Research

After her little trip down Memory Lane, Delilah swung her legs over the edge of the bed and rose to her feet. She was bored. She glanced toward her overfilled bookshelf- at this point the shelves were bowing- and sighed heavily. She'd already read everything there multiple times. She really needed to get back to the Surface again some time soon and gather more. There was so much information out there, and she was always eager to learn as much as she could.

She picked up her clothing from the day and went to hang it up in her wardrobe. A quick muttered enchantment and it was lovely and clean. Probably cleaner than it was when she'd stolen it. Being a demon meant she didn't perspire, so her clothes never smelled- unless she got them covered in blood that is- but the Underworld was dusty and sooty, and she hated walking around covered in dirt. A lot of the others clearly didn't mind, and she often turned up her nose at the demons who passed her looking like hobos. Really, have a little self respect. How could the humans possibly take the Underworld seriously if everyone walked around looking like a homeless person? It didn't make any sense either, because the enchantment was so easy. She'd learned it in her first year as a demon. Her Father had always taught his recruits to take pride in themselves.

With her clothing put away Delilah decided that she might go to the library- yes, even the Underworld had libraries- and see if she could gain any more information that would help with her Master's current mission. Of course this meant getting dressed again, but thankfully she could just throw on a shift dress and her black hooded cloak and be done with it. She only wore the cute little girl clothes when dealing with humans or her Master. It fooled the humans, and it made her Master feel even more superior. She liked making him feel that way, being underestimated was a huge benefit in this life.

Delilah made her way through the dimly lit streets of the Underworld, hood up and head down in order to avoid being stopped for a chat by any of her fellow demons. While demons might be intimidating on the job, there were an awful lot like humans in social situations. They liked to stop and have a chat, find out how you were doing with your current job. Of course it was mostly so that they could mock you if you were failing and gloat if they were doing well, but then humans weren't much different. The only difference was that demons admitted to the reasoning behind their banter. Demons had a reputation for being liars- at least among the humans that actually believed in them- but they were far more honest than any human Delilah had ever met. Of course there were exceptions to the rule, but most of them were truthful.

The library was not far from her living quarters, which was one of the reasons she'd chosen to live where she did, and she managed to make it without being stopped. Once inside she took down her hood, and immediately began perusing the shelves for any information she could find on Necromancy. She'd done this many times before, but now that she had more information, she had a specific goal in mind. Defeating minion drones was easy, but she knew that if Sakareth was forming an army, these drones would be much more difficult to take down. She needed to know everything possible about battling drones. Of course ideally they needed to take down Sakareth herself, but they wouldn't even be able to get to her without defeating the drones.

Delilah was very curious about Sakareth. She'd only ever encountered male high level demons and necromancers. She wondered what Sakareth had done to become so powerful. Her Master wanted to kill Sakareth and take her place, but Delilah wanted to learn from her. Such a high level necromancer certainly wouldn't take on an apprentice, but she didn't have to be teaching in order for Delilah to learn. Delilah would learn by fighting, as she so often had over the centuries. You could learn a lot about a necromancer by the way they controlled their drones. A lower level necromancer could only control so many before they started to weaken, the drones simply collapsing and dying where they stood. Higher level necromancers could control many more, but they had to be fairly close by in order to preserve their strength. Delilah had heard that Sakareth could control many drones from several miles away, and split them into groups with different tasks. This intrigued her, and also gave her a tactical advantage. If it was true, then they knew that wherever the drones were, Sakareth was not. Most demons would simply charge in and smash their way through the drones as quickly as possible, assuming that they would find Sakareth on the other side. Delilah knew better, and their most likely chance of success was to battle the drones, drawing out the fight while a separate faction of demons went out in search of Sakareth, miles away.

As Delilah was pondering this, she picked up a few books and took the lot over to a table in a dark corner. Reading in the dark was easy for demons, their eyes better suited to darkness than light, and it gave her a better chance of going undisturbed. She scanned contents pages in each of the books until she had all three open to the chapters written about drones. She then picked them up one at a time, and read each entire chapter twice. Delilah had a very good memory, and she found that if she read something a few times, she was able to absorb all the information she needed from it.

As she put down the last of the books, Delilah smiled to herself. Her trip here had not been in vain. She had learned a great deal about the way that drones worked. Necromancers controlled the soul within the body- this she had already known- so they were extremely difficult to kill. As the body was technically already dead, most wounds would not kill a drone. The most effective way she had ever found was to cut them in two- either by severing the head, or simply by slicing them in half- splitting the soul in two. Technically speaking a necromancer could still control both halves of the soul, but it wasn't worth the effort most of the time. What was the use of controlling a pair of legs? Or a head? Or a torso? It was much more useful to focus energy on the remaining intact drones. What Delilah hadn't known was that the death of each drone actually had an effect on the necromancer's strength. Each defeated drone drained away just a small fraction of energy, but if Sakareth had a huge army, then the deaths would add up, and she would be weakened. This was excellent news. Already Delilah had new battle strategies forming in her mind.