Well, you think, that was a thing.

You've received more personal attention—unless mission assignments count—from the most important members of the Grigori in the past three weeks than you had in the past three centuries before then. No wonder you were never noticed in the past, if it takes surviving your own death in order to become someone. Clearly you should try it again, just to see if you'll get a posthumous promotion or something this time around.

Shaking your head, you fetch your notes and pen. As always, there's much to be done – and while you might have plenty of time to do it in, you've already fallen into that trap once. The temptation still lingers beneath your thoughts, however; indolence is the ground state of most Fallen, and that means you need as much momentum as you can get. Hopefully there won't be too many more distractions between you and finishing off the first draft of your teleportation circles.

You decide to test out the chair Kokabiel left; you wish he hadn't been quite so rude about it, but it's true that you haven't got around to sprucing this place up yet. Soft black cushions, thick armrests, and, yes, a button to recline and kick out a footrest. You sit down, and for a moment all you can think is floof. What the fuck. How is it possible to be this comfortable?

Okay. Kokabiel can insult your living standards all he wants if he'll give you more chairs like this because God in Heaven you're not even sure you'd get out of it if Azazel asked you. While naked.

You lounge there for half an hour or so, drowning in relaxation, before you come to a horrifying realisation. This chair is too comfortable. You can't do any work like this; right now, you barely feel like doing anything at all.

You're going to have to get up.

This, beyond anything else, is true proof that the universe hates you.

Standing—slowly, regretfully—you move to your bed, stretch out, and start to write. It is, of course, entirely accidental that you're looking out the window and not toward the chair when you continue where you left off with your translation.

The rest of the night—and the following day—drifts away under the smooth strokes of your pen; you change positions on the covers so many times you stop counting, have to consult Dohnaseek's laptop three times an hour, and give thanks for Fubini's theorem every five minutes. Sometimes you are perfectly silent except for the soft susurration of pages beneath ink; others you curse profusely as you tear ten out in a row and start again.

Slowly, like you're trying to unravel the Gordian knot with nothing but a needle held between your teeth, a pattern emerges. Gremory's circle was inscrutable, switching between too many different languages and relying on a few too many unfamiliar principles that you can copy but not understand – but your own is unfolding like a flower before the sun.

You fill out three lines, your thoughts chorusing of course! instead of why?

Another thirty follow, and you can see the final shape as a shadow across your mind. Your hand is a blur across the paper. You just need to define this variable and calculate the probability that it will be here and use that to determine the expected value of the tolerances for this and your will be done.

Strewn across your bed are twenty-something pages of equations – only a few actually matter, the rest part of the journey but not the destination. You gather them up, your fingers shaking from the strain. You've been writing so much for so long—even with swapping between hands every now and then—that you can barely tell you've dropped the pen; your wrists feel like somebody replaced your bones with broken glass. Your throat is dry, and you have to look down to make sure there's not a hole in your stomach.

You don't care.

You pick up the pen, ignoring the numbing agony in your joints and the ache of your hunger, and free-hand a perfect circle from memory onto a fresh page. It seems fitting. Variables and definitions and equations spiral in from the edge of the circumference to the center – and then you repeat the process on another page.

You sit both on your kitchen bench and draw your ritual knife from the sheath on your hip. It gleams in your grip like a shard of sharpened sunlight. One quick cut across the Ring of Saturn on your palm—an act of defiance—lets you drip a line of star-bright blood across each circle. Against all odds, the paper does not burn; you seep your Light through each glittering drop, and so they instead fall into the ink, tracing each symbol in white fire like the edges of an eclipse.

The first circle, you leave on the bench while you wait for your skin to heal – the second, you move to the floor afterward. You return briefly to your suitcase to fetch a coin from Kalawarner's wallet, and set it in the centre of the circle on the floor.

You inhale, drawing Light as well as air, and clap your hands.

The Earth does not move.

The coin, however, does.

There is no great fanfare. No blinding flare of light or Light. Just a soft, subtle sound, like the whisper of a breeze, as one moment the coin is on the floor and the next it is on the table.

Triumph wells in your breast, a surging, exultant tide. You feel like you're flying.

This is the proof that you can be greater than you were. You could never make teleportation work, before. Too weak and too stupid. But you've done it. You've fucking done it. Part of you wishes God wasn't dead, just so He could witness you in the moment of your glory and realise He was wrong to make you so small.

You want to drag Ruri into your bed—better, your chair—and not leave until tomorrow. You want to clap your hands again and again and watch as the coin skips between the circles – so you do, laughing. You want to call Mittelt and shove your success in her face. Who's the better ritual sorcerer now, huh?

But you can't.

You clap one final time, and the coin settles back onto the floor.

Wherever she is, she'd better be fucking jealous.

You take a couple of steps forward to gather up the circles and collapse.

Vaguely, you realise you were only standing through determination and exhilaration. You poured so much power into testing the teleporters over and over that your soul is little more than a sparking ember, the bones of your hands feel like blades plunged into your skin, and you haven't eaten in almost thirty-six hours – or eaten anything of substance in closer to seventy-two.

This is… probably bad.

You're having a hard time mustering up any concern, though.

The floor is soft.

You think you'll just lay

here

a wh—

Angels, Fallen or otherwise, do not sleep.

They can, however, pass out.