting demon-princes so Mr Demonic Magician can become demon-king. It couldn’t be any clearer unless you wrote it yourself.”

I took a second to consider whether I had penned any such drivel in any of my journals. No, nothing so grandstanding. “Perhaps I should write someone else in as my demon queen, then?”

“You fucking dare, Max.” Her hands gripped at the rifle tighter. “I will tear this reality to shreds and kill whoever it was, before killing you.”

Wolf huffed and settled down, rolling his eyes at the charade we were about to pull off. Scene was playing out like the performance it had to be.

“Ren, my love. You have neither the guts nor the ability to kill me.”

She bared her teeth and swung the rifle up to point at me. “Take that back, you shit.”

I opened my arms wide. “Prove me wrong then.”

“Last warning, trickster. Make me your demon queen, or else.”

“Nah.” My smile widened. “I don’t feel like it now, peasant.”

Her finger clicked the trigger, striking me straight in the forehead. Back of my skull blew open and painted the back wall with my brain matter. Arms still extended for a slow two seconds before the rest of my body got the message and I dropped over backwards.

The real me appeared next to the elf, twirling her around as she wrapped the gun around me. Lips locked, we slunk down against one of the tables - until Wolf cleared his throat.

“Again, legendary item. Looks like it would be useful for Ren.”

“Hah!” The elf grabbed my chin to give my face a little shake. “Get fucked, magic man.”

“If we had less company,” I murmured, turning to look at the sea of Imps and hounds waiting for further instruction. As the elf hopped over to the bear, I gestured for Roger to follow me.

I took him a little further away, mostly because it seemed to cause him increased tension. We stopped at the corner of the banquet hall and I leaned against the wooden wall to look back across the gathered summons. At the other end, Ren was explaining how useful her new trinket was to a very uninterested looking Wolf.

“Roger. What’s with the wavering loyalty as of late?”

“I’m a demon, Boss. It’s kind of my nature to be a shit.” He shuffled awkwardly. “Being at war for so long… I haven’t seen my family. It was fine when it was like a short vacation…”

My right eye twitched again. “You think this is fun for me, Roger? Every waking moment is filled with violence and the dry heat of hell sapping my sanity away. Every night I have to scrape the gore from Ren’s hair and pretend that being baked in sweat and grime is normal. Wolf has been so corrupted that he has turned into a bear.”

“Erm, pretty sure he always was one, Boss.”

“Shhh shut it. Shut-up.” I placed a blooded finger up to his fuzzy lips. “Silence.”

My brow furrowed as a chill worked its way down my spine. I looked at the rabbit with a little more calm focus in my vision, before turning my head to the others.

“Look lively,” I announced. “There’s a powerful demon landing at our location in…”

The building vibrated, sending clouds of dust raining down from the rafters.