The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

They did not hurry.

Sentinels chained together walked down Vharra’ sake road. Four pairs of towering guardians, their limbs stretching nine feet above ground and sheathed in scales of black interlocking armor. Smooth iron masks for faces. Chains dragging behind them, scraping sparks off the pavement.

Austin Veyron counted the links.

Each sentinel had one single thick chain that ran vertically across its chest. Their core line.

The antlered scout Austin Veyron had spared loitered off to the side behind the border statues. "Don’t let them get close," she warned. "Their chains restrain whatever they touch."

"You could have said that sooner." Rin said.

" You did not ask."

The first sentinel raised its arm.

A chain flew across the road.

Seven stepped into it. The force knocked him back ten feet, his boots kicking up dust as he moved. He caught it with both hands before it could reach Elena.

"Weakness exceeds estimated threat profile," Seven deadpanned.

"Informative," Kaela shouted.

The second sentinel lumbered forward from the left. Kaela met it halfway with her spear. Her point stabbed its chest core and skidded sideways across oily black sparks. The sentinel backhanded her hard enough to slam her against a broken storefront wall.

Sarielle stepped towards her.

"No." Austin Veyron said. "Stay focused on breaking their cores."

The third sentinel hurled chains across the road, trapping them between the delegation and border with a net of black metal. Links dug into the pavement and started crawling toward them.

Rin vaulted up onto an abandoned car hood, then launched herself into the guardian’ back. She slashed through three links with her knives before being grabbed by the throat.

Austin Veyron opened Root-Graft and crossed the gap between them.

He snatched the sentinel’ wrist with both hands. The armor felt so cold it scorched his skin. He felt his hunger stir inside him the moment his fingers closed around.

[Chain Sentinel Core detected.]

[High-Value consumption available.]

[Warning: Sovereign residue present.]

He could consume it.

He could take one bite of DEVOUR and dismantle the guardian, drain the hollow beneath his ribs dry, and probably disembowel whoever was waiting for them on the other side of this stupid borderwall.

But Vharra’ mark burned hot across his wrist.

"Go ahead. " she whispered. "Burn me if you want. You do not owe your enemies mercy."

Austin Veyron gritted his teeth together and pulled Rin away instead.

She dropped to the ground and rolled out of the way, knife blades sinking into the joint behind its knee. The guardian lurched backward.

"Why didn’t you just eat it?" Rin hissed through clenched teeth.

"I trusted her judgment."

"That’s becoming a problem weakness."

The fourth sentinel crept closer to Elena and the sanctuary volunteers.

Instead of scattering or shouting commands they all raised their shields and pressed them together. Kaela had trained them for this. Its first chain collided with the shields and tossed two people to the ground, shields miraculously intact. Elena squeezed through them and sheared through the chain with contract- blades from Maelis’ embersteel knife.

The severed link screamed in pain.

Austin Veyron heard Seven yelling over it. "Cutting their core lines will synchronize them when severed. Attempt to sever two simultaneously."

His earsplitting scream echoed off the towers behind them and the antlered scout charged into the road anyways despite her wounds. "The masks." she yelled. "Their eyes are empty. Each sentinel’ core line intersects directly beneath their jaw."

Austin Veyron looked at her pointedly. "Seven. Why are you helping us?"

"Because I refuse to let Vharra kill another person through that gate."

The first sentinel started tearing Seven towards the black line marking the edge of the road. Her light spasmed erratically. Austin Veyron started charging towards her too, roots tearing free from the pavement in front of him.

"Kaela!"

She was already on her feet. Already moving.

Kaela vaulted over the piles of storefront rubble and slammed the first sentinel square in the jaw with the jagged remains of her spear. Simultaneously, Sarielle stabbed her silver sword through the second sentinel’ throat.

Both core lines flared white.

Austin Veyron shot roots through the gaps and tugged.

The sentinels screamed silently.

Their chests exploded open like rotten wood, revealing fist-sized black crystals nestled within their rib cages. His hunger clawed at his ribs.

The crystal closest to Austin Veyron rolled lazily towards him on tendrils twice his height like it recognized him somehow.

Elena noticed it too. "Austin Veyron."

She wasn’t calling him over. She already had him. She was reminding him.

He reached for the core.

Instead of saying DEVOUR he bound it in a cage of roots. Crystal shattered. Instead of consuming him the power flowed down his arms and into the cracked pavement.

The first sentinel collapsed to its knees.

The other two simply stopped moving.

For one perfect heartbeat nobody did anything at all.

Then the mask covering the closest sentinel’ face cracked down the middle like dry clay. Inside was no soulless machine.

Inside was another person.

A woman stared up at them.

Human. Female. Adult. Exhausted and bruised, with long chain-link scars stretching from her temples and ripping down past her throat. Blood smeared across her cheeks but her eyes were bright with life.

"Don’t kill the last core," she croaked. "I am bonded to it."

Rin carefully sheathed her daggers.

The road felt like absolute silence now.

Austin Veyron stared at the chained guardian looming over them.

He stared at the glowing core embedded into its chest.

He stared into the eyes of the chained woman within it.

He heard Vharra’s voice in his head one last time.

"Take what you need from me." No sacrifice is permanent unless you allow it to be.

"One sacrifice for safe passage." That’s how borders are enforced Austin Veyron.

He stepped forwards until he was standing directly in front of it.

He pressed his palm against the black crystal lodged into its chest.

His hunger screamed inside him to just kill it and swallow.

He squeezed DEVOUR around each chain connecting into the woman’ skull instead.

Light exploded from his mark. Warmth flooded through his chest and arms. Pain shot through his wrist.

The sovereign link reached for him like it wanted to claim Austin Veyron too.

[Command structure detected.]

[Claim target as asset?]

"No."

He refused it. Denied the prompt outright.

The text evaporated from his mind.

He accepted her offer without claiming her as his own.

Crystal shattered.

Sentinel exploded into a cloud of razor sharp black links. The chained woman fell limp into Kaela’s arms. Still alive but trembling hard.

The last sentinel lowered its arm.

A cold mechanical voice spoke from behind its iron mask.

"Border test complete. Travelers do not qualify for safe passage. Escort sequence will be initiated."

One of its shoulders dipped down, revealing a flat metal plate hiding beneath its ribcage.

Underneath that plate Austin Veyron could see another set of chains. Not metal, but bone-white and stamped with a crest he didn’t recognize: a hunch-backed crown wrapped around a hooked blade.

"Escorted will be enacted by authority." it continued. "You are ordered to cease aggression and wait to be collected. Failure to comply will be regarded as attempted trespass."

Sarielle stared beyond the road at Vharra’ gleaming glass towers in the distance.

"This is another one of her rivals?"

The chained woman coughed again.

"She doesn’t answer to Vharra." Tessa said. "Arctos consumes whatever she leaves behind."

Austin pocketed the white chain seal in his hands.

Warmth continued to spread across his skin.

The sovereign mark branding his wrist grew ice cold.

There was no more screaming.

Absolute silence blanketed the road for the first time since they’d arrived at the border. Not even

Lady Vharra was whispering in his ear anymore.

It was worse than anything Austin Veyron had ever heard

The chained woman yanked herself upright with Kaela’ help. "Call me Tessa." She rasped. "Arctos will call me property. He’ll call you criminals for cutting those chains."

Austin stared down at all the black links spilled across the road between them.

"You’re going to let him leash you right back to him?"

She snorted a laugh. Void of humor.

"No."

"What makes you think you can keep me?" She asked instead.

Then she was gone.

"Then you owe allegiance to no one." Austin replied.

She shot him a look like that answer hit closer to home than anything they’d just discovered.

Elena checked Tessa for major injuries. The sanctuary volunteers escorted all the scouts out of harms way and into shield formation. Rin kept staring at the white chain seal Austin clenched in his fist.

"This other lord." Rin started. "He isn’t granting us asylum."

"No." Austin agreed. "He’s trying to cage us."

The seal tightened imperceptibly until it was carving half-moons into his palms.

Ahead of them Vharra’ city towered in one direction. Behind them a pale stone fortress crawled forward through the dust, its broken crown seal unmistakable.

They’d passed one border.

Now they had to answer to two different lords.

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