In the vast, terrifying hierarchy of Mordus, there were positions of power, of fear, and of respect. And then there was the position occupied by Glim.
Glim was an imp. But he was not a mischievous, giggling imp who popped tires on hell-carts or hid the brimstone salt. He was a small, perpetually anxious imp with drooping ears, big, sad, watery eyes, and a nervous habit of apologizing to inanimate objects when he bumped into them.
He was, by every demonic metric, an abject failure.
His attempts at causing minor chaos usually ended in him accidentally helping someone. He once tried to trip a grumpy Orc warlord, but instead just managed to dislodge a rock that would have otherwise fallen on the Orc's head. The warlord, thinking Glim had saved his life, had clapped him on the back so hard it had nearly shattered his spine. Glim had spent a week hiding, terrified of the Orc's gratitude.
His natural aura was not one of fear or malice. It was an aura of mild inconvenience and secondhand embarrassment. Other demons didn't bully him in the traditional, violent way. They mostly just found him depressing to be around.
So when King Xylos's royal guard kicked open the door to Glim's miserable little hovel in the dampest, saddest corner of the Citadel, Glim's first and only instinct was to burst into tears and apologize for the state of his floor.
"I-I'm so sorry, sirs!" he squeaked, cowering behind a wobbly table. "I was going to sweep, I swear! It's just, the broom seemed so happy in the corner, I didn't want to disturb it!"
The guards stared at him. The order from the King had been specific: "Find me the most useless, pathetic, sniveling wretch you can."
They had found him.
Glim was dragged, weeping and apologizing the entire way, to the foot of the Onyx Throne. He lay prostrate, a tiny, quivering ball of failure.
"So," King Xylos's voice boomed, "this is it. Our grand weapon."
"Please, Your Gloominess!" Glim cried. "Whatever I did, I didn't mean to! I'm sorry for being born! I'm sorry for breathing your magnificent, sulfurous air!"
Xylos's plan was already in motion. "Indeed, you are a pathetic excuse for a demon," he said, his voice dripping with theatrical contempt. He snapped his claws. A hulking guard stepped forward and, as ordered, gave Glim a single, well-aimed but non-lethal kick that sent him tumbling across the floor.
It was cruelty for a cause. The "victim" had to seem genuinely victimized upon arrival.
"You are a blight on my realm," Xylos declared. "An embarrassment to all demon-kind. I am banishing you. Casting you out. Let some other realm deal with your pathetic incompetence!"
With a grand, sweeping gesture, the King's Arch-Sorcerer tore a jagged, unstable portal open in the air above Glim. It did not lead to the antechamber of the Tome and Trinket. Xylos was smarter than that now. The portal opened three hundred feet above the town square of Oakhaven.
"Begone from my sight!" Xylos roared.
Glim was sucked up into the swirling vortex of chaotic energy. "I'M SORRY FOR FALLING INCONVENIENTLY!" were his last, wailing words before he vanished from Mordus.
Xylos watched the portal seal, a look of grim satisfaction on his face. The bait was set. Phase Four had begun.
In Oakhaven, the Aura of Unconditional Okay-ness had made the day's market particularly pleasant. Merchants were offering discounts just for the heck of it. The town guard was helping old ladies with their groceries.
It was into this idyllic scene of profound calm that Glim arrived.
He didn't just appear. He fell. A tiny, screaming, pathetic shape, tumbling end over end from a ragged hole in the sky that sizzled and vanished in the blink of an eye.
"IIIIII'M SOOOOOORRRRRRYYYYYYYYY!"
His pathetic shriek was the only warning.
He crashed headfirst into the new, pristine roof of "Billiam's Bakery," the very same bakery that had been partially destroyed by the Imperial golem weeks ago.
CRUNCH. Thump. SLIIIDE... THUD.
He slid down the tiled roof and landed in a large, open barrel of rainwater with a sad sploosh.
A moment of stunned silence descended on the market square. Everyone stared at the steaming hole in the bakery roof, and then at the barrel, from which two drooping, pathetic ears had just emerged.
Inside the bookstore, Lyno's "Committee for the Preservation of Serenity" (as Valerius had started calling it) was in the middle of a delicate task. Ren had created a "Contemplative Custard," and they were all sampling it, trying to discern its deeper philosophical meaning.
The distant shriek and the crunch of roofing tiles, however, broke their concentration.
Seraphina was at the window in an instant. Her eyes narrowed. "Energy signature... chaotic, but faint. Demonic in origin, but... diluted. An object has fallen from the sky."
Valerius joined her. "Another one? Have they learned nothing?" he scoffed. "What manner of assault is this? Is it a biological plague? A psychic spore?"
They watched as the tiny, dripping figure of Glim crawled out of the rainwater barrel. He looked like a drowned rat, if rats had the capacity for deep, existential despair. He immediately noticed the hole he had made in the bakery roof and burst into tears.
"Oh no, oh no, I broke the roof!" he sobbed. "I'm so sorry, Mr. Roof!" He then started trying to apologize to the rainwater barrel for getting his misery all over it.
Valerius and Seraphina stared, utterly baffled. This was not an assassin. This was not a soldier. This was not even a coherent being.
"What... is it?" Aurelia asked, joining them.
Valerius stroked his beard, his magnificent intellect for once completely stumped. The being's power level was negligible. His intent was a chaotic mess of self-loathing and fear. He did not fit any known category of threat.
"It is... a statement," Valerius finally said, his mind forcing the incomprehensible data into a familiar pattern. "But of a kind we have not yet encountered. Our rivals have failed to best us with subtlety and with force. Now... now they have sent us a paradox."
"It's a crying rat-thing, Sage," Seraphina said, her tactical mind failing to find a threat to analyze. "It seems harmless."
"Does it?" Valerius countered, his eyes gleaming. "Or is its harmlessness the most dangerous thing about it? The 'Baker' was a feint of mundanity. The 'Grokk' was a test of strength. This... this creature is a test of compassion. A weaponized victim. They have sent us a broken thing, knowing the Master's kindness would compel him to fix it. It is a spiritual trap. A 'pity bomb.'"
This logic was so convoluted and yet so perfect that it immediately clicked with the others.
Lyno, drawn by the commotion, peered out the window. He saw the little creature crying. He saw the broken roof. He saw its pathetic, drooping ears. He felt a pang in his chest. It wasn't fear this time. It wasn't annoyance.
It was... empathy. He knew exactly what it felt like to be small, terrified, and to feel like you're always breaking things by accident. That little creature was him. A small, furry, demonic version of himself.
"Poor little thing," Lyno said, his voice soft. The simple, humane decency his mother had taught him was bubbling up again. "He looks so sad. Someone should help him."
He hadn't intended it as an order. It was just a thought, spoken aloud.
But for Valerius, it was confirmation of his theory. "The Master sees the trap," he whispered to the others. "And he intends to spring it on his own terms. He will not refuse their compassion-bait. He will embrace it. He will heal this broken creature, and in doing so, he will once again prove his moral and spiritual superiority to his enemies."
Aurelia looked on in awe. "So, we are to... adopt it?"
"We are to perform a salvage operation of the soul," Valerius corrected.
Before they could act, however, the object of their analysis, Glim, noticed them watching him from the window. He saw the Master, the man whose face haunted King Xylos's nightmares, staring down at him. Glim's tiny heart seized with a terror so pure it transcended all other emotions.
He did what he did best. He fainted. Face-first, into a muddy puddle. A fittingly pathetic end to a pathetic arrival.
Seraphina sighed. It seemed she was on rescue duty. Again.
"I will retrieve the 'pity bomb,'" she said, her voice filled with a weary resignation. It was hard to feel like a legendary assassin when your primary job was now collecting stray lunatics and unconscious demonic failures.