Times had been lean for Striker of late. And he wasn't stupid or arrogant enough (though on the latter, it was a near thing) to be blind as to why. Though his now missing arm had been replaced by an immaculate prosthetic from BathTech, one so good that he could actually feel through its fingers, that hand shook. The fingers twitched in ways that he didn't want them to. And he'd troubleshot the fuck out of the thing, trying to eliminate every conceivable reason for bad connection to his brain or signal misread, but the problem wasn't in the arm. It was in him. He had a bad case of The Yips.

His other hand shook, too.

It wasn't nearly as bad in the arm that was made out of meat, but it was there. And that was the proof he needed that his brain just wasn't in it. Not since that bad fight that tore up about half of Pride Ring. He'd kept up on the news, listened to his 'comrades' in the Guns of Satan. Turns out, there was less than virgin's chance in Ozzie's that Striker could have won that bout. He was fighting the fucking Demiurge. That he survived was a miracle beyond miracles. All it had cost him was an eye, an arm, and his ability to shoot straight.

Still, he wasn't going to wallow and drink himself to death like his mama did once she lost her looks and that Goetia motherfucker stole all her savings. It didn't shame him any that he was a literal son of a whore. She did what she was good at, and she made sure he did what he was good at. He just needed to shake The Yips. Which was why he was laying here on the crest of a hill, covered in snow, with only the tip of his rifle poking out of the white fluff which layered over him. It wasn't even cold down here. With a half foot of the shit on him, it served as a blanket.

The scene was a little get-together, being hosted by a former target of his. The Prince of Flowers didn't have the largest social circle, having essentially cut himself off from his Goetia brethren in the last couple of decades for unstated reasons. But then, as though those last few decades hadn't happened, he started reaching out and inviting people again. Raum was the one that he was putting effort into today, and the young crow, Created by God mere moments after Naberius as a younger sibling, was speaking animatedly to the owl-demon. There were others, of course. Sallos was present, looking a large human with shaven head and carefully tailored beard, drinking tea with a measured look on his face. Striker guessed he was probably trying to work through why Stolas had chosen now of all times to reconnect.

And that didn't matter to Striker in the end. He just had to put a bullet into Raum. But his gunsights were shaking; even the muting effect of the snow layered on his firearm wasn't enough to mute the tremble that went through his limbs, not for the distance he'd chosen. Perhaps chosen foolishly. He'd been able to make a shot from this distance before, but that was then. Maybe he'd have been better off moving for a closer shot – with all the peril that entailed – but it was too late to reposition now. He just had to get the shakes under control, and squeeze the trigger.

Of course, there were other guests. Stolas' eagle-sinner leader of his legions was there. His daughter, too, looking uncomfortable and out of place amongst her vastly older family members. She didn't stick around long, looking thoroughly unhappy to be here, before slipping away from the group and out of sight. And weirdest of them all was fucking Blitzo. First of all, his gut made him ask why the fuck he was even allowed to be seated there with these aristocratic piles of uselessness and ego, but the fact was Blitzo was the Proxy of Lucifer. He had more right to sit there than Stolas did. And he wasn't even looking bored or like he was going to steal the silverware. No, he was talking to Glosya-Labolas with something approaching eagerness, to which the griffon-dog responded in kind, each ignoring the provenance of the other as though having found a fertile common ground.

That sneaky, lucky fucker.

Striker wasn't about to blast Blitz for managing to do what few imps ever did – infiltrating the highest circles of society on his own merit – because that was the kind of shit that Striker always considered the proper goal of any self respecting imp. And Blitz had a lot more respect for himself than most. So while it was a bit rankling that Blitz made it up there first, that was the way the game shook out some times. Besides, it wasn't like Striker didn't have time to make up the gap.

He wondered what would happen if an imp became a Deadly Sin.

Ah, well. Such thoughts were mere distraction for his task. Raum needed a new hole. He was being paid to provide it. He just needed to get the quiver of his sights to still, just for a heartbeat, just for an instant. Part of the reason he'd chosen to do this in the cold was because he'd believed that eventually hypothermia would kill his shakes if he waited long enough. But it didn't seem to be doing it fast enough, and that little snow-side jamboree that they were taking part in wouldn't last forever. Fuck it. If he couldn't get a perfect shot, Striker would have to settle for an adequate one. Now just to wait until he could manage an adequate one.

He barely noticed how Blitz's eyes swept out over what was to him the distance, pausing just for a moment on the hill that he was laying on. It wasn't long enough for him to really note, or be concerned about. He had to keep his attention on Raum, and his field of vision was intensely narrowed by the fact it was viewing through a scope.

He didn't see at all how Blitz broke off his conversation with the Ars Goetia of Murder and said a few words with Stolas, and handed him something. No. No time for that nonsense. Just focus on the young crow. This would probably put him at odds with Naberius, now that he thought about it... no focus Satan damn it! He pulled his hand from the rifle, flexing it and feeling the creaking of his finger joints. The cold was starting to get to him. It made him feel ancient and arthritic. After a few flexes, of getting some flexibility back into his joints, he carefully slipped his hand back into place, taking care not to jostle his rifle, to throw off its aim. Okay, that was more like it. The tremors were declining. Just a minute. Just a moment. He just needed the right moment.

Then there was a crunch of something heavy stepping on snow directly behind him. He didn't even have a chance to turn and spin the rifle around when a hand plunged through the crust of snow over him, grabbing him by his tail and lifting him from his sniper's perch.

Stolas Goetia did not look impressed.

"Are you trying to interrupt my party?" Stolas asked.

"Only for one of you," Striker admitted. Directly behind him was a portal, lined with fire, and through that portal, he could see Blitz just on the other side of it, looking a bit surprised that Striker was here. "You've made waves, bow-limp. Now I gotta play catch-up."

"Ain't exactly polite to assassinate somebody in the middle of a party, fucko. I thought you learned that one last time," Blitz said, cocking his fists on his hips like a sassy grandma.

"Well, whatever the case, you've failed, and I'm taking this," Stolas said, tearing the rifle from his grasp and throwing it behind him to Blitz, who tucked it away into his coat – which ought to have been impossible because that gun was slightly larger than Striker was, and weighed about half as much as an adult imp by its lonesome. "Now, you can go away and leave us to our fun. Doesn't that sound reasonable?" Stolas asked, looking very, very smug.

"Not exactly in a position to say no, now am I?" Striker asked, shrugging with nonchalance in his voice that he wished came from the pit of his soul. Sadly, it was only skin deep. That rifle was fucking expensive, and he wasn't exactly rolling in money now that he'd stepped away from active duty as a Gun of Satan. Replacing it would mean he'd have to put off getting that augmetic eye. Shit.

"That's what I thought. Run along, now," Stolas said, dropping him and making shooing motions, before turning and striding back to the gathering a bit over a kilometer away via portal. Blitz took the opportunity before the portal slid closed to flip him off with both hands, which Striker just sat there on the snow and shook his head at. And then he started laughing.

And he kept laughing, because it was the only thing keeping him from crying.

The shakes were getting worse.

Chapter 16

Where Angels Fear to Tread

The ground had shook under Michael's feet. Just a quiver, ever so slight. The distance from Cloud Nine to wherever that shudder had come from was immense, but that merely meant that the source must have been terribly great indeed.

Earthquakes were just that – confined to Earth. Heaven and Hell, both static bodies, never experienced such things as that. So why would such a seismic tremor come now? He didn't know. What he did know, was that this wasn't the first time such a tremor occurred.

With a muttered epithet under his breath, he Transited to the domain of the now quarantined library of Penemue. Once bustling and replete with scholars of the Cherubs and the Host, now it sat more or less abandoned. Gabriel likely wanted it torn down, despite what it was, as the greatest repository of knowledge in all of Creation. Even the fact that it had barricades around it vexed Michael, who took a moment to catch his balance, leaning against the locked and chained gates.

Transiting used to be seamless and effortless for him. But it had been so in a kinder age than this. No, now he had to keep moving. When he stopped, his body began to ache, to stiffen, as though turning to stone. He had to keep moving, because if he ever ceased, there might come a point where he would never be able to start again. He would be stuck as Father was stuck. That was not something Michael could allow.

After managing to hold his stomach in – not that he had anything but bile to spew onto the flagstones – he started toward Penemue's glory. The hour being what it was, here on Cloud Seven, the night was out in force, no moon in the sky and the stars twinkling the only light that there was to navigate by. Still, Michael had walked this path far, far too many times in the last few millennia to trip or stumble until he reached the door. Strange how he still managed to do exactly that.

He could rest when Heaven was safe. When Lucifer was back in his cage, when the Rat Towers were solved and Gabriel cowed, he could rest. And it might be centuries before he rose again when he did. But that was a pleasant fantasy for another day. Now, he had to learn a truth. The doors were locked, but a touch of Michael's hand opened it regardless. As the Taxiarch, almost none were the doors which were closed to him. It was not a power he used freely or lightly. Trust was part of why such largess was given to him. He could not afford to betray that trust. But this was what it was. And this door needed to open for him.

He opened the door with a pull of his arm that felt more strenuous than it ought to have been. Like that door had grown heavier in the time since he'd last been here. But Michael ignored such concerns. Perhaps his strength needed a new tempering, but it would have to join a long queue of much more immediate and desperate concerns. Like why Heaven had shook two times in two months.

He had expected silence and utter darkness here in the library. Sunlight was ruinous to books, and noise in a house of learning was rude. But where he'd ought to have entered what should be a chthonic cave of literature and science and other such things, he could see faint outlines in the far distance, of a light source that had deflected off of several objects and snuck around some corners. Michael's brow drew down. Somebody else was here.

Michael focused his will, and felt his halo grow dark, the light it cast descending to a point where it was practically invisible above him. His wings, he willed to a dull, ashy grey, and let them carry him silently above the floor. Who would come here, into this now-forbidden place? Who would have the audacity? That question had too many answers, so Michael refined it to 'who would be so audacious and so desperate?', which had far fewer.

Still, it didn't reduce it to one, so he drifted as quickly as his might would allow him, passing through the great halls of texts as though he were a plastic bag caught in a breeze, and reached his end with just as little fanfare. There sat the Spellbinder, his back to Michael and his halo unconcealed.

Birah was on the short list of those who would be both audacious and desperate, which meant Michael wasn't completely losing his senses. He leaned aside, still hovering in the air with his halo quashed, and looked upon a stack of books penned by Sahaquiel in the far, far distant past, books so ancient that they were held together solely by the magic that Sahaquiel had imbued in them. What was this? What was he trying to find?

But then a page turned, and revealed the Horn of Jericho, and a question was answered, to at least some degree.

"It would not work as you believe it would," Michael said. Birah spun in a flash, manifesting a pair of short rods in his hands. They were not clubs, or even escrima sticks, because they were hollow. The moment of panic at being discovered faded after a moment, but shock and revulsion took their place in short order.

"Father help us what's happened to you?" Birah asked, looking Michael up and down as he allowed his cortalas to fade away.

"I'm not the one at issue here, Birah. You are," Michael said, ignoring Birah's obvious concern.

"I... right. I needed to find answers," he said.

"You needed to find answers in a building where it is forbidden to cross the threshold," Michael said.

"Well... I didn't cross the threshold, exactly, so..." Birah hemmed.

"Don't play precious with me, Spellbinder. Why are you here? Really?" Michael narrowed his eye.

Birah straightened his back and reached back to the page behind him. "Getting. Answers," he stressed. He turned the chair so that he could sit down without putting Michael at his back and motioned to a page of another book that was open. This one seemed to be on architecture and hyperspatial conjunction. "I've been thinking about the fall of the Walls of Heaven for months now. And it always bothered me, in a way that I couldn't put my finger on. I've done my homework, to to speak, on the nature of the wall, of the way that it was made, of the substance it was built of. And when I looked into that old theory that the Horn of Jericho had anything to do with this... it couldn't. It literally couldn't."

"I could have told you that much," Michael said.

"No, you don't understand. The Horn of Jericho can destroy any structure in Creation. But not the Pearly Gates. Why?" Birah asked.

"Sahaquiel's cleverness was not as absolute as we'd have hoped, sadly," Michael muttered.

"Oh, but it was," Birah said, moving to the book on the Horn. "He was able to find out exactly how the Horn functions. All matter exists in a three dimensional space-time – discounting time as a dimension because it's not spatial. If you strike a brick in a wall, you're not just striking that brick: you're striking every brick that that brick touches, and every brick that those bricks touch, etcetera and outward until the force is dissipated by the sheer mass of the whole. But what if there was a way to prevent that effect from happening?"

"What are you..." Michael began, but Birah was off to the proverbial races.

"So that's what the Horn does; it imposes a bubble of pseudo four-dimensionality, and anything standing suddenly finds that it has 'holes' that it can collapse into, undermining all integrity of the structure. It's just a good thing it doesn't do that to living tissue, or we'd have had to destroy it a long time ago lest somebody use it as a weapon of mass destruction," Birah continued.

"This is not relevant to..." Michael tried to cut in again, but to no avail.

"And that's the brilliance of Sahaquiel's construction method!" Birah said, holding the book toward him, showing a baffling model inked onto the page. "The Pearly Gates are not three dimensional matter! They're four! Which means that every brick touches not just the ones to their left and right, top and bottom, but also from other oblique dimensional directions as well. The Horn could not undermine their structure because by their nature they fill all the 'holes' that the Horn would have created in the first place! It's also why the Gates were so adamantine! Consider the force to dislodge one brick on a three dimensional wall, now try to imagine how much more it would take to have to dislodge six thousand times as much with the same force in the same area!"

"What is the point of this?" Michael grabbed Birah by the shoulders and made him stop. Birah recoiled, as though afraid to get too close to Michael. He again glanced up and down him, before sliding the book back onto the table.

"I was just saying that... the amount of damage that would be needed to break every single brick in a four-dimensional structure such that said four dimensional structure could collapse into three dimensional space is gargantuan... if not infinite. I need to know, Michael... is the Demiurge truly the Equal And Opposite? No, don't look away. I need to know!" Birah caught him as he turned.

"He is," Michael said. He would have preferred if Birah had made some complaint, some declaration of impossibility. But he simply nodded.

"So there are two, if not three, infinite beings in Heaven," Birah said.

"Three?" Michael turned an eye to the Spellbinder.

"Gloria," Birah said, without elaboration. That was yet another problem that Michael was going to have to solve. He simply could not have these unknown influences involving themselves in the business of Heaven. Not when there was a war on. And preferably not ever, but that was as easily left unsaid.

"So you have an answer. An unstoppable force met an immovable object, and the object moved," Michael said. "Leave. Before you incur the anger of somebody less forgiving than I am."

"I'm not done," Birah said.

"You're not supposed to be in this building to begin with. And now you're demanding more time?" Michael asked.

"Heaven shook three times in the last three months. Thrice, having never experienced tectonic events before. What has changed?" Birah asked.

"Twice," Michael corrected.

"No, when the Walls came down, Heaven shook. Where were you that you couldn't feel it?" he asked, brow furrowing. And that was not a question that Michael could answer. Not to him. "The first shake was the walls falling. The next shake happened within days of the second wave of Hell's invasion. The third was yesterday morning. There's only three data points and they don't create a line, but the fact is... if my presumption is correct..."

"And which presumption is that, Spellbinder?" Michael asked.

"That the shaking is a result of the Thrones shifting in their setting," Birah said. What? The Thrones could not move. They had been designed that way by God's own hand! "And with their shift, even so minuscule compared to their whole bodies, throws off all things that are connected to them. The tramway suffered a fault at Terminal 2 last month. I don't doubt that a similar one will be reported within the next few days. And the magic that is bound to the Thrones, that's going to falter, too."

"Which could be catastrophic," Michael muttered.

"How?" Birah asked. "The magic moderates the weather, keeps the seasons static, and prevents Edge-Cancelling. None of those things is an immediate danger if they shut down. It would probably do some of those people down there some good to have an unexpected rainfall, or an oddly cold day," Birah said. But Michael knew that he was far shrewder than that, so simply stared at him. The naivete, such that it was, faded, as Birah saw that Michael was calling a bluff. "But those aren't the ones you're worried about are you? You're worried about the ones keeping the humans penned in."

"If they start to migrate..." Michael began.

"Then they'll regain territory that was taken from them three centuries ago, by us," Birah slapped his hand against his chest as he said that. "Humans are not a threat to us. They're our charges, our wards."

"And what happens when the Demiurge sneaks in with them?" Michael snapped. "What happens when the Equal And Opposite maneuvers himself into a place he must not be?"

"Are you serious? You think this is the Demiurge's doing? Michael... cousin," Birah shook his head. "Those barriers were always going to fall. They could not stand eternally. It was not by God's hand that they were wrought..."

"You know nothing of God's design," Michael said. "The Demiurge is the second greatest threat to Heaven. Lucifer is the first. And do you think that only humans are kept in place by those wards? Think, Birah, think!" he thunked the Spellbinder in the head with a finger. It left a bloody stain when he did.

"I am thinking. Sinners are already walking Heaven. To ward them is to encase the humans in despair atop the despair they're already stuck with. There's got to be a better way and goddamn it why won't you let me find it? Why are you trying to shove me out of this place when the answers to the most important questions left in Creation could be right here, waiting for us?"

"I am trying to keep Heaven safe..." Michael said.

"No, you're trying to keep Heaven the same. If you wanted it safe, you should let those who want to fight, fight. I could be useful out there! If I'd been allowed to the front lines when the Angel Of Iron returned, I could have thrown her back before she even had a chance to build that bloody bunker!" he gestured widely as his voice finally broke past that near whisper and took on heat and anger.

"You must not be on the front lines, Birah, it's..."

"Oh, because I'm too young? Bullshit," Birah said, throwing down a fountain pen at Michael's feet. It shattered against the stone of the floor, but the ink inside had hardened to stone. "I'm less than a month younger than Hepsut, and he fought in the vanguard against the Traitor Knight, and he held the line against the Angel of Iron. Why are you all so petty that you can't accept a Secondborn..." he continued to rail, and Michael shook his head.

"This isn't because you're a Secondborn," Michael cut him off.

"Then what possible justification could you give for relegating me? There are Cherubs less than three decades old holding guns on those battle lines! We have Innocent that died THIS BLOODY YEAR rubbing shoulders with your bloody Firstborn and gunning down Sinners and fiends! I could be–"

"It's because you're a Hexbreaker!" Michael finally snapped, putting to words what had been long left to musing and whisper. Birah was taken aback by that.

"What? I'm not... The last time God made a Hexbreaker was during the Leviathan Expulsion. That was long before my creation. I can't be a Hexbreaker," he said.

"Hexbreakers are selected, not made," Michael said. "You cannot be on the front line of a battle, because you would be the most dangerous, deadly, and effective Angel to be stationed there, and everybody on both sides would know it. You'd be ripped to shreds by the weight of your enemies in furious combination."

"I... why?" he asked. It stood to reason that he didn't grasp the revelation. Hexbreakers had become something of a legend and cautionary tale in Heaven. Most of the ones that God had selected for conflict against the Leviathans, eventually turned coat and joined Lucifer in his war against Heaven. All the others died trying to fight their traitor brethren. Of The Thirty One, twenty two were in Hell now, firmly entrenched on the Great Enemy's side. Eight were dead, and one missing, presumed likewise.

"I know how deeply you see the magic. You can see its strands with your naked eyes. Even Azazel needs tools to do what you can unaided," Michael said, his tone shifting from impatience and grievance to something more consoling. "You can manipulate it without spells. You can pull on its weave without mudra and kata. Do you remember how feared the Traitor Sorcerers were?"

Birah nodded, still on edge, but trusting his own memory more than his paranoia. "They were terrible and ruinous. They were why Lucifer achieved so much with so few," Birah said.

"He achieved nothing but bloodshed and ruin! And I..." Michael broke off from his interrupting to cough, pain radiating through his chest as he did. He turned away, hacking deep from the seat of his lungs and spraying mustard colored froth from his lips as he finally pulled his breath back into a proper state. "You're right," he moderated himself, wiping away the oddly dull blood from his lips as he turned. There was no point getting angry at Lucifer again. There was enough water in that well to drown Heaven. "They could scythe through the defenses of our soldiers with a thought, and put them down with no more than a thrown knife, a simple arrow, or even a chunk of cobble. And that is what they would see in you. A threat. An existential, strategic-level threat, one that hey will pay any tactical price to remove from the board. I am not keeping you off of the battlefield to belittle you, Birah. I'm doing it to save your life."

"...I guess," he said. He turned a concerned look at him. "But that still doesn't explain you. You're in Dissonance. That's clear. But why? I can't see any curse or hex that's causing it. Almost as though the Dissonance is coming from within..."

"It's time to leave, Birah," Michael said, cutting off the Spellbinder before he dug too deeply with his magical sight. "Your time in Heaven will come. A time to stand in glory. I hope I see it when it comes."

"Wait, what does that mean?" Birah asked. Damn it all, damn his tongue, and damn his distraction. Michael waved his hand, and there was a shuffling in the air as Birah was forceably Transited back to his home. It was not kind, to lock him out, to cast him away, just to avoid uncomfortable questions. But Michael had a job to do. Heaven was crumbling. It had been crumbling for a while, and now it was getting worse. God would not release the Horsemen, nor allow the opening of the Last Arsenal. God didn't say a word. Just like He hadn't said a word in three centuries. However Michael was going to beat Lucifer, it was on Michael alone now.

He couldn't trust anybody else with this burden. As the Taxiarch, Heaven was his to defend.

The get together wasn't a party per se, but a pleasant little gathering of those members of he and Stella's shared social circle who hadn't been so poisoned by his ennui and her vitriol as to take immutable sides. Frankly, it was pleasant to speak to the young crow again. He had feared that Raum would have washed his hands of Stolas, distant, aloof, daft and distracted as he was. But he seemed pleased as peaches to see Stolas 'coming back to his usual self'.

Stolas didn't know exactly what he'd meant by that, but he had a clue. The last time he'd spent any amount of time around Raum was at the 'Not Divorced' anniversary that Stella had thrown for him half a decade ago during a particular nadir of their relationship. And that was in the last few decades before Stolas' appointed, destined death. In a broad sense, he knew that he was to blame for all of the loneliness and alienation that he'd suffered in the last period of his life. He had caused it by seeing the steadily, inevitably approaching end to his own life, and just... checking out. Not caring anymore about the details or the broad strokes. Just numbly letting life wash over him until it ended.

It was a cruelty he'd done to Stella that drove her to rage and then to cruelty of her own, and an unforgivable neglect to Octavia. He tried to be there any time she wanted him, and she did indeed want him... years ago, at least. Then she started to grow as he had become. Aloof. Distant. Alienated. And it was his fault.

And his distance had done no favors to Blitzie, either. Sure, the imp was sitting there talking animatedly to the Ars Goetia of Murder, but Stolas wasn't such the fool that he didn't know that before that griffon-dog had started 'talking shop', Blitzie was bored off of his branch. Now, after all of that madness had happened, he was still ignoring the people he loved. He still barely understood what Octavia was doing all day, running around to various places in Hell, be they foundries in Wrath, metalworks in Imp City, or weapons developers out in the Pride Wilds. If nothing else, the other Ars Goetia seemed to approve of it. And that gave Stolas even more concern. He knew the kinds of people his distant family could be. The kinds of things they approved of filled him with fear.

And Blitzie! Oh, sweet Blitzie, working his tail off murdering the living and the damned for money, and then being forced to be the Devil Himself's dogsbody as well? It was demeaning. And Blitzie agreed on that last point. He'd had to run around Sloth for near a week because of some problems down there with regards to the False Worlds and the people who tended them. He must be exhausted right now. But that he even came at all has to have meant something, right? Right? Glosya-Labolas gave some parting aside to Blitzie, and then sauntered away, pausing by the cocaine pile to suck in a lung-full before he went. Stolas took that as his opportunity to break away from those avian members of the Ars Goetia, and move to the side of the Proxy of Lucifer.

Was that a look of distraction, or even disgust? No. No it couldn't have been. Stolas was surely just imagining things. Still, the first time he tried to speak to his lover, the words tangled in his throat and nearly choked him. He always found himself stammering like a virgin schoolchild – two things that he as an Angel either barely was or quickly eschewed – around Blitzie. But he needed to speak. Words needed to be said. So he picked the ones which would be kindest, first.

"Are you alright, my sweet? You seem so distracted," he said. And then kicked himself for not being more direct, and to the point. Blitzie preferred that.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. I'm just surprised one'a your weirdo friends was willin' to talk to me," Blitz said. He turned his seat, grabbing some hard drugs from the imp valet who was trying very hard not to stare with venomous envy at Blitz and knocking them back as though he weren't afraid such things would kill him.

"Is it safe to take that much methamphetamine?" Stolas asked.

"Oh that? That's nothin'. I used to take like five times as much back when I was stuck on Earth. There wasn't anything better to do than get shit-faced and kill fascists, so I did plenty 'a both," he said. "Globulin over there gets it. Sometimes killin's just what the doctor ordered to get the bullshit out of your system."

"That's not his..." Stolas almost said, before giving his head a shake and stopping himself. "I'm just concerned that you're not... enjoying yourself here."

"I'm kinda not," Blitz admitted. He waved a motion toward the counts, earls, and marquisses that were yammering on about things which even Stolas could agree were utterly trite and beneath contempt. "I mean look at those assholes. The only reason they're willing to talk to me and not stare at me like the shit stuck in their boots is 'cause of some job title that don't actually mean a fucking thing."

"It does, in their eyes. Even if it doesn't in yours, that title has weight," Stolas said.

"I'm still surprised you even brought me up here. With these fuckers," Blitzie said. He offered a laugh. "I kinda figured that you were still embarrassed of me, the way you hid from 'em. So what's got you unfucked on that front?"

"Un...fucked?" Stolas asked.

"Yeah. Unravelled the Bird-Puss. Released the nut-grab. You know. Defused the shit bomb," he continued to euphemize.

Stolas was silent for a moment, his ennui dug into his face for a moment, such that even vulgar Blitz was called to silence, as though in a quiet, barely acknowledged shame that he might have hurt somebody with his words. But Blitz was not the source of Stolas' current problems. Like most of the ones that had beset him for all of Octavia's lifetime, they could only be set at his own doorstep.

"I've chosen to stop caring what people think about me," Stolas said. "But it's turning out to be a harder thing than I thought. I keep recoiling. And I don't want to."

"Know all 'bout that..." Blitz muttered, and Stolas felt shame pinion his heart again. Of course he was probably thinking about that disastrous 'first date' down in the Lust Ring. When Asmodeus and that little cyborg aired all of the dirty laundry of Blitz's less than successful romantic pursuits... and Stolas hid like a coward. There were many things that Stolas regretted in life – chief amongst them doing the stupid thing and reading The Prophecy – but that was a memory that would forevermore bring him shame. Blitz turned to him with narrowed eyes. "Why exactly did you even invite me to this weirdo party, anyway? This ain't my scene, and according to Globular, that," he pointed to the drug buffet, "ain't yours. So what gives?"

Stolas sighed and nodded. "To be frank, this party is as much about my divorce as it is about you," he said.

"Me? What the fuck did I do?"

"Whether you want to interface with it or not, you are now the Voice of Lucifer," Stolas said gently. "You are a terrifying presence in the highest circles of Hell, because they know exactly how much more they stand to lose if they incur our High King's displeasure."

"So they're what? Fighting for a chance to suck my dick so's I don't slap them sideways?" Blitz asked.

"They would have to fight a lot harder than that to take that privilege, Blitzie," Stolas couldn't let the chance for innuendo pass, and the eye-roll from Blitz told him that at least the humor made it through. For once. No, don't be that way. This is a happy day! "But yes. The others in the Ars Goetia are concerned as to what kind of Proxy you would be. And I must say, you've acquitted yourself exceptionally thus far!"

"What? I just did a bunch of coke, drank a quart of vodka, and then talked about killing people for an hour," Blitz pointed out, grabbing some more 'party favors' from the staff that circulated through the slowly fading party.

"Exactly! You've already shown that you are uninterested in intruding into their day-to-day affairs, proven that you don't consider them beneath contempt, and can be more-or less be relied upon to follow your own ambitions unless specifically commanded to! You are everything that the successor to that terrible mister Birch needed to be!"

"That's a hell of a reach, reading all that into a drug habit and some boredom. Do those idiots really put that much effort into reading into shit that ain't even there?" Blitz asked. Stolas could only shrug and nod. It was what it was. Blitz laughed. "Shit man, I put a lot more effort into fucking you the first time than I did here."

"What do you mean?" Stolas asked. The night in question was a fairly flagship one for his entire long existence, the night where he learned that whatever he'd been doing with Stella before, it clearly wasn't sex.

"I mean I had to spend an entire day sneaking around your palace, dodging your bird faced bodyguard and dump a fucktonne of aphrodisiacs into everything you ate, drank, or touched," Blitz said, reseating himself a bit more proudly, as though relating a magnum opus of his life. "I had to know you'd need to have at least a nine-out-of-ten Horny to fuck around with a guy like me... so I tipped your scales a bit. And by a bit, I mean a lot. And by a lot, I mean I was kinda afraid of you for the first month of this bullshit," he pointed between the two of them.

"Whatever do you mean?" Stolas asked. Blitz glared at him.

"Calling me, at all hours of the day or night, even when I'm on jobs – getting fucking shot at! – to promise the nastiest shit that I've heard in my entire fuckin' life and then making it really goddamned clear that that shit was gonna happen whether I wanted it to or not?" Blitz offered. And at that, a final piece clicked into place for Stolas. He looked upon his relationship, and saw it was born of exploitation.

"I... I'm so sorry. I didn't... I honestly didn't even realize," Stolas stammered, the horror on his face taking the edge off of Blitz's displeasure. Stolas slumped in his own seat, as though collapsing under his own weight, heedless of what the other Goetia would see or say. Father damn it all, was there a single tragedy in Stolas' life that he hadn't built with his own hand? It seemed to be a definite 'no'! "I didn't want to hurt you. I wanted you to... to want me. To want me as badly as I wanted you."

"Big words, Stolas. Big words," he said with a shake of his head, staring at the snow and other white powder.

"Please tell me... is it really so onerous a thought to care about me as much as I care about you?" Stolas asked.

"What does that mean?" Blitz was all suspicion now. Had he been too bold?

"I know that you have that... tendency... to push those you are intimate with away. I didn't want to be another one who..." Stolas began.

"No, the word 'onerous', what does that mean?" Blitz asked.

"Burdensome and unpleasant," Stolas defined.

Blitz stared at the others for a moment, turned a glance to Stolas, then actually rubbed at his face, as though he were actually giving this an uncommon degree of consideration. Blitzie was so delightfully spontaneous that deliberation was not something which came so easily to him, but he was putting in work now.

"No. Fuck me but you aren't," Blitz finally said. He just stared into the distance. Then his face screwed tight, a thought obviously coming to him, and he snapped his head toward Stolas. "Wait a fuckin' minute. Do you actually love me?"

That pulled a nervous hoot out of Stolas' throat, and set his back straight and leaning away as though Blitz had menaced him with a sword. That word, it wasn't a word to use so lightly. But when he tried come up with an answer that avoided it, yet still addressed the issue at hand, he found his arsenal distinctly lacking.

So he did what felt terrifying and dangerous and spectactularly unknown. He just did what his instinct wanted him to.

He laid his hand on Blitz's cheek, tilting his jaundiced red eyes up into Stolas' own.

"I think I have for a while, now," Stolas said.

Blitz stared, nodding lightly, not pulling away from Stolas' touch even though they were in public and those gossipy bitches in the Ars Goetia were probably going to run the rumor-mill to the point of destruction come tonight – fuck them! Let them!

"Well. Shit... I better go..." Blitz tried to slink away, to sabotage himself as that Tilla woman always said that he would. This time, Stolas' hand which held Blitz's refused to budge, and when he tried to jerk free he was reminded that for all he was a spectacular specimen of the impish race, perhaps even the finest to have ever lived... Stolas was still demon royalty.

"Blitz, not this time. Don't run away from me," Stolas said. "Don't push me away and try to antagonize me. I'm not going anywhere. I am not going to betray you. Not after my last failure. My pride won't allow it. Just. Stay."

Blitz looked at him like he wanted to gnaw off his own arm to escape. But only for a few seconds. Then, whatever self-destructive impulse which he immediately defaulted to when intimacy reared its head began to disperse. And in its place came a naked and unattractive but honest need.

"Everybody says that," Blitz tried to snark, but his voice quavered when he did.

"And sometimes, people come back," Stolas said. That Tilla woman had. And Stolas would too.

"...fuckin' fine. But this was a lame ass party. Next time, ditch the Goetia and make guests of your staff," Blitz said.

"Would that... even be a party?" Stolas asked, confused at the notion of it.

"Oh you ain't had fun until you've seen what imps get up to."

"Have I not thus far?" Stolas asked.

"Not even close," Blitz promised.

Perhaps this was a tiny step in the grand scheme of things, but if it was, he'd take it anyway. One of these days, Blitz was going to accept that he was beloved, even if he had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the realization. And Stolas would have plenty of help with it. Blitz's mother was dragging Blitz by his other boot toward the same destination.

Talking to the other Ars Goetia was still boring, and watching her father swooning over the red dickhead was utterly beyond the pale.

Even now, with Octavia actually contributing something to the rulership and progress of Hell, she found the others of her 'uncles' and 'aunts' so interminably dull. She had thought that once she knew her purpose and her place in Hell, that she'd click into place with the rest of them, another cog in the great machine of Lucifer's ambitions. But it turned out, through mechanism she had not yet determined, she ended up not being a cogwheel, but an entire lathe, belonging to a whole other machine.

Some of the Ars Goetia had pointless jobs. Others were so narrow that their utility vanished into darkness. Then there was Purson. Purson had an obvious and important job, one of great and broad utility, and reaped a lot of respect as the Great King of Secrets – regardless of the overlap with her 'grandfather' Paimon. The problem was that he was so interminably long-winded. There was no simple answer from him. To every single question, no matter how basic, the first words he offered in answer were 'that depends'.

So she tried to go to his library without him, and learn what she needed without an impediment in the way.

Then, Octavia learned about the utter hell that was the Dewey Decimal System.

She should have just told Ambrosius to do this.

"I had not been told that there was another relative in the stacks," a melodious voice came to Octavia in the nook where she was reading up on Angel Magic, that discipline that had been so sparingly taught to her in her years. After all, she was Hellborn. Her powers came from down here. Octavia looked up, to see a woman with angular features and a halo with strange black traces running through it. Octavia gave an alarmed hoot, before she recovered herself and stood.

"I was told that my spell would keep me hidden from the other Ars Goetia," Octavia said, standing at her full height and staring down at the much shorter, hellbound Angel.

"I am not an Ars Goetia," Penemue said, no expression coming to her face, which was as expressive as a stone mask. "My abilities are rather more broad than most's."

"Well, just leave me in peace and let me do my reading. I have no business with you," Octavia said.

"On what topic?" Penemue asked.

"That's none of your business," Octavia said. Penemue laced her fingers before her. Though the word was that she was pregnant, it was obvious that Penemue wasn't far enough along to start showing it yet.

"Knowledge is my business. It is why I was made," Penemue said. "What topic are you plumbing?"

Octavia turned a suspicious look at the Angel. "Why do you want to know?" she finally cut to the heart.

"Because there is a small but non-zero chance that your skulking about in our library will lead you to calamity through your own inexperience, and I don't want that disharmony in my life right now," Penemue said. She gestured vaguely to the other mountains of books and the weave of magic that even Octavia could feel as though a breeze against her skin, here in the Private Library of Purson and Penemue. "Purson, unfettered by the strictures of research that exist in Heaven, was able to transplant ideas born in the higher realms into a place willing to pay such prices to test them. And those experiments have born strong though strange fruit. It is to your best interest that you don't explore without restraint. You will find knowledge that will eat you whole."

"Because I'm so young?"

"I fear your lack of experience far less than I fear his ambition," Penemue quietly turned, her face gaining as close to a stink-eye as her otherwise expressionless visage seemed to ever achieve. And the topic of that unkind stare was obvious. Walking along the paths between books, flanked and followed by foul sigils of crimson power, was a tall Sinner, deer-antlered and grinning as though he knew a joke that nobody else would understand, to their detriment. "Whereas you would find ruin by accident... he would find it with purpose."

"Then why don't you just kick him out?" Octavia asked.

"Because we are no longer allowed to," Penemue said. Then she turned that stone-mask of a face back to Octavia. "Your topic?"

"...Angel Magic. Specifically their protections," Octavia said. She'd gotten battlefield-reports of the first 'variant' of the Blasphemer that she'd put out. Instead of a plasma cutter, it used that light anti-tank missile that the designers had pushed for. And it was doing terribly.

"Did your parents not teach you of the Angel Skin?" Penemue asked. Then she paused. "Of course they wouldn't. Because that power is beyond them now. Stolas may be able to keep it up, but the rest of the Ars Goetia, without their wings, cannot keep the Skin active for more than an instant."

Penemue held a hand out behind her, and after a few seconds, a different text, from a whole other section of the library rocketed toward it, impacting into her palm with a crack like a bullet into armor. She quickly flicked it open to a precise page, showing a diagram in nearly faded ink, showcasing just how long ago this had been penned. And even with Octavia's fairly pedestrian understanding of the Enochian language that this was written in, she could tell that was a comprehensive foray into the abilities of the exact ability that she'd been looking for.

"This is exactly what I need. I–" she reached for the book only to have Penemue pull it out of her reach. She could easily step closer, and then overwhelm whatever arm-span that Penemue could muster, but she didn't want to ring that bell quite yet, especially since once rung, it could not be unrung. "What's the issue?"

"I will hand you this book under the sole proviso that you do not turn so much as a single page, and that you do not leave with it," Penemue said. Octavia gawped for a moment, wondering why that was even an issue. But she didn't see a reason to decline, so...

"Fine. Let me see," she said. Penemue handed the book to her, and Octavia saw instantly why her new Blasphemer was doing so poorly against Angels compared to the previous version. Through sheer luck and kismet, she'd managed to design a weapon system in the plasma flamer that perfectly circumvented the most potent defensive capabilities of the Angel. And then she gave it to common soldiers.

That had to be something of an upset, up there.

"The wards you're looking at are common enough that most people don't try to circumvent them," Penemue said. "Which will be to their downfall once they realize how proficient the hellborn have become at salvaging our bullets and arrow-heads. It can protect against lead, but not Angel Steel. And not against flame, as fate would have it."

"Is there a way for an Angel to protect itself against my weapons?" Octavia asked, waiting for the unfortunate answer.

"That comes with either a 'no, unless', or a 'yes, but'. No, unless they want to drop another defense. Yes, but they make themselves vulnerable to more mundane weaponry," Penemue said.

"You've certainly done your research into killing your own kind," Octavia muttered.

"They are your kind too, cousin," Penemue pointed out. "And for the record, I indeed have. Considering the dangers that now stalk my halls, and my current precarity, it behooves me to know the ways I can protect myself, even against the most eldritch and strange."

"Dangers, like...?" Octavia leaned aside, seeing that red-suited Sinner again strutting through the stacks, this time with a pair of Incunabula in his hands. That made Octavia lean back a bit. She'd touched an Incunabula once. It damned near knocked her on her ass, the power that flowed from it. But there was this former-human sauntering around with two of those foul tomes in his grasp.

"Indeed," Penemue said, not just humorlessly but somehow running a steep humor deficit. "I would eject him were I allowed. But part of the price for The Demiurge was that I can not impose myself or my husband over the depravities of the Radio Demon."

"That's the Radio Demon?" Octavia asked, pointing after him. She could swear that in the distance, the Sinner turned a half-glance at her, his grin broad across his face when he did. As though delighted to be recognized, though how he could hear at such a range eluded her.

"Indeed. Why? Was he not what you expected?" Penemue asked.

"I just thought he'd be... I don't know. More!"

"He's enough already," Penemue had a very dark look steal across her face. And when it fled, it was because the shadows shifted, and somebody joined them, an arm looped around the tall, narrow shoulders of the Ars Goetia and the low, narrow shoulders of the Scriptor.

"My ears are burning, my dears. If you wanted to get my attention, there are far easier ways of doing it," the fucking Radio Demon said, grinning at Octavia from uncomfortably close to eye-level. She was used to towering over Sinners. "So what has you two scuttling around like furtive vermin here in your own house, young Scriptor?"

"I am almost unimaginably older than you," Penemue had something close to a scowl on her face.

"Please, I know for a fact that you are only a few centuries older than the Grigori's little indiscretion, topside. I've known a former-cherub who was several orders of magnitude older than that. In fact, I would wager even Cain has seen the turning of more years than you have," the Radio Demon said, before breaking into derisive laughter.

"You are a fellow at this library only by Lucifer's word. And I don't fear your king's punishment nearly as much as my husband does. I can take such punishment to have you removed," Penemue pointed out, cold and sharp like a knife pulled from a glacier.

"Ah, but there's the rub, isn't it? If Lucifer really wanted you punished, why would he punish you? No no no no, he would get a great deal more mileage by targeting your dearly beloved, wouldn't he? And we both know for all his foibles and failings, he is not short-sighted when it comes to the creative applications of cruelty," The Radio Demon said, most unkindly.

"Why are you darkening my doors now, Alastor?" Penemue said.

"You have a section of your works under lock and key, one that I would be most interested in perusing," Alastor said.

"I will not reveal the secrets of the Powers Outside to you," Penemue said.

"I already know far more about those than you do," Alastor said, patting her head like a recalcitrant child. That actually drove an expression of outrage to Penemue's face, her eye twitching at his touch. "No, what I want from you is the keys to Block E, Section 1, Subsection Orange."

"You want the books on... music theory?" Penemue asked, as she no doubt wracked her brain.

"Yes. There's a delightful possibility that I believe I may have been overlooking for some time now," Alastor said.

"With music theory," Penemue clarified.

"Yes, yes, with music theory. I also require these texts, which though not restricted are in inconvenient places and I want them delivered to me," he said, and pulled a long list of other titles from a portal that Octavia's senses told her was so innately wrong that she wanted to either vomit or kill what produced it. Sadly and fortunately, both impulses shorted each other out, so she could only watch in confusion as he handed that list over to Penemue. "Do be a good librarian. You know where to find me."

And then, he seemed to melt into inchoate blackness and shadow, slipping into the darkened edges where light died and vanishing from their presence entirely.

"What the fuck is he?" Octavia demanded.

"And why does he want... a text on hyperbolic space geometry?" Penemue's confusion was plain.

"Is this how he usually acts?" Octavia asked, glancing down the pathways which the Radio Demon thankfully did not now walk.

"No. Usually he swans around and mocks us for not knowing things that we were either forbidden from putting to page or haven't existed until the last two decades, and thus are outside of his horizon of knowledge as well," she said with an aggrieved shake of her head.

"I know that feeling, at least," Octavia offered.

"I imagine that you would," Penemue said. She then turned to Octavia again. "You should come to this place more often, if only to counterbalance the fact that he so frequently darkens my door. I have failed most of the children of Angels I've ever met. I would like to succeed with one."

"Succeed at... what?" Octavia asked.

"And if nothing else, you have a new cousin to look forward to," Penemue ignored her question. She turned a look back, toward where they could vaguely hear somebody loudly humming ragtime in the library stacks. "And perhaps, if my thinking is correct, you might be of use to me against the likes of him."

"I've only just met the Radio Demon and you're already trying to have me kill him?" Octavia asked.

"The longer you know him, the more desperately you'd want him dead," Penemue said. She gave her head an annoyed shake, then turned to Octavia. "If there's anything else you require, ask one of the Fellows. I require ice-cream."

And then with a fluttering sound, like a bird taking off writ large, Penemue vanished from sight, leaving Octavia all alone in her section of the library.

Things were only going to get more complicated, she realized. The more of this – or in fact anything – that she did, the more people were going to keep sticking to her like clot on a wound. And not all of that clot would be sanitary or beneficial. It was days like this that made her regret hatching in the first place.

Finding the assassin that the Swindler Incarnate had fingered turned out to be a lot more time-consuming than Cherri Bomb had thought it'd be. He didn't stay in Imp City, as many of his impish kind tended to, nor did he frequent the 'diplomatic corps' of the Ring of Wrath, as befitted a Gun of Satan. He didn't bunker down in the dense streets of Pentagram city, or do business in the warrens of Bitch's End, out on the Greed-bound side of the Pride Wall crossing. No, Striker was being low-key. Frustratingly low-key.

Cherri was a bomber and an anarchist. She was a rabble-rouser and a molotov-slinger. She was not, however, a scout, a spy, or a diplomat. But the fact was, with the people that they needed to pull off this caper up in Heaven scattered quite figuratively across Hell's half-acre, they had to split up and run down people as they found them. And since Cherri had lost the coin flip for the obvious target in Imp City to her bestie's brother, she had to drag ass way the fuck out here.

It was hot, but she liked hot. It was better than the cold of Chicago in the winter. That was one of the few perks of being dead and damned. You didn't have to deal with winter very often. And here, up against the Pride Wall, the strange winter of Pride had fallen away to a more tolerably balmy warmth.

Black Tooth was a border town, so far off the highway that it had taken three hours to drive here – and she was driving like a lunatic when she did it. If the highway had come here, it would have taken less than five minutes. Fucking magic bullshit, and the distinct lack of magic bullshit to her benefit! Whatever the case, she was here, in the first gas-station that she'd seen in hours, pumping gas into the stolen ride that she'd crossed most of Pride Ring in to get to this point. The people here were mostly imps and fiends. Maybe a few Hellhounds, but she might be the only Sinner here in the entire town, let alone at the pumps.

"The fuck are you looking at?" she demanded of an imp child who was staring at her. The imp girl gave a peep and ran, quickly darting out of sight, while Cherri Bomb shook her head and continued pumping gas. She'd have stolen the gas too, but there was an imp actively watching her, and that was a shotgun on a rack in sight just behind him. If that fucker shot this car and ruined any part of it, she wouldn't be able to drive out of here. That would turn a three hour trip, into a three week one. Play nice. However much you want to burn this whole place down.

The pump finally shut off with a somewhat unsettlingly loud clunk, one that shook the pump a bit. But shitty infrastructure was about the last thing on Cherri's mind or within her world-view, so she just muttered under her breath, hung up the nozzle and headed in. And the gas station door was oddly short, as tough it'd never heard of a six foot tall person. She didn't bang her head against the lintel, but it was a closer thing than usual. And within, the gas station was claustrophobic and cramped, sized, she realized, for an impish customer base. In fact, the only things pandering to beings that weren't imps were Hound treats in a display right next to the door-frame.

"Don't see yer kind 'round here much," the jowly imp at the cash register said after a moment of perceptive silence. "Cash, card, drugs or vows?"

"...Okay, I knew that places out here dealt in drugs-as-currency... but 'vows'?" Cherri asked, despite herself.

"There's more'n one way to pay, an' credit cards ain't the only deferred means 'a payment," the owner said. "Cash, card, drugs or vows?"

Well that was unsettling as fuck to think about. So Cherri flipped out her wad of Souls and started to lay out money. "I'm looking for somebody. A drifter who might have come to these parts," she hazarded a chance here.

"Lots of drifters pass Black Tooth. What kind?" the owner asked, as he verified the authenticity of every bill that she'd given him. Even the ones.

"Imp. Betrayal clade, looks like he's gotten mangled in the past," she said.

"We got two 'a them what lived here for years. Best be more specific," he said, now biting the coins she handed out. Jesus Christ on his magical stick were these people mistrusting of a Sinner's money.

Although to be fair, if she thought she could get away with stiffing him, she totally would.

"Don't know what name he'd go by. This place looks like it's a bunch of hillbiiiii drifters and shit," she managed to not complete the insult that would have gotten her shot in the face, but it was a close thing. The imp just glared a jaundiced eye at her. "All I know is that he used to kill for Satan."

"Gun of Satan in town? Wouldn't that be a hell of a thing?" the imp said, then slapped down a button on the cash causing the thing to rattle open, and he flicked all the cash into its appropriate slot or bin without taking his eyes off of her. "Might want to talk to the Reeve. She keeps track of their kind."

"What's a Reeve? Fuck it, that doesn't matter. Where's the Reeve?" she quickly ditched the stupid questions for a smarter one.

"On the rocky side," he gestured to the portion of Black Tooth that blessedly wasn't plunging its way through the Pride Wall – a fatal meander to the likes of her – and instead was cut into a sort of box-canyon-in-miniature. "Just ask for Miss D. She'll set you right."

He then leaned aside, still watching her, and spat into an unseen spittoon. Fucking gross.

There wasn't much in the way of parking in that narrow rut in the stone, so she shifted her car into the parking spots next to the gas station, and looked at what had been put here in front of her. There was a very occasional cold breeze that wafted in from the frozen heartlands of Pride, but otherwise the whole spot was dry, hot, and as miserable as the lands east of Perth. Like they'd put a piece of her Australian birthplace here in Hell to mock her with. Well fuck it, she died an American, so this false Australia could go fuck itself just like her long renounced citizenship.

Fucking hell, they even had a minefield over there. And there were beds of fucking dandelions all over the place. Talk about familiar.

She kept to the more commonly walked paths, her only eye flitting between the people that were watching her as she plunged into thoroughly unfamiliar territory. The owner of a rat-bag motel sharpened his knife with his eyes on her as she passed him by. A few of the windows dropped their blinds when she moved. Old Mutants kept flitting their gaze at her as she passed a corroded gate and into a short alleyway, keeping note of her as they played Charioteer on a discolored plastic board.

It quickly became apparent the kind of Reeve that she was being shepherded toward, because the building which took up the end of this short path, the short leg of the T-junction that would otherwise plunge her ground-level into a ravine, was a bar. A saloon, even! There were noises coming from within, which was a respite from the near oppressive quiet but for the sound of cold winds trying to spread snow to this place and failing. She couldn't make out what was being said, but something certainly was. So she pulled the door open, expecting a wall of silence to fall at her approach. It didn't. Like every other bar she'd ever been to, this one remained a din of laughter, drunkenly earnest conversations, and the nearly inaudible but annoying drone of mosquitoes.

The fact that they ignored her as profoundly as the people outside had kept her in their sight was not lost on her, but she wasn't smart enough by her reckoning to know what that probably meant. She just had to do a thing and find a motherfucker. Anybody with a pulse could do this job. With a grumble under her breath as to how one-sided her friendship with Angie had become – although only with the lightest of vitriol – she went up to the bartender and slapped some Souls onto the bar top.

"I'm looking for something wet and the Reeve," Cherri said.

"Why are you looking for the Reeve?" a fairly inebriated looking Succubus with unusually hued, dark hair asked from Cherri's side of the bar, while the bartender snatched Cherri Bomb's money and started pouring her a pint. Seriously, looking at her head was distracting, because her eye couldn't tell what color her hair was supposed to be, other than 'dark'.

"I'm looking for somebody who's in town. Might be making himself scarce, but I don't have time to put up with that," Cherri said. She then narrowed her eye, leaning slightly aside. "...but you already know who I'm talking about don't you? You're the Reeve."

"Guilty," the Succubus said, and offered a hand. "Truly, at your service."

"They named you Truly?" Cherri asked with a baffled look.

"They named my brother 'Falsely'. Yeah... he's dead now," she skulled the rest of the can of beer she was drinking and crushed it on the spot of her forehead between her horns. She then sat with her knees spread like she was a piss-drunk man, rather than a literal demon of sexual desire. But from the look of her, she seemed to be the sort who's only 'head' she indulged in came on the top of stout and pilsner. "I am indeed the Reeve, until somebody wants to do it more for less money. So what brings one of your kind way the fuck out here to Black Tooth? I only ask, because the last time a Sinner of note came a'calling, he fucked up two houses, Billy-Joel's fence, and then fucked off before we could make him pay for any of it. Oh, and the Radio Demon came here too. Fuck that guy."

"As long as people don't try to fuck with me, I've got no reason to fuck back," Cherri said. The pint was handed to her, and she pulled a hearty swig from it. It was actually really good beer. Not like the rat-piss that she usually was subjected to back in PC. "I'm looking for an imp. Ex Gun of Satan. Or maybe vacationing Gun of Satan. Got fucked up a while back and hasn't been on the clock."

"It's not Satan's way to hire your kind to look in on his own," Truly said. She gave Cherri a nod. "What's your business with him?"

"My business is my business, not Satan's. Like you said, the likes of him wouldn't have anything to do with the likes of me," Cherri said.

"May be, that may in fact be," Truly said. "You here to kill him?"

"Hire him," Cherri said.

"That's a damn sight less messy than what I thought you were on about. You've got a smell, Sinner. A perfume. You've a stink like motor oil, but you don't seem a black-thumbed type, so I'm guessing you're a bomb-maker. You wouldn't be the kind that can just," she snapped her fingers beside her, "and have some grenades appear, would you?"

"What business is it if I am?" she asked.

"I'm paid to keep Black Tooth nice and peaceful. Most high explosives fail fairly spectacularly in the production of peaceful times," Truly said.

"Like I keep saying, I'm just here for him, then I leave," she said.

"And if'n he doesn't want to be hired by the likes of you?" Truly asked.

"I'll convince him," Cherri said.

"With your Semtex, or your shining personality?" Truly asked oh-so-very-flatly.

"I'll convince him," Cherri said, with much less humor this time.

"Don't take that tone with me, stranger," Truly said, still smiling, but it no longer reached her eyes. "It wouldn't take much to fill you full of holes you weren't born with and chuck you through the Pride Wall. Your word. Right here, right now upon Satan himself, that you ain't gonna set off so much as a cherry-bomb in my little slice of paradise. You give me that, I don't run you outta town. Hell, I'll even give you the keys to Guilt's Gulch."

"Fffffine," Cherri Bomb muttered. She fucking hated it when other people had her number.

"Fantastic," Truly grabbed Cherri's drink and pounded it down, before rising to her feet. She really didn't look like any kind of peacekeeper that Cherri had ever seen, dressed in an overcoat-over-slutwear and only having a single badge displaying a broken fang as symbol of her office, pinned right over her tit. She dug through the various pockets of her overcoat, before swearing and then reaching down into the back of her slutwear, pulling out a heavy-duty key that was uncomfortably warm and covered in what Cherri hoped was merely sweat. Fucking gross. "Take the turn just out the door, keep taking lefts until you pass the Satanic Chapel. He wanted privacy, but he didn't pay for it, so he's getting what he paid for."

"Yeah. I'm gonna go now," Cherri said, holding the key by the edges of her fingernails, not even wanting to put her fingertips on the thing. Whatever Truly said was lost when Cherri immediately turned and put her out of mind, exiting the bar and heading about a dozen paces to a small, unisex public restroom. Therein, she washed the fuck out of that key.

Fucking succubi.

Fucking imps.

Fucking Angel Dust while she was at it! This was not her forte!

With a key she was now not revolted to keep in her hand, she took the directions that Truly had offered, passing into a weird town layout, with things stacked with low overheads, or else built to the aesthetic senses of people who didn't get killed in Chicago. She didn't put much though into it, at this unusual melding of building styles of all the lower croft of Hell, because her lot was to destroy infrastructure, not marvel at it.

The church-yard of the Chapel of Satan was indeed locked with a very sturdy gate, one that she would have had to spend an annoying amount of thermite to cut through, so the key was a small but appreciated gift. The gate only clunked when the lock fell open, but otherwise swung silently. Somebody was taking care of it, despite its chunky appearance.

While the yard had a few grave columns in one corner of it, the rest of it was open space and dry, dead, brown grass, broken only by intrusive patches of white-plumed dandelions. Click. She also saw a figure, shorter than her by about a head, if one factored his horns, and maybe a few inches shorter than that if you measured him by his crown. Click. He was going through a repeated motion, standing with his toes facing Cherri's left, while his left hand kept going down, then flashed up, followed by click, then back down again.

When Cherri Bomb crossed the distance, she saw what he was doing. He was practicing quickdraws at inconvenient angles with his left hand. A left hand which, upon inspection, was artificial.

Draw, click, holster. Draw, click, holster, pointing the plain pistol from the hip at a target somewhere over yonder. Then, when she got about ten yards away, he turned with that same repeated sound, only this time he drew with his right hand, spinning so his stance was reversed; he now pointed a very fancy looking revolver directly at her.

"You're not as quiet as you think you are," the one-eyed imp, who had to be Striker, said.

"Yeah, that stands to reason. I don't typically try to be," she said. "You're Striker."

"That would depend on who's inquiring," the imp who very likely was Striker pointed out.

"A potential employer," she said. He continued to stare at her, his one remaining snake-like eye having its slit narrow and his brow draw down. His gun wavered a bit, but not enough that she could guess which way she needed to dive to avoid getting shot, so she stayed standing. Show some confidence, goddamn it! He's just an imp!

"I'm on vacation," he said, still pointing his gun at her.

"If you wanted a vacation, you could have gone to Sloth. You're training," she pointed out what even she could see.

"Maybe this is a vacation for me," he said with a shrug, then asserted his gun again. "You'd best run along, now."

"I don't think I will. Because I think you want to know what kind of job an Overlord of Pride could have to offer you," she said.

"I ain't getting involved in your petty fucking turf-wars," he said.

"I've got higher sights than that," she said. "I want to show Heaven a little bit of Hell."

"...You want to what?" he asked, dropping his gun so that it was now aside his hip, but still pointed in her direction.

"You're called one of the toughest bastards of Wrath, and one of the best killers around," she began, because stroking his ego might get him on side.

"Naw, I think 'Blitzie's pretty thoroughly usurped that title from me. Not much chance of me getting it back at this point," he said.

"Blitzie?" she muttered.

"How 'bout you stop trying to suck my dick when you got the teeth of a centipede, and just deliver the fuckin' point?" Striker demanded. So he wanted to the point? She could do to the point.

"We're going on a ranging. Way the fuck up in Heaven. Deeper than any Hellspawn or Damned has ever been before," she said.

"Deep as in..."

"Cloud Three, if not Four," she exaggerated, because there was no reason that Angie would want to go past his only objective. Who in their right mind would? "We're going to be heading so goddamned deep into enemy territory that we'll have the freedom to shank Angels while they're taking their nightly shits and thinking themselves immune to us. But the trick of it, is to get that far. And I hear you've got skills. Valuable skills. Skills we could use getting into the heart of that heavenly-piss-pool with literally every set of hands in Heaven turned against us."

He stared at her. Gauging. Gauging her honesty, maybe? Or maybe he was looking at something else, but she wasn't adroit enough by a half to pick out the intricacies of his expression. But what even she wasn't so dense as to miss was that he flipped the pistol 'round his finger and shoved it into its holster, small nods seeming to slip from his stony expression, as though some part of him was saying 'say yes, but don't seem eager'.

"Alright. Consider me interested," Striker said. One down. Who the fuck knows how many left.

"You cannot comprehend the level of betrayal I felt to look upon the sections of Heaven that had been taken from the human race in the last few centuries. Understand, I had been to Cloud Five before, some two thousand years ago. And Cloud Four had certainly lulled me into a now-obviously false sense of security at Heaven's decay. But in the back of my mind, I had always thought that Five would suffer the same depletion and desperation that the first three Clouds did. And to an obvious extent even Four did, frankly...

Imagine if you would, watching a paradise fall into ruin and decay in what seems the blink of an eye. It's easy to believe that they have suffered as we have suffered, that this wasn't an injustice but instead an apocalypse that would be evenly distributed. But that's the thing about apocalypses and people in positions of power. Those with power will do everything they can to consolidate that power. And using land stolen from my people to buy the loyalty of their more wilfull? Just another tool in the toolbox.

It was almost unchanged. As though there were no famine, as though the were no Meagre, no Great Starvation, as though nothing had changed in ten thousand years. Just a bunch of Angels pointedly ignoring the fact that we were suffering under their care. Our world was ending. And they were just fucking fine. Talk about injustice. Talk about betrayal.

No, I won't have sex with you, you repulsive harpy. Stop asking."

-Aleph the Inverted, Redemptor.