A silence settled over the room in the wake of Imthala's confession. It wasn't necessarily a bad silence. Just contemplative. Her final suggestion echoed in all of our minds, feeding our imaginations.
The potential of what she was describing was immense. I could barely hold back from cartoonishly cackling while rubbing my hands. It obviously appealed to Mia as well, considering her fundamental desire to make Vallinach suffer in multiple ways.
Imthala, though, did not seem so comfortable in the silence as the rest of us.
"W-Well… that is basically all I wanted to say." She paused and wet her lips. "You're not — I mean, you don't resent me, do you? I did join your company with malicious intent." This she aimed at Glaustro, unable to look away from him now. "Are you going to cast me out and demand I never show my face again?"
She tried to add a teasing lilt to the words, but the whole thing was ruined when her voice cracked towards the end.
"Not, Imthala, I do not hate you and want you gone." Glaustro had to take a deep breath before continuing, but I didn't think it was because of any ill will towards the demoness herself. "I remember that time. And, well… we were kind of a mess, weren't we?"
All of us chuckled at the thought. Bronwynn had been painfully weak for a demon of his age. Mia and I had still been mortals. Methialia had joined up out of sheer desperation, with illness dogging her steps. In fact, none of Glaustro's hires had a particularly happy backstory.
Honestly? The biggest surprise was that we didn't have more half-baked spies among our recruits from back then. That none of them had apparently chosen to betray us for real was kind of astonishing, too.
Or maybe it wasn't. The Legion of Torment really was so messed up that Glaustro's crumbs of kindness appeared as monumental actions of affirmation and acceptance.
Who knew?
"I'm not going to say that I don't feel upset," Glaustro went on. "You did join us with the intent of sinking a knife in our backs. But… you didn't. Both back then and now, you didn't. And you are trying to work with us to take full advantage of the opportunity we now have. That's about as much as I can ask of any of you. I'd just like to make it known now that, should any of you ever be unhappy with me, tell me. Don't just vanish after getting a better offer of employment."
Glaustro smiled wanly. In that smile, I saw the shadow of the old Glaustro, who constantly clung to the image of his 'better, more important' brother. I hated it, but I also knew there was only one way to deal with Glaustro's old traumas.
Action.
We'd stick with him. We'd watch him rise until he was finally high enough above Graighast's gray ass to realize that he wasn't playing second fiddle to anyone.
I just wondered if that truth would hit him before or after he rose to the highest position in the Legion of Torment.
"We still need to figure out what exactly we are going to do, but for now… we need to head back. I trust you to keep doing the excellent job you've done so far, Imthala." Glaustro stared directly into her eyes. "None of us would have managed this city as well as you are doing now."
"I totally could have," I cut in, smirking at all the disapproving glares I received. "Maybe. Until I got bored. Mia, though, would definitely just order everyone else to take care of her work and then curl up for a nap."
"Hey! I resent the truthfulness of that," the cat demoness dramatically grumbled.
My smirk widened into a grin as our little byplay drew genuine laughter out of the rest.
Oh, I knew we weren't that funny. I knew they were just releasing the tension of that little episode between Glaustro and Imthala. Still, it felt amazing to hear them all laughing like that.
I pulled Mia into my side just a tiny bit tighter. This was the family we had found our way to, somehow.
And we would fight to keep it.
Reality was a horrid bitch when she wanted to be, so of course we didn't have any time to enjoy the newfound relaxed atmosphere of Imthala's lovely home. We said a hasty goodbye to the ice demoness and headed immediately back to Torgun.
Thankfully, it didn't seem like our excursion off-world had been noticed. That still didn't mean we could relax, of course, for a whole host of reasons.
Chief among those reasons were the two sleepy idiots trailing behind Mia and me.
Immediately upon our return, we had fetched Ian and Revilla from the Apple. They'd continued to board there even after finding out the truth about the place, and even though the Apple's staff took great joy in teasing the poor wolfie boy every chance they got. This was doubly hilarious when you had direct insight into Ian's feelings and could tell he was genuinely just flustered by the attention, rather than tempted. The majority of his feelings and desires centered on one particularly prickly elf.
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Revilla, of course, seethed every time one of the Apple employees so much as cooed in Ian's direction.
The two were still awkwardly dancing around each other. Mia and I frequently felt the need to pull out popcorn. But at the rate the Apple's staff were winding them up, I was pretty sure Revilla would drag Ian off to their room sooner rather than later and just, ah, stake her claim on the shifter.
Honestly, they were too adorable. And we had neglected them far too much during the reveal and subsequent cleansing of the traitors in our midst.
"I'm going to assume I have you to thank for the continued diligence of my apprentice, Revilla?" I asked as we walked.
"A-Ahem, yes, I've pressed him to continue his mage training. He resisted a little at first, but I saw to it that we both made the most of our recent downtime."
"And you've kept up with your physical training, too?" Mia questioned sharply.
Revilla's instant waffling amused me, but I tuned it out, along with Mia's complaints and Ian's assurances that they had spent plenty of time on their physical conditioning. Instead, I began to inspect both apprentices' mana cores a little better.
What I saw made me grin. Both of them were within the superior mage rank, which was honestly impressive.
They were ready to hear what Mia and I had been planning for them.
"I know Ian's pushed decently far along his ascension path out of necessity," I began. "And I'm sure you two have memorized all the warnings we've given you about the process. But it's time. We'll start boosting your souls towards that goal soon."
I could see the shadow of apprehension on their faces. Ian, in particular, had already sensed a shift in how easily his Emotions got away from him, even if all our advice was helping him deal with it properly.
"Don't worry, we'll be there," Mia assured them. "And we won't be leaving you alone anymore."
That was a bold promise, but one we were both set on keeping. We couldn't be away from our apprentices while we prepared to push their minds to possible breaking points.
We'd been tempted to just let the pair do one major push beyond standard ascension at the same moment they became demons, but several worries had prevented us from pursuing that course of action.
For one thing, we had no idea if they could handle all those mind-crushing changes occurring all at once. It might render them permanently insane or cause them to ascend as imps. We definitely wanted neither scenario to occur.
And even if they ascended properly, we still didn't know what that concentrated process might do to them. The different perspective, the overwhelming Emotions… Our apprentices could easily lose themselves to being demons, which would then lead to arrogance, impulsive behavior, rank stupidity, and a whole lot of other problems.
So, we were having them follow in our footsteps, after a fashion. Just like Mia and me, our apprentices would experience their first taste of demonic life while still remaining mortal. They'd open a connection to the Abyss, which would start transforming their mind and introduce them to just a bit of their future core Emotions.
Of course, they would be facing all the same risks we'd faced. Their mortal minds weren't quite equipped to handle that intensity of feeling. They would be in constant danger of being overstimulated by their Emotions, like I had experienced those few times I almost drowned in Woe.
But that's why we planned to be there every step of the way. We would make sure they were prepped and coached. We would hopefully be able to keep their environment more stable and less insanity-inducing than ours had been. If they could glimpse their future Emotions, and learn how to cope with them before becoming demons, then it would be worth it. They'd have a much better chance of not losing themselves later.
This was, I suspected, something which Glaustro would appreciate. I hadn't missed the way he'd badgered us into accepting apprentices. My colonel had an eye on the future.
Even with the recent fiasco over spies and such, things were going well with the recruits themselves, and Glaustro was investing into them heavily. They were getting teachers, resources, and even a few souls as rewards for the particularly advanced. The average soul level of the mortals in our midst was much higher than it had been in my own cohort, and most if not all of them were at least starting to thread the path of magecraft.
Sure, that increased our expenses. Sure, the risk was there that they'd choose to turn their backs on our army and go elsewhere in the legion. But if things did go to plan, then Glaustro would make out like a bandit.
As such, our determination to guide our apprentices through the advanced ascension process was something Glaustro, and by the same token our entire army, could benefit from. If we could establish a relatively solid framework on how to approach ascension, then there was no reason our troops would have to be 'inferior' to Abyss-born.
It was a solid strategy for the future success of Glaustro and his army. Still, I had to admit I was a bit worried.
Why was it such a novel idea to provide mortal recruits with the kind of guidance they'd need to truly excel and get the most out of their ascension? Sure, arrogance and distaste for competition were perfectly valid reasons. But not all demons were like that, right?
Someone must have tried it in the past. Were they simply successful and then buried the secret to their success? Did their rivals band together and put a stop to it? Or had things gone disastrously enough to discourage such fully support of future recruits?
I supposed we would find out. Either Glaustro would have a proper army all his own, or he wouldn't.
I could only hope our apprentices, at least, got the most they could out of these investments into their future. Even the early introduction we were about to give them to one of the more… unpleasant aspects of becoming demons.
We reached our destination just as Mia finished her tirade on the importance of proper physical training, and I let out a long sigh.
"Follow me. I will explain what we are doing here and why, but I want you to refrain from asking too many questions for now."
I shot the duo one final look, then pushed the door to my experimentation area open.
I'd had the victims of my experiments assembled there ahead of time, along with the one comatose former recruit whose soul was being devoured by my own soul sliver pieces.
It was finally time to introduce our apprentices to exactly what sort of things demons tended to get up to. We needed to see how they handled the cruelty and the sheer disregard of mortals that came so naturally to our kind.
Honestly, I'd long stopped wondering whether the Abyss was actively suppressing my empathy for mortals, or if it was just a natural side effect of evolving past them. It was a convoluted mess, doubly so when I clearly could feel fond of individual mortals, but it was what it was.
For now, Ian and Revilla had a lot to learn.
And I had a sword to feed.