Since then I've slept here on my throne. Determined to continue to enjoy my life here. I can't even remember the last time I muddled with the affairs beyond these four walls and the world seems to have gotten along just fine. I as well have greatly enjoyed this peaceful period in my life. There is no need to struggle or to want for anything. My body has long since grown past the point where it would be required to take in sustenance or excrete anything – I can survive quite easily on the massive tide of mana that grows unendingly each time I open my eyes. My clothes are made of some incredibly high class substance a minion delivered to me in tribute too many years ago to remember – they never wear or tear and in fact probably have some incredible ability to resist damage; so many years soaking in my mana at point blank range coupled with a base materiel of high enough quality that a servant saw fit to deliver it as tribute – the resultant fabric is durable to say the least.

Speaking of me, I am something like a demon. Demons of course come in a great variety of shapes and sizes but for me I look more or less like a human woman with only a handful of overtly demonic features. My skin is pale and my hair is black; two small black horns curl out from either temple and two black feathered wings sprout out just above my tailbone. My eyes are blue, which is strange for a demon but my clan is – was – unique. I am wearing a simple backless dress (to accommodate my wings) a pair of heels and a simple gold circlet atop my head. This is the form I have appeared in for as long as I can remember – I never change my clothes because it's inconvenient and to discourage the rabble from piling up worthless jewelry and clothing as tribute.

I say that I am something like a demon because I am not sure if the label can still be applied to me ever since I discovered I can more or less alter my appearance at will. So if I wanted I could take the form of a human, or an elf, or a beastkin, a celestial, anything I damn well please it seems like. Not that I ever bother doing so but I've at least confirmed I have the capability – useless as it is. Why useless? Well it's dependent on focus, so if I stop paying attention to maintaining the spell it dissipates – for example if I, say, fell asleep that counts as losing focus and the spell disappears. Do you see the problem? Not that I ever need to disguise myself in the first place… it does however occasionally raise some thoughts as to what exactly I looked like when I was born? Some doubts about my nature. But eh, no one has ever accused me of being introspective.

In short I am quite content with my life. I want for nothing. It seems odd considering I merely spend all my time sitting on this throne wiling away the years with sleep and dreams but that is my lot and I have accepted it. Truly a tragic lot in life, to spend all my days blissfully sleeping, surrounded by cute and capable minions who delight in bringing me the shiny things with which they decorate my home.

Though not capable enough I reflect, aware of my desolate and thoroughly ransacked castle. Speaking of that, at first I wondered why I was spared when my castle fell but after the third time I cracked my eyes open since I was initially made aware of the damage I spotted a clue on the floor surrounding me. Glowing magical runes were scattered in a circle around my feet in what I recognized to be a sealing formation. Quite a powerful one actually, the kind of thing the old Demon King I knew in my youth might have whipped up in a pinch. And it was made with holy magic too, which is supposedly extra effective against demons – though I don't feel particularly sealed so maybe take that bit of wisdom with a grain of salt. In short I wasn't spared – instead I was sealed. Probably because whoever drew up the “seal” felt fighting me would be suicidal. Wise. I mean considering they didn't even actually manage to seal me – if they had I would have noticed when I started to starve. I've already mentioned I rely on my mana for all of my bodily upkeep. Thus the sealing formation is little more than a glowing decoration around my feet and I'm content to leave it be.

…

…

…

I've been floating in a state of half sleep and half wakefulness for years now, well I think its been years, in truth my perception of time has become rather shoddy as it has worn on. The throne room never changes after all. It used to be that new cycles of demons would appear and disappear as fast as I noticed them – which gave me at least an awareness that time was passing but ever since my castle was emptied I no longer have even that. But now I feel the passage of time more keenly than I have in probably hundreds of years and the reason is … difficult to articulate or maybe just difficult to accept. My senses have become extremely keen over the years and recently they have been alerting me that something is very wrong with the world. At first I ignored it and slept on uncaring. Then I nobly decided to make a concentrated effort to ignore it until it resolved itself. But it has been getting worse. To the point where I can no longer sleep properly, I've been soldiering on and enduring this feeling of being half awake all the time in hopes that someone else will fix the problem. But its been years now and it hasn't gotten any better – it's like someone is actively trying to ruin everything.

Since I've been feeling this unpleasantness for so long I can identify the cause fairly easily, basically it's because there are no demons. Or very few? Anyway it's causing a massive imbalance in the world's mana. Doesn't make any sense? Well that's just how things are, demons are especially adept at channeling chaotic demonic energy and in exchange they can't channel holy energy hardly at all. Conversely celestials can barely channel demonic energy – to the point that it makes the ill even – but are very adept at channeling holy energy. Humans, elves, beastkin, and the like also have various specialties though in those cases it's much more down to the individual - demons and celestials are rather unique in their race-wide bias due to their respective creator deities Kaos and Seriah. Not that any demon I ever met did something like acknowledge a deity. I've gotten sidetracked but in the time I've been in this state of half-wakefulness I've felt a use of demonic energy precisely once. All over the world. One time.

Do you get it? My senses are absurd you know? When I'm just sitting here and doing nothing – in the seat of my power, built over millenia – I can feel millions of tiny pinprick flares of mana being expended all over the globe. Holy magic, elemental magic, arcane magic, demonic magic they all have a distinct feeling and as a demon my sense for demonic magic is even better than my sense for the other kinds. So for the years I've been half paying attention no one has used any demonic energy except for one time! People use their magic every day for everything you can think of you know? The only way to go this long with no expenditure of demonic energy is if a very concentrated effort was made to wipe it out. Which isn't too far-fetched now that I think on it, humans and celestials have constantly railed against demonkind for as long as I've been alive at least. But they should know they can't actually exterminate another race without any consequence right? Even if the other sentient races decided to throw themselves into learning demonic magic it still probably wouldn't be enough to maintain the mana balance – demons are highly magical beings after all, just by their existence there is a constant expenditure of demonic energy.

What is the mana balance? I don't know. Honestly it's not something I learned about in my youth, nor in any of my subsequent exploration of magic but as I aged I noticed that it certainly exists. Even if no one seems to acknowledge it – it's something I can feel for myself you know? It's too big and obvious to ignore ever since my ability to sense mana became so large. There is a constant flow of magical power around us at all times made up of unaspected magical power, demonic energy, and holy energy. That's just how the world was shaped when the Gods created it. When sentient races draw on any of those sources it depletes the source marginally, in an infinitely close to zero kind of way – even the strongest mages alive today draw from their chosen source like a thimble from an ocean. But apparently all those thimbles add up because I can clearly sense that the demonic energy is thicker than any other kind. Because no one is using it. And the imbalance is creating problems at the very roots of the world. I can feel the demonic energy forcing its way through the barriers keep it separate – corrupting the unaspected mana. And even physically manifesting in some places and presumably corrupting the physical world.

I – and apparently everyone else – have ignored the problem so long that it's starting to look irrecoverable to my senses. Even if there was some effort made to get the mana flow back into balance the corruption of the physical world will not be so easily reversed. More worrying the corruption of unaspected mana which will undoubtedly manifest in a million tiny and terrible ways - not only for a being like myself that relies entirely on mana to sustain my life – but for literally everyone who uses mana at all. I'm pretty sure the corrupted unaspected mana will not function like demonic energy at all. Instead it will have unpredictable effects on all living beings because all creatures of this world from the sub-sapient spirits that live in the winds and waters up to the mightiest dragons all eat and breath mana at all times. Sentient races too, of course, though they will probably be a bit more resistant to any random corrupting effects and more able to come up with countermeasures. Though I think it's inevitable that they will be overcome and die – unaspected mana is just too integral to the existance of every living being and it's not like the corruption is going to suddenly reverse itself – in fact it will continue to get much worse unless demons go through a population explosion or at the very least a lot of people start using demonic energy to channel their magic. That latter is unlikely because as I understand it, other races need to be taught to channel demonic energy rather than being able to wield it innately.

In short, somehow, while I've been sleeping here peacefully in my castle the rest of the world has managed to collectively commit suicide, I'm almost impressed.

Which leads me here, though the world is likely beyond saving, it's probably not quite impossible yet. But if I fall asleep again I will probably wake to a world well and truly done for. That knowledge has me a bit more awake. More awake than I can remember being … ever really. I know I was more active in my youth but my memories of that time are so faded they're practically from another lifetime. My dreams seem more real sometimes. Well that knowledge and also the horrible feeling of dissonance this mana imbalance is causing makes it more or less impossible to sleep, it's really terrible in a way words can't even describe. Not being able to sleep I mean.

So should I try to help? To fix this somehow? I am a demon so I am slightly more qualified than most. Not that that will count for much in regards to a problem like this. A problem that likely requires so-called Divine Intervention. Loathe as any demon is to admit it, there are things like Gods in the world. You don't have to look far for proof; humans – for instance – are always singing praises to their petty Gods which are as numerous as stars in the sky, to the point that you start to doubt their credibility as Divine. But there are two whose credibility is unquestionable, who appear in every creation myth I've ever heard, those being Kaos and Seriah who birthed the demons and celestials to carry on the endless conflict and blah blah blah…

While pondering that, a magical formation appears above my head. A dozen Runes, from languages that were dead and buried before the first stone of my ancient castle was laid, twinkle into existence. The constructs of pure demonic energy faintly glow sickly green as they arrange themselves into an arcane formation vaguely resembling a comet. Then, with a thought, they disgorge lines of green fire and eradicate the “seal” drawn in front of me, scouring the holy runes from my sight, until nothing remains.

Haha … For me to use magic. To willingly conceive of a spell and channel the demonic energy – when was the last time I did that? I put energy into my limbs and my whole body perks up a bit more. Slowly, I grasp the arm of my throne, and lift myself from it. My movements are smooth, no indication of my long period of inactivity are reflected there, as expected of this unreasonable body of mine. Graceful steps lead me slowly down, descending from my throne for the first time in…

Its been so long. So long since I did anything. But if the whole world is corrupted by that miasma it will become fundamentally uninhabitable – even for someone like me. Also everyone else will also die and no longer be able to bring me tribute. Which is something I didn't even realize I would miss until it was gone. Funny how these things work. I suppose maybe I ought to do a little bit of work, just this once.

…

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…

Slowly, moving on silent feet, for the first time in over ten-thousand years the being who had once been known as Demon Goddess Alexandria moved from her Holy Throne Room.