The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 217: Fire

Chapter 217: Fire

Even with how fast Cassiel was able to find out the design of a mana sauna, it took some time just to acquire enough steel for the construction.

Iron was a bit of a rare commodity in Heaven, with almost all of it requisitioned for the Heavenly Host. The better part of a month passed before they were able to acquire enough, mostly by searching the manor for unused equipment. Their final break on that front came when Iriel showed up at the forge one night.

She arrived right when Rainier was trying to melt together a floorplate out of different kinds of steel, and when he expressed a need for more steel, she showed him to a disused armory full of the rusted detritus of her past projects.

Iriel seemed to think Rainier was forging himself a set of plate armor, and so had commented "Not many angels appreciate good steel nowadays. That factory shit just can’t compare," before giving him advice on how to fit a breastplate for wings.

Meanwhile, Ozzy and Cassie managed to track down the angel who’d once run the commercial mana sauna. He had a few parts in storage that would help them make the mana emitter, and Cassiel strongly suggested she’d bribed him for them.

They worked on that part on top of all the extra cardio and endurance training they were going through, in preparation for the Choir of Love’s idea of a deciding contest: A race across the skies of heaven, followed by combat between the first and second squads to finish.

The fact that most of the race would take place in the middle canopy all but confirmed Rainier’s theory, and while none of the other Houses were keen on spending time there, many within House Eros were taking frequent trips to the mana-rich area to train as they tried to get a feel for what the route might be like. No one would know the final route until the day of the race.

In the end, Rainier cobbled together a booth-sized chamber, using a closet in one of the most distant parts of the manor. The hardest part for him was concentrating enough magic into a flame hot enough to weld the seams of the chamber. Kir had once tried to teach him what fire really was, but Rainier just couldn’t visualize it.

Thus, he was confined to the limits of magical fire, and he wasted two days trying to weld with it before finally deciding to fix his understanding.

Which was why he wound up in the library long after nightfall, an Angelic to Common dictionary on his right, and a book titled The Truth of Fire on his left - next to a pile of dead-end books he hadn’t put back yet.

After an hour, he was still in the foreword.

"...that in its own way, that fire is the true..." he shuffled through the dictionary "...protagonist of this love story-"

With a groan, Rainier dropped his head onto the table with a loud thunk. He’d grabbed yet another novel. Why was Angelic so hard to understand? The author had waxed on and on about fire only to hide the nature of the book until the end... How did that make any sort of linguistic sense?

"Some of us are trying to read you know," a voice said from across the room.

Rain looked up to find Malz sitting, her dark dress blending in just a bit with the dark covers behind her.

"How long have you been there?" he asked.

"Here specifically? About half an hour, watching all those little faces you make. But I’ve been in the library since sundown, reading up on the mid-canopy for the big race." She gestured at the book she had, whose title was illegible to Rainier.

"Sundown?" Rain looked about, finally seeing through the cracks beneath the sheets covering the windows that it was night. A tired groan escaped his throat.

"It’s almost morning by the way." She got up and started walking over. "What’s with all the books about fire?"

"I just need to figure out how to weld with magic," Rain sighed. "But all the books that look helpful are in Angelic and half of them are novels..."

Malz bent to look a bit more closely at the titles. "Eesh, I’m pretty sure there are wands for that sort of thing. It looks like you just picked books at random if they had the word ’fire’ in them."

"I tried looking for books with ’welding’ but none of the books had that in the title," Rain grumbled. If he’d known Malz was there, he’d have just asked her instead of wasting hours.

"But why fire? Everyone knows fire magic doesn’t affect steel directly unless you really pump in the mana. You’re better off trying with lightning."

"Yeah, but using mana to generate real fire would affect steel like normal, I just can’t figure out how to do it," Rain said. "If I understood how fire actually worked, I could. Maybe even get it hot enough to do what I need."

"You probably want a book about chemistry then," Malz said. "But if I remember science class correctly, you need a lot more than just knowing what fire is. You’d need to know about electrons and energy exchanges and-"

"I’ve heard about electrons!" Rainier said. "My boyfriend told me about them before he-" Rain stopped himself. He recognized that he was tired and likely to slip.

"Oh..." Malz responded, sounding a little sad. "I, uh, should have guessed... I mean, it’s pretty obvious, given how you’ve been dealing with Cassie."

"Guessed what?" Rain blinked in confusion.

"You know... that you like boys..."

"I like everybody," Rain said. "The thing with Cassie... I mean... I just feel weird about it because she’s in charge of me and she said we were cousins and Heaven seems strict about that sort of thing... everything, really."

Malz snorted. "The rules sound strict, but the only people who really care are the ones trying to beat you over the head with them. Hell, no one would care if you were siblings as long as the babies come out alright."

"But I’m only a half angel," Rain said, shoving the thought of siblings "engaging" aside as much as he could. "Angelkin... not an angel."

"Yeah, there is a law against that I guess. Don’t want too much Ayther blood all the way up here," her tone dripped with sarcasm. "Say, who’s your boyfriend?"

Rain flinched at the sudden change of subject. "Ex-boyfriend... He died."

"Oh... Wait, so it’s not someone up here? I’d have heard if someone died," Malz quirked her head and an eyebrow.

Rain found himself on the back foot. "It’s not important," he muttered.

"Now I’m curious. He was someone you knew on Ayther, wasn’t he?" Malz’s eyes had taken on an interested glint. The same kind he saw in Cassie’s eyes. "How does someone on Ayther figure out electrons? That’s Heaven-exclusive knowledge."

"He just knew it when I met him," Rainier said. "I don’t know how he knew half the things he did, but it all turned out to be true, so I just need to remember it or figure it out for myself." Kir had been smart, suspiciously so, but people at the Academy had thought Rain to be suspiciously attractive. He hadn’t quite had the heart to look into it when Kir was alive, and now that he lived in heaven, it was the "ruggedness" of his appearance having grown up on Ayther that made him attractive at all in Heaven. Most Elevated looked better than him, in his opinion.

Malz frowned. "You’re not doing anything to make me less curious, you know. I’ll trade helping you figure out welding wands in exchange for telling me about your dead boyfriend."

Rain grimaced. "I... don’t want to talk about him," he said, feeling a tension in his heart. Unconsciously he gripped his shirt over his heart. "I shouldn’t..."

"Oh," Malz’s voice grew sadder as her face fell. "I thought you might want to since you’ve been up here a while. Never mind then..." She turned to leave.

Suddenly Rain felt bad about letting her down. "Wait," he called out. Malz turned silently, pausing her steps. "I’m not... I don’t feel ready to talk about him. But... how about I tell you about what we’re trying to make."

"We?" Malz raised an eyebrow.