Now that everyone was healthy, we had some things to take care of. To do the first, I told the trolls that Rargar was cleared, and that a shapeshifting demon had imitated him.
Naturally, they suspected Lesseth.
I shook my head. “Shapeshifting demons, slime demons. Different things. Trust me, I’ve consulted with an authority.”
“Ah,” said one. “An authority.”
“He’s spoken with an authority,” said another.
“Well then,” said a third, and they wandered off.
That should not have worked as well as it did, especially given that my authority was an evil pervert inside my head. A thought occurred to me.
“Is slime demon, um, pejorative?”
“Oh, no,” Lesseth replied. “Slime is fine.”
“I don’t want to be insulting.”
“Well, don’t call me sludge, or sludgy, or anything like that. That implies I’m gross. Also, ‘demon of viscosity’ is passé, as is ‘ooze.’”
“I never thought I’d say this,” Kathy said. “But I would like to go home. I have had enough of this place. Despite some very lovely people in it.” She gave Talos a megawatt smile.
“May I escort Kathy home, Abby?” Talos asked.
“Sure. You okay with that, Kathy?”
“Oh, it’s fine,” Kathy said. I got the impression she was trying to play it cool, when really she wanted to hang out with Talos. It would also get him away from the troll whose nose he broke, so I thought it was win-win.
The bigger question was what to do with Lesseth. I didn’t exactly want to take her to see the gate. Could someone like her even go through the gate without dying? That was an interesting question, but a distracting one. The real problem was trusting her with my secret. It was probably a prejudice, but it was easier to trust a paladin or a neighbor than it was a slime demon.
“So, um, Lesseth, what are your plans?”
“Plans? I don’t have plans. My husband always made the plans, and I followed. Now I belong to you, so I imagine you’ll make the plans.”
“What’s so funny?” Lesseth asked.
“Abby likes to pretend she’s not in charge. Until something happens, then she becomes a bossy babe.”
I looked at Valeria for support, found none, and just shrugged.
“You are into girls, right?” Lesseth asked. “I’m naturally female, although of course I can gain protuberances, and give them enough solidity to allow penetration. But from the way these two treat you, I assume that they are your lovers.”
“She also likes to pretend that she and Valeria are just good friends with a bondage fetish,” Gren said.
“Oh dear,” said Lesseth. “I’m, well, it’s pretty much impossible to tie me up, I’m afraid I won’t be very good for that.”
“It’s okay. Abby likes other things, too. Wait until you see her big –”
I interrupted. “Lesseth and I need to have a little demon to demon talk about what brought her here, Gren, so why don’t you and Valeria – no, we’ll just walk over there, and stay in sight but out of ear shot.”
“Are you going to show her your big –” Gren started to ask.
Valeria interrupted Gren for me. “I only had a few minutes to look at it myself, she can’t go showing it to the new girl already.”
Shouldn’t a paladin have more of an issue with a slime demon than just calling her the ‘new girl?’ There was a lot I didn’t know, and Enash had gone silent again.
Lesseth and I walked about a hundred feet, and I tried not to be distracted by the way she moved her hips, or the fact that she smelled like raspberries and I was kinda hungry. “So, you said something brought you here, that you couldn’t talk about. By the way, what was your husband’s name? It feels awkward just saying ‘your husband’ all the time.”
“Ex-husband. His name was Takahashiaitchpeecraftzebub.”
“Alrighty then, let’s just call him your ex.”
“That works, my present.”
It took me a moment to figure that one out. “Alright, so what was your ex trying to do?”
“He intended to bring Kathy to the archfiend, as a gift. Many demons are on a quest for nubile and exotic females of all races to dance for the archfiend.”
She leaned close and whispered. “The archfiend has a little difficulty.”
“What kind of difficulty?”
“You know, a, well, male difficulty.”
I imagined an arch-fiend in my mind. “Groin pull?”
“Oh no. The other thing.”
“Erectile dysfunction?”
“Shh, it’s a secret!”
“Alright, so the archfiend can’t get it up. What’s the big deal, and why did that lead to kidnapping Kathy?”
“Well, it was hoped that the females of other races would arouse him. Maybe he’s just tired of shapeshifters and slimes and dimension steppers, and needs a change. If one of those girls could get him going, then he could fuck all the demon princesses like he’s supposed to.”
“Still very confused.”
“Well, you’re a demon, you know how it is.”
I did not. “Enash, you in there?”
“Enash?” Lesseth asked.
Yeah, I’m here. I was playing a role-playing game, okay?
“A guy inside my head,” I explained to Lesseth. “Just a moment. How do you play a role-playing game by yourself?”
It’s good, you don’t have to worry about the other players screwing things up. It turns out that the system interface will show your mana to four digits after the decimal place, which means the last few digits are essentially a random number, so I use that instead of dice rolling. Anyway, what did you want? You can’t have any of the goodies inside the bag until you bang the slime girl and the paladin where I can watch, so don’t ask. Oh… you want to know about the archfiend thing. I was kinda half-listening. Well, it’s . The archfiend’s job is to fuck all the demon princes’ wives in front of them. This arouses them, and they then go do the same to the demon lords’ women. And so on, down the ranks. Basically, if the archfiend isn’t getting laid, there’s a lot less sex all around.
“Demon society is built on cuckolding?”
Don’t judge. And some demons can get it going without that, it’s just, well – power, you know. Turns us on. Lots of power. Infinite power. The power to destroy worl—I got carried away. Go away and don’t bother me.
I could hardly go away, but alright.
Lesseth looked at me. “You have the great Enash inside your head?” she said, amazed.
“He’s hardly that great.”
“He’s like a legend. I traded three demon-prince cards to get an Enash card, once. And then my brother tore it up.”
“Trading cards? Like for a game?”
“No, just to collect. I guess some people figure out games to play with them. Of course I’ve outgrown that now, but if we do find my brother and you wish to drain his soul, I will support you like a good wife should. Not that I hold a grudge. But you have the great Enash inside your head?”
“Please stop calling him great. It goes to his, well, he doesn’t have a head, but same concept.”
I’ll also give you one of the treasures in the bag if you call me great five hundred times.
“What would you like me to call him?” Lesseth asked.
“Cranky?” I suggested.
“As you command,” Lesseth said. “Cranky Enash. You know, it’s odd, but that is helping me with the loss of my trading card. You are truly wise, Abby.”
Tell her not to call you that. It will go to your head.
“So, your ex cared about all this enough to kidnap my friend, but what did you think?”
“Well, if I knew she was my future wife’s friend, of course I would have acted differently. It’s just hard to know who will kill your husband, you know? Unless you plan it, of course.” She shrugged, which rippled her whole body. “Um, anyway, no, I didn’t care. Fact is, we had a little club where the wives who weren’t getting railed by their husband’s superiors got together, and we took care of each other. You’ll see, my love. I can slide in everywhere. Some slime girls won’t do anal, but –”
“Got it.” The crazy idea of asking Enash if I could trust her, simply because I’d won her by conquest, popped into mind, but it was crazy because I couldn’t trust Enash anyway. He’d just want to get my dick wet. “Anything else you need to tell me that’s secret demon stuff?”
“No, that’s the big secret.”
Ah, thank goodness there was a big secret out there that Gren didn’t know about.
“May we kiss now?” she asked. “Oh, and what flavor would you like? I can be raspberry, cinnamon, sour apple, or honey, and I can learn other flavors to suit your preferences.”
I was very, very curious. But I resisted. “No, thank you.”
“I need to earn it,” she said. “Yes, Abby.”
“Do you want to go home?”
Her mouth widened in an impossibly large way, looking not unlike Munch’s The Scream, but in red. “My husband’s family would most likely eat me alive.”
“Oh, quite literally.”
Okay, so that was out. I admit I was curious about all the possibilities she presented, but the smart thing to do was to send her away. I kept having to trust people I didn’t trust, and I was getting tired of it. “We’ll see how this goes.” I walked back toward the others.
Lesseth followed me, a bit like a puppy.
“Can I talk to you, Abby?” Valeria said, signaling me aside.
“Of course.” Gren moved off to give us space, but Lesseth just stood there. So Val and I moved aside, and Lesseth followed.
I almost told her, “Stay.” “Lesseth, I think Valeria wishes to have a private conversation.”
“Oh! Of course.” She went over to where Gren stood.
I waited and then looked at Valeria. “What’s up?”
“She doesn’t detect as evil. Which is unusual for demons, but not unheard of.”
I wondered how I would treat her if she did, but I suspected Valeria and Talos would want to kill her. They seemed to have a simple, black-and-white viewpoint of these sorts of things, which is why my existence had thrown them both for a loop. “What does that mean?”
Valeria shrugged. “All people are a little evil. Even me, although my life is dedicated to fighting it. Trolls, elves, humans, demons – everyone. And everyone has the capacity for good. Even necromancers, apparently. L’shan in Their wisdom did not make a spell that detected the degree of evil in a person, because of the strife it would cause. It only tells me if their evil crosses a certain threshold. Those who are that evil must be destroyed. But below that, a person could be on the edge of evil, or a saint, and the spell would see them just the same. Only if a person or thing was sufficiently evil for the spell to detect it, would I get some indication of how great an evil they were.”
“Ah. And Lesseth there might be – well, morally challenged, without being evil enough for your spell.”
Valeria nodded. “Yes. Clearly, helping her husband kidnap Kathy was an act of moral weakness. Of evil. But he was the mastermind, not her. He was very evil.”
“You cast that spell in the middle of combat?”
“It stays active for a while, so that even if he were to change his form, I would still know him for what he was. That was why I was not distracted even when he changed to look like you.”
“I’m more than just a pretty face and a voluptuous body in impractically revealing armor, Abby.”
Was I in trouble? I didn’t think I’d disrespected her that way, but I was speechless.
She went on. “Not just a pair of wrists to be tied behind my back, or ankles to be bound tightly so I can’t move, and then strung up behind and attached to my wrists, with a gag in my mouth so I can’t talk. No,” she said sadly. “I’m more than that.”
“I’ll take care of your needs soon,” I promised. “But it’s been kind of a long day.”