The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 403: With What Precious Things We Carry

Chapter 403: With What Precious Things We Carry

The clipper had ceased its movement. Nature had snapped her sails and cracked her hull. Had made the emergency wards light up the sky in distress, while the anti-leak wards seemed to do nothing at all.

Fuck, Val thought, before springing into action.

"Pilot, bring us along the Rorqual! Cut across the Bitch if you have to! Port one-five-zero!"

"Will’so!" the pangolkin man shouted, wasting no time to start turning the wheel.

"Signal the Bitch not to help us," she shouted to the bosun. Jumping down, she ran one deck below, bellowing with enhanced volume, "All magics, prepare to rescue! Cargo priority!"

In short order, she and a squad of seven mostly-enhancer mages were climbing the rigging or waiting as needed. The looks on their faces were determined, but few were concerned. After all, most of them had been slave-mages like her. Most had come to her as rookies - barely trained enough to be muscle. With few exceptions, she’d beaten and raised them up to strength herself, and their confidence made her feel a small swell of pride. They knew to focus on the fight.

Only one person is dying today," Val thought. For a moment the warm swell became a different sort of fire as her hidden thoughts rose. She shut it down, hard, with a well-practiced hold on the apathy she needed to hold for other people’smav lives.

Her ship was sturdy, fast, and always in good repair because she met laziness with violence. She would survive. For at least as long as the storm kept the monsters deeper below.

The cut in front of the Bitch’s path seemed very close, but a lucky wave allowed the Queen to sail past without a scratch - though for a moment Val anticipated the Bitch’s foremast might strip the rearmost rigging. The moment each mage or maven was in range, they leaped according to their capacities, and Val was the first with her magic-enhanced strength.

She landed on the Rorqual amidships, and instantly dove for one of the slave-mages. Grabbing him by the chains on his wrists, she grabbed one more before leaping back the way she’d come, heedless of their cries of pain and broken arms as she turned to count her mages returning in singles or pairs with cargo.

Three... Four... Five...

That made seven. Where was the last piece of cargo?

The Rorqual had twenty-four crew, since Val had dictated that more be sent to keep the Bitch of Catsperch afloat. The crew was begging to be saved before she even landed, her claws digging into what was left of the mainmast as she jumped for the cargo hatch. "Where’s the last slave-mage?" she demanded as she ripped the iron from its moorings.

"Cage wouldn’t open," Captain Peot greeted her. "All the magic on this ship is fucked."

"No shit!" Val dove into the bowels of the ship, swimming for the floor. Instead of making her way down, she dug her claws between the planks and ripped them away until she broke through to the cargo deck.

The glow of magic guided her to the cage, whose occupant was desperately trying to keep her head in the shrinking bubble of air she had left.

Val tried the door, but it refused to open. She knew Captain Peot, however, and the cheap bastard had skimped on iron for the bars. The bars that were supposed to be on the bottom of the cage did not exist. But at least the piece of shit is still bolted to the floor, so Peot wasn’t a complete idiot. She was already thinking of him as a dead man.

After all, it was Syndicate tradition for the captain to go down with the ship.

Unfortunately, that meant if she wanted to get in from under, she’d have to break through to the bilge deck and all of Peot’s human-grade shit.

Her hesitation ended in less than a second.

Breaking her way in, she grabbed the sheepkin slave and pulled her under, knocking her out so she wouldn’t struggle as Val swam back up. She arrived to find that the storm had started to wane, and that her mages had scooped up the rest of the crew.

Except for Peot.

"Val," the human seemed about to whimper. "We’re old friends, you and me. Nine years, Val."

"You know my priorities, Edgar," she said, her voice emotionless as she hardened her eyes.

The man drew on her, his cutlass glinting. "You’re going to take cargo over me?" There wasn’t a lot of ship left. She could only make the one jump. But she wasn’t going to choose. "Just let me on your ship, I can get there myself."

Val sighed just a little, "Heaven’s orders, Edgar. You know what that means. Can’t let you on my ship."

"When Heaven gives an order, the Syndicate follows all the rules to the letter." Including shit traditions. Not that Peot would have anything to return to after losing his ship. He’d be a slave, at best... but he’d be alive.

A look of desperation flashed across his face before he realized the futility of arguing with her. Turning his blade, he offered her the hilt. She kept one hand on the slave’s chains as she accepted her "old friend’s" blade.

"Make it quick," he implored her. "Old friend."

For a moment, Val let the seething wrath in her heart spread into her mana. Her fur heated and steamed as she took the strain, showing Captain Peot all the contempt she held for the Syndicate. As practical as it had been to work for them, she had never loved her work.

"We were never friends," she said, stabbing him in the gut before leaping to safety as he let out a mewling, burbling cry.

He continued to scream even as she landed. The lowering wind and the man’s own puny

And, ever the bitch, that was when what passed for a clear sky nowadays shone through, unveiling the roiling black nothing-scape from Hell’s skies.

Does it feel warm because it is, or because I know it’s Hell?

With how the winds were changing, the thus-far permanent rift had probably introduced a lot of heat...

If the world was getting hotter, she’d just have to weather it in a place that could handle it.

Guess I’ll take a walk to Aaru.

She figured she might as well look for her brother one last time since it was obviously the end of the world.