Anyone who has served the mighty Demon Lord Morgard for as many years as Vez has, knows when to grovel, when to lavish with praise, and when to yes m’lord until the crackling embers cease their raining from the demon lord’s flame drenched eye sockets. Vez has seen first-hand what happens to those too stupid or stubborn to bend to Morgard’s whims.

Vez is neither stupid nor stubborn. He values his life too highly to trade it away for sheer stupidity, or worse - the stubborn, relentless sort of stupidity which so many heroes wear like those crests on their useless shields.

When Morgard approaches Vez, his favored seer, demanding a prophecy which will stem the endless stream of foolhardy heroes (little more than pests to one such as Morgard), Vez does what any sane minion would do. He lies through his teeth.

“Yes,” Vez says, dipping delicate fingers into his wide basin. The water is icy and it sharpens his senses. “I see it,” he says - though in truth, the only thing he sees is his own reflection. Dark skin. Elegantly braided hair. Bright gold painting the rims of his clever eyes.

“What do you see?” Morgard asks, hunching eagerly over the bowl. He is ten feet tall and monstrous in his great cloak. He wears a deer skull on his head, and whatever lies beneath is inky and immaterial - apart from those red, ember eyes.

Vez stares down at his reflection and can’t help recall the last hero - a grim faced woman with a brave, steady gaze. She’d sworn to defeat Morgard so that she might save her enslaved, suffering people. By the end, Vez watched as Morgard bent over her, the chalk white skull shaking atop his head as he sucked the soul from her body. The day before had been a young man - burned to a crisp. And before that, twins - crushed beneath each of Morgard’s cruel feet.

Vez thinks of the seemingly endless numbers of heroes willing to throw away their very lives for the barest hope of a better, demon-lordless world. It isn’t that Vez sympathizes with them. Gods no. He can’t afford that. He does tire of all the death though.

Besides, he has no real vision to offer Morgard. What is the harm in one more lie?

“There is only one in all of the world who can defeat you, my lord,” Vez hums, artfully twisting his fingers through the water. Waves lap at the basin’s silver edges. “And what luck, my lord! The only one in the world who might defeat you is a coward at heart.”

As the demon lord roars with laughter, Vez smiles into his basin.

It really is a perfect trick, he thinks to himself. The brave heroes will no longer have reason to throw themselves at Morgard - for their willingness to die separates them from any coward. While a true coward would never willingly risk their life fighting Morgard to begin with.

Word spreads of the prophecy. Whispers are delivered to the right ears and easily decoded messages placed in carefully selected hands. Soon enough, all surrounding lands know of the impossible prognostication.

Of course, heroes try to find ways around the prophecy, but not nearly so many as before. Heroic deaths, which had once been a near daily occurrence, are now a mere monthly affair. It doesn’t make the screams necessarily easier to overhear, but Vez appreciates that he no longer needs to stuff his ears with cloth every other hour.

Vez goes about his business of foretelling (which is sometimes genuine, but mostly telling the demon lord what he wants to hear), and doesn’t look at the heroes who still come to die, doesn’t listen to them, doesn’t think of them…until the children arrive.

Vez is sprinkling a rich maroon powder into his basin for purely aesthetic purposes when he hears the doors to the main chambers open and close. The sound that follows is the metallic snap of guard’s boots - then, the telltale, high-pitched sobs of children.

He stands before his purple basin, one hand reaching for the cloth to plug his ears, his other reaching blindly for the door. In the end, he tucks the cloth in his pockets and slinks silently into the grand hall.

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