The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 242: Love Race - Exacta

Chapter 242: Love Race - Exacta

"Come on, they’re getting away!"

Cassiel urged her team on as they barreled through the mycelium layer of Heaven’s roots.

Rainier kept his focus on controlling his speed to stay within her wake. There would be time later to discuss why attacking the other Houses’ teams had slowed them down, but for now, speed was all that-

SMACK

Something hit Cassiel from above.

Rain had less than half a second to spot the blue-winged body before it collided with her, and bare moments later he was putting all his effort into diving after the fallen angel, even before Cassiel shouted in surprise.

Handling the man was awkward, but as soon as he rose again, he looked about for a place to land, finding a greyish bridge looming several stories above them, barely within the course.

"We need to take him up!" Cassie said, using one of her magiform hands and placing it on the body.

"What happened?" Ozzy asked.

"I don’t know, but healing him takes priority over the race," Cassie replied. "Ozzy, you go for help. Rain, land us on that brace."

At that point, Malz’s team, Tenebris, started to underfly them. Nodding to her order, Ozzy sped toward them, waving his arms for their attention.

Landing on the bridge, the first thing Rain saw was signs of battle.

Blood had been spilled, and there were objects and a small pack scattered near the place the angel had lain.

"Oh shit, oh shit. This guy’s barely alive," Cassie said as she checked him over. "Fucking... what are these, claw marks?!" She began to gather magic, forcing a great deal of mana into the man’s body.

A terrible, choking sound oozed from the angel’s throat as he was forced awake. His skin, deathly pale, had too much blue in it, and Rain suspected that he wasn’t going to last long unless Cassie could somehow get blood back into him.

For once, he cursed himself at his lack of knowledge when it came to medical magic. With no orders, he tried furiously waving for the attention of every other racer coming their way, but to no avail as they chose to under fly the bridge, one and all.

"Help..." the man wheezed as his eyelids fluttered in anemic confusion. "It hurts..."

"I’m here, I’m here. I’m helping," Cassie said. "Do you know what did this to you?"

"Demon... halo...cam..."

The angel tried to look around, but the effort taxed his body too much, and suddenly he convulsed, coughing blood into Cassie’s arms before, with a rattling, shuddering breath, he stilled...

Cassie was stunned. Her eyes moved about, and Rain recognized the look of her thinking through everything she knew as she tried to find a solution.

"Cassie..."

"Oh no you fucking don’t!" Cassie said, not to Rain but to the angel. She looked up at Rain.

"Give me your hands!"

"What?"

"I said give me your fucking hands!" Cassie shouted as she ripped open the angel’s shirt.

As soon as Rain arrived Cassie took both of his hands with her magiform ones and placed them on the man’s chest.

"You can do basic lightning, right? I need you to shock this man. Brief pulses, half a second only if you can-"

"What will lightning do?" Rain asked.

"Real lightning can restart the heart. Get it pumping... You’re lightning aspected now so-so you should automatically make a little real stuff if you- It-it would take too long to explain everything. Please just do it!"

Rain understood what she meant. It was a subject that had come up with Kir a lot, the difference between what he called magical simulation and magical creation. Without asking further, and glad he could help, Rain concentrated, sending a pulse of lightning into the angel.

The way the man’s body arced, which was not something Rain expected, told him that there was indeed some real lightning in the spell.

"Again!" Cassie ordered.

Rain shocked him again.

"Again!"

He obeyed. Obeyed and obeyed until with a gasping draw of breath, the man arced one final time and collapsed, breathing softly.

"He’s unconscious," Cassie reported with a relieved chuckle. "My stars... this is the first time I actually saved someone’s life..."

Rain hardly considered it the first time, given some of the life-threatening training methods they’d employed over the last week, and their battle with the tempest roc, but he wasn’t about to remind her of those events.

Instead, he looked around, spotting team after team passing below, before clearing his throat awkwardly. "He said a demon attacked him... and something about a halo? How does a demon even get up here?"

"I don’t know... are those his things? See if you can find his- oh wait, he said halocam! Go find that!"

Cassie kept her hands on the victim while Rain, his hands now somewhat bloody, walked over to the scattered goods and searched.

In short order, he returned with the only thing that seemed to fit the bill. A halo with a black jewel or perhaps a bit of glass set at one point.

"Give it here," Cassie said, pulling her tablet out of its storage.

"What are you doing?" Rain asked.

"Seeing what attacked him." She hastily tapped her tablet and the halocam together, then started to tap her way through the tablet screens as she did something. "If the demon had venomous claws or anything, it might be helpful to know just in case."

"What do you mean seeing what attacked him?"

"That’s a halocam, it records things. We’d get better ones as full Executioners," Cassie explained as Rain handled the device she’d dropped in front of him.

"Let’s see... Shit, this must have happened a minute or two before we got here."

On her tablet, a scene played in reverse. When it suddenly switched to a completely different place, she tapped the illusion forward until the first scene of the angel’s arrival at this bridge.

"Phew. Didn’t think anyone else from the network was here..." Everything in the images was jumbling and moving about as the halocam had bobbed and oriented itself. They caught a glimpse of dark grey skin. "Looking forward to the race or-"

Suddenly a couple of bright lights shone down on them.

Cassie paused her tablet and hastily tucked it away into her storage before waving into the lights.

A trio of angels descended, wearing the blue symbol of House Amelioratus. Or at least two of them were. The last angel wore a symbol of the Executioners, a bundle of rods with an axe coming out of the top and a sword coming out of the bottom.

Ozzy was not with them, which made Rain wonder why until he recalled that Cassie had been able to share her "flight data" by simply tapping her magic device into theirs. Given how loyal Ozzy was to Cassiel, Rain wondered if he’d been ordered to remain behind.

As soon as they approached, Cassie started shouting out.

"He was bleeding very heavily. I forced through an accelerated heal for injuries on the chest, throat, and wing, and managed some defribulation..."

The medics crouched over the victim, one of them gesturing Cassie away. The other watched her talk, a somewhat impressed look on her face.

Seeing that the professional healers were occupied, the Executioner officer approached Rainier. By then, he was the only one here who had not stowed his wings.

"Come with me, son," he said, leading Rain away from the healers. "My name is Hanzel Inquisitio. What is your name?"

"Rainer Eros," Rain replied, trying not to flinch as he remembered he was supposed to add the lesser modifier to his family name.

"Young Eros... do you know that man?"

"No sir. Is he important?"

"He’s just a sports reporter with the Sports Herald. Do you know how he got like that?" The Herald was an illusion show Cassie sometimes complained about.

"In the little bit he was conscious, he said a demon attacked him. There’s proof on the halo can."

At the word ’demon,’ the officer visibly tensed all the way to his pleasantly-yellow wings, which did not match his black hair. "Did you see it?"

"No, sir."

"Give me the halocam," he emphasized the last syllable. How could he be more annoyed at Rain’s mispronunciation than a dead angel?

"Here," Rain did so. He chewed his lip, then asked. "How does a demon get into Heaven?"

"They don’t." Without even looking at it, the officer shoved it into his personal storage portal. "Now, Young Eros, I need you and Miss Cassiel over there to keep quiet about this attack. We can’t have a panic over what may just be a... minor encounter. The Executioners will need to review the evidence, get together a hunting party, and work on an announcement to keep people calm. You understand, right?"

Rainier tensed, but nodded.

"Good lad. Now, as far as cover stories, this man did what some foolish angels might. He mucked about with the caretakers and found out what happens when you do. Alright?"

Rain nodded.

"Good. Good. Now, I’m going to say the same thing to everyone else here. Can I count on you to inform me if anyone else learns the story you’re not going to tell anyone?"

Rain blinked twice. Had the man just ordered him to stay silent about the attack? Was he also ordering him to keep everything a secret and report on Cassie?

"Young Eros..."

"Yes... sir." Rain snapped out of his thoughts.

"Good boy. Now, is there anything else you want to tell me? Did you take anything from the site or copy any of the holocam’s recording?"

Rain looked over at Cassie, who had stood back from the medics as they started to fix up a stretcher. The look on her face, and Rain’s knowledge of how much more sensitive her senses had gotten after gaining her magiform, told him she heard everything. She shook her head at Rain.

"No, sir. I didn’t."

"And?"

"And I have nothing more to tell you."

Suddenly the entire race course surged with magic, and a booming voice announced the winners of the race. In first was Malz’s team, Tenebris, followed by Jassiel’s team, "The Master And His Falcons". The latter’s name told him exactly about the sort of relationship the angel maintained with his Elevated team.

"Well, that’s the race," the officer noted. "Thank you for your service, candidate. I’ll speak to your leader now."

He let Rain go and waved Cassie over.

Looking back at the injured, bloody angel, Rain couldn’t help but wonder about just how used to Heaven he’d gotten before this strangeness hammered home that things were not as they appeared.

There were too many things in Heaven that spoke against his childhood tales of Heaven’s benevolences and virtues.

He’d found friends. Lovers, even. But nothing in Heaven’s society was there to help him in any way other than to make him a soldier and a servant.

So much hidden intrigue.

So many little lies.

He could only ask himself, "What the Hell is going on...?"

Whatever it was, he felt he needed to find out...

To understand...

Before he figured out if he even could escape it.