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Tonight, we shall tell a tale of hubris. The *humans* were once pushed to the brink. Battered and beaten, they were pushed to the edges of their civilization. Barricaded in their cities as our battlements battered their walls. They couldn’t fight, they couldn’t run, they couldn’t hide. All they could do was die.

They were terrified, those pathetic things. Most of them would escape us, moving into the plane that belonged to our counterparts, but there were a good number of them vile enough that we got them much faster than we would’ve if we’d just waited for them to die. Why settle for a trickle when you could have a waterfall?

That was until, of course, He came to them. He was not the strongest of us, nor the most skilled with magic, nor was he particularly gifted with intelligence, but his tongue, his tongue was the vilest of us all. He came to men with an offer. He would guide them – lead them even. He would tell them our weaknesses, our flaws, our plans, such that they could not just survive but win. The humans saw him as a traitor his own kind. They didn’t fear a trick, for of course, why would we trick them? A few more years and they’d be all but w3iped out anyways. They had nothing to lose.

Traitor he was, but he was still a demon. He demanded a price. A simple one really, but one humanity was bound by the Old Words that predated us and our counterparts, fundamental to the world itself. That they would not forget him, if he did succeed.

The humans agreed.

So it was that the tide turned. Slowly at first, in places the humans thought we didn’t expect. He saw patterns in our defenses that the men did not, until he pointed them out, so the humans could press their advantage. And so, slowly at first, but then gaining speed – for that is how these things go – the human advance picked up momentum, pushing us back and back and back till we were forced back though our portals back to our realms, banished. The only revenge the humans thought we had was that we dragged the Traitor Demon back with us.

Time went on, the humans, of course, changed the tales. They are fickle things, determined, dumb, and filled with pride. They could never accept salvation from a source so reviled. So it was only natural that the so called Traitor Demon changed. Changed in their tales from Demon to half-demon to man to ang– our counterparts. Malice at first but then just forgetfulness. The humans forgot the one who had brought them back from the brink of extinction.

But the universe did not forget. A vow given in the old words is passed down from the giver to his descendants to their descendants in turn, and so all the humans, every single one, had broken their word.

A vow given to a demon, if written in the Old Words was broken, well, their soul was forfeit.

And so, where our generals and warriors waged war across a planet to get a fraction of the souls we killed, I, without lifting a sword, have brought our realm every single human soul that has and will ever live.

Traitor demon indeed…

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Submitted by XcessiveSmash on Wed, Mar 08, 2023 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

You aided the humans in the demon war, they called you the traitor demon , your only request was that they never forget what you did for them. But after your "death" they were quick to brand every demon as bad, evil. your name was forgotten, images of you changed to show just another human.