Demon Core

Chapter 22: The Cracking of Jokes, Wood, and Bones

Chapter 22: The Cracking of Jokes, Wood, and Bones

~ [Shivelo] ~

Marionette, Male, Crusader Location: The Demon-Kings Castle, Floor Twenty-One Level: 91

Shivelo is a crusader, a brave and noble warrior who has dedicated his life to fighting the forces of darkness. He wears a white cloak over his metal armor, a symbol of his purity and faith. He carries a silver crossbow and a dagger, weapons blessed by the holy light. He follows the lead of his commander, a wise and venerable priest who guides them through the perilous halls of the Demon Kings castle.

But Shivelo is also a puppet, literally. He is a wooden marionette whose strings are controlled by an unseen hand. He has been cursed by the Demon King, along with all his comrades, to lose his humanity and become a toy in his twisted game. He does not know this, he does not see this, he does not feel this. He simply walks with stiff and jerky movements, unaware of how his joints creak and squeak with every step. He speaks with a monotone and wooden voice, unaware of how his words sound hollow and empty in the air. He looks with blank and glassy eyes, unaware of how his vision is blurred and distorted by the spell.

He is oblivious to everything around him, except for one thing: his mission. His mission to slay the Demon King, to end his reign of terror, and to save the world from his evil. He, as a crusader, is driven by one thing: his faith. His faith is in the holy ways, the divine plan, and the righteous cause.

The stumpy legged marionette bounces as he moves.

Until his legs leave the ground and he, not really realizing it, is lifted up towards the ceiling above all of their heads.

~ [Ruhr the River-Sorceress] ~

Marionette, Female, Sorceress Rank: SSS Location: The Demon-Kings Castle, Floor Twenty-One Level: 96

Dust and wood chips rain down over them.

Say, Zac, old pal! starts Ruhr the river-sorceress excitedly, her wooden body bobbing up and down with exaggerated movements, causing her straw-like strands of long, blue hair to bounce around the air. What do you think about the Demon-King? asks the river-sorceress, holding her hands on her hips as she essentially dances in place, the painted on mouth on her flat face turning into a smile that is just a single black smear where her lips should be.

Her friend Zacarias looks back at her, the strings holding his head aloft from above shimmering in the aural light of the dungeon. His features, like hers, are all painted on the wooden sphere that acts as his head. Ruhr tilts her head, looking at him; the string holding her noggin aloft moves to the side as the invisible puppeteer above makes this accommodation.

What? asks the man dryly.

Ruhr, tapping her wooden chunk of a foot that is painted in the color of her boots, continues to bounce as she looks his way. You know, the Demon-King! says Ruhr, leaning in towards him.

The Demon-King! whispers a voice from the side, from another crusader in the circle.

Another man, also a puppet, lifts a wooden finger, the string holding his arm aloft rising into the air. I heard he eats babies! says a man. People gasp all around the crowd.

Another woman chimes in from the side, her head swaying back and forth. Why, I heard that he reuses the same bathwater every day! Shocked noises come from around the room from the hundreds of puppets. And then he pours it on cold orphans!

Ruhr nods, her arms crossed, the painted expression on her face moving as she talks, as if her features were being continually redrawn every second. Did you know, Zac? asks the river-sorceress.

What? asks the man.

- That the Demon-King eats worms three times a day? she asks, waving her finger with the bobbing of her body.

Really? asks Zacarias, raising an eyebrow.

She nods, leaning in. And then he pukes it all back into baby birds' mouths until they die!

I heard he likes to crawl under peoples beds at night! calls a voice from the side. They all turn to look at the other man who said that.

Why? asks his neighbor, a priestess who, for some reason, has her arms out to the side and is waving with both her hands as she bobs around.

The man confidently crosses his arms. To pull away their blankets while theyre sleeping and uncover their feet! he explains.

Horrified murmurs move through the crowd.

That old meanie the Demon-King is a real jerk, Zac! says Ruhr, as the man turns back to look at her.

Why are you bouncing? asks Zacarias, raising an eyebrow.

Ruhr waves at him with a finger, smiling. Because theres a spring in my step! she jokes.

Everyone laughs.

~ [The Demon-King] ~

Swain stares blankly at the crusaders through the vision granted to him by his many eyes. The intruders have been turned into wooden marionettes through the magic of floor twenty-one of his castle.

He slowly turns his head, looking at the creator of the section, the spirit-cook, Byblos.

The once dark-elf cook turns her head, feeling his gaze, and stares back at him. What? she asks.

The horrific monstrosity that is the true horror, the beast of the hopeless wild-lands, the king of the damned, and the lord of all that suffer, gestures vaguely toward the distance. Byblos turns around, crossing her arms.

I like puppets, okay? she admits.

Swain looks back into the distance. I just thought itd be something about cooking, is all, admits the Demon-King.

She lifts her nose, turning around again. I love cooking. But that doesnt mean I cant have other interests. The gallu stares off into the distance for a time, before looking back over her shoulder. Its important to collect a variety of experiences in life, she explains, looking at him as she remembers something that had happened. To help broaden your ah capabilities, remarks the demon, playing with the ties of her apron, which may be covered in what is either copious amounts of blood, or strawberry jam as she walks towards the throne.

It is impossible to say.

The Demon-King, not entirely unimpressed, snaps his fingers for a sheet of paper to write on as he gets an idea, which is delivered by a howling ghost that just as quickly flees in horrific terror, though he finds himself otherwise distracted from the noble, artistic pursuit.

~ [Cartouche] ~

Gallu, Female, Dancer Location: The Demon-Kings Castle, The Demon-Quarters Level: 100

This is where youll stay, she says, as the new gallu walks into the room, looking around himself. Hes still dazed from the transformation. She recalls the sensation herself. It takes a little while before the power of the Demon-Kings blessing is fully absorbed by the living vessel of the body. When you are ready, come find me, she says, closing the doors to leave him there.

The confused man, still covered in afterbirth, his short hair sticking to his face and obscuring his vision, looks her way. Ready for what? he asks.

She tilts her head. Thats up to you, replies the dancer, closing the doors and walking away to get back to her practice. Ghosts appear from the walls, orchestrating her movements, even the mundane ones.

The demon narrows her eyes, looking at a trumpeter who has been playing a note for every step she takes. The ghost plays a long, drawn out, falling note as her eyes lock onto its.

~ [Ruhr the River-Sorceress] ~

Marionette, Female, Sorceress Rank: SSS Location: The Demon-Kings Castle, Floor Twenty-One Level: 96

Take that, you dooby-wooby! yells the river-sorceress, holding her hands out in front of herself. Blocks of blue painted wood fly outward, thudding noisily against the head of a skeleton, bonking against it and collecting over the ground below in heaps.

The skeleton lifts its hands dramatically, shrieking somehow, as its bones fall apart into a jumble.

Dont waste all of your magic on trash mobs like these, says Zacarias, looking over at her, his wooden body clattering as he moves.

Ruhr laughs smugly, waving him off. Dont worry, Zacco, says the river-sorceress. Whats a little magic here and there? she asks, leaning toward him. Its -

I will hit you, he warns.

The two of them stare at one another.

Ruhr opens her mouth. No -

- I mean it, warns Zacarias.

She closes her mouth, and the two of them look at one another from up close. She lifts a hand, holding it against his chest. Say, Zac, you hunk, when did your muscles get this hard? she asks, her fingers running down his wooden torso.

I huh? he asks, confused at the sudden shift of topics.

- ITS NO SKIN OFF MY BONES! yells Ruhr as quickly as she can to get the joke out, ducking away from the confused man and laughing as she dives under his arm, which swings over her head, and instead of hitting her, clears her head and catches hold of the marionettes strings, holding her up.

Ruhr, pulled back by the tug on the strings attached to her head and limbs, flies off of her feet and then lands on her bottom, sliding down onto her back over the stones.

Oh, hell, says Zacarias. Im sorry, Ruhr! says the man emphatically, looking down to help her up. I didnt actually mean to hit you.

Ruhr, laying on her back, stares up towards him. Despite lying there, her legs and shoulders pull in and out, as if she were still on her feet, bouncing up and down. Thats okay, Zac! says the river-sorceress, her painted on face changing through a variety of expressions on her wooden face. I guess you -

He sighs, looking down at her. - Youre gonna swept me off my feet, arent you? he asks, interrupting her.

Really swept me off my feet! finishes Ruhr, entirely ignoring his comment and then laughing.

The rest of the crusade laughs too.

Some of them watch as one of the others in the back of the crowd is slowly lifted up into the air, the strings on his body holding him taut as the puppeteer above chooses him to be pulled into the thick darkness above their heads that light doesnt seem to pierce, but even those that do continue laughing at the spectacle of the two of them.

Ruhr nods. The Demon-King is like that, so youre probably right, she relents. But sh shoebox, Zac. Sheesh. She folds her arms over her chest and looks away. I thought there was going to be like this whole thing, you know? she asks, gesturing to the stage set around them. That well work through your dark and mysterious past in a sequence of events where we learn more and more about you through a series of horrific experiences together, until ultimately coming out stronger in the end together after weve beaten some dire, evil monstrosity.

Exactly, replies Zacarias, tapping his head knowingly. Thats why I told you the big secret now, right away, so the Demon-King doesnt have anything left to play with. He looks at her. My parents werent good people, Ruhr, but I still felt obligated to take care of them. He shakes his head. I pulled someone else into my obligation and then neglected her for its sake, explains Zacarias, opening the door.

And your folks? asks Ruhr, looking back his way. Demon-King?

The door swings open, revealing the pulsating, gyrating meat that hangs from the ceiling a cancerous growth with dozens of long, pale, lanky arms that reach and touch all around the room, feeling for things to grab hold of with their slender, sharp, witchy fingers covered in clawed nails.

The paint all around the room is scraped off. The wood is dug out for as far as the hands could reach, burrowing into the room and consuming it, many others reaching up and catching the shredded flakes of those others outside of the house who are torn into the darkness of the ceiling.

No, replies Zacarias, as the mass inside the room shifts. Dozens of arms move through the squelching flesh, coming together at the front to contort themselves onto the growth, forming the image of a hungry face. People like them never seem to die, explains the man as the arms break formation and begin to reach for him. He looks at the drooling monstrosity, covered in wiry hairs and a strange gel that oozes down its exterior. Probably because people like me keep them alive. He shakes his head. We water the weeds and not the flowers.

He lifts his shield off of the ground, which is one and the same as many of the arms bear on the joints.

Dang, thats poetic, she says, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Ill handle it, he says, walking towards the clawing, hungry tumor. This is on me.

A hand pulls him back. No, replies Ruhr, shaking her head as she looks at him. Were friends, Zac, explains the river-sorceress. Friends dont let friends suffer the consequences of their own actions alone, she says, wiping a strand of blue hair out of her face, which is actually just a series of blue painted wooden beads. Were going to kill your parents together.

Are you sure? he asks. I get that this might be weird for you.

Ruhr shrugs. No. Were good, she says, knocking against his chest. Ive always wanted to kill a parental figure, so if anything, I owe you for letting me get in on this, explains the half-elf. There is a loud scratching of nails as blackened, fouled hands dig into the wood at their feet, just barely unable to reach them. The digits of hundreds of soggy palms try to grab them, only a breath away, as scraps of the dead and the constantly dying rain down slowly over them as members of the crusade are slowly, one after the other, pulled into the darkness above.

So do I kill your mom or your dad? she asks, looking at the mess beyond them that is hardly separable into such clean cut categories.

Dont make it weird, remarks Zacarias, turning to face the thing that cant reach them.

Okay, well, then Im gonna kill your dad, replies Ruhr. You seem like a mommy-issues-boy.

Whatever, daddy-issues-girl, replies Zacarias. The two of them nod and charge in, pressing the hands back together with the wooden tower-shield and the force of wooden water.

~ [The Demon-King] ~

My lord, we are about to reach a new fork in the road, says Abydos the painter, holding out his hands to the side. One road moves through a collection of villages that have established some unusual fortifications, explains the demon. It would seem theyve managed to use some unconventional methods to capture a wild demon for their benefit.

A demon? asks Swain, looking at him and at the half-written poem in his lap now that Byblos has left it and returned to her work elsewhere.

A wandering creature of the depths that existed before yourself, my lord, explains the painter. He lifts his other hand. The other road is usually an empty route, but it appears that a large contingent of armored riders is moving to the north there; we would overtake them on the road, though it is unlikely theyll stop and well need to give pursuit. He lowers his hands. Theyre likely trying to reach the north to reinforce the capital.

The Demon-King lowers his head in thought. Hell have to make a choice on the matter.

Any news of the witches, whom weve ignored in the past? asks the beast, considering the last time such a choice had to be made.

No, my lord, replies Abydos. They seem content to exist in mutual disinterest.

Swain nods, thinking about it.

It is unlikely that the human forces, if allowed to fester in their interior, will not come back to haunt them later down the road should they be ignored. However, much the same, allowing such a powerful group of additional soldiers to reach the human capital will significantly aid its defenses for the final push.

He must consider it carefully.

~ [Ruhr the River-Sorceress] ~

Marionette, Female, Sorceress Rank: SSS Location: The Demon-Kings Castle, Floor Twenty-One Level: 96

Wood clatters, chipping away in all directions, the beads on her head rattling in the violent winds as magic presses out of her stumpy, wooden hands, totally consuming the entity as she screams, letting out a few things. The monster, pelted with sharp, jagged wood, flails and screams, blood and sinew flying all over the place as it is bludgeoned and ripped apart the sack that it is being filled with misgrowths, such as eyes and teeth spilling its contents onto the floor, connected by strands of sinew and odd veins that connect to useless pieces of a body, to feed those parasites with blood.

A hand reaches out, grabbing hold of all of the strings attached to the top of her body at once, causing Ruhr to tightly compress together into a backwards bent ball, her joints moving in directions that they really shouldnt, but she doesnt notice that.

An instant later, she lurches, her body hanging free again and falling to the ground as a heavy tower shield cracks into the arm, breaking it at the elbow and causing it to let go, flopping uselessly on the stones. Ruhr jumps to her feet, running to the side just in time as another fist smashes down where she landed, cracking the ground behind her with a wave of hammering strikes, smashing down like the hammers of a piano as she runs along the edge of the room, holding her hands out towards the creature again. Ruhr sees Zacarias out of the corner of her eyes, both of his hands locked against a pair that grips him from the front, pushing back against him as another fist now raises itself over his head.

She holds her hands up.

(Ruhr) has used: [Aquatic Dragon]

It rushes down towards him in the same instant as a great serpent made out of azure rips through a dozen arms that fall to the ground, their severed nerve endings wiggling like worms as they come into contact with the air, the beast catching the fist before it hits him and smashing it against the wall.

Ruhr grabs a shield, spinning around once and chucking the heavy thing through the air towards him definitely not with enough force to damage any of the limbs like he had. Zac! calls Ruhr.

The man looks to the side and pulls his hands out, catching the shield and then spinning, cutting through the lower wrists of the two appendages with the bottom of the shield, sending sprays of black blood everywhere through the air, coating the strings above his head with a greasy fluid that drips down towards him, running along their wiry lengths.

The two of them lean against each other, looking at the flailing, oozing monstrosity that hammers the room with its remaining fists more violently than ever, thrashing like a beast in rage.

Ruhr moves behind Zacarias, holding her arms around him and planting her palms on the back of the shield. Hold it, she instructs. As long as you can. The man plants his legs steadily down, planting the shield in the ground and hold onto it as water begins to spray out of her hands, chunks of wood splintering and crashing down around their feet as she applies more pressure, intensifying the spell and then even more still, the metal rattling, splinters flying through the air in all directions like shrapnel.

RUHR! he barks, as the hands move towards them, lumbering, greedy fingers that always yearn to take more. In the grave, before the grave it doesnt matter More. More. Black hands crawl around the shield, reaching for them.

More.

NOW!

Zacarias pulls his arm free of the shields breaking straps, the sheet of metal shooting straight through the air, filling the room with a loud, sickly cracking noise.

The two of them stand there, looking at the growth in the center of the room, which has a hole going clean through it. The tower shield is bent and embedded deeply in the opposite wall.

The arms stop and begin to fall down to the ground, one after the other, as the monster dies, shuddering in a spasming death that sends viscera and goo everywhere in the throes of a beast that can never scream.

One arm falls down before him where the shield had been, a gently curled index finger running over his cheek with its backside, as if to offer any solace if mocking or not, she cant tell.

The two of them stand there in silence before looking at one another.

Ruhr purses her lips in a smile of sorts and nods to him once.

Zacarias nods back.

Theres not really anything else to say that hasnt been said.

Especially now that the spell has been broken.

Ruhr opens her eyes in her real body, staring down at the room she was just in together with Zacarias from above as if she were hanging from the ceiling. Wooden puppets lay down there limply in the arena, one with blue hair.

The half-elfs eyes wander to her own arms, which are adorned with strings and wires that lead down to the marionette below; she follows them, looking at the blue doll, and twitches a finger. The doll twitches a finger.

The hell mutters Ruhr, blinking to focus her blurred vision, before turning her head back around herself and looking up at where she expects the ceiling to be, given that she assumes her back is pressed tightly against it.

Yet there is no ceiling. There never is, is there?

The whole thing is it. It is much like the thing below, but spread flat all across the entire floor, like a meat paste smeared onto brickwork.

Long, cankerous hands hold her aloft the very same as the ones they had just fought below. Many of them hold people, like herself, who are only now starting to wake. Many others hold nothing and simply hang there, limply, having already consumed their prizes - the puppet and the thing that was holding them.

An eye looks down at her from above, having been waiting for a long time to pull her into the toothless hole that is waiting for her not far away now.

(Ruhr) has used: [Torrent {Holy-Water}]

Water explodes out from her, bursting into all directions, tearing the hands off of herself and those around her as they fall down in free-fall with the wave, mostly roughly crashing into the ground below and looking up at the ceiling that has now become visible, now that the act is over.

Hundreds of impossibly long, gangrene arms dangle down towards them like vines in a jungle, the puppeteer from above having finished the act but not the show. Ruhr blasts the ceiling, shooting down hundreds of people. They must have gotten caught in a trap when they entered the floor.

What a disgusting thing.

The river-sorceress continues the stream of her magic, pressing waves of water against the ceiling that immediately rains back down over them and the floor as a whole in her attempt to drown the thing above and to free as many others as she can.

Zac! yells Ruhr over the roar of the magic, as the crusaders come to wakefulness and join in on the counter-assault, blasts of radiant magic of all kinds flying up into the holy-water that drizzles down around them, intermingled with blackened blood. Her eyes frantically scan the arena, not seeing him. She turns her head around, looking at the puppets.

The strings.

No. No. No. No - mutters the woman, not seeing the doll anywhere and then looking back up towards the ceiling. ZAC!

A long, gangly arm whips through the water. She turns her head just in time for its clawed, rotting fist to smash right against her face. Ruhr flies back, a loud, sickly crack ringing through the room as her head roughly strikes the wall of the fake house, her vision going dark immediately before she has the chance to limply fall over.

Next to her, an urn falls from a table and shatters.