CHAPTER 109: A MOST UNREASONABLE DEMAND

When the light faded, he knelt before me.

"I am reborn, my Lord," he said, his voice now a smooth, confident tenor. "I am Saburo. Your Vampire Noble. I swear my eternal, undying fealty to you."

The sincerity in his voice was actually... impressive.

Maybe this wasn’t a total disaster after all.

He was still an idiot. But now, he was a powerful, evolved, and surprisingly noble idiot.

And he was my idiot.

I looked at my newly promoted commander. At the smoking ruins of the dwarven forge. At the mountain that still stood between me and my prize.

The distraction was over.

Now, it was time to meet the king.

Chapter 127: A Most Unreasonable Demand

The final gate of the Hakui mountain fortress loomed before us.

It was a masterpiece of dwarven engineering, a single, seamless slab of shimmering, silver-like metal that hummed with a barely contained power.

My army, a brutal and beautiful collection of monsters, stood ready.

My commanders, a dysfunctional family of legends, stood beside me.

But I was not here for a battle.

Not yet.

I was here for a negotiation.

A hostile, aggressive, and probably very one-sided negotiation. But a negotiation nonetheless.

I had learned my lesson from the war with Sarah. A kingdom conquered was good. A kingdom acquired, with its skilled personnel and infrastructure intact, was better.

I wanted this Dwarf King.

I wanted his forge, his skills, his glorious, magnificent beard.

And I wanted him alive.

"Pixia," I commanded, my voice low. "Broadcast my message. Full power. I want every dwarf in this mountain to hear it."

My tiny pixie advisor nodded, her eyes glowing. She held up a small, crystal amplifier.

My voice, magically enhanced, boomed through the mountain, a sound like the grinding of tectonic plates.

"BEHOLD, YOU STUBBORN, ROCK-EATING HERMITS!" I began, deciding that a bit of theatrical flair was always a good opening.

"I am Ragnar Vhagar! The Tyrant of Aethelburg! The conqueror of Gorgon, the slayer of Alyssa, and the new, undisputed ruler of this entire godsforsaken prefecture!"

I let the silence hang for a moment, letting my impressive, self-aggrandizing resume sink in.

"I am here for your king," I continued. "I am offering him a choice. Surrender your domain, your forge, and your loyalty to me, and you and your people will be granted a place of honor in my growing empire. You will have unlimited resources. You will have my protection. You will be the master craftsmen of the new world order."

I smiled, a sharp, fanged thing.

"Resist," I purred, "and I will have my new friend, Grak the Unbreakable, punch your pretty little mountain until it is a pile of gravel. Then, I will sift through that gravel until I find your king, and I will use his beard to polish my boots."

"You have one hour to decide," I finished. "The clock is ticking."

The ultimatum was delivered. Now, we waited.

The hour was a tense, simmering thing.

My "Troublemaker Party," as I had started calling them, was already living up to their name.

Takaharu, my Beast King, was arguing with Sarah, my former Demon Queen, over the proper way to cook a goblin.

"YOU ROAST IT OVER AN OPEN FIRE!" Takaharu roared. "TO SEAL IN THE FLAVOR!"

"You braise it, you uncivilized brute," Sarah retorted, her voice dripping with condescension. "With a nice Chianti and some fava beans. It is a matter of basic culinary decency."

Saburo, my newly evolved Vampire Noble, was trying to mediate, which mostly involved him striking dramatic poses and making long, pointless speeches about the "harmony of the warrior’s palate."

It was exhausting.

Just as I was about to order them all to be quiet, a low, grinding sound echoed from the final gate.

It was opening.

From the darkness beyond, a group of dwarves emerged.

They were not a war party. They were a delegation.

And at their head was a figure so unexpected, so utterly contrary to every expectation I had, that I was momentarily stunned into silence.

The Dwarf King was a girl.

She couldn’t have been older than twelve.

She had long, braided white hair that shimmered like mithril, and eyes the color of molten gold.

She wore a pair of greasy overalls, and a bright yellow safety helmet was perched on her head at a jaunty angle.

She was also, I noted with a flicker of professional respect, radiating an aura of power that made the very air around her hum.

She stopped about twenty feet away, her hands on her hips, her expression one of weary, adult exasperation.

"You’re the one making all the noise?" she asked, her voice a deep, surprisingly mature rumble. "I was in the middle of a very delicate calibration. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get the arcane resonance of a soul-forged axe just right?"

I stared.

This was Akira. The legendary Dwarf King. The master craftsman I had marched an entire army across a prefecture to find.

And she was a child. A very powerful, very grumpy child.

"I am Ragnar Vhagar," I said, recovering my composure. "And I have come to offer you a position in my organization."

"I’m not interested in a new job," she said flatly. "I like the one I have. It comes with a forge and a distinct lack of loud, dramatic vampires."

She looked at my assembled army, at my powerful, monstrous commanders. Her golden eyes lingered on Isabelle for a moment, a flicker of something unreadable in their depths.

"However," she continued, "I am a pragmatist. And you have brought a very large, very pointy argument to my front door. I am willing to... negotiate."

"I am not here to negotiate," I corrected her coolly. "I am here to accept your surrender."

"And I am here to tell you that I don’t trust you as far as I can throw one of my golems," she retorted. "You’re a conqueror. A tyrant. Your promises are worth less than the slag in my forge."

She reached into a pouch on her belt and pulled out a single, intricate object.

It was a collar, forged from a dark, swirling metal, covered in glowing, complex runes.

"This," she announced, "is a Collar of Pledge. A binding magical contract. I will place it on the neck of your most trusted subordinate. You will then swear an oath, upon their life, that you will uphold your end of the bargain. That you will ensure the safety and livelihood of my people. If you break that oath, the collar will activate, and your most beloved commander will be... unmade."

She smiled, a small, cunning expression that did not belong on a child’s face.

"So, Tyrant of Aethelburg," she said, her golden eyes locking onto mine. "Who is it? Who do you trust with your life? Who is the one you would risk everything for?"

She surveyed my commanders. Her gaze swept over Chloe, over Saburo, over Sarah.

Then, her eyes settled on Isabelle.

She pointed a small, grease-stained finger.

"Her," she declared. "The Saint. Put the collar on her."

The world seemed to stop.

The air in the cavern crackled with a sudden, impossible tension.

Chloe’s hand went to the hilt of her dagger, her eyes narrowing into slits of pure, murderous rage.

Sarah let out a soft, amused laugh.

And I stood there, caught in the jaws of the most brilliant, vicious, and exquisitely cruel trap I had ever seen.

She had just forced me to publicly declare my most trusted subordinate.

To choose between my two secret lovers.

In front of my entire army.

This was not a negotiation.

This was an execution.

And I was the one on the chopping block.

----------------------------------

My name is Ragnar Vhagar.

And I was, for the first time in a long time, deeply, profoundly satisfied.

The Troublemaker Party, as I had mentally christened my new team of former Demon Kings, was a beautiful, chaotic mess.

They were a walking, talking diplomatic incident waiting to happen.

And they were all mine.

We stood at the precipice of our next great conquest: the mountain fortress of the Dwarf King of Hakui.

The air was crisp, the sky was a hateful, burning blue, and my army of monsters was ready to commit acts of geological and biological violence on my command.

"This is the life," I murmured, leaning back against a cool, black rock.

Sarah, my newly acquired and perpetually unimpressed former Demon Queen, was filing her nails with a shard of obsidian. She looked bored.

Grak the Unbreakable was using a small boulder as a stress ball, his massive hand squeezing it until it crumbled into dust. He looked happy.

Kevin, my newly evolved Vampire Noble, was practicing a series of dramatic poses, his cape swishing with an enthusiasm that was frankly embarrassing. He looked constipated.

"Our forces are assembled, my Lord," Isabelle’s voice, a cool blade of calm in the midst of my circus of sociopaths, cut through my thoughts. "What are your orders?"