The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

The execution chains fell to the ground.

Tessa and Orena were already moving.

They pressed their palms against the resistance markings below the engine. Worn grooves made by people who had tried breaking Vharra’s math before it became a throne room. Before it even started calling itself a palace. Their blood mixed with the grooves. The markings pulsed white.

The engine shuddered.

"Now!" Orena shouted.

Sarielle rolled under Veyra’s suspended body with a silver blade drawn. She sliced through the first return chain. Sparks crackled across the engine chamber. Elena scaled the platform with medical wire and ember salves. She shouted at Veyra to keep fighting.

Seven grabbed both of his hands onto the engine brace.

It began to splinter apart anyway.

"Structural failure imminent," Seven said. "Recommend acceleration."

Kaela’chu’s voice crackled over the radio. "Outer gate is compromised. We have guards coming down the west hall."

"Keep them busy." Austin Veyron called back.

"It would be my literal pleasure." Rin’s voice responded one second later.

Austin Veyron stepped forward toward the core.

The black crystal heart split open like a pupil.

[Sovereign Heart Authority granted.]

[Claim linkage. End conflict.]

The prompt was beautiful in its own toxic way. One word and every guard in the citadel would drop to the ground unconscious. One word and the chains would release Veyra from their grasp. One word and every kinetic pulse flowing through the citadel would shift to keep Austin Veyron alive.

The cost of usage was printed below in smaller text.

[All claimed linkages subject to user will.]

His mother’s voice whispered through the chamber.

"You are tired of asking. Take the answer!"

Austin Veyron reached out his own hand toward the core.

Not to claim it.

To know why it repeated. To know what math held it all together.

There were two sides to the engine’s math. The piece that Vharra placed beneath Veyra’s feet and the copy stored away deep inside of Austin Veyron’s rootwood cage. Both pieces were programmed under the same sovereign. Claiming sovereignty over the heart wouldn’t grant him anything he didn’t already know about Vharra.

The false one wouldn’t care about owning him.

The other one wouldn’t care about owning anyone.

"Austin!" Elena shouted.

Guards kicked open the west door. Kaela spun around to skewer one of them with a stolen spear. Behind her, two more burst into the chamber. Another guard stumbled through just before the engine chamber erupted into a field of chain fire.

Austin Veyron executed DEVOUR around the juncture where the two halves of the engine connected.

Pain exploded across his consciousness. The feeling of hunger, possession...none of that.

Definition.

The core bombarded him with every possession noun it could think of. Lord. Owner. Devourer. Weapon. Slave. It pushed every word into his brain before extracting them back out again.

"Look what you made us do." Elena screamed.

Austin Veyron slammed the rootwood cage against the heart crystal.

"I do not accept."

Nothingness screamed back at him.

Tessa and Orena slammed both their hands into the resistance markings with more force. Sarielle slashed through the second chain. Seven’s brace cracked apart under his grip and he shifted his weight beneath the falling engine piece to catch Veyra rather than let her fall.

Elena reached the execution platform.

"Veyra, stay with me," she said.

Veyra shifted her eyes over to Austin Veyron. "Do it."

He shook his head.

"I am."

Austin Veyron forced the engine core to accept one final answer.

Not Vharra.

Not himself.

Every person ever linked to the engine singularly declaring themselves autonomous over their own mind.

The false sovereign order echoed through the chamber. Amplified by the voices of everyone who had opposed Vharra tonight. Tessa’s unwillingness to submit. Orena’s defiance. Elena’s steady voice. Sarielle’s fear and choice to move forward anyway. Rin’s hatred. Kaela’s courage. Seven’s instinct to protect Veyra by disobeying orders.

The engine seized up.

[Authority malfunction.]

[Ownership undefined.]

Ribbons of black glass spiderwebbed out across the floor. The heart crystal shattered.

Vharra’s scream tore through him.

"You cannot build a fortress out of indecision!"

"Austin," Elena called.

Instead of siphoning Veyra’s life energy into itself the engine detonated outward. Engine blood burst forth from the resistance markings in ribbons of red light. Sarielle sliced through the last chain. Elena caught Veyra mere seconds before the execution platform smashed into the ground. Seven yanked the brace away with both arms while metal ripped itself from his joints.

Machine glass burst from every direction the engine chamber ceiling used to be.

The core cracked open inside of Austin Veyron’s chest.

DEVOUR was holding his heart in place. Begging him to relent. To just become enough of whatever it was programmed to look for.

He pulled away.

The piece of the engine’s math held captive within the core rippled through every tendon and artery connected to the citadel itself. Piercing through execution chains like ripping metal.

The chains connected to Veyra’s body exploded apart.

Heavy limp from where she landed in Elena’s arms.

No one breathed for a few seconds.

Veyra exhaled.

Elena laughed in relief before composing herself. "She’s alive."

Footsteps pounded against the metal engine chamber doors.

Lady Vharra stepped through the smoke and debris littering the ground.

Her face hadn’t changed since before the attack began. She still wore the black dress atop her iconic glass armor. Only now chains whipped around her back like demonic wings. Every guard left alive immediately dropped to a knee.

Vharra locked eyes on the destroyed engine piece for several heartbeats. Then on Veyra cradled safely in Elena’s arms. Then on Austin Veyron himself.

"You have killed a sovereign heart," she said.

"You built it from people."

"I built it from inevitability."

Rin pressed a knife against Vharra’s spine. Kaela brought her spear to bear overhead. Everyone from the delegation linked arm in arm no matter how injured or tired they were.

"I commend you," Vharra said.

"You spared her." Austin Veyron said. "To use later."

"You are mistaken." Her grin stretched wide. "You have mistaken mercy for victory."

Metal groaned from every entrance way leading into the engine chamber.

Tower chains whipped through the smoke. Thousands upon thousands of dark lines whipping themselves outwards across the horizon.

Voices.

Pitched voices belonging to every single person Vharra weaponized the sovereign heart against.

"The heart was only the beginning," Vharra said. "The network remains intact."

He stared into her eyes then away to look at Veyra.

He hadn’t failed. They had won this one for her.

They had rescued her.

Now the war would just drag everyone else down with it.

"Get up." Elena ordered.

Veyra stood regardless of the hand still connected to her shoulder. Execution chains were gone but black smoke burned across her wrists and collarbones where the engine had attempted to take them. She lifted her gaze to meet Vharra’s unaffected.

"You always build empires too large," she said. "You think nothing can survive underneath you if you can’t see it with your own towers."

Vharra’s expression hardened. "And you believe nothing will survive over you if you tear them down."

Every tower chain ripping out from the citadel thickened and blackened. Thousands of voices screamed out across distances Austin Veyron could hardly process. Some begged for help. Others issued commands. A few were simple names being read aloud from registries.

Tessa went white. "That’ the claim networks. Every chain leads back to someone’s home."

Orena met Austin Veyron’s eyes. "If Vharra has every territory linked right now she can draft every person with a debt they can’– army sized forces to track them down, or supply contract into this war."

"We destroyed the supply lines," Austin Veyron said.

Vharra laughed quietly. "With what? Your ragtag rebels? Your wonderfully defiant refusal to take power?"

He hesitated to answer. All Austin wanted to do was scream back at her. Tell her what would happen when someone bigger than her monsters screamed back.

Instead he looked at everyone protecting the perimeter around Veyra. At Tessa and Orena who defied him twice tonight. At every person who decided to cross that line no one told them they had to.

"No." Austin Veyron said. "With every person you ever taught to fear you."

Vharra’s chains flapped against the air around her.

Black glass plummeted from every tower arch around them.

Half the citadel destroyed itself to put up a fight. The entire delegation ran for the service tunnel with Kaela and Rin blocking their path. Seven dragged the brace behind him with one shoulder and Veyra’s limp corpse with the other before she finally collapsed. Austin Veyron clawed his way through the tunnel after them.

Black shards of glass crunched underneath his boots as he escaped the engine chamber. Smoke filled the air far too thick for him to see much past his hands. But before it swallowed Vharra up entirely he caught one last look at her standing above the cracked core.

She was expressionless.

Alive.

Her hand rose from her side to wave at him over it.

"Build your petty rebellion," she called out. "Let me teach you just how expensive it can be."

The tunnel doors slid shut.

Above them the chains pulling every tower apart from each other stretched further into the sky.

Because now it was war on a bigger scale.

For everyone shouting through those claim networks.

A colder one.

More personal than before.

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