"I think Hare is annoyed with you," Lu chided.

"I think Hare can hear you right now," Hare said from the passenger's seat.

"I saw an opportunity. I took it," Delilah said from her place riding the middle of the back seat. If only because that way she could serve as a physical barrier to keep Vera, who was currently 10/10 horny due to the dank kush the three of them had been hotboxed in, away from One who was deeply uncomfortable having to even be in the same proximity to her.

"An opportunity to bring a potentially dangerous Vanguard home with you like a stray cat. What a brilliant idea! What a wonderful thing to drop into my lap after that FUCKING CATASTROPHE!" Hare pointed back whence they had come. She stewed for a moment. "I should have just killed it..."

Delilah was about to say that 'nobody died', and thus it wasn't a catastrophe, but a glance to One and his still slightly-protean face put a lie to that. Five people died who didn't have to. Because of them. Delilah kept her mouth shut.

Hare puffed out a breath, tweezing her brow, while Lu leaned toward him.

"Could you make me another…" she began, but Hare cut her off by lifting one hand and having a box of pop-tarts appear in it. "Thank you Hare."

"Just keep your eyes on the road," Hare muttered, as Lu, in the depths of the munchies, demolished the pastries with haste and violence of action. Delilah felt fine. Not particularly hungry, nor as frisky as the imp. Maybe she just had a higher tolerance to 'the devil weed'. With the moderately long drive to Orlando continuing apace, Hare turned to face Delilah.

"How can we trust that once that thing sobers up it won't just kill us all?"

"She, Hare," Delilah said.

"I don't know how its gender works! It's an alien lifeform! For all I know it doesn't even have any internal organs!" Hare stressed.

"You're closer to being right than you know, human," Vera said with an amorous purr. "You can be as big as you want. We're really stretchy."

"Oh for fuck's sake!" One snapped, while Delilah gently pushed Vera back onto her part of the back seat.

"This is lovely," Hare said flatly. "Delilah, seriously; what was your thinking with…"

"I wasn't going to leave her on a dead earth with no living plant-life and a sun which was being torn apart by a mechanical crab," Delilah said, which looking back sounded outright insane. "And besides, she seems to be almost as good at noticing the weird bullshit that we have to interact with as Lu is."

"I got a question," One said.

"This isn't a classroom, One. You don't have to raise your hand," Hare said, her patience obviously fraying.

"How come Lu looks like that? She ain't ever done that before."

"Look like what?" Hare said, then actually scrutinized Lu, who was in a form that neither Delilah nor One had seen her in before today. Hare's eyes opened wide. "Oh shit, well that's an event of rare occurrence! Lu, you're still wearing your O face."

"I am? It completely flew my mind," Lu said, chucking the already empty box into Hare's foot-well.

"Remember how I said that most people Go Adonis for their first few Resets, and how she didn't? Turns out she already had it out of her system when she started," Hare said. She puffed out a breath, and looked at the imp next to Delilah. "Give me your honest opinion; can you kill that if you have to?"

"Oh yes. Kill me. I can think of a fun way to do it…" Vera said, trying to crawl past Delilah's shoulders and get at One. Delilah sighed and grabbed her spaded tail, yanking her back into her spot whether she wanted to be there or not.

"Hare, I know your magic hive thing can make drugs. Is there anything you can give her to calm her down a bit?" Delilah said, still holding the tail so that Vera couldn't get very far.

"Alien electrochemistry, Delilah; I have no idea what effect any drug will have on her. For all I know something as simple as acetylsalicylic acid might kill her, or caffeine might make her drunk as well as high!" Hare gesticulated broadly.

"Well you've gotta do something. One's not gonna survive this drive with his chastity intact if you don't," Delilah pointed out. Hare thought for a moment, then reached into the glove-compartment, extracting a small bottle of water, and held it toward Vera, who was still distracted trying to cross Delilah's lap to get at One. As soon as Delilah reset the imp once more, Hare squeezed with all her might, causing the water to rocket out of the bottle and spray the imp in the face.

Vera snarled and snorted and hacked and coughed at the sudden infusion of water into the air she expected to be breathing, and sat still at long and blessedly last, blinking in confusion with her hair smacked to her head and showing that she did in fact have both eyes, it was just that she preferred to keep one hidden under her coif.

"Are we feeling sensible again?" Hare asked.

Vera blinked a few more times, then rubbed at her eyes. "That was deeply unexpected. I seem to be somewhat beside myself. I blame that man's skunk gas."

"Yeah, I figured," Hare said. "My name is Hare. Why exactly are you sitting there and not fleeing back to wherever it is you come from?"

"I have no desire to go back to that shit-show," Vera said. She leaned forward, squeezing some wet out of her hair so she could re-arrange her 'do to its proper arrangement. "Which means I am in the market to offer mercenary Thaumaturgy to any enemy of Ruut Nuckelavee."

"I don't know who that is," Hare said.

"Ignorance of her makes you an enemy of Ruut Nuckelavee, trust me," she said. Hare though, tilted his head, as an idea no doubt occurred to him.

"So you're looking for work. And I'm willing to pay for an external specialist in certain things. I can pay in gold and other luxuries, if that's your liking," Hare said.

"I could be convinced," Vera said.

"Excellent. Would you be averse to undergoing a few basic tests when we get back to our base? I'd like to not kill you by accident."

"No, you are looking for ways to do it with purpose. But as I am an imp, I haven't the luxury of making best choices, merely the best of the choices available. Very well. As long as the price is proper. But I do not consent to vivisection. I am not Amberley; that girl is a self-destructive freak," Vera said.

"I think we can make this work," Hare said, but gave Delilah a glance that told her his conversation with her was far from over. Oh well.


Helldiver VII

Downtime: Debrief and Recruitment, Vera Drevisté


Hare, as she was known, was currently reading printouts vomited forth by a computer nearby with a look of ever growing alarm and confusion on her face. Vera didn't particularly care. The moment that Hare had put her money where her mouth was and proved that she could afford Vera's services, all was well both here and in Hell. If the larger of the brown humans wanted to frighten and vex herself while Vera sat in a comfortable chair drinking delicious coffee, that was her prerogative. Such a pity the cup was almost empty.

"So… that's a thing," Hare finally said, turning a mildly fearful look at Vera. Just as well, for all the human had twice Vera's weight, Vera had Un and Darkning if one were to get uppity. If she grew in her blood well enough, she might even be able to manifest the Frostgrave. Hare came over and lightly prodded at the skin of the hand Vera wasn't using to hold her mug. It had the stylized scars banding around it marking her as Bright Blooded, one of the only imps who had any standing or future in the Clan Cruac. He was lightly pinching and rubbing at her skin, then rubbing his fingers together as though they'd come back oily. Which they wouldn't. Vera wasn't an Engi-Enno; she at least knew how to clean herself.

"Are you finally no longer afraid that I will kill you with a touch?" Vera asked.

"No, I've become concerned of something else entirely. Are you aware that your skin is composed of at least 30% molecularly-impossible matter?" Hare asked.

"I have no reckoning of what that means," Vera said flatly. Hare sighed and pointed to a wall, which began to display some sort of diagram which was opaque to Vera.

"All matter here as it was in the Prime is comprised of LEEs. Least-Energetic-Elements. The most basic forms of matter that can be found in all creation. The most stable, least radioactive forms. For example, you have to get all the way down to Uranium here to have a meaningful radiation hazard for a basic element."

"And thus?" Vera asked, motioning the woman to get to the heart of things.

"Your skin has linkages of Carbon 13 ½," Hare said.

Vera shrugged.

"Carbon CANNOT HAVE half of a proton in its nucleus!" Hare pointed at the opaque chart again.

"Why not?" Vera asked.

"Can a world have half of a sun? Can a man sire a third of a daughter?" Hare asked.

"I suppose not," Vera said. "Still, why are you so alarmed at this? I feel fine."

"You shouldn't," Hare said. "You should be radioactively decaying into either Carbon 12 or possibly into boron. Which is not conducive to things like being alive."

"Your science is weak before impish physiology," Vera said with a laugh.

"I'm guessing so. Do you consent to some internal biopsies? I need to understand how this is even possible, let alone sustainable," Hare said.

"How much 'biopsy' are you asking for?" She asked. He picked up the tool, which looked like a hypodermic needle lacking a syringe. She shrugged. "Very well. Don't drain to much of my blood; I need that to do my magic."

"...I'm not even going to question that," Hare said, deftly pressing the needle into Vera's arm, then extracting it without any suction applied, as though coring out a fine sample within the metal and dragging it out when it came. It didn't even hurt. "So… while I'm running this… explain again what exactly you are."

"I am an imp," Vera said.

"How long ago did you branch away from humanity?" she asked.

Vera scoffed. "Please. We predated humans by near a billion years. Although to our shame we did spend most of the first few hundred million of the years we had living in the gutter and trying not to be stepped on by the Elder Devils. Only in, say, the last eighty million summers have we become the fine, upstanding race you see before you."

"You're not related to humans at all?" Hare asked, frowning at Vera.

"God made you long after we came to be," she confirmed.

"And how did this 'god' make you?" Hare asked, as the computer began to spit out more readings. Vera outright laughed again.

"God had no hand in our creation! We oozed up out of the Abyss into the ring of Betrayal and expanded higher every year thereafter!" Vera said.

Hare pondered for a second, then turned to Vera. "You 'oozed up' from the Abyss? That hideous black mass that separates Creation from the rest of Reality?"

"Yes. Did you not comprehend me the first time?" she asked.

"The Abyss shouldn't be conducive to life…" Hare began, but then she straightened. "Which is why you came to 'hell'. Of course you're a Vanguard. You're not trying to invade Earth, you're trying to invade Hell."

"Invasion? Pfah! We live there! There are clades of imp in every Ring, from Pride at its top to Sloth at its bottom!" Vera said.

"I thought you said Betrayal was the lowest 'Ring' of Hell," Hare said.

"Once it was. Then Lucifer hurled it into the Abyss. Possibly because he was sick of fighting against the Litigators and their Faithful King. I cannot speak to his motivations. The King of All Hell does not share his motivations with lowly imps."

"So these 'Rings' can be destroyed and are ruled by Kings?" Hare said, obviously guiding her question, so Vera nodded, and answered what she was going to get to next.

"Each Ring has its own sovereign, whom each in turn bends the knee to the Low Throne. Highest is Baphomet, who all agree is a powerless puppet-king, only stacked onto a throne so that The King Of All Hell may honestly claim that he had bent the knees of seven kings instead of merely six," Vera said. "Any who have eyes or a working brain know that it is not Baphomet but instead he who is Pride Incarnate."

"And beyond those?" Hare asked, turning her back to the computer now.

"Well, there is Mammon, Poison-Lord of Greed, who undercut his Ring during Lucifer's invasion and was rewarded with power when it collapsed. Leviathan the Abomination, Envy-Incarnate who rose up in riot and rebellion to overthrow the Selachimorph clade, who are even now in decline. Past him is the Old King, Satan, Wrath Incarnate. I know little of that realm; its imps are… strange… to us."

"Strange how?"

"They… pair off. Exclusively. And care more for brawn than for magic!" Vera said, hoping her tone alone would express her incredulity at them. Hare gave a grunt and nodded, seeming to grasp her point. "Past Wrath, we reach my home, Lust, domain of the Hell-Knight Asmodeus, who won Lust by honest strength of arms. It has forever and eternal been the home of the Clan Cruac, and its families, including my own. Do not ever demand to take me there again, unless you wish to empty the swamps of no few matriarchies of imps. I will not return in chains to that miserable shithole."

"Taken under advisement," Hare said. "Beyond that?"

"Well, there's Gluttony, ruled by Princess Beelzebub, the 'Queen of Evolution'. I cannot say why they call her that. She is supposedly a Gluttony Drone – itself a nearly mindless thing – which developed hitherto unseen guile and size. And lastly, we have Sloth. Don't go to Sloth. It is the one place in Hell more miserable than Lust. And nobody even knows what Belphegor is, only that it is well hated for the method by which it turned Sloth over to the invading King Lucifer."

"I notice you haven't named any imps in these positions of power," Hare said, turning to the computer once more.

"Of course. Those on-high consider us scum. Pfeh! More the fool them when we shank them in the kidneys for overlooking us!" Vera said.

"A perpetual and visibly obvious underclass would go a long way in fortifying a miserable hierarchy," Hare seemed to muse. "'Do as we say or you'll be as bad off as the imps'."

"More accurate than not," Vera said. "You ask many very fundamental questions regarding my homeland? Do not your people have legends of Hell Most Foul?"

"Where I come from, Hell was literally a myth, something used to scare children and Baptists into being obedient and giving exploitative fucks their money," Hare said.

"A world without Hell? How boring," Vera noted.

"If you'd seen what happened to my world, you could make an argument that lacking de jure a Hell, we created one de facto," Hare said. Hare turned and approached with the needle again. "Do you have a heart? I don't want to jab you in it."

"It's One Of The Eight, so yes we do," she said. Hare blinked at her.

"The Eight?" he asked, as she guided the needle well south of her ribs and away from the beating purple organ that circulated her soul through her body.

"The eight distinct bodily organs of the imp," she said.

"Humans have dozens of organs," Hare said.

"Humans are needlessly overengineered," Vera scoffed.

Hare shrugged, and lanced into Vera's body again, this time causing a very slight sting as though she had pricked herself lightly with a pin.

"So beyond your skin, which is the obvious one… what are they?" Hare asked, depositing his sample and letting his computer begin to chug along again.

"Well, women have the womb, and men the gonads. A small percentage of Pridelings have something which is technically both of them at once. The imps of Pride are a pathetic and swarming lot. The only advantage that nature has given them was overwhelming numbers. Beyond that, the brain of course, and the heart, and lungs. The stomach and its piping both up and down… and beyond that the liver and the spleen," said Vera.

"So you don't have kidneys. Or a bladder."

"The first only exists in fiends, and in your kind, human, and the second is parceled with 'stomach piping'," she said.

"How do you digest your food?" Hare asked.

"Visceral mass," she said.

"Visceral mass," Hare echoed.

"You likely have a section of it in that needle of yours. It is most of our organ-weight per individual. "You must be operating from a place of true ignorance if you don't even know what the Visceral Mass is."

"I have dissected unspeakable horrors from beyond reality numerous times. I've seen physiologies that put yours to utter shame, and would leave a scientist smashing his head against a wall in confusion and dismay," Hare said over her shoulder. "You're weird. You're not the weirdest."

"I am somehow disappointed by that," Vera noted.

"I'm also told that you have some facility in Endeavor usage," Hare continued, sitting on a stool and spinning it so that she could face Vera once more.

"What is Endeavor, besides an enterprise one pursues?" Vera asked.

"Our paranatural powers," Hare began, only for Vera to clap and cut her off.

"Oh you mean my Thaumaturgy!" she said.

"Your… thaumaturgy," Hare said.

"Yes, the powers of the Black Blood of the Imp, made manifest through study, intent, Words Of Power, and purity of blood," she said.

Hare was silent for a moment, the shifted in her seat slightly, as though settling into the most comfortable spot and bidding Vera continue.

"I take it that magic is somewhat obfuscated to you? It surprises me little; humans, for all their impossible capacity to learn literally anything, have precious few actual, usable scraps of arcane lore to guide their paths. Not all humans can walk the path of The Beast That Grins," Vera carried on.

"Should I ask?" Hare asked.

"If you would go to Hell, then take this one advice of a daughter of Cruac; avoid The Beast That Grins, called also The Radio Demon, as though your life depends upon it. Because I very much promise you that it does," Vera said. "He, a mere human, in his first year in Hell was able to step into a deadlocked three-way war and kill all three sides! He annihilated the Clan Kellion, they who were the greatest of Cruac's clans! It was by his interference that Nuckelavee became the miserable pillar of the Clan that they now are!"

"And he used to be a human," Hare clarified, which Vera didn't see the point of.

"Many of the denizens of Pride are the Damned, those who lived vile lives and are punished for it. Fie on them. They are as crabs in the bucket, forever dragging themselves down and of use to few and of utility little," Vera dismissed. She then flicked a glance to Hare, who was starting blankly at her. "Do you expect me not to to insult the debasement of humans, having seen what their tenure in Hell has resulted in? Pfeh! If you were a better race fewer of you would be there!"

"Spoken by one who was born and raised in Hell, that stings not very much at all," Hare said. "So you have few actual internal organs, are 'really stretchy' by your own marijuana-infused words, and are considered an underclass in Hell. You've already pointed out the existence of evil humans, damned by their sins. Who else does Hell have to offer?"

"A few Angels, those uppity Ars Goetia fuck-heads who prance around like they're better than us even though they got kicked from the shores of Heaven in abject failure with their wings ripped from their backs!" Vera offered a laugh at their misery. Hare seemed to also note the comedy of it, in that her face showed the ghost of a smirk. "And Hellhounds of course, but they are a slave race; beneath contempt to any but we imps. Beyond that, there are the many, extremely varied fiends of the Rings. Every Ring has its own clade of fiends. Furies of Wrath, Mutants and Selachimorphs in Envy. Greed is stranger than most, because its clade the Consumers has a baker's-dozen of subclades under it, from the goatish Capricans to the fishy Pisceans, to the nearly angelic Virgoans. Do not speak of the Scorpii. It is considered a ruinous faux pas."

"...Riiiight. So you have fish in Envy and in Greed," Hare said.

"Indeed!" Vera said. "Fools say that you can't tell a Piscean Consumer from a Selachimorph. They say that because they are blind or else brain damaged; I have never seen a Piscean with the shark-tail, nor have I ever known a Caprican to be mistaken for someone like The Goat Of The Apocalypse."

"Should I ask about that one?" Hare queried.

"Remember my warning of the Radio Demon? Invert it for the Goat," Vera said. "I think you and he would get along swimmingly. He has the same 'wheels within wheels' sort of thinking that you would appreciate." Hare nodded with a thoughtful expression. Vera had heard many stories of the Goat of the Apocalypse, and few of them were bad. Nasty, a few, but those were all situations which the client had brought upon themselves trying to cheat the Goat. As far as Vera was concerned, they sowed stupidity, and they reaped doom from it.

"I'll make a note of that. And how exactly do you get there and back?" Hare asked.

"Well, I was working under Aydra, that envy-poisoned fool who turned Drevisté into but a sad reflection of Nuckelavee. And so far as I know, she was contracting with somebody called Henroin Veloce. Some mafia political foolishness I care naught for. They saw to it that we were sent up through the use of ritual and crystal."

"What kind of ritual? And crystal?" Hare asked, leaning forward on her stool.

"Well, this crystal, by means of example," Vera unearthed one of her amulets from the seven that rode her neck. This one was not gold or silver like the others, but brass, set with a pink crystal, cushion-cut. "These are refined from the amniotic fluids of the Concubi, those horny demons of desire and wonton fucking. It's said it takes a thousand births to create a Slave Crystal. And perhaps ten times as many to make the Master."

"So those things are networked somehow," Hare seemed to grasp Vera's mechanics. "I'm guessing that it's the Master Crystal that actually passes from Hell to Earth, and the Slaves that are… well… slaved to it are dragged with it."

"Accurate! You understand the principle!" Vera said.

"Which means that by itself, that crystal is essentially useless for bringing you back to Hell," Hare added.

"Also accurate," Vera said, and then she feigned a look of despair. "Such a pity I cannot return to the miserable spit-stains who forced me to squat out a short-bus full of idiot spawn."

"Seeing as that thing isn't functional, would you be willing to let me run some experiments on it?" Hare asked.

"Just don't snort its dust or inject an emulsion of its powder in oil," Vera said with a shrug, handing over her least favorite piece of jewelry.

"Why? Is it poisonous?" Hare asked, brow drawing down.

"Because it will ignite in you an amorousity that will take days and a small army of sexual partners to defeat," she said.

"...You're joking," Hare said.

"Would that I were!" Vera said, as Hare put the thing down and shook her head. "The crystals were first refined for their aphrodisiac effects; the ability to punch through to the human world was discovered far, far later."

"I'd ask why people were refining the afterbirths of demons into aphrodisiacs, but the fact that you come from a place which proudly calls itself Hell is likely all the answer to that question that I actually need," Hare said, returning with a different tool. This one she motioned for Vera to do something with her ripped dress. Since this was between ladies, she saw no reason not to doff it. Hare blinked a few times at her. "Of course you're naked under it."

"The lands of Florida are alike to my homeland. It is only prudent to have something breezy... what are you doing?" she asked as Hare first scraped a small amount of skin off of the stretch-marked hellscape of Vera's stomach, then returned to feed that needle into the tiny blemish which was her navel. It was uncomfortable, sitting here with her child-rearing wounds open to the air; her fourth pregnancy had been a shit-show, with four of the little fucks gestating in her; of the lot of them only one came out alive, and in the doing had stretched her such that it now looked like she had been rather thoroughly stabbed in the abdomen. "What is that thing?"

"This," Hare said, having put aside the scraper and the needle, was a more common syringe to Vera's eye, "is collecting a blood sample. Have you never had a physical work-up done before?"

"A what now?" she asked.

"Been to a doctor?" Hare clarified.

"I've been to physicians, yes," she said.

"A physician isn't necessarily a doctor," Hare said. "Half-trained hedge-witches can call themselves a 'physician' if they've got enough pomposity."

"I won't say you're wrong with that," she said.

"So if I'm reading between the lines properly, you live in a hermit kingdom of magical supremacists, which may or may not engage in eugenics…" Hare began, slowly drawing out a small measure of Vera's black, viscous blood.

"Not only do they," Vera confirmed, "they also enforce mandatory breeding from the age of first bleeding until the age of last."

"...How old are you?" Hare finally asked, eyes narrowed.

"Thirty… three? Yes, it would be thirty three now."

"And you have have had how many children?" Hare asked.

"Seven, from fourteen attempted gestations."

"Did you start having your children at nineteen?" Hare seemed a bit concerned.

"Sixteen," Vera said.

"And how long does it take for an imp to reach sexual maturity?"

"To be frank? Eighteen to twenty years," Vera said. "They can have offspring earlier than that, but it is usually very damaging to them to do so, both of body and of mind."

"Christ Almighty," Hare said, shaking her head with a distant and unfocused sort of anger on her face.

"You see exactly why I had to get out of that place. I was granted education only when half-mad and half-stupid shitlings were growing inside my guts, and only allowed to use my magic once I had 'produced an acceptable number' of get for them," Vera said. She spat on the floor. "Fie on Aydra Drevisté! You damned fool of a woman have turned us away from The Mean and made us nothing more than a poor imitation of an even worse Family!"

"What exactly is this Mean?" Hare asked, as she started to do things with Vera's blood and the machines at her disposal. "You should probably put your dress back on."

"Oh right, yes I probably should," she said, but paused looking at the long rip in it. "Would you happen to have a needle and thread?"

Hare turned to her, then scowled, taking the few steps over to lay a hand over the base of the tear that being tackled betwixt realities had imparted on her second favorite dress. Well, it was by default her favorite now; the one she preferred to it now was outside of reality for Vera. Live with what you have. Even as Vera pondered this, she watched as her dress dragged itself together, seeming to 'unrip' itself before her eyes, and when Hare nodded, she then asked, "so about 'The Mean'?"

Vera nodded, pulling her dress back into place and situating it properly. "That was the credo of the family Drevisté; Heed The Mean. Whereas Kellion would take great and unseemly risks, launching themselves into a heedless rush towards an impossible 'glory' up in Pride Ring in pursuit of 'No Way But Forward', or Nuckelavee can enforce a miserable but rock-rigid stability over the other families with 'Unbreaking Tradition', Drevisté has never been given historically to such extremism."

"You heed the Golden Mean," Hare said with a nod.

"I have not heard it 'Golden' before, but yes," Vera said. "Drevisté do not endure when other Families foolishly die because we are somehow magically stronger or fortified by destiny – for destiny has no part for the imp to play in it – no no; we survive because we are prudent. Or at least, we used to be."

"I've heard it said that having enemies means that you've stood for something," Hare said, her tones distracted as she reread the output of the computer regarding her blood.

"Oh, Drevisté has its share of enemies. Moderation is an extreme position in a time of extremity," she said. "It has lost some enemies in recent years because of Aydra's envy, which means in the last short while we have come to stand for less, by your metrics. That damned fool of a crone seems to think she can play according to Ruut Nuckelavee's rules and somehow outplay The Undying Archcrone."

"I'm sorry, I wasn't listening to anything you just said; are you aware that your blood is comprised of roughly 45% Numen by volume? How in the fuck is that possible? Numen isn't even a fucking liquid!" Hare asked, picking up the half of the sample she hadn't used and holding it up toward the light.

"Excuse me?" Vera said, a little annoyed by Hare's shift in tone.

"Numen, the power which literally allows me to do this," Hare said, and as Vera watched, Hare warped and shifted, her skin twisting and blooming, shifting colors until it was the more pink hue of the humans that she had been warned about regarding the Radio Demon. As the body changed, the clothes shifted too, moving from the feminine to the masculine. When Hare's bodily transformation was completed, she had become a he, someone tall and slender with grey eyes and his hair ashen and short.

"An interesting glamour. A pity that imps have lost the knowledge to create them with our thaumaturgies," Vera said with an offhand shrug. But then she watched as the bloom of magic from Hare faded away, until there was nothing there anymore. There was no trademark nimbus surrounding the glamour. Vera was silent for a moment, then jumped off of her stool and moved to the human and grabbing his hand, feeling its digits under her own. She dragged him down to her level, questing her fingertips across his facial features, and finding that her sense of touch was telling her exactly the same thing as her magically attuned vision. She took a couple steps back, shocked. "What."

"Yeah. This isn't a 'glamour'," Hare said.

"How did you do that? How did you shift from woman to man? In truth, now!" Vera demanded.

"I can rebuild myself into whatever form I need myself to be. I'm actually curious to see if you can as well," Hare said, standing up and turning his back to her.

"...Are you actually a man, or really a woman?" Vera asked.

"Are you really a human, or are you a dog?" Hare countered.

"I am neither of those things. It is a choice between two incorrect options," Vera said.

"And so it is with me," Hare said. Oh clever you.

"Are you alike to the Glimpse?" Vera asked.

"Excuse me?" Hare asked, turning a look over his shoulder.

"There are some legends amidst the 'civilized' regions of Lust that a shape-changer has entered the service of the Hell-Knight, to act as his proxy and voice in matters he is too horny to bother with."

"When?" Hare's eyes narrowed.

"Generations ago. It'd had to be, for such 'worldly' rumors to reach we isolated imps," Vera noted.

"Decades, then?" Hare said. He pursed his lips for a moment, then gave his head a shake. "Couldn't have been one of us. We didn't have True-Gate tech nailed down back then. Considering that mythological vampires are a thing distinct from fucking Hematophages, it would stand to reason that Changelings – real, mythological Changelings – are real as well."

"Wait… Vampires still exist?" Vera asked.

"...yes. In Greece they do at least," Hare turned back to Vera. "Why?"

"I had been taught that the entire Vampire race had been wiped out in the ancient times of Hell by their cousins, the Succubi and Incubi," Vera said. Hare was solemn for a moment, then seemed to have a chuckle escape him.

"Suddenly that mosaic makes sense. No, they're alive. Just living on Earth. I take it they're actually long-estranged Hellspawn, like you?"

"Very long," Vera agreed. There was a loud buzzing noise, which drew both sets of eyes to a machine which was now showing a repeatedly blinking red light and making unhappy noises. Hare leaned over, then flicked a glance back at Vera, before hitting some buttons on the machine's face. A few seconds later, the buzzing and beeping returned.

"Well that's impossible," Hare said distantly.

"So pleased to befuddle," Vera said. "Can I have something to drink? I find myself parched and my mug is empty."

Hare pointed idly at the table near her, and the porcelain mug had a strange dark cloud form over it, one that dribbled something dark and aromatic down into it from out of the naked air. She poked the fluid carefully to make sure it wasn't an illusion. When she brought it to her nose, it smelled of that other dark human beverage they loved so much.

"If this is right," Hare said, pressing a few more buttons, only to have the buzzing return after a brief hiatus, "that can't be. If that were true you'd have infinite Capacity."

"Considering that sample you're playing with is a tiny amount of my soul, I should hope it is," Vera said. Hare turned a confused look back at her. "It is common knowledge that the soul of the imp is a black, viscous tar-like substance that we use for blood. Every species has a soul, and its form varies by what contains it."

"The soul is just metaphysical shorthand for your Integrity," Hare said.

"And yet Hellhound souls despite this claim of yours remain a hot, arid gas, and the souls of fiends are steamlike, hot and wet. The soul is a substance. It can be captured. It can be manipulated. And with the power and knowledge of the Archcrones, they can even be called back from beyond the grave."

"...You have Endeavors that can…"

"I have no Endeavors and no Capacity and no nonsense! What I have is magic! Magic defying your scientificizing attempts at recategorization!" Vera countered, taking a sip of her tea.

"Another term for Endeavors amongst the illiterate is…" Hare again tried to bullrush her, but she refused him.

"I don't care what you think Endeavors are or are not. You are not in your world where Endeavors are the sun in the sky and the tide at the shore. This world is not even mine, but is close enough to mine that I can lay claim to it, and it is in this world that you now stand, Hare the Face-Dancer," Vera took a proud step forward, pointing sternly at the floor with the hand that didn't have a mug of tea in it. "This is a world of magic as well as science. It is a world of impossible materials, of souls, and of life-after-death even to those like myself who have no true afterlife! It is said that when Ruut Nuckelavee was murdered in her sleep, she had her daughters dig her out of the Seething Black and restore her to life, and there is great proof behind that assertion! The literal souls of the damned amongst your kind dwell now in eternal punishment and annual purgation in the Ring of Pride, prisoners of their own failings and to be killed by the Steel of Angels. This is the world, Hare. Do not claim you know it better than a woman who was born in it."

Hare, though, was not cowed. "So, how does your 'magic' work? What are its mechanics? Because if you can't look at the back-end of the machine you operate and know how input creates output, then you don't really understand anything."

With that, Vera grinned. "Oh, you have asked precisely the correct person for that question," Vera said. "Thaumaturgy functions by use of Words of Power, focused through a purity of blood, and given shape by intent."

"That isn't…" Hare began.

"The Words of Power," Vera trampled over him, "are in the language – or some might say pseudo-language – of Enochian, which was devised by the Elder Devils who listened to the last echos of God's Word Of Making when he created Hell. Each rune in Enochian represents a phoneme of one of God's Spoken Words, and to speak the phoneme correctly is to invoke a tiny portion of God's power; as God created all in Hell that is not Imp, even if indirectly, it is a very easy catalyst to begin a Wyrd, Spell, Thaumaturgy, Hex, Ward, or Charm."

"Okay, that actually makes a bit of…" Hare continued.

"The blood is what sets Thaumaturgy apart from other forms of low-magic. Low-magic of course being pejorative, to separate it from the gnostic magics of the enlightened or the magic that comes directly from Heaven itself. I disdain the distinction between High and low magic; it is all magic, following the same mechanics; Word Of Power, Purity, Intent. Thaumaturgy gates the use of its abilities away from all Hellspawn. Without the connection to the Abyss, there is no wellspring with which to kindle the flame of the Wyrd, Spell et al etcetera," she continued.

"So the blood is a battery?"

"More of a conduit, a wire connecting the spellcaster to the Abyss which spawned us," Vera countered. She was now deeply on her role as an instructor, so she kept going. "It is said that humans with sufficient training can 'cheat' and use Thaumaturgy as well, but it is damaging, painful, and slow for them compared to even the meanest imp. It is said that Cain knew a fair amount of Thaumaturgy, as well as a Sinner who learned under the Kellions of Pride. I cannot recall his name. I think it started with a 'V'," she wafted the digression away. "The last is intent. Without a crystal understanding of how the magic must arrange as it is cast, it will hit the air not as an explosion of force but as a farcical fart."

"So education on proper magic-visualization is likely very important," Hare said, leaning forward on his stool and tapping at his chin with a finger.

"Incredibly!" Vera agreed. "It is said that with sufficiently advanced understanding of the harmonics and flows of Thaumaturgical power, one can even cast above one's station-of-blood, or use one's station to empower lowly Thaumaturgies to new and interesting effects."

"It is said, rather than it is known," Hare clarified.

"What point do you make?" Vera felt a bit miffed at his implication.

"Considering how long you've been doing your magic, I thought you'd have nailed down every conceivable variable by now," Hare said, disappointment on his face.

"Would that were the case," Vera muttered. "Much information is kept secret to keep advantage over other families within the Clan Cruac, or between the lesser Clans who frankly don't matter much in the broad weave of Hell. Because of that secrecy, much arcane lore and expertise is lost with the dying of each elder Thaumaturge. I nearly weep for the thought of all that will be lost when The Bard finally dies. He is said to be even more knowledgeable than Ruut Nuckelavee herself!"

"I'm just glad that you haven't devolved to passing knowledge through rote-repetition," Hare said. He shrugged. "I'll be frank, when you started talking in terms of magic I thought that there wasn't going to be any native-side experimentation or development, and that I'd have to do all the bitch work myself. Again."

Vera shook her head. "Oh no, there is a long-established tradition of secreting out the small advantages of magic, and then keeping them to your fucking self so extremely that they die with you," she said.

"Why don't you collaborate with…" Hare began. Vera, though, was rolling her eyes so hard she could practically hear them.

"Collaborate with whom? Our would-be enemies? Our rivals? Our underlings who would supplant us with such power?" Vera asked.

"What about somebody safe, like your children?" Hare asked.

"Fuck children in general, and my children in particular," Vera said with a slashing motion of her hand to make her point. "I know not what world you come from, Face-Dancer, but in Hell, you cling to whatsoever advantage you can find, and never let it go. Hell is not kind to the imp. We are not given the chance to live great lives. So we must find ways to endure with paltry ones, and power gives enormous comfort to a paltry life."

"It just seems a deeply sad way of running a society," Hare noted, turning to hit a few buttons on the machine again, and then stand with the needle once more. "This one might sting; I'm going to take a sample of your nerve-tissue."

"Only cowardly imps have nerves," Vera said.

"The fact that you're able to react to me in any regard tells me you have nerves," Hare took the hand not holding a mug of tea and carefully oriented it, before sliding the needle between two of her fingers. She outright yelped and flinched, slopping some tea onto her hand and onto the floor when she did. The pain was sharp, but brief, and Hare retreated once more. "So you have an insular culture which values personal power over group advancement. I begin to realize why you haven't taken over this reality."

"As though Lucifer would even allow imps to try, let alone the dogs of God," Vera said.

"And again that name comes up," Hare said. "Are we talking about the same angel who rebelled against Heaven and was cast down by Michael for it?"

"So you are not utterly void of history," Vera said, flapping her hand which now tingled lightly and sitting back down with her tea. Tea on the floor was a crime against civilization and good taste. So it goes.

"Where I come from it is legend and mythology," Hare said, slotting the new sample into his strange machines. "I wasn't being glib when I said that the world I come from has no afterlife. I meant it has neither Heaven nor Hell. But that didn't stop us from confabulating stories about them as though they were real. I'm guessing, then, that such confabulations are reflections of what is, to you, a matter of historical record."

"It would seem. How does your world work if there is no Hell?" she asked.

"Badly," Hare said. Vera glared at him. He sighed. "Fine. We only have one lifetime to do things, and there is no supernatural judgment awaiting us at the end of it. Evil men live evil lives and die happy, comfortable, and unpunished. Good men live lives of toil, heartbreak, and agony without any reward. There is no God. There is no justice but what we make. And we're really bad at making it."

"That sounds terrible," Vera noted.

"Schopenhauer knocked it out of the park, when it came to his particular definition of Existentialism," Hare said. "It wasn't a great world. We had a clutch of about four-hundred dragons-in-human-form who controlled as much wealth as most of the rest of the planet combined, and in my opinion entirely too few of them were flayed alive for their part in the climate catastrophe and the beginning of the Third World War. And the decades after that clutch of greedy, world-devouring monsters was put into graves long overdue, we just end up coming up with other, worse ways to run the world. Those three sanctimonious fucks at AEGIS are prime example."

"Should I know anything about them?" Vera asked idly, interested to see how long he'd rant.

Hare raised a finger, as though about to launch into a diatribe, but he paused, as though catching himself. "Frankly, no. They should vanish into obscurity without so much as a snarl, lost in the churn of history for their sins. That's the only afterlife we have, Vera. How people remember us. And very few people remember the agents of the Downfall. For people like me… we die so quietly people have to look very hard to see if we were ever there at all."

"To being an overlooked cog in the machinery of the world!" Vera raised her mug.

"If I'd had a cup, I'd match that toast," Hare said. "I notice you have a lot of bile toward your kind. Should I…"

"I have a question about this madness I find myself in," she cut him off. Hare stammered a bit, but shrugged and bade her ask. "You are from some other world-that-may-have-been, yes?"

"It's slightly more complicated than that, but that's a good place to start looking," Hare said with a nod.

"And I am by virtue of your underling adrift in the worlds-that-could-be from whence I actually belong," she added.

"True," Hare said.

"So does it therefore stand to reason that this universe has another version of myself in it?" she asked.

"Excellent question! Yes. Yes it likely does," Hare said. "Alternates are… were… a problem back in the Prime Reality, because if an Alternate came through, it was inevitably a Storm King from one of the Subsumed Worlds coming to start some shit. The dumb fucks tried to send an Alternate of Arthur Flagstaff after the actual, honest-to-Christ Arthur Flagstaff!"

"I have no idea who that is," Vera said flatly.

"Who's the most famous imp of all time?" Hare asked.

"Fabrizio Cruac," Vera said without even needing to think about it. "The founder of the Clan Cruac and the one who murdered the Elder Devil Rozenkrantz to free the imps of first Lust, and eventually all of our kind during the beginning of the Rotten Kings dynastic period."

"Arthur Flagstaff is to my entire world, what Fabrizio Cruac was to the imps," Hare said.

"Then these 'Storm Kings' were true fools to attempt to knock down so mighty a man, even with his own reflection," Vera said with an acknowledging nod.

"Oh, it was way worse than that. The Arthur Flagstaff they used was just a Storm King, while the actual Flagstaff was a Founder," she opened her mouth, but Hare raised a finger as though he were about to explain, so she let him. "Imagine if Fabrizio Cruac were being attacked by you, wearing his face. Or if, I don't know… some drunk human were to try to throw hands at one of your gods."

"I hold even less esteem for the intellect of these Storm Kings now," she said.

"They didn't know any better. Our own Founder isn't any stronger than their own Nth. Call it a critical lack of perspective on their part," Hare waved it away. He paused. "I wonder what happened to The Nth Storm King. Met her once. She didn't know I was me. Yelled at me a lot. She was fucking frightening."

"Also, we killed all of our gods long ago during the Rotten Kings period," Vera added.

"You're smart to have done it. Gods are pretty much always more trouble than they're worth," Hare said with a dismissive gesture. "Ordinarily, making deals with people outside the cell is utterly verboten, upon pain of A Harsh Talking-To, if not death. Circumstances aren't usual, though. I'm stuck in a place where the Downfall isn't, have no way back, and frankly, I could use somebody who understands metaphysics to any useful degree. God knows I'm not the one to teach it to Lu and the others."

"So this has come to a place of employment?" Vera asked, putting her tea down. "And you want to know if you can afford me."

"I'm certain I can afford you. I just want to know your price," Hare said with an easy smile.

"Oh ho! So confident you are!" she remarked. "Well, first, I expect to have better accommodations than I have seen in this strange bolt-hole in the dirt…"

"Would you like a lavishly appointed suite in this bolt-hole in the dirt?" Hare asked.

"I take it the latter half of the sentence is a prerequisite?" Vera said with a slight scowl.

"Strange circumstances or no, secrecy has saved my skin more times than I can easily relate. So it'll be here. Accepted," he said.

"And I will require more vestments than this, and an array of materials and ingredients to render those vestments puissant; I cannot live my life in a single dress!" Vera let her scandal be known.

"Accepted. Just give me a list of what you need," Hare said. Vera blinked at him. What manner of deal was this if he wasn't even going to haggle? Or did he value her so highly?

"Next, I expect to have amusements, food, narcotics and such medicines as can render an imp infertile," she took a stab deep into impossible territory.

"The first few are easily done; the last one might take a bit of research but it shouldn't be more than an afternoon's work," Hare shrugged. She was very careful to school her features not to twitch or give away that he was offering the impossible as inevitable. Who was this man? What faction did he represent where he, a desperate and starving man by his own admission, could offer so much in exchange for just a single imp of middling Thaumaturgical power?

"And lastly," she said, taking a flying leap into the impossible, to see if he was just offering the moon despite not even being able to stand. "By nature of the certainties of this reality, there exists somewhere in Hell right now another version of myself, as you have noted to me."

"Yes, and?" Hare prompted.

"I want you to remove her from the Clan Cruac to such a place as they cannot reclaim her," she said. Asking him to grab an alternate version of herself, despite having no way of reaching hell, should be beyond the pale. And if he promised her this, then she would know him for a liar.

"That alone, out of all you have laid out, is a big ask," Hare said, nodding. "At the moment, we have no way into Hell, and no way to find your Alternate even if we did. However, if it is a precondition of you offering your expertise, I will offer you a guarantee that when we can, I will see to it myself."

That was exactly the answer an honest man should have given.

Damn him.

"Very well. I will begin my employment with you on the 'morrow, for I am fraught and tired and stinky. I do have one question, though?" Vera said.

"I thought you would have many," Hare said.

"I do. But one is germane above all others, and it is this: do your kind operate under rules of chastity and celibacy?"

Hare almost laughed. Almost. She could tell it strained his face to hold it in, but he managed only to release a desperate snort.

"...no," Hare said flatly.

"Good! All will be well then. I have often wondered what a real man would be like; the one they forced onto me was a pathetic waste of skin and sweat."

"Fair enough," Hare said. He then popped the last of her skin-scrapings into one of the machines and stared at the wall near the door for a moment. "While these things churn through your samples and make sure I don't accidentally poison you, you'll find your rooms down the hall outside the door. It'll be the fancy door, not the basic ones."

Vera scowled at him. "There is no hallway out there beyond the one that leads to this laboratory; it sits in a dead-end."

"Yeah, well, maybe you're misremembering," Hare said, turning his back to her and giving his entire attention to the scientific apparatus that surrounded him.

Vera scowled at him, but abandoned her mug of half-drunk tea and moved to the door. When it irised open, she blinked in confusion; where once there was only the hall leading directly here from the entry area, now there was a T-junction, one that extended what she presumed east and west. And in one of those, she indeed did see a fancy door, which was marked with a golden plaque encrusted in rubies that spelled out 'Vera Drevisté'. She glanced up at it, then at the doors. They opened as she took a tentative step forward. And revealed within was a room befitting the king's harem, bedecked in translucent veils of silk in many colors but favoring reds, purples and oranges. All colors she was currently wearing, in fact.

Whoever this Hare was… she had a feeling staying in his good graces would be tremendously luxurious and well advised. And with the tribulations she'd gone through in her thirty three years to get this far, she was fucking owed such luxury.


Delilah noted the change in the layout of the Den, but didn't give it much thought. Hare had sent her a text asking for her, and with One now settled down and no longer moping (much), she had no reason not to see what the boss was after. She stepped into the laboratory, and winced at the look of things. There was a span of red skin hanging from a strange rack next to the various goo-gaws that Hare used. Had he just skinned Vera? That didn't seem like a very nice thing to do. But then again, Hare was a lot more paranoid than even One.

"You wanted to talk to me?" Delilah asked. Hare had taken on a new face, this one of a be-stubbled, short haired man, who gave a glance over his shoulder and nodded, turning on his stool and pointing. He didn't say a word, and had a very serious expression on his face. Oh. It was that kind of talk.

Delilah didn't shirk, though. She'd survived being harangued by Shithead. She could survive being chewed out now.

Hare, though, stared at her, chewing his words as though he couldn't speak them until they were a fine paste. He sat back for a moment, raising a finger, then lowering it without saying anything, almost with a look of being rebuked on his face when he did, as though he'd in that moment had an argument against himself and lost.

"So… is this about Vera?" she asked.

That at last got Hare to break his deadlock. "Yes," he said. "That was an extraordinary risk, dragging a Vanguard into the Den. Entire Cells have been wiped off of the board by a Noumenal entity finding their bases by accident. And you brought one here on purpose."

"She was willing to work with us," she said, and Hare raised a hand, cutting her off more gently than she had expected he might.

"Do you know," Hare asked, letting his history put weight on his words, "how many unspeakable things I have seen in the fifty seven years I've worked for the Downfall and their Eldest?"

"No," Delilah said simply.

"No. No you don't," Hare said. "I have seen every stripe of Noumenon. I have fought nearly all of them. And in all my years, do you know how many times, how many of those monsters that I saw loose in the world of humanity that would look at me not as prey but as an equal?"

"I'm guessing none," she said.

"Before today? One," he said. She blinked at him. "Did Lu talk to you about the Sky-fishers?"

"No, that's new to me," Delilah said.

"Her name was Seven Titanium Power Conduit Cover Sunrise Through Thin Clouds," Hare said. "Like all Sky-fishers, she was something like a, well, a barnacle. A barnacle that was a meter and a half across, a meter tall, and produced ephemeral tendrils fifteen meters long with which it fed, but still, it's a good place to start imagining it."

"Wait… its name was Titanium Power Conduit Cover?" Delilah asked.

"Her, Delilah. She was a female of the species. Or what counted as a Female," Hare said. "Wasn't a very nice person when I met her; she just ate the guy who was chasing me, which seemed to give her enough umph to grow a consciousness and start asking questions about phenomenology."

"A barnacle talked to you about philosophy?" Delilah confirmed, not sure at all where this was going.

"A Sky-fisher, but yes," Hare said. "I dare say that she was probably my closest friend for that year. Every time I was run ragged, I'd go out there into the rain-funnels and just talk to her until the world made sense again. I still sometimes wonder if she's still out there, clinging to the side of Bismarck Arcology and watching the sunrise and talking the ears off of any fool who gets lost in the armor-belt. I hope that she is, at least."

"I have no idea where you're going with this conversation," Delilah admitted.

"I'm saying that you looked into a Vanguard organism's eyes, saw a scrap of humanity in it, and made a choice," Hare said. "I'm saying that when put in a position without overriding authority to depend on, without directive or direction, you took a massive risk in order to be kind."

"And that's a bad thing?" Delilah sat back on her stool.

"No. No it's a reminder that we're supposed to be better than our enemies, one that I haven't gotten in admittedly far too long," Hare said. He laced his fingers in front of him. "Let me be completely candid with you, Delilah. I don't want to be in charge of us. I don't want to be 'the authority' that other people have to refer back to. And I am very much not trained in the specifics of leadership. I am woefully ill-equipped to continue our mission in Creation. And I'm hoping that one of you starts taking the lead, so that I can gracefully slip back into doing what I do best; bilking people and building things."

"According to Lu, we've got a fraction of your power," Delilah began, but Hare shook his head and chortled.

"As if that was the most important part of leading a Cell," Hare said. "Delilah, Mussa was closer to your Resonance than mine."

"And that matters, why?" Delilah asked.

"Okay, maybe not closer to you, but he was the lowest Res of all of us," Hare corrected himself. Then he seemed to twig that she'd asked a question during that. "And as for why it matters? It doesn't. It never did. Whoever's got the good idea leads the task force. Whoever's good at fighting directs the battle. Whoever's good at talking to people does the jawing."

"That sounds like barely-functioning anarchy," Delilah noted.

"It functions well enough, and in the war we're fighting right now, you'll quickly come to the realization I did back in Cascadia: There are times when 'good enough', is absolutely perfect," Hare said. "You made a good call with Vera. And because of that good call, not only are we down an enemy we're up an ally. That is on nobody else's shoulders but yours. Good job."

"And here I thought I was going to get chewed out for bringing the imp in," Delilah noted.

"What am I, stupid? I'm not a teacher and I'm not your mother; I don't call you into the sitting room to bitch you out over getting an 80 on your final grades," Hare waved the notion away.

"I would have killed for 80s," Delilah noted.

"...they seriously let anyone become a cop, don't they?" Hare said with a shrug.

Delilah wished she could have snapped at him. But god damn it, he had a point. "You were looking for an excuse to not kill her, even back in the car, weren't you?"

"...I don't often get the luxury of hope," Hare admitted. "And even less of a hope realized."

She nodded. "So. We're going to be working with hellspawn for the foreseeable future, then?" she asked.

"As long as I can keep her content, yes. But FYI, I have signed us up for a rescue mission in Hell at some point in the indistinct future," Hare said, turning away from her and returning to his scientific instruments.

"Who does she want us to rescue? Her kids?" Delilah asked.

"No, she specifically ordered us to leave 'those little shitlings in the filth where they belong', her words not mine," Hare said.

"Wow. She's a terrible mother," Delilah noted.

"She resents them bitterly because she had no choice in having them, nor who she had them with. They are a living symbol of her enslavement," Hare said. "No, she wants us to rescue this reality's iteration of herself."

"That feels like it should be against the rules, somehow," Delilah noted as she got off of her stool.

"She's not being inexorably horny, nor is she beholden to our 'no being a business' rule, nor is she a toilet-booted Loug. There's nothing about that request which is against the rules," Hare said. "That's one of the only perks of living in Creation now; my rulebook is a lot lighter than it used to be."

Delilah couldn't help but agree. A lack of rules would probably bite them in the ass somehow, sometime, but for the moment, this she could abide. And time would give the others a chance to recover, instead of panicking about the imp now amongst them. One would have words, doubtless, but that was a bridge she'd have to burn when she got to it. She then blinked and watched as Smudge primly walked across an intersection in the Den ahead of her.

"God DAMN IT! Who let Smudge out!" she roared, and started to jog after her faithless little feline.


Vanguard Organisms

Be it known on this the 5th of November of the year 2022, that there shall be allowed throughout all lands under my dominion amnesty for all Creatures From Outside who are willing to bend the knee and offer fealty to the Low Throne of All Hell and the Deadly Sins which administer its Rings, a freedom from hunt and execution and a path to citizenship within the united and indomitable Dominion of Archangel Lucifer Magne, of the House of the Morningstar.

Be it known that all Creatures From Outside who meet this criterion for amnesty must be of the following:

-A native of a realm from outside Creation, not born naturally within its confines or one not born to naturalized citizens of Hell or members of its Infernal Legions.

-Capable of cogent thought and communication with the administrators of the Naked Law of Lucifer, free of the puppeteering of those Foul Realms Outside.

-Capable of maintaining a form or forms conducive to interactions with the material world of Hell and its eventual external territories.

-Capable of obeying the laws of Lucifer and the Deadly Sins of Hell.

-Capable and willing to partake in the advancement of industry or trade in the Rings of Hell, or;

-Capable and willing to engage in battle against the enemies of Hell within its Infernal Legions.

-Capable of loyalty to the House of the Morningstar above all, and to the Deadly Sin to which they have more immediate responsibility.

Any creature meeting these requirements shall be given succor, amnesty for what-so-ever methods they used to enter (Even illegally) the Dominion of High King Lucifer. No matter the manner of beast or man-thing, no matter whence come ye nor what form ye take, nor whom once ye had as enemies in the Realms Outside of Creation, all such struggles are to be buried and service to Lucifer rendered as price of domicile within the realms of the True Son Of God.

-Proclamation of Outsider Amnesty, from Lucifer's Own Hand, 2022