The Demon Lord Is An Angel-Chapter 514: The Guest Arrives

Though the bed he’d been given for the night had been soft - too soft - he’d spent fitful moments tossing and turning, dreaming of darkness and the approach of death. The feeling of his skin burning as he desperately pushed mana into it to keep his defenses strong, as he desperately cut into the guts of the titan that swallowed him. Losing his knife. Clawing at the bloody wound trying desperately to pull himself out towards the outside. All as he suffocated in the reeking effluvia of the titan’s belly...

He woke in a cold sweat, his arms throbbing with pain. For a moment he thought he saw a slight purple glow, following the darkened veins where the kaiju blood had seeped into his wounded skin, but he quickly dismissed it as he fumbled with the lamp until he brushed the raised part of the spell that made light shine from the soft yellow crystal.

For a long moment, he just lay there, trying to sort out his head until he realized he wouldn’t be sleeping any further. So instead he did pushups until his arms grew sore before enhancing himself and repeating the process through three more sets. After that he moved onto situps and then stretches. He was properly sweaty by the time a clerk knocked on his door and said, "Mr. Owyn, you leave in one hour. Please be prepared by then." 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"What about breakfast?" Owyn asked.

"I’ve been told it will be waiting for you when you arrive."

That’s it, huh? At least these people don’t stand on too much ceremony. As he stepped into the shower, it occurred to him that things were moving awfully quickly. Even his clan took weeks before they let him have the run of the place, and for all he was expected to attend this Academy, there were no other restrictions on him except... Oh yeah, the ’Minder’.

Owyn didn’t like the notion of having someone at his elbow all day, every day. But as Aban was fond of saying, "My house, my rules!" even though they all lived in yurts. This Norneau was their house, and until he learned their rules, he would play along while he contemplated what to do next.

Very quickly, the hot water began to relax his muscles. Waterfalls were nothing new, but an indoor waterfall that also had hot water, without a mage having to heat the water beforehand; Owyn was in paradise.

An hour was a long time for Owyn, and as he lathered himself with the softly scented soaps, he found his thoughts drifting over his adventure thus far, and lingering on the pretty face of the girl he’d met. She was a bit short, perhaps only two measures tall, and yet she was far prettier than the womenfolk of his clan made themselves out to be.

Very quickly, he found himself imagining her as a giantess, and his hand drifted downward as he made the decision on how he would be relieving his tension. As the last groan of pleasure left his lips, he found himself feeling a little guilty over thinking of someone he just met that way. But then again, it wasn’t like he would ever see her again. The city looked massive. Perhaps even more massive than the port of Reclaim, far to the south, which was the place where Owyn had been orphaned before his adoption.

After drying himself off, Owyn started with the pants his hosts had given him as he prepared himself for the week ahead.

Minutes later, he was escorted into a flying carriage that began to drift down from the heights of the blue tower at the center of the barrier. For the first time he saw where he’d been, a circular structure, vaguely shaped like two teardrops meeting at the center, which clung to the tower like dew on a twig.

"What’s this place like, where I’m going?" Owyn asked as soon as he was done staring at the structure.

The guards sitting across from him, still fully armed and armored with gear that would have made his clan have a fit, looked at each other before one, an elven man, shrugged. "No one gets into the House of Stars without the metatron’s say-so."

The other guard, a youngish birdkin who resembled a cardinal, added, "I heard someone else ask that question to Chancellor Imogen. She said it was ’chaos.’"

"Chaos?" Owyn raised an eyebrow. "Who’s ’the metatron’?"

"Oh, I’d have thought you’d know, since he’s the one that slew the kaiju you were, uh, inside," the birdkin said. Both guards relaxed a bit.

"It was hard to see when my eyes were full of blood and stomach acid," Owyn said.

"Like you’ve ever seen him," the elf clunked his gauntleted hand into his companion’s pauldron. "He always just appears in the council like that," he snapped his fingers.

"What’s he like?" Owyn asked.

Both guards grimaced, the birdkin by ruffling a bit before he said, "All I know is, don’t get on his bad side."

"Right force of nature, he is. Rumor has it he’s responsible for why the world outside was..."

"Shush! Are you trying to get fired?"

Owyn’s eyebrows quirked. He knew vaguely that there was some sort of apocalypse two thousand years ago, but to him, that was just a story. He hadn’t thought to ask until now, "What’s with everyone and this apocalypse? The world outside is just fine."

The two looked at each other. "’Spose it’s alright to tell you. All the Knights got told first, and the city’ll know today." The birdkin seemed to brace a bit as he sat up straighter. "For us, it’s been almost twenty years since the end of the world."

Owyn’s jaw dropped. "How is that possible?"

"No one really knows," the elf said.

"’Cept maybe the metatron. But hey, maybe if you find out let the rest of us in on it," the birdkin knight chuckled nervously.

"Right," the elf rolled his eyes and looked out the window. "Get ready, we’re about to land."

*

Arc was not ready when the knock came at her door.

It was Cory, and as soon as she saw him, she remembered what she was supposed to do. Swearing, she got dressed as quickly as she could, fixing her pixie cut hair with a few strokes of a comb, all while Cory made fun of her from the doorway.

"For someone who sleeps in her clothes a lot, you sure take a while to- hm’mph!"

Arc, having chucked a pillow into Cory’s smug little face, walked past him towards the front of the house.

"Wait up! You can’t greet our guest with your clothes all wrinkly." Arc barely paused long enough for him to start using magic to iron out her clothes. "Mother said to make sure you’re presentable."

"Your mother?" Arc asked, thinking Cassiel - the one who birthed Cory - cared a bit too much about appearances.

"Our mother."

"Which one?"

"Does it matter?"

No, she supposed it didn’t matter.

"Break a leg, sis!" Cory said before spiriting himself somewhere else to be a bother.

Arc was at least minimally presentable when she arrived in the foyer to find the guest standing around gawking at everything.

"You’re the guest?" she blurted, blushing a bit as he made eye contact with her, and he also blushed. She should have guessed it would be him, since Imogen had specifically asked her to help the newcomer acclimate to the Academy, as well as catch him up with any basics he needed.

"Yeah... fancy meeting you again."

"Miss, if we could just get a signature..." a birdkin Knight presented Arc with a slip and she pressed her icrys into a small rectangular box, causing the magical paper to react and form her name in cursive runes.

The guards didn’t try to make eye contact with her except for a split moment to render their salutes, leaving before she could return the favor, which left her in the room with...

"Hi, I’m Owyn," he smiled a bit... guiltily? Arc didn’t know him well enough to read his face, but whatever was there- "Is it alright if we grab breakfast first? I’m starving."

"Sure. I’m Arcine, but my friends call me Arc," Arc said, turning about and leading him through the foyer and into the hall. She barely caught his comment about her name being pretty before, from the opposite hall, she caught Cory snickering. She gave him the finger, which caused Owyn to look at her finger before he looked up.

"How are there clouds...?" Owyn asked.

Arc glanced upward, "Just an illucaster set to sky-mode. My father invented them."

"Illucaster?"

"It’s like a screen with pictures on it," Arc said. "Only the screen is made of magic that makes whatever pictures are put into them."

"Screen?"

Ugh this is going to be worse than I thought. "I’ll show you later," she said, having to speed up to keep up with his stride even though he was the one following her. "For now, let’s go over a few ground rules while you’re here."

"Alright, I’m all ears," he replied.

"First, if you don’t know what a room is, don’t go into it. Most of this place is bedrooms, but a few rooms are people’s workspaces, and my parents get really mad if people mess with their work."

"Okay..."

"Second, if you see a room marked Lab, then don’t go into it... Except for the food lab, that one’s okay. Those rooms belong to my Father, and he does not play nice when it comes to his work."

"How do you mean-"

"Last, don’t even think about trying to steal anything that looks valuable. The last person who tried it wound up as a pile of dust."

Owyn gulped, which was exactly the reaction Arc wanted as she led him into the kitchen.

I guess I have to make him breakfast, too... Or so she thought before Cassiel slipped into the room with a tray.

"Who wants pancakes?"