Chapter 411: The Knowing Curse
Malzkael let the words ’time war’ settle into her thoughts before she spoke. "Before we talk about something insane, what did you do to Anko?"
"She’ll be fine if that’s what you’re worried about. Consider it a test of her capacity to be educated. I don’t want blind loyalty, but neither do I want loyalty out of ignorance. The sort of people who want either assume they deserve it." Kiryu exhaled some smoke. "So. Time war."
Malzkael furrowed her brow. "Like in fiction?" Time-magic fiction wasn’t a genre she enjoyed since most angels wrote it as a form of wish fulfillment. Usually, such fiction meant an angel would breeze through social adversity, arriving at a superior position to some dreaded rival or even gaining power over them. Or an angel would arrive amongst primitive Aytherians and wind up being worshipped as a god.
"Yes," Kiryu replied, "Except this isn’t fiction. This body’s mother can see the future. And I think you know who the only angel that can do that is."
"The Daughter of Heaven," Malz replied. Yet even as she said it, she couldn’t believe it. All the accounts of her she knew of described her as kind and empathetic. "I find it hard to believe an angel would want to destroy the world. Maledict is the one who had it out for Heaven. I may not have seen it happen, but I know it has to have been him."
"It doesn’t matter who does the deed. She’s the one who selected for that to happen," Kiryu argued. "Morality doesn’t really play much into it, except in an ultimate sense."
"What’s that supposed to mean?" Malz hissed.
"It means that kind of power warps your values. Makes you less able to distinguish the ’goodness’ of one outcome over another, when what you want is what you consider the good outcome. Lives become pieces on a board. The thoughts and actions of your loved ones, when they become predictable and repeatable, cease to hold any value for the person behind them. People become events. The world becomes a game board you can swap for another."
"Personal experience?" Malz challenged. As much as she knew she shouldn’t piss him off, Kiryu irked her. His irreverent attitude reminded her too much of who she had been before years of torture and desperation had stripped it down. She was still an angel who loved wicked things, but the impression she had of Kiryu was that he was cruel.