Nothing grew in the Desolate Mountains. They were a stretch of ten thousand jagged peaks between human lands and demon lands wreathed in bleak fog. Each peak so steep they seemed like giant tusks jutting out of the ashen ground. The vultures and wyverns and that made their nests at the peaks were no friend to human or demon. If you wished to cross—as Marcus as his armies did now—you’d have to weave your way between. From his vantage atop a peak, they seemed a slow river of oil winding its way west.

To hold demons in an army was a little like trying to pen cats in with a fence. They weren’t used to the shape; they’d only stay here a little while. To keep them docile—as docile as demons ever got—Marcus dripped them through one tribe at a time. Too many more and they might tear each other apart.

They were a mere hundred li from human lands. They were promised blood and glory. Soon they’d get it.

The battlefield he’d chosen was the last chokepoint before the Mountains opened up. It was boiling over with humans. Humans stretched down its middle in one long crescent of bristling spears. Waiting. He could see a stretch of pale white puffing out before them, their nervous breaths staining the air.

Then the first of the demons broke through.

A standardform, as most demonforms were—giant dark humanoids peppered with a few animal traits. This one had fangs like a tiger’s. His sworn brother burst out behind. A ramform, his body like a thornbush, horns gleaming black scimitars. His bleat made a strangled, grating battle cry. Then came the rest in a wild rush.

A black tide met the line of gleaming silver. The silver changed colors; flared red, sparked yellow, dripped blue, as each spear channeled the qi of its user. These demons had never fought humans before. Even warned shared a disdain for Spirit Weaponry, for Techniques—these little human toys they’d heard legends of, but never saw. These, it was widely believed, were the last resort of the craven. It was the body which reigned supreme.

It was inconceivable that their bodies might fall to a prickling of metal. They had heard of ‘channeling,’ this human ability, the same way they’d heard of ‘Techniques,’ throwing qi outside the body. They’d never given it much weight.

They seemed surprised when steel carved chunks out of their chests, blasted them back spurting black blood.

But now their blood boiled. These were Feral demons; they had no sense in demonform. The bloodlust had them. They threw themselves against the spears, shattering them. It was a chaos of screaming and shouting and clanking and torn limbs and ripped blood up-close. But when Marcus let himself fade back, simply observe from his perch, it merely seemed like two colors moving at each other, moving apart, then back again. If you pulled back far enough you hardly felt war was a violent thing at all.

Marcus wondered at those terrified human faces. They fought with such animal desperation… doubtless they believed they were fighting to protect their homelands. That if they failed here the demon tide would overcome them, annex their homes, seize their territories. It was a very human way of thinking, a flawed model of the world. Demons weren’t humans.

Demons and humans lived in fundamentally different environments. Humans drew from the air. Demons drew from the land. In demonic regions the land was black as coal, seeped through with demonic essence. Humans would despise it there, just as demons despised it where humans lived. And demons almost exclusively lived in nomadic tribes; what use would they have for fixed lands?

No; what demons were after was blood, and glory, and bounty. It was a matter of pride, of valor, of living valiantly in life that one may claim a high post in the wastes of Hell. Demons had little use for most human treasures. But it was the principle of the matter, the taking what was of great value to another.

Sometimes Marcus felt like the owner of a feral hound. The beast must be fed. And as more poured through the cracks, joined the battle, battering at the human lines, they slaked their thirst with blood. Even their own would suffice.

It had always seemed madness to Marcus. Then again he was a late convert to demonism; he hadn’t been raised in their ways. Perhaps it was a matter of culture, not biology. Perhaps both? He’d never been quite sure.

“Is now a good time?” Caius had climbed up the cliff face beneath him, hanging off two clawed fingers sunk into the stone.

“Yes,” said Marcus. “Please, join me. I expect we’re finishing up.”

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Caius landed with a crouch, then sidled up to join him. Together, they watched the dying battle.

The shadows had broken the line of silver to three snippets and were circling them fast. The silvers were winking out. Soon darkness reigned in the valley, and roars of triumph sprung up. They were jarring to Marcus’s ear.

“Exactly as you said,” said Caius. “The formation broke in threes, the encircling… one could think you had the power of prophecy.”

“That is very kind of you,” said Marcus. “But only true seers know the future. And even then the term ‘seer’ is a misnomer; they are feeling, in truth. Fragments come to them in flashes of inspiration. Their words are translations in the way a cartographer translates a river into lines on the page—imprecise, lacking depth. I much prefer what I do, flawed as it is… Alas. I’m prattling again… you have news for me, I sense.”

Caius grunted. “The plot’s been foiled.”

“It… has.”

“It was the girl. She raced home, fed the Hero Moon Serpent venom, which cannibalized the Duskwraith. Then she fed him the antidote.”

For a few breaths Marcus was silent. Then he burst out in shuddering laughter.

“Truly!” he wheezed. “I’m worse at predicting the future than I thought! Ah… these things never go in ways we expect. The demon flesh, the Moon Serpent… I’ve handed my assassin the dagger. What a fool I’ve been.”

“That was our best chance,” said Caius. “Already he is far too strong for our typical assassins to take quietly. And there is the Butcher to consider. Shall we try with Gaia?”

“Too risky, too volatile.” Marcus watched his army clear the valley, marching past the mouth into human lands. He’d drawn up their claw-and-tail attack pattern mere hours ago. It had played out precisely as he’d envisioned. “I want control, precision. No more sneaking poisons into soups. We need something decisive. Something that leaves little to chance.“

“You have a plan?”

“Don’t I always?” said Marcus, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “What do you know of human society?”

Caius blinked. “Little.”

“Of late I’ve been studying their urban demographics. The data is fascinating. Did you know as of last census, ninety-four percent of folk range from Qi Condensation to Early Foundation?”

Caius was giving him a long-suffering stare.

“Bear with me, I promise this has a point.”

“Go on.”

“They are an incredibly inefficient society,” said Marcus. “Their numbers dwarf demons’, yet their combined battle strength is less than half of demonkind. Why is that? Their strength is concentrated in very few powerful folk—the nobility. And if any talented upstarts were to rise from the slums, instantly they are given a crest and swallowed into the upper crust. The system remains.”

“The point?”

“Think of the untapped potential, Caius!” Marcus sighed. “They could be so much stronger than they are. They are in dire need of a revolution. Give them secure lodging, clean water, good roads and bridges and education—Techniques and otherwise—and a class system with some social mobility—and in thirty years they could rival demonkind.”

“You may be letting your imagination get the better of you,” said Caius. It was his job to say these things, to be drag Marcus down when his head got too high. But in this instance Marcus wasn’t having it.

“You don’t know them as I do,” said Marcus.

“Sometimes you are too close to these things to see them clearly."

“On this I am quite certain. It has been done before. They could structure themselves after ancient Atlantis—”

“A myth.”

“Tsk tsk. I’ve seen relics that suggest otherwise.”

“The point?” sighed Caius.

“Yes, yes. We are coming to it. We shall agree that humanity is insufficiently strong. Demons… we are like a dog with a worn bone. Lucius grows belligerent. Drusilla is bored. Octavius has already begun baying for civil war; Cato’s blood hasn’t so much as dried! This will not do. The foil does not convince. Then there is the human Hero. A lovely boy, by all accounts. A pity he is meant to kill me. Thus two problems present themselves. Is there a way to solve both at once?”

“…Is this rhetorical, or do you have a plan?”

“I have an idea. Nothing so much as the full stem of a plan, but certainly a seed, but it needs some watering yet…it also depends, I suppose, on how fast our dear Alchemy prodigy solves the elixir issue. It is a thorny one.”

“Even for you?” said Caius, surprised.

“It would take me most of a week of nonstop closed-door study. I can hardly spare a day as it is.”

Another grunt from Caius. “Let me know when it’s time to act. Time is against you. Octavius is on the verge of becoming another Cato.”

“I’m aware.” Marcus cast his eyes to the sky. The moon was a milky sickle trampled by a swarm of dark-gray clouds. He wondered at the tyrants he read of in the annals of human history, the Red Hand, who hung ten thousand heads on the city walls after the August Uprising; the Mad King, who spilled so much blood in the Crimson Serpent Delta it was said there were still places the soil was salted beyond rescue. How easily history tarred them; how easily he judged them. Yet who was he to cast judgment, after all he’d done—after what he was about to do? It seemed to him ruling was a string of awful choices. In hard times, good rulers had dirty hands. The only moral rulers inherited the brief stretches of peace which broke up wars. History might call them good. Marcus called them lucky.

“Perhaps we may yet solve three problems at once. Tell him to rally his camps—all twenty thousand—to march at a moment’s notice. If it’s blood he wants, he’ll get it. Soon.”

***

This time, Ruyi drank her cushioning, sleeping draught, and lastly her demon flesh in liquid form.

She woke up, surprised at how painless it’d all been. She almost thought she’d dreamt it until she pricked a finger and tested the blood. It came back solid pink.

Two weeks in, and she was almost halfway through Larval.

Time to run some more tests!