Five days in the desert. Five days of watching Desmond nap in the sun. If Kaden forced his will into the soul bond, he could make the demon move. Even stand and stumble from place to place, and once he’d forced the words “blufaj gruhhhh” from the Demon’s mouth.

  This wasn’t working.

  “Can you torture him?” Kaden asked. “Make bone spines grow in his skin? Trinity isn’t willing to eat him. Or turn his skeleton inside out? Maybe I’ll just set him on fire.”

  Trinity opened one eye to look at him, the eye that was downwind, then closed it. She had standards.

  “Yes, yes, no, and no. I could torture him, bone spines are classic, I don’t blame Trinity and you are going about this entirely wrong.” Sevin stood and stretched. “Demon. What do you want in exchange for helping us? We want you to lead us to Ghastos’s temple. You know the Forgotten Places.”

  “No deal,” Desmond said. “If you’d led with that? Maybe. Now, I have suggestions about what you can do to your TriTerror.”

  Trinity’s rumble was *I love him, but not that kind of love. Demons, everything has to be about eggs with them.*

  “Fine. Skully is undead and won’t mind leaving this body behind. I’ll just build a quick bone box, then bury you in the sand. I know, you don’t die. But we’re not going to take you out of that body. Kaden, you can make him lie still, right?”

  “Done.” Kaden approached, for the first time, putting a hand on Desmond’s skin. It was startlingly real. The body lay limp by his will. “Get me a box. Skully, dig deep. I don’t want a sandstorm to reveal where he is. And once we’re done, you and I can go get a nice, cold beer.”

  A groan escaped the demon’s lips.

  “And hot food,” Sevin added. “I’m hungry for some tasty hot food.”

  Desmond’s eyes snapped open, his face twisted in a suspicious snarl. “You? You, who look like a lump of bread dough that got left out in the sun? Name your favorite dish. Name the thing that makes you salivate. You don’t look like you enjoy a damned thing about life.”

  “Scorpion steak with garlic relish and a little raspberry compote,” Kaden said. “Seared just right and seasoned and then allowed to rest so the juices sink in. I love a good chili, and on cold mornings, spiced cider that burns like a demon talon in your gut, just perfect.”

  “I hate you,” Desmond said. “Go on, go back to meat-puppeting me.”

  “Frozen cream and sugar,” Sevin said. “With chocolate powder mixed in.”

  That was Sara’s favorite desert, but Kaden saw the advantage. “You’re making me famished. Let’s bury this demon and go eat. And drink. And then we’ll make a deal with another demon lord to find Ghastos’s Temple.”

  [Read Emotion] wasn’t designed to read the body language of demons, but it told Kaden the demon was very, very passionate about food. Which seemed odd. “Why do you care? You don’t need to eat or drink.”

  “Oh, one of those,” Desmond said. “I get it. I have to be hungry for souls. Or devoted to the service of my Demon Daddy. Look, I’d sell both of you and your precious ‘party’ for a good serving of fish and chips. I’d slit both your throats for a tankard of ale. I don’t care about the hells. I don’t care about the precious balance. I like life. I take pleasure in pleasure, and it’s taken me three cataclysms and sixteen assassinations to get to this point. I won’t have you mess it up.”

  He does not lie. The Demon would kill you both for a cookie. Perhaps for a crumb.

  Nurav’s guidance was the obvious. Kaden didn’t need that. “All I want is someone—anyone—to take me to Ghastos. If you can do that, I’ll unbind you, once we reach him. I will swear it before the system.”

  “You..you’re serious? There are easier ways to die. There are better places to die. Syntera, she’s—you have to meet her to understand—she runs a Symphony of Pleasure. You’ll die but you’ll die so happy you won’t mind. What’s Ghastos got Syntera doesn’t?”

  “Met Syntera. Passed on her sticky sex spot. Ghastos has my party.” Kaden offered snipped of System logs. “I want them back.”

  The Demon squinted as though he didn’t quite put the words together. “Wouldn’t it be smarter to get another party? Can’t say I’ve dealt with Ghastos but I have seen what happens when mortals pit themselves against a deity. ‘Snot pretty.”

  “Get me Ghastos and you’re free. Otherwise, you can wait here, in the desert. Eventually these enchanted bones will decay. Or maybe a troup of miners lost in the desert will accidentally uncover you.” Kaden relaxed the soul-bond. [Advanced Leadership] reminded him that the best leadership was getting people to do what you wanted on their own.

  “I don’t fight gods,” Desmond said. “I don’t even fight for my favorite meal tray. Say I did know how to find this Temple. You know these places are forgotten for a reason. You’ll need to release me before you’re turned into paste.”

  “Get me to Ghastos. I’ll take it from there.” Kaden recalled all the tavern tales about demons and how they were literal. And tricky. And sexy. Two out of three were still possibilities. “I swear on the system that when you lead me to Ghastos, I will release the soul bond on you and not re-establish it immediately, or kill you, take your seed, wait until the immediate clause doesn’t apply, and then bind you. Or have any of my party kill you. Or trap you and then let one of them kill you. Or unbind you and encourage Sevin, who isn’t part of our party, to kill you since he wouldn’t be subject to that clause. I also won’t hire someone else to wait outside and kill you, or bind you, or put a magic beacon on you so they can hunt you down. You will lead me to Ghastos. You won’t betray me by action or inaction, or try to harm me by the same. You don’t have to fight Ghastos.”

  “What kind of miserable life have you had?” Desmond asked.

  Heard and acknowleged. The soul binding on entity ‘Desmond’ will automatically released when Kaden Birch reaches Ghastos.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  Desmond sat quietly. “I don’t trust you. No one makes a deal with a demon and doesn’t have a backup plan to double cross them. No one smart.”

  Sevin cleared his throat. “I would be happy to restate the oath. I’ve known many who dealt with demon lords.”

  “You have a serious lack of fun in your life. I have one condition. Tonight, you get me food. And drink. And fleshy company. Tomorrow, I take you there. Agree, and you got a deal!” Desmond shouted.

  The entity ‘Desmond’ has added a condition: First, he parties. Accept? [Y/N]

  The oath is accepted.

  Something snapped into existence between Kaden and Desmond, and if he’d had access to Mr. Dervish’s Summoning Circle, Kaden suspected he would find a different kind of binding. “Now. Where do I find Ghastos?”

  “Easy-Peasy.” Desmond picked himself up, dusted himself off. “Forgotten Places are usually bad for Demons, so we keep an inventory of them. I know exactly where to find ‘em. It’s a real shithole. It was ugly before Tremadeus sent his newest daughter. She got herself killed by a bunch of weak adventureres, then, what does he do? He sends another. Gathers a gods-damned cult. Guarantee you, it’s an even worse shithole now.”

  Sevin crossed his arms. “You’re leading us to a place filled with cultists. It sounds like an ambush. But I have no love for cultists. I will wipe them from the earth.”

  “Right.” Desmond looked to Kaden. “Is he always like that? You think I like cultists? I don’t. They give me the creeps. No one should be that dedicated to anything. Take bacon. I love bacon, but you wouldn’t see me offering a sacrifice to it, and I love it way more than I do any of the Demon Lords.”

  He speaks truthfully about the bacon, but beware, the demon will slip lies in among truths, Nurav said. Use him to get to Ghastos and then we will bleed him dry.

  “I named my condition,” Desmond said. “I need a drink. And a meal. And if there’s a whore or ten, I could use their company. Then, it’s straight to Ghastos. You die, I go free, everyone has a great day.”

  Kaden exchanged glances with Sevin.

  He didn’t trust the demon. He did trust the power of an oath before the System. “Fine. One drink, one meal, zero whores.”

  “Two. Or three. Maybe more, come on, you’re going to die, you may as well go out with a dozen Status conditions and strange sores in places you didn’t have them before.” Desmond looked to Sevin. “Stick-in-the-shit there isn’t going to. You look like the sort of man—oh, I’m screwed, aren’t I? You’ve never been with a woman and he’s still in love with his mum.”

  “I have too!” Sevin said. “I have a lovely woman who enjoys my company. A summoner with a mythic summons, a growing business, a Party Leader, she’s even a newly titled Baroness.”

  “Name her,” Desmond said. “Anyone that powerful, I’d recognize from the whisper net. We keep track of truly powerful individuals.”

  Kaden almost panicked. Naming names around demons was not good for health, which, in retrospect, made declaring ‘I am Kaden Birch’ not the best way to start his demands of Asmodeus.

  “You…wouldn’t know her,” Sevin said. “She’s not from around here. I mean, not here-here. No one is from around here in the desert. She has this absolutely magnifcent Cosmic Horror that grows out of her shoulders. It’s not from around here either, but I don’t mean this continent, I mean ‘this universe.’”

  “Right.” Desmond smacked himself in the head. “That’s what I get for trying. You and your lovely summoner girlfriend who absolutely exists and definitely is rich and has a noble title have all the fun you want. Me and stick-in-the-shit are going to a bar and chatting up some bar maids. Last night alive, spend it wisely.”

  Kaden closed his eyes and thought. Help me out here. Make him bleed or something until he takes us to wherever Ghastos’s Temple is now.

  Patience. You have an oath. This gets us there, and the demon doesn’t have blood. You need to eat red meat so your body can produce more blood. Go with him. Order a steak. Order two. Your blood is more like pink water right now and I can’t work magic with that.

  “Let me explain something.” Kaden pointed to Skully. “He ground up the last Demon’s Daughter to make the soup we used to revive you. That’s exactly what will happen if you so much as blink wrong in my direction.”

  “Very scary,” Desmond said. “Where’s my fish and chips? I don’t see fish and chips. And that, my beastly friend, is also very scary.”

  ###

  Hard to Kill has granted you a new resistance: Resist Alcohol.

  Your skill with Resist Alcohol has increased.

  Desmond stood at the front of a packed bar, his shirt torn, which was a dirty trick, because the demon didn’t wear clothing. Still, he’d willed his demon-flesh-clothes to be torn and now as he led the crowd in a song, it hung open. “That’s why you never invite a [Bearserker] in for tea! Bartender, another round for everyone on my friend, Kaden Birch. He’s going to die tomorrow.”

  The cheerful bar fell silent, and Desmond spoke. “Oh, cheer up. It’s what he wants. Ghastos is going to kill him. Don’t know who that is? Damn right you don’t. Drink up, people and remember my saying: If you can’t be with the one you love, experiment with everyone else, you might find someone better.”

  A [Knight] in black plate stood up. “I want to kiss you!”

  “Then do it!” Desmond said.

  “I plan to stab him!” a [Thief] said, while Desmond gave the first man a passionate kiss.

  Desmond dipped away from the [Knight] and tipped an imaginary hat. “Sounds like a dream to me. A plan is a dream you put a blade behind.”

  “I want to burn this city to the ground!” someone behind Kaden screamed.

  The bar fell quiet.

  Desmond scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Maybe a hair too far. How about we start with something manageable, like, burn a house to the ground? The mayor’s house? Or the [Farrier’s]. Putting shoes on horses, making them think they’re as good as us, where does that end?” Desmond asked. “Nowhere good for you, I’ll tell you that.”

  After two more dances, Desmond slunk back over to the table. He took one look at Sevin, slumped over the table with a hand still on a beer and tsked. “Such hard partier. You, you’re still awake. You still look glum. Is it because the barkeep wouldn’t let that TriTerror of yours in? Or the Skeleton? Or the dragon? Bet he ain’t seen that [Match Lizard] on your collar or he’d be yelling about that.”

  The laughter was punctuated by a sound Kaden would call ‘knight getting stabbed by thief’ if he were forced to randomly assign names to sounds. “You’re evil. Telling that one to stab and that one to burn.”

  “I didn’t tell them a damned thing. He wanted to stab, I said ‘Do what you want.’ He wanted to burn, and I said ‘Do a little of what you want.’” Desmond whistled for the barmaid and whispered in her ear until she giggled.

  A moment later she returned with a cracked tea kettle and a lusty smile. The kettle, she left on the table. Desmond pointed to it. “See, you think demons are like tea kettles. Some are tiny little kettles of evil, and some are great big boiling pots of evil. Wherever they are, evil’s going to come spilling out, scalding everyone. And we kind of are, come to think of it. It’s actually a good analogy. Good job, Desmond, remember that one for later.”

  “You’re not helping your case,” Kaden said. His chest ached because the dragon didn’t want to be in his soul and he was carrying the soul weight of too many beasts and also missing Trella. She loved a few drinks, a dance party, a good stabbing, and a little arson.

  Desmond’s fingernail twisted, becoming razor sharp. He scored the edge of the teapot, then flicked it. It shattered into a thousand chunks—except the spout he’d carved around. “For people like this? Demons aren’t tea kettles. We’re spouts. All we do is let the evil inside them out.”

  “I want to head to Ghastos’s Temple,” Kaden said.

  “Well, what you want and what you agreed to don’t align. Now, I promised my new friends a good time, and I’m going to show it—Oh, don’t look at me like that. I meant them. Friends don’t put bindings on other friend’s demon seeds. I’m going to show them a good time.”

  Fine. That left Kaden time to plan how to kill all a forgotten god’s servants and rescue his party. Right after he ate the steak the waitress had dropped off. The third one. He didn’t remember ordering the second, either, but here it was, and letting a steak go to waste was always a bad idea.