She was dying.
After decades of uncertainty about that fact and more decades of research on how she might avert it, she came to the conclusion that her death was both unavoidable and imminent. Likely no more than a century away.
So she did what witches often do. She plotted.
She knew a great deal of demonology, but she had friends who knew more. It was these friends who supplied her with the remaining knowledge she needed.
In retrospect, she really should’ve told them what she was planning, but they might have tried dissuading her.
Unacceptable.
The plot was simple: she would find a suitably powerful and possessive demon, and she would offer that demon ownership of her soul for eternity starting at the moment of her death.
Thus bound, she would do the same again with an equally powerful, equally possessive demon.
Each time, she would receive what was most typically on offer in exchange for one’s soul: power.
Then, at the moment of her death, not one but two demons would come to claim her. Being jealous and possessive creatures, they would fight for ownership of the soul she promised.
Perhaps their battle would buy her centuries. Perhaps they would be evenly matched enough that it would go on forever. Either way, with no one to definitively claim her, the witch’s spirit would be free to possess a new vessel and avoid true death.
If or when one should win, the power she wielded from her dual pacts should be plenty to finish a creature weakened from battle with a near-equal.
The destruction of both owners of her soul would free her from true death forever.
Or so she believed.
She executed her plan flawlessly, binding herself to two powerful Demon Queens from vastly different hellish domains.
The towering inferno of muscle—with her great curled horns and claws dripping with flames—made of the witch’s heart a roaring furnace of endless power.
The shadow-given-form—a creature of void, an ever-shifting shape, with her venomous eyes and her touch that stains—etched the witch’s essence with a delicate acid touch, liberating her from the rigidity of static flesh.
Both collared her soul. Both called her “mine.”
But when they came for her at the moment of her death, they did not fight.
They talked.
Each had never met a demoness like the other. They seemed fascinated by each other. Conversation turned from curious questioning to compliments shared to plans made to, most frightening of all, laughter.
The witch’s plan, it seemed, ignited other passions than she expected.
They did not fight. They merged their domains. They moved in together. And they both held a leash to her collars.
And sometimes they even rewarded their pet for bringing them together.
The witch was surprised to discover that she enjoyed the arrangement.