The wind howled across the parapet, carrying the thick, metallic stench of sulphur and ash from the smoking valleys below. Paradonia stood a half-step behind him, her hands resting quietly at her sides as she looked down at the sprawling hellscape. This was a realm populated by demonkind - a proud, cunning, and self-serving race. They prided themselves on rigid bloodlines, class, and the sins they embodied. For generations, and since their creation, the various factions despised and rivaled one another with simmering spite, viewing opposing houses as a constant challenge standing under the relentless sun. Wars between houses were constant, as underlying tensions and differing prerogatives were barely held in check by the melting iron grip of the obsidian throne. The royal family was slowly but surely losing favor with their subjects - and Brymthos knew this all too well.
In fact, he reveled in it.
With a chilling, charismatic charm, he sweet-talked his way into the graces of disaffected demon lords within the night court, whispering promises of mutual benefit, playing noble houses against one another, and carving out his own clandestine faction right under the monarchy's nose. Hiding in plain sight.
A low, dark chuckle reverberated from his throat - a dry, sardonic sound. He gazed at the harsh horizon overburned with sulphuric smog. An ethereal layer of toxic fumes blanketed his domain.
"They despise each other, don't they?" Brymthos murmured with a playful hint in his demeanor. His voice dropped to a smooth, purring cadence as his pale fingers brushed the back of her neck.
"The highlords of the night court look down from their obsidian balconies and see only rivals. Such fragile, petty hatred."
Then he turned his head, casting a sidelong glance of proprietary down at her.
"And yet, with just the right words. Just the right leverage. You can make even the most proud and stubborn demons dance to the same tune," he continued softly, his thumb tracing a slow, chilling circle of her collarbone, and then paused.
"Your husband also succumbed to the same melody."
He stepped closer to her.
"King Solomon, the righteous one, thought he could play my game, but he was nothing more than a clumsy amateur playing with fire, " he reminded her softly. Then a maddening grin cracked across his face.
"He mistook me for a demon. He thought the eternity I promised him would be full of roses and flawless beauty." He loomed over Paradonia, casting his shadow over her once more. He brought his face close to her, only a mere inch apart.
"That mortal bargained with an undead, and so I gave him nothing but the best kind of immortality - a lich's curse."
Paradonia's eyes widened. Her expression contorted into something grim, and her lips were pressed into a hard line before she burst out laughing. Brymthos tilted his head, his manic grin still visible as the elf lurched over, holding her stomach. Her shoulders vibrated. She couldn't stop the laughter. The mad, unhinged cackle made a few passing demons turn their heads in alarm. After a minute or so, she forced herself to stand up straight and brushed her hair back.
"What a fucking idiot."
Brymthos stood there, regarding her with his hands clasped behind his back. His smirk never retreated. Not once. In fact, the corner of his smile spread further.
"An idiot indeed," Brymthos purred, with the sound carrying a razor-thin thread of amusement. In an odd way, supposedly for a lich, he found her outburst to stir a sense of evanescent fondness and humor within his old bones. The laughter seemed to feed the hunger within his own soul.
Paradonia then wiped a stray tear from the corner of her eye, her breath still coming in shallow gasps as her shoulders finally settled. The sulphurous breeze whipped past her hair across her face, but she didn't bother brushing it away this time. She turned her sights over to the sprawling valleys where the infernal lakes apluttered and raged.
"He really thought he was something, didn't he." It wasn't a question, but rather a statement. The sharp edge of bitterness and humor faded into something far colder.
"Solomon spent years spouting drivel about divine right and judgment. About peace between my race and his. Such sanctimonious hypocrisy." Her face twists in revulsion, and she spits down on the earth as she recalls the memory of his speech before the royal court. The day of their wedding.
Brymthos took a slow, deliberate step around her, like a shadow drifting along the edge of the blade. "The living are so pathetically anchored by their foolish appetites - glory, vanity, fame, the desperate hope that someone will remember their names when their flesh finally rots and turns to dust. It makes them so predictable. So wonderfully easy to break. Especially kings. My personal favourite." He admitted without a shred of remorse. The intonation of his voice rose with an audible hint of delight when he mentioned kings. As though the favouritism was born from a personal sense of satisfaction from watching a monarch's downfall.
He stepped beside her, leaning his forearms against the weathered, burning stone of the parapet. Down in the courtyard below, two lesser demon guards from rival houses bared their fangs at one another over a minor dispute of precedence, their hands twitching near the hilts of their serrated broadswords. Neither of them noticed the lich watching them from above.
Paradonia tilted her head, her gaze fixed on the two guards down below as one finally drew his hell-forged blade from its sheath, sparking a brief brawl that sent nearby thralls scattering.
"And what of the demon lords of the night court?" She asked with a small smirk appearing on her lips.
"House Vane and House Mavis are already marching their vanguard towards the eastern pass. Soon to ambush one another." Brymthos chuckled. A dry vibration rattled his chest.
"I personally ensured both high duchesses received identical, highly confidential reports detailing the other's impending betrayal. By midnight, two of the largest bloodlines in this wretched realm will slaughter one another in the ash drifts. And when the dust ultimately settles, who do you think they will turn to for sanctuary?" He turned to face her fully, his pale, gaunt features illuminated by the sinly amber glow of the valley fires below. He extended a hand towards her, palm upwards, offering a silent invitation - into the prelude of the dark machinery of his grand design.
She took his hand, then yanked her forward. His icy breath ghosted over her ear.
"Down in the outer pits, a patrol of royal demon scouts has crossed into my territory. I want you to go down there, my sweet pet, and remind them why crossing us is a fatal mistake."
With a flick of his wrist, Brymthos summoned a heavy, elven sword.
It was hers.
She didn't recall bringing it with her initially when she landed here. It was scuffed. The blade seemed duller and was now glowing with red fissures. It was changing. Just like her. Both were being corrupted by this horrible place. Her jaw clenched, and she swallowed the lump in her throat. She wished she could weep her heart out, but in the end, she knew it would solve nothing.
She needed to keep playing her part. She needed to survive. That was her priority.
Brymthos didn't hand the sword to her; instead, he let it slip purposely from his hand and let it land on the stone with an obnoxious clang.
Paradonia looked down at the weapon. The phantom ache of her sawn-off antlers throbbed at the crown of her head, but her expression remained perfectly smooth, schooled into the blank, compliant mask of a trained weapon. Slowly, she knelt and wrapped her fingers around the familiar hilt. The warmed steel felt right in her palm - a lethal extension of her suppressed fury.
Brymthos watched her pick it up, his dead eyes gleaming with a smug satisfaction.
She then rose to her feet, lifting her chin, meeting his stare head-on, and gave him a brief nod.
"As you wish," she said flatly.
Brymthos smiled, intoxicated by the leash he thought he held so securely in his hand. The heavy iron of the sword grounded her, sending a familiar yet lethal vibration straight up through her calloused palm.
"Go on then," the undead snapped. Cutting the moment short. He stepped back into the shadows of the arched doorway leading into the courtyard, and gestured out towards the winding stone stairs that plunged downwards into the smog-choked canyons.
"Do not keep me waiting, elf. And don't forget to bring back a token. I want to see how sharp my favourite hound's teeth are."
Paradonia internally seethed as she bowed her head, maintaining a posture of silent submission.
"As you wish," She repeated, her voice layered with a steady and hallowed facade. The facade of a soul who has abandoned resistance and succumbed to the despair of her own reality. She promptly turned away from him, her boots clicking against the stone steps as she descended into the gloom lurking below.
The transition from the parapets to the outer pits was a descent through circles of decay and sulphur. The atmosphere grew thicker and more determined to invade her lungs. The stench of boiling slag and the sharp, coppery musk of demon blood hit her face with full force. Around her, the protruding, uneven walls of the canyon seemed to close in, weeping thick, vicious black tar that hissed as it met the hot rock below. As she neared the leveled grounds of the outer pit, the sounds drifted up to her: the clipped yet gruff cadence of demonic speech, the metallic clink of armour, and the crunch of heavy boots over the dry, cracked turf.
She slowed her pace, stepping out from the shadows of a towering stone archway at the end of the stone steps. There they were. A patrol of four royal scouts, clad in sleek, blackened plated armor bearing the insignia of the obsidian throne. They were large, muscular brutes with twisted horns curling proudly from their temples - a brutal visual reminder of the very pride and joy that was stolen from her. They stood around a smoking sulphur vent, sneering and casually kicking at the grey heaps of ash.
"The lich is losing his grip," one of the scouts grunted, spitting out a spatter of dark phlegm onto the scorched earth. "Hiding up in his tower like a rat. It won't be long before the high lords come to their senses and tear this whole scrap-heap down..."
"Careful," the leader muttered with caution, his hand resting casually on the pommel of his infernal greatsword. "Even a cornered hell-mutt can..."
Then a sudden, sharp whistle cut through the suffocating air - not of wind, but of displaced velocity. Before the leader could dare to turn his head, Paradonia was already upon them. Moving with a silent, blinding speed that defied the physical trauma still echoing through her lashed and bruised spine. She closed the distance in a heartbeat.
She didn't hesitate. She didn't announce herself.
With a brutal, downward arc, her blade caught the leading scout clean across the throat. The corrupted steel tore through thick hide and muscle with a wet, satisfying crunch, severing the windpipe before he could even draw breath.
As the large demon clutched at his gushing neck, stumbling backward into the heaps of ash, Paradonia's green, bloodshot eyes locked onto the remaining three.
The mask of docility vanished in an instant, replaced by a frigid, feral clarity. Her grip tightened on the hilt, the fissure of corruption flaring with a faint, angry light. The second scout lunged at her, his broadsword sweeping in a wide, whistling arc meant to cleave her in two. Paradonia didn't try to block the heavy blow. Instead, she dropped low, sliding through the choking grey ash and smog coming from the pits with grace. The blade hissed through the empty air just inches above her scalp. Before the brute could recover his balance, she drove her boot heel hard into the back of his knee joint. With a sickening pop of cartilage, the massive, hulking demon collapsed forward onto the malnourished turf.
Then the elf was on him as he was flat on the ground and drove her sword through his spine, earning a loud, crippling crack. Plunging into soft tissue and cutting deep into bone. The demon choked out a thick, bubbling gasp, clawing into the dirt, trying to escape. Losing to the fade of his consciousness. The fade of his own spirit. Then, with a calculated twist of her wrists, she wrenched the blade free, letting his lifeless husk lie bleeding in the dirt.
The remaining two scouts backed away, their faces twisting from arrogant dismissiveness into stark, primal hysteria. They had hoped to hunt for wandering strays upon the fringes of the wasteland. New, helpless, and lost arrivals cast into their domain, doomed to taste eternal punishment. They hadn't expected a ghost of a condemned queen dripping in blood and malice.
"What the hell is she?" One of the scouts stammered, raising his shield with a trembling arm. Then he froze, recognizing something beknownst to her. Pulling a scent from her blood. Something in her own bloodline that has been buried by the ages.
"Impossible. You can't be."
He didn't get to finish.
Paradonia lunged forward, using the momentum of the spray-kicked ash to blind them. She closed the gap with terrifying speed, her movements no longer hindered by the wounds inflicted upon her back. Her adrenaline and deep, consuming fury were overriding every injury that was ever felt.
She parried a frantic, sloppy thrust from scouts, sliding her blade along the flat of his drawn weapon to create an opening in his guard, then slammed her elbow into his snout. As he staggered back, she spun, and then thrust her sword through his heart before tearing it out. Then his scream was cut short as Paradonia drove the pommel of her sword straight into his temple, sending him crashing face-first into the dirt.
Silence rushed back into the pit, broken only by the crackle of distant sulphur vents and the ragged, heavy breathing of the final surviving scout.
The last demon stumbled backward until his back hit a wall of rock. He dropped his weapon, his hands raised in surrender, staring at her with wide eyes. Blood smeared her face and soaked the front of her shredded garments, but she stood tall over him; the corruption in the steel of her elven blade shone with a hateful radiance.
"Please," the scout choked out, trembling. "Take whatever we have. Just..."
She didn't hesitate. A single, fluid stroke silenced him forever.
The pit fell deathly still.
Paradonia stood amongst the bloodshed, her chest heaving slightly. She looked down at the blood dripping from her blade. This was the first blood she had spilled in the abyss. But Brymthos demanded something more. Something heavier. Something to prove the completion of her bloody task.