Two men were pacing anxiously around a beautifully decorated room. They have been left in the dark for days now and it scared them. Ever since the new King of Demons, Luziefer III., had ascended to the throne they had been anxious and scared and this sort of treatment only worsened their fear. They hadn’t  been treated badly in anyway obviously, even that simple minded young king knew not to mess with diplomats without any reason, but him not telling them anything still made them nervous.

Luziefer had been on their radar for years at this point, he was hot headed and obsessed with personal glory and for some unknown reason he believes that attacking the kingdom of Fahrgust was the best way to archive that personal glory he dreamed of.

Since they were diplomats from said kingdom they obviously had been wary of the young demon even back when he was nothing but the third son in the line of succession to then king, Baelzebub IV., after all he was rather public about his plans and much to their horror he gathered a sizeable part of the wider populace supporting him, since he told the public he wanted to 'get back their rightful place at the sun'.

The kingdom of Demons was in a weird position both geographically and political compared to its western neighbour, it was far smaller and located on what is known as the 'Wastelands of Utunmo' where the soil is completely black and barley any plants can grow, as such the kingdom was heavily dependent on imports of food from the Kingdom of Fahrgust.

Considering that Fahrgust practically decided if the Kingdom of Demons starves or not, people would think they had the demons in a extremely tight hold, only worsened by the demons smaller military size, it is not unreasonable to believe that Fahrgust could easily wipe out the demons whenever they wanted to, but that was not the case, rather the demons had the other kingdom of Fahrgust at their mercy.

Reason for this was a unique resource only found within the wastelands of Utunmo and that is the world only reliable source of 'Phantry Iron', more commonly known as Black Iron due to its distinctive colour. This iron, once properly processed, can be turned into some of the most effective weapons or armor know to the world, rivalling even centuries old Dragon Scales, not in durability, but the Black Iron had a very unique property to its name: it absorbed magic.

Even a single piece of armor made from Black Iron could make most of the mages in the world struggle to even hurt you and the chances they could actually kill you were even lower. For this reason it was the most sought after material for anyone who expects themselves to fight any form of magic and was especially sought after by nobles who wielded armies under their control, making their armies practically invincible against massive mage attacks.

With The Kingdom of Demons being the only known reliable source of that Black Iron, most Kings of Fahrgust preferred to be in friendly terms with the Kingdom of Demons, after all if they ever were to come and fight, they would have to deal with armies completely immune to devastating magic attacks while their own could be bombarded to death by the demons own Mages.

Any sane ruler therefore avoided direct military conflict and the demon kings, even with their rather high military advantage, chose to simply pursue a relationship of mutual benefits, with the kingdom of Fahrgust delivering food aid and the demons providing them with the highly sought after metal, even if it was highly regulated it was so valuable that they accepted these otherwise completely one sided trade deals, just to have even a small amount of the valuable metal.

This very carefully crafted balance the two diplomats were now worrying over, as they feared the hot headed new king would actually go through with his idiotic plans that would only result in unnecessary damage to both kingdoms, since the demons simply lacked the manpower to actually take over Fahrgust, but with Luziefer‘s obsession with personal glory they didn’t put it past him, they just had to hope and pray his advisor would beat some common sense into him.

There was no winner if it were to come to war, only mutual destruction.

———————————————————

When Hanna woke up once more, she was extremely confused, she no longer opened her eyes to beautiful paintings depicting various nature phenomena, but rather multiple wooden planks and she soon realised why, she was on the floor rather then hanging from those cursed chains. Once she realised that, she immediately decided to try and failed to move her once bound wrist, but the moment she tried pain shot through her, it wasn’t as unbearable anymore but definitely enough to immediately stop all her movement attempts and hiss through her teeth.

Taking a closer look at her wrist, it was almost completely black and smelled like charcoal, you didn’t need to be a genius to connect the dots at that point, Hanna glared at the wrist, it just had to be her dominant hand as well didn’t it?

"Is she finally awake Magek?" "She loos angry, did we upset big sister Magek?" "I don’t want big sister to be angry Magek!!" There was a sudden influx of extremely high pitched voices hitting her still only half functional brain, making her grab her forehead in pain as she felt how a migraine was coming in.

Hanna had heard a lot of things in her life, but nothing, absolutely nothing, be it during her time on earth or during her time as sadistic murdering psychopath monster, could sound this completely and utterly annoying. It made her angry, to listen to all of those voices coming from all around her, it sounded like a toddler that inhaled multiple gallons of helium, it was genuinely impressing her how someone could make her this irrationally angry with just their voice, the fact that there was what felt like hundreds of them didn’t exactly help either.

Suddenly it got louder and it felt like even more squeaky voices came from everywhere at once, Hanna could feel the migraine becoming worse with every single second, briefly she wondered if she had died at the hands of that torturous handcuff and that this was her personal hell, at the back of her mind she found the karmic retribution of her dying due to a torture device quite amusing, but her brain was throbbing far to much for her to form any real cohesive thoughts. And it didn’t take long for it all to burst over.

"Why can’t it be QUITE?!" Hanna practically screamed and she swung her still functioning arm around herself and she suddenly made contact with something soft and hairy, she ripped through it and suddenly her arm was covered in an all to familiar liquid.

Luckily for Hanna, her outburst seemed to have done the trick as it was completely quite save for her own heavy breathing and the distinctive sound of blood dropping onto the floor and bursting out from a body, it calmed Hanna and she soon managed to get her breathing under control, once she calmed down enough she could feel the fear all around her and it was an crushing amount of fear, like the there hundreds or thousands of people all around her.

And as Hanna finally managed to look up and see properly through her no longer glossy eyes, she saw that there actually were thousands of people all around her, well, Hanna wasn’t sure she could really call them people per say, all around her were tiny balls of yellow fur, with stubs and short little legs and comically large ears which were all laying on top of their heads completely flat, like a terrified animal.

Hanna, probably understandably so, was rather confused at that, not the fact that they were terrified, after all she did just kill someone of their own right in front of them, but rather who the hell they were, what they were doing and why were they asking for a big sister?! And so she voiced her confusion.

But once she had asked her questions, only silence answered her, the fur balls were looking around nervously, looking everywhere but her, this, unexpectedly, didn’t make Hanna really happy and she wasn’t in best of moods already, so she reasoned that another little motivation was all these things needed to get talking.

She grabbed the nearest fur ball to her and held her claws dangerously close to the things small, button like eyes.

"Answer me right now or this one goes blind!" Hanna yelled out, which in hindsight this was unnecessary and rather dangerous, if these things were out to get her, she would have no chance, as there were an uncountable amount surrounding her and she was alone, even if they were absolutely weak and pathetic in everything, numbers still played a huge role and she would be overwhelmed eventually. 

Luckily for her, these fur balls weren’t out to get her, or maybe they were genuinely terrified by one of their own to get hurt, Hanna didn’t know And she didn’t care, all she cared for were answers.

"We came to save you big sister, Magek! Please believe us, Magek!" "Uhhh, why is big sister so scary, Magek?!" "Please don’t hurt us big sister, Magek!!"

It wasn’t everyday that Hanna thanked the heavens, back in her old life, while not disliking reading, she had a tendency to forget everything in less then a week, some called her blessed while others curse, she herself called it a curse and it finally seemed to have been lifted as she remembers that infuriating book back when she first woke up in her new body, talking about her race and their quirks.

And it just so happened that the book theorised that Dark Margenko’s have some form of mind control, since they were often seen being the head of thousands of Margenko‘s, the whole reason they were named Dark Margenko‘s was because of their connection to the Margenko race.

But as it turns out, no mind control after all, it simply seemed that the Margenko‘s looked upon the Dark Margenko‘s as their elder siblings. How that translates into them following her every command was beyond her, but maybe it was normal for the younger sibling to do what ever the elder said? She never had any siblings so she wouldn’t know.

As she was lost in thought, the Margenko‘s around her started to get nervous at her silence and they started to murmur amongst themselves once more.

"Ughh Big sister can be so scary! Magek!" "Did we do something bad Magek?!" "Why won‘t big sister speak again? Did she die Magek?"

Hanna tried her best to ignore all the voices around her and focus on her thoughts for now, she went over the events that happened up until that point where she woke up surrounded by her so called younger siblings, but try as she might she couldn’t not hear all of the stupid squeaky voices that came from all around her, she remembers reading that Dark Margenko didn’t treat their armies of Margenko really well and she now knew why, if all Margenko‘s talked like that she understood why everyone treated them like garbage, because they were annoying as all hell.

But one particular set of murmurs stood out from the rest and quickly more and more Margenko‘s started to murmur about the same thing and it soon grabbed the attention of Hanna.

"I wonder if the female wakes up soon Magek!!" "She is so cute Magek! Can’t I already start Margek?“ "I want that elf Magek! I haven’t bred with an elf in so long! Magek!“ 

It didn’t take a genius who they were referring to and with a quick glance to her side, Hanna got her suspicions confirmed, as she saw the unconscious forms of both Adeline and Luisa next to her on the floor, she saw similar burns to her own on Luisa’s wrist, but interestingly, Adeline didn’t seem to have any burn marks at all.

"No way! Your being way to greedy Magek!" "Well I was the first to see her so she’s mine" "Big brother Kevin found her you big liar Magek"

Hanna didn’t care for either Luisa or Adeline all that much, they weren’t friends or partners, but pets she kept around for her amusement  she would keep them out of any major harm but if either of them had to die to keep herself save, she would gladly do so. Now in theory Hanna didn’t care if anything bad happened to either of them, which would include them being raped by her younger siblings, however…

"Don‘t you dare touch her, she‘s mine!" Hanna growled loudly, smashing her functioning hand onto the ground which result in a small dent in the floor and the body of the Margeko she was still holding bursting apart into thousands of bloody bits all over her body and floor.

These younger siblings of hers awakened something inside of her that she didn’t quite understand, she grew irrationally angry, which, to be fair, wasn’t that uncommon for her these days, but this was on a different level to whatever she had ever experienced prior, the only times that it even came close was during the battle against that aristocratic bitch in the woods by that village, and during her raid on the prison tower.

It was an almost instinctual reaction for her to smash her fist onto the ground, creating a small dent into the wooden floor and in the process smashing the body of the Margenko she was still holding onto into uncountable bloody bits, some blood splashed into her face, but she didn’t care.

The murmurs died down immediately and only Hanna’s own heavy breathing could be heard in the room, many of the Margenko‘s started to shiver and others had tears in their eyes, clearly terrified by their sisters outburst.

Hanna herself seemed rather confused by her own outburst, she didn’t care for Luisa before this, so why on earth was she…

Before she could ponder this line of thought however, she heard shouts coming from outside and the sound of heavy metal rattling.

"Patrol the nearby areas for possible stragglers or other Margenko‘s in the area, if you find stragglers get them to safety and kill all Margenko‘s on sight, we can’t allow a single one to escape or they will return in years time. If possible, use fire to ensure the pests have been eliminated! You three, you will come with me!"

A massive panic erupted almost immediately amongst the Margenko‘s, they were running around like headless chickens and screaming as loudly as their squeaky voices allowed, which wasn’t that loud, but when thousands all screamed at the same time it wasn’t exactly quite.

"The screams are coming from the second floor! Come on quickly now!"

Hanna, with a thousand thoughts racing through her mind as to how she could get out of this situation, did the one thing she knew would shut her siblings up and smashed her fist onto the floor again, this time breaking through the wooden boards and creating a small hole in the process, luckily it worked and most of her siblings started to quite down, while those that didn’t started to jump from the nearby window or ran through the door, they would die without a doubt, but they would probably buy Hanna some time at least which she was fine with.

"There they are, after them, don’t let them escape!"

Luck seemed to be on her side after all.

"Everyone listen up, I have a plan to get us out of this, so do as I say you might get out alive!" This was a lie, but Hanna doubted her siblings would actually question her and she herself didn’t care if they died or not, as long as she would get out unscathed in the end, everything was fine.

"You will help me wake up my two pets here and then you will go out and cause as much chaos as possible, I don’t care how you do it you will just do it." She looked at the window from which she could see the sun hanging high above the nearby hills.

Truth be told she didn’t really want to lose her small army of unquestionably loyal slaves to her, but at the same time she needed to have enough time to actually escape, because she highly doubts that her small army could actually kill anything at all, much less armored soldiers or adventurers or whatever was down there, so sacrifices would have to be made.

"Now get to it!"

And they got to it, most immediately ran out of the room screaming as loudly as their small lungs could tolerate and soon Hanna could hear shouts and rattling metal from outside, there was confusion fear and everything mixed in between, it was exactly as planned, what wasn’t as planned were that those that stayed behind didn’t seem to do what they were told to do, they tried to wake up Luisa with everything in their disposal and truth be told, seeing three or four small fur balls constantly jumping on Luisa’s body was sort of amusing even, but they all seemed to ignore Adeline.

"Hey I said both of them, so get to it and wake her up as well you idiots!" Much to her surprise however, the Margenko‘s didn‘t do as they were told, instead they looked sad and afraid, they were clearly hiding something.

"Well? Out with it, why oh why won’t you do as I say?!" Hanna growled at one of the Margenko‘s that was unfortunate enough to be the closest to her, he started shivering and closed his eyes as Hanna stared at him expectantly.

"P-please don’t be angry big sister, but when we arrived she had been awake before you and I swear we didn’t know she belonged to you Magek! If we had know we wouldn’t have done so Magek! Please don‘t hurt me Magek!!"

"What did you do." Hanna asked, her voice low and threatening an idea formed in her head, and if it was true…

"We already bred her Magek. But believe me when I said that we didn’t know she was yours Magek! We simpl-…" The sentence was never finished as Hanna grabbed the fur ball and smashed him into the wall, blood splattered onto the ground and onto Hanna‘s body once more.

Her eyes shone crimson as she looked onto the rest of the Margenko‘s that had stopped their work and simply cowered before her, their hands above their heads as if it could shield them from her anger.