text: [Themes: grimdark fantasy, socially important, fantasy, villain protagonist]
  
  Lesser demons are always a safe choice, at least for those seeking to cause complete carnage. The only thing about them that's consistent is their unending, chaotic drive for violence. The only thing they lack more than self control is intelligence, which is actually a bonus for you: these demons will never consider widening a planar rift to bring in more friends or worse yet, creating their own planar rift (even though they certainly have these capabilities).
  
  You thumb through the back of the book until you reach the desired page. Unlike the pages for summoning a Greater Demon, it's not marked as especially dangerous. While this seems like a reassuring sign, it's really just an underestimation of the danger of Lesser Demons. Plenty of your followers have perished while attempting to bring such creatures into this plane at your request.
  
  Nonetheless, you are ready for all the peril that they bring with them, and it's generally easier to deal with demons than the Inquisition (despite what they'll lead you to believe). You place the incense holders, candles, and various other alchemical ingredients, ranging from bat droppings to a small crab statuette made out of radium, a metal with wonderful healing properties, that's only recently been discovered. Why this is a component of supposedly ancient demon summoning rituals, you don't know. If this would be your first time summoning demons, you would be skeptical, but the radium has never failed you in the past, so you don't question it.
  
  You begin the chanting, having laid out every item necessary for the ritual; however, when you complete the incantation, there's a strange issue. An actual portal appears, an oval of shimmering colors, transitioning from orange to green to purple, with a view straight into the depths of the abyss. This, you hadn't expected, ever. Normally, planar gateways are invisible, and therein lies their danger. Unchecked gates or unclosed gates could easily lead to chaos as extraplanar beings poured through over time. A visible gateway, however, seems like it wouldn't even be an issue.
  
  You notice movement on the other side of the portal. You step slightly closer, and peer within. The landscape that greets you is so terrible it can hardly be called a landscape, as it's primarily pools of acid, lava, and whatever excrement the foul creatures nearby produce. Of these foul creatures, there are many. Ranging from frail, limping humanoid, flesh torn from the bone by some larger demon until it no longer became worth the howls produced, to large but uninspiring winged demons, with pale flesh and fangs, to towering conglomerations of flesh, sinew, and even metal, coated in a glaze of blood and organs, topped with the most spiky weapons systems their overlords could muster. Thankfully, you see none of these overlords within sight. Instead, you look for a few moments as these various demons—alongside an endless number of other variations on ugly, slimy, and spiky—brawl atop distant cliff faces, push eachother into the seemingly sentient embrace of twisted, thorny forest, and congregate at some toppled stadium of ancient times, scheming about who knows what. You are even able to watch as new creatures are birthed from the sludge: rather routinely, a new thing crawls its way out of the goo, and immediately proceed along the warpath, in many situations getting splattered into guts and having its components flung back into the very same pit by a larger or more skilled foe.
  
  At this point, as you watch an eternal cycle of carnage, an idea enters your mind. You could just leave the portal open, allowing it to flood the city with whatever terrible, disgusting spawn of the armpits of the buttcrack of the universe it contains. At the same time, you could get a little gazorpus (word for a group of demons, invented by the same mental patient writer of Daemonology for Complete Retards, that has stuck around way too well) of your own, and close the portal. This could allow you to further your career in the city, if you survive the impending battle. As you mull over the options, you see a couple of the smaller demons turn their heads toward you. They see you, and a couple begin approaching, some looking rather angry, while others look very curious.
  
  > get a Gazorpus
  You stand in front of the portal. Despite it being an unusual one, the demons that enter should still be forced to follow the rule of "the summoner gets to boss them around to a varying degree depending on how powerful the demon is". The issue with Greater Demons is that they're very likely to find loopholes in your commands, but lesser ones will obey them readily and without complaint, like very ugly, very hungry dogs.
  
  Three lesser demons climb through the portal with an aggressive demeanor. Once through, their mood changes, and they sit down, staring at you. All three of them are pretty similar: humanoids with four beady red eyes, wrinkly grey skin, a bunch of spikes on their back, and long snouts that contain multiple rows of vicious teeth. You wait for another few seconds, and two winged imp-like creatures pop through the portal as well. These are scrawny and purple, but they have four flaming horns, and their hands spark with lightning and fire, which probably shows some level of magical affinity.
  
  You see that more demons are approaching across the shattered hellscape, but the longer this portal is open, the higher the chance of something terrible and uncontrollable entering this plane. So far, nothing of the sort has happened, and you don't see any larger demons paying attention to the portal. Should you take on the paladins with this cohort, or attempt to amass more forces?
  
  > Charge!
  You flip through the book until you reach the page for closing an abyssal portal. You peek out of the room, and see that the basement is still clear. Grabbing a string, you reenter, and attach the string to the portal with a simple globule of glue. Yanking on the string, the portal rolls up and disappears, the blinds into another realm closed.
  
  Now, you take a moment to inspect your forces. Five demons, each of which looks fairly capable of violence. You'll be able to handle the attackers, no problem.
  
  You begin talking to them, "Alright demons, you guys have a very important mission. You get to kill the paladins that want to kill you. If you don't kill them, we all die, so you better do your jobs. All right?"
  
  The demons produce an assortment of gurgles, shrieks, and gobbles in response.
  
  "Good enough," you say. "Now let's do this shit!"
  
  You lead the demons up the stairs, and into the main hall of the church. The paladins are there, rooting through your lectern, overturning pews, and generally causing property damage.
  
  You whisper to the demons behind you, "Alright, they don't see us, so let's just spread out, take it slow, and fla—"
  
  One of the imps chucks a fist-sized fireball into a paladin's helmet. The ignition is awesome, and the paladin's hair goes up in flames, which in turn go out the small eye openings of the helmet, like a dragon breathing fire. He collapses, brain melted, but his allies jump and turn towards you. You have no choice but to get up the stairs and charge in.
  
  "CHARGE!" You shout, running forward. The demons run past you, and then you stop, having realized that you still don't have any weapons. Nonetheless, you follow behind them, hoping to scavenge something.
  
  The demons immediately swarm a paladin, and tear his armor off by the plate, before tearing his flesh off by the chunk. He's picked clean within seconds, and his mace and shield fall to the ground beside him. You use the rushing demons as cover to pick up these sturdy implements of war.
  
  The shield is heavy, and the mace is also heavy, even though it's supposed to be a one-handed weapon. As you're debating whether you should just drop the shield and two-hand the mace, you hear several guttural screeches. You turn and see that one of the grey demons has been decapitated, and another has been ran through with a pike, spewing ichor like a fountain (and the grey skin sure adds to this effect).
  
  You try to look for an opening to strike, but at this point, the paladins are in formation, and they outnumber you. You didn't account for there being so many of them, but it's too late to go back and summon more demons, especially as you're surrounded.
  
  The imps try to find openings for their fireballs, and manage to lob a flaming sphere into the chestplate of a paladin preparing to snipe you with a crossbow. As he's engulfed in flames, his comrades push closer, unfazed by the horrible fate they may suffer.
  
  As they close in, you realize that you are the one that's going to suffer the horrible fate. The demons pace around, but they're running out of room. You're being suffocated and compressed by thin spear and sword tips.
  
  You reach for the book, hoping a spell could be cast as a last resort, but you left it downstairs when you had to yank on the string to close the portal.
  
  The demons are finally pushed to their limit, and rush in suicidally, and to no effect. They are stabbed and sliced, shrivelled demonic guts sloughing out of the wounds and onto the previously pristine floor of your grand temple. You look around, and decide that their way is the right way. You run into the shield wall; you are skewered, and as you watch your life drain from you by the pint, you breath out for the last time.