Chaos Unchained

CHAOS UNCHAINED

FORWARD

Greetings, good reader, and welcome to the latest work of Andrew “Rendaw the Rockstar” Parkin. As ever, my goal is but to serve and please the patron of my literary art, and I would like to kick this story off by mentioning such.

Now, as a note, I’d just like to inform you before hand that this is not, in general, a happy story. Of course, there are happy bits in it, and rest assured that there’s going to be something of a happy ending (although as I write this I know not what form it shall take). This story is, however, going to be rife with war, death, suffering, loss, and it shall be interesting to see how my characters deal with all of this mess.

Interesting side-bar: the founding idea for this story came from a dream I had not long before beginning this forward. It’s somewhat confusing, but I’ll see if I can put it into understandable perspective. So, let’s see…actually, the bulk of my dream was made up of the normal fucked up shit that I usually dream about, and quite frankly I find it difficult to remember or care about. It was the end that caught my attention and stuck in my memory.

Basically, for some reason or another, my dream shifted into a different world than I’m sure it was already set in. In this place there was a tall, dark castle with large, spikey turrets and crenellations. The sky around was filled with dark gray storm clouds, and the castle itself was black, although some parts of it, if memory serves, glowed an unholy (neon) green. What was happening on this none-to-cheery castle was a battle between good and evil gnomes, although somebody who did not have any inexplicable knowledge of the situation probably would have described it as “Smurfs on Crack.” Indeed these figments of my imagination did startlingly resemble Smurfs; the good ones were blue, the bad ones were light gray. All wore black or silver barbarian (how else can I describe it?) armour, and held barbaric weapons (word of the day: variations on “barbarian”). The good blue gnomes had a desperate look and feel to them; their numbers were not as great as those of their gray foes, and they were obviously fighting a losing battle as they struggled to keep their enemies from taking any more of the castle wall than they already had. It seemed to me that their cause was nigh hopeless, just like the plights of many a good guy band or army throughout literature. The bad guys, though, had a sad, lost feeling to them, almost as if they had lost their souls, and without them they could do nothing but fight mindlessly. They also inspired a certain “caste” of bad guys that will appear in my story.

A few other things happened in that dream that I remember, but they are not worth mentioning. The point is, I was left with an intriguing idea, which I gradually expanded upon until I had a rough idea of what my story was going to be like. Now, if only I could find an excuse to write it…

My excuse came in the form of a miniature NANOWRIMO (is that spelled right?) competition hosted by a couple of girls I know from school. Basically, it was a competition to write 40 thousand words during the month of July (from July 1 to July 31). It was just for fun, of course, with no prize or anything like that, but even so I jumped on the chance to bring to life this new idea which had invaded my brain. After mulling on the basic concept of the story and jotting down a few pictures of the good and bad guys, I had a rough outline of the plot figured out and, by July 1, was ready to write.

One of the prominent elements you’ll find within this story is going to be that of contrast. Since it features an idyllic, fanciful fairy-land which is invaded by the forces of Hell itself, I have seen the opportunity to combine both pure, almost adorably child-like good and depraved, loathsome evil within the same number of pages. Obviously there would be a substantial rift between these two opposing forces, and therein lies the main element of contrast. There and, of course, in the fact that, in this case, the force of evil is overwhelming in both power and in numbers, while that of good is willing in spirit, but small in both strength and numbers. I believe that helping these good guys to beat the odds and win the day will be a challenging – although not uninteresting – endeavor.

And so, without further ado:

THE STORY

(Dedicated to Emma Dewit, who asked me to dedicate something to her while signing my yearbook. Now I’ve gotten it over with.)

Imagine a world apart from all other worlds. It is separated from the rest of the universe, not only by millions of light-years of space but by the fabric of reality itself. In essence, it is its very own dimension, a universe unto itself. And it is, indeed, perfection right down to the very core.

Now, there are, of course, many different definitions of perfection as seen by many different kinds of people, many of which contradict, or at any rate rub badly against one another. Hence, it would be impossible for this world to have achieved all of these. For instance, some say that perfection lies in the dominance of one “Master Race” over all others, yet here in this perfect world its inhabitants, whose skin colours ranged from bright blue to lime green, all lived in peace and harmony. Some say that the essence of perfection lies in the disbanding of civilization and society, and the return to lawless nature. Yet in this perfect world societies did exist – villages, farms, shops, even cities and castles. Others still say that perfection is a mere matter of external beauty, yet the inhabitants of this land, a race of almost child-like gnomes, ranged from unbelievably adorable to jaw-droppingly homely, yet thought nothing of these physical differences. Thus, the perfection that they had achieved was, perhaps, the truest form of the word known to anybody. The perfection of this world lay in that everybody was happy.

At least, nearly everybody was happy.

No world is without the presence of both good and evil. This one was no different, except for the nature of the division between good and evil. Normally the two are spread about the planet’s populace in portions that depended upon the individual’s nature. In this world, however, good was spread about for all while evil was culminated completely within one spot – or rather, one creature.

This being was one that was as old as the very world in which it lived. Its form alone was frightening to behold, especially in a land where nature itself had a softer, milder look, as if the habitant creatures were all children’s cartoons brought to life. This one being had a giant head which protruded necklessly from a humanoid torso, a wide, gaping maw ridged with cracking, dry lips and filled with dozens of long, needle fangs. Two long, ram-like horns protruded from the sides of its head, and its nostrils were located in the middle of its forehead – nobody knows where its ears, if it had any, were located. Its arms were long, twisted, and each ended in five big, scary claws, and each leg separated into two opposite-facing goat’s hooves at the knee. It had a long, swishing tail that ended in a vicious snake’s head, and its large, leathery wings were those of a bat, save for that each only had two fingers and a hook-clawed thumb. Its entire body was completely black, all save for its eyes; its huge, crimson, glowing eyes, which glared with anger and hatred unmatched in all the universe. He had never presumed to give himself a name, but the frightened, child-like gnomes who had seen him only ever referred to him as “Grumpy Dan.”

Grumpy Dan did not like this perfect world; he had a very different perspective on the nature of perfection, and a bunch of goody-goody two shoes gnomes going around being happy definitely was not it. His fondest wish – the only thing that he had ever felt fondly about, too – was to destroy it all and then rebuild the world in the image of what he deemed was true perfection, but he knew that he never would so long as two giant factors stopped him. The first of these was that he had not the means to bring about such destruction; the second was that he knew not what he thought of as true perfection.

For the first couple million years of his life Grumpy Dan had wandered his world, making a name for himself by using his ghastly appearance to frighten and bully the little gnomes who he so hated, but knew no way of destroying.

Although this “retribution” gave him some semblance of gratification, he never stayed in the same place for very long. This was due to the land itself; the land, which loved its precious denizens like a parent, and served them as best it could. Examples of such services came in the forms of plants springing up in the farms without any need for planting, candy, toys, and other such childish pleasures that would normally have to have been manufactured appearing like magic in the shops that sold such things, and money mysteriously appearing in people’s the piggy-banks with which to buy these goods. And as the land served these people, so did it protect them; when Grumpy Dan’s presence became too bothersome to the inhabitants of a certain region, the land itself would rise up and drive him out. Thus would the gnomes get on with their happy lives, and thus would Grumpy Dan’s anger and hatred grow ever more foul and consuming.

This world, a beauteous land for the most part, was not so much a planet as a gigantic expanse of land, large enough for it to take hundreds of years to traverse completely. As well, this world was ever growing because death from old age had no place here, and room had to be made in order to fit the newborn creatures of this land. It did, however, have an end, and one day Grumpy Dan came upon the ledge that separated land from the eternal night of space.

At first he had stared bleakly out into the cosmos, momentarily forgetting his eternal hatred and malice so that he may better wonder at just what all of this empty space was for. Then his glowing red eyes started to slowly pulse, and within a few heart-beats he could see it all; suns, stars, galaxies – moons, planets, life. Plants, animals, people. Civilization…

And here, things got interesting.

Grumpy Dan never looked twice at the good things produced by the life on these worlds; rather, he concentrated all his heart and mind upon all the evil he could find. He saw war, rivalry, torture, genocide – perversion, racism, dogma, strife. He stood upon the ledge of the world for a thousand years and reveled in the delightful evil taking place on these uncountable worlds. He drank in every innocent death, every hateful thought, every vicious lie as if it all culminated to create a wine too sweet to waste even a drop of. At last, what he had been searching for; true destruction, true evil, true perfection! Oh, if only there was a way to bring it all here…

And then he sensed another presence; some new cosmic anomaly, some echo of a vastly powerful force, so strong that its influence could be felt in every corner of the universe, although there was something distinctly foreign about it. Almost without thinking, Grumpy Dan reached out with his thoughts to contact this power, to communicate and share its secrets. In this endeavor, he soon found that he would receive all that he had wished for and more.

This entity turned out to be an evil so terrible, even Grumpy Dan stood in awe of it after having established a connection. The force behind this power, however, gazed upon the wicked creature with something bordering on being impressed; never had it seen a being become so wicked without its own influence. It recognized such an evil creature as Grumpy Dan’s desire for power, and sympathized with his current weakness; also, though, it recognized an opportunity to gain a strong foothold on a world which was almost its own dimension. From this position, who knew how far it could advance its own cause…

And so this sub-universal entity spoke to Grumpy Dan, its powerful voice whispering in his ear all of the secrets of the evilest powers known to this or any other universe. Grumpy Dan, meanwhile, drank in his new dark mentor’s knowledge with a dying man’s thirst; it would not be long before he used it to bring true perfection to his own wretched world…

~

Grumpy Dan, despite his thousand-year absence, had become quite famous among the little gnomes. He was commonly characterized as a sort of boogey-man, and more than a few children had problems with thinking that he lay under their beds at night. Even so, life went on quite well without him, although some who had seen him in their lifetimes wondered just where the old grouch had gone, and why he had been so bad to everybody. Still, it was not a question that anybody lost sleep over.

Then, one day, Grumpy Dan appeared again, seeming to have undergone a dramatic change. He was happy, joyful, greeting everybody he met (and sometimes everything, too – some befuddled gnomes had reported seeing him saying hello to the occasional rock or tree) with exuberance. When asked about this sudden change of heart, he had simply explained that he had finally found out why he was so grumpy and sad; it was because he was depressed by the colour of the clouds.

Now this raised a few disbelieving eyebrows. Grumpy Dan, however, merely elaborated by saying that the clouds were all such a dull, dreary colour – white, gray or darker gray, and that was it. His proposal to fix this was to create a large chain of "Cloud Factories” – factories which would use special ingredients obtained by him (nobody knew where he himself obtained these materials) to create clouds of many other different, vibrant colours. The gnomes, being a trusting, helpful bunch, believed every word, many of them agreeing that, while for the most part clouds were alright, they could use a touch of colour here and there. Besides, by getting a job working in these Cloud Factories, they would help make the only grouchy, mean creature left on the face of the world happy like everybody else. Put like that, volunteers showed up in droves to do whatever Grumpy Dan required of them.

Soon Cloud Factories were springing up here and there all over the place. Grumpy Dan took special care to make the environments of these places as cheery and friendly as possible; most of the machines did the work themselves, and only needed workers to be constructed, maintained by and given a steady flow of the required ingredients. It was not long before clouds of swirling colours could be seen overtop the many Cloud Factories dotting the land.

And for years the gnomes worked on these factories, blissfully ignorant that they were helping complete the first stage of their own world’s doom.

~

The clouds created by the many factories that dotted this perfect world were not merely pretty puffs of gas. They were, in fact, created from the vilest substances known to the universe, and then imbued with all the hatred, grief, anger, and every other emotion Grumpy Dan felt befitting of the new Perfect World. Finally, when he was confidant that his Cloud Factories had produced enough, the vile creature used the wicked magical powers taught to him by his sub-universal ally to send the vile clouds swirling over the world in vibrant, gaseous waves.

Now suffering was not entirely unknown in this perfect land, but it was quite infinitesimal, especially when compared to the suffering felt in other worlds. There was only enough bad feeling in this world so that the distinction between it and good feeling could be made. At least, that was how it had been originally; now, all of the millions of gnomes who had been caught amid the clouds of noxious fumes were bombarded by such sorrow, such hatred, such evil, it seemed to cause them to lose their very souls. No matter what colour they had been before, all of these affected gnomes’ skins turned to a pale gray, their eyes glazing over and faces taking on a look of perpetual sadness and loss. From that day forward, these “Hollow Gnomes” could do nothing and think of nothing save for what Grumpy Dan ordered their soul-forsaken bodies to do.

Once again, though, the land rose up to protect its children, giving to those each of who were left a flawless, purple gem, whose internal power would strengthen their souls and allow them to persevere through these dark times. This, however, would not be enough; it was not long before Grumpy Dan started forcing his hollow gnomes to mercilessly dig through the earth itself in order to rape it of whatever minerals could be found and used to make weaponry. Soon armies of armed and armoured gray gnomes could be seen marching forth to slaughter those they would have once called friends. And this was only the beginning of Grumpy Dan’s armies.

Now that he had established a substantial military presence in what would soon become the New Perfect World, Grumpy Dan, aided by his dark ally, started finding new ways of swelling the ranks of his troops. He used black magic to open magical portals to a million different inhabited worlds throughout the universe, and through them he summoned unbelievable numbers of the wickedest, most dishonourable outcasts, criminals and other muck scraped from the dregs of countless species of sentient life-forms. These alien warriors, rallied under a hundred thousand cunning, ruthless generals, who in turn bowed down to Grumpy Dan, came to form the dreaded Outlandish Legion.

Still, Grumpy Dan did not stop there. He wanted to make sure that there was absolutely no chance of failure in this endeavor, and in this he was enthusiastically supported by his delighted ally. It was this wicked being that showed him how to summon armies from its own universe, which Grumpy Dan did without a second thought. Thus he assigned a thousand hollow gnomes to construct the newest portal’s framework, and sent a score more out to find a sacrifice whose innocent blood could be used in the ritualistic sacrifice necessary for opening it. All this done, Grumpy Dan was finally able to open the gateway into a dimension devoted entirely to everything that is evil.

And so did he open the very Gates of Hell itself.

From this unholy portal poured the most frightening range of abominations ever seen in the universe. Gargantuan devils, roaring the most blasphemous battle-cries and armed with nothing save for their own gigantic claws and fiery magic, emerged from the portal, along with uncountable lesser demon warriors, all of whom were armed with fiendish weaponry and bedecked in satanically decorated armour. Legions of warriors who had been damned to hell for knowingly and remorselessly slaughtering innocents during war-time now marched once again into the lands of the living, ready to fight like the demons they accompanied before being sent once again back down into Hell to live out their eternal punishment. These and other unspeakably evil creatures now marched forth to poison the once-perfect world.

They did not, however, go unresisted.

~

The Safe Return horn blew a crisp, clear note from the gates of Castle Pippernil, whose mighty walls and fortifications had risen from the very earth itself not two weeks ago. Already it had become one of the strongest bastions against darkness in this land; manned by fully a hundred thousand soldiers, it still stood a small chance of doing much to stop Grumpy Dan’s untold millions of soldiers and demons.

Right now, however, was not a time when the bleak reality of war really mattered; the newly formed army under General Saul had just returned from what had to be one of the first victories against the hordes of darkness ever achieved by a gnomish force. People rushed to the castle’s streets, dancing and singing the praises of their returned comrades as they marched victoriously through the streets. Between several of them and accompanied by repetitions of “For he’s a jolly good fellow” was borne sergeant Jon, a battered, bruised but otherwise okay gnome who would soon be known as the hero of this battle once word of his brave exploits had gotten out.

Meanwhile, Michael, a young gnome with a soft, round, bald head, brilliant bright azure skin, and big, brown eyes, peered out at the celebrations in the street from his little room above his father, the quartermaster’s shop. He let out a sigh; he should have been there too, pounding those mean baddies and getting all this praise for it. If only daddy had let him go…

A knock on the door brought Michael out of his gloomy revery. “Come in,” the gnome called, although he knew who it was. After all, who else lived in this house other than his Dad and…just his Dad. Right. It was still hard to get used to…

Creaking slightly the door swung open, and his Dad stepped into the room. The older gnome’s feet made a “Thump, CLOP, thump, CLOP, thump, CLOP” sound as he hobbled across the creaky wooden floor to his son’s bed. Grunting, Dad heaved his round, heavy mass onto the mattress and sat down. He then looked up at his son, who still could not but flinch at the sight of that huge scar running across his forehead…

Dad was a kindly looking old gnome. Fat and round, with an unusual blond moustache drooping from his upper lip, he would have looked every bit like a jolly old gnome but for the prominent war-wounds – a broken, useless left hand, a peg leg, and a scar across his forehead – which would forever scar his body. He had taken up arms early on during the war, grabbing a shield and sword and marching out with a large group of other gnomes like him, his loving wife ever at his side. Michael had wanted to come, too, but his duty was to look after the smithy while his parents were away. The young gnome had reluctantly accepted, and after saying his farewells, watched his beloved parents march off to face the unpredictable horrors of war.

Apparently a large horde of hollow gnomes had been ravaging the countryside and laid waste to several small villages. Father had described the atrocities he had witnessed in these ravaged places; houses burnt to their frames, their walls lying in ashes; massive piles and graves filled with the butchered dead, heads mounted upon stakes, young and old alike hanging from trees, river-water mingling with spilt blood…

Michael could hardly imagine such horrors being committed to such nice people, but these were hardly nice times. And it got worse; eventually, the gnomish army caught up with the hollow gnomes. They were lucky; the enemy was on the march, skirting the side of a low but wide hill. The gnomish army was thus able to climb up the other side of the hill, then hit the enemy hard on the flank before they had time to properly react. When they did recover, however, the hollow gnomes started to fight with deadly, mechanical precision, uncaring whether they lived or died. Michael’s mother had gone down almost instantly, taken through the gut with a spear, while his father screamed with fright as he fought off three at once. Dad’s shield was broken during the battle and his left hand crushed by a mace, and one of his combatants had torn a large gash across his forehead. Once during the fight he had thrown his hefty weight forward, allowing him to break through the defenses of one hollow gnome and sink his blade into its empty heart. However, another one of his attackers had taken this as an opportunity to hack downward with his axe, lopping off the poor gnome’s leg. He would have killed the wounded soldier, had three more not rushed to his aid.

Two of them had fought off the advancing hollow gnomes while one managed to drag Dad to safety. Then the retreat had been called; the gnomes broke ranks and fled after two minutes of battle, some helping along their wounded as they did, although few of these survived; the hollow gnomes had rushed after them, making not a sound as they mercilessly cleaved down their fleeing adversaries. Dad had only managed to escape by hiding among several bushes, where he and his rescuer soon collapsed into a silently weeping mess.

And now he sat before his son, eyes once bright and joyful now sad and dull to the point where they were almost reminiscent of those of a hollow gnome. “So,” he said, forcing a smile onto his face, “You heard the good news? We just scored us a big victory today! Ain’t it wonderful, son?”

“Yes, indeed,” Michael said plainly, sitting down beside his father. He shifted uncomfortably; he was, admittedly, somewhat resentful that had had not been allowed to go to war with the soldiers. At least, he felt resentful, although he new no such word for the feeling. It had probably been one of those rare bad feelings that hardly anybody ever got when the world was still good; now, it was noticed that he and many others were experiencing these bad feelings more and more as time went by.

Dad sighed; he obviously knew what his son was thinking, and said so quite plainly. “I know what you’re thinking,” he stated levelly, “But the answer is still no. War is dangerous; people get hurt or killed all the time, and I certainly am someone who knows about this sort of thing.” He paused, thinking of what to say next in the manner of all fathers everywhere when trying to offer their words of advise concerning a difficult subject, “It’s really scary, too, having to fight and stuff like that. You don’t know what it’s like, facing some mean, gray gnome who wants to kill you, and apparently most of the things in that army are way scarier.”

“But we can beat them,” Michael argued, “Those guys that came back with General Saul just did? I can fight just like them, can’t I? This isn’t fair!”

“Son,” Dad said, putting his broken left hand on the lad’s shoulder, “Son, you don’t understand things like this. Neither did I when I went out to fight, but I do now. Remember how many soldiers marched out of the castle when Saul led them off to battle? And now look how many came back. A few hundred; just a handful of the ones who went out. I hate to say it, son, but you can bet that most of those soldiers were killed in battle; Saul probably only came back because he doesn’t have enough left to continue the camping.” What he had probably meant to say was “campaign,” but new words like this always stumped the gnomes the first few times they said them.

Michael groaned, somewhat agitated not only by the fact that he disliked what his father had just said, but because he knew it to be true. Dad was smart, had seen a lot of things; if he said it was true, then it probably was. Even so, this had been much easier to accept before these terrible events had taken place, and suddenly Michael felt himself becoming more and more re…reb…reborlius? Rebarlis? Reblellius? Rebellious…yes, that was the word. He didn’t like the thought of it, but now some aspect of rebellion seemed to have poisoned his heart and caused him to wish to stray from his father’s advice. “Now just think about it,” Dad continued, “What if I had let you join that army, hm? Where would you be? I hate to say it, son, but you would probably have been killed by whatever big, mean creatures already killed so many others in that army. We may have won the battle, but I’m sorry to say that we’ve failed the camping.”

Michael nodded; there was no point in arguing. Then a small twinge of curiosity caused him to ask, “Just what were Saul and his army doing out there, anyway?” he paused, thinking, then elaborated, “You know, on their camping, or whatever. Did they just go out there to fight the bad guys?”

Dad shifted his blubbery mass into a more comfortable position. “A bit of both,” he explained, “Yes, they went out there to fight the bad guys, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. War is a pretty complicated, confusing thing, you see? There’s a lot of intry-kissies-” (that meant intricacies, another relatively new word to him, anyway) “-but I can tell you what I know. Basically, we hear there’s some sort of door to somewhere else, some different universe that’s filled with big, scary bad guys. That’s where they’re coming from, you know; there are billions and trillions of these awful monsters there-“ (in other cases this might have been classifiable as a childish hyperbole, but in the case of Hell itself it was an understatement) “-and now tons of them are coming through that doorway into here. So that’s why the door has to be shut or destroyed or whatever; otherwise, the whole world is gonna be covered in monsters, and we’ll all be dead! Do you understand?” He heaved a heavy sigh, then continued.

“I saw your mother die, you know; it was awful, but I couldn’t stop to cry until I was in a safe place. I don’t want to see you die like that, son; I can’t lose you too. I just want to keep you with me in a safe place until…” “Until what?” Michael himself was shocked by this sudden outburst, but never the less continued, “Until all of those monsters have poured into this castle because Saul’s army didn’t have enough soldiers to close the door?”

“Now son,” Dad said, trying to sooth him, but alas his efforts were in vain.

“Because everybody wanted to just stay in a safe place because they might get hurt if they don’t?” Michael ranted on, “Dad, I’m going to have to fight these monsters sometime! Because if we don’t go to them, then they will come to us! Darn it dad,” Impudent rage built up inside Michael, who then blurted, “I’m leaving! I need to go for a walk!”

With that anti-dramatic conclusion, he stomped out of the room, his father staring stupidly at his back. The door to his room slammed shut, and Dad sighed; nothing seemed to be going the way it should any more.

~

About a week’s march north of Castle Pippernil had once stood the city of Zabby. A nice place to begin with, now its buildings crumbled into disrepair, for the earth itself no longer held any wish to maintain them. Of course, this disinterest was shared by the unholy hordes that now occupied the city; it was, after all, but a place to stop and lick their wounds before orders were received from higher up the chain of command concerning their next move. The most previous battle with the gnomes had gone unforeseeably disastrously; it was obvious that heads would roll for this failure.

Shall we take a closer look at the goings-on inside the city itself? I suppose so; therein lies the interest, after all. Demonic warriors, many of whom bore damaged armour and heavily bleeding war-wounds, snarled and barked at one another as they loitered outside of ruined buildings, which were either slowly beginning to collapse or already filled with fellow demons. In fact, one building, as the unfortunate occupants found out all too late, turned out to be both. Here and there a fight would break out between two or more demons over some petty issue or insult; this was merely their infernal nature taking hold in the absence of any enemies to kill. Combined with the close proximity to creatures that, despite their common Hellish origin, the demons felt no particular fondness towards, these two factors culminated to produce several bloody battles, which were cheered on and occasionally joined by bored, restless on-lookers.

Amid all of the demons, there was but a single mortal being to be found.

Escorted as he was by two large devils, he was still quite a large creature, seven feet in height, and bore a distinct resemblance to a giant lizard. His scales bore a hue that ranged from reddish orange to red, giving him an almost infernal look like the beings around him, although this look was complimented by the trim, navy blue blazer he wore (adapted, of course, with an extra sleeve coming out of its chest to accommodate for the being’s third arm). He cut a good figure as he strutted through the streets, his medals of honour flashing in the sin light (an unholy glow which emanated from certain species of highly volatile demons) and a fang-filled smirk ever filling his wicked, lizard-like face.

Every demon he passed by, no matter how angry or rowdy, instinctively cringed and shied away from Jericho, one of the most powerful of the hundred thousand generals of the Outlandish Legion. He thoroughly enjoyed the fiends’ reaction to his presence, sucking in their awe and apprehension like a hatchling upon the fluids within its own egg and reveling in the taste. Jericho was an arrogant creature by nature, the type of being so bloated with pride that it became as a sin. Always did he give naught but condescension and contempt in exchange for the awe and respect that he received from those he considered inferior.

And this word did, indeed, encompass a great, many people.

Even for one of his own race Jericho was bad. He was a reptilian being from a hot, jungle world which resembled Earth during the dinosauric era, although due to lack of massive extinction of the dominant life-forms, the giant reptiles still ruled and had, in fact, evolved to an impressive extent. Birds and mammals were mere vermin to Jericho’s race, who had evolved not from monkeys but from a race of large, three-armed, pack-hunting lizards.

His race – dubbed the “Lizarnians” because they, like many others, only ever referred to themselves as “people” – usually ranged between six and eight feet in height when at the prime of their lives. Standard physical traits attributed to this race were small, sharp beaks at the end of their snouts (which played the roll of incisors), a long line of molar-fangs behind this, a ridge of spines travelling down their backs from the top of their heads to the tip of their tails, corded, muscular bodies, and a third arm protruding from their chest. Their hands were all three fingered, although the thumb on the middle hand was always located directly below the middle of the palm. All lizarnians could use their middle hand just as well as their dominant right or left hand, although a rare few (like Jericho happened to be) could use all three with equal skill.

Jericho’s entire race had, in fact, gained sentience not through necessity (humanity and many others would have been killed of had they not done so) but out of pure ambition. They had seen how other beasts feared fire, how using tools could increase efficiency of hunting and gathering, and known that, armed with such knowledge as this, they could reign supreme over all other animals in their perpetually Jurassic world. Thus, within only the three and a half millennia since now and the time their race gained sentience, they had advanced in leaps and bounds until now they stood on the brink of a new “Renaissance” which would not usher in nostalgic glances back into the days of antiquity, but a glorious push forward into the future. That was how the lizarnian people saw it, and many – Jericho included – jumped on this as a chance to expand their own personal wealth, status, fame, and, most of all, power.

Jericho himself had been the head of an attempted “Communist Revolution” in the semi-democratic nation of Crk-Tzzzrr. He had succeeded in overthrowing the current established government and at first thought he had secured himself in a place of power from which this new form of government would (supposedly) never allow him to be budged. Lizarnians, however, while not always evil, were competitive to the very core of their natural being, and thus would never be satisfied with a government that they found left them no means of personal improvement. Thus a Capitalist Revolution broke out, and, after years of bitter civil war (both sides were secretly supported and traded with by their neighboring nations, who would later deny all involvement with the loser) the victorious Revolutionaries now cheered in the triumph of democracy, while Jericho was forced to flee in bitter defeat.

And then he received a call from across the universe.

It started out with a little voice whispering in the back of his head; he had thought nothing of it at first, but eventually it became louder, more prominent. Eventually it was continually screaming at his defenseless mind, ordering him to find a doorway that would lead him to his destiny. Thinking himself mad but knowing that finding this fabled door was the only way to silence the nagging voice, Jericho began a long, grueling journey, during which he met up with more and more dangerous outcasts and no-goods like himself, all of whom suffered from the same driving, merciless voice.

And then they found it…

The portal was small, only about the size of a normal doorway (for one of their kind) and filled with shining red light. Even so, they fought tooth and nail to be the first to get through it, although Jericho was the one who pushed through first in the end. At first, though, after he and the other had pushed through, they screamed as they fell soundlessly through black oblivion before emerging on the other side into a strange, alien world.

And so the voices abruptly stopped, leaving Jericho to contemplate the limitless possibilities for conquest and power held by this new land.

Of course, the road to the fulfillment of his ultimate ambitions would turn out to be long and arduous indeed. Almost immediately after he and the rest of the startled lizarnians had emerged from the portal they had been assimilated into a large army of bizarre, alien beings, who were as many and varying as the coral beneath the sea. A brief introduction delivered by one of their generals told them that they now served the Outlandish Legion, comprised of countless deviants and villains from across the sea of space. They would fight in the name of their lord and master, a supremely powerful and innately wicked being known as “Grumpy Dan,” and would fight alongside hordes of wicked, supernatural beings and the risen dead of some ancient warrior-race.

In return for their unwavering loyalty and service, the lizarnians were promised glory, riches, power, everything any of them had ever desired. The edges of Jericho’s reptilian lips had twitched upwards at this; a land of opportunity, indeed. Thus he worked hard and schemed to the best of his abilities, did everything he could to distinguish himself from the common rabble and claw his way up the scale of power. He had risen from a simple grunt soldier to a minor general within but a few weeks; now he was on the verge of ascending to yet-unclaimed title of Legate commanding the entire Outlandish Legion. He could just picture it; swarms of the most dangerous creatures from a million worlds all bowing to him…and that wasn’t even the full extent of the opportunity given to him on this brave new world!

He had met with Grumpy Dan himself on several occasions; a bizarre creature if ever there was one, but very interesting indeed. The two of them had had some very stimulating conversation; Grumpy Dan had identified the lizardnian right away as someone who would stab him in the back straight away if given even half a chance, and told Jericho such himself on their first meeting. The lizarnian general had been somewhat shocked at this; usually such knowledge of potential political rivals was kept a secret, so that the back-stabber does not know that the one he wishes to back-stab knows, and therein lies the advantage. At the reptile’s perplexed reaction, Grumpy Dan had merely laughed heartily and told him that he was exactly the kind of person who was needed to help run the New Perfect World; apparently, he loved treachery, even from those who would wish use it to undo him for personal gain. Treachery, along with war, infighting, exploitation, and other wicked things like that, were apparently everything Grumpy Dan wished to bring to this world.

It was almost immediately clear to Jericho that this Grumpy Dan creature saw himself as “evil;” a word, in his knowledge, which partained to anything destructive, oppressive, or just plain chaotic. Even the faithful among lizarnian religions set themselves against the fabled “Powers of Evil,” although personally Jericho had thought it all stuff and nonsense, just like all of the other silly little ideals created by doddering philosophers with too much time in their claws. While Jericho realized there were advantages to enslaving a people using the name of some immortal being, he recognized that he himself would never gain true power while their hearts and minds were still held by some amorphous deity. Thus he had – rather foolishly, in retrospect – attempted to slowly abolish all semblance of religion in his mother-country, an act which only seemed to pour crude oil on the fires of revolution.

Jericho had failed to take into consideration that some lizarnians were actually loyal to the gods they served, that they actually loved them. Few atheists can understand the power that faith brings out in people; whether it was because it draws upon some inner potential hidden within the creature, or whether the new personal strength is made manifest by some higher power, he soon learned that it is very difficult indeed to kill a God. Before long, his elite Krrrak-Gorrr-Tchks (“Keepers of Order” in the lizarnian tongue) found themselves being vehemently bombarded by faithful reptiles turned fanatic by the growing threat to their religions. To make things worse, the Capitalist Revolutionaries had promised freedom of worship without oppression if they succeeded, which only gained them more support from the masses. Thus, he had learned the hard way that he would probably never fully destroy the beliefs and ideals which did not directly suit his goals, although he might use them to his advantage.

For one, Grumpy Dan’s idea of overthrowing whatever current system of government had been established in this land so that he could replace it with his own had its advantages. At the moment, Jericho was a servant of that new system, a servant of the New Perfect World. When Grumpy Dan gained power, he would have a hefty chunk of it in his claws, and from there he could expand it until it encompassed all of the power there was to have. However, the idea of bringing all that is evil to the world…no. That would not do. Oppression and things like that Jericho could live with (so long as he was at the top of it all), but war, chaos, and other forms of “evil” would only weaken his hold on supreme power.

This was quite a complicated matter, actually; these demons, whether their origin truly was supernatural (or “sub-natural”, as they proudly referred to themselves) or whether they were just a race of treacherous, vile tempered brutes, the fact remained that they still prided themselves for their evil, and this would have to be dealt with using care and creativity. Perhaps he could create some sort of public entertainment to control this – he had learned that a multitude of other worlds had violent forms of amusement to manipulate the masses to whatever end. Gladiatorial fights, violent, hardcore pornography, mock-battles, real battles (under controlled conditions) and other depraved forms of entertainment (some new thing he had heard of called “Gangsta Rap” also sounded promising) – all of these could be used to satiate the demonic masses’ lust for blood. Of course, all entertainment of this sort would have to be government-sanctioned and ensured to meet the right end, but he would worry about that later.

Other than his misguided belief in evil, Jericho found Grumpy Dan to be quite cunning and intelligent. Some of the debates he had waged with the creature had almost led to the lizarnian general reconsidering his own beliefs – almost. Not only this, but Grumpy Dan had gone to great lengths to make Jericho as powerful a general as possible, giving to him countless texts from countless worlds describing war, tactics and the like. The reptilian creature was also pleasantly surprised to see that there were others in the universe who shared his beliefs; he had read the Dramtorric Edrotzite, the Maktrik Kyil, the Sout Routtle Tek, and the Communist Manifesto, all of which pandered to his existing beliefs but unfortunately revealed little or no further insight. Still, he was grateful for these literary works – they definitely put an edge on his abilities – and had built up quite a bit of admiration for the scheming, wicked Grumpy Dan.

Indeed, it would be the highest of honours to be the one to plant a dagger in his back.

And so Jericho continued his jaunt through the city, searching for one thing in particular but not failing to cast his eye about at the surrounding scenery. Although he did enjoy gorging himself upon the fear of the demons around, he did notice with a frown how the buildings were already falling into disrepair. Something would have to be done about this; an empire could not be built on a foundation of falling-down masonry, now, could it? Of course, the city’s local Cloud Factory was continually kept in working order by a skeleton crew of hollow gnomes, but the rest of it was unacceptable. Even so, there would be a time to deal with the demonic attitude of negligence towards maintenance, and that time was later. Right now he had different business to attend to.

Finally the pair of devils stopped before a massive building. One of them pointed to the door and rumbled, “In there.” Of course, what it had sounded like was “Iiiirrrn duuuuuuuuhr.” but Jericho decided that it would be very rude and, quite frankly, very, very stupid to correct the pronunciation used by fifteen feet of muscular monster from Hell. Another thing he had noticed about this place; for some reason, everybody unthinkingly spoke the same language, even he. No matter; if what he needed to do was in this building, then into this building he would go.

Jericho pushed open the door and immediately braced himself as the foundations trembled violently. He shuddered like the building itself, feeling an unusual flash of fear, then looked back at the devils who accompanied him. No matter how simple and brutish they may seem, he reminded himself, they were still malicious and treacherous beyond belief. Thus he could not afford to show weakness in front of them. Thus, plastering his face with a fang-filled, arrogant smile, he strutted through the doorway. The building shuddered once again, causing him to trip up a little bit, but suddenly fell still. Regaining his composure, the lizarnian stood still, took a few deep breaths, then continued alone down a long, unlit hallway.

It was not long, however, before Jericho could see a faint, unholy light emanating from beyond. Confidently he strode towards it, his eyes adjusting as it grew brighter and brighter. Eventually he emerged into a chamber which literally looked like it had gone to Hell; fires burst from cracks in the floors, innocent gnomes, now mutilated beyond recognition, lay strewn about the various torture devices, unholy weapons lay in little or no order on several weapon’s racks. And in the middle of it all had been set up some infernal forge.

Be it as it may that he did not believe in real evil, Jericho still stood reveling for a while in awe as he watched a crew of several lesser demons go about their work. Tattered bellows screamed like the tortured damned as they pumped. Molten metal with a distinctly poisonous look to it hissed as it was cooled into the desired shapes, which were always undoubtedly frightening for the eye to behold. Even the tools were carved in intricate shapes depicting either screaming demons or tortured faces, and all made unnaturally chaotic, unholy sounds as they were used.

Eventually, though, Jericho built up the courage to approach one of these demons and, using as confidant a swagger as he could, walked up and tapped it on the shoulder. The demon, an ugly being with a gnarled face and claws, looked up with a scowl and, seeing the alien’s medals of honour, threw a hasty salute. “’The fuck do you want?” he grumbled (this was about as polite as demons got when not addressing a superior demon).

This remark struck a cord with Jericho; he demanded respect, and hated to not receive it. However, at least now this latest remark had put him in an indignantly arrogant mood, and he decided to milk this to its fullest advantage. “Right now I want to tear your head off,” he snarled in a low, hissing voice with a subtle Russian accent, raising up to his full, intimidating height as he did so, “But if you tell me where General Abimelech is, I’ll let you go with only tearing off your nose.” He gave a condescending smile, which only seemed to infuriate the demon further.

Even so, he knew that this brute would not dare harm him, no matter what he did. Thus the demon snarled, then pointed to what Jericho had mistaken for half of a suit of armour laying on the anvil. It was nearly complete; the chest and arms were already done, although from where Jericho was standing he could not see where the head was supposed to be; a demon was standing in the way. He could, however, see a miasma of unholy green gas billowing out from the bottom of the cuirass; he reached tentatively forward to touch it with his claw…

“Don’t!” the demon had extended its own grizzled appendage to stop him from touching the gas. At a questioning glance, the infernal blacksmith explained, “Don’t touch, dammit; fuckin’ gas’ll melt yer fingers off, see?”

“I…see.” Of course, there must be a perfectly logical explanation for all of this, Jericho tried desperately to reassure himself, then pushed the demon blocking his sight out of the way so that he could better view the other end of the armour. He did, indeed, get a bit of a surprise.

An ugly, green lump of a head protruded from the breast plate’s neck hole. Although it did bear some resemblance to that of an amphibian, no frog ever had teeth as large and sharp as its (the thing’s canine teeth dropped way down past its chin, like those of one of the saber toothed cats he had read about in a few books) or eyes which contained as much hatred and malice as its own. Well, eye, anyway; the right eye still remained, although the fiend’s left socket was still crusted with blood from when the demonic orb had been savagely ripped out… It did not take long for the lizarnian’s presence to register in the creature’s one remaining eye. “What do you want, you scaly red fucker?” the demon snarled.

Jericho cringed from both fear and indigence; still, it would be better to let the latter feeling guide him through this meeting. As calmly as he could, Jericho straightened his back and asked sharply, “You are Hell-General Abimelech, I presume?”

The demon let out a harsh, snarling breath. “Who the fuck wants to know?” he asked savagely.

Jericho bobbed his head curtly. “Allow me to introduce myself,” he said, offering his middle hand to be shaken, “I am General Jericho of the Outlandish Legion, sent by our lord Grumpy Dan himself to personally confer with you. I do not believe I have had the pleasure of meeting you before, have I?” He waited for a while, the sounds of the working forge the only thing penetrating the silence. Abimelech merely stared at the out-stretched claw. Right, Jericho chided himself; of course he wouldn’t recognize the gesture, the stupid demon only has two of them. Thus, he extended his right claw in a sign that would surely be recognized as a wish to shake hands.

“Oh, yeah,” Abimelech grunted, now finally seeming to recognize the other general’s gesture of insincere good will. Thus he raised his own gauntleted right claw in a fist, the back of his palm facing the lizarnian. From there, he extended the middle digit. “Pleasure to meet you, too – cocksucker.” He grumbled, then let out an unholy cackle. Jericho grit his teeth, smarting from the obvious insult, but never the less kept his composure.

“Several armies under Grumpy Dan have been given the task of wiping out the opposing castle of Pippernil, an object which has resisted our advances for an admittedly short amount of time, but for too long none the less. Your force and my own are among these assigned armies.”

“Yeah?” Abimelech snarled, “Anything else, or are you just waving your dick in my face?”

Jericho’s claws flexed angrily, and such was even reflected in his voice. “What’s else is that I’m telling you to get yourself and your army off of your lazy asses and move out post-haste. Is that clear?”

Now it was Abimelech’s turn to get angry. Even so, he restrained himself, grunting, “Okay. Sure. Fine. So, why exactly is Grumpy Dan sending a General to do a messenger’s work?”

“Because,” Jericho explained through clenched fangs, “We are required to compare notes and construct an adequate strategy for the destruction of this bastion against our armies. So, have you any ideas or did I lose you at the first three-syllable word?”

Quicker than lightning, Abimelech’s gauntleted left had shot up to catch Jericho about the neck. Gasping helplessly, the surprised lizarnian was pulled down until his face was but a scant inch away from he demon’s. “You had better remember,” Abimelech hissed, washing Jericho’s face in poisonous-smelling breath, “Just who the fuck you’re talking to, alright?” He pushed the lizarnian away, causing him to almost stumble back into a rack of smithing equipment. “Besides,” the demon added, “Just rushing in and killing everyone I saw always worked for me in the past.”

Gasping and holding his throat with one claw, Jericho regained his composure (although he made sure to do so outside the range of Abimelech’s claw). “Indeed,” he snarled, “Which explains your most recent glorious victory, I suppose?”

Abimelech roared in anger. “That wretch!” he raved to nobody in particular, writhing about on the great anvil and disrupting the demonic blacksmiths’ attempts to do their work, “That puny little fuck of a wretch! He tore me in twain, hewed open my arms and torso, took my left eye, and only received three tiny fucking scars to show for it! That filth! That vermin! THAT FUCKING LITTLE PUKE-FUCKER! I’LL KILL HIM AND BATHE IN HIS BLOOD!”

The Hell-General then fell silent momentarily, scowling up at the ceiling. As the blacksmiths started to tentatively get back to work, Jericho stared about nervously, then built up the courage to speak once more. “For those of us who weren’t there getting the shit kicked out of us during this glorious battle,” he asked, hoping that using sarcasm would not worsen the situation, “Would you be so kind as to tell me just what in the fuck you are talking about?”

Abimelech’s plated chest heaved furiously as he sought some semblance of control over his anger and indignation at the thought of his recent defeat. “There is something unnatural about that little fucker,” he snarled, “That gnome who single-handedly did this to me,” He threw out his hands as if to indicate his entire remaining body, “And all I managed to do to him was inflict three tiny scratches. Now most gnomes are weak little pussies, but this one…fucking fiery balls of semen, there are few demons who could have done this to me! No matter.” He held up a clawed gauntlet before his face an clenched it experimentally. “My body has been re-crafted, welded into the Hell-Armour I now wear. When the time for my vengeance is at hand, I will crush the life out of his miserable little body myself, and enjoy every second of his suffering.”

“How dramatic,” Jericho muttered, clearly unimpressed, “However, to avoid repeating the mistakes that you made last time, it would indeed be prudent to go over the initial strategy – assuming, of course, that you even had one – and form a new plot based on the avoidance of anything that would shift the balance of combat into the enemy’s favour. Is this understood?”

Abimelech spat contemptuously. “You pussy,” he snarled, “Our numbers are limitless as the bowels of Hell, and here you are talking about gay shit like strategy.” He spat again, horking a huge, poisonous glob in Jericho’s general direction, one which the lizarnian barely managed to evade. “You disgust me.”

“I assure you,” the reptilian alien snarled, looking disgustedly at the small gob of poisonous mucus which was now melting away the ground, “The feeling is mutual.” He turned back to the demonic warrior and growled, “And by the way, let me make one thing clear to you. It is not I who wishes you to take into consideration any sort of ‘gay shit like strategy,’ as you yourself so eloquently put it. Personally, I would not lose a second of sleep if you and all of your vile, stupid, loathsome, brutish kind ran blindly into battle only to be chopped to pieces by a bunch of puny little gnomes. If you did, it would only thin the ranks of the competition and distinguish myself even more. However, you must know that it is, in fact, not I who wishes to collaborate with you and yours, but Grumpy Dan himself who has ordered that the coalition of our forces be brought into existence. So, as you can probably guess, it matters little to me whether or not you agree to cooperate; if you refuse to comply with our orders, I shall merely bring this issue back to Grumpy Dan himself.” He noticed the Hell-General flinch subtly; heartened by this, he continued gleefully, ”I shall merely tell him that, no matter how I tried to persuade you, you would not waver from your fallacious course of action. That you cared not for his orders, and thought yourself so above him to extent that you…”

“ALRIGHT!” Abimelech roared, swinging a gauntleted claw at Jericho, who merely dodged out of the way, his maliciously arrogant grin revealing every fang. “All-fucking-right! You win! I get it, you fucking douchebag! By all that is dark and unholy…leave me be! Find somewhere to stay while these fucking demons finish my armour, and then I’ll come and meet you so we can ‘confer.’ Now get out of my sight, you fucking pussy! NOW!”

Still grinning and secure in the knowledge that he had won, Jericho gave a mockingly low bow. “As you wish,” he said with condescending humility, then turned to leave before stopping when he was almost at the door. Oh, he had almost forgot… “Hey, you,” he called to the first demon he had talked to, striding over to the demon in question.

The infernal being raised his scowling head, irritated at having to once again acknowledge the presence of a mortal he could not hurt or kill. “’The fuck do you…” He had time to say nothing more; grinning wickedly, Jericho swung his right hand up, sticking a finger in each of the creature’s nostrils, then drove his thumb down into the bridge of the demon’s nose. The lizarnian general relished in both the sound of agonized screaming and the feeling of crushing cartilage, then, his fiendish deed done, he exited the unholy room, emitting a high pitched “Shreeeeeeeee” while making a “Cuh-cuh-cuh-cuh-cuh-cuh” sound in the back of his throat; such was the equivalent of a triumphant lizarnian laugh.

~

Michael returned home late that night. His father said nothing to him; rather, the young gnome entered the house and went straight to his room, where he immediately collapsed upon his bed and was instantly to sleep.

And gazed in stupefied horror at the giant tongues of hellfire that lashed mercilessly at the walls of Castle Pippernil. Mortar crumbled under the unholy heat, and everywhere one went the sounds of death and fighting followed. Gnomes and demons battled in the streets. Regiments of savagely clad hollow gnomes chanted soulless war songs as they marched through the places where the wall had been broken like a continual, unstoppable flood. Twisted undead warriors from some large, warlike race slaughtered soldiers and innocents alike with as little discrimination as they had shown in life using an arsenal of weaponry compiled over the eons that their people had existed and fought one another. Outlandish monsters cut bloody swaths through the defenders using a variety of crude killing implements from thousands of different worlds. And above it all the skies overhead swirled with chaotic colours as the clouds seemed to coalesce into the laughing, wicked face of Grumpy Dan…

“GAH!” Michael sat up straight in his bed, shivering, sweat beading his smooth, bald forehead. He looked around his darkened room; thankfully if had all been a dream. Just a dream…just and awful, terrible dream…but it had seemed so real, so true. He huddled down beneath the covers of his bed; oh, how he wished that all of these bad people would just go away and leave him and all of the other nice people alone. What was their problem, anyway? Why did they have to be so mean…?

“Son?” Dad was in the doorway, concern filling his gentle eyes. “Son, are you alright?” Michael merely whimpered. Dad sighed; this was not an easy thing to do, but it had to be done. But first, he had to explain one thing to the lad…

“Michael,” he addressed his son kindly, sitting carefully down on the bed so that none of his massive bulk fell down on top of the lad, “You know, being a blacksmith like I am is not a complete waste of time. Soldiers need weapons, shields and armour, and blacksmiths are the people who make and repair that sort of stuff. You are not failing to do your part or whatever by staying here with me and learning how to work with metal; I just wanted to let you know that before…” his voice trailed off.

Slowly, tentatively, Michael peeked over the edge of his covers. “Before what?” he asked in a voice as diminutive as a mouse’s squeak.

It was all Dad could do at that moment to keep from bursting into tears. “General Saul says he expects the bad guys to launch a retal-territory strike-” (this meant a “retaliatory strike,” although Michael would not have known what it was even if his father had pronounced it right) “-which basically means that the demons want to get back at us for what we did to them. You’ve heard of the Hell-General, Abimelech, right?” Michael waggled his head furiously; everybody had. Within hours of the army of General Saul’s return, Sergeant Jon had become famous for having torn him apart so badly that the fiend’s entire force took flight after seeing it. “Well, it looks like he’s back now, and he’ll be bringing even more soldiers than he did this time; even more armies under even more generals. Castle Pippernil is going to be under seized-” (this obviously meant “seige”) “-some time very soon.

“And that’s why,” Dad’s voice started breaking up as he forced back the tears welling up in the corners of his eyes, “That – that – that’s why every able-bodied lad and lass is being given the choice to join the Castle Mallita-“ (again, this obviously meant “militia”) “-And if you wish to join then – then – then I cannot stop you.” Please don’t do it, he thought pleadingly, Please don’t go off to die like your mother. Please don’t leave me alone…

Michael, however, was now sitting up straight in his bed, some new, unrecognizable feeling rising within his soul. This is it, he thought disbeleivingly, This is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for. Oh, I just have to go… He briefly remembered his father’s advice about the blacksmithing. “If I’m gone, you’ll still be able to make swords and armour and stuff, right?” he asked with innocent, childish thick-headedness.

Dad briefly lost control of himself, letting out a strangled sob. Regaining his composure, however, he reminded himself that it was the lad’s own choice. “Yes,” he finally managed, “Yes, I – I – I can…” He fell silent, staring at his one remaining foot and peg leg.

Michael, however, so filled with duty and pride was he, he was left completely blind to his father’s obvious objections. “I won’t disappoint you, Dad,” he jumped out of bed, throwing his arms around the old gnome. Then, getting quickly dressed, he asked, “So, when do I join? Where do I join? Come on, Dad? Huh? What’s the matter, Dad? What’s – what’s wrong?”

Dad let out a long, heavy sigh; he felt like he had aged a billion years in one minute. He wished that he could keep the lad from going, but he knew that Michael had already made his own choice. “Near the town square,” he told his son, his voice broken and defeated, “They’re having sign-ups at all hours. If you want to go, then I cannot stop you.” Please don’t… a single, defeated voice in the elder gnome’s head begged pleadingly.

It was not that Michael had anything against his father, or wished him to come to any misery. This was merely a case of childish foolishness; even the young adults of the gnomish race were notoriously childish, still clinging onto their kid-like ways. In days past, no matter how old or wise a gnome grew they would never lose touch with their own innate innocence; now the dark times which had descended upon the world had put this purity to a severe test. Michael, however, had yet to bear the brunt of real war and suffering; hugging his father, he rushed out the doorway with an elated call of “Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll be fine! You’ll be proud of me, you’ll see, pops! I’m gonna make you real proud!” And then he was gone.

Alone in the dark room, Dad finally let the dams that restrained his tears crumble, and soon he was gasping and sobbing as big, fat tears rolled down his face, dripping from his gentle moustache. The choice had been Michael’s to make, although that still didn’t make him feel any better about the final outcome.

~

Sergeant Jon sat behind a desk set up next to the town square, a sign supported by two poles and held high overhead reading “RE-CROOTING OFFISS.” It had been made by Jon himself; he wasn’t much of a speller, and was, truth be told, more than a bit proud with himself that he had put two S’s in the word “office” so that it didn’t make an “ise” sound. Even so, although his spelling was nothing to admire, the prowess he had shown in the most recent battle certainly was. That was why General Saul had ordered that he be the one to sign in all of the new “recroots.”

And by golly, there were a lot of them! Many gnomes of all ages, sizes and skin colours all flocked to the recruiting station in order to be sworn in by the famous sergeant himself. Some wore a look of glowing pride, as if they had just been chosen for some great calling or destiny. Some bore the determined expression of one who knows his duty, although obviously has no idea how much Hell he is about to go through A few were apprehensive, even though they were willing to sign up just like everybody else. In Jon’s opinion, it was these gnomes who were the smartest; if any of these kids had seen what he had, they’d be even more so by now.

Jon was a normal sized gnome, whose pale azure skin combined with deep blue eyes and thin, dark blue hair that dropped down to mid-cheek level. He was a spry, skinny fellow, still quite young, and had been born with an unusual number of fingers (while most gnomes had four fingers on each hand, Jon had five fingers on each hand, totaling ten in all). There had probably been a time in the past when his thin eyebrows were not so narrowed and his mouth so tightly drawn, now he looked as stern and intimidating as ever a gnome had. On his left cheek he bore three small scars, like a bad scratch from a cat (on another world – cats on this one were noticeably friendlier and more sociable). They were the only bit of hurt that the Hell-General Abimelech had managed to inflict upon him during that last gory battle between gnome and demon.

“Okay,” Jon muttered, jotting down the name of the most previous applicant, “There you go, welcome to the army,” he hastily shook the other gnome’s hand, then called, “Next.”

There were a lot of gnomes signing up here, so he had not the time to have a leisurely chat with each and every one. Of course, other recruiting stations had been set up in various other places in the city, but these were not very popular due to the fact that no famous heroes attended them. In fact, some of those who had gone to the other recruitment stations had come to this one just to be sworn in again by Jon himself! Such sounded preposterous, even to Jon, but at least these beings had someone to look up to, some rock, some hard place where they could lay all of their hopes.

Indeed, one of Jon’s many worries was whether or not he could possibly live up to this monumental expectation.

“G’day,” he muttered as the next gnome stepped forward. Another bright-eyed, optimistic young fellow; poor fool, he had no idea what was awaiting him come the hell of his first battle. “So, kid, you here to join the army?”

“Yes sir!” the young gnome responded enthusiastically. Jon smiled outwardly but groaned inwardly; this kid didn’t look at all like the type who survived battles. He felt a flash of pity for the young gnome; the poor lad would be in for a very nasty surprise indeed come the armies of darkness and evil.

“Okay,” Jon said, “So, who shall I mark you down as?”

“Private Michael of the City Mallita!” the kid quipped helpfully, straightening his back and saluting. Poor lad, Jon thought sadly as he scribbled down the new soldier’s name, “Mickel,” on the list of “Recroots.”

“Very well,” he said, “You will report to barracks at dawn tomorrow to begin your training and outfitting – oh, and by the way, it’s ‘militia’, not ‘mallita.’”

“Sir yes sir!” Michael responded enthusiastically.

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Jon smiled and extended his hand to shake. “Welcome to the army, then,” he said, then called, “Next.”

Poor lads…it wasn’t that he looked down at them or anything like that, it was just that something seemed to be hardening his once optimistic heart, turning his mind cynical and pessimistic. Maybe it was that he had seen war, had seen thousands of poor souls just like this Michael march off to their deaths in the face of overwhelming odds. Some part of him still hoped that the current threat could somehow be overcome, but another, more prominent part of his mind told him that the last battle had been a mere stroke of luck. The forces of Grumpy Dan would reevaluate their old errors, gather their number once more, and strike with more ferocity and ruthlessness than ever. Every minor victory would only turn the evil armies into a tougher enemy; only a crippling blow could possibly bring realistic hope of victory to his people.

And if this thought wasn’t depressing enough, another looming fact that was even more so was that he, Sergeant Jon, was one of the only gnomes who could bring about such a miracle. All the gnomes now looked to him; even General Saul sought him often for his advice. Indeed the weight of the world was truly resting upon his shoulders, and what a heavy burden it was, too.

~

Jericho looked about at the assembled generals who had come to meet with him at the city of Zabby. About a week had past since his first meeting with Abimelech; his portion of the Outlandish Legion was moving into position even now, and a steady flow of Abimelech’s demonic warriors was leaving the ruined city as they spoke. Although there had been many points in the attack plan upon which Jericho and Abimelech had violently disagreed, both unanimously felt that the counsel of the other generals should be taken before launching the attack. Thus they had summoned all of the other leaders participating in the attack into one place so that they could compare notes and come up with the best plan possible. This being done, all that remained was the planning.

The present company included four others aside from Abimelech and Jericho themselves. About the hellishly decorated iron table they sat, no two looking the same as one another. There was Sihon, a skeletal demon with bony wings sprouting from its back, two horns sprouting from its forehead, a long, bony tail, and razor-sharp fangs and claws. Transparent muscles and organs were faintly outlined by the sin light glowing from his very bones. An amazing anomaly, I shall admit, Jericho thought, regarding the unique creature with interest, But perfectly explainable, I am sure. Even so, he was running out of explanations for all of the weird, otherworldly things he had been seeing; at times he considered that there might actually be such a thing as gods and supernatural beings after all. Still, he fervently hoped that this was not the case; if it was, then he could be in a lot of trouble…

The next general was Zur, a fellow leader of the Outlandish Legion. There were no beings that even resembled him on the planet Jericho had come from, but even so, the histories of their two planets had taken very different routes. Zur was a norrote; a mammalian being which, just like humans, had evolved from some ape-like creature far back in the distant, pre-historic past. The difference, however, was that mankind had evolved from the monkeys who climbed about the trees, and later forsaken their world’s arbors in favor of the ground itself. The norrotes, on the other hand, had evolved from a land-bound species of ape that had gradually taken to the trees for protection from its enemies, and there had eventually started to construct primitive cities among the branches high above the ground. Zur, like all of his race, was about four feet in height, had two arms poking out of the left and right sides of his torso, green skin and blue hair, and had a mean, hungry look in his bright, red eyes. On his home planet he had been dubbed “Zur iyb Hoawk,” or “Zur the Bloodloving.” He had been a warlord whose bloody campaign of battle and butchery had come to an abrupt end when he had received the summons, and brought himself and his entire army through the portal with him to serve Grumpy Dan on this plane.

Another demonic Hell-General, a hideous fiend named Rekem, also sat at the table. Well, some of him sat on the table; alrighty then, this deserves a bit of an explanation. He was much different from most of his demonic kin, you see; while your average demon ranges between three and eight feet in height, Rekem loomed at a massive fifteen feet. While most demons were killing machines comprised completely of muscles, claws and infernal strength, Rekem looked to be made mostly of fat. So much so, in fact, that he was literally a giant blob: folds of flab seemed to ooze about everywhere about him, completely enveloping the chair set aside for his use and even sagging into the table. The being was not totally made up of flab, though; from his body sprouted an uncountable multitude of large, fang-filled maws, long, pin-pointed spines, small, grasping claws, sucking, slurping tentacles, and wicked, lidless eyes that continually stared in an unnerving – not to mention insatiably hungry – manner. Every minute tiny, impish minions scurried in and out of the meeting room, each time carrying in large, heavy trays piled high with the sorts of food that epitomized gluttony, poured them into one of Rekem’s ravenous maws, then scurried out while muttering furiously in some nonsensical language. Apparently, the being’s intake of food was directly related to the extent of its intelligence; the higher the former, the higher the latter, and the lower the former, the lower the latter, and (predictably) the lower the fuse on the foul thing’s temper. Already Jericho had seen the obscene blob of fat devour a servant which was too slow to feed it; what a truly remarkable (if not disgusting) being! How any creature of this sort could possibly have evolved naturally was far beyond Jericho’s comprehension; most likely it was some sort of mutant. Considering how preposterous the idea of it being of supernatural origin was…

The fourth other general, however, was more different than any of the others. For one, this being seemed by all accounts to be, to his shock, female. Her name was Asheara, and although she was less of a frightening sight to behold than most of the other assembled generals, she was undisputedly the most disturbing of them all – and considering that the comparative group included a giant ball of living fat and a walking skeleton, that was saying something. Her name was Asheara, and seemed to be a demon of some sort – Jericho had heard the others refer to her as “Hell-General,” so such must have been the case. She was, actually, a fairly diminutive creature. Like Zur, she was some sort of humanoid, although her skin was soft and a healthy-looking tan colour. She stood only five and a half feet in height, with only two arms which ended in dainty – although not particularly long – claws. Her feet were cloven, shaped like the hooves of some otherworldly farm animal, although Jericho somehow got the idea that they were, contrary to their appearance, as sharp as a razor. Two black, bat-like wings sprouted from her back and a black, swishing tail grew out from just above her rump, which, like much of the rest of her, was curved in a disturbingly alluring way. What was disturbing about it was that creatures like lizarnians, who so disresembled such beings as this, were not supposed to feel attraction to the traits that were possessed by this being and others like her.

Now if Jericho had one redeeming quality, it was that he was not a pervert; he generally regarded such things as perversion as below him, although possibly something to be used to one’s advantage should it be able to be used in gaining status or power, or even muddying the name of some enemy in order to enhance his own personal appearance. Even so, when Jericho so much as looked at Asheara, his heart thumped faster in his breast, the frills hidden beneath flaps of skin on the sides of his neck started to try and break free, he felt the sudden urge to rise up to his full, impressive height, and, of course, his genitals started to harden in a way which made him glad that he was seated at a table, and hence such was hidden. She seemed to have no visible effect on the other demons, but Zur was definitely experiencing much the same thing as Jericho; the primate, too, was shifting uncomfortably, subconsciously beating a soundless staccato on his own chest with his two lower paws as his lips parted in a worried smile. Jericho smirked bitterly; no doubt he, too, was finding his own mind jumping up and down with barely controllable lust, and there was even less doubt that, by the way he shifted and fidgeted, he, too, was extremely glad for the presence of the large, concealing table. Perhaps this disconcerting – although inexplicably arousing – feeling was induced by some secretion of pheromone, or something else like that. Jericho had heard too many tales of seduction by demonic succubi to want to even consider that there may be an inkling of truth to the rumors concerning their supposedly “supernatural” abilities. There’s always a reasonable explanation…

“Brothers and Sister Hell-Generals of the Demonic Hordes,” Abimelech, whose Hell-armoured form now floated atop the vile green miasma which had almost swallowed Jericho’s hand, announced. “Esteemed generals of the Outlandish Legion, we are gathered here today in this place so that we may discuss our plans for the destruction of Castle Pippernil and the prejudiced extermination of all who dwell therein.” That said, he turned to his usual, boisterous, obnoxious self. “So, any one of you cunts have any idea just what the fuck we’re gonna do?”

Asheara merely smiled demurely, batting her wings in a manner that made both Jericho and Zur spasm uncomfortably, barely able to contain their unnaturally induced lust. “It was my understanding,” she said with a quiet smile, “That we would merely overpower them through force of arms. Is this not a suitable enough strategy?”

“That’s what I’d thought,” Abimelech sneered, chucking a thumb at the startled Jericho, “But this pussy-pants douche-faggot of a lizard here thinks we need some of that gay strategy bullshit.” He snorted, then grinned toothily at the uncomfortable lizarnian; no doubt he had seen some opportunity for payback in this meeting, and would exploit it to his black, wicked heart’s content.

“Um, well, um,” Jericho was about to explain that it had not, in fact, been he who had recommended that strategy be used in the conquest of Castle Pippernil, that it had been because of Grumpy Dan’s orders alone that this meeting had been called in the first place. But wait; obviously these demons, Asheara included, knew little of Grumpy Dan’s wish for tactics to be put in place; as far as they knew, it had all been his plan! Yes, yes, what a perfect opportunity; not only by explaining the need for tactical action would he topple that smug, arrogant Abimelech’s attempt to make a fool of him, but he would also show off his ingenious intellect to the beautiful Asheara – What do you mean, beautiful? She looks nothing like your race! – Still, the curves of her body did appear to be disturbingly arousing – She’s a hairless monkey for the love of –um, fuck, how is an atheist supposed to finish a phrase like that? – The way she batted her wings, the way she smiled – It’s just some trick with pheromones, don’t you dare fall for it! – Her breasts and lips, so full – No, no, no, you must resist! – Her eyes, so deep – Oh, I want to fuck you like the dirty little whore you are, you fucking bitch! –

Jericho suddenly snapped to his senses to find that his beak was hanging wide open. The assembled generals were all staring at him in a very odd manner; Zur’s bright red eyes pierced him with questioning sympathy, Sihon regarded him with unabashed astonishment, Rekem glared with mild surprise, Asheara smiled with amused satisfaction. And as for Abimelech – well, that bloody demon looked like he could barely surpress the loud, wicked laughter which was obviously building up within his armoured belly. Jericho then experienced three new thoughts in rapid succession; #1: Did I just say that? #2: Oh shit, I just went and said that, didn’t I? #3: Oh fictional amorphous deity, I just said that and they all just heard me say it, too!

For a while he sat there, paralyzed by his dismay at having realized that one of his thoughts had actually translated into words, and that this thought had been one of those thoughts that even the stupidest of males would keep to themselves when the female in question was within hearing distance. In the end, however, it was Rekem was the unexpected “hero” who decided to save the poor lizarnian from his predicament. “Asheara,” his voice rumbled from deep within the folds of fat as a pair of demonic servants rushed to feed one of his gaping maws, “Whatever spell you cast upon these mortals, you must cease it this instant. You are doing naught but wasting time and interfering with the productivity of this meeting, so desist with your lecherous tempting until a more suitable moment.”

Asheara folded her arms across her chest, puckering out her lips as she pouted prettily. Never the less, both Jericho and Zur both felt a sudden surge of relief as the unnatural lust left their bodies. This was good indeed; already, the lizarnian was wondering just what the hell he had seen in that humanoid bitch, and was more than a little bit revolted that he had ever even considered actually rutting with her. What a preposterous thought…Those pheromones or whatever she uses are indeed powerful, he pondered, But seem to be able to be turned off, their influence completely dissipated, within but a few scant seconds…How interesting, this must surely be the logical explanation for whatever the fuck just happened there… Logical explanation or no, he immediately saw the threats – and advantages – to a creature such as this. The threats were pretty self-explanatory in his opinion, but the advantages…if he could only harness this demon’s abilities, he could use seduction to overthrow whatever political enemies he may make on the way to taking control of the New Perfect World.

“Now,” Rekem rumbled, turning its many baleful eyes once more upon Jericho, “What reasons have you for seeking an alternative strategy to merely overwhelming the enemy through strength of arms and numbers alone?”

This was it; once more, Jericho had been put on the spot. This time, however, he was prepared; no longer was his mind clouded by the unnatural, perverse lust induced by whatever mysterious pheromone that demonic bitch secreted. Once more his mind started to operate with the cold, deadly efficiency of a complicated machine, a lovingly familiar feeling that both comforted and thrilled him at the same time. Grinning, he also remembered that this was his chance to show up and humiliate that arrogant wretch of a demon, Abimelech; oh, how he would enjoy this…

Jericho, noticing that his glands were no longer hardened, now felt comfortable with standing up to address the small audience. “I know what you are all thinking,” he announced, “Believe me, I do; I know that you all think that, with numbers and power such as our own, what need is there to make use of strategy, am I right? What chance do those little gnomes possibly have, hm? Well, I shall tell you something, my comrades; at the moment, they stand little chance. At the moment. But what about the next moment? Have you considered that?” The other generals glanced at one another in confusion, but listened on with interested never the less. Meanwhile, Abimelech just hovered there, glaring at the scaly alien general. Emboldened, Jericho continued.

“During the first stage of the invasion, accounts collected from that time tell us that the first regiments of hollow gnomes met little or no resistance from their gnomish counterparts; the little buggers would merely run away when attacked, and never even think of standing and fighting. As more and more hollow gnomes became equipped for the rigors of war, however, and the first warriors of the Outlandish Legion and Demonic Hordes started to arrive, the gnomes started to fight back. They threw together a few hasty rabbles of untrained, unprepared villagers and sent them to attack us. Their attempts at making war were, admittedly, absolutely pathetic, and many of their armies were either crushed or forced to flee by our forces, which have since been dwarfed by the size and power of the forces which currently serve under our lord Grumpy Dan. And now, as you have seen, a smaller army – but a disciplined, organized one, none the less – of their warriors have sent a massive demonic force fleeing with its tail tucked between its legs.”

“Why you dirty son of a bitch!” Abimelech snarled, pounding the table with a gauntleted claw, “I’ll rip your fucking head off, you piece of…”

“Enough out of you,” Sihon hissed, then turned back to the smug, smiling lizarnian general. “By all means, continue.”

It was so good watching Abimelech this uncomfortably angry, it was almost orgasmic. Thus, Jericho continued, “My fellow generals of the Demonic Hordes and Outlandish Legion, we must recognize these occurrences for what they are. The gnomish armies are getting better, you see, as they go along. They are getting used to the rigors of war, starting to get the hang of strategy and fighting. Now, I shall willingly admit that they are not nearly as powerful as we at the moment, but be that as it may the fact still remains that they are improving. And they will improve more. And look at us; although our armies now occupy a gigantic space of land, we have still not conquered even a tenth of this rich world.”

“So?” Abimelech sneered, “Just what the fuck do you want us to do about it, eh? I say we smash ‘em all before the little butt-fuckers can improve! That’s what I think!”

“A commendable plan,” Jericho muttered sarcastically, “Right up there with putting our heads between our knees and kissing our assholes goodbye.” With a roar, Abimelech tried to lunge forward at him, but was held firmly back by one of Sihon’s unpredictably powerful skeletal claws. Smirking wickedly, Jericho continued, “However, we must be realistic here. Although we could try to just sweep over this entire land in one giant wave, that is not going to happen. For one thing, it would apparently take at least several centuries without rest to travel from one end of this world to another, and for another, even you demons need to stop and rest once in a while. Besides, we do not have the numbers to…”

“FOOL!” Abimelech bellowed, “Not enough numbers? There are more demons in Hell than there are creatures in this universe! Not enough numbers my green, gassy ASS!”

“Eloquently stated,” Jericho muttered, completely unimpressed by the demon’s sudden outburst, “But even if such is true, and not merely a sweeping hyperbole, then I might as well remind you all that the larger part of those demons are still in Hell. We have no accurate estimates how many gnomes there are in this world, but there can be no doubt that they number in the billions, possibly even trillions. And once they are able to organize themselves into large, proper armies with which to face our own, they will pose a threat to our master’s cause and we will need to put our actual minds to work coming up with new ways of defeating them. And rest assured, there is no way of killing them all before that happens; the laws of physics, geography, and, indeed, reality are the main reasons for this.” He smirked once more at Abimelech’s impotent rage and discomfort; ah, this was heaven.

“Hence,” he concluded grandiosely, like a major politician delivering an important speech to millions of adoring onlookers, “If you do not consider the use of strategy in this endeavor to be important, then at least consider it practice for things to come. For although we might not need to make use of tactics at the moment, know now that a time will come when we will need to. Remember, the wise mind sees past, present and future; I have said all that I need. Now, have any of you got any questions for me?”

He stood there for a moment, surveying the assembled generals. Sihon was nodding silently; obviously, he was quite intelligent, and agreed with every word. He’s a demon, so he’s treacherous, too, Jericho observed mentally, That might make him a threat in the future. Zur seemed also to be in agreement; as the sentient primate noticed the lizarnian’s eyes turn his way, he thumped his own chest once and inclined his head, a gesture that was surely a way of expressing respect. He may be a good servant one day, Jericho considered, But watch that he does not become too ambitious for his – or your – own good. Remek, although he made no physical motions (except for greedily wolfing down yet another tray full of gluttonous foodstuffs brought to him by his little demonic vassals), he did seem to emanate something like approval, which even bordered on respect – but even so, it didn’t quite cross over that line. You’ll know my power one day, Jericho thought mildly, And if you don’t choose to serve me willingly, then I shall crush you under my foot-claw like the blob of worthless fat you are. Asheara, meanwhile, stared at him in a flirtatious manner that told him that she was clearly impressed. As well she should be, Jericho took a moment to flatter himself, For when she and her powers are at my disposal, I shall become more powerful than ever. And her skills will serve me alone; they’ll be all mine…Little did he realize that she was, once again, working with her old demonic influence to play with his thoughts and feelings. And as for Abimelech; hah, look at that sucker squirm, baby! Obviously the Hell-Armoured demon was at his fuse’s end; he was barely able to control his temper now. Jericho enjoyed the wicked being’s discomfort; oh, how he loved getting revenge on that stupid brute of a creature! The demon had tried to humiliate him, and instead been upstaged himself! Oh, the sweet, sweet irony of it all! It was all Jericho could do not to emit the shrill, high-pitched shriek that was a lizarnian’s equivalent to a triumphant laugh.

Still, Abimelech wasn’t done yet. “Plus, it was upon Grumpy Dan’s orders that this meeting was called to take place, was it not?” Jericho glared at the demon, but this only seemed to give the foul thing heart. “It was upon his advice that we devise a strategy, was it not? His genius in leadership which will teach us to use our minds in combat as well as our warriors, is that not correct?” He grinned wickedly. “Unless, of course, you are presuming to take all of the credit for his ideas?”

Jericho was momentarily stuck here; he saw Zur twitch uncomfortably, obviously glad that he was not in the lizarnian’s position. The other demons, however, were watching this entire exchange with rapt interest; obviously infighting and intrigue was quite amusing to them. Even so, Jericho rallied magnificently; making himself appear as modest and unpresuming as possible, he said, “Of course, I would not dare to question Grumpy Dan’s orders, never mind take credit for them. Yes indeed, I respect all of our lord and master’s wishes, even if they do involve the usage of “that gay strategy bullshit” as you so eloquently dubbed his ideas.” Now Jericho grinned with every razor-sharp fang as he watch Abimelech look worried for the first time since he had met the demon. All eyes in the room were now concentrated on the Hell-General, who searched carefully for his next words.

“Um, well,” Abimelech was now on the spot, and he knew it. “Well, um, you see, I had originally thought that this lizarnian…”

“Or this “pussy-pants douche-faggot of a lizard,” as you yourself said,” Jericho interjected, “I believe that this was the term you used to refer to me when you had thought that the idea of using strategy was mainly my own, true? But then you realized that such a plan had, in fact, come from Grumpy Dan and not myself, and therefore you were not calling me such, but instead you were referring to Grumpy Dan!” He turned to Asheara (just because she was a demon, and chosen COMPLETELY AT RANDOM), “Tell me, my lady, is it a custom among your people to insult your noble leaders so?”

Asheara laughed pleasantly, obviously enjoying this war of words. “Why, I must say that it certainly is not, my good sir!” she responded with a winning smile. Emboldened, Jericho grinned once more at Abimelech, whose very face even now betrayed his embarrassment, rage and worry. Yes, yes, yes, this was where it was at! Another attempt at revenge turned into retribution far worse than this unctuous demon could likely handle; oh what sweet, succulent irony!

“I’ll have you know, you insolent little cunt of a mortal,” Abimelech tried to rally, “That I implied no such thing! I – I merely said what I did in order to, um, in order to, well…”

“In order to what?” Jericho asked meekly, “In order to explain ‘my plan’ to the rest of these generals?”

“Oh, fuck you!” Abimelech roared, “You know damn well that I knew it was…was…” His voice trailed off in the manner of all creatures who have just started to say something incredibly stupid, although they know it is far to late to turn back now.

“It was – was – was what?” Jericho asked, adding a flare of vicious, mocking sarcasm to give just the right effect, “Come now, we all value your knowledge; what exactly do you speak of, hmm?”

“Well, I…” Abimelech floundered for a while.

Finally, a loud belch from Rekem broke up the conversation. “Enough of this,” he rumbled, obviously having grown bored by this nasty little exchange, “We have more important matters to discuss here, do we not?” Abimelech regarded his rescuer with something approaching gratitude, while Jericho, although somewhat disappointed, was still able to sit back down with a smug grin settling across his features. Sihon and Zur both seemed to radiate amusement in their own manners (the latter grinned wickedly, flexing all four paws in appreciation as he did, while the former seemed to merely glow with the feeling). It was clear to the lizarnian general that Asheara was also somewhat disappointed, although she, too, seemed satisfied. For some reason, this gave Jericho a small, barely discernable warm feeling inside.

“Very well,” Jericho announced, “So, what do you propose that we do?”

~

Michael looked around him at the other people manning the wall. He had had a hard week and a half; being a soldier wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. It seemed like they had spent every spare hour they had training, exercising and learning sword-play. Since he was new, he had had trouble with it, but continued with fervent determination where some others just decided that learning to fight was too hard and gave up. He would become a soldier; no matter how hard he had to work or how long it took, he would help stop the bad guys!

The hard work wasn’t the only thing that got to him, though. Another part of it was that he had to live and sleep at barracks with all of the other gnomes there. He had started out knowing very few of them, but eventually he had made several friends. Even so, he had little time to get to know them very well, as most of it had been consumed by training to fight and make war.

There was actually several sergeants who trained the soldiers, although Michael knew few by name. Mostly he just called them either “Sir” or “Sarge,” depending on their personal preference. Once, however, he and the rest of the new recruits had had the honour of being shown sword-play by the heroic warrior himself, Sergeant Jon. He had been a stern but fair guy, who accepted no nonsense but was never the less patient and respectful to those who tried their hardest, no matter how good or bad they really were at fighting. The privilege of his company had been a one-time occurrence, though; most of the time he had been busy signing in eager new recruits, or else attending mysterious meetings with General Saul and a few other important officers in his army.

The training period, however, had been cut short due to reports from one of the patrols which had gone out to gather reconnaissance. Apparently, several absolutely gigantic forces were closing in around Castle Pippernil on all sides, and had already blocked off all main routes of passage. Any dismal hope of escape that remained lay in travelling over the wilderness to freedom, although soon even this would be made impossible. Thus every gnome who could hold a sword, no matter how well or poorly trained, had been placed on the walls and towers of the castle to await the inevitable storm.

Castle Pippernil had two main walls surrounding the main Keep at the center. Each of these walls was dotted by the occasional guard tower, and the main populace lived between them. The Keep itself was its own maze of walls and turrets; one could conceal an entire army in that one single structure. Siege weapons such as catapults and, well, that’s pretty much it, had been set up here and there along the walls. The world itself had provided all of the materials for construction of its own volition, and instilled its beloved gnomish children with what little knowledge it had of how to wage war. Even so, apparently all of the approaching enemy armies put together were large enough to cover several miles of land through their sheer numbers, and many of their warriors were each good for at least five untrained gnomes. There was little hope indeed for Castle Pippernil’s survival during this battle.

The day was a dark and dingy one; big, gray storm clouds crowded the skies, occasionally giving a rumble of the distant thunder which seemed to be approaching the castle quickly. As Michael stared up into the gloomy weather, he thought he could see a faint twinge of coloured gas start to illuminate the massive thunderheads. He shuddered involuntarily, reassured only a little bit by the feel of his own little jewel, which hung from a necklace hidden beneath his chain mail tunic and was continually pressed close to the bare skin of his chest. He clenched tighter on the short sword in his right hand, recognized the weight of his heart-shaped shield in his left, tried to assure himself that when the bad guys came he was prepared; he had weapons, he could fight, he was a soldier. Even so, this did little to comfort him.

Looking around the ranks of other gnomes lining the walls, Michael saw similar discomfort and worry. There were lots of gnomes, boys and girls, purple ones, blue ones, indigo ones and green ones, short and tall ones, homely and handsome ones, all of whom stood together on the walls, waiting for the enemy to appear. They were armed with swords, axes, maces, spears, bows and arrows. Each had a mandatory dagger in his or her belt, and many had some sort of shield. These had been optimistically designed and decorated, either painted pink and formed in the shape of a heart (like Michael’s) or shaped like a circle with a big, yellow smiley face painted on it. These designs were meant to cheer the gnomes a bit, give them small symbols of the good for which they fought. Quite frankly, it wasn’t working.

“Hey, son,” a gloomy voice said beside Michael. The young gnome looked to his right to see Dad, decked in full armour and holding a spear, standing right beside him. He wondered how he hadn’t heard his father’s peg leg clopping on the ground, but right now it did not matter. What was he doing here? This was a dangerous place, and Dad couldn’t fight! He…he might get himself hurt, or even worse! Killed!

“I’m here to protect you, son,” Dad said in a wavering, unhealthy – yet still determined – voice, “I won’t let them do anything bad to you, don’t you worry.”

“Dad, please,” Michael hissed so nobody would hear, surprised by a sudden feeling of frustration and irritation, “You can’t be here! You can’t fight like this! We’re in a lot of danger here, and besides, I’m a soldier now! You’d better go back home where it’s safe.”

“It’s not gonna be safe back home,” Dad almost wailed, grabbing his son’s arm and clenching protectively – although not necessarily gently, “It’s not safe anywhere, and that’s why I have to be here with you, to protect you. Please, son, you’re all I have left…”

“Dad, let go,” Michael said, trying to shake away the older gnome’s grip, “You’re hurting my arm…”

“Please, son,” his father persisted, “Please, please listen. You’re all I have left, and I love you. I – I couldn’t stand to see you get hurt, I just couldn’t live with myself knowing I didn’t do nothing. Please, you have to…”

“Hey,” a stern voice barked at them. Both looked up to see Sergeant Jon, who was going about a routine inspection of the troops before the siege. Behind him were two gnomes, uncharacteristically grim and hard-eyed for their kind, who each held a long spear and large, unadorned round shield. The Sergeant himself had a wore not only the same chain-mail tunic as everyone else, but a bandoleer with two swords crossing one another on his back, an axe and a dagger in his belt, the sergeant’s stripes on an arm-band placed on each arm, and, of course, a stern, no-nonsense expression on his face. In his hand he held a short, sleek spear, although he seemed to have no need for a shield, nor any desire to use one.

He took one severe look at Dad’s peg-leg and said with respectful severity, “Soldier, I am afraid that I cannot allow you to fight with your current disability. You’ll have to leave the walls and go somewhere safe. That’s an order.”

“But – but sir,” Dad protested, “I – I need to stay here to – to – to protect my son, sir…”

“You’ll do no good here,” Jon responded sternly, “Now go somewhere where you won’t be hurt. That’s an order.”

“I – I can’t,” Dad whimpered, “My son…”

Jon sighed, rolling his eyes. “Take him away,” he told his two guards, who immediately moved in and, disarming Michael’s protesting father, dragged him away from the walls. The Sergeant then turned to the young gnome, who was still staring, baffled, at what had just happened. “Your father, I presume?”

“Um, yes, of course, sir,” Michael responded, throwing a straight-backed salute as he thought was expected of him.

“Well,” Jon muttered, “It’s a good thing we got here; he seems nice enough, if a bit fuddled, but the poor guys won’t last two seconds in actual combat with wounds like that. He may have once been a soldier, but he ain’t one now.”

“But sir,” Michael asked, “Did your guys have to be so, well, rough with him? I mean, he didn’t mean any harm, he was only trying to help, to, to protect me…”

“And it was very nice and noble of him to do so,” Jon said as if he thought his own words meant little, “But in the long run he’d not only have got himself killed, but he won’t have been able to do anything to keep you alive. You know it’s true.”

“I – I guess,” Michael admitted, although he was still shocked at the draconian manner with which his father had been dealt. Seeing this, Jon sighed; hardened as his heart and mind may have been, he was still a good soul underneath it all, and hated to see someone sad on his account.

“Look, if it makes you feel any better, your daddy’s being taken away to a nice, safe place,” he explained to the young soldier, “It’s you, though, who you should be worried about.”

As if on cue, a great roll of thunder announced the presence of the enemy. It was as if one minute there was nothing covering the large fields and plains outside of Castle Pippernil, and the next they were all there. There was thousands of them, millions to the frightened eyes of the gnomish defenders. Michael had never seen anything this scary; briefly remembering the vivid nightmare he had experienced a week and a half ago, he quailed in fear as he stared out into the sea of death which was now closing in on Castle Pippernil. Huge masses of hollow gnomes advanced in ranks, chanting the same ominous war-songs that Michael had heard in his nightmare. There marched forward in a mechanically disciplined manner, males and females alike decked in savage armour, bearing wickedly designed blades, axes and pikes, and all wearing the same lost, confused look of some poor person who has lost their soul. At the forefront of their ranks many standard-bearers rode upon the backs of large, snuffling hell-pigs with beady red eyes, waving flags that mostly depicted sad faces and other small symbols of these poor gnomes’ hopeless situation.

At the same time, large numbers of admittedly less well-organized – although undoubtedly deadlier – beings from the Outlandish Legion sallied forth, waving their weapons and shouting whatever strange war-cries these things had brought with them from their planets of origin. They were a mixed up, rowdy, rambunctious bunch, no two seeming to look alike as they marched forth carrying weaponry from many thousands of inhabited worlds. These alien warriors ranged through all shapes, sizes and skin-colours, but even so were not nearly as frightening as their demonic counterparts.

Granted, the warriors of the Outlandish Legion were scary, but at least they were mortals. At least they had souls. One single look at the demons, however, told Michael that these were creatures who had no such thing; that these were the foulest beasts from the foulest place, and now they were spilling forth to poison this world. Despite his innate fear, he felt rising within him a burning anger, a desire to send these wicked creatures packing back to Hell where they belonged. Even so, there was something else that soon caught his eye. Turning to Sergeant Jon, he pointed out into the enemy ranks and asked, “What are those?”

“Those?” Jon muttered, seemingly barely phased, “Those are the Warriors of the Damned.”

Michael nodded dumbly, staring out in horrified fascination at the thousands of shambling forms which moved tirelessly towards the wall. Although many came in different sizes and laden with different weapons and armour, all had the same approximate shape, although obviously their forms had been twisted and mutilated beyond recognition. He had heard just a little bit about these creatures; apparently they had once been warriors of the most warlike race in the universe, and been damned to eternal pain and suffering for their sins in life. They were frightening indeed to look upon; although he did not know it, the cruelest, most vicious soldiers from every war in their race’s long, sad history were there. Mutilated legionaries wearing torn-up armour marched in semi-straight ranks under the same Eagle banners they had fought under in life. Hordes of Mongols and Huns whooped and shouted madly as they rode forth atop giant, muscular Hell-Horses. Aztecs and Conquistadors who had fought and slain one another in life now marched side by side, still babbling as they had during life. Confederate and Union soldiers from the American Civil War marched with muskets in hand, backed by the shrill wail of their old trumpets. Soviet tanks trundled forward under menacing red flags that depicted crossed sickles and hammers. Gutted air-fighters, patched-up zeppelins and cantankerously clunking helicopters soared through the air like awkward – although no less menacing – vultures. Legions of Nazis goose-stepped in patchy ranks behind tattered, swastika emblazoned banners, singing their old anthem in voices that were high-pitched and maddened from their time spent in Hell. All these and more now closed in around Castle Pippernil, but then stopped before they were within arrow-range.

For a while all was still, all was silent, as the attacking and defending armies seemed to size one another up. Occasionally a gnome on the walls would begin whimpering silently, but these poor fellows soon shut up lest they draw the enemy’s attention to themselves. All the while, the chaotic coloured gases from Grumpy Dan's Cloud Factories swirled about in the sky overhead, gradually coalescing into a large, spike-toothed face with giant, glaring red eyes. And this face spoke but three words; “KILL THEM ALL!”

And then the battle began.

~

The plan was simple but effective, and had gained the support of each and every general. Even the bitter Abimelech had begrudgingly agreed with its merit, although he had been in no position to express any negative opinions lest his recent poor choice of words be brought back to light. Thus the plan had been presented, gone over, and approved all within one short meeting.

Jericho and Abimelech would bring their armies to attack the northern wall, aided by several large battalions of hollow gnomes and warriors of the damned. Zur and Asheara would take the southern wall, while Rekem and Sihon each respectively fought to gain a foothold on the East and West walls. All of these other armies would also be backed by legions of hollow gnomes and damned soldiers, but not as many as the first two forces. After all, it was the responsibility held by Jericho and Abimelech actually take over the city; the other forces were merely there to box in the gnomish defenders, to make sure that none escaped while at the same time keeping a large number of their warriors distracted from fighting off the main force.

Now that the basic outline had been developed, the finer details of the plan had to be worked out. Grumpy Dan did not want the castle leveled, rather he wanted it taken control of. He, like Jericho, had foreseen the time when the gnomes would rally themselves into a force to be reckoned with. He also knew that when that time came his forces would need fortifications such as this to act as bases for military operations, way stations for troops and supplies, and symbols of their claim to the freshly conquered lands. Thus, as little of the actual structure was to be damaged as possible; maybe a few places in the walls could be knocked down, but that was about it. Hence, Jericho and the other leaders had adjusted their strategies accordingly, that they may serve Grumpy Dan’s wishes and capture one of the strongholds which would be of so much use later on during the campaign.

Thus, the entirety of the armies which had been sent to assault Castle Pippernil advanced. Arrows and javelins showered the forces of evil from the walls, peppering their ranks and causing many to fall either dead or wounded. The enemy armies, however, did not take this treatment without retaliations; hollow gnomes returned fire with bows and crossbows. Soldiers of the Outlandish Legion let loose whatever bizarre ranged weapons they had in their own possession. Demons roared battle-cries over the deafening cacophony made by their own hellish firearms. And all the while, the warriors of the damned let forth their fury from afar using every ranged implement of killing and destruction ever conceived by the violent race from which they had originated. Gnomes fell in scores, and some who survived fled in panic from the walls. Foolish, this; such inexperienced cowardice would buy them little more time in life than they already had.

The warriors who defended the eastern, western and southern walls of Castle Pippernil were somewhat luckier than those who stood defending the wall to the north. This was because the enemy soldiers who were sent to attack these walls were merely trying to scale them; ladders, scaling ropes and grappling hooks were little compared to the bombardment which faced the north wall. At first fighter jets flew in, peppering the wall with machine gun bullets and bombs dropped from the sky. Artillery fired mercilessly, blasting defenders clean off of the tops of the walls and sending shards of shattered mortar flying dangerously into the city. Only a handful survived this initial assault, but all hell had not quite been unleashed yet.

Sergeant Jon, who had been sheltering Michael with his own body, let the younger gnome up once again and looked out at the field outside of the wall. The crenellations had been blown clean off, giving Michael the instinctive urge to huddle closer to the ground, frightened as he was. Even now, siege weapons were blasting other parts of the wall, and certain individuals among the warriors of the damned seemed to be running at the walls. These warriors were cloaked and hooded; as they watched, one ran for the section of the wall directly below the place where they were standing.

“What the…” was all Sergeant Jon could manage before the creature far below threw off its hood. Even from high up, he could see the revolting visage of a being so tortured and mutilated. Below its frayed, tattered turban, wild eyes glared angrily from their lidless sockets, a bare, muscle-stripped ribcage could be seen under the many sticks of dynamite which had been attached, and gnarled, fire-blackened fingers clutched the trigger to the explosives strapped to its very body…

“Allahu akbar!” the creature jabbered mindlessly to whatever god it had thought it had served in life, “ALLAHU AKBAR!” And then, with a press of the thumb, it detonated the entire load of deadly explosives which were attached to its body. At first the wall merely trembled, and then it shook even more violently as even more of these reanimated suicide bombers blew themselves to pieces against the walls of Castle Pippernil. It was not long before the mortar itself could be heard crumbling; grabbing Michael’s arm, Jon ordered, “Come with me! Hurry!” Together, the two tried to outrun the collapsing walls as they searched for the nearest way down.

The closest opportunity came in the form of a ladder leading from the top of the wall into the city. “Get onto it and start climbing down,” Jon ordered his dazed companion, who was too stunned to disobey or question any of the other soldier’s orders. Thus the two started to climb down the ladder; only when they were halfway down did real complications hit them.

The section of the wall against which the ladder had been propped up had slowly started to crumble from the bottom up. “Darn it,” Jon growled, holding tight as the ladder rocked wildly, causing Michael to scream out in fright as he did likewise, “This isn’t gonna be very fun!” He measured the distance between the ladder and the wall, then looked behind himself into the town. Hmm…if this didn’t work exactly the way he wanted it to, then they were both dead. Thus he swung himself around the ladder until he was on the other side, propped himself up with his feet resting on the wall and his arms holding the side-bars, and pushed forward with all his might. “HOLD ON TIGHT!” he yelled at Michael as the ladder tipped back into the city, just as the section of the wall crumbled and fell apart in all different directions.

Both Michael and Jon screamed as the ladder toppled down to the ground. Fortunately, just as Jon had hoped, when it landed it did so across the roofs of several houses, with he and Michael in between them.

“Well,” he muttered, dragging his beleaguered companion onto his side of the ladder so that they could both walk across it, “That wasn’t too hard, now, was it?”

Michael said nothing in response; rather, he vomited over the side of the ladder. Jon rolled his eyes. “Come on, let’s get going to the second wall. No doubt it’s going to be a dangerous, scary trip.”

“Oh no,” Michael wailed. Oh why had he joined the army in the first place? Nothing but hard work, training, and then when you did get to the fighting, it was nothing like as glorious as it was supposed to be! The gnomes on the walls hadn’t stood a faint of a chance! This wasn’t fighting, this was slaughtering! This was murdering! This was cheating!

This was…this was wrong!

“This is all wrong,” Michael whimpered as they ran over the roofs of several more houses via the rungs of the ladder until they had reached the end. Jon gave him and odd look when they did, then turned around and started climbing down onto the roof at the ladder’s end.

“I don’t remember anybody ever saying that anything about this war was right,” he muttered, checking that he still had all of his weapons. He and Michael then slid down the roof of the house and landed on the street below, which automatically softened to break their fall. “Thanks,” the sergeant muttered before turning back to his companion, “But if we’re gonna win, then we have to fight it right or wrong. Now let’s go; soon these streets are gonna be swarming with demons.”

Gnomes and demons battled in the streets… Michael shuddered as he remembered the vivid nightmare; was it now about to come true? He knew he should have told somebody about it, to make sure that it didn’t – or did that only go for good dreams? Whatever; as Sergeant Jon and he ran through the streets, he said, “Um, sarge?”

“Yeah?” Jon muttered in response.

“I had a dream a while ago that this was gonna happen,” Michael muttered guiltily, “I guess I should have told someone, huh? That way it wouldn’t have come true…”

Jon rolled his eyes. “Kid,” he muttered, “There ain’t a gnome in this fort who hasn’t had that dream, too. I don’t know quite what it means, but it can’t be good, but the main thing is not to blame yourself. If something’s gonna happen, then it’s gonna happen; all you can do about it is go along with it and deal with it as best as you can.” The conversation was cut off there, for around the next corner the two saw a large group of demons fighting with a bunch of gnomes in the streets…

Just like in the dream…

Jon cried out, reversing his grip on his spear and hurling it. The weapon shot through the neck of the nearest demon, who howled as it fell dead to the ground. Then, drawing both swords from the bandoleer on his back, the brave gnomish sergeant shouted angrily as he practically flew into the fray, whirling his blades like a cyclone of death. Some of the demons were caught unprepared, although many of those who weren’t fell anyway. Michael watched in awed fascination as Jon leapt onto the back of one large, goat-faced demon, stabbing both swords down into its neck, then back-flipped onto the ground, spun about, and ran headlong into a demon which was charging at him. One swipe of the sergeant’s right blade knocked away the demon’s weapon, and one jab from the left gutted the thing. Twisting his sword, he pulled – along with a jumble of the demon’s guts – out and leapt at another enemy, jumping below its defenses and ramming his right blade straight up through its chin. The creature shrieked as it toppled backwards, allowing Jon to jump off of its chest and onto another demon, whom he skewered through the eye with a single thrust. One of the other demons, who was fighting off a group of gnomes with the axe in its left hand, used its right to aim a gun at Jon and fire a rapid stream of bullets. Jon dodged each and every one of these as he ducked, rolled and scampered his way towards the demon before leaping high into the air, reversing his grip on both weapons as he did so. Then he came crashing down, bringing a blade crashing down through each of the demon’s shoulders as he did. He then let go of both weapons as the thing moaned and toppled forward, drew his axe and jumped at another creature, hacking the shaft of its spear in two before bringing his own weapon into its gut. Although this did not quite kill the beast, the thing was soon overrun by several other gnomes, who shouted and cheered as if they had won the battle.

Michael felt a sudden flash of shame; here Jon and those other guys had been fighting bravely and gloriously, and all he had done was stand around and gape at it. He plodded forward humbly, walking up to Jon. “You were great out there,” he said meekly, “I – I’m sorry I couldn’t be of any help…I – I was just so scared…”

Jon shrugged, re-sheathing his axe and retrieving his swords. “Don’t worry, kid,” he muttered, pointing down the street, “There’s plenty more where they came from.”

Michael let out a frightened yelp as he saw a long wave of hollow gnomes advancing upon them, their eyes and faces vacant of any feeling save for soulless misery as they sang their unholy war-songs. “Don’t worry, lad,” Jon muttered, bracing himself for the fight, “They’ll no doubt be easier than these demon fellows.” With that he looked back at the remaining gnomes, who seemed to have taken new heart now that they were joined by the heroic sergeant himself. Raising his right sword, Jon cried, “Let’s show ‘em what we’re made of, boys and girls!” The other gnomes cheered, then followed their sergeant in a charge headlong into the hollow gnome ranks. Michael stood about dazed for a while, then quickly remembered to follow suit.

Jon was the first one by a good two meters to hit the hollow gnomish force; swinging both blades about like and enraged berserker, he cut a long, bloody swath throw the ranks of gray soldiers. The feeble weapons and armour of the hollow gnomes were no match for his inexplicable strength, and every swing of his blade seemed to send one dead to the ground. And then the other gnomes followed after him, pressing their advantage as they cut through the ranks of a force much more vast than their own. Michael himself was suddenly confronted by a hollow gnome, one a young adult by the look of him, who lashed out with a wickedly hooked sword. Crying out in fright, Michael caught the blow on his shield, then, ducking down low, pushed forward and thrust with his blade at the same time. The hollow gnome made not a sound as he crumpled to the ground, pierced through the gut.

There was no time for what he had just done to truly register in Michael’s brain, though; two more hollow gnomes, a male and a female, were marching steadily towards him, weapons held at the ready. One sliced at his neck with her glaive, the other sliced at his gut with his sabre. Fortunately, the sabre bounced off of his chain mail armour, but the glaive did manage to nick a small cut on his chin. Immediately, Michael cried out in panic that thrust himself forward, slashing wildly with his blade and bashing about with his shield at the same time. He caught the female gnome squarely on the jaw with the latter, while a stroke from the former decapitated the male. Blood fountained up from the headless stump, spattering Michael and causing him to scream once more before being confronted by another hollow gnome.

This one swung an axe straight at his head. Michael ducked under the cover of his shield, then pushed forward, ramming into the creature shield-first. This knocked the hollow gnome off of his feet, and gave Michael the opportunity to stab downwards into its gut. Finally, when he looked up he saw that the hollow gnomes were fleeing from him and the other beleaguered gnomish soldiers, who cheered raggedly at their retreat.

It was odd, though, the manner in which the hollow gnomes were running away, because they were not, in fact, running. Rather, they were backing up quickly, holding their weapons in defensive positions while their ranks parted in the middle. Sergeant Jon seemed to know what was going on; turning to the rest of his men, he ordered, “Fall back, guys and girls! Get out of here! We don’t have enough to hold what’s gonna be coming next! What are you all staring at? I said MOVE!”

It was only then that the gnomes started to obey, but by then the reasons for the hollow gnomes’ falling back had become immediately apparent. Dozens upon dozens of warriors from the Outlandish Legion surged forth through the gap in their ranks, shouting, whooping, screeching, and making all sorts of terrifying noises as they waved their weapons menacingly. One of them, a huge, lizard-like creature with three arms who was running at the front, let out a terrifying shriek as it grabbed a gnome’s had using the arm that protruded from its chest and, with seemingly no actual effort, crushed the poor being’s skull. The rest of the gnomes, all save for Michael and Jon, turned and fled. When the sergeant saw the young gnome still standing there, he scowled and ordered, “You heard me, kid! Get out of here! Now!”

“But – but I…” Michael stammered.

“Kid,” Jon growled, “You’re gonna die if you stay here! I’ll hold them off for a while, then rejoin you and the others. Trust me; I just gotta do a couple things first. Now go!” Wordlessly, Michael complied, leaving Jon to face the oncoming horde.

~

Jericho gasped as he staggered away from the battle currently raging against a single gnome in the streets. What a fucking psychopath; it was no wonder Abimelech had nearly died at this beast’s hands! Of course, since this gnome was the only one he had seen who could fight like this, he assumed that it was this diminutive sergeant who had been responsible for Abimelech’s defeat. That son of a bitch had torn Jericho some impressive new wounds and almost even hit him somewhere vital before he had left the rest of his warriors to fight the thing!

“Medic!” he barked, and was instantly attended to by one of the field surgeons. It was a demon of some sort, a two foot long creature that looked like some perverted cross between a spider and a scorpion, with a large, bloated abdomen, a pair of claws, eight long, spindly legs, three barbed tails like that of a scorpion, and the sort of face attributed to any arachnid. Another strange feature was that it seemed to inexplicably hover in the air and had no recognizable means of propulsion. Perhaps some sort of sack full of compressed gas, Jericho thought to himself as the beast started sewing his many wounds back together with strands of its very own webbing, but even he could not totally convince himself of there being reason behind everything he saw in this damned world. Indeed, he had put finding an explanation for the Army of the Damned’s very existence out of mind until later…

Snarling, Jericho looked back at the fight. The gnome now stood atop a pile of dead bodies, and still seemed completely without fatigue. Remarkable creature; perhaps it was due to some sort of accelerated metabolism, some mutation caused by exposure to certain chemicals or other such substances. He snarled angrily as the medic used two of its scorpion-tails to inject him with not only more plasma, but also some sort of healing agent for infection; no matter. Whatever that scrappy little twirp of a gnome was or whatever was causing it to fight the way it did, one thing was for certain; it would die, just like every other miserable one of its kind in this damnable castle.

Even so, he felt a brief flash of worry as he wondered just how long this was going to take.

Finally, however, after there was at least two score alien bodies lying in the pile (this little bastard was amazing!) the gnome fled, fighting its way through what few Outlandish Legionaries stood between it and the inner city. “Let him go,” Jericho barked at his men, who seemed disinclined to argue. Even so, by way of explanation, he merely looked down the streets and snarled, “Besides, we have to leave our good friend Abimelech some work, do we not?”

He then thought through the next stage of the plan. “Right,” he snarled, “Half of you pillage the houses; kill any gnomes who you find that aren’t gray, I don’t care how old or young they are. And don’t burn any of the dwellings; we’ll be needing them to provide our soldiers with shelter later on, you know. The rest of you, come with me; we’re to meet Abimelech and his command outside arrow-shot of the second wall in 0:300 hours.” He grinned maliciously, raising his cutlass in his right hand and cocking his flintlock pistol in his left. “Now let’s have some fucking fun, shall we? ”

~

Michael and the rest of the group ran on through the city, which, despite Jericho’s orders not to touch the buildings, was now practically roasting in the eyes of the gnomes. Abimelech had not taken into consideration that his troops would need shelter after the battle was over, and had thus given no orders not to burn the buildings. Thus hellfire had been summoned to consume a great number of houses, turning once comfortable, humble homes into food for flames that leapt to and consumed the roofs of nearby buildings. Although not all had been set alight, many had caught fire, and would soon spread their flames to the houses that hadn’t.

All in all, the effect all of this horror created made the gnomes feel like they were running through Hell.

The demons were not the only ones burning houses on purpose, though; Looking down one alley-way, Michael saw two warriors of the damned standing there, each holding a flame-thrower and each using their weapon to burn away the structures around. Both were dressed in tattered, green jungle camouflage, and neither seemed to have all that much skin left on their charred bodies. Even so, while one stayed silent due to the lack of a throat, the other hollered and screeched wildly as it might have while fighting in life. “Goddamn Japs!” it shrieked, “Fuck you slitty-eyed pigs! Fuck you!” It seemed at that moment that the gnomes running by caught its one remaining, bloodshot eye. Babbling incomprehensibly, it aimed its flame-thrower and shot a blast of flame at them as they ran past; only one was hit, and this one went down in a screaming, flaming pile. Michael couldn’t stand to look back as he kept running.

Suddenly, from an alley that let out about three and a half meters in front of the group of fleeing gnomes burst a large group of more damned warriors. They were all clad in chain mail, although some of their suits were missing large areas of links, some of their suits had sections of links welded together into large, flat clumps, and others still had their own armour pressed into their very skin. Each wore a tattered tunic with a red cross emblazoned almost mockingly upon it, and while some wore helmets others left their ghastly, tortured visages plain for all to see. This macabre group was led by a former paladin whose ironic battle-cry was “In the name of God and Christendom!” as he surged forward atop his wicked Hell-horse, swinging his mace and crushing a gnome’s skull as he did.

The gnomes had no other choice than to engage these monstrous warriors from Hell. They actually proved to be tougher than the demons; they had all the unholy strength of those with nothing left to lose – not even their soul – combined with the fact that they had fewer vital places to hit, so they were that much harder to kill. Michael found himself fighting one, who swung vehemently at him with a long, sharp blade that dwarfed his own puny pig-sticker. Michael screamed and hid beneath his shield, using it to deflect each blow. The creature’s strength was immense, however; every blow sent painful vibrations stabbing into the young gnome’s arm. And it wasn’t very stupid, either; after a few fruitless hacks, it had the sense to kick under the bottom of Michael’s shield, knocking it out of the way and bringing its own blade down again as it did…

And that was when Jon came shooting through the air, like the hero who always comes to the rescue at the last minute. He stabbed with both blades, one into the being’s head and one into its heart. The damned creature’s helmet and chain mail, already worn out and severely damaged, stood no chance; it died instantly, a sword piercing each of its two vital spots. Before it had even started to fall, Jon had kicked off of its body, back-flipping over the frightened Michael’s head to land on the ground with the agility of a cat. “Told you I’d be back,” he grunted as he leapt forward again, crying out as he swung wildly. Warriors of the damned toppled in mere seconds under his frenzied blows, and the half-dozen gnomes in the group who now remained after this latest skirmish took heart once more.

“Go for their heads and hearts!” Jon instructed as he decapitated one, pushing his sword through its chest just for good measure, then stabbed his free blade through another’s heart as it approached before pulling free his other blade and bringing it down in a long, sweeping arc to smash open the latest creature’s skull. Then, pulling himself free, he rolled back across the ground before righting himself and facing yet another foe. He traded a couple blows with this one before hacking the legs from beneath it and, as it toppled to its knees, stabbed his right and left blades into both its heart and head respectively. Then, kicking the corpse from his swords, he swung around to face the leader, whose Hell-horse reared and whinnied angrily.

Jon surged forward as the creature came down, slashing at him with its razor-sharp front hooves. He dodged both of these, then jumped up and swung at its neck. The unholy beast neighed in pain as its head was half severed from the rest of its body; “Fuck you, you fucking asshole!” it cursed as its body crumpled, dying, to the ground.

Jon gave the crusader atop its slain Hell-horse no chance to recover; jumping high up into the air, he came down with blades swinging. He managed to hack off the creature’s left arm with one blade, but the other only bounced off of his helmet. The former paladin swung his mace, but Jon leapt backwards, then came forward again, moving his blades in a scissor-like motion. Blood splotched (this isn’t a real word, but it describes the action quite well) as Jon cut the creature’s heart out, yet still he kept swinging his mace wildly as he dragged his own body from that of his fallen mount. Jon still had to take out the head, although obviously this one would be a bit more troublesome than the others…

He needn’t have bothered; the few remaining gnomes swarmed all over the creature, tearing him to pieces as he writhed and flailed about, trying to shake them off. In the end he was killed, although he did manage to take another gnome down with him.

Grunting a “Thank you,” to his companions, Jon looked about the streets. Buildings burned all around; the very heat of the hellfire seemed to be evaporating the sweat that beaded his body. The streets were now steadily filling up with squads of demons, hollow gnomes, alien soldiers, and warriors of the damned, who attacked and fought with groups of other fleeing gnomes. At least, they fought with those who could fight; innocents who knew nothing of soldiery were even now being cut down mercilessly, torn apart by the ruthless warriors of evil. Michael grimaced with unfettered fury; this could not be allowed to continue!

“Alright,” he barked at his gnomes, “Everybody follow me!” He led the six remaining gnomes in this group, Michael included, through the sweltering streets, a plan formulating in his mind as he did. He’d gather all the gnomes he could, save them from whatever enemies they were fighting, and soon enough there would be enough of them behind him to actually stand up against the demons. And then; then, well, they’d retreat back to the keep, where they could hold out for however long they needed to concoct some plan of escape. They ran headlong into another group of gnomes fighting a mix of demons and damned warriors. “Go for the hearts and heads!” Jon yelled as he leapt into the middle of the conflict, whirling both blades as he did. Heads flew, demons fell pierced through vital areas, warriors of the damned groaned as they were slashed apart. At the sight of this the other gnomes cheered and fought more vehemently than ever before; there was something about Jon, something that inspired others to reach their maximum potential. Whatever it was, though, gnome-kind was going to need a lot more of it if their race was to survive the rigors of warfare.

Soon the small group of demonic and undead looters had been crushed, and Jon’s force had been expanded by about twenty five, give or take a couple. “Come on, boys and girls,” the Sergeant shouted to the other gnomes, “There’s still more fighting to do!” Cheering at the sight of their hero, the gnomes followed him eagerly as he ran further down the street, headed towards the castle. Michael noticed that fear no longer haunted their eyes or, indeed, his own soul; it was as if he and all the rest had vested all of their hopes, all of their will, in the heroic sergeant. So long as he lived, their collective fighting spirit would survive as well.

But if he died…

Michael put that nasty thought out of mind. Jon was invincible; he couldn’t die! Everyone was counting on him not to! He had bashed up all of those awful monsters, surely he could find a way out of this situation for he and the rest of them! Michael gave himself a small, inward smile; good old Jon, he’d know what to do. He had to; he was their only hope now.

~

General Saul pressed his back against the side of an alley, his bloodied sword in hand. His chest heaved from his recent exertion; he may have been a general, but he was not one to place his troops in a position he would not place himself. He fought, just as they had, except he had the advantage of having fought before, and knew what to expect and how to deal with it. Even so, things were still looking grim, and although he could throw together a clever strategy in a few short moments, he had not the fighting skill of his best sergeant.

Saul was an elder gnome, a fellow with kindly eyes behind his big, round spectacles. One of these was now chipped, though, which somewhat impaired his vision; if they broke completely then he would be as a blind gnome groping about the battlefield as if it were pitch dark. He could only imagine what would happen then; in such a situation, there would be a million and one ways for death to find him…

With him stood what remained of his honoured body-guards. There was about fifteen of them left, male and female, and all looked frightened but determined. Some pressed their backs against the same wall as he, others the wall of the alley next to him. Right now the street that separated the two halves of the force was undergoing a blitz in its own right; damned warriors from Second World War advanced steadily up the street, firing randomly at whatever moved. Meanwhile, an occasional blast from their artillery tore through a nearby house, sending splinters and debris everywhere. A fighter from the First World War sped low over the ground, its gunner firing the plane’s machine gun at random as it did. Saul looked back at his soldiers, who stared back at him with understanding. They couldn’t hide from the enemies’ gunfire forever; eventually, the enemy would find them, and when that happened they would either fight or die.

“We’re right with you, sir,” one of the guards whispered to him, accompanied by nods and other affirmations from the others. Saul smiled back at them, nodding himself, then peeked just around the corner.

He drew his head back just before it could be blown through by a bullet.

“Right,” he hissed to the others, “They know we’re here; on my signal, we…”

No time for further orders; one of the soldiers pushed its skull-faced, deformed head around the corner and, with a single, skeletal claw, threw in a pin-less grenade. Not giving himself any time to think, Saul lunged forward, thrusting his blade through the thing’s macabre face and bursting out into the streets, his gnomes in tow. Heaving as hard as he could, he threw the still-struggling warrior of the damned over his head and into the alleyway, and then charged into the midst of the enemies. This was a reckless move, one which could have cost him his life as easily as it had saved him. However, it was at that moment that the grenade exploded, causing flames to burst out from the alleyway and hit the surrounding undead instead of him.

A frenzied battle between the gnomes and the warriors of the damned began in the streets. Saul met a Soviet soldier with a submachine gun head on; the creature, however, was more inclined to use its knife in close quarters, which was something of a blessing. Saul quickly knocked the blade from its hands with a single swing – the creature’s fingers were so decayed, its thumb flew right off! – and before the damned soldier could aim its fire-arm at him he scurried in close and stabbed the wretched creature again and again and again up through the gut. He guessed that he had probably hit it in the heart some time during the process, but nevertheless the former Soviet did not desist. It merely grabbed him by the hair with the remaining fingers on its unoccupied claw of a hand and hoisted him painfully from the ground until its eyes were staring madly into his own.

“For Mother Russia,” it jabbered, leveling its machine gun with his body. Saul gave it no time to do so, though; kicking away the firearm’s nozzle, he bought himself just enough time to swing wildly with his blade, hacking off the hideous creature’s head.

Without so much as a groan the creature died, crumpling to the ground as it dropped its machine gun. Saul wasted no time; grabbing the fallen firearm, he sheathed his own blade and rested the stock under his right armpit. I’ve seen enough to know how this works, he thought grimly, them fired it up into the heads of some of the damned warriors. He was alarmed by how violently the weapon itself reacted; he was blown clean off his feet by the sheer movement of the thing as it fired, yet still hung on as if for dear life. Some bullets hit the enemy, some bullets missed, but Saul took every precaution he could not to aim at the level of his own soldiers, lest one of them be caught in the uncontrollable stream of fire.

Pivoting around on his back, he tried to hold the submachine gun steady as he blasted several of the gruesome warriors back to Hell where they belonged. Soon the undead were retreating slowly but steadily, walking backwards and firing as they did. However, the five other surviving gnomes had also taken up the weapons of their fallen foes, and were now taking cover behind large boxes or barrels in the streets, lamp posts, the corners of alleyways, or whatever. Saul himself stopped firing long enough to run back to the alley he had come from, where he immediately started firing once more. He’d gotten the hang of how this weapon worked; an amazing – although undoubtedly awful – device, one which could potentially serve his people well in the war ahead. Assuming, of course, that anybody survived to give them such weaponry.

A sudden artillery blast tore through the bodies of two gnomes hiding behind a pile of crates, sending wooden splinters and other debris flying everywhere. Saul ducked back instinctively, then cried out angrily as he started to fire once more. The fighter-plane swooped in again, clearing the street of any of Saul’s gnomes who were left alive, leaving only him and one other, who was hiding in the alley opposite. The poor little gnome, a blue skinned, purple haired girl, gave him a worried look before aiming her rifle – comically large in hands like hers – and firing several times before a bullet from one of the undead took her straight between the eyes. Saul grit his teeth bitterly, unable to find a curse suitable for the feelings he felt now. He could see that they warriors of the damned were advancing once again; this street was lost to the enemy now. If only there was some way to escape…

As if feeling his thoughts, the earth beneath him rumbled sympathetically, then started to give way. At first Saul screamed and struggled, unable to figure out what was going on, but then he lay still and let the world do with him what it pleased. He remembered an earth he had trusted, and earth he had loved. An earth that, in his reckless, playful days as a child, had softened itself for him when he had jumped off of high places in the hope of flying, had sent in a gentle breeze to sing him to sleep when he had been lying alone in his bed, shivering for fear of Grumpy Dan under his bed. Hah, Grumpy Dan under his bed; even as a kid he had feared the monster, and now as an adult he had all the more reason to do so. He actually kind of wished that one day Grumpy Dan would appear under his bed, so long as he had this trusty submachine gun with him should that ever happen…

He felt a peculiar feeling in the earth that was ferrying him to wherever he was going, one that bordered on disapproval but seemed more caught up in the realm of concern. It was obvious that it did not like the bitter thoughts that clouded the elder gnome’s mind, but like a loving parent it showed not anger but deep, wondering concern and fear that these recent events were poisoning its child’s heart. Obviously he was not the only one whom the world was concerned for; millions upon millions of gnomes were probably feeling the effects of the evil being let loose upon these lands. He felt a brief flash of sorrowful empathy for the poor earth; how sad it truly must be…

~

Abimelech floated about three metres above the charred rubble of the north wall, directing his soldiers as they swarmed into the city. “Come on, you undead maggots,” he barked at a bunch of warriors of the damned, “Get those fucking tanks moving! And you,” he shouted at a demonic subcommander, “Take five squads and clear a path to the gate of the second wall! I don’t want anything getting in the way of these damned machines!" Like anything that did would live through it, Abimelech thought humorously, but even so he did not want to take a chance here. If strategy was what Grumpy Dan wanted, then strategy he would fucking well get. Even if it was all just a bunch of gay, pussy bullshit, he would comply with his master’s word if it cost him a million of his underlings’ lives!

“The rest of you cocksuckers,” he roared at his other demons, “Follow me! It’s time to do some fucking killing, see?” He hefted a monstrously huge machine gun in his right gauntleted claw and raised his sword in the left – the latter was a relatively simple – although unbelievably sharp – while the former was so huge it had to be held like a bazooka, and even then its very side rose five feet in the air above its holder. “We’ve got three hours before we need to meet Jericho, but and in that time, I want to see every fucking thing in this worthless city get wasted!”

The demons cheered raucously at this, waving their hand-to-hand weapons in the air, firing off their guns at random, and running pell-mell into the city, each and every one of them hell-bent (literally!) on its destruction. Abimelech roared gleefully as he himself blasted off in a cloud of acrid gas, blasting apart the surrounding buildings with his gigantic machine gun. He flew deeper and deeper into the city, trailing not only the fumes from the corrosive gas within his armour but also a long, steady flow of his own demonic minions. All the while, he fired his machine gun at anything that moved and looked like it wasn’t on his side; he was having the time of his life!

Suddenly, something way further down the street caught his eye. A sensation of fear and loathing surged through what was left of the Hell-General’s body; could it be? He concentrated harder with his remaining eye; it was! That little bastard of a gnome, the one who had torn his very own body in twain and cost him his eye…

Abimelech’s claws tightened around the handles of his weapons until he almost crushed them; that little bastard was slaughtering his warriors, too! “You’re mine, you little fucking fag,” he snarled before roaring with outrage as he rose higher and higher into the air, spiraling about so that the gas below him seemed to swirl upwards like a sick, green, corrosive twister. Then, high up above the height of even the walls, he let his voice boom throughout the city with infernal strength and loudness.

He said: “YOU GNOME, WHO HAS COST ME THE GREATER PORTION OF MY MORTAL BODY! IT IS I, ABIMELECH; I HAVE COME FOR YOUR HEAD!” He felt the eyes of many of the fighting creatures in the city – those of his target as well, he noted with a grin – cast themselves up upon him; by all that was dark and unholy, he felt strong! He could truly feel the strength of his new Hell-Armour, which seemed to draw a peculiar power of its own from the fear and awe he received from the pathetic mortals below. It was as if the armour itself relished in their terror just as much as he…

“PREPARE TO MEET YOUR DOOM!” he shouted before shooting like a rocket straight down at Sergeant Jon, who stood his ground, waiting with both blades drawn…

~

Jericho cackled wickedly as he hacked his bloody way through a group of gnomish defenders, swinging about his cutlass and occasionally firing his flintlock pistol. His soldiers followed close behind; they were larger, stronger, more skilful, and more numerous by far; this was hardly a challenge! Some warriors would have thought this battle not worth fighting, but Jericho’s opinion was exactly the opposite. He was the type of creature who reveled in the culling of weaker enemies, a creature who had gotten bullying down to an art. Lizarnians were predatory by nature, and what predator ever hunts for prey that is stronger than itself and its fellows?

Before he knew it, however, the gnomes were in retreat. He turned to three subordinates and barked, “You, you and you! Follow those gnomes! I’ve other matters to attend to!” The fact that these “other matters” were basically limited to finding some fresh meat that wasn’t running away did not enter his (nonexistent) explanation of the orders, but they were followed none the less.

The three who had been selected were a mixed up bunch, but such could only be expected from the Outlandish Legion. All three were scoundrels in their own right; the first of them was a bodekuk named Gob. He, like all the rest of his race, was a creature somewhere between amphibian and reptile, with a fat, frog-like belly, two tails, and a salamander-like head which came with three eyes and two big tusks jutting from his lower lip. Gob’s arms and legs had evolved for mobility outside of the swamps of his race’s origin, although they could still be used quite well for swimming and the like. Both pairs of limbs were long, thin and lean in contrast to the rest of his seemingly bloated body, although he was quite a strong being none the less. He wore leather armour atop a chain mail vest, and held a long pole-arm with an axe on one side of the head, a hook on the other, and a spear at the top. On his old home world he had been a thug employed by a despicable tyrant, whose downfall had left Gob banished and with a large bounty on his head. It was then, when all had seemed lost, that he had heard the call…

The next warrior was an oltan named Reba. Aside from his thick iron-leather (taken from a beast with amazingly tough skin and treated to make it more durable) coat and bandoleer connected by a Pentagram-bearing brooch, he’d have looked every inch the little green man from Mars. He had a large, ugly face with small, sharp teeth, almost human ears, and two large, bony ridges protruding slightly from each side of his head. His eyes were yellow save for the thin, catlike pupils, and his nose was but bump between a pair of slit-like nostrils. A long, slightly curved slashing sword was held firmly in his six fingered hand, which resembled a human hand save for the extra digit, and was also equipped with six long, sharp claws. Reba had originally come from a world which was much the same as Earth – in fact, it was named “T’Chok,” which is “Earth” in an old, dead language of theirs – which was inhabited by his race alone, aside from all the different species of animals. There had once been other semi-sentient races there, too, but they had been promptly wiped out before the planet’s history could be recorded by oltan scribes, who had, by that time, yet to come into existence. Reba’s race had evolved sentience as a “past-time,” if you will. With such inherent intelligence as possessed by themselves, combined with an innate ability to climb to higher places in order to evade danger for long periods of time, the oltans often became bored and started experimenting with their surroundings. Soon they began developing primitive tools, which gradually became more and more advanced. Then their people, still in the stone age, started expanding, and it was in this period that they wiped out all other contenders for the dominant life form of planet T’Chok. Once the oltans had gained enough land, however, they began to settle down into villages, which gradually developed into tribes, states, nations, and, with all of these, cities. And every city (on almost every planet) has a fine film of sludge on its boot that represents the criminal underground. It was to this low class of society that Reba had been born.

Reba had grown up fast – but not smart – under the leadership of a slough of gangsters, muggers, con artists, and even partakers in organized crime. In his life he moved from the gutter into an okay home – bought from ill-gotten gains, of course, and maintained through the money doted upon him by bosses who had enemies or debtors who they wished to “disappear.” “A happy worker does well his work,” or so the old oltan saying goes; the same often goes with hired thugs and killers. Reba’s life, however, soon took a drastic change when he had received the call…

The third and biggest one of the group of aliens was a hairy crocodile (his race was dubbed such because they had no word for their own kind – like the lizarnians, they only ever referred to themselves as “people”) named Hur. This nickname, although unflattering, was somewhat appropriate, for it described his racial characteristics well. While he could not be mistaken for anything other than a mammal, it was the long, broad, bumpy snout and predatory eyes that reminded everybody else of a river-dwelling reptile (this was not exactly a well-known fact, but just about every planet in the universe has managed to evolve something that resembles a crocodile). Actually, his race was omnivorous, and had evolved from some weird, horse-like being (whose head also resembled a crocodile’s) that had grazed in the planes and hunted some of the smaller creatures that dwelled there. His entire body, corded with powerful muscles as it was, was covered in mats of shaggy hair which weren’t quite thick enough to be called fur. As another racial characteristic, he had been born with a large hump and a long neck that sported two shaggy manes, one lining the top of his neck and the other lining the bottom. His large, callused, three-fingered hands held a primitive type of buzz-saw which was operated somewhat like the peddles of a bicycle; the non-dominant hand holds it steady while the dominant hand rotates the axle, which turns the chain that in turn rotates the large, circular saw. With powerful arms like his, this saw could be made to rotate so fast that it could penetrate armor, cut a hole in a wall, send enemies’ weapons flying from their very hands, and do absolutely gruesome damage to an undefended body. Hur wore a cuirass of hard leather armor, although he was not, to tell the truth, a very bright creature. He had been raised by a sect of fanatical terrorists, and had thus spent his entire life following their orders. He had did what they had said and killed who they had told him to without thought or consideration; facing him in combat was like facing a machine. And then, one day, he had received the call…

The three warriors had met soon after joining the Outlandish Legion, and instantly formed a tight comradeship. They were all pretty much alike; none of them were excessively smart (or even normally smart, or even smart at all), all of them had spent the better part of their lives following the orders of a higher commander without thought to reason or morality, and all had been toughened considerably by their respective pasts. Perhaps it was because they were so simple that they had formed this friendship without thought of either mistrusting or betraying one another for whatever reason. They all made excellent grunts, but it was doubtful that they would ever advance beyond that level.

These three warriors gave immediate chase to the retreating gnomes, all of them seeming to relish in the chance to do some real damage to the enemy. “’Ey Hur,” Gob barked in a rough New York accent, “Lemme have the first one, a’right? I wants to kill some o’ these damn fairy punks ‘fore this battle’s over!”

“Ah?” Reba squeaked in a high pitched New York accent that disturbingly resembled the ones used in 30s gangster movies on Earth (specifically, by the sort of characters who say things like “See?” and “Mrah,” every other sentence), continuing to give chase as he did, “You tellin’ me youse ain’t killed nuffin’ yet dis battle?”

“Nope,” Gob responded, “Axe ain’t got no blood on it yet, eh? ‘Ow ‘bout you?”

“Mrah,” Reba muttered dismissively, “Ain’t got th’ opportunity yet, see? Ow’s about you, Hur?”

“Duh,” Hur responded in the universal accent of moronic thugs everywhere (with – you guessed it! – a faint twinge of a New York accent), “I already gots’d five of ‘um; sorry.”

“Hah!” Gob gave him a playful slug on the arm with his shield as they continued running, “Don’t be ‘pologisin’ yet there, big guy; plenty tah go round, yah know?”

“Yeah,” Reba grinned toothily, “These lil’ guys’ve had it, see? We’s takin’ over this town, an’ there ain’t nuthin’ no lil’ green shits is gonna do ‘bout it, right fellas? Mrah!” “Da’s right,” Gob snickered before bellowing, “LOOK OUT!” Raising his shield as he did, he barreled into Hur just in time to catch an arrow from a gnome who had turned around and fired his bow. As he did he jabbed out with his halberd, catching the poor little creature through the neck with the weapon’s spear-head. “Hah! Gotcha, yah lil’ twirp!” he laughed, and the chase continued. At the end of the street the gnomes stopped and made another stand. A bad mistake; Hur barreled right into them, pumping his buzz-saw with all his might. Weapons that clashed with the quickly rotating blade and were thrown far and fast by the weapon’s very force, hafts of spears and shields splintered, armour broke and blood squirted. Meanwhile, Reba cried out joyously as he jumped at a gnome, swinging his blade. The gnome blocked the first slash, but was unprepared for when the street-fighting alien kicked him in the crotch, then decapitated the poor being with another blow. Gob swung out with his pole-arm, slicing through the chest cavity of one with the axe blade, then pulled it back, skewering another with the hook. “All right!” he cried exuberantly, spinning the shaft of his weapon with unexpected expertise, “Dig this, youse guys!” The lashed out again, catching a gnome a hard blow to the jaw with the butt end of the weapon before bringing the other end about to strike the killer blow.

Reba finished stabbing a wounded gnome on the ground through the chest, then looked up and slashed outwards just in time to slit the throat of another advancing enemy. “That’s three fer me,” he called to his companions, then noticed, “’Eh! They’s runnin’ away again, see?”

“Aw, already?” Gob cackled, “Man, an’ I was just startin’ to enjoy myself!”

“Eh! Where youse guys goin’, ah?” Reba called mockingly as the group gave chase once more, “This party’s just gettin’ started, see… Holy crap!” “What’s wrong with…” Hur began.

“Otha way, man, otha way,” Gob grabbed Hur and spun him around, “We ain’t gettin’ paid enough to deal wi’ shit like dis!” All three aliens then truned tail and ran from a large force of gnomes that had appeared from around a corner and started running in their direction. At the head of this large pack, unbeknownst to Gob, Reba and Hur, ran Michael, who found himself, for the first time in his life, filling the roll of leader for a large group of other gnomes. Michael was as excited as he was unsure about this new, honourable charge; words could not describe the pride he had felt when Sergeant Jon had chosen him to lead those gnomes he had managed to rally to the gates of Castle Pippernil’s second wall. Even so, despite this unexpected honour, Michael was unsure of his ability to bear this mighty task; what if something went wrong, and he couldn’t do what Jon had asked? What if right now a huge army of demons or warriors of the damned or whatever appeared, and he didn’t have nearly the courage or fighting skill of the heroic sergeant to fight them off? Fortunately, such had not occurred; the large group had penetrated quite far into the city, and there was much less fighting here. They still came across the occasional group of warring combatants, but these were growing far fewer as they went on, and the enemies usually fled at the sight of such a large force, which would be immediately joined by any gnomes who it came across.

Even so, despite the rapidly growing numbers of the small army behind him, Michael held no delusions as to how it would fare against the rest of the enemy’s forces. He knew that there was far more of the forces of evil in this city at the moment than the forces of good, and he also recognized that it would suicide (although he was not familiar with the actual term itself) to go back and fight them all, even with this army. No, better to do what Jon said; he was the heroic sergeant, he knew what was best for everybody. All their hopes rested in him, now…

But where was he, anyway?

~

Abimelech and Sergeant Jon circled one another warily, each sizing up the other a had the attacking and defending armies during the beginning of the siege. Occasionally a demon or alien would run by, and if it came too close to the gnomish warrior it would be disposed of without Jon even breaking his stride. Other than a few interruptions of that sort, all was silent between the two combatants to be.

Finally, Abimelech spoke. “You know,” he grinned with every fang in his wicked mouth, “You’re gonna fuckin’ pay for what you did to me, right?”

“Phooey on you, too,” Sergeant Jon retorted in an incredibly childish manner, “You deserved a lot more than I gave you, you mean, ugly demon, you!”

“Hah!” Abimelech cackled horkingly, “’Phooey on you,’ you sound like a fucking child, man! Huh; sorta reminds me of a Greek poem I heard a while back, tell me if you know about this one,” He raised his gigantic machine gun and leveled it with the brave little blue gnome. “It’s the one where the pussy-pants little cunt who talks like a baby gets blasted all to shit with a million fucking bullets! Does that ring a bell, you little cweef-maker?”

And then the air was pounding with the sounds of unholy gunfire. Abimelech laughed insanely as he blasted everything – crates, buildings, even the street itself – where Jon had been standing into molten wreckage under a hot storm of bullets. Finally, after a while, he lowered his machine gun and glared in satisfaction at what he had just done; ah, revenge was sweet…

Suddenly, some hellish instinct caused Abimelech to turn around, holding up his blade as he did. He had raised his sword just in time to catch a blow from Sergeant Jon, who had somehow managed to maneuver around him without the Hell-General’s even knowing. Indeed, this gnome was better than Abimelech could have guessed; how had he appeared so suddenly in this exact spot?

“You just don’t get it, do you?” Abimelech snarled, pushing Jon away with a push of his blade and advancing steadily upon the gnome. He swung down at him, but Jon dodged out of the way, jumped up with both swords in hand, and swung down at the demon. Abimelech blocked both at the same time, then swung at him with the giant machine gun (the enemy was too close to actually use the weapon). Jon, however, leapt up onto the top of the machine gun, did a somersault in the air as he jumped off of it, and came straight back down at the Hell-General, who merely dodged sideways, letting Jon fall face-first into the ground. The street, however, seemed to instantly turn to jelly beneath him, breaking the gnome’s fall and turning him right side up once again as it did. Once again, Jon stood facing an increasingly enraged Abimelech, both swords ready and poised in the fighting stance.

“Tell me,” Abimelech snarled, “Just what the fuck is so difficult to understand here?” With a roar, he started firing his machine gun, which bellowed just as loudly as he fired it repeatedly at Sergeant Jon, who continually ducked and dodged out of its line of fire. “I,” Abimelech continued to roar as did his machine gun, “Am a demon, a warrior and general of Hell itself! You are a pathetic, worthless, insignificant, insubstantial, useless little gnome who just doesn’t know that he’s supposed to be fucking dead right now! What the fuck is the problem you have in understanding that, you fucking little retard douchebag?”

Jon, however, said not a word; rather, he continued ducking and dodging, gradually maneuvering closer and closer to his foe before jumping high up into the air and sheathing his sword as he did. In its place he pulled out his axe and, landing on the top of the machine gun, started hacking his way down into the gun itself. For a while, Abimelech just stared in shock; how was that even bloody possible? I mean, that gun was three feet thick, like a box of solid steel on the outside, and within contained who knew how many pounds of machinery and ammunition, and this creature was tearing through it with a puny wood-cutter! How in the Hell…?

Suddenly Jon burst out the side, screaming angrily and swinging down at Abimelech’s head. Abimelech threw away the gun and jabbed with his sword, knocking the swinging axe away and off-balancing the gnomish warrior. Jon fell to the ground, which predictably softened beneath him, then rolled out of the way as Abimelech swung down at him. Then he lunged forward, slashing and hacking with sword and axe at the same time, valiantly trying to destroy Abimelech’s hard, thick Hell-Armour. His effort was a worthy one, although innately futile in nature; the demon’s new casing was much harder and sturdier than had been his old body. Eventually Abimelech swung out with his blade, trying (but failing) to skewer his combatant, then shot up into the air and blew a cloud of corrosive gas down from the bottom of his cuirass at the smaller foe. Sergeant Jon, however, merely jumped out of the way just in time and circled around on the street, holding both of his weapons warily.

Abimelech guffawed mockingly at the brave little being’s show of determination. “I would almost start to admire you for the way that you have fought upon this day,” his wicked voice boomed, “But then I merely remind myself that you are nothing but a little twirp of a pussy blue gnome who slashed me in twain a couple of weeks ago! Do not think that you shall do so again, however; luck has favored you once, and hellfire never burns twice in the same spot!” (The reason for this being that, when hellfire burns something in a certain spot, everything that it can burn instantly does start to burn, and very few things can put it out. Hence, when hellfire is done burning in any given spot at any given time, whatever it can burn is always completely burnt away, leaving nothing left for the hellfire to burn a second time.) “You had best give yourself up now, little gnome, while I am still inclined to dote upon you a quick and comparatively painless death!”

“Like I said earlier,” Jon retorted angrily, ‘Phooey on you! I beat you up and sent your demons packing once, and I’ll do it again just as easy!”

Abimelech stared for a while, as if shocked that the gnome had rejected his offer. Then, slowly, he started to snicker. Then he started to chuckle. And then he started to guffaw. And then he started to cough and cackle. And then he started to laugh so loudly that it seemed to shake the very buildings around and even the ground itself. “Very well, then,” Abimelech laughed cruelly, “I applaud your bravery, but you leave me little to compliment you on where your brains are concerned! And now, I am afraid that you, you cock-sucking little douche-shrew, are about to learn the meaning of pain!” Abimelech pointed on the ground several meters down the street, where a mass of demons mixed in with warriors of the damned were steadily advancing. Over the tops of their heads, Jon could see one hulking, rumbling machine made up entirely of blocky metal armour which, had he been a human, he would have recognized as a tank (specifically, a Northern Viet Namese tank from the Viet Nam War, but such minor details are quite unnecessary). Abimelech’s malicious grin widened as he noted a hint of shock in Sergeant Jon’s eyes, and then, pointing down at him as if he were condemning the young creature to some awful fate (which, in a way, he was trying to do) he boomed, “My warriors! Take this impudent wretch alive! I am going to fucking torture him until his skin itself turns into blood!”

“Just try it, doo-doo brains!” Jon cried as he leapt into the midst of the enemies, swinging his sword and axe with the same deadly precision and speed as he had during so many other instances throughout the duration of this siege. The first to die was an ugly demon whose bumpy gray body was dotted here and there with patches of dark fur and spikes. Jon stabbed him through the heart with his sword, pushing the body backwards as he did so in order to somersault through the air to face the next opponent. As he did so, he brought his axe a-swinging into the next creature’s ugly, pig-like face, then kicked off of its chest with his left foot and soared in the direction of another demon, hacking off the head of a warrior of the damned as he did so. He skewered the demon he had originally targeted, then pulled free his blade as he alighted once again upon the ground, letting the beast fall back. With that he ran at the damned warrior’s legs, cutting them out from under it with a swing of his axe, and with a downward thrust of his blade he pierced the still-writhing and groping undead being’s heart. Then he looked up to stare down the nozzle of a demon’s machine gun…

If he had been any other gnome, this would have been where his story ended. But the fact still remained that he was Sergeant Jon. As a result, a few blindingly quick movements saw the demon riddled with bullets from its own gun, and the heroic gnomish sergeant holding a very, very dangerous weapon indeed.

Watching from high up in the air, Abimelech could not help but gulp involuntarily as he watched the gnome get used to the feel of the gun in his hands, while the demons and warriors of the damned just kept their distance, holding their breaths (if they were demons – the undead do not need to breath) and waiting for his next move. “Oh shit,” he muttered, then yelled, “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU FOOLS WAITING FOR? FUCKING KILL HIM… Oh, cock and balls.”

“BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA!” Demons screamed and roared painfully as they fell, clutching futilely at the blood pouring free from the dozens of bullet holes that now riddled their bodies. A few warriors of the damned even fell, although they had fewer vital spots, and Jon had not necessarily been aiming his gun the first time he fired it. “BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA!” Even more demons and warriors of the damned fell, causing blood to wash down the street like a river. Abimelech shook his head; oh, these incompetent morons… ”BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA!” by now his gun was empty, but the damage had been done. The demons were in full retreat; their own infernal sergeants might have made some effort to quell their desperate flight, but these demons were already either dead to the last or fighting to flee ahead of their other comrades (as the old saying goes, “I do not have to outrun the bear; I shall do well enough if I can but outrun you.”). A few warriors of the damned, damaged but still standing, were still alive (the term is used loosely here), and their tanks continued to trundle slowly forward, a sluggish beast, yet as unstoppable as a juggernaut.

Jon cast his empty machine gun to the ground, then hurled his axe at a warrior of the damned, taking him through the face. The creature fell – its heart had already been pierced by a bullet – as Jon unsheathed both blades and leapt at the next one. With this furious leap he put into action his patented stab to both the heart and the head simultaneously, then kicked out as another attacked him, catching it in the jaw and sending the damned warrior spinning around. Then, pulling free his blades, he jumped over the head of one warrior of the damned and onto the chest of another, plunging his sword into its heart with his right blade while sweeping its head off with his left. He used the momentum of the swing to carry himself around, hacking off the head of the other undead creature before pushing off from his most previous foe’s still standing body, lunging forward and thrusting his blade through the other enemy’s back and into its heart. It was then that another warrior of the damned, somewhat less damaged and disoriented than the others, took a swing at him with its machete. Jon blocked the blow, then hacked out, splitting the undead being’s skull. Even so, the thing did not die; its heart would have to fail next.

Leaping in circles about the furiously hacking and slashing creature, Jon steadily started to tear off bits of it with his own two whirling blades, until after no long amount of time the unholy creature lay in a heap of body fragments. Idly dispatching the warrior of the damned he had given a blow across the jaw to, Sergeant Jon scowled up at Abimelech, who glared foully back down at him in turn. “You’re next, you know,” Jon growled, “And if you don’t come down here, then I’m coming up there!”

At first, Abimelech’s already hideous features contorted into an even angrier scowl, but then a small glimmer of a smirk lit up the demon’s wicked jaws. He chuckled, horked, then started laughing raucously, pointing at something behind Jon. Somewhat confused, the heroic gnomish sergeant turned around just in time to see the huge tank bearing down upon him…

And then the earth gave way beneath his feet.

~

High up in the air, Abimelech roared with triumphant laughter as the large, cantankerous tank trundled over the spot where Sergeant Jon had once stood. Actually, the Hell-General noted with malicious glee, he probably was still in the same place, only a good deal flatter – and bloodier – than he had used to have been. Hah, what a glorious day! A staging ground for Grumpy Dan’s operations secured and Abimelech’s own personal ambitions for revenge fulfilled, all in one fell swoop! This was indeed a day to be remembered fondly once this entire wretched world was clutched, writhing, in the infernally powerful claws of Hell…

Suddenly, the tank stopped. Raising a questioning brow, Abimelech watched as the mighty war engine bumped and rattled about, then lay still. “What the fuck?” he muttered before the tank’s hatch popped open, revealing…

“No fucking way.” Abimelech grunted, a look of unmistakable perplexity etching itself upon his face for the first time in a long, long while.

Indeed Abimelech was right to be so shocked, for staring up at him from the tank’s hatch was the battered yet still living face of Sergeant Jon, whose tight, stern mouth now bore a confidant smirk. A nutshell-shaped soldier’s helmet from one of the now dead warriors of the damned within the tank rested lopsidedly atop the brave little gnome’s head, at least two sizes too large for the diminutive creature. Even so, Sergeant Jon’s eyes shone with some sort of passionate fire, the likes of which sent a shiver up Abimelech’s – well, considering what had been taken away from him during his melding into the Hell-Armour, he was no longer sure as to whether or not he still literally had a spine, but never the less some odd glimmer of fear was now welling up within his unholy being.

And then he noticed it. While his attention had been totally fixated on the seemingly back from the dead Sergeant Jon, the wicked Hell-General had totally ignored the fact that the large cannon mounted atop the tank had been slowly aiming at him.

“Take this,” Jon grinned as the tank’s main gun fired, taking Abimelech straight in the chest. The demonic general screamed as the force of the shot sent painful vibrations wracking his entire form; for a while, he thought that this was it, a fatal blow had finally been struck. However, after a few short minutes he regained his composure, and steadied himself floating once again in the air. It was at this time that uncontrollable anger and loathing started welling up inside his wicked, black heart. Glaring down once again at his foe, he suddenly noticed something very, very, very unsettling.

That something, of course, being that Sergeant Jon seemed to have just recently figured out how to operate the tank’s machine gun.

“Oh balls…” Abimelech swore before screaming aloud as bullets started blasting into his Hell-Armour. After a while, however, he stopped screaming and became used to the vibrations, which, in retrospect, actually weren’t that bad. Hah, the puny little bullets were just going “pink pink pink” against his hellfire-hardened cuirass; putting both hands on his sides, he laughed with mocking confidence at Sergeant Jon’s feeble attempts at his destruction. Foolish gnome; he would have better stuck to using those two swords of his…

~

Meanwhile, down in the tank, Sergeant Jon swore vehemently. “Fiddle sticks,” he snarled as he fired the machine gun, “Oh, darn it all to heck; how do I aim this darn thing higher…ah!” Now it was he who was wearing a face full of grin, for soon enough Abimelech’s ugly face would be quite full enough with lead.

~

Abimelech didn’t know what had hit him; he would never have expected something of this sort, but in retrospect he should have. Many denizens of a certain far-off world advocate the use of a helmet before going out to ride on one’s bicycle, and about now, Abimelech could have applied such unexpectedly wise advice to entering battle, as well.

Too late for that, though; Abimelech fell to the ground, his face blasted mercilessly by a shower of machine gun bullets.

Sergeant Jon watched with satisfaction as his enemy fell, but soon found his celebration to be premature. For, a mere moment after Abimelech hit the ground, his Hell-Armour started to pulse with unholy sin-light. The sound of low wailing filled the air, sending a cold tingle down the little gnome’s spine while his eyes stayed rapt upon the unfolding spectacle. He could not identify exactly what it was, but Abimelech’s unholy armour seemed to be drawing power from some indiscernible source and channeling it into the wearer itself. As Jon’s fear grew, though, so too did the power flowing back into Abimelech’s broken form.

And then, the seemingly dead Hell-General started to move.

Sergeant Jon stared in shock and horror as Abimelech, his face still scarred and bloodied from the hail of machine gun bullets, floated once again up into the air, the green miasma beneath him looking twice as powerfully pungent as ever before. Indeed, the demon’s face was in quite a state of confusion; it grinned with malicious triumph while at the same time giving the impression of unholy, livid rage which was soon to be unchained.

“You,” the Hell-General’s voice boomed loudly, “My little gnomish friend, are FUCKED!”

“YAAAAAGH!” Sergeant Jon cried, frustration and fear mingling in his voice. “BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA!” his machine gun roared, nearly drowning out the sound of his own screaming. Still, the bullets seemed to have even less of an effect than they had before; Abimelech merely laughed raucously as they pinked and pattered off of his mighty Hell-Armour, which fed his wicked life force even more power as it healed the wounds left by the newest blows to his face. It was but an inevitability that Jon would run out of bullets eventually, and when he did he could not but stare at Abimelech, who floated high in the sky, completely unfazed.

“Is that all that you have, you little ass fag?” Abimelech grinned, “Well, then; I suppose that means that it’s my turn!”

Raising his gauntleted right hand, he chanted several words in a tongue too unnatural for mortals to understand, let alone pronounce (Latin). And then, lo and behold, his claw was soon glowing with infernal black fire. Cackling wickedly, he then hurled the flame itself down at the tank, which then began to rapidly melt into liquid metal, which consequentially began to boil and evaporate into burning steam.

Had Jon not jumped out and away just before this had happened, such a fate may well have befallen him, too.

Abimelech laughed as Sergeant Jon circled about on the ground, edging away from the skin-popping heat of the wrecked tank. “You like that, you little cock-sucker?” he roared, calling into being another black flame about his gauntleted claw, “How about you have some more? HAH!” He hurled it down at the gnome, who leapt out of the way just in time to avoid melting and evaporating with a large portion of the street. Then he began to run away, followed by a viciously laughing Abimelech.

“Where are you going?” the demonic general called mockingly, “That’s just a fucking appetizer! Wait until my new armour and I serve up the main course!” He raised his sword high, chanting several words in some unnatural, demonic language (once again, Latin) as a tornado of silently wailing, screaming faces began to coalesce like a fine mist about the blade. Then he pointed it down at Sergeant Jon and, incanting one last unholy syllable, sent a whirlwind of despair, misery and fear down to consume the poor gnomish hero.

Sergeant Jon was caught dead in his tracks; all around him were wailing, moaning, weeping, screaming faces, all of their silent cries of anguish growing so loud in his ears that it was all he could do not to succumb to grief and join them to live in misery for the rest of eternity. It was then that the little jewel in his pocket seemed to pulse with energy, and instantly he was reminded of everything he had once known; all his friends, all his family, the sweet, unspoiled land, the happy towns full of happy people, the general happiness felt by the entire world…

Abimelech, however, had been prepared for this. Using his own unholy powers, he forced Sergeant Jon to once again live through the brutal death of each and every friend that had fallen to the forces of Hell, how the war had separated himself from his family. He reminded Jon of how the taint of evil had soured and despoiled the once sweet, unspoiled land, and how even now Hell’s influence was both directly and indirectly destroying and poisoning the bodies and minds of people everywhere upon this entire world…

“And now,” Abimelech grinned, maintaining the awful whirlwind while at the same time calling into being a final, wicked magical spell, “It’s time for some fucking desert…”

“STOP!” something barreled into Abimelech from out of nowhere, breaking his concentration and spell while at the same time sending him flying into the nearest building. He smashed through the wall, but soon righted himself and, flying through the hole his body had made, stared in outright disgust and loathing at the wondrous being that now hovered right before his eyes.

“Fucking porcupine’s balls,” he swore, “You’re a fucking angel, aren’t you?”

The magnificent creature said not a word; rather, beating his magnificent wings that shone like driven snow in the sunlight, the angel swooped steadily forward, his alabaster armour gleaming despite the permeating gloom all around. He raised a blade of blindingly shining metal, then swung it at Abimelech, who blocked with his own unholy sword. Sparks flew as metal clashed again and again while both combatants circled about in mid-air, each trying to either get past the other’s defenses or shatter the other’s blade altogether. Abimelech felt no fear here; rather, through the mists of disgust and hatred, he saw the perfect opportunity to once again truly prove himself in the eyes of those that even he called superior by besting this impudent thing. He had waited his entire long life to have the chance to engage the natural enemy of all demons, and would not turn it up when finally it came!

“This isn’t your fight, little angel,” Abimelech snarled as he and the angel continued their aerial duel, “Why don’t you flutter off and play ass-grab with all of your other little faggot friends, hmm?”

“You shall not harm the champions of this world,” the angel spoke finally, still trading blows with the wicked Hell-General, “I am the Herald, and I am here to see to it that this world is cleansed once more.”

“Hah!” Abimelech laughed, “So that makes you the damn garbage man, huh? Oh man, I can’t believe I’m fighting a fucking janitor!” An especially forceful blow knocked Herald back momentarily, allowing Abimelech to press his advantage. Fortunately, though, the angel ducked under the demon’s next swipe and lashed out with his own blade, tearing a shallow cut in the beast’s armour. Even so, despite the minimal depth of the scratch, Abimelech howled in pain as the heavenly blade came in contact with the Hell-Armour; this was a scar on his breastplate that could never be repaired.

“Son of a bitch,” the Hell-General snarled, “You will pay for that!” Roaring, he lunged forward, swinging his blade wildly.

Jon, however, who had just recovered from his miserable stupor, looked up at the aerial duel with rapt wonderment. He soon shook it off, though; whatever that nice creature up there was, it needed his help if it was to beat that awful demon. His mouth tightening once again with grim determination, Jon unsheathed both blades and ran into the nearest house, shot up the broken stairs to the second floor. Then, sheathing his swords once again, he scrambled onto the roof and stood there, watching the angel and the demon dog-fighting it out several metres away and only a few feet above the current level of his head.

Sergeant Jon then unsheathed the little dagger in his belt and held it up by the blade. Taking careful aim lest he hit the angel, he concentrated on the ever turning-about demon and, finally, when he felt the moment to be exactly right, he let fly…

Jon could not have possibly known how Abimelech had sensed his intentions, but somehow the demon had. Still fighting off the angel with one hand, the Hell-General held out the other and spewed forth a ball of hellfire that consumed the blade and carried on towards the little gnomish sergeant, its flames warping and twisting into some hellishly frightening beast as it did. Herald, however, swooped around Abimelech and the fireball with lightning speed in order to pick up the small sergeant and carry him away just before the infernal flames hit and consumed the roof of the house he had been standing on. Abimelech watched the two go; at first he considered pursuing them, but soon realized that he had not the speed nor, although he hated to admit it, the strength. Spitting harshly, angry at being deprived of both his vengeance and his opportunity to kill an angel, he shouted after them, “Cowards! Fly away with your tails between your legs, you puling wretches! But know this; this entire fucking universe isn’t big enough to hide from me! I shall find and kill you, you bastard gnome, and pluck the fucking feathers from your little angel bitch when I’m done! Do you hear me, you weaklings? You shall never escape my wrath!”

Still muttering angrily, his mind fixated upon bitter thought, Abimelech returned once more to ground level, where he once again let the old malicious grin creep across his ugly, demonic face. There was still work to be done here; there were still many more gnomes here for the killing, and he didn’t want to miss out on a second of it!

~

It took only a few hours for the entire city outside of the second wall to fall to the invading army. Messengers were sent to the Hell-Generals Sihon, Rekem and Asheara as well as to General Zur of the Outlandish Legion, ordering them to move their forces forward past their respective walls and make sure that the city had been completely wiped clean of any of its original inhabitants. Then, once this was done, the taking of the second wall could commence as planned.

Jericho waited impatiently on the street that led to the gates of the second wall, just out of the gnomish archers’ range. The lizarnian general wanted to take not a single chance with his life; he could see the bodies of aliens and demons here and there who had ventured too near to the second wall, prompting the defenders to take a couple of pot shots. He had even seen a few of the foolish warriors die himself, and quite frankly he felt no real sympathy for them; they had done something stupid and deserved to die. As far as he was concerned, there were thousands upon thousands more where those few had come from, and while such remained a solid fact, all of their lives were as worthless and expendable as common muck. Every communist worth his salt knows that.

It was then that a pack of warriors of the damned came charging up the street, shouting and hollering wild, maddened battle cries. They had once been from an ancient Germanic tribe, and although some still wore the frayed, tattered pelts of dead animals, most ran naked into battle, the skin flayed from their brutally pierced and mutilated bodies. Many even had woad war paint tattooed to their very muscles, or else burned straight into their forms. They shrieked their olden war cries in voices that ranged from shrill and screechy to low and moaning, but all hit the same octave in the end; disturbing.

“What the fuck are you lot doing?” Jericho barked at them, “Get back here this instant, you mindless cadavers!” Surprisingly, they stopped instantly and obeyed without a question, despite the arrows now flitting through the sky and into their bodies. Fortunately, due to their lack of vital body parts, few actually collapsed under the hail of projectiles, although those who came back did somewhat resemble pin cushions. Jericho sighed irritably; he may not have been the only creature in the Outlandish Legion who was more than a bit disturbed by these foul abominations, but he did have even more reason for being so. These… things went against every logical fiber in his body, causing his fanatically atheist mind to scream at him that this did not make sense, that it should not be. How could the dead possibly walk? Such was stuff and nonsense from religious texts and legends and what not, certainly such an anomaly could take place in real life? Maybe they merely have some sort of disease, some chronic skin condition… Oh come on, was that the best explanation he could come up with? Even if they actually were alive, how could anything in the same physical condition as these “undead” warriors possibly even walk, let alone fight in a full-scale battle?

Perhaps their condition renders their pain nerves numb, and causes a slow degeneration of the brain, which would account for their mindless actions and disturbing babble… Which still did not explain why they were so damnably hard to kill! He had seen several of the abominable creatures walking past with only a slow ooze of blood dripping down from lost limbs, or their guts completely torn out, or even worse, yet they paid such injuries not a single thought. Jericho had even seen one with the side of its head cleft right off and its brain a scrambled-up jumble inside, yet still it continued to fight with skill and technique until a gnome’s spear had pierced its heart, at which point the automaton collapsed without a sound. Even the idea of death throes could not have explained that!

And another thing; just how the fuck did one explain the bizarre range of weaponry and armour held and worn by these so-called warriors of the damned? They were all of the same race, that much was for certain, but apparently they were all from different epochs of their people’s history. Some were primitive in the extreme, carrying stone mallets and rocks. Others were from various other eras of war, obviously waged with such weapons as swords and bows for the most part. In fact, there was even some whose weaponry and manner of clothing suggested that they hailed from a period of technology very similar to the one which was currently being undergone by the lizarnian race. But there were others, too…

Jericho had been absolutely stunned at his first sight of certain parts of these damned warriors’ technology. Guns that fired dozens of successive shots within scant seconds. Tanks that trundled forward with steady, unstoppable force, crushing all within their path and blasting at everything else with their big top-mounted cannons. Fighter planes that brought to life the dream of mechanized flight only dreamed of on Jericho’s home world. All of these culminated together in order to create a truly awesome, truly terrifying spectacle that had dazzled his mind, filling him with visions of an army under his command bearing reproduced and improved versions of such weapons as these. It was a pity that Grumpy Dan had not thought to mass-produce these advanced weapons for distribution among the entire army, but perhaps it was for the best. Such devices required training, after all, and besides, a rapidly firing machine gun in a rival’s hand would kill him just as well as it would kill them in his own. No, for now it would be best to just wait around and see where the situation would take him.

Even so, Jericho was astounded at just how many warriors there were. On the world he had come from, most of the fighting was done behind closed doors, or at least brawled out in the streets. Very few actual wars like the ones that had ferried him in and out of a position of power had happened at any large scale throughout his planet’s history; for the most part, large armies were kept in order to stare down at other nations, to subtly cow them into submission. On whatever world these warriors of the damned had come from, however, the only explanation for their sheer numbers was that war was some sort of sport to them! Either that or they were at least as violent and ornery as the demons who had brought them here, but even so, there was so many… If what Jericho had been told was true, and these were warriors from every war during their race’s history, then surely the explanation for so much of their primitive weaponry must have been due to more time spent at war than creating new means of advancement. By the – damn, what can an atheist say here? – stuff, hopefully their race would never come in contact with his! With these things’ violent nature and advanced technology, coupled with an all too apparent eagerness to use it, they would tear his race apart before he could go back and conquer it himself! Hopefully there was enough space between their two worlds to keep both races good and far apart!

Finally, however, something else came along to distract Jericho’s attention; floating atop a corrosive green miasma up the street and followed by a steady line of those awesomely destructive tanks came Abimelech, covered in blood but smirking with satisfaction. Jericho snarled at the Hell-General’s smile; “You are late, you toad in a tin can; for one so eager to do battle with the foes of his master, you seem to hang back quite a bit.”

Just as Jericho had wanted, this struck a cord with the demonic warrior. “Wretch,” Abimelech spat angrily, shaking a bloody, gauntleted fist before his face, “Fucking cock sucking little maggot of a lizard! Do you dare to presume to call me a coward?”

“Not at all,” Jericho raised his claws in a mocking display of mild submission but grinning with every gleaming fang all the while, “I merely noted that I saw quite little of you during the actual fighting, although that could be attributed to the fact that you surely must have been elsewhere. Even so, I must ask exactly what you have been doing while our brave warriors fought and died under the banners of our armies. An acceptable proposal, is it not?”

“Fuck you,” Abimelech snarled, hoisting up his bloodied blade, “You see this? I’ve killed more of those fucking gnome bastards with this blade alone than you probably have with your claw, cutlass and that pussy little toy gun of yours!” Abimelech seemed to notice the flinch of irritation that twitched across Jericho’s face as he clenched his claw around the flintlock pistol. Emboldened once more, the demon then continued, “So do not dare to doubt the worth in combat of a Hell-General such as myself!”

Jericho glared momentarily, then slapped on a cheerful grin. “Very good,” he quipped merrily, as if carrying out a cheerful conversation, “So, tell me, did you ever manage find that pesky little twirp who, by sheer luck, I am sure, managed to draw and quarter you before taking one of your eyes out during your last little confrontation?” Only encouraged by the look of smoldering, murderous anger in Abimelech’s eye, Jericho continued airily, “Am I right in assuming that you were now able to find him and crush him like a tiny little maggot, then? Or was he merely unable to kick your ass a second time by virtue of the fact that you no longer have one…”

Roaring with infernal rage, Abimelech swung forward his gauntleted right claw and seemed to effortlessly pick Jericho up by the throat. Gasping in shock, Jericho motioned for his troops to aid him, which they did. The first two to approach the Hell-General were cut down by his very own blade while still holding the alien commander in the other hand. It was then that a group of demons backing Abimelech up jumped into the fight, roaring wildly as they fired randomly with their infernal guns and laid into the alien soldiers with big, heavy melee weapons. The warriors of the Outlandish Legion, however, were not to be forced into submission by these lowlifes; those nearest to Jericho launched themselves into the battle, ripping and tearing about with their many bizarre killing implements.

The only thing that stopped an all-out brawl from breaking out was a squad of giant devil enforcers who had come carrying between them a litter that bore the monstrously fat form of Rekem. Upon his order they had laid him reverentially upon the ground, then, taking unusual care not to crush any of the servants currently attending their Hell-General’s ravenous appetite, they had entered the melee and separated the two soon to be warring factions. Jericho could not help but squeeze out a pained, triumphant smirk as one of the devils forced Abimelech to let him go, although this was somewhat diminished when the Hell-General killed the unholy enforcer with a single stroke from his blade. Then, glaring heatedly at the still half-strangled lizarnian, Abimelech had floated off to converse with Rekem.

~

Jon met up again with Michael atop the second wall, clapping his hands enthusiastically and expressing how wonderful it was to see the other young gnome alive. “You look like you’ve been through Hell and back,” Jon said, filled with relieved excitement at having survived the battle, “But you got the job done, right? You got all the gnomes you could and brought them all here, eh?”

“Well,” Michael muttered, naturally modest, “I did the best I could, but I’m afraid we didn’t kill too many demons out there; most of ‘em took one look at our force and went running away, all fradey-cat like.”

Jon smiled widely; he was in an unusually good mood, perhaps merely because of his survival or perhaps… “Whatever. The point is, you did the best you could and got something done at the same time; that’s all I asked. You did good, kid; you should be proud of yourself.”

Michael grinned happily in spite of himself, blushing with humble pride. To be told that he had done well by such a great hero; wow, this was amazingly cool!

“In case you wanted to know,” Michael said helpfully, “I told everybody to get on the wall and guard it till the end, no matter what happens. Is that alright, sir?”

“Good intuition,” Jon complimented him, drawing yet another smile from the young gnome, “But I’ve got another idea. Spread the word to everybody, tell them that Sergeant Jon told you to tell them that I want everybody to pull back into the keep.”

Michael stared at him questioningly. “But why?” he asked, “Won’t that mean we’ll lose this wall, too?”

Jon sighed, clapping the young gnome on the shoulder. “Yes, it does,” he said, “But it’s alright; pretty soon we’ll have lost this wall anyway.” Michael frowned. “That doesn’t sound too alright to me.”

“Trust me, kid,” Jon assured him, “It’ll all work out; I’ve got a friend, and he knows all about this sort of stuff, and how we’re going to make my plan work. Now get going; I don’t know how long it’s gonna take until those demons and other nasty things to strike again.”

Michael opened his mouth to ask just what this fabled “plan” was, but snapped it shut instantly. Instead he turned about and ran along the walls, shouting out orders in Sergeant Jon’s name. The other gnomes, who were, for the most part, a mere body of warriors with no other superior command to respond to, carried out his orders with the same “I’m going along with this and hoping like heck that it works” sort of attitude of leaderless soldiers in their position everywhere. It was not long before the second wall was completely bare, and it was only then that Michael, having made sure that absolutely everybody had cleared out, took his leave and fled into the keep himself.

~

“I swear by all that is dark and unholy in this universe,” Abimelech hissed in a surprisingly low voice to Rekem, “Some day I am going to fucking spit that lizard!”

“Patience, brother Hell-General,” one of the gaping maws rumbled as another gorged itself on a tray hefted almost entirely into its mouth by a small, wiry imp, “Although in all sureness Jericho is unsuitably arrogant for a mortal, to spill his blood would only incur the anger of Grumpy Dan in a fortunate instance. In an unfortunate instance, you would incur his wrath as well.”

Abimelech snarled, looking contemptuously back at the warriors of the Outlandish Legion, who were still exchanging silently burning glares with his own demonic brethren. He spat. “Fucking aliens,” he snarled, turning back to Rekem, “Why do we need their filth, anyway? When this world is ours, do you really want to be dog-fighting with these mortals for the scraps of power thrown down to us from Grumpy Dan’s table?”

“Mind your tongue when you speak of our master,” Rekem warned, “Besides, it would be unwise indeed to so hastily disregard the potential held by the Outlandish Legion. They are, after all, the worst scum and villainy from over a million mortal worlds, and could serve our purpose very well indeed if used – and treated – properly. They shall only pose any real threat to us if we were to misuse or mistreat them, as you seemed to have been doing with General Jericho quite a bit, lately.”

“Pagh!” Abimelech spat, “Mistreated, did you say? Perhaps I didn’t treat that fucking dirty lizard the way he deserves; what he deserves is a big fucking blade through the eye and the ass, that’s what he deserves!”

“He is our brother in battle,” Rekem retorted, “He and his warriors fought side by side with us and our own, and until he does otherwise, he shall be our ally.” “Battle, eh?” Abimelech sneered (usually he would know better than to take such a tone with Rekem, but right now he was pissed), “Oh, and you’d know a fuck of a lot about that subject, wouldn’t you? Hiding behind the lines, being waited on by a host of imps and guarded by another of devils, I suppose one could gain much more knowledge than I who actually fight the enemy alongside the warriors beneath me!”

Rekem rumbled angrily, lashing out with a tentacle and wrapping it around Abimelech’s armoured torso, then drawing him so close that the other Hell-General cried out in shock and fright, thinking perhaps that the enormously fat demon intended to devour him. The corrosive gas did nothing to Abimelech’s pale, rubbery skin, but fortunately Rekem tried to do nothing else to the other Hell-General. Instead, he raised him to the level of one of his particularly bloodshot, glaring eyes and boomed once again.

“Do not think to call me down so quickly,” Rekem’s fetid breath blasted Abimelech from a nearby maw, “Although it is true that I would be all but useless in a full-scale battle, I am more cunning and intelligent than you, Asheara, Sihon, Jericho, or any of those other Outlandish beasts will ever be! Always remember that I can either be an extremely beneficial ally,” he cast Abimelech back, causing him to hit the wall of a house behind him, “Or an extremely, extremely dangerous enemy. So, do I make myself clear?”

“Yeah,” Abimelech grunted, rallying himself once more and regaining his composure, “You have made yourself clear. I respectfully apologize for my impudence.” Lazy fat fuck, he thought angrily, although he knew it would pass in time. Jericho or something else like that would come along to piss him off even more soon enough.

It was just as well that the heated exchange between the two had been left at that, for it was at that moment that Jericho reappeared, backed by the other three generals, Zur, Asheara and Sihon. Their armies were all well on their way to having moved completely into the city, and another phenomenal occurrence had caused the trio to seek the council of the remaining two generals as to their next move.

“Hell-Generals Rekem and Abimelech,” Jericho saluted them with professional (although insincere) courtesy, “My three comrades and I thought that it may be beneficial to draw to your collective attentions a new development in the siege.”

Abimelech let out a horking chuckle. “What is it now?” he grinned, “Did those pansy ass gnomes finally realize that their shit was whipped no matter what they did, and decided to make it easy on themselves and surrender?"

“But that we should be so lucky,” came Jericho’s muttered reply, “But never the less, my news is good. To the last they have fled from the second wall and into the keep behind it, leaving the fortifications at our disposal.”

Abimelech let out a roaring laugh. “HAH!” he boomed, “The stupid little fucks! They’re playing right into our claws!”

Rekem, however, merely rumbled suspiciously. “I would no be so hasty to accept this seeming offering,” he said warningly, “It smells of some sort of trap to me…”

Abimelech chortled obnoxiously at this. “A trap?” he asked incredulously, “Fucking damn, Rekem, I had never taken you for a comic! Hah, a trap! Like these gnomes would have the underhandedness, never mind the brains, for something of that sort!”

“Much as I hate to admit it,” Jericho conceded, “I am inclined to agree with comrade Abimelech here. I could also see that, by moving back to the keep, they would have an even more secure location to defend, although they have made the mistake of giving us another bulwark from which to fire and launch our attacks. Zur, Sihon, Asheara and myself have already taken the liberty of sending warriors up to secure the wall tops; it shall not be long until they are all in position…”

A large sound like stone grinding boomed form behind the lizarnian. Jericho and his three other companions turned about to see the second wall starting to slowly shake, as if the earth beneath it were moving. The aliens and demons atop the wall cried out in shock and fright as the wall steadily began to crumble beneath their feet, slowly at first but increasing in pace as time went on. Large chunks even shot from the wall itself into the army gathering in the streets, crushing many and causing general havoc amongst the ranks of the evil warriors. Soon enough, all that was left of the wall was a large ditch surrounding the keep about three metres in width, and surrounded by rubble with the occasional crushed alien or demon all the way about.

The generals all just stared for a while. Then Abimelech broke the silence; “Fuck.”

“You devils, get those panicking soldiers back in line,” Rekem rumbled at his enforcers with irritation, then turned back to his fellow generals. “I told you that this was some sort of trap; obviously the gnomes are more intelligent than we thought.”

“I don’t know,” Abimelech muttered, for once sounding almost pensive, “They are receiving additional help, I know this for a fact.”

“From whom?” Jericho asked.

“An angel,” Abimelech hissed hatefully. Every demon within hearing range shuddered at the very mention of the word. Jericho and Zur merely exchanged questioning glances; both shrugged at one another, showing that each knew as little as the other about the current situation.

“An angel,” Rekem rumbled, fear and loathing mingling in his voice, “Are you sure? I had thought I had sensed something earlier, but this…”

“I am sure,” Abimelech snarled, “I saw him myself, and fought with him, too! But that he had stayed to be slain, but instead the winged bastard chose to flee like a coward! He had better hope that he has flown far enough, though, for some day I will find him again, and make him pay for ever crossing my path!” “Excuse me,” Jericho interjected, “But what exactly is this angel creature, and why is it so important?”

“Angels,” Rekem explained, “Are what you might call the natural enemies of demons, although our hatred of their vile kind goes back further than you could possibly imagine. For millions of years our races have warred in this universe and many others, although neither of us seem to have gained a sufficient amount of ground against the other. One of the primary objectives of subjugating this world, in fact, is to claim a staging ground for demonic activity in this universe, that we may crush the angelic scum once and for all.”

Jericho nodded with fascination; this war ran deeper than he had thought. Who knew what other hidden agendas these demons had behind this war, and when they would be revealed and in what form? Indeed, this could add some unnecessary complications to his plans for the domination of this world, but still, the one with the most potential looks for opportunity in every situation that is thrust upon him, and he had little doubt that this one had limitless possibilities. Indeed it would be interesting to learn more about this fabled war over millions of years, but right now was not the time; right now, he and all of these other creatures still had a castle to take over.

“Alright,” he ordered, “We shall discuss the intricacies of this war later; at the moment, we’ve a war to get back to. I want ramps built so our warriors can move more easily over the rubble-” (from his current perspective, he could not see the gaping trench that led to no-where) “-and projectile warriors firing on any of that castle’s battlements that are within range. We may as well leave the tanks and other siege weapons out of this one, except to break down the main door; after all, we don’t want to destroy this keep, we merely need to capture it. We can use our fighter planes, though, to pick off any foes who have taken residence in the upper parts of the keep; a few bullet holes here and there won’t topple the entire fort, after all.”

“And who put you in charge here?” Abimelech snarled, obviously angry and looking for a fight.

“With all due respect,” Jericho grinned arrogantly, “The one who put me in charge was everybody else who did not decide to think up a strategy, including you. Now,” he said, turning about, “Come on, my good comrades; we have orders to deliver, and plans to carry out.”

“Why that arrogant little…” Abimelech was just about to drive his sword through Jericho’s back, but once again Rekem interjected and saved the hapless lizarnian’s life, lashing out with a tentacle and looping it around Abimelech’s blade. Instinctively, the other Hell-General resisted, severing off the appendage, then gaped in horror at what he had just done.

“I – I apologize, brother Hell-General…” he started, but Rekem waved him into silence with the same bloodied half-tentacle.

“I shall grow another,” he rumbled dismissively, “Just remember that we still need Jericho and the Outlandish Legion – for the moment anyway. Now go, and cause no more trouble; a time may come when you may take your revenge, but that time is not now.”

Abimelech, somewhat relieved that he had gotten off so easily, merely shrugged. “As you say,” he said, then muttered under his breath, “That fucking time can’t come soon enough.”

~

What remained of the city’s housing was soon being torn down and salvaged to create ramps and bridges with which to cross the massive trench which had once been a wall. This menial labour was left up to the hollow gnomes for the most part, although the warriors of the demonic hordes, the Outlandish Legion, and the Army of the Damned all had to contribute in giving their gray, soulless allies cover-fire from the gnomes inside the keep. Arrows flitted across the gap from both sides, along with the occasional rattle of gunfire in certain areas. A few gnomes had even managed to procure some firearms, and were slowly but surely beginning to get the hang of how to use them. Many hollow gnomes working on the bridges by the trench were within shooting range, and even the wind itself seemed to guide arrows into their soulless bodies. Even so, they continued to do their job with swift, mechanical efficiency, no matter what the cost to their numbers.

Meanwhile, Hur, Reba and Gob stood together near the front lines of the force led by Jericho; they were quite close to their general, actually, close enough that even merely calling his name would turn the lizarnian’s head. Not like they would, though; if the boss wanted to talk to them, he’d do it, and ain’t no questions asked. Right now they merely conversed with one another in their inexplicable New York accents.

“Man, those fuckin’ demons,” Gob snarled, rubbing an ever-bleeding wound on his left arm with a piece of cloth he’d found, “One o’ them’s gave me this beauty, y’know? Man, damn thing won’t stop bleedin’!”

“Duh,” Hur tried to be helpful, “Maybe you should stop pickin’ at it. It won’t go away ‘nless youse stop pickin’ at it.” He concluded sagely.

“Nah, nah,” Reba advised his friend, ignoring Hur, “You’re goin’ about it all wrong, see? What yah need t’do is squeeze down around the wound, cut off the circulation, like, see? Mrah!”

“I tried that,” Gob grunted painfully, “It don’t work; the damn thing just keeps bleedin’. Man, it’s like that demon put somethin’ on his blade whut makes it cut yuh, so’s yah don’t stop bleedin’ till yah die!”

“Oh no,” Hur cried, surprising Gob with a smothering hug, “Don’t tell me you’s gonna die, man? I can’t stand the thought o’ youse dyin’, man, please don’t…” “Eh!” Gob gasped in shock, “Ease up, would yah? C’mon, yah big lug, get yer big paws offa me! I can’t hardly breath, y’know…” At this, Hur let him go, looking somewhat dejected. Gob sighed; not much for brains, this one. “Look, if it makes yah feel any better ‘bout this whole situation, I’ll tell yah that there is a way where I can get this big frikkin’ wound fixed, we just haven’t found it yet, a’right?”

Hur sniffled slightly. “You sure?” he asked, “Cause if you’s just sayin’ that so’s to make me feel better…”

“Eh, come on,” Reba grinned understandingly, “We’d nevah lie to you, man! Youse our buddy! Now, all we gotta do is find one o’ those creepy medic things; y’know, the ones what look like big, floatin’ spidaz an’ stuff like that.”

“Spidaz?” Gob asked, still nursing his wound, “Ain’t nevah heard o’ no spidaz. Iz they some type o’ scorp’yin’re somethin’?”

“I dunno,” Reba muttered, “We ain’t got no scorp’yins where I come from, see? Whatever those are. Is it tha thing with, y’know, eight legs and a fat ass?” “No, it’s da thing with two big pickin’ claws an’ a big, frikkin’ tail,” Gob said, then thought about it for a moment. “Eh, d’yah think that it could be, like, a cross between both your spidaz and my scorp-yin? Like, heh heh, one day a spidaz went an’ got wasted, heh, an’, an’, like, woke up next to a scorp-yin? Heh heh, heh HAH!”

Gob and Reba both fell into obnoxious chuckling, while Hur merely stared dumbly forward. Finally, he tapped Gob on the shoulder. “Hey Gob?” he asked.

“Whassup?” the reptile/amphibian creature responded.

“Duh, if you want,” Hur pointed out, “You c’n ask that medic thing over there where it’s from, an’ maybe if it c’n fix yer wound an’ stuff.” Gob, however, had already started charging over to the creature to beg its assistance.

And thus his grovelling began; “Um, hey, youse,” he addressed the floating demon, “Yeah, I’m talkin’ to yah. Yeah. So, anyway, I wuz wonderin’ if you could, like, fix up this big, bleedin’ wound here, see? Yeah, got it in a scrap with a demon, when that big Hell-General guy picked up the boss by the throat, an’ everythin’ went to Hell from there. So, like, could you help me or somethin’? I mean, it just won’t stop bleedin’, and I ain’t no doctor, but I think I know that this can’t be any good for yah, right?”

The demon regarded him momentarily, then, without a sound, floated over to the wound on his arm and latched on with its pincers. From there it started literally sewing his wound up with the thread from its large, bloated abdomen, its spindly legs working almost faster than the eye can see. Gob grit his teeth as the thread was poked in and out of his very flesh, then yiped and bit back a full scream as the two of the creature’s tails jabbed him in the arm and injected him with more plasma and the infection-killing substance. When it was done, it detached from his arm, leaving a couple of claw-marks where it had latched on, and floated away.

“Um, thanks,” Gob called after it, “I owes yah one, mac.” Receiving no response, he went back to the side of his companions, putting on a brave face. “How was that, eh?” Reba asked him, “I saw whut the lil’ creep did to yah; looked pretty painful, if ye’re askin’ me.”

“Ah,” Gob said, waving his hand bravely, “It didn’t hurt one bit! And now I’m fine, see, and ain’t nothin’ gonna bug me ‘bout that wound no more!”

“Duh, wow,” Hur exclaimed in awed admiration, “Yuh really didn’t feel nothin’? Man, you is tough!”

Gob grinned, basking in his gullible companion’s admiration. Reba, however, who wasn’t that smart but could still smell bullshit a mile away, narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Wait a second,” he muttered, “If you didn’t feel nothin’, see, then how come you went and yelped like a kicked, um, thing that yelps back there, eh? Mrah!”

“Oh, that,” Gob saw he was in a delicate situation here (although he couldn’t spell the word “delicate,” never mind “situation”), “Well, see, it sorta took me by surprise, y’know? Heh, stupid little sting-y things, nevah much liked ‘em. I don’t like nothin’ that wants ta sting me with somethin’ sharp in tha arm, y’know I don’t fly with that sorta thing.”

Satisfied, Reba merely shrugged. “Whatevah,” he muttered, then looked at a nearby crew of hollow gnomes marching steadily past bearing a plank between them. “Creepy little things, aren’t they? Don’t like the look of ‘em, see; how bout you big boys, eh? Mrah!”

“I gots to agree with yuh there, buddy,” Gob agreed with his buddy there, “Somethin’ about them gnomes just freaks me out somethin’ awful, y’know?” “Yeah,” Hur agreed as well, “It’s – it’s like they isn’t meant to be, yuh get where I’m comin’ from?”

“Yeah, I get it,” Gob said.

“Like, like it isn’t right that they are the way they is,” Hur elaborated. “Gotcha,” Gob confirmed.

“Y’know what I’m sayin’,” Hur still wasn’t finished, “It’s, it’s like their soul itself has been…”

“Yeah, I know,” Gob said again.

“…Like, taken out o’ they bodies, an’, an’ put somewhere else, leavin’ ‘um hollow an’ empty, yuh see what I mean?”

“Loud an’ clear, cap’n,” Gob assured him, continuing to stare at the creatures as they worked.

Hur fell into an unintelligent silence for a while, then asked, “Hey Gob, why’d you’s just called me cap’n there, anyway?”

“I dunno,” Gob sighed, “It’s just a figure of speech, yah know?”

“Mrah,” was all Reba seemed to have to say. Hur then decided to just leave it at that.

~

Michael watched from a battlement high above the city as the ramps were put in place, and hordes of demons, aliens, hollow gnomes and undead started to make their way across them. The earth itself had now started rumbling, trying to shake loose the shoddily constructed bridges. In some cases it worked, and dozens of foes were sent falling into the dark oblivion that was the bottomless trench. He could hear cheers from the gnomish defenders on various levels of the citadel whenever this happened, although he doubted that it would be enough. “Stand to, soldier!” a familiar voice called from behind him. Instinctively, Michael’s back straightened as he turned about on one heel, saluting at the sight of Sergeant Jon and a few other gnomes.

Another gnome, an elder, be-spectacled green fellow, waved him down. “At ease, lad,” he said, “Everybody around here is already rigid enough as it is. Allow me to introduce myself; I am General Saul, and I have heard great things about you from Sergeant Jon here, who informs me that the two of you have met on several occasions.”

“Um, sir?” Jon asked, cocking his head to the side in indication that he should be leaving.

“Oh, right,” the elder gnome waved him off, “You’re dismissed; try to see to it that the plan is kept to. Now, where were we,” he adjusted his glasses before once again returning his gaze to the young Michael. “Oh yes. Right. I hear you not only did a darn fine job of leading a large mass of troops to the second wall and rallying them there, but also got them off at the wall quicker than probably anybody else. We have need of guys like you, kid; you’re shaping up to be quite the little soldier there.”

“Oh, well,” Michael blushed involuntarily, “It was really nothing, you know; I mean, I don’t deserve this sort of praise…”

“Oh, pish-posh,” General Saul waved him into silence, “Face it, kid, you’re good at orchestrating things, and people are willing to follow your lead. Given the opportunity, you’d probably be able to show some darn good initiative, too. I have no doubt that you will make a fine soldier, and you’re at least as good, if not better, than most others at the moment.”

Michael felt somewhat overwhelmed by all of this praise coming from such an important person, but was not given any time to really sort it out. General Saul continued, “We have made arrangements with a new friend who has come to aid us in this fight; right now he is opening a large portal to somewhere safe in the very highest room in the keep. It’s gonna take time, though, so we’ve got to hold the lower rooms of our fort for as long as we can, and Jon, the other officers and I can’t be everywhere at once. We need you, Michael, to carry out any orders we give you and fix up any breaks in the line that you see; now’s the time to exercise that initiative of yours.”

“But I…” Michael started, still reeling from the weight of the burden that had been placed upon his shoulders.

“No buts,” General Saul snapped, “You will do this job and you will do it well.” Looking upon the panicked face of the young gnome, the general sighed, loosening up somewhat. “Look, if it makes you feel any better, I believe that you are fully capable of doing this, but you have to believe in yourself, too. So, a lot of lives are depending on you today; are you gonna believe in yourself so you can save them?”

“Yes sir!” Michael saluted rigidly, determination starting to rise in his voice and eyes. He may have been afflicted with a certain childish simplicity, but put like that he was filled with renewed will to do whatever it took to get the job done.

“Very good,” General Saul said, “Now – DUCK!” He dived forward, tackling Michael to the ground as a fighter plane flew by, spraying the battlement with bullets. When Saul let Michael up again, they both saw that most of the other gnomes present were alright, save for one who was currently lying in a pool of blood, his dead body being shaken by one of his sobbing companions.

Saul took it all in with a grim, hard stare. “Move out,” he ordered, then raised a weird looking gun and ran to the nearest flight of stairs. Unsheathing his sword, Michael charged down the stairs as well, mentally preparing himself for whatever was to come. You can do this, Michael, he though grimly to himself, You just have to believe you can and you will. Sergeant Jon believes you can, General Saul believes you can, now you have to believe you can, too. You can and will defend the keep at all costs; everybody is relying on you to do it, so it has to be done! Suffice it to say, this did not entirely reassure him. Besides, some small voice at the back of his head kicked in, General Saul himself said that you’re really good at organizing things; if he says it then it must be right! Just try your hardest, and hopefully everything will be okay

Little did our young blue friend know it, but this was the thought behind some of the most heroic actions done on any world, anywhere.

~

Sergeant Jon waited at the head of a large force of gnomes concentrated in the main Waiting Room of the keep. It was the room directly behind the keep’s gate, which was now being hammered at mercilessly by the forces outside. Holding his two remaining blades grimly, Jon watched as several gnomes tried fruitlessly to reinforce the gate, to keep it up for a few more moments yet. Everything they could carry was being moved into the barricade; tables, chairs, closets, other types of furniture, even large crates and boxes and whatever else they could find. He knew that their whole-hearted attempts would probably avail them to naught, though; if those hollow gnomes were bad, then these demons, aliens and warriors of the damned were nigh on unstoppable! Even so, he knew that they could and would at least be held at bay for a while longer, just until a mass exodus through the portal could begin…

“BOOM!” Wood splintered as a hole was blasted through the gate, sending those who were trying to reinforce it running away, screaming in fright. “Hold your positions!” Jon called to the warriors behind him, most of whom were quite shocked by the sound of the blast. The doors slowly began to creek and bend inwards, as if some ponderously unstoppable force was pushing on them from the outside. A grinding sound could be heard, a familiar sound to Jon, who had already hear the sounds of treads rolling along the ground…

And suddenly the door burst inwards, revealing a gutted Japanese tank, which trundled into the Waiting Room with its cannon blazing. Dozens of demons and aliens swarmed in around it, hitting the front line of the gnomes hard. Unfortunately, Jon could not spend most of his time concentrated on these comparatively minor foes; while that tank still remained operational in the enemy’s hands, it was still the biggest threat to himself and his fellows. “Die, you stinking demons!” Jon cried, leaping up into the air and decapitating a demon as he did so. Then, kicking off of the still-standing creature’s shoulder, he shot forward, hacking open an alien’s skull with one blade while plunging the other into another demon’s chest. Then sword still embedded in the latter creature’s body, he used the demon’s falling backwards to carry him to the next demon, who he stabbed through the gut with his other blade. The demon, however, merely crumpled forward, howling in pain, and Jon could not help but be borne to the ground as well. Slipping his blades from both bodies, he parried a blow from another demon before cutting off its axe-hand, then charged headlong into it, sliding both blades into the creature’s chest and gut. The thing cried out as it slumped forward, but Jon, finding some surprising strength within his small limbs, lifted the impaled creature’s corpse above his head and tossed it off of his blades and into the crowd of enemies around.

By now he was but five feet away from the tank. However, standing between it and him was a huge, violet alien with red hair. Plates of armour were strapped here and there on its massively muscular body, and even this beast’s giant arms seemed to strain as it raised its gigantic war-axe…

Jon wasted no time. Crying out angrily, he surged forward, not leaping but running while swinging his blades. The creature shrieked in agony as Jon’s blades ripped into its groin, crumpling to the ground and letting its axe slip from its fingers above its head. The massive weapon fell straight down, its blade splattering the creature’s brains about everywhere. Before the dead alien could fall down and crush him, however, Jon had leapt up onto its shoulder, kicked off and landed on the top of the tank.

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