There were few times more deadly in a nation’s existence than a split. Civil strife could often be far deadlier than battle against any foreign power. Such was the situation the Kingdom of Etalin found itself in. After the death of the king, an inheritance struggle ensued almost immediately between Prince Roland and Prince Manfred. As the eldest Prince Roland was to inherit the throne however, Prince Manfred had the support of Duke Jerin von Frisland, High Marshal of Etalin and leveraged control of the Royal Army. Thus for the past two years the great kingdom found itself embroiled in civil war, the Royal Army doing battle against the levies of the nobles that supported Prince Roland. 

Currently the Royal Army was trying to throw itself against Blackstone Keep, a strategically significant stronghold keeping them from striking at the heartland of the high nobles. Built to guard the only bridge across the turbulent and vast Reinwiess River it was necessary to the war effort to control, yet designed to last against any siege for at least three years. Three years the High Marshall did not wish to spend. Something Count Gustav von Ostrik knew well as he oversaw the defense against the Royalists. Yet these recent reports were… concerning. 

“For what reason would they have to move their camp further away?” The Count mused at his war council. Indeed, the Royal Army had swiftly dismantled their camp and moved it about a mile out. They had sentries watching still but it was a good bit of breathing room for those trapped in the keep. 

“It's hard to say, my lord. Were I to pose a guess I would say it a trap. They seek to give us confidence to depart the keep and cut down whatever forces we send out.” His Captain remarked as he took a drink of a beer mug, wiping some froth from his red beard. 

The Count had not lived to have more grey in his hair than black by being a fool. Even throwing in his lot with the High Nobles had been a calculated move. If the High Marshal had given up a mile of space between him and the army there was a reason for it. Something that he knew that Gustav was missing. He turned his eyes to a figure that had been standing in the corner of the room until now, gesturing for her to approach. An unassuming man in common clothes. 

“What was the word around the camp?” He asked the man. 

The brown haired man bowed his head low. “There are a number of words floating around. Some say they are preparing to break the siege and head north before the snows fall. There was one rumor that was most prevalent. Some say that the High Marshal hired a mercenary. The Grand Contractor.” 

The name struck as vaguely familiar for Gustav. His captain snorted. “Some spy, can’t even parse out the truth of the matter.” The red bearded man remarked. 

Gustav ignored the glares both the captain and his spymaster shared, instead looking at a robed man rather enjoying swishing a glass of wine between thin fingers. “Sounds like a mage of some sort. I take it you’re familiar, Albert?” 

The dark haired man always struck an arrogant image, his features as aristocratic and youthful as they came and his manner of carrying himself and speaking implied he felt himself above those around him. It grated but the man knew his work, his work being the strange world of the arcane. Enough that Gustav kept him on staff and dealt with his offputting demeanor. 

“Oh I know of her. Dionna Kendet, the so called Grand Contractor. Never a bigger failure was there to be found at the Academy. A mousy girl of red hair, stuttered over her spells all the time. A passable summoner, enough to earn a reputation as a mercenary it’s told in the years since she dropped out of the Academy. Non-mages do tend to exaggerate the stories around us you know.” The man remarked. 

Gustav scratched his chin. “You sound quite certain this woman isn’t a concern. I trust you’d be more than a match for her then?” He asked. 

Albert laughed. “I’m offended you’d even have to ask, my lord. If she so much as tries to challenge me, I’ll have her eyes melting from her skull and her skin falling from her bones. You need not fear her anymore than a man fears an ant.” He said with a smirk as he took a long sip of his wine. 

The Count nodded. He had never known Albert to underperform. He was a braggart and an arrogant son of a bitch but he was every bit as talented as advertised. Many a push against the keep had fallen as his magic rained death upon the soldiers of the Royal Army. He turned his gaze back to his spymaster and considered his next order. There wasn’t enough to really act on at the moment. 

“Find your way back to the enemy camp. See what else you can figure out. I’ll send word to the capital that we might have an opportunity to push, but I want to have some solid info first, not rumors.” He said. 

The spy bowed his head and slipped off out of the room. Gustav considered his own mug of beer for a moment. Mages were not something he enjoyed dealing with, however at the very least he had a counterplay if they were indeed bringing in some mercenary mage. Yet still there was something that sat ill with him about the whole affair. Well, nothing for it but to keep moving forward. To be paralyzed with the unknown was to be fated to fall standing still. Something he refused to do. 

It turned out the rumor of a mercenary mage was proven correct the very next day. The sentries had warned of a single person approaching Blackstone Keep. Gustav stood clad in fine armor as he looked out across the way at the figure standing just out of range of their crossbows. Albert had departed to meet his counterpart and thus it was something he left in the mage’s capable hands. Even still he had his crossbows ready and waiting for the slightest hint of anything going south. 

The figure in question was indeed a redhead of orange of some rather short figure. No taller than 5’4” really. She was a direct contrast to the tall finely dressed dark haired man, dressed in rather drab and thick leathers of brown grafted in the shape of a robe. Her face was certainly rather plain with some freckles dotting along her nose and cheeks. Her boots and gloves were worn and clearly having seen many roads, her staff gripped in her left hand having been carved of driftwood into the shape of a snake. 

Albert paused ever so when he noted a particularly new addition to her. An eyepatch over her left eye. She looked different in many ways than he recalled her. Her fashion sense had certainly suffered over the years. It did nothing to show off her assets or half decent figure. Well no matter really. He crossed his arms and inclined his head with a wry smirk to the redhead. 

“Why it has been some time, Dionna. What, five years since last we saw each other? I seem to recall you departing the Academy in a huff after flunking out of your general magic studies.” He remarked, voice level but works honed to cut. 

The redhead smirked in return. “Yes well, I suppose school and I never really did agree with each other Albert. Good to see you are as fond of your own voice as I recall. Someone has to be.” 

Albert’s brow twitched ever so slightly at the remark. A bit more bite to her than he recalled. “Well, seems like you crafted yourself a spine as well! Wonders never cease, you used to be such a spineless jellyfish I was shocked you could move around at all. I suppose some things take time.” 

Dionna laughed slightly. “Oh not having a spine would have ended poorly for me some years ago. You tend to get one quickly in my line of work. Speaking of which. Much as it's amusing to watch you trade wits with me and come up short I’m afraid I’m here to ask for your unconditional surrender. The good High Marshal promised me a good few crates of crystals and well, hard to pass that up.” The woman said. 

Crystal. She could only mean Aether Crystals. Albert’s eyes narrowed ever so. There were many reasons one would use those, skilled mages could draw from them rather than use their own reserves. As well they were catalysts in a number of powerful spells. Spells that rightly were beyond the ken of the woman standing before him. His magical sight found her aura to be rather pitiful really, far below his own. A flickering match next to an open fire like his own power. Still didn’t change much here. 

“Tsk. You should know better than to pick fights you’ve no hope of winning. Surrender and at the very least I’ll see to it you are treated half decently in captivity. The least I can do for a former fellow student of the Academy.” He said, drawing himself up and looking down on the woman physically. 

She ran her fingers along her staff before shrugging. “Suit yourself.” She reached up with her gloved right hand and… bit into the glove. 

Albert lifted a brow as fire flickered to life around his own hand. She bit and tugged the glove off and when she pulled it off he blinked to find not a hand beneath it but instead that her hand ended at the wrist. A rather garish stitched stump at that. He wrinkled his nose at the sight as she held it up over her head and there was a glow beneath the sleeves of her coat. He didn’t waste any time waiting to see what was about to happen and instead cast out his hand and firebolt for her face. 

“Klava, come forth my Right Hand!” She called out. 

The flickering magical bolt Albert had fired off flew fast and true, striking not the face of Dionna but instead smashing into something else entirely. A red figure stood between them, tall and towering with her shadow well above Albert. The firebolt had stuck a set of rather well toned abs and flickered out without so much as leaving a smudge upon the red skin. His eyes shot wide as he jumped back from the figure. 

She was impressive, more than impressive really. Her black and grey clothes hung loosely around her body, her midriff very much exposed and a split on either side of her skirt gave her plenty of mobility for her powerful legs. Her arms were exposed, bracelets of what appeared to be bone the only thing covering the corded muscles of the red skinned woman. Similar anklets were around below just above her bare feet, her nails on both hands and feet ending in short black talons. Her face was quite fetching, if not for the rather sharp looking teeth shown in her toothy grin. Curling forward from her head were a pair of thick horns, clinching it. A demon. 

The demon looked down at her stomach and brushed away at where the firebolt had impacted. “You got another one of those in you, tough guy? Maybe something a little warmer eh? I belch fires hotter than that!” She laughed. 

Albert glared at the demon, her yellow eyes and the black where the whites should have been looking down at him mockingly. “Don’t think your pet terrifies me, Dionna.” He growled as he held both his hands before him and a sphere of pure white hot fire started growing. 

He poured as much aether as he could into the sphere, the thing swelling until it was twice the size of his head before he tossed its flickering heat at the demon. She grinned and fell into a stance, pulling back her fist as it arced right for the amazonian demon. Her fist sped forward and slammed right into the ball of fire just as it was about to explode. Albert’s eyes widened by a few fractions… the last expression he ever made with his face in fact as the ball of fire exploded back away from the demon and completely incinerated the mage with his own attack. 

The sight was met with naked shock from the ramparts of the Keep, a dark shadow on the ground the only thing left of the Count’s mage. Flames flickered in the grass for a few moments. To call it absurd would have been an understatement. Gustav was frozen for a good few moments as he was processing the raw display of strength. Meanwhile in the field the Demon and her summoner were talking. 

“Whoops. Hope you didn’t want that guy to be breathing. My bad.” The demon ran her fingers through her long white hair as she looked over her shoulder at her summoner. 

“I *was* kind of wanting him to stick around long enough to watch you in action proper. Hey, don’t step on the battlefield if you aren’t looking to die.” Dionna shrugged. “Anyway, wreck the keep all you want but the bridge has to stay intact.” 

“Smash the keep, got ya. You should take more jobs like this!” The Demon Klava laughed as she smashed her fists together and started walking toward the keep with a very broad toothy grin. 

“The affairs of men aren’t quite what concerns me, but they pay well.” The summoner remarked as she stepped back a couple paces while Klava got started. Her splash zones could be something. 

At the Keep they managed to gather themselves finally and once they did Gustav turned to his crossbows. “Fire, fire damn you! Captain, have the Knights sally forth! Now!” The Count bellowed. 

The men were shaken from their stupor at the words and turned their crossbows on the red skinned amazon as she strode forth toward the keep. Their weapons fired forth a hail of deadly bolts that would have felled scores of men upon impact. The bolts struck the skin of the demon and as soon as the tips struck her skin they bent or bounced aside as though hitting a wall. She caught one of them between her fingers and used the tip of the weapon to pick between her teeth as she walked, flicking it aside as the gates started to open. She was making a mockery of the weapons of man. 

The thundering of hooves echoed out as dozens of knights sallied forth across the field toward the demon. Their spears were down and pointed right at Klava. She reached out and seized a man right off of his horse as the spears impacted with her skin and splintered. The man screamed as she grabbed him by the leg and started using him as a club, laughing the whole while as she smashed at the horses and their knights with the very swiftly dead knight. Swords that struck her bent like tinfoil and any other weapon seemed similarly ineffective. It was a nightmare to look at. She reeled back her leg and kicked a man square in his chest, sending him flying over the walls and landing in the courtyard. 

The Count stared in horror as the demon butchered his knights. This was beyond anything he could have hoped to fight. The only thing that could be done was to seal the gates. Which he immediately had his men do as the knights were basically almost dead by this point. This was madness! Pure and utter madness. 

Klava dropped her improvised club that had once been a man and now was little more than metal and pulped skin and cracked her neck from side to side. “You know, sometimes you look for a challenge but other times it’s just nice to put your foot over an ant hill and stomp on it.” The demon remarked. 

With that said something happened below that switched horror to naked terror within the Keep. The ground started to rumble and shudder and the figure of the demon started to expand outward and upward. She stretched her arms up high above her head as her shadow very slowly drew until it was swallowing up the whole of the keep and then a good bit of the bridge beyond. Gustav stared up. And up. And up further still and actually was unable to glimpse her face. Instead he saw her rather well rounded assets. 

Her growth stopped when she reached a mile high height that seemed impossible. It *was* impossible. Nothing was supposed to be that big. Nothing could be that big. Yet looking out from the top of the keep walls he saw the bare toes of the demon before the keep. Her shadow was over all of them. Now he knew. Now he knew why the Royal Army had fled a mile back. Now he knew why the summoner herself had stepped back. It was because this demon was a monster beyond all reckoning. Beyond the hands of mortals. 

The Demon let out a rumbling noise of thunder from above, loud and booming enough to bring many a man, including the count to his knees. He clutched his ears from the ringing. It took a moment to realize that noise was her speaking. Sounds that wouldn’t have caused any discomfort before were as large as the being before them all. 

“Gotta leave the bridge eh, Dionna? Tsk. If those mortal fucks that hired you were worth a damn they’d walk over the stream. Even like this it would only take a single stride.” The red demon boomed. 

The ground shook again as she lifted her foot up off the ground, debris and earth falling away from her bare sole as it lifted up into the air. The screams of men filled the air as they pointed up and gestured wildly into the heavens. Some were calling out, pleading and begging this demon to spare their lives. Gustav for his part was just staring upward, almost uncomprehending for how everything could have come to this. They were doing well, they were holding back the Royal Army. And then this nightmare had appeared before them and upended it all. 

Her foot slowly moved and shifted its way over to loom above the keep itself. It’s shadow blotted out the sun above and swallowed everything up. There were still bits of stone and rock that clung to her crimson sole, her wriggling of her toes causing the skin to shift and dislodge some of it. Rocks rained down upon those below. Crushing soldiers and crashing through buildings like stones thrown from siege weapons. 

“Ahhh… yes… keep screaming. More despair. Let it reach a fever.” She sighed, sounding pleased by the suffering and fear. 

A demon truly. Truly a demon with a black and evil heart to take pleasure in all of this. Gustav watched as her foot slowly lowered itself down, coming closer and closer. The air itself rumbled and screamed in his ears as he added his own cries of terror to those around him. Cries that like so many others were silenced immediately when her foot smashed down upon the walls of the keep and shook the ground upon impact. The bridge beyond wobbled threateningly and the waters of the river shook and shifted as the ground was quaked by the step of Klava. 

The demon let out a sigh of pleasure as she arched her foot up, grinding the ball of her foot and toes into the rubble her step had created. It had fallen apart like it was made of cardboard. Not a single bit of resistance it could have showed to her mattered in the slightest. Any survivors were finding themselves at the mercy of her grinding against the earth, caught under her sweeping toes and smeared to nothing. 

“Ahhh now *that* felt great. Need to do that again, Dionna.” The demon laughed. 

The words of her summoner were conveyed mentally to her. “Yes, you are quite the walking apocalypse upon the mortal plane. Your ass better be after I had to cut off my right hand for our contract.” The redhead remarked. 

“And I’m a finer replacement than you could ever find.” The demon remarked. She eyed up the bridge and the tiny figures fleeing across it. There was a clear urge to pursue that flickered in her eyes but she wrote it off and instead rolled her shoulders. “Anyway, I’ll leave you to collect your reward.” 

Her form, once all encompassing vanished into a puff of red smoke that flickered out of existence moments later. A single green eye looked out at the devastation left behind by her. Dionna looked at the destruction caused by the demon as she slid her glove back onto the stump of her right hand and pulled a leather strap taut. Means to an end in the end. Dionna didn’t try to justify it mentally. She had killed men by the score through her actions. Simply the cost of doing business. The Grand Contractor had her eyes linger there for a moment longer before turning and walking back in the direction of where the Royal Army was camped.