VI

It was almost too easy, Gabriel thought. Within quick minutes, they had the whole of the human crowd under control—or objective control, in any case; a good number of them were still in near hysterics, but they wouldn't be getting themselves killed anytime soon. Lucifer came quietly—very quietly, a smirk playing around his pale lips and not so much as a growl of frustrated pain emerging from his mouth as Gabriel and Michael swiftly went about binding his wrists and shoulders with holy oil-drenched leather straps. It burned Gabriel's fingers even to briefly brush against the damp material, and he wished he couldn't imagine the pain involved in having them tied over the very tender point at which his wings emerged, but he felt no sympathy for Lucifer regardless. Unlike Michael and a few of the others, who still carried sentiments from the old days, Gabriel couldn't bring himself to sense a trace of guilt or nostalgia pertaining to his older brother. There was a sort of familial love, certainly—a very soured type, though, one almost inverted and turned to raging distaste with the burn of the years. He matched Lucifer only in his ambition. That aside, they were perfect opposites, and harbored a flawless hatred towards one another; a hatred that Gabriel had no objection to materializing in the form of a particularly swift jerk of the straps that he now wrapped around his cruel-hearted sibling's thin torso.

"Really thought that you could come back so easily? After everything?" he scoffed under his breath, fingernails digging into the pale skin of Lucifer's wrist. His brother blinked demurely, long lashes flitting briefly to obscure his wide eyes, which were whirlpools of pure, glittering gold now that he was no longer restraining himself.

"I still do," Lucifer murmured. "For a creature reliant on the movements of faith, you're... rather lacking when it comes to your own. Your own faith in my armies, that is. I have many followers. You aren't the only ones who can stay strong, achieve victory for your side. The Devil has been detested for far too long. It is time I take my proper place in the scheme of things once more."

He really did seem... confident, Gabriel couldn't help but think. Not in a way that was threatening, but that cold certainty lingering under the surface served to unsettle nonetheless, especially when paired with the lack of struggle he was displaying. He paused in half a crouch, still gripping Lucifer's tied wrists, and met the gleaming eyes straight on, glaring deep into them; attempted in a quick moment of suspended breath to tell whether there was a hidden agenda buried deep in the mind across from him, some separate arrangement of planned events that were still well on their way to falling into place.

"Gabriel, Michael, we need to move out." Raziel's voice—she'd come here, of course, as backup that turned out to be unneeded, and stood now with her eyes shadowed and her shoulders near sagging from their usual perfect posture, exhausted after healing the most gravely injured of the humans with the force of her holy touch. "The human emergency workers will be here soon, and we don't want to leave impressions of our own faces with a disaster like this."

"Switching vessels is always an option," Michael pointed out as Gabriel stood up and wiped off his hands, still glowering in Lucifer's direction. "It can't hurt to change skin every once in a while; it could even be beneficial. I find myself more agile the more I change out."

"Yeah, well, some of us are fond enough of our suits right now," Gabriel shot back. "She's right, let's move."

"Besides, we don't want the humans that we inhabit now to suffer for our actions," Raziel added, taking a step closer and extending one of her thin, fine-boned hands. It was clear what she wanted—drained as she was, she expected one of them to assist her, to provide the energy that would be needed to transport them to their destination.

"Holy Shield ship, right?" Gabriel clarified through a sigh, aware as Michael bent down to grasp Lucifer's hand that he would be responsible for moving them all.

"Yes. As an inter-dimensional vessel, it will be a bit more of a challenge to materialize on, but if you're careful, it won't be a problem. It should be just over America—" Michael began.

"Yeah, yeah, I got that much. I've done this stuff plenty, trust me. Right." He stretched his shoulders, pressing his lips together against the strain, then, with a nearly soundless swish of perfect gears clicking into place, he extended his wings. They curved high above him, shadowing the marble ground in clear arcs of shadow, and their weight against his back was pleasantly familiar. They were a contraption that he was rather proud of—powered by material star energy rather than holy grace, the wings that fueled him were as powerful as the universe itself, despite their external appearance of simple metals. They would power him for as long as the plane he existed in needed his survival, and he had the added benefit of never tiring out as Raziel did now, as he was never pulling on his own wavering strength. Of course, he'd probably exhausted a few star systems already with his dedication, but he at least had the moral reassurance that there were no fertile planets within their reach.

"Hold on tight, then." He secured his fingers around Michael's shoulder after making sure that his blonde brother had a firm grip on Lucifer's bonds—his jaw was tight with the pain of grasping the oil-soaked material, but Gabriel knew that he could endure. Raziel took ahold of his other hand, her thin, smooth fingers twining with his rougher ones, and he took a deep breath, letting his eyes coast shut as the blare of German sirens began to howl through the night.

"Off we go," he murmured, and launched not into the air, but rather through the thin fabric of physicality itself, his heavy metal wings shuddering with the effort of being forced out of material existence. It was only a brief snap of time—he forced them down, against the metaphysical wind, churning the four of them through blank space, with the fierce image of the Holy Shield priests' location in mind—the galley ship that the angels had provided, the massive, grace-powered boat capable of nearly every act of what a human would consider to be magic, the only proper place on the planet to imprison the Devil while they attempted to regain the Tesseract, the Hell Key, and put back all that had been wronged—

He had nearly reached the blazing spiritual glow of the ship and its occupants when he felt the tingle of the others' grasps shaken loose of his, sucked away into the vacuum of nonexistence in a massive, shuddering boom of what he could only possibly liken to a mighty snarl of storm clouds' thunder.

Lucifer felt himself broken free of Michael's grip all at once, ripping forth and tumbling back into physical reality in a whoosh of icy, night-stained breeze. The pitch night flashed by, and there was stone against him, a rough rock face that only continued as he rebounded off of it and hit a lower shelf of granite ground with force that would liquidize every bone in a normal human's body. As it was, his grace-imbued tendons shuddered but didn't snap, and he drew his jaw into a pained wince as he finally rolled to a halt, suit dirtied and ripped, light gold ichor brushing the underside of his skin as a few pale bruises formed over his thin limbs.

The fall, however, hadn't had a wholly negative impact upon his situation. After a brief moment, he realized, upon instinctively flexing his raw-rubbed wrists, that the ferocious burn of leather bonds was no longer in place. They had been torn away by the impact of rock, and, as he pulled himself into a sitting position, he brought his long-nailed fingers to the wider straps cinched around his chest, tensing his forearms in preparation to tear through the burning material, and was just on the verge of tearing when a sudden bolt of pain lanced up his spine, so sharp and sudden that it preceded the sight of its inflictor.

Lucifer flew back at the impact, colliding with the jagged side of the dark mountain again, and spat out in his fury, coughing into the whoosh of air from and around him. Light vibrated behind his eyes, and he squinted into the mass of shadows twisting below his dangling feet. A weight hooked under his forcefully lifted chin, pinning him against the craggy rock that, in turn, tore at his shoulders without freeing them of their bonds. His breath misted in the air, but he managed to see past the wavering cloud, directly at his attacker.

"Brother," Lucifer exhaled, then laughed, the sound bubbling forcefully against the hard grip of the hammer handle that was pressing against his windpipe. "Oh, Ramiel, it's been too long."

"Where is it?" the angel of thunder snarled, his breath hot against Lucifer's frosty lips.

Ramiel's eyes blazed blue in the night, set into a rough, fierce-boned face, framed by shaggy dark blonde hair that spilled to his broad shoulders. Extending from his muscular back were wings—white as Michael's, though not quite so expansive, trailing soft as cotton through the silky air. They beat silently, and Lucifer's own strained for a similar release, but he held them back, well aware that letting them free now would only result in their being immediately sliced off by the holy oil bonds.

"I'm quite sure I don't know what you're—"

"Where is it? You know of what I speak, brother. The Hell Key. It is invaluable—it cannot be spared—"

"You'll have to fight more than me for it." Lucifer's fingers curled against the grip of the hammer, brushing against the warm side of Ramiel's hand. "The Holy Shield church, the humans... they're a bit keen on getting their toy back, as well."

"Humans are no object to me; now, tell me the location!"

"Mm... but it's not just the humans. They have the others on their sides. Those that you've turned against, or so I've heard... Michael, Raziel, Gabriel. Abandoned them due to how they rejected me, did you not? Should I be flattered?"

"Far from it." Ramiel's wings snapped and swished, sending a sharp velvet gale in the face of Lucifer, who frowned delicately. "I mourned you, Lucifer—when you were cast out. I banished myself for my own grief. And this, that you should be so ungrateful to my loyalty now that you will not so much as expose the location of the most powerful object in our universe... perhaps they were right, if you are so selfish." His voice was growing lower and rougher, and if his clear eyes hadn't been all too visible before Lucifer, he would have guessed him to be crying. "It is for all of our good, my brother, that the Hell Key is sealed away. Our realms are not meant to merge. There will be no clear victory—the humans and demons will tear each other apart, and all will suffer."

"...Maybe suffering is not so horrid, have you ever considered that?" Lucifer gasped back. His vessel was beginning to strain with the pressure of the metal handle against his throat, and he felt a brief flash of irritation at humans' weakness, before sending another surge of grace through himself, replenishing his breath. "Perhaps... it is the tax for a better world. We are the superior race, you know that... I intend for neither humans nor demons to survive. They will wash one another out in a storm of chaos, and then there will be only angels—only us..."

"You believe that? You truly believe that—that we are above them? Brother, please, please see sense—this is important, I beg you, listen—"

There was a flash of red and gold, and he was gone.

Lucifer pulled in a rough lungful of air, back scraping against the craggy cliff face as he slid down once more, forcing his wings to stay tight and invisible rather than leaping into their instinctive wide position to save him from the rapid descent. Augmenting himself with further pumps of glittering grace, he managed to slow himself to a skid, just long enough to hook his fingertips around a cleft in the stone, then heaved himself up upon it, his heels pressing against the pit in the rock. It was nearly a vertical grip, and he breathed heavily, hunching himself up against the rugged flatness, fighting the wind that attempted to tear him free of it and down into the thrashing treetops that masked the ground below. He was much closer to the base of the mountain now, ichor leaking from his battered palms, and he steadied himself there, gold eyes swiftly scanning the treetops, searching for where Ramiel had been torn away to.

It didn't take long—he soon enough located the broad white wings of his brother, fluttering under the dappled cover of needle-clustered branches. And there was something else, too, another presence... Gabriel, he allowed; the scent of polished metal was thick in the forest air. Michael was nowhere in sight, then—the fight was just a hint more even, and he had no idea how much Ramiel's energy may have grown in his absence.

Keeping his breaths shallow and steady, Lucifer began to slide himself down the cliff once more, nails scraping and breaking against the rock. It would be interesting to see how this turned out.

Gabriel didn't think before lashing out, a bolt of raw star energy darting from his palm as he clasped it over the shoulder of the creature that had interfered with his flight. A heavy, muscular body stiffened under his, and the two of them sailed through that air, locked together, before Gabriel's wings flashed wide, cushioning his own fall just slightly while casting the other into violent collision with the floor.

He rose with a huff, his cheeks scraped from the sharp twigs that they had crashed through but healing as he moved. His quarry was hunched on the ground, golden hair spilling over broad shoulders, and, after trembling with a massive, winded cough, it stepped back to reveal a scattering of silvered droplets on the ground—unmistakably angel's blood.

Gabriel felt his wide eyes narrowing, and he took half a step back, fingers curling into his palms. "Brother...?" he began slowly, but was unable to fully form the word when a weight crashed against his breastbone, shoving him backwards into the wide trunk of a batter-barked tree, which instantly bent under his weight, springing far back. A crack rent the air, pure as the bang of thunder, and then there were sharp splinters of wood shoving up against the base of his spine—he spat out a dusting of silvered blood where he had bit his tongue and shook his head, flexing and extending his wings to make sure that each meticulously placed gear and slip of metal was still in working order.

"Oh, you'll regret that," he growled once he was sure his power hadn't been diminished in the slightest. Rising fully, he was able to focus again, his eyes honing in on a colossal silhouette posed a few meters away, feet planted against the pine needle-strewn dirt, a blocky hammer dangling from its thick fingers—the hammer, Gabriel thought with a stir of fury, was certainly what had hit him and thrown him against the tree.

"Arrogance will make you bleed!" he got out, his voice rough with hateful taunting, and he pushed his wings down hard against the dry mountain air, launching himself through the air and at the throat of the other. One hand was there in seconds, pressing against the warm, sweaty skin, while the other found his attacker's wrist, holding it in place and rendering the hammer useless. "Who do you think you are?" Gabriel demanded, his teeth tight together, glowering into the shadowed features of the long-haired man whom he now confronted.

"I am called Ramiel," was the returning rasp. "Do you not recognize me, brother?"

Gabriel's fingers loosened instinctively, though he still maintained his grip at a lesser ferocity. He blinked once, and the face in front of him seemed to rearrange himself into familiarity—of course; the narrow blue eyes, the broad forehead—"Ramiel," he growled. "The betrayer."

"He who refused to turn against his brother."

"And in that left the rest of us."

"I have seen the error of my ways, Gabriel," Ramiel sighed, the sound rugged through his battered throat. "I wish now only for forgiveness... and for the right to Lucifer, whom I believe I am entitled to have my way with."

"Nice try."

"He was responsible for my downfall, surely—"

"Your own disloyalty was the cause of your downfall, Ramiel." The anger licked against Gabriel's lungs once more—he felt wrath building inside of him; sinful, Michael would scold, but, in Gabriel's mind, necessary in moderation. "Just because you feel you can come back to us now... that does not make you any less of a traitor."

Before Ramiel could voice another objection, he thrust forward, and the physically larger angel would have tripped backwards if not for the sudden, snapping release of his wings, billowing like twin white banners from his wide shoulders. He beat against his momentum, and then Gabriel was the one flying backwards, drawn in close to himself to avoid whatever mighty force his brother might bring down on him. He snarled through his teeth at the sight of the gleaming silver hammer flying around once more, straight for him—he wheeled backwards, but there would not be time to dodge—

And then, suddenly, there was something between them, something the precise tone of Ramiel's hammerhead, but wider, rounder, a disc of pure shimmering moonlight that obscured Gabriel's vision entirely. There was a crack that would easily have burst the eardrums of any normal human, and Gabriel felt his vessel's strain, drawing hard on the fiery energy that kept them intact as a shockwave blared forth from the circumference of Michael's shield, slamming against the trees and rock alike, resulting in a shower of rubble and a chorus of bird cries as well as a great, shuddering quake from the earth itself, rocking under his feet and nearly throwing him backwards.

As it all whispered to a halt, Gabriel blinked, heaving his lungs full once more as he glanced around. He, Ramiel, and Michael stood, all spaced from each other, exchanging tight glares as they stood at three points of an invisible triangle. Radiating out from them was a flat circle of utter destruction, ash against the dirt where trees, animals, and stone alike had been vaporized by the sheer power contained in the collision of the angelic weapons.

"Anger is despicable," Michael declared once the silence had impressed itself fully upon them, "and to be avoided at all costs, lest we sink to the very level of the fallen brother that we are likewise attempting to deter. We have no quarrel with you, Ramiel. You have disgraced us and our father, abandoning us as you did in protest of our entirely warranted behavior towards Lucifer, yet we will not judge you for it now. It is not our place. Help us—help us retrieve the Tesseract, and do with it what we must, and then, perhaps, our father will decide what lies in store for you."

Lucifer hadn't been expecting to escape, not truly, and perhaps that was why it wasn't as horrifically embarrassing as it could have been when Raziel retrieved him, her red eyebrows arched high when she discovered his position, flattened against the side of the cliff like a baby bird in a storm. She bound his wrists without word, ignoring his small sigh of objection, and led him to the clearing created by the seraphic conflict that Lucifer had observed from his elevated nook, where Gabriel, Michael, and Ramiel stood amidst the clutter of burned and destroyed branches and boulders. None of them quite met each other's eyes, instead maintaining a cold distance on all levels, and Lucifer felt a spark of glee within himself, though he didn't dare show it. Their anger, subtle but stirring nonetheless under the fragile surface of their vessels' skin, was valuable—he would use that anger soon, he knew, when he burst free from his docile state and finally allowed himself to do what he must, to turn them against each other in what was sure to be a beautiful mess, a clash of purity in a chaotic storm that would rock the foundations of the universe itself. He couldn't expect to destroy the angels on his own—of course he couldn't—but he would release them upon one another, and the resulting devastation would more than do his job for him, opening the way for his release of the demons and harnessing of the Earth that was rightfully his once more.

Of course, there was a trigger. An activation. It had to start with Ezekiel.

Set Ezekiel off, and he'd set it all off—the monstrosity that the angel of Death possessed deep within himself was the perfect way to begin the decimation of their ranks. He would not be able to control himself, and so the result would be glorious slaughter upon all of God's ranks.

He had to suppress a smile at the thought.

Now, however, they were all working together with despicable ease, though the tension, at least to Lucifer, is still palpable.

"Make no further attempts to escape," Michael murmured as Lucifer approached, his hands suspended in Raziel's straining grasp. "It will only result in bitter consequence for you."

"Oh, I was making no attempts whatsoever to... escape," Lucifer responded in an equally cool tone, lifting his chin high and allowing his features to relax, take on an expression of gentle laziness—he didn't care whether they thought he was comfortable; even if they did know his plan—and a mere demeanor wouldn't be enough to give it away, in any case—there was nothing they could do to stop it. Their own destruction was inevitable; the ranks of seraphim would eventually destroy themselves without his assistance. He was practically doing them a favor by rushing the affair along—and doing himself a favor, of course, by using it to bring forth the release of Hell's residents. "As you well know, dear brother. It was the fault of Ramiel... who you seem rather keen on forgiving now, I must say. I heard from my messengers what he did—a felony in your eyes, was it not? Such lamentable laws, that you won't even involve loyalty to family ties to be tolerated... and a poor structure of your system, too, if such rules will be broken for the shallow purpose of assistance in a task that's just too hard for you."

"I wouldn't expect you to understand, Devil," Michael replied, entirely unfazed. A sharp wind sailed around the mountaintop, but he didn't appear to be penetrated in the slightest by the deep chill. "You make quite a habit of breaking the Lord's laws that you can't possibly so much as comprehend them, at this point. Now, come—there is a ship to which we will now take you, and you are to accompany us without protest, as I first said, or you will suffer for it in whichever way our Father declares wisest."

"I never made an objection on that matter," Lucifer said, keeping his tone lofty, the lilt of his words approaching boredom. "Ramiel disrupted your first flight. If not for his intervention, I'm sure I would be quite secure now in whatever prison you have in mind for me."

Michael spoke no more words, but instead nodded and extended his hands, one towards Ramiel and the other Gabriel. Raziel's fingers tightened on Lucifer's, and he allowed himself the slightest whisper of a pearly dark grin, invisible as the flap of Gabriel's mechanical wings snapped them all up into cold nothingness once more.