Stanton was sure he'd said something wrong, but he couldn't tell what. Hindering the discovery of his error was Battlemaid's steadfast commitment to not saying anything to contradict him. "You don't want to be a judge?"

Battlemaid shook in place—not shaking her head or nodding, just trembling as her servos felt like they were malfunctioning. She started to run a diagnostic on them when Stanton's palm cradled her chin and tilted her head to look up at him. "Engaging advanced cooling systems," she said, halfway to a panic.

The rush of cool relief was momentary for Battlemaid, because Stanton wasn't looking away. "W-W-W-What's wrong? Did Battlemaid malfunction?"

"No, but I want you to be honest, what would you rather do than judge the contest?" Stanton asked.

Muttering it under her breath (and not because her vocal systems still had slight problems during times of high thermal output), Battlemaid said, "I want to cook for you and go on a date." She was so sure that Stanton wouldn't hear that she was fully prepared to adjust her vocal modulation and try again.

"Then you can cook for me—and I will wish you the very best of luck." At the incredulous look Battlemaid gave him, Stanton used his free hand to tap one ear. "Good hearing comes with being a werewolf. If you want to mumble, you'd best shift to a lower voice."

All the recipes Battlemaid knew flew through her mind, and she shunted them into a relational database and started to add further details. Then she built another database of Stanton's likes and dislikes, and set about doing a large join query between the two. She ended up with three dishes that she already knew he liked. "I'll do my best, thank you!"

When he turned his attention away from her, Battlemaid took the opportunity and ran with it, diving away and out of reach of his soft, strong hands to do a combat roll and flee to the kitchen. She already knew his favorite foods, which was cheating, and she had mastered each already, which also was cheating. Battlemaid, however, hadn't noticed "no cheating" anywhere on the list of rules.

So, she considered her options. He had favorite dishes, and while he seemed capable of eating those for every meal every day, she wanted to go above and beyond. He liked sweet things. He liked seafood. She put these facts together and started building flavor profiles based on her knowledge of food.

When the combinations of foodstuffs that could give the correct output of both seafood and sweet, she had to make choices. "Battlemaid will not be undone by simple mathematics!"

----------------------------------------

Gisse was nibbling her lower lip. She had been not-stalking Stanton (which involved not following him around but merely being in the same locations as him) and overheard him talking to Cassandra, of all people.

"You're kidding, a cooking competition? What's the prize?" Cassandra asked, walking along beside Stanton.

The problem Gisse had was she couldn't hear what Stanton was saying. She really wanted to move closer and hear his answer, something inside her was certain it was about to become the most important thing in her life. Edging nearer, she pretended to look at a nearby food cart that was loaded with vegetables.

Plants, Gisse had found out, had tiny little souls that were so small she'd probably be able to accidentally eat a thousand of them and not notice. They'd made her nervous at first, but after coming to terms with it being impossible to eat here and not eat their souls, she'd surrendered a little of her demonic veganism.

"What?!" Cassandra asked, loudly. "You're going to be the prize? A date?"

Gisse tripped and fell over. Her heart raced and she used her lower profile to crawl closer to where the pair were chatting.

"It was that or have a pair of werewolves openly fight over me—possibly to the death." Stanton sighed and sipped at the hot coco he'd purchased. "This whole betrothed thing is harder than I thought it would be."

Cassandra sounded like she was about to go apoplectic. "You have got to be kidding me. How can it be hard?"

"Surviving it isn't hard, but making sure everyone around me survives is. Triana is nice. She doesn't even sound like she minds if she loses me to someone else, but Elspeth is actually scary. If Mother didn't set the rules she did, I'm sure she'd have killed everyone around me and dragged me off for some mental conditioning."

Gisse decided that Triana was the right choice. She could never be Stanton's wife herself, she assured herself, but to have even a moment here and there when he looked at her with those big, gorgeous eyes and whispered to her—

"Hey, Gisse, what's up?" Stanton asked when Gisse had fallen over against his leg. "Gisse?"

"Gisse?!" Cassandra stared at the demoness as she stood up. "What are—I mean, who is this, Stanton?" Her mind raced as she tried to work out how the two knew each other.

"Oh!" Stanton nodded to Cassandra. "Gisse, this is Cass. She's been a friend of mine for a long time. Cass, this is Gisse. I know what you're thinking, she's a demon, but she's a nice demon. She even promised not to devour any souls while she's here and not to consume any non-animal souls."

"Um," Gisse said, "plants are okay to eat too, right? Only, I can't help consuming them because they're so tiny and I feel really bad for them."

"Hey, Gisse." Reaching down to take her hand, he helped her to a seat beside him. "Unless they're a person or a familiar, they're free game as far as I'm concerned. I know it's important to you, though, so is there anything I can do to help make it easier?"

It was the perfect opportunity to nibble at his soul, but Gisse didn't want to reveal her plan to Cassandra. "If I think of something, I'll let you know."

Putting his arm around the succubus, hoping she wasn't using some ultra-subtle mind-control, Stanton gave her a little squeeze. "Make sure you do. I like that you're putting in effort not to be evil and manipulative."

Gisse melted. It felt like home to her—better than home. She was warm and it had nothing to do with the layers of clothing she wore and everything to do with Stanton's arm. His words left a mark on her—she would definitely ask later. But, now, all she wanted to do was stay right where she was—and cook. She lifted her head and asked, "Cooking competition?"

"Yeah. A bit out of it today? Are you sure you don't need something?" Stanton asked.

"Yessss… Wait, what competition? You're the prize? No, a date!" Gisse's mind raced through recent events, picking out the important bits. "Warm… Uh, can anyone compete?"

"You want to have a date?" It wasn't exactly a surprise to Stanton, but he could see Cassandra's eyebrows shoot way up. When Gisse nodded, he gave her another little squeeze. "Great. I'd love to try something from your homeland."

"Demon food?" Cassandra and Gisse both asked at the same time.

Laughing as the girls stared at each other in surprise, Stanton nodded. "I love trying new things. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing better for fueling magic than the high energy street food they sell around here, but I grew up tasting things from all over the kingdom. Tasting food from other planes would be amazing."

Gisse felt tingly and excited. Cooking food from her home for him— It dawned on her that she didn't often cook. In fact, apart from the odd soul-sliver sandwich, she hadn't really cooked at all. "H-How long until the contest?"

"It's after lunch today. I need another judge, Cass, if you want to join me in sampling everything?"

A decision needed to be made, Cassandra realized. She wanted to date him—she wanted it with every fiber of her being—but she had no delusions about her cooking ability. Having an army of kobolds, most of which could apply heat to things in meaningful ways, had been a blessing. "I mean, I could save you from those crazy werewolves, but then I'd be no better than them. No. I will be a judge with you."

"I hope you like weird food, then. Last time I looked, Triana was making some kind of trendy new werewolf food; Elspeth isn't saying anything, but I bet it's super traditional werewolf delicacies, which means raw meat; we're going to have some delicious demon food; and I have no idea what—what my maid will make." Unsure why he didn't say her name, Stanton realized he would have to do the opposite of what he and Lorissa had—she would need a normal name.

"Lorissa isn't competing?" Cassandra asked.

"I don't know. Maybe she'll wind up helping Triana. They're pretty tight with each other." That's when it hit Stanton. Triana was, if his current state was anything to go by, into girls. Lorissa was into girls. It was like having a little sorcerer's light illuminate the top of his head. "Anyway, I look forward to having someone there by my side."

With those few words, Stanton stole away Cassandra's worry. She let out a happy sigh that she could, in this one little way, protect him. "So, uh, Gisse. What are you doing in Conjur?"

Narrowing her eyes, Gisse didn't have to reach far to realize that Cassandra was hiding her draconic nature from Stanton. She was new to being a dragon, or so Gisse understood, which means old friends wouldn't know. And, with the reputation of dragons that Stanton had told her (being far worse even than demons), Gisse could understand why she kept that secret. "Ugh. You wouldn't believe it. I have this annoying dragon that won't stop bossing me around. I shouldn't even be here. It's too cold and I'd rather be home listening to some music."

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Stanton knew Gisse had some connection to the dragon, and knew the connection was a little sour, but he wondered why she'd bring it up now. "Hey, you don't have to worry about that. The dragon isn't here now, you can relax and be yourself."

"Soooo," Cassandra said, "what's the deal with that anyway? I hear the dragon was just beating on some nobles or something. Real upper-class types."

"Not what I heard. There was a bunch of property damage the first time it appeared, when it started a brawl with a werewolf, and then its minions were outright robbing houses." Stanton didn't want to give away who he was—not even to his best friend. The fewer people involved, he reasoned, the less danger there was to them.

"Nobles, I bet." Cassandra didn't need to bet, she knew the Evil Pig of Evil had been targeting specific homes, looking for the artifact that had let him summon Gisse. "And you can't tell me that werewolf wouldn't have started it. You know what it's like, Stanton."

He knew exactly what it was like, only he couldn't say the werewolf in question wasn't trying to start a fight because that would let the cat out of the bag. "Just because they're noble means they deserve to be robbed? Cass, you're not exactly doing it hard—should someone break in and steal your stuff because you have more than the lowest born?"

Cassandra was about to raise her voice, let a little of her draconic side slip, and get angry when she realized this was the same path they'd taken on the train. Instead, she sighed. "We always get into these arguments, don't we?"

"Yeah. This is better though, right? Realizing we both are getting too worked up?" Stanton asked.

"Sometimes it's good to get mad, but not with friends." It warmed Cassandra to know that she could step back like that and not let the dragon out to rage. "So, when does the cooking start?"

"I arranged for us to use Academe's kitchens, since there aren't any students in right now. We have from two until four. So, if you can't get your ingredients together by then and get done in two hours…" Stanton shrugged.

Gisse's brain, a highly evolved piece of hardware designed explicitly to take power away from mortals and demons alike, and keep it, was struggling with such short-term goals. It didn't help that Stanton's arm was still around her. Then she came to the conclusion that she had about four hours to master cooking and gather the ingredients to make Stanton something from the abyss. "Ack! I need to go get ready!" Reluctantly, she squirmed and wiggled to get out from under Stanton's arm. "Oh, but to get things from the abyss I'll need someone to summon them. Uh, S-Stanton?"

"Hey, Cass, you're better at summoning than I am. Can you help Gisse with what she needs?" he asked.

"Uh, sure!" Cassandra tried to avoid giving Gisse a confused look. "Wanna go do that now?"

"Yeah." Gisse's reply was at once both excited and bored—a mode of speech she'd perfected on her father.

After saying their goodbyes, the journey back to the lair was without comment, neither wanting to broach the topic of the other knowing Stanton—nor wanting to explain themselves.

Finally, Cassandra asked, "So, what do you need me to do?"

"It will only be a temporary summon, for a few hours, but can you summon this demon." Turning her hand over, Gisse wrote a demonic name on it with her magic.

"There's fifteen syllables in that name. Who are you summoning?" Heading to the room where the Evil Pig of Evil had built the summoning device they'd stolen, Cassandra started etching the name into the summoning circle with her magic. She started the chant, not bothering to stop until it had activated.

The moment the spell finished, Cassandra's mind went blank and she dropped to her knees. She stared at the goddess before her and wished, with every fiber of her heart, that she could spend eternity worshiping her.

"Moo-oom!" Gisse glared at the arch-succubus Cassandra had summoned. "Leave her alone. She's—I can't believe I'm going to say this—helping me."

Flashing her long eyelashes to the kneeling dragon at her feet that she had oh-so-effortlessly taken over, Daemneth Queen of Desire sighed. "Sweetums, they look so tasty. Wait"—she held up a hand to her daughter—"I know you don't eat souls, and I respect that"—she pointed at Cassandra—"but I am not you."

"Mom!" Glaring at her mother, Gisse finally witnessed her lower her head. "Thanks, Mom."

"The things I do for you, Sweetums. I haven't had a dragon in over a hundred years. They're a delicacy." It took little more than a thought to banish her aura of control and another to slither all her strings from Cassandra. "Happy?"

Rushing to her mother's side, Gisse wrapped both arms and her wings around her. "Yes, Mom, but I didn't summon you to put dragons in their place."

"I assumed that." Reaching around her daughter's shoulders, Daemneth hugged her back. "Shame, though. Are you sure I couldn't—?"

"No, Mom. I need help with, with a guy. With making him like me. With—"

"Oh. Oh my. My little devil is growing up? Who is he? He must be powerful if he can resist my daughter's magic. Very well. Point me at the miscreant and I will bind him to you as your sla—"

"No. Ugh. I don't want to use magic to do it. You see, there's a cooking contest." Gisse explained how Cassandra and Stanton were the judges, and how he wanted her to cook something from the abyss for him.

"What happened?" Cassandra shook her head and looked around. The demoness she'd summoned had, she realized, broken the warding circle she'd constructed without so much as blinking, and the result was she'd been overwhelmed so fast she'd not even had a moment to realize what had come through.

"My mother did."

The succubus was the image of perfection. She was wearing very little while, at the same time, what she did wear buzzed with magical power. Cassandra couldn't help taking-in every inch of the flawless skin, from the tip of her tail to the top of her horns. Her wings so graceful, her fangs delicate, and her chest— Cassandra tried to jerk her mind away, but it was a lost cause.

Focusing more on Daemneth, Cassandra had a crisis of sexual attraction. She was, in every other way, heterosexual—but now she realized she was… "Hi, Cassandra, you can call me Cass. What's your— No. I'm Cassandra."

Freeing herself of her daughter and taking Cassandra's hand, Daemneth lifted it up and stroked the back of it. "Forgive me my little foibles, dear. I am Gisse's mother, Daemneth Queen of Desire. You can call me Darling."

Licking her lips, Cassandra nodded. "Y-Yes, Darling. You can call me Cass. Sorry, I didn't mean to summon you from—"

"Mmmm no matter, Cass. It was all a big misunderstanding. My daughter is lucky to have a friend so understanding and—beautiful." For Daemneth, snaring hearts was as natural as breathing, and she could see that Cassandra's heart was very snareable. "It shouldn't take more than a few weeks for you to master a dish," she said at last, looking at her daughter. The look of raw panic tipped her off. "You could still get one dish figured out in a week."

"Mom, the contest is in a few hours."

Daemneth stopped stock-still. There was very little she could do for her daughter, training wise, in a few hours. "You haven't made this easy."

"Mom, please? I promise I'll—I'll do anything. Name it!"

"Oh, before I forget, young Syntha asked me to give you this when I next saw you. I don't know how that girl sees the future, but I swear she has some sort of augury ability." Holding out her palm, Daemneth showed her daughter the plain ring. Glancing at Cassandra, she asked, "How would you like to improve your summoning magic by doing me one, little favor?"

"Yes!" Cassandra tried her best to moderate herself, but Daemneth's eyes had a way of making anything she thought melt away into complete agreement. "W-What am I agreeing to, exactly?"

"Two gifts. One must be willing, the other must be taken. The latter"—Daemneth held up one hand and breathed some energy into it, producing a huge tome—"is knowledge. The former…?" When Cassandra nodded longingly, Daemneth struck like a cobra.

The first real warning Cassandra had of the impeding kiss was Daemneth's lips against her own. She let out a sigh as the demoness deepened the contact, wrapping her in red wings. Then she felt it—power. Demonic power—a pact. She didn't resist as it sank into her and spread out, mixing with her draconic energy and making her more.

"Now, I need you to summon me into my daughter here as a possession-type summon. It's on page thirty-five," Daemneth said.

Blinking in surprise, Cassandra opened the book and flicked through the pages to thirty-five and, sure enough, there was the correct spell. It was complicated, but nothing she couldn't manage.

"And do be a dear and cast it now."

"Mom, I don't think this is—" Gisse didn't get any further with her concern.

Cassandra quickly worked the spell, making the summoning circle the weakest possible to inconvenience Daemneth as little as possible. When it was done, there was only one succubus still in the room.

Rolling her—or rather her daughter's—shoulders, Daemneth let out a soft, breathy sigh. "Oh to be a few eons younger all the time. Sorry, Sweetums, I'll give you control back and slip into the background."

Gisse gasped and stumbled. "Mom, ugh, you're getting your magic everywhere. I could have— Okay, I couldn't have come up with anything better." She could feel the ancient, all-powerful succubus that was her mother lurking in the back of her mind. That's when she realized one of the judges was right here with her. "You won't tell Stanton about this, will you?"

"About this? Look, you might have noticed I don't tell him I'm the dragon that's been terrorizing all his upper-class-idiot friends. I'm hardly going to tell him I helped summon an ancient, sexy demoness that can enthrall with just a glance and is so beautiful it hurts not to see her and wow I'm rambling now and can't stop—" Cassandra did stop, but only when Gisse's hand sealed over her mouth. She nodded her thanks and, when Gisse removed her hand, said, "Thanks. Wow. I've never reacted to someone like that before."

"Mom once got in a contest to make a rock attracted to her. She won." Gisse struggled to shove her mother's intrusive self down and retain control of her body. "So, with Mom giving me advice, I'll still have to do the cooking. It would give away too much if I let her do it."

"Okay, well, that's still cooking it yourself, so I can't really see any reason to mention this to Stanton at all." It took everything Cassandra had not to fawn over the demon she knew was inside Gisse. "How long is she going to, uh, be in there?"

"Mom? She agreed to leave before the date." At least, Gisse hoped her mother did that. There was still the matter of what she owed her dear mommy.

"I'll go and get ready for this insanity. Good luck." It took every ounce of willpower Cassandra had to leave Gisse's (and hence Daemneth's) presence, but she managed it and felt like she'd been hit with a bucket of cold water when she was out of the room.

Back inside, Gisse opened her hand to see the ring that Syntha had made for her. A little thrill ran through her, and she promised herself to ask Stanton to let her nibble him later that night. "Okay, Mom, what do we need to get started?"

It was easy, apparently. She needed souls, her mother informed her. "I am not cooking a non-vegan dish for my boyfri—my friend." She shoved back the cackling of her mother. "What about that cake you always made me? That uses soul-extract, not a whole one."

After a few moments of her mother acting affronted and annoyed that she'd ever use substandard ingredients, they got together and started discussing how to make the dish. It was moderately complicated, but only from a lot to do perspective. Gisse felt confidence building at an equal rate as anticipation. "He's going to love it, and then I can ask him, and have him wear the ring, and he'll be safe and sound from other mean— Mom! I am not going to take over his destiny! I want him to live how he wants, whatever that might be, with me."

Gisse tried to ignore her mother's laughter as she set about gathering the ingredients she'd need. The normal things from her current plane were easily summonable, items from the abyss needed more energy to bring over, but likewise were easy enough to acquire, but getting the less mundane things was going to be a problem.

Leaving the lair, still rugged up as much as she could get, Gisse set about finding the breath of a love-lost man, milk from one denied love, and (of course) soul-extract. The latter would be surprisingly easy, since animal souls could be used.

"It's lucky mortals will do almost anything for gold," she said, summoning some of that into the bag she carried, "or this might be harder."

In her head, Gisse managed, barely, to keep her mother from investigating more details about Stanton. It wasn't that she didn't want him to meet her mother, more that she worried her mother would bind him before she got the chance.

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This story is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. If you are paying money to see this or the original creator, Damaged, is not credited, you are viewing a plagiarized copy of the story.