***The Infernal Planes of Gluttony***

***Amon***

“I still must remind you that your idea is straight-up stupid,” Uphir complained while we were walking down the narrow passageway between two sewers, him in leading the way. “If anyone saw you, you wouldn’t get out of Baaar alive. Every demon with half a brain would try to capture you, either for your souls or in expectation of some reward...”

The tunnel was barely large enough for a single imp to walk through upright, so I had no other choice but to endure Uphir’s speech. I wrinkled my nose at the smell that came with exploring the sewers beneath Baaar.

I finally decided to interrupt him. “It is a matter of ensuring that the various pieces of my plan work seamlessly with each other. Disabling Baaar’s Anima Stone in a manner that prevents reinforcements from returning to the battlefield too quickly is one of those things. And everything should be fine as long as nobody sees my wings, right? That’s why we are going through the sewers. That, and I have a cloak.”

If I had known that my appearance would be that much of a problem, I would have stayed far away from the city. My minions were very adamant about the fact that I shouldn’t allow myself to be seen by any of the adult demons. But as it was, I was committed to seeing this plan of mine through to the end.

“It is so smelly and dangerous, you have no idea what you are doing!” Philomena moaned from behind me.

I was sure that she was only complaining because I forced her to join us on this trip. She didn't look like she had much to do lazing around in the camp after fulfilling my tasks.

Then she continued, “I don’t get how you aren’t appalled by the smell! Shouldn’t the nose of someone like you be a little more delicate?”

“Someone like me?” I asked and frowned. “I don’t know what you are getting at. Honestly, I have smelled worse than this sewer.” The walls were dirty, and I was sure that Baaar's dry environment ensured that we were currently walking through not much more than piss.

“Oh, come on,” Uphir huffed from in front of me and gagged upon passing a particularly nasty something that was drifting through the brackish water to our feet.

Even I lifted my tail in order to avoid touching the thing.

He continued, “You can’t tell me that you aren’t a runaway from some powerful family. Your wings are a dead giveaway. Your parents probably brought you up with powerful souls, feeding them to you one by one in order to rear a powerful subordinate.”

“I am sorry to disappoint you, but I was brought up in a hatchery. My hatchmates shat and pissed in an enclosed space for months. This sewer is honestly not that bad, since there is at least some airflow,” I corrected his false assumption.

Philomena gasped in disgust when she encountered the unmentionable that Uphir and I had just passed. “I am not getting paid enough souls for this!” she complained. “And what does this mean, you grew up in a hatchery. How did you get out? The hatcheries in the vicinity are supposed to sell their produce exclusively to Lord Ostreios’ warbands. How did you get the souls for a powerful evolution?”

She wanted to know a little too much.

“I was lucky to escape. And the rest is none of your business.” I returned a part of my attention to the stick in my hands which I was improving by carving runes into it while we walked. Though, since the stick was formerly an archmage’s wand, it was debatable whether my alterations were actual improvements. The issue was that I didn’t really know what I was doing. I simply hoped that my soul’s memories wouldn’t fail me.

Having knowledge is one thing, but using it correctly is an entirely different matter.

The other made itself known once more, which made me even more annoyed than trudging through this sewer system. Did the other really believe that I wasn’t aware of the dangers? I already had to learn that the hard way during my second summoning when I tried to abuse the arcane knowledge of my souls by casting a spell which I had found in the memories of the other.

It… didn’t go that well. Trying to cast a spell above one’s bodily ability to control the arcane energies was a unique experience which almost cut my visit to the mortal plane short.

But no, Betsy had advised me to accept the different facets of my being, or I would never come to terms with my existence.

I blinked and decided to forget the regrettable experience.

Increasing my knowledge of my people’s culture was more important. “Uphir, Philomena, does your question mean that there are other ways for a demon to grow up aside from a hatchery or a powerful progenitor? It sounds like the two of you don’t hail from either of those origins.”

Uphir hunched his shoulders as if he had been caught doing something naughty. “Well, you saw all the demonlings on the battlefield outside Baaar. Our origin lies with them.”

I grunted for him to go on, hoping that I wouldn’t have to pull every little piece of information out of my minion’s horns.

Philomena took up the task. “Many demonic evolutions allow females to have huge clutches of eggs. So many that they don’t know what to do with them. In some cases, it is so bad that if they gave each of them just one soul, they would starve themselves sooner or later. Having a powerful progenitor who wishes for capable offspring is the best thing that can happen to a young demon. The second best would be to be granted a soul by a slightly sentimental mother and being delivered to a hatchery. Most of the demonlings you saw outside Baaar are the third, eggs that were laid and then abandoned without granting them a soul. It means that the demonlings which hatch from those eggs are nothing more than mindless beasts. They don’t have access to education, nor the knowledge of a soul.”

“Wait, so you are saying that you were among those?” I asked. “But how do the demonlings out there ever get a soul if it is not bestowed?”

Uphir shrugged. “Every once in a while, a demonling has some luck on the battlefield. They may be involved in the death of a warrior or an imp. Or someone who wants a servant catches one in order to grant it a soul and some small education. Philomena, Shax, and I, we come from such an origin. Kitia managed to run away from the warband which bought her from a hatchery in order to replenish their numbers, but that’s her own story to tell.”

Philomena spoke up from behind me, “I think I ran with a swarm for a few decades until a cook in one of Baaar’s restaurants decided that he needed someone to wash the dishes instead of a piece of chopped meat. Of course, I cancelled that contract as soon as I was able to.”

Did that mean what I thought it meant? That she was intended for the chopping block when...

The way she said that sounded entirely too cheerful for me, so I decided to avoid the topic of her miraculous ascendency to imphood. “So, how many demonlings in those swarms are actually sentient?” I asked, thinking about the task which I had given to Shax.

“One in a hundred would be a pretty good guess,” Philomena answered.

Maybe I should apologize to my minion for giving him an impossible command. A leader is only as good as his ability to judge what’s possible and what not. I wondered about the different behaviour which Baaar’s demonlings were displaying compared to my hatchmates. “Will Shax be okay with his task?”

Uphir waved his hand in a so-so gesture. “Shax is insane enough to actually talk to the demonlings and I haven’t heard him complain. The few demonlings who have souls among a flock can actually exert a surprising amount of control over the rest, so the task isn't completely impossible. Only slightly impossible. I wouldn’t worry as long as he doesn’t get himself eaten too often, though I would say that you owe him a few souls after this. We imps have to work hard in order to keep ourselves afloat.”

“I am only glad that we are doing this during the competitions,” Philomena added. “Could you imagine walking through these sewers with swarms of demonlings on your tails?”

I looked behind me and glanced at the other imp. “So they are normally living down here?” I scoffed. “It’s almost like a hatchery, I guess.” I rethought my opinion of Baaar’s sewer system.

“Yeah,” Uphir replied downtrodden. “Normally, all of Baaar’s unwanted and forgotten offspring is searching the sewers for something, anything, edible.” He shuddered. “It’s only during the competition that they get some real food outside the sewers. Which is why we can traverse these tunnels at all right now.”

“Say, Amon, how old are you by the way,” Philomena cut in. “You said that you escaped from a hatchery, but you really don’t seem to know all that much about demon society.”

I blinked, then thought hard while taking my time.

My guides clearly grew worried when the answer wasn’t forthcoming immediately, so I decided to throw it out.

“I am not sure… our caretaker taught us about the demonic calendar, but he never mentioned what date it was. There was also no clear way to tell time inside the hatchery,” I admitted finally.

“Oh, that’s…” Philomena clearly wasn’t sure what to say. “But why would it matter? It can’t be that much of a difference whether your age is amiss by a year. The longest a demonling stays in a hatchery is not much more than that before they are sold. You must have been on your own for centuries to turn into an imp without help or guidance from anyone else.”

“M- more like months?” I corrected her and tried to help my estimations with my claws. “The caretaker was just done with language and basic contracts when I escaped. It was after the first summoning-lesson that I got out. I have a feeling that it couldn’t have been much longer than five or six months. Maybe seven? Then I lived alone for a few weeks, and then I had really long summoning which brought me up to maybe a year? I honestly didn't bother to keep track of time.”

Uphir stopped suddenly and I ran into him from behind. He stumbled and almost fell into the undesirable sewer water, but caught himself.

He slowly turned around to face me. “You are telling me that you are just a few months old? A year at best!?”

I sneered at him and pointed down the tunnel, hoping that he would get the hint. “Age alone doesn’t make one powerful as you can see.”

“He is just an infant…” Philomena mumbled from behind. “We are following an oversized infant...”

“Less talking, more walking!” I ordered and summoned an icicle to my fingertips. There were some applications to that spell which I had found out to be very deterring to my fellow imps.

Uphir eyed the icicle and turned back to leading the way instead of challenging me, which was a smart move on his part. “I am sorry, I was just surprised. You must be very talented in negotiating with mortals to advance that quickly to your next evolution.”

“Indeed,” I said nothing more, not thinking it necessary. My inquiry had almost cost me all the respect of my minions. “And I think it best if we just forget about this little detail of my past.”

“Of course!” Philomena was quick to agree. “If the others knew about this-” I raised the stick and she changed what she wanted to say. “You would only get a lot of unnecessary additional work in subduing them.”

We walked on in silence for a while, relying solely on the light of a little fireball that Uphir had summoned to his palm.

At last, we reached the area of interest, a slightly larger chamber that was supposed to provide a buffer overflow for the sewage water during the rainy season of the year. Though, right now, it was only a large, empty room that was relatively dry compared to the rest of the sewage system.

Uphir waved four other imps aside who were guarding our treasure. Then he pointed out the large amounts of explosives and poisonous gas that our people had already secretively stored away. I didn’t envy anyone who had to carry the crates through the narrow passageways.

“We set these up here and in two more places beneath the central plaza so that it would be easier to spread them out once the operation starts,” he explained. “Here, all the stuff can also stay relatively dry. I heard that these explosives don’t react well to water, so by storing them here, we can minimize the duration which they are exposed to it.”

I nodded. “How will you set up the trigger system?”

Uphir pulled a map of the sewage system out of a spacial storage ring on his finger.

Upon seeing it, I immediately made a mental note that I also had to get one of those.

“As you can see, our stockpiles are here, here, and here. As long as you give the command an hour before the operation starts, my three teams can spread the explosives and the gas canisters in regular intervals throughout the canals beneath the plaza.” He pointed at the map of Baaar’s underbelly which had the Anima Stone at its centre. “You said that you didn’t want to take out the Anima Stone, so we will do our best not to damage it. If everything goes well, the explosive charges should shake up and crack the ground without actually exposing the sewage system. That should allow the poisonous gas to leak out and do its job without anyone being able to do something about it. Though, you should be aware that the more powerful demons won’t be stopped by this.”

I nodded. “That is fine. This operation is solely about gathering souls for us. We don’t want to win a war with Baaar. If we manage to get through without anyone being the wiser, then allowing some demons to escape the trap isn’t that big of a deal.”

“I am still concerned about our exit strategy,” Philomena wiped at her forehead. “Registering ourselves at an Anima Stone far away from Baaar doesn’t strike me as thorough enough. What if they manage to capture one of us? There are ways to forcefully bind someone to a new spawning location.”

“That’s what the poison pills are for,” I explained. “Killing yourself with poison and paying a single soul for respawn is much better than being killed in combat.”

“I would still want to avoid testing that theory,” she replied rather testily.

“Then see to it that our plan doesn't have any weaknesses,” I retorted with the obvious solution to her problem, then shot a glance at the imps who were guarding the explosives to make sure that they were far enough away. “Don't you guys have the advantage of age and wisdom? Use it.”

She bristled but said nothing.

We continued our inspection of the stash and then trundled on, making a roundabout tour through Baaar's sewer system. I would have never expected to see my first demonic city in a way like this. But the more I heard about the place, the less I wanted to see it up close.

Demons who ate their demonlings and thought nothing about it. A yearly competition of mass-murder to find the most murderous of demons for the Lord's legion. Demonlings who were thrown into the sewers...

“Say, do you have anything positive to say about Baaar?” I asked when I realized that I was probably making everything a little too black and white. Only because my guides hadn't told me anything good about the city didn't mean that there wasn't something.

The long silence that ensued spoke more than a thousand words.

Finally, Uphir raised his voice. “Well, if you manage to become the city's Lord, everyone else is your bitch. I suppose that's one good thing about it?”

“Oh, I know!” Philomena chimed in. “If you manage to become a demon capable of running a good hatchery, you are likely to be able to do as you please, and Lord Ostreios will stay off your back if you keep selling to his people. Like Aria, the Broodmother. She can have hundreds of eggs in each of her clutches and only sells the most vicious of her last surviving hundred to the Lord's personal guard each year.”

I shuddered. “A demoness who can lay hundreds of eggs in one go?” What kind of evolutionary path was that? Did it hurt?

Uphir nodded to himself. “Some evolutions are ever so unfortunate, or fortunate, depending on how you see it. Haven't you noticed the huge titans outside Baaar?”

“I did...” It took me a few seconds to get the hint.

He clapped approvingly. “Correct. Lord Ostreios keeps them close as siege weapons in case he decides to wage war on another Infernal Plane. The Broodmother is actually one of them.”

“But why aren't they in charge?” I couldn't help but ask “Just one of those things looked like it could crush the city if it fell on it!”

“There are powerful strategic class rituals in place to prevent that. Being big may make you powerful, but you are also a slow, lumbering target.”

“I think my curiosity is satisfied for now. Let's not pursue that topic.” I had enough and what I had learned definitely required me to adjust some of my contingency plans.

“Let's go home for today.”