D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

--- Kat ---

A table had been laid out and Kamiko had delivered some food for everyone before leaving. Lily had let her know what was going on and dispersed the people waiting outside to lead everyone around. Things… hadn't quite worked out how it was intended and now it was time to talk about the repercussions of that.

Corela had been tempted to bring in someone to speak as a representative of the 'kids' but… Ben would probably insist and it was decided it was best to simply not bother.

Kamiko did heal up the head wound on Grepnar before she left though, which was another nice thing the succubus had done. Kat wished Lily was here with her for the conversation, but a quick mental smack at that thought revealed even if Lily wasn't physically present she was certainly paying attention over the link.

Stensil was still asleep and nobody had made a move to wake her. Grepnar was also… 'asleep' though with the recent bit of healing nobody was quite sure how long that would last for. Trumbor, the guy who'd 'woken up' asleep had been slapped awake though. Meg was in charge of that and nobody commented on the smile she wore while doing so.

He was now awake… but had his head resting on the table, still half asleep.

This meant there was Amalak 'vomit man' the aforementioned Trumbor, alongside Slate who was now sitting up… and looking somewhat intimidated. She was from a more recent generous and felt out of her depth, especially because she recognised Corela still. Oh and there was Craunch of course.

He'd put his feet up on the table angled towards Meg… who responded by doing the same and now they were poking at each other with their toes. It would be funny if they weren't doing it right next to the food. Though that may have been part of the point.

Corela didn't look too interested in interrupting. Kat wasn't sure if that was due to the fact that the last interaction she'd had with Meg was getting slapped… or if it was because she was happy to use the distraction as a way to buy time to work out what to say. It's not like Kat knew how to begin whatever this meeting thing was. It was all awkward and somewhat sombre. Continue your journey with empire

Crunch.

Kat whipped her head over to see that Craunch had bitten into the meal on the table. He'd deliberately bitten into something that… well it wasn't celery because it was bright orange but it sure sounded like it was. Crunch.

Everyone was paying attention to Craunch now, and he was still messing with Meg who seemed to be somewhat enjoying herself. Though she might've just enjoyed messing with everyone else as well. "What?" asked Craunch in between bites.

"I think they're all surprised at… well I'm not sure if they think you're being rude or if they're just surprised you have an appetite," said Amalak.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

"Both obviously," said Craunch without shame and Kat felt her eyebrow twitch at the answer. She sort of wanted to smack him… but didn't at the same time? Odd.

"Why is it rude?" asked Trumbor from where he was on the table. Kat felt confusion for a few moments… until she realised that Trumbor didn't KNOW. Nobody had told him what had happened to that one woman… Mebor? He didn't know that she'd died. Didn't know why they were arguing like this…

In fact the only one who DID know was Craunch. Probably. At the very least nobody had been explicitly told why they were the only ones getting resurrected. Craunch certainly had a good idea but nobody else had really been in a good enough state to work it out and in Trumbor's case he'd been asleep for the entire thing. *Do… do I explain or…?*

Kat was saved from potentially needing to make her own explanation by Corela taking the question as a chance to speak up. "In a short amount of time a group of survivors will be leaving for the outside world. It's quite habitable… but behind on technology. I wanted to allow everyone frozen the chance to decide. Did up pamphlets and everything…

"But I suppose I didn't properly internalise what Meg really meant when she explained to me that opening these things should be left to professionals. Nor did I fully grasp just what she meant when she explained how dangerous long term cryo-sleep actually is. Then someone died. The first person we tried to wake up in fact.

"That had me revisit my plan. Originally, anyone Meg estimated as having a greater then fifty percent chance to survive the waking process would've been awoken and given the choice to stay or leave… I mean that was the whole point if some of you remember. To sleep away the days until we could finally leave the facility.

"Of course, with a death on my hands I wasn't willing to be quite so cavalier about it. Instead I focused on just the people that were most likely to survive the process and sadly that still wasn't good enough. Someone STILL died. So… now I guess I'm left wondering what to do. The chance to leave won't come up again soon… or perhaps ever,"

"Well why not?" asked Trumbor.

"Because I don't know how to summon demons. Even if we've got some good stuff here, I'm not quite sure what would be enough to summon one… but I never learnt how and the demons we DO have with us don't know either… and I'm really not sure who or what else would even know how to open the pods safely.

"Which would mean involving the church, they control demon summoning these days. They don't have anything against demons they just don't want the methods for summoning them in public hands.

Anyway, that aside if I get in contact with the church I'll be much more 'on the radar' so to speak and I'm already not sure how I want to deal with the kingdom so anything that would put that off would be for the best…" Corela trailed off with a sigh.

"Hmmm… I may be able to help," admitted Trumbor.

"Oh?" asked Corela.

"Well, I may not know how to summon a demon for that specifically… or even how to summon demons… but I know more than most-"

"How?" cut in Corela, who paused for a moment to shake her head. "Sorry, I didn't mean to sound accusing but one of the projects I was rushing through was to see if we still had information on demon summoning in the server files… and maybe we do, but certainly nothing specific or clearly categorised,"

"Well, I mean… it wouldn't surprise me if you don't remember but I'm not from the new generation or whatever it's called. I was part of the old one. I wasn't anyone important, just the nephew of Strenul, one of the old project leads so I had the chance to move into the fancy area down here. It was just meant to be a short vacation you know? Couple weeks…" Trumbor let out a long sigh.

Crunch. Everyone turned and glared at Craunch. "What? There was a break in his story! It's perfectly valid to snack in between emotional beats or whatever this is going to be?"

Corela glared at Craunch for a few moments but Trumbor did pick back up, "He's right. Can't let myself get bogged down with things just yet. I can… deal with the potential issues the pods have later. I… I was fascinated with demons, and I was trying to work out how to summon one before I took that vacation.

Actually, it was my mother finding and burning all my books on the subject that got me to take a break…"

Kat felt the horrified gasp from Lily in the back of her mind.

"Why were they on books?" asked Amalak.

"Eh… thought my Mum would check my browser history? Look I dunno why I thought it was a good idea. She caught me because I spent a whole bunch of credits printing it all out! Wait… no wait I think I thought I could find some sort of hidden message in the printed copies? Like, charcoal rubbing or invisible ink that reacted to magic or something.

Spent a lot of money getting them properly printed… money that may or may not have technically been mine,"

Corela tapped on the table a few times to draw attention back to her. "So you think you can summon a demon then?"

"Well I don't know for sure but I tried looking into this before, and perhaps with some real demons that can answer questions I can get closer?" offered Trumbor.

Kat winced, "Yeah I know nothing about summoning demons,"

Meg nodded along, "It really isn't something I looked into much either. I mean, I do know how to call backup but not much more than that. For something like this you're going to need better… or a LOT of overpay to compensate for the shitty circle,"

"Wait is that how it works?" asked Trumbor.

Meg and Kat gave matching nods. From what they knew, that was indeed how it worked.