Master Demonologist Grigory Petrov Thippliy wiped the sweat from his brow. His face was flush, not from exertion, but from excitement! He had at long last cracked the impossible problem! A decade of research and experimentation had yielded what he alone had thought was possible. The work of a demonologist was highly illegal and blasphemous by its nature. Being covert had added complexity to his research and made finding investors impossible, but it was all worth it! The ancient manuscripts he stole from the vampires hinted at it. The tomes from the dusty Library of Eternity in the halls of the Mountain Kings suggested how it could be powered, and every morality tale told to children was clear it wasn’t to be attempted. Scrying for shreds of forbidden knowledge, Grigory had come to a whole new understanding of reality. Now standing in front of him on his desk was the impossible demon. A perfectly safe one.
The demon on his workbench looked like none of the known forms of demon. It was tiny, no taller than a straw doll. Its red torso was taut with magically augmented muscles. Its limbs were long and gangly, with knobby knees and elbows. It stood on black hooves, no wider around than a copper half glindi coin. Grigory leaned forward to better inspect its head, holding his leviathan oil lamp close. It was hairless, like the rest of its body, and dominated by a single eye. He could just barely see two pinhole nostrils above its slit of a mouth through which it will never eat nor drink nor breathe.
The two beings were all alone in the tiny, dark, low ceilinged cellar that had become Grigory’s makeshift lab. While it lacked a great many things it was rich in privacy. The smell of the damp room didn’t bother him, but the dampness did cause his papers to yellow and his ink to smudge. None of that was close to the top of his mind today!
Giddy with excitement, Grigory gestured to a thick layer of loose yellowed papers covered in his scrawlings. In a shaky voice he said, ”I command you to sort my notes!” The tiny creature replied “Merp!” and scampered across the workbench.
The demonologist held his breath as he watched as the tiny imp surveyed its surroundings with its one big pure black eye. It saw the notes and scuttled over to sort them into theory, ritual, and techniques. It then sorted the pages into sequence before arranging them into a single stack, and hip bumping each of the four sides to square the notes into an even stack.
His critical eye for demons acknowledged that the imp could have been more efficient, and was slower than the limits imposed by its strength. His brow furrowed, were the enchantments of learning syncing? The imp should get better at every task, optimising its paths and eliminating wasted movements.
Satisfied with the neat stack of notes, it was time for the next test. Grigory cleared his throat and commanded, “Make me a horse!”
To a real demon, this is an invitation to a dozen different cascades of failure and rebellion. He deliberately gave an ambiguous command with the potential for a consent boosted polymorph. This exact mistake has claimed the lives of countless novice demonologists. The tiny demon looked all over the worn workbench, then walked around the edge of the tabletop, and then sat down on its haunches and replied “Nurp!”
“Capital!” Grigory exclaimed to the empty lab. "The bindings of task refusal are working!" The patiently waiting demon, briefly tilted its tiny leathery head and attempted to parse the non-task related statement. Grigory leaned over to the drawer, and pulled out a knife and a small block of wood. He placed them on the table in front of the imp, who was sitting patiently.
“Make me a wooden horse.”
“Merp!”
In a flurry of activity, the imp started carving into the wooden block. Slivers of wood flew all over the desk and before his eyes formed a model of a horse, true to life. Veins in its neck, smooth flowing mane, the tiny nostrils flared from exertion, its eyes smaller than a mustard seed, but clear and intelligent, a sculpture no longer than his finger that would shame a grandmaster. Grigory smiled as the enchantments of worldly knowledge were flowing, allowing a creature just moments old to know everything about the word and idea of a horse. He held the tiny wooden horse in the flickering lamp light to appreciate the countless tiny details. It was perfect in every regard. When he created the summoning ritual, its dexterity and skill was one of many unknowns. He theorised it was a consequence of the countless enchantments interacting, causing the demon to perform better than he had dared hope.
Grigory leaned back, holding the freshly carved horse in one hand, and the ebony totem of summoning he’d carved that morning in the other. The demon clearly did better work, steadier with cleaner lines. A surge of pride in his creation’s obvious skill welled up in his chest.
To prepare for the next set of tasks, he pulled a sizable lump of ebony from the shelf. He placed it in the centre of the workbench along with his demonologists toolbox. Not that another demonologist anywhere in the Empire would even recognize the exotic tools he’d collected and built over the years.
This part of his plan was the riskiest. A self sustaining recursion, opening up whole new vistas of economic possibility.
“Duplicate your own summoning totem at 1/10th the scale, down to the smallest details including ethereal, then summon and bind a demon to the totem. Repeat ten times.”
The demon stood up and mewed “Merp!” and immediately started to work. This piece was vastly more complex than the horse. The totem was completely covered in spidery arcane symbols, and the activation and linking of them was a dense textile of magic. Grigory cast a gesture of auras to closely monitor its progress. Like its skill with tools, its enchanting was the work of a master. Once the totem was carved and enchanted, all that remained was to summon and bind a fresh demon.
The imp solemnly chanted “Meeeerp merp mrrr mrr meeeeeeeerp!”
Nothing happened.
Its simple slit mouth, lacking teeth or a tongue or even lips, was holding it back from the final completion. Grigory leaned forward to intervene but paused. The imp tried the chant again. Still no telltale woosh of summoning nor a crack of a binding. It hurried to some blank sheets near the recently stacked notes, tore off half a sheet, and frantically scrawled line after line of demonic script on it. It held one of Grigory’s nibbed pens like a ferryman would hold a bargepole, dipping into his inkpot and writing in tiny tight demonic lettering. The imp finished writing and went over to its new totem and slid the page under it. It held up its two thick fleshy fingers, and a tiny purple-white hellflame danced between them. The imp lit the page on fire and it burned with a blindingly bright purple-white flash, casting strange and evil shadows through the dark cellar. The stink of mildew was replaced with the stink of hot iron and sulphur.
Wooosh!
Crack!
A second demon, with identical features and of identical size, blinked into existence a handspan above the newly bound totem. It gracelessly tumbled to the table, but energetically leapt back to its feet. Immediately the new imp started carving a fresh totem from the block of ebony. They worked with no words or gestures shared between them, each focused on their task. This was it! They can recursively summon themselves! Grigory had been especially worried about this part. Not one of the countless scrolls or tomes even suggested it was possible for a demon to summon a demon, but his equations had balanced! Spells based on untested theories were a reckless idea in any form of magic, but in demonology it was especially insane. There was a chance it hadn’t ever been done. Not that demonologists would share their findings.
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Like his partially mad mentor had told him decades ago when he was first expanding into demonology, “It’s only insane if you fail!”
He leaned back to watch them with a slight furrow in his brow. He thought it was odd that they were literate in Demonic. Something to look into later. He knew enough demonic to understand what was being written, but nowhere near the level to imbue a scroll of effect like they were using. That use alone seems incredibly useful! Perhaps literacy was just intrinsic to demons?
Cra–Crack!
The demonologist gleefully watched the work of what were now four demons, the latest two starting on their tasks as soon as their hooves landed on the table. Scratching his short beard, streaked with grey, he wondered if they were going to summon ten total imps. Or maybe each imp summoned would make ten, which would never end! Maybe each imp will only carve the number of totems left in queue when it was summoned, which would be about 3.6 million imps. That's far fewer, but would probably be enough to cause problems.
The imps worked noticeably faster as they gained experience. Fascinatingly they seemed to learn as one. They would run out of ebony long before making millions of totems, but there were tales of demons summoned with human bones. He knew where plenty of those were, not that far under his skin. Something the imps, with their worldly knowledge would also know. Probably enough for the few million totems in the surrounding towns and villages.
The demonologist tensed as the four papers flashed blinding purple-white, followed by four loud cracks of binding. They landed on his bench and set to work. With a profound sigh of relief he noticed that the imps organised themselves into two teams to quickly complete the final two totems. After the final double crack of binding, ten new imps along with the original one placed their tools into the correct slots of the toolbox, closed it, then sat cross legged on the workbench with their long legs and knobby knees overlapping.
Oh! Safety! He’d forgotten the most important part! If not for the depth and breadth of the safety precautions he’d committed to, he’d have been done years ago. Safety was the lynchpin to everything!
Clearing off the tools and wiping away the ebony shavings, Grigory left the razor sharp knife on the table. He unbuttoned his cuff, rolled up his sleeve and put his left arm on the table.
“Remove my smallest finger.”
“Nerp!”
Grigory nodded in relief. He noted that they didn’t even look at the knife and the refusal came the instant he finished speaking. Exactly as it should be. Grigory fixed his sleeve, adjusted his vest and ran a sweaty hand through his short dark hair. Everything was progressing so well!
The fear of being mined for his bones subsided, Grigory couldn’t stop grinning. His smile grew wider and wider as he reflected on his success. All the overlapping enchantments and bindings worked out so elegantly! He basked in the glow of his success. Success beyond his wildest expectations!
He leaned back to consider the implications. This will change everything! An end to drudgery! Every man, woman and child will live better than the Emperor! This will do more for quality of life than the sum total of every god, king, hero and priest combined! There is so much suffering in the world, and almost all of it for the simple want of something his imps can provide. He knew that delusions of grandeur were a common road to madness, but also knew that his breakthrough today would affect more people than the invention of agriculture or the concept of writing!
“Imps, fill my woodbox, make my bed, clean my house and prepare me some roast chicken and boiled potatoes for dinner!”
In perfect unison, eleven imps squeaked “Merp!”
They energetically bounded off to run up the rough hewed wood stairs into the one room cottage Grigory had been living in for the past several months.
Now that the hard part was done and his dreams were real, the demonologist realised he hadn’t planned the next phase. Consorting with demons was a way to get burned at the stake anywhere the Church of the Eternal Triangle held sway, plus a great deal of other places as well. Those insipid morality tales that children everywhere were raised on made demons out to be dangerous! That might make it hard to get anyone to even want to command a swarm of demons. Even for free! Even to free themselves from drudgery and routine! Even if it were legal. Surely convincing people to embrace a better way of life won’t be that hard?
People are open minded! They will behave like rational economic agents to maximise their quality of life! That’ll be with domestic and industrial demons. The invisible hand will do the heavy lifting here!
Grigory scooped up the totems, putting ten pencil sized and one truncheon sized ebony carvings into his satchel, then headed upstairs to observe their work. Two darted downstairs, between his legs and hopped onto his stool, leapt to the table then dragged his toolbox off the side of the table. It weighed at least ten times as much as they did, but still they set to dragging it across the damp dirt floor to the base of the stairs. A few seconds later two more imps bounded down to help them. Together they lifted it onto their shoulders like four doll sized pallbearers carrying an oversized coffin and darted the rest of the way up the stairs. Immediately they passed each other tools and set to work carving and building.
He trusted them to know what they needed to do. Grigory sat his wobbly stool, the only chair in the dark room. He cast a gesture of flame to light his lamp and got out his notebook with “Problems to Solve” in his neat cursive script on the cover. He had left it open hours ago by his now cold boiled oats. Flipping to a new page he started a brand new list.
Long term Objectives:
1. Improve the quality of life of all humans.
2. Improve the quality of life of all sapients.
3. Improve the quality of life of all living things.
He looked up and saw his creations had already set up a tiny workshop by the firewood pile. They carved wooden tools appropriate to their size to start their tasks, Tiny wood wheelbarrows and an access ramp up the edge of the woodbox. Such clever and hardworking little demons! Briefly imagining how all this might look to the eyes of excitable townsfolk he added to his list.
4.Don’t get executed.
But that immediately seemed wrong, so he fixed the numbering;
Long term Objectives:
1. Don’t get executed.
2. Improve the quality of life of all humans.
3. Improve the quality of life of all sapients.
4. Improve the quality of life of all living things.
He tapped the list a few times with the stylus. That’s much more workable.
All options to achieve this are basically impossible, but this morning making a perfectly safe demon was impossible. Now he had an infinitely scalable workforce! He updated the long term goals yet again.
Long term Objectives:
1. Don’t get executed for demon based crimes OR rebellion based crimes.
2. Don’t get murdered by rivals.
3. Improve the quality of life of all humans.
4. Improve the quality of life of all sapients.
5. Improve the quality of life of all living things.
He closed his notebook and observed the imps sweeping up with tiny adorable brooms as other ones scrub the floor with tiny brushes and shallow bowls of warm soapy water. Grigory felt his confidence return. With Imps like these how could he possibly fail?