Chapter 85: We’ve Come Bearing Truth

Chapter 85 -085: We’ve Come Bearing Truth

True to her words, they did come: the demon lord’s attendants, barely an hour after she had gotten out of the bath.

Her footsteps on the stairs had been quick and light, and she had knocked three times, each a little louder than the last, as though she wished someone would answer before she lost her nerve.

When Aldridge had answered the door, only one of them came in, which Nyx noted with a bit of interest. She was dressed in clothes that were ceremonial and too formal.

The sleeves were a little long and the collar a little stiff, the kind of dress chosen by someone who had been told to look impressive and had clearly not been told how.

“Greetings, strangers,” the young female demon spoke first. Her voice was firm. Forced, but firm. Her hands were laid out, visible for all to see, and her posture was that of one instructed never to provoke whatever it was that had let out such a dominant presence and had left traces for it to be found.

To the inhabitants of the current era, and for most of the short-lived races, the concept of beings at Half-Deity rank was a matter of history and legend, to say nothing of Quasi-God rank. So the aura from before, while it had not yet been verified as Half-Deity, was known by those at the top to be levels above Archsage, and hence the ‘panic’.

The attendant studied the duo. The man was unassuming and old, with a face that had aged like fine wine, his grey, almost silver hair and beard well kept and trimmed, dressed in a crisp black three-piece. The lady was the complete opposite.

She looked fiery. Fiery as in red-hot fiery. Her white hair cascaded down her back like an avalanche of snow, while her eyes were dyed red with an emotion akin to rebellion. Her skin was porcelain and smooth, a source of envy. She wore dark orange, the deep, burnished shade of an ember that had lived past its prime, in a material the attendant suspected to be high-quality silk, a long dress that fell from shoulder to floor unbroken.

The slit on it, though, mostly defeated the modesty she was apparently trying to convey, running from the ground up to her thigh and revealing long, slender, pale legs, the same color as her face. A scarf completed her outfit, draped over her head and falling loose past her collarbone, resting in a manner that suggested she had never once intended it to stay in place.

Feeling she had studied enough, Aldridge cleared his throat. “And what brings you here?”

“Yes. But first, the young lady looks like she has stepped out of a painting. You must be a really proud father.”

Nyx set down the book she had been pretending to read.

“Flattery won’t get you anywhere, child.” Or so she said. The look in her red, slit eyes, however, clearly demanded more of the praise.

The attendant, who had no idea what she was being tested on, smiled uncertainly and did her best to look as though she meant it. Aldridge hid his own smile behind his hand.

“She is a generational beauty, isn’t she?” Aldridge laughed warmly.

“Very much so!” The attendant cleared her throat before continuing. “Now, to the purpose of my visit. My lord and master, Asmodeus of Ira, has requested that you visit him at his palace. A meeting that wouldn’t take up much of your time.”

An invitation, trying its best to come off as a sovereign’s summons.

It was a clever way to do it. An order would have been an insult and a request would have been a confession, so the demon lord had chosen the narrow path between them.

‘Clinging to whatever pride you’ve got left. A good start for the Progenitor’s plans.’ Aldridge looked at her.

“What do you think, my lady? Is Asmodeus worthy of hearing your testimony of truth? Or do we go to another with much more influence and power?”

The sincerity in the old man’s eyes and voice made it impossible to tell whether he was just plainly mocking the demon lord or truly believed his assumptions to be facts.

Either way, the attendant could only silently grit her teeth in anger.

“He’s a demon lord nonetheless, not much different from the other six,” Nyx said. “Whether we take our revelations to another shall depend on how he receives them and what he does with them. You, I trust you came with a form of transportation?”

The question was sudden and took the poor lady off guard.

“Yes, ma’am. A carriage awaits downstairs.”

Nyx glared at her so hard that she felt her skull was being bored through.

“Do I look old enough to be a ‘ma’am,’ child?”

“No, my lady. My apologies.” The girl apologized profusely.

She bowed again, lower than before, and kept her eyes fixed on the floor.

Aldridge sighed, his lips curving in mild amusement. Barely two hours ago, she had ordered him to call her ma’am, and now she did a complete three-sixty. This reincarnation of hers might just be the most fun of them all.

By now, Nyx had already risen to her feet. She looked gentle and soft, discarding every hint of the rebellious fire she had shown mere seconds ago.

“Shall we, then? It is not proper to keep a lord waiting on his own territory.”

The attendant hurried ahead to hold the door, and neither of the two strangers so much as glanced at the stairs on the way down.

* * *

Asmodeus’s throne room, if one could call it that, was nowhere near worthy of the term. It was nothing like what Aldridge’s memories had led him to expect.

There were no skulls on the walls, no trophies from conquered enemies, no bone spikes sticking out at random points in the room, and the lighting was not red.

Aldridge had braced himself for a hall of horrors, and the plainness of the place unsettled him more than any skull could have.

The room was simple: wide, sparsely furnished and low-ceilinged, its only illumination coming from the braziers that burned at the corners and a medium lamp that hung from the ceiling and cast a bluish hue over everything.

The Bull of Ira, Asmodeus, was even less than they had anticipated. He was a lot less violent, more gentle-looking, and a lot older, his grey bull-like horns curving backwards.

The robes he wore were plain, the table before him bare except for a single cup, and there were no guards in sight, which meant either that he trusted himself entirely or that he trusted whatever stood out of sight.

He had watched them enter without saying a single word, his amber eyes studying the possible cause of the tremor from a few hours ago.

When they had entered the room and stood before the only table in it, he finally spoke.

“Sit.”

The girl sat without hesitation, as though she had chosen the moment herself.

For a very brief moment, Asmodeus thought the old man behind her was actually the one he wanted to meet. If he was, the discussion was likely to go even more smoothly than with a youngster.

His expectations were dashed as Aldridge refused to sit, taking a place at the young lady’s side instead, and they both stared him dead in the eye.

“I’ve spent the better part of my afternoon deciding whether you are the most arrogant thing to walk into my territory, or whether you have absolutely no reason to be afraid of me.” His eyes moved slowly and deliberately from the grey hair to the white. “And I haven’t decided which possibility concerns me more.”

Nyx leaned forward, resting her face on the back of her hand.

“They needn’t be mutually exclusive, Demon Lord Asmodeus.”

Asmodeus’s amber eyes narrowed a fraction, the only sign that the answer had landed.

There was something Aldridge noted. In the inn, in the alley, back in their suite, despite how energetic the Progenitor had looked, the tone of her voice had carried the same weak, unhurried and indifferent ring. Even now, it did not change one bit. She didn’t care to perform, nor did her voice carry any shred of aggression. As far as she was concerned, the only real threats to her were beings above her, which, according to her, were mostly the myths, legends and folk tales the world held them to be. So why bother performing for beings worth less than rodents in the field?

Asmodeus noted the reply. They cared nothing for power, nor for usurping him, as he had first suspected, something quite common in Khyron. But the sensation that they wanted something from him stuck like glue to the back of his mind.

“Do you come representing someone, Miss…?”

The young lady did not care to reply.

“Nyx,” the old man behind her pointed out with a smile, receiving an acknowledging nod.

“Miss Nyx?”

“Not really someone, Bull of Ira,” Nyx said. “We represent something. A truth, a reality that the world has hidden from you Khyronians. That distinction is very important. We come bearing something far older than your history annals even remember. We come bearing your origin story.”

Your gift is the motivation for my creation. Give me more motivation!