Interlude: Accidental Ally

To Utraxia, Sovereign of Pride, boredom was a constant threat. To call it a companion would be to undermine the lengths she went through to ensure that her perfection was not marred by ennui.

Writing had been a passion, once, before that scarlet harlot had taken a shine to her works and utterly ruined her creative spirit. Painting, architecture, refinements upon refinements of spell formations she’d mastered millennia ago, nothing was quite so thrilling as the past few weeks.

Well, nothing recent anyway.

First Envy came traipsing through, this latest title-holder the woe-is-me sort of self-centered “master planner” that gave good reason as to why perfection such as her maintained the production of bile. They’d brought with them a most interesting wrath demon lost in her own world of self loathing.

Utraxia had debated breaking her neutrality and snatching the lass from the cave entrance she so often stared out of, if only to prod at how a wrath demon could so completely lose the emotion. A pity then, that she’d been killed. Some mortal had dragged her here and she’d died with the mountain.

A beautiful mountain it had been, too. But the battle, re-told to her again and again by a wonderfully irate Quiraxa, was her biggest regret. Not for lack of participation, no, but from how she’d not witnessed it. To debase herself for a haunch-set seat in the snow would have been, in a vanishingly rare instance, worth it.

Now, the burning, shattered corpse of a demonic titan lay sprawled across the edge of her demesne like a bizarre monument. Defilement of a sort, but also terribly interesting, though she’d learned precious little of its origin. From what her best could tell, it had been amalgamated only prior to its birth into this plane.

A pity, for a second such creature could be a fitting opponent.

Its killer? The Sovereign of Wrath. Not a slavering beast, but a well-mannered, starkly timid woman of surprisingly modest proportion. Truly unfortunate then that she was in bed figuratively with she-who-will-remain-unnamed and literally with a red-winged angel.

Though apparently the angel had become well acquainted with Quiraxa. Good news for future cooperation, but frustrating that Quiraxa would waste time away from her additional duties writing letters. The gall she’d had asking Utraxia herself to send them via her constructs of ice…

Well, Utraxia supposed that, in her magnanimity, she could forgive Quiraxa just this once.

Especially because of the curious crimson guest who graced her throne room, kneeling and fixing to Sovereign with a baleful glare.

Utraxia looked away from the shivering wrath demon and to Quiraxa, who was standing at attention behind them. “You said you found this one wandering the borders of my demesne.”

“Yes.”

“And they have no name?”

“Yes.”

“So they are not one of hers?”

“Not yet, Mistress.”

Utraxia raised one eyebrow and shifted her haunches. “Oh?”

“She is much alike; Seyari and I believe she was formed out of the battle that took place in Wrath’s demesne.”

“Hmm. A first-name basis with the so-called ‘angel of wrath,’ dear Quiraxa?”

Utraxia’s subject cast her gaze down.

The kneeling demon stirred. “I am not with those blasphemers!”

Quiraxa swallowed and Utraxia tutted.

“I had been informed you wish to die. Know that I will not grant this to you. Now, is it true you were born out of that recent battle? I advise you not to lie, my generosity extends only…” Utraxia trailed off as the demon kneeling before her collapsed to the ground.

A wail echoed around the chamber as the demon on the floor began to sob.

Utraxia grimaced. “There is no dignity in this. Quiraxa!”

Quiraxa snapped to attention.

“Take her to a guest chamber. You have already washed and clothed her—ensure she is comfortable and warm. When she calms herself, I will speak to her in private.”

***

Sylvia found herself in a room, lying on something soft and warm for the first time in… since before. Everything from before felt just a little blurry, just a little wrong. Just a little bit like she was living someone else’s memories.

That Sylvia had been pious. That Sylvia had done right by the world. That Sylvia had died facing down monsters.

This Sylvia didn’t know who she was, she only knew that she was now a monster. That her reward for a lifetime of service had been the ultimate blasphemy.

Except that every time she told herself these things, they rang a little more hollow. Every trail she followed in her mind dead-ended at a wall of orders and scripture. Even the name Sylvia started to feel like ash on her tongue.

She tasted it eagerly, reveling in the bitterness that kept her grounded and her mind alive even as she burned at the thought of what had been done to her.

She lifted her head as a door opened. How she’d not heard the footsteps of the titanic, blue, centaur-like demon were beyond her. The monstrosity laid itself across a pile of cushions, stretched and kneaded at them with four cat-like paws, and flicked the bladed tip of its toward her.

“Comfortable?”

Sylvia quickly sat up, furious with herself. “Absolutely not.”

The big blue demon raised both eyebrows. “Oh? You seemed quite comfortable earlier. Did you sleep well?”

“I didn’t sleep.”

A tut was the immediate response, followed by a sigh as she pointed a manicured claw at Sylvia. “You are a demon of wrath. You were created out of human souls who fell in battle against the Sovereign of Wrath. From how human-shaped and lucid you are, I can only guess that you have a dominant soul fragment and that Wrath’s demesne has influenced you.”

She continued before Sylvia could even process what she meant. “If I had to guess, you are suffering trying to reconcile what your past lives’ beliefs were with the reality you face before you.”

Sylvia tried to tune her out, looking down at the multicolored cushions she sat on. A hand under her chin forced her head up.

“I do not make it a practice to help those such as you. I do not care to treat someone so miserable and weak that they fail to have the smallest sliver of pride in what they are. Look. At. Me.”

Sylvia looked away. Claws dug into her. She forced her eyes closed. Needles of ice forced them open, frost rimed her face and forced her to look into the eyes of the monster.

Irises of mercury gathered in a pit of blackest tar, the pupil in the center a needle that widened, catlike, as her gaze pierced into Sylvia.

They were little like the eyes of the demon that had killed her. Those eyes held passion, fury, and on their later meeting an impossible sadness. This monster’s eyes were cold, pulling her in like a frigid whirlpool. At the center, deep down, a little spark of something.

It couldn’t be kindness. Sylvia knew kindness.

Right?

“You have no self worth,” the monstrous demon in a voice that dripped scorn and pity in equal measure. “Not a shred of dignity. Your existence as it is is less than an insect never hatched.”

The ice around her jaw fell away. When Sylvia spoke, her voice should have been hoarse. This accursed body ensured it wasn’t, so nothing could hide the way it wavered.

“I am blasphemy. I am failure.”

The monster snarled and jerked her head forward until their noses touched. “You are potential. I do not tolerate wasted potential.” She relaxed her hand and let Sylvia slump back onto the cushions, shaking. “But I do not nurture potential. Those who cannot grow themselves are undeserving. Yet.” She stood up, towering to the ceiling of the room. “Nothing grows in barren soil. Nothing changes frozen in ice.

“Your Sovereign knows of you, this I do not doubt. She is kind in ways I cannot be, and I do believe, at the very least, I could repay her for the pest she removed from my demesne. Consider it an honor then, that I, Utraxia, Sovereign of Pride, will teach you to value the life you sought to throw away.”

A Sovereign Demon. Sylvia’s eyes went wide, clawed hands digging into the cushions beneath her. None of this made sense. She’d deserved to die out in that snowfield and she’d been so close. Closer in any way than when she’d tried to destroy herself.

Utraxia did not extend a hand. “Get up. Follow me. There is much you ought to learn.” There was no question in her tone, as if the only path forward was made by her decisions alone.

Sylvia stared after her, lost. This monster was…

Monster…

She tried to deny it, tried to remind herself that the only reason she was treated well was because she was a monster too. But a true monster would not care to save another monster. A monster was not capable of such thoughts.

This monster was.

This Sylvia was, just as that Sylvia had been.

That Sylvia had been zealous. That Sylvia had done right by herself. That Sylvia had died facing down… people. Not monsters.

Sylvia stood, took a deep breath, and followed Utraxia out into the frigid hallway.