“Here we have an android,” Perry said, motioning to the man entering through the door, wearing a brown leather jacket straight out of the seventies and a terrible haircut.

“Hey, I heard you guys were giving away free cell phones? My moms’ been telling me- OH MY GOD, WHAT IS THAT!?”

The test subject jumped in place, staring up at the dragon staring down at him from a conservative fifteen feet above him, a thin squeal dying in his throat.

Perry shot him.

The gun didn’t make any noise or light, nor did it have an indicator when the trigger was depressed, an oversight on Perry’s part.

He’d been distracted by the excitement of inventing a new spell.

As expected, nothing happened at all.

“Here’s a phone,” Perry said, pulling one out and tossing it to the terrified android. “Numbers on the back.”

“They really do serve as excellent control groups,” Tyrannus said as the test subject fled, sprinting back out onto street.

“Next subject should be baseline biological human,” Perry said, motioning for Tyrannus’s people to send in the next one. It really was nice working with assistants again.

“Hey, I heard there were free hot dogs?” The bio-human asked as he entered the room from another doorway. He was a scruffy young man in his late teens with a lanyard around his neck.

“Why’s it so dark in here – OH MY GOD!”

Amusingly, most people, android or bio-human, had similar reactions when finding themselves so close to an enormous dragon.

Perry shot him.

Click.

Perry watched the dimensional fabric ripple as the spell took hold in the subject.

The man immediately relaxed.

“Oh, I’m sorry, man, my bad. That must be alienating.” The scruffy ‘human’ test subject said apologetically as he craned his neck to look up at the dragon. “Do you…want a hug?”

“Non, merci.” Tyrannus said, declining with a lazily waved claw.

“Cool, I just hope I didn’t make you feel bad. Just because you’re scary doesn’t mean you’re scary, you know what I mean?”

“Here,” Perry said, retrieving the bait from the bait-cart nearby. “Have a hot dog. I made it myself.”

“Oh, wow, this is really good.” The scruffy young man said, stuffing his cheeks with the para-dog, while occasionally glancing up at Tyrannus nervously. “Are you sure I didn’t hurt your feelings?”

“J'en ai l'habitude.” Tyrannus said.

“Well, you shouldn’t be…I’m gonna give you a hug anyway.”

“Nice touch with the translation spell.” Tyrannus said, gently brushing the roofie’d test subject off him and out the door.

“Like I was saying, you gotta attack the concept, the underlying support of War’s very existence.”

“We’re not ‘attacking’ war.” Tyrannus said, tapping the side of his nose.

“No, we are not,” Perry said, turning to face the final test subject as it was seamlessly unveiled by the researchers.

“We’re getting War in touch with its feelings,” Perry said, taking aim at the minor war demon trapped inside its crystal prison.

The heavyset demon brimmed with raw malice as he tried to bash through the Preserving Crystal and attack them, his efforts redoubling as the chintzy ray-gun turned his directions.

Click.

The result were...more interesting than Perry had expected.

The demon half-melted, flesh softening on its bones for a moment before it violently exploded into a tornado of tortured souls, the very glue that bound it together to a single entity dissolving and releasing the raw torment that had created it in the first place.

The tornado of lost souls penetrating the preserving crystal easily, spreading out into the lab, creating an ill wind in the real world that caused the human technicians and lab assistants to take an involuntary step back, despite not being able to percieve exactly what was going on.

“If you’re human, get back!” Perry shouted, motioning for the researchers to create more space.

Whatever grudges remained of the war demon, they were strong ones, and while Harmony might’ve destabilized them, their pain was still very real.

“I named her Harmony, by the way!” Perry shouted over the rapidly rising moan of ghost-laden air swirling around them, pointing at his new toy.

“Obviously some improvements need to be made!” Tyrannus said.

“What!?” Perry asked. the howling of the damned was getting real loud, so he started pelting them with Harmony. It dampened their enthusiasm enough to hear.

“If we help ‘Hotexul get in touch with his feelings’ with this, he’s gonna leave behind a crater the size of a city,” Perry said. “We need to make some improvements!”

The dragon narrowed his eyes.

But who do we know who’s good at dealing with ghosts in huge quantities?

Perry glanced over at Heather wearing her Wraith Hyperweave. Anya The Ghost was standing in front of her, shielding her from a bit of the frankly dangerous levels of tortured souls with grudges.

The Nocul.

Perry and Tyrannus were unaffected, like heavy stones in a stream, but some of the researchers were starting to foam at the mouth.

“Evacuate?” Perry asked.

“Please, I’ll be staying though. I want to witness the manifestation’s maximum radius before it dissolves. Having precise numbers will help to estimate the density and total mass of Hotexul.”

Perry leaned over and slapped the ‘evacuate’ button, helping those who couldn’t stand to leave the building, carrying half a dozen people with the Pernicious Prison.

From outside the building, they watched as the pillar of souls rose into the sky and simply….kept going, becoming a tiny light in the sky that soon became so small it couldn’t be seen by the naked eye.

“Huh,” Perry grunted.

“I think we can call that a partially resounding success,” Tyrannus said, emerging out of the building into the Chicago air. Now we just need to alter the spell to account for the violent release of grudges.”

“And double check to make sure that particular demon is no longer…that particular demon. I saw the souls going off somewhere…” Perry motined toward the sky. Didn’t seem like they were going to separate anytime soon.” Perry said. there was the possibility that they recoalesced into…something up there in the sky.

We should probably figure out what happened to them so it doesn’t bite us in the ass.

“You heard him,” Tyrannus gestured to the researchers still able to move. They hustled back into the building and got it ready to resummon their target.

If they couldn’t reel the same war demon in again by using its true name, then they had confirmed the entity had ceased to exist in any plane of reality.

Which was the purpose of the experiment.

“In the meantime,” Perry muttered, stroking his chin. “I need to go talk to an old lady.”

Portal.exe

A portal opened up head-height at the side of a withered Nocul crone, one Amelie Gabras, his grandmother’s arch-enemy from a species of long-lived worshipers of Gintax, the God of Death and Bloodshed.

Who was a surprisingly chill dude.

The Nocul had some of the most advanced magic and methods when dealing with the spirits of the deceased, that made the spells in Perry’s book look like pale imitations. Most of them were pale imitations.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“What do you want?” She asked, not looking up at Paradox. “I don’t leave the front of my store unwarded so that people can spy on me.”

“Looking for an expert opinion,” Perry said.

“Ah, Paradox.” She said, glancing up, wiping her gnarled hands on her apron. “I haven’t seen you in years. How are the babies?”

“They’re good, Nat’s is a bat outta hell, and Heather’s is the calmest little boy anybody’s ever seen.”

She gave him a wide grin, her perfect teeth at odds with her wrinkled skin.

“Good, good, what do need from me? She asked, reaching off-frame and bringing a pen and notepad back. With a bump of her head, she allowed bifocals to slip off her forehead and onto her nose.

“So I made this.” Perry shot her with Harmony.

“What is that, a magical roofie?” She asked, frowning as the spell spattered off her layered defenses.

The prototype was still just a proof of concept and didn’t have any advanced spell-penetration yet.

“It’s more complicated than that, but kind of.” Perry said with a shrug. With a motion, Perry brought the portal with him as he walked back into the lab, Amelie’s point of view hovering over his shoulder.

“This is a minor war demon, summoned by our friendly assistants here,” Perry said, raising Harmony.

The ‘friendly assistants’ scrambled to get distance, and he waited an extra heartbeat for them to before pulling the trigger.

Like before, the demon melted before exploding into ghosts, flooding the inside of the lab with lingering grudges and spiritual venom.

“Wow,” The gnarled old woman said, her eyes widening. “I have only ever seen a formation like that during a mass sacrifice. That’s what a demon is?”

“A war demon anyway, I imagine other demons form slightly differently, but let’s focus on the ghosts. How would you handle that?”

Amelie blew out a raspberry as she gave a thousand-yard stare.

“I mean, what couldn’t you do with that?” She asked. “The mass sacrifice I witnessed when I was a little girl was funneled into a gem and placed upon my grandfather’s brow. It allowed him to control the weather. Averted a famine actually. It was a wonderful celebration of life and the power of death.”

“Huh. You’re saying we could use them as a power source?” Perry asked.

“Of course. It would be a broader, less efficient working of Resolution and Inheritance, especially since you’re not addressing the spirit’s needs in particular. But quantity can make up for quality in many cases, especially where raw power is required over specific benefits.

“Would it break up the snarls of ghosts and make them less…toxic?”

It wouldn’t break them up so much as…align them in the manner of your choosing, but you would need a few ritual pieces to give them that direction. They’re essentially raw, unfiltered power at that stage. Let me jot down some techniques that could help you manage that many ghosts at once. I’m sure you can take it further than I ever dreamed if I just point you in the right direction.”

“On my tab, then?” Perry asked as she ripped off the notepad and offered the page to Perry.

“That’ll be twenty million dollars.” The nocul witch said, holding out her other hand.

Perry sighed and pulled out his phone, wiring the money. The old woman got a ‘ding’ from her phone and cast an eyeball at it before huffing in satisfaction and handing Perry the note through the portal.

A moment later, she withdrew her hand gave a dismissive wave, causing the portal to wink out of existence.

“Okay, we got our expert opinion,” Perry said, waving the sheet of paper as he returned to the dragon. “Check this out.”

He grabbed a nearby hologram projector and displayed the Periodic Table of Essences.

“This hexagon here represents the six ingredients of the ritual she just gave me,” Perry said, pointing it out. “You’ll notice a conspicuous hole in the center here, and a slight bend towards Utility, compliance and Energy, dictated by the stronger repelling force of using a higher quantity of Guanum Seed,”He said, pointing it out. “Ghosts go into the ritual from the side of Grudge, Hatred, and Malice, and ping off the denser metaphysical sides of the ritual and get directed where we want them.” He pointed out to the arm of the spinning galaxy of Essences.

“I’m not sure if Amelie knew how literal ‘making a funnel for ghosts’ was,” Perry said, chewing his lip in thought.

“”How can we apply this to our design?” Tyrannus said.

“Your curse design intakes energy over here,” Perry said, highlighting another arm of the table. “ So to get the ghosts to shoot over there effectively you’d need to…”

Perry drew a simple contraption taking in the ghosts, pressurizing them and shooting them to the other side of the periodic table.

And if we convert that into essence…” Perry had the computer spit out the ingredient list. It was similar to the old woman’s in a lot of the major ingredients, while including over a dozen minor ingredients that needed highly specific quantities.

“Can we make that happen?” Perry asked, showing Tyrannus.

The dragon leaned down and studied the formula, his nose leaking a bit of smoke as he hummed to himself.

“…Yes, I think we can make this work.”

The dragon gestured and opened a portal of his own, with swirling crimson and gold edges. On the other side was a massive library of essences, and several technicians standing at attention.

Tyrannus handed them the printout and they immediately began quickly and efficiently filling the order.

“Uuugh, I miss that so much,” Perry said, staring enviously.

If a dragon could look smug, Perry was pretty sure he’d witnessed it.

Half an hour later, they combined the essences, roughed out activation triggers, then digitized the wavelength by Perry sampling and regurgitating the pure, activated essence.

“So if the math works out on this…” Perry said, setting down his pencil. “A single minor war demon should make an explosion of love, empathy and understanding big enough to scour the face of a continent, equivalent to the energy generated by a mass sacrifice.”

“And any war demon caught in that blast will also explode in a similar blast. Ad infinitum. Afterwards, the curse will seed the soil and catch any war demon who comes back into existence or returns to the plane from afar.”

“Sounds fun to me,” Perry said, glancing at the synthesizer they would use to create the curse. “Let’s show this dick what a real spell looks like.”

Perry scoffed.

“A lightning bolt!?” Tyrannus demanded.

“Right!?”

***Hotexul***

I don’t care if the area is under the protection of multiple gods! It’s just spiritual density isn’t it?” Hotexul demanded. He was in one of his moods.

“Can’t I just blast though it!?”

“You might miss,” Suzy said, putting all her control into not cowering. Cowering only encouraged the demon to become more violent. “Again.”

“I DID NOT MISS!” Hotexul roared. “There was a strange spell around that boy that made the impossible happen. He practically flickered in place…”

“The dragon and the boy are at war,” Suzy said, begging forgiveness for what she was about to suggest. “Maybe you could…”

“Right! Right.” Hotexul frowned, then frowned harder, veins throbbing on his temple as his face turned red.

“They called a complete cease-fire!” Hotexul said, his voice rising in pitch, shellshocked.

“They probably understand-“

“Now they’re working on something.” Hotexul said, staring thousands of miles away, relying on the senses provided to him with the War portfolio. “It feels like a weapon, but…It’s not a weapon. I can’t quite make it out.”

“It feels like they’re going to…attack? Or not?” Hotexul said, cocking his head in confusion.

Suzy felt something coming too, but figured it was best not to mention it and instead seek cover behind the throne, tucking her head between her arms.

“Well, whatever it was, it’s gone now.” Hotexul muttered.

BANG BANG BANG

Following three sharp blows, the door was shoved open, and Suzy peeked around the edge of the throne to see Slak’vreth Deathseeker, one of Hotexul’s highest generals who he’d cursed with immortality for some long-forgotten slight.

The demon’s face was half-melted, but a vicious grin was still stretched across her face.

“My lord, I’ve come to…share something with you.” She said, her sharp teeth glittering and bloody in the lamplight.

“What is it, Slav’vreth? Out with it!” Hotexul demanded.

Suzy wisely chose that moment to retreat back into the throne she was chained to.

A moment later an explosion tore Suzy out of the throne and tumbled her across the face of…

Nothing?

Suzy glanced up and saw that the throne she’d been chained to for so many centuries was gone. As was the room around it, the castle around that, and most importantly, the demon lord who’d kept her prisoner for so many years.

Suzy levered herself to her feet, scanning the empty horizon.

Norgosh had been rendered a barren, flat plane by a power that dwarfed a god’s. As if every ounce of malice in every demon in the realm had been turned against itself all at once.

And the power…

Suzy sniffed, tasting the air with all of her senses.

“Sophie?” she asked, frowning.

A moment later, a portal opened up, and Suzy turned, her heart beating in joyous excitement for the first time in a millenia. Her sister had rescued her!

A strange insectlike creature dropped out of the portal, its entire body stained with old blood.

“There, there,” Suzy said, her voice trembling, raising her hands as the creature approached. “You don’t need to hurt me, we’re friends,”

She had been denied access to her powers as an Elysian Attendant for so long that she was afraid they no longer existed, but they flooded back in full force like a breath of fresh air after being trapped underground for an eternity.

Suddenly she knew it better than she knew herself.

The creature wasn’t aggressive. It was curious.

“Hello,” Suzy said, kneeling to offer the strange creature her hand, radiating friendliness and empathy. “My name’s Suzy, what’s yours?”

The reddish creature with talons for legs leaned forward and sniffed her hand, finding her sufficiently non-demonic to allow her to live. It pushed its head into her palm, demanding scritches, forcing a giggle out of her as she obliged.

She felt another portal open behind her, and turned to see the figure of her sister stepping through.

“Time to come home, Suzy,” Sophie said, her eyes wet with tears.

Suzy tackled her younger sister, the sheer momentum of their embrace carrying them both through the portal…and home.

****Paradox****

“You think it worked?” Perry asked.

“We’ll probably find out soon enough one way or another.” Tyrannus said.

True enough, a few minutes of conversation later, they got confirmation, albeit indirect confirmation.

“Paradox Zauberer?” A young woman said, catching Perry’s attention.

“Yep?” Perry said, glancing over to see an Elysian Attendant in business casual stepping through a portal.

“In light of your recent deeds, Elysium has sponsored you,” she said, offering him a pair of tickets that positively radiated power.

One said ‘lifetime attendant’.

The other said ‘get into heaven’.

“We understand that your actions were taken out of self-interest, but their sheer magnitude cannot go unrewarded: One voucher for the service of an Elysian attendant for the rest of your natural life, and another for entry to Elysium itself after you die. For services rendered towards both the natives and the wounded warriors of Elysium. Many thousands of their family members were bound into the demons you exorcised, and they cannot express how grateful they are for your actions. You’ll be quite the celebrity when you arrive.”

‘Arrive’, meaning ‘die’.

“Oh. Cool.” Perry took the tickets, which dissolved into his skin. “Does that mean…”

“War won’t cease to exist, but the Demon Lord of war will never rise again. His ilk have been expunged from Nargosh.”

“Excellent, thank you.” Perry said, the Attendant gave him a brisk nod before retreating back to her home plane.

“Well, looks like it worked,” Perry said, catching Tyrannus giving him an envious side-eye. “I don’t know if Elysium does dragons,” Perry said with a shrug.

“Pshh,” Tyrannus waved it off. “I have plenty of attendants, and I have no plan on ever dying. Nothing that woman offered is of any use to me.”

“William Kline?” A majestic red dragon asked, stepping out of a portal.

“Wha-oh, um, wh-who wha-“

“In light of your recent deeds, Elysium has sponsored you,” The glittering red dragon roughly twice Tyrannus’s size spoke, offering Tyrannus a second pair of tickets.

“I guess they do do dragons,” Perry said with a shrug as Tyrannus continued to stammer.

Congratulations!

You have reached Level 18!

“Boom!” Perry fist-pumped, ignoring Tyrannus fumbling his first dragon-crush and instead dived into his stats.