“What do you seek, mortal?”
Kellek tried to see where the voice was coming from, but could find little farther in the murky cave beyond the spiked knees of the demon, high above him. “Vengeance,” he said, through cracked lips.
“On whom, mortal?” The voice of doom sounded a little bored.
“My king, his court officials, and those of his army who decided to destroy our village to build a new palace. They killed my family, my neighbors, my dog.” Kellek tried to hold his voice steady, but the long climb up the mountain, along with the grueling rituals required to summon the demon, had left him weak. He felt a tear slip down a dry cheek, and lacked the strength to wipe it away.
“And what do you wish to become of these people?” demanded the thunder from far up above him. “And what will you pay to have it happen?”
“Let them die, all die, just when they think they are safe and powerful,” said Kellek. “Let them lose their powers and die, and know themselves to be dying. Give them pain…and fear.”
“Very well,” said the voice. “And what will you pay?”
“Anything.”
The voice rattled the walls, and made Kellek’s bones seem brittle. “Everything?”
Kellek did not hesitate. “Everything.”
“This includes your entire afterlife of service, and you will not like your role in my world.”
“So my enemies die,” said Kellek. “It is…..” The rest of the sentence dissolved with him into a pile of noisome sludge on the temple floor.
Huge toes kicked this out of existence. “What was that all about?” inquired an equally thunderous but slightly higher pitched voice.
“Another to empty buckets of sulfur through eternity. He vowed everything so that his enemies would die.”
“Were his enemies mortals, too? Wouldn’t they have died anyway?”
“Yes. He was a little specific about how he wanted them to go, but the people he picked out are the sort to die much as he hoped, which will satisfy his request.”
The next laugh shook the mountain. “So he should be happy.”
The deeper voice laughed as well, starting several fatal avalanches. “No. Not at all.”
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