"don't make deals with a Devil, unless that Devil is me,
Better the devil you know, than the devil you don't,
'coz NOTHING is ever truly free, ALL Devils have a fee!"
-- 'Ancient' Terran Aussie Saying -- Adam in Darwin
[AN: Ah yes, the ancient Aussie sage of wisdom, Kylie Minogue]
It's difficult to trust a Tiefling at the best of times, and why not? They look exactly like they stepped out of a woodcut from The Temptation of Everyman. It's not their fault. Those who decide to fight the natural assumptions frequently complain that they pay the price for sins that aren't theirs. Even the ones who roll in the everyday assumptions claim that they're only catching up to the sins that made them that way.
It's only natural that the honest and dishonest alike become rogues, vagabonds, shysters and... adventurers. This one is almost a joke Tiefling. One that looked the very image of Asmodeus. Blazing red skin, eyes like fire in the night, a mouth full of shark-like teeth. Even the horns pointed upwards, telling all who saw him that this was, indeed, a Tiefling. One didn't even have to look for the tail and hooves, though they were there all the same. The claws on his fingertips were black and gleaming. Wicked and sharp. Further, he seemed to have a finely-tuned horseshit detector. So sensitive that it would go off at the slightest whiff.
"You want to pay us in gratitude? I want to know how much gratitude is worth to you. I can't speak for the rest of this group, but if you're willing to go out of your way to get gratitude, I'm willing to give up on my share of the ten percent. That's twenty thousand gold you don't have to surrender to a random asshole who'll likely blow it on ale and whores." The sharp grin was humourless. "I understand my gratitude is worth less than an empty sack... but how about the gratitude of a Duke? Would you bargain for that?"
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