The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

Tessa did not sleep.

She sat beside the delegation’ small fire with her back to a broken road marker, staring toward the pale fortress on the horizon. The Court of Hooks was closer now. At night its towers looked like white bones reaching out of the dust.

"Arctos will send hunters." She said.

Rin glanced up from sharpening a knife. "He already did."

The antlered scout and the two others Austin Veyron had spared had set up a perimeter beyond the firelight. They had not named themselves friends. They had simply stayed.

Tessa touched the chain scars on her throat. "His hunters will call me an escaped asset. They will say I was damaged by Vharra’ sentinels. They will say returning me is mercy."

Austin Veyron felt the word scrape against his nerves.

"What do you want?" he asked.

Tessa looked surprised.

"I want to live without another lord naming the price."

"Then that is what we protect."

The white chain seal at Austin Veyron’ belt warmed.

The hunters arrived before dawn.

Seven’ warning cut through the camp. "Six armored targets. Closing fast. Two elevated positions."

The first hooked bolt came from a rooftop. Kaela knocked it aside, but the second struck the road beside Tessa and unfolded into a net of pale chain.

Rin cut through it before it reached her.

"Lord Arctos requests the return of his property," a voice called from the ruins.

Tessa stood, shaking but upright. "I was never his."

The voice laughed.

Six hunters stepped into view. Their armor was white metal and leather. Hooks hung from their belts. The leader wore a porcelain mask with no mouth.

"Every body inside the Court is accounted for," the leader said. "You will return the chain sentinel. The unregistered devourer will surrender the black fragment. The rest may leave with their names intact."

Elena moved beside Austin Veyron. "We are not trading anyone."

The leader raised one hand.

Chains fired from both rooftops.

The fight split the road apart.

Kaela led the sanctuary volunteers into the left ruin, shields raised against the hooks. Sarielle and the antlered scout flanked right, cutting down the archers before they could pin anyone. Seven charged straight through the center, taking three hooks into his armor to close on the masked leader.

Austin Veyron went for the net launcher aimed at Tessa.

The hunter using it was fast. She dropped the device and drew twin hook blades, attacking Austin Veyron’ wrists instead of his chest. She wanted his hands intact. She wanted him captured.

That made the hunger laugh.

Austin Veyron caught her blade between Root- Graft claws and twisted. The hook snapped. He drove her into the road hard enough to crack the pavement.

[Combat core available.]

He felt it immediately: a small but sharp demon core pulsing under her breastbone. He could swallow it. It would give him strength for the rest of the battle.

Then he saw the chain scar around her neck.

Not a hunter by choice.

Austin Veyron tore the scar’ outer link apart instead. The hunter screamed and rolled away from him, clutching her throat.

"Run," he said.

She stared at him.

"Now."

Across the road, the porcelain- masked leader drove Seven into a wall. The leader’ s hook entered Seven’ s shoulder joint and began pulling apart the metal plates around it.

Tessa ran toward them.

"No," Austin Veyron shouted.

She ignored him.

Tessa seized a loose chain from the ground and wrapped it around the leader’ s arm. Her hands bled as the links bit into her palms, but she pulled with everything she had.

"I choose myself," she said.

The words struck the white armor like a hammer.

The leader staggered.

Austin Veyron reached them and slammed his roots through the leader’ s chestplate. Beneath it was a white crystal core wrapped in a contract.

The devouring option rose in front of him.

[Consume: Court Hunter Core.]

[Gain: Hook Authority.]

He hesitated.

Hook Authority would let him command the chains around them. It would turn Arctos’ own weapon against the court. It would also place more lord- power inside him, more reason to believe coercion was efficient.

The leader wrenched free and drove a hook through Austin Veyron’ s side.

Pain made the decision for him.

Austin Veyron opened DEVOUR.

He swallowed the core’ power in one burning pull.

The road went white.

Every loose hook and chain on the battlefield jerked toward him.

For one terrible second, he could feel how easy it would be to order everyone to kneel. The sanctuary volunteers. Tessa. Rin. Elena. The freed hunters.

He heard their heartbeats as if they were handles waiting for his hand.

Austin Veyron screamed and forced the authority downward.

Not into them.

Into the ground.

The road split beneath the hunters. Their hooks buried themselves in stone. The white chains became anchors, trapping the armored squad without touching the people around them.

The porcelain leader fell to one knee.

Austin Veyron stood over him, blood soaking his shirt.

"You work for Arctos?"

"I belong to the Court," the leader said.

"No," Tessa said. Her hands were still bleeding. "You were taught to say that."

The leader’ s mask cracked.

Austin Veyron did not kill him. He did not free him either; he did not know how to remove the Court’ s chains safely. He left the hunters anchored, gave them water, and told them that anyone who chose to leave when the chains broke would be allowed to go.

Rin looked at him as they resumed the march. "You devoured that core."

"Yes."

"And?"

"And I wanted to use it on all of you."

Rin’ expression hardened. "Thank you for saying it."

The Court of Hooks opened its gates before sunset.

Inside, the fortress was not a city of prisoners. It was worse. People walked freely through its white streets, wearing hook- shaped badges at their throats. Merchants bowed to armored officials. Children played under chain banners. Everyone looked calm.

Everyone watched the delegation pass.

At the center of the court, Lord Arctos waited beneath a canopy of hanging hooks.

He was tall, pale, and entirely unchained. A broken- crown crest rested on his collar.

His eyes moved to Tessa, then to Austin Veyron’ fragment cage.

"An unregistered devourer," Arctos said. "A broken sentinel. A fragment Vharra wants badly enough to speak through blood."

He smiled.

"I believe we can make each other very useful."

The people in the white court watched without moving. Austin Veyron could feel their attention on Tessa, on the fragment cage, on the blood drying at his side. Arctos had made their arrival into a lesson before anyone had spoken a word.

Tessa stepped forward despite the tremor in her legs. "You sent hunters for me."

Arctos did not look at her. "I sent employees to retrieve a damaged investment."

The calmness of it made Austin Veyron’ s new Hook Authority stir. The hooks hanging above the court answered the anger in his chest, dipping lower as if ready to obey.

Elena touched his elbow.

Austin Veyron forced the authority down. Not yet. Not here. The Court was waiting for him to prove he was just another lord with a different uniform.

"What do you want?" he asked.

Arctos finally met his eyes. "A conversation. Then a choice. I can give you the road to Vharra’ s heart, devourer. In return, you will help me decide who deserves to own it."

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