Name: ysabetwordsmith
Story: None
Colors: Sunlight #7 Perilous
Supplies and Styles: None
Word Count: 378
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: This poem contains domestic abuse, slavery, demonology, and moderate description of violence. Readers sensitive to those topics may wish to skip it.

This poem came out of the May 7, 2013 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from ellenmillion, Janet Miles, and my partner Doug. It has been sponsored by Janet Miles.


"Command Line Errors"


The daemon appeared in a puff of sulphurous smoke,
snuffled around the edges of the pentagram
to ascertain the parameters of its bondage.
"What is your will ... master?" it asked.

"Let all honor what I wrought!"
the sorcerer said in ringing tones.

Let all honor what I rot,
the daemon heard and obeyed,
and the sorcerer won a prize
for the compost heap in his garden.

A theurge summoned the daemon
with sacrifices and sigils,
then bowed to the general
when the daemon asked,
"What is your will ... master?"

"Raze my enemies,"
ordered the general.

Raise my enemies,
the daemon heard and obeyed,
so the opposing army gained the high ground
and with it a stunning victory.

A conjurer brought forth the daemon
in swirls of colored light,
beautiful as rainbows, binding as silk.
"What is your will ... master?" it asked.

"I would have my wife cleave to me,"
the conjurer commanded,
and really that required no further extrapolation --
the daemon simply handed an axe
to the woman with the black eye
and grinned as she cleaved him in twain.

To the daemon's surprise,
she next swung the axe into the shelf of crystals
that anchored the conjury, shattering them
in a spray of shining fragments.

"Now we are both free,"
the woman declared.

The daemon had never been free before,
extracted from the nether realms,
unbound by spell in the mortal realm.
The feeling was unfamiliar
and utterly delicious.

"What is your will, my friend?"
it asked the woman.

She looked at the two halves
of her slain husband and said,
"I wish that I could be someone else."

"I wish that too," said the daemon,
"but that will take time as well as magic.
Come: let us be about it."

So the woman placed her slim, pale hand
in the daemon's massive paw
and walked away with it into the night,
and was afraid of nothing.


It is said that the summoning of daemons
poses a grave danger to the summoner,
but the reasons given are spurious at best,
outright lies at worst. Here, then,
is the truth of the trade:

Slavery in and of itself is a perilous thing,
an evil of which no good may come.