The scream had a most particular quality to it, one that stood out starkly from all of the screams of its ilk which sounded in a constant wail of the damned that only occasionally had the basic decency to shut the fuck up. The usual scream was one of confusion, of terror, of fear. This was not that kind of scream. This was a scream not of disbelief and a bracing against impact, and pain, but instead had a particular cadence to it. Almost as though it were not an inarticulate howl at all, but instead a very pointed, very directed epithet levelled not at the ground of Hell which was rapidly streaking up toward its source, but instead at the Heaven which grew invariably farther away.

If you listened closely, you could have sworn that scream said: "YOU BASTAAAAAAARD!"

What typically followed was a deeply unpleasant, meaty thwap as the plummeting figure connected at great velocity to the ground, typically barren of such mercies as cushioning due to Sinners proclivity to land near where there are other Sinners, because, as the saying goes, Hell is other people. Most Sinners lived in the city. That meant that most newly Fallen tend to introduce themselves after cratering into concrete, asphalt, or somebody's roof.

This one, though, had uncommon luck. Luck, or perhaps something else. Because while this woman fell, and did indeed come perilously close to smashing spine-first through the glass of a conservatory, she instead landed directly beside it, and had her impact lessened by some tiny degree by a remarkably thick bed of dandelions under her.

Rachel was more furious than she had ever been in life.

She lay there in understandable and incredible pain, on the ground, glaring up at Heaven. This fury was new to her. Usually, her ire burned low and steady, the embers of a dying fire, and couldn't be stoked higher even by the most personal of betrayals. But this? This gave her wrath. At the audacity at the bald-faced hypocrisy of them. She knew that the best revenge was supposed to be living well. She knew that she was intended to turn the other cheek in the face of insults and attacks against her. But if there was one thing that could murder a belief in a benevolent higher power, it was actually standing in Heaven and seeing what had become of it.

"Holy shit, I t'ought I heard somethin'," a voice came from the conservatory. Rachel pressed her eyes closed, puffing out a sigh of pain.

"Ow," she said.

"You okay out there, doll?" the voice came again, nasal and seeming straight out of a mob-movie. Rachel allowed herself to continue to let out a groan, and then lifted one arm, to see if it was broken. It wasn't. Nor were her legs, as she tensed and flexed them. She was pretty sure the entire back of her was going to be a solid bruise in a few minutes, but considering she had plummeted at terminal velocity from Heaven, a bruise being the worst of her injury was something of a mercy. And it wouldn't last very long. She didn't Regenerate the way that the Damned did, but injury on the Innocent was a very temporary thing. "Fuck. Shit, I'll just put... Fine. Hold on, I'll get you, babe."

With a final, aching growl, she pushed herself out of the crater of green and yellow that she had landed nearly at the exact center of. Dandelions? Really? And where was... oh. Yup, that moon had a pentacle carved into it. There was a clock-tower in the distance that listed 61 days until 'next purge'. There was a blimp flying overhead that was advertising a new formulation of Krokadil that promised '40% less necrosis'. And there was another blimp, advertising methamephetamine, which was burning it out of the sky using a flamethrower. And of course, the wind turned that spray of naphta back on the attacking blimp, which caused both to plummet to the ground.

Rachel blinked a few times. Was this really?

Any doubts that might have possibly had a chance to develop in her were unceremoniously shot in the head and dumped into an open grave, because the figure who had come to her side was not even approaching a normal human form. He – if his voice truly pegged him as a he – was covered in very fine, white fluff that was marked with pink, his eyes both asymmetrical and heterochromatic. He had four arms, and was wearing an apron depicting two loves of bread that were boxing each other for some reason.

"...What the fuck are you?" the strange demonic being asked, looking her up and down in confusion.

"Did your mother raise you to introduce yourself like that?" Rachel asked, coughing and groaning as she finally got to a proper sit, feeling every welt and slightly-misaligned bone in her body. God damn, but that hurt. She was going to be careful not to mess around with ledges in the future. It wasn't the fall that was the problem, rather the sudden stop at the end of it, and she had no intention of revisiting that problem.

"Hey, fuck you, lady," the spider demon said. "I'm tryin' be helpful here."

"...right. Sorry," Rachel said. She had to moderate her tone here. They didn't know her ways, and she didn't know theirs. "I could use a hand."

"Yeah, I'm not doin' shit until you explain why you ain't changin'," all four of the spider demon's hands recoiled from hers.

"Changing into what?" she asked.

"You just got here, right?" the demon said. "Oh fuck me, you've just landed. Charlie's gonna want you on the double."

"Landed. Right. Because that..." Rachel trailed off, as her nose caught something. She turned back to the demon, and then sniffed. She pushed herself up to a hobble, which the demon recoiled a bit from. "I smell dough."

"Yeah, I was gettin' some herbs an' shit to make it fancy."

"You have food?" she asked.

"Why? You... actually yeah, you do look like you probably starved ta' death. Come on. I'll get some food in ya'," the demon said.

"Wait... why are you offering this?" she asked, trying to lean away but still not quite being physically up to it. If the Good could use people, Christ only knew what the Damned would do.

"Charlie, she's got a big heart, and likes to take in strays," the demon said. His face, for all its alien qualities, took on some softness, some tenderness. "She brings out the good in folk."

Rachel wanted to be clever about this, to think this through, but it felt like it had been months since she'd eaten anything – although the sad truth had been closer to eight years. The smell of food, food that she didn't have to by dint of her responsibilities ensure that went to another, was quickly shutting down her other faculties. She knew that she had about half of a conversation left in her before she started hunting down edible things and beginning to consume.

"I'm starving," she said. And gestured ahead of her.

"What's yer name, copper-top?" the demon asked her.

"Rachel," she said.

"Angel Dust," he offered a hand to her. She stared at it for a moment, unsure of his intentions. "Don't gimme that, I ain't no Dealmaker, I'm just bein' friendly."

"A friendly demon named Angel Dust," she said.

"And you're a dead asshole just like me, so you ain't go no place to bitch," Angel Dust said, not altogether unkindly, though. "Go on. And grab somm'a that oregano when you do. Imma make somm'a that fancy bread tonight."

"What is this?" she asked, as she was essentially escorted through the conservatory, which played host to strange, distorted plants that were alike, but not identical, to the ones she'd known in life.

"What'd'ya mean, 'what is this'?" Angel Dust asked. "What'd'sit look like? It's a fuckin' hotel!"

As they exited the conservatory and entered the halls, she could see exactly what he meant by that. "Right. And you, a demon, work in a hotel."

"The only soy-ten-tee in the afterlife is taxes, babe. And I earn my money on my knees an' on my back. This is a hobby."

Oh...kay? Spider demon prostitutes moonlighting as bakers. Hell was weird. And still not the strangest thing she'd seen since her death. "Well, I–" Rachel began, before stalling as she saw a werewolf through the doors that looked into the lobby area of the hotel. "...why is there a werewolf down here?"

"Ain't a were-wolf, doll. That's a 'there-wolf'," he said, and then cackled at his own joke. Rachel stared at the drolly chuckling spider demon for a moment, before remembering what Dieter had told her. Dieter, a Penitent, had spent four decades in Hell. And apparently Hellhounds were a lot more ambulatory than the stories had spoken of. The spider demon seemed to catch wise that she was staring quite blankly, so elbowed her in the side. "Learn to take a joke, Dame. Maybe you stand a better chance wit' him than I do. He don't seem to want nothin' to do with me."

Okay, not just a prostitute spider demon, but a gay prostitute spider demon. Rachel gave her head a shake, and kept walking. She knew she was 'supposed' to consider him four times an abomination. But at this point, any belief she ever had in the Catholic Catechism had been pretty much filed out to the last grain of dust. This was Hell. Hell had all kinds.

"I appreciate it, Charlie. I really do," the Hellhound said, his voice very soft and she would almost call it conciliatory. Despite his fearsome appearance, by the way he spoke you'd think him a harmless pup. "But I've already taken a room for a lot longer than I'd planned and I don't want to run out my welcome here."

"You're still welcome," a very tall blond woman with rosy cheeks and startlingly kind eyes told him, laying a hand on his shoulder. The fact that she was almost as tall as this towering hellhound threw Rachel, even though she was being guided toward a dining room by an eight foot tall gay prostitute spider demon, and she could see a three foot tall sprite of a girl vigorously cleaning the cracks in what looked like a recently refurbished bar area. "You don't have to feel like I'm giving you the bum's-rush. You're not a bum, and even if you were, you can go as fast or as slow as you want."

"It's just..." the Hellhound gesticulated for a moment. "I've got a brother, he's got a place. And it's time I started... I don't know. Being myself for the first time in my life."

"If that's how you feel, then I won't stop you," the blonde woman said, but gave the Hound's shoulder a squeeze. "But just know if anything goes wrong, you can always come back. Just 'cause you're not a Sinner doesn't mean we don't have lots of room!"

"Thank you. Really," The Hound said, then grabbed a piece of very out-of-date looking luggage and started toward the door. The tall blonde woman sighed, watching after him.

"Ahem," Angel Dust said. "What the fuck? I literally laid out that guy's lunch!"

"Somebody else will eat it," Charlie muttered, staring after him.

"Yeah. Maybe this one will," Angel Dust said.

"What do youuuu-who are you?" the woman said, turning toward Rachel, and having her expression brighten from doldrums to excitement in a heartbeat. She darted closer, extending a hand with perfectly manicured nails toward her. "I'm Charlie, and this is the Happy Hotel! You must be new, because you haven't taken your new form yet!"

"...I guess?" Rachel said, rubbing at her back, which honestly was already starting to hurt less faster than she thought possible.

"I found this chick cratered in the doyt outside the greenhouse. Bitch just landed here like a couple minutes ago!" Angel Dust said, presenting Rachel to 'Charlie' with a theatrical flair of his hands.

"Well that explains things perfectly," Charlie said, but Rachel could tell by the woman's inflections alone that she was either lying or omitting something. A lifetime of trying to figure out other people's heads taught her at least that much.

"Pleased to meet you. Is this place, like... a halfway house? A soup kitchen?"

"Why would kitchens only serve soup?" Charlie asked, thrown by the question.

"It's a human thing, boss," Angel Dust said. "Cheap food you give to a fuckload a starvin' people. Capone did it all the time."

"I do not like that man," Charlie said, which gave Rachel two moments of consideration. One, because it implied that Alphonse Capone was down here, and two because the tone Charlie used spoke to something like brutal enmity, something she otherwise didn't show the slightest of.

"Yeah, I'm gonna get some food in 'er. You can talk to her after that," Angel Dust said.

"Why are you doing this?" Rachel asked.

"I gots debts I gotta pay," Angel Dust said.

"You don't owe me anything," Charlie said casually, but Angel Dust was already guiding her toward a dining room. Well, say a dining room, it was a room that had a few tables scattered around its periphery, which was dominated front and center by a massive brass propeller, one that had had chunks taken out of it, but was otherwise abandoned. And one of the tables had a meal fit for a body-builder on it.

"There ya go. Pull up a chair, chow down. I'll put some meat on ya' bones," Angel Dust said.

"I'm just... I can just," she pointed at the food, a quantity that she had never seen laid out for one person in all the years since she died. This amount of food was typically portioned out to feed ten, if not ease the pangs of twenty.

"Go nuts, I got, like, four otha' things going right now and the fuck am I gonna throw that out to the bums," Angel Dust said. He gently but firmly grabbed her shoulders, plunked her into a chair in front of the still steaming pasta, lamb, scallions and beets, and other less obvious vegetables of Hell's bounty. She had a moment, just a moment, where she considered saying Grace.

But Grace had abandoned Heaven long ago.

So without a word said, Rachel began to eat the first meal she'd had since 2013.

The Song of Ruin

Act One: Dolce Et Decorum

Chapter 1:

She Who Desires, But Acts Not

"Because of diminishing returns," Octavia listlessly recited. Her tutor nodded eagerly, mistaking her ability to point out what he was laboriously veering toward as a keen and special intellect. The fact was, she figured that she was, at best, slightly above average in terms of academic achievement. She didn't exactly have a large sample size to base herself against. She had been tutored in the palace by specially chosen educators for her entire life. She'd never set foot into a school. Schools, as Mum said, were for poor people. Because of her 'rarified lineage', Octavia found herself adrift and without peers. A child of the Ars Goetia, with nobody to compare herself against, not even her supposed 'lessers'.

"Exactly so!" the tutor said. "Putting so much as a single bent penny into infrastructure for the masses is a waste of valuable money, because the dividends from them will be so vanishingly small!"

It was weird. She knew that Mum and Dad were trying to propagandize and indoctrinate her, to have her see Hell the same way that they saw it. But the fact was, she didn't. She didn't, and she couldn't. She had no context. They'd spent her entire life preventing her from gaining context. And now it was starting to bother her.

Even Princess Charlotte Magne, Princess of All Hell, got to go to school. She got to have friends. Highschool loves. Peers. Well, as close to a peer as being the child of The Devil Himself could ever have. The tutor continued to prattle on that the only sensible place for money to go was at the very highest of the upper class, while seemingly conveniently forgetting that he wasn't one of those lucky few, while she let her mind drift.

Dad seemed happy, of late.

That made Mum furious.

After that tantrum that Lucifer threw about two weeks ago, hunting for some human that nobody knew and nobody cared about, there was a period of quiet, peace, and calm. Then that red dickhead started showing up again. He started walking in the front door, not skulking in over the fence (which was now electrified), crawling in through the undercroft (which was now festooned with landmines, and also electrified), or stealing his way through the servants' entrances (which were now biocoded to the staff... and also electrified). When Mum tried to get Legatus Agrippa to throw him out, the red dickhead just laughed in her face.

And Agrippa did nothing.

Octavia might be, by her estimation, a bit above average, but that definitionally mandated that she wasn't stupid. Something had changed with that imp. One that had driven Stella to spend the last few days in seclusion at her winter estate in Sloth. Was Mum going on some kind of bender? In ordinary circumstances, Via would have said not a chance. But these weren't ordinary circumstances. Hell was changing. And their attempts at suffocating her under their protective wings were doing her no favors. She needed to know what was going on. While Mum and Dad's mercy toward Octavia may well have bordered on infinite, she was absolutely sure that the rest of Hell could give scarcely a barleycorn of a shit about whether she survived what was coming or not.

She was not spun from glass. She was not a vapid doll. And one day, whether her parents wanted to believe it or not, she was going to have to cut her own path through Hell. She continued to ignore her tutor listing all the reasons why it was virtuous to fuck over the poor in every interaction, and gave that imp a moment's thought, because he was obviously a part of this. He might not be at the center of it, because what imp possibly could be at the center of anything, but he could well be a useful bellwether for what was to come.

Dad was fawning over him as per revolting usual. She didn't know why he was like that. He certainly never behaved that way around Mum. Of course, she was also aware that she was not even twenty years old, practically still in the egg to things as old as Mum and Dad. The way Dad was now with 'Blitz' could well have been the way that he once was around Mum. And seeing that mildly disconcerting glee that Dad showed to the imp, it did kind of stand to reason that Mum would feel so slighted. If Dad had withdrawn that kind of doting, grinning, bombastic affection from Mum, well, Octavia could see why it would make a woman bitter.

Then there was the imp himself. Blitz looked like warmed-over shit when he strutted into the manor. He was covered in dark bruises, one of his horns had about a quarter of it snapped off, and he had a pair of metal discs at their bases, indicating that he'd had to have augmetic ears put in. Honestly, it looked like the imp had been the recipient of the worst beating that had transpired this side of the fight between Lucifer and Michael. Only it was clear in his posture he hadn't the slink of the defeated, or even the ram-rod back of somebody in denial of defeat. No, he had swagger. Had he a peacock's tail, it would have been fanned broad every step he took.

The thought that Octavia came to was 'you should see the other guy'.

Of course, that still didn't explain why he was walking around like he owned this place. There were lots of uneven fights that imps could get into. They were the bottom link in the Chain of Being, after all. Even winning a fair fight against a Sinner took a lot more gumption than most imps had. But even still, Octavia's failure to be a fool discarded that as a possibility, as well.

Blitz had to have won a fight that was impossible to swagger like that.

If one of the Ars Goetia had been killed, Dad wouldn't have been able to hide it from her.

If a Deadly Sin had been unhoused, it would have reached even sheltered-Octavia with the inevitability of taxation upon the poor.

Which left few targets. So she gave some thought not on what was being said, but on what wasn't. And if there was one name that had been spoken a lot two weeks ago, and then dropped without so much as a mention, it was that of the Proxy of Lucifer. Why Lucifer had picked a Sinner for his most recent Proxy was lost to most. But the reputation Nathan Birch'd had was probably part of that. He didn't need to come to you. You would come to him. Or else. And nobody was talking about Birch anymore.

No way.

Her thoughtful expression brought forth some eagerness from her tutor, thinking that she was contemplating his utterly bullshit lessons about economy and class when she was in fact disregarding them as blatantly unfeasible. Had that red little dickhead actually managed to not just kill Nathan Birch, but to take his place?

Well, if he had, that would explain his swagger.

And speak of the angels so they should appear, there he was. Her lazy glance out the window spotted the little red dickhead in the gardens, on his way out. At least that meant she wouldn't have to bump into him. But that gave her only a little comfort. Because, as this tutor was hammering home, Octavia's position was entirely incumbent upon the positions of her parents. By birth alone, she had the position of Marchioness. She had a literal legion of the damned. She wasn't yet allowed to actually, well, do anything with them. Which confused and annoyed her. If she had a legion, she should be able to use it how she pleased. Oh, but you're too young for that responsibility, they would bemoan. Bullshit. Mum's were just rotated in and out of the Forever War on a schedule that ran like clockwork. Dad's sat around doing nothing and getting paid for it. Surely it was possible for Octavia to at least get some experience in actual leadership.

She was a fucking Ars Goetia. How could she possibly learn how to rule if everybody expected her to quietly follow?

The tutor finally restated the same belabored point about fucking the poor in the thirteenth different way, and declared that the lesson was over for the day. Via had that much going for her, at least. Without even offering a peremptory goodbye to the tutor, she got up and started toward her father's room. This foolishness was going to have to end. At some point, Dad was going to have to accept Octavia as an adult. Hell, Charlotte Magne got her first legion of the damned a year earlier in her life! She knew that it likely was because to unaging beings like Dad and Mum, she had only existed for a blink of an eye. Well, that blink was over.

The door to the room was open to Dad's room, but the magic of it was off. Even more off than it had been of late. Once, it hummed with a quiet resonance of the Duchess of Iron and the Prince of Flowers. Since the pair's estrangement, only the latter remained. Now, though, it was even more off. As though a portion of it had been cleaved off, leaving a strange sort of dissonant note in the magic of the room. Octavia frowned at that, tilting her head to catch the sound of it. It called to her, to the spot where a lectern stood next to Dad's bed. Where the Grimore Anthos would rest each day... well, before the red dickhead stole it.

Now, though, the magic was almost thudding with absence. She laid her hand on the lectern, and felt that that it was gone. Not just in the imp's hands, but utterly gone. And though she knew she was only aware of some small part of the politics of hell, she knew enough to be aware how bad that would be for her father's status. And by extension, hers.

Hell, after all, was not kind to the powerless.

"You sure yer okay, boss? Last time somebody left, you got all maudlin on us," Angel Dust said.

"Sam was... a different case," Charlie said. "Maelstrom will be fine on his own."

"You sure about that? Just 'cause he's built that way don't make him a junkyard dog," Angel Dust counciled. "Fuck me, he talks like he's a fuckin' puppy."

"I'm sure about it, because if he isn't, I'm going to go out there and save him," Charlie said. She didn't consciously linger on the fact that she was wearing some of her old clothes, back from when she still dwelt in the palace with her father. She had felt, even a month ago, that retaking her old duds would have put her right back where she was before she started the Hotel project. The truth as it had turned out was rather more complicated. Old symbols could be given new meanings. Whether Sam had intended to or not, he had taught her that. That and the other notion. Of a Heaven in Hell.

"So what'cha gonna do about the ginger?" Angel Dust cocked a thumb toward the dining room.

"The same thing I do to every Fallen soul. Try to get them into Heaven," she said blithely. This newcomer, Rachel, was odd, admittedly. In an entirely superficial way, she reminded Charlie of that horrible Nathan Birch, a Sinner who clung to the mortal form that they had before. But it was just that; superficial. Even a glance would tell the difference between the Sinner eating lunch and the now dead and utterly unmourned Proxy of Lucifer. If Charlie were a gambling woman, she'd say that where the latter was hiding a verminous nature under narcissistic clinging to their 'ideal self', the former was just somebody who had decided 'I am who I am'. Hell would change her, as it changed all who dwelt in it. But for now, if Charlie's guess was right, she was just too humble to morph.

"Hon, I just noticed Maelstrom leaving. Are you alright?" Vaggie immediately called from the doors at the end of the lobby.

"I'm fine, Vaggie," Charlie said. Vaggie tilted her head, her one remaining eye asking a clear 'are you sure' without words. Charlie chose to answer it by clapping her hands in front of her. "You should get the forms. I think we're going to have another gue~est!"

"Really?" Vaggie asked. "That was fast."

"Word's starting to get around, I think," Charlie said with obvious glee.

"Then it's lucky that Sam did as much work here as he had," Vaggie said. She gave Charlie's cheek a pat, then darted into the offices to get the intake forms that they continued to refine with each new guest.

"Don't it seem like that guy just echos in this place?" Angel Dust said with a nostalgic shake of his head.

"I think that's just how this is going to work," Charlie said. The truth was, she had no idea how she'd managed to get one of her guests into Heaven. While she would love to have said that her program was what did it, Angel Dust had been here longer, and had been in that same program for that entire, larger span of time. And, while it wasn't exactly kind to say... he was still here. Angel Dust was still in Hell, and Wendy Monday got out.

That was entirely ignoring Sam. She was pretty sure that whatever happened to Sam, Samael, Yaldabaoth, or whatever you were supposed to call him now, it broke all of the rules by its very nature.

"Well, I got pots on the stove an' I don't want that shit to burn. You gonna eat next?"

"I think I might," Charlie said. That was another thing she didn't like to vocalize; that Angel Dust's cooking was just so much better than everybody else's. Razzle and Dazzle, her personal valets and creatures of debatable autonomy, they certainly tried, but she had to admit that they had the palates of a garbage shredder. The only other person who'd come close to what Angel could whip up was Wendy. And she was gone.

Still, maybe that was a good thing in the whole. Every minute that Angel Dust spent in the kitchen was a minute he wasn't whoring himself out, getting high, or fighting somebody. And he seemed to enjoy, if not the process, then the prospect of having proper Italian cooking on the table in front of him come the evening. Charlie had a thought, one that she made a point to actually write out; maybe part of the solution was finding something that actively drove you away from your worst. Angel Dust cooked. Wendy gardened. Sam killed Overlords. But again, Sam was a special case.

By the time Vaggie joined Charlie, Angel Dust had returned to the kitchens. "Alright, I've got everything. Let's see who our new guest is," Vaggie said. She hadn't the enthusiasm that Charlie did. Maybe she still doubted. Well, if she did doubt, then Charlie would have to believe for the both of them. Charlie certainly had that much in her. She'd gotten one person into Heaven. Now she just had to do it again, to prove that it wasn't a fluke.

"Hello Rachel!" Charlie said, as she entered the dining area. "Do you mind if I call you Rachel?"

Rachel didn't answer, shovelling food into her maw with such eagerness which made Charlie fairly certain that whoever Rachel was, she'd died of malnourishment. It was sad. Charlie's first charitable endeavor in Hell, before the notion of the Happy Hotel even came to her, was providing the left-overs of the upper class to those scraping by at the bottom. The poor snapped them up eagerly, but the rich complained so loudly and so pointedly that Dad had to eventually step in and force Charlie to stop. Mostly because of what it was doing to his reputation, she wagered. The hungriest she'd ever been in her life was a three day fast that she voluntarily took two decades ago, to see what it was like. Even three days wasn't pleasant. What would three weeks feel like?

Charlie waited, but Rachel continue to feast, only slowing down once the entire platter of pasta, the entire plate of lamb, and half of the other mixed vegetables were devoured. Charlie offered a mildly uncomfortable laugh, and moved to the seat opposite Rachel, sitting down. Rachel was a small woman, almost a foot shorter than Charlie, and had hair like copper wire, all uncontrollable curls flaring past her shoulders. It had been lank and lifeless when she'd come in, but the process of eating a meal fit for a man three times her size seemed to perk her up. Above her head there was a strange white spark, which waxed and ebbed like a depleted wick clinging to its last gasp of flame. Rachel finally brought her frenzy to a close by drinking deeply of... of a can of root beer, her eyes drifting shut for a moment, as she settled into her seat and a blissful smile crossed her face.

Even now, she wasn't gaunt anymore. As though the food had instantly gone from her mouth to her body, she'd filled out so that she had full, freckle-specked cheeks, and the dress that had hung like a garbage bag on a coat-rack off of her now filled out with her curves. With a sigh released, she opened her eyes, which now showed a sort of nearly-grey shade of blue, and the bliss seemed to drain out of her like someone'd pulled a plug. "I'm sorry, did you say something?" Rachel asked, her expression now utterly deadpan.

"I just asked if you mind if I call you Rachel," Charlie said.

"It's my name. Why shouldn't you?" Rachel asked. "Do you have any more?"

"More?" Charlie asked. "I... uh... Maybe?"

"Great. That's the first time I've eaten in months," she said.

"Did you die of starvation?" Charlie asked, flipping to the second page.

"No, I got hit by a car," Rachel said.

"Oh. I'm sorry. I just... usually when people land here looking like you did, it was because they starved to death."

"Oh, that had nothing to do with my death," Rachel said.

"I thought humans couldn't survive not eating for several months," Charlie said.

"They can't," Vaggie said, as she approached with the other half of the forms. "Charlie, correct me if I'm wrong but... doesn't she seem familiar somehow?"

"Not really," Charlie said. "I've never seen a human go this long without morphing, but there's a first time for everything, I guess."

"...uh huh," Vaggie said.

"Alright, let's get down to brass tacks!" Charlie said. "What's your name?"

"...Rachel, like I told you," she said.

"No, that's your deadname. It's not a good idea to cling to who you were before," Charlie said.

"According to who?" Rachel asked, an orange brow raising.

"According to... that's a good point. I'll have to look into that," she admitted.

"Here in Hell, a lot of people use this as a chance to reinvent themselves. They died as one person, usually a bad person. Down here they embrace the worst of themselves," Vaggie said.

"Well, I'm not going to do that. You can put me down as Rachel Scailes, thank you very much."

Both women stared at the redhead across from them.

"I'm sorry... Rachel what?" Charlie asked.

"Scailes. A-I-L Scailes," the woman said.

Both continue to stare at her, agape.

"Okay, I've obviously stepped on some kind of landmine here. Would you mind explaining why I've got you so flabbergasted?" Rachel asked, leaning forward in her chair.

"Did you have a son named Samuel?"

"Oh damn it all; you too?" Rachel seemed more annoyed than angry. "I'll tell you what I told them. Samuel was a child when I died. A child. I don't know anything about who he is, who he made enemies with, or where he is. Only that somehow he's scaring the shadows off of everybody, and people only started asking after him once the walls fell."

"I'm sorry, WHAT?" Vaggie demanded.

"I have nothing more to say on Samuel Scailes," Rachel said, firmly.

"...But... but Sam said that you died in 1995," Charlie said.

"I guess I did," Rachel said.

"Wow. Not the longest gap-fall I've ever seen, but..." Charlie said.

"No, Charlie, sweetie, listen," Vaggie grabbed Charlie's face and turned it toward her. "Listen to what she just said."

Charlie stared at her girlfriend for a moment, then turned to Rachel.

Oh.

"...But... Sam said you got into Heaven," Charlie said.

And as she watched, that spark finally stabilized, then flared; a blaze of light appeared above Rachel's head, expanding from a point into a dot, from a dot into a line, from a line into a band, and that band twisted and bent until it formed an almost complete halo of pure, warm white light, its gap aligned with the bridge of her nose.

"Heaven's not all it's cracked up to be," Rachel said.

The hovels of Heaven's lowest Cloud were stacked higher than the Tower of Babel had reached, before God smote it down. Well, for those who'd actually seen the thing, it wasn't so bold a feat of engineering. After all, one hundred and sixteen feet of mud-brick didn't exactly scrape the clouds. It wasn't the engineering of the Tower of Babel which had set the rumor mills of heaven a-whirl. No, it was that they were trying.

And even Hepsut wasn't immune to reality. He was one of the last of the Firstborn, only in what amounted to his infancy when Lucifer began his war for Heaven. The great flood of Secondborn were more his kin than those unspeakably ancient beings who could call themselves Firstborn. He wagered that if it was sheer scale of building that would upset the Father, then he would have given the Earth a second flood the moment the Eiffel Tower was completed, let alone the monsterous icon of mankind's hubris which was the Burj Khalifa. Or the Shanghai Tower. Or the Canadian National Tower. Or any of about two hundred of the damned things that humankind had gotten into their heads to build up, in raw spite against the Scattering and the spreading of the languages that had resulted from their first attempt at such an endeavor.

There was such hubris here. Hepsut had spent much of the last thirteen days just shifting stone. Sahaquiel had much to answer for. The walls that he had built should have been adamant, impervious to harm such that only God Himself could tear them down. And then, without warning, down they crumble, crushing underneath their great alabaster weight all of the many, many structures that had grown to abut the thing, thinking it an impervious and unchanging firmament. The edge of the vessel which contained them. And for an eon, they were right. But now? Now there were questions. And Sahaquiel would offer no answers.

Hepsut was tired. He was tired, and he wasn't even sure Angels were supposed to be able to be tired. He found himself in desperate need of rest, just leaning against the edge of a hovel and catching his breath.

"This is endless, brother," Hepsut said. Where Hepsut was one of the last Firstborn, Birah was one of the first Secondborn. He was bright where Hepsut was dark, wiry where Hepsut was built like a bull. "I had no idea there was just so much stone in those damned walls!"

"I think that was the trick of them," Birah said. "They were impervious because each strike against a brick of it had to punch through the combined strength of a hundred which overlapped it in space and time... Yeah, that sounds like the kind of bullshit Archangels get up to," Birah said.

"Mind your language," Hepsut said.

"Nobody's paying attention. Who cares what comes out of my mouth in private?" Birah griped, likewise trying to recover from the days of labor they'd had to do. For both of them, it was the first time they'd had to do manual work on such a scale as this. Neither had been there for the building of Heaven. "I think we're starting to run out of bodies."

"That would be a mercy," Hepsut agreed. A glance toward where the once pearly walls of Heaven had stretched from horizon to horizon, now there was a mound of broken scree, one that once had been so tall it crushed whole buildings under it. Now, it was only about the height of a single-story building, and grew smaller with each passing day. Clearing the mound away would only be the first step, though. Whatever calamity caused the Walls to fall was likely not just going to be unremarked and unnoticed by the things in the rest of Creation.

Even now, one could sit on a balcony of the ramshackle buildings that choked the space of the lowest of Heaven, and look down upon the Earth. And if you looked even farther, you could see the flaming pit that denoted the entry to Hell. That pit was burning bright, this day.

With sun setting, night approaching, there was no release from labor. The numbers of Heaven's inhabitants grew more listless the more work they did. Hepsut had heard Jabril decrying the humans as lazy and useless. Hepsut knew better. They knew fatigue more than any angel ever had. And for the immortal specters of the Good and Forgiven, there simply was an inviolate extent to which their energies could press. A wall, as some would put it, through which no willpower could sustain them or breach through.

Hepsut worried that this would be an excuse for more of them to Go Numb. Every time one did, it felt like failure to the Angel of Alms.

"Hep, did you see that?" Birah said.

Hepsut gave his head a shake, and turned to the direction that the Secondborn had faced. He got to his feet, his wings spreading out behind him. That was a strange light, alright, only visible now that the sun cast long red rays across Heaven. It was white, as all angels' was, but... but it seemed hot, instead of cold.

"Think we're getting some help?" Birah asked.

"I don't know," Hepsut said. He tensed his shoulders, and bounded off of the balcony, gliding down to the corner that the light had vanished around. When he reached it, he saw the light ahead of him, amidst the scree. He was about to bound over the bank of it, when there came a shifting noise, and then a crash, as a section of the fallen wall began to slide. "Slide! Slide!" he shouted, flapping into the sky to get out of its way. Birah, who had also been in the process of landing, slammed his wings down and chose to hover. But now that Hepsut was up here, he could see both what was at the heart of the slide, and what was the source of the light.

He was wearing the Plate of God.

The nearly-mythical armor made of bands alike to a serpent, covering its wearer from neck to foot, passed from the hands of God Himself unto Michael. Michael wore it long before Hepsut's creation, during the Banishment of the Leviathans. An armor which was stolen from Michael in the midst of Lucifer's Great Heresiarchy, and cast into oblivion. The question of 'how' drifted in Hepsut's mind, but far more pressing than that, was the question of who.

The one who wore that armor had four wings, each of which had four eyes within their structure, eyes which turned to the First and Secondborn as they hovered above the ruin. The collapse continued to shift and spill, to plummet and crush, but with a gauntleted hand, the stranger seemed to hold a prismatic barrier, one the likes of which Hepsut had never seen before. "What is he doing?" Hepsut asked.

"That's... that's not Angelic magic," Birah, the Spellbinder, said.

Slowly, the figure in the impossible armor turned to them, his circular pane of light that made up his halo not shifting in the slightest, always located on the far side of his head from them, and showed the lion helm of the Plate, only in the jaws of this helm was a death's head mask, through which blazing white eyes glared.

Hepsut found himself at a loss for words. It was obvious he was an Archangel. But at the same time, even Hepsut could tell there was more to him. That what was standing amidst the ruin was only the smallest part of a far more massive, far more powerful being. The only time Hepsut had ever felt such a presence, honestly... was when he spoke with the Godfriend, or the Taxiarch. Or when he watched God do His Yearly Works.

Or when he fought against Lucifer.

"Disappointing," the figure said, his voice having a terrible timbre to it. He cast his arm slowly to one side, and a huge section of the Walls of Heaven, one that they had been arduously shifting brick by brick because there was no other way... outright disappeared, as though evaporating into air. The lesser Angels shared a confused, concerned look, and the Archangel returned to ignoring them, sweeping his arm again and causing another section of the wall to vanish. Revealed under that sweep was an Innocent who was essentially mash. The appearance of that person gave pause to the Archangel. He then took a few steps to the soup of a Good Human, and laid his hand upon it. A rune in blazing white fire appeared over his head.

"Oh how in the fuck..." Birah said, eyes bugging in his head.

"Explain?"

"He shouldn't be able to do that!" Birah pointed.

"Should matters little in this day," the figure said, not turning back. And when the rune snapped again, it was to the advent of a blazing, white hot figure in iron, one that fell to the street with a muted clang, as the body of the Innocent quickly reconstituted itself, Regenerating. Regenerating like one of the Damned. How? HOW!

"Help me..." the Innocent said; she was a woman, it turned out, dusky skinned and black haired.

"Where does the Gentleman live?" the Archangel asked.

"What? You can't... You have to help me! My family is..."

"They will be helped. Tell me. Where does the Gentleman live?" the Archangel stressed again.

"I..." the Innocent said. She glanced to the other Angels. "I'm not supposed to say... to one like you."

"There is no one like me," the Archangel promised.

The Innocent hesitated, pushing herself up. As she did, fine linen clothing appeared on her body, returning her dignity. How? HOW! That was Creation Ex Nihilo! The Innocent didn't ponder such things, though. "The Gentleman lives beneath red hills and above green waters."

"Thank you," the Archangel said. Then he stood. With a snap of his fingers, there came a noise, like an enormous metal cable which had been under ruinous strain finally gave way and snapped. When it did, two others in various degrees of maceration appeared beside the Innocent, who gave a gasp of shock and dread, only to have it strangled when the Archangel held a hand over each, and they... Regenerated... like she had. The Innocent quickly embraced the two men who had been returned to her, and the Archangel turned from them. Another snap of his fingers, another loud metal snap, and all three vanished from sight.

"What are you?" Hepsut asked.

The Archangel looked up at him, then with a pulse of his own tetrad of wings, rose up to their level. He stared at them for a pregnant moment, then pulled the mask from his helm, to have the whole helm waft away as though it were made of incense smoke. He was rough-featured, not at all beautiful or refined. He was subtly asymmetrical in a way that no Archangel ever was. His eyes were beacons of blazing white light, his hair searing and licking white flame that was only visible because it was highlighted by the stronger light of his halo.

He had a face like a human.

"I am the end," the Archangel said. He raised his hand again, and again snapped his fingers. Another metal snap, and the Archangel was gone. An instant later, the hole that he'd cut into the scree collapsed and dumped the white stone into the void that his excavations had left behind.

"He was using demon magic. Demon magic, Hep!" Birah said, sounding mildly sick.

"We need to tell somebody about this," Hepsut said.

"Who? Michael?"

"Good luck finding him," Hepsut rolled his eyes.

"...then who? Gabriel?" Birah said.

"If we need to... somebody needs to hear of this," Hepsut said.

"In retrospect, I'm not surprised it took so long for the Purgatory Project to get its feet under it. You're dealing with an entrenched and deeply cynical status quo on one side, a naive ingenue on the other, and no shortage of admitted assholes in the middle. Literally anything that could work against the notion of a self-directed program of personal betterment, whether it was bound for Heaven or not, happened. And I'm not so proud that I can't admit that I thought she didn't have it in her. I thought she was like a lot of people I've known in my life. Addicted to passivity, reacting to the world as it came to her.

If I were to name one great failing of Hell, and of Heaven, but oddly enough not the Canadian and German governments, it would be institutional passivity. Complacency. The entire structure of reality seemed for the longest time dedicated to the creation and upkeep of a status quo that anybody with a functional ethical compass would find utterly unacceptable. A machine designed with ill intent to punish any attempts by the moral to create something better. And I saw her as an agent of that machine.

Well, she proved me wrong, didn't she? She proved us all wrong."

-Rachel Scailes, First of the Betrayed.