A twitch of the nose. A flicker of… something. A whisper at the edge of hearing.

Cerberus raised one head and sniffed deeply of his realm. Brimstone. Sulfur. The stench of the lower Abyss, bubbling up from below. Just a whiff. Just a taste. A tiny trill of a song he might have remembered centuries ago, but had lost the ear for it with his contented domestication.

Still. He remembered how to listen well enough.

These incursions had become more frequent in the last hundred years or so. Things below that wouldn’t have dared raise their heads were starting to stir again, deep in the Abyss. Things that had once ruled before Discord; before Celestia. Old things.

Things very close to beings like Cerberus, but ones that hadn’t taken a deal from a vengeful, living goddess when she had crusaded down to the depths of hell.

Things that, technically, he was supposed to be keeping an eye on. Those were the terms of his deal with Celestia. A devil always kept his deals, when fairly struck. And Tartarus was a nice realm to rule. In the Abyss, he never would have been able to scratch out a territory this large with so little effort. Ambient magics to feed him, prisoners to torment when he saw fit, and the ability to stymie his former rivals in the Abyss with a most potent ally at his back.

But that was such a long time ago, and the original deal didn’t have an end date. Hardly a fair bargain. Cerberus had done his duty, and done it well.

The devil’s heads slowly drifted back down. It was such a small thing, too. Not even a real test of the limits. Just enough Abyssal energy for something slight, like a portal. Hardly the first one he had noticed in the last few years. He had even done his proper duty and sent a missive to Celestia - one she hadn’t bothered following up on.

So that meant she didn’t care, right?

Cerberus let that thought sit for a moment. He tried it out, like someone would try on a new jacket. It didn’t raise his hackles to think such a thought and no lightning from the sky. That meant he hadn’t broken any terms of his agreement with Celesia, right?

Right. Correct. Perhaps I should send another message.Three thoughts, three heads, and two agreements to one disagreement. Decided, the devil closed his eyes. Celestia had decided she didn’t care, so neither would Cerberus.

And if Celestia found his logic lacking, then maybe she needed to be reminded of why you always had to read the fine print when it came to dealing with defeated Archdevils.

Defense in Depth: Chapter 18

Twilight woke in a box.

A dank, foul-smelling, humid box that had no light. Her first few breaths were labored and gasping as the unicorn’s brain began to slowly smolder again, but before Twilight fully recovered the fetid, sickly air pressed around her fully invaded her senses. It was overpowering. In her first moments of wakefulness, it was just one of many pressing instinctual concerns battering at Twilight’s mind, but after a few deep breaths, the stench of rotting, predated meat broke through all the other concerns.

It was a smell that tickled the very ends of Twilight’s primordial instincts. The fine hairs all across the unicorn’s body raised and she flailed her legs up because Twilight had woken on her back. But her hooves only scraped against an ungiving wall a few inches from the tip of her nose; the box she was in was only a few inches taller than she was. In a panic, Twilight tried to roll to either side, but she was packed tight, with no room on either side of her.

Something bit her leg - a sharp, stabbing pain - again and again and again as she frantically scraped her hooves, trying to get some purchase against the lid of the box. More bites, rapid in succession, went up and down Twilight’s body. She felt little legs and claws scratching and crawling all over her like running water.

When something crawled into her nose, Twilight’s mind finally snapped.

Her horn lit and for one terrible, mind-scarring second Twilight saw the mismatched, bleeding limbs and stacked pieces of bodies packed around her in the dank coffin. Then it was all washed away in a screen of white fire spilling out from her horn. It washed over her body, burning away the hundreds of corpse beetles gnawing at her flesh, and blasted the coffin to cinders. The soil above of her groaned and shuddered as the tons of soil pressed back against her power, but Twilight was irresistible.

A dozen feet above her, the blasted, damned soil of Thanatos shuddered. It shifted, blistered, and burst in a pillar of flame that sputtered up into the sky like a geyser. A lavender unicorn frantically crawled her way out of the deep grave, shaking off the soot of immolated corpses as she rolled across the ground.

Twilight gagged and coughed, sucking in air not polluted by rotting death, but what she found was nearly as fetid, nearly as disgusting, of the air down in the coffin. Her stomach lurched and Twilight threw up most of everything on her stomach, but as she coughed and sucked in air, she saw the squirming black shells of corpse beetles and her mind rebelled again. A gout of fire erupted from her horn and torched everything around her as she screamed and shook her head.

The unicorn’s terror and rage were both spent quickly, though. Her horn, glowing white-hot, sputtered and smoked as everything around her was turned to ruin. Other graves, marked by a thousand broken tombstones, shattered in a fire that flowed and snaked between them like water. Orange waves licked and scorched their stones and raced down into carrian burrows, adding a chorus of chittering screams to the roar of the flames.

But Twilight’s magic wasn’t inexhaustible. Her horn flickered from fire-white back to orchid and the flames abruptly ceased, leaving only a burning graveyard. She fell back on her rump, panting and shivering. Twilight gagged a few times more until she was sure nothing else was in her stomach, food or otherwise, before finally trying to catch her breath and take stock of her surroundings.

Or, rather, surrounding. Twilight was engulfed by a massive, unending graveyard. The air smelled of rotting gravestench and the sky was a dark, cloudy stain of black and gray with only a slight tinge of light by which Twilight could see. Her own grave, the one she had blasted out of, stood open a few feet away, smoldering and smoking. Twilight stumbled over to it and looked down, but there was nothing recognizable at the bottom; only the burning fat of the body parts and refuse she had been packed in with.

Her mind shoved that memory aside, violently. The one moment of brightness in that coffin would be buried deep and compartmentalized; stamped down, so that Twilight could focus on surviving. Instead of that horror, she latched onto the last memories she had.

The creature. The thing that had been born out of the ashes of the necromancer’s spellbook. A humble quasit, the horned creature had called itself. Some kind of demon that had entrapped her. Pulled her here, wherever here was. Had it been the one to put her in that grave? And why would it? If it had wanted to kill or harm her, there were much easier ways.

But then, Twilight realized what she was missing - her sword. The runesteel claymore that had been on her back when the quasit had taken her. Its weight was gone and only an empty harness was left in its absence.

Twilight’s ears perked. There was a sound, a scraping, clawing sound, from behind one of the tombstones closest to her would-be grave. Of course the quasit was still here, watching. Of course it had taken her sword before burying her alive. Whatever it had set out to do had obviously failed, so it would try again.

But Twilight was not going to be so easily tricked a second time!

The unicorn rushed to her hooves and charged the tombstone, her magic ripping it away, but there was no tiny horned demon cowering behind it. Confused, Twilight’s ears swiveled this way and that, trying to pinpoint the faint scratching sounds. They seemed to be right on top of her, so she spun in a circle so as to not let the little demon jump on her back again.

Something grabbed her leg in an iron grip. A skeletal hand had burst up through the ground and caught her, yanking her downwards with merciless strength. Twilight’s whole foreleg was pulled into the soft dirt before she could pull herself free, but another arm caught her back leg, and then two arms around her barrel. She was quickly pulled straight to the dirt, swarmed by undead appendages. Her horn lit, but something small and green bounded over to her from across the clearing, fast as a jackrabbit. What magic Twilight had been gathering slipped away as a band of cold iron clamped around her horn.

Still, she nearly managed to gore the little demon before it could leap back. All she got for the trouble was another half-rotted arm looping around her neck, pulling her down until she was chin-flat in the dirt.

The quasit, for that is what had revealed itself, laughed as deeply as such a small creature could. “Thought you were so clever!” it taunted. “So powerful! But not so clever or powerful now!”

“I swear to Celestia I’m going to end you!” Twilight yelled. She nearly retched when a rotting hand clamped down over her muzzle.

Braver, the quasit walked up and kicked her right in the ear. “Puny horse! Puny! Nothing compared to the mighty Verrbon! I have fooled both you and the other horse that thought to bargain with my master!” Its little lips quivered excitedly. “Now you should die in terror and become my minion!”

It had clearly wanted to say something more, but a long, tall shadow washed over it, Twilight, and the tombstones far behind the demon like a dark blanket. Twilight twisted this way and that, but the undead holding her wouldn’t budge - but she felt the footfalls of whatever had just joined them. Each step shook the dirt of the graveyard.

The quasit, that had called itself “Verrbon”, tried to scamper away. It was so terrified that it tripped and nearly ran straight into a tombstone, but Twilight thought it had escaped - until an arm reached out and plucked him up like a tiny pebble. The clawed fingers on this arm were easily half as long as Twilight was from snout to tail and were attached to a hand as wide as a dinner table.

“Noisy thing,” a deep, guttural voice said as the quasit was pulled up into the air. Twilight felt a shudder deep from the ground below her and she was suddenly free, the undead arms fleeing back under the dirt. She whirled, backing up into the cool stone of a grave marker, as a massive creature loomed a good dozen feet above her.

It was hideous. A great bald, bulbous head filled with sharp, protruding teeth was set atop a sturdy body the color of a corpse. Its skin hung loose around its shoulders, but Twilight saw chords of muscle ripple as it manipulated the screaming quasit. When it chuckled, its tiny red eyes squinted in pleasure.

But, most horrifying of all, was its exposed ribs and stomach. Its intestines slithered around its legs and hips like red snakes, weaving between jutting bone spikes that broke through its skin all over its body. It reminded Twilight of a massive giant from a storybook, only gutted and left out to die.

“Master, please!” Verrbon squealed. “Please master! Take pity on your poor servant!”

The giant hissed in pleasure. “What use do I have for such a pathetic thing?” it asked. “Does my graveyard need a caretaker to scour the headstones? Do I need you to bark like a hound when rats invade my domain?”

One little red eye swiveled to Twilight as it said that. It was a dead, milky-red eye, but its appearance did nothing to hide the malevolent intelligence lurking beyond it. The quasit screamed as a looped tendril of intestine reached out and took it, faster than a striking snake, coiling around the smaller demon and pulling it inside the giant’s rib cage. It didn’t kill it, instead just holding it there, still screaming incoherently for a few moments before some kind of exhaustion took it.

Twilight thought about running. In fact, her brain was screaming at her that she should have bolted the second she’d gotten free, but that quasit was her only lead on escaping this place. It had been the one to bring her here and she needed it back. Which now meant freeing it from this horror. With a flash of magic, she shattered the iron band around her horn and braced herself in the loose dirt.

“A cornered rat will always bite,” the thing chuckled. A fat, rotting tongue licked at the sharp teeth in its mouth; the two narrow slits between its eyes flared as it took a great sniff of the air. “Living rat. Tasty rat. You have such a bright soul that I will savor.”

It lazily reached out for her, thinking to pluck her up as simply as the quasit. Twilight’s magic stopped it dead a few feet away, fingers twitching helplessly. The thing’s little eyes narrowed and it put more force behind its grasping, but Twilight twisted her neck and swatted its arm away telekinetically. Now it snarled at her like a beast and flung its other arm out with all its strength. Twilight tried to grab this one as well, but the force and momentum were too much. She had to roll away from the attack as its massive clawed hand smashed into several tombstones behind her, shattering them like glass.

Its other hand came up. Twilight thought it was another swipe, but instead it pointed a massive clawed finger at her. Verrbon groaned inside the monster’s rib cage and a small ball of green fire appeared at the tip of that claw.

The demon could cast spells!

Twilight put her shield up a moment before the energy ball could slam into her, but her shield was nothing against the follow up swipe of the monster. It shattered the orchid bubble and swatted Twilight like a rampaging bull. She skipped and skidded along the dirt until she slammed into a tall tombstone. She clenched her teeth and rolled back to her feet, but she was shivering and lightheaded from the blow.

It was grinning at her now, claws on its right hand twitching and crackling energy held in its left. Twilight let out a huff of air and charged up her lightning spell - the one Trixie had taught her in the badlands. It didn’t even try to move as the electrically-charged bolt raced toward it, although such a large thing surely wasn’t that quick to begin with. Instead, it simply took the hit, electricity crackling along its skin, making the tendrils of its intestines quiver like worms in a rainstorm.

Then Verrbon’s groans turned to screams. Quickly, Twilight cut off the magic. The little quasit, her one link to home, smoldered and smoked from its prison inside the fiend’s chest.

“Not a clever rat,” the giant taunted. “Careful, morsel, or this little dog will stop its barking. If you want him out you need to only stop resisting and take his place. Before I devour your soul, I may let you speak with him.” Its tongue lolled out. “Am I not a kind master?”

Twilight’s jaw clenched. She wanted to scream at the demon for not fighting fair, but even deep in her temper she knew that would be foolish. It was a demon. They were the definition of wickedness and evil. She couldn’t fight it with magic, because it had a hostage. She couldn’t fight it with strength, because it had magic itself. And she couldn’t shield herself, because it could break her shield.

Slowly, angrily, she let the orchid glow of her horn fade. Her head slumped, defeated.

A happy ripple went through the demon. Exposed organs quivering in delight, it almost sang. “Giving up? Smart morsel. Clever morsel. Submit to me and I promise that I shall make your demise a quick one.”

“Let the quasit go and let me ask it a question,” Twilight hissed. She didn’t shy back as the massive demon walked right up to her, looming.

Its claw came down and caressed her cheek. “If you resist,” he told her, “the quasit dies.”

Intestines as thick as Twilight’s leg unwound from the demon’s stomach. They wrapped around her neck, her barrel, her legs, binding her better than the undead under her hooves had before. Slowly, she was reeled into the slimy, humid wetness, taking the place of Verrbon. The rotting, rank flesh she was neck-deep in molded around her; the ribs, her cage, closed back up before her eyes.

Her horn began to glow a sickly green. “What a soul,” the demon sighed. He lifted his claws out before him and they pulsed with orchid magic. “What power you were hiding! With you, I could leave this tiny graveyard and take a seat at Lachrymosa! No! I could take Lachrymosa! I could-!”

The demon was never allowed to finish.

When she saw the quasit stumble away, Twilight gathered her power and pushed. Not in one direction - all directions. The flesh around her resisted long enough for Twilight to see that great bulbous head bend over to stare at her, but by then the demon’s ribs were already splintering.

Verrbon was only mildly aware of his surroundings as he tried to get away. With the unicorn’s magic, that devourer would break him without so much as a thought. In his tiny chest, hatred burned. Her soul had been his to take. His to consume.

I hope she dies screaming, he thought. In fact, it could be worth the risk to watch the life fade from that unicorn’s eyes for ruining his plans.

Someone did scream, but it wasn’t the unicorn. A chunk of gut wetly splattered in a heap beside him. Unthinking, the quasit ducked behind a tombstone, only catching a glimpse of the orchid-colored bubble now bloating the devourer out to ridiculous proportions. Its massive hands were locked over its stomach, as if it could somehow contain the unicorn’s power, but it was completely futile. It only managed one garbled scream as the tension in its body was finally overcome by the magical force pressing upon it.

Gore covered the graves. A broken piece of rib skewered Verrbon’s hiding place, nearly taking off his ear. He made to run, but his leg wouldn’t move. It was shivering too much.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

Horseshoes against flat grave markers. Slow, yes, but steady.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

An orchid light filled the graveyard, casting long and irregular shadows from the granite monuments to the dead. On hands and knees, Verrbon crawled. His power went into the ground, cajoling the mindless undead beneath. There is food for you, he told them. Flesh to tear and bones to gnaw.

But they didn’t answer.

Clack. Clack.

It stopped. The orchid light shrunk the shadow of Verrbon’s hiding place on all sides, closing in as that light steadily came closer.

A face appeared above him, looking over the top of the tombstone. A face running red with the blood of a dead demon, eyes lit with fury brighter than even its glowing horn.

The demon screamed as orchid fire caught him around the neck and began yanking him upwards.

“And now, Verrbon, you are going to have a conversation. With me.”

Author's Note

I'm back. Blame Armasyll mostly, but also blame yourselves. Somehow this story still, periodically, gets over a hundred views a day. It's in cycles.

Seriously. Where are you guys coming from?

Oh, right, our dnd monster of the week! Meet the devourer, who is not nearly as dumb as he looks with a good intelligence stat.