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"What are 'pizza poppers,' my lord?"

"Well," said Lord Nightfall, arms crossed, "some people say they're the same as pizza rolls. But they're not."

Gaia was a world where pizza did not exist. Was Dodd expected to know of this 'pizza?' Was it vegetable? Vermin? Mythic beast?

Dodd and Lord Nightfall were standing in the middle of a massive, well-stocked kitchen. From the ceilings, rows of pots and pans dangled like stalactites. They had been forged in hellfire. Ninety percent of them had never been used. You don't need much metal when you're making pizza poppers, just a single good pie tin.

There was no electric or gas stove in this kitchen. Why would there be? The planet of Gaia was still in a very middle-agey state. Mortal technology was pitiful. And demon technology, while its existence alone was impressive, didn't fare much better.

So when the egg timer rang, that was the cue to take the pizza poppers out from a fire stove built into the wall. "You get that," the lord said to Dodd.

A few moments and a lot of struggling later (Dodd had no muscle mass to speak of), a wooden paddle bearing a pie tin and many, many little round pastries came out of the fire and smoke. A delicious mix of cheese and tomato steamed from them. The drizzle of fine herbs atop them looked like beach sands on a hazy morning...

They were dumped haphazardly into a pie tin. Lord Nightfall plucked a pizza popper from the tin and ate it. Then he ate another. Then ten more, shoveling them into his fanged mouth with both hands. At this rate, they wouldn't last five minutes.

His obnoxious, gooey chewing sounds filled the kitchen. Dodd, out of respect, looked away.

He asked, mouth full, "Want some?"

"I do not want some," said Dodd.

"They're good," he said.

"We're demons," she said.

She would not elaborate, again out of respect. Lord Nightfall knew perfectly well what she was getting at. This was...well, it may not have been typical human food on Gaia, but it damn sure wasn't for demons.

And the way he was eating it didn't make him look like anyone's demon lord. It made him look like a natural slob. Which, as Dodd was about to see, he was.

***

How many servants were there in the grand Nightfall Castle? Two. A grand total of two demon servants, both of them imps of the absolute lowest caliber.

Aside from Dodd, there was Felicity, a wood imp who had been working with their master for a few days now. She was a smidge taller than Dodd, with long, twisting bark-horns. Her big, watery eyes were blistering magenta. Dodd could tell that Felicity was younger than her—and feistier. Not in front of Lord Nightfall, though. Only in private.

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Once that first day on the job turned to evening, Dodd was sent back to the servants' quarters. She and Felicity sat to rest on opposite straw piles in the same room. Aside from these "beds," the room was cluttered with the type of junk one would expect to find littering a mortal warzone: armor, broken spearheads, bits of metal that no longer went with anything.

When Dodd got in, Felicity was already sitting on her pile of straw.

"Hello, Felicity," said Dodd, keeping her voice low. "I'm the new servant. If you wouldn't mind, I have a few questions..."

"I'm sure you have several," said the wood imp. Her voice was even smaller and higher-pitched than Dodd's own. Yet Dodd could tell that anger—unbecoming for an imp—was brewing behind those chirps.

Dodd cleared her throat. "W-well, this first day was...I-I was just wondering...are we really servants to a demon lord, or did we... Okay, let me tell it from the beginning."

Felicity sat still and listened.

"You know the furniture, the tables, the way everything is laid out? I-is the castle supposed to look like this? Is that just what's popular with demons now?"

The chandeliers, the fancy staircases, the deep red velvets—they all suggested a certain kind of luxury. Human luxury. And Lord Nightfall made zero attempt to hide it.

"When you first got here and you saw everything," said Felicity, "how did it make you feel? Sick to your stomach, right?"

The fire imp nodded.

"And the food."

"The 'snacks,' he calls them," Dodd whispered.

"Yeah. Those things."

If you could smell Lord Nightfall's pizza poppers, either you would testify to the greatness of his original recipe or you'd immediately throw up. But if you were a demon, you'd do neither. Demons get little excitement out of Gaian food. They can't smell many things.

"I couldn't even smell any human blood around here," said Dodd. Now her temper was rising. "No human blood, and yet we're surrounded by humans."

"Guess what?" said Felicity grimly.

"What?"

"When he really wants to celebrate, he breaks out the bottle of—"

"Rat blood?"

"Rat saliva."

Dodd whimpered. Right there on the spot, she broke down in tears and fell to her knees. She blubbered, "I didn't come here to be someone's fool!"

"He's not just 'someone!' Say it, Dodd, say it!"

"He's a human! Waaah!"

"Louder!" said Felicity, springing to her feet. "The sooner you come to terms with it, the easier it'll be!"

"We got ripped off!" Dodd wept.

"He ripped us off so fucking bad!" cried Felicity. She had been fierce at first, but now she started to weep too. She took Dodd in her arms. They hugged each other and bawled for hours.

Meanwhile, in the drawing room, Lord Nightfall was sitting on his medieval easy chair and picking the wax out of his ear. Heaps of thoroughly human leavings surrounded him like oceans around an ignorant island: papers, lint, pizza dribbles, and a few sparkling cups and plates worthy of high society, which, if anything, only made the whole mess more embarrassing.

There was so much cleaning for the imps to do.

Unless, of course, they could change him.