in which a demon king is born

Soon, the cave was covered in doodles. The rain had receded to a drizzle; now the sky matched the color of the campfire. “There’s this supposedly cursed item at the capital,” Frell said. “It’s not true, of course, but they’re using that as a selling point at the auction.”

“Auction…”

“Yeah. Shut up, I know. I’ll stop gambling next week. Anyway, I’ll tell you the details later, but basically we’ll get the thing and then, oh no! It’s cursed with the spirit of an evil king!”

“What is a king?” Pebble asked. She’d long since sought the warmth of the fire while he continued to draw.

Frell added a stupid-looking hat on his latest doodle. “Bad guy,” he said, tapping it. “They were uh… it’s hard to explain. They ruled over everything because they wore a crown.”

“So the crown gave them power?”

“Kind of? I guess? Not magic, though, just… people obeyed them because they said so. I don’t know. I was just a priest back then, so I never questioned it. Anyway, cursed item. I’ll take it, then pretend to get possessed by an evil king who wants revenge. You won’t be able to save me. So you’ll go back to the Hall and…” He trailed off.

Pebble was braiding her hair again. “If the strongest Saints join forces to defeat you, you won’t stand a chance.”

“...yeah… ugh. Then—wait, but I’ve beaten you in duels before.”

“Me? The Saint of Swords #244?”

“You’d have a better number if you tried climbing up the ranks.”

“Why would I?”

“Point is,” he said, lest this devolve into yet another ‘lost potential’ argument, “I don’t think I’d lose that easily.”

“Let’s arm wrestle,” Pebble said. When, predictably, he scowled at her, she added, “I was thinking that we could do a trial of sorts. Instead of the whole world, we could try starting small, and if you don’t get beaten up, then the demon king’s influence can slowly spread across the land.”

Frell tapped at the beauty mark under his eye. He did that a lot and it never annoyed her less. “About that… how can we make the demon king seem threatening without hurting anyone?”

“Word of mouth?”

“That could work… at first. But then we have to show it, you know?”

“Pretend to kill me,” she proposed. “Painlessly if possible. Then revive me or something.”

“No.”

“Why not? Killing a saint would set a precedent.”

“Think about it. If you die and get revived, then it’ll be obvious that I…” He clicked his fingers. “Wait, I get it! Poor, poor Frell will snap out of the demon king’s control for one moment, just one, to revive his fallen friend… and tell her… to save the world from himself…”

Pebble had just kind of figured that a death would make the threat more credible, but sure. She nodded. She knew better than to stop him when he got like this.

“Since you’re #244, they probably won’t take me that seriously, which works to our advantage. I was also thinking of visiting a graveyard to—”

He dodged a scorching branch. As it landed against the clay wall behind him, its fire fizzled out.

“—get a makeshift army. Yeah, I knew you wouldn’t like that.”

“No necromancy.”

“Then how is the evil demon king supposed to get an army?”

“Why would you need an army?”

“To make the lie credible?” Frell picked the log, then tossed it back into the campfire. “Peb, come on.”

She said nothing.

“You know they’re not in there anymore. In fact, I’m pretty sure I prayed for most of their souls.”

She said nothing.

“They’re probably butterflies now. Or flowers? Or maybe the chicken we had for lunch. So they’re double dead and double reincarnating. One of them could be the tree we got these branches from.”

“That’s just what you believe in,” Pebble said, “because of your job. You think saying pretty words to corpses means that something exists after death.”

“Wow, it’s almost like I hear their dying thoughts during battles.”

“Dying, not dead.” Pebble stood up. “No necromancy.”

Frell rolled his eyes.

“It wasn’t going to work out anyway.”

“Peb, calm down.”

“And if it did, then the plan wouldn’t have lasted for long anyway. That’s the way things are. It wasn’t a good idea in the first place. Just wishful thinking.” Pebble glanced at the scantily-clad villain with the funny hat. “Why can’t I be the demon king, anyway?”

“Well, you’d break character.”

“Huh?”

“My point exactly,” he said.

Did he mean that she wouldn’t be able to keep up the act? Because if so, he’d be right, and she didn’t feel like admitting this, so Pebble opted for a different approach. “Wouldn’t a god becoming evil make things worse?”

Frell opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked away. As someone who’d defected during the war, Frell was one of the ‘good ones’. He’d agreed to being sealed. He wasn’t a warrior or a politician, but a priest—one sinning constantly, but still. “Technically, I’d only be a pitiful, tragic puppet in need of rescue.”

Pebble didn’t feel like being a pitiful, tragic puppet in need of rescue, so this approach also failed.

To be fair, this had been her idea.

The rain had stopped, and the sun had gone to sleep. The Saint of Explosions #10 was probably drinking again, the rogue deity long since forgotten. Tomorrow, the townsfolk would wake up again, surrounded by mud, and despair, and resentment.

While Pebble pondered, Frell walked around her, over and over again. “If we do this, I’ll help you get a boyfriend,” he said.

“Fine. Let’s—wait. Not that.”

He paused, grinning.

“You just said that right before I accepted. I don’t care about that stuff. At all. Fuck you.”

“Gladly.”

“And I don’t mean it in that way.”

To be able to re-enter the village, Pebble had to put Frell inside of a sack, and then another sack, and then another one, so that the guard at the entrance would be too lazy to check the contents of her luggage. Since it’d begun to rain again, Pebble had bought an umbrella. She later used it to knock out the guards at the chief’s manor, after which she tossed Frell over the wall, ignored his angry screaming, then left. He’d take care of the extortion situation.

For the meantime, she had homework.

First—finding the cursed item. Frell had given her his sketchbook with instructions on the last page. He explicitly wrote for her to not check the first half of the notebook. She did just that, then yearned for her eyes to melt.

It took three days to return to the state capital. She hated traveling by turtle; it made her dizzy, and thus she had to walk. The city had started as a mining camp, but then an evil cult tried turning its citizens into mindless servants. The citizens beat them up, stole their riches, then opened a factory.

Above, sparkling smoke vanished into the sky. Below, hundreds of clay, square houses lay scattered on the mountain. Pebble’s hometown had yurts instead. They were warmer.

More importantly, her hometown didn’t have CONSTANT RAIN.

It had NOT stopped raining.

Days before the latest quest, Pebble had bought a new battlesuit. It was pretty—white slacks, knee-length black boots, burgundy tailcoat. It’d been on the cover of her favorite magazine. Her mom liked it. And now it was muddy and gross. And this provisional suit didn’t suit her skin tone. Besides, what was it with this region and its compulsion to make women wear miniskirts as battle armor?

As soon as she reached the first washhouse, she rented a cleaning station. Baffled, the laundress drank tea while watching someone do her job. Pebble had nothing against the girl, but she’d been disappointed by their services one too many times—best to do it on her own.

While waiting for the clothes to dry, Pebble got the most annoying task out of the way: walking from tavern to tavern to tack the bounties Frell had made onto their bulletin boards. They were fake, of course, with a price low enough that no one would bother to take them. All of this, she did while disguised.

The next step was to try to find a boyfriend, but she failed.

As she drank at the tavern that night, rejected and single, Pebble read through Frell’s notes again.

Frell called the fabled item a “crown”. They’d auction it in this very town, thinking it a curious little hat instead of a former symbol of power. According to the scheme, Pebble had to win that auction (while disguised), then pretend to lose the crown (while disguised), then put up bounties to spread awareness and recruit people for the incoming journey…

…wait.

Then how did it make any sense to put up those bounties if the fake crime hadn’t happened yet? After double-checking the notes, she found that she’d messed up the order.

…oh, well. No matter. It wasn’t as though anyone would notice or care. Speaking of things forgotten—at thirty-three, she was the only one among her peers who hadn’t dated yet. She wasn’t particularly enthused at the idea of carrying a parasite in her gut, holding it constantly, feeding it, and teaching it to wipe itself, but at the same time, it didn’t sound that bad, did it?

She’d spent a good while following the magazine’s instructions when it came to makeup. She tucked a single strand of hair behind her pointed ear, showing off her homemade earrings. She was trying her best to be what the magazine called aloof yet approachable, sitting at the corner of the bar, casting sly glances, drinking her caramel banana milkshake with marshmallows...

But nothing…

…oh, well. No matter. She was getting distracted. She had a world to save…

Or, more realistically, time to lose.

Or, ideally, someone to prove right.