“Major? The general made you a major?” For a moment, all my anxiety crashed head-on with the good news Glaustro had just shared, leaving me dizzy. Sudden elation for my friend didn’t mix well with my persistent, lingering fears. Before long, though, the positive emotion won out, and I broke into a wide smile. “Congratulations!”

Glaustro laughed, happiness positively radiating out of him as he surged forward and squeezed both Mia and me in a bone-crushing hug. Bronwynn followed, watching us with a small, satisfied smile in place as he watched.

The annoying butt’s smile widened into a grin when he saw me frantically gesturing for him to save us. I would have begged, but Glaustro had completely squeezed all air out of me on first impact.

When the jolly demon finally pulled away, I was left gasping and wide-eyed, and Mia looked more poofed out and frazzled than ever. The glance we exchanged spoke volumes: when celebrating with Glaustro, we were never letting him get his hands on us again.

My poor, poor wings.

“I can’t believe this!” Thoroughly unaware of our pain, Glaustro continued to pace in his excitement. “I didn’t think I’d get promoted again… ever! I thought he was summoning us for a punishment. The legion doesn’t typically tolerate failure. Instead, he was ecstatic about all we learned in that world. Apparently, the grand duke has been looking for a Primordial for ages. I don’t know why, but…”

He launched into several theories, each more fantastical than the next. Really, was building a ‘living’ layer of the Abyss even possible? If the grand duke was looking for a Primordial in general, he couldn’t have known he’d run into an earth-aligned one…

Of course, we all chimed in with appropriate responses, encouraging Glaustro to continue his wild theorizing. The demon looked happier than I’d ever seen him, save perhaps for the flash of joy when he confirmed both Mia and I were alive and had successfully ascended. None of us wanted to ruin the moment for him.

Still, I had a lot of questions, and one eventually burned its way out of me. “What’s going to happen to our unit now? You got us way back when you were just a captain, so…”

“Ahhh, yes. We are going to have to move, obviously.” Glaustro smirked, then proceeded to turn up his nose with a pompous air. “This compound is no longer fit for one of my station.”

Part of me unclenched, though not entirely. “Of course, your glorious majorness, but I was more asking who’s going to be our direct superior officer. Unless I’m really wrong in my assumption, you’re going to be recruiting more demons, right? I mean, a major can have, what? Four sergeants under them? And each sergeant gets two captains? You’re way overdue for more soldiers.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I have three of my four sergeants in this room, then,” Glaustro replied smugly, an odd kind of vindictiveness gleaming in his eyes.

Wait, what?

“Wait, what?”

“What do you mean, what? Why do you think I waited so long to decide who my two captains would be? Sure, Bronwynn was going to be one, but what about the second? Tell me: if not you or Mia, who would I trust with that kind of thing?”

“But…” I scraped the depths of my memory, finding it remarkably easy in the wake of my ascension. “What about Tybalt?”

The mention of the demon who had briefly served as Glaustro’s second made him tilt his head in confusion. “What about him? He’s an excellent guard and fighter. He made it out of Lagyel fine. Still, he wasn’t the one I spent most of my time getting to know. Honestly, with the way you two were rushing things, I knew you’d ascend sooner rather than later. I just thought I would only have one promotion spot to offer, not two.”

“But… we are freshly ascended demons! We don’t understand all the political nuances and stuff of the legion. I barely even know what all the different divisions are.”

“You are trying awfully hard to convince me not to promote you. You don’t want the post?” Glaustro’s tone was teasing, but there was an undercurrent of seriousness that said he was genuinely asking.

“Just…” I paused, then settled on the most fundamental question swirling in my mind. “Really, why us?”

“Because I practically raised you both from your weakly mortal selves into relatively stable, powerful demons. I ask again: if I can’t trust the two of you, who can I trust?” Again, there was that teasing note, but the sincerity of the question more than made up for it.

I opened my mouth to ask if he really thought we could handle that sort of thing, but Mia beat me to it with a question that made me freeze up.

“Would we have to go on separate missions if we accept?” she asked bluntly, eyes slightly narrowed. “We’ve been getting jerked all over the place, and we never consistently worked with other units.”

“No, of course not!” Glaustro rushed to assure her, then sighed for the first time since his promotion. “Listen, my situation was a bit… awkward. All the other captains were promoted before we ever set foot on Berlis.”

I blinked, my brow furrowing. “And?”

“And, that meant they were promoted by someone. Most likely a sergeant, whom they were supposed to join once the invasion was over. That sergeant answered to a major, who answered to a colonel, who answered to one of the four lieutenant generals, who answer only to the general himself. But I was promoted by the general. Effectively, we found ourselves outside of the normal chain of command.”

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“Shouldn’t we have just joined the major who approved Wilhelmina’s promotion? You took her place, didn’t you?”

“Yes and no.” Glaustro sighed again, and I watched politicking suck the joy out of him one step at a time. “Wilhelmina is… let’s say, important, because of her standing. The general stripped her of command, but you could bet that her superior reinstated her as soon as she was back in the Abyss.”

“So, she got her spot back, and… with no major to consult, we were on our own?” I didn’t like the sound of that. “But it was the general himself who promoted you!”

“Exactly. He did it, and that’s why no one tried to strip me of my rank. But no one officially claimed us, either. Honestly? It was probably Graighast we can thank for finding an invasion to join so quickly. His chain of command led directly back to Crewe, which is why we ended up on Lagyel.”

I chewed my lip, stewing on all the revelations.

Mia, of course, was still moving at her own pace. “So all your troops will be part of the same invasions?”

“Yes, Mia.” Glaustro chuckled good-naturedly. “My troops go where I go, unless I explicitly deploy them elsewhere. That typically isn’t required of majors. Colonels and up do need to split their troops between different worlds, but I still don’t have that many. Well, I only have the one unit, really. We’re going to need to recruit so many people. I don’t even want to think about budgeting and logistics…”

Glaustro collapsed into a chair with a groan, running a hand down his face.

Bronwynn was at his side quickly, smiling as he elbowed the bigger demon. “Don’t worry, major mine. I’ll help. I used to do a desk job, remember? I was a clerk, once upon a time.”

“Oh, yeah…” I mused. “That explains so much.”

The quip earned me a glare from Bronwynn. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, you know… your sunny disposition,” I teased.

The corner of Glaustro’s lips twitched, proving that I had successfully distracted him from his oncoming panic attack, at least for the moment.

Bronwynn, of course, launched into a series of idle threats. Tuning them out with ease, I began to really consider the offer Glaustro had just made.

Did I want a promotion? I didn’t think I deserved one, and that wasn’t just my Emotion talking. I knew practically nothing about leading, or what being an officer entailed, or… well, anything past being a soldier.

Glaustro’s offer made sense from the angle of trust. It was also undeniable that, as archdemons, both Mia and I had the raw power required of an officer.

That didn’t mean I could truly stand in for an archdemon, though.

It was just like with my promotion to Archmage, or even the previous mage ranks. I had all the base abilities and raw force of an archdemon with none of the training, knowledge, or experience. To grow into the role of a sergeant, I would have to improve on so many different fronts that it wasn’t even funny.

Granted, I was now a demon. I could suck down a couple dozen souls to drain them of their skills and knowledge, no problem. But I didn’t think that would really count. After all, thanks to the Absorption Station, I had done my fair share of consuming souls as a mortal. How many of the things I had learned and stolen were truly ‘mine’? How many was I using to their full potential?

The depressing answer was… not many.

Even the swordsmanship I had stolen so very long ago was basically neglected. Its true use required two weapons, and I mostly just relied on my mother’s sword to handle combat. To reach the skill level expected of me, I would first need more training or souls, followed by a lengthy period of time to figure myself out and truly forge my own style of combat.

And that was just for swordsmanship. Could I handle leading people, on top of that?

On the other hand… did I want to disappoint Glaustro by saying no?

Over and above everything: did I want an official title within the Legion of Torment?

The answer that popped into my head almost immediately was as unexpected as it was annoying.

Yes.

Yes, I wanted official standing. Sure, it came with a heavy weight of responsibility. But it would also translate to more resources, and eventually, more power.

Power I could then use to protect those I cared about, like Mia, and Bronwynn, and Glaustro.

I hated feeling helpless while waiting for Mia to emerge from the station. I hated having to acknowledge the fact that I was just another soldier in the battle of Lagyel, incapable of truly making a difference. I hated it when Crewe used a single burst of Emotion to sunder my mind utterly and compel me to do his bidding.

So…

“I accept.”

Glaustro paused in his latest rant and sent me a confused look, prompting me to clarify.

“I want to be one of your sergeants. I don’t know if I’ll do a good job. But if you think it’s worth the risk of accepting someone untested like me, I accept.”

Glaustro’s face positively lit up. Then he turned to Mia, his eyes expectant.

The cat sighed and shot me a dirty look, but nodded. “If we can all stick together, then okay. I accept too.”

“You are not going to regret this,” Glaustro declared with enthusiasm. I tensed, catching a twitch in his arms that suggested he was about to rush in and hug us again. Thankfully, he didn’t. I was pretty sure my wings were still healing from the last bout of his affection.

“Really, this is the first time I’ve seen someone try so hard to convince people to accept a promotion,” Bronwynn groused, rolling his eyes at us. “Do you have any idea how hard people typically struggle for those?”

Glaustro’s face momentarily clouded, but then a smile was back on his lips. “Yes, well, I’m not going to make people fucking grovel for my favor. I’m going to pick people I like and who I think deserve it. Am I biased? Sure! But I refuse to ask for a thousand years’ worth of salary or a slave contract in exchange for a promotion.”

“They really do that?”

My shock must have shown on my face, because he huffed at me in amusement.

“Yes and no. Some just demand oaths of loyalty. Sometimes, you have to bribe certain officials even to get considered for a promotion. Higher rank officers typically don’t go looking for people to promote. They either have their own people lined up, or they rely on bureaucrats to find suitable candidates for them. I got stuck at captain for so long because I refused to suck up to superiors or pay bribes.”

The last part was nothing new, of course. I’d heard that rant from Glaustro many times before. But this time, he moved on quickly, regaling us with tales of the glorious future that awaited us.

As I watched the new major wax eloquent in his joy, I felt an odd, fuzzy warmth fill me.

Here was someone who had been passed over and neglected so many times that he ended up on Berlis, of all places. It was a humiliating prospect for such an experienced soldier. Now that his fortune had shifted, I wouldn’t have blamed him for shutting everyone out and hogging all the hard-earned benefits to himself.

Yet the instant Glaustro had real power, here he was, trying to pull all of us up alongside him.

Despite our initial unpleasant meeting, I had been thankful to the demon for some time now. He had even become a friend, someone I valued, trusted, and cherished.

But it was only in this moment that I committed myself to do whatever I could to support Glaustro’s climb through the ranks of the Legion.

Not because I knew he would drag me with him right up to the top, kicking and screaming, if I let him. My newfound resolve was based solely on my genuine conviction that he deserved it. Besides, friends are meant to support each other, no?

Since he had claimed two former mortals as his friends, I supposed he was stuck with us now.