“A long time ago, the Mother Goddess fell in love with a mortal. Through Her divine power, She was able to grant him immortality in exchange for the man’s ability to have children.. They lived their life in happy bliss until tragedy struck.

One of the dissenters who disagreed with the Goddess and her teachings of love and light tried to assassinate the Mother Goddess. The dissenter was able to forge a weapon that supposedly could kill an immortal. He had learned how to create the weapon from the old archaic tomes of the primordial peoples who once existed on our lands. 

The man went to pray at the temple like everyone else during the sacred Festival of Lights during which the Goddess would appear to give Her blessing to her faithful followers and bestow them gifts of magic.

When the Goddess appeared before humankind, that’s when the dissenter struck. He threw his immortal rending spear and pierced Her heart. The Mother Goddess fell and bled upon the floor to the dismay and horror of Her believers. 

Her consort, wracked with despair, fell into darkness and became a demon who spread calamity and strife upon humankind. Through his despair, he never noticed that the Goddess was still alive but She was very weak and injured. 

When the Demon Lord saw the Goddess rise and heal from Her wounds, he could not believe that his wife was indeed fine. He claimed She was a fraud and that he would destroy humankind the way humans destroyed the woman he loved the most.

Thus started the Holy War between the Mother Goddess and the Demon Lord which continues to this very day,” regaled the storyteller of our village to the small group of children that sat around him.

One of the kids in the village pointed at me and with a snotty voice stated, “So is she one of them?” while pointing in my direction.

I glared back at him and said nothing.

Another kid chimed in, “Yeah, like where’s her dad? Does she even have one?”

The boy who started this conversation smiled wickedly at me and accosted me, “We all know your mom is a whore who sleeps with devils”.

The storyteller, horrified at the child’s language, scolded him, “Watch your language! Where did you even learn those words?”

Snarkily he replied, “My parents talk about her mom a lot”.

The storyteller did nothing to stop the child from talking shit about my mum even though she was amazing. “No wonder you have no friends! Your mom is a whore who can’t hold a real job! She performs demonic blood rituals to seduce men!”

He kept going on and on and no one stopped him. The other children only nodded their heads in agreement and the storyteller remained silent. 

By the end of his tirade, he had stood up and was facing me and was invading my personal space bubble. His nose was a breath away from mine and he stared with hate into my eyes.

With a low voice, I growled, “Don’t talk about my mum like that!”

But alas, he did not stop. Instead, he kept going, becoming crueler and crueler with his words. Until he said the one line that would be his very last.

“You’re just a hellspawn who doesn’t deserve to live, just like your demon whoring mother!”

Rage suddenly filled my entire body and all I saw was crimson.

It felt as if time slowed down while I reached my hand up and the anger took control of my body. Blood red scales appeared on my arms and my legs while a few scales appeared around my eyes. My eyes went from being white to pitch black. Curved horns protruded from my head and curved towards my temples. A red-tail swooshed angrily from my bottom. 

A dark red aura surrounded my body and without thinking, I roughly grabbed the boy by the face and slowly clenched my clawed hands with his face still in my grasp. Blood started to pour out of his face from my claw marks. The other children were screaming in horror as they watched me maul this kid’s face and not to mention they were freaking out about the literal demon standing before them. 

In the back of my mind, I do remember seeing the children run towards the adults and point at me. Then a bunch of adults ran towards where my mum and I lived. I recall them dragging my mum out of our house and immediately started to restrain her with rope. 

Seeing my mum in danger, I let go of the boy with blood streaming down his face. He couldn’t stop screaming in pain and agony. 

I ignored him and started to stalk towards the men who were detaining my mum. The red aura around my body was glowing fiercely and the villagers did their best to avoid me while still dragging my mum to who knows where.

While the men were dragging my mum, other village members were quickly gathering wood and creating a large pillar. A few adults were able to sneak up on me because I was too engrossed in getting to my mum. They overpowered me and forced me to the ground with my hands behind my back. 

In horror, I watched as they lit the pillar on fire and forced my mum towards it as they were screaming, “BURN THE WITCH!”. 

They were successfully able to roughly throw my mum into the flames. Her screaming cut through the village and shook me down to my bones. I watched in horror as my beloved mother burned to death. 

I couldn’t let this happen. Not to my mum.

Strength filled my tiny frame and I easily pushed the grown men off of me. I started to run towards my burning mom but some of the village elders and men got in my way blocking my path. 

I said nothing as I brutally clawed them out of my way while tears were streaming down my face in agony. By the time I stood in front of the burning pillar, my mum was dead. Standing there numbly, I vaguely heard the sound of the villagers screaming how I would be the next to burn.

The screams of anger and hate turned into screams of pain and suffering. I don’t remember much, but I do remember a large horned creature tearing into the villagers like they were a bunch of pigs in a slaughterhouse. Blood rained down and splattered the village red while limbs and appendages were strewn about the ground. 

The large horned man knelt in front of me and hugged me tightly to his chest. He whispered in my ear, “Thank goodness I found you before it was too late”. He held me by the shoulders and looked me in the eyes. I noticed that his eyes were red and black. “We need to run away now before others come to the village and find us here with all these dead humans around us”.

He smiled at me gently and stood up. “Let’s go Nocturne. There’s a lot I need to tell you, but I’ll do that once we’re safe”.

With that, he held my hand and led me to my new life as a half-demon.