Somewhere, a door leads not where it's supposed to, but instead - to a bar.
"...Hi," someone very pale and holding themselves carefully says, glancing over the newcomer, "Welcome to Milliways. I'm guessing it's new to you."
Someone significantly less pale - a somewhat eye-searing shade of fiery orange, in fact - grins widely at the appearance of a potential source of information, and stops spinning around trying to look at all of it at once. "Mill-i-ways, what a name for a place, it is! It is new to me! What is it?"
Someone with a nigh-supernatural threat sensor might notice that, despite being (a) unarmed, (b) smiling disarmingly, and (c) barely over six feet tall even with a tall set of spiraling horns, the demon is not at all harmless.
Of course he does. That was most of the reason for the hesitant initial reaction.
"Milliways is a magic interdimensional bar that sometimes steals doors from random universes and lets interesting people in. You can meet just about any sort of person here. There are rules - no nudity and no violence in the main bar area. I am told there is someone working Security who can definitely handle us both. I do not care to test this claim and accordingly have not committed any violence, nor do I plan to."
"Aww, where's your sense of fun? Bars are the best places for fights and getting arrested is hilarious - no, no, don't worry about me, I am a responsible and polite member of society who would never dream of committing violence in such a lovely establishment." He spreads his arms and hands illustratively: look, no weapons. This is of course a completely symbolic gesture, but seems to be sincere.
He peers at the stranger, who has implicitly claimed to be interesting. "So, interdimensional stranger, what makes you an interesting person?"
"A crystal ball!" He claps his hands in childish delight. "Oh, wizards never let me touch their things, they're always going on about how they'll die before they let me corrupt their life's work or whatever, it's so unfair... this of course I will definitely not do to your very nice crystal ball, I have never corrupted anything in my whole life, everyone is just mean to me because the see the horns and the hooves, you know, and suddenly I'm scary."
This is to a significant degree objectively false, but he really does believe it.
Now, what to offer to pay with ...
Giggle. "I am not really the type, no," he agrees. "I did however recently acquire a few very shiny rocks!" (Which he totally did not in any way murder a jeweler for. Also, the jeweler had it coming.)
He reaches into an inner pocket of his silk coat and produces a gemstone. It is reasonably obvious he has no idea how much it's worth, but the answer is 'a fair amount,' if Nick knows anything about shiny rocks.
Three questions! How traditional.
"Oh, I already know the meaning of life!" he says brightly. "No one ever seems to understand the explanation, though. Hmm. What about how questions, suppose I asked it 'how do I regrow a severed arm,' will it show me how to cast a regeneration spell?"
Nod, nod. "I shall!"
He skips over to the bar and addresses it in the obvious expectation that the barkeep is invisible. The resulting napkins are peered at fascinatedly, and then he hands over another gemstone and pats the bar delightedly when it vanishes. Presently he has received in exchange a glass of something blue and slightly luminescent, a plate of some unidentifiable raw meat, several sheets of paper, and an inkpen, the collection of which will occupy him for at least a short time.
He is moderately familiar, at least, in the way of people who've definitely encountered plenty of human blood but maybe not ever actually drunk any. He flashes a fangy, approving smile, but doesn't comment.
After a little while Ashiok presents Nick with eight slips of paper, reading:
freedom
sharp
s͜p̵͘í͜͜r̕a͢l̨͜
̼͉f̩̲l̸̡̙̪͇̳̰̪̣̀m̧̡͎̗̹͙̗a̡͙̰̝̣͇d̨͉̩̕h͏̭̮͙̠͟ ̧̧͓̝̼
z͚͕͔̗̞y͏͓̟y̶̪͕͍̻̦̺̙̙̮͝z̶͏̲̞͕m̛̘̲̦̼͔̀
̵̴̯͉͉̱̰͞t̹͍̬ͅe̵̛͙ȩ̴̨̯̯̳̻ṭ̞̝̳͝͝h̨͏̙̠
̙̬͇̫̠ṿ̨̡͚̭̩̖͇̟į̡͚͔̻͔͈r͎͚͞ͅc̡̮̫͞l̺͖̼̪̲͍̩̭͠y͏̝̝w̸͙̰̜͢w̗͉̗͜
d̏ͫ̏͏̬͚̳̞i̴̘̣͉̥͖̤͇͎͇͌̈́͗̚͠f̛͎͕̲̯̳͇͙͍̏͒ͫ͐̏͆̀̔ͤq̢̛̞̣̝͉̯̮̉̀̌̈̑̅́ͭ̃ḿ̛͕̤ͯͩͩͣ̀͐ͭ̏z͔̝͇̥̦̹͍̀͊́͝͠y̸̘̝̦͚̒̊͌̍̅͢ͅr̵̳̯͉̈̐̅̍ͅ
"Dangerous ideas!" he giggles, secure in the knowledge that this is totally not what they're for. (That's totally what they're for.) "That would require them to contain any ideas! They don't, promise, they mean things that don't mean anything, that's sort of the point - okay, okay, let me try again..."
Scribble scribble.
freedom
sharp
laughter
spiral
unholy
teeth
cold
darkness
Of course. Gotta trust your wizards to inexplicably always have sources of fire even though they're the ones with all the flammable paper.
"Shiny." Ashiok admires the crystal ball, as yet free of interesting visions, for a long moment. "Oh! Just to be clear, I should mention, I said 'sword' before and I wouldn't mind a sword but actually ideally I want something more like this?" From nowhere, or possibly the void, he produces a weapon rather taller than himself with a wickedly spiked hooked, bladed end.
He steps over to the door and wedges it carefully open with the blade, which with any luck is sufficiently attached to him that it counts as him holding the door himself, so that the crystal ball can "see" into his world.
"Okay, magic ball of wisdom," he says sunnily, "where can I find the very coolest magic bladed polearm?"
Mysteriously understandable painful nonsense full of purpose! Ashiok's very favorite thing!!
He is so thrilled with the crystal ball. He might be a tiny bit ominously glowing, with how enthusiastic he is about the crystal ball.
And now he has a quest.
"Eeeheheheeeeeheee," he trills, as the vision fades and Nick comes back into focus, "you're my favorite wizard."
Not technically a wizard. Yeah, okay, he can understand that, he is also technically-not-a-wizard by many definitions. Nod, nod. "No, no, three is the number that it should be, can't have too many quests at once or I'll forget 'em." Thoughtful hum. "Do I now do the writing-on-pages thing again or is 'how do I fix mind control without any holy nonsense' a clear enough question by itself?"
Instincts? What instincts? Ashiok has totally sensible, not at all evil reasons to want to be rid of his reliance on paladins to keep his minions from being dominated!
... Right?
"Ah, excellent. Okay, so, magic crystal ball," it's so pretty, he wants one - best to avoid stealing from wizards magic-users who know him, though, that never works out very well - "how do I find a non-holy artifact or a spell that'll let me get rid of mind control?"
Burny is a weird feeling. It's not quite totally unfamiliar, he has ever met enough fire to get through the demonic resistance, but - weird.
He shivers slightly, confused and discomfited.
Can he focus on one of the options to get more information about it, or is he stuck with the metaphorical indecisive shrug?
Huh. Okay. He can't fix 'dead wife,' that's among the things he is annoyingly reliant on holy nonsense for, but he can totally kill people.
And ... steal ... brain ... jars? ... this is going to be a weird quest. He is excited for his weird quest. "That one was all complicated," he complains anyway, "why is magic always so complicated, ugh." There's always so many books! What is it with the books! Why can he not just devour people's souls and learn their spells or something, that would be so much cooler and less boring.
"But they spend a lot of time and effort making it still hard, instead, because they are masochists or something?" A wiser person might at this point have noticed that Nick is impatient for him to leave; he is not that person. "My third question should be easy, though, I just want to know where to find a dragon somewhere along the path of those other things. Not like, a really big dragon necessarily, I don't wanna be dead, but not a baby one," he sticks out his tongue and makes an expressive blegh face, "they're all bones."
"Only the really little ones!" He gestures illustratively with his hands. "They're all, you know, wings and tail and bones, like starving lizardy sparrows." He fetches more paper willingly enough, and this question is at least a little easier than the last one, modulo having to be careful not to accidentally write chaos instead of normal words. He can totally have preferences about dragons, it's not like trying to describe the abstract concept of awesomeness.
fat
lazy
fire
smallish
eggs
cave
alone
spices
... what, spices are valuable, he can totally hope for a dragon that hoards them. Deliciously.
... okay that's not his favorite mountain but he will totally take it.
Bounce, bounce. Resist urge to try to murder the blood drinking diviner-artificer-whatever for his crystal ball, that really seems very unlikely to work and he has at least heard of the concept of a self preservation instinct.
"Thank you!" he says instead, quite sincerely, and skips off, humming a somewhat discordant tune.