The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 326: You Are Here

Chapter 326: You Are Here

Malz almost took her hand away from charging the device.

Almost.

As her tears fell, she forced herself to read the largest icons.

Util... Messaging...

The moment she saw the second word, she tried to touch it, but the same box from before appeared, telling her "network not found".

Apps... Nav...

She tried Apps, but found only unintelligible icons and titles in tiny script. The one icon she could intuit was the swooping arrow in the corner that allowed her to return to the home screen.

Util produced the same effect, but with familiar shapes like gears. It was probably a way to configure the device, but she didn’t want to risk putting it into a mode that would render it useless, so she backed out of it.

That left Nav.

As soon as she touched it, a box came up.

INITIATING LOCAL PING...

Ping?

The screen glitched for a few seconds as something happened. At first, she didn’t know what she was seeing. Lines drew themselves, and icons appeared, many, many red and yellow icons.

She had no memories to match to the information she was seeing, but it slowly dawned on her that she was looking at a map, and that the icons must mean places that were damaged...

Somehow it scanned the area... without mana. Tablets that can do that are reserved only for soldiers, and they only work in Heaven...

At the center of the map, a pale blue dot appeared, along with three words.

"You... are... here..."

Understanding surged hope into her.

I am here... I know where I am now...

There were names all around where the map indicated she was.

Most of them began with the word "Laboratory" and then an uninterpretable collection of letters and numbers.

Her prison was labeled "Storage Block SS1-L".

She touched the blue dot, and the tablet shifted just a little. Scrolling the map, she saw the corridor leading out, the passageway leading deeper beneath it, which terminated at a red symbol.

Trying to go back to her location frustrated her as her fingers shifted in ways that required more strength than her body wanted to give to control. But it was because of this that she figured out how to zoom in and out, and a familiar image appeared when she maximized the zoom.

She was beneath an area that contained a lot of towers... a whole city’s worth. And while it was hard to measure distances, the map clearly showed the broken elevator that went up the world tree Araqlun was built on.

The city rested in a clearing amidst world trees, dead and forgotten by Heaven... No, filled with demons trying to do... something... to Heaven.

She remembered vividly the grandstanding Maledict, Duke of Heresy, had performed upon her capture. Her goal for the last two years had been to warn Heaven, but after the torture, she’d been put here to be drained to death.

"I need to escape..."

As soon as she said this, the tablet’s screen changed. It returned to her position, and a yellow line traced itself out of her prison and through the city. To a place not far beyond, where a wedge of world tree root was represented by a massive red blot through the structure it was showing her.

A structure labeled...

"Escape... Pods..."

"Escape..."

Malz’s eyes widened. The sound for ’escape’ was the same now as it had been, even if modern spelling used a ’k’ to be proper.

Was the tablet telling her how to escape? Would whatever an "Escape Pod" was work after millennia in darkness?

Malz thought. She didn’t have the strength to break out of her chains, much less outrun even a starving demon.

She needed to get herself moved... somehow.

Anko would be the key to that.

The demoness was clearly young, and naive enough to give Malz an angle to work with. She just needed more information to figure out what she wanted that could-

Footsteps echoed in the hall.

Malz was the only prisoner here that she knew of, so she only had a small amount of time to hide the tablet under her pitiful mattress as the steps neared.

She’d lost track of the time. Or Anko was early.

Either way, she flay down, forcing herself to look sleepy despite the rare surge of energy that had come with hope...

With a heavy click the door opened, and Anko stepped in. Instead of the box, she had the tiny tablet and a plate of food. Twice her usual portion, and a slice of some sort of bacon.

As Malz smelled the allure of salt and fat, her stomach growled, and Anko noticed she was awake.

"Maledict wants me to double-check you can do what you said. Do a good job and you might get this every day," she gestured with the plate, which included a wooden spoon.

Two years ago, the notion would have revolted her. But now the thought made her actually want to do a good job...

"What’s your blanket doing over here?"

Shit.

Malz had forgotten to take it back.

"Th-the demon outside was snoring... I couldn’t sleep very well..."

"Oh." A wave of relief came over Malz as Anko seemed to accept her answer. "I’ll wait for you to eat, then we can get started. Oh, but do it slow. Chef says if you eat to fast you’ll get sick."

Malz knew the same thing, from experience, so she forced herself to eat slowly. Looking up after a few bites, she saw she had Anko’s complete attention.

It was time to take a risk.

"Why do you want to get out of here so bad?"

"I got someone I gotta get back to," Anko replied.

"Maledict?"

Her arms twitched, one moving slightly toward her bruise. "No. He’s on Ayther."

"In... Norneau, right?"

"Yeah," Anko said.

"Family?"

"N-nothing like that," she blushed. "He saved my life, so I owe him... And thanks to him Maledict took me in and now I’m a demon. Even if it’s tough, it’s a better life than I had... Even if Maledict gets mad a lot..."

"Is Maledict the one that hurt you?" Malz looked at the bruise on her shoulder.

Anko’s tone stiffened as much as her posture, "It’s my fault he hit me. I shouldn’t have talked back."

"That’s not fair."

Anko’s silence was all the answer Malz needed to confirm the girl knew this as well. Whatever else Malz felt about her situation, she could commiserate with a fellow girl about shitty men.

Not wanting to push her too hard, Malz focused on eating.

"I asked to go back to Ayther early..." Anko suddenly confessed. "I told him I’m pretty much an adult now, but he said I’m barely a child compared to proper demons... When I told him I hate it here... he got mad."

"Why?"

"I don’t know... A lot of people are saying he’s gone mad... Some of the demons in charge are angry. People want more mana, but he’s putting all of it away somewhere."

Malz wanted to ask where, but that might give her away. Instead, she asked, "If you could go to Ayther today, would you?"

Anko puffed out a small laugh. "That’s not going to happen. Purgatories can’t reach here without a gate, and Maledict only opens gates for crystal hunts."

"But if it could happen?"

Anko chewed her lower lip. "Yeah."

Alright Malz... play it cool. You just need to "discover" those escape pod things...

Malz hurried a little to reach the last bite of her meal. The bacon hit her like a wave of nostalgia, whoever cooked it had salted it perfectly. It was both chewy and crunchy and well worth the wait.

She finished it and found Anko staring at her.

"You look like I did... when I was human. Whenever I got a bit of meat... There was this druid hut where they did cooking, I never got let inside but they’d give me meat sometimes."

Poverty wasn’t something Malz ever had to worry about. Even the poorest angels, those who had left their choirs or were born to such people, were given the necessities and a stipend. The poverty that those who lived on Ayther could live in was academic to her. Those who were most conscious of it, simply pretentious enough to dangle their knowledge or help like a medal around their necks.

Malz had never known poverty, but the last two years had taught her a lot about starvation... and that was a lesson she felt in her bones.

"No one should have to live like that," Malz said.

Anko nodded.

After a few more moments where Malz licked her fingers and the bowl clean, she was handed the small tablet.

Malz was a bit more cautious with it than the big one. She quickly found what she hoped was the right hole and started to charge it.

"I think that, if you left, I would miss you," she said. "We might not have spoken much, but I can tell you’re kind..." Malz looked down, "I can’t help but think... In another life, if I wasn’t an angel, we might have been friends."

A sad look crossed Anko’s face.

"Yeah."