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A silver demon, on a silver throne.
A demon king’s estate is significant in the way it bares the character of its appointed ruler, and this estate is no different. If you were to go by carriage, you’d find the path to the vast royal residence winding, and unpaved, and on each side bordered by a dense, humid forest–a veritable wall of greenery. At all times a din of organic life emanates from somewhere hidden in the leafy tangle: anxious prey animals chitter cautions at one another; insects, ever-present, drone in a high, grating incessance; even the bone-shaking roars of great, unseen beasts can be heard from the road now and then.
Inside the estate, although a bank of quiet descends upon one’s passage through the gates, the profusion of life continues no less. Nature is here, too. Flowers in abundance, of every shape and size, spread through the king’s open-air court. Small animals play among them, living lives of ease. Larger creatures approach the throne, unafraid.
The throne itself is a thing of undomesticated luxury: a tangle of branching, leafing vines, verdant and greedily sprawling; and lined from head to foot with giant down feathers, these gleaming like burnished metal but soft as satin. When evening falls, and the moonlight trails its chilly talons through those feathers, one would swear they transformed in its magical glow from silken down to steel.
Brimming with life as it is, however, the court remains particularly notable in one aspect: it is entirely vacant of demonity.
Except its lack of demonkind, this court is mirrored by the whole of the nether. Cities that were once the pillar of demonity have been returned to the wild; their past inhabitants must learn to live in harmony with the natural world, or they will perish to it. “Demons are of nature,” the king was known to say, with a voice as soft and resonant as the toll of a distant bell, “When we impose upon it, when we kill it, we kill a part of ourselves, as well.”
Demonity adapted, of course, as king Balam wished them to.
When the gargoyle king first ascended the throne, he’d been eager to alter the nether to his vision, stabilizing the fraying image left behind after Delkira’s long vacancy. He pulled demonity out of its aimless descent and into an era of peace. His happiness cheered his subjects, and left hell blossoming with organic splendor.
But weariness set in, in time. Balam’s eyes darkened; his features drew tight and grim. At some point in his reign he started secluding himself for hours and even days on end, eschewing demonic company, wanting nothing but his beasts and his books. Not even his faithful security demon, a hard-faced man named Naberius Kalego who’d accompanied him since his Babylus days, was privy to whatever was gnawing away at the benevolent king. Something weighed heavily on Shichiro’s mind, and with every year that wore on, the king’s formerly resplendent joy dimmed. A silent sorrow could be felt in the bent heads of the nether’s sunflowers, and in the slumping jungles, once turgid with unabashed life.
Kalego would ask; but the demon king kept his mouth sealed. In time, even Kalego–like the rest of the court before him–was pushed away.
How could Balam tell him? How could anydemon, even his once dear companion, ever understand?
For all its beauty, this world was Balam’s personal hell.
His nether… wild as it appeared to be, a bastion of natural life as it seemed, was nothing of the sort. No… that pleasure, that freedom, existed just out of reach for all of demonkind, as it did for every creature great and small that walked the planes of the abyss. And for this, one entity alone was to blame:
The demon king himself.
A demon king’s will was absolute. Like a cancer it permeated every atom of the netherworld, malignant and all-consuming. Nothing honestly natural existed under him; everything was just another extension of the demon king, now held in thrall by Balam as if by strangling roots. Life or death, change or apathy; he channeled his will into the netherworld and it bent, like silver, in his indomitable claws.
A construct. Hell was a construct, and this truth seared his heart.
Hell needed a guide, not a master.
If this place was to become natural, and a place of genuine freedom, it couldn’t be ruled by any demon-blooded beast, whose inherent magic invariably chained it to the current system. But where was one to find a creature not bound to the laws of demonity? Ah; but Shichiro knew where! Every fragment of the nether realm might wilt to the power of the demon king’s caress, but hell was not alone. Unknown to all but a powerful few, a second realm existed in hell’s shadow: the world of human beings.
Most demons thought humanity a myth. This was on purpose. Where the magic grew thin between this world and the next, the sturdiest of barriers had been constructed, the maintenance of which fell to a fastidious border patrol. One would not be alone in assuming this barrier existed to protect humanity from demonic influence; certainly the brutal magic and physical prowess of a demon would cow any poor human who ventured in.
In actuality, that was not the case. This wall between worlds existed for demonity’s safety. For the human world had something the nether did not, something it could never contend with: free will.
Just a handful of humans invading the nether was all it took to sow chaos so unpredictable, the netherworld would be turned on its head. Even a demon king could not foresee the future where the influence of a human pervaded it.
As it should be, Balam thought, while finalizing his plans. No creature should be saddled with a crystal-clear vision of what is to come.
An heir; a human heir. He’d locate a suitable human heir. And when that heir took the throne, Balam Shichiro–and all the netherworld–would at last be freed, and wild, and whole.
The matter of scrying up the location of a fitting candidate went smoothly, despite how murky the nether’s magic grew when it crossed the boundaries between worlds. With an exit point decided, he was ready; and in mere moments, demon king Balam tore through the fabric of reality and across. From a portal high above the planet, Shichiro looked down upon a sea that stretched from one horizon to the other. Well; even the demon king’s magic faltered sometimes in this unusual place, as could be expected. In a way it was heartening. This was a portent of things to come… a taste of a world that did not obey.
His magic worked well enough to orient him in the direction of his quarry, and a simple flight brought him to the child.
When Balam found the poor whelp, the boy was stranded on an otherwise uninhabited island–and thriving. Shichiro hid in a tree above, smiling at the sight of him. For here was a child who was part of nature even as he defied it; not bowing to his world, and yet not separate from it, either. It could be seen in the crude structures of leafage the boy had built for himself during his days here, as if to say, “I will survive in this place, with what I have, no matter the odds against me.”
Metal bits of boat wreckage on a nearby beach told a silent story of how the boy had come to reside on the island alone. How many children, Shichiro wondered, would have the resilience to make a life like this, when plucked up by chance and thrust into so desolate a fate? Such a tiny, vulnerable thing this human was, and utterly isolated at an age where the little lad’s well-being could only suffer without the support of his people. It was wrong for him to be so alone. An ache sprang up in the lurking gargoyle.
For a while, a quiet Shichiro watched the islandbound boy go steadfastly through the motions of survival: gutting a fish found trapped in a tide pool, and returning the bloody offal to the water for the critters there; stripping a tree to its cambium for the useful bark, but not girdling it, so as to leave the thing alive; mending his fragile shelter with great care and an emerald mass of newly-severed vines.
Yes; this was the right one. This was what he’d hoped for in a future demon king.
The Between, a frothing red space straddling two realities, emerged around them when the gargoyle landed behind the boy. Vines exploded from a wide, outstretched palm, entwining the child. “Don’t be afraid,” Balam murmured as his cocoon-shaped barrier rose up to close them in its protective confines. Shichiro lifted the boy, sweeping him into the netherworld with him; and in moments they were flying, suspended leagues above a night-darkened hellscape, their way lit only by the cold, cold light of two full moons.
When he descended with the boy, it was into his private tea garden.
“There,” he said solemnly, pausing a moment to awaken some of the nether’s magic in the mind of his young guest. It would enable the boy a comprehension of the demonic language. “Can you understand me?”
The boy, who’d squirmed with panic up until this point, went still. “Who–who are you? What are you going to do to me?” he ventured in a timid voice.
“I am the gargoyle, and king of demons, Balam Shichiro.” Several hellfire lamps hung around the patio and lay dotted about the garden, and these flickered to life, raising a merry yellow light around the two. “And you… you’re human, aren’t you?”
“Well… yes.” The child was bowing, stiff-armed and still trembling. “I am the human, I-Iruma. Suzuki Iruma, sir!”
“Iruma, hmm? Pleased to meet you, Iruma.” With the press of a single claw he prompted the boy to stand straight before him. “I’ll have none of that. You’re a guest here, not a servant. Speaking of which, would you care to join me for tea?” A cupboard popped out of nowhere, laden with sweets and teaware. “I have just about any flavor you could ask for.”
The boy’s eyes lit up at the sight of food. “Yes!”
Shichiro gestured to one of a pair of wrought iron patio chairs, and soon Iruma was situated at the quaint black table between them, enjoying a plateful of treats.
The demon king made to prepare their tea. But as soon as his claws stretched out for an empty teapot, he found it already piping hot, its fragrant contents perfectly steeped; oh, of course it was. Balam couldn’t even muster the energy to curse the occurrence anymore. The man ferried two cups to the table, and attempted, then, to at least pour the glass of tea for his guest; but the instant he struggled to perform the delicate task, the pot lifted itself up, and the tea began to pour itself.
Shichiro sighed dejectedly. He’d meant this as a peace offering, and serving the tea on his own had been the point.
Iruma gazed at the floating teapot as if in wonder. Shichiro too had once thought the effortless power of his will a magnificent thing, before a different understanding of it grew in him. Wearily he rested a cheek in his hand, and when the feeling of the smooth skin jarred him, a phantom scar briefly rippled into being beneath the demon king’s palm.
His terrible scar: a thing he’d struggled with, just like he’d struggled with the tea; and just as it did with his tea, the nether had fixed it for him. After that first evening when Balam Shichiro found his skin unbroken–after that nightmare–nothing here could be the same for him again. Something inherent to his demonity had been stolen; as if with along his disfigurement, his own history had been erased. It would take but a wish to transform the flesh, of course, back into a scar, but it would never be his scar; never anything but an artifice of the talons that had once touched both him, and his heart. Balam’s relationship to his past and the creatures therein had been permanently severed. That bleak evening, the horror of his station at last began to dawn on him.
After a handful of seconds, Balam’s skin settled back over his teeth, once again complete. At least Iruma was too preoccupied to notice the change; the bared, distorted fangs would certainly have frightened him.
Shichiro let the boy eat and drink for some time–he was sure to need it.
When Iruma’s ravenous pace eventually slowed, and food and drink dwindled before them, Shichiro rose to his feet.
“Come here, Iruma.”
Iruma was motioned over to the side of the patio, where Shichiro stood with his hands behind his back, looking out over his court.
“You saw the jungle as we passed over it, didn’t you?” he said, and he was met with a nod. “Let me tell you about that jungle. I raised it up myself… the entirety of it. Every flower, every blade of grass; every shrieking demonic creature, all stem from me. I wanted that jungle to be a place of wild freedom… for its plants and creatures and demonic residents to live their beastly lives unworried, and as sincere to their true nature as possible. Demons are simple, happy creatures when the pressures of modern life are off them.”
A wind unsettled the flowers of the garden, their delicate crowns bobbing in fitful waves.
“But they are none of them free. Not while my impulses determine their fates. Not while they are powerless in the face of my demands. And that brings me to why you are my guest today, Suzuki Iruma.”
He turned to the boy with an air of formality. Iruma watched Balam cautiously, but the demon king was glad to see that a good deal of the boy’s prior fear appeared to have melted away. Shichiro pursed his lips, trying to stymie a tenuous frown.
“I brought you here because I wish to adopt you, Suzuki Iruma. You see, despite how it looks on the surface, there is no real wilderness in the demon realm; no wilderness, and no free will. You, little one… at this moment, you are the only creature here with the power to truly change the nether. You are the most natural creature of all.”
Wide blue eyes, like life-giving water. Uncomprehending, on the surface, but there was a kindness in their subtleties; though a haggard look haunted that frail face, its creases were the sort wrought by expressions of worry, and not of wrath.
“Your fate alone, Iruma, is not trussed by the insidious magic of this nether; and your fate alone is what can break its chains. In short, you are the key to liberating all the demons of this world.” The demon king grated his backmost fangs together, withholding a bitter tone that threatened to eke into his words. “Should you wish to go back to your life on earth, however, I know I have no right to keep you. If you choose to refuse, I’ll return you safely to your home.”
Shichiro would not force this tender creature to bend to his will like the netherworld did; of this he was adamant. No threats, voiced or implied. If it hurt to let this chance slip through his claws… then he’d have to let it hurt.
Iruma swallowed, and sounded disbelieving. “I… can refuse?”
Balam watched him sadly. “Of course. I’ve torn you from your home. I can’t expect you to adapt to this realm immediately. You must have a great many friends, and a lovely family, all desperately waiting for word about you.”
The boy visibly paled at these words. Ah; he must be missing his human companions, indeed.
“However…"
The demon king sunk into a deep, deep bow. Down on one knee, Balam could meet the boy’s eyes straight-on. Raising an adoption contract in both fists, he tried to distill all his emotions into one plea:
“Iruma, please, become my son and heir. I promise, as long as I live, you will never want for anything here. I beg of you, for the sake of the netherworld… join me. Join me and help heal this realm.”
A painful silence descended. Shichiro stooped lower; a profusion of silver tresses trailed the ground around him, veiling his sight.
“Please,” he groveled, feeling powerless to the young man. “Please.”
Softly the contract left his fingers. “Y-yes…” the boy choked out.
It was the first genuine yes he’d heard since before he’d ascended the throne, and it gored him like an arrow.
For a moment, all breath abandoned the demon king; the last thing he’d expected was a yes. Frankly it shocked him; he held the adoption papers in his claws, trembling, peering at the fresh red seal while his reality as he knew it imploded. What had he just triggered? What would become of the demon realm? Did he really have an heir? A son? Didn’t that–wait, didn’t that actually make him a father?
Shichiro had never brought a child into the world; no child deserved the curse of obedience. No companion did, either. It was not an option. Pets he’d had, yes, hundreds of them; to hold and caress and love, as much as he could. As much as anydemon could love a creature they could unmake with nary more than a thought.
“O-oh…” he murmured, wiping his face again and again, the tears rolling down into the scales of his forearms. He snapped around to see Iruma, as if the boy might have disappeared during his break in vigilance; but no, the little human was still there, still whole, and looking unsure. “Oh… my son…”
If he wished it, Balam could obligate anydemon to fawn over him. He could mold the magic of a demon’s soul, like putty, into whatever shape he desired. Purge a being of all traits he deemed less than pleasing; create of old enemies an army of adorers, raring to die at his feet; even fashion the perfect, doting sweetheart out of raw mana, if such a fancy struck him. Any such feat would be trivial with his power. All it took Balam was a momentary slip into weakness–a rogue I wish they liked me more– and a demon’s view of him would be permanently altered, their own will and nature be damned. Not one devil was spared the captivity of his influence.
And herein lay his secret: king Balam, in the rich black core of his hulking demon body, knew that no individual yet captive to him could genuinely love him.
He was alone.
Until now. After oh so many years of hollow sorrow–so many long years, spent languishing in the sickness of his heart–his acceptance by this tiny child as new family couldn’t have moved him more.
The devil king scooped Iruma into his wide forearms like a tot, realizing this moment would change both history, and his life. “Welcome,” he said, sobbing as he gestured out to the rampant gardens, and not caring how openly he wept, “Welcome to my abundant hell, Iruma-kun.”
All across the nether realm, tiny flowers bloomed in blue.