The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 309: Meting Out - The Village

Chapter 309: Meting Out - The Village

"Wake up, Knight. Come with me."

Amarena opened her eyes to find it wasn’t even daylight, and Warmancer Halie was kicking her out of bed... And not her bed, but Telan Roh’s bed after a night of drunken revelry - for him, at least, Amarena needed a lot stronger than just beer to get drunk.

Telan was a sabel-haired, brown-skinned human with perhaps a little bit of elf in his bloodline. He had mottled patches of white skin that made him look exotic to Amarena, but those weren’t his only good features...

"What’s going on?" Amarena asked, jumping to her feet and taking the sheets with her.

Telan groaned, his eyes fluttering open before he groggily tugged a corner and then the rest of the blanket on top of himself. "Don’t rust my armor..." He murmured, falling back into a deeper sleep almost instantly. She had ridden him hard.

Amarena had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but Telan was someone she liked for his body, and occasionally his squire’s body, as she’d discovered when she first walked in on the two of them having sex.

Halie was not in a mood to waste time as she tossed Amarena her things and a pack. "We’re going to Hotterton. There has been a lynching and the mayor demands the Order Justiciam provide arbitration."

"Hotterton is four days away on foot. Isn’t your duel with the Gales in six days?"

"They will have to accept another delay or leave," Halie said in a matter-of-fact tone.

Why didn’t she just duel them? Amarena had never gotten an answer. Halie had always seemed the sort to take every fight she could, especially when Amarena became her squire and challenged her daily.

Until suddenly she hadn’t.

Since the day Amarena returned victorious from the mission to retrieve her sword from the local jormagr matriarch, Halie had avoided all fights, drowned her schedule in work, and taken every possible step to seemingly keep the Brigit and Darlae Gale, the mothers of Kir Gale, trapped in the city.

For their part, the Gale wives were determined to "out-patience" Halie in their quest for answers, and it was this stubbornness and their need for funding that kept them in Isegard, the last bastion of the once-empire of Valria, and a former prison city.

Having the two women around wasn’t so bad, especially since they were better at explaining magic than Kir, and had helped her greatly with understanding her mavenry. And she wrote and bundled her first letter to Kir with theirs a few months ago... though no caravan intending to go to Norneau had shown up.

In fact, no caravans had shown up at all for the last three months, and it wasn’t just because of the snow.

The Duke of Pride was coming north, consolidating his power in Nyandor while heaven, strangely, did nothing. Amarena may not have cared for Kainur Satanos, but the fact he was seemingly unchallenged left her wondering what game was being played.

But that didn’t matter now. He was down there, and she was up here, and she had a job to do.

"I can get us there faster," Amarena offered.

"As could I. But the walk will be useful. It is sometimes nice to travel on foot."

Of late, something strange had been going on with Halie. She avoided the use of her mavenry - the unique ability to generate portals swiftly and cleanly - and had taken to forcing her body to store more and more mana.

At her age, which Rena guessed was in the three-hundreds, there should have been no way she could increase her already vast capacities, but she seemed determined to do so or die trying.

"As you wish, Warmancer."

*

Half an hour later, the two set off into the snow.

For a long time they simply trudged east, with Amarena contemplating her situation as she wondered if Halie was going to have her do the arbitration or not.

She wore her short swords on her hips, and had adopted a steel breastplate atop her gambeson, which now rested over form-fitting clothes of fine silk - the better for her to move at speed in without damaging her body or chafing.

Her swords were the reforged children of her father’s sword, which had been damaged and rusted from months spent stabbed into the horn of a jormagr. The new blades were graceful and curved, with their blades shaped like long leaves that flowed with black-blue veins of orichalc alloy. One she named Patience and the other Time, since Halie was fond of saying that with patience and time, all things are possible. A phrase that Brigit also said once to Darlae, when the latter got impatient after yet another delay of their duel.

It was Darlae who created the design, and it pleased Amarena to think of dancing with the blades in battle. It had taken some work finding someone who knew the style of fighting she wished to learn, but then she met Telan after the Valrian knight returned from his mission in Retha.

The style of dancing combat he taught her was called odoriken, and while he was by no means an expert, he had enough of the basics down to impart them to Amarena, and even to suggest creating a new style together, since he doubted the more advanced techniques of the Rethan continent would suit Amarena’s demonic form.

One thing had led to another though, and it turned out he was quite fond girls with... swords.

Amarena considered him a good fuck; enough so to get her just a little in touch with the succubus side of her heritage - though to her knowledge she lacked any abilities associated with it - in their casual affairs. Mostly he encouraged her to "relax into" her allure if she was also going to be both a Knight Justiciam and a dancing warrior, to "romance her opponent into their mistakes like a jibaeli dancer."

Neither of them was remotely inclined towards romantic feelings with the other, and Amarena suspected he was a little in love with his Rethan squire, an elvish man named Yozua, so "romancing her opponents" would have to wait.

These thoughts and more crossed her mind as she and Halie silently hiked, moving from the hills to the rocky cliffs that sheltered Hotterton from the rest of the world.

They noticed the town first by its steam.

Two things came from Hotterton to Icegart, salt and fish, and the reason it was habitable despite existing within the crack of a former glacial trough is that there were ample hot springs in the area.

Counting rooftops, Amarena saw that there were only thirty or so buildings in the entire town, but then she noticed that many holes were carved right into the cliffs, and it was from out of these homes that people came and went.

"This place seems peaceful," Amarena noted as they walked down the cliff path and past a grim-faced guard. Before arriving, Amarena made certain her hood was up past her horns and scutes.

"Look closely," Halie said.

As she did, Amarena saw that almost everyone had a smiles on their faces, despite many having fresh scars and some missing limbs.

"They look a bit rough, but happy," Amarena grunted.

"Judge Knights!" A voice called out, and a skinny, aged elf approached with spry steps along pebbled street. "Thank you so much for making it here. I’m Mayor Rhappad. We have the demon in the holding cell, and we kept the body where it was like the Order likes it."

"Demon?" Amarena asked.

"Don’t worry, he’s harmless. Well... relatively harmless." The elf finally seemed to notice that Amarena - even hooded as she was - was a demon. He paled, and Halie finally spoke.

"She is my apprentice. The first demon valrian and a vested knight."

"We-we don’t get a lot of news here," Rhappad offered a slightly forced handshake to Amarena before doing the same for Halie.

"Please explain the situation and take us to the body," Amarena said.

"Well, the situation is pretty straightforward," Rhappad began to walk, looking at Halie most of the time over his shoulder. "The Cliff Lord was murdered by the demon. There were many witnesses."

Halie grunted to acknowledge having heard him.

"How was he murdered?" Amarena asked when Halie didn’t.

"Beaten, gutted with claws, then tied to the dockpost for glinters to eat him alive."

"What’s a glinter?"

"Some call them flashies. They’re little fish, about the size of mice, but they know a meal when they see one and they’re fast enough to peck a body to the bone in minutes... Of course with the fishery we get a lot of them here..."

They arrived at the dock to find the top half of a fat human male tied in place.

A small floating dock had been dragged out for them to walk on, and it was tied to the same pillar.

"Clear the docks," Halie said to the Mayor. "Tell everyone to go about their day."

Rena turned to find what looked like half the village following them.

As the may shouted and waved his arms, the crowd reluctantly began to disperse.

One of the few people who had actually been on the docks, a bent-backed fisherman of dwarven heritage, cleared his throat. "Everything alright, Rhap?"

"Yes, it’s fine Ned. These are the Knights we sent for... Ah..."

"I am Warmancer Halie of the Order Justiciam. This is my apprentice, Knight Amarena of Wrath. You will treat her with respect, as I have decided she will perform the adjudication."

"Warmancer, the protocol is the highest Knight judges-"

"I am aware of the protocol. I judge that this case is for Amarena to decide, as I judge you have yet to carry out my order to clear the docks."

"Sorry Ned," the mayor turned.

"See you around," the dwarf grunted and shuffled off as the Mayor looked back to Hailey.

"You too."

"But I have a responsibility to-"

Amarena put a hand on the Mayor’s shoulder. Heavily. "Go," she said.

Rhappad’s mouth flapped like a fish before he finally said "This is highly irregular!" and turned, walking away at a rapid pace as if trying to catch up with Ned or perhaps the rest of the village.