22. DARK DEEDS, PINK ROBES.

Dark was the night (which is not the same thing as it was a dark night, there’s a proper form to these things and ominous gatherings have their own way of doing things.) As hooded figures descended on the Offsett’r estate.

They gathered in the basement to prepare for their evil deeds.

“Look, all I’m saying,” reasoned Lord Inclement-wevvr, “is I don’t see why we have to go faffing about with magic. I know she’s a nuisance, but surely a good old-fashioned assassin would be less trouble. Less likely to result in a mess, too.”

He was, of course, quickly shushed by his accomplices; it’d been absolutely ages since they’d done a good old-fashioned dark ritual. (That thing with the King’s father hardly counted, the old man had been holding off on popping his clogs for ages, it’d barely taken a demon saying boo to him to solve the problem.)

“Alright, who’s got the ritual sword, Lord Sentrist? Put that down at once and back away, and stop sneaking up behind people like that, honestly sometimes wonder if I’m running a demonologist's coven or a playgroup.” Grumbled the figure in the blood-red robe. He hadn’t even started the ritual, and already he was fed up to the back teeth and pondering letting the bloody demons have the lot of em.

The ritual sword was eventually pried from Lord Sentrist’s hands, despite him moaning like a toddler taken away from the deadly objects, and presented a nice, safe toy in their place. Then came another issue, they had the candles, but where were the matches, and why the hell were they using tea lights? Did nobody here care about image but him?

“Alright, somebody get the matches away from Lord Sentrist; you know he can’t be trusted with ‘em”, sighed Redrobe as the candles were lit, revealing everybody else in the room clad in pink.

“And why are you all dressed like that? How hard is this to get? White robes.”

“Well, that is sort of how these started off”, replied Lord Inna-Troff, “but you said absolute secrecy, so we couldn’t exactly get a servant to wash the robes. These are, in fact, white robes, just a red sock got in the wash.”

At this, Redrobe threw his hands up. “Fine, time was we’d just get a servant to do it then off em after, or had their tongue removed and their fingers too, so they couldn’t leak anything. That’s the way it should be done. But the world’s gone soft, and you just can’t get the staff these days.”

The others nodded along (quite missing that just maybe if they stopped killing off staff, removing tongues, and looping off fingers, and instead settled for a non-disclosure agreement, it would probably be a lot easier to find the staff these days. Also, failing that, paying decently would have sufficed.)

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So matches retrieved, candles lit, and sword (after yet another confiscation from Lord Sentrist) readied, they began the ritual. To summon the mighty demon, they began with the ancient chant.

“Objectname = archdemon” chanted Lord Basyl-brush,

“Setobjectscale = 125.50” Intoned Lord Sentrist,

“Setobjecttexture = Hellscapedefault” chanted Baron Mydnyt,

“Setobjectvalue = 5mortalsouls” added Lady Haggs.

“Runscript archdemon invocation.es.p” came the ominous chant from the circle.

Thus, the demon spake, in mortal tongue.

“Alright, alright, Oi’m comin’, keep yer ‘air on”

The dark coven waited for their will to be made flesh, and waited, and waited.

“You don’t suppose he got lost, do you?” pondered lord Inna-troff “the hell scape is a big place.”

“And I suppose you’d know all about that? Been there, have you?” Shot back Baron Midnyt. To assembled groans from the coven, if it wasn’t for how thick a padding these robes had in the head department, Redrobe would have long since bashed these two’s heads together.

“*ahem*.”

“I might’ve been”, sulked Lord Inna-Troff, “you don’t know everything about me.”

“*AHEM*.”

“For all you know, I could be in and out of the hell scape all the time; you’ve got no business saying what I do and don’t do in my own time and my own home.”

“ALRIGHT, WHO PLAYED SILLY BUGGERS WITH THE SCRIPT?” Roared the currently 125 by .50 millimetre scale Archdemon, who was rather disconcerted about the two-dimensionality thing.

“Told you it was in millimetres,” crowed Lord Basyl brush, “didn’t I say? But you didn’t listen; now we need to fix this.”

Ten minutes, a banishment, recode, and reinvocation later, they finally got down to the bargain with a (properly resized, of course) archdemon.

“We’d like to offer you a bargain to dispose of Princess Rosalind.”

The demon sucked his teeth at that. “That’s a big job for not a lot of souls, course depending on quality oi could do it no problem, but they better be bloody good offerings alroight?”

“Pure Virgin sacrifices, of course.”

At that, the demon winced, “Oh, we don’t do virgins, not moi department, Oi’m recruiting succubi, see, lust and sin are both basic qualifications. How is an innocent soul supposed to prepare itself properly for depraved acts? Consent is a thing, and we ‘ave rules the same as you. If oi goes round recruiting virgins without sin, well, it’s more than moi job’s worth. ‘I'm upstairs would ‘ave my ‘ide” He looked around at the veritable sin feast gathered around him, greed flashing in his eyes.

“Now, Oi’m sure if you were to offer something properly steeped in sin and treachery, we could work something out.”

“You misunderstand, Sir, I don’t mean that kind of Virgin, the sacrifices we’re offering were carefully scouted. They were all caught on numerous occasions complaining how women never put out; most of them described themselves as “alpha male types”, and they routinely hung around bars looking for drunk girls. Honestly, I may be evil, but I do have standards.”

“Oh,” said the demon with a grin, salivating at the thought of dealing with this. “That’s a whole other kettle of fish; why didn’t you say so right from the start. Alroight, oi reckon you got yourself a deal there.”

He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. Honestly, offering virgin sacrifices were so passé. But what demon in their right mind would pass up on the opportunity to get their hands on Extra Virgin.