The Many Faces of Evil

Beelzebub sat in his office, enjoying the sweltering heat of his homeland, as well as being in his natural body. His wings fluttered in content for the moment as his mind wandered. It then stumbled upon the fact that Daniel was still a threat to his well-being, and would be rewarded for his power.

"I should have been the one to destroy Urebor," he muttered to himself, standing. "Then Daniel would just be another one of those useless statues standing in front of Satan's throne. Pft. There must be a way to solve all of this. What to do with that boy? I have trained him too well; he is more of a match for me... but if I cheated..."

He sat back at his desk and reached into a drawer for a tome wrapped in rotten leather with black pages and blood for ink (it was a little hard to read, but the concept was pretty dramatic when it was written). Inside were spells that would ensure his victory in a fight against one like Daniel.

He then began chanting in a dark tongue that snuffed the torches in the room and ripped books from their shelves. The shadows flew into him and his eyes glowed white with power.

***

I sat on my couch, enjoying my time off and catching up on the episodes of I Love Lucifer that I had missed. My baldric hung just a breath away, and I kept my wrist-blade gauntlet on my person at all times. When I heard my door open and close I grabbed the sheath of my sword and flicked out the small blade.

I relaxed when Beelzebub fluttered up the stairs and lighted down in the doorway of my bedroom.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, taking a swig of beer. "Is the bank being robbed or something? Timmy fall down a well?"

"Are you drunk?" the fly asked, genuinely inquiring.

"Only because I'm not on duty," I slurred. "Besides, it makes Lucifer's show seem better to watch."

Beelzebub cringed at his timing; I was a mean drunk.

"Hey, is it just me, or are your eyes white?" I asked, throwing my bottle out of the window and into the lake of boiling blood.

"Daniel, do you know how much pain you've caused me this past week?" Beelzebub inquired, his teeth barred.

I began to sober up, sensing danger afoot.

"This revolution was your fault," the Lord of the Flies continued, floating circles around me. "We can defend ourselves against a few nasty demons, but once you piss off every single one of them, you put us in a bad spot. We don't enjoy having you around. You slow us down. You distract everyone from what they actually need. You are a thorn in our side. And you must be dealt with."

His eyes flashed intensely and the house suddenly shattered in a mass of splinters. I fell ten feet to the ground, a hard landing. When I regained my footing, Beelzebub was already upon me again. I drew my sword, pointing it at him.

"What are you doing?" I asked, frightened of the situation.

"Solving everyone's problems," came the answer.

I saw the next attack just out of the corner of my eye; a limb, nearly invisible, glinted in the sunlight, rushing towards me. I slashed at it, driving it away. The limb came back for a second strike. I drew in close to Beelzebub to cut off the invisible appendage, successfully severing it. He cursed and retaliated by flying in at a high speed and knocking me down. He swooped back around and picked up me. I looked down as we hovered over the lake.

"Not this shit again!" I cried, stabbing upwards with my sword.

We fell to the side and hit the bank of the body of blood, luckily not landing in it. While the fly was stunned, I created a giant flyswatter out of energy and began to bash my opponent with it in a twist of irony. When Beelzebub was satisfactorily flattened, I walked up to his wounded form and slashed off his wings with my wrist-blade.

"How?" he wheezed, rolling over. "I cheated. I should have won."

"Yeah, well, you didn't," I pointed out. "No one can beat me. Haven't you learned anything from teaching me? I knew that you weren't just letting me win in those practice battles near the end of my training. I can beat you any way, anyhow."

"Then I must defeat you in another sense," Beelzebub said, leaping up suddenly to grasp me by the throat.

"What the fuck, man?" I cried, trying to raise my sword.

He pinned down my arm with one of his own and leaned in close. I could smell the blood on his breath as he spat it into my face.

"If I cannot kill you, then I will put you where you can no longer bother any of us," the Lord of the Flies growled, lifting me up by one of his invisible arms. "I shall send you to your own personal Hell, a place where you can finally suffer and pay for your crimes against the regime of Beelzebub, the greatest warrior of Hell. I shall send you to Earth!"

"Oh, God, no!" I cried in genuine terror. "Anywhere but there, please!"

"You shall suffer with me," Beelzebub stated his farewell. "And yet without me. Goodbye, Daniel. 100,000 years you shall spend with the humans as one of them. Oh, and while you're up there, go check on Atlantis. The spell I cast to defeat you may or may not have sent out some evil spirits to destroy that island. I'll see you in 100,000 years. This face of evil would rather you removed from the head. Suffer."

With that, he tossed me into the air at such a velocity that I did not stop. It felt like I was falling, yet I knew that I was travelling upwards. It seemed like forever that I fell upward, sideways, downward, and inside out. Nothing made sense. The world around me did not exist, and yet it had to exist so that it could not exist. I floated in this catch-22 for a while before I woke up in the middle of a desert, my wings missing from my back and my red sash missing from my robe.

I couldn't speak. What would I say? Where was this? I wandered about for a few minutes, totally lost. And thirsty. God, I needed a drink of water.

For hours, I trekked across the desert, going north, or what I thought was north. Where was I going? Was it morning or afternoon? Could I be going south? Questions fogged my mind and I could not focus on any one thing until I collapsed. The wind began to pick up, blowing sand around my face. In the blowing dust, I thought I saw people approaching. Humans.

One knelt down and offered me a skin full of water.

So this was Earth. This was my hell.

What did I do to deserve this?

It was Beelzebub. The petty, selfish, gluttonous bastard. He wanted the glory of being the greatest warrior for himself. He would do anything to keep that title, even calling upon the spirits of the worst kinds of evil to aid him.

I accepted the drink and gulped greedily. The man standing above me did not argue. When I was done, he gestured for me to follow.

I was human, now. Oh, God, I felt so destroyed.

But now I had to get to Atlantis.