Augustin Arcosa thrusthis hand toward the demon encampment, a harsh wind howling from his back. Around them, metal clanked as the hovering messengers bumped into each other.
“Release your prisoner,” the wizard boomed, “or suffer the consequences.”
Braiden shifted from one foot to the other and wrung his hands, struck by the wizard’s rare display of dominance. He tugged on his collar, embarrassed to ever admit that he would have done anything Augustin wanted, if only he’d use that tone of voice.
Never mind that their party was still surrounded by a ring of trigger-happy messengers, and never mind that they were now confronted with the problem of dealing with two extra demons.
As the wind died down, the messengers clink-clanked back into formation, muttering and cursing among themselves.
“You can take him,” Valefour shouted back.
From my cold, dead hands, Braiden had expected the demon to add, except that his sentence actually ended there. Valefour actually meant it.
“Excuse me?” Braiden asked. “Really? You lure us all the way down here and now it’s that easy?”
“Sorry?” Valefour answered, pulling something out of his ear. Bones rattled and squirmed in his arms, kicking at the air. “Could you repeat that?”
Was that a wadded-up ball of wax? The other two demons — one a shapely woman with deep red skin, the other no taller than a child — pulled similar objects from out of their pointed ears.
A twisted bit of cloth and what appeared to be a carved piece of cork. Those were makeshift earplugs. They’d guessed right all along. Bones had resisted the demons the only way he knew how: with the torturous sound of his own voice.
“Never mind,” Braiden said. “Just hand him over, already.”
“And give back my cloak while you’re at it,” Elyssandra shouted.
“You can take him,” Valefour replied. “He’s so very annoying. We couldn’t stop him from screaming, and he keeps chewing through his restraints.”
Bones suddenly went quiet and meek, as if making a belated, far-too-late effort to show that he was on his best behavior.
“The absolute nerve of you,” Elyssandra added, “thinking I would be any easier to abduct.”
The demon woman gave a harsh, bitter laugh. “We would’ve taken you over the skeleton any day, little princess. Don’t take it so personal. You’re worth more, and that’s all there is to it.”
Elyssandra appeared to be on the very knife’s edge of being offended, but seemed mollified by the knowledge that Valefour hadn’t actually underestimated her ability to defend herself.
“I was a perfect angel,” Bones said.
Valefour rolled his eyes. “I’ve never met anything more horrible in all the several hells. Throw me in the Thicket of Perpetual Itching instead. I’d rather be burned alive in the Very Lowest Furnace.”
“I knew he would give them hell,” Warren said proudly, sniffling as he dabbed at the corner of his eye.
The demon vanished in a puff of smoke and reappeared mere feet away from the party. He unceremoniously dropped the bundle in his arms onto the ground, then teleported away again, appearing in a fiery column between his compatriots.
“Ow!” Bones shouted. “My patella!”
Again Valefour rolled his eyes. He beckoned with a curl of his fingers and the ring of messengers disengaged, flying over to hover in a circle around the encampment’s bonfire.
Elyssandra knelt to check on Bones, quietly collecting her cloak when she found that the skeleton had been returned to them all in one piece. Well, figuratively speaking, that is.
Bones leapt to his feet, creaking as he pointed his finger at the demons with all the aggression of someone hurling an accusation. Which was the very thing he did next, of course.
“Now you’re going to get it.” Bones turned to the rest of the party, still pointing at the demons. “They hurt me!”
“Did not,” the smaller demon protested.
“Did too!”
Warren cleared his throat, speaking in a low voice. “Er, Bones? In all my time with you, I’m reasonably certain I have observed that you cannot actually feel physical pain.”
