The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 140: News Of War

Chapter 140: News Of War

General Vrees was shortly followed by another demon, this one resembling a large, grey-skinned elf with membraneous skin between her arms and sides.

She was dressed in a front-cut blouse along with her more uniform components - which for much of the camp seemed to be black clothes of varying shapes - and a lightweight leather helmet with bone layered in scales. Her horns were leaf-like, and they grew out and around her ears in a way that suggested they might funnel sound.

Most striking though was her split jaw and the rows of teeth that were revealed when she gave Kir what he hoped was a smile.

"This is Mesembrine of House Vissanguis," General Vrees gestured. "She is Captain of our scouts and aerial legion."

"On behalf of my division, I offer an apology for the rude behavior of my scouts," she said in a voice like someone was chewing on a harp, but with a strong impression of being unaffected by her strange mandibles, seeming to occur more from back in her throat. The woman bowed formally.

"It was no issue," Kir said. "I hope they weren’t punished."

"Would you prefer to carry out such yourself?" she asked.

"No, no. No punishment needed," Kir said, then tried to change the subject. "I’m sorry, but I’ve never seen a demon like you..."

Mesembrine seemed to... preen? Her body language was strange. "Then I have the honor of being the first vampire to meet the son of Maledict."

Kir had never seen any depiction of a vampire like her. "Is it true that vampires, ah, drink blood?"

Mesembrine chuckled, which sounded a bit oddly like choking coming from her. "It is true that we bite to bleed, but that is mostly to keep our fangs inside while we drain our meals of mana." As she spoke, a blue outline of teeth over her teeth formed, with four very elongated, fanglike canines. A moment after showing these magical fangs, they blinked away and were gone. "But the blood itself doesn’t do any more for us than a cup of wine."

"May we...?" General Sreev asked.

"Oh. Please," Kir said, happy for the break in discussing blood.

In a few short moments, everyone was seated, with Litty taking her seat next to the general and Mesembrine sitting on the other side of Noir.

"Ah, food. I shall imbibe," Sreev said with a light clap of his hands, before selecting a cooked wing and popping the whole thing - bones and all - into his mouth. Shortly, the sound of bones crunching was accompanied by an appraising look from across the table. "I must say, you seem remarkably more magically capable than I expected, for such a young demon."

"How so?" Kir asked.

"Well, you are under a century old, and yet there is quite a well of mana inside of you," he tapped his chest to indicate Kir’s. "And of course, your condition is quite stable given what you are doing. Most could not function normally and commit to reification. Tell me, does food help with that?" He was clearly staring at the glow in Kir’s chest.

For the second time, Kir began to choke on his food, but he held it back this time. "I’m sorry, did you say reification? As in to treat an abstract as concrete?" Another definition of reification came to mind, but Kir didn’t think this world was ready for alienation theory.

"Oh, so you haven’t... Whoever Maledict employed to raise you did not teach you? Reification for mages is the transformation of the abstracts of mind and soul into the concrete... the fusion of your whole being in one body." He webbed his fingers together.

The way he emphasized the last, Kir knew he’d just confessed ignorance of something important.

"I am... still studying mage craft," Kir said. He didn’t want to reveal that the big floating school the General was presently sieging was his.

"Well then, your master has been most neglectful by allowing you to begin one of the most dangerous processes a mage can undergo without the proper training." He rubbed a hand down his face. "That’s like pushing you off a cliff when you haven’t learned to walk, much less fly."

"I don’t have a master," Kir answered before thinking, annoyed by the General’s tone.

"No master? How have you survived?" Sreev seemed genuinely concerned as he let his hand drop.

"I’ve only been like this for a month or so."

"Impossible. Even your father took a decade to reach that level in his transubstantiation, and that was after mastering himself in the forms of body and mind. You can’t be more than fifty."

"You mean like war form?" Kir asked, filing the comment about his age away for later consideration. "I’ve been able to go into mine for a while..."

"The attainment of body, yes," Sreev said. "Ideally you should have both your war form and your magiform already before fusing to that extent... If you don’t have a master, how have you learned magic at all? What method are you using to reify?"

Kir suppressed a flinch. His personal theories on magic had been based on what he could observe, which ran counter to the common understanding of it.

"I learned magic from books and experimentation," Kir said. "Other than that I don’t know how this is happening to me except that I became like this while I was in a dungeon." But he suspected... "Wait... I can eat mana crystals... would that do this?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. The process is different for each person. The only demons who have successfully reified themselves in this cycle are the Dukes of Heresy, Pride, Gluttony, and Wrath... and the last we only learned of after she died."

"What!?" Amarena rose, slamming her hands on the table. Her face looked livid but her eyes held an emotion Kir had never seen in them. Fear. "You lie!"

"I do not lie, Wrath-Daughter," Sreev said, his tone flattening and deepening a little. "Nor will I suffer the same attitude from you that Duke Maledict found amusing."

"Rena, calm down," Kir said, raising both hands in a calming gesture. "General, do you have any proof of this?"

"Of course," General Sreev said. Lifting an arm, he touched one of the circles on it, revealing for just a moment a spell sigil that glowed, before the light traveled to his palm and beyond, producing an image.

For the next half hour, Amarena and Kir watched in silence as they watched a battle between what looked to Kir like a humanoid kaiju and a titanically-sized angel. Everyone jumped when the scene went white for a long, long moment.

Amarena jumped to her feet then, shouting "What happened?"

"Just wait," Sreev replied.

Soon, the whiteness disappeared, and they watched as Leviathan rose from beneath the shield of her opponent.

Did he sacrifice himself to protect her?

Kir didn’t realize he had gone slack-jawed with shock until the video was over.

"Lies..." Amarena said, but without any feeling behind it.

"Unless you have another way to verify, Wrath-Daughter, these images have been seen by virtually all of the people of Tzal at this point."

Amarena reached up, her hand tightening around her bicep as she gripped it. Kir could only imagine what was going through her head as she held still, except for the slow trickle of blood that started where her claws had met flesh. When she pulled her hand away, she stared at the glistening ruby drops on the ends of her claws, before finally making a fist.

"The angel who slew her... who is it?"

"Vinam Victoriam, the present Son of Heaven," Sreev intoned, "And not someone you can expect to survive against, as you are."

"Are there survivors?" she asked.

"Only those who were at the farthest reaches of the battle, and they fled when the enemy weapon consumed the field. Tzal accepted a few thousand, as well as any Wrathian who fled from Leviathan’s cities to us."

"Take me there. To Tzal. I must know..." Amarena’s mood had chilled to something close to emotionless, and it was somehow even more intimidating than the fire she’d shown Kir.

"I cannot," Sreev said. "Tzal no longer exists."

"How?!" Amarena asked, slapping her bloodied hand on the table, proving that the fire of her wrath was merely beneath the surface. "Did Tzal not fight? What of Goetia’s wards?"

"We fought," Sreev said. "Our own way." He raised his arm and selected the same circle. "Please do not speak to me for a moment, it takes some concentration to make the scenes move faster." He instructed as the light traveled across his arm to his hand, from which he projected a new scene.

This time, the images he showed seemed to be an overview of a massive city, one that Kir recognized as the place he’d glimpsed through one of Maledict’s portals.

Little white, wavy lines seemed to move toward the city, pulsing in and out. Until Kir realized they weren’t lines, but wings. The wings of angels assaulting the city en-masse. From the view above the citadel, a massive shield that had encircled the city fell before an onslaught of magical force. The demonic defenders held their own for only a few moments afterward before they were overwhelmed by what looked to be tens of thousands of angels.

Elsewhere, the city was being indiscriminately destroyed by great castings of magic and angels in forms that dwarfed even Kir’s warform. Some beings seemed to be made of humanoid-shaped light, and these cast the largest spells as they wrecked entire neighborhoods with a mere gesture.

A group of three light-beings landed at what seemed to be a massive circle of stones in a proportionately large plaza. Then another landed, and another, followed by a screen of soldiers who fanned out to protect them as they began to raise their hands toward the circle. Runes began to glow, transitioning from red all the way up the spectrum. And when they reached purple...

Once more, the scene went white. Only this time, the source was obvious.

The portal gate, for that is what Kir suspected it was, had exploded.

"Tzal was sacrificed to slow the march of Heaven’s Host and the pace of Hell’s harrowing," Sreev said. "Maledict believes the time has come to fight a different sort of war... A war for the future, given Heaven’s obvious intent, is to destroy every last demon. And they have the means to do so, at least against those of us on Hell."

He paused, letting the news sink in.

"Our nation is in hiding."

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