[Lord Magtok]

@The Interrogation of Marcel Lanier: Plot clones as a superpower, nifty.

Anyways, here's the next Harpoontok tale. A little shorter than the last, and I'm not quite as happy with it as I was with five and six, but trying to fix these things usually just inadvertently makes everything worse, so here it is!

Post-Death MagJournal Entry 7 - Wow, Seven? I Could've Sworn I'd Be Done Breathing By Now

Spoiler

There’s been news coming in of a new sort of enemy, completely unaffiliated with all the major players around here. It was suspected that they might’ve been working with that erinyes lady, but those suspicions quickly died out when a number of her best got in this new foe’s way, and were promptly torn to pieces. They just sorta steamroll over anyone in their sight, near as we can tell, cutting a swath through even the toughest of soldiers as if they were merely a stack of used tissues, and using some sort of unidentified chemical weapon. Worst part is, they’re headed right for us, if the reports of our scouts (the ones who weren’t gibbering incoherently about ants crawling in their skin, I mean) are accurate. That means I’m liable to be deployed against these monsters, in the hopes that I get another ridiculously unlikely lucky victory like I did last time.

Speaking of that last time, and since this might very well be the only chance I’ll ever get to update this MagJournal before I’m brutally eaten alive, I suppose I ought to continue where we left off, and explain just how it was that I came to defeat the mutinous scumbag bastard that was Lord Demontok, Jerkface Supreme. Contrary to what you’d expect from a Magtok vs. A Bigger Magtok fight, it was ridiculously easy. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that he was miles away from being a true Magtok, after all the heresy and grossness and terrible foolish nincompoopery he’d been up to in all his time here, I’d feel really embarrassed about the whole thing. The guy went down like helicopter with a dead Reinholdt clone jammed in the rotor (funny story about that, but let’s save that for another time), fell right over in the first round, and I almost found myself feeling sorry for the guy. Almost.

"So let me get this straight. You, the MagClone with a harpoon in his chest, want to duel me, the guy running this little cave network, and you’re willing to put up centuries of loyal servitude and duty as your wager if you get knocked out, whereas all you’re asking for, if by some freaky miracle you win and kill me instead of just knocking me out, is my corpse, that Libby lady’s corpse, and a non-magical telewarp which can only be provided by my hands, back to your home base. Which you’ll use to call in a bigger team of Clockworks to explode everyone here who’s unlucky enough to still be around when the reinforcements hit."

"Yes, that’s basically everything. Oh, and would you mind letting my have my pick of weapon from anything in this cavern? Excluding your trident thingy, of course, and any obvious loophole nonsense that shouldn’t fly."

"What’s the catch, Whaley? And don’t tell me there isn’t a catch, I know us well enough to know you wouldn’t risk it all on something this stupid and pointless without a ghost of a chance. "

"That’s my little secret, Lobsterface. You should at least let me have that much. I mean, I’ve already made it easy enough for you as is."

I smiled back at the bastard. I had him right where I wanted him, and he was falling for everything hook, line, and sinker. He knew it too, but with all his little devil buddies watching, what kind of leader would he appear to be if he passed over a chance to put an arrogant fool like me in their place? What kind of coward would bow out of a thing like that?

What I wasn’t expecting was for him to respond by ripping my left arm right out of its socket and telekinetically smashing my face against a table. Cheap, underhanded bastard, that guy. Nothing said I had to be perfectly functional before our big fight, and with all his friends around and his demon powers to back him up, I couldn’t exactly protest that little assault, either.

"Fine. You can have your little tricks, insect. Deep down, we both know I’m going to stomp you flat anyways. Choose your weapon, and let’s get this over with."

"Fine. Libby’s corpse is my weapon. Feel like walking all the way down the cave to go get her, or are you going to waste a precious telewarp portal just to avoid whatever I might have planned?"

He scowled at me, floated up into the air on those ragged gossamer wings, and raised the trident arm menacingly, before sinking back down. I got him, folks. Right then and there, I knew I had him hook, line, and sinker. He put his hands together, pulled them apart to open a telewarp portal with what little power he had left for that sort of thing, stuck his arm into the portal…

And then he died. Just as I’d hoped, Libby’s domain was death, her corpse maintained such magical power, and without any sort of consciousness in her head to restrain herself from doing so, Libby’s fingers instantly zapped Demontok dead. His eyes rolled up, his legs gave out from underneath him, and I was the legitimate winner of our little spectacle.

"GET HIM! FLAY THAT CHEATING LITTLE RAT BASTARD! RIP THE FLESH RIGHT OFF HIS BONES!"

Just a shame his loyal minions didn’t see it the same way, though. I ran like the hell I was living in, screaming and flailing my arm around like an idiot as fireballs, magic bolts of death, energy-draining lightning, and just about everything else they could find to throw at me. I took about as many injuries from that volley as Demontok probably expected to hit me with in our incredibly short-lived battle, with blood and oil and gods only know what else leaking from every inch of my body.

I thanked about forty-eight different gods that Demonface’s telewarp portal was still open, jumped through, and closed it up behind me just as some sort of hideous dog-monster with three separate slavering mouths full of razor sharp teeth on its face leapt for my throat. I was alone now, with Demontok’s severed, lifeless arm, the horrible mess that was Libby’s face after I freaked out and shot her for no reason, and also the bodies of my comrades. The solitude wasn’t to last, however, as I could already hear a stampede crying out for my blood, organs, and a few things that I shouldn’t repeat, making its way into the tunnels.
I grabbed Demontok’s dead limb, thankful that his body didn’t have any leftover death goddess energy in it to kill me with, and opened his last telewarp, punching the coordinates for my home base into his left arm. My vision was getting cloudy, and I couldn’t be sure I’d gotten the last two numbers right, but I wasn’t going to get another chance anyways, so I clapped our hands together, pulled them apart, and then threw his arm, Libby’s body (I only grabbed her robe, I’m not stupid), and myself through, blacking out before I could be certain I’d jumped into the right place.

As we both already know, of course, I did. I won, I saved the day, Libby and Demontok’s bodies were sent somewhere to have the magic sucked out of them, and I was the proud recipient of some stupid Champion of (the hell-layer of) Lust award, after several grueling and painful days confined to an infirmary bed. The story ends there, I kicked butt, took some names, ensured the eventual downfall of several other enemy units in the surrounding area, didn’t steal anything out of dead-Libby’s pocket before blacking out which might be of strategic value without telling anyone, and proudly completed my first mission for Her Insidious Majesty’s Infernal Guard. The end. For today, at least.