The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 331: Interlude: The Emissary

Chapter 331: Interlude: The Emissary

In Jeviel Fidelos’ world, there was order.

Heaven above, Ayther below.

His office reflected this, with its white walls that left no room for shadows. Its pristine, diamond-wrought bookshelves were burdened only with holy texts and not a speck of dust. Its lavish "window" allowed him to view anywhere in the city where Heaven had placed its monitoring devices, whenever he wished. To stare out into chaos from a place of perfect order.

That was what the model on his desk represented, and it was just one of many little luxuries that made his time in this backward corner of Ayther bearable. On it, the globe rotated under a stationary heaven, with little illusory clouds that even indicated the weather.

Hell wasn’t depicted at all, since it was presently a little over a third past the horizon, visible to those on the other side of the continent, but not to Ayther.

A minor tempest was working its way across the northern peninsula of Thera, and he knew it was so because the sphere reflected information sent from Heaven’s own forecasters.

There were never storms in heaven, just the occasional summer rain - well-planned in advance - and nothing heavier than the slight amount of mist that gusted up from the world trees - except when ashfalls sometimes came from Hell.

Weather was a thing of transience. Of chaos.

Of Ayther.

As Jeviel contemplated the globe, he wondered if he should have been a meteorologist, but there was a certain excitement to where he was that no amount of watching would fulfill.

He stood in a place of calm because to these savages - even the ones who claimed some modicum of divine heritage - he was the storm. The arbiter of Heaven’s will, and its wrath.

He thought of his last assignment, the nowhere harbor at the north end of the Naio Plains, in far off Retha. Compared to Myoken, Norneau was all business and little art. There, setting the people of Naio against their neighbors to the south and east had been child’s play. Barely an inconvenience to his little pleasures.

But here... there was something about the beating heart of this burgeoning city - prospering despite the Heavenswar - that Jeviel had come to covet. A single point from which to play off the empires of an entire continent, yet not beholden to any...

So... resistant, and yet so capable... So willful...

There was a certain pleasure to overcoming resistance that Jeviel knew, that the one commanding him did not.

If Jeviel could tame this city, he knew he would be able to do much more than the Son of Heaven demanded. He could ensure chaos on the continent. Sow the seeds of a discontent so deep that the nations would beg to be taken under Heaven’s direct rule...

And when the pillars of light descended on the capitals, wiping all resistance from the world...

Norneau, his Norneau, would become a new beacon. And he would stand with the power of an entire continent of lesser beings beneath him, enriching him beyond any concept of wealth. Perhaps enough to found his own House, in the world to come.

So what if Lumin had sussed out her own version of magical scripting?

That would just make things easier for him to fly ahead of his competition... once he had the city in hand...

A gentle knock at the door drew his eyes away from the globe.

"Emissary," the barely adult angel said as soon as he waved it open. "We have another volunteer..."

"Excellent! Show her in," Jeviel beamed.

The angel stepped aside and revealed a human girl who couldn’t have been far past her majority, if she even was that old. She had tan skin and black hair, and eyes that shone with faith.

"Greetings, child of Ayther," Jeviel said, standing from his desk regally and stepping around it. "You wish to pledge your services to Heaven?" He held out his forefinger, allowing her to kiss it.

"M-more than anything, angel."

"Why?" he asked.

"B-because the angels are the most beautiful of Aidaeb’s creations... and because it’s the right thing to do..."

So pure...

"And will you do anything we ask? Suffer anything we require?"

The girl looked at Jeviel’s secretary, who nodded and smiled, just like with every person who’d wished for Jeviel’s favor. "Yes, angel," she bowed her head.

"Then come this way," he looked at his secretary and nodded.

"I also have a report for you-"

"Just leave it on my desk, Sheryl. I’ll be done in a few hours..."

A wave of his hand produced the door to his sleeping quarters, right next to his office. Here, there was much, much more lavish decoration. Walls carpeted in red velvet, carpets decorated in the finest murals that twenty Rethan hands could stitch together. A four-poster bed with a deep, soft mattress, perfect for wings...

But it was not to the bed that Jeviel led his new prospect.

It was to the chair, with its sturdy leather straps, sitting in the corner.

Behind it were the instruments of Jeviel’s "little pleasures," knives and scalpels and hooks and bone saws.

"Sit," he commanded the human girl. "And strap yourself down."

"A-angel... what is this?"

Jeviel inwardly rolled his eyes before smiling and gently pushing her closer to the seat. "It is a test. Nothing more. If you pass, you will emerge far, far better than you were."

Though she swallowed nervously, she seemed convinced by his sincere, beneficent tone. She sat and started with her feet, then awkwardly locked in the strap over her left hand...

Oh, how he loved when they went willingly... how they ignored the signs of their hearts and minds. Granted, he’d learned not to make the "test" too obviously painful before it started. He was always careful to purge his instruments and the room of blood, afterwards...

"Angel, I can’t get the last one."

A wave of the hand was all it took for Jeviel to finish strapping the girl down. The chair had been a token from his first assignment, overseeing imports from Sweetling Isle, one of the Chain Syndicate’s biggest holdings. One of the plantation masters had kept it on his front porch, for all the slaves to see as he sat in it and watched their daily labors.

One day, a rebelling slave had been caught. A young catkin girl. It was a day that Jeviel was visiting, and he still remembered the abject terror on her face when the master had her strapped into the chair... How she’d screamed, then fixated on him as he watched and watched... how she begged him to save her, because he was an angel. Because he was good...

Before she died, Jeviel knew that in that one, long moment of exquisite pain, even that beastkin knew faith...

"How old are you, mortal?" Jeviel asked as he started to untie her top.

"Twenty, L-lord angel..."

"Twenty... you know it is a sin to lie..." He drew a knife from the wall, a terrible, rending thing with a hooked end.

"Seventeen!" she panicked.

"Seventeen..." Perhaps it was fate? His first assignment to Ayther had been twenty years ago, after a century and a half of working in offices and pushing buttons on messages... And his first encounter with this chair and its victims had been just three years after that...

"Do you believe in me?" Jeviel asked.

"I-I believe in the gods, through whom all things are possible... I believe in Ayko, Mother of Angels, and in her children who guide the world from above..."

"Look at me. Answer me!" Jeviel hissed, placing the cold knife on her cheek where it drew a line of blood...

"Y-yes!" she shouted.

The sound of the door to his office bursting open was an unwelcome interruption.

"I can’t let you in without an appointment," Sheryl said, her voice jittering as she hurried behind-

"Uncle!" Jassiel shouted.

"You stay quiet," Jeviel sighed to the girl and stood up, taking the knife with him. "In here." As soon as Jassiel entered, his green wings tensed against his body, Jeviel yelled past his wings, "You can go, Sheryl."

As soon as he heard the doors to his office close, Jeviel rounded on his nephew who was leering at the tits of the human girl strapped to the chair. "What could be so important that you would break into my office like some barbarian?"

"Kiryu Nasumi."

"What about the mutt?" Jeviel had only one reason to look into Kiryu Nasumi, and that was to expose whether or not it was Lumin who had sussed out how to perform scripting magic and given it to the dog and his protege.

If she had, then it would form the excuse Vinam needed to hunt down the remains of the Houses Memoriam, Alithea, and Epeikeia. Kiryu Nasumi, therefore, was clearly just a belligerent puppet, meant to make Lumin’s hostile compliance seem palatable in comparison, but Jeviel wasn’t fooled...

"That mutt just let two demons into the city."

"What? Where is his head?"

"I don’t have it. You are the one that forbade me from killing him!"

"So that he could be useful to us! Where is he now?"

"I don’t know! The team we sent to retrieve his protege was defeated by some giant while I was busy responding because you gave that useless maven the means to call me!"

"So Michelle was there too... bring her here. Mavens are rare enough that even a weak one like her has their uses."

"What should be done about the demons?"

"Get the Elevated armed and pass out detectors. We’ll find them and string them up on the city gates... and for that matter, we need to lock down all the gates and the teleporter at the Guild... Oh and send two teams to that blasted glideway tower. If we move fast, they’ll have nowhere to go, and we can take our time breaking the Professor of his secrets..."

Jassiel nodded. "I’ll see to it right away," he looked at the girl again.

With a sigh, Jeviel turned, grabbed her hair and slit her throat, holding her head up as he watched her dying eyes. "I’m sorry we didn’t have time for a proper test... Have faith... we will meet again in your next life, little kitten..."

Jassiel left without comment.

Alone with the dying woman, Jeviel waited until the last burble of her dying breath to let her head drop. Then he knelt and slipped one of the shoes from her feet, taking it reverently to the opposite wall, where he kept a bookshelf full of his little treasures.