A Dark Clerical Error

The usual fantasy trope.

An Evil Necromancer with vast power and a huge army versus a besieged castle a long way from any help or reinforcements.

In charge of the castle and of keeping the Duchess safe from the forces of evil, was Grand Keep Wizard Mal-eath and Captain Mitchel.

Captain Mitchel rubbed his eyes!

Trying to squint a through sheer force of will his extreme exhaustion away.

He was supposed to have, under regulations, have had ten hours of sleep last night.

But he had not slept.

He had too many things to do.

Dam he was tired!

He needed some immediate sleep while he could.

Even as he had that thought,

The Battle horns blew!

The Castle was due to be attacked by some enemy army.

Captain Mitchel's heart sank.

“Shit…” he thought!

From the war tent, the Dark Necromancer called forward a group of specialised henchmen.

One of whom was his Cleric of the Church of Hell.

The evil cleric bowed as he presented himself, his little goblin scribe hand was next to him, struggling with arms full of ink and various scrolls.

The dark necromancer rubbed his smooth youthful chin and pondered.

“I feel a bit of demon backup is needed for this attack… “The Young Man said.

“Let me guess,” Said the Cleric “You want a fire and molten rock demon, Again!” he sighed in exasperation.

“I beg your pardon?” Said the Necromancer.

“It is always a fire and molten rock demon!”

“If you or any other evil tyrant is going to summon anything, it is going to be yet another fire and molten rock demon!” Said the cleric rolling his eyes.

“Billions of demons and it is always an order for a dam fire and molten rock demon, every time!”

“I don’t even know why hell bothers making any other sort of demon!”

Then his head exploded.

The red glow faded from the Necromancer eyes,

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The Necromancer did not know where that cleric's sudden irreverence, courage and disrespect had come from and did not care!

So, he crushed the insubordinate fool’s head!

The necromancer then turned to the goblin scribe hand.

“You have just been promoted!”

The goblin scribe hand gulped; he was only an intern but tried to rally around his very limited training.

“Hello and good, insert time period here, I am your server, insert name here” Chirped the goblin not quite understanding that “Insert Here” was not what was supposed to be actually said, from the book of service script!

“Can I please take your order?!”

The necromancer pondered again.

“Yes…. I will have a large fire and molten rock demon, extra-large!”

“Would you like that on its own or as part of a unit?” asked the Goblin scribbling furiously.

“I’ll have that as part of a unit!” replied the Necromancer

“With fries or chips?” Asked the Goblin express hell server.

“Errrrrr Both!”

“Half frying air on its surface and half razor-sharp pointed chips all over its body,” Said the Necromancer.

“Do you want to supersize that for only ten sentient souls extra?” Asked the service goblin.

“Why the hell not, It is only an extra ten sents!” exclaimed the Necromancer, waving his hand idly.

(“Sents” was an underworld abbreviation for “Sentient Souls”)

“Any sides,” asked the goblin.

“No thanks, that should be enough!” Said the Necromancer.

“Ok,” Smiled the Goblin, scribbling on the order scroll.

The goblin struggled to read his own writing back to the customer.

“That’s one Hot Supersized Larvae Demon Unit, Half Chips, Half Fires. No sides!”

“Will there be anything else?” the goblin chirped away happily

“Nope, One Hot Supersized Lava Demon Unit, Half Chips, Half Fires. No sides! That all sounds right,” Checked the Necromancer.

The goblin diligently checked each item as the Necromancer spoke the list.

“Your order should be on the battlefield in less than fifteen minutes!”

“Thank you for ordering from MadMammon, and do have a nice day”

“Thank you I will” Smiled the Necromancer, rubbing his hands

“Will there be a tip?” Asked the goblin

“Yes” replies the necromancer “My life tip to you is, Don’t ever piss me off!”

He said pointing to the headless and very dead hell cleric on the floor!

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Back at the castle the Duchess’s court Grand Keep Wizard Mal-eath shouted confidently to all the whole yard.

“Don’t worry, We just have to kill the main demon that is bound to be summoned and then the rest of the army will flee!”

Mal-eath almost laughed as he joyfully said this next bit,

“And it is ALLWAYS!”

“ALLWAYS!”

“ALLWAYS! A fire and molten rock demon! ALWAYS!”

“No matter the size I have everything we need to destroy this thing easily!”

Mal-eath cast a few and fire demon and anti-earth demon wards on each wall.

Mal-eath cast ice and water enchants on all the ballista’s and most of the archer's bows.

Mal-eath then finished with a few temporary anti earth demon spells onto all unit leader’s swords and shields.

Mal-eath then took a pose and with a flourish of his long flowing cape and spoke.

“I am off to bed, wake me when it is over!”

All the men cheered, even Captain Mitchel felt impressed.

Against any fire and molten rock demons

This battle should be an absolute cakewalk!

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Down in the depths of hell.

In the demon kitchens

One of the head demons’ forges shrugged.

“Mmmmm?!” It said.

Another demon forger turned to him

“What?”

“I am just looking at this order…” Said the first demon.

“Why?” Said the second, “Is it not the usual, fire and molten rock demon?”

“No, for once it is something a little different!” Replied the first.

The Second demon forger raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Oooooh!” the second demon forger exclaimed in surprise “That’s a VERY expensive one!”

“You are telling me?!” Replied the first Demon Chief,

“That will cost A LOT!”

“It must be a life-or-death emergency up there!”

“Because this will defiantly bankrupt his arse forever!”

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The moral of this story

Beware of even the simplest mistakes on any demonic military order!

And also, beware of under-qualified goblin hand scribes with dyslexia!

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Imagine you ordered a Burger at a mainstream fast-food restaurant

Imagine then if they screwed up your order!

Instead of the standard cheap burger that you could easily afford.

Instead, you got the Mona Lisa served on top of a Gideon Bible on a very large plate carved from a solid yellow diamond.

And THEN all THAT, instead of becoming an asset, it all dissolved before your eyes!

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Now imagine getting the totally destroying financial bill for that incorrect order.

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Now imagine that there were absolutely no returns, “the customer is always wrong” policy and any debt collection agency would be ruthlessly backed by every armed force in the world, working seamlessly together in perfect harmony, to make sure they got their money!

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Now imagine the burger price you expected, for the order you expected, as a good customer was supposed to be ten times less

Now imagine the debt you are NOW ACTUALLY IN, Instead, because of the wrong order, is times, in the charged value by the mortal example given, by a billion, But was to be paid in sentient souls rather than money.

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Now imagine that instead of all the armies of the mortal world you faced all the armies of hell! Wanting their bill paid!

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Now triple the feeling that all that would give you in shock, horror and spirit-crushing despair.

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THAT is ONLY almost how the Necromancer felt as he now screamed and pointed at the freshly summoned extra-large Larvae (Note NOT Lava!) Demon.

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The Necromancer kept screaming

“That’s NOT what I ordered!”

“That’s NOT what I ordered!”

“That’s NOT what I ordered!”

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As a tidal wave of (unaffordable) flesh-eating demonic maggots surged towards the human castle!

Everything organic that the magots touched was devoured and turned into yet more demon maggots!

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The billions of little maggots all with human faces that constantly screamed even as they chewed with their mouth full!

The surface or each maggot sizzled the air with extreme flesh boiling heat

(Because air that fries, was what was on the work order!)

And each squirming body was covered in armour-piercing chips of razor-sharp hell stone.

(Because chips were also on the work order!)

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The abomination was unstoppable, relentless, and slow.

(Hell could have made the thing super-fast if they had wanted, but it would have spoiled the highly crafted artistic effect!)

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This is not the nice cheap, mass-produced Lava Demon the Necromancer had MEANT to order!

This was something else!

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These were self-replicating hell maggots, in a very slowly cascading mountain of doom!

This was a Larvae demon NOT a Lava demon!

This was NOT earth!

This was NOT fire!

This was not going to be bothered by any of the counter anti-demon spells against fire and earth that the defending human's Wizard Mal-eath had cast.

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The rest of the Necromancers army started to disband and drift away.

It was well known that the Necromancer paid his army with gold spun from magic.

And IF the Necromancer had kept his composure, the rest of the army would have kept obeying him for another month.

But the Necromancer had failed to keep his composure.

Instead, he was on the floor weeping aloud,

“I am ruined! I will never be able to afford any magic again!”

“I am ruined! I will never be able to afford any magic again!”

“I am ruined! I will never be able to afford any magic again!”

Over and over!

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No magic meant no gold.

No gold meant no pay.

No pay meant no loyalty.

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Eventually, the Necromancer was left weeping on the floor alone!

What was he going to do?

Unlike normal mortal crushing debt, it was not as if he could commit suicide to get out of it!

Hell would be waiting!

Saying that the former Necromancer was “Screwed” did not do his situation justice!

If a team of genius physicists wanted to calculate how many ways the former Necromancer was now totally screwed.

They would need three ‘state of the art’ cray mega computers, fifteen years, plenty of illegal hallucinogenics, some insanity and to invent some totally new concepts of geometry

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This description is not good enough.

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For me to accurately express in how many ways this poor bastard was screwed,

I would need to have the genius of Shakespeare, the wit of former actor Robin Willians, three hundred years of life to perfect my descriptive craft and to create a totally new form of, as not yet invented and a presently inconceivable new form of super sarcasm extreme 3.0!

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Put simply

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How screwed was this former necromancer?

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The answer was

“Very”

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Meanwhile, the little intern hand scribe goblin was blissfully unaware of his screw up.

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He felt an innocent warm pride in himself

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As only a budding evil hell cleric, he had sent down his very first demon summon order.

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The little goblin had honestly felt, that for a first attempt. that he had done quite well!

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Thoughts about how naturally talented he was and how gifted he must be, swam in his mind.

“I have a very bright future ahead of me!” he beamed to himself in joy!

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Meanwhile,

Back at the castle…

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Captain Mitchel looked on in fascinated horror at the crawling screaming abomination.

Very quickly he calculated very acutely in his head how much time they had left before the monstrosity got to him and his men.

He sighed and gave the only sensible order he could, given the facts.

“Fill the cauldrons and boil water!”

A sergeant next to Captain Mitchel asked

“How long do we have Captain sir?”

Captain Mitchel looked down calmly at his terrified sergeants face.

“I reckon,” the captain said flatly.

“Give or take a bit”

“About 4 weeks bare minimum!”

“So, boil the water lads!” The Captain shouted.

“Time for cups of tea all round!”

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