The man was approaching her slowly, her sword held out at her side as she panted, her free arm protectively over her bruised and aching stomach where he had kicked her. He was smiling slightly, his eyes an odd yellowish-gold shimmering colour she had never seen before. Short black hair and a chiselled face. There was a little metal ring in his lower lip just off to the side, another thing she had never seen before but was not unheard of.
He wore a long black coat and black gloves that covered only his first three fingers, but he didn't have a bow as the gloves would suggest.
A large chain with a silver cross hung around his neck, looping his slender throat with two more loops and then a large one that held the cross. The cross was inverted, and she watched it as he approached. She wanted that stupid, ugly necklace very badly.
Her eyes slid up from it, past his smiling face and to the top of his head, where two small horns stuck out from his wild hair. Sliding down again, she found the short, pointed shape of his ears and they carried a large number of rings in them, thick and thin.
He was a demon of some sort, attractive enough to stop most women, and when he smiled, her heart skipped a beat at the sight. He was a demon, and she could guess which one.
Lust demons were the pretty ones.
Pushing herself to her feet, she tightened her grip on the handle of her sword, ready for his next attack.
"Etani, my love. I haven't seen you since you were but this tall," he stooped, holding his hand palm down around two feet off the ground.
That made her stop, her head cocking slightly to the side as she studied his face with renewed interest.
With his pace slow and relaxed, his hands shoved into the pockets of his slacks, he looked as though they were simply bumping into each other on the street, not in the middle of a warzone.
"Who are you?" she asked, and her question seemed to annoy him.
"Ah, yes, I forgot. He died before he could tell you about me. The black sheep." His voice was honey and sex, all things promising but she wasn't buying his act.
"I will ask again, who are you?" she demanded, her free hand going to the small of her back, fingers tracing names as she picked out the one she wanted.
He vanished between steps, and as her fingers closed around a vial, his fingers closed around her wrist and jerked her arm upwards. She hated it when her adversaries could do that.
Forced forward with the pain, she gasped and lifted her foot, bringing her heel slamming down on the top of his.
He hissed in pain, but he refused to let go of her. "Stop being so difficult. I should never have added that damned siren, the lot of you have been uppity ever since," he growled in her ear.
She flicked the sword down to run it along her forearm and drove it backwards and up, aiming for his chest or even his head if she could.
The sword deflected off his chest as though he wore armour, fabric tearing.
"Such a pain…" he sighed and tucked his foot around hers, jerking her foot out from under her.
Falling to her knee and bent forward, she realised she was running out of options.
"Trust a demon to fight dirty," she snarled, tears in her eyes at the pain of her arm and shoulder.
"Now there's no need to be petty. You should be nice to your father."
She went rigid as the words hit her and, in her distraction, she found herself face down on the grass.
"There we go, now be a good girl and give me the sword." His hand clamped down on hers, squeezing until there was an ominous crack of one of her fingers and she reflexively released the sword.
Pulling that arm behind her back, he proceeded to sit on her backside, her hands in his lap as he pulled them up, presumably to see what they looked like.
"Who are you? You're not my father," she said angrily. She clenched her fingers into a fist to keep him from being able to do anything, but he simply pried her fingers back open and studied her nails.
"Mm, yes, that one was a particular pain in my arse," he said as he flicked her nail, hearing the tap of metal on nail. "Agnes, the iron witch,"
He pressed her hands down onto her back and something clamped onto them, making it all but impossible for her to move them even half an inch apart. Standing up only long enough to roll her onto her back, he sat down on her hips and leant down close to her face.
"Haven't you ever heard of personal space?" she asked, turning her face away from his.
He gripped her jaw and forced her face back to his and she smiled just a hint before she jerked her head up and her lips connected with his.
Bursting through his defences, she threw her consciousness downwards like an arrow, brushing his soul only to snap back to herself with a wrenching sensation as he forced her face down to the ground.
"You little bitch," he snarled, releasing her long enough to slap her across the face, his nails digging into her cheek. "Ought to muzzle you. There'll be no killing me." He gripped her bleeding face painfully hard, forcing her head back and to the side to examine her ears and the scars on her throat.
"Vampires are always a problem for you lot," he murmured, irritable at her attempt to kill him.
"Get off me, demon!" She wriggled but she wasn't moving even an inch.
"Daemon," he said, and she looked at him. "Shut up," he said, seeing the taunting sarcasm in her eyes.
"Those eyes though..." he breathed as he studied them. "Those were hard to get back," he pulled down on her lower lid and she jerked her head away from him.
"What do you want?"
He was driving her mad with the inspection but then he noticed her teeth.
Gripping her jaw with hard fingers, he forced her mouth open.
"Damned vampires, I knew they would end up being a problem. Can you still procreate?" The last question made her angrier and she bucked her hips in an attempt to throw him off, but he barely budged a little and settled again on top of her.
"Stop squirming, I haven't gotten this close to you in nine hundred years. I need to see my work." He sounded exasperated. Finally giving a huff, she remained still while he picked at her hair and ears, her lips and then down the top of her vest.
"You turned out a lot better than I expected," he said finally, turning around on her and tugging at her pants.
She kneed him in the face, and he nearly fell.
"Fine, fine. But really about the procreation?" He turned around again to face her head.
"Yes, I can still procreate," she said angrily, glaring up at him.
"Then why haven't you? You've got two husbands, surely one of them could have done it by now."
The subject was making her deeply uncomfortable, and she wondered how he even knew about Epharis and Drizdan.
"That's none of your business. Who even are you?" she snapped, her arms straining to even get her hands to move closer to each other and away from her elbows. It felt as though he had glued her arms together, forearm against the top of the other arm.
"I'm Daemon, I created you," he said simply as he leant down over her, examining her throat. "Can you sing?"
"Like a siren. What do you mean, you made me?"
"I made you. Your father and his mother and so on. You are my pride and joy, my prodigy. You are the result of centuries of my very careful selective breeding."
His words struck her like a physical blow and her face paled as she took it all in. The family tree being a perfectly straight line, the feeling that it had been all been planned.
She had no words to describe just how horrified she was by the news, nor by his appearance now.
The battle raged around them, but out of some magical anomaly, they were given a perfect circle of ten feet where no one entered, no blood splashed.
"Why?" she finally asked, trying to understand.
"The perfect weapon. The woman who will take over and rule all of the worlds. That is why," he said in a breathy tone while she shook her head.
"I won't let you continue to breed my family," she said, thinking of her children and grandchildren in the hands of a demon.
"No, my love. You are the weapon. You are the perfect being," he said, his nose a mere inch from hers. "A creature so beautiful it could blind, who can kill with a kiss, can sing children and men into endless sleep. Immortal, and who can move between worlds with only a drop of blood, who can enchant any creature that comes into contact with her. You are the destroyer of worlds, the joiner, and the creator. You are the one I have been working on for so long. It will be your womb that births an entirely new reality with no flaws like the humans suffer through. It will be perfect, just as you are."
His speech made her feel ill and she began looking for something to beat this crazy demon over the head with until he stopped talking.
"I know you're probably sick of hearing this by now, my love. But I'm going to marry you,"
He wasn't wrong on that matter, and she looked up at him, eyes narrowed and jaw set.
"You're the fourth man to tell me that in a year. It's a tad old," she said sarcastically.
"Yes, but they aren't me. Together we will create infinite worlds, infinite beings," he breathed, and she was thoroughly creeped out.
"Well, thank you for the offer, but I'm afraid I will have to decline. I have no interest in being some universe brood mare, nor your wife, nor some perfect magical being." She began to squirm again, managing to wiggle herself up an inch.
"I'm afraid your refusal isn't an option, Etania. I created you and I can always replace you with your sister."
She looked up at him and then began to laugh.
"Letari's been dead for a year, idiot. You need to keep better track of your toys."
He looked genuinely confused.
"But I can sense her. She's nearby," he said, baffled.
"Yes, she's under you right now. We're both in here. She died and we touched in the spirit world," she was still laughing at the utter ridiculousness of the entire situation. "I'm all you've got Daemon the demon. Get off me." She jabbed her knee into his back and while he was wrapping his head around what she had said, she wriggled herself free of him.
"This is rich. After everything this world has put me through. After the men and the monsters, you come along and tell me I'm a dog you have bred. After everything I had to endure, after everything Letari and Avadari had to endure." She pushed herself to her knees and then to her feet, rage boiling up in her to a point where she was simply laughing. She was so completely beyond anger that she could do nothing but laugh, standing before him with her arms bound behind her back, in the middle of an active war, laughing.
"Nine hundred years of running, nine hundred years of fighting to survive and there you are sitting all pretty in your ugly jacket." She advanced on him, and he was starting to look a little nervous. "Nine hundred years alone, Daemon. Then I come here. One year of torture and men abusing me. One year of being lied to and manipulated and you decide to come walking up to me. In the middle of a war." Her voice had begun to rise, and her hair lifted off her shoulders and back, floating just off her skin.
Her eyes had begun to glow white in her absolute and perfect fury. The demon had begun to back away from her.
"One year, Daemon! One year of suffering and you come here to tell me you were watching? You just sat by and lamented your poor little pet experiment and wondered when she was going to become a killing machine for you?"
Her fury bottomed out and the entire field had gone silent, or perhaps she was just so incredibly enraged that she had gone deaf.
"I'm going to kill you now," she said calmly and took one step, then drove her foot into his face.
The demon seemed to vanish, but then she followed a perfectly clean line of flattened soldiers and fighters where the demon's body had gone flying, landing finally to leave a gouge in the ground some two hundred metres away.
Those involved in the sudden projectile demon looked a little shocked, sprayed with blood from exploding creatures and then turned to look at what had caused it.
After a pause, they seemed to unanimously decide that their current location wasn't the best one to be in and they scattered, shouting for others to run.
They didn't get very far as she turned, her eyes going towards the titan and he seemed to see her at the same time, her long hair floating around her as the braid unwound, her eyes a bright white tinged with blue. Her arms peeled free of each other, her fingers in claws as she boiled inside, something building to erupt out of her.
Her mouth opened and the sound she made was not a scream, it was more than that. It was louder than that, more depth and yet it was no sound at all.
She was screaming for those around her, for the dead who were already dead and for the dead who were dropping even as she sang their deaths for them.
Humans and mythical were dropping like cut flowers, mid-step and mid-rise to their feet. They simply dropped and the circle around her was perfect as though she had taken a scythe to wheat.
She was so beyond done with the lot of them, their taunting her, their abusing her, their using her for whatever goal it was they had, she wanted them dead and gone. She was going to destroy every last one of them and so she screamed and ears bled, eyes rolled back, and people died instantly, their brains exploding and their eardrums rupturing.
Glass all over the field seemed to evaporate at the sound, showering shards and killing even more with the projectile fragments.
Finally, the call began to fade, and the sound began to return to her ears, just in time to hear running footsteps.
She smiled, turning and throwing her arm up, punching the demon in the chest to send him flying just as far.
It was almost impossible to kill a demon, she knew that. But she wanted revenge and if he was going to make it easy for her, she was going to give him what he wanted.
Inhaling slowly, wisps of white began to lift from the mouths of the dead and flowed to her in long, glittering streamers.
Her body screamed with the energy that shot through her like a drug, hundreds dead in a second, hundreds consumed from a distance into the woman whom had become death incarnate.