The greeting hall seemed to be like a large sitting room; but instead of couches and coffee tables, there were many low tables and comfortable look cushions on the rugged floors. On the far wall was a cozy, but currently unlit, fire place, and on the opposite wall were tall windows with Dark blue curtains pulled back. There was an amazing view of the lake beyond the balcony. I realized that we had gone up the stairs but I didn't realize that we were now above the wall.

  "Sin!" Called a young voice, drawing my wandering eyes to the Queen who was seated on the floor near one of these windows. Near by, a glass door stood open, letting in a warm breeze. "Over here!" I smiled at the girl and Trina hurried me her way. "Have a seat! I had the chefs make us some sandwiches for now while they finish up the real food. Do you mind if Garris joins us? He is my advisor and where I am lacking in knowledge, he is usually well versed. I may be queen, but he will probably be more helpful to you than I am at the moment."

  "No, I don't mind at all." I said and sat on a puffy green pillow on the floor. Trina and Kieran sat as well, but they were several feet back keeping a respectful distance while still close if needed. There were two men seated behind Felicity as well, and Garris settled himself next to the queen.

  "Alright," said Garris kindly. "Perhaps you should tell us your tale. Then we may better understand where to go from there."

  I nodded and took a deep breath. "It will be a long tale, and it may even sound unbelievable, but please bare with me." I looked at my hands, wondering where to start. At the beginning. "First of all, you should know that I am not from this world. I am from a place called Earth."

  "Do you mean Hearth?" Asked the queen.

  "No, I was on heath before coming here, but I am originally from earth..."

  I went on to tell them a brief synopsis of my life as a human living on the streets, about my death, and then about the incredible circumstances of my rebirth, including the intervention of the god Kradiff. I explained my attempts at fitting in on Hearth, and how I had next to no access to information about demons or their lives. I told them about being a tamer and my time with the Red Ravens. Finally, I told them about the heroes and my mission into the Elswell dungeon, where Roran had shoved me through a gate or portal to the Demon Realm. I finished with a short blurb of my trek through the wastelands and meeting and taming Rougier.

  "You are Rougier Death-Bringer?" The butler asked the small dragon who now sat on the table, munching on some sort of sausage roll.

  "I am." said the Dragon, still totally focused on the roll.

  "As in, the strongest, most hated and feared dragon to ever fly the skies of this realm, Rougier? The dragon who caused the deaths of four Queens, essentially eradicating four whole family lines, as well as reducing the numbers of several other lines?"

  "Yes," Said the dragon and I felt myself pale. "That was probably me."

  "You are the dragon to whom fathers tell their sons who miss behave, 'do right or you may find yourself fed to the Death-Bringer'?" He asked and I winced.

  At this Rougier stopped eating and looked up at the man. "How am I supposed to know what you tell your hatchlings, demon?"

  "Rougier..." I warned. I wasn't so much feeling sick over what the dragon may or may not have done a millennium ago, as much as how him being here may be seen as a grave insult to these people.

  "He asked..." Pouted the dragon, returning to his food which he seemed pretty fond of.

  "Um, I am sorry for what grievances my dragon may have committed in the past." I said softly. "But as my tame, I assure you that he will do only as I say. If ever he does something that is seen as disrespectful or worse, than please direct your ire at me. As his master it is my responsibility."

  "Indeed, it is all her fault."

  "Rougier!" I snapped with a death glare. "I will make sure you never get one of those again!"

  "Oh, very well! I apologize for eating your Queens, killing your armies, burning down a few minor villages, and causing an entire country or two to be unfit to sustain life." He said with a rather mocking bow to the Queen and her butler. "Happy?" He asked me.

  I glared down at the dragon. "I took you from the top of that mountain, do not think that I wont look for a way to put you back you ungrateful little lizard."

  Both the dragon and I glared at one another till, eventually, Rougier was the one to look away. "As you say Mistress." He sighed. Pleased, I patted his head and put another sausage roll in front of him. I turned back to the other demons. "In all honesty, he had told me he had done somethings demons would not thank him for, to say the least. But I hadn't known he was that famous."

  "Well, to be frank, he is the second scariest thing to demon kind. Or at least that is how he is portrayed. Sometimes men go into the Sickened Lands on a quest to defeat the dragon, to win glory. Almost none make it back."

  "None who found me did." Said Rougier, back still turned to us.

  I sighed. "Could you at least be like me and pretend you have manners."

  The butler laughed. "Dragons are known to be selfish, self indulgent, oblivious to others, and vain above all else. His attitude is merely the norm for his kind. They say that dragons are the closest creatures to the gods, after all."

  "Do they?"

  "They fashioned us in their liking." Said Rougier. "I'd say you are the only one to reduce a god to that of a human child..."

  "I hardly think that is my fault." I looked back at my hosts. "I have to say you are taking this all-in stride. I was sort of expecting disbelief and denial."

  "As far as I can tell there is no need to lie to us. Besides," said the butler with a smile to his Queen. "Lady Felicity's bloodline ability is the ability to detect truths and lies. If you were an exceptionally good liar you may have been able to fool her, as she is young and only just learning her gift, but other wise she would be able to tell."

  "Wow! That is a very handy power to have. What is a bloodline ability?" I asked, smiling at the smug look on the Queen's face.

  She blinked in surprise. "You really don't have any idea bout our people, do you?"

  "None at all. And anything I do know is from the mouths of other races."

  "All demons have a bloodline ability. It is handed down from our mothers. So, any children Felicity has will inherit her physical attributes as well as her bloodline ability to detect lies."

  "There are some humans with that ability." I said remembering Rift, commander Rice, and Roran. Hang on, did everyone in that family have an "R" in their name? "I heard that those who are summoned as heroes can develop skills, and then those skills have a chance to be passed on to their children."

  "It sounds similar. Though with all demons it is certain that they will have the bloodline ability. Though the strength of the inherited ability can vary."

  "I noticed that there are other women here. What is the difference between a normal demon female, and a Queen?"

  "Hmmm. Let's see if I can explain." Said Garris, setting down his teacup. "The most important person to demons is their queen. There is only one per family and there can only be one. They are born only very rarely, and even then, they can only be born to a queen. So, as you can imagine, the death of all queens would be the death of our race. And the death of even one queen is a great loss. Hence why Rougier, with four Queen murders to his name, is so hated."

  "Yeah, that sounds bad."

  "Indeed. A new queen only comes along about once every few hundred years, on average, so were are still two thousand years form even replacing the ones lost, and that's not even considering the centuries it would take for new queens to start new clans.

  So, only queens and birth queens. But another reason, among many, that queens are so important, is that only queens can give birth, regularly, to females. Other females only very rarely give birth to other females, and never queens of their own. Every woman you see in this castle is precious because they can make sons for the family, but almost only sons."

  "Um, wouldn't that mean that all the men and women in a clan are related?" I asked. Was incest not an issue on this world.

  "Yes, they are. Females, the queen included of course, take breeding partners from other clans. The mothers raise their young till they are five years old, then it is the men in the clans job to finish raising them. I introduced Kieran as my son, but biologically speaking, he is my half brother. But he was given to me to raise when he turned five, so I am his father. Biological fathers have nothing to do with their young."

  I tried to work my head around that a bit. "Okay" I said glancing back at the man behind me. "Then you and he had the same mother? Or else he would have been a cousin or nephew?" would demons even have these terms?

  "Kieran and I are sons to the previous demon Queen of this clan, as such, we are also Queen Felicity's half brothers. Or we could be full siblings I suppose. I have no clue who our sires were."

  "I thought you said that a clan can only ever have one queen?"

  "They can." Replied Felicity this time. "But not long after I was born- about when I was nineteen- my mother died. It was due to a rare illness, and it was very sudden. Normally a clan would elect a female, preferably the strongest one, to be the Reihee. A Reihee is a woman who is elected to be queen till she dies, then a new one is elected till the line eventually dies out. As in no females remain in the clan. Because when there is no queen there are no more newborn females.

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  But when mother passed, I was still so young. I still am as a matter of fact. I would not even normally leave to start my own clan till I turn fifty. At twenty-six, I still have another twenty-four years. So, my situation is unique. I decided to take on my mother's clan. They will do what they can to ensure I reach breeding years, and I will protect them during that time."

  I sat, quiet, for a moment, letting that sink in. The information was one thing, but the revelation that this child was twenty-six despite looking twelve was a mind bender. "What happens to the clan once you do come of age?"

  "Then they will elect a Reihee, and I will go on my way. It is the way of demons."

  "It was a great loss when our Queen passed, but it was an immense joy that she left another queen before she died." Said Garris sadly. "Some queens never produce a queen themselves, so the late Mistress was very happy and proud in her final years. "For the next couple decades, we will follow Felicity faithfully. Then we will decline. It will take time, for we are a fairly large clan spanning several towns like the one you flew over to get here. But in a thousand years, perhaps, we will be gone."

  "That's kind of sad..." I spoke. And it truly brought into perspective how horrible a loss those four queens Rougier had killed really were. I wasn't about to blame him. I mean, that would be like blaming a cat for eating birds, weather those birds went extinct or not.

  "But you, Lady Sin, are a true miracle!" Said Garris.

  "I am?" I asked. Can't say I was ever called that before.

  "Indeed! A new Queen is already a thing to be celebrated far and wide. Once the other Queens know there will be celebrations all across the land."

  "Woah, wait, what? That sounds like a bit much."

  Felicity laughed. "Before you, I was the youngest- or newest I guess- Queen, before me the last one was eight hundred years ago."

  "And on top of all that, you were made by the gods them selves! Brought to us from the planet of heroes none the less. Essentially, you are a demon hero queen." Chuckled Garris.

  "I am pretty sure I am a product of Kradiff's prodigious lack of awareness." I sighed. "I am willing to bet he did not even think about the consequences of slapping down a demon woman on Hearth. I am betting that the reason I am even a queen is because I was reincarnated as a full-grown woman. I wasn't born to any line, so nature had no choice but to make me a first of a line... that stupid kid."

  "If it was a mistake, then it was a happy one for our kind." Laughed the butler.

  "Well, I mean, hold up there. I don't know how I feal about being a mother to one kid much less to an entire line of them! I was thirty plus in my old life and never once even thought about being a mother!"

  Garris shook his head with a small smile. "No one can make you do what you do not want to do Lady Sin. You are, in effect, too powerful to force into anything. Even if you were the weakest of all demon queens, that would still mean you were at least amongst the top few hundred most powerful people. And the only ones above you would be other demon queens. And possibly a handful of dragons and such. But also, no one can force a demon female to have a child. The hole biological process is voluntary. There is no such thing as an accidental demon pregnancy."

  "Besides," Added Felicity with a mischievous smirk, "By your own admission, you are only about three or four months old after all. Even by human standards that is far too young to have children."

  "A technicality..." I sighed but felt relief all the same. Supposedly, so long as my stupidity didn't get me killed first, I was gonna live indefinitely. No doubt I would eventually want to settle down and start that family line.

  "Hmmm." I said as something entered my mind. "I wonder what my bloodline ability is. If I even have one considering my odd origins."

  "It is possible that your insane levels of mana could be your blood line trait." Said Garris. "If so, it would be a formidable one. But that could just be because you were made a demon from earth by a god. Some Queens do not know for sure what their trait is till they have young. A queen's stats are so high that it isn't till she has a child with exceptional strength that it is known that that is the blood line trait."

  "Wait, that's a thing? Just a stat boost rather than a power?"

  "Oh yes." Said Felicity. "At least a third of the demon lines are just boosted in either physical or magical strength."

  I popped a fruit that looked a bit like a grape into my mouth. The flesh was red but the inside was more like a citrus fruit. "What other ways are we queens different then?" I think I had a hold on the whole bloodline thing. But what about me had clued Garris in that I was a queen in the first place?

  "There are many, but some are bigger or more obvious than others. There are a few physical differences for instance. Queens have black claws for one. It is the easiest was to tell by sight that a female is a queen immediately if it is in doubt somehow. Also, queens almost never were foot coverings."

  "Why?" I asked, confused but now understanding why I hadn't been provided with shoes.

  "You haven't noticed anything different while walking barefoot?" Asked Felicity.

  "No. Mind you, I don't often walk about without shoes on either."

  "Well, you can try now if you like. It works better on soil but put your feet on the floor and concentrate." I did as I was told, swiveling my body so I was seated sideways to the table. Feet flat on the floor I concentrated on them, as odd as that was. "It will be feint as we are on stone floors and a couple stories up, but you should be able to feel a sort of energy. That energy is the mana flow of this world."

  Surprised I tried to focus harder. It took a moment, and it may have just been in my head, but I thought I felt something. Kind of like a light tingling sensation. "I might feel something..."

  "Do not worry if you can not. It is a skill that works best with practice." Said Garris, nodding wisely. "But it is an essential part of being a demon queen. It is one of a queen's most important jobs to feel and aid the flow of mana in her lands. To be good at it can mean the difference between a great harvest on year and a bad one the next."

  "Queens really are super important..." I said, suddenly feeling the weight of impending responsibility. Sure, maybe I wouldn't be expected to take it on any time soon, but eventually...

  "Very." Agreed the butler. "Another application of a queen's mana is the ability to share her mana with her people and her land. And in this, you have the greatest potential as it stands right now." He took another sip of tea and looked at me with meaning. "This ability, only performed by our queens, is called 'Gift', and you, with your virtually unheard-of mana pool, have the potential to out do all other queens."

  "I do?" I asked, worried for my sanity at this point. What the hell had Kradiff been thinking, having me become a demon queen? Nothing apparently?

  "Yes. As you said, you have been a demon for only a few short months, yet you have a mana pool so large that you would rank in the top ten queens on our world. Sin, a queen's mana pool is always increasing. Perhaps not by leaps and bounds, but the longer you live the larger your mana pool will be. There are queens who are thousands of years old who can not match you right now. Maybe in a thousand years you could have double the amount of mana you have now. It is rather incredible. And having this much mana means that you have that much more to share with your land and people when the need arises. It is truly remarkable."

  "For reference, my mana pool is thirty-six thousand. And that is high for my age." Said Felicity. "It is not always the case, but usually the demon lines that are smaller and less physically powerful, tend to be more magically inclined. Also, usually demon queens with pale skin make smaller demons. It is not always the case, but it is the norm. Red skinned demons are the most common and are usually large. But then there are the out liars who look very strange. But beautiful as well. For instance, Queen Hardera's line are small with blue skin, yet they are actually very physically strong!"

  "Queen felicity has grown fond of learning about the other clans as of late." Explained Garris.

  I laughed. "It does seem to be an interesting topic."

  We continued to talk for a long time, the chefs bringing in a continuous stream of food. Rougier seemed to be enjoying his meal at least. Garris asked me what I knew about Hearth. Apparently, for the most part, demons were disinterested in the world of Hearth. Just the fact that their power was so greatly diminished made it downright unbelievable that people actually wanted to go there. Add to that the biases that the other races felt toward demons I could see why most demons avoided the place. According to Garris, the reason why there were so few free demons on hearth was that they just had no reason to go. Mostly it was only a handful of demons who felt they could add nothing to the world they lived in and hoped to make an impression elsewhere. Almost all the demons who do decide to go are those who no longer had queens.

  "How do I get back there?" I eventually asked. It was my most pressing question, an the one I feared to be answered, as I didn't want to hear bad news.

  "It is actually very easy to get to Hearth. Just takes time and mana."

  "Wait, really?"

  "Yes, it can only be done in the few weeks scattered through out the year when the two moons of the demon realm are in the day lit sky. It opens the mana flows. Then a goodly chunk of mana is needed to open the gate. If you wish to go to a specific location- within a couple kilometers- you need to use a permanent gate. As you can imagine they are few and far between. But there is one in a territory not far from here. So, you should be able to go back in less than a month if that is what you want."

  The amount of relief I felt was palpable, and a little surprising. I knew I wanted to go back but I did not realize that it mattered that much to me. So, in less than a month I could go back. That was good. Really good. It also made me think that Roran was far less intelligent than I thought, or he had no clue just how easy it was to go back and forth for demons. I was spiteful enough to just assume he was dumb.

  "Seeing as how you are stuck here either way, Lady Sin, why not make the best of it?" Asked Felicity with a smile. "I would love some company during my own lessons, and I am sure there is much else besides you can learn while you are here."

  "The Lady is right." Agreed Garris. "It is a perfect opportunity for you to learn more about your people, and there fore about yourself. Also, you told us that you were unable to utilize the Hearthian magics, correct? Well now is the time to learn what you can about the magics of demons. They would be stronger here in the Realm, but I am sure you can use them to some effect on Hearth as well."

  "Yes," I said happily. "I would really appreciate that."

  "Though most queens do not bother, unless they get bored, you may also like to learn the combat skills of our males? Normally a queen's magic is so powerful that it renders the need for combat skill irrelevant, but I am certain you will need them on Hearth."

  "Thank you, yes."

  "Good." Said the butler. "We have spoken into the night now Lady Sin, and I am sure you are exhausted from your mana use. Go get some rest and I will see about tutors for your lessons."

  "And tomorrow I will have my messengers send word to the other clans of you! There will be much celebrating, I am sure!" Exclaimed Felicity. I wasn't one for parties and attention being laid upon me, but I wasn't about to snub their traditions, especially after how kind they have been and how much help they were offering. "You will be having a welcoming ball before the week is done, I am sure."

  "Yes, it is as you say my Queen." Sighed Garris and I smiled. She may be a demon, but Felicity was about a bubbly as they came. "Kieran, Trina, please bring Queen Sin back to her rooms." He told the two people who had been seated behind me this whole time, except when fetching me tea or helping with the food. They had been so quiet that I had forgotten them a time or two, but now worried that they must be fatigued and probably had leg cramps. "You are in no way a prisoner here Miss Sin, but I ask you not go exploring with out one or the other. This castle may not be large, but the halls can get confusing and it would be poor hosting on our part if something happened and we were not their to aid you."

  "Yes, I understand." I was pretty sure I was going to completely pass out when I got back to my room any way.

  We all got to our feet, I said my good nights to Garris and Felicity, scooped up the sleeping and noticeably fatter dragon, and followed my two aids out of the room. They led me back to my chambers, pointing out painting and statues that depicted places and people as we passed. Once there Kieran told Trina that she could go get some sleep and he would stay close in case I needed any thing.

  Trina bowed to me, said good night, and disappeared rather quickly.

  "Are you not tired Kieran?" I asked in the doorway of my room.

  "I am quite fine Miss Sin. We are trained to stay up for days if the need be. Trina was not so I sent her back for rest."

  "Oh, well thank you for looking out for me then."

  Kieran positively beamed and bowed. I shut my door, wondering if he just never got thanked, or if being thanked by a Queen meant that much. I shook my head and stumbled for the comfortable bed. I can't say I had ever slept in anything so grand before. I gently laid Rougier on a pillow then collapsed next to him. I was pretty sure I was asleep before I even thought about it.