Chapter 575: Thus Time Marches On - Part 3

The Demon Lord Is An Angel - The Final Adventure

With the situation on the moon resolved, Arc, her friends, and the Princess return to the Demon Empire. Snow parts with them, wanting to explore her budding relationship to the future Empress, and Norneau is given permission to enter the skies of Reath. Setting the city above a lake, the Stars descend to solve the mycelium crisis, discovering in the process that the strange, white roots are quite edible and even delicious. While they cull the majority, a few patches of farmland near the portal to the moon are left isolated to grow, providing a new source of sustenance while the Empire stabilizes its food production.

A year on, Aban is hitting his limit when it comes to his efforts to embody death, but he finds the final tie holding him back when he murders Ylfri, consuming her core and stealing her gate to turn into a well of anti-magic, in which he believes he has the right knowledge needed to destroy any being - god or mortal. He takes her place in the Pantheon as a minor martial god of the Church of Aeleas, and begins the process of corrupting them from within to serve his ends.

The Constellation, meanwhile, discovers that in annihilating the fragments of Vinam, they have somehow taken on his ability to read the past by touch. They use this to uncover a few secrets and solve a few murders before setting the power aside because of its invasive nature. Ferro and Kir create a daughter, and they name her Venus.

After suffering a sudden "illness" the Emperor of the Demons dies, leaving the Princess to ascend the throne. Snow balks at the prospect of remaining as her consort, wanting to continue to explore with her dragon, but the Princess woos her over by wanting to survey her new empire from above while she contemplates Kir’s suggestion for turning the continent into a democracy - a check on the power of the military and merchants, and their court backers, who tried to coup her father.

Another problem exists, however, in that the dungeons of the world have all been exhibiting the strange, nigh-yearly incursions of monsters, and each one grows fiercer despite efforts to contain them. Having finally made peace with Maledict, at the wish of Aeleas, Kir finally decides that he and his family will confront Aeleas, ending her life to prevent her madness from consuming the world - since the incursions are a reflection of her inability to grasp the knowledge of infinity, as the dungeons take that magic and parse it through the shattered dimensions contained in their bulk.

Before Kir departs for the Mother Dungeon Duat, Aban and elements of the Pantheon attack, and in the chaos, Owyn and Arc are captured and taken to Anduat. There, he tortures Owyn for his lack of respect going all the way back to when they were children, and he is about to torture Arc when he discovers that she’s disappeared.

Having been smuggled out of prison by an underground group of angels, she is begged by them to intercede on their behalf with Kir, whom they believe to be the savior foretold who would end the reign of Aeleas and restore their wings and bring them to glory. Unbeknownst to Arc, this prophecy was created by Aeleas herself as a salve to guide the population of enforced servants towards accepting her son upon her death. Aeleas contemplates this as she watches Arc’s flustered negotiation with the angels, stating that she believes the most her father will offer them is equality. Though some of the angels resent this, the majority find equality acceptable compared to their enslavement, and agree to help her free Owyn.

Meanwhile, Raven infiltrates the capital and begins to hunt down members of the Pantheon, leveraging her blood magic and its particular relationship to antimagic to forcibly embody the ascended beings before killing them, after seeking information to lead her to Arc and Owyn. Recognizing Raven’s "style," Arc seeks her out with the help of the renegade angels, arriving to save Raven as a group of mortal Inquisitors tracks her down. Together, they invade the Palace of the Gods - built around the Duat’s exterior - to rescue Owyn, but the escape becomes a trap as Aban isolates Raven and begins to torture Arc for information about her father.

Trapped in a pocket dimension she cannot escape, Raven makes a desperate bid by consuming the vial she stole from her father, Bailey Black - one that contains Kir’s blood, which her father was mildly addicted to and has been weaning himself off ever since his and Kir’s long-ago battle. In concentration, the blood unlocks more of Raven’s gate than she is prepared to handle, but she manages to break free and fight Aban to a standstill before being overwhelmed by his power over death, wielded against her mortal body. While Arc struggles to use her power to keep Raven alive, Owyn takes up the fight, giving himself over to draconic rage as he attacks recklessly, the remaining gods of the Pantheon arriving but refraining from combat - as the whole Pantheon is on guard against Kir’s arrival because of Aban.

Aban, not understanding what Owyn has become, is unable to figure out how to induce his death. The fight drags on until suddenly the Pantheon turns at the appearance of a new power. The Entire House of Stars, every aspect, arrives to do battle, each confronting a god individually, with even Stella and the most powerful members of the House of Crystal joining the fray. Kir, however, challenges Aban, finally recognizing that he is confronting a ghost from Kiryu’s past. After a brief conversation, Aban attempts to use his power against Kir, only to fail, and Kir proceeds to pummel him as he strips away first his godhood, then his magic, and then the strength of his body, before leaving Aban’s fate to Owyn. As a dragon, Owyn reduces what’s left of the former Chief’s son to less than ash.

Once Aban and several of their number are dead, the remains of the Pantheon are made to yield, and Kir assumes a new form, an amalgamation of all the House of Stars’ first constellation, unique and unlike any being that has existed. Rather than ascend through the Duat, Kir rises to the peak of the crystal tree and pulls Aeleas into the world, placing her and her throne atop its trunk.

Maledict appears and, in a final confrontation, accepts that he will die with Aeleas. They have both outlived their love of life, and it was always to be that before they could grow to hate and destroy, they chose the future that would place the world in their son’s hands. Kir acknowledges their resolve, and takes the power of the Throne of Time, reverting Aeleas to a mobile state to stand next to Maledict as he takes her place. Once seated upon the throne, however, he realizes what it was that kept Aeleas rooted to it. The universe where they reside is still young, and the dimension it was carved into attracted beasts from between spaces, each one seeking cracks in reality to consume the magic of Creation - the ultimate source of reality, the clarion from which all universes and times, even their own artificial one, were born. It was not a place any thing could exist in without being subsumed into the infinite. But it was a place from which those that feasted on realities could draw sustenance, though the closer such beings became, the more they risked predation and their own annihilation.

To ward the universe against this, someone had to sit the throne until the universe had expanded to the point it would no longer be viable as a food source to the creatures. A task that would take billions of years. It was then that Aeleas confronted Kir about the final prophecy she had given him. She knew he would never seek its knowledge, and the moment she left the throne all possibilities would converge around this point, this decision he was about to make. Within him, the constellation weighed the responsibility, the sacrifice, the need. Even with the throne, there were already minor incursions far too numerous to count. Even without it, they would have hundreds of millions of years of stability before the universe was unwound. In the end, they could not choose, and so they asked their daughter.

They asked Arc, and she chose life. She chose the possibility her power granted her, to give her parents life outside the confines of the prison-throne, if they chose to save all that was for as long as it could be. Hearing this, they chose to finally see the prophecy Aeleas meant for them. The confession of her hubris and the knowledge that no single-minded being would ever be enough to hold the universe together from its center, the world of Ayther. All of their suffering and hers, to see beyond the wall of time where Aidaeb failed and she began, was to create the one being that could make this choice. Not just for the best possible outcome in the eternal wars between angel and demon, but to go beyond. A final path, the only one she could draw, after Aidaeb took with them the power of prophecy. Their final gift to her, for her sacrifice of thousands of years enduring the prison they spent millions of subjective years in alone.

Sitting back, giving themselves fully to the throne, the Constellation chose. They accepted Arc’s decision and, reaching out, empowered her to spread her connecting threads to all that encountered her, no matter how little time, so that she could tell the world what was to happen.

They spoke their message, their final truths, and charged the Aytherians with the spreading and seeking of life in the universe. To seek out the paths of the gods who left Ayther in eons past, the worlds they founded, and the life they brought forth. To explore, to live well, to seek peace, and yet struggle to improve. Through Arc they spoke to the world, and then they left their final gifts.

For the children of the Constellation, immortality and power. For the world, the secrets of magics to traverse the stars, by portal or flight, traced along the paths of mana that lay dormant in the void. To each of the worlds in Ayther’s system, they sent an equal share of dungeons, so that traversal within the solar system would be possible and easy for those who dared, and to each of these worlds they intended to begin the slow spreading of life.

As for Aeleas and Maledict, mortality and a world to die on. To live their final years knowing the price they paid for their success was never to see it. It was the only mercy Kir had for them.

The Constellation took the throne, and there they remained for ages hence.

Thus ends the tale of Kir, son of the Demon Lord who was an Angel.