The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 273: Black Tower

Chapter 273: Black Tower

After the match against Jassiel, the month that followed became a flurry of activity, with squads deemed worthy of graduating reporting to the Black Tower, as he learned the headquarters of the Executioners was nicknamed.

Elevated took everything Rain owned and bundled it with Cassiel’s significantly larger amount of luggage, moved into one of the large, shared suites reserved for Prime teams.

"I know it’s only temporary before we move to Ayther, but I just can’t live without proper nightwear," Cassie said on the first day, after having Rain and Ozzie hang up her collection of negligees.

"The other teams will be training soon, for the tournament. Shall we join them?"

"Oh, I forfeited. They were going to give us a bye anyway. I’d rather not make enemies before the Expedition."

Ozzy was unconcerned, simply stating, "As you wish, Angel."

Rain, however, was shocked. "Didn’t you want to make it to the top? So people would see you as a leader?"

"There will be plenty of chances. And besides, I already forfeited. There’s no going back now. It’ll give us more time to settle in, maybe do some actual work before the Expedition, since we have a spot anyway."

"Some actual work," it turned out, was reviewing something called "black-box" records.

The records actually came on little chips, which were sheathed entirely in steel, and therefor likely to survive anything short of a cataclysmic attack.

"Ooh! This is exciting! We get to see how actual Executioners act in the field!"

"We are actual Executioners now," Malzkael sighed. "Junior ones."

"Hey, you’re the one who gave up your chance for the Expedition," Cassie elbowed Malz in the ribs a bit.

"I have no regrets there. I just wish they labeled these things before they had us go through them." Reaching for one of three stamps, Malz lifted her most recent black-box from its receptacle and stamped it, leaving a fingernail-sized "MH" on it for "Monster Hunt."

Rainier finished watching a rather bloody video of a demon hunt, which concluded with the slaughter of a small group of demons from above. With a sigh, he stamped it HW for Heavenswar, before depositing it into a box labeled for such things.

Watch, stamp, box. Watch, stamp, box. Watch, request more ink, stamp, box. The mundanity of their tasks started to feel like a punishment to Rain by the third day.

"Hey," Malz said, drawing the attention of everyone in the room - which was just the two teams. "I’ve got some weird footage here."

"The case looks scorched," Cassie noted.

"Still works though. I just don’t know how to classify it. So I wanted a second opinion."

Everyone wound up crowding around to watch, with Rain at the back because he was the tallest.

"Heaven above all!" an angel shouted, his weapon briefly appearing in the shot.

What followed was a scene of absolute carnage, a demonkin whose appearance was often blurred by the sheer speed at which the combat was happening. Another demon fought with him, and she was just as vicious.

"Take your war form or prove you know how to use that thing!" the female demon shouted.

Kir had his war form? From everything he heard, angels and demons in war form were ridiculously hard to kill... At least, assuming they weren’t like Jassiel and stealing other people’s mana for a size they couldn’t maintain.

When the first angel died, everyone flinched except for Rain. It was... almost ridiculous. The tactics of the angels were clearly the most basic ones for slaying monsters, not a pair of hardened fighters, even if there were three of them.

And one of those fighters was Kir, looking a bit more mature and stronger than the last time Rain had seen him... The way he wielded his sword, which had a long handle that made it equally capable as a spear, he was clearly more than a match for the angels one-on-one.

When the first halo exploded, the video went a bit weird, the angels clearly growing more desperate, yet still too arrogant to consider retreat.

There was a moment, where Kir looked like he was about to offer a surrender, but then he cried out and clutched his chest. Something glowed there, and there was no offer. The fight continued...

When Kir pulled his wings out of his dimensional storage, everyone but Rain gasped.

"Is he part birdkin?" Malz wondered. "If he didn’t have those horns and the weird feet, he’d look angelic."

But then the deaths started.

The last thing Rain saw was an angel charging toward Kir, his sword leveled, only for Kir to grab and pull the team’s healer into the path of the weapon.

Moments later, the camera was blocked out.

"Wait, is that the end?"

"Shh! Listen."

"Demon!" "You honorless filth! If it’s the last thing I do I’ll-"

The sound of a sword passing through the angel was accompanied by the restoration of the video as the halo fell to the ground.

"I had wondered if you had the strength to finish the job," the female demon said from off-camera. "I am glad I need not have worried... but I must ask, what are you?"

"Something else," Kir said, approaching the bodies, his clawed feet appearing close. "I’ll tell you more later."

Moments later, Kir picked up the halo, curiosity on his face. The images shifted about until he looked directly into the camera once more, his eyebrows knitting together. "A camera?"

The last image was of Kir’s hand crushing the lens.

"That was... brutal..." Cassiel said.

"Yeah, but the part that got me was at the end. What did he mean he was ’something else’? And how did he know there was a camera in the halo?"

Rain swallowed. The room had started feeling claustrophobic since he recognized Kir, and he felt his chest constrict.

"Rain? Where are you going?"

"I need some air."

"I’ll go with you," Malz said, grabbing the black box out of the slot in the work desk. "Please keep working," she said to her subordinates.

"Me too, Ozzy, stay here."

Rain was already heading for one of the many balcony exits. There were other executioners waiting, and Rain nodded nervously before taking off on his godflesh wings, looking for a place that wasn’t occupied. Or even part of the Black Tower.

The answer was nearby, at the very top of the Araqlun’s central spire, the same place he’d seen in his... hallucination, only now covered in gleaming gold.

He landed in the same place where Helios had those countless years ago...

"Rain! Why didn’t you wait?" Cassie shouted down before she landed. "We were right behind you."

Malz landed a moment later, "I thought you saw worse up close at the race."

"It wasn’t just the deaths..." Rain said. "That demonkin... that was Kir."

Malz and Cassie both flinched.

"Sorry... I had no idea he was your ex..." Cassie said.

"It’s not your fault..." Rain replied, "It must have happened after he got lost in the dungeon... and before he... died."

"You don’t have to talk about him if you don’t want to," Malz said.

"What does it matter? He’s dead."

"It matters to us because it affects you. If it didn’t matter to you, you wouldn’t be up here, trying to figure it out," Cassie said.

"I just... I never thought he’d be so..."

"Vicious?" Malz tried.

"Yeah... It makes me feel like I didn’t know him at all..."

"Yet he seems to have left an impression... I suppose that’s fitting because he was your first boyfriend," Cassie said, blushing slightly and sighing.

"I think we’ve got a different problem now though," Malz said. "If this goes back to the Black Tower, I think I’ll have to stamp it D."

"D for defeat?" Cassie tried.

"D for destroy." Malz gathered herself, taking a long breath. "What do we do with the black box? We need a place to keep it, but they do room inspections."

"We could keep it. I haven’t had a room inspection since we’re a Prime squad," Cassie offered.

"Oh they do Prime quarters sweeps, they’re just quiet about it. I saw some strangers in your room on flyby once," Malz said.

"What?!" Cassie grew red, likely thinking of some of her more "intimate" possessions.

Rain, meanwhile, had turned his attention to where they were.

He started to approach the door, and Cassie and Malz stopped talking to follow him.

A few steps from the door, a red light projected out and scanned him.

It intoned a word in some ancient language, but Rain knew what it meant... The meaning was in his flesh after all.

"Password?"

What did Helios say?

"Helios Three Alpha Tenet Blue," Rain intoned the ancient words, having added them to the things he reminded himself of while alone in his room.

"ID confirmed. Welcome, Security Officer Nico."

Guess he never had a chance to change his name with the door...

A rush of air was sucked into the room as soon as the door opened.

"Your vision... it was real?" Cassie’s mouth was open in shock.

"What exactly is godflesh?" Malz asked, cutting to the heart of the mystery.

The room inside was covered in dust.

Like it hadn’t been used in millennia.

The center of the table had the most dust, now pushed back somewhat because of the release of the vacuum. Amidst the dust were glittering threads of gold.

"What’s this?" Cassie asked, going for the threads first.

Rain wandered around the room, touching the device where he saw the visage of the woman named Aiko.

It didn’t seem to be powered.

"Cassie, I think you should drop that," Malz said, standing at the head of the table. "Because I know what these are."

She pointed at little white beads, buried somewhat by the dust... only they weren’t beads.

"Those are teeth," Rain said. It suddenly clicked. There were strands of gold thread on the table, but also on the floor, and a nearby console...

The only places where dust was present in small piles, still largely undisturbed by the addition of air.

Long ago, an angel had failed to stop Aiko from taking away a massive, orb-like vessel. According to one of Malz’s books, he was doomed to have his limbs torn away and regrown again and again, but the truth was likely far more simple.

"This is where Helios died..."