The green flame that burns in my eyes burns in your backside. You’d think you’d be free of pain once powerful and magic-weaving. Not so. Pain doubles as an older sorcerer, an older liar. I’m not ripe yet – though – in spite of my three hundred and sixty years: I’ve been thirty-six for three hundred and twenty-four years. What a tiresome existential drag to carry on for this long. My tiefling muvver had been an entertainer, and now that she’s fertilizing daffodils I carry her skull around. That amuses me. The demon that begot me is still raping and pillaging, down in the abyss. His suffering is endless, all that eating and murdering must be exhausting. Bless him.

I grew up among actors, singers and other such charlatans. My mother used to have artistic pretentions, and she used to smear everything with colour. Hence, my apparel remains motley, like a double-sheep that doubles as wolf. She used to paint the sky purple, and that’s the definition of crazy. Some of the vampires in our troupe thought me a trick or two. And I still cherish the values they taught me. Manipulation, deceit, honesty, thievery. Of course, honesty is the world’s biggest lie. But also, this is very much not That. Clearly it’s not enough to sit and watch the world burn, one has to really enjoy it in order for anything to mean something. When something burns, it transcends into something meaningful. Oh yes, I forgot to say that I am a pyromaniac.

My friends have betrayed me at the best of times. There was a drug-dealer, a useless wimp, and there was a double-crossing mentor. And of course I’ve had a few rumbles and a few tumbles, but Love hasn’t, thankfully, stuck. Instead I am left, in our later age, sliding and slithering around in search of meaning, wondering whether my father’s choices, the lying demon’s choices, were the correct ones.

Yes, of course, his lies made me suffer, and I tried for many years to have him love me. He was busy, raping and killing other tiefling women. That’s his thing. He did teach me to tell good lies, and to tell liars from truth-mongers, and that of course is my core skill.

The shadows and the wild manifestations of Evil in its surging are my element, but there is nothing preventing from enjoying the ease of city life, though I do prefer vacationing inside volcanoes and the among the ruins of ancient civilizations.

In this latter day of my existence I am looking for peace, and hopefully it’ll come soon in one form or another. I’d welcome death, but then again I can always make new friends, and even better, make new enemies to spice up the emptiness that is my life.

And of course, for a liar, honesty is essential. Fear is also important. It’s what keeps us in check when the temptation to go overboard is too strong. What is a liar, you ask? The truth can be so easily bent. It’s as flexible as spring rain. It’s very upsetting that we have to lie to get by. Truth in fact is so very exhausting. It’s such a limited resource. It must be used sparingly.

The blue over the horizon indicates that my time is soon up. Scuttling along the land like a wood louse I await judgment, having avoided it so long. Denial can be a religion, too. Or at least a credo.

If the giants were ever to come back, they’d have to deal with the stream of fear that clogs the sewers of the city. Drain the swamp, so to speak. From the comfort of my mansion in the Alley, I can observe the little people going about their business. My nose seems to run every time some deeply repressed emotion has a chance to run riot, or at least, drip, drip. A little poison in the gutter rivulet that is my body. The latter, of course, aches, and my soul is old. Shit, the mind has let slip one or two half-truths too many.

“A summer’s day will seem an hour but short”