Bartering with the Devil

You raise your axe to the sky, foot firmly planted on your victim to-be. For a moment, though it’s perhaps unwise, you look up, catching the moonlight glinting along the silver edge of your axe, a sign that the angle is right.

You bring the axe down, cutting off a choked plea with the sound of your axe crunching into the snow. You heave it up, whipping the blood off of its blade and looking towards the wagon. Tipped on its side, the roaring flames blaring into the otherwise calm night, illuminating the savage scene around it. Your grim work is done, for the night.

Just as you turn away, you catch a curious glimmer in the corner of your eye. You look over your shoulder, and catch a form amongst the fire.

A frail, shaking form, clambering out of the skyward side of the wagon. Dressed in infernal finery and possessed of strange spectacles whose lenses seem to trap and bounce the moonlight about, making them glow like an animal’s eyes caught in direct light.

“My friend! My friend…” he calls out, a terribly familiar voice. Of course, he is unharmed by the fire, his fine coat barely singed. He drops carefully to his feet, dusting himself off. “Haven’t you done quite enough already?” The light in his glasses shines over his face, and illuminates his wretched grin.

It’s wiped quickly away as you turn toward him fully, lurching forward with your axe. He backs against the wagon, stammering out: “Ah, ah, wait! Okay, alright, I get it. You and I… we’re both well aware that I can’t stop you in this blasted form, nor can you put me down in a way that matters. I’m here to TALK, Ikali.”

“You are only ever anywhere to talk. Your words are poison,” you retort, your voice flat and harsh. You brandish your axe in his direction, and he sneers.

“Come now. You’re not so confident in my power that you worry I might sway you off your crusade with a little chit-chat, are you…?” Again, that grin settles on his face. You snarl lowly, but take a more defensive posture.

“Good… good. I know why you’re angry. I flubbed our deal. I’m a man of my word, and I can admit when I’ve failed. I certainly bit off more than I could chew; that terrible king on his terrible throne was a little outside of my paygrade.” He sighs, casually withdrawing a pipe from his jacket and gingerly lighting whatever it contained with the flames of the wagon. “You know how old men are. We’re always eager to prove our strength to the youngsters, and sometimes it doesn’t turn out so well…”

“You are no man,” you simply respond.

“Can we cut the pedantics? My point is this. I can give you something else. I owe you, of course. There will be no cost to you.” He approaches you, perhaps bravely, to offer a shaking, wiry hand. “What do you want, Ikali? Perhaps the weakening of your other… more important enemies? Or maybe… someone else to watch over your sister, among the veritable pantheon of people watching over her already. Someone to help her along towards her well-earned apotheosis.”

You regard his hand carefully, like you’re considering the offer. That grin on his face only gets wider, baring teeth barely hiding the black void beyond.

Before he can so much as move his hand out of the way, you strike out, a swift and precise chop with your axe sending it into the snow. He howls in pain, backing away and into the burning wagon, clutching his bleeding stump.

“Your words are poison,” you repeat. “Next we meet, I will not be so merciful.”

“You… damnable savage! You’re fighting a war you cannot win! Do you even understand who I am!? I have pulled the strings in this wretched world since the very dawn of time!”

“Someone has to cut them eventually,” you reply. “It may as well be me.” You begin to trudge off, divine blood making a trail in the snow as it drips away from the axe dangling in your hand, leaving him to curse and sputter.