The Demon Lord Is An Angel-Chapter 483: Here, Together

Kir sat across from himself.

He felt... strange. Like waking up from a long dream.

It hadn’t really been a dream.

The place he’d experienced was so much more.

Just a moment, stretched across time in a way that felt a little like eternity.

Only a little.

A drop of eternity, that’s all he was.

And the being across from him... the one who had lived for only three days... was less than that.

Just a tether...

No.

He couldn’t let himself think like that.

So he started over.

"What do you want?" he asked himself.

Across from him, he nodded his head.

There was something to understand there.

"May I see?" he asked himself.

The other one raised his head, then nodded.

Searched his body’s mind, finding three days of kindness. Confusion. Pain.

The gentle following of inclinations welded into his mind as the physical gave way to the magical.

To mana.

Touch, and then its absence, and then touch again.

Malz asleep. Ferro and Anko, talking.

Sights and sounds and scents and sensations.

Battle. Pain. Confusion.

Chaos, an empty mind trying to make sense of everything with nothing but what it could learn. Not a soul, but almost an echo, filled with understanding but not knowledge.

An echo that had no concept of fading, or wanting to fade, or even wanting to be.

He just was. There wasn’t time for him to become anything more.

When Kir withdrew, he acknowledged this with a nod, reaching out and taking his own hand, Kir reclaimed his material form.

*

Kir opened his eyes.

He found himself in a place of utter, blinding white.

A place almost like the inside of his mind, before he’d crafted it into a more suitable home.

As soon as he thought about it, everything returned. The city of Norneau. His childhood home, outside the gates. The Academy.

He found her waiting behind him.

Amida.

As she had been in that room filled with gods.

"You’re back," she said. "Where did they send you?"

"I don’t know," Kir replied. "It was not a place that could be put into words."

Amida nodded knowingly. "Will you go through the gate?" she asked, and the mindscape shifted, bringing him next to his childhood home. "If so, I cannot go with you."

There, at the other end of the bridge, was the gate. His gate. Only...

"There is no gate," he said, looking at her with a sad smile. "Only infinity."

As he approached the void, the stones exploded from it. To pebbles and then to dust.

There was no stepping through.

He beckoned, and it engulfed him.

*

Malz gasped back to awareness, only to find herself being held in Rainier’s arms.

"You’re back," she said hoarsely, reaching up to touch his face, as if he might disappear.

A mighty gust of wind passed over the group, and Malz caught her bearings to find...

"Cassiel!" she stared at her lover twice over, but Cassiel did not approach.

"I’m sorry, Malz," she said... "I should have looked for you. I should have..."

Malz wanted Cassiel close, and so that’s what she got, but pulling her over with magic and embracing her. For a long moment, they just held each other. Then another gust of wind came, and Malzkael looked up.

Above the city, nothing flew. Nothing could fly against the swirling sphere of black energy, surrounded by blazing, iridescent mana. It swirled the air about it, clouds stretching and shredding into strips only to be pushed out by the energies from within.

"What is that?" she asked, her eyes reflecting an object that looked as if the sky had swirled into a dark drop of itself.

*

"That’s... Kir," Rain replied. "I don’t know if we can reach him." He let her go and looked about him. No one was fighting. No one understood what was happening. The rend in the sky, showing Hell, was gone, its energies dispersed into a haze of blue-green motes that were still falling, except for the ones swirling around the stormy darkness, shrouded in thick mana.

Amarena let out a startled cry as Kangetsu seemed to leave her storage of its own accord, flying toward the sphere at a speed no one could pursue.

*

Ferro and Anko both took their turn to hug Malz, before the unfamiliar blonde angel reached up and healed Ferro’s face. He winced a bit from the pain, but turned his attention to the object caught by the massive demoness with purple skin and a crystal horn.

A glint of light and a surge of mana began to form above and behind her, another portal.

And through it stepped...

*

"Maledict," Darlae snarled.

He was wearing the same guise he’d worn when he first came into their lives, but with horns on his head and a flaming crown between them.

"What are you doing here, Heresy?" Bridget challenged.

"It’s Demon Lord now, human. Did you forget I sent you on this little errand? I knew the moment Anko grew near to you that you’d succeeded." He stared up at the sky, a look of concern on his face. "You found my son," he looked down, "and you have also revealed to me that I have been betrayed."

Wrath rose on Maledict’s face as he saw Rainier. "I gave you freedom and purpose, Rainier. Out of curiosity about my son’s choice of partners. You swore an Oath. I felt it fade. And yet here you stand... alive."

Behind Rainier, Anko tried her best to make herself small behind Cassiel, but Maledict’s gaze picked her out all the same. "And you, Anko... here I find you with my pet. How is it that both of you live?"

*

Another surge of mana split the air behind Maledict, wider than the portal he’d used. From it stepped a woman in a mask, the wings behind her back both demonic and angelic as she regarded those gathered before her. The portal closed a moment later.

"They live because it is as I willed it, Maledict. I pulled upon the strings of fate. I broke their oaths. I used your son to lure you here, Demon Lord."

"Aelias..." Maledict’s face softened. "Twenty-five years..."

In the minds of all those brought here by Kir and his destiny, Aelias spoke.

"You have what you need. Go to Aaru. Go to Araqlun. Stop Vinam."

"I’m not going anywhere until-" Darlae started to shout, but a moment later she disappeared, followed by everyone else, only to reappear at the edge of the desert, atop the mountain overlooking the city.

*

Maledict regarded his wife. He sensed her speech with the gaggle of fools behind him, but made no effort to hear or disrupt it. Nor did he try to stop her when she disappeared them. They had served their purpose.

"I am not Aelias," the angel in a mask said. "Only the Endmother. She who kills the world, so that he will save it," she gestured at the sphere in the sky. "In making him, you have served your purpose."

Such was his anger that Maledict began to walk forward, his form growing more demonic with every step. "Twenty-five years... and that’s all you have to say to me?!" He lashed out, hands meeting no resistance as the illusion before him shimmered before restoring itself. "Was it all a lie?!"

"No," the illusion responded. A teardrop fell from beneath her mask. "Just as it is not a lie that I am no longer Aelias."

"That can’t be true. I won’t allow it!" Maledict loomed into the air, his voice deepening as he took upon himself his true form. "I am the Demon Lord! I am a god!"

"We are not gods, Maledict. Though you may never die, there is nothing waiting for you in eternity but what you bring with you, and when that fails, loss."

"Words," Maledict hissed. "I know you loved me. I felt it. The day you broke our Oath, our bond, almost destroyed me. Yet I felt your regret, even then. So do not speak idly to me of loss. Show me what could be so important that you abandoned your name. Your husband. Your child."

The illusion raised a hand, clenched her fist, and pulled.

Suddenly, Maledict found himself before a throne, the world around him a void filled with stars and dust. He had been abducted against his will, and yet he’d felt nothing. The hand that touched his cheek felt nothing like an illusion. He realized then what had occurred. That the illusion had not been a layering of space, phased so minimally that only sound and light could carry.

In approaching her, he’d come into that space, and into the reach of her power.

"The answers you want come with a price, Maledict. And they will not bring your Aelias back."

Maledict refused to believe her, even then. It was that or give in to the despair he felt clenching around his heart.

"I refuse to believe that," he replied. "Name it. Your price."

"Everything," the Endmother replied.