Through the week, I spent my entire days in the library, reading as much as I could. I didn't borrow anything (the librarian was an honest-to-God dragon with gold scales and smoke always curling from his nostrils). I immersed myself in fictional lands, stories about fantasy worlds and even 'realistic fiction' (as if I knew what the difference between that and 'fantasy fiction' was anymore, being in hell itself) about strange worlds and mystical beings. 

I read textbooks and spellbooks. Apparently imps like me could create illusions and astral projections. Each higher tier demons had powers of the lower tiers, and additional ones, so us imps couldn't do anything a higher demon couldn't, which was why we weren't useful for much other than forced labor. 

At tier-3, the 'gallu' demon tier, as it was called, demons could cast healing spells and shielding spells, which gave them a lot of opportunities since many higher demons didn't have time to do healing or shielding magic. I didn't know why one would need healing magic when demons were immortal. Were there demon diseases?

A few books and one day later I had answered that question.

Demons who entered the mortal world could die.

If a demon took the job of a convocate and was summoned by a witch into the mortal world--something which couldn't happen everywhere since the government put spells to restrict summoning zones so that only certain locations were summoning zones--it could die if it had no host body. Demonic possession was real.

And if I could get myself summoned, maybe I could get out of hell. Maybe I could somehow release myself... whether through my death or some witch magic to resurrect myself. I wasn't super clear on how witch magic worked... 

But alas... imps like me weren't allowed to be convocates.

I'd gotten my hopes up for a way out of this place but ultimately that led to nothing.

I was going to become a slave, and there was nothing I could do about it.

And now it was the last day of the week I had been given.

I would be consigned tomorrow.