Interlude Two: Field Assignment

            The call had come in at the Earth Help Center. Peorth had answered it, and she was leaving for Earth to fulfill the caller's wish. Tomaas absently noted that she didn't seem too happy about the job. There were times when she seemed to truly enjoy working here, and there had been times when he had seen her thoroughly despise it.

            Women, Tom mused. I'll never understand them. He waited until she was gone, then left the Earth Help Center's office to discreetly follow his friend.

            Peorth sighed. It was one of those clients again. It wasn't that she held a grudge against men in general, but she had made the experience that callers like this one – old and middle-aged men – seemed to hold a preference for one of three things: power, which she couldn't grant directly, money, which she could, and – probably due to her provacative style of clothing and apparent youth – a night with her.

            Looking around the room, she marvelled at its inhabitant's lack of taste. When the owner came into the room, she put on the best smile she could muster, and said, "Hi! My name is Peorth, Goddess first class, unlimited license. I'm here to grant you one wish of your heart's desire. Here is my card." She gently laid the piece of paper in the man's hand.

            She tried not to show it, but she felt anxious. As she had expected, the old man didn't bombard her with a load of questions. Rather, he seemed to be contemplating, and taking his time.

            The demon sat on the roof on the next building over, watching the scene with a slightly amused sneer on her face. She cracked her knuckles and got ready to interfere with the wish-granting. She grinned devilishly as she thought about the havoc her little virus would cause in the Yggdrasil mainframe and Ultimate Force system. It would be fun, indeed.

            "I wish, just once, to see a sunset with my own eyes and share it with my wife."

            Peorth gaped before she remembered to close her mouth. She quickly likend up with the Yggdrasil database and called up the man's data. Hmm. Married, three children, one grandchild. Wife is still alive, but he has been blind since birth.  The goddess was pleasantly surprised, and revised her opinion of human males. They couldn't all be that bad.

            She felt the energy build up inside her. Peorth lifted off from the ground, levitating a foot above it. Every small object that wasn't bolted to the floor or the walls began circling around her in a cyclone of objects, as the magical vortex started building up around her.

            The demon could feel the power focusing on the house before her, and she knew it was time to act. If she wanted to disrupt the wish-granting process, she'd have to move fast. She grinned.

            The demoness began chanting. A small mandala that had previously been concealed with a minor invisibility spell formed under her feet.

            The objects floating around Peorth moved faster and faster. Then, a bolt of magical energy shot out of her forehead goddess marking all the way to Heaven.

            The last rune slid into place, and the mandala was complete. The demoness smiled evilly as she prepared to add her own little program to the datastream that was travelling from the goddess's Yggdrasil uplink any moment.

            Something cold touched the skin at the base of her throat. She froze and glanced down to be blinded by the reflection of the setting sun on the metal blade of a sword.

            "Trust me, you so do not want to mess with that wish," a male voice announced. A demon doesn't take threats easily. With the wish granting process nearing its end, she knew she had to act fast. Backing off from the sword, she readied a forcebolt.

            Tomaas leaped to the side as the forcebolt smashed into the ground where he had been a moment before, leaving a smoking crater behind. He silently swore and struck a defensive stance with his sword. While he couldn't afford to kill the demon due to the doublet system that bound the life of a demon to that of a goddess, his opponent had no such restrictions.

            He leapt aside as his opponent fired another forcebolt at him. This one came a lot closer to hitting, and left a bloody streak across the back of his hand. Tomaas swore and the demoness smiled evilly as she realized who she was dealing with and recognized his weakness.

            She started to levitate and threw out more, albeit weaker, forceboltsat him. The swordsman dodged them, launching into an intricate dance-like series of moves, his silver blade twirling around him, moving in towards her. The demoness backflipped into the middle of her mandala as a column of light shot from the next building over into the sky.

            She began chanting, activating the mandala.

            "Oh no, you don't," Tomaas growled, and tossed his sword at her. The blade hit, glancing off her upper arm. Being a human-made weapon, it wasn't able to kill the demoness – and that hadn't been his intention. However, it did hurt the demoness enough to interrupt her concentration. The mandala faded as the spell went awry.

            Tom summoned his blade back to him and faded back into the shadows as the demon's retalitation strike struck the ground.

            Peorth returned to the floor, exhausted. "Wish granted," she said. The old man opened his eyes and blinked rapidly, his mind trying to make sense of the new sensory input. As he stared out of the window, Peorth prepared to leave. As she went through the camery, the last thing she heard was a faint, "Thank you."

            When Peorth returned to the Earth Help Center, she walked up to Tomaas. He was leaning on a wall, seemingly calm, observing the various goddesses at their posts in the EHC. She grinned. "No demons," she teased.

            He just nodded. "You did your job, and no one interfered. Congratulations." When he offered her his hand, she spotted a white, blood-stained bandage on his right hand. "What's this?"

            Tomaas shrugged off her inquisitive glare. "Just a scratch."

            "When did you get it?"

            "Not too long ago."

            She stared at him, her tiredness evaporating instantly as she considered the implications of his words. "You were down there, weren't you? I thought I felt something familiar during my uplink with Yggdrasil." Tom looked passive. "Let's just say it was a farewell gift from a first-class demoness," he replied.

            Peorth concentrated and cast a minor healing spell, then leaned against the wall beside him. "Thanks," she whispered. Tomaas simply nodded in acknowledgement and went back to the main area of the Earth Help Center.