Chapter 12: Conscription

Grevall Town seized being a normal town within an hour of the decree.

Nobody ran screaming in fear or despair. That would have been easier to do. Instead the whole settlement moved at once, like a hive that had been kicked. Demons hauled sacks of dried meat out of storage. Others fought over healing herbs at the herb stalls. Weapon-smiths had stopped taking orders and started taking bids.

Everyone understood that the deadline for the conscription was only three days away, so they had to be prepared.

Koda stood at the edge of the market and watched it happen. He didn’t join in, because he didn’t yet know what was worth fighting for.

Serah walked up beside him. "Lord Vaelric’s domain runs on an essence tax; every demon under his banner basically owed him essence, materials or labor. Conscripts were no different. They received basic rations and a weapon, and in exchange they had to meet a daily kill quota. Miss it, and the rations shrank. Miss it twice, and the equipment was taken back."

"So the draft is a tax, and the tax is a leash on his citizens," Koda mused.

Serah nodded in agreement.

The stronger demons had already worked that out. A broad-shouldered merchant was selling a single strip of dried hide for three times its price to a trembling scavenger. Someone else was peddling "inside information" about which officers were fair and which were butchers, and half of it sounded invented.

Vaelric hadn’t lifted a claw to force them, because he didn’t need to. His structure made the demons squeeze one another for him.

Koda turned the idea over carefully. Back on Earth, he’d always thought of a ruler as someone who held power by being feared. Here it was simpler and much more colder. Politics wasn’t a separate thing from violence; it was violence organized at scale, until the victims did the work for the one holding the knife.

’Getting stronger isn’t going to be enough on its own,’ he thought. ’Strength is only one piece of this.’

---

The bazaar lay beneath the east quarter, reached by a crooked stairway behind an ordinary butcher’s stall that nobody looked at twice.

Serah led the way. She’d explained on the walk down that the underground market sat outside Grevall’s normal trade location. There were no registered stalls and no tax collectors, which meant no protection either.

It was crowded and loud, and everything about it felt predatory. Poisons sat in open vials beside stolen rations. Forged writs were sold by a demon with ink-stained claws. Cultivation resources that never appeared above ground changed hands in the dark.

Koda noticed how many of the merchants were already packing crates and counting stock.

They were preparing for the draft too.

A dealer near the entrance took the beast core Serah had cut from the shoulder joint, rolled it between his claws, and counted out Soul Crystals without haggling much. Twenty-two of them. It was more than Koda had seen since he arrived, which didn’t say a lot.

"Keep most of it," Serah murmured. "You’ll need it for the next stall."

"Which stall?"

"The one at the back."

---

The stall had a single stool, a low table, and one demoness sitting behind it with her hands folded.

She looked young, slim and dark-scaled, with pale green eyes that didn’t seem to blink often. She smiled as they approached, easy and warm, in a way that told Koda nothing at all.

"Koda," she said. "And Serah. I wondered when you’d come down."

Koda frowned. "We haven’t met."

"No." She tilted her head. "But you’re the Peak Awakening Realm demon who made Varkos retreat. Half the district’s talking about it. And Serah’s been the one cutting cores for newcomers since before the last Town Lord’s mark changed." She said it pleasantly, as though reciting the weather.

"We need information about the draft," Serah said.

"Everyone does." Nera named a price. It was nearly the whole bundle of Soul Crystals.

Koda tried to bargain. He argued that two of them were paying, that they might come back as steady customers, that no information was worth that much. Nera listened to all of it with the patience of someone who had heard worse.

"Food rots," she said at last. "Weapons break. What I sell is the thing that tells you which of those will kill you first. I don’t discount that."

She held out her hand.

Koda looked at Serah. Serah gave the smallest nod.

He placed the crystals on the table.

"Vaelric isn’t expanding his borders," Nera said, lowering her voice, tucking the crystals away without counting them. "That’s the story he wants everyone to believe. The real target is below Grevall."

"Below?"

"There’s a fresh but unstable Abyssal Rift below Grevall. It’s full of resources and concentrated essence, and it’s also full of things that don’t want to be disturbed." She spread her fingers. "He needs bodies to go in, fight whatever lives there, collect what’s inside, and calm the anomalies so the real troops can follow."

Serah’s jaw tightened. "How many conscripts does he expect to lose?"

"As many as it takes." Nera’s smile had gone thin. "When an anomaly starts to destabilize, officers push the weakest squads in first. The anomaly destroys them, thereby wearing themselves out. Once it settles, the stronger units walk through. The kill quotas aren’t only to feed the army. They keep conscripts producing and desperate, and desperate demons don’t ask questions."

The words chilled Koda’s chest.

His fear of becoming disposable had always been abstract, something to keep in the back of his mind. Now it had taken shape. Serah stood beside him very still, composed, though he could see how tightly her hands were gripped.

’I need more than strength for this,’ Koda thought. ’I need resources, information, allies, and a way to keep from being used as canon fodder.’

---

"You’ve both gone quiet since the decree," said a voice behind them as they left.

Varkos leaned against a crate near the stairs, arms crossed, flames flickering lazily along his horns. He hadn’t been there a moment ago, or if he had, he’d been quiet about it.

"What do you want?" Koda said flatly.

"A proposal." Varkos pushed off the crate and came closer. "I’ve heard the same rumors you paid for. The frontlines will be a slaughterhouse. Three demons working together have better odds than three alone. Even I can count that high."

"You want to form a group?"

"You could say that... an alliance of sorts. At least, we won’t die in the first week." He shrugged. "We would make a good team. You fight dirty and don’t flinch in the face of trouble. She knows her way around, better than most. And I’m quite a strong fellow."

"You took everything those scavengers obtained," Koda said, ignoring the hidden jest. "And you’d have taken ours if I hadn’t forced you to retreat."

"Well, I respect the strong. That’s that." Varkos grinned, spreading his arms. "Look, I’m not pretending we’re friends. But betraying you mid-operation would be stupid. We’d all need each other once the Rift opens. Remember that, and we get along fine."

Koda studied him. He didn’t trust the foolish grin on this demon’s face. But he also didn’t see a lie behind the logic. Hell rewarded cooperation when cooperation increased the odds of staying alive, and this was exactly that.

"Okay, well have a temporary alliance," Koda said, glancing at Serah snickering at the side.

"Obviously."

"If you betray us, I’ll finish what we started."

"You’re welcome to try." Varkos stuck out a hand. Koda took it.

Serah exhaled slowly. "Then we should use the remaining time we’ve got," she said. "Food, healing herbs, anything that heals or sustains. Three days isn’t much time to prepare, but we have to try gathering resources."

Koda and Varkos nodded.

The noise in the bazaar suddenly died all at once.

Heavy boots rang on the stone stairs. A patrol of enforcers filed into the market in black lacquered armor, crimson crests stamped on each chestplate. Merchants froze mid-sale. Even the poison vendors stopped talking.

"All registered conscripts," the lead enforcer called, voice flat, "will be marked. Anyone who resists will be punished on the spot."

Nobody argued.

The enforcers moved through the crowd with branding irons already glowing, pressing them to the shoulders of every demon who’d signed or been listed. Cries cut short. The smell of burning scale drifted through the air.