The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 402: Over Storm Tossed Seas

Chapter 402: Over Storm Tossed Seas

"Starboard three-zero!" Valera Rubi, Captain of the Queen of Iron shouted over the roar of the tide and wind, dominating both thanks to the mana enhancing her vocal chords - and indeed the rest of her petite catkin body. As befit her status, she wore a high-collared leather jacket and a rakish hat to help with the cold, which was winterlike for the ocean despite it being the height of spring.

Her pilot called back the command as he turned the wheel, arms throbbing with mana, while the crew struggled to tack the sails for their new heading. She kept her eyes on the horizon a moment longer, then turned to find the other two ships in her expedition changing course to follow.

Like the Queen of Iron, the SteelRorqual was a fast clipper, under the command of one Captain Peot. Val held back a wince as the Rorqual crested the short side of a wave, crashing with enough force that the reinforcement runes flared amidships. Her freedom rested on the safe delivery of all three ships to harbor - and their cargo.

Behind them, a five-masted barque - its sails fanned like a facsimile of a rising sun - struggled hard against the large wave that the Queen and Rorqual had barely avoided. The forward reinforcement runes throbbed from the sheer force they deflected as the barque cut through the wave like a fat finger through melted butter, steam rising where some misspent magic vaporized the foam it touched.

For a moment she could see the name Bitch of Catsperch as the wards lost their glow.

Hold together you bitch. Heaven’s orders.

She thought uncharitably about the nigh-foundering hulk, which had been the constant bane of her forays from the Shattered Isles. The task of bringing her to Ironport was daunting, but Valera couldn’t exactly say no to her employers.

At least they had the prudence to order basic supplies instead of fucking cargo.

"Viper" Val had a reputation to maintain.

That of a captain who never lost cargo - not that many people were willing to raid ships with "Iron" or "Steel" in their names.

Such ships were the property of the Chain Syndicate.

And with the Syndicate, "cargo" meant slaves.

Having once been a slave herself, Valera knew how little the worth of a person’s life was. She’d grown tough - had grown herself as an enhancer mage - defeating anyone who even thought about messing with her cargo...

That was the most she felt she could do for them.

But all that will change once we get to Ironport. I’ll take my cut and...

And what? Do something else?

She was a good captain and a better fighter - compared to the mundane and near-mundane dregs the Syndicate employed at dirt-cheap rates - but mercenaries were a dime a dozen during a Heavenswar.

What she’d wanted to do was find her brother, who had been sold in Aaru.

A year ago she’d tried - oh she’d tried - to track him down. The Syndicate was, after all, a fiend for record-keeping. Not the least because their biggest customer was Heaven itself. She’d found the brother where he’d worked for years, only to discover he’d been sold to a private buyer. A champion of the Grand Coliseum.

It took her one month of running around to finally learn where Ferro had gone. What he had become.

A concubine. Not just any kind, but a concubine of the Tower.

To her that meant he’d likely been broken enough to accept his role, and still pretty enough to be taken for it.

Crossing her arms, she felt the scars through her fur as she thought of her gentle, protective older brother.

The thought of him turning tricks at the whims of nobles had left her incensed. But she couldn’t even approach the Tower of Aaru as a mere ship’s captain. Somewhere in the shock of learning his fate, she’d grown angry over the last few years. Angry at the thought that he’d given in. That he got to live in luxury, without having to fight for it. Without pain or responsibility or debt.

He got to be some kind of pampered slut for royalty. For people who never had to work a day in their lives, her once proud-to-be-rust catkin brother had lain on his backside. Or frontside. However men fucked each other.

The Syndicate had tried to make her a slave like that at first.

She still remembered it, because it was the day she’d discovered her magic. The day she’d put her mana into her body to fight back, a full four years younger than average for awakenings. It was the day she’d first killed, some merchant elf with a prick like a pinky finger. And it was the day she earned the chance to become more than a slave.

After all, even the Syndicate needed good mages. Ferro had always gone on and on about what he would do if he only had magic. And it hurt to think that he’d never gotten the chance to magic his way out of slavery, even if it meant working for the Syndicate. It hurt worse to think he might have forgotten her... Gods, the things that could be done to make whore-slaves compliant... But no, those tended to ruin the body. Whores only got branded if they tried to escape, no one so marred would have been brought to live in the Tower of Aaru.

She’d fought her way up as a child. And while she was piss-poor at generative magic, she was a monster with enhancement - all centered around the sure knowledge that her body was the only thing she owned in the cruel world of the Syndicate.

From slave to slave-mage to sailor to quartermaster to Captain, she’d climbed. She’d made the only choices she had left. Serving the Syndicate to avoid trouble down the line helped her survive, but she’d thrived! Not like the illiterate slobs who accepted their enslavement.

Not like her uncle, who didn’t even have the good grace to be alive when she’d arrived in Aaru to kill him. She’d wanted to end the man with Ferro there to watch, but he’d gotten himself killed and cremated while Ferro was being some leokin brute’s whore. There hadn’t even been a grave for her to desecrate.

These thoughts distracted her as she reached up, feeling the broken, circular scar on the back of her neck. It was flattened by the debranding and healing, but formed a slight depression under her fur where once there had been a raised circle with inscribed wire inside. The mark of her emancipation, but not her freedom. Not when graduating from slavery meant rising to the rank of debtor.

The cargo we have here will end that though, she thought.

Slave mages. Most of them were either debtors or those who had attempted to dodge the Heavenswar and were too useless to be either footsoldiers or combat mages. She had sixteen units of cargo, split between the Queen and Rorqual, which couldn’t carry much in the way of goods anyway. They were more valuable than the goods on the Bitch of Catsperch.

"Captain!" her first officer shouted, pointing off the side.

For a moment, Val entertained the notion that the edge of the storm they were under was in sight. But nature, unlike the gods, existed, and was therefore trying its hardest to remind her how little she mattered. How little her strength meant in the face of true, omnipresent power.

No, nature did not even do her the courtesy of watching the Bitch break apart like the overused piece of whale shit she was.

Today, nature wanted the Steel Rorqual.