The Story of Alecta

Not all children are born in Serin. Some are hatched, some are ripped from their mothers' stomachs like sacks of flour, and some are not born in Serin at all. So begins one such story, the story of a little girl born under a black star. The star shone in a crimson sky. I shall try to describe it to you, but I have never seen such a thing. None have, save the demons who occasionally escape this place. This is the story of Alecta. Alecta came into this world howling, but let us not start there. Instead, picture a pitted seed in the hand of a cruel god. An offering. An alliance, extended to the demon prince [redacted] as he prepared his horde to cross the material abyss. "Why, it can be used for many things," the cruel god crooned as he closed the demon prince's fingers over the seed--an act of familiarity not lost upon [redacted], "but I suggest you snort it." No love was lost between the god and the prince, but the latter craved Serin's magic, the life that seemed to take root so easily there. When the prince returned to his own body, seed in tow, he considered the gift carefully. He arrayed it before himself on a platter made of bone in the uppermost tower of his fortress, also made of bone. He could spy a black star in the sky as he stood at the ossified crenellations. "Bottoms up," said the prince, making quick work of the seed with a mortar and pestle. He snorted neat lines with a vellum page torn from the Book of Water--another gift--and began shaking as the acidic granules sped up his nose and toward his brain. He felt like he was dying. Flying? Brackish ichor spilled from the prince's nose as the acid in the seed took what it wanted, taking root. He leaned back, nearly tumbling through the open window. Nothing for a moment--and then: A pounding within his skull as such he had never felt, as if his brain might demand egress and escape forcibly. Drums. The drums of war? He fell upon the ground as the plates of his head split open, sundered. And out spilled a little girl. Not a baby, for Alecta was never a baby, but a small child, say five or six. The prince looked upon his daughter and was pleased. Many sons had he fathered in the way of demons, but a daughter? This was truly a gift worth celebrating. [Redacted] looked at the black star, throbbing in the crimson sky like a vein, the frantic pulse of a cornered animal, then back to the little girl covered in gore and viscera, picking herself up off the floor. She whispered to him her name and also the one that he might call her. She said in a sing-song voice, wicked despite its juvenile timbre, "The star will lead us to Winter, father." "And then?" "And then--the howling can begin."

Daughter of Acid

Alecta met her god in the space before creation. She was not Alecta then, only a tiny drop in a great river: a river of acid and of ice. Corroded rock formations jutted from the banks of the river like the god's twisted fingers as he crouched low to scoop up his prize. "Hello, little one," he whispered to the granule in his hand, "We have work to do." Then the god vanished in a cloud of smoke with his fist drawn shut like a trap. <> Later, Alecta would tell me this was her first memory. She would tell me a great many things, most of them wicked un- or half-truths pocked by a child's acid tongue. Still--here, an inkling of origin, a whiff of the divine. That I lived to tell you seems like truth enough to me. <> Back in his workshop, the god labored at his table. He considered his tools: a scythe sharp enough to cleave a soul in two and then contain the pieces; a Necromonicon bearing the true names of several greater demons; and a vase of dead poppies, for balance. He sat back after a long moment-- what are minutes or hours to a god? How do they measure time? --at last satisfied with the object of his infernal ministrations. He tucked Alecta in his pocket and traveled to his next appointment. Perhaps you remember what happened next: a poison seed, a demon prince, a call to Winter and the boundaries where realms touch. So it was that Alecta led her new father, [Redacted] of the material abyss, to the bank of a great river and the foot of a fallen black star. "See--father--he prepares the way for us!" Alecta squealed as she undbound a mask from the star's face. A gruesome visage stared back at her, its lips curled in a rictus of pain. Alecta toyed with the mask in her hands. She knew what she must do. She knelt among the rocks, motioning for her father to join her. The demon hissed at the child's temerity, too bold, even if she'd been right so far. Finally, after a look that could wither grass, [Redacted] lowered himself next to Alecta, kneeling as he would in sight of no other. What happened next happened so quickly that [Redacted] could not react. Alecta flung herself toward the river. The demon grabbed her by the neck, but not before the child's head whipped forward, fully submerging her face. The howl that tore from Alecta's throat as the acid consumed her would have been heard in every corner of Serin, through the barren plains of Winter, through the material Abyss, into Acadia, to the very nether-corners of the void itself. Check your calendar for fields gone fallow overnight and livestock born with too many heads--this was Alecta's gift, she later told me, purifying. When Alecta finally stopped screaming, [Redacted] watched her fasten the mask to her face.