The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

The Hollow Crown Road tore itself open when Lia fled.

Crowds of black crowns burst from the pavement and spun to watch them like flocks of predatory birds. Broken factories and abandoned warehouses lined every road north they traveled. The portable ledger root glowed faintly from exertion only; every time the road threatened to swallow them whole, the scribes re-signed its chosen path with new present-choose markings.

Lia kept herself near the center of the group, protected by but not confined within it.

"I am not a weakness." Lia had told Austin Veyron when he asked her to stay with the southern evacuation group.

"I know." He said. "I am asking where you want to be."

"I want to find the others." Lia replied.

The ledger signed her.

It was then that road wardens ambushed them.

Snapping pieces of black iron clawed free of ruined shipping yard walls. Robotic bodies crowned with horned chains swept through the street around them. Each one wore massive gauntlets ending in long hooks, digits pointed outward and ready to clamp down and sever the portable root line from the rest of them.

Veyra intercepted the first wave charge with her own counterattack. Rin moved above them along the roof line. Calder throbbed a pulse into the asphalt revealing hidden command knots underneath the shipping yard while Maelis lit the warehouse doors ablaze denying the wardens cover to flank the party’s route.

Austin Veyron understood what they were doing immediately. They weren’t going after Lia. The road wardens had decided to use her position to pin them into defensive positions while the hollow crown cut off the scribe’’s living route behind them.

The old court would’ve admired such efficiency.

Vharra called them for exactly what they were.

"I trained my wardens for this." She said. "Force the enemy into protecting what they love, then punish the protector."

Austin Veyron watched hooks clamp around the root line. "Help us break that lesson." He said instead.

She stepped into the ruined shipping yard herself.

Vharra didn’t command her wardens. She named the logic chains powering each of the crowns above their heads and Calder took advantage of her distraction to scramble it.

One of the wardens collapsed from feet immediately.

Another threw its hook backwards and struck the road itself.

Lia held up the silver bracelet she had kept stolen from the rail yard previously.

Black residue stained its surface, glowing towards a set of command knots hidden beneath the loading dock.

"No!" Lia screamed. "Not there. There!"

Rin reached the line first and sliced through it.

The wardens fell from formation.

Led by Austin Veyron the group sprinted through the opening.

Not away from Lia, but forwards with her at the center of their movements.

The group worked together with Lia in the middle: Veyra covering their backs. Maelis burning through the hooks while the portable ledger root continued to hold fast.

When the last road warden dropped they found what they had been looking for underneath the broken loading dock.

A map. It detailed the location of the Hollow Crown’s outer gate.

Three black circles orbited around prisons encasing it.

One had Lia’s name carefully etched inside.

Two remained blank.

The map shuddered violently once beneath Lia’s fingers.

Behind her a road warden Lia had thought killed re-took full standing behind her.

The chain crown surrounding its head had cracked in several places but remained intact. Slowly the road warden swung its hooked gauntlet towards Lia’s wrist dragging her towards the ground with it as punishment for disobeying.

Austin caught the gauntlet before it could reach Lia’s wrist.

The impact threw him across the loading dock towards the road warden.

His seed screamed at him to consume its core and end the immediate threat.

Instead Austin Veyron stared into the eyes of whoever was trapped inside the armor.

A factory worker.

One of the many who helped build the road program before they wiped her mind and re-trained her as one of their army automatons.

"Calder." Austin Veyron said. "Locate human."

Calder pulsed the road warden with a wave of resonance. It stopped dead in its tracks.

Veyra sliced open its crown control node while Rin carefully severed the command threads leading into it without hurting the workers human core in the process.

A woman sized shadow writhed out from beneath the road warden’s armor and stumbled out onto the pavement coughing.

The road warden collapsed underneath her weight into useless scrap metal.

The worker stared up at the portable ledger root buried into Lia’s wrist.

"They harvest names from the road. Send them to the gates. The hollow crown hunts down victims and witnesses."

"Witnesses for what?" Lia asked.

She pointed north. "Choose."

"To whomever shall take source."

Nahlia received the gate map through the same relay network.

"The empty circles are more than prisons Lia."

"They’’re chairs at the feast ground."

"The Emperor is collecting hungry around the hollow crown like cattle."

Vharra stared at the map with haunted eyes.

"If Sable plants three potential successors there she can force the trial to start immediately."

They couldn’t afford to march all the way back south.

"How far north can this root signature take us?" Austin asked the scribes.

They analyzed the root line still strung between Lia and them to the cracked black road they had just escaped.

"Far enough to keep you safe." One said. "If you choose the path every meter you walk."

It wouldn’t be easy but it would work.

"We take the north towards your circle Lia." Austin said. "And we arrive before Sable can claim her candidate."

Lia nodded in understanding and together the group watched the portable root brighten and turn north.

Behind them road warden armor began to buckle and fold back into the pavement disappearing into the hollow crown road network.

In front of them the entrance to the hollow crown’’s outer gate materialized out of the industrial fog.

Three empty chairs sat awaiting their prey; the hollow crown’’s hungry intended victims.

Night fell upon the group by the time they arrived.

It was less of a gate and more of boundary.

Ruined concrete towers stretching tall around an inner circle of cracked blackened earth.

Three open chairs sat waiting before them on the ground; each flanked by hungry black roots.

Lia’’s name pulsed with light brightly within one.

Two remained empty but new footprints were already trailing south away from them back towards the north.

They wouldn’t be alone for long.

"We have time to prepare ourselves."

Everyone who had made it to the outer gate first spread the white roots of the portable ledger throughout the outer ring.

The road fought back from within the smoke. Pitch black humanoid figures reached at the scout marker lines lining its edge.

Veyra and Rin linked themselves together forming a barrier while Maelis burned clear patches of ground for everyone to work on.

Calder located the gates own set of command paths underneath it and began choking the black roots feeding from their automaton soldiers.

Austin Veyron and Lia stepped into Lia’s circle.

The ring of black roots wrapped around her ankles.

"You have to let me go." Lia pleaded. "It wants me inside. If I just give it what it wants maybe they’’ll leave everyone else alone."

Austin stared down at the living crown roots wrapped around Lia’s ankles.

"Do you think that because you were too weak to resist the road it will give up on everyone else?"

The bracelet on Lia’’s wrist flared brightly.

A memory of Lia played out above the scorched circle:

Lia at the rail yard when Sable first approached her. Promising to let her go free if she would only side with the black crown road.

Lia had refused.

The road punished her choice then.

This ring wasn’t holding Lia prisoner because she was weak.

This ring was a prison because Lia had already chosen not to serve the Emperor and would die here as punishment for her disobedience.

"The Emperor will not set you free." Lia sighed. "Not until she’’s ready."

Austin slammed the portable ledger root into the base of the black ring in front of them.

"You do not have to choose to stay here Lia."

"Yes." Lia nodded.

Her present choose marker exploded into the knot network:

Lightning striking a tree.

The black ring tore itself apart in response.

Every scout symbol still standing along the Crown Road screamed in response.

The gate slowly rolled away revealing further exposure of the hollow crown’s true hunger:

An enormous crater draped in black roots with three vacant ritual seats prepared for candidates not yet ready to choose between life or death.

Inside of that crater a new crowned figure took a place to stand next to Sable.

A small girl.

The girl was crowned in black.

And one of the empty chairs beside Sable was already missing.

"This will not be the last choice you make." Sable said.

The outer gate began rolling closed behind them.

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