The throne room of Mordus was colder and darker than usual. King Xylos sat upon his soul-forged throne, his immense patience being tested. He had expected Malakor's mission to take days, perhaps weeks, of subtle infiltration and careful manipulation.
Yet, less than a full day after his departure, a frantic message had arrived: his agent was returning. Immediately.
A vortex of black and green shadow tore a hole in the reality of the throne room, and from it stumbled Malakor. He was no longer in his baker disguise. He was in his true form, a being of polished obsidian and golden eyes, but he looked... frayed. His usual serene, dangerous calm was gone, replaced by the wild-eyed terror of a cornered animal.
He collapsed to one knee, his breathing ragged.
"My King," he gasped, his voice thin and reedy.
Xylos leaned forward, the souls in his throne wailing in concert with his displeasure. "Report," he commanded, his voice a low growl of thunder. "Did you succeed? Did you find a flaw in their ritual?"
Malakor looked up, his golden eyes filled not with the cunning of a master spy, but with the hollow emptiness of a broken mind.
"There is no ritual," he whispered.
Xylos's crimson eyes narrowed. "What foolishness is this? The wards, the quarantine, the Emperor's own actions—"
"You misunderstand, Lord of the Seventh Gloom," Malakor interrupted, a shocking breach of demonic etiquette. He was past caring. "It is not a ritual. A ritual is an act of becoming. A process to achieve a state of power." He took a shuddering breath, the memory of the teabag still burning in his mind. "The one they call 'The Librarian' is not becoming anything. He already... is."
This statement hung in the sulfurous air. It was a terrifying, heretical thought.
"Explain yourself, Malakor," Xylos's voice was now dangerously soft. "Choose your words with the care of a mortal walking on broken glass."
Malakor began his report. He did not speak of secret spells or hidden armies. He spoke, with the unnerving clarity of a man who has stared into the sun, of what he had actually seen.
"I passed their perimeter with ease, my King. Their wards search for power and intent, as you predicted. I had none. But the tranquility... it is not a shield. It is his native environment. The Empire is not guarding a ritual; they are desperately trying not to disturb a slumbering leviathan."
He described the bookstore. He described the three followers: the Sage who spoke of foundational principles, the Princess who was treated as property, and the assassin who guarded him with the ferocity of a goddess.
"They did not meet my allegorical challenges with counter-moves," Malakor continued, his voice trembling. "They met them with... pity. They treated my carefully constructed codes as the babbling of a lost child."
And then he described the Master.
"He... is a man. He looks like a man. He moves like a man. And that is the most terrifying part of the disguise. He did not speak a single spell. He did not level a single threat. He came down the stairs, clutching a chipped mug... and he offered me tea."
Xylos waited for the rest. For the part where the tea was poisoned with divine fire, or laced with a spell that shattered the mind.
"It was the tea of a peasant," Malakor whispered. "Common. Worthless. He offered it to me, an agent of the Gloom Lord, with the same casual air one would offer scraps to a stray dog."
He looked directly into his King's burning crimson eyes.
"It was not an act of hospitality, my King. It was a power play of such sublime arrogance that I am still reeling from it. He did not see me as a threat. He did not even see me as a rival. He looked at the subtle knife of Mordus and he saw... nothing worth his notice."
Xylos was a being of paranoia and calculation. He searched for hidden meanings, for deceptions. But Malakor was not being deceptive. He was being horrifyingly, uncharacteristically... sane. He was simply reporting the truth, and the truth was more terrifying than any lie.
"He dismissed me, my King," Malakor's voice cracked. "Not with a display of force, but with an act of mundane pity. His power is not in what he does. It is in what he is. His very existence is a passive force that reorders reality around him into a state of... placid simplicity. He doesn't command. He simply... makes it so."
Malakor reached a trembling hand to his own chest. "I feel... cleansed. Hollow. As if my very nature as a being of chaos was an affront to the absolute order of his being. I do not believe he intended to do it. It just... happened."
Xylos sat back on his throne, his brilliant, strategic mind grinding against a problem it couldn't comprehend. He had sent a weapon of sublime subtlety, and it had been disarmed by a cup of cheap tea and a kind smile.
He had expected a report of magic, armies, plots, and betrayals. A game he understood.
He had received a report of philosophy, symbolism, and existential terror. A game so far beyond his own that he couldn't even see the board.
His paranoia, faced with a lack of understandable data, did what paranoia does best: it inflated the threat to godlike proportions.
This 'Librarian' is a new kind of power, Xylos realized, a cold dread seeping into his dark heart. He doesn't fight. He... absorbs. He doesn't conquer. He converts. He turns assassins into bodyguards, princesses into servants, and demons into... broken things. He is not a king, or a god. He is a Primal Law. A spiritual black hole.
He could not fight such a being with subtle knives or hidden armies. That would be like trying to stab the concept of gravity. Any force he sent would simply be... absorbed and neutralized.
He needed a new plan. A weapon that this Librarian couldn't dismiss or pity. A weapon that did not operate on the level of subtlety or power.
He needed a weapon of pure, unthinking, absolute chaos. A force of nature so idiotic and destructive that it couldn't be reasoned with, converted, or philosophically disarmed. A blunt instrument of apocalyptic stupidity.
He looked down at the broken, trembling form of Malakor, his finest agent.
"You have done well, Malakor," Xylos said, his voice surprisingly calm. "You brought me the truth. A horrifying truth. Rest now. Your King has a new strategy to devise."
He stood and walked to the edge of his throne platform, looking out into the shadowy expanse of his realm. A new name formed on his lips. Not a name of a subtle spy or a powerful warlord. It was a name that made even other demons shudder. A name that was synonymous with mindless destruction.
He would not send a knife to this strange new game.
He would send a sledgehammer. And he would aim it right at the town of Oakhaven and pray to the elder darkness that the resulting mess would be enough of a 'flaw' to matter.