Woodcutter 7

Five – New Friends?

“I can't believe you talked me into this.” I muttered to my companion as we approached Dunstead, on foot because most animals could not abide his presence.”You are going to scare people and I am gonna get blamed for it.”

“Peace, we need sustenance, and hunting cannot be done for reasons of nature, also I must see this town and be among people for reasons of educatory.”

“Education” I corrected. He still had trouble with the common tongue on occasion, but always grammatical and never pronunciation, he spoke with no accent.

“Indeed? Education then, butit remains that I must, and you must as well for we must keep to bargains struck.”

I sighed, glancing directly at my companion, the thief from Port Jasper looked much the same save for the new hand in a stylish leather glove, unless you looked at him out of the corner of your eye, then you got the impression that something else was there which disappears when you look directly at it, it was unsettling to say the least, and I had finally been forced to lock my door at night, otherwise he would stand in the corner “to observe” he said, and scare the daylights out of me when I woke up.

I say he, but that wasn't entirely accurate anymore of course, as I have been alluding to my unwilling thief companion wasn't really here anymore, his mind and soul pushed out(I hoped) by the new occupant

As near as I can tell, demons, or at least demons of this type, don't have gender really, being formed from the stuff of their home planes, or possibly created by other denizens there, or brought there from somewhere else maybe, he was unclear to say the least and it is pretty irrelevant anyway. But he was in a male body and didn't seem to care so that is what I went with, I called him Henry after a particularly stupid dog I owned as a child, names were another thing that confused him, apparently identity as we know it is more a matter of willpower and only relevant in terms of discussion or conflict with others where he comes from, and the idea of an identifier that isn't subjective appeared to interest him greatly.

All things mortal appeared to interest him, sleep was a big one, as I mentioned earlier, but biological functions, language, and social stuff all held equal fascination with my guest, and formed the basis of our bargain. He would train me in magic and do so within a time frame that allowed me to accomplish my goals, that part was hard to explain, time being another thing he didn't quite get. And he would learn from me about life in the world, this includes interacting with other people apparently

To be fair, he held up his own end of the bargain, although not without consequences of its own, demonic magic, at least as done by Henry here, seems to be more about confusing the world until it does what you want it to do, and while that comes naturally to his kind, it is somewhat more difficult for a native of the world to accomplish. Forcing my brain into alien thought patters hurts, but even with my limited skills, I found myself growing in power quickly, many minor effects where well withing my grasp and we were working with some success on more dramatic expressions of power.

So, we went to town for shopping. I was planning on introducing Henry as a cousin from out of town, here to help me with the cabin since I was on my own now. He would draw some interest, but I was hoping that most people wouldn't really care that much, and Henry was oddly charming in his own way.

“What will we first accomplish?” Henry asked.