The Demon Queen Wants To Live.

My horde swept the great plains outside the Dark Tower in formations as straight as drawn arrows. Fifteen thousand of them, at a glance. A small portion of a far greater whole, drilling beneath a sky that stretched crimson from one horizon to the other.

They ran their drills. I had not asked them to. Epherion had fallen. The kingdoms of men had been brought to heel. The Dwarven tunnel-cities were caved in, every one. The Elves had abandoned their great tree-cities, and even my Generals could no longer find them. The Beastkin had already pledged me their allegiance, for theirs was a race that had always believed in the might of a fist, and no fist was mightier than my own.

My horde ran their formations, and there were no longer any fields left to use them in. It seemed some things never changed, even without the Pantheon to demand them. The sight might have pleased me once. It sat unwanted in me now.

"My Lady," a serpentine voice called from behind me.

I did not turn from the great window. "Did you find what I asked, Seryth?"

"I did," the woman replied. "There is no mention of any woman named Ash Vale." My hands clenched. "However, there was a Hero who bore that name. He died seventy-six years ago. I have located his body."

I turned from the window then and regarded her. Seryth was on one knee, her head bowed low. The obedience was perfect. It should not have been so. I had memories of a different demon, one whose back had never been that straight. One who had looked at me with devotion, but something sharper besides. A hunger. I saw none of that in Seryth now. Strange, that obedience should taste bitter.

"Show me," I said.

Seryth nodded. She reached behind her and drew the wicked curved sword strapped across her back. [The Cutter]. She slashed the air to her right, and a tear opened in the world, one that led only into darkness. And from it slid a body, wreathed in white.

I stepped forward. My gait was steady. I made certain it was. I looked down upon the Hero, and for a moment I did not recognize his face. Then I did. This was the face that had stormed the halls of my fortress. The body had been preserved. By whom, I did not know. Perhaps the world had simply produced it, the way it produced everything else this story required.

I had memories of two worlds. In one of them, an Ash Vale had died long before he ever reached my halls. I had heard the report and I had laughed. A Hero who could not even reach the goal of his quest was a poor one. In the other, a woman had reached me and killed me. I knew which of the two was true.

The man looked every bit a Hero. All firm lines and hard edges. He was handsome, or would have been, by the standards of humans. This was not my Ash. My Ash was steel, but she was soft besides.

"[Dispel]," I whispered, hand outstretched. My mana swirled, and I felt the spell take. Nothing happened. The man was still a man. There was no woman folded beneath. "[Greater Dispel]," I said. Nothing happened.

"My Queen?" Seryth asked. She glanced at the corpse, and then at me. "If there is some secret here, then I would be-"

"Do not touch her," I snapped. I caught myself, but it was already too late. Seryth had gone down to both knees, her head pressed against the floor. "I simply wished to confirm something," I said. "There is no need to do more. Thank you for locating him."

Seryth's eyes widened at the end. I ignored it. "You may leave," I said. "Return to your duties."

The woman rose, and turned, and made her way toward the great doors of my chambers. "Seryth," I called after her.

She paused mid-stride and looked back. "Yes, my Queen?"

"It is nothing," I said. That was not what I had meant to say. I had only realized that there was no point in asking what I wished to ask. Not of this Seryth.

She left, and then I was alone. Alone, with the corpse of a Hero who was not my Hero. I could see Ash in his features, even as a man. But it was not the same. It was not the Ash in my memories.

Time had passed in this false world. How much of it, I could not say. Days, perhaps, or weeks. It had been that long since the memories returned, and they had taken their time to clear. Even now, what had been done to me was a difficult thing to believe. And so I had confirmed it.

I had used [Teleport] to reach the far edges of the world. I had gone to every land I remembered, searching for some seam where the illusion faltered. There was no such seam. It was no different from the world I remembered.

"Except that here, you were never a woman at all," I murmured. I reached down and brushed the Hero's face. "You were a Hero even in this world, Ash. And not nearly so successful a one, if I still breathe." Then I rose, and my glare was for the world entire. "Is this the world you envisioned, System?" I asked.

It did not answer. I would give it mine instead.

---

I walked the halls of my fortress in silence. It was a walk I had made ten thousand times, and never once like this. I fed a thread of mana into [Tower Control], and in a corner of my mind the whole of the Dark Tower unfolded. Everything was where it should be. Everyone was where they should be. That was precisely the problem.

The first door was silver. Serpents coiled through its engravings, wound around one another until it was difficult to say where one ended and the next began. I pressed my palm to it and stepped through, wrapped in [Void Presence].

The room inside was bare. A large bed in one corner. A pair of mounted trophies. A great desk set against the far wall, and Seryth seated at it, her tongue flicking at the air as she wrote. She did not notice me. She would not, beneath the Skill. And she was the true Seryth, not one of her many shadows. I had checked before I entered.

"Seryth dressed her chambers in finery that rivalled my own," I said.

The quill stopped. She turned, and her eyes found me, and she was already sliding from the chair. "My Queen?"

I ignored her. "She took the finest of her trophies and drowned this room in enough gold that it hurt to look upon. She was trying to match me, I think. Or to exceed me. That was what she always wished."

Seryth went to her knees. "Your Royal Darkness," she cried out. "I would do no such thing."

The scales along her collar shifted. Confusion, or nerves. That much, at least, was still the same. I looked down at her. At my General. The most disloyal of them, and among the most useful. A woman who had wished to put a blade in my back, and had tried, more than once, whenever she believed the opening survivable.

"I have a question for you, Seryth," I said. She went very still, listening. "Would you ever betray me? Would you covet my place, or resent my station above yours?"

"No, my Queen." It came at once. She prostrated herself, brow to the stone. "Never. I would never dare. You are the greatest Queen this world has ever known, and it is my honor to serve at your side in whatever manner you permit."

I smiled. It was not quite a smile. "I see," I said. "You are loyal."

Seryth raised her head to look at me, and I extended my right hand. "Her back would have broken," I said, "long before it bowed so."

The System had rebuilt my Generals from their Roles, and from nothing else. I would not suffer these mockeries of my Generals to live. Not even in a false world. Not even where no eye but mine would ever fall upon them.

"My Queen, I don't under-"

"[Balefire]."

White flame left my hand. Seryth's mouth opened to scream, and she was ash before the sound could form. I looked down at what remained of her, and something inside me twisted. I ignored it, and stepped back out into the corridor.

My hands were steady. I kept them so.

The next door was an ornate black, trimmed in gold. I stepped through it and into sound. There had been a spell on the room, then, holding the noise inside. I understood why a moment later.

Malrath stood facing a statue of himself, carved in marble, rendered so finely it captured his visage down to the sneer. He was speaking to it.

"-and naturally all the people of Shamir applauded me, for what else could they do? Some of the men wept. Some of the women reached for me. Not that I would ever permit one of those filthy humans to touch me, mind you. Were it not for my Queen's orders, I would have razed the city entirely."

"And would you have," I whispered, "if I had asked?"

He turned. He saw me, and he was on one knee in the same breath. "Your Royal Darkness. I was not told you wished to see me. It is a great honor. Had you but sent word, I would have come to you inst-"

"Answer my question, Malrath."

He looked up at me. "I would have, my Queen," he said, and there was nothing in his voice but confidence. "I am strong, after all."

"You are," I agreed. It came out soft. I had inspected him days ago. The Malrath kneeling before me was a level 900 [Whisperer]. The one I had known never passed 700. The System had made his strength the equal of his boasts, and in doing so it had unmade him. What was the Great Boaster, if every boast was simply true? The great hall he practiced his speeches in had always been empty.

"As such, whatever task you would assign me, I will-"

I stepped forward. I called, and the [Devouring Sword] answered, coalescing into my hand between one stride and the next. I drove it through his skull. Whatever wards and defenses his increased level had given him were nothing for this blade. Malrath's eyes went wide. Blood welled from the wound, and his mouth opened, and he toppled onto his side, dead before he finished falling.

"I apologize," I whispered. "It would have been a proper fight, had I come openly. And I did not wish for that."

His body was already coming apart into mana and aether. I stepped out of the room.

Something in my right arm was twitching. I ignored it.

The next room was Zarvok's, and I paused inside its threshold. He was hunched over a desk built to his scale, an almost comically large quill wedged between two fingers, and he was writing. His lips moved around each word as he set it down.

I crossed the room and looked over his shoulder, and even hunched, his shoulder nearly stood at my full height. It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. A report, written in enormous, flourishing letters, each one bleeding into the next until I could scarcely read them at all. It concerned the fall of a city called Aeron, a great bastion of trade near the Zeken Archipelago. It told of Zarvok's deeds in the siege. How he had met the humans' knights one by one, and slain them, one by one.

The grammar was perfect. Not one word sat misspelled.

I read it to its end, and then I read it again. In the true world, a fool of a General had filled pages like these with the names of the dead. I searched this report from its first flourish to its last. There were no names in it but his own.

The System had understood Zarvok. But only the smallest part of him. And he had not noticed me once since I entered. The real one apparently always had.

I raised my hand behind his head. "[The Truth That Lies Beyond Death]," I whispered, and turned for the door.

I heard the thud before I reached it. I had not wanted to meet his gaze while I did it. And this spell gives one more than just a pained death. It embraces them. I allowed him that gentle death, for he was writing. That much of my former General still remained.

My hands were shaking now. Something pressed against the back of my eyes, and I wiped it away, and kept walking.

I stopped partway down the corridor, and turned to face a stretch of wall that was only wall. In my true memory, there had been a door here. There had been a room behind it. And a woman whose voice had been very soft, and very sweet.

"It seems this world does not acknowledge you at all," I said. My hand found the smooth stone and rested there. "Good. I would not have liked to kill you again, my friend." I paused. "Though I suppose I failed the first time, too."

The stone said nothing. I walked on.

Orzathiel's door opened onto an empty room. I stared into it for a moment, and then I continued. Zera's chambers were empty as well, which was no surprise at all. There had only ever been one place she truly lived.

I heard the Beast Hall before I reached it. The sounds of battle rolled out through its great doors, impact after impact, and beneath them the screaming of beasts. I stepped inside.

Great creatures crashed against one another down the length of the hall. At its center, a giant of a troll grappled with the [Shardar] that this world's Zera favored, the two of them shaking dust from the distant ceiling with every collision. Zera herself stood to one side, watching. And all around her, arranged in rows, knelt beasts. Dozens of them, chained to the floor.

"Zera," I said. "What is this?"

The hall went quiet. The two great beasts at its center stilled mid-grapple. Zera came to me at a gallop, on all fours, and straightened before me to her full eight feet.

"My Queen. My apologies, if the sound carried too far."

"It did not," I said. I gestured at the kneeling rows. "What is this?"

She glanced back at them, then to me. "My Queen, I have run out of room for these creatures. So I wished to learn which among them was strongest. And which was weakest."

"I see," I said, and it came out sad again. "And the weaker ones. You would…"

"I will kill them, if their matches do not." She grinned as she said it, wide enough to show every tooth.

"Of course you would," I said.

I raised my hand. Zera's eyes went wide. "My Queen, what did I-"

The chained beasts were already moving. They obeyed Zera before they obeyed me, even in this world. It was good to take her by surprise. It saved me much time.

"[Balefire]."

White filled the hall. When I lowered my hand, the hall was gone. There was only a vast breach, open to the night air.

"I used more of myself than I should have," I whispered. There had been no need to use that much mana. It was the fury in me that had answered the false Zera so. I knelt, and touched the scorched floor. "I told you a hundred times to bond only the beasts worth the trouble. You never once listened." My hand pressed flat against the stone. "I preferred you that way, Zera."

I rose, and stepped back out.

On my walk I passed one more door I knew well. Echidna's. I looked at it, and I did not go in. She had been given no place in this world's story.

I walked, and each step came slower than the last. I was not injured. I had expended only a percent of my mana. My right arm burned, and my left burned with it. And then I was walking down a hallway I had never walked in either life, toward a hollow in my own fortress.

I stepped through, into a wide circular ring of blackened stone. There was no garden.

Orzathiel stood alone at its center, flowing through his forms, four swords tracing arcs through the air in a stance I knew almost too well. It was the stance he had always taken when he came to my throne room to challenge me. His blades sang, and his feet were planted. The four blades blurred into one another so fast that even I could not tell where one ended and the other began.

Unlike the others, he noticed me. He turned. "My Queen?" Confusion crossed his face. "Have you come to-"

"Be silent," I said. And this time my eyes did blur. "I would speak with you. But you cannot answer anything I wish to ask."

I extended my right hand, and the [Devouring Sword] answered.

"Defend yourself," I said, and drove mana through my legs, and charged.

It took some time to kill him fifteen times. Fourteen times he rose from where I had put him down. The first five times there had been only confusion. The other ten, he had fought as he had always fought.

I stood over his fading corpse. "You were strong," I said, "even in this life." Wounds dotted my arms where he had pierced through my [Darkness Binding]. Others were along my side. One had almost cut clean through my right leg. All of these were wounds that I could not heal, and so I ignored them.

"Why?" Orzathiel coughed, and blood came with the word. "Why, my-"

I put the sword through his throat before he could finish it. I drew the blade back as his body came apart into mana and aether, and then there was nothing in the ring but me. I had killed the last of my Generals. And I had done it shamefully, taking each in the dark, alone. Together, they might have bested even me.

I sat down on the blackened stone. I drove my fist into the floor. Once. Twice. A dozen times, until the whole fortress shook with every blow.

"Is this what you wanted?" I hissed at the sky. "Is this what you believed I wanted?"

There was no answer this time either. A wind came from nowhere, and a breeze blew over the hollow. I looked, and to my left, I saw a black flower. It lay in a seam between two stones, where my General's body had lain. The stone around the flower was rotting away.

I reached out, and I touched it, and it did not harm me at all. I almost crushed the flower in my fist. I held it gently instead.

My left arm was burning. Something trickled down my cheek, and I did not wipe it away.

"Why would you show me this now?" I asked.

Nothing answered me. I stood, and I raised my hand to the crimson sky, and I called for all of it. All of the mana I had, and I pushed it into the greatest Spell I commanded.

The true world was far too grand a thing for even me to destroy. I suspected it would not be so here. Perhaps it would break the walls of this place. Perhaps it would break me along with them.

As the power gathered, the world seemed to lean toward it. As though it had been waiting for someone to end it.

"[Oblivion's Decree]," I whispered.

Both my arms caught fire from wrist to shoulder. The world warped, and cracked, and the cracking spread out from me in a single great wave, out past the ring, past the Tower, past the horizon and the crimson sky above it. And then there was nothing.

---

I blinked, and I was standing in endless white. There was only one thing. A System screen that hung in the air before me. It had two lines.

[Scenario Complete.]

[Remaining Participants: 1]

I looked down at my arms. Somehow, I knew exactly what I would find. The Lines were gone. Down my right forearm ran a branching pattern of purest black, and down my left, its twin in white. I had two Sigils. And I hated them.

And the Ember Core was back, but not as it had once been. The grinding pain was gone, and in its place, was only a slow and steady pulsing. It did not quite match my heartbeat, but it was close. It was not quite painless, but it was better than it had been.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my wrist. Then I extended my right hand toward the screen.

"Ruin."

Black fire poured out of me and it passed through the screen without purchase, finding nothing at all to end. I had known this would happen.

"Curse you," I growled.

I turned. Behind me, rising out of the white, stood a barrier. It shimmered faintly and it stretched away to either side without end. I crossed the white and pressed my palm flat against the barrier. Ash was in there. And I could not help but wonder what world she saw. I only hoped it did not taste too sweet.

I reached for the bond with Solara, and did not find it at all. I squashed the feeling that came. There would be time for that later. I looked only at the barrier. I had stood before a door I could not open once before and listened to a Hero weep on the other side of it. I had walked away from that door. I sat down before this one.

There was nothing to do but wait, and hope.