"You want to act like a human, cowering in your own realm, killing with magic instead of rending your enemies?" Satan spat contemptuously.
He's playing with me, Belial thought with some relief even as he continued to abase himself. Those words stated flatly would have spelled his doom. Phrased as a question, Satan was just forcing him to justify himself.
"Your Eminence, of course your glorious armies will grind the humans into dust, Abigor's failure will be of no consequence in the long run. But it will take time to muster fresh legions, the humans may falsely believe that their resistance has won them a respite. Please sire, let me erase that hope, command me to make them burn and suffer even as they await their final extinction."
Belial Kornakat raised his head and a silent understanding passed between him and Satan Mekratrig. He would get a chance. Success would mean elevation sufficient to ensure his survival in the court. Failure would result in a fate even worse than Abigor's.
"Very well. I see no reason to allow the apes the luxury of hope. You will choose two of their largest cities and destroy them utterly as you destroyed Sodom, as you destroyed Gomorrah."
Belial thrashed his tail and licked at Satan's talons, resembling for a moment a gigantic, monstrously disfigured dog. All for show of course; mentally he was weighing the risk of asking for more resources and looking weak against the risk of the attacks failing. He had heard that the humans had multiplied greatly since the time of Sodom, and this had to be a most spectacular defeat.
"Thank you your Eminence, we will begin at once, the suffering will be glorious… but sire… the bigger the coven, the more humans we can burn. If I could have more naga for the effort, our blow will be that much more crushing for the humans."
A fresh murmur passed around the throne room. Satan merely snorted. Belial's admission of weakness was pathetic. There was truth in his words though. With the grand portal to Earth already open, the naga would not be needed for the counter-strike, so the other dukes might complain but could definitely spare them. If his plan was successful, such reliance on others would prevent him gaining too much glory.
"Attend me. Each grand duke will send a party of portal-mages to Tartarus such that he deems fit to compensate for Belial's inadequacy."
Satan's gaze returned to Belial, who was writhing in fresh paroxysms of abasement. "You are right to bask in my generosity, Belial. I will allow you twelve days to destroy two great human cities. Fail me and I will have you baked alive in one of your own furnaces. Now leave us."
"Of course your Eminence! I will begin the preparations immediately!" Belial scrabbled to his feet and fairly sprinted from the throne room; meeting Satan's schedule would take a minor miracle.
DIMO(N) Headquarters, Crystal City, VA
Lugasharmanaska looked up at the moon and stars overhead, marveling at their beauty. She was relaxing on a long bed-like something that, like the roof garden she was in, was a left-over from the time this building had been a luxury hotel. The bar in one corner was closed but the furniture was still here. Not wood or stone but the curious dead material the humans called plastic. They used the plastic for almost everything it seemed. And there was an awful lot of everything, that was why Lugasharmanaska was thinking so hard.
The problem was quite simple, her original defection had placed her in a position where she could benefit no matter which side won the war. The more she had learned, the more she had seen, the more she had become convinced that the humans were not going to lose. They were wealthy beyond any demonic dream of avarice, they had machines to do their work for them and they had an unlimited number of those machines. And that was the problem because they used those same machines to do their killing. Lugasharmanaska shuddered slightly to herself. Humans were so good at killing, when they couldn’t find demons to kill, they practiced on each other.
It wasn’t just that they were good at killing, they were good at understanding as well. If they met something they didn’t understand, they didn’t write it off as “magic” or “magery”, they didn’t consider it to be “the will of something or other”. They set people to work studying it and those people would nibble away at the mystery until they had worked out what it was all about. Then they would hammer away at what they had learned some more until they not only understood the mystery but had worked out practical applications for it. Applications that were far more useful than the mystery itself.
In a flash of insight, Lugasharmanaska suddenly understood why Yahweh had abandoned this world. For millennia, humans hadn’t thought that way, they’d accepted what they had been told, treated “divine revelation” as something sacrosanct that it was death to dispute. Suddenly, that had changed, humans had stopped accepting what they were told and started asking questions. And, when they didn’t like the answers, they’d started arguing. They’d found their own answers and realized there was no place for “magic” and “magery” in the world they were learning about. There were only things they understood and things they didn’t understand – yet. Their plastic, their machines, their terrible efficiency at killing, all came from that same desire to understand what they didn’t understand – yet.
And that was why Hell and all its demons were going to lose this war. They accepted things the way they were, they didn’t ask questions about why. Things were what they were and that was it. Humans didn’t agree with that, things were there to be understood and used. They even had names for these arts. Understanding things was called “cyunse” and using things was called “enjunyrin”. Lugasharmanaska almost fell into the trap of believing they were new religions but she’d been saved from that error by a fluke.
She’d been in one of the buildings devoted to trying to understand Hell when she’d seen two men arguing in front of an audience. An old man, obviously of great importance and a younger man, probably his follower. They’d been arguing furiously, shouting at each other, waving their arms around and making marks on a great black board. Lugasharmanaska had expected to see the young man struck dead for his impudence, what Satan or Yahweh would do to a follower who argued with them in public defied even Lugasharmanaska’s devilish imagination. But the young man had made some triumphant marks on the board and the old man had looked at them for a minute or so then said, simply ‘he’s right you know”. And the room had burst out into applause and the old man had clapped the younger one on the back and shaken his hand. That was when she had understood, when cyunse said something was so, that was only the case until somebody proved otherwise. Then the old truth was dropped and a new one put in its place until that too was disproved.
That was why humans would win this war. Whatever Satan and his armies did, humans would understand it, improve it and then use the improved thing against their enemy.
The question was, what should Lugasharmanaska do now? She’d already modified her original plan quite drastically, her intent had been to tell the humans as little as possible and distort what she did say to them in ways that would benefit her. She’d nearly been caught, had only escaped by pure luck. Humans had taken what she had told them and used their cyunse on it. They’d proved that some of the things she’d told them contradicted others. She’d pretended ignorance, said that was the way she’d understood it and acted bewildered. And she’d made a vow to be much more careful for she knew her survival depended on being useful.