The humans were, as expected, unhappy. Nevertheless, Ortho's glare was keeping them under some semblance of control while the letter had been brought to a different building for a careful inspection.

"So, the demon lord was right in front of you, and instead of slaying the evil monster, you stopped for a chat?" exclaimed Craig incredulously.

"Yes. The demons aren't unequivocally in the wrong here. I'm not going to start killing unprovoked."

"You killed the red dragon!"

"I did, but not unprovoked."

"Have you no loyalty towards your own race?!"

"Why should I have any loyalty to someone based only on their species? It's not even as if I'm from this world. I'm impartial here. If he tries to betray you, I'll fight against him. If you betray him, I'll come after you."

Craig continued to grumble, but said nothing more. It was half an hour before the message was brought back in, declared clean, and presented to Ortho to read.

He did so in silence, his expression inscrutable. "Well?" demanded Craig, his patience expiring before even a minute had passed.

"I will speak once I've finished reading," Ortho answered without looking up.

The room of nobles was rapidly approaching boiling point, but luckily the document was not long, and it took only one further minute for him to finish his perusal. Eventually, he sighed and placed it face down on the table. "Sharing the contents will cause a civil war," he said plainly. "This is a better trap than any poison."

"That's not your decision to make!" shouted Craig, apparently the spokesman for the angry noble clique. "While we're willing to trust you with military matters, negotiations are not within your purview."

"I didn't say I wasn't going to share; I was simply providing a warning. This is, as Katie stated, a demand for our surrender. It lays out three alternative sets of terms, leaving the option up to us as to which one we'd pick. Do you have any foreknowledge of them, Katie?"

"Stop delaying," shouted angry noble B, who was again silenced by a glare.

"I don't. I suppose each set of terms favours a different group?"

"I suppose you could say that. The first option certainly favours you."

"What? Why would I be involved?"

Ortho stared some more, before sighing yet again. "It seems you really didn't know. Well, the options are as follows. One: Everyone in the kingdom submits to a slavery soul brand. Everyone. Man, woman and child. Noble, commoner or king."

He was interrupted by a bang from the right side of the table, where angry noble C had slammed his fist into it hard enough to leave an impression. "That outcome is exactly what we're fighting this war to prevent! I will never submit to slavery!"

"I'm more curious as to why you think that option favours me?" I asked.

"If people would stop interrupting, I would get to that," said Ortho, unbothered by the noble's outburst. "The concession here to us is that the slavery would not be to the demon lord or the dragons, but to Katie."

I had never before realised it was possible to choke on air, but that statement was enough for me to manage it, leaving me coughing and spluttering as I tried to recover from a simple breath gone epically wrong. "What?" was all I could manage.

"It doesn't seem complicated. Option one is to enslave the entire human race to you."

"She's betrayed us! She's working with the demons!" exclaimed someone, but my mind was too busy spinning its wheels to work out who.

"I've already established she had no prior knowledge of these terms," said Ortho calmly. "Of course, if you want to arrest or kill her, I'm not going to stop you from trying. At this point, the loss of a few more men will make no difference."

"What?" I uselessly asked again, before putting forth all my effort and managing to slightly improve my eloquence by adding a second word. "Why?"

"I have no idea. I am simply reading what is written."

What possible reason was there? Because of my treatment of the fox-kin? Or did he think being enslaved to a human would be more palatable to them than to a dragon? But nobles would never accept slavery, whoever it was to. That couldn't possibly be a serious suggestion.

"Option two is a reform of society. There is a list here of nobles and merchants who are alleged to have assisted in or condoned the kidnap and sale of demons, who are to be publicly executed. Remaining nobles are to be stripped of their rank, and power will fall to a council of elected officials in each territory, with a larger group for central administration. Observer posts are to be created in each council for the demons to monitor compliance. There are also some commitments we would be required to make that will not be controversial."

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

So that would turn the kingdom into a democracy? Stripping the nobles that the demon lord blamed for the incursions into his territory of their power and giving him the ability to watch all future lawmaking. That didn't seem a bad option, but none of the nobles would be happy about it, least of all the ones on the execution list. How many in this room would be? Craig had certainly paled at the mention of execution, so he was under no delusions.

"Option three is occupation. It imposes no limits on our self governance, but we will be required to disband all armies and combat forces. The manufacture of weapons would be banned and all existing weapons destroyed. Mages would be required to wear limiters to prevent use of offensive magic. Our safety would be guaranteed by demons living in our territory, who would also act as an enforcement squad, with explicit permission to act on past crimes."

So that list of nobles and merchants would end up dead anyway. And it went without saying that should the humans ever do anything unpalatable, the demons would be in a position to win a war within minutes of it starting. Or even if a war didn't start, their position would leave the humans completely open to abuse.

I'd been expecting something along the lines of paying restitutions, freeing their prisoners and committing to keeping the border impermeable. From the expressions of everyone in the room, so had they.

"Option two sounds acceptable," said one of the quieter nobles. "I will, of course, need to consider that full list of commitments, whether or not you think they are controversial."

"And you don't care at all about who is on that list?" shouted angry noble B.

"I think everyone here knows whether they are on it, assuming the information gathering of the demon lord is accurate, but even if I am, my life is a small price to pay for the safety of my citizens, is it not?"

So, this is why Ortho expected civil war. I was wrong about each option favouring a different group of people. Option one was out because it involved enslavement. Option three required trust in the demons that they did not have; if the demons disbanded the human army and destroyed their weapons, but then betrayed them, humanity would be wiped out in days. They were only there to make option two sound more palatable. It was the only one that they would consider a viable option, but it divided the nobles into those who valued their power and those who valued their people.

Ironically, those who valued their people could probably get voted straight back into power, if they desired.

"I would appreciate you not picking option one, since I intend to go home at some point, but I don't think there's any danger of that in the first place."

"Of course not," snapped Craig. "We're not surrendering at all! All we need to do is say we're considering it, and delay until the new summoning circle is completed. Hopefully, the new set of heroes will be more resolute than this failure."

"We have six hours to decide before attacks resume," added Ortho, a fact which I felt he should have mentioned earlier. "Well, more like five hours now."

"Then Katie can go and demand more time. Even if she's too cowardly to fight, surely she can do that much."

"I could, but I won't. Besides, the demon lord can read minds, so you've already spoilt your own plan by telling me of it."

"Gah... You useless..."

"The latest schedule indicates another nine weeks until the replacement summoning circle is completed," said Ortho. "If Katie could buy us a day, or even a week, it would achieve nothing."

"It would give us a chance to reorganise our forces," said one of the more considerate nobles.

Ortho tapped his fingers against the desk, looking off into the distance. "No. We've lost Muigal Pass and thirty percent of our combat-ready forces. The demons have lost closer to twenty, and they outnumbered us to start with. Even if we went as far as to conscript every last man and woman in the land, and managed to bring every one of them to the front within whatever time Katie bought us, the grand barrier would still fall before a new summoning circle was completed. We can't win this with conventional warfare."

"Then if Katie won't willingly help us, we just need to force her to. I've got plenty of slave collars in my..."

Craig's latest speech was rather spoilt by the way charcoal silhouettes didn't have the necessary organs for talking. His outline stood in the middle of a circular patch of wall that was glowing a dull red and clinking as it cooled.

"Could you please refrain from killing my councillors?" asked Ortho with a sigh, but I was almost sure I saw the corners of his mouth twitch upwards.

"Is that all you've got to say?!" yelled angry noble B. "She just murdered Lord Slecher!"

"Vaporised, in fact. Faster than any of us could even draw weapons. As I said earlier, if you wish to arrest her, you are welcome to try. However, if you value your continued survival, I would advise against it."

"But she's here working for the demons! She destroyed the castle and killed the king! And we all know damn well that she was the one responsible for the fall of Muigal Pass."

"I haven't attacked anyone who hasn't attacked me first. In your castle, at Muigal Pass, or the red dragon."

"Lord Slecher didn't attack you."

"No, he was about to order others, who probably didn't..."

For the first time in the conversation, Ortho hit me with his glare, and despite the situation, I suddenly felt like I was a four-year-old back in preschool, with my teacher expressing her disappointment at me weeing on the carpet. My complaint died on my lips, mid-sentence.

"Enough," demanded Ortho. "If anyone else would like to commit suicide, please do so when we are not as time constrained. For now, we need to decide how to proceed. As Lord Slecher mentioned before his unfortunate accident, while I can point out the inevitability of our eventual defeat, I have no authority here to surrender or negotiate terms."

I supposed it would normally be up to their king to decide this sort of thing. He may have a group of advisors, but in the end, it was his decision. Alas, I'd spoilt things by dropping a castle on his head. Not that the demon lord believed he would ever surrender, so if I hadn't, this meeting wouldn't be happening in the first place.

"Of course not. That's the king's decision," snapped angry noble C. Or maybe it was D. They were all blurring together into a generalised cloud of fury. "And since the previous king and his children are dead, that would be the next in line to the throne, his uncle Claudius."

"What are you talking about?" snapped another noble. "His younger brother is next in line."

"Oh? You still support him after his performance in the war?" sneered a third.

Here they were, in an existential crisis, with five hours to go before an attack by an overwhelming force, and they're busy trying to argue that the king was someone who they thought would give the answer they wanted. I was tempted to work my way down that list and burn every noble on it myself, but aside from Craig, it wasn't as if they'd attacked or threatened me. I couldn't go around burning everyone. I'd just have to wait for them to finish arguing, and hope that it ended in time, and without the city catching fire. This was going to be a long day...