It was a simple thing to say, what Sadrahan asked of them. After all, there was no gate to pass through at the wall. I’ve got to make sure they know where to go, and that the ones waiting on the other side know that there is no hostility to worry about. Plus I have to show them where they’re going to be staying. So why… why are they all murmuring like I’ve said something profound?’

He mentally shrugged it off and instead focused on the important things, “Since I rescued the ones trapped in that pit the humans call a ‘mine’ and since Liln and Batagan captured a village full of humans, we’ve been very busy. We built what homes we could, but we had to skip on some of the little things, you’ll have to plug the gaps yourself, the humans use tree sap mixed with earth, I suggest you do that.” Sadrahan said when they rounded the current end of the wall, but before he could go on Zorahen was quick on the uptick and asked…

“Captured humans? You captured humans?” He asked and scratched behind his ears, which went down as if he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.

“Yes, things… happened.” Sadrahan explained and cleared his throat, coughing into his balled up fist, “And now they work for me too. They have a Voice who speaks for them when they have concerns, they are at the core, harmless as the ones I remember. The ones who do all evil seem to come from a place called Sevenills. I captured the distant cousin of their King, their chief of chiefs, and the humans here were able to tell me more of where they come from.”

“You keep the kind of your enemy?” Zorahen asked, doubt was in his voice and when Sadrahan looked backward he saw that their steps slowed.

He turned around so that he faced the full village, his hands went to his hips and he said in no uncertain terms…

“The danger is far worse than you were told. Far, far worse. One day they will come again, and if we are not ready when they do, we either work to death or we die quickly. The crops don’t care who grows them. The house doesn’t care who builds it, the fire doesn’t care who feeds it, and the food doesn’t care who eats it. Everything and everyone who is useful must be put to their greatest use.”

He said it louder than he intended, putting the weight of his belief behind his words, “I have seen the not settlements, what humans call forts. They have so many people that they do not even send mates, they have people who wear metal and do nothing but fight. Many are the villages they have burned, many are the wings they have cut. I cannot throw away a single useful tool when faced with that. I do not even have enough tools for the hands we have now.”

“Our smith will be very busy then.” Zorahen said immediately and broke the tension that was building with Sadrahan’s defiant pragmatism.

“You have a smith!” He exclaimed with such glee that his wings spontaneously popped out of his back and spread to their full width, casting his shadow over the villagers who followed. The low slope on which he stood made his black outline spread far over the ground, encompassing nearly every male and female, young and old alike.

Again the murmur went up, more confident than before, they huddled closer together, putting them all within the shape of the Demon Lord’s body.

“Yes, we tear a little ore from the hills near our home, our smith is Macu. He has forged our tools for two hundred years, and never once has anything but the wood broken.” Zorahen said and straightened up a little, as much as his hunched body would permit, the wide hyena maw spread back in what Sadrahan supposed was his version of a smile.

“Good, we’ve found some new stone, a strange white rock that breaks everything. Perhaps you can do something with it?” Sadrahan suggested, and from the back a goat demon stepped forward, his hooves carried him straight to the front and from his urgency and the light in his eyes it could be no one else but the smith.

“I want to see this rock. If it is as hard as you say, maybe it will be useful. Some rocks seem hard, but are brittle and break, some seem soft, but can be made tough. I can look, but I have only tools, no forge.” Macu said and spread his hands out at his side, “What can I do without that? A smith with no forge is a farmer with no field.”

‘These are a very stiff people… but honest.’ Sadrahan thought with a sense of mild approval hidden behind his blank face.

“Take five to help you build one, close to the mountain, and if you need more help, take humans if any of them can be of use. But your skills are vital.” Sadrahan emphasized and didn’t even try to hide his enthusiasm, his hands spread open as if he were going to hug the smith then and there, “A place without tools is a place with little work getting done. Now come, let me show you your homes, take the ones you want and settle in, add your food to the common storage, and prepare to join us for a feast.” Sadrahan said and clapped his hands together, a great broad grin spread over his face, ‘A smith, at last! That solves half my worries in one go… but why are they staring at Macu like he’d become a god or something?’

It wasn’t an understatement, Macu stood directly beside his chief when he said that, and the chief of the village took that moment of brief quiet to ask, “What house belongs to you, chief of chiefs?”

“I don’t have one.” Sadrahan said and pointed up toward the entrance into the mountain, “The mountain is my home.”

Macu gasped, his big goat eyes seemed to open wide as a bowl, “You honor me… more than I dreamed. No smith has ever been so close to the side of a chief… let alone a chief of chiefs…”

Sadrahan felt his understanding begin to dawn, and for just a moment a sense of dismay threatened to come over him, the urge to correct the misunderstanding about what was implied, ‘I just wanted it to be convenient for him to work, a little faster to get materials to him I…’ He bowed his head toward Macu to hide the lump of anxiety in his throat.

“Your tools will save lives. This is for right.” Sadrahan said, and then put his back to them again, drawing his wings into his body once more, he led them to a cluster of empty homes. “We prepared as best we could, and we will need more made, but we couldn’t know how many there were. You may have to share space until after the winter. So for now, make do.”

As he gestured with one outstretched hand to the cluster of stacked log homes that were spread in double lines along the fields, he saw Liln approaching out of the corner of his eye, alongside Sarthas. Their pace was hasty to say the least, though they weren’t quite running.

They ate up ground the way they’d eaten up food when they were starving, but the expressions on their face, wide eyed, open mouthed, the slight hint of a smile beginning to form on each of their faces, it was clear they were filled with relief.

When they were in front of him, they knelt for an instant until Sadrahan nodded for them to rise, and he preempted any words of theirs. “We have a new village among villages.” He pointed toward the hyena demon, “This is Zorahen, their chief. He will handle settling in… Sarthas, help him with anything he needs, at once.”

Zorahen approached and the pair clasped forearms, digging claws into flesh for several seconds before the moment broke.

Before he could go further with his explanation, Liln put her hand discreetly on Sadrahan’s back and rose up on the balls of her feet to whisper, “May I speak with you alone?”

Zorahen watched the interplay with mild interest, the way one hand went to the back of the chief of chiefs, the way her other hand went and rested on his bicep with claws lightly pressing into skin. Any objection to being passed on to someone else, died in his throat. Particularly when his mate put her hand on his arm in a similar fashion.

“Thank you for taking us, chief of chiefs.” Zorahen said and bowed his head.

“We refer to him as the Demon Lord.” Sarthas corrected him, “A Lord is as you say, a chief of chiefs, and he is chief of all chiefs.”

“I… see.” Zorahen said and scratched at the fur beneath his jaw. “Then I thank you, Demon Lord. We will do as you will.”

The parting went quickly as Sarthas turned his attention toward guiding their new residents through what was needed and expected, and Sadrahan focused instead on the dark haired demoness who seemed intent on getting him alone as soon as possible.

‘She’s going to make me turn her down again. Why won’t anyone understand… none of this, none of that, is what I want… I just want to see that my Lamashi is safe… everything else is a distant second… I don’t need a new mate, I don’t want one, the one I wanted will never come back, and never leave me either…’ His heart threatened to rip itself in two again as his thoughts swirled in his head like a tornado until they were alone in the cavern and a crying, hungry Lamashi was reaching out to be taken up.

Liln waited until Sadrahan gave her an approving nod, and she took the infant up, bared her breast, and began to nurse the child of the Demon Lord. Only when the sound of suckling was well underway did she speak again.

“You cannot take chances like that, My Lord.” She said at once.

“I’m sorry?” Sadrahan asked and blinked three times in rapid succession, far from a lovelorn confession or expression of longing or a pragmatic arrangement argument… ‘Am I being scolded?’ He asked himself, and from her stern look up at him, he was.

“I said, you cannot take risks like that. Not anymore. You are our Lord. The stone cutter and the founder of a Demon Kingdom… Lord of the Red Mountain, master of the range, terror of the humans… the savior of life… and whatever other names people have come up with since you plucked them from the pits or from the edge of death. You. Cannot. Take. Chances. We can’t lose you.” Liln emphasized.

“Chances? What chances? I went out to greet-” She immediately cut him off.

“You went out to greet an unknown. They could have been enemies as easily as friends. Even if they were demons, what if they were from a village that fled human attack and after learning about this place, chose to attack it to take it for themselves? What would we do then? No. You can’t do that anymore.” Liln lectured him like an angry mother, and a dumbfounded Sadrahan scratched his horn as he struggled to shift his thinking from how to turn down a proposal to how to answer a distraught advisor.

“I was expecting… something else.” He fumbled over his words and Liln gave her head a slow shake.

“You rejected me. That is your right. I accept that. My son has no living father. Your daughter has no living mother. So it is, and so it will be. I will not ask you again, that would be… degrading, to us both.” She said, and then snapped her eyes up toward him and they flashed with anger.

“But that doesn’t change that you are irresponsible! You take risks you should not take! We are many now, let another go speak to those who come close. If they are safe, let us bring them to you. If they are not, then you should lead us in slaying the threat! Take no chances with your irreplaceable life! Or would you take your daughter’s father from her!” She shouted it at him, and the walls of the cave shouted with her, drowning out the noise of the nursing infant and the endless dripping from above.

Sadrahan’s shoulders drooped in defeat, of all the things that Liln told to him, not her anger, not his importance to his followers, not the threat to his life, none of that mattered. But her final admonition left a black pit in his gut. ‘I’m the only one alive who remembers Lamash, now. At least like that. The only one to know who she was beneath who she was to everyone else. The only one to see her final sacrifice. And the only one who can one day pass that on to Lamashi so that she knows how much she was loved to the very end… and if I die, I take all that away. It becomes a puff of smoke in the breeze, scattered and lost like it never was… and I take away her last family too…’

“I’m a fool.” Sadrahan admitted when the last echo died. “I didn’t think about what I was risking, I just… acted. I made a decision in the moment without thinking about what went with it.”

Liln approached, closing the space between them both and put her hand over his chest. “It’s all right. That ‘foolish’ behavior is why I’m alive. Why my son lives. Why we all now live. Not one demon in a thousand would dive into the pits of men to draw out strangers. Not one demon in a thousand would stand before the bows of a hundred and have the gall to demand that the rest be let go… you may be a fool, Sadrahan Hamash, but you are the fool we need… we just have to keep you alive against your better instincts so that you can keep being a fool for us all for centuries to come.” She gave him a little wavering smile and tapped her claws against his hardened red flesh.

“Your daughter is done now, you may take her back, remain here, Demon Lord of Stronghold. The human King, he didn’t go out with his own, you shouldn’t either. Not unless times are desperate. We will deal with the small things for you.” Liln said, and plucking the infant from her breast, she passed her over and righted her shirt again. When he had her in hand she glanced around the great empty cavern, “Including… as soon as we can, turning your home into a proper place for a child to grow up in.”

Sadrahan gave a quiet nod, and said nothing more as he watched Liln leave himself and Lamashi behind.