Lord of Entertainment

Chapter 519: Ten Angels

(3rd Person POV)

More than a month had passed since Arthur enslaved the Demon King, and the demon realm had a deity now. A Demon God. "Arthur Pendragon."

It was historic, and every demon alive understood that it was. The realm had never worshipped anything before; it had only ever obeyed. What changed it was not the throne and not the name on it. Arthur had raised three great theaters in the capital where demons could sit in the dark and watch films, and Hellfire had opened its doors, and televisions had gone out to a thousand households inside a single month.

That was the reason they knelt. Not fear. Entertainment.

In the Demon Castle, which no longer looked anything like itself since Arthur redesigned it, he sat in his office with Firfel while Alukah knelt on the floor and made his report.

"My Lord. After more than a month, the demons of the realm have converted in full. There is no holdout left worth the name; they accept you as their Demon God and they say it in their own homes, not only where I can hear them." Alukah kept his head down. "I have also set Legion Swords to the work of spreading your name. Everything they were built for now serves that cause and nothing else."

Arthur nodded, smiling. "Good. You may leave."

"Understood." Alukah bowed and went out, obedient to the last step.

That left Arthur and his wife.

It had all moved too fast for Firfel, and it showed in the way she said it. "Is this really fine, Arthur?" She looked at the door the Demon King had just closed behind him. "A realm in a month. I'm not complaining, I'm asking. I know you can bend time now, I've seen it. But is that enough to actually beat the Origin? The Five Heavenly Pillars, the Ten Angels, all of it at once?"

Arthur was not particularly worried. "Chronette by herself doesn't make me confident, no. If that were all I had I'd be moving slower than this." He turned a hand over. "But I have cards I haven't put on the table. And there's Om. That energy is lethal in the truest sense; used correctly it reaches past reality itself, and nothing here was built to survive being reached past."

Firfel nodded slowly. She knew the power of Om; she carried it herself.

"Om is a broken thing, I won't argue with you there." Her eyes stayed on him. "What I still can't work out is how you walked out of that Matrix with it. Not just the Om. Chronette too. The Master of Temporal Laws, following you home like a stray." She let that sit. "It seems you still have a great many secrets you aren't telling me."

Arthur said nothing at all, and thought:

'I'm sorry about this, Firfel. I can't tell you about the System yet. I don't know what happens if I do, and I won't guess with you. When I'm certain I'm truly in control, when I've actually inherited the One True Throne, I'll tell you everything. Not before.'

The transparent panels of the System hung in front of him where only he could see them. Since the upgrade he had been finding new things in it day after day, doors that had not existed before he absorbed the Om.

'The upgraded System is the real weapon. With Om behind it I've come into something absurd.'

[Absolute Words]

'My imagination and my words alone, shaping the state of reality and law.'

---

As Arthur rose into a Demon God, it stopped being possible to hide him from the higher powers of this world.

The Ten Angels convened in the Divine Mountain Realm, the secret space kept for council.

At the head of the table sat Nimuel, the Angel of Song and Masks, a neutral. He was a towering figure in a dark mask, and his heavenly voice filled the chamber without effort.

"We have a serious matter before us. I have lost every contact I placed to keep the Demon King in check. Not some. Every one, inside the same span, and not one of them sent a final word." He let his hands rest on the table. "Meanwhile the Demon Realm is changing beyond recognition. They have begun worshipping a Demon God who did not exist a season ago. Arthur Pendragon."

Kessengrimm spoke next, the Angel of Plague, another neutral, in the mask and robes of a witch doctor. "Then we set our differences aside and treat it as what it is. A realm that never worshipped anything now worships something. That is not politics, that is an Outer Deity's work."

Sygrun, the Angel of Dreams, who served the Goddess of Night, agreed at once. Her beautiful face had gone tight with concern. "Her Highness Xylia informed me herself. She encountered something that defeated the Fragment she had placed inside the puppet Princess. Defeated it. Her own Fragment."

Not every Angel agreed.

Wieland, the Angel of Craft, a bulky dwarf hung about with trinkets, said it bluntly. "Hmph. And how do we know this isn't the Goddess of Night's own scheme to turn our heads while she moves? Her angel brings us her word, and her word is the only proof we've been offered."

He served the God of Iron, Grimmhardt.

Brannhild, the Angel of Duel, a warrior of the same master, backed him. "Exactly right. The nations of this world are at one another's throats as we sit here, and every kingdom that wins a war wins the prayers that come with it. That is the game being played. I serve Master Grimmhardt, God of Iron, and I will not be pulled off the board by childish schemes out of the Night."

"Well said, brother." Wieland thumped the table. "We serve Master Grimmhardt's purpose and no one else's."

Aschelin, the Angel of Ash and Memory, a hard-faced woman under Halvern, God of the Grave, cut across them. "You fools. This is precisely how the Outer Deities get in. They don't force a door. They wait for the ones guarding it to accuse each other, and then they walk through while you're still arguing. Their strong forces may already be here."

Ehrenfried, the Angel of Scales, a lizard-man of the same master, followed her. "Master Halvern has confirmed all of it. He does not confirm lightly."

Ysolde, the Angel of the Hearth, who served Edmuthe the Goddess of Harvest, spoke gently into the middle of it. "Listen to them, Wieland. Brannhild. Just listen."

"Trust us." Kessengrimm turned toward the two of them. "I am neutral. So are Nimuel, Lorelin, and Thalgrin. We take no side and we gain nothing by frightening you. On a matter of this size we cannot lie."

Thalgrin sat off to one side, the Angel of Coin, a neutral with the look of a well-fed merchant, turning a coin over his knuckles. Lorelin was beside him, the Angel of Roads and Rivers, blue-haired and calm. Both nodded.

Brannhild's eyes changed. "Is it truly that serious?"

Wieland flinched in spite of himself. "Do we act now? Tonight?"

"Yes." Nimuel's voice came down gravely. "The sooner we move, the sooner we deny this Outer Deity a foothold. Understand what a foothold means. It becomes a rival to the Five Heavenly Pillars, and once it is rooted, even the Origin will not lift a hand against it."

And with the Angels finally coming into agreement, Thalgrin spoke, and the coin stopped turning.

"Unfortunately for you lot, it's a tad too late for all of that."

The table jolted.

"What!?" Kessengrimm turned on him. "Thalgrin. What do you mean by that?"

Lorelin, who had sat quietly through all of it, finally spoke. "Thalgrin. Let me explain it to them."

Ehrenfried frowned. "Lorelin? What is this?"

Lorelin smiled, and said something that emptied the room. "Thalgrin and I are no longer neutral Angels." She folded her hands. "The two of us serve the Demon God, Arthur Pendragon."

Aschelin came out of her seat. "What!?"

"Why are you bringing this up now?" Wieland's voice went suspicious. "We are here about an Outer Deity, and you choose this moment to declare a master? Which of the Five did you go to? Morgenchild, Lord of Earth? He's the only one without angels to his name—"

The others leaned in for the answer.

Lorelin laughed. "No. We're not with any of the Five Heavenly Pillars." She let the silence do a little work. "We serve the Outer Deity you've spent this whole council discussing."

Wieland's breath went out of him. "Nonsense!"

"This must be a joke." Nimuel had risen slightly. "Thalgrin. Lorelin. You two were the ones who first brought word of the Demon Realm's change to Kessengrimm and myself. You brought it to us—"

"Yes." Thalgrin chuckled. "And that was part of our Lord's plan. You were never going to learn of it by accident. We wanted all ten of you in one room, on one night, with your masters far away."

Brannhild's fist closed. "It can't be!"

Wieland's presence filled the chamber, commanding, the voice of an angel used to being obeyed. "Slaughter these two fools where they sit—"

"It's useless." Lorelin did not raise her voice at all. "We came prepared. This entire space now sits under Lord Arthur's Authority. All eight of you are inside it. You cannot reach the Five Heavenly Pillars, you cannot send word, and you cannot draw on your power. Try it, if it helps you accept it."

They all sucked in a breath and reached, every one of them, and something interrupted the reaching no matter how they came at it.

"Impossible!" Brannhild, proud fighter that he was, stared at his own open hands. "Not an ounce. I cannot pull an ounce of it. What kind of magic is this? What deity works like this!?"

Thalgrin laughed under his breath. "Surprised? We were equally baffled the first time. We fought Lord Arthur. We went to eliminate him, exactly as you're all imagining doing right now." The coin started turning again. "His words alone are power. That is not a figure of speech. He says a thing and the world adjusts. And I'll tell you plainly, if the Five Heavenly Pillars set aside a thousand years of grudges and stood together tomorrow, I don't believe they'd take him."

Kessengrimm could not accept it. "This is betrayal. Not only of the Five Heavenly Pillars, but of the Origin itself. Thalgrin. Lorelin. How could you—"

"Our Lord promised us a seat in his new rule," Lorelin said simply. "And godhood of our own."

"That is nonsense!" Nimuel refused it outright. "Nobody but the Origin can grant such a thing—"

"That is exactly the point." Thalgrin smiled. "Lord Arthur has left us in no doubt that he can defeat even the Origin."

Ehrenfried's eyes went wide. "Nonsense!"

"You two are insane," Aschelin said.

Lorelin snorted. "Insane or not, you'll surrender. Or we won't leave one of you alive in this room."

Then the two of them struck together, and the strike that came out of them reduced eight Angels to weak mortals. They went down onto the floor of their own council chamber and struggled to get up again.

"Shit!" Wieland's arms shook under him. "We are the Ten Angels. The feared Ten. And we're on the floor—"

"We will never yield—" Sygrun got that far.

Explodes!

Blue blood sprayed across the chamber. Thalgrin and Lorelin let an invisible barrier take it, and not a drop reached either of them.

Ysolde screamed. "Sy-Sygrun!"

The rest of them understood then that no part of it was a bluff. Kessengrimm was the first to yield, lowering his head without a word. Nimuel followed after a hesitation that cost him something to give up.

Ysolde was too frightened to do anything else and yielded at once.

The proud ones did not. Brannhild, Wieland, Ehrenfried, and Aschelin went for a powerful artifact between them, timed to catch the traitors looking elsewhere.

Thalgrin had anticipated it. He erased the four of them off the floor in an instant.

Kessengrimm, Nimuel, and Ysolde did not dare to make a sound.

The Ten Angels, who had been feared across the whole of this world, were five.