>>5181256“What is this host’s personal problem?” you ask as you enter the Incubus smokey, ill-lit ‘office’.
The creature dens amongst tributes and tributaries, as usual. It snaps its fingers and waves away its supplicants before answering you:
“Lack of confidence,” it says, in a deep baritone. “Lack of agency. Lack of manhood—not literally, I suppose, but he has been made to feel that way. With the combined tribute of these people, he was allowed to buy this property from the previous owner. Now, he lives like the king of a little fiefdom…”
“With you his soul’s personal and eternal emperor?” you say. “It is sad what lengths these humans will go to, for such a petty and fleeting sense of worth.”
“Your accent is gone,” the Incubus notes. “Ssssick of feeling like a stranger in a strange land? It’s okay to feel inssssecure sometimes, you know. Natural, even.”
“Keeping my identity hidden,” you say stiffly. “I brought you something.”
You beckon, and the hellhound and the wraith enter the room. The one creeps in shamefacedly (well, if you can read the twisted hound-like entity’s inscrutable expression or cryptic, alien emotions). The other seeps cautiously in through the window, clinging close to wall and ceiling as if eager to avoid drawing too close to the greater demon in the centre of the room.
“Nicely done,” the Incubus says, nodding to both.
“Weak now,” Brezzog says of his lessened state, attempting to stand with prideful purpose despite this. “Hurt. Paladins. Will be strong again. Don’t eat!”
“Yes,” the wraith agrees, “we will serve you well. We wish to join your court.”
The Incubus laughs, the sound even more unnatural in its timbre than the wraith’s voice—enough so to make the lesser demons flinch.
“Oh ho ho, never you fear. I’m already well-fed, and I’m ALWAYS hiring.”
The Incubus grins at you, with a wink. You clench your jaw slightly. The hellhound and the wraith both seem to take some comfort in this lack of immediate hostility, though.
“Come, let me get you something to eat, my fine hound… And somewhere dark and cool to spend the day, my good wraith?”
