Fantasy 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐥 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰

[neon reverie]

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[Uxie]

maximina

They remember when they were an inkling, no more than a speck in the wretched hierarchy only evil can deem fair, beneath cannon fodder; a scrappy stowaway amongst Beelzebub's horde, made into a worthless errand kid when they found them. They remember his gaze, the way it bore into them and squashed them beneath the weight of it, and they remember that crooked smile on too-wide lips, the echo of a threat that would come once the devils won the war.

She is his only companion when he flees the battlefield.

She is the only witness when she rips out his heart.

She got her name from him too, you know? Magnus, to mean greatest, so she was Maximina, or Maxie, if you were really pressed for time. No one ever uses her nickname with her, though, because she hasn't really got any friends. It's a lonely world at the top of the food chain, or something. She lets out a laugh at her own quip.

When she looks down at you for a reaction, you can only stare up at her bug-eyed, gasping for life with her hand against your throat. She supposes you wouldn't understand why she's telling you all this — she reminds you, gently, that she can still taste the rot of his soul on her tongue. That foul aftertaste has lingered for centuries, and she wonders if it is a pathetic battle scar or something closer to Damoclus' sword.

She hopes yours will not disappoint. You do not reply.

Tsk.

Maybe your life flashes before your eyes when her hand hovers over your chest, maybe you think about how you should've picked another night to go hunting. She doesn't know — she's never really cared to ask. Egocentrism might be another one of her sins, and that's just on-brand, right?

She does not stay long, because there is nothing to savour; your soul tastes no better than any of the others she's taken.

 

[neon reverie]

Helena

You see her before you hear her. A shadow slipping through the cracks of dawn, silent as a whisper, deadly as a promise unkept. Gaze pressing down upon you like family paintings have done to her. Blood runs, deeper than one lifetime, inescapably linked to beings far older. Neither of you chose to be of this nature, to be a whisper in other people's mouths, half chewed on, half spit out. It's the inevitability that captures you both, fates as sure as the rising sun.

You will both argue the same things; that you are just living in a world where the line between right and wrong blurs like smoke in the wind. That it's life that made it so, having carved identity from still growing bones, already deciding who you were and who you should not be. Society expects, demands, rarely excuses. Was it truly a sin to snarl back at them, wanting to hurt a world who hurt you first?

You wonder if the legacy weighs on her, if she feels the chains tightening around her own soul. Does she lie awake at night, haunted by the faces of those she’s captured? Does she ever doubt, even for a moment, the righteousness of her cause? You curse her, just as the ones before you have done. Helena. Her name feels rotten on your tongue. You lash out, because of everything you know. It's futile work.

She merely tightens the binds, hands you over to her superiors like the damned pawn she is. It's just another day for her, doing what she has all ever known.

【 Except, it feels like she knows less and less the more she does it 】