There had been a temple once to a dark god, built in that little town. It had been a very long time ago, when the world was much different than it was now. It was a sleepy little town now, idyllic. The tourists passed through on their way to more important landmarks, but they always wanted to stop for lunch here, because it was “just so pretty, almost perfect.” The world was much different than it had been. When there was a temple here, there were no tourists yet, of course, but travelers gave the entire area wide berth lest a follower of the god find them, or worse, the dark energy centering on the town suck them in by their feet, against their will. Such evil, such rampant destruction, though could not even be tolerated by humans long, though we have visited every kind of torture upon each other, the town with its temple serving as the seat of the dark god-a demon, really, the most powerful of all demons, trying to raise itself up and become, or at least be called, that which it had always been jealous-was so concentrated with the evil of the god that humanity itself could not tolerate it.
So the kingdoms, which typically amused themselves with petty arguments and by waging wars with their neighbours, banded together, and brought their armies, and destroyed the temple, scattering the engraved stones that had made up the demon’s seat of power and even buried them under the earth. The kingdoms suffered many losses in that great battle, and returned home decimated, more than decimated, staggered home two fifths of their strengths and were too weak to wage war amongst themselves for a generation and a half-but the dark god was gone, and a darkness lifted from the land, and it began to heal.
Over time, the people forgot. The dark god was reduced in stories to an evil lord, a corrupt mayor, and then forgotten altogether. The people moved on. The people had children. The children stayed, or the children left. The town was renamed, and renamed again. The dark god was so forgotten that there was no one to rejoice that its power had been broken, for the people, like the demon, had believed that belief is what made these powers and kept them strong, and unbelief made them weak, and no belief caused them to never have existed at all.
They both were wrong. For the demon, she was a demon still, and she was powerful still, the most powerful of all demons. She had been banished when her temple was destroyed, but eventually, she found her way back, back to a town where no one remembered there had ever been a temple, so many generations past the country the town now lay within had not existed. The demon, she found her way back, and she was strong, and the people, their houses had been built with the bricks and stones of the fallen temple, and the demon, she would crush them all.