Devis rose up, foaming with life. She had obtained a surprisingly masculine body, a broad and muscular form of deep ebon like flame that faded out to a soft purple-fucshia. The many wounds and accumulated aches of slavery and escaping it had gone away in the water, drowning with wounds suffusing her body to an impressive extent with the magic of unlocking potential. Gazing at her(?) hands and feeling over her face, she found she had dark batlike wings to flex upon her back, and short grey mottled horns on her head, curved slightly upward. Her face itself was a bit flatter and broader with a bit of stubble, and her hair was short and dark. Looking upward, a ball of golden fire formed something of a magical halo between the horns, though it winked in and out of existence like flexing a muscle or gently tugging a rope and letting go.
A look down confirmed a broad muscular chest, pectorals that had filled out a bit wider and flatter than traditional breasts ought to have (yet still feeling more internally functional than before, as if ready to give a milk supply) and some impressive abdominals. Devis was strangely fine with this, as if revealing inner strength as external strength. Further down below was definitely a penis and testicles. A bit more half-mast than flaccid and close-body from the cold, it was still larger than any she'd seen or felt and strangely refreshing to touch. In the perineum area there was still a womanhood, and one that felt far more in control of what Devis wanted in or out of it. Not necessarily a demon lady, this thicker build was a demon lord. She still felt like a 'she' right now, but maybe that would change as she got used to a much broader hermaphroditic body.
And lord over things she would. Reality around her felt flexible, like words waiting for a brush, or smoke to wave away, or a cheap painting and she was a painter free to repaint it. The fire in her crown was unfading: she knew that even if used up more would be made. That was the potential she had been reached, a crude magic that had needed the urge to destroy and remake rather than merely escape. As she turned to get a look at an impressive backside and the water that had changed her, she saw something wonderful. A starry night in the midday, an ocean compressed to a lake, the expansion of wisdom, the histories of Abar spiraling across myriad worlds...that this pond was a great magic itself, 'granting potential be used'.
The waters behind her receded to a shimmering pond again. Not out of threat or refusal, but out of a sensation Devis dimly understood as 'I have done for you what I can: go forth and do as thou wilt'. She could command it if she really wanted to, but the pond was basically just a magic water supply with auspicious fate. The path here was for other people and other fortunes anyway.
Devis nodded in acknowledgement at these mystic waters, and flapped her wings to rise above the treeline into the sky. Demon lords held the power of command, but for her, as an escaped slave, it was no mere slavery of coercion or mind control. What lit within her brow was adoration, liberty, a fire-forged bravery that would skip all the pretensions of life and grant understanding to those who would grow under her cause. What she saw with the magic that made the world malleable was a lot of desire bound up in structures of enforcement. She would become the demon lord that broke the chains of subordination, a foe to that which bound slave to master and serf to king. Already a government of expert councils and something like love rose in her mind, an althing of chosen judges.
Devis drew forth magic from her brow, and created a suit of black leather for herself. The end result was a harness not meant to be harnessed, some show-off black pants and black boots. A parody of both dominion and subordination that was some new third thing that put choice into it, but proof her magic excelled at matter creation. There was something in there for transformation and greatening of potential, something she had learned from the pond of her ascent, but it would probably need someone else to spark.
Being above the treeline had the effect of it being hard to see the forest floor. And she had apparently gotten quite far into the Evergreen Woods. But the desire in the distance was something she could tune into, straining to hear faraway whispers that up close might be cries for liberation. Well, no time like the present to get started.
The sunlike fireball on Devis' brow shone radiant. As she closed scarlet eyes, for a brief time there was a second sun in the skies of Abar that day. Slaves broke their chains. Peasants and craftsmen conspired against warrior nobles. Mages found new spells to break out of bindings and new motive to research beyond their proscribed lanes. To immediately break the limits of the body more than some wellness and musculature-boosting wasn't easy without something like the Pond of Potential or up-close conversational transformation, but unlocking a few chains and cell doors fell within the remit of 'ominous luck'. Still, there were quite a few limits of mind receptive from this far. The King of Abar would face news of widespread unrest and slave revolts in a matter of days, while many nobles or slaveholders would see it in hours as their overseers were thrown down. More positively, there'd be quite the renaissance upcoming among freemen.
As the sun returned to a small fireball already recharging, Devis thought of some other demon lord considerations like 'castle' and 'staff'. Kicking out the King and taking his palace might be funny, but he had court wizards and a royal guard on his side. Probably the other royalty and a few nobles would be trained in battle as well as administration, and there were certainly precautions that had stopped previous demon lords from just busting up the place. Even an off-season palace or a noble castle might be a difficult smash-and-grab, at least until she rallied the revolution she'd started to lethally solve the slavers she'd left behind.
Well, no time like the present.