Path of Dragons-Chapter 80Book 7: : A Demon’s Lament

Once, she had a name. A history. A family and some degree of happiness. She could remember none of it, though. Now, there was only the Corrupted.

By virtue of her archetype, she was a Healer.

It disgusted her.

The notion of helping anyone twisted her stomach into knots and if she thought too long on it, bile rose in her throat. No one else deserved her help because she knew the truth. She saw the world as it was, unclouded by idealistic propaganda espoused by those who wanted to breed a population of cooperative drones.

No – the world was a brutal place, and the only way to survive was through unerring self-interest. She had seen people leap in to save others, white knights who unhesitatingly sacrificed themselves for the sake of preserving life and innocence. Or for what they deemed the greater good. Narcissists, all.

They didn’t care about helping others. Nor did they care about the health of the societies they protected. Instead, they were motivated by their own inflated sense of self-worth. They had truly convinced themselves that they would be remembered, that they deserved the adulation of the masses.

Fools, each and every one of them.

That clarity gave her the strength to reject notions of collectivism or any sense of responsibility toward her fellow demons. Their society was based on harnessing the worst parts of their nature. Most didn’t see it that way, but she saw beneath the surface of racial pride to recognize that the whole system was built upon distraction. Sins were embraced by the rank and file, and meanwhile, the powerful exploited them. They were told that there was no morality, that the only way to be free was to give in to their base instincts. To their sinful natures.

And they were all happy to comply, like the good little fools they were.

But everyone knew the truth. Deep down, they were aware that morality wasn’t some societal construct. It was a very real thing, and when they neglected it, the only true result was rampant and hollow self-loathing.

That played into the ruling class’s claws as well. A depressed people was almost as easily manipulated as a distracted population. When those two factors were combined, the nation of demons didn’t have a chance of escaping the crippling bonds they’d shackled onto themselves.

That was the source of her corruption. She’d worked tirelessly to try to cure her people. And she had been derided for it. Called an Angel. She became an outcast, but still, she’d tried to show them the truth, and slowly, she built a following. Just a few hundred demons, but enough that she felt she was making progress.

But then, they came.

The Muj’akar. The most feared enforcers in the Hexarch Hegemony.

They slaughtered everyone. Even when her followers surrendered, there was no mercy on offer. She pleaded with them to stop, unleashing more power than she’d ever thought possible. But it was all for naught. She was a mere ascended, while they were all demigods at the lowest. Most were full half-step deities with thousands of years of experience.

She never stood a chance.

Still, she had fought until she had no more ethera in her core. Only then did she succumb, and she was captured soon after. The trial she’d been forced to endure was a farce. They charged her with all sorts of detestable things, framing her attempts at helping them as imposition of ethical tyranny, subversion of individual autonomy, and violating the Doctrine of Supremacy.

The last was the most laughable, because it assessed that any imposition of moral authority was an attempt for an individual to set themselves apart and above their fellow demons. In a twisted way, it made sense – trying to dictate morality to someone was, at its core, a supremacist act. But she’d taken great pains not to frame it that way. She never thought she was better than anyone else. Instead, she only posited that demons were better than their current incarnation.

The justicars of the Hexarch Hegemony did not agree.

They’d added a host of other charges, including the corruption of innocence, which claimed that trying to impose moral standards was inherently corruptive of the natural state of hedonistic pursuits. But after a while, she had stopped listening. They were all ridiculous, and what’s more, she knew that none of it mattered. Even if she’d violated the laws of the hegemony, she knew she was justified.

Still, the hegemony’s macabre sense of justice fell upon her with the full weight of demonic vindictiveness. When she was convicted – even after an impassioned speech that she thought might sway her accusers – something inside her died. Then, they labeled her the Corrupted, and she was sentenced to give herself over to the World Tree.

But unlike so many others who were meant to populate Primal Realms and the like, she wasn’t given the solace of forgetting her past. Instead, she remembered what she’d done. She remembered why she’d ended up in the Desolate Reach. Her identity – such as it was – remained intact, as did her bitterness over how thoroughly she had been betrayed by her own people.

The others weren’t like her. They knew nothing other than the identities they’d been given by the system. Certainly, they had their constructed backstories and some semblance of free will – that was the key difference between towers and Primal Realms – but they were hollow set pieces.

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She was different.

A pitiful creature sentenced to an eternity of being slaughtered and farmed for experience and rewards. She welcomed it. After what she’d experienced, she knew it was better than returning to the Hexarch Hegemony and their twisted sense of morality.

Of course, there were other demonic enclaves of power. The Vexis Dominion was the most prominent, but there were hundreds of others. By their very nature, they weren’t nearly as unified as the other surviving elder races. That was one of the reasons they’d never managed to defeat the angels, though the Corrupted’s experiences suggested that the eternal war between the two races wasn’t as justified as she had been led to believe.

Those thoughts fluttered through her head as she focused on the Bladesinger. He was just like the Muj’akar, and he displayed all the worst demonic characteristics. Most of the time, he was wholly focused on advancing his martial prowess, and indeed, he was obsessed with blades to an unhealthy degree. However, he wasn’t above succumbing to his vices. In particular, he enjoyed an unhealthy fascination with the Chainspeaker’s captives.

Some, he merely tortured, though when doing so, he was more fascinated than gleeful. The Corrupted was required to heal those poor wretches, and even if they were made whole through her efforts, they retained the psychological consequences. They were, each and every one, broken people.

But the worst off were those pretty young things that drew his more carnal attentions. The Corrupted turned a blind eye to his lustful actions, much to her shame. She couldn’t do anything to stop the Bladesinger. No one could. And what’s more, there was an argument to be made that he was only acting according to the character that had been forced upon him. He was a victim, too, though to a far lesser degree.

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It was difficult to remember that when she knew the things he’d done. Very, very difficult.

At present, the demon was busy directing the elite undead to lead their charges to the staging area. The first army had been decimated, though no one was quite certain how. If a group from the world on the other side of the portal had infiltrated the Primal Realm, then they’d disappeared without a trace. Which didn’t make sense. Once inside, there was no way out but by defeating the Queen of Desolation. And what’s more, from everything they knew, there was no one in the city known by the locals as Hong Kong that could meet such a challenge.

Was the system punishing them, then? Perhaps. Maybe it was part of the script it wanted to play out. Whatever the case, they had no choice but to assemble another army, harvesting fresh undead from the Underrealm. Control of that gate was the reason the Queen of Desolation was in charge.

That, and her unmatched personal power.

Regardless, so long as they kept it open, they had an endless supply of soldiers that would wash over that world and earn them each more Feats of Strength for when they were reunited with their real selves.

The Corrupted held out hope that if she grew powerful enough, she might be able to escape the Hexarch Hegemony. Perhaps she could settle in one of the other demonic enclaves.

More likely, she would be killed once she’d served her sentence in the Primal Realm.

After all, she was far too large a threat to their way of life. Too dangerous to let live, she knew.

The gate itself was set in a depression in the center of the courtyard. To the Corrupted, it had always appeared that the undead dragged out of the Underrealm were climbing out of their graves. A silly notion, but one she couldn’t escape.

Just as she was on the verge of giving an order – those zombies were wandering off – she saw something she never could have expected. A swarm of spiders – each one almost a foot across and seemingly made of crystal – pounced on the Bladesinger. The Corrupted could feel the afflictions piling onto him, and for the briefest of moments, she considered letting him suffer. After all, it wouldn’t kill him. She could feel that much.

But then she decided to do her job.

However, when she started to cast her curing spell, she felt a pinch in her back. The wound was nothing – barely enough to pierce her flesh – but her spell was immediately interrupted. What’s more, she felt the swirling ethera in her core come to a screeching halt. She whipped around, intent on finding the source. An instant later, she caught sight of a large human in a ridiculous, broad-brimmed hat.

She aimed a backhand in his direction, but, defying his bulk, he nimbly danced aside before darting back in and peppering her with another three stab wounds.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a low-slung lizard-like creature appear on the Bladesinger’s back. It bit him, and via Sense Injuries, she could feel that its venom was far more potent than that of the spiders. However, with her core having been disrupted, she could do nothing about it.

She screamed at him to evade, but the Bladesinger was never one for defense. He was a Warrior, but one almost as focused on offense as a Berserker. So, he reacted predictably, spinning in place as he tried to dislodge the lizard monster and the spiders. The arachnids were easily killed, shattering almost like glass, but the larger creature was far more persistent. It bit him a dozen times before he managed to throw it free.

Then, it ran.

The Bladesinger shouted, “Kill it!”

The Corrupted tried to caution him against those actions, but when she tried to speak, she found that her words died in her throat. The big human had obviously used some sort of spell, but it was one with which she was unfamiliar. It didn’t last long, but by the time she found her voice, the Bladesinger was already gone.

And he’d taken most of the undead with him.

That’s when she saw two other humans approaching from where they’d hidden nearby. How they’d gotten so close, she had no idea. They shouldn’t have even been capable of infiltrating the fortress, much less gotten to the courtyard. However, there was nothing she could do about it now.

Her eyes flicked from the man in the broad-brimmed hat to a woman in damaged armor. Finally, she looked at another human who lagged behind. He was their Healer, she was certain. And that meant he was her first target.

The second her core churned back to life, she launched her lone offense spell in his direction. It was a simple bolt of force – more of a stun than a spell meant to inflict real damage – but she hoped it would be more effective against the Healer. He was weak, after all. Not even ascended. None of them were, though the other two were on the precipice.

The armored woman leaped into the spell’s path, slashing it with her sword. It shattered, proving that her attackers were not without power of their own. Then, the woman’s sword glowed, and when she landed next to the portal to the Underrealm, the weapon descended. An explosion came a second later as she slashed through the governing runes. Even as the woman went staggering backward from the shockwave, the portal winked out.

It was closed. There would be no more reinforcements from the Underrealm.

But that was fine. She only needed to endure the assault until her detestable colleague returned. When the Bladesinger finished dealing with the lizard monster – probably someone’s tamed beast – the intruders would die. The portal would be easily repaired, and the invasion would proceed.

With that in mind, her only goal was to remain standing. To that end, she began to layer healing and protective spells. If she could survive the onslaught of Muj’akar elites, then she could endure the attacks of a few mortals.