“Fools! Pigs! Bastards!” he roared then. “Ye less-than-sentient things! I address myself particularly to my so-called brothers of Darkness, whose champion I have been, betrayed utterly by your indifference. We could have won it, boys and girls! We had the chance! My conception was glorious, unprecedented, and it could have worked!”
He paused and coughed. Someone passed him another flagon, and he sipped from it. The hall had grown quiet now.
“But did I get any cooperation?” he went on. “Not a bit! The fools in Supply acted as if I were doing this for my own personal aggrandizement, rather than the greater glory of us all. Why, damn it! I got more help from that fool Babriel, the stupid-faced observer from the Powers of Light, than I got from any of you. And you call yourselves evil! You are living proof, all of you, of the banality of bad! And now you sit here and celebrate and await the announcement. I tell you, friends, Evil has grown boring and stupid in this day and age. We of Darkness have lost the ability to steer the destinies of humanity.”
Azzie glared around him. Everyone was silent, waiting for
him to continue. Azzie strode across the table, took another swig, swayed again, regained his balance.
“So I say, the hell with all of you! I am going away now to a private place, to think and to rest. This entire event has been very trying. But I want to tell you all, this isn’t the end of me. Not at all. I still have a few tricks, my masters! Wait now and see what I bring next for your amusement!”
Azzie threw out a double travel-spell and disappeared in a clap of thunder. The assembled demons and angels glanced at each other uneasily. “What do you think he meant by that?” several were heard to mutter.
They did not have to wait long to see.
Before they could move, a tornado came sweeping in from outer reality. It roared, ripped, and tore at the banquet hall, and it was accompanied by a rising rush of water. The carefully noted speeches of the elder demons and angels were ripped from their hands and sent flying to the skies. There followed an infestation of frogs, thousands, millions of them, dropping from out the heavens. The walls began to sweat blood, while noxious halations suddenly became the order of the day. And through it all there was a faint demonic laughter-Azzie’s laughter- as he sent peril after menace after direness after terror into the banquet hall.
All in all, it proved a most memorable dessert.
Chapter 7
Brigitte was playing with her dollhouse when she heard something behind her. She turned slowly, a question already forming on her lips, a question which was lost due to the moue of surprise she gave when she saw who was standing there, tall, red-furred, with a mean smile on his face.
“Why, hello, Azzie! How are you?”
“I am very well, Brigitte,” Azzie said. “And you look well. And I can hear the sound of a pen scratching in an upstairs room, so I suppose Thomas Scrivener is living up to his name and recording something about the events that have befallen him recently.”
“Indeed he is,” Brigitte said. “But he tells me he doesn’t know the ending.”
“It may surprise him,” Azzie said. “Indeed, methinks it may surprise all of us. Heh, heh, heh.”
“What a sinister chuckle you have, Azzie,” Brigitte said. “Why have you come?”
“I’ve brought you a present, child,” Azzie said.
“Ooo! Let me see!”
“Here it is.” Azzie brought out a box made of difficult-to-acquire cardboard and, opening it, showed within the little guillotine.
“How nice!” Brigitte said. “It looks like the perfect thing for cutting off the heads of my dollies.”
“And so it is,” Azzie said. “But you really shouldn’t do that, because you love your dolls and “would be sad to see them without heads.”
“That’s true,” Brigitte said, and she began to snivel in anticipation of her bereavement.
“But how can I play with my new guillotine if I do not cut off the heads of my dolls?” She looked around. “Maybe one of the new puppies – “