The venue they chose for this little piece of impossibility was the heart of the Gates to Purgatory. Once a sprawling baroque city, set upon hundreds of canals that drained the River Ambition into the delta that marked the lowest point of the realm of redemption, Gates was now a ghost town. Formerly proud and powerful structures, built by the hands of angels and Demons working side by side in a time so long ago that the only ones who held it in living memory were the undying beings such as the Ars Goetia, the Elder Devils, and Lucifer himself, now they felt old. Disused. Decaying.

Failed.

Once-grand promenades and gardens became swamps and overgrown nests. Palaces crumbled under their own, untended weight. Temples were desecrated and desanctified, all of their gold and promise carved away by three centuries of covetous and cruel hands. Amphitheatres where the great orators of the angelic host would do as demons did, tempting, lay overgrown. The angels had tempted not with riches, glory, or power. They tempted with the ability to look yourself in the mirror without cringing. The freedom to wake up, and know you were not a monster. They tempted with the chance to turn back from the worst aspects of yourself, become something better, and be free from the unending torment that a god which they would never call cruel had cruelly bestowed upon them.

It was a testament to the desperation of the Damned that the Angels did as well as they did.

It was a testament to the drive of humans that so many of them succeeded, and got the fuck out of Hell.

Now? Gone.

Altars to the Archangels dotted Gates, all of them defaced and desecrated, most of them having vulgarities carved into their surfaces, because paint just wouldn't last long enough for the spite of the never-ending Damned. Temples to Satan and the actual building of the College of Satans fared better. Sam had done some reading up on the actual practices of the Satanic Temple, both before and after his meeting with its head figure. Congregations came to Gates every few years to restore Satan's chosen grounds. And even Lucifer didn't have the balls to tear down the College of Satans.

Walking through this bleeding edge of what Purgatory had once been made Sam feel... oddly bitter. That there had been a way out for so many for so long, only to have it snatched away. And he still didn't understand why. Apoc had looked into the why of things during his Jaunt back from 2021 to 1665. And answers eluded him, no matter how deeply he looked, no matter what he payed to Purson. Sam, though, lacking answers, had only a hypothesis. That the Fall of Purgatory and the Silence of God came on the same day was a fact. And with God's Nature as the Most True Thing in Creation, perhaps God simply... became bored.

And he broke his toy as he checked out.

The canals which now flowed off the edge into the Abyss were now a death-trap. If you fell in, you had about an imp's chance in the Bleeding Pits of getting out before you were swept off the edge by the quiet but unyeilding flow, and vomited forth onto the last fall that you would ever encounter. Why Hell didn't run out of water, considering it was constantly pouring out of existence? Nobody could say. God did it. He ain't gonna explain shit. Still, Sam had no intention of coming this far, making these plans, and surviving these tribulations only to get flushed out of Hell into the only place in Creation that was worse. He kept to the slowly overgrowing streets and causeways, which all reminded him of the ways of old European cities he'd never gotten a chance to visit. This place was built around horse and carriage and foot traffic. Cars wouldn't be invented for centuries after this place lost its gate to the next step upward, and thus lost any relevance to the denizens of Hell.

The skies turned silver the moment they crossed a particular road, with suffusive and directionless light pressing in from all directions. This was the last existing chunk of the Ring of Purgatory, clinging like a splinter into the body of Pride. The air felt different here. Lighter. Sam's feet rested not so heavy in his boots. His breath was cool as it slipped past his lips. The last remnants of the border city literally overhanged the Abyss. If you were to dig straight down, you were in for a long fall, and an unhappy end.

Sam turned back to Alastor, who was standing on the other side of the street from where the skies turned silver. "Are you coming?"

"I'm just checking something before I do," Alastor said, as various red runes and symbols swirled around him. He flicked his cane to one side, and the smooth marble of the wall began to spall and melt, as a rune was installed there. It slammed into Sam's brain with the force of a ball-peen on a dishing anvil, not nearly so debilitating as this once had been. A waymarking spell, to snap him back when a particular circumstance was triggered. Probably if he started erupting into flames from even the last ghosts of Heaven's Largess saying FUCK TO THE NO.

"Better?" Sam asked, rubbing at his temple to knead the discomfort away.

"We'll see in a moment, won't we?" Alastor said. Though he still had a smile on his face, there was something very rigid about it. Almost like he was forcing this smile on to convince himself. After another moment to adjust his scarlet suit, he took a step forward. The realm invisibly bucked against him, trying to throw him back out. But when Alastor realized the realm was merely trying to expel him, and not annihilate him, his grin grew more determined. His eyes flashed and flickered, a buzzing hit the air like the radio tuned to a dead channel. Then, with an electric snap, he stepped through, leaving a haze of static marking the point where Purgatory tried to deny him, and failed. "We could have done this just about anywhere, you know. There was no reason to risk my very-Damned skin to do this here."

"This is literally the last place that Lucifer would look to stop us if he feels what we're doing before it's done," Sam said. "You don't want him to interrupt us, do you?"

"I suppose I do not," Alastor admitted. He leaned aside to the imp who was too stupid to be petrified of him. "You should be careful, little assassin. He's becoming incredibly adept with that tongue of his."

"You don't say? I might have to take him up on that!" Blitz said.

"Ha! No," Sam said with utter deadpan. With that dealt with, he moved through the arches of the covered hallway that connected two buildings, and moved on into a fountain garden. These, fed by the wash of the water plunging over the cliff and out of existence, didn't fall to stagnancy and swampiness. Some of the more complicated ornamental fountains were partially broken, but there was enough water flow to keep the many-colored troughs and baths flowing clear. The rushing of water died down to a bubble here. The wind and rains of Pride were gone. Just gentle warmth of autumn as it descended toward harvest and winter. This was the spot. Sam could feel it.

"Alright. This is our spot. I'll start setting it up. Alastor, if you would instruct?" Sam said, as he began to take the Special Bloods and shake them in their cylinders using a piece of thaumaturgy he had been blindsided with by the fairly reckless teenaged imp who still looked like she was torn between wanting to be here, and wanting to run the fuck away.

"The Oaths are tricky to conceptualize," Alastor said, staring at the other side of the garden, where the building had crumbled to the point where only the front facade was left. The rest of the structure was now down amongst black tar. "In the heart of them, they are promises that you make to yourself and to the multiverse around you. Promises that you will be you. Promises that you shall not allow things beyond to change you save by your permission and consent. You are staking a claim on a patch of Creation the size and shape of your own body, and hanging up a sign that says 'Try me, and find out'."

"That seems a bit... simple... for what it does to you," Moxxie said.

"It's not as simple as you presume, little thaumaturge," Alastor said.

"I'm still not a thaumaturge," Moxxie said, but Alastor continued talking over him.

"Because you see, you need to give it not simple, banal and ordinary truths and promises. You need to offer truths that frighten you. You need to make promises that cut you to the bone. And you cannot balk when I begin to take you down this path. You must walk forever forward. A single step back, and you may never so much as attempt to walk this road again," Alastor said. "Like I said to Samuel, when I undertook this path, my will was defined by my lust. I don't care in the slightest for the so-called delights of the flesh. My lust was always deeper than that. An eternal, undying lust that no lover could ever satiate. I needed to know. I needed to know everything. And that unquenchable thirst made it utterly impossible to step back. Even in the darkness of the oaths, I would rather die ten thousand deaths than lose my chance to know."

"Moxxie... are you sure you still wanna do this?" Millie asked, cupping her hand on her husband's cheek.

"It's the only way for us to be safe. To win," Moxxie said.

"I hope you have a better reason than that," Alastor said, while Samuel continued to paint the Liminal Rote on dull white flagstones. Alastor's grin grew a bit flippant and he shrugged. "But at the moment, you have plenty of time to figure it out. Your drive will come. But the simpler Oaths come first. Oh, this is so very exciting. I can't wait to see what you show me."

Chapter 31

What's Not Impossible, Is Inevitable

Loona was nervous. If that creepy fuck was telling the truth, then she needed a reason to do this that was a lot deeper than 'I don't wanna die'. And she honestly didn't have one. She never had any reason for any thing. But she puffed a breath through her snout and gave her head a shake. Moxxie and Millie had both stripped down to underthings, not out of sheer necessity but because the Radio Demon wasn't sure if synthetic fabrics might interfere with the incredibly sensitive whatever-the-fuck was going on. Loona wore leather, denim and cotton. And the fuck was she getting naked in front of the fucking Radio Demon.

"Alright," Alastor said, as he stood, ignoring the sheaf of papers that Krieg and Sam were referring to constantly. After all, he was the source of that information, and more besides. He didn't need instructions on how to do this any more than Loona needed instructions to comb her tail or wipe her ass. "The first is a simple one, but one that people I imagine mess up pretty easily. It is the Oath To Identity. You swear upon an identity that you shall never abandon. You may use aliases as you need to, you may wear a million masks in your life, but in your innermost self, in your truest personhood, you have a name that you will never betray. So swear to yourself, and swear to Creation entire: What. Is. Your. Name?"

"Moxxie D..." Moxxie began, but stopped, as though realizing something. Millie took that as an opportunity to speak up.

"Mildred Rough," she said. "I am Mildred Rough. I have always been Mildred Rough. And until my dyin' day, I'll still be Millie Rough."

There was something strange that happened. It itched at Loona's nose the same way that her Scentings worked allowing her to follow prey across the whole of Hell or Earth. For just a split second, Millie's unique and singular scent no longer was. Almost like there were an infinity of other Millies for just an instant, in an infinity of different directions and distances. But that moment was all it took for all of them to converge on the half naked she-imp kneeling on her hooves amongst a bunch of magical bullshit on the floor.

The smile that came to Tubby's face made Loona a bit sad. Envious, even. God-fucking-damn it, why did they get to be so fucking cute together? That shit oughtta be illegal. And taking Millie's answer as his prompt, Moxie answered next.

"I am Moxxie Rough. Before I met you, I wasn't even that. I was just drifting through Hell without hope or cause. And I have that in you. If I am anyone? I am Moxxie Rough. Until the end of time, until the Abyss turns to stone, I will always be Moxxie Rough."

Again, that disorienting scent, as an infinitude of Moxxie's appeared to Loona's Hellhound senses, snapping down and into the imp that now took Millie's hand at almost arm's-length, due to the distance the weird shit on the floor required.

And Loona didn't have an answer. Who the fuck was she? She never had a surname. And all she was now was just sticking up a middle finger at the bullshit that her childhood put her through. Was that all that there was to her? Was that all she could ever be? She felt her face drooping in sadness.

Then she realized the answer. It wasn't a good answer. But it was an honest one. One that hurt. Just like that grinning fuck demanded of her.

"I am Loona Miller. I am what nobody wanted, what nobody could use, and then got thrown away. I am free because people's callousness was greater than their cruelty," she said, and as she did, she felt an anger start to burn inside her. "I am the result of greedy fuckers deciding that as a Hellhound, I was a fucking commodity. And if I have any name, it'll be fucking that. I am Loona Miller. Does that name work you saw-toothed shit?"

"It's a good start," Alastor said.

And then Loona felt something strange happen. There was no smell of herself converging on her. Instead, she just felt... heavier. Heavier, but also stronger, as though every gram she gained was perfectly counterbalanced by an extra twist of muscle and sinew.

When all was said and done, Alastor simply stood back, watching with that measured smile on his face, as Sam threw a black-brain onto a brazier and the smoke began to surround them, low but opaque at around Loona's ankle-level. Loona turned a look to Blitz. He looked... oddly sad. She didn't know why.

And right now, she didn't have time to worry about it.

"Now," the Radio Demon said, as he towered over the married imps that still held each other's hands. He gave their grasp a swat with his cane, parting the two of them with a shake of his head. "We need to do the important part. And fortunately for you, you don't even need to understand why you're swearing this oath, only that you do it. Am I being quite clear, little thaumaturge?" he asked.

"She's the..." Moxxie began, but then he stopped himself. This Sinner obviously couldn't tell a male imp from a female one. What chance did he have at picking two different imps based on anything else? "Fine. What is it that I need to swear, this time?"

The first few oaths had been simple. Simple like claiming a name that he would have until the end of his life. How could he be anything other than husband of Millie? To put it to words was to showcase the absurdity of it. It was more likely for Moxxie to cast down the King of All Hell than it was for him to ever carve the greater part of his heart out of his chest and leave Millie behind. The next few were easy for him. Claiming of plane, claiming of instance, claiming of birth. And what came stone-simple for Moxxie and Millie both, all seemed to trip Loona up to the point where even Moxxie was starting to wonder if she was going to be able to continue.

After all, if it took her that much time to decide what her name was, what hope did she have with the later things?

"You, young pup, you will do nothing until I tell you specifically to," Alastor said, stage-talking over his shoulder to where Loona was knelt. She looked for a moment indignant, but though Alastor wasn't looking at her, he still somehow knew she was about to say something crude, so made a placating gesture with one hand. "Mostly because you can't do what they are to do, as much as they cannot do what you are to do. You can't eat chocolate, they can't receive blood transfusions. Just the way it is."

"Imps can receive blood transfusions..." Moxxie said, and Samuel managed to say right over top of him.

"Jinx, you owe me a rootbeer," Sam said. While they could, it wasn't like humans could. Imps had hundreds of Blood Types, there was nothing akin to a 'universal donor', and even if you did manage to find a match, there were pretty nasty side effects that were fairly hard on the recipients' mental health when they did.

"And I'm pretty sure I can eat chocolate if I take a pill first," Loona pointed out.

Alastor's smile lost a great deal of its mirth. "As much as I enjoy the notion that rules are meant to be broken, I would sternly recommend against it in this juncture. Even I do not know what would happen if you muck this up. But I imagine it won't be pleasant. But by all means. If you want to be an afternoon's amusement to me, disobey my commands."

There was silence but for the trickling of the fountains.

"That's what I thought," Alastor said. "You, then, imps. I will tell you what to say, and you must take a moment to know even vaguely what you are doing, then agree to it. You have to mean it. You have to mean it even if you don't fully understand it. Because for me to adequately explain it would take entirely too much time, and I don't have infinite patience, even if that one," he pointed idly at Moxxie, "might be able to understand the breadth of it. Am I clear?"

"Yes," Moxxie said.

"Then listen, ponder, and repeat what I say now," Alastor said. "I swear upon The Abyss, the Ruin of All Things, the Source That Twists. I swear upon the End Of All Ends fidelity. I swear upon the Power That Changes And Unchanges that I am one with you, as you are one with me. I swear upon the Pestilence That Brought God Low that my ends are your ends, that my strength is your strength, that my frailties are your frailties. I swear upon you that we are the same, and that the song of me shall echo to the highest echelons!" Alastor broke off of his recitation that grew into rapture, then turned to the imps. He thrust a finger out at each. "Repeat it."

"Word for word?" Millie asked. Alastor didn't answer her. He just tilted his head at her, his smile growing savage. She swallowed with nerves.

"It's alright. Just say what I say," Moxxie said. "I swear upon the Abyss," he said. Why were they swearing upon that godawful blight? "the Ruin of All Things, the Source That Twists. I swear upon the End Of All Things, fidelity,"

"I swear upon the Abyss," Millie began, echoing Moxxie's words. The Abyss was a horrible, seething anti-existence. How Imps came about from it was completely beyond Moxxie's ken. Or so he thought, until this very moment. When he stared at Alastor, who glared at him above a serial-killer grin, he finally grasped it. They were swearing upon the Abyss, because as imps, they were one with the Abyss in a way that no other race in all Creation was. The Abyss and the impish race were both things untouched by God, things created without His consent, and thus were the only things in Creation that were outside of God's Design from their outset.

Of course they had to swear upon the Abyss.

How could they swear upon anything else?

"I swear upon you that we are the same, and the song of me shall echo to the highest echelons," Moxxie finished, with Millie having caught up to the point where she finished about two words behind him. And again, there was a strange kaleidoscope to Moxxie's vision, as though he saw the world around him shatter into an infinitude of shards, before they flew back together and melded, and his body felt in the same moment heavier, and stronger, with a strange hum began to work its way through his muscles and his bones.

"Interesting. Very interesting," Alastor said. He then turned and disregarded the Imps entirely, facing the hellhound at the long point of the isoceles triangle that the three of them formed.

"Are you alright, Millie?" he whispered to his wife.

"I'm fine. I feel great," she said.

"You're holding up alright?" he asked. "Because I keep seeing something every time we agree to one of these vows..."

"Really? I just feel this weird hum in my muscles," Millie said.

"You're not as quick as the thaumaturge and not as dull as the berserker, so I'll be a bit slower with you, but I'm sure you'll keep up," Alastor said in a fairly condescending way. The stubborn look on Loona's face could have been passed genetically from Blitz, if such a thing were even possible. "I swear upon The Crucible, The Engine of Evolution, The Forge of Clones and the Changer Of The Ways fidelity."

"I swear upon..." Loona gave her head a shake, then continued. "I swear upon The Crucible, the Engine of Evolution, the Forge of Clones and the Changer Of The Ways, fidelity."

"I swear that I will never stop growing. I will never stop changing. That never shall I stand upon one spot and say no further. Always forward, or always back, but never stagnant, never static, and never stale," Alastor pressured, his back arching so that he dominated her field of vision.

"I swear that I will never stop growing," Loona said, meeting his lunatic red glare with red eyes of her own. And without missing a beat, she hopped to her feet, staring him down as she continued. "I will never stop changing. I will never stand in one spot and say no further. Forward? Backward? Doesn't matter, but I'm never going to get stuck in a fucking rut, and become this places' fucked up status quo!"

"I'd dare say you understand this better than the imps do, my dear," Alastor's words had a strange twist of admiration and condescension in them. He held up a finger. "I swear that my ends are your ends. That my strengths are your strengths. That my frailties are your frailties. I swear upon you that we are the same, and that the song of me shall echo unto the highest echelons."

"We work as one. We are strong as one. We are weak as one. We are the same, high and low. The song of me will echo until the end of existence."

And with that, there was another twisting in Moxxie's vision. He flicked a glance over to Samuel, who also seemed to catch it. Krieg was taking notes. Blitz and Millie seemed blind to what the three of them had witnessed, that fracturing of the real, and almost instantly reconstituting it into something else. What was going on?

"Of course. I understand how I missed that," Alastor said, likely to himself, as he rubbed at his chin. Then he turned to the imps. "You could take lessons from this one. She understands the intent of it. You're just parroting the words."

"Fucking right I do," Loona said.

"Don't move, though. Wouldn't want to muck this up for yourself, would you?" Alastor asked. She growled under her breath, but settled back down to a squat. "With you bound to your proper and respective frequencies, now we deal with your banes. You can't win them all, after all. And by swearing fealty to your deepest natures, you necessarily make enemies."

"What's new?" Moxxie asked with an exasperated tone.

This was confusing as fuck. And despite the Radio Demon saying that Loona understood it better than the imps, she really didn't feel it. After all, she was just promising things that, as far as she was aware, were pretty unenforceable. Pledging allegiance to ideas and staking a claim on their name, that was just a bunch of woo-woo bullshit. And even as Loona thought that, she inwardly kicked herself a bit, because that was the exact kind of phrasing that Blitz used all the time when he was talking about stuff he didn't understand.

And the Pledge of Dissonances made even less sense than the shit that came before it. Now she was 'admitting' that she would forever be weak to and an enemy of four other fucking things that she'd never heard of before today, and any creature that swore to uphold those weirdo things' ends she was to kill upon discovery. She wasn't even sure what the fuck an Akashic was.

More confusing than that, the Imps had a wholly different list of new enemies that they'd need to kill.

There had then began a lull in the ritual, as Sam began to set up the Soul Jars into their proper places. The silver one was put between the imps. The gyp-rock one was placed before Loona. She puffed out a breath as Alastor and Sam talked about some sort of weird fuckery that had to go on during 'the next step', and stared down at the tile.

"You know what, Eddie? I think you got off easy," Loona said to the dead kid in the tile. "One way or another, you're off the hook as soon as this shit goes off."

"Do you have that or need I write it down?" Alastor finally ended.

"Oh, I've got it," Sam said, as he moved to the blood runes, and began to paint with some of Krieg's Thaumaturgical fluids (a mixture of her blood, Sweet Tar, and a saturated solution of salt and sugar in water) around Satan's Grace, which still moodily cast light from its place at the heart of this unequal triangle. Alastor then turned to them each in turn, his grin even wider than usual.

"This has been wonderfully illuminating, but I'm looking forward to this step more than most. Because this is the Annunciation Of Terrific Truths," Alastor said. "I had despaired that I would die knowing only a fraction of Creation's truths. I doubt you had such heady goals as I did. But you have fears. And you must sacrifice them, the deepest of them; the darkest fearsome truth you have, the one that leaves you cold and afraid when you lie awake at night. Only the worst one will do. So take your time. Dig. And don't try to palm me off with a phobia. It needs to be one that you understand. One that is writ into your bones. One. That. Hurts."

Loona's obvious answer was that she didn't want to die. It was so obvious that it was obvious even to Loona that it wasn't the right one. What the fuck would she even say to this? What fears did she have? Sure, she had been terrified that Birch was going to violate her when he dragged her back into the office, but that fear wasn't that deep. It was a justified fear of a bitch like herself. So what was she really afraid of?

"I don't deserve you," Moxxie and Millie interrupted Loona by blurting out at the same time. There was a moment of silence, as each was stunned by the other's statement.

"What are you talkin' about? You're perfect!" Millie said. "You're so handsome and you're so much smarter than me, and..."

"No I'm not," Moxxie said. "I'm weak! I'm frail! I'm everything that Wrath holds in contempt! I've always been the worst imp of any group I've ever been at in the things which mattered most to the people around me. I'm..."

"You're not weak, hon," she said. "You're stronger than I am."

"I've watched you cut a man in half, lengthwise!" Moxxie pointed out. Honestly, that was rather impressive what she did to that DHORKS dork.

"You deserve better than me," Millie said, her eyes drifting to the floor. "I know you would'a been happier if you stayed with Myron."

"Who?" Moxxie asked.

"Your boyfriend when I met you!" she said.

"I... wasn't in a relationship when I met you," Moxxie said.

"But Myron was..." Moxxie then snapped his fingers.

"Oh right! Ron Blix!" he said, as though finally remembering him. "Yeah. He was a good friend, a long time ago. But we were never lovers. I never saw him that way, he didn't either."

"Oh, he did," Millie said, nodding earnestly.

"...really?" Moxxie seemed a bit stunned by the revelation. Then he shook his head. "Look, it doesn't matter. From pretty much the first moment I saw you, I knew that it could only be you. You were the only one that I could have as my partner in life."

"The first time you saw me I'd just literally ripped a man's throat out with my teeth!" Millie said, pointing at her mouth.

"I know. It was spectacular!" Moxxie said with the most lovestruck look on his face. "Never in my life have I ever found somebody so wonderfully violent. Watching you mowing through people is like watching a tornado! I grew up around thugs and idiots, who thought that just punching harder made you powerful, but you? You? You were sublime. When you ripped Mallacieous Bulgar's horns off with your bare hands, I found an awe in myself I didn't even know I had."

Millie looked utterly struck by that. "But... I thought..." she then drifted her gaze to the ground. "I've always been so danged angry. And that violence is always right there, right 'neath the surface, waitin' for any kinda excuse to come out. Weren't I born in Wrath, I'd'a gotten thrown in prison for sure! I'm a loose cannon! I'm a grenade that's never had a pin!"

"And that's why you're perfect," Moxxie said. "Every day I wake up next to you and thank Satan that I'm in Hell. And because of you, I feel like I can do anything. Even kill Lucifer's Proxy. You make me strong, Millie."

"...and you make me calm, Mox-mox," she said.

There was a crack and a blast, as the Soul Jar between them detonated, sparks and trailers shooting up between the two imps as a pair of faint apparitions shot skyward and out of sight in about an instant. In the wake of that, as both of the imps flinched back from where they were about to take each other's hands (which would have resulted in both of them losing a limb), there was a twisting coruscation in Loona's senses. But this time, unlike the first which was an infinite number of themselves crashing into one, this one seemed to blend the two of them together in a way that resulted with the output being something different and greater than the sum of its parts. With a blast of flame consuming the silver and evaporating the metal into the air, the garden fell silent once more. The silence lingered for several seconds, until Alastor began to slowly clap.

"I was about to tell you to knock off the passion play," Alastor said, "but it seems like that was exactly what the doctor ordered. Another brick into the wall."

Then, he turned to Loona.

"I trust you have something every bit as salacious?" Alastor asked.

And she didn't.

She looked at the imps, who were now recovering from the shock of having a soul jar explode in front of them. The looks that they gave each other would have pulled dismissal and disdain from Loona this time last year. But now? Now all she felt was envy and emptiness. She turned to Blitz. And she saw that he was looking at them, too. His face was slack, his usual high-energy expressions missing. He looked sad. Deeply sad. And when he swung those yellow eyes to her, for reasons that Loona couldn't properly explain even to herself, like he was waiting on betrayal.

Loona would once have said that Blitz was categorically incapable of introspection. Now, she knew better. That was an introspective look. And it was clear he hated what he found there. Fucking hell, why was she only seeing this now? Why did she only notice now, after years living under the same roof as him, that he was so packed with self-hatred that it practically displaced his blood? And then she knew why. Because for the longest time that she was under his roof, he doted on and babied her. His affections ever borne outward, never inward, because he felt unworthy of them.

Holy shit.

She knew what her painful truth was.

"Blitzø is my father," she whispered.

Immediately on the tail of that admission, the tile in front of Loona exploded into flame and sparks, an apparition streaking skyward as Eddie was freed from his magical prison and allowed to take his chances against the Pearly Gates. And Loona felt a weight settle onto her body, dragging at her limbs. Fucking hell, it was true. When the choice was between homelessness and some random fucking imp, that random fucking imp stepped up. When she was hungry, he gave her the best food he could afford. When she was hurt, he kicked down doors to see her healed. And while he was a clingy creep, it was because he knew no better way.

Blitz was her father.

When she looked up again, Alastor just nodded, his smile small, but smug.

"Did something go wrong? I didn't hear her truth," Sam said.

"Oh, it was a good one," Alastor said. "And now you have to live with it. You see… you are reforging yourself. And you do so according to your unkind truths. You might want to get your blood tested. You'll be surprised what you find," he said with a wink.

...Mother fucker, did she have imp-blood now? As Alastor turned to face Sam, she quickly bit the web of her thumb hard enough to split the skin. And what oozed out was relievingly red.

Then, the next bit that came out after was black.

And then red again.

"Oh. Oh this can't be good," she said, as the blood seeping from her wound alternated being red and slick, and black and viscous.

"We're almost to the climax of this little play," Alastor said. "And when we do, you'll show the truth behind this wonderful process. And you don't even want to know what I can do with that."

"I'm sure that Hell will quake in your wake," Sam said.

"Hell won't even be able to hold me," Alastor said.

This time, Moxxie could barely hear the Radio Demon, as he spoke about the next, the Binding Of Natures. The words went straight in one ear and out the other. It wasn't like him to be so distracted when things were so critical, but even now, Moxxie felt his face oddly slack, and the sound of the bubbling waters now overwhelmed speech. And they didn't bubble, anymore. Now, they were song.

He was starting to understand things, now. Like how the Revelation of Terrific Truth wasn't about a painful truth, per se, but rather about the moment of epiphany that resulted when it surfaced. That pristine moment when your mind opened to possibilities that it would otherwise forever remained blinkered to, now enabling your now-opened mind to accept things that were beyond its ken. In a word, the Oath opened the door wider than you knew it could open. And now, for the second time this year, Moxxie could feel his mind adrift in the sea of what he would have called impossible things, simultaneously grasping and in gawping ignorance of them all.

His eyes drifted to the half-functioning fountain at the outskirts of their triad, as the water surged and ebbed out of its spouts, droplets landing like chimes as they met with the flow that swept towards oblivion. And the song that it played was the song of Hell, of Purgatory. Of change itself.

He arduously turned toward the Radio Demon. Even as this horrifying abomination in human form spoke, his own words had an underlying song to them. A song of something far more terrible than Hell. A hunger that could never be satiated. A lust that could never be slaked. His eyes swung farther, to Sam, who stood, staring intently at the goings on. Even the flickering of his hair seemed to imply music.

And there was music in Moxxie, too. He could feel it with every breath he pulled in, a frequency that connected him to something greater than himself. A sluggish glance to Millie told Moxxie that she was having the same trouble in concentration that he was. And the song she gave off was as visible as a rainbow after a storm. It was flowing and perfect, in utter harmony with Moxxie's own. A counterpoint that without which his own would never be complete.

Even as Alastor started to come to something like a conclusion, he looked to Loona, the caustic secretary that Moxxie now saw for what she was. A terrified kid, putting up walls. Satan's Horns, he had been in her place when he was younger. And she was still stuck in Old Moxxie's ways. Push them away. Alone is safer. And she had no Millie to teach her otherwise.

There was music in the hellhound, too.

It wasn't Moxxie and Millie's perfect harmony, but formed a strange syncopation when paired with their own. On its own, it was fine. Together, the two tunes demanded something. That was what this all was. The formation of a song. A song of Moxxie, of Millie, and of Loona. A song that would see the end of the Proxy of Lucifer.

His world went dark, then, as he knew that he had to make a choice. What would be the nature of his power? He could tilt his ear to the Radio Demon and hear in this strange mystery-play that Alastor had chosen to become as invulnerable as he could, and as insightful as the powers would allow him to be. And Moxxie could understand that choice. But he, unlike the Radio Demon, wasn't doing this alone. He didn't have to try to spread himself thin, to cover all avenues of might. He could focus on one thing. One thing he was already good at. One thing that he would become extraordinary at.

Intellect. The power of logic and mathematics, of deduction and discovery. Even as he chose it, he could feel his mind expanding, his thoughts growing steady even as the world seemed to slow down. Even as his brain grew comfortable with the notion, he instantly started to grasp aspects of Thaumaturgy that had been so out of his depth that Krieg had only mentioned them once and then given up. By Satan... with a bit of research, he was certain he could discover how Cruac brought back the dead.

Insight flowed from that, the intuition and invention and awareness of the subtle. Of course he knew how to bring back the dead. All it took was power, raw power. Power he now knew that there were ways to steal, to siphon that power, ways that even the Arch Crones of Cruac had never discovered. No wonder Alastor had always called Moxxie the Little Thaumaturge. When this ended, if he survived the fight against Nathan Birch... Moxxie could well become the most powerful impish wonderworker to ever live.

Even then, he felt the world settle into a new tempo, his accelerated mind now held back by his body. It was a strange sensation, to be able to outthink himself on his best day with only a fragment of effort. And he could change that tempo according to his whims, now. So he decelerated it, if only so it didn't take what felt like minutes to turn his head toward his wife.

He knew what she would pick. He knew that she would do the same thing he did, to focus on what she was already marvellous at, and become unparalleled. She would chose strength and grace and raw endurance; the power to tear a gargoyle in half with her bare, impish hands. The grace to move with any assault so that no foe could strike her. The endurance to survive any injury that did meet her.

And Loona? That alone, that syncopated rhythm was for the moment beyond him. But he felt a new question within him. A question asked by the power he was integrating with, itself.

What will you do with me?

And Moxxie had all the time in the world to come up with that answer. He could have accelerated his mind so that he could have pondered it for what felt like hours, or even days. But the answer was so simple that both he and Millie came up with it at the same time.

"I will make Hell respect the imp," husband and wife said in unison.

Loona was lost in a strange sensorum, a phantasmagoria that she didn't have the language to properly describe. It was like bouncing between nightmares and dreams, never lingering in any of them long enough to know which was which. But through all of it, the mind stretching extremes of it, she felt her body hum to her. Sing to her. It was a song that had been playing her entire life, and she only now heard it. It was the song of a people weeping in bondage. It was the song of orphans who never knew the love of a parent. It was the song of feral curs, kicked to the curb by greedy monsters.

And she was one of them. She would always be one of them. The luckiest of them. The most gifted of them. From this moment, she swore to herself, not even to this fucked up bullshit she was doing, but to herself, she was never going to let the gifts she was given to waste ever again. She was a free hound. And she had power now.

They would need her to speak for them. To make demands and have them be heard even by the cruel and the callous. She would need the charisma and poise of the Elder Devils to do it, but now that was within her reach. So she took it.

She knew herself. Loona Miller, child of greed and waste. Raised by her father, an imp. Member of a slave race that only by the grace of good luck she avoided the worst of. A soldier in a war that had been going on for a billion years before her birth. Only now? Now, maybe, she had a chance to turn the tide. She knew at long last what she would do with this power. Not just to beat Birch into a thin red paste and shovel him into the Pride Wall. No, she now had something she wanted, something that she needed.

"No slaves!" she declared, her voice thunderous in the din around her. "No masters! I will break the chains of the Hounds!"

And then, there was a noise in Loona's head like a thunderstrike, but emitted not from the air, but from every point in her body. The blast of it tore the already torn parts of her pants and almost unraveled one of her top's arms, made her fur stand on end. And despite being blinded by the crashing of internal thunder, she could tell the same was happening to the two imps across from her. She felt like she was expanding, ballooning, on the verge of bursting. It was pain in all of her body, and all of the parts of her that weren't her body.

She didn't know if she was standing or kneeling or if she'd in fact exploded. She couldn't hear. She couldn't see. But at the same time, she perceived through her other senses, that somehow informed her sense of smell to provide images and sounds.

She saw Hell, she saw the Human World, and she saw Heaven.

And then she saw other entire cosmoses, other Human Worlds devoid of Heaven or Hell.

Then she saw the former, spreading outward in fractals, histories and realities that followed a different, but familiar course. And then she saw more of the latter.

She saw an infinitude of them, so many more than the triplanar reality that she was used to that they crushed her home into oblivion by sheer weight of infinity. An entire layer of universes lesser than her own because to them, there was no afterlife, side by side in an infinite sheet, that folded atop itself in a neverending stack. No Hell of great plenty in which the hellhound could ascend from the cur. No seething abyss to give birth to the imps. No Heaven to shit out its angels. Just a single planet in an unbounded cosmos.

Infinite worlds without God.

All of them them so very nearly the same.

And then, with a click less auditory than it was visceral, she felt herself... the term she had to use was 'slot into place'.

Loona was more aware of the feeling of her eyes opening than she'd ever been cognizant of any physical action she'd taken since the loud Pop that signalled the beginning of her sapience as a pup. Despite the ragged state of her clothing now... she was fine. She didn't feel at all injured. But at the same time, she could feel a pulse inside her, one utterly heedless of her heart. Like her body was a tuning fork for a very particular frequency, one that would echo across the cosmos in ripples that would become waves, which would themselves become tsunamis.

And as she breathed in, the first inhale she'd had since this strange process completed, she could 'smell' the exact same tuning fork in Moxxie and Millie. Only theirs were set to a different frequency than her own.

At the center of the triangle, between resting between the feet of the Radio Demon, Satan's Grace had split into chunks and was now as dull and stagnant as any rock she'd ever seen in her life.

"Incredible," the Radio Demon said, awe in his smile. When she pulled in her second breath, she could smell that same 'tuning fork' in him, as well. Only his was a note that clashed with her own, one that was uncomfortable to even perceive. "I see what I was missing. Oh, what a day, what a day."

"They're... different," Sam said.

"They look the same to me," Blitz countered. Then he leaned toward the imps who were still knelt, stunned, at the base of the triangle. "Hey Mox, I can see your dick!"

"Oh crumbs," Moxxie said, covering himself. He'd been wearing less clothing and it was much tighter than Loona's. The 'Blast' essentially left him and Millie naked. Millie stood, heedless of her nudity, and walked over to a collapsed piece of fountain that looked like it had to weigh several tonnes.

She lifted it with little apparent effort, joy spreading across her face. She idly biffed it so hard into the sky that it landed somewhere outside the garden. Then, she tried punching a nearby marble pillar. It cracked its entire length from the blow, and when she looked at her fist, she hadn't even split her knuckles open.

"It worked," Moxxie said.

"It did... something," Loona said, getting to her feet.

"Exactly. Whatever you do now with it is your own business. I've gotten everything that wanted out of this little endeavor," Alastor said. He then crisply turned to Sam. "Our slate is clean, Samuel. Do not think to call on me again, unless you're willing to pay for it."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Sam said. Alastor started chuckling, then belly-laughing. He snapped his fingers, and with a metal snap he was gone, his laughter continuing for several seconds afterward.

Blitz continued to look at her, and she could see aspects of him that she'd been blind to before. Pride was there, in the way he looked at her, but also sadness. Sadness and fear. Fear was welling up. And she couldn't see why. She was about to speak when she heard her Hellphone ringing in her coat pocket. She scowled for a moment, but went to pick it up.

"Is this Loona?" Reggie's voice came through the call upon answering it.

"Why are you even asking that? You've got a Hellphone," she said.

"Well your handwriting is shit, so this is the fourth number I've called trying to find you," Reggie groused. She could tell just at a listen that his annoyance was only skin deep. Huh. Turns out her new 'eye' for people's tells ran a lot broader than just to the man who had taken it upon himself to become her father.

"Did you find out anything new about Maelstrom?" she made an educated assumption.

"Kinda. We need to meet up. I'm not going to talk about this over the phone. People might be listening."

"Who would..." Loona began on instinct, before remembering just how many Sinners with electromagnetic powers existed who could intercept such things, and would gladly sell out a stranger for a reward. "You're right," she corrected herself. "I can go right now. Where are you?"

"Booth 11 at Denny's," Reggie said.

"I'll be there in, like... an hour," she said. She then hung up. "Guys, I gotta split. Hound stuff."

"Yeah, you go have fun with your friends," Blitz said. "The rest of us are just fighting for our fucking lives, you know?"

"You think I don't know that?" Loona asked.

"Sometimes I don't know," Blitz said, turning at her with an outright angry look on his face. That was the kind of expression he directed at others, not her. Not until now. "Because every time I need you nowadays you're always fucking off with your dog-bois doing whatever the fuck you want when I need you the most!"

"I am trying to keep the Proxy's Hound from ripping us apart. Don't you think that's kinda fucking important?" she snapped back.

"Is that what you're doing? Is it really?" Blitz shouted. "'Cause for all I know, you're just lookin' for somebody to shack up with as we get fucking murdered!"

She knew exactly what to say to defuse his anger, to smooth things over. But in this particular moment, she had exactly no desire to. "You know what? I don't have time for this," Loona said.

"You never have time for me, now do you?" Blitz demanded, as Loona started to stalk away to the van.

"It's always about you, Blitz!" Loona countered. "Everything that those two over there are doing," she pointed at Moxxie and Millie "is because you dragged them into our bullshit. They would have been just fine after we ended up dead if you didn't rope them into this. Now they're on the line for your grudge against the fucking Proxy of Lucifer just like I am!"

"How dare you talk to me like that!" Blitz blasted.

"I'll talk to you however I want to. I'm not a kid. I wasn't a kid when you adopted me. And I'm not one now," Loona said, her anger boiling down to something a bit more manageable.

"Don't you walk away from me," she said as she continued walking to the van.

She didn't answer him. She just got into the driver's seat, turned the key and drove off.

Left in her wake, Moxxie raised a finger. "Um... that was our only ride," he said.

Sam sighed, palmed his face and shook his head. "God damn it," he said. "Fine. Everybody gather up. Even you, Blitz. Let's get home."

The sounds of the city started to fall away from Martha, where she sat in her car, Ralphie at her side. The drive-thru food was sitting between them, but the usually succulent aroma of bum-burgers and double-fried potatoes faded away, as an instinct hit her mind. She didn't know how to describe what she felt. Only that it was urgent. Her hand snapped to Ralphie's shoulder. "Pull over, right now," she said.

"Feelin' sick, Darlin'?" Ralphie asked.

"PULL OVER!" she shouted.

Ralphie turned an ursine frown at her, but did pulled to the crash-lane of the road. She threw open the door, her painfully burning arms naturally drifting upward. Was it really happening? Did they get in?

Her answer came, as she saw something falling toward her. Two somethings. Her eyes widened for the second and a half it took for them to streak, like a heat-seeking missile, directly at her.

The impact flattened her to the tarmac, and with a last pang of burning, she could feel the marks that the flame-headed Sinner burning off of her arms entirely. In those arms were a pair of children. One of them, a boy, had the visage of a raccoon, the other, the girl, of a stoat. But despite those fuzzy faces, she knew them. She knew them because to be a Sinner was to look upon souls. Since she had the wind knocked out of her, it was they who spoke first.

"Mama?" her son asked her. And her daughter clung hard to her as she began to weep with joy, Ralphie rushing over to join them in their moment of glee.

Anything that is not literally impossible, is inevitable.

Even the death of God.

-Alastor, the Radio Demon