Barbatos shifted uneasily on the tri-horned throne. Forged in the visage of one of the six primordial demons, whose names had all long been lost to history, scant thought had been given to its comfort. This was his fourth time seated on it as protector, yet the feeling that he was unworthy of such an honor only grew in his dotage. It was undeniable that compared to even the average demon, he was and always had been frail. Yet because of his precognition and judiciousness, he managed to not only garner enough respect to become the high lord of the great city, Bittervale, but to instill a sense of stability that made his city even more prosperous than this here capital of Dreadmus.
Although the elderly demon favored diplomacy over violence, in the months since donning the crown, he had been doing little apart from addressing the flood of political matters that had gone neglected during Misery’s brief reign. He was convinced some of these petty nobles had restrained themselves from murdering one another in their land disputes and other such squabbles, simply because they craved to hear their ruler tell them that they were in the right. Because of that, having envisioned it hours prior, he had been eagerly anticipating the moment the massive throne room doors were shoved open with far more force than was necessary.
Still in the body of that half-breed, the boy Misery had dubbed, Wrath, Prince Resent strode in. On Barbatos’ orders, an investigation had been launched into the circumstances of that boy’s birth. While it was impossible to deny his lineage, as tens of thousands had witnessed him manipulating the nebulae in the arena during his separation from the prince, there was still the matter of whether he was indeed Strife’s spawn...or Resent’s. Though, if the castle’s servants were to be believed, Strife had taken up with a young woman seventeen years ago. And she had disappeared soon after her belly had started to swell. How such an otherwise astute king could stoop to such impropriety, not once, but twice, was beyond Barbatos’ comprehension.
Prince Resent was dressed in modern human clothing, like the most recent influx of slaves, and the right arm Misery had severed was replaced by one born of nebulae. He arrived at the bottom of the dais and sketched an exaggerated bow. “Hello, King Barbatos.”
“Just Barbatos will do. Why have you returned without restoring your body, Prince Resent? Do you require assistance? Soldiers to do battle with the angels, perhaps?” Against his better judgment, Barbatos offered the prince one final chance. To eradicate both of Strife’s descendants, the entire royal bloodline, that likely dated as far back as the origin of the demon species itself, would be no small thing. If Strife’s firstborn abomination was still alive, the one Barbatos’ own son, Murmur, had deserted with all those centuries ago, he was of less consequence than the cambion. At least the boy’s impurities could be bred out.
Prince Resent gave Barbatos one of his infamous lopsided smiles. An expression that usually held the ability to unnerve or infuriate whoever it was directed at, but now lacked a certain panache. “Why ask questions you’ve already foreseen the answer to?”
“Truthfully, I was hoping you would have the sense to rethink your current course of action. But I suppose that is too much to expect of one so young and imprudent.”
With not having faced a single assassination attempt for many years due to his well-documented ability, Barbatos had chosen to exert great caution, gripping his fabled, golden war-horn since first having seen the vision. Now, he raised it to his dry, cracked lips and blew into it. The booming sound reverberated around the throne room, an assault in itself for beings with the keenest of hearing.
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His personal guard, Bittervale’s four greatest living arena conquerors, appeared as if from nowhere, blocking the path to the throne in a neat line. Their bodies were all marked with runic symbols that summoned them to Barbatos’ immediate aid when his horn was blown, no matter their preoccupations or distance. Just outside, in the circular great hall leading to the throne room, a necromancer was masking his life energy behind a fade periapt and hiding among the larger statues of past rulers. He was lying in wait to capture the prince’s soul on the moment of his demise. Admittedly, considering Resent’s reduced strength in the half-breed’s body, this stratagem was excessive, but Barbatos would leave nothing to chance.
Resent’s violet eyes flicked from conqueror to conqueror before coming to rest on Barbatos beyond them. He had the audacity to whistle. “Well, would you look at this. Rolling out your big four just for me. And here I thought they were a deterrent intended for the other high lords. Do you truly fear me so, decrepit one?”
As Barbatos watched the prince, his conceit bordering on caricature, as if that single trait comprised his entire personality, he grasped something that had not been clear in his glimpse into the future. And he felt relieved that the rightful king, a diavolik he had seen grow from an infant, doomed to never meet his father’s twisted expectations, to a brash youth who spat in the face of them, was not so foolish as this. “Dispose of this impostor.”
As the four conquerors surrounded him, the impostor’s face and posture relaxed, no longer needing to keep the charade going. In an instant, darkness crackled at his upper back, forming a pair of pitch-black bladed wings, akin to the skeletal wings of the fallen angels. His left wing sliced high and his right wing low, both cleaving through the unprepared demons around him. Armored heads and bodies clanked to the ground, as blood so dark it was nearly black, pooled at the impostor’s boots.
“Nebulae...how?” Barbatos asked. Once he had realized this was an impostor, he disregarded the nebulae forming the arm as just another part of the illusion. The disbelief of that was compounded by the fact that for the first time in his life, his ability had failed him. In his vision, he had seen Resent brazenly march in and kill him with his bare hands, as the prince was fond of doing. “What is this?”
The impostor kept Resent’s appearance and voice, but his entire demeanor had changed, becoming much more restrained. “It’s so simple that you were privileged to have lasted this long. Your glimpses into the future are critically flawed. They’re only accurate the moment that you have them. Once I saw how self-assured you were, I knew you had laid a trap and I would actually need to try. Therefore, by greatly adjusting the situation you foresaw, you rendered it useless.”
Barabatos had lived for two millennia. He did not fear death. Younger demons had died of old age, and with his body’s regeneration slowing by the day, he had come to expect it at any moment. So, when he looked upon his killer, he didn’t insult them both by reaching for his blade. Instead, he stroked his long gray beard, as he often did when contemplating something, for what he was certain would be the final time. “What can you possibly hope to achieve through all this?”
At the words, the razor-sharp wingtips that had stabbed out for the high lord halted inches from his skull. “That would require far too much time to explain. Just know that I take no pleasure in this, ancient one. Despite our past disagreements, I bear you no malice, and would have spared you, were you not so set in your ways. As is, your death is a necessary injustice to prevent an even greater one.”
Then the nebulae closed the distance.