The next night, I stood in the hallway with Sett, a plate full of cornbread in one hand. When I’d asked him for help at evening Mess, he’d said yes immediately. Tamra and Aldric lounged just a few meters away. Tamra had her sword out, as usual, and she was stroking it and muttering to herself. If I didn’t know she’d taken the Armament path, I’d have thought she’d lost her mind. As it was, the sight just made me miss my little gold-and-orange viper. Aldric looked bored out of his mind. I wasn’t sure we’d need them for my plan, but I figured better safe than sorry.

“Not that it’s anything less than thrilling to hang out in the hallways with the kid everyone hates,” Aldric said dryly, “but we could have eaten those little cakes in the Mess Hall and saved some trouble.”

“We’re using them to trap a demon,” I told him.

His eyebrows shot up. “Like the entry test demon? No thanks, crazy kid. This isn’t the Melee Hall, y’know. Get your guts torn out here and you’ll die unless we haul your ass to the Healers.”

“It’s an imp,” I corrected myself. “A little one.”

“Oh, so like in the Threshing,” he sneered. “The one that killed half of our group in seconds. Not helping.”

“Aldric,” Sett said quietly.

“No!” the other boy said, jutting out his jaw. “He’s your friend, Sett, not mine. He’s about to get himself thrown out of the Tower, and it’s not my problem.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “Go if you want. It might not be safe.”

He glared at me for a long second and then spun on his heel, walking away. He got halfway down the hall before stopping, giving a monumental sigh, and coming back. “You’re all idiots. If this imp of yours claws your guts out, I’ll take you to the Healers myself just so I can cut your throat after.”

I gave him a nod. “Noted.” He was a moron and a loudmouth, but he was staying to help, and that was worth more than some bluster and sass. “Mostly I just need you and Tamra to pen it in when it shows up. Keep it from running away.”

Tamra looked up, swinging her sword in a blurred circle. “I can do more than that.”

“Don’t kill it,” I said. “We’re going to trap it.”

“With what?” Aldric asked incredulously.

I pointed up the hallway behind him. “That.”

The staff boy Steg had just rounded the corner, carrying a stout metal cage in his arms. He paused when he saw the four of us, unsure of himself, but I gestured him forward. I hadn’t thought to mention that others would be there when I’d talked to him outside the Mess Hall tonight. “Everyone, this is Steg.”

Sett shuffled uncomfortably, not looking him in the face. “Maphen, we’re not supposed to talk to them.”

“Yeah, Maphen,” Steg echoed, looking mildly annoyed. “What’s all this?”

“Sorry, everybody, I know this isn’t how we’re supposed to play it, but you’re the only ones that I can depend on. This shouldn’t take long, and then if you never want to talk to me again, I’ll understand.”

“I never wanted to talk to you in the first place,” Aldric muttered.

“Stuff it, Al,” Tamra told him. “You don’t even hate him – you’re just being an ass for fun. Knock it off before I turn you into a meat skewer.”

“This was the biggest one we have,” Steg told me, ignoring the others. He held up the cage. It was half a meter high, half a meter wide, and a full meter deep. One end hinged upward, and the bars were as thick as my thumb.

“Do the rats here get that big?”

“We joke that even the vermin are working on their virtues here in the Tower,” he said with a smile. “I’ve never seen one that we’d need this cage for, but I’ve seen chew holes that tell me they’re in here somewheres.”

I took the trap from him. “Thank you.” It was stupidly heavy. “You don’t have to stay. We’re going to trap a demon. It could get ugly.”

He snorted. “You think I want to miss something like that?”

We had it all set up in short order. I moved the desks against the wall and set the plate full of bait in the center of the cleared space. The cage went into the seat of one of the desks where hopefully it wouldn’t be noticed.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“I thought the idea was to put bait inside the trap,” Tamra said. “Kind of defeats the purpose otherwise, doesn’t it?”

“This thing’s too smart to step inside a cage,” I told her. “We’ll have to surprise it in the middle of eating and force it in.”

“Oh, just force the demon into the cage,” Aldric said, scoffing. “No problem.”

“We’ll need Sett’s Toughened Skin mastery,” I admitted. “You two herd it toward him, he grabs it and stuffs it in the trap.”

“I’ll work the catch once it’s in,” Steg offered. “The mechanism’s fiddly.”

“If it’s safe,” I told him. “I don’t want you losing a finger.”

He shrugged. “I could just run to one of the Healer’s stations. Done it before when I caught my hand in the meat grinder for the kitchens.”

“I’m never eating the sausage again.” Aldric said.

“We can do this,” Sett said stoutly.

“You’ve got the dangerous part,” I told him.

“Not if you’re going to do what I think,” he said.

I shrugged. He wasn’t wrong, but I’d realized partway through my planning that I’d rather die trying to succeed than wait for failure, even if I didn’t get healed after.

With everything set, we retreated to the hallway and waited. And waited. And waited. Several Acolytes and a Deacon passed by us as the Tower moved toward bedtime, and they all gave us strange looks, but nobody bothered to find out what we were up to. Aldric filled the hours with complaining, and I filled them with pacing.

Finally I heard a metallic scrape from the other side of the door. My heart leapt into my throat. “Here we go. Tamra and Aldric first, then Sett, then me and Steg.”

“Just like the last twelve times you told us,” Tamra said. “Let’s do this. Three, two, one… go!”

The two Warriors burst through the door, and I heard a screech of surprise.

“Get it! Over there!” Tamra yelled.”

“I know!” Aldric bellowed. “Whoa, watch it!”

Hisses and high-pitched curses rang through the doorway, and then Sett charged in. I was right on his heels. The imp was scampering in circles around the room, an explosion of cornbread crumbs painting the floor. It darted from Tamra, who turned aside its sharp claws with a swipe of her blade, sparks flying, to Aldric, who’d planted himself in front of the door to keep it from escaping. It skittered to the left and the right, but Aldric had grown long crystal shards out of his fingernails, and he used them like a screen, scraping them along the floor to either side of himself to keep the little demon from darting past him.

That open-armed stance left his center open, though, and the demon sprang forward, mouth open. Aldric cursed and fell back, but Sett was right there, lumbering forward with a stiff awkwardness that told me he’d hardened his arms and chest. He barreled into the imp before it could land on Aldric, knocking it back to the floor. He reached for it, but he was too slow with his Mastery activated.

Shit. I’d been afraid of this. I’d really hoped to avoid this part, but… I focused my mind and said, “Derzhat!” The power flowed from my lips, and the imp toppled to the floor, locked into immobility.

The Word didn’t hurt nearly as badly when you said it right the first time, but even so, my throat seared and my lips ached. Pace yourself, I said in my mind. Lots more of that yet to come. “Grab it!” I cried, and Sett scooped it up, stuffing the creature into the metal box with clumsy hands. Steg was there as soon as the imp was in, moving one lever and taking out a pin before slamming the front face down and putting the pin back in.

“Everybody okay?” I yelled. I was being too loud, but my blood was still singing and my heart racing. I couldn’t believe it had worked.

“Been better,” Tamra muttered. She had three deep gashes in one shin that bled heavily. The imp had gotten past her blades before I ever entered the room.

“Come on, you big baby,” Aldric said amiably. “Let’s get you to the Healers before you die of whining.”

She raised her middle finger at him and he cackled even as he came to get under her shoulder on the wounded side. She limped out of the room, and he handled her almost gently. He’d dismissed his crystal claws, and with the smirk on his face, someone might even mistake him for a friend.

“Hey,” I said to them. They turned in the doorway. “If I’m still here after tomorrow, I owe you one. Both of you. Big time.”

“Don’t think I’ll forget it,” Aldric said. “Not that it’ll matter. You were born to lose.” Then he was out the doorway and gone.

“He didn’t mean that,” Sett said.

“Mean it or not, he might be right,” I muttered. “That was the easy part.” I pulled out the book I’d been studying all day and sat on the floor in front of the cage. My hold spell was starting to wear off, and the demon was making a hissing noise deep in its throat. If I couldn’t get through to it quickly, it would chew its way through those bars and be on top of me. From the murderous glint in its bared teeth, it wouldn’t be shitting on me this time. Now we were playing for keeps.

I stretched my mouth and worked my tongue. The book had all the Words I needed, but I’d only practiced them in my head so far. I thought I had the rough idea of them down, but I was bound to make mistakes. Sett’s tale of Chorazin tearing his own face apart during the last Melee by overusing his Word came back to me, and I sent a silent prayer up to the Covenant to smooth my tongue to make this deal.

“You both might want to go,” I told Sett and Steg. “This could go badly.”

In response, they both sat down, one on each side of me.

I couldn’t help but feel a glow of satisfaction, and I flipped open Basic Demon Contracts and Covenants. “All right, you little bastard,” I said to the imp. “Let’s make a deal.”