Zwei’s eyes fluttered open to the sound of speaking voices, one of which he recognized as the Demon Lord. The cool stone of the mountain interior replaced the cold ground of the winter outside, and out of the corner of his eye he could see the sky of glowing green that bathed the cavern in an eerie, ethereal light.

He said nothing, though he flicked his sharp tipped ear in their direction to catch what was said, and lowered the lids of his eyes so that he was barely seeing what took place only a handful of paces away.

‘The impudent boy…’ He realized a moment later, when he saw the stretched out lad with the brutal slash of claw marks across his chest. Another demoness knelt beside the lad and had her hand clutching the youth’s in a fierce grip that paled her knuckles with its intensity.

Strangely, it was a pink hued human, a female of their kind, who was tending to the boy, she was packing the wound with blue hued moss and uttering words that, in his still foggy mind, were said too quickly to be understood.

But the demoness, she was clear. Through the crack in his eyes, Zwei could see she was leveling a single claw in his direction. “I prefer to kill him, My Lord.”

“For what he did, I would too. But we let the humans live and their kind did worse. We’ve never killed because of injuries. Only killed for killing.” Zwei lolled his head a little, so that he could see the male speaker more clearly.

‘The big one… the rock breaker…’ Zwei bit his tongue, ‘The one who beat me…’ He recalled as his ability to feel pain slowly restored itself, every bruise announced itself on his body, one tooth was broken in half, and he struggled to breath through his nose. ‘That’s broken too… bad. This is bad, how many injuries do I have?’

There were many throbbing bruises, dull pains that radiated from a dozen places, his ribs felt as if they were poking into his lungs with every ragged breath, ‘Those are definitely broken, he hit like his hands were made of hammers…’ And worse, Zwei could feel blood trickling over his skin and pooling in the little curves of his body. ‘How much did I lose? I’m not dead yet, that’s something.’

He tried to distract his mind by listening, and by trying to recall the details of what happened. ‘The mountain shook and he came out and… he shook the mountain…?’ Zwei felt ice run through his veins as the memory of the wrathful Demon Lord bringing down his fury took on new weight. ‘I mocked the title, but what else could-’

He cut off his own thoughts when the big one picked up a small infant demon and cradled her in one arm while addressing the demoness who still knelt beside the injured boy. “He is strong, and demons need all the strength we can get. He survived… so far at least, if he recovers, he can be a useful meat shield, if he doesn’t, you get your wish, Liln.”

“I know… and I’m grateful, Lord, that you let me bring my son here so I could mind both while you defended us and avenged him, but still…” Liln turned her eyes toward Zwei, “He struck my Assamo, and I will never forgive that. Not even if he takes a hundred lives as a blood price.

A new hand closed over her shoulder from behind, and Zwei tried to open his eye just a tiny bit more to see the source. ‘I recognize that one… he is the one who ran away when I struck that boy… I thought he was a coward, instead he just went to get a living weapon.’

“Liln, I understand how you feel, but we don’t know what happened to the others yet, from what I learned before I went to our Lord, all the walkers we sent out, except for the one to return with that first village, are just ‘gone’ but we don’t know where or what that means. If we come back out with his corpse, we may lose all those who followed him, and who knows what that means for us. We can’t just kill him, or even let him die.”

She lowered her head, “I know, Sarthas, I know. But let a mother dream.” Liln then looked to the human, “Shala, go, pack the wounds of the newcomer, treat him as… best you can. Spare him death, but if no one objects… don’t spare him any pain.”

“My Lady.” Shala said, then turned every head toward the beaten demon when she asked, “Since he’s awake, could someone hold him to make sure he doesn’t try to hurt me?”

Zwei let his eyes open the rest of the way, “What gave me away?” He grumbled and grunted through the pain.

“You tensed when I stood up. Every living thing tenses when they think they’re going to be in pain, even if they’re brave.” Shala replied, but did not come closer.

“You don’t need to hold me down… I know when I’m beaten.” Zwei grunted, “I couldn’t hurt you even if I wanted to, not like this…” He winced as a shock of pain suddenly ran from his lungs and twisted his thick dark lips in pain. He tried to raise his left arm and felt the bulge of a broken bone warn him not to do that. He let his arm go limp instead.

“You may apologize for your violation.” Sadrahan said and crossed over the short distance to where Zwei lay prone and defenseless, his feet squared and back straight, despite knowing they were nearly the same height, Zwei now felt heads smaller than the one looking down at him, and closed his eyes so that he wouldn’t have to see any longer. “Do it, and your wounds will be cleaned and you’ll be taken care of while you answer questions.”

“Apologize… that…?” Zwei’s eyes snapped right back open, and when they did he saw that the Demon lord was bouncing his laughing daughter between his forearm and his bicep.

‘I see…’ Zwei began to understand, ‘Humans talked about how some of their ‘lords’ were actually protective of their servants… the boy must be one of those.’ He swallowed his pride like it was a stone in his throat and looked between the feet of the Demon Lord to where the mother still knelt by her child. “I regret my action, and… apologize for the injury I gave.”

The demoness stared daggers at him, her lips remained tightly sealed… but she didn’t ask for his life a second time.

‘There you go, Lamashi,’ Sadrahan thought when the demon on the ground lay his cheek flat on the stone, unable to look up through his shame, when the big one made his apology to his daughter, Sadrahan’s temper began to fade, ‘he’s said he’s sorry for making you cry, that’s a start.’

“Now that that is out of the way, what happened to our ‘walkers’, the messengers we sent out? Are they alive, dead… captured?” Sadrahan added for emphasis, and the already cool cavern became several levels colder, at least where their spines were concerned.

“Alive as far as I know. I am Zwei, chief of Two Hills. Your walkers came to us and gave us words of warning, they did the same to other villages. We are not like some of the others, our villages speak to each other and come together when we need to, it is how we trade mates. So we all heard the rumors, and the Midas father and Midas son carried words to us before your walkers… rumors we hardly believed. Until we saw the scars of all your walkers laid bare, and all from other places… the cuts of their wings haunted many dreams before we left.” Zwei paused as a hacking fit hit him and he spat blood out of his mouth which landed between the Demon Lord’s feet.

The human knelt beside him and said, “Don’t move, this moss has healing properties and if we pack the wound tight, it will close up clean. It will hurt, but bear it.”

He grunted and tensed his body as the cold packed moss was shoved into the cuts deep and shallow alike that the Demon Lord left on him. He remained silent but for animalistic grunts and sucking in his teeth when something particularly hurt, until finally the human stood and stepped back. “I still need to bind the bones in place, but he won’t bleed to death for now, My Lord.”

Zwei immediately went on before Sadrahan could speak, “When we saw what we needed to see and decided what we needed to decide, we returned to all our homes, packed all that we had, and came here… but your walkers did not choose to come with us. We knew of this mountain from the young Midas stories, so we needed no guide.”

“Then where did the walkers, our messengers, go?” Sarthas asked, “You said they were alive, but you left them behind, surely they didn’t just say, ‘no we’re not going back’ and not give you any hint of where they were going?”

“They didn’t say, they only said that the Demon Lord was gathering everyone at his mountain to fend off the humans. They also asked us for directions to other villages farther from us, we told them how to go there, but we can’t know if they made it or not. Does that tell you what you want to know… Lord Sadrahan?” Zwei asked.

“It does. And it tells me we have far more to do than I realized.” Sadrahan said with a long look down at Zwei. ‘I didn’t think they’d go that far, I just meant the nearest villages, not to go from one to the next… how many villages are there? How many will listen? If even one in ten villages, or a few in each… we’ll need to grow faster than I ever dreamed.’

‘He’s looking at me… he’s deciding whether to keep me or discard me… I see, I was beaten, but he did say I might be useful and he let me apologize to his servant. I see, he’s waiting for me to speak… fine. Giving me control over my fate one more time… a respectable thing to do.’ Zwei acknowledged the grace of his adversary with some reluctant, but begrudging respect.

“You are Lord of Stronghold… chief of chiefs… keep me as chief of my own, allow me to heal, and I will follow you wherever you lead. Strong chief, strong tribe.” Zwei said it as if it were a rote expression, and waited for an answer.

Sadrahan took a deep breath as his wonderings of just how many the walkers would end up sending to him threatened to spiral out of control in his own head before he gritted his jaw and grumbled out a weary, “It’s fine, we’ll see.”

“Then I will be your demon, My Lord.” Zwei said and struggled to raise his broken arm until Shala crouched by him and hissed out a rough order…

“Do not move that again until I’m done with it!”

‘Wait… what?’ Sadrahan wondered when Zwei gave his vow, but before he could verbalize a question, Liln and Sarthas spoke up.

“If we’re going to accept so many…” Sarthas began his sentence.

“...Then we should get started with everything now, wouldn’t you agree, My Lord?” Liln finished the sentence for him.

“Yes.” Sadrahan said at once, a wave of gratitude washed over him for the easy answer at last. “But you should stay with your son, and… mind my Lamashi, I should speak to them personally, and I suppose our feast will be bigger than expected.”

That at least was a welcome thought to have before Sadrahan could make his escape from the cavern.