Aidan put his head in his hands and sighed. “I am so tired. So very, very tired. I want this to just be over!”

Jordanis rested his hand on Aidan's shoulder. “With just a little luck it will be soon. Are you ready?”

Aidan slowly got to his feet. He took a deep breath, and touched the hilts of his daggers, feeling reassured by the prickling discomfort of the blessed blade. “Yes, I'm ready.”

“Then I'll send you on your way. Good luck.”

The portal behind him glowed faintly as Aidan set foot on the strange stony ground of the Lower Plane. He stood and looked around for a moment. Jordanis had dropped him on the very largest floating island he could find. This one was large enough that there was actually a sense of a horizon in one direction. He looked out across the nearly level plain before him. One of the ribbons of water poured down onto it and meandered along for a while as a nearly normal stream before pouring over the edge. Other than that it was featureless. But he saw what he had hoped to see, the shadowy shapes of several demons in the distance, looking flat and two-dimensional and strange, like cartoons dropped into a photograph. And then he nearly jumped out of his skin as one came up beside him, from behind the portal. Slitted red eyes regarded him for a moment.

“Hello,” he said.

It let out a screeing sound and scurried rapidly away from him, leaving Aidan blinking, but feeling a little more hopeful. He rehearsed Jordanis's instructions once again.

“The portal is keyed to you, so nobody else can pass through it, demons included. Just don't lose track of it, I don't want to have to retrieve you again. As for how to find the demon you're after, this may not work out, but I have some hope...”

Aidan saw the demon that had fled from him approach another demon in the distance, and the second one turned and started moving rapidly in his direction. He swallowed and held his ground, standing in front of the portal.

The demon stopped a few yards away and said something to him.

“Sorry,” said Aidan, “but I don't speak demon.”

It said something else, and he just shrugged. “I don't suppose anybody here speaks Common Arethan?” He switched languages. “Or English maybe?”

The demon said something else, then turned and scurried away. Aidan shrugged and settled in to wait.

“The thing about demons is that they're not necessarily evil. They're just not the least bit human. I've researched them extensively since you first came to me with your problem. And I've turned up an interesting bit of demon lore. I couldn't find any corroboration for it, but I couldn't find anything that contradicts it either, so I'm hoping it's true.

“Now I know that it's true that most demons actively try to avoid being summoned to this world. They don't like it. And they mostly don't speak our language or have much to do with us if they can help it. This little bit of extra demon lore says that those demons who willingly come to this world, and who willingly have contact with us mortals are regarded by their fellows very much the same way that we might regard demon summoners, as being deviant, and maybe more than a bit crazy. Demons don't fear mortals, we don't give them that hair-on-end feeling that they give us, but they don't like us, and they're going be very unhappy if they notice a human hanging around.”

Aidan had nodded. “I don't get that hair-on-end feeling, but Flame told me about it. And even without it I don't like demons at all, so I don't doubt that they might not like us either.”

Jordanis had chuckled a bit at that. “Indeed. But this means that you may have a little bit of leverage. Tell whatever demons you meet that you won't go back to your world and leave them alone unless they produce Asmodeus for you. Tell them he's been hanging around your world and bothering you. If this is right they'll think of him as some kind of freak when they learn that, and they'll want to do anything they can do to get you to go away. So they may well hand him over to you.”

“Right.”

Now Aidan looked out and saw a swarm of shadows approaching. A dozen or so demons drew near and he swallowed. The couldn't hurt him directly, but they were still a rather intimidating sight as they halted in a semi-circle of shifting shadows a few yards away from him. One moved a bit forward from the others.

“Why are you here, being from the ordered world? You are not welcome.”

“I apologize,” said Aidan. “I wouldn't have come here if I had any choice, but there is a demon who has been coming to my world and harassing me, and I've come here to fight him and make him stop.”

“A demon, gone to your world?” said the spokes-creature. “And do you know his name, mortal being?”

“Asmodeus,” replied Aidan.

There was a hissing, clicking murmuring among the demons at that. “Asmodeus,” said the one. “So. He breaks his probation once again.” The demon hissed something indecipherable, and Aidan got the impression that it was swearing.

“You should go away,” said the demon after a pause.

“No,” said Aidan. “I'm sorry. I don't want to bother you, but I can't go until I've killed Asmodeus. You said he was breaking his probation. Forbidding him to bother me won't make him stop, and he has to stop.”

“Kill him?” The demon hissed something else. “Ordered beings cannot kill demons. Mortals cannot kill demons.”

Aidan drew his left-hand dagger. “I can,” he said.

The demon chittered at him and recoiled. From a safer distance it said, “I see that you can. You are certain you will not leave?”

“Very certain. I can wait a long time. I will wait until he comes, so that I can fight and kill him.”

“Well. It is true that he will not obey our laws nor accept our punishments. He deals with mortals, it is fitting that a mortal should punish him. We will bring him.”

“Thank you,” said Aidan politely, relieved that what Jordanis had told him seemed to be true. Now he only had to fight and win...