The Heavenly Host

Tizzy shrugged. “Well, that has been my assumption. I smelled them when they first showed up here, all at the same time, which is very odd.” He took a quick puff on his pipe. “The odder thing, though, was the smell; they didn’t smell so much like buttah as marzipan.” He pronounced buttah in his yenta voice but otherwise spoke normally.

“Marzipan?” Talarius asked, puzzled.

“Yeah, it’s an almond paste, smells a lot like cherries,” Tizzy told the knight.

“I know what it is; I’m asking why they smelled like marzipan,” Talarius said, annoyed.

Tizzy shrugged. “Why do others smell like buttah?” Again, the demon used his yenta voice for buttah.

“You are the only person I know who can smell new arrivals,” Boggy said. “I don’t smell anything.”

“What did Talarius smell like?” Reggie asked.

“Like blood, sweat and piss,” Tizzy said. Talarius glared at him.

Tizzy grinned. “I should know, I carried him all the way back to the cave, got quite a whiff.” He shuddered slightly. “But the smell only comes when someone manifests a new body. Talarius came through a hole, a portal; he didn’t incarnate a new body as is what happens with new arrivals.”

“So the goddess and her avatars created new demon bodies for themselves?” Antefalken asked.

Tizzy shrugged again. “So it would seem, but like I said, it didn’t smell right and they all showed up at the same time. Fortress popped up very shortly thereafter, too soon to have been built normally. That smelled weird too, like iron and sulfur. I got there with some cookies just after the fortress was completed. They’d just shut the door behind them, so I had to knock.”

“Hey, you didn’t bring me cookies!” Boggy said, annoyed. “A hundred and fifty years ago? You also didn’t bring me along to check out the fortress.”

“You were probably working.” Tizzy gave Boggy a glare. “Remember, you hadn’t eaten your accursed master then.”

“Well, technically, that would have been the grandfather of the accursed master that I ate,” Boggy pointed out.

“You ate your master?” Talarius said incredulously.

“Best way to get rid of him once and for all,” Boggy said.

“Seems pretty gross,” Reggie said. “But then, where I come from there’s this religion where every time they have a worship service, they eat bread and wine and pretend they are eating the body of their god. The oldest version of this religion actually believes the bread they eat and the wine they drink transubstantiate to become the actual physical flesh and blood of their god.”

“Ritualized cannibalism?” Talarius asked with distaste. “Clearly these people are heathens of the worst sort.”

Tom interrupted, “Guys, we are getting off track here.”

“Sorry. Back to the topic,” Reggie said. “Why didn’t I get cookies either?”

Tizzy held up his upper hands as if trying to placate them. “I’m sorry, but the cookies were a house-warming gift. Did you just move into a new Dark Fortress?”

“No, but Lord Tommus just did,” Zelda pointed out.

Tizzy closed his eyes and grabbed his horns with his upper hands, rocking his head from side to side. “Okay already, I’ll bring cookies to the feast! But it’s going to take me some time. Do you have any idea how long it is going to take me to bake three or four hundred dozen cookies in my oven? I can barely fit a whole dwarf in it!”

Boggy gave him an odd look. “You have an oven? I’ve never seen it.”

“Guys... please?” Tom felt like he was going to lose it. He was under enough stress as it was; trying to work with Larry, Moe, Curly and Shemp all at once was too much. “I have to get back to open a gate for the next hunting party. So let’s get to what needs to be done.”

Antefalken frowned. “What were we trying to do? I’ve forgotten at this point.”

“We were talking about teaching Vaselle and Damien the Cool spell,” Tom said. “Or maybe they could make amulets or something like Talarius’s armor. Actually, that would be the best thing.”

Antefalken scratched his chin. “Well Vaselle told Damien and me that he runs a shop and creates arcane devices. I am not sure what type, and I am sure Damien could make one too. Let me discuss it with them this afternoon when Damien summons me.”

“Fine. I will contact Vaselle and have him get some clothes for Edwyrd, and we’ll come by.”

“Who’s Edwyrd?” Reggie asked.

“He’s me — it’s my human form,” Tom said, noting the knight turn to face him.

“So you are the Lord Edwyrd who sank the Oorstemothian ship?” the knight asked.

Tom sighed. “Yes, I was disguised as a human so as not to cause a panic. We were told the Oorstemothians were pirates attacking our ship, and having been hired to defend the ship from pirates, we tried to defend it. But then they nearly killed Rupert — in fact, I thought he was dead — so I sort of took the battle to them and sank their ship.”

Talarius was silent for a moment, thinking. “That makes some sense, but — ”

“But being a demon, I can’t be trusted with the truth! Do you want to really know what was going on?” Tom asked. “Let’s get it out there before I go sending more D’Orcs into Astlan.”