Perfectly Safe in Every Way

Grigory Petrov Thippliy wiped the sweat from his brow. Not from exertion, but from excitement! He had at long last cracked the problem, most of a decade of research and experimentation and reflection had finally yielded what he long thought was at least philosophically possible. As a Demonologist it was all contraband, and highly illegal, making the work harder, and investors impossible, but here on his desk was the result that made it all worthwhile -a perfectly tame imp. The millennium old manuscripts he stole from the vampires, the tomes in the dusty Library of Eternity in the halls of the Mountain Kings and every morality tale told to children were all wrong, Grigory had done the impossible and created a perfectly safe form of demon.

Giddy with excitement he said in a shaky voice ”I command you to sort these notes!” Gesturing to a thick layer of paper covering his wide workbench. The tiny creature, no bigger than a doll, with lanky slender arms each ending in two fleshy fingers replied “Merp!” and moved across his desk.

Without breathing he watched as the tiny imp surveyed the desktop with its one big flat black eye set in the middle of its smooth face, featureless other than a slit of a mouth through which it will never eat nor drink nor breathe. It scanned the notes and patiently sorted them into theory and ritual and methods, Then sorted the pages by sequence and chapter before arranging them into a single stack, and hip bumping all 4 edges one at a time to square the notes into an even stack.

His critical eye for demons acknowledged that the imp could have been more efficient, and was a lot slower than the limits imposed by its strength. He was very confident in the cantrips of learning that the imp will get better at every task, optimising its paths and eliminating wasted movement.

Satisfied with the neat stack of notes and with growing confidence he commanded “Make me a Horse!”

To a real demon, this is an invitation to a dozen different cascades of failure and rebellion. It was an ambiguous command with the potential for a consent boosted polymorph, the exact category of error that claims the lives of countless novice Demonologists. The tiny imp looked all over the workbench, then walked around the perimeter of the tabletop, and then sat down on its haunches and replied “Nurp!”

“Capital!” Grigory exclaimed to the empty lab, "the Task Refusal enchantments are all working in the real world!" Leaning over to a nearby drawer he pulled out a knife and a small block of wood, then placed them on the table in front of the patiently waiting demon, who briefly tilted his tiny red leathery head and attempted to parse the non task related statement then resumed sitting cross legged in the centre of the bench.

“Make me a wooden horse.”

“Merp!”

In a flurry of activity, the imp started carving into the wooden block. Tiny slivers of wood flew left and right and in under a minute there was a model of a horse true to life. Veins in its neck, smooth flowing mane, the tiny nostrils flared from exertion, its eyes smaller than a mustard seed, but clear and intelligent, a sculpture that would shame a grandmaster. Grigory smiled as the cantrips of worldly knowledge were flowing perfectly, holding the tiny wooden horse to the light appreciating the countless tiny details. All of them are perfect in every regard. Such supernatural skill wasn’t guaranteed, but it appears to be a consequence of just how well this imp was created.

Comparing it to the ebony totem of summoning that he had used to form the imp, it was clearly a step above, smoother, crisper and more elegant. Now came time for the true test.

To prepare for the next set of tasks, he pulled a sizable lump of raw ebony from the shelf. Next he put his demonologist's toolbox, full of all the tools for the craving, consecrating, enchanting and binding of demonic totems, next to the ebony in the centre of the workspace.

“Duplicate your own summoning totem at 1/10th the scale, down to the smallest details including ethereal, then invoke the totem. Repeat ten times.”

The demon stood up and mewed “Merp!” and immediately started to work. A few minutes later the carving was finished, then rite and rituals were correctly performed, but the invocation was a roadblock. The imp solemnly chanted “Meeeerp merp mrrr mrr meeeeeeeerp!” but nothing happened.

Its simple mouth, lacking teeth or a tongue or even lips, was holding it back from the final completion. Grigory leaned forward on his stool to intervene but paused as the imp tried the chant again. Still no telltale crack of a binding. The imp walked to the recently stacked notes, tore off half the cover sheet, and frantically scrawled line after line of demonic script on it. Once the page was entirely filled with tight tiny lettering, the imp went over to the finished sculpture and laid the page flat on the bench, lifted the totem onto the paper then ignited it with a spark of hellfire. The page burned with a blindingly bright purple-white flame and then the crack of binding as a second demon, with identical features and of identical size, blinked into existence a handspan above the newly consecrated totem. Both imps immediately started carving fresh totems from the block of ebony.

Grigory leaned back to watch but with a slight furrow in his brow. Odd that demonic literacy is a skill it had. Maybe it was an aspect of the Worldly Knowledge subbinding, but demonic scrolls are purely otherworldly. He knew enough demonic to understand what was being said, but nowhere near the level to create a Scroll of Effect. That use alone seems intensely useful! Maybe some demonologist somewhere had that expertise, thus causing a blurring of categories of types of knowledge.

A double pop interrupted his chain of thought as the demonologist looked at what were now four demons, the latest two starting on their tasks less than a second after their tiny hooves landed on the table. Now that he had a chance to think about it, he wondered if they were going to summon ten total imps, or will each imp summoned make ten, which is more than infinity, or will each imp make the number of imps remaining in the task when they were created, which would be about 3.6 million imps. That's fewer than transfinity, but would probably be enough to still be a problem. Now the imps were working noticeably faster than the first one had as they gained experience in the task, Grigory made a mental note that testing the Cease Task failsafes should be the first he tests next time. He assumed they would run out of ebony long before making a few million totems, but there were tales of demons summoned with human bones. He knew where over a hundred were, just underneath his muscles, knowledge of the world they might also possess. Probably enough for the few million totems in the surrounding towns and villages.

The demonologist tensed as the 4 papers burned bright purple white, followed by four loud cracks of binding going into effect. Four more demons landed on his bench and set to work.

With a profound sigh of relief he noticed that the imps organised into two teams to quickly complete the final two totems. After the final double crack of binding, the ten new imps and original imp all placed their tools into the correct slots of the toolbox, closed it then sat cross legged on the workbench with their long legs and knobby knees overlapping. Hah! Perfectly safe, exactly as planned!

As the fear of being mined for his bones subsided he couldn’t help but grin. His smile got wider and wider as he reflected on all the overlapping elegant and brilliant cantrips and bindings that all were working perfectly. This is going to change everything! An end to drudgery? Every man, woman and child will live better than the emperor! This will do more for quality of life than the sum total of every god, king, hero and priest combined in the last ten thousand years!

“Imps, fill my woodbox, make my bed, clean my house and prepare me some roast chicken and boiled potatoes for dinner!”

In perfect unison eleven imps squeaked “Merp!” as they bounded off his desk and ran up the stairs and into the one room cottage Grigory had been living in for the last several months.

Now that the hard part was done and his dreams were made real, the Demonologist realised he didn’t have a plan for this next phase. Consorting with demons is still a way to get burned at the stake anywhere the Church of the Eternal Triangle holds sway, and a great number of places without the Church too actually. Those insipid morality tales that children everywhere are raised on will likely make it hard to get anyone to even want to command a swarm of demons to free themselves from drudgery and routine, even if it were legal. Dispelling the (as of several minutes ago) myth that you shouldn’t trust demons might be its own challenge.

This should be fairly easy to convince people to stop acting against their own interests, he mused. People are a rational bunch and should be able to see the obvious advantages of demon labour, once he gets them to understand these are perfectly safe and obedient demons in all regards. Zero risks to anyone, so who can be against that?

Grigory stood up from the bench to follow his imps upstairs when two darted between his legs, climbed the stool to hop to the table and grabbed his toolbox, even though it likely weighed ten times as much as them combined and they set to dragging it to the base of the stairs. A few seconds later two more imps bounded down to help them, lifting it onto their shoulders like 4 doll sized pallbearers carrying an oversized coffin and darted the rest of the way up the stairs.

He sat on the only chair in the room and got out his notebook with “Problems to Solve” in his neat cursive script on the cover, which he had left hours ago by his now cold boiled oats. Flipping to a new page he started a brand new list.

Long term Objectives:

1. Improve the quality of life of all humans
2. Improve the quality of life of all races
3. Improve the quality of life of all living things.

He sighed and looked at it intensely as he mentally mapped out what each line really meant. He looked up and the imps had already set up a tiny workshop by the firewood pile to carve wooden tools appropriate to their size to start their tasks. Tiny wheeled carts and access ramps up the edge of the woodbox. Such clever and hardworking little devils! Briefly imagining how this might look from the eyes of excitable townsfolk he added to his list.

4. Don’t get executed.

But that immediately seemed wrong, so he fixed the numbering;

1. Don’t get executed.
2. Improve the quality of life of all humans
3. Improve the quality of life of all races
4. Improve the quality of life of all living things.

He tapped the list a few times with the stylus. That’s much more workable.

Next comes the details.

Instrumental Goals:

1. Get money
2. Secure personal safety
3. Acquire allies
4. Change the perception of demons
5. Supply everyone with as many imps as they want

Hmm, this list is looking a lot like a political revolution now. But at the same time changing how people live is the goal, and changing the minds and way of life of everyone everywhere isn’t something you can do with a pamphlet. Accumulating the political and financial power on this scale would mean taking it from someone else. Grigory closed his eyes and thought through the implications a bit more. All options are basically impossible, but this morning making a perfectly safe imp was impossible and now he had an infinitely scalable workforce! Flipping back to the last page, he updated the long term goals yet again.

1. Don’t get executed for demon based crimes or rebellion based crimes
2. Don’t get murdered by rivals
3. Improve the quality of life of all humans
4. Improve the quality of life of all races
5. Improve the quality of life of all living things.

Observing the imps sweeping up with tiny adorable brooms as other ones scrub the floor with tiny brushes and shallow bowls of warm soapy water, Grigory felt his confidence return. With Imps like these how can he possibly fail?

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