It was a clerk outside the capital that explained it to them. They had decided to capture her because her tiny horns bespoke a touch of infernal blood, so she had to be carrying something important, right? Turned out to be crop records of all things. She had been absolutely indignant when one of the heroes had tossed a ledger aside, snatching it up and brushing dirt from the pages. “Idiots! Crop records are important! They show weather patterns, predict tax income, give figures for where and what relief is needed when things change for the worse. That’s the problem with you muscle bound types, you don’t understand how things -work-.”
Mirae tried to smile, the young woman was pretty if you ignored the horns and golden eyes. “Well, why don’t you explain it to us? Why does a demon lord care about disaster relief and taxes?”
The clerk gave Mirae a skeptical look, then looked at the drawn swords of two of the other heroes and turned back to Mirae as the best of a bad lot. “Because Hell runs on the souls of the damned, and people can only be damned if they choose to be evil.”
Mirae frowned, “But if people are hungry, they’ll steal to feed their families.”
The clerk nodded, “But that’s desperation, it’s not evil.”
Mirae frowned more in frustration, “He should be making it illegal to go to temples, or ban healers to force people to break the law.”
The clerk sighed, “Once again, desperation, not evil. Turning to prostitution to feed your kids isn’t evil. Lying to avoid execution isn’t evil. Working holy-days, eating forbidden food, breaking laws to save lives Is. Not. Evil. Evil has to be a choice. An uncoerced choice to do unnecessary harm. Oh sure, under the old system we got the souls of a few nobles who enjoyed being at the top and hurting people. But NOW?”
The clerk grins, and the grin seemed to have a few too many teeth. “Now people have a CHOICE. They choose to torment their neighbors, or to steal from taxes that would feed the poor, or to attack those who are weaker. Not out of hunger or desperation but out of their own pride…
“Before we fed on a few nobles a year… now we get plenty of ordinary people as well.
“And now… we get heroes.”
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