In an ideal reality, Mia and I would have skipped out of the city, hand in hand, and proceeded to wreak beautiful havoc on the civilization of this particular Earth.
Unfortunately, as was often the case, reality was a cold shower. Followed by dreadfully soggy socks, because your shoes were not, contrary to s, 'water repellent.'
At least, that was how I felt sitting across from Glaustro at a delightful little café. A place I was unlikely to visit ever again, out of pure spite.
"You want us to what?"
"I don't see why this is an issue." Glaustro's voice was calm, collected, and just a tad taunting. "Training the surviving mortal recruits was your suggestion."
"I suggested training them en masse, yes. Nothing else!"
"And wouldn't it be fair to give some of the promising ones the same chances you were afforded? Or better?" He tilted his head at me, copying the gesture I liked to make when asking questions.
My eye twitched as I directed my attention to Mia. "What do you think about all this?"
My kitty cat paused, deliberated, and nodded. "They could be useful, if trained right. This would potentially give us more archdemons so we could bring those numbers up a little."
She neglected to mention why she would want that, but it was rather obvious. More archdemons meant more power. More power meant more influence. And more influence gave Glaustro a better chance of succeeding Naberius. Oh, and increased the likelihood of Vallinach getting fucked over.
Torgun, which we'd discovered was the word for 'Earth' in the local tongue, could become our very own spring point for acquiring higher quality troops.
Doing so would be a pain. Less of a pain than 'traditionally' recruiting them, though? Ugh, admittedly not. Archdemons, not to mention actual noble demons, were not in the habit of following unestablished colonels unless they were assigned to them by a lieutenant general. After all, in that scenario, it would be the lieutenant generals recruiting them, rather than some nobody.
Technically. Sort of. It was a way of looking at the world just convoluted enough for a demon to buy.
That was why we hadn't even been able to gather enough archdemons to fill all the 'important' officer roles for this invasion. Mia and I had only two each working under us. And we were majors now!
"Fine." I sighed, slumping a little as I let my gaze drift around the high tech city. The sight of demons wandering through the streets was still throwing me for a loop.
"Excellent!" Glaustro beamed, subtle manipulation tactics thrown aside now that I'd agreed. "I'll have the details on the most promising recruits forwarded to you shortly."
Curiosity finally got the best of me. "How did the first push go, anyway? Anyone we can really bet on raising up successfully?"
Glaustro shot me a disappointed look. "You should have been paying attention to the combat."
"I had more important things to do!"
"Such as Mia?" Methialia chimed in cheekily, making me jump in shock. She had appeared almost out of nowhere.
"Gah! How'd you even do that? And no, we were playing video games!" I shouted, ignoring the way both Mia and I had flushed.
Methialia just laughed and plopped herself down into an empty seat without even asking. Rude fire chicken that she was.
"Video games… oooh, heard about those from the memories I devoured. Gonna need to try some," she enthused. "Anyway, yeah. There were a few mortals that stood out."
"That mean the surveillance system your officer set up was a success?"
Methialia had lucked out and gotten her hands on a summoner. The eyeball thingies he could conjure were creepy, but useful… though Mia had a disturbing tendency to pop them with her claws when they got too close to her. Her little giggle every time she did this made me smile and freaked me out, simultaneously.
"Yep, big time," Methialia replied. "There's twelve mortals we're watching in particular, but Glaustro snatched one up. I stole one away, too."
I looked at Glaustro. "Oh?"
The big guy nodded, a smile flitting across his lips. "This mortal is… promising. He managed to rally a group of around five hundred others and led them to follow behind the imps. When the imps broke the ranks of the… robots, the recruits rushed in and scavenged their weapons. They were quite successful after that. They are also a major reason why we didn't have more losses. Their actions galvanized the others."
"Huh," I muttered quietly as I watched Glaustro, unable to stop myself from wondering at his actions.
After all, he wasn't taking the most… typical demonic approach. That would be to crush would-be leaders in the cradle, just in case. Unless you were Naberius, obviously. The general seemed content to have dogs yipping at his heels.
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"And you?" I asked, turning to Methialia.
"I got myself a pyromaniac." She grinned like that wasn't a horrifying thing to say. "You saw those couple of gutted buildings, right? Before the claiming?"
I thought back hard to the conclusion of the battle, but I only remembered seeing a lot of smoke from a few massive skyscrapers.
"Maybe?"
"Well, she happened to them. Went all rogue on the security's asses, took out everyone on the first few floors, and then set them ablaze. Apparently, she has an extremely notable fire affinity, which… isn't that surprising. She actually comes from Lagyel."
Now that made me sit up. Mia stiffened beside me, spearing the fire demoness with her eyes almost as effectively as if she'd used her claws.
"What?" my kitty cat demanded, coldly.
"Oh yeah. She was one of those… sand people? Did we ever get their names? Eh, one of those. Except, apparently, a fire jinn got a little frisky at some point and got her mother pregnant. He hid her when the claiming age came, probably to 'conceal his shame' or some shit, the way she tells it. Anyway, she's sixteen now and was very cooperative when taken to a training camp, so she ended up with us."
"Hrm. I'd like to meet her." Mia still looked as intense as before.
Methialia's expression was going steely too, however. "Why?"
"Because trust me, the kind of things that happened to her can cause grudges to develop. Grudges that might be turned towards us," my beloved hissed, looking three different kinds of scary.
And attractive, though that might not have been the appropriate Emotion? She was veering into very hypocritical territory, but… I couldn't blame her, exactly.
"Trust me, my apprentice will not cause any trouble." Methialia bit off the words like her element was ice instead of fire. "And even if she did, it would be up to me to correct that."
"At the cost of putting everyone here at risk?"
"From a mortal?"
"Mortals ascend," Mia growled, letting her long, deathly sharp claws wisp out of her fingertips.
"Enough!" Glaustro's expression made it clear that he was more than a little done with our shenanigans. "Mia, put some trust in Methialia. Methialia, if there are any issues and you catch onto them, I expect to be informed. I appreciate your efforts, but I won't have problems developing under my nose."
The two demonesses sat back in their seats, making me blink and wonder when they had leaned so far forward. I also noted that the edge of the table on Methialia's side was lightly charred where she had been gripping it.
"I had a question," I said, piping up before any further tension could seep in. "We're making a ton of plans. I approve of them, obviously, since some were mine. But how many of these mortal recruits will we be allowed to keep?"
It was a fair question.
Naberius might have put us in charge, and we had his backing as a fifth faction. However, these initiation invasions were meant to be an opportunity for the four lieutenant generals to recruit new followers. Typically, officers from all four factions would be assigned to lead newly initiated mortals. Glaustro had spit in the face of that when he got frustrated and assigned only our people to the invasion.
This was ultimately his right. It was also technically 'fair' to the four idiots, because not one of them had been favored. But it was still bound to cause issues.
Glaustro fell silent at my question. His eyes drifted down to the table, his brow furrowed in thought. Had Bronwynn not been out wrangling recruits, he probably would have taken up a position behind the colonel and started gently kneading his shoulders.
As it was, Glaustro had no such support when his eyes flashed up to roam over all of us. That didn't stop him from showing that inner fire of his, though.
"All of them. We take all of them. Each and every recruit we can swallow up, we take. The lieutenant generals can sift through the leftovers if they want to. I don't care."
That… was a much firmer stance than I ever expected Glaustro to take, which was saying something.
"Um… Not that you'll hear me complain, but… won't that ruffle a lot of feathers?" I swayed my wings for emphasis, which did draw a little chuckle from the colonel.
"Oh, it will. I just don't care. I followed your suggestion, and the recruits will be getting basic mage training. That means they'll be tougher. More promising. Higher ranked. We need that," Glaustro snarled. "We need that badly. I'm not giving those clowns a chance to swoop in and leave us with nothing again."
His hands briefly tightened on the table, leaving claw marks. I was honestly feeling guilty over the state of that piece of furniture. The poor café owner had nothing to wrong us.
I was also focusing on stupid nonsense so I didn't have to endure the look of utter Wrath on Glaustro's face.
I mean, I knew that recruitment had been… rough. I knew that Bronwynn and Methialia had pulled off miracles with the troops and archdemon numbers they did manage to get us. But I still had to admit: Glaustro was right to be upset.
Back before storming Breskwor, we had scraped the bottom of the barrel. We'd snatched up every single demon that showed any kind of motivation and spirit. We had even taken on desperate souls more interested in commerce and craft, who had been forced into the soldiering life by debts and poverty.
The troops we'd gathered in this last drive? They were a level below that.
I dare say that Bronwynn and Methialia had bullied a whole lot of them into signing up. Oh, we owned them now, and Glaustro had made sure they were motivated, but that didn't change the fact that we were running around with the dregs of the legion.
I sincerely missed our 'core' army. They were still stationed on Breskwor under Imthala's firm command, just in case. Because of course some asshole might try something underhanded while we were away, even if we were on sanctioned legion business.
Here on 'Turgon'? Here were the talentless, the unmotivated, the lazy. They were fine as pawns and shock troops, bodies to throw at the front lines and forget about, but if we wanted better? We'd have to raise them up ourselves.
Which is the whole reason I'd suggested training the mortal recruits better in the first place.
"Okay, then," I breathed, eyeing Methialia's worried expression and Mia's glee over pissing off the lieutenant generals. "So, we're betting on these recruits, and we're betting big."
"True." Glaustro didn't even bother with denial. "It can work, though. Especially with everything you and Mia shared about your own experience. Plus, this world is ideal for this kind of thing. With their population numbers, we'd be able to properly ascend pretty much all of the recruits we've got."
That was fair. With every city having billions of souls waiting for us, we could absolutely pull off some insane stuff. Still…
"Are you sure you want an army full of unstable, ascending mortals that are constantly being pushed beyond their limits?"
I quirked my brow as I pointed out the one flaw in his plan. After all, I'd advocated for training the recruits. Not handing them enough souls to push themselves way over the minimal ascension requirements, just in the hope of producing marginally more useful demons.
My colonel drew in a few slow, deep breaths. I watched with some alarm as he made an obvious effort to center himself. Still, when his eyes snapped open again, they were just as determined as earlier.
"We'll manage."
I sighed. "Well, okay. Fine. When's that list of promising recruits gonna make its way to us?"
Glaustro grinned.