The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 365: Intercardinal

Chapter 365: Intercardinal

Ferro woke with the dawn to find Malzkael deep into his book.

Panic was his first response.

"What are you doing? Give that back!"

She looked up at him, surprise replacing the fascination on her face.

"Sorry. You dropped it and I was bored," the angel said. But she didn’t return the book. "Did you write these notes?"

"No, but I would like for you to give it back." He wasn’t fond of force, but life in the Duat had him gathering a spell -

"Sure," she closed the book and reached across with it. "No need to get angry about it."

"It’s precious to me," he said, dissipating his spell before he took it, checking the page she was on and flipping back to check for damage.

"I can see why... there’s forbidden knowledge in there."

Ferro’s ears flattened, and not from concern. "The knowledge in here kept me alive. I’m not giving it up." The tension in his face made his fangs show more than was polite as his tails stiffened.

"I wouldn’t ask that of you," Malz replied. "From what I saw, someone had knowledge only angels are supposed to have. And I thought that was fascinating. If it’s not an angel, then it’s someone who’s probably much, much older than most. Maybe an Ayther god or a millennium mage."

"What’s a millennium mage?" Ferro asked.

"Just a mage who makes it past the three-hundred-year-old mark. They don’t teach you that down here?"

He shook his head. "I’m self-taught. Slaves don’t exactly get a curriculum."

Malz flinched at the word "slaves." Ferro knew the look of someone who never had to consider people like him. But then she surprised him.

"In Heaven, we have... Elevated. They’re like slaves, but as far as I know, they’re all willing to do whatever is asked of them. It’s a... religious thing, almost."

"I didn’t think Heaven needed slaves," Ferro said. "What about everyone being immortal and having more magic than they know what to do with?"

"It’s not as magical as you think," Malz replied. "And we die just as much as anyone else... though maybe we get two or three hundred years in on average."

Ferro let out a jealous snort. "You must be ages older than me then..."

"I’m twenty... one? Maybe twenty-two."

"You don’t know?"

"Hard to tell time when you’re being tortured and drained day after day," Malz’s lips twisted sardonically. "I used to scrape a mark for every day when I woke up, but then this one gnossinian thought it would be amusing to make me think every day was the first day we were meeting..."

Ferro felt a bit worse after hearing that. He might have been a slave but he was never tortured daily except through fear.

Ferro cleared his throat. "Maybe we were put together for a reason -"

With a gasp and a snort, Anko rolled to a seat, her hair askance and her eyes bleary. "Morning..." she groaned, stretching to a loud series of pops and cracks from her back and four arms. "Ugh, I thought it was all a dream for a moment..."

"You thought what was a dream?" Ferro asked.

"Being stranded in the desert..." She yawned and stood, performing more stretches. "Do we know where we are yet?" she asked Malz more than him.

"Not a clue," Malz shrugged.

"Guess I’ll go check then," Anko yawned again, stepping outside into the light wind of an early desert morning. The next thing Ferro heard from her was "Hup!" before she leaped straight up into the air.

A moment later there was a dull thud as she landed on her back, crashing through the top of the tarp and into one of the crates that had been emptied of its uniforms. "I saw some stuff," she reported, seemingly none the worse for the wear.

"Anko that was dangerous! What if you fell on a weapons crate?" Malz chastised.

Anko shrugged. "All that stuff’s separate. Wanna know what I saw?"

Ferro, his hackles up from the crash, rubbed a hand through his short mane. These girls are going to make me die of a heart attack...

But at least one thing was clear, and that was that Anko was probably more talented with enhancement magic than he could hope to be. He cleared his throat. "Please."

"Right. So that way" she pointed through Ferro "Is a bunch of mountains."

"That’s to the east," Malz noted, chewing her thumb. "Maybe northeast?"

"And where my feet are, that way is more sand," the demoness said.

Ferro thought on the information. It was clear that they were far away from civilization. But the only thing of note to the east side of the Desert of Ends was the Talsien Range and...

"Chainsfree..." Ferro uttered the name of the city where his destiny awaited. Where he would have the chance to save his sister...

"Hm?" Anko asked as she rolled to a stand.

"It’s a city... well, sort of a city. East of Aaru. A place for escaped slaves." There was also the city at the base of World Tree Arjun, Jus-Ihbar, but a lot of slaves were sold to Aaru from there. All it would take was one person recognizing the slave mark that had been burned onto the back of Ferro’s neck for him to be arrested and sold...

Even though they weren’t slavers, telling Anko and Malz about the other option seemed like a bad idea.

"We need to go northeast," Ferro said, glancing down at his compass, which was pointing through him. A smile crossed his face as a sense of rightness filled him.

"Weird compass shit?" Anko asked, having stuffed a date into her mouth.

"Yeah," Ferro acknowledged.

*

About two hours later, once they had decided on what to bring and what to leave behind, the three of them set out.

Ferro had contemplated setting the supplies on fire, but as cruel as they were, Aaru’s army also kept the desert free of bandits and monsters. So he settled for asking Anko to scatter the weapons, which she did with much enjoyment, tossing swords and spears with some degree of skill.

She kept a few knives though, pushing them into her dimensional storage until Malz noticed and protested.

"Hey, do you still have my knives in there?" she asked.

"About a few," Anko admitted. "Not a lot of space from my ink, so I just kept the nice ones."

A brief exchange followed, which mostly consisted of Malz insisting on taking back her knives while Anko grumbled or claimed not to have the specific ones the angel asked for. Ferro listened with only a little interest as the three of them walked. In the end it was decided that Malz would take back two of her old knives - one for each hand - and Anko would carry the rest. At least until the former got her storage tattoo fixed.

Ferro listened with many an internal sigh. His holding capacity was barely thrice what an untrained person would have. That was enough for one solid burst, but it meant he was entirely dependent on his rapid output for sustaining spells. Any drop in that would reduce the power of what he could produce... But it would have been convenient.

While they bickered back and forth like old enemies, Ferro reached into his pouch and extracted one of the books given to him by the Aikos. A thin instruction manual on the necklace and its functions, written in slightly archaic but still understandable Common.

The level of detail was difficult to parse, but the way it was written seemed to contain a hint of pride.

He couldn’t even conceive of what it was like to remember the same thing as over eight-thousand copies of himself, but that was a matter for the Elder Aiko, not her sisters.

Occasionally, Anko took big leaps to check on their progress.

"There’s a house near some hills that way," she pointed. "Looks like they have a well."

Based on where she was pointing, that was not in the direction they were supposed to go.

"Did you see any people?" Malz asked.

"Nope," the demoness replied. "But I thought I saw a horse or something."

Putting his book away, Ferro looked down. "The compass says we should go that way," he pointed more to the south of where Anko had.

"It’s still on the way," the demoness crossed her lower arms. "I don’t see a reason we can’t check it out."

"I just... have a bad feeling about it," Ferro said.

"Sounds more like you just want to follow that thing," Anko jabbed a finger at Ferro’s compass.

"What about you? What do you think?" Ferro shifted to look at Malzkael.

"I kindof agree with you, but Anko does have a point. It couldn’t hurt to check it out."

Outvoted, Ferro complied as they turned their steps more to the northeast.

After a few more hours of walking, the desert sands became a bit rockier, replaced after a point by red-brown dirt broken through by black shards of volcanic rock.

When they finally saw the building, Ferro tucked the necklace under his cloak, fixing his skirt before temporarily removing his cloak to put the strap of his satchel under it.

"That’s uh, some interesting stuff you got on under there," Anko scratched at the back of her head.

She was probably talking about his gold piercings and his skimpy harem garb. He rather liked the piercings, though he’d just as soon trade them for something cheaper if they needed the gold...

A sudden, very loud chirp sounded and was returned a few moments later from the opposite direction.

"Birds are really loud here," Malz commented.

"All birds are loud. What kind of birds they got in Heaven?" Anko prodded with a slightly mocking look.

"Songbirds," Malz replied, then peered to the side a bit. "That’s not a horse! That’s a skinfaxi!" Her tone of voice went higher. "Oh my stars, she’s so cute!"

The skinfaxi, laying on its side, looked a little like a horse, but it had a long, predatory face with two tusks for digging surrounding its large, flat, grazing teeth starting at the back. It also had a shaggy blonde hide that ended with a long, blonde-white tail, and padded feet with claws instead of hooves. Perfect for desert travel, but not so much for mountains.

The mare regarded them with a look of haughty boredom, before turning away to gulp from a trough.

"You three look lost," a voice called out, and the group turned to find a woman leaning at the door of the large one-story house. A dark-grey-skinned giantess chewed on a cinnamon-colored toothpick the size of an actual branch. Her red hair was bunched up in a ponytail and she wore loose desert robes. "You looking for a place to stay?"

Before Ferro could speak, Malz stepped forward. "Yes, please. We can’t really pay, but we won’t be trouble-"

The giantess shrugged and smiled. "Well come on in. I’ll get you watered and we can talk pay once my boys get back with the herd."

The giantess ducked back into the house and Ferro grabbed Malz before she could walk off.

"What?" the angel asked.

"That was too easy. We’re in the middle of nowhere," he looked around, trying to spot anything out of place. "People aren’t just nice..." Something else was screaming in Ferro’s mind for his attention. Something about what the giantess had said, but before he could put his finger on it-

"You worry too much," Malz wrenched herself free, then lowered her voice. "Besides, it’s three against one. What’s the worst she can do?"

Anko, meanwhile, was already entering the building.

Ferro looked down at his compass, which was pointing at the two of them, as well as off in the distance.

With nothing else he could think of, he bent down and scooped up a handful of sandy earth, stuffing it into one of his cloak’s inner pockets, before following them in.

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