The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 352: Blood and Snow - Kordia vs Zazel

Chapter 352: Blood and Snow - Kordia vs Zazel

An explosion from the city drew Kordia’s eyes for a split second as she dashed her way through the battlefield, looking for Amarena.

Gods damn her... why couldn’t she wait for us?

Encke was a few steps behind her, everyone else was staying safe, sheltering in one of the warehouses of the lakeside docks. The giantess covered her back as Kordia cleared their front, her silvery shields a solid enough wedge to plow through the formations that tried to stop them.

Formations that were heading in Halie and Amarena’s direction until Kordia and Encke arrived.

No army was about to tolerate the appearance of potential enemies in their reserves. Spells and weapons alike were sent their way. Until finally one of Kainur’s generals finally cast a spell large enough to stop Kordia in her tracks, as the ground rose before her in a wall.

And atop that wall...

"Hmm... Spirit-touched. Such a rare opponent," a large demon, his mouth entirely covered in razor teeth, chuckled. The top of his face was domed, covered in seven small eyes behind the bone of its skull, which arced backward before splitting into dozens of spines. Three eyes were closed.

"Grigori," Encke warned. "Carrion demon."

"You know my kind but not my name... I am Zazel, the Watchful Eye of Pride. I would ask yours, maidens of power." His power, sheathed around him in his aura, was blue. The demons that had tried to close with them from behind kept their distance.

There was something strange about the mana around him. It was thicker beyond the edges of his tightly-held aura. Like there were people standing around him, only there were none.

If he would not let them pass, then every moment counted for discerning his weaknesses.

"I am Kordia, and our business here isn’t with you or your army. Unless you make it so," Kordia flared out her six tails, with six silver fox fires above. She pulled a bit on the free mana around the demon, and it converted willingly to feed her flames, which flared just a little.

"Encke. Daughter of the Demon Breaker," the giantess said.

"Ah... such a prize. I will be greatly rewarded for you, child of my master’s enemy."

Kordia’s eye twitched a little. Was Encke trying to get into a fight?

"Shouldn’t you be more worried over your Duke?" Encke asked.

The demon looked over at the city. "He does not need my worry. Even if the one he fights is... an anomaly I do not understand." He shrugged. "Whoever emerges victorious is worthy of Pride."

Kordia noticed a string of mana from one of Zazel’s closed eyes, leading off toward the city. Another led behind him, toward Amarena. And the last led straight up.

Zazel waved a hand, and the demons that had surrounded them while they talked turned, making for the city. But they left behind one demoness, whose aura was a darker, clearer shade of blue.

"I am Char Satanos, daughter of Pride." She kept her eyes on Encke as she continued. "Zazel, take the foxkin. I will handle the giantess... one daughter to another."

"As you wish, Princess."

Char Satanos began to walk, and Encke followed her, neither turning away from the other as Kordia felt silent spells begin to form. Their manifestations held back a mere breath away from completion.

Kordia readied her own spells, her mind working through various offensive and defensive concepts. In between thoughts, she grew curious as to why the demon in front of her seemed relaxed enough to remain unreadied when it was obvious he knew what she was doing.

"You are a healer," Azazel noted, his razor teeth twisting into what might have been a smirk. "I have never fought a powerful healer before."

"I try not to make fighting a habit," Kordia replied. She sparred with Kir sometimes. Once in a while, when they remembered enough to coordinate something. He had some morbid ideas about how healing might be used in battle. Offensively. Probably because he got attacked on a regular basis by his own students.

"And yet I see the tempering of battle upon you... perhaps from your ally, who attacks my Duke?" He chuckled, a grating, crunching sound coming from his teeth. "Tell me, what is the name of one so foolish?"

"Kir," she replied. "And I would worry more for your Duke if I were you."

"Duke Kainur has survived death before, and once he returns to his former power, he will reclaim his mantle once again. But hmm... Kir... Such an insult to my Duke."

"It’s his name, I doubt anyone meant an insult by it."

"Coincidence or not, Kainur will see his betrayal in it."

"Betrayal?"

"By the Cult of Shaitan-Kir... I doubt your grandmother’s grandmother was even alive when they existed." He extended his arms to both sides, invitingly. "Have you readied yourself enough, Healer Kordia?"

"Enough to make you regret it," Kordia replied. She reached into her own storage and pulled out her spell focus. A wand, its handle curved downward to fit her palm like the ’pistol’ Kir used sometimes in their sparring.

Although, unlike that thing, there would be no unpleasant, sulfurous smoke from Kordia’s pistol-gripped focus.

"A strange wand, for a strange healer." Zazel chuckled.

Off to the side, Encke’s duel with Char began. The century-mage unleashed cascades of rock and ice upon her opponent, who replied with Hellfire and blades of light.

Kordia looked that way.

A moment later Zazel warned her, "You have not enough eyes to waste being distracted."

She turned to find him guiding the spectral form of one of his own eyes out of its socket, his body still facing her. With a flick, he sent the manifested eye flying toward the nearby duel. A fourth eye on his face closed itself, leaving the center three staring at her.

"You’re awfully patient for a demon."

"One learns to be patient when one is a General. Especially when there are unexpected guests." He gestured with his open hand, inviting Kordia to begin.

Over the last two years, Kordia had settled well into her new levels of power.

She began the battle with a spell that sent six concentrations of invisible light streaking out from her fox flames. A technique she’d developed with Kir after he suggested that light could be a cleaner, sharper way to cut than even the most honed, enchanted scalpel.

To any other opponent it would have seemed as if their shields had come under sudden, invisible attack. But Zazel’s eyes twitched in the directions of each beam.

"I see..."

The moment after, his shield suddenly went opaque, compressing and then bursting downward through the earthen wall as the ground rose up to intercept every one of Kordia’s beams.

Kordia jumped back, hardening the air under her feet to keep stay airborne as she hopped backward swiftly to avoid the rising earth.

She was confident in her body enhancement to help avoid harm, but sensing he could manipulate stone and earth effectively warned her not to let herself get trapped.

The moment she dropped her spell, to focus on staying airborne, spikes of stone rose up, aiming for her. She hopped quickly, dodging the spikes and even leaping of her hands at one point.

It was much easier than trying to dodge Kir’s strikes. Her boyfriend preferred attacks that worked at the speed of light, for gods’ sakes.

Fox-like features crept into her form as she started sprinting a circle around her opponent, as she drew deeper from her well of mana and the connection it gave her to the nameless spirit that had blessed her as a child.

Silvery fur covered her, her face elongated into the narrow muzzle of a fox. Her claws lengthened, and her tails grew larger, longer, and bushier.

Her feet, in their change to digitigrade ones, slipped out of her shoes, which fell away.

In her vulpine form, the power Kordia felt was immense.

Landing on an untouched patch of land, she reached up and cast a shield around Zazel, hardening it tightly enough that even air could get through.

But with a flexing of his body, the shield cracked and shattered around him.

"Are you not taking this seriously, foxkin?" the demon’s mouth turned at the corners, a frown. "I have not been challenged since the last Heavenswar. It would be a shame if you did not fight to kill."

"I don’t kill people if I can help it," Kordia answered.

"You acknowledge me as a person. That is strange for one of the myriad. Does this come from the one who fights my master? This... Kir."

"Why do you care?"

"Because if Kainur falls, I wish to know more of who I will serve."

"I doubt Kir would ever want your service. Especially if you kill me."

"Whether he wants it or not, as a demon he has the right to rule should he succeed. I assume that is why the Demon Breaker chose to become one of us... Another anomalous development." He sighed. "But if you will not fight me seriously, I suppose I’ll just have to make you."

He raised a hand and pointed it at Kordia, before drawing it up and away.

Towards Amarena.

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