“Forever in his mind’s eye would this wicked scene out of Satan’s dream be emblazoned to wake him in the night, cold in his nightmare sweat.”

-From #14 Devils' Food

Head over heels they flew as Domingo’s thick shins shattered the fallen and rotted log at the apex of their climb out of the hell of the devil-teeming Hudson Fiord. Now, as the Daybreak Angel brightened the sky at their backs they fell down into a darker—more rocky—pit, as if yonder Hell had a conniving twin.

He felt Domingo roll beneath him and the great thick arms and shoulders slacken, catapulting him forward into a tangle of thorny brush that crashed under his weight. A heavy impact cracked something in his hip and lower back. His soul shuddered as he felt nothing below his belly, only heard the flapping of his lifeless legs as they flailed against the barer defile below; rocky and disposed to minister pain to all of his upper feeling parts as he flopped end over end into the very pit of despair.

Mishar groped blindly about for the air rifle tethered to his harness but flipping and flopping and smacking the tumbledown world as maddeningly as his uncontrollable legs. By God’s Mercy the mighty weapon found its way into his hands, and by clutching it and tucking elbows, he rolled now with more smoothness like a floppy ended roller, until finally a tangle of brush saved him from plunging into the absolute pit of this place. He lay suspended, looking up at the radiant crest of the maw of this defile as Daybreak spread His radiance. Then the hurtling ball of muscle that was Domingo came rushing out of the light like a Christian cannonball of old and crashed into him, taking them both deeper into the pit as Mishar’s wind was driven from his lungs and the emerging hope from his soul.

He woke to the cursing of his Christian slave Domingo, as the sturdy creature fussed with something uncooperative. That something was Mishar, whose legs were broken, and low back as well, rendering him an even less fit burden then before. Domingo was in a hurry to haul Mishar up the other side of the pit, and out of this sunken cave mouth, where it seemed all the devils above were rushing to nest—or perhaps feed as they leaped down the craggy brush-choked defile, their hideous ‘suck-splat’ sound seemingly too vile to escape this place and was cursed to echo within it.

Domingo managed to pry apart the two small trees that sprouted from the base of this mucky pit between the springy trunks of which one of Mishar’s broken feet was trapped. Domingo, holding them apart, seemed to be motioning with his eyes and head for Mishar to pull free, but he could not.

Mishar took his rifle in hand and placed the butt against the trunk of one sapling and pushed, causing his foot to drag like death itself out of a grave free. No sooner had his limp twisted and bleeding foot, bare now of deck slippers and socks, been freed than his tireless Christian brute was slinging him over one brawny shoulder like so much wheat and scrambling in a panic among the rocks, his hard body now seemingly as fatigued as his simple mind was addled.

Mishar looked all about, swinging his head where need be, even as he clutched his sacred weapon high against his shoulder to keep it from harm as he dangled over the broad hairy back of his loyal savior. They passed many a rocky cave mouth and many of leaf-pasted clay as well. The vile smell of countless urinals wafted up from these holes in the world which surely led one to Satan’s Hell Door.

The devil spawn were now swarming into the defile below in their hideous sucking manner. Domingo scrambled past a few small clay cave mouths and then up and over a great granite boulder. There, with heaving chest, the beast man set his master down and pointed below, at the level of the caves and dens and holes on the other side of the clay pasted gorge, indicating that they were above the line of the dens, and touching his chest, indicating also that he could go no farther.

Domingo now looked into his eyes, grunted something in his infidel tongue, and seized Mishar in the oddest manner. Mishar was placed in a sitting position which was hard to maintain with the loss of his lower muscle control. Domingo hugged him with legs and arms from behind, so that his muscular form made a kind of gunner’s chair, cradling Mishar.

“Yes, I understand. We will sell our lives together, the gunner and his chair.”

Domingo pointed down into the pit at a clutch of the devil spawn that were interlinking tentacles as their terrible mouth-feet sucked at the spot where Mishar and Domingo had so recently been.

Mishar cranked the feed bar and checked the sealant gauge to find it in full working order.

“Yes, the gun of my father, and of his father, and of the fathers of Fez who served the house of Saud in exile. You shall bring God’s judgment on the vile fiends!”

Domingo patted him on the back and pointed over to the left and to the right, where single creatures were working their way around as if in accordance with some battle plan. Below the teeming mass of creatures—most by far—that plunged into the pit, dispersed in columns into the various cave mouths and dens. It became apparent by the appearance of the enmeshed ones which were now prowling along their trail, that these were a slightly different breed than those plunging into the pit as if afraid of the light of day. These were larger, had less translucent skin, and had a black leathery membrane encasing their foot-mouth. These stalkers also had larger gelatinous heads with more of a cast of red than gray.

Mishar pumped the air compression lever.

“These devils are those who fed on our friends Domingo.”

Domingo gave him the two tap with his open fingers that indicated yes.

Mishar pumped the air compression lever.

“Then this is a battle of vengeance, righteous before God.”

Domingo cupped his heavy hand firmly under Mishar’s elbow to help steady the left arm, which was clearly broken below the wrist though Mishar was now beyond all earthly pain. The Christian extended the other long arm and used it as a target indicator, pointing to the closest in each of the three approaching groups of spawn.

Mishar took inventory, and saw that he had 30 100 centimeter bolts left to only 12 targets, in two flanking groups of 3, and one trailing group of six.

He pumped the air compression lever again, maxing the seal. This gives the gunner 10 shots at an ever reducing velocity, which, for defense like this is fine, as the earlier shots are furthest.

Mishar chambered a rod and followed the traverse of Domingo’s right hand and zeroed in on that threesome of gruesomely leaping creatures. The first rod exploded a gelatinous head, sending his fallen man’s ill gotten blood into the earth where it belonged. The second rod pinned a sucker-foot closed—a terrible shot really—effectively disabling the creature. This gave him an idea.

Mishar took his time and aimed, bursting the head of the last creature in the rightward flanking group. Domingo now aided his left hand traverse as pain shot through his arm, indicating that the damage was on the outside of the left arm, and that these shots would be difficult.

Mishar led loose a bolt through the head of the leader that was now but six leaps away.

Domingo excitedly patted his bolt hand to reload, overtaken by a hound like panic, where his calm master gunner was not, as he slowly slid the bolt home.

Mishar took aim, waited for the synchronized hoping of the remaining two fiends to bring their bobbing heads in line and drove the second bolt through the head of the leader, which burst in a riot of gray goo, black oil and red blood, and continued on to pierce the head of the trailing creature, which stopped in its place and slowly drained as it’s sucker-foot twitched as if pleading loneliness to an uncaring world.

The sun was almost nigh, was about to crest the ridge, and, in place of what should have been the morning caw and twitter of birds was greeted by nothing but the furious sickening crawling waterfall sound of thousands of leviathan spawn plunging into the pit below.

Six black-footed fiends still stalked the earth, mere meters from his position. They could not be seen, but could be heard, sucking their way up the rocky side of the defile long the path that Domingo had come hauling him. It occurred to him then that these things were scent driven, not sighted, though perhaps they had eyes that saw underwater. These though, behaved as if blind, blind ravenous beasts sniffing and sucking their way toward the scent of the feast.

They—it!—came up over the rise in a mass of interlocked tentacles, the sucker-feet beneath virtually unseen as the mass of bobbing heads and tentacles formed a living curtain of horror.

Domingo shuddered with such force that his muscular shiver ruined Mishar’s shot, sending the bolt tearing through some tentacles. This however, showed a glimmer of what moved below. The mouth-feet below were not hopping, but sucking along. The three forward points of the star-shaped would raise, and then the two rearward V-shaped star points would creep forward.

“Domingo, lay me down and support my arm.”

Obviously much more conversant in Arabic than Mishar was in his infidel tongue—at least where the hunt was concerned, Domingo did as he was bid, and there they lay as the quivering monstrosity came on. The tentacles did not brush the ground but curled upward catching their sent. The slope would have made this difficult, but now the mass of reaching tentacles and sucking feet rounded the great rock and they were on the level. He had air for a mere 4 shots. Would it be enough?

To pump more air would take time he did not have and stress the seals, possibly rendering the weapon ineffective.

Mishar took aim and drove a rod into a sucker foot, and the mass of tentacles stopped moving. He drove in another and the thing shuddered tentacles flailing all about, exposing heads, and a central head. Into this he drove his next to last bolt. The beast let out a plaintive gurgle as the bolt pierced its brain.

He slammed the next bolt home, and then horror, as the brain of the central creature oozed from its gelatinous place the creatures separated, leaving one dead, two immobile, and three fiends crouched to pounce. In two leaps they would be upon them and he had but one bolt. Perhaps sensing this the depraved sea creatures raised their brain-sucking trunks above their gelatinous heads.

Domingo seized a rock and squatted over him, and he took careful aim—then, came the song, a song sung in some alien language, by a human voice, or perhaps Satan’s idea of a human voice, once the serpent in the Garden had mated with a disloyal Eve!

He could not make out the words. The words, sung to the tempo of big slapping bare feet, were of an infidel tongue, a tongue Domingo had no knowledge of either by his answering shrug.

Most importantly, the song seemed to stay the progress of the devil spawn, who did begin to sway to the music of the voice, and rock their sucker-mouth feet—razor toothed it could be seen from this close vantage—to the words of the Devil’s song.

Domingo shivered audibly, his teeth clanging together. The Azorean savage dropped his rock and gathered Mishar in his arms and curled them both into a weeping crouching bundle. Mishar hugged his slave too, clinging to that last shred of human contact, that last touch of humanity before he was plunged for ever into the abyss!

Then, the song of an alien tongue on his lips, there stood Satan before them. Domingo’s shudder was so great that it hurt. And there they sat; too pathetic fearful creatures before the embodiment of their every fear!

The Devil—if so he were and not merely a demon helper, which did seen likely based on his unimpressive appearance—stood on one broad black foot, the other large black foot elevated in a curious gesture, like a dance halted in mid step. If he were the Devil the fact that he was black would satisfy the prejudices of many an Islamic scholar, including the venerable Hajj jinn-Latif, who had died upon the barge this very morning.

The Devil was a slight black man of very small stature, with large feet and hands, the nails of which were sharpened to a point and tar black. The head of the creature was twice again the size as it should be for a man of that tiny frame. The curious head narrowed to a pointy rat like chin that had not a whisper of a whisker on it. Indeed this being was completely hairless and naked, with no genitals. He held in the crook of his left harm a large bloody hat it seemed, with a leather buckle above the rim.

The most distinguishing feature about this being were its great black almond shaped eyes. From what he understood of optics—which was considerable with him being a rifleman—Mishar could not credit such eyes with the power of sight, for there was no contrast.

As such wonderment crossed his mind the being blinked and peered into his eyes, and spoke in Arabic, a dialect of Arabic that seemed wet with the mists of antiquity when it rolled thickly from his large broad-tongued and big-toothed mouth, teeth like those of a grass eating beast, not a carnivore.

“Oh Momed Maan

No need contrast

For one I am,

See you—

I do!”

With that odd verse the creature held aloft that which had been wrapped in the crook of his one long arm, now in the palm of his hand. In his palm was the hat of a Christian of Austerity as sometimes journeyed the coasts looking for their lost and false Savior. Within that hat was the severed head of such a pale skinned man. Within the head was a raw human stew, and into this the Devil placed the sharp black nails of his other hand and withdrew them covered in gore. The beasts of the dark deep at his feet now fawned like enthralled plants, their tentacles following the swaying dance of the big footed imp like he was the very sun traversing their bright sky.

With hand held high and upside down Christian hatted head held to the side the Devil cavorted and chanted, in Arabic now:

“You,

Son o’ Momed,

Do—

Be me enemy me enemy;

Be me pawn

Me feed me spawn—

Go brown boy!

Fright me white!”

Domingo was picking him up as calm as could be and the Devil was dancing and chanting as he flung brains and blood into the air to be snatched by the questing trunks of the devil spawn and sucked down greedily as the many tentacles danced like so many fiendish fingers to his song,

“Wet me dead

We baby

Drink me dry

We baby

Under me sky;

Fallen Dragon at me feet—

Me baby

Eat we meat!”

By the shudder that wracked Domingo Mishar knew that somehow, knowing but a smattering of Arabic and unable to communicate beyond the needs of the hunt, his Christian brute had heard and felt just as deeply that demonic chant below, a chant Mishar heard in archaic Arabic, that lent wings to his dirty and God-blessed heels, for God had surely bless them both through the Daybreak Angel.

In a few heaving moments the song below died away and Mishar emerged into the light of glorious Daybreak on the shoulders of his faithful Christian steed, broken from the belly down, but defiant and hopeful from the heart up. To the north and west, across the rolling wooded land that was once the ruling province of the great Satanic Empire could be seen the smoking column that indicated the place where the star had fallen from heaven as the Leviathan rose to devour their clan barge.

Domingo took notice and pointed, and his master patted him gently on the head in the affirmative. With that, Mishar, lacking the constitution of his savage slave, fell into the welcome darkness of exhausted sleep.