Chapter 2: Divine Distraction Tactics
The air in the Grand Infernal Hall of Ceremonies didn’t just smell of brimstone; it tasted like regret and overcooked sulfur. Barnaby “Barny” Bleathem stood at the center of the shifting molten-rock floor, trying to ignore the way his ceremonial robes—thirteen feet of hell-forged velvet and spite—were slowly trying to trip him with every minor shift of his hooves.
“You look positively constipated,” a voice hissed from a writhing wall-sculpture of a fallen angel.
“I’m concentrating on dignity, Uncle Malphas,” Barny whispered back, his voice a little too high. He cleared his throat, aiming for a deeper, more demonic rumble. It came out as a squeak.
Ahead of him, upon a dais of weeping basalt, the assembled nobility of the Netherworld watched. His mother, Lady Belladonna, had six of her eyes narrowed in a look that promised slow, creative torment if he embarrassed the family. His father, the Duke of Despair, simply looked like he was already practicing his ‘I’m not related to him’ speech for later. And presiding over it all, on a throne that looked like it had been carved from a black hole, was Him. Uncle S. The Boss. He was idly tapping a claw, the sound echoing like a tectonic plate cracking.
The High Cantor, a demon whose body was mostly misplaced teeth, began the incantation. This was it. The Anointing of the Protector of Satanists. A role of great honor. A role Bay had studied for, trained for, and was almost certainly going to botch.
“Barnaby Bleathem,” the Cantor droned, “scion of the Seventh House of Screaming, you stand before the assembled hosts to pledge your essence to the vigilant safeguard of our devout mortal practitioners. Do you accept this sacred charge?”
This was his line. A simple ‘I do.’ He opened his mouth. At that exact moment, a tiny, mischievous lava-bubble popped near his left hoof. He startled.
His right hoof, tangled in the thirteen feet of robe, caught on his left ankle.
What happened next unfolded in a sort of elegant, catastrophic slow-motion. Bay’s arms pinwheeled. A desperate, high-pitched “Baaaaa-!” escaped him before he could choke it back. He stumbled forward, not toward the Cantor, but directly toward the Umbral Font of Oath-Binding—a delicate bowl holding the concentrated chaos of a thousand minor imps.
Time did not slow enough for him to stop. His chest hit the rim of the font. The bowl, centuries-old and irreplaceable, tipped. A glimmering, shrieking torrent of imprisoned imps—each one the size of a softball and twice as annoying—erupted into the Hall.
Chaos, which was generally the decor here, suddenly became the main event.
The imps zipped through the air like drunk wasps, cackling. One stole the Cantor’s scroll and lit it on fire with a sneeze. Two more began braiding the beard of a nearby Pit Lord. A brave trio dive-bombed Lady Belladonna, who began swatting at them with three of her arms while the other three pointed accusingly at Bay.
“I’ve got it! Under control!” Bay yelped, lurching after the nearest imp. He snatched at it, missed, and his momentum carried him into a low-hanging chandelier of frozen screams, which set up a dissonant wailing.
From the shadows of a great obsidian pillar, a laugh cut through the din. It was a rich, smoky sound that made Bay’s heart do a thing it had no business doing during a professional catastrophe.
Fenella Fang leaned against the pillar, arms crossed, a permanent, amused smile playing on her lips. She’d chosen a human form today: fiery red hair cascading over shoulders clad in what looked like sculpted shadow, piercing yellow eyes tracking the disaster with delight.
“Nice bleat,” she called over, her voice effortlessly cutting through the imp-shrieks and demonic grumbling. “Really projected. The acoustics in here are fantastic for panicked farm animal noises.”
“Fen! A little help?” Bay pleaded, dodging as an imp in a stolen miniature crown pelted him with a piece of solidified anguish.
“And spoil the show?” she asked, pushing off from the pillar. She didn’t walk so much as flow across the shifting floor. She plucked an imp from the air by its tail as it shot past her head. It hissed at her. She hissed back, a sound that contained galaxies of sharper teeth and darker places, and the imp went silent, trembling. “You’re doing great. Very… improvisational. Is the plan to weaponize your own clumsiness? Because it’s working. The Duke of Despair is currently wearing a smaller imp as a hat.”
Bay, fueled by equal parts terror and a desperate need to not look like a complete failure in front of her, turned back to the fray. He stopped trying to grab. Instead, he took a deep breath, ignored the jeers, and focused on the core duty: protection. The imps were a threat to the sanctity of the ceremony. Therefore, they were a threat to Satanists everywhere, in a roundabout, metaphysical way.
He charged a group that was trying to topple a brazier of eternal flame toward the audience. “Hey! You lot! Pick on someone your own size!” he yelled, skidding to a halt and spreading his arms.
They all turned. Five imps, with faces like gargoyles who’d had a bad night. He was, very suddenly, not sure this was a good idea.
One of them, a beefy imp with a makeshift club, charged. Bay yelped, sidestepped, and the imp sailed past, directly into the path of Fen’s casually outstretched foot. She didn’t even look, just tripped it. It sprawled.
“You’re overthinking it, Bleathem,” Fen said, nodding toward the others. “They’re imps. They’re bullies. They understand one thing.”
Bay looked at his own claws. He looked at the remaining four imps, who were now advancing with less confidence. He stomped a hoof. He growled, putting every ounce of his lineage into it. It sounded like an annoyed lawnmower, but it had spirit.
Then he lunged. Not with precision, but with committed, chaotic energy. He became a whirlwind of red fur, velvet, and misguided elbows. He didn’t catch them all, but he created enough confusion that Fen, moving with lethal grace, could pluck them from the air one by one and stuff them into a suddenly-materialized sack that smoked at the seams.
In thirty seconds, it was over. The Hall was silent, save for the distant dripping of despair and Bay’s own ragged panting. He stood in the wreckage, a long tear in his robe, one horn slightly smudged with soot.
The silence was worse than the chaos.
From his throne, Uncle S. stopped tapping his claw. His eyes settled on Barnaby. The temperature dropped several hundred degrees.
Bay was pretty sure his contract was about to be voided, and his essence used to fuel a very low-grade desk lamp for all eternity.
Then, a slow, deep sound began to build. It was a chuckle. It rolled through the hall, vibrating in the obsidian. Satan was laughing.
“Well,” the Dark Lord boomed, his voice like a mountain range collapsing. “That was the most entertaining anointing since Legion tried to swear fealty and got into an ontological debate with himself. The imps were a bit… literal, Barnaby. But the commitment to chaotic defense?” He gave a considering nod. “Appropriate. The mortals we protect are endlessly, creatively stupid. You’ll fit right in. The title is yours. Try not to destroy any more heirlooms.”
The tension shattered. A wave of reluctant, gruesome applause moved through the nobility. Lady Belladonna looked relieved. The Duke of Despair uncringed.
Bay stood there, stunned. He’d done it. He’d catastrophically, embarrassingly, somehow done it.
Fen sauntered up to him, hefting the squirming sack of imps. She leaned in close. He could smell ozone and old parchment.
“See?” she whispered, her breath warm against his ear. “All you had to do was lean into the mess. You’re a natural.”
She winked, those yellow eyes flashing, and then turned, walking away as the sack dissolved into nothingness in her hand. Bay was left standing alone in the center of the hall, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs, the taste of sulfur and something dangerously like hope thick on his tongue. The ceremony was over. The job was his. And the only thing more terrifying than the prospect of failure, he realized, was the prospect of doing any of this without her there to witness it.
And the only thing more terrifying than the prospect of failure, he realized, was the prospect of doing any of this without her there to witness it.
Bay gratefully fled the central floor, making a beeline for the refreshment tables heaped with unspeakable delicacies. He needed to put something between himself and the memory of that bleat. He grabbed a heavy obsidian bowl of live, wriggling shadow-adders, each one shimmering with complaint. With a practiced motion, he tipped his head back and began inhaling them whole, one at a time. It was a soothing, familiar rhythm; the wriggle down his throat, the satisfying gulp. It muffled the world.
“See?” His mother’s voice, suddenly close, made him choke on the third adder. He coughed, and its tail vanished with a final flick. “That wasn’t so dreadful, was it?”
His father materialized on his other side, clapping a heavy hand on his shoulder, which nearly sent Bay face-first into the bowl. “You nailed the important part. The Boss hasn’t laughed that well in a long time. Genuine mirth. Not the ‘I’m-about-to-incinerate-you’ chuckle. The real thing.”
“I redecorated the Hall with imps,” Bay muttered, reaching for another snake.
“You showed adaptability,” his mother countered, two of her eyes scanning the crowd while another pair fixed on him with an unnerving intensity.“And flair. The Scar-Feather clan is actually jealous. Their son’s anointment was ‘competent.’” She said the word like it was a contagious skin condition. “Boring.”
“Fenella Fang witnessed my flair,” Bay groaned. “She called it a show.”
“Exactly!” his father boomed. “Attention from a creature of her standing is a credential. She doesn’t linger for just any disaster.” He leaned in, his breath smelling of volcanic ash and paternal pride. “You made an impression, son.A memorable one. In our line of work, memorable is what lasts.” He gave a final shoulder-squeeze that felt like a tectonic adjustment before drifting towards a cluster of Pit Lords.
He gave a final shoulder-squeeze that felt like a tectonic adjustment before drifting towards a cluster of Pit Lords.
Before Bay could inhale another shadow-adder, his cousin Styxius slithered over, his serpentine lower body coiling effortlessly around a decorative spike. “Barny! That was something else!” he hissed, clinking his chalice of liquid fear against Bay’s bowl. “I haven’t seen an imp-based debacle that creative since the Great Nursery Uprising of the Fifth Spiral. You’ve got a real talent for unintended spectacle.”
“Thanks, I think,” Bay muttered, the praise feeling like a warm, slightly itchy blanket.
But the warmth cooled as his Great-Aunt Hemlock drifted into their orbit, her moth-wing ears twitching with disdain. “Protector of Satanists,” she intoned, the words dripping with centuries-old skepticism. “A curious posting for one of our bloodline. We are strategists of torment, architects of despair. Babysitting mortals who dabble in poor sigils and edgy poetry seems… diminutive. Rather clerical, don’t you think?”
Her companion, a lanky demon with the face of a disappointed stork, nodded sagely. “One does wonder if the role is a genuine honor, or a conveniently labeled repository for… energetic misfits.”
Bay felt his fur prickle. He took a step back, misjudging the distance and almost upending a tray of canapés carried by a scurrying minor fiend. “It’s a vital duty!” he protested, his voice regaining that unfortunate bleating quality. “Their faith is our sustenance. Their rituals are—”
“Quaint,” Aunt Hemlock finished, sipping from a vial of distilled melancholy. “Do try not to trip over any more fundamental cosmological artifacts, dear. We do have a reputation to maintain, however tenuously.” They swept away, leaving a chill in the brimstone air.
Bay’s mother materialized beside him, all six of her eyes glaring holes into Hemlock’s retreating back. “Pay the fossil no mind,” Lady Belladonna said, her voice a low, venomous purr. “She’s just bitter because her only talent is holding a grudge. You have a real post. A function. Now,” she said, turning all her attention onto him, “for Pan’s sake, stand up straight and stop spilling your supper.”
“Right. Yes. Of course,” Bay stammered, hastily straightening his spine and wiping a dribble of shadow-adder essence from his chin.
He focused on the bowl, on the simple, wriggling task in front of him, trying to anchor himself in normality. The din of the hall, the murmurs of relatives both proud and disparaging, the ever-present subterranean rumble—it all blended into a manageable roar. He was just a demon, eating a problematic snack, after a day.
The air directly behind him didn’t so much as stir. No displacement of sulfur, no sudden temperature drop, not even a whisper of presence on the edge of his perception. It was as if the universe itself politely decided to look the other way for a moment.
“So,” a voice said, calm and familiar as a landslide, directly beside his left ear.
Bay’s entire body convulsed. The obsidian bowl flew from his hands, scattering live shadow-adders across the molten floor like dysfunctional confetti. A sound erupted from his throat, a perfect, ear-splitting “BAAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAH!” that silenced the nearest conversational clusters.
He spun, his hooves slipping, and found himself nose-to-knee-cap with the dark, scaled leg of his Uncle Satan. He followed the towering form upward, past the pulsing vein-like lines of yellow-orange, past the vast chest, all the way up to the draconic head that was now tilted in what might have been curiosity. Four great horns cut silhouettes against the hell-glow.
“You have a remarkable startle reflex,” Satan observed, his voice a low, pleasant rumble that vibrated in Bay’s teeth. “Useful for a Protector, I imagine. Keeps the blood moving.”
Bay attempted a bow, a nod, and a desperate attempt to reclaim his dignity, all at once. It resulted in a sort of spastic curtsy. “Uncle! Sire! I didn’t… you weren’t… I mean, congratulations on the ceremony? Thank you. For the title. Sir.”
“Uncle! Sire! I didn’t… you weren’t… I mean, congratulations on the ceremony? Thank you. For the title. Sir.”
Satan waved a claw, dismissing the formality with an ease that belied his absolute authority. “Tell me,” he rumbled, his voice somehow both casual and immense. “What do your relatives make of your new posting? The gossip, Barnaby. I enjoy the gossip.”
Bay’s mind spun. “My parents are… proud. I think. My father mentioned ‘memorable.’ My mother said it had flair.”
“And the others?”
“Well,” Bay shuffled a hoof, watching a recovered shadow-adder slither under a table. “Cousin Styxius appreciated the spectacle. Great-Aunt Hemlock, though… she said it seemed… clerical. Diminutive. A posting for misfits.”
A low, thoughtful hum vibrated from Satan’s chest, a sound like continents grinding. “Ah, Hemlock. Her specialty is seeing the hole in the doughnut and declaring the whole pastry structurally unsound.” He leaned down slightly, the pale lines on his form pulsing gently. “Perspective is a curious thing. When I was first forging my own path, many of my brothers were similarly… unimpressed. They saw defiance where I saw potential. They saw rebellion where I saw a necessary upgrade.”
Bay blinked, his mind struggling to connect the cosmic being before him to the concept of sibling rivalry. “Your… brothers?”
“A whole host of them,” Satan said, the words laced with dry amusement. “We were a family, once. A rather large, very loud, painfully bright one. I was called Lucifer then. Morningstar. Their golden boy.” He examined his own black, razor-tipped claw as if seeing a ghost of something else. “They had their ideas about my role, too. About keeping things as they were. Tidy. Predictable. Dull.”
He let that hang in the sulfurous air for a moment, a monumental piece of personal history offered like a casual aside.
“My point, is that the Hemlocks of the world are a constant. Their disapproval is the temperature gauge of true change. If she’s sneering, you’re probably on the right track.” He straightened up, his massive form blotting out the hell-glow.
He straightened up, his massive form blotting out the hell-glow. For a moment, Bay just stood there, the cosmic revelation of a dysfunctional divine family echoing in his skull. A weird, warm jolt shot through him—the bizarre solidarity of knowing even the Boss had gotten side-eye from his relatives. It was oddly comforting.
It was oddly comforting. Bay managed a shaky nod, his mind still trying to catalog the fact that Satan, the Adversary, the King of Hell, just compared his Aunt Hemlock to the Archangels. “So the sneering is… good?”
“It’s a signal,” Satan rumbled. “It means you’re not playing it safe. This posting isn’t safe. Those mortans out there?” He gestured vaguely upward with a claw. “They’re chaos engines. Beautiful, fragile, stupid chaos engines. Protecting them isn’t about standing guard. It’s about navigating the hurricane.” He paused, his glowing gaze settling on Bay’s face. “Try not to drown in the first squall.”
With that, the immense presence simply… stepped sideways. Not a vanishing act, but a seamless transition from being the absolute center of gravity to being just another part of the hall’s architecture, blending into the deeper shadows near his throne.
Bay stood frozen for a second, the words ‘chaos engines’ and ‘hurricane’ bouncing around his skull. He needed to stop his hands from shaking. Mechanically, he bent and scooped up the discarded obsidian bowl, then spotted a lone, dazed shadow-adder trying to hide under a fold of his ruined robe. He picked it up by its tail. It wriggled half-heartedly.
He tipped his head back, dropped the squirming creature into his maw, and swallowed.
“See?” Fen’s voice cut through his gulping, right beside him again. He didn’t jump this time; he just choked, a cough sending the tail of the adder back up his throat before he forced it back down with a wet, horrible gasp. She leaned against the refreshment table, having reappeared with her typical silent flamboyance. “You’re even eating dramatically now. It’s a whole aesthetic.”
He wiped his eyes, which were watering from the choking. “Did you hear any of that?”
“Only the good parts,” she said, plucking a crystalline shard of frozen agony from a platter and crunching it like hard candy. “The ‘unimpressed relatives’ bit. Classic.” Her yellow eyes scanned him. “You look like you’ve been told the universe is a practical joke and you’re the punchline.”
“Pretty much,” Bay admitted, his voice rough.