The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

The stairway down from the First Ledger didn’t ascend like stairs.

It ascended like judgment.

Each white tread only materialized after someone elected to take it. Each time the group committed, another one of Vharra’s traps activated. Bridges sealed with red-gold chains wrapping themselves around massive barricades; wardens with full armor plating slamming themselves into the walls around them; mirrors whirling around to confuse anyone they couldn’t pin down. Every time they solved an obstacle it split their party further apart.

Nahlia clutched the binder full of copied severance pages to her chest.

"Don’t break the conditions." She ordered. "If we destroy the pages we have to find the ledger again."

Veyra sheathed her sword. "Then nobody will get through us."

Austin Veyron scanned back down the line of fighters, scholars, escaped captives, and freed wardens. "Nobody is required to stay."

One of the freed court wardens stepped forward. His mask was cracked and slick with sweat. "I choose to stay."

One at a time, they volunteered. Each phrasing their answers in their own words.

The white stairway expanded wide.

Vharra’s first guardian slammed itself into their path.

Constructed entirely out of palace stone. Black pillars where its legs used to be, window chains for wings, and a full mirrored chest for its face. It crashed into them with enough force to cleave three stairs away from the wall.

Rin darted underneath its clawed foot and sliced through the chain anchor securing its ankle. It lurched away and swung another clawed limb in her direction. Veyra caught it and stabbed through the wing joint. Sarielle’s silver magic flowed into the hole it created, blasting the limb backwards.

Austin Veyron didn’t destroy its core. Buried within the guardian’s mirrored chest was a group of bound court workers, dozens of tiny faces blinking in and out of focus as the construct repositioned.

"Seven." Austin said, nodding past them. "Anchor visualization."

Lines of white light traced a knot just below the guardian’s throat. Austin kicked into the air, grabbed the chain collar wrapped around it, and willed DEVOUR through the line threaded through the anchor.

The guardian spasmed.

The stone around the workers liquified and pulled away, depositing the panicked squad unconscious but alive onto the stairway.

They rushed the freed wardens behind them out of harm’s way.

Vharra called out down the marble halls.

"You waste valuable resources trying to salvage scraps of a court that doesn’t want to exist."

Austin looked up at the red-gold chains stretching across the ceiling above them. "That’s where you’re incorrect."

The group began the rest of the ascent with one less member. Behind them, the queen’s voice called down in laughter.

They kept climbing.

Vharra’s next defense wasn’t even alive.

It was a stairwell lined entirely with mirrors. Each one reflecting a different member of the expedition wearing the sovereign crown.

In one there Elena sat upon the throne of Grand Meridian with every exit sealed. Another had Rin addressing an army made entirely of chained hunters. One possible future showed Maelis burning down the entirety of the court until there was nothing left but herself.

Each reflection began to speak.

"You could make it safe for them."

"You could stop anyone from losing everything they hold dear."

"You could decide on their behalf."

Calder stopped beside Austin Veyron. "Honestly. That’s what scared me. Not the chains. That offer that I could make it so I would never feel weak again."

Austin gripped the railing of the white stairway. "We have to move past it."

"They’re just reflections. We don’t actually have to answer them."

The group filed past each mirror in respectful silence. After enough time their reflections began to crowd behind them, filling every inch of space they could see. Austin felt the seed whisper its offer of sovereignty into his mind again, this time with absolutely no limitations what so ever.

[ASSUME SOVEREIGNTY.]

[PREVENT ALL FUTURE LOSS.]

He didn’t step off the route to answer it.

The first mirror cracked when Maelis laughed.

The second shattered when Veyra simply walked past it.

By the time they’d finally reached safety every crown-shielded reflection had been destroyed for refusing to listen.

At last, they could see the doors to the throne room up ahead.

A final row of wardens blocked their path. Some had volunteered themselves while the Queen still reigned. Others were chained to her by literal red- gold chains that burned hotter whenever they so much as thought about disobeying.

A young woman stepped forward, her sword shaking violently in both hands.

"I can’t allow you past." She said sternly.

Rin holstered her daggers. "Do you want me to make you able to?"

The girl started crying.

"No."

Nahlia flicked open the transfer book. The collar had an active claim network threaded through its command line. Cutting it free would send a pulse through every bonded warden’s collar in that hall, likely killing everyone left who wore one.

Austin stared down at the severance requirement they’d copied into the book. It would force the queen to take them up on her own condition if accepted. It wouldn’t compel anyone else to do the same.

"I guess go make room." He told the rest of his squad. "Try not to kill anyone if we can avoid it."

The party shoved through the courtyard melee style after that. Veyra wrenching weapons from loyalist wardens. Rin collapsing tunnels around collar anchors so they couldn’t be commanded. Sarielle’s silver flames seared through command threads just long enough for captured wardens to free themselves from their grasp. Austin and Calder combined forces, severing commands without destroying cores.

Chain fell in every direction.

At last the doors to the throne room loomed before them.

Beyond it was Vharra, waiting.

She still wore the same black coat she’d first put on when she’d approached Austin about reaching a bargain. Except now the gold embroidery lining her neck had cracked and shards of material fell away each time she moved. Behind her, the throne erupted into a grotesque mound of red-gold tentacles arching in every direction from its base, coating every inch of the palace they passed.

"You made it far." She said, taking a step towards them. "Far enough to weaponize your weaknesses."

Nahlia stepped into the aisle in front of them, binder open and waiting. "Controlled severance triggered. You claimed autonomy over your courts decisions, let’s see you forfeit your control over them."

Vharra smiled. "And what happens when a queen claims autonomy over her own choice?"

She pointed at Austin Veyron.

The throne beneath him opened a single page.

’CANDIDATE Austin Veyron: BEARER OF EVERY BROKEN CHAIN.’

Every strand of red-gold converged on him.

She’d rewritten the final condition on the fly to attack any witness.

The roots entangled Austin Veyron’s arms and wrists before anyone could stop her. Every single time a chain had broken throughout their court sprang into focus beneath him: Left contracts. Freed wardens. Collars yanked from servants’ throats. Every decision he’d made to undermine their authority over people flickered across the throne room floor. The seat of power tried to catalogue every moment into a debt that only Austin could ever hope to repay.

His Devour seed screamed inside his mind.

[ASSUME BURDEN.]

[OF EVERY BROKEN CHAIN.]

[YOU WILL BECOME SOLE MONARCH.]

Austin stumbled backwards. If he let her spirit absorb this the roots would release all of them. Every line of authority the court held would fracture towards his core and latch onto him, feeding off his inability to devour her gift. Power would consolidate around him and perhaps even fall from Grand Welt.

But he broke every chain in their court.

The offer said he bore them.

Elena noticed too. "How can she usurp the very laws you set us free beneath?" She yelled over the pulsing mass of roots writhing around them. "No single person should bear the weight of us all."

Nahlia sprinted forward and slammed the copied severance condition they’d written down onto the open page in front of her. Words scrambled themselves across its surface, burning the parchment right out from under Nahlia’s hands.

Calder rushed next to Austin’s side even as chains whipped at his arms. "According to that vow, your sentence states the queen bears every chain she refused to dismantle. Not everybody that exposed them."

Vharra grit her teeth against the words.

"I did not say that."

"You did." Maelis shoved. "You made that promise when you thought we’d be too scared to speak."

Escaped wardens began flooding into the throne room from out of nowhere behind them. Some were still missing half their collars entirely. Others didn’t even have arms free to throw up in defense. Every last person who stopped to watch the sentence etching Austin Veyron’s responsibilities across the throne room floor.

The girl who’d faced them down in the hallway stepped forward once more.

"That chain wasn’t his responsibility." She yelled. "None of them are ours."

Person after person flooded forward to stand beside her.

"Mine wasn’t either."

Together they shouldered every broken chain the courts of Vharra wielded over other people.

This time there were enough voices to overwhelm her.

She’d consolidated her power by speaking for others, and the second they had a chance to do something about it they took it.

The throne page Austin was forced to stand on shifted.

’WITNESS CONFIRMED. BURDEN DISPUTED’

Vharra charged towards them.

The throne spawned another curtain of roots that stretched across the entirety of the throne room. Veyra raised her sword to meet it. Rin cut underneath. Waves of silver magic crashed through the thrashing tide of red-gold as Tessa dragged Nahlia out of range of snapping chains.

Austin grabbed the vines wrapping around his wrists and refused to devour them. Pulled harder until Calder could reach the thread of magic linking the promise they’d written to the throne itself.

Together they yanked on the anchor.

The vines ripped free from them both.

Vharra stumbled for the first time since they’d left the under city.

Her throne began rewriting itself again.

’QUEEN VHARRA: UNRESOLVED DEBT’

At least controlled severance still functioned.

They just knew she was watching them now.

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