Normally the return to camp after a big score was filled with relief and excitement, but tonight was full of tension.  Llelwyl had the excuse of guiding us through the underbrush for why she was not talking, but Bushwack had enough ire for both of them.  She had given up her usual perch on the elf’s shoulder so she could balefully glare down at me while in flight, circling around Sondra’s hands.  As a precaution, Sondra had cupped a hand around me as a shield, and Margret stayed close in case she tried something.

When we reached camp, we found Kirinhalut sitting on a blanket by the firepit appearing to meditate, lit by a lantern on the ground in front of her.  Llelwyl paid her no mind and went about stacking wood for the fire.  The noise from logs dropping alerted her, and she looked at Llelwyl with her dark eyes.  “How’d it go?” she asked.  “Did you get what you were looking for?”

“We’re about to find out,” Llelwyl replied tersely, striking flint over the wood.

“And my plan?” she pressed.  “Did the little man get that magic item of yours where it needed to be?”

“It got in place, yes.”  Llelwyl was already trying to downplay my role in their success.  If it had not been totally expected I would have been upset.  With how she tied me to that arrow, it was possible she thought I had no more stake than the arrow itself.  I should able to easily make a compelling case, though I had seen greed cloud the judgement of the closest adventuring groups.

Fire glowed from the pit, and the group assembled around it in a circle.  Bushwack popped the chest open, and Llelwyl inspected its contents.  The elf withdrew a sheet of rolled and sealed parchment, then dumped the rest on the ground.  A mound of gold poured onto the dirt, and once she set the parchment to the side she upturned the pouch Bushwack had grabbed, adding its contents to the pile.  She placed the items she had taken beside the parchment, then began raking the gold together with her hands until it was a roughly even circle.

Llelwyl used her dagger to cut the gold pile into four equal parts, then put it back in its sheath.  “You know the drill,” she said, addressing the group.  “Take a portion, then we count it up and equal it out later.  No reason to mess with something that works.”

“There should be five portions,” Margret declared.

“Hm?  I guess you have a point.”  Llelwyl gathered the gold back up and began splitting it into fifths.  “We should be putting some into a common pool for later group expenses.”

“I meant for the five people who were there,” Margret clarified.

“What do you mean, five people?” Llelwyl asked.  “I only see four members of the group here.”

“You didn’t have any trouble seeing him when you tied him to your arrow,” Margret shot back.  “Come on Lell, don’t be like this.  You made him take part in the raid, now pay him for his contribution.”

“What contribution?  He got thrown in there, then activated a portal.  Bush has done the same thing dozens of times, and then she at least grabs something or stabs someone afterwards.  If we’re cutting out a portion for the shrunken human, we should be adding it to hers instead.”

 “You want to talk about contributions?” Sondra cut in, curling her hand further around me.  “Because I didn’t see you do anything besides grab the loot.  Margret and I could have done that easily, but I don’t see you jumping to give up your share to us.”

“I’d like to see you lift that chest, twig,” Llelwyl countered.  “If you were in charge of looting, we’d be in rags and have a pile of rusty weapons!”

“Everyone calm down!” Margret called over the din.  “We’re all friends.  Are we really going to let a bit of gold come between us?”

“It’s not about the gold, it’s about the principle,” Bushwack said.  “The fact is that he didn’t do anything to get there, and he didn’t do anything I couldn’t have.  Are we really going to reward people for just showing up?  We don’t even know if he wants gold, the coins are bigger than he is!”

Sondra scoffed and replied, “Of all people, you’re the one bringing his size into this?  You, who has someone else carry her gold whenever we go into town?  If we divvied stuff up based on how much we can spend, you’d be sleeping in a pinecone.”

Bushwack wanted to fly on the offensive, but Llelwyl blocked her with a hand.  “There’s no reason we need to come to blows over this.  I’ve heard your arguments, and I’ll divide the gold into five parts, with the fifth part going to someone who was truly integral to tonight’s plan working.  Kiri came up with the idea to launch the shrunken human into the camp, so it goes to her.”

“You can’t be serious!” Sondra protested.

“She’s not even in this group!” Margret added simultaneously.

“I think we can all agree this is more fair than the four of us hogging it,” Llelwyl continued, as though she had not heard two loud objections.  “If she wants to toss a couple coins to the shrunken human out of pity, that’s up to her.  She’s the one taking care of him, anyway.”  Kirinhalut proudly raised her chin toward me as a subtle victory lap.

The two humans grumbled at the settlement, but it was either that or draw steel.  They remained silent while Llelwyl split the pile into five parts, then slid one over to the disguised succubus.  Each recipient gathered their treasure into a sack, though I noticed Bushwack’s was essentially lumped in with Llelwyl’s.  Even though her pile was bigger than she was, she had still tried to say I was too small for a reward.

“Okay, let’s get some rest and cool down,” Llelwyl declared while standing.  “We’ve got a lot to do tomorrow, and I don’t want any hurt feelings getting in the way.”  She strode off before anyone could say something.  Somehow, I did not think it was her feelings that had been hurt tonight.

Sondra started back to her tent, keeping me cupped and protected in her hands.  She suddenly stopped, throwing me into the hand she had raised as a shield.  “Oh, hey Kiri,” she said, trying not to sound exhausted.  “Can I help you with something?”

“You’ve got something of mine,” the succubus responded, and Sondra let out a loud sigh.

“I really don’t know what you mean,” Sondra replied.  “I didn’t even know you had anything other than what you’re wearing.”

“In your hands.”  Sondra understood her meaning, and slowly drew me closer to her chest.  “We were both at the meeting, so I know you heard it.  I’m the one taking care of him.”

“You haven’t been doing a very good job of it.”  She pressed me against herself, dimpling her robe with my body.  “You’re the one who suggested Lell tie him to an arrow.  It’s a miracle he wasn’t horribly maimed or killed!”

“I might say you’re overprotective of him.”  Kirinhalut took a menacing step forward, and Sondra stepped back to keep the space.  “You know what I really did?  I proved he has a function.  The others want to get rid of him, just toss him off the side of the wagon next time we’re moving.  They can downplay it all they want, but now they’ll think twice.”

“I proved that earlier,” Sondra shot back.  “Besides, he doesn’t need to be useful to be worthy of respect.  A person isn’t just the sum of what you can extract from them, they’re everything about them.  He shouldn’t have to justify his existence just so he can get help.”

“Those are a lot of pretty words,” Kirinhalut retorted, stepping forward until Sondra’s back was against a tree trunk.  “We both know who gets results, though.  I’m his official caretaker, after all.”  Sondra’s hand relaxed, as though it was forced to by an outside influence.  The succubus reached in and languidly plucked me out of her palm, then gestured behind herself with her chin.  “You’ve had a long day, maybe you should get some rest.”

Sondra seemed dazed as she spoke.  “Yeah, I should get some rest.  I’ll see you two tomorrow.”  She continued toward her tent, moving with a painfully wooden gait.  Her legs scarcely bent with each step, and every time she turned she came to a complete stop.  It was the most unnatural way I had ever seen someone move.

When she had disappeared into her tent, Kirinhalut pinched my feet and let go of my body.  I fell backward and rolled over her thumbnail, getting a face full of her chest.  She briefly supported my head while adjusting her grip, making it so I would dangle beneath her fingers rather than be draped over one, then lifted me so both of her dark eyes could focus on me at once.

“My, oh my,” she purred, looking at me hanging helplessly in front of her face.  “You’ve had quite a busy day, haven’t you?  You and that blond seem to be getting pretty close, you know.”

“Leave her out of whatever you have planned!” I shouted.  “She’s just doing whatever she thinks is best.  In fact, why don’t you leave them all alone?  They’re helping you get to a city where you’ll have thousands more souls to corrupt, I figure you’d want to make that easy as possible.”

“Because that would be boring!”  Kirinhalut said it in short, separated syllables, leaning a little closer in each pause.  She punctuated the sentence by batting me with her index finger, sending me swinging until I slammed into the bridge of her nose.  I swayed while dropping away from it, my vision blurry, while she quietly laughed.

“You should count yourself lucky no one can hear us,” she continued.  “Don’t want you getting any illusions above your status as a bug.  Speaking of lucky, that girlfriend of yours seems really resistant to my suggestions!  Too bad it’s super easy to hypnotize her.”

“You have what you want from me,” I began, “why don’t you leave me be?”

“Because I like watching you suffer,” Kirinhalut explained.  “It’s one thing to feel your suffering through our link, but it’s quite another to see it first-hand.  I’ve been doing this longer than you can imagine, and there’s nothing quite like fresh agony perceived through the eyes.  Besides, I only get a chance to corrupt a whole group of do-gooders every thousand years or so, and I’m not going to squander this one.  After only - what, two days? -  I already have them at each other’s throats.”

I was speechless.  Kirinhalut was a demon, one of many incarnations of pure evil in the multiverse, so that should not have come as a surprise to me.  However, it was the first time I had heard one lay out their agenda so thoroughly and non-chalantly.  She had described turning friends against each other with the same passion I had when teaching someone how to properly clean a sword.  It was just a game to her, and whatever the outcome meant nothing more than having to start another one.

“Well, have fun out here for the night,” she said, with a note of finality.  “If you’re lucky, someone will take pity on you and bring you into their tent.  If they’re lucky, some animal will carry you away and I can get back to tormenting you in private once I track you down.”

I tried to ask what she meant, but her fingers had already let go of me.  In an instant I plummeted the whole length of her body to faceplant in the dirt, kicking up a small cloud of dust when I landed.   Kirinhalut stepped over me on her path toward the wagon, her long legs making it impossible for me to catch her.  With a groan I stood and looked around.  As far as I could tell, I was alone, with only the crackling fire to break up the silence.  It would be a long walk, but I started the trek toward Sondra’s tent, hoping I could make it there before daybreak.