The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

Citadel walls began collapsing before they reached the service tunnel entrance.

Glass ceiling tiles cracked. Towers made of linked chains folded into themselves, showering burning metal onto the street. Seven carried Veyra while Kaela and Orena rushed at her back to hold back palace guards. Rin leapt forward, chopping through collapsed walkways.

Austin Veyron ran next to Elena, bouncing against her back.

The whole sky pulsed with chains.

They hadn’t spoken at first, not with voices. They’d attacked him with vibration. Pressure applied to his wrist mark like a question. Then they whispered names.

[Cinder Gate. Starved.]

[Red Basin. Claim squads approaching.]

[Grand Meridian. Network signature detected.]

Tessa stumbled from another pulse vibrating beneath her skin. "It’s not just Vharra sending messages. There are other networks feeding reports from everywhere she’s touched down."

"Can you ignore it?" Elena asked.

Austin Veyron tried.

His mark burned brighter. He saw places far from here all at once: a market avenue burning beneath a chain attack; demon women carrying crying children through rubble; white armored deserters pouring through a mountain valley; the broken streets around Grand Meridian he knew so well.

It ripped away again.

"No," Austin Veyron said. "But I can hear every person she’s touching."

Behind them another palace guard dropped from a falling ceiling beam before the tunnel entrance. Its armor shell was made of black glass; one arm was hidden by a helix of chains ending in a spearhead.

Kaela slammed her broken spearshaft against its pauldron. The guard shoved her backwards. Orena swung around its side, slashing at the joints in its kneeplates. Austin Veyron opened Root-Grain below the guard’s feet and snagged an ankle.

A single second passed with the guard’ s glowing core held open.

The hunger inside Austin Veyron whispered to claim it.

Instead he severed its command line. The guard crashed unconscious, long enough to take three terrified steps before running blindly into the smoke.

"Don’t free people during an apocalypse," Rin growled.

"I will work on my timing," Austin Veyron said.

Collapsed walls dropped around them as they reached the rail bridge leading into the tunnel. The heart of the citadel behind them imploded.

At the tunnel exit waited the glass train, every door wide open like nothing had happened. Veyra woke up just enough to see it before Seven put her down.

"No," she gasped. "That train is hers."

"It will also take us away from here," Elena said.

Austin Veyron felt the network pulse beneath his skin again.

Voices this time.

[Cinder Gate will collapse in twenty minutes. ]

[Grand Meridian network chain is searching for a host body.]

Austin Veyron stopped running.

Grand Meridian was his home. Elena’s expression let him know she’d heard the call on her radio as well. Cinder Gate was a refuge full of refugees that Veyra had helped defend against demons. Thousands of trapped civilians mixed with former resistance fighters.

They couldn’t save both.

"You’re wrong," Veyra gritted out. "Cinder Gate has nothing left to fall back on. If Vharra takes that place she gains thousands of new supplies and claimants."

"The people Elena grew up with are at Grand Meridian," Tessa pointed out.

"They’re our people too," Elena insisted.

The train doors sounded their open bell.

Austin Veyron wanted to make a decision. Make it fast. Choose home. Choose familiar streets and faces. Choose who would hurt him worst if he didn’t save them.

But he wouldn’t make that choice alone.

"We have one train, twenty minutes, and three tasks." He looked between them. "Tell me what each place can do for itself."

Elena keyed open her radio. Maelis picked up on the third try, frantic and panting but alive.

"We have the outermost root wall intact," she said. "Chain fighters are probing it already. We can defend for a few minutes if Seven reinforces our perimeter protocol."

Seven nodded his white eye at the radio speaker. "Protocol can be bolstered remotely."

Austin Veyron tuned into Cinder Gate’s emergency frequency. An older woman’s voice responded through gunfire and crumbling buildings.

"We can extract survivors from the lower districts." Her voice was edged with static. "But the defenders at the gate are pinned down. We need someone to disrupt the claim squad."

Austin Veyron looked at the train car.

"If we leave Cinder Gate now, there will be nothing left when we come back."

"Cinder Gate first," Austin Veyron said.

Elena squeezed her eyes shut for a second before she nodded. "Grand Meridian has the root wall. Cinder Gate does not."

Nobody argued.

They piled into the train.

It began moving as soon as they climbed aboard, disappearing into smoke as Seven uploaded his perimeter protocol to the network. From there it bloomed around Grand Meridian, embers of light Maelis had planted joining it and pushing back the searching chain.

Until further notice.

The train flew across debris-filled streets.

Veyra propped herself up on an elbow, blood smeared map of Cinder Gate barricaded against her chest. "Once you find the claim squad commander you can collapse the rest of her structure. Demon armies will rout without orders."

"Can’t always rely on assumption," Rin muttered.

"We’re not assuming," Veyra snapped back.

Austin Veyron stared out the window as blood colored earth streamed past.

Since finding Vharra’s signal in the sky the world had shrunk around them. Every distant emergency now came with chains wrapped around it. Every life saved had a chance of becoming someone else’s claim.

The train ground to a halt.

Cinder Gate was ahead of them, a twisted wreck of burning streets.

Black chain flags snapped above its ruined towers. A towering demon in pale armor paced the street through the gatehouse entrance, hooked standard over the heads of trapped civilians.

A voice said his name through the pulse of linked chains at his wrist.

[CLAIM COMMANDER: BASTION VOREL.]

Another notification offered itself up.

[Consumecore. Obtain Network Breaker.] Learn Network Consumption

[Your rivals need supplies. Attack networks weakened by the crisis for resources.]

His stomach dropped.

The war started sooner than any of them had been expecting.

The doors slid open, disgorging them into smoke.

Kaela led the way down the ramp, charging forward with volunteers from the sanctuary. Orena and Tessa formed Cinder Gate’ s left attack as Veyra directed them from the train entrance. Rin hung back with Austin Veyron.

"You unlikely devourer." Veyra wrapped a blood stained scarf around her mouth. "Break his standard and his forces will scatter."

"Easy enough," Rin replied.

Chain weapons fired from the gatehouse. Seven intercepted two bolts with his own armor while another punched through the train’s exterior glass. Elena dragged a burned civilian behind a burned wreckage cart to treat.

Austin Veyron had a clear view of the commander now.

He was immense, easily as tall as Seven with four armored arms and gray twisted horns. His hooked standard towered above the cityscape, tendrils of black light slithering across the street to loop around civilians trapped in the plaza.

Vorel was looking right at him.

"You unusual devourer," he said. "Submit to the network or I will crush you where you stand. Your friends will be... guided gently."

Rin’s knife clipped his shoulder plate before he could reply.

The chain commander didn’t even blink.

The Network Breaker offer appeared in Austin Veyron’s wrist again. He pictured ripping Bastion Vorel’s core from his chest. Claim lights might snap offline. Trapped civilians could be freed. He could hunt this flavor of network down anywhere.

But he would also command every single citizen of Cinder Gate.

"We’re running out of time!" Elena yelled from the market barricade.

Austin Veyron acted.

"Seven, blind their defenses. Kaela and Rin take the standard." He pointed at the cliff of panic hiding behind Vorel. "Sarielle find that commander and—" He cut himself off. "Do not hurt any civilians unless they try to escape."

His team sprang to action.

Light spilled across the street from Seven’s injury visor. Vorel bellowed and waved his standard, whipping chain fire back towards them. Kaela bolted straight through it, chains on shield hissing, while Rin attacked up the broken market wall.

Austin Veyron invoked DEVOUR—not on the commander’s core, but on each thin claim tether linking terrified civilians to Bastion Vorel’ s hooked standard.

Links pulsed warm under his tongue.

He tasted one, then another. Each unlink muted a collar charge. Each unlink turned Bastion Vorel further into rage.

Vorel charged through the smoke.

His footsteps cracked the street apart.

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