The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

Lord Arctos never brought chairs.

He waited for them to stand beneath the canopy of hooks before speaking. Court officials filled the galleries in white armor. Merchants stopped negotiating prices. Small children held hook badges against their necks as thin attendants guided them forward.

The court had come to see freedom challenged today, and they wanted to see it tested against someone who knew how to rewrite the rules.

Arctos raised his hand. One edge of the white stone floor slid upward.

Heavy chains rose from underneath it, hauling a demon woman into view. She sat bound in a cage of silver hooks and was older than Tessa, with gray ash skin and straps across where her coat had been ripped from her back. Her left eye was bruised shut. Her right eye was open, burning with fresh hatred for Arctos.

"This is Captain Orena," he said. "Some years ago she spearheaded a workers’ revolt against the Court. Cost me three districts and two hundred loyal employees."

She spat blood against the floor.

"She cost you control."

Tessa said it without moving her eyes from Arctos’ face.

His lips twitched up into something that resembled a smile. "Control is simply a word that weaker people use to give themselves the illusion of stability."

Austin watched the hook chains dig into Orena’ chains around her shoulders. The Authority inside him flexed. Every hook hammered into the walls leaned in closer to Austin’s hands, waiting.

Arctos watched him watching.

"I imagine you find this useful, aren’ t you?" he whispered. "You could snap your fingers and watch those chains release her. Order every badge in this court to remove themselves from their necks. Overthrow me by sunset if you wanted."

The wolf beneath Austin Veyron’s skin growled before he opened his mouth to speak.

He imagined it. Commands cycling through his mind as the hooks shifted around the room, dragging Arctos away somewhere and forcing the court to kneel before him. All it would take was one exertion of Authority and he could tear this entire place apart.

Everyone would listen to him after that.

"No," Austin said sharply.

His voice settled the room. Lord Arctos’ smile never faltered. "No?"

"No thank you." Austin added. "I won’ take your place." "

Murmurs whispered through the galleries.

Lord Arctos tapped the white chain seal clipped to Austin Veyron’s belt. "Very well then. Vharra is developing her own sovereign weapon with the black fragment. I know where she keeps the heart- road leading to it. You need my map. I need someone strong enough to oppose her." Two willing individuals. We can help one another."

"You want me to steal her territory for you."

"I want you to make a decision." Lord Arctos replied. "Ownership is never given. Everyone owns something. The real question is if you allow it to belong to cowards like Vharra or someone strong enough to own it properly."

Captain Orena snorted. "He means beneficially."

The gallery straightened at once.

Lord Arctos stepped toward the demon woman’ steel cage. "Captain Orena," he said, "your trial is not over."

A single hook slid free from the canopy above Orena’ face. It hung suspended for a moment before swinging toward her neck.

"Enough." Tessa said.

A court official reached for her arm. Rin got there first, blade at the man’ wrist before he could touch Tessa.

Every voice in the Court went still.

"I warned you," Arctos said softly. "Violating one of my officers is making yourself punishable by the court."

"We weren’ t attacking anyone." Elena protested. "We were defending her." "

Lord Arctos eyed Elena Vacker for a few heartbeats before looking back at Austin Veyron. "You see the issue with what you just did? When you attack ownership, every single action is a statement. Defending yourself comes with consequences."

Austin felt every hook chain pull against his consciousness. They demanded he speak, demanded he make some simple, agreeable proclamation like unshackle Orena or restrain Arctos or end this quarrel now.

Instead, he asked her another question. "Do you want out?"

Orena blinked at him, unsure.

"I mean, do you want me to throw this at Arctos?" Austin pressed.

"If it unlocks those chains without wrapping another lock around my neck." She said. "Then yes."

Austin nodded once, hard.

Every pair of eyes in the Court stared at him as he lifted his hand into the air.

Hook Authority rushed into Austin Veyron. It felt delicate in his mind, brittle with precision. A language made entirely of vulnerabilities and forfeits. He hated how easy it was for him to understand.

"Release the restraints around Orena."

Nothing happened.

"You do not own anything here," Arctos said, smiling once more.

Austin looked closer at the hook chains littering the walls around him. They didn’ just belong to Arctos. Every hook bore another statement etched somewhere throughout the room: ownership, duty, debt, punishment. Owning one didn’ make you free to own everything else.

Austin couldn’ force these hooks to release Orena from her chains.

He could devour the statement used to chain her here.

Austin Veyron activated DEVOUR.

He didn’ devour Orena’ markings, though. Instead he aimed at the black ink defining the contracts inside each hook chain. Words burned down his throat: **REBEL. DEBTOR. ASSET. **Every one of them tasting like blood and fear.

Every hook-chain in the room screamed in defiance.

One popped free from Orena’ arm. Then another. She was cut open along both wrists, but she didn’ make a sound. Tessa and Elena caught her when the cage unlocked.

Hook badges throughout the gallery flickered, turning on and off.

Austin Veyron felt every obligation tied to every badge for a single, terrible heartbeat. He could unravel them all. He could shatter this Court and set everyone free.

But ripping those chains would also rip every person in this room of the food contracts, medicine allocations, and travel passes tied to their badges as well.

Power was never given with as easy a choice as breaking one chain.

Austin pulled his Authority back before it could devour anything else in the room.

Lord Arctos looked pale as death.

"You are far more corrupt than Vharra."

"Possibly." Austin Veyron agreed. "But at least I ask before I take something from someone."

Orena pressed herself against Tessa’s side, chest rising and falling rapidly. "As long as she listened, I want his map."

Arctos looked at her with plain disgust before laughing.

"Alright then. Enjoy my little performance."

He clapped his hands together. One of his attendants nodded toward a black glass plate sitting on a table near the front of the room. Lines sprawled across its surface in white ink, sketching out an intricate path that ended at a circular sigil beneath the largest tower in the court.

"This," Lord Arctos gestured, "is the heart- road. It’ usable during a sovereign trial, and you will be allowed to keep this fragment leading to it."

Austin accepted the map plate from the courtier. Its edges were cool to the touch.

"In return," Arctos continued, "you two will undergo your ownership trial before the Court tomorrow. If you win, you leave with Orena and the map plus anyone else willing to follow you." Lose, the fragment stays here and you accept a Court badge."

Tessa squeezed her fists together.

"And if we refuse the trial?" Elena asked.

Arctos pointed toward the white gates surrounding them.

"They close."

He gestured again. "You can fight your way out if you want, but every person in this court has orders to stop you. I am only giving you the courtesy of solving this civilly."

Austin scanned the room. The badges. Orena’ raw wounds down both wrists. The burn branded into his own palm with hook teeth.

Ownership trials were bait and blackmail.

But the map. The heart-roads were real.

"Alright." He said. "We accept."

Lord Arctos bowed in Austin’ direction.

Tomorrow," he said, "the Court decides who owns who."

Whitewood attendants fluttered around the room, anxious to get the show underway. Pale walls descended around them, sealing off the center aisle as white hooked banners were raised above the galleries. Announcements had already been drawn up. This would be a spectacle.

Captain Orena stared at them flatly, eyes empty like a soldier. "His trials aren’ meant to be fights. He gets people to turn on themselves. He forces them to make choices with every answer trapping them further."

Elena snapped the map plate away from Austin just long enough to trace the route with her finger. "Then we give him the choice he doesn’ expect."

Tessa slid next to Orena, still shaking but holding herself rigid. "And we show everyone watching that they can say no too."

Austin Veyron stared at the white towers guarding the Court, at the badges buried into everyone’ throats, at the doors that locked quietly behind them all.

This wouldn’ be about besting Arctos tomorrow.

It would be about showing them a new way to play the game.

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