Long Story #3: The Demon of the Threads (P2)

He could avoid a potentially dangerous battle, if he played his cards right; a little threat could go a long way, to a mother whom had a brood. The feel of it wasn't right, because it went against his instincts as a hero, but this was a terrible demon, wasn't it? This was fair play. He still took his steps slowly and softly as he crept the last leg of the journey. The gentle music box of the nursery faded into the distance, and in its place would come a more lively tune. Violin music? Quite impressive too, from what he could already hear. Before reaching the top of the spiraling steps, the music would come to a halt, and the atmosphere again grew dim. Entering the throne room, the inner sanctuary of the demon, it was time for the little hero's world to again be flipped upside down. Radish had ascended these plentiful steps, with the vivid image of a twisted villain being who waited for him at the tower's peak. There should have been a ferocious beast with claws like swords, and a maw of teeth like daggers; flames should have erupted from his eyes, and molten drool should have been dripping from his enormous jaws, all while the breath of blood and decay wafted throughout. Where was the bellowing roar? The earth-shaking steps? The spear-like horns and the pitchfork tail? There wasn't a throne of skulls, there were no tapestries of human flesh, and there were no signs that any blood had ever been spilled in here. What there was, was a small boy with white hair, piercing red eyes, and tiny horns that barely rose above the description of being nubs atop his head. He was fair of skin, and he had an amused look on his face as Radish entered the room; he had what looked like a small glass goblet betwixt his fingers, full of a red liquid that he swished around idly. He was smaller than the size that Radish had currently been reduced to, but not by very much; if he were to guess in human terms, then he would assume the boy was maybe five or six at the most, but demons all aged in very unique ways. Demons also came in a variety of sizes and shapes, with some being much bigger or smaller than a human. Judging by the boy's manner of dress, Radish assumed that he was merely a large tot; he was dressed in a very fanciful, regal top, which had frills and a cravat to boot, but looking a little lower... He was undeniably wearing a diaper, and a pretty bulky one too. The cloth looked pristine, elegant, and expertly crafted, but none of that really mattered when thinking about the end-all purpose of the garment's necessary existence. This must be the demon's son, right? After the initial shock wore off, that was the first thought to come to mind. He'd already figured out that the demon had a baby here, and he had expected to see it, but he hadn't thought it would be plopped down on a throne that was far too big. To the child's left was the violin that Radish had earlier heard, leaned up against the side of the throne; to the right of the boy was one of the stuffed animals, who was holding a silver platter full of small finger-foods to snack on. But there was nobody else. Was the demon away from the tower? Having left their child to be doted on by these magic dolls? Could Radish have really been that lucky? "You took your time to come up here. You came into town so long ago, that I've really started to get bored waiting. Why were you moving so slowly? Were you scared?" Radish blinked, not having expected the little demon to speak with such refinement, or really with any at all. Call it prejudice against demons or toddlers, but he'd more been expecting barely cogent babbling, perhaps interspersed with a few crude facsimiles of real words. "Scared? No...I..." Radish started to reply without thinking, before stopping himself and tempering his response. "I've come to claim the needle, small one. My people are in great need of it, and I've come a long way to take it. I promise no harm to you, or your mother, or your father, so long as you don't impede me from my quest." The demon smiled, "Small one? Aren't you one to talk. Are your people in such dire straits that they had to send a little boy to save their kingdom? A little better than sending a little girl, I guess." "I'm not a little boy, I'm--" The hero attempted to argue, before being interrupted. "--And furthermore, you have a lot of nerve to come into my home and start demanding my toys. Didn't your mommy teach you any manners? Were you raised in a barn? It really is disappointing, you know; I thought you might be coming up here to play with me. It gets oh-so lonely in this big tower, and it is not like these stuffed animals are full of lively conversation, or are capable of keeping up with my games..." Radish narrowed his eyes and put his hand on his scabbard, not planning yet to unsheath his blade, but not keeping it off the table as a scare tactic. "Listen, brat. I've had to go through way too much nonsense to get here, and I'm not leaving without that relic. I'm not here to play little baby games with you, or to carry on a conversation with you. If you won't lead me to the needle, then I'll find it myself; if you try to stop me, then I won't hesitate to cut you down and send you back into the infernal depths." The little boy laughed, clearly unafraid of whatever Radish was trying to convince him of. "You really are too much, you know that? Okay then, I guess I'll have to stop you. I just need to decide what kind that I think you should be...What best describes you? Hmm, you're stubborn like a goat, but goats aren't very cute..." Radish gritted his teeth and started to walk up more closely to the throne. "That's it, I'm finished with you. I don't appreciate being mocked by a babe still in a nappy, though you should thank your mummy for swaddling you so thickly; all that cushion will help when I knock you onto your backside." The child didn't move from the throne, just sipping more at his goblet, still apparently deep in thought. Just as Radish was raising an arm, likely to slap the smaller boy, the demon gestured with his fingers, and Radish's arm came to an immediate halt. "What the...What have you bound me with?" "Thread, stupid. Did you really come all this way without knowing my name? My title? That's not just arrogant, it's dimwitted! I'm Sebastian, the demon of the thread; you know: the patchwork prince of puppets, the silken son of the spool, the condemned cadence of cotton! I'm the seventh crown of the lower spheres, sheep-demon royalty, and what are you? Some smelly peasant boy playing hero with daddy's sword?" It couldn't be, could it? Was this diaper-clad cretin really the beast he had been so nervous to face? Was he the archon of the Pale Tower? Source of sorrow for a nameless kingdom that had been lost to time? He couldn't possibly be! And yet, he did command the threads without trouble, just as his title would imply. "Too gobsmacked to talk? That's okay, you don't need to talk to play." Sebastian said plainly, finally starting to slide off his throne, so that his socked feet touched the stonework of the floor. The ensnared hero made an attempt to draw his blade with his free hand, but as he broke it free from its sheath, that hand would be bound by a fine thread too. Sebastian clicked his tongue and shook his head at the sight, before coming closer to tap his foe on the nose. "No, no, none of that. I can't have you cutting my threads. You must be curious about what this precious treasure that you're looking for, is even capable of, am I right? Nothing would make me happier than to show you, and I think I made a decision too." Radish wriggled and writhed, but he was stuck in place, unable to break free from the invisible chains that shackled him. "D-do your worst, demon! I have the heart of a hero, the blood of a champion, and I won't be intimidated by some infant prince of strings!" "My worst? No, I think I'll do my best job yet with you. I've had a lot of practice, but not nearly enough prey. Not everyone is anything approaching as foolhardy as you have proven to be." The child held up both hands, and from them, strands of silk seemed to burst forth. The threads rapidly began to twirl around Radish, wrapping him in layer upon layer of cloth material, until he was swaddled like a cocoon, with only his head mostly unobstructed. Radish felt a pinch on his side, and then another, as if he was being pricked very lightly by needles. It was a little painful at first, but it grew less so after each successive occurrence. He winced and clenched his teeth, trying not to show his discomfort, but Sebastian wasn't fooled at all by the attempt at machismo. "I kind of like you, so I'm going not going to make you like the others, at least not entirely. It'd be no fun to turn you into just another servant, especially whenever I've become so bored here." A pulse of heat flared throughout the snare of silk; first lightly, and then growing more intense with each wave. It didn't hurt, but it did feel strange, and his body was beginning to feel less normal by the second. Radish felt light and detached. "What are you...What's happening to me?" "I'm using the power of the artifact that you came to steal. The one which should only ever belong in the skilled hands of a seamster. I'm transforming you into one of my little toys." Suddenly, the wisps of thread began to rapidly retract and disappear from the boy's body, like an invisible spool had sucked them all back up to wind around it. Radish dropped to the floor, but he no longer resembled the person he'd been only a few minutes prior; he was a bit smaller now, and while he still wore a tunic, his tights had disappeared completely. In their place? A diaper, much like the one that was around the demon's own waist, except it was sewed at the waist to his...Skin? No, couldn't call it flesh any longer, because it lacked the solidity and warmth that such a word honored. He was fabric and fluff, wool and who knows what; he lifted his hands up toward his face and stared in horror at the sight of the nubby grippers he'd been left with; he took a shaky step backwards, and fell onto his padded bottom with a squeak. "I'm...I'm..." "A toy, that's correct. Just like the rest of my servants are toys. I decided to make you a little lamb, because that's the sort of demon I am, and I thought it'd be nice to have something familiar to play with. I let you keep your fingers at least, so that's something, right? And you still get to keep your clothes, and whatever knickknacks you brought along with you...It could have been a lot worse, believe me." Radish wasn't sure how exactly this could get worse, and while Sebastian may have been content to leave him in such a ridiculous form, it wasn't an option that Radish could allow; he still had a job to do, and he couldn't let things end like this. Especially not like this. With whatever growl he could muster, the lamb pushed himself off the floor and flung himself at Sebastian with all his might. There was no plan, no tactics, just pure impulsive anger. He crashed into Sebastian and tried to start hitting him with his fists, but it was a useless effort; these fluff-filled fists had no weight behind them, no power. "I'm starting to get a little mad at how ungrateful you really are. I let you into my home, I let you live, and I put extra effort into making you a toy, and you still want more! I think it's time that we play, and maybe you'll learn something about politeness." Sebastian easily grabbed Radish around the waist, now that the adventurer weighed so very little, and he started to carry him off toward the back of the room, where a window peered out into the endless desert. "I could just exile you, you know. I could throw you out this window and wash my hands of you. You would never survive toddling those sands again, not as a little stuffed lamb, and even if you did, then you would still be stuck like this. Letting you stay here will be a privilege that you should be grateful of, just like all the rest." Radish grimaced, "You mean the kingdom you destroyed? Are the toys here the citizens of that place? Survivors you kept as slaves?" The questions actually appeared to catch Sebastian off-guard, but be quickly regained his composure and clicked his tongue again. "That's right. I'm the big bad demon that laid waste to everything and everybody out there; fields of bones, rivers of blood, and the last of them became my dutiful servants. If you knew that, then why did you come?" "Well, I..." "It doesn't matter. You should have been scared off by my legend, and you still came, so now I'll have to lay waste to you." Instead of murderously threatening, the comment came across as taunting, almost playful. Sebastian tossed the toy lamb to the floor, and before Radish could try to get up, his legs were stepped on directly by the demon child. Sebastian turned around and began to squat, the enormous elegance of his padding lowering toward Radish's face. "W-wait, what are you--" Horror painted itself across his face, “—Y-you better not be filling your nappy, you nasty little imp!” A noisy fart sputtered into the back of the diaper, like a howling wraith, and the demon let out a little grunt of effort. Invisible threads wrapped themselves around the hero's head and pulled it up, so that his nose would get even closer to the looming seat that hung above like a full moon. "I bet you...Mmph...Didn't...Nghh..Think that you could still smell anything, being all plush now. Let me know how well that nose still works." Sebastian teased, before letting another gassy eruption out to blast against the thick layers of cotton that swaddled his bottom. Just as the brat said, Radish could still smell things just fine, and that would now include the sulfurous smog that was being blown so effortlessly in his direction. He thought the vile indignity of it couldn't get any worse, but then Sebastian bent his knees further, and the fetid flatulence finally took solid shape. Magmatic mush spewed violently into the diaper, like the furious vengeance of a hydra's blast; it gurgled and bubbled as each wave settled, the back of the diaper becoming swollen with the girth of the boy's bounty. The stretched material was now brushing against the sheep's nose, and the molten heat was like the bowels of hell itself; when the hero had conceptualized demons, and the motif of 'fire and brimstone', this had never been what he'd pictured. With a contented sigh, the demon's knees shook, and he suddenly let himself plop down with his full weight onto the stuffed animal, using the woolly visage of the lamb as a pillow for his stinking rump. The muck inside the diaper squelched loudly, the contents smearing wildly in all directions, and the full temperature of his demonic droppings becoming a stark reality for the toy underneath him. More gas bubbled out, remnants of the burning tribute already offered. Radish felt faint, frankly more wounded by his sense of shame, rather than appropriately disgusted by the fecal fumes that were all consuming. It was no understatement to say that the toxic scent was akin to a malodorous miasma that reeked of despair and misery, but it was the far more offensive notion that he'd been bullied by a demon in a nappy, that really struck his soul. A demon dirtying his nappy had bested him...and now he was in a nappy too. Sebastian wiggled his hips, grinding the squishy garment roughly against the stuffed animal below him, with a smirk on his face and amusement in his eyes. "Not a simple challenge to overcome, is it? You're incapable of suffocating as a toy, but in a contradiction, you still have a sense of smell, and the urge to breathe. Your senses remain, magically affixed, even when you no longer have a body where it would make sense." Sebastian squeezed his eyes shut and grunted once more, forcing another large dollop of flaming filth to plop into the pile with a burbling fart. "Mmph...Excuse me, us demons can have quite the ravenous appetite, and well, that leads to...Well, I shouldn't have to spell it out for you." The muffled whimpers of the hero were lost underneath the mass of fuming fabric, which made the small demon giggle. "I think you'll be my new favorite toy, little lambchop." It was starting to really set in. Radish had been vanquished, his journey was at its end, and his kingdom would fall into darkness; as the malevolent cataclysm engulfed all he cared for, he himself would be stuck here. Stuck as a helpless toy for a terrible tot. Stuck squished under a mound of fire and brimstone. Perhaps until the next intrepid adventurer came along. (To be continued?)