The knock at Cherri's door was insistent. She was hung over, and thus had tried to ignore it, but she was pretty sure that at some point that door was gonna come off its hinges if she didn't shift ass, so she zombie-lurched to her feet and cracked it open, the one eye in the center of her face narrowing on the fucker who'd roused her from her rehabilitative coma. "Who the fuck are you, and what do you want?" she demanded.

The man was middle eastern, middle aged, and very well groomed. Almost Cherri Bomb's exact opposite, in fact. "I have been told you have something that belongs to me. I want it back," the stranger said.

"Fuck off," she said, and slammed the door in his face. Fucking grifters. She had only made it two zombie lurches away when there was a shattering sound, and when she spun on her heel, she found her door collapsing to the floor in a pile of prismatic, door-colored shards. The dark and bearded man walked in, wafting with his hands and causing the shards of her door to flood into her room so he wouldn't have to step in them. He straightened the line of his lapel, then faced her again.

"Again, I will attempt to be polite. My name is Cain. You have something that was taken from me. Return it," he said crisply.

"How about you pay for my fucking door and get outta my apartment before I paint a wall with you?" Cherri threatened, summoning a satchel-charge into her hands. It was already ticking down its timer.

"Very well. The hard way, then," Cain said. He snapped his fingers while pointing at the charge, and it stopped ticking. When Cherri glanced to it, she saw that the entire thing was now choked with frost, as though he'd frozen the weapon solid. She tried to unsummon it, but it remained there. When she tried to drop it, it turned out to be frozen to her palm.

She glanced up to find Cain already in motion toward her. Out of panicked reflex, she manifested a flashbang, pin already gone and the fuse burning. There was one problem, though. That still gave Cain three seconds to grab her by her fore and upper arm, then twist hard to a horrible pain and tearing sensation as the flesh was ripped apart. The lower arm, hand still tight around the flashbang, was thrown so hard at her bulletproof window that that window nevertheless shattered, and the concussive device fell out of sight before managing to go off.

Cherri cursed incoherently as she pulled out a dinky little Saturday Night Special and tried plugging rounds into the man who'd invaded her space. It wasn't easy, as she was shooting with one finger and thumb with the rest of her hand bound to a satchel charge. The first hit him, but he dragged her other arm hard and broke it, so that the next four shots that the five shot revolver had went into her own gut, before the gun fell out of her frozen hand and clattered to the carpet. Then, with a knife-edged chop of his hand, there was fresh pain in Cherri Bomb's neck... and she found herself falling to the floor.

Correction.

Part of her fell to the floor. Her body was still being held up against the wall, and her head was staring up at it. She wanted to shout at least one more slur at him, but lacking any connection to her lungs, all she could do was stare hatefully at Cain, as he dusted his hands and let the body slump.

"It could have been much simpler had you been reasonable," Cain said, as he unbuckled his belt and withdrew it from its loops. What the fuck was he doing? That alarm grew near hysterical when he reached down to her carcass's waist, and undid her own buckle. Oh don't you fucking dare. Well, it turned out she had nothing to fear on that front. Once he extracted her belt, he quickly fed it through is own beltloops and fastened it in place. "There. All is right again. Now, as for you."

Cherri was utterly helpless, unable to even bite him as he picked her decapitated head up by its hair and plunked it ungently onto her body, then reached past her to some duct-tape.

"I will not erase you, because it does not benefit me. If you try to reclaim what was always mine, I will correct you in this manner again. See to it that you are more careful about the sources of your treasures in the future, 'overlord'," Cain said, then crudely duct-taped her head back into place. She was furious, but knew that he'd just turned fortnight of Regenerating into about a day. Once her body was sorted, he rose, grabbed his coat from where he'd tossed it during that ludicrously one-sided 'fight', and pulled it on. "Now, I must see about my harpoon."

With that, he left.

And Cherri Bomb was left asking herself... what the fuck just happened?

And then she started worrying about the satchel charge frozen to her hand.

Chapter 11

If The Lion Is Advised By The Fox

The cold dread of hopelessness had settled into Stella's heart as she looked out over the army which was being sent with her. Although it was in every way an equivalent army to the one which Asmodeus had been granted during his ill-fated first assault, it still felt so utterly paltry to Stella. What would this scant million do against the massed Host of Heaven? Die. That's what they'd do.

Still, Lucifer was right in one respect at least. Fighting is what Stella Goetia did. It was who she was. And though she looked out across the mustering grounds built on The Edge not through her own eyes but through clever cameras and screens, she felt lighter even than she had in her old armor. That old thing, heavy with plates of Prima Materia – such stuff as could even claim to be more adamantine than the Steel of Angels – had saved her skin a few times... but there was no Prima Materia in Hell. The rot of ages had rusted much of it away. So she would have to either go into the fight essentially naked... or hope that her Legatus Damnatio was as discerning with his procurement as he claimed to be.

The stretch of outer Pride had been converted into an actual staging ground since the failed first attempt. No longer just hurling disparate Legions into a battle and hoping they would just 'figure it the fuck out', she had demanded that they have a line of organization in place before they took one step into Heaven. Each Legion would know which other legions they were to support, who would defend who, who would flank who, and if the worst came, how to use each other to effectively withdraw. There was one exception to that last. Her own husband's Stellar Grenadiers, despite not being mustered, had offered to serve as her vanguard, and at their vanguard, those soldiers she had taken to calling in confidence Her Men Of Iron.

Their own panoplies were lesser imitations of her own. Theirs may give them a day of service before they seized up and shut down. Her own armor could run until the stars died in the heavens. Still, what a day they could make with them was yet to be seen. And she could see the envy and avarice of the other Legio Centurii who could look upon the warriors that would be fighting at her side, and see toys that they didn't even know that they wanted. The dull thrum in the air reached a new level as the magic that would catapult them upward continued to intensify. She knew that when Asmodeus led his first wave, he did so on the heels of an uplifting speech, to fortify the morale of the soldiers that would fight under him. Stella said nothing. There was nothing to say.

She turned one final time toward the distance, to where her Palace lay somewhere over the strange horizon of Pride, and sighed. Be well, Octavia, she whispered in her own mind. Then, she turned away, put her back to the symbol of her life's ambitions, and waited for the rising tones of the portal to reach a crescendo. Then, there was a dry tearing sound, as reality parted, and showcased a section of Cloud One, the lowest level of Heaven.

"Not there," one of the heavily armored Men Of Iron said.

"Excuse me?" Stella asked, broken from her melancholy by somebody having the audacity to intrude on her silent self-mourning.

"You are in command, Mistress. We cannot invade here," he said.

"I lead this invasion, not you, peon," she snapped.

"Mistress... please," the Man Of Iron said. And though Stella glared at him, the effect was muted by several inches of armor plating preventing her actual eyes from burning holes in him. So she did what she seldom did. She relented. And she laid a hand on the coruscating orb that was the focus through which the portal opened, and gave it an idle spin, hurling the destination portal to a different, random spot somewhere on the bottom of Cloud One. That Man Of Iron held up his hand, as though looking for something, as the scene zipped past on the other side. Then he pointed. "Yes! Exactly what I need."

She didn't even bother questioning, she just grabbed the standard of the King Of All Hell from its mount and slammed its butt spike into the ground with a sound like a mountain dying. Without a word from her said, the soldiers began to surge forward, into the bottom level of Heaven. And she was only a dozen steps behind them. When she emerged, it was onto grey clouds that supported infinite burden, not the fluffy white that she had remembered from the days of the first War For Heaven. The entire place smelled of dust and crushed stone. A great scree of rubble had been left nearby, and that particular Man Of Iron had broken from the rest of her cadre and was pulling unarmored soldiers toward that paltry cover. Well, his folly would likely result in his death.

The army spilled out, and the humans of Heaven, seeing the armies of the Damned spill out, fled in terror, shuttering their buildings as much as they could. Considering the state of the buildings this close to the now-ex Walls Of Heaven, most of them were secured with tarpaulins instead of masonry. But there were surprisingly few actual angels up here. Maybe that armored cretin had been on to something. Such it was that she'd managed to get the overwhelming majority of her army standing on the surface of Cloud One by the time the first bolt raced down from the heavens and slammed into the formations of her soldiers.

The eager sons and daughters of Wrath were split apart by the ruin of the attack, an Angel hovering in the sky with a bow in his hands. There was a twist in the air, and dozens of cherubs popped into sight, their crossbows raining a blizzard of golden, superheated bolts at the front of the battle line. At her Men Of Iron, and at her herself.

And though many of the bolts struck her, they all shattered before even denting the armor.

Even the Men Of Iron were not slowed in the slightest.

"EMPTY THE SKY FOR ME!" Stella roared, motioning forward the standard of Lucifer, and the Sisters Of Steel, the infamous single Legion that Baphomet had to their name, cranked their vehicle-mounted anti-aircraft guns skyward, and filled the air with flak.

Ahead of them, more Angels appeared, unfolding from the Greater Song that they traveled through, kneeling down with ballistic shields in their first rank, as the second rank tucked in behind them with their heavy caliber machine guns, and the roar of gunfire filled the air. Thousands of rounds cracked the air, trying to smash flat the charging point of Stella Goetia's spear. Trying to turn twenty nine warriors and one Ars Goetia into bullet-riddled cadavers in the least honorable way possible, by Stella's logic. Bullets made of Seraphic Steel raced out, each one of them an utterly lethal answer to the Regeneration of the Damned, and the tyranny of physics answering the Resilience of the Hellborn. Every bullet that struck Damned or Hellish flesh should have been a casualty, if not a fatality.

But they were aiming at the closest targets.

The closest targets were armored in the best that Hell had to offer. And those bullets deflected.

The Host, who had been all business when they opened fire, began to show confusion, then panic as their compressed, concentrated fire on a small section of the battle line failed to provide any effects whatsoever. The riflemen began to step back as they fired, causing confusion and fear amongst the shield wall the were now retreating away from. And her people kept charging. Two hundred meters. One hundred fifty. Somebody along the battle line threw aside their machine gun for an anti-materiel rifle from magical storage, aimed it unerringly at where Stella's eye would be, and fired.

The display in the corner of her vision noted that that there some microfractures in the head-plate.

She didn't even feel it.

"LIGHT THEM UP!" Stella roared through the din. And when she did, her Men Of Iron held up their left arms, with the bore that reached down to their backs, and let fly burning fire that was so hot that it was invisible as it flew, until it reached something that could burn. The shield wall was rent to bits as the plates of steel were melted through in a moment, and the Angel behind them let out a scream of agony as their uniforms burst into flames. Some of them, less robust than others, were carved apart by the Hellfire Cannons before they had a chance to even panic, dead before they could reach the ground. Their halos overheated and Flared Out into shimmers of brilliant fire, their songs dispersing now that their flesh could not contain them. Those less fortunate were now rolling on the ground, on fire and sporting grisly burns.

"Call for Gabriel! Call for Gabriel!" an Angel in the distance cried out. Stella turned her glare to him, then slammed her hand into the ground, tearing up a cobble as long as her head, before launching it at ludicrous speed to the Crier, bursting him apart like a shotgunned melon from the force of it. Others of her ilk always complained about how hard it was to kill an Angel. She always managed just fine. She did have satisfaction on her face as she watched him fall like the afterthought that he was. However, since his halo didn't Flare Out, she hadn't killed him. He fell out of line-of-attack from her. Damn.

Ahead and ahead, she plunged the knife of Her Men Of Iron into the meat of the Angelic resistance, standing now on the burnt and melted bodies of the shield-wall, pulling from her side a javelin and hurling it with all her might at the armored plating of a not-yet-operational gun emplacement that the Angels had no doubt tried to buy time to set up; the spear from her hand shattered through its firing mechanism, and rendered it useless.

Ahead and ahead, Her Men Of Iron crossed the no-man's land between the edge of Cloud One and the claustrophobic grasp of the Rat Towers; every defense that Heaven could array was either beaten back, fleeing, or outright crushed underfoot. The Innocent, with their gapped halos, were massacred in droves. It was not something which would 'take', though. Tomorrow, they would be back up and ready to fight as though today never happened. Forward, and the sun died before the suffocating embrace of desperately constructed wood, metal, and concrete.

But there was something amiss.

She turned a look over her shoulder, which did nothing to change her perspective, before remembering that this armor had cameras behind her. She instead flicked her eyes to the section depicting what was at her back. And the angels were trying to surround her.

"Pocket!" Stella shouted. Her Men Of Iron turned, and found that they had handily outstripped the rest of the Legions. In their eagerness to storm forward, they had outrun their allies, and now the enemy was closing behind them.

"Aye, we're outnumbered and surrounded. Fookin' glorious! Now no matter where we shoot, sommun's gonna die f' r'it!" a Man Of Iron declared joyously. Well, if they were going to have fun with their encroaching death, she saw no reason not to let them.

She just had to buy a few hundred square meters. A bolt hole in Heaven. Anything.

She wanted to see her daughter again.

Cain opened the door to Princess Charlotte's hotel without demanding attention. He'd already been invited in by its proprietor before, and today his business was not with her. No, today, he was looking for something which belonged to him.

The lobby was quiet, as the hour was late and most people had gone to bed. Cain found he had little use for sleep these days. He seldom became tired in that way, and there was nothing of use to his dreams. Except perhaps that thing down in Sloth. That appeared too often for Cain's liking. Whatever the Delerium Engine was, it was too keen on haunting his unconscious by a half for him to give it a chance to. So he kept moving. If nothing else, it would keep him from slipping into solipsism again. As he crossed the expanse of the lobby, Cain felt something askew in the world. So he halted in his advance, and refocused his mind and the energy of his body.

It was a terrible shame what had become of the Cultivators of China. Where once their techniques allowed them to bend reality by the weight of their souls, the unkind advancement of ages had piece-by-piece poisoned and diluted actual wisdom with thoughtless adherence to dogma, until that dogma no longer actually created the once-lauded result. By the time people got around to codifying the notion of Qi Cultivation, it was already so bastardized as to be utterly useless. Cain, though, had learned from those who had nearly completed their journeys with the internal refinement before something killed them, as their paths were necessarily cruel, grasping, and sinful. He learned the real Cultivation. His Cultivation worked.

And because of that, when he purified his perceptions, he could see something hiding just on the other side of reality. Not what, but that there was something there, and that something reeked of Powers Outside.

"Reveal yourself," Cain said. "I know that you are hiding here."

There was a moment of silence, then as though unreality was popping like a bubble, a new figure appeared. He was very tall, pale and deer-antlered in a very dark red suit. Across his face was a smile neither kind nor polite. "Well that's a neat trick. I guess you really are the star of the city people used to say you were."

"I suppose, then, that you are Alastor, called the Radio Demon?" Cain said, his posture loosening to a somewhat more casual stance. Somewhat. He had heard many things about the Radio Demon in the last few days.

"I am. And you would be the First of the Damned. Oh what a night this is. Had I known you would have been visiting my little hotel, I would have arranged for a proper greeting!" the Radio Demon said, letting off a staccato laugh.

"From the man who had pointedly avoided me when I first arrived, that means little," Cain pointed out.

"Oh, you mistake me," Alastor said. "I was not hiding from you. I just knew it wasn't yet time."

"What business do you have here, Dealmaker?" Cain asked.

"I am in a position where I must ask the same of you, first," Alastor said, his brow drawing down. "After all, you are the one sneaking into my domicile in the middle of the night, with intentions of taking something from it."

"You have a keen eye, Radio Demon," Cain said, and raised a hand in a placating gesture. "But what I seek has nothing to do with you. Merely an object which had been given to me long ago, which I would see returned to my possession after long being passed from one set of hands to another."

The Radio Demon laughed at that. "That could be a great many things, old man. You're going to have to be a lot more specific than that."

"A weapon. A physical implement, not something a sorcerer the likes of you is going to be interested in," Cain said.

"You might be surprised," the Radio Demon said. He took a few steps toward the front desk of the hotel, which also served as a bar, and daintily tapped the bell there. "Oh Miss Vialpando? Could you come to the front desk please?"

Cain raised a brow, but kept his silence. The silence did stretch a bit long, though. Then Alastor hit the bell again.

"I understand your annoyance. I must nevertheless insist," Alastor said, as though carrying on a conversation to which Cain was only party to half of. It was a strange magic that Cain could vaguely sense, a sort of the type that he'd not felt before, which made it a very novel thing indeed. Alastor adjusted his bow tie and laced his fingers atop the cane topped with a radio microphone, a patient smile on his face, a pleasant mask over what Cain could sense to be utter savagery.

Finally, Vaggie emerged from the hotel, clad in her pyjamas and looking generally drowsy and displeased. "What do you want, Alastor?" she demanded, her one eye narrowed into a venomous glare.

"Could you be a sweetheart and fetch your harpoon, my dear?" Alastor asked.

"What the fuck do you want that for?" Vaggie asked. Alastor continued staring at Cain.

"I have a place I want to put it," Alastor said.

"Get it yourself," Vaggie muttered, before turning toward the doors. With a snap of Alastor's fingers, beyond-black tendrils erupted from the floor, covering the path into the rest of the hotel and casting a strange half-light through the otherwise dim lobby. "What..."

"My dear... I insist," Alastor continued staring with incredible intensity at Cain. But not with anger. Almost... goading? However Vaggie, who was standing on the wrong side of him, could only tell that he had a grin on his face and was staring at Cain, so its nuance was lost to her. She reached out, and manifested a harpoon by some means that Cain was not familiar with. It was not in extraspatial storage. It was... somewhere else. "Now, please give that to its rightful owner."

"What are you talking about. This is my..." Vaggie began.

"That harpoon was given to me by Forfax, as thanks for hunting down The Clot in Purgatory some thirty centuries ago," Cain said, instantly recognizing the piece of Angelic manufacture. It was not a crude weapon of Hellish manufacture, the way that most weapons using Seraphic Steel were in the modern (and in fact not so modern) era. "I would like to have it back."

"Give it to him, dear," Alastor said.

"Fuck you. I'm not giving up my spear," she said.

"Harpoon," Cain corrected. "And if you won't return it voluntarily, I will take it from you."

"Is your comfort and lack of pain worth a piece of weaponry that your paramour could replace at a simple request?" Alastor asked. Vaggie scowled as hard as her face would allow, but with a look of abject distaste, she threw the harpoon to the floor at Cain's feet. Cain instantly felt it sing to him, nostalgia flooding through him as he remembered old dour Forfax, and the bare nod that the angel had given him for doing their job for them. Forfax was a good egg. He hoped that Heaven had not rotted him.

"Excellent. I have no further business here tonight," Cain said. Although he was going to have to talk to Charlie some time soon. That could wait.

"Oh, we're not done by a half," Alastor said, clenching his black fist and having those same beyond-black tentacles choke out the door to the outside as well. "You see, you almost got away with it. You almost had me fooled. But you made one critical mistake. Do you know what it was?"

Cain loosened his joints a bit, preparing for some assault on his person. He had little knowledge of what the Radio Demon was capable of, but his reputation apparently set him as more dangerous than Cain Himself. Though those notions were likely a result of recency bias. It had been long since people saw the likes of Cain, and soon since they'd seen the likes of Alastor.

"Please, indulge me," Cain said, a smile coming to his own face as he prepared for a contest against what might be an actual challenging foe.

"Not you," Alastor said. And then he swung his gaze to Vaggie. Vaggie, who was standing in pyjamas with a confused look on her face. "You. Do you know what your mistake was?"

"What is happening right now?" Vaggie asked.

"She can't use extradimensional storage. Or in fact nearly any magic. Her wellspring is barren as her womb," Alastor said. "Stolen from her, by the likes of me. You might have enough of her memories to pantomime her part here, but you are more magically rich in the sweat of your brow than she is in her entire body."

"Are you high on something?" Vaggie asked.

"What is the meaning of this?" Cain also asked atop her.

"Before this begins," Alastor turned to face her properly. "Answer me this little question. Have you been intimate with young Charlotte in the last two weeks or so?"

"Why the hell do you want to know that?" Vaggie asked.

"It's a simple yes or no. Have you indulged in the fleshy pleasures with the Princess of All Hell since the day I sent that delightful woman after the imps?" Alastor asked.

"Why would you even care?" Vaggie asked. Alastor just thumped his cane against the floor, his grin growing cruel. "No, okay? We've been too busy with the damned literally raining down from the sky and all this... everything!"

"That's good. Because it would be ever so annoying to have to tell The Devil Himself that an intruder had raped his daughter," Alastor said.

"This is not..." Cain began.

"Indeed, this is not Agata Vialpando. So who exactly are you?" Alastor asked. The expression drained from Vaggie's face. The tension that now filled the room couldn't be cloven with the Edge Of God.

Alastor struck first, his limbs distorting, growing long and crooked as he almost instantly transitioned into his War Form, with long clawed fingers slamming through the center of Vaggie's chest and out the other side, her heart penetrated and quivering on the other side. But Vaggie, with an expression not of pain and fear but of deep annoyance, hooked her own fingertips under the edges of Alastor's jaw, then ripped upward.

Alastor's head popped off like a cork out of a wine bottle. And not satisfied with that disabusement, Vaggie then cracked her fingers deeper into the disembodied head and rent, tearing the head apart and sending red gore and black brains flying in all directions. Then with a mighty kick, she drove Alastor's cadaver off of her, sending it hurtling across the room to crater into the wall next to the television.

Vaggie fell to a knee, discomfort on her face, as she closed her eye and seemed to focus. And when she did, the gaping hole through her pulled closed. She then turned to Cain, and her gaze narrowed, a decision being made. "Y̸͊̀̀̿͋̋̂̒ͅo̵̢͈̳͙̣͍̓̓͆́̓̂́͜͝ư̵̧̭͇̮̽̐̀̚͠͝͝ ̴̧̘̪̠́̌̀̑̚d̸̝̯̬́̿ĭ̸̞̩̺̱̹͌͊̌̊̿͠͠ͅd̶͔̱̱͌̓̈́̀n̵̨̘̪̼̓̋́͂̏'̴̞͆̏̀̏̒̒ţ̴͚̳̊́͆̄ͅ ̵̫̯̦̟̅͌̆s̵͔͓͆e̵̙̮̜͉̞͈̐e̸̢͙̬͕̩̹͉͇͗ ̶̫̔̚͝͝ä̶̧̲́̉̍̔̏͒͒n̶͎̫̙͊̈̋͗̈́̑͜y̶̢͕̰̦̞̅͌͐̏̽̕t̷͎̳̺͍̹̼̯̤̎͂͛́ḩ̵̨̛̹̼͇̝̖̠́̾i̶̱̯̚̚͠͠n̷̢̛͚̩̻̣͕̲̽̏̕g̵̬͇̋́̇̈̀̉̽̉," she wyrded.

No, Cain Rebuked.

Vaggie recoiled as the consequences of her attempt at violating him rebounded onto her, but she got to her feet, standing with a posture that Charlotte's lover never had. Imperious. Demanding. Powerful. "I should have guessed that wouldn't work on you. The reputation has fallen short of the man."

"Stories often have kernels of uncomfortable truth in them," Cain said. He offered a bow again. "Again, I ask, who do I speak with now?"

"Why should I waste breath on a loose end?" Not-Vaggie asked. And just like that, Cain let his muscles slack and prepare for violence. If this was going to be that kind of night, it was going to be that kind of night.

"Oh ho ho ho! Well that was certainly surprising," Alastor's voice came from the vague location of his decapitated carcass. Only it wasn't a carcass, because it was standing back up, despite lacking anything north of the collar bone, jetting out spurts of red blood and black ichor with the pulsing of his heart. "And it answers my question beautifully. Cain, my good fellow, would you like to know who has stolen into my web and tried to usurp me as spider?"

Not-Vaggie's glare toward Alastor's body was pure venom. "You should have stayed dead," Not-Vaggie said.

"This, old timer, is The Glimpse, Proxy of Asmodeus," Alastor declared while his body made a dramatic gesture with its strange and crooked limbs. And as he did, his head rebuilt itself, a pulsing black brain growing up out of his neck stump, followed by bone, then muscle, and finally flesh and hair. His antlers grew far longer now, mounting up and spiking out to almost a foot away. "And they are not welcome in my house."

Battle had turned against Stella. She knew that. She'd fought in enough of them to learn the delicate ebb and flow of initiative and momentum, and she knew that both had swung firmly against her. And she had nobody but herself and her eagerness to blame. Still, there was a time to blame her folly on herself, and it was when the battle was done and in the dust of her wake. She was in the thick of it now. So much so that she literally had to slash her bladed mace such that its serrated edges tore through the Innocent's arm, forcing him to drop the recoilless-rifle that he was trying to use against her. She knew that this armor was effective against small arms. She reckoned that if she were to just open her external microphones, she'd hear it rebounding off of her plating like rain off of a roof.

A flick of her wrist and she brought that mace down hard onto the weapon itself, breaking it beyond use, then swept the weapon in a broad arc and sent the once-human defenders flying away, bodies broken and second-lives spent as they dropped motionless to the dank, ill lit environs of the Rat Towers. If only she could keep them dead. Attrition did not favor her side, if Heaven was ready to use their own denizens as cannon-fodder this early.

"Report," Stella barked, and a little display unfolded in her vision showing a map of the nearby area, with the tide of her own forces arrayed in clarity, and the supposed positions of the Host sprinkled elsewhere. "This is..." she began, and felt a strong desire to thank her daughter again. This was everything that a commander could have wanted; knowledge of your own forces was only half of a battle, but it was a critical half which a lot of commanders flubbed. She knew exactly where her people were. And she knew that because of her own arrogance, she'd put herself a half kilometer ahead of them.

"Directly back is a no-go," the slightly shorter figure of Deez, the imp in charge of the Grenadiers' reconnaissance, piped up. "They're calling in Angels and portalling armor. If we try to line-of-fight it back, we'll get ground up."

"I don't keep you in this unit for excuses. I keep you here for solutions!" Stella snapped at him.

"You don't keep us in this unit at all, Ma'am," Deez pointed out, brazen and audacious and insubordinate and churlish as all imps were.

"We serve as your guard at your husband's pleasure," the lieutenant colonel in charge of this deployment added. "We will see our duty through."

She wanted to smite both of them for daring to speak that way to her. But if she did that, she'd be down two soldiers out of the twenty nine she had, and be no further ahead for it. No. She was going to have to do what she ought to have done a month ago when this war began. She was going to have to swallow her pride, and accept their fool dickishness. So she did what her pride demanded of her and pretended that they hadn't just done something she would have ordinarily killed them for. "How did they get behind us so quickly?"

"Whoever's leading them knows about small-unit tactics," the lieutenant colonel said. "Probably an Innocent who fought in the Big One. Might'a even been one of mine!" he then let out a laugh.

"Fractured formations shouldn't be able to stand in your way," Stella pointed out.

"Obrink has an armor-penetration," the lieutenant colonel said. "They might not have the guns they need to blow through us, but they got mortars, and those mortars got enough umph to crack our shells. As long as we stay here in the Rat Towers they can't use 'em. But the moment we try to get back to our lines, they'll rip us a new ass."

"Puller might be overstating it," Deez said. "A lot of their mortars are going too be busy lobbing shells at the rest of the line to bother with us."

"Unless we come out the same way we went in, then they'll focus fire. It's what I'd'a done in Korea," Puller said.

"So we maneuver and then force a new exit point," she said.

"Exactly, ma'am," Puller said with a nod.

"Could work, but we'll be getting ambushed the entire way. I'll move out front," Deez said. Before Puller could move to follow, Stella gave a click in her throat which arrested him. He turned his featureless, armored head toward her.

"Why do you allow such flagrant disobedience in your ranks? I would have had him flayed for disrespecting me," Stella demanded of him.

"I'm not you," Puller said. And then, with a crisp salute, he went silent and began to coordinate Her Men Of Iron back into movement. There was a control to allow her to overhear his orders, but she she'd not bothered learning it before coming out here. So she was left out of the loop, as the unit mustered and plunged through the claustrophobic passages of this mockery that had become of Heaven.

And within minutes, the front was peeling back, showing cracks in their armor as heavy shells ricocheted down the path before burying itself into a building. Those vermin on the other side had pushed a cannon of some description into their streets, and were firing it as fast as they could reload it at anything which rounded that particular corner. They were standing in her way, so she just strode past the soldiers which were trying to come up with an elegant way to bypass the problem, and she faced it head on.

She made it two steps out of the corner before there was a terrific impact that checked her advance and had her armor screaming warnings at her, of layers of her armor cracked and failing on her chestplate. It was still in a decent armor state, but that was the first time that particular warning had sounded. Still, she wasn't going to be stopped by the likes of this fool. The Innocents in question, upon seeing her in her hell-forged panoply, slammed one final round home and fired it. This one, which she'd seen coming and was able to dodge out of the path of, flew harmlessly past as she stormed forward. The Innocents began to scream and flee, abandoning their gun, as they knew what would come next.

But when she reached their back line, one of them turned, planted his feet, and slammed his hands into her chest.

Outright stopping her.

She glared down in confusion, at the man who was not even half of her height, who nevertheless had her stuck in place. He glared up at her with searing blue eyes, and above his head sparked into being a halo; from his back spawning a pair of wings. So an Angel was hiding amongst the Innocent? That was usually so beneath them. She answered by driving her leg into a brutal front kick which sent him rocketing back and cratering him through a barricade which the last of his men had just fled over. He picked himself up, and as she watched a second halo flickered into being, perpendicular to the first.

"Get out of my home, demon," the Angel in his simple military fatigues said, with an American drawl of all things.

"Make me," she demanded, and pulled a javelin from the rack built into her armor. "Let's see how your edge fairs against mine."

"Yeah... I don't exactly comport with that sort of thing," the Angel said with a cocky smirk. And when he held out his hand, what came to it was not the sword of a Firstborn, or the axe, mace, or other martial weapon of a Secondborn. No, what came to his hands was a M1 Garand made of solid flame.

Which he then shot at her.

She ducked and dodged his fire, because this was wholly outside of her experience. There was no such thing as an Angel who would willingly use a weapon invented later than the 17th century. And yet here was one using one from the middle of the previous one. After more shots than she believed a weapon like that should have been able to hold, there came a loud metallic ping, and the surge of fire halted. She used that moment, that fraction of vulnerability, to hurl her javelin at him.

The Angel's eyes widened, but before that funeral stake could impale and ruin him, there was a fluttering sound, as the Angel Transited out of sight. She instantly tightened her grip on her mace, turning and viewing the region of claustrophobic architecture that she found herself in. Where had he gone? She could smell an ambush, here.

The answer came when the snap of gunfire hit the air and impacts tore into her shoulder, the side of her head, and her cooling radiators. She turned, holding up an arm to block incoming bullets, which cracked and eroded the armor there. These bullets were slower, smaller than the ones he'd been firing from the Garand. And when her suit's sensors picked him out, firing down from a high window, it was with a Thompson, the likes of which Hellish mafia used, only wrought of flame. She couldn't just stand here under fire. She had to respond. So she heaved with all her might the mace in her other hand, and smashed it into the wall containing that high window, and with an act of her faltering Song and her unbreaking will, spread the ruin of that blow far past the point where metal met stone.

The entire section of the Rat Tower burst out, raining rubble and debris into the street, and causing the Angel to fall as the place he'd been firing from was now suddenly unable to support him. He didn't even try to hold the sky with his wings, instead flapping hard with them to send him cratering through the opposite wall. That wouldn't save him. She swung hard into that side of the Rat Towers next, and the entire section of the Rat Towers shuddered, then bent, until its upper floors tilted and slammed into the upper floors of the damaged tower opposite it. They didn't outright collapse, but from the sound and the rain of debris, it surely seemed that they wanted to.

The Angel rocketed out, and slammed into her chest with a bayonet knife made of living fire, one that cracked through layers of plating and had her armor screaming warnings at her. She didn't have the time to worry about how many of those layers she had left. She had to deal with this damned Angel. She grabbed him by the wrist and shoulder, and with a massive heave, lifted and then slammed him into the ground. She reset her grasp, catching him now by his ankles, and slamming him over her head onto the wet concrete she was standing on as though beating dirt from a rug.

The metal tink of a pin being pulled registered too late, though, and something sticky adhered to the armor of her head, directly over one of the cameras which winked out that field of view. About a second later, it detonated, driving Stella back a few steps with ringing ears. While the armor was good, there was only so much it could do to protect you from an explosion starting on your face, it seemed.

She gave her head a shake, trying to clear the stars from her vision and widen the tunnel she was seeing through. There he was, that strange American Angel. He was manifesting a recoilless rifle of living fire, taking a knee to shoot her in the face with it. But before he could hit the trigger for the weapon, he was washed with fire that had him shout in pain and alarm. He turned and instead fired behind him, that bolt striking one of Her Men Of Iron in the chest and causing the armor to get pounded through the chest of its wearer and onto the street.

"You're not the only one with fancy tools, Angel. Think you can take us all?" Puller demanded.

"I've faced worse odds before," the Angel said. Puller's armor pulled back for a moment, as though in shock.

"...Murphy? Is that you?" Puller asked.

"I don't care where I'm welcome. I go where I will," The Glimpse said. She turned to Cain. "And I take what I want."

"You will have a harder time than you think, if you seek to take Terror Incarnate," Cain pointed out.

"You're an unexpected face. But I've dealt with unexpected before. Everything I've seen since I came here has been unexpected. And I've dealt with it. But you, Alastor? You're very familiar. And I like that least of all."

"Get out of my house, intruder. I offer you exactly this one mercy," Alastor promised. "I won't be so polite next time."

"I'm exactly where I need to be," The Glimpse said. And then she turned a glare to Cain. Cain felt something connect the two of them, as though something had been imparted to him. But what happened next was somewhat more odd. A sphere of blasting flame erupted from Cain, one that didn't harm him in the slightest nor touch his clothes, but slammed into The Radio Demon and made him take a step to move with it.

"So be it," the Radio Demon said, his grin now eager. Red runes began to float around him, and black tendrils reached up from the floor to crush and mangle the false-Vaggie. She started to shudder and shimmer, as though her edges were becoming indistinct. When the beyond black finally reached where she was, she wasn't there anymore, moving in a blur to a new spot. She then raise a hand, and touched the nearest of those red runes which floated in Alastor's viscinity. When she did, it turned a sort of silvery-blue, its form changing and shifting until it was something so alien that even ancient Cain had never seen its like. And then she spoke.

"Ś̸̩̘̘̀̉̌͒́̈͝Ü̵̲̗̝͗̿͊̚F̷̹̂͑̋͒͆͘ͅF̷̧͓̤̤̗͈͈͓̞̣̆̈̇̈̋̔̈́͋͌̒͠ͅE̵̢̢̺̤͓̻̺̝̮̟̳̺̤̻͍̋̔̉̈̈́̐R̸̬̰͎̣̟̫̜͉̜̿͗̓̌̉̓̽̒̚̕ͅͅ,̴̖̻͇̩͈̯̜͉̈͗̑" she bade. And the instant she did, Cain found himself wracked with agony, the skin around his eyes splitting and blood oozing from his gums, every movement of his body feeling like it was tearing muscles. Blood likewise leaked from the Radio Demon, and Cain could sense that they were trapped in a sort of macerating aura centered on the Glimpse. But he couldn't determine how far that aura went, so he presumed the only way to escape it was to cut it off at the source. Well never let it be said that Cain lacked for interesting enemies.

Before Alastor could even respond to the agony that he was no doubt being subjected to, Cain launched himself forward. In his heart, the seat of his soul, he felt the golden core of his power there chime with might as he summoned Demonfire from his foot, driving it up and then down in a savage axe-kick which should have broken The Glimpse's skull and the fire following it boil her brains. Instead, his foot went straight through her as she became intangible somehow. Off of his balance, and out of position for what Cain had presumed would be his follow-up strike, he could do nothing but twist his torso as The Glimpse thrust her hand with fingers forward like spears toward him, so that when the slammed through his telekinetic barriers and his Mage Armor with equal ease, they plunged into the meat of his chest and tore out a chunk of his lung instead of his beating heart.

Cain focused on building The Tower, of letting his body's agony be the bricks that would keep him from harm, and for the moment it took The Glimpse to realize she'd missed his heart and make a second attempt, by the time she lashed forward with her other hand, this time her fingers smashed into his skin and crumpled to the sound of crunching bone. Cain lashed forward in a head-butt, one that drove The Glimpse back a step but she didn't look even as stunned as Cain was. He then swept his arms in a mudra of devilish might, as one of the War Signs of the Elder Devils alit before him. But before he could ignite it, and unleash the ray of ruin that such a War Sign as this would create, she flicked a finger at him, and a bolt of lightning appeared out of nowhere near her, striking Cain, fouling his Sign, and launching him away.

He was fairly certain he blacked out for a moment, and perhaps even perished, because that bolt had had as much power in it as a bolt of Jupiter. He'd been hit by one of those before. It was fortunate indeed that Vulcan was dead, and that none of them were left intact.

Nevertheless, he got to his feet, and saw the Radio Demon lashing out with beams of unbeing, ones that the Glimpse flickered and avoided as easily as she had his tendrils. Why was it that Cain could strike this creature, but Alastor could not? This was altogether very strange.

"My my, if you keep showcasing your power at this rate, sooner or later I'm going to actually have to start trying!" Alastor chided.

"Full bore or idle. The engine still dies," the Glimpse answered his bravado with a cold tone. She then cast out an arm, and something like an isopod raced out from her viscinity, but it looked like it was made of living lightning. Alastor's body seemed to smear out, becoming somewhat see-through as his edges became indistinct. This was one that Cain was aware of, a form of derealization of the self as a means of defense. But the lightning insect, standing as tall as an attack dog, similarly smeared itself, tackling Alastor in his spread-out state and tearing at him with limbs of electric force.

And Alastor laughed.

"How delightful! Even Angels can't keep up with that one!" Alastor declared, as he arduously grabbed ahold of that lightning vermin and hurled it away from himself. The crackling vermin became as solid as it was going to get once it left Alastor's bubble of non-reality. And it immediately turned to Cain.

Cain tried to invoke The Stone and ground out that lightning insect before it could even approach him, but it stormed through the region that he had infused with his chthonic magic without being slowed in the slightest. So when it launched itself now at Cain, he could only keep it away from his face with his arms.

Instantly, his muscles locked rigid, which contracted his legs so hard that he actually launched himself into the ceiling of the lobby before plummeting back down to the lobby floor. His entire existence was electric agony, fighting with incompliant meat to keep that voltaic vermin from tearing into him even deeper. He had lost his vision the moment it struck him, overwhelmed from brain to nerve by the sheer current that this thing was pumping out.

Finally, there was reprieve, as the electrocution ended. Cain rolled over on the floor, and found one of his arms cooked to a carbon briquette next to him. The other was sliced to ribbons and cooked to a culinary delight. Cain closed his eyes and invoked The Partial Miracle of Raphael, those few words that Father Adam had passed down from his own observations of the Archangel of Healing, and made into something usable by the brilliance of Hexbreaker Purson. It took a few seconds, but he was able to recover his lacerated right arm to the point where he could use it, and then invoke it a second time to reattach his severed, carbonized left.

He looked up to see that lightning insect racing around the room at a truly tremendous rate, having attacked the black tentacles that were blocking the door to the rest of Hell. Now, it raced directly for the back of The Glimpse's head, claws of crackling light grasping and desperate. The Glimpse reached back with one hand, with a 'one moment' gesture toward it. It then burst apart as it was fundamentally unwoven from reality.

"That's the problem with Bad Ideas, isn't it?" Alastor chided. "You can't trust them not to rebound on you eventually."

"You haven't begun to see my bad ideas," The Glimpse promised. Cain stood up and circled to Alastor's orbit, fists raised against what new horror she would levy at them. "You don't need to be involved in this, old man."

"And yet here I am, knocking off rust," Cain said amiably.

The Glimpse gave a chuckle, a ghost of a smirk on Vaggie's face. "You know, just for that, I'm not going to kill you when I'm done with him. You sound like fun."

"I don't disappoint a lady," Cain said with a grin.

"Please desist turning this into flirtation. You're ruining the purity of this all!" Alastor demanded with only about half seriousness. But of the three of them, the only one of them seeming to take this to some degree seriously was The Glimpse itself. "So would you please inform me as to..."

She cut him off by setting him on fire somehow. She didn't move. She just stared at him, and Alastor was being consumed with hellfire. He didn't scream, of course. He just paused, his skin crackling and splitting, his red suit turning black and revealing pale flesh that was almost solid with ritual scarification under it.

"That was very impolite," Alastor noted, his War Form's grin growing a touch less humorous.

Cain, though, swept with the Winds of Kong, dragging some of that fire off of Alastor, and slamming it with the force of a great wave onto the body of The Glimpse. But where that fire had consumed some portion of Alastor, it seemed to pass around The Glimpse, as though she had some strange force field that prevented even her own fire from touching her.

She snapped her gaze to him, and the fire on Alastor died, before immediately igniting Cain. Cain knew what would shortly transpire, so with a last word before his tongue burned away, he implored of Mimir to give him sight through Odin's other eye. And true to his expectations, a moment later his own eyes were burned out of their sockets, but he could still see through a magical, intangible sphere that hovered near him. It was odd to see himself in the third person. But the magical nature of the eye allowed him to see something else.

There was a metaphysical connective tissue on The Glimpse, like a nerve fiber that connected her to somewhere else, outside of reality itself. And her body teemed. With The Tower still standing, and his agony a problem for another day, Cain forced his enflamed body to rake now fleshless fingers across the face of The Glimpse, to gouge out the one eye that its visage of Vaggie had to use. While he could not feel the impact, the cutting and ripping of sharp, heat-hardened bone, he could see through the Other Eye Of Odin that her socket was empty at the tail of it, and she kicked him back, sending him rolling to a stop next to where Alastor was magically reconstructing his suit.

For the third time, Cain prepared to invoke The Partial Miracle, to restore his incinerated flesh. But as he did, he saw the hand which had clawed out The Glimpse's one eye was now melting a different way. It was sloughing as though turning to slime. He couldn't feel the agony of it, so ruined was his nervous system. But that sloughing was creeping up his arm. So he grabbed his shoulder and heaved, ripping off his entire right arm and throwing it away before the infection could reach his torso. Within seconds, his arm turned to pink sludge, which then ate its way through the floor.

Cain narrowed The Other Eye of Odin on his wound, looking closer and closer as the rest of his body slowly repaired itself via angelic fiat. It was not acid, nor a spell of any description. It was like his flesh had been torn apart by tiny pincers, which continued cutting until the slime that had been his limb fell through the floor and into the basement.

And as soon as Cain turned The Other Eye to The Glimpse, she pulled off her eye-patch, showcasing an eye under it that, though withered and jaundiced, could still see, in the few seconds it took for the one Cain had torn out to be rebuilt, cell by cell.

"This is not something I admit often," Cain said, beginning the moment his tongue returned to his head, "but I believe this may be something I cannot kill."

"And yet you continue to fight it?" Alastor asked.

"Because it is such a thrill!" Cain expounded.

"What a shame it was that you had to be catatonic when I got here," Alastor said, as he turned the words he spoke into weapons and launched them at The Glimpse. Most of them she slipped past like wind through leaves, but 'catatonic' rebounded off of her and embedded itself into a wall. "You are a kindred spirit in so many things!"

"I am bored. You are a monster," Cain said, without judgment.

"You see straight through me. Are you sure you don't have Samuel's particular gifts?" Alastor asked with a delighted grin. The Glimpse took his brief pause in offence to slash with her fingertips as though describing a line, and then lift off of the floor such that only one toe-tip was keeping her tethered. The unending waves of pain and the tearing sensation of Cain's whole body ended, and he felt another pressure of an aura spreading out from The Glimpse. One that despite his being able to see its nature, he could not so easily deny. An aura of invincibility, of inevitablity.

Of rightness.

"Come to me," The Glimpse demanded. And every whit of Cain wanted to obey. It was not even a subsumation of his will so much as his will being overpowered by something so heavy as to crush him effortlessly beneath its callous weight. He took exactly one step forward, then there was a flash an an electric snap, as the air in front of him lanced out with a bolt of lightning that drove him back to his starting place. Cain gave his head a shake, and reached out with his nose for storm; there was the stink of ozone everywhere in this lobby. Thunderbolts waiting to launch for an unwary fool to step into their radius.

Alastor's swirl of runes reconstituted themselves into a portal, one unlike those that Cain had ever seen. Its edges were corruptions in What Ought Be, and through that portal came a blast of plasma and heat, one that outright melted the stone too close to it, slamming through the black tendrils that barred the door beyond, and spilled out into the street whence it melted half of Charlie's limousine. For a moment, The Glimpse stood nude, her clothes unmade by the attack, but not a single whisper of burn on her. Then new clothes began to assemble themselves on her. And not by magic.

She took a step forward in a sort of armor that Cain had never seen before that grew out of dull-colored slime which she sweated out of her body. There seemed to be machines built into it, a device akin to Miracle Tech, or the purported innards of the Exorcist. And the last thing she did was manufacture a long, wickedly sharp knife, that gleamed with the unmistakable hue of Seraphic Steel.

Which was patently impossible, because Angel Steel could not be created in Hell. Only have its form transformed.

"Interesting. Not what I expected," Alastor said. "You may want to take a step back, old man."

Alastor didn't even give Cain the opportunity to obey. He simply grabbed the increasingly ruined collar of Cain's shirt and hurled him backward toward the open elevator. Doing so sent Cain through more of those electric traps, which burned and shocked him, but there was nothing he could do but impact the back wall of the lift and slump there, clutching the stump of one arm with the burned mess of the other.

Cain growled, focusing past his pain and increasing fatigue to try to invoke The Partial Miracle again, but this time it failed. So instead he switched his attempt to the ritual breathing that supercharged his body's energy even as it ate through what fat his body held so that his skin pulled tight against his muscle and bone, cannibalizing his flesh for the energy to restore itself. And with that new vigor, and a half minute of blind concentration, he began to feel his Regeneration pick up speed, and the bones of his shoulder start to spread and reconstitute.

The sound of uproarious laughter dragged Cain's eyes open again. And the door to the lobby was a pane of utter black, the likes of which Alastor used to attack. It was a bizarre magic, something that seemed to take cues from both Angel Wyrding and powers from here in the pit. But whatever its nature, he got little chance to think about it, before Alastor swept into the elevator, having left his War Form, and planted his back to the wall next to Cain, hitting the button for the penthouse with the butt of his cane when he did. "What did..." Cain began, but he was cut off when The Glimpse stormed into the lift with them, clutching a knife by its blade in her hand.

"What the fuck is this about, you fucking psychopath?" The Glimpse asked, ignoring Cain utterly and brandishing that knife toward Alastor, as the door slammed shut behind them, and the panel of black was left behind as they ascended. Why was she wearing her old dress again? And she had her eye-patch once more...

"I needed to get your attention, my dear," Alastor said easily. "Otherwise you'd have been stuck in there for the last two weeks. This just seemed simpler."

"What?" Cain asked. And when he looked at the third in the lift with them, he could see that, whoever this was, this was not The Glimpse.

"What?" she asked at the same time as Cain. She then turned to him. "And who the fuck is this? Another one of your sorcerer friends? For fuck's sake, Alastor, we don't have time for this! Lucifer just declared war! Against Heaven!"

"You don't know who I am..." Cain said.

"Of course she doesn't," Alastor said. "Because this, my prediluvean friend, is the real Agata Vialpando."

Vaggie stared at him for a moment, then to Cain. "...what just happened?" she asked.

"The last loop for a long while, my dear. I'll explain in a moment," Alastor said as though comforting a child.

"Can't say I expected to find you here. Well, at least on that side of things," the Angel who was for some indescribable reason called 'Murphy' said. He stood with his rifle trained on the heavily armored forms of Her Men Of Iron, but even still, Stella could see him flicking glances to bathroom mirror in the scree of the broken Rat Tower that let him keep tabs on her.

"And I didn't think you'd have wings. What the hell are you doin' holding a gun on a superior officer, son?" Puller said.

"I'm not in your army anymore, sir," Murphy said.

"You big showboat, I don't think you ever were," Puller said. But despite the content of their words, the two of them seemed down right jovial.

"You're invading my home, sir. That I will not abide," Murphy said.

"It doesn't have to go this way, son," Puller said. "Just step aside. I'm not here to burn your home to the ground. Just to get the lady here a postage stamp of land."

"And I can't even let you have that," Murphy said. "If you don't leave my home, I'll have to shoot you. I'll shoot you and every soldier that's working for you."

"You will try," Puller said. There was a moment of silence as Stella reached to one side and grabbed one of her fallen javelins, flipping it between her fingers.

"What'd you do to end up with them?" Murphy gave a nod toward Stella, eyes still on Puller.

"Not a damned thing. And you'd be amazed how goddamned angry a man gets when he's sent to Hell for no good reason," Puller said.

"I wouldn't. I can understand it entirely," Murphy said. He gave a meagre shrug. "I'm gonna have to shoot you, now."

"I understand, son. Men, kill that movie-star for me," Puller said. As one, Her Men Of Iron and Stella with them surged in on Murphy, assailing him from every angle that hey could manage and a few that they outright invented. And Murphy was good. He didn't fight like Stella did, with intense violence of action and precision of movement. He was almost entirely defensive. But the 'almost' was the crippling part. While spending 95% of his time dodging, blocking melee strikes and blocking the line of plasma fire with other bodies, that remaining five percent was him taking utterly clinical shots which fouled elbow and shoulder joints, cracked armor plating, or planted one of Her Men Of Iron onto their asses, if even temporarily.

Stella grew bored of his defensive fighting and shoved the armored honor-guard that Murphy was keeping between himself and her out of her path, and lashed forward with a ruinous swing of her mace. He sidestepped it, and then with a full-armed baseball swing of his burning Garand, clocked her up the face, cracking it's plating, before sending another swing around and shattering through the bullet-worried armor of her left arm. She felt a deep pain in her arm, the bone not broken but creaking under the assault.

The pain ignited her blood. She could feel the cold flame of her soul begin to burn hot, and with a movement so fast that even Murphy could not keep up, she slammed down on the floor with her mace, a blow the likes of which both in scale and intensity had sent Satan recoiling during their battle in the streets of Greed. She didn't even care that it didn't hit Murphy. If it had, that would have been a pleasant bonus. Instead, it was intended to strike the ground and cause it to shake. The entire region rumbled as the Fundament of Heaven shifted for the first time since it was built, and even more debris began to rain down from above as the tilted Rat Tower shook its heart out into the gap between. The blow to the ground sent the ground out from under Murphy, and her immediate up-swipe dug the serrated blades of her mace into his side and heaved him in a bleeding arc, one that crashed through one of Her Men Of Iron and sent him rolling but finished when she dashed him against the stone foundation of the still-standing Rat Tower.

Golden blood splatted there, the blood a true Angel, but he was not the first Angel that she'd clipped the wings of, today. So she drove her foot in a brutal front-kick into him, causing him to spit even more golden blood from his mouth. He still jammed his burning bayonet into her leg's armor, cracking a plate there as he did. Defiant to the utter end. She could respect that. So when he rebounded off the wall, his eyes bleary and his posture bent, it was still with weapon in hand, his wings looking a bit crooked and off kilter. She had no words for him, though. He was in her way, of taking land in Heaven and seeing her daughter again. So with a wordless roar, she did as he had done, using both hands with a baseball swing of her mace, one that caught him flush in the chest, and the sheer ruinous impact of it burst his ribs out his back along his spine, a splat of pulped angel and ruined flesh as he was sent rocketing down the alleyway, ricocheting between the Rat Towers on either sides until he landed face down in a heap, his halos starting to overheat and Flare Out.

"Unknown Hostile!" Puller shouted, and sent a stream of fire down the path that they were clustered. By now Stella was getting used to not having to turn her head to see behind her, but she had no notion of what Her Men Of Iron were shooting at. It was just empty alleyway as far as her eye could see.

"Movement!" Deez called out, and sent fire down the side path that they'd come into this stretch of alley from.

"You're jumping at shadows. Get ahold of yourselves," Stella barked at them.

"They should be afraid," a voice came to Stella. She turned her gaze through the visual feeds that she had, even looking 'up'. Nothing.

Until somebody walked out of the Rat Tower near where Murphy was in the process of expiring. Somebody or something. Whatever it was, it wasn't an Angel. It did have a halo, in the form of a plane of brilliant white light arrayed always on the far side of her head from where Stella was viewing her. Her body seemed human, at first, but there was a dread weight to it that even magically dull Stella could perceive. Her hair, auburn, didn't even reach her shoulders, and though the eyes on her face were pressed closed, there was a third in the center of her forehead which was open, as though glaring at Stella. She had an unclear number of arms, seeming to vacillate between four and twenty eight depending on the moment, and when she moved it seemed like she was dragging reality with her as she did.

Stella launched a javelin at the newcomer.

There was a blink just at the instant that the high-speed metal should have impaled her.

And then the metal was streaking harmlessly through the alleyway, rebounding off of the floor and walls until its kinetic energy was spent. She had... what? Slipped out of reality for a moment to avoid the attack? What the fuck was this woman?

"Get up," the woman said, the one green eye she was staring through locked on Stella as she knelt down beside the dying Murphy.

"He's not getting up. Leftenant, cut me a path out of here," Stella said. She turned away from the dying Angel and the weird thing that drifted toward him, bearing with her the scent of pine sap, flowers and petrichor.

"At once, Ma'am," Puller said, turning one last glance to the Angel, then looking at the Rat Tower beside them. "Straight through? Straight through."

With no more said, her men began to barge through the wall of the Rat Tower, which collapsed and shattered under the combined influence of the invaders' power armor and their own poor construction standards. But as Stella moved to stoop into the hole they were cutting, she turned a last glance back at the strange woman-thing that was bent down over the Angel who was in his last stage of Flare Out. She laid a hand on him.

And his two halos blossomed into a pane of light like her own, arrayed behind Murphy's head. The strange woman-thing wafted down into him like colorful smoke, absorbing into Murphy's shattered body. And when he did, Stella could see that his wounds began to pull themselves closed. He was Regenerating. An Angel was Regenerating.

And when he stood up, there was a split in the skin of his forehead, a third eye opening there.

"This feels a lot weirder than I thought it'd be. Well, I keep my promises. Wait a second am I talking out loud? Would you rather I try doing this in your brain? Actually I think this is probably better for my sanity, ma'am," Murphy then said.

"Oh that can't be good," Deez said. "Guys! Move faster!"

"I still feel like hell, frankly. Give it a second. Seriously, I can feel my spine reforming. Like I said, give it a second. Is this what it's like being you all the time? You have no idea, poster-boy," Murphy said. When he turned his eyes to them, there was a strange sort of fire in them, his head now back-lit by the pane of his new halo. "This'll be interesting."

There was a shout of alarm from the front of Her Men Of Iron. She could see that the wood of the structure that they were battering through was trying to grab and grapple them. She flicked a javelin out of her carrier, noting that she only had one more left, and hurled it with all of her might and skill at the transformed, possibly possessed Angel. This time, the Angel didn't try to dodge. He caught the javelin, taking a moment to spin it with his fingers, before hurling it back with little of the apparent effort that she had used, but with calamitous result; the impact of it on her right arm outright burst the armor there and revealed the working machinery of this armor to the naked air. It hadn't damaged her flesh, but she knew that there would be no more second chances for her right arm. Her luck was running dry.

With a call of rage and effort, she bade the discarded metal of the area obey her. When she did, every nail, every piece of cutlery, every scrap of pipe or vent or tool or even just detritus rose up, racing toward her in an accretion disc that glowed with the heat of pressure-welded metal, before she thrust her hands outward, and that disk exploded into long, red-hot shards of scrap that tore a thirty foot hole in the Rat Tower she was standing in, and punched a fifty foot hole into the one on the other side. Murphy dragged up with his hand, and from the ground rose an oak with white leaves, one that burned as it absorbed the deluge of metal that she had sent at him, growing ever upward as both Rat Towers assailed by her attack gave plaintive groans and promised collapse. By the time she ran out of metal, the tree stopped growing; all of her attack now formed a sort of stitch, like a scar wrought in iron and copper and tin and lead that ran from the trunk of the tree up to where its limbs held the two towers upright.

Stella took a step back, Her Men Of Iron having cleared a path for her, as Murphy rounded the tree, giving it a 'not bad', nod, before turning his attention to her and summoning his firearm again. But he was not alone long. After a few seconds of his advance, there was another flutter and flash as another Angel Transited into the alley. That one took one look at Murphy and rose his hands as though to strike or hex him, but paused, confused, at the nod that Murphy gave him.

"What is this?" the new Angel asked.

"I'm helping," Murphy said. "And she doesn't belong here."

The newcomer turned to Stella. And when he did, she recognized him from the look of disdainful anger that came to his face. "It's been a while Spellbinder. Do you still not know how to fight to save your life?" Stella chided.

"Maybe I'll show you how I've grown!" Birah shouted at her. Murphy held his arm across Birah's path.

"Don't let her goad you. Bind her in place."

"Oh I don't think so," she said. She turned and tilted her head straight back, facing directly upward. Then, with all of the air her lungs could hold, she let out a scream that exploded all of the armor from her head away from her, that shook the air and had the two Angels recoil, Birah falling to the ground covering his ears while Murphy stoically stood with eardrums burst. But she wasn't aiming it at them. Angels were annoyingly tough. If you deafened them, they could keep fighting easily. No. She aimed up, so that she shattered the structural integrity of the Tower she was just inside of.

The debris and humans began to rain down as the entire structure began to collapse on itself from the top down. She began to back away, a smirk on her face as the collapse would soon seal that entire alleyway and prevent them from following her. "Report. How many are we still?"

"We're down one. We're taking him out with us," Puller said, from where his people were still smashing their way through the now collapsing Tower, letting the humans be crushed or shoved aside, as needs be.

"Why bother? Leave him and move faster," she said.

"And let his armor fall into Heaven's hands? I'm not that big of an idiot, Ma'am," Puller said. And he had a point. They had managed to keep up with her as she heedlessly and recklessly charged entirely too deep into enemy formations, and only lost a single of their number while doing it. She would have to see to it that she showered these audacious fools with glory and riches for doing the impossible and keeping pace with her. Such soldiers were a rare and valued breed.

"Then keep moving us out. I have no intention of dying here in Heaven, today," she declared.

Stress. It was a constant companion to Vaggie. Both in her life before, and in her afterlife afterwards, she lived under a constant weight of it. Fear and desperation, the dangers of human predation, and the cruelty of powerful men clung to her as a second shadow. She'd had to sacrifice her body and her sexuality for the sake of food and shelter in life, and had to sacrifice a hell of a lot more down here in Hell. So the thought of Charlie's dad being this big of a fucker, of making everybody's lives harder for no benefit of theirs, well, she was used to that. It was a blow that she'd taken so many times she was numb to it. But he pressure remained.

She paused, staring up through the bars of the fire escape, as she saw the massacred carcass of a soldier plummeting down into Hell from a failed attack of Heaven. The rain of dead soldiers wasn't constant, but was significant enough that she didn't want to risk it. She Regenerated slower than anybody else in this hotel. Any harm she took would be a long time in fixing.

Once the body splattered and clattered to the ground, his armor flying away in hunks of twisted metal, she started to drag the garbage bags out from the protective lee of the fire escapes and dump them into the dumpsters that had been pushed away from the wall of the Happy Hotel, their lids thrown open so that corpses would just drop in amongst the rubbish instead of ruining the container itself.

She grunted at the weight of the bags, because of the sheer amount of rubbish that Charlie – delightful woman that she was – had dragged out of her childhood home and now had to pare down to keep in her hotel-based dwelling. It was obvious that Charlie was just used to having a lot more space to live in, even with the last couple of years here in this ramshackle building.

"Got any change, mith?" a slurred voice came from up the alleyway as she steeled herself to throw out another heavy bag. She looked up to see a particularly harried looking imp, standing with a battered cup in one hand and holding himself off the alleyway concrete using a two-by-four as a crutch with the other.

"I don't carry money," she said. "But there's food in that bag if you want it."

"Very kind mith, very kind," the imp said, and the tock-tock-tock of his movement sounded as he slowly passed her. There wasn't as much food waste as there had been when Razzle and Dazzle were cooking, but that was because the people here actually wanted to eat Angel Dust's food. That was a shock and a half, that that mobster was a decent cook. Still, and despite the newcomer Rachel eating as much as she and Charlie combined at every sitting, there were still leftovers. Mostly because Angel Dust cooked like he was an Italian Grandma. It was a deadly sin to finish your meal with a clean plate, apparently.

Honestly, she was surprised at Angel Dust. She'd expected that he'd just dive headlong back into his old, bad habits now that the reason for his hiding in this hotel was dead and gone. But he wasn't. Maybe Charlie was right after all, in her expectations of him? Maybe there was something worth saving in Angel Dust.

Of course, he was still a murderer and a prostitute, so there was a long way to go. But by that metric, so had Vaggie been. There were infinite graduations of damnation. And Angel wasn't nearly as foregone as even Vaggie had given him credit for.

"Exuthe me, mith? Do you work here?" the imp asked, as he rummaged through the food waste bag.

"Yes. Why?"

"Excellent," the imp said, standing up. Wait what happened to his oth

Vaggie recoiled as something raced past her face, embedding with a metal twang into the body of the dumpster next to her. She could hear the distorted, distant laughter of that Dealmaker shitlord in her ears as the kitchen knife slowly vibrated itself to a stop. She then looked to the alley. The imp was gone. And the carcass... looked... blurry. But Vaggie wasn't going to bother with wondering about that. This was a step too goddamned far. She was not going to allow Alastor the fucking Radio Demon to treat her like a goddamned plaything. She tore the knife out of the metal, not even caring how its edge bit into her palm, and stormed back toward the doors, leaving the rest of the garbage for later.

She tried to pull the door open, but her hand seemed to waft through it like it was made of colored smoke. Oh, you deranged fuck, what did you do this time? Vaggie wasn't about to put up with this shit, not right now. She barged forward through that intangible door and through the hotel's back passages. As she moved, the whole thing felt dream-like, slightly off balance, but she ignored that too in the name of her anger. Until she emerged into the lobby, and then suddenly, everything snapped into focus and clarity.

"Ah! There you are at last! I was wondering if you'd forgotten about me!" Alastor taunted. Husk and Rachel were on their way out the door, and the shitlord was backing into the elevator with a grin on his face. With her fury on her face, she stormed toward him, glaring as much as she was able with the one eye she had left, until she passed through the threshold of the lift in Alastor's wake.

And suddenly there was a third, a one-armed, slightly butchered looking older fellow sitting with his back to the elevator wall.

"And that is what happened to Miss Vialpando leading up to this moment," Alastor said. Cain recoiled, and felt a need to divert his eyes from Vaggie.

"I must protest. I did not concede to being party to this violation of her privacy!" Cain declared.

"You what?" Vaggie asked, looking at him in confusion.

"I just showed him your perspective of what transpired the moment that The Glimpse got its hands on you, stole your memories and form, and infiltrated this hotel," Alastor said, manipulating the knobs of his microphone cane. "She'd intended to punt you into a time-pocket until she was done. You're welcome, for the work I did to pull you out and bring you here."

"How dare you!" Vaggie demanded.

"How dare you indeed! This is uncalled for," Cain said. There were very few depths that Cain had not plumbed in the eon he'd spent in Hell in his search for some stimulation that would outweigh the insistent weight of awfulness which was Hell under Lucifer, but he refused to be a molester nor a breaker of minds.

"Well what's done is done, and cannot be undone. And a chance to match wits with The Glimpse was worth the effort to get you here," Alastor said.

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

"The Glimpse has been here for the last few weeks in your form," Alastor said. The elevator gave a ding, and the doors opened to a seemingly random floor somewhere up the hotel. Which was odd, because the only button that'd been hit was the one for the penthouse. "Now since the likes of that is entirely out of your pay-grade, this is where you get off."

"I'm not done with you!" Vaggie said.

"Well, I am done with you," Alastor said. And then he shoved her so hard that she was launched out of the elevator and landed in a pile on the floor, whence the elevator doors slammed shut once more, and the lift continued rising. "Such a trial having to live with the humorless, wouldn't you agree?"

Cain didn't answer, focusing on trying to rebuild his limbs and getting more fatigued and weak with every passing moment that he did so. But after a few more seconds, there was a fresh ding, as the elevator finished its ascent and opened into a broad venue which was some combination of conspiracy-theorist den, open-concept kitchen, technology hub (which Cain would later learn was an all-in-one radio transmitter, encoder, and recorder), a partially built... something, that made Cain's eyes ache to look at it.

There was a deep sound that shook his guts as the air opened nearby, and The Glimpse, still wearing the face of Vaggie and the armor of an Archangel from some cybernetic future, stepped through. It was not Teleportation, as there was no snap or crack or pop. This was almost like she'd folded space, and stepped through the gap in the fibers of reality. She turned her now-pair of eyes to Cain, then to Alastor. And when she spoke, it tore through Cain's mental defenses like a Gluttony Drone through rotten wood. "Kill him," The Glimpse ordered.

Cain took one step out of the elevator and promptly almost keeled over onto his face. His arm was regrown, but it was withered and emaciated, as was the rest of him. He felt like he was starving to death, weak almost to the point of perishing, so when his body tried to do what she demanded, it failed. And Cain tried to sense a way to ward from the things that she demanded of him, but as long as she had that aura of absolute dominance around her, he did not believe he could.

"I'm afraid it's just you and me now, intruder," Alastor said brightly. He flourished with his arms, and cast out with a thrust of his cane a Pain Elemental, one that struck The Glimpse and put her back a step as the agony of it washed over her. She took that pain better than most that Cain had ever seen. Most when struck with one of those little thaumaturgical horrors were sent shrieking to the floor. "Delightful! There's only so much practising on the homeless that a man can do, after all."

He flicked a second, but she held out her hand in a 'one moment' gesture, and when the next Pain Elemental reached her, it 'warbled' in the air as though it were being pressed through some unseen force. It still struck her, and she was still driven back.

"Do you mind if I let you in on a little secret, old timer? I only learned how to do this in the last month! Can you believe it? Near a century down here in Hell and there's a whole new avenue of magic that I've only now had access to. Oh ho ho ho, this is a delightful day!"

The Glimpse flicked a glance to Cain, who was gasping for wind on his knees, trying to keep his head from spinning from weakness. But then there was a harsh electric snap, and a line of lightning formed between Cain and The Glimpse, a tether that he tried to recoil from, but found it didn't actually hurt him. She then blurred in motion, dragging that tether into and then through the Radio Demon, burning and electrifying him. Alastor gave a noise of surprise, not so much pain, and tried to enact The Gutter Lock on The Glimpse. It was a corrupted version of what was said to be Michael's special miracle, one that shoved a target outside of time. The Gutter version did not have an event-horizon, instead a gradual 'thickening' of time until all was still. And while the The Glimpse was slowed for a split second, there was a strange shifting sensation and then she slipped out of it without harm, before darting across and dragging the lightning tether through Alastor a second time.

Alastor grabbed it as it passed through him, as though catching a rope. With a wrenching motion of both hands, he snapped it, causing Cain to recoil and tip over onto his side. The Glimpse was likewise off of balance, and turned a deeply concerned look for a moment at Alastor. Almost as though she'd believed that such a feat ought be impossible. Cain pushed himself up to a ragged sit, and Alastor spoke Words That Should Not Be, in the language of things that Cain had been praised by Heaven for killing here in Hell. The words themselves made The Glimpse bleed, vast wounds opening in her body, her armor corroding under their malign influence.

The Glimpse darted back, her edges blurry again, and then reached out with her open hand, as though trying to grasp something of Alastor. And when she did, Alastor changed. His easy-going posture ended, his grin no longer showing undisguised mirth but instead becoming a thin and fragile mask over overwhelming rage. And when The Glimpse spoke, Cain could understand why.

"FORGET," The Glimpse demanded.

At that, Alastor slammed his cane down on the ground, burying its foot a quarter meter into the stone tiles and infrastructure of the penthouse. When he did, the entire Penthouse twisted, a rippling wave of unreality spreading outward from The Radio Demon as he willed what was not be, and what should never be, to be.

With steady creaking of bones breaking and sliding past each other, Alastor rose up to an even greater height, his antlers growing thicker, longer, and more spiked. His crooked body suddenly made sense in this bubble of malign dimension; here where the laws of all physics were debunked and space and time were decoupled, where the possible was impossible and the impossible inevitable, Cain could in this moment see what Alastor really was. A monster. A monster that Heaven in good standing would have come to destroy long ago. And here, in this impossible place that Cain's aged and seasoned mind could barely comprehend, he saw that The Glimpse was too.

And with a lash of his now sensible limb, Alastor slammed The Glimpse hard against the machines that made this radio station function, pinning her against them to the sound of breaking vacuum tubes and twisting metal. And Alastor was not smiling.

"Until this moment," he said, his voice finally devoid of distortion, "this was all fun and games. A chance to array myself against somebody who might actually put up a fight. But no. No you had to go and do the one thing I could not countenance."

He heaved and slammed The Glimpse into the floor with such violence of action to cause her body to leave a red smear on the floor when she bounced off of it. He could see her visibly healing, though, wafts of strange energy flowing up through the floor into her, before infusing her body and repairing what was lost. And those very same wafts of energy were flowing into Alastor as well. She rolled to her feet quickly enough, but was instantly penetrated by the butt of Alastor's cane, straight through her breastplate, sending another shock of blood against the walls.

"You had to try to deprive me of the only thing in all creation that I hold sacred. You tried to take away what I HOLD DEAR," Alastor shouted.

The Glimpse pulled herself up that impaling cane, grabbing ahold of Alastor's antler and ripping it from his head, trying to drive it through his eye, but he batted it away and left her open for him to drive his other fist through her chest and slam her first against a pillar holding up the ceiling before slamming her viciously to the floor.

"YOU! TRIED! TO! DESTROY! MY! KNOWLEDGE!" Alastor howled.

The Glimpse didn't look panicked, seeing Alastor the Radio Demon in a genuine rage. But she did look concerned. But before Alastor could call his power into an Annihilation Ray, Cain could see The Glimpse's eyes crackle, and spark, and then blossom.

There was a tremendous electric snap, a thunderbolt not coming from an inch-thick pipe of plasma but instead a sphere that enveloped the entire station, and ruthlessly slammed into the brains of both Cain and Alastor with equal brutality.

Cain took a few moments to regain himself. He'd already been teetering when that blast of fury came, and when the lightning cooked his brain it knocked him out until it could Regenerate itself. But he was cogent enough to see that even Alastor was reeling from the attack, crackles of lingering energy bathing him as he tried to stand up straight, to clear his lightning-struck brain. And The Glimpse was healing herself, the flood of that strange energy swirling 'round her until she was whole again. And Alastor's injuries were still there. They were Regenerating, faster than anybody who Cain had ever seen, but they were still there.

She beckoned with her hand, and the Seraphic Steel knife that she'd manifested jumped off of the floor and into her grasp. With a cold look of contempt, she prepared to thrust it into the brain of the still-reeling Alastor. But as the blade when forward, it was intercepted by the staff of Alastor's cane. He had been baiting her. And now that he had her knife within his reach, so with a flick of his wrists bent it out of The Glimpse's grasp and slammed it hard into her breastplate. And it deflected away at first, gouging the metal. That could only mean she was clad in Prima Materia. Which was doubly impossible as there was none of such thing on Earth or in Hell. Alastor didn't seem to care though. With a movement that had to be practiced to a surgeon's skill, he ripped the knife from her grasp, and with a full armed swing, drove its point straight through the gouge he'd made and into The Glimpse's flesh.

The Glimpse responded by grabbing Alastor and dragging him toward her as though trying to embrace him. But the instant she did, the rage on Alastor's face turned to another new expression, the like of which was new not just to Cain but to anybody who had ever seen Alastor in all Creation; panic. The arm that he had thrust into her was vanishing, being pushed somewhere Outside. And with the unknown prospect of what lay Out There, he chose the safer course and hurled The Glimpse away so hard that she broke through one pillar and splattered into a second. Literally. She broke apart in to a red goo, one that slipped down the pillar and reformed into herself, that blade still through her armor. She immediately rooted her feet and made a heaving motion. Cain's eyes saw a stream of color, of matter, of time, of being itself, that was being wrenched away from Alastor, as the Radio Demon finally fell to a knee as his eyes glazed somewhat and his War Form faltered. And when The Glimpse had that mass of causal existence reach her, she flexed hard, and a blast of pure force emitted from her, shattering the area surrounding her and buffetting Cain with its power.

"No compromise with Akasha. Death to the mind-slavers," The Glimpse said, stumbling to a knee with that Angel Steel blade driven through her chest.

Alastor gave his head a shake, then turned to her. "I'm sorry, what?" he asked.

"I will never allow a pawn of Akasha to live in my home. I will kill you," she swore wetly, coughing up blood that looked... strange, to Cain's eyes.

"Wait, you think that I serve Akasha?" Alastor asked, as he got to his feet, his wounds continuing to close as he did so. "Posh! You don't know me at all if you believe that! Why would I ever agree to bondage under anybody? No no no no. I stole my power from Akasha. And if I ever reach that vaunted realm, I have no intention of ruling it, or by extension any of its tributaries. No, I intend to ransack it."

"Really?" The Glimpse demanded of him, as she pulled the knife out of her chest and the blood pumped out exactly once before it... clotted. And started to heal. Wait what? The Steel of Angels was supposed to make wounds more real than the beings who suffered them! "So you are not a child of the Mind Eaters?"

"Of course not. Was all this little piece of silliness a misunderstanding on your part?" Alastor asked, his grin returned and a chiding tone in his voice.

"It would seem that it was," The Glimpse said, as she coughed and spat out a wad of hardening blood.

Alastor cocked his head to one side. "That knowledge isn't actually gone, is it?"

"No. I imagine for one such as you, it will return. It would for me," The Glimpse said.

"Then I can forgive your little insult to my mindscape. For now," Alastor said.

"I have no conflict with a breaker of Akasha. Until and unless you chose to stand in my way and intrude into my affairs, I have no business with you," The Glimpse said. As she did, her entire body seemed to tremble and surge, her skin blooming in a rich peach shade, horns emerging through hair now turned golden blonde, as she swelled in stature until she looked down on both of the men while wearing the face of Lilith, her armor vanishing and being replaced by one of Lilith's salacious dresses. She turned to Cain. She opened her mouth as though to speak, but then paused, staring into his eyes while reality finally asserted itself. He could feel a presence in his mind, delicate as a spider walking on glass, and though he held the Tower fast, it seemed this presence was resolute. "Oh, that's surprising. I was about to bemoan the fact that you were stuck here in Pride like all of you Sinners. In that case, you should take this and visit me some time. I can give you... special access," she said, pulling a card from her cleavage and flicking it unerrantly to where Cain was still on his knees on the floor. It was a card to Ozzie's, the pride of Asmodeus, Embodiment of Lust.

"Maybe one day I will have to seek you out as well. You've shown me a few things I'd love to learn," Alastor said.

"On my terms, usurper. Not yours," The Glimpse said with a smug smile captured one-to-one from Lilith at her most sultry. It had no effect on Alastor. And then, she motioned behind her and summoned that strange portal again, this one connecting directly to the Ring of Lust, which she shashayed into with not a care in the world, leaving the two wounded men in her wake.

Then there was a ding in the elevator behind them. It opened to reveal Vaggie, and also Charlie in her pyjamas.

"Okay what the FUCK happened here?" Charlie seemed genuinely angry.

"Just a little misunderstanding!" Alastor answered happily. "Would you like to know the whole, sordid story?"

"You..." she began, then stopped. "Cain? What are you doing here?"

"That, too, is a bit of a long story," Cain said.

The battle swirled around Stolas, where he stood invisible and imperceptible to the throngs of soldiers. In most circumstances he would be beside himself with joy at the prospect of walking the Clouds of Heaven again. But not today. Today was a special day. And important one. He had read the Prophecy. He had read it to its end. And it painted with broad strokes the scene that he saw before him.

He had not known at the time what The Folly Of Angels meant, but seeing the Rat Towers arrayed before him, he understood at long last. It dominated half of the horizon as far as the eye could see, a cliff-face of man's design in the name of desperation and want. The soldiers of Heaven, once to be staffed with the Myriad of Angels and Cherubs, now had a vast array of Innocent taking up more modern arms. This was not a battle of sword and shield. While those were in use, it was mainly in the hands of Angels. Cherubs and Innocent used guns. And Guns were massacring the hordes of Hell wherever the two met.

Stolas couldn't see Stella anywhere. He wasn't worrying. He was outright panicking. He couldn't protect her if he couldn't find her. And with the swirl of battle as it was, there was a chance that he was desperately out of position. But he didn't even entertain the notion that Stella might already be dead, that he may have missed his chance to save her. That wasn't how The Prophecy worked.

He had said goodbye to anybody whom he cared to. Octavia would be okay. Blitz... well, Stolas had done all that he could. The she-imp Tilla would have to take up the rest of the slack per their alliance. Amongst the rest of the Ars Goetia, there were only a few that Stolas held in such intimate regard as to bother sending final messages, but those messages had been sent, to be delivered upon confirmation of his death. He should feel at ease, at peace. Today was his last day. So why did he fear? Why did dread still hound him?

He had no time to ask these existential questions, because one of the Rat Towers began to shudder and crumble, the highest section slumping from the skyline and collapsing inward. And from the base of that monument of ruin emerged some of those strange, heavily armored soldiers that Octavia had been so insistent that he invest in. They were all battered, yes, but where thirty men went in, twenty nine were coming out – even if one of them was being carried as a carcass. Maybe Octavia had been right to invest in such things. Well, if she was as smart as Stolas always believed she was, she would have most of Stolas' wealth to continue doing it.

And the last out of that now utterly collapsing Rat Tower was the panoply of Stella, itself almost smashed to bits but still managing to function despite the grisly damage it'd taken. She paused only long enough to grab a chunk of stone from the ground before twisting and hurling it at the Angelic Archer that had turned to send a Bolt down at her. The strike severed the archer's head from shoulders, and the halo Flared Out a moment later.

Stolas let the sweep of soldiers carry him forward, unseen by their number as he was brought into the middle, the place where bullets overtook corpses. And retreating through that no-man's land, Angel Steel deflecting off of them the entire way, came Stella and those volunteers of the Stellar Grenadiers. Above, more Angels Transited in, sending down more Bolts, or diving to engage in blazing Melee, or even dropping low to do both. Where was he? Where was Cecutus?

One descending Angel had come to close, and the Grenadiers washed him with plasma-fire for his trouble, dropping him into the mash of the Angel's side of the war. Stolas did not see if he died. It didn't matter if he did. Cecutus! Where are you, damn you? The churn of the soldiers carried Stolas right to the Hellish shield-wall, great plates of steel which were battered, bullet-scarred, and damaged from the sheer volume of Angel Steel that they had warded away. Though Stolas stood pelvis, torso, and head above the shield line, he didn't have to actually dodge very often. Nobody, on either side, could see him. He was as good as intangible.

The Grenadiers were closing. Soon, they'd bridge the no-man's land, and press passed the shield wall into safety. This had to be the moment. The language of The Prophecy left no doubt in Stolas' mind. It was now. So with a sweep of his arms, a pang of pain in his shattered wings, and a flaring to life of his long shelved Halo, he let himself appear and summoned all of his magic to himself, his defenses ignited in full. Not that it would save him today.

"Hold this line, soldiers!" he called, his voice losing all of its melody and harmony as he allowed The Black Bird to manifest through it. The light of his halo was mottled, corrupted as it was by an eon in The Pit. It glowed, yes, but there were bands and bruises of black against its white; it was no longer pure. He didn't care. It'd give him enough. With a turn of his gaze, he swept Petrification along the Innocent who were trying to pursue his wife and the soldiers protecting her.

Stella turned from where she had taken to throwing corpses at those distant Angels harrowing her, and saw him. "What are you doing here?" She demanded at a scream across the quarter kilometer of battle.

"I am doing my part!" Stolas said. With a wave of his hand, vast arrays of rubble, which had been falling effectively harmlessly from the collapsing Rat Tower ahead of him and behind Stella, were taken up by his telekinetic grasp, and then rained down in a blazing display of ruin. Even as the Angels turned and saw him, saw the threat he represented, he could feel a hex blazing toward him, red against the grey sky. He flicked his hand and banished it, burning it away before hurling a broad doom back whence that hex had come. He didn't see whom it landed upon, but he didn't particularly care. As long as somebody was suffering for their attempt, that was what mattered.

He stepped over the shield wall, and swept a portal ahead of him just as a volley of Angel Steel bullets was fired at him. He opened a second portal perpendicular to their firing line, so they ended up peppering their own soldiers with their own fire. Many died. But those many were Innocent. And Innocent, for reasons that Stolas and Purson together had never learned, were not badly done by the Steel of Angels. Still, it put them out of the fight, riddled with holes as they were. He kept twitching those portals into new arrangements as different formations turned their attentions on him, and he punished them one and all.

Some part of him wondered what would be spoken of him tomorrow. Though this was a mere simple trick, would it have been enough to salvage the battle? He didn't know how simple-minded the other Legatus Damnatio had been, or how restricted the powers the other Ars Goetia had brought to the field. He didn't know that his raw cleverness had eclipsed any that Asmodeus had led during his disastrous first wave. All he knew was that he had to buy Stella time. Time she was using well, closing distance.

And there, there Stolas saw Cecutus. The Angel Of Archers, whose properly placed arrows could kill any target regardless of its protections, landing in the no-man's land, his bow in hand. His eyes were locked on Stella, determined to bury his blazing golden arrow into the side of her skull. He didn't offer a challenge to her, for Cecutus was not defined by honor. He just wanted her dead. And Stolas let his long, long legs carry him in a sprint, closing distance across the swamp of broken bodies, so that when he launched himself, that arrow he fired would bypass any magical defense he could muster and slam into Stolas' chest, instead of Stella's brain.

But before Stolas even got a chance to jump, grey metal surged. At Cecutus. The Angel Of Archers, target fixated on Stella, didn't even pay attention as the form in the power armor closed distance at a heedless sprint, and then tackled him. Wait... what?

Stolas still interposed himself between Cecutus and Stella, but as he watched, a second armored figure joined the first, grappling Cecutus and snapping his bowstring. The other thrust his left fist against the back of Cecutus' neck, and there was a blast of fire as the Angel's head was cut by flame from his neck. The halo sputtered and burned, Flaring Out as Cecutus died.

Wait. WHAT?

"Did you see that? Deez! We killed a fuckin' Angel hand to hand!" one armored figure said with an electronically projected voice.

"Fuck you!" the one called 'Deez' shouted at the decapitated head, then held it aloft. "Y'all want to see what imps are capable of now, you sons-a'-bitches?"

WAIT WHAT?

"Why are you standing there you goddamned numpty? Stella shouted at Stolas, grabbing him by his arm and dragging him toward Hell's battle lines. His eyes kept flitting around, looking for what was the source of the arrow that would end him. And he found not a single soul casting a though of harm in his direction.

"Wait... what?" he finally summoned the effort to say.

"Fall back to the bunker," a voice called out, shrill and high. There was the Legatus of cousin Sallos' legions waving her standard and covered in blood. She seemed preeminantly pleased with herself.

"What bunker? We don't have a bunker!" Stella said. But when Stella turned, dragging Stolas with her, he could see what Gallia had been referring to. There was indeed a bunker, built out of the rubble of the Pearly Gates, assembled with Weepstone for mortar with its back to the edge where Cloud One became the formless in-between. It was not large, only as tall as a two story building and as large in footprint as Stolas' swimming pool (which meant that it was nearly two thousand square feet of space). But it was there, settling into place with the magic and the weapons of Heaven rebounding off of its adamantine stone, unable to unseat them from their new place.

Stolas was cogent enough to realize he was in a state of shock. He should be dead right now. He had seen a vision upon reading that last page of his testament of the Prophecy, of slowly gasping to death as the forces of Heaven were arduously, gradually, and painfully pushed away from him, and of expiring as the victory cry hit the air. But here he was, in the same place, on the same day exactly as God's Prophecy had stated... and he was fine.

He was okay.

And he didn't understand why.

"Colonel Puller, how many did your people lose?" another armored figure asked, as the whole of the armies of Heaven began to fold their way into the posterns of the bunker that hours of work had built.

"Only one, and we didn't leave Heaven the armor. I'd call this an unmitigated success," the soldier so addressed answered. "Damned near killed an Archangel, too."

"That wasn't an Archangel. Whatever that was, it wasn't an Angel at all," Stella said. The doors were sized that Asmodeus wouldn't need to stoop through them, which was of convenience to Stella and Stolas. As soon as they were within, Stolas saw something akin to the staging grounds at The Edge, only built into Heaven, a great Portal Stone deposited on the dust-smutted Cloud. The soldiers seemed very pleased with themselves, as the most mangled pressed through the portal and back into Hell, while the rest took up spots on the defense and shot anybody who tried to approach the bunker.

Stella, meanwhile, took Stolas and shoved him hard against the wall, leaning in with her nearly broken armor at him, her eyes glaring. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

"I was... trying to help," Stolas said, his head feeling like somebody had replaced his brain with loose cotton. "I saw..."

"I don't care what you saw! You could have left Octavia an orphan and for what? Some attempt to reclaim personal glory? Think Stolas! THINK!" she said, giving him a slap which did very little to clear Stolas' head. She thrust a clawed finger into the center of his chest, pinning him to that wall by the tension that was only a touch away from cutting through his skin. "You swore to me that you would make sure that Octavia was going to be alright. And you come up here to throw it away because of glory! Even I thought you were smarter than that!"

"You don't understand. This wasn't about my glory, this was..."

"Then what was it? What was so important that it made you go back on your FUCKING WORD?" she demanded, her eyes as angry as she was the day she learned of his affair with Blitzie, but for a very different reason. That had been because he was assailing her reputation by proxy. This was... more primal.

"I was supposed to have been killed three minutes ago," Stolas said, staring her in the eye. She recoiled a bit. "I was supposed to die. Saving you from Cecutus."

She stared at him, then rolled her eyes and scoffed. "You put too much faith in your magic, Stolas. Just stay here and don't go wandering onto that battlefield. You're not even wearing armor for God's sake," she muttered, unable to even maintain her anger on him. He let her go. What had happened today? Why was he alive and Cecutus dead?

What had changed? How could God's Prophecy possibly be wrong?

With a noise in his mind like radio static, he could barely register as the men of his Stellar Grenadiers spoke, talking about what they had seen and what they had fought to the one of them that had remained behind and built this entire second-hand edifice. And he barely even noticed the incredulity in Lieutenant Colonel Puller's voice when he asked 'well if Aym's Burning Fifth didn't show up here, then where in the fuck are they?'. He just opened with his hand a motion that he intended to spawn a portal with, only to have nothing happen, as the Grimoire was, of course, no longer bound to him. Oh. Right.

He didn't know what to do with himself.

And he was so very, very confused right now.

It was a rare thing that Angels referred to God's Prophecy. Because of the nature of the text, it could only be used to read one's one story from the moment of their creation until the moment of their demise. And as a result, most Angels thought that it was something of a novelty for beings with memories as unending as their own. Yes, it could be used to recall things that one may have forgotten, but what other worth could it have?

The answer came that it could be used to read the whole stories of the dead, and that if one were brazen and foolish enough, you could read ahead to your own end. The tome itself was a massive text, as large as a man's torso in height, width, and thickness, bound between panels of ancient, veined black wood of the branches of the Qliphoth. It looked to weigh as much as a human man, but if you tried to lift it, you would find it heavier than the sun. And at the moment, it was being looked over by a pair of cherubs trying to resolve a bet.

"See, I told you, you were wearing an orange dress when you came to my wedding," the unimpressed looking capybara of a Cherub said. The other, looking like she was made of living, mobile wood, rolled her eyes.

"It wasn't orange, it was ochre," she said.

"The book says orange," the capybara said.

"I don't care what the book says. When I ordered it, I demanded ochre. The dress was ochre," she said. The capybara Cherub, with her face as unfazed as the animal which she was based upon, tapped the word clearly written on the page of God's Testament Of History, which said very clearly 'orange'. "Well you're an asshole," the wooden Cherub said.

"Language," the capybara Cherub admonished. And then there was a loud, wooden crack as the book was thrown closed quite ungently. Both turned, and saw Metatron, standing with glassy eyes at the head of the book, and he picked it up as though it were a pamphlet. The two cherubs shared a glance as Metatron walked away, leaving the slightly darker Prophecy shaped section of the table where All Of Time's worth of erosion had not weathered that tiny portion of Heaven. This was unheard of. Nobody ever moved The Prophecy. So the two fluttered their little wings and followed the Metatron as he walked, uneven and lurching, away from the annals of Heaven's history, and toward the Plaza Beyond.

"Metatron... what are you doing?" the wooden Cherub asked. Metatron of course did not answer, simply lurching his way through the streets. "This is highly irregular, isn't it?"

"You saw the stone-shadow. Of course this is irregular," the capybara cherub answered.

They followed as the Keter Seraphim, Metatron Unchanged, made an awkward path through the streets of Heaven, until those streets began to shift in uncomfortable ways. They followed, gaining other Cherubs and Angels as witnesses as Metatron did something obviously strange and worthy of consideration. The streets bent, weight pressing the Angels down as their wings stopped working to keep them aloft, and they were forced to walk on their feet like humans. The roadway tiled with regular pentagons opened into a hypobolic space where length and depth remained intact, but breadth felt tenuous. And from time to time, those witnessing the march of Metatron could see themselves, either in the future or the past, watching the march of Metatron, talking amongst themselves, or fleeing as something great approached.

The murmuring of their concern and fear began to echo oddly through the plaza, bending around the shaft of the Greatspear of Ruin which even now was half driven, a sloppy nail, into the pentagonal tiles, before returning to the one who murmured them. Past the Greatspear, Metatron marched, past the Durance Enduring, a spot under perpetual Grand Seal, a Lock of both Time and Space which had already been there when the Angels built Heaven, and would be there until the end of days. Past The Moment, an instant of time occupied by Hodal the Cherubim Undivided, its eyes pressed closed as it rested outside of the flow of time yet still visible to those within it. Onward Metatron lurched, until finally it reached The Garbage, a point where the stink of the dire and foul overwhelmed all other odors. There, Metatron rotated in a way that the lesser Angels following him could not explain but were able on some degree to perceive, and when he did, they saw a hole open in reality, one that presaged a long fall into the raw and teeming madness of the Abyss.

"What is he...?" the wooden cherub began.

Metatron cut her off by throwing God's Prophecy into the hole he'd made, and sent it plummeting into the Abyss, and to its destruction. A wide gasp came to the throats of everybody watching. They were so shocked by what happened, they didn't even have words to describe it. That text was irreplaceable. Only God could make its like. And Metatron just threw it into doom itself.

"Why?" the capybara cherub demanded, huffing her way in front of Metatron. According to the observers, she was standing on an open hole. Why she wasn't falling was a mystery. "How could you do that! That was God's own word!"

Metatron blinked, and his eyes became less the glass orbs of a doll, and more the head-struck eyes of a wounded beast.

And then for the first time in three centuries, Metatron spoke.

"I... don't know," he said.

"Stay where you are, and do not move," the human demanded, keeping his submachine gun trained on them. Of course, what he'd actually said was something more in the realm of 'Bleib, wo du bist, und keine Bewegung,' but as children of Hell, they were outside of the Scattering and the need to actually learn the languages of mankind. Still, Bommer did as they demanded.

He should have known that things had gone tits up, that within seconds of stepping through the portal, every single Sinner in their unit burst into flames and made charcoal of themselves. But with that 15% of their force gone, and only the Mutants, Furies, Hellhounds, and imps still standing, they thought they would just get orders and start killing. After all, there were lots of non-demons to fight up here. But no orders ever came. And there wasn't even really opposition. A few very lightly armed humans, who didn't even have the Gapped Halos that they'd been briefed on.

Of course, Bommer had figured it out pretty quick. Imps didn't survive long by being morons. Even big'uns like him, pride of the Ring of Wrath that he was, had to be quick on their hooves and quick with their mind to survive against Demons who had every physical advantage over an imp like him. He pegged it pretty quickly that they weren't in Heaven. They'd gotten kicked out in the Human World.

"They're gonna kill us all," Rex said. He was unable to keep his hands behind his head, because one of them was shattered by rifle-fire. The Hellhound was allowed to let it dangle at his side as it was clear that he was not in a condition to keep fighting.

"They haven't so far," Bommer said.

"We just killed three dozen of them," Rex said.

"And then they pushed our shit in with their military. That's how it goes," Bommer said easily. You win some, you lose some. But whatever maudlin yammering that Rex was about to go into was cut off when the door opened, and a new human entered the room, wearing similar armor to the human soldiers, only over a business suit.

"The invaders are these?" the newcomer asked smoothly, which again twigged Bommer as having been translated from yet another of those fucking human languages. "It is true they can understand us?"

"I can understand you just fine," Bommer said.

"Well pardon my incredulity that a demon would speak French," the newcomer said, with a chuckle.

"Funny. The last guy said I was speaking 'German'. What the fuck is a German?" Bommer asked.

"He is," the newcomer said, gesturing toward the soldiers keeping them at gunpoint. "Can I presume you speak for your unit?"

"Well, it should be Kuril, but his jaw's shattered," Bommer started. "And Lewis is dead, and so's Wojtli, and... well, fuck me I guess I am talking for them."

"Good. Your name, please?"

"Fuck you, what's yours?" Bommer demanded.

"Well then, mister Fuck You; I am Rene Desjardins, with the European Union's Bureau of Paranatural Affairs," he said, moving to a collapsing table which had been set up near the entryway to the storage room they were being housed in – which as he'd later learn was the gymnasium of a local high-school. "When the Americans got ahold of Demons, they did it through the private sector, and made a dog's dinner of it. No offense."

"None taken. The Legion feeds us shit," Rex said.

"I see," Desjardins said. "Unlike the DHORKS fiasco, I am not going to try guarding you with weapons from Japan's Edo period. You will not be leaving this room unless I specifically request EUBoPA allow it, and anybody trying to extract you will be killed by the best guns that Germany has to offer, held by the best trained soldiers on this Earth. If they try to extract you..."

"Yeah, let me just cut you off there, neck-tie," Bommer said. "Nobody's comin' for us. They probably don't even realize that we ended up here, and they won't care enough to come looking. So how 'bout you just knock off the 'you're not getting away' talk, because we already aren't getting away."

"I have one question before we proceed," Desjardins said, opening a briefcase and extracting some paperwork. "Is your presence here a presage to an invasion of the Earth by forces from the pits of Hell?"

"Nope. We're here cause somebody fucked up; we're at war with Heaven, not you guys," Bommer said.

Desjardins stared at them for a while, as though gauging whether Bommer were lying – he wasn't – and how much Bommer knew – not much – before continuing. "Very well. You will be given medical treatment for your injuries and you will be moved to secure holding within the day. Legal proceedings will begin regarding the crimes you've committed since your arrival here. Welcome, demons, to the European Union."

"Indeed, that was the point where my then superiors lost the plot, as the saying goes. It was held by the masters of the Choral Cadres and their dedicated Auxilia that the war would be won without allowing a single demonic inhabitant of Hell to hold so much as a ducat's worth of land for longer than it took to scoop them back over the edge. But as I have been saying for the last few decades, they were too set in their ways and didn't have their eyes open wide enough. I would have warned them to finish dumping the dross of the Wall over the edge had they listened to a lowly human such as myself. Instead, what they overlooked became the unbreakable and insurmountable advantage of Hell.

If you were to ask me at what point exactly I decided that I would have to start taking a more active hand in the defense of my new homeland, it would be the creation and holding of Hell's Redoubt. The impotence of the angels to shift that pile of rubble held in place with the bones of dead demons showcased, once and for all, that Angels' thinking was permanently backward and unable to heed the realities of a modern war. With that understanding in mind, I merely had to ensure that I was in the correct place to capitalize on the failings of my Angelic overseers, and step by step, to replace them.

How many Firstborn still hold positions of leadership in the Choral Cadre? I will tell you, mistress; less than five. And when I began my ascent to command, they were ubiquitous. The Firstborn were built to a different mould, an inferior one in my opinion, for the Secondborn at least are willing to adapt when reality denies them their whims. The Thirdborn, though? I would stand aside a Thirdborn any day and against any foe. It was such a relief once more of them were created. Fie upon God for being so blind in His ambitions that He relegated the creation of His most valuable servants to the nearly-blind adventures of the rigid-thinking Firstborn."

-Niccolo Machiavelli, Brevet Supreme Commander of The Heavenly Host