'Mistakes were made. Mistakes were most definitely made.'

The man in front of me, dressed in an olive jacket and grey cargo trousers with a cap overshadowing his face, shifted from foot to foot, tossing the several-inch-knife he was holding between each hand as he moved.

I swallowed, feeling my heartbeat in my throat and ears, very aware that the only thing approximating a weapon I had on me was a Leatherman Squirt multitool with a blade measuring barely three centimetres, if that.

I didn't dare go for it either – the fucker was fast, I knew that from the steady throb in my side where he'd snap-kicked me before I could reach him as I ran into the alley, and my knife was buried in a shaped pocket in my jeans that made retrieving it difficult.

All in all, my situation - which had started at shit - was deteriorating by the second, and I was getting jittery from all the adrenaline entering my bloodstream.

And of course, it was my own fucking fault.

'I always wondered why those people in horror movies ran toward screaming.' I thought to myself, breathing deeply and seeing the edges of my vision darken as they became less important than the man in front of me...

And the woman standing behind him, clothes torn and a panicked, fearful expression on her tear-tracked face.

'I guess it's just the human thing to do though.'

The man hadn't said a word; instead, he must have been watching my eyes – waiting for me to shift my focus even slightly – because that was when he lunged forwards with the knife in his right hand, reaching out with his left to grab me and drag me onto the blade.

I twitched badly, backstepping into the wall behind me and just out of the knife's reach – then I grabbed the wrist of the hand reaching for me and did the first thing I thought of. I grabbed the elbow of that same arm with my other hand before wrenching in different directions.

There was a sickening snap sound as the arm broke, and the man screamed – right in my face, startling me into letting go as he shoulder-checked me into the wall harder, cracking my head on the brick before he tossed me to the ground and then came down knife-first.

It skipped off one of my ribs before biting deep into my lower right torso, probably puncturing a lung knowing my luck – but for karmic balance, the reflexive curling of my spine from the pain launched my forehead into his nose, breaking it instantly and knocking his cap off his head.

The man reared back, and I got a good look at his face for the first time since I charged into the alley.

He was pale – pale like marble, like alabaster; not a colour human skin should have. His eyes were off too, the colour of blooming lavender, something I didn't know was possible in human genetics.

His hair was black and wavy, and I noticed that it seemed to be in oddly good condition for belonging to someone hanging around trying to rape a woman in an Aberdeen alley - it was a similar trait to his skin which, apart from its pallor, showed not a single blemish anywhere; not a scar, not a spot, I couldn't even spot any stubble.

Well, the big red splash-mark and accompanying downward trail that spread outward from his nose might have counted as a blemish - but under that, the skin bore more resemblance to carefully worked marble than flesh.

All in all, he was surprisingly good-looking for a murdering rapist; although, the maddened rage in his eyes and the snarl that seemed to have permanently twisted his mouth into a jagged line certainly were a serious detriment.

I tried to roll out from under him while he was rearing back, but instead found myself trapped by his weight and made the knife-wound worse with my wrenching.

I screamed between my clenched teeth, feeling blood on my lip from where I was biting it, then choked on the sensation of the knife withdrawing from my body before it plunged back in again, this time directly into my stomach.

I couldn't contain the scream this time, so instead I loosed it right into the now-closer face of my assailant, splattering him with blood and saliva as I vented pain and rage into him point-blank.

He flinched backwards for a moment, and I shot both of my arms forward, wrapping my fingers around his throat with the thumbs over his adam's apple and then squeezing.

His eyes immediately started to bulge from his skull as he choked, and he withdrew the knife from my body once more to try and slice at my arms.

I started yelling through the tears pouring from my eyes as my left arm came under attack, dozens of cuts ranging from almost-non-existent to seemingly-fatal opening along the limb – the number decreasing as the man's struggles weakened, his face turning red then blue as he struggled before he finally dropped the knife, slumping and causing his entire weight to fall on my arms where they were still choking him.

Blood, tears and other things were streaked across my face, both mine and from my attacker's nose, and as I struggled to breathe I could feel some of the mess go down my throat.

I almost immediately felt the urge to vomit it back up again, but figured that would cost me precious air.

Air that was almost as precious as blood...blood which I was still losing.

Trying to shake off the cotton wool in my head, I managed to tip the man atop me over so he fell at my left side, then scooted out from under him by pushing with my feet and dragging with my right arm.

My right arm was being less than cooperative; I could barely even see it beneath the blood and the ruins of my hoodie.

Reaching the opposite wall, I managed to sit up against it, casting my eyes down to get a better look at myself.

Two stab wounds; one in my stomach, one in what was probably my lung and would explain the difficulty breathing. My left arm was comprehensively fucked and I wondered if I'd ever be able to use it again. The back of my head felt hot and damp, which meant it was bleeding, which meant I probably had a concussion or a broken skull or both.

I glanced around the alley, wondering if maybe I could make some bandages and then go for help; and in doing so, I noticed something was missing.

'Huh...the woman's gone...' I observed, looking slowly both ways and trying to blink past the darkness encroaching on my vision. 'Good...maybe she'll bring some help...or the police...'

A wrenching cough brought my attention back to the comatose body across the alley from me – or, rather, what was meant to be a comatose body.

Instead, my assailant was up on their knees, caressing their throat with their unbroken arm.

'Well, fuck me sideways.'

There was a grinding of metal on stone as my attacker retrieved his knife before turning to me, clambering to his feet and staring down at me.

"You're an uppity piece of shit for being nothing more than a lowly human, aren't you?" He rasped, the words thin and reedy but considerably better than I would have expected from someone whose larynx I'd done my utmost to crush into paste.

The man (though I was starting to wonder, somewhere in my fuzzy brain, if that was quite the right descriptor) glanced down the alley and glared at the empty space, giving me a chance to slip my right hand into its pocket. "And it seems you have cost me my entertainment too." He turned back to me, spitting to the side.

It came out mixed with blood and – probably to add insult to considerable injury – landed on my sliced-up arm.

"Trash humans like you shouldn't try to play at being heroes." He sneered. "All of them died long ago. All your race produces these days are rats and worthless garbage."

Stalking forward, he flipped the knife into a reverse-grip, the blade pointing down at me as he raised it high. "Die like the pest you are – and rejoice in the honour that comes from dying at the hands of Malachi!"

The now-named Malachi reared back, preparing to bring his knife down into my chest – probably my heart, if I had to guess.

So I took the opening he gave me and used my as-yet unharmed legs to launch myself forward, knocking him onto his back as I flipped the knife out of my multi-tool, having retrieved it from my pocket while he was busy sneering.

I dragged myself up his body with gritted teeth, trying to trap his limbs with my body-weight while I clutched my little knife in my fist. At the same time, Malachi was shaking off the knock to his head and bringing his knife back around to stab at me.

We both moved at the same time.

His face turned shocked as my insignificant blade knife stabbed deep into the side of his throat and then tore across it, opening the entire assembly to the air and fountaining blood over both of us as the arteries were severed.

Meanwhile, I let out a soundless scream as his knife plunged into the gap between my neck and my collarbone, the metal piercing deep into my shoulder and probably emerging in my respiratory system, if my sudden inability to breath or speak was any indicator.

Malachi kept trying to speak – or so I thought, based on the bubbling of the blood frothing from his open neck. Meanwhile, I collapsed bodily onto him, not particularly appreciating my position but finding it far too difficult to move myself.

I idly watched as my vision darkened, the shadows lengthening and reaching toward me, the light dying away. 'So, this is what it's like to bleed out.' I pondered slowly, starting to feel rather cold. 'Hm...'

I managed the titanic effort of rolling my eye upward to see the face of the dying man I'd collapsed on – managing to see the rage and the fear that warred on his features...

His glassy eyes told me more though. 'Well how about that; your face really can freeze that way.'

The dark moved closer, and I found myself trying to hum – thinking the words along even as I failed to produce the sound. 'Innocence is gone...and what was right is wrong...

'So I bare my skin...'

I couldn't feel my limbs, now – everything was going cold and numb, sensation spiralling away into oblivion.

'And I count my sins...'

So much that I'd still wanted to do...my parents would get a call from the police instead of my visit home next weekend; Heather would never get a response to that last message she sent me; the guys back in the apartment would probably wonder what happened to me for a couple of days until the University told them what had happened...

Well, shit – I'd caused a lot of trouble, hadn't I?

'And I close my eyes...'

There was no world beyond the end of my nose, now – just shadows.

My eyelids were so heavy...

'And I take it in...'

It's dark.

It's cold.

I'm alone.

So...this is...the end...

'And I'm...blee...ding...o...u...'

As a teenager bled to death atop a corpse in an Aberdeen back-alley, he didn't have the sight to witness what came next.

As the last dregs of consciousness fled from the creature named Malachi, a golden light began to shimmer across its skin – a pattern wrought in light itself, depicting sweeping characters unlike any seen before on Earth.

Or, rather, that Earth.

As the design blazed into life, it rose from the skin, wrapping itself around the cadaver like ropes or vines – and, when it reached the corpse laying atop the body into which it had been engraved, it hesitated only momentarily before encompassing it as well.

The light's work continued until both corpses were ensconced within it, cocooned in golden light – at which point it began to wrap itself tighter and tighter, compressing itself down until it occupied far less space than anything containing two bodies had a right to, before it vanished into thin air.

The search for Drew Campbell would go on for several weeks before he was announced legally dead. A funeral was held for him in the same church where he was baptised, by the same reverend who performed the ceremony – a friend of the family.

His family each visited the grave every day for weeks, then after that always at least once a week until they became too old to travel – and eventually, his younger brother would become a father himself, and tell his children about the uncle they never got to meet.

Life went on in the world without Drew Campbell.

But elsewhere, Drew Campbell went on without his world.

Across a divide which was simultaneously thinner than paper and wider than the Universe in which Drew Campbell lay dying, a being sat at its desk staring at the paper which covered the wood.

The being resembled a human in all ways; looking at them, it would be impossible to tell them apart from any other twenty-to-thirty year-old man, with his black hair and goatee, dressed in a violet yukata as he sank into the deep chair he occupied.

The golden follicles that spilled over his brow, fading into existence from the black of the rest of his hair, were perhaps a bit odd – but it could be explained by dye. At the same time, his lavender eyes were a touch different – but lenses or simply odd genetics could provide an answer to their existence.

No, though he was perhaps a bit stand-out, there wasn't anything to say this being wasn't a baseline human.

Except if they knew his name.

An old name.

A powerful name.

A name written in the stars and heavens when they were still young but it was old, a name that still echoed in the halls of Heaven itself though its owner's footfalls had long since fallen silent there; a name that struck fear or awe into the hearts of those who heard it. A name-

"AZAZEL! HAVE YOU FINISHED THAT PAPERWORK YET?!"

A name whose owner didn't appreciate his subordinate yelling after all the sake he'd drunk the previous night.

Groaning and massaging his temples, the Fallen Angel Governor, Leader of the Grigori, opened bleary eyes and glared at the doorway to his office. "C'mon Shem, can't you just give me a few minutes?" He complained. "You know what Inari's stuff does to me."

"And so do you, but that doesn't stop you drinking it by the barrel!" The other Fallen's voice declared, drawing a wry chuckle from his leader.

"Ah, but it's always worth it for a night with that vixen!" He declared, drawing a pair of dismayed groans from beyond the door.

"I can't believe we're still letting him make that pun after two hundred years…" Baraquiel complained, followed by Shemhazai sighing.

"If we just keep letting him do it, he'll eventually grow out of it. Just like his Blazing Shi-"

With a sound like tearing paper, the skin and yukata over a spot between Azazel's shoulder blades bulged and then erupted in a shower of ink-black feathers as a new limb grew there.

Extending for as long as Azazel himself was tall and then half again, the wing was the kind of black reserved for black holes and the void between galaxies, an endless darkness that almost seemed to look back if you stared at for long enough.

That same eldritch limb then extended itself seemingly of its own accord to punch straight through the wooden door and knock the Fallen Angel on the other side off his chair and to the floor.

A groan drifted through the hole in the wood, and looking through it, Azazel could see Baraqiel's face as he leaned over to check on his fellow Fallen.

The first Vice Governor of the Fallen Angels was another very human figure; the image of a gruff male in his late thirties, a full head of black hair still present in a spiky beard that framed his entire face and jutted out at the sideburns, skin that was tanned but not leathery, and eyes a somewhat darker shade of lavender than Azazel's.

He was dressed in a white shirt and black slacks with suspenders, looking like he wouldn't be out of place lounging around in a black-and-white mafia movie somewhere. "Perhaps. Who knows; maybe you'll grow out of mentioning that every week eventually, too."

Shemhazai groaned from his position amidst the broken floorboards, where his head was smoking slightly amidst the cloud of wood particles that used to be the office floor. His appearance was that of a pale, handsome man in his mid-twenties, with silvery-white hair and pale lavender eyes.

Being the slightly more serious of the trio on a day-to-day basis, he usually wore his 'working' outfit around the headquarters - namely, a purple beret (which was also part of every other outfit he owned), a purple trench coat over a black vest, white pants and black boots.

He picked himself up out of the wooden crater, rubbing the utterly unmarked side of his head and shaking it slightly to rid it of wood dust, then glanced at the damage to the door and floor.

There was a faint golden shimmer over both areas, then wood seemed to crawl out of thin air, writhing into place and taking the position of what had been there before.

An almost-invisible twitch of one finger disturbed the air currents in the room, causing a momentary wind which gathered the clouds of splinters and wood dust before carrying them into a bin set against the wall.

In under five seconds, the room looked exactly as it had done before Azazel's actions.

The second Vice Governor of the Grigori shook his head, sending a baleful look into the wood that currently shut Azazel's desk away from his and Baraqiel's, allowing the Governor to sit in complete darkness, nurse his hangover and procrastinate over doing his paperwork again.

Or, in other words, do exactly the same thing as he'd been doing for the past three weeks as he waited for some new fancy to take him.

Shemhazai himself had to admit that he was almost hoping for another border skirmish with the Devils or perhaps some new instance of Kokabiel's war-mongering, just so long as it would break the monotony.

The Underworld was a far cry from Heaven; there was never boredom among the Host, but down in the shadows of this sunless world, the dreary eternity dragged on and on, shifting like molasses.

It might be a life away from the constantly restrictive laws and regulations of Heaven...but dammit, he really needed something to do-!

Both Shemhazai and Baraqiel turned towards the door to their office at the same time, a few seconds before someone knocked on the wood.

"Enter!" Baraqiel called, and a Fallen Angel with the appearance of a brunette woman in her teens pushed open the door.

She was dressed in the white overcoat which signified the Grigori's medical personnel, beneath which would be hospital scrubs conjured for the day ahead and easily dissolved to constituent magic at night so as to prevent any need for washing - but more important to the Governors was the worried expression she wore.

"What is it...Coretha?" Shemhazai asked, recalling her name as she was one of the more recent six-wing Fallen. She was a fairly young thing all told - barely into the second half of her second millennium.

"The Reclamation Script for Malachi triggered…" She began, drawing a tired sigh from both Shemhazai and Baraqiel - both of whom knew their leader would have closed his eyes in his office.

He always took such failures harder than anyone else.

"So, yet another brother lost to us…" Baraqiel noted, before frowning as he noted the vaguely shifty expression on Coretha's face and the way she fidgeted with her fingers.

"Well...that's what I'm here about…" She began, her nerves increasing by the moment as Shemhazai and Baraqiel stared at her, finding her words failing her - then a pair of warm hands landed on her shoulders, and she looked startled over her shoulder to find the smiling face of Azazel looking back at her.

"Take it easy, Coretha." He told her, squeezing her shoulders lightly. "Breathe deep and let it out, then tell us what you came to."

Nodding somewhat dumbly, the Fallen did as she was bidden. "When the Script returned to the Medical Wing, we expected to find Malachi's corpse; since there haven't been any patients today, we went to get it ready for burial then and there…"

Azazel nodded encouragingly, and Coretha continued. "But when we checked the Homecoming Chamber, we found...well...we're not sure who."

The Governor frowned, bringing a hand up to stroke his goatee. "You mean you don't recognise their appearance?"

Coretha shook her head. "No - but it wasn't just that; we considered something like plastic surgery or some kind of magical shape-shifting, even Malachi somehow getting access to his old powers. That's why we ran some deeper tests.

"Whoever they are, they bear all the traces of the Reclamation Script - but at the same time, they register as someone...as something...completely different to Malachi."

Azazel raised an eyebrow. "Something?"

Coretha nodded. "Somehow...the readings we got back from the analysis spells say that they're part-Fallen, part-Human."

Baraqiel stiffened in his seat, while Azazel's eyebrow was joined by its twin. "Well then…" He muttered, his eyes starting to gleam. "That is interesting."

With a casual wave of his hand, a white overcoat not dissimilar to the one worn by Coretha herself appeared over the Fallen's yukata, while a white surgical mask and a hair-net also appeared to adorn him.

Pulling on a pair of elbow-length white gloves, the Fallen Governor turned on his heel and marched out of the office to begin descending the spiral staircase leading up the tower which supported the workspace. "Come, Coretha!" He declared. "We have a mystery to solve - for science!"

"A-ah, right Lord Azazel!" The younger Fallen scrambled, scurrying out the door and leaving it to swing close behind her.

In the now silent room, Shemhazai looked over at Baraqiel. The Angel of Lightning's eyes had slid shut as he leaned on his desk, his fingers interlaced as he almost seemed to bow over his own joined hands. "She's still young yet." Shemhazai noted, turning back to his own small mountain of paperwork. "She'll come around in time."

"Should she really, though?" The other Fallen whispered, drawing a shrug from Shemhazai.

"I'm not one to give advice on family matters." He stated. "But when she finally outgrows that human mindset of hers, she'll come to realise holding a grudge means nothing."

Baraqiel grunted. "You and I should know better than most what a 'grudge' can mean, old friend."

Idly, Shemhazai reached over his shoulder, touching the spot from which the first of his ten black wings would appear with a mere thought. "Perhaps." He whispered. "Perhaps."

I opened my eyes.

Then I blinked, muttered "What the fuck...?" under my breath, and closed them again for a few seconds.

'Alright. I definitely bled to death just now; I had the whole fuzzy-thoughts thing, my vision faded to black, I couldn't breathe...yeah, I definitely bled to death.'

That fact affirmed in my head, I re-opened my eyes, staring at the white-tile ceiling above my head. 'So either I was somehow revived and I'm waking up in a hospital...or...'

I tried to sit up and get a look at my surroundings – but when I did so, I felt a resistance at my throat, which started light but rapidly increased to choking as I kept moving.

Immediately dropping my head back down, feeling my breath coming quicker as I recalled all-too clearly the feeling of asphyxiation I'd experienced only minutes ago by my reckoning, I instead raised only my head to look down my body-

And found myself lying on a plain white sheet, laid on a bed with a metal frame, surrounded by mint-green hospital curtains – the same colour as the hospital gown I myself was wearing.

But slightly more attention-grabbing were the bands around my wrists and ankles.

Despite their golden-yellow colouration they were almost see-through, obviously not fully corporeal; the best comparison I had was a hologram, light that had been re-ordered into shapes which formed an ethereal image.

Squinting, I found I could get a surprisingly good look at their forms, considering I was looking down the length of my own not-inconsiderable frame...but I supposed the bonds' seemingly light-based composition might have an impact there.

Rather than being actual bonds, I discovered, they were more like loops of characters; characters I didn't recognise, but which swirled and curved to form inhumanly elegant script that seemed almost familiar to me.

They linked together in a ceaseless loop, then seemingly fed into another line that connected to an identical loop around the frame of the bed, acting like mystical handcuffs.

Mystical – because even if I was jumping the gun a bit, I could only attribute bonds like those to magic of some kind.

I blew out a breath, closing my eyes again and thumping my head back against the pillow it was lying on. 'Well, I'm definitely not in Aberdeen anymore. So this is...what? Reincarnation? Possession? Transmigration? An afterlife?'

There were too many options – too many possibilities, though being under some kind of magical restraint limited them mostly to the more fantastical options.

'Well, I'm not going to find out if I just lay here.' I decided, looking left and right without raising my head.

The room stretched out on either side of me, lines of the same generic beds-with-curtains that I was lying on pushed up against the white walls while a walkway of sorts had been left clear down the middle of the room. The floor itself was linoleum or something like it, coloured the same white as damn-near everything else in the room.

'Maybe this is Limbo.' I considered, before starting to test the bindings on my wrists and ankles. 'Well, if so, all the more incentive to find myself something to do – starting with getting on my feet.'

As expected, my limbs experienced the same gradually increasing resistance as my neck had done, and I paused to think.

'Alright – logic dictates that I, of all people, am not going to overcome magical bindings with brute strength. So, how am I going to get around them?'

Well, that was a simple enough answer. 'If the door is unbreakable, smash the frame.'

I focussed on my right wrist, and – with a moment's stretching – found that I could wrap my hand around the part of the frame where the 'cuff' was anchored.

Doing so with my left wrist as well and finagling my left ankle until I had hooked my left foot beneath the frame as an extra hold, I started to pull myself as hard as I could toward the left side of the bed, still pulling on the anchoring area of the frame with my right hand.

A few seconds later I heard the squealing start, and that gave me a resurgence of confidence that helped me grit my teeth and pull harder.

The squealing grew louder and louder, the bed-frame deforming, until the metal finally gave up the ghost and snapped.

I took deep breaths, relaxing my hands and foot while the chunk of badly deformed metal slid out of the anchoring loop on my right wrist, leaving the holographic cuff hanging from my wrist like a strange bracelet.

"That...actually worked..." I panted, shaking my head a bit. "Man, I thought it'd be more work than that..."

With my hand free, I twisted to my side as much as I could manage before being stopped by my neck and ankle bindings, managing to get my right hand onto the bed-frame beside my left hand.

With a hand on either side of the left-wrist binding's anchor loop, I started to push and pull at the same time, the metal twisting almost immediately until it too snapped, this time in the space of only a few seconds.

Then, I brought both my hands up to my throat, feeling the strap across it.

It was almost like touching crystal – nearly frictionless, a bit warm, and there was an almost imperceptible vibration beneath my fingertips. It felt like I should almost be able to make some sense of it if I listened closely enough...

But I shook off that distraction, instead working my fingers beneath the band, bracing my elbows against the mattress and pushing.

First my elbows, then the area of my back, starting sinking ridiculously deep into the mattress as I kept pushing, leaving me at least three inches deep before I realised I suddenly had a new option available to me.

So I switched my grip, reversing it so my fingers were facing toward my face instead of away, then started to tilt my head forward, touching my chin to my chest.

It took some serious bending of my neck, as well as my spine so I could lower my torso and give myself more clearance, but I finally managed to push my head forward enough beneath the binding that when I stopped pushing, my neck was free of its confines.

I took a few moments to rest, panting as I lay on the bed and finding myself rather surprised that I wasn't a hot, sweaty mess. In fact, I barely even felt tired or sore, despite contorting myself and doing all the pushing and pulling I had done.

A creeping suspicion entered my mind, and I brought my right arm up in front of my face, examining it.

It was my arm – I could tell; I'd been using the same one for eighteen years. I was rather attached to it. Thus, I knew its shade well, knew the veins and the fingers.

However, what really got me was that it seemed...better.

The biggest immediate change was the lack of hair; the criss-crossing, sweeping black follicles that were usually so obvious against my skin had vanished. The birth-mark on the back of my right hand was gone, as was the small scar across the knuckle of my pinky finger. The tiny sun-spots, all the little bumps and ridges, even the scabs from scratching my outer arm too much; they were all gone, too.

I ran my left hand along the limb's length and found that it was almost perfectly smooth; it was warm, and I could feel the touch, but to my left hand my right felt almost like touching stone wrapped in a hot water bottle; it was warm, there was give, but it was obvious that there was a solidity at the core which couldn't be denied.

It was unmistakably my arm – but at the same time, it was like someone had chosen to try and create an artistic representation of my arm, then gone overboard with the aesthetic improvements.

I flexed the limb, and the swell of my bicep was almost like someone had emptied their lungs into a balloon beneath my skin.

That cinched it. I tried to keep in shape, but I'd never had a result like that before.

Someone had been playing silly buggers with my body, and I had no idea just what they'd done.

Now with more of an imperative to get up and moving than ever, I sat up and leaned forward, repeating the same strategy for my ankle-bindings that I'd used on my left wrist.

With my ankles free, I immediately got off the bed, looking back at it.

The mattress had a Drew-shaped indentation a couple of inches deep; there were four rather obvious chunks missing from the frame, other parts of which had bent and twisted as I tore myself free; and there was still a glowing band of that written-light over where my neck had been.

'No way to fix any of that.' I shook my head, sighing.

There'd be no 'Did he vanish into thin air?' or 'Was there ever anyone here?' thoughts among my captors; no, it was going to be incredibly obvious that I'd escaped, and there was pretty much nothing I could do about that.

So I looked around the room instead, searching for a way out.

I spotted one a good ways along the hall (it was more of a hall than a room, I could see now – it might not have been all that wide, but it was long), and set off at a brisk pace, hearing a crystalline ringing as my ankle-bindings dragged across the floor.

I examined the double-doors I had spotted more closely once I reached them. They were wooden, with brass handles, and looked entirely out of place as a portal to a medical facility.

They were engraved, too; intricate, curving designs that reminded...me...of...

I brought my right arm up, dangling the binding stuck on my wrist in front of my eyes so I could compare its script to the door.

Not a perfect match, but they were more than similar enough.

"So they put some kind of spell on the door." I muttered to myself, frowning as I lowered my arm. "Makes sense, I guess…"

But how was I going to get past it? Touching it would just be asking for trouble, and even if I was apparently stronger than I used to be now, I wasn't certain of my ability to break down the doorframe around them - besides, there might be wires or something in there, which would make my decision to stick my unprotected arm in there a rather stupid one.

I tapped my chin, glancing around to see if inspiration would strike…

And my eyes fell on one of the beds.

I considered. 'On the one hand, it's really obvious, it'll be loud, and I'm not even sure if it'll work properly. On the other hand, my other options are staying here and trying to ambush whoever comes through the door or breaking through the wall by hand, since laying hands on the enchanted door is just plain foolish.'

Well, I'd already died once - what harm would it be to take a little risk now?

So, I walked over to the bed, crouched down beside it, firmed my grip on the underside of the frame, and lifted.

It came up easily; I got the piece of furniture to eye-level with no real struggle at all, even though I was having to grip it tightly enough to stop it rotating around the part of the frame I was holding it by.

I revised my estimate of how strong I was now, pacing over to the door and swinging my arms back and forth a couple of times, getting a feel for the bed's weight.

Which, to my arms, apparently wasn't much - but it was still there, and I could still use it.

So, I swung the whole bed back until it was almost vertical, then brought it forwards with as much of my strength behind it as I could manage.

The resulting cacophonous smash of metal on wood, accompanied by a sound rather like a mirror breaking which came with a flash of golden light, was echoed an instant later by the bed-frame leaving my hands in a burst of movement as it was flung into the hall's opposite wall, where it embedded itself in the material and didn't fall.

'I guess it had some kind of force-reflection on it, then.' I considered, eyeing the shattered doors where they barely hung on their hinges. 'Well, I've already tripped any alarms they might've had, so no point hanging back any longer.'

I moved up to the left-hand door, clenched a fist, then punched at the frame - remembering the trick to hitting something full-force was to swing for what was behind it, instead.

As such, I envisioned punching into the open air in the room or corridor beyond the frame, and in doing so I overrode my natural inclination to hold back on a punch to a solid object.

The chunk of wooden frame I had aimed at exploded outwards and splintered, taking the hinge with it and leaving the door to collapse over onto the floor beyond the hospital ward. I took the new opening to walk through the doorway, carefully not stepping on the door itself in case there was still some active spell on it, rubbing my fist.

'Not even a bruise; barely even a twinge.' I noted. 'No splinters, no cuts, no blood. Just what the hell did these people do to me?'

I emerged into a corridor even longer than the room I had just exited; it was dark, despite being lit with torches every few paces and by the large windows set into the wall opposite me, which were multi-foot, arched constructions of thick glass with wooden struts inside them.

'It's like I'm in a castle or something.' I noted, stepping forward to a window after checking both ways down the corridor in case someone was coming. 'But where I am is the questi...on…'

My thoughts trailed off as I stared out the window, then swallowed heavily. "Oh. Bugger."

The world outside the window was barely lit; there was a kind of malignant purple-ish glow from the inky black sky, which bore not a single star, but it didn't seem to do much to brighten the ground, which seemed to be mostly bare rock with coatings of ash or something similar.

Clouds that looked like they were also ash floated above like boulders waiting to fall, casting shadows that made the ground below even darker.

There was no plant-life to be seen anywhere; not a single bird or other animal in sight.

Apart from the landscape, I could also see what must have been another part of the building I stood in; it was all dark brick, with the same large windows that just barely exhibited the glow of the torches within, and the part I could see looked rather like the wing of a mansion with several towers extending from its roof and continuing out of my sight.

"Just what the hell is this…?" I asked myself, a bit shakily if I'm honest. "Am I in Resident Evil or Castlevania or something?"

I clapped my hands to my cheeks, which gave much less of a sting than it used to but still managed to help me focus. "Alright - alright. First things first, people are going to be coming to check on me, what do I do?"

Stay, run, fight - those were my options.

If I fought, I'd be doing so with my new strength - but I had only ever been in one serious fight and it got me killed. I didn't have any weapons this time, and I was only dressed in a hospital gown. 'Not the best option.'

So, stay or run. If I ran, I'd be heading into what was quite possibly enemy territory with barely any clothes on my back and no knowledge; I wouldn't put any money on my being able to survive in the hellscape out the window and I had no idea if I'd be able to get any kind of supplies from around the building without running into someone and being forced to fight.

That left staying - and no sooner had I reached that thought than two figures rounded the corner at the other end of the corridor, then stopped and stared at me as I froze in place.

Both of them were in white coats, but the one on my left was rather obviously female, with long brown hair. The one on the right was taller, male, but wearing a hairnet and a surgical mask, along with long white gloves.

I couldn't make out many details - or, at least, I couldn't until I squinted a bit, at which point they sudden jumped into sharp relief...and I felt a shiver run down my spine.

Both of them had eyes that were, with only slight variation, the same colour as Malachi's had been.

"Oh? He's already up and about." The male one noted.

"But...but that should be impossible!" The female proclaimed. "I used the same Restraint Script that we used during the Great War - there should have been no way for him to leave his bed!"

"Well, one way or another Coretha he rather clearly has." The man commented, his eyes locked onto mine from across the distance separating us.

'He can make out my eyes as easily as I can see his; so, he has the same odd senses.'

If he had the senses, he also probably had the strength - that, and whatever weapons or other abilities their group or species possessed.

I gritted my teeth; fighting was definitely out of the question now, and running seemed like it would be a futile effort.

So instead, I stepped forward, keeping my head held high and my eyes locked with the male's gaze.

The man stepped forward too, apparently surprising his female compatriot as she had to take several quick steps to catch up, and we stopped when we were only a couple of feet apart.

The man was taller than me; not by a great deal, but still definitely taller. When he reached up and idly removed the surgical mask, which he tossed aside, he revealed a goatee'd face belonging to someone in their twenties to thirties.

I tried to think of something to say - something that would make the right first impression, that would make it clear I wasn't going to be a pushover (I hoped) and that I would like some answers to my situation.

I took a deep breath...and opened my mouth.

"So, what's up, Doc?"

Azazel raised an eyebrow above his surgical mask as he rounded the corner, finding the being whose presence he had been observing from a distance ever since Coretha informed him of their arrival standing outside the ruined remains of the infirmary doors, having just turned away from the window by the looks of things.

The tan skin was odd for any Fallen; even though it showed the trademark flawlessness that came as part-and-parcel of any Angel's existence, there wasn't any of the usual marble-paleness that seemed to shine in the dark.

Likewise, the lavender eyes of a Fallen were darker than normal on this one - almost at the tipping point into a particularly dark blue.

Apart from that, the build, magical presence and shoulder-length, wavy black hair were all about right for one of the Fallen…

Azazel noted that the wrist and ankle bindings Coretha placed were still around the being's limbs, so it hadn't broken them directly - which wasn't surprising, considering Azazel himself had designed that Script to be unbreakable by anyone with a power level beneath the Fourth Level.

Instead, it had somehow thought its way around the bindings and to freedom.

Azazel found himself rather amused at that, and his curiosity went up a notch.

He met the being's eyes the moment it looked up - and it took a moment, but he could see the slight narrowing of its eyes before they took on an inner glow, indicating the being was focussing its vision.

So, it did have access to at least one Fallen ability; that was interesting.

Even more interesting was when the being began walking forward, meeting and holding Azazel's gaze as it walked with a certain pride, despite wearing nothing more than a hospital gown.

Amused and curious, the Fallen Governor did likewise, coming to a stop barely two feet from the being as it looked up into his eyes.

Idly he wondered what it would say. Would it make a demand or a request? Would it plead or rage? Perhaps it was simply curious?

"So, what's up, Doc?"

Azazel blinked.

He...hadn't been expecting that.

"Not much." He replied, shrugging. "But my employee here found something interesting in the building today, so I thought I would come and take a look."

"Well, you've looked now." The being responded. "I've done some looking too - but what I've seen doesn't make much sense."

"Was that a question?" Azazel wondered aloud, and the being shrugged.

"It could be."

Azazel hummed, eyeing the being for a moment, before grinning. "Alright then - how about this? A question for a question; you can go first."

The being gave him a vaguely suspicious look, but nodded slowly. "Alright then…" It muttered, before glancing out a window. "Where are we?"

"The Underworld." Azazel informed it, cheerfully. "The Headquarters of the Grigori, to be exact."

He watched the being stand stock-still upon hearing the answer, the way its eyes lost focus indicating a great deal of thought occurring, before a laugh seemed to force its way from the being's throat. "Of course…" It gasped. "Of course, I'd end up in Hell...no good deed goes unpunished and all that…"

"My question next then." Azazel smiled, getting a nod from the being - who had stopped laughing, and was instead looking somewhat resigned. "Who are you?"

"Drew Campbell." Came the reply, before the being's mouth took on a sardonic twist. "A dead man walking."

Azazel noted the muttered continuation as Drew turned to look at him again. "What are you?" He asked. "'Cause I'm fairly sure Succubi are meant to be Greek," he gestured to Coretha, "and I always imagined that the Devil would look something like a mix of Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch."

Azazel blinked again, noting that Coretha did much the same thing beside him while mouthing the word 'Succubus…?' under her breath.

"Well, I'm not the Devil, though I do have him on speed dial." Azazel replied - and he wasn't even lying. "But I'm a Fallen Angel. And so's Coretha here."

Drew hummed. "Really? I always figured Fallen Angels would be eldritch abominations twisted and mutated by sin and corruption until they became utterly unholy monsters hell-bent on devouring souls."

It paused. "Or maybe I'm just basing all that on the Dresden Files, I don't know…"

"Well, I don't know what you imagined, but I know what I am, and that is a Fallen Angel." Azazel replied easily. "After all, if I wasn't a Fallen Angel, I wouldn't be able to do this."

There was a sound like an entire classroom's textbooks ripping themselves apart in seconds, before a group of mystically-black wings erupted from Azazel's back.

Twelve wings, in total - the mark of an Archangel, as Azazel himself once was. He remained the only Sixth Level Fallen in the Grigori; even Baraqiel and Shemhazai, while powerful, only bore ten wings apiece.

And the gap between a Sixth Level Fallen and a Fifth Level Fallen was as insurmountable as the peaks of Mount Olympus.

Beside Azazel, Coretha's own wings appeared; not so black as his own, more like the feathers of a crow or raven, but still the three pairs were unmistakably supernatural.

Drew watched with wide eyes as the new limbs appeared - then suddenly bent over, grabbing the fabric over its chest with a gasp.

A second later, a pair of black wings streaked with grey feathers erupted from his back, brushing against the ceiling with their tips and spanning from one side of the corridor to the other.

That still put them at a lesser length than Azazel or Coretha's - but that didn't seem so important to the man who was staring up at his new limbs in what appeared to be a chaotic blend of resignation, terror and amazement.

"And now, it seems, so are you."

Royal-purple eyes met Azazel's own lavender, which seemed to glow faintly in the not-light filtering through the twelve massive wings stretching from the Fallen Governor's back, and the newest Fallen Angel paused for a moment before letting out a long sigh.

"Fuck it; I was already going to hell."

And thus did my new life as an unholy affront to all that is pure and good in the world begin - because when it rains arterial spray, it pours bullshit.

Or something like that, anyway.

(PSIness11): I'll just get this out of the way, he brought this idea to me and I then proceeded to force him to write it.

Honestly, I did kinda want the excuse to write it - but at the same time I only really wanted to write a plot bunny, whereas under Ness this happened.

(PSIness11): Teninshigen - "This is sort of a plot bunny that I've been thinking about." Ness: "It's a story now mother fucker."

Yeah, that's…that's just about right.

Anyway, this chapter and the two I have in reserve are the only 'solidly planned' portions of this story - there are ideas about where it could go from there, which would likely involve quite a few OCs and a general exploration of the DxD world beyond just Kuoh and the Underworld. You'll note now and in the future that I probably seem to buff Fallen Angels quite a bit, among other differences from the canon universe - well there, you'll just have to excuse my artistic license, because I want the potential for interesting magic mechanics and fight scenes. And Hell, at least I'm not inventing some new Sacred Gear for my character (or, God forbid, a Longinus) or even giving him access to Devil magic (because trust me, that would be a recipe for disaster); and it's not like he's going to just stroll through the story like a bed of roses.

The road to Hell is paved with SI/OCs and the river running alongside is all their salty tears.

Of course, I don't always get what I want - so you can be the judge of whether or not I achieve my goals.

(PSIness11): Speaking of OCs… I have been put on creation duty for this story. So you'll definitely see my own personal flair in this. I've taken it upon myself to give Teninshigen ideas and whole non-canon arcs to develop the story, so expect to see a lot of love and work put into this story. Kinda like Press-Ganging My Friend into this Bizarre World.

Ah Press-Ganging - a whole lot of fun to write...even if it's apparently not so fun to read.

Ah well; we wouldn't write this stuff if we didn't enjoy doing it. *shrug*

See y'all next time!

(PSIness11): In about a day if my estimations are correct.

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