The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 468: Before The Battle

Chapter 468: Before The Battle

Two Days Ago...

Malz felt like she was on fire.

The gem she’d swallowed had done nothing at first. Just long enough for her to feel foolish before she suddenly doubled over as fire tore through her nerves.

Everything that happened next was a blur of pain and small bouts of lucidity. She remembered being carried. A brief glimpse of the portcullis at the front of the Chapterhouse. A sensation of heading up, not down to their quarters. And then being dropped into a bed.

And then there were the nightmares. Most of them featured Maledict, but a lot of them involved Rain and Cassiel. In some, they were dead or being tortured and killed. In others, she was made to kill them by Maledict. And in the worst of her dreams, they became her torturers, replacing the nigh-faceless blur of demonic faces and bodies that had inflicted so much pain upon her.

In so many dreams, she saw her veins opening and her bones exposed. She saw dark blood seeping from the cuts and from under her fingernails. She heard Maledict’s amused chuckles and the shrieks of her loved ones. Their eyeless faces staring at her, telling her that it was her fault for being weak. For not being enough. For being just a copy of someone better...

And then the nightmares ended and she found herself in a vast, white expanse, with thousands of versions of herself. The same face. The same raven black hair, but with subtle differences that showed her they were not the same person. A scar here, a broken nose there. Eyes with subtle inflections to their looks and colors.

She walked amongst them, as quiet as they were, as they looked upon each other. What could she say to her selves that they did not already know? That they did not already experience in their own ways, through their lives and each other’s lives. There were gaps in the crowd of Aikos. Places that felt like missing memories and denied experiences. And at the center of the formation was a gate of dark iron, before which an onyx pool was carved into the shape of an eye, with a golden iris at its center.

The waters of the pools churned, and the gate creaked with every inch it opened, its hinges straining against their posts. And sitting at the edge of that pool was a woman. One whose visage filled Malz with a sense of ancient timelessness. She was wearing a lab coat over a suit not unlike the one Malz owned in the real world. Her hair was black but streaked with pure white, and her golden eyes stared at the pool as if she saw something other than the bottom of it.

Malz came to sit by her. By the woman she knew was the origin of her bloodline. She said nothing, simply staring where Aiko stared, trying to see what she saw. A storm in the water, of movement but not light. Malz thought she saw glimmers past the surface. But it felt impossible to be sure, and so she reached out and touched the surface. She felt its heat, and the depths of the pool suddenly seemed so much more vast than before.

And she knew, somehow, that this was her. Not any of the women who came before her. Not even Aiko. This place was hers. Malzkael’s. No one else’s.

Morning...

When she came to, Malz found herself covered in sweat and naked, a thin sheet clinging to her body and her wing cramped from having been lain on for so long. Her insides felt just shy of unbearably hot as she forced herself to sit up.

The only other person in the room was Kir, who was crouched at one of the walls, letting a dormouse crawl about his hand as he watched it in fascination. The fact it wasn’t being burned surprised Malz until she noticed it had green fur and a slight glow to it that was distinct from Kir’s, meaning it was some sort of magical beast or perhaps even a spirit.

Turning so her legs were off the bed, she peeled off the sheet and felt for the collar Kiryu had given her, relieved to find it still around her neck. She activated it and held still as the suit formed onto her body before standing. The room she was in was not richly appointed, but it was certainly quite lived-in. There was a small pile of clothes and a set of iron weights against one section of wall, and a table with cold food on it.

The sight of food reminded her body that it was ravenous, and so she went to the table and started on some of the fruit, not even bothering to peel most of them until she discovered one with an inedibly bitter green outer shell. She had no idea what she was eating, but some seemed to correlate to the fruits grown in Heaven, but with virtually no mana to them except in their seeds, and even that amount wasn’t enough that anyone would feel it.

The moment she made a disgusted sound, Kir looked up at her with an oblivious smile, the dormouse jumping to the top of his blazing red hair. "Malz," he greeted.

"That’s me," Malz replied as she tried the cup of brown liquid, which turned out to be some sort of tea with a tiny bit of sharp alcohol taste. He walked over and tilted his head as she peeled another green fruit and popped it into her mouth. There was some stale bread next to the plate of fruit, but she didn’t care as she tore into it.

That was when she saw the note.

It was in some sort of wrought iron holder at the center of the table, which had somehow escaped her notice despite being a rather obvious device once she wrapped her head around the concept. People on Ayther didn’t have magic devices for everything, and so they relied on paper, and that paper needed to be stored.

The note had her name written on its top rather prominently, and so once she finished with the stale bread, she reached for it. The handwriting was neat but had strokes to it that suggested it had been written with something sharp instead of the smoother, rounded edges of a heaven-style pen.

Malz,

We’re sorry to leave you with Kir, but he would have followed us otherwise. There’s going to be a battle. Ships are coming, and there’s an army outside the pass. Anko and I are going to help with the defenses, and everyone seems confident that the city will be fine, but there are rumors.

Anko seems pretty sure that the rumors mean angels are helping the Syndicate and the Aaruites. The Council is split on whether or not to trust us, so we’re doing everything we can to prove that we can be trusted in case things get out of hand.

We don’t know for sure what’s happening to you, but Councilor Avasar suspects whatever it was Kir created is optimizing your body for magic. She said something complicated about it, but I could only grasp the basics of what she meant. I think the important thing is that hopefully you’ll be able to use magic again.

Please stay in the tower and look after Kir. I don’t want to put you in a situation where you might have to fight your own people. We’ve been stopping by to make sure you’re fed, but if you find this note before we can return, know that we just want to keep you safe. You mean a lot to us, and to me, so please do not put yourself in danger without us. We’ll come back for you as soon as we find a chance.

~ Ferrovia & * Anko *

Malz smiled a little at seeing Anko’s name done up with stars. Feeling more herself, she finished the tea and stood, not particularly surprised when Kir picked up one of the green fruits she’d left behind and put it in his mouth, chewing without any particular reaction to what she knew was a bitter experience. He didn’t even react after he swallowed it except to quirk his lips in a bit of confusion, as if questioning why Malz ate regular food at all.

Walking over to the window, Malz saw the city from what seemed to be about five stories up. The morning sky was red, with a few long clouds drifting in the air, and the sounds of the city rising up in a way that felt as if little had changed. She had a view of the mountains and the landward edge of the walls.

The latter were covered in weaponry. Ballistas mostly, with catapults and even a few arcane constructs situated further back. Soldiers patrolled in groups of four, typically sorted out by the color of sashes they wore, but often with a green sash or two mixed in.

Malz had never been in a proper war. The notion of joining the Heavenly Host hadn’t attracted her like the relative independence of being an Executioner had. Her sole goal had been to come to Ayther to look for her lost family, and now that she had accomplished both, in a manner of speaking, she found it oddly less freeing than she’d hoped it would be.

But that only meant that she still had more to do. Like protect her friends and loved ones. Like finding Rain and Cassiel. And after that...

Taking a deep breath, Malz reached into her well of mana and decided on the first spell she would cast.