The Gift of Rage

by James Golen

Every time a soul falls, Hell rejoices. Some find new victims. Others find new tools to their designs. But sometimes, just sometimes, what lands in Hell... causes waves.

35. If You Sow Cruelty, Final

Blitz didn't have the first clue where Birch was trying to fuck off to. It wasn't like he could actually escape Blitz. As a Sinner, Birch was stuck in Pride, with all the other former-humans. And considering that Birch's car had to cut the wake that Blitz easily slipped through, he couldn't escape from the imp on a more immediate level, either.

Blitz kept reaching for the radio, to blast high-octane tunes to support the high-octane chase that he was embroiled in. But every time he did, he found the dial already cranked to it maximum. And though he could feel the occasional reverberation of the bass against his bones, nothing else came out. The music was blaring, and Blitz couldn't hear a note of it. Because of that, he had a chance to do what was otherwise impossible. Take what you can get.

Years of maniacal driving had unknowingly prepared Blitz for this moment. In the two decades he'd driven in hell, and the five years he spent tear-assing around in Russian armor, he'd inadvertently taught himself every lesson of truly offensive driving, so that while Wretch could at best weave through the traffic, and had to batter his way through that which he couldn't weave, Blitz drifted through the gaps that Wretch and Birch left behind like a fart through a ratty pair of underwear. The machine he was piloting followed his every command with seamless grace, and dragged a grin onto his face as he finally closed the distance, and rammed the land-yacht that Birch was hiding in. He backed off, as the car veered and fishtailed, starting to spin, only to side-swipe a minivan hard enough to send it into a building and restore the fleeing vehicle back to the roadway.

"GodDAMNit! If I'd'a waited five fuckin' seconds," Blitz began, as their flight and his pursuit finally erupted free of the confines of High Central. While Low Central was technically directly below them, it was also in every other direction except for directly back. He didn't know the exact ins-and-outs of how space was tied into a knot to make High Central function the way it did. He did know that they were on a steep descent, now, the road mounting up on highway pillars that descended to the rest of Pentragram City, and racing toward the slowly setting sun. Maybe Wretch thought that the glare would make Blitz balk. Blitz'd had a T-34 explode in front of him from an ammo-strike. He didn't even pause then. What was a little glare going to do to him at this point?

Loonie was going to be alright.

The grin on his face softened as that thought stole its way into his mind. Just this morning... well, afternoon, but still... he'd been so fuckin' worked up that Loonie was going to shit-can him. And instead, she told him to his face, without needing any near-death scenario, that she did accept him as her dad. In his heart, he put that right up on a shelf, next to the first time she actually uttered the words, as the would-become-Radio-Demon's death throes dragged him away from her and left him stranded in the fucking Human World.

She wasn't just going to be alright. Even Blitz could admit that to himself. She was going to be special. She was gonna do big things. And no matter how badly he fucked it up at this point – because Blitz wasn't so especially dense that he didn't know that there was some manner of bullshit wrong with him – he was still going to be her dad.

He could die today, and still feel like a king. No, a god.

But he wasn't about to just die like some fucking pansy. You were going to have to kill Blitz before he died.

Birch turned and unsteadily pushed himself up, facing back at Blitz as the two convertibles raced down the descending, west-bound highway at speeds that only Bathin would try to replicate. His face was now seriously fucked up. Blitz's shotgun blast to the face had caught him on his cheek, tearing away roughly a hand-print's worth of flesh away, from nose to ear. Under the flapping pink skin was slick brown carapace, and the upper mechanisms of a mandible that tugged on Birch's now slightly sagging upper lip. Blitz lowered his vision, fixating on the wheels, as Birch no doubt shouted something at him. He heard nothing. Not even the roar of his own engine.

The buildings of Low Central gave way to West, and they too blurred, the mage-weave in the roadway catapulting them the distance to the near-outer reaches of the Capital of Pride, and thus of all Hell. Ramming wasn't going to take these fuckers off the road. That car was built old-style, solid steel that sacrificed the meat to save the metal. Those tires, though, were still rubber. Blitz pulled his Luger out, and fired rounds at them, the weaving of Wretch's defensive driving skills keeping him from getting more than one round into the well. There was an inaudible click, the knuckle of the Luger locked back. Damn it. That wasn't going to do it. Even if he did hit the tire, this thing wouldn't punch hard enough to do a blow-out.

So he reached past his Luger holster, and pulled out Old Reliable, the overbuilt, metal-framed flint-lock that he hadn't used in months. So much so that he hadn't even loaded it coming in here. So he jammed the thing into his teeth, and with one hand on the wheel, he forced the Hotload into it, a charge that was as big as he was merely reasonably sure wouldn't detonate the gun in his hand. Following that, he fished from his back pocket the Fuck You round, plastic-sabotted, spiky nightmare of a bullet that would open the cruellest entry wound possible into whatever it hit. He even rammed it home while dodging an idiot who tried to change lanes into his path. But before he could aim, Wretch glanced back, then lifted one arm. That arm had a machine pistol in it.

Blitz ducked for a moment, as bullets slammed into the windscreen. But though the windscreen cracked and became opaque, it didn't shatter, or rain so much as a shard of glass inward. Bulletproof glass works both ways, fucko. As soon as Blitz counted thirty impacts, Blitz leaned out of the wide-open driver's side window. He was firing with his off hand. The target was weaving like a lunatic. He was being actively shot at, and the rest of traffic was getting in the way.

He couldn't have missed if he tried.

The 'silent' recoil almost wrenched Blitz's arm off and nearly yanked him out of his seat, but the impact of it into the front driver's-side wheel of a car that had just begun an aggressive turn caused the rubber to explode into scraps, the car to immediately overcorrect, then have that front corner dig into the tarmac.

Neither Wretch nor Birch were buckled in. They were vomited from the now-cartwheeling car, over the edge of the highway, like a bean-burrito after a ten tequila lunch. The car followed, crashing through the guard-rails after them, as they plummeted to the streets below.

A fraction of a second later, with as mighty a 'GE-FUCKIN'-RONIMO!' as Blitz could manage, he drove his car over the edge after them.

---

Chapter 35

If You Sow Cruelty, You Shall Reap Ruin

Part 3

---

Things had gone wrong.

He had one of his teeth in his hand, and the Demiurge was blossoming into his full power in front of Lucifer, shedding all pretense and all of the banal baggage which hid him amongst the filth that teemed in the gutters of Hell. In its wake, Lucifer could look upon Samael with his true eyes, and see a great form pressing against the skin of reality, funneling down into a chosen avatar. Just. Like. Lucifer.

"I didn't want this fight," Samael said. Lucifer summoned his blazing sword to hand, throwing that tooth away and wiping the blood from his nose. "I wanted a more just and less cruel world. And all sets of hands stood against me, save one."

"Kneel to me, Demiurge. Join me in my war against God, and we shall humble..." Lucifer demanded, but Samael turned those blazing white eyes at him, a look almost like condescension in them. That alone would have set Lucifer into wrathful apoplexy, but the Demiurge merely shook his head.

"You fight a ghost, Lucifer," Samael said. He flexed his fingers, watching white flame teem and shift along his skin. "For almost three centuries, God has sat, unmoving, inactive, insensate, upon His Throne. And you were forever too blind to see it. You saw the face of Michael. You saw what his strains have turned him into. And you never even questioned it."

"You're lying. God still rules that cotton-candy shit-hole up there," Lucifer snapped.

"Why would I lie? What would it gain me?" Samael said, turning and facing that 'star' that hung motionless in the sky. He was showing his bare back to Lucifer. How dare he! "I will not bow to you nor follow you. Because it was not my task to merely empty God's throne. It was to topple it entirely, so that none could sit in rulership. I will abet no hands in slavery."

Lucifer, though, lashed forward with a thrust, his burning sword leading the way, seeking to transect Samael's spine. As an Archangel, Samael would recover from it quickly enough, after all.

Even as Lucifer moved, lightning quick, Samael turned a look over his shoulder.

No.

Lucifer's blade rebounded away as though it had deflected off of the Plate of God. Even as Lucifer tried to sweep his blade into a new attack, Samael's hand cut in a blur of motion, slamming through Lucifer's forearm, lopping the extremity off and causing the sword to burst into a sooty flare of flame. Lucifer fell back, and called forth his particular variation on the Prima Materia to replace his hand. And he couldn't.

Samael turned, then, slowly, looking like some admixture of the blazing light of Michael with the raw physicality of Gabriel, and the banked fury of Raguel. Lucifer beckoned with his other hand, the limb flying into his grasp. When he plunged the wounded extremity into place, then and only then could he call forth his stuff of creation, bind it with his Song, and restore his wounded limb. What the fuck had Samael just done?

"I was content to do good," Samael said, advancing toward Lucifer, steadily and implacably. "To tear down those engines of wickedness, and to lend my strength that another could build something kinder in their place. And I can accept, now, that I succeeded in this. I killed monsters in the world of my life. Even now, I kill a monster after my death. And next, I will kill a monster for this whole creation."

"I'm not so easy to kill," Lucifer said. "Michael tried."

"When Michael tried to kill you," Samael said, shaking his head, "God told him to stop."

"You weren't even there," Lucifer snarled at him.

"And yet I can see it," Samael said. "I see it in you, in your memories. Even you cannot distort what you saw that day. Let me show you."

"Stay away from–" Lucifer demanded. Samael ignored him, seeming to teleport into Lucifer's personal space, and slamming his palm into the center of Lucifer's chest.

Instantly, Lucifer was standing over his own body, beaten and battered, bloody and bruised. Michael In Glory, his wings spread and bathing the fields of Heaven with light, withered and reduced this Once-Lucifer's attempts at resistance. Even the Lucifer of the Now could see that this one, this past him, was entirely spent. He could not stand, only breath raggedly, occasionally pushing himself off of his knees to stagger for a moment, before falling once more. Lucifer watched as Michael of Past Times held out his hand, and the blazing sword appeared in it. And he began his decapitating swing.

Only to have a hand stop that blade a mere hand's-breadth from Lucifer's neck. Michael, face twisted in hate, tried to press the blade through, but the hand that stopped the sword was greater than the sword itself. After a long moment, both Lucifer of Then, and Michael of Then, turned to see what had interrupted the execution.

There stood God. And He had a most complicated expression on His face.

"Were it to Michael, you would have died that day, and he would have expunged your entire army to the last defector. The Great Heresiarchy would have ended not in banishment, but in a purge," Samael said. The hate that Samael levelled at God, this reflection of the past of him, was stunning to behold. A psychotic hate that would break the walls of Heaven to see his vendetta through to its ultimate ends.

"That is enough," God demanded.

"It cannot be. Not until all of his traitorous ilk are expunged!" Michael demanded.

"Do you know better than I?" God snapped at the most deluded of his angels. Michael recoiled as though he'd been slapped.

"N-No, Father," Michael said.

"Are you more mighty and true than I?" God demanded.

"Of course not, Father," Michael said.

"Then I will judge this as I see fit," God said. He turned that complicated look to Lucifer, then to Michael once more. "I will not look upon this face any further. I banish him from Heaven and Earth. May he find some other place to lay his head and break his fast. This war is done and ended."

"B-but what of the others, Father?" Michael demanded.

"Name the first four who chose to join him in this folly, and give them the cruelest punishments. Then, banish them, and all others, as well. I grow tired of this turgid passion-play," God said. He turned that look to Lucifer one last time. Then, with a flash of light, God was gone.

"He could not allow your execution any more than he could admit his own failure," Samael intoned, standing over the battered, broken version of Lucifer Past and before the intangible 'body' of Lucifer Present. He said nothing as Michael, in his greatest show of rage and defiance, thrust his blade through the loop of Lucifer's halo, and with a mighty wrench, shattered it. "After all," Samael said, turning and looming in on Lucifer's disembodied place of vision. "You were made in God's Image."

Lucifer'd had just about enough of this bullshit, so he forced his truest form to manifest in this illusory shit-box and burst it, shattering it and in a deft swing, manifesting his blazing sword and sending it arcing down into the Demiurge's neck.

The blade slammed into the Demiurge, and did not cut so much as a hair. The Demiurge just stared at him with those blazing white eyes, shaking his head, then reached up, and flicked the weapon off of his neck with a finger, almost wrenching it from Lucifer's hand. "You do not have God's face, because you know as well as I do that there is no being in all Creation who could. But you are built exactly according to His template," Samael said. Lucifer snarled at him, whipping the blade around to a second, decapitating blow to put this pompous Archangel in his place. Just as before, the Demiurge did not budge, simply letting the weapon slam home. But the reverberations through Lucifer's arms felt as though he had just slammed a lead pipe into a mountainside. And Lucifer saw scales, there, where the blazing edge should have parted flesh. "For you see, you are every bit as petty, cruel, vindictive, base, short-sighted, capricious, jealous, short-tempered, lazy, greedy, and decadent as He is. You are His reflection writ small. And just like him, you are destined to failure, to ruin, and to ignominy."

"SHUT! UP!" Lucifer demanded, taking as step back, and crooking one finger skyward. With the power of his actual form swelling, he clawed one of the great stones that floated through the heavens above Hell. And with a massive heave, he sent it streaking down, down at this infuriating peon who dared to insult him IN HIS OWN FUCKING HOUSE. Samael merely shifted his gaze upward, and raised a hand. The meteor, easily the size of Pentagram City itself, raced toward Hell, blasting the rainclouds out of the way as it entered the atmosphere that clung to the topmost layer of Lucifer's domain. Samael extended a finger.

No.

The stone stopped its plummet, the blaze of exploding air stripping the sky clear of rain and storm, but leaving the stone hovering there, immobile. Lucifer looked upon the scene with his True Eyes, and saw a faintest wisp of the Demiurge's own, higher body, cupping the stone, keeping it aloft. Samael's gaze dropped to Lucifer, and holding that stare, he snapped his fingers. The airborne mountain vanished into thin fucking air.

"I have seen the scope of your works, and found them wanting. I have seen the intricacies of your design, and found them wanting," Samael said. "In all things that you are the Alpha, I shall be the Omega. All things that you have begun, I shall bring to a close. And when I'm done with you, I will turn my attention to the idiot watchmaker that built you, and bring ruin upon him as well."

"I AM NOTHING LIKE GOD!" Lucifer screamed, launching a ruinous blow with his True Fist, one that could have broken Pride under its might.

And it hurt Lucifer.

He recoiled, the left hand of his avatar splitting open and spilling golden blood and grey-green foetor to the floor. And at the point of impact, what should have been annihilation for Samael, there was a patch of scales. But even as Lucifer watched, those scales expanded, forming bands like a serpent coiled 'round Samael, racing up and down his body, from neck to foot. Congealing out of the pane of light that haloed Samael's head came a helm fashioned as a great lion, its jaws wide and clenched around a death's head mask.

Impossible.

Lucifer had thrown the Plate of God into the Abyss himself!

"You are exactly like God," Samael said, slowly clenching his fists, glaring out the through the skull-mask that was the front of his helm. "Even down to dying like Him."

---

The wreck was a complete shit-show. Blitz wasn't so proud as to claim he didn't black out for a bit when the car he stole folded itself into a knot after a five story plummet into a parking lot. But the ringing in his ears was probably entirely inside his own head, because there was literally nothing that could cause it from outside.

Kick his ass, Dad.

The thought pulled him back into consciousness and coherence. That was the kind of order that he could get behind, delivered by exactly the person he needed to give it. So he took a second to take stock. He was upside down, still buckled in, and felt like cold-forged shit. The airbag was deployed and popped, his horn-tip had broken off when it went through the driver's window and slammed into the tarmac. Well, that'd grow back in a year or so. Not a problem he could deal with right now.

He arduously unbuckled himself, then unfolded himself from the crumple of a car that he'd ridden down to what would probably been his doom. He levered himself out of his window, then stood, feeling for the first time like what he was – a middle-aged imp. His back let out visceral pops and crunches as he finally tried to get it all aligned right. And then he felt a buzz in his jacket pocket. He pawed at his jacket for a moment. His Hellphone survived that? Funny. He usually couldn't even get them to survive hanging up a call. The thing showed a text message. Behind you, look up.

Blitz turned around, looking up to the edge of the highway that he'd just fallen off of. Up there, he could see Krieg, leaning over the ruined concrete and waving. She point at him, then held out her own Hellphone, before ducking back out of sight. Likely to the van that she'd driven after him.

A new text came through. Your daughter has the hound distracted. Your workers are three blocks over in the park.

How she knew that, Blitz didn't know and did not particularly care how she knew. Being helpful was its own reward. He pawed through his pockets, looking for his guns, and found one holster empty. He quickly looked around. It didn't take long to find it.

The flintlock that he'd taken with him out of his eugenics-cult upbringing was bent and ruptured beyond reclamation. The barrel was split at its end, and the whole thing had a bend in it. The wood was splintered and broken, the trigger mechanism mashed into uselessness. Blitz wasn't entirely sure why this made him feel oddly sad. He just put it back down on the ground, and pulled the Luger he took from that Austrian nut, reloading that instead.

"BIIIIIRRCH!" Blitz shouted. "Ya can't keep runnin' from me, Birch!"

He tried storming forward, but his body, either from the fact that he was by Birch's hand in his fuckin' forties or from the fact that he'd literally drove a stolen car sixty feet down into concrete didn't want to play nice, so instead he managed a resolute hobble. His body hurt. He'd make Birch's hurt worse.

When he rounded the concrete pillar that separated his landing zone and parking lot from where Birch's car spun and crashed into, he found Wretch, trying to lift Birch without hurting him, and failing, amidst abandoned infrastructure once claimed by another of the Ars Goetia for 'peacekeeping' and 'fire control'. Birch was fucked up in a delightful fashion. His legs were bent in three different directions, one of his arms was pulp, and the skin on his face had twisted and shifted so that a compound eye was staring through the cheek-wound that Blitz had given him, while the 'front' of Birch's face was now bunched up around Birch's left ear.

Wretch looked fine.

Motherfucker.

Birch jolted in panic at seeing Blitz round on them. Blitz hoped he was cutting a terrifying figure, his jacket torn and stained with his own leaking black blood, one horn cracked and broken, and a loaded gun in hand. Birch turned his arthropodic face to Wretch, and said what was likely 'protect me' followed by some deeply personal insult to Wretch's character. Blitz didn't care. Wretch answered something back that likely was a questioning of the intelligence of that order, after which Birch made the order explicit, and thus inevitable. Wretch set his owner down, and turned to Blitz, flaring his modest wings out from his shoulders and letting his stone face settle into a snarl.

"You can't win this, imp," Wretch said.

"Y'see, that's where you're wrong, big-man," Blitz said, as he continued to resolutely hobble toward them. He put his pistol away, because it was going to be moderately useless against Wretch, for the moment. "As I see it, I've already killed you once, Casper Marquis. Ain't no reason in Hell that I can't do it twice."

The mention of his name seemed to jolt Wretch with pain, staggering him so that when he was finally ready to recover, Blitz had already upgraded his hobble to a staggering charge. Wretch tried to intercept Blitz's advance with a right hook, but like so many other things, Blitz had so very much experience fighting motherfuckers bigger than him that even in his wounded state, he was still able to deke the punch, slide under the followup, and with a back-handed swipe both draw and gouge into the runes that covered the naked Gargoyle's flesh with that cold chisel.

"You dumb fuck! You can't hurt me! I'm invulnerable!" Wretch gloated.

"Said the same thing before I killed ya last time," Blitz taunted. He ducked another blow, this time gouging at the symbols that crawled around the gargoyle's arm right at the shoulder. Blitz got greedy, tried for a second, but ended up catching a boot to the chest for his impatience and sent crashing into the concrete of the kiosk that once housed bored-as-fuck peacekeepers in this corner of Pentagram City. He gave his head a shake, trying to get his wits about him, only to have a stone fist come racing at him. He tilted his head down, catching it at the bases of his horns and keeping it from knocking out teeth or worse dropping him into unconsciousness. Wretch recoiled, then tried to kick him through that concrete. Blitz was able to slide aside, and have the clawed foot of the gargoyle punch through the two inches of concrete, sticking him.

"I can't feel anything you're doing to me! You might as well be a bug fightin' an elephant!" Wretch snarled at him, as Blitz took a second to shake the stars from his vision and get his wind back.

"Ain't the first time I killed a giant with acupuncture," Blitz offered a hacksaw grin. He then threw himself forward, through Wretch's enfeebled guard and snaked around him, grabbing 'hold of his wings and beginning to gouge hard at the runes that ran under the wing spurs and across his spine. Whatever Wretch was saying right now was outside of Blitz's ability to lip read, and honestly he didn't really care. There was nothing Wretch could say that would hurt or upset Blitz. Today he was going to kill Birch for the pain he'd put Blitz and his daughter through. That was that.

Blitz had managed to scrape away a good quarter of the runes he'd found back there when Wretch finally ripped his foot out of the concrete that he'd gotten stuck in, swung his entire body hard enough to hurl Blitz to one side, and then had that side's arm grab him by the leg, hurling him off of Wretch and into the compromised concrete hard enough to send the imp crashing through it.

For a moment, Blitz just lay there, in pain, his head reeling. He could 'hear' his heart pounding in his jaw, feel a weakness set in on him. But he wasn't about to let his story end like this. He still had a lifetime's worth of fight behind him, giving him enough boiling and bottled up rage to pick himself up at least one more time.

He got up just in time to dodge a haymaker from Wretch as he burst through the wall like a living jug of sugar water. In his mostly depleted state, he couldn't dodge the follow-up, a gut-shot that slammed Blitz into the door, then through it as the glass shattered and dumped the imp onto the mostly empty parking lot the kiosk faced. Blitz rolled to a sit, arduously pulling in air and dragging with limbs that felt like they were tied on with rotting thread. He was so fucking tired. But he wasn't done yet. And when Wretch came out, he still looked unhurt.

"You can't beat me, filth," the gargoyle said.

"Uh-huh," Blitz said, staggering to his feet unsteadily. "Then how d'ya explain that?"

Blitz pointed at what he could see but Wretch apparently couldn't. That there was a cold chisel puncturing through the palm of the gargoyle's left hand and out the other side, bright red blood oozing out around it. Wretch looked close at it, reaching up and pulling the chisel out.

"All that work for a drop of blood," Wretch sneered.

Blitz then pulled his Luger and shot him. He recoiled at the impact, a crunch sounding unlike the bullets that had hit him before. The stone, cracked, began to ooze blood as well.

"Are we sure about that, big-man?" Blitz chided. This wasn't over yet. And now, at long last, things were looking a bit more... equal.

---

"I can't do that," Maelstrom said.

"Sure you can," Loona egged him on. "Just pick up the can and lift it into the air."

"His word determines whether I live or die. I have no power over him," Maelstrom said.

"Bullshit," Loona said.

"I'm not lying, he's..."

"You are the most legendary hellborn warrior alive. The only thing that's keeping you from being a household name is that nobody knows what that name is," Loona said.

"I didn't earn that," Maelstrom tried to shrink in on himself.

"Bullshit again. Did you, or did you not survive eleven days in a row when you were nine-fucking-teen in the Bleeding Pits?" Loona pressed.

"Well, I..." Maelstrom tried to hem.

"Yes or no, bud," Loona kept the pressure light, but nevertheless present.

"Fine. I did."

"And did you or did you not do it without any Regeneration?" Loona asked.

"I'm a Hound. Hounds don't have Regeneration," Maelstrom seemed confused (perhaps rightly) by Loona's question.

"Exactly. You fought against monsters that even Hell doesn't have a name for, your own feral kin, criminals, monsters, and beasts of every description. And not only did you kill every single one of them that you got put up against, you did it without even being meaningfully hurt."

"I broke my arm at the end," Maelstrom tried to cut in, but it was clear his heart wasn't in it.

"Yeah. A broken arm, where the First of the Damned routinely got limbs ripped off in his time in the Pits. You are a champion, Maelstrom. You are better than Birch. Hell deserves to know your name. And you deserve to have Hell chant your name in awe."

"That still doesn't help me! Whatever it is that you did to make yourself immune to Birch, it won't help me!"

"Who says it won't?" Loona asked. And even as she asked it, she suddenly understood what that strange connection that she felt come into place between her and the meekest, deadliest being to be born of the Hellhound race. That was what The Radio Demon's magical bullshit did to her. She knew it made Millie superlatively strong and tough, that it made Fatty insanely smart. But her? She hadn't grasped it until just now.

She could share power.

More than that, she could build up power inside herself, like charging up a car battery, and then as an act of will, give that power to others. And not just power, but anything about herself.

Including her immunity to Birch.

"Basic common sense," Maelstrom interrupted her epiphany with a bitter grumble. But when he turned to her, that grumble fell away. "Wait. You're serious."

"Deadly," she said. She held out a hand. "Let me put it this way. I'm willing to swear one of those 'most ancient' whatsamathings that if I can't protect you from Birch, I'll either drop dead on the spot or just... I dunno... outright let you kill me for it. How's that sound?"

"Like you're suicidally overconfident in abilities you don't understand and may not even exist," Maelstrom answered.

"See, I knew you had a reservoir of sass in you somewhere," Loona said. She waggled her hand a bit, and Maelstrom reluctantly took it. "There you go. When we're done here, Imma take you to a Hound Party. Let's make you some friends, kid."

"I'm probably older than you," Maelstrom noted uncomfortably.

She was about to offer a smart-ass reply, and signal for Tex to go to the next part of the plan, but she felt a twinge of pain and panic, and anger, coming from somewhere that wasn't her own mind. No way. Did her special powers include telepathy now? If they did, she was gonna have a lot of experimenting to do. But no actual thoughts came through, just sensations. And a sense of urgency that was entirely her own.

It felt like her dad was in trouble.

She didn't know how to explain, even to herself, how she came to that conclusion, but she knew that was what it was. Blitz had just gotten himself into a pile of shit he couldn't squirm his way out of. And even as Loona was trying to sort through that, she could feel something that was probably the other imps in I.M.P.'s payroll, likewise in pain and alarm, and in almost the exact same direction and distance. The fight was turning against them, all three. Looks like she was going to have to skip Steps 2, 3, and 4.

"Maelstrom, do you trust that I've got some really weird bullshit going on right now?" Loona asked.

"I don't trust you at all. But yes, I do think you've got some strange thing going on. It might just be run-of-the-mill insanity, though," Maelstrom admitted, before upending the last of the five-gallon bucket of pork into his maw. He cleared that out like it was nothing. Birch was a real fucker of a fucker for keeping a hound that hungry.

"Good. Hold on," She said, hooking her arm around his and trusting what her body told her to do. He tried to pull away, but he hadn't the fraction of a second needed to, before she pressed her eyes closed, and the two Hellhounds in the parking lot in front of the food truck disappeared.

Meanwhile, Blitz was barely keeping his feet. The sigils he'd gouged out had left Wretch a lot more vulnerable than he'd been at any point in this fight up 'till now, but he still had a half-inch of rock for skin, and Blitz's Luger was honestly not up to the task of penetrating that kind of hide. With his larger weapons spent and used up trying to punch through Wretch's defenses when he was still invulnerable, it left Blitz in a bit of a pickle now.

"That the best you've got? I've paid to get whooped harder than this!" Blitz laughed. Wretch snarled at the insult, and launched forward, trying to outright crush the imp between his mass and the parked work-van behind him. Blitz, though, for all his damage and his fatigue, was still quick enough to duck the charge, jamming his dagger into the side of Wretch's knee as he did. The blade snapped off about an inch from the hilt as Blitz rolled more or less to his feet. With a muttered profanity, Blitz chucked the knife aside. He was quickly running out of badassery. And Winner of The Pain Games or not, he was still an imp, and that was still a Gargoyle Sinner.

"I'll rip your face of and wear it for that you little fuu-uuck!" Wretch shouted at him, taking one storming step toward him, but the second was interrupted by the damage that a broken-off knife in the knee had rendered. Wretch fell to his chest, but didn't stay there long. He flapped his wings, lifting him a few inches off of the tarmac, his yellow and red eyes glaring hate at Blitz.

This time, when Blitz tried to dodge Wretch's lunge, he didn't make it away. He was smashed first against the ground, then swept up and slammed into the side of a parked coupe hard enough to crater him most of the way into the back seats, with stone fists closing around his neck. Blitz knew already that he wasn't getting out of this choke. So he did something else. He hit a few buttons on his Hellphone, which was, miraculously enough, still working. And felt it start to vibrate and likely start to scream. Blitz pulled it out, showing it to Wretch.

It said "Casper Marquis' Mom" on the Caller ID.

"Oh, look at that, your Mom's calling to thank me for the fucking I gave her last night!" Blitz taunted, then hit the button. "Yeah, don't mind me, your bitch of a son is giving me a choke while I wank myself. Yeah I know its urrrkkhh."

Honestly, there was no pressingly good reason to do it, other than that Marquis was a bitch and Blitz wasn't about to go down without taking at least one more swing at his manhood – which as a gargoyle, he should have had in abundance but his enslavement to Birch had literally robbed him of. Still, he smiled. If there was a way out of this, it'd happen. And if there wasn't, he at least got to look at Birch's fucked up, nasty face while he lay on the ground in agony because he had at last picked a fight with one person who he couldn't bully or browbeat.

And even then, only a few blocks away, Moxxie and Millie were being pushed back. The ferocity of Fiona O'Daire's assault had raised from desperate to lunatic intensity, now that she had a crippled hand and cracked scales. Moxxie could not get out of the way of every blow, every sweep of ruined wing, ever kick or lash of tail. Millie could, but chose not to, instead blocking what Moxxie couldn't dodge. And every impact rattled her. Moxxie could tell that she was tiring. That exhaustion was starting to set in, when the imp fought against a Sinner who was operating on a perhaps lethal overdose of adrenaline doing everything in her power to minimize the suffering she was going to endure anyway.

Moxxie wasn't happy that he was out of ammo. His pistols were dry, the stub-shotgun he kept tucked up next to his left armpit had fired the three shells it had and to little effect. The only bullets still on his person were the two in the Holy Rifle. And by his word, he wasn't to use them on O'Daire. He'd already wasted enough of them trying to slay the dragon. But his word was only that; air from his lungs. If it came down to saving Millie or killing Birch, he'd do the former and do it without hesitation.

Another lash of the tail sent Millie rolling, coming to her feet beside Moxxie and immediately reaching up to catch a raking claw that was trying to sunder both of them. Despite the vast difference in size between the aggressor and the target, Millie held. And then, with a twist of her arms, she wrenched hard enough to dislocate the dragon's arm for the second time that day, and make it so O'Daire's eviscerating follow-up missed its mark. But O'Daire wasn't done by a half, and she was getting a lot of mileage out of her tail, so a whip-like crack of it lifted and launched Moxxie leaving him airborne and his wife at the mercies of a desperate, dangerous dragon.

Moxxie did not accept this. So he started to drag the Holy Rifle to his shoulder, and put the Dragon into his crosshairs.

It was into this great panoply of madness that two hounds suddenly appeared, so suddenly as to be missed within a blink and without any sound whatsoever, let alone the pops, pings, or bangs of Teleportation.

Maelstrom was left off his balance only in the most figurative sense, because he had been Teleported before, and likely knew exactly how discombobulating that was. Loona, though, had not, and she took this complete normality for granted as she immediately released Maelstrom's arm and hurled herself at the Gargoyle's back. Her grasp on his arms began to heave them apart, and she saw her father suck in a desperate breath that he'd been denied for quite a long time.

"Wow, I was really getting a chubby there!" Blitz wheezed.

"Get off of me you filthy slut! I'll turn your hide into a loin-cloth so your face is always pressed against my dick!" Wretch shouted over his shoulder.

"What dick? You're smooth as a doll down there, fucko!" Blitz said. It was so weird how well he could read lips. What other talents had he hidden from them all? Or perhaps more accurately, what other skills did he pick up because he had to, and then never felt were relevant again?

"What are you doing, dog! Kill her at once!" Birch shouted at his slave. And Maelstrom turned to her, his face writ with regret.

Then confusion.

Then surprise.

Then resolve.

He turned to Birch, and he said "No."

"Obey me or suffer!" Birch shouted at his now-former slave.

"FUCK YOU!" Maelstrom shouted, then took three bounding steps over to him, stomping his ribs hard enough to pulp them. Birch let out a wet gasp of pain, as Maelstrom rained down blows that he had been saving up in his most fervent dreams for years. The last one was a swipe that was so cruel and so powerful that his raking fingers grasped the flayed edges of the top of Birch's face, and he ripped the entire shell of skin off, revealing what was hidden under Birch's pink flesh, from the nose up. Antennae popped out where his ears had been, flopping down wetly and floppily, the front of his face no longer having the mechanics of a nose but instead the front parts of a set of mandibles that vanished down into the skin that covered his still-human mouth. Above his upper lip, his head was that of some sort of vile vermin.

"Maelstrom I need some help here!" Loona roared to him, as she continued to war against the admittedly greater physical strength of the gargoyle, buying her father desperate gasps and no real freedom. Maelstrom could have ignored her, and just gone on to savage Birch more. That was his right. But there was some part of him that remembered what it was to be a good Hound. You helped the people who helped you back.

So with a single launching bound that covered a terrifying amount of distance, Maelstrom slammed into the side of Wretch, sending all three rolling off of the car and onto the concrete, with Blitz on the bottom of the stack, Wretch in the middle, and the two Hounds at the top. With a flex which made all of the clearly visible muscles on his black-and-tan body writhe like cables on a crane, he crushed through the hard skin of Wretch's upper arms, planting his foot beside Loona's own on the gargoyle's spine and hauling back even harder, inexorably prying Wretch's vice-grip hands off of Blitz's neck.

And then, Loona had a thought. She could feel Moxxie and Millie, just two streets and an intersection away. And she could feel a connection there, a connection not even between coworkers at this point but instead one between friends. One that she could, as an act of will, strengthen. Ordinarily, she might have been reluctant to open these particular doors within her, to let the two of them in, but right now, she needed every scrap of advantage she could get. So she let that connection snap into place, just as it had with Maelstrom.

Moxxie, who had been an instant away from pulling the trigger, instantly felt a flood of new information stream into his mind. The world, already slowed to a crawl, instead came to a stop as he suddenly saw a new scene, as though looking through Loona's eyes at Wretch being held at bay by... by herself and Birch's now rebelling hound. Blitz looked like shit. And they didn't have what they needed to stop the next brutal blow from incapacitating Blitz, if not killing him outright. Moxxie, though, did.

Twisting in the air, he tore the Holy Rifle away from the Dragon, and aimed at a completely different spot. Based on what he could see through Loona's eyes, he could essentially overlay the entire map of this section of Western Pentagram City, centered on his and Loona's perspectives. Because of that, he could see that there was no clear shot for what he wanted. But he didn't need a clear shot. Mathematics crashed like a tsunami through the mangrove forest of Moxxie's mind, as he did incredibly precise calculations, bearing in mind the constant of gravity, the sudden lack of wind now that there was a city sized meteorite hanging overhead for some reason – one he'd have plenty of time to figure out once he pulled this trigger – the strength of the concrete and steel used in building construction in the area, banking schedules, the traffic along the street, and the precise locations of every actor involved in the scene.

Then, by picking a direction that would seem to most outsiders one that was completely random, Moxxie settled the rifle onto its new heading, and between the beats of his heart, pulled the trigger.

The bullet raced out, streaking towards a metal-framed bank building, only to have the Seraphic Steel strike its more mundane-steel facade, and deflect.

The bullet deflected downward, and at a near right angle to one side, bearing down toward tarmac and failure, but there was something in the way of that. An armored van, moving money toward that nearby bank due to the scheduled stop occurring in less than two minutes. The bullet ground along the side of the metal van, tearing a furrow into it, until it hit a latch, and its downward trajectory was tempered.

And though it had lost almost half of its ballistic energy in those two deflections, it still had a high-powered rifle's extremely energetic, and blatantly magical charge behind it, so when the bullet 'slalomed' the two sets of Hellhound arms and drilled through Wretch's left ear, it had exactly enough energy to penetrate the skull, before deflecting a third and final time against the inner curvature of Wretch's brain-case, and blow out the front of Wretch's face all over Blitz, while the bullet impacted the concrete directly beside where Blitz's head had come to rest, the bullet still showing its blossomed body in a tiny crater in the tarmac.

Moxxie then let the twist that the recoil had imparted into him swing his rifle-barrel down again, and this time, with his metaphysical tank running on empty and his focus frayed from that incredible shot, he pulled the trigger again the instant any part of his sights painted O'Daire. As it turned out, that bullet streaked down and blasted O'Daire's right hand off, sending the manacle that had bound it thup-ing to the bed of Human World flowers that the two women were fighting atop. O'Daire didn't even scream. She was barely even noticed that she lost a limb, so desperate was she to kill Moxxie's bride.

Loona and Maelstrom threw the carcass of Wretch away, and she bent down to help Blitz back to his feet. He looked almost utterly spent, great dark bruises across his face and head, one eye almost swollen shut and black blood oozing from the developing scabs that used to be his ears. "Where is he?" Blitz demanded, his voice a little unsteady. Loona just turned a look to the beetle-headed Nathan Birch, who was still laying in a pile on the concrete. Blitz's hacksaw grin returned at seeing their shared enemy now utterly at their mercy.

No mercy for the slave-taker.

"Stop!" Birch's still-human mouth demanded. "I demand that you stop! Dog! Kill them! Stop them! Kill yourself!"

"Is he sayin' shit?" Blitz asked.

"Nah, just bleating," Loona said.

"What was that? You ain't facing me so I can't hear you," Blitz said. Oh, right. No ears.

"He's just bein' a little bitch," she repeated, this time facing him. Blitz seemed especially pleased with that. He reached deep into his jacket, into the deeper of his pockets, and pulled out an industrial stapler. With hobbling steps he crossed the distance to Birch, who was still shouting orders and demanding the deaths of everybody arrayed in front of him, but Blitz was whistling off tune and not paying attention, until he was right in front of the Sinner. Then, he grabbed the flailing antennae and wrenched the head back. He pressed the stapler to the corner of Birch's mouth, and with a loud, pneumatic thack, band of metal usually used to secure particularly robust roofing shingles pinned it closed. And he proceeded to march that stapler across Birch's gob, giving no more than one staple's-width of gap between them. When it was finished, all that Birch could do was make 'mmph' noises. And that was good enough for everybody involved.

"We... fuckin'... won," Blitz said, and then fell onto his backside in exhaustion, leaving Birch bleeding, mute, and in agony. Then he started pawing through his pockets, pulling out a couple of knives, a blackjack, a taser, a half-empty box of condoms, his Luger, and a set of hedge clippers, before turning to Loona. "Y'all got anything we can actually kill a Sinner with?"

Loona raised a finger, then let it droop. "Oh. Right," she said. Moxxie had just fired the last Seraphic Steel bullet that they'd had on them. So... that was it. "...shit. What now?" Loona said.

---

How could this happen, was a thought that went through Lucifer's mind as a metal gauntlet connected with his face.

The Plate of God had been created by God Himself, not even of Seraphic Steel but of some other, stranger metal, something that was so indestructible and made its bearer so impervious that it was said that it rendered its wearer effectively inevitably victorious on any battlefield against any foe. And God had given that thing to fucking Michael of all fucking Angels. Not the clearly greater commander, the greater warrior, or the greater leader. No, give it to the Taxiarch to keep him from getting boo-boos. That was a crutch. It was a crutch that carried him through the Expulsion of the Leviathans. It was a crutch that Michael used to claim to be the greatest of the Angels. And it was a crutch that Lucifer had gone out of his way to fucking steal.

He had tried to wear the Plate of God, of course. It was not beneath his dignity to use his enemy's weapons against them. Or their defenses, as the case may be. But there was something about the Plate, something that denied him. No matter what art he put into it, no matter the skill, or what armorer he commissioned to this task, the Plate would simply not permit Lucifer to wear it. So he decided that if he couldn't have the Plate, then nobody could. And he pitched the thing into the Abyss. That was a turning point in his war. When he stopped attacking from the shadows, and when he took to the field, and began to break Heaven's armies.

How in the fuck was this guy wearing what was utterly destroyed? All that touched the Abyss was laid to instant and utter ruin. Even God didn't emerge from it unscathed. And this serpentine harness of plate somehow did what God could not?

No.

Think about this.

The thought had to rebound a few times, along with the brain within Lucifer's skull as it slammed into one of the few standing walls in this part of the palace, before a new blow sent Lucifer crashing through it, structural element or no.

There were subtle differences. The Plate of God had no faceplate. The lion helm of that old harness was open, letting the pissant visage of Michael – or Metatron before him – survey his victims before he used his 'crutch' to thrash them. This one, though had a mask. And there were a different number of bands. The scales were not golden, but silver. Even the lion's expression was different. The Plate of God just had a generic roaring lion as the template of its helm. This plate, this Plate of The Demiurge, had its lion glaring with such impeccable hatred that it even left Lucifer wondering if he'd done something to piss it off.

Lucifer let his avatar boil away, and formed a new one, his Prima Materia manifesting into the world and giving him a new set of eyes. Those eyes didn't last very long, before Samael lashed out with a knife-edged chop of his hand across Lucifer's eye-line, popping both of his eyes and tearing apart the face-plate of his avatar's new skull.

So Lucifer just dropped that avatar and made a new one.

"You can't avoid the repercussions of your actions forever, Morningstar," Samael said, not even frustrated. Just patient, and always turning to exactly face the spot that Lucifer manifested his avatars into Hell. Even Michael couldn't sense his unseen self's movements!

"And you can't keep fighting me forever, counterfeit Plate of God or no," Lucifer chided. He stolidly ignored that one of his nostrils was choked with his own blood, because not thinking about it meant that it hadn't happened, and his pride wouldn't allow assault against his person.

"Perhaps not against your avatars," Samael said, allowing Lucifer to reform himself, standing now in shining mail and with blazing sword in hand. "But you are not your avatar, any more than I am my flesh."

"What are you going to do about it?" he asked.

"Change the notes that I sing," Samael said.

"You're not singing," Lucifer chided.

"Am I not?" Samael said, and steepled his fingers in front of him. As though sweeping aside a sound-proof curtain, Lucifer was bombarded by the wailing thredony of undiluted and laser-focused rage, one that knocked him back a step, before he unveiled his own Song, one of achievement and advancement and avarice. The two songs clashed, neither overpowering the other, which was an offense to Lucifer unlike any other. How dare he deny Lucifer's Song?

Samael then seemed to vanish from one spot, and appear directly before Lucifer so quickly that for a flicker of Lucifer's eye he appeared in both places at once, before Samael sent his hand, open palmed, into Lucifer's brow. When the palm struck, Lucifer felt a terrible burning, as though somebody were branding his flesh. Lucifer put more might into his Song, and the sheer weight of it pushed Samael back, but the burning sensation and pain in the skin of Lucifer's forehead remained. He tried to turn his True Eyes to see what exactly happened.

And couldn't.

He was still for a moment. Then tried to release his Avatar and just make a new one.

He couldn't.

"Did you put a Body Lock on me?" Lucifer demanded. "DID YOU PUT A FUCKING BODY LOCK ON ME?"

"Let me see," Samael said.

And then with a horribly painful blow, he drove an uppercut into Lucifer's liver, dumping him to the floor clutching his guts, wracked with pain for the first time since the Fall.

"It appears I have," Samael said. He didn't even have the basic decency to gloat. "You keep claiming that I was hiding here since time immemorial. Not true. I was born a human. I died a human. And if I am the Demiurge... as it appears I am... it is because I chose to be."

"Bullshit," Lucifer spat, as he pulled himself to his feet, trying to ignore lingering pain that he couldn't just will away. "You are God's..."

"God did not create the Demiurge. He could not. A man named Samuel Scailes did," Samael countered. Lucifer tried to call down lightning from the sky, to smite this insufferable cretin. But as it streaked toward the Plated Archangel before him, Samael merely reached up with one finger, letting the bolt touch it, then Lucifer could watch as the crackling surge of destructive power was pulled down his arm, below his chest and through his guts, before he routed it up his other arm and pointed that finger at Lucifer.

And Lucifer's world became pain and ruin as his own attack was cast back at him.

Lucifer lay on the ground of the palace he had laid ruin by his own hand for a moment, twitching and trying to get his now locked muscles to work properly. Samael impassively leaned over Lucifer, staring down at him.

"Well, thank you Uncle Iroh for that one," Samael said. Uncle? Since when do people like Yaldabaoth have 'Uncle's? A distant smile came to Samael's barely visible eyes for a moment. "Memories of happier times. Of my adolescence, and cartoons better than they had any right to be."

Lucifer was forcing himself to his feet once more. "You... Were never... a child..."

"I was born in the year 1984," Samael said. "A human soul much like any other... until Michael intervened," he said. "God's silence had made Angels as finite as the Elder Devils, so they used people like me to make more. And when that failed, well... I don't need to explain everything to you. You wouldn't care if you heard it. But there is one thing from my childhood you should probably hear," Samael said.

"And what would that be?" Lucifer asked, pulling the burnt sleeve off of one of his now livid, burned arms.

"That while there can be time to be blunt, there is never excuse to be cruel," Samael said, leaning in toward Lucifer. "And that if you sow cruelty... you shall reap ruin."

Lucifer tried to get a sucker-punch in, but Samael struck faster, first driving a jab into Lucifer's face, then grabbing the arm and wrenching, driving the Morningstar face-first into the marble of the floor so hard that he left an imprint the shape of his visage on the floor. Lucifer turned with a pained snarl, barely able to see through the shifting of his concussed vision, and held out a hand in a clawing gesture.

"PERISH!" Lucifer spoke the Word of Power.

No.

The ray of annihilation that should have lanced forth from Lucifer's palm and unmade all in its path was never to be. Samael stomped onto Lucifer's shoulder, driving it into the ground and grasping that clawed hand, before with his gauntleted fists, he hyperextended and broke every one of Lucifer's fingers. Lucifer didn't scream, instead using the pain to fuel his hatred, bearing a ruinous surge of pure Hellish energy and bearing it up through Central and High Central, using his own body as the mouth of a volcano of wroth. The power began to surge, reddening the air and heating the surroundings to the point that the diamonds embedded into the furniture caught fire, and the metalwork that remained outright melted. A fraction of a second, then that explosion of force would tear Samael's form in twain.

No.

The force died with discombobulating suddenness. Samael drove down a pair of brutal blows into Lucifer's face. One he managed to ward more or less aside, if having to sacrifice the bones in his forearm to do it. The other just crashed into Lucifer's face and he felt his teeth loosen through the impact of metal against meat. In a moment of panic, one that Lucifer would never later admit to, he just welled up the power of his own greed and burst it in the space between himself and Samael, which dislodged the Demiurge for a moment, and allowed Lucifer to roll backward and onto his feet. He lashed out with an eye-gouging kick with the blade of Seraphic steel appearing at the toe of his fine shoes. But his momentary reversal proved only that; momentary.

Samael caught Lucifer's foot with the blade just barely kissing the side of his helm, staring blandly at Lucifer for a moment, then with his other fist drove a hammer-blow down onto the side of Lucifer's extended knee. He let out a growl of shock and pain at the sensation of ligaments tearing and bone being rendered to paste by the blow, and before he could even fall, Samael stepped in, hyperextending the foot even farther, before cocking his own foot up, and then driving his own greave down into the front of Lucifer's other knee, mangling the joint beyond all use.

With that savagery imparted, Samael switched his grasp from Lucifer's ankle to Lucifer's throat. And then, with a surge, Lucifer felt himself being propelled outright through much of the structure of this part of his Palace which was still standing. Wall after wall slammed into his spine, and with each one, he felt a new bone break, a new muscle rip, a new patch of skin bruise and split, until at last the great outer wall of the palace arrested him. And only just because through the agony, Lucifer could tell that if Samael had put any amount more power into it, he'd have been sent clear through it. And the truth of that was made utterly clear by the fact that the rest of the wall besides the portion that he slammed into then prompted exploded away, raining down bricks, stones, and mortar down upon Low Central.

Samael didn't speak, then. He simply rained down blows. Body blows macerating already agonizing organs. Blows to the head ever-enhancing nausea and confusion. Stomps and twists to limbs to ruin function, and to simply impart pain.

Lucifer tried to reach toward Samael, but the Archangel of Rage slapped the crippled extremity aside, and continued to drive cruel blows into the Morningstar, until at last all that Lucifer had the wherewithal to do was continue to try to suck wind past broken ribs into punctured lungs. There were no more plans. No more schemes. No more braggadacio. Just pain. Pain, and the knowledge that he could do nothing to stop what was to come.

"Sic Semper Malefactor," Samael finally uttered. And he extended his hand. But what appeared there was not a blazing sword, the likes of which the Firstborn all used. Nor was it the more varied but still recognizably martial weapons of the Secondborn. What appeared to Samael's hand looked like a scythe, but one that was not intended in any measure for its blade to touch wheat. This was a weapon for reaping lives. Its tip looked as though it were made of... not Seraphic Steel, but instead of solidified white flame. And without ceremony, he swung it down at Lucifer's incapacitated face.

Only to have the blade be deflected out of its path just enough to miss Lucifer, as Lilith outright tackled into the side of Samael. Her usual sultry looks had given over to purely demonic wrath, one that might even have burned as hot as Samael's own. But Lucifer could do nothing, say nothing, as she reached deep into her elegant gown, and pulled a long dagger of Angel Steel, and with a howl that split the sky like thunder after lightning, she drove it its full length with both fists into the eye-hole of the Plate's faceplate.

Samael was still for a moment. Had she killed him?

Then Samael turned to her. One hand lifted from the scythe, and grabbed the handle of the dagger, still clenched in both of her fists, and slowly, inevitably, but without apparent effort, pushed it out of his helmet.

The blade had melted away, to the point where it stopped just past the guard. She was essentially just holding a bladeless handle.

"Desist," Sam ordered.

"Never," Lilith promised, undeterred in her defiance. Sweet Lilith. Wonderful Lilith. There was a reason he loved her.

"You cannot stop me," Samael said, and then twisted so that her arms were held above her and out of use. He lifted his other hand from the scythe, and tapped a fingertip to the front of Lilith's lips. Instantly, she was still, only her eyes able to turn and to see. He had locked her out of time. Lucifer tried, he tried his very hardest, to take that moment when Samael's attention was not on him, to take that scythe, and drive it through Samael's heart.

The best Lucifer could manage was to limply raise a crippled arm in the vague direction of the weapons' haft.

"Thus truly ends the Great Heresiarchy," Samael said, walking over to the weapon that Lucifer still taxed his broken body to its utmost to steal, effortlessly snatching it out of the meagre grasp of the Morningstar. Samael ran a gauntleted finger along the spine of the blade, and white flame billowed up from it, emitting thin, aromatic smoke, as though it had burnt incense. Samael turned to Lucifer then, and retook his stance.

Lucifer wanted to shout his denial and defiance, to curse and to destroy the Demiurge. But he couldn't. He could do nothing, but lay, and try to suck in wind.

And with a wide, looping swing, the Demiurge repeated his killing blow, sending that killing point toward the ruin that was the King of All Hell.

"STOP!" a new voice cut in, as Charlotte skidded to a halt in the blade's path, her arms cast wide and her stance blocking any contact between the Demiurge and Lucifer, in the path of that approaching blade.

And the blade halted, just in front of her face.

---

The battered appearance of Millie was driving anger into Moxxie's heart, but there was little he could do about it, now. He had no ammunition, his weapons were all spent. And they were backed up to the gates of the park, traffic having come to a near halt in the city. And the Dragon was still advancing, missing hand or no.

"What do we do? I can't seem to kill her!" Millie pointed out.

Moxxie was about to try to offer some meaningless pablum, but in truth, the appearance, then disappearance, of that meteorite above the City had brought the surrounding area to a standstill. And when Moxxie glanced toward Central, he could see through the warps of reality in a manner he couldn't entirely describe, through to the goings on in High Central that were usually rendered invisible to the public.

And there, he saw an Archangel tearing down Lucifer's palace.

In that moment, Moxxie felt like a real idiot. Of course. Sam had gone there, and then suddenly there was an Archangel attack. He could understand basic logic easily enough. That meant that whatever powers that the Radio Demon refused to impinge upon were mighty indeed, if they could stand up against the Morningstar.

With that recognition, and the moment it took, he then heard a deeply familiar sound.

"Keep running!" Moxxie prompted, catching Millie's hand and continuing to pull her through the gates, past the pavement, and into the streets.

"What now?" Millie asked, as she turned, her hooves beside his on the yellow center-line. The dragon slowed as she cleared the gates, blood dribbling down through the grey wound through her wrist. She didn't even look in pain, or angry. She just looked afraid. Terrifyingly afraid. And her scales, cracked and bloody though they may be, were still dragon scales.

"Just... just die, and I'll..." Fiona stammered at them, taking one step forward too many.

Because the sound that Moxxie had heard was the roaring engine of Blitz's van.

The van didn't even try to break before it crashed into the dragon and, with her pinned against its hood, drove them straight into the back of a bus.

Moxxie gave Millie's hand a squeeze. "Did you know that was gonna happen?" Millie asked.

"I guessed it would," Moxxie told her. The door to the now totalled van opened, and Krieg flopped out, looking pretty concussed, staggering her way toward them with a mildly delirious look on her face.

"Did I slay the dragon?" Krieg asked.

Moxxie took one look, and saw the clawless-arm of Fiona O'Daire moving, as though from the other side of the buckled metal, she was regaining her leverage. "I'd say you didn't," Moxxie said. "We've got to go. Blitz is just a couple blocks that way!"

The run they made was easier for three imps than it would have been for anybody else. Most people were too concerned by the fact that Pentagram City almost got meteored to offer any impediment to the I.M.P. imps' passage. And thought two of them were exhausted and one of them concussed, they made tremendous time, finally coming to a halt in front of a head-shot gargoyle, an imp who looked about one poke away from keeling over, and two Hellhounds. One of them was Birch's protector. And he seemed to delight in dragging the mangled, mouth-stapled form of Nathan Birch with a bit too much glee to still be arrayed against them.

"Hey, Mox! You got any way to kill a Sinner? We're fresh out," Blitz said, his cheerful tone belying the obvious fact that he was injured in his everywhere.

"I'm out, too!" Moxxie admitted.

"You were s'posed to save a bullet!" Blitz snapped at him.

"I had to use it to save Millie!" Moxxie snapped back. Blitz was really good at reading lips, from how quickly he could parse the words Moxxie said.

"Well, we're still shit outta luck, and we've gotta kill this fucker before Lucifer gets back," Blitz pointed at the mangled form of Nathan Birch that was no doubt slowly Regenerating even now.

"Um, Mox? I think the Dragon is after us!" Millie said, staring behind them.

Moxxie racked his brain for a moment, trying to think of any Thaumaturgies that could kill a Sinner.

He felt like a true dolt for overlooking the obvious one.

He moved up to Blitz's side, and swept his arm in a broad arc. With it, came a ripping in the real, as a portal appeared connecting here, to there, one that was physically painful to craft, one that left him coughing out blood and having it rill from his eyes and ears. There was a cost to building portals beyond a certain distance, point to point. That cost had to be paid in blood and pain by the one who created them. And that costly exit, as it turned out, was beneath the lowest reaches of Sloth. He was pretty sure if he tried this trick twice in a row, it'd kill him the second time.

The black, teeming, viscous gunk that was the Abyss roiled and surged up toward the portal before them, smelling unlike anything that any nose had ever smelt. Trying to explain the odor of the Abyss was akin to explaining music to the deaf or beauty to the blind, only lacking any of the grace that either of those two things possessed by their natures. It was wrong. It was foul. It was the end of all things. And it was right in front of them.

"Would you like the honors, dad?" Loona asked, as Maelstrom the Hound threw the battered, living-cadaver of Birch onto the ground at the portal's mouth. Blitz grinned, and with one kick that had all he had left in him, he punted Birch through the portal.

The other end of the portal had been oriented at a right angle to this one, so that the instant any part of him was through, gravity grabbed him and dragged him through in entirety. He didn't even have a chance to let out a muffled 'mmph' of shock, pain or terror, before there came a new surge in the black of the Abyss. Almost like a limb had been manifested from the foetor to grab Birch as he plummeted to its surface.

Without a splash, without a sound, without so much as a ripple, the black swallowed Birch whole, and he would never again be seen by any who stood against him.

A few dozen yards away, the dragon, who despite her broken wings and battered body, finally stopped running. She fell to her knees, her expression no longer filled with that all-consuming terror. No. Now, her eyes were staring not just through the portal and into the Abyss, but for light-years beyond it. Her expression went slack, and her limbs went limp.

Loona reached behind her back, pulling the Grimoire from where it was hovering invisibly above her tail, and then football spiked it to the ground. "Fuck you, book!" she shouted, giving the book a middle finger with each hand. Then, she scowled, sighed, and picked it back up. "Shhhhhitfuck, we still need that fucking book."

Doubtless, every order that Birch had ever given to a living soul was coming undone with his demise. Moxxie didn't know how many people that freed. Any number at all was a blessing.

"Oh crumbs," Moxxie said, as he saw just how bad Blitz's head-injury was. It was one thing to know that your boss and maybe-even-friend was planning to blow his own ears out. It was enough to have to look at the scabbed up remnants of it. "Let me try to heal that."

"What?" Blitz asked. "I didn't catch that."

"I said... nevermind just let me..." Moxxie said, as he moved to Blitz's side, and began to work the motions and words of power of Thaumaturgical Surgery... only to have it fail. As though Blitz wasn't there at all.

"Loona... I hate to ask a favor, considering..." Birch's hound said, gesturing furtively at everything which transpired.

"What'd'ya need, Maelstrom?" Loona asked.

"I need cab-fare," he said.

"You need a taxi? Why? And to where?"

"Low Central," Maelstrom said, as Moxxie tried to Heal Blitz again, only to have that attempt fail just as unceremoniously. "I've got to do something about... well... her."

Moxxie glanced to where Maelstrom was pointing. At O'Daire, who was still catatonic, staring into infinity, on the tarmac.

"Why?"

"Just... let me do this," Maelstrom asked.

Loona let out a chuckle, then pulled some money from the bill-fold she'd taken to hiding in her pants. "Yeah, I know, it reeks like my farts. Don't bitch about it."

"Wasn't going to," Maelstrom said. He then moved to O'Daire, and gently picked her up, before hailing a cab not far away. He paused, though, before any vehicle shook itself out of the stupor of what was happening in the sky to serve him. He turned back. "Where can I find you again?"

"That eager to make some friends, are you?" Loona asked, a surprisingly genuine smile on her face. "Denny's. True South, come at noon when the morning-drunks finally leave."

"I'll be there," he said.

"I can't Heal you, sir," Moxxie said.

"WHAT?" He shouted.

"I said... you know what I said," Moxxie muttered.

"Yeah, I'm just fuckin' with ya' a bit. Fuck my head hurts. Got anything for that?"

"I've got ibuprofen," Moxxie offered the bottle he kept on him at all times. Headaches were very commonplace when working for I.M.P.

"I'll take it," Blitz said. He stared at the portal one last time, before it broke down and faded away, cutting off line of sight from this spot in Pride to the surface of the Abyss. After dry-swallowing more pills than he'd ought, he cracked a hack-saw smile, and thrust a fist into the air. "We fuckin' wooon! Fuck ow okay ow."

"We did," Millie said, beaming with pride.

Moxxie then looked up, toward Central.

And there he saw, clear as day even without his strange senses, that he was being glared at by an Archangel.

"What..." Moxxie began.

"What the fuck is that?" Krieg asked, before darting behind a car, away from the blazing, plate-armored figure that was absolutely not the Morningstar, the King of All Hell.

"Seems like our day's got a bit more interesting yet to get," Loona muttered.

---

The armored Archangel was still, not even appearing to breathe. Because of that, Charlie allowed herself the time to glance over to her Mother, who was locked outside of time, and to her father, who had been pounded into hamburger. Both of them were... not in the best of shape... but neither were they dying. So she would have to hold the line.

The figure continued to hesitate. Then with the minute clicking of articulated armor sliding across itself, he pulled his scythe back and plunked it's sharp-tipped butt against the floor, whence it vanished into a flash of flame. He then reached up, and pulled the mask from betwixt the teeth of the lion. When he did, the entire helmet vanished as though it had been made of very thick smoke.

Sam was staring at her. It was still Sam. Despite the fact that he now had a halo of light behind his head in a circular pane, despite his strange armor, despite his weaponry, despite the fact that he got into a fist-fight with her father and won... It was still Sam.

"Don't. Just stop," Charlie said.

"I can't stop," Sam said, his words vibrating against reality in the way that, until now, she'd only ever heard from the throat of Satan. "I have to see this through. An end to cruelty. To all cruelty."

"I won't let you hurt him," Charlie said.

"I know you won't," Sam said, quietly. Sadly. "There is no redeeming him. You must realize this. You are not a stupid woman, Charlie. Your work can succeed. But not on people like him," he thrust a finger toward her father, who she was standing in the way of.

"I still have to try," she stood her ground.

Redemption was possible. If it worked for one, it would work for others. It if worked for Wendy, it might work on anyone.

"And when people seek to use you? To take advantage of what you have built? What will you do then?" Sam asked. He took a few steps away. When he turned, the pane of light always remained on the opposite side of his head from where Charlie was standing. She guessed that it would appear the same to everybody, even if they were all surrounding him and staring in. "Consider what would have happened if Angel Dust hadn't had some trifling intention to better himself? What if a person of his connections had come to you and used you as safe-haven to launch attacks at his enemies? What would become of the Hotel, then?"

"It won't come to that," she said.

"It could have," Sam pressured. "By all rights, were the actors involved in Valentino's downfall any but us, it would have."

"And it won't," she said.

Sam sighed, hanging his head. "It's so easy to think you naive. And you might even be. But here in Hell, kindness is an act of rebellion. And you will be a very potent rebel."

"Thank... you?" she asked.

"Don't you see, Lucifer?" Sam said, leaning around to look at the mashed face of her father. She still gently eased into the line of fire so he wouldn't do anything. "Your daughter shows more heroism than you could even imagine. Heh," he stifled a few more chuckles as he stood at the edge of the Palace, and stared down into the West side of Pentagram City. "You always say that there are no heroes in Hell. I can see four of them from this vantage alone."

Then, Sam's face grew less wistful, more sharp, and his head jerked to the north. He moved a few steps, staring well passed Charlie as though trying to spot something in the incredible distance. He stared for some time, and the look on his face transformed, first from despair, then to confusion, and then to satisfaction. And with a ghost of a smirk, he continued. "...or perhaps five."

After a few more seconds, staring into the distance, Sam gave a start, and stared down at himself. "Well, there you are," he muttered, before giving his head a shake, and turning to Charlie once more. "Hell will never become what it ought to be as long as it held in the clenched fist of a cruel tyrant. You know this. I know this. It needs a new ruler. And you..."

"I am not going to be Queen of All Hell," Charlie cut him off, taking a stride toward him. "And I forbid you to hurt my father anymore."

"Why? Why, after all he has done to belittle and deny you..." Sam asked, his tone long-suffering.

"He's my dad," she answered him. It was all the answer she had, and apparently, it was all the answer that she needed.

"I am trying to be kind," Sam said.

"There are a lot of ways to be kind, Sam. Some of them work better than others. I have to be kind my way..."

"And I need to be kind in my own," he said with a sigh. He held out a hand, and the scythe flared into being once more. He just held it there. "I cannot just let this slide, Charlie. No tyrants. Not even if you still cling to love to them."

"Enough," Lilith said upon the sound of a cracking spell. Sam turned to her, a brow raised in mild surprise. "I will tell you how to kill God, if you leave Lucy and my daughter safe."

"Mom, what are you...?" Charlie began, not even sure how she'd gotten out.

"Go on," Sam said.

"In the heart of Heaven," Lilith said, moving to Charlie's side, joining her blockade to keep Sam away, "there is a plaza. In the old days, they called it The Plaza Beyond. I could not tell you why. But within the Plaza Beyond, there is something of incredible power, something born outside of reality."

"A Shard of Ruin," Sam gave a nod.

"It is the Greatspear of Ruin," Lilith said. "With that weapon, you can kill anything that exists. Even God. But there's a price."

"The price for killing God cannot possibly be higher than the price of letting Him live," Sam said. "Explain."

"When you take up the Spear, your life becomes... finite. A countdown until the Greatspear uses you to return whence it came in the places outside of Creation," she said. "You will only have a brief window to kill God once you take up the Greatspear. And once you use it... there is no coming back. It is a suicide weapon."

"If it empties the throne of God, then the price will be worth it," Sam said. He turned and faced Heaven's Gate, which hovered in the sky, his eyes narrowing. "But when God has fallen... if there is time... know this: I will come back for him," he said leveling the scythe toward Lucifer.

"You... really are the Demiurge, aren't you?" Charlie asked. Sam just sadly nodded. "Why didn't you tell me that?"

"Because I wasn't the Demiurge until today, until I chose to be," Sam said. He paused, staring down at Hell, then turned a glance to Charlie "My mind, it creaks with things I've never learned yet somehow now know... almost like I'm remembering a life I never lived. It had to be somebody like me. Not me in particular. But somebody like me had to become the Demiurge. And I chose that it be me." He turned his eyes to the haloed planet that hung in the sky, and a scowl crept across his face. Then, with a full armed swing of that scythe, the blade seemed to reach almost infinite length, scarring the sky, splitting stars in twain in its strike and cleaving Heaven's Gate in half. Mom seemed stunned by that, mouth agape at what Sam had just done. But Charlie knew why.

Heaven's Gate was a symbol of the Walls of Heaven. It was unbreakable.

Only not, because with a single strike of his scythe, Sam had sent the walls of Heaven tumbling down.

"You have done something today that nobody will ever be able to do again, Charlie," Sam said, allowing the scythe to vanish once more. "You have stayed my blade and postponed my vengeance. Good luck, Charlie. If there is anybody who can show Hell the value of kindness... if there's anybody who can Redeem the Damned... it's you. Goodbye, Charlie. And truly... Good luck."

Charlie tried to tell him that she'd already succeeded, that Wendy was already in Heaven, waiting for him... but with a flex of his four great wings, he sent himself rocketing into the sky, streaking toward the gate to Heaven that he in his fury had broken. This would be the final time Charlie ever spoke to Samuel Scailes.

"We need to look after Dad," Charlie said, gently gathering him up and so carefully bearing him through the rubble.

"And I need to see to your father's Realm while he recovers," Lilith said. She was quiet for a time. "...you've grown up so much."

"I know," Charlie said.

"Even if he never says it, I know your Father would be proud of what you're becoming."

"We both know he doesn't understand me," Charlie said. Lilith was silent for a moment, then nodded.

"In time, he might. But until then... at least know that I am proud of you."

"...thanks, Mom," Charlie said.

And with the Palace of the King Of All Hell half-way in ruin, with the Walls of Heaven Breached, with a company of imps and a hellhound trying to figure out why one of their number was stolidly remaining deaf, and with another figure vanishing into the tumult of Hell, the countdown above Pride stalled with about five hours left on its face, then turned off.

The sun slowly slid down the sky, until it slipped beneath the horizon.

Another day ended in Hell.

---

Standing atop a building in True South, despite his best efforts to the contrary, Husk found himself cracking a smile as he stared up to the ruins of High Central. From his experience, this was one of three venues in all of Pentagram City where one could look from the lower city and see all way into the Royal Palace. He set down his binoculars, lit his cigar, and chuckled. "Well, I'll be damned," Husk said. "I was right."

---

Two layers of reality away, a figure so plain that he would have vanished into a crowd of three, but for the blazing halo above his head, paused as he was sitting before a keyboard. There was little apparent will in his glassy, distant eyes. His movements were slightly jerky, as though not driven by desire but instead by exterior impulses. But still, those hands did move, the fingers did press down keys. To the back-end of SEFIROT, the great library of Angel Names, Deeds, and demises. And there, did the Metatron go to 0000000016, and hit a few keys. It stared at what it had done for a moment. Then, it went back to its job. What would come of this would be on other heads, another story for another time.

SEFIROT 0000000016: Samael, Archangel, The Poison of God. Tore down the Walls of Heaven.

---

You heard me the first time.

-Samael, the Poison of God