One Foot Out the Door

One Foot Out the Door

These tiny, human-like creatures, no bigger than a baby mouse standing on its hind legs, surrounded my cabin. They had sharp fangs and razor-sharp fingernails. In their tiny voices, they were chanting “Come out, come out, today's the day you die.” Not the most inviting words I've ever heard. I was trapped in this cabin all alone, without most of my former magical skills. These buggerbites, that’s what they were once called---hateful creatures that hated me even more than hate allowed. They were in a frenzied state. The protection spell I wove was fading. Soon I’ll become their dinner, but before I do, let me tell you a tale of how this all came about.

I come from a family of celebrated and powerful sorcerers, myself included. We were born when the world was young and innocent. With the introduction of Evil, it soon fell into the disarray that it is today. But I digress. My name is Azriel. After ages upon ages, I took on clients to relieve the boredom. This was an age when gods, angels, demons, and men intermingled; exciting times for some, deadly for others.

I was commissioned by a committee representing the nine kingdoms to relieve them of their buggerbite problem. The buggerbites hated humans, with just cause, I might add.  They were once peaceful beings with ample magical powers. When they first approached humans, they were treated with nothing but laughter and scorn. They invaded their kingdom in the forest and kidnapped their best and brightest, forcing them to pose as dolls for their children to play with. Those who resisted were stepped on and squashed to death. The buggerbites became enraged by their treatment.

Their most powerful mages transformed them into killing machines with a taste for human meat. Their teeth became fangs, and sharp talons protruded from the tips of their fingers. They amplified their strength a hundredfold, making human strength puny in comparison.

Any who entered the forest were killed or captured for their meat. They even raided their villages and took their best and brightest to breed them as one does chickens.  

To me, good and evil were different sides of the same coin, so I had no problem destroying the little buggers.  I went into the forest and, with one powerful spell, set fire to thousands upon thousands of these little human-like creatures. I eradicated them all except for those posing as dolls. The human leaders stopped me from killing them. They said their children were fond of them and that they would watch them for any trickery. I foolishly agreed and went on my way. In the back of my head, I knew I should have killed them all. It turned out that those little dolls ate the little girls who played with them, fled into the woods, and bred. After a few hundred years, there were thousands of them with an unbridled hatred towards me; bad luck for me, good luck for them.

By killing these buggers, I also earned the wrath of an extremely powerful succubus and her kin of evil entities. The buggerbites were under their protection.

One night, while I slept, the succubus Andariel kidnapped my dreams and sucked out most of my magical energy. When I woke, I only had the power of a low-level sorcerer. In my nightmare, she told me my draining would last for five hundred years rather than be permanent, since we were once lovers.

Unfortunately, I had only a few years left before my powers returned. I was toast. My protection spell was drained. The buggerbites howled with glee. They busted through my cabin and were all over me, biting away. As they closed in for the kill, my mother, Lilith, Queen of Hell and mother of ten thousand demons, pulled me back into Hell. 

A Deus ex Machina saved the day. What else did you expect?

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

let it rip