Kiarak rubbed her neck beneath the collar, trying and failing to shake the lingering dizziness away. As a daemon, she was deeply familiar with pain and discomfort, but the Father’s presence dug so deep and wide that even a demigoddess of the Ascended didn’t want his direct attention. Except weirdoes like Zongatis.
The portal, now reduced to a pleasant, pulsing red glow, shuddered and jerked as it disgorged daemon after daemon to join the crowd of wildly different figures already filling the glade.
Ulvanach’s Xaglar hunters lifted lupine muzzles to sniff and scowl at the air. Jagged, ritual scars glowed with baleful energies over scarred flesh and scar as exposed muscles and tendons were flexed and bony claws dug into the ground. The hunters growled and twitched as they daubed themselves with caustic blood in anticipation of the hunt to come.
Flabby rolls overflowing from ornate armors heaved and roiled as Zubari slavers took in the place with cold, calculating glances. A few had already herded the little monsters into a fence they had their Thilgra slaves erect in a stunningly short time. Gurgling guffaws filled the air and bone quills were dipped into slave blood as future profits were calculated, attracting curious looks from the little gold beings.
Zonbatis’ Gennoth moved about, silent wraiths swathed in runic cloth and barely restrained energies with faces sank in shadows. At their mistress' behest, they were busy assembling altars and gory implements for their rituals.
A couple of Thilgra obediently followed the Gennoth’s instructions, the two brutes’ gaze little more than empty as they easily carried blocks of obsidian streaked with sanguine stone from the portal. Another daemon, scales peeled away and blind, was led by a chain, the marking on once-mighty muscles signaling him as a “Zubari Broken Guaranteed.”
Kiarak let her attention linger on the various groups enough to count their numbers. Idly, she let her well-trained political senses work their magic before letting the matter be. That was a mission handed out by the Darkness, so the usual daemon jockeying had no place there, every group focused on its own role.
A small sound – not quite a cough, not quite a hum – sounded close by. Kiarak opened her eyes, taking in the small army of daemons waiting for her pleasure.
The Kiaraki weren’t as specialized as the other Ascended’s personal army. They lacked the Xaglar’s unmatched hunting prowess, the Zubari’s economical skill and the Gennoth’s magical might. What they had in spades were numbers, brute force and the lack of wherewithal to know when to retreat. All together, those three things made them the equal of every other army present there.
The daemon that attracted her attention, a red thing wrapped in spiked armor and exposed bone whose name she couldn’t be bothered to remember, looked at her with a mix of apprehension and fear, a look shared by everyone else. Only the lemure, all of them Zubari Guaranteed, didn't share it, whatever fugue obscuring their minds keeping them docile as they licked her scales clean and soothed her sore muscles with long fingers where claws and nails had been ripped off.
Kiarak grinned indulgently, and let the spell she had been holding breathe out of her. A collective sigh of relief went over the Kiaraki as the protection of the Father shrouded them. And of course, now that basic survival was assured, they immediately started bickering over spots and first right into fights.
Kiarak rolled her eyes. She chose the Kiaraki for lack of brain and plenty of brawn. It made for an effective assault force and kept believable attempts against her authority pathetic enough that she almost felt them relaxing. It was hell for management since she had to put her tail on everything to avoid stupid shit, but she would very much put in the extra work than having to deal with another ritual duel. She got sick of them the fifth time it had happened, especially of all the skinning afterward.
It was frustrating, really. Daemons liked this life and jockeying, loved it, everything she knew and heard told her as much. But for her, it was just a brief rush that left a widening hole in her gut. She wouldn’t admit it out loud under torture, but she very much preferred having to deal with a brigade of mouthy idiots as an Ascended than a region always about to go up in flames as a daemonlord.
She left command to Tiefrin – she called all her lieutenants like that, from her first – and went off searching for Ulvanach.
The daemon, a habit shared by his subordinates, had found an isolated hiding spot for himself. He lounged on the crook formed by two Tolgran’s branches, ignoring or not caring about the eerie creaks they gave under his bulk.
“Hey,” she said, leaning against the Tolgran’s trunk as she looked upward. A strange annoyance danced into her chest.
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Ulvanach didn’t look up from the knife he was sharpening. It didn’t look like it needed it as much as Kiarak could tell, but what did she know?
“Hey!” She repeated, hitting the Tolgran for emphasis.
Ulvanach glanced at her, and she made a show of bristling just to tell him that she knew he knew she was there, and wasn’t above pulling him down if he tried saying otherwise.
That seemed to amuse him. He grinned, so Kiarak grabbed his dangling tail and pulled him down.
Kiarak knew that for any other daemonlord, that would have been the same as a deadly insult, to be repaid with blood, death and an imprecise amount of pain and desolation. Ulvanach just landed lightly on the ground and flicked her forehead with his tail, laughing. He was just that strange of a daemon.
She slapped his tail away, feeling strangely annoyed.
“Hey,” he said, grinning, and flinched a little. “Always leaves an impression, uh?”
Kiarak didn’t need to ask him what he meant. There was only one that could leave an impression.
“You think he could go easy on us for once,” she grumbled, idly kicking at a Tolgran. She frowned as the whole thing came down with a crack and a cloud of splinters. “Not like we can do anything but obey.”
She wouldn’t have said what looked dreadfully like a critic of the Father with one of her own Kiaraki, not with Zubar or his scum-sucking bottom-feeders and certainly not with Zonbatis. That crazy skunk would have her hide in the time it took for the words to be spoken. But with Ulvanach? In the decades they had passed together, she had learned, despite her impressive walls of caution and self-reliance, that he was just the right amount of nonchalance and idiot to listen and not to go to blab it to someone with a sharp knife right away. Ulvanach only cared about his hunts. The rest could rot. Or at least that’s what she had come to believe, she thought, that strange annoyance reasserting itself.
True to form, Ulvanach shrugged. He leaned against the ruin of the Tolgran, resuming his work.
“Weight of command?” He offered. “I know I’d be stepping on everybody’s tails if I had a kingdom of daemons under me. Or maybe he just gets a kick out of it. You know, like us.”
“Do you really think he feels like us?” Kiarak couldn’t have been more skeptical. For some reason, the overwhelming force of the Father always felt to her more like an elemental thing, like a wall of lava or an earthquake, than a living being.
“Why not? He made us, didn’t he? You’d think that you can make only what you can envision. Look at this knife. I couldn’t make it just right if I didn’t know how it would look. And it’d make sense that a daemon god feels like daemons.”
Kiarak felt there were several possible counterpoints to the argument, but she wasn’t going to start debating over what the Father did or did not feel with other daemons close by. From what she knew, if you weren’t part of the tightly controlled and god-approved Order of the Shadow, it was a very effective way to end on the wrong side of a pike.
“Whatever,” she scoffed, turning.
She heard the soft thumps of his steps, a sound that she knew he was allowing her to hear, and anticipation that she didn’t know was building inside her sprung to the forefront.
When his large, claws hand closed around her shoulder, she leaned back, exposing her neck, looking into his eyes. It felt good to see the glimmer of surprise there. It disappeared just as quick, covered by smug bravado, but she had seen it.
“It’s not so bad,” he rumbled. “We Ascended have a lot more freedom compared to a daemonlord slumped on a stupid throne.”
That had to be one of the stupidest things she ever heard him say. But this close she could smell his scent just right, and feel the waves of heat from his muscles. She could almost bring herself to forgive him.
“Like what?” She breathed.
Ulvanach grinned, his hand clenching and scratching her pleasantly. “Right now? I got a few ideas.”
“During a mission, Ulvanach? Just after Daddy gave us the sermon? And with his favorite pet just over there?”
“They’re not here, are they?”
Kiarak shivered with delight. Breaking the rules wasn’t her usual policy. But sometimes, it felt just too good to pass on.
“I wonder,” Ulvanach said after a moment, and Kiarak almost missed the strange tone in his voice.
“What?”
He watched her, a strange, intense gleam in his eyes. “Do you think someone could take him?”
There was just a “Him” he could be referring to, but the eventuality was still so outlandish that it took her a few moments to put the pieces together.
“You’re crazy,” she said, walking away abruptly.
He didn't follow her. “Don’t tell me you never thought of it, come on.”
Of course, she did. Plenty of time. Each and every time she had been forced to eat dirt while her body was wracked with agony. But to say it out loud? That went beyond any spice dangerous work put into situations. That was pure crazy.
Truth be told, there had been exactly three contenders to the Unassailable Throne since the snatching of Uthar from the void, each of their names made to learn to every daemon worth a name. Ogrozol the Mighty, Tror'geroch of Olmothen, and Trannolluth the Fire. They had been the strongest of the strong, daemonlords that had unified the greater part of Uthar by fang and flame and might. Too far evidently, since they thought that the obvious next step was to challenge the Father Himself. The Darkness didn't mind for one of His children to rule over the land, but He didn't abide challengers, as the three pain-spirits bound to His vessel could attest to.
Any daemon received the message, Kiarak first of them all.
Ulvanach seemed to get the message, because he backed down. “Just a game,” he said. “We’re here, in an unknown territory where even His authority and voice can’t quite reach. It’s impossible there’s something here that can take him, sure, but we thought it was impossible coming here as well. It makes sense to be prepared for any situation, right?”
He was just twisting words now, but she gladly took in the handhold all the same. Put it like that, words of treason turned into honest concern for the Sovereign. It helped that she could almost picture the capital H in his words.
Her anxiety fell down a fraction, and she turned to an almost subdued Ulvanach. It was pathetic, and she made him know that with a scowl, but her hearts weren’t in it.
“That’s what we do,” she conceded though.
“That’s what we do,” Ulvanach repeated, and stalked closer. Kiarak let him, entwining her tail with his.
Kiarak gladly welcomed the right atmosphere in as they fell to the ground together. Godly matters like those weren’t for them, or at least, not for her.
Truth be told, she had long accepted that her life couldn’t be any different. That was what daemons and Ascended did. They threatened and got threatened, hurt and were hurt, obeyed and forced to obey. From time to time, she could have some fun to take her mind off the eternal unease, and that would help, until next time. It could be worse, and things weren’t so bad after all. At least, that’s what she kept repeating herself.
Blasted Ulvanach put the tick in her ear, though, and she found herself wondering, again, what she would do without the Father’s boot on her neck, or better yet, in His place. The thought alone was so deliciously blasphemous that sent her hearts into overdrive. She imagined seas of power and dominance as she had everything and everyone that ever annoyed her reduced into a smear beneath her tail. Missing that, not having to always look beyond her shoulder would have been nice for a change.