Archive of Our Own ^beta

"Ey, EY, buddy. Around. Move around."

That tone in the creature’s voice, what a ghastly sound. It had been decades since the demon-thrull had heard anything dare address it with disrespect. 

The noise flushed the husk of sin and grafted flesh with a quantity of blood it hardly ever summoned. Retracted wings, withered and unused, stretched their great bat-like spans and consumed what lay forward in shadows. Teeth grew damp from saliva in torrents rolling through its expansive fangs, each the size of a human finger, as sharp as Golgari skinning blade. A blank heaped of lumpy flesh constituting its face squirmed, then cracked, as long sealed eyes came back to life beneath the decay of woven bodies. Its three freshly birthed misshapen eyes glanced down, and stared at the pest.

The mighty undead demon looked down, and saw staring back up a goblin.

Best to make its prey run for its life. From its service disciplining the indebted, it knew well that fleeing always tasted delicious.

The horrible beast roared and bellowed with an orchestra of its many spliced lungs, gurgling in a heinous blast of sound. It thundered as death itself.

As the roar subsided, once more, the goblin spoke. 

"Hey, buddy, look, I said go around."

The creature snapped back, giant jaw snarling, snapping teeth. "What is this insolence!?"

Not a single flinch from the Goblin. "Look my guy, Gruul folks broke the street. We’re gettin’ another group of Gruul folks to break their breakin’ and fill in the potholes. We need folks to go around it for an hour. Capiche?"

Great dark wings swung down, stirring pebbles and loose rubble to dance in devotion to the demon-thrull’s power.

"You will step aside now, and I might grant your soul mercy to flee as I gnash your body to fine meat."

The goblin sighed, and gripped his forehead with his fingertips. "One of these fellas…"

A voice called out. "EY! RUDY! MAKE ‘EM GO AROUND!"

"I’M TRYIN’ BOSS, GIVE ME A MINUTE!" The goblin shouted at three times its previous volume.

Rudy’s green finger shot to his left. "We set up a nice little detour for folks while we’re workin’ on this. Can’t you just go around a few extra buildings and be done!? Huh? That so hard?" 

"I do not. Tolerate. Insolence!" 

Terrible dark fire bathed in ghostly white wisps erupted from the maw and eyes of the demon, baking the pavement’s bricks with its fury, the rage of a grand demonic Orzhov debt collector.

Rudy’s patience started wearing thin.

"Yeah, real cool, bud! Real alarming. Yeah, you’re like the third source of wild combustion I’ve had to see today, ya yutz. How about you haul the fireworks that way?"

The fire paused suddenly.

"You will obey!" The demon-thrull bellowed like a beast, flames roaring back to life. "I’m the greatest menace this city has ever known. Bow before me!"

"Menace or not bub, you’re still blocked. Take a hike."

The monster started to inhale, terrible energy welling inside it, preparing another unearthly roar. It readied a bellow that could strip selfhoods clean from their flesh. Its eyes focused on this sniveling worm and-"

"Jeeze, C’MON!" Rudy shouted "Great dental work, yeah! Go. Around!"

The demon flinched at the noise right before the horrifying screech slipped back into its throat, swallowed and dead.

"Why… Do you truly not fear for your immortal soul? Do you not fear me, a lord of the undead!?"

Rudy shook his head. "Buddy, you’re nothin’ new. Demon dies and weirdo church dudes stitch it back together with a hunk of stomachs on the front. I seen your type. I don’t care what title your little playplace grants you. You go around, like any other pedestrian. "

"Pedestrian!?" The word sunk bitter into the demon-thrull’s lips, worse than any demonic fire its stomachs had ever summoned. 

"Yeah. Nothing wrong with bein’ one, but I’d say you’re acting pretty pedestrian too."

Disgruntled snarls leaked from those toothy lips. Unable to get its way, the demon-thrull stooped to bargaining. Its great muscular arm, ending with two great spliced clawed hands, pointed one of its six fingers forward into the site.

"Why was that lesser hellspawn allowed through!?"

Rudy looked shot to where the demon’s hand pointed, towards a towering blood-red demon next to a human within the confines of the construction site, nearly out the other end.

"Her? Oh, she very politely came up and informed me that her figure would loom over some of the perimeter with her bulky wingspan, wanted to make sure it wouldn’t break anything." Rudy explained "Her girlfriend even offered to go around farther if it was too inconvenient, but we made an exception, gave ‘em some hard hats, and let ‘em through. Wanted to make sure they got to their carnarium poetry slam on time."

"What!?"

"Yeah, crazy, right bub? See, the thing is, when you’re nice and patient with folks, they tend to try and figure out ways to accommodate ya. Gotta say, I have thus far not been offered such graceful patience by an allegedly superior hellspawn."

The demon-thrull had enough.

That same ungodly fire burned from its face. Its horns grew so hot the dust in the air crackled against them like water in an oily frying pan. Its monstrous hands shot to the goblin’s neck, its razor-sharp claws not even a hair’s thickness to gutting that throat. The demon stared ceaselessly at the foolish insect challenging its might. Even more long forgotten eyes seared through the canvas of rotten facial flesh as its raw fury melted its very body.

"You have earned a fate worse than damnation!" It bellowed. "I will gore your body and watch in glee as you bleed out and suffer before the great might of-"

"Ah? Yeah? You wanna do this buddy? You want assault?" Boomed Rudy over the grandeur. "Want to slit my throat? Yeah, be my guest, wiseguy. I got buddies in the force who’ll helix your ass if you get much louder. You try and make me bleed, one of them farmer girl cultists is gonna shoot up and repair my neck so good I’ll have double chins that can deadlift. Oh, and I guarantee you there’s some invisible eyeball crap watchin’ us right now making a mind-recording of this whole altercation. Soon as I cough up a penny for that footage, your ass is doomed in court, bub. I’ll be livin’ out the rest of my life in luxury with your precious syndicate’s settlement dough while they make you pay for every dime. Or hey, maybe it goes the whole way anyway and you’re sittin’ in a jail cell with nice big heavy ethereal restraints and a lovely ear full of law makers. You want that huh, bub? You want to live a fate worse than hell? Or do you wanna go around the construction site?"

The wellspring of burning fires stopped all at once.

Again, the demon-thrull raged and spit fire in unbridled, unholy fury, as if at any moment it could collapse the sky, swallow the sun, and envelop the whole world in its never-ending fury of darkness.

Still raging, the demon-thrull turned to its right, and started walking around the construction site.

"Ey, have a nice day" Rudy spat out like a reflex. "Yeesh, and demons are usually so nice here…"