When Dantalion arrived, it was already midnight at local time. The room was lit by the dim, cold light from a cheap lamp, bearly brighter than the computer screen on the same desk. Then he saw the human who summoned him – a black-haired, black-eyed maiden. Although her height hardly reaches the demon’s chest, she held this marvelous tranquility as she stared straight into the holes in his mask.
As an Arch Duke of the honorable Pandemonium, Dantalion is responsive to those who pursue knowledge beyond their reach in exchange for their souls. In the centuries since the technique of summoning had been revealed, he and his colleagues had seen countless humans terrified, fleed, and some even confessed to God on site as soon as they witnessed one of them in person. This maiden was certainly one of a kind, and for this, he bowed and greeted her with full respect,
“Arch Duke Dantalion, at your service.”
The maiden saluted him with one hand on her heart. Then, without passionate speeches or redundant explanations, she turned to her computer and started pulling files. It was just within Dantalion’s expectation; youth these days often need nothing more than some common things: love, reputation, health, and academic achievements. The young summoner fell into the last category, and her field of study was exactly Dantalion’s the trick of trade – namely, art.
On the screen lies a layered painting of a house made of uneven wood planks, covered poorly by straws and patched cloth, apparently built in a haste from scratch. It sat on a hazy beach, where barrels and ship parts lay here and there. The sky was nearly as dark as Dantalion’s homeland, only a glimpse of the light can be found from below the distanced horizon as if the last breath of a dying sun. A truly sad image, highly rendered, yet the mood of despair overflew, not only from the artistic choices but also the anxiety of the artist herself.
Upon the second look, the Arch Duke realized the problem was far more severe than mere lack of motivation. It was off – the perspective, planes, air, and colors – all of them were done with the artist’s best as I can tell, yet each of them was a subtle degree apart from right, and when all the subtleness added up, the visual imperfection became disastrous. Sweet Satan! Dantalion had never failed a project given to him since the rebellion of fallen angels. He carved homes for thousands of his comrades in the giant stalactites of inhabitable Lethe, and he master-planned the grand cityscape for their capital Cocytus from the First to the Ninth Circle. He’d expect sloppy doodles from an amateur and exquisite design piece from a skillful craftsman, yet such mediocre and uninspiring work was something he had never seen before. What was it for?
By then, Dantalion realized he had been sitting in the chair for quite a while, and the maiden looked at him, sharply still, but had grown worried as time passed second by second, eager for a response. So Dantalion arranged his diction with care, and spoke as objectively as possible:
“Young lady, in my humble opinion…the structure of this house can hardly stand still in real life. At the current level of rendering, it is quite difficult to make fundamental changes upon existing layers.”
Right when his voice fell, so fell the maiden on her knees. Bending over her body, knocking her head on the floor, begging the demon so hard that nearly echoed in the small dorm room:
“Master! Your Excellency! In the vast world, from the dazzling firmaments to the burning hell, only YOU can perform the miracle upon an art failure, only YOU can save me from this everlasting suffering! The deadline is tomorrow at 8 am sharp, and I got to find a way to make it work no matter what you may say!”
Dantalion was moved by such determination. Individuals who have the strong will to accomplish even a regular assignment are not ubiquitous even in his realm. Perhaps one day when she dies eventually, Dantalion can convince his Lord to make her a fine citizen of Inferno. But for now, his job is to do his best to deal with the maiden’s living problem, or she might end up not in a studio but a church.
“Please, stand up as you were, young lady. You appointed me specifically and I have accepted your soul as patronage, thus I will serve you until your highest satisfaction. It might not be a good idea to make further changes to this painting, so I propose to make a brand new piece, in your style, with my hands. For that, I will need to check your assignment requirement.”
A smile of surprise, joy, and owe bloomed on the maiden’s face all at once. She flipped through a colorful binder, took out the desired page, and presented it with both of her hands. It reads the following:
“Pirates’ Hideout”
It was at sunset, the ocean and the sky are dark like hell. A crew of pirates has their ship wrecked, so they built a shack on the beach. The shack lies between a very old banyan tree on its right and a group of coconut palm trees on its left, but they are all on the right side of the image. It sits on stilts cut from branches and trees from the jungle behind the hideout and wooden planks from the deck of their ship. It is self-evident that these are their only source of wood. Part of a white canvas sail drapes over the shack’s entrance and offers some shelter, it is not black or blue, nor there was a pattern on it. A clothesline rope hangs from a broken mast stuck in the sand and a coconut palm, where pirate clothes are hung. There are five clothes in total, four is too few, six is too many, seven is right out…
Dantalion read through it, and read it again, then he got tired before his third attempt. He imagined, that whoever wrote this would expect sixty paintings with nearly identical components, composition, and color schemes. Dantalion could hardly find this different from the standard exam for one to enter Heaven. Is this the wit mankind ate the forbidden fruit for? What will the apprentices learn from it?… Are pirate stories still relevant? If Dantalion could not resolve the mysteries, who is he to serve as an architect of Pandemonium?
Suddenly, Dantalion felt a gentle grasp on his shoulder. It was the maiden, smiling and shaking her head without a word. He knew, and she knew, he was out of his tricks. Before Dantalion was about to apologize in grief, the maiden put something refreshing in his hands.
It was a bottle of ale, how kind – so Dantalion thought. Gracefully he opened the cap and drank his sentiments all in. Then, a revelation came to his mind. Alas, compared to the eternity of the afterlife, or even just the future decades of human age, the perfection of a single academic assignment was not that important. Why not just use the time to have some fun? The maiden is going to Hell anyway. Dantalion was about to share these thoughts with the maiden as he finished one bottle, but the maiden gave him another. Then, she drank her toss with a brave gesture, which motivated Dantalion to keep drinking more. The maiden could really talk – from how she designed her first original character when she was 5 to how having class online completely destroyed the college experience, all spiced up by the bubbled texture of the carbonated beverage. Dantalion could talk even more, from the creation of the known universe to random trivia of demon lords, nothing is secret other than what Dantalion’s Lord would think about his report when he went back.
Bottle by bottle, Dantalion lost the track of time, and Dantalion was happy.