The bell rings and I sigh as I watch my classmates scramble for their seats, although I’m not sure why they bother. The instructor isn’t even here yet – whoever or whatever they are.
As I stand in my place at the back of the room, at the top of the stepped seating layout, I survey all that lay before me… my classmates, soon to be my retainers and subjects, all who will bow before me and my might and intellect. And not a humanlike among them! Fitting, it’s so fitting.
“Lannie, come on!” the girl next to me whines, her thin chitin reflecting the slightest amount of starlight from the nearby windows.
My kid sister… or at least I call her that, due to her childish demeanor despite having been hatched only seconds after myself. Being one of a clutch of over a thousand certainly doesn’t make her my equal though, and neither of us have any illusions otherwise.
I shrug her off. “It doesn’t even matter, Kenna. Look around us. Especially, look up there!”
Her gaze follows my gesture to again see the empty dais at the front, before tilting a concerned gaze back toward me.
“He’s right, you know.”
“Yeah, why bother?”
I smugly grin as my two fast friends – I suppose some would call them ‘lackies’ or ‘toadies’, but I’d prefer to say they have superior foresight – take their places at my shoulders.
Yes, I’m going places, that’s for sure. Why do I even need this ‘education’ or ‘training’? A waste of time, all of it! A waste, I say!
Nobody dares side eye me as I chortle to myself. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before whoever this ‘instructor’ is will bow to my will as well, to my sheer and utter greatness!
After all, I’m going to be the greatest demon lord the planes have ever seen. Even greater than my great grandfather!
They’ll see.
They’ll all see.
“What will they see?”
Flinching, I look around for the source of the grating, hollow voice…
And find nothing. Nothing at all.
“Who said that?” I snap, but my classmates all nervously look away, denying any involvement.
“My. GREATNESS,” I growl. “My right and fitness to rule, over all the mortals, and monsters, and planes!”
“Is that so?” it replies, before a dark chuckle rolls smoothly, gracefully over the room.
“What! Don’t you dare laugh at me! Do you have any idea who I am!?”
Without pausing its mirth the voice answers, “A petulant brat, leaving the nest for the first time. Naïve. Weak, and foolish, and pitiful in its own failure to understand that same weakness. Another ant to be trod upon, serving only to strengthen others around it by its demise, and the experience its death returns. A pebble at the side of the road, thinking it not one of many passed the same. Fodder for the goblins and wolves that fill the dark forests, bones for the kobolds to gnaw. A future? A future you say, one where you rule over all? No. I know your kind, child; one far behind on your lessons, and manners. What is the point of being a demon lord if you lack even the basics of nobility? Grinding all beneath your boots leads to a kingdom of ash and dust, not power.”
I stand blinking for a moment, struck speechless and reeling from the scathing criticism.
“But do not fret, larva. You will learn. Oh yes, you will learn it all.”
And then the aura hits me.
The strongest aura I have ever felt. It tastes of violence, and of blood, and ash… all of it inexplicably old, indescribably old and alien.
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And hungry. So hungry.
It suddenly occurs to me that I’m the only person in the room not seated, as black smoke gradually materializes about the room, filling it and blocking out the light.
No, not smoke…
“TAKE. YOUR. SEAT.”
I’m in no position to resist… whatever it is. Was the academy invaded!? This is a heaven, with appropriately powerful dungeons… could this thing have come from one of them? It doesn’t matter. I quickly take my seat; if I had exposed skin, I’d be sweating buckets. Why weren’t we warned about something like this!? Where is the headmaster!? If they’re such a powerful entity, shouldn’t it be protecting us from this thing? We’re their precious students!
Then the ‘smoke’ begins to coalesce, and to the gasps of my classmates, a single figure emerges from it.
An indra, I think… if my studies are correct. Although they typically don’t have flaming red eyes, or teeth like daggers…
Or scales covering half their body.
The gasps continue as it occurs to me that most of them are using their u-comms to at least have any kind of idea what we’re looking at, so I attempt the same…
[Unknown Divinity – Identification Blocked]
“You’ve learned to identify those of hostile intent. Good. Good. That is one less lesson I need to beat into your empty heads.”
The indra-that-is-not-an-indra turns on her heel and begins primly pacing slowly on the dais, eyes closed and with her hands behind her back as she continues in that monstrous voice.
“You are here for a reason, personally hand-picked by Headmaster Owyn of the New Iden Hero Academy because you are not fit to be heroes. But I suppose you are aware of that, ha! No, children; no, you are fit for a slightly different role, different but no less important; you will be a foil to them, your counterparts in entertaining the gods. And make no mistake, all of these foolish antics are in fact part of the games we divinity play – congratulations. I do expect that you will all put on a good show, and distract the pantheons from BOTHERING ME.”
Wait, did we just learn something major!?
“For the less perceptive of you, yes. You are in fact to be trained as fledgling demon lords – ah, yes. You in the front row. Malida, is it? You may speak, I will permit it.”
Incredulously, I glance toward the front row to see a shivering, ice-white student raising her hand. “Uh-um… Are… Are you to be our teacher?” she squeaks.
And the laughing rolls again, gradually rising until it rattles the windowpanes as the stars outside seem to glimmer…
“No, child,” she scoffs. “No, I am not your ‘teacher’. I have more appropriate people in my employ for that purpose. No, indeed.”
“Then, um… who are you?”
Stopping dead in her tracks, the interloper turns to face the class… and then throws her arms wide in triumph.
“I will tell you then, though I suppose the more informed of you would already know, wouldn’t you? I am hunger, and night. I am Malevolence – as I am sure you are aware! I am Nemesis, who was once Nyx and Astraea before that. I am master and patron god of Caelum Astraea, the plane on which you now stand and my home. And as headmaster of this New Iden Charter Hero Academy Satellite Campus, I welcome you to your education, and your home for the next five years should you manage to survive – both academically and physically.”
With a flick of her hand, my u-comm activates without any input from me. And chilling words appear in my vision, the gasps around me confirming that my classmates are sharing the experience.
[Outsider (Void Horror) – Queen of Hunger (The Ephemeral Dream) – Obsidian Witch of the Infinite Void (She of Shattered Facets – Sovereign of Night)]
The headmaster and literal goddess takes a breath and smiles. “Your teacher will be along shortly; considering you are the first class admitted to this newly established institution I thought it appropriate to greet you personally. My office is on the topmost floor should you require my judgment, although you should make a point to schedule with my administrative staff beforehand. I will not be present at all times, although I am never more than a single rift away.”
Wait, a rift?
The indra grins and then turns, before a dozen glossy black tendrils erupt from fissures in the air around it, grasping and tearing a hole in reality.
A hole in the plane not unlike the one in the sky, the empty space among the stars.
…A rift.
And then in a regal, flutelike voice so unlike the horrid tone she’d been using she says, “Now. Behave. Carry yourselves in a way that demonstrates the honor and respect due to a demon lord. As demon empress, you will one day be my vassals. And you will not fail me.”
As she – Nemesis, apparently – finishes speaking, she steps through the rift and vanishes as it closes behind her.
The tension in the room hangs heavily for a few moments before my classmates erupt in conversation, an absolute din entirely focused on the events that only just passed.
And I sit in silence, dumbfounded.
I’m… in a lot of trouble, aren’t I? The headmaster is no doubt watching me now. In any other circumstances I’d consider this the greatest boon.
But these circumstances?
I’m going to die, or worse.
The door opens and an unfamiliar person enters, a nightwalker in an immaculate maid uniform. Remembering the words of the headmaster, I quickly flick on my u-comm to identify the newcomer…
And am almost as horrified by what it reveals as before. A nightwalker, yes, but…
But…
…
This… is going to be a very difficult five years. Isn’t it?