July 29, 2013
Page 181 Book 5: The War Diaries
Things you never say to megalomanic archdevils.
There’s quite a lot that comes across in this page, I hope.
The first and perhaps most obvious is that Asmodeus really doesn’t like being spoken against, especially not in attempts to convince him to surrender. Whilst he’s a fairly intelligent and soft-spoken guy normally, as we saw in the previous page, he’s very accustomed to people obeying him without question, usually with a degree of begging and whimpering on the side. To him, being asked things and being disobeyed, usually mean someone is about to become a new scorch mark on a distant rock. The look on his face alone tells quite a story here, going from “huh, that usually works” to “oh HELLS naw!” in a fairly short span.
Which then displays something else, about the relationship between these two characters. Here we have Levistus, who has planned for this day, for this very battle, for millennia. He has every confidence in himself that this is a fight he can win, but he’s offering Asmodeus a chance to step aside peacefully instead. Asmodeus and he used to be friends, they used to fight demons together side-by-side, and now it’s come to this.
Sure, he’s as ready for a fight as one might expect after having been imprisoned in a glacier for most of human history, but we know he’s also very aware of history and that means he’s going to give an old friend a chance, even if he knows Asmodeus would never take it. This is the first time in a very long time that these two have stood on equal terms in an encounter, and the archdevil of betrayal and vengeance is offering a surrender.
Oh, and I’m still really enjoying the environmental aesthetics of the Ninth.