Part One - Reminiscence

The sole leader of the risen demonic species - A demon known as Bade - takes a night off from his duties to mull over the progression of his species: from close to the very beginning, long before his birth.

 The midsummer night’s air hung loosely, slowly whisking throughout the open plane and rustling the deeply coloured green grass, carefully sprinkled with small pine and bramble bushes. It was open and it was beautiful and Bade could find himself completely alone here, tracking his way around trees which only grew to as tall as he was, with no need to reach any further heights. This was a place of absolute peacefulness: even the unconscious plants did not compete with each other to overthrow themselves for the light of the sun, or the water beneath their roots. Bade had made sure to keep this place free from settlement, free from anything which may disturb the finely tuned equilibrium of this tiny area – tiny, yes; but still large enough for crude production. The place had potential for many imaginable things, however Bade had held off his creativity and need for construction, and for unquestionably selfish reasons at that. He needed a place to be without disruption. To think when the bustling, busyness of the inhabitants of his primary haven became all but too much for himself to bear. He needed a place in isolation to muse. A place of which not even the closest of his entourage knew a thing.

 

 Here was a place close enough to The Demon’s Lair, Bade’s primary centre of activity: the massive castle which cast a figurative shadow upon the settlements surrounding it. A place no one who did not belong there, or who had not been summoned to visit dared to approach.

 

(The castle was dangerous. It was a symbol to those who did not consider it a holding; a home. The Demon’s Lair had been dubbed so by humans and Bade smiled to himself as the thought came to him. Humans were said – in legend of Old – to be creatures of great intellect and innovation. As a child Bade had been told stories of the feats of the human mind; how they were said to be able to destroy things just by thinking. The legends, he found, had not held as true as one would have expected. Still though – even he himself, who knew the human species considerably more than the average demon, found the sheer obviousness of naming a dwelling of demons ‘The Demon’s Lair’ very much laughable.)

 

 And it was because of this quiet place’s closeness to this Demon’s Lair that no human would enter. Nor stray off the track to discover it. If it so happened a human did chance upon the field it was more than likely they’d turn on their heal and run, for the tall castle’s towers loomed over from behind it as if they were watching to see the movements of intruders below.

 

 Here was a place far enough, however, from the castle itself for a stray demon to know this was not theirs to patrol. Though demon control had spread miles and miles in retrospect to the castle – which by no doubt was the heart of the outreach of power the demons had enforced – this place was not within bounds of the large, stone giant’s walls, though they grew up behind it (and would most definitely obscured its morning sunlight). This place belonged to no one. No one but Bade. This point in general was equally as laughable as the uninspired human name their stone giant was dubbed with: Bade was a demon, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Not only a demon but one of high regard, the highest, in fact. If this place were to belong to Bade, it would – of course – belong to the demons; he was their ultimate representative. But still as Bade looked over the flat ground, fleeced with soft grass and freckled with vegetation he couldn’t help but feel the odd twinge in his mind. The twinge that he had stolen this place. Stolen it from his own species.

 

 The demons were not as those in religious folklore. They had not once been souls of the living. They did not represent the many dark entities from legends of deceit and betrayal. They had not come from a land of liquid sulphur and brimstone and fire. They were not all ruled by one great entity which encompassed the very definition of evil. They were just a species; much like the humans, from a plane separate to the one they currently inhabited. Their past was longwinded and often wrongly told or misunderstood. Bade had heard several versions of his species’ past growing up. His mother – mistress of stories – had told him an epic tale consisting of immeasurable journeys and heroes who had the unimitateable urge to succeed in their goals of greatness. His father – cold and cruel – had told him stories of humans more demonic than the demons themselves, who deserved to be drawn and quartered for their unspeakable acts of evil towards the demons. Aylan Harshaad – Bade’s master, his kind hearted teacher and his unflinching friend – had mentioned origins of demon beliefs which seemed to intertwine with humans’ own. The only thing which never changed between variants of the stories told to Bade and all others of demon kind were the simple facts, known instinctively by any demon old enough to think for himself: Once, countless ages ago, the humans and demons had lived together. Together on the plane he currently walked on, this land of infinite beauty and untold offerings. But humanity was an interesting species to watch evolve. They moved from a primal creature – not much different than the demons themselves – to a civilised society who (in a very much uncivilised manner) took much disdain in being in the presence of any creature with ideals which differed from their own. The demons had been that species and the humans had driven them away. They had had help, of course. Bade did not like to think of the species that helped them. They were a species who seemed to influence humanity until humanity became almost one with them. An eternal enemy of the demons merely because of the sheer difference in their two standards of living.

 

 Angels.

 

 The angels lived for nothing but beauty. The demons lived for nothing but the animal instinct of survival and continuation. Along with the humans who changed what they lived for instant by instant it was always clear the three species would end up destroying each other. What happened next was much disputed. Did the demons do something to anger the inhabitants with whom they shared a home plane? Were they victims of a cruel angel trial? Did the humans and angels join in a single, compiled attempt to rid their seemingly flawed world of the species who they believed to be the cause of said flaw? Regardless of reason, the demons species became the target of a new power the angels seemed to muster after millennia of tolerance. The angels drove the demons to a plane of their own creation. It was a lazy and incomplete world; barely passable as a habitat for anything. The demons stewed there for years. Thousands of years where they continued surviving as they always had been, knowing nothing of the legends spun throughout the generations of human storytellers and lies of the angels. The legends had been built off nothing but hatred and discontent (and thus the demons were awarded their images of evil and sin).

 

 And like the humans, the demons had spun their own stories, small though they were. It was a way, Bade imagined, of relieving the guilt of what they attempted... and succeeded in doing. After thousands of years of separation, they took the plane back from humanity without warning or explanation, when at last the children of the Old humans took the stories of demons as only myths and nothing more. To Bade it would have been a lot more fulfilling if the humans had understood why the demons had taken their world back in the first place. But it was not to be helped.

 

 (The angels were long gone by the demons’ rising, tiring of the humans as they had tired of the demons, running off to a plane of their own; carefully made this time – of course – to be even more beautiful and illustrious than the one Bade stood in now. After all, the humans needed beings and places to inspire their legends of greatness and not just their legends of evil.)

 

 The humans had resisted the rising of the demons, of course. It’s a pity, Bade thought to himself as he turned his gaze to the blue sky. A sky he would never get used to. If they had agreed to share the world as in the ways of Old, the demons would not have had to take to them so violently. He would only rule his own species rather than humanity as well. The humans’ resistance had been their undoing, and it had fallen to its knees under the force of the invading species. After all, as humans were renowned for their intelligence, demons were renowned for their strength.

 

 Now, Bade was here, master of it all: the land, the species, the reapings. His power as a warlord and how he came to have it, too, was a story which – to Bade himself – seemed to be as long and grand as the story of his species’ falling and rising. But it was a reminiscent thought for another time. Now was the time not to think of what was. It was this kind of thinking from which he was trying to escape by trailing his lonely way down here. Yes it was irresponsible to leave his subjects without notice or explanation as to where he was headed, but Bade knew he’d left his people in more than competent hands. And that he’d only be gone for the duration of the night. He perched himself in front of a large, laden boulder, leaning slightly back so his body was cropped upward, to face the sky which was slowly fading into the inky darkness of the night. Three stars glistened from above the tree line which penned in the small patch of grassland encompassing him. Stars. His plane had never had stars. Of all the differences between his home plane and this one – the master copy – the stars were the difference Bade liked the most. They gave him a feeling of openness; of reality. Without stars a whole world could seem artificial – even if one had been raised without knowledge of their existence. Stars created a feeling of completeness, of a world that was too detailed to have been created by a lazy, uncaring species which just happened to find the power to do so. This world was natural. It had come to life before the species which inhabited it; not after. Its inhabitants had been made to suit it; it had not been made to suit its inhabitants. This is where he belonged... where they belonged. If the humans could only see that...

 

 Humans could not see a thing. Humans created their own ideals in order to cope with whatever trial they faced. Right now their trial was sharing a plane with an ancient species whom they cast out and recreated through hearsay. Their trial was probably the hardest the species had ever faced and without the angels to come to their rescue – as they had so often done, time and time again – they had no choice but to become subservient. This was the way humans worked – Bade had figured out – they needed a world in which one species was dominant and the other... or others, recessive. In the Days of Old, the humans had stood aside and let the angels dominate both themselves and the demons. When the two other species had left the humans had taken up the responsibility. At this point they must have learned the sin of greed... or perhaps vanity (though most demons say they learned vanity long before they were alone in the world, back when they had let the angels cast out their nemeses). So when the demons rose back, the humans could not simply share the land and the world’s riches. They had to dominate the species who wished to invade their sacred dwelling. A demon, however was fine being an equal, even to those who despised them in the manner which humanity did so much. Though, when something would try to dominate a demon, a demon would fight back; and fighting was a demon’s forte. A human couldn’t live as a demon’s equal, they’d force themselves to resist their invaders – in an entirely human-like manner – and inevitably become subservient to them. Bade knew there were humans – thousands, perhaps millions of humans – who hated him for his position over the demon species, merely because of the demon species’ position over their own... but it had always been common knowledge to Bade that where the humans found themselves today – servants to or renegades from the new, unwanted demon rule – was purely due to their initial decision not to face the new species as equals. It was for this reason Bade felt no guilt about his position of power, and no regret for the actions he was forced to take against such an adamantly resistant species.

 

 Bade laid his head back, against the rock behind him, noting the number of stars which would appear, as if he’d blinked and missed their entrance. He closed his eyes and smiled, smugly to himself. When he eventually opened them again the sky would be full of them; like spilled salt on black slate. In the midst of the castle – with the lanterns ablaze – the majority of them were rubbed out of the sky. Here was far enough to escape light’s clutches and the sky would glow, violently with the billions of worlds encompassed in this single plane. Everyone should live by the morals of the stars. Bade’s mind was wandering through an idealistic train of thought which he always seemed to call upon when on his lonesome. The stars are huge, impossibly powerful entities. The stars could destroy this entire plane if chance permits. The stars exist in a world filled to infinity with entities like them, with entities the exact opposite to them and still create an equilibrium perfect enough to breed much smaller entities; entities with a power the stars do not have: consciousness. How is it so that the stars, powerful and merciless and without any form of route or direction in and to which they blaze, can exist without conflict; whereas a world of thought and intelligence, knowing full-well how to live at peace, choose to do the exact opposite?

 

 Bade’s eyes flew open to absorb the now full night sky. There was no moon tonight; Bade had chosen his time to escape specifically. The millions – perhaps billions – of speckles of light filled his gaze and the sides of his mouth curled up in awe under them. So small from here they were, but not to be underestimated. How deceitful. Bade was surprised the humans had no qualms with them, the stars: making fools of their ancestors who thought they were pinpricks in the blanket of the night, or fireflies, or chariots. But of course they’re beautiful. Bade told himself, Humans will forgive anything of beauty no matter how they have been treated by them in the past.

 

 And they will despise anything less than beautiful. Bade’s thoughts continued as his eyelids drooped in a sudden wave of fatigue. He hadn’t slept in a few days; as was expected of a strong demon; especially one who commanded other demons. I can see why, too. Beauty fabricates an insight only a human can understand. Human intelligence isn’t knowing the difference between what is and what isn’t. It’s devising a fact that they all understand and accept without question... whether it is the truth or not is never an issue.

 

 (And now), he was hearing a new voice in his head. The voice belonged to his advisor, Brann: the most insightful demon Bade had ever chanced upon. (And now, you’re thinking like a human).

 

 Yes. Bade answered it, almost bitterly before remembering that all he could blame for conjuring the lecturing voice, was his own mind. Perhaps I’ve been amongst them too long now. Perhaps I need to get back to my roots. After all, nothing is ever more satisfying than taking the world at face value. It wasn’t a lie either. It was simply the way demons lived and breathed and functioned. It helped them survive without forgetting the crimes committed against their species all those years ago. It helped them destroy the human armed forces in spite of all its technological advances. It helped them continue to hold the world between their claws with little to no effort.

 

 Bade’s eyes, at last drooped gently closed and with his last conscious effort he managed to fold his arms, low across his chest to shield the gentle licks of wind which sent soft chills through his body. He was vaguely aware of the movements of humans which he could hear and feel through the trees, quite far from he and his private paradise. They were hunting. Hunting for food which the demons demanded and food which they so needed to survive. They will not venture past the trees. They have no reason to. This was Bade’s last line of thought before slumber took over and he grew limp against the rock, head lolling sideways a fraction, away from the stars which had made him think so much like a human.

 

 If Bade did truly think like a human, his mind would still have been racing, slowly pushing itself into a nonsensical blur of assumption and desire: Dreams.

 

 But Bade was a demon. His world fell into obscure blackness and then into absolute nothingness as his mind shut off almost entirely, to let his body regenerate.

 

 A demon never dreamed.

 

Author's Note

I would rather have the piece free from italics. Bade's thinking is in present tense whereas the descriptions are in past tense, but as I looked over it, I felt it would be too hard to decipher between the two. Am I being over-assuming?

The piece is made to evoke questions, but not being confusing - or more, hard to follow.

Reviews

[Bran the Broken]

It's interesting and evocative, and makes me want to hear more about the nature of demons, as well as their enemies the angels, and the nature of things as represented in this story. Good start.