Chapter 66

  ‘Alright, let’s hear it!’ I said to Fragnok as Riaret left with her captains and as my squad took another step back to put some distance between them and the cat, who was now rubbing against the legs of a completely unconcerned old demon.

  ‘Lord, my skills are the highest level in the western parts of the Ring. No bonder around here can do bonds the way I can.’ He began with the utmost humility possible, his eyes almost literally glowing with enthusiasm. ‘Do you know what this means?’

  ‘I have a feeling you’re going to tell me,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. It means that the same old paltry weapons’ bonds the damned mages and warriors are always asking for, are no longer enough to level my skills. But with this!’ he almost yelled the words, looking down at Mickey. ‘With this and with you, I can. One of the Blessed! And this … creature! My skills are itching.’

  ‘Do you even know what this creature is?’ I inquired.

  ‘I don’t know and I don’t care. It has a soul that wants a bond, and that’s all that matters. But let’s not do it here. Over to my workshop! Now!’

  And he turned around and began walking, supporting himself with one hand on his cane, waving at me with the other to follow. Mickey, as if he had understood the old demon’s ramblings, followed him without hesitation, his head bobbing up and down.

  ‘Yeah? What about what my soul wants?’ I grumbled.

  I had to admit though, I was a little curious; not because I wanted yet another bond, but because the information itself could come in handy in the future. An old saying back on Earth claimed that “curiosity killed the cat”, and in this particular situation I was worried I might end up the proverbial dead cat — well, maybe not literally dead, but who knew? And it bothered me that Fragnok had automatically assumed I’d be leaping at the opportunity and follow him to his workshop and get a bonded cat. And why did he have a workshop? Did working with proto-souls and bonds require tools or something? Ah, damn curiosity!

  The old demon marched on, slowly and kind of limping, Mickey trudging after him, but I stood still, unable to decide if I should dedicate any of my time to this or not. I had other things to do. The cat stopped and turned his head back to look at me, glaring at me with his one eye.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Meow,’ he said.

  Fragnok stopped and turned, too.

  ‘See? The creature … the … uh … cat wants that bond with you, Lord,’ he translated.

  ‘You can understand the critter?’

  ‘Understand him? I understand his soul,’ he stated, then resumed walking with Mickey in tow.

  It just wasn’t fair that an old man and a cat would gang up on me like this. I had to remind myself that this was Hell, and fairness wasn’t a given. So, I followed them, fearing that this adventure might net me another talking companion to annoy me.

  ***

  I walked slowly, a few steps behind Fragnok and Mickey — they seemed to be best friends already. My squad quickly overtook me, making sure they were between me and the cat at any given moment; I found it admirable how Grash and the others, even Lanny, swallowed their fears of the terrifying furry menace and decided to position themselves as my shields against the potential threat. It was unnecessary, but very, very endearing. It also reinforced my suspicion that Riaret was the odd one out when it came to the cat. And now Fragnok of course.

  The old crafter was leading us through the streets between the simple buildings of what I could call the outskirts of the city, turning here and there to navigate us to his workshop, and as we progressed, there was no shortage of fire and ice-demons stopping to stare at us with worried looks and mouths open. And talking about annoying companions, Burning Darkness decided it was time to let his opinion known as we walked.

  ‘My man, this is a bad idea. A familiar? You already have me. What could you possibly gain from having a familiar?’ he wailed.

  ‘I have no idea. Do you?’ I asked.

  ‘Uh … no, I don’t,’ he admitted. ‘I mean, I’ve heard about some heroes having familiars, but I never got a good look at any of them. I have no idea what they do.’

  Hm. Surface World heroes and their familiars, huh?

  ‘I recall you mentioning that some of those heroes went to the Fifth Ring back then,’ I mused.

  ‘Some of them did. The guy I was with back then was one of them, but he didn’t have familiars. I would have noticed,’ he said.

  ‘Are you sure? It was a thousand years ago, wasn’t it? That’s a long time, even for your memory, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, yeah, some of it is a little hazy, but come on! I’m not a demon or a human. I’m better.’

  ‘Good to know.’ I grunted. ‘But still, I’m positive Mickey is a cat, and I find it hard to believe he’s a native of Hell. Is it possible he’s been left behind in the Fifth Ring by one of your heroes?’

  ‘Hm. I suppose it’s not impossible,’ Burning Darkness admitted. ‘But all that dimension eating and space bending; even in the Fifth it’s a little extreme, unless you go really deep. That’s why it stands to reason that your little friend is from there.’

  ‘You know, he might become “our” little friend soon,’ I said to him, unable to keep a grin off my face; even if I had no use for a cat whatsoever, maybe it would give my sword someone else to annoy occasionally. That would be a win, wouldn’t it?

  ‘Ah, come on, my man! You’re not seriously considering it, are you?’ he demanded.

  ‘I am, actually,’ I said. ‘I mean, I will hear the old guy out first, see if I can get a better picture of what’s in it for me if I bond with the cat, and then … we’ll see.’

  ‘This thing eats souls. And your dimensional storage,’ he argued.

  ‘True. But perhaps I can train him to gorge on minotaur souls,’ I argued back.

  ‘Okay, good point,’ he conceded. ‘Just keep the damn critter away from my soul, alright?’

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  ‘Deal.’ I agreed.

  ***

  It took us ten minutes to arrive at Fragnok’s place. It was exactly like all the other houses in the area: a simple albeit large stone construction, the building blocks carved out of the same, dark grey rocks I’d seen in Scaragar as well as Garoshek. We followed the old demon inside, through a hallway and into a room that was probably the largest one in the building, so all of us could fit in there nicely. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the place gave me the shivers. Oh, I had a bad feeling about this.

  The walls were painted white — the first time I’d seen a demon use that colour for anything other than writing in this realm dominated by deep reds, greys and blacks. But that was just one thing. In other houses I’d been to the flooring had been made of wood, but here I could almost see my own reflection in the highly polished, reddish-grey stone tiles. The chair in the middle of the room not only had its backrest tilting back at a 45-degree angle, it also had a footrest. In addition to that, the metal table next to the chair had small wheels, like a gurney in a hospital. In other words: this was almost exactly like a demon-dentist’s treatment room. I could never have guessed or imagined that someone would be able to create a roomful of extra hell in a place that was already Hell.

  I began eying the door, wondering if I could get out of here as fast as possible without coming across as a coward — which would have damaged my reputation as a demon lord — but the door swung open and an unfamiliar fire-demon burst into the room. With this one act, the young-looking demon, a boy really, shattered my escape plan. Or saved my reputation, depending on the way I looked at it.

  ‘Ah, Derilak, good! Take the table away and get another chair. And find some cloths to cover it. We’re not bonding a weapon today, we’re bonding this,’ Fragnok immediately addressed the newcomer and lifted Mickey up to show him off. For some reason, the cat didn’t protest at all. Huh. The boy froze as he stood in the doorway, looking at the cat in the crafter’s hands. Then, he slowly turned his head and saw me, and he froze again.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ Fragnok snapped at him.

  The boy opened and closed his mouth, his eyes wide with terror — I wasn’t sure if it was Fragnok or the rest of us that had caused it — but he broke out of his temporary stupor and rushed to get that metal table out of the room.

  ‘One of my apprentices.’ Fragnok put Mickey down as he explained. ‘He’s not usually this slow. He’ll make a good bonder one day, if he works a bit harder. And faster.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, watching the demon boy as he pushed the table out and pulled another chair in — a fairly normal looking chair, thankfully — then rushed out again, presumably to find the cloth to cover it with as his master had asked.

  While the kid looked older than Flamey — probably late teens if the term could be applied to demons at all — he was certainly not a fully grown, adult fire-demon. And an apprentice? That was a surprisingly normal way to train the future workforce; Earth’s history was full of examples of this kind of master-apprentice arrangements. It seemed civilian life and professional development in the Fourth Ring did follow some common sense, unlike their military practices, which seemed to have been revolving around the idea that the numbers and levels of your troops were the only things that mattered.

  'Well then, Lord,’ Fragnok said with a huge smile on his wrinkled, demonic face, gesturing at the dentist-chair for me to take.

  ‘No!’ I snapped immediately, mostly on reflex and out of an irrational fear of dentists. Which the old demon wasn’t.

  ‘No? What do you mean “no”, Lord?’ Fragnok looked at me like I had just declared bonded weapons would be banned from the Fourth Ring as of this moment.

  Ah. This wasn’t good; I needed to steer this conversation in a more favourable direction and find out more about this whole “familiar’s bond” business, all without giving anyone even the slightest indication that my sudden refusal to get on that chair had anything to do with my momentary fright.

  ‘Not yet, Fragnok,’ I said to the bonder. ‘You said it yourself that it has been difficult to level your skills.’

  ‘I … did say that, yes,’ he acknowledged it, unsure where I was going with this.

  ‘You also said this was a great opportunity to finally get some skill-related experience, perhaps even level a few of them. All because this would be something new that you haven’t done before.’

  ‘I did say that, too. It will be a challenge, no doubt, but the basic bonding principals should be the same as with other types of bonds.’

  ‘I see, but I’m getting the feeling that you would gain a lot more from this bonding-job than I would, and as such, I don’t see why I should let you do it without you paying me.’

  Fragnok’s eyes widened as if a sudden revelation had hit him. He shuffled closer to me under the watchful eyes of Grashon and the squad, and he simply put his arm around my shoulders and leaned as close to me as it was possible, our heads almost touching — just like an old friend would do when sharing a secret that wasn’t really meant to be shared. What the hell was happening here?

  ‘Oh, my Lord Hyde!’ he giggled, half-whispering. ‘I don’t know much about the Surface; no-one really does, but now I’m suspecting merchants and traders in the world of the Blessed must be tough negotiators. Were you perhaps a merchant in the past? Before you … uh … decided to … visit our glorious Fourth Ring?’

  Me? A merchant? Absolutely. On deployments, especially during longer ones with sketchy supply lines, I had been a major player in the inter-platoon tobacco and dessert trade. Buying, selling and bartering cigarettes, Crunchymel bars and MerryBerry cakes had always been a tough business, and I had been pretty good at it. In fact, at some point I had been the go-to guy for a variety of sweets and smokes during those longer deployments, even for marines. As a medic, I’d had allowances for a number of refrigerated containers for my medical supplies, which of course were ideal to store desserts and other things, too. I would have been a fool not to take advantage.

  ‘I have done a lot of things before I came down here. Some fighting, some trading, often at the same time.’ I whispered back to him, and it wasn’t technically a lie.

  ‘Well, but then you must understand the value of the work I will be doing.’ Fragnok began to explain his point of view on the matter. ‘It’s true; I would gain significant advancements for my skills. But Lord, you would gain a whole new set of skills through your would-be familiar. Surely you have noticed the echoes of all the skills etched into the creature’s soul. If I may be so bold, I think you might get a lot more out of this than me. Perhaps you should be paying me to do the bond, or at the very least call it even as it is.’

  What? I had to restrain myself from turning my head to look at the cat in utter shock and disbelief. A whole new set of skills? Through the bloody cat? Just what was that critter? And was this something bonders could just tell by looking at someone’s soul? How? I felt very naked and exposed all of a sudden. Could this guy just look at me and take stock of my skills, too? Surely not! Well, regardless of that issue, the scale was tilting in favour of accepting Mickey as my familiar. New skills couldn’t hurt, right? The question was: what were those skills and how useful would they be in the near and the far future. I decided to try and get some more info out of the guy.

  ‘I understand that Fragnok, but my own skills have served me well so far. I don’t know what skills the cat has to offer, so I can’t be sure if they’ll be useful. It very well may be the case that your gain will greatly exceed mine, which I would consider my overall loss.’

  ‘If you’re asking what skills the cat has, I don’t know,’ the old crafter said. ‘But I can tell it has a few of them.’

  I had suspected as much. But still, Mickey was a space-eating menace who could turn into a ghost and hop in and out of a dimensional storage like mine; I was sure whatever skills he had would be considered exotic here in the Fourth Ring. Bonding with him was starting to look like a good idea.

  ‘Then you understand my position about the uncertainty around the cat’s skills,’ I said to the old demon.

  ‘But it is not an ordinary critter, is it? Doesn’t that make it worth letting me bond it to you, Lord?’

  ‘Not without a proper deal to ensure I don’t lose out in case the skills are useless,’ I stated, mostly just to keep up the facade that this was an actual business negotiation. Which Fragnok seemed to enjoy.

  ‘Ah, you know how to drive a bargain, Lord,’ he said, grinning ear to ear, his arm still around my shoulders like we were the best of friends. ‘How about this then: I’ll do the familiar’s bond between you and the cat. It’s a considerable thing. Maybe the first of its kind to be done in the Ring. But since its value is … undetermined, I offer to bond any weapon of any kind for you or any of your chosen demons. Within reason, of course.’

  ‘And in return you’ll be able to level your bonding skills, which is very valuable to you.’ I nodded.

  ‘And perhaps a quick peek at the bond between you and your sword?’

  ‘Deal.’

  Fragnok finally withdrew his arm from around me and gestured to the chair.

  ‘Get in the chair, Lord, and let the bonding begin!’ the old crafter cheered.

  Ah, damn! Why did it have to look like a dentist’s chair?