Dodd returned to the servants’ quarters. She lit as much of the room as she could with a tiny will-o-the-wisp that stayed hovering in the air. The flames reflected off untold amounts of miscellaneous metal and even revealed a bunch of other crap.

With the patience of a needleworking mother, Dodd set to work cataloguing the armor and separating the useful from the not.

Among the items she found were:

- A perfume bottle the size of a flask, complete with a fancy squeezy thing to pump out the stuff. Except it didn’t hold just any old perfume, and Dodd could tell that immediately. Whatever the pinkish-orange substance inside of it was, it smelled strongly to her—unlike the scents that the mortals of Gaia spritzed themselves with. It must have held some sort of enchantment, she figured. Maybe it had been Nyx’s shapeshifting aid before they’d developed their powers? No way to identify it safely.

- A crossbow that nearly fell apart when Dodd picked it up. It felt like a series of bolted-together twigs with all the strength of a rusty Erector set. It still held a few arrows. They were tiny enough that they stretched the length of Dodd’s arm.

- Oven mitts.

- A crude drawing (in only one sense) of an unidentifiable young person with shaggy red hair holding and yelling at a vaguely spear-like tripod tool. Two strange panes of glass, apparently for aiding vision, were set on the bridge of the person's nose. Based on the glimpses Dodd had gotten of Nyx’s room (which they would not risk letting the servants into), the picture might have been drawn by Nyx themself, or by an old friend. Demons didn’t care for drawings. They had much more effective ways of recording images via impressions from the mind.

- Eighteen tarnished metal helmets, with and without visors. Seven chestplates. Loads of other armor bits, many of which Dodd couldn’t identify, much less place on a mortal body. All of them seemed decades old and past their prime. Also, none of them would fit an imp.

- A few old leather pouches, belts, leg straps, and fanny packs. Dodd tossed a pouch into her personal pile of straw. Nyx would have to excuse the shred of impudence it took for an imp to claim her own private property.

- Five tiny vials with translucent miasma inside. More enchantments and hexes. Three were labelled with tags that stuck out from their black corks: “Binding.” Two were unidentifiable.

- Two broken swords. A handful of tips from spears and arrows. A thin wooden staff. A single old boot.

- A few more interesting weapons, again rusted to shit. A chain scythe. Crude nunchucks. A spiked mace. Dodd particularly liked the stack of chakram, although she almost cut her finger on them, not realizing at first glance that they were even sharp.

- A wooden briefcase containing a variety of daggers and knives. A few of their shapes were pretty peculiar—hooked, thin, inconveniently ridged—and several of them had oddly colored stains on them. It took Dodd a good long minute to realize that this was a gift collection of fancy cooking knives. Even she was nauseated. She set it aside.

- Three elegant, courtly costumes. Rather, they had been elegant once upon a time. Now their velvet capes and silky pants were flea-bitten. They glowed with mustiness.

And that was it! Dodd took a moment to sigh and rest. It’d been fulfilling to sort through this pile once and for all, even if it hadn’t made this room any less crowded. Hopefully Nyx could sell the unsalvageables at whatever the demonic equivalent of a garage sale was.

Dodd was about to open the door and holler when another thoomp and a terrible scream gave her a jolt.

“IMPS! NOW!”

Dodd grabbed a weapon and hurried out as fast as she could.

The sounds had come from the kitchen, where Nyx stood facing the firepit stove in the wall. They had a dagger in one hand and the ridged Hellrazor in the other, panting fast and heavy.

“They’re here, you’ll see them,” Nyx breathed.

“But what exactly—”

Another terrible shriek. Nyx backed against the counter so hard that the pans hanging from the ceiling clattered and several fell screaming to the ground.

The shriek had come from Nyx.

Felicity rushed in, and Dodd whispered to her, “I don’t see them.”

For whatever reason, the wood imp looked deeply disappointed. Unimpressed. “That’s because they’re small,” she whispered.

“Y-you don’t have any weapons.”

Felicity snapped, “I won’t need any!”

“Shut up!” Nyx cried. “The first one to make fun of me gets kicked in the face!”

“They’re bugs,” said Felicity.

“It’s a phobia, man! And therapy doesn’t even exist in this world!”

A bug the size of a bullet ran across the floor. Nyx leaped backward and cried out again.

Dodd sighed. “Well, intruders are intruders. Did you find anything good, Felicity?”

“Hardly. You?”

Dood took out the chakram. “Here, have one,” she offered.

“Uh, there’s only one.”

She was right. It was “chakram” singular. Sad.