Nlocnilmaharba

The demon awoke sitting on the throne and glancing at the sky.

For some reason, he could not move his head or his body. He could see his enormous body sitting there, with his hands resting slightly beyond the armrests of the huge throne. He could see his slaves skittering down beneath him, but could not raise a voice or lift a finger to torment them. And they needed to know their place as they smiled up at him, seemingly mocking him.

Everything else He saw looked very different than what he was used to seeing. Everything seemed to have a dull and white haze to it. He began to ponder why things happened how they happened before he came to. Right now, the demon couldn’t even remember his name, but knew he was a demon of importance. A Demon.

The Arch-Duke, Melthforcarabus, had invoked his right to claim territory on a sub-layer of the Expanse. The place where the Demon called “home”. The layer was made of hardened flesh and petrified bone-matter. The sky rained black acid and a pleasant wind that smelled of urine was always teasing the nostrils of its inhabitants. A lone monolith occupied the center. Mount Mourning, the Demon remembered naming it before the Arch-Duke muscled Him and His small army out. The Demon made his center of operations on the mountain, constantly plotting to slaughter those lesser-demon fools who had no place in ruling.

Then the Duke came. It wasn’t much of a struggle fighting him and his army. Melthforcarabus was schooled in advanced magic that turned most of the Demon’s army inside-out (literally) before the Duke even set foot on the layer. The Demon remembered facing him. Remembered old and foreign incantations the Duke uttered softly. Remembered his smile as the Demon tried to ward off…what was it? Phasing? Fading? Vaporizing?

Yes. The Demon’s own body began disappearing slowly before His eyes and then there was blackness. How long had He been out or banished before He became aware again? Years? Centuries? Millennia? None of it mattered unless He could get out of whatever prison the Duke engineered for Him. It didn’t matter unless He could discover the unfamiliar hell that the He now observed.

The Demon knew quite a few spells himself. Even spells powerful enough to escape the predicament He was currently in. But the centuries (it had to be that long) had dimmed the memories of evoking even the simplest of spells. He could only recall bits and pieces. Maybe if he thought long enough, the intricacies of them would resurface and he could begin his path to revenge on Melthforcarabus. Yes. They had to. Many minutes (or were they years?) passed and a Crumbling Shackle spell began to birth in the Demon’s mind. “This will do just fine” the demon thought with an inward smile. He began the long and spidery words and although the spell only produced minor subtleties at first, over some time He would be released to enact his vengeance.

The slaves stood below, admiring. Smiling at the Demon. “The insubordinate wretches. "I will grind them into dust with my heal” He thought as He continued with His silent spell. If the Demon would have had His slaves’ point of view, He would have seen why they seemed so whimsical. They were not looking at Him - rather through him.

He would have seen the awesome structure of the Lincoln Memorial.