"I'm here to report on our front with the elves, my queen!" He shouted as he knelt in the throne room. The constant sound of scribbling on leather echoed throughout.
Scribble.
Scribble…
Scribble.
Tap.
The scribbles stopped.
A few meters ahead was a pristine, decorated wooden table towering with documents. Barely enough room on it for anything.
But one presence stuck out more than all the clutter.
Her horns longer and sharper than any demon. Her skin, however, snow white. Contrasting with her blood-red eyes and blood-red hair. Same color as the velvet carpet beneath her as she sat on her cushioned chair, leaning on her elbow lazily, looking at the demon kneeling before her.
"...You seem more tense than usual." Her soft voice barely raised over a whisper, yet it echoed throughout the room.
The demonic scout flinched once. Bit his lip.
"Speak." She let out. "I'm used to losses. Who died?"
He gulped, slowly raising his head.
Such a vibrant demoness, he thought.
If only her eyes weren't so hollow. Like staring into the abyss.
"All…"
He gulped.
"All of them. Five of our demonic generals sent there. All dead."
She blinked once.
Twice.
"....Haaah." A slow exhale. She leaned back, rubbing her face, stretching her eyelids as she looked at the ceiling.
"... Continue. Leave no detail out of what's happened."
Then she looked to the side. At nothing in particular, as the scout detailed what he saw.
"I understand." She murmured when he finished. Her voice had dropped to something quieter than a whisper.
"Thank you. Take a break."
She rose from her seat and walked toward him. Paused beside him. Placed her palm briefly on his shoulder before moving past.
"That should've been your home," she said softly, mostly to herself, as she opened the door.
"My queen…?"
"Don't go back there." Her voice returned to its usual steadiness. "You've done well. There's somewhere I must be."
She didn't look back as she disappeared from the throne room.
A few hours later.
At the Royal Chambers inside the human capital, Varolon.
The king's head rested on the table. He hadn't looked up since she arrived.
She sat across from him, leaning on her elbow. Watching him.
"Aldric." She said it quietly.
"You sure you don't want to? Neither of us have someone who understands what this is. And it'll only be once." She paused.
"Before we have to go back to letting the people we care about die."
"You of all people," he murmured into the table, "know why I could never."
Silence settled between them.
She looked at his hair. At the tension still sitting in his shoulders even now.
Slowly, without thinking about it, she reached over and gave his head a light scratch. Then again. Her fingers gradually moving through his hair.
"...Stop." His voice was immediate. Low.
She didn't.
"Alicia."
"I heard you." She kept going, unhurried.
"Stop it." He said it again, harder this time. "Right now."
Her hand stilled. She drew it back slowly. Folded it in her lap.
She didn't look away from him.
"You've always asked. And I always gave you the same answer. It's not any different now."
"If I let you do something like that," he whispered, voice hoarse, "I'll hesitate when I'm facing you."
"And I keep telling you that I won't hesitate," she replied. Her foot found his calf beneath the table. A light, absent kick.
"That's because you're a sick demonic bitch."
"You brat. You're thousands of years too young to talk to me that way," A vein at her temple. "Should I just kill you now?"
Silence.
Her foot kept its slow rhythm against his calf.
"What did you come to talk about, Alicia." He blurted.
She looked at the wall to the side. At the portrait of a certain princess.
"Five of my generals died to a human… That's more than 50% of my forces." A pause.
"You know what that means."
His eyes closed.
"...Yes." He exhaled. "I do."
The tap of his finger on the table filled the quiet.
Alicia leaned forward slightly, reaching toward his hand.
"How's your daughter?"
He was on his feet before she could touch him. Chair scraping back.
"Enough." The word came out like something held too long and finally let go. He didn't look at her.
"I'll prepare my army and the Otherworlders. Let's be done with this."
Alicia stayed seated. Watched him put distance between them. Her hand still resting on the table where his had been.
"Give the Gods what they want," he said, "so they'll leave us be."
She said nothing.
Her foot had nowhere to reach now.
"Either of us might not 'be' afterwards."
She said as she kicked the air once.
"What's wrong with just…" She clenched her teeth. Her hollow eyes flashing with a spark, "Us doing what we want to each other? You don't even have to perform, Aldric. I'll take care of everything, so—"
"Alicia," The king let out, not looking back at her. "That's because only you want to do something at this time."
"As for me, I don't." He concluded. "Eloping before battle. Cease your foolishness. I want nothing to do with it. Never did."
A beat as he turned around and walked towards the exit, "We'll meet on the battlefield."
Slam.
"... Fucking liar," She growled in her lonesome.
Her hollowness returned.
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Once upon a time,
there was a world lush beyond measure. Bountiful. Still.
The races did not war. The fields did not burn. Century after century passed in a peace so complete that those who lived within it had no word for its absence; only the slow, full rhythm of lives that ended in beds, surrounded by those they loved.
Such a thing was possible because the Gods watched over it.
And they were content. For a very long time, they were content.
Then a certain Goddess arrived. From a world so alien that even the eldest among them had no name for the place she described. She spoke of it simply. Casually, even. The way one speaks of something beloved.
The Gods listened as joy beamed from her face.
And as they listened, something stirred in them they had not noticed was missing.
Hunger.
Not for food. Not for prayer. For something to watch.
Entertainment.
So they decided, quietly, among themselves, that the peace would have to end.
Each generation, they would move their races like pieces on a board.
Pit them against one another. Choose champions to lead the slaughter; revealing only to those champions the truth of what was happening, so that someone, at least, could appreciate the cruelty of the game.
The Goddess was horrified.
She had only shared her favorite things about the world she came from without its horrors of war. A memory here, a story there, something small and dear to her from a world they would never see.
She had not meant for it to become a manual for ruin.
But she was outnumbered.
And then her turn came.
Her enemy was the Elven Goddess.
It was then she understood the full shape of the trap.
Since she's new to the role. Since her influence was still puny compared to the other gods, then should her race lose, she would lose her divinity. Her seat. Perhaps her life, whatever life meant for something like her after ascending to godhood.
So she fought. Not with grace. With everything.
She won.
Two thousand years passed.
Her turn came again.
This time, her enemy was the Archdemon. The God of Demons. Our current war.
— Entry recovered from a burnt book. Author Unknown. Believed mad.