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thatboomerkid · 5 years

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Battle-Banners of Lesser West Podunk

Pathfinder Fiction by Clinton J. Boomer

Brought to you absolutely free to enjoy, to test & to share – as always – by the fine folks of my Patreon.

Chapter One: Blood and Giggles

Old Wishtwister Shadibriri was having himself another truly lovely day.

It was a morning of smoke and screams and sweat and sobs, a morning of the dead and the damned and the doomed and the dying, a morning echoing with the clash of steel on wet-painted wood and the shrieks of tattooed flesh torn to ribbons by betrayers'-blades. The woods were filled with young men chasing after hot, red glory; with old men weeping over festering, ancient grudges and ugly new wounds; and with fresh-made corpses growing fly-blown in the damp heat of a hazy summer dawn.

It was a morning filled, in short, with delight, reward ... and opportunity.

As he strode down the muddy, bloody and night-soiled path between the warring camps, steam rising 'round his priestly-garbed glamer, the ageless demon called the Wishtwister began to fairly skip and sang out jubilantly with the little girl who pranced beside him:

"One and two! Black and blue!" "Three and four! Gone to war!" "Five and six! Bones and sticks!" "Seven! Seven! Gone to heaven!" "Eight! Eight! Burn the gate!" "Nine and ten, and ten-and-ten! 'Round and 'round and 'round again!"

“HAI!”

With a shriek, both of them spun in place and jumped once. Then the girl gleefully dropped a glass vial over her shoulder. It landed in the middle of the trail with a dull plop.

The pair stopped and stooped for a moment to consider the tiny prize: a crystalline, bluish hue suffused through the liquid within caught the sunlight, dim like a candle. The Wishtwister idly calculated its value at somewhere equal to the pay of nine years’ honest, back-breaking labor by any single member of the little girl’s family - perhaps, in fact, the very age of the child herself.

Shadibriri had not yet asked how old she was. Or her name, for that matter.

His little assistant looked to him. "What's inside it, Bishop, sir?"

"Eh? Oh. Magic."

The Wishtwister’s attention was drawn then, for an instant, by another bit of mischief: some hundred yards back up the road, a wounded young man of perhaps fifteen summers staggered from the tree line toward a similar prize sparkling in the shifting shadows, only to be cut down a mere hair's-breadth from his salvation by arrow-fire from some unseen sniper.

The demon chuckled.

"What magic?"

"Hmm-what? There? Distilled inside, a potion of aiding, for the shrugging off of wounds! It will make a man brave, and his arm strong; his fear will shrink to a tiny thing, far in the distance, and his pain will be forgotten. Even a fellow sunk deep upon his deathbed might spring to his feet with a drop of this, and fight like a bear in heat with it sparkling on his tongue."

"A medicine, Bishop?"

"Oh, no, no-no. It is a potent mystical compulsion of the mind only, and quite temporary - lasting merest moments."

The girl nodded, and reached unbidden into the clanking leather-bound satchel which hung from the Wishtwister's arm. She pulled forth another vial.

"And in this one?"

"Whiskey, mixed with a kiss of cherry-juice. Very similar stuff, though vastly cheaper."

She tugged forth another from the seemingly endless contents of the bag, and he smiled with delighted pleasure at her rude presumption. This little lass was a wicked girl, careless and curious and more than a little selfish -- as children so often are.

"And this?"

"That? Ah, poison - and most dreadfully painful."

The girl gasped, and then a sly smile spread across her face.

The Wishtwister did not bother to hide his grin at her reaction. This girl was cruel, and as capricious as he. "Ah, indeed! My thoughts exactly, and such fun! But before we set it down for someone to find, let us walk another few paces, shall we? Oh, for-a ... One and two, black and blue!"

"Three and four! Gone to war!"

And away the kindred spirits danced.

Their merry, nonsense song carried far before them along the path as the two wove further into the woods, wracked as it was with other, more brutal sounds this morrow - of struggle, and suffering, and sorrow.

Yes, it was a deeply fine day to be walking to and fro on the earth.

Chapter Two: Last Night’s Laughs

The evening before had been less auspicious, of course, but there had been some mad and giggling promise in the storm clouds hunkered above as the Wishtwister, dressed as a cleric, arrived at the little town he had come to name "Lesser West Podunk." The old fiend had learned to trust those little auguries and omens, even as the ages which had taught him those instincts slowly faded into a confusion of sharp fractures and slick half-memories.

His traveling companion last eve, the wandering, west-born sell-sword called Durnaur of the Legion-Serpent, had of course repeated the name of the town several times along the way, but since it was little more than a wide clearing where a few dirt roads met in the sparse wood, and a good nine days’ travel from anything approaching actual civilization, Wishtwister Shadibriri had staunchly refused to memorize it.

The town had lived up to its new nickname, at least: it was formed of only two permanent structures, neither rising beyond a single story. One of them doubled as both a low-rent tavern and the cheapest sort of brothel; the other, a sagging sheriff's barracks marred by some obscene graffiti, poorly painted over, denoted the extent of law and order in the region.

These were near-feral borderlands on the far western edge of Galt, some one-hundred-and-eighty miles from either golden-paged Isarn or the gray-bladed gardens of Litran, and more than a hundred miles upstream from the dissident print-shops of Woodsedge. This land was ruled by several feuding squatters: close-knit clans of backwoods hillfolk tracing their hot Kellid blood back to the age of Iobaria; a few impoverished lines of well-armed farmer-veterans late of Chairman Rane's suicidal conscription-scheme; some marked men no longer welcome in even the most brackish of northerly Riverlands port-cities; and, in name only, by a few well-intentioned, ill-informed souls loyal to Local Governor Greythornne, Citizen in High Standing of the Revolutionary Council.

These squabbling, unwashed hillbillies were united only in a shared hatred of Chelaxians ... and, admittedly, a certain seething jealousy of Andorans.

This was not any particularly important place in the world.

Far from it.

North, and not too far, were the River Kingdoms, and beyond that, Numeria, and beyond that ... well, just Mendev, and then the icy end of the world. South were rolling fields, some fallow and some fruitful, all contested - many by marriage but most through murder - and further south, Taldor and then the Inner Sea and a few isolated places where abject, sociopathic barbarism was, on occasion, the exception rather than the norm. And west, of course, across the surging Sellen, glimmered the gold-green glory of Kyonin, and the shining, crystal towers therein that none born of the mud here would ever find any home or welcome among.

And here ... here there were games to be had.

It was intended to be a peace-festival: a foolish scheme set into motion by an arrogant, insufferably educated and willfully-ignorant man, seeking to finally rectify grudges older than the Even-Tongued Conquest. By his edict, there was to be a general airing of grievances, a debate and some rounds of arbitration, and then a formal declaration of truce. After that, an honor-duel or two would perhaps be needed to set a few stubborn things aright, and then the breaking of bread would ensue on these, the final Fireday and Starday of Desnus ... followed by a lovely Sunday for trade and a merry feast.

It was going to be a disaster, of course. Then a horror-show, and then - finally - a blood-bath.

And if the Wishtwister had anything to say about it, it would be a great and jagged blade into the very heart of reality, as well, with a few damnations thrown in to boot, as was his liking. That latter part all came down to the tome, of course. Shadibriri would be long gone by the time the real damage started breaking loose.

But such was the curse of Galt, it seemed: interference, and the imposition of experimental edicts by sagely and stalwart men upon illiterate and underfed masses, led forever to screams and terror and carnage.

Good intentions and all of that.

Word had gone out for weeks, twenty-odd miles in every direction, calling for a general holiday and brief freedom from indentured or bonded servitude. Musicians and poets and other men of letters, pious men of any virtuous and patriotic faith, and traders and craftsmen, tinkers and players were welcomed to attend.

The good governor (called Absentee-Master Short-Stride the Tax-Fat by some of his more hostile constituents, especially those most angrily aware that they were, in fact, technically governed) should have been exceptionally nervous when the only vendor to answer his call was a grim weaponsmith, loaded down with arms and armor as if for a war and the only preacher to arrive, a swaggering, smiling fellow in a wide-brimmed black hat sharing the road with a hired sword and carting clanking casks of sweet spirits and a few cheap curiosities.

Also in attendance were five-hundred-and-fifty-some hardened men and women, fifty or more of whom were actively-practicing professional combatants; two dozen children from three summers to twelve in age; a host of scarred and superstitious camp followers; an unending abundance of horses, mules and the half-wolf dogs so favored by Northmen - bred for ferocity, all; and, most curiously, a single, lonesome lantern-light angel unseen by most, hovering high above it all.

A more hostile collection of unkempt savages was scarce imaginable.

Durnaur, slightly more familiar with the region's history, did his best to make clear to his robed companion the complex lines of allegiances, marriages, feuds and vendettas which crisscrossed here, and how he himself might hope to spin some coin from them ... but it was all something of a jumble to the old demon. In short: it seemed those under the banner of the bluish-ravens bore great enmity towards those bearing the sigil of the orange-red fox, who hated families clothed in the mantles of the brown bear, who despised the folk marked by the ashen owl, whom they considered heretics for some reason or another, and who hated everyone else. And beyond these sigils, there were mercenaries under countless ostentatious colors hired by each cadre, some flying flags most recently seen upon privateer vessels of Lake Encarthan, some hired out of Pitax and even a crew claiming, illegitimately, to be Templars from the far-away Worldwound.

Indeed, keeping score of the seething contempt these disparate, desperate tribes claimed toward one another required keen and ever-vigilant eyes, a sharp damn memory, and a dedication to task.

In this instance, the Wishtwister lacked primarily only the capacity to dedicate himself overmuch. Not that he did not care, but it just seemed such a waste of energy. He wasn’t really the note-taking type - as had been said before, he was ever the artist, never the engineer, and an improviser always. A single second’s spark of spontaneity, he liked to think, was worth well more than a dull decade’s dusty design; a moment of madness, in his estimation, would always out-pace several centuries of contemplation.

And besides, memorizing names and faces was oh so very, very boring.

Shadibriri and his sell-sword had arrived with the coming of afternoon’s highest heat, and since the demon was in the guise of an adherent to Cayden Cailean, he and his beer were warmly welcomed. They set their camp upon the village green, across the road from the inn and beside the wagon of the weaponsmith as the shadows grew longer, and watched as the unofficial festivities commenced in earnest -- with the drinking.

Ever and forever, the drinking.

Then the event began formally, as such things always do, with a speech.

This, the Wishtwister safely ignored, although he did well note the nonsensical confidence betrayed in the knees and eyes of the stubby Governor as he spoke, behind an array of armed guards, of peace, prosperity and patriotism. The book, which the old demon bore among his robes, cried out for the man.

Hmm. Oh, yes. That.

Well, getting the blasphemous text into the fellow's hands, and in the right way, was going to be both a bother and a chore, that was for damnably well certain. For a time the fiend contemplated this, his chin tucked to his chest, idly pondering - pretending to sleep as he and his associate separately counted the blades toted by the growing horde.

Then came the swearing of oaths and the shouting of boasts, some general milling and mucking about and a brief fistfight or two, and then - as the sun lowered and the wine was refreshed yet again - things began to get interesting.

Darkness crept across the scattered camps, and bonfires and torches were lit, and the Governor retired to his little private tent with his patriot’s-phalanx. The business of the inn grew more secret, sour and sweet, all at once, and cries could be heard in the shadowed woods. Somewhere, in the star-lit wilderness, a horn began to blow. Thunder rolled over the hills, and the heat rose and stank, but the clouds refused to begin spitting.

A slow boil seeped into the town.

Shadibriri redoubled his efforts at giving away alcohol and, in this, he was quite admirably successful.

And then the games began.

He witnessed the first murder of the weekend less than an hour after sunset, right in front of his own massive tent. By midnight, reports held that the camp of the bluish-ravens, or whatever they were more rightly called, had been assaulted and burned ... although none could agree upon who the aggressors were, precisely.

Shadibriri had his inflammatory opinions, of course, which he loudly shared, and his actual suspicions, which he kept to himself. He had given away a good amount of lamp oil, a half-dozen empty bottles, a tinderbox and some rags to a certain few individuals who had been quite interested in what directions the kindly, doddering old priest could provide into the woods ... but the demon had no definite proof of their guilt.

If ordered into a court of law, he would have claimed ignorance of any malice and innocence of any wrongdoing, but beyond even those easy lies, he could scarcely in good conscience chalk any resultant deaths to his own killing-score.

An hour later, the sheriff was dead - knifed in the back, open in the street. The demon had to do that one himself, though. He framed a deaf man for it, and paid Durnaur to act as witness. There was a swift lynching thereafter, once Shadibriri had reassumed his cleric’s guise and roused the crowd to sufficient anger.

And then the descent into chaos began in earnest. Anarchy, confusion and rage continued into the night.

Two hours before dawn, the delighted Wishtwister had sat in the dark of the woods, hunched in his true, great and monstrous form, and observed a lame-legged, grossly inebriated man with a single eye and a bloodied shirt spend two full minutes screaming at his slowly twitching victim before he looted the corpse of gold, leather, steel and everything else worth having.

The victim was, it turned out later, the owner of the tavern, and there was much commotion and conjecture as to who his murderer might have been. What fun!

Then, at sunrise, the grinning old demon began to set about the next project of his greater work.

And the work was fine, indeed.

Chapter Three: Wolf in the Woods

Old Wishtwister Shadibriri and the little girl were laughing and skipping, now, through a perfect early afternoon.

The demon was delighted to discover how much his young ward enjoyed leaving poisons and potions scattered through the woods; it was rare that he met a soul with quite his appreciation of mischief.

And the games were only just beginning.

He counted their combined body count at less than dozen, after all.

"One and two! Black and blue!" "Three and four! Gone to war!" "Five and six! Bones and sticks!"

"Seven! Seven! Gone to ... oh, goodness, my fine lords!”

With that, the demon and the girl came around a gentle curve in the woodland path, smiles beaming upon their faces. Before them were fifteen-odd men, girded for battle and flying a blood-stained flag woven in the sunset-colors of the fox clan. Whatever their name or their particular grievances were, they were on the march; somewhere in the woods, someone was expecting them, and blood was soon to be shed.

The demon smiled wider. “... And may I offer to you, then, a draught, a dram, a sip, a sup?"

Their leader -- a professionally-equipped man outfitted in a leather helm, its face-mask cunningly wrought to resemble a feral hunting cat -- spoke for the group without putting his weapons away. "We have no coin, priest, nor any desire to buy your wares."

The Wishtwister laughed. "Oh ... oh, no - you mistake me, fine citizen and friend! I am not selling these trifles! They are a gift from my lordly master to you good patriots: elixirs and unguents to aid your cause, only! Young lady, grant each man here a vial!"

Even he was surprised at how disarmingly innocent he could sound when he really, honestly wanted to.

A smile like sunshine lit the girl’s face. “Indeed, Bishop!”

Chuckling, a tall and sunburned fellow clad in loose, improvised armor over rough-spun farm cloth shifted his crude polearm to his left hand and stepped forward to claim the offering, a parental grin upon his face. But the man in the mask stopped the farm-hand short with the tip of his blade ... and quite rudely too, by the old demon’s estimation.

"Huh. Such things can be dangerous. I would not consume anything given so lightly."

"Oh, by the heavens, no! Surely, my good man, you cannot suspect that I would distribute something ... foul? No! No-no! I provide only a physic, a medicament, a curative, a panacea. In fact, young lady, take a drink of one!"

The little girl gleefully dug into the satchel at the demon’s side, popped a cork and quaffed down the contents of the thumb-sized bottle she’d retrieved ... and as they all watched, the Wishtwister paused and idly wondered, with a wry chuckle, what would happen if she suddenly turned gray and cold and then dropped over dead.

He would probably have to kill everyone here, he mused after a moment, and while that would certainly be amusing, it would hardly serve his greater purpose.

Wouldn’t get rid of the book, anyway.

He’d been charged, by magics most foul, to deliver it, by hand -- and all by powers far greater than himself. And so he would, like it or not. If it had been up to the Wishtwister, of course, he would have simply thrown the thing into the woods, where someone stupid would find it eventually ... but such things were not to be, it seemed ... and so this required subtlety.

Beyond all that, the presence of a lantern-light celestial somewhere here in the woods was more troubling still. While of no real danger to him, not even in a storm of their gestalts and the glare of their brightest, most stinging light ... where there are lanterns, there are often harbingers - equally unworthy - and hounds.

Hm. Holy-hound spirits.

Yes, yes, of course - the Wishtwister knew himself the match for any dozen such creatures. The stalwart dogs of heaven would break against him, and die. It would be hilarious, in fact.

But where there are hounds, well ... there are often legions and shields.

Now, the Wishtwister could enjoy fighting a celestial legion-spirit or angelic shield-bearer. They hit hard and flew fast, for certain, but they were weak. Cracking open the little armored being's defenses and slowly breaking-off parts of the self-righteous thing until golden blood rained out, its heavenly weapons faded into nothingness ... yes. That was fun, and perhaps even something of a challenge for the half-minute or so it would take him to catch and best one.

Yet truly, the Wishtwister did not desire to face a mass of them. Certainly, not more than three-to-four. Not all at once. Not today. Not unless he had to.

And where there are shields and legions, unfortunately, there are often trumpets.

Ah, yes.

That.

Against an angelic trumpet-spirit, well ... it would be the flip of a coin, in honesty.

The celestial would be faster by a fair margin -- more than twice his speed on wing -- and he, unable even to get airborne, would be much the larger, stronger and better-armored, certainly, but likely not by enough to matter overmuch. In such a well-matched encounter, the creature would never allow itself to be cornered and confused by a horde of reflection-figments, then caught up and torn apart by Shadibriri's many claws, fangs and pinchers. Not even to use its sword.

They weren’t stupid, unfortunately.

Not like humans.

Thus, it was with some delight that the Wishtwister observed the girl fail to die.

Instead, her face flushed with a rosy and healthy glow as tears streamed silently down her cheeks, and her smile grew warm and sweet. She spoke quickly and forcefully as the men arrayed before them gaped in awe.

The demon’s mind spun down from the dizzying heights of his calculation, and he beamed a broad grin at the fellows arranged before him on the woodland path. He gestured to the little girl, and resisted to the urge to say, “I told you so.”

“Magic! Bishop, it’s magic!”

She danced a small circle, between the beats of her heart, more graceful than a coiled cat, and her voice spun into the trees with a flutter and a twinkle; a lovely lyric, gifted by a transmutation of splendor.

The old demon couldn’t help himself. “Yes, dear girl! Lovely magic! Why ... have another!”

She did, and again failed to die ... and so the company of foxes, satisfied with the cleric’s intentions, took a handful of his brews and went upon their business, none the wiser.

Yes, it was a lovely day!

---

The afternoon wore on hot and wet, with whispers of warm wind sliding through the cool damp that slunk low in the shade of the trees, when the Wishtwister and his youthful ward came upon the quiet camp of the ashen-owl-marked families.

It had been a bad few hours for this little camp, it seemed, their numbers cut from one-hundred-some to roughly half that now. Wounded and weary men were propped next to weeping widows, and linen-draped corpses piled high in the thin shade of the clearing, prepared for a pauper’s burial. And everywhere a fevered hush hung over the camp, so thick with grief that even the children and dogs had grown silent.

So the silly songs of the demon and the little girl echoed among the fallen owls in a jarring and most unwelcome way.

Shadibriri was undeterred.

He knew one thing, above all, as his grinning gaze fell across them: these grief-struck families wished to be quit of their sorrow. Most surely, he could help them in one way or another. After instructing the little girl - whatever her name was - to do cartwheels for the amusement of the ill and the injured, and briefly offering everyone present a drag of whiskey or an unmarked bottle from his clanking satchel, the demon swift-deduced that these people were decidedly abstemious ... and further, most certainly unamused.

Teetotalers.

Ew.

Poking about at their dead, his welcome wearing thinner and more frayed with each passing second, the Wishtwister determined that they were, as a family and to a man, strict adherents to some obscure and unnaturally severe religion or another.

Not the Inheritor, sadly. The demon knew all too well that boring, mortal-born bitch and her clunky sword-cross symbols, –and he truly delighted in the ruin of her faithful.

But this - the desecration and slaughter of a small, isolated backwoods faith - could be just as delightful. It merely called for sacrilege.

As to whom they worshiped, precisely, he didn’t know and he didn’t care. It could have been anyone from Razmir to Abadar to ... whoever: the one god, with the monkey-face; or the burned one, what’s-his-name. That wasn’t the point. The point, the demon Shadibriri decided with a grin as he poked at a partially-dismembered body and dribbled holy whiskey on it, was to make them mad.

For it was much more comfortable, wasn’t it, to be angry than sad? Oh, they would warmly welcome the shift he’d soon provide.

Yes. Now, to make them rage. To make them focus their uncomfortable aching outwards, upon an outsider. To make them hot and cruel with fury, and to make them threaten an unarmed priest and a little girl with violence, all in the name of their stupid god. To force their hidden hatreds and judgments out into the open.

In short, to make the world a worse place.

And when they had committed enough insults, spat enough invectives, perhaps shoved him once or twice and brandished weapons and told him to go away as he prayed in his mocking way to the Accidental God he pretended to worship... then he would kill them.

Butcher them like cattle, all, and fling their ruined pieces into the woods, and cheat their useless god in the process as their sin was ripe and boiling enough to burst, and their souls contaminated with such blind, lashing frustration as to go squirting through the Boneyard and down into the Abyss to take deeper root.

It was nearly a perfect plan, in honesty.

He glanced around, then, and confirmed after a moment that the little lantern spirit wasn’t about.

Shadibriri couldn’t help but smile.

Intoning with a loud, mocking slur the name of Cayden Cailean, the Lucky Drunk, and mismatching a good deal of the barkeep-god’s articles of faith in the process, the demon upended his flask and dumped the cheap contents onto the pile of honored dead. He then began flicking droplets of the rotgut into the bushes, singing atonally, as he dug into his purse for a bottle of low-grade, pinkish wine he was nearly certain was stuck in there, too.

And that’s when he felt the hard hand of a fighting man clamp down upon his glamer’s shoulder. Right around the level of his own knee.

So soon? Huzzah!

Oh, such good fun!

Chapter Four: A Night of Damnations and Cheap Laughs

It was just past the last gasps of sunset when the gore-slick demon found himself back upon the winding roads between the camps, his claws and pinchers and wolfish fangs all a-quiver with the simple joy of making murder.

He was idly looking for the little girl, whatever her name was, when he happened across a young woman dressed in the colors of the brown-bear camps.

She made a bow, but no eye contact. “Evening, Bishop.”

“Ah! And the loveliest of all possible evenings to you, as well! How fare you, and have you seen a little girl about, and would you care for a drink?”

“I thank you, Bishop, but no. I must be getting along - and I’ve seen no one.”

“Ah. More’s the shame. Then might I join you on your walk?”

She hesitated, but eventually acquiesced - better to be wrong than to seem rude, the Wishtwister supposed with a smile. “Indeed, Bishop. I would share your company - there are dangerous things in the woods tonight.”

“Really? Like what? Monsters, do you think?”

“No ... just men.”

She sounded like she knew there was little difference, given the right circumstances and the wrong sort of hunger.

That pleased Shadibriri immensely.

He winked at her. “Oh, come now. Surely you cannot mean that there are men in these woods who would - could - might, even, assault an unarmed priest and a lovely young woman like yourself, can you?”

She stared hard at him, and frowned.

To her surprise, the old man laughed.

“Ha! Oh, and so, and so - that makes me very happy; you do truly mean that. Ha ha! And you know, I suppose that you’re probably right!”

She eyed him for a moment, there in the darkening woods as they strolled, and something within her balked. She wished, after a moment, that he was not accompanying her after all. The demon’s glamer was convincing, certainly: able to mask scent and sight and sound and scores of other senses humans simply had no word for. But some part of her, in that space of a heartbeat, knew that the grinning old man was much more - and much less - than what he seemed.

He was like a great and gnarled bulk, somehow, huge as a cottage and thick like an ox, made of great green-grey limbs and shining pits in the snarling black, creeping along at the pace of a man.

The Wishtwister saw her fear, and his smile deepened. “The night is a bit ... frightening, isn’t it? Why, yes, yes ‘tis - and it’s even worse for me! For I’ll have to walk back all this way alone!”

---

Under a bright moon on a perfect, starry night, clean and cold in a dark little clearing he had found, the whistling Wishtwister was taking joy in a simple thing - that is to say, he found himself about the damnably pleasurable business of slowly, methodically ruining a corpse.

It wasn’t one of his, but one he happened on as he traveled.

It deserved ruining, surely, and anything worth doing was worth doing right. The pleasures of a job well done, of course, were almost equal to the twin joys of defiling a body and of setting a very nasty trap.

Oh, such a fine task he had set himself!

The rations the dead man carried had become subtly fouled by his condition, sure now to carry some grave disease or another, and his water-skin was made unclean with drops and smears of that certain filthiness which only a corpse can secrete. Shadibriri had seen to it that the weapons were made unsafe, each in one of the myriad little ways such things can snap, break and fall apart, and now was set to the task of figuring out how to ruin everything else. This was a chore to which he bent much care. Was it better to shred a fine leather belt such as this into useless, ugly ribbons and strew them about in an evocation of horror? Or should he in fact break the thing in some obscured fashion, - thus giving momentary hope to whoever might find it - before realizing, too late that it was useless and that the world truly is a terrible place full of bad people?

Hmm.

While he pondered, the Wishtwister idly punched holes in the man’s boots with his sharp fingers, and reminisced with a fond smile upon the faint, tangy scent of a gooey, translucent neurotoxin he once owned, which he might have applied to the insides of these woolen socks had he still possessed it. If there had been any spiders or scorpions about, he might have put one of those in, as well.

The footwear tasks completed, he began idly carving obscene runes, sacred to some Hellish beast or another, into the dead man’s skin. This served no practical purpose whatsoever, but the images were shocking and disquieting to look upon, and such an action was something of Shadibriri’s calling card. Furthermore, it might convince someone that the victim had either been a devil-worshipper in life or had been slain by Chelaxians.

Either way, it roused suspicions and ire, churning up accusations and paranoia and general misery and sometimes - delightfully - wrongful executions.

In short, it would put people in a less joyous mood.

The demon thought a moment on the topic of joy and recalled a sober and stalwart sage by the name of Master Lewis, a writer and theologian of some backwater reality on the far edge of forever’s bunghole. He had once remarked of demons that “bad angels, like bad men, are entirely practical. They have two motives: the first is fear of punishment, while their second is a primal kind of hunger."

In this, he described the Old Wishtwister perfectly; his own hunger, as he understood it, was for joy.

Shadibriri was mad for the stuff. He craved it, gobbled it down and lapped it up like a dog, every chance he got. Riddles, games, songs, skits, funny faces and lovely smells alike: all the things that make life worth living - especially from millennia to millennia and world to world - and he made damn sure, every-which-where he went, that he sucked as much joy out of everything and everyone else that he could.

A finite amount of it must exist, after all. And the Wishtwister was determined to keep as much of it to himself as possible. He was happiest when the people surrounding him and those reeling in his wake were abjectly miserable to the point of homicide, suicide or regicide - or preferably a uniquely bleak combination of all three.

The fiend’s wandering and tuneless whistling slowly turned to an odd and disharmonious hum as he finally set about systematically stripping the belt into bits. He smiled; his decision regarding the article had been idly made without his even realizing, and little slivers of coiled leather began to collect in a tattered pile between his clawed and cloven hooves, falling like sad shreds of sullied snow.

And then, a sound.

A snap.

Thirty-five yards away. North by northeast. A man -- probably this corpse's killer, garbed in light leather armor adorned with steel -- a professional killer, to be precise.

The ageless demon continued about his work and grinned to himself, quite truly delighted to hear someone creeping upon him in the quiet, lonely blackness.

He let the man get close. A dozen-and-a-half paces from him, perhaps.

Then the demon turned with a start, and painted a look of startled shock upon his illusory face, pretending to squint in the soft moonlight.

“Ah! Who goes there!?”

The armed man crept closer still, all cloaked in shadow; the washed-out colors of his pirate’s motley clashing against the bright, orange-and-red fox-shaped badge pinned to his coat. Shadibriri wondered, ever so briefly, if the man might have been all-but-invisible to more human eyes.

He decided to run with that notion. Even if he had misjudged the dark - which swift parted, like transmutations and illusions alike, before his potent divinatory sight - his fake priest’s persona could believably have particularly poor vision.

“Gah! I say again, who goes there? I am but a simple cleric, and unarmed! Be you friend or foe?”

Again, the near-silent man moved closer, his bare axe-blade - perfectly (if crudely) wrought for chopping wood, boarding ships and hacking open torsos - catching a brief glint of faint light. The Wishtwister tried to remember if his glamer’s visage wore eyeglasses. He was pretty sure that it did. He pretended to back away as he feigned adjusting the spectacles, and made a show of tripping over the corpse beneath him.

“Oh! I can see you there, ever so barely! Please, I only seek to give this man his last rites to send him along to the Boneyard to meet whatever god he might have served. I will gladly give you whatever provisions he held, and moreover, whatever I carry is yours for the asking! You need but ask!”

With that, the axe-man hesitated, still a dozen paces back.

“Please, oh please - spare me!”

Then the ax man's voice came, more growl than words. “Shut up, priest.”

“Eh? A-what, now?”

The man advanced, firmer now in his resolve. “I say again to shut up, old man, or I’ll shut you up.”

“Of course, fine sir. I merely desire to do my duty. Oh, but also - have you seen a little girl somewhere around here?”

The man blinked and his eyes narrowed.

The demon smiled and pretended to consider. “I could swear that I left her nailed to something, but when I went back, I couldn’t find her.”

The man blinked once more, and his footing shifted as he became uneasy.

The demon went on. “Ah, perhaps the dogs got to her, come to think of it.”

The man gaped slightly in confusion. “Wha-?“

“Yes - well, I suppose there is that. So … magic?”

A freezing blight of slick, silent blackness suddenly shattered into the world in a choking spray around the man, greasy tendrils oozing and groping in an unholy, killing horror. This nameless, wordless malevolence sought out kindness and good will, in its cloying, mindless hunger ... and ate it, burning it from skin and soul in lethal bites.

It found none.

After a moment the blasphemous evocation cleared, and the axe-man stood unblemished - if, perhaps, slightly startled.

He took a step forward, blinking at the priest. “... wha?”

“Hm. Yes. You said that already.”

The demon next unleashed a raw burst of sizzling, unbridled primal-energy, cascading in a spastic torrent, scribble-bright and swift enough to sheer flesh from bone. It washed over the mortal, seeking out oaths and rites, promises and prayers, loyalties and fealties; orders obeyed, agreements kept, plans executed to the letter, conscriptions faithfully endured - these, it sought out, only to char them away into something less than strewn ash.

The man blinked again. “... wha?”

“Ah-ha! Yes, less subtle than divinations, certainly. But those can be tricked. More interesting still: your heart is unbridled and unrighteous, both ... so you’re one of mine, then. Now this gets interesting.”

Shadibriri took a step forward, and cast aside his illusory veil. “Try your blade against me. Try, try, with all your might, your strength against mine. See if you can spill a single drop of my ichor before I have you helpless. See what it is you face.”

The man’s eyes went wide, his hand sliding on his axe hilt.

Then a single scream pierced the night.

It was delightful.

---

The one-time axe-man, now bereft of axe, armor and clothing alike, twisted slowly in a night breeze just cold enough to bring shivers and gooseflesh to his naked limbs - hanging about thirty feet from the ground by the pincher of a gnarled beast like something spawned, scuttling, at the lightless bottom of an unholy and oily ocean.

He could not scream or speak, for his mouth was stuffed with various fresh-cut parts of a corpse, and a strip of leather was tied around his face to keep it in ... but his rolling eyes, the tremble of his hands and his pale, sweating skin bespoke his panic.

In his mind, the silent voice of the Wishtwister echoed.

“Welcome, welcome, little man. You’ve lucked into a rare opportunity.”

The man squeaked.

“Yes. People like you -- my friend, my dear, my droplet, my dulcet dove -- tend to get scared when no longer in power. That’s the term, isn’t it? Scared? Yes. Yes it is. Well, I’m here to fix that. Why, if it were up to me, you would never be scared again!”

The man gibbered in his own head.

“No, no, that will never do. Think out loud, boy. Pretend that you speak - that your tongue is not pinned, that your mouth is not bound, that your throat is not choked and letting in trickles of foulness no matter what you do. Pretend, as if your life depended upon it. Say ‘hello’ for me.”

“H-hello?”

“Good, good! Now we speak as immortals do. We speak as the first and eldest of souls did in the formless, dancing time before time. I have taught you a new language, boy - say thank you.”

“Th-thank you.”

Shadibriri shook the man like a leaf. “Say ‘thank you, master’ when you thank me.”

“Thank you, master!”

“Ah, and very well, and you are most welcome! It was but a trifling thing, to open your mind like so. Now, however, my fine lad, I must apologize - I cannot grant you your heart’s desire on this evening, much as I would like to. It is promised to another - your better - although he does not know it, yet.”

The man whimpered once more.

“Yes. Yes, indeed. Do you know the most powerful words, boy?”

The man quailed.

“The most powerful words; they are, quite simply put, ‘I want.’ They are the heart and heat of all power. ‘I want.’ Against these words, there can be no debate, no shield, no resistance. These two words make the blood flow and the grass grow. ‘I want’ leads to ‘I take’; ‘I take’ leads to ‘I have’; and ‘I have’ well ... it leads to all the mysteries and miseries and miracles of all the universes. Just two syllables - less than a mouthful, yet so much more than a handful. ‘I want.’ Just so. Do you understand?”

He did not.

“Oh, do you dislike how I speak in riddles, little mortal-thing? Do you want to understand? Then let me be clear: I grant wishes. Any wish you like. I can call forth any spell, I can resurrect the dead, I can rewrite time and space. I can make you wealthy beyond your wildest dreams; I can open doors to other worlds; I can cast you across the infinite pleasures of the planes as you desire. I can turn lead to gold, pig-farmers to pigs, and day to night. With but a word, I can unmake mountains, reshape flesh and topple kings ... but my powers, this eve, are granted to the local potentate, this “Greythornne.” Am I understood?”

The man, dangling, nodded.

“Speak, boy!”

“Y-yes, master!”

The demon smiled. He liked telling half-truths. “Very well. Yet my vast and otherworldly powers are otherwise mine to implement as I see fit; therefore, on this night, I can grant you one of three requests: death, madness, or the promise of power ... and of a wish in one year’s time. Which shall it be? What do you choose? What do you ... want?”

The man shook, but his mind was shrewd. “Power?”

“Ah, yes! I am but poorly bound, and will not be constrained even in this way for long; I can teach you potent words, holy to my patron Baphomet; with these rites and rituals, you will have power - over the arcane, and over beasts and those who conspire against you, and over the secret societies of the Ivory Labyrinth who will take you in and make you strong. Be obedient in these, and meet me in one year here in this place.”

“In this place?

“Here, and only here.”

“... and then?”

“Then I will grant you a wish, boy! Think hard on it, for you may have anything you want. Upon the year after that, then, bring me thirteen human hearts, and I will grant you another. For as many years as you have, mortal, this shall be our bargain.”

The man considered.

“One wish a year, as long as you live, and power - yours for the taking. The first will be free ... and after that, not too difficult in the paying, yes? Of course, my offers of death - or of madness - still stand. So tell me truly, boy - what do you want?”

In the end, man restated. “Power.”

Teaching him of the Ritual of Horn and Haunted Eyes, as Shadibriri liked to think of it, and sending him on his way into the darkness with visions of wishes and power roiling in his mind, took almost no time at all.

And just like that, the world was a worse place.

Chapter Five: In the Early Hours

As the easterly sky began to brighten, and with so many of his errands completed, the Wishtwister found himself - at last - alone with the tiny lantern-spirit.

It twinkled high above him, some twenty meters above the earth - a glow like the faintest of candles, shifting between branches and hiding between the morning stars, as it watched the comings and goings of men.

“Hello, little angel!”

It paused, its featureless light and the dim, attendant runes of righteousness that hung about it all-but-inscrutable. And then the celestial drifted lower. After a moment, it spoke with a strange, echoing and language-less whisper that set Old Shadibriri on edge and grated against his mind: the truespeech of the Empyreal Lords, bane of lies and the inversion of his own sickening and slithering telepathy.

“Fair morrow, good priest. I am somewhat taken aback that I have been discovered - though, mind you, not displeased.”

The demon chuckled. “You are subtle, little angel, and most unobtrusive in your vigilance. My own eyes are keen, but other than I, who here would think to cast their gaze heavenward, and chance to spy a glimmer so soft and so distant in these black woods?”

“Please, good priest, speak of me to no one.”

“This, I do promise. So then, if I may ask - why are you in attendance?”

“A fine query - one which you may ask and I may answer. I am merely here to observe, friend; to learn what I am able of mortal chivalry, of honor and of virtue, and of that integrity on combat’s field which is oft spoken of, but rarer seen.”

“Ah! And what have you discovered, little angel?”

The angel paused. “Nothing that has made me proud, priest. I had thought to find some good here, and to nurture it in what quiet way I can, but naught to which I have been privy has been valorous or noble, in purpose or of deed. These conflicts are without reason or merit which I may see: base passion without temperance, hostility without the barest thought of fair play.”

The demon shook his head in feigned disgust. “It is as you say, little angel. I, myself, have seen only one truly honest and courageous act these past few days.”

“Ah! And what was that, if I may ask?”

“You may! Yet before I answer, little angel, I must ask of thee: are you the only of your kind in these woods on this lovely morning?”

“Indeed, I am, friend priest.”

“I see. So there are no other angels who might come forth and bear witness to my tale of true chivalry and purity of both reason and action in the face of danger?”

“I answer honestly: none.”

“Hmm. Then, your brethren shall have to hear of this goodness I have witnessed; can I trust you to take my tale to them and to be ardent and forthright in its telling?”

“You can trust me in all such things, good man.”

“Very well. I have seen, as I say, but one noble act these past few days - and ‘twas this very morning.”

“What was it?’

The priest-demon hesitated, his smile frozen on his lips.

He was thinking again of the Heavenly host; of trumpet-archons.

Against such creatures, it would be a contest of magics ... and at range.

Ech. A losing proposition; trumpets were well-famous for their spell-power, and possessed a versatility in casting that any mortal arch-mage could only hope to match.

The Wishtwister did not relish a brawl against such a celestial, in truth.

If he caught it unaware, maybe. In the stunning wave of his terrible power-word, with the angel unable to pierce his illusions ... No. Not possible. Not unless it was wounded - for its soul burned so very bright.

Hmm. So he would be outgunned, possibly, and slow and earth-bound, certainly, but he might not be out-numbered; at best, it would be even-odds as to whether the Wishtwister could hope to rip reinforcements from the other side of the Astral Plane, and another gamble, as to whether he might summon up one or a full pair of winged, screeching wind-demons.

And what use would the things truly be, he wondered, against the paralyzing menace of such a god-messenger's mighty, ceaseless horn-blast? Against mere men - or better yet, against unarmed women and children - the flailing, winged vrock were like the reaping of a whirlwind; a frenzy of claws and spores and screams and horror.

Delight, made dancing flesh.

But in this, the vulture-headed, frothing favored of Pazuzu would probably be little more than a distraction, hardly worth the time and effort in calling them.

And then there was the trumpet’s retaliation to consider.

Hmm. Its blade was a concern, to be sure, but the greatest fear was that the angelic thing might simply choose to banish the Wishtwister back to the Abyss; trumpets, infamously, often prepared such divine words, thick with their damnable faith. He would put his chances, in such an instance, at only a little better than half that his ensorcelled skin might innately shrug off the aforementioned abjuration ... and then only slightly better again that his sheer will might be able to resist its mystical power if his flesh failed.

Eugh.

Poor chances, truly.

And if he could resist? For a minute or an hour, it would matter not. In the end, all luck of every kind in the Wishtwister’s favor and the fight decidedly his - the celestial perhaps stupid enough to fall into the grip of his rending claws - in that eventuality, the archon might simply retreat and regroup, vanished in a wash of teleportation and be made whole with healing conjurations aplenty ... to strike again upon the morrow.

And again the next, and the next; a relentlessly unkind hunter, ever weakening the harried fiend.

Then there was also the remote but sickening chance that the creature might have studied the Wishtwister's breed, might have some insight into his strengths and tactics. It might cast upon itself an abjuration of spell-immunity to ward against the demon’s mighty chaos-hammers, his vicious blight-bolts and his potent confusion-enchantments, all. And from such thoughts were anxious nightmares born.

Could he truly hope that the creature had studied, perhaps, only the living, the dead, the unborn and the undying ... yet never demons?

No, no, not good odds at all. Not good enough for him, at least.

And where there are trumpets, well ... let the great and powerful Thirteen Lords and all their numberless, nameless, nascent rivals forbid it; may our jests and japes, our scraps and scrapes, and our eternal inventive cruelties forever amuse them and those who claw and scheme their way to take such rank. By lovely Nocticula, his dark muse; by mighty Baphomet, his potent patron; by beautiful, unconquerable Lamashtu, his great Demon Mother - may her black cervix ever twitch and spit; and above all, by himself, Shadibriri, who will one day make himself king of them all, ruler of the Abyss and all it touches, may it be forbidden to even think ...

Where there are trumpets, there are often stars.

Against a celestial star, there could be no hope, nor even hate. No victory. No chance, no succor, no stratagem nor plea. It would be better to have never crawled up from the Maelstrom and into the world than to think that an angelic star, of all things, might cross paths with the Wishtwister.

The demon exhaled slowly, letting his mind flicker back to the moment at hand. “You are certain, little friend, there is no other archon of Heaven you might call up? None you might teleport to, or beg into our audience?”

“None. None, I do swear. Now, please: tell me, what goodness you have seen?”

“Do you ... wish me to tell?”

“By all means, yes!”

The old Wishtwister smiled. “Very well. It was you, and only you, my dear angel. You, with all your many powers, who in your decency did not violate my privacy with your divinations - to see if my heart was wicked.”

A wave of unnatural vileness engulfed the little lantern, and it was summarily snuffed from the world.

“You stupid shit.”

Chapter Six: Sunny, Sunny Sunday Afternoon

So very nearly finished with his work, the Wishtwister found himself, late that afternoon, in the profession of a weaponsmith and in the guise of a moon-eyed fool.

It had taken both some heavy drinks and some heated words, cloaked in his priestly glamer, about the glory of battle and the righteousness of war and the need of stalwart men in these dark times to take up arms against their oppressors, to send the man who owned these weapons away and into combat. But in the end, he had gone -- and had left his wares and tent in the hands of Shadibriri.

So that was nice of him.

And, in truth, most damnably necessary -- because the Wishtwister had work to do.

The Wishtwister thought of himself, primarily, as a creature of open and unfettered space for two major reasons.

First and foremost, he loved the feeling of raw soil beneath his feet ... or stinging sand, or sheer and shattered ice, or rain-worn stone. He adored tangles and rust and gnarls, and abandoned and rotting tracts bleached pale by the sun, shadowed by overgrowth and smudged with ages of grime and disuse. He loved the smell of wind, and of isolation, and the sound of thunder pealing across lonely places. He was always most comfortable walking naked amongst the uncreated things of the world: the uncut, the uncrafted, the unwashed, the unworked, the unshaped and untamed. In the places where men froze, or burned, or huddled and wept and then died of exposure and thirst and want, he found that he was most at home and most alive.

Secondly, in his true form he was half-again the full height of an adult Vudrani bull elephant, and weighed not an ounce under three tons, so he had trouble fitting through doorways.

Oh, certainly, he had his ways of making himself comfortable around presses of humanity. His potent illusions could male him look like a man, certainly, or draw him onto the fabric of the mind’s eye as small and silent as a field mouse, if he so chose. He could step between the spaces of the Astral and walk with a single sideways step from mountaintop to ocean’s floor, and beyond. And there were no shortage of cathedrals, corridors, catacombs and crypts scattered about the world which had been crafted wide and tall enough to accommodate his frame. He could be a creature of cobbled streets, carnivals and cottages, too, when it suited him.

But damn it all, there was no way in heaven or on earth, or any other reality he could recall, that Old Shadibriri was getting inside the private tent of Good Governor Greythornne to give him this stupid haunted book. Even if he crawled on his belly and tucked his arms to his chest, held his breath and crept along on tippy-toes, there was no way he was getting into that little demi-pavilion without knocking over everything in it, ripping the roof off and wrenching the pegs from the earth as he tore it to shreds.

He stared at the place, and hated. If it was more than seven feet wide and seven feet deep, the Wishtwister was a monkey’s damned uncle. It looked like a child’s play-toy, stitched of bright silk in the blue, white and red of the Revolution, and it was closed on all sides - the better for the Citizen in High Standing’s privacy, and to keep him from having to look directly at the rabble he ruled.

The man didn’t like to take walks, either. Ugh and sigh, damn and damn and double-damn.

The demon knew in his heart of hearts, as he stood and ruminated and fumed, a few very important things - and that he wasn’t getting into the tent was one of them - but, at the top of the list was his suspicion that his time in Lesser West Podunk was going to need to come to a satisfying and swift conclusion ... and the sooner, the better. Already he had killed too many. Left his maiming, ruinous mark in too many places. Shown his face and tipped his hand a few too many times.

In short, he had made a mighty mess of everything.

And that was all well and good and deeply delightful, as such terrible things go ... as long as he got the hell out of here, and fast. Let the folk here be suspicious; let them tell tales of a monster in the woods and of innocent lives stalked and snuffed out, one hot summer night, by something inhuman and huge. Let the angels of the Empyreal Lords shift between the planes and waste their time hunting after the vanished demon that gleefully slaughtered their tiniest, most foolish of standard-bearers. Let the whispered word go forth from killer to craven, from pirate to heretic, about a wish-granting spirit bound to the forests here.

Durnaur would tell a few tales, and if they ever found that little girl, so would she.

The Wishtwister, for one, intended to be on the other side of the world by nightfall. Sundays are always a good time for travel, and there was trouble and mischief to get up to in every place on every globe. Specifically, the old demon mused, he had a familiar itch to push someone off of a bridge in Yen-Shuan. Maybe disrupt a tribal-wedding in the ruins of Anchor’s End. Or spread a few false omens and kick a baby over a fence in some rustic village somewhere in the south side of Sarusan.

But he wasn’t going anywhere until this errand was run.

Old Shadibriri admitted to himself, after a humble moment, that perhaps he might have planned this one a little bit better.

He had spent the weekend lollygagging, there was no doubt.

With the shake of his head and wry chuckle, the demon tsk-tsked himself for his lack of preparation.

Yet it had seemed so very simple, on the face of it: beneath his robe was an abundantly evil text, semi-sentient and hungry - a loaded and lethal weapon of sorts, penned in virgin’s blood by a mad necromancer and bound in the skin of a tortured god from some obliterated world on the forgotten edge of another universe. And here, in Good Governor Greythornne, was a smug, ambitious and cruel little guano-psychotic pseudointellectual with a chip on his shoulder - a seemingly-perfect recipient, already reveling in the mean sort of power that comes to selfish and shrewd men with a bit of political instinct and a willingness to bellow for witch-hunts, and whisper for assassinations, in times of turmoil.

This was the sort of problem that traditionally solved itself. How could the two -- evil man and evil book -- resist one another?

It was exasperating, honestly.

And the worst of it was that he couldn’t just throw the book into the man’s tent and be done with it, or hire Durnaur - wherever he had gotten himself off to - to do the same. No, nothing ever so simple as that. The bloody text, whatever it was called, wasn’t in any language the Governor or even old, wise Shadibriri was familiar with.

In fact, the book was quite possibly scribed in a language without any hope of translation by any creature in this solar system.

So, then, this was going to call for the implementation of magic.

Potent magic.

He was going to have to trick the stupid mortal into wishing he could read the book.

It was enough to make a demon want to chew someone’s eyebrows off.

The other thing he was aware of, as the sun glared hot off the weaponsmith’s abandoned wares that the demon was all-but-giving-away, was that there was no way in hell he was carting all of this crap around with him once this chore was finally over and done with. Swords, shields and scabbards were heavy, dull things; suspicious and prone to entanglement in legalities. And they were poor bartering chips in the first place - not like ales and meads and wines and potions.

And poisons. Oh, those lovely poisons - light, liquid, lovely. Every drop a thing of pricelessness, in the right hands and with the right words.

So the demon Shadibriri stood in the sun, and garbled and goggled and fumbled at his appointed task of getting good prices for good steel - letting the fine folk of Galt gleefully fleece a simpleton for the fruits of his “father’s” only livelihood - and he worried, very quietly, somewhere in the very pit of his stomach, how long it was going to take for a trumpet-angel to show up and avenge its tiny lantern-light counterpart.

His concerns about fighting trumpets and stars were unabated. In all honesty, they had begun to grow.

The Wishtwister stared at the tiny, taunting tent of the Good Governor and hated, and waited, and resisted the urge to kill every single person there.

---

It was coming up on sunset when the Wishtwister finally realized what he needed to do.

He was simply going to have to get himself a different body.

Demonic possession, unfortunately, was tricky.

Oh, it was easy, certainly. Though less than a third of the screaming damned below in the Maelstrom knew how to do it properly, and less than half of those who had mastered the procedure had any comprehension of how dangerous it was, it was the sort of trick that any wriggling fiend anywhere in the Abyss might pick up.

Shadow demons were the undisputed masters of the art, certainly, but there were a dozen brute-force cheats that could accomplish half of the same thing. The bluntest, most brain-dead dretch could attempt the feat; the most feebly useless quasit could try to muddle through it. It was just a simple matter, after all, of exhaling one’s self into smoke and then letting a mortal breathe it in. From there, it was the merest problem of intertwining with their soul, letting your own predilections seep into their bones and then telling them what to do from the back of their mind.

Which was much like saying that it was very easy to win a chariot-race: it required only that you make your own horses go the very fastest at pulling your chariot, while simply not letting anything bad happen.

Accurate as such a statement was, technically, it quite missed the difficult parts.

But human minds, the Wishtwister well knew, were as slippery as a greased eel and twice as wiggly, when you got right down to it. There were demons bound, enslaved, captured and ensorcelled in all manner of terrible circumstances, all across all the many worlds, by mortals virtuous and villainous alike, who wished they had had half the sense not to try such a tricksy thing as possession.

There was nothing for it, at the end of the day. It was not as if the tent of the Governor was going to get any bigger, and there was most certainly no way that the Wishtwister was going to be able to tiptoe through a crowd, or collection of armed guards, up to Greythornne without someone noting that he had shoulders eight feet wide and cloven hooves the size of a particularly large and deadly wagon-wheel.

And so Shadibriri, still in the guise of a simpleton, shouted, “I gotta go potty!” at the top of his lungs, flailed his arms over his head, and ran into the woods as fast as he could.

He was going to have to find that little girl, after all.

---

He found her in the woods, wandering aimlessly and alone, and quite possibly, quite deeply in shock.

The demon approached her in the guise of a young woman -- close in description, but of no precise relation to the nameless woman he had murdered somewhere out here in the woods the night before.

“Hello!”

The girl looked up, and Shadibriri was pleased to see she had not been crying.

“Hullo.”

He feigned kindness. “What are doing out here all alone?”

She eyed him warily. “Looking for treasures.”

“Ah, I see! And where is your family?”

The girl shrugged. “Dead.”

The demon nodded. “Good. So is mine. I find that I can have much more fun this way.”

The little girl seemed surprised at the remark, but showed little other emotion as she looked away and back to her search. “You can’t have any of my treasures.”

Shadibriri smiled in spite of himself. The greedy minx. “Hmm. Alright, but perhaps I can show you something else that’s fun?”

---

Dashing through the darkening wood, the little girl’s legs pumping with a fury spurred by a litany of encouraging threats from the back of her mind, they managed to make it back to camp just in time.

Absentee-Master Short-Stride the Tax-Fat, flanked by a dozen armed men, swaddled in silks befitting the richest of Qadiran spice-merchants and outfitted in soft, buttery leathers like a Taldan noble set to embark on a carefree fox-hunt, was making his first public appearance since his stirring speech at the start of this disastrous weekend.

Apparently, he was still intending to have his merry feast - the scores of dead who chose this inopportune event to get themselves slaughtered be damned.

Shadibriri admired the man’s flagrant and cavalier cruelty, at the very least.

He approached the gouty, ridiculous and red-jowled figure in the body of the impish little girl. Still, despite his apparent wholesome harmlessness, the soldiers of the Governor’s elite patriot-guard brought him up short as he skipped playfully, near enough to smell the imported liquor, tobacco and cheese lingering on the regional ruler’s breath.

Expensive tastes, this one.

The Old Wishtwister painted a fresh and beaming look on his face, and somewhere inside he was tickled that the men before him looked him over, more than once, to be certain the little girl, emerging from the throngs, did not conceal a grenade, a poisoned dagger, or a coat-pistol intended for their master.

“Lord-Governor Greythornne, might I beg of you an indulgence?”

The waddling man stopped, and looked blankly at the girl, and then scanned, with his piggy eyes, the small, yet-growing, crowd surrounding him. He was checking to make sure this looked good. That it would “play” well among the people. And somewhere deep inside, the demon knew that if there hadn’t been a witness here, the Good Governor would have told these men to kill the girl without a second thought - or, perhaps, he would have done her in with his own bare and pudgy hands.

The Wishtwister nearly did somersaults and clapped with delight.

Honeyed insincerity dribbled from the Governor’s sweating lips. “Of course, young patriot. How may your fellow citizen be of service to you today?”

The truth - or some element of it - was probably the simplest start, the demon thought. He fed the girl her dialogue. “My father found this book, Good Governor, and passed it to me; he bid me grant it to you. A gift!”

A humorless chuckle escaped the rotund man. “I see.”

“Yes, for he knows you as a man of letters, lord, and admires your legendary studiousness. He believed you would find this text, in his words, ‘Illuminating.’”

“Ah. And what book, pray tell, is it? I have read many.”

“I could not say, although I know it to be unique - possibly priceless! It is all quite beyond me, truly - but he wishes you to have it.”

The flabby little lordling scanned the crowd again, and gave them an indulgent smile. “I see. Well then, give your father my dearest thanks.”

The old demon inched his borrowed form forward, and set the tome into the hands of the closest guard. “I shall, most gracious Governor. So, then ... do you wish to read it?”

A condescending smirk creased the face of the doughy, spheroid fellow as he began to turn to go. “I will read it, little one.”

Ah, here was the annoying part. “Yes, truly? You do wish to read it?”

“Of course, dear girl - you may trust me in this, as in all things. Now run along.”

“Yes, but ... do you truly, truly wish to read it?”

A patronizing smile appeared, and fit tight and fine upon a face begging for a fist. “Yes. Yes, of course I do.”

Shadibriri did not, at this point, vomit himself from the girl’s mouth in a wave of smoke, take on his terrible true form, and kill everyone.

He also did not ask the man to, perhaps, re-phrase that - which was sometimes something of a give-away, he had found over the years. Instead, he regrouped, and waited for the chubby man and his retinue to begin their departure.

This insignificant little potentate was not the only one who could play to a crowd.

Just as the silk-draped figure was lost in the shuffle and press of bodies, the old demon nudged his girl to speak again, now in the reediest and neediest of pitches. “You do?”

The assembled throng laughed, and the Governor turned to address the old demon, wrapped in his borrowed body, in a singularly mocking way. “Yes. I wish to read the book.”

“Good!”

And with that, in the quietest of ways, a wish was granted.

By the spin and weave of mighty magics, the greatest trick of the arcane, those alien scratches and skitters of the blasphemous text would now be as clear and concise as native Taldane to Governor Greythornne ... and to no one else.

And that would mean corruption, in time.

And that leads to treachery, and to deceit, and subversion, and all the best things in all the living worlds.

A job quite well done, if the demon did say so himself.

This called for a celebration, the Wishtwister decided as he wandered off into the woods to find a safe place to vanish.

He unceremoniously coughed himself from the girl’s body, and then sent her on her way -- giving her the name ‘Durnaur of the Legion-Serpent’ to be her new guide and chaperone, and a few choice secrets of the man, with which to blackmail him into service.

There was some question as to how all of that would work out, but the Wishtwister had already lost interest.

As he walked and idly considered where he would find himself next, he spotted something glittering, low, in the high glass. There sat a small and broken bottle, unstopped, leaking the last drops of a sweet and slow-acting toxin disguised with the tang of an orange liqueur. It had been found, and used, and discarded - like so many other things in the world.

Oh, someone was going to be very sorry that they drank that.

Ah, and ha-ha, such good fun, thought the demon!

And then he was gone.

—

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#pathfinder #galt #demon #glabrezu #fiction #wishtwister

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