"Alright ass-heads, listen up," Blitz said as he strode into the building. "You have something you want destroyed, and I'm offerin' to accept money for destroying it!"
"Do you think they'll actually listen to him?" Millie asked from her spot beside Moxxie.
"Oh, they'll do it," Loona said from the passenger's seat in their new van. If nothing else, the fact that the seat was intact made it a drastic improvement over the old model. And it had hidden guns everywhere. "Lyle's a dickshit, but Goopty's got a vindictive streak from here to Sloth. He'll pay anything to keep what should have been his magnum opus out of other people's hands."
"Shame, too. The humans are actually managing to create some genuine miracle-tech. And until the last decade, the only place you could find the likes of that was in Heaven," Moxxie noted.
"Well, color me shocked that humans ain't as dumb as everybody's making them out to be," Loona said.
"Oh, they are, just in different ways," Moxxie said.
"What makes you say that, hon?" Millie asked.
"If you build a machine that keeps you from dying of old age... don't you think that eventually somebody from either below or above is going to destroy it?" Moxxie stressed.
"Why would they care?" Millie asked.
"Because to the powers that be, the status quo is sacrosanct," Loona said.
"Exactly," Moxxie said. "The status quo is that old people die, they go up or down, and a new generation swarms in behind them. It doesn't matter to those powers that be if the change to their status quo is strictly a benefit or if it isn't. The fact that it's a change at all makes it an abomination that needs to be destroyed."
"The Status Quo is that imps are the dangling link on the chain of creation, and my people are slaves. Fuck the status quo," Loona said.
"You're not going to get any argument from us," Millie said. Loona gave a chuckle and nodded, continuing to flip through the Grimoire Ultima Mundi. Now that Moxxie had replaced his eyes with more magically attuned ones– which was a moderately horrifying piece of self-surgery – he could see the magic in much the same way that Krieg could. And the amount of magic bound up in that book was terrific to the extreme.
For one thing, this was not strictly speaking a Grimoire. Grimoires were merely magical tomes which were spellbound and protected with powerful magicks and wyrds. The Grimoire Ultima Mundi was something much more potent; an Incunabulum. It was less a book and more of a magical artifact, secrets of arcane lore writ on the preserved and arguably still living brains of ancient warlocks that had been stretched and formed into a more customary shape. This was a book that, if it sensed itself in danger, could protect itself.
Worst of all to Moxxie's eyes, he could see that whomever this Incunabulum was, he had chosen this fate. He'd wanted to be a storehouse for extraplanar knowledge after his body's demise.
And he used to be an Angel.
There were so many questions that Moxxie's sight offered that he suddenly understood Krieg in a way that he never thought he would before. Not just because of her cultish upbringing, and her strange, off-putting ways. He never considered how the sheer scope of what she perceived that nobody else could would shape her personality. Now that he was party to it, he could readily admit how distracting, how enlightening, and how fearsome having eyes of this nature could be.
Apropos of nothing, these eyes also made it very hard to sleep, because even if he closed them, he could still see the hellish leyline that ran under their apartment.
"Have you given any thought to Blitz's offer?" Loona asked.
"That manor? I mean... kinda?" Moxxie said. When they killed Birch, everything he owned that he didn't mandate went to somebody else defaulted directly to Blitz. And Birch, cosmic narcissist that he was, never considered for an instant that somebody would actually be able to kill him. Which meant that Blitz was now the owner of a slightly destroyed manor estate in High Central, a fleet of classic luxury cars, a vault full of stolen jewelry, a supersonic VTOL plane, an outbuilding full of slaves – who Blitz emancipated on the spot because didn't think of any use for and thus didn't want to deal with former humans – and a controlling interest in a radio station that only played songs from the Human World's 1920's and 30's.
"We'd have a lot more room for stuff, hon," Millie coached.
"But we'd still be a bunch of imps in High Central. Our neighbours would be looking for any excuse to have us all killed," Moxxie countered.
"Yeah, if you claimed to own the place," Loona interjected. "Who says you had to own a place to live there? This is literally how apartments work."
"Come on. I wanna get outta that dump just as much as you do," Millie said.
"And the hour it would then take to reach the office?" Moxxie asked.
"We've got a plane that can land like a helicopter and the office has a helipad. We'll be fine," Millie pointed out.
"Hey, if you guys don't want it, I'm gonna take it," Loona said.
"What would you want it for?" Moxxie asked.
"Oh, I dunno, maybe doing something about the fact that one in three Hellhounds is fucking homeless?" Loona stressed.
"That doesn't sound right at all," Moxxie said. "Are you counting..."
"If your name ain't on a deed or a lease you're homeless," Loona said. Well that certainly pumped up the numbers if you counted it like that.
"By that reckoning, you are homeless," Moxxie pointed out the flaw.
"Hey, I didn't ask for this shit from you," Loona began.
"Now now. Everybody just calm down a bit," Millie tried to play peacemaker.
"And who's to say that the neighbours of High Central would accept a house full of Hellhounds any more than they would a house full of imps?" Moxxie continued. "It doesn't really matter what we do with that property. It's going to anger somebody. And we aren't even allowed to sell it and use the money somewhere else. It's the very definition of a White Elephant Gift."
"Hey, I read up on that shit. The plan is simple; kill the king, then butcher the elephant," Loona said.
"That isn't how this works..." Moxxie said.
"Yeah it is. If somebody complains, hang him from his own fence-post by his intestines. The next person won't complain," Loona said.
"I mean... she ain't wrong, hon," Millie said.
"You're taking her side on this?"
"We need space, Mox," Millie said, cupping his face. "We can't live in that li'l shoe-box forever. Even if rent is a fuckin' steal. And what happens when we wanna have kids? We can't raise 'em there."
Moxxie sighed, but nodded. He'd known going into the marriage that Millie had wanted a big family as fast as possible. And that she'd only delayed starting to pop out spawn because they wanted their finances to be stable before the first of them came. But the fiduciary excuse was quickly starting to hold less water than a collander, what with the last few jobs they'd worked pulling down ten to fifty thousand Souls per kill. It went without saying that this time last year, these would have been jobs they would have been incapable of, but still.
"I just don't want to put is into a situation we can't get out of," Moxxie said. His mother had been very clear throughout his childhood that you ought never allow yourself to be backed into any corner you couldn't kick a hole through to escape. "But I'll think about it. I promise I will."
"Great. And while you two waste time, I'm going to see if he's willing to 'hire' some Hellhounds to work as his 'staff'," Loona said, idly holding out air-quotes.
"I think Blitz is coming back," Moxxie said. He wasn't sure why he could say that, because he could see and hear nothing that indicated that. But after a few seconds, the door to to GLW Heavy Metal's door was kicked open, and Blitz began to strut his way back. There were so many things that had happened to Moxxie in the last year that they beggared the imagination. And what happened in the last, clinging vestiges of Purgatory were but a capstone to that. While his eyesight and hearing had always been good, now they were practically supernatural in their clarity and aptitude. He could crack a safe by holding one hand against its frame while working its dial. He could guess a code-lock by feeling which keys were greasier and warmer than others. Every door of perception he had was now not merely open, but amplified to a modestly horrifying level. He could see such things that others would never believe.
What Purgatory and the 37 Oaths had done for Moxxie's mind, they had done similar things to Millie's body. He had always said that the perfect woman was the one who could suplex you without breaking a sweat. Now, she could suplex an Elder Devil. Satan help him, but he loved that woman.
The door to the van was pulled open, and Blitz hauled himself inside, looking quite pleased with himself.
"Did you get a job?" Millie asked.
"Two hundred K to destroy the machine, another hundred K to destroy all of their notes left in the human world," Blitz said. That was an insane payout under ordinary circumstances, but ever since being payed a million Souls to do what they were planning on doing anyway – killing Birch – even Moxxie knew that his perception of what deeds were worth was slowly becoming slightly skewed.
"I just hope it doesn't take as long as last time," Loona said.
"Oh don't you worry about that. We already know 'xactly where the fucking thing is, and we already killed like half of the people who know how it works," Blitz said.
"Do you really think politicians know anything about miracle tech, sir?" Moxxie asked.
"I have it on good authority that at least two of the fuckers we offed did," Blitz said primly. With that, he started the van and started to drive away from Glowtown. The company-town had grown up pretty much overnight, as the ambitions of Wally Wackford suddenly needed an immense amount of manpower, and since they were headquartered in the back-side of nowhere up on the Pride Wilds, that meant that they had to build a town for their new workers. As such, Glowtown was a chaotic, maniac mess the likes of which you typically had to leave Pride Ring to find.
"So you finally figured out how our money's looking?" Blitz asked, as they carefully navigated the hilariously unsafe byways that would vomit them back out onto the highway. Although, from the looks of the road they were already on, it was probably slabs of highway concrete with their intense structural magic which had been physically pried up from somewhere else in Pride and set into the ground here. Considering the shocks-testing bump that issued every time they passed from one section of road to the next, they were certainly not put here by Infernal Infrastructure.
"Of course," Moxxie said. He'd had it done before they even left the office parking lot. But since Blitz hadn't asked, Moxxie didn't waste breath. The financial situation for I.M.P. Group was nothing short of miraculous. Two years ago, they had paid out of pocket to put up an obnoxious ad on a channel nobody watched, and were otherwise living loan-shark to loan-shark. Now, all of I.M.P.'s debts were dead and buried. The things that they'd purchased to fill the holes that earning the money had given were swallowed in the Birch Windfall without making so much as a wave. From having to steal street-level guns and kitchen cutlery to fight with, to owning two Carmine Ballistics weapons – one of which wasn't even stolen! – and all of the materiel needed to kill anybody, at any time, for any reason. But Blitz wasn't interested in all of that. He preferred issues to be reduced to something a six year old could parrot. And for once, Moxxie was easily able to do that. "We're good."
"Good to hear it," Blitz said.
"Are we good, or are we good good?" Millie asked, privately.
"We're good good," Moxxie said with a smile on his face. This company was, in his opinion, no longer an utter and unforgivable mess. It was not lurching from desperate gasp of air to desperate gasp of air. It was solid. It was steady. And every human that died to the pull of Moxxie's trigger or the thrust of Millie's knife was a bit more financial security, and a bit more satisfaction, and, which gave Moxxie a bit of pause, a bit more power.
Death had a frequency, he had come to realize. It was a note that had a place within the Song of Creation, something that informed the nature of its melody as surely as the notes of birth or ascension. And every time that Moxxie and Millie and even Loona strummed that chord, it grew stronger. And when it grew stronger, it reverberated in them as well, until the tune that the three of them embodied transformed it into even more of themselves. Perhaps the same happened for Blitz. But Moxxie couldn't say with the surety that he could for the two imps and the Hound who had sworn the 37 Oaths atop the crumbling bones of Purgatory.
Moxxie and Millie and Loona were getting stronger.
Their tune was growing louder.
And one day it would shake the foundations of Hell.
Chapter 9
Think In The Morning, Act In The Noon
Hell had become quite strange.
It was a notion that Cain considered again as he shepherded the curly hairs of his beard into something that resembled a sheet made of braids, and severed the overwhelming majority of it off. After all, having a beard of a wild-prophet was uncouth. And Cain had spent an Angel's-time in Hell reforming himself into a man of precision, taste, and refinement. When he finally had his facial hair to his specifications, he held an arm out. With a giggle of glee, the fascinatingly mad little pixie of a Sinner launched herself in a great bound to thread his arm through a sleeve, then bounded up off of the sink to repeat the process on the other side. She was quite happy to undertake the task of buttoning his shirt and putting his vest into place over it.
"You are a treasure, dear Niffty. Don't ever forget it," Cain said as she fastened the last button at a speed that ordinarily would have taken all three of Cain's attendants to perform. She did it with the notable handicap of being three feet tall, and did it alone. He would have to hire this woman when his manse was back to scratch. Niffty, though? She practically swooned to the compliment. Cain gave her a smile, and a wink, and turned to exit the room. It had been entirely too long since he had made himself properly presentable. And now that he had something worthy of wresting himself from his solipsism, he was going to do what he could to remind people of what Cain once stood for, both as a name, and as the First of the Damned.
The hotel had a sort of degraded elegance to it. But he could sense that there was subtle traces of magic everywhere here. Both that which belonged to the foul creature who avoided him at every turn, and another, deeply familiar source. If Cain had been a fool or had been given to pareidolia, he would say that it was alike to those last ghosts of divine power that his father, Adam had held, a lingering taste of the Fruit of Knowledge of Good And Evil. The power akin to God, but shaped by mortal hands.
But such things were impossible. Father was in Heaven, along with Abel.
...Fuck he missed Abel.
He forced such thoughts away. Regret was not enough to earn forgiveness, not even with him standing atop the Stone of Farewell. There was no atonement that would overcome God's grudge. So he would simply have to take comfort in the fact that his father and his brother were both safe and in Heaven. Or unsafe and in Heaven, as the truth may well turn out to have been. He saw a broken woman in Rachel Scailes, but he did not see a dishonest one. And more than ten thousand years in Hell taught him exceptionally well how to spot a liar. She was being as truthful about that as she cared to be.
Still, Hell had moved on without him. It had made leaps and strides that he could never have predicted. From being able to send music and conversation through the air in 'radio waves', to having plays delivered directly into the home into a box no thicker than his finger and reaching as tall as his torso and as wide as his arm-span. Technology had always fascinated him, that deep seated urge by the children of Adam to create with their hands what God could make by fiat. It was one of the most deep seated human desires. To make a thing. More than violence, more than sex, creation was the true state of Man.
Cain pushed the doors open to the lobby, and found his host conversing with the thief that had begun today's madness. "Greetings, Mistress Morningstar. Now that I have made myself presentable, I believe a more formal introduction is in order. I am Cain Adamson," he said, bowing at the waist and extending a hand toward her.
"Oh you don't need to do that. I'm not my dad," she said.
"So you say, but you are still daughter of my current King," Cain said.
"Current?" the ashen woman beside her said. Cain didn't raise from his bow, but did flit a glance to her. Ah, the closeness between the two of them. The warmth and the comfort. Lovers, very likely.
"My first king is and shall always be my father, Child Of God, first of humanity. But I am in a strange country, and must bow to a strange ruler," Cain said. Things had been simpler under Vai. Vai, the Old King of Pride, he'd been a simpler king to bow to. You did it once, then he would have you slapped if you ever tried to do it again. Vai, for all his power, had been almost cripplingly humble. Perhaps even shy.
"I... you're not going to stop bowing until I do something are you?" Charlotte asked.
"To do otherwise is to invite your father's legendary wrath," Cain said with a distant smile.
"Very well. I greet you in the name of the house of Morningstar. Please rise," she said, sounding like she didn't want to say any of it. Like she didn't believe in any of it. Cain allowed himself a proper stand, and motioned idly to the small table surrounded by robustly stuffed chairs near the bar. The chairs were obviously native to this place, but the table looked newly imported from somewhere. It was slightly out of place. And it didn't have the same scuff-protectors on its feet that the chairs did.
"Please, do me the pleasure of telling me of your version and vision of this place," Cain motioned around him. Within moments, a coaster appeared and a daiquiri was set upon it by the tiny cyclops that he had gathered into his orbit. For the moment he ignored her. Niffty seemed the sort that if you teased too much may view it somewhat askance.
"The Happy Hotel? It's the place were we rehabilitate Sinners," Charlie said, sitting down opposite her. The ashen woman, Vaggie by name, stayed nearby, eyeing him as warily as a cat finding itself locked in a room with a strange puppy. She probably thought herself Charlie's protector. Cain could break Vaggie in half with nary a whit of effort.
"To what end?" Cain asked.
"Redemption, obviously," she said.
"I suppose then," Cain said, taking a sip of the daiquiri, "that your employee Miss Scailes has not informed you of the nature of Heaven? Or do you instead have information that countermands her version of things?"
"I know that Rachel believes what she says about Heaven," Charlie began, in a very measured way. "But I cannot accept that Heaven can be worse than Hell. We have an entire community for people to eat other people! Heaven doesn't have that!"
"So the Cannibal Colony still exists? I thought that would be a mere flash in the pan," Cain said. Funny how things that seemed so ephemeral from before managed to cling to being. "I do not mean to insult, so please take my next question in the helpful spirit that I offer it; who are you to decide whether an uncertain Heaven is better than a certain Hell?"
She would say simply; she is Charlotte Magne, of the house of Morningstar.
"I don't have that right. But even if Heaven is worse than Hell, which I refuse to believe," Charlie began, "I still believe, with all my heart, that teaching people to be better is good, in and of itself. Even if they can't be Redeemed, they can still be better. That the work we do to the distant goal of Redemption will still build a better Hell than the one I grew up in," she reached back, and gave her lover's hand a squeeze. "...that we can build a Heaven in Hell."
Cain stared at her for a moment. He had expected the vanity of Lucifer, yes, but he didn't expect such a woman to possess all of his bald-faced audacity.
"I wish I had your confidence in this, but..." Cain said, and gave a shrug. "I have seen more of what Man has done with their chances at betterment. Only a fractional few of them go through to the end of things. And the Stone of Farewell is... was... the final judge of that."
"And who decided that?" Charlie asked.
"Pardon me?" Cain asked.
"Who decided that the Stone of Farewell gets to make that distinction, of who is good enough for Redemption and who is not?" Charlie pressed, thumping her finger against the small table between them. Cain was about to say 'God, obviously', but he paused and gave a moment's consideration. She knew something that she hadn't yet revealed.
"For somebody younger than the fall of Purgatory, I can only presume you have learned from your elders its nature," Cain said. "The Stone was The Stone. It will do as it wills."
"Just like God," Charlie said. "Only God didn't make The Stone of Farewell. Just like He didn't make the Altar of Worms."
"He also didn't make the Qliphoth. I fail to see where you are leading me," Cain said. At some point he was going to have to take a trip down the Rings. See how the Tree of Death was doing way down in Sloth. Maybe see if Satan's plots and schemes were still going on. The Old King of Wrath hadn't let his grudge against Lucifer go in all of Cain's time in Hell, so why would he stop now?
"The Stone of Farewell had no authority as a creation of God to Redeem the damned. You know, since it wasn't one," Charlie said, leaning back with a satisfied look on her face.
"A bold statement. How did you come to it?" Cain asked.
"Sam," Charlie said. Vaggie unfolded a chair and sat near her lover, always keeping her remaining eye on Cain, as though she had any means of protecting the daughter of the Devil Himself from the Champion of the Pit. Let her hold that delusion. It was sweet that she tried.
"Again this 'Samuel' comes up in conversation. I would like to meet him," Cain said. But it was the thief, who was in the process of slowly repairing the bar, that gave a chuckle and interrupted the conversation that the two – perhaps three – were having. "Do I amuse you, thief?"
"Nah, you're just a bit late to talk to Sam," Husk said.
"Ah. My condolences," Cain said. Even Sinners did not last forever in Hell. Except for Cain, at least.
"Sam's not dead," Charlie said. "He's the Demiurge. And he is trying to murder God."
Cain stared at the Sinner for a moment, unsure whether that was intended to be a joke. His uncertain gaze shifted to Charlie's lover, who gave a 'what can you do?' shrug. Cain took a moment, furrowing his brow and tapping the tip of his nose in consideration, before carefully choosing his words. "You are saying," Cain said, "that Armageddon has come and passed, that Yaldabaoth the Demiurge has been revealed... and you have had council with him?"
"Actually, almost none of that happened," Charlie said.
"He was Rachel's son," Vaggie said.
"Impossible. How could a being such as the Demiurge be a Sinner?"
"That's a long, long story. One that I don't have all of the information on, but it's got something to do with God becoming silent, the Angel's starting to go extinct, and a desperate bid to create new ones," Charlie said.
"God is silent. The fabled Demiurge used to be a mere man. Lucifer has a daughter, and there is no Armageddon," Cain summarized. Charlie nodded. "Is there a new war against Heaven?"
"Well... yeah," Charlie admitted.
And Cain laughed. He laughed deep, and long, shaking his head the whole while.
"And I in my pride thought that I had seen every single thing that Hell could possibly offer me. That there were no surprises left for Cain to delight or shock by. That things had become... static. What a fool I have been," Cain said. "Oh. Had I merely waited a few decades instead of surrendering to boredom. So many things could have been different."
"Hell can be different," Charlie agreed.
"It may well, mistress. It may well," Cain said. He sat back and rubbed at his eyes. He hadn't quite cried with laughter, but his body felt a bit achy, for it had been so very long since something had set his belly to jolliness. "But we have talked on lofty goals and impossible things. Tell me more of your methods."
"If you want to talk mechanics, you're probably better off talking to Rachel," Vaggie said with a shrug.
"She did mention some matter of Original Sin," Cain said with an off hand gesture. When he did, Niffty supplied a crudite into it. Such a thoughtful little woman. "I of course reminded her that Original Sin is a matter of Catholic historical fiction. If there is a single improvement to the laws of Hell that your father introduced in his tenure, it was making it so that the sins of the father are not legally permitted to pass to the son."
"Yeah, he angered a lot of people when he did that..." Charlie said. It was the law of the land that you could never leave a debt as an inheritance to another. You could give them something costly, but it had to be at least on paper counterbalanced by an asset of worth. The worst thing you could offer your 'beneficiary' is something that, according to a semi-ignorant observer, was worth nothing, but at least cost nothing. That still made it ripe for abuse by the clever.
"But she then told me how she defined the term," Cain concluded. "That there is one driving sin that brings you here. Something which Hell then inflates to the point of absurdity as the Damned grows inured to the savagery."
"Wendy's was despair," Charlie said quietly.
"And Wendy is your success case, yes?" Cain clarified. He gave his head a shake. "It is fortunate that I never had a chance to stand before God. If I had, I would strike Him for being so cruel as to make His personal failings something 'worthy' of our damnation. And that would not have ended well for me, as your lovely mother can attest."
"Mom doesn't talk about that," Charlie said. Then her eyes narrowed. "...how exactly do you know my mother again?"
"How else? She was the first lover I had whom I wasn't related to," Cain said with a shrug. "But this was ages past. And she quickly sided with Lucifer the Bright over drab and boring Cain. It surprises me to know she has remained so faithful for so long. She was..."
"Can we not talk about my Mom's sex life?" Charlie asked.
"Wait a second... lovers you weren't related to?" Vaggie asked, a deeply confused look on her face. "Did you have sex with Eve? Your own mother?"
"Don't be profane. Of course not. My wives in life were my elder and younger sister," Cain said. Both stared at him, one aghast, the other confused. "Why so shocked? Abel did exactly the same. We did not exactly have a great pool of humans to choose from."
"Since when did Cain and Abel have sisters?" Vaggie asked, pulling back as her expression became one of calculation.
"Oh that's what's confusing? I thought it was the incest thing," Charlie said.
"It should come as no shock that so male-focused a cult as the faiths of Abraham would erase any women of note from Man's history. There were more daughters of Adam and Eve than there were sons. Five of them by the time of my death, in fact. Did you really think that a creature with the strongest reproductive drive of any human to ever exist would stop at having only two children, both of them sons? No. We had nearly three dozen siblings. We seven were all that survived to adulthood, for the world was harsh, and for all his fertility, Adam was not... clever," Cain gave a shrug, then chuckled. "Illness cannot be treated by ignorance and superstition, after all, and beasts have little respect for poorly sharpened rocks. His 'stolen miracles' would have been more effective in the hands of a brain-damaged infant than his own, sadly. Oh, if only Mother would have cared to learn aside him. So much more would have been passed to my siblings and I. Had we only ventured a few more hundred miles and I a few more years, I would not have had to fold that sheet so far. But I am led astray. You speak of original sins, then you should easily guess my own."
"Envy," Charlie provided.
Cain nodded, feeling a pull of sadness in his heart. But he just let the sensation waft through him as though air through a sieve. He had tried to surrender to despair an age ago. He managed to get bored of it. And in the absence of higher virtues, boredom still got you moving again. Cain chomped on the crudite, and used the moment it gave him to give a moment's thought to The Dragon of Connacht. If Rachel's medicine was right in its diagnosis, it went quite a way to explaining the Dragon's behavior as it evolved over the years. She went from strident to nearly rabid. He was tempted first to offer 'ambition' as her sin, but the problem was, that wasn't a sin.
So he thought as to not what she did, but why she did it. She, during her life, would board ships and massacre entire crews to get her hands on a single chest of silks or black pepper. Things that, from the worth of them, she could have lived as a queen. And instead, she consumed. Feasts with the spices of Asia. Her clothes tattered remains of dresses spun in Formosa – or to be somewhat less racist, somewhere in the heartlands of Tang China. And since then, in Hell, her appetites only grew. The flesh of beasts of all description under Heaven, and even the meat of Things Beyond. Spices stolen or smuggled out of Heaven. Angel Satin for blouses, Angel Steel for swords. Any man who took her fancy, she would pursue, seduce, and fuck into a crater.
She was a creature of want.
As Cain licked the trace of sauce that had been left on his thumb's tip, he gave a nod.
"And if I were to offer an opinion onto the failing that doomed Fiona O'Daire in her life, I would say it is not greed, but gluttony," Cain said. "She does not want things to have things. She wants things to experience things."
"You make her sound like a Devourer," Charlie said.
"I believe she may be the human who is closest in spirit to those fetid aristocrats," Cain said. "I was always so uncomfortable around those creatures, that thought themselves refined and special when all they did was consume without producing anything of worth. I at least made offerings before I damned myself. What do they make? Pfeh!"
"I'm sorry. It's just so strange talking to a Sinner who's allowed outside of Pride. The only one before you was Sam. And he wasn't so much permitted as... well... the Demiurge," Charlie said.
"And I will have to learn of him," Cain said. "And no few other things, such as these technologies which have grown up during my stupor. And once I have a footing under me, there are a great many thieves that I must bring to ruin for what they've done to me."
"We don't do revenge, here," Charlie said.
"You did, for Angel Dust," Vaggie said with a light poke into Charlie's side.
"That was different!" Charlie said, clearly defensive.
"There is no Redemption for me, sweet girl," Cain said calmly. "God has specifically forbidden it. But now that there is something worthy of my time and attentions, I feel a need to remind this Ring of why Cain was once the greatest of the Damned."
Charlie didn't look happy with that statement. But give her time, and she would figure it out. For now, Cain's mind turned to the people who could have taken those things that he had invested so much effort and pride into. And turned also to what he would do when he found them.
The Edge dominated the entire section of Pride Ring near the Gates of Purgatory. Once, it was an open field with lush green grasses that steadily rose up the Mountain Of Farewell, cast to waves by the winds out of the realm of redemption as they blew into Pride proper. Now, though, it was a precipice, and the winds were dead.
Krieg was of course keeping Uller at gunpoint. It had been a long drive out here, and their driver managed to be exactly drunk enough to not ask questions as to why one passenger was holding another one hostage. This was Hell. That kind of thing happened. The smell of this place was strange. It was somewhere between a distant waft of a battlefield, the sickly sweet of rot and the metal bite of blood seeping into the soil, put up against the gentle insistence of brine as though from a sea. Which was doubly odd, because the nearest ocean was three Rings down.
"We had better be getting close, incompetent thief," Krieg said.
"We're close," Uller said. He moved close to the edge, to the fence which had been set up about three centuries ago and then allowed to rot away and petrify in the strange conditions. The whole region reeked of magic of every description, an array of the magic of fiend and Man and Angel, but there was something off kilter about it. As though it were not the magic itself, but an echo of that magic. A memory of spells cast.
She had felt it the last time she was out here, during the swearing of the 37 Oaths by the three assassins. And now that she was not distracted by the presence of the Radio Demon, and the prospect of a truly legendary feat of Covenant Magic, she could focus on it. Her eyes saw what others missed. She knew that. Sam had at least clued her into that aspect of her existence. And because of that, she saw that the line of collapsed ground where the fence sat was not actually Purgatory, but a chunk of Pride that had been dragged away when Purgatory fell. She knew that because there was a line, invisible to most senses, where the plain being of magic and nature that was Pride Ring became the chaotic and inchoate maelstrom that was the void left in Purgatory's absence.
The sun, as it hung low in the sky on this early winter morning, seemed to split into sad and moody colors, cut through a prism of sadness. The air was a blanket lined with lead, pressing down on the shoulders and pooling deep in her lungs.
She felt the like of this in a rather unexpected place; Alastor's pocket. That same sensation of heaviness and melancholy. And she again felt it while she was discussing matters with Charlotte Magne, sitting in a bell jar on her desk.
And if Krieg was in fact good at reading between the lines, then Charlie had referred to that substance as 'Wages of Sin'.
Purgatory reeked of them.
"Alright. I'll just go... get it," Uller said, pointing down the crumbled cliff over The Edge. The porous wall into Purgatory was nearby. And Uller had wings. Krieg was not an idiot, and knew a perfect time to escape a gun-toting hostage-taker this definitely was. So while staring him the eye, her gun trained on his chest, she reached her left hand to her mouth and bit hard. Hard enough to break the skin, to have her blood well up black and viscous. Then, she focused her will, and spoke words of power, a brief incantation of maybe a half dozen seconds. And then, she grabbed Uller by his neck. The instant her skin met his, there was a metaphysical snapping sensation.
Uller instantly recoiled.
"What magic have you put on me, witch?" he demanded.
"It is an Umbilical Curse," Krieg said. "You are now bound to me. If you try to fly into any Ring which does not contain me, without my immediate vicinity, you will be wracked with crippling pain and disorder. I don't imagine you can fly very well with near all your muscles cramped into oblivion."
She had used this same Curse on her mother to keep her from returning to Lust when Blitz had offered them an escape from Bal Matheer. If she had a nickle every time she'd used it in her life, she'd have two nickles, which wasn't a lot, but it was still strange that such a specific and low-utility Thaumaturgy would be used by the same person in the same year and for the same reason. Couldn't have this person running off.
"And if I were to just kill you?" Uller asked, looking less than amused as he rubbed at his neck where she'd touched him.
"What happens to the spawn when you kill the one whom it is tied umbilically to?" Krieg asked.
"...ah," Uller said. The Umbilical Curse was a means of imprisonment in Lust Ring, after all.
"Hurry back," Krieg said with an unkind smile. Uller looked outright sullen, but flared his wings, and threw himself off of the crumbled edge of Pride Ring, gliding for a moment before twisting and diving, disappearing out of sight under a shelf of stone. She had to hand it to Uller. This was a very effective place for an Envy Imp to hide something. The only fiend clades that could look for it were Gluttony Drones – which were usually too stupid to 'search' for anything – or particular strains of Mutants. It was about as secure a cache as a mere imp could make it.
Uller didn't even bother wasting time trying to come up with a way to turn things back to his advantage. Which was foolish of him, but he was young. Well, in truth, he was probably no younger than she was, but unlike Uller, she had actually achieved some things in her time here in Hell. Hell had no affinity for the likes of her, or the likes of him. Both of them were to be crushed under the fiendish boot out of sheer callousness, let alone if they tried to step out of line. Pfeh. She had no intention of painting a sole.
One day, she would be the one wearing that boot.
The flapping of wings pulled Krieg out of her pondering and watched as Uller emerged from the nook in the collapsed land. She kept her gun trained on him as he rose up, struggling against the unnatural and foul gravity that the Abyss exerted. But for all the Abyss was insistent, Uller had the power of self-preservation on his side. He broke that dark balance, finally reaching the foot of the scree that reached the edge. Then, with no grace whatsoever, he scrambled up it until he was at Krieg's side, panting with exhaustion and glowing with sweat.
Without a word said to him, she pulled the book from his hands. It was in terrible shape. The alabaster which gave the codex its name was entirely missing from the front cover, which was torn and water damaged. The back had a set of runes from the Enochian alphabet etched carefully into them, and over the untold centuries had become so impacted with smut and filth that these letters and runes now stood black against white. The Codex had thaumaturgies wound around it, but there was one that she had been looking for which was missing entirely.
The Forgetful Mind Hex.
She flicked a glance at him. When he tried to open his mouth and say something, she adjusted the aim of her pistol at him, sat on the ground with the book in her lap, and opened a few pages.
It was utter nonsense.
As with the back and the spine of this book, the lettering was in Enochian, but though Krieg had some facility in that language, this was a far more argot form than any she'd learned, so it stood as transparent as mud to her.
"You have brought me nothing but spelled non-sense," Krieg said.
"What? But..." Uller gave a look of confusion, of despair. So it seemed he had no understanding of the Most Ancient Tongues, then. "They... so many people died for this..."
Krieg motioned to the ground with her gun. Uller did as she demanded, sitting on his tail in the dirt, as she pulled out her Hellphone and took a picture of the first page. She then sent the picture of it to the only other comparably intelligent imp that she knew; Moxxie Rough. "Now, if this is a folly, I have no reason to keep you alive. After all, you did invade my home."
"After everything they did, the price they paid... it can't have been for nothing," Uller said.
There was a strangulated yell that came from Krieg's Hellphone. She looked at the message that Moxxie had sent back to them.
WHERE DID YOU FIND THAT?
"Congratulations. You will not die today," Krieg said. Uller leaned back, confused. Krieg then sent off another message, asking him for his expertise. After about a minute, another answer came back to her. "You are still my prisoner until the true nature of what you've given me is plumbed, but if nothing else, you have given an object of curiosity. Once Mister Rough is returned from his sabotage in the Human World, we will be able to decipher this mystery you've dumped into my lap."
"So what am I going to do until then?" Uller asked.
"Have you not been listening? You are still my prisoner, and you have done insult to my family by digging through my underwear drawer."
"What are you... I did no such thing!" Uller complained.
"Yes, yes I know. You did no such thing, because I have no such thing," she said. She got up, holding the book with her tail and motioned that he stand up and start walking. "You are going to tell me exactly how you came into the possession of this tome. And if it proves genuine and the information of worth, then we can talk about what comes afterwards."
Uller gave a glance to The Edge, then to the taxi which brought them here, parked as it was at the edge of the country road nearby. The driver, a pride-imp who was only three quarters the height of either of them, was smoking impatiently from his place sitting on the hood of the car, his feet resting atop two of the bumper-spikes. Uller was likely considering how much of a chance he'd have if he just flew away as fast as his wings could take him. Pity for him, there was not an Envy Imp alive who could outfly a bullet. Then with grumble of resignation, he started back toward the taxi, the long drive, and his own imprisonment.
Time was running out.
Although Mum had not yet been given her marching orders, Octavia could feel a clock ticking every moment that she waited. So she did as little waiting as she could manage. It may well have been driving the young angel-spawn to destruction, but frankly at this point, Octavia didn't care. The new prototype out of Glowtown still had some things that needed sorting out, but it was closing in on what she needed. Cheap, reliable, and able to deflect anti-materiel fire.
And then she'd been reminded of Heavenly Artillery, let alone the slaughterous abilities possessed by even the least of the Heavenly Host. These things might be able to protect a fiend from the martial aptitude of a cherub, but that was about as much as they could offer. And thus, with twenty of the things in the possession of the Legate Damnatio Ambrosius Agrippa, she immediately gave them to the only unit intact enough that it could still serve as something of an 'honor guard' to Mum. The Stellar Grenadiers.
"Do you think it wise, my Domina, to give this device to the likes of... him?" Agrippa asked at Octavia's side, as the two of them watched from a gazebo as a corporal acclimated himself to the capabilities of the armor.
"What do you mean?" Octavia began.
"These suits cost two hundred seventy thousand Souls each," Agrippa said. "And though the wealth of my master is vast, it is not infinite. Such panoply ought be granted to the officers."
"That kind of thinking is why we nearly got annihilated last time," Octavia said. Agrippa lofted a brow. "How many officers survived the first battle?"
"Very few. Their courage did them ill," Agrippa said.
"Or maybe," Octavia said, forcing herself to be patient with the man, "they were specifically targeted early in the fight because they were so visible."
"Their panoplies..." Agrippa began, but Octavia tutted, and he silenced himself.
"Face that way a moment," Octavia said, pointing in toward the rest of the house. Agrippa shrugged and did as she asked. Then, she let out a high whistle from the back of her strigine throat, causing the soldiers to pause in their training and face her. "Form a line!" she shouted. They quickly started to sort themselves into what they were used to, but she let out another loud whistle. "First come first served!"
The soldiers shared a confused look for a moment, but then moved into the most immediate line that they could make. Octavia pointed at one, then pointed to the far left of the line. Then she did to another and pointed to the far right. This she did four more times, until the only one of the entire group who she knew the identity of was the squad's reconnaissance expert, who was an imp and thus nearly a quarter shorter than the rest of them. With them well scrambled, she turned to the soldier beside her.
"Master Agrippa? You have two shots. Kill the commander," she said, and motioned to the armored figures before her. Agrippa turned, looked at them, then pointed to the one at the far right. "Dismount!"
The armor of that soldier opened, showing that same corporal who started this whole fuss. Agrippa recoiled a bit, his expectations thoroughly upended. He then turned a look to her, and started to point toward the left end of the line before stopping himself. After a moment where his face was tight with consternation, he sighed, hung his head, and then emitted a chuckle. "I see your point exactly, my Domina. Forgive my old perspective on things."
"Easily forgiven," Octavia said. "Mostly because you're willing to admit when you're wrong about something to somebody a fraction of your age."
"I think age will become increasingly a weakness in the coming battles and campaigns," Agrippa said. Octavia made a dismissing gesture, and the line broke up, the soldier mildly baffled but returning to acclimating themselves to the armor. It seemed to be going well, at least. "It will complicate the order of things. How will they know who their leaders are?"
"Um, we have Hellphones now, Ambrosius. Do you really think I'm spending this much of my Dad's money to keep my Mum alive without realizing we literally have computers that can handle that shit?" she asked.
Ambrosius gave another nod. "It seems that I am finally entirely behind the times. The age of the sword and the spear and the bow is at its end. Now is the time for the computer and the cannon."
"We're fighting angels. As stuck in your ways as you are, they're worse," Octavia said. "Until and unless the Angels miraculously change their natures, there will always be a place for blade, spear, and arrow."
"I will see to it that they are trained adequately. Whensoever the call comes for your mother, I swear that the Stellar Grenadiers will serve as her honor guard," Agrippa said. He gave her a slight bow, then moved out to the soldiers. Octavia, though, returned to the estate, passing the room where the doom of Stella had been pronounced. She was uncomfortable standing in this part of the room, where Lucifer had stood as he made those demands. Or maybe it was because it was too close to that flaw in reality that he chose to serve as a vainglorious 'body guard'.
She didn't even know its name, and she wanted to kill it. Things From Outside like that had no place in Creation.
Octavia would have gone to talk to her father, to convince him to outright open his purse instead of allowing her to use her trickle of 'allowance' to purchase the salvation of her family. As the Prince of Flowers, and the one responsible for the existence of nearly 70% of the crops grown in Hell in the modern era, Stolas Goetia was fantastically wealthy, accounted as perhaps the tenth wealthiest being in Hell. Or was it eighth, now that the V Triarchy was disbanded, and two of its members dead? Whatever the case, he had such funds to throw around that could shift the landscape of Hell. Literally. If all of his money was transferred from electronic to paper, the volume of that paper could erase a minor canyon in Wrath.
But Dad was too busy these days. Either running around with the red dickhead, or talking to Mum. It was strange, though, that there hadn't been an explosive argument for a while now. Had she been a younger and more naive woman, she would have attributed that to her parents finally returning to the couple that they once had been. But Octavia was not so childish in her outlook. Mum still carried on her dalliances with Agrippa. Dad still had the red dickhead. But they were being civil. That was a change warranting consideration by somebody with more insight into their relationship than Octavia.
Hell continued to change. And it continued to try to keep Octavia from seeing why.
There was a looming sense of dread that hung over her even now. A great weight held aloft by a slowly but unpredictably fraying piece of cord. She could hear the cord popping, popping, popping as the strands burst and snapped one by one, but she didn't know which strand would be the final one, and presage a terrible fall. She had stopped flinching every metaphorical pop that she heard, but that was because since this stupid war began she had heard so many. Octavia knew that meant when the weight fell, it would catch her completely by surprise. No putting that djinn back in its bottle. It was what it was.
So instead of waiting for that hundredweight of ruin to fall, she did what she could. She was Ars Goetia. She was an Angel born in hell. Her duties would not wait forever to snap her up, so she plowed into them first, to dig herself a niche before one was decided for her. Who knows? Perhaps Hellish Technologist may end up being what she ended up doing for the rest of eternity? And that too was a hard notion to hold in her teenaged mind. Eternity. The boulders of time grinding down until they slipped through her fingers as grains of sand. It was one thing to know that you would never die of old age. It was another to be in Dad's squeaky slippers and feel it.
"Via! There you are. I was beginning to think you were going to miss tea," Dad said brightly as he called from a little room near where the estate split into three, and where the mostly erased scorch-marks demarcated his own section of the palace.
"We're kinda busy to sit around sipping tea, Dad. Don't know if you've noticed, but Mum's going to be sent to her death soon!"
"She will survive. She was always the stronger of us," Dad said, his delight fading as he stood, abandoning his porcelain and the tea within it. "You will have to be stronger still. This war is only going to get harder, fiercer."
"Do you really think I don't know that, Dad?" Octavia demanded as he came into her space. "Really, sometimes I think I'm the only one in this house who even thinks about that! If Mum had been in it from the onset, we wouldn't be in this mess to begin with!"
"It is as it was always meant to be," Dad said. But the way he said it gave Octavia pause. He didn't say it with his bouncy dismissal of consequence, he didn't say it with his lofty haughtiness, nor with anything approaching anger and defiance. He said it cold. Sad. Resigned. And his expression was grim. But he turned to her, and that grimness lessened. "All we can do now is play our parts. I promise you, your mother will not fall in the fields of Heaven."
"How can you promise that? You weren't there when the Legions came back!" Octavia demanded of him. "You didn't see how many – or rather how few – of them survived! You were off chasing that red dickhead! I had to watch people holding their innards in, dying on our lawn before they could even last long enough to die inside our house! And what did you do?" she gave her father a shove when she ended that sentence.
"My duty to Lucifer," Stolas said. "My duty to Hell."
"You were off fucking that imp..."
"While that did happen, it was... you see I now have to... it was a transactional fornication, you see," Dad suddenly seemed so entirely out of his depth, before giving his head a brisk shake. "No, the point is this: I had to do my duty. The duty that keeps you and the rest of Hell safe. That's where I was. That's what I was doing. What I had to."
"So why couldn't you just..." Octavia tried to find the words to explain her strain, her hurt. But being a teenaged Hell-Angel, she didn't have the repertoire to manage it.
"Look at me, Via. Look at me," Dad said, gently. He stared at her, four dark red eyes into her pair of glowing scarlet. "Oh, my little Starfire. You are going to be something remarkable. Something that all of Hell will look to in envy and pride. I wish... Oh, who even cares what I wish? What I want to say, every time I see you... is that I'm proud of you. Of who you're becoming. And it will be something extraordinary. I just know it."
And then he pulled her into a hug. But it was not a comforting hug. Because as much as she enjoyed the embrace of her father, of the unconditional care that it represented, this hug was not one of those. This one felt desperate. It felt sad. And it felt...
Final.
When he pulled away from her and started to walk away down the halls of their palace, it left Octavia standing in the lurch, stunned. She watched his departing back, and deep in her heart, there was a piece of her that feared... that this would be the last time he ever did that.
That this was Dad's way of saying goodbye.
And she was not going to be okay.
Michael stumbled as he unfolded back into reality to the fluttering of distant wings. It was as though is balance had abandoned him in that critical moment between when he allowed his body to be abandoned and released back into the Prima Materia from which, among other utilities, Angels' flesh was sung, and when he reformed it elsewhere in Creation. He stifled a growl of annoyance at the inconvenience of it. What would happen if he suffered such a lapse during conflict, when he had an enemy worthy of the name able to take advantage of his instant of weakness? It would not end well for him.
But there was little point in fixating on such flaws. They were what they were. And Michael, for all his glory and power, had something of a blind-spot when it came to certain aspects of his own being.
Still, after a moment, his awkwardness fled and he was standing in the manse of Raguel the Godfriend, Archangel of Justice. The edifice was gargantuan, every bit as large as Michael's own. And considering Michael's was of such scale that he could turn it into a bloody parliament and still have enough room to store his personal effects, that spoke volumes. But Raguel had a very different layout to his own. Clean lines and elegant simplicity were the order of the day. The ceilings did not vault away nearly so high, its second story much closer to the ground than Michael's – or in fact any other Archangel's – manse. And there were islands of comfort which were scattered strategically throughout the architecture such that one was never left truly adrift in spartan awe for long before being confronted with a comfortable chair, a handy desk, and a book to read.
If Michael were to try to summarize the 'feeling' of this place in a single word, he would call it 'cozy'. How it managed to be cozy with vaulting architecture, sleek marble, and masterful statuary overlooking those who walked it, well, that was likely in the hands of God. As he moved, he spotted a flare of light, as one of Raguel's few servants appeared in a niche. That was one of Sahaquiel's devices. How odd. And Michael felt his teeth grit when the flash of light resolved into an Innocent.
Oh, this is bold, Raguel, Michael thought. Here on Nine, humans were not permitted to walk the streets under any circumstance. Cloud Nine belonged to the Angel and to God. But there was no law mandating that they couldn't be teleported directly into Raguel's home, over which his word was second only to the Father's Own. And it was not God's word which banned humans to the first, second, and third Clouds. What did this human even want with Raguel, Michael pondered? But the obvious answer came quickly to him. This was likely one of Raguel's failures. A human who had been granted the Gift of Justice, but did not apotheosize into an Angel. The human didn't spare Michael so much as a glance as she moved off into another section of the manor. Michael felt no need to stop her. She was here on Raguel's recognizance. Any consequences of her presence would be on Raguel. Not that Michael had any intention of betraying him to them.
Michael followed his senses, his true eyes guiding him through the estate, past statues depicting people and Angels. Michael almost walked past one of them before a tinge of memory occurred to him, and he recognized who it was. This statue was new. It hadn't been here last time Michael had come to this part of the manse, some time one or two years ago. This was Elias, son of Yeqon. The eldest of the Nephilim. The only one to have a son of his own before Gabriel killed him. Michael's face tightened at this. What connection had Raguel formed with the Grigori? Dark thoughts began to churn in his head, before he turned and saw a strigine demon depicted in the next niche. He felt a moment of alarm, but then looked at the name plate. Octavia. Daughter of Stella and Stolas.
"Victims of our hubris," Raguel's voice pulled Michael's attention away from the statuary. And when he did, Michael stumbled for the second time. Raguel was not wearing his armor.
Raguel, the Godfriend, who had spent much of the last ten thousand years in his panoply, had eschewed it this day. He wore a tunic of burgandy and orange, which had its front side almost painted white with dust. From his waist was a thick kilt of leather, in which the tools of stoneworking and sculpture were contained. His hair flickered white under his halo, and his eyes blazed unblinking from his burnt and scarred face. "What is the meaning of these?" Michael asked, making sure not to put too much accusation in his words. He had few enough friends left. And Raguel, being Raguel, would likely have some decent explanation.
"I have been given... perspective," Raguel said, idly frisking away the marble dust on his tunic and letting it gather on the floor.
"Perspective on what?" Michael asked, as Raguel moved toward the nearest island of comfort, humming under his breath to manifest a second chair for himself to sit in, while offering Michael the one which wouldn't suddenly disappear when Raguel stopped consciously demanding it.
"On a number of things. Including my own personal failings," Raguel said. "I failed them, you know. I failed the Nephilim."
Michael tilted his head in confusion. "What do you mean by that, brother?"
"Their sin was that they frightened God. It was no act of their own which sealed their damnation. And God's pogrom against them is fundamentally unjust. In allowing it to be enacted, I have failed in my duties as the High Arbiter."
"You... cannot be saying that God was wrong..." Michael said, carefully.
"Elias was an orchard-keeper. He took a human for his wife, and with her had a daughter and son. And Gabriel spilled the blood of all four of them, and put that orchard to the torch. What ambition against the design of God do you read into Elias' actions?" Raguel asked. "What sin had the orchard committed?"
"It had to be done. Father demanded it," Michael said.
"And why does that make it 'good'?" Raguel asked. "It was unjust then. And I can no longer lie to myself as to its injustice. If God were to break His silence this day, I would demand His justification as to why a good man, an innocent woman, and two sinless children had to die for His fear. And I hold no faith that He would have a justification worthy of the butchery He ordered."
"That still does not explain why you have a literal demon rendered in stone in your home, Raguel," Michael said, pointedly not looking at the eleven foot tall owl demon that stood directly behind him.
"You know why she is here," Raguel said.
"She does not have the shining blood of Angel and human. She is not a Nephilim. The Father's pogrom will not target her," Michael said.
"Gabriel will," Raguel seemed so tired as he said that. Michael sighed, sinking into his seat, which was luxuriantly comfortable. A small and quiet part of him wanted to just sit here for a year and a day, to ignore duty and just... rest. But that part of him was indeed small, and he could not shirk his duties. It was not in his nature.
"What happened when you fought the Demiurge, brother?" Michael asked.
"He defeated me," Raguel said.
"How?" Michael pressed.
"Handily," Raguel said.
"Why are you being evasive about this? There is no shame to losing to a stronger opponent. You are not Lucifer nor Gabriel; your pride is not so quick!" Michael said. And the expected anger at being compared to either of those two never came to Raguel's face. Instead, there was a long and deep seated shame.
"You are asking to know how he fights, so that when you face him, you will have learned from my mistakes, and can use his techniques against him. You cannot," Raguel said. "He did not show me his full strength. Or perhaps I merely believe he did not. There was no escalation I offered that he could not match or better. I did not land a single blow that so much as bruised his flesh through his plate. He fought as though he were God, given arms and panoply."
Michael stared at him, blinking in confusion. "God has never fought..."
"Not to your knowledge, brother. Not to your knowledge," Raguel said.
"If he was so mighty, why did he even let you live? Your armor was not even that badly damaged, your gorget notwithstanding," Michael said, leaning forward in his chair.
"He did not kill me for the same reason he did not kill Atheed and Malik and Shamsel. Because we were beneath a need for him to kill," Raguel said.
Michael rose from his chair and moved to Raguel's, taking his shoulders. "Get ahold of yourself, brother. This is not you! Where is your defiance? It's not your nature to simply despair after a single lost fight! You lost a fight against Lucifer but still warred against him afterwards!"
"I have fought Lucifer and I have fought the Demiurge," Raguel said, his distant and distracted white-blaze eyes staring through him. "And Lucifer is no Demiurge."
"Has he ensorcelled you? Bewitched you somehow? Should I call the Spellbinder?" Michael demanded.
"And you would call the Spellbinder on me, while refusing to see how you yourself have degraded, Michael?" Raguel finally asked, his face setting into a more familiar, stubborn set as he rose to his feet and the chair that was beneath him vanished. "I have seen you during the greatest days of the Angel, when we one and all cast the Leviathans out of Heaven. I have seen you at your most strained during the war against our brother Lucifer. And to see you now? I hardly recognize you. What is happening to you?"
"What do you mean?" Michael asked. He felt an urge to reach for his pocket, but didn't.
"You are in Dissonance," Raguel said. "Your frequency is corrupted. And any who can see you can tell. You are becoming diseased in a way only Angels can be diseased. What have you done?"
"I have kept Heaven running in the absence of our Father for three centuries," Michael said.
"That is what you are doing, Michael. Not what you have done. Something about you has changed. Recently. In the last calendar year. And it is killing you," Raguel said.
Michael kept it from his face, but had a notion exactly what that was. "If you really wanted to know, you could simply strip-mine it from my memories. So this is merely pantomime and passion-play."
"Or I want you to admit it. Out loud. To yourself," Raguel said, glaring as white smoke gathered up around him, manifesting into his armor and covering what had until now been revealed at long last to Heaven, until the only part of him still revealed was his face, girded by his helm. Michael wished he wasn't the one to blink first. Heaven today was not so kind. "Which one?"
Michael considered lying, but against this Archangel in particular, that was a fool's errand. "Khalera," he said.
Raguel turned away with a growl in his throat, taking a few steps as his composure was overtaken. Then a purging breath and he turned, pointing at Michael. "Why? You would sully yourself with The Waking Apocalypse, and for WHAT?"
"For when I need it," Michael said. Raguel shook his head in disbelief.
"When you need it? Against whom? Whom could be so adamantine that you need Khalera to reach them?" Raguel demanded.
And again, Michael wished he could lie. But the truth was not kind, and it was all he had to offer. "...I don't know yet," he said.
"If you would still call yourself my brother, my friend, cast Khalera away," Raguel said, throwing his arm aside. "It is a foul thing, and is doing foul things to you. Travel for a moment to Hell and hurl that thing into the Abyss where it belongs so that no hand can touch it."
"You do not order me, brother," Michael said, eyes flashing.
"I'm beginning to think that somebody besides God should," Raguel countered. "Why are you so slavish in devotion to the idea of our Father that you cannot see that for all the brilliance of Creation, He was not the perfect Pater that you believe He is?"
"God is perfection. That is His nature," Michael snapped.
"Then wherefrom does evil spring?" Raguel didn't give an inch. "You idolize the Father to the point where you cannot see His shortcomings. You cannot see that His sight, His power, and His benevolence were anything but absolute."
"And you sound like you're beginning to walk the path of Lucifer," Michael said, turning away from Raguel for a moment as he chewed his words for a moment. "And demons? Demons, Raguel? Dangerous enough to import your servants from the lower Clouds to serve in your palace. They are your adopted children, you have that right. But DEMONS?" he cast his arm toward the statue of the owl-demon in her finery.
"There is innocence in hell. And injustice in heaven. Demon has become an empty term of derision, not a meaningful category," Raguel said.
"How do I know if you aren't making deals with the Pit even now?" Michael said, storming into Raguel's space.
"The Pit is less just than this mockery that Heaven has become. Do not think to lecture me on utility, when your moral judgment begins and ends at Father's directives," Raguel said.
"What did the Demiurge do to you?" Michael demanded.
"What a lifetime of service to God could not," Raguel said. He stared into Michael's eyes for a pregnant moment. "I can see your dander rising, Brother. Don't let this be a schism between us, in the face of what Gabriel desires. You know that no good would come of his faction gaining strength over the policies of Heaven. Please. Throw Khalera away. Remember what it was to be the Taxiarch in those earlier years."
"No," Michael said. Again, he did not reach for his pocket, did not reach for what he needed. But he couldn't cast aside a weapon that may well save him. Save them all.
"Then there is little more to say," Raguel said. The white smoke rose up again, and covered his face in the featureless ballistic mask that had been his visage for thousands of years. He turned from Michael. "Until and unless you can begin reaching beyond your interpretations of Father's expressed wishes, your people shall forever be left behind in an evolving, silent Heaven. I am sorry. I cannot follow you down the path I see you walking."
Michael wanted Raguel to rail at him, to call him a fool, but all that he could sense from his brother, from his friend, was disappointment. Dreadful and deep-rooted disappointment. And Michael could not say for certain that Raguel was wrong to believe it. Still, with a flex of Michael's fist and a tensing of his higher, truer self, he caused the marble statue of Octavia, daughter of Stolas and Stella, to explode into dust and fragments which sprayed across the smooth, shining floor of the palace.
"This, I do for your own good, brother. Don't forget that. I want to save all of us. Including you," Michael said. Raguel did not speak to him. He just stared at the now empty podium, as the white dust settled down into a pile. With regret, and even shame in his heart, Michael willed his body away, and with the fluttering of a bird's wings, Michael was gone from the palace of Raguel the Godfriend.
"Those were the glory days, back then. The pandemonium was so incredibly useful to me, and by extension, the entire Clan. You have to remember, Killjoy, that despite the fact that Sinners like you can potentially live forever, you have very short memories. Shorter even than my kind do. And with the Purge Unending beginning, with the Second Heavenly Invasion at its onset, and that utter insanity down there with Envy and Heck and the CHOZ, it was a very, very good time to be an imp.
We survived for as long as we have as the dangling link on the chain of creation because we're adaptable in a way that only the Mutants can even claim to better. And... well, you saw what became of Leviathan. Between the return of the Most Ancient Secrets of impish magic, the Blood Emancipation, the works of The Waymaker, and everything that Lucifer was doing wrong, we had more than enough room to carve a place for ourselves. It's why people don't call us the dangling link anymore. The chain just got longer, and we're not the bottom link.
The old saying 'What does not kill you makes you stranger' certainly has some truth to it. Back when Pride Ring was still Pride Ring, it got hit pretty hard. So of course, to survive, it had to become very, very strange."
-Ur-Crone Krieg Miller, of Clan Cruac-Purgatorii