The Queen and the Soldier

Glaucon was born to human parents in a 'verse centuries before our own and very far away. His human family was slaughtered by demons looking for an easy meal, and his second adopted family dissipated when the young woman who was holding it together died of an illness in a demon-populated city. From that day on, he knew that if he wanted to survive in the world into which he was born he would need to be something more than merely human, more than meat for the beasts that inhabited this space.

He was fourteen the first time he summoned a demon. A wolf-demon, or a demon of the hunt, or something like that. Centuries later he didn't remember its name or species and he didn't care to. It had served its purpose.

He bargained with it: enhancements to his body to help him survive in exchange for years of service. Five years in the demon's world, but fifteen in his, but it was a small price to pay for survival. He put up with the demon for five years, doing its bidding and learning how to fight, how to use the new-won aspects of his body. He put up with being shuttled from town to city to plain as the demon warlord commanded, and learned both how to fight and how to command others in battle. His aptitude for learning put him in a safer position than he might otherwise have been; it made him useful to the demon. So useful, in fact, that when the time of his service was up the demon laughed and promised that he would never let the boy go. Now a young man, Glaucon had other ideas. He killed the demon upon the conclusion of his payment and fled back to his own dimension.

After that success there were other bargains, other acquisitions. He studied with a creature whose name and nature he never met for three times three years, sacrificing memories without remembering it afterwards for the small forms of knowledge, the little things that made a master out of a professional, a god out of a devotee. When he found himself captured after becoming too cocky and too successful in one village, he tricked his vulture-demon co-prisoner into helping him escape, then turned around and made a ritual component of him. The attributes of a carrion-eating raptor proved more useful than he would have guessed at the time.

There were other lessons to be learned, simply by living.

He did find love, too, or at least a semblance of it. They spent a short time together that was briefly passionate and even more briefly happy. But there were secrets he kept from her about his nature, and an an even bigger secret that she kept from him. Eventually, without knowing, he killed her for it. Not for the secret but for her withdrawing from him, making him a stranger to her in their home. He couldn't stand it. After that his life was consumed by war, until the time when he lay split in two on the battlefield, held together by thin strips of skin and muscle, breathing his last through bubbles of blood and spit.

She found him dying, and brought him back to life.

He found new purpose as her loyal soldier, waging war at her bidding. He led marches through wastelands and marches through ice, going at her bidding to apply discipline or take over a province, never questioning. He led bloodbaths and neat, tidy raids, and he was very successful at it. She even permitted him into her gardens, in quiet moments, as a reward. He became well-known and even well-loved in her empire for being one of her most loyal and capable servants. More so, perhaps, than even most of her people knew.

He made friends, some close friends, and learned respect for several of his commanders. Missions became excursions, some of them, taken no less seriously for the fact that he carried them out with friends.

As rumors of betrayal, sedition, conspiracy within her ranks grew, they fought more often. The fights were somewhat one-sided; she seemed distracted with other matters and he was so frustrated that she seemed not to take heed of his warnings. Eventually, irritated by his constant worrying, she sent him to take care of a minor matter on her borders. He went, ever the obedient soldier. And then returned, when he heard rumors that she had been overthrown, frantic that he had arrived too late. As it turned out, he had.

Those who remained attempted to keep the empire, her empire, together. It crumbled for want of their Goddess, despite their best efforts. he stayed out of loyalty to his comrades and deference to his commander, but that didn't stop them from dying. Slow, one by one. Eventually, when there was no one left whose loyalty commanded him to stay, he left. He picked a direction and he simply wandered that way for as long as he could.

He spent fifty, nearly a hundred years in the monastary. He refused to eat unless it was necessary, to sleep unless he was too exhausted to stay awake, anything. Eventually even his health did fail, until he was confined to a bed and lapsing in and out of consciousness. The monks who tended him without knowing who they had brought into their midst thought he would die, although they did not wish it. He wanted to die, although he no longer had the strength to take his own life. After a long period of wasting and living decay, the monks decided that it was only a matter of time. Which was when she found him again, long after he had given up all hope. She took charge of his care, took him back to her and brought him forward to the world into which she had been hurled years before. It was... very strange to him.

The new world was not a welcoming place. It was too loud, too noisy, and fit to drive him mad. The inhabitants did not like him nor did they seem to even want to understand him. He found a few things that were familiar, a few places; the sudden prevalence and power of humans startled him. He took refuge in practice and habit, remembering and returning to the old ways as best he could. And in some other ways, he attempted to re-create a semblance of what had been lost.

They found their own measure of peace in the new world. They learned things about each other, small things, that would have seemed inconsequential then and were now of vast importance.