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The ash drifted down in soft white flakes, muffling the sobs of the dying and blanketing the sharp, twisted edges of the wreckage. A few hours ago, this had been a city, moderately prosperous and reasonably peaceful: that is, as peaceful as one could expect a city-colony of Alternian conquerors to be. The inhabitants had been veterans fresh from their mandatory tours of duty, eager to settle down to a new life without devastation and death.
By the time the rescue ships arrived, there was precisely one survivor, unharmed and clutching her dead moirail to her chest. It was a full perigee before she was able to speak of what happened, and even then her explainations were rambling and broken. It all boiled down to one sentence, in the end.
“She called herself the Demoness.”
--
The virginal attendants scurried around like flies on a dead, rotting carcass. It was an unprecedented disaster, one which they hadn’t accounted for in all their rules of conduct. The previous night, there’d been ten young jadebloods training for their future role and fussing over the juvenile mother-grub-to-be. That night, there was only one left alive, found nestled amidst the bodies of his comrades and their charge.
A single word was scrawled in jade on the wall.
DEMONESS.
--
The attack was swift and relatively small, but the consequences were far-reaching. Normally Gl’bgolyb was quite good about staying as silent as possible. Oh, sure, there were the occasional murmurs of hunger, slipping out despite her best efforts to cause death, but for the most part, she was quiet.
Even the most stoic of abominations, sadly, will cry when an appendage is ripped away. It wasn’t really her fault. Had she known the pain was coming, she would have braced herself, and perhaps only a few thousand redbloods would have died. When woken rudely from one of her rare naps by stabbing, unexpected pain, however…well, she couldn’t help but scream.
Millions died, and millions more dreamed of the Demoness.
--
A young child woke suddenly in her hive, coughing. The air was thick with smoke and ash, and for a brief moment of terror she wondered if her hive had caught fire. She scrambled from her recuperacoon, spilling sopor all over the floor in her haste. An older troll might have remembered to stay low, to avoid breathing in the toxic smoke, but this was no adult. As she ran for the door, she sucked in more and more smoke, until her head swam with confusion. Where was the fire? She had to get out!
When she managed to open the door, she wasted her last breath with a scream. The lawn ring was burning, and above the flames floated an all-too-familiar silhouette. Every child had heard of the Demoness, had been told she’d come get them if they were bad, or merely unlucky. Very, very few children ever got to see her.
A wand, raised. A shot, fired. A life, ended.
--
The rebellion was blessed with unusual luck. Major enemies were found dead in their recuperacoons, traitors were sniffed out with unusual accuracy, and, well…some said their leader had magic.
It wasn’t true, of course. As far as he knew, magic wasn’t real, or if it was, it wasn’t available to mere mortals like him. No, he thought one night as he preened in front of a mirror, what he had was charisma. Who else could claim to have tamed the Demoness, to have convinced her to join him? Who else could claim to have thought of the idea that was, in retrospect, extremely obvious? Between the fair lady and himself, there was nothing they couldn’t accomplish! They would be gods among trolls!
He thought he might like to try and court her.
When she materialized behind him, he turned to give her a courtly bow, thinking nothing of the fact that her wand was out. After the first shot had taken out his right foot, he was forced to admit he may have miscalculated a little. By the time she was finished with him, he was quite certain he’d miscalculated a lot.
--
Over the millenia, her motives have been the subject of much scholarly debate. There are those who think she seeks to bring the entire troll empire down on its knees, and those who thinks she wishes to impart an object lesson on the cruel, capricious nature of fate. There are even those who argue she’s not even a person, but a psychic manifestation of oppression, frusteration, and self-hatred, spawned from the collective minds of a billion lowbloods.
None of the theories put forth are correct. The Demoness has no motives. There is nothing she wants, nothing you can give her in order to ward her away. She is an agent of chaos herself, a force of nature. You can no more tame her than you can tame a supernova or a black hole. She is as merciful as a volcano and as discerning as a hurricane. Rich or poor, high or low, smart or stupid, good or bad: it doesn’t matter to her.
She will get her pound of flesh.
--
A lone figure drifts between stars, her face emotionless, her movements smooth and practiced. She is a person and she is a force of nature, she is a slave, and a tool, and a messenger for a wrathful god. The only thing she owns is her mind, and even that has been twisted and shaped to the whims of her lord.
There are those out there, broken, lonely fools, who think their lives could not be any worse. Perhaps they are slaves. Perhaps they are living batteries on ships, unable to move or even terminate their own lives, waiting for the day ten or five or two sweeps in the future when they will finally burn out. They are wrong. Things could be worse.
They could be in her place.