The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

The stair beneath the Oath Well ended at a door made of white chains.

There was no lock carved into its surface. No doorknob waited at its center. Instead, the First Queen’s palm coated the entirety of the door: an open hand crossed with a broken link.

Calder stopped at its threshold.

”This wasn’t here when I came down.”

”You came down with Vharra,” Nahlia responded. ”The ledger may have hidden the door from her.”

Austin Veyron stepped forward. The Devour seed beneath his skin flared not with hunger but recognition. White chains shivered across each other. A single line written between them.

’NO SOVEREIGN MAY ENTER ALONE.’

Austin Veyron locked eyes with the rest of their group. No one had to vocalize the restriction. The First Queen had designed the door’s function as a refusal of precisely what Vharra had centralized her court around.

Maelis pressed her palm against the seal. ”I volunteer to enter.”

Elena pressed her hand against it next. Then Veyra, Rin, Tessa, Nahlia, Sarielle, Seven, Calder, and the wardens who had volunteered to come down with them.

Austin Veyron pressed his hand against it last.

The door swung inward.

What lay behind it was a library larger than some cathedrals. Columns of white bookshelves enclosed a lower central dais where a single book as tall as a coffin rested open upon a stone pedestal. Its cover was blank except for the First Queen’s seal stamped across it. Frayed chains trailed away from its pages and into the walls around them, guiding filaments of light through the space.

The original ledger wasn’t stagnant paper.

It was the nexus of every contract every member of the court had ever issued.

Vharra’s crimson-tinged network had only scouted out the edges of the room. It slithered across the floor in desperate strokes, looking for anything to latch its chains onto near the ledger.

Nahlia cracked open the transfer book. Its pages rippled at her touch.

”If the red network connects to the ledger,” she said, ”Vharra claims the oath again. Every contract belongs to her.”

”And if we burn every chain?” Elena asked.

”The enforced contracts unravel.” Nahlia replied. ”But so do all of the tunnels funneling resources to this court. Transit cells might tear people out of safe trajectories. Whole districts could fall.”

There was no perfect answer.

Calder approached the dais. ”There’s got to be a way to sever it cleanly. The First Queen put that door there so nobody else would become another Vharra.”

Pages of the ledger rustled. The original book opened itself.

Images projected above the dais. The First Queen standing in front of the Oath Well with Vharra standing behind her. She looked younger in the projection. The red-gold streaks didn’t bleed through her skin. But her expression was the same.

”Name the burden,” she ordered.

Vharra answered, ”I will uphold the claim network. I will shoulder every chain that I do not decide to sever.”

The image distorted. Vharra reached out a hand to touch the ledger. A crimson wound blossomed across her throat.

”You accept the repercussions of refusal,” the First Queen said. ”Should you choose to uphold that vow.”

The image evaporated.

Instead, words phased into existence over the ledger’s open page.

’CONTROLLED SEVERANCE REQUIRES: THE QUEEN, THE OATH WELL, AND A WITNESS WHO REFUSES THE CROWN.’

Austin Veyron understood.

”Vharra needs to be at the well.”

”Has to volunteer?” Rin asked.

”Or lose at a game.” Nahlia skimmed the footnote clause. ”The ledger won’t pull her authority without making her hear the oath willingly.”

Veyra turned to Calder. ”Could we just drag her down here instead?”

”As long as she has the palace,” Calder replied, ”she’ll devour the court around us first.” She waved towards the library. Books plummeted from shelves towering over their heads.

The shelves around them cracked.

Ledgers identical to the one in Calder’s arms yanked themselves from alcoves far above. They unfolded into towering oath constructs with white-paper torsos and chain dreadheads for heads. All of their blank faces turned towards Austin Veyron and Calder.

’REPLACEMENT SOVEREIGNS DETECTED’ they declared in chorus.

The Devour seeds pulsed.

[ALEXA, OPEN LEDGER ACCESS.]

[ASSUME NETWORK MAINTENANCE.]

Austin Veyron could feel the proposition settle onto his shoulders. If he accepted both requirements, if he assumed control over the court then he could stabilize the claim network beneath them. He could secure the court’s foundation and emancipate people slowly. He could save people one at a time and choose the order they were saved in.

He would become what Vharra had been.

Calder heard it too. His hands twitched.

”I can do this.” He said. ”I know what this incinerates.”

”You are the reason why you can’t,” Austin Veyron replied.

The oath constructs moved.

One advanced towards the ledger. Veyra met it with a white inferno of flame. The construct’s chain crown wrapped around her sword blade and began pulling it towards its body, intent on shackling her weapon to Calder’s arm and adding her blade to the court’s assets. Rin cut through the crown with her sword while Sarielle burnt away the paper husk from the construct’s legs upwards.

Two more moved towards Calder.

Austin Veyron tackled the first of them. He did not DEVOUR its heart, but the clause instructing it that anyone with a seed might serve as a replacement monarch. The construct evaporated into loose pages.

Calder stood tall against the second by himself.

Its blank face reflected his own youthful appearance.

’TAKE THE CROWN. SAVE THEM.’

Calder squeezed his eyes shut, reached both hands into its chain crown and ripped it away from its head.

”I can’t save people by owning them.”

The construct folded in on itself.

One yanked at the original ledger. It tried dragging the book towards the crimson cracks spider-webbing across the floor. Austin Veyron, Elena, and Maelis dove to intercept the book on their side. Austin Veyron pressed it against their backs to hold it still. Elena deciphered the ledger’s hidden severance clause. Maelis burnt through the crimson tendrils trying to haul the book away.

The construct screamed as the book resisted its grasp.

Silence fell over the room.

Text carved itself into the first ledger’s page: a path manifesting between here and the throne room above.

’BRING THE QUEEN TO THE WELL. BRING WITNESSES. BREAK ONLY WHAT YOU CAN REBUILD AFTER YOU’VE LEFT IT.’

’THE VOICE OF VHARRA’ echoed down every corridor in the palace. Shattered by terror.

”You want me at the well?” she said. ”Then climb. We’ll find out just how much your precious witnesses are worth when the court comes crashing down on top of them.”

Every crimson tendril retracted from the library and began pooling abovestairs.

The Queen was amassing her court for her final stand.

Nahlia copied down the entirety of the controlled-severance clause into the transfer book before they could dissolve from sight. ”Now we have the equation balanced.” She said. ”The obstacle here is... it requires a witness that declines the crown the second Vharra forces them to uphold the oath. That means you.”

Austin Veyron looked down at the chains securing the original ledger shut. ”What about Calder?”

Calder met his gaze. ”I am there as collateral.” He locked eyes with Austin Veyron. ”As proof that if the witness falters then the court escalates.”

”You aren’t,” Elena stated. ”You are there as yourselves. This doesn’t get to punish either of you for trying.”

The declaration hit the ground between them with more weight than either expected.

The freed wardens below them began corralling loose pages out of the destroyed oath constructs. They could not parse the legal frameworks governing the ledger’s function, but Nahlia showed them how to mark active claim lines so that controlled severance would only sever collateral obligations away from densely populated sectors.

They could fight with strategy now, not heroism. Veyra and Rin would lead. Sarielle and the wardens would guard their flank. Nahlia, Tessa, and Seven would carry the originals of every condition clause laid out by the ledger. Maelis would light their way to the throne room with ember-flame. Calder would have to hope he remembered enough of the old court’s architecture to anticipate the Queen’s reprisals.

Austin Veyron refused to put anyone into danger they hadn’t elected to fight for. He asked them. Each answer came quick.

Yes.

The ground beneath them cracked open once more.

A claw of crimson life shot upwards from the fissure in the stone. Where its end should have been tapered off to a point, there was another clawhook.

”You cannot unmake the chains you laid.” Vharra’s voice said from inside it.

Austin Veyron stepped forwards into its path, meeting the hook with both hands at once. The seed inside him groaned in dissatisfaction at his whim. He ignored it. Grasped the hook with his fingers and tugged on the book as everyone else sliced away at its bindings.

The ledger remained intact.

The claw of crimson muscle pulling on the opposite end recoiled and evaporated.

Upstairs, the stair leading to the throne chamber unlocked for them at last.

They could feel the Queen waiting behind every lock that still answered to her.