They hadn't even bothered to answer the invitations. And he'd made a special point of putting RSVP on them.

"Demon?"

Eric peered around the door.

"What shape are you?" he said.

"Pretty poor shape," said Rincewind.

"I've brought you some food. You do eat, do you?"

Rincewind tried some. It was a bowl of cereal, nuts, and dried fruit. He didn't have any quarrel with any of that. It was just that somewhere in the preparation something had apparently done to these innocent ingredients what it takes a million gravities to do a neutron star. If you died of eating this sort of thing they wouldn't have to bury you, they would just need to drop you somewhere where the ground was soft.

He managed to swallow it. It wasn't difficult. The trick would have been preventing it from heading downwards.

"Lovely," he choked. The parrot did a splendid impersonation of someone being sick.

"I've decided to let you go," said Eric. "It's pretty pointless keeping you, isn't it."

"Absolutely."

"You haven't any powers at all?"

"Sorry. Dead failure."

"You don't look too demonic, come to think about it," said Eric.

"They never do. You can't trust them wossnames," chortled the parrot. It lost its balance again. "Polly want a biscuit," it said, upside down.

Rincewind spun around. "You stay out of this beaky!"

There was a sound behind them, like the universe clearing its throat. The chalk marks of the magic circle grew terribly bright for a moment, became fiery lines against the scuffed planks, and something dropped out of the empty air and landed heavily on the floor.