***The Mortal Plane***

***Amon***

“You are not allowed to kill humans!” Betsy immediately clarified.

“What if your enemies have human servants?” I asked. “You have to be very careful with the restrictions you place on us, or we might not be able to rescue that baby.”

Loretta stopped her friend’s reply and addressed me, “You can kill anyone who stands in the way of saving my boy as long as you and your people act in good faith with our intentions. Which means, no turning this into a murdering spree on innocents! You are a thinking being, so I am fairly certain that you can figure out what we want.”

What you want is not always what I want...

I frowned, tilted my head, and mulled over how ‘good faith’ with a human’s intentions could be interpreted. Would the Infernum strike me down if an innocent got injured in the crossfire? “And what exactly are your intentions?”

Loretta’s expression turned stern. “I want my baby back!”

I rubbed my hands and dug through my spacial pouch to find one of the standard contracts for services rendered which were issued to me when I joined the warband. “Please sign this in blood and the deal is made.”

The human narrowed her eyes at the lengthy scroll of legal demon-lingua and I could already tell what was coming next, so I rolled my eyes and decided to appease her worries. “Why do you mortals never bother to actually read the damned contract! All so you can say afterwards that you didn’t know?” I shook my head. “I, Amon, swear that this is a standard working contract for services rendered. You, as the contractor, keep me and my minions in this dimension for however long it takes to fulfil the contract and we get to keep whatever loot or souls we manage to claim from your enemies.”

I pulled my dagger and offered it to Loretta.

She only eyed the wicked blade for a second before she ran for a drawer and pulled a sharp knife from it. I only then realized that they had apparently summoned me in Loretta’s kitchen. The witch cut her thumb and a moment later, I had my contract signed and rolled it up to deposit it back in my pouch.

“Perfect! Now, I only need some space to summon my five minions and we can go and kill some fae!” I clapped my hands and stepped out of the summoning circle. “Betsy, could you make me some coffee while Loretta explains the exact details of her issues with the fae?”

“I am not your minion!” the human female retorted.

“But you are currently very useless while I have important work to do!” I clarified the situation for her.

Loretta waved her hand. “Just do it, Betsy. Please, and tell Thomas and Jeremy that the ritual succeeded.”

I placed a hand on my chest and turned to Betsy. “Men? I am astounded! Don’t tell me that you actually managed to find yourself male company!?”

Betsy turned red with anger. “Yes, I did! It actually wasn’t a problem after you were gone.”

I smiled, showing her my sharp teeth. “I am glad. Given how short a human’s lifespan is I was afraid that you would die old and alone. My poking and prodding solved at least one of your issues.”

Sadly, I couldn’t poke at Betsy’s hang-ups any longer, because Loretta pointed me out of the balcony-door which led directly to the property’s garden. “The closest neighbours are living a few kilometres away, so it should be fine if you summon your friends in the garden.”

Outside, we were greeted by two men who looked concerned, their eyes wandering between Loretta and me.

“You did it?” one of them asked. “Did you sign a contract?”

“Yes, Thomas. This is Amon and he will help us. Amon, this is Thomas, warlock, and my husband.” She pointed at the other one. “And that is Jeremy, a wizard who is going out with Betsy.”

“I still don’t think that bargaining with demons is a good idea,” Jeremy complained. “We should have brought this in front of the city’s board for supernatural affairs.”

“And by the time they get anything done who knows what the fae will have done to my son!” Loretta replied angrily. “They are a menace who have been doing as they please for decades and nobody in the paranormal community dares to stand up against them...”

I ignored the bickering humans and took note of the fact that aside from the garden area, there was a generous asphalted space that doubled as a veranda. It was perfect to draw a few summoning circles, so I shoved the table and chairs which were in the way onto the grass and got to work.

“Loretta, you wanted to explain the details?” I asked while I drew a piece of chalk from my pouch and covered it in my blood. Thank the Infernum that I had bothered to learn the summoning circles for my friendly minions.

The human female gave me a rough outline of what had happened while I got to work. Apparently, the pairing of a witch and a warlock wasn’t liked to be seen in the magical community around here. Loretta’s coven and Thomas’s circle were at each other’s throats, so they had to overcome some pretty rough resistance from their peers in order to get married. Somewhere along the line, they were forced to accept the help of a fae prince, which was apparently some type of paranormal creature on this world.

Loretta tried her best to make sure that her repayment would be in monetary values only, but the fae seemed to have pretty lenient ways of honouring their contracts as long as they could get away with it. One day, they simply decided that taking Loretta’s son as an indentured servant would be a valid form of payment.

“It somehow contradicts with what you have told me about these creatures,” I commented while finishing the last circle. “On one side, they are supposed to stick to their word, but on the other, they are breaking it freely.”

“They are very much like demons in that regard,” Thomas commented from where he was watching me. “They honour the letter of a contract, but not the spirit.”

“Not at all!” I shot back. “Once we demons make a contract, we honour the spirit of it down to the letter. Why do you think that we put so much effort into writing everything down? There is no tongue-twisting or misinterpretation with the written word. If the mortals don’t get it right, it’s entirely their fault. Damned analphabets...”

“Haven’t you said that you are going to summon five minions?” Loretta asked suddenly.

“Yes,” I replied.

She frowned. “Then why are you drawing six?”

I stopped moving the chalk and stood straight up. Then I slowly counted to five, which was inconclusive with the mortal’s result. I doubted that she couldn’t count in the single digits, so I repeated the process, using my fingers while slowly focusing on just a single circle at the time.

“...six. Oh, that little bitch. I have no clue how she did it.” I hit my temple, trying to figure out how Isabella had gotten into my head! The fact that I was drawing her summoning circle hadn’t even occurred to me until the human pointed it out! That said, how did I even know her summoning circle? That was a neat piece of unconscious indoctrination!

“Problem?” Jeremy asked.

I dismissed him with a wave of my hand. “A certain demoness who put it into her head to stick to the sole of my boot like chewing gum. I may as well summon her too, just to find out how she did what she did.”

Growling, I kneeled back down to finish the circle and to summon the rest of the troop. Then I concentrated and poured energy into the ritual. Slowly, one after the other, each circle started to glow with red power. Some took longer than the others, but I suspected that was only normal if my minions were just in a tutoring session.

Finally, six shapes took form and Kitia, Philomena, Uphir, Shax, Jebril, and Isabella materialized. The demons looked around disoriented until they spotted me.

“Amon! Mhm-” Isabella spread her arms wide and ran towards me, which I blocked by stopping her with my palm on her face.

“How did you do it!?” I asked angrily.

“Did what?” she pouted.

“You messed with my mind so that I would summon you on the next opportunity!” I accused and poked at her sternum, avoiding those glorious tits of hers.

Her gloomy expression immediately lightened up. “I did no such thing, but I am so glad to hear that you were thinking of me! It makes my heart all tingly!”

“Bah!” I threw up my hands. Did she just lie blatantly to my face or was there something else wrong with me? Was this some kind of succubus-magic that Isabella didn’t have to consciously use in order to warp my mind? If so, she wouldn’t have necessarily ‘done’ anything specific. In the future, I would have to pay very close attention to everything she said.

Kitia cleared her throat. “Amon, why are we here?” She looked at the humans who suddenly didn’t seem so comfortable with the fact that they had now seven demons in their garden, two of them almost twice as large as themselves.

Shax didn’t exactly help when he decided to use the tip of the garden parasol as a toothpick.

“Ah, yes!” I ran over to the table which I had placed out of the way and jumped on top of it so that I could loom over my minions. Well, I was just on eye-height with Shax but that was okay.

“My minions! Today is a great day because I got a wonderful contract! On top, I decided to share it with you in my generosity. And tell you what, we are going to abuse the heck out of it because this dimension is running at least ten times faster than the Infernum!” I spread my arms with a huge grin on my face.

Blank expressions answered me.

I dropped my hands and sighed, saddened that I actually had to explain something so obvious! “One week in the Infernum equals more than two months in this place! We are going to train here, slaughtering our enemies, and once we go back, we kick our tutors’ asses!”

The comprehension slowly dawned on their faces.

“And that’s why in order to stay here, we will declare a…” I halted and thought. A wàr wasn’t enough and a wãr didn’t fit the situation either, but a wâr seemed proper, even if it was closer to a blood-feud between two families. “…A Wâr on our contractor’s enemies, the fae!”

The crickets chirped, but then Isabella was the first to clap her hands together and cheer! “Wâr!”

It only took a few more seconds for the others to raise their fists and join in, even if I had just done a very unconventional thing by practically declaring them as my family. But once they bought into it, all of us were shaking our fists and howling at the sky in demonic.

“Wârﬡaêrjﬡfae!”

None of us cared whether the wide-eyed humans understood a word, but Loretta apparently got the gist of it. “Wait, wait, wait. I just wanted to get my baby back!”

Uphir shook his head. “Too late, human! We already declared a wâr, so either we get what we want or the fae bleed until there are none of them left to bleed!”

Jeremy slapped his forehead and groaned, while the parents looked torn between being horrified and exhilarated.

“Soo…” Isabella raised her hand. “May we now know what fae are and why we just swore to obliterate them down to the last egg?”

The humans were too horrified by what the succubus just said, so it was left to me to educate the others on the details of the situation while we ignored the mortals. Only that my knowledge of fae was rather lacking. So, in the end, we had to turn to the humans for further explanations after all.

“Where do we find fae and what do they look like?” Uphir asked. “We have to catch one and interrogate him or her on the nature of their defences. Then we can work on a plan to extract that demonling of yours.”

Most of the humans who had gathered on the veranda looked dejected, but Loretta had apparently made up her mind. “Fae, as a whole, look very different from each other. They even count different species among their kin, from elves to pixies and gnomes. What unifies them is their strange magic and that they are living in their own realm, a pocket dimension that is connected to ours. But we can provide you better because we happen to have one in our basement.”

Kitia pursed her lips. “You have a fae in your basement?” The beautiful demoness stepped closer to the human and smiled down at her, causing quite the awkward situation until Loretta's husband pulled his wife back and shielded her with his body.

Shax didn't care for all the drama. He was much less talk and more about action, so he stepped towards the house and tried to get into the kitchen. Which stayed only an attempt because his horns caught in the narrow entrance. “Hgnh...”

“Nonono...” Loretta ran up to the huge demon and slapped his thigh. “You are too big for the house!”

I sighed and gestured for Uphir and Philomena, who was still large, but due to her more normal physique actually capable of moving inside the human home. “Let's get that fae out here. I assume that there won't be much space in that basement.”

We followed Loretta's husband into the house and down a stairway while he explained. “We caught him when he and one of his friends abducted my son in an attempt to replace him with a changeling. I can only guess that he was supposed to fake my son's death sometime later. Unfortunately, they got away with my boy before I could do anything.”

Down in the basement, we found a human-like creature with long, drooping ears, strange clothing, and leaves and moss in his hair. I frowned, wondering whether it was really necessary for the fae to be gagged, blindfolded, and bound with thick rope to the point that there wasn't much of his body visible. Were they that capable of escaping their bonds?

I sighed and gestured for Philomena to get to work. It looked like neither Uphir nor I were needed to carry this stick. “Philomena, get him up to the veranda.”

The warrior demoness stepped forward and grabbed the rope at the back of the fae's chair, then lifted him with one hand, startling the human who was watching us. She led the way back up the stairs while carrying the fae in front of her.

Less than a minute later, we were all gathered on the veranda with a very eager Isabella who danced around the prisoner. “Oh, a guy! Do you want me to charm him? I can make him wag his tongue, telling us all of his people's secrets.”

“Succubi...” Uphir shook his head and pulled off the fae's blindfold and gag.

The fae blinked and spit at Uphir, which was instantly answered with a fist to his belly. The prisoner coughed, but the blow hadn't been too hard, so he quickly regained his wits. “Stupid humans! What have you done!? Have you opened a portal to hell and allowed the devils into our dimension!?”

“Ngh... demons...” Shax corrected.

“Yes! We are demons, not devils! There is a difference!” Isabella purred while kneeling at the fae's knees, looking up to him and incidentally giving him the grand view down the v-cut of her silky dress which sported colours of gold and black. “A... huuuge difference.”

I couldn't help but feel a little envious that she was putting up a show for someone other than me, but if it got the fae to talk then I was willing to ignore a little posturing.

Upon realizing what I just thought, I quickly pinched myself. This woman was not getting into my head again!

The fae, on the other hand, was totally unimpressed by Isabella's allure. “Get away from me, devil wench. I won't be ensnared by the likes of you!”

The succubus stopped smiling. “Are you a newt or something?” She reached between the fae's legs and the prisoner started screaming as she twisted something.

I winced and turned to Uphir. “What devils is he talking about?”

My comrade scratched his chin and shrugged. “Some realms are in the habit of conjuring devils, which is vastly different from summoning a real demon. Mind you, devils are like lesser infernal elementals, mere magical constructs without souls or the smarts to do anything aside from the most basic tasks. It is highly derogative to compare us to the likes of them, but I guess that most mortals just don't know any better.”

“Understood. Although, I am very curious about this fae's ability to withstand Isabella.” I stepped forward and grabbed Isabella's tail, pulling her away from her screaming victim.

“No!” She immediately turned to me and hugged my hips before I could stop her. “I promise that I can be helpful and make him talk! He is just a little stubborn.”

I placed my hand on her head and tried to push her away, but couldn't do so without hurting her. “Just let go! I am sure that you will get your chance.”

She finally allowed me to dislodge her and stepped back, smiling like an idiot. “I knew that you would give me a chance to prove myself!”

That wasn't exactly what I meant, but the fae distracted me from my succubus-problem by shouting profanities.

“Stupid humans! Do you really think that you can turn me against my kin just like that? I order you to release me or your child will suffer the consequences! The moment my heart stops beating, the prince will know and your debt will increase a thousand-fold!”

I huffed and stepped closer.

Then I ripped off his droopy left ear and took a bite. It wasn't quite as chewy as a tongue but had more of a rubbery texture to it. Tongues were definitely better, so I spit the filth onto the ground, dropped the rest, and tried to get out the cartilage that had caught between my teeth.

The fae wasn't screaming, but his mouth was open in a silent scream and his face showed pure agony and horror.

“Thank the Infernum,” Jebril let out a breath. “For a moment, I feared that he would get a taste for ears too.”

“Ears are an 'acquired' taste,” I admitted before the fae started screaming for real.

I took a minute for him to calm down again while I contemplated what I should rip off next when Uphir stepped in. “Allow me to try. The art of interrogation is obviously something that neither of you has paid any attention to.”

He was right, so I stood aside and sat down on one of the chairs at the table while Uphir got to work with a wicked dagger. It was a blessing that Betsy had just now left the house with a tray on which she had a can of coffee, cookies, and several cups.

The petite human circled in a respectful distance around Shax who was watching her and placed the tray in front of me.

Then the demons surprised the humans by sitting down very civilly and drinking coffee while one of them skilfully dismantled the fae into little pieces while somehow keeping him alive.

It took me two cups of coffee until the fae eventually relented to answer at least one of Uphir's questions. He screamed the answer, “Theee Fairy Mount is insideee the Oaken Gladeeee!”

I set down the cup and turned to the humans. “Does that tell you anything?”

A sick-looking Thomas nodded. “The Oaken Glade is a well-known reserve at the edge of the city. A forest of oaks with a little glade that's a relaxation resort.”

“Then I guess that's all we need from this one?” I got up and looked at the fae who wasn't in the best of states with his skin hanging down his body in ribbons.

“Youu caaan't kill meee!” the fae squealed. “They... they will know! They will know as soon as my heart stops beating!”

I nodded and placed a hand on the fae's shoulder. “I guess that we just have to keep it beating then?”

“Wha-”

Without waiting any longer, I pulled back and punched my hand through his sternum until I managed to grasp the life-giving organ and pull it out while I watched his terrified eyes.

“What did you do!?” Loretta tore herself from her husband's embrace.

“Do? Nothing much.” I raised the warm heart which I kept throbbing with my healing magic. “Look, it is still beating, and it will continue to do so if you bring me some small container that I can enchant.” Then my eyes fell on the coffee can. “Actually, that's not necessary.”

I opened the can and drew a piece of chalk from my pouch after dropping the heart inside. Then I chanted a life-supporting stasis spell while focusing the energies of the world into the can. Having the soul of a master healer surely was helpful.

“He- he- my he- my heart...” The fae was watching me with eyes that almost came out of his head.

“You are still alive?” I turned away from my impromptu fae-artifact. “Tough bastard. Shax, finish off this part of his physical shell.”

The fae gaped as the large warrior demon raised a fist and brought it down like a sledgehammer, caving in the prisoner's head and a part of his chest. Everything beneath's Shax's fist was turned into paste.

Being at heart a child of Gluttony, the large demon consequently tore off one of the fae's arms and took a bite while the humans looked like they were about to lose their shit.

I took the enchanted coffee can and handed it to Loretta. “See to it that this stays safe while we go hunting.”

Then I turned to the rest of my troop. “And now we are going to hunt down some fae!”