The smell of blood lingered in the cool air. It was fresh and sweet. I stepped over a long chitin arm and a thin scaled leg. Beastly screeches rang out in the distance, echoing into a fearsome ambiance. These two limbs were obvious, but it was often hard to tell what was a vine or a root and what was part of some disembodied demon. Every inch of this place was grown over the remains of savage battles. And on a hill not far away I saw an enormous beast of a demon with thick bone covered arms greedily claw and bite into the flesh of a bloodied foe.

The Dygarlands is beautiful in a certain way. I thought. Its murder is so innocent. Here they slaughter freely, knowing only their endless hunger. Sometimes, these fiends will kill enough, consume enough to gain a kind of sapience. But before that, they murder because they’re young. They kill because they don’t understand that we are all demons.

As I was admiring that demon in the distance, I noticed a creature gazing at me from deep within the undergrowth. With big, yellow, slitted eyes, it assessed me with nothing but cold hunger. It saw my pearl white skin and frail thin body and judged me to be pathetically weak. It skulked along the plants, closing the distance little by little. Suddenly it lunged at me, swinging its two scythe-like claws to bisect and decapitate me. It hoped to end my life quickly.

How does a princess rule a people born from murder? With mercy of course.

Moving subtly, just below it, I shifted my hands to fold the space around it, adding an unnatural weight. The sudden imbalance left it fumbling, and as it swung, it missed me entirely and fell awkwardly onto the ground. I couldn’t help but giggle a little. Before me, it was just a clumsy child. It began to lift itself up, confused, maybe even embarrassed. It decided that this was my fault, and returned a glaring hatred. It was right of course, but it clearly hadn’t yet grasped what it was dealing with.

I began shaping the space around it in rapid movements. The world despised such a blatant bending of its natural laws by a demon. And with every movement I made, I could feel its fury grow until it began desperately trying to kill me. I could see the waves of space around my hands accumulate into angry torrents. They flashed and arcs of lightning struck out at me for my arrogance. I bent forward to dodge one aiming for my head and bent back to avoid one diving towards my heart. I couldn’t help but let out a maniacal laugh in defiance.

The creature struggled to stand as it grew heavier. Finally, after a futile moment, its bones began snapping under its own weight. It let out an agonized moan, as one by one, its limbs surrendered to the ground with a crack.

I smiled, crouching just enough to meet its eyes. It was shivering in fear. What cruel fate awaits me at the hands of this monster?! It must have thought. I offered an answer as I reached out for its head, petting it gently. I could feel its nervous confusion at the delay in its death and it flinched in fear at my touch. The poor thing assumes I’m as murderous as it is.

Its horns curved forward around its head, rough and thick, they exuded a defiant malice. They were similar to my own and seeing this made me feel a strange sense of pride. It had a sleek, sturdy exoskeleton, a large jaw with sharp teeth. It wore itself like armor and its scythelike hands could do little else but murder. But looking at and petting it, I couldn’t help but sit there for a moment and imagine it as more. I imagined us talking as equals one day. I saw it in my mind, speaking its first nervous words, and looking back at this moment without fear, without hatred, and just simple embarrassment.

I was interrupted from my thoughts, though, as a demon with wings of burning ash knelt before me. The sweltering heat was an annoying quality of this one. I think his name was… Belphegor…? Many demons tend to die quickly, but this one was sent along by my father, so I took a little more care to remember its name.

“Princess, I apologize. My carelessness left you defenseless against a hunting fiend. It was an unforgivable mistake. ”

He began ripping one of his six arms off in a kind of… apologetic frustration. I watched as a storm of anguish overcame him. As he did so, my look was meandered to his two already ripped stumps. With a final grunt, he finished, and offered his ripped arm to me.

“You… can keep it.” I said.

He looked kind of disappointed. To him, it must look like I’m denying his apology but… I definitely got the message.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Consider it a reminder of your failure.” I lied. He had 3 stumps now, that was more than enough of a reminder.

He gave a solemn look and an affirmative nod.

His passionate form of apologizing seemed obviously unsustainable to me. Is this how he gained favor with my father? I wondered. He’s probably more here to train than to protect me anyways. Mercy, mercy. I emphasized to myself.

“Have you found what you were looking for, princess?” Belpheghor asked. His forehead was pressed against the ground and it was a little hard to hear him.

“Almost, continue to cover me alongside the others and do not fail again. I will fly back up when I am finished.” I said.

His eyes swirled with fear and determination. It was hard to stay irritated at him seeing how genuinely grim he looked. He leapt into the sky, smoldering the air around him and gliding into a rampage of unseen devastation.

I took a final moment to sit with the fiend. In an effort to pacify it, I had broken its limbs until they were misshapen and useless. Demons heal quickly, but this one was doomed to die if I left it alone. Maybe knowing this, it looked at me with a cold, hateful glare. There was no way to tell really, it could have just been ravenous hunger. I had used gravity in an attempt to teach it, to show it that there was more to this world than murder. It had been crushed, bone by bone in an absolute victory. It was obviously being spared, I thought it’d see this. It still didn’t seem to understand though, it was my failure, and so my responsibility. Took a moment to pet it and I whispered to myself. Mercy, mercy. And I threw its mangled body into a portal. It would be a problem for another time.

I walked slowly along the surface of the Dygarlands, searching. Movement made the plants more aggressive, and they grew stubbornly underneath and beside me. They resisted and despised my every step. I had a saber ready for their hatred, though, and as maws and thorns reached out for me, they were obliterated with the dismissing slashes of crude steel. Taking in every little detail, I attempted to parse a route. Smaller, more morsel-sized fiends hopped around silently, falling into maws at the slightest misstep. Wisps of light whispered the faintest song, with words that sounded so soothing and familiar but which defied any comprehension; in the distance, I heard the screams of fiends as they clashed against ash and flame; and amongst it all was the faintest distortion, an intent written into space itself.

The true nature of space isn’t something I have the ability to see. With a spatial sight like some of the more rare demons, I’d be able to parse it with a glance. I lack those kinds of gifts though. Instead, my sense of space is mostly a learned instinct. The most blaring abuses of spatial magic are easy to recognize. Portals, storms, and rifts—all of these violate the self consistency of the world enough to be obvious to anyone. There’s a higher level of precision, though, in noticing the subtle knots and shifts in space as reality moves through it. The more sensitive to the space of the world, the more one can see their own impact and the better they can play within and learn to manipulate that impact. It’s something surprisingly easy to learn when it’s bled for—when it’s something someone will die without. At least I think so, I can’t talk to the ones who found it too hard.

I slipped the source of the distortion into my fingers. I judged it closely, attempting to squeeze out all its secrets from its look alone. It was an arrow. I couldn’t parse the spatial intent written into it too specifically, but it had the curls, the tone, to be of the kind that allows for misdirection. It could veer unexpectedly, maneuvering in deadly a riposte. Rangers can be a troublesome bunch; even though this wasn’t an especially powerful intent, it was simple enough to be easy and deadly in the right moment. They aren’t the flashiest or the strongest, but they can be clever sometimes. I admired the slight wafting intent. Maybe I could learn from them. I thought.

A team of rangers had gone missing some cycles ago. So my father, annoying as he is, used the opportunity to force me out of the castle and stuff me into a retrieval party. He saw me lying around and assumed I'd just been rotting away. I tried to explain to him I was just trying to get a sense of the flow of reality through the spatial geometry of the castle. But he just said that sounded like nonsense and wouldn’t hear another word. To him it’s either I’m stuffing a blade deep into the neck of a Mistzere clan heir or doing absolutely nothing. Most of this was just a waste of a frustrating waste of my time. I thought. But I remembered the fiend I’d decided to take care of. It’s not so bad though. I flew up into the air, flowing in a smooth, confident arc. Now that we’ve confirmed it, we could use this signature to track all the way to the ranger party. Soon this would all be over with, I could get back to training, and maybe even help show that fiend the real world.

In the air above the Dygarlands, I could see my party members in the distance. From the air they sprayed fire and ash, herding the roving fiends away with sweltering walls of death. They were rangers, brutes, and sworn flames, hobbled together, but hopeful and hardworking. When they noticed me, I twirled the arrow in my hands proudly and amongst the floating wisps of ash and flame, I couldn’t help but smile.