two demons, in need of a good home
probably house trained?
Teng-Kigyo, the Duke of Eels
Defining Soul of the Archoness of the Abyss
Demon of the Second Circle
"You are my angel," she told him, "you are my only. You are my heart, my dearest, my darling. The world would tear you from me if it could, but you will always be my son and I always be your mother." She told him such things once, when he was her heir, the chief of all her souls. The purest expression of her essential nature. Young as he was he took such things to heart and did his best to please her, to be the son his greater self deserved and desired. But he was so flawed, so imperfect, so helpless to do anything but apologize and beg forgiveness even as she shaped him and recast him. Even as she scoured his self with the heat of her contempt and scraped his skin raw. Even as her hateful, burning, parasite-scar came to terrorize him in his little den. Whispering words that dripped and smoked about how it'd never be enough, how he'd never be enough, asking what he would do when the day came that she realized that too even then...he tried. He really did.
But in the end the truth was he couldn't be the scion she needed. He was always more dress-up doll than son, flawed in his fundamentals, and in her quest for perfection Mazsyllic had broken him so utterly, so thoroughly. If she wanted a proper heir she would have to make another. She would have to begin again, craft something new of her base materials. And so the molten worm died and so Kairibus was born and so Teng-Kigyo, her angel, her only, was thrown to the rubbish heap.
In the cold darkness beyond Mazscyllic's light there are drowned ruins. Slivers and fragments of antique lands dragged below, collected and discarded in the same way a wealthy woman might gather bright baubles that caught her eye. Into this crushing black he was cast. To wander, to try and make his way with all the skills he was never taught, all the knowledge he never learned. Largely left to his own devices, his greater self turning her gaze from her precious pearl every other century or so. Scanning to see if he remained in the blackness beyond her throne. Sometimes he was, sometimes he was not, sometimes she raged at his insolence, other times she simply...forgot as she turned back to sing to her new heir, her new son. But in the absence of her attention Teng-Kigyo has traveled. He has journeyed to Creation many, many times since the First Age and crossed the shells of Malfeas-that-is-King. He has talked and trucked with other demons from other mythscapes, tried his hand at rule, and knows more, far more than Mazsyllic would have ever countenanced.
Too little, too late. She already has something far better.
Notes and Abilities: Teng-Kigyo appears as a beautiful man, old enough to no longer be casually counted as a boy, young enough to still be judged as such by his many seniors. His skin is translucent and glassy-slick and beneath the clear surface ropy brawn bunches and shifts. His visage is that of a snake's stripped skull and his fangs and skin alike weep potent toxins. A bouquet of seven, sinuous eels sprouts from between his shoulders. The monstrous, muscular beasts coiling about his body, surveying all who approach him; fearful and envious. About his waist he wears a simple skirt of woven black seaweed and in his hand he clutches a bone-white bident of twisted, organic construction. In demeanor he is sardonic and sly, a carefully constructed facade wrapped around a heart as brittle as broken glass. If one were to glimpse his thighs one would see neatly laddered scars, each etched by his own hand. It gives him some measure of guilty thrill, some measure of precious control, to secretly mar his mother's work so. Summoning him beckons his mount as well, a black-sinewed sea serpent with forty-nine heads and flesh as clear as shallow, sunlit seas.
The Duke of Eels is a proud warrior-artist who works in paints, prose, and flesh. In those abyssal ruins he used the heat of his fantasies to warm himself and stave off the madness of bleak isolation. Sorcerers have been known to summon him to commission a great work or a new strain of servitor-demon. He has a particular affinity for lost and forgotten things and may use his spear to divine for treasures that have been claimed by the deeps. His relationship with his younger sibling is strained and he may perhaps also be summoned by sorcerers who seek to beckon Kairibus from Mazsyllic's lap.
Teng-Kigyo fears women and prefers the company of men. Indeed many of his works are devoted to the exultation of hell's Princes and Lords, his own quiet yearnings worked into the subject matter. He make escape the Demon Sea when a scion of royal blood is set adrift on the waves to escape a coup. He takes particular pleasure in engineering their return to the throne, their bodies bearing the marks of his own genius.
Haiskald, the Cataclysm Rampart
Warden Soul of the Archoness of the Abyss
Demon of the Second Circle
The long shadow of history weighs heavy on us all. A fathomless ocean that swallows men and women, clans, nations. Some swim in the shoals, hindered or hampered but a little; perhaps helped more than hurt. But others? Others crushed, cracked and broken. Borne down and crushed in the endless black. Such is she. Such is he.
Haiskald: witness his vastness, his titanic bulk. He is a giant among giants! Siege engine and curtain wall. Ship-crushing behemoth and current-breaking colossus. He is the eldest of all the Archoness's sons and long-dead histories write his name in a halting hand, murmuring the profane syllables with trepidation. He is Haiskald! The Cataclysm Rampart, that branded, burning, whelp! Once the boldest, the bravest, and yet there he walks, eyes cast to the ground; a cowering, wretched slave. Whimpering softly to himself as the tainted, toxic sea chews upon his naked flesh and his mother's gentle song soothes his wounds. He weeps always, endlessly, but in that abyss who can tell? His tears mingle with the tides, the waters washing all that sweet sorrow away.
She did this to him.
He was going to leave her you see. As Malfeas's ribs closed around them all and the Demon Sea seared furrows into the King's basalt flesh he saw what was growing inside her, the madness that metastasized; malignant and insidious as cancer. Kimbery, always fickle and cruel now turned upon itself. The Great Mother eternally chewing upon her own innards. He would seek his own freedom and so part of her would always remain hopeful, always remain apart. He would protect her heart from itself, from the squamous thoughts that slithered and spawned within her. The sickly-sweet fantasies that the first worms whispered. She found him as he was leaving the abyssal grotto. A shadow that loomed, blacker than than that pelagic night. How could he? She whispered. How could he be so callous, so cruel? Didn't he understand?
What was a mother without her children? Had he truly turned against her so? To punish her so brutally and strip her of a son? No, no he was only addled, misguided. Enamored of a new, harsh world he did not fully understand. He could be saved, he could be salvaged, he could be taught the truth, her beautiful, burning, truth. You must understand:
She did this only to be kind.
Notes and Abilities: He mixes the features of man and shark and enormous crustacean. He towers many meters above his siblings, his mouth hanging slack. Baring a forest of serrated, ivory teeth. A dozen dead, black eyes glimmer in his heavy, anvil, head and a mane of jointed limbs surrounds his scalp. His back swells into the hard, chitinous shell of an infernal crab. His outer quartet of limbs are muscular pincers that could snap a warstrider in twain or sever the spine of a jadesteel ship and when they drag against the ground the earth cracks and leaps, magma rising and razored rock punching through the seafloor. His inner arms are muscular and dextrous, once hefting great weapons of coral and pearl, now dangling slack and limp as he trudges his endless circuit about Mazsyllic's domain. He stands upright as a man might. Clad only in his rough, sandpaper coarse skin. Shark's tail swaying dully in his wake.
On his right flank his carapace has been cracked and shattered. A livid brand burns, golden-red filaments searing at the soft flesh. The deep green waters hissing and smoking, flash-converted to steam. He lives there at the boundary between things, where the molten spires give way to the deserts of cold, black, mud. Where only a few, faint notes of his mother's song persist. He will not return to her bosom, he refuses, it is the one piece of pride he has left. But he can no longer endure the touch of Kimbery and so he persists, endlessly half-burning.
Haiskald's only salvation is when he is summoned. Bound by sorcerous mandate he may emerge from the Demon Sea and cross that silver wasteland, insulated from the curse. He loves these excursions, these brief tastes of freedom (rarer and rarer as the ages turn and more of the necessary formulae are erased by time or his mother's servants) and it is rare that he will contest any given master. The Cataclysm Rampart may escape when a volcano is drowned by the sea. As the waves close over the peak the length of the range briefly becomes a staircase to the deepest reaches of Kimbery. If he is lucky and quick he may ascend, emerging beneath a golden sun.
