"Well, Benjamin... it's time I headed out," said Pearlan with a transitional sigh, rising from his throne and dragging his feet across the wood floor of his 50-story castle. To this day the building stood proud, unafraid of the Duke's impressive wall that had swallowed up the whole of Dowa, unbothered that the conquering demon of humble origins, in broadening his own provincial horizons, had obscured the broad horizon that it once overlooked. Wary and unblinking, sharp and angled like the brows of a warrior with conviction in his gaze, its traditional Japanese gables still watched over the city folk, even though the castle's grip on the attention of distant observers had long slipped like snow off its roof. It had enough admirers in the densely inhabited Dowa with or without the enclosure. And the castle had a new lord who'd settled in nicely, despite the blood that he'd once spilled across its floors.
But right now, that new lord couldn't give a fuck. Pearlan had put time, energy, and resources into constructing a rampart big enough to span his dominion and tall enough to cut it off from the outside world, but he couldn't get complacent. When was the last time he'd seen beyond the wall? There were more towns out there where he could work his evil plans and bring the humans to their knees.
"I know you'll miss me, but my story can't end here!" Pearlan resolved, picking up his sword in the corner of the room. "But before I do that, I should really shake the rust off this blade."
Benjamin was the Duke's right hand, and though one would expect the demon who held that position to look a little livelier, his face sagged in an unimpressed frown, almost filling the ends of his fat, square chin. The only features that stuck up were sharp fangs the size of arrowheads, and even they looked more plastered to his face than protruding prominently from his lower jaw. What dulled Ben completely were his colonial white ponytail, his low-hanging reading glasses that he didn't care enough to fix, and his white dress shirt that struggled to contain his stomach.
"Better for the both of us if you leave," Ben answered dryly, "...since I always look half-dead when you're around. And I don't think swordsmen actually shake rust off their blades... That's just a figure of speech."
"What do you know?" Pearlan retorted, thrusting his weapon to the fat demon's throat. "Have you ever picked up a sword? Or anything that isn't cake from the castle storeroom? I'll have you know I'm a master swordsman! Or was..."
"Here we go again..." Ben muttered, bringing his hand to his stony gray face and resigning himself to another one of the Duke's soporific monologues.
"I fondly remember a week-long trip my family and I took to the city when I was 11. Back then I was an overzealous child who hadn't yet become the master swordsman I am today, carrying a wooden imitation wherever I went. I was never the indoors type, so while my parents were out sightseeing, dining in restaurants, and making weird noises in their bedroom, I explored the city and wandered into a dojo where I found older kids training with real katanas. My eyes lit up, and I started screaming like a kid who'd just snorted a thousand lines of coke, 'Ooh, I wanna try! Let me try! Give me one!'"
"You sure had a messed-up childhood if you knew what coke was at that age, and if your tolerance was already that high," remarked Ben. "But at least that's a good explanation for your purple skin and delusions of grandeur."
"...You know, if all you do is talk shit, why do you still work for me?" asked an upset Pearlan. "Besides, purple skin comes from shooting up too much heroin. Or in my case, from becoming a demon. And when that happens, no amount of heroin will turn your skin any more purple. Trust me. I know from experience."
"..." Ben sighed. "I'm only working for you because it'll help me lose weight. Nothing kills those pounds quicker than this fasting thing you're making all of us do, or as you'd put it—resisting the demonic urge to devour every common, tasteless human in sight and refining one's palate to dishes of a higher quality."
"Yet you're still fat," Pearlan chastised. "This is why I can't leave you alone, or you'll pillage the storeroom again and I'll have to roll your fat ass out of the doorway just to get through. Seriously. Isn't there a single demon here with a noble reason for joining the Eveldauer Clan? Hey, you! Wraith! Why'd you join?"
"Huh? I just joined for free drugs," answered a lean-muscled, red-haired demon lounging in the corner of the throne room with some playing cards.
"You know what..." said Pearlan in a measured tone that understated his exasperation. "...Fuck you guys. I'm leaving. To terrorize a small town. Y'all can sit on your asses and eat cake or play cards or scratch your balls as much as you want. I'm outta here. And fuck my fancy sword too. I'm heading back to the country to eat some country people, so I'll pick up a cheap stake along the way to better fit the mood."
As the Duke stormed out, a second storm of fear subsided within Ben, Wraith, and all the other Clan demons lazing around the throne room.
"...Thank Satan he didn't get to finish his story," said a relieved Ben.
"What? You mean the one he's told a hundred times? About the sword that swings beautifully but doesn't cut?" asked Wraith.
"That story's so boring, I heard the boss kills demon slayers just by telling it," added Skip.
"Trust me," warned Ben, "we haven't heard the last of it."
~~~
Pearlan arrived at his destination sooner on horseback than he would've on foot, but he still wished his Blood Demon Art were teleportation in situations like these. Blood Demon Arts be damned, if he weren't a demon, he could've gotten here in the day. His favorite thing about winter, however, was that night fell more quickly. He didn't need to wear his white mask, cloak, and tinted goggles, which pressed his eyes tighter than his pants did his ballsack and made him look ridiculous. The humans could feast their eyes on his purple skin, in all its unblemished and unobscured monstrosity, their jaws dropped to the floor in terror. Then the hungry Pearlan would drop his and feast on them!
But the Duke was an evil mastermind, a cunning genius, a scintillating schemer, a demon with an IQ of over 1600 who wouldn't be ruled by his primal desires, and getting human body parts down the hatch always involved the hatching of some elaborate plan. The town was particularly crowded tonight, perhaps because of a festival. Pearlan wasn't sure, but his mind was equally crowded with ideas, ones much brighter than the paper lamps providing scant illumination from the strings on which they hung.
When an elderly couple shuffled past, he drooled at the thought of old people in his mouth. The demon stalked them slowly with the expression of someone who was enjoying this way too much, and lowered his head to the old man's dragging leg like a drinking horse. Then, he bit into it and tore the whole thing off like a docile animal turned predator.
"GAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…h!" screamed the aged civilian, running out of breath midway, yet whirling around with what little strength he had and drawing back in pain at his assailant.
"YES! THAT'S RIGHT! FEAR ME! I AM AN EVIL DEMONIC GENIUS MASTERMIND WHO JUST DEVOURED YOUR LEG! SCREAM IN AGONY!" the Duke cackled madly. He produced a white cloth and a wooden stake he'd found in the forest, prepared to choke and stab the old timer to death. But he stopped when the man sighed in pleasure.
"...Aaaaaaaaaaaah~"
"...Wait, what?"
"Thank you, good sir, for getting that pesky leg off of me! I was supposed to get it amputated a while ago, but I've been nervous about the operation and putting it off, no matter how much my wife kept pushing me to go," confessed the man, clasping the demon's hands gratefully before inspecting the items that they carried. "...You know, they didn't have any prosthetic limbs down at the doctor's office, last I heard. But that stake you have, it's the perfect fit for my new leg! And I can use that cloth to clean off the blood!"
"...Are you aware of what's happening here? Like, at all? Don't you know who I am?" Pearlan questioned. "Are you, like, senile or something?"
"I'm just overjoyed, that's all!" the old man replied, turning to address his wife. "Honey, why don't we thank this gentleman properly? He's looking a little blue... or purple... My eyes can't see very well, but he might need some cheering up, and it's the least we can do."
The elderly woman had brooding, angry eyes, and it was instantly clear to the confused Pearlan that she was far sharper than her ailing husband, probably from whatever stick was up her ass to keep her awake and alive all these years. The Duke was just as triggered, however, by the fact that her husband had called him a "good sir." Of all the things he could be called, "good" was the worst, for he was a ruthless, intelligent, cold, calculating, diabolical spawn of Hell who'd drown the world in a sea of carnage! How dare the old man call him "good!" But before Pearlan's mind could descend down a stairwell of anger and self-doubt whose every step was an internal argument with himself, he regained his composure. Though demons couldn't stand the light, he looked on the bright side of things. The old man's misguided belief that he was kind meant that he felt a false sense of security, that he was easier to manipulate. If his wife thought the same, then he had these two wrinkled raisins in the palm of his hand.
"I do appreciate that you got rid of his diseased leg, but you should know..." she began, closing her wide eyes in deliberation before powerfully snapping them open, "...that I'm the only one who gets to taste my husband!"
Pearlan, who had momentarily restored his confidence, lost it anew in the blink of an eye. Actually, the hapless demon didn't even get to blink, as the furious old lady disappeared behind a fast-approaching circle of metal and a frying pan hit his face with a resounding thud. The purple-skinned royal fell backwards, less from the impact of the blow and more from the cringe of her finishing line, his visage twisted with disgust rather than pain. Unlike the competing emotions that shaped his expression, however, the words that escaped Pearlan's mouth as he collapsed and the wind that the hit had knocked out of him were in complete harmony.
"That... IS THE MOST VOMIT-INDUCING THING I'VE EVER HEARD! WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT? YOU'RE LIKE 80!"
Upon uttering these phrases, he'd made a grave mistake. By raising his voice the Duke indirectly raised the height of the throbbing bump on his head, a fact he fully comprehended when the skillet wound back and slammed him a second time, dizzying him to the extent that his vision was as poor as the old man's. At this point he couldn't tell if the stars he was seeing were those in the sky, or those his disoriented mind had conjured up, but as the passing festivalgoers chuckled and gossiped about the scene that had unfolded, he smiled at the fireworks display that his pinballing eyes had created just for him. It was a small consolation before the wrinkled bat reprimanded him a final time.
"Never assume a lady's age! I'm only 79 and a half!"
