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Post By The Hooded Hood's infernal episode Fri Aug 05, 2005 at 08:26:05 pm EDT |
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#226: Untold Tales of the Parodyverse: Nats Must Die! | |
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| #226: Untold Tales of the Parodyverse: Nats Must Die! Previously: The demon lord Neka has placed a spiritual bounty on the life and soul of Nitz the Bloody, believing a prophecy interpreted by the Necromancer General that Nitz will otherwise inherit the power and authority of a hell-lord himself. Strange things are happening at Nitz’ Paradopolis University dorm. Xander the Improbable has contracted Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises to send Nats to hell and retrieve a mysterious package from the abandoned realm of Mefrothto, Prince of Fibs. Now read on.  Nats reached out and wrapped an arm round the warm soft woman beside him. “Uhuna…” “Nope. Oh, that’s not a good start, William.” Bill Reed jerked wide awake. The stunning dark-haired woman in bed with him turned round and opened her eyes. Nats fell out of bed in a tangle of blankets. “Nor that,” his bed-mate pointed out. Now the blankets were off her Nats was treated to a coffee-skinned vision of delights. “What…? Who…? Where…?” “First duty of a gentleman to remember who he took to bed the night before,” his companion scolded him. “Still, you’ll be pleased to know that at least this time you didn’t wake up married.” “Uhuna!” Nats said guiltily. The woman smoothed her hands down her perfect torso. “I am not Uhuna,” she clarified. “I’m Regret.” “Regret?” Bill Reed’s mind raced, trying to collect his memories. “I don’t…” Then the recollections cascaded back. The EEE mission for Xander to the lower planes, the desperate flight over the abyssal plains, the attacks on body and soul that he had barely survived, his last push into Everrue Palace to collect some package, and his confrontation with the demon lord Grimpenghast. “The penny’s dropped?” Regret asked. “You’re staring to work it out?” “I’m in hell!” The brunette pouted. “I’m insulted.” “I’m in hell. This is another illusion. Something Sage Grimpenghast conjured up!” “Well, you are in hell,” Regret conceded. “But this isn’t any more illusion than all of life is. I’m real.” “You work for Grimpenghast then.” “Well yes,” the woman answered as if that was self-evident. “I’m a damned soul in his service if that’s what you mean. I’m your temptress.” It was two a.m. and the cardiovascular spectres of all the animals dissected in the Paradopolis U biology theatre were squelching their way across the lecture hall, singing French chansons in squeaky Disney voices. A coatstand in the registration block had started to prophesy winning lottery numbers for the Paraguay Grand Draw. Half a dozen art students had locked themselves in the chemistry lab and were etching exciting new geometric designs on each others bodies with the acids they’d found there. And the late-night students in the computer centre watched in horror as mpegs of their parents having sex with household pets were flashed across the internet while their terminals giggled at them. The Dean hastily showed the experts into the refectory, where a yellow writhing pool of custard nine yards wide had oozed across the floor and was taking the shape of David Bowie. “Do something!” he demanded. Visionary and Yuki shone their high-power hand torches into the room. “Ah yes,” Vizh said, trying to sound knowledgeable. “Your standard ectoplasmic custard scenario.” “You’ve seen this before?” Yuki Shiro felt that as first cases went, the Lair Legion might have been kind and simply sent her to hit someone. “Well, I’ve seen custard before,” the possibly-fake investigator of the occult answered. “I can see you two have things well in hand,” the Dean said hastily. “Look, if you need me I’ll be at home catching up on paperwork.” Yuki watched the academic retreat with a thinly-veiled contempt. “So, what’s the Lair Legion procedure for investigating supernatural custard?” she enquired. “Um… Maybe we should take a sample and get it back to the lab?” Vizh suggested. “I’m pretty sure Enty could blow this up.” “There’s got to be some reason there’s so much weird stuff happening on campus tonight,” Yuki suggested. “Some trigger. Where were the first incidents reported?” Visionary checked Hallie’s notes. “Over in the Hackman Dorm,” he answered. “You think we should go take a look there?” “Well, anything’s better than trying to fight custard. This is a new jacket, you know.” Visionary accompanied the Legion’s newest associate member across the fear-stricken campus. They were almost at the dorm when they were cornered by the Switchblade Choir, shambling castrato zombies giggling towards them with their hands replaced by razors. “Uh oh. We’d better back off and find another way,” Vizh advised. “I don’t like the way they’re levitating six inches off the ground, or the things twitching uder their cassocks. I think if we duck into the social sciences building we could… Yuki?” The cyborg PI stuffed her jacket into the possibly fake man’s arms. “Don’t lose this,” she instructed him as she leapt forward to hit the Switchblade Choristers. “My temptress.” “Yes. Your personal temptress.” The sleek coffee-coloured beauty stretched out on the bed luxuriously. “What do you think?” Nats choked back a whole bunch of replies and finally said, “It’s not going to work. I’m just here to pick up some package for Xander the Improbable and then I’m going home to get married.” Regret looked wistful. “Sounds nice,” she admitted, “But please don’t.” “What?” Nats had expected demonic blandishments, not a simple request. And there was an undertone of terror in Regret’s voice. The woman leaned forward distractingly, but her face was dead serious. “Do you know what happens when you die?” “Well, in my experience you have to have tea with a slightly overweight but rather pleasant girl called Tricia.” “My experience was rather different,” Regret said. “They told me all about hell in school and in church, of course, but I never really thought… Well, I didn’t expect them to be right.” “You died and went to hell?” Nats tried to sound sceptical. The lower planes were full of demonic monsters, but this was getting a bit too theological for comfort. “Well, to one of them,” Regret answered. “I don’t think this is a final hell, though. I think there’s… well, what comes after this makes the rape and torture and slaughter here look like paradise.” She shuddered uncontrollably and pulled the blankets round her shoulder. “I haven’t experienced hell yet.” Nats wasn’t sure what to say to this. “Could you escape?” he asked. “I don’t think so. I’m bound here now. You need a body to leave, and mine’s cremated and scattered in a garden of rest. And I’m a sinner, so… this is what happens to me.” “Couldn’t you… I don’t know… repent?” Regret shook her head. “That’s before you die. I was a Catholic and I died without the last rites. Car crash actually. Bobby was drinking and driving, we should have known better. And we’d fornicated, so I’d committed a mortal sin.” “That seems a bit harsh,” Nats admitted. “What else did you do?” “Well, I went down on…” “I mean apart from the fornication,” the flying phenomenon clarified hurriedly. “Did you kill anyone, or stuff like that?” “Well, I lied sometimes, and I was envious of my friend Helen. She got a pick-up for her birthday. And I swore and I said ‘God’ when I didn’t mean it.” “Nothing else?” “Lots of little stuff. You know. The usual.” Regret sighed. “But that’s the system. I just didn’t listen to the rules closely enough.” “That’s the system?” Nats asked. “What about people who aren’t Catholics?” “I don’t know, William,” the woman answered. “We don’t tend to discuss comparative religion between anguished screams down here. But… there is one way out for me.” “What?” Regret pointed at Nats. “You. Like I said, I’ve got to tempt you. That’s the deal. If I can do that then I won’t be… they won’t do bad things to me. I’ll be protected. But if you aren’t tempted, if you walk out on me…” “The bad things,” Bill surmised. “Sage Grimpenghast isn’t a very forgiving abyssal lord,” Regret confessed. “So you’ll pardon me if I throw self-respect and decency to the winds and say I’ll do anything – anything – you want if you’ll just stay with me for a while. Nothing you could do can be as bad as what happens if I fail.” Bogdan Vladivock was a cadaverous ancient sorcerer who looked every inch the part of Necromancer General. He strode across his workroom on the secret island in the lake under the abandoned Paradopolis Variety Theatre and talked to one of the dead spirits he’d pinned to a wooden frame. “Well? Is he dead yet?” No, came the whispered answer. Vladivock hissed unhappily. He’d called in a lot of favours to ensure that the bounty on Nitz the Bloody was claimed, and he was due for ten percent if it was one of his agents that made the kill. “Where is he now then? Can you see him again?” Yes, the spirit on the rack answered with a strangled sob. He is no longer hidden from us. The Necromancer General didn’t like that the prey had found a way to vanish from all occult tracing for the better part of four hours. That suggested that the priest of Zeku had resources that hadn’t been factored in, or an unknown benefactor. “Well then?” Vladivock demanded of his tortured souls, “where is he?” Behind you. The occultist whirled round and caught a spiked hardwood mace in the stomach. “Hi,” Nitz the Bloody told him, leaning over him and lifting the weapon again. “I want to talk to you.” “What do you say, William?,” Bill Reed’s personal temptress asked, running her hands over her exquisite naked flesh. “What would you like me to do first?” “That’s not…” Nats glanced at the door to the luxurious room they shared. “I can’t stay. I have things to do. And there’s Uhuna.” “Your princess is a good person,” Regret told him. “She wouldn’t mind. Under the circumstances. She’d want you to save somebody from such suffering. You know she would.” “I love Uhuna. I’m going to marry her.” “I think that’s wonderful, William. I hope you’ll live happily ever after. But I don’t think you’ll be able to if you know you walked up the aisle while I was screaming in eternal torment because you abandoned me.” “Look, if you’re in hell, you’re in hell for a reason. I can’t save you and I sure can’t save every damned soul.” “Because I loved my boyfriend and wanted to show him? Who did I hurt? I loved Bobby. I loved him!” A thought came to Nats. “Is he… here? In hell?” Regret went pale. “Yes,” she admitted. “Sage Grimpenghast showed him to me once. He’s… I didn’t even recognise him, not just his body but what he’s become inside. What he wanted to do to me. Bobby wasn’t protected by the Sage like I was.” “You were protected by Sage Grimpenghast? Why?” Regret seemed to feel that Nats wasn’t paying attention. “To be your temptress, William. If I’d been given to the hordes of hell as their plaything there’d not be much of me left to appeal to you. And I know I appeal to you, because of all the millions of damned souls in his grasp the Master of Deceptions chose me as the best person to put in your bed. To lead you astray.” Nats scratched his ginger hair. “Look, Regret, I don’t know quite how to handle this. I don’t want to do you any harm – any more harm. But I have to do my job and get back to my own folks. You seem like a very nice girl, apart from the whole damned soul thing, and it sounds like you had a crappy deal, but…” “I thought you were a hero!” Regret blurted. She turned away from Bill and stared into the blaze in the fireplace. “When I studied you, I thought you were a hero.” “You studied me?” Nats wondered how Grimpenghast had known to make such preparations. Perhaps time worked differently in hell. “Of course I studied you. I know more about you than anybody in the multiverse, William. More than Ruby. More than your mother. More than Uhunalura. I know every dirty secret thing you’ve ever done, every bad thought you’ve ever had. I know your wicked desires and I know your secret perversions and I know your deepest regrets. And… I thought you were a hero.” “You thought…?” “I’ve seen the worst of you,” Regret answered, “but I’ve also seen the best. I had to know you to tempt you. I never expected that you would tempt me too.” “What do you mean?” Nats asked. “You’re silly and shallow sometimes,” Regret told him. “But other times, when things get bad, there’s such a shining core of nobility in your soul. You risk your life again and again to help people, and you face death because it’s the right thing to do, and you’re… you’re brave and loyal and loving and you’d never let your friends down or… or leave somebody to be destroyed.” She sniffed and looked back at the flying phenomenon with tears in her eyes. “Funny, isn’t it? Sage Grimpenghast’s little joke on me. I have to damn the man I’ve fallen in love with.” “Just to clarify, the next time I suggest we run like hell, what I mean is ‘don’t jump in to grab a supernatural choir boy and use it to carve up its fifteen undead buddies’,” Visionary pointed out. “What, we were going to run from those little snots?” Yuki demanded, retrieving her jacket and heading off towards the Hackman Dorm. “We have a job to do.” “Yes, but you lose points if you get ripped to shreds by supernatural entities before you finish it,” Vizh told her. “Or after you finish it, really.” The Dachau Skins were waiting for them in the hall lobby. Yuki tossed Vizh her jacket again and ran in. “It’s good to know you learn fast,” sighed the possibly fake man. Bill Reed swallowed hard. “Regret… I can’t save you. I can’t save everybody. I wish I could, every hero wishes that. But I can’t.” “I could make you happy,” Regret told him. “Maybe not as happy as Uhuna could, not at first, but I would try so hard. All you have to do is stay with me for just a little while. The world has lots of heroes. Let Hatman and CrazySugarFreakBoy! and Goldeneyed save the universe for a while and stay with me. Please.” Oh sure, Nats thought, like I’m going to leave the universe-saving to G-Eyed! And that thought snapped him out of his reverie. “Tell Sage Grimpenghast it was a great little trap,” Bill told Regret. “Really it was. Damned clever. Literally. Major leagues, just like he threatened. Never mind the nightmares and the bug-eyed demons and the hellfire and brimstone. This is a much nastier attack, and you very nearly hooked me!” “William? What do you mean?” Regret rose in panic. “William!” Nats strode towards the door. “Goodbye, Regret. I’m sorry.” Regret reached out as if to pull him back then caught herself. “I understand,” she said instead. “I think you’re doing the right thing.” “But you were going to have me stay.” “Temptress, remember? But a temptress who loves you. You’ve made the right choice, even if I won’t think so one minute into the punishments that await me for my failure. Goodbye Bill. Think of me sometimes.” “Goodbye,” Nats tried to say, but the words caught in his throat. He dragged open the door and stepped through it. “Interloper!” the Necromancer General hissed, gesturing to loose his Guardian Shadows on the attacking high priest of Zeku. “Strobeku!” Nitz shouted, flashing the sentient darknesses into nothingness. “Destroy him!” Vladivock screamed, willing the corpses around the island to rise up and stagger towards the post-human commando. “Explodeku!” Nits countered, detonating the incoming zombies. “Also Burneku!” The Necromancer General clawed his hand and squeezed to pulp Nitz’s heart. The high priest of Zeku staggered and kicked him in the bollocks. The Necromancer General’s protective magics against occult attack hadn’t foreseen that one. He went down gasping. Nitz took a moment to shatter the wooden frames where the bound spirits wailed and to pound anything else that looked expensive in the workshop to fragments. “Right,” he told Bogdan Vladivock. “Sources tell me that you’re the bastard that’s responsible for most of the supernatural nutters that are out trying to skin me tonight. Some kind of demonic bounty or something.” “Only half the creatures,” the Necromancer General gasped. “There’s plenty of freelancers out there too. Penny Blood’s creations, and Daimon Soulshredder, and the Technowitches, and the Picnic of Doom…” “Yeah, but they’re out there on your say so,” Nitz accused. “I know about the deal with Neka.” “Do you?” Vladivock snorted. “Well then, you’ll know that you’re dead. Neka has demanded that you be slaughtered by midnight, and the kind of creatures he can dredge up will peel you and eat you like a bloody grape! You think you’ve been clever staying alive this long? The things that are coming for you now make the things that have hunted you so far look like nothing!” “Well it sure is good the way you tell it,” Shawn Griffon snarled. “You want to tell me now why you’ve got a demon lord all riled up at me so it’s the finale of Ghostbusters?” The Necromancer General laughed derisively; then he answered. “Bravo!” declared Sage Grimpenghast, Master of Ignorance and Teacher of Deceptions, as Nats emerged from Regret’s bedroom. “I’m quite impressed!” “Get out of my way,” Nats told the demon lord. “I have a job to do.” “No matter what the cost,” Grimpenghast noted. “How very admirable. You think like a devil.” “You set up that whole trap with Regret. Whatever happens to her is your doing not mine. And one day I’ll make you pay for it.” “Because a mortal who can fly is a serious threat to a Lord of the Abyssal Deep.” Nats glared hard at the snake-eyed scholar in the academic robes. “Ask Mefrothto. Ask Blackhurt. Ask Mr Lucifer. And get out of my way!” Nats strode round the Teacher of Deceptions towards the small brown parcel on the black marble altar but was repulsed by an unseen force that hurled him across the room. “The only way you’re going to get to that package, Mr Reed,” Sage Grimpenghast told him, “is though me.” “William!” Regret was in the doorway of her room, watching the confrontation. “He’s trying to delay you until one of his agents can break through the palace’s defences and claim the power in the package for him!” Grimpenghast turned a furious stare on the coffee-skinned temptress and she screamed and spasmed to the floor. “Bill?” Nats’ commlink crackled back to life with Miss Framlicker’s voice. “Can you hear us, Bill?” Nats saw Regret screaming in agony on the ground, saw the enjoyment on Grimpenghast’s face; and he saw red. He flew straight at the demon lord, ignoring the repulsion barrier that prevented him from passing by his enemy. Grimpenghast had said it: the only way was through him. Nats concentrated his telekinesis and powered into Sage Grimpenghast. The demon lord popped like a soap bubble. If the Teacher of Lies had been able to appear in the flesh he could have claimed the prize himself. His hollow image shattered and Nats toppled down by the marble altar. “Nats, can you hear me?” Xander’s voice crackled over the comm-link. “Listen, it’s very important that you get the package out of there and away from the palace. Then we’ll seek a suitable transfer point to bring you back.” “Somehow,” came Al B.’s distant mutter. The main doors of the palace shattered into fragments as Grimpenghast’s emissary arrived. “Too late!” keened Regret. “I’m sorry, William. I doomed you anyhow.” Nats seized up the package that contained the infernal power of the fallen hell-lords. With such a prize Grimpenghast could double his domain, claiming the lands previously interdicted by Xander’s wager, gaining ascendancy over all his peers, uniting them into a single unstoppable force to pit against humankind. “Nats, what’s happening?” Miss Framlicker demanded. “We’re picking up arcane impulses that are way off our sensor scales.” “Do not let the emissary get that power, Nats!” Xander shouted. “William,” Regret whispered, trembling in his shadow as the emissary sprawled its bloody blackness towards the flying delivery man, “open the box. You can’t get away, but you can deny Grimpenghast the power.” The emissary rushed forward. Even its proximity seared Nats’ flesh. Bill Reed ripped open the package and stared inside. And the power of the hell lords filled him. “Bill, what’s happening?” Miss Framlicker cried as the sensor instruments at the EEE firehouse detonated one after another. “We’ve lost his signal,” Al B. told her as Amy Aston extinguished the worst of the flames. “We’ve lost him.” Nats reached out for the emissary and shredded it. He extended his will out to the swarms of demons that milled across his plains and smeared them over the desert. He purified his realm of intruders all the way from the Agony Mountains and the Gorge of Regret to the Disharmony Spire and the Yearning Bridge where the Mewlips dance. And he saw that it was good. Visionary and Yuki raced up the stairs to the third floor of the Hackman Dorm with the hordes of hell a few paces behind them. Yuki grabbed one tentacle as it wrapped round her calf, ripped the ur-fiend forward then hurled it back to burst over the front rank of pursuers. Vizh grabbed the fire axe from the wall – there was always a fire axe in the hall of monster-stricken dorms, it was some kind of rule – and used it to wedge the doors closed at the top of the stairwell. “So you’re willing to run from some things then?” he panted at the cyborg P.I. “Those Hiroshima Screams were cheating,” Yuki complained. “They didn’t have physical forms to hit. And what the hell was that Picnic of Doom?” She was quite shaken and she sounded more aggressive than she meant to. “Welcome to the Lair Legion,” Vizh told her. “Anyhow, this is where the first trouble was reported, some beings made of clockwork, some electrified corpses, some burning foetuses, that kind of thing. And also a badly dripping tap, apparently.” “In the TV shows and movies its always some kids playing with ouija boards,” Yuki suggested. “Should we check the rooms for occult paraphernalia?” Visionary was reading the names on the slime-covered doors. “Let’s check this one first,” he suggested. “The one with ‘Die Nitz the Blody’ seared into it with hellfire?” Yuki examined the door. “Nitz the Blody? What the hell is a blody?” The stairwell doors broke open with a crash. The lymphovore was the first creature through, but Daimon Soulshredder’s Hunting Sores weren’t far behind. Yuki kicked the dorm room door in and pulled Vizh inside. The Shallow Gravers were waiting for them. The silver cauldron was still coated with burned blood, and the congealment patters clearly spelled a name: N itz “That’s it?” Shawn Griffon demanded. “That’s why every creepy in the Northern hemisphere is trying to kill me?” “That’s why,” agreed the Necromancer General. “I had to use the dying essence of a putative deity to manage a divination this powerful. Brilliant stuff if I say so myself. Everyone’s impressed.” “You sure have some difficult stains on that pan,” Nitz agreed. “So what does it mean?” “It’s the name of the person who will inherit the infernal realm that was formerly the domain of Mefrothro and Blackhurt, Princes of Fibs. And property is power.” “You’re saying I’m due to become a demon lord?” Nitz checked. “Me?” “Some time in the next twenty-four hours,” Vladivock told him. “Unless somebody gets Neka’s bounty. Then, when Neka’s got your soul, he can claim the destiny instead.” Nitz examined the congealed irregular letters in the divination censer. “So you’re just the middle man. You tipped off Neka about your little prophecy. He puts out the word that he wants the world cleaned of high priests of Zeku. And I get the choice between being ripped apart and soul-sucked by a menu of monsters or becoming a lord of hell?” The Necromancer General smirked. Nats looked closer at the letters. “Why are they so uneven?” he wondered. “This was a difficult divination,” the Necromancer General pointed out. “Very few could have…” “Yeah, yeah, you’re the necromantic Steven Hawkins. But I think you might have made a boo-boo.” “What? How?” Nitz pointed to the inscription in the basin. “See where it says N itz? With the little gap between the N and the I?” “So?” “So look closely at the I. It’s as if something’s been broken off the letter on the left. Two little bumps at top and bottom, as if there was more to the letter and it’s been snapped away.” The Necromancer General scrabbled to his feet and elbowed his enemy aside. “Let me see that. You don’t know what you’re talking about. There isn’t…” “See?” the priest of Zeku challenged. “Know what I think? That wasn’t an i at all. It was an a. And that z isn't a z, it's a flipped-over s.” “That’s not possible!” worried the Necromancer General. “Not possible. That would mean…” “Your prophecy was about someone else and you’ve got Neka’s hordes hunting down the wrong proto-demon lord?” asked Nitz the Bloody. “Yes.” Regret cowered as Nats strode towards her. She scrabbled away on her bottom as he reached towards her. His eyes were black. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m me. I may look like Dark Willow, but I’m still me.” “R-really?” Regret asked. “Because you look like a demon lord to this damned soul.” “Well I’m not. I just happen to have absorbed the power of some, that’s all. It was either me or Grimpenghast, and it felt like a really bad idea to let him have it.” “You’ve claimed these lands, too,” Regret sensed. “This realm.” “Nah,” Nats said. “I don’t want ‘em. I’m just going to use this power to set up barriers to keep everybody out. And then I’m going home.” “To Uhuna.” “To Uhuna. That’s all I want. I’ve never seen it more plainly.” Regret nodded. “I’m not a very good temptress really, am I?” “Better than you know. But listen, you said Grimpenghast protected you?” “Yes. I somehow think that time has passed though.” “Well now I’m using this power to protect you, okay? Stay here if you like. In the Everrue Palace. Nobody will bother you, I promise. It’s not a perfect arrangement but it’s better than…” “Than eternal torment. Yes. Thank you, William. That is more grace than I deserve. And more than I’ve ever received.” “Well, I gotta go,” Nats told her. “I hope Xander can get his cargo out of me somehow or Miss F’s going to be royally pissed at the penalty fees. Take care, okay?” “You know where I am, William. Next time you feel like a little temptation.” “Aaaagh!” shrieked Yuki Shiro as the Shallow Gravers grabbed her and passed forty thousand volts from their hands. “This is a new jacket!” The animated corpses of executed child molesters didn’t care. The piled on to the cyborg P.I., dragging her down with their rotting bulk. “Hold on, Yuki!” Vizh called. “If you need me I’ll be under the bed.” “What?” the purple-haired girl called, struggling as the electric shocks started to penetrate her insulation. “You coward! Aaahh!” But Visionary had spotted the elaborate chalk drawing under student Shawn Griffon’s bed. It was a complicated circle and a five pointed star and it included unpleasant brown smears that probably weren’t tabasco sauce. There was no time to think. Visionary grabbed the first of the incoming Drowned Puppies and squeezed it out over the diagram then smeared the figure with his coat. The occult conduit burned up in a flash of hellfire that scorched Vizh’s fingers. Yuki was suddenly struggling with nothing. Across the campus things went back to their normal level of weirdness. Yuki retrieved the remains of her new jacket and shook her head. “Okay, so what was this all about?” “Frat week?” Vizh suggested, sucking his fingers. “This is a little embarrassing,” admitted the Necromancer General. “It’s Nats’ fault for having a name so similar to mine,” Nitz comforted him. “Even though he had it first.” “It looks like the incantation was modified by the sorcerer supreme,” Vlastivock realised, examining his divination with new eyes. “He stole part of the letter a, flipped the s.” “I guess he needed a distraction to keep everybody from shredding Nats,” Nitz guessed. “Remind me to thank him.” A new thought occurred to the priest of Zeku. “Hey, why did you go to Neka specifically with the info about me? There’s plenty of demon lords.” “Neka has a special interest in you,” the Necromancer general replied. “Didn’t you know?” He looked worriedly at the censer. “He’s not going to be too pleased about this little misunderstanding.” “And that’s why I’m going to leave you to him,” Nitz told the occultist sweetly. “I’m going to let you explain about the typo and get him to call off his dogs. You’d better be convincing or I’ll be coming back to pound whatever’s left of you after Neka’s finished.” He glared at the dishevelled sorcerer. “Banisheku!” she shouted, and the Necromancer General vanished to wherever Neka was lurking. “Very good,” commented the Hooded Hood, emerging from the shadows. “I think you’ve made the right choice.” “Well? How did I do?” Regret asked, flexing her beautiful black bat wings. “Acceptably,” Sage Grimpenghast admitted. “But then, you always do. I was particularly impressed with your Catholic adulteress story.” “William wouldn’t have succumbed to lust,” the temptress argued. “But he’s a sucker for a sob story. I couldn’t keep him from the package.” “But you made sure he absorbed the power himself rather than let Xander give it to someone who could cope with it. That’s still a technical win.” “I thought he did very well, considering. It’s no mean feat to fight your way through the hordes of hell, thwart a demon lord, and save the girl,” Regret pointed out. “And now he’s made you mistress of his whole infernal realm,” Grimpenghast noted. “He’s made me his mistress, yes,” the infernal beauty agreed with a satisfied little smile. “The rest is just a matter of time.” In next week’s exciting episode: The Lair Legion reunited! More on the mystery of the missing real estate! Yuki’s first expense claim! Cleone’s choice! The Machine Shop and the stolen Wastelands radiation! But mostly be here for the wedding of the year, with special guest stars galore and a very special appearance by Regret of the Damned! Coming in Untold Tales of the Wedding of Nats and Uhuna And if anybody should wish to contribute little bits for Uhuna’s bridal shower or Nats’ stag night, or suggest what their character’s wedding gift might be, just post them or e-mail them to me and we’ll try and work them in.  Better To Reign In Hell Than To Footnote In Heaven: Regret of the Damned: As you may have surmised by out closing scene, there’s rather more to this young woman than first appears. Don’t take everything she said as gospel truth. Or any of it really. She was particularly lying when she said she wasn’t a very good temptress. Sage Grimpenghast, Master of Deception and Teacher of Ignorance, is the most prominent of the current hell-lords, having seized his opportunity when the previous front-runners were destroyed. It’s a competitive field. Grimpenghast eschews the usual horns, wings, and cloven hooves for the shape of an eremitic monk in dull robes and a black skull cap. Only his serpentine eyes betray him. Bogdan Vladivock, the Necromancer General is an ancient White Russian sorcerer specialising in the magics of the dead. Many years ago he even sacrificed his own niece Urthula, raising her to unlife as a ghoul. The Necromancer General was previously based in the Willingham lighthouse, but after the events of Visionary and the Heart of Darkness he seems to have found new accommodation beneath the Paradopolis Variety Theatre, the city’s former opera house. The package containing the power of the hell-lords was left in Everrue Palace by the Parodyverse’s sorcerer supreme, Xander the Improbable, for safe-keeping, after the events of Untold Tales #199-201. Nats’ missing a : Astute readers will realise that the small curved piece of charged lower planar matter that Xander provided to Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises in Untold tales #224 was actually the missing part of the Necromancer General’s divination. Waste not want not. Neka is a post-demon manifestation of whom little is currently known. He first appeared in The Sermon of Neka, wherein he empowered an internet fanatic to pursue his obsessive lust for Nitz’s friend Molly. He now appears to be taking a special interest in Shawn Griffon. So Nats is a demon-lord now? No. He’s a nervous bride-groom right now, but it’s just possible we might clarify that other situation a little bit next time. Regret’s already picking out her wedding outfit. The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse Director’s Cut Added Scenes When checking my hard drive today I found two scenes I had carelessly omitted from previous chapters of Untold Tales. I’ve gone back and added them in to the archived versions, but for those who are interested yet don’t want to hunt back and check, here they are as well: Added Scene to UT#222: “There has to be some way to get us out of Disney’s Norse ride,” Kerry Shepherdson complained. “I’m expecting the Paradopolis U football team to call tonight.” Kerry, her big sister Dancer, Visionary, and Yo were still stuck in the mythlands with Donar and Harlagaz. Since Ausgard had vanished so had Bifrosting, the rainbow bridge that was the conduit with the mortal world. “Mjalcolm taps into the power of yon rainbow bridge to transit twixt worlds,” Donar explained, hefting his enchanted baseball-bat-with-a-nail-in-it. “Without yon bridge we art not able to use that route to returneth.” “There art other routes though,” Harlagaz suggested. “In yon deep troll caves or at the ravening heart of the muspelcanoes, or under the depths of the sea of all-drowning.” “You guys sure know how to run a tourist industry,” Visionary shuddered. “Yo is thinking that is to be important to be finding of what has being happened to cute Ausgard,” Yo suggested. “Is not to be many powers which are to be able to steal city of the gods.” “The Celestians did it once” Dancer worried. “When the Ausgardians were transported here. You don’t think…?” “Tis impossible to say, mine lady” Donar scowled. “But we wilt find mine missing queen and mine missing city, and yea verily I wilt plant Mjalcolm so far up yon malefactor’s…” “But first we are needing to be getting of back to Lair Mansion,” Yo suggested diplomatically. “Is to be what we are concentrating on now, yes?” Added Scene to UT#224: “Aaaaaaaaagggghhhh!” gasped Nats as he was swatted from the skies like a mosquito. The turgid red clouds over the desert of desolation had turned black and there were things like giant maggots writhing overhead. “Guys?” “Soulworms,” Xander answered, observing what the delivery man was seeing via an EEE monitor link. “The abandoned realm of Mefrtohto is being invaded now that somebody has penetrated its interior.” “Somebody’s broken in?” Nats worried. “You have,” Miss Framlicker pointed out in the tone she reserved for idiots and Bill Reed. “But apparently that’s enough to break the truce that kept the demonic fortune hunters out. Now everybody wants a piece of the action.” “Nats went in there and suddenly all hell broke loose,” Amy noted. “Must be a Thursday.” “I’m certainly picking up a lot of biopsychic impulses,” Al B. Harper warned, checking the monitor boards. “It might be a good idea for you to hurry up. Before you, you know, get ripped to shreds by incoming demon hordes.” Nats decided that this was probably good advice. Then the demon hordes seethed over the horizon, saw him, and bellowed for his blood. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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