Year 13,402 of the Imperial Calendar. City of Empyrea.

Holy Capital Empyrea. Centre of the human world. City of Everlasting Day. Jewel of the Goddess. A work of art erected by the greatest masters throughout History, and the largest settlement on planet Zarath. So vast it spanned from one horizon to another. So vast the saying went that one would need two lifetimes to see half of it. A symbol of pride and power for the Three Suns Holy Empire.

Today, however, screams filled Empyrea, and blood flooded its streets.

From time immemorial, the Great Wall that encircled the city—a rampart said to bear the enchantments of the Goddess Herself—had held at bay every enemy to ever succeed in reaching the heart of the Holy Empire.

Today, however, she had come. The one called the Daughter of Death. The Blightborn. The Walking Decay. The one named Meriataneesh Karstrev, Grand Queen of the Demon Realms. With one swing of her cursed Death Scythe, she had blasted a hole in the Great Wall as if making a mockery of its millennia of boasted invulnerability.  Not only had the rampart been cleaved, but the surrounding area had been blown to smithereens in a radius that might look negligible to the abnormal expanse of the capital, but in truth encompassed the size of a large town.

Through the opening, the Dark Ruler had marched boldly into the holy city, leading the way to legions of demons, undead, monsters and other races allied under her banner. Like a dark wave, the Queen’s army had poured into the streets. Overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the enemy, the guards, clerics, templars, and paladins tasked with protecting the Holy Land had opposed but a symbolic struggle. A decade of brutal war had already bled dry the resources of the Empire, leaving only a small number of elites to defend its core.

The assault had not come solely from the land. Breathing fire and death upon the world below, the revered kings of the skies had followed in the wake of the Demon Queen, unhindered by the magical barrier that had been shattered along with the Wall.

Giant winged reptiles, obscuring the heavens with their unequaled mass like flying warships. Their scales outshone the gleam of any jewel and were worth more than any treasure, yet no creature was greedier. Famed for their wisdom as much as they were feared for their ruthlessness, they were creatures of selfishness. They were the dragons, arrogant monarchs known to bow to no one, not even their own.

Yet they had bowed to her, the Harbinger of Pestilence, and to the mightiest amongst them, the Black Dragon, united in their hatred, promised blood in return, their legendary pride overshadowed by wrath.

Flames devoured buildings and people alike. Houses collapsed. Temples crumbled. The smell of roasted flesh and cries of agony filled the air. Thick clouds of black smoke rose and covered the sky, bringing Night to a land which had known only Day since ages untold by the blessing of the three suns.

Today, the Holy City burned.

* * *

In a street less touched by destruction, a woman was running as fast as her thin legs allowed her. In her arms, a frightened little girl was desperately clinging to her clothes. The hands holding to the child’s back were caked with drying blood which belonged to neither of them.

At one glance, one could tell the two were not related. The woman had reddish brown hair and sported fox-like ears on top of her scalp. Each of the short breaths she took revealed sharp pointed fangs hidden behind her lips. The nails of her bloodied hands extended longer and sharper than expected for any human. All these features designated her as one of the beastkins. Similar to humans in many respects, they also shared various traits with animals and possessed keen instincts.

The little girl, on the other hand, had hair that shone an ethereal shade of silver. Her ears, though long and pointed, were on the sides of her head. Her face still retained the roundness of infancy but already showed traces of an inhuman beauty. She was an elf, a long-lived race ordinarily found in the depth of forests, where they lived peacefully in harmony with Nature.

What both had in common were the torn rags they wore, and the thick metal collar encircling each of their necks. They were slaves, people reduced to the rank of property, regarded as no more than cattle and treated as such, sold and purchased openly like any common goods.

A loud scream echoed from behind the fleeing pair. The woman risked a glance over her shoulder and gasped in fright at the sight of three figures, two men and a woman, all humans, rushing after her. 

Looking back had been a mistake. Because she stopped watching her step for an instant, she missed the hole in the pavement. Although maybe she might have missed it anyway in the dark despite her eyesight surpassing a human’s.

She tripped and tumbled down. As she fell, she barely managed to twist her body to shield the child from the impending impact. The woman yelped when her back scraped against the rough cobblestones, her tattered tunic doing little to prevent the rocks from ripping her skin to shreds. The little girl cast her a worried glance, but she responded with a forced smile and hurriedly tried to stand up.

Unfortunately, the trio of pursuers caught up before she could. The taller of the two men was quick to kick her back down. The boot hit her head with force, but again the woman ignored the pain, in her head, on her back, and protected the child with her battered body. She placed the little girl behind her and growled at her assailants, baring her sharp teeth.

“Disgusting beast!” the man spat as he unsheathed the sword at his side.

The weapon swooped down and, with no time to think, the fox-eared woman threw herself over the smaller girl. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth in anticipation of the pain to come.

But the pain never came.

After three heartbeats spent awaiting the cold bite of steel, the woman fearfully raised her head. What she saw then left her speechless.

The man, who had without a doubt been about to slay her, had dropped his sword. His hands were clutching his shoulder, pierced by the quadruple pikes of what could only be called a pitchfork. 

Holding to the shaft of the tool, a trembling elderly stared aghast at the blood dripping from the wound. He looked human and was wearing clean but simple commoner clothes. An ordinary Empyrean citizens like thousands of others. Likely, in his long life—at least long for a normal human bereft of magical power—he never had seriously hurt anything larger than a stray dog, maybe a horse or a cow if he worked at the stables or the abattoir, but not a fellow human, and certainly not so purposefully.

A glance at the woman and child curled up on the ground, however, and his horrified gaze hardened. He retracted the fork, then shouted to give himself courage and charged again at the wounded man. Although, resolute or not, he was but an old man way past his prime. The other, young and strong, caught the improvised weapon by its shaft with ease despite his injury and tore it out of the elder’s grasp before angrily flinging it aside. A kick to the stomach sent the old man reaching on the ground next to the two slaves.

“Beast lovers and traitors. You make me sick!” the younger man spat, literally this time, on the senior.

He bent down with a grimace, to pick up his sword, then once again prepared to cut down the fox woman, mad hatred in his eyes.

This turned out to be the last action he ever performed. Or tried to perform.

Before he even finished raising his weapon, two black blades suddenly erupted out of his chest. He vomited a mouthful of blood, his gaze disbelieving for a heartbeat, then slumped, lifeless. His sword clanked loudly on the pavement in the stunned silence. His two companions were staring with terror at something standing behind the dead man.

The black blades retracted as abruptly as they’d appear. Deprived of the only support holding it up, the bulky corpse crumpled down like a dislocated puppet, revealing a nightmarish creature to the eyes of the slaves and the old man. The being looked like an unholy crossbreed between human and some kind of monstrous insect. Chitinous blue plates covered its tall body like an armor. It had no eyes or nose to speak of, instead, a helmet-like carapace encased the whole upper half of its head, which sported two long horns curving backward. Under its headshell, a huge disproportionate maw opened vertically, framed by twitching mandibles.

The creature possessed two pairs of arms similar to human’s—if one excepted the length and the fact each hand only had three thick clawed fingers—as well as two appendages growing from his shoulders, reminiscent of the front legs of a praying mantis. Only those were much deadlier, ending in long and thin curved blades dripping with blood, which the creature removed by nonchalantly whipping the blades sideways.

Demon. The race both most feared and shunt on Zarath. Amoral creatures, notorious for their penchant for slaughter, pillage, and rape—even amongst themselves. There existed a great many different demon clans that shared little in the way of appearance or culture, and the only law in the Demon Realms was that of the strongest.

And the title of Strongest belonged undoubtedly to the Demon Queen.

The insectoid demon ignored the two standing humans frozen in fear and took a step forwards in direction of the old man, balancing itself on tripod-looking feet. To everyone’s surprise, however, instead of tearing the elder apart, the monster reach out and pulled him up. Then, balling another of his four hands, it hit its torso where the heart would be in a human’s body.

From up close, a symbol could be seen painted on its chitinous chest, faintly glowing in the obscurity. The image of a black scythe surrounded by two golden bird wings.

“For the Queen!” the demon exclaimed.

The old man was taken aback for an instant. Understandably so, since the creature’s mouth clearly was not suited for human language and thus its words sounded, in fact, more like “Orsh hah Krrreen!”

“A-And for the Princess!” he eventually stammered, mimicking the salute.

The demon nodded, apparently satisfied, much to the old man’s relief.

“I…Thank you. I’m—”

The demon interrupted by waving a hand dismissively, as if saying it did not need gratitude, or that it did not care, difficult to say. Then it glanced back. In fact, the whole upper half of its body pivoted since its short neck did not seem to allow much flexibility.

Meanwhile, another man had arrived at the scene and had already made a short work of the two remaining pursuers, now very dead by lack of a head attached to their shoulders.  

The newcomer’s traits resembled the little slave girl’s. Fair skin, surreal beauty and pointed ears. An elf. However, his hair was a midnight black instead of moonlight silver and was tied in a ponytail. He also wore a full set of wooden armor, so fitting it seemed to have grown around his body. Which happened to be exactly the case. On his breastplate was carved the same winged scythe the demon sported. Without even a glance at the bloody corpses sprawled on the ground, he approached the four living. His gaze briefly landed on the girls’ collars before moving to the demon.

“Those were the last in the area?” he said in the human language, with only a slight accent.

Instead of bothering to form words, the insectoid creature simply nodded once more.

“Good. Do your thing, then we’ll meet up with the others.”

The demon stepped to the slaves, still on the ground and more than a little confused and frightened. It kneeled down by their side and extended its bladed appendages towards their necks. Evidently, this frightened them even more, but a stern look from the black-haired elf kept them from moving. The tips of the deadly cutters delicately touched each collar. With an audible snap, like miniature thunder, the accessories opened in two and fell to the ground.

“…Eh?”

The elven girl let out a small exclamation, while the beastkin woman silently brought a shaking hand to her throat. Feeling the skin under her finger and not the accursed band of metal, tears welled up in her eyes. She looked up at the demon and suddenly its hideous face was looking like the most sumptuous vision she ever witnessed.

Her mouth opened as she struggled with words, unable to find ones sufficient to express the amount of gratitude she felt.

Her attempts were cut short when a shrill abominable cry pierced the relative silence. The four amongst the group with visible ears winced and covered them, while the demon appeared unfazed. All raised their eyes towards the thick clouds of smoke darkening the sky. From time to time, flashes of colored light broke through, sole testaments of the savage battle waged above, along with the occasional orb of fire and giant corpse raining down on the city.

“We need to get moving,” the armored elf said, looking at the demon. The latter nodded and picked up the two slaves. The little girl gasped but did not struggle. The woman simply held herself to the plates covering their porter’s shoulders.

The long-eared soldier then turned to the old man, who had picked up his fork and was clutching the bloodied tool as if his life depended on it, despite how useless it had been earlier.

“What about you, human?”

The elder only hesitated briefly, then showed a resolute face.

“I’m coming with you, elf.”

The other only nodded in acknowledgment, proving as locations as his demonic companion. But no more words were actually needed.

Or so it should have been.

“…Old Man, can you run?”

“Ah.”

Instants later, and a bit of shuffling, all five were moving fast through the deserted streets, the elf holding the little girl while the demon carried the two others. The demon appeared to be slightly sulking, although it was difficult to confirm given his strange facial structure.

Simultaneously, similar scenes were occurring all over the city. This was because not only the invaders, but the Empyrean citizens themselves had taken up arms and were fighting and dying against their own countrymen.

Today what had befell the Holy City was not a simple invasion.

This was an uprising.

* * *

At the very center of the Holy Capital rose the Imperial Palace, immense, towering and intricate construction of white stone, the crowning jewel of Empyrea the Magnificent, home to generations upon generations of Emperors and Empresses of Mankind. Its size was such, the castle grounds alone made up a tenth of the boundless city. The Eight Spires of Life, the tallest buildings on Zarath, made up its heart and thusly the heart of the Empire.

Some said the Spires had been erected by order of the First Monarch of the then Three Suns Kingdom. Other claimed the Goddess of Life Herself had shaped them from the bones of the Eight Elder Titans, cruel monsters who ruled the world before the Age of Gods.

The truth of their origin mattered little, however. Sufficed to say these structures were so old, they might as well have dated back to the very Dawn of Time. Over the eons, they had protected the area the capital now occupied, creating an inviolable sanctuary where humanity had prospered, safe from the merciless environment of Zarath. In the midst of the towers, the magical power was so thick that liquid streams of energy circled them perpetually, like ethereal ribbons floating in the air, their brilliance visible always in the distance even during the brightest of days.

Yet, today, even though darkness plagued the capital for the first time in its history, no light could be seen coming from the palace.

Across the vast gardens, through the white hallways now marred with red, human soldiers were fighting ardently against the heteroclite, seemingly endless numbers of the invaders. They were the Imperial Guard, elites amongst the elite, the strongest of mankind, bearers of the Blessed Lances, second only to the Hero.

And, truthfully, their fame was warranted. Despite the overwhelming odds, it seemed they were succeeding in keeping the Queen’s horde from stepping into the Inner Sanctum of the palace. Under their strikes, countless assailants were turned into countless corpses on the steps of the High Shrine of the Goddess. From the start of the battle, one, only one single demon had managed to break in. An impossible military prowess these guards seemed to be accomplishing with ease.

However, if one were to take a closer look at the expressions of those mighty warriors, they would see no determination, no fighting spirit, nor even a shred of hope, only horror, and despair. From an outsider point of view, it might appear as if, against all chances, the defenders had the upper hand in this hellish stalemate. But in their heart, the knights knew the truth. They were not blocking the enemy outside.

It was them who could not move in!

One. One single demon had broken in since the very beginning.

And it was the one demon that should not have.

Before her, even the strongest men were like ants. The Monster had breezed past them with such nonchalance, they might as well have been air! She had stepped into the Inner Sanctum and the Imperial Guard had been unable to give pursuit, trapped outside with her demonic minions.

She had stepped into the Inner Sanctum.

Her Death Scythe was swung.

And the Eight Spires had become seven, their timeless power dissipating into nothingness.

The Lights of Empyrea had been extinguished and with it the last hope of Mankind.

All the guard could do was cry, and fight. Fight to the last.

One last stand.

For the Empire.

* * *

Blood, Fire, and Death.

Wherever her solid black eyes fell, all she could see were broken ruins of a once-lavish hall, filled with burning banners and tapestries, shattered ornaments, fallen columns, and an ocean of red in which were floating dozens of cooling corpses, some wearing robes, others clad in radiant silver, all pitiful isles, collapsed long before their time, all for the sake of one single man and his greed.

She sighed. Then started coughing, pieces of flesh escaped through her dark blue-grey lips. Black tar-like blood trickled down her chin. When the fit subsided, she closed her eyes and leaned back against the hulking form laying immobile behind her.

Ravens and Crows, I’m tired.

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She had never needed much sleep. But now, she could not even clearly remember the last time she’d simply laid down and rested. Granted her mind was growing increasingly muddled, so her memory wasn’t at its best right this moment. She felt exhausted and so, so weary. This war had stopped being fun years ago. Or maybe she’d been the one to change, she wasn’t sure. She’d used to enjoy all the bloodshed, at some point.

It doesn't matter now. Maybe I can finally sleep. A quick nap should be fine.

But she knew she couldn’t. Not yet. Through jagged holes in the walls of the shrine—white walls marred with gore—she could still perceive the sounds of battle rising from the city bellow and falling from the skies above, accompanied by the smell of smoke and ripples of power caused by the clashes of magic.

She groaned. She had to stand up and leave this place. She had to tell them it was over. If it was to be the last thing she did, she needed put a stop to this senseless massacre. For the sake of her own troops, surely, but for those stupid apes of the Empire too. While she held no sympathy for the human race as a whole, she nevertheless acknowledged that most had committed no worse sin than being born under the iron fist of a madman, a sin they could hardly be accounted for. In fact, she actually did not hold much sympathy for any race, not even the demons she technically ruled. But that was alright—because the feeling was essentially mutual.

Nobody liked the Daughter of Death, not even herself.

Well, perhaps not ‘nobody’. Her lips lifted in small half-smile, but even that much hurt and her smile quickly turned into a grimace. The curse was eating her from the inside out. She’d expected the pain, but expecting and experiencing were two very distinct things.

In any case, I should make haste, she told herself. However, she did not move. She could not move, unable to muster the strength to do so.

“Damned Ptaeesh!” she spat hoarsely, prompting another fit of bloody coughs.

Swearing would not help, but it did feel relatively good. She also found a modicum of humorous reprieve in the irony of cursing the Death God’s name, when most of the world was convinced said evil god had sired her. Not that she could refute those accusations. She herself had not the faintest clue about her ancestors. As far as she could remember, she’d been alone. Which was very strange for a demon. Orphans were common—Zarath was a harsh place—but demons had a strong sense of community. Or at least they did within their own subspecies. No child of a clan would be left to fend for themselves. And if that clan was wiped out, another clan of the same species would take in the younglings and babies.

However she alone belonged to no clan, nor had she ever encountered or heard of any similar to herself. In many ways, she was an anomaly. So the possibility of her being, in fact, the offspring of the one existence whom in this universe was more loathed than herself might not be such a far-fetched hypothesis after all, even if the Divine Reaper himself had seemingly vanished several millennia ago. Ptaeesh’s temples had long since crumbled to dust.

The fact people still recalled and cursed his name, even after all this time, was actually an impressive testament of the hatred directed at the Death God. Hatred she herself had partially become the living recipient for the past ten centuries or so.

“Ahhh…” She wheezed and shook her head. The movement caused her dangling broken left horn to tap against her cheek, and her long dark hair fell before her eyes, its purple shine revealed whenever it caught the lights of the fires. She berated herself. Now is not the time to wallow!

She needn’t go too far. Her army was encircling the Inner Sanctum. If she could only drag herself to the shattered doors of the shrine, down the spiral staircase and to the gates of the outer ring, she could get hold of one of her generals and have them relay the information. It wasn’t much. She also was far beyond caring to let others see her tattered state. What use was pride to the dead?

But she was tired. So tired. Her body felt impossibly heavy. Her imposing frame, usually so nimble, had turned into a cumbersome mass of dead weight pinning her down. Her sensations were growing muffled. Sounds, smell, touch, magic senses, her own thoughts, even the pain permeating her every muscle and bone, by the minute everything became more distant, duller, fading like the memory of a dream…

Her nightmarish eyes, the bottomless abysses of darkness that made even the mightiest demons cower in fear, roamed aimlessly across the devastated High Shrine filled with bloodied corpses. The most sacred place of the Life Goddess had become a temple of Death, god or no god to be worshiped.

How ironic. I believe that whore should be quite displeased right now. Serves her right.

Her wandering gaze slowed down over one specific butchered body, one clearly smaller than the rest, and not solely because many pieces were missing. Clad in shredded white metal, lying face-down in his own fluids, his inky black mane, usually held tight in a ponytail, now floated in the blood like a mocking halo around his head. The ‘Hero’ of Mankind.

“How utterly stupid…” she scoffed softly, before succumbing to yet another short attack of coughs. She noticed dejectedly that the pieces of rotting flesh coming out of her mouth were quite large now. She could only imagine the disastrous condition her innards had to be in. She repressed a sigh. That was what she got for messing with a cursed divine artifact. She could only smile bitterly, thinking that the Life Goddess was not sole to be struck by irony on this day.

Resigned to her immobility, and to waiting for someone to be courageous or foolish enough to disobey her order not to enter the Inner Sanctum, she allowed her hazy thoughts to return to the so-called “Hero”. A rather pitiful existence. So young, less than a babe by her standards. A child with mysterious powers kidnapped from a foreign world, then thrust into a conflict he knew nothing about by people who had no scruples feeding him with half-truths and outright lies.

She had tried to spare the child. Not exactly out of mercy—merciful, she was not—but because killing pure-hearted imbeciles of his sort always left her with a bad aftertaste. She herself was far from a saint, obviously, but the desire to protect something precious to oneself was one she could get behind. Seeing such feelings twisted and used both saddened and sickened her.

Unfortunately, that naïve idiot had been far too strong for his own good. In the first place, the title “Hero” was not an empty one. He was not someone against whom she’d had the leeway to hold back. This had been their first time crossing blades in person, but the war had lasted a long time and spanned an unprecedented scale. Even with unequaled powers, she was only one person and could not be on every battlefield. She had, however, read many reports on how the young Hero would tear through even her prided Undying Guard, the elite of the Demon Realms, as easily as a child collapsing a sandcastle. So much for “undying”.

If anything, the kid had been a great warrior. Sadly, that only made his death even more of a waste.

“I hope… you are… proud of yourself…” she croaked venomously. Her own weak whispered voice sounded foreign her ears.

She was not insulting the fallen youth, but another who had shared his demise, albeit two heartbeats later. Painfully, she tilted her head to look in direction of the round altar occupying the very center of the vast room.

On the stone cleft in halves, laid a corpse clad in regal robes. Imperial robes more accurately. The splendid vestment, made all of golden brocades and once-pure-white cloth, was now torn and soaked with thick red. From his chest protruded the blade of a huge pitch black scythe. The design of the weapon was simple, plain even, but it exuded a tangible feeling of dread that even she was not insensible to. She’d always hated wielding the thing.

That said… she mused. Nailing the Emperor, officially the First Servant of the Life Goddess, to the Altar of Life with the Cursed Scythe of the Death God. She must have broken a new record of blasphemy. Despite the situation, she could not help to be quite proud of herself.

She had no proof the weapon had indeed belonged to Ptaeesh, but there was no doubt about its power. And knowing the Hero had managed to counter the power of that scythe, be it for an instant and when its wielder had already been severely weakened, she unwilling shivered at the thought of the monster he would have become had she allowed his talent to mature in the hands of the Emperor.

Another strike of irony. If not for the Hero, the demon army had had no plan of assaulting the holy capital for several more years. If she had to be honest, they had not been ready. But this single threatening existence—whose strength kept increasing ever passing day—had forced them to hasten their plans instead of gradually reinforcing their ranks. In turn, this had forced her to unseal the true powers of the Death Scythe to palliate to their weakness.

And now she was dying.

I knew this war was a bad idea. She chuckled, quickly regretting her action when blood and pieces of entrails erupted from her mouth in another violent series of spasms.

In a very roundabout way, the young idiot had succeeded in killing her. Actually, he had unknowingly stumbled on probably the only way to do so. Oh, he might have defeated her, had they faced off in a few years. But slay her? Nay. Seal her at most. She highly doubted anything but a curse from the Death God himself could bring down the expert user of Death Magic she was. Fortunately for everyone on Zarath, there were no two users of said magic, for the simple reason that a living being wielding the power of Death was an impossibility in itself.  She was the first in known History, a true aberration in the mortal plane, and without the presence of Ptaeesh in this world, she likely would be the last.

Darkness was creeping at the borders of her vision, and her eyes were fluttering shut once again. Sleep. If only she could sleep a little, she would be able to go tell everyone about the Emperor’s demise when she woke up.

But then a distant dying scream jerked her back awake.

Ravens and Crows! What am I doing?!

Anger welling inside her, she raised an arm, and violently stabbed her black claws deeply into her opposite shoulder! Digging in, she felt her fingers close around the bone and, without hesitation, snapped it, then brutally retracted her hand. She roared in pain, causing the last remaining windows of the shrine to shatter. Stained glass shards rained inside the room, sinking into the thick layer of blood covering the floor. Stars exploded in her mind, momentarily dispersing the haze that had been spreading over her thoughts. For the first time since she’d let go of the Death Scythe, she felt somewhat lucid.

“Dammit. I… cannot die… yet... I must.. tell... them... Argh! Cough! Dammit!”

Coughing uncontrollably, she attempted to stand up, leaning heavily on the dead beast behind her. She managed to raise herself off the ground. However, to her surprise, she could not seem to put any strength into her left leg. She slipped, fell back down, and let a groan of pain escape through her gritted fangs.

What the… She glanced down, and couldn’t contain a cynical laughter despite the agony it put her through. Well, obviously I shan't go very far in such condition. Damned Ptaeesh! Just how out of it am I?

Her own injuries had escaped her dazed mind for a moment. Of her left leg, only a mangled stump remained, oozing the black tar that filled her veins. Sighing, she gave a weak punch to the humongous reptilian creature she had been using as a backrest.

“Imbecile…”

She was not certain whether her invective targeted herself or the dead monster, who had mistakenly thought a good idea to swallow her limb. Both seemed to deserve the title at this moment, although especially the beast. Who was dumb enough to bite into someone nicknamed the Harbinger of Pestilence and the Daughter of Death? Her touch killed a normal grown man in two heartbeats and a few drops of her blood would poison an adult dragon to death.

One would think any being with a modicum of survival instinct would stay clear from her. And they would be right, for the most part. Unfortunately for both of them, however, the creature which had gulped down her leg had not possessed even this “modicum of survival instinct”.

The beast was called a draith. Many considered them nightmares of the skies, but in her opinion, draiths were just pitiful existences. Born from magic and alchemy in an attempt by the Empire to artificially raise an army of mindless obedient dragons, they were flawed creatures, constantly in pain and enslaved through complex hexes. Botched tools of slaughter with a lifespan of barely above one full year.

As pitiful as they were, they still were frightening as living weapons, and they might have turned the tables of the war if not for a slight miscalculation. To develop the draiths, the Empire’s alchemists had experimented on many dragon eggs, stolen from all over the continent. Dragons were fiercely selfish creatures, who notoriously cared of no one but themselves. The imperials had believed they would have at most to face a handful of enraged mothers. Nobody could have guessed that the entire race would unite in outrage at having their kin used to conjure up deformed parodies of themselves.

Well, she had known, because Shadow had told her this might happen. The black dragon knew well how the members of his race were nothing if not prideful.

Involving the dragons had been the second of the Emperor’s two mistakes that led to his demise. The first had been not to kill his own daughter.

The draith now lying dead next to her had come crashing through the wall about three-quarter into her fight with the Hero, taking everyone still alive by surprise, especially her. When she had taken down the barrier protecting the shrine, she hadn’t exactly expected anything to fall on top of it. Sure, dragons and draiths were battling above the capital, but considering the expanse of the city, the probability of something like this happening was beyond negligible.

Not negligible enough apparently. As bad luck would have it, the thing had almost squashed her when it fell. Moreover, despite grievous wounds, it had still been alive, and enraged, as draiths always were. She had managed to survive its mindless attack, but the dumb animal had still managed to take her leg before dying instants later. Although not from its injuries. Obviously, eating the flesh of a being whose sole touch brings decay and death has proven to be a very bad life decision. Hahaha…

She didn’t notice she had been dozing off again until hurried footsteps broke through her dazed downward spiral of dark humor. Forcing her eyes open, she laboriously turned her head around towards the broken silver doors of the shrine. Soon a group of about twenty-five barged into the trashed room. All but one froze in shock at the scene of carnage filling the place, their gaze converging especially on the impaled body of the emperor.

Only one girl amongst the newcomers did not seem to care, even though she probably should have—because the man nailed to the altar was her father.

But instead of showing even the slightest interest in the corpse of her genitor, the princess scanned the blood-stained wreckage fearfully, until her sky blue eyes spotted the body of the draith—admittedly difficult to miss—and the comparatively much smaller maimed silhouette laying unmoving against the monster.

“MERIA!!!”

Ah. Music to my ears.

If this was a dream, she didn’t want to wake up and be once again alone in this stupid shrine of that stupid goddess. But this wasn’t a dream. And the girl started running towards her, heedless of the blood that splattered her beige pants with every step she took. The fallen one-legged demon did not mind either. Meria had always found women more beautiful when covered in someone else's blood. Maybe it was her twisted heritage manifesting, or maybe she just had a weird fetish. She didn't really care. Right now her thoughts were all focused on the magnificent apparition dashing towards her.

Golden locks floating behind a face that seemed carved by the hand of an artist. Blue eyes housing a thousand emotions, from the deepest kindness to the coldest violence. Rosy white skin the sun seemingly could not seem to darken. Kissable lips and shapely breasts that had spawned countless fantasies in the demoness's mind, granting her precious moments of reprieve whenever the weight of her responsibilities seemed about to crush her. And that ass! How she wished to hold this woman, to caress her, to worship her. She wanted to conquer the world and lay it at her feet, to tie up her naked form and make her squirm and beg for release, to cuddle under the moonlight then fuck her senseless until she screamed her name.

Pity, none of those fantasies could ever be anything more than just that. Fantasies. Even if Meria hadn’t been dying, what could she do when she could not even touch the woman without killing her?! Although, she did come quite close to conquering the world—if leading a coalition of all races to crush the largest Empire in the world counted as something. And Meria believed it did.

Looking at the approaching beauty, she idly thought if she were to die right then, this wasn’t such a bad last sight to see. Not a bad sight at all.

“Meria!” The human apparition slid to her knees in the filthy blood. Immediately she reached out for the demoness' face, but a stern glance of pure darkness halted her gesture. Instead, she deviated her hand and entangled her fingers within the dark purplish mane framing the visage most feared in the world. However, there was no fear in her own azure eyes, only a mixture of worry and relief.

The demoness looked down at the small human—though really all humans were small to her—and couldn't help a slightly bitter smile.

“Hi, Beautiful…Fancy meeting…meeting you here…”

“Meria. Thank Goddess you're alive!”

“Ha...Now, that would be…hilarious.” Meria stifled yet another gory cough, keeping her face stoic. She knew her princess well enough to guess that the blonde would try to ease her pain regardless of the consequences. “Please don’t make me…laugh…It tickles.”

No. Better suffer in silence and keep the beauty's hand in her hair. At least that part of her body wasn't cursed. She was still vaguely worried some of her blood had seeped through her scalp, but she felt too tired and weak-willed right now to refuse herself this small comfort.

“Shhh, Meria. Don’t be silly. You're injured.”

“No? ...Really?” she tried to sound innocent, failing horribly at it.

The blonde shot the demon a glare and the most powerful being in the mortal plane backed down like a meek kitten.

The princess’ earlier scream had snapped the rest of the group out of their daze. Now three people were quickly approaching while the remaining ones, a heteroclite gathering of demons, humans, elves, beastmen and even one short stocky dwarf, started to sort out the ruins of the shrine. The demoness reluctantly averted her gaze from the embodiment of perfection and glanced at the new arrivals.

Walking in front of the two others was a tall and sickly pale man with long white hair, wearing a black cloak. His bright red eyes shone in the ambient darkness. The blood coating the floor was parting before him as if animated by a life of its own.

Slightly behind followed a purple-skinned woman. Two horns grew from her forehead, spiraling backward, and two large bat wings, currently folded, protruded from her back. Her skin-tight black leather armor hugged her sinful curves so closely, she might as well have been naked. Daggers, bolts and two small crossbows hung from her belt.

The last one looked at odds with his two companion. Obviously human, clad a white clerical robe, he looked much more shaken than his companions by the devastation around.  In truth, he did a relatively good job at hiding it, but in comparison to the two who seemed to have fully recovered from their initial shock, his faint shaking and swimming eyes formed a sharp contrast.

Reaching the two women, the vampire, the succubus, and the human quickly kneeled down, a circle of the floor having magically cleared from its blood. With a quick glance from the red-eyed man, the red maculating the princess' clothes also flew out and returned to the sea of fluid filling the room.

“My Queen,” the vampire spoke softly with reverence, two long incisive peeking out from under his upper lips when he opened his mouth.

“Zephyr," the fallen demoness acknowledged. “We…must send word—”

“It has been done, Your Majesty.”

Ordinarily, nobody—not even her most trusted aides—would dare interrupt the Demon Queen, but it was obvious to everyone present that talking was extremely painful for her. Meria didn’t thank him, but her lack of reaction to Zephyr’s insolence was telling enough.

“Always the zealous…one, uh? Then…we must—"

“We must nothing!” This time it was the blonde who interrupted the Demon Queen, though no one seemed to find it strange. Normal rules didn’t really apply to the princess. “They,” she said pointing at the trio, “are perfectly capable of dealing with everything now. You need to rest. You’ve done too much already.”

Silence greeted that declaration. The vampire, the succubus and the human priest had complicated expressions on their faces, expressions which the fallen Queen understood well. Truthfully, the princess was not as oblivious to the situation as she seemed. She just still refused to accept it. Meria offered a small smile to the tearful blue eyes. She hated to see her princess sad and how she longed to be the one to wipe those tears. Of course, that was not to be.

Closing her eyes briefly, Meria turned towards the purple wet dream.

“Sheila,” she greeted. “Shadow?” her voice was barely a murmur now and each word struggled to form.

The succubus shook her head and made a contrite face. Meria felt her slowing heart clench. Amongst all she knew, Shadow was the one she’d known for the longest. They’d been together for nearly seven hundred years, ever since she had grabbed his egg from his mother’s cooling corpse. In her defense, the female reptile had been trying to eat the young Meria.

“He outdid himself, Your Majesty,” Sheila added, in a solemn tone unusual for the ordinarily playful seductress. “He took down two-thirds of the draith flock by himself before falling.”

“Only two-thirds, uh?” Meria croaked, as if destroying hundreds of giant flying monsters wasn’t impressive at all. “Hahaha…What a slacker…I’ll have to…spank…that brat…next time…I see…him…”

She joked to hide her sorrow, but inwardly she was filled with pride. Even for a black dragon, famed as the strongest of the race, killing so many of these abominations was no short of a miracle. She thought he must have used some kind of forbidden magic to achieve something so ridiculous. He’d always loved toying with the most dangerous spells. Like mother, like son, I guess. Another bitter smile formed on her lips.

“Don’t speak like that, Meria! Don’t...” the princess’ voice died when she met the glazed black orbs of the demoness. The Queen’s time was running out, and they both knew it.

Meria’s crooked smile turned into a calm and loving one. She raised a hand to brush lightly inches away from the beautiful blond locks, which seemed as if they would shine even in the darkest of hells.

“The Emperor is dead...” she whispered. “Long live the Empress...May…May her reign be long and…prosperous…” Her lids fluttered shut. “A shame I won’t…be there to see it.” Maybe it’s for the best.

"Meria..."

"Shhh..." The demoness forced her eyes open again with visible difficulty and soothed the crying future Empress with another weak smile.

She shot an imperceptible glance at the two other demons waiting close by, both of whom nodded slightly in response. They clearly understood the unspoken message. Should the new Empress die in any other way than peacefully, of old age, and after a long and fruitful life, then Meria would claw her way out of whatever afterlife she ended up in and would make both of them wish they’d never been born. Then she would hunt down whoever had hurt her beloved, then follow all of her victims back in the afterlife again and make them wish they never died.

Knowing their Queen, both demons thought she was just unbelievable enough to pull off such a feat.

Satisfied, Meria looked back to the young princess’ face. Her gaze suddenly froze when she noticed the white strand now marring her golden mane. Horrified, she quickly retracted her claws which had unknowingly taken hold of a lock. Some hair stuck to her hand, already decaying fast enough for the naked eye to see.

She kept staring at the dust in her palm, unable to avert her gaze.

“Only this...” she whispered unconsciously. “Only this…I wanted...for myself... Just once...Just...Just this... Was it too much…to ask?” Her voice trembled as her vision blurred. Oily black tears filled her solid black eyes and trailed down her cheeks. “Just—”

Warm lips on her cold ones interrupted her words. Their touch felt soft like Meria had always dreamed it—and more. All her pain and aches seemed to vanish, for this instant, she believed all the suffering in her life had been worth it, if only for this single chaste union. She almost lost herself in the sensation, but then her sluggish mind caught up with reality and she mustered all the strength she had left to push the young woman away.

“NO!!”

But it was too late already. As she feared, the veins around her beloved’s mouth had begun turning black and her skin was already losing its color.

“Ulrich!!” she shouted, causing her to vomit copious amounts of blood and almost choke on pieces of her own putrefying guts. She did not care in the slightest.

The white-clad man who had remained silent until now gasped in horror and rushed forwards, his hands shining a blinding warm light that made the three demons wince. He clasped his palms on both sides of the blonde’s face and mumbled some incantation. The marks of death slowly receded, leaving only a slight bluish tint to her lips. The man, as well as the three demons, all sighed in relief. Only the princess herself seemed unfazed by her near brush with death.

Meria slouched back against the draith corpse and glared at the blonde woman.

“Ravens and…Crows! Why would you…do such a—”

“I love you, Meria.”

The demoness’s next word got stuck in her throat which had tied itself into a knot. She took in a sharp painful breath, and closed her eyes, burning into her own soul the last memory of the young woman whose beauty and soul shone brighter than anything she’d seen in her long, long life.­

Then she allowed herself to say the words she’d refused to let past her lips for the past ten years.

“I love you too, Elise...please…be happy.”

And, as if a weight had been lifted from it, the demoness’ tired heart was finally granted a rest long, long overdue.

Thusly died Meriataneesh Karstrev, Demon Queen, Unifier of the Demonic Realms, Mother of the Black Dragon, Daughter of Death, Blightborn, Walking Decay, Harbinger of Pestilence, Strongest and World Conqueror, hated by most, feared by all but one, marking the stumbling first step of a new era of peace and prosperity for the world of Zarath.

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