Establish the new order

The next couple of days were full of big changes in the monster village. As you worked through everything, you visited often with the cyan-haired harpy and the amber-skinned lamia. You really only wanted to talk to the harpy, since the lamia still hates your guts and wants to kill you, but it was impossible to speak with her alone. The bird woman has watched over her injured ‘sister’ ever since the battle ended, refusing to leave her side even if the lamia herself requested it. During your conversations, you learned that the unemotional expression that captivated you on the battlefield is just a part of the harpy’s generally cold personality. She speaks bluntly, and in few words. By contrast, the lamia is loud and combative. She constantly cursed you, threw things at you, and demanded to know every little thing you were forcing her ‘family’ to do. When you asked the two a question, it was common for the harpy to give a curt, yet honest reply while the lamia would answer with insults or sarcasm. It could be hard to get through the conversations you had with them, but you always learned something in the end.

For your first big act as lord, you summoned every monster in the forest and had them swear allegiance to you. The idea was to get a head count of everyone under you and plan your next moves accordingly. The monsters showed up in droves, and you got to know every race and population now under your rule. For any race of monster that Blythe couldn’t say much about, you went and asked the harpy to learn more. Some of them were more or less familiar to you, being the standard monsters you’d see in any fantasy story, while others defied your expectations. Most of them were not intelligent enough to speak, but they all demonstrated their fealty to you in one way or another. Cady, notably, did not answer the summons, but you trust that she’ll show her face sooner or later.

For your second act, you worked with Blythe to divide your monster subjects into three groups: workers, soldiers, and civilians. The worker group consists of all the monsters who are young and capable enough to handle manual labor. You sent them to work chopping and milling lumber, for now. You would have liked them to start constructing roads and stronger buildings, but as the stick-and-mud shelters of the village suggest, none of them know how. There was a moment that you considered teaching them what you know, but after some reflection you realized that a having watched two or three survivalist videos on the internet was not a substitute for genuine carpentry knowledge. The soldier group’s job is self-explanatory: all of the monsters who are more adept at tearing things down than they are at building them up will undergo daily combat training. Finally, the civilians are all of the monsters who are too young, too old, too weak, or too unintelligent to fit into either of the other groups. They are the ones who the other groups work hard for, the ones who need and deserve protection.

Now, three days after taking over, you stand in the center of the village. For your third big act, you plan on taking a leap of faith. Earlier in the morning, you declared that a special ceremony would be taking place at midday. The ceremony carries with it a huge risk, but the benefits could be crucial to your success as a Demon Lord. Now, as the sun beams down from the middle of the sky, a small crowd of spectators has gathered to watch whatever spectacle you have planned.

“Welcome, my loyal subjects,” you say to the crowd. “Today I will be bestowing a great honor upon two of you. It has only been three days, yet I find the services rendered by these two individuals to be so outstanding, so valuable, that they deserve special recognition. Here they come now.” You gesture towards the crowd, and all of the monsters shuffle out of the way to allow those behind to approach. A collective gasp rolls through the spectators as they see who the honorees are. “Yes, you know them!” you say. “You look up to them, as you should!” The harpy and the lamia, led by Blythe, make their way forward. Although they don’t have far to go, the lamia moves markedly slower due to her injuries. Blythe marches up and takes her position by your side, while the two monster girls stop about six feet in front of you. The cyan-haired harpy kneels to you on her own, while the amber-skinned lamia remains standing. Her **** glare does its best to **** you from afar. “Without your knowledge, I would not know my own followers,” you say. “As a result, I would have asked too much, or too little of them. I thank you for your guidance.” The muttering of the crowd grows to a chatter for a few seconds before dying down again. You see a lot of nodding and smiling going on among the spectators, which is encouraging. “I see great potential in you two. Going forward, I will be relying on your strength not as advisers, but as agents. To ensure that you serve me and my interests to the best of your abilities, I will now bestow upon each of you the power of a name. Use this blessing to stand against all those who would oppose my reign.”

The lamia can’t keep quiet anymore. She yells out, “What!? You can’t be serious!” The crowd of monsters goes silent, and all eyes are on the angry snake woman. The harpy tilts her bowed head to the side enough to glance up at her sister’s outburst. “You think, just because you got lucky last time, we would accept your handouts? Never! Save your pity for someone else. I’ll ki—”

A mostly cyan-feathered wing swoops out to cut the lamia off. It then hovers in front of the stunned monster for a couple of seconds before returning to the harpy’s side. “Thank you, my lord,” says the bird woman.

“Sister, no.” The lamia drops down and grabs onto the harpy’s shoulders. “I know you were just trying to save me back then, but this is different.”

That piques your interest. So the harpy only surrendered because the lamia would have died otherwise, you think. I knew from how determined she was to stay by her side afterward, but these two really care about each other a lot, huh? They’re like real sisters.

“You can’t let him look down on you. On all of us,” the lamia continues. “He’s a human. He and the elf killed our brothers and sisters. We sleep on their furs every night!” She is, you realize, referring to the griffins and dire wolves that you fought against when you and Blythe first delved into the forest. The villagers had laid out all the corpses, then waited for you to see them before they were slaughtered for meat and hides.

“And I took that lesson to heart,” you say, loud enough for the whole assembly to hear. “Back then, like many humans, I assumed that all monsters were bloodthirsty savages. I was wrong.” I’ll ignore the fact that those griffins and dire wolves did, in fact, try to kill us, you think. “I assumed that you wouldn’t care about your dead.” I’ll also ignore how you made a show of their dissection just to make me feel guilty. “Your ‘sister’ here has taught me the strengths and weaknesses of my followers, but it was you who dispelled my prejudice. I thank you for that.” Except for the part where you tried to **** the shit out of me. Really, why am I giving you a name, again? The harpy is one thing. She has proven herself loyal, as far as you’re concerned. You don’t want to have to keep thinking of her as ‘the harpy with the line of scarlet feathers on her wings,’ so you thought of giving her a name. Honestly, evolving into a stronger monster was an afterthought. The same can’t be said of the lamia, though. Giving a power boost to a monster girl who actively wants you dead seems suicidal, so why did you summon both of them?

You glance at the harpy, who is staring directly into the lamia’s eyes, and then you remember why you’re doing this: only naming one of them would drive a wedge through their bond. It would make the harpy depressed, and the lamia furious. A Demon Lord you may be, but you’re not quite evil enough to want to break up two sisters.

“Eat shit and die, human trash,” says the lamia, visibly disgusted by your little speech.

You’re making this really hard, bitch.

You turn to Blythe, and gesture towards the amber-skinned lamia. The elf strolls over to the monster girl and wrestles her away from the harpy. Their scrap is loud and violent, but the injured lamia never stood a chance: within thirty seconds, Blythe has the woman pinned to the ground at your feet. As for the harpy, she watched the whole thing unfold while wearing her signature neutral expression.

“Now, without further ado,” you say, pulling the audience’s attention back. Both the harpy and the lamia turn their focus to you, as well. “Let’s begin with you.” You gesture to the harpy. She quickly bows her head, ready to receive your blessing. The crowd of monsters holds their breath as they await your next words. So, what do I name you? you think. Coming up with names is really hard sometimes. You look the harpy over again. She has a slim figure with small breasts, similar to Cady. Her personality is cold on the outside, but you know how much she really cares for her fellow monsters. What is most striking, though, is the feature that keeps drawing your eye: the stripe at the bottom of her wings that matches the color of her alluring eyes. That’s got to be it. “From now on, you will be called Scarlett.”

As soon as the name leaves your lips, you notice a change in the cyan-haired harpy. There’s a strange glow coming off of her now, like an anime character whose power is overflowing. After a few seconds, the tips of her cyan hair redden to match the color of her namesake. Following that shift, the feathers of her wings disintegrate into magical energy that then reforms itself into two humanoid arms. The mysterious glow remains for another moment or two, before finally disappearing.

Just like Cady’s evolution, she became more human-looking, you think. Despite gaining humanoid arms, you note that her feet are still the large talons of a harpy. She’s still a far cry from being mistaken for a human, then.

“Rise, and introduce yourself,” you say.

Even though she takes it slow, she still stumbles when she tries to get back on her feet. On her second try she loses her balance again, but her arms convert themselves back to wings and she catches herself. Once she’s finally stood upright, she looks at her feathered appendages with a curiosity that breaks through her usually calm demeanor. She closes her eyes for a moment, and after concentrating, manages to shift only her right wing to a human arm. Then she switches it back, and tries the same thing on the left. Satisfied with her experiment, the newly evolved harpy sheds both of her wings and crosses her arms over her small bosom in a salute.

“I’m Scarlett. I serve Demon Lord Evan Reynolds.”

“Good job, Scarlett,” you say. Then, you turn to the lamia on the ground. In her eyes is a raging fire bent on burning you to a crisp. “You and I have had our differences,” you start. “I wronged you by killing those pups, and you sought ****. Now, you feel like I’ve wronged you again, but I want you to give me a chance this time. I know how much you care about every single monster in this forest. You worry about them, and look after them.” She’s like their older sister, you think. “It’s those qualities that have earned you this name.”

“Just get this over with, asshole!”

You look over the lamia one more time. Her figure is curvier than Scarlett’s. Between her amber skin, her chocolate brown hair, her hazel eyes with vertical slits for pupils, and her verdant green lower half, she has a number of striking features. However, you can’t stop thinking of her as the ‘tough, but kind big sister’ of the forest monsters. More than any physical characteristic, it’s the lamia’s personality that you’re the most drawn to. With that in mind, the perfect name pops into your head in no time at all.

“Henceforth, your name is Violet.”

The same glow overtakes the lamia, and within moments her large, green snake’s tail splits in two and morphs into human legs. She moves her new legs in odd, useless ways, the muscle memory from being half-snake clearly not translating well to her new lower half. Since she obviously won’t be getting up on her own, Blythe safely gets off the woman’s back and pulls her up into a sitting position. As the glow begins to fade, Violet glares up at you. “Sleep with one eye open tonight,” she says. “I swear I’ll kill you for this.”

“Be patient with me, Violet. I hope that one day, you’ll see our values aren’t so different.”

With those final words, the ceremony is complete. Scarlett helps Violet walk away, and the crowd of spectators disperses. Blythe joins you on a walk around the village as you contemplate your next move.