Demon || Variable thirty-three

Amidst the old gigantic trees of the largest forest in the world, on a meadow by a lake with waters deep and pure, slept an old dragon.

He had a long body of an eel, and scales like a fish. His head resembled the head of a turtle, and he had a long fin along his head and a long white beard under his chin.

He was the size of a mountain, and his head alone was as big as a house.

His scales, with their colors faded by time, looked even more greyish under the cloudy sky, which forecasted the oncoming rain.

A beautiful, tall and slender man with long silver hair approached him with the poise and dignity of a prince. His hair was twice as long as his height, tied in two braids, which were further wrapped around his waist. He wore a long golden robe, which was embedded with rarest gemstones of the earth.

He approached the sleeping dragon and touched his head.

The dragon slowly opened his eyes, and said, "I don’t need any healing."

The beautiful man had a long face, a thin nasal bridge, and a slightly pointed nose. His lips were thin, his forehead was smooth and his cheeks were glossy like caramel. His ears had a pointy top, and his long narrow eyes looked like two wells filled with springwater under the bright sun.

“So why did you call me?” the man asked.

With a peaceful voice the dragon responded, “I didn’t call you.”

“I did,” a hoarse high-pitched voice responded from the direction of the woods.

The elf took his hand off the dragon’s cheek and looked in the direction of the voice.

“Baba Yaga,” the dragon said with a small growl - a warning directed at the unwelcome guest.

“Show yourself, witch,” the elf ordered with disgust.

“Such a warm welcome,” she laughed as she turned herself visible. She stood alone with both of her hands holding her broom.

The elf furrowed his eyebrows.

The dragon sighed, “what do you want from us?”

“Have any of you ever travelled to another world?” she asked what seemed like a very random question.

“Get to the point,” the elf said, “or I’m leaving.”

“Fine, fine," she repeated herself twice, before she proceeded with an explanation. "A demon from another world is planning to come here. She already conquered that world, and now she wants to conquer ours.”

“Why would I believe a witch? Why would I believe the queen of the witches?” the elf immediately remarked.

“You don’t need to believe me. All you need to do is go there and see for yourself,” the witch smirked. “She has already created a portal from that world to our world, and us witches have already been there.”

The elf didn’t respond. Instead he was glaring at the witch, carefully observing, and expecting an attack at any time. Unlike him, the dragon was calm, and kept lying down on the meadow, as if he didn’t care at all.

“You aren’t lying,” the dragon spoke and the elf looked at him in surprise. “Did you come here to ally with us?” he leisurely questioned her.

Baba Yaga nodded, and the elf looked outraged.

“Is the enemy that strong?” the dragon calmly continued.

“This demon is far stronger than any of the demons, who fought in the war,” Baba Yaga said and there was a clear tone of fear hiding in her voice, which was sensed by both the dragon and the elf.

“God would never allow…” the elf began to speak, but the dragon interrupted him.

“Nobody knows the ways of God,” he said, then directed his speech to the witch. “You said, that that demon has already conquered the other world, correct?"

“Yes, it’s true. There are still some, who are fighting, but they are small in numbers.”

The dragon closed his eyes, thinking. In the meantime the elf spoke, “why would it concern us? The demons hate humans, not us, elves.”

Baba Yaga laughed with her high-pitched voice, which sent chills down the elf’s spine. “Oh, my dear King of Elves, let me tell you what she did with the elves of that world. First, she turned them into creatures far more ugly than goblins. Then she made them enjoy the life of slavery, which she put them into. The elves of that world, the small ugly creatures, clean dirty toilets with joy.”

Upon hearing the words spoken by the witch, the face of the King of Elves at the same time turned white pale with horror and red angry with fury.

The goblins were the ugliest creatures in the world, while the elves were the most beautiful. Calling an elf a creature uglier than a goblin, was the greatest offense, which could be directed at an elf. Furthermore, elves were creatures of artistic skills, whose work consisted of writing and drawing, and they were known to live in harmony with nature. They didn’t produce any dirt, so they never had to clean anything. Being told of a world, where elves were slaves doing manual labor was a disgrace demanding a death sentence for whoever dared to even think of it.

However, Baba Yaga wasn’t feeling afraid in the least, and she continued, “as for the dragons, she took away their ancient powers and their divine wisdom, leaving them as nothing more than overgrown lizards with almost no intelligence, more stupid than frogs.”

The dragon immediately opened wide his eyes, which were filled with thunders of rage.

Dragons were the oldest among the creatures created by God, and because of that they possessed two things, which no other creatures had. The first one was ancient powers, which allowed them to control the world of nature around them. The second one was divine wisdom, which was merely a tiny piece of God’s wisdom, but even with such a tiny piece, they were known as the wisest, most intelligent of God’s creations.

Dragons cherished their ancient powers and divine wisdom the most of all their qualities, and any offense directed at them regarding these two things would never be easily forgiven. The old dragon slowly raised his body from the meadow, and spread his wings, which until now had been so perfectly wrapped around his body as to be unseen. His featherless wings were transparent and looked like fishing nets wrapped around his bones.

“Where is the demon?” he asked.

Baba Yaga looked up at him and answered, “on the way.”

“When is she coming?” the dragon let some smoke out of his mouth.

The witch shook her head, “that I don’t know.”

The dragon moved his head closer to the witch. “How do I go to that world?”

“Through a portal,” she answered, and pointed in a general direction. “But you won’t have any allies in that world.”

“I am the Ancient Elder of Dragons. I can call all the dragons right now, and all of them will follow me,” he declared, ready to fly away.

“And you’ll still lose, if you go to that world,” the witch stated assuredly.

The dragon looked at the witch, bewildered and doubting. “How can it be?!”

“That demon has used possession on that whole world. Anything, which enters that world, has to follow her laws. If you go there now, with all the dragons from this world, then the moment you enter that world, all of you will turn into overgrown stupid toads,” Baba Yaga accented the last three words, and the dragon calmed down.

“So we cannot win, unless we fight from our home,” the dragon said as he put down his wings, but continued to sit on the meadow, looking like a snake ready to attack. “Out of interest, what did that demon do to the witches?”

“Nothing much,” Baba Yaga responded. “She made us more like humans.” After a moment, she added, “which has made us weaker.”

“Wait a moment.” The elf put his hand under his chin. “You have said that the demon used possession on that world. How can that be, if the world already belongs to God? Is that demon more powerful than God.”

“Oh no. Of course no,” the witch shook a hand in front of her. “Nothing and no one can be more powerful than the creator himself. But you have forgotten that long, long ago, after God created the world, He gave it to humans. Later on, the humans asked God to be the Lord of everything and God agreed, becoming the Lord of all Lords, and the King of all Kings.”

“Are you implying that this event didn’t happen in that world?” the dragon asked.

“Precisely,” she smirked. “In that world, God gave the world, which He created, for humans to rule, but those fools gave it to the demons.”

“How dare they?” the elf was at the same time shocked and angry.

“That explains a lot,” the dragon looked at the horizon from above the trees, where late afternoon sun slowly drifted out of the cloudy sky on its way down. “So those foolish humans destroyed the whole world, and all of us with them,” he summarized before he looked at the elf.

The elf looked back at him in silence. It was hard for either one of them to imagine a world, so different from the one they lived in. The world, which God created, was a world full of magic and miracles. It was a world filled with adventures, dreams and secrets. It was a world of mysteries and riddles, where nothing was impossible. And most important of all, it was a world ruled by its Creator.

“How is she planning to attack this world?” the dragon asked. “She cannot possess it.”

“Thank God for that,” the elf said.

“Thank humans for that,” the witch pointed out. “I don’t know what she’s planning, but I know she’s planning something. And for us, the earlier we start, the better prepared we’ll be.”

“Understood,” the dragon declared. “We shall cooperate in this matter. I’ll let all the dragons know.”

The elf answered unwillingly, but even he could understand the gravity of the situation. “The elves shall also cooperate.”

“One final question,” the dragon spoke, “do humans of our world already know about this?”

The witch stroked the side of her face with her long bony fingers capped with claws. “That is a difficult question. It appears that among the clergy, the Elder Father knows and has notified some of the elder clergy, but not all of them know. Among the royals, there’s the Emperor, who doesn’t know about the demons, but it seems like he can sense something, or maybe he knows something, but it’s hard to tell how much. Other royals know nothing.”

“What about the nobles and commoners?”

“O-ho-ho, that is truly interesting. Among nobles, there is one man, who was born to the Snow household about thirty years ago. His parents tried for many years, and couldn’t have any children, so they came to pray in a temple. Then after many years of prayers, an angel appeared to them and said to the woman: you will give birth to a baby boy in one year, but you will raise two sons.”

“And what about it? It isn’t unusual for angels to be messengers of God’s word?” the elf commented.

“Oh no, it isn’t,” the witch agreed, “but when the woman gave birth to her son, the angel returned again with a second baby boy in his hands, and he gave the baby to the woman, giving her another message from God: raise this child like your own, and when he grows to be of age, send him to the temple. The woman did just that. When the child was ten yrold, his family sent him to the temple. There, the clergy found out that the boy had memories of another world.”

The dragon and the elf looked at each other. They never heard of anything like that happening before.

“That noble,” the witch continued, “was originally from that world, which the demon took possession of. He was one of the several, who fought against the demon. Of course, he lost. After he was killed by her, God turned him back into a baby, and brought him to this world. He knows everything about that world and the demon, who killed him, but he’s the only noble with such knowledge.”

“And what about commoners?” the dragon calmly asked her, expecting nothing stranger than a story of a nobleman coming from another world.

“Oh, I’m leaving the best for last,” the witch giggled, and it was a sound so terrifying that not even the worst nightmares could match it. “A child was born in a temple,” she started. Then the Queen of Witches told them a story so bizarre that neither the Elder of Dragons nor the King of Elves could believe what they had heard on that day.