Duke Heinlein smiled at his daughter as she danced for him in the soft moonlight of a summer evening. They were so far away now from the wars that had plagued them for the last decade. Stress had burned untimely wrinkles permanently into his brow of only fifty physical years of age and blown out every last shade of color from his now balding head, but his Duchess claimed to like the newfound maturity it had brought him. It made him look outwardly like the thousand year old patriarch he had always been, she said. Trisha, of course, was bitterly opposed. They had the best archons for a thousand miles and yet The Duke would leave his head openly bald? It was ugly, she had told him, but he knew she was merely teasing. Besides, the opinion of a daughter was only secondary to the opinion of his wife. Perhaps she was merely trying to keep him faithful by limiting his sexual marketplace value, but it didn’t much matter.

When he was in court it was easy to wear a toupee. The brown one he wore now was itchy, but looked the nicest of the collection, being made of six different species of demi-human’s hair. His peers would sometimes brag of how their retainers’ toupees were only sourced from the finest hide and the donors butchered to ensure they remained one of a kind, but Heinlein saw this as nothing but butchery. Why would you destroy the one source of a replacement material in the event the original article was for some reason or another damaged or misplaced? For that reason he brought various species of demi-human to the capital, even if none numbered among his court.

It was economically beneficial to allow for diversity. The werewolf could work at night while man could not. In this way it was strictly beneficial to have both, as this allowed around-the-clock productivity. How his peers failed to understand this simple fact was beyond him….

But Trisha scowled. There he was thinking about work again. The Duke relented and unfurled his tightly-coiled brow, leaning back into the opulent arctic demi-wolf throne he had prepared among the clouds. This was a night to remember, after all. The mango trees bloomed in opulent dots of orange all over his duchy only in name, and it had been a decade since he’d gotten to enjoy the holiday. So much war and bloodshed, at last rendered absent for this tranquil scene. Trisha slowly bobbed back and forth on beautifully sparkling pixie wings over the hardwood stage prepared to overlook the sky, and The Duke finally got to appreciate the fruits of his daughter’s time spent abroad.

But when the clouds were blown apart as the sky turned red the back of The Duke’s Prussian blue coat parted to allow his normally tightly-furled wings to part. Their leather hide rippled as he fell into the scene, watching the sky open up into an expanse of perfect vision below. A thousand verdant fields speckled with orange and yellow dotted the landscape, but to his great surprise the lakes and rivers that ran between had changed shade, as though their essence had been stripped and put into the sky. The Duke felt no worse for wear, but he knew the day had come at last where Yaldabaoth’s protection waned.

It had been a curse destined to bring the world to its knees one day, but he had always known it would come. To live a thousand years was to see many travesties, and The Duke of Hell had lost more than one daughter over the many long centuries. So many concubines had borne him children. So many children had grown up only to die. And yet he would still foster their growth and development, because that’s what it meant to live. He would live on and they would die but their contributions to the world would persist through him. Or perhaps they wouldn’t. He had many children, after all. But Trisha was one of the special few chosen to live on into eternity with him. A rare cultivator with the talent to rival the great gods of old, given only the time to foster her talents. Perhaps, one day, she would even succeed him.

But his thoughts were too distant. It didn’t seem the landscape was on fire, but then what was this? The sky faded back into the usual hues of purple and blue, but the sun had long since set. If it wasn’t the destined curse, then what could it possibly have been? He didn’t know, and the thought troubled him. So The Duke found his way back up to the airship on a cloud, so far away from the armies that could assail them down below, and made his way to the war room— a twenty by fifteen foot box of enchanted crystal designed to prevent any assailant from bringing this ship to heel.

His generals puffed up their chests in bright blue and yellow coats. Their wings were unfurled as though they had once again remembered their great trek out of hell. It had been centuries, but they would not forget. How could they? For all the dead left on the path it would have been the mark of pathetic men themselves too weak to escape. No, they were the lucky few destined for greatness atop the world at which point they already stood. They had been sulking, wings furled up, for so long, and yet now they stood with chests proud and marks of their heritage displayed proudly for The Duke to see. They had known this day would come, and for their unreliance on Yaldabaoth they would at last see themselves to conquer the world.

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Trisha banged on the door, asking her papa to come back to watch her dance, but Duke Heinlein reminded her that country must always come first. There could be no family without a state to defend it, even if the boundary was blurred when he himself was the state. But nonetheless, they began to plan as though the day for their triumph over man had come.

“The Triumvirate should be our first target,” a proud lizard-demon snarled, “they’ve expanded too quickly and been too quiet for the past several years. It’s obvious they’re planning something.”

Many in the room concurred, but a sheep with a permanently-bleeding eye objected— ever the obstinate voice of reason in these conversations—

“They’ll be spread thin in the act of conquest, yes, but our neighbors will be equally defenseless, and less likely to have predicted this outcome.”

His tongue lapped up the blood that flowed towards it as he spoke.

“Just because our neighbors will be weak doesn’t mean we should ignore our neighbor who will themselves soon become strong. Far stronger than we can handle if we allow them to.” Said the low and measured voice of a man with the voice to match a face far crueler than the rest. His eye was scarred with a knife-wound, and he seemed ready to stab anyone looking at it for more than a half-second. Heinlein, of course, knew Marquis Markus was a soft man that loved his sixteen daughters and sweet candies in almost equal measure, but wouldn’t dare belittle him now.

“Exactly,” the lizard affirmed. “If you allow them to spill out their borders all over the map they will not grow easier to defeat for the expanded angles of attack. To the contrary, if we allow them to expand their territory outside of their current single continent, it will become impossible to handle all three of their leaders at once. They will splinter to the winds and become impossible to rout.”

“Their Hidden Emperor is already rumored to inhabit many bodies.” The sheep objected with a gleam in the eye. “What difference does it make if we attack them now or later? We either stand to reduce our forces in combat with a peer nation— assuming even that our assessment of their strength is accurate— as the other nations pass by us, or, we could simply expand faster than them ourselves.”

“Ah,” Mr. Cotton-Candy Bat Demon objected, “but that’s where you’re wrong. The Triumvirate will expand faster than us. I’m sure we’re all aware of their rapid ascent to the world stage after the Great Scourge. You can’t be serious in proposing they won’t pass us by now. If we don’t strike while our greatest threat is weak, we will not be given the opportunity to strike again.”

“He speaks the truth,” a bald demon in orange monk-robes began with a gleaming halo above his head— a marker that he had achieved inner peace and thus perfect immortality even beyond the total decapitation and scattering of his body’s chunks— “They were a tiny and backwater province before the Covenant collapsed. It’s clear that they bought time and played their cards wisely rather than expanding for its own sake in the belly of an unassailable empire which would destroy them if they stepped out of line. More than that, rumor has it that their “hidden” emperor, the body-snatcher we spoke of before, is the very same Quorus that played a key role in driving Yaldabaoth off to establish the Covenant so many years ago.”

Murmurs rose in the room.

“Is that true?”

“Why haven’t I heard of it before?”

“You liar! You bleat the lies of sheep!”

The Duke Heinlein was forced to quiet them down after that line, clearly spoken out of turn. But he too was curious.

“Why haven’t you brought this to our attention before?” he questioned.

Trisha screamed before the monk was given any opportunity to answer. The Duke flew outside in a rage, ready to kill any who would dare harm his daughter. But no one was there. Heinlein looked around, but saw no one and nothing.

“Trisha?” he questioned.

There was no response. Trisha was strong, but in a real challenge would not be strong enough. It was her potential that made her The Duke’s favorite among the children, and as such it meant he must protect her while she grew into what he saw she could become.

Heinlein turned back to the war room. The generals had gathered near him to see what they could behind The Duke’s imposing figure.

“Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me.”

The wings parted as he turned back to the scream of his daughter, but were not given the chance to fly.

Carnimeas had stabbed him in the back, his woolen bleeding eye staring back at The Duke blankly. There were no words as the sheep was incinerated, but Heinlein could swear he heard laughing from outside as he fell to the ground.

His heart had been punctured by a comrade he had known for well over two hundred years. A comrade trusted enough to become a general. A comrade enough to have been stationed here with his darling daughter.

Trisha screamed as she flew over on pixie wings to find her father’s good spirits dashed. He had no words for her now beyond the last.

“Please, live on and succeed me. Live for yourself. Live to be hap—” but alas his pulse had faded long ago, and with it his words.