Sadrahan emerged into a flurry of snow. White flecks drifted down and struck his wings like thousands of tiny arrows, only to melt against the heat of his body, his wings beat like the drums of wrath, he had eyes fixed forward to where a larger number of demons than ever he’d seen gathered together before, stood idle and waiting in a wide semicircle. ‘There are more demons there than in the human fort… hundreds…’ But that only spurred his anger to new heights.

Far from intimidated on seeing the hundreds of families, their young, their many wagons of goods, and the slew of destitute demons who carried nothing but their young or the clothes on their backs, instead Sadrahan could only think one thing. ‘They saw what he did, and did nothing…’

He closed his arms against his body, folded his wings in, and the blast of icy cold wind struck him in the face, his teeth bared as the sharp blast of cold ripped a roar of pain from his throat when it hit him just right.

Sadrahan landed at the front and center a dozen paces from the semicircle. “Who did it! Who did it! Who?!” He roared his outrage and squared himself against the gathered villagers, “Give me the name!” He bellowed. ‘Who dared make my daughter cry?! Who!’ He howled inside his raging heart, the memory of her cries as she tore her way free into the world as her mother died behind her set his eyes ablaze with wrath.

“I did it!” A demon announced and stepped from the center, “I put down the boy when he told me I’d have to b-”

Sadrahan had no interest in hearing what the fool had to say. He barely looked at the fool. The demon was one of the rare green types, thickly muscled and with a pair of hand sized teeth that protruded from the lower jaw and up to flank a large bulbous nose. He had black hair like most demons, but eyes of green like his pine needle colored flesh. Thickly muscled and as tall as Sadrahan, he was head and shoulders above most of the other demons. He was shirtless, but wore around him a series of leather strips each one as thick as his tree trunk-like thighs.

Sadrahan’s wings carried him forward and he landed a thick fist at the center of the bulbous nose, staggering the demon back several paces.

“Y-” The demon tried to speak again.

Sadrahan’s fist flew out a second time, this time into the demon’s chest, staggering him again.

“You dare!” Sadrahan roared with raw fury, “In my home?! My home?!” He bellowed only the first half of his thoughts, leaving the second screaming wrath hanging like fuel in his fiery heart, ‘Frighten my daughter, make her cry in my own home where we sleep and eat and she is supposed to be safe?!’ Such were his raging thoughts as he crashed into the green demon who finally had sense enough to realize there wasn’t going to be a chance to make a challenge or explain himself. Behind Sadrahan, demons were shouting their cheers, and ahead of him the semicircle shrank deeper.

[Cutting Claw] he activated the skill he knew best without thinking about it… a skill honed by cutting stone after stone, tearing out a place to rest his Lamashi to sleep in peace. Against a demon who never faced a tougher foe than wood…

Red blood sprayed out of the green demon’s cheek as Sadrahan’s claws ripped them open.

The blows began to rain back and forth, smashing into one another, fists hit the furious father and he felt them like the stone feels a gentle rain… while fists connected with the bleeding newcomer…

And felt like fists.

The audience of demons of all stripes watched as the rumored Demon Lord fought against the chief who injured one of his subjects…

‘So far for one fool boy…?’ The thought went up through many a mind while the smell of blood became thick in the air…

While others wondered, ‘Is this the power of a Demon Lord? A new breed of our kind rising to confront the threat?’

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While yet others wondered, ‘Is this the price of violating the law here?’

Sadrahan thought none of it, felt none of it, the stranger landed a blow against his face that finally staggered the Demon Lord, and the green threat dove at him, his own wings spread and drawing him close, he tried to rise into the air…

‘You won’t escape!’ He vowed and rose with the newcomer, and as they circled one another, rising higher and higher above the world, bloody rain fell with flecks of winter snow. Their wings created a storm of snow that whorled around them like a tornado they were intent on staining red and roars went up that rang against the mountain walls.

The newcomer darted his head toward the mountain, ‘Is there another h-’ His sudden fear rose when he heard an echo for the first time in his life, and Sadrahan’s clawed fingers wrapped around his throat. He whirled toward the stone surface and caught unprepared, the green fleshed demon lost control. ‘Wha…’ A vague part of his chaotic mind tried to understand what was happening as the choking grasp dug into his throat, the Demon Lord seemed to loom like a mountain in his eyes as he was driven toward the stone.

“No!” He choked out his denial as if that would persuade Sadrahan to stop.

It did not, blood choked off all words as it spattered past dark green lips and his back smashed against the mountainside. Sadrahan thrust his claws toward the demon beneath him.

And missed.

The green demon crumpled, slipping down between his legs and falling to the ground, leaving Sadrahan’s hands embedded in the stone.

His eyes whirled on the mass of demon villagers, and first one, then another, then another, then two more, then five, ten… and finally a wave of them went down to one knee and bowed their heads the way the now injured boy told them before.

The green demon moaned and rolled over onto his back. ‘He’s alive? Good. Then he can apologize for making my daughter cry.’ Sadrahan thought privately when he realized the fool was still living.

‘I can’t very well bring all of them in…’ Sadrahan realized in an instant, “You wait here.” He snapped at the lot and reaching down, he grabbed the demon by his horn.

“You have words to give.” Sadrahan snarled and hefted him up.

The demon only moaned, not quite ‘back’ to himself yet. ‘Fine, I’ll carry you myself then.’ And without a second thought he tossed the limp demon over his shoulder so that he dangled front and back, then wrapped one arm around the thick green waist, spread his wings, and flew the beaten male up toward the entrance of his inner layer.

Batagan watched the Demon Lord depart carrying the defeated challenger, then turned his eyes to the demons who watched the same mysterious actions and looked to each other, each unafraid to speak, each wondering the same thing. ‘What is happening? What do we do now? Do we just stay like this?’

The bat-faced demon lowered his ears, ‘Poor things, they see the power of the Demon Lord, but they don’t recognize the depths of his thought or his greatness yet…’ He told himself and then clambering up over the wall from the boulder on which he stood, he hopped down and approached.

The first stirrings of mumbling from among male, female, and child alike diminished while his feet crunched over hard ground and he held his hands out in a gesture of peace. “I am Batagan, I suppose you could say I am Master of the Fields here, welcome to Stronghold.”

Far from an enthusiastic response… their silence was like the dead.

He put one hand behind his head and rubbed it, he then closed his eyes and sighed, “Ah, if you’re worried about your leader there… he’s alive. And I’m sure he’ll stay that way.”

“Then… where… why take him?” A voice belonging to someone lost in the crowd asked.

“I expect he’s being taken to offer submission to the Demon Lord.” Batagan answered the obvious question and with his free hand he pointed up toward the cavern entrance. “He resides up there… that roar you heard before… that could only be him, he must have been told about your man’s treatment of Assamo.”

Demons could not become pale, but they’d witnessed the mountain shake earlier, and heard the roar come from within, it was impossible to deny.

“The Demon Lord shakes mountains?” Another curious and fearful voice asked.

“I didn’t know he could do that either… but then,” Batagan shrugged and let his hands fall limp at his sides, “I’ve never seen anyone attack any of his subjects before, either. Our Demon Lord breaks stone with his hands, it makes sense that he could make stone quake with his voice. Just remain here, and when he’s received the submission of the one in charge, I’m sure you’ll be allowed in.”

Rumbles went up from more voices than Batagan had ever heard before, while they seemed doubtful and worried, with their darting eyes and in some cases, desperate, destitute looks, with lips bitten down on hard enough to draw blood, wringing hands and shivering shoulders that were busier than even the winter chill should have compelled.

The silence stretched out with the passing moments, and to fill that span, Batagan rushed out a question he was sure the Demon Lord would want to know. “Why are there so many of you, I thought only six or so went out… and where are they?”

A slender demoness near the center, green as the beaten leader and clad in long pants and a leather shirt, with thick protruding teeth rising from her lower jaw answered with quiet bluntness… “They are gone.”