Chapter 54: An Escalation To Third-Party Arbitration

The crowd surges back together at the tortoise-kin woman’s words, murmuring amongst themselves in tight little clusters, nodding, arguing, nodding again, torches passing hand to hand as the discussion spreads outward through the square in ripples.

It reaches an agreement fast enough, a matter of minutes, not the hour Lucien might have expected, that he starts clapping before they’ve even properly finished, the kind of speed that suggests this isn’t the first time this particular village has needed to summon a goddess on short notice.

"Excellent idea," he says, beaming, already striding over to the old woman. "I’ve been hoping to meet the Beast Mother anyway. Ever since I first heard her name, actually." He turns to her fully, offering a small, genuine bow. "Thank you for believing in me."

She squints up at him, entirely unimpressed, leaning on a gnarled walking stick that looks older than the village itself. "I’m just trying to get the demon lord lynched, mister."

His mouth falls open.

Behind him, Serenith chokes back a laugh, floating just far enough away that Lucien can’t see her body shaking with it.

"My reputation as the Demon Lord," he mutters, "is genuinely dire. I can’t let this continue. I’ve never been this unpopular. Not even after the Everglades incident. Something needs to be done."

"Several somethings," Serenith chuckles in agreement. "Starting with never announcing you’re the Demon Lord to an armed mob again. That would be a brilliant start!"

The mayor pushes back through the crowd at that moment, chest puffed out, chin lifted in the exact posture of a man trying very hard to look like he’s still in charge of the situation.

"It has been decided." he announces proudly, "We will perform the summoning ritual."

"How can you encourage this?" Serenith asks, heading shaking as she watches the town decide Lucien’s immediate future. "The Beast Mother could actually devour you!"

Lucien waves her off.

"Fine!" Serenith huffs, "Remind me to say I told you so when she bites your head off."

A solemnness falls over the crowd, which Lucien notices.

"What exactly is the summoning ritual?" he asks, genuinely curious now.

"You don’t deserve an explanation,"the mayor says, folding his arms, doing his level best impression of a man with actual authority here. "You’ll see it soon enough, Demon Lord. "

Kamiko cuts in smoothly before the mayor can inflate his ego any further, and one of her minotaur guards turns a sharp, unimpressed stare at him until he snorts and oinks and vanishes back into the crowd.

"In times of great distress," she explains, settling deeper into her conjured chair, pipe smoke curling lazily upward, "we summon the Beast Mother directly. Last used during a dwarven invasion, a generation back, before my time even. She answers. And there’s always a reckoning, that part hasn’t changed." She counts the possibilities off on her fingers, one by one, entirely too casual about the whole thing. "She might kill you for wasting her time. Kill you for being a demon lord outside your territory. Devour a dozen villagers, if she’s in a particular mood that day. Or... if we’re genuinely lucky, she’ll ignore the whole affair entirely and everyone simply goes home disappointed."

Lucien pales slightly, some of his earlier confidence draining visibly from his face. "I thought you liked me."

"I do, darling. Enormously. You’re a treasure." She shrugs. "But as far as I can tell, you’re just Lucien, a clever little merchant with a magical manhood. If you were actually the demon lord, I’d have had you killed the moment you set foot in the tribelands. Everyone knows a demon lord is powerless outside his domain. All the more reason to strike while he’s vulnerable. Demon Lords can’t be trusted. All of recorded history confirms it. It’s practically a tradition."

The crowd murmurs its collective agreement, several heads nodding along.

"What I hate," Kamiko continues, "is that you keep insisting, despite all evidence otherwise, that you are our mortal enemy. So now... now, I’m compelled to check. As much as I’d rather just believe you’re a bad liar with good hips." She softens, just slightly. "I do hope the Beast Mother finds you favorable. Perhaps you’ll survive her summoning. I was genuinely looking forward to working with you. Crazy as you are." A small smile. "The crazy ones do tend to change the world. And... apparently bring twenty-one of my girls to finish in a single afternoon. That kind of talent is rare."

Lucien bows with a theatrical flourish, sweeping one arm wide. "I live to serve."

"You keep saying that," Kamiko says, puffing on her pipe. "I’m starting to suspect it’s the only sentence you actually mean."

"I mean all my sentences." He smirks, "Some of them are just more profitable than others."

Kamiko throws back her head and laughs, loose and genuine.

"Breakfast!" she calls out with a wave of a hand, "For everyone!"

Because apparently a man about to face possible divine judgment shouldn’t have to do it on an empty stomach.

The lynch mob, somehow, against every reasonable expectation, dissolves into a full village picnic within the hour.

Blankets spread across the square in a loose, colorful patchwork, breakfast passed hand to hand between neighbors who’d been ready to set each other’s torches alight moments earlier, stories and gossip trading freely alongside bread and cured meat and small cups of something that smells suspiciously like homemade spirits.

Children who, minutes ago, were being hurried indoors by nervous, white-knuckled parents now chase each other between the blankets with fistfuls of stolen berries, shrieking with laughter, entirely unbothered by the morning’s near-execution.

Somewhere near the well, a trio of otter-kin have struck up a lazy, cheerfully off-key tune on a battered fiddle, and a few couples have already started swaying to it, more out of habit than any real rhythm.

Pitchforks lean forgotten against fence posts and doorframes, casually repurposed as impromptu bread-toasting sticks held over small cooking fires.

If Lucien didn’t know better, watching the whole transformation unfold in real time, he’d assume this was simply how the village greeted any unhinged stranger who wandered through. A mob first, brunch second.

Lucien lounges beside Kamiko on a spread blanket, still deep in business talk, sketching rough infrastructure plans directly into the dirt between bites of pastry. Roads here, a proper trading post there, a bridge over the river the otter-kin currently guard so jealously it might require its own separate negotiation entirely.

Kamiko listens with genuine, engaged interest, occasionally correcting some detail about local geography he’s gotten slightly wrong, or reminding him exactly which family will absolutely riot if their ancestral land gets rerouted around without consultation first.

Serenith drifts nearby, arms loosely crossed, watching the two of them casually build the framework of an empire out of crumbs and morning enthusiasm like it’s the most natural thing in the world, something that unsettles and impresses her in roughly equal measure.

Val emerges from the inn a while later, squinting hard against the late-morning sun, one hand shading his eyes as he takes in the sight of the entire square gone from bloodthirsty mob to lazy garden party in the span of an hour.

"Strangest post-execution ritual I’ve ever seen," he mutters, mostly to himself, "and I’ve seen quite a few."

Then his eyes land on Lucien, who was sitting cross-legged in the grass, surrounded by half the village’s finest pastries like some kind of self-appointed dessert king holding court.

Val’s confusion deepens considerably, brow furrowing as he tries to reconcile this scene with the mob he half-remembers looking at from his room upstairs.

He shoulders through the loose crowd toward Lucien, several beast-kin scrambling politely out of his way without quite seeming to consciously notice they’re doing it, and looms over Lucien at his full, considerable height, one eyebrow raised in silent, pointed question.

Lucien squints up at him, hand at his brow to block the morning sun’s glare, cheeks stuffed, and mumbles through a mouthful of cream pastry.

"Hi, sleepyhead!"