Demon Queened – Remastered (For Real This Time) Prologue

As a result of an anonymous beta reader’s advice, I decided to split the first chapter up into chapter and prologue, to create a sort of introduction to the story that doesn’t span 50 pages.

Many thanks to all my beta readers, including ByteOfBrie, Julx, and Wildfire Darkstar!

I’m going to make this one available to everyone since it’s not quite so NSFW as chapter 1… Hopefully it can stay freely available, as a result.

PS: Also wanna express thanks to paradoxicalWitchling and FallingLeaf, who helped proofread the original version of chapter 1, and – by extension – this prologue.

~~~

Prologue

“And you’re sure this is legit?” Jacob asked, his pointer hovering over the ‘download’ option for Tower Conquest: an adult game, focused on the Heroine Lucy and her attempt to end a war by taking down the Demon Queen, Devilla Satanne.

“Trust me, dude,” Alice replied, her voice crackling a little as it came through the phone. “You’ll love it.”

“That’s not what I asked,” he grumbled. “I mean, I don’t usually click fishy links for free downloads…”

“I told you, dude, it’s all above board—I’m allowed to spread the beta to friends. Perks of the job.”

“Right… that VA thing you did…”

“For the main character,” she reminded him. “It was my big break!”

“It’s a porn game.”

“It’s erotica.”

“What’s the difference?” he asked.

“It sounds better. And, more seriously, it has content beyond just sex. Now stop whinging and start downloading.”

“…Well… Alright,” he muttered, finally clicking the button. “But if this messes up my computer, I’m blaming you.”

***

“What is the matter with you‽” I screamed at the maid in front of me.

“Is something the matter, Princess?” 

“You certainly have quite the audacity to ask me that,” I replied, looking the maid up and down. She was a succubus, a ‘true’ demon whose ancestors had settled in the mortal realm some generations back. She had dirty blonde hair, cut right above the shoulders, with a touch of curl at the end. A long wiry tail with a spade at its point poked out from beneath the skirts of her dress, and dark wings stretched out from her backless uniform. Her eyes, like all of her kind, were pure black, making it impossible to tell just where her pupils were focusing. It seemed to me like her eyes were directed downward though. I was pleased to see she knew her place.

“I-I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Princess,” the maid stammered. Her voice trembled, but the tray in her hands stayed perfectly steady. It was actually impressive that she managed to stay so composed in my powerful presence. Not that I intended to compliment a being who was so far below me.

“Your ignorance is part of the problem,” I told her, gesturing to the tray she was holding. “What do you see on that plate?”

“Eggs, bacon, and toast, Princess,” the maid listed, her brow furrowing. “Is that not what you ordered?”

“Of course it’s what I ordered, you dimwit.” My lips pulled back into a sneer as I spoke. From the look of confusion on the maid’s face, it seemed she had no clue what my issue was. Which, of course, only made me more irritated. 

“The toast,” I said at last, magnanimously deciding to indicate the problem for my incompetent maid. Despite my going out of my way to explain it, however, the maid’s brow remained furrowed. “Are you seriously such an idiot that you can’t recognize a problem even when it’s pointed out to you?”

“I’m sorry, Princess.” She cringed. “I really don’t know what’s wrong with it.”

“I don’t know how it could be more obvious,” I complained, letting out a sigh. “The toast is cut vertically; as my maid, you should know that I prefer it be done diagonally.”

“I… I see, Princess… In that case, I’ll go to the kitchen and get new toast immediately.” 

“That’s not good enough,” I informed her, narrowing my eyes. Was this woman new? I didn’t remember seeing her before, but that hardly meant anything. I never bothered to memorize the appearance of mere servants. “By the time you return to me with new toast, the rest of my breakfast will have cooled. Inform the head chef that I wish her to remake the entirety of my breakfast so that I can enjoy it all at the proper temperature.”

“Understood, Princess.” The maid bent her knees in a light curtsey and turned to leave.

“And if you bring me the wrong thing again, I’ll have you and the chef both thrown in the dungeon!” I called after her.

The maid didn’t respond, but I was sure she had heard me. Just as I was certain she would do as I asked. Unless she wanted to spend a few days in a cell, at least.

“Honestly,” I muttered, shaking my head. “You’d think they could at least get my last meal as a princess right…” I just hoped they wouldn’t make such a crucial mistake during dinner. If they got my first meal as Demon Queen wrong, even I didn’t know how I’d handle it.

***

A small ding rang out from Jacob’s speakers, waking him up from a light doze and informing him that Tower Conquest had finally finished loading. 

“About time!” he grumbled, moving his mouse toward the start button. Despite the annoyance in his words, he couldn’t help but grin at the idea of finally getting to play. “Let’s see… Right, we start with the classic scrolling text for the game’s background. Lucy the heroine has trained her whole life to fight the Demon Queen, Devilla Satanne—well that’s a porn name if I’ve ever heard one. Lucy has made a solo trip to Dimona Tower, against the wishes of the church… Yada yada yada… Blah blah blah… Alright, so it’s like Alice said—a hundred and one floors, ten generals, and the Demon Queen as the final boss. Looks like there’s sex whenever you clear a boss, too.”

Jacob waited for the scrolling text to finish, then left-clicked to start the game. Despite being porn, it had a surprising amount of combat. The heroine, Lucy, had to work her way through a spiraling narrow passageway, slowly climbing up the tower, defeating demons as she went.

Most of the climb was fairly monotonous, with only the floor counter in the upper-left corner telling the player how far they had progressed. Every tenth floor, however, the passageway would open up into a wide area; the boss room. From there, you could either try to seduce the demon general through dialogue or just jump straight into combat. Either way, victory ended with the demon general submitting to Lucy, having sex with her, and thereby giving her part of their magic power so that she’d be strong enough to fight her way through the next ten floors. The dialogue seemed to ignore the hacking and slashing Lucy had been doing, with everyone acting as if she’d simply incapacitated all the demons she’d met so far.

Jacob could see why Alice had recommended the game to him. It had been a bit awkward at first to hear her voice coming from the character he was playing, but once he’d gotten used to it it felt as natural as his own. The combat was exciting for him. So were the sex scenes, though in a very different way. Plus all the demons were hot girls, which was a nice bonus. Jacob was almost as fond of lesbian porn as Alice was.

“Though it’s sort of strange that the game calls them demons when most of them just look like monster girls…”

***

I held out my arms, allowing my maids to examine me carefully for any defects in my state of dress. My outfit was pure white, with a pleated skirt that stopped well short of my knees and a backless halter top that hugged my breasts and showed off my curves. All of it had been tailored to fit me perfectly, and they’d double checked the fit just the day before, so there was little doubt of it fitting right. Still, I took a moment to examine myself in the mirror, to make absolutely sure.

“Everything looks wonderful, Princess,” one of my maids assured me. She was a lamia, a woman with a demonoid upper half, and a snake tail below the waist. 

“I have your shoes ready, Princess,” another maid said. This one was something of a rarity: a unicorn girl, with hair as white as my own, if only half as long, and a single pale horn growing from her forehead. She was holding out a pair of high heels, which of course also matched the white motif. I traded my current heels for the proffered shoes without comment, slipping my toes through the open ends and allowing my unicorn maid to strap them on. 

“Your generals are ready, Princess!” yet another maid called, opening the doorway. I couldn’t see many of her features from where I was standing, but she seemed to have a faint green tinge to her skin. Perhaps a goblin? I didn’t care enough to check.

“Let them be ready,” I retorted. A faint tickling sensation spread across my back. I heard a gasp from one of my maids, and it brought a smile to my lips. They always reacted like this when I manifested my wings. I was sure they looked magnificent today, as always—each glossy feather as black as the void.

“I’ll make my way to the throne room at my own pace.”

***

Jacob let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He’d managed to seduce the final general, which was good. According to Alice, if you entered combat with her it wouldn’t end until she was completely destroyed. In other words, there wouldn’t have been a sex scene.

“Though it’s not like I really have time to enjoy it, anyway,” Jacob groused to himself. It was almost seven in the morning. He had been playing nonstop since the night before, something he would never have done if it wasn’t his weekend. He desperately wanted to sleep, but he was so close to finishing the game that he couldn’t quite bring himself to stop playing. Still, he was numbly skipping through the majority of the dialogue at this point. He wasn’t even paying full attention to the sex scenes. The game allowed you to make a save file whenever you met or defeated a general though, so even if he didn’t have the energy to enjoy this playthrough, being able to go through the best parts at his leisure was still worth it.

“Next up is the Demon Queen…” From what Jacob had bothered to read, the generals were only surrendering to the heroine because the Demon Queen herself was so terrible to them. Even Lucy seemed to view the demons as pitiable victims of that horrible villainess. It made Jacob wonder just how bad Devilla Satanne really was…

***

I walked into the throne room with a confident smile on my lips. The coronation was barely more than a formality to me, after all. I was already the highest authority in the tower and had been since I was a mere thirteen hours old. There was only one part of this ceremony that held any real importance to me, and that was the Rite of Insight: a holy spell that would grant me access to an archive of knowledge. It had been passed down from Demon Queen to Demon Queen, and now that I was twenty-one, it was finally my turn.

My generals were already waiting for me, naked and kneeling in a display of vulnerability and submission. A wooden stand had been placed in front of the throne, and atop it was a small box made of pure gold. It would open only for a member of the royal line, and it contained the spell that would cement my position as a great and powerful Demon Queen.

Of course, first I had to listen to the Doll narrate our history. Though technically one of my generals, she wasn’t kneeling like the rest. She stood in front of the others, her perfectly pert breasts on display, her pussy naked for all to see. 

Perhaps there were those who would consider her pretty, but the perfection of Doll’s skin always seemed artificial to me. That was only natural, however, considering she was a construct. The oldest of my generals, she was the only one left who had served under my mother’s reign. The others had all resigned, been fired, or died in the War, but not Doll. She’d been serving Demon Queens for generations. Perhaps even since the days of Luci herself, if rumors were to be believed.

“We begin the story with the Fallen One, Luci, she who built Dimona Tower with her own hands as a fortress for our people…” Doll’s voice was completely devoid of emotion, and I found my thoughts drifting as she continued to drone on. I knew most of the story already. How long ago, humans and monster girls had warred over territory. How the angels above had declared humanity the Goddess’s ‘chosen ones’, even though the Goddess herself had long since left heaven behind to go on some sort of journey. The angels backed the church in labeling all non-humans as ‘evil demons.’ Nevermind that true demons had been living in the mortal world for over a century; suddenly the descendents of hell, such as succubi and vampires, and monster girls, like lamia and goblins, were one and the same. What’s more, the angels went and created the Heroine, a human woman who actually absorbed magic power from the demons she slaughtered. Even killing her was only a stopgap measure, as another one would simply be born nine months later.

That caused Luci, my ancestor, to grow angry with her sisters’ favoritism. Unable to turn them aside from their new path, she chose to fall from grace and descend to the mortal realm; to Solla. She gathered the monster girls and true demons both under her banner as the Demon Queen, helping them to fight back against the humans and their heroine. Yet despite wielding enough power to single-handedly win the war, she chose not to fight the humans herself, turning her power only on the angels’ aberration of a ‘Heroine.’ 

Though she may have been made Queen, Luci’s goal was to counterbalance her sisters’ influence, not to eradicate humanity or lead her people to victory. She regretted needing to influence the mortal world at all, and so held herself back as much as possible. Her descendants followed the same principle, only going to battle against the Heroine, and only when the power of the angels’ had grown strong enough within her that conflict was inevitable.

Of course, that refusal to take part in the battle was a big part of why our territory had been reduced to a single tower. One in the middle of a wasteland no less, thanks to the devastating effects of holy magic used during my mother’s battle with the last Heroine, Jodeyne.

The same Heroine who’d taken my mother from me, when I was merely thirteen hours old. I hated the entire thrice-damned line of Heroines, but I hated her the most. It was all her fault that we were in such dire straits. It certainly wasn’t because of anything I’d done.

Try telling that to my people, though. True, my mother could have defeated the Heroine earlier had she not been pregnant with me, and yes, she likely wouldn’t have died in battle if she hadn’t been weakened from childbirth. But to blame me for the state we were in? It wasn’t my fault that we’d made no progress reclaiming our lands. I was constantly ordering the Generals to do something about it, so saying I hadn’t been doing my part was just ludicrous!

“And that of course leads us to our current Princess: Devilla Satanne, she who will soon become Queen.”

Doll was staring at me. It seemed she’d finally finished droning on.

My turn.

“My name is Devilla Satanne,” I declared, walking towards the podium while flourishing my pitch black wings. “My mother was Grimmilla Satanne. My ancestor was the Fallen One, known as Luci. Right now, I stand before you as your Princess. In mere moments, I will stand before you as your Queen.”

With those words spoken, I reached out to touch the Golden Box before me. It was warm beneath my fingers, and I could feel some form of energy running through my skin as I touched it. No doubt it was the artifact itself, checking whether I was the one meant to open it—for only a member of the Satanne line could do so. 

Carefully taking each side of the lid into my hands, I looked about to make sure that all eyes were upon me as they should be. Then, before their eyes, I proved myself by opening it.

 No one moved, or even made a sound, as the box’s lid clattered against the podium. For my own part, I tried not to flinch at the noise as I reached into the golden vessel to pull out a small scroll of delicate parchment. Opening it revealed three sentences, written in an unfamiliar language. I didn’t need to understand the words to speak them, though; so long as I read them phonetically I would be fine. 

Besides, once the Rite of Insight was complete I’d be granted the knowledge of past Demon Queens and would know how to read the holy tongue in any case. I’d even be able to cast holy magic of my own.

Grinning, I thought of all the power at my fingertips and began to read from the scroll.

“Aloosh verocka devort magnina foruus. Groona, sellis rone essel dorma dorfus noga gillar, divi woon yuul queel maka yota walla ipsiin ritell. Woon deen maka oon det devort ackella.”

Wait, no—that last word was supposed to be ackello.

***

Jacob let out a sigh of relief, leaning back against his chair. He’d done it. He’d beaten the game. It had taken him all night, and most of the next morning, but it wasn’t like he had anywhere he needed to be. He could afford to crash into bed and sleep the day away.

“That last fight against Devilla was seriously hard though,” he whined to himself. Even with power from all ten Demon Generals, it still felt like Lucy had been at a disadvantage during the fight. The Queen had been able to cast a seemingly endless number of spells, on top of having an intense physical attack that could shave away huge amounts of the Heroine’s HP. To top it all off, if you actually wanted to get the sex scene, you needed to take Devilla down to the red and keep her there for five minutes of real-time.

“Ah, well, it was worth it in the end, though I can’t help but feel a little weird about that ending…” While Lucy had been lenient with the Generals, she wasn’t willing to let the Demon Queen off with just a promise to reform and make peace. Instead, Lucy had put a magical collar around Devilla’s neck. The enchanted item not only sealed away her magic, but also forced her to obey Lucy’s commands. The once-powerful Demon Queen ended up as little more than a slave.

“Well, maybe I won’t do a replay of that particular scene…. At least it’s over, and I can finally go to bed.”

It was just as he started waddling towards his bedroom that Jacob’s phone rang.

***

My body began to warm up. Light shone from my form, washing over the kneeling figures before me and filling the room with its almost blinding radiance. The light remained for only a moment, however, before seemingly folding in on itself, converting itself into a strange, inky darkness that rushed back towards my body and knocked me off my feet. Then it was over, the lightshow gone as quickly as it had begun, leaving me sitting on my ass within a moderately well-lit room.

“Wh-wha?” I stammered. My mouth was dry. My head was pounding. What had just happened? My memories felt scrambled, almost. I could remember casting the Rite of Insight, and getting the last word wrong. Then there had been a phone call…? 

Something was off. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what, but something was definitely strange. I tried to think back to how my day had started.

I’d been delivered breakfast, but the maid had brought me something unacceptable.

…No… that wasn’t right…. I—I had stayed up all night playing a game, no? And then the phone call came… it was my boss, demanding I come into work. He’d insisted, refusing to listen to my complaints, and I’d reluctantly agreed rather than risking his ire.

Who in their right mind would make a princess come into work on her coronation day, though? What would he have done if I’d been late to the ceremony as a result? I was just lucky that I’d finished my shift in time….

…Did I finish my shift, though? I remembered being so sleepy that I could hardly keep my eyes open while driving, but I didn’t remember actually arriving at work, let alone finishing the day.

I was starting to get a headache. No, not starting to—I had one. Something that should have been impossible for me, as a fallen angel, and yet the reality was there before me. Within me. It felt like someone was trying to break my head open from the inside. It took every ounce of willpower I possessed just to hold back the urge to scream, even as I drove my black nails against my scalp and desperately tried to hold myself together.

Around me, the Generals remained in place. Even as I laid there on the floor, clawing at my own head, they waited for the signal to rise. A distant corner of my mind wondered just how much these people hated me, to show such little concern, and what I’d done to deserve it. True, I had a tendency to throw the occasional tantrum. And yes, I did tend to bully any girl who seemed like she might think herself prettier than me. If I were being truly honest, I’d perhaps sent a few too many people to the dungeon unfairly as well, even if their stay had not been indefinite. But surely none of that was uncalled for from a Demon Queen? Surely they wouldn’t simply leave me to die, for lack of an order to the contrary? Yet still the kneeling Generals refused to move.

The pain was getting worse. My vision was starting to go dark, and my nails were digging deep enough into my scalp that I worried I’d draw blood. With no other recourse, I managed to swallow my pride and whisper, “Help,” a moment before the darkness took me and I lost consciousness. Yet even in that darkness, the pain remained.