Chapter 10.5: Farmers Don't Count As People

Many of them never knew peace. From the day they crawled their way out of their leathery eggs and stood on gray wobbly feet they were trained for war. Sometimes their grandfathers spoke of happy days, when harvests went to trade ports not ravenous armies, and children grew tall having never seen death. But more often than not they cursed the humans and their heroes instead.

In the aftermath of the great war and their lord's death, the demons were united by only one collective goal: revenge. Forged in grief, their flagging industries and broken culture began to heal, albeit a twisted healing. Those who could not fight, the mothers, the youth, and the elderly, threw themselves wholeheartedly into revitalizing the economy. They sacrificed rest, luxuries, and dreams to the war effort. And those who could fight swore themselves to their cause.

It was honorable to become a soldier. These demons tied their fates to their cause through blood rites, trading their very names and memories for power, skill, or strength. Many of them became unrecognizable to their families. They rallied around the demon with the blood slash, who was the most devoted of them all. Though he had traded his name away, they gave him a new one: Mavier.

His strategy was simple – avoid human armies and target the heroes themselves. After decades of watching his people die, pitted against expendables, the demon with the blood slash knew who the true enemy was. His lord had realized it as well but was tricked and lost to the heroes. Mavier would not lose.

He would not play into their deceit. Instead, he would draw them out where their armies were too slow to follow. He would burn villages, to draw them out. Surely they would not ignore such an offense.

But they did.

He and his nameless army waited in the forest surrounding Deep Creek village, but the heroes never came. The shelled houses smoldered then were still in the light rain that came and went over the next week as they waited. The carrion birds came and picked clean the villagers, just like the last village. But the heroes never came. He had even made sure a few villagers escaped, so it could not be that this village was unknown. Mavier's contempt for the human race grew with each day he waited. Though he himself ruthlessly killed, he did not understand how the lives of one's own people could be valued so little by those who would take on the pretentious title of Hero.

So be it.

He would just have to find some place they did value, perhaps a place of strategic importance, to coax the spineless worms out of their city.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The great hero Elena looked around her drab and cold office with a sigh, wishing that the fire in the hearth would actually warm the room for once. She wasn't surprised, of course, the prison-like castle she was stationed in was always like that, but it never stopped her from wishing.

A knock on her door jolted her out of any wishful thinking. "Come in, the door is unlocked," Elena shouted, already curious over the interruption. She was terribly bored.

"Greetings to my lady," A chainmail-wearing soldier bowed, "I have news that my lady may find interesting. Demons have once again been spotted roaming the land."

"Demons? Clarkson, I thought that they were all extinct years ago?" Elena questioned, obviously confused.

"I thought so too, but it has been confirmed by a few surviving villagers I questioned as they were headed to the capital. If their accounts are to be believed, the leader has a skin of grey, and has great sway over a pack of monsters and other grey-skinned beings. Demons for sure."

Elena could only crease her brow at the troubling information. "So, they are attacking innocent villages now?"

"Yes, two villages have been completely razed."

"Fucking lizards! Those scum always find new lows to sink to. What are the others doing about this disaster?"

Clark gave a sad smile. "Well, it is as you expect. They don't care."

Elena's mail-covered fist smashed down on her desk in rage, adding more dents to the already splintering table. "Of course those assholes don't care. Just a bunch of psychos and lazy sociopaths. They probably expect me to solve it." Elena's face twisted with hatred by just remembering what she guarded here, and how she could never leave.

"Perceptive, my lady," Clarkson said respectfully, "would you like me to take some boys to wipe out the lizard bastard?"

"No, no. We have far too few trustworthy men here as it is. Half the men here would have been executed, but it's more convenient to dump them here on us. I would rather not lose the handful that I know won't stick a dagger in my back if opportunity provides." She could only shake her head at the circumstances that had led her into an exile in all but name.

"One day, Clarkson, when we figure out how to kill that rat bastard downstairs for good, I will return to the capital, and there will be a reckoning."

Clarkson laughed, already imagining the joyful scene of Elena planting her mace into the heads of the cocky heroes in the capital. He hated his own exile and the heroes that put him here just as much as she.

"It's my guess the demons seek revenge on the heroes for the death of their lord. I believe he is trying to draw them out, but maybe once he finds out my lady is here, he will march over and save us the trouble."

"Wouldn't that just be peachy?" she said, only half sarcastically. She would like nothing more than to watch the demons dash themselves to pieces on her fortress. "With the way life has been lately, I can only assume the worst will happen. Three birds with one stone, both the Rat and I pushed off on the demons. Devious bastards." Elena's face settled into a sad smile. "Saved by their own irreverence for human life. Clarkson, prepare our defenses and brief the men. We cannot count on luck out here."

"Your will be done, my lady."