The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

Austin Veyron stood at the entrance of a flooded tunnel. Tracks plunged back into the hillside, disappearing beneath a layer of black water.

The rail vault’ s sign still hung crooked above him: EASTERN LINE. Scratched through the text was a chain symbol.

Austin Veyron held the fragment cage against his back and stared down at the flooded entrance. Inside it, the black crystal clicked once, then twice.

"Vharra’so heart-roads down there?" Sarielle asked.

"The vaults connect to it somewhere on the map," Elena said. "Doesn’ t mean she left it unlocked."

Tessa pressed her palm against the tunnel wall. "Arctos smuggled refugees down here before he built his road court. Vharra flooded it afterwards. If you try to pass through without a sovereign key between stations, she traps you inside."

Rin glared at the black water. "I hate underground lakes."

"Noted."

They pushed past each other and into the tunnel anyway.

The tunnels were silent for the first fifty yards, save for dripping stone and boots scraping against submerged rail. Seven took point, his white sword cutting through the darkness. Sanctuary volunteers kept close together. Orena and Tessa hovered near the center of the group, both carrying spears but neither stupid enough to claim they were prepared to disarm another lord’ s trap.

A mechanical hand clutched up out of the water.

Another hand joined it.

Contract enforcement machines lumbered out of the flooded rails: ancient maintenance droids covered in ledger paper and barnacles. Faces were smooth glass plates. Hooked wrenches extended from each of their palms.

"Do not let them mark you," Seven warned.

The machines lurched forward.

One hooked around Austin Veyron’ s neck. He ducked, stabbed Root-Graft through its torso, and tugged free a clump of soggy contracts. The machine toppled backwards, but ink-stained paper wrapped around Austin Veyron’ s wrist before he could wrench it free.

[Maintenance debt detected.]

[Repair required.]

The words flashed through his mind, scrambling to form a usable sentence.

Austin Veyron opened DEVOUR and consumed the words whole. Old fear and stagnant water flavored the text.

Another machine yanked on Elena’ s pack strap. Rin sliced through its wrist. Kaela stabbed through its glass face. The machine folded onto itself and sank beneath the water. Pale segmented fingers twitched between its dangling chains.

Seven stopped.

[New threat identified.]

[Aquatic.]

Water exploded around them.

Jets of debt-eels shot through the flooded rails. Snapping mouths full of contract teeth latched onto ankles, wrists, anything they could reach. Chains whipped around Kaela’ s pack straps. Rin sliced through two of them with her sword, kicking another off her shoulder.

One burrowed into Tessa’ s ankle.

She kicked at it with her other foot but didn’ t scream. Instead, she jabbed her spear through its eye sockets. Two more grabbed onto her leg.

Austin Veyron reached for Hook Authority, preparing to force every contract eel in the tunnel to release their grip.

The program obeyed instantly.

The eels stopped thrashing.

Hooks everywhere stopped moving. The grappling hooks that were wrapped around Kaela’ s pack straps disappeared into its stitching. The metal buckles securing Elena’ s medical kit snapped closed. Even the white service badge Orena kept tucked into her shirt folded neatly onto itself.

Austin Veyron could feel Hook Authority reaching past the contract eels, into strangers’ equipment.

He could control anything down here.

Austin Veyron withdrew the command.

"Seven, illuminate them," he ordered.

Seven flared brighter. Debt-eels snapped away from the sudden illumination. Sarielle slashed through the ones wrapped around Tessa’ s leg. Orena dragged her backwards. Rin kicked at the flooded rails until surface tension shattered all movement in the water ceased.

Tessa panted against the tunnel wall. "You could have ordered them off."

"I almost ordered everything in this tunnel off," Austin Veyron replied.

She glared at him, then back at the tunnel behind them. "Then I am glad you didn’ t."

The first lock guarding the vault’ s heart-road sat at the far end of the platform.

It was a wrought iron gate chained to a circular plate. Three indentations covered the plate: A hook. A ledger book. And a black crystal.

Elena traced the fragment cage resting in her palms. "So... This lock requires a sovereign key."

Austin Veyron pressed the fragment cage against the third indent. The black crystal rattled inside its rootwood bindings.

"Be careful," Sarielle whispered. "It doesn’ t want to be there."

"Everything down here doesn’ t want to be there."

Austin Veyron pressed it into place.

The gate shuddered.

The hook indent glowed first. Then the ledger slot. Finally, the fragment cage’ s black crystal pulse surged through rootwood and into the lock.

It unlocked with a deep humming noise that reminded him of a train horn coming from deep beneath the earth.

Past the gate sat a sealed station platform. An empty train sat on the rails. Each car had been constructed entirely from sheets of black glass. There was no engine at the front of the train. Chains dangled into tunnels above the engine car, warping around themselves like they were caught in some invisible current.

Someone had updated the station sign to read HEART ROAD — LAST SERVICE

The fragment cage began to pulse wildly.

Every map fragment plate implanted in Austin Veyron’ s pack heated up.

A woman’ s voice whispered from inside the black glass train.

[Board, devourer.]

The mark branded into his wrist twitched back to life.

The doors slid open.

No one moved.

Seats inside of the first car were upholstered in black leather. Names had been branded into each headrest. Some of them had been scribbled out. Others were clean enough that blood still pooled inside their grooves.

Tessa read one of them and her face blanched white. "That was a sentinel I swore in."

Orena stepped in front of her. "Do not read them. It’ s a registry. Not a manifest."

Austin Veyron’ s mark burned hot against his skin.

[Choose it, breaking voice quieted inside his head.]

[Only the brave, or foolish, ride the heart-road.]

"They take brave or foolish travelers," Vharra continued. "Did you not listen? They take anyone that boards the train."

He relayed her words directly to the rest of the delegation.

"What is the price?" Elena asked.

It whispered the answer back through the train doors.

[ONE MEMORY FROM EACH PASSENGER.]

Rin pinched the bridge of her nose. "That isn’ t a price. That is theft if you ask me politely."

Sanctuary volunteers started screaming all at once. One of them wanted to find another way back. Another pointed out the city would burn if Vharra got her weapon built and left it unchecked.

Voices escalated until Kaela placed a hand over her own mouth to quiet the group.

"No one boards until everyone agrees to the terms."

Austin Veyron stared down the rail tunnel behind them.

They had activated the vault’ s defenses by unlocking that lock. Contract machines were reforming beneath the water. Lady Vharra had shown them only one way out of this place. And it was the heart-road train.

He was bitter that Vharra bothered locking them in here so well.

"You know stealing someone else’ s memories isn’ t commerce," he said. Breaking Voice fell silent inside his head. "If anyone wants to board, then they will board because they feel the price is worth it. Understand no one is below my command."

Seven tilted his head. "My biological memories are encoded into my core programming. The records within my server might suffice."

"You are not riding first," Elena said.

Tessa stepped forward. "I will."

Orena grabbed her wrist. "You don’ t owe anyone else another memory."

"I know," Tessa replied. "I just want to give one. Give the train my memory of that day."

He wasn’ t fond of her decision but recognized the difference between forcing someone for their memories and allowing someone to give them freely.

"If you are sure."

"I am."

Tessa stepped through the doors. Chain whipped across her temple and she yelped-laughed.

"What did they take?" Orena asked.

Tessa thought for a moment. "The sound of him saying those words."

"Still." Orena pulled Tessa close to her.

The train glowed to life.

One by one, members of the delegation selected what they were willing to give up.

Elena sacrificed the smell of cinnamon from her childhood kitchen.

Kaela gave up the sounds of drill instructors yelling during training.

Rin relinquished the face of a childhood friend who betrayed her for adventure.

None of them smiled stepping through the doors.

None of them were forced.

Austin Veyron stepped up to the train and its empty carriages.

Chains floated above his head.

[CHOOSE YOUR MEMORY.]

Memories of his mother laughing danced across his thoughts. Then the day he first saw Veyra. Names the system assigned him flickered across his mind like a newsreel.

The voice offered him another memory: the first time Austin Veyron wanted power so badly that he was willing to hurt someone else to gain it.

He gave the memory to her.

Like pulling a tooth from a live body, it was ripped from his mind. The lesson it taught him remained but the dark satisfaction he used to feel when being cruel leeched from him.

The chain retracted.

The doors closed behind him.

Outside, the drowned rail vault began to sink.

Pulling them with it was a black glass train with no engine.

They sat in silence and watched tracks vanish from beneath them.

Ferrying themselves deeper underground towards whatever nightmare Lady Vharra had planned on the other side of the heart-road.

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