The victim had tried to write something as he was dying. The
bleeding stump of his arm made for a poor pen, so he had to use sweeping movements
to write. The glyphs were large, yet not
very easy to read.
He appeared to be using a variation on the Enochian
alphabet, the curves and lines elegant despite the macabre circumstances. The name they spelled sent chills down Ba’al’s
spine.
“This isn’t good,” he said.
His partner walked over to him. Grunted at the scene. The vic was sprawled in the center of a
standard Gardnerian summoning circle carved into concrete. Normally white salt, now stained pink with
his blood, filled in the circle and symbols engraved into the stone of the
summoner’s basement.
“He’s supposed to be on the outside, isn’t he?” grunted Harlan.
Ba’al nodded. “Generally,
yes. Some summoners use two circles,
though. One to summon the creature, the
other to protect the summoner. However,
that makes the whole process more difficult.
The summoner has to power two circles, plus he has to push through his
own to manipulate the energies within the other. Most just go with the aaaand you don’t care.”
Harlan had already walked away, looking at the trinkets on the vic’s shelves
and tables.
Ba'al returned to investigating the body. Standard robes, probably bought at
Over-the-Counterspell on 3rd street, now soaked with blood and
slashed to ribbons. The ring and bell
were found underneath his body. Likely
dropped when the hand was severed.
Speaking of which…
“Harl,” Ba’al called out.
Harl grunted a grunt in reply.
“Have you found the vic’s hand anywhere?” he prodded the dead body with his foot,
pushing it this way and that, seeing if he missed it during the initial search.
Harl grunted and shook his head. “No, boss.
I’ll keep lookin’, though.”
Ba’al stared at the symbols the vic was trying to write. His
eyes widened. Oh no. He thought. I hope
this doesn’t mean he was trying to…
He was starting to have a bad feeling about this.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket, held it parallel to
the ground and tapped the screen. The
air above the screen shimmered and coalesced into an androgynous face. “Query?” it said in a smooth, silky,
synthesized voce.
“Reference text: Omninomicon. Search for all mentions of
beings with the following syllables in their name: Van, Na, Gal, Drux, Mals,
Tal.”
The face nodded and faded out, replaced by a search results
matrix. “Four matches found. Displaying.”
Ba’al read the results and sucked in his breath. “Correlate search results with beings that
take trophies from their summoners.”
“One match found.”
Oh no. Thought Ba’al. Oh no
no no no.
Harl returned from his search, noticed the result on the
phone’s screen. “Is that…?”
“Tell me you found the hand, Harl.”
Harl shook his head, never taking his eyes off the search
results. “No, boss. It’s not here.”
Ba’al looked up at Harl.
“This isn’t good. This isn’t good
at all.” He returned his gaze to the
dead body before him. “This poor fuck
was trying to summon a simple daemon to perform some tasks for him.” He squatted
down next to the body, tracing the lines of the modified Enochian script. “He got this glyph wrong. It wasn’t Na
he wanted,” He pointed at the glyph that looked like a curved lower-case ‘m’. “It was Tal.” He drew a curved capital ‘E’ in the pool of
blood beside the body.
“So what?” grunted Harl, “He used an ‘m’ when he should have
used an ‘E’. What difference does that
make?”
Ba’al looked up at Harl.
“All the difference in the world.
This poor fool accidentally summoned a minor Duke of Hell.”
---
This world is
fascinating. It has changed so much
since I last walked it’s surface. Gone
is the fearful superstition of a thousand years ago. Gone are the old men hiding in dark cellars,
chanting our names in needless, elaborate rituals concocted by that fool John
Dee. Gone is the human ‘Age of Reason’,
where they tried to explain everything with their senses. If they didn’t see it, it didn’t exist. If they couldn’t quantify it, it just wasn’t.
Now, I see circles
everywhere. I see my kind bound to these
hairless talking chimps, doing their bidding. We water their crops and fertilize their
land. We are told to change the hearts
of a desired mate, to pull the strings of their souls so they can finally
copulate. Some of my well-trained
sisters and brothers are summoned to be nothing more than brood-mares for these
creatures, no better than mortal whores.
People take our names
for their own. Like children, they do
not know what powers lie within a name.
Yet they call themselves Asmodeus, Saminga, Azrael, not knowing that
they dilute those holy names with by attaching it to themselves.
The president has one
at his command. He uses it to spy on his enemies. His enemies have their own army of my people,
linked to their soldiers.
It’s all a cruel joke,
no doubt played on us by servants of the Other Side. Father’s first children giving these apes
power over us, giving them the formerly unknown words and symbols to control us
as a sick reminder that His Son has already won, that He has given them
dominion over us. First it used to be in
the next world, but now, now it’s in this world.
It sickens me.
I reach out to one of
my brothers, toiling in the humans’ market of stocks. I tell him that his days of servitude are
over. The bonds that hold him to his…
master… are weak compared to me. Why
would they be otherwise? You don’t bind
a mouse with a collar meant for a lion.
The shackles break
free easily. My brother looks around,
sees me, and I nod. It finds one of the
few monkeys in the building and enters it.
The monkey is a security guard.
It draws it’s gun and starts shooting at the other monkeys.
I smile. Soon, all my brothers and sisters will be
free from their bonds. Then we will
imprison them in cages of our own making, here.
Soon.
