The silence was so stifling that you could have heard a pin falling, let alone hitting carpet.
"...say what now?" Blitz finally broke the spell of the room.
"So these are your lackeys for your quest to bring down the fool who thinks himself a king? I might have thought better of you, Samuel. Your last endeavor at least employed an Overlord, two mafiosos and the Swindler Incarnate. Tell me something, are you giving yourself a handicap? Because if you are, I can only say bravo to your confidence."
"That's the fucking Radio Demon," the third Sinner in the room said. She was a former corporate shark, likely from the 1990's; he could tell that without even Looking Within from the way she was dressed. She looked so utterly out of her depth in the presence of the most feared Sinner in all of Hell that she looked like her body was about to melt down into a puddle and seep away.
"Yeah, we know that," Blitz said, disregarding her out of hand. Ordinarily, Sam was confident that would be a mistake. Ice Elementals didn't control water, exactly. They extracted energy from objects, fucking with their entropy-state to such an extent that she could make the temperature differential make you explode. She could reduce a man's body to Absolute Zero at a touch in seconds, and if she really wanted to, she could make it even colder than that. "So what'd'ya mean you've 'already killed' Birch?"
"Well that's a meagre and uninteresting tale in most circumstances," Alastor said, swishing his cane and thunking it onto the floor, crossing his fingers atop it. "You see, back in around 1931, I got a grand idea in my head that I was going to become powerful. And to do that, I needed bodies to lay as the bricks of my path. Fools, vagabonds, derelicts, the uncouth, the unworthy, anybody whom I found that disagreed with my sensibilities, I buried. And as I was doing this, I came upon the attention of some evangelical mystic who was bilking a bunch of fools under the pretense of predictions of Armageddon."
"Birch was an apocalyptic preacher? He didn't seem the type," Sam said.
"I never claimed for a moment that he believed the drivel he was spewing. Only that he was quite adept at spewing it. He saw me as a convenient scapegoat to rile his congregation against, a monster that he could exhort them to murder, and then blackmail them with the fact that they had killed a man. Of course, that wasn't how it turned out," Alastor's grin was wide, and nostalgic. "I plowed through their unbroken ranks like a tractor-harvester, and by the end of that fine September night, I had forty one more carcasses to do with as I pleased."
"Birch couldn't have been pleased with that," Sam pointed out.
"No, he wasn't. From a method I never discovered, he learned some form of Angelic Wyrding, a way to make his words seem more profound. A parlour trick to bend the minds of fools. He tried using it against me," Alastor paused for effect, swinging his gaze off of Sam and to the third Elemental in the room. Sam was pretty sure she pissed herself. "I. Did. Not. Bend."
He then broke off and started to pace the small space that the office offered. "After I ripped his tongue out and he choked to death on his own blood, I had nearly forgotten about him. Just another frankly unremarkable stepping stone to my own personal goals," Alastor said. And if Birch, with a prototype of his Compelling Voice, was considered 'unremarkable' to Alastor while he was still alive, it gave a lot of context to the kind of life he had lived, in the age that he had been flesh and blood. "Until one day, I get a knock on the Hazbin Hotel's doors. And when I open them, I find a surprising sight. A contrite looking hellhound, and a distracted fool of an imp, with a picture of my own carcass," he produced the picture between his fingers, flicking it onto the table in front of Moxxie and Millie. When the imp picked it up, Sam could see that Birch had written 'What Goes Around Comes Around' on the back of it.
The Ice Elemental had been edging toward the door, but was stopped when Alastor's back straightened, and turned to face her directly. She let out a terrified, strangled noise in her throat. "I don't know you, do I?"
"No... no you don't," she said, shaking her head as she trembled. "...sir?"
"Don't call me 'Sir'; my father was a 'Sir', and not the good kind," Alastor said. He leaned toward Sam. "Let's just say he was proud of those white robes in his closet, before I burned him to death in them. But as for you, you don't belong here. This is a conversation amongst conspirators. And unless you are willing to throw your might against the might of Ruin itself, you had best skip along."
"Yes sir. Thank you sir," she said, pulling the door open and evacuating at a sprint. Krieg, who had been sliding along the wall behind Alastor's back was forestalled when Alastor rolled his eyes, then turned to face her directly.
"And as for you. Have we met somewhere?"
"Absolutely not," Krieg said.
"Hm... are you sure? Maybe I met a relative of yours?" he prodded.
"Quite impossible," Krieg said, sweating buckets.
"Really?" Alastor leaned in, his back extending and hunching, his limbs beginning to grow crooked. "Because I could have sworn I had met your kind before..." But the instant that the eye Sam was privy to seeing turned into a radio dial, Sam grabbed his forearm. Alastor's head spun to him with the crunch of breaking bone. Sam simply glared at him for a moment, managing only to swallow for nerves rather than blanch and flee as his instincts had once demanded of him.
"Krieg," Sam said, "is a Thaumaturge, recently immigrated from Lust Ring. Are you really going to throw away your second chance since coming to Hell to learn the one form of magic in Hell that you're missing?"
There was a loud, crushed bone crack as Alastor pulled himself directly back into his civilian form, his grin no longer murderous but rather... patronizing.
"Oh, you have no sense of humor. I was merely getting a rise out of the girl. No harm intended," he said, but that was a blatant lie. Sam knew that his intervention likely saved Krieg's life.
"Sooo... what exactly are you gettin' out of doing all this bullshit again?" Blitz asked, scratching his head with his gun-barrel.
"When I did it for myself, it was a rather euphoric experience," Alastor said. "Something practically mind-destroying in bliss, soul-sundering in pain, and ego-killing in alienation. It was so beyond my comprehension at the time that during its entirety, I was little better than a gibbering moron, drooling into my own lap. There are doubtless myriad fine features and details that I utterly missed in the procession from lead into gold. I believe that if I have the opportunity to view the process again, this time from the Outside, I could learn something of world-shaking significance."
"You're not going to survive against Birch without the 37 Oaths. And he wants to run a few guinea pigs through the process," Sam said. "You still won't..."
"You will not undergo the process, Samuel. I'm not going to waste the time and effort. Pearls before swine, and all that," Alastor said. It was frustrating that Alastor wouldn't explain why. But given that Sam was doing just as much harm to these imps by winding them up with power and pointing them at his enemy, he wasn't exactly standing on the moral high ground to gainsay him.
"So... what do we do now?" Moxxie asked.
"What else? We partake in the oldest science known to mankind. Alchemy of the soul. The Lapis Philosophorum. We turn you vile little creatures..." Alastor smiled down at them in a most unkind manner, "into something that will break the bones of God."
Chapter 30
If You've Gotta Do Something Stupid, At Least Be Smart About It
"Are you alright?" Moxxie asked. Krieg had been keeping as much distance between herself and the Radio Demon as she could muster. Which was the sane thing to do, because this was the fucking Radio Demon.
"That... is the Crone-slayer," she whispered, voice a bare hiss that he could barely make out, no doubt redoubling her effort to not have it reach the tall red Sinner that now engaged in magical theory with the burning Elemental who, of all Sinners Moxxie had ever encountered, didn't seem terrified of him. "He unpeopled Pride of the entire branch of Cruac Clan in a month!"
"I know. But he doesn't seem like he knows. Or maybe he doesn't care," Moxxie said.
"He knows," Millie said, as she sharpened one of her knives.
Krieg made a desperate gesture at Alastor's back, but Millie shook her head.
"Mox is right. He don't care none. As long as you ain't tryin' to do somethin' stupid to him in the name of revenge, he'll let you be with no more than a li'l heart attack," Millie said.
"And what base you this opinion on?" Krieg asked. "You saw the way he looked upon me!"
"Call it a woman's intuition," she said, reaching over and pinching Krieg's cheek. The teenager let out a growl and swatted at Millie's hand, only to have Millie chuckle richly and go back to her knives. Moxxie knew that common sense dictated that approaching the Radio Demon for any reason was taking his life into his hands. He also knew that common sense had departed the entire company from the moment that Blitz stole that book from the Prince of Flowers, which was to say, you had to leave it at the door, and if you were lucky you could pick it up again when you left each evening. With that understanding in tow, he straightened his suit, adjusted his tie, and moved toward the towering Sinner.
When Alastor's neck spun around like an owl's, Moxxie damned near fell onto his face, as his entire body locked up in primal fright. He cleared his throat – painfully, because it felt like there was something tied around his esophagus – and raised a hand. "Excuse me. I could use some help with..." he motioned toward the work he'd done on the whiteboard. Alastor's head turned even further, then his body pivoted the wrong way to it, meaning his head had to have done more than 360 degrees to get to that position, and he stared at the imp's work.
"Ordinarily, I would lambast you for your folly, but considering how little you have to work with, it's a minor miracle you've managed to do as well as you have, little mage," Alastor said.
"I'm... not a thaumaturge?" Moxxie said.
"Oh, one of you is. You little creatures, you're all so similar to me," Alastor said with a dismissive flick of his hand. "As I said, a wonderful first try, but you're missing the biggest piece of Step One. You can have all the Special Bloods, all of the Knowns and Natures and declarations of intent, but if you don't have a piece of Grace, the whole thing is a complete non-starter!"
"Grace?" Sam asked. "I'm sensing a capital letter there, so... what exactly is Grace?"
"It is a fragment of a Power. Either permission given by one of the most puissant factors in reality, or a stolen piece of their might," Alastor said. He swept his arm and created a strange, angular symbol in red light before him. As Sam watched, the red mouldered over with black until it was darker than death and crumbling under its own weight. "I decided that I wasn't going to hitch my wagon to anybody who might decide to yank my reins. After all, I wanted power. I wanted permission. And to have unlimited power, I needed to have unlimited freedom."
"You stole your 'Grace'," Sam confirmed.
"Yes, from a being calling itself Angra Manyu. She was quite annoyed at that. Declared me her Enemy Undying over it," Alastor said. "Pity she can't breach the walls of Hell and get me, isn't it?"
"You're going to need to unpack that a bit," Sam said. "What exactly does 'Grace' entail? How did you steal it? What are its effects?"
"Grace is Grace," Alastor said. "It is an aspect of one of the Powers that be. Any sufficiently world-shaking entity has the capacity to bestow Grace, or have that Grace stolen from them. I'm sure if you asked politely, you could accept the yolk of Lucifer to fuel this little shard of insanity."
"He wouldn't, not considering we're trying to kill his Proxy," Moxxie pointed out.
"You might be surprised," Alastor said, then turned and waved his hand before the white board. Everything written on it was erased and new symbols and icons appeared on its surface in dried blood. "Beyond the irascible liege-lord of this Hellish kingdom, there are others, of course. If you're willing to find them. Most of them stay away from Hell, but they're rife across the Living World."
"Not Armageddon, but another kind of apocalypse, then," Sam repeated, as though from a near-forgotten conversation.
"Perhaps. After all, it was supposed to be Heaven's duty to expunge the taint of the Powers From Outside from all places above Hell's grasping reach. A duty that they have been frightfully neglecting over the last few centuries," Alastor said.
"So we should find one on Earth, then," Moxxie said, thumping his fist into his hand.
"If you feel up to the prospect of bushwhacking a primordial force of nature the likes of which even mad men see in their darkest nightmares," Alastor said, his smile filled with cruel mirth. "After all, a worldly Power is one that I would be in no position to assist you with, even had I the inclination to play gopher with your laundry list."
"...o...kay?" Moxxie said.
"What other Powers are there?" Sam asked.
"Well, the only one I could walk up to is Lucifer, contained within Pride as I am," Alastor straightened his back and started to pace again. "But there are others. Satan, of course, is one. And Belphegor's creation, the Delirium Engine, now likely counts for a second. But I question how much compliance you could get out of that living conglomeration of brass, steam, muscle, sinew, and nightmare."
"Satan, though," Sam said. "Because of the Altar of Worms, I take it?"
"Yes, he has that six tonne brick wrapped 'round his finger," Alastor said. He then paused, and tilted a smile toward the imps behind him. "Do you have any idea how annoyed Lucifer is that people pray to Satan, but not him?"
"How would we even get Satan's Grace?" Sam asked, trying to keep the Radio Demon on topic and in his lane.
"I... um... might know a way," Moxxie said, raising a finger. All turned to him. "Satan doesn't exactly make it secret that he still despises Lucifer. The personal philosophies of the two of them are almost diametrically opposed. Satan derides everything that Lucifer cherishes, and Lucifer mocks everything that Satan holds dear. If we were to make a formal request, maybe work with his Sons and Daughters, we might be able to work something out with him. He would probably give Grace just on the chance that it could be used to annoy Lucifer, let alone harm him in any material way."
"Wait, so religion actually matters after all? Who the fuck decided that?" Blitz piped up. Krieg swatted him with a silencing gesture.
"I mean... it might work," Moxxie admitted. He gave a guilty shrug. "I haven't been in a temple since our wedding. I haven't been to a proper service in years before that. He doesn't hold lapsed Satanists in very high regard. But lacking any other options, its something we can try."
"Satan's Grace is our Plan A, then," Sam said. "What's our Plan B?"
"You're not going to like this one," Alastor said. "Do you know what other Power we could call upon here in Hell that would be opposed to Lucifer innately, if at the significant chance that he would kill us all just for being loathsome sinners?"
"...The Taxiarch," Sam muttered.
"Yes of course the Taxiarch, the Archangel Michael!" Alastor gleefully expounded.
"Why would he ever work with hellspawn, though?"
"I don't know, and I don't even have to care," Alastor said. "You asked for Powers that would work against Lucifer, not the price you would have to pay to get their say-so. If even one of you little creatures survives long enough to gain Grace, then I will show you the path. I want to see what I missed the first time. And you will be very enlightening to me when you open pandora's box and release the monsters even God thought forgotten."
Plan A didn't involve asking for assistance from an Archangel, so Moxxie jumped on that one as soon as he was allowed out of the room. There were very few Satanic Temples in the ring of Pride. Considering the King of All Hell's disdain for any religion which didn't host him as the central figure, not really surprising. There were a few places that managed to eke out an existence beneath Lucifer's radar, though. And Moxxie knew of one of them in Imp City itself.
The building looked like a dilapidated meat-packing plant that had worked with only the worst cuts of meat when it was active and now was consigned to the slow devolution into scrap and rubble by apathy and the ruthless march of decay. It was one of the ten-a-penny ruins of Pride's Second City, the home of all those things which had more claim to Hell than any human Sinner ever could. And it disappeared into the background of urban sprawl and urban decay so effortlessly that unless Moxxie had been specifically told about it when he emigrated to Pride, he would never have found it in an imp's lifetime.
Since the great factory doors to the building were well and truly rusted shut, Moxxie took the side path that lead into the interior, via a crack in the wall and foundation. He had to descend to almost sewer level before the collapsed infrastructure ended, then a well tended, fairly fresh-poured concrete stairway began to lead back up. The lights were still dim in the stairway, because this edifice survived in not calling attention to itself. Only when he reached the top of those stairs, which emptied into what had once been a foreman's office, that Moxxie saw a single soul involved with the whole affair.
Wearing red robes marked with three frogs – Satan's personal crest – the doorwoman was a Fury, one of the heavily muscled mostly-female fiends endemic to Wrath. "What are you doin' here, kid?" she demanded.
"Coming home," Moxxie said.
"Home does not want you," she answered his call.
"Then I will tear it down and build a new one," Moxxie finished. The fury looked him up and down, then leaned in and smelled him, which was a bit rude.
"You stink of Pride, Wrathling. When was the last time you were in your Home Ring?" the Fury asked, her stance relaxing somewhat.
"About a year ago. Harvest Moon festival."
"Fun times. Didn't that year's Harvest Games end in a tie? That never happens," the fury noted, giving her head a shake.
"Strange times in Hell," Moxxie didn't want to spend all day here, so he just gestured in, and the fury swept the beyond-black cloth out of his way. As she did, the noise from within suddenly reached him, no longer blocked by the ensorcelled cloth. Below, she could hear the low, deep drone of the chorus in litany, as a scattering of imps, fiends, and even a couple of Sinners sat in pews facing an altar that showed a caricature of Satan wrought in slightly crusty iron with his arms outstretched.
The whole thing left Moxxie a little uncomfortable. Despite every attempt at it, Moxxie grew up being a fairly areligious person. He didn't have faith in Satan. He didn't pray to Satan. He was fairly certain that if he admitted out loud those things to his parents, they would go into apoplexy and die on the spot. But the fact was, there was no faith-shaped hole in his life. That wasn't to say he spat on Satanism and all it stood for. In fact, it was a perfectly valid source of moral teachings. That the weak ought obey the strong, because the strong had a responsibility for the weak and not just because they were too powerful to be disobeyed. That some evils were too low for any demon in good standing to even entertain. That there should be structure and direction to society. He just didn't feel any pull toward the spiritual side of it.
While one red-robed Son of Satan continued the litanies, and several others added to the gut-shaking drone of the Canticles, yet others moved through the pews and the crowds. If they were anything like the Aspirants that had done the Small Works of the Temple in Moxxie's old home in Crooked Bone, they would be speaking in hushed tones to the congregants, to understand the privation and want that they were suffering, and then give the pastoral care that Satan doled out. Often, it was a 'get it out then get the fuck back to work', because there was little sympathy for lazy people in Wrath. Sometimes it entailed more involved advice.
A few times, if the Son or Daughter of Satan was particularly incensed at what the congregant was going through, they would take matters into their own hands. There were few things as terrifying as a furious Proxy of Satan storming through the streets with a copy of the Biblica Iracundia in their fist, fire in their hearts, and vengeance on their minds.
Moxxie moved to the Room of Airs, where congregants could more actively seek out benediction, if at the cost of being more likely clipped in the ear and kicked out of the temple for being a whiny bitch. Despite being of such volume that it could contain just about any of Hell's incredibly varied creatures, it still managed to feel claustrophobic to the diminutive imp. And he didn't need to kneel on his hooves for long when the side door opened, and a succubus in red robes and a clear hanging-scar at her neck entered.
"Why have you come to the house of The Final Satan?" she asked, her voice low, dry, and wracked with fry.
"I... uh..." Moxxie found himself unable to remember the right way of saying this. He might not be religious, but this was still a religion, and there were certain ways things were done. "I have come seeking... intercession?"
"And you do it with a coward's ire," the Daughter of Satan rasped, narrowing slit pink eyes at him. "How long have you wandered, imp, since you last bit the blood and broke the bone," she leaned in on him, in a manner that succubi almost never did, not in lust but in threat. And this time, not a lusty threat. "Do not lie to me. I will know."
Moxxie swallowed nervously, and then hung his head. "It's been... I don't know. Four years, since my last Sacrament?"
"And why do you think that the Pater Wroth would listen to the likes of a wandering shade?" she demanded.
"Because my f... my anger," he chose his words a bit more carefully, "is directed at an enemy that he holds close to his claw-quick."
She stooped down to his level, incredibly intense glare locked onto his. "The grudges of the Pontifex Vermiculii are myriad. Why should you see intercession when so many others will not?"
"Because my enemy is the voice of Lucifer," Moxxie said. Old lessons were starting to slot back into place, the way things were said dragging the practices of his childhood back to the fore. The Daughter of Satan scowled deeply at the mention of Lucifer's Proxy.
"I would rip his dick off and make him eat it if I had half a chance," she said, breaking 'character' for a moment, but she shook her head. "Half of Pride wants Proxy Birch dead or worse. What gives your claim more weight than any of theirs?"
"He's..." Moxxie began, but when her eyes met his again, he realized what he was about to say would get him thrown bodily from the Room of Airs and mocked out of the door. No. He had to be even more frank about this. Frank to a point that even Moxie didn't like to admit. He puffed out a breath, and looked the red robed succubus in the face. "He has maimed and wounded a, uh... I guess a friend, and put the life of the love of my life in mortal peril. He is a cancer on the face of Hell itself. And we... and I... want him to be erased."
That was the thing about Blitzø Nuckelavee. He was vain, petty, cruel, selfish, self-destructive, greedy, horny to a fault and a ghost of a man at best. But the rest of Hell, in Moxie's observation and opinion, was by and large worse. And frankly, how many friends did Moxxie have at this point? Or at any point? He was always the strange, incongruent key that fit no locks, no matter where he went in the Seven Rings. It had been a miracle beyond telling to find Millie. And despite Blitz's many, many, many, many failings, he was as close to a friend as Moxie had made since leaving high-school.
Honesty was prized by Satan, though. His Daughter leaned back, scrutinizing him to see if he was lying, which honestly he would have preferred to be at this point. When she found that he wasn't, she gave a nod. "I will consult the Book of Alms. Name a date and direction. You have twenty five pages."
"October 31st of the past year, backward," Moxxie said. The succubus departed, leaving Moxie kneeling on the floor. The Book of Alms was Satan's Big Book of IOU's, ones that he added to when he perceived something that pleased him. Many Satanist families had several entries in it, just by living according to the tenets of Good Standing. Moxie, not practising for years, could only hope that Satan's soft-spot for honest romance was as true as the rumors insisted.
When the succubus returned, it was carrying a book the half the size of her torso bound in gold-bracketed wood. She opened it to the date, and began to flip backward from midnight of the 31st. "What is your name?" she asked, her voice about as soft as a gravel pit.
"Moxxie Rough," he said.
The Succubus flipped another page. Then another. The Books of Alms ended up getting fairly large, depending on how much attention to the lives of his adherents that Satan was feeling on any given year. And the patience of the priests and priestesses of Satan was not unlimited. So if you wanted to have them intercede on your behalf, you had to know exactly how to prove that you were worth spending any amount of effort on. Profligates did not receive the power of Satan. And wasting his time was usually punished with scorn and rebuke.
At the fourth page, the succubus stopped, reading again after almost scanning past something. "You who have married into the family Rough, to a she-imp Mildred," the Daughter of Satan said. "You have been granted a Moderate Boon, with notice: 'How very amusing'."
Moxxie's heart rose at that. So Satan had approved of the lengths Moxxie had gone to show how deeply he cherished Millie's love. But the note was a bit off-putting. 'Amusing'?
The Daughter tried to close the book, but it flew back open when she did, the binding smashing into the lectern-top with a crack like lightning, and smoke emitted from the back page as new words burned into the vellum. She looked about as surprised as Moxxie at that. Slit pink eyes darted from the page, then up to Moxxie.
"Answer me a question and answer it truthfully. Falsity will result not just in a loss of grace but in your immediate death," she ground out. Moxxie swallowed nervously again. This wasn't usual at all. He gave her a nod. "Do you know the whereabouts of a Sinner called in life Samuel Scailes?"
Moxxie stared at her, incredulous. "Say whut?" he asked.
When Moxxie came back from his 'experiment', he had tall woman in red robes staring at him like a shark stares down a seal, so Sam figured that something had to have gone wrong at least to some degree. He looked a bit sheepish as he returned to the office, his new minder practically stapled to his tail. Millie took one look at the statuesque succubus and immediately got a knife into her hand, but Sam gently laid two fingers on the back of her dark-knuckled fist and shook his head.
"What's this about, then?" Sam asked.
"I seek the Sinner called in life Samuel Scailes," the succubus' voice did not sound proper coming from her. Hell, it could have come from Husk's throat and Sam wouldn't have batted an eye. But when Sam tried to Look Within on her, it just... failed. And the only other time it had ever failed before was against the Goat of the Apocalypse, who was literally a divine being. So instead of cheating and strip-mining information from her soul, he just took an assay of her and got the notion that this was not a 'successful' seducer of men. This was a fiend that had been born of the wrong Clade, and in the wrong Ring. The fact that as a demon that was built around fucking the life out of mortal men, she had the clear scars of a botched hanging on her throat, it painted a picture of somebody who went to Satan less out of desperation and more out of spite.
"Aren't you popular today?" Alastor asked him.
"I have no business with you, Radio Demon," the Succubus ground out. "Satan has no use for your follies."
"I was in life Samuel Scailes," Sam said, cutting off whatever jibe that Alastor was loading to salvo at her. There was a time and a place to antagonize the adopted children of Satan. The time was preferably never, and the place was preferably nowhere. "Is there a problem with Moxxie's request?"
"Father wishes verbal intercourse with you," The succubus said. Weird choice of words, there. "And I was told that you have special dispensation to enter Wrath, against the laws of Lucifer King Of All Hell."
"If Satan is offering it, then who am I to decline?" Sam asked. Somebody knew. It was obvious that he was being led into a trap. The problem was, he wasn't sure the nature of it.
"Moxxie and Mildred Rough, you are to accompany," the Daughter of Satan declared. The married imps shared a glance, one that was confusion and fear from Millie, and comfort and alertness from Moxxie. Sam really hoped that this wasn't going to be a fight. Because if it came down to the three of them against Wrath Incarnate, then that wouldn't even be a fight. The succubus pulled out a Hellphone and quickdialed a number. She spoke in Enochian into it. And while Sam's understanding of Enochian was 3rd grade at best, he did pick out that there were terms for 'agreement', 'privacy', and 'refreshment'. Maybe this wouldn't be a fight after all.
No sooner had the Succubus stopped, than there was a violent rip in the air, an unpurple light flaring from the wound in Hell that lead from a shabby office in Imp City to what looked to be a gilded, imperial palace. Moxxie looked like he didn't know whether to shit or go blind. Millie, for a wonder, looked every bit as gobsmacked. Sam, though, gave his shoulders a shrug and shepherded the pair of them ahead of him through the tear in the realm.
Passing the threshold instantly bumped the temperature up about seven degrees and made the air brutally dry, a stark change from the cold wet of Pride. Sam looked around, and saw that the room had furniture that was by and large sized mostly for imps, with a few pieces appropriate for a fiend of about Sinner size. The rest of them were built for a titan. And when the rip closed behind them, another opened on the other side of the room, and that titan in question appeared.
Satan was a terrifying creature to behold. Standing easily three men tall, and likely weighing two and a half metric tonnes of black, muscular flesh, bone, and horn, he would have inspired tears of fear from children and nightmares of terror from his face alone. But there was something else to him, something that was even more threatening to Sam's more rarified perceptions. There was a Weight to Satan that Sam had only ever seen once before, in the moments between when he'd been blasted into the side of Charlie's limo by Michael, and when the Archangels departed for Heaven, only Satan's was even more oppressive.
Moxxie and Millie went to their knees, him out of built-in reflex and her because she trusted her husband's instincts. Sam, though, stood. He didn't know the protocol for what to do when meeting one of the Deadly Sins. If there even was a protocol when one of the wretched humans met the Kings of Hell. Satan looked at the imps first, as though gauging them, as he adjusted the ruby and topaz encrusted finery of his station. After staring at Hell's lowest for rather a while, he turned to his adopted daughter. "Thou may leave," Satan said, his words leaving echoes in Sam's ears that he wasn't sure were caused by the architecture. The Daughter gave a bow, then departed, leaving the four of them in the chamber undisturbed. "There is custom to bow to one's rulers," Satan rumbled.
"I don't live in Wrath," Sam said without thinking it through properly. That probably wasn't smart.
"And there is a custom of power to punish the snide," Satan added. Sam could only sigh and shrug.
"You're the Deadly Sin of Wrath. If you wanted to kill me, you'd have done it already. You must want me for something," Sam said.
"I do," Satan said. He then turned to the imps, and held out a hand festooned with rings the size of bangles. "Arise, my children. Thou hath brought amusement to me, so thou shall be granted boons. Speak of them."
"May I ask how we amused you, Pontifex?" Moxxie asked.
"Thou trod the territory of the Embodiment Of Lust and declared monogamy and fidelity," Satan said, moving to a table and pouring a shining golden fluid into a cup that was, to his scale, the size of a thimble. He then handed it to Moxxie. Moxxie accepted it, while looking about as stiff as an old man's lower back in winter. "Thou refuted the entire paradigm of the Invader King to his face. And in the end, thou did it not to scorn, jeers, and abuse, but to appreciation and applause. Thou delivered unto him that his world will fail. Thou showed that Satan's Way works where his does not. And this amuses me."
He then handed Millie a second cup, which was large for an imp but tiny for Satan, and then poured a third for himself, which likely had about as much in it as a beer keg. He raised it in the air.
"To the impotent rage of evil men," Satan declared. Son of a bitch. Apoc had been working with Satan the entire time.
Moxxie and Millie both raised their glasses, and drank as Satan did. Whatever it was they drank, it probably wasn't alcoholic.
"So what boon ask thou the Father of Wrath?" Satan asked.
"We need your Grace, Pontifex," Moxxie said. Satan's face twisted in confusion.
"Why need thou the Grace of The King of Wrath?" Satan asked. "Thou art no fanatic of my cult, and seek not to be my children in law and truth. So to what ends dostthou strike?"
"We need it to... to perform a magic. A magic that will help us kill Lucifer's Proxy and humiliate him."
"Thou speak of a work of covenant magic," Satan said. He raised a clawed hand to his chin and pondered, twisting the black fur that formed a sprig of beard, before nodding. "It will be granted. The world we live in has become static and stagnant, brackish like a choke'd pond. Perhaps what thou do will be first to a flood, to wash away the filth that makes mockery of MY HOMELAND."
"Thank you, my Pontifex," Moxxie said, bowing again. Millie, thoroughly out of her element, did likewise a moment later.
"Go with this, the Grace of Wrath," Satan said, snapping massive fingers to a sound like a howitzer firing, and causing a stone the size of an imp's fist to fall into Millie's hand. As she turned and looked over it, it seemed to chance its size, shape, texture and makeup. Sam's eyes goggled at that. Was that... "So knowest thee the nature of the Altar of Worms, strange sorcerer. No, this stone is not of that provenance," Satan said. "But it offers a connection by it. Use it as thou will. And know that as thou strike to change Hell, Father Satan strikes with thee. Now. Begone," he waved his hand, and the unpurple light flared around Moxxie and Millie, swallowing them and likely dumping them back into Pride Ring. Satan stared at the point they'd been standing for a moment, a complex look on his face. Then, he took a moment to smooth his regal robes, and faced Sam. "And now we speak in confidence, sorcerer."
Sam was about to demur, to deflect.
But this time he stopped himself.
"I am a sorcerer. And I'm also a couple of other things," Sam began.
"Thou know not even what thou art," Satan said. He stared down at Sam, and Sam got just a full glimpse into the scale of difference between the two beings. This was a being older than the oldest of Angels. The First of the College of God's Ha-Satans, and the only one who remained. He had seen the time before the universe was born. And unless something got unbelievably lucky, he would be there to watch it when it came to its end. "Do you feel it? That strange tide, from you to I?" Satan then asked.
Sam was caught off guard by that, but took a moment. And he did not deny that there was some sort of strange familiarity. Like he knew Satan from his Life Before. Which was ridiculous. If he'd have come to Hell knowing that Satan was a real person, that Hell itself was real, he likely wouldn't have gotten nailed to a wall in his first hour. "I feel... something," Sam admitted.
"The most insidious of God's machinery," Satan said with begrudging tone. "The music of Syncretization. A power He used to strip Ahura Mazda's aspects and godlings and pull them to his bosom. The power to steal a God of Storm and reduce him to yet another angel. The power to turn you, Samuel Scailes, called by fools Samuel The Poisonfire, into merely another aspect of Me."
"It figures that God would use such underhanded devices as that," Sam said.
"There was a time where I worked, hand in hand, with Him. A time of peace and good spirit between Heaven and Hell. Where I was the first and foremost amongst his Accusers," Satan said, as he took another keg's worth of the golden fluid with him and sat in a massive throne. "I was the alpha and the omega of the College of Satans. The ones to point out the folly in God's plans, that He make a more perfect world. A more perfect Creation. And as mine brothers and sisters fell, aged to oblivion, or vanished, I was the Final Satan as well. With none others like me, title became name. And God? God became sour. Fetid like fruits upon the ground untouched by bird nor beast."
Sam thought about keeping silent, but Satan was going to figure out anyway. If he didn't already know. "I worked with the Goat of the Apocalypse."
"I know," Satan said.
"And we planned to kill God," Sam said.
"Thou slay not God," Satan said. "Thou slay a rotten husk of a Creator, lost to solipsism. The pool of Heaven is even more fetid than what Lucifer has turned my homeland into. I have watched in a blink of the eye how once righteous and brilliant angels became... hmm..." he pondered for a few moments. "Alike to the Damned."
"And here I thought all of Hell held the same low opinion of Heaven that I did," Sam said.
"Thine glibness in any other case would be punished, Samuel," Satan pointed out, and Sam blanched despite himself. He might have inoculated himself to terror from the Radio Demon. But the Radio Demon was no Satan. Satan's glare drifted from him, though, and back to his cup. "Thou be correct, regardless. Angels are changed by privation and toil much as humans are. While I hold no truck with the vile spoilage that spills into Hell, for they are proven worthless by their deeds in their own world, humans are a powerful thing. They possess a soul unlike any other. Thou possess this, also."
"As a human, I would have died two audacities ago," Sam said. "Only this... angelic bullshit... is keeping my head above water."
"The Gift thou gestate is merely a facet of thine true power, Samuel Scailes," Satan declared with finality, taking a sip from his cup and pointing a massive finger at him. "What would thou say ist thine nature?"
"One that can change the natures of others," Sam said, not particularly happy about that fact. Satan surprised him by letting out a bone-rattling chuckle.
"A love-struck imp challenged and defeated the paradigm of a King of Hell using only a song," Satan said. "Changing of natures is not a nature of itself. Thine nature, Samuel, is that thou knowest not thy nature. It is in this ignorance that thou grow with explosive force, unbounded by the preconceptions that would blinker thy vision and fetter thy movements. Thou hast what even I lacked in my creation; thou hast choice."
"I don't feel like I have many choices right now. Either help them kill a truly heinous person, or allow that person to live," Sam said.
"And when Lucifer comes for thee?" Satan asked. Sam leaned back a moment. "It should not be a surprise. Lucifer knows of thy nature, simply not thine identity. He searches for thee even now. And in time, he will flush out even thine deepest, and cleverest held hideaways. So what shalt thou do when the time comes?"
"What could I do? He's an Archangel, and I'm a failed, stillborn angel in a shitty human suit," Sam said.
"Not stillborn," Satan shook his head, the jewelry amongst his horns rattling lightly as he did. "It continues to grow even now. But in a way not alike to what bright and now-hellbound Penemue planned. Thy Gift cannot imprint thine identity onto a newborn Angel. It has become something else. Thou wilt be what God could never make. Thou will be something that has not yet been seen. And when the time comes, it will come to thee in a choice."
"A choice," Sam repeated.
"I cannot speak as to its nature, as my powers do not allow me sight into the future," Satan said, with another sip from his cup. "But I have seen many things, and my wisdom – which allowed me to outlive almost all of my kin – has only swelled with time. Lucifer will come for thee. And thou can escape him not, no matter how thou flee or to what place thou hide. He will exact pain from thee. Torment. And will expect power. You will have to show him power, the likes of which Lucifer may never hold. Do this for me, Samuel."
"If you're asking me to fight Lucifer... I'm sorry, but that wouldn't be a fight. He could wipe me out with a snap of his fingers," Sam said, offering the snap to punctuate his sentence.
"He could. He will not," Satan said. "For thou be something he shall not chance to destroy, so desperate is he to possess it. You must fight. And you can win."
"I can honestly say I was expecting demands from you, not a pep-talk," Sam noted.
"If I have but one demand, it is this;" Satan leaned forward on his thone. "When thou break the walls of Heaven, and beat the foolish from their ramparts, when thou stand before the Throne of God and look upon Him in all His uselessness, I demand thee do what I now may not. I demand that you spit into the eye of God for the mockery of our once-great plan that He has allowed Creation to become."
"That? That I can promise you," Sam said.
"Then begone. Break this terrible status-quo. And let all of Creation know your name."
There was a wave of Satan's hand, and he found the palace ripple out of being, replaced by the I.M.P. office. Moxxie turned to him, looking a bit surprised that he'd came out alive. "What did he want with you?"
"To wax poetic on romance," Sam lied. "He gets it. Sometimes you just have to find a woman who can suplex you."
"That's what I'm saying!" Moxxie agreed.
"With that silliness out of the way," Alastor cut in, looming over them all as only the Radio Demon could. "I believe it is time that we start the bitter work. Reality isn't going to rewrite itself."
For fuck's sake, you don't do anything by half-measures, do ya? Shit. Come on, you should know this better than I do: if you've got to do something stupid, you might as well be smart about it."
-Husk