ButcherPete
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Chapter 87: Cherrymaid Doctrine
🕑 Added 2025-07-12 02:00:04 +0000 UTCThe convoy stretched across the black basin like an open wound. Six wagons, iron-spined and bone-tired, groaned over cracked stone as the slavers cracked whips and shouted obscenities. The cart beasts wheezed. The prisoners, emaciated demons curled in corners, didn’t respond.
On both sides of the convoy walked ten contract-devils dressed in merchant suits sewn with Greed-style threading. Four slavers rode ahead on mounts, their laughter echoing.
“Five silver on that one croaking before sundown.”
“Haha, make it ten. I’ll whip her till she squeals.”
They laughed harder, unaware that death had already taken position.
In the tree line, three women stood in silence. All wore black-trimmed uniforms, cut tight and high, pristine white aprons fluttering. No one could see their faces, each wore a cloth veil under a silver circlet. Only the gleam of pink skin peeked beneath.
Their hands hovered near their belts.
When the lead slaver passed the fourth cart, a chime rang out.
Soft, clear. Like wind rustling glass.
Rose moved first.
Her weapon snapped from her hip with a metallic hiss. The straight blade unfolded into jointed lengths, transforming into a silver whip. It lashed across the convoy and tore into the nearest devil’s chest before he turned. The second slash ripped through his comrade. The third devil lifted his staff, too slow, and Penelope’s weapon took his head.
By the time the fourth tried to run, Lily stepped from the other side of the road. Her form trembled slightly beneath her blouse as she held the handle of her weapon with both hands. Her voice was barely audible.
“Please… don’t run.”
He ran anyway.
Lily closed her eyes and pulled.
The blade snapped loose and cut through the devil’s ankles first. He fell. Then it struck again. Fast, sharp, silent.
Ash spread across the sand and then bloomed into light particles before vanishing.
A minute later, the battlefield stilled. The slavers gone. No survivors.
Inside the cages, the chained demons stared without comprehension.
Rose walked toward the lead cart. Her polished boots leaving no prints. She stopped before the lock and gently removed the iron pin. The door swung open as if it were never locked at all.
The demon girl inside, perhaps no older than fourteen, whimpered as she flinched backward.
“Don’t be afraid,” Rose said softly, kneeling. “We’re not with them.”
“You’re devils…”
“No,” Rose said. “We’re servants.”
Behind her, Penelope walked the line of carts. Her weapon retracted into saber form with a clean, deliberate click.
“Fourteen slaves rescued. Three dead. No law tracking left behind.”
“I checked the ridge,” Lily said quietly, coming back from the rear. “No more patrols. The next caravan’s still two days out.”
She spoke with her head down, fingers folding together behind her back.
“There was a boy,” she added, voice fainter now. “His eyes were open but he wasn’t breathing.”
Rose nodded once, but said nothing.
Six months ago, they had been the ones in the cages.
It hadn’t mattered that they were charm demons once. Their gifts, their beauty, their bloodline, it hadn’t protected them when the slavers came. Their village burned. Their families died. Their children were torn apart in front of them.
They didn’t scream anymore after that. Not even when they were beaten. Not even when the Greed merchants bragged about how much each of their bodies would fetch at auction.
They had given up.
Until that day.
They didn’t see how the devils died, only heard the war demon’s footsteps and felt the cart jolt as their cages opened. Some of them stirred, thinking death had come.
And then she appeared.
Pink hair tousled, smelling of devil-prince wine, her pale skin speckled with someone else’s blood. She wore no veil. No armor. No insignia.
She looked at them.
And smiled.
So pitiful. She had said, her tone lilting like a lullaby.
And yet, somehow, still alive. They remembered.
Hans, the war demon, didn’t stop her. He stood aside, unreadable, as she stepped on to the cart and crouched.
She offered no warmth. No apology. Just a contract.
An exclusive one.
Yet it looked so simple, a crestless, seamless swirl of mana. Just a promise and her name at the bottom in fluid script:
Hannya.
Sign it, and I’ll give you a reason to live.
Was what her words and actions convey to them.
Rose’s hand had reached out. Penelope and Lily didn’t even look. They just signed.
The change wasn’t instant.
Though the weight in their hearts had lightened, they remained broken for weeks, buried in self-hatred and emptiness, especially after they couldn't focus on Hannya’s well being, even as Hans took them in.
But they trained, they ate, they bled, they continued to follow orders.
Then something inside them shifted.
Their charm energy began to blacken, harden. Their blood boiled more violently by the day. And one morning, without ceremony, their skin turned pink.
Hans simply raised an eyebrow when it happened.
“You’re not charm demons anymore,” He said. “Not sure what you are now.”
They never named it.
But it made their enemies scream.
Now, as Penelope stacked the corpses to be burned and Lily knelt beside a slave girl to unfasten her collar, Rose looked toward the horizon.
Avaritia’s lands still stretched wide. But piece by piece, link by link…
They were cutting the chain.
“Mistress,” Rose whispered, “we haven’t forgotten… we never will.”
The corpses of demon escorts were still smoldering when the sky shifted.
Rose’s gaze lifted with trained calm. A distortion rippled over the basin rim, subtle, nearly invisible. Then, above them, a gold glyph flared into view. Sigils spun outward like wheel spokes, forming a full airdrop circle.
“Above. Right flank,” she said.
“Got it,” Penelope answered.
“Perimeter,” Rose added. “Lily.”
“Yes,” came Lily’s soft reply.
From the sky, six figures dropped like heavy lead, Greed Enforcers, 2 and 3-star devils all. Their armor gleamed bronze, etched in anti-charm script. They struck the ground hard, their arrival disciplined, their movements sharp. These weren’t guards. They were field hunters.
One Enforcer stepped forward and deployed a shimmering hex-shield.
“You three are accused of destabilization, theft of contract-bound property, and interfering with Council-certified slave traffic. You’ll be purged and archived.”
He spoke like he was ordering coffee.
Rose clicked her saber loose, her motions graceful and still. “Permission denied.”
The first spear launched.
Penelope intercepted it mid-air with a delicate twist of her wrist, sabering it off-course. The moment the metal clanged, another Enforcer bolted forward, boots igniting as he attempted a rune-enhanced thrust straight at Lily’s throat.
Lily didn’t flinch.
She took one smooth step sideways, pivoting just enough for the blade to miss her collar by a breath, and lifted her finger, her eyes downcast.
“Mind Magic:” she whispered. “[Nerve Bloom].”
A pink sigil flashed into the air like a painted rosebud, and the charging Enforcer collapsed instantly. Crippled from memory.
His mind was flooded with pain.
Every skinned knee, every broken rib, every fever sweat and night terror, all surged into his nervous system simultaneously.
He screamed, clawing at his head. Then, he vanished into ash.
“Lily’s refined it,” Penelope said as she danced past another spear. “Her blooms are more precise now.”
“Our pain’s evolved,” Rose said, sweeping her leg into a perfect arc to avoid a blow. “Let them taste it.”
Another Enforcer activated a null flare, standard anti-charm countermeasure. The battlefield shimmered in dull white light. The sigils around scrambled.
But it didn’t matter.
Pain held no charm.
Their abilities were not shaped by affection or longing.
They offered no lure, no kindness, no plea.
Pain was simply the truth they carried.
And that truth, that law, remained unchanged within the suppression.
“Double cast:” Penelope intoned, sweeping her saber in a wide crescent along the ground. “[Nerve Bloom].”
The sigil sketched itself into the soil with raw elegance, double-layered like a blooming thorn bush. Two devils caught in its radius staggered, retched, and screamed. One clutched his chest. The other tore at his own helmet before both collapsed and disintegrated.
“That’s three,” Lily whispered. “Three left.”
A fourth Enforcer raised a counter-sigil and shouted a rapid incantation. This one was different, chained glyphs designed to overload perception and lock down motor function. A rare combat array, expensive and rare for field deployment.
Rose tilted her head. A flicker of annoyance flashed in her voice.
“Mind Magic:” she said coolly. “[Grief Stitch].”
The sigil unfolded like black lace across her hand and then burst forward in a ring of psychic thread.
The Enforcer’s incantation failed mid-word.
His glyphs cracked like glass. His mind began to twist. The stitching reached into his emotional core and forced it open like a bleeding wound.
He gasped.
Then fell, muttering apologies to someone who wasn’t there.
“That one must’ve loved his brother.” Rose murmured.
Ash followed.
The battlefield fell quiet.
Only the commander remained, taller than the rest, plated in dual-layered sigil armor, his mana pressure sharp but shaken.
“You’re monsters.” he said, voice hard.
Rose approached with fluid, polished steps. “No. We’re servants.”
“Who do you serve?”
“Pain... and purpose.”
The commander gritted his teeth. “Then die with it.”
He launched forward, aura flaring violet, spear aimed for Rose’s heart.
Lily stepped in with silent grace and blocked the thrust using only a palm ,wrapped in a sigil of pink light.
The commander froze. The sigil pulsed.
“Mind Magic:” Lily whispered. “[Widow Veil].”
The pain didn’t hit his body, it struck his sense of timing.
His past and present disconnected. His sense of self was peeled away from the moment. He blinked in confusion.
And Penelope’s saber slid across his throat.
Ash.
Night fell.
At the edge of the fire, the three maids cleaned their blades without urgency. The saved slaves had already been released and moved into a nearby shelter.
The wind blew gentle.
“They sent 3-stars this time.” Penelope said. “Not just merchants or trackers, full combat now.”
“They thought rank would solve the problem,” Rose said. “They still don’t understand what we are.”
Lily looked up from her spot near the fire. Her eyes were thoughtful behind her veil.
“Do you think Mistress knows?”
“Most likely, but even if she doesn’t, she will soon,” Penelope said.
“Then we’ll do more.” Lily murmured, almost too quietly to hear.
Rose didn’t respond right away.
She watched the wind stir the battlefield, thinking of Greed’s attempts to control what it never should have created.
“Let the greeders send more,” she whispered. “They’ve never seen a war built on grief before.”
…
…
A day later.
The auction floor below was a garden of cruelty. Warm light spilled across trimmed velvet seats. Hologlyph displays hovered midair showing the ‘features’ of each lot. Nobles lounged behind silk screens sipping spiced nectar, waiting for the next flesh parade.
Above it all, seated behind the two-way crystal of a private balcony suite, was a chef dressed in white.
Manzana.
His collar was perfectly folded. His sleeves rolled at a crisp angle, exposing gloved forearms marked only by two hollow star tattoos beneath his left eye.
He sipped apple vinegar from a crystal glass and tapped his fingers lightly on the booth's lacquered table. In front of him sat a small plate. A single crimson fruit resting on black velvet. The apple pulsed faintly, almost like it breathed.
“You’ll debut nicely,” he murmured. “Royal blend. Gentle cursed-blood infusion. Slightly aged.”
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a brush, and dusted the apple with powdered sugar.
For contrast, obviously.
Three shadows watched from the ceiling beams.
Rose, Lily, and Penelope stood silent and poised above the private suite, concealed by cloaking sigils and the architecture’s blind angles. They had already infiltrated the auction house an hour prior, intending to intercept a shipment rumored to contain survivors from a massacre.
But Lily had noticed the tattoo.
“Below. Suite nine. Hollow stars. Left cheek.”
Penelope tensed. “No name?”
“Hans said she renamed him. Gula changed his brand. She erased the rest.”
Rose peered down at the calm, smiling man polishing his fruit like a gemstone.
“Then we’ll go by memory.”
The door to suite nine whispered open.
Manzana didn’t turn.
“No guards,” he said softly. “Which means this is about me, not the fruit.”
He paused, eyes still on the apple. Then smiled.
“Good. I was worried they tasted sour.”
Rose stepped inside first. Then Penelope. Lily last, her posture quiet and measured.
None of them spoke.
They didn’t recognize his name. But they remembered him.
The one who grinned as they screamed.
The one who named his whip.
The one who stood outside their cages with a clipboard and said: “Your worth will be exceptional.”
Rose said nothing. Her hand touched the edge of the table.
Penelope circled behind him with gliding precision.
Manzana continued polishing the apple.
“You know, she didn’t erase my name out of mercy.” he said conversationally. “She erased me for utility. All flavor, no memory. Very Gula.”
Rose leaned down, her veil inches from his ear.
“Do you remember us?”
He tilted his head slightly. “Not the way you want me to.”
“That’s fine.”
Her fingers reached toward the fruit, brushing it delicately.
“Because we remember you.”
Lily whispered behind them.
“Mind Magic: [Culprit’s Guilt].”
The sigil lit the air like soft pink thread. Manzana shivered.
His grip faltered on the apple.
“Ah… that one’s new.”
Pain spread. Like indigestion soaked in shame. Like every memory of overeating compressed into a single pulse through the gut. He coughed lightly. Blood seeped between his lips.
Still, he smiled.
“Very elegant. You’ve matured.”
Penelope pressed a sigil into his shoulder, where his star tattoo met skin.
“[Salted Scar].”
A spike of phantom pain exploded up his spine. His eye twitched. His teeth clenched, only barely.
“She’d love this.” he whispered.
“She?” Rose asked.
“The little sister. It was Hannya, right?”
Penelope raised her saber an inch.
“Say her name again and I take your hand.”
Manzana stopped smiling. One less hand would cut his apple production in half.
“That’s better,” Rose said.
They didn’t beat him, or scream. They didn't even burn the apple.
They let his nervous system remind him who he used to be.
And why that version of him would die soon.
“We’re not slaves anymore.” Lily whispered.
“We’re not even demons.” Penelope added.
Rose stepped close. Her blade tapped once against his cheekbone, just beneath the left eye.
“We’re servants of despair.”
Then they left.
Silently. Elegantly.
Manzana exhaled, fingers trembling.
He stared at the apple.
“You better taste divine.” he muttered.
Then bit down, juice trickling from the corners of his smile.
The auction hall descended into its usual tempo of cruelty and applause.
A new shipment was wheeled in on a silver platform, each cage polished and glowing with human-lock runes. Children. Elders. Survivors from the southern valleys. Their chains gleamed. Their voices were silent.
The announcer’s voice carried bright and cheerful tones.
“Lot 51: The rivercharm lineage! Rare village bloodline, magic resistance, high fertility, and ritual clarity. Opening bid begins at twelve soul chits!”
Claps. Laughter.
The nobles didn’t see the three figures slipping between columns like living silhouettes.
They didn’t notice how the shadows bent just slightly, reacting to the presence of the three veiled women.
It began with a single pink sigil blooming on the wall behind the auctioneer.
Nobody noticed it at first, just an odd shimmer, a curl of magic.
Then the lights shifted.
Sound warped.
And suddenly, everyone could feel their first broken bone.
The audience froze, gripping arms of their chairs, knuckles whitening.
A second sigil appeared midair, written in glowing script only visible to those who’d ever heard screams for mercy.
Then came the voice.
Soft and meek.
“Mind Magic:” it said. “[Wailing Thread].”
The auctioneer dropped mid-announcement.
So did half the guards.
The floor seemed to shimmer with the memory of screaming.
Rose stepped forward onto the main platform, one foot atop the silver cage.
Her posture was flawless. Her saber still sheathed.
“We’re taking them,” she said.
“By whose authority?!” screamed a merchant from behind a mana curtain.
Penelope unsheathed her blade and wrote a glyph in midair so fast it burned pink trails.
“By the only authority that ever mattered,” she said. “Pain.”
Lily unlocked the cages with whispered sigils. The captives looked up in dazed awe, seeing maids where monsters had been just moments ago.
“You’re safe.” she told a small boy with green tinted skin.
“Who are you?” he asked.
She offered him a hand.
“The end of their story.”
By the time the enforcers rallied, it was already too late.
Each attempt to cast a binding sigil was disrupted, scrambled by half-seen runes already carved into the pillars. Doors refused to open.
Guards screamed.
Some remembered traumas they’d buried.
Others choked on invisible phantom wounds.
In the chaos, no one even saw the maids leave.
When the lights returned and the sound returned to normal, only a single pink flower sigil remained on the auction platform, glowing faintly with residual psychic magic.
Burned into the wood beneath it, one word:
[Remember.]
The news spread faster than it should have.
In the streets of Greed’s fractured capital, they were called many things:
The Pink Slayers.
The Maidens of Pain.
The Cursemaids.
The Three Veils.
But the one that stuck, likely born from a drunk noble’s shaking report, was the most common.
Pain Demons.
They were described as elegant and inhumanly precise. Psychic users cloaked in veils and silence. They melted into walls, moved through crowds unseen, and made grown devils sob with a whisper.
Their skin, it was said, gleamed hot pink in the moonlight. Their blades were whips. Their glyphs were drawn in midair and etched directly into the mind.
They left no bodies. No wreckage. Just sigils glowing with pink light, and the unbearable memory of pain.
And they didn’t take riches.
They took people.
~~~
Cashmere sat in Greed's only functioning business library, eyes narrowed behind his square-rimmed glasses.
He had spent days investigating the slow rot spreading through the northern territory. The apples were one thing. But slavers killing themselves. Contract disputes imploding. Strange behavior from nobles. All of it smelled like mismanagement, until the stories began cropping up.
Three demons. Maid uniforms. Psychic torture.
No faction claimed them. No enforcer survived them. No security array had recorded a proper image.
“Pain demons,” he muttered under his breath, flipping through a rolled dossier handwritten by a merchant who’d escaped a convoy attack.
He turned to the librarian, a thin, red-skinned devil with a tidy ascot and an ever-suffering look.
“You ever heard of that species?”
The librarian checked an index. “No known entries, sir. Might be a new variant. Unconfirmed taxonomy. No contracts filed.”
Cashmere scratched his temple. “That makes five appearances in two weeks. Each one more precise than the last.”
“Should I contact Records for possible Union mutations?”
“No. Not yet.”
He tapped the [Golden Investment] coin against the desk.
It tilted in his palm, leaning flat, like it refused to be flipped.
[Inquire further]
He sighed. “You’re getting vague.”
That never boded well.
He turned back to the scattered reports and resumed scanning. The names of cities. The targets. All were auction-based, convoy-linked, or involved unregulated contracts.
It didn’t fit anything he knew.
Hannya was new to Hellnia’s central politics, barely a blip before six months ago. He’d only heard of her through whispers passed along by the Greed Council’s observants, something about the Dreamveil Compact, some minor allegiance with a gathering of nobles, and a formal association with Baku and the Dream Knights of Hazy Mountain.
Not worth a full audit. Not right now.
She was strange, yes. Unknown lineage, meteoric rise, strange influence over Dream Core markets, but she had been diplomatic, orderly, even charming.
She didn’t feel like the cause of this.
Not the sort to send veiled assassins to gut auction houses and drag slaves into the shadows.
This felt more... Personal. Raw.
“Either a revenge faction,” he said aloud, “or a new experiment.”
Or worse, a competitor.
He tapped the side of the file once more.
“Let’s dig deeper.”
If these “pain demons” were real, and not just stories wrapped around trauma, then they came from somewhere. They bled like someone. And they answered to someone.
He intended to find out who.
Not for justice, of course.
For leverage.
Comments
Butch Perterson
lol if your on the fence about commenting something just dm it to me. But yes it’s written intentionally to draw parallels to their own past and why they developed laws like that, BUT I WILL BE CLEAR THEY ARE PAIN DEMONS NOTHING ELSE, but the way it’s inflicted on others runs opposite to charm, normal charm at least, but if you don’t like it, I’m not against changing it if you have a suggestion that might convey it in a softer way?
Prent
I’ve been thinking about if I want to say this or not all weekend, and I’ve decided that I should. When I first read this line: “Their abilities weren’t fueled by affection or temptation. They didn’t beckon or seduce. They only forced.” My first thought was “Oh, they’re r**e demons now.” If that’s what you want to imply, then fine, feel free to ignore me, but otherwise, maybe think about changing that line.
Legokill101
holy crap hans and hanya made them stupid op.
