Anko felt every footstep in her ears as they echoed in the narrow, cramped hall through which she walked, one of her hands holding a small plate of food. Beneath that arm was a small box of technological junk, and in her top right hand she held a mana gun.
At the end of the hall was a door, and behind that door was soone she’d first seen two years ago. Today was the first ti since Malzkael’s capture that they would et again.
Anko was not looking forward to it. She’d tried to avoid this duty for quite a while, even going so far as to actually take her non-combat lessons seriously...
The mory of seeing that angel’s wing being torn from her body still haunted her. Just like the dispassionate look on Maledict’s face as he simply pulled her apart like-
"Stop. Don’t think about it..." Anko shook her head violently.
"Hm?" The guard at the door, a bored-looking and particularly skeletal pagaak - a fear-eater - raised his overlarge eyebrow at her. "That’s so quality terror you’re giving off," he chuckled. "Don’t worry, new girl, the angel can’t hurt you."
Anko scowled. "I’m not worried about her hurting . I’m just supposed to see if she knows what this junk is."
"Ah... so you’re afraid of having to hurt her... Wait... You’re her, the one Duke Maledict intends for his son."
Anko’s scowl deepened. "Yeah, so?"
"So... I could help you. Instead of heightening your fear, I can just take away what you’ve got. All I ask in return is that you let stay in the room and maybe hurt her a little..."
There was a hungry look in the pagaak’s eyes.
Even after two years of gathering sources of mana, the ambient levels were too low compared to Hell to keep people fed above starvation levels... and the peace Maledict enforced ant that any demons that "acted out" would quickly find themselves added to the scavenger teams, which rankled the pure demons, since they were already being out-perford by half-demons like Anko who were born or made with more capable wells of mana within.
"I’m not here to torture her, so shove off. Go get a al or sothing." Hopefully this was one of the demons that had accepted eating physical food as a stopgap against the low mana levels.
Anko didn’t want him looming over her shoulder, either. As one of Maledict’s "favorites," Anko outranked him, so he had to obey.
"If sothing happens while I’m gone, you’re taking the bla."
"Fine."
He got up, looming over her like a skinny sapling draped with black, snakey vines for hair, and stalked off up the hall.
She steeled herself one last ti before opening the door, checking to see the dark beauty was lying on her cot before stepping in. She’d been warned about the earlier tis when the angel tried to escape, and getting ambushed at the door was not sothing Anko wanted for herself.
Malzkael moria stirred and rose slowly. The chain on her foot, which was bound to the back wall, clinked as she sat up, holding herself at the knees as Anko shut the door.
She was clean, but covered in scars and fresh welts from the last person who had been assigned to her, and Malz started by following the protocol that had been drilled into her by Maledict’s chief enforcer, Marshal Lucifer.
"H-Hands," Anko pulled a depleted mana crystal out of the box and held it out to the prisoner.
The angel complied, holding out her hands together as if in supplication.
As soon as the crystal was put into them, Anko rotated it until the paired circles etched on one side were touching the angel’s flesh. She counted to ten as the mana was taken from the girl before withdrawing the draining stone.
She rembered being told that the angel used to be able to fill a half dozen stones... maybe once she stopped being able, they’d give her the rcy of death. Seeing soone just... broken... shook Anko to the very core. It made her rember that she’d once been a desperate alley rat nad Nona...
"I rember you..." Malzkael said softly when the silence stretched. "You... you don’t have to do this..."
"Do what?" Anko asked, but she already knew the answer in the barely-healed cuts all along the angel’s body. The girl was naked, but dressed in scars. "I won’t have to do anything if you just tell what this junk does."
The angel remained silent. She moved slightly when Anko approached, trying not to look at the ruin of the angel’s remaining wing. The wing had been plucked of every feather. No more than a vaguely blade-like finger of flesh and bone... and scars. As Marshal Lucifer had cautioned her, if Anko saw any full feathers, she was to take them. The potions that could be made from angel feathers were necessary, and they were rich in mana besides... but it looked as if she hadn’t grown anything in months. Even her once shining black hair, cut short, had strands of white from malnutrition.
The storage tattoo that had once rested between her shoulders almost invisibly had been broken, the contents of her storage seized. There was no way for her to put away the unsightly thing...
"Then you’ll let eat?" Malzkael asked.
Anko had almost forgotten the food. She put it down on the ground, still keeping her gun ready and out of reach... not that the angel should have been strong enough to attempt a rush. Maledict made it clear when he assigned Anko this duty that she was not to kill the angel, nor let the angel provoke her into killing her.
She watched quietly as the angel shakily moved forward and took the bowl of wet rice gruel and plain bread, before beginning to eat with her hands.
Anko put the box down, sitting cross-legged as the girl ate. With four arms, it was quick work to start pulling items out and laying them in a row, which Anko did by size. Nothing she’d brought was larger than a dinner plate, nor was any of it sharp.
When the angel had scooped out the last grain of rice, Anko cleared her throat. "Bowl," she said, reaching out and taking the item before tossing it in the empty box.
Even after two years of torture, the angel’s eyes looked at the objects with curiosity.
She’s not all-broken... If she was, she wouldn’t still be useful to Maledict, even after everything he’d done to her... Anko shook her head to herself. Maledict was cruel. He had to be, because the angels were crueler... and even if she didn’t like it, she needed to hold on until her training was done and she could go to the demon that had saved her... his son, Kir...
A tiny sound escaped the angel’s mouth, as if she was about to ask sothing before stopping herself. It was just enough to bring Anko out of her distraction and back to the task at hand.
She picked up the first object.
"What’s this?"
"That... looks like a vibrating toothbrush."
"And this?"
"Another toothbrush... but shorter."
Anko looked at the line of junk she’d made. There were a lot of similar items, and she gathered all the "toothbrush-types" together and dropped them in the box. She could save the important questions for the weirder stuff.
"What’s this?" she held up a palm-sized box.
"That... looks like an alarm clock, but broken."
"Alarm clock?"
"It keeps ti... and you can have it ring an alarm when-"
Anko smashed the "alarm clock" and dropped it into the box. Anything that could alert Heaven to the presence of demons in its depths had to be eliminated imdiately.
"... It’s not dangerous..."
Anko ignored the remark. "What’s this?"
"That looks like a mount... maybe for one of the toothbrushes... but I don’t know why it has a wire."
"None of this junk works on mana. Maledict wants to know why."
The angel chewed her lip. "Where did you find it?"
"People found it. I’m just bringing it here." Anko grabbed another thing. It was a long, ergonomic black object with lots of little holes. Maybe so kind of instrunt, except there were shards of green and bits of tal inside.
"I... don’t know what that is."
Anko dropped it in the box. Another object, like the last but with a disc in the middle and grey instead.
"I don’t know."
A dull, triple-bladed thing with a circle in the middle.
"That looks like fan blades."
"You can’t cut shit with these," Anko took two of the blade parts with her hands and showed how bendy they were. One of them snapped.
"They’re probably made of plastic."
"What’s plastic?"
"I... don’t know..."
"’I don’t know. I don’t know.’" Anko mimicked back. "Tell sothing useful so I can get out of here."
The angel swallowed. She looked like she wanted to cry, but there were no tears.
"I saw you... before we t. My... friends showed sothing. A recording of you, attacking that angel. Cassie and Rain saved him... but I rember you... you didn’t ask for that fight-"
"What is that supposed to an? Who are Cassie and Rain?"
The angel shook her head. "It doesn’t matter... they’re probably still on Ayther... and Maledict already knows everything I know..."
Anko scowled. Of course Maledict knew, and he hadn’t told her. A frustrated snarl crossed her face. He was still treating her like a child, even though she’d proven herself ti and again by doing everything he asked, learning everything he told her to... even math.
"I... might know what that is..." the angel looked at a small, tallic rectangle that was black on one side and dusty grey on the other. It was the largest object Anko had brought.
Anko lifted it, careful not to damage anything as she scraped aside the remaining articles of junk with her free hands.
"What is it?"
"I think... I think it’s a tablet..." the angel said, carefully. "A thing that shows pictures... or words like a book..."
"How does it work?"
"Can I hold it?"
Anko’s face hardened with suspicion.
"I’ll hold it. You can touch it."
The angel reached out. She brushed her fingers along the featureless black surface of the glass-like side, and when she tried to tilt it to examine the sides, Anko took over tilting it for her.
"I used to have a few of these..."
"It doesn’t work with mana. Can you make it work?"
"Maybe... I... think I know what it needs but... I can’t rember... I’m so weak..."
The angel stopped touching the tablet, trying to bring her legs back onto the cot causing her skinny knee-bones to creak and pop...
Anko pulled the tablet away and boxed it.
She was done. She didn’t want to see any more.
She didn’t want to think of starving in winter of the sounds of popping, rending limbs...
She didn’t want to talk to this girl, even if she was supposed to force information out of her.
It was completely unnecessary, and yet Maledict wanted to see if Anko could get what two years of torture, beatings, and starvation couldn’t...
Picking up her gun, Anko’s palm flexed around the handle.
Maybe if I say she attacked ... I can just put her out of her misery and do sothing else...
Maledict wouldn’t buy that excuse... not without a witness, and she’d already sent away the pagaak. And Maledict’s tolerances for failure were thinner with every passing day... with every portal he forced open through Perdition, only to barely harvest more than he spent...
An image popped into Anko’s head of Maledict grabbing her by the wrists, pulling on her one arm at a ti... his face flat and uncaring... like ripping the arms he’d given her away would be just... aningless...
And she didn’t want to.
Standing up, Anko made sure she had everything before slamming the door behind her and bolting it.
With everything around here being made of tal, there was no chance the angel could escape.
Just like Anko couldn’t escape what she owed Maledict... not until she could finally leave and join his son...
She rembered that he had killed a man to save her. Cleanly and quickly, but with the sa dispassion on his face that Maledict wore so often these days...
He was still her hope... and she hoped Kir was still kind...
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