The Demon Lord Is An Angel-Chapter 505: Norneau Hospitality
Owyn’s eyes scraped open, beholding a blurry white light as he felt surrounded by softness and a gentle cool that was far more refreshing than the summer outside... and oddly scentless.
A bit strange, but it wasn’t like he had any expectations with regards to being dead. If this was the afterlife, then it wasn’t as unpleasant as sleeping on a cot.
He tried to recall what had happened to him, and memories rushed in to fill his mind with the disaster that had unfolded. He remembered the titan cutting one of the veteran hunters in half... Aban shouting orders...
As the scout and the one responsible for drawing the titan to the cliffs, Owyn had tried to keep the monster’s attention. Only as soon as Aban spoke through the stone, the monster had turned away from Owyn to-
Aban’s stone!
Owyn leaned up, realizing he was dressed in some kind of loose-fitting white clothes of a style that was plain and unadorned. A slight pain was telling him something was in his arm.
Aside from the darkened, lightning-like shock of veins, there was some sort of metal needle, its end capped by what looked like a glowing glass bead, which was filled with a clear liquid that was creating a cooling sensation as it pumped into his arm. Nearby, a rounded glass container had a similar glass bead over its spout.
Not knowing what it was didn’t stop Owyn from pulling the thing out, and he winced from the sharp pain before his blood welled up where the needle had been. He dropped it onto the bed, where it continued to leak past the drop of blood that went with it.
As soon as the door opened, Owyn put a hand up as he was blinded by the brightness of the light shining through the window. As he blinked away the spots in his eyes, his jaw dropped as he realized that he was in a city, one that dwarfed the only city he’d ever seen in scale.
Buildings rose ten or more stories in the air, many of them uniform, but some of them climbed in fantastical shapes, their forms spindly and yet covered in glass. His eyes caught on a tower that resembled a closed lotus flower, which seemed to be made entirely of tinted glass as it rested atop a pedestal-like foundation of stone. Between the more uniform buildings, parks sprawled, and people of all shapes and sizes went about their daily lives. Nearby, something massive moved along one of the walls, following the curve to a platform before it let people out from the inside.
It was breathtaking.
As soon as Owyn took his next breath, he realized he wasn’t alone as someone called out, "Hey, you’re not supposed to leave your room!" He looked across the long, window-lined hallway to find a woman in plain, loose clothing approaching. Instinct brought Owyn’s fists up into a fighting position, which stopped the elf in her tracks. A moment later, he learned that was the wrong move as she shouted, "Security!"
Owyn expected her to call for a guard... what a strange thing to say-
A door burst open between Owyn and the elf, and he caught a brief glimpse of a room with couches that smelled of some strange drink before another elf emerged, a smile disappearing from his face as he looked up and saw Owyn.
"Shit. You’re the one they brought in from the woods. Quit harassing the nurse and go back to your room." The guard rested a hand on a baton made of wood, which was inscribed with runes Owyn didn’t recognize. What he did recognize was a little man with a little power, like many of Aban’s sycophants.
"I’m not going anywhere until someone tells me where I am," Owyn said.
"You’re in the hospital. Now please go back to-"
"What’s a ’hospital’?" Owyn shot back.
"Kaiju blood must have melted his brains," the nurse huffed.
"Just go to your room and wait," Security said, drawing his weapon, which lit up with blue light. "I won’t ask you again."
"You were supposed to be guarding him-" the nurse snapped as Owyn made a decision. He turned and ran, counting on his enhancement magic to move his suddenly tired-feeling legs as he dove down a stairwell.
Owyn heard Security swear as he burst through the next door, only to find a near-identical hallway with windows as a woman - an orc - leaned over a counter and shouted, "Hey! You’re not-"
Whatever Owyn wasn’t supposed to do, he didn’t hear as the elf caught up and jabbed the wooden baton into Owyn’s ribs, causing lightning to spark from the weapon and into his body.
On reflex, Owyn backhanded the elf into a wall before stumbling into the window.
The orc woman shouted, "Don’t lean on the gla-"
A thwump sound announced the glass’ departure from its frame as Owyn followed it down. He didn’t have long to fall, just a couple of stories, but it hurt a lot to land on hundreds of shards of glass that embedded themselves in his skin wherever they could. As a giant, Owyn had a pretty thick skin, and he was grateful for the calluses on his feet as he ran across the glass, trying to avoid the looks that people on the street were giving him as he found an alley to disappear into.
If growing up in a forest had taught Owyn anything, it was the value of losing line of sight with one’s pursuers, be they monsters or predators.
After ten minutes of running, Owyn found himself stopping in the shadow of an isolated fountain, which he used to wash the wounds on his limbs as he plucked glass out of his body with his fingernails. Even though the place looked untrafficked, the water was clear and clean.
In between wincing and catching his breath, he thought about his situation...
Okay, so I’m in a city... but the last thing I remember is getting eaten by a titan... He looked around before circulating a bit of mana into his wounds, trying to get them to heal better. First things first... I need to figure out where I am and where my things are...
Mostly, he thought of the speaking stone Aban had given him. It seemed valuable enough to sell, and was technically the most valuable thing he "owned" in these circumstances. His clothes were of good quality too, and judging by the fact that no one seemed to wear armor around here, he guessed he might get a silver at most for his leather vest... He just had to hope he wasn’t being pursued. By all appearances, he wasn’t, but it never hurt to be sure...
The sounds of scuffling steps and laughter caught Owyn’s attention, and he turned to find a band of smallfolk youths making their way into the area. They wore strangely consistent clothes of mostly black and grey, and even the boys had dark makeup on. Owyn might have thought they were dressed for a funeral if they weren’t smiling and joking, both of which stopped as their leader, a human youth, spread his arms out to halt the group from the front as he cast a baleful look at Owyn.
"What’s this Macabres? Some ruffian bleeding on our fountain?" he spoke in a high tenor, and Owyn was too stunned at the obvious attempt at intimidation to laugh. The youth wasn’t even half his size!
"Uh, I’m just passing through," Owyn tried.
"No, no, no. This is Fourth Ward Macabres territory. And you bled on the fountain of our sacred lady!" the leader said.
"I, uh, don’t know where that is..."
"It’s here, peasant! Or have you forgotten where Norneau is, too?"
Norneau...?
"Skull, he looks like he’s from the hospital," one of the other smallfolk, a dwarf by the look of them, tugged on their leader’s shirt. The others nodded until their leader raised a hand for silence.
Skull twitched his head to the side, "Then he should be no stranger to pain, if he doesn’t pay for besmirching our One-Winged Angel..."
Owyn lifted an eyebrow, glancing sideways to see that atop the fountain was a statue of a rather kind-looking woman with a single wing on her back and long, straight hair. He turned back to Skull, "Uh, I didn’t say anything about her..."
"Silence, peasant! Your dripping blood besmirches-"
"I don’t think that word means what you think it does..." Owyn only knew it because Aban had a week or so where it was his favorite word.
"Silence!" Skull spat. "Point is, this is our turf, so pay up or prepare for pain!"
Owyn had had enough of this pitiful shakedown. He cracked his neck and his knuckles. "Are you sure you really want to do this?"
"Fists? Hah! I went to the Academy. No mere muscle’s going to harm me!" Skull lifted a glowing hand, and Owyn immediately closed the distance with a lunge as a weak spell singed a hole in his already-bloody shirt. He was counting on enduring the hit to get in his own as his fist flew at the youth’s stomach with meteoric force.
A thwng sound echoed about the shadowy square as his fist collided with a magical shield instead, bouncing off of it. A pain shot up his arm, not from the impact but from the spidery darkness that felt as though it was threaded through his arm.
"Hah! Now you see what I mean? Pay up or else I shall unleash my ultimate techni- What are you doing?!"
The shield resonated again as Owyn threw another punch, and another, each time pumping just a little more mana into his fists as he felt the shield start to give. He felt depleted and, the pain mounted with every strike, but he was damned if he was going to get shaken down by some tiny little-
Suddenly, Owyn’s punch connected with nothing but air. At first, he thought he’d broken through, but then he saw Skull prostrating himself on the ground, along with the rest of the gang.
"The fuck-"
"Bow, you savage! You dare stand in the presence of our goddess?!" Skull’s tone had completely changed. It was enough to get Owyn looking around, but aside from the statue there was a decided lack of female presence in the area...
Until he looked up, and saw the woman the statue was meant to represent...
And she was scowling.
