I cried. I had considered not showing an inch of weakness, but I could not deny my pain. One of my greatest friends in this life had betrayed me, and there was no way I could be unaffected. My enemies watched me break down, and I was unsurprised to see them finding humor in my anguish. I only used their ridicule to fuel my rage further. I drew upon my memory core and relived that moment of betrayal. Over and over. My hyperdemon gland activated, and I screamed. I thrashed. I cursed upon this world and everything that existed beyond this tiny cell.

I allowed that to become my world. Every waking moment. I did not give myself any rest. I subsumed the madness, and it subsumed me. Soon, they were no longer laughing. They were disturbed. They were afraid. I could no longer hide the miasma. I didn't care to. I allowed its full force to envelop all that I spurned. I would break this prison, I would break everything, and we shall see who laughs then.

[Hyperdemon Gland has reached Level 38!]

~~~

Betrayed alone broken broken broken NOT you fucking traitor friend I will hunt you down wipe out every last one of you leave none alive in this place as I burn it all down in a hell of my creation so I may be free of this world I shall break this prison by their BLOOD their bone their flesh their life—

"COME HERE! GET IN HERE! JUST GET CLOSER AND I WOULD RIP YOU APART AND SHOW YOU THE NIGHTMARES YOU'VE BEEN HAVING IN REALITY YOU IREDEEMABLE COWARDLY STAINS ON THIS WORLD!"

I will be freed of these chains they won't laugh forever you duty shall be your end you will fail in guarding me you are mere fodder to feed the FLAMES of my vengeance you cannot protect anyone all you love will melt they shall watch with horror as I curse their kin and flay them alive until there can be no betrayal anymore–

"DID YOU WET YOUR PANTS!? THAT'S RIGHT! COWER! COWER! RUN! I WILL FIND YOU! I WILL KILL YOU! NO ONE CAN SAVE YOU NOW!"

Yes YES be angry hurt me so I can hurt you hurt each other you all deserve it nothing but death death and suffering–

"Can you stop that?" a familiar voice said, and my head snapped to the source so fast I almost heard a crack. The templars that were torturing me, and those who tried to ignore everything, immediately snapped to attention upon the arrival of the Royal Executor. The guards the kobold had brought with him grimaced in sympathy at the sight, or perhaps they were just feeling the force of my wrath unbidden upon stepping foot into my sacred domain. The templars who had already been forced to spend too long in my presence all looked crazed and numb and horrified by now. But they had no choice, for they couldn't just leave me unguarded.

"StOP WhAt yOU PAThEtiC sack OF SHIT!?" I mocked. My bones almost creaked with every movement. I had somehow, impossibly so, gotten even thinner. My skeleton showed, and it heaved with every breath.

Zazarian furrowed his brows, though it was harder to tell with his kobold face. I'd never actually been close friends with their kind before, and he was certainly not going to be the first. What use were friends anyway, when they would only betray you and sell you out to filth such as this?

I tilted like a hungering spider when the heavy silence only stretched on. This would usually be the time where he berated me, perhaps even gloated. And I would admit, he did succeed in making me angry, angrier, but that was only a drop in the ocean.

Today, however, he sighed. Like he was so impossibly tired. I could grant him rest. I would make it eternal.

He walked into my cell, and stood closer to me than he usually dared. "Look, Haell. This is difficult for everyone… but I know that I can't appeal to your common decency, or even a shred of respect for the shepherds and the angels. So I'm here again, to make another offer. One demon child, and I'll…" he glanced at the templar guards around us, then back at me. "Then I'll let you go free. And I don't mean just make your stay more comfortable, as you have so clearly not cared about that. I'll have your chains removed, and you can leave this manor. By yourself."

"NO." My voice boomed like two monsters forced to speak the human tongue. The guards were already offended by the suggestion, but now they were even more incensed by the refusal. Their temper were so much worse than normal, and two immediately pounced on my cell to beat me, until Zazarian decided to put a stop to that after only a few hits. How fucking merciful. My mercy shall be comparable.

"No?" he asked, frowning deeply. "Isn't this the one thing you want? You'll accomplish nothing by continuing to be a nuisance here. Think about it, Haell. This can't just continue on forever. You won't actually get free of here, no matter how many you hurt or kill."

"I tire of your games," I snarled, both impassively and with deep fury. "If you truly mean it, then release me right now. Let me go free. And then I'll fulfill our deal. Deal?"

"...No. You need to do your part first. It should only take around a year, unless if your birth cycle is extreme. And then I'll let you out. There needs to be a compromise, otherwise this uneasy situation will just continue, without either of us ever getting what we want!"

"Why don't you compromise then, and fulfill your end of the bargain first?"

"Because I don't trust you to not just take the first chance you get and run. I'm already lowering myself to make a peace offering here. You can't just ask me to make all the sacrifices!"

"You talk to me about sacrifices?" My horridly disfigured and healing body moved terribly, and I leaned closer to him. "This is why I said that I tire of your games. Because just as you distrust me, I distrust you. I do not believe you when you say you'll free me." I shifted, and my chains jingled a little. "But, even if my brain were to be so heavily damaged that I actually trusted you, I would still find your request to be repugnant in itself, and I will never do it, even if you offer me the rotting corpse of an angel in exchange."

"You dare–"

"Yes. I do."

He already knew.

The templars did too, but they still retaliated in all the ways they would have done regardless.

All the more reason to run my mouth.

Fucking mald.

[Hyperdemon Gland has reached Level 40!]

~~~

Someone stepped down to my level, and I glanced up. I grinned savagely when I saw Zazarian walk in, instead of just the usual and more frequent change of guards. He had not visited me at all over the last month, perhaps our last conversation had really gotten to him. But now I finally got to see his face for one final time.

"Welcome, welcome!" I rasped joyfully. I felt the power thrum, no matter the weakness of my body.

"Hello, Haell." Unexpectedly, he greeted me cordially back. "You wouldn't happen to have had a change of heart, would you?"

I thought about it for a moment, the wording of his question. "Not a change, no."

"I figured," he shrugged, now unbothered. "But I thought to try and convince you one last time. Something worse is coming. Worse than me. Zilantor had taken a caravan to relieve me of my… mission, and I was not informed until they were already more than halfway here! I know how you hate me for what I've done, and I won't argue about it right now, but know that he will be worse. And I know you're going to say that it can't possibly get any worse than this," I smiled wryly at having been predicted like that, "but trust me when I say that he can. So consider this to be my final offer, and yes I'm making it for my own sake, but it'll be the better choice for you too, if there is any shred of rationality left in that head of yours. Agree to make one demon child, and I may yet be able to keep custody of you, where you will continue to be locked in here, instead of that most cruel man's clutches." Zazarian looked at the open vault doors leading out of my prison, and then beyond. "Perhaps… perhaps if you stay here, then we may yet fall to the siege, and you would be rescued."

I took a moment to process that whole entire tirade. And then I snorted. I giggled like I wasn't tortured. I laughed so hard that it was as if I was already free. And I did not stop. My cackles echoed madly in the tiny space, and the calm Zazarian had been trying to project slowly melted into a frown.

"What's the matter? I know you've gone insane, but has it gotten even worse?"

I giggled again, burning his current expression into memory. I made sure that my swollen eyes remained unblinking and pointed right at his face.

"No, no. I just wanted to thank you, Zazarian, for coming all the way here today, and even giving me that utterly pathetic final spiel." I would've clutched my stomach from laughing, were I capable of it. "Ohhh… I'll remember that. I'll remember you. Not exactly fondly, but you had your funny moments. If only you'd have chosen a more fitting and undeniably safer career in that field instead."

"What are you…" Instinctively, he took a step back. Those were good instincts. But not good enough.

"HELL ON THIS WORLD."

~~~

—Zazarian PoV—

My eyes widened before Haell could even speak those final words. This place always gave me a creepy and insidious feeling, but I felt how it had instantly grown even worse.

My eyes roamed over the place. I begged my mind to work harder. I had seen her commit rituals before, only this one felt far stronger. I knew what that meant, and I knew what catalyst she required. Different from most ritualist, she could cast without complex illustrations. Her blood would suffice. Perhaps a body part. The former was painted all over her cell, a dark dried red from wall to ceiling to floor.

I glanced at my guards, but they were clueless somehow, and there was no time to warn them. I myself was too close, so I immediately moved to create distance. One big and powerful breath gathered in my Koboldragyn Lungs, and I squeezed every drop of fire mana I had in me into the organ. I was in pain, but I had to burn away every drop of blood in that cell… and beyond, fuck! I would not make it, so I'd have to settle for blasting away whatever atrocity that insane demon unleashed instead.

"HELL ON THIS WORLD."

My eyes never left my prisoner. But what I was waiting for–and I didn't know what–did not come from there. It did not only come from there. It came from everywhere all at once.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!" I shouted, repeated in a dozen different tongues for I was not the only one. Instantly, suddenly, without a single warning, everything was on fire. Everything I saw took on the red of blood, and the pain of the heat lanced straight into my soul.

I fell to my knees. Everyone around me thrashed and screamed. This was too much pain. I couldn't take it. Who could ever bear through this torture? Angels. Queen Eden! PLEASE!

–And it was exactly for them that I had to pull it together. For one last time, just as Haell said. I burned, and it was hard to feel anything else other than the agony of that experience, but there was still a different warmth in my chest. I glared at the woman who was the cause of this, the one who had brought me so low, and the demon who I had tortured and tormented for the past year. I'm sorry my queen, and all the Angels I worship, but I have to put her down. There is no taking away her means alone now. You are right, and I am wrong, so I'm really truly sorry for my arrogance in my final moments. But I have long thought that this plan would only end in disaster! A whole race of the fuckers cannot possibly be a good thing!!

The warmth had spread to my mouth. Fire licked beyond the boundary of my fangs. Her eyes met my own, and my breath was held. I could not release it. I could not release it! I was gripped with such fear, that I could not even summon the courage to make my one final act of defiance. I prayed to the angels, I remembered all that I had ever believed and loved, but all the bravery that gave me was quickly snuffed out when the world itself decided to crush my will.

I could only stare at Haell. The demon's power continued to grow. Reality itself was at her bidding, and there was no hope for someone as insignificant as me to ever resist. I burned from the inside by my own doing, but I could not summon the will to stop it. This was my end. This was my end. This was my end. This was my end.

I was already staring in absolute horror when the herokane chains that bound Haell melted. I was the only one left here, for everyone else had suffered the same fate, and soon I will too. She who was once my prisoner stood with a regality that was somehow imposing, despite how she looked like a broken ruin made flesh. The ground began to shake violently, although perhaps it already had, and I was only now just noticing. My breath had already left me, and my small pitiful fire had dispersed harmlessly like the final sigh before death.

The ugliest and most terrifying sword I'd ever seen crushed my head.

~~~

Burn.

Everything burned.

Finally, finally, FINALLY!

It's what I'd been waiting for. The one thing I had to live for. The reason for all my suffering. The culmination of all my wrath. The height of all that I'd toiled. The End.

"W-What is happening!"

"HELP!"

"I'm burning!!!"

"Mommy, I'm scared!"

"It's going to be okay, baby. IT'S GOING TO BE OKAY!"

"DAD HELP!"

All I hated, this place of only torment, all of it was put to the torch, and the screams of my victims echoed unnaturally down infinite halls to reach and whisper and beg into my ears. But they would receive no quarter from me, just as I never received a single act of kindness from them. Be they shepherd, human, or kobold. Maid, Templar, or priest. Man, woman, or child. Soldier, civilian, or prisoner. All shall be burned away, for this place did not deserve to exist. It shall be remade into my image. And the only thing I wished for this land was death.

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A wish fulfilled and indulged beyond the fullest extent. I watched the templars suffer just as I did. Some cursed me, others begged, but most were incoherent from the pain of death. They were driven mad. They were driven to betray, and to drive their swords upon the hearts of their brothers and sisters. This was the same event they had gloated about. The same pain they had laughed at. It was what I had been subjected to. Now feel a fraction of my suffering, and break to show me just how fragile and incapable you all are!

None of you, not a single one, would be able to endure as I have.

Soon, the living had become the dead. A final blaze of life. It was almost merciful. It was a release. Something I had been robbed of for so long. They didn't deserve it. I would torment them more if I could. If only they weren't so weak. Their bodies consumed by the halls they had once guarded. But there was someone here who endured for just a little bit longer.

Zazarian.

His eyes had met my own, and he had promptly lost all will to fight. To live. It was fucking pathetic. His own home had betrayed him, and he could not even lash out. He had given up on his one last attack. It might have even worked. It would have hurt. How utterly miserable and sad.

My chains melted. The flames and the hellish miasma avoided me, but that was fine. This fine metal had been the closest thing to me during all this time. It had hugged me, embraced me, through all the hardships I'd been through. It knew me. It loved me. And now it unraveled upon its own will, so that I may be freed.

The chains clattered loudly unto the ground, and my skin was left marked and scarred by heat and curse, and the relentless march of time that preceded it.

That was fine. My entire body was an open wound. It was nothing new.

I took a step forward. The floor shifted underneath my hooves. The only place I had been to over the past year continued to change before my very eyes. It was hard to see through the glow of death, but I felt as the templars I had killed were consumed. The walls ground against itself, and the gravelly sound almost sounded like whispers I could nearly understand. A sound made it through all the hellfire that surrounded me, and I looked up to see the ceiling droop like a water droplet made of stone, metal, flesh, and bone. The thing continued to ripple, and soon the roof of the place could not hold it anymore. The heavy thing dropped on the ground and began to rapidly churn, inside and out, until it had formed into the rough shape of a sword. Very rough. It was more a club with mishapen spikes of blade and bone and viscera. It stood there, planted in a crater, in perfect reach of my arm. Except that arm was still gone, it had barely grown. My captors had even periodically trimmed it like a beautiful bonsai plant.

No two ways about it, I wasn't about to heal just yet, so I shifted to grab the… 'sword' with my remaining left arm. It was heavy and I almost lost my balance after having barely moved for so long, but my wrath magic easily compensated for that, no matter that it put strain unto my already emaciated body.

I dragged the 'sword' forward. Like an executioner on a final mission, I moved to give a kobold his final rites. The fires parted, the miasma cleared, and I could see the final pathetic expression on his face. His own backfired breath had only ruined it further.

This was the man who captured me.

He was the one who had me locked up here.

Made those stupid disgusting demands.

The architect of my torture.

I lifted the entire greatsword with painful arm, and then I smashed it in all its cursed entirety upon the skull of Zazarian!

And more!

AND MORE!

AND MORE!

I continued to rake sword across the scales until they peeled like so many shard of glass. What was left of his body was tossed, it was stomped, I lynched him across the flames and I screamed out my rage that I could finally enact. I kept going until he was only paste. I scooped it up and ground it into ever finer dust. Even the bones were shattered, and the repository left to rot.

Finally. Finally. After an indeterminate amount of time. The floor ate what's left.

I breathed.

The ground rumbled in approval. The ceiling trilled in amusement. And the walls clapped in full support.

I let go of the sword for a moment and leaned against it with a grateful palm. The stone opened up, thick curses belched like a burp, and my one remaining arm was sucked inside.

I snorted lightly. I relaxed without any panic. What surrounded my arm was almost soft, fleshy… like a tongue. But also sometimes coarse and powerful like gravel. Occasionally hot as lava.

Soon I was let go, the arm pushed out and dry. But the mouth remained, and it threw up… a limb. And appendage. Okay, it was an arm. It was supposed to be. But it was made like my 'sword,' horribly misshapen and imprecise.

I laughed and shook my head. I picked up the thing and attached it to the stump of my right arm. Instantly, I felt… 'tendrils' dig inside. They weren't gentle and blood began to pour. The whole thing was way longer than my other remaining arm. Some parts were sensitive, while others were not at all. But it could feel. I moved it, I flexed it, and the limb obeyed my every command. Eagerly and with sheer and absolute utter glee. The arm would function well enough for my purposes.

"Thank you." I petted the thing, and then the walls right beside me. The mouth burped out some more cursed smoke before melting back into the greater structure.

Well… sort of. The wall was certainly left deformed.

"No…"

"...I don't want to die."

"Angels please…"

"Tell me… What should I do…"

The cries of my endless victims continued, but weaker now, more infrequent, and soon they would finally cease. I might well be the only one who could hear their final cries for salvation, but in me, they would find no savior. I was the very demon who had caused their demise, and I would listen as they met their final end in some far forgotten corner of this wretched place.

I marched right up to the stairs that led out of my prison. It was the furthest thing I could see for so long. I stepped over what remained of the vault doors that had once kept me trapped. I kept my sword in my left hand, for it was still stronger than the new one. My own personal prison collapsed behind me, and I did not look back.

I climbed. The flames retreated, and the curses did no harm. The stone was revealed to not be how I last saw them, for they were all blackened and charred. But I knew that wasn't the only reason for the deepening darkness of each stair, and every part of this cursed manor. I could feel it even now, stronger than ever before, and it wasn't leaving. The greater magic was thick in this place, for my ritual was not yet over.

I reached the dungeon above. I'd known this was here. The prisoners held in those cells were captured for a variety of reasons… but there was a war going on outside. I could guess why they were here. But now they're all gone. Everything was burning, yet even their ash was nowhere to be found. I had killed them in my search for vengeance, when they had done nothing wrong. They were on my side. Some, perhaps many, probably admired me. And it was that same trust that I betrayed. I was no one's salvation. I would never be.

I would choose differently right now, I hoped. But the damage was done. It was over. I was too angry to have any regard for anyone. And now there was no one left to have any regard for.

The flames danced in sympathy, and that only confirmed that I could have prevented this had I been a better person.

I moved on. The evidence of my slaughter was everywhere, in every flicker of hellflame and every imperfection of the 'stone.' But it was also nowhere to be found. Not the people who once populated these prisons, nor any of their belongings. The guard posts had similarly become simple empty rooms, with only the general structures spared and twisted into something else.

I finally found the exit to the burning dungeon, only to find myself in a similarly burning corridor. It was empty of life just like the misery below, made of the same sinister, almost hide-like black material. I could tell that the place was already in an isolated and guarded part of the building before, but the silence only grew more deafening as I walked and found rooms where people must have once sat. Halls where high society gathered. Rooms where people slept and had their affairs. The furniture was all gone of course, nothing remained but for the general shape of a building. But I could almost feel echoes of it in the hellfire that never ceased. I heard the same agonized whispers that reached my ears once I crossed through that point of return.

I walked forward just a little straighter. I held myself steadier. I used my memory core to relive the moment of their deaths. I did not run from what I had done. I would not.

They suffered by my hand. They burned by my touch. They died by my blade. It was I who decided to do all these things, and my tears would only be poison for their graves. I had committed a massacre, indiscriminate and terrible, and for that I shall stand tall against the torrent of hate that I deserved.

I reached the outside world, and found that it hardly differed from the central wing. Hellfire rose from where well-manicured grass must've once stood. Thick putrid smoke rose into the air, and converged into one great column. It gathered in the sky, almost like stormclouds, blanketing the whole city in eternal dark. It almost hurt to even look at.

The rest of the manor continued to burn. Every wing, every building, every shed, and every place of worship. All the art that once adorned the walls and the halls of the manor had been erased, replaced by a uniform terror that perverted all that preceded its creation. And within every room, every corner, and every corridor, was its own little tragedy.

Bedrooms became gravestones for the final slumber. Kitchens burned like the furnaces within. Plantlife withered into ill-defined biomass. Priestesses found their prayers unanswered. The church offered neither life nor protection. Beautiful places, once filled with joy and laughter, became instead drowned in screams and madness. Shepherds found their charisma useless, with no one there to listen. Doctors could no longer heal themselves, let alone their patients. Leaders decayed, just as they were rotten on the inside. All visitors found my hospitality to be final.

"Help!"

"HELP!"

"Hold tight!"

"Hold steady!"

"The angels will protect us!"

"Don't give up!"

"Reinforcements are coming!"

Everyone was dead now. Everyone except for one pocket of resistance that had somehow persisted. I was almost impressed as their urgency continued to be conveyed to my ears. I had thought many times that they had finally fallen, but here they still were. It was the kind of spirit I could respect. Would crush until not a speck was left to dust.

Where? I thought. I listened. I looked in the general direction, and then the ground rumbled. I followed the line of flames that rose higher, until my focus reached the burning pillar of a tower. Hellfire swirled along its top floor, and I opened my wings wide for the first time in a year.

[Demon Wings have reached Level 40!]

I blinked. I laughed. That was all it took to push my final Mutation over the edge. Now I was ready to evolve, but I couldn't do that in the middle of a yet ongoing battle, so I took to the air and flew right into the wall that led to my target. It opened up, and I kept going until my sword crashed right into the torso of a familiar mage. We rolled into a tumble, and then immediately picked ourselves back up. That flight was way clumsier than I would've liked, for I was still weakened and not used to moving about, let alone in the air. Whereas, the man had to immediately resume his spell of a cascading flow of water that enveloped everyone, lest they be burned by the continuing result of my ritual.

"You…" he growled.

"You." I rumbled the same, and there was a world of a difference between the weight of our wrath. This was the same old man who'd been trying and failing to identify my information out of me. Though I wondered how much of that they got out of Therick…

…

They staggered. I had stopped and tensed at the thought of that traitor. The tower we were on had reacted in turn, perhaps the entire manor had. I shook off the distraction but kept the ever burning rage. There were other mages here, all doing a variety of spells. Some held back the tide like the old man, others shone a purifying light, while others yet healed the culminating wounds upon themselves and their allies, for no one could remain untouched in this hellish environment. Not even remotely close.

And then there were those who did nothing. They cowered in pain and fear as the world collapsed around them. From maids, to butlers, servants of all kinds, and a few of their children. They could only rely on those around them. How nice it must be, to be saved.

"You did this?" the head mage asked a question with the most obvious answer. His skin freely bled, and the rot had spread even deeper. The same went for all his people, for the curse was even harder to defend against than the hellfire. Light could weaken it, magic could heal it, but it would never be made entirely obsolete.

"Of course. Who else can?"

"Do you have any idea what you've done!?"

"Naturally," I scoffed at another uncreative question. "I see it all around me. I destroyed the manor, and killed everyone inside."

His face contorted in anger, he grimaced in pain.

"Leave the defense to me! Get her!"

The other mages heeded his advice, and soon a torrent of water and ice was crashing against me from all sides. I summoned hellfire and conjured wrath to try and defend against them, but quickly lost control. My horns were not even halfway healed. That was fine. That was never how I fought. I remembered, I recalled every instance of it, and then I weaved my magic into the weapon I'd been given. The world around me helped my control, and with it I was able to carve the familiar channels into a most unfamiliar medium.

I charged. I scoured a path for myself through the enemy offensive by the confluence of my wrath. The technique was difficult to pull off in my current state, with a terrible sword and an even more unreliable arm, but I made up for the difference with sheer wrath. The great oceans of it inside me had hardly sunk. The wall of magic parted by my will, and soon I was upon my first victim, no matter how much more broken I had become. My slab of a weapon swung towards her, but it turned into a glancing blow when a torrent of water slammed at me from the side and sent me crashing towards a wall.

"Fuck," I coughed blood. That didn't work. None should've been left alive by now, but they had stubbornly refused to fall, and for that they shall be made aware of the futility of their struggle.

My evil eyes seized their soul. My aura combined with the ritual's and crushed what little resistance they had left. The floor underneath them cracked and broke apart. The mages could not muster a response. They all fell to the next level down.

They burned. They cursed. They were cursed. What remained of their defenses was propped up only by one man, and even he was starting to fail. The waters that insulated them from the hell of my choosing were rapidly evaporating, and there was no longer any light to drive away the cursed miasma.

I drove the final nail into their coffin. I dropped into the same pit they had fallen under. A pleading look crossed the old man's face, but I answered his plea just as he answered my own. My club of a sword crashed against his body, and he was unable to muster any meaningful resistance, just as I had once been chained. He screamed upon being blanketed by the hellfire he had so desperately kept at bay, but his death was not yet over. He who had once tried to learn my secrets, now feel that power with your flesh!

I heaved him off the wall. I smeared his face against the floor. His bones broke by the stomps of my hooves. His torso bled from many wounds, and I shoved my hand in them to widen every gash. I grasped hold of the organs that hid within. I pulled out his guts, the ropes of intestine, his very heart. I took everything, even his spine and his skeleton, and I fed it all to my wonderful creation.

The floor accepted my offering, and I breathed.

His pupils and his colleagues had already joined him in death. I could see not a sign of them.

But surprisingly, not everyone shared that fate just yet. The hellflames were remarkably thinner in one arena, and there I found people who remained alive, if heavily wounded and outright charred. Not a single one managed to remain conscious through the ordeal, when this didn't even scratch the surface of what I had to endure. There was one child among them, and his breathing was fading fast. The other kids among their company had surely already died, by my hand and by my command.

They weren't the first children I killed today. They could only be the last.

"Toss them out," I said to the walls around me. I knew from my short time in the air earlier that the soldiers were gathering to muster a response. "Let the kindness of my enemies determine their fates, for I am fresh out."

The tower rumbled. It… didn't understand. Those instructions were too complex, so I repeated it while holding the walls intensely.

The manor shook as a massive boulder crashed against the courtyard outside, but I did not pay it any mind.

Finally, the remaining survivors were swallowed by the floor, and then they tumbled down and were passed around by clumsy appendages of rock and flesh. I grimaced, unsure if they would even survive the process, but I supposed it didn't matter in the end. I had already made of myself a true demon. Nothing would undo what I had done.

I flew back outside, unconcerned of their ultimate fates. Here I saw the skies churning. The building clouds of before had become an aurora of power, but dark and cursed unlike anything I'd ever seen back on Earth. The streets beyond the manor were in chaos, and the soldiers could hardly muster up the forces to attack the domain that I'd claimed. They collapsed to their knees, they attacked their fellow men and women, they could no longer think as themselves anymore. The sky was like my own gaze, evil incarnate, but impossibly more indistinct and alien.

I experienced no such problems gazing into that abyss. In fact, it was almost inviting, I couldn't help but be drawn in. I understood that it was in part because the sky was a mirror of my own powers, but that 'aurora' was no longer truly my own. It was the greater magic made manifest, and it wanted something from me.

…No. Rather, it's quite the opposite. The world wished to lavish me with gifts, and I accepted its offering.

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