Chapter 9: The Fate of Humanity
It took some time for Miona to provide the mage everything he needed to know based on Arzoch’s notes, but eventually she was able to dismiss the mage from the mirror and have him start on the ritual. Once she was summoned, they worked out a contract where she would be his familiar until he released her, except she could end the contract and return to the demon realm at any time. Further, she was not bound to follow his orders. Under normal circumstances, no summoner would ever agree to such an insane contract, but these were not normal circumstances.
“How do you want me to go about bringing people here?” the mage asked Miona.
“What would summoners normally do with a bound demoness they wanted to abuse?”
“Honestly?” He wondered. “They’d probably parade them around to show them off.”
“Then let’s do that,” she decided
“Ugh… Do I have to?”
“Yes. And make sure to dress me the way a slave would be dressed.”
The mage buried his face in his hands. Miona couldn’t decide if he was perfect for this job or terrible at it.
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By now, everyone in the city knew that the mage had summoned and enslaved a demoness concubine. For the time being, Miona would wait and see how others reacted. It was premature to judge people based on how they visibly reacted to first seeing a girl dragged all over. Of note, nobody had tried to help her. Maybe if her hair didn’t reveal the fact that she was a demoness, perhaps she would have received some sympathy.
“Do you think anyone will reach out to you?” Miona asked the mage as they cooled their heels in his home.
“Probably. I hate to say it, but that guy you both helped me deal with recently isn’t the only one who has an issue with me or looks down on me.”
“I see.”
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Sure enough, the knock came.
Miona easily dispatched the first waves of sickos once they made their intentions clear. She even impressed herself with her own acting as she pretend to be helpless.
Recognizing that disappearances would eventually draw attention, they accelerated their plans. The mage started inviting people over to share his new pet with. For the ones who showed no interest or even suggested he stop mistreating her, Miona had the mage send them away unharmed, if they even came by to begin with. For the others, they met a suitable end. Miona was nowhere near as powerful as Arzoch, but she could still take care of herself when not restrained by any abusive contracts or summoning rituals.
At Miona’s instruction, the mage shared more and more publicly all the awful things he and his now-missing friends had supposedly done to his familiar. Most of the acts were things that would get him imprisoned or even beheaded had he done them to a human girl. But Miona was a demoness. Would anyone care about her suffering?
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Arzoch returned to his chamber, actually delighted to see that Miona wasn’t there waiting for him. Patient as he was, he thought it necessary for her to become less dependent on him. Her going out on her own was a good thing.
He walked over to the mirror to begin the process of taking it down from the wall. As he walked past the bookcase, he froze. Stepping backwards twice, he turned to look directly at it, confirming that materials were not as he left them.
Having a bad premonition, he raced out of his chamber at a speed humans couldn’t possibly perceive. Arriving at the entrance to Jokin’s domain, he saw Miona exiting at that very moment.
“Miona!”
She turned to look at him, a somber look on her face. “I’m sorry, Arzoch.”
“What have you done?” His tone wasn’t accusatory, even if his words were.
“We’re not the only ones who can summon humans anymore.”
There were at least two things wrong with that statement, but Arzoch focused on just one of them. “We?”
Miona explained how and why she summoned the mage, as well as the purpose of her experiment in the human realm.
“Even so,” he protested, “they won’t stop at just punishing those who abuse our kind. They’ll expand their net to tormenting all humans. And the humans will respond in kind with a single-minded, unified focus—“
“I don’t care.”
“What?” He thought about how to put things delicately, given Miona’s history with humans. “Even if there are those who revel in tormenting us—“
“That’s not why!” she objected, distraught. “I already knew there were humans like that. There are also demons who enjoy doing the same things to humans.”
“Then… why?”
“Because…” she whispered. “No matter how much I pleaded, none of the other humans helped.”
“Miona…”
Arzoch had only ever been thinking of the demons’ well-being when he tried to avoid an escalation with the humans. When presented with Miona’s rationale, he could no longer blame her for ushering in what was to come.