The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 404: Over The Mountains We Must Climb

Chapter 404: Over The Mountains We Must Climb

The sky had never looked so black to Ferro before.

Not at night, and not now when it was supposed to be the middle of the day.

The rending of the sky had left a perpetual stream of little motes falling like stars amidst the ash-choked sky.

Following the compass, the girls and he had ridden as high as they could before their mounts refused to take them any further. His eyes had been so fixed upon it that had Malz not mentioned it, he would never have known that it was no longer leading them toward Chainsfree.

"The city is over there!" Malz gesticulated emphatically. "See the glow on the underside of the clouds?"

"I can’t. I need to follow the compass." Ferro looked up the mountain ridge, following the thin beam, which seemed even brighter in the dark.

"We should just leave him," Anko hissed. "He can always catch up to us later."

"No!" Malz said. "We don’t have enough food or light to mess around. We need to stick together."

The angel was having the roughest time of it, now that they were on foot. Ferro wanted to go to the city, and not just for her sake. He needed to await his sister. To steer her away from life under the Syndicate... And to warn people about the army supplies hidden in the desert.

So many things pulled on his worries, but with the sky gone black, the compass was not only the most immediate concern, it - and he - were their only consistent source of light. Malz needed to conserve her mana, and Anko simply couldn’t cast spells as a maven... which left him.

I’m their beacon as much as the compass is mine...

But was it fair to lead them somewhere unknown, when it could mean they’d die?

He hoped that Aedaeb... the Creator themself... didn’t intend for them to die; and he was barely certain he wasn’t meant to die either. But between half-mad words about prophecies and reality, he could not be certain that the two women who’d come so far with him had not already fulfilled their roles. He looked at the compass. There was only one beam. Solid and sure and pointing up along the mountain ridge they’d spent more than a day climbing already.

He took a few steps, following the compass’ light.

If it only needed to be him, he could go alone...

No! Ferro shook his head. He clutched the compass hard. He was free, for as long as he never saw Lanoch and their magical contract again, which meant he could do things the way he wanted. I’m not abandoning them...

"Hey, uh... are you alright?" Malz interrupted his thoughts.

He wouldn’t abandon them, but that didn’t mean he had a right to decide for them. "I-. You don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to," he looked at Anko.

"Great!"

"Anko!" Malz chided. "Look... I’m not in the best decision-making space right now..." Ferro nodded. "... and physically I’m probably done for at least a day the moment I lay down. But I think we got enough distance from those slavers that we can stop to look around. So how about we just get to the top of the next highest place that compass of yours is pointing to and go from there?"

Her proposal had merit.

"That sounds reasonable," he replied, thinking that it sounded more like a delaying tactic. The next peak was about a great measure away, but the hike looked relatively easy.

"Let’s vote," Malz said. "All for following the compass up one more hill?" She and Ferro raised a hand each - Ferro a bit shakily. "All opposed?"

Anko lifted all four of her hands into the air. "We’re just wasting time."

"That still only counts as one vote," Malz stuck out her tongue at the half-demon.

"I say we play by Demon Lord rules. Strongest decides," Anko scowled at the angel.

"I’m pretty sure Mr. Ferrovia could wipe the floor with you," Malz said.

"What?!" Ferro mewled.

"Remember how he held his own against that maven bitch?" the angel continued, ignoring him.

It had been a harrowing fight for all three of them against that slaver, and the most they’d been able to accomplish against her was killing two untrained accomplices and blinding one of her eyes.

For a few nights, Ferro had nightmares of her melting the mountain stone beneath them, before entombing them forever. The dreams were an exaggeration of the power she had commanded to wield rock like an extension of herself, yet keeping it malleable as clay.

Thankfully in the end Anko relented to one last hike without a fight, and even took the lead, but there was a tension left in the air that Ferro couldn’t help but notice, and Anko carried it in her shoulders.

She doesn’t trust Malzkael... Ferro recognized the body language of someone who knew they had been played. It was a look he’d seen on people who realized that concubines like him didn’t truly feel for them. The girls didn’t seem like lovers, but maybe they had been friends?

It was hard to imagine an angel and a demon coming together for any reason. But these were strange times, and the disappearance of Heaven - Ayther’s second moon - had seemed a terrible portent even before the sky split open.

For the first few days of traveling with the girls, they’d had a mutual dynamic of survival and mutual benefit. But the long journey was starting to expose wounds in their relationship that clearly had yet to heal.

He pondered these things from behind Anko. Until he accidentally bumped into her back.

"Watch it!" she shrieked, easily regaining her balance despite almost being tipped over. The maneuvers and contortions she used to right herself were born of her mavenry, which according to her enhanced her coordination and bodily enhancement magic. She wasn’t particularly strong for a maven, but she was hard to hit and quite swift.

"Why’d you stop?" Malz panted. And then... "Oh."

Ferro looked up to find that the green-blue lights were falling around some sort of invisible barrier. A barrier Anko had been about to walk into.

Dodging a mote, Anko passed her hand into the space before stepping in.

"What the... fuck, I don’t like this." the half-demon shuddered.

Arriving beside her, Ferro felt a familiar pressure right as Malz declared, "We’re in a mana field. Something big must be nearby. Maybe a spirit or-"

Ferro muttered to himself, "It can’t be a dungeon..." but it sure feels like one. Looking down at the compass, he was not surprised to find it seemed to be pointing directly towards the epicenter of the field.

Anko groaned, "Let me guess, your thingus wants us to go into the middle of this shitstorm." Ferro nodded, and she continued, "Great! Maybe stay an extra step away in case I throw up."

Recalling the signs of mana poisoning, something clicked in Ferro’s head.

"You’re untempered." Ferro said as he activated his manasight, spotting a few veins of corruption in her.

"Huh?" Anko made a face.

"It’s something dungeoneers and people who work in high-mana environs do to help manage their mana intake," Malz explained.

"Speak Common, please," Anko crossed her arms, holding herself as she continued walking.

"It’s teaching your body to let in mana it can use and keeping mana it can’t use out," Ferro said. "It takes a day or so. And a lot of exposure..." He shuddered, remembering his experience tempering, which had felt like freezing from the inside while he burned on the outside. "Even mundanes need it if the density is high enough."

"What could be making a field like that up here?" Malz wondered. "It would have to be an unanchored spirit or maybe a monster... but most monsters hate mountains."

"Could it be a house?" Anko raised her voice over Malz’s as she let her top right arm point past the jut of the rise they were on.

Rushing the last few steps, Ferro gawped at the completely unexpected sight of a stone house half-carved into a cliff that was just past the rise. Though only a single story, it was an imposing structure with a brutal aesthetic, almost featureless except for the windows, which had no curtains but did have shutters made of stone. Smoke went up from an unseen vent in a steady stream, barely visible as the wind ripped it away.

Light shone from within, but the mountain winds made it impossible to hear any activity, even as they neared.

Up close, even more mysteries presented themselves. Bars of metal and precious gems were strewn about outside the windows, as if discarded.

A few measures away from the structure, Anko suddenly collapsed, panting hard.

"Fuck... I hope this isn’t a trap, because I’m not feeling so good," Anko grimaced.

There’s no way the slavers got ahead of us... Ferro hoped, but he swallowed his fears as he held onto his compass and approached.

As the eldest of their group, it was his responsibility to -

Right as he was about to knock, the door opened, and he looked up - and up - to find himself staring at a demonkin over three measures tall, his face partially shrouded by the copious smoke he emitted from a long pipe before he took the device from his mouth.

"What do you want?" the man asked, with a cold face and near-dead eyes.

Ferro swallowed. The hand on his compass opening as he reflexively looked to find it pointing right at the demonkin.

"I-I know this is going to sound strange but..."

"Kir!" Anko gasped. "I-it’s me!"

The demonkin man pointed at her, "First of all: it’s rude to interrupt. Second of all: I’m not your boy. And third: I don’t know you, Kid." Having silenced her, he gestured with an open palm at Ferro, who couldn’t help but notice the demonkin’s claws were extended and quite large. "Alright Kitty, go on."

"We’re on a mission from god!" Ferro barked out quickly, repeating the words that Aidaeb had told him to say.

The demonkin stood straighter. For the first time Ferro noticed the man’s clothes were strange. A gray, form-hugging suit like a second skin was covered in hexagons, with protective metal plates at the joints and boots. Lines of mana ran along the outside, tracing around the hexagons in manasight, but Ferro guessed they’d be invisible to mundane sight.

"Well that’s just great! Come on in!" he said with sudden joviality.

"Really?" Ferro asked.

"No."

The demonkin slammed the door shut.

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