Shere Khan

**Shere Khan** was an Archdemon and a major antagonist in *An Archdemon's Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride*; being responsible for countless atrocities in a mad quest to bring back the one he loved.

## Appearance & Personality

Shere Khan is a Tigryn, essentially an anthropomorphic tiger-man, that had white fur/hair with black stripes and silver eyes. He preferred to wear a black cloak befitting his sorcerer/Archdemon look with a hood. About five years before the start of the story, Shere Khan was wounded beyond healing by Head Archdemon Marchosias forcing Shere Khan to be bound to a wheelchair and incapable of moving without aid.

While mainly a mystery, Shere Khan was an extremely cruel and driven man; giving even the psychotic Bifrons a run for their money. Driven by the desire to revive his lost love, Lisette Dantalian, Shere Khan had no qualms with committing *numerous* unspeakable acts in his pursuit; being responsible for more death and destruction than nearly anyone to ever have lived. His actions were so heinous, other Sorcerers and even his fellow Archdemons saw him as a irredeemable *monster*.

Despite all these traits however, Shere Khan did have a morbid sense of humor, as he found Zagan's reasoning for killing him to be perfectly fair and even found death by his hands humorous in some way. Also, despite all his atrocities, Shere Khan was a master of Healing Magic and ultimately did wish to "save the world", in his own twisted and misguided way.

## Background

800 years ago, Shere Khan was the apprentice of then current Archdemon Head, Lisette, whom he held romantic feelings for. At some point, Marchosias seemingly betrayed Lisette alongside the Angelic Knights and mortally wounded Lisette for "doing too well at bringing peace to the world". Mortally wounded, Lisette ordered Shere Khan to consume her so he could become an Archdemon and survive. Shere Khan though took this *hard* and swore vengeance upon the world. He eventually made a "perfect copy" of Lisette and named her "Lisette", but ultimately lost her.

Eventually, Shere Khan found a way to create **Nephilim**, near perfect homonculus clones of anyone or anything, which Shere Khan used to make numerous copies of Lisette like Dexia & Aristella, other deceased Archdemons, and many more into a formidable secret army for himself. However, perfecting these copies required numerous delicate and rare genes and materials. This caused Shere Khan to form the **Rare-Species Hunt**; a sick organ and gene harvesting hunt of the rarest species in the land, both non-sentient and sentient species, nearly wiping out and completely wiping out some species. Because of this, the Chivalric Order sent Archangel Valjakka and his squadron of Angelic Knights to stop him. Shere Khan however, slaughtered them and forced Valjakka to turn spy for him in exchange for sparing his life.

His actions soon become so reprehensible, one of his students, Shax rescued a valuable Cait-Sith, Kuroka Adelhide, from him, but also helped Marchosias locate him so he could finally be put down for good and end his reign of terror. Shere Khan barely survived however, rebuilt everything, and eventually formed an alliance with fellow Archdemon Bifrons to continue his mad plans.

## Plot

### Volume 8

When Shere Khan finally made his move, he ordered his Chimera to attack Kianoides in an attempt to secure Alshiera and Kuroka for their Vampire and Cait-Sith Genes. However, his plans were thwarted by Zagan, causing Shere Khan to become more wary of him.

### Volume 9

Soon Shere Khan hatched a new plan with Bifrons to steal the **Staff of Azazel** from the Chivalric Order's holy city. He ordered Valjakka to allow Dexia & Aristella access into the Treasury and requested Bifrons to back up for the twins.

Later, the three returned to present the staff to Shere Khan, but to his dismay it wasn't the staff but a mythril rod. Despite his disappointment, Shere Khan didn't blame them as he admitted he forgot to explain the real staff's appearance to them and accepted the valuable mythril rod anyway.

### Volume 10

Continuing his plans, Shere Khan concluded that he needed a third Archdemon Sigil and plotted a way to gain one. He openly admitted his options were limited to either bringing another Archdemon into his plans or stealing one. Both of these however admittedly had their problems, as most of the Archdemons despised Shere Khan and stealing a sigil would mean making an enemy of another Archdemon. Niether of these options Shere Khan liked.

Bifrons approached Shere Khan with a scheme of his own that required him to borrow Dexia & Aristella; to which Shere Khan allowed. As they were gone though, current Head Archdemon Andrealphus found Shere Khan and attempted to finally put Shere Khan down for his crimes. After the battle, Shere Khan was even closer to death than he already was, but Bifrons arrived and saved Shere Khan. Now, the duo had the extra Archdemon Sigil they needed for their plans.

### Current Events

Eventually seeing that he couldn't succeed in capturing Alshiera, Shere Khan had used the controlled Andrealphus to capture Gremory to use as a power source for his Nephilim army. With this, Shere Khan gained leverage over his old rival Kimaris to attack Zagan in hopes of getting rid of them both. This backfired horribly though as the two joined forces against him and eventually killed him.

As he lay dying, he was shocked to see Lisette, the perfect copy of his beloved that he lost earlier, appear before him and apologized to him. At peace with this, Shere Khan accepted death and died peacefully but not before having a chuckle at Zagan's reason for taking him out: because he interrupted his date with Nephy.

With his death, his Archdemon Sigil was taken by Marchosias.

## Abilities & skills

Shere Khan was one of the most powerful Sorcerers to have ever lived, his mad quest to revive his love forcing him to to break every rule and push him knowledge and magic further and further with each experiment. In fact, a major reason Shere Khan was never killed or banished from the Order when he was so hated, was because he was so powerful the other Archdemons simply found it nearly impossible to put him down.

## Trivia

* Shere Khan is named after the famous Tiger villain from Rudyard Kipling's legendary book, "The Jungle Book" circa 1894.