So You Think You Angered a Lord of Hell

Ganymede knew he was in a rough spot. He had angered a powerful demon lord, or maybe the avatar of a demon lord. He should have known better than to use her name in public. Alma and the others had been nice to him, defending him and all that, but he didn't believe that he was actually off the hook. He may not have even deserved to be off the hook.

Angering a demon lord was dangerous business - he already had one dead master thanks to an angry demon. He wanted a chance to enjoy his newfound freedom, so he needed to make this right somehow.

Caissa, as they called her, was a tutor at the school. He was able to learn this, and to track down when and where she held office hours. That was when he would approach her - he was told that people rarely attended office hours when there wasn't a test coming up.

He walked through her door holding a cupcake in a small plastic container. When their eyes met he would stare at her for a moment, fearful, before bowing and holding it out for her.

"P-please accept this humble offering."

The cupcake would still seem warm, thanks to the magic he had used on it. This wasn't all Ganymede intended to offer her, but it was a good start, he hoped.

Ganymede seemed confused by Caissa's reaction. All this time, he thought that he and Paimon - Caissa, rather - were the only ones who really understood the magnitude of his mistake. But even Caissa was telling him not to apologize, now.

He hesitated. Then, he went to shut the door, and sat down across from her. He still wanted to apologize, despite being explicitly told not to. So he did the next best thing: explaining himself.

"I didn't realize it was a secret, since your name is in books normies can find. But it should have been obvious to me that your true name is like that. My master used to say he'd turn me into homunculus parts if I ever learned his."

He avoided eye contact, staring at a spot on the table. He was still ashamed of himself.

Ganymede almost protested when she remarked that his kind was 'depressing,' but he respected her signal to wait a moment.He just silently took in the information Caissa presented. She was actually a daughter of Paimon.Her father was using her as his proxy in summonings, which made her mad. Paimon must not have raised her for this, the way he was raised for his servitude.

But she didn't blame him for revealing her father's name.

He managed to look amused when Caissa brought up item 3. Then, he decided that he would change her mind about his kind being depressing. "Here's a third thing then, to complete the set: what do you want your cupcake to taste like?"

Right now it was just vanilla, with plain icing whipped on top.

She decided on durian, so Ganymede happily cast the spell to make the cupcake taste like Durian. Caissa didn't seem too surprised by his abilities. Ganymede was a little disappointed, but he knew he shouldn't have been. She was a daughter of Paimon, after all. But she really seemed to like the flavor, and that made him happy. Even if he wasn't entirely sure how a house husband was different from a normal husband.

Everything was going better than expected. "I'm glad you like it!" he said, and then he thought about her question.

"I didn't come in here for that, no. But if it wouldn't be bothering you, I would like some help with math," he said, bashful. "Only if you don't mind."

And if she said yes, he would pull two books out of his backpack. One was a math textbook for middle school students, with a sheet of pencil-marked paper between two of its pages. He would open it to that page, where an array of pre-algebra problems sat. The other had an ornate cover, its title written in German: The Eleven Guiding Principles to Spellworking. This, he would push to the side for now.

Caissa thought he was advanced in magic! The catboy got flustered. "I-I'm not that advanced... am I?" He often compared himself to his master, the warlock who had likely dedicated over a century of his life and part of his soul to the pursuit of magic. Compared to that man, the boy knew he had been nothing.

The conversation would move back to math. Ganymede was a little skeptical at first about how good Caissa's memory was, but he didn't question it. He dutifully read out the chapter and page and problem numbers, and he admitted that he didn't know how to approach one of the word problems (but he did know how not to get the answer, and he had spent a good bit of time on that wrong answer before realizing he was doing it wrong and getting frustrated and doing something else).

As it became clearer that Caissa remembered the problems perfectly, Ganymede's jaw would drop.