(One year later)
Let me just start by saying:
I can finally walk.
Kind of.
Okay, I wobble like a drunken goblin who's had too much elderberry wine, but hey—mobility.
For a whole year, I was locked inside the prison of infant weakness. A worm with no dignity. A bald, burping blob of regret and rage.
But now?
Now I'm a slightly upright, chubby-legged menace with a full set of baby teeth and a vengeance burning in my tiny heart.
I am Fuoco Cattivo, age one, escaped ruler of the Nine Hells, and current disgruntled resident of the nursery wing.
Also, very important development: I can now reach the bookshelf.
You know. The big one. The one they idiotically put right at baby eye level because "the nursery should be a place of learning!"
Idiots. Pure, well-meaning, cloth-brained idiots.
I zeroed in on a particular book that glowed faintly with ancient magic. Glowed. I mean, what did they expect me to do? Ignore it? Come on.
Naturally, like any inquisitive former Hell lord, I toddled over, reached up with all the power my marshmallow arms could muster, yanked it free, and—
—tried to eat it.
It smelled suspiciously like forbidden knowledge and caramel. Five stars. Would recommend.
Just as I was about to chomp into the first chapter of "Advanced Pyromancy and Practical Mayhem, Volume I," I heard it.
A sharp, scandalized gasp.
"Fuoco, honey! Books aren't for biting!" Millie shrieked, rushing over like a maiden in a bad opera.
She lifted me under the arms like I was made of unstable explosives, spinning me around until the book dropped from my mouth with an audible plop onto the carpet.
I blinked up at her with my best "innocent baby" eyes.
She wasn't fooled.
"Ohhh nooo, mister! I see that little glint in your eye! That was not a reading look. That was a snacking look!"
Maybe not for you, I thought dryly, but this one tastes like the dark secrets of the elder magi and toasted sugar.
She set me down safely away from the bookshelf, adjusting my onesie like she was trying to repackage a wriggling loaf of bread.
"You, young man," she said, wagging her finger with the seriousness of someone lecturing a known arsonist, "are not allowed to eat enchanted grimoires."
She paused, frowned.
"Or non-enchanted grimoires. Or normal books. Or newspapers. Or scrolls. Or parchment of any kind."
I gave her my best attempt at a smug grin—which, with a one-year-old's facial muscles, came out more like a cross between "toothless threat" and "confused vegetable."
Millie huffed, crossing her arms.
"And don't even think about chewing on the map of the Empire again! The Duke still thinks that 'mysterious hole' near the Western border is a secret volcano."
Technically, I mused, it could be one if they dig deep enough. I was helping.
Undeterred, I immediately started toddling back toward the shelf.
"Ohhh no you don't!" Millie yelped, snatching me mid-toddle with reflexes honed from months of baby-wrangling chaos.
She plopped me down on the plush play mat covered in embroidered animals who all looked way too cheerful about being tread on by a future archfiend.
"You need distractions, little mister," she said, disappearing into the toy trunk.
Seconds later, she returned, arms full of brightly colored horrors: rattles, squeaky unicorns, something that looked suspiciously like a training staff for toddlers.
She waved the rattle at me.
"See? Not forbidden knowledge," she said, shaking it back and forth until it emitted a jingling noise that I could only describe as violently cheerful.
I stared at it, unimpressed.
I wanted power.
Not a jingling banana plush.
"Come on, Fuoco," she coaxed, rattling it again. "Be a good boy for Millie, yeah?"
I reached out a hand.
Paused dramatically.
Millie's eyes sparkled with hope.
I slowly—very slowly—tilted my hand...
And smacked the rattle away with all the might of a disappointed god.
It hit the floor with a tragic squeak.
Millie blinked.
I folded my tiny arms across my chest and fixed her with the baleful stare of a sovereign who had just been offered a wooden spoon in tribute.
Her face twisted into that strange mixture of frustration and fondness that adults reserve for babies and small misbehaving dogs.
"You," she sighed, scooping me up again, "are going to be a handful when you grow up. I can already tell."
Handful? No, my dear Millie. I will be an empire-breaker. A living calamity. A—
I farted loudly.
Millie laughed so hard she nearly dropped me.
"Yup," she wheezed. "Definitely a handful."
And thus, the mighty Asmodus, eater of worlds, conqueror of heavens, reduced to drooling in the arms of a peasant girl while plotting my inevitable comeback from between rounds of book-based snack attacks.
One day, this world would bow before me again.
But first, I had to survive naptime.