The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 384: The Three Day War - Day Two

Chapter 384: The Three Day War - Day Two

Kir woke to the feeling of his own sweat, cold against his body.

He felt the thoughts of his companions. Concern. Relief. Fear.

And he felt the eyes of the Lake Spirit upon him, the snarl on her face held still and waiting.

Everyone started speaking at once, but it was the Lake Spirit’s voice that silenced them all.

"Abomination. You dared touch the bones of my creator," her voice boomed in everyone’s heads. "Were it not for the aid you and this one," she nodded to Kordia, "gave unto my child and I, I would have destroyed you while you lay sleeping."

Kir’s thoughts rushed. He recalled the strike. The shield he’d tried to make. Her help. All he could think to say was "Thank you for sparing me... how can I make this right?"

"The light has carved deep around the mountain. My waters flow there now. The corpse of my maker is exposed. LET NONE TOUCH HER AGAIN."

Standing, with Amarena’s help, Kir looked down and around. The coils of a massive serpent, a skeleton amidst the stone, lay exposed along every remaining portion of the mountain, and Kir realized that it had been fragments of the tail that had been mined for.

A moat now surrounded Mount Morens, its depths still turgid with dark soot, expanding with every crumbling of soil once held together by trees burned to less than cinders at the roots.

The mines were flooded, and in the distance Kir saw many disparate groups moving as fast as they could away from the mountain.

"I’ll see to it," Kir said, unsure of how he was going to accomplish this but already feeling the stirrings of ideas. "But as long as there is mana here, the angels will fight to have it."

Without a word, the Lake Spirit dissolved into glowing waters that sped down the spiral of her maker’s corpse, and Kir watched as the well of mana was stripped away as she flowed down it. Growing in size like a gathering flood before sliding into the lake and surging away, like an underwater comet of blazing mana.

Kordia’s thoughts replaced the silence of the scene. She realized that the Spirit of the Lake had just grown herself beyond the point of safety. To preserve her honored dead, she’d taken the power from the mountain... and made herself a target of Heaven.

And then there were more thoughts.

Everyone inside his head.

How did this happen?

His question echoed into the newly formed bonds. And Kiryu answered.

"It’s fucking magic, kid. They’ve been speculating about me all night thanks to that shit you pulled."

Kir felt everyone go instantly on edge. Had they heard Kiryu? At the very least they seemed to sense him. Amarena tensed. Kassin looked sick, and it was then that Kir saw the boy had grown a second tail, and that his orange hair and fur were redder than they had been.

Kordia spoke first. "Kir I... we can feel a presence in your head. It’s shut us out from hearing it but..." she chewed her lower lip for a moment. "Is it Kainur?" Her fear unfolded before Kir. Kainur’s soulstone, consumed by him. But all Kir had gained from that desperate act was to place himself on a dangerous precipice of power.

"It’s not Kainur," Kir sighed. "It’s... hard to explain." Kir turned his thoughts to Kiryu, a silent request for permission.

"Go ahead. The damage is done," Kiryu said bitterly, passing along a strong urge to have a smoke.

Kir extracted his kiseru from his storage and lit it.

"The voice in my head is... me. Or he was me." Kir took a pull on the pipe, finding it difficult to absorb the swell of curiosity from everyone. "I’ve known about him since before the Siege of Norneau... but he’s known about me since..." Kir shook his head. "He’s been awake in my head since the day I was born."

"So when the Spirit of the Lake said..." Kordia began, her thoughts flowing into him.

"Yes," Kir replied. "I think she felt him in there. And I suspect..." Words left him at that moment. He suspected so much. That Stella might have sensed something and didn’t tell him. That Kiryu’s presence in his mind and soul was keeping him from evolving further. That now, after having come closer to Kordia and Amarena than ever, he would lose them because of the secret he’d kept from them.

A complex wave of emotions emitted from Kir’s lovers. There was pain, but also a willingness to understand. Compassion.

And in an undertone that echoed all they felt for Kir, Kassin’s mind bore shame.

At first, Kir didn’t understand, but he could feel how his presence allowed Kordia and Amarena to also know Kassin’s feelings. And for the first time since they’d met, Kir felt he’d neglected to see Kassin as a young man trying to find his place.

Kir inhaled deep, and began to tell the truth...

"In another life, on another world...

*

And when his story was done, he felt as if a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He hadn’t even told his parents, but he could feel that despite the worry in their minds, the people he loved were willing to think and accept.

But then there was the one he didn’t love.

"It’s hard to believe," Kassin said when Amarena and Kordia remained silent. "A past life... Another Ayther without magic..." Kassin had struggled the most with the concept of alternative realities. Perhaps it was because he was the youngest one there - although Kir could sense that Amarena might not understand at all and was just accepting what he was saying because he was saying it.

Kiryu had remained silent throughout, unwilling to answer any questions or do more than send angry pulses of emotion at Kir when he touched on Kiryu’s identity. Kir tried to keep to the basics when it came to his other side, and in truth how little he knew about Kiryu kept that aspect of his story consistent.

"So you have his knowledge... But he’s not you." Rena said, "He’s his own person... but inside your head?"

"That’s about the sum of it," Kir puffed out some smoke from the kiseru. "He knows some things I don’t, and has all the memories I don’t have of being him, but what he knew, about the world and the technologies I’m trying to bring to Ayther, those were either in my head or we worked them out together... When he cooperated." Kir sighed. "Magic, however, was something we both discovered together. Or rather, he discovered it through me. I can’t help but feel he’s disappointed in it though. Or disappointed with how it’s used."

Utter silence echoed from Kiryu.

Kordia’s tails wagged into one position, "So programmable magic, what you’ve been teaching at the Academy, the glideways..."

"All things we came up with together. The hope was to let scientific knowledge and methods permeate the world while staying out from under Heaven’s watch. And to improve the situation in Norneau so that Lumin and the city council would overlook all the new innovations coming out of the same people... all of whom were associated with me playing Kiryu Nasumi..."

"So that’s why you’ve been stressed enough to start smoking," sudden understanding radiated off of Kordia.

"Actually I started smoking to keep Kiryu happy."

It wasn’t working now though. When Amarena reached over to inhale from his pipe, Kir didn’t resist.

"If I may say something to, um, Kiryu..." Kordia paused, and Kir felt Kiryu’s slight curiosity, "...thank you, for looking after Kir."

A begrudging sense of acknowledgment wafted through the bond from Kiryu to Kordia.

Kir tapped the kiseru clear and stood, storing it. "I am so sorry I hid the truth from all of you," he bowed deep.

"Apology accepted," Rena said without hesitation.

Kordia placed a gentle hand on Kir and radiated her acceptance. Behind her, Kassin seemed to feel resigned, but he sent an acknowledging pulse through their bond. Kassin shuddered as he curled both of his tails around his hip to contemplate them.

The forced sharing of mana had connected them did not relieve the fundamental issue of Kir’s impending need to evolve - and the barrier keeping from it. But rather than overflowing a single pool, baptizing others had given him more "pools" to fill, and as the one with the most growing to do, Kassin felt the changes to his mana the most.

"I still have this war to fight," Kir said as he rose. "I don’t want you to see what might happen next..."

"I’ll get us back to camp," Amarena volunteered. "Maybe distance will give us all a bit of privacy."

With a final hug, into which Kir pulled a slightly reluctant Kassin, Kir saw them off. Then, letting his mana shine like a beacon once more, he stepped off the mountain and angled himself toward the capital and what he hoped would be the last battle of Lapins’ war.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.