Pale Queen

The Pale Queen is an ancient and malevolent being of unknown origin who terrorized humans since they evolved. She is the main antagonist of Michael Grant's Magnificent 12 book series.

DEScription
The Pale Queen is a shapeshifter who can change into any form she chooses, and her true form is unknown. However, she seems to prefer forms with certain common traits: colossal size, translucent pale skin and hair, thirty-six sharp teeth, and generally feminine humanoid features. In her first physical appearance, she takes the form of a woman as tall as a giant sequoia and clad in a dress purportedly made of screams and tears. In her second and final appearance, she appears as a skyscraper-sized leviathan with a humanoid head and limbs but a vaguely insectoid body plan. Her body is a vast, bloated abdomen, and she is supported by six humanoid arms.

History
The Pale Queen's origins are completely unknown. However, she is old enough to have existed alongside early species of humanity. During that time, she killed any proto-human she encountered that could not stand upright or make tools in order to encourage the evolution of a species suited for worshiping and serving her. Once this was complete, the Pale Queen set herself up as a god, demanding sacrifices of animals and humans to eat.

At some point, the Pale Queen had a daughter named Ereshkigal by a man she ate before her daughter's birth. She raised Ereshkigal as her right-hand woman but kept her under strict control. Millennia later, Ereshkigal encountered a young man named Gil Gamesh and fell in love with him. In response, the Pale Queen tried to find and kill him, but he escaped. This would begin Ereshkigal's resentment of her mother.

Around 1000 BCE, the Pale Queen marched out of the Middle East at the head of a vast army of monsters and invaded Europe. Her armies killed, enslaved, and ate many thousands of people before she was met in battle by the first incarnation of the Magnificent 12, a group of a dozen magically-gifted twelve-year-olds. While four of the 12 were killed in battle, the rest defeated the Queen but were unable to defeat her. Instead, they sealed her beneath the earth for three thousand years, a period chosen because it was the largest number they could think of.

The plot of the Magnificent 12 novels deals largely with the imminent expiration of the spell binding the Pale Queen and her agents' efforts to kill the new 12 before they can all meet.

Powers and Abilities
The Pale Queen wields unrivaled physical and magical power. She can cast a wide variety of spells and appears to do so without speaking, normally a prerequisite for using magic. She can take any form she desires, although she prefers gigantic, monstrous shapes. In these massive bodies, she is as strong as her titanic size suggests, and is implied to passively use magic in order to support body weights that Earth's gravity normally would not allow. Additionally, the Pale Queen sometimes devours the souls of her victims. She can combine the cries of these captive souls into a single magical scream of cataclysmic power. This scream, clearly audible for a thousand miles in every direction, strikes such terror into those who hear it that many die outright.