The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

The First Feast road stretched south faster than refugees could walk.

It sliced through cornfields and burrowed under freeways, consuming every dirt path in sight until Grand Meridian was choked by black route-matter. Austin Veyron’ expedition brought up the rear clutching the portable ledger root between them. The road wanted them to use it. The white trail made them drop it every mile they trekked.

They were exhausted.

Veyra’s bandages shimmered silver where she bit down on them so she didn’t limp. Calder’s contestant mark burned every time they passed feeder remnants spawned from the road. Lia and Mara traded off sleep at the portable ledger’s feet while everyone else woke them to redirect witness lines. Sable marched without her crown, watched over by Rin and by the knowledge that her exile was why they refused to give up.

Sunset brought the first feeder remnant swarming out of the darkness.

It popped out of a drainage culvert beneath the road. Tiny black crown hovering over a skull modeled after Lia’ own.

’ACCEPT. REST. SURVIVE.’

The girl stared at it, transfixed.

Austin Veyron took a step forward.

Then another.

Behind him, the expedition froze.

He stopped.

"What do you choose?" he asked.

Lia stared at the crown. She stared at her fatigued allies, and then she stared at Mara gripping the white root line taut in her hands.

"I choose to keep walking," Lia said.

The portable ledger sparked to life.

Rin cut the crown from her air. Veyra snapped the feeder’s spine. Calder purged the route marker giving it life and Austin Veyron swallowed the subversion urging him to believe tiredness was the same as surrender.

The remnant vanished.

They planned to march at midnight.

Instead more showed.

Feeder remnants spawned the moment they stopped to heal instead of attack: To a crippled scout. To Calder. To Sable. Every time the expedition paused to recover from the journey, the road tempted them with another alternative to the suffering of continuing.

Sable stopped before the third apparition materialized in front of them.

"I know what it’ doing," she said. "It’ going to keep giving us options until one of us takes it."

"Then we don’t take it," Austin Veyron said.

She blinked. Cooperation had not occurred to her.

Working together they seeded decoy trails leading away from their path. Sable anticipated the feeder spawns seconds before they appeared using what little remained of her crown sense. Calder plotted escape vectors from the portable ledger. Maelis and Sarielle laid firebreak lines around their position. By the time they started responding to the road’ temptations the expedition was anticipating them.

By midnight they’d diverted three feeder nests away from populated areas.

Grand Meridian rose over the eastern horizon at sunrise.

Hope surged through the expedition, fading when they saw where the road materialized inside the city.

Black routes wormed into the skyscrapers ahead of them, choked out the outer access points, and slithered along every defensive route devised by the Freehold. The common ledger still pulsed brightly from where it rested in Grand Meridian’ center but every white route the expedition redirected found its way to the feeder nests now converging on their position.

"The road is trying to starve Grand Meridian out," Marcus murmured from somewhere beyond earshot.

Austin Veyron turned back to face his tired expedition as Grand Meridian dwindled behind them and then the First Feast road waiting patiently beyond that.

The Hunger Emperor hadn’t returned to claim his contestants.

It had brought thousands of them with him.

"We don’ march through the main entrance."

Every single route the First Feast road could converge on had already been entangled with black route matter. The road tested every white route’s strength by hurling crippled scouts forward, sacrificial children of itself.

Austin located a blind service tunnel tucked away behind an alcove with the portable ledger and led the expedition through that instead.

Older. Narrower. Crowded shoulder to shoulder with evacuating civilians traveling the opposite direction... but untainted by road.

Inside, volunteers scrambled to do what the Hunger Emperor never accounted for civilians doing on their own initiative: Make choices.

Fill supplies caches. Pass along intelligence. Tear down access routes and reinforce shelter corridors. Accept duties that strengthened their resistance.

Each decision made anchored another bolt of common route-light in place.

A young building warden blocked Austin Veyron’s path three stories below the lobby. "The root heart is deeper still. You were able to access the building when you first arrived, but the road has sealed off nearly all entry points by now. If we don’t reach it in time, the entire Freehold routing network becomes another avenue for the Feast."

Calder glanced down at the black stain bleeding across his wrist. "They’ going to use me as bait."

"They’ going to use every last one of us." Sable’s voice was barely above a whisper. "They always do. Worst of all, they prey on people who don’ know when to say no because they’re tired."

Root-Matter shook underfoot. Behind Mara, another feeder remnant materialized from the floor, reaching for her with that impossible black crown strapped to its skull.

Instead Mara whipped the portable ledger root out from under her backpack.

"I choose this tunnel," she said.

The white route beneath her disavowed the crown hovering above her wrist. Rin shredded the feeder before it could stand.

Step by step, choice by choice they closed in on the lobby.

They reached the main staircase just as the hotel began to collapse inward. Windows shattered. Roots cracked through marble foundations. Marcus and Elena manned the opposite side of the lobby with half the ledger team clustered behind them, using the common route-marker to anchor Grand Meridian’ root heart in place.

Feeder remnants surrounded them.

Standing in its center was a black doorway pulsing with raw route matter.

The Hunger Emperor hadn’t taken the time to construct a replacement road anchor.

It didn’t need one. There had been a body walking among them mere hours ago. In its place now stretched an endless ribbon of road reeling from feeding on fear, consuming entire neighborhoods and stretching farther across the cityscape with every mouth it fed until it reached Grand Meridia.

"A bridge."

"You built this siege."

Austin Veyron yanked his half of the white root-chain taut.

"If we take it down."

"They’ not going to let us."

"Then we break it."

The doorway throbbed with trail-matter. Feeder remnants cascaded into the lobby threatening to overwhelm them with duplicates of every volunteer pledging their support.

One carried Marcus’ face. One dripped Elena’ bloody bloodcoat.

One looked exactly like Austin Veyron and stepped forwards to point at the root heart mounted in the center of the lobby.

’ONE STEP THROUGH THE DOOR. END THE SIEGE.’

His own face stared back at him.

He stuffed the white root-chain into his boot.

"We take it together."

Instead of tearing down hallways after their duplicates the expedition cleared a space in the center of the lobby. Veyra and Rin guarded the perimeter. Maelis rigged firebreaks along the stairwell as Sarielle shielded the injured scribes sprinting choices down to the lobby. Calder marched towards the door but his contestant mark began dragging him forward despite his attempts to resist.

"It’ pulling me."

"If you do this alone, it will swallow you whole." Austin shoved past him to stand in Calder’ place.

Black roots coiled around Calder’ ankle. Sable cut them free with what little remained of her crown-route sense.

Skinned back across her throat from the effort of cutting through the doorway’ defenses. But it had breached enough of the protection sealing Grand Meridian’ root heart in place.

White lines were flickering out inside the root heart ring. Marcus fed choice after choice into the common ledger with bloody hands while Elena clutched the transfer book tight in both fists franticly rewriting manifest decisions the road attempted to erase before they could be committed to record.

"They will hold." Marcus dabbed at his throat with his off hand.

"The people are choosing because they know this is their only option." Elena flipped through erased names in the transfer book so fast her hands turned white gloves. "There’ literally nowhere left for them to run."

Austin stared up at the black doorway.

Its presence filled every surface of Grand Meridian. Waiting until someone gave it a contestant to stabilize the bridge long enough for it reach them.

And multiple people were capable of fulfilling that one role requirement so instead Austin Veyron gifted the road something else.

Witnesses.

Every volunteer taking refuge in the lobby sealed their choices through the common ledger. Voices cried out from the kitchens. Voices cried out from the hospital wing. Voices from maintenance crews and route runners patrolling the corridors above. Court citizens displaced from their jobs decades ago. Refugees fleeing border settlements for the promise of safety in Grand Meridian screamed until their voices were hoarse.

The white routes fused together into a circuit around the doorway.

It attacked.

A hundred hands grappling with root-matter. Countless footsteps trying to pull them away from the lobby.

It could not funnel every single witness through the same node at once.

Calder pressed his marked wrist against the white route-marking painting the lobby floor.

He wasn’t touching the doorway anymore.

"I choose the city."

The contestant mark flared like it had been branded directly on his skin then rerouted that node somewhere else within Grand Meridian’ witness count.

The doorway shattered into pieces.

It crashed down onto the floor with enough force that fragments of it scraped back up from beneath them as the city tried to heal around them once more.

"We have to keep choosing."

Instead of dispersing the expedition Austin Veyron dragged DEVOUR through every inch of the black doorway until every last trace of the word burned away. Not to feed the First Feast road continuing beyond Grand Meridian... but to purge it of any connection to the Hunger Emperor’ appetite.

The lobby quaked.

"You cannot close a road paved with hunger."

Feet scrambling to safety. Voices pleading for it to stop.

The doorway began sinking beneath them.

’YOU CANNOT CLOSE A ROAD BUILT FROM FEAR.’

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