The Demon Queen Wants To Live.

The room was empty when I finally returned. I set the satchel on the bed and checked the egg. It was warm. It was always warm. I adjusted the cloth around it, felt the pulse against my fingers, and let myself hold it for a moment longer than was necessary. Then I set it down on the pillow where it belonged.

“It took longer than it should have,” I told it, or her, or him. “I apologize.” The egg pulsed once.

The book sat in the crook of my arm. It had been surprisingly easy to stow it away. I placed it on the table between the one bed and the remains of the other and stepped back. The cover caught the lantern's light. The warhammer and the horn. Zarvok's sigil. Two simple shapes. Even the horns barely looked like horns. He had always preferred to chisel them himself.

Ash was not here. The room smelled of nothing but stone and the faint oil of the lantern. There was no second heartbeat, no sound of breathing. That was no matter. A Queen did not require company. Especially not the company of a Hero who could not so much as find her way back to her own room after a simple measurement ceremony. Where was the fool?

I sat on the bed. I looked at the far wall. I looked at the book on the table. I looked at the far wall again.

These were the collected writings of a general I had trusted with nothing that required subtlety or deeper thinking. A man who could turn words into useless sentences, and useless sentences into needless paragraphs. A man whose tactical assessments I had overruled nine times out of ten, who had once gotten his own warhammer stuck in a crevasse while attempting to tame a Hellstag. These would be the musings of a fool. There was no reason to read them, and every reason to sleep instead.

The aching came. For the first time today, it came from somewhere past the core twisting inside me. The egg pulsed against the bed beside me. I reached over, adjusted it again. Checked that the cloth was secure. It was. I had already checked.

"This is…merely to confirm its worthlessness. That’s all," I said to the empty room, and opened the book. The first entries were exactly what I had expected.

Zarvok’s handwriting was enormous. Each letter took up space enough for three, with curving letters that served no purpose at all save for making his writing difficult to read. I tried anyway. I did not know why I was wasting my time, only that I was. I read the first entry.

The border skirmish at Zel'shar was a feat they will sing songs about. The enemy -a pitifull and meager host of perhaps three hundred- broke upon our lines as waves upon the Endless clifs. I, Zarvok, The Red Giant of the Kraghul, led the charge myself. The sound my hammer made was, I venture to say, the final cord of a great symfony, if that symfony were composed intirely of screaming. Her Royal Darkness would be proud.

This was almost enough for me to close the book. Zel’shar had been a small border skirmish against the elves, one of the first missions I had assigned solely to Zarvok. He had distinguished himself there. He had been tame in his boasting to me. He had not been tame on the page.

He misspelled "reconnaissance" on the next page. Then again two pages later, differently. Then a third time, more differently still. It was almost an achievement.

If this was the shape of all of these entries, then I regretted wasting the tiny specks of Essence it took to recover them. I read on. I did not know why I did. At some point, the bluster faded. Zarvok spoke of his achievements more seldomly, and when he did, they were described almost clinically.

In its place, he began to name the dead. The soldiers who fell in every skirmish, great or small. He wrote small details about them. One had carved his lover’s name into his shield. Another had hummed a tune before every battle -Zarvok described this tune poorly, and so I could only guess.

Twelve fell today. I will list them here, for they fought well, and it costs me nothing but ink to honnor their memmory, and what is ink to a man who has so much of it?

It was a record of the dead that nobody had asked for. One that I had never asked him to make. One that….I had not thought he could make. I turned the page. The nature of the entries changed again. He spoke of the other generals. He wrote about them with a warmth I had not permitted myself to feel.

The first was of Malrath. The great boaster, we had often called him. He was the loudest voice in any hall. Zarvok described catching him in an empty chamber, alone:

Malrath spoke to an empty hall today as though a thousand knelt before him. His voice rang from the stone. I watched from the doorway. He did not see me, or if he did, he did not care. He gave that same speech again, later, to a large gathering of watchful imps. He looked relieved when the speech ended, and when they applauded him.

The next was about Orzathiel. I only noticed now, but the letters here were scrawled more carefully, in smaller sizes. Ones that almost fit on the page they were meant for. I did not know the care it would take for a Demon of his size to write so.

Orzathiel tends the garden still. I asked him once who it was for. He did not answer. The flowers are lethal to all who touch them. Even to me. Even to Zera. Even to him. All save one. I do not think she knows. I do not think he would want her to.

I read the passage thrice. The second time was slower than the first. By the third, the page was clenched in my fingers.

He made the garden after the stone halls fell. Before them, he had not been that kind of demon. I do not think anyone told him to start. I do not know why. He does not answer when I ask.

Ozrathiel had started his garden after the Dwarves, then. I knew this, of course. Had always known this. I turned more pages and my hands were steady. They had no reason not to be.

Then, he spoke of Zera, his sister. The letters here were more careful still. They did not even have the curving flourishes they did before.

My sister found another one today and this time it was a creature so wretched and strange that it defies the language I have at my disposal, and I have much of it. I do not know where she finds these beasts. Perhaps even the System does not know. She placed it in front of the Queen’s chambers as she always does now. The Queen pretended not to see it and my sister pretended the Queen had not pretended.

My jaw tightened. Zera’s small rebellions had grown more and more bold, the more years we had spent together. Always I had considered tightening her leash. Always there had been a reason not to. I read the section again, and understood it no more than I had the first time. Or I pretended not to, at least.

There were other entries to Generals I had lost before the others. The ones I should not have lost. I did not read theirs, though I knew not why. The lantern flickered. I had been reading for some time.

The entries changed again. These were shorter. Some were barely a line. They were scattered between campaign notes and complaints about food, or the weather or any other mild inconvenience my General had gone through. They were about me.

The Queen gave the order today. Her voice did not shake. Her hands did afterwards. I do not think she knows they do this.

I stared at the words. I read them again, slowly. I read them a third time. My hands did not shake. They had never shaken. I had never- I was the Demon Queen. My hands did not-

Something sharp pulled inside me, from the core. I pressed a hand to my chest and breathed through it. It passed. I turned the page again.

She stood at the glass again tonight. The battle ended at the fourth bell. She did not move from the window until the ninth.

The next entry was several pages later. Between them, there was a campaign, a siege, more dead who were named.

The Queen has not eaten since the executions. She says the new food displeases her. That we need to find more chefs. The food has not changed.

Then, much later:

I saw the Queen in the eastern corridor today. She paused at the passage that leads to Orzathiel's garden. She stood there. She did not notice me, though she always does. Then she turned and left. She still did not notice me.

“You…bastard,” I whispered. I had always thought that I saw and heard everything that had ever happened in my fortress. That I knew the lives of all those who walked within it. That i kept an eye on them even as the Gods kept an eye on me. I was wrong.

I turned the pages again, and now he talked about himself. He had stood guard outside my chambers on nights he was not assigned. Not that anyone ever was, as I had never needed protection.

I could not sleep. The corridor outside the Queen's chambers is quieter than most. I stood there until dawn. The Queen did not emerge. I left before she could see.

Then, he spoke of the nights where I could not sleep. The nights where I traveled the length of my fortress.

I followed the Queen tonight. She always walks, on the days after a great battle. After the losses, great or small. On these nights she does not notice me, though she knows most things. Her path is always the same. She stops outside the doors of all of her Generals. Those who live. And those who do not. She lingers outside theirs longest. Mine she passes third, and this I consider a great honor. She always ends at Zera's beast hall. I have not found the courage to follow her inside.

I set the book down. I picked it up again. The entry after the Dwarven campaign was the shortest in the journal. Every other campaign received Zarvok's full poetic treatment. This one was ten lines. Amidst these lines, he wrote about me.

The Queen has not eaten in three days. She says it is because the food displeases her. The food has not changed.

The entries that followed were fragments scattered between other things. I almost missed them. Perhaps I should have missed them.

Orzathiel was in the garden when I passed this morning. He did not look up from the soil. He asked me if I had looked in on her tonight. I told him I had. He nodded and returned to his flowers.

Malrath caught my arm after the campaign briefing. His face was strained beneath the usual bluster. He asked me if she had eaten today. She has not.

The ache came again, spreading from the core outward. It settled somewhere at the base of my throat. I did not press my hand to my chest this time. I just read. I knew what I was reading, though I wished I did not.

They had all known. They had watched me in silence. They had spoken to each other in half-sentences that never quite said what they meant, because they could not. They had done what I had never asked, and they had called it service. My hands were trembling. There was a weight pressing from the back of my eyes. I had to force myself to read further.

The next entry was written most carefully of all. In letters that did not connect to the next. It was the first time I found his writing adequate.

Malcis fell to the void today. Zera had to slay him herself. She struck clean. It was a mercy to him. It was not a mercy to her. The Queen entered the chambers afterward. She ordered everyone out, everyone but Zera. Her voice was iron, and nobody questioned it. Then the Queen left as well.

I was in the corridor. I should not have been. She walked past me without seeing, or without caring. She pressed her back against the wall, and stayed there. I looked back through the closing door. Zera was alone. Her face was doing something I had never seen my sister’s face do before.

The Queen's hands shook for the rest of that day. I have seen the Queen do many things I cannot explain. This is the first I do not wish to.

I closed my eyes. I breathed. I opened them and kept reading. The next entry was about the reports. General Zarvok had many roles in my forces. One of them, the one I had forced onto him, had been the reports.

The Queen demands another account, this time of our daily mana crystal expenses. I do not know what purpose these serve anymore. We would not run out of mana crystals even if we fired them from our cannons. Perhaps she feeds these reports to her hearth. It does not matter. The writing is the task, and I will give them all the effort they deserve, even if no eyes but mine ever see them.

He had thought them punishment for a general who was too poetic. An order given by a Demon Queen to her General was not an order he could refuse, chain or otherwise. It was an order that forced him to use the words he so loved. This journal existed because I had given him the excuse to write. I had not thought he would stretch my permission this far. If he was still alive, I would berate him for it. Perhaps…perhaps I would not.

I was nearing the end of the journal now. I had been reading for some time. Until the only light that came was from the single lantern. Ash had still not returned. I should have set the journal down, and yet I did not. There was little left, it made no sense not to read it now. I turned the page and read the next entry.

I was walking the lower halls tonight. I felt something that did not belong in a fortress. I found the Queen in one of the unused chambers. She was sitting on the stone floor.

Echidna was curled around her. All twelve heads rested against the Queen. Four at her shoulders. Four in her lap. Four pressed to her side. She filled half the chamber. The Queen's hand rested on its scales. She was speaking to it. I could not hear what she said.

I left before she could know I was there. I will not write of this again.

My face was very warm, though the room was not. It seemed I saw less in my fortress than I would have liked. It seemed those below me always had a way of wandering where they were not wanted. If the man had still been alive, I would have executed him on the spot. I tried to close the book again. My hand rebelled. I tried to quash the rebellion, and failed.

I turned the page again. It was dated to the day before the Hero's party breached my fortress.

The others do not see it. Perhaps they only choose not to. The Queen has been preparing for something, and I have watched her too long to miss it. I do not know what comes tomorrow, only that it comes.

Orzathiel tends the garden. Zera has gathered her creatures close. Malrath practiced his lines today, for the last time I think. Even Seryth has mingled with us freely today, though she never has before.

I have served the greatest Queen this world has known. She will not hear this from my lips and I think it would only burden her if it could. She carries too much already. She has never set it down. But I wish her to know, if these words should ever find her, that we-.

I turned the page. It was blank. I turned another, and it was blank too.I turned every remaining page in the journal, one after another, and they were all blank, and they would always be blank. The man who filled them had died soon after. I stared at the last entry for a long time. Until the words blurred into each other.

"You stupid fool." The words came out quieter than I had intended. I barely heard them over the sound of something I did not recognize at first. It was coming from me. "All of you were such fools."

My voice cracked on the last word. The core answered with the same hum I had felt when the third thing had first caught inside me. It filled my chest now and it did not stop.

There were wet spots on the page. I stared at them for a moment before I understood where they had come from. I wiped my eyes. It did not help. I wiped them again. I tried to read the unfinished sentence one more time, because surely I had missed something, surely there were more words if I only looked hard enough-

There was a sound. The door, perhaps, or footsteps on the stone. It came from very far away. I did not look up. Warmth settled behind me. I might have mistaken it for the hum, had it not been so familiar. Arms wrapped around me from behind. I stiffened. The arms did not let go.

"Are you okay?" Ash's voice was quiet, from somewhere just behind my shoulder.

I did not answer. I could not. Ash was very warm. I did not care that she was late. Only that she was now here.