“Very well, Wormsap, you’ve got my attention. What are these things?”
“New standard equipment for the associates, Master Screwtape.”
“Hmmm. Tridents have served the security goblins well for millennia. I wasn’t aware of any compelling need to replace them. Though, I confess, these implements do possess a certain barbarity.”
“Did you think that one up all by yourself, sir?”
“Did you answer my question, Wormsap?”
“It’s a question of symmetry, sir. Without compromising efficiency, of course.”
“Symmetry?”
“The agents of the [ptui!] Adversary are equipped with harps, are they not? Why shouldn’t ours be equipped with harpoons?”
“Did you think that one up all by yourself?”
“I’m surprised no one’s thought of it before, sir.”
“They probably have. But I’ll take the idea to H.E.L.L.’s next Board meeting and find out. Who knows, they may even like it. But, so help me, Wormsap, if after these things get issued, I hear about drunken sailors even once …! If there isn’t anything in our Rules and Regulations forbidding such insolence, there soon will be.”
“Yes, sir.”