The Meaning of Those Words

"So — this thing's still heading east, right? Looks like it's about to fall apart, mind."

"It'll make it to the foot of the mountain. I built it knowing we'd need that much. The gold's just peeling a little earlier than I'd like, that's all — I happened to be momentarily shocked. — Don't you mock the power of gold!! Do not mock — the power of gold!!"

"Oi, oi, I'm — I'm not mocking it…"

The 〈Alchemy King〉 Shaw was bearing down on the 〈Fist Emperor〉 Salman with a face a touch too earnest.

The interior of the gold ship had calmed considerably.

The grade had eased as they approached the foot of the mountain; the ship had slowed, and the surface gone smoother. They were on the long, gentle final stretch, the twins still feeding their water-and-ice path beneath the hull as it descended.

"…So once we're off the slope and east — then what? Mūzeg's main body we shot past back there, but staying east straight into Mūzeg territory is what's waiting. Plenty of Mūzeg's allied states close at hand, too…"

Salman remembered something else and tagged it on —

"No — there's the 〈Three Kingdoms〉 too, set apart from Mūzeg as they are. But the Three Kingdoms sit further inland past Mūzeg, and they share a border with Mūzeg, which is its own problem…"

"That, plus — the Three Kingdoms may be technically independent of Mūzeg, but they have a history of forcing Demon Lords into wars in heavy-handed fashion and getting them killed in the bargain. There's the geography of sitting across a plain from Mūzeg, but more critically, there's a track record of something close to Demon Lord Hunting in their past. That's the bigger sticking point."

Shaw said, picking up the thread Salman had laid down. His face had turned, quite suddenly, serious.

"Mmh — every direction's bad in its own way, but east is especially tangled, isn't it. Has to be somewhere reasonable…"

Salman went the full circle without arriving anywhere, and let out a long sigh.

The other Demon Lords had each gone quiet, faces clouded, the odd low groan drifting up from the floor.

Watching this, Shaw — the man whose call had pointed them east in the first place — held his own answer back. He'd let the other Demon Lords think out loud first, and weigh what came up. If anyone landed on something better than what he had in mind, he'd take it without a second look.

"You can't really afford to drop your guard around any country at war, can you. If the situation goes south, they'll come asking for power on loan. Or rather — loan would be fine, but the moment you decline, loan becomes hand it over and we're back to square one. Ugly forecast, but a likely one. — Surely there's somewhere willing to actually take the shape of an honest deal."

The 〈Flame Emperor〉 Lilium, sweeping back her crimson hair, joined in.

The seasickness seemed to have lifted. Her voice was sharp again.

There was an undertone in what she'd said: Lilium had, at some level, accepted being a Demon Lord. More specifically — we may not get to escape fighting altogether, phrased a roundabout way.

Hard to swallow. Objectively, rational.

However hard they kicked at it, the Demon Lord label wasn't coming off. In the worst case, their power might have to be currency — to buy themselves the place to stand that the world's hands couldn't reach into.

At minimum, what every Demon Lord here needed was a place where their lives weren't simply for the taking.

The ideal was different, of course — somewhere they could live without combat, without threat of death, free to pursue their own ends. But in the present situation, that ideal was wishful thinking. Clinging to it was a faster road to a bad move than seeing the picture as it was.

Lilium was being rational.

"…"

Her words quietly cleared the fantasy out of the air. Twenty-two people got pulled back to the brutal present in one motion.

To Demon Lords who had been leaning, however lightly, on baseless wishes, Lilium's words might have struck like a hostile spear.

Even so, in this situation, her rationality was correct. Hopes with a trace of plausibility were tolerable; fantasies of pure convenience, in a moment like this, would only multiply the danger to all twenty-two of them.

"All right. Easier to be deal-making than threatened, anyway."

Salman caught Lilium's implication first, and answered in the same key.

"In exchange for the country shielding us from outside hands, we lend power when they need it — that's about what a country might realistically offer us. Helped while helping — that's about the best result this moment makes available."

"Right."

— provided we're not betrayed.

If a country could honestly hold to that bargain, it would be the best of it. Lilium had been about to add this — but caught herself. Her last line had weighted the room enough already; pressing the pessimism further wouldn't do morale any favours.

She shrugged it off instead, putting on a sardonic edge — her commentary on the world entire.

"Surely someone, even as a lie, could be silly enough to say if you don't want to fight, you don't have to. These days, no one will say it even as a lie. The greedy gleam is in their eyes before they open their mouths."

"No kidding. Lots of low character around."

"Mūzeg most of all. That woman, this woman — any one in reach, basically."

A wry smile from Salman at the comparison.

Then —

"…Right. Running out of time, anyway."

He looked out the window.

The view outside was getting clearer by the moment. They were slowing.

"Sa-al! The slide's almost gone—!" "Sa-al!"

The twins, who had been leaning out of a window to feed the ice path, had pulled back in and were turning toward Salman in matched motions, sweeping their long blue-silver hair back.

"Oi. Stop calling me that."

"But — Sa-al!" "Sal, Sa-al!"

"…Ugh."

Salman didn't have it in him to scold them right then, and just sighed.

He'd been planning to deal with it later anyway. They had to settle a destination before the ship stopped, so the lecture got bumped further down the queue.

The Demon Lords went back to thinking.

"Um —"

Just then.

"Could I weigh in?"

Merea — the most worldly-naive of any of them — pushed his head back into the conversation, suppressing a leftover groan from earlier.

In Merea's memory, there was the name of one country that mattered.

---

If you ever find yourself lost on where to go — head first for the Kingdom of Lemuse.

The words stood with a small light around them, in Merea's memory.

Through the sky dragon Cortista, he'd been told this was something Flander had said.

— He must have known I'd be officially named a Demon Lord, then.

That was probably why those words had been left for him.

Merea was certain on that much. After what had just happened on the mountain, it was hard to doubt.

He braced, and brought it up.

"What if we tried for the 〈Kingdom of Lemuse〉?"

A snap of recognition went around the room.

Right — that country. The look of something half-forgotten coming back. Faces sharpened for a moment.

And then, almost at once, a cloud passed across the same faces. Most of the room dimmed.

"Aah… Lemuse, huh. Lemuse is — a bit rough. Then again, given the circumstances, it beats no possibility at all."

Salman, first.

"It used to be a fool of a soft country that would shelter Demon Lords on the run. But that's the past. The current King of Lemuse is, by what I hear, bad news."

"Bad news?"

Merea tilted his head.

"Yeah. I'm not exactly fluent in eastern affairs, but even I keep hearing about how lousy that king's politics are. Just rumour, mind — but the talk is that he's about to bend the knee to Mūzeg outright. The fact that that rumour's even on the wind tells you what state Lemuse is in right now."

"But Lemuse is still alive?"

"Just barely. Half-dead, basically."

The room let out a collective sigh of agreement.

Merea watched their reactions and thought so it's no good after all — but then a voice came in to back his suggestion.

"Even so — if there's nowhere else, heading first for Lemuse might be the right move."

Marisa.

Both hands at her knees, spine perfectly straight, no apparent reluctance about going against the consensus.

"Lemuse lies south of Mūzeg, and at a shallower depth in the continent than the Three Kingdoms. With a wide enough detour, we may slip past Mūzeg's reach. And if, once we're inside Lemuse, the situation looks unworkable — we can pass through and slip into the Three Kingdoms from there. As a first destination, Lemuse still has, faintly, a hope. It is well-suited to that role. — And, at the very least, today's Lemuse — should they pull anything along the lines of hand over your power — would be a country we could crush. Unlike Mūzeg, there is room to push back. That alone is, for us, a sufficient reason to choose it. At worst, we'd be buying time."

Marisa's clear voice cut a clean line through the stale air.

…The real reason's the last point, isn't it… This maid is terrifying— trembled out, scattered, from elsewhere in the hull.

Then Shaw stepped in behind her.

In truth, Shaw's own preferred destination had been Lemuse all along. Nothing better had come up from the room — and so it was less backing than converging.

"For what it's worth, I see real possibility in Lemuse. I won't pretend that view is free of wishful thinking — but it is, comparatively, better. They're more likely to take Demon Lords in than countries actively hunting them. The fact that they used to do it, once, is — against countries with no such record — a basis for choosing. Just barely."

He couldn't quite deny this had become a process-of-elimination call. Which was why, on the mountaintop, he'd given his own choice a small private smile. But he hadn't thought the choice was wrong. Better than the alternatives — that judgement was real.

If Merea hadn't raised Lemuse first, Shaw had been about to. As it was, he'd ended up in support instead.

Whether Marisa had had the same intent, he couldn't say. Possibly she'd also been heading off any fragmentation in the room. Shaw had the thought after the fact.

"…Yeah. Not a bad call, actually. Like the money-grubber says, there's a precedent. Not zero hope. And Marisa's worst case, at least we can push back isn't off the mark either."

Salman thought a few seconds and nodded.

He added, with deliberately theatrical hand gestures and half a smirk —

"…Honestly, while we're on the road to Lemuse, wouldn't it be something if a revolt or a palace coup happened to swap out the king? While they're at it, ideally, Lemuse turns back into the country it used to be."

"That's a very convenient forecast, Salman."

Lilium gave him a flat look.

"But the country's falling apart from inside. A revolt's about due, you'd think."

"True. But even if there is one, the moment Mūzeg gets past the Three Kingdoms, Lemuse gets eaten anyway. Post-revolution chaos? Practically a come and devour me sign. Mind you — if a king came out of the upheaval as foolishly noble as the Lemuse kings of old, then maybe something actually changes."

"You've got a more imaginative head than you let on, don't you."

"Oh, shut up."

"So — Lemuse first, then?"

Watching Salman and Lilium bicker with a small smile of his own, Merea slipped the question back in.

The Demon Lords answered with nods.

Marisa's and Shaw's twin endorsement seemed to have given them the cover they'd needed.

"Right. — Then, Lemuse it is."

Merea took in their nods and let the consensus settle in him.

He hadn't intended to lead the room. It had just come out that way.

"What do you know — you're starting to sound like a Master of Demon Lords."

"Master of Demon Lords?"

Salman dropped the bickering with Lilium for a moment to lob it at Merea out of nowhere.

Merea tilted his head. Doesn't quite fit me, the gesture said.

Salman fired back.

"You basically are. We left the final call to you on that mountain, didn't we. Maybe you don't see it that way, but we put a weight on your shoulders. Bad of us — but I still think someone holding the call is necessary."

Demon Lords falling out among themselves was probably the worst-case state of affairs.

Right now, every one of them was watching the others. That they were managing to cooperate at all was thanks to the fact that the final judgement was being consciously deferred. The moment any one of them developed a real grievance with another, a stiffness would set in. It would spread. They'd come apart.

The connection of Demon Lord alone wasn't yet strong enough to smooth over that kind of fracture.

As those who are hunted, the empathy among them ran deep. As individuals, they barely knew each other.

Don't think about it.

Not until they were clear.

If they fell apart here, what was waiting was a slow, ugly herding to death by Mūzeg's forces — or Saisalis's — or someone else's.

Salman pushed that worst-case out of his head.

"Until we get somewhere safe, we need someone holding the calls. — And, hey, your maid is right there, isn't she? Makes you look more like a master, doesn't it?"

"That's a terrible designation."

"Lilium. You really do retort a lot."

"It is terrible."

The two launched back into bickering, and the topic dissolved.

But —

…Master of Demon Lords?

In Merea's mind, the words written on a future stone he had once held came back to him at last.