Here’s a thought; after the “soul splice” runs out, do the three evil souls go away, or do they still hang around ? And when one of the fiends decides to call in his share of time with V’s soul, does the evil soul get to move in and take charge for that time ?
Especially dangerous since V is unlikely to mention that he’s making deals with the lower planes to the rest of the Order. So no one will know that an evil dead mage is in control until it’s much too late.
Not only that, but an evil dead mage capable of casting epic spells.
Also, the splice lasts as long as V “can” hold onto it, not “wants to” hold onto it. Is it possible that it’s actually very easy to hold onto, and that V won’t be able to get rid of it until the fiends want it over with? (not using V-pronouns is hard!)
I was thinking something along these lines. Also, My first thought was that the catch is: V will do something or things while holding onto this evil powerful that would otherwise forfeit hir soul, outside of the rules of the contract. Let me rephrase that. The fiends believe it is likely that V will perform some action that would damn hir soul anyway, making a full bargain for hir soul at this point in time unnecessary. Granting hir access to the powers of these three arcane artists is a nudge in that direction.
I also get the impression that losing control of the splice is fatal, one way or the other. A “splice” isn’t something that you can just undo in the real world, at least not without stripping a lot of stuff out. Ending the gestalt might be a bad thing in and of itself.
Irregardless even without playing “Oh they’re trying to trick V!” things there’s a lot of bad stuff in that deal: the exact nature of the splice and the results, the nature of the time of service to the three fiends, the potential of unleashing a new evil in the universe, and the complications of a gestalt when V isn’t in the best of mental shape to begin with. The “catch” (if V accepts) is going to be something obvious like those where the issues are obvious; evil tempters are more effective when they’re not trying to screw the customer. 
Someone on another forum pointed out that a deal where one of the provisions is that they control your soul for a specific time period is a bad idea when they’ve just demonstrated time control abilities with that Time Stop.
Not to mention that they’ve just explicitly told V that this is baby-step one in part of a larger plan for destroying all Good and Holy, etc. I figure even if everything else they is above board, knowingly being a part of that plan would be a pretty good basis for a one-way trip to eternal damnation.
Being involved in an Evil Plan would be a bad thing for someone of Good alignment in their afterlife – as we’ve seen such an evaluation for Roy.
However, V is not Good, but Neutral. Heck, it could be argued that the occasional Evil deed might be necessary to counterbalance any of the Good stuff accomplished with the OotS, or else be kicked out of the Neutral-type afterlives.
I wonder if V agreeing to this contract is what the kobold Oracle was referring to.
That’s what I’m thinking. Four words: “I accept your offer.”
My problem with this is that V is supposed to do it for all the wrong reasons. How is trying to save your children a wrong reason?
They’re trying to destroy all that is Good and Holy through cooperation and good-will among fiends.
I’m not certain that this wizard-meld satisfies the request for complete and total ultimate arcane power. I mean, those three already achieved it, that’s why the fiends have it available for V… so how “ultimate” could it be?
Also, it amuses me that the strip where Elan makes the “dragons, color-coded for your convenience” joke is titled “Now If We Could Only Organize The Fiends Somehow”. And in these recent strips, we have My Three Fiends showing up… color-coded for our convenience in telling them apart.
My guess is that V will accept the offer by saying something like “I accept your terms” and many readers will speculate that those are the four words the Oracle refered to. But for the reason Trion gave, I think it’ll be a misdirection from Burlew. These four words won’t be for the wrong reasons. The real four words will appear later in the series when V is under the fiends’ control.
Well, V will have the power of the three of them at the same time. In a sense, it’ll be quadruple the power that any single wizard held in his/her lifetime - for as long as control can be maintained.
Rich Burlew is never quite that obvious… and I expect the right words at the right time to the right being for all the wrong reasons will be:
Towards the very end of the comic storyline.
Almost out of left field.
Incredibly, indescribably funny, like the Three Stooges but with arcane power and double entendres instead of pies.
Belkar still gets to kill V someday soonish. I think we may know why now.
Wait, didn’t Belkar only get to kill V, Nikko, Nikko’s horse, or the Oracle? And he already killed the Oracle.
Jonathan
Miko, not Nikko, and Roy was also on the list of potential targets. And yes, it was “any of the following”, not necessarily all. The Oracle did start on some convoluted explanation of “And as for the elf…”, but given how tenuous the explanations were getting by that point, it could have just been “you got em so frustrated that you contributed to es alienation from the group which led to em being in a position to make a very bad choice which will eventually contribute to es death”, or something like that.
Because, ultimately, V will not agree to the terms out of concern for hir children, but for access to nearly unlimited magical power and knowledge.