Underkeeper

Bernt talked for nearly an hour, explaining how he’d first found Jori in the sewers and how she’d helped him with his work. Some eyebrows rose at that, but no one commented. Then he told them about the dungeon—getting in, being separated from the group, and how things had grown progressively more desperate after that, until he’d finally managed to break out his party and escape. He meant to skip over what he found in the storage room, but it came tumbling out with all the rest. It was just such a relief to talk to someone.

Throughout the telling, he made sure to emphasize Jori’s invaluable support. He wasn’t sure what they would want to do with her, but he could guess. A random demon in the sewers would be treated as an intruder at best and a pest at worst. In both cases, an Underkeeper would be required to kill it.

“Bernt, I have to ask,” Ed said, when Bernt finally finished. “Why do you think that warlocks use demonic pacts when they could just form a more… informal working relationship with a demon instead—like you did?”

Bernt wondered if that was a trick question, but he answered it all the same.

“Because a demonic bond gives them access to the demon’s power. If I made a pact with Jori, I could get access to hellfire. It might even transform all of my fire spells.”

Ed nodded, as if that were exactly the answer he’d expected.

“You could, if the contract you wrote into the pact stipulated that. Demons aren’t chaotic beings, they can be bound to rules and agreements. That’s the entire point of a pact. It’s about setting boundaries.”

He scowled at Bernt, as if willing him to understand. When he didn’t, he sighed and continued.

“Demons don’t belong on the mortal plane, son. The first thing any demonic pact does is muzzle the demon. They’re not supposed to be able to touch souls—or even the soul residues left behind in a corpse—unless their contracted warlock gives it to them. Your ‘Jori’ is an unbound demon, even if she’s still very small and relatively harmless for the time being. You’re lucky that your imp didn’t run into any dead bodies earlier. If she’d been feeding this whole time, she might be quite a bit more powerful now. And you might have become one of her victims. If she’s left to her own devices, she could threaten the entire city eventually.”

Bernt considered that for a second. He couldn’t picture it. Jori was a demon, sure—but she bore little resemblance to the monsters that had helped to bring down the empire in the history books he’d read at the academy. No matter what kind of temperament she had, demons took a long time to grow into that kind of power. As far as Bernt could see, this was mainly a legal issue, not a moral one—at least not unless Jori started killing people and eating their souls. That was what they were worried about, but they didn’t know her.

“What’s going to happen to her?” he asked carefully.

Ed shrugged. “That’s up to you. For now, at least. The easiest thing if you want to keep her is to set up a proper demonic pact with her. I’m sure the Solicitors would be happy to help—they have rules for that sort of thing.”

Bernt looked between the three older Underkeepers, trying to decide if they were joking. Mages in particular considered warlocks to be lesser spellcasters borrowing the powers of others because they couldn’t hack it on their own. Dayle’s expression certainly hinted that he didn’t think much of the idea. Why would Ed suggest this?

“But—I can’t be a warlock!” he protested.

“Warlocks rarely go into it because they like it so much,” Ed responded. His scowl softened a little. “Most also aren’t trying to save a demon—more, say, trying to save their friends from a horrible fate at the hands of kobolds. If you decide to go that route, I’d suggest you go with that explanation. Your other options are to kill her or get her to form a pact with someone else. The Solicitors aren’t going to tolerate a demon running around without a properly binding pact.”

Bernt frowned. “Why the Solicitors? And doesn’t the government deal with rogue demons through the Adventurers’ Guild?”

“Well, sure. If the demon is officially recognized as a threat,” explained Ed. “They’re not going to issue a quest without an incident report—property damage, assault, that sort of thing. The Solicitors aren’t interested in any of that. They’re protecting their reputation—and the reputation of warlocks as a whole.”

“I don’t think they’ve been doing a very good job, then…” Bernt said. Nobody liked warlocks, they were barely tolerated at best.

“Nonsense. The Solicitors are well respected,” Ed corrected him. “In some ways, that’s better than being popular. But never mind all that right now, you can learn about their organization another time. If you’re set on not becoming a warlock, you’re going to need to find someone who feels differently. Otherwise, she’s going to get sent to her home plane sooner or later.”

“Uh… we can send her home?” Bernt frowned in confusion. Why hadn’t he mentioned that before?

“Demons aren’t mortal,” Dayle chimed in, seeing Bernt’s expression. “Killing it is how you send it home. Your little fire-spitter would just reform there.”

He didn’t like the sound of that at all. It didn’t matter if she came back to life—it was still death, in a way. She’d be gone.

Bernt needed more time to think. Having her form a contract with some random warlock seemed crazy. Besides, he couldn’t picture Jori actually agreeing to that. She was his familiar, not some random demon.

At least Ed was trying to help. That gave him a little hope, but he knew he’d have to ask the question that had been haunting him all day sooner or later.

“So, uh… am I still an Underkeeper?”

For a few seconds, Ed just sat there, puffing on his pipe. Then, realizing that it had gone out, he pulled it out of his mouth and looked around for his ash bucket. Not finding it, he glared over at Fiora, who grinned at him unrepentantly. He set the dead pipe down on the table and turned back to Bernt.

“Look. We’re not so flush with new applicants that we can just terminate a young Underkeeper—especially one who volunteered for the job. You’re only the second Underkeeper we’ve had in my tenure here who wasn’t somehow forced into the position…”

Bernt breathed a sigh of relief and his heart started beating normally again. He needed this job badly if he ever hoped to make it. It didn’t pay well in terms of what mages usually earned, but that didn’t mean he could do better in the regular labor market. Sure, he lived like a part-time dock porter, but he did that in order to save most of his wages. He didn’t have to live in a ratty hole down by the docks. Still, while he’d managed to loot some valuables in the dungeon, it likely wouldn’t even cover the money he owed Therion for the superior healing potion he’d drunk.

“Of course,” Ed went on, “we also can’t afford any… incidents that would undermine public trust in our organization. So, there are going to be some conditions to your continued employment.”

Well. It wasn’t as though he had a lot of options at this point.

“What are the conditions?” he asked.

“The first is that you’re going to bring Jori over to the breach tomorrow morning. I’m going to have Iriala put a long-term tracking spell on her. If she shows up anywhere she’s not supposed to, or if I hear anything suspicious about demon activity in this city, I’m going to take care of it personally.”

Bernt swallowed. There was little doubt in his mind regarding how he would “take care of it.”

“Alright.”

“The second is that you’re going to get out the books and scrolls you found in the dungeon, including that crackpot wizard’s journal you mentioned earlier, and you’re going to show them to me. Right now.”

Bernt hesitated. What if he didn’t give them back? He’d meant to try to sell the scrolls at least—once he learned that cold fire spell, anyway. But this wasn’t the time to argue. He reached into his bag and produced what he’d found in the dungeon’s storage room—a small heap of scrolls, the journal, and that demonology tome Jori had found.

Dayle and Fiora went through the scrolls together and quickly discarded most of them, except for the cold fire scroll and the unknown scroll Bernt hadn’t been able to read. Meanwhile, Ed flipped through the journal, eyeing the spell diagrams with interest and apparently reading the antiquated text without difficulty. He whistled to himself after a few moments, apparently impressed.

“Well, you should definitely take a closer look at this,” he said. “You might learn something. Not that spell, of course—can’t use a spell you can’t cast, and it looks pretty janky anyhow. What’s impressive is that this wizard here managed to build a spell like this at all. There’s lots of useful theoretical insights in here, if you can make sense of them.”

Last, he picked up the demonology book and flipped it open. He grunted once, then flipped it closed again with a scowl.

“Standard demon-summoning drivel—and written in Duergar of all things. Garbage.” He put it in a drawer in his desk. “I don’t recommend letting anyone know you found this. You can have it back when I’m confident that you aren’t going to do anything colossally stupid with it. Probably not a big risk, considering that you’d have to learn an entire new language to do it, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

“Hey, this cold fire spell is kind of interesting,” Fiora said, “and neither of us recognize the language on this last scroll here at all. Not even the script… you ever seen it before?”

Ed took the proffered scroll and frowned down at it.

“I… maybe. It looks familiar. I’m going to need to check a few things.” He rolled it up and slid it into the same drawer as the book, looking thoughtful. Then he visibly collected himself and held out the journal. Bernt took it, and stowed it alongside the cold fire scroll, which Fiora had handed back to him.

“Bernt. You can go home. I expect to see you here an hour after dawn with your demon. And you should expect a summons from an investigator—could be from the Adventurers’ Guild or the count, depending on who takes point in the investigation. You should not tell them that you’ve been harboring an uncontracted demon for the past two years. Just let people draw their own conclusions.”

Nodding gratefully, Bernt made his way out, waving goodbye to Dayle and Fiora on the way.

***

Bernt stumbled through his door to find Jori already curled up next to the stove and fast asleep, a fire burning merrily inside. She’d let herself in through the window, and he hadn’t noticed. She even closed the window behind her. When he kicked off his boots and sank down onto his bed—more of a cot, really—she looked up at him for a second, stretched her wings with an adorable chirp, and settled back down.

Bernt sighed in contentment. His bed had never felt quite so comfortable. It was barely dark out, but it had been a long day already. Still, he had a few things to do before he could finally rest.

The wound in his foot itched horribly—still not completely healed despite the potion. If he’d remembered to recharge his amulet after the last time he had used it, he probably wouldn’t have been injured in the first place.

Taking an important lesson from that, he untied the bramble amulet and examined it. Some of the thorns had broken off, which made it more comfortable to wear—but he suspected that also meant it would break sooner or later. Considering what he’d paid for it, he supposed that was fair.

Following Grixit’s instructions, Bernt carefully pricked some of the thorns into his forearm. He didn’t want a bunch of little punctures in his fingers, after all. For a second, nothing happened, and he started to wonder if he was doing it wrong. But then he felt something. The thorns sank deeper into his skin, drawing a gasp from him as a painfully cold feeling radiated up his arm.

It hurt a lot—much worse than when he activated the amulet—but it was mercifully quick. After a few seconds, the thorns withdrew, and he could feel the latent power swell in the amulet over the next few seconds. It was almost as if it were digesting his power, converting it.

That conflicted with everything Bernt had ever heard about enchanting. But, then again, normal enchanted items didn’t need to be recharged, either. If that was the only price for such powerful protection, he would gladly pay it.