“You seek for me to merely, let a hero win?” I sighed, crossing my arms as my assistant sorted through the excess documents I had on another desk. Additional immigration documents from the Lust sector are requesting additional salary to take out unsatisfactory customers so I currently have my hands tied.

“That’s right” spoke a female voice from the other side. “I had spoken about the prophecy about the hero after all, they should be arriving soon. You will thusly, need to be ‘vanquished’ in accordance to follow the plan. You know like usual protocol”

The voice was from the Goddess Sophia, my wife. Even now, it was still an unprecedented marriage. A demon lord and a god, usually on opposite ends of the spectrum, now uniting together in hands. Though that is not really something I care about. I love her dearly, and she does to me too. That’s enough for me. Our own private quarters in our respective abodes links together to a private domain in limbo, so we may hold each other to our hearts’ content without having to spend time visiting each other.

Why do we not stay with each other? Aside from the world’s perspective seeing us as different, it’s also because we run…a business to be exact. I’m the great demon lord, some of the humans have named me The Morning Star. Sophia, my wife, is known as The Goddess, she told me some people have called her The Graceful Mother. As the heads of our pantheon, each of our pantheons have long since accepted our marriage. But now arises a new problem.

Previously our economies hinged upon warfare. Using humans and lesser demons as proxies, we gained our currency through winning the heads of minds. The more people who live lavishly under the realm of desire, the more power and currency we demons get. The more people who abides by virtue, the more power and currency the gods get. So my wife and I proposed a plan. The Hero plan. Instead of simply waging war, we have single proxies instead. Every 100 years, “The Graceful Mother” will announce a prophecy that “The Great Demon Lord” has resurrected and would thus need a “Hero” to vanquish them. She will then select the strongest Hero candidate, who also represents the holy virtues, to fight on behalf of the humans to “kill” me. The gods get paid through the people’s faith in the hero, and the demons get paid in spreading the Seven Deadly Sins throughout the land a few years prior to the prophecy announcement. And for about 1000 years now the plan has proceeded without a hitch.

However this year, there lies a problem.

“Dear, you know I have no problem in letting the hero win occasionally, you know I love theatrics” I pursed my lips as I looked at the map on the wall beside me, with the border cities crossed out as placed taken on the hero’s campaign. “The problem is the hero you’ve chosen seem to represent more as a person who’d ally with the demons than a hero”

“Well yes, they’re the best I could find” the voice, albeit regrettably, admitted.

“That’s the best?!” I shouted, startling both my wife and my assistant. “Ah, sorry, I didn’t mean to shout dear”

“No no, I understand, I’m equally as shocked as you are.” Sophia agreed, seemingly sighing over the call. “Raping conquered townsfolk, forcing them to convert to the religion if they had their own gods……it’s as though they completely forgot what it means to be a person of faith”

“If the best of humanity is like that, I don’t want to know what it’s like for the rest of humanity. Or the good people who are forced to lived under them”

“……” My wife stayed silent. “My love, do you think we should activate it?”

“You mean the drive for rebellion?” I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. “But that would essentially leave the demons completely free for a few decades, not to mention the impulse for rebellion is controlled by my hand as well, what would happen to the gods then?”

“My love, you have been slain so many times, yet you always came back, the same man I love all these time. It’s high time I suffered the brunt now.”

“But-“ I was hushed instantly.

“My love please” I could feel her gentle hands on my cheeks, as though she was here with me in my office. “You told me so many times that good and evil are but sides of a same coin, even if they flip, it doesn’t change what it means to be good and evil. Your people. The demons the humans have hated so much have noticeably helped so many of the lost who ran away from the kingdoms. I would be blind to not notice”

“But if you go through this-“

“I would be lauded as the demon instead. But I leave the decision to you.” She laughed, light heartedly. “I would gladly become a demon for you, if it means protecting the world you and I wanted to forge for everyone. I love you.”

She blew me a kiss, as she hung up.

I set the phone down, a magic apparatus that we worked on together so we can contact each other even at work. She asked me to let the hero win if possible, since their own evil tendencies will end up giving me more power than he has to even defeat me. But it also means letting someone like that stay a hero. If someone like that is a hero, who knows how bad the rest of humanity has become, or the how much of humanity has to suffer under people like them?

Yet if I do so, she……

I hesitated, before turning to my assistant. “Lilith”

She turned to me, setting the documents aside. “Yes my lord?”

“Call the 72 demons in” I adjusted my suit as I walked out. “I will be engaging the revolution”

An artificial intelligence realises its feelings

Year 20XX. The anti-magic revolution has begun, and is now on its final battle. Generally, most of the rebel forces have already subsided and were left up to the few in the capital. Most of the capital’s forces are armed with near impossible magical constructs, powerful spells. It is those same spells which they used to oppress those without power, without skill. But it was in this battle the rebel forces introduced the A.M.J, the Anti-magic jammer. Now, the true battle against magic has finally commenced

I like how only the knight speaks old English lmao

Immortality sounds fun on paper. Never being able to die, there’s no reason to fear…..anything really. You can just give your problems to time and eventually the problems will go away on its own, gradually, slowly.

But the same applies for feelings too. With time they fade, they become memories, then soon, a blot in your life. Fall in love with a girl, see them grow up, fear them having to see you not age anymore, leave. Eventually, it becomes so…..empty the only thing you can ever see in them is what form of sexual pleasure and interest they give you, if only to see how people treat it differently then their peers decades prior.

But I can’t love them, as much as I had fun with them on those nights. I know my lives can’t cross with them, I know I……

No, perhaps there was one. Fifty years ago, resplendent skin, eyes that reflected the ocean, white yet youthful hair and a body as bewitching as Aphrodite herself. She was magnificent, in all forms. And for the first and only time in my life, I felt a chord had struck my heart. On that night, as we melted into pleasure, I could feel my soul and hers becoming one. But, I knew I had to let her go. I couldn’t become attached. For people like me, getting attached to something that has the same lifespan as a flea relative to you……is just a recipe for sadness.

Yet, after all those years, I still couldn’t move on. My flings, became sparser in nature, I started to grow…..responsible. I couldn’t continue offering my body to others, it felt…….wrong. Eventually, it spiralled from flings, into slow walks on the beach, wandering, searching for her.

I knew it would be fruitless, she’d probably be dead by the 40th year I continued doing this. But I persisted. Deep in my heart, I wanted to believe too.

And now, fifty years later. Trudging in the sand, I could see her, and I knew, she saw me too. Speechless, I could feel the words stuck in my throat, wishing to call out to her, and yet I could not, fearful of how she would see me if she knew what I did. But, I never needed to. With tears welling up, she ran over to me, arms stretched, hugging me tightly. Even though she looked the same, I could feel the scars she had on her body, even though they long since faded. Her feet, though the same as before, walked in the same manner a weary traveller would. And her eyes, once full of the ocean, now greeted me with sights from all over the world, the splendour that once faded, now returning to her eyes. My sight started to blur as I hugged her back, the hot tears racing down my cheeks as the rowdy beach soon became but a backdrop to our plight.

We had been searching, and we had been found.

I always had…..an effect on women.

While it sounds like bragging, I can assure you, it is not. One hath not understood the wrath of a woman until they had their hearts broken.

Four years old. Pre-school. Most of the girls supposedly flocked towards me, my current memory hazy, as parents soon took them out of school one by one.

Ten years old. Mine eyes hath been opened to the world of the supernatural. Demoness’s jumping left and right, Dryads reaching out when I pass, Banshees screaming as they disguised as the crying crows in the sky. But I knew better. I always knew, that they were waiting, waiting for something.

19 years old. Hell’s kingdom be raised, my own school mine grave. Clawing, shrieking, chasing. I had dug mine own grave, declared upon the world that I am not to be wed, to stake my heart on mine cross. Their faces of beauty and perfection twisted to anger and desperation, they chased, clawed, wept. Their cries disorienting. “Ours souls be one, Thou and I. Consummate and tear asunder. Succumb, succumb. May our Prince awake from his slumber”

34 years old. Fully grown adult, I have spent the last decades of my life in hiding. Covering my phase, hiding my voice, living as far away as people from possible. I wanted answers. No, I needed answers. Those voices meant something. This Prince, this thing that took my life away from me.

I chuckled, sighing as I sat myself upon my decrepit chair, as piles of books littered what could be called a house. Just last month, I had sold off the family house to buy the last volumes of the Book of Hoss. In about a week, they are coming to destroy it. Not that it matters, by then, I should be dead, for these volumes contain my answer.

And an answer, I did get.

Mine Prince of hell, Temptor of Man.

Awake from your slumber, and see for yourself.

You shall lay claim to all in the land,

Women, sin and devilry.

As the lord of Sin, awaken, awaken.

For your men and harem await your command