Eventually, the summons came. It was delivered by a succubus messenger, and her tail swished behind her perfect red bubble butt as she guided me to the central palace. She wore a short skirt, but the tail kept flipping it up, and she kept looking back at me. I wasn’t sure whether it was to make sure I was looking, or simply to make sure I was still following. Somehow the peek-a-boo of her ass was more sexy than nudity, but I couldn’t let myself get too distracted.

I wore my hair slicked down, so that my horns would pop out. I think they’d grown a half-inch since I got them, but my hair was naturally full enough that normally they were usually still concealed. Still, best to look as demonic as possible. I wore nearly-black lipstick, too, and my nails were done to match. The elves might be nicer people, but the demons were more likely to appreciate my fashion sense.

We walked over a bridge that overlooked a moat of lava. I appreciated the aesthetic, if not the smell. It was the sort of thing that would cow most visitors, although any good dimension shifter demon could teleport right over it.

I was brought to a chamber with a raised platform at the far end, where a large, four-armed male demon sat lazily on a giant stone throne. He wore only a loincloth. A giant sword rested next to the throne, and two succubi, both topless, lounged on the dais on each side of it. There was a goblet of wine balanced on one arm. He looked like a four-armed, deeply suburned version of Conan the Barbarian.

On one side of the room, two relatively human-looking demons, one male and one female, were chained naked to the sort of crosses one might see in a bondage club. Another demon held a whip in his hand.

“Come, come,” said the four-armed demon, who was presumably the Archfiend, to the demon with the whip. “Don’t disappoint them. They are our guests, after all. He turned to me. “So. You have a dick, I hear.”

“Well, yes,” I said. “But that’s not the real reason I’m here. May I draw close?”

“Frisk her,” the Archfiend said.

Two more four-armed demons moved from behind pillars, and grabbed me. I thought they were about twice as handsy as they needed to be, but they were definitely thorough.

“All she has on her is this,” they told the Archfiend, holding the little bottle of pills. “She had it in her cleavage. And she has a dick, but it’s really small.”

“That is what I came to bring your evilness,” I said, gesturing to the pills. I left the small comment alone. It wasn’t much, when it was soft, and being manhandled by that crew made it very soft indeed.

“Hold on to it for now,” said the Archfiend to the guards. He frowned at me. “You may approach. We are curious. I admit that a chick with a dick is a novelty, and I understand why Rakalnekesh thought I might be interested. But if it’s tiny…”

I walked forward.

The demon woman on the cross yelled, “It’s not about size, it’s what you do with it!”

The Archfiend shifted uncomfortably.

“So,” I said in a low voice, wondering if I’d gotten myself in over my head. I would have liked to bring the bag of holding, with everything in it, but I was glad I hadn’t, because it just would have been taken away from me. Without it, I felt naked, but without getting all the plusses exposing more skin would give me. “In that bottle are pills that help with achieving and maintaining an erection.”

“Well,” said the Archfiend, narrowing his gaze. “I’m sure some of my subjects could use such a thing.” He glared at me, and looked around. “But no such thing exists, so you’re clearly just trying to poison me. Chain her up!” he yelled.

Well, this was going well. “I’ll take one, and you’ll see.”

“The old build up an immunity trick, hmm?” said the Archfiend. “I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”

“You can bring in someone to detect whether I’m lying,” I said.

Everyone in the room gasped.

“You suggest I employ forbidden magic?” the Archfiend asked, harshly.

I hadn’t expected that. I suppose it made sense, in a way, that demons would regard lie detection as a danger to society. I should have discussed that in more detail with Lesseth, but I was used to the idea that my cuteness and Seductress bonuses would let me talk my way out of trouble. I took a gamble. “What could be more evil than using forbidden magic? A ploy worthy of an Archfiend!”

He laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. And then, at the end, he said, “Ah! But an Archfiend is also wise. If you were actually lying, you wouldn’t press for a lie detection spell like that, therefore you are telling the truth! You can’t fool me.”

“She could be running a double bluff,” said one of the succubi. “She could have assumed you would think that she wouldn’t push for using lie detection.”

“Or a triple bluff. She could have assumed you would think that she was bluffing, so …”

I broke in. “Look, I don’t have to be here at all. And why would I poison his evilness? I’d just be locked up and probably tortured.”

“If it was a slow-acting poison, certainly,” the Archfiend said. “If it was fast enough you would get the whole kingdom through right of conquest.”

Oh. Right. “Trust me, I wouldn’t want to be Archfiend. No way. Too much responsibility.” And the whole idea of obligatory sex with my underling’s wives turned me off.

The Archfiend looked at me. “You’re wiser than you look.”

A courtier appeared. “Your evilness, the Elf delegation has been spotted. They should be here in two hours.”

The Archfiend hesitated. Then he turned to me. “What’s your name?”

“Abby.”

“What a strange, short name. Well, I have only a short while left.” He turned to the others. “Leave us be! All of you! And leave her pills with me.”

The succubi scampered. The guards unchained the demons on the crosses and took them away as well. In less than a minute, the room was emptied of all but the Archfiend and myself. It was way too large a room for two people, even when one of them was as big as the Archfiend.

“So. You know,” he said. “Tell me what you know.”

This was dangerous ground. I didn’t know what he might be sensitive about. “I know that you can’t fuck all your Prince’s wives. And that means they can’t fuck all the Dukes’ wives. The whole system is in danger of collapse and the information is leaking out everywhere.”

“Everywhere?”

“I don’t even live in Tartarus, and I’ve heard about it. The elves have heard about it. I know trolls, orcs, and dryads who know about it. I’d say it’s pretty much everywhere.”

“Then… this is the beginning of the end.”

“Unless I fix it,” I said.

“With these pills,” he said, giving the bottle a shake.

“Yes.”

The Archfiend sighed. “You know, if this doesn’t work I’m going to kill you.”

I gulped, but I suppose I should have expected that.

He smiled. “That’s oddly freeing in a way. I rarely have anyone I can talk to, but knowing you’re going to be dead soon makes me feel that I can unburden myself.”

I forced a smile. “It’s always good to talk about our feelings,” I said. Always was an exaggeration, but I wasn’t going to stop at a little lie in the middle of Tartarus.

“It’s not easy at the top, you know,” he said. “People always asking how they should do things. Having to watch all the state tortures. And the wives! So demanding!”

“You have a lot of wives?”

“Of course not. I don’t have any. I mean the Prince’s wives.”

“What were you before you were an Archfiend?”

“A Prince, of course.”

“And what happened to your wife when you became an Archfiend?”

“Divorced and exiled, of course. As is tradition.”

“And your, um, little problem – wasn’t that an issue when you were a Prince?”

He shook his head. “Nah. I think the whole ceremony really got me going, you know? Seeing my wife defiled by the Archfiend? Wow. I want to give that to my people so badly, that mixture of desperate loss and eroticism, but somehow I just can’t.”

I smiled, slowly. “I have an idea.”

“You have the loveliest evil smile, Abby,” the Archfiend said. “It’s a shame I’m going to have to kill you.”

“After you take one of the pills, to see that it works, you won’t have to kill me.”

He shrugged. “Nothing has worked so far, Abby. I just wasn’t cut out to be Archfiend. I imagine if the ritual fails tonight, they’ll draw and sixth me.”

“Sixth? Ah. Four arms.”

“Never explain a joke. But exactly. So, you see, I have nothing to lose, really. Of course, on my demise there will be the ritual blood sacrifices, and so on. A shame to miss out on that.”

Yeah. I needed to stop that. “So, you have nothing to lose, huh?”

My idea was so crazy I thought it might work. I leaned forward. “So here’s what we’re going to do.” I explained my brainstorm, in detail.

“You know,” he said. “Even just hearing about it is making me a little – mmm. This is so crazy it just might work.”

“Give me one of the pills,” I said.

He shook all the pills into his hand, and then looked at them. “They look all the same.”

I nodded. “They are all the same.”

“They are remarkably identical, in fact. Such craftsmanship!”

The wonders of the twenty-first century. Perfectly oval blue pills, each stamped with the same number. Truly, the pinnacle of civilization.

“Open your mouth, Abby. No sleight of hand.”

I opened my mouth, and he popped a pill in. I swallowed it down. He handed me his goblet of wine to wash it down, and I made do with a tiny sip.

He watched me. “Well, it didn’t kill you instantly.”

“Nope.”

“Is your dick getting hard?”

“It takes an hour.”

He nodded, and we just looked at each other for a bit. Time ticked away.

Five minutes or so later, he said, “Well, if one is good, then two is better, right?” And he took them both before I could stop him.

“You want to save some for the future!” I said.

He shrugged. “I have to make sure I have a future, first.”

I smiled. “This is going to work. I promise.”

He shrugged.

“I have a spell that can help, too. More in the long run, but it should have some short-term effect.”

“Well,” he said. “In for a toenail, in for a leg, eh?”

I didn’t want to know how that saying came into being. I cast Imbue Fetish.  Most of its effects were slow acting, supposedly, and I’d never cast it before. But it was theoretically more effective if it amplified an existing fetish, and I thought it would work.

He shrugged. “I don’t feel anything.”

I nodded. “It’ll take a while. Like the pill. So, um, do you have any hobbies?”

We chatted for a while, about this and that. He explained that he only had people tortured in his throne room who liked that sort of thing, and that he really wasn’t into it. He preferred dice games. For an Archfiend, he wasn’t such a bad guy, I thought, just caught up in a twisted society.

There was a loud knock on the large double doors that led into the room.

“Come in!” yelled the Archfiend.

A bunch of demons walked in. “Your evilness,” said one of them. “The Elf Princess, Lysandra!”

Lysandra strode in between two rows of demons. She looked even paler than usual, and she was wearing a fine white dress with gold edging, and a little tiara on her head. “Your evilness,” she said, and bowed, which showed off her cleavage and made her grab her tiara to stop it from falling.

Halfway up, she saw me, and her draw dropped open. Hope blossomed in her previously listless eyes.

“You’re Lysandra?” the Archfiend asked.

“I am.”

“You’re a skinny thing.”

“Uh.”

I didn’t see the point in negging, but I suppose some people just think it’s part of the courtship ritual. Compared to the succubi, Lysandra wasn’t super-curvy, but I thought she was beautiful the way she was. And thanks to the Sildenafil, her bending over had been more than enough to give me a raging erection.

“Well,” he said. “In for a toenail, and all that.”

“Your evilness?” asked one of his courtiers.

“I now pronounce us Demon and Wife,” the Archfiend said.

Everyone gasped as if one, and the hope vanished from Lysandra’s eyes.