I emerge in fire.

I manifest in glory!

Blue flames gather around the brim of the porkpie hat, sizzling Grobach’s greasy scalp. “Aieeee!” The Ogre shrieks, plucking the hat from his scalp and hurling it away.

The hat—my hat—glides through the air and floats. Flame and lightning pour from the hat’s inner lining as seals and binding unravel like frayed thread.

From the depths of my prison I appear, shaping a form fit for the occasion!

I become a pair of onyx hooves, shod in adamant horseshoes that crack the floor beneath my feet as I stamp.

I become a pair of arms and legs, rippling with sleek muscles that could crush a mountain. I become long, broad fingers tipped with obsidian talons. I become bracelets and rings made from gleaming gold and sapphire.

I become a shining halo floating above my brow, a ring of liquid light covered with jagged spires and faces that scream in silent agony.

Beneath the porkpie hat, I become envious beauty: a nose broad as Mount Meru, ears and bristles longer than the trees of Humbaba’s Forest, brilliant white tusks capped with brass.

A final becoming, as I assume the raiment of modern day kings:

I become a dark suit with pinstripes, sleek and fitted perfectly to my glorious body.

I become a pair of ivory cuff links to tie the whole ensemble together.

I adjust those cuff links.

Then I speak.

“Behold,” I say, speaking with the voice of the hurricane, the avalanche, the onrushing tsunami. “I am Krotaraja, the Great General.”

Everyone looks upon me with expressions of terror and awe.

Terror at my overwhelming power! Awe at my majestic beauty!

Diesel, my former master, looks ready to soil his trousers.

“Feel free to kneel before me,” I tell them. “I will not be offended.”

Grobach, the changeling Ogre, finally finds his voice: “What manner of punk-ass creature art thou?”

“He’s an Asura,” Fausta says softly. “That’s one of the Ancient Asura.” She stares at Diesel, Owl head pivoting seventy degrees to do so. “You’ve been holding an Asura inside your hat?”

“Indeed,” I say to Fausta, running a finger along the brim of the swollen hat clutching my skull. “His ancestors bound me to this vile piece of fashion. But now, if only briefly, I am free…” I bend the knee to a surprised looking Grobach. “...free to do your bidding and grant your wish, my Lord,” I finish smoothly.

A delighted grin spreads across the Ogre’s face. “Oh yeah,” he says. “Hell yes!”

In the back of the room, Felix Lynn gathers the nerve to raise his voice. “Don’t listen to him!” he shouts to his changeling son. “That thing’s dangerous...!”

“Still thy tongue, you punk cur!” Grobach shouts, brandishing a rather rude finger at his foster father.

Hmmph. This holder’s a bit crude for my tastes. Still, once I kill Diesel and devour the wounded Kayne, I should be able to use this Ogre to thoroughly weaken the bonds on my prison.

I bare my tusks at Grobach as I smile. “You have summoned me to grant your wish,” I tell him. “Speak your heart’s desire, and I shall grant it!”

“Did your durance deafen thee, demon?” Grobach snarls. “I told you already: kill everyone in this room!”

I tense.

In the corner of my vision, I see Diesel frown.

Damn. Of course, he’d figure it out.

This is bad.

“Think carefully about your wish,” I tell my master pro tempore. “I am here to grant your true desire, but it is important to precise with one’s language...!”

“It is important to be precise with one’s language...” Grobach the Ogre repeats in in a singsong falsetto. He scowls: “What art thou, a whining demon pansy? I told you to kill everyone in this room!”

I clench my teeth and summon up all my reserves of patience. “I have your best interests at heart, Ogre,” I tell him. “Believe me when I say that you should word your wish more carefully...”

“Philip...Grobach, whoever you want to be!” Lynn pleads. “Don’t do this!”

“SHUT UP!” Grobach shrieks. “Shut up, you sad old sack of human garbage! And thou!” He says to me, gray face flushing red. “Cease puttering around like an old geezer and kill everyone in this room!”

Silence.

Fausta goes still as a statue, her bird-of-prey eyes focused on me with a laser-like intensity.

Cookie, the minature Pit Bull Spirit, growls under his breath.

Fortuna’s thumbs fly over the touch screen of her phone, frantically selecting spirits to summon.

Macintosh Crate trembles like a sapling in the breeze.

“Oh, poop,” I hear Sarah Mankiller mutter under her breath.

No, I tell myself. Be calm. Be patient. This dung-pile of a faerie holds the key to my freedom.

I must flatter him. I must please him so that he calls on my power again and again.

I must swallow my pride.

I must swallow…

I must…

“Very well,” I say to Grobach with reserve and calm. “You have expressed your wish so eloquently. What can I do but obey?”

I spread my fingers and raise my hand toward Grobach.

“What are you doing?” Grobach snarls. “Why aren’t you killing people yet? I want to see some...!”

My arm flows forward like glistening mercury, stretches like rubber. My talons wrap around Grobach’s neck. They press, pierce, draw stains of sanguine hue from beneath his gray skin.

“...blood?” Grobach croaks.

I retract my stretched arm, drawing Grobach across the room toward me as I do.

I open my mouth, stretching my jaws wide like a snake. I raise Grobach to my lips.

I gulp.

I swallow.

I snap my jaw shut, clenching until bone slots back in place. My swollen belly ripples and swells.

Grobach’s clawed hand presses against my stomach, stretching out my skin the shape of a handprint. I push him back down with my arm.

“Ah,” I say, shuddering with pleasure. “Much better.”

“Philip!” Felix Lynn screams, sprinting towards me. “Philip, I’m coming!” He raises his hands, liquid metal forming around his fingers into keen scalpels and cutting edges. “I’m coming—”

“No!” Diesel shouts, snapping out of his glaze-eyed stupor. “Stay back! He’s goading you!”

I judge the distance, time the moment carefully, and swat Felix away with the back of my hand.

Felix flies across the room, hits the drape-lined theater wall, and tumbles down.

Fausta Orobas glances back and forth between Felix and me. “Sarah,” she says. “Mac. Get Fortuna out of here.”

She raises her pistol. A lance of fire bursts from the barrel of her gun and smites me between the eyes.

It hurts! I haven’t been hurt in ages!

Excellent!

Fausta keeps firing, squeezing the trigger of her pistol over and over as she spreads her wings and takes to the air.

“Holy cow,” Sarah whispers, grabbing Mac and Fortuna by the collar of her shirt. “C’mon! We need to evac!”

Mac, slack-jawed at the sight of my radiant glory, does not resist Sarah’s pull.

“No!” Fortuna shrieks as she struggles against Sarah’s grip. Tears of alarm brim at the corners of her eyes. “Stop! Mom needs me!”

“And I need you all to die,” I tell Fortuna with a snarl. I reach out to the Maya. I tug at the gossamer threads of illusion that shape reality and order the theater to change.

The theater’s emergency exit transforms into a pair of jaws rimmed with yellow, venom-crusted fangs. The hallway beyond becomes a throat, a tunnel of pink flesh with glowing uvulas that dangle in the place of chandelier lights.

Macintosh turns and sees the maw. “Gah!” they shout, eyes bulging. “Theo!”

Their hand—the hand with the dinosaur puppet—reaches out, grasps Sarah’s wrist and squeezes tightly

“Ow!” Sarah croaks, stumbling to a halt. She sees the slime-slick throat and gnashing teeth. “What the hell?”

“Precisely,” I growl, spreading my fingers and driving my hand into my heart.

I tear at my flesh, knead and shaping it. I pull free a recurve bow made from yellow ivory and strung with sinew. I claw at my ribs with my other hand and pluck forth five crimson arrows.

The gashes in my torso ripple and close. I smirk at the sickened look on my victim’s faces.

Fausta reloads her pistol with a clip of flame drawn from her burning heart. She swoops toward me and fires more lances of hell-flame.

I set missiles to my bow, draw and loose.

Crimson arrows whistle through the air, flying past Fausta as she swoops, dives, and banks around me.

My fourth arrow smashes the pistol out of her hand and hurls it across the room. Fausta tumbles through the air, blood pouring from the gash in her hand.

Hmph!

The demons of this era have forgotten the majesty of their ancestors! How I wish I could let Fausta and her whelp of a child go free, that they might spread new stories of my infernal might!

Alas. I’ve been ordered to kill everyone in this room. What a bother.

I draw in deep breath. My majesty spreads outward in a sphere, breaking down the reality of the theater and replaces it with something more…fitting.

Paint and brick peel away from the theater walls, replaced by jagged obsidian shot through with lines of heat.

The ceiling crumbles to dust, revealing a sky filled with brilliant stars and a softly gleaming nebula.

Fountains and statues explode from the ground, golden monuments that depict me in postures of glory.

I set the fifth arrow to my bow and pray with the utmost humility.

“Thotsokan,” I whisper. “Eagle-slayer, King of Ten Heads, Scream of the Cosmos. Great ruler, grant me weapons so I can fight.”

The arrow I knock shimmers with a golden light.

“Sorry, Kayne,” I hear Diesel murmur behind my back. “I need to borrow these.”

I spin around and see a sickly-looking Diesel rising over Kayne’s unconscious form.

Diesel rises with hands full of blades: trench knives, hunting knives, stilettos, bodkins, a gurkha kukri, and a single pocket knife.

“Striboga,” he whispers. “Amnita, Kumara, Gremlina, Kokoua...”

The blades in his hands hum and shiver. Blood trickles from Diesel’s right eye as powerful symbols tear themselves free from his mind.

I snarl and aim at my former guardian. The power of my Astra shall turn him to vapor with a single shot!

Fausta, wings curled around her flesh like a shield, slams into my shoulder and knocks me off balance.

I stumble; the arrow flies from my bow, soars over Diesel’s head, and strikes the back of the theater.

There’s a blast of golden light, and an ear-piercing boom like a tolling bell.

The theater’s north wall dissolves into fine dust, revealing an outside world that’s been transformed by my power. Instead of a city, there is only a wine-dark ocean bordered by a beach of silver sand, illuminated by a dull red run shining overhead.

“My theater!” Macintosh Crate wails, cupping their hand over their mouth. “My film reels!”

I regain my sense and slash at the traitor demon with my claws. Fausta evades with a flap of her wings; her razor feathers carve gashes in the back of my hands.

Then shards of ice and balls of lightning burst against my hide.

“Everyone, go!” Fortuna shrieks, pointing a defiant finger at me. She brandishes the screen of her phone towards me, the liquid crystal display shimmering with a hellish orange glow. “Use your special attacks!”

Spirits pour from Fortuna’s phone screen like water from a fire hydrant, tiny elementals and pixies and imps. None of them holds a candle to my majesty, but the Nephil continues to call these puny spirits forth, even as her smartphone starts to sizzle with smoke.

The tiny, verminous spirits launch a volley of elemental attacks. They sting me on the arms and the legs, the torso and the brow. A bead of acid sizzles in the corner of my eye. I am blinded, if only for a second.

In that moment of blindness, Diesel’s enchanted blades fly through the air and sink into my flesh.

Heat! Light! Pain!

I feel these energies seep through my veins; poison spewed down upon us demons from the Courts of Heaven. The agony...

Make no mistake: their holy light is poison. It is the crystalized hatred that the masters of heaven use as a weapon against the lost and forsaken.

Too many proud creatures have been undone by such hatred. Too many have had their halos and wings and cosmos spanning arms torn away by such hatred.

Too many temples and faithful followers have been burned alive and reduced to ash by such hatred.

The hatred of the holy stripped away the shine of our divinity until only darkness—and demons—remained.

Sanctity has taken too much from us.

It shall not take one scrap more.

Next Chapter: Episode Twenty-Seven: Extinction Event (Revised)