Malakor sat frozen on the chair of judgment. The cheap, dry teabag sat in the bottom of his priceless crystal cup like a dead spider. It was the most profound and absolute symbol of his failure. Every second he remained in this room felt like a millennium of being scrutinized by an uncaring god.
His mission was to introduce a flaw. To be the subtle knife in the heart of a grand ritual. But his every move, his every coded word, had been seen, analyzed, and effortlessly countered. He hadn't been fought; he had been... diagnosed. And the verdict was a contemptuous dismissal.
He couldn't stay. To stay would be to invite further humiliation. Or worse, annihilation, not through violence, but through a slow, agonizing process of having his entire demonic nature conceptually unraveled by the sheer, passive reality of the man sipping tea across from him.
He had to report back to the King. The plan had to change. This wasn't an heir being anointed. This was a primordial power holding court, and the Aethelian Empire were not his sponsors, they were his first, terrified supplicants.
His brilliant, analytical mind, which had been his greatest weapon, was now his worst enemy. It provided him with no escape, only the stark, terrifying truth of his own inadequacy. He began to sweat, a cold, oily sheen that was very real and not part of his baker persona.
He had to leave. Now. But how? Fleeing would be an admission of defeat. He needed a pretense. A believable exit that would satisfy the terrifyingly perceptive guardians of this place.
He seized upon the first, most logical excuse his panicking mind could grasp: his cover story.
He stood up abruptly. The movement was jerky, lacking his usual grace. "The... the wheelwright!" he stammered, his voice two octaves higher than before. "I... I have taken up too much of your time. Your generous hospitality has restored my strength. I must see about my... my 'wheel.'"
His cover story was now his lifeline. He clung to it with the desperation of a drowning man.
The three followers watched his sudden panic. They did not see a demon whose nerve had broken. They saw the result of a successful divine confrontation.
He flees! Seraphina thought, a thrill of pride coursing through her. The Master's simple gesture completely shattered his composure! He came as a proud envoy and now he leaves as a gibbering messenger, sent scurrying back to his own masters with a tale of power he cannot comprehend!
He speaks of the 'wheel' again, Valerius analyzed, stroking his beard furiously. But his meaning has changed! He is no longer asking who crafts destiny. He is now babbling about his own wheel, his own small part in the great cosmic cycle. The Master's lesson has reduced his worldview from the universal to the personal. He has been fundamentally humbled! A magnificent success!
Lyno just saw a man who was clearly in a hurry to leave. He had probably just remembered an important appointment. A normal, everyday occurrence. He felt a small spark of success. He had been so normal the visitor was now leaving in a normal way!
"Oh," Lyno said, offering another small, awkward smile. "Alright. Safe travels, then."
Those three simple words were the final nail in the coffin of Malakor's sanity.
'Safe travels,' his mind echoed, twisting the mundane phrase into a threat of cosmic proportions. It wasn't a pleasantry. It was a pardon! A decree! The Master was telling him, "I will allow you to leave my domain unharmed. I am gifting you this 'safe travel.' Know that it is my mercy, and not your own skill, that will see you home." It was the ultimate power move. A verbal stamp of ownership on his very journey!
Malakor could take no more.
"Thank you! Thank you!" he babbled, bowing repeatedly and backing away towards the door. He moved with a complete lack of grace, bumping into a bookshelf and sending a few romance novels tumbling to the floor.
FOOMP. FLUTTER.
He didn't stop to pick them up. He fumbled with the doorknob, wrenched the door open, and practically sprinted out into the street, a flabby baker running for his life.
The door slammed shut behind him.
SLAM!
Silence returned to the bookstore.
Aurelia finally let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "He is gone. Did we... win?"
"My dear Princess," Valerius said with a condescendingly gentle smile. "It was never a contest. It was an educational seminar, and the lesson was... 'Know Thy Place.' The Master is a superlative educator."
Lyno, meanwhile, was just happy his unwanted visitor had left. He felt a small sense of accomplishment. He'd handled it! But the baker had left something behind. He walked over to the chair where Malakor had been sitting.
The crystal cup was there. And inside it, sitting in a tiny puddle of condensation, was the dry, untouched teabag.
[He didn't even drink his tea,] Lyno thought, slightly disappointed. [That's a bit rude.]
He picked up the cup, took the teabag out with his fingers, and casually tossed it towards a small wastebin in the corner. He was a tidy person, after all.
The teabag, a cheap piece of paper and string filled with common 'Stout Highland Root,' arced through the air.
At that moment, a mote of pure, suppressed demonic energy, a tiny remnant shed by Malakor in his moment of supreme terror, happened to be floating in the air. The teabag passed right through it.
The effect was instantaneous and profound. The latent, chaotic energy of the demon lord's agent was instantly neutralized, absorbed, and conceptually grounded by the teabag's symbolic connection to the 'common earth' and, more importantly, its brief proximity to the 'Absolute Causality' of Lyno.
FIZZLE.
For a fraction of a second, the teabag glowed with an faint, black-and-gold light before landing softly in the bin amongst dust bunnies and old receipts.
The 'Proof That Remains' had been created.
Seraphina's sharp eyes caught the flicker of light. "Sage... did you see that?"
Valerius, whose senses for aetheric phenomena were unmatched, was already moving. He strode over to the wastebin, a look of profound, horrified awe on his face. He did not reach into the bin. He simply stared into it as if it were the abyss itself.
"Incredible," he whispered.
"What is it?" Aurelia asked, coming closer.
Valerius pointed a trembling finger. "The teabag. The symbol of the Master's dismissal of the envoy."
"It... glowed?" Seraphina ventured.
"It did more than glow," Valerius corrected, his voice cracking with emotion. "I felt it. A lingering trace of the envoy's true nature—a chaotic, high-dimensional demonic essence. When the Master tossed the teabag, he didn't just throw it away. He imbued it with a final, parting lesson. The teabag, symbol of the 'common,' passed through the demon's residual energy and... purified it. Neutralized it on a conceptual level."
He looked at his two fellow students, his eyes wide with the staggering implication.
"He did not just defeat the envoy in a battle of wits. He has, as an afterthought, using a piece of garbage, fundamentally cleansed the lingering spiritual poison of his presence. He tidies reality itself as a man might tidy his own room."
He stared at the bin with religious fervor.
"That teabag... it is no longer a simple object. It has performed an exorcism of a conceptual demon. It has become a holy relic. A ward against chaos of the highest order. We... We must preserve it."
Lyno, having turned his back to finally make his own tea in peace, heard none of this. He was blissfully unaware that he had not just tidied up, but had accidentally created a Sacred Artifact of +5 Holy Purification that his followers would probably end up building a shrine around.
The age of misunderstanding had just gained its first museum piece.