226 Rise (1/2)

”Not quite a child. Not in the human sense of the word. But in the sense that this personage became blind and all too forgiving, yes.” Zagan's eyes flashed with fiery red tinged with equal parts anger and wistfulness.

”This personage has spent now seven centuries roaming this world, consuming mortal, monster, and demon alike. Countless souls have passed through him, and with them, all the emotions packed within. Hope. Despair. Rage. Happiness. Love. Hate. And yet, it was two and a half centuries ago that the fieriest soul of all was witnessed.

Demons are born from spawning pits that lie within the earth, festering and solidifying pure chaos. From birth, we are conditioned to seek more of the chaos, and as such, we feast upon each other as beings of chaos to grow stronger, but above all, we seek the chaos brewing within mortals, for nothing exists that is so nourishing.

Naturally, a demon spawned closest to En Arkennan, the Heart of Chaos, the source of all spawning pits, will be more powerful from birth. This personage was born directly from the heart when its tendrils could spread through the entire vastness of this world.

After the gods themselves defeated us and sequestered us to the West, the roots of the heart have receded, and successive generations of demons have grown weaker. More isolated. Demons spawned in the fringe lands close to human civilization, to the 'Hinterlands', as you call it, are even weaker.

Imps. Firehounds. Creatures not worth mentioning. Not worth devouring. Yet it was here, within a razed human village, that this personage encountered that soul. An imp leading many of its kind in desire to take over land and power.

Its desire was intense. Fueled by vengeance for its fallen and ambition for more, it held within its soul the embers of greedy desire that this personage took a liking to, thus the imp was taken in, guided, for soon enough, its misguided ambitions would be squashed under the might of adventurers.”

”And this was two hundred and fifty years ago?” noted Li. ”That would make this imp, the Burning One, quite young.”

”Still a whelp, he is,” said Zagan. ”And yet, in some ways, that whelp has more wisdom than many. This personage took in the imp in the wake of the third invasion's failure, when the Elven hero wielding armor and weapon made for slaying demons from realm unknown defeated us.

This personage was herald of greed then as well, and yet, knew that power to reach the title of Burning One was beyond his potential. Thus, he sought another with more potential, a 'child' if you so desire to call it so, to nurture into the next Burning One to bring demonkind victory.”

Zagan paused to contemplate Li's words. ”Yes. This personage has raised the mightiest Burning One yet, but there is no pride. Only regret.

That insatiable ambition in that imp's soul never faltered, growing only brighter and stronger as it evolved from imp to demon mage, from demon mage, to archdemon, from archdemon to Dark Archon.

With that ambition came a willingness to sacrifice everything. All tradition. All lessons this personage taught. From the beginning, the whelp was never attuned with the primal ways of our kind. Spawned weak and isolated from the heart, its mind was far more open.

It accumulated power slowly compared to its stronger kin, but it compensated in other ways. It sought magics of all kinds. Disguised itself as mortal and tricked beings all across the world for knowledge and power. With that knowledge came tactics, spells, and ways foreign to demonkin, and it used them to devour demons that seemed far stronger than he.