“I am!” she protested. “I’m a good archfiend!”

But the cat wouldn’t stop laughing, beating his little paw on the bloody ground before him. “Oh, sure!” he said. “Look: I believe that you believe you’re a good archfiend. Honestly, the Arbiter never gets things wrong, and they said I was coming in on humanity’s half of things.”

“You have! I fight for humanity!”

The cat looked around the small room they occupied—at the bloodied corpses of the carnage demons, each with their necks laid open, and at the grisly remains of the human who had been torn in half.

“Doing a great job, I see,” he said, eyes fixed on the human.

“They were dead when I got here! I tried!”

“Sure,” the cat said.

“Look,” she said. “If we play it right, we can save humanity from the worst of the invasion.”

The cat snickered.

“What?” Asthoreth asked, crossing her arms.

“Oh, Heavens,” he said, looking up at her with glistening eyes. “You really do believe it, don’t you?”

Ashtoreth put her hands on her hips. “Now listen,” she said. “One, I don’t care for that kind of language. And two: yes, I believe it. I told you, I’m fighting on the side of humanity.”

Dazel snickered. “Ah, of course—humanity, bastion of all that’s good and true in the multiverse. You know what they say: ‘nothing bad ever happens on Earth’. What could be more of a good deed than keeping Earth the way it is….”

“Hey! Whether or not humans do bad things has no bearing on whether or not they deserve to be invaded by the legions of Hell.”

“All right, all right,” the cat said, turning away from her and starting to walk around the room. “Say: did you put all these hearts over here?” he asked, prodding at one of the hearts that had been scattered when a demon had torn her carry-sack.

“Yes,” she said. “What about it?”

“I don’t know, I guess I just don’t consider ‘collects the hearts of her enemies’ to be a morally neutral character trait.”

“I don’t collect them,” she said. “I eat them. See, I’m a [Vampiric Archfiend]. My [Consume Heart]—hey!”

For some reason the cat had started laughing again. “Oh, forgive me,” he said, giving her a mock bow. “I didn’t realize that you were a [Vampiric Archfiend], that changes everything! Nothing evil about a [Vampiric Archfiend] devouring the hearts of her enemies….”

“Eating a demon’s heart when it will help you save human lives isn’t evil!” she said. “At the very worst, it’s neutral!”

“Oh, I get it,” said the cat. “But say: about that really dark spot on the upper half of the human corpse, there.”

Ashtoreth looked down at the corpse, then away. “Uh—which, sorry? There are a lot of dark spots that I can see. It’s a very bloody corpse.”

“The darkest one. There, under the tear in the robe. Just near the ribs. See it?”

“Well….”

The cat kept sniggering, barely containing his laughter. “Is that, perchance, the hole that you ripped their heart out through before you ate it?”

Ashtoreth blanched. “There were, uh, circumstances.”

“Sure!” the cat said, sitting up and spreading his forepaws. “Circumstances! She didn’t save the human, but she ate their heart—circumstances!”

He continued to laugh uproariously, his voice making it sound like he was on the verge of tears.

Ashtoreth glared down at him, crossing her arms once more. “So you’re a wise guy,” she said.

“Listen, Princess,” the cat said. “Your soul’s as black as mine. Probably even blacker. An infernal is an infernal—and infernals are the cosmic bad guys, the black hats, the designated villains. The sooner you realize that, the better.”

“I won’t be a villain according to humanity,” she said. “Not once I’m finished. And you know what? You won’t be so down on yourself, uh… say, what’s your name? You never told me.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“It’s Dazel,” he said. “And you were?”

“Ashtoreth. I told you.”

“Oh, right.” He shrugged. “It’s an easy name to forget. Where I come from, Ashtoreth’s are a dime a dozen. Used to be even worse—in the Crucible of Hate a few centuries back, you’d just call any girl an Ashty. Six times out of ten you’d just be using her name. Still not nearly as bad as when Lilith was in fashion….”

“Can we focus?” Ashtoreth said.

“Sure, master. Just let me know what—” Dazel suddenly froze. He looked up at Ashtoreth, narrowing his eyes. “Hey,” he said. His eyes seemed to glaze over for a moment—he was checking something in the system. “Why does this say that I’m a companion?”

“Because you are.”

His little bat wings rose as if he’d sensed a threat.

“You’re my familiar,” she explained cheerfully. “I took an upgrade on my [Demonic Summoning] ability—you’re a permanent companion!”

“Permanent?” he said. “Familiar? If that’s an upgrade for [Demonic Summoning], then it’s a new one.”

“Well, then it’s a new one!” Ashtoreth said.

“Oh, come on,” said the cat. “With an archfiend? And a crazy one, to boot.”

“I’m not crazy.” Ashtoreth said. Her smile had begun to fade. This was… definitely not going how she’d wanted it to. “But look: I want you to be happy as my familiar. Tell me, what’s the matter?”

The cat sat up and folded its front paws. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Permanent servitude! Not a temporary summon—permanent servitude! To an archfiend of all things! Ugh, I should have figured out that’s what this was when I saw my new body….”

Now it was Ashtoreth’s turn to cross her arms. “Excuse you,” she said. “But it’s supposed to be a great honor to serve someone of my pedigree.”

“Honor?” He cried. “Oh, yeah—just what every demon craves: honor! I used to stay up at night thinking about it, back in my crevice in the Pit of Sorrow—am I noble enough? Am I, as a demon, truly living up to my principles and values?”

“Say,” Ashtoreth said, smiling. “You’ve got some sense of humor, don’t you? I like that. I think once you get acclimated, you and I really gonna get along.”

He groaned. “You just don’t get it, do you? Listen, how about you unsummon me and we’ll think of this as a successful attempt at a job interview that I failed.”

“But I can’t summon someone else,” she said. “It’s a companion ability, you’re locked to the position. If I unsummon you, my whole [Summon Demonic Familiar] ability is wasted.”

“It’s never a waste to try new things, boss,” Dazel said. “Even when they’re instant, obvious, abysmal failures. That should never have been tried. You learned what you don’t like, today—and you can’t put a price on knowledge.”

“Look,” she said. “Just try being my familiar for a while, all right?” She beamed down at him. “I promise: you’ll quickly see I’m not like the others. We’re gonna be great friends.”

“Yeah, no….” he said, turning to move for the door.

“Hey!” she said. “Come back!”

“Nope! I’m a companion—I get a choice, remember? And I am choosing to find a place far away from you until you unsummon me.”

Dazel made for the doorway, but before he could reach it, Ashtoreth used [Command Infernal]

“Come.”

Dazel’s body went rigid, and he turned and slunk back toward her, eyes vacant—he was far too weak to resist her spell.

She picked him up by the tail just as the fog cleared from his eyes.

He yelped. “What are you doing?”

“I’m gonna torture you,” she said simply, the cheer never leaving her voice.

Dazel struggled, twisting and turning in the air before her.

Ashtoreth conjured a fistful of hellfire and began to move it closer to his face….

“Okay, stop! It’s too much—I give in!”

“I didn’t even—”

“Nooo!” he wailed, writhing in the air and batting nonexistent flames off his body. “I’ll do anything you want! I swear!”

“Everything,” Ashtoreth said, in a tone that clearly made it a correction.

“Okay, I’ll do everything! Everything you want!”

She dropped him to the ground. He sat there in a pool of blood, looking up at her with what she was sure was a resentful expression. “You said you were different,” he said.

Truthfully, Ashtoreth probably couldn’t have gone through with torturing him… but he was a demon. There was no way he’d expect as much from her.

And she wasn’t so bent on being good that she’d be stupid. An intellect spirit was a useful person to have around.

“I am different,” she said. “I fight for Earth. And right now, your cooperation could mean the difference between life and death for any number of humans. I’m not gonna let you mess this up.”

She paused, then added: “And I mean, pretty much anyone with any sense should agree that torture is justified when the stakes are this high. Now come on—we gotta go do the right thing.”

Dazel stared at her in incredulity for a moment, then hurried after her into the hallway outside.