The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 124: The Battle of Darlbridge - Part 1

Chapter 124: The Battle of Darlbridge - Part 1

The clash of swords rang out through the field in front of Kir’s house.

Blocking the first swipe of the angelic Executioner, he leveraged his height and strength to push the man into his compatriot’s path.

The disruption bought him only a moment as the second angel simply pulsed his wings to rise above his companion, slashing down at Kir’s shoulder.

With a surge of his wings, Kir used that moment to push himself backward, gaining two paces distance as he braced himself for the pain that would come from charging Kangetsu with his mana.

Frost began to rime the edge of his blade, filling in the spell circle and every available groove. Unlike steel, Kangetsu could survive, and even become tougher, the colder it got.

Having broken three of his four seals, the pain was manageable, and he stopped the flow as soon as he felt that Kangetsu was full, knowing that the blade would retain his mana for at least an hour.

"Elauen aet!" the leading Executioners suddenly shouted, and Kir saw his partner raise a hand, beginning a chant.

Bands of light began to appear around Kir, and he found himself stopped in midair, the lead Executioner’s two-handed blade leveled to pass between the bands toward his chest.

Kir strained against the bonds as soon as he felt them, but they didn’t give at all, nor did he recognize the meaning of the angel’s angelic chanting.

There was nothing he could do to-

Clang

With a sudden flash, Amarena appeared, her sword batting down along the flat of the Executioner’s blade, driving it into the ground.

"D’mat c’z Lev’tzan!" Amarena’s warcry was amplified by her war form, and a split second later she backhanded the angel into his companion, sending both Executioners tumbling in the dirt as she landed. "So much for the fortifications, eh?" she grinned at Kir as the bands of light dissipated.

"Better to have them and not need them," Kir supposed, adjusting his grip on Kangetsu as he took up a fighting stance. The nearest fortifications were just spiked logs at acute angles, meant to channel approaches toward the pathway.

"Take your warform or prove you know how to use that thing," Amarena nodded at Kangetsu before dashing forward, her speed enhanced and her body teeming with mana.

The leader raised his two-hander, blocking with the bent blade as she rapidly struck and moved.

Kir remained in his normal form as he charged the second angel, swiping at him before he could cast another spell.

The executioner blocked Kir with his shield, shifting his grip on his sword as he counter-attacked. Shifting his stance, Kir dodged. As the angel tried to bring his sword up in a follow-up swing, Kir planted his foot and leveraged Kangetsu against the Executioner’s shield, surging strength into his arm and pushing the angel out of alignment.

His swing flew wide of Kir’s head, and the next moment, Kir stomped on the join of his ankle, wrapping his foot around the angel’s boot and digging in with his talon-like claws.

"Raaagh!" the Executioner yelped, trying to pull his foot away, but Kir held firm before lifting his leg, pulling the angel off balance and onto his side.

His wing broke his fall with a sickening pop that made Kir flinch, accidentally letting go of the angel’s foot.

His lost advantage became manifest a moment later when the angel, dropping his sword, spoke an Angelic word, casting a spell that sent Kir backward.

Had his body not been reinforced, Kir’s wings might have suffered the same fate as the Angel’s, but he was lucky, and as soon as he felt himself strike the ground, he instinctively stored his wings at the first prickling pain of losing feathers to the impact.

Grunting with pain, the angel began to stand, his wings disappearing as he finally used his own dimensional storage.

Even with his wings put away, the look of pain remained, and Kir guessed that he was still feeling the pain from his dislocated wing.

It was that look that made Kir realize he was stronger than the angel.

He thought about offering the angel a chance to surrender, but as soon as he opened his mouth-

Suddenly pain flared in his chest. The oath mark he’d made sent a surge of pain throughout his being. The angel started a bit in surprise, which was a mercy, because it bought Kir a precious second to realize that he’d almost violated his oath to Noir.

-

Elsewhere on the battlefield, Amarena danced a whirling storm of perpetual strikes.

She reveled in her strength, her speed and momentum lending power to her sword - a sword that very quickly was becoming more apt at bludgeoning than slicing as the angel kept up a two-handed defense with his blade.

She’d intentionally taken the stronger opponent, not wanting Kir to take all the fun. How she knew the angel was stronger lay in the fact that it had been this one who had broken the barriers around the house. Such a feat of endurance meant that he could not be allowed to recover, lest he leverage his strengths against them.

Amarena could sense the mana in his eyes, the way his sword began to extend slightly from his body as he found her rhythm.

Knowing his counterstrike would soon come, she forced herself to relax, to reign in her arcs until-

Right as she committed to a tri-strike leap, the angel braced his sword by the flat with both hands before shoving hard, interrupting her third strike as he pushed her onto the ground.

She kept herself loose, rolling with the fall and spinning upward with a push of foot and tail as she rose into the air - right as his greatsword fell into the space she’d once occupied.

In that moment, Amarena remembered beauty.

The woman who had dared to fight in Tartarus wearing nothing but silken cloth. Wielding nothing but a curved sword. She had known how to hold the advantage in every pose... and how to cast away her blade...

As the angel stepped forward into his swing, ready to raise his blade in a jabbing strike, Amarena threw her sword for his head, sending it end over end-

The clash of metal against metal rang out as her sword failed to find a fatal home.

At the last second, the angel had turned his head, forcing her blade to cleave through his halo, leaving only a thin scar across his forehead.

"Demon bitch!" he shouted at her.

Amarena laughed in his face as she landed.

From above the angel’s head, a disconcerting whine began to sound. As his halo began to falter, the angel grabbed it and threw it at Amarena.

Unlike her siblings, Amarena had studied the angels. She some of their tactics, recorded at great cost by past demons. One rule of fighting them was to never be near a halo when it hits the ground.

Amarena knew she couldn’t get away.

So she kicked it back.

Surprised, the Executioner blocked the halo with his sword, his eyes widening in shock before-

SHKREEEEE

Instead of an explosion like she expected, the halo burst into a yellow ball of shrieking mana, a four-pointed star of black anti-magic enveloping the angel and everything within three tails.

And yet, to her surprise, the angel came out looking unscathed. He took one angry step and then suddenly fell to one knee. Behind him, his wings had started to wither. The feathers losing their white sheen as several of the larger ones began to crumple and fall away.

"No..." he gasped.

Amarena kicked away his sword before raising a fist. What she lacked in a sword, she made up for with brutal, spiked knuckles that crashed into the angel’s jaw, sending him flying to the side.

"Lendelel!" the angel cried out through a broken jaw, his head turning upward.

Suddenly a white-silver light began to surround him.

Healer’s light. Above them floated the living reminder of another angelic tactic.

Angels fought in threes.

"Druk!" she swore in demonic, leaping into a punching set of strikes as she tried to outpace the healing the angel was receiving. As she continued to punch and punch, the angel flailing in his strikes against her, she called out to Kir.

"Kir, above! They have a healer! I can’t fly!"

-

Kir realized they had a healer only moments before Amarena confirmed it.

The silver white light surrounding his opponent made his grimace of pain lessen. Kir looked up to find an angel holding her hands towards the two fighters, white light held in each palm, and her brilliant yellow feathers contrasting against the sky.

Her lips moved in an inaudible chant, and as their eyes met, she looked down at Kir with the blank, slightly disgusted gaze of one looking at a distant spider.

Once more, Kir thought about his oath.

He knew he would have to kill her too, in order to keep it...

Bursting his wings free, he shot into the air with all the strength he could muster.