The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 411: The Knowing Curse

Chapter 411: The Knowing Curse

Malzkael let the words ’time war’ settle into her thoughts before she spoke. "Before we talk about something insane, what did you do to Anko?"

"She’ll be fine if that’s what you’re worried about. Consider it a test of her capacity to be educated. I don’t want blind loyalty, but neither do I want loyalty out of ignorance. The sort of people who want either assume they deserve it." Kiryu exhaled some smoke. "So. Time war."

Malzkael furrowed her brow. "Like in fiction?" Time-magic fiction wasn’t a genre she enjoyed since most angels wrote it as a form of wish fulfillment. Usually, such fiction meant an angel would breeze through social adversity, arriving at a superior position to some dreaded rival or even gaining power over them. Or an angel would arrive amongst primitive Aytherians and wind up being worshipped as a god.

"Yes," Kiryu replied, "Except this isn’t fiction. This body’s mother can see the future. And I think you know who the only angel that can do that is."

"The Daughter of Heaven," Malz replied. Yet even as she said it, she couldn’t believe it. All the accounts of her she knew of described her as kind and empathetic. "I find it hard to believe an angel would want to destroy the world. Maledict is the one who had it out for Heaven. I may not have seen it happen, but I know it has to have been him."

"It doesn’t matter who does the deed. She’s the one who selected for that to happen," Kiryu argued. "Morality doesn’t really play much into it, except in an ultimate sense."

"What’s that supposed to mean?" Malz hissed.

"It means that kind of power warps your values. Makes you less able to distinguish the ’goodness’ of one outcome over another, when what you want is what you consider the good outcome. Lives become pieces on a board. The thoughts and actions of your loved ones, when they become predictable and repeatable, cease to hold any value for the person behind them. People become events. The world becomes a game board you can swap for another."

"Personal experience?" Malz challenged. As much as she knew she shouldn’t piss him off, Kiryu irked her. His irreverent attitude reminded her too much of who she had been before years of torture and desperation had stripped it down. She was still an angel who loved wicked things, but the impression she had of Kiryu was that he was cruel.

"Bingo. But I’ve never had the ability to see the future... at least not in the sense that the angel we’re up against can."

"What’s a bingo?" Ferro asked.

"Don’t worry about that," Kiryu said. "Worry about the fact that, if everything happening right now indicates what I think it does, then we’re already more than proverbially fucked."

"How fucked?" Malz asked.

Kiryu tapped the table a few times, before puffing his pipe. "I remember running calculations on the sizes of both moons while I was trapped in Kir’s head. The canopy of all those big trees hid a lot, but finding out the individual plates that comprised the surface of Heaven are about three kilometers per side leads me to believe that there are somewhere between forty and sixty thousand fragments to account for. Add about five hundred thousand kilometers for a long run-up, and the impacts from that amount of acceleration get deadly."

"But there’s something that can be done about it, right?" Malz pressed.

"If the one with power in this situation allows it, yes. It’s not me, by the way. It’s the one with the power of prophecy who has the power to direct this madness, even if she doesn’t control the physics." He exhaled a long breath. "As far as physics is concerned, destroying the fragments is what I’ve been working on. I have ideas about where to start... but if even one percent of those fragments hits Ayther, it’s game over. An ice age, at the very least. The extinction of life on the planet, at most. Not sure how dungeons-"

"That’s why I’m here!" Ferro interrupted, hand on his compass. The device had done nothing but pulse ever since they entered the building, at least according to Malz’s memory. "It was hard to understand, but Luda said they want to help you. They said I was supposed to give you a message."

Kiryu froze where he sat, a sadness rising in his eyes. Instead of answering he looked down at the table and continued to inhale from his pipe. "And if I don’t want to hear it?"

That is not normal behavior, Malz reminded herself. But what is normal nowadays? I’m traveling with a fanatic and a madman... sitting in the home of a mad "god" with no idea of what’s happening except the end of the world... I need to focus on what’s important. Get back to Heaven or whatever is left of it and find Rain and Cassiel. They’ll listen to me about Maledict...

Malz was so caught up in her thoughts that she failed to notice when the conversation between Kiryu and Ferro ended. The compass was flying across the table to Kiryu’s waiting hand, trailing the silvery helix of Ferro’s enchanted necklace.

After a few seconds, the ringing began, but instead of both articles reappearing on Ferro’s neck, the compass stayed in Kiryu’s hand while the necklace lurched across the distance to land between Malz and Ferro. The next moment, the compass began to spin on its own, hovering as the image of a human began to form around it.

After a few seconds, the image resolved into an androgynous person with brown hair and a wide smile under intelligent eyes. Eyes that stared down where Kiryu sat, but did not seem to see him.

"Hey, tall boy," the hologram began. "I know you... have your doubts about me, still... but I’m just glad you’re alive."

"For now," Kiryu muttered.

"For now, yes, I know..." the hologram said, almost overlapping the demon, whose lips twisted slightly. "I know what’s happening to you... and I know you don’t have a lot of time, so I’m... altering the prophet’s plan a little. It’ll be much faster if you can just produce the beacons up there. Less intensive for you, I think... but yes, you already have someone who can distribute them. Unless... no... Not those three," The image gestured at Malz, Anko, and Ferro before it glitched back to staring at Kiryu.

"Oh, but you should help them. Sorry... my mind is... not what it was. Even if I’m not, I think I’m a real enough version of the Luda you loved to drive myself crazy over everything that happened. I need to tell you about what we did to humanity. About the kids... about everything. She stole you from me... but at the same time, she did something we never could. She kept you alive. And now that there’s a chance, I just want to say..."

Kiryu leaned in. It was not hard to see the tears he was holding back.

"... Come home, please. Aiko and I will be waiting for you. We’re different now... but so are you, I hope."

The image drew in a breath. "The compass will help. You need to give it to the fast one, along with the beacons. I’m sorry to say that there’s nothing we can do about some of the landers. They’re simply too old... but with her plan, there will be enough bell jars to ensure this world recovers. And your sigil cores will play a huge part in that."

Kiryu shifted uncomfortably in his seat at those last words, as the specter drew breath.

"Even if... even if all this is for nothing... I just want to see you again. Aiko and I forgave you long ago. We want you here with us. So that the three of us can decide, together, what to do with ourselves." They let out a little sigh. "Ya tebya lyublyu, moy zmei. Viper True."

"Yeah..." Kiryu whispered as the image shut off, leaving the compass hovering in the air before it began to project images and symbols on the table. The details of a device appeared, one seemingly simple if not for the array of codes that accompanied the blueprints.

For a long time, Kiryu simply sat and stared. He even neglected his pipe, from which smoke slipped upward in a constant stream. There was a small click as he let the pipe go to facepalm himself.

"I’m such an idiot..."

He started to laugh. The dreaded Shinigami Kiryu. Endbringer. The Final Tyrant. Unmaker. As Malzkael’s mind pored over his titles, trying to understand who she was dealing with - and how she would survive him - the conclusion she came up with hit her like the sudden cessation of a spell.

"You’re a god, but you act like you’re just a man," Malz said, barely above a whisper.

"That’s wrong," Kiryu said with a waning smile. "I am just a man. Or what is left of one... Which is why I find this world worth saving. My qualification for godliness is a lot higher than what people consider here. Omnipotence and omnipresence, for one." He brought the silvery orb he’d worked on forth and began to trace his fingers on the surface.

Glyphs appeared, in a script Malzkael was not familiar with, each fading into the construct before he telekinetically pulled the compass into his hand and touched it to the silvery orb. It stuck on contact, and the demonkin’s hands began to dance in earnest as he looked up at the still-active projection of code.

The moment Malz realized he was translating the code from Old Angelic to whatever language he was using for the sigils was also the moment he stopped. He placed his hand on the orb, and without any warning suddenly disappeared - orb, compass, and all - before reappearing in the exact same spot barely two minutes later.

"What did you just do?" Malz asked.

"I sent the world’s most advanced mana-based matter compiler to a cavewoman. Also, I confirmed a pet theory of mine," Kiryu shrugged, picking up his pipe and proceeding to renew its contents before lighting it. Then looked at Ferro. "Now... tell me where I can find Luda."