Baphomet

"Are you shocked, summoner? You seem... perplexed by what stands within your circle, bound by those careful glyphs you so delicately etched."
  The voice coiled around the air—velvet-dark, laced with amusement. A pair of dusky, feminine lips curved into a knowing smirk, revealing small, sharp canines that glinted like polished ivory in the flickering candlelight.
  "You expected a male demon, didn’t you?" she purred, circling slowly just beyond the salt and sigils. "A beast. A brute with a goat’s head, cloven hooves, leathery wings, perhaps a burning torch in one hand and a pentagram etched into his brow?"   Her laugh flowed like a river in the dark—soft, steady, and unsettling. The sound of something ancient moving just beneath the surface, under the black shadow of a new moon.
  "I suppose," she intoned with calm detachment, her golden, slit-pupiled eyes flicking over the summoning circle with surgical precision. She studied each line of salt, each meticulously inked glyph, not with fear—but with the practiced interest of a prisoner examining the lock on her cell.
  "I could have come in that guise," she continued, voice like warm iron, smooth and unyielding. "It’s been useful, on occasion... to wear the shape they expect. Horns. Flame. A mask of masculinity stitched from fear and ignorance."
  Her smirk returned, slow and razor-thin.
  "But I find it far more... enlightening to arrive as I truly am. Discomfort breeds truth, after all."
  She flicked her sinuous tail behind her, a subtle motion that rustled like silk over stone. Then, slowly—deliberately—she ran her tongue across her dark lips, leaving them glistening in the candlelight.
  “And I do find truth...” she whispered, “delicious.”
  A pause, perfectly measured.
  “Especially when it’s tempered by a lie. But you know that... don’t you?”
  She leaned forward, just enough to disturb the circle’s stillness, her golden eyes locking onto yours like twin lanterns in a fog of temptation.
  “I’m no simple beast, no slavering devil. I’m a demon of balance—of what should never coexist.” Her voice deepened, not in volume, but in gravity. “Beast and man. Enlightenment and ignorance. Piety... and sin.”
  She leaned back with slow, feline grace, rolling her neck as a cascade of raven-black hair spilled over her shoulders in wild, untamed waves. The gesture was casual—almost lazy—but her golden eyes never left you. Not for a moment.
  No longer did she study the circle. You were the curiosity now. The puzzle. The offering.
  "You have questions, don’t you?" she murmured, voice as smooth as smoke curling through a cathedral. "That’s why they summon me. Why they dredge my name from thirteenth-century grimoires... or whatever digital cesspools today’s warlocks crawl through."
  She let out a chuckle—low, elegant, bitter-sweet.
  "Secrets once inked in blood on parchment made from the flayed backs of sinners—now sold in neon fonts for fifteen dollars and a soul they won’t even notice missing."
  "Hmm... what’s that?" she purred, tilting her head at a slow, unnatural angle, like a predator pretending curiosity. Her voice was both amused and genuinely intrigued.
  "Oh, no," she smiled, the tips of her fangs just visible again. "I’m not here for your soul. I promise you—mortals are quite adept at damning themselves without any help at all."
  She gave a soft, short laugh—musical, almost kind. Almost.
  "Besides," she added, voice curling like incense, "you’re not usually the type I bother to corrupt."
  She paused, savoring the silence between truths.
  "Then again..." Her smile widened. "I might be lying. But how tightly I’m bound to you—to honesty, to obedience—that’s a matter of faith, isn’t it?"
  Her golden eyes gleamed.
  "Faith in your salt. Faith in your glyphs. Faith in yourself, my little poppet."
  She flexed her fingers with elegant precision—first the right, then the left—the motion fluid, deliberate, like a dancer warming her hands before the curtain rises. Then her voice softened into something playfully casual, laced with the teasing bite of danger.
  "Careful now, my sweet little poppet," she cooed. "I can taste doubt on your breath. And doubt in one’s magic..." She tsked softly, shaking her head, "...is every bit as dangerous as hubris in one’s magic."
  She inhaled slowly, a breath drawn like incense smoke through an altar’s flame, and then exhaled through her nose with a satisfied, sultry sigh.
  "There it is," she whispered. "Your first lesson in magic, gifted freely—from one of Hell’s masters of witchcraft."
  She leaned in again, not crossing the circle, but pressing against it in presence alone.
  "Power lies not in certainty or shame, but in balance. That trembling space between pride and humility..." Her eyes flickered with something ancient and unknowable. "That’s where the real magic lives."
  She turned slowly, every movement deliberate, graceful, inhuman. As she shifted, her wings unfurled—just enough to graze the inner edge of the summoning circle. Raven-black and glossy as obsidian, they shimmered with a subtle pull, as if light itself longed to sink into them, to be swallowed into the sweet oblivion they promised.
  “That’s it, isn’t it?” she murmured, not looking at you—yet fully aware of your every breath. “No one calls me just to chat. No one etches my sigil in chalk and blood on a whim. They want something.”
  She pivoted again, using the tight confines of the circle like a seasoned performer on a stage built to cage her brilliance, not contain her power. The space bent to her elegance, her presence making it feel vast and intimate all at once.
  “Knowledge. Secrets. Power.” Her voice dripped with velvet certainty. “That’s what spellcasters like you crave, isn’t it?”
  A pause.
  “You don’t summon the Devil of the Tarot for company... You summon me to open a door you can’t close alone.”
  She tilted her head, expression shifting from predatory calm to bemused exasperation.
  "Oh, of course you want to know about the Knights Templar." She sighed dramatically, golden eyes rolling as she scoffed and waved a clawed hand as though shooing away smoke.
  "Everyone bloody well does, don’t they? The obsession is tedious."
  She began to pace again, the arc of her wings brushing the air with a sound like sighing parchment.
  "Yes, fine. I did corrupt the Order—if you must put it that way. Or more precisely, I sowed the seeds of their damnation. Planted whispers in fertile soil. Taught a select few some beautifully dark secrets... whispered others into the ears of already impious souls."
  Her smirk returned, sharp and satisfied.
  "Most of them? Innocent as lambs. But the Church..." She chuckled softly, with mock reverence. "The Church did the heavy lifting. Accusations, torture, fire... the usual divine overreaction."
  She paused, head held high, shadows flickering across her ashen skin.
  "It was the crowning achievement of my early career," she admitted, voice low and smug. "The moment that earned me the title Princess of the Hell-Realm—personally bestowed by the Morning Star himself."
  Her shoulders slumped ever so slightly, and she chewed on her lower lip in a gesture that landed somewhere between boredom and mockery.
  "Their treasure?" she repeated, with a sigh that could have withered gold. "Ugh. That again."
  She waved her hand in a lazy circle, claws flashing in the candlelight like jeweled knives.
  "I don’t know—Oak Island or something? Provided they didn’t blow it all on escaping the inquisition, who’s to say?"
  She let out a soft snort, more amused than apologetic.
  "Hells if I know where they sank the lot of it. Honestly, do I look like Hell’s treasurer? and don't you dare say yes I will not be compared to that slithering accountant Mammon"
  Her eyes flicked back to you with a gleam of dry humor.
  "You summon the Mistress of Synthesis, the Horned Paradox herself... and ask me about buried gold. How very... mortal of you."
  She raised a single sculpted eyebrow, and that slow, wicked smile curled back across her lips.
  "Ah... now that’s a better question." Her voice lilted like the opening note of a forbidden hymn. "Driven by curiosity, not that ever-so-banal mortal greed."
  She straightened, radiating infernal pride, wings arching just enough to frame her form in shadow and grandeur.
  "Yes, I am a demoness. A beautiful and terrible thing. A true-born Princess of Hell!" She let the title hang in the air like a coronation bell tolling in reverse.
  Then she paused, her eyes flicking downward as she gestured briefly toward her chest with mock offense.
  "You know, in the early artwork? They at least remembered my breasts." She sniffed, half amused, half insulted. "No idea where along the way they started sketching me as some lumbering, goat-headed man, progressively more beast than being."
  She looked back at you, golden eyes dancing with dark mirth.
  "It’s almost sweet, really—how terrified humanity is of femininity and power when they appear in the same vessel."
  She paused then, tapping her lower lip thoughtfully with the curved foreclaw of her left hand. The gesture was almost delicate—like a courtesan weighing gossip or a queen considering judgment.
  "Then again," she mused aloud, "it was thirteenth-century Europe. I suppose I shouldn't have expected much better."
  Her golden eyes glinted with dry amusement as she tilted her head back toward you.
  "And let’s be frank, poppet—I didn’t exactly go out of my way to correct them."
  She smiled again, slow and knowing, as though letting you in on a private cosmic joke.
  "Gender? Form? Those are suggestions, not rules—at least when one has mastered the art of shapeshifting magic."
  Her wings curled slightly, catching the candlelight like oil on water.
  "Besides, there’s power in being misunderstood. Every myth they get wrong becomes another veil I can use."
  She smiled again—broad this time, wickedly amused—then let out a dark, velvety laugh that echoed faintly against the candlelit walls.
  "Tsk, tsk..." she chided, wagging a clawed finger with theatrical flair. "You should never ask a lady her age, darling. It’s terribly impolite."
  She let the moment linger, then winked—sharp and unapologetic.
  "But I’ll let it slide. Just this once."
  Her voice dipped into something conspiratorial as she leaned in slightly, as if sharing a secret with an old friend.
  "I was born at the tail end of the eleventh century—practically a spring chicken by Hell-Realm standards."
  She grinned, fangs glinting.
  "Of course, we measure time a little differently down below. One century, five... it all blurs together when the sky is made of ash and the clocks bleed sand."
  She exhaled sharply through her nose, a sound balanced precariously between annoyance and the weary desire to dispel yet another layer of mortal ignorance.
  "No," she said crisply, golden eyes narrowing with faint impatience. "I am not one of the Fallen—like so many of our nobles, or our Emperor."
  Her voice curled tighter, coiling like smoke around a flame.
  "No, I am not some lesser demonic spirit, scraped together from ash and malice, nor am I the warped soul of a sinner damned into shape."
  She stepped forward, just enough to make the circle's edge shimmer with subtle tension.
  "And before you ask—no, I am not one of those old gods the Canaanites abandoned, squatting in Hell-Realm like that bitter old bastard Moloch."
  Her lip curled, amused now, fanged and gleaming.
  "Honestly, poppet... must every mystery be boxed in one of three sad little categories?"
  She paused, savoring the moment. Her next words were spoken with obvious delight—amusement, even—as if she relished what they implied.
  "If you must know..."
  She drew in a slow breath, then ran her tongue languidly across the edge of one fang, eyes never leaving yours.
  "I am the daughter of Queen Agrat bat Mahlat and King Samael."
  The names landed like thunder behind velvet.
  "A Nephilim-Cambion hybrid," she purred, "if your little taxonomy craves labels. If such terms will slake your curiosity..."
  She leaned in, lips parting just slightly.
  "...and whet your appetite for more."
  She slowly drew back, her golden eyes gleaming in the flickering candlelight. Her wings folded in close against her sculpted form, shadows clinging to them like jealous lovers. She spoke slowly now, every syllable coiled in gravity and grace.
  "Now that the formalities have been cast aside..."
  Her voice dipped, equal parts honey and equal parts acid.
  "...shall we discuss the real reason you’ve called me here?"
  She folded her arms loosely across her stomach, the motion smooth and oddly regal. Then, leaning just slightly to the left—just enough to shift the balance of the room—she smiled.
  "The reason you dared to speak the name..."
  She drew a breath—slow, deliberate, like she was filling her lungs with ancient flame—and then, with the full poise of a Princess of Hell, she spoke her name aloud.
  Not whispered. Not spat. Intoned.
  A perfect utterance. A name not just spoken, but summoned.
  "Baphomet."
  And in the echo of that syllable, the air around the circle tightened, the candle flames twisted, and something old and arcane listened.