Mundane Humans seem to have a real fascination for fake magic; I saw it being
‘practiced’ fairly often in my travels. It doesn’t work, of
course, but with some people, it seems to give them confidence in themselves
that they don’t usually have, and they go out and do things they wouldn’t
ordinarily even attempt. It’s when they start believing that it really
was the ‘magic’ that things get weird.
“Um... yeah. So, he started in with some junk about ‘binding’ and waved a bunch of smoldering plants at me, and proclaimed himself my ‘master’.” Farquahar rolled his eyes derisively; it was oddly interesting the way he did it. His entire eye-bulge seemed to ‘roll’. Wow.
“It didn’t do anything to you, right?” I doubted it, but I still had to ask.
“No,” he snorted. “I almost laughed at him, he was so funny. All turned out in this white robe and waving a white book at me. But I just played along.”
“What did he want?” asked Trowa.
“Oh, the usual; gold. They always want gold.” He looked from Trowa to me and back again. “What is the deal with gold, Lord Puma? Silver is much better.”
“Humans value gold more because it’s less easy to find.”
“Really? Huh. I always wondered. Anyway, he ordered me to give him gold. Like I carry the stuff around with me. I told him I could show him, but I wasn’t able to touch the stuff. He got kind of pissy then; demanding that I bring it to him.”
He sipped at his coffee and took a couple of bites of his omelet. I finished my coffee and thought about getting some more; demons are apparently not the most concise of story-tellers. Neither are some Wizards, come to think of it. That thought made me smirk; Farquahar blinked at me.
“Um... So, yeah. I had to tell the dork about five times that I couldn’t *bring* him any gold, but I could *show* him where to find it, before he finally stopped frothing at the mouth. So he ‘commands’ me to show him where the gold is, and does all this hand-waving and fake spell-casting that’s supposed to make me have to obey him.” He sighed heavily and looked at Trowa. “I really have only done that a time or two; are all Humans so... so... lame? How do you stand them?”
Trowa leaned his chin on one furry hand. “Well, they aren’t all like that. The Magical ones are usually a little brighter, but often more arrogant. The Mundane Humans I deal with are just living their lives and pretty oblivious to anything that isn’t right under their noses. But some are real twits; your guy sounds like a twit.”
“No shit,” Farquahar muttered.
“So,” I prodded, “What did you do?”
“I took him to where the gold was.” He blinked at me. “It was just a little vein, but he got all excited and started scraping it out into a plastic dish. When he was done, he told me to take him home and then did a bunch more muttering and hand waving and ‘dismissed’ me. That’s all.”
“Really.” From Trowa. “And then...?”
“Um... Nothing. I went home.” Farquahar was carefully not looking at Trowa.
“No, you didn’t. What else did you do, demon? And don’t lie; lying upsets Duo.”
Farquahar swallowed, watching me from the very corners of his eyes. I frowned and glared at him.
“Well.... I did make a little side trip on my way back to Fresno... It only took a few minutes... or so.” He looked up at Trowa hopefully; Trowa raised one eyebrow. “Maybe a couple of hours,” he muttered.
“Farquahar, cut to the chase; what did you do?” growled Trowa.
“Um... Well, there was this vein of silver not too far from the gold, so.... I went and got it.”
Trowa blinked; I blinked. Since when did demons need valuables? Trowa must have been thinking the same thing.
“Why?”
“The... um... the place in Wyoming... It was for sale, so I needed something to buy it with.”
Trowa’s jaw dropped. “You *bought* that property?!”
Farquahar poked at his omelet, not looking at us. “...yeah...”
“Why?!”
“Cuz I wanted some territory! And... well... it just seemed easier to buy it... Since claiming it didn’t exactly work out before...” he muttered gloomily.
Trowa rubbed a hand over his face. “You bought a piece of property... Just like any Human or Wizard would do.” Farquahar nodded. “And you took on a Human form and... what? Just lived there?”
Again, the demon nodded.
“Like a regular person?” I said in disbelief. “Paying bills, buying groceries, mowing the lawn?”
“Yeah.”
“Farquahar, what the fuck?!” demanded Trowa. “Why?!”