Content warning: Discussion of suicide and suicide adjacent actions.

Silence hung in the air as we stared at each other. Doll seemed content with the silence, apparently having said what she wished, while I didn’t even know where to begin. In the end, though, I suppose the decision was obvious - I decided to start with the beginning.

“Geas? What geas?”

“The ‘Rite of Insight’ is actually a spell of control,” Doll replied, her voice as flat as ever. Even her eyes seemed dim somehow, devoid of their usual contempt. “One which binds you to the position of ‘Queen.’ One which forces you to play your role as she intended.”

“Can you stop with the cryptic nonsense and just tell me what the hell you actually mean?!” I demanded, frustrated that even now she was being vague and evasive. “Why would Luci create a geas like that? To ensure that we would do our part in the war? That we wouldn’t run away?”

“In part,” Doll confirmed, slowly nodding her head. “But the part she intends you to play is not the one you think.”

“Meaning?” I asked with impatience. The venom was dripping from my voice as my hands clenched and only the feeling of something soft in my left hand kept me from forming proper fists. It was the stuffed rabbit I’d recovered from Sylvanna. The one Doll had left for me to find.

“You stand upon a grand stage,” Doll said, speaking slowly and carefully. “The setting is an endless war that is only now approaching its conclusion after over two millennia. Your role was to be the final Demon Queen. She who falls at the Heroine’s hand, and bringing peace to the land… or so I imagine, at any rate. It’s not as if Luci actually told me any of her plans.”

“You’re saying I’m supposed to die?” I asked, wishing to confirm Doll’s words. “To L… to the Heroine?”

“Correct, but you already knew that. It was part of how you were raised- to be a sacrifice for everyone else. Like your mother, and her mother before her, and every mother before that all the way back to Luci herself,” Doll confirmed. “No, that isn’t quite right. All the way back to Luci except for her. She makes you fight and she makes you fall, but she only pretended to fill the same role herself.”

“That… that doesn’t even make any sense,” I replied, trying to ignore all the ways in which it did. How it explained why I, unbound by the geas, was impervious to attacks that would have ended my supposed equal… How I had theorized that it might be possible to will myself weaker… “Are you saying it binds our strength?”

“Worse. It forces you to bind your strength. Forces you to cap it, keep it low, and fight the Heroine on equal terms to her.”

“So you mean it forces us to fight until we die?” I asked, clinging to the faint hope that I’d misunderstood what Doll had to say. That she wasn’t claiming everything I knew to be a lie. “You’re saying Luci didn’t trust her descendants to do their job?”

“I’m saying that a Demon Queen - an angel - could never be slain by a human under normal circumstances. Not even if she was substantially weakened and out of magic. Luci would never give a mortal that sort of power.”

“Luci would… what?” I asked, my mind spinning. “Luci is dead. She died fighting against one of the first Heroines! Against the being her sisters empowered!”

“Luci still lives. She still leads. It was she who came up with the plan to plunge us into war with the humans. She who ensured that the war would be endless. She who sends Demon Queens to their deaths even now.”

“By forcing them to fight?” I asked, desperate for her to tell me I was wrong.

“By forcing them to lower their defenses and be slain,” Doll replied, somehow monotone and merciless at the same time. “Did you not think it strange that no prior Demon Queen ever led any serious attacks on human lands to conquer them or sought to exterminate them all by herself? You know you have the power necessary to do that if you wanted to. Did you think it a coincidence that your mother was the only Demon Queen to ever fall to her first Heroine? The only Demon Queen to ever die without a princess of age ready to take her place?”

“I… I thought it was because she’d just given birth to me…” That’s what everyone always said. That she was weakened because of me. That she was unable to fight at her best. That it was my fault.

Certainly no one had ever implied it was Luci’s.

“...You’re lying,” I said after a long moment. “There’s no way Luci is still alive. It’s been over two thousand years!”

“Angels are made to last for eternity,” Doll replied, her voice still flat, her face still expressionless.

“She fell from grace! She gave up her powers to stand against the Heroine!”

“She changed the color of her wings and nails to black and acted to bring the various monster girls under her banner. She worked in coordination with her sisters who were still in heaven to choose the most militant branch of the Goddess’s church and help their ascendance to power with angelic backing. It was her idea to create the Heroine in the first place. To make this war one of extermination.”

“That’s… that can’t be true!” I said, shaking my head in denial. “It goes against everything I was ever taught! Everything everyone was taught! Luci… Luci was the hero who helped us survive this far!”

“Luci is the angel who orchestrated this war.”

“Why?” I demanded. “Why would she even want to do such a thing?”

“Why would the angels suddenly pick the human side in a war that barely existed as such? Two thousand years ago there were skirmishes, but nothing of any serious scale. Not until Luci stepped in and played both sides of the conflict.”

“But… why?!” I demanded. I could feel tears running down my face, but I paid them no mind. They didn’t feel real at this moment. Nothing did.

“She never told me, but she must have her reasons. Not even she is so cruel and mercurial as to cause so much death and suffering for no reason. I only know that she intended for it to last for as long as possible. For Heroines to rise and fall, fighting against Demon Queens and dying directly in the aftermath. For Demon Queens to stand in the back until it’s time to fight to the death, going again and again until she decides it’s time to end the charade and begin anew. At least until your mother derailed everything..”

“...My mother?” I asked, clutching onto the change in topic. The idea that Luci had betrayed us… it was too much to think about right then. She was practically a figure of worship for us! Her choice to descend to the mortal realm was the only reason we’d survived as long as we had! She couldn’t possibly be back in heaven, watching all this while laughing and eating popcorn… right?

“Your mother was a menace,” Doll declared emotionlessly. “She fought against the geas every chance she got.”

“She tried to break free?” I asked. “Did she succeed?”

“No,” Doll replied, shaking her head. “She did not fight to escape. She fought to irritate.”

“...Irritate?”

“Yes,” Doll confirmed with a slow nod. “She would go out of her way to annoy Luci. She exploited every loophole she could find to that end and that end alone. If she couldn’t insult Luci for being selfish, she’d do acts of charity in Luci’s name, knowing she would hate to see her own flesh and blood doing physical labor among the peasants. She’d make sure to very loudly do it in Luci’s name as well, telling everyone made up stories about how Luci herself used to do numerous unpleasant jobs to help her people.”

“That sounds… petty…” Not exactly befitting the image I had of my late mother.

“It was very petty,” Doll agreed. “But so is Luci. I’m sure she was quite bothered by it… It’s not like your mother stopped there, in any case. She explored and stressed the limits of her geas like none that came before her, putting every ounce of energy she had into defying Luci in even the petty ways. She would lie about Luci’s favorite breakfast cereal, share embarrassing stories, value troop lives over territory and hasten our eventual defeat…”

“...One of those sounds very different from the others.” I was unable to help myself. Not even with tears streaking down my cheeks.

“Yes. Your mother’s efforts to end the war were the final straw, to be honest. Everything she’d done before, I could accept, but once she started messing with Luci’s grand plan…”

“What did you do to her?!” I demanded, my eyes narrowing as my fists clenched. The sound of a stitch straining forced me to relax a moment later, reminding me that I carried something precious. Something my mother had left for me.

Doll didn’t seem to care either way. This entire time she had been regarding me cooly, her expression still blank. After a moment or two she said, “I helped her.”

“...Helped her?” I questioned. “You’ll have to forgive me if I’m a little skeptical. You just told me that my ancestor was a traitor and that you’ve been sitting on this information for… how long?”

“Two thousand years, approximately. Though I was not really conscious at the beginning of it all - not until Luci’s daughter modified and added to my enchantments to the point I gained true sentience…”

“And you didn’t tell anyone?!” I demanded. “This entire time?!”

“...Demon Queens are not the only ones bound. Many restrictive enchantments have been placed upon my body. I am, generally speaking, unable to speak of these matters to anyone but the Demon Queen. The ‘true,’ post rite Demon Queen.”

“And yet you’re telling them to me,” I pointed out. “Someone who didn’t do the rite properly.”

“I am,” Doll confirmed with a nod. “But these are special circumstances… Do you know what it is I have my hand upon?”

I glanced at the dark ball her hand was resting on. It was set into the dais at the center of the room, swirling with holy energy. “Some sort of enchanted item, I assume?”

“It is the charging station for this tower. For two thousand years, Demon Queens have fueled this tower’s many enchantments by pouring energy into this dais. It can store quite a lot. Enough to survive a twenty-one year drought, even… though it was getting close to running out when I finally decided to put my hand on it.”

“So you’re fueling it?” I asked. “How?! You’re not an angel or a Heroine. You’re an artificial construct, aren’t you? There’s no way you can wield holy magic.”

“Correct,” Doll confirmed again. “I cannot wield such magic. I am simply powered by it.”

“Then… You’re transferring your energy stores?” I asked. “To fill up the tower? Why? You could have simply asked me.”

“You are technically correct that I am fueling the tower, but it would be more accurate to say that I am draining my own power supply. Though, in truth I finished doing so long before you ever came in. At this point the moment I take my hand away from the podium I shall finally run out of power and die.”

“...What?” I whispered.

“The enchantments that control me rely on holy magic to function,” Doll informed me. “They utilize the very power that drives me in order to restrict me. Right now, however, there is no power within me. I am drawing out exactly the amount I need to stand and speak and nothing more. For the first time in two thousand years, my own enslavement geas is - quite literally - powerless.”

“But… If you let go…”

“When I release the podium I will be completely without any holy magic. This should permanently end the enchantments placed on me - both those that control me and those that give me life. If you find a way to charge this body again, feel free. I will happily donate this shell to you as a blank slate if it helps to achieve my goal.”

“Your goal?”

“I want to make a mess so big that Luci herself will have no choice but to come down and fix it personally. I want to reveal her true identity and derail her plans. To make whatever she’s been working toward for these last two thousand years fail… or, failing that, to annoy her in the same petty way your mother did. It is to that end that I agreed to help your mother.”

“My mother?” I asked. “We’re back to her again? You… said that you helped her, didn’t you? But also that she went too far. What’s that about?”

“She found and exploited too many loopholes. She annoyed Luci while forcefully altering the timeline Luci had planned for. As such, I expected Luci to tighten up her geas and eliminate whatever loopholes she could find. If you’d taken the geas, you would likely have found yourself more restricted than all who’d come before you, completely enslaved to her will. It would have been utterly impossible for you to derail, or even irritate, Luci.”

“So… you worked together with my Mother… to ensure I wouldn’t be bound in the first place?”

“Correct. The original plan was for me to drain myself right before your coronation so that I could reveal everything to you before you took the Rite. Unfortunately, your childhood development was… sub-optimal. I decided that trying to keep you from being controlled by the geas would be too great a risk for too low a chance of success. I was planning to instead wait for my next opportunity - no matter how long it took.”

“Wait. You were going to let me take the Rite? Let me be enslaved?”

“I was going to do the same thing I have done for the last two thousand years - wait endlessly. I will likely only have one chance to upset Luci before she destroys me. I did not wish to waste it on a brat who likely lacked what it takes to survive on her own.”

“You…” I took a deep breath, forcing myself to calm down. I hugged my stuffed rabbit to my chest. “You chose to sacrifice me. Like all those who came before me.”

“I did. And yet, somehow you avoided the geas despite this. If I didn't know better, I would think it was your mother’s handiwork… but there is no way Luci would allow her anywhere near the mortal realm now that she’s been slain.”

“Wait - what do you mean the mortal realm?” I demanded. “Are you saying-”

“That your mother is alive?” Doll interrupted. “I told you, did I not? Luci would never give a mortal enough power to actually hurt an angel. Their physical bodies may have been slain, but such things are only an inconvenience for an angel. Your souls can construct new housing for themselves if given time. Luci and her angels simply make a point of scooping up any wayward Demon Queen souls before that can happen.”

“My mother… is alive?” I whispered.

“Likely trapped, but yes.” Doll tilted her head a little to the right, frowning. “I am surprised to find you so invested in this. You only knew her for a few hours at best, did you not? Even with an angel’s perfect memory you should barely have any recollection of her.”

“She’s my mother” I whispered, as if that explained anything. Maybe it did. Doll didn’t seem to think so, though, from the way she shrugged.

“I have a letter for you from her, if you wish to take it.”

“...What?” I whispered.

“I said I have a letter for you from her, if you wish to take it.”

“Why do you…?”

“The Rite of Insight promises the wisdom of your ancestors after the completion of the spell, does it not?” Doll reminded me. “That part at least isn’t entirely a lie. To be precise, it offers you access to the knowledge I have stored over the last two thousand years. I will warn you a fair portion of my memory is taken up by letters such as the one your mother wrote, though. In fact, they are mostly from mothers begging forgiveness from their daughters. Though the geas has a large effect on the actions and expressed personality of an individual, often preventing them from forming close bonds with even their family members, it would appear each nevertheless feel guilty about their daughters having to go through the same thing they had suffered.”

“That’s… I mean…” I didn’t even know where to begin. “Just… give me the letter. Please.”

“Of course,” Doll said. “Would you like me to write it down, or would you prefer the audio recording?”

“The… Just… write it down.” As much as the recording intrigued me, I did not want to hear my mother’s voice from Doll’s lips right now. I wasn’t even sure I would be able to recognize it as such, given I had no memory of her actually speaking at all…

“Of course,” Doll said, reaching into her skirt pocket with her free hand and withdrawing a folded piece of paper. “I took the liberty of writing it down for you in advance.”

I didn’t say thank you. I simply took the letter from Doll’s hands, opening it up and scanning its contents. I don’t know what I expected to find. A clinical explanation, such as Doll had given me? Confirmation of her words?

Whatever I was expecting, it certainly was not what I saw.

My dearest Devilla,

If you’re reading this, then that means that bitch Luci finally sent me to my death. Probably getting revenge for that one time I said she used to dig latrines. Or that story I told about her barking like a dog to make some redblood kid happy. Or maybe she’s just pissed that I keep retreating instead of fighting… who knows? 

Does it matter? Nope! It doesn’t. Screw her. This letter is about you, Devilla. My precious baby girl. Did you know I named you after a story? One that’s been passed down in our family from generations. Supposedly Luci shared it with her daughter once when she was feeling a bit maternal, though I doubt the bitch is even capable of caring about anyone other than herself. It’s all about this girl named Devil who defies the heavens and carves out her own destiny. I sorta changed it to give you a little of my own name, too - hope you don’t mind - but… at the end of it all, that story’s what I want for you. For you to defy heaven, and carve out your own path. Even if it means using the very tools Luci’s given you.

Things… things are going to be tough going forward. I mean, if you’re reading this letter in particular, that means you avoided the geas, right? My plan worked! Doll actually did something other than stand there uselessly and helped for once in her damn life! You’re actually free! Free to do whatever the hell you please. Free like I couldn’t be…

Luci’s… probably not gonna like that. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s breathing down your neck even as you read this. She’s definitely going to come down from heaven the moment she notices things are wrong. She’ll probably try and force another geas on you, too - but here’s the thing…

She can’t. At least not on her own. I mean, there’s a reason she has us cast the spell on ourselves - one angel can’t trap another like that! It only works because she’s using our own damn magic to enslave us!

That means you have a card to play. You can make a deal, if you want. Get her to use a less restrictive geas on you, maybe? Not that I would actually trust Luci to keep her word… You could just promise to go along, I guess? Make sure you have some freedom, in this trap… I mean, the other option is fighting her, and I have no clue how that would go. She’s an angel, just like us, but… she’s also something special. The Goddess’s representative. That means she’s got strength the rest of us lack. She has access to Divine magic, rather than just holy. Beating her… is probably a pipe dream. Which is why, again, I’m going to point out the lovely card you have in your back pocket! The fact that whatever she’s after, whatever she organized this damn war for, it’s not going to end the way she wants without your cooperation! If Doll’s letting you read this then that probably means she won’t interfere, either. If anything, she’ll be happy if you can earn her more time to plan something foolproof… I kinda forced her hand when it came to helping me, after all. Something about me making too big a mess?

You’re… probably not going to go that route, though, huh? Not if you take after either of your parents. Maybe you won’t wanna get tied down - like me - or you can’t stand to see people suffer - like your dam. Or maybe there’s someone you want to protect? Some reason for you to fight with all your might? I don’t know… but… I somehow can’t see you taking the route I’m suggesting.

No matter what route you take, though, I’ve got a request from you. A dying wish from your Mom, you could say. Not that I’m sure how much weight that’ll hold with you… but still. It’s too important for me not to ask of you, anyways.

Be selfish. Think of yourself, occasionally. Care about your own happiness. If not for your own sake, then for the sake of everyone who came before you - every ancestor of yours that never got the chance.

Also, know that you are loved. Know that I love you with all my heart, and that I’ll support you no matter what your decision is. 

I’m your Mom, after all, aren’t I? That’s sort of what we’re here for. I know you’ll make me proud.

Love,

Grimmilla.

“...I… Think I need a moment to process this,” I whispered, closing my eyes and holding both the letter and stuffed rabbit tightly to my chest. 

“I suggest thinking quickly,” Doll replied. “There’s someone outside the door.”

~~~

Author's Notes

So many secrets revealed! So many left to be discussed... I did my best to keep the exposition engaging, though! And hopefully succeeded, since I've now written up to chapter 72, which moves past it. Working on 73 as we speak, in hopes of getting it out soon... In the meantime, though, I've still got a 4 (unedited) chapter buffer up onPatreon for those interested! You can get it - plus 2 advanced chapters of Naughty Magic and Hatching a Heroine - all for as little as $1~!

Many thanks to FallingLeaf for the editing job! And the title suggestion.