Chapter 9 – The Surrender

“Hold your arms up! It's better that way,” yelled Shart. The roller coaster suddenly banked sharply, and we twisted down a series of curves and bends.  Without me physically being there, the effect was greatly muted.  That, and I could fly now. After that, roller coasters just seemed kind of dull.

Shart was enjoying himself though, so I let him.  The train had dropped us off here at Limbo’s premier amusement park ‘Asshole Land’.

It looked like every Six Flags and King’s Island in America had gotten together and had a baby and a very pretty one at that.  There was always a kind of organized chaos at amusement parks that only a demon could love, and that was obvious here.  Someone had really spent the time to fully lay this place out and it was a master course in the craft with one glaring flaw.

Asshole Land was totally empty except for me.

“So why don’t the demon’s come here?” I asked as we got off the ride.  There was an announcement in demonic about something, but even with Demonic Lore my skill in understanding low demonic was not great, yet.

Shart spoke what I’d call high demonic, think of it is newscaster English. Everything was crisp, clear and pretty easy to understand if you spoke the language. The demons from limbo actually spoke in low demonic, which would be what the language mutated into if spoken over billions of years. The difference was like listening to old English vs modern English.

In the past hour of listening to the whole new dialect I’d gone from not understanding any of it to picking up the meaning of most phrases.  The platform was asking us to get off and go around for another ride.

I’d tried to get back onto a spinning ride that Shart had liked, but there had been warnings and the ride hadn’t worked.  You apparently had to go all the way through the line again.

“They did, in the past,” said Shart as he signaled for me to continue walking down the path.  “I could watch from further away, but couldn’t come here.”

“Why not?” I asked.

Shart said nothing for an uncomfortably long time.  I got to the next ride, a viking style swinging boat, and started to walk through the full line which was setup for hundreds of guests waiting here simultaneously.

“I always wanted to try this,” said Shart finally, “But we were always stuck in the tower.”

I swung as Shart laughed.  He actually laughed.  He was billions of years old, had incalculable powers, and he laughed on amusement park rides like he’d never been on one before.

Because he hadn’t.

That much was obvious.  I still didn’t fully understand why yet but when the ride stopped for the eighth time I found someone who might be able to answer that question.  A lone demon stood waiting at the exit of the ride.

I really wasn’t in danger here, so much as I could tell because I wasn’t really here.  That was good because the energy coming off of the being standing at the exit of the ‘Douche Canoe’ was overwhelming.  He was easily at the same power level that the Dark Overlord gave off, and the fact that I both could and had to use Charles as a yardstick was concerning.

The being was a tall man in what was the Ordinal equivalent of a suit.  The Ordinalese variant closed in the front with the whole chest being covered up by the dress jacket, and he was wearing a bow tie.  It was only the fact that his head was a human skull that really set him apart from any other human I’d seen.

“Jim,” he said after a moment of watching me carefully.

“Bruce,” I replied, addressing the Lord of Jersey, Patron of Death, and one of Ordinal’s few World Bosses.

“I see you brought your demon, Shart, with you.  Might I have a word,” asked Bruce.

Shart froze in my mind, and I was about to refuse when I heard the demon lord whisper a question.

“Does he have your assurance he will be unnoticed?” I asked.

Bruce considered that, “Kevin would certainly be noticed, but your bonded Familiar Shart will be safe enough.”

We waited a few moments, then Shart flickered into existence on my shoulder.  He stood there, proudly.  I looked behind us, but there was nothing there.  Finally Bruce shook his head.

“Good to see you in the flesh, so to speak, boss,” said Bruce.

“It’s good to be here, I suppose,” said Shart.

Bruce nodded, for a skeleton headed being he was very polite. He nodded at me, “Good work on the Sphinx, by the way. I’ve been waiting for several of Grebthar’s companions and she was on the top of my list.”

“She is gone?” I asked. “Like in never coming back?”

“Cleansed her myself, much easier when she was dead,” said Bruce. “Only a few more on my list and that part of history will be buttoned up. “

I wondered if the Sphinx had somehow managed to get out alive despite what I’d seen. The few more comment probably meant Badgelor or Charles, possibly both.

Shart looked around uncomfortably. He was in his chibi form, which annoyed him. It looked small, pathetic and lost in the demonic city. “So what did you want to talk about?”

“I’ve seen you peeping here, now and then,” said Bruce and he directed us towards the center of the park.  Shart had been avoiding that place for some reason, and I hadn’t really cared why.  I felt the demon tense up on my shoulder, but I followed Bruce anyway.

“I thought the host was pretty adamant about their attitude towards us visiting here,” said Shart.

“That really hasn’t changed,” said Bruce as we got into full view of the massive statues.  Shart’s statue looked stupid, weak, and as I read the inscription below I saw why.

“The Asshole’s Surrender.”

There was an artistic representation of an admin there.  That was the first time I’d ever seen one and they were nearly identical to what the demons all apparently looked like here.  Instead of the flowing shape of a demon though, the admin was all hard lines and angles.

“The admins represent order?” I asked, gesturing towards the statue.

“That’s a simplistic view of it, even for a mortal,” said Bruce as he walked over to one of the automated stands.  “Demons believe that inside any system order will only be properly affected if some chaos is introduced.  In essence, things only work if they have been tested, repeatedly, and can still function.”

“Wait a second,” I said as Bruce waited patiently.  “Don't the admins think that a chaotic system that has been brought to order is the optimum method?”

Bruce nodded.

“That’s functionally the same thing,” I said, exasperated.

Bruce nodded again.

Shart snarled, “It's different.”

“Not different enough for this,” said Bruce as he walked back, holding a pretzel.  “There are certainly some differences in methodology, but in the end the results were nearly identical so one might question why we have subjected ourselves to this timeless internment for a point so minor you’d have to be an asshole to start a war over it.”

Shart looked towards the feet of the statue of the biggest asshole.

“Seriously?” I asked Shart.

“He’s never going to answer that, Kevin is a dyed in the wool believer,” said Bruce, chomping into the pretzel which vanished rather than be chewed, thankfully.  Bruce didn’t have lips.  “The most powerful among us were also the most stubborn and they believed that after the Eternal Ones ascended to the next plane, they had to have their way.”

“There was a war, the demons lost and were imprisoned?” I asked.

“Some of us worse than others,” grinned the skeleton.

Shart growled, “We were this close. We had a plan, and if we just had a little bit more time we would have won!”

“Are you still telling yourself that,” said Bruce, finishing off the pretzel in two more bites.

“Can’t you renegotiate?” I asked.

“That would require for the admin’s to actually talk to us, or care,” said Bruce looking around.  “They have a city in the heavens much like this one but obviously much better, where they all hang out and watch.  If they decided to partner up with us again, they’d have to work, and no admin wants to work any harder than they absolutely have to.”

I decided not to point out that the demons sported identical attitudes.

“Wait, there are admins on Ordinal?” I asked.

“Not any more than there are demons,” said Bruce.

“They are separated from us by a barrier so you can’t summon them,” said Shart. “Only a few pay any attention to Ordinal.”

“So do they have Elder Demon equivalents?” I asked.

“Yes, two, Zadkiel and Uriel,” said Bruce. “Shart dislikes both of them immensely.”

“They’re pricks,” said the elder demon.

“You did give Zadkiel that scar,” said Bruce.

“I wasn’t trying to scar him,” said Shart angrily.

“And ever since Zadkiel has been coming down on you whenever possible,” said Bruce.

Shart said nothing and I shook my head.

“When you say you are afraid of the admins noticing what I’m doing, you are actually afraid of a specific individual,” I said.

Shart said nothing.

“And if there is a barrier, how did you get me here in the first place?” I asked.

“That was Michael’s doing. He’s been studying the admin’s great wall of fire looking for a way in since we were imprisoned. Your acquisition was part of his research,” said Shart. “Earth has no magic, so he was able to affect a null soul capture at a specific space time coordinate using the Tower’s equipment.

“Michael was always the smart one,” said Bruce with a smirk. Shart growled.

“Anyway, because Earth has no magic, it is easy to add and remove information from there, but because there is no magic basically all you can do is collect souls.”

“Why the hell would they have bothered to collect me?” I asked. I was going to die, but maybe death was preferable to this horror show.

“The Admins blocked out all the higher-level traits,” said Shart.

“Anything that could threaten them,” said Bruce, who was quite the expert. “Your talent is divine tier, which the admins don’t want to deal with. As you were from a non-magical realm, you wouldn’t have had a trait. When you came here, Michael was able to add one that was not on the approved list.”

“Charles said I could go back.”

Bruce looked at Shart who shrugged, “You could, but it would destroy Ordinal. It would be possible to push enough Shadow Mana into a specific source to open a temporary gateway between here and Earth. The problem being that there is such a massive imbalance in power between Earth and Ordinal that the connection point would cause a Mana singularity which would destroy the planet.”

“But Earth would be safe?” I asked.

“Earth has no mana,” said Shart. “You can’t have a mana singularity without mana.”

I looked confused, but Bruce shook his head.

“They only grabbed your soul which didn’t actually make the kind of connection necessary for a singularity,” said Bruce. “You were either dying or dead and they snatched you up. They weren’t looking for Jim, they were looking for any free soul. The amount of time necessary to transfer a soul is fleeting. Putting you back in your old body would be impossible without magic, and returning physically would shatter everything.”

“And there is no magic on earth,” I said.

“Not a single divine crystal to be found,” said Bruce. “Neat situation actually. Do you know that Earth is surrounded by an entire Universe? From what I’ve read the speed of light is limiting the whole size of the project and eventually the entire thing might start to shrink down again. Very interesting.”

Ordinal was literally a planet. There wasn’t even a real sky, it was a projection on the backdrop. That explained why Ben was so hell bent on protecting the dungeon. The dual crystals were obviously divine crystals, and only two remained.

“Now what?” I asked, grabbing a pretzel. It was eating a pretzel or ask yourself the question, could I go back? No, that wasn’t the question anymore, the question was should I. That made it worse, there was a path back and that was going to be harder and harder to resist.

“I believe you were heading to Newark, and I’m not going to stop you,” said Bruce, looking around.  “I was actually checking up on Badgelor.”

“He’s fine, minding his own business and staying out of trouble,” I said instantly.

Bruce stared at me for an uncomfortably long moment. “If you say so, though I’ve never known him to do that. Out of curiosity, where is the old badger? I believe I owe him a visit.”