Michael looked like hell.
He was not so blind nor so foolish as to deny what was directly in front of him, in this toilet that was attached to what was once a free-store on the other side of Heaven's Gates, a convenient spot for the Innocent... and once the Penitent... to receive either a first outfit and a meal, or a change of clothes from outfits that still reeked of Hell. The stink of vomit was clear in the air, and Michael found himself staring at himself, and hardly able to recognize what the mirror threw back at him.
His eyes had dark bags under them, and they were the darkest part of his skin, which was now so sallow that people were beginning to ask after his health. His eyes were bloodshot, his lips cracked. His face, no matter if he shaved it in the morning or not, had a near-beard of greying blond by ten in the morning. His cheeks were gaunt, his hair was thinning.
And before this afternoon, Michael had never experienced regurgitation. Today was an informative day.
"Are you composed, brother?" Raguel asked from outside the door.
"More than I was," Michael muttered. He tried to straighten his tie, to adjust his suit, but within seconds the knot loosened and his suit was a shambles again. As below, so above; flesh followed soul. And Michael's soul was run to its limit. He opened the door, and the blank mask of Raguel greeted him. The building, usually busy at all hours of the day, was abandoned. The staff, for the first time in centuries, absent their posts. "Did you find any injured?"
"I have seen little, but shouts speak of a few unlucky souls freshly unearthed," Raguel said. He paused, looking past Michael. He could hear his brother take in a whiff of scent, and despite having no visible face, Michael could sense concern there. "You should go back to Nine, brother. You are doing yourself grievous injury with..."
"I have a job to do," Michael stressed.
"...so you do," Raguel relented. He took his place at Michael's right hand, leaving the abandoned storefront and entering the causeway that was once paved with golden bricks. Well, it still was, but grime had set in from billions of feet upon it, making the once gleaming surface more orange than gold, and not gleam except when the sun hit it exactly right. Michael turned just a glance toward the Rat Towers that started to dominate the horizon, and he looked away in shame.
What he looked to did him no more favors. Because what once dominated the outermost level of Cloud One, the great and gleaming walls that kept Hell and Earth at a stern and unbroachable arm's-length, were now rubble.
There were hundreds of cherubs and many dozens of angels who even now were carefully shifting the great white and pearlescent stones to try to unearth the unfortunate and unlucky who had been caught underneath them. Even from the time Michael got here, they'd pulled out eighteen for this tiny section alone. If the survivor's words were true, then there were still hundreds more, as whole buildings had been buried under the weight of the scree.
And this collapse had happened the entire circuit of Cloud One.
Victims had to be in the hundreds of thousands.
"How did this happen?" Michael asked again.
"I have asked Eistibus to scry the whereabouts of the Horn of Jericho," Raguel said, his hand always slightly out as though preparing to steady Michael. Michael didn't offer rebuke. Honestly, collapsing sounded like a lovely option, if one his duty denied to him.
"The Horn wouldn't work on this wall," Michael muttered.
"It is missing," Raguel said.
"It doesn't matter if it's missing, brother, the Horn couldn't have done this," Michael said.
"Listen, brother," Raguel turned Michael toward him, blazing eyes glaring through his mask. "A Shard of Ruin has vanished from the care of our proxies on Earth. We are losing control of circumstances. This..."
"Another one!" a cry came up, as an angel heaved with all her might and shifted a fallen crenellation out of the upper story of a building, letting it crash to the ground. The angel picked up the wounded, and with a flap of her wings descended to ground level. The victim was an Innocent, a man raw boned and slender, as most humans in Heaven were these days. His lower body was mangled almost to the point of cartoonish horror, and he was greyer of pallor than even Michael.
"Ho there!" Michael pulled away from Raguel's grasp and strode toward the Secondborn with her wounded Innocent. "How many is this?"
"Michael!" the woman said. She quickly set the human down and offered a bow.
"There is no time for courtesies; emergency takes precedent," Michael said.
"This is my fifth, Taxiarch," she said.
"I've never seen Innocent mangled so badly. What caused this? Have you any ideas, because I –" Michael asked. He then sighed and rubbed his hand down his face. "I'm sorry. I'm forgetting basic manners. Your name, sister?"
"Cousin," she said. "I am Tartys. And I think it's because of what fell on them; when was the last time a stone fell from the Pearly Gates?"
"Never," Michael said.
"Brother. Cousin," Raguel said, as he joined them.
"Godfriend," Tartys answered back, before turning to Michael once more. "If you will forgive a mild blasphemy, if one in keeping; this is a goddamned mess."
"Don't blaspheme," Michael said idly.
"I know that God would damn this personally were he able," Raguel said, nodding sadly. Tartys gestured to him, and Michael could only sigh.
"You seem unwell, cousin," the Secondborn pressed. "Should you be pressing yourself in such times? I could call for Gabriel, to..."
"You will leave Gabriel out of this," Michael's words were perhaps too sharp, but Tartys didn't recoil as far as her Grigori ilk usually did when confronted with the outrage of the Firstborn. And it was at that point that he remembered. She was Secondborn, but not Grigori. All Grigori were Secondborn, but not all Secondborn were Grigori. Father help him, this day was going to be the ruin of him. "He won't do anybody any good. He'd likely just shovel all of the rubble, victims and all, over the edge down into Hell."
"...if you say so, cousin," Tartys said.
"S-samael," the victim whispered from the ground between them. All eyes turned to him. "S-samael..."
"Him as well," Michael muttered.
"What is this?" Raguel asked.
"You haven't listened to the others?" Tartys asked.
"I have come fresh from Nine. I have had no chance to," Raguel said.
"What is Samael?" Michael asked of the Secondborn.
"I don't know. It sounds like an angel name, but I've never known such a man," Tartys said.
"What does SEFIROT have to say of it?" Raguel asked.
"Nothing. There is no Samael in SEFIROT," Tartys said. Raguel, though, dug out his smart-phone and started to thumb through it. "You're not going to find anything I didn't."
"...SEFIROT has been updated," Raguel said.
Silence fell, marred by the grunts of effort by the Host trying to save the undeserving victims of natural disaster, and the delirious whispering of the wounded.
Michael reached into his own pocket, picking up the phone which had a spider-web of cracks across its screen, and did as Raguel had. He barely noticed how his other hand pulled out his nail-file, and that he nervously ground his teeth against it.
The change was obvious.
For time immemorial, there had always been a glaring blank spot in the first page of SEFIROT's listing of the Myriad. The sixteenth entry. Now, though, there was a listing there.
Samael, Archangel, The Poison of God. Deeds: Tore down the walls of Heaven.
"What does this mean?" Tartys asked, looking over Michael's elbow.
"...I don't know, cousin. I don't know," Michael said.
"...I might," Raguel said. And then, with a flap of his wings, he departed, leaving Michael amidst questions, confusions, and the cries of pain of the victims of tragedy.
The Gift of Rage
Things Can Get Better
"I can't do it," Romeo said.
"Sweetie, you can't do this to yourself. To us!" Rosie tried to press him, but Romeo was set. Imps were already considered shit-amongst-filth in Hell, Pride especially. He had worked too hard for too long to prove people's prejudices right.
Thing was, Rosie was right. Romeo needed that kind of money. Considering the prize on offer was anything Lucifer could give... Romeo carefully stood from the table, which was festooned with bills and not much food. The kids were hungry. Rosie was hungry. The only one in this rat-bag apartment who wasn't hungry was Romeo himself, but that's because he was pretty sure he was about a strong-breeze away from dying.
Illness was a terrible thing for imps. It was just presumed that if you weren't tough enough to survive a malady, then you'd curl up and die from it in a week or so. Romeo's degeneration was much more gradual. Fuck, he was barely fifty, and he'd had to stop working because he literally couldn't do the work of building and maintaining the concrete of Imp City. Times made for tight belts and hungry stomachs, even with his now nearly-grown kids chipping in their cheques as well.
"I'm not going to do it," Romeo said. Samuel Scailes. That was a name that he'd not heard for twenty years, nearly. And now it was being shouted across the skies and echoed through the newsrooms, people frantically scrambling to find any hint as to who or what or where he was. This Sam was a Sinner, of course. He could last in Hell until the sun burned out in the sky. But the thing was... for all Romeo had only known him a couple weeks... he was a good guy. Better than most Sinners he'd ever met.
"If you die, who's gonna..." Rosie tried again.
"The minute I die, and you all don't have to pay my fucking expenses, everybody's gonna be fine," Romeo shut her down. She recoiled as though he struck her in the face. And he sighed. "I'm sorry, hon. I'm just... we've got to be realistic about this. There ain't no cure for this. Shit, woman, they named the disease after me!" he gestured at himself. How the fuck was he supposed to deal with sugary blood, anyways? Lots of kids died from that malady, but they'd never seen an adult with it. Until today. And they named the syndrome after him for it. At least today the confusion wasn't as bad. It sometimes got bad.
"Lucifer could cure it. Just tell him what you know!" she pleaded.
"And what if that ain't enough?" Romeo asked. Rosalind had always been the practical one in their relationship, so he tried to attack the pragmatism of things. "What if he decides that my twenty-years-out-of-date information ain't worth shit? I'm not going to shift my ass and waste my time on a fool's errand."
"Sometimes a fool's-errand reaps a king's reward," Rosie said without humor, returning one of his own tidbits back at him.
"I don't think it will this time," Romeo said.
And then there was a knock at the door.
Romeo tried to walk to it, but felt faint and had to catch himself on the cupboard, so Rosie went to the door and opened it. And then had to look well up at the red face of a Litigator Demon. Oh, fuck that with a cactus, Romeo thought, as he tried to pull in wind and steady his balance.
"Is this the domicile of one Romeo Bismark?" the Litigator asked.
"No. This is not."
"May I remind you that Naked Law punishes perjury?" the Litigator noted. Rosie blanched, her red skin going nearly black. "I will ask again. Is this the domicile of one Romeo Bismark?"
"I am Romeo Bismark," he said, as he carefully made his way to the door.
"Be it known that effective 6:53PM today, an estate clause activated upon the departure of its principal. You are named amongst three beneficiaries of his estate," the Litigator said.
"Come again?" Romeo asked, because it wasn't just his fucked up blood which was putting him off his balance this evening. He'd honestly expected this would be bill collectors.
"You have been given standard rights of excusement from your bequest, which consists of one trust drafted into being twelve hours ago, and one envelope, included on my person. The moneys within were verified by Byrne And Company LLC and stand at a sum of three hundred thousand souls, to be dispensed at your discretion."
"What? Who in the fuck just gives random assholes three hundred grand in good money for no reason?" Rosie asked the obvious question.
"Included in the bequest was this letter. Do you choose to reject this bequest?"
"No. Fuck no," Romeo said. The Litigator gave a nod, then held out a form, which Romeo almost signed outright before Rosie beat him to it and read the thing. And she looked all the more flabbergasted when she finished. "Well?"
"...somebody's just giving us money," she shook her head in bafflement.
Romeo signed it, and the Litigator handed over an envelope. "You have been served. Good evening," the red demon said, before clicking his pocket watch, spawning an Infernal Gate, and walking back to his office. Romeo closed the door, leaning against it, and opened the envelope, and read the mostly blank sheet that was within it.
Your illness has a name. It's called 'Diabetes'.
Romeo leaned back from that.
There is a hellhound who can procure medicine for it. Depending on your disease's severity, it is either Metformin or Insulin. With this ongoing treatment, if it works, you should be able to live a normal life as you had before it manifested. The funds enclosed should see you through the rest of your natural life, provided you stipulate she not buy from Americans.
"The fuck is 'Americans'?" Romeo muttered.
If the medicine doesn't work because you're an imp, take your family on one last great vacation or something. Otherwise, contact Loona Miller, care of Immediate Murder Professionals Corporation, 1057-96-656610.
Don't say I never did you any favors.
Sam.
Razzle and Dazzle had their work cut out for them, as Charlie parked the moving van in front of her hotel. And it really was her hotel, now. Any debt that had been incurred on behalf of her family had vanished into her windfall without even making a ripple, leaving her in the clear on every front that she could discover, and a few more that Dazzle and Vaggie had brought to her attention. Now, all there was left to do was get down to the business of redeeming the damned.
Easy peasy.
The tiny goat demons would likely spend at least half a day moving all of Charlie's old things into the building. But since she was never going to be moving back into Dad's palace – in no small part because Sam, as an Archangel, had demolished the nursery that she'd been reared in – the array of her stuff could follow her here permanently. This was her home now. This was her calling.
"Charlie, oh thank god. Are you alright?" Vaggie asked, running to Charlie as she came through the doors. Charlie quickly found herself being glomped onto, but she returned the hug with warmth. "I've been watching the news, and..."
"I'm fine, Vaggie. Everything's going to be alright," she said.
"Are you sure?" Vaggie's concern bled into her suspicion. "Heaven's Gate is literally cut in half! The sky is broken!"
"That was..."
"And your father is still planning on throwing this entire plane of existence into the Abyss!"
"No, no," Charlie said, extricating herself from Vaggie. "He's not going to do that any time soon."
"What happened?" Vaggie stressed.
"...Sam is gone," Charlie said, standing aside so that Razzle could carry in a stack of her clothing that was about three times taller than he was. Vaggie let out a sigh, sadness creeping into her expression.
"Lucifer got him, then. I'm sorry, Charlie. There was nothing you could have done," Vaggie said.
"That's not what I..." Charlie tried to cut her off, but Vaggie kept talking.
"That just shows you the kind of man he was. Willing to give himself up for us. For all of us," Vaggie continued.
"Vaggie! He's not dead!" Charlie said.
"He's not?" Vaggie seemed a bit confused by that.
"You remember how Sam was kinda... weird?"
"That he had an angel growing in him? Yeah," Vaggie said.
"Holy shit, girl, you movin' your entire house in here?" Angel Dust imparted from the doors to the dining room. "I got bread goin'! Y'all want some?"
"...It wasn't an angel," Charlie said.
"...then what was it?" Vaggie asked.
"The Demiurge," Alastor answered, from where he stood, entirely too close for Charlie's liking. Of course, neither had noticed his approach. He could do that trick to almost anybody, it seemed like.
"The what now?" Angel Dust emerged from the dining room, wearing an apron and his hands for once not wearing his 'sex gloves'.
"The Equal and Opposite of God," Alastor said. "And he has just declared war on Heaven."
"...oh fuck," Vaggie said. She turned a concerned look from Alastor to Charlie. "That's what the Goat meant."
"About needing those mercenaries? Ohhhh. Oh no. Oh no you're right," Charlie said.
"Pardon my intrudin' onto what appears to be a complex fuckin' issue, but what the fuck is goin' on?" Angel Dust interjected.
"Samuel has finally made the decision to stop doubting himself," Alastor said. "And the instant he did, he became as God."
"Well shit, I could'a told him to do that," Angel Dust said.
"No. No you couldn't have," Alastor said. "And you certainly couldn't have given Lucifer the caning that he's just received."
"I'm sorry, what?" Vaggie asked.
"You should have seen it, Samuel beat Lucifer to within an inch of his life! How glorious!"
"Really?" Vaggie asked, in wild disbelief. When she saw the look that Charlie couldn't hide from her expression, that disbelief curdled into to dread. "What's going to happen now?"
"What else? A new war against Heaven!" Alastor laughed. "Or at least, there will be once the King of All Hell is no longer bedridden. Might be a week or two, considering the state he was in."
"You weren't there. How could you possibly..." Charlie began. Alastor leaned in, though, grinning wide and not at all kindly.
"I have ways of knowing things, and of seeing things. You know this, my dear. Stop pretending you don't," he said.
And then all were interrupted by a rap on the door behind them. Well, a thump, because it was delivered by a foot. Charlie turned, and found a mostly naked Hellhound cradling an entirely naked Sinner who was missing her right hand. Her scales looked like they were supposed to be red, but like a bruise spreading across her body, those red scales were turning a pale pink not unlike that of Charlie's palms.
"This is the Happy Hotel, right?" the Hellhound asked.
"Yes. Who are... why are you almost naked?" Charlie asked.
"Is-someone-almost-naked?" Niffty's words led her appearance in the entry by a fraction of a second, and of course the tiny woman skidded to a halt nearby. Niffty took a look at the vaguely draconic Sinner, disregarded her, then feasted her eyes on the Hound. "Oooh, he's built like a dancer!"
"Could we... not?" the Hound seemed very uncomfortable. "Or could we get some blankets?"
"Right. Of course. Niffty, blankets, now," Vaggie said. Niffty looked like she was going to complain, but Vaggie stamped her heel with a loud crack and pointed, and the tiny Sinner let out a groan and went to obey.
"Right. I'm Charlie. This is the Happy Hotel. How can we help you?"
"Not me. Her," the Hound said. "Is there some place that...?" he asked, and Charlie bade him enter. He took her to the Recovery Sofa, as it had been officially named and engraved-plaque-bestowed, laying the draconic, catatonic Sinner down. Niffty idly tossed a blanket at the girl, but held the next one teasingly toward the Hound. When he reached for it, she twitched it back, her grin growing a bit demented.
Vaggie had seen enough and blasted Niffty with the squirt bottle. Niffty sputtered, dropped the blanket, and ran, so Vaggie handed to the Hound who quickly draped himself in something like a robe of it. He seemed to have experience clothing himself in a sheet. "Alright. Why exactly do you have an Overlord here?" Vaggie asked.
"Who now?" Charlie asked. She glanced to Alastor to see if he was going to offer an answer. He had disappeared without a trace.
"Fiona O'Daire," Vaggie said, pointing at the catatonic woman who's skin faded into scales as they approached her neck and torso.
"The singer?"
"That's Fiona Dejarie," Vaggie said. "No, she's an Overlord. Worse than that, she belongs to Nathan Birch! Same as him!" she pointed at the Hellhound.
"Nobody belongs to Nathan Birch anymore," the Hound said.
"Are you sure about that?"
"Considering I watched him get kicked into the Abyss about an hour ago? Yeah," the Hound said.
"What's your name?" Charlie asked.
"Maelstrom," he said. He gave a furtive look around. "I've heard that you... well... take in people. People who need help."
"People who seek help," Vaggie said. "And considering she spent nine centuries as an Overlord, unless she's..."
"Look at her," Maelstrom said, quietly but sternly. Both women did. And both of them saw a broken, broken soul. "Whoever she was before Birch? That's gone. He had her for thirty years and this is what's left of her. Maybe she can heal. But only if she's somewhere that people stop using her. If that place even exists."
"It does. It's here," Charlie said. This woman was going to need specialized care, but considering she'd already, by means she wasn't entirely clear on yet, managed to get a Damned soul into Heaven, rebuilding a broken mind wasn't much larger of a feat.
"...thank you," Maelstrom said, turning toward the doors.
"Where do you think you're going?" Charlie immediately asked him.
"Honestly, I have no idea. But I'm not a Sinner, so I can't stay here," the hound shrugged in his blanket-robe.
"And who decided that?" Charlie said. "Niffty? Niffty!"
"Yeeeeeees?" Niffty practically appeared from Maelstrom's shadow, and he only missed driving a nearly-decapitating kick into her face by the fact that she was so short. He was left with his back pressed against a pillar looking about ready to kill God, before he realized who'd gotten the jump on him, and started, slowly, to calm down. Niffty didn't seem to care that he'd almost kicked her head off. She just watched him. Hungrily.
"Get a room ready for our new friend, Maelstrom," Charlie ordered. Niffty seemed a bit disappointed to be sent away, but did as ordered.
"I'm... I can't..." Maelstrom said, hands up as though warding.
"I insist. Come on. I'm a trillionaire and I can redeem the Damned. If I want to give you a place to live, I can give you a place to live," Charlie said with a degree of smugness which finally, after so long in her life, she finally felt like she had earned.
"I... what?" Maelstrom said.
"Come on. Let's get you some real clothes," Charlie gently prodded Maelstrom ahead of her toward the elevator. "You're small for a Hellhound, you know that? I think you might actually be able to wear some of Sam's old clothes."
"Who?" Maelstrom asked.
"Long story, Maelstrom," Vaggie said, tagging along with a small smile, as though one despite herself, on her face. "Long story."
Angel Dust took that opportunity to sidle up to him. "Heee~y," he began.
"No," Maelstrom said. "Just no."
Then the elevator closed, and they ascended to where the Demiurge had once dwelt.
The fact that Blitz could hear a weird beeping sound was odd. Considering the state of him when he left that parking lot, he was wondering how a) he had any sense of hearing at all, and b) why he was under a blanket in what looked like the most expensive fucking hospital in Pentagram City.
"He's awake!" the voice that came through was obviously Krieg, but there was a strange, almost mechanistic buzzing to it, as though he were listening to a shitty recording of a shitty recording. He slowly, unevenly blinked his eyes. They felt like they were covered in glue. And then he shifted an arm back so that he could prop himself up a bit, before hissing and looking over there, discovering buttons that could do that shit for him.
"Yeah. I'm alive. Whoop-di-fuckin-lah," Blitz muttered, again gaining that strange buzz when he 'heard it'. "What the fuck is goin' on with my head?"
"You collapsed after kicking Birch into the Abyss," Krieg said over her shoulder as she threw open the door. "Get in here! He awakens!"
"What...?" Blitz muttered, before the door was thrown open practically into Krieg's face and suddenly the fancy fucking hospital room was filled with people.
Loona took a look at him, a smile coming to her face, which she quickly banked and leaned against a wall. He usually would have only saw her aloofness. Today he saw that little smile. Next in was Tilla, who rushed to his bedside and immediately, if gently, pushed him back against the pillows. Moxxie and Millie were the last in. And frankly, the two of them were radiating pride. Pride, and now that they were here, joy.
Blitz had a bad thought, so took the cup of water from the bedside-stand, held it up to his nostril, and sucked hard.
Yup, that hurt. Everybody gave a surprised, alarmed look as Blitz hacked and wheezed, trying to un-aspirate the water he'd attempted breathing in. Why? Because he could breath underwater in dreams. And this was starting to seem uncomfortably like one of his happier and more unrealistic dreams.
"You're supposed to use your mouth, sir," Moxxie said, taking the cup away from him.
"I'm not that bad..." Blitz said.
"You've been unconscious for three days, boss," Millie said.
"Yeah, long enough to get that thing wired into your skull," Loona idly motioned toward the side of her head. When Blitz tapped his fingers up the side of his face, right at the base of his horns he found a metal crescent there, dug into the flesh but not actually hurting at all. His fingers then felt the slightly raised letters over a control. Bathuul Tech Aura 7.1.1. Who the fuck wasted the money to give him a augmetic ear? "If you were under for a couple more days, they would'a wired up the other one, too."
"So that's why I can hear shit," Blitz said. He'd have to get used to the weird buzzing that lingered low in the background of everything. "So we won. Fuckin' hell yeah."
"You did," Tilla said, her expression had a moment of pain in it, one that he would have usually missed as well, but this time, like Loona's little smile, he caught it, too. "Which means now you work for Pride Incarnate."
"Oh. Right. That," Blitz said. "What's the chance he'll just let me quit? I don't want to be some other guy's bitch-boy for the rest of my life. I've got better shit to do."
"You'll have to take it up with Lucifer," Loona said.
"No," Moxxie said, a pensive look on his face. "It won't be Lucifer. Not today."
"What do you mean, Mox?" Millie asked.
"Step away from the door," Moxxie said, shepherding his wife and Krieg to the window opposite that door. And after about a second, it was clear why, because there was a fanfare of trumpets that made Blitz's still-recovering head ache and his eyes water for its volume with his still-miscalibrated new ear. The door then slammed open. And striding in was the Queen of All Hell herself, Lilith Magne of the House of Morningstar.
Moxxie and Millie were already bowing when she appeared, and Loona and Krieg did likewise a moment later. Only Tilla remained where she was, seated on a stool at Blitz's bedside. The Infernal Guard with her took one step in, scanned the room and its inhabitants, then departed, leaving Lilith holding court in this hospital room. Suddenly why he was in this fucking place made sense. If Lilith was one of his new bosses, like fuck was she going to go slumming around in a back-alley clinic to talk to her new agent the moment he perked up.
"Leave us," Lilith demanded. Tilla turned a look at him, like she was about to refuse, but even Blitz knew how bad an idea that would be.
"Go on. Gotta talk to the new boss sooner or later," Blitz said. Tilla gave his hand a squeeze, then shepherded her daughter and the other imps out with her. Loona made to follow, but was halted with a gesture by Lilith. Lilith held out her hand.
"The book?" she asked. Loona pulled the Grimoire from where she kept it hidden, and handed it over, because she had no other choice. "Good. Now you can go. And as for you. So you've had your little... thing."
"Yeah, they decided a coma's a good time to get cranial surgery done," Blitz said.
"By my orders," Lilith said. Oh, so that was how this was going. "On behalf of the King of All Hell, congratulations on succeeding in the Status Jihad and claiming the position of proxy and agent of the King of All Hell Lucifer Magne of the House of Morningstar. You now have the responsibility of acting and speaking with the authority of the King of All Hell in matters that he does not see fit to handle on his own."
"Great. Can I retire?" Blitz asked.
"You may not," Lilith said.
"Wait a minute. You're telling me I'm stuck doing this job? What about my business?"
"I don't give a damn about your business," Lilith said, and then to prove her point, she made Stolas' fancy book burst into flames in her hand, burning it away into ash and dust. "You follow whatever courses you wish when you're not on the clock. But the moment that my husband, King of All Hell makes demands of you, you will undertake them with your whole, undivided, and unflinching attention. There will be no dithering about, no wasting my husband's resources and his time and his patience. You will do as he says, when he says it."
"Uh huh. And what kinda things is he gonna tell me to do?"
"To investigate the loyalties, the efficiencies, and the abilities of actors throughout Hell's highest echelons, up to and including the Deadly Sins," Lilith said as though that wasn't insane on the face of it.
"Why would they listen to me? Don't know if you've realized, but I'm an imp."
"You are not an imp. You are the Proxy of Lucifer, King of All Hell," Lilith said with a smirk on her face that made her look exactly like she did in the portrait for the 10,000 soul bill. "Your voice in matters that Lucifer directs may as well be Lucifer's own."
"So when I go and boss people around, and they ignore me, am I literally allowed to slap them in the face?"
"You are given permission to act as though you are Lucifer in his endeavors. Including reacting how Lucifer would react to such bald-faced offense."
"...I have carte-fuckin'-blanche to ice the shit-bags who give me lip when doing my job?" Blitz needed to hear it said, so that he didn't get any mistaken conception of what exactly was being asked of him.
"Exactly so," she said. "Woe unto any who stay the course of Lucifer's Will, whether directed by his own hand, or though yours."
"...okay. Okay," Blitz said, trying to put two and two together. "So I'm not gonna be on the clock all the time. I can still run I.M.P. Good news me. Wait, fuck! The book!"
"Right, that," Lilith gave a glance to the ash pooled at the hem of her dark purple dress. "It is unbecoming for the agent of Lucifer to have to beg and barter for passage to the other realms. And Stolas has been both lazy and indiscreet for more than a decade, now. He is owed a bit of... humbling."
"...say what now?" He asked. She instead pulled a new book, one even fancier than Stolas', from somewhere that Blitz didn't even see, and set it at the foot of the bed, a good two and a half feet away from where the blankets betrayed the location of Blitz' toes.
"You are now given free transit to All Places Under Heaven, through the inherent authority of Voice and Deed of Lucifer Magne, to transit as you see fit and to your purposes," Lilith said, and despite the amount of cleavage that her dress showed – nearly diving to her pubic mound – managing to sound the cold, imperious empress. "The Grimoire Ultima Mundi is now yours, to use as you see fit in accordance to your duties. And if the Prince of Flowers wants to continue to do his own job... let him beg for it from you, as is proper."
"Neat," Blitz said. There was probably a reason that Lilith was doing this instead of Lucifer. It had to be big, but right now, between Blitz's headache and the fact that he had the greatest gift-horse dropped in front of him, he wasn't about to bitch about its missing back tooth. "Any idea when y'all'll need me?"
"When we call on you. Otherwise? Just don't bring disrepute to the name of Lucifer Magne," Lilith warned.
"Wouldn't dream of it," Blitz said.
It helped that he wasn't even sure what could bring disrepute to Lucifer's name at this point.
Putting the whole 'working for the Devil' out of his mind, plans started to swell in Blitz's head. Of making I.M.P. something even bigger. Of making it more than just killing the living for the cash of the damned. Of something that Striker had offered him falsely more than a year ago.
Blitz was going to make I.M.P. the people you call, when you need to kill the unkillable.
Because he'd already done it once. He could do it again.
Maelstrom was getting used to people calling him by name.
It didn't take nearly as long as he thought it ought have. He'd spent a near decade under Birch, and that was enough to nearly kill all hope. No, let's be fair, now. It had killed all hope. There wasn't even a whisper of defiance in him a week ago. And then that glorious bitch came up to him and asked him if he was hungry. And everything that he expected would be his future outright evaporated away. And he was free.
Maelstrom was free.
And now, as a free Hound, he had a room in a somewhat ratty hotel run by somebody so antithetical to Birch's ideology that it beggared the imagination how one realm could have two so diametrically opposed people, and how they didn't immediately destroy each other upon that discovery. It seemed unreal that after somebody like Birch, there could be someone like Charlie. But then, Maelstrom had been primed for impossible by Loona Miller. Unreal was paltry.
Denny's was a weird spot. It seemed sized not for Sinners, but for a particular variety of fiends that were around Maelstrom's height and heft. And the whole thing was tilted slightly, such that anything spilled onto the floor would inevitably migrate to the southwest corner of the building, which had hastily had a drain installed in it so people didn't have to constantly walk over and bail it out with buckets.
"I'm, ah... looking for some Hellhounds?" Maelstrom said, unable to make himself sound anything approaching to confident.
"Looked in a mirror lately?" the imp at the cash asked. She was older, her hair closer to mannish-white than womanish-black, and she stared at him over the rim of thick rimmed spectacles.
"Other hounds. Ones that aren't me," Maelstrom clarified.
"This is Denny's, son," the woman said. "We sell bacon in a five gallon bucket. You'll always find Hounds in here."
"A girl... a bitch, I mean... about my height. White and grey?"
"Oh that nice one selling drugs in the back booth? Such a good seed," the imp said. And she didn't seem to be being sarcastic, which confused him a bit.
"Selling... drugs?"
"Yeah, the good ones. Ones you can't get here in Hell."
"I think I'm asking after the wrong person," Maelstrom asked.
"Well shave me and call me a cat. Look who we have here," a slightly familiar voice came from behind Maelstrom, and he turned to see him so quickly that only a lot of practice doing it kept him from wrenching his neck. It was that big hound who worked in the food truck.
"Wh... what are you doing here?" Maelstrom asked.
"What does it look like? I'm helpin' out," the big, dark hound said. He was carrying a big cooler in each hand as though they were duffles. "Looking for Loona, are ya?"
"I am. What is this?"
"I have no idea. Only that it's from the Human World and needs to be kept cold," the larger hound said. "Name's Tex."
"Maelstrom," he said. And it got less awkward to do it every time he did.
"Yeah, I heard that," Tex said. He motioned Maelstrom to follow him, and led him to a curtained off booth. He swept it aside, to see Loona sitting with her feet up on the table, an imp across from her.
"Tell me that's more of it," the imp said.
"One of 'em is," Loona said, opening each cooler as Tex set them down. One had a bunch of vials, which she immediately closed again, the other had banks and banks and banks of pills in large, white, plastic bottles. "There we go. This ought to be about, what? A year's worth of Metformin."
"I don't care what you call it. It's a fucking miracle drug," the imp said. He handed over a huge wad of cash, which Loona peeled open, and handed about half of it back. "But you said..."
"I'm not here to gouge a desperate man, that's just evil. And this shit's cheap as fuck in Ireland," Loona said.
"R...really?" the imp said.
"Yup. Better to have a grateful customer than a dead one," she offered. He tried to say something, but didn't seem to have the words. Unable to say anything more, he caught wise that there were others watching them. He hastily grabbed the tubs of pills, gave a hasty thank you, and then departed. "Tell your neighbors! If you ain't dying in the next hour I got a cure for it!"
"So you are selling drugs. Medicinal drugs," Maelstrom said, as she settled back down and started inventorying the contents of the coolers.
"There was a gap, and I can get paid to fill it," she said, giving him a brief glance. "And not always paid in money, as it happens. You're looking sharp. I take it you didn't spent the last couple of days in the gutter, then."
"No. No, I didn't," Maelstrom said. "How do you do this?"
"Do what?" Loona asked.
"Make the impossible seem inevitable?" Maelstrom asked.
"I'm just lucky like that, I guess," Loona cracked a smirk. She then pointed back into the Denny's, dragging Maelstrom's gaze with it. And when he turned, he saw a Hound that... that looked a lot like him.
"What is this?" Maelstrom asked. The other hound was all brown, true, but beyond that, the resemblance was uncanny.
"My apology for skipping step two, three, and four," she said. "Maelstrom? This is your brother, Regicide."
"You got named Regicide?" Maelstrom asked.
"Says the guy named Maelstrom," Tex joked.
"Says the guy named Vortex," Loona added.
Maelstrom had no chance to weather the storm of the strange, before the Hellhound who by smell alone could only be his brother took a few steps forward, and embraced him with one and a half arms.
Maybe last week was just the end of a very long nightmare.
Now, he was awake. And this was worth fighting for.
This was deeply curious.
He'd had no call to duty during the passing full moon, which was not a hitherto unprecedented event, but still managed to be a deeply unusual one. Doubly so considering the showcase of Angelic Might that he had played close witness to on that fateful evening. Why Lucifer would choose to be so silent in the wake of the ruin of part of his palace and the near annihilation of the city of Pride's Glory would raise questions, questions the likes of which Stolas was fortunate to be inoculated from by simple fact of his presence in those events. He knew what he saw. He saw the Demiurge. And he saw Lucifer fail a second time.
No, those distant concerns mattered little to the Prince of Flowers as he examined the specimen in front of him. Taraxacum officinale ceratophorum, the common dandelion. A plant so widespread in the human world that it had crept onto nearly every continent, a cultivar as old as human civilization on that world, and so commonplace that it was viewed by most as a most insidious and pervasive weed. To call it a common plant upon the Earth was to minimize its thriving stature amongst the green biosphere of the Human World almost into absurdity.
For an eon, he had never seen so much as a single one in Hell.
And yet, here they were.
There had been no order for him to explore this phenomenon. No demands from on high to locate the source of this infestation, and if needed, tear it out by its roots. No, this was driven simply because from Stolas' long memory, shot through with the despair of knowing the ends of all things, there was no mention whatsoever in the Prophecy of dandelions appearing in Hell. Something that was beneath the notice of God made it a mystery that Stolas had a chance to unravel on his own. And given the sheer state of boredom that he and many of the other Ars Goetia were in since the days of the Conquest, finding work was the kind of thing his once-angelic siblings did for the sake of their own collective sanity.
The first ones he'd personally seen so far away from their seedbed homes, wedged between Heaven and Hell, were in that park where he struck that accord with the impressively bold she-imp. The entire area was festooned with them, growing up as though in great masses that wandered not by wind-dispersion but as though growing up from the bootprints of somebody's passage. Which ordinarily, Stolas would have rejected out of hand. But the Demiurge had revealed himself. And the Demiurge broke many rules that demons like Stolas had long taken for granted by his very nature.
In his wanderings, he found another infestation of these things that had sprouted spontaneously from window-boxes that overlooked a bank, and another, much larger one in the little border town of Black Tooth. A growth of dandelions that extended beyond the Pride Wall and into Greed. He ventured further afield, leaving his heralds and his bodyguards behind, letting haste be his armor. In Wrath, the parking lot of a seedy motel had them growing up through the cracks in its surface. In Greed, a seaside town was painted yellow by them. But oddly, Wrath seemed as low as they went. And Pride was most polluted by them by far.
It was a delightful mystery. Was the Demiurge planting these cultivars as part of some gambit, or were they simply a part of his nature? Similar to how unless reined in, all living things wither and die around Lucifer, perhaps the Demiurge's unconscious effect was a near reversal of this. Not the reduction and annihilation of the vital, but the implantation and spontaneous generation of it.
It was becoming more likely as he went along. And though Stolas was aware that there was a great radiation of them spreading out from dear Charlotte's passion project in Pentagram City, he wasn't about to go poking his beak in there. Not without her permission, certainly. And he had little doubt that, with things the way they were, and with her father in the state he was in, she would be less than forthcoming with such permissions. Fools thought Charlotte weak. Fools failed to recognize that no matter her foibles, Charlotte Magne was the daughter of the Devil Himself. Stolas could wait to examine that growth. He had other places to search.
Imp City, for example.
The Second City of Pride was almost as overrun by dandelions as Pentagram City had been. What Imp City had in spread, it lacked in depth, though. He could see regions where the growths had failed to win against the truly pervasive pollution of this place. And it was telling indeed to the level of pollution, when even dandelions couldn't take root and flourish. He found some of them clinging to life around several of the hotels in the city that were sized for a more fiendish clientele. But the largest array of them, thick as any growth in Pentagram City, was centered around a horned office building in the commercial district, with the yellow weeds punching their way through cracked concrete, spreading along the choked-up tree cubes, and generally living in their greatest defiance to the hubris of Man or Demon alike.
This was where Blitzie worked.
Honestly, Stolas had had a fair degree of trepidation, coming here. Their... relationship... wasn't exactly on the most glowing of terms. It had taken the stern words of the man's mother to make that clear to him. It had been made abundantly clear, to Stolas at least, that the reasons for the debacle at Ozzie's could be placed upon no other head than Stolas' own. He had created this unwieldy, fragile minefield of a romance. And just because he'd trod on one mine during that 'first date' gone horribly wrong... didn't mean there weren't hundreds more, just waiting beneath the surface for a fool like him to walk on next. That things had become less overtly rocky didn't fill Stolas with hope. He knew that when the sailing was smooth, it didn't preclude the existence of stones beneath the waterline.
The building itself looked like it was remaining upright despite itself, rather than by any quirk of proper building ordnance. The last time he'd been here, he'd been in the midst of foreplay, so taking a second look at it made him feel... well, it started out as pity, but then it turned into something more akin to outrage. How dare Hell demean his darling Blitzie by subjecting him to such events? Still, he had to remind himself that, while he was indeed a Prince of Hell, he was not nearly at the top of the proverbial pile. He could only do so much to twist the arm of Hell's rigid hierarchy before that arm began to twist back.
With such thoughts a-whirl in Stolas' mind, he surveyed the lot surrounding the building. Very little yellow, here, but there were enough of the seed-clocks remaining now that the rain had subsided from beating them down to let the Prince of Flowers estimate that the plants were in a spreading phase, having already burned through their blossom and germination. The insects of hell certainly had no problem adapting to this hardy, readily available source of pollen. He would have to talk to his cousins about finding the bees that consumed these things. If nothing else, there was likely a market for mead from such insects.
With his cunning eyes, he could see the slowly healing rips in space that festooned this place. Most of them were recognizably a result of the use of his Grimoire. A few, however, were not. And the same 'signature' marked those tears with the resonance of the plants he now stooped well down to observe. Spontaneous generation indeed. Well, it was the Demiurge. If he wanted to manifest dandelions, he could by his rights manifest dandelions.
Another data point entered into his mental journal, he turned to leave before he interrupted the goings on of a particular tenant of the building. Only to have that particular tenant pulling in, driving a van that was so new that they hadn't even pulled the advertising sticker off of the passenger side of the windshield. The van hit its breaks hard, skidding sideways past Stolas and slipping into the parking spot near the door with such skill that it only tore off one of the wing-mirrors adjacent to it.
"Stolas? What the fuck are you doing here?" Blitzie asked, shouting out of his driver's side window.
"What, couldn't I come and visit you, darling?" Stolas asked.
"You don't visit," Blitz said, pulling himself through the window, landing on a pile on the asphalt, and then popping back up none the worse. "You always call for me to visit you. So you want something, I'm guessing? Your book, maybe?"
"Well, I wouldn't be averse to doing my job," Stolas began, feeling his ire raise, but he quickly caught that moment of cruelty and stifled it. "We had an agreement. One day of the month for myself, the rest of it for you."
"I'm changing that agreement," Blitz said.
"It's my book. I am in... No. Alright," Stolas again caught himself. Don't feed his paranoia if you want to keep him at your side. "I understand that I've been a bit... demanding... of late. But so have you! You've been interjecting yourself into my schedule and my life and..."
Blitz did not look happy with the direction Stolas' mouth was taking him.
Wow, Stolas thought. I'm really bad at this.
"Look," Stolas tried to catch himself again. "I'm happy that you're being more a part of my life. But I have responsibilities too, you know. And I have to undertake them, or the price would be grievous indeed."
"And you're not even asking where I've been the last few days? Fuckin' typical," Blitz said.
"Why, have you been away?" Stolas asked. The hurt on Blitz's face stabbed Stolas in the heart. Oh. Oh that was not the right thing to say. And at this point Stolas actually paid attention to what he had been glossing over because of the bliss of being in his lover's presence, namely that Blitz looked like he'd been run through every machine in a meat-packing plant and then cut out of a box on the other side. He had new scars on the already mostly-white side of his face. And there were the metal crescents at the bases of his horns of some sort of augmetic. "Oh. Oh my. Oh, I'm so sorry. I-I-I didn't know. Did... does this have to do with that beastly man Birch?"
"Yyyyeah," Blitz said.
"How dare he! I'll tear his skin off and make him eat it!" Stolas swore, feeling the black bird in him swell.
"Huh. I could almost believe you cared, talkin' like that," Blitz said, starting toward the doors. While the rains had abated, there were other clouds approaching, and it was well into autumn, going on winter. The cold would be here even if the current temperatures were balmy.
"Blitzie wait," Stolas called after him.
"I'm not going to give you your book back," Blitz said.
"What?" Stolas asked.
"I'm not going to because I fuckin' can't." he clarified. Stolas felt his stomach start to sink.
"...what do you mean, you can't?" Stolas asked.
Blitz hesitated at the door, a look on his bruised, still healing face as though he couldn't decide whether to do one thing or another. But in the end, he turned his back to the door and reached into his coat.
And he pulled out another Grimoire.
"...Whose is that?" Stolas asked.
"Mine," Blitz said.
Stolas knew exactly what that meant. That his own had been taken, if not destroyed, by Lucifer. That Blitz has defeated the Proxy of Lucifer in a fair fight. That Blitz had now taken his place as the Proxy of Lucifer. And that Lucifer, in a deeply petty swipe, decided that if he couldn't be happy down here in Hell, then nobody could be, and sought to inflict pain on Stolas for the sin of finding a joyous outlet to an otherwise bleak and monotonous existence.
Common sense told him now was the time to grovel. To beg. To ingratiate himself to the individual who, due to the instantaneously reversed power imbalance, was now both his superior and the only way he'd be able to continue earning his keep in high demonic society. Common sense told him that he was now at Blitz's mercy, and that he should expect little. Common sense told him to be afraid.
Stolas instead grabbed Blitz and pulled him into a sweeping embrace. "I'm so proud of you!" Stolas declared.
"What the fuck, man! I thought you said no PDA!" Blitz muffled out against Stolas' pelisse.
"Like that ever stopped you before," Stolas chided. He set the imp down, and he felt himself lighter than air. "You simply must tell me every detail of you you served that ghastly clod of a Sinner his just desserts."
"Oh, it wa'n't much. Just kicked him through a portal into the Abyss."
"Come now, there has to be more to it than that. Please, you must tell me from the very beginning!"
"Ah-huh. And why exactly do you care?" Blitz asked, extricating himself from Stolas's hands.
"It's been... brought to my attention... that I haven't been the most fair of partners. And I –" Stolas began.
"Partners? Since when the fuck have we ever been partners in anything?" Blitz began.
"You're right," Stolas cut him off. Of all the things that he'd tried to predict about Blitzie, that he'd react in this way to that statement was one of the few that Stolas had managed to get right. "I've been unfair to you. Sometimes even cruel to you. And you have every right to be furious with me. All I can ask is that we... I don't know... try. Try something. Maybe even try again."
Blitz was about to say something, when Stolas could practically see the metaphorical lightbulb blink into shining in his mind. "Wait a minute... I just realized something," Blitz said. Stolas motioned for him to continue. "I outrank you now."
"Yes. Yes you do," Stolas said.
"...Well fuck. I'm not sure what to do about that," Blitz said, rubbing at the back of his neck.
"You coooould start by telling me all about how you brought ruin to Lucifer's little cretin of an employee," Stolas offered.
"You don't get to tell me what to do anymore, you know," Blitz said.
"I wasn't telling. I was... asking," Stolas said. Wow, this felt so awkward. With every passing moment he realized another of the injustices he had heaped upon Blitz with every interaction. Lucifer's Light, he was fortunate beyond words that Blitz hadn't just outright declared his contempt and left.
"Yeah. Yeah you were," Blitz said. He stared at the distance for a while, before a smile seemed to pull onto his face against his best efforts. "And you know what? I'm fuckin' dyyyyying to brag about this shit. So here's how its gonna work. You an' me are going to go to a shitty dive 'round the block, and we are going to get so fuckin' wasted that neither one of us knows how to get home, and while we do that, I'll tell ya all about how I mashed that fucker into a smear."
"That sounds delightful," Stolas said, not understanding what a dive bar was, what his presence in it would do to his already damaged reputation, or what the two of them drinking to incoherence would do to Blitz's. In retrospect, even had he known then what he later did, he would have done the same thing. Now was not the time to be prim. Now was the time to be proud of a hard fought victory, in whatever manner the victor willed.
Rachel sighed, standing by the door staring into the room. It was tiny, barely larger than a closet, a former sitting room that had been subdivided into sleeping chambers exactly big enough to fit a tiny mattress in and nothing else. Her stomach hurt, her head hurt, and her professionalism hurt. Another one lost.
"Well?" Saul asked from the hall.
"Numb," she declared. Saul sighed, leaning against the wall beside him and rubbing at his gaunt face with bony hands. Rachel's were much like his, and she was aware of the ghastly spectacle that she presented to people. It wasn't possible to starve to death here, after all, but you could still starve. "It's not your fault, Saul. You couldn't have known."
"He didn't answer this morning. I could have..." Saul began.
"And I couldn't have come until now. He might have Gone Numb last night, and even if you'd opened that door at the break of dawn, you'd still find him like this," Rachel said. "There wasn't anything you or I could have done about it."
"It still feels like my fault," Saul said. Saul was an Old Innocent, who had been here since Imperial Rome. His home was once a sizable manor, befitting his status as a martyr. But with things as they'd gotten in the last few decades, he'd taken to subletting and subdividing that once airy venue to house two hundred in a space that, on Earth, would have played host to maybe ten. And his was far from the worst of the Rat Towers. The fact that they didn't just sleep in a pile on the floor, that they had their own, walled places to take their fitful sleep, spoke to that.
"I'm losing too many of them," Saul finally said, as she left the cubby. "I can't keep up."
"Neither can I. That doesn't mean you have to join them," Rachel said. Saul nodded, then turned and gave a shout down the hall. He called for the Ragmen to come, to pull the body of the Numb man out. Another would have his bed in a matter of hours. And the former denizen would be taken to the Shrine of the Lost Inside.
Rachel didn't know the exact mechanics of Going Numb. But she had a theory. And that theory was tied to despair. Despair in the living world caused death by suicide, by overwork, by bad habits, or by recklessness. But here? In Heaven? There was no death. There was no escape from despair, not even by putting a bullet in your skull. You'd just wake up a few days later like it never happened. With infinite despair and no means of escape, Rachel presumed that the only way that these people who had surmounted the Judgment of Saint Peter to escape that despair... was that they shut off their minds. And like turning off a computer with no Boot Drive, once it turned off, it couldn't be turned back on from the outside. Once you Went Numb, there was no coming back.
It was really goddamned handy that Rachel didn't feel sadness, let alone despair. Maybe being what she considered to be a functional sociopath in life had finally come home to roost, so to speak.
Rachel navigated the tunnels that had once been a garden, here at the bottom of a Rat Tower, until she finally reached the doors to that manor and emerged. There were only streaks of light that reached down between the leaning and unsteady towers of desperate habitation that had sprung up through all the places where Humans were allowed to dwell in Heaven. If you stood in a place like this, maybe a few minutes each day, you could actually see the sun directly. And the smell was indescribably bad.
Honestly, if Rachel had known that Heaven was in the state that it was, she might have chosen to curse God with her dying breath so that she could go to Hell instead.
The flapping of wings pulled Rachel's attention up, and she saw Raguel descending toward her. Unlike most of his brothers, she felt no sneer come to her face at his presence. He, unlike most of the Archangels, did what he could to help. He at least tried. He didn't break the Golden Rule. That made him better than most. "Herald Raguel? What brings you to this..." she tried to come up with a less disparaging euphemism for what they were standing before, and she failed.
"Rat warren," Raguel offered a blunt answer to her attempt at tact. "You are a hard human to find."
"I'm busy," Rachel said.
"I have had to search for a day and a night to find you. It speaks to the state of Heaven that it was so needlessly taxing," Raguel muttered, the banked outrage evident even through the featureless mask that he wore before his face. He then paused for a moment, then turned to her, blazing eyes intent. "We must speak, you and I, in private."
"Regarding?"
"As I said, it must be in private. Can you spare some time?" Raguel asked. Though it sounded like a demand, and from another of his kind, it would have been, Rachel knew that if she said no, that he would actually have abided by it.
"As long as you send a message to Norman and Gloria that the Taranto Tower needs the next shipment of food, I can go with you now," she said, instantly putting that task out of mind.
"His name is Borlaugim," Raguel began.
"He goes by Norman," she countered flatly.
"...who is 'Gloria'?" Raguel asked.
"Gloria Mundi? She's one of yours," Rachel said. Raguel gave his head a shake, allowing a rare moment of fluster to show. How strange.
"This is immaterial. I will do so," he pulled out his smartphone, and quickly sent off a message. "Please stand close."
Rachel did so, ignoring the boring pain in her stomach. As soon as she was shoulder to shoulder with the Archangel, he held out a hand, as though painting the air, and in its wake lingered cold, white flame. Once the sigil was installed, Rachel heard a loud, metallic snap, and the environs of the Rat Towers vanished, replaced by a bunker-looking room that was made of that self-healing concrete that Heaven couldn't make more of.
"There. We may speak here in private," Raguel said, manifesting with a twist of his Angelsong a pair of basic chairs, facing each other. He lowered himself into one, his shoulders slumping slightly when he did, as though he were at long, long last allowing his fatigue to reach him. He reached for a moment for his ballistic mask, but seemed to think better of it, and then motioned for her to sit as well.
"So what is this about?" she asked.
"I need to know about your son," Raguel said.
"Philip? Why are you worried about him? Did something happen to him?" Rachel asked, leaning forward in her seat, her mind starting to mobilize dire considerations.
"No. Not Philip. Your second son. I need to know about Samuel," Raguel said.
"He's... well... I don't know how much I could even tell you about him, at this point. He's probably not even fully grown, yet."
"You... of course you don't. The current year is 2022, Rachel," Raguel said, and Rachel stared at him, confused.
"What? No. No it's barely 2000 by now."
"You died in the year 1995," Raguel said. "I understand how hard this is to reconcile, but without the more traditional travails of the living, time takes on skewed meaning in Heaven."
"It's... There's no way..." Rachel said, but then she took a look at the Archangel opposite her. He was not built for jokes by any measure, and he was not trying to be cruel. He needed something. And that meant that he was telling the best truth that he had to offer. So Rachel silently changed all the calendars in her head ahead by almost two decades, asserted her mental control of her world, and puffed out a breath. "Alright. Twenty twenty two. Flying cars on Earth?"
"These are as far as they've gotten," Raguel held up his smartphone. And here she thought they were just miraculous, Heavenly technology. "Your son, Samuel Scailes. Tell me of him."
"He was... well, he was devout in a way Philip wasn't. He believed, like I said I did," she said. Then a dark thought came to her. No. "Oh dear God, did he come to Heaven? Did he Go Numb?" she asked.
"No. Because of the... rigidity... of my brother," Raguel seemed quietly angry at that, so she did not plumb, "he was declared unfit for heaven upon his murder."
"My son is dead," Rachel said. She stood up. "My son is damned!"
"Yes. I'm sorry," Raguel even seemed like he meant it.
"What are you going to do about this?" she demanded of him. His blazing eyes glared at her impertinence, but fuck that. There were three people that she had ever loved in her life, and all three of them had come out of her. If Sam was in danger...
"I was not the one who cast him Judgement. Were I, I would have let him through. He did his best with an especially terrible life, a lesson you know all too well," Raguel said. "But this is immaterial. I need to know why your son still has a Gift."
"...Pardon?"
And when she blinked, there was a third in the room.
He was taller than Raguel, even were the Godfriend standing, stripped to the waist and bearing the lean, powerful musculature typically seen in wolves. His face, too, had a sort of wolfish bent to it, his features sharp and predatory. His hair was golden and flowing, reaching past his shoulders in lazy curls. And his eyes threatened to eat the two of them whole.
"Yes," the interloper said, grabbing Raguel as the Godfriend spun at him and then lifting Raguel by his throat. He did it with no apparent effort, despite the seeming half tonne of armor that Raguel wore.
"Gabriel! What are you doing?" Raguel demanded.
"My duty, brother," Gabriel said, glaring with a most unkind smile at Rachel. "After all, the Demiurge has been revealed at long, long last. And I will be the one who crushes the life from his eyes, in the name of the Father."
"Let me down! This will not stand!" Raguel shouted.
Gabriel very gradually lowered Raguel, but didn't allow his feet to reach the floor. "...Ask for God to stop me. Because only he could," he promised. And then with a heave, sent Raguel rocketing through the wall, which burst outward not in a scree of rubble, but with ragged edges like a fleshy wound. Instantly, Gabriel turned and pointed down, the oppressive tone of his Song manifesting shackles on her wrists, snaring them together, and then dragging her down into her abandoned chair. He then twisted that song again, and an interrogation chamber appeared ex nihilo around them, locking her in place by its attachment to her chains. With that done, Gabriel very casually took the other chair, spun it around so he sat astride its back, facing her, as the wounded wall pulled itself closed.
"What do you want from me?" she asked, squinting through the oppressive light and battering sensation of his Song. She should be afraid. She wasn't, because that part of her had always been broken.
"It's quite simple, Missus Scailes," Gabriel said, with that starving-wolf grin on his face. "You're going to tell me absolutely everything that there is to know about the being once named Samuel Scailes. And if I'm satisfied by what I hear... I might just let you scurry back to the rats' nests where you belong."
"And if I don't?" she asked.
"...then maybe I could decide my brother was wrong to let you into Heaven in the first place," Gabriel's grin grew wide.
This would be the last time Rachel Scailes spoke to Raguel.
But not to Gabriel.
I understand. I understand better than you could ever possibly know. Your privation is not alien to me in any degree. I have known hunger, as you know hunger. I have known pain, as you know pain. I have known fear, as you know fear. I am not different than you. But for the grace of the path you walk, you could have been me. But what matters now is that we keep doing what is right and what is good. That we try to be kind. I have seen why Heaven is in the shambles it is. I have seen the best of Hell and the worst of Heaven and the strangest of a world that lies between them.
I know despair, as you know despair. And I will reject it, today and forever because of one very simple understanding. That if you pursue the good and the kind, THINGS CAN GET BETTER. And that if we all work together, we will not give fate a choice in the matter.
No more despair in heaven. No more ruin on Earth. No more cruelty in Hell.
- Gloria Mundi, Redemptor
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Well, that's the end of that story. Yup, didn't end happily, but not all stories do. Sam failed to forge his own path; in a moment of rage he declared war against God and in the end, despite all that's happened, despite the people that would beg him not to, he went out to actually fight it. This was an interesting piece for me to write, because I started the project literally with a couple of set-pieces in mind and no outlining otherwise. The moments in question were the fight between the White Flame Beast and Alastor, the fight between Sam and the V's, and the karaoke scene. With just those three points, and the notion to start at minute one with a newly fallen dead guy, the entire story began.
Okay, I'll admit, there's one more thing I went in knowing; the character had to be called Sam. Because the Samael reveal was cooked into the story right from the onset. But when I started to do research into the biblical Samael, I learned that Samael was conflated with Yaldabaoth, and decided, why not both? Which led to the rest of the story points including my usual habit of taking a kiddy pool and turning it into an ocean. Why does Charlie even need to have a hotel to rehabilitate Sinners? Because Purgatory isn't doing the job? Why isn't it doing it's job? Because it's not there anymore. Why hasn't God fixed that? Because God is Silent. How can a dead guy be an Angel? Because God's Silence has made the Angels desperate.
That in a single paragraph is my worldbuilding ethos. Ask a question. Come up with an answer that asks another question. Answer the new question with an answer that demands another question. Never create a fully answered scenario, never fully finish a logical stream, and you'll be able to keep expanding your world when you need to. It also helps me design characters. I knew Michael was going to make a showing in the story, but who would Michael pal around with? What Archangel would be the kind he would buddy up with? Enter Raguel. What's this? Raguel is called 'the Friend of God'? What does this mean? Keep digging and you'll get somewhere, and even if you don't you'll still finish with a large and pleasing hole.
Oh, and I should probably mention... yeah, this story isn't actually finished. As should be apparent because of the awkward and unbalanced state of things when things came to a close, there's a pair of sequels in the work. Well, one sequel, and a companion parallel piece, which I'm not legally allowed to write yet.
I'll see y'all in The Song Of Ruin.