“’Course, stupid wizards just ignore them. Maybe they just don’t care anymore. Out of sight, out of mind, ignore the lower class help, you know, that sort of thing. After all, they must be some sort of servants for these council people. Why you have invisible demon servants is a might weird. But then so are wizards in my book.” Edwyrd grabbed Tizzy by his front left shoulder.
“Tizzy,” Edwyrd said, trying to catch the demon’s attention. “What demons are you talking about?”
Tizzy just looked at him as if he couldn’t figure out why Edwyrd would even ask such a question. “Why all those invisible demons standing around in the hallways. Must be one in every corridor of the building.”
“Big demons?” Gastropé’ asked nervously.
“Nah, little guys, smaller than me. Little Ones, you know sprites, imps and shadows mainly. Course shadows don’t need to be invisible being shadows, but the imps and sprites, they’re invisible. Still seems like a waste of energy to turn all your servants invisible. I mean, I know these snooty wizards don’t like to have to dirty their own hands, or acknowledge any help they get... but to actually make your servants invisible. Mighty egotistical if you ask me.”
“Is such a thing common practice?” Edwyrd asked Gastropé. The wizard just shook his head, puzzled.
“No, it’s much too dangerous. No wizard or group of wizards would want to try and control that many demons at a time for so little a cause. It would be crazy. A few demon servants you can keep your eyes on are no problem for a wizard, especially if they are just imps or shadows. But in every corridor? Especially ones with people walking down them? No, it would be insane, eventually one of them would work its way around its instructions and start rampaging around the castle.”
Tizzy was just staring at the wizard. Tizzy blinked and looked at Edwyrd. “You know, this kid’s brain really isn’t full of mud. I guess I owe you one.” Edwyrd had no idea what the demon was talking about. “He’s a bit stereotypical. Actually, I’d have to say he’s being something of a bigot really.” Tizzy tilted his head. “However, bigot or not, he’s got a point. Given enough time, one of them would start causing problems. Take a lot of work to keep that many demons in line. I counted about two hundred or so, before I stopped counting.”
“Two hundred demons?” Edwyrd said, unbelieving. Tizzy made a motion indicating a lot more than that. He’d really have to start trying to make improvements to Edwyrd’s eyes so he could see things like he could in his true form. He couldn’t believe he’d missed them all.
“Yeah, and that’s just the little ones.” Tizzy said. “Didn’t mention those bigger ones.”
“Bigger ones? How much bigger ones?” Edwyrd asked suspiciously.
Rupert wandered down the dark corridor. He had told everyone that he was going back to his room to read, and he had been. He’d just had a better idea while en route to his room. He’d gotten to thinking about what a big fortress this place was. From everything he’d read, such places usually had dungeons to torture prisoners in and store treasure and other valuable things. He’d wondered if this fortress had a dungeon.
As he came across a stairwell leading down, he’d decided to find out. Thus a spur of the moment excursion had turned into three hours of wandering deeper and deeper into the bowls of the palace. It was rather exciting really. He simply took every downward bound stairwell or stairs that he could find. Occasionally he’d hit a dead end and have to go back up and then down some other set, but eventually he’d gotten quite deep.
He could tell he was quite deep because the walls had gotten quite cool to touch and he didn’t encounter any more windows. He also didn’t see much in the way of people. In fact he hadn’t seen anyone in the last half hour or so. The other thing was that the halls were lit by torches, and these had become scarcer as he went. In fact it had gotten quite dark between torches.
So that he didn’t trip over anything, Rupert allowed his eyes to shift slightly. Like he had in the Abyss, this let him see fine in the dark. Actually, having done this, he noted that periodically there were other light spots, besides the torches that he hadn’t seen before. Some were floating in the hallway and some seemed to come through cracks under various doors. Really rather strange actually.
The other thing he’d noted as he paid closer attention was that some of these glowing spots that floated, also moved around almost as if intelligent. That rather spooked him. He didn’t know what those spots were. Ghosts maybe? He had to chide himself. Here he was, a demon, getting spooked by ghosts. It was just that he really still thought of himself as a human more than a demon. It hadn’t been that long ago that he’d finally even admitted it to himself. And even less time since his first trip to the Abyss.
