The wind was cold as it whipped through the grasses and plains, but Joy could feel none of it. Even the gaze that swept through the lands was not his own eyes; it was detached, severed. He was staring with his Mind’s Eye, wisps of white smoke curling out of the corners of his eyes. His other senses were numb or muffled, and it was a strain to feel what used to be second nature to him. It was frustrating, knowing what he had lost—he had lost running through the grasses, feeling the blades whip against his snout and brush against his claws. He had lost drinking from the river, the chilly water carving a path down his throat and through his chest. He had lost howling in the night, had lost tracking his prey by scent during a hunt. Joy was a demon, was a creature of the wilds, and yet it was the wilds that had been stolen from him.

Yet his body was not the only price he had paid—he had lost his Sister that fateful day so many nights ago. He could still see her smiling face as it burnt to ash, could still see her green eyes as she threw away the darkness as the sun throws away the night. She had killed herself that he might slay Sin, and indeed it was his claws that had seen the shadowfiend fall. The creature had hunted them across the lands, had stolen flesh and blood and threatened their lives. Its death had taken Sister’s life. Its death had taken his mind.

And yet its death had given him a people. They were sprawled along the bluff in all manner of forms, bearing all manner of claws and fangs. They were demons, shaped out of dirt and stone much as he was. Between them ran the pups, their short, stout forms unable to constrain the vigorous curiosity that they held towards everything from flowers to stones. They ran through the grass, unconcerned and unabashed as they tackled each other in playful combat. With stubby limbs, they pressed each other into the dirt. With short fangs and sharp claws, they tugged and swiped and bit at each other with the roughhousing characteristic of whelps learning to hunt. And as the occasional pup grew frustrated, there would spout a short gout of flame from its throat, blossoming like a strange flower into the air before disappearing with the scent of char.

The demons were joined by men in leather and metal, clothed in strange garb that was their hide and their scales. It would not protect them much against a true demon’s claws, but it served them well enough against those false fangs that they bore as weapons, forged from bending steel and melting iron. Painted over their armor and their too-large shields were crests—symbols of their packs, and sources of pride for all of them. Yet their packs were too-small now, from what he knew of them. They ought to be men in the thousands for each pack, and yet for these men, they were barely five hundred. They were his spoils of war, his prizes that he had won from conquering the Heartlands. Houses, they called their packs, for they lived in stone dens that did little but crumble before his demons. So many Houses ruled these lands, and yet one by one they had all knelt before him in service. One by one, they had all pledged themselves to fight for him, to die for him. And he was certain that they would die.—humans were simply too frail to do anything else otherwise.

The Houses had been small, mostly—lesser packs pledging themselves to the greater, paying tribute in return for protection. Of the hundreds in the Heartlands, he had found the greatest four. Then, he had come upon them like a forest blaze through the wilderness, his horde of demons a storm upon the plains. They had summoned their warriors and their soldiers to defend, and their men had rallied behind walls of iron, wielding short swords that hoped to prick the demons to death. Yet they found demon hide not to bleed so easily, and they found their trusted steel to be weaker than expected. Muscle had torn through leather and claw had sheared through iron, their flimsy defenses standing up no stronger than mud walls on a surging riverbank. They had panicked. They had broken. They had ran.

He could still see their panicked expressions as his demons sank their teeth into thigh and chest, tearing out chunks of scarlet flesh with monstrous ease. He could still see their twitching agony and their convulsing terror. They had ran. They had bled. They had died. And watching as his pack fell, watching as his warriors were no stronger than a pup before an alpha, their pack leaders had come out to bend the knee.

Yet there were larger Houses still that would have proven difficult to break. Even ants in enough numbers could fell a lion, and Joy knew that his demons had their limits in battle. Against two legions, they could not possibly hold. So instead, he summoned Kha. The lizard-demon was a channeler, much as he was. They could shape the magic through their veins, could guide it and mold it as they pleased. Together, they had channeled the crackling mahji through their limbs, and together they had spat out fire and lightning upon the waiting legions.

The men had burned that day, a raging torrent of greedy flame that had swallowed the m whole inside of its gaping gullet. Their armor had glowed a brilliant pink, their leathers catching fire. Their skin was not spared from the same fate, even as they struggled to beat out the flames that clung so tenaciously. Man after man had crumpled to the ground under that blaze, unable to even breathe as the fire stole the very air out of their lungs. Their skin had slowly charred black, the muscle sloughing and cracking under the fire’s bites. Slowly, their screams had died out. Slowly, they had died.

And so their warriors had fled from death. And so their lords had bent the knee.

They had traveled far throughout the lands to gather together the human packs, and it had proven as irritating as he had expected when the notion was first proposed. Humans were as prevalent as mice and as persistent as roaches; often even coercion by force proved ineffective. Indeed, he held no doubts that these men under his rule were thinking only of their next opportunity to escape, and indeed he held no qualms of their intentions show he show any weakness. That much, at the very least, he could understand.

His gaze swept once more over these men, that seemed like ants sprawled out as they were among the grasses. He spied the red hawk on yellow, the sigil of House Tyne—the largest House that he had made bend the knee. They had taken the most of his demons, bleeding out two of his largest that had grown to drunk with bloodlust. They had proven themselves a worthy foe, and he felt more respect for those men than he did for any other; he could only hope that their teeth would not grow dull with fear. He saw the golden star on black of House Florell, of the broken House that he had saved from the shadows at the Yearning. They were an empty pack now, no more than five soldiers under a grizzled alpha. The man they called Mors was strong enough; his eyes were clear and his stance was strong, all of which were signs of a true alpha. Yet without a pack to lead he was nothing, no more than the last dying gasp of a once-great lion.

There were smaller houses as well, whose names and strength was so fleeting that he struggled to remember both. There was the yellow fox on green of House Aless, which they had traveled so painfully far north to conquer. They had pitifully few warriors as well, though they would claim that they fought harder for it. He saw no proof when they had broken like panicked pups on the field, nor when their men pissed in their boots at the mere sight of a demon. The last was the red cat on black of House Muran, which had been an easy enough acquisition as they had marched south for House Tyne. The fools had been in the way, and it would have taken longer to go around them than it would have to take them.

A thousand and a half men were camped on the bluff overlooking the Capital, like mice in the shadow of a giant. Under any other occasion, perhaps, those leviathan walls might have been intimidating, with its scales of stone that seemed to be the hide of some enormous serpent. Indeed, his first time at this city, he had been astounded. His first time at this city, he had lost his Sister. His first time at this city, he had found his pack. This was not his first time any longer. He had returned to see it be his.

Many a warlord had shared similar sentiments, evidently, for the city’s walls showed evidence of frequent campaigns of conquest. The stones were broken and the gates worn, the damage too extensive and too expensive to be repaired. It was instead ignored, the men hiding deeper in their burrow to compensate for the walls that might fall on their heads at any time. Joy did not know how many times the throne had exchanged owners—he still remembered the first such fools that had approached while his pack had tried to flee. Their bones now littered the soil beneath the ground.

Yet high above the walls now flew a single flag, its features too distant for even him to make out with his Sight. He knew what it said, however, for Mors had told him when they had first arrived at the Capital. It was the sigil of House Mace, of the last, strongest pack that still held the Heartlands. With them serving underneath him, he would finally have an army large enough to accomplish what he wanted. When them crushed before him, he could finally turn his attentions south. For south, he knew, was where the true enemy lay—the enemy that hunted in the night and stole away the flame of life.

The shadow that stalked, the skal’va hunted in the southern lands. They were coming to swallow the earth and sky in darkness. His demons and these foolish men were the only tools that could stop them.