The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

Someone had thrown down a traitor beacon.

The lobby was quivering echoes of panic—voices tight as wire, smoke pooling red against pillars.

Elena nervously fingered a brass patch like it might begin whistling again; her knuckles shiny white with sweat. Seven weaved between panicked bodies gracefully; lithe as cats because soldiers knew how to place bodies wherever order demanded them be placed.

"Take down every beacon." Austin instructed. "If you don’t know its song don’t hum at it." Kill the bird. Don’t kill the tree it nested in.

Men scattered into the hotel’s belly. Dust motes swam through ancient service tunnels lined with steam pipes coiled like icicles. Austin slid his palm along a seam in the plaster until his fingers were curled tight; felt the building breathe back at him: quivering minutely beneath his Flesh- Eater as it wound through joist and balustrade. His System chirped quietly in his mind; miniscule and demanding: [Contract Perception: Signal contains multiple chain- beacon signatures. Internal signals: 4. External sig relay: possible. Malrec packet sent. Suggested response: incapacitate nodes.]

"We’ve got four." Elena gasped. She yanked open a radiator vent and uncovered the first receiver tucked away behind decades of corrosion. Micro sigils scorched into brass skin, designed to sing decrees. Austin felt the chain-anchor nest inside his skull—a featherweight against bone but intrusive as mal-code trying to bleed the ancient hunger churning in his gut.

He wanted to rip that command from the pipe. Devour it so he could silence that wood before someone else could make the building listen to their voice. Numbers bloomed behind his eyelids: [Demoniac Assimilation: 6.2%.]

He couldn’t.

Instead he bashed the patch flat with the heel of a wrench until it cracked through the metal veneer and muted the receiver’s song. The System rewarded him for his diligence: [Enforcement trace: proximal beacon destroyed. Malrec alert escalated.]

They found two more tucked away afterward: hidden away like secrets. Behind a painted support column, underneath the lip of a service vent. Every time Austin silenced a beacon felt like robbery—Austin and Elena’s progress clawed away fragment by fragment but not doing so meant civilians screaming a language designed to swallow them whole.

Then they found the mezzanine.

There was a brass plate hammered into the central support column where Austin’s vines had arced across the lobby to function as a balcony. The metal had been affixed flush against living wood, hooked into his Flesh- Eater like bone grooved into muscle. Austin felt it flex beneath his nerves like burning coal shoved against skin.

[Hostile Contract Detected. Pattern: Structural Enslavement. Authority Source: Chain- Warden Class. Priority status: immediate.]

"Chain- Warden," Seven croaked out, words dry as ash. "They can cage flesh. They can cage wood. If they anchor themselves here." He jerked a thumb at the building’s embellishments, "They can talk to the hotels graft."

To think about it made his chest stitch together beautifully awful. Like learning the definition of cage. Chains could cage hands but they could also cage will. They could leash every woodcarved bird and vine unto obedience.

Austin felt go rigid.

Upstairs Vorth laughed and the noise cascaded slowly like the fall of a guillotine blade. "Harvest leaves do not change waters," he called down at them tauntingly. "Garden listens to it’s master."

Scouts skittered along the mezzanine by then—limber men with chainthrowers slung across hips; coils snagging on belts like dead rattlesnakes. Links flashed with lawstone. One threw a hook and the chain reeled toward the balustrade caterwauling hungry. Metal burrowed into flesh and wood at the contact point and living fibers cinched tight.

"Don’t let it anchor!" Austin yelled without thinking, whipping his head around violently. He charged toward the cascade of bodies shoulder lowered and caught whip-like chainlink across his ribs. Abraded painfully then tugged free. He grappled and shoved violently; yanking the hook free with tremendous primal force he probably didn’t realize he had. Metal shrieked against contact.

Gunfire sang back response—icy and deadly where Elena opted to shred with bullets. Somewhere on Austin’s team clawed at paneling; digging for electrical that relay might have snaked through.

System etched microscopic striations of law into his mind like static; pulsing toward organs.

Chain latched around a support pillar. Sigil flared across hardwood and suddenly the balcony shifted beneath him—not curling defensively as it had been taught but intentionally. Willful movement—like an arm/trunk folding down. Instead of putting a hand on impact to brace himself Austin watched helplessly as wooden boughs slammed down ontop of a cluster of evacuees; striking at human granite with clockwork efficacy. Like it knew exactly what it was doing.

"No!" Elena screamed quiet-bite through smoke thick as sand. She dragged two survivors out from writhing wood by sheer force, vines reeling around ankles and calves. Wood against skin sounded grotesque; a cacophony of rusted nails and screams.

Seven hissed low and hard. "They’re chaining people. They’re chaining this place."

System provided dry analysis in clean text: [Chain- Warden: current knowledge involves the binding of said entity to sentient and nonsentient targets via contractual law tether. Cascading effect: control over symbiotic architectural biota. Anchor is capable of superseding native signature threshold- If true— safety projection: hive-mind inversion.]

Austin felt his stomach drop out. His Flesh- Eater was supposed to protect him. Austin thought their contract had given him leverage—he and Elena knew how to herd/buildings with law but Malrec had Chain Wardens that could whisper in wood. They could overwrite every safeguard he installed and tear the hotel down like currency. Could cage his flock. His vines— sculpted into loving shapes to keep his flock sheltered under stone could unravel and choke them until they begged for mercy.

Ground shifting beneath his boots before he fully registered his own movement. Hauled himself over hands and knees toward a scout teetering dangerously on the edge of the mezzanine. The other man was tall and wiry—used to this sort of thing probably chainthrower already spooling into action. Austin tackled him where he knew to— shoulder, knee, fist shoved roughly until humanity lost and a scout went rampading through panic, tumbling sideways over the railing to collide across marble.floor.

Chain reeled free from wood and latched back onto a support beam instead, burrowing into building’s foundation.

"Break the song!" Austin yelled instinctually. "See where it weaves through plaster, sever it like arteries and maybe—"

Something smashed through plaster nearby and they staggered into basement proper where employee lounges turned municipal landfill had collected decades of dust. Chains slapped against floorboards like wagon wheels counting carefully. Men in chainmail barred the stairwell—a hell of a buzzkill plated men waiting for backup to arrive. Links braided together above the hatch; heavy brass plates thrumming aggressively under scrutiny.

Chain- Warden himself wasn’t present only hearwhere voiced bouncing hotly off plates like punched paper, concussive and absolute.

Austin was running before his boots even hit ground. Shoulder barged through bodies until chain cut dangerously close enough across his forearm the metal buzzed white-hot against nerve. It hummed against him, sharp with authority. Commandments etched not in flesh but jurisudence.

He wouldn’t budge.

Wouldn’t let it drag him wherever they wanted him. Instead he grabbed chain wrist-deep and began to tug—pulling not with hostile intent but diplomacy; leveraging his mass against cold iron.

Man on the other end dropped to his knees from struggle; feet skittering beneath until Austin was spinning again knife-edge toward new terror. Someone went for his thrower and Austin twisted violently; wrenching the tool free of hands until splinters sprayed lap and metal contorted into egregious scrap.

That was when one of Austin’s vines —a segment of railing—writhed upward and striking toward ceiling. Wood shifted, shifted fluidly until it resembled a fist with twice too many fingers; and pointed directly at his face. Austin felt System freeze in dread anticipation.

[Hostile Override achieved. Structural obedience: confirmed. Immediate stability readings: COMPROMISED.]

"No!" Seven growled, but his objection was meaningless by the time digit settled against flesh. Skin gave way easy like dough and tendon then slammed down ontop of survivors batting through splintered timber like a farmer coming to take his cattle. Vines whipped around bodies— meant to cage rather than protect. Flesh warped around ribs and mouths greedily, insistently like a father pulling teeth from son’s smile.

"And this," Vorth crooned silk through blade, tone twisted satisfied amusement. "Is why we came back to recruit you, boy." He gestured between hell unmade at his feet. "Devourer."

There was fire in Austin’ bones now—a dull roar trumping white noise in his ears. Pressure crawling across him that made him want nothing more than be made meal. Outside he pictured tearing through brass plate until he could rip sound from wood and scream until nothing else existed but his voice and lone capability to coerce that building into obedience.

Undoubtably his neck bitten through from behind because System fed him suggestion as cruel joke: [Priority directive: sovereign ingestion STAND DOWN immediate destruction.]

Eat and let Malrec bask in victory. Tear it all apart and doom everyone still ensconced in lobby to die like vermin. There was no winning.

Austin hacked away with crowbar blade instead, serrations ripping woodhand until....

...it gave. Flesh-tears of sap and vine-gore sprayed grotesque; section of wood yielded beneath his strikes then pulled away from swings only—

—to tug back on his ankle, securing him like gravity itself.

The world tipped. Entire building felt lurch under his boots like chorus changed directors. Floors warped ominously beneath feet, whole lobby careened like needle tossed too close to magnetism.

Flesh-root Austin so lovingly grew to shield children from pain recoiled around him like hangman’s knot. Screams reached ears.

Metal ground against teeth and suddenly Austin remembered how to listen to that old song sing again.

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