The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 407: Where We Are Going...

Chapter 407: Where We Are Going...

Kordia van Mora, Kassin Korabodur van Gra’Rhuel, and Lapins van Montmorency paused at the junction of the road they were traveling on.

Snow lingered in places despite the lateness of spring, and the choice before them was a difficult one.

"I say we risk the capital. It’s not too far away, and no one’s expecting us to be anywhere," Lapins said. "They probably don’t know we’re gone."

"My mother always seems to know everything about everywhere on Areth," Kassin said, tugging a bit on the short travel skirt Kordia had loaned her. "I don’t want to risk getting caught."

They argued for a bit, but in the end, Kordia was the decision-maker. This journey was hers. To find and aid the Silver fox spirit whose life was linked to the Mora clan’s lands. She chose to risk the capital.

"We need supplies. And swift mounts if we can find some," Kordia said, planting herself between them both and giving Kassin a reassuring touch.

She showed them the ten gold, nine silver, and nine copper she’d brought with her, as well as a few minor mana stones. It would have been enough to cross the continent thrice over before the Heavenswar.

"Can’t we just ride you in your fox form?" Kassin asked.

"I can barely keep it up for an hour at a time," Kordia replied, shuddering a little as a drop of water fell off a branch and onto the back of her neck, her six tails fanning.

"How does it even work?" Lapins asked.

Kordia tried to explain as they walked. The best she could guess was that the more powerful she became, the more Silver affected her new capacities. It was almost like she became a large spirit fox and more of herself at the same time.

The conversation took up the rest of the journey to Korabodur. Until they started to see hamlets and villages, and the land became more clearly curated for resources, yet much wilder than what Montmorency had looked like.

Given the sheer diversity of beastkin diets, Kordia and Kassin both knew how closely their nations kept to the natural location. Maintaining a balance with the local spirits was essential to determining how much farming could occur, and thus most of the herding would take place in grasslands far from the city.

Lapins still reacted with shock upon seeing Korabodur. Where Montmorency had been a compact city building up towards its central palace, Korabodur sprawled like a spread-eagled dragon.

"Where are the walls?" Lapins wondered.

"Karabodur doesn’t have walls," Kassin answered. "Except around the palace."

What the city did have were rivers. According to Kassin, his great-grandmother had the river split to protect the fox clade, forming the large roughly circular area where the palace was centered. Aside from the palace river, called the Shalun, another river to the north served as a barrier, deepened long ago through magic. There were also large artificial lakes that formed chokepoints at various locations, providing both the appearance of openness and a barrier to armies.

In many of these lakes, airships floated on the water as they were repaired. Popular explanations were that this was a demonstration of Heaven’s wrath or a demonic spell gone awry. The motes’ disruption of enchantments had grounded the air fleet, and many were worried that the disappearance of the second moon was a portent of disaster for the empire Queen Fruhe had promised them. Almost as if Heaven had withdrawn the mandate she’d published.

Throughout the city, shopkeepers had odd reactions to seeing the three of them, but that didn’t stop them from acquiring what they needed at prices Kordia considered ridiculously low compared to Norneau (at least with leather goods). Kassin was the most uncomfortable with the stares, not least because she was fresh "out of the closet" as Kir liked to say.

It was on the way out of the city that they ran into trouble.

A female guard gestured for them to halt as they tried to leave by the northern bridge.

"Honored foxes, may I ask why you are attempting to leave the city?" the female evolved bearkin guard asked, her eyes flicking over to Lapins.

"Is there some prohibition on it?" Kordia replied, which only made the guard’s suspicions rise.

"Yes. The queen has expressly forbidden foxkin from leaving the city without a permit until a resolution on the moon situation." Her hand dropped to her weapon, a mace. "What are your names and clans?"

Kordia suppressed a flinch. If Fruhe was being overly cautious, then things were not going so well for her politically. While it was uncommon, some beastkin often expressed their displeasure on entire clades, like the foxkin, with violence. Fruhe’s alliance through marriage with the bearkin clans were a formidable barrier to it though.

"I’m Lapins, the human, and these are Dia and Kas," Lapins lied quickly. "Obviously they’re-"

"Silence, skinner!" the bearkin snapped. "Do you let this one speak for you?" she looked at Kordia.

Kordia straightened her back. "She is my friend, and you will not speak to her like that," her tails flared on instinct, and suddenly she realized how much trouble she was in as more guards surrounded them.

"Six tails and silver fur... You’re under arr-!"

Whatever the guard had to say next was cut off as Kordia burst into her fox form, leaving her clothes and pack in tatters on the ground before quickly snatching up Lapins and Kassin with two of her tails and holding them as she barrelled through the stunned guards. She leaped, sprinting through crowds and carts alike as she tried to avoid the weapons of panicking guards.

She ran for a full hour before the strain of her transformation forced her body back to normal.

"Ohh, I definitely shouldn’t do that again," Kordia said, shuddering as she noticed how much more everything everything smelled like. "I feared I might not return to normal for a while."

"Thanks for getting us out of there," Kassin said, her legs wobbling a bit uncertainly as her feet finally met the ground.

"I was wrong about Fruhe," Lapins said. "She is quite well informed if that guard knew to watch for someone like Kordia. Speaking of which, we should probably avoid the main roads as much as possible. Is it a hostile border between the Laikal Lakes and Gra’Rhuel?"

"I’m not sure how you’d define hostile, but there is a barrier at the main pass if that’s what you mean.

Three days later, they arrived at the border.

"That seems pretty hostile to me," Lapins noted as they beheld the roughly rectangular split over which a great measure-long bridge spanned. The bridge itself was in two pieces, designed to rotate left and right in order to meet in the middle. At the moment, the Mora clan’s side was extended, while the other was parallel with the sheer canyon wall. They’d risked coming back to the main road in order to see if they could cross without going over the mountains, where one bad snowstorm could delay them badly.

Through her bond with Silver, Kordia could feel pain and worry, but Silver rebuffed any attempt at communication, and Kordia did not know if she should force the matter in a way that would let Silver drain her of mana again. She’d pushed herself to come this far, so she made the decision to rest off to the side before approaching the gap.

"What are you doing?" Kassin asked as she pulled her sketch pad out of her storage.

"This is actually the first time I’ve seen it, even though I passed over it as a child," she explained as she flipped past the sketches of bodies, organs, and even cells. It was the book she used for her medical classes, the one she’d had on her when their impromptu adventure came calling.

Sketching calmed her, and Lapins cuddling against her back helped, even if they were all more than a bit sweaty from the hours of walking interspersed with riding her back, followed by dressing herself in her only set of replacement clothes. At least the latter let her see Kassin’s adorable blush, and Lapins turned her head away in the way humans were weird about. Using Kir’s terms, it reminded Kordia that Lapins’ primary "orbit" was around Mercy.

About halfway through her sketch of this side of the canyon, she felt Lapins turn her head and ask, "What are you doing?"

"I was thinking about that name you called me," Kassin said. "I know this might sound weird, but I’ve been thinking and... I don’t know what to think about the whole... becoming a girl thing..."

"It’s not really a ’becoming’ thing," Kordia said. "It’s discovering who you are when you peel away everything that’s been laid on top of you. If that’s a girl or a boy, great! You can be neither or both too." She could sense his trepidation, even though they were far from Kir and the bond.

"It’s just... things were so clear when we were in each other’s heads... But now I don’t know what to think..."

"I don’t think it’s our place to tell you who you are," Lapins said.

"We just get to reflect back the best things about you," Kordia finished as she added more black to represent the canyon’s shadows. "And there’s a lot there, underneath all that envy."

Kassin made an uncomfortable sound, "I know you told me that this... constellation thing means giving up on jealousy, but I can’t help it! I feel jealous of the people around you all the time!"

"That’s not a bad thing," Kordia said, storing her sketch as she gave Kassin her full attention. "What matters is how you communicate it. And when it comes to things that concern you, you’re just like Kir."

"I’m nothing like him," Kassin scoffed. "Pretty much the exact opposite if I’m a girl..." he crouched, letting his back come to rest on a tree.

"Kassin, Kir bottles up everything until he can’t avoid it. He had a version of himself living in his head for years, and he knew about it, without telling us. Do you know how unbelievably angry that made me to learn that?" She could wrap her head around the concept only because of her experiences with great spirits, and Silver’s infrequent presence in her head. "I don’t want you to be like Kir. I want you to be you. Because if you’re happy with yourself, you’ll be happy with us."

"But I’m weak," Kassin replied. "Compared to him..."

"You can be strong in a different way," Kordia said. "All you have to do is ask and I’ll teach you everything I can. I’ll help you any way I can. And I’m sure Kir and Amarena will too."

Kassin suddenly shivered, "Amarena scares the shit out of me."

Lapins burst out laughing, "Glad I’m not the only one then. Gods."

They spent some time talking after that, until the conversation eventually circled back.

"So... did you have an issue with being called Kas?" Lapins asked.

"Yeah, I don’t like it," Kassin answered. "It’s too close to Kir."

"Look who’s being honest," Lapins said, webbing her fingers together. "So, what do you want to be called?"

"How about... Sin?"

"Sin... Sin..." Kordia tried the name. Didn’t it mean something in Old Angelic? Something bad, her memory echoed, but she couldn’t quite pin it down. But they were all pretty much in rebellion against Heaven at this point, even if Heaven might no longer exist. "I like it," she concluded, before Lapins spoke.

"It’s lovely to meet you, Princess Sin."

"L-lovely to meet you, Princess Lapins. Princess Kordia." Kassin tried to stand and curtsy only to wind up balancing on one foot for a while. "I still need to work on-"

Suddenly her ears perked up, twitching towards the road behind him. It took a moment for Kordia to also feel it, the approaching mass of mana, but as soon as she did, she stood up and stored her things. "We need to go, now."

"What’s going on?" Lapins asked as she hitched her pack higher on her back.

"My mother’s coming. And she’s bringing Crimson," Sin said, a whine in her throat.

Lapins furrowed her brow. "Who’s Crimson?"

"He’s the Great Spirit of the Rhuel Forest."