“I don’t see it to be perfectly honest with you Tarnik”
“I didn’t fucking ask for your opinion Shaaknish you bilious shit-smear”
Tarnik fumed and shuffled the grubby playing cards in his claws peering through the thick cigar smoke that swam languidly around the table. The lilac haze was sickly heavy sweet smoke, and yet the dark, brittle smell of brimstone and char wafted under the door to fuse into pungent cloud. His eyes watered slightly.
Nobody met his gaze, even Furnuz averted his thousand eyes and stared at everyone’s whiskey.
“So …anyway.. before the golem made of eyes grabbed you he, uh… he wanted to use you to channel some sort of.. electric shock through your hands?”
Tarnik started to deal the cards to the other imps. Slowly working his way around the table trying to forget the feeling of having his skull turned into mush as he was slammed against the entry way to the marble tower. He touched his forehead thoughtfully. Still rigid and encasing as the day he was spawned.
“Look, give him a break. It wasn’t his best idea, but then, neither was storming in the front door of a tower of no return you know? Hes not big on the tactics or survival side of things. I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t have picked him for this project if I had the choice. But these are the cards we are dealt.”
He smiled at his pun. Gritgoz probably would have liked that one, the treasure hording, corpse raiding degenerate.
“He was like.. super into baking too.”
“Whats baking?”
“You grind up wheat into flour and mix it with…”
Tarnik stopped talking and looked at his companions. They blinked back patiently, waiting for his sermon on baking. He had seen more brains on the end of Ernie’s spear. Questions like that is why Imps were bottom of the food chain around here. This is why every acne ridden teenage apprentice fucking wizard managed to rip them from their homes at a moments notice and bind them as servants to do their fucking laundry and spy on the local wench. Questions like that, reminded Tarnik why every demonic army ever raised had imps as a meatshield for the slovenly overlords, or had them manning the burning catapults of doom ( which almost never worked by the way). This was why the knight in shining armour galloping into the frey wiped imps from his shield hours later back in the tavern, like the inconsequential deamon-stains they were as they splatted again him like insects.
“Tarnik you’re … doing that thing again. You’re frothing too..”
Tarnik snapped back to the table to find his companions staring at him, looks of consternation and amusement across their faces (in some case, across all their faces)
“Sorry guys, been a long few weeks”
“You could always terminate the contract Tarnik, find a new one. This guy sounds like a liability”
Tarnik shook his head.
“No can do. Sure he makes me climb through human faeces on a semi regular basis, has a deathwish and seems to have fallen in with the most simultaneously incompetent and successful campaigners I’ve ever had the misfortune to follow around, and oh did I mention they cant even solve puzzles? Like they just get this big guy Throkk to smash through everything but… but… Hes a good kid you know? And besides, he needs my help. He has literally a snowballs chance in hell without me”
He chuckled again. Man, he was on a role with the puns.
He stared at his cards. He had nothing. zero. worse than zero, the hand was almost completely unsalvageable. By the twins. He glanced up at the other imps and made a quick assessment of them. Morons.
He met the raises as they slowly worked their betting around the table and played their way towards the flop.
“so what now? Is he dead? Will he summon you back? You gonna tell us what you really wanted with him?”
“Nah, he aint dead boys. I can feel it. I think Ill be back in the game before too long”
He met the increasingly frantic raises now and locked eyes with a few of Furnuz’s. He held the stare. At least he thought he did, it was hard to tell with Furnuz.
“I dunno Tarnik, this is gonna end like that last one. Remember him? Killed by a vampire!”
“No, Ernie’s special, Im telling you”
The pot was massive now. He glanced at his cards. Absolutely nothing.
Time to pull an Ernie.
He pushed the mound of coins, clay tablets and ancient blood parchment onto the table. Every coin, every spell and the rights to human soul he had. The others physically reacted to the overwhelming display, Some shooting up from the table, another fainted, others licking their lips in a sickly moist snap.
“All in you Imp fucks”
“ Tarnik, that’s a lot of souls there. And that’s … thats your contract with Ernie. All your talk about how special he is and your putting that on the line over a game of cards”
“I don’t fuck around fellas”
Tarniks eyes pierced into each player like the point of a knife. He slowly made the round of the table, daring each player to match his ludicrous bet. He imagined Ernie’s cloak billowing behind him in defiance, and he twirled the shattered shaft of his imaginary spear.
One by one they folded, each staring wistfully at the pot as they did.
“Hahaha, oh baby.” Tarnik pulled the haul towards him.
A gasp broke his laughter as the imps stepped back. Tarnik held his claws up to his face to see them bathed in a dark purple flame, emitting no heat, but already starting to char and burn through his flesh. Nice… VIP treatment. This resummoning was coming straight from the top. Excellent. Things were starting to fall into place already. He waved at the amazed daemons as chunks of his flesh began to crumble away.
“Told you he was ok, ill see you fuckers around.”
“Wait.. Show us your cards!”
With his last seconds on the plane, he triumphantly flipped the cards over on the table.
A royal flush.
“That’s pulling an Ernie, your blackblooded assholes” he thought as he stuffed his original cards under the mantle of the table before crumbling into a pile of smoking ash on the floor.
