Stepping out of the portal, I found myself standing in the courtyard of my castle.
Right, to summon your Demon self, just summon some power. Since it has nowhere to go, it will begin taking physical form which you can then inhabit.
Sounds simple enough. I summoned power, and just like Luca had said it began molding into my demon body once again.
Now, just transfer your consciousness into it. You already know how.
I did as he said and was greeted by my improved eyesight once again.
“I like this body much better. It’s got so much power in it.”
“Yes, it does. Now, we should give your dragons a warm welcome.”
My human body was covered in Luca’s red flames, before getting consumed by the floor once again.
Looking up at my castle, I noticed that two new perches were added to its top, just like Luca had said there would.
Following this thought, two massive portals formed on top of the perches, which Ragnar and Egnis stepped out of. Their souls chimed happily now that their bodies were once again within the same dimension as them.
Between the two, a smaller portal appeared which the eggs fell out of. They were no longer protected by Luca’s barrier, but the nest did a perfect job of protecting them from the fall. Immediately following their soft landing, a barrier of green appeared around the eggs.
I shot some hellfire out of my palms and flew up to greet the two dragons. “Hello Egnis, hello Ragnar.”
The two dragons bowed as best they could. “HELLO ANDRAS. IT’S GOOD TO FINALLY SEE YOUR DEMON SELF.”
“I MUST SAY, YOU’VE CHANGED THIS PLACE FOR THE BETTER SINCE LAST I WAS DOWN HERE.” Egnis commented. “WELL DONE.”
I Smiled at Egnis’ compliment. “Why thank you, it’s not easy playing god and I was wondering if it ended up looking any good.”
Ah!I suddenly remembered something. My memory was piqued from seeing the two dragons in hell. I probably had my own true demon form like Luca does!
I wonder what creature it is.
Luca flew up beside me. “Hello you two, if you could excuse me and your master for a moment, I need to discuss something important with him.”
Luca nodded toward the ground and fell down. I stopped blasting hellfire and fell down beside him. “What is it?”
“As Lord of Hell, you have many responsibilities. One of them is diplomacy between the various human settlements that are down here. Truth be told, this is probably the true reason Jiren made this place uninhabitable so that people could not make a civilization. He hated politics.”
“Really? What a goober. That sounds easy.”
-
I would soon find that it, indeed, was not easy.
Three major human settlements had popped up in hell, and they all had something against the other.
We were now sitting in the meeting room of my castle, which I didn’t know I had.
“Okay guys, you all need to start cooperating or I'm turning this place into a hellhole again.” I said boldly.
The room shut up after that. “But each of us has something the other wants! The jirads have a monopoly on water, and the foundlings have all the livestock.” One of the three women spoke out.
“Have you ever considered just uniting your territory into one?” I asked.
“Oh.”
The leaders all turned red realizing how stupid they were acting. Once they all started talking to each other like civilized people, they came to realize that they had nothing innately against the others.
After the meeting was concluded, they had agreed upon uniting all of Hell into one singular group, simply called Hell.
“Damn Andras, you make it seem easy.”
“I guess I do.”
-
I’d decided to go visit the settlement of humans. Our castles and arena were all floating above the actual dimension, so I had to jump down to get to the ground.
How did the humans get up to my castle, you ask? Well, as Lord of Hell, I can summon stairs at any time going down to the ground from the different pathways. Not that it matters if any do make it up here, but I make sure that no uninvited are left wandering the paths. The cobblestone roads are meant for Demon feet only.
Speaking of Demons, there are a decent bunch of them. They have their own little community right underneath the Arena. Their settlement is the only one of the different factions that has an actual permanent staircase going up to the cobblestone roads.
Come to think of it, I don’t actually know much about the extent of this dimension. You would have thought that after manually replacing every piece of it by hand I would have picked up on some things, but no. I was too preoccupied with making sure everything looked good.
Anyway, about the human settlement. It was rudimentary, but pretty close to how civilization was up above. Of course, they didn’t have any metal armaments, because there simply isn’t any ore to make it out of down here. The hunters did have wooden spears as well as bows and arrows though.
The leader of the new clan, Hell, was a kind old man named Olaf. After giving me a tour of the capital city, if you could even call it that, he invited me to visit anytime. During our walk he told me that if he had the chance to pick, he would pick this new hell over whatever heaven was like. I was flattered by his compliment.
Olaf also showed me the main food of the Hell inhabitants, mainly cooked ‘deer’. The deer down here wasn’t like the ones up above though, hence the Apostrophe. The deer down here was much more territorial, smarter and way stronger. It took an entire team of human hunters to hunt and kill a single one of the beasts. Olaf offered me a piece, but I politely declined.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
I’d found that my demon form did not require sustenance to maintain, only a tiny amount of demonic energy was required to keep me going. It was less than a 100th of a permille of my total reserves though, so I wouldn’t count it as really anything at all.
After my visit to the human clan, I flew back up to my castle. For the longest time, I've been wondering about how my final form looked, and I felt it was time to find out.
I sat down in a meditation position on the castle courtyard. Remembering how big Luca was, it was probably the only place in hell I could fit if it turned out my form was bigger than his. There was a great possibility that it was since I was more powerful.
I began summoning power from my reserves. I could feel myself growing in size very slowly.
Remembering how long it took Luca, who has been a demon for millennia, I expected this to take a long time.
To my surprise, I had ‘maxed out’ my humanoid form after only 10 minutes of drawing power from my reserves. Just like with Luca, a sphere of power was now formed in front of me containing the last little piece of power I needed to transform.
I was afraid to move at all, for fear of breaking anything. The immense power I had stored within me now was almost too much to control.
“Hey boss, what are you doing?”
Ah, there’s a voice I haven’t heard in a long time. Heltana had appeared behind me, completely without me noticing.
Now that I had drawn all my power, I was finally able to stand on eye-level with her. Actually, more than eye level. She was at eye-level with me, and that was with me sitting down.
“I was just about to attempt drawing all my power to find out how my true demon form is like.”
“I see. I can certainly tell you’ll be a big one, so I'll give you some space.”
Following her comment, she teleported away a good 20 meters to give me some room.
I took a deep breath, before looking at the orb of energy floating in front of me.
I drew the final piece of power, and the orb flew into me.
The feeling was... Strange. It’s like the power wanted to stay in my humanoid form, but there simply wasn’t enough room for it.
Suddenly, I felt my hands grow larger. Probably doubling in size.
Then my nails grew longer, turning into claws. The canine teeth I'd once had in my mouth became way bigger, and my head grew in size.
I collapsed to the ground, not able to keep my body upright with the weight of my head.
Then, a tail shot out of my behind, along with my neck lengthening.
I felt my skin tingle and looked at my hands. I was growing scales, just like Luca, however mine were green in color.
Finally, wings sprouted out from my back, and I grew horns.
Goddamn, guess my true form is a dragon!
Heltana looked in awe at my new form, and another visitor appeared beside her. It was Luca, here to probably check out what all the commotion was about.
“Holy shit boss! You’re huge! And to think you’re a dragon just like me... Congratulations!”
I looked down at the two. They suddenly seemed so very small, as if they had shrunk. Of course, I knew it was I who had grown a lot bigger.
“I feel huge.” The voice coming out of my mouth was entirely different from my own. It was rough, and loud.
“You are huge, dummy.” Heltana commented, with some jealousy. “This is unfair... Why am I the only one without a true form?” She scuffed.
“Sucks to suck, loser!” Luca said, before teleporting away.
Heltana, clearly angered, teleported after him. No chance in hell (pun intended) that she picked exactly where he went though. There is an entire dimension to hide in after all.
I shook my head laughing a little.
“SO, YOU’RE ALSO A DRAGON?” I heard coming from behind me. I turned around, and saw the speaker was Ragnar. The voices of true dragons are so similar I would never be able to discern the two’s voices. “JUDGING BY YOUR SIZE, I’D SAY YOU’RE A LEGENDARY IN TERMS OF POWER.”
I certainly felt legendary. I towered over the two. Roughly estimating, I was double their size.
“Could you two teach me how to fly? I've never used wings before.” The new addition of a tail and wings was certainly weird. My tail almost seemed to have a life of its own, flailing about wherever it felt like.
“SURE.”
-
After some instructions, I was finally able to flap my wings correctly so that they produced lift. It was certainly draining on the muscles, and it was easy to tell they had never been used before. Luckily, I had Demonic energy to keep regenerating them whenever I tore them, or they became too tired to continue flapping.
After just a few more practice flaps, I jumped into the air using demonic energy and began gliding on my wings. When I began losing altitude, I flapped which kept me neatly in the air.
“YOU’RE LEARNING QUICKLY. IF YOU GO ANY FASTER, WE WON’T BE ABLE TO FOLLOW YOU UNFORTUNATELY.”
Hm, that sounded like a challenge. I increased my pace, zooming forward with immense speed.
Oh, turns out they were just speaking the truth. I flew away from the two.
No matter, I'll just continue on my own. I pointed my palms backward, releasing hellfire to increase my speed even more. I was basically a bullet flying through the air at this point.
It. Felt. Amazing.
After flying for probably a good half an hour, I came to a halt. Not because I had to, but because I remembered something.
Is this still within human territory?
I looked down at the ground beneath me. No, no definitely not. There were only deer here, running scared for their lives away from my shadow.
They were indeed intelligent.
Looking around the area, I noticed this biome was completely different from the one I had made back in the center of hell. It looked almost untouched. It was snowing, and there was plenty of fauna and flora that I definitely wasn’t a part of making.
Just where was I?
I folded my wings inward and relied purely on hellfire to lower me to the ground. I attempted to make it as soft of a landing as I could, but it still shook the earth. I laid myself down on the ground, feeling the cold snow against my underbelly.
I felt the snow hitting my scaly hide. It immediately evaporated upon touching it, but something about it was off. I thought Luca said water couldn’t exist in hell.
Well, I definitely already proved his point wrong, because the lava lakes that were once flowing within the center of hell were now replaced with water, but still.
In the middle of my thoughts, I failed to realize I was being attacked. It didn’t even phase me, but I still felt some bumping on my back leg.
I bent my neck so that I could get a good look at whatever this annoyance was and made eye contact with what looked like a bear cub.
Immediately noticing that I was looking at it, it then attempted to go for my eyes. Its claws slipped off my skin like they were made like butter.
“Hey dude. Whatever you’re trying to accomplish isn’t working. You should go do something else before I end up hurting you on accident.”
To my great surprise, only the sound of my voice was enough to knock the bear off my snout.
The bear flew so far, I couldn’t even see where it landed.
“Oops, my bad...” I mean, technically it was self-defense. It did try to attack me first.
I felt kind of bad for it though. It most likely died from the impact.
Shrugging off the thought, I exhaled a little cloud of green smoke from my nostrils before lying my head down on the ground.
It was nice to just be alone with my thoughts for once. The sound of water evaporating was the only thing that filled the air.
-
I decided to make a landmark here, so I could teleport back here in the future. As a demon, you only need to know how some part of the world looked to be able to teleport to and from it, so I made a gigantic snowman. Well, on my scale it looked normal-sized but to a human it would probably be as tall as an 8-story building.
Satisfied with my work, I decided to teleport home again. I was starting to feel a little tired.
Upon arriving at the castle courtyard, I remembered just how big this form was, and reluctantly began releasing my energy back into my reserves. I’d definitely be using the dragon form more in the future though. It felt awesome.
“Ah, you’re finally back. How did your first flight go?” The voice of Luca pierced the air.
“It was absolutely lovely. I had a great time.”
"Well, I was just here to tell you that you have a meeting with the clan leader of the demons tomorrow. For now, you should get some sleep. It’s been a long day.”
Indeed I will, Luca. “See you tomorrow then. Goodnight.”
I closed the door to my castle behind me as I walked into the foyer. I went upstairs and entered the master bedroom.
The bed could probably fit 5 people easily. Why does everything need to be so extravagant? No matter. It was a comfortable bed.
I said goodnight to the souls of Ragnar and Egnis before tucking myself into bed.
“GOODNIGHT ANDRAS.” They answered.
That was the last thing I heard before I began drifting off to sleep.