Chapter 7

12:45 AM (local time), January 30, 2021
Temporary HQ for the Imperial Asmodean Legions
Mumbai, India

“Well, that’s that, then, isn’t it? The Caspers have taken Hanoi and cut off the local Vietnamese forces. They’re spread pretty thin by now, wouldn’t you say, my lord?” Deepika Padukone, now an intelligence officer with my legions, informed me now.

“Yes, though that’s small comfort right now. It was a good thing that we managed to turn and evacuate so much of the local population by now. Those who are going to die now are the ones who refused to leave or turn demonic, of course. They had a choice and they chose poorly. That’s going to cost them their lives, one way or the other, I suspect. The Holy Ghost still intends to sacrifice them all for his own purposes, after all,” I observed as Deepika suddenly mounted my pole and started riding me for the hell of it.

“On a different topic, you know that every last Bollywood actress aged fourteen above is now a succubus and all of them are pregnant, too. Probably half of them by you, my lord. They should be so lucky,” she intimated as we began fucking and she managed to brief me in the process.

“My lord, there are reports that the NCA have resumed using nerve gas to kill any humans in their path, perhaps with the logic that it will clear the front of civilians. Militia, peasants, townsfolk, etc. all are being gassed and any who survive those attacks are simply shot. The Caspers are right SOBs, no doubt of that now. The first army to invade Vietnam since 1979, of course. And that one was Chinese as well, in retaliation for Hanoi’s conquest of Cambodia.

“The remnants of the Communist Party Central Committee have voted formally to disband said party and turn over power to an executive of your choice. They specifically named you as ‘guardian and protector of the People of Vietnam for the duration of this state of siege.’ Expect the civil government to quickly ratify this decision, as you know the degree of party control of the state and military apparatus. Then again, how many of these loyal Communist comrades are now demons, anyway? What a radical turn of events!” Monica Bellucci reacted as she spread Deepika’s cheeks to rim the fuck out of her while she rode me.

“Excellent ... I’ll appoint a sixty-nine member chamber to replace all other central governing bodies in all of Vietnam. This interim body will become formally known as the Provisional Council for State Defense. I’ll naturally lean on your advice a bit in selecting the members, ladies. Among others, of course. Its chair and fourteen other members will constitute a Guidance Committee. Seven demons, eight humans, at least until we can get the rest of the mortals to turn, that is,” I stipulated as I enjoyed the way that Deepika now humped me with abandon.

“This group, will it include any Communists?” Kari asked me as she nibbled on my ears and Jane Krakowski joined her in that.

“Naturally. You can’t run Vietnam without any Communists. Too many necessary and useful folks have been Party members, at least in name. As long as most of the councilors are demons or sympathizers, that shouldn’t matter, anyway. I fully expect that the rest of Southeast Asia will soon fold as well, and when they do, we’ll continue our reorganization of the region to coordinate our collective defense. You know what’s coming in time, of course,” I countered while Deepika still rode me.

“Annexation?” Emma Watson posed that question to me.

“Or evacuation ... maybe a little of both ... but nations as they exist today never will again, I assure you of that much, my dear,” I told the actress.

“Excuse me, my Lord, but Vientiane has been declared an open city by what’s left of the Laotian Government. It hasn’t done any good. The NCA is giving no quarter even now to the local populace. Anyone who hasn’t already been turned demonic is being slaughtered wholesale now. That includes the handful of human politicians left running things in that country. They’re not even trying to hide what they’re doing, either. Open, wanton butchery,” Anna Kendrick showed me the scenes of sheer, bloody mayhem in that capital that had been leaked out of it.

“In all of my years of journalism, I’ve never witnessed carnage on that scale before ... madness!” Elizabeth Vargas declared with horror.

The colossal bloodbath reminded me of the stories of the Khmer Rouge in the killing fields of Cambodia, which weren’t that far away, geographically speaking. It also reminded me of Stalin’s purges in the Soviet Union and of the SS Einsatzgruppen in the Nazi-occupied areas after Operation Barbarossa commenced. As a demon and now King of Hell, I was well aware of the extent of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man, but this was on a previously unheard of level here.

Apparently, the NCA had dispensed with any niceties and gone all Old Testament, Jericho-style with their push to exterminate the inhabitants of Vientiane, every man, woman, and child. A city with a population just under a million before this all started, a full-third having turned demonic already ... some six hundred plus thousand people had just been callously butchered by the invaders. Over half a million people ... in just one city, in one basic spot, on a single day, in a matter of mere hours. Murdered in cold blood on the orders of the Holy Ghost.

The same basic thing was still going on in Hanoi, and odds were that it would only take longer because there were so many more people in that city. Indeed, even there, the NCA had dropped their mask and just shot people where they stood. Men, women, children ... armed, unarmed, resisting or not, they were being slaughtered like sheep. This was going to be even worse than Vientiane. Maybe a quarter of the many people there had been turned in time ... the remaining six million, ten times as many as died in Vientiane, would now perish at the hands of the New Celestial Army.

“Good God ... that’s sheer savagery!” I heard from behind me as Orlando Bloom, his ex-wife Miranda Kerr, and Lacey Chabert viewed the scale of the atrocity.

“Yes, and I’ve had quite enough of it... , “ I said as I vanished and reappeared in Hanoi, kicking ass within seconds of my arrival.

I carried my pitchfork like a spear and cut through more than a dozen of the foe before someone caught me on viral video, watching me deal out death to the invaders. I summoned every devil in the area to join me in Hanoi and they did in a hurry, slicing through more than a few Caspers in their path. While I knew that the suffering of the slain was over and that it was necessary to let the enemy overextend himself, now he had just gone way too far. It was clear to me that the Holy Ghost had accelerated his pace of slaughter in order to take as many humans down with him as he could. He wanted them dead before they could turn demonic, too, perhaps in the belief that it would be too late to convert them after death.

In any case, it didn’t take long at all for the relief force to arrive, composed of every available demon in the province, most of them previously assigned to conversion duty. That would take a backseat at the moment to the job of slaying as many of the Caspers as we could, even if the Holy Ghost also took some satisfaction from them dying, too. This wasn’t a grand strategy or tactic full of flanking maneuvers and obliques. It was just pure, wanton bloodshed. My own armor was now blazing with literal Hellfire, as was my pitchfork, as I cut a massive swath like a scythe through the enemy ranks.

The introduction of Hellfire onto the battlefield had predictable results ... nothing man-made could withstand that kind of heat. Everywhere, people who could and should flee the war zone did so, rather than be burnt alive with such a blaze. Buildings collapsed, including plenty made from concrete, from the sheer intensity of such flame. Burning wraiths that used to be men shrieked in pure agony as they turned to ash before my eyes. It was quite literally Hell on Earth now ... and I had brought it with me, I, the very King of Hell. Civilians fled to safety in a rush, but combatants kept up the fearsome carnage.

What seemed an eternity of such brutal, bloodthirsty mayhem finally ended when the last Casper’s flames went out and his ashes collapsed on the ground. I checked for time and realized that I had been fighting for not hours, but days ... ten days, in fact. That was how long the battle had lasted and I had lost any sense of time itself. I had been so busy killing Caspers that I wasn’t even aware of the passage of so much time at all. Hanoi was a burnt husk of its former self, too, but the deed was done. I had drawn in a sizable force of Caspers and dealt them a massive defeat.

“What’s the situation elsewhere, guys?” I asked as I returned to Mumbai and left my local forces back to their own devices.

“Well, the drawing in of so many troops and resources, and yes, much of it was sucked into Hanoi like a whirlpool due to the Holy Ghost’s obsession with destroying you ... it drained the NCA of some rather critical resources at such a pivotal moment. It diverted enough to allow an allied counter offensive that expelled every last Casper from Thailand, at least for now. The Cambodians have formed something called the Sihanouk Line, after their most notorious monarch, which has held for now at least.