I raise my eyebrows and smile pleasantly. Blarg cringes a little more. Not a lot, then.
"Blarg, at this stage in the preceding, I'm not making any conclusions. I'm certainly not carrying out any decisions, which even if I had made them I would have to run by the First anyway. I'm simply gathering information. But if you don't give me the information I'm asking for quite politely, then I am going to use your battered remains as a lesson to the next demon I speak to that I do actually expect answers."
In other words, the little guy is so terrified that it can't even speak. Off to a great start.
I paid for lawyers and magicians. The contract was drafted and redrafted, the First arguing very little. The only real point of contention was that I wanted to only take possession of the book once my side was completed where he -for whatever reason- wanted me to take it from the start. Some sort of obligation ritual component, I suppose. And… I signed, and my nature… Set An Example.
An odd choice. I can't imagine he's forgotten why he agreed to this, so... Why delay the ability to do it?
He only gets a month, and no trickery can be used to make that month longer than the least of all the places it could be a month in. I'm obliged to do my best, but… I'm a long-term planner. Ultimately, if I create the best plan and it isn't a plan that can be implemented within a month, that's his problem. Like a sales consultant who recommends a new sales technique, if the salespeople won't use it, that's their managers' problem.
And the First doesn't bother keeping precise records I could just ring-scan or use divine power to intuit.
...Okay, a month isn't that bad. and if the Renegade can't make some
improvements in a month, then he should just retire now.
"YyyesLord."
"So. What do you do? In your own words."
Whatever it is, I suspect it's nothing
impressive.
"I'm a Slime Demon, Lord."
"Y-. Yes, that's what you are. I'm asking what you do."
I suspect for one as simple as this one, name and function are one and the same.
"Slime, lord. I do.. slime."
"I wasn't aware that slime had any particular spiritual presence."
You'd think that... Then you see
ooze-girls...
"It adds ambience, Lord. And things stick to it."
"Corporeal things, or..?"
So, set dressing, among other things. The sort of thing I'd expect in the realm of Dreams, rather than Hell.
"Thoughts. Feelings. Little fragments of self left behind."
"And you subsist on that?"
...That actually sounds useful. After all, who thinks about the traces they leave around them every moment, the tiny flakes of skin we don;'t even notice we shed...
It… 'Shrugs'. "It's a living, Lord."
This is… Literally, a bottom-feeder. Excellent! Or-. Ugh.
...Just imagine the
uses for such discarded nothings.
I went into this agreement intending to fulfil it while at the same time helping Hell as little as possible. But… Now that I'm here, the same sort of thing that drove me to order the digging of a network on canals across the continent of Africa in order to make the place more navigable means that I'm… Really interested. In the ecosystem, in the people, in the magic systems, everything. And while my contract means that I can't use further resources other than myself and my personal equipment, I saw the way Sunset was looking at it. The Alicorn of Magic is interested, too.
An entire arcane realm to poke around in and study? Why would she
not be interested?
"What proportion of your time would you say you spent on Earth? Or-." I fan out my hands, shaking my head. "Or anywhere else in the mortal universe."
"Um." Five eyes blink at me uncertainly. "I have been on Earth…"
Since Hell
technically extends everywhere all at once. It's just that we never see any bits of it beyond Earth's part.
I nod encouragingly. "Good."
"As a proportion, it's not very much. It was more in the beginning, but after Crulk had his.. fall from grace I've… Most senior demons have their own pools of spies to draw on, and they don't like bringing in less reliable outside help."
Especially something as... I hate to say
pathetic, but...
"So you're a spy?"
"I have spied. It's more of a default thing than… Something I'm good at. I'm not really good at… Much. But I don't need much spiritual power to keep going, to stay on Earth, and… Who really notices slime?"
...On the other hand, who
would pay attention to it? Even the most suspicious demon would go 'get away from me, you whelp.'
"So… Crulk was your former employer, and he would arrange for you to be sent to Earth and put into positions he wanted observed. You would absorb ambient power to feed and report anything significant you observed."
"That's the size of it, Lord. And tried not to get set on fire."
Well, depending on the composition of the slime, that could be a risk. Something oily and flammable...
"Did that happen a great deal?"
"Slime isn't all that mobile, Lord. If a fire happened there wasn't much I could do about it. And it's a pretty good purgative. If someone couldn't do spells to purify a place, a little fire would do the job. And modern cleaning agents can be nasty."
Heh. I love that
that's a concern for him. How his slime would react with bleach, or drain cleaner, or any number of cleaning agents.
"Personal experience, or..?"
"Sort of, Lord, sort of. Leave a little bit of me in Hell, so if my body gets destroyed I can recover. Eventually. With what my smile absorbs."
Smart guy. This is the kind of demon you want to talk to, the ones who survive through thick and thin.
"Hm." I nod approvingly. "So you do little with even less. Efficient. I approve."
"You… Do?"
Maximum profit for minimum effort. Quite clever indeed.
"Frankly, yes. Take.. Nergal, for example. A powerful lord… Undone by a mortal wizard a fraction as powerful as he was. You on the other hand have a tiny fraction of his power, and yet you fulfil a useful role as an observer. Tell me, do mortal ever summon demons like you?"
"Hardly ever, and then it's mostly by accident."
I suspect uttering Constantine's name could trigger a panic... Smart to avoid it.
"By accident? So they don't bind you?"
"Bind me against doing what, Lord? I'm a Slime Demon. Even if I got down their throats, they could just cough me up. And that would be really hard."
So he avoids peril by being such a non-threat no-one would want to bother.
"Do Slime Demons go through with a lot of summonings?"
"I don't know. But there are usually a couple of others who go through when I do, so I'd guess so."
Heh. Just pulled through by accident, eh? Well, they are the kind that rely on quantity, not quality.
A plan occurs. Have standardised no-obligation summoning rituals. Whatever the terms are, sneak a few Slime Demons through. Yes or no, the main demon does its things or comes home and the Slime Demons hang around.
Though that's inefficient. It would be better to have secretaries listen to requests and match summoner with an appropriate demon. No sense in getting someone important involved if the summoner isn't going to be able to make a big enough…
Ah, right. Gotta pay to play, and in this game...
Sacrifice.
Ah.
Okay. It's true, but… I mean, if they were going to sacrifice something anyway, all I'm really doing is preventing them from making more trouble.
As long as there are conditions about what level of sacrifice gets you. Discouraging human sacrifice might sound like a nice idea to implement, but I suspect some stronger demons would baulk at agreeing to it...
"Thank you, Blarg, you're being quite helpful. One final question. What do you want out of existence?"
"Existence, Lord."
For someone this weak, just
existing is probably a fine reward.
"Yes, what do you want out of it?"
"Existence, Lord. To continue to exist. There are a lot of Slime Demons and we're all very easy to destroy if something powerful turns its attention our way. I don't want to be destroyed."
Survival. A fine drive.
"A reasonable desire, but have you ever considered..? Anything more..?"
"A dark hole no one else can go in would be nice."
...Tempted to post the 'this is my hole' meme, but too much trouble to find it.
Which ties back into the 'existence' thing. Yes, demons like this aren't going to really threaten the material world. I might be able to build something with them.
"Thank you, Blarg. That will be all. Please send in the next interviewee on your way out."
Interesting idea. Use the weakest to overthrow the strong. Or at least
inconvenience them.
