Loki shook his head.
"You're thinking too much. I only made an educated guess based on what's in front of me. I remember being dragged away before falling 'asleep'."
The darkness seemed to pulse at his answer before it grew to absorb the spikey face demon into the collective unending depth of the abyssal darkness.
As the peering eyes started to discuss with each other through gazes, Loki noticed a pair of eyes that he could've sworn were part of the same demon, which looked at each other too as if the eye on the left was consulting with the one on the right.
Loki felt the attack on his body lessen slowly as he didn't need to steal away his corruption anymore.
And almost immediately because of the reduced burden on his spirit and his mind his instincts picked up something strange about the place he was in.
"...we heard from 'Him' that you chose to help 'Him' as payment."
Loki smiled mentally.
'They're quick…no time to waste for them…they're probably tired from waiting for so long to get their 'home' back.'
"Yes, I did. And I hope you don't mind parting with a few precious things along the way to help me help you. After all, you want to go back don't you?"
Loki maintained a professional smile throughout but when the demons didn't bother responding, he frowned.
And since it seemed that they were waiting for him to do so, the creatures of the abyss spoke once again.
"We don't need to go back."
Loki's brows rose but a bit to express his surprise, "And why is that if I might ask?"
"We've integrated well enough into the society of the Wizards and have changed our ways and methods to get what we want without being hunted down for it… truth be told, you're more of an annoyance for us than anything."
"I see…" Loki nodded.
'Do they really think I'm such a pushover?'
'Do they think I don't realise that they're trying to get me to owe them a favour by begging them to help me since I've already agreed to Salazar Slytherin's request?'
'How can a scammer scam the god of scammers without even praying to him first!?'
Loki observed the flesh bags hiding within the darkness carefully. Trying to understand if he was being tricked or if there was some rationality to it all.
Especially since his decryption abilities were ringing like a bell being rung on a shore after spotting pirates.
'A few genuinely want to remain here.'
'While a few others want to swindle me.'
'But the rest…they're acting like they truly need me for something…'
'What could a group of demons isolated from the world, and protected by a True God need from a mere Sequence 4?'
'Would there even be a reason for them to ask for my help instead of Salazar himself?'
'And why do I get the sense that the worried ones are the stronger ones?'
'Interesting…'
And after some quick thinking, Loki crafted a perfectly annoying frown on his face.
"....is that so…" Loki said with some disappointment.
The eyes in the abyss bobbed up and down ever so slightly following the movement of his head.
"I understand…" Loki said, as he easily caught several of those eyes twitch in happiness when he said that, but Loki continued since they were too weak to even cater to, "Then I'll have no choice but to ask my lord for help…"
Before any of the fleshbags even realised what was happening, a dense and alienating feeling of suppression left Loki.
Grey Fog manifested around Loki, rolling off his body like a geyser, as Loki manipulated his connection to the castle to draw more of it than he currently could with the help of the Sequence 3 Beyonder Characteristic.
"....you think you have a choice?" Loki said with a tremble in his tone as it cracked randomly, his eyes already focused on something much further in the darkness, hidden as if cowering from something, or someone.
There was silence for a few seconds as the demons looked bewildered at what was happening, moving away from Loki so as to avoid touching any of the grey fog that was pouring out of him.
Their eyes immediately crashed to the ground, not daring to even so much as glance at him from their periphery.
They couldn't possibly know what it was, but their instincts as demons screamed danger of the highest order, and so they unhesitatingly followed, even the strongest ones.
Loki's robes aired out, the grey fog slithering around his body as it covered the right half of his face in a mysterious way, appearing as if hiding an entity far beyond comprehension speaking to their madness.
That was when every single demon in the area felt it.
A sickeningly sweet smell, an aroma they couldn't hope to resist.
It was as if they'd been offered their greatest desire right in their mouths.
For the very first time in a while, every single demon in the area, even those as strong as demigods found themselves succumbing to a simple attack-
Their eyes lulled as their vision blurred.
Their flesh bags relaxed.
And their minds calmed down.
A simple corruption spilled into their minds from their subconscious.
They felt pleasant.
Loki however only gave them a single glance before his eyes landed in the darkness of the Abyss and spoke in a cracked tone, "Out with it."
The demons all slowly stretched out their hands and placed their sharp clawed fingers before their temples, ready to bore into it at the mention of a single word.
As Loki had decrypted, it was clear to him that if the Demons actually didn't want to move from this place, it meant one of two things, or even both at once.
Either the demons really liked this place since it was guarded by Salazar Slytherin himself and kept separated from the 'real' world so that no threats could harm them.
Making all of them into glorified bags of fleshy paper weights not wanting to risk going out of their way to 'return the glory of their ancient elders'.
Or, the second option that occurred to Loki which got his attention even more.
"A demon succumbing to emotions…oh my…how far you've fallen Farbauti…" Loki whispered, his voice and tone laced with desire so strong that it evoked feelings of dread and despair in the one hidden in the shadows.
The eyes of every demon not fully drenched in desire, instantly widened at the mere mention of the name, as most suddenly snapped from fright and began to tremble with their arms and bodies doing their best to snap out of control from Loki's manipulation.
Loki noticed keenly how even his desire manipulation based on the sea of subconscious couldn't stop the demons' from trembling as soon as the name was mentioned.
But not one to miss out on such a perfect opportunity to study a weakened True God, Loki continued with a smile.
"I have one option for you." Loki said while pulling out a 'special' monocle from his pocket and looking into the shadows in the distance.
After carefully looking at it for a while he simply tossed the monocle into the air, his fingers flicking it to give it a spinning flip.
"If it touches the ground, I'll leave and never return. You can keep your hopes of me doing anything with yourself after that..This one is my blessed…if you have the courage to trick him, then you must be prepared to trick yourself first."
With those words, Loki vanished without a word, 'taking' Tom with him.
Gone was the Grey Fog and the sense of suppression that the demons felt.
As the Monocle flipped through the air because of Loki's toss, every demon looked at it with horror as they each slowly realised what it was.
They could feel about the same level of power from the item as they had from Loki from before he revealed the Grey Fog.
Meaning that it had everything in it from the Sequence 9 to the Sequence 4 Beyonder Characteristics in it.
A mystical artefact!
The monocle reached the apex of its toss as the demons held their breaths with worry, unable to make up their minds about what they should do in this current situation.
One of the demons, less affected by Loki's desire manipulation since he had applied his own desire manipulation skills onto himself as soon as he 'felt' emotions to lessen the impact, managed to think quickly as a coldblooded.
He would sacrifice one of them to see if they could touch it without being killed and then deliver the Monocle to their Lord In The Shadows.
Within an instant, the demon amplified the corrupting desire of greed and envy into the weakest demon nearest to the monocle.
Before anyone even realised what happened, the grotesque demon, half bird, half worm, split right down the middle, shot towards the monocle to 'consume' it directly with its now exposed stomach to swallow it whole.
Except, just as the demon reached the monocle and tried accommodating it into his body, he passed through it harmlessly, as if what he'd just touched was an illusion.
Each pair of eyes floating in the Abyss widened as their pupils shrunk to the size of a pinhole.
Had 'Loki' tricked them? Did he honestly want to start a war with the demons by humiliating them?
With each moment the Monocle fell, the tension in the Abyss thickened.
But just as the monocle was about to fall to the floor of the Abyss, a single hand grabbed it out of the air.
The hand was pale, as if it hadn't seen the sun in a million years.
The nails were coloured black with dried blood.
And had Loki not left yet, the hand would've been at his feet in this moment.
The hand slowly lifted as the wisps of shadows clouding the body of the man started to unravel themselves.
He wore simple but 'fashionable' clothes. Any muggle would've been stunned by their sense of design had it not been for the sickening 'human skin colour' leather it was made out of.
Intricate reliefs containing stories of various battles were carved into the skin shirt, blood still pumping around it, highlighting the thin details, while bones formed buttons and smouldering hair interweaved in their holes before rising upwards like thin threads into the darkness.
If not driven mad to death by the clothes the person was wearing, the person would've surely died of fright when they laid their gazes upon the man's head.
The man's jaw was strangely normal.
Lips blackened by dried blood remained plump and fresh.
A nose whose pointed end, pierced by a taurus ring, remained sharp and chiseled.
Weirder were the cheeks painted with dry blood that formed strange elusive patterns that shifted around while making any that lay eyes upon them succumb into a state of dysphoria.
But even weird was the upper half of the man's head.
Or the lack there of.
Everything above that was a single crooked branch, filled with deep burning cracks coursing with what looked like souls of the dead, screaming in despair, shrieking for an end.
Red pupils surrounded by an abyss like black sclera peered through the newly emerging holes on his skin on his hands as they carefully examined the simple monocle held in it.
Almost immediately all the floating pairs of eyes in the surroundings collapsed to the ground, not daring to even breathe in front of the person in front of them for even a second.
"Hmm…a challenge…?"
"From a mere brat?"
And then the darkness trembled.