Chaos God, page 31
“Don’t make a move until they’re good and trapped.” I stared hard at my two companions, and then I took a step away from the group.
More than a dozen curious and suspicious eyes narrowed at me, but I turned a bit away from them as I allowed my survival instincts to kick up a notch, and I focused on what I needed to do next. I needed to be able to climb up the walls to reach the hidden level to activate the jail cell doors, and I needed to stay hidden. I turned my ears to the quiet chattering of the demons in the next room, and I imagined what would happen to me, these prisoners, and everyone at the camp if I was caught.
My brain dumped a load of adrenaline into my body, and I immediately felt the beginning of my shift. I shrank low to the dirty stone floor, and I sprouted four extra limbs from the middle of my torso. My eyesight multiplied several times, and I could suddenly see everything around me in a complete three hundred and sixty degrees. I felt a burst of wiry hairs sprout out all over my limbs as I sank down to just half a foot tall, and then I inspected my eight legs and found I’d become a gnarly-looking, black-and-brown tarantula.
“Oh!” the old woman who’d been cowering in the corner had looked up at exactly the wrong moment. She’d caught sight of me shifting into a massive spider, and she’d fainted straight away.
“Silence!” a demon called from the next room.
“Steady!” Azariah hushed the prisoners, and they all backed as far away from me as the prison cell would allow.
I stared up at them and blinked as reassuringly as I could manage, but I didn’t think the extra hairy limbs that extended from my body were very comforting. I scuttled through the bars and up the wall beside the doorway that led through to the second area of the dungeon. I was pleased to find that my eight spider legs had excellent grip against the stone walls, and I scurried around the top of the ceiling.
Twenty demons were lounging lazily around the open cells doors. They were eating something that looked like a groundhog with small antlers, but I didn’t pause to take a closer look.
I raced over to the doorway and slowly crawled down to where the little lever mechanism was hidden in the stone wall. I peered at the demons to make sure none of them were staring too pointedly in my direction, and then I moved my first leg into the crevice and pressed down as hard as I could on the small iron lever. My brain started to panic when the little bar didn’t immediately give way under my hairy appendage. Then I pressed harder, and I heaved a sigh of relief when I heard a slight click.
The iron door slammed shut.
I heard the demons mutter amongst themselves, but I didn’t linger to see their reactions. I raced back across the highest part of the stone ceiling, and out of the second room. Then I quickly found the second little lever and punched it with all my might. The second door slammed shut more easily than the first, and I allowed myself a short victory shuffle as the demon guards spun around to find they were entirely trapped within their own prison.
All of the demons blinked in confusion for a second, and then they darted over to the locked cell door. I stood at the bottom, and I looked up at the enraged demons as they banged and thrashed against the iron bars.
“Who is responsible for this?” a demon guard howled, and his black eyes glowed with rage. “You will all pay the price!”
I longed to return to my human form in front of the demons and enjoy the utter shock on their faces as they saw me, but I had neither the time nor the adrenaline to spare for that. Instead, I scurried over and crawled up to the iron keyring. I knocked the keys off the nail, and I dragged them over to where Varian stood waiting for me.
“We will take it from here, Levi,” the brown-haired man said to me, and he gave me a confident smile as he glanced at the locked-up demons.
“Is this even possible?” one of the prisoners asked as I started to scurry out of the dungeon.
I left the room and raced up the slick stone stairs without any issues, past the kitchen, and up the servants’ stairs toward the main level of the castle.
The two demon guards who had escorted us to the dungeon were nowhere to be seen, so I could only assume they’d returned to their posts outside.
I darted forward and into the entrance hall. I decided I should quickly assess the crank mechanism that held this massive wrought-iron chandelier in place, and I scurried up the wall toward it. The lever was at least a foot long, and I could tell it would take a lot more pressure to throw this switch than the cage doors in the dungeons required.
I paused for a moment, and I decided the first thing I needed to do was hurry to the Demon Lord, see if he’d drank all his wine, and then get his heart pumping. Once I got him good and riled up and chasing me, I wanted to lure him under the chandelier in the dining hall and cut the rope. I didn’t think that would be enough to kill him, but it would hurt him, I was fucking sure of that. Then I could rush out here, shift into my human form, and get him under this much larger chandelier. Once he was under it, I’d release the lock and send this massive hunk of wrought iron down on his head.
Then I could shift again and finish the bastard off.
It was a good plan, and I was ready for it. I scurried back to the floor and raced down toward the dining hall. I slipped around the doorway, into the room, and dashed into the corner to watch the Demon Lord.
The huge, hideous beast was diving face-first into his meal, and it was clear he was enjoying gorging himself on the excess food. I hoped he was stuffing himself to the point of a post-Thanksgiving coma that any proper American grandad would be proud of.
In the meantime, I waited and slowly edged my way around the room toward the wall with the windows. Right between two of the open windows in the exterior wall was the anchoring rope of the chandelier above the table. I needed to get a quick look at the path I would take from the middle of the dining table across to that rope, and luck was on my side. I smirked at the open space on the table’s shiny surface directly below the center of the chandelier.
Then I took a few moments to gnaw at the rope with my tarantula fangs, and I stopped when the rope strained to hold the weight of the wrought-iron chandelier above. One more fiber of the rope snapped, and the rope held, but I knew it wouldn’t last long.
Ingrid stood as still as a statue in the dimly-lit corner of the room, and she held the silver decanter in her hands. I could see a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead, but her hands were steady.
“Slave!” the Demon Lord suddenly hollered at the top of his lungs. “My wine is empty!”
I ducked back against the wall, and I watched as Ingrid rushed forward from the corner. She tipped her silver decanter over the Demon Lord’s empty goblet, and she poured the last of the poisoned wine until the very last drop. Ingrid’s eyes went wide as she looked up and spotted all eight of my hairy legs along the edge of the room.
I lifted one foot to my mouth in a poor imitation of a shushing motion, and then I dashed forward and under the edge of the table.
“Why are you still here, slave?” the Demon Lord growled a moment later. “Shoo.”
“Yes, my Lord,” Ingrid’s voice shook, and her feet backed away to the corner once more.
I crawled up the leg of the table, and I scuttled up onto the shining surface. Then I spread my legs out as wide as I could, and I tried to keep myself close to the table.
“Delicious,” the beast muttered to himself, and he licked each of his fingers one by one.
I inched slowly forward, and I could see that the Demon Lord’s gut was incredibly bloated from his meal. I studied his movements for a moment as I made my way carefully closer.
The Demon Lord’s eyes appeared unfocused, and when he reached for his goblet again, he missed the huge silver cup twice before he gripped around the object with both hands. The goblet shook as the tyrannical asshole raised it to his enormous mouth, and he quickly dumped the remainder of the contains down his gullet in one huge gulp.
That’s when I sprang forward on all eight of my legs, and I made sure to knock into as many of the silver items on the table as I could to draw the Demon Lord’s attention.
“What is this?” The Demon Lord scowled down at me. “Begone, foul creature.”
The hideous beast’s words were slurred, and he gestured at me to just go away. The Demon Lord clearly wasn’t bothered enough by my presence to get out of his chair, and I knew I was going to have to do something drastic to get the beast to chase me.
“Fuck,” I cursed.
I was shocked when the word rasped out of my mouth clearly enough that the Demon Lord’s orange eyes widened with recognition.
Chapter 21
“Did you…” the Demon Lord mumbled, and his words were even more smushed together.
I could tell the night lace poison was in full effect, but I was barely able to register the fact over the realization that the Demon Lord could understand my words.
“Did you speak?” the Demon Lord asked, and he laid his massive hands flat on the table in front of me. “What is the meaning of this?”
“The meaning of this is your death!” I hissed at the hideous beast, and I was pleased to see my words had the intended effect.
The Demon Lord’s orange eyes burned with sudden rage, and he hauled himself to his cloven feet. He stumbled back a few steps, and then he stared at me in surprise.
“I’m here to kill you,” I announced to the stumbling Demon Lord. “I’m here to free all the people you’ve kept as your own personal cattle!”
“How do you intend to kill me?” the Demon Lord burst into hysterical laughter. “You are but a tiny, insignificant spider! I will squash you like the pest you are!”
The Demon Lord lurched forward, and he swung a huge hand down onto the surface of the table. I bolted out of the way, and he tried again in vain to crush me. The poison was having a heavy impact on his coordination and balance.
“Yeah,” I laughed. “If you can catch me!”
I scuttled backward and darted side to side as the Demon Lord slammed his hands down in an attempt to catch me. The table shook violently underneath my feet, and I felt a crack splinter up the length after one particularly hard hit.
“Aaaahhh!” the Demon Lord roared as he grabbed hold of the table and began to lift it clear off the floor.
Now was my chance.
I launched myself off the edge of the table and raced up the wall to the partially severed rope. I looked back at the Demon Lord as he roared with frustration, and he hurled the table right against the wall opposite of where I stood. Then I quickly checked for Ingrid, and I was glad to see she’d disappeared from the room.
“Where did you go, vermin?” the Demon Lord roared, and his orange eyes burned with rage.
The Demon Lord stomped forward, and I held my breath as I watched him stop right where I needed him. Then I sawed quickly through the last few threads of rope that held the massive chandelier overhead.
Everything went into delicious slow-motion as the rope snapped, and the torn edge sailed away from me toward the ceiling. The chandelier seemed to hang in the air for a split second like Wile E. Coyote in a Road Runner cartoon before he looked down and realized the cliffside was gone. I even got the full satisfaction of the Demon Lord looking up just in time to watch the massive wrought-iron light fixture come crashing down onto his head.
“Oooof!” All the air whooshed out of the bastard’s lungs as the chandelier crashed down onto his head and pummeled him to the floor
I was surrounded by the crashing sounds of metal and the crunching of bones as the beast collapsed onto the stone floor with the chandelier on top of him, and I waited to see how much damage it had done.
The Demon Lord’s chest continued to rise and fall, so I knew he wasn’t dead, but based on the amount of viscous black blood that spilled out around the beast, the wrought-iron fixture had definitely injured him.
“Uuugh,” the asshole groaned, and he started to push the chandelier off of himself and rolled to the side. There was a huge gash in the right side of his massive horned forehead, and black blood was dripping steadily down his face.
The Demon Lord’s eyelids were heavy from the concussion he’d surely just received, and I scuttled closer to the door that led out into the hallway and toward the entrance hall. I stopped in the middle of the doorway, though, and I turned back to the disoriented and poisoned beast.
“I’m over here, motherfucker!” I screamed at the top of my tarantula lungs. “Come and get me!”
“Pest!” The Demon Lord shook his massive head in what was probably a futile attempt to clear the fog of the poison away, and then he lurched after me.
I raced down the hallway toward the cavernous entrance hall, and I could hear the hideous fucker’s stomping feet close behind me. I dashed out of the corridor and darted directly for the spot on the wall where the much larger chandelier was hanging.
Once I was just below the heavy foot-long lever, I closed my eyes against the racing of my heart, and I forced myself to take several deep breaths. I knew calming breaths alone wouldn’t be enough to end the shift this time, so I went with my gut, and I focused on channeling that adrenaline into what I needed to do next instead.
I envisioned myself shifting back into my human form and releasing the chandelier’s locked chain just in the nick of time.
Then I felt my body slip into a peaceful state of vindication, and my form began to stretch back out to my natural size. I opened my eyes, and I watched as my vision narrowed back down to that of my human eyes.
“Where are you?” the Demon Lord’s rasping voice screamed as he stumbled awkwardly into the entrance hall.
The beast nearly tripped right over his own cloven hooves, and it was obvious the poison was still having a huge effect on the asshole. He skidded to an unstable stop several feet into the hall, and his unfocused orange eyes scanned around the room in search of me.
“Yoo-hoo,” I taunted in a singsong voice, and I waggled my fingers at the hellish bastard. “Looking for me?”
“What…” The Demon Lord’s eyes crossed in confusion as black ichor flowed in a thin line down his face.
I could tell the exact instant that the asshole’s eyes finally fixed on mine, but he still didn’t seem to be able to comprehend what the fuck was going on. The Demon Lord glanced around the room again, and he took several steps further into the room. He stopped a few steps outside the chandelier’s radius, and I gritted my teeth in frustration. I knew I was going to have to piss him off a little bit more to lure him right where I needed him.
“Hey there.” I leaned casually back against the wall, took my smuggest stance, and gave him an incredibly cocky smile. “I’ve got something to say to you.”
“What could you possibly have to say to me?” the Demon Lord scoffed at me like I was a piece of litter at his feet, but he stumbled another step forward. “You peasant, you do not deserve to breathe the same air as I.”
“Right,” I agreed lightly. “But I do. I have a massive problem with you, you giant bag of dicks. You’ve been killing good people for a long time now, and I’m here to stop you.”
The Demon Lord growled at me, and his eyes narrowed with confusion and what looked like nausea. His dark skin even paled a few shades, but he lurched forward again.
I smothered my smirk as I saw that he was so close to standing exactly where I needed him to be. I shifted slightly on the wall, and I raised my left hand up to gesture vaguely at the creature before me. The movement appeared relaxed, but it brought my hand within two inches of the lever that would release the chandelier into a free fall from the thirty-foot-high ceilings.
“You’ve been acting like a bratty little kid with an ant farm,” I said, and I sneered at the beast. “But that stops here. Playtime is over, and you’re going to get exactly what’s coming to you.”
“What is this nonsense you speak?” The horned bastard’s words were heavily slurred at this point, and he wobbled precariously on his hooves. His eyes rolled back in his hideous face, and he stumbled forward once more.
“It’s okay if you don’t understand what I’m saying.” I smirked openly as the hellish demon stood exactly under the center of the massive wrought-iron chandelier, and I moved my hand to press against the cold lever that would seal this fucker’s fate. “You are dumb enough to fall for the same trap twice.”
Then I spun around and pressed on the lever with all my might. My heart nearly stopped when I felt the iron lock give way under my palm, and I heard the whooshing clicks of the chain links racing through the gears.
I looked over my shoulder as the Demon Lord looked up just in time.
The huge light fixture dropped like a hundred tons of rocks, and it crashed right on top of the Demon Lord’s already wounded skull. Then the beast was crushed like a stick figure, and I heard the horrendous sound of his spine snapping under the weight.
The Demon Lord’s entire body crumpled into a broken heap, and broken bones speared out from his snapped arms and legs. Thick black blood pooled all around the stone floor, and the acidic smell of his innards coated the inside of my nostrils.
“Ugh, fucking gross” I groaned, and I took a few steps closer to make sure the beast was really dead. “This is exactly what you deserved, you ever-loving piece of fucking shit.”
The sound of racing footsteps echoed up from the hallway that led toward the kitchen and the dungeons, and I turned around to see who was coming.
Azariah, Varian, and Shalanna bolted into the room, and close behind them were Astrid, Ingrid, and several other faces I recognized from my excursions through the castle.
“Oh, my gods,” Azariah gasped at the mangled sight of the Demon Lord’s corpse.
“Praise Odin,” Ingrid sighed, and silent tears started to spill heavily down her cheeks.
Just then, Elora, Ayen, Arlindra, and Elion burst in through the front gates. They held their weapons aggressively in front of them, and Elora’s amber-red eyes were filled with determination as they flicked around the room.
