Sometimes, on admittedly rare occasions, one has to set aside the typical rules of demonic behavior and channel one's inner fae.
The deceptive little shits.
Fae, or faeries, dedicate most of their existence to one simple thing: messing with everyone and everything, up to and including reality itself. Theirs was the only civilization on par with demons and angels who didn't bother invading other worlds.
They were almost never invaded, either. Those dumb enough to try either didn't last very long or became locals in due time.
You can't enter a realm so utterly twisted by laws, contracts, oaths, and who knows what else and expect to remain the same person. You could literally lose pieces of your very nature simply by taking a left instead of a right turn at an intersection. People went in confident, proud, and prepared. They came out penniless, without their very names, and often literally naked.
How was this possible, you may ask? Because of the very topic I was so interested in: implicit and verbal agreements.
The act of entering the fae's homeworld was an implicit agreement to obey their rules. Verbally agreeing to something while chatting with a fae? As good as a written contract signed in blood and soul slivers.
So, yeah. Fae were tricky little shits whom no one wanted to deal with.
For anyone seeking revenge, the best time to try and kill a fae was during one of their rare Wild Hunts. Royal fae treated this activity like an amusing pastime, equivalent to taking a weekend trip to a different town. Except they strolled through the ancient woods of other worlds and killed or kidnapped whoever caught their fancy.
Not exactly 'equivalent.'
It was also hilarious that the whole thing didn't count as 'invasion', since the fae technically had permission to do it. They just used the World Will of their messed up homeworld to communicate directly with other World Wills and negotiate their 'Wild Hunt' excursions. Sanctioned war crimes for the win, I guess.
Did I mention that the fae were annoying little shits?
No one could deny, though, that they had a knack for tricksy contracts. So, if one wanted to bind certain pesky demons into agreements without their knowledge, it only made sense to draw inspiration from the fae.
For example, by enchanting a bracelet so that whoever put it on was immediately bound into a contract.
The logic seemed sound to me. What really mattered, though, was Tibath's response to my idea. Thankfully, she seemed to find the whole thing hilarious. General demonic contempt for the fae aside, she was perfectly happy to help me figure out how to implement my plan.
This was a Very Good Thing. Because, to my shame, I was kind of a bad enchanter.
Now, I know what you might be thinking. To say that about someone who regularly creates and enchants crystalline constructs on the fly would be to spit in the eye of anyone struggling to master basic enchantments. That's fair.
But it was precisely because of my approach to this magical subject that I was so horrible as a 'traditional' enchanter.
Most if not all of my constructs were never made to last. My vines and flowers? More ephemeral than most actual plants. My larger, rougher constructs? Temporary abodes, just hastily formed spheres meant to withstand the immense pressure of the earth so Glaustro could sneak us around underground. All of them were designed to endure for a few days at most.
The one exception was the city I had helped build. Even then, though, I had focused primarily on the base of the city. I'd made the buildings and supports, and then let dedicated enchanting teams handle things from there.
So, while my crystals were amazing mediums for enchantments, one could argue I was severely underutilizing them.
Tibath, on the other hand, knew how to create things that lasted. Sure, she had no real experience with the kind of enchantments I wanted, but she had built countless sets of armor. And each set involved a level of enchantment work that I could only dream of.
She knew how to stabilize enchantment matrices, customize them, and edit them. She had even invented entirely new configurations. The number of enchantments she had created, refined, and filed away for her successors to benefit from could fill a library.
Her brilliance in this area was a large part of why her business was so successful.
Others could try to steal her enchantment schema by stripping the armor she had sold them, but their efforts failed ninety-nine percent of the time. Each item in her shop had defensive measures built in to prevent that and other kinds of theft.
Plus, even if thieves did copy her stuff, Tibath simply had to put out something better. Which, she confided in me as we worked, she had done. Many times. After all, there would never be a lack of people looking to advance themselves quickly. But none of them could match up to the brilliance and skill of the person who had invented the stuff they were stealing in the first place.
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Light bragging on Tibath's part, sure, but I wouldn't ever try to deny her claims. Not after seeing exactly what she could do when she got serious.
The array she assembled out of souls, mana conductive materials, and mana stabilization matrices alone blew my mind. The fact that she then inscribed far, far too many minuscule enchantment matrices on her prepared array in a dizzying schema only furthered my disbelief.
Still, that was nothing compared to watching her finally shrink the entire thing and somehow transfer all of it onto a bracelet I had made.
When she inspected the newly made item, smirked, and nodded her head confidently, I felt my spirits lift. Then her next words plunged my insides into the icy depths of despair.
"Well, it seems like this works! Which means I've now got to teach you how to do it." She grinned like a shark. "What? Did you think I'd personally make however many bracelets your brilliant plan requires? Please. I have much better things to do."
She was, of course, correct. That didn't make me hate my life any less as I struggled to follow the brilliant demoness' lessons. I had all the respect for Yules, who was forced to join me in my suffering on day one.
"She doesn't have as much experience with this kind of stuff as she ought to," Tibath said gleefully. "And your idea might be applicable for projects she wants to do in the future."
It was torment of the highest order. Just the inscribing alone left my head aching, hands twitching, and eyes feeling like someone had shoved hot coals into them. Hour after endless hour, Yules and I squinted at the tiny lines of enchantments, trying to pen them as small as possible.
That was how I spent my following three weeks.
Three. Weeks.
Three weeks of pure misery, achiness, and a shocking lack of Mia. I only got to see my kitty cat at the end of each day, when I collapsed in our frustratingly constrained quarters next to the yeti tribe we were helping to 'protect.'
The only reason why Imthala, and Mia for that matter, didn't protest my uselessness during that period was the same reason why I persisted through the agony. We had a problem. I had a plan to solve it. And each terrible day was another step towards that solution.
At last, though, my misery was brought to an end. Tibath carefully examined the latest bracelets I had managed to produce, nodded her head proudly, and shot me an approving grin.
There were few things as beautiful as that grin, let me tell you. Not because of the demoness' innate beauty (though, and don't tell this to Mia, she was beautiful), but because it meant I was finally free!
Along with my freedom, of course, came the prize for which I'd worked and suffered: all the bracelets I had made.
They weren't all of a particularly high quality, but they would be more than enough to bind demons of lesser power. Even the worst of my bracelets could pin down any demon with a lower rank than superior, by sheer virtue of who had made them. Trash made by a Baron was always going to be better than the masterpieces of an imp. And while raw natural talent and genius did count for a lot, there was a point where the amount of mana you could sink into something won out over the base enchantment quality.
In other words, I had a couple hundred bracelets ready to be deployed. I hadn't been able to make them very quickly at first, but the three weeks of constant practice had been effective. I was confident that I could produce a lot more of them faster in the future.
That confidence was enhanced by the final lesson imparted to me by Tibath. Of course, the same lesson also sorely tempted me to try and deck the smug demoness.
She presented me with a very particular runic schema, one designed to feed either off of my own mana or an outside source at will. It had a singular purpose: to hold, store, and then replicate whatever enchantment schema I inscribed in it, allowing me to mass produce an item quickly and conveniently.
Sure, it required me to do some steps manually. The thing wouldn't just pop out items for me. I would always need to copy, miniaturize, and then paste the enchantment onto an item.
However….
"If this was possible from the start, couldn't I spend more time inscribing the enchantment schema perfectly once, and then just use the runic schema to copy it over and over again?" I protested. "I mean, I know I needed the training. It's good to know how to miniaturize it and then root it inside an item. But was all the inscribing really necessary? I'm a demon. I'm a demonic Baron, actually. And I can't feel my hands!"
Tibath smiled lazily, the picture of pure contentment. Yules was just watching the both of us blankly, like she understood my pain perfectly and had learned long ago to accept it.
"Of course it was necessary," Tibath replied, her smile stretching even wider. "The skills you acquired here will serve you well, no matter what kind of project you do in the future. I might not have charged you for the lessons and the assistance, because I like you and that cat. And because your idea amused me. But did you really expect to just get a finalized schema for free and then walk out to craft a pile of items immediately?"
Well… a part of me may have expected that?
I got what she was saying, though. Instead of just giving me something that would solve my immediate problem, she had forced me to learn how to produce enchantments myself.
I took a deep breath in, then slowly let it out. "Thank you. Truly. I… don't really know how I can pay you back, but I'll try."
I meant it, too. Technically, she had taken me on as a temporary apprentice.
And she was, I had to remember, very much a Duchess in her own right. Not a whole lot of demons ever got the kind of privilege that I had been casually afforded. One of my absolute best strokes of luck ever was getting to know Tibath and Yules so early in my demonic career.
"If you really mean that, then just get me some unique materials to play with. You've been good at that so far, so I trust you'll manage." She waved a hand towards the door. "Now, go. I know you want to see that cat of yours, and you look like you'll pass out on me. Just try to make it to her before you do that, okay?"
I laughed, said my goodbyes to the two, and then braved the cold world outside their shop. Honestly? The cold felt really good against my overly hot skin, flushed from the mana exertion and all the work I'd had to put in.
Somehow, I managed to fulfill Tibath's request. I dragged myself to Mia with minimal stumbling, finding her on a patrol route that travelled the full perimeter of the yeti tribe. Her eyes lit up, as they always did at the sight of me after we'd been apart for any length of time, and I couldn't have held back a grin if I'd tried.
"Heya, kitty cat. Guess who's finally done with the enchantment training?"
Then, just to underscore how amazing I was, I let all the exhaustion crash over me as I passed out, right into her waiting arms.
I might have heard her laughter as my eyes fluttered closed, but that just made the smile stretching my lips grow.