The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

Vharra remained silent as she walked the white route.

There were no chains around her wrists. The controlled severance didn’t require them. Every red-gold line tethered to her throughout the palace now led back to the mark she bore on her neck and every time someone resisted severance from a forced claim, the debt echoed throughout her veins.

Austin Veyron observed her from several steps behind.

He could have easily called this justice. She saw it in his eyes.

”Don’t become her jailer.” She warned softly.

”I won’t.”

Vharra glanced back at him as they continued forward. ”Your friend is correct. You do not get to claim this is mercy because you made the chains benign.”

”I am not calling it mercy.” Austin Veyron responded. ”I am calling it the oath you willingly accepted.”

The palace began crumbling around them.

Without Vharra’ support the majority of routes solidified under the common ledger. Others unraveled catastrophically. Bridges to side passages evaporated into rootless nothingness. Archive doors unlocked onto halls that didn’t match their markings. Above the route trusted loyalists were gathering.

Nahlia looked down at the transfer book. ”Three evacuation routes have collapsed. The common ledger needs more volunteers if we intend to fully evacuate the east wing before it becomes uninaccessible.”

”I can manage the fire gate team.” Maelis said, gesturing toward a dividing route.

Sarielle took an opposing route. ”So can I.”

Austin Veyron did not stop either of them in their decision. ”Go if you want to.”

They both nodded and sprinted off.

Names illuminated across the transfer book as former scribes and wardens selected evacuation routes to hold. The common ledger was chaotic and slow and flawed. But at least now it didn’t require one person to decide everyone else’s fate anymore.

The loyalist wave assaulted the next bridge they reached.

Six wardens clad entirely in crimson armor dropped from the ceiling each of them wearing red-gold collars and owing fealty to Vharra’s debt. Their leader drew a chain spear.

”Release the Queen,” he ordered. ”Let her stand before the court.”

Vharra said nothing.

Austin Veyron stepped in front of them both. ”You want to fight for her?”

The warden’s jaw tightened. ”I have been ordered to obtain her alive.”

”That’s not what I asked.”

The bridge vibrated as the attacking wardens surged forward.

Rin intercepted spear warden sliding underneath his weapon arm to slash at the collar anchor embedded into his throat. Veyra intercepted two attacking wardens at once. Calder traced the root commands strengthening the loyalists through the seed’s resonance without having to touch their cores.

Austin Veyron snagged a chain blade suspended by a mere thread and yanked the command line until it snapped.

The warden clutching onto that line stopped moving.

”You want to keep fighting?” Austin Veyron asked him.

He turned his gaze toward Vharra.

The Queen’s complexion was deathly white. ”Answer him,” she hissed.

He holstered his blade and turned away.

The others paused one-by-one until their leader attempted to stand fighting against his weak ankles. His collar flared a bright red as he reached for his spear once more.

Vharra walked towards him.

Every person in the room held their breath.

She placed her hand upon his collar.

”I claimed your free will.” She stated. ”Release it.”

The red-gold metal around his neck cracked.

His knees gave out and he crumpled forward onto his hands.

The common ledger shifted due to severance.

’QUEEN’S VOLUNTARY SEVERANCE RECORDED.’

Nahlia whipped her head toward them. ”That voids her oath. A voluntary severance from Vharra negates the debt without reassigning it.”

Vharra turned to Austin Veyron. ”There are thousands underneath us like that person.”

”I know.”

”You can’t drag every chain to the well.”

”We don’t have too.” Calder replied. ”You can release them.”

The Queen scoffed harshly. ”You want me to unmake everything that allowed me to thrive?”

”No,” Elena said. ”We want you to own what it took from you.”

The white route finally led them to the Oath Well.

The room beneath them had shifted. Red-gold roots withdrew into the water. White chains floated within the dome, each tethered to an anchor that contained a ledger of claims Vharra refused to sever.

The First Queen’s seal flared to life across the surface.

’STATE THE CHAIN YOU CARRY.’

Vharra hovered near the edge of the pool.

She remained silent for several heartbeats before responding.

Then she spoke aloud the name of the first collar she claimed upon. The first ledger she forged. The first person she shackled into servitude for the court. With every name another white filament materialized in the well.

The palace quaked beneath her confessions.

But just as the final red-gold brand began to fade from Vharra’s throat, a dark chain coiled up out of the center of the pool.

It belonged to no one.

The Oath Well blacked out.

A new seal ignited across its surface: a horned crown overlaying an open mouth.

Calder froze in place.

”I recognize that sigil,” he muttered.

Color drained from Vharra’s face.

”The Hunger Emperor.” She whispered. ”He owns the oath underneath every single court.”

The black chain ensnared the final red-gold tether connected to Vharra.

Her debt hadn’t ended with severance. It had only been noticed.

The black chain came to a complete halt at the water’s edge.

It didn’t strike right away. Instead, it oscillated back and forth over the oath well greedily absorbing any remaining red-gold radiance leaking from Vharra’s mark. Every white chain hanging from the ceiling within the chamber trembled menacingly as if the entire room were holding it’s breath collectively.

Nahlia cracked open the First Queen’s ledger to the copied transcripts with shaky hands. ”The Hunger Emperor existed before every known court sovereign. He is the base authority the First Queen tried to quarantine within each court.”

Vharra stared down at the black chain anchored into the water below her. ”I maintained the network because I thought it was the only way to contain him.”

”You maintained it because you grew comfortable with power.” Calder replied.

She nodded. She exhaled shakily. ”Both are true reasons.”

The black chain struck the surface of the pool.

A mouth opened underneath the water. Massive and unseen. Its voice didn’t project through words but gluttony; the hollow starvation that had once driven Austin Veyron to devour demons, Calder into taking power, and Vharra into constructing her court from the ashes up.

[ORIGIN AUTHORITY DETECTED.]

[RETURN TO SOURCE AVAILABLE.]

Austin Veyron contemplated stepping forwards.

Elena seized his wrist. ”Tell us what you believe it wants from us.”

He swallowed thickly. ”It wants the seeds. It wants me to return, and says if I do then the chains will be ended.”

Calder scoffed. ”That’s how every conflict starts. Promises you an end, then enslaves everyone trying to find it.”

The Oath Well projected another image: black tentacles stretching past the reaches of Vharra’s palace in every direction extending through every known demon territory and reaching up toward the world above. The Emperor’s chain was anchored into every forced claim and court auction existing within the world.

Lines drawn in white from everyone strengthening the common ledger began to flare up across the projection in strikes of pure illumination. Everyone who volunteered to hold evacuation routes were the only thing stopping that picture from being consumed by nothingness.

Vharra met the gaze of everyone she had managed to mold into this unlikely group.

”You can’t take him down by destroying every hierarchy.” She stated. ”You will need land, armies.”

She paused when her gaze fell upon Austin Veyron. ”You will need enough power to stand against an Emperor.”

Austin Veyron looked at all the freed wardens behind them. At the scribes. At every person who chose to stand with them despite what became of the court.

”We will find a way to build what we need without enslaving people.” He guaranteed.

The black chain lifted away from the water gradually, dragging one final brand across its surface.

’FIRST FEAST: NINE NIGHTS.’

They had been given a deadline.

The Queens severance was no longer the ending of their rebellion. It was advertisement of a war that they couldn’t possibly fight alone. And every person who remained in that chamber knew that the next nine nights would make or break whether this new Freehold survived the oncoming feast and the far more sinister hunger that arrived directly after it alive or not.