Despite the entry of the demons, the flow of the battle did not turn. Seeing the reinforcements, the Kin redoubled their efforts to break the human formation but they quickly discovered a big roadblock before them. The barbarian warrior, Mazo, was in the middle of the line of warriors and he was slaughtering anyone that got near him. He was the immovable center that was holding the humans together and the Kin were pushed back. The human mages and hunters found big juicy targets in the T-Rexes and immediately turned their attention to the big lizards. Arrows and spells flew towards the charging lizards and two of the T-Rexes fell almost immediately. The demons responded with spells of their own. Skittering behind the charging T-Reses, demon mages threw fireballs and balls of webbings towards the humans. The fireballs did more damage but under the circumstances, the balls of webbings were the ones that were more effective. When they landed, the balls would spill apart and the webbings restrict the movement of the nearby humans. This slowed the movement of the human hunters and mages and gave more time for the T-Rexes to reach the human army. Usually, all these developments would be wonderful entertainment to the Fire Hive but right now the spirits within the Fire Hive were having a battle of their own. They were too busy arguing with each other.

“I/we can’t believe it. WE DID IT AGAIN!” A spirit complained. “We are idiots! Why do we keep making these kinds of stupid simple mistakes? All we had to do was tell the demons not to attack the humans outside the maze and we just…FORGOT!”

“Well to be fair, we were busy.” Another spirit said. “We were having too much making the mutants.”

“Yes and we would be having even more fun if the humans actually came into the maze. Now they’re not coming in and there goes our fun.”

“Well there’s nothing we can do about it now. We can’t stop the demons already in battle. Let’s just watch the battle and enjoy it.”

“Yes but we need to find a way to stop making these kind of mistakes. We just can’t keep doing it over and over again. It’s stupid!”

“We’re not stupid. We’re geniuses!”

“We are stupid geniuses if we keep making the same mistakes over and over again.”

“Okay then but what are you proposing?”

“Details!” The spirit said. “We need someone to handle all these small details for us while we focused on the big picture!”

“What big picture? We have a big picture?”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“The creation of new creatures, demons, traps, spells, or anything that catches our attention. That’s our big picture! We always get distract while we are creating and forget the small stuff. We need someone to remember and handle the small details for us.”

“In other words, you want someone to do the real work while we get to fool around.”

“…I/we wasn’t going to call it that but in essence; yes!”

“That doesn’t sound very nice.”

“No, no, no! We just appoint one of the demons to act on our behalf. They’ll probably think of it as an honor!”

“So you want to appoint…a Speaker?”

“Well yeah! We can call this demon the “Speaker”. It doesn’t really matter what he’s called right?”

“Yes it does! Someone who can speak for us while we are distracted could lord over the other demons. If we don’t name him and give him a proper title, the demons would probably start calling him something stupid like “Demon Lord”. Also if we pick the wrong demon for the job, it might give us even more problems in the future. We need to be careful.”

“You guys are worrying too much. The Speaker speaks for the hive and she don’t lord over the Kin.”

“The Speaker wasn’t appointed by the hive remember? She was appointed by the Alpha. We are appointing someone ourselves. It’s totally different.”

“So what if the demon we appoint lord over the other demons? It’s of no concern to us. We always left the creatures to their own devices, why change it now?”

“Because we need someone to speak for us to handle the small details for us…”

“Then don’t worry about this demon being too powerful and misusing the authority we give him. We can’t have it both ways.”

“What if we want it both ways?”

“Um…anyone has a solution?”

“Appoint two people.”

“What?”

“Appoint a Speaker and a Demon Lord and let them settle the job of running the demons on our behalf.”

“That could be trouble too. What if they get into conflict?”

“So what? Appointing two demons will prevent either of them from getting too powerful and besides; that’s just more entertainment for us right?”

“That’s just stupid! We shouldn’t appoint anyone. Just let the demons be themselves!”

“We’re not doing this for the demons; we’re doing this for us.”

“We are the Fire Hive; we can handle ourselves just fine.”

“But we keep making these stupid mistakes! Having one of the demons being in-charge would help us immensely.”

…crack…

“That’s just stupid!”

“No, it’s not!”

“Yes, it is!”

…crack…

“Okay, that’s enough! This argument is getting us nowhere and we’re missing the fight. What about this…we tell the demons to select an overall leader among themselves?”

“What if they pick someone we don’t want? Or someone unsuited for the position?”

“Not our problem.”

“Well…what about this; they select someone and we must give our approval?”

“WHAT? Why?”

“Look this is a compromise. We get a demon to handle the day-to-day running of the demons and at the same time, the demons get to decide for themselves who would…lord over them. Any objections?”

“Nope”

“No”

“Don’t care”

“Great! Now everyone shut up and watch the battle.”

And so the spirits within the Fire Hive settled down to watch the battle, focusing on individual demons and their contribution to the battle. This was the strange origin of the position among Demonkind called “The Demon Lord”; a compromise among argumentative spirits.