Upbeat Hyena 1 (Patreon)

Commissioned by Definitely Not Dio

Upbeat Hyena

Chapter 1

-VB-

Jerald trembled as the cultists in front of him chanted.

When Daniel brought him to this club, he thought that this was supposed to be a high school sanctioned activity. His eyes landed upon the dead rabbit cut open with its heart out and blood dribbling down the side of the school desk, and knew that there was no way in hell that this was acceptable.

Now, he wasn’t a tattler. No, but he wasn’t coming -.

He and everyone in this corner classroom froze as the made up ritual circle underneath them all lit up in a dim red light.

“... Daniel, this ain’t funny, man,” he muttered before looking up.

Daniel, the occult lover, looked at the circle with a pale face and shaking hands.

“T-This isn’t supposed to happen?” he stuttered.

Other members of the occult club converged on him. Erica, a cute brunette girl who definitely wasn’t the reason why Jerald came to this club in the first place, grabbed the front of Daniel’s shirt.

“Don’t tell me you’re a goddamn cape, Daniel!”

“I’m not!”

Erica’s taller and more plain blonde friend, Jessica, quickly stepped in and separated the two before dragging them away from the center of the circle. Jerald did the smart thing and copied her.

“The door’s locked!” someone who’d gone straight for the door - smart man - shouted as he threw his weight into opening the door.

Jerald looked up at the narrow windows at the top of the classrooms. “It’s only noon right now, right?”

“Yeah?” Erica turned to him irritably before she stopped and looked up as well. Blood drained from her face as the rest of the occult club members looked up.

The windows.

They were pitch black. They couldn’t see out.

“T-This ain’t f-funny!” Erica shouted before turning on Daniel again. “You drew the circle, Daniel! Who the fuck did we just summon?!”

“I-I-I made it up!” he shrieked as he began to sob. “This club is a joke, so I made a joke circle!”

“It ain’t a fucking joke anymore!”

“Quick! Scratch out the circle!”

Squea-runch!

Everyone froze and looked towards the center of the circle, where the school desk with the dead rabbit had been. The desk sat on the ground with its legs sprayed out and the bloodied wooden top snapped in half. On top of the table laid a hand made out of shadows cupping the top of the table and the rabbit sacrifice and emerging from the center of the red lit circle and cupping the sacrifice.

“We’re so very dead,” Jerald murmured as something huge crawled out.

The first part of the demon that came through looked normal, if made out of shadows. An arm grasped and pushed the rest of its body up and out of the summoning circle.

A head popped up. Long hair as dark as the night sky of New York City and white eyes that gave nothing away except in its shape. The demon opened its mouth, and rows upon rows of serrated teeth bled into reality, churning and weaving around each other as some disappeared into mere wisps of shadow while others formed from it. Its torso emerged, and it was at this point that the room began to feel cramped for everyone.

Jerald pushed his back against the wall as his body quivered uncontrollably.

He wanted to shout and yell that this was some parahuman prank. Some sort of new villain was being a dick!

But something deeper inside of him screamed and begged for mercy because it knew an evil being was here.

“O-Oh, mighty prince of demons!” Daniel suddenly shouted as he threw himself to his knees and bowed. “We w-welcome you to Earth Bet!”

‘What the fuck are you doing, Daniel?!’

The demon looked down. Its bulk filled the center of the classroom like a man inside children’s indoors playground boxes, the ones with clear half domes on them.

Jerald felt his ass hit the ground and he kept looking up.

The demon tilted its head.

[Why have you summoned me?]

Jerald wanted to scream. Merely hearing its words sent a splitting migraine through his head. He crumpled down and clutched his head. Why was this happening?!

“W-We merely wanted y-your gui-”

[Do not lie.]

Daniel shut up.

Jerald saw from the corners of his eyes as Erica knelt and bowed.

“It was a mistake, oh lord of demons! We meant not to summon anyone!”

[... Yet I am here.]  It tilted its face up. [This is a fresh world, free of the touch of my kin.]

H-He had to stop this.

He reached out and scratched at the summoning circle.

The demon turned towards him leisurely. He felt himself piss but he didn’t stop.

It smiled.

“Jerald, stop!” Daniel hissed towards him.

“No no no no no-!” Jerald hissed even as his body shook uncontrollably.

“You’re going to get us all killed!” someone else shouted.

The demon reached out… and pinned his hand to the floor.

[Here.]

And with another finger, scratched the circle itself.

The light died down but nothing else happened.

Jerald looked up.

The demon was still here.

It was still smiling down at him.

[You seem eager.]

“No no no-!”

It picked him up and -.

The last thing he saw was the insides of a demon’s mouth.

It was filled with eyes.

-VB-

I used to be a human man.

Well, to an uninformed observer, I was still a human man, but I had been a towering [Prince of Demons] just a few moments ago before this small feast. Eating six humans gave me enough of a “template” to weave myself a human body with power.

I licked my lips. Humans were tasty. Like well done pork.

It’s funny how having a more dominant personality changed how I viewed my human memories. Eating a human was no longer a taboo in my mind. It became … some to be cherished. Something to be desired. A human was no different than a cow in my new paradigm.

It really struck home that I was now a demon. It even came with its own set of instincts. It was how I knew to act like a [Prince of Demons] as I did. Of course, this involved partaking in sacrificial price for the summoning, but really, that boy really should not have tried to erase the circle.

To break a summoning circle was to break the non-aggression pact between a spiritual lord and the summoner.

Pausing, I looked around to make sure all of the humans were in my belly and not in this place - a classroom, right? Aside from a few puddles of blood and broken school furniture, nothing seemed out of ordinary.

Perfect.

Time to leave.

I opened the door and walked out of the classroom and then out of the fancy looking school building. I hummed as I walked around the city, and it was a bustling city. People rushed towards their destinations on the streets and in cars.

Sprinkling rain soothed my ski, and the heavy clouds above me suited my taste.

“This is a wonderful city. Where am I?” I asked as I looked around.

To my surprise, I got my answer pretty quickly.

Because no other city had the Space Needle.