It had all fallen apart so quickly, I thought to myself, decades of planning, years of effort, and I’d come so close. But in the end, my bid to reconquer the homeland of my people, the demon race, that had been lost to humanity, had failed.

The endless conflict between humans and demons had almost always ended with human victory, and they’d taken more and more land from us until our species was relegated to the fringes, badlands where we could no longer farm enough to sustain ourselves. Years of bad harvests, encroaching desertification, and a slow-spreading cursed undead blight had left our species with little option but to attempt to avoid mass starvation by attacking the humans.

At first, I’d managed to lead my people to victory after victory, securing much-needed food from the fertile farmland that had once belonged to us. But then, predictably, five chosen heroes, selected by the gods themselves, led a successful counterattack. I am a powerful demon lord, perhaps the strongest since the great demon lord who unified our people thousands of years ago, but I could not stand up against these heroes.

Time and time again, they’d find a way to break through my army's lines and engage me in battle. What could I do, fighting five chosen ones? I was forced to flee, over and over, my armies routed and thrown back.

Now it’s come to this, I sighed. The heroes had not stopped at the old borders, they planned to exterminate the “demon threat” once and for all, and were now committing genocide, killing every demon they could, even non-combatants. Not that it mattered, most of our people would soon starve to death anyway, since the invading armies had already torched what little farmlands we had left. Already some survivors were becoming feral, resorting to cannibalism to survive. My people were broken, our society shattered. At best, I could hope that a few isolated tribes would remain. I had gambled for a chance to save my people, and I’d lost.

Now the heroes had already breached the capital, broken into my castle, and were but minutes away from reaching my throne room where they hoped to have one final confrontation with me. A fight I was certain to lose.

A tiny part of me was tired, willing to die; survivor’s guilt. This is your fault, a tiny part of me suggested, you shouldn’t have tried to invade humanity. Maybe I should have grovelled and begged the humans for aid, though I doubt they’d have listened. The humans had refused to sell us food, knowing full well how desperate we were, but we could have culled our own numbers until our meager food supply was enough. Perhaps it had been my stubborn pride that had made me refuse to accept the bitter pill and take such drastic measures.

But the rest of me felt nothing but hate and an overwhelming desire for revenge. Screw those heroes. They’d not claim my head like some obscene prize. Instead, I would try to focus their attention on chasing me, a red herring that would distract them from chasing the last few survivors of my race. I would flee someplace they’d have no way to reach, but I knew that they would waste their time trying.

I just needed the heroes to witness my departure. The heavy iron doors to my throne room burst open. Perfect timing, I thought to myself as I watched the heroes of light run down the tattered red carpet to run face-first into the powerful ward spell I’d spent the last week preparing. This wasn’t a spell I’d ever been able to use on a battlefield, but ritual magic could be quite effective if you had the time to prepare. The look of comic surprise on the rest of their faces as their leader, the pompous paladin bounced back on his ass after being repelled, was worth the effort.

“Dark Lord, you bastard, it’s time for your tyranny to end!” The paladin yelled dramatically, hampered by the fact that he was struggling to get up off the ground, a task made less than graceful by his heavy armor. The bastard was strong as a bear of course, but he was still wearing more than his own weight in steel, it took him a while. The other muscle-bound member of the party, the barbarian, reached out with a thick meaty hand to help.

“What tyranny?” I asked, “I am a constitutional monarch who was chosen for my magical might, rather than bloodline. I was elected by the twelve warlords to lead, and my armies were all volunteers fighting to amass enough food for their loved ones to survive. Your people? Absolute rulers, hereditary kings with conscript armies.” 

“Politics are boring. With your death, our names will go down in legends,” The barbarian said with his rough northerner’s accent, “What sort of song will it make if we don’t finish the job?”

“Will genocide be a good song? I may have started this war, but I never slaughtered non-combatants, can your people say the same?” I asked.

“There are no innocent demons,” the priestess spat, a look of self-righteous bigotry crossing her pretty features, “The goddess has cursed your kind, and the foul magics you wield are proof enough of that.” She added. “Death is a kindness for your kind, perhaps the goddess in her infinite mercy will see to it that you are reborn as human in your next life.” 

“Foul magic? Don’t like my void magic?” I laughed, “Your ignorance astounds me, you never stopped trying to counter it with holy magic, as if I were somehow using pure evil, rather than the energies bound within the fabric of spacetime and the infinite spaces between the stars. Not all that is black and shadowy is evil, void knows no right or wrong. Much like holy magic, it is only the actions it used to achieve and the methods that it requires, that define its morality. At least as a void mage, I don’t pretend my magic makes me righteous,” I told the priestess, knowing that she’d honed her power in ways her goddess would never have approved. 

Justifying the use of her corrupt spells because they were only used against demons? Weaponized healing magic that accelerated the growth of bacteria causing rapid gangrene of any wounded soldiers? And they called me evil? I shuttered inwardly.

“You are not a mage,” the sorceress, a fiery redhead who was already trying to undo my ward. This ward is competently done with ritual magic, who cast it for you?”

“Please, just because I have an innate ability to use void magic, doesn’t mean I can’t use formal ritual magic. You have an innate ability to use fire magic, but we both know how to cast ritual spells to achieve effects outside of our innate domains, what then is the difference between us?” I asked her.

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“We’re not so different, you and I?” The sorceress said with a sneer, “Please, don’t be so cliche. You’re a backwaters ruler of a race of bloodthirsty savages, I’m a trained imperial mage who earned the right to use the title of mage by graduating from a prestigious university of magic. Your little war was but a welcome diversion from the tedium of my duties as a court mage; nothing more. Your void magic is a failure of a magic. Once it was determined that only demons are able to use it, studying it was declared a waste of time. It is not considered a form of magic that justifies the title of a mage. Just because you know some tricks makes you a dabbler, not a mage. You never earned the use of such a lofty title.”

I chuckled, “Trust me, my title is well earned. I’ve been studying magic far longer than you’ve been alive, my mastery is far deeper than yours. If not for your four companions, I’d have defeated you easily. Prove me wrong, break this ward.”

The sorceress huffed, “It’s complicated, whoever set it up for you did a good job, probably some more guild-trained mage you tortured? It will take me a little while to break it.” She admitted.

“Let’s just leave him there,” the final member of the heroes of light suggested. He was a black-clad older man who specialized in archery and poison. He was a former assassin they’d convinced to join in exchange for a pardon. Of them all, he was the only one who’d actually come close to killing me several times, mostly via attempted surprise application of poisoned arrows. A true paragon of virtue, I thought to myself as I looked at his weasel-like face. At least he was the only one of the party under no illusions about what they were actually about. “I say we loot the treasury and go home. The demons won’t be a threat for at least a dozen generations, let them keep their failure of a king,” the assassin suggested, “I’m tired of killing.”

“No,” the paladin said, throwing me a look of pure hatred, “The demons must be ended as people once and for all, so that future generations of humans will not have to deal with them. Killing him will demoralize the survivors, make them lose hope. That will make them easier to hunt down. He can not be allowed to escape,” He said, sounding as if he were discussing the extermination of rats or cockroaches.

“Your god must love you,” I muttered, “But then again, he is a human god, so perhaps he does.” 

Raising my voice, I launched into my prepared speech, “I’ve set this all up so you could watch. I plan to deny you in the only way left to me. Escape to somewhere none of you can follow, as you have no void magic of your own. Sorceress, priestess attest!” I told them, as a massive black oval opened behind me, an interdimensional gateway. “This leads to another realm. I used divination magic to find the best destination for me. The place where I am most likely to find what I seek. It is another world with breathable air, a place inhabited by your kind, but no demons. I chose a place where magic is possible, but not in use. A place with humans ignorant of how to use magic, thus a place with no defence against my power, and I plan to subjugate it. When I rule that world, I will come back, with slave armies of your own kind, and destroy your kingdoms and empires. I will rescue what remains of my people. For every one you slaughter from this day forth, I will slaughter a thousand of your kind. Leave my people be lest you bring forth a terrible vengeance upon yourselves. If I return and find no demons left, I will ensure this world is also scoured clean of humans,” I threatened. 

“That’s an interdimensional portal,” the sorceress said after casting a quick identify spell. Surprised, she added, “Void magic isn’t capable of that!” I was amused that she’d say so, given that she’d just verified that my void magic was capable of that.

“He’s not lying,” the priestess added, “He’s a demon, he’s capable of such foul deeds,” she added, worried. I wasn’t surprised that she’d believed my words, but I was surprised at her hypocrisy, given the foul deeds her own people were inflicting on mine. If the humans had fought with honor, I’d not have to resort to such threats. Killing innocents had never been something I’d done where it was possible to avoid, but to the priestess, and humans like her, even a newborn demon babe deserved death. 

“A cornered foe is often capable of surprising things,” I told her, “I’m the greatest void mage my people have ever produced, and I’ve made a breakthrough. This is ritual magic applied to my own innate magic, the final product of everything I have learned. You will never be able to chase after me, so you can only wait patiently for my triumphant return!” I gloated, projecting confidence. 

Inwardly though, I was not certain I could ever return; it would be extremely difficult. I’d told no lies, outright falsehoods were damaging to me, disrupting my core with dissonance; a limitation all demons shared. Statements about the future could only be a lie if the demon is saying something he believes impossible will happen or involves stating he will take actions he does not intend to make, I cautioned myself, knowing that the priestess could detect the slightest bit of dissonance-pain and thus, catch any lie I tried to make. I intended to conquer this unknown human world, but I’d omitted the fact that my plan was basically; Figure something out when I get there.

Even if I succeeded, it took all of my power to send a single demon, myself, through. How then to send an army back? The amount of magic required would be enough to shatter a continent, if I could do it, I’d not need an army. I was somehow counting on finding a suitable and vast power source in this new world?

My plan is more wishful thinking than anything else, I admitted inwardly, an optimistic self-deception. Any statement can only be true or false based on what the demon who says it believes, I reminded myself, I just needed to force myself to believe what I was saying despite my more pessimistic (and realistic) analysis.

No, this final retreat would likely be my permanent exile, my threats were as empty as my heart. I would be casting myself adrift in an unknown hostile human world, with only a faint glimmer of hope that I could eventually conquer it and find some means of powering my triumphant return. I could have fled to another world inhabited by demons, but it would have been hard on my conscience to conquer them, as they had not done anything to deserve it. Conquering humans on the other hand? Humans were a species that deserved no compassion from me.

“We’ll find a way to follow you,” The paladin promised, “And even if it takes us years to find you, it will not matter. There is no place your evil will ever be tolerated. A demon will always be hated by all humans. And if the humans of that world can’t kill you, I will.” he promised me.

He was probably right, at least in his claim that humans would automatically hate me. I expected that I would die soon after entering this new human world, likely at the hands of some angry mob, but what choice did I have but to play my part? “Good luck, to both you and the people of the world I will soon rule over,” I told the paladin with a sneer. “For I’m the villain am I not?” A question can never be a falsehood, so I could have asked that no matter what I believed. But the guilt I bore for my people’s fate meant I did believe I was the villain, though not for the same reasons as they did. 

“If anyone can find a way to ruin my plans, it will be heroes like you,” I taunted them with a snarl, turning that hated H-word into an insult. “Don’t disappoint me.” Don’t ever stop trying to chase me, better you focus on that than killing my people, I thought to myself as I turned away and stepped through the inky black portal.