Season 1: Survival of the Fittest

  Ch 11: The First Campaign

  Thursday. A day without grandeur or ambition, as far as Nysera could tell. The city outside simmered with the sort of weather that suggested the goddess of this world had grown bored — not quite rain, not quite fog, just a damp, oppressive cling that seemed designed purely to ruin hair and tempers. The lift stank faintly of wet coats and defeat as she ascended. Someone had stuck a passive-aggressive note inside it that read "If you're the one leaving crumbs, you're the one cleaning them." The note was printed on pastel paper, which only deepened the insult.

  The office itself fared no better. By half past nine, morale was already circling the drain. Someone was eating crisps aggressively at their desk, the noise carrying like a challenge. Another had brought in a lukewarm coffee the size of a chamber pot and stared bnkly at their inbox as though daring the emails to kill them first.

  Ben, her so-called line manager, was visible through the gss partition, furiously typing what Nysera had learned were known as "looping back" emails — coded mortal nguage for "You didn’t do this, but I don’t want to say that directly." His face, pale and sweaty in the way of men who had known neither victory nor grace, brightened the moment he saw her.

  She had barely set down her bag before his voice rang out.

  "Mira! Quick favour, if you've got a sec?"

  Nysera inwardly transted this at once. "A quick favour" — otherwise known as "I wish to offload something tedious and career-damaging onto you, and I hope you won't make it obvious in front of the others."

  She approached his desk with the serenity of a priestess accepting sacrifices, hands neatly csped before her. "Of course," she said smoothly. "How may I be of use?"

  Ben beamed, entirely missing the razored politeness. "Brilliant. Look, total nothing project, honestly. SippySmart. You probably haven’t heard of it. No one's expecting much, but it'd be great if you could throw something together? Low stakes, really. No pressure. Have fun with it."

  Nysera regarded him silently. Outside, the skies wept in solidarity.

  So. They offer me failure, expect me to wear it like a badge of mediocrity, and call this mercy.

  Her expression never shifted. "Delightful," she said at st, voice as smooth as poisoned wine. "I'll see what can be salvaged."

  Ben didn’t notice the edge. He rarely did. He waved her off with a grateful nod and returned to firing more emails into the void.

  Nysera turned crisply on her heel, already filing the task not as optional creative exercise but as what it truly was — an insult disguised as opportunity. No one gave doomed projects to allies. They gave them to quiet enemies and unremarkable peons, hoping they'd quietly fail.

  She lowered herself gracefully into her chair, steepling her fingers before her chin as the details of SippySmart loaded on screen.

  Very well, she thought coldly. If they wished to assign her to obscurity, they would find obscurity did not suit her.

  The product description stared back at her with all the charisma of a rotting turnip. SippySmart? — The Smart Straw That Reminds You to Hydrate! There was even a nauseating little slogan beneath: "Sip, Smile, Succeed!"

  Nysera’s lips twitched faintly, though not in amusement. She scrolled through the accompanying brand guidelines with growing disdain. Happy people with glistening teeth. Sun-dappled kitchens. Soft pastel graphics implying that remembering to drink water was some sort of whimsical adventure.

  "Insipid," she muttered aloud, flicking through the slides like a disappointed judge reviewing poor tournament entrants. "If this were presented at court, the designer would be flogged for wasting parchment."

  She kept reading. The product itself was worse. A reusable straw linked to an app, chirping notifications whenever the user failed to hydrate on schedule. Reviews were already brutal. It broke easily. Sync issues were frequent. One memorable comment simply read: "Why is my straw yelling at me at 3AM?"

  Nysera tapped the table thoughtfully. They had asked her to bury it quietly. To wrap failure in pastel ribbons and allow it to sink politely into irrelevance.

  Cowards.

  She leaned back in her chair, eyes narrowing. No. If it could not be sold as virtuous, then it would be sold as tyrannical. She would not ask mortals to drink. She would command them.

  After all, fear had always been more persuasive than kindness. She had once ruled by reputation alone; nobles and priests alike had trembled to be noticed by her. Even the pet she had broken — the one who had ter become a monster — had first bowed because he was afraid not to.

  So be it.

  She flipped to a bnk slide, fingers moving rapidly across the keys as dark slogans bloomed like poisonous flowers.

  "SippySmart: Your organs are begging. Why do you refuse?"

  "Drink. Or be judged."

  "Weakness is a choice. Hydrate properly."

  The more she wrote, the more alive she felt. It was art in its purest form: persuasion stripped of fttery and niceties. Honesty, brutal and unforgiving. By the time the office had begun its te afternoon ritual of pretending not to watch the clock, Nysera had completed the deck. No soft colours. No smiling faces. Just bold text, stark images, and the cold promise of accountability. She reviewed the finished slides with the satisfaction of a conqueror surveying a battlefield. Where others would have quietly accepted failure, she had sharpened it into a weapon. It was rule, repackaged.

  Ben had asked for a quick run-through in the war room, though calling the meeting space that was a severe overstatement. It was a gss box filled with uncomfortable chairs and faded motivational posters — "Teamwork makes the dream work" hung crookedly behind him like a lie everyone had agreed not to acknowledge.

  The team gathered slowly, clearly expecting little. Nysera stood at the front with calm, regal composure, clicking through her freshly finished deck with the grace of a sovereign unveiling execution orders.

  The first slide alone earned a stunned silence.

  "Drink. Or be judged."

  No whimsical graphics. No cheery colours. Just stark, brutal messaging that nded like hammer blows.

  By the third slide — "Your organs are begging. Why do you refuse?" — someone audibly choked on their coffee. Two others exchanged horrified looks, the sort that said she can’t be serious... can she?

  Nysera observed them coolly, mentally filing away a new discovery. For all their supposed enlightenment, modern mortals were still entranced by crude magic. She had crafted this entire presentation with a strange local spell known as PowerPt, a tedious artefact of multi-coloured boxes and shoddy transitions which — somehow — wielded unspeakable power. A relic, perhaps, from the gods of efficiency. She had never seen people so rapidly swayed by information.

  If persuasion in this world required not silver tongues but carefully aligned text boxes, so be it. She would become its master.

  Ben sat stiffly in his chair, knuckles white as he gripped his reusable water bottle like a lifeline. "Er. Right. So, Mira..." He gnced up from his notes, clearly hoping to find some shred of the Mira he knew, the one who apologised when printers jammed. Instead, Nysera met his gaze with utter serenity.

  "It’s quite..." He fumbled for the word, eyes darting around the room. "... bold."

  "Timid campaigns serve timid brands," Nysera replied coolly, sipping from her own mug with the air of someone unswayed by mortal discomfort. "This product does not deserve kindness. It deserves honesty."

  The words hung there. No one disagreed. They didn’t dare.

  Someone at the back muttered, "Honestly... it’s terrifying."

  Another, under their breath: "I’d buy it, though." Laughter rippled quietly, nervous but genuine.

  Ben shifted, clearly trying to find a polite corporate middle ground between this is insane and this is potentially brilliant. "Right. Well, I mean, obviously the tone is... very fresh." The word did not suit him. He cleared his throat awkwardly. "But why not. Let’s test it. You can start pushing this out on socials now — see if it cuts through. Report back on the numbers tomorrow morning?"

  Nysera inclined her head graciously, as though he had granted her permission rather than simply gotten out of her way. "Of course."

  "Brilliant," Ben said, already trying to smooth his own nerves as the team filed out, whispering amongst themselves. Nysera caught words like "Domme energy" and "Marketing tyrant" tossed between them like uneasy offerings.

  Good.

  Fear bred respect, and respect bred loyalty. That much remained true, even in a world where allegiance came in the form of retweets and clickthrough rates.

  But as Nysera gathered her things, packing away Mira’s scuffed ptop and slipping the cursed phone into her pocket, a different truth began to gnaw quietly at the edge of her thoughts.

  Ben hadn’t sent this campaign to her out of vision or opportunity. No. It was clear now. The poisoned gift had been meant to fail — and worse, it had been meant to exhaust her. The words "See if it cuts through, and report back tomorrow" had sounded casual enough in the meeting, but now, walking through the chill night air back toward her tiny ft, they rang differently. That had been the dagger slipped between ribs.

  She would have to make the campaign work — really work. Not just slogans and slides. Assets. Variants. Social posts for every hour. Audience targeting. Reaction bait. Engaging responses. The thousand petty duties that modern mortals believed made kings.

  For the first time that day, Nysera felt a flicker of something close to mortal fatigue.

  So. This was the war they fought here. Not swords and daggers in dark hallways, but endless, mind-numbing bour. Not intrigue and bloodshed, but notifications and grind. She clicked her tongue softly, more irritated than dismayed. Exhaustion would not break her. It merely annoyed her.

  By the time she returned to her ft, the sky had bruised deep purple. The room was chill and joyless. She flicked on the lights, hung her jacket neatly — dignity remained, even in exile — and stared at the barren kitchen counter. Her stomach gave a subtle, traitorous twist.

  "Fine," she muttered aloud. "I will embrace your common mortal rituals."

  She tore into the instant ramen Mira had stacked in shameful quantity in the cupboard, boiling water in the ancient kettle with the resigned grace of a queen forced to draw her own bath. The instructions were absurd. Powdered broth? Dried vegetables reanimated with scalding water? Crude sorcery.

  And yet, when she slumped onto the sofa and took the first mouthful, something unexpected happened.

  Nysera froze, chopsticks poised delicately in the air. The salty, savoury rush hit her tongue with the force of revetion. She chewed slowly, eyes narrowing, tasting carefully as though the ramen itself were attempting to deceive her.

  It wasn’t refined. It wasn’t dignified. It was, in fact, outrageously vulgar.

  But it was delicious.

  She took another bite. Then another, faster this time. The broth clung greedily to the noodles, rich and sharp in a way no court chef had ever dared. By the third mouthful she had abandoned decorum entirely, slurping the strands noisily while a low, involuntary hum of pleasure slipped past her lips.

  "This is..." she murmured between bites, eyes widening faintly, "... obscenely good."

  She sat back, cradling the cheap pstic bowl like it was ambrosia. Mortal food — this miserable, salt-den peasant concoction — was magnificent. She understood now why Mira had stockpiled it in the cupboard like emergency rations. If something this easy could taste this satisfying, why would anyone in this world suffer through banquets? Revived in body and spirit, she set the empty bowl aside with the solemn reverence of one who had glimpsed a forbidden truth, then pulled the ptop across her knees and began the real work.

  By midnight, she had crafted an entire campaign suite: dark, elegant social tiles. Brutally concise captions. Snide auto-replies for social engagement. Even a schedule, hand-coded into the primitive scheduler as if she were issuing orders to her captains before a dawn raid.

  Each post was a strike. Each slogan, a bde. Each wry response, a calcuted show of contempt to hook the hungry masses.

  Weakness is a choice. Drink properly. Or don’t drink at all. See who notices. This is not kindness. This is obligation.

  She barely noticed as the night crept on. The cursed phone pinged regurly as scheduled posts unched into the void, and the first tentative likes and shares began to crawl in.

  This was war, she thought, rubbing the back of her neck and gncing at the clock blinking an accusatory 02:43AM.

  Ben had meant to break her with the weight of petty bour.

  Foolish.

  She had carried entire factions on her back before breakfast. A few hours of digital warfare — fuelled by the divine blessing of instant ramen — would not undo her.

  Nysera leaned back, surveying her dark kingdom with faint, satisfied malice. Let London sleep.

  She would rule the night.