The bigger picture

Uklag looks down on himself. His arm is back and he is wearing his robe, although the left sleeve is still missing. “I expected more of body change I got to say.” He mumbles and looks up. “This however is beyond fucked up.”

He stands on the transmutation circle, however it seems that the circle has teleported him somewhere else entirely. The stone platform the circle has brought with it and Uklag float at the beginning of a wound pass that leads to what seems to be a void filled with moving pictures. The disturbing thing being that Uklag recognizes about half of these pictures as his own memories.

“Well, might as well.” He says and walks up the path, looking at the memories that drive by him. They seem to travel towards wherever he is heading with him.

There is Analea as she gives him his first blowjob back in Orstead. Catherine with that sheepish smile when Uklag gave his first demonstration of Alteration on her expense after she tried to influence him. Droy in his room, telling his stoy, the words are numb but he can still understand them. Uklag’s sister when he managed to come back to the tribe alive. “Finally got your own powers, I see.” She says proudly. Aelana as they curse at each other. Celine when he first met her, dirty and in pain. Zal as he walks up the hill, still a drone. Alratha laughing about a guys eyebrow. Ulric as he leans in to threaten him, then the picture of him smiling.

Other memories show themselves. All the 432 versions of the bended City fly by. He knows the flaws in all of them, but not yet how to fix them without creating new ones. He sees his time spend alone in his room in Orstead as he experiments on whatever poor servant he kidnapped that day. The time spent alone in his enchantment quarter as he finally unleashes his potential on this world.

The final memory he watches is a single picture that blocks his path. It shows Jalkal his face is split by a wall of red metal that is about to cleave Uklag in two.

“Did I lose in the end? Is this hell?” Uklag wonders and steps through the picture. It shatters and reveals a stone circle with a huge hole in the middle hanging in the void. In the emptiness of the middle float two things. One is a thing made from two humanoid shapes that looks like two differently coloured layers of pure ice a top of each other. While both are clearly visible one of them is slightly in the foreground.

The one in the foreground is a white outline with red lines on the upper left part of his chest and a green mark on his collarbone. Uklag can recognize a representation of himself when he sees one. The other one is twice as big, black and has horns, wings and a tail – It is Jalkal’s demonic essence.

Above that thing floats a handsome young man. Indeed, handsome doesn’t even cover it, he is male beauty made perfection, his strong chin, chiselled muscles and curly brown hair have a weird, seducing effect on Uklag. Of course he knows only one being that could make him feel this way.

The Arch-Incubus looks at Uklag and smiles. He raises his hand in applause. “Bravo, Uklag, Bra-Vo.” He praises the warlock, “For a moment I doubted you could pull it off but here you are.” “Here I am.” Uklag affirms, looking at the floating memories, “Wherever this is.” The Arch-Incubus looks back down on the humanoid shape, “Mhm, you could call it the void between dimensions but that isn’t entirely correct. For the moment, let us call this the abyss.” The Arch-Incubus clicks with his tongue, “You lost an arm, that is unsightly…but I don’t think you will need those wings so let’s take the energy from there.”

With a wave of his hands black energy from the shape in the background phases flows off the wings until only the skeletal outline of them remains. The energy separates in the form of a ball and then reattaches itself on the white humanoids left shoulder. Uklag watches in fascination, as the ball of black matter becomes a dark grey, the rest of the white tainting in response, and takes the shape of an arm. “Yes, that should do…let’s get rid of these horns as well, they are ugly, you could use a longer tail instead.” The horns disappear and the tail indeed turns a bit longer.

“What are you doing?” The Arch-Incubus looks up and seems surprised to see him there. “You still exist? Wow, your ambition must be pretty strong to survive this long.” Uklag raises an eyebrow, “What are you talking abou-“ He realizes and with shock he looks around. The memories are slowly fading, the known and the unknown ones, as they close in to this place. “Those aren’t just random memories floating around.” He says, “That is my splintered soul!”

“Bingo, Uklag.” The Arch-Incubus applauds again. “I have to commend the twins for a job well done. Seeing as you still exist let me explain to pass the time until the rest of your soul arrives here. Every now and then us Arch-Demons create demons we call messengers. We give these messengers special knowledge, maybe on how to summon one of us or maybe how to create a certain metal, with that knowledge we lure in very powerful mortals to essentially do our dirty work, have fun or achieve something else.

I gave the twins the knowledge of immortality, a very tempting thing indeed. My plan backfired last time because that stupid warlock had to summon the Arch-Imp instead of a Demonlord. That gave that greedy overmind the chance to gnaw away at your world for a bit.”

Uklag narrows his eyes, “And what is it you truly want from all of this?” he asks. “A new kind of Demon!” The Arch-Incubus exclaims, “A demon that can use human magic! That you removed one of Asha’s little playthings is a bonus. I will recreate you as the first Demonmagus.” The final splinted of his and Jalkal’s memories fade away and the Arch-Fiend begins to channel a spell that combines the two shapes into one. The black shape begins to shrink to fit inside its human soul equivalent.

“Why would you do that?” Uklag asks and watches the process. “Because, little human, by the end of this you will be MY demon, MY toy.” The Arch-Incubus chuckles, “You fight because I will it, You think because I will it, you are BECAUSE I WILL IT!” Uklag grits his teeth, “You want me to be your eternal ****?” “Oh no, Uklag, you already are.” The Arch-Incubus says, “The second you finished the ritual you have lost, your soul is as shattered as Jalkal’s and now I just have to recreate you from the pieces I like, frankly I am surprised that you even managed to hang onto a rest of your personality for this long.”

Uklag screams out in anger, “HAAAAAAAAANS!” The demon breaks out into laughter, “This is why I never tell you my true name, the way you mortals angrily scream Hans is priceless.” He interrupts his channelling for a moment to whip away the tears of laughter, “Don’t be angry, nothing can save you anymore, the second I finish this ritual you will become my demon, I even picked a name for you already.” He spreads out his arms, “Ulal, sounds nice right? I first wanted to go with Uklakal but that was too long for my taste.”

Uklag looks at the two shapes. They are almost one now, the Arch-Incubus is right there is nothing he can do. Unless…

The warlock smiles, “You said you are currently recreating my soul by combining it with Jalkal’s right?” “That is correct.” The Arch-Incubus says, sure of his absolute victory. “That means everything in there is a shattered part of my personality and Jalkal’s, correct?” “Correct, again. Why?” The Arch-Incubus is confused at Uklag’s sudden cherry attitude. “Meaning that if, let’s say, the part of my soul that is strong enough to still exist until this point were to jump in there right now it could theoretically devour every other aspect of himself and become an entirely different being from what you have planned.”

The Arch-Incubus smile disappears and he looks at Uklag as he runs towards the inner edge of the circle. “Doing this will most likely destroy you entirely. Take the safe option and serve me!” The demon screams as he tries to hurriedly finish the spell. “If faced with the boring thing and the glorious thing I will always take the glorious.” His smile becomes mocking, “And what could be more glorious than fucking over an Arch-Demon?”

The Arch-Incubus realizes he can’t finish the spell in time. He has to watch as Uklag touches the humanoid shape and gets absorbed by it. For a moment nothing happens then cracks spread over the white shape, then they spread over to the black one. For a moment, it looks like the whole construct will simply shatter into a thousand parts and disappear into the depths of the abyss. Then the two shapes become one. Two eyes open on the beings head, the left one is a normal, dark-green human eye, the right one is black with a red-iris and a snake like pupil.

“Thank you, Hans.” The new being says in two overlapping voices that slowly become one as he continues speaking, “Thank you for providing this ritual to me. If you excuse me I have to return to my base. Better luck next time.”

The Arch-Incubus watches as the new being disappears. He floats there for a bit and then he smiles. “Marvellous, absolutely marvellous, Uklag. You broke all my expectations. However you are mistaken.” The Incubus summons a book. It is a book that only the Arch-Demons have access to, the true book of names. It contains the name of every single demon in existence. He doesn’t need long to find the name, Ulal. Uklag may have succeeded in having his ambition becoming the centrepiece of this being but it is still a NEW being.

“I should tell the others about this. Oh, Asha will be furious, Shaja will have a good laugh. Karr and I can have a drink or something.” The Arch-Incubus exits the abyss. There is no reason to hurry it along, let the new child have its fun in the mortal for one, ten, hundreds or even a thousand years, he is a demon now.

And all demons return to their realm eventually.