D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

Chapter 1939: Chapter 1939 History of Stent

--- Kat ---

They were once again flying low and dealing with the cold weather. Of course, the giant portal lasers meant flying low was the only choice and the weather was expected. At least this time there was something to do. Kat herself hadn’t so much as... ’read’ the information as she had abused her demonic energy to quickly flip through the pages. Not too fast of course, she still remembered the mess that was her memories of her quick flick through the race options for Lily. Felt like so many years ago... even if that wasn’t the case, not truly.

Regardless, Kat had examined the pages in enough detail that they could be checked over in her memories and then Lily had gone through and read them properly. So what did you learn?

[A few things. Though I do sort of wish that we were able to see what was meant to fall out and what wasn’t. From what I can gather, the diary was written by someone called ’Mr Stent’ though that’s more a guess on inference because his mother was ’Judy Stent’. I suppose he couldn’t taken his mother’s name...

And I’m also guessing that this was a guy. Not sure it’s ever directly stated that he is, but it feels right to me, and if I’m wrong... well he can’t complain. Technically this conversation is all in my head.]

Kat grinned at the joke and wished to gently kiss Lily for the amusement... but currently Hedera was in her arms and the elf would probably freak out if Kat moved anywhere close to her with a kissy-face. So Lily would just have to suffice with the mental image of such an act. Considering Lily twitching slightly on Hedera’s stomach, she got the idea.

[Right so ANYWAY. A lot of what I’m relaying to you is just a guess. Most of the dairy is Mr Stent... or well, let’s just call him Stent. Most of the diary is Stent complaining about various things. Though towards the end, he would admit that complaining to the dairy made him less of an angry person... but it didn’t help as much as he might have hoped.

Stent’s father died a while back, his mother was in a coma, and he had a brother and sister that left town. It’s a little ambiguous as to if they were alive, though more the brother than the sister. The sister, who wasn’t named, left town with her husband, a merchant that travelled between towns in Winter. Despite being a merchant he mostly made his money delivering letters.

The brother... it’s harder to say. There was a lot of complaints about the brother and not a lot of details. I’m not entirely sure Stent actually knew what his brother was doing. First he’d complain about his brother finding a girlfriend, then he’d complain about his brother managing to get a high paying job in the capital, and another about hitting it big in the mines.

There are... a few other inconsistencies in the diary, especially towards the end but the brother has by FAR the most. Sometimes he was the younger brother, other times the older. At first I thought there was two or more and they all went off to do different things, but I’m nearly certain that Stent was losing his mind and there was only one brother.]

*What sort of clues point towards that?*

[Well, for one it was the lack of names ’my brother’ instead of ’one of my brothers’ or ’My oldest brother’.]

*Didn’t you just say sometimes the brother was older and sometimes younger?*

[I did yes, but they would pop up in the same paragraph when clearly talking about the same brother. I mean, it’s possible that there are multiple sure but I’m more certain there’s just one brother than I am about a couple of other details in the book.]

*Well I wasn’t really paying attention so I’ll believe you on this. Just sounds super weird.*

[Yeah it was. That’s sort of why I’m wondering if letting the damned thing fall apart would’ve been better. Honestly, less information might have told us more. So much of this garbage feels like nonsense. Knowing what might be a clue and what might not be is a massive pain in the ass.]

*Are there clues?*

[Still not sure about that. It’s part of why I was going over it with you. I’m hoping that laying it all out in simple, coherent terms will let me figure out what is and is not important, and possible what’s even real.]

*Fair, fair. Please continue.*

[Cool. So, the family situation. As far as I can tell this all started back when Stent was a kid, back when his dad was still alive. His father was the town’s main enchanter and also a blacksmith. Stent was the only one interested in the family business, and unlike his mother who is referred to as ’mother’ his father is often ’dad’ or ’old man’. Not always, but he’s never called Judy ’mom’ so... might be projecting but that doesn’t say great things.

Especially when it became clear that his mother favoured the other kids. At first, this was fine, Stent and his dad got along wonderfully. They were constantly working together on projects... until something happened. Now the town ruled it as an accident, but Stent was certain his father was murdered... and a lot of things went badly from there.

His mother bought the party line. Though having read the diary I’m not sure if Judy actually believed it, or was just trying to go along with things to protect her kids because a rival enchanter exploded into prominence. He was the mayor’s son and I’m not sure what his name is, but Stent has given him the meanspirited nickname of Donkey.

Things didn’t go great, because Stent’s father was dead, possibly murdered, and nobody wanted to believe him. In addition, a lot of the family wealth was in the workshop that exploded. Mostly because the wealth was tied up in various projects.

Stent kept going at it, rebuilding the workshop and taking a few commissions based on the things that survived, mostly stuff he was working on in his bedroom... something that his mother was ALWAYS against him doing, and with the workshop destroyed that made things worse. Judy thought it was dangerous to enchant in the house, but Stent literally had nowhere else to do anything.

As the money dried up, his sister married... and Stent thinks it was just to get away from the family. No idea if that’s true or not, but yeah things weren’t great. The issue is that shortly after this his brother left to seek his fortune. Now, I THINK he was getting a job in the big city as one of the mining project managers, but that’s a guess. Whatever the job actually was, it left Stent at home... with his mother who he didn’t like and was rather sick at this point.

Stent saw this as a major betrayal. He was left alone with someone he didn’t like and she was very sick. Which then comes into ’the incident’. The details are really, really spotty, and not much is mentioned in the dairy about it. Super vague and whatnot.

From what I can tell though? Stent was trying to enchant some things, possibly even the same thing that got his father killed. The workshop exploded AGAIN and this time the explosion was a lot bigger taking out some others nearby... or at least that’s what said.

See, there’s a few odd things here but how true they are I’m not sure. Stent seems to think it was Donkey, or someone Donkey hired to get him. Everything was ruined, once again... but unlike his father, he wasn’t around when the explosion went off. He was nowhere near the workshop at all... yet he was blamed for the explosion.

Now, the town isn’t all out to get him. From my understanding he was potentially going to get away from the incident completely free... but Donkey accused him of doing the same thing his father did, but worse. That it was his father’s fault the first time, and that Stent was clearly even worse at it. Stent attacked Donkey then and there. Three people had to step in to pull him off the other guy.

Because of this, Stent lost the land the workshop sat on, he lost a lot of what he owned in the explosion because he slept there plenty of the time. He was also banned from ever enchanting anything in the town limits, and forced to attend therapy to get over his problems.]

*That’s... something. Though how does this help us?*

[Ah, well that’s the thing. Stent didn’t stop enchanting just because he was told do. I think the diary is meant to be a hint that tells us how to break into Stent’s secret enchanting stash.]

*What’s the catch? Do we have to go back to town?*

[The catch is I have no idea where the heck it could be. At first glance Stent never even hints at its location and barely that it exists. Might be missing something honestly.]

*Hmm...*