(Warning, contains violence)
Two hundred and ninety-five years had elapsed since Azrael had been slain, and in that time I had learned much that is hidden, dark magic in particular. I had had my high points, and my low points.
Once I had woven a spell to show me the moment of Azrael's death so that I could learn more of his killers. To my surprise I saw the shades of Azrael and the demon who had slain him, shaking their heads as I pursued the survivors through the castle all those centuries ago.
In times gone by I had carried a gun with me at all times, but since a vixen sniper had proved her skill in killing unsuspecting innocents from afar, the concept of the gun had lost something of its charm.
The last victim of my semiautomatic was the Angel, Zarach. The vixen's shooting spree was ultimately his fault, having deluded her into the belief that by shooting his own followers she would be saving their souls from being eaten by me, and so putting a bullet through his head seemed to me a fitting justice for his deeds.
Fitting or not, I had decided that he should be the last to die by my hand in such a way. To this end, I destroyed the blueprints and outlawed the manufacture of anything more advanced than a flintlock. The weapons which I had already made were useful in the defence of the realm - indeed, they were part of what kept Ha'Khun safe from invasion - so I was not about to give up that advantage entirely.
For this purpose I maintained ours existing stocks and ensured that there was a supply of ammunition, made in secret within the fortress, but never again would I carry a gun of my own.
Another thing I had to my name was a room of the castle which was now entirely filled with roses sent to me by my clan leader, Daryil, who still believed that I would one day become his lover.
I had been unsure what to do with his unwanted gifts at first - my natural inclination had been to throw them onto the compost heap in the palace gardens, but he had preserved them by some means and they remained fresh.
Burning them was an option, but I quickly realised that he would be watching me as he had in the past - and if he got the idea that I was not interested in him at all, he might come to kill me. So I put them in storage. One hundred and tweny-five years later, I had a room full of the damned things.
But today I sat brooding upon my throne, casting my mind back upon these thoughts and others.
There was a sign outside the door which read:
ASSASSINS PLEASE NOTE:
One of my assailants had actually been foolish enough to heed this sign and I had quickly overpowered him by stamping upon his feet.
"Happy Birthday," said Ashley, and clapped his hands twice. The door to the throne room opened, and one of my guards entered.
"These are the prisoners, Mi'lord," he said, tugging upon the chain that bound two weasel demons. I stared at them in disbelief for a few moments, and then my mood began to harden as I realised that centuries of planning was about to bear fruit.
"You!" I shouted, "You killed Azrael! Mere death is too good for what you have done.
"But before I decide your fate, pray tell me what possessed you to return to my territories? Were you going to have another crack at taking over Ha'Khun, hmm?"
The weasels stared back at me, a silent act of defiance.
"ANSWER!" I shouted, but they would not.
I chose the more surly-looking one and stared into his eyes with my usual sneer of contempt. A moment later he was screaming with agony as I smashed his mind-shield like a pane of glass.
"Yesh we were," I said out of the corner of my mouth like a bad ventriloquist.
"I am frankly surprised that you didn't learn your lessons the first time," I continued normally.
"Ah well. Ashley, I am very grateful for your present, but I must ask you to leave if you would be so kind.
I desire I few moments alone with my... friends."
Ashley hesitated, but he could tell by my mood that I was not to be trifled with. It was as much for him as for me, since I didn't want him to have to see what was about to take place.
At last one of the demons spoke. "What of your ancient principles?" he whined. "Didn't you say that all lives are sacred?"
"Indeed they are," I told them, "But some are more sacred than others."
My tentacles shot out, closing around their necks and choking off their whimpers of terror as they realised that their lives were over. I stared intently at the pair with an expression of stark lunacy, their fear sweet as ambrosia, and I began to laugh, a loud peal of demented laughter.
"It's twelve-thirty," I said, and as their terror reached its peak I took their heads from their shoulders. There were two thumps as their skulls hit the ground, the floor and my own fur tainted with crimson as the severed arteries shed their load. In spite of this, the two demons weren't actually dead until the shock set in, and even then I wasn't finished with them.
Laughing with the pleasure of the kills, I closed one eye, watching the two shades coalesce as their brains died. But before they could flee into the afterworld, I took hold of their spirits, reeling them in like fishes and feeding upon their energy. As I watched I could see their figures becoming dim as I feasted upon their immortal souls.
Oh, how tempting it was to destroy them utterly, but Azrael's own words came back to me, clearly... almost as if he was watching over me.
"He could quite easily have destroyed your soul.
Let's just pray that he doesn't think of that when he catches your companions."
No, I thought. Not that. All they did was kill Azrael... what I am about to do is a crime far, far worse. My own people think I am a monster, and if I continue down this path, they will be right.
Reaching for the chain I wore around my neck, I clutched the two jewels and they became warm in my hands.
"I shall wear your souls around my neck," I said to the faintly-glowing jewels. "I swore to make you suffer for this, and you WILL suffer! For ever and ever!"
"Amen," I added sarcastically.
I suppose it was all over rather quickly. Perhaps I should have felt disappointed at the anticlimax to my three-hundred year wait, but on the contrary I was ecstatic. Perhaps it was due in part to the high from the kill, or the fact that I'd glutted myself on their terror and pain, but whatever it was, it certainly felt good.
Leaving instructions for the demons' bodies to be burnt and their heads placed upon pikes outside the fortress, I retired to bed. With Page finally avenged, I felt able to sleep for the first time in many hundreds of years.
That night I dreamed a dream, my first in nearly seven hundred years. I was walking through a stone corridor, with the jewel-trapped souls around my neck and Azrael by my side.
"I've been watching you ever since my death," he was saying. "Many things which I have seen have pained me greatly. I have been hoping against hope that you would in time recover and see the error of your ways. But I fear now that this may never happen of its own accord, and that is why I am visiting you tonight, old friend."
"I did it all for you," I said. "Everything. I have torn the land itself apart to find your killers."
"I know," he sighed. "And frankly, I don't know whether to be touched or appalled. I have made peace with my killer, yet you have committed many crimes in a monomaniac quest for a vengeance that simply does not interest me."
"Crimes?" I asked, in a puzzled tone. Azrael looked at me sorrowfully.
"You have done murder, although I grant you that many of those deaths were justified to some degree by your duty to protect the realm as its patron. But you have also joined forces with the underworld and terrorised millions of citizens - our own citizens! And then you embarked upon a series of conquests, invading other realms for no good reason that I can fathom.
"Are you sure it will make you happy, slaying your three demons? Can't you see how far you have strayed from the original vision of Ha'Khun? What happened to our dream of a Furrae free from hatred and war? Wilson's dream?"
"Johan Cross happened to it," I said, and began to cry.
"There there," said Page, his hand upon my shoulder. He was crying too. "At least you can see it now."
"I see it," I wept. "How could I have been so stupid? So wrapped up in my own petty plans for vengeance that I couldn't see how I perverted the dream of Ha'Khun?"
"Power corrupts," he said. "Never forget that. As Creatures we must always remain vigilant or we will become monsters. You have resisted it better than most, but your soul has still been tainted by what you have done."
"But what can I do now? What would you have me do to make amends?"
"The answer to that lies with you, I fear. Now that I have helped you to see the error of your ways, my part is done. Nonetheless, I believe that if you seek to help others, you will be able to heal yourself."
I awoke soon after, and when I did I knew at once what I had to do. Taking a parchment and the relevant seals, I wrote a letter proclaiming my leave of absence, leaving the realm under the stewardship of Ashley. I also included an amendment to my laws, providing that Creatures and Beings were to be considered equal within the realm, something that Azrael and I had enforced by preference but needed to be enshrined in something more durable than the whims of the then-ruler.
As I placed Azrael's ring in the envelope, I found that I was whistling to myself. This caught me by surprise, until I suddenly realised it was because I was free. I would not have to listen to my advisers anymore or solve other people's petty problems. The burden of my leadership was at an end, for despite what the document said, I had no intention of returning.
Packing a bag with some of my most treasured possessions, I included the tape which Page had recorded our conversation about the HMS Resolution so many centuries ago, one of the few surviving recordings of his voice. Among other things, I also took his treatise on gate manipulation, Daryil's notes on advanced metabiology and the bottle containing Ulric's soul.
Reaching for the charm that Fa'Lina had given me so many centuries past, my hand yet again snatched away at the last moment.
I went to inspect the turbine hall in the basement of the fortress one last time, and ensure that the staff tending it could cope with my absence. I had other reasons too - the hydroelectric generators were the cornerstone of Ha'Khun's technological edge, and I had designed them myself. In a way they were a link to my younger, innocent self, and stupid as it sounds, I would miss them.
Rather than teleporting, I decided to walk the entire way, although I had to avoid the throne room. There were still bloodstains upon the floor, a grim reminder of last night's slaughter. What had then seemed sweet now brought me close to vomiting, a symbol of how far I had fallen.
All life is sacred. This had been my guiding principle from the outset, but of late it had become mere words, an inconvenient slogan to be circumvented and worked around with clever excuses. That ended now.
Clasping the two jewels that held the immortal remains of my victims, I swore that I would never again move to take the life of another Being or Creature unless there was no possible alternative.
The engineer within me satisfied, and vowing to build more generators in future, I decided to end my time in Ha'Khun with a stroll through the central park before I left, for it was one of my favourite walks through the city. As I gazed into the fountain, I was suddenly startled as a hand clapped itself upon my shoulder.
"Ashley," I said sadly. "You shouldn't be here. You're supposed to be running the city."
"Come on, Yak," he said. "Two can play at the abdication game. I don't know where you're planning to go, but I'm coming as well, like it or not."
Laughing, I took him by the hand and my other closed upon the charm around my neck.
"No," said Fa'Lina. "This is supposed to be a 'cubi academy, not some kind of youth hostel for all and sundry. You are an incubus. He is not, therefore he is not welcome here."
"Oh come on," I said impatiently. "You have other Demons and Beings on campus, so what's the big deal about one more? I can vouch for his integrity if that helps you at all."
"He'll need to eat! We have quite enough non-'cubi, and I am not looking for any more."
"Well, those are my final terms," I said irritably. "You've been trying to get me to join your staff for centuries and it's not like you to suddenly just throw an opportunity like that away, but ultimately it is your choice.
"You want me to help set up and run this new Being Technology department, right? Well if you want to have me on board, Ashley comes too - otherwise I go elsewhere. I'm sure the military academy at Xe'Pherion City would be very interested in the weapons technology I have at my disposal."
I smiled inwardly as the all-knowing headmistress of the Succubus and Incubus Academy blanched. Apparently my long absence from the Academy had fogged her ability to predict things where I was concerned, but she'd heard about my guns and my threat to sell the technology to the highest bidder had clearly upset her. And then there were the rumours I had spread about the uranium bomb.
The only risk was that I might have gone too far. Fa'Lina might decide I was a threat to our race who had to be eliminated at all costs. But who else might I have told? And would killing me stop it, or make it inevitable as my followers unleashed her worst fears out of vengeance?
I may have been bluffing, but she had seen for herself what a sniper rifle in the hands of a mere Being could do to a fully-trained incubus - indeed it was only by the skill of the Doctor and myself that he had survived. The Doctor...
"Is the Doctor still looking for test subjects for his drug?" I asked suddenly.
"It's up to Ashley himself of course, but that would seem to be the only compromise."
"The serum? It is usually far more trouble than it is worth. Besides, Ashley is a... what? Part-demon? You know there are side-effects. He'd be a very weak incubus and Clanless as well!"
"So bond him to my Clan," I said. "His demon heritage should make the process simpler than a pure Being."
"Very well," she replied with a faint air of relief, and her usual demeanour slowly began to return.
"If he is happy to accept the risk, then that is what we will do. Obviously you shall be responsible for his actions, at least to begin with, and he will have to attend classes to understand his new abilities. But when he is not otherwise occupied, I see no reason why he should not become your assistant.
Provided he survives the treatment, of course."