Marbas and Gamigin (2)
"…What are you getting at?"
A brief silence settled over the room.
In an instant, the atmosphere turned frigid.
Gamigin peeled her back from the chair, leaning toward the table as she fixed Marbas with a look that all but demanded an answer.
Meeting that stare, Marbas opened her mouth with unhurried ease.
"Gamigin, old friend of this body. I spoke purely for your sake."
Gamigin stared hard into Marbas's eyes, as if trying to read her true intent.
Eventually deciding it was hopeless, she closed her eyes and sank back against the chair.
"Hah…"
Gamigin let out a sigh and, eyes still shut, drifted into thought.
Does she know what I've been doing in Korea? I never exactly advertised my activities to the other demons…
She opened her eyes and quietly studied Marbas.
Nothing particularly noteworthy stood out.
"Do you actually know what I've been up to?"
At Gamigin's sharp words, Marbas poured wine into her glass and spoke.
"There is no need for this body to dig that deeply, is there?"
Gamigin's face crumpled with dissatisfaction at the answer.
Well, how much does she even know?
"Whatever. Fine. I'll handle my own business. Don't stick your nose in any further."
Gamigin dismissed the matter with a sigh.
Watching that reaction, Marbas wore a deep smile.
"Ah, is that so."
Meeting Gamigin after so long is rather entertaining. She seems to have changed quite a bit. Especially her manner of speech.
Recalling the Gamigin who had once rampaged across the battlefield, Marbas could barely contain her laughter.
Spotting Marbas quietly chuckling to herself, Gamigin furrowed her brow as hard as she could.
"What are you laughing at?"
Far from composing herself at the rebuke, Marbas only laughed harder.
Just as Gamigin, unable to take any more, rose from her seat and opened her mouth to speak, Marbas gradually reined in her laughter.
"Ah, my apologies. I merely thought how different you have become from the you of those days."
Gamigin snorted at the excuse and sat back down.
"Everything changes with time. That goes for Transcendent Beings too. And speaking of which, Marbas — you've changed just as much."
Marbas nodded as if conceding the point.
"True enough. This body has changed considerably from before as well."
"Yeah, Marbas. Your speech has gotten kinda… Gen Z, hasn't it?"
Marbas blinked, regarding Gamigin with a dubious look.
"…This body's speech is like that? Not yours, Gamigin?"
Gamigin crossed her legs, running a hand through her floor-length hair as she grinned smugly.
"I've always talked like this. You're the one who suddenly changed."
"Ah, so you are aware that your speech is like that…"
Marbas and Gamigin had last met face-to-face some two hundred years prior — but that did not mean their last conversation had been two hundred years ago.
As President and Marquis, a certain degree of contact between them was inevitable.
Even without meeting in person, there were any number of ways to speak remotely, and in truth, Marbas and Gamigin had last conversed only a few decades ago.
"Seeing your speech change so suddenly… Marbas, did you pick up a contractor or something?"
Gamigin asked in a sly, probing tone — the way one might casually ask a close friend if they'd gotten a new lover.
"Well, something like that. It is only natural that a demon would be influenced by their contractor, is it not?"
Marbas shrugged at Gamigin's words.
"So you came all this way just to talk about that?"
At Gamigin's snappish remark, Marbas put on a deliberately wounded expression.
"Hah, Gamigin. Do you truly think this body would come in person merely to discuss something so trivial?"
"…Then what did you come to talk about?"
"Well, how much is there for a President to discuss with a Marquis? Let us speak of work."
In the end, having come out to receive Marbas on such short notice, Gamigin spent the entire unplanned visit buried in work talk before finally returning to her own chambers.
She collapsed limply onto her bed and stared up at the ceiling.
So that bastard Marbas really came all this way just to talk about work?
Gamigin gazed blankly at the ceiling, her mind drifting back to those days.
The era when war between angels and demons had raged at its fiercest.
The Great War — parts of which even humans had recorded in their histories.
Back then, Gamigin had not worn the form of a frail little girl as she did now.
She had taken the shape of a vast, magnificent, truly splendid horse.
A steed with a deep blue mane and a body of pure black, she had thundered across the battlefield without restraint, cutting down angels by the score.
Marbas had been one such demon as well.
In those days, Marbas had taken the form of a colossal lion with a black mane.
Gamigin had earned great distinction on the field of war.
And so, becoming famous among demons and angels alike, she had been able to grow her power even further.
With each passing day, she could feel her strength climbing higher and higher.
But there had been a side effect.
The famous angels, too, had begun to take notice of her.
That was not necessarily a bad thing.
It was a defining trait of Transcendent Beings that the greater their influence, the greater their power — and the more high-ranking beings who knew of you, the stronger you became. That was simply how it worked.
Demons who had slaughtered countless angels, and angels who had slaughtered countless demons in turn.
It was inevitable that Gamigin would eventually face them.
And so she had fought them without rest, day and night.
Sometimes for a week straight; at worst, for an entire month without pause.
In the end, she had nearly died at their hands.
Especially at the hands of the Archangel of War, Camael.
Camael was particularly battle-hungry even among angels, and fought demons every single day.
In the morning, if the wind blew too gently and soured his mood, he killed demons.
At midday, if the wind blew too hard and soured his mood, he killed demons.
In the evening, he simply hated demons and killed them. A complete lunatic.
On that day, Camael had set out with his subordinates to slaughter demons as usual — and so the advancing host of angels had crossed paths with Gamigin.
At the time, Gamigin had been riding high on confidence, thoroughly full of herself; Camael, having cut down so many demons, had a confidence that practically scraped the heavens.
That the two of them would clash was a foregone conclusion.
Gamigin's army and Camael's army collided head-on, and Gamigin and Camael themselves crashed together at the front.
Retreat, or resorting to underhanded tactics, was out of the question.
Angels believed that using dirty tricks against demons would lower their own worth beneath even that of a demon.
And so angels could not employ underhanded means against their demonic foes.
The same held true for demons.
Underhanded tactics were, for demons, one of the core elements of their very nature — but only when they themselves were the stronger party, only when they were toying with the weak.
Thus the demons, too, faced the angels in open, honorable combat.
Of course, that was a rule and a creed held only by beings of a certain rank.
What kind of nonsense is that for nobodies? If you don't want to die, you use every method you've got.
Lesser demons and lesser angels of insufficient standing simply brawled in the mud.
They were nothing more than countless pawns on the battlefield — expendable pieces to be used briefly and discarded.
Naturally, none of that was any concern of Gamigin's.
She, after all, had not been a lesser demon.
And so Camael and Gamigin had fought without rest, shifting battlefields as they went.
The fighting had been so savage that the scars of those battlefields still remained scattered across Heaven and the Demon Realm to this day.
The victor of that battle had been Camael.
Just as Camael had been about to finish off the fallen Gamigin for good, Marbas had appeared.
The grueling combat had exhausted Camael no less than Gamigin.
Marbas had ambushed the weary Camael, and in the opening created when Camael was struck and sent flying, she had rescued Gamigin.
Gamigin owed Marbas her life.
Even after that, Gamigin and Marbas had continued to clash with Camael again and again.
Until the bitter feelings among them had been thoroughly burned away in the heat of battle.
There are times when a rival you face every day, trading blows without end, comes to feel more comfortable — more familiar — than a comrade who has merely shared hardship at your side.
The three of them had reached that stage.
And as it happened, the war between angels and demons, between Heaven and the Demon Realm, had been gradually drawing toward its end.
All three had survived until the war's conclusion, and they still maintained contact even now.
Though, of course, even that contact had last taken place several decades ago.
"That absolute psycho… he's not still out hunting demons these days, is he?"
Gamigin muttered, her brow furrowed.
Even if he could no longer hunt demons as openly as during the old wars between angels and demons, he could still quietly kill a few of them in the human world.
That said, the human world has been awfully quiet… doesn't really seem like that's the case. Well, it's not like I hold any particularly high position in the human world myself.
She didn't take the matter all that seriously.
What did it matter to her if Camael was out killing demons?
It wasn't as though Camael had killed any of Gamigin's own subordinates.
And the odds of Camael's true form and Gamigin's true form ever crossing paths were practically nonexistent.
Not like we'd run into each other in the human world either.
Gamigin decided to simply stop caring about it altogether.
She briefly considered Marbas's warning as well… but if that warning meant her amusement got derailed, well — that unexpected twist would be its own kind of fun. So it didn't matter.