Caffeine and Magix

writing-prompt-s:

You were once the demon king. “Defeated” by the hero, you went into hiding to pursue a simpler life. Today the “hero” has appeared, threatening you family to pay tribute, not realizing who you actually are. Today you show them what happens when you have something worth fighting to protect.

You are told at seven that you won’t ever do anything good in your life. You grow up knowing that it doesn’t matter that you help your younger sister make her letters properly or that you’re the one who stays up late with mother when too many custom orders come through the tailor shop. It doesn’t matter that you don’t want to hurt anyone or control anyone or anything of the sort. It doesn’t matter that your name means Light in your mother’s native language because as soon as they realize that you’re the Demon King, no one ever calls your name again.

You are chased out of your village the moment your powers bloom at fifteen years old, and the skies turn black with your fear. A rock hits you between your shoulder blades just as you make it to the main road and you stumble, falling to your knees in a mud puddle at the very moment the skies open up.

“She’s cursing us!” the midwife who delivered you screams over the thunder. “She’s damning us with her!”

Your mother is crying, but she doesn’t raise a hand to help you. She did everything she could, keeping your Role a secret all these years. She won’t risk anymore with another little girl to take care of.

No one tells you that you have a choice. No kind stranger drags you out of the rain and into the warmth of their home where a wise sage tells you it is not how we are born, but what choices we make.

Instead, you take the little pack your mother hid for you in the depths of the forest and sling it over your shoulder. There’s money, provisions, and more wraps to cover the evil mark on your left bicep.

“Your destiny will find you,” your mother told you only hours ago. “I forgive you for it.”

She meant the words as a comfort, but you only heard condemnation in it. Without having killed so much as a fly, she is already blessing you with forgiveness.

———————————–.

It is not an easy life for you. You can’t stay long in any town. When you do, the magic in the air turns. Milk curdles and crops wilt. Thunderstorms find you and bring with them the small demons, the screaming bats and howling horned rabbits.

Lead us! Lead us! Lead us!

You cover your ears on these nights and cry. You are not a leader. You are not someone who can command the power they hold, these creatures of magic that humans are afraid of. You are not someone who can or will do anything good in life.

When dawn breaks and the villagers begin to stir, you pack and run. You don’t want to be hit by a stone ever again.

————.

You are 25 when, as your mother predicted, your destiny finds you. You are young and strong which is why no one blinks twice when sometimes you are too strong. You carry armfuls of firewood to the back of the blacksmith and know, if you wanted, you could carry whole trees. Your strength runs through you like lava, begging to erupt.

The town you are in is three times the size of the one you were born to. Because of this, merchants visit regularly, and a festival is held every other month it seems. Warm street stalls with soft, sweet dough and loud counters with so many different things from all over the country. Laughter and music and performances by pretty people your age with long, silk scarves trailing behind them.

It is the second festival for you here. You know it’s time to leave, know that the storms will come soon, but are reluctant to go. There are good people here, kind people who don’t pry when you shy away from their questions, who give you jobs and teach you about their world.

A Hero arrives.

She’s an old woman, but it takes you a good hour to realize that. The aura around her is pure power, her golden armor shining with iridescent waves of magic. She sits proudly on the stage the townspeople make for her and smiles at all the children who run up, begging for her blessings.

“Took out six Demon Kings,” the blacksmith tells you when he catches you staring. He claps your shoulder. “They don’t make Heroes like that anymore.”

You swallow hard and agree weakly.  A circle is cleared in front of the stage as dancers arrive to perform for the Hero. Through the drifting, brightly colored scarves, you and the Hero lock eyes.

She knows what you are immediately. You can see it in the flare of her nostrils and the way her hand twitches to her sword. You take a step back instinctively and, when your power rises to meet the challenge she presents, you bite your lip until it bleeds. Your power is nearly uncontrollable these days, lashing at your ribs in an attempt to break free.

You won’t let it here, not when so many kind people could be casualties of it.

You stagger back to the little room the inn keepers let you keep behind their establishment. Your nails are digging into your arm where the mark of the Demon King throbs hotly in time with your racing heart. You have to leave quickly, silently. Maybe the Hero will follow you, maybe she will let you go because you are young, but either way you can’t risk—

“You know,” the Hero says from the door, “you might be the most powerful Demon King I’ve seen so far.”

You drop your clothes and whirl. She’s standing in the doorway with her naked sword in her hand, blade as silver as her hair. She’s watching you like a fox might watch a mouse.

“I haven’t done anything,” you blurt out and then cringe. It doesn’t matter that you haven’t done anything, you’re a Demon King and all anyone cares about is what you’re destined to do—

“I know.” The Hero sheathes her sword, steps forward, and closes the door behind her. Her eyes hold something you have only just become acquainted with. Kindness. “It’s a cruel thing, fate. Chooses the best of us for the worst roles, don’t you think?”

You don’t know what to say to that. You rub your palms along your thighs. “So you…you aren’t going to kill me?’

She studies you and it’s like being flayed alive. She watches you like she knows about how you’ve been chased out of every home you’ve ever found, like she too can hear the sound of the demons in the clouds begging you to rule. Finally, she says, “I’ve killed an awful lot of Demon Kings. I think it’s high time I saved one.”

You collapse to your knees and wonder if this is what salvation feels like.

————————..

You leave with the Hero in the morning. The blacksmith and the innkeepers see you off, thrilled that you get an opportunity to train under one of the best Heroes in history.

“They think I’m a Hero,” you tell Helga once you’re well away from the town. That’s her name—Helga. By the way she smiles when you use it, you think no one has said her name in a while either.

Helga hums. “In some ways, you will be.”

“How?”

“First, I’m going to train you,” she says. “There are ways of fighting that don’t end in death. You will need to know them once your power overwhelms you. The nation you are destined to lead is a wild one with too few rules and even fewer rulers. There will be times when the will of the monsters overwhelms you. I will prepare you for that.”

“So I can fight it,” you say. There’s hope beating in your heart. “I don’t have to become the Demon King.”

Helga is kind, but honest. “No. Your destiny always finds you.” She smiles at your crestfallen expression. “But that’s when it gets interesting, Alina, because once it finds you?” Her smile widens. “That’s when you can get rid of it once and for all.”

Her smile and her confidence, the way she touches your shoulder kindly, the sound of her gentle voice all become precious to you. You know she is risking much, teaching you the things she does, and you become a fervent pupil to honor that.

You follow her for years, until she can no longer travel as she once had and must return home to her house in the countryside. You see her to her door, confer her to the loving arms of her children and set off into the world before your powers can darken her doorstep.

You will see her again, you know. But, for now, you’ve got a fight to win.

———————.

The first year without Helga is…awful. The power overwhelms you, just as she predicted. It catches you in the middle of a dry, uninhabited valley.

Lead us! Lead us! Lead us!

The cries of the demons fill your ears until you can no longer think, until the boundary between you and them crumbles and their need becomes yours. Home. Safety. Love.

They are desires you know too well—the only surprise here is that you didn’t succumb to them sooner.

You are a plague across the lands. Where your foot falls, plants wither and twist with dark magic. Fires with unearthly blue hues rip across the plains and only extinguish in the thin air of the mountains. The seas roll when you come too close to the coasts where the seafolk beg your council.

There are wars. You shudder to think what they might have been without Helga’s teachings, but nobody dies by your hand. You blast gorges in the ground between you and the knights in shining helms, too deep for you or them to cross. You lift yourself on howling winds when they pursue you into the forests and spirit your realm into caves and rivers when armies come marching past.

Your sense returns to you slowly. The demons aren’t evil—they’re lonely. Their loneliness eases as you build them cities in the uninhabitable parts of the world. You hide caverns with your magic for the demon bats to live in. You raise mountains around the dry plains the howling rabbits prefer. You calm the seas and whisper the krakens back to sleep.

When you have cared for your people and the storms no longer haunt you and the plants that die under your tread bloom into shining, magic flowers, you know it’s time.

Finally, at long last, you rest and let a Hero find you.

————————.

“I don’t take pleasure in killing you,” the Hero says with his sword pressed against your neck. He’s young, but not younger than you. His golden armor does not radiate the same power Helga’s did, but he is strong enough. He’s the first to have tracked you to your mountain throne and it took more than courage to overcome the obstacles you placed in his path.

“Of course not,” you say. You don’t twitch as he presses the blade closer. This isn’t your real body. This is only the part of you that’s needed for destiny to be fulfilled. You only need to act the role to the bitter end. “Your kind wouldn’t.”

The Hero’s face twists. “I’m doing this for my people. So they no longer have to live in fear.”

“Yes, yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re not,” you say. You smile up at him. “It was an honor to have fought against a Hero as strong as you.”

“An honor,” he echoes. Shakes his head. “I’ve wasted too much time. Good night.”

What an odd thing to say, you think and then close your eyes as he pulls back to swing at your neck.

——————————–.

You arrive on Helga’s doorstep a month later. Your realm is still a hum in the back of your mind, but your veins no longer throb with the power destiny thrust upon you. You are reborn and returned to the world you’ve always longed to be a part of.

“Holy shit, it worked,” Helga says when she sees you.

Your jaw drops. “You didn’t know for sure?”

“Well now I do.”

And then you’re both crying. She’s too thin now to hold you as she once did, but that’s okay. You hold her and smile at her son who comes to the door alarmed. “It’s okay, it’s all okay now.”

———–.

You find life in Helga’s town peaceful. There are plenty of odd jobs for someone like you who has so many skills. You hunt with Helga’s daughter-in-law and teach their children what to do if they ever see a demon in the woods.

You plant the fall crops beside humans who would have screamed to know who you once were. You keep your mark covered and don’t feel the least bit guilty about it. You are not the Demon King anymore.

Then, two years after you were once the Demon King, a Hero arrives in town.

It is one you know.

————————-.

“I’m visiting every house,” the Hero’s voice floats through the house. “To introduce myself.”

“Every house?” Helga’s son, Don, asks. He whistles. “That must take quite some time.”

“You have no idea,” the Hero says. He rounds the corner into the living room where you and Don’s wife, Leila, sit side by side on the couch. The kids are sitting on the floor at your feet, wide-eyed and eager to see what a Hero in their prime looks like.

Then you lock eyes with the Hero and…

Nothing.

His eyes skip past you, to Leila, to the children, and then go back to Don. “A household of four?”

“Five, actually,” Don says and leads the Hero to the armchairs sitting across from the couch. “My mother is out for a morning ride.”

It still gives you a secret thrill, two years later, to be considered part of the household. You have a family now, a beautiful one where the children call you Aunt and Don and Leila call you Sister. You smile at Don’s careful omission that his mother is a Hero herself, one more famous than the one sitting in their little living room. He’s always been a mischievous one.

The Hero clears his throat. “Wonderful.” He pulls a small notebook from the satchel at his hip and flips through the pages. “Five people…right, yes, that’ll be ten gold pieces then.”

The silence in the room is loud enough to stop your heart.

Don is the first to recover. “We already paid our taxes, Sir Hero.”

“Ah,” the Hero says and squints at his little book. “I see you did pay to the last Lord of this land. Six silver pieces, was it?” He tallies it up. “I am a kind Lord, of course. I’ll honor what you’ve already paid which leaves…Nine gold pieces and four silvers.”

“We don’t have that kind of money,” Leila says. She shakes her head. “I—I don’t understand. You’re raising taxes?”

“I have to,” the Hero says. There’s a hint of sympathy in his voice, but something is wrong. He sounds hollow. Fake. “You see, as your new Lord, I had to perform an audit. Current taxes simply don’t cover the necessities this land requires.”

“We’re a farming community,” Don says. “What necessities?”

The Hero carefully slides his book back into his satchel. “Security, for one.” He smiles and it’s just as fake as his sympathy. “You have a Hero protecting you now. That’s very expensive.”

You can’t believe this. Your mind races. Is he really pretending his taking over the Lordship is reason enough to justify this—this highway robbery? This is who you lost to? This is who you let defeat you?

Don is thinking along the same lines. He scoffs and stands. “We’re not paying it, my Lord. And neither will any of our neighbors. No one has money like that in this town.”

The Hero’s smile falls. “You must. Or suffer the consequences.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Leila says. She stands too and you can see her fists trembling with anger. “You’re ridiculous. My husband already said we won’t pay for your protection racket. I trust you remember the way back to the door.”

The Hero doesn’t stand. Instead, he leans back, crossing one knee over the other. He unclips his sword from his belt and lays it across his knees. “I must warn you, the consequences are severe.”

Don stiffens. “Are you threatening my family?”

“No, no,” the Hero says. There’s darkness you’ve seen before lurking behind his eyes. “I’m promising. You won’t make it long without my protection. This land is out in the middle of the woods. There are quite a few demons running amok.” His eyes slide to the children. “Your children are just about the right size to make appealing targets.”

Leila gasps and snatches the children up, face pale. “You—you vile, hideous—”

She stops abruptly when you stand, sliding in front of her and the little ones. You watch the hero with cool eyes that hide the rage bubbling underneath your skin. “You were asked to leave.”

Don’s eyes drift to the window. His lips thin, but he says nothing of the clouds gathering outside. Instead, he gather his wife and children and back away from where your aura is beginning to escape the confines of your flesh.

“And I will,” the Hero says. He leans forward, putting both of his feet square on the ground. The hilt of his sword is in his hand. “Once I get what I came for. It’s a small price to pay for security, isn’t it? A very small price indeed.”

You can’t recognize the man who apologized for killing you. The sheer—the sheer evilness in his demands, his implications, astound you. No, not astound. They infuriate you.

“Don’t threaten my family,” you say. Your voice is deeper in your anger. You can feel your vocal cords writhing with the need to transform. “You’re a Hero. You don’t threaten my family.”

At the word Hero, his face twists. He finally stands and, in the same motion, draws his blade. “Careful what you say, peasant. It’s because I’m the Hero that I’m doing this. You think what I do is cheap? I’m doing this for my people. So they no longer have to live in fear.”

I’m doing this for my people. So they no longer have to live in fear. All at once you see him on his knees over you, saying the same words with his sword against your neck. It had been righteous then, a cruel destiny he’d been forced to play out alongside you.

But both of you have already fulfilled your roles. You’ve made your own choices and become your own people. You? You came here and found a family.

Him? He came here and threatened it.

Lightning crashes overhead as your powers surge for the first time in two years. You reach out and grab the collar of his armor. He scrambles at your hand as you drag him out the door and into the garden.

“Let go!” The flat of his sword slams against your back. “This is treason!”

You don’t say anything. Your teeth are warping in your mouth, fangs pressing against the seam of your lips until they peak out. You don’t want the children to see you like this. You bend your knees and use your power to jump, up and up and up as the Hero screams in your grip. Thunder crackles around you and you growl with it.

He thinks himself righteous? He thinks himself a Hero? You’ll show him why he never even earned the title.

You land somewhere in the forest. The earth cracks under your feet and the Hero chokes as all the air is forced from his lungs. Only then do you drop him and step back so he can see the horns spiraling from your head and the talons at the end of your fingers.

“You!” he gasps silently. He attempts to struggle to his feet, but the lack of oxygen sends him back to the ground.

“Me,” you say coldly. “This is what you’ve become? A con artist? A thief?”

“Said from the mouth of a farmer,” he pants. He glares up at you. “I am only asking what I’m owed.”

“Owed for what?” you ask incredulously. You spread your arms wide. “For killing me? The only Demon King in history who did not take any lives? For fighting demons just as any knight would do? For—”

“For being a Hero!” He makes it to his knees and digs the tip of his sword into the dirt to support himself. His eyes are wild when he looks at you. “I saved them, I saved them all, and what do I get? A dirty little piece of land all the way out in the middle of nowhere. They’re lucky to have me!”

“You’re delusional.” You drop your arms. “The world doesn’t owe you anything, Hero. If anything, Fate does for marking you as something you clearly aren’t.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” the Hero says. He staggers to his feet and shakily points the tip of his sword to you. “You—you’re the reason nothing’s gone right. Because you didn’t die, that’s why this has happened.”

It’s a sentiment you’ve heard before. The only difference now is that you don’t believe it. Instead, you see what you should have seen all those years ago; a sour little waste of a person who can only rely on destiny to validate themselves. You narrow your eyes at the Hero. “Go home, Hero. Don’t come back.”

You turn your back on the Hero, unable to look at him anymore. He’s going to attack you, you know it, but you hope he won’t. Maybe there’s something good in him still, something that will tell him not to attack someone who clearly means him no harm—

Metal clashes against metal and you turn to find Helga standing over the Hero, her sword against his neck.

“I’ve saved a lot of heroes,” she tells the man on the ground. Even in her old age, her grip on her golden sword is strong and sure as she holds the blade to his neck. “Tell me why you should be one of them?”

The man gapes at her. “H-hero Helga? They said you were dead—”

“As dead as little Miss Rainstorm over there,” Helga says, jerking her head towards you. She taps him with her sword hard enough to draw blood. “I’m waiting for an answer.”

“Sh—she’s a Demon King!” he splutters. “I’m a Hero, like you, we should work together—”

“He threatened the children,” you say.

“Ah,” Helga says, “why didn’t you say so?” And neatly cuts his head clean from his body.

You blink at her, conflicted. You’re not sorry he’s dead, but there’s relief you didn’t have to do it. “I was hoping he’d change his mind.”

Helga clicks her tongue, summoning her horse from the forest. “You have too much faith in people.”

You watch her brush rain droplets from her saddle and smile. “I have reason to have it.”

“Sap,” she says fondly and swings into the saddle. “You got yourself out here, you can get yourself home. I’ll tell them the Hero went on a journey or something. They love when Heroes go on journeys.”

You watch her ride off through the trees and look up. Above you, the clouds are drifting away to show a perfect, endless blue sky.

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