Demons and Botched Rituals Part 7 (Patreon)

“Is there a reason you’re cutting off branches from different parts of the tree?” Fred asked as she watched Harry use his wand to cut through a branch he was holding with a beam of light.

“I’m running an experiment,” Harry replied as he put his wand behind his ear. He pulled a section of bark away from the wood and stuffed the branch into his inventory. “I want to know if taking the wood from an area around the blast gives a better or worse result than taking the wood from the rest of the tree.”

Fred stepped back when Harry teleported out of the tree and reappeared next to her with a pop of displaced air. “What are you expecting?”

“No idea, that’s why I’m running the experiment,” Harry replied, thinking about the Prince’s potion book and all of the helpful hints in the margins. “I want to know if I can improve the basic recipe or if they’re set in stone.”

“In other words, you’re using science to test your magic?” Fred asked as she glanced around at the forest that was growing darker, wishing she had a flashlight and a gun, a big one.

“Magic might be more of an art than a science but even art has rules or at least guidelines. A friend of mine explained it best, even with magic, it’s easier to push a boulder down a hill than to levitate it.”

“That’s just basic physics,” Fred agreed then froze as she heard a wobbling shriek from the forest. “They probably caught the scent of blood from the crocodile-bear. We should probably get out of here.”

Harry winced as he heard another wobbling shriek from behind them in the forest, not sure what it was but absolutely sure he didn’t want to meet it. “Do you have any objection to being teleported?” 

“Not if it gets us out of here,” Fred said as Harry grabbed her hand.

“Good.” Harry apparated them back to the entrance of the tunnel he’d used to reach this particular hell.

Fred grabbed her stomach as it lurched and tried to rebel, not liking the feeling of getting sucked through a very small pipe and then spit out, but refused to waste the best meal she’d had in what seemed like forever.

“Sorry about that. You get used to it, eventually,” Harry muttered the last part as he focused on the wall of the tunnel and opened a door to his Shadow Home. He blinked when he looked into the room and saw Jade, Ruby, and Azure sprawled on a large comfortable looking four poster bed snoozing. “That’s new.”

“Friends?” Fred asked before taking a couple of breaths to help keep her stomach under control.

“Don’t worry, they’re friendly,” Harry said as he walked in and looked around at the bear skinned rugs scattered around the room then over at the pair of two handed swords over the fireplace and the wrought iron candle holders mounted on the wall that gave the room a warm glow.

Ruby yawned and stretched her arms above her head as she sat up, drawing Harry’s attention to her breasts. “I’m glad that you’re back. While this place is much better than where we were, we weren’t quite sure where it was or how to get out.”

“Sorry, I got a bit distracted,” Harry offered sheepishly as Fred walked inside and looked around. “This is… my cave.”

“Hmm,” Ruby mused as she glanced between Harry and the new girl that looked like she really needed a bath and a change of clothes. “Where did you find a human?”

“I was pulled into a portal when I read a book,” Fred explained, still not sure why she couldn’t use the same words she’d said to get there to return to L.A.

“Ouch. Cursed books are the worst,” Ruby said, thinking about some of the cursed items she’d run into over the years and the inventiveness of the curses placed on books, no two being remotely similar.

“She ran into me when I was looking for a lightning struck tree so I could craft a magical dagger,” Harry explained as he looked around at the rough recreation of the Gryfindor common room curiously before he walked over and opened a door set in the wall where a closet normally was, revealing a small forge and an anvil. “I’ve started to learn Blacksmithing for the Edgelord class.”

‘At least they’re not looking at me like I’m food,’ Fred thought as she studied the naked demon girls, surprised by how human they seemed compared to the other demons she’d run into.

Ruby stared at the forge that hadn’t been there the last time she’d checked. “That’s new.” 

“When was the last time you checked?” Harry asked curiously.

“Before we passed out.” Azure yawned as she sat up. “Who’s your friend, Harry? I’m Azure.”

“Sorry, I’m not used to introducing people.” Harry gestured toward Fred. “This is Fred.”

“I’m Ruby and my sister is Jade,” Ruby said as she playfully swatted her ‘sleeping’ sister’s behind.

Jade twisted around and frowned when she saw Fred’s collection of rags that barely passed for clothes. “We’re going to need to make you new clothes.”

“I wouldn’t object,” Fred said, knowing she looked worse than a homeless person in New York, unless it was from the movie ‘Escape From New York’.

“Speaking of heading somewhere civilized, can we get some cards or maybe a couple of books?” Ruby asked hopefully. “I mean, this is a much better place to stay, in between summonings, than the hell we were in, but it’s a bit light on entertainment.”

“That reminds me, I picked up some stuff while I was out.” Harry opened his inventory and grabbed the book Randel had been reading off his corpse and handed it to Jade. 

“Thank you!” Jade squealed as she opened ‘her’ new enchanting book.

“Do you have any books that aren’t about enchanting?” Ruby asked as she walked over and sat down next to her sister so she could examine the book over her shoulder.

“Probably, Randel had a small library, let me check,” Harry replied as he grabbed Randel’s pack, which contained a small collection of books, out of his inventory and dumped them on the bed. “You should be able to find something.”

“Books, how I’ve missed you,” Fred said as she hurried over to look at the titles, happy to have a little piece of civilization even if her hands were dirty enough that she didn’t want to touch them.

Harry smiled wistfully, Fred reminded him strongly of Hermione at that moment.

“What type of demon are you?” Azure asked curiously. “I mean, a demon having a personal demesne, even one as small as this, usually is a prince, but that requires centuries of training and struggle.”

“Not to mention this place feels a lot lighter than any hell I’ve ever been in,” Ruby added, glancing up from the book she was reading.

“Which we heartily approve of,” Jade added cheerfully, as she lounged on the bed.

Harry examined his character sheet. “I’m a Daemon Paragon.”

The three demonesses stared at him.

“What?” Harry asked cluelessly.

“A Paragon is someone who has limitless potential and Daemon refers to an unaligned spirit, which would explain quite a bit,” Azure said with a respectful nod.

“So this place is your personal domain, which will expand and change as you do,” Ruby said, “just like a Demon Lord, only with less lava and screaming.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” Harry readily admitted, with a shrug.

“Okay, think of it like this… Asimar above, Demons below, and Daemons… wherever they damn well feel like,” Ruby offered cheerfully. 

“Paragons are connected to the plane they belong to, Asimar the heavens and Demons the hells,” Jade explained, “creating their own personal domain through their connection to it.”

“And what plane are Daemon’s connected to?” he asked.

The three demonesses looked at one another and then shrugged.

“They aren’t,” Azure replied, “so not a single clue. I don’t think it's supposed to be possible.”

“On the plus side that means you don’t have to worry about anyone trying to claim your domain to expand their own, since you have no neighbors,” Ruby told him.

“And your first expansion should be someplace we can wash up,” Jade told him, “just picture what you want in your mind and push mana into it. I’m sure you have a lot of unrealized potential available for constructions since all you’ve built is this room.”

“Think bathhouse, with large pools of hot water to soak in,” Ruby encouraged him, bouncing on the bed and causing his head to bob in time with her for a moment, till he realized what he was doing and wrenched his eyes off her chest.

Harry closed his eyes for a moment and pictured the Gryffindor shower room and pushed mana into the concept like he was trying to cast a spell. He was more than a little surprised when the stone at the top of the stairs rippled and melted away, leaving an empty doorway and a new place to explore. “That should be the bathroom and showers,” he guessed.

“Do you have any special skills to go with your unique type?” Ruby asked eagerly, wondering if she should start bouncing again to try and snag his eyes once more or drag Fred off to bathe as the poor girl desperately needed it as well as some physical affection, something she was very talented at.

“I have an inventory skill which lets me store items in a pocket dimension and my Wayfinder ability which lets me instantly teach professions, skills and patterns by spending mana….” Harry trailed off when the demons gave him looks of disbelief. “Let me guess, that’s rare?”

“More like unheard of,” Jade said after a couple of seconds. “Teaching professions normally requires the Teaching Profession but that doesn’t help learn individual skills or at least not instantly.”

“You can learn some skills with hard work or from artifacts but you can’t learn everything that way and you normally only learn the lesser versions anyways,” Ruby added.

“How many levels do you need to be able to teach us your Blacksmithing class?” Azure asked, interested in picking up the skill.

“No idea, let me try something,” Harry said as he pulled up his teaching menu and glanced between the two Blacksmithing skills he could teach. ‘At least I can teach both versions.’ He selected the better version and spent the 25 mana to teach Azure. “Anything?”

“Blacksmithing 1 of…” Azure trailed off as she realized that the skill had a higher maximum than it should. “Thank you!” she squealed as she hit the accept button then brought her menu up and looked over her patterns. “1 of 25 skill, this is going to be awesome!” she said as she pulled Harry into a hug.

Harry blinked in surprise, not used to anyone other than Hermione or Mrs. Weasley hugging him and she was wearing a lot less than they usually did. ‘I could get used to this.’ He selected his Spark Dancer pattern and paid 10 mana to teach Azure the pattern. “Did that work?”

“Yes!” Azure giggled and hit accept then let him go and stepped back.

“How did you boost your max skill over 20?” Jade asked, curious if that was a function of his Wayfinder skill or something else.

“I grabbed the Edgelord class, it increases the cap on your Blacksmithing skill at the cost of only being able to make knives without losing the class and thus the skill,” Harry explained as he taught all of his patterns to Azure so that he didn’t lose them when he swapped classes.

“Ack!” Azure complained as a bunch of notices appeared at once asking if she wanted to learn various patterns. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Harry replied as he went back to looking through Randel’s stuff for magical items. 

“Is there something I can help with?” Fred asked.

“You can help me sort through the books after you’ve gotten a shower,” Ruby said, knowing there was a lot to read through.

“I don’t exactly have anything clean to wear,” Fred pointed out.

Jade conjured a fluffy blue bathrobe. “Don’t worry, I have you covered, let’s get you clean then we’ll figure out something permanent.” 

“That reminds me, I have some boots I need identified.” Harry pulled the boots and Deckard Cain’s Guide to Identifying Enchanted Objects out of his inventory and showed Jade the book. “Would this help?”

Jade stared at the rare book for a couple of seconds then looked over at Ruby. “Can we keep him?”

“Yes, it’s official, we’re keeping him,” Ruby agreed with a wink.

Harry laughed as he went back to making a pile of the various items he’d collected in the dungeon. ‘The only way this could be better is if Hermione was here. I miss her.’

0o0o0

The first thing that Hermione noticed as she stepped through the stone arch to the Blacksmith quarter was the almost solid wall of noise; hammers striking metal and people trying to sell their wares over the shouts of their fellow smiths, the next was the sheer number of short people with beards walking around or working at anvils. “Dwarves?”

“Dwarves,” Selena confirmed as she glanced between the two dozen forges she could see, trying to figure out where they could find the smith they were looking for. Her eyes stopped when she saw a painted wooden sign with an anvil that was being struck by animated bolts of lightning. “That’s easy!”

“What?!” Hermione asked, not able to hear Selena over the shouting and pounding of metal that made her wish she had her earmuffs.

“This way!” Selena shouted as she grabbed the sleeve of Hermione’s robe and headed toward the blacksmith shop that she was fairly sure was the right shop.

Hermione stared as she got close enough to see the almost Hagrid sized elf with pointed ears and wild green shoulder length hair that was standing in front of a forge eating the last of a sandwich. ‘Somehow I doubt they’re related to house elves.’

Selena sighed in relief as she stepped between the stone pillars that held up the stone roof and the noise dropped down to a dull roar rather than the madness inducing clattering it had been. “That’s better.”

“Aye, the noise can get a bit annoying,” the man said after finishing his last bit of sandwich.

Hermione sighed in relief as she stepped into the forge and the noise dropped to a tolerable level. “Are you Windle?” she asked hopefully.

“I’ve been known to answer to that name,” the man replied with amusement as he wiped his fingers on his apron. “What can I help you with?”

“We got some adamantite in the Warlock dungeon,” Selena explained as she reached over and pulled one of the blunt arrows out of Hermione’s quiver. “Eric mentioned you might be willing to buy some.”

Windle’s eyes narrowed slightly as he stared at the blunt adamantite arrow that smelled nothing like it should if the dungeon had created it. “May I?” he asked as he held his hand out for the arrow.

“Of course,” Selena replied as she handed him the arrow.

Windle brought the arrow up to his nose and sniffed it, inhaling the scent of metal and a pleasant flavor of magic he’d never tasted before, that reminded him of books and candles. ‘Yeah, there’s no way this came from the dungeon.’ He shook his head as he remembered that several orders were on hold because he was waiting for more adamantite. “Do you mind if I break the tip off?”

“Go for it,” Selena replied, not the least bit concerned about the wood.

Windle snapped the blunted tip off and dropped it on the scale, mostly for show as he could already tell it weighed a forth of a pound. “There’s just a touch over a forth of a pound of metal and I usually pay around a 1,000 gold per pound. How many do you have to sell?”

“Twenty, is that a problem?” Selena asked, hoping it wasn’t.

“Not in the slightest,” Windle replied as he walked over to his lockbox to get the coin.

“Do you know anyone I can learn the Blacksmithing class from that won’t charge an arm and a leg?” Hermione asked as she pulled blunt arrows out of her quiver and set them on the empty table.

“I would if I could lass, but it’s against Guild rules to teach the standard Blacksmithing class to demons and members of less ‘civilized’ species,” he explained as he grabbed an empty leather bag and started filling it with coins. 

“Why?” Hermione asked, trying not to be too offended that the Guild wouldn’t teach people just because of their species.

“Control. No one really cares if an orcish horde gets a couple of magical weapons, but everyone gets a bit twitchy with the idea of a thousand orcs with silenced armor and blades that will cut through steel like butter.”

“Couldn’t they just raid a dungeon?” Selena asked.

“I never said it was a perfect system or even a good system. However it is the system the king says we have to use,” Windle replied as he continued counting coins. “Technically speaking, the Apprentice class is better in some ways.”

“What do you mean?” Hermione asked, curious about the differences.

“The professional class only gives you Blacksmithing and Fire Resistance, the Apprentice Blacksmithing gives you Blunt Mastery, Blacksmithing, Cleaning and Mining,” he explained as he set the bag of fifty gold crowns to the side and grabbed another bag.

Hermione stared at him. “If the Apprentice class gives four skills, why would anyone want the professional class?”

“A couple of reasons, the Apprentice classes I’ve seen are only five levels which means you’ll get less stats out of them and you’ll probably never reach the top of your profession without a lot of help because you don’t get patterns from the class, you have to learn them from other members of the profession, which requires a decent amount of gold or a lot of luck in various dungeons.”

“Not to mention you can only have one Apprentice class at a time,” Selena added as she absently examined the smith’s tools. “Most magic users save the Apprentice class for Enchanting.”

“Which isn’t an option for demons, the Enchanting Guild won’t teach them because they can just sidestep the geas against sharing the class by dying,” Windle said as he grabbed another bag and started filling it up.

“Crap, so much for learning Enchanting,” Selena complained, annoyed that no one had mentioned that little detail before.

“Are there any other ways to learn it?” Hermione asked, gears already spinning with plans to break their stranglehold on knowledge.

Windle shook his head. “Generally speaking, the only way for a human to get Enchanting is via the Apprentice Enchanting class and the only way to get that is by signing a magically binding contract that will strip your class if you share your enchanting patterns with anyone outside of the guild or kill you if you try to teach the class.”

“That’s barbaric,” Hermione complained, thinking about all of the patterns they’d probably lost over the years to that sort of stupidity.

Windle snorted. “It’s actually worse than you’re probably thinking, the geas includes all patterns, not just the ones you learned from the Guild, which means that they’ll always keep control of the profession. All it takes is them sending one associate mage and one little Suggestion spell after a bit too much to drink, an order to copy down all of your patterns and hand them over and you’re no longer an Enchanter or a court case going badly where the thoroughly bribed judge demands that you share a pattern for the good of the realm, or any number of less than honorable tricks they’ve used to make sure their stranglehold on the profession isn’t broken.”

“Why hasn’t anyone stopped them?” Hermione demanded.

“Because Master Enchanters can do great and terrible things,” Windle replied dryly. “In addition to mundane things like creating flying ships, permanent defensive spells, large hoops that purify water or any number of things that the kingdom needs to function. They can also do things like create cursed hunting horns that can be blood linked to a target or to a particular family so that only the victims can hear it.”

“That sounds less than pleasant,” Hermione admitted, wondering if there was a way to break the geas without triggering it.

“The last time a noble pissed off the Enchanter’s Guild to a significant degree they found one of his bastards, got a sample of blood in a bar fight then paid a group of bards to wander around playing the horn all night and randomly throughout the day for a week straight.”

“If nothing else, I’ll grab the class, you can be the Blacksmith,” Selena offered, feeling bad that she’d suggested being an Enchanter earlier without knowing better.

“It’s a start,” Hermione agreed.

“In that case, here,” Windle said as he spent the mana to give Hermione the Apprentice Blacksmith class. “You saved me a bit of trouble with the adamantite, it’s the least I can do since you didn’t complain about the price.”

Hermione hit accept after quickly reading it over. “Thank you, this should help.”

“Happy to help,” Windle replied as he stood up with five leather bags filled with gold. “500 gold crowns, pleasure doing business with you.”

“Same,” Selena agreed as she transferred the bags to her backpack, happy that it was enchanted so that she didn’t have to deal with the weight.

“Best of luck on your travels,” Windle said as he went to work ripping the arrowheads off the shafts so he could get back to work.

“In that case, we might as well head to the Alchemist Guild and buy the shop before we hit the bookstore,” Selena mused.

“Probably a good idea,” Hermione agreed then turned to look at Windle. “Sorry, one more question. Do other races have Enchanting?”

“I’ve heard rumors about a demon that can teach a Twisted Enchanting class for a price, but nothing I trust and you’d be smart not to make deals with demons without reading the contract at least three times and making sure any graphics on the edges are just graphics before signing anything,” Windle warned as he worked through the rest of the arrows.

“Thank you for the advice.” Selena turned to look at Hermione. “We can visit the bookstore after we go clothes shopping.”

“No worries, good luck…” Windle trialed off with a sigh as he realized his professional pride wouldn’t let him leave her without the tools she needed. “Wait, I’d be a shitty Blacksmith if I didn’t at least make sure you have the basics and my apprentice isn’t back from lunch. What do you have for patterns?”

Hermione opened her new Blacksmithing menu and looked at her available patterns. “A fire poker that requires wood and metal, a pair of tongs with a ring in the middle, and nails.”

Windle shook his head when he realized how unlucky she’d gotten with the starting patterns then looked at Selena. “Do you mind if I borrow her for a couple of hours? I can show her a couple of patterns and she can help me by working the bellows.”

“It’s up to you,” Selena said as she looked at Hermione.

“I don’t mind hard work,” Hermione assured him. “I appreciate any advice you’re willing to give me.”

Selena smiled at Hermione. “In that case, I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

Windle watched Selena leave then turned to look at Hermione. “Grab an apron and some gloves, we’ll start with something easy.”

Hermione grabbed an apron and a pair of leather gloves that looked like they would fit then walked over to the bellows.