"…aaand here's your room."
The monarch opened the door for the current Stolas, Octavia von Goetia, who was currently devoid of most of the powers of the office… and vested with her luggage in both hands. The bedroom in front of her was garishly pink and white, filled with traditionally feminine flourishes, and the bed itself, hopelessly ostentatious and large, was barred with a canopy, pink silk embroidered with gold draped against it.
Octavia squinted. "…gee, thanks. How soon can I leave?"
Lucifer let out a laugh, ruffling her head and displacing her beanie. "Ohh, it's alright, it'll be soon. I just thought you may enjoy Charlotte's room like she did…" A soft, longing sigh. "She isn't living with us anymore, so you won't have to worry about her coming in or bothering her stuff… she took what she wanted and left the rest behind."
"I thought she enjoyed the room."
"Well… yes, but… she grew out of it, I suppose. I don't see why she would, it's positively gorgeous! Look… the bed is even shaped like an apple!" He ran up to the canopy and moved it aside to prove his point. The sovereign, Emperor of the Ars Goetia and Lord Protector of the Underworld, grinned and giggled like a madman.
"…ugh. Fine." She placed the luggage down, clicking the handles in, and went back for the rest.
Lucifer stopped her. "Oh, no, no… you're a Goetia, Stolas. Let the eunuchs take care of it."
Octavia froze and swung to meet the emperor's eyes, a horrifically distraught expression plastered on her bird-like face. "…okay, first off, weird that you're calling me my dad's name. Please don't. Second of all, what the fuck do you mean 'eunuchs'?"
"…oh dear." Tsk tsk tsk. "Dear dear dear… did your parents tell you anything?" Lucifer leaned on the wildly extravagant vanity, crossing his legs and tapping the toe of his boot against the floor. "The servants you met… hell, the servants your father's household owned… they're eunuchs."
"…as in…"
"Yes. Servant imps had a bad tendency of… procreating and focusing on family rather than service to their court, their lord. Therefore, I decreed centuries ago that, unless you were Goetia, no men or women were allowed in any of the Goetia manors after dark. Of course, since I'm Emperor of the Ars Goetia, it applies to me as well." Lucifer gently places his hand on his own chest, closing his eyes in a haughty acknowledgement of himself.
Octavia's expression was now filled with the contradictions of stolidity and great disgust. Cringed wrinkles had appeared on her pale white face, and she squinted at the sovereign. "…where's the nearest washroom. I need to throw up."
The demon stood up and pointed to the left. "Just down the hall there, to your right."
Without a word, the Goetia stormed out, beelining straight for a water closet, and slammed the door behind her.
The emperor desperately yelled. "Enjoy your stay!"
It was early in the morning. The surgical team had assembled in one of the conference rooms, boring and grey, wooden tables and black office chairs dotting its spartan interior. Dr. Albright was in the front, notes scribbled in marker on a sheet draped over an easel made of metal bars, which he was pointing to as a lecturing aid. "…the most extreme part of the surgery, as you can likely see here, is an amputation of the left leg above the knee. However, considering previous experiences with the demon, this portion can be done without the morality- err, excuse me, mortality of the alive specimen."
The anaesthesiologist, sitting as far away from Albright as he could without being disrespectful, stared coldly at the presentation in front of him.
"We will approach the amputation similarly to that of a human leg. We will debride the skin and muscle, ligate, cut, and cauterise the various veins and arteries, and then saw through the bone. While we do this, we will leave enough tissue to construct a stump, which will then be stapled together." Dr. Albright paused. "I have sent a PDF to all of you that I expect you to read by the time of the surgery. I'm sure that all of you have already performed this procedure some time in your life, so most of this is review."
The room silently waited for Albright to continue. Instead, he made a proposition to the surgical team. "Any questions?" A few seconds pass. "Great, I expect all of you to be scrubbed in by, oh, let's say 3:00. We'll have the surgery done by the end of the workday. Sound good to everyone?" Further silence. "Alright, dismissed."
The surgical team, without a word to either each other or to Dr. Albright, obediently sat up, gathered their things, and exited the room.
Nobody had come to save him. Time has lost all meaning. His brain had been shut out of most stimulation; all he could focus on was the dull sounds of the hallway outside. He was unable to hear it before, but his being was so deprived that anything he could use to ground himself into reality was readily used. Even the pain the imp felt could be now be recorded in an encyclopedic manner. Sharp, dull, throbbing, stinging… it was no longer unwanted. It was welcome.
He no longer had any hope that he would make it out alive. No longer did he feel like his employees would come to save him, nor would anyone come to claim the grimoire from their human captors. He was alone. Even Loona… his adoptive daughter, the one who took care of him during his drunken benders, was nowhere to be found. He hallucinated escape multiple times, of the crew coming to save him… only to be drawn back down into the darkness.
His anger gyrated between his captors and his friends. He was furious he had gotten into such a position, that the humans were treating him like this… and then equally furious that those he had trusted with his life, the ungrateful bastards he paid, didn't even try to help him. He ruminated and ruminated… they had it so much better than he did. He was the only person holding them back. They had a reason to abandon him.
An anaesthesiologist walked into the medication room. They took the tranquilliser syringe out of a sterile packaging, ejecting the contents out into a garbage bin. A vial of solution, unmarked, was quickly placed on the counter. The man looked side to side, checking to see if anyone was looking. The syringe was filled with the solution, the vial was tossed, and the syringe reinserted. It was then carefully taped shut once again and placed back where it belonged.