The Manse of Cain, First of The Damned, had a good location in High Central. This spot was usually denied easy entrance to Sinners, as it was supposed to be the domain of those Hellish Aristocrats who had earned a place near to Lucifer's Palace and his grim machinery of rulership. But there were three obvious exceptions.
Cain, for example, was the first human who, by giving over to his own envy, Damned himself. He had been a part of Hellish Society longer than Lucifer had. He was the only Sinner still alive who had travelled to all eight of the other Rings – including the Ring of Betrayal, which Lucifer destroyed. His imprisonment in Pride was mostly self-inflicted. As he was grandfathered into permission by every other ring, he could literally go wherever he pleased, Lucifer be damned. And the Old Houses of Hell remembered the myriad services that Cain had done to them over the eon since his damnation.
The next exception was Rachel Scailes. But she wasn't a Sinner, and she wasn't Damned. So the usual ways that people noted out that somebody didn't belong here passed over her without registering her any more than they would an inert lump of plastic.
And the third was Husk. But he was an exception because he was just that good at getting places people didn't want him.
"I hope you got a good plan for this one, dame," Husk said, as he put his muscles to tearing open the back door. It had been nailed shut at some point, but nails lost to rust had little purchase and his arms were not nearly so decrepit. "'Cause as a rule, Cain don't do nothing. At all."
"Trust that I do. Is... it supposed to look like this?" Rachel asked, looking suspiciously at the building that they were trying to sneak into.
Understandable. Considering the buildings surrounding it, it stuck out like a herpes-sore at a cotillion. Unlike the prim, pristine, and gilded manors and estates that flanked it and opposed it across the street, this one was none of those three things. While it did have the superstructure of a great mansion, the stature and the build of a Great House worthy of the name... the details betrayed it.
Like the dirt, for example.
The moment that the door was ripped from its moorings and swung open, a wall of dust came out, one that set Rachel to coughing deeply as she tried to wave the grey cloud away from her. After a few seconds, ended by her spitting phlegmatically and dislodging a bolus of grey-black onto the dead brown grass. Every place where dust or wind-blown dirt or debris could gather on this building, it did. It built up there until it either reached a point where the wind or rain could snatch it loose again, or became heavy enough to crash through the rooftop. Of course, that was a low likelihood occurrence. This Manse had been built to last.
Still, there was only so much Ragnarok-proofing that you could do in Hell, and two hundred years was a very long time in such environs.
"I was going to say that this place was a dump," Rachel said, scooping a smudge of dust out of her eye as she did, "but even I'm not blind to good craftsmanship. Or would you call it craftsdemonship?"
"Don't start with that bullshit, we'd be here all day," Husk said.
"Would you mind introducing us?" she gestured ahead of them, to the empty hall.
"Nah. You'll see when we get there," Husk said. The building was indeed built well, and built to last. And two hundred years ago, it had been one of the most resplendent manses that a human had ever held. There were still stories of the Study In Five Jades, which was tiled and walled and ceilinged in jade of five distinct colors in a more subdued – and in Husk's opinion more tasteful – edition of Lucifer's own Emerald Room. It spoke of libraries festooned with books from all Man's civilizations, a Library of Alexandria writ small. It spoke of vaults filled with riches to make a man's head spin and eyes pop.
But that was two centuries ago.
By the time that Husk got down here, the Manse had been absolutely picked clean. There was not so much as a speck of marrow left for a thief like him to extract from these old bones. Other, more enterprising larconists had won this race long before Husk even started running. All that was left was wood and nails, because unlike all else in this place, they were not worth the effort to extract.
Well, say a lie there. There were a few places where particularly spiteful and long lived enemies of Cain had done some minor insult by deconstructing a section of the manse. Judas had reportedly been among them. Once the Purges began in earnest, and Christ's Betrayer was expunged from Hell, they quickly got more pressing priorities that needed seeing to.
Rachel was almost as quiet as Husk was, barely a creak emitting from her passage through what were to Cain the bones of better days. She had experience moving silently. Given what she went through as a kid, he could now understand why. The dust here was thick, though. There was no concealing their passage, because every time they stepped, it was through an inch of dust onto the boards. The central passage of the house, the one which connected to all of the rooms on this side of the grand staircase and the front atrium – they had of course entered via the rear – was so packed with dust that it resembled a sand-desert, a great inch-and-a-half dune of dust humped in the center of the building where any wind could deposit it and then never blow it out again.
"This reeks of malicious neglect," Rachel said. "You're not bringing me here to view a carcass, are you?"
"...not exactly," Husk said.
Then they reached the door to the small study that stood open, its door causing a stilled vortex in the deposition of dust. Within was a window that was open a crack, and the wood along that crack was water-damaged and crumbling. There was less dust in this room than any other.
Mostly because the two of them were no longer alone.
"You wanna see Cain? There he is," Husk said, pointing to the man in the chair.
You could be forgiven for thinking him a mummy at first glance. His skin was grey, his hair was gray, and the chair he was sitting on was grey. But that grey was all dust. It layered him nearly an inch thick in most places. He sat, back straight, in a chair that was built robustly enough for somebody who weighed three times as much as Cain did. Fortunate, because that chair had sat in that exact spot and orientation for centuries now. And Cain sat in it still.
Cain seemed to be naked, his clothes all moth-eaten into oblivion, his olive skin only peeking through the thick layer of dust in certain places. One of his eyes was completely choked with the grey smut, as though sealing it. The other eye was a solid green orb, without iris or pupil, that Husk could nevertheless tell was not-watching in the vague direction of the window to the outside world. His horns that reached up through his curly black hair were alike to that of an ibex, and his beard provided modesty that clothing denied him.
"...Okay, explain," Rachel said.
"Cain ain't done shit in centuries, as I hear it told," Husk said, as he pulled out his lit cigar from extradimensional storage and continued to smoke it. At this point, Cain had already tacitly forgiven much larger grievances against his property than the presence of some ash. "Just got tired of doin' the same Hellish shit day in and day out, sat down in his study, and stopped paying attention."
"He Went Numb," she said. Then she sneezed hard, and had to flick away a clump of smut that fell from the brittle cobwebs above to land on her hair. "I despise these things..."
"Oh, he's still alive," Husk said, reaching over and giving Cain a prod. His skin was still warm, and though you couldn't easily see it, he was still breathing. "Still useless to us."
"That's exactly what Going Numb is," she said. Then she reached into her hair and pulled out the knitting needle holding her up-do in place so that she could dig through the mess of her hair and pull something out. In her hand were five dessicated spiders. "...disgusting."
"That's a heaven thing, I take it?" Husk asked.
"Despair in a place that's supposed to be paradise does not do good things to a person's psychology. Damn it," she muttered. "So we're going to have to hire that imp to do it again, this time on Cain."
"Why are you so set on this? Just figure the bitch out on your own. You ain't dumb. You'll get her number," Husk said.
"I am a partially trained psychologist, and the brunt of my social work experience is trying to keep people from the brink of despair in Heaven. I need every edge I can get," she said. And Husk could see exactly where Sam got that quality from.
"Well there'll be other ones," Husk said.
"I thought you didn't 'do' pep talks," she said, turning a wan expression at him. Then she paused, and glanced past him. "...that's odd. How often does Cain move?"
"Not once in a couple hundred years. Why?" Husk asked. Then he glanced back.
Cain wasn't staring out the window.
He was staring at Rachel.
In particular, he was staring at the arc of her halo which now poked through her collapsed beehive-do.
Instinct roared to him, and Husk responded by tearing Rita from her resting place and trying to get it between him and the First of the Damned, but Cain was faster even than the most practiced and cunning move that Husk was capable of. With almost mechanical precision, Husk had his wrist bent down and twisted as Cain instantly took his feet and invaded Husk's space. When Husk's tendons betrayed him and Rita fell from his grasp, he was then heaved hard into the far wall, cratering him against the barren wood panels.
Husk shook the stun out of his head, because he didn't have time for that. He tried to pull his throwing knife – slicked with Stygium for extra fuck-you – but his arm didn't obey him. Cain had managed to dislocate his shoulder with that throw. How in the fuck? Husk wasn't so myopic as to claim that he was immune to ambush, but he had the next best thing. Any time somebody was getting offed, it was heralded maybe a couple seconds before it happened by somebody in the area's luck changing drastically. Why hadn't it... oh. Oh that was why.
He couldn't see his own luck.
And Rachel's luck may as well have not existed.
Husk reached for his Saturday Night Special instead, as he was down his good arm and needed means to cause pain. He fired a warning shot directly in to Cain's chest. He didn't so much as flinch with pain from the bullet punching through his skin and causing red blood to start to wash away the dust that caked him. "Back the fuck off, buddy!" Husk demanded.
Cain, though, lightly held Rita between his fingers and ignored Husk. With his empty hand, he reached up to his face and clawed out all the dust that had obscured his other eye, continuing to stare at Rachel, who was leaning away with a nearly empty look on her face. It wasn't fear. Apprehension more like. After a few blinks, Cain now saw with two eyes once more. He reached up and started to strike the layers of filth from him, raising grey clouds around him as he did.
"...what are you?" Cain asked, his voice smooth and bearing an accent that seemed either Middle Eastern or North African.
"Rude," Rachel said.
Cain tilted his head for a moment. Then his lips twitched and he ran a hand down his now four foot long beard. "I apologize. I have been indelicate," he said. "But understand that you have come uninvited into my house, with a man who is every inch of him the thief. And I have never in my life or afterlife seen the likes of you. So please. Could you enlighten me?" he asked offering a polite hand, palm up, toward her.
She turned a glance to Husk, then laid her hand atop Cain's own. "I am Rachel Scailes. I'm a social worker."
Chapter 8
No Bird Soars Too High
"If you will forgive my incredulity, I have met 'social workers' before. Deluded people with pushy agendas, all," Cain said, briefly laying his other hand atop Rachel's before turning and walking to the window. He ran a finger along the pane, having to score a deep rut though the dust to get there. "And it has been a while since I've seen anything new. You are new, Rachel Scailes. And not for your agendas."
"You're naked," she pointed out.
"You are not complaining," Cain said, turning to face them again, again having only a reprieve from nudity by grace of a lot of facial hair. She nevertheless looked somewhat uncomfortable at the way he was right now. He gestured toward her head. "What is the meaning of that?"
"Dame, don't..." Husk began, but there was a whizzing sound, and Rita was suddenly buried into the wood beside Husk's head.
"Please don't interrupt me, thief. We are in polite company," Cain said, not even glancing at him.
Rachel pulled the other knitting needle from her hair and let the rest of her hair fall to its resting, chaotic state. And now that it wasn't trying to win a fight against gravity, it no longer concealed that there was a Gapped Halo above her head, which gave the room a slightly otherworldly light. "This... I got upon entry to Heaven. And I apparently kept it when Gabriel kicked me out," Rachel said.
"Gabriel is being his usual thoughtless self?" Cain asked.
"He tortured me to what you would call 'death' three days in a row, looking for answers I didn't have to give him," she said.
"Then you have my condolences. Gabriel has never been a pleasant one to be around, especially since Lucifer's Fall From Grace," Cain said. He turned to the door then tilted his head again. "It strikes me that I have no tea to offer you. And I have seen little beyond what lays beyond yon window," he gestured vaguely to the one he'd spent several centuries staring mindlessly at, as he moved to Husk's side. With a sudden push, he shoved Husk back against the wall. There was a sudden burst of pain, a wet and meaty crunch, then odd comfort, with feeling and control returning to his right hand. Cain turned to face Rachel once more, giving his back to Husk.
If Husk had been an ambitious person, he could have pulled Rita from the wall and made himself a Legend as the man who finally killed Cain.
Husk was not an ambitious person. He tucked Rita into an extradimensional pocket.
"So tell me, Rachel – may I call you Rachel? – what is your opinion of Hell, as one who has seen the other side of it?" Cain continued, ushering her into the hallway. Husk trailed, because as much as he was in thoroughly uncharted territory, with Cain returned to his senses so abruptly and so... politely... Rachel was still relatively defenseless. Husk may not have been a truly dangerous bastard, but he had more edges in a fight than she had. The first time she tried to throw a punch, she'd had her fingers curled over her thumb. A fighter, she was not.
"There is more despair in a single house in Heaven than I've seen in all of Pride Ring," she said.
"You ain't even seen a fraction of Pride Ring," Husk added.
"I've seen that fraction, and am good at interpolation," she countered.
"This is altogether very strange," Cain said. "Despair in Heaven? I would call you a liar but such things as I see with my eyes are hard to deny."
"Things have changed quite a bit in the last few centuries, while you were sitting in that chair," Husk admitted.
"Could you... please, find something to wear? I'm not comfortable having this conversation with you naked," Rachel said.
"Ah. Forgive me. Time has eluded me; let me just..." Cain said. And then his eyes boiled with seething blackness from their outer rims inward, and he pulled a piece of thread from his beard. Once his eyes were black, and bruises started to spread across the skin of his face. That thread expanded, growing out into cloth, and from cloth into a simple but very comfortable looking robe, which he put on without notice.
"Where'd you learn that one?" Husk asked.
"I have spent several decades in the marshes of Lust with the imps of that place. Incredible masters of their strange magic. And they were willing to teach it for exorbitant prices," Cain said, his green-on-green eyes returning but the bruising around his eyes only receding more slowly as he Regenerated the injury away. "Would that they were willing to teach me their deep secrets. Alas. If this pleases you, would you explain why you have called upon the First of the Damned?"
"Of course. Do you recall a Sinner by the name of Fiona O'Daire, one who until recently took the form of a red-scaled dragon?" she asked.
"Until recently? All the time that I knew her she was of red hide," Cain asked, pausing to stare at a room which was utterly empty. There was a complicated look on his face as he swept his eyes along barren walls, and empty shelves that lined them. "...I have many house calls to make, it seems."
"Trophy room?" Husk asked.
"Something of the sort," Cain said. The next door was to that short hall that they'd come in through. "I know Fiona. In many ways. She is a troubled soul. What has become of her?" he asked.
Husk turned Rachel a look, a warning one, and she seemed to catch it and think for that half second that conversation allowed so that she could come up with an answer that was less revealing and more appropriate to the second most dangerous Sinner in Hell. "So you do know about her mental issues?" she sidelined.
"To call them that is to almost reduce them to parody. She had the impulse control of a trapped animal at her best days, of of a mad one at her worst," Cain said.
"She was recently... wounded... mentally," Rachel said. "Psychologically damaged. And..."
"And you think I have some magic power to restore her? I may," Cain said. "It has been very, very long since I practiced the impish Wyrds. Longer even now, circumstances what they are. Does she still align with Jingo? I swore that I would take no part in his stupidity in the streets of Pentagram City."
"Hyuu-boy. Yeah, makes sense you won't 'a known that," Husk said. "Pride War's over."
Cain turned to him, a brow lofted. "Who won?" he asked.
"Nobody," Husk said.
"That is an ending I can believe," Cain said. "I am happy that Jingo is apparently dead, for he was a fiend of a man too strange by a half who earned a hundred times over his Damnation. Whomever the Archcrone is has gone as well?"
"And most of the Von Brutte family," Husk said.
"Mutual destruction?" Cain prompted.
"Outside-context antagonist," Husk said.
"Oh. He doesn't know about the Radio Demon," Rachel said. She then shook her head. "I need your understanding of O'Daire and her history, so I can try to come up with a treatment plan, and figure out what her original Sin is."
"Her original sin?" Cain asked. He turned to her. He shook his head lightly. "I may not know of Radio Demons, but I did watch Purgatory fall into the Abyss. There is no redemption for the damned anymore. And nobody who would even seek to try."
"That's where you're wrong again," Husk said. Cain looked somewhat less amused. He puffed on his cigar, and nodded to Rachel. "Do you wanna tell him, or should I?"
"Tell me what?" Cain asked. Rachel, though, made a magnanimous gesture toward him.
"Let me tell you a bit about Charlotte Magne," Husk said, letting his chuckles put a layer of dark levity to his words. "The proprietor of the Happy Hotel, and builder of a fuckin' Heaven In Hell."
"Charlotte... Magne..." Cain said. Then he glanced to Rachel, who could only shrug. "I have not awakened. I have gone mad."
"Yup. Welcome to 2022," Husk said.
Raguel stooped by the groaning body of one of his brothers. His arm was broken in grisly fashion, his jaw dislocated if not likewise broken. He seemed only moderately conscious. His armor, made all of Seraphic Steel plates, was crushed and shattered.
"We cannot allow his continued aggression," Hepsut said, as he made the call to Raphael.
"We do not know what transpired here," Raguel said plainly.
"What has transpired, is that this 'Yaldabaoth' has brutalized another of my brothers," Hepsut said with heat in his voice.
"And do we know why?" Raguel asked.
"I don't care why! It doesn't matter why!" Hepsut said.
"And that is why I am in charge of this taskforce, and not you," Raguel noted, perhaps a bit harshly. Hepsut didn't answer that, though. As he was not an Archangel, decorum dictated that he do as his betters demanded. "But you have complaints. Air them."
"He is mocking us, and we treat him with care as though coddling a child. Why?"
"What do you do when you are handed a strange devise which emits a ticking noise?" Raguel asked.
"What?" Hepsut asked.
"When handed such a device, do you crush it under foot? Or do you instead endeavor to learn of its nature before you launch out into something which you cannot take back? It would make all the difference to your health if the device you were handed was a clock, or if it were a bomb," Raguel said.
Hepsut swung his eyes along the edge of the Rat Towers that stretched out toward every horizon, and to where the last ruins of the Walls of Heaven stood. Here stood the hard-scrabble farms that were at this point a tangled mess of dying brown, the poisonous leafy greens and stems of specially developed strains of potato murdered so that the tubers that the plants created could be effectively harvested. Raguel's knowledge of agriculture was not great, as he was the Archangel of the Scales, not of the Plow, but he nevertheless made a point to know the nature of such things.
He was told by Borlaugim that ordinarily, such leafy litter was usually only so tall as one's hips, at the highest. This pile of dying nightshade was easily as tall as Raguel's eyes.
"He has gone into the plants for some reason," Raguel said.
"Why? Is he hungry?" Hepsut asked, obviously not really believing it.
"He may well be," Raguel said, beginning to walk through the plants, heedless of how they smutted and stained his armor. Hepsut, perhaps unwilling to sully his armor, flapped his wings and hovered nearby. "Or perhaps this place, once a village, has been converted in desperation to a farm plot, and what was buried under its agrarian foundations he seeks to bring to the light."
"A bit of a reach, Raguel," Hepsut said.
"He is not wrong," There was a flap of wings and Forfax joined them. The squat, bald and broad-faced angel appeared walking alongside Raguel, his sharp eyes sweeping the jungle of dying green-manure that they were walking through. "There is a change in the air. I can feel it."
"What are you doing here?" Hepsut asked. He turned a glance to Raguel, but Raguel shrugged.
"Forfax agreed to help," Raguel felt no need to elaborate.
"He's a Gabrielite," Hepsut said.
"And what does that make you? A Michelin, or simply a coward?" Forfax asked. He didn't even turn a glance toward Hepsut. "Heaven has changed, and I will not sit by and do nothing when the heart of Father's ambitions is bleeding."
Raguel nodded, understanding Forfax's desire to do something. He also understood that sometimes doing the wrong thing for the right reasons was altogether more catastrophic than doing nothing at all, however. He was in no position to judge Forfax.
Who knows? In the future, history may look much more kindly on Forfax than it would on Raguel.
"I have seen Yaldabaoth with my own eyes. I know the smell of him. And I smell him here," Forfax said.
"Have you any insight into his character?" Raguel asked.
"Do you have insight in the character of a villain who has stolen into your house? Or do you simply kick him out?" Forfax demanded. Raguel simply turned a look at him. Then Forfax scoffed. "And I forget who I am talking to. Damn your strange talents, Raguel. You make a fool of me."
"I would be the last to call you a fool. I may call your actions impetuous, or ill advised, but not foolish," Raguel said.
"Hold. Look there," Forfax said, pointing slightly aside in the leafy litter. Hepsut summoned his sword, but Raguel could see nothing of note. Forfax waded through the dying plants and shoved some aside, until it revealed a potato-strewn hole that had been bored a good ten feet down, concealed from easy sight by the potato-tops from overhead viewing.
"Yaldabaoth is clever. Had not Forfax searched for him, this may well have been lost to the harvest entirely," Forfax said.
"What is it?" Raguel asked, gently pushing aside mature tubers and leaf litter, and finally heavily taxed soil.
"It was eleven feet deep, so it was eight feet lower than the topsoil we have dumped here," Forfax said, continuing to shift potatos, mud, and very occasional stones. Wait. Those weren't stones. Those were chunks of primitive concrete. Forfax dug quickly, and revealed at the bottom of that hole a pad of Roman fresco. Raguel looked at it.
"Attrezzo?" Raguel said, looking at the barely legible word rendered in colored tiles. "This was a toolmaker's smithy in the old days."
"What would an ancient, human tool be to the Demiurge?" Hepsut asked.
"As we have no concept of the Demiurge's plans, we cannot even hope to guess," Raguel said.
"He dragged it yon," Forfax said, pointing toward the granary building that stood near the middle of this section of the field. "It was of great weight. Perhaps near a tonne. Such that he did not dare to carry it lest it drive his feet into the soil like piles."
"A direction and a point of his itinerary is more than we had before. Lead, Forfax," Raguel said.
Forfax only brought them to the edge of the overgrowth when he went rigid as a stone. Raguel took a place at his side, and followed his eyes as though heeding a pointer-hound. And lo, there did Raguel see in the crumbling granary a queer light. It was like his own, but brighter, and hot where his own was cold. They said not a word, as the Demiurge stooped through the door, turned, and saw them.
There was a moment, where all were still, save for the beating of airborne Hepsut's wings. He stared at them, dispassionate, his lion helm missing, and his white-fire hair burning against the circular pane of his halo. Then, he turned minutely, his eyes still locked on the three of them, as though in conspiracy to another still out of sight.
"Leave," said the Demiurge. And a moment later, before Raguel could do anything to prevent it, there was the flutter sound of an angel departing.
"Hepsut, find out who that was," Raguel said.
"But..."
"Do not question me in this. Get your brother and track it!" Raguel barked. Hepsut was silent for a moment, but backed away. "Forfax, can I trust that you are not tasked to fight him?"
"I am not," Forfax said.
"Then tell whom you must what you saw and where. I will stop him for as long as I can," Raguel said.
Forfax didn't need urging. He simply nodded, then with a flutter he Transited and was gone.
Raguel stared at the Demiurge for a moment more. "Please do not bring violence here. This need not end in blood."
"If only reality were so kind," the Demiurge said. He lifted a hand, and his reaper of Man appeared in it. "I can not be stopped."
"And that is why I must try," Raguel said. "I am sorry."
"...yes. Yes you are," Yaldabaoth answered him.
Then, as far as the outside world was concerned, the two locked themselves in a staring contest. But Hepsut, outside the radius described, saw it for what it was. Raguel had enacted a Time Lock and a Space Lock on that entire side of the field, the Grand Seal that few Angels could match. Slowly, gradually, the sight of Raguel and the Demiurge began to fade red, scarlet creeping in where white was, until the red faded deeper into blacks. Hepsut then had nothing he could do but go and find Birah the Spellbinder, as a sphere of pristine beyond-black loomed in the breadbasket of Heaven.
And not a soul outside would be able to know what happened within, until the Locks fell.
Charlie had a tendency to fret.
Given that she was attempting what was on paper an impossibility, had vulnerable and damaged people boarding under her roof, and a lot of expectations that she wasn't sure she was capable of shouldering nevertheless dumped onto her back, it was understandable. Husk and Rachel had gone out. Again. Despite Charlie having been entirely clear on how dangerous that was to Rachel's wellbeing. She had actually broken down and contacted Uncle Purson about the Innocent, over the last few days. Well, it was Aunt Purson for that conversation, but Charlie couldn't begrudge her a change of face once in a while. And the Innocent lacked almost all of the defensive powers that the lowliest of the Damned possessed.
Vaggie was a terrible example of a Sinner, for example. Her Regeneration was paltry, and her physical capabilities little better than they'd been when she was alive, and her luck was simply atrocious. But there was a reason for that; she had been run into the dirt by the Dealmaker Karasnikov in the first week of her Damnation. He had torn from her almost every whit of hellish power that was due to her, and sold it away. She Regenerated limbs over weeks instead of days. She literally had her eye stolen so that it could not properly heal. Her magical wellspring was essentially dry. And the only Sinner she could beat in a feat of pure strength was probably Niffty.
Rachel was weaker than her in every respect.
The Innocent needed no defensive means in lofty Heaven, and thus received none. They may as well be mortals, only they'd some ressurective power that Purson had not gone into any great detail on. Even the Penitent at least got the benefits of Magical and Physical Intangibility, so that they could only with consent of both parties even be touched. Rachel was vulnerable out there.
Of course, this discounted Husk. But Charlie barely knew Husk, even after nearly a year of him manning that desk as her 'greeter'. She knew that he was stronger than any Sinner left in the Hotel except Alastor, but that was the extent of her knowledge. Would he be able to keep Rachel safe against the worst that Hell had to offer? Honestly, and perhaps incorrectly, she doubted it.
Still, those worries turned out to be wasted mental effort, because the door to the lobby opened, and Rachel was heading back inside. Her halo was being more-or-less concealed by the umbrella which was keeping the early winter snow from landing on her. Autumn had been short this year. Dad already decided to let Winter have its way.
"You need to stop doing that..." Charlie began.
"You need to stop treating me like I'm an infant made of spun glass," Rachel said, flapping the slush from her umbrella and dumping it into the holder near the door. The next one in, though, prevented Charlie's rebuttal from even leaving her mouth.
"What are you doing here?" Charlie asked, and felt panic start to build up in the base of her spine. That was Cain. The First of the Damned. She had never met him, because he stopped doing... well, anything... not long before she was born.
"Greetings. May I enter your house?" Cain asked. He was an attractive middle-aged man, for what it seemed, but there were enough stories that Mom had told Charlie about him that his presence was an alarm unlike any other alarm.
"That depends. What do you want here?" she demanded, storming up to him and staring him in the eye. Cain, as it turned out, wasn't a very tall Sinner. But considering that Charlie was a fairly robust six feet tall and change, her viewpoint was perhaps a bit skewed.
"I have been asked about my history with a certain woman whom I am given to understand is your guest, here," Cain said.
"To what end?" Charlie pressed.
"That she be free of madness and grief," Cain said.
"...why should I trust you?" she asked.
"If you do not trust my word, ask your mother to vouch for me," Cain said with an easy shrug. Why was he wearing a bathrobe? The length of his hair and his beard made sense given he was reputed to have sat around doing nothing for more than Charlie's entire lifetime, but the bathrobe? Weird. Charlie narrowed her eyes at him, and in that moment wished that Sam was still here. Because Sam could have taken one look at this guy and told her if he was lying. Instead, she had to trust her instincts.
Which were notoriously unreliable.
"You may enter," she said. "But if you cause any harm to the people under my roof, you'll be leaving a lot faster than you came in, and I can't guarantee you'll be doing it from the ground floor."
"And at last I see some aspect of your purported father in you," Cain said with a delighted look. He took a step into the lobby, and looked around. "You seem to have had your tribulations. Is there a place that I may refresh myself? My manse lacks the magic of indoor plumbing, since its pipes were ripped out and stolen.
"Did-I-hear-a-man-say-he-needs-a-shower?" Niffty demanded, skidding to a halt nearby having appeared from God only knows where.
"Why yes, small lady. Is such a place available to a visitor such as myself?"
"I don't know if..." Charlie began.
"Of course! Right this way! You're gorgeous!" Niffty said, moving to take his hand, but Cain snatched it away for a moment. When he saw how crestfallen that made her, he sighed, relented and let her grab his other hand and drag him toward the showers where Sam's opening outburst set all of this recent hullabaloo in motion.
"She seems like she is going to spy on him as he bathes," Rachel said, watching as they pushed through a door and vanished from sight.
"I don't think Cain could give less of a shit about that if you paid 'im," Husk said, shouldering past her and heading for the bar.
"Husk. Explain," Charlie demanded, catching him by his wing before he could move entirely past her.
"Rachel got it in her head to talk to Cain. I went out there so the cannibals couldn't eat her," Husk said with utter deadpan.
"And why are you even going out there?" Charlie demanded of Rachel. "You don't look anything like anybody out here. You stick out like a hammer-struck thumb!"
"Cain's sin is Envy," Rachel said.
"What?" Charlie asked.
"He and I spoke on the ride back. And it's obvious that he lacks the overweening pride, self-destructive lust or all consuming gluttony that would damn him. If the biblical account can be trusted – which by his testimony was very incomplete – then it was envy which drove him to the first murder and thus damned him. If he were to be a guest here, the moral failure he would have to conquer would be his envy," Rachel said.
"You figured that out from one conversation?" Charlie asked.
"Even atheists know the story of Cain and Abel. There's a lot of cultural baggage that informs my interpolation," Rachel admitted. Husk finally shrugged his way out of Charlie's grasp and finished his march to the bar. Rachel moved in step with Charlie as she moved back through the lobby. "The problem that I've managed to glean from the postage-stamp version of O'Daire's story isn't that there isn't enough sin to guess which one is her anchor, but that there's way, way too much."
"So it might not just be cleaning her soul of one sin to Redeem her?" Charlie asked.
"I'm not so sure about that," Rachel said. "When I said that Cain's sin is Envy, think of all the evils he has done as a result of that envy? The people he's killed or hurt or swindled, not just because he wanted what they had but because of the effects of the consequences of his actions. Knock-on effects and down-stream repercussions. He may have acted with pride and wrath and greed, but the first stone that tumbled in the avalanche that followed was that of envy. We need to find O'Daire's first stone, and that means tracking it back through the avalanche that it spawned."
"I hope you're right about this, Rachel," Charlie said. Because she had very little idea what to do if Rachel was wrong about it.
The door to the back stairs was kicked open with gusto and perhaps a bit too much enthusiasm, as the imp began to strut her way through the lobby. Oh, what now?
"Bask in my brilliance and aptitude, for I have here worked a miracle!" Krieg declared, arms cast wide and a huge grin on her face.
"Is Fiona awake?"
"She is now merely asleep, though she did show a split-second of cognizance before I hexed her into slumber," she said.
"Then we're continuing apace. And you even did it a half day ahead of schedule," Rachel said.
"I still expect to be paid for the full day," Krieg said.
"Acceptable, yes?" Rachel turned to Charlie, who sighed and nodded. "Yes. Do we need to call somebody to get you?"
"Ah, but I can handle such things myself," she said, while Rachel went into the office to get the money. The little imp swept her arm behind her in a broad arc, hissing something inaudible through her teeth as she did.
And then just stood there.
After a moment, she turned, looked behind her, and saw that nothing had changed.
"Well. Drat. I thought I had observed that wyrd correctly. I have missed something," Kreig said. She then pulled her Hellphone from her pocket and hit the call button. "Moxxie, I need your attention... Of course, it's dinner time, why wouldn't you be?" a muffled shout came through the phone. Charlie could tell it was Moxxie delivering exasperated displeasure at something, if not exactly what he was shouting. "Don't be so dramatic. I am not requiring you to dislodge yourself from your moment of intimacy, simply to create a portal so I need not slog an hour to Imp City."
The sigh that was voiced on the other side of the line even reached Charlie was a defeated note common across all planes of reality. A few seconds later, a flaming rent appeared in the lobby of the hotel, one that revealed on its other side a hallway of a small apartment building. Audible through that portal was the sound of a door slamming, and then a number of locks being engaged.
"Excellent," Krieg said, ending one call and starting another. Rachel finally got back and started to hand out the money.
"If I come across others who need similar sorts of magical aid..." Charlie began.
"I take a thoroughly mercenary approach to these things, Princess of Hell; I will do what I am paid to do," Krieg said, as she waited for the line to connect on the other end. "If you have work and the means to pay for it, I will do it. Strange. Mother usually does not let me ring out."
"I'd say it was a pleasure to do business with you, but I barely noticed you were here at all," Rachel said.
"You flatterer," Krieg said. With a grumble under her breath, she ended the call, snatched the money, gave a nearly mocking bow to Charlie, then walked through the portal, and sauntered away.
"...How long is this going to stay here?" Rachel finally asked, as the portal made no overtures as to closing itself.
Oh for crying out loud...
As far as devices of human manufacture go, the Gyrfalcon was a work of art. Stolas would even put it on par with the creations of Sahaquiel. It lacked much of the elegance of the Exorcists, but the fact that two Sinners and an imp could put this together in the course of several hours with only a vague notion of what the end result was expected to be spoke more to the levels of mastery that these humans had achieved than it did for the gulf of aptitude that supposedly eternally separated the monkey from the angel.
It was around six tonnes of Man's inability to admit its limitations. It reeked of magic and engineering mixed to the point where it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. Literally. Just looking at it in the few moments before Stella returned was enough to tell him that there was a mastery of structural magic in this device that, had Lucifer had it during his first attack, he would surely have sat the throne of God at the end of it.
And then there was the one intended to wear it. Stella entered the room, took one look at him, and her face fell in dismay. It did every time she looked at him, these days. Despite its inevitability, it still hurt to receive, every single time.
"What do you want now?" Stella demanded of him. Her voice had the gentleness of steel rasps tearing apart copper. It always did, now.
"I wanted..." Stolas began, but the words failed before the sheer weight of her disapproval. "I wanted to..."
"Stand around like a numpty wasting my time when I've got actually FUCKING IMPORTANT WORK TO DO? Because if that's the case, you're doing a SMASHING job!" she screeched at him.
"I know, I know. I want to help, in any way I can, but..." Stolas reached out, as though trying to pull the words he needed to say from the air around him. But like the air itself, when he closed his fingers, it slipped effortlessly between them.
"You can't," Stella said, turning away and storming over to her desk, which was decorated by scraps of every standard she had ever had her army bring low and kill during the Forever War. It looked almost like a quilt, so varied and many were the scraps of enemy flags. Actually, now that he tilted his head, it actually was properly quilted. You could use that thing as a blanket, if it wasn't rolled up along the back of a writing desk. "The Most Ancient Laws deny the transfer of legions between the members of the Ars Goetia under any circumstance. I have to start from scratch. Fucking again!"
"Just because I cannot give you manpower, doesn't mean I can't assist in some other way. Somehow," Stolas began.
"Just stop. If you actually cared, you would have done something meaningful twenty fucking years ago," Stella bit out at him.
"Well I'm doing it now," Stolas said.
He'd seen all of this.
He considered it, in the pit of his being, the greatest mistake that he ever made not that he followed Lucifer in Rebellion. Had he known the ending, and the pain of it, he today would have made exactly the same decisions, save one; he would have not bothered sparing Cecutus on the battlefield. He would have stabbed the archer. Just once. Just a little. He wouldn't have been able to kill him, things being as they were, but the satisfaction would have been sweet and long-lived. One Angel's mercy, or cruelty; besides that, he would do it all again. No, his greatest mistake was to read The Prophecy.
It was a day-by-day document that if read, could describe everything from the moment of God's Creation of Hell until the present day, and then if you kept reading, would take you into the future. Invaluable as a historical text, Stolas had made that critical error in judgment. He read ahead.
He read all the way ahead.
He followed The Prophecy through everything that he did or would ever do. Every choice that he would ordinarily have reasonably made in the moment, laid out an eon before it transpired. And every single thing that he read had happened, even the things he tried to avoid. Every. Single. Thing.
Except for two.
Octavia.
And Blitzie.
"A day late and a Soul short," Stella grumbled. She turned a glaring red eye at him. "I don't even have the strength to be angry at you. That's how fucking tired I am. Isn't that pathetic? The Duchess of Iron, so weary that she cannot even shout?"
"Neither of us expected to be in this position," he lied gently. He'd read about this argument, too. "But now, everything is for Octavia. I will not see her deprived of a mother, not for anything under Heaven."
"And how exactly am I supposed to 'win ground', on Heaven? All I have is that," she hurled a make-up case at the Gyrfalcon, which refused to budge from the impact, "and less than a hundred stragglers who leaked in from the back line of battle. That's not enough to win a game of polo."
Not the way Hell played it, at least.
But that wasn't the point. "You keep speaking as though you're going to be sent up there alone. Was Asmodeus alone and helpless when he sent the first wave?" he gently noted. Stella rolled her eyes. "You are not expected to single handedly break the defenses of heaven, Stella. You are expected to lead. And though you are correct, that by law I can send no men to you... there are other sources."
"Sources like who?" Stella asked, the low-banked coals of her never-fleeing anger glowing in her visage, for once not blasting out in explosive bursts.
"You may not like my first option," Stolas hedged.
"Satan. You expect me to ask Satan for help? After all the two of us did to him? He'll laugh me out of the room," Stella looked less than impressed.
"Not Satan. The Wrath Volunteer Regiments," Stolas said. She tilted her head at him, not grasping the difference. "Have you not been... Oh, right. Yes, you were at the spa when they were formed," Stolas said. "There are vast swathes of Furies, Wild-Blood Hounds and bloodthirsty imps that have pledge to follow any leader that will loose them against Heaven."
"That sounds... moronic and suicidal," Stella said.
"I never claimed that they were intelligent, just eager," Stolas said. "I have some knowledge of their capabilities. The imps, I mean. They are a sterner stuff than... well..." he turned a glance to the runty, straight horned imp who was cleaning the mess that the make-up case made when it shattered against the powered armor.
"They would have to be," Stella said.
"They host regular battles of physical might and dominance. They live to fight. Agriculture is merely what they do so that they may pursue their passion toward violence," Stolas said, remembering that time a bit over a year ago when Blitzie showed such beautiful supremacy in those deliciously physical competitions. Stella offered a scoff.
"If you're trying to make them sound exactly like the Iron Guard, I'm not buying it," she said.
"They are not yours. I will admit that to you," Stolas said. "But they want to fight. And they want a leader. You could simply go to Wrath, point at one of them and tell him to raise a legion, and he would do it with a grin," Stolas said.
Stella stared at him for a long time, before sighing. "Fine. That will get me some cannon fodder at least. And if they're better than that, every legion needs its Velites. But I need heavier soldiers.
"Furies," Stolas said.
"Satan will not be happy if I wrench too much of his populace..." Stella began.
"He has outright asked us to do it. Octavia was there. She will tell you the same thing," Stolas said.
Stella looked to the window for a moment, her anger fading to wistfulness for a moment. "For just a moment, until you brought up Via... I could lie to myself and say that the last two decades didn't happen. That you weren't... you... and I wasn't me," she said. Then she turned to him. "But there is very little room for such lies, is there? This is not Sloth, and there are no False Worlds for us to live in. We have a responsibility."
"Yes. We do. To Via," Stolas said.
There were things he wished he could tell her. That he knew she was going to survive the battle that was coming. That Octavia was going to be be alright. That they could win this day in the new War for Heaven. But the fact was, the Prophecy had one very critical cut-off point for any individual reading it. No matter who you were, you could not read past the moment of your own death.
On the field of Heaven.
Staring Cecutus in the eye.
Saving Stella's life, one last time.
"Now let's get you some soldiers," Stolas said, forcing his mind off of his very near death. It wasn't the time to bemoan his fate. It was his fault for knowing it was coming. And right now, Stella needed to be strong, so he had to be strong for her. So she could, in turn, be strong for Via.
Mother wasn't at the office.
And neither were all of Uncle Blitz's people at theirs. Of course they had an excuse, in that they were killers specializing in dealing trans-planar assassination. They could be anywhere under Heaven right now, earning their own keep. Krieg may not have been of a sort with Uncle Blitz, but she certainly appreciated his level of ambition.
From a ramshackle start-up based out of a van with two completely wet-behind-the-ears killers trying to earn enough money to afford any room in any building, to their new edifice, as well as holding a strong stake in her own endeavors as well as those of her adoptive cousin Loona, he was proof in the flesh of how high the lowly imp could go. And she would emulate his rise in her own right. She was already Archcrone of the Miller Sect by default. Someday, though, she would become Ur-crone. Hers would be the magic of the whole impish race.
The walk from the office to the apartment that the entire Miller brood shared was a short one, because blitz had been somewhat fortunate in that regard. She wondered how catastrophically badly he would take Krieg or Loona's plea for a private place. Blitz was clannish to well beyond a fault. He wanted his people around him all the time. Price for having all semblance of community denied to him for so long, she reckoned. There was another option, though. There were other apartments in this building. Merely having to take an elevator to see his family might sit more easily on his sanity than the audacious demands of having a separate living space entirely.
Not that possessing such a thing helped Moxxie and Millie. Krieg was convinced that Blitz had learned how to infiltrate their abode through conversations with local cats.
Still, thoughts to entertain as she strutted home. The money was deposited safely away. Nobody could even rob her right now. Hell was good.
Well, as good as Hell ever got. She could overhear conversations not appended with her presence about how the Purge was coming, and what the Heavens would unleash on them this year. That was such a strange tradition that Heaven had put into place. To send a wave of Exorcist automata to massacre anything they found in the Ring of Pride. It was a foolishly simple notion, one so fraught with planning oversights that even teenaged Krieg could come up with many, much better ones with only the time for thought afforded to her by showers.
Why was it only one day a year? If they really wanted to do some damage to Hell, just let them run roughshod until they were either destroyed, or Hell was. Why only a few thousand Exorcists? Did they lack production capabilities? And if they did, what were the bottlenecks? And that being the case, why not instead save themselves money and hassle, and just send down Angels, as they did in the days before 1815?
Or was it 1814? Her knowledge of the history of this particular Ring was not complete. Lust, her once-home, was never Purged.
Which raised another question that nobody could provide any answer for.
Sinners were outnumbered by fiends, sapient Hellhounds, and imps no less than twenty to one. If this was really about overpopulation... why did they only ever attack Pride, the least populous Ring by far?
Again, her lack of history meant she lacked the obvious answer. That in 1815, the population of Pride Ring's Sinners by themselves was almost equal to four of the other seven Rings, combined.
The door to the apartment had a lock on it, but Krieg knew that by banging the latch as you pulled it could be bypassed. Everybody in the apartment building did the same. This time, when she opened it, there was a loud clunk and the latch slid out of its housing as though open-locking as the door swung free. That was odd. It usually didn't do that until it closed. She then tilted her head, and heard something of a commotion coming from one floor up. An expression of concern was on her face as she took the stairs up, two at a time.
The noise was, as she had feared, coming from Blitz's apartment. And it sounded like her brother and sister taunting somebody between grunts. Krieg picked up her pace, and threw the door open to the apartment that Blitz shared with all of his family.
And she was greeted by a fairly odd sight.
Plureae and Nexzum were each clinging to the leg of an imp whom Krieg had never seen before. His head was bound up in one of Loona's sweater, blindfolding and gagging him, while Mother sat on his lower back, pinning his wrists behind him. The most odd thing about the stranger, though, was that he had wings.
"Mother? Why has an Envy Imp come to our home?" Krieg asked.
Mother turned to her, pivoting her seat and wrenching the intruder's wrists under her backside while her tail snaked around the bottom of the sweater blinding the... man?... and facing her flush. Krieg immediately then had a new question she needed to ask.
"What insanity is this? Did you not think to inform me of this?" Krieg demanded, pointing at the heavily swaddled imp infant that Mother was holding close.
"Why? You were busy and I didn't want to distract you," Mother said.
"You gave birth to my sibling and didn't think that was deserving of a bit of distraction?" Krieg countered.
"MNPH mnh nhhnphnm!" the intruder tried to interject.
"Nobody asked you, stranger!" Krieg snapped at him.
"I wasn't aware I needed your permission to greet my own spawn," Mother said, twisting in her spot so that she torqued his arms a bit harder. "Did you get along well with your work?"
"Of course I did. I am a thaumaturge! But who cares who my work went? I wish to see my sibling!" she said, dropping her satchel and stooping down to look the swaddled imp in its face. It was so young that its horns weren't even hard, and seemed very content being asleep and warm. "Was it a boy or a girl? How shines its blood? What name have you given it?"
"It's a boy," Mother said, then paused and swung her heel into the ribs of the imp she was using as a bench. "Settle down, thief, or I'll call my eldest son in after you," she then turned back to Krieg. "I don't have a name for him, yet. I... it will be the first time I have had a chance to actually name a child myself. I want to give him a good one."
"And his blood?"
"I'm not going to test him," she said, a smile clear in her eyes. "However bright or dull his blood is, Hell will have a place for him. Even if I have to carve it myself."
"Don't be a fool, Mother. If he has bright blood, he could..." Krieg began, but was silenced by a glare by her mother.
"I am not having this conversation with you. Not now. Maybe not ever," she said sternly. And like that she was reminded who was mother and who was child. There was no magic in existence as powerful as a mother's reproach.
"Ooookayyyyy," Krieg said, as she continued to prod her newest sibling, trying to get any reaction out of it. But the new spawn pointedly refused to offer any response to Krieg's poking, as though he already knew what she wanted and was mulishly refusing to give it to her. "Well. What about this little scene of bedlam?"
"Oh, Plureae found him while he was digging through your things and tackled him," Mother said, motioning toward Krieg's sister.
"I didn't stop biting 'till he hit the floor!" Plureae declared with her teeth still stained black.
"After that, Nexzum threw himself at him and put Loona's sweater over his head. And hit him in his testicles a few times, if I recall," Mother continued.
"He should 'a wear'd a cup!" Nexzum declared from his place clinging to the intruder's other leg.
"After that, I came in, put the groceries away as they were struggling, then finally sat on him. Then a few minutes later, you come through the door," Mother finished.
"You just let two imp children attack a burglar and didn't help them until the end? You show a great deal of confidence in their abilities," Krieg said.
"My kids are strong. You know that. You're one of them," Mother said with a moment of pride beaming through. Then she shrugged. "It wasn't even that much of a fight. He looks dreadfully malnourished."
"Mph dmn pphmnn nngh!" the intruder interjected.
"Nobody cares," Krieg said. "Why was he digging through my things? I don't keep my money here. I'm not a fool."
"Plureae, do you know what he was doing?" Mother asked.
"Don't call me that. I'm Victoria now! 'Cause I'm Victorious!" the she-imp raised her arms in triumph, only to have the intruder try to throw her off of his leg, causing her to instantly snap back down to grappling him, and incidentally biting his already tooth-marked leg.
"Only one Clan-name to go," Krieg said. Mother gave a chuckle but raised a finger. "Two then, since you are so unwilling to shed your own. Now let us deal with the Envy Imp in the room."
Krieg moved to the head of the intruder and dragged the sweater off of his head and from where one arm of it had been shoved into his mouth as a gag. Mother wasn't kidding about the state of him. He looked spare almost to the point that a stiff breeze could lift him up and carry him away. But more pressing than that, when she got a look at his horns, she had to sit back on her heels.
"Why didn't you tell me he was so young?"
"Unhand me you gaggle of witches!" the teenaged imp declared. His forehead was mostly white scar tissue. As though it had borne a Clan-brand like Mother's or Blitz's, only to later be gouged off. That was not a thing which happened without pain. Yet again Krieg was glad she managed to get out of that shithole in Bal Matheer before they started to forceably tattoo her like she was cattle.
"Who are you and why were you rummaging in my things?" Krieg began.
"You! You're Krieg Nuckelavee!" the imp said, seeming to think it an explanation.
"Krieg Miller," Krieg corrected him. "Archcrone of the Miller Bloodline."
"I've never heard of a 'Miller' Bloodline," he pointed out.
"And who are you to have heard or not heard of anything?"
"I am Uller, and your mother is breaking my wrists!" he complained.
"Are you calling me fat, boy?" Mother said with very little humor at him.
"Very well, 'Uller'. Uller-who?"
"My father is Dismas Cruikshank of Clan Morne. I do not know my mother's name," he said.
"Clan Morne? Do you know of such a thing?" Krieg asked. It wasn't one of the Clans she'd ever heard of.
"Just a moment," Mother said, shifting her sibling into one arm and searching on her phone. "Oh. Just a mud-grubber Clan based in Envy."
"I came here to learn magic!" Uller finally declared.
"...why?" Krieg asked.
"The Seer told me I have the Sweetblood. That I can learn the Imp Magic. And I came here 'cause fuuuuuck going to Lust!" Uller said.
"Well, that's an entirely sensible thing to believe," Mother said with a nod.
"No, my question was 'why did you come here," she pointed down at where Uller was currently being pinned to the floor by three imps.
"I heard stories of a she-imp that stole the magic of Clan Cruac and spirited it up to the land of the Beast That Grins," Uller said. "That was you. It was you, wasn't it?"
"It was indeed. Mother? Could you get off of him. Victoria? Please stop biting him."
"But he's tasty!" Victoria complained.
"P... Victoria. Homework. Now," Mother declared. "You too, Nexzum."
Both of Krieg's siblings gave moans of dismay as they let go of Uller's legs and drifted back to their bedroom to do their homework. Mother likewise got off of Uller's back and took her place on the couch, watching over its back as Krieg was able to pull Uller to his feet with one hand and shove him perhaps ungently into the kitchen chair beside the fridge.
"So why exactly did you think it prudent to break into my things, stranger?" Krieg asked him, as he started to bind his lazily bleeding calf with paper-towels.
"I already told you. I need to learn the imp magicks," he said.
"And you failed utterly to explain how those two things are connected," Krieg said.
Uller paused for a moment, then sighed. "If I were to go to Lust, I would be taken by the fiends of Cruac. I would vanish into Sietch Cruac or Sietch Nuckelavee or Bal Matheer, and I would be taught nothing, and likely have my arms and legs cut from me so they may spend the rest of my life extracting my seed. I am a mage, just an uneducated one."
"Whereas I am a free mage," Krieg said.
"Did it not occur to you to simply knock on our door and ask to be taught?" Mother pointed out from the couch.
Uller was still for a moment, stunned.
The thought obviously had not occurred to him.
"Let us table that for the moment," Krieg said, leaning with her shoulders against the kitchen table. "What do you bring to any engagement that would even make me want to teach you? I have a business to run, money to make, and a legacy as the youngest and greatest Ur-Crone to set in motion. Your being here has done nothing to further that, and may well have set it back."
"I have the Codex Cruac In Alabaster," Uller said. Krieg shrugged, as that meant nothing to her.
Mother, though, rose from the sofa.
"Show me," she demanded, her eyes now fierce.
"Do you think I'm an idiot? I don't keep it on me while committing what in retrospect were poorly-planned out crimes," Uller said.
"Mother, what is this Codex?" she asked.
"It is a powerful Grimoire of magic, gathered by the Clan Cruac and its predecessor, the Clan Fola-searbh from roughly three millenia ago," Mother said. "Some say it holds the oldest secrets of impish magic, from billions of years ago when imps first appeared in Hell. It is the only text which has written the secrets of Resurrection."
"That is a princely price indeed. Why are you so fierce on the topic?" Krieg said.
"Crone Beatrice of Cruac-Kellion was said to have hurled it into the Abyss to keep it out of the Radio Demon's hands. It is a lost text."
"Do you really think there was only ever one copy of the Codex Cruac in Alabaster?" Krieg said. "It is a book. Such things are made to be reproduced."
"He's lying," Mother said.
"We can determine that when he shows us what he claims is the Codex," Krieg said.
"This is a grift of some kind, Krieg. I can see that. Why can't you?" Mother seemed genuinely disappointed as she said that.
"If you are so sure that this is a folly, then it will be upon my own head and wasted time to pursue it," Krieg said. "After all; if what he shows me is not actually this legendary lost tome of magic, I can simply emulate Crone Beatrice and hurl him into the Abyss."
"Um..." Uller said, trying to butt into the conversation, but he was bull-rushed verbally by Krieg's mother.
"Don't be silly," she said. "He's an Envy Imp. He could simply fly away. Just shoot him."
She then pulled the handgun that Blitz kept in the cushion of the sofa pillow and handed it over to Krieg. Krieg smiled, and pointed her gun at Uller. "Well then. With my mother's permission to dump black blood if you are giving me folly, I say show me what you claim is mighty. I will decide if it is worthy of my time."
Fiona woke from a strange dream. A dream of a purring imp staring down at her. The lingering vespers of the dream tried to cling, to drag at her, but moment by moment, she felt her mind start to slip back into coherence, and reality to reassert itself.
She had no idea where she was.
Her body had an odd stiffness, as though she'd slept wrong. She raised a hand to rub at her face, to dig the sleep out of her eyes, but when she did, she found it... a bit lacking. That moment of stunning clarity finally dispelled the unreality, and she lay there, staring at a right arm that ended at the wrist, gnarled scar-tissue mounting up atop the meat-capped radius and ulna.
Right.
She'd lost that hand.
Why was her arm pink?
"Good evening, Miss O'Daire," a woman's voice came from somewhere past the supine dragon's feet. Fiona looked down past herself, bundled in blankets though she was, and saw a human sitting there. Not a Sinner. A human. Wait... A human with most of a halo. She looked... honestly a lot like Fiona once had, only Fiona had been an amazon whereas this one was a pygmy. And those eyes were so cold as to freeze the straits of Gibraltar.
"Who the feck are you, where the feck am I, and what the feck do you want?" Fiona demanded.
"Rachel Scailes 'the fuck I am', the Happy Hotel 'the fuck you are', and making sure you don't flee naked into the night 'the fuck I want'," she said coolly. "A different room can be provided for you if this one doesn't suit your needs. Food will be provided if you're hungry, water if you're thirsty."
"Am I a prisoner here?" she demanded.
"Does that door look locked?" Rachel said, casting a thumb to the ajar door that she instantly pegged as being a White Point Model B. The walls were all Weepstone, so this had to be one of those old bunkers from before the Pride War. When the hell had that poncy bint built one of these things in her waste-of-time-and-effort hotel?
"Do you like fucking me around, woman?" Fiona demanded, but there was something oddly hollow in her words. Like the meteoric outrage that she'd expected... just wasn't there to propel her. It left her seated on the bed, her body aching as though she'd gained arthritis in the everything. She stared at the stump of her right hand, and at her now human-flesh colored left. Her claws were gone. Well, in truth, they had shrunk down to being now merely very aggressive finger nails with somewhat robust beds. She flexed her hand, seeing the musculature tense under the minute scales that grew as they moved down toward her elbow.
Something was wrong.
Or maybe not even wrong, but really fucking different.
"I'm doing nothing of the sort," Rachel answered. She leaned slightly aside in her seat, trying to get a better view of Fiona. "Is it fair to say you've got questions? About what happened to you?"
"No, I know exactly what happened to me. That scunner..." Fiona began, and again expected the rage to swell and burst in her, only to be so awkwardly off of balance when it didn't, "made me fight those imps, they blew my feckin' hand off. I lost a fight and this is what I get for it. Feck me, when was the last time I even won a fight? I used to be so much better than this."
"So you remember," Rachel said, refusing to elaborate.
"I was once second in command of Jingo. I once led armies that swarmed across all of Pride and clashed against the forces of the Archcrone and the tin-man soldiers of Von Brutte. And now look at me. Look at me!" Fiona said, her voice starting to get away from her.
Her eyes starting to well.
"I couldn't do a feckin' thing. One word. One word and I was... Jesus Christ in Heaven I wish I had just walked into the Pride Wall. Why didn't I just walk into the Pride Wall? I could 'ave. And none of this would have happened and..."
"...suicidal tendencies," Rachel muttered, sitting back in her seat with a scrutinizing gaze.
At this point the first sob actually got out. Fiona tried to stifle it, to crush it, to kill it like she had killed every fear and pain that the last thirty years had inflicted on her. But even thinking about those pains chipped away at her almost non-existent control until the levee burst and the dread overtook her.
What was she if she couldn't be powerful?
What was she if a man's word could reduce her to being meat he'd whore out for favors and power?
Nothing.
She was nothing.
Rachel didn't say anything, didn't try to console or comfort her. She just nodded, as though she understood. As though she had been exactly where Fiona was. That was perhaps the greatest comfort that she could offer her. Not a patronizing 'there there', not a disingenuous 'it will get better', but instead, looking her in the eyes and saying... 'I know. I know.'
"...am I a bad person?" Fiona finally asked. And with the same heavy resignation, Rachel nodded.
"We all are. That's why we're in Hell."
Michael stormed to the edge of the beyond-black hemisphere that marked the place where Raguel had engaged the Demiurge. He was not the only one of his kind who did so. "Gabriel," Michael said.
"I was beginning to think you weren't even going to bother showing up," Gabriel said with a hungering grin. He turned a look at him that managed to be perfectly patronizing without being being sufficiently offensive to retort. "You don't look very well, Michael. Maybe it would have been better if you stayed home in your cupboard."
Michael, though, scowled at his counterpart. "The Demiurge has been found and locked into place. I will see the end of this threat to Heaven, so help me God."
"There's some of the fire that you were once known to hold," Gabriel said with an almost genuine sounding delight. He turned to the wall of black before him, and flicked a motion to the Gabrielites that had joined him; the motion had them take wing and post up at points surrounding the Great Seal in three dimensions, so that the only way that anything could elude them was by digging straight down. And with Forfax at Gabriel's side, even that would not provide escape. "Do be a good soldier and tear down this wall, would you?"
Michael nodded, and reached out, touching the surface of the Great Seal, that combination of Time Lock and Space Lock that only a few hundred Angels could create as a single organism – a fraternity pointedly not including Gabriel – and with a twist of his song, he shattered it. The shards of black pulsed a blinding white, as all of the light inside was blue-shifted into ionizing radiation and blasted outward, which stung and seared at Michael's skin.
Gabriel also felt the instant-sunburn that had hit he and all of the other Angels around the now fallen Seal, and turned a confused look toward Michael, his superior smirk finally slapped from his face. It was sensible that he was so gobsmacked; when Great Seals fell, there was usually just a meek pulse of heat, because the only light that could glow inside was overtaken by the darkness of exterior light failing to get in.
Something had to have been outputting a sun's worth of light to be able to sunburn an Angel.
"Find the Demiurge," Gabriel called, and the many angels began to fly across the fields and the buildings, throwing open doors and storming within with blazing swords. Michael also launched himself into the viscinity of the buildings, landing at the doors to the warehouses. They looked... different. He focused his true eye on the building, and was for a moment gobsmacked.
It was made of utterly mundane wood, the tar of its shingles was perfectly normal, the floor unremarkable concrete, and the plastic of its siding was ordinary to the extreme.
The building that had been here before was a rusting corrugated steel shack on a bed of gravel, clearly Angelsung and decaying from the lack of monthly upkeep.
This building could sit here, untended for decades without so much as a care.
And inside it was filled from roof to floor with potatoes.
Michael turned back, to the fields. They were still unharvested. Of course, the entire reason they were unharvested was because a few days before they were to be pulled, the Walls of Heaven fell. He narrowed his vision, first on the tubers without, then on the tubers within. As far as his higher senses could tell him, they were exactly the same. Just ordinary potatoes.
Spontaneous Creation Ex Nihilo.
"Why?" Michael asked of nobody. "Why would he do this in the midst of a fight? Unless..."
The fact was, he didn't have a concrete thought that affixed to the end of that 'unless'. Merely that a Demiurge that had the time to create a warehouse full of potatoes was not one who was fighting for his life.
"We have found him!" a call came out. Instantly, both sets of Michael's wings flared from his back, and he threw himself into the air, crossing the equipment and produce storage area in the blink of an eye, landing next to the pump-jack which drew out gargantuan amounts of water to be used in irrigation.
Raguel sat there, in the dirt, not paying any attention to the five angels who were gathered around him. He was slumped, the gorget of his armor shattered and on the ground before him. His helmet and faceplate were missing, meaning that he stared into the infinite distance with his bare, scarred face. If he wasn't breathing, Michael would have thought him a corpse.
"Stay back. Give me a moment," Michael said, breaching the line of Angels who had formed a confused picket around him. He stooped, then when he found it unsustainable let his knee hit the dirt. "Brother. Brother can you hear me?"
Raguel blinked, slowly.
It was the first time he'd blinked since Michael had gotten here. And if memory served, it might be the first time he blinked ever.
"Brother! What has happened to you?" Michael urged. He then turned. "Call for Raphael! I believe Raguel is injured!"
"Don't be daft, Michael," Gabriel said, staring imperiously over the shoulders of his underlings. "I see no blood there. He's fine."
"Don't argue triage with me, Gabriel. Find the Demiurge!" Michael snapped at him.
"Oh, gladly," Gabriel said. He turned, and as he did there sounded the flapping of wings, and he disappeared from sight.
"I think he has been struck mad," a slender Secondborn said, looking deeply concerned as he peered the Godfriend in the eye.
"He seemed so sure," Hepsut said. "So sure he could win."
"We don't know what Yaldabaoth is capable of," that Secondborn pointed out.
"Raguel. Brother. Please. Tell me... what happened here?" Michael said, finally giving Raguel's armor plated shoulder a light shake.
With that, Raguel gave a few rapid blinks, then turned to him. His face looked utterly lost, unsure to a degree that he had never even imagined the Godfriend capable of. "I was defeated," Raguel said.
And thus, another day ended in Heaven.
"If the microphone is working then the interview begins now, vile whore. The only reason I am speaking to you and not expunging your taint for the good of all creation is because I was specifically ordered to take part in this foolishness. So ask your questions, I will answer them, and then hopefully you suffer a True Death so I never have to share a room with you again.
The Demiurge? Of course I fought the Demiurge. Several times, in fact. And each time, I was soundly defeated. I don't hold that as a failure of my own strength. I could as well defeat God with a stick found rotting on the ground. Consider all of the others who fought the Demiurge and were humbled: Michael fought him, and the exertion of trying to keep pace with the Poison of God nearly killed him. Raguel fought him, and the Demiurge broke his will. Countless First and Secondborn fought him, and were crippled and maimed for the trouble. The only being in all of Heaven who could match him, strength for strength, was Gabriel. And I am not convinced that The Demiurge didn't manage to use defeat to fuel victory.
We grew arrogant. We believed that we were right because we were mighty, instead of that we were given might because we were doing what was right. That fool-headedness infected many of us. Most of us, I would even wager. Not Forfax. Forfax saw the truth that others missed. That is why I could fight the Demiurge without losing heart. To this day, I would still oppose him, for the pain he has caused, even if I cannot deny the result of it.
...I don't expect the likes of you, hell-bound filth, to understand. We needed to be humbled, to be reminded what we had been created to do. Humble should be the servants of God, whether of the old, or the new."
-Forfax, Angel of Hunter and Prey