Apostles of Doom

“Pretty big oversight on the part of the Council of Wizardry,” Gastropé agreed. “I guess he neglected to include that on his CV.” At nineses this morning, Trevin had filled the rest of the party in on what she had learned last night.

Jenn snorted. “Of course, you actually worked for him and never noticed.”

“I’m sorry, but if Lenamare and Jehenna couldn’t determine he was a demon, let alone an archdemon, how is a lowly wizard like me supposed to know?” Gastropé replied.

Jenn laughed. “I think that’s the best part of this. Lenamare the Great was completely fooled!”

“I know!” Gastropé grinned at her, and then paused. “Of course, you realize this means that throughout their years of competition, it turns out that Lenamare was continually one-upping a thousands-of-years-old demon lord?”

Jenn’s faced sagged. “Argh. Thank you for ruining the mood! This just means he’s going to be even more insufferable!” She shook her head in frustration.

Gastropé shrugged. “I am hoping someone thought to ball it. That’s a battle I’d love to have seen!”

“Completely!” Jenn agreed, smiling at him once more. “I can only imagine it — all of them in combat together, including Alexandros Mien!”

“Historic!” Gastropé marveled. He would love to see a balling of it, but he was just as glad not to have been in the battle. Like Jenn, he had been shocked by this revelation this morning. Never in a million years would he have guessed Exador was a demon. Although, given his reputation, he probably should not have been surprised. Further, the fact that he had never guessed Edwyrd and Tom were the same person should have clued him in that you could not judge a demon by appearances. On the bright side, he supposed, he had been working for an archdemon; now, with Tom, he was working with a demon prince. That was a definite trade up; the big plus being that he was working with, rather than for a demon prince.

That was, to Gastropé, a very important distinction. He was unlike nutty Vaselle, who was Tom’s warlock. Gastropé could not imagine wanting to be that. It had been bad enough to be a simple employee of Exador, whose unofficial employment agreement included an implicit termination clause — meaning Exador could terminate your existence whenever he felt like it. He had no desire to be any demon’s servant, lackey, employee, slave or whatever.

Of course, from a textbook point of view, Exador fit the “dark lord” bill much better than Tom. As far as he could tell, all of Tom’s people he had met seemed genuinely happy to be working for him, including the demons. Gastropé had never met anyone working for Exador who was actually happy to be working for him. For most, it was at best a job, except for the crazier, greedier, power hungrier, or downright antisocial bullies. There had been quite of a few of all of those types.

Gastropé frowned. In fact, Tizzy even seemed to enjoy working for Gastropé. Demons were not supposed to like their accursed masters; yet Tizzy was always friendly towards him. Of course, Gastropé was not really Tizzy’s accursed master. He still had no idea where that link could have come from. That was still very disturbing. The only thing he could even remotely think of was that Tizzy had bound himself to Gastropé, but that made no sense at all! Why would a demon bind itself to a wizard? Particularly a demon that claimed to have no magical powers?

On the other hand, what did sense have to do with Tizzy? The demon, while amicable and talkative, was completely off-balance and unhinged. He could also be more than a little bit menacing; he was a demon, after all, as those liches had learned. That had been three fiends — second-order demons — and they had wreaked unholy havoc upon liches on ice dragons? It was too easy for wizards, conjurors like himself in particular, to get complacent and start thinking that just because a demon was of a lower order, they were not deadly.

It was this logic, which he had spent many sleepless nights refining, that had led him to the conclusion that a small number of D’Orcs and D’Wargs were more than a match for a hundred alvar on hippogriffs. Given this, he could certainly understand why the alvar were freaking out. He would probably be freaking out if he was in their position. Of course, he wasn’t a thousand-year-old being that was supposed to be all logical and deliberative. This rush to panic seemed contrary to everything he had ever heard about alvar. Of course, that was just it — he knew only legends and secondhand information.

“Why so pensive?” Jenn asked after Gastropé had been silent for a time.

“Just thinking about the alvar versus the orcs and D’Orcs,” Gastropé told her. “Given the power of the D’Orcs, I can see why they would be concerned about them reappearing; however, this rush to battle, the incursion into orc territory? It seems like a forced error.”

“Indeed.” Maelen twisted around from his pillow in front of Gastropé. “That was my thinking exactly.”