Demonworld
Authors: Kyle B.Stiff
Demonworld
Book One
By Stiff
For news and info about Kyle B. Stiff’s other writing projects, including Demonworld and Heavy Metal Thunder, visit his web site at www.heavymetalthunderseries.wordpress.com. To contact the author, send a letter to [email protected].
This book is copyrighted and belongs to the author.
For the world is Hell,
and men are on the one hand the tormented souls
and on the other
the devils in it.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: The Land Under the Black Sun
Chapter 2: Through the Door of the Black Valley
Chapter 5: The Tree of Life and the Cave of Harsh Enlightenment
Chapter 7: Child of Destruction
Chapter 8: Saul’s Amazing Journey
Chapter 9: The Sacrifice on the Hill
Chapter 10: The Eye of the Black Storm
Chapter 11: Saints of the Sacred Oasis
Chapter 12: Escape from the Black Valley
Chapter 17: No Compromise Between Life and Death
Chapter 19: See the Monkeys Dance
Chapter 21: An Island in the Sea of Tranquility
Chapter 22: Storming the Gates of Heaven
The Land Under the Black Sun
Before he became a god and chose to destroy the world, my Lord was just a boy living in the city-state of Haven.
But to understand my Lord and the terrible path he walked, you have to understand
my
world. I did not grow up within the gentle confines of Haven. I was born in the wasteland.
The wasteland is any stretch of arid, scorched earth that lies between human habitations. Our city-states are mostly cut off from one another, though we do occasionally travel in heavily-armed convoys.
We must travel heavily-armed because the wasteland, and in some sense the entire world, is utterly the domain of the flesh demons. Flesh demons are the dominant species. They shape our nightmares, they dictate our morality, and they set the limits of our existence. They were most certainly the end of the Ancients, and it was the flesh demons who gave us our inheritance of barbarism and superstition.
In some lands they build great walls to keep out flesh demons, and the people who live inside those walls become like demons in order to get ahead. In other places they worship the demons as gods and make sacrifices of their children in order to survive. Most places are run by an awkward combination of these two methods.
But Haven, the home of my Lord, is different. Haven was founded in secret nearly six hundred years ago on a remote island, where it lies in the center of a ring of great black mountains. They hold the arts in high regard. They democratically elect their leaders. They embrace science, public education, and technological development. They do not hold public executions and they do not keep slaves and nobody was ever imprisoned for speaking against a public figure.
Of course, in order to live in safety, certain concessions had to be made. This is the story of one such concession.
- from
The Entertainers: Chapter Jarl
: 28:1
* * *
At the age of five, little Wodi stood with other children his age, their right hands upraised. They stood in a square room lit by sickening fluorescent light that cast shadows in the eyes of each child, like the animated dead. Garish posters and optimistic signs covered the walls, but where the paint was chipped they could see that the wall was a solid block of gray stone colored with veins of milk and ash.
The needle-sharp voices of the children repeated a litany that came from a box that carried the voice of an unseen speaker:
I swear an oath of fealty
To the flag
Of the free city-state of Haven
I swear my loyalty to the republic
Of the Founding Fathers
To never reveal our sanctuary to outsiders
Or sell our Haven to demons
They were the children of laborers, born in the northern laborers’ area of Haven, and it was the closest thing to poetry that some of them had ever heard.
This was the first day of their official education. Here they would learn about the scientific pioneers and political revolutionaries who cleared away the cobwebs of demon worship and child sacrifice. Here they would learn about the freedoms they enjoyed and the lives of ease they had to look forward to, and they would learn all this in caverns deep underground on an island which they were forbidden to ever leave.
“
You may be seated!” ordered the teacher, and little Wodi and all the other children obeyed.
* * *
At the age of seven, little Wodi was terrible at sports. He was small for his age and uncoordinated, and he was notorious for wandering away in the middle of games. There was only one sport that Wodi enjoyed, and that was the chaotic, violent free-for-all called
battle ball
.
Four balls were tossed into a crowd of children. The balls were immediately snatched up by the four biggest louts, and while the others screamed and ran to the center of the gymnasium, the four bullies set to throwing the balls against the heads and asses of their classmates, calling them “out” or “dead” so that they had to stand on the sidelines while the slaughter continued. Some children took the game quite seriously, dodging balls or even grabbing balls so that the throwers themselves “died”, while other children pleaded and cut deals with the bullies so as not to be hit as hard as those who foolishly played by the rules.
Wodi’s small size made him a difficult target. And the rules of battle ball, unlike in toss ball and ball-by-ball, were quite simple: Don’t get hit.
Survive
.
The balls flew and smacked into faces and soft limbs. Classmates fell all around Wodi, crying out to a gym teacher who was completely oblivious to their existence. The ranks of the dead grew and formed a ring around the arena. Wodi called out encouragement to a few classmates that he liked, and used others as cover if he did not like them. Brown hair clung to his head, matted with sweat; a great contrast to the last time he was in the gym, when he stood as still as stone and refused to move for the entire period.
Finally, only Wodi and four throwers remained. The four who stood against him were brutes of legendary strength and cruelty. Some laughed at Wodi and others glared at him doggedly. They knew that Wodi would be trouble, so they formed uneasy alliances, surrounded him, and took turns trying to sandwich him between speeding balls. As the spectators on the sidelines either moped about impatiently or shouted at him to give up so they could move on to something else, Wodi imagined them as fallen warriors cheering him on from Valhalla, a host of shining dead demanding heroism, just like in the comic books he read. Wodi’s lungs burned. He turned about in an unending circle, his eyes on the killers.