I want to return to the “Salvos” series because I don’t think I’m done with it here.

One of the reason why it’s so good is that the characters break their own mould; they belie expectations. For instance, you would expect that Salvos, as a Demon of Pride, would act in ways a typical prideful person will act, but she’s actually humble. When Willy berates her and she knows he’s right, she will just bow her head, take it and apologise. When Lux Golmi berates her for breaking into its home to kill it for body parts she needs for a potion, and accuses her of being wild, she actually stops, thinks about it and feels shame, because she can understand the “monster’s” perspective and it isn’t flattering. She then offers a compromise and there ends up being no violence. You would expect a proud powerful person to laugh at such criticism, act arrogantly and just take what they want, but Salvos never does. When Haec berates her for hiding corruption from him and doing things behind his back, she again bows her head and apologises. So, her pride is not what people usually mean by it; arrogance, rejection of all criticism, being convinced of your own superiority despite evidence. For Salvos, pride means being great and doing great things and then soaking up deserved praise. Pride is being loved and trusted by worthy people because you are worthy. Pride is not allowing threats to harm what is yours. But when she fucks up and someone gives her a piece of their mind about it, you would expect her to act like those people we all know, who would just arrogantly tell you to fuck off and it’s not your place to say anything. Not Salvos. Salvos believes in reality over everything else. If you believe something about yourself, you have to prove it. If you fucked up and somebody proves it to you, you need to accept your mistakes and do better. Defending your flaws isn’t her kind of pride. Her kind of pride is not having flaws in the first place, and then being admired for it. So, since that’s what she loves, she works on not having those flaws. She doesn’t like being looked down upon for being weak, so she works on being strong. Essentially, she has a constructive approach to things; see what you like, and become the kind of person who deserves it.

Also, one would expect that her pride would demand her to always want a leadership position, but that’s not the case. She’s perfectly satisfied to be the most powerful person in a group, and have someone else lead; whether it’s Helena or Clayton or Haec, it doesn’t matter. She’s more interested in getting things done. On a superficial level, she likes the concept of a cheering crowd or having minions who worship her, but she would get bored of it very quickly, and she usually prefers a much different environment – a company of equals who each have a say, who have opinions, fears and desires she acknowledges and accommodates. She doesn’t want power in order to be a tyrant like Regnorex; in that sense, she’s very much like Samuel, who made a kingdom of equals, people who were joking and messing around with each other and who all had great power, but nobody saw the power of others as a threat that needs to be controlled, the way Regnorex doesn’t allow his minions to evolve to Primordial because he fears being deposed. Samuel’s kingdom was full of Primordials, and they absolutely loved him. They worshipped the ground he walked on. He gave them safety, purpose, peace and hope where there used to be chaos, despair and death. When Trico betrayed them and everything collapsed, including Samuel’s heart, they hoped for 50000 years that he would return to his kingdom and lead them all again. Samuel didn’t need fear to rule, and neither does Salvos.

Even people who barely know her, like Bertrugil, trust her and feel safe with her because they see how she deals with things. They feel safe enough to whine and complain to her. Nobody feels safe with Regnorex that way. People walk on tiptoes around him and constantly bow in submission to appease his ego. Nobody does that around Salvos; instead, Aemula feels safe enough to complain that Salvos doesn’t believe her when she says she can see solid ground, and Salvos is careful not to hurt her feelings. Mind you, Aemula is a lvl. 108 Archdemon. Salvos is at that point a lvl. 165 Lesser God. They are all in Salvos’ pocket space, travelling between the folds of Nexeus, and everybody feels perfectly safe. Aemula whines about not being taken seriously and then rubs it in Salvos’ face when she turns out to be right, Bertrugil sleeps, Taburas broods, Haec is having his evolution in peace. They are all within a construct of space magic created by a Lesser God and they are not walking on tiptoes around her. For a supposed Demon of Pride, Salvos has almost none of what people would call “ego”. Sure, there’s pride in her own achievements, there’s a desire to be great and to be seen as great, to be admired by worthy people who see her greatness and acknowledge it, the pride of truth being said about it and this truth being high praise. Most of it, however, is constructive. She did have some detours into the pathological, such as when she was tutoring other kids and it went into her head, but for the most part, it’s pride of the kind where she doesn’t allow people she loves to be harmed, where she doesn’t allow there to be a power higher than herself that could take all she loves away from her. That’s why the character and the writing are interesting; you don’t expect the Demon of Pride to act mostly as a Goddess of Love.

That, among other things, is why the humans in the Mortal Realm are currently losing their shit over her. They have an expectation of what Demons should be like – Lucerna who rampaged across Nixa, destroying towns and killing people. Belzu who did the same but more effectively, killing millions and razing entire countries. Servants of Regnorex who invaded Inor and Elutra, destroying everything and sacrificing the population to bring in more Demons and eventually the Demon King himself. The fact that the carefree girl who kept destroying all harmful creatures, who was known for killing the Centinels, the undead, the Demons and the cultists who created mischief, who did so many protective and good things that the System gave the Title of “Secily’s Sentinel”, making her essentially the official protector of their world, who fought so hard to defeat the Demon invasion that she brought them all together and didn’t rest until they all focused their efforts to defeat the threat, and was one of their greatest generals and arguably the person most responsible for the victory, the fact that she turned out to be a Demon herself, and not just any demon, but a Primeval Demon who was also a Lesser God who radiated Divinity like the Watcher, Mori Gladius and the Immortal King Alexander – they didn’t know what to do with that. Some tried to argue that it all had to be some deception, but it made absolutely no sense. The alternative was that a Demon can be good, and not just good, but the best person in the world, and that broke their minds even worse because it contradicted everything they knew about Demons. Demons aren’t supposed to have angelic wings, radiate Divinity and make the world safe from threats and evil. The Demons aren’t supposed to have the “aura” Salvos has – something that makes you mildly euphoric, something that makes you want to rise up, earn greatness, leave fears and limitations behind you. Demons aren’t supposed to inspire, elevate, and bring knowledge and peace. Clayton knew she wasn’t human, but his first guess was that she’s a Spirit, because that’s what she feels like. There’s an aura of levity, kindness, protectiveness and inspiration around her, and his suspicion was that she’s either a rogue Spirit, or the Spirit Lord is up to something. Even when he met the Devil in his human form, he felt nothing like what he would expect a Demon to feel like. I honestly can’t imagine what he would have thought; there’s a being that’s extremely powerful, throws one of his professors out the window to prove a point, and then calmly allows Clayton to lead them out of his school without offering resistance, and all the while Clayton is probing him with Identification and who knows what Skills and learns only that he’s the equivalent of a human Elite, but nothing more. The combination of power, mischief and benevolence makes him suspect Spirits, because that’s what people would logically think. Their experience with Demons consists of either Regnorex and his minions, or rogue but evil Demons like Belzu, whose idea of levelling is to raze towns and kill people. When they encounter a Demon whose idea of levelling is to find some wasteland full of wild creatures nobody will miss and kill them, and then go to school to learn magic, their experience offers no guidance that would explain this. And yet, she’s not as unique as they would think; it’s just that Regnorex has been shaping Demons into what they are now for the last 10000 years. The Humans don’t know about the First Kingdom of Samuel the Devil King, who ruled with inspiration, kindness and vision, not fear. Salvos is merely someone who would fit right in with Samuel’s old people, to the point where he ends up actually adopting her as his daughter, and she instantly befriends his viceroy Belphegor when they meet. Humans think Regnorex and his Demons are typical, but they are merely a pathological branch that’s been developing for a long time, and they have a short historical memory.

Humans call the Demons a scourge of the Nexeus, but the Demons used to hang around freely with Spirits, Dragons, High Elves and ancient Humans. They explored sophisticated magic, participated in sophisticated world politics and were seen as merely another species. In fact, Kobolds see Demons as not much different than Spirits; Elves have little to no idea about them, and no prejudice. It’s just Humans that have a problem with… well, everybody except the Spirits, in fact. So, if something is alien but good, it must be a Spirit. Humans, in fact, have a thick wall of prejudice against Demons, that Salvos has to overcome each time with them, but which doesn’t exist with any other species. She befriended a Fairy, a Kobold, multiple Elves, a Spirit and multiple monsters, but with Humans it’s always “Demon! Let’s kill it!” at first. Centina has a similar situation where everybody hates the Centinels, but in both cases, you can’t say the prejudice is unwarranted. The Centinels just kill everything and are completely irrational, and Demons occasionally pop up in the human lands and just kill everyone indiscriminately. Both species are terrible pests that ravage the Human lands. So, why would there not be prejudice against them? There’s 10000 years of history behind the prejudice, and no known exceptions. And Salvos has to concede that. She hates being looked down upon for being a Demon, but when she sees what other Demons are doing there, she can’t blame the humans for drawing the obvious conclusions. Instead, she turns her rage at Regnorex, whose fault it truly is. She’s not stupid the way humans would be, and ask not to be discriminated against as if it were a right. No, she puts real effort into making things right first, and then hopes to be judged fairly.

So, as you can see, it’s this complexity and nuance of the whole thing that I find fascinating.