How I Helped My Demon Princess Conquer Hell

Whatever surprise the High Inquisitor might have felt at Liam being so pleasant, it was quickly gone.

"I'm going to hunt you down," he said. "I'm going to find you and your demoness. You're consorting with demons, and your eternal soul is at risk."

"Oh, I'm sorry about that," Liam said, shaking his head. "I'm pretty sure my eternal soul is probably already more than at risk based on the way you guys look at the world. Lucky for me, I don't really subscribe to your view of the world.”

"We speak the truth," the High Inquisitor said. "We bring it to the world all around us. You deny that truth at your own risk."

"I don't know that I deny it at my own risk," Liam said. "You had every intention of taking me back to one of your dungeons where you're going to torture me until I tell you what you think is the truth, right?"

Again he blinked, seeming surprised.

"Well, yes."

"And you brag about how you always get the truth out of somebody once you have them in your care, right?" Liam asked.

"Of course, we do," he spat. "That is what we do. Nobody can hide from the purifying light. Nobody expects us, and nobody can resist us."

"Well, you see, that always struck me as a bit odd. Though I never would’ve given voice to this thought before a couple of days ago. It seems like the kind of thing that would get me in trouble, you know."

"I have a feeling that whatever you're about to say is still going to get you in trouble," the High Inquisitor said. Though some of the anger and hate in his voice was modulated just a little. Not by a lot, but a little.

"See, now that's where you're wrong," Liam said. "I figure I'm only in trouble if I manage to stay in your custody and you have somebody come along who can keep me captive. So far from what I've seen, I don't think there's anybody in your current group who can do that considering they're all rolling around on the ground in obvious pain."

The High Inquisitor still glared up at him. That seemed to be all the answer he was going to get for the moment.

"Anyway, it always seemed to me that if you're taking people out of their homes or off the streets and spiriting them off to your special dungeons where you torture them and question them because you assume they're already guilty of whatever you accuse them of, then of course you're going to have a one hundred percent success rate. They're going to just tell you whatever you want to hear to make the pain stop."

More glaring, which was getting tedious. Liam looked around. Some of the other Inquisitors were stirring. A few of them were staring at him, but none of them were saying anything.

A few of them were whimpering, but they weren't actually saying anything intelligible

"Anyway," Liam said. “Just a little bit of professional advice to you. Maybe something to think about. If you get away from this."

"If I get away from this?” the High Inquisitor said through gritted teeth, and then he let out a quiet groan that Liam figured was supposed to be a laugh, but it didn't quite work because the man was obviously in pain. For all that he was trying to act like he wasn't.

"Yes, if you make it out of this," Liam said. "Now, could you please show me where that key is? It would be very useful if you could just tell me and save me the trouble of rummaging through your pockets. I'm assuming you have pockets in these ridiculous robes?”

"These are the robes of a High Inquisitor," he said. "I have worked for years of my life to be able to achieve these. I will not have my accomplishment so trivialized by a demon lover."

"Okay," Liam said with a shrug. "I tried to ask nicely. I want you to remember that."

He opened some of the mana pathways in his body, and then he picked up the High Inquisitor by that robe he was so proud of.

"What are you doing? Unhand me."

"I told you we could do this the easy way, and you thought it would be fun to insult me," Liam said with a shrug.

He started patting at the High Inquisitor all around, feeling for a metal key. Only he wasn't finding anything. He turned to Albert.

"I thought you said there was supposed to be a key in here."

"They used to use physical keys," Albert said with a slight shrug, which was another one of those accomplishments of human body language in cat form that was quite impressive.

"What are you talking about?" the High Inquisitor said, shaking his head back and forth and laughing. "We haven't used actual keys for years.”

“Oh,” Liam said, turning his attention back to the High Inquisitor.

"Of course," he said. "Why would we do something like that? The key is in here."

He started to move his arm, but Liam reached out, grabbed it, and held it in place. He felt strength pushing through the High Inquisitor, like he was trying to flex his own power. Liam was able to hold him in place easily enough. Finally, the High Inquisitor sighed and rolled his eyes.

"I was going to tap my head to indicate that the spell to open the cage was in my memory, but you seem to be stopping me."

Liam stared at the High Inquisitor. The High Inquisitor stared back at Liam, but there wasn't hate there any longer. Not quite.

No, it was something else. A single trickle of sweat ran down his forehead and along his cheek. Liam leaned in, pulled the High Inquisitor’s robes up, and wiped at that small bit of sweat. A subtle reminder that he saw how nervous the man was, but couched in an act of kindness.

"Are we having a little bit of trouble?" Liam asked.

"No trouble at all," the High Inquisitor said.

"You're a very good liar," Liam said. "I suppose that suits you well in your job."

"How dare you insult me, demon lover.”

Liam sighed, looking down at Albert and then back to the High Inquisitor. Then he looked over to Ana, who was crouched in that cage with her legs crossed. Her arms were crossed as well as she stared at him, and the meaning was clear as her eyes glowed with a surprising intensity.

"I'm working on it," Liam said.

"It would be nice if you could work on it faster," Ana said.

"Yeah. I know," he said, turning back to the High Inquisitor.

"Look, I really don't want to have to hurt you."

The Inquisitor laughed. "You think you can hurt me, boy?"

"I do," Liam said.

The laughter cut off abruptly. The High Inquisitor stared at him. Liam stared right back.

"I need to get into that cage, and what’s inside that cage is more valuable to me than the lives of you or any of your men," Liam said. "Please understand that I mean it when I say this, and I will have her out of here before this is all said and done."

"You wouldn't," the High Inquisitor said, his eyes darting up and down. "I can tell you're soft. I can tell you don't have it in you to harm me. I heard the conversation you had with your familiar, and I know I'm in no danger. You're still going to be sitting here hitting me with empty threats right up to the moment reinforcements come looking for us, and… oof!”

That last bit was said as Liam's mana hardened fist made contact with the High Inquisitor’s gut. He doubled over, but he didn't collapse to the ground. Mostly because Liam was still holding him up with his other hand.

"What are you?"

Liam pulled back, and then he moved his open palm across the High Inquisitor's face, sending blood spraying out in the opposite direction. He was methodical about it. He thought about all the fights and scrapes that he'd gotten into in the farmyards on the estate.

Farm boys were wiry and tough, and so Liam had been forced to get wiry and tough himself. His subsequent time going into the Felwood to fight demons also helped.

The High Inquisitor stared down at him, blinking in surprise. Blood trickled out of his nose. Liam held him there, not even breathing heavily from the exertion of lifting the man.

"What are..."

Liam grabbed him with both hands and pulled him down. At the same time, he pulled his knee up and hit in between the Inquisitor's legs with all the force he could muster. There was a loud crack. It sounded and felt like the High Inquisitor was wearing some sort of armor under his robes. Liam even felt a bit of push from some sort of a mana infusion on that armor that was no doubt meant to stop somebody from doing exactly what he was doing now.

It didn't help the High Inquisitor or his favorite piece of anatomy one iota.

His knee continued moving through the armor and smashed into the High Inquisitor's balls. Even Albert let out a hiss from next to him.

"Damnation,” the cat breathed.

Liam stared into the High Inquisitor's eyes. Eyes that rolled into the back of his head as he let out a low whimper.

Liam set him down and tried to get him to stand, but the man immediately went weak in the knees and would’ve collapsed if Liam wasn't holding onto him.

So he did just that. He held him up with one hand and dusting off his robes with the other, getting off bits of dirt and muck that had gotten onto the thing while the High Inquisitor was whimpering with tears running down his cheeks. He didn’t cry out, though. Liam had to give him that.

Liam maintained a level stare the entire time. "People keep making the mistake of thinking my concern for doing as little harm as I can possibly do means I'm soft, and that's a notion that I'm going to disabuse you of the hard way if you continue refusing to give me what I want. Do you understand?"

The High Inquisitor stared down at him. All the anger and hatred had drained from him. There was pure terror in those eyes now.

“Demon lo…”

Liam smacked him across the face.

“I’m going to march you over there, and you're going to cast the spell that unlocks that cage and let her out. If at any time I think you're not doing that, then I'm going to make you suffer in ways that would have all the people in all the depths of all the dungeons the Inquisition is running across the kingdom think they were on a nice summer excursion to one of the royal oceanside beach resorts. Am I understood?"

The High Inquisitor let out another whimper. His eyes darted around to the other Inquisitors all around them, but Liam knew they would be no help. He could feel some of them trying to access their arcane cores, but he could also feel their consciousness slipping around them. Which was an odd sensation, feeling that from so many people all at once.

He also knew they weren't going to be any harm to him because along with being able to sense those arcane cores, he could sense with a surprising clarity how powerful they were in relation to him. He didn’t know what Ascension they were, but he knew he was more powerful than even the strongest of them.

Only just in some cases, but he still had the edge.

The High Inquisitor was the only one who was more powerful than him, but even that was negated with the mana dampening spell. For now. He could feel the man pushing at the edges of that spell, but it held for now.

As a group they were a danger, but he'd figured out a way to use a spell to stop all of them. Albert had been absolutely correct about the value of actually using magic rather than trying to turn himself into a glorified melee fighter with a few magic tricks.

He turned his attention back to the High Inquisitor.

"None of your friends here are going to be any help, and your reinforcements aren't going to be here in time to save you. So what do you say? Are you in a more helpful mood now?”

The High Inquisitor let out another whimper, and Liam took that for assent. So he turned around and dragged the Inquisitor across the space between the fire and Ana's cage with every intention of seeing her free.

When he looked up at her and smiled, she stared at him with wide eyes, looking somewhere between impressed and slightly terrified herself.