As soon as she arrived on Earth, Ashtoreth's first goal was to try and warn everyone that Hell was coming to destroy everything they held dear.
She knew they wouldn't listen to her, of course. But if they rembered so of what she told them when the portals started opening, she knew it might help save their lives.
In a flash of violet light and smoke, she'd warped in and landed on the colorful tiled floor of so kind of restaurant. Imdiately she clambered up onto a nearby table to turn and shout at the various families who had taken a break from eating their paper-wrapped als to stare at her.
"People of Earth!" she cried. "First of all, hi! How's it going? It's great to finally be here."
She bead down at all the humans in their natural habitat. Nearby, a small, curly-haired toddler with ketchup stains on their face excitedly raised a hand to wave.
Their mother grabbed their hand and pulled it back down. Several people began to mutter to one another as they stared at her.
"Second of all, heed my warning!" she said, her voice darkening. "The apocalypse is nigh! The world as you know it will soon co to an end! The sky will open up and the legions of Hell will pour forth with the singular aim of conquering humanity and enslaving all that you hold dear!"
"Ma'am!" The voice was sharp and loud as a cracking whip. Ashtoreth looked down to see one of the humans approaching her, a restaurant employee, but not just any employee: Her striped shirt, stockier size, and the full hat she wore in place of a visor indicated her to be of a higher rank than the others.
An elite.
"Hello!" Ashtoreth said.
"Ma'am, you need to get off that table."
Ashtoreth looked around her at the custors—all of them using chairs. She realized she'd been rude. "Oh," she said. "Sorry."
She stepped down onto the nearest chair, then turned back to the crowd. "I won't lie to you!" she shouted at the assembled humans, so of whom were taking out their phones to record her. "At first, I expect the apocalypse to be widely unpopular! But—"
"You need to leave the store now, ma'am," said the elite. "The police have been called about the firecracker."
Well, that was certainly good news. After all, her second goal was to get arrested.
"Um, actually, it was a warp spell," Ashtoreth said to the elite.
She turned back to the assembled families. "Listen," she said over the continued protests of the elite human. "If my life in Hell has taught anything, it's that you can always look on the bright side! Every cloud has a silver lining!"
"Get down and get out!"
"No—I'm doomsaying," Ashtoreth said, beginning to grow annoyed. "Try to see this all as an opportunity," she cried out to the humans. "It's the perfect chance for a career or lifestyle shift! And if you grow very powerful, you can exact revenge on everyone who's ever wronged you!"
The elite human reached for her, and Ashtoreth plucked the woman's hand from the air, then twisted it to bring the human to her knees while still looking at the restaurant-goers.
"To all of you, the apocalypse is going to look a bit like a video ga." She said. She blinked, then pursed her lips. "Which hopefully you play. See, Earth is an outer realm that has drifted close enough to the inner realms to be contacted. That ans it'll get systematized and—sorry, could you stop making so much noise?"
She was frowning down at the elite human, who had been twisted and struggling against Ashtoreth's hold on her, hissing in pain. Ashtoreth released the human, who scrambled back across the floor of the store and stared up at her.
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"Okay, where was I?" she asked. "Right: Earth hasn't been in contact with the inner realms, but their nature still echoes into your dreams. The stories you tell have reflections of truth in them—and they've gotten more and more truthful as ti goes on and Earth gets closer and closer to the other realms! Pretty easy to understand, right?"
Several of the people in the restaurant had gotten up to leave. She knew they didn't believe her, but that was fine: a car was at least a much safer place to be when the demons ca than a publicly accessible building.
Ashtoreth carried on for the benefit of the remaining humans. "One of the things you've known for a while, though, is that pretty much everyone who looks like is bad news."
Ashtoreth turned to look in the window near the table she stood beside, smiling at her own reflection. She was small for her age, but the humans could surely see that compared to them, she had all the trappings of a well-bred archfiend: the black, curling horns erging from waist-length twintails of violet hair, the symtrical wings sprouting from her shoulder-blades, the sinuous black tail and the faintly luminous, violet eyes.
She turned back to the humans, then flared her wings and narrowed her pupils to slits for emphasis. As she did this, she raised a hand and shifted her fingers into lengthened, bony claws.
Perhaps they'd thought, in spite of her lifelike wings, that Ashtoreth was wearing a costu. Now she could tell that so of the humans were rethinking this assumption. Many had lowered their phones to stare at her, open-mouthed.
"Of course, I'm not bad news," she said. She put her hands on her hips, thrust out her chest, and grinned. "I'm here to help!"
Then she glowered down at them. "But seriously, everyone else you see who looks like is evil and wants to enslave you. The whole species. Everyone."
A thought occurred to her, and she added: "Even if they're sexy, okay? Because, you know, I know that supernatural romance is a whole thing with you humans, and I want to stress that even the good lookin' ones—other than —are evil."
She held her hands out in a what-can-you-do gesture. "The apocalypse can be a gateway to many new lives, many fantasies, but that's not one of them." She shrugged. "And I'm real sorry about that, you know? I an, I don't want to kink sha anybody or anything—oh, hey," she said excitedly, getting distracted as she looked out the window. "The police are here!"
She could see them pulling up outside, their blue-and-red lights flashing. She spent a mont just staring at the car, mouth open in a wistful smile.
It's really happening, she thought. I'm actually on Earth!
"You guys!" she said, grinning as she turned back to the restaurant. "I think I'm gonna get arrested!"
She blinked, clearing her head. "Okay, before I go, one useful tip. I don't know how useful it'll be since I don't think any of you really believe yet, but there's a really, really good trick you can do when the system initializes that will make you more powerful. You just do whatever you would normally do to kill yourself."
More people were getting up to leave.
"Now, none of you look like you've killed yourselves before," Ashtoreth added. "But I want to stress you won't really be killing yourself. It's not really suicide! You're just trying to get your soul to leave your body. Temporarily, I an. If you're in a transitional state between life and death when the system cos, you can get an undead race augnt, which are pretty danged—"
"Ma'am!"
The voice was even more aggressive than the elite's had been. It was the closest of two police officers that had just entered the restaurant—an older human, his hair black and grey. He had a hand resting on the gun holstered at his hip.
Ashtoreth looked down at this and bead. "Is that a gun?" she asked. "Great! Perfect; I'm gonna need that in a minute."
The officer imdiately drew their weapon and pointed it at her.
"I said in a minute," said Ashtoreth.
"Turn around and put your hands behind your back!" he commanded.
"Oh! Right," she said. She turned, hopped down off her chair, then presented her hands as requested. "I'm getting arrested, right?"
"Just keep your hands behind your back."
"Are we going to the police station?"
Ashtoreth had decided that the best people to warn about the impending apocalypse were probably the cops. Hence why she'd wanted to get arrested. The fact that it had happened so fast, with the elite human calling them just from seeing her warp spell, was a stroke of luck.
"I'll ask the questions, ma'am." She felt the officer clipping sothing tal around her wrists.
"Sure!" she chirped. "But I don't know how much ti we have before Hell starts attacking. We should probably get a move on."
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