04/09/2026: The Devil You Know

The cellar of the Ship’s Prow smells of brimstone and mildew. The boarded door is still holding — barely — and from behind it, the voice of Lord Zazel has begun demanding, once again, to know who troubles him.

Nobody answers. Sean, in the cellar with the others, makes sharp gestures: silence, they say, fall back, and say nothing.

⚔

In the prison chamber beyond the door, Jayce is still chained to the wall, still bleeding at the wrists, still listening to Jeremiah struggling to pick the lock. Beside them, Bolinda Farck hangs from her own manacles, shifting uncomfortably as if she has something pressing on her mind — which, given the circumstances, she probably does.

She mentions, sweetly and quietly to Jayce, that he might try to free her, too, if it isn’t much trouble. She smiles a bit too brightly. “You won’t forget me, will you? I’m old and afraid.”

“She’s playing the ‘grandma’ card,” mutters Jayce to the sweating Jeremiah.

“I promise you free card readings for the rest of your natural life,” she pronounces, “and beyond, if I can manage it.” She reaches toward him with the limited range of her chains, attempting to pat his cheek. She cannot quite reach. She tries anyway. “You remind me of my son. Maybe my grandson.”

“Please,” Jayce says.

She pats the air in his general direction, with the smug satisfaction of someone who has accomplished a difficult task.

⚔

Back in the cellar, Bob has questions. Specifically, he wants to know whether Zazel is physically near the door.

“Are you touching the door?” he calls out.

A pause. Then, with the patient condescension of something very large and very old:

“Yes. Yes, I am touching the door.” The snarl in the low, booming voice is unmistakable. “Why?”

Bob is clearly working toward something. “No reason. Just curious,” he says. “Keep touching it, ok?”

Zazel is unmoved by whatever Bob’s argument is, and responds by casting a Command spell at Bob. The word — UNLOCK — is meant for Bob’s ears alone, sliding through the wood like smoke.

Bob’s eyes glaze momentarily, and his hand jumps to the massive key in the door’s lock. His fingers find the head of the key and he turns. Ka-chunk. The lock disengages.

Then, Bob begins prying at the boards still nailed across the door. The group stares.

“Um, what are you doing?” demands Viktor, a bit desperate to understand this recent change in tactics.

Jeff, surveying the situation, decides that what’s needed here is entrepreneurship. He kneels at Bob’s feet and slides some gold coins under the door as an offering.

Zazel accepts this offering with the sound of scraping claws behind the door. “I still get your soul,” he adds pleasantly.

The demon then casts Command again — OPEN — and Jeff begins to tear at the boards with his bare hands. The nails scream as they are pried loose from the planks. Although they come out only partway out, they still hold.

Jeff redoubles his efforts.

The board splinters free. The door swings open.

⚔

Standing in the doorway is Lord Zazel.

He is nine feet tall, bald, furious, and red as a forge coal. His wings are vast and leathery, his tail pointed, his arms enormous, and he carries a trident that looks like it has seen heavy use. He looks, the group will later agree, like the mascot of a fast-food taco chain who has had a very, very bad day.

Ducking to fit through the frame, the demon surveys the room.

He holds out a clawed hand to Jeff — specifically, he holds out some gold coins. Jeff’s gold coins. The ones Jeff slid under the door as an offering.

Zazel smiles a toothy and very disconcerting smile at Jeff and says, “I am returning these, because I have decided I prefer a different currency entirely.”

Jeff stares back at him blankly.

The demon plunges his arm up to his elbow into Jeff’s chest.

For the rogue, the sensation is not quite painful. It is more like something being rummaged through — a sense of an inner space deep inside him becoming suddenly crowded. Zazel withdraws his hand with an uncomfortable pop.

In his massive, red palm sits a small, shriveled, black slug.

He examines it.

“I paid too much for this,” he says, dropping it into a bag on his hip.

He looks at Jeff. “Now you’re mine.”

Jeff, to his credit, takes this relatively well. He no longer has a soul, which means — as Zazel helpfully explains — that if he dies, he goes straight to the Abyss. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred gold pieces.

“So,” Jeff says thoughtfully, “about that. Lord Zazel —” he points directly at Sean — “I heard this guy said some mean stuff about you earlier.”

“Kill him for me, would you?”

Sean looks startled as Jeff approaches.

⚔

Viktor, watching from the edge of the room, decides he has seen enough. He casts Minor Illusion to make it look as though he is still standing in the cellar and slips silently up the stairs. The illusion is reasonably convincing — Zazel perceives a flicker of something, but not enough to track Viktor’s escape.

He blinks in the light of the lobby and hears someone kicking in doors somewhere above. From the voice, Viktor can tell it’s Wilrick. He races up the stairs to find him.

⚔

Meanwhile, Sean, still in the cellar, watches Jeff approach him under Lord Zazel’s command. Sean tries a different approach. He seizes the Hogman — the inn’s orcish former landlord, who has been hovering anxiously in the background — muscles him by the scruff of his dirty neck, and marches him to throw him at Zazel’s feet.

Zazel gazes down at the crumpled orc. Then up at Sean.

“I like the way you work,” the demon says. “How many of your other friends, exactly, are you willing to sacrifice to me?”

The Hogman is chained to the wall. Only three more to go.

Sean is informed, with some delicacy, that Zazel already has his soul too. It became Zazel’s when he agreed to betray the others. That is a standard demonic agreement.

Zazel gestures toward the others. “Now go fetch me my sacrifices. We need three more.”

⚔

Deeper in the prison room, Jeremiah has been very quietly picking the lock on Jayce’s manacles — and on this attempt, something finally moves. The chains fall.

Jayce is free.

Jeremiah chains himself to the wall in Jayce’s place, so the empty restraints will not immediately be noticed. Then Jayce tucks himself into the shadows and waits.

Zazel spots Jayce almost immediately and informs him, gently, that he is one of the intended sacrifices, but that arrangements have been made on his behalf.

“Let me have your soul, paladin,” the demon says.

Jayce kneels. He explains, respectfully, that he cannot offer his soul. He does not agree to this.

Zazel reaches through his back anyway as the paladin leans toward him.

He withdraws something small and bright yellow, shaped exactly like a rubber duck — a buff, muscular rubber duck with tiny Hercules arms and a look of profound confidence. Zazel holds it up and examines it with what appears to be genuine interest.

“I’ve never seen one that looks like that,” he says.

“I am pretty unique, myself,” Jayce replies, very modestly.

Zazel drops the rubber duck soul into his bag. “You will make a fine sacrifice,” he tells Jayce. “It’s just what comes afterward. Your eternal reward.”

⚔

Bob has been watching all of this from the hallway. He has been waiting for exactly the right moment.

He sneaks up behind Zazel and reaches into the soul bag. His hand dips in — Zazel’s attention is elsewhere.

Bob palms both the rubber duck and the black slug and slips back into the corridor.

He looks at them. He looks at the shriveled slug that is Jeff’s soul.

Jeff opens his mouth and and Bob tosses it in for Jeff to swallow.

It tastes terrible. The soul slips back into its proper place. Jeff blinks and feels marginally better about his situation.

Bob pockets the rubber Hercules duck for safekeeping while Jayce is busy.

⚔

Zazel turns around.

He sees Bob.

He looks at his bag. He looks at Bob. He shakes the bag. Something is clearly missing.

“Have you stolen the souls I harvested?” he demands.

Bob shakes his head vigorously, but Zazel does not believe him for a moment. The demon’s slitted eyes narrow even further.

Zazel decides Bob is done being useful. He tells Sean, who is nearby: “Kill him. I’ll take his soul as he dies.”

⚔

Viktor, having found Wilrick on the fourth floor of the rooming house, brings him quickly up to speed:

There is a demon in the basement. Jayce is trapped with it and chained to a wall. There are some other prisoners chained with him. Someone is making deals with their souls. He was not entirely sure how to help them, so he left.

Wilrick, who has been systematically kicking open every door in the building looking for a portal, has recently kicked open Bolinda’s room. On the back of her door, he has discovered a faintly glowing sigil. This, he deduces, must be the portal he is seeking.

Viktor warns him not to touch it — he himself touched it earlier, and it nearly killed him. He doesn’t know why it transported Jayce and not him. They don’t yet know that the portal keys to something else.

Wilrick has a plan. It requires holy water, the ceremonial dagger he’s been carrying since they found it and the portal. He needs to get downstairs and cause enough chaos to serve as a distraction while the others free whoever’s still captive.

Neither of them notices the crate under Bolinda’s bed.

Viktor goes back down to the cellar to reconnoiter. He finds Bob, who holds up the rubber duck and reports, in a whisper, that Jeff and Jayce have both had their souls taken and he has stolen them back, and that there is a demon threatening everyone.

Viktor processes this.

“What is the duck?” he asks.

“That’s Jayce’s soul,” Bob says.

Again, Viktor does not have a response to this.

As if to add to this tale, Zazel nods a greeting at Viktor and glares at Bob, “I knew you stole those souls!”

⚔

Back upstairs, Wilrick finally notices the crate beneath Bolinda’s bed. He drags it out and opens the lid. Inside: twelve crystal bottles of holy water, nestled in straw.

Holy water, against demons, is essentially an exceptionally effective weapon. Like a grenade.

He now has twelve of them.

Wilrick grabs the case, takes the ceremonial dagger in his other hand, and touches the sigil on the back of Bolinda’s door.

He teleports into the prison room, appearing beside Zazel with a case of blessed ammunition under one arm and a knife in his fist.

The demon ceases checking Jeremiah’s chains and eyes the box and the dagger suspiciously. “What have you got there?”

Wilrick doesn’t answer. He’s already thinking about which to throw first.

Sean — his tiefling blood making him technically immune to the holy water’s sting, if not exactly enthusiastic about it — sees what Wilrick is holding and understands the plan immediately. He has his own supply. Between them, they are very well armed.

Wilrick takes aim and heaves the case, which is more ungainly and awkward than he anticipates.

The case falls short of its demonic target.

All the vials of holy water fly from the crate, but only six of the twelve shatter on the stone floor. Holy water floods across the packed earth in a wide, sanctified puddle. Zazel’s bellow fills the room — not a sound of anger, but of pain, high and involuntary and enormous. The demon scrambles backward, hooves slipping on the wet stone, and stumbles directly onto Jayce, pinning him beneath his massive hooved feet.

Returning to the cellar, Bob grabs one of the unbroken bottles from Wilrick’s shattered crate and snarls at the demon. “Get off of him!”

Zazel, panicked, does not respond and continues to balance atop Jayce to keep himself out of the puddle of holy water on the floor.

Bob throws the vial.

Zazel vanishes.

Crystal shards and damp air shower down on Jayce, who tries to catch his breath.

The room is silent. The brimstone smell thins. Somewhere in the space between worlds, a nine-foot demon is, no doubt, regrouping and planning vengeance.

But he will be back. He said so himself.

For now, though, the room is clear, the prisoners are alive, and Jayce is lying on the floor of the cellar of the Ship’s Prow with a rubber duck for a soul in his chest, staring at the ceiling.

The party has survived the encounter — for now.