King Xylos was monitoring the situation through his one remaining, tenuous scrying link: a passive sensor keyed to Malakor's unique demonic signature. It couldn't see or hear; it could only register broad emotional and aetheric data.
He watched as his "pity bomb," Glim, entered the sanctum. The sensor registered a corresponding dip in the ambient "tranquility field" inside the bookstore. A wave of grim satisfaction washed over the Demon King. It was working. The spiritual virus was taking hold, creating a low-level dissonance, a sadness that the Librarian's passive kindness couldn't easily neutralize.
For hours, the sensor reported a steady, satisfying level of "abject misery" and "existential dread" emanating from his agent. Xylos allowed himself a rare, cruel smile. The Librarian was struggling. He was distracted.
Then, something changed.
A new energy signature began to fill the sanctum. It wasn't power. It wasn't magic. It was... comfort. A powerful, focused, weaponized aura of profound, soul-deep comfort. The scrying sensor flared, almost overloaded by the sheer empathic force of it.
Xylos watched, baffled, as the reading for "abject misery" plummeted. It didn't just go to zero. It was replaced by a new, utterly baffling reading: "cathartic release" followed by a steady, unwavering signal of "warm contentment."
His spiritual virus had been cured. In under an hour. Not by being expelled, but by being... hugged to death by soup.
His spy was compromised. Worse, his spy was now... happy. A happy imp was a useless imp.
"Report!" he snarled at the Arch-Sorcerer. "What was that energy signature? A compassion spell? An emotional exorcism?"
The Arch-Sorcerer, still nursing his bad eye, trembled. "I... I do not know, my King. I have never encountered a signature like it. It felt... delicious."
Xylos knew his plan had failed. It was time to retrieve his "patient" before the Librarian could turn him into a permanently cheerful, traitorous puddle of joy. He gave the signal to his sorcerers to enact the pre-arranged "emergency extraction."
In the "Tome and Trinket," Glim had just finished his soup. He felt… light. The crushing weight of his own existence had been lifted, replaced by the warm glow of chicken broth and acceptance. He was idly helping Ren polish a spoon, a small, genuine smile on his face.
Suddenly, a ragged, unstable demonic portal tore open above him. The same kind that had dumped him there.
Glim looked up at it, and for the first time in his life, he did not feel fear. He felt annoyance.
He was happy here. He was warm. The nice sad man gave him soup. He didn't want to go back to the cold, gloomy citadel where everyone made him feel useless.
Two shadowy demonic tendrils snaked out of the portal, wrapping around Glim's waist. "NO!" Glim shrieked, a cry not of terror, but of pure petulant defiance. "I don't wanna! It's nice here! You can't make me!"
He clung to the leg of a nearby table. "I won't go! The sad cook is my friend!"
His followers watched the scene, their minds once again assembling a grand narrative from the pathetic spectacle.
"He is resisting the recall!" Valerius exclaimed. "The Master's healing was so profound, so absolute, that it has granted the creature free will! It is defying its dark masters! It has tasted the light and now refuses the darkness! The Master doesn't just convert followers, he liberates them!"
Lyno, for his part, just saw a terrified little creature being forcibly abducted. It was horrible. He wanted to help, but he had no idea how.
Glim's grip on the table was surprisingly strong. He was clinging with the desperate strength of a creature who had found his one safe place in the universe.
The tendrils pulled harder. The table leg splintered.
And then Glim, in his panicked, unwilling struggle, was dragged backward. His flailing foot kicked over the small bowl that had held his life-changing soup, which now sat on the floor. A single, leftover drop of Ren's "empathic broth" splattered upwards.
It flew through the unstable, sputtering demonic portal just as it was closing.
The portal snapped shut with a sizzle, taking a weeping, protesting Glim with it.
Back in Mordus, Glim was unceremoniously dumped onto the throne room floor. The portal vanished.
"So," Xylos said, leaning forward. "The patient returns. Tell me everything you—"
He was cut off by a soft, almost imperceptible plink.
A single, golden drop of chicken soup had fallen from the fading energies of the portal. It landed in a puddle of old, dried blood on the obsidian floor.
The effect was not explosive. It was far, far worse.
The single drop of "weaponized comfort" did not fizzle out. Infused with Ren's pure, empathic spirit and supercharged by the ambient holiness of the sanctum, it began to... grow.
Not like a fire or a flood. Like a gentle, creeping moss of pure, unadulterated niceness.
The old, dried blood it had landed on was instantly, conceptually purified. It turned from a crusty brown stain into a sparkling dewdrop. From that dewdrop, a tiny, impossibly white and fragrant flower bloomed, its petals unfurling in the gloomy air.
A soft, golden light began to emanate from the flower. A light that felt warm. The cold, oppressive chill of the throne room was subtly lessened. The eternal wailing of the souls in the Demon King's throne quieted slightly, replaced by a confused, low hum.
Xylos stared at the small, glowing flower that was now growing out of his throne room floor. "What... what is that?" he whispered.
The Arch-Sorcerer crawled closer, peering at it. "It feels... nice, my King," he said, a note of deep confusion in his voice. "The very air around it is filled with a sense of... forgiving contentment."
Glim, seeing the flower, pointed a shaky finger at it. "That's it!" he squeaked. "That's the feeling! The feeling from the soup! It's… it's leaking!"
Xylos looked from the flower to Glim. The imp was no longer a quivering mess of misery. He was just... a little bit sad. Manageably so. He looked healed.
And then the most horrifying part of Xylos's plan came to fruition. He had hoped to use Glim's sadness as a spiritual virus against the Librarian.
The Librarian had countered, turning the virus into an antidote. And Glim had just brought that antidote back home with him. He was a carrier. A spiritual Typhoid Mary of happiness and contentment.
King Xylos realized his devastating error. He had not sent an agent to be a sensor. He had sent a patient to be cured, and that cure was now loose in his own citadel. This creeping, floral-scented niceness... if it spread... it could undermine the very foundations of his demonic empire, which was built entirely on misery, fear, and ambition.
He had tried to give the Librarian a cold. The Librarian had instead developed a cure for the common cold, and had just sneezed it directly into Xylos's face.
His fourth plan, the plan of insidious sadness, had backfired more spectacularly than all the others combined. He had not just failed to weaken his enemy. He had introduced a conceptual plague of niceness into his own home.
"QUARANTINE THIS THRONE ROOM!" Xylos roared, a note of genuine, raw panic in his voice for the first time. "No one enters! No one leaves! Get me the Hellfire Regiments! We are going to burn that flower and every molecule of this floor! Burn it all!"
The demon kingdom of Mordus had a new internal enemy. Not a rebel army, but a single, stubbornly cheerful flower, born from a drop of holy chicken soup.