The horrible thing about going to sleep with your significant other cuddled up by your side is the fact that you eventually need to awaken, disentangle yourself from them, and then get up.
Oh, the waking up part could be heavenly. Especially if you were drawn out of your slumber by sinfully sweet kisses, as I was that morning. My real problem was with letting go. And, you know, actually getting up.
Kisses tended to make me more clingy, not less.
"You need to let me go," the little shit taunted.
"And you need to move." I mean, she had draped herself over me and gone fully limp, basically pinning me to the bed. What was I supposed to do?
"Mmmm, true." She smirked. "You first?"
"How?"
"Get creative."
I squinted up at her. Then I gently ran my hands up her body until they landed on her torso… and started tickling.
Mia's eyes bugged out as she erupted into a cascade of giggles.
"G-Give, I — I give u-up!" she finally managed to gasp.
I stopped, letting her collapse on top of me again for a few seconds. Then I flipped us around and claimed one final kiss before reluctantly getting up and stretching.
Both of us had lost our clothes at some point during night. I was very aware of Mia's eyes trailing over me as I got dressed. I could have summoned clothing directly onto my frame, of course, but where was the fun in that? I even angled my wings just-so, forcing her to shift around and giggle as she fought to cop a full look.
With clothes on and fun out of the way, however, it was time to get a bit more serious. Meaning, I summoned my soul blade from where I'd dropped it on the floor, and then hesitated only a moment before drawing the sword free of its scabbard.
To my utmost relief, the blade was whole and fine.
The last time I'd seen it, it had been a molten mess, with even the hilt starting to melt away. But now… if anything, the blade was better than fine.
So was the hilt, which had taken on a partially crystalline look, but the blade was what shone about the sword. Literally. The green, crystalline blade was still dotted with odd lines and mystical symbols, and looked to be lit from within by gentle green flames.
I knew for a fact that the flames were anything but gentle, of course.
The Abyssal fire that burned within both my soul and my blade could reach horrific temperatures. It would melt right through any demon who failed to put up sufficiently powerful, carefully calibrated magical defenses.
I knew the flame itself had been strengthened by my ascension to a Baron. I was now a true demonic noble, if low-ranking, and the sword's power reflected that.
However, what had really strengthened the soul blade was angelic soul essence. I'd stuffed my blade full of it during the angelic invasion of Desire, using the sword to end more than a few angels. Decently ranked ones, too. My most impressive kill was a Dominion-rank angel, and I wouldn't stop smirking at the memory any time soon.
Regardless, satisfied that my sword itself was fine, I plunged my mind into the jewel inlaid in its pommel. Instantly, my eyes landed on the book collection my mother had left me. Seeing for sure that it had survived made another knot of tension in my stomach start uncoiling.
Next, I looked for all of my gear and Mia's sword, which I had stashed in the jewel right before we blew up.
To my relief, the two Lagyel-forged swords were fine. They were extremely exquisite examples of craftsmanship. I knew that Yules had commissioned them from one of her family members, wanting to pay us back for giving her Lagyel sand to begin with.
The sand had wonderful anti-magic properties. It actually came from a Primordial, an elemental creature that had claimed Lagyel as its own. We didn't know that when we invaded the world, of course, which made the moment the thing woke up all the more memorable.
Suffice to say, the sand was valuable. Because of its properties, sure, but also because of its rarity. As far as I knew, the legion hadn't even attempted to retake Lagyel yet. With all the losses we'd sustained? I was fairly certain that wouldn't be happening any time soon, either.
"Here, look what survived our explosive demise," I teased. I pulled her sword out of my spatial storage and threw it at the cat demoness, who was still lounging on the bed.
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"Yessss! Now if you could dig my armor out of that, too…"
"Sorry." I grimaced as I pulled my own armor out of storage. "That's just not happening. Couldn't really summon it off of you, and… well, look at mine."
My armor hadn't held up well. At all.
Sure, it was made of Lagyel sand. Those plates were, for the most part, fine. Scratched up, dented, and smudged like hell, but fine.
The rest of the outfit?
The leather was shredded in some places and burned in others. Entire sections had melted off completely. Metal was warped, twisted, and generally ruined. I had to cast four cleansing spells to clean it properly, and it still looked stained. I knew it was just damage masquerading as dirt, but still!
That was to say nothing about the enchantments that had once been laid upon it.
Everything that went into the materials that weren't 'Lagyel sand'-based was gone. Even the enchantments added to the sand-based plates were either damaged, severely weakened, or actually destroyed.
It was hard to consider the armor as remotely functional, or even as something that I could justify trying to wear. It had only stayed on me because I had my crystal constructs covering it like an outer shell, and because it had been literally welded to my skin in places by the power of my flames. Plus, you know, the generous wallops of Cradle mana it got dosed with.
Which, as I've noted before, is highly toxic to demons. Portalling over into Cradle, as I did right before I blew myself up, was the equivalent of skinny dipping in acid.
Good thing demonic resurrection always provided me with a fresh body, so long as the damage I'd taken wasn't fundamentally ruinous to my soul. Even before I blew it up, my old body had been just as wrecked as my armor.
"We're going to need to visit Yules," I said, gingerly setting the mess aside. "As soon as possible."
"Mmmm. She's not going to be happy with us, though."
"No, she won't be." I winced. "She was so excited when she made these for us…"
She really was. I'd met Yules before she was even allowed to put her armor on sale in her mother's famous shop. The two of them were kind enough to sell me some basic-as-hell armor during my first invasion. Afterwards, I'd returned a few times with much deeper pockets and far more interesting materials.
The thing was, while Lagyel sand was an exquisite thing to work with, I still wasn't very powerful back then. The strongest enchantments couldn't feed solely off the environment or the materials. They partially fed off the person using them, too.
Basically, while the armor had been amazing for a pair of archdemons, Mia and I were nobles now. The armor was clearly not meant to be taken into the level of combat that our new status implied we were capable of, and that showed in the damage it had sustained.
"We'll visit and give her something nice to get her to forgive us. Maybe we should save some of the angelic soul essence for her?" I suggested, and Mia hummed approval of my idea.
I was honestly impressed by how much angelic soul essence my sword still contained. I had overfed it, which the soul blade had used to grow through a literal trial by fire, but it had also fought to preserve as much of the extremely useful resource as it could for me. The pride I felt towards the blade was answered by a quiet sense of satisfaction and smugness as my sword's budding consciousness reached out to me.
Well, 'budding' was a misleading word. The sword had already climbed to incredible heights once in my mother's hands, and reached full sentience. Then it had been almost destroyed when she died. So, what it was going through now was more like a recovery than a transformation.
I couldn't wait until it got powerful enough to properly communicate, so it could share any stories of my mother it remembered…
Patience.
The word rang out in my mind. My lips quirked a little as I gently patted the blade that had just addressed me.
"Okay," I sighed. "Enough delaying. I know this is going to suck, but we need to do it anyway."
I turned towards Mia, who had still not bothered to get dressed and was now pouting at me.
"You just want to stab your overly shiny sword deep inside me," the cat demoness purred. Then she languidly stretched, which did… interesting things to her assets.
I cleared my rapidly drying tongue, but it wasn't like I stopped staring. We had gone past that a while ago, and the grin she shot me was plainly encouraging.
"I'd really rather you didn't phrase things like that," I complained. "You're just making things awkward."
"Not my fault you want to stab me!"
"Yes, stab. Literally. No lewd implications are applicable here!"
"Fine, then." She sighed like I was leading her to the gallows. "Get on with it."
I rolled my eyes and threw another divine totem banner at her face, just because I could. Strolling over, I gently lifted her arm, hesitating only a little before stabbing my soul weapon deep into it. I watched as the blade slid into Mia's soul, just as its name hinted it was able to do.
Then, ever so slightly, I began to release the angelic soul essence contained in the blade, directly into her soul.
It was a brutish way to achieve what I wanted to do, but we weren't skilled enough to handle the soul essence in any other way. Besides, the Abyss had a nasty habit of stealing the resource if you carelessly released it into the atmosphere, so this was much safer on all counts.
Of course, the angelic soul essence did set Mia's soul aflame. Her soul's rigid, opaque state began melting into a slurry barely contained by her body, which itself began to melt away in patches.
Mia hissed out in pain, but she was still cognizant enough of the world around her to pull on the Divinity in the totem banner. The golden substance streamed into her, helping her soul rapidly recover from the state the angelic soul essence had put it in.
Together, the two opposite forces, along with the continued purification of the angelic soul essence into the best possible tonic for a demon, didn't just heal Mia's soul. They improved it.
It took remarkably little of the precious resource before we could stop, and Mia's soul thrummed with power and health once more.
"The process sucks. We need to work on it," Mia groused, but her smile was happy. "I feel so much better, though! Your turn."
I sighed again, but I did lie down on the bed and start to pull the soul essence into myself, setting my insides on fire.
It hurt. It 'sucked', as Mia so adeptly put it. But the slow boiling away of the wounds left on my soul also filled me with a contented thrill.
We would wash away all the marks our last invasion had left on us. And then we would face whatever the lieutenant generals decided to throw our way.