The most important thing, Gentry reflected, had been safeguarding his base of power -- without his rituals to summon his dark master, he wouldn't be able to get any more spells. And while the ability to set obnoxious homeless men on fire was very keen indeed, it didn't do much for his long-term survival prospects and was a poor trade, fiscally speaking, for the life of luxury and privilege it had cost him. So he'd had to get very creative.

The first step had been securing transportation - he'd ambushed a deliveryman outside a cleaner's early in the morning, subjected the poor fellow to his fire jet spell, and stolen his truck while he'd been flailing and screaming on the ground as the flames consumed him. Next, he'd driven the truck to a parking garage, beaten a motorist unconscious with a tire iron, then taken their wallet and keys and stuffed them in the trunk of their own car. And now, after driving the car to the address on their license (and setting them on fire in the trunk just to be safe), he had lodging, however temporarily. But the fridge had a frozen turkey that, when thawed, could serve his purposes. He carefully selected suitable knives from a chopping block in the kitchen, repeated his preparations, and chanted the incantation a fourth time. In yet another burst of choking fumes, the now-familiar red shape appeared.

"Dark Lord," intoned Gentry somewhat crisply, "I humbly and respectfully request an explanation. Why have I been treated this way? I have done as you asked, and even used your gift to strike down those who would impede your will. Why, then, have you seen fit to cast me out of my home? I abjure you to speak only truth."

The boglin, now quite confused, turned around and stared. "Say what, now? Look, kid, I'm rootin' for you over here, but you gotta give me somethin' to work with, yanno?" It waved its tiny clawed hands about aimlessly. "Why doncha begin at the beginning, yeah?"

Gentry nodded calmly, doing his best to control his temper. "As you say, great Satan. As you instructed, I burned down my principal's house..." -- the boglin let out a guffaw of laughter here, but did not interrupt -- "...and abruptly thereafter found myself mysteriously barred from my own home, at just such time as my wallet disappeared from my pocket. If this was a prank, I do not see the humor."

The boglin blinked, exasperated. "Kid, you're fifteen, you gotta lighten up a little." It scratched behind one ear contemplatively. "Sounds to me like you got free of a life of social calcification, though. Now you're free to do as you please, exactly like that book you keep quoting. The whole of the law, man."

Gentry's right eyebrow quirked upwards. To those who knew him, this was a very dangerous sign indeed, but the boglin had no such specialized knowledge. "So you are responsible for this? Some... ironic wish fulfillment?"

The boglin held up its tiny hands defensively. "Whoa, kid, whoa. I didn't say I was responsible, just that maybe you should look on the bright side."

"I abjure you further. Speak the truth. Is this your doing?" Gentry's right hand came forward, clenched in a fist, and to the surprise of both parties, the boglin found itself lifted off its feet as an invisible force clamped around its neck tightly. It squirmed, clawing at its throat, but could find no purchase.

"Ghack! Hey, kid, what's the big idea?" The boglin felt dread begin to creep up its spine-analogue -- any hostile action by the summoner should have freed it, but instead the binding was restricting it more than ever. The only possible explanation was that the binding itself was choking it, and that was not good at all. It gasped for breath, despite being exactly the sort of magical creature which did not breathe air to survive. "Wasn'... me...."

Gentry's fist clenched even tighter. "So, you profess ignorance, but the true Fallen One would know all. What is your true name? Answer, I command you!"

The boglin's red flesh began to turn purple, then indigo; one of the core directives in the binding ritual that allowed it to be summoned was that it could never be forced to reveal its true name, but Gentry had commanded it both to answer and to tell the truth; the enchantment's objectives were conflicting, and the boglin was being squeezed between them like a grape. "Ghurk... glack... blrk...! Gnf...nf! GhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAA --"

The eruption of pus and foul-smelling ichor that erupted as the loathsome little creature popped was putrid and disgusting, but Gentry didn't even flinch. Blood trickled out between his fingers from lacerations where his nails had pierced his palm as his fist shook with rage. The ignominy, the sheer cheek! The very opprobrium! His breath wheezed out of him in gasps for several minutes before he finally regained his composure.

So. The summoned creature had not, in fact, been the devil; that was obvious at this juncture, but that created a number of exciting new avenues for research. He'd have to find a new way to get more spells, but the grimoire contained many rites and rituals, and though he already knew many of them were mere mummery, there was bound to be at least one or two more that had actual power. He likely had at least a day before he would need to find his next quarterage; surely he could test a reasonable number of rites by then.

But first, a nap. And then possibly a sandwich.

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The pounding on the door awakened Orton instantly; his eyes snapped open and he immediately tried to spring up off the couch. However, his physical reflexes were those of his eighteen-year-old body, and were deeply at odds with the mental routines which he had drilled into himself with decades of grueling practice and training; instead of leaping up adroitly, he sort of spasmed and fell face-first onto the floor. Enna, in the next room, squawked and splashed as she was startled out of her long, half-dozing soak.

Orton, who was at least wearing pants, struggled to his feet and peered blearily at the door. It had been less than half an hour; even his mostly-drained magical strength should have been able to passively prevent coincidental intrusions for this long. He tugged on a shirt and muttered "Keep your head down" as he closed the door to the bathroom, ignoring Enna's indignant protest. He contemplated putting his eye to the door's peephole, decided he didn't want to risk a bullet through it, and yanked open the door.

The five men outside, all clad in crisp black suits, were identical; each had the exact same slick haircut, wraparound black mirrored sunglasses, and discreet but prominent radio earpiece. The leader (at least, the one at the head of their wedge formation) regarded Orton passively, and Orton felt his stomach drop. The Matrix doesn't even come out for another two years. What is this? "Can I help you gentlemen?" he asked, somewhat diffidently.

The leader responded by producing a huge black pistol, which surprised Orton not at all; he slammed the door, leapt backwards, and muttered his most powerful anarchic shielding charm. The spell, among his most reliable, caused any bullet shot at him to miss as long as it wasn't fired at point-blank range for as long as the enchantment's power held out; with his current spiritual strength and estimated power reserves, he guessed that would be about thirty seconds. He really, really needed a break.

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The door crashed inwards with great force, ripping clean off its hinges and collapsing on the floor with a huge boom as the suited men flooded through the cracked and broken doorway. The leader squeezed off three shots while the others were drawing their weapons, and Orton felt them whizz by with a zipping, wasplike drone. Damn, these guys aren't fooling around. He reached into his pocket and hauled out a fistful of quarters.

"What the hell!" shrieked Enna from the bathroom, causing all of the agents to turn in perfect synchronicity towards the sound of her voice. It was a perfect distraction, and Orton didn't waste it; hurling his loose assemblage of spare change at his enemies, he muttered the invocation of the hawk's stoop. The spell had originally been designed in the ancient past to make a single spear, arrow, or other weapon fly swift and true over distances much longer than a typical shot or throw, but Orton had long ago (for him, anyway) figured out that it could make any small object a deadly projectile at close distances. The quarters left his fingertips, twinkled in the air for a fraction of an instant, and then abruptly shot forward at nearly a hundred times their previous velocity. The effect was immediate and violent.

The hyperaccelerated coins tore into the cloud of suited men like buckshot, blasting huge holes straight through them and embedding at wild angles into the walls behind them. Three of the five fell instantly, but two staggered under grievous (and bloodless, Orton noted) wounds but kept their footing. One kicked in the door to the bathroom, while the other charged towards Orton; Orton, now almost entirely magically drained, had no choice but to close to melee.

He focused on getting ahold of the wrist of the other man's gun hand first; his warding spell wouldn't do much if the barrel were pressed directly to his head. He expected his opponent to possess superhuman strength, but it wasn't as bad as Orton feared; though powerful, his enemy's limbs were only about half again as strong as a normal human's, and Orton was very, very practiced at grappling with superhumanly strong enemies. He twisted his opponent's arm a precise thirteen degrees, ducked his head in under the arc of obstructed movement, and bashed his forehead directly into the other man's face.

Enna, who had shrieked quite powerfully at the sight of a man in a suit smashing the bathroom door open, scrambled to cover herself with a towel as the man, despite a wound the size of a grapefruit directly through his torso, reached down into the tub to grab her. She growled, twisting and kicking, but her foe's grip was like iron. Sure would be nice if I could defend myself magically, she thought sourly as she scratched and flailed. This damsel in distress shit is getting old.

Orton's blow seemed to bounce off the other man without harm, but he staggered backwards nonetheless; Orton was surprised to discover that the fellow weighed less than half what he should have. Seizing the opportunity, he rushed forward, lowering his center of gravity as he barreled through and lifted his opponent off his feet. With a surge of effort, he ripped the gun from the other man's hand as he hurled him bodily through the open bathroom door, directly into the back of the other man who was accosting Enna. With a loud crash and splash, the two men fell into the bathtub on top of her.

Orton rushed into the bathroom, preparing to fire at the two men as soon as he could get a clear shot, as Enna squirmed out from under them, naked and slippery (which was very distracting despite his best efforts). However, the crisis appeared to be past; the two men in the tub were now motionless except for occasionally throwing off sparks. "Guess they're allergic to water," he muttered as he ejected the gun's clip and checked its remaining ammunition.

"What the fuck, Orton?" shouted Enna, wrapping a towel hurriedly around herself. "Who were these guys?"

"No idea. I've never seen anything like this, except in movies." Orton kneeled and studied the bodies; the men were flawless, perfectly-formed copies of human beings on the outside, but their exposed innards seemed to be made of plastic and microchips. "Looks like some kind of android, or something, but that can't be real."

Enna stepped forward, poking at one cautiously. "Maybe they're from the future, like you? Like in Terminator?"

Orton shook his head. "Even twenty years in the future, this kind of technology doesn't exist -- and if it did, it would look differently." He pointed at an exposed circuit. "Those are big, chunky integrated circuits like they used on the Apollo missions -- that tech is twenty years old now. Circuits in the future are tiny; they use molecular engineering to make them smaller than grains of rice." He stood up, brushing off his pants. "These things, whatever they are, are impossible. Circuits this primitive can't possibly run humanoid robots this complicated."

Enna tugged on a shirt, distracting Orton further; she did not, he noted, wear a brassiere. "What about magic? Can it animate things?"

"Golems, sure, stuff like that. But you have to make them a certain way; you can't just slap a rune on a table and make it attack your enemies." Orton rubbed at the creatures' foreheads, checking for an animating rune, but found nothing. "I've never seen anything like this before. And lady, I've seen a lot of shit."

"So what do we do now?" asked Enna, pulling on her underclothes and jeans. "I don't think these guys were with hotel security."

Orton handed her the pistol. "Here. There's seven bullets left; if anybody else attacks you, just shoot them. Just be careful you don't shoot yourself." He poked through the dead men's clothes, searching for identification or clues, but found nothing. "Cripes, not even pocket lint," he muttered.

The two of them tugged on socks and shoes quickly. "We should scram," Orton decided. "They might have reinforcements."

"Wait, one minute." Enna shoved the gun in her pocket (making Orton cringe at the lack of firearms safety) and started searching cabinets and drawers in the room. "Maybe they were after whoever was supposed to be here."

Orton winced. "If that's true, finding out who it was probably wouldn't be good for us. We don't want to get --"

"Got it!" Enna sang out, holding a piece of paper up. "'Mister Lytton -- thank you for your patronage. We hope you enjoy your stay. Sincerely, the Management.' Sounds like this might be who they were after."

" -- too involved," finished Orton, belatedly. "Great. Now we know they were probably after some dude calling himself Lytton, which may or may not have been his real name. Can we go now?"

Enna pocketed the note, picking her way back across the torn and disheveled floor towards him. "You really aren't concerned about who might have been behind this?"

"Obscurity is security, trust me. Right now, my two biggest concerns are, in order, getting us out of here alive and finding a quiet, secure place to rest and teach you some tricks to defend yourself." Orton grabbed another pistol from one of the fallen creatures and shoved it in his coat. "Let's go."

The two of them carefully made their way out of the hotel, Orton's meager dregs of magic power straining to deflect attention away from them. At one point, Enna pulled her pistol out at a door that opened unexpectedly, but it was only a housekeeping maid backing a cart into the hallway; Orton managed to drag her away before the woman noticed them. When they finally emerged from the stairwell into the garage, Orton breathed a sigh of relief and chucked his pistol into a dumpster, motioning for Enna to do the same.

"Seriously? Shouldn't I keep it? For, like, protection?" She folded her arms defensively, glaring at him.

"Magic can trace the weapons used in a fight. That's why most mages fight with pure magic or disposable weapons, like that conjured sword I used against the revenants." Orton turned away. "You can keep it if you want, but you'll be leading them right to us."

Enna paused, torn, for several seconds in front of the dumpster; Orton, walking away, barely heard the clunk as she gave up her last scrap of agency. Don't worry, lady, he thought grimly. Pretty soon you'll have enough power to really be dangerous.