Apostles of Doom

He closed his eyes for a few minutes of uncomfortable rest, but was suddenly roused by some really bad whistling. Someone — one of the guards, obviously — was making their rounds and trying to whistle. However, it was really bad whistling; almost like what a child would do when learning to whistle.

“Hmm. Human. Male. Ehh,” a very nasal voice said before the whistling resumed.

“Human. Female. Not too bad, edible,” the voice said to Rede’s shock. Did the guard just describe a woman as edible? The whistling did not resume, fortunately.

“Another human male. A bit stale-looking though,” the disturbing guard said. The guard then inhaled deeply for some reason before making a small cough. “Probably shouldn’t be smoking this. Outside the Abyss, it always gives me the munchies, and this smorgasbord is a bit lacking.”

Rede shook his head. Outside the Abyss? As in the place where demons live? Something very odd was going on.

“Hmm, another human female. At least there’s some meat on the bones,” the clearly demented guard said.

Is this some sort of intimidation? Trying to scare prisoners into giving up information? Rede wondered. That had to be it. There were no other logical explanations.

“Another male. Hmm. This one seems to be a bit catatonic. Unless I miss my guess, he’s also way past his sell-by date,” the nasal voice mused.

A very strange scent reached Rede’s nose. Dhampyrs had very acute olfactory abilities, as did many predators. He peered out the small, barred window of his cell.

Suddenly an extremely ugly, mottled face with a pipe sticking out of its mouth appeared in the window. Were those horns on his forehead? Rede tried to squeeze himself further back into the corner.

“Whoa!” the ugly creature exclaimed. “What do we have here? Do I smell dhampyr?”

Rede said nothing, simply stared in terror at the creature outside his cell door. Had the Storm Lords summoned a demon to come for him? He didn’t know if they could or would do that, but he was certain that the Citadel would not be using demons.

“Hmm, not very talkative, are you?” The face looked down and Rede heard the sound of papers being shuffled.

“I am going to assume that since you look like a dhampyr and you smell like a dhampyr — and because there is an empty wineskin that reeks of blood — you are a dhampyr!” the demon said, for clearly it had to be a demon. Nothing else was this terrifying.

“What is your name, dhampyr?” the demon asked.

Rede remained silent.

“Ahem. How am I going to know whether to eat you or rescue you if you won’t tell me your name?” the demon asked.

Rede swallowed hard. The demon arched an eyebrow, opened the eye under it wide and simply stared at him.

“Rede,” Rede finally said.

The demon suddenly smiled, revealing very sharp fangs, much more frightening than Rede’s or, for that matter, Vladimir’s fangs.

“See? Much better!” the demon said, looking down and shuffling papers. He held the papers up, several sheets in each hand above his head, and peered back and forth between them. “Hmm. This is such a pain.”

More papers came into view at the bottom of the window, as if the demon were holding them in a second set of hands. The demon looked down at those, shaking its head and grimacing. Finally he looked up. “Sorry for the confusion. I’m working from my old notes.” The demon sighed. “I misplaced my book, so I’m kind of going by the seat of my pants.” He shook his head sadly. “And the problem with going by the seat of my pants is that I don’t own any pants!” He then began to nod, apparently to himself. “As you can imagine, this makes things rather difficult.” The demon looked down and stared fruitlessly at the papers some more before lowering his upper hands and shuffling all the papers. “What’s your last name?” he asked.

Rede stared in shock at this very weird demon. He would have expected demons, particularly one this horrifying, to have their act together a bit more.

“Hello! Last name? Family name? Surname?” the demon asked.

“Yondin. Rede Yondin. Yondin is my mother’s family name.”

The demon gave him a grin and began going through his papers again, muttering something unintelligible. “Ahh! Now we are getting somewhere!” He looked up, grinning from ear to ear. “Can you confirm your patrimonial name? That of your sire?”

“Czernobog Smerti was my sire,” Rede said. Clearly this demon must work for the Storm Lords. It was not something he would have expected, but nothing in his life was making a lot of sense.

“Excellent!” the demon exclaimed, raising his left upper hand, which now contained a large, purple-plumed feather pen. He moved it down theatrically to where Rede assumed paper was and made a motion as if he were checking a box. “Yep! I am here for you!”