Demonworld

DEMONWORLD

  Book One

  by Kyle B. Stiff

  Copyright 2012, 2014 Kyle B. Stiff

  Updates for Kyle B. Stiff’s writing projects, including Demonworld and Heavy Metal Thunder, can be found here, here, and here:

  www.kylebstiff.wordpress.com

  @KyleBStiff on twitter

  [email protected]

  Demonworld is a series of ten books that takes place in the distant future, during the Age of Capricorn.

  Other books in Kyle B. Stiff’s Demonworld series:

  Demonworld

  The Pig Devils

  The Floyd Street Massacre

  Shepherd of Wolves

  Lords of the Black Valley

  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 3: Genesis Unbound

  Chapter 4: A Human Sacrifice

  Chapter 5: The Tree of Life and the Cave of Harsh Enlightenment

  Chapter 6: River Crossing

  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 13: In the Beginning…

  Chapter 14: The Wasteland

  Chapter 15: Scar of the Ugly

  Chapter 16: The Inquisition

  Chapter 17: No Compromise Between Life and Death

  Chapter 18: The Monster

  Chapter 19: See the Monkeys Dance

  Chapter 20: Soul Selling

  Chapter 21: An Island in the Sea of Tranquility

  Chapter 22: Storming the Gates of Heaven

  Chapter One

  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, where endless miles of arid, scorched earth lie between scattered city-states. Mankind is no longer an apex predator with the earth in his grip. We have become prey, and it is our habit to offer prayer to the very creatures that hunt us – the living gods we call 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 they wouldn’t 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.

  Wodi could never catch a speeding ball and out a thrower, so his only option was to endure. But the temptation for one of the bullies to grab an ally’s ball and make an easy kill was powerful, and soon two bullies killed one another in quick succession. Wodi laughed, and just as he thought that he had a real chance at victory, the gym teacher realized that the chil
dren were becoming bored and would soon make trouble, so he blew his whistle and declared everyone a loser. Wodi beamed with pride.

  Some of his classmates approached, and one said, “Wodi! Let’s play slaves and raiders.”

  But Wodi was tired of the company of others, and wanted only to be alone. “Not now,” said Wodi, his green eyes clear and unyielding. “There’s a sick rat behind the bleachers. I’m going to cut it open and see if anyone ever finds it.”

  The children scurried away, shrieking. None considered that Wodi lied in order to make them leave so that he could wander alone in his imagination. In fact, when some looked back and saw him disappearing behind the bleachers, they even felt their grip on reality coming loose.

  So it always was with Wodi. One never knew what he would say or do. He was an outsider who could not be understood, both a wonder and a horror.

  ***

  At the age of twelve, Wodi and the other “gifted” children of the northern laborers’ section were allowed to attend special classes one day out of every week. Theoretically, the children were supposed to be encouraged to pursue independent study and craft-making in a dullard-free environment conducive to creativity. In practice, the special classes were directed by teachers who came from the very same culture of labor, discipline through drudgery, and abject tedium from which the gifted children were meant to be freed. The teachers were incapable of understanding why the supposedly gifted children showed reluctance to produce extra work when given the opportunity. They struggled with the riddle as if alien to their own species.

  Once every year the children were forced to produce some sort of exhibit for the Advanced Studies Project Fair, where slower children and teachers from all across the district could see various exhibits concerning science and the arts while trying to hide any obvious signs of boredom. So it was that little Wodi’s own presentation stood in between “The Bob-Tailed Jumping Rat: Pest or Pet?” and “How Clouds Get Formed” and across from “Gerrold ‘Champ’ Beauchamp, Ninth Prime Minister of Haven”. Wodi’s exhibit bore a sign that read

  Gaze Upon the Demonic Overlords

  Who Rule the World!

  and even included hideous dioramas sculpted out of colored paper and clay: Winged beasts feeding on human children, horned monstrosities limping about on uneven, non-uniform legs, and one giant humanoid beast hunched over, with tentacles arching up from its back to gingerly accept the sacrifice of a screaming maiden from a gang of half-naked primitives.

  He had even drawn a vivid sketch of Haven in flames, with the dead trampled underfoot by demonic forces. Over the picture hung a sign that read, “The City-State of Haven: Celebrating Nearly Six Hundred Years of Demon-Free Living!” Still another sketch showed primitive wastelanders dancing and bowing before devils. A nearby caption read, “Mankind: Is Second Best Good Enough?”

  One devoutly religious teacher stared at the piece for a long time, feeling out the nature of his repulsion towards the garish display. He knew, from various historical documents, that the flesh demons of the outside world were capable of communicating with one another over vast distances through a power that, for lack of scientific explanation, was sometimes referred to as telepathy - and so the teacher wondered if the mind of a child could be remotely influenced by psychic domination. He moved along before the smiling boy could say something carefully calculated to ruin his spiritual well-being.

  Another teacher was drawn to the carnival air of Wodi’s display, but could not help but feel that the young mind that could dream up such grotesqueries was itself demented. Not to mention irrelevant: What did it matter if some beasts with the power of reason harassed the inhabitants of the wasteland? If they were outside of Haven, was it not the same as if they did not exist at all?

  One teacher felt magnanimous enough to warm-heartedly berate the boy. But Wodi stubbornly clung to his simple reasoning, which was: The flesh demons do not live as they do because we influence them, but we live as we do because they influence us. So it was that the flesh demons ruled the wasteland and took humans as sacrifice; so it was that the most popular idea in the world was the idea that that which stands out puts the tribe at risk, thus making it the duty of the tribe to stifle that which is not the norm; so it was that other city-states in the wasteland hid behind walls and guns and rarely venture out; so it was that the people of Haven, despite their science and their democracy, never thought to expand beyond their hidden land, and always kept their heads down, and always knew their limits. According to Wodi, the morality and the values of the cultural elite and the naked savage were exactly the same.

  By coincidence, Professor Korliss Matri overheard the debate. He alone saw something beautiful and rare in the exhibit. The colors, the madness, the inspiration! He was not fazed by the macabre nature of the display. What truly inspired him was how the inarticulate child dug in his heels, even against authority figures.

  Professor Korliss Matri did not approach Wodi, but took note of him. Though he was technically a teacher, he really had no business being at such a dull, provincial event. He had come because he was intensely interested in the new generation - and he was interested because he knew, for a fact, that one child in Haven had had his fate altered. One child had the book of his life rewritten, and was not like the others.

  And he had dedicated his life to finding that child.

  ***

  At the age of fifteen, Wodi’s class went on a field trip to a large nutrimilk production facility. It was underground, dark, gray, and filled with vibrating machinery that resonated with a dull grinding OMMM sound, like the birth-cry of a new and sterile world. There were pipes and vats everywhere, all of them gushing with a tide of white nutrimilk. The miraculous foodstuff was incredibly healthy, was offered in a variety of flavors for laborers, and was even used as an ingredient in upper class cuisine.

  Wodi’s classmates were bored beyond belief to be there, and either took turns annoying one another or simply lurched forward when their elders demanded. Wodi stood out from the others, and not just from his excitement at the ridiculous field trip. Though he had the plain brown hair common to the northern laborers’ genotype, he was quite a bit smaller than the others, and had finer features, and his green eyes shone with piercing clarity.

  Wodi listened as the tour guide rambled on about the scientist who invented nutrimilk and the “bovine plant” which produced it: Didi, head of the Department of Science and founder of the Department of Research. Didi was a strange man, a genius and a polymath afflicted with a host of diseases, a man so eccentric that normal communication with him was considered impossible. He was the so-called “mad monk” of science who, despite his reclusive nature, was somehow a brilliant leader and organizer.

  The tour had yet to reach its exciting climax at the nutrimilk-themed gift shop, but the penultimate stop proved to be Wodi’s favorite by far.

  “And here you have it,” said the tour guide, “the amazing bovine plant. It -”

  The tour guide could barely finish as a gasp went through the students. Some were so disturbed by the thing that only a visit with their local spiritual counselor could allay their fears.

  The bovine plant was hideous. It was a huge, round orb of white, ribbed flesh suspended in a large vat of clear fluid. A host of tubes punctured the thing, some carrying a compound of vitamins and minerals mixed with sawdust for the plant’s consumption, others carrying out waste, and still others carrying out the precious nutrimilk which the living plant produced. It was a genetic work of art, a re-engineering of nature in the service of mankind. And there were rows of the giant vats, each filled with a bovine plant, and the rows extended as far as the eye could see.

  “Please, if you’ll be quiet,” said the tour guide, leaving off from his script, “I assure you the plant feels no pain. It doesn’t even have a proper nervous system!”

  “Well I think it’s just awful,” said someone near the back. “It’s all kinds of blasphemous.”

  “We’ll have
to have this discussion later,” one of the chaperoning teachers said in an effort to stop the discussion entirely.

  To Wodi, the un-living creature was truly a wonder.

  Though it was illegal for young children to work, he had been working in his father’s grocery store for a year. He had seen raw meat that was still in the shape of a once-living animal. When he looked up at the ceiling of the nutrimilk production facility, he could imagine row upon row of cows and goats hung on hooks, skinned and hopefully dead, and could imagine the cries of others down below as they were packed in, suffocating against one another, an endless wellspring of misery, a terrible black hole from which no hope could emerge.

  And now, because of the bovine plant, nearly all of that suffering was over.

  “Didi created this,” said Wodi, almost to himself.

  “Yes,” said the flustered tour guide. “Yes he did.”

  “Then he is truly a hero.”

  “Hero?” said the tour guide. “I don’t know if I’d go that far.”

  That night, Wodi lay awake and thought about the obvious analogy of the bovine plant and the vats: The people of Haven also spent time in amniotic vats. And not in some metaphorical sense, either, in which a person’s job or school or neighborhood or family or social circle acted as his protection against a harsh and uncaring world; no, the people of Haven quite literally spent several of their first few months growing in warm, protective glass wombs within the halls of the Makers of Mothers, which was a very old branch of the Department of Science. If they did not, then they ran the risk of contracting a fatal disease commonly called Pharaoh’s Curse.

  Some children were planned and conceived artificially, the sperm and egg handled entirely by the Makers of Mothers. Some were conceived naturally, then removed from their mothers and given time with the Makers during those first few critical months. Some children were born straight from the vats. Some children were transported back into their mothers so that they could have a “natural” birth, which was fairly common among religious types.

  Pharaoh’s Curse had nearly destroyed the first few generations of Haven. Only Haven’s early scientific pioneers were able to save the people. Only the unnatural had saved them.