The Great Throne Room Purification was a disaster.
The Hellfire Regiments, demons wreathed in eternal, soul-searing flame, were called in. They unleashed torrents of black and purple fire upon the small, cheerfully glowing white flower. But the flower, born of Ren's weaponized comfort and nurtured by the sanctum's holy aura, did not burn. The flames washed over it, and instead of being incinerated, the flower seemed to... enjoy the warmth. Its golden glow intensified, and a second, even more fragrant blossom unfurled beside the first.
The Hellfire itself was affected. The flames that struck the encroaching field of niceness lost their malicious edge. They no longer burned with a hate that could scorch souls. They just burned with a pleasant, toasty warmth, like a well-tended fireplace on a winter's eve. The demon soldiers found their rage dissipating, replaced by a strange desire to roast marshmallows.
King Xylos watched, his mind, once a fortress of strategic brilliance, now a crumbling ruin of abject failure.
Plan A: Subtlety (Malakor) -> Result: His best agent was psychologically broken and they received a holy teabag.
Plan B: Brute Force (Grokk) -> Result: His living siege engine was deleted and they received a holy turnip.
Plan C: Chaos (Heretics) -> Result: The Empire developed a new pacification weapon and they received... nothing.
Plan D: Sadness (Glim) -> Result: His citadel was now infected with a plague of weaponized, fire-proof pleasantness.
Every single arrow he had fired at the Librarian had transformed mid-flight into a boomerang that had flown back and smacked him squarely in the face. Force, cunning, chaos, misery—every core concept of demonic power had not only failed but had been inverted and used against him.
He was sitting in his throne room, which now smelled faintly of fresh laundry and hope, and a new, terrible, and flawlessly logical thought entered his mind.
He could not win.
It wasn't a matter of strategy or power. The very physics of this new conflict were rigged against him. To attack the Librarian was, by some fundamental law of the universe, to attack himself. To send darkness against him was to have it reflected back as an even more brilliant light.
"We have been defining him as the enemy," Xylos said, his voice quiet, speaking to the equally baffled Arch-Sorcerer. "But what if that is the foundational error? He has not attacked us. He has not invaded our lands. He has only ever... responded. He is a reactive force, not a proactive one."
He looked at the two cheerful little flowers, now pulsing with a gentle, calming light that was giving him a headache.
"Every action we take against him has resulted in the creation of a new 'holy' concept or 'relic' that makes his position stronger and his domain more peaceful," Xylos continued, the horrifying pattern laid bare. "We send a Golem, he creates a crater that is studied by sages. We send a Grokk, he creates an artifact of absolute negation. We send a sad imp, he develops a 'cure' for sadness that is now loose in our home."
He sank back into his throne, the souls within it now humming a rather peaceful, if off-key, melody.
"Don't you see?" Xylos whispered, his crimson eyes wide with the horrible revelation. "We are not his enemy. We are his forge. We are the mindless, stupid hammers that he is using to beat raw reality into a new, more powerful shape. Our aggression is the fuel for his miracles. The harder we strike, the brighter his divine light shines. We are locked in a symbiotic relationship of utter, comprehensive self-defeat."
The Arch-Sorcerer stared, his one good eye watering. The King was right. Their enmity was actually the engine of their enemy's apotheosis. They were the architects of their own destruction, not by losing a war, but by instigating it.
To fight the Librarian was to make him stronger. Therefore, the only logical, strategic path forward... was to stop.
But that wasn't enough. Simply stopping the attacks would leave a power vacuum. The meddlesome humans, with their 'Heresy' and their 'Inquisitions,' would continue to poke and prod at the sanctum, potentially triggering new, unforeseen miracles that could further upset the cosmic balance.
If Xylos's own actions were strengthening the Librarian, then it was equally true that the actions of others would do so as well. A terrifying thought occurred to him: What if one of the Heretics' stupid plans actually succeeded? What if they somehow did manage to annoy the Librarian into taking a proactive stance? The resulting "sermon" could rewrite the entire continent. Xylos's demon realm was, geopolitically speaking, next door. He did not want to live next to an actively annoyed God of Niceness.
This led to the fifth, final, and most insane plan. A plan born not of aggression, but of pure, paranoid self-preservation.
"If our attacks empower him," Xylos declared, standing up with a newfound, if grim, resolve, "and the attacks of others empower him... then the only path to our own survival is to ensure that no one attacks him. Ever."
He turned to his court, his voice ringing with the authority of a king who had just glimpsed the abyss and decided to put a nice picket fence around it.
"Our war with the Librarian is over," he announced. The assembled demons gasped.
"Our new war has just begun," Xylos continued, a mad glint in his eye. "A war for the Librarian. A war to protect his sacred, inviolable peace from all the fools and fanatics who would seek to disturb it. We sent him our worst to test him. He sent them back, improved. He has taught us the error of our ways. He has... converted us."
He was not, of course, actually converted. But he was going to pretend to be. It was the only strategic move he had left.
"From this day forward," King Xylos, Lord of the Seventh Gloom, declared, "the Kingdom of Mordus is the sworn protector of the Master's divine serenity! Our spies will no longer seek to infiltrate his lands, but will instead hunt down and sabotage his enemies! Our armies will no longer plan for invasion, but will mass on the Empire's border, a silent, menacing deterrent to any mortal faction foolish enough to contemplate aggression against Oakhaven! We will become his unseen, terrifying, demonic... Guardian Angels."
Malakor and the Arch-Sorcerer stared, their minds unable to cope with this level of strategic jujitsu. They were going to protect their greatest enemy, in order to protect themselves from him.
"And our first act," Xylos said, gesturing to the still-cheerfully glowing flowers, "will be to establish the 'Sacred Order of the Twin Blossoms.' These holy relics will be enshrined. Glim, our 'blessed failure,' will be their first caretaker. We will study this... niceness. We will learn to understand it. Perhaps we can even learn to weaponize it ourselves one day."
He had found his path. He could not win the war, so he would appoint himself the new leader of the enemy's fan club—a terrifying, heavily armed fan club whose primary goal was to viciously murder anyone else who tried to join. It was a perfect, demonic parody of devotion.
The Doctrine of Mutually Assured Serenity was now in effect. And Lyno, the object of this terrifying new policy, had just decided to take up knitting, because it seemed like a nice, quiet hobby that couldn't possibly cause an international incident.