The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 431: Friends And Apologies

Chapter 431: Friends And Apologies

Ferro trudged through the snow, thinking about how the first snow he’d ever seen was in the Duat. Malz and Anko weren’t talking to each other, and it was only out of practicality that they were still together at all. The argument that occurred in the wake of Kiryu’s departure had almost risen to blows, but reason and a shared interest in survival won through in the end.

Their destination was Chainsfree, mostly because it was the only place for them to go. Ferro wasn’t about to head back to Aaru; he alone would have needed more food than they had, and Anko wasn’t about to help Malz cross the desert after what she saw as a betrayal.

In truth, Ferro appreciated Malz standing up for them, but in retrospect, he’d sensed Kiryu had been looking for a way out of bringing them along even before Malz snapped. He also felt betrayed by Malzkael, but he understood why she’d done it. Just as he understood why she now refused to apologize or back down to Anko, one of her former captors.

She was broken. Maybe not like him, but she was doing her best to overcome it; only she was also broken in her body. For all he had lost, Ferro had always kept his faculties, but Malz had lost her wings. She’d lost access to the sky, and Ferro could barely imagine what that had meant for her ever after practicing flight through the suit Kiryu had gifted him with.

The suits he and the girls wore were more than a little amazing. For one, they kept them all warm despite the environment they found themselves in. Ferro was also generally warm thanks to his fur, even if it wasn’t as thick as a proper winter coat, but the girls didn’t, and Malz’s wing was another point of exposure, and even moving it had clusters of frost. Couple with its half-healed appearance and the feathers still growing back, and it looked as though a blizzard had torn it apart.

"We should stop for the night," Ferro said.

"Why?" Anko snapped. "I can keep going," she cast a sideward glare at Malz.

"It’s getting too cold," Ferro said.

None of them had expected the windward side of the mountains to be so snowy, but travelling on that side gave them the advantage of being able to forage amongst the patches of trees and bushes that dotted the mountain range.

They found an outcropping and set up camp, which mostly consisted of building a fire while Ferro passed out some of their few remaining rations. Anko particularly enjoyed using the flamethrower spell in her suit to burn the pile of logs she’d brought for the blaze, sending up roiling black smoke because she had barely bothered to delimb their canopies.

At least the wind was taking the smoke away from their camp.

They sat in silence, listening to the crackling flames. Anko slept, and Malz alternated between stretching her wing closer to the flames and doing something on the wrist control of her suit.

Once he noticed this, Ferro looked at his own, quickly identifying a seam in the middle of the device. A few short experiments later, he discovered the top slid out on a pair of rails. Beneath it was another device, one with the same runes as...

A chime sounded from Malz’s direction, and Ferro looked over. "What did you do?" he asked quietly.

Malz half-glared at him for a moment, until whatever thoughts she was having worked themselves out, and she held out her wrist. "I figured out how to replace some functions."

Sure enough, where there had been the icon for flight was now a symbol that looked like an eye over an ear.

"What does that do?" Ferro asked.

"It’s one of the level one sigil functions. The impression I got was that it would enhance seeing and hearing." When she touched the symbol and waved a hand in front of her eyes, a slight distortion occurred, and she looked away from Ferro. She shuddered a moment later, touching the symbol to dispel it and holding her head.

"Are you alright?" Ferro asked.

"It was a bit overwhelming. I’ll get used to it," she said flatly. After a brief pause, during which Ferro settled in to sit, she spoke again. "I know I froze up back there. It made me remember I’m a better thinker than a fighter... I was unprepared, and I won’t let it happen again."

It almost sounded like an apology.

"Kiryu was right about us, we are pretty terrible at working together," Ferro sighed.

"I hate that man," Malz scowled.

"Remember what he told us, though. The real owner of that body is in there somewhere. Anko even says she met him."

At the mention of Anko’s name, Malz flinched. "I’ve been having weird dreams... sometimes recollections during the day," she changed the subject. "Other clones. Other versions of me. Most of them born in that place you call the Duat."

"I’ve been to the Duat, are you sure it’s there and not..." he pointed up.

"I’m sure," Malz said. "There’s this place that’s all clean, and most of the time there’s just three of me. I can remember something like being each of them as they talk to each other. Thousands of times. But the worst is... I remember versions of me that were born in Heaven. Everything I thought and knew about my House was a lie. We were a shadow house. A family people came from but no one ever joined... passed around between the choirs whenever they wanted to figure out some ancient knowledge."

"That’s so cruel," Ferro said. Her memories of the duat matched his experience visiting the heart of the Mother Dungeon. He reached out to touch her shoulder, and Malz almost jerked away before stopping herself.

"They wanted memories, fragments of knowledge, or abilities passed down through the cloning process. They tried to make me live through an exact set of events. Growing up, losing my parents. Even my transition... until whatever process they were doing got interrupted." Her fist clenched. "And I never knew. I was just a broken doll to them, one that they might even have copied by now if Heaven hadn’t..." Tears rose in her eyes, but she brushed them aside.

"You’re still sad your home is gone," Ferro said. He didn’t quite know what she meant about "cloning" or "transitions" but he knew they were important to her.

"I hate what they did to me... but it was still my home. There were people there I cared about. People who might be dead now." She shook her head. "But I can’t worry about them. Heaven has outposts all over Ayther. If I can just find one... I can see if there’s anything left. Maybe figure out where my friends are. Knowing the truth doesn’t change anything."

"Except it does," Ferro said. "You never said much about your friends before today." Feeling it was the right thing to do, Ferro drew out a few dried dates and handed them to her. "Do you want to talk about them?"

She remained silent, eating the dates and spitting out their seeds one by one.

Just as Ferro was about to assume she didn’t want to talk, Malz cleared her throat.

"There were two people I really cared about... I mean, I had a couple of other friends, Ed and Lute, but once we became Executioners, that started falling apart, since they’d been given to me and we had to behave as both master and servants and coworkers."

"They were slaves?" Ferro asked, unable to keep a tense tone out of his voice.

"Elevated. Slaves in all but name, despite Heaven saying everyone is free there. I tried to give them as much freedom as I could. Mostly, I just stayed away from them in libraries, except for training. But the two people I meant..." She wiped more tears away.

"One was this half-angel boy I dated, Rainier. He was so dumb when he arrived, but I loved how he kept improving. How he didn’t let his situation make him cruel or lose his pride." She sniffed. "Fuck, he even helped me get back with my ex."

"He sounds pretty amazing," Ferro said encouragingly, rubbing her shoulder a bit. Ferro had never had a romantic relationship in his life, but he’d heard stories and read a few. Romance was a luxury he never thought he would have as a concubine, and it had never been demanded of him... "Wait, didn’t you say you were dating Rainier?"

"Yeah. But he was also with my ex, this girl named Cassiel, an angel. We got to be together for so little time, but we tried our best to make the most of it until we were separated. And I..." She bent forward, lowering her face into her hands. "I fucked everything up because I was just so mad about... about being left behind. If I hadn’t just stayed where I was..."

"You’d be dead along with all the other angels," Anko’s voice instantly raised the tension in the atmosphere.

Ferro turned, finding her standing with all four of her arms crossed.

"What do you want?" Malz glared at her through her tears.

"I want an apology," Anko growled.

"I’m not apologizing for what I said to Kiryu. The man was an asshole."

"Not about that!" Anko snapped. "I mean, yeah, I’m kinda mad about that, but he was an asshole."

Ferro hid a smile, coughing behind his hand.

"Then what-

"We saved each other’s lives! Up in Darkness a-and then the desert and then with Kiryu’s stupid ’training.’ Street rules say that makes us friends, but you said you only had those two angel friends!"

"You think we’re friends?" Malz asked, her whole body tense.

"Well, duh. Why else would I stick around after you called me a-" Malz burst out crying, interrupting what Ferro remembered would have been a long string of invectives, and all four of Anko’s arms came up as she waved them in the air awkwardly. "Look, it’s alright! Friends fight! I mean, I saw demons who would stick each other and then walk away all smiles. Point is, I was mad, but I can’t just stay mad forever. So it made sense that Kiryu guy really got to you after I thought about it. And slept about it."

"It can’t be that simple." Malz sniffed heavily and wiped her eyes.

"I like simple," Anko shrugged. "I’d also still like that apology... friend." She held out a lower hand for Anko.

After a moment, Malz took it. "I’m sorry, Anko. I should have counted you amongst my friends... I just didn’t think..."

"Heheh, maybe you’re like that Rainier guy you were talking about. Was he big?"

"He was well muscled, yeah. Almost twice Ferro’s height, too."

"Not that kind of big. Big." Anko held her top hands apart and parallel.

"I know, I just don’t feel like talking about my boyfriend’s dick," Malz answered sardonically. "If he hasn’t moved on from me by now..."

Ferro decided to add his opinion to the mix. "If he has, then he’s as dumb as you said he was."

"Rain wasn’t that dumb for an Aytherian," Malz countered.

"Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?" Anko asked angrily.

"It just means that Heaven has hoarded knowledge for millennia, and people down here weren’t allowed to know certain things. That and my other memories also explain why countries got wiped out every couple of Heavenswars."

Ferro pondered this revelation. He only knew a little of the history of Nyandor - his homeland - and Aaru, but what he knew was that Nyandor had only existed for a couple hundred years, while Aaru was also nicknamed the Eternal Oasis, amongst a hundred other names.

"Ugh, that sounds political. How about your girlfriend? Did she have huge knockers?"

"Anko, if you keep asking about my paramour’s parts, I’m going to have to demand an apology from you." Malz’s voice was annoyed, but she couldn’t hide the beginnings of a smile.

"Para-what?" Anko raised her eyebrow.

By then, Ferro was also smiling. Now that they were getting along again, he sensed that it would be downhill all the way to Chainsfree.

Anko feigned a wound in her heart. "Alright, fine! I’ll apologize... After you tell me about lover boy’s bits."

Malz rolled her eyes but held her hands a certain length apart.

"Woah," Anko and Ferro both exclaimed.

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