The Demon Queen Wants To Live.

The heavens were bleeding, and my blade was buried in their heart. Though perhaps, more precisely, it was buried in the heart of the Goddess whose entrails now seeped onto the white stone upon which she stood.

I withdrew my blade, and Fate staggered back half a step. The Goddess's mouth opened. Blood left it in place of words, and then she was falling. She fell onto her knees, and then onto her side. Her form had begun to disintegrate into aether and mana before it ever met the ground.

I turned and looked down. Down the many thousand steps that led up to the great Pantheon stood legions. My legions. They watched me, and my Generals stood at their forefront.

There was Zera, seated atop one of the [Shardar], a great hulking beast of green and brown. Its head was bowed low, and Zera sat upon it, as was proper. Beside the great beast stood Malrath, his back turned to me as he addressed the demons. He was announcing the victory, regaling the ranks with tales of the divinity we had slain this day. Seryth stood next to him, though my eyes cut through her illusion at a glance. Her true body I could not see at all.

Near the base of the stairs stood Orzathiel and Zarvok. They both looked up at me, and I needed no [Spell] to see the awe in their gazes. They deserved some share of the credit. Zarvok had fought the God of War, and shattered that untouchable armor beneath the swing of a hammer. Orzathiel had held back the Goddess of Peace and the God of Skies both. They had performed their roles well.

My horde was watching. Waiting for an answer. I, Lysanthia, the strongest who had ever lived, would give them one. I raised the [Devouring Sword] to the sky, and reached into my mana.

"[The Ending Sky]," I murmured, and my power answered.

A line of red shot forth from the blade and reached the white sky above the heavens. It cut through it, and then it spread. The red bled through the white like ink through water, and then the sky was crimson. My crimson. Our crimson. The color beat down upon the world until everything beneath it wore the same shade.

The sky would always look like this now. And not just in my realm. I had come to the heart of this world, and I had made it mine.

"Epherion has fallen," I said, and mana carried the words far and wide. It carried my voice well past the horde staring up at me. Past the seventh heaven that surrounded Epherion. From here, no doubt, it reached every corner of the world.

The horde began to roar in one voice. My Generals joined them. Their voices reached me. The warhorns took up their thundering beats. The Sirens began their sultry whispers. And I stood atop the sky above the sky.

"[Status]," I said, and this time the word was no more than a whisper.

Blue split the air before me as the System presented me to myself. I ignored all of it, save for a single line.

[The Demon Queen] → [The Last Demon Queen]

It was almost enough to make me smile. Almost.

My left hand reached toward my collar.

I frowned, and looked down at it. I had not permitted that gesture. I stilled my hand, dismissed the System, and looked once more upon my cheering hordes.

"Now we drown the world!"

It should not have been possible, and yet somehow the cheering only grew louder.

Epherion, the last seat of the Gods, had fallen.

The corridor was empty. Of course it was empty. None were permitted this floor of the Dark Tower save those I summoned to it. I looked down all the same, down at the black stone before my feet, as though something small ought to have been there. There was nothing.

I began to walk, idly feeding mana into [Tower Control] as I did. And in a corner of my mind, I saw the whole of the Dark Tower. Nothing was out of place. There was no one left in all the world to put anything out of place. The fortress was quiet. My chest was quiet too, as it had always been.

Through [Tower Control] I saw demons in every wing of the Dark Tower with their mana flared as brightly as their cores would allow, burning like torches against the black stone. It was amusing. Perhaps later I would remind them whose halls they dared burn so brightly in.

I turned a corner. Imps prostrated themselves as I passed, and held their bows long after I had gone. Other lesser demons offered their obeisance just as openly. Many of them whispered.

Glory to her Royal Darkness.

Glory to the ruler of the world.

If they wished to praise me, then they should have done it properly, with finer speeches. Perhaps I would ask it of Malrath, when next I saw him.

A mirror stood where two corridors met, a tall pane of polished silver set into the stone. I caught my own reflection in passing, and permitted myself a moment to regard it.

A regal face looked back at me, cut finer than any blade. Pale skin. Crimson eyes whose color bled faintly into the air around them, red laced through with white. There were large silver horns, jutting proud from long dark hair. The reflection was a beauty beyond beauties, one that would be sung of for as long as there were men left to sing. When they were done with their screaming, at any rate.

Then the reflection blurred. For a single instant there was something else in the glass. A warmth of gold at my shoulder. There was blond hair, falling loose and melding into the dark of my own until it was difficult to tell where the gold ended and the black began.

I blinked. It was gone. There was only me.

I glared at the mirror for several moments longer. My reflection was still my reflection. I had not expected otherwise. "[Status]," I said. The System greeted me, faint and trembling. It listed no ailment that could explain the strange vision. I clicked my tongue and dismissed it, before shooting the mirror one last glare. Perhaps the bonds that held this world were fraying without its Gods. That was fine. It would learn its place, just as all of the conquered nations would.

I walked on, and in time the corridors widened toward the doors of my throne room. Before I reached them, the air at my side shimmered.

Seryth materialized out of nothing and sank to one knee in the same motion, head bowed. Surprise moved through me. Why should it surprise me that my own retainer knelt? She had knelt ten thousand times before. I shook the thought away.

"Report."

"They are all assembled, my Queen," Seryth said, in that serpentine voice of hers. "They await only your presence."

"Then have it they shall."

Seryth rose and pressed her palm to the great doors, and they swung inward without a sound.

The throne room of the Dark Tower was built to swallow armies. Vast pillars of black stone covered its length. Balefire burned in the braziers between them, painfully bright and casting no shadows, and the banners of a hundred broken kingdoms hung from the heights.

And there was no sound. Hundreds stood assembled within, and not one of them made a sound loud enough to be heard. None would. Not until their Queen had taken her proper station.

They were all there, just as Seryth had promised. All of my Generals, standing in a line. Zarvok towered over them, though Orzathiel came close in height. Zera had brought none of her beasts. Mighty and impressive as her menagerie was, I would not have tolerated such creatures in this hall. And behind my Generals, arranged in lines as straight as drawn arrows, stood their lieutenants, rank upon rank, stretching back until they reached the far end of the hall.

Everyone of import and power in my army was-

Pain lanced through my brow, just for a moment. I stifled it as soon as it came, and made my way to the Dark Throne.

The Dark Throne stood at the head of the hall, atop a staircase that wound upward in a slow black spiral. The throne itself was cut from a single mass of black metal, a black deeper than the pillars, a black that gave nothing back to the balefire. As I approached, the whole of it stirred. The staircase folded in upon itself and the throne descended to meet me, lowering the way a warhorse kneels for its rider. The dais bore me upwards and upwards, until I looked down the hall as if from a great vantage point.

And the weight settled, as it always did. The [Demon Queen's Crown] wove itself from shadow and set itself upon my head. It was weightless. It should have been weightless. I reached up and adjusted it against my brow. I had never once needed to adjust it before. It sat cold against my skin, as it always had.

Perhaps something warm would have sat better.

The hall held its silence. Seryth glided from my side and took her place at the end of the line of my Generals. I regarded them all from on high, and let the moment stretch.

"Malrath," I said. "Approach."

He came forward. He was short for a demon, sharp and wiry where the rest of my Generals were muscled and strong of frame, with features that might have passed for an elf's were it not for the blue horns jutting from his brow. He sank to one knee before the base of my throne.

"Yes, my Queen."

"Your contributions to our assault," I said, "were… inadequate."

The flinch took his whole body. In the next moment his head was prostrated to the floor, brow pressed against the black stone. I let him lie so for a breath before I continued. "But I will give you the chance to redeem yourself."

"Your Majesty." His voice rang from the pillars, polished even now, even pressed against the floor. "Give me a task, and it will be carried out. Ask me to split the great seas, and they shall be split. Ask me to find you more Gods to slay, and I shall cross worlds to fetch them."

Malrath. The Great Talker, my hordes called him. It was a truer name than the one the System had given him. "Would that you had been a match for the Gods of this world," I said, "before you set out to seek the Gods of another."

The flinch came again, smaller this time. "But I will give you a chance," I said. "You will go to the lands of the humans, the ones we have brought down to their knees, and you will teach them how to kneel. When they have learned it, you will go to what remains of the elves, and you will teach them the same."

"Of course, my Queen!" He raised his head, and there was nothing in his face but eagerness. I did not know why I had expected to find anything else. I waved a hand, and he withdrew.

"Zera," I called out. "Step forward."

She came with one arm folded across her waist, and bowed over it. "Yes, your Royal Darkness."

She was kin to Zarvok in more ways than the one. Eight feet of muscle, skin a shade darker than her brother's red, and short black horns -short, at least, for a demon of her stature.

"Your performance was acceptable," I said. "You slew a great many of the angels with that menagerie of yours." Zera smiled up at me.

"I am told you lost one of your lieutenants."

"It is no matter, my Queen," Zera said. "He was simply too weak."

"I would have his name. If only so that all others gathered here know better than to follow in his wake."

"Malcis, your Royal Darkness," Zera said, with that same smile upon her face. Nothing in her face moved at all.

I blinked. A dull throb began at my brow and ended at the base of my skull.

"I will find you a replacement," I said. "And afterward, I have a task for you. You will go and find the last of the ten [Great Calamities] left in this world, and you will tame it, or you will slay it."

Zera's smile widened until it showed teeth. "Thank you, your grace." For her, I knew, it was an order and a boon in one. I waved my hand, and she stepped back.

"Zarvok."

He came forward and knelt, and even kneeling he stood taller than most demons. His warhammer hung across his back on its shaft. "You slew a God, Zarvok," I said. "Ask for something, and it shall be yours."

The great demon did not hesitate for even a moment. "I want nothing. Fight more enemies. Strong enemies."

Zarvok was a man of few words. It was one of the things I had always found accept-

The pain came again. I blinked through it. Almost, I brought up the System a third time. I stayed my hand. Zarvok was still looking up at me, waiting.

"Very well," I said. "You will join Zera. And when the last of those beasts has been put down, I will find you another war. Perhaps there will even be one, if Malrath fails."

At this there were a few faint snickers, quickly stifled. I waved my hand, and the great demon stepped back.

"Orzathiel," I said. He stepped forward.

Orzathiel was only half a head shorter than Zarvok, though he was built long and lean where Zarvok was wider and fuller. His four hands were clasped before him, folded into two bows at once. His four swords hung hooked at his waist.

"Orzathiel. You too have slain a God this day. And so I will ask you what I asked Zarvok. I will grant you a boon. Ask for something, and it shall be yours."

He lifted his head and met my gaze, and a grin split his face. "I long for nothing, your grace."

I looked at him. It was a proper answer. It was exactly the answer a General of the Demon Queen ought to give. Something about the answer was strange. I could not have said what, or why. Still, it was the answer he had given me. "Very well," I said at last.

I looked to Seryth, and inclined my head by a fraction. She stepped forward from the line, and her mana swelled until her voice filled every corner of the hall.

"Let the feast begin."

The great hall of my throne room became a banquet hall in moments. It took only the barest of will, the smallest of intent, and the Dark Tower answered. My Generals seated themselves at one table. Their lieutenants seated themselves at several more. It was quiet. I watched them from above, though I did not need my eyes to see anything here.

And the [Chefs] came, and we began our great feast. The greatest feast in the history of the world, and perhaps the last, for I had ended history.

In front of me was a [Wormtongue]. It was a great length of flesh, covered in overlapping scales of silver. The [Chefs] bred the [Scaled Worms] in the dark of the kitchen halls, generation upon generation. It was considered a delicacy fit only for me. It was an honor to all the lieutenants who attended.

I cut a piece free and bit into it. The meat was cold, and rough. It was not supposed to be either of those things. And the taste of it was strange.

My head felt as though it were burning. The pain was back. I took another bite, and I bit into something for the first time, instead of the ten thousandth.

It was faintly sweet, in a way a wormtongue had never been and as I chewed I tasted the strange tang of smoke. Why was there smoke? And the aching was back, a throbbing pain that split my skull in two. In one moment I was in my great hall, at the end of history. In the next, I was elsewhere.

I sat across a small and pathetic fire from a woman with golden hair and the meat in my hands had come from a creature I could not name.

Then I was kneeling in mud, wearing rags. My hands shaped something I could not see.

Next, I saw a small girl holding a tribute from me that had not been worth taking, and she smiled.

In another moment, I raced towards the same small girl, shielding her body from flame.

The vision changed. And changed. And changed again.

My hands brushed a golden egg, split with black veins. I brushed against it in the day. I brushed against it at night.

I was pleading with a very small bird to stop screaming, and the bird was not listening, and I did not burn it for the insolence.

They changed again and again. And then, as suddenly as they had come, the visions stopped. The pain ended.

The hall had not noticed. Far below me, my Generals and my Lieutenants still ate. My Generals. My Lieutenants. My. My.

Something slid down my face. I reached up to touch my cheek, and my fingers came away wet. The weightless crown dug into my brow.

"Ash," I whispered.