I was most definitely, and pretty thoroughly, screwed.
The chirpy menace had seemed bright and kind, at first. The façade held up until she forced us to run all the way back to where her troops were stationed because she ’refused to lose to her sister.’
Things only got worse from there.
She swept into the barracks assigned to her troops and gave them all a loud and rude wake-up call. The fact that all the grizzled-looking demons under her command were doing their very best to kill her with their gaze didn’t deter her.
If anything, she thrived on their hatred.
As soon as everyone was out of the barracks, she announced we were marching out right that instant. This was not well received. Complaints immediately erupted, and were immediately silenced as she casually drove her fist through the nearest protesting demon’s face.
Then she just stood there and smiled like a psychopath, obviously daring anyone else to speak up.
The one who did was a harried demon with barely any meat on his bones, wearing a ridiculously large pair of glasses.
"My lady," he began. She glared at him murderously, and he sighed. "I mean, commander, I’m afraid to say that we can’t set off immediately. If we do, our regular troops might manage without their assigned provisions. However, our fresh recruits definitely will not survive. The general would take notice of that."
The man’s voice was calm but soft. I had to hold back my disbelief when the unreasonable woman actually paused and pursed her lips to think. She started tapping her foot on the ground, sweeping her eyes back and forth over her silent troops.
"Fine!" she shouted at last, throwing her hands in the air. "Be that way! Go get them their provisions, but I expect them to be ready to set out in two hours. That’s all the time I’m willing to waste. If anyone’s not here at that point, I’ll personally track you down and send you back to hell."
No one was in the mood to test her, and her apparent assistant quickly swept us away into a part of the city I hadn’t explored before. He kept up a rapid but mostly realistic pace, leading us through a series of army gear shops to a huge warehouse run by the local quartermaster.
The massive crimson quartermaster was quick to hand out our provisions, especially when the sergeant’s assistant brought up our commander’s name. Apparently, even red-skinned demons could go pale with fear. The quartermaster’s skin turned an odd shade of washed-out pink.
Unfortunately, that was the tail end of our luck. We were rushed back to our commander, who then cheerily proceeded to drive us out of the city and into the wilds of the world we’d been unleashed upon.
Three days. That’s how long the insane demoness kept us marching without pause or break. Every physical need we had was to be handled during the march, with no exceptions or excuses.
Apparently, no one had ever bothered to brief her on the frailty and peculiarities of human bodies. Then again, she likely thought these human-details were a non-issue, considering the differences between humans and demons.
For example, demons don’t need toilets. The digestive track of a demon is both many times more efficient than a human’s and entirely mana-based. As such, it would be entirely impossible to provoke ’normal’ bodily functions in demons, short of forcing non-mana-reactive materials down their throats.
No such luck for humans. Basically, our lives were absolute hell for those three days.
I was actually one of the lucky few. My mana technique eliminated a ton of the exhaustion and soreness typically associated with nonstop marching. Even then, I was bloated, bone-deep tired, and on the verge of passing out.
Speaking of unconsciousness, the only reason the insane woman eventually called a halt was because so many of her human soldiers did pass out. The demons were starting to complain about having to carry them and the smell that began to clung to the human portion of the army.
The break didn’t end our suffering.
They were only delivering themselves to the slaughter.
Feeling numb, I pushed more mana into my legs and rocketed forward so I could bury my sword inside a man’s chest. I spun away from the thrust of a shabby spear, then severed both its shaft and the neck of its wielder with a single slice.
The tide of demons washed over the remaining ’defenders,’ and then we were among the houses.
Demons eagerly broke off to dive inside certain homes. The result was always a chorus of horrible screams. Somehow, the demons were unerring in their search for hidden locals, and I realized they were relying on more than conventional senses. It was likely some form of mana- or soul-sight.
Either of those things would be highly beneficial for me to develop.
Those were the exact thoughts in my head as I skewered a running woman from behind. It wasn’t that I was becoming a sadist. The opposite, in fact. I tried to flood my mind with inane ramblings to spare me from understanding the horror of my actions.
It really didn’t help.
I was all too aware of the laughter, of the crazed gloating, of the delighted expressions on the faces of my fellow ’human’ soldiers as we slaughtered our own kind.
Could we even be considered human anymore, with the literal fires of hell burning within our souls and hellish things we were doing? Judging by the expressions on the locals’ faces, the answer was probably no.
There were some five hundred souls living in that village when we arrived. By the time the last home was set aflame and the final life was snuffed out, I was responsible for the death of eleven people.
Eleven souls.
The equivalent of one hundred and ten skewers, or two nights spent in a fancy inn. The cold hard value of claiming an innocent’s life.
Our commander was ecstatic. She had her assistant take down a detailed record of every soldier’s kills, and I was surprised to find myself among people commended for ’our eager efforts to help win the bet.’ Apparently, it was the final soul-count that the sisters were interested in, rather than the strength of the opposite. It made me sick.
We didn’t take much from the village. Some soldiers hurriedly grabbed provisions. Others brought along a few interesting knickknacks. That was it. Other than the lives of all the inhabitants, of course.
A whole community lost to the senseless violence of a demonic army.
Funnily enough, everyone felt reinvigorated after our brief exertion. We still hated the sergeant’s treatment of us, but after inflicting some good ol’ senseless violence on innocent humans, we were ready to push ourselves further.
Even I wasn’t immune to this phenomenon. I knew exactly how heinous my actions were, but a part of me didn’t care, so long as I got to unleash worse suffering on others than what I was experiencing myself.
A nice cocktail of disgust and relief brewed in my chest as our pointless march continued. Disgust was rather obvious and self-explanatory. Relief, however, stemmed entirely from the fact that I had been able to do what I was ordered to do.
Earlier, I decided to advance the demon ranks. That was true enough, but I still didn’t know if I could follow through with what that meant. I wasn’t sure if I could take innocent lives without shattering, like a porcelain figure dropped by a careless child.
I now had my answer. I was, indeed, enough of a monster to survive in the demonic army. If things aligned just right, I could be monstrous enough to thrive.
All that could be had at the low cost of a bleak numbness spreading through my mind and chest.