The Song of Ruin

by James Golen

The Demiurge has revealed himself, and declared a vendetta against God. Hell is in turmoil as Lucifer - now with a mere imp as his Proxy - is surely planning a new war against Heaven, to reclaim the throne he calls his own. And those who are stuck on the battlefield have to find a way to survive. This is a story of how good men die. Book 2 of The Silent God Duology.

20. 500 against 1? An even fight

Striker had been in a number of Goetic manses in his time. It'd been ten years now, since he first swore upon the Altar of Worms to kill in Satan's name, and near twenty since he'd started killing people for cash. Of course, he'd gotten into the job young, still in his early teens, so he had an unusual leg up in terms of experience compared to his age-wise contemporaries. Imps had to start young. Most didn't have a lot of support structure allowing them to be late bloomers. This particular manse belonged to Paimon, the King of Secret Things, The Waters, and the Winds. It was wealthy in a way that few others could match; as one of Lucifer's most ardent followers, Paimon was afforded boons well and above what most of the other Ars Goetia received.

The whole place reeked of undeserved plenty, one that set his resentment at a low boil. He hated these royal fucks with every second fiber of his being, and of the half of him left over, three quarters was dedicated to not throwing himself away pitching a shit-fit. And while Striker was no stranger to the benefits that kissing up to the right ass could bring you, you at least had to have some scrap of self-respect so that you didn't bury your head up your patron's anus. Striker was pretty sure that Paimon was approaching Lucifer's stomach from the other side, patsy that he was. Striker'd always fantasized about being able to break into this place and rob it blind when he was a kid. But Paimon would never lower himself to inviting an outsider – and especially not an imp – to rummage around unescorted in his demesne. That fantasy of larceny would have to remain a fantasy.

The Hellhounds which escorted Angel Dust and the others of this 'mercenary cadre' through the palace were wearing suits, but those suits were ragged and poorly repaired. Striker knew a patch-job when he saw one, and if he had to guess, he'd say that these bastards had a dress code to adhere to, and no monetary support in meeting it. They were probably slaves, too. Well, that was the way of Hell. Sucks to be them.

The last turn brought the cadre down a hallway festooned with portraits of Paimon's 'children', the Angels created by his demand to God. Striker even saw a child-form of Stolas in Heaven, which was surprisingly adorable. He didn't even know Angels could age. Must have been a one-off thing. Whatever the case, the hallway ended in a set of ornate double-doors, which swung open as the hellhounds approached, revealing a throne in a hall that was host to a seething, warping, inchoate darkness that didn't quite make Striker miss a step with its similarity to the Abyss, but it was a closer thing than most.

The blackness seethed through dozens of forms as the mercenaries approached, between snapping tri-partite demon-heads, a crocodile with feathers growing from its skull, a crowned camel, a massive human with grey hair and beard with black-on-black eyes, and finally mounting upward into the twelve foot tall form of a black bird of unclear description, eyes hidden behind a domino mask of white with red brocade, wearing a crimson cloak and a tall, golden crown. He rose from his seat, and looked at the hodge-podge of fiends, Sinners, imps and Hellhounds of which Striker's group was the last to arrive.

"Well, this is a... well, it is certainly a group," Paimon said with booming and unctuous tone. "Welcome to my palace, you... um..." he paused, then turned to the well-groomed Incubus wearing valet livery next to him, "who were these assholes again?"

"The mercenary proffers you asked for, your highness," the incubus answered smoothly. Paimon rose to his towering height again, clapping his hands together in seeming joy.

"Of course, my soldiers of fortune!" he exclaimed. "I have heard things, both good and not so good about most of you, and those I haven't heard of probably have glorious tales that you could regale me with if I actually gave a cubic shit-inch about any one of you. However as that is obviously not the case to any meaningful degree, I will simply accept that any man or woman or... whatever the fuck that is," Paimon pointed at somebody that Striker couldn't see, causing a few heads to turn toward it, but continued before anybody could explain, "is somebody bold and greedy enough to accept my call to arms to act as auxiliaries in my Hellish Legions!"

"Please note," the Incubus valet said, upon Paimon's broadly gesticulated announcement, "that King Paimon the Shadow Of God will not be expected to provide any weapons, armor, tools, or support items for your term of service in his Auxilia. You will be expected to provide all tools of your trade. Payment will be remitted from escrow into your personal accounts on the moment of your verified arrival into Cloud Probity of Heaven."

"My desires are as follows," Paimon said, stepping down and pacing before the assembled medley of all Hell had to offer. "Being that I have more legions than several of my underlings and children combined, I have been tasked with expanding Hell's grasp on Cloud One, and capturing Heavenly infrastructure for the good of Hell. My legions will accomplish this. You, on the other hand, are there to make sure that they succeed. I don't care what you do to assist them, but if you so much as trip one of my men by accident as they perform their infinitely more important duties to me, I will unmake you so utterly that your disgusting descendants could search the interstitium between Heaven, Earth and Hell for ten thousand years and not find so much as a cell of you."

Paimon leaned down at one cluster of hellspawn in particular, fortunately not Striker and Angel Dust's, and glared at them. "I do so very detest the stench of the poor. And your presence in my house is making it reek. So do not test my patience. Do my bidding, and you will be made less poor for it."

With that, Paimon returned to his normal stature and returned back to his throne, fingers steepled in front of him, until he swished his feathered tail out of the way and sat down once more. "Oh, and there's one more thing. I have a granddaughter up there, doing some sort of 'experiment'," he said, throwing air-quotes as he did. "Do be a dear and stay out of her way. I'll consider any inconvenience done to her as an affront upon me personally. That is all. Get the fuck out of my house."

"He didn't even ask us to bend the knee," the Presbyter muttered, as they turned and filed out of the throne room. Like fuck would Striker ever kneel for anybody. Even Lucifer would have to force him down. The only reason he worked with Satan for as long and as amicably as he had, was because when Satan brought him in off the streets, he demanded that Striker not grovel before him, but instead kill standing at his side. Satan had the right idea, with that one.

"Yeah, like fuck am I kneelin' to the likes a him," Angel Dust said. Striker turned a look at him. He seemed to have a broken sense of terror, that one. Even Striker was reluctant to shoot his lip off at the Shadow of God. "Let's get our shit together and go topside. I'm sure he'll be plenty happy with the shit we pull on our way up to Molls."

"We'd better hope he does," Cherri Bomb said. "I don't think it's a good idea to get on his bad side."

"What's he gonna do? Sit on his fancy chair and clutch his poyles at us?" Arackniss asked, with a laugh. But that laugh was a nervous one. Unlike his brother, Arackniss understood that the Ars Goetia were not the like to be lightly fucked with.

"Maybe. But whatever the case, we got a job to do," Striker said, putting his revolvers back in their holsters from the valets who allowed the hellspawn and Sinners to rearm themselves now that they were out of Paimon's presence. Bullets were still there, powder was still dry. He tapped his pocket, feeling the compacted form of a vital tool there. He felt a bunch of other things as well, lock-picks, multitools, a surgical-first-aid kit for fiends and imps, and a number of other things packed into pockets too small to actually hold them but for the magic that was involved. His hands weren't shaking very bad, now that he was actually going through with it. Maybe this'd be the end of it. And one way or the other, whether Angel Dust got what he wanted or not, Striker had a way of coming out with a win.

---

Chapter 20

500 Against 1? An Even Fight

---

Stella didn't even give Striker a glance as he and the column of riff-raff got unloaded from their buses and marched their way through the steadily constructing fields of her new palace-fortress. The Portal was their destination, and was already surrounded by other soldiers, tens of thousands of them in orderly lines as though bracing to receive a charge. There had to be entire legions there already. What were they waiting for?

Such things didn't matter to Striker, though. He wasn't a soldier. He was a killer. And he enjoyed his work killing for people who could appreciate his particular skills and drive. Satan had been a very understanding employer back when Striker was still barely away from his mother's miniskirt. Had the Deadly Sin of Wrath personally seen something in Striker to cultivate? Or was Striker just reading too much into the actions of an admittedly ancient and weird Old King? He didn't care particularly which it was. Satan called on him from time to time to kill somebody who displeased him, and gave him blessings to pursue his own murderous ambitions the rest of the time. And he gave Striker all of the tools a killer needed to become good at the trade.

In his more introspective moments, he wondered about that. But he wasn't so introspective as to linger on such thoughts for long. He was a killer. He had bills to pay. And jobs like this paid well. There was an old saying in mercenary circles; never get paid for a job that you can get paid twice for. And this was a living example of that. The newly minted Queen of Iron just stood, imperious over the scum, as they jumped the line and made directly for the portal.

"Make sure you got all of your shit, Angie," Cherri said. She might not have her head screwed all the way on tight, but it was a damned sight tighter than either of the brothers'. And since Striker didn't know that goatish Presbyter from the likes of Adam, he could only hope that their pay-day wizard wasn't going to lose his head at the first sign of danger.

"I got it, babe, I got it," Angel Dust said, revealing for a moment the fact that he had a squad machine gun and a light anti-material rocket tube hidden somewhere on his person, which was kind of impressive because that didn't seem like he'd used magic to do it. Must have been a Sinner thing. Well, Striker had all kinds of party favors tucked in his pockets. He just had to make sure the fight didn't strip him naked and he'd outshow that Sinner in a heartbeat.

The legions flanking the portal didn't move as the auxiliaries and mercenaries walked up betwixt them, under the imperious eye of Stella the Queen of Iron, and toward the faintly quivering aperture that connected the edge of Hell to the edge of Heaven. And since the line was passing through into the bunker on the far side, Striker saw no reason to dally.

The transition from Hell to Heaven was a spike upward in temperature and a sort of dusty, sweaty and desperate smell in the air. Yet again, Striker's path took him in a direction that he'd never have expected it to. The cluster of mercenaries was partitioned by towering figures that looked like golems, all dull metal and armor plating, sectioning them out into lots of about a hundred. The bunker had some magic expanding its internals to surpass its external footprint, but that still left it rather cramped by the five hundred soldiers being sorted into groups. Walking up and down in front of their numbers was a stern, sharp eyed aquiline Sinner, wearing damaged and repaired armor that likely traced its lineage all the way back to human antiquity.

"Groups 7 through 11," the Sinner barked over the noise. He pointed at Striker's group. "Your job, Group 11, is to conceal the advance at grid-square L11," he cast his hand back at the map which hovered as a magical image above a table that was being manned by... well, do my eyes deceive me or is that Stella's daughter over there? Grid L11 was a spot a good distance away from the bunker, with a lot of open territory and not a lot to hide behind. Striker hoped that they wouldn't be the first into that grid; that way, they'd at least have corpses to huddle behind. "To that end, you are to be given Portable Night. Your duty is to conceal a column with diameter not less than one half kilometer, by one half kilometer tall. Do you understand your purpose in this?"

"How does one use Portable Night?" a merc nearer the front of the formation asked. He was in a different group, so it was obvious they were the last ones being given this job.

"You pull the tab, and it burns for five seconds, emitting sphere which consumes and sequesters light for a set duration. The sphere is air-neutral, and will float where it is at the moment of detonation. You will need to loft several Portable Nights to achieve your objective. One is to be alloted to every fifth soldier leaving the door. You can sort who holds what in the field. Don't die with the night still leashed. That is all. Groups Seven through Eleven, move out!"

Well, that was about what Striker could have expected. Ambrosius Agrippa was an old Sinner, former lover to one of Striker's former clients, and a generally well-known martinet. Striker was just glad he wasn't duty bound to that guy. He was, however, somewhat envious of the machines that were continuing to either sort the traffic in the bunker or were massing near one of the doors. There had to be as many incredibly armored figures over there as there were mercenaries. As much as he wondered what that was all about, he wouldn't be amiss at the opportunity to get his hands on one of those things. If those were what he thought they were, if they were what the rumors purported they were, he would do very well by getting in on the ground floor of those bastards.

But that was a wonder for a different day. Striker needed his game-face on, and to cut the chatter within his own mind. The battle was upon them, as the hundreds of mercs and fortune-seekers were vomited out into a walled-grotto in the lee of the bunker. The wind tore along the edge of Heaven, and if Striker cared to take a few dozen steps over thattaway, he could have leaned over and looked at the Long Fall to the Pit. The hour was early, but the sun was raising gray and weak, overcast skies leaving the morning shadowed and cadaverous.

"Wait for the fire to move out or you'll get shredded," a Consumer Demon who looked like a dollar-store Litigator said from near the controls to a remote gun-turret. There was a whirring as, somewhere out of sight, a panel retracted and an instrument of death rose out of secure storage, and began to bark autocannon fire and send forth the high roar of rockets firing. Angel Dust made to start moving, but Striker grabbed him by his coat-hem and shook his head lightly at the incredulous look that the Sinner turned to him, then pointed with his metal hand at the opening to the fields of Heaven.

True to Striker's expectations, within seconds of the turret barking its way to life, there came new whistling from the heavens as counter-battery fire responded, trying to shatter the turret and anything in the same area-code as it. The first, ambitious hellspawn that had run out when the turret began firing found themselves ripped to a pulp by the sheer wall of concussive force that the Heavenly artillery dropped onto the turret. The turret kept firing, though. It had been magically warded against harm.

"What're ya doin'? We gotta move!" Angel Dust demanded, pulling his coat free of Striker's grip.

"Sixteen seconds," Striker said, raising his flesh-and-blood hand, counting down four times on his fingers. As he did, some of the people who'd rushed out now crawled back in, stunned or mangled or even dying. The barrage continued. People huddled in alarm, in fear. But when Striker reached thirteen, there was an odd pulse in the firing, as the very wall began to leak dust as an uncommon weight of fire flew wide and hit the bunker instead of the area of the turret, and the exit of the bunker. That was the sign; they were reloading for the third time and the angle was drifting. "Now!"

With that, Angel Dust's group again disobeyed the logic of the mob. First they had been still when the mob was moving. Now they were moving when the mob was still. But when they cleared the edge of the wall, the Presbyter among them holding out a hand with one finger hooded under his thumb, there was no wall of shrapnel and force. Sure, the noise was essentially deafening, and shells were exploding uncomfortably close to where they were running, but Striker and the others could live with 'uncomfortable'.

In the wake of Striker's group getting out intact, the rest of the mob found new heart, and surged out likewise. They weren't quite as lucky as Striker, who'd picked the perfect lull in the fire when the Angel's impetus to fire quickly overran their desire to fire accurately, and thus at least one lesser shell landed amongst a mercenary knot. Still, of the four hundred fifty who hadn't been reduced to slime in the initial barrage, a full four hundred ten made it far enough that the first of them either lost their nerve or obeyed orders that hadn't been given to Striker's 'group 11', and popped a Portable Night on the spot. The area behind Striker quickly grew dark, as the Night consumed and hid away the light. Now, the artillery could only target the mercs by sheer guesswork.

That was kinda the point of artillery, though.

"C'mon, 'boss'," Striker said. "Sooner we do our 'job', the sooner we can ditch 'em and head deeper into the Cloud."

"Fuckin' right," Angel Dust said.

It was a simple thing, letting people think they were in charge. And if it let Striker do what he needed to to regain his pride, he could swallow a bit of humble pie to do it.

---

"We've got the first group reaching the Towers, my Domina," Ambrosius said as he quickly riffled through a set of reports, and quickly moved the markers on the display that showcased where all of the many, many soldiers involved in this push were reporting in. It had been a fairly simple plan from a planning perspective. Launching a three-pronged attack with the least massive one coming from the bunker itself meant that Heaven would be forced to look at two more obvious targets while her now properly outfitted Starfire Battalion did what needed doing. Simple plans were nice. Execution as always seemed to be the sticking point.

She looked up at the display, of vast tranches of the manpower that Paimon had to bear were spat into the fringes of Cloud One. The display was only real-time in her immediate area, because Paimon was frustratingly old-fashioned when it came to equipment, weaponry, tactics, strategy, and logistics. In short, by all that she'd learned about the difference between Agrippa's time and the realities that they now faced, such an army as Paimon's Enigmatic Legions ought not to have been able to function. And for once, it didn't function well despite that just to frustrate her understanding of Hell. Common sense said that the troop quality of Paimon's legions would be shit, and reality proved out that they were indeed shit. To put not-too-fine a point on things, she was using her 'grandfather's soldiers for cannon fodder, because that was all such a disorganized, low-morale, under protected and under-armed rabble was worth.

"The Speakers For The Line are finishing their preparations," Agrippa said, and the symbol that announced the presence of the volunteers by Hexbreaker Barbatos, one of her Ars Goetia 'uncles' whom she'd had little reason to meet before today, began to pulse.

"Tell them not to begin the teleportal until the signal has been given. And make it clear that impetuousness will just lead to dying like an idiot, not glory," she said.

"I will, my Domina," Agrippa said, and then left Octavia at the mess that she had taken it upon herself to set up. While her mother had managed to pull her own tail-feathers out of the fire that she'd put them into, that was only a partial salvation for the family. Dad was still distracted by the Red Dickhead, and Lucifer was likely looking for any excuse to be a shit-head to those who had displeased him in the past. She had to show that she had something to offer before he decided that he was going to put her on a course of his choosing, instead of her own abilities.

It was an inglorious thing, to lead from the bunker. But she was not ready to fight against angels by a half; her own performance against the puppets of Strigoi and that other Angel in her own house had taught her that much. Still, if there was one thing that Octavia seemed to have in plenty that not many other of the aristocratic commanders of the Hellish Horde could match, it was that she was willing to see this war in the terms of this war, and not trying to fight it according to the rules of the previous conflict.

The old way had been a thing of set-piece battles, maneuver warfare, and attrition. She didn't have time nor tolerance for any of that. Just by giving radios to all of the legions could she improve the coordination a hundredfold. But Paimon had recoiled. Said it 'hurt the purity' of their fighting. Fuck the 'purity' of fighting! Who cared if they were 'pure' in their fight if they were splattered across the rocks by the artillery of somebody who cared less about purity than they did?

Agrippa was a bit of a millstone in that regard, she recognized. He, too, was set in old, wrong ways. But by her influences he was starting to arduously and piecemeal shed such blinders and preconceptions to the point where he could be able to be the terrifying commander that she knew he was capable of being in the modern age. Sinners had one thing going for them, above their freakish regeneration ability, and it was that they could adapt to almost anything in a blink of an eye, compared to her kind.

She ran a hand over the scrying orb, and looked at what Paimon's legions The Fists and The Death Of Secrets were doing over on their fringe of Heaven. Dying, mostly. While Asmodeus still could claim the dubious honor of getting more of his army killed than any other commander since the Fall From Heaven, Paimon seemed to be wanting to make an honest competition of it. They were advancing in ranks and maniples, and getting their wooden shields and iron armor shredded by bullets fired by Innocent. Sure, they were closing distance, but how many thousand died when mere dozens would have fallen if they just ran to the foot of the Towers and then assembled there?

Octavia didn't want to claim that she was the sole genius in a Hell filled with utter morons, but there were days when it certainly felt that way. She snapped her fingers and ran her hand over the orb, showing the other pincer, which was doing even worse. The logician snapped a salute at her, which was polite but she didn't have time to reciprocate. "Send word to The Hidden Fire and The Thundering Tide that they're to go to Site 2 instead of 3. And tell them that they are to disregard rank and charge to the foot of the walls. Am I clear? Repeat that."

"Hidden Fire and Thundering Tide divert 3 Charge on entry regroup at Tower, aye!" the soldier said. The next two of Paimon's Legions that were filing through the Hellportal and then taking a turn into the more local portal were stopped before anybody went through, and they swapped to enter the one that was set up on the other side.

Just as she'd demanded, the thousands of people broke rank and just started charging, using the dying bodies of their previous legionary comrades to avoid fire as they made more time toward the Towers in minutes than the forerunners had in an hour. Come on you incompetent fucks; get them to turn toward you. I need them focused on you all, she thought to herself.

Another glance to the Speakers. A quick glance at her back to the massive metal cubes that were stacked near the front Teleportal. She only needed a few minutes, and she might change the course of the war. If that didn't buy her some good grace in Lucifer's eyes, she didn't know what would.

---

While most of the other mercs and 'auxiliaries' were floundering about looking for something to do now that they'd reached the relative safety of the feet of the titanic towers that dominated the skyline of Heaven, Striker wasn't so distracted, and he made sure that none of the people in his squad were, either. They'd handed off their ball of night-time to someone else, and now were in a position where they could start to press in.

The din was catastrophic. The thud of artillery landing out from the buildings where it streaked down nearly vertically from wherever it was they were firing that shit formed a wall of noise that disoriented and discombobulated. Striker had earplugs. His group was fine. He tried to shout something to Angel Dust, who was busy reloading two sets of guns, from all the bullets he fired on his way in. But that was something of a pointless effort because a shell chose to land closer than usual and stymie him. Instead, he swatted the Sinner in the lower elbow, then pointed up at the wall of the Tower. There was a window there that he could use to get in. It was a damned sight safer than going in through the alleys; those had to be stogged solid with Innocent and Angels.

Not waiting to see if the Sinners were going to follow him, he clambered up quick-as-you-please, not really paying attention to how much better imps were at climbing than the bigger races were. Though the window was quite prudently locked, it was also blown out, so offered no actual defense against him, and after sweeping the glass out of the frame, he pulled himself into the stench and darkness of the interior of the tower.

There was a yelp of surprise and fear that came from the hallway he was now standing in. He quickdrew and put a bullet into the chest of the Innocent that picked the wrong place to be at the wrong time. He fell, clutching at his wound, trying to shout. He didn't fight long. Emaciated as he was, he had little strength left. And though the noise of combat was muffled here, a gunshot was not so out of place as to draw attention.

Behind him, Cherri Bomb was the first one to worm her way through the window, flopping like a fish onto the glass of the floor.

"A little warning next time, buddy?" she demanded, as she pushed herself to her feet.

"And here I thought you were a big, bad Overlord," Striker chided, as he spun his pistol in his hand and slid it home to its holster. He turned back, stepping away from the window and into the building. There were metal shutters pulled down here, as though this were a commercial district in the Old Town of Los Satanio instead of any place in Heaven, and a stairway marked the way down or up at the end of the path. The building was awkwardly sized and shaped, he came to realize, as though there'd been an alleyway here, too, before they just started infrastructuring it until it was a tower of its own right.

By the time Arackniss joined them, the Innocent that Striker shot had crumbled into a pile of salt. Weird but whatever.

There was a shudder which shook the tower and caused a pipe to rattle out of place and dump foul-smelling water further down the path as they waited for the slowest, the Presbyter, to join them. "Alright, now that y'all are here," he said, not having the patience to wait for the old goat before starting in on phase two, "we've got to move deeper through this forest of towers. But we gotta stay off of ground level the first few buildings, so we don't run into a nest of those assholes with their guns. Any questions?"

"How exactly are we s'posed 'ta go from building to building? We suppose to what? Swing like Tarzan or something?" Angel Dust asked.

"That's part of why we have the goat. Where the fuck is the goat?" Striker finally griped. They all glanced back, and the Presbyter still wasn't there with them. "Oh for crying out loud..."

Striker went back to the window, leaning out and looking down to see the Presbyter trying to concentrate on something but failing due to the constant din of explosions around him. He tried shouting to the goat, but that was a non-starter. So instead he threw a pipe-elbow at him, which ponked into his shoulder and dragged his attention up. He tried screaming 'Just climb, dumbass!' at the goatish Consumer, but that was lost in the noise, so he growled and leaned out of the window, dangling a hand. The Presbyter finally stopped whatever it was he was trying and attempted – twice unsuccessfully before getting an attempt that worked – to take Striker's hand. While Striker wasn't strong enough to lift a demon over twice his weight up on his own, the fact that he was a steady hand-hold was enough to finally get the Presbyter up and in.

"I thank you. That noise made it impossible to Teleport," the goat said with a mildly stunned shake of his head. Finally, he rose and pulled a face as something sticky clung to his backside upon rising. "Oh. Oh my. How revolting. Are we sure this is actually Heaven?"

"We can worry about expectations and all of that shit later. Is the noise quiet enough for your delicate little ears that you can pop all'a us into the next building across the way?" Angel Dust asked, his tones mocking. The Presbyter didn't seem to appreciate that, but Striker cleared his throat and pulled the goat's attention to him.

"Line of sight, right?" Striker asked.

"Yes. Skipping will require a line of sight to the destination," the Presbyter said. "Do you know where we can go to get that?"

"Just keep up, ol'timer," Striker said. He then wove through the Sinners and started upward. The upper stories were darkened, electric lights flickering if not turned off entirely. Perhaps even destroyed. There were shapes that Striker could see down those halls, human-ish, but as wretched as any Sinner in Hell. While Striker's heart was the farthest thing from soft or bleeding, it still struck him as somehow and fundamentally wrong that he was seeing this. Not his problem, but still as though seeing a vital machine with a missing part.

Another floor up, and they finally reached a landing that had a window that stared 'inward' into the cliff-face of towers that they were navigating. The Presbyter needed little prompting to look across the gap, make a particular gesture with one hand, and then slide his eyes closed.

Up became sideways, down became backward, red became time, and no became cucumber, and with a noise like a bubble popping the whole lot of them fell to the floor, their balance utterly shot and confusion overtaking reality, as they were Skipped into the next building. That was the roughest fucking Skip that Striker had ever been a part of. Must have been a Heaven thing.

"We still all here?" Striker asked, keeping his voice low since they were now one layer of buildings away from the landing points of artillery shells.

"Fuckin' what was that?" Angel Dust demanded.

"Least Teleportation can be somewhat discombobulating," the Presbyter offered as he pushed himself to a stand. Then the door to the room swung open, and a skeletal human with a gapped Halo was looking at them. He sucked in a breath to scream, but before he could release it, Arackniss became a grey smudge that launched into – and indeed through – the Innocent and caused him to explode as though he'd been shot by a cannon. Arackniss was left standing, stunned, on the far side of the threshold, his hands up as though to grab at a throat.

"...why did he explode?" Arackniss asked, covered in the rapidly vitrifying innards of a former human.

A shriek cut through the hall that Arackniss was standing in, somewhere out of sight by Striker but not by Arackniss. Striker remedied that by slipping through the door, just on the heels of Arackniss becoming a blur again. This time he stopped short of the she-human, grabbing her neck to break it, but when he wrenched he popped it off like it was a bottle-cap. Arackniss flinched as the scream died suddenly, the Innocent dropping into a pile on the ground. "...what the fuuuuck?" Arackniss asked.

"Humans are a lot squishier than you are. Didn't you know that?"

"I've fought lots'a Damned assholes. They don't fuckin' explode when I touch 'em!" Arackniss pointed out, setting the head down on the body out of discomfort. Cherri leaned out of the door, spotting the fallen Innocent, then shrugged.

"Damned are tougher in death than we were in life. Maybe you're just so used to playing on hard mode that easy is fucking with you."

"We don't have time for this," the Presbyter said, his eyes pressed nearly shut, his ears high as though trying to maximize his hearing.

"Why not?" Angel Dust asked.

"There was a breakthrough in several places. Heaven is mobilizing strikers to stem the flow. We need to avoid them," the Presbyter said.

"Well don't let me get in the way of that," Striker said, bidding them along the hallway. He took point, pistol leading. Occasionally, he saw a door open, a head sticking out, but when they saw so much as a glimpse of Striker, let alone the cadre walking behind him, they slammed the door to their tiny room's shut and locked them. A brief moment at a window that was not looking in the right direction allowed Striker a moment to look upward, through the forest of stone and concrete. And there, he saw Angels moving toward the battlefield, flying above the level of the Towers' roofs.

The first step was getting past the assholes blocking the way. And following the hallway to the other side of the building was prime to that. He tried doors on the proper side until one was unlocked. He pulled it open, and quickdrew at the Innocent that was sitting against a wall, staring directly at him.

But not.

The bony man didn't move a whit at Striker's appearance, didn't react to having a gun pointed at him. He didn't even visibly breathe. "The fuck is this?" Striker asked. He walked up to the human, prodding him in the face with his gunbarrel, even poking him once right in his eye. He didn't react. Freaky, but whatever. Humans could do what they wanted, including nothing if they so desired. He ignored the human, and looked for the window. The next building was a squatter structure, not towering like the rest of the buildings around it, and looked like it was intended to hold stuff. A warehouse, unfit for verticality.

"Shit man, warn me b'fore you spring this voodoo shit on me," Angel Dust said as he entered the room in Striker's wake. "Didn't hear you plug him."

"I didn't," Striker said. He couldn't see any windows on that building corners-ways, so they were probably going to have to have an awkward walk on a rooftop. Still, unless an Angel was flying directly overhead when they were doing so, they'd have plenty of time.

The Presbyter was, as usual, the last one in. It seemed like the name was an apt description of the geezer; he had all the cardio of a carcass. He shot an unsettled look at the Innocent who did nothing as Arackniss picked him up and threw him into a corner and simply remaining in the pile he'd landed in, and then to the window. "That's a lot of open space, uncomfortably close to the Edge."

"Can you think of a better way to get across there without goin' to the ground floor?" Striker asked.

The Presbyter gave a harrumph but offered no alternative. Then, he slid his eyes closed again, and began to make his gesture.

"Hold onto your tits, this is gonna suck," Cherri said, pressing her one large eye shut and doing exactly what she'd warned them to do.

Another pop, another discombobulation, another lurching of the stomach and concussing of the mind as they emerged nearer the far edge of the warehouse than the closer. That just cut down on the amount of running they'd have to do. Striker was again the first back to his feet, and was a bit concerned that he had been Skipped onto a sky-light, along with the Sinners. It was a vast pane of glass that now gave begrudging creaks at having to support more than a hundred kilos of weight with no warning. The Presbyter popped into being a few yards back, on open roof.

"We had best move fast," the Presbyter said, still reeling. "We don't want to be in sight when the st–"

He was cut off to a calamitous bang, as a streak of blazing starlight slammed down into the spot where the goatish Fiend had been trying to stand. Purple blood and viscera was sprayed in all directions, mostly hitting Arackniss who was the closest of them to the crater in the roof.

There was a sound like wings the size of continents flapping, the light dimming down until from the blinding radiance there emerged a form more than eight feet all, with four vast wings sprouted from his back. He wore what looked like some strange combination of an EOD bombsuit and medieval plate-armor, decorated with hexagons. His helm had a featureless ballistic face-plate, through which blazing white eyes stared.

He was kneeling on the flattened, impaled corpse of the Presbyter, almost casually lifting his blazing sword and dragging the remnants of the Presbyter up with it. In a literal bolt from the Heavens, Raguel had arrived.

---

"Are they taking the bait or are they not?" Octavia asked as she flit through scenes as quickly as the scrying orb would allow them to show. The stalwart presence of Agrippa, and more notably his tutting, finally made her stop.

"The plan is sound, my Domina. You must have patience," he said. It was easy for him to be patient. He was thousands of years dead. She was not even two decades old. But she did indeed pause on the scene of the flank lead by the Shadows Finest. And there, she saw that there were flashes, blips as Angels showed themselves and made force to turn away the Hellish tide. "See? They are mobilizing. The presume the redoubt's push is a ruse."

"Legatus! Sightings of Raguel on the central front!" a call came out, and again Octavia's hand flashed over the globe, showing the appearance of the Archangel of Justice, exactly where she needed him not to be. Fucking typical.

"What do we do to draw him off?" she asked.

"That will be upon the Pride of Paimon. They have broken a cohort through," Agrippa said, staring at the blinking marker on the map that hovered before them. It was wildly out of position, but then again, when you're dealing with hellspawn, a certain impetuousness was to be expected. "They've managed to get deeper than I thought. They must be those radicals Paimon was talking about."

"Radicals?" she asked.

"Yes, some rather strange ilk who happened upon your paradigm before its time. They are somewhat poorly looked upon by the rest of your 'Grandfather's Legions for their use of human weapons."

"Human weapons? You mean that Paimon actually has a Cohort that's sensibly armed?" she asked with a chuckle born despite itself.

"You say sensible, he says radical," Agrippa said with a shrug.

"Whatever the case," she pressured, "they're going to get his attention long enough at least for him to wipe them out. How many are they?"

Agrippa looked at her as though she'd just said something dumb, which frankly she might have – this was not her forte – before answering "They are a cohort, my Domina; they number 500."

Octavia nodded. "And how do you rate five hundred properly armed soldiers against one Archangel?"

Agrippa paused, rubbing at his beak for a moment. "Hm. You ask a fight of five hundred against one? For Raguel? An even fight at his worst. And on any other day? Well, it might slow him for a few minutes."

"Well, as long as he's there, we're stuck in place," she said. She glared at the teleportal at the end of the bunker, which again shuddered as Heavenly artillery slammed into it. Such shudders were rarer now. Perhaps Heaven did indeed think that this front of the attack was the ruse she needed them to believe it was.

"Word from Legion X Arbitus!" a call came, and she quickly looked up to the display, hanging magically before them, updating so fucking sporadically because these idiots didn't know good battlefield coordination from the hole that they shit into. "Michael is on the field."

"Michael has taken the bait. We need only wait for Raguel to kill the cohort in front of him and redeploy," Agrippa advised. He paused. "I don't suppose there's anybody of any importance currently out there, is there?"

"No, nobody of importance," she agreed. So they had to wait for the whims of an Archangel. Fine. She could be patient. It's not like she was out there dying in the field.

---

Striker certainly considered himself a person of some importance, and he was in fact out there dying in the field, so when pressed face-to-face with an Archangel who just flattened and impaled their only fucking wizard, Striker did what any good fighter did. He ran like hell.

He didn't even pull his pistols from their holsters, shooting straight down past his hips and into the glass they had all landed on. Before Raguel could even showcase a complete lack of expression on his ballistic faceplate, they all plummeted through the shattering skylight, and began to careen rather ungently through the stacks and stacks of crates that this building was home to.

Well, the Sinners 'careened'. Striker had his tail and a working sense of balance, so was able to kip down and land on his feet while the two spider-demons and the anarchist-pyromaniac landed in a rather unpleasant pile.

"The fuck was that?" Arackniss was the first to ask, because of the lot of them, he was by far the toughest.

"Saved your hides. You're welcome, now start running!" Striker said. Arackniss needed only to look up, at the cold white light which was pressing toward the skylight that they'd plummeted through to see the wisdom in his statement, get his feet under him, and start moving. He even did Striker the favor of grabbing his brother and the Overlord when he did, which meant that by the time Raguel had any chance of dropping onto them and repeating his performance that he'd done on that poor fucking Presbyter, they were already as rats in the warrens of this place. Still, they were definitely in the shit now. Without the Presbyter, the whole plan was dead on arrival, but good luck for an imp of any stripe to convince a Sinner of that. He heard a crash as Raguel went in after them. Focused motherfucker, wasn't he? Well, what had Striker done to piss in the Angel's cornflakes? Then he gave himself a nod. He was indeed a Gun of Satan. Maybe Archangels could just sense that.

"Hold on a second. Wh..." the largest of them said, only to have the other two Sinners clap their hands over his mouth. Cherri and Arackniss had their heads on straight. Stealth was survival when you were hunted by something the likes of that.

"Now you listen here, tenderfoot," Striker said, his voice a grind barely at a whisper level, as he continued dragging them along through the palattes of... clothing, it looked like, "are you seriously so deluded that you think you can throw down with one 'a them? Get your head outta your ass!"

"Get offa me, Get offa me!" Angel Dust said, shrugging the others away, but mercifully staying quiet. "Now listen here. We still got a job to do, and we..."

"Your job died when that wizard did," Striker said. "Now you can follow me, and maybe survive this day, or you can try your luck against the Justice of God. And I'm pretty fuckin' sure you've failed on that front already to land your ass down here with me."

"No. I don't accept this," Angel Dust said.

"This weren't our moment," Arackniss realized. Striker pointed at him, for making Striker's point.

"I can't just turn back now. I'll never..." Angel Dust began.

"There will always be another tomorrow, unless we die today," Cherri Bomb added in. Smarter cookie than he gave her credit. But then again, she was smart enough to recruit Striker. That had to mean she wasn't completely rotten in the brainpan.

"Ffffine!" Angel Dust said. "We'll do this your..."

"NOT SO LOUD!" all three hissed at him.

But not soon enough. There was a crashing, as the light swelled on them. Fuck no, he was not going to die in a fucking warehouse. So Striker reached into the first of his many pockets, pulling out a device that looked rather like a particularly irate urchin. He pulled a particular spine and hurled it behind him, then pulled from another pocket to extract a Portable Hole. The Godfriend's ruinous charge was stalled as the spines began to blast toward him, all of them racing to find their way into tender flesh not hidden by his mountain of armor – which meant that most of them were going for his eyes.

With less of a jump and more of an ungraceful tumble, Striker pulled Arackniss down with him; Arackniss, being stronger than pretty much anybody else short of Satan Himself that Striker had ever met... Well, add to that a White Flame Beast that took his arm and eye, but... Arackniss dragged the others; the Portable Hole was a pretty new toy, fresh out of Zagan's skunkworks, and only in the hands of Striker because Striker was that fucking good; It more or less compressed here and there so that for a moment, there was nothing between the warehouse, and the alley outside of it. And when they all landed in the filth of heaven, they did so amongst a lot of piles of salt.

"The fuck is..." Striker began.

"Oh fuck me, somebody's been killin' Innocent!" Angel Dust filled in that hole. Well, sure, why not. Why shouldn't the drug-fueled fairy know more about these heavenly assholes than Striker did?

The Portable Hole snapped shut with the Archangel finally swiping away the quills that tried to blind him, and started storming toward it. Good timing, that. Still, Striker was quickly on his feet with the others and running, past the piles of salt until they heard shouting ahead. Striker skidded to a halt at the corner, peeking around for a moment, even as crashes of walls being barreled through sounded from the warehouse behind him. That glance showed a hopeful sign; the camel-head standard of Paimon.

"Well fuck me at last some good luck," he said, and darted down the street. The cohort's members who were on rearguard pointed some guns at him, but he quickly held up the decorative '11' patch that the people of this ill-omened expedition had been given. "Aux Eleven! We're with Aux Eleven!"

"So some of you fools survived? Ha!" one of them said, and lifted his rifle to part aside, allowing first Striker, and then the Sinners with him to move into the intersection that this cohort of Paimon's Pride was fortifying. Striker saw one of the Centurions waving him over, to demand an explanation why a lowly Auxiliary was inside of the line of his cohort, but the masonry-cracking rumble of a wall giving way told Striker to avoid him. Pity, the Centurion didn't take Striker's attempt to snub him lightly, darting in front of him and blocking his path.

"Explain yourself at once, imp! You stand before the Praetorian of Paimon's forces!"

"I don't see no tent here, friend," Striker said. Angel Dust, Arackniss and Cherri Bomb managed to slip passed, with the others in the cohort not paying them much attention. No, it was the imp in riding leathers that arrested their attention for some fucking reason. "I've got to reconnect with Eleven before..."

"Century! Approach rear!" The rearguard screamed, and Striker use that to try to worm his way past the Centurion. But the old soldier clamped a hand like a vise onto his shoulder, and refused to let him pass. Fucking old soldiers! Can't you be flexible for once in your fucking existence? The blooming of cold white light announced Raguel before his presence did, and when he rounded that corner airborne before dropping gently to his feet, it was to sporadic machinegun fire. Raguel stood there, getting shot by near fifty guns, with the only concession that he was in peril was that he had one arm held up before his face.

"Firebombs! Willy Pete!" the Centurion roared. And from one of the sides that hadn't been rudely introduced to Raguel, a set of heavy-weapons Furies came over, grinning dementedly wide, as they knelt and aimed a group of missile or rocket launchers at the Justice of God. With a tremendous backblast that would have punched Striker right in the mouth had he not gotten his false arm up in the way to batten himself somewhat, the rocket raced out, bursting meters in front of Raguel, and then causing the sunrise of Heaven to become high noon, as white-hot flames exploded from the warhead. Raguel stood through it, not shifting a whit. Another, this one bursting against his arm and slathering him with burning napalm, which he outright ignored. A third, alike to the first, fired and exploding with such fury that the napalm was blasted off of the Godfriend's armor, and still he did not move or flinch.

The last to fire was a brute of a thing, as big around as Striker's ego used to be, which fired a roughly imp-sized payload at the Archangel which was staring them down. At that, did finally Raguel respond. Using the arm he had been shielding his eyes from bullets with, he flicked downward, a blazing sword burning into being and slashing through the streaking warhead so that it parted and flew past him, rocketing a good twenty meters further down the path toward the edge of Heaven before first one half, then the other detonated with terrible force.

"O listen ye not worthy," the Archangel said, his body lifting upward, now free from incoming fire by the need for hell's soldiers to reload, and his words shuddered against the whole of the realm as he spake. With each word, his body swelled, gaining another three feet of height and all the mass and plating – of an oddly duller metal – that such expansion required. "Upon thy throne God Most High: Grant this one forgiveness."

Now they weren't not shooting him because they needed to reload. Now they were not shooting him out of sheer awe. The light he radiated from his halo made was crippling them, all of them. Even Striker wasn't immune to it. He could feel his every dubious action clinging to his back and dragging at his body, akin to chains, regardless of how little option he had in those choices. That in turn ignited rage in Striker. How dare this fucking Angel declare that his life was vile. That fucker hadn't lived through what he had! But whatever rejoinder he would even think to fire out at the Archangel was halted when Raguel reached behind him, and extracted something that Striker never thought he'd ever see in the hand of an Archangel.

A massive, fourteen pound autoloader pistol, chambered in .700 Nitro Express.

"Forgive this one," Raguel finished, as he racked the slide on the inside of his other armpit, "for the violence he is about to inflict."

The first bullet he fired hit the Centurion just to the left of his heart, and blew him in half. The panic was instantaneous, as everybody who had been spellbound by the Archangel began to dedicate themselves wholly into doing whatever was needed to kill it. Striker wasn't one of them. He just started to run, but didn't make it far before his lack of visual field betrayed him and he was barged into by somebody a lot bigger than him that sent him landing in a pile, where he was promptly stepped on.

Growling under his breath, Striker swiped out with his tail, until he found a leg to hook his spade 'round, using it to drag him out of the trample that he'd landed in, and get back to his feet. It didn't do him any favors, because in the second or so he'd been down there, Raguel had closed distance and began butchering the soldiers of Paimon's radical legion. It wasn't even a fight. Striker had seen bullets flatten against naked force outside of the Angel's body before, some sort of protective magic they used. It seemed that Raguel didn't bother with such cowardice, allowing every single bullet to spark and grind across his armor and impact directly into him. And with the extra puissance – Striker presumed – he redoubled his slaughterous output to the point where Striker was sure if you put an entire day's worth of a meat plant in front of the Archangel he'd be done hacking it apart before the late-arrival whistle blew at 8:10.

And he kept advancing. He plunged toward where Striker was moving, not seeming to be following him but instead trying to get into the greatest concentration of Hellspawn so that he could bring them low by blazing blade or deafening gunshot. Striker didn't look back. No reason to. He knew what was back there. He just darted around soldiers or of needs be between their legs and out the other side.

Then he had a strange sensation, a hitch in his sprint, a moment that rang out to him from the same place his vow upon the Altar of Worms did. He'd heard a note sound in the air when the old Proxy had tried that mind-control bullshit, and this was very much a similar kind. An off-note to a song he'd heard so often that he'd forgotten it was playing. Because of that, he turned and stepped aside on sheer instinct, heeding what his body could tell him without necessarily informing his mind.

And a fraction of a second later, a Seraphic Steel .700 slug streaked just past his jacket, where it would have otherwise blown out his lung, and likely tore off his arm and leg along with it had he not sidestepped.

That was weird, but the bullet blew out a Sinner's calf, which gave Striker a platform to get above the madness for a second. There were a lot of days when he didn't mind having the stature he did, but today was not one of them. He could see the Angel Dust over there, aiming that little rocket launcher at the Archangel. Fat lot of good it'd do. And he could see a few pockets of lower density where it'd be easier to walk, so he bounded, pulling his tail in so that the sweep of the burning sword of Raguel didn't hob-tail him.

While Striker's landing was immaculate, the soldiers didn't play along, one of them stepping into the side of him and almost dropping him onto his ass again, but this time he had both arms and a tail to stabilize him, still getting clocked by a rifle-butt near the top of his head for this trouble. Not enough to concuss him, but he knew it was slowing him down. Well, things have gone to shit, now's as good a time as any.

He reached into another pocket, pulling out a small drop bottle, one that he held to a nostril and then squeezed flat, while inhaling sharply. The instant that the fluid hit the inside walls of his sinuses, the fatigue and the muddiness of his perceptions snapped into perfect clarity, and his heart started to pick up speed. It'd have to hold. He could feel every ache, every pain, the dull throb of every injury. He just didn't care about them.

Another bad note, and with his now Heartstopper-infused brain running even faster, he knew that reality itself was declaring in a very petty fashion 'fuck you in particular'. Striker abandoned abject speed and hurled himself to the ground, coiling his tail 'round him like a belt, and only just managing to avoid the sweep of a blazing sword. He glanced back, and saw that Raguel was turning to face a Fury who was trying to bludgeon him with a spiked mace of strange black metal, but Raguel deftly turned the attack, then with seeming contempt in his movement, reverse-gripped his sword and rammed it through the side of her breastplate, before pointing at something that displeased him with his massive pistol and killing it.

Time was going so slow, now that the rate of Striker's heart had reached a frankly unsafe level, that he heard the fwoosh of a rocket being launched, and since Striker knew both the direction it was coming from and where it was going, he turned onto his side and clapped his hands hard over his ears. The blast didn't smash him as hard as it might have; there were a lot of soldiers in the way. And with Angel Dust's one rocket spent, he had all the impetus he needed to just run the fuck away like Striker would.

Striker looked at the warren ahead of him, glimpses visible between feet, and saw that that street he was looking down was arcing away from The Edge. Well, frankly, every direction he was aware of except the one currently monopolized by Raguel could claim the same. So when given no easy way to slink out, a hard place in one direction, and a bunch of rocks, you pick the one with the most comfortable rock.

The Cohort was already starting to break. It'd been less than a minute, and Raguel had thirded their number. Some of them were starting to realize that the game was rigged from the start. For all their 'revolutionary tactics' of using basic common sense on weapon usage, they were still a bunch of Sinners, Hellhounds and Fiends, and Raguel was still Raguel.

Finally, Striker had a chance to break from the crush, and start running. And the most comfortable rock was the one he'd come in on. He could see that Arackniss was standing out in front of them, fists up like a pugilist. That might have even mattered if he wasn't staring at an Archangel while doing it. Angel Dust seemed like he wanted to scrap, too, which was fucking insane. Arackniss looked worried about being seconds from fist-fighting an Archangel. Angel Dust seemed eager.

Even the bomb flinging Overlord seemed to have more sense than that!

There was a lull in the fight, with a bunch of Legionaries trying to kill Raguel while he reloaded, but that was a matter of about a second or so. It felt longer to Striker. Fuck, he hoped that his cardio conditioning had prepared him for this. If it hadn't, that would have been really goddamned embarrassing. Imagine, an assassin and Gun of Satan like him, going out 'cause of a fucking heart-attack!

Another glance, and another massacre. The cohort was breaking in earnest, now, soldiers trying to find a place to run. But Raguel cut them down with movements that left him a blur, leaving them bisected where they ran, or else simply intercepting them with a massive bullet that blew them into Demon Bone Ash. Less than fifty now. One hundred seconds, four hundred soldiers. Fuck, Striker thought to himself. Was this what it was like when Asmodeus launched his first wave? It was a wonder Hell even still wanted to fight!

Actually no, no it wasn't: Hell was full of ornery idiots looking for any excuse to spill some blood, whether they survived the process or not.

Still, it wasn't a matter of fighting anymore. Now it was butchery. And the stragglers of the 11th Auxilia, who'd stood back when fools rushed in, were the only ones not being carved for dog-food. Striker finally rounded the last stunned member of the cohort, and Arackniss could glance down and spot him.

"We've gotta go!" Arackniss proved he had a working brain.

Not even offering words, Striker ran. And again, note out of place. Once was weird. Twice was coincidence. But three times? This time, he listened to it. To the harmony that underlay it. It was a song that had entered his life on the day he pressed his hand upon the Altar of Worms for the first time, always low below his conscious hearing, but subconsciously there. And he recognized it as the idiot tune of a Shard of Ruin, warping against another song that tried to displace it.

This time, Striker refused to deke left as he'd intended to, and a shockwave of flame struck there an instant later. He turned and fired his Number One Gun at Raguel, but though he had bullets that could probably knock an Angel on its ass, Raguel was covered head to toe in armor thick enough to stop an artillery piece. He even managed to strike Raguel in the mouth with his bullet; it still deflected away harmlessly from the Archangel's protective mask.

And breaking the spell of that strange, inaudible music was the bullish and profane shouting of a trio of Sinners, who were unloading weapons or hurling bombs at the Archangel as it approached on them without haste but instead a staggering sort of inevitability. There had to be a way out of here, a way away from Raguel's gaze and his 'tender' attentions. But Striker wasn't seeing it.

Arackniss was the boldest. He launched himself at the Godfriend with such violent force that the Archangel was actually bracketed back a step. If there was any emotion in those blazing white eyes, Striker would have called it mild surprise. Raguel tried to swing his sword down and cleave the shorter, grey-fuzzed Sinner, only to have Arackniss catch the wrist that drove it down, and though requiring such strength that the defiance cracked the ground, stopped the swing. That mild surprise grew stronger, and stronger still as Raguel's until-this-moment steady and implacable hand wavered and struggled.

Raguel was not an honor-bound fighter, though, and his opponents were literal children of sin and deceit. Rather than try to simply overpower Arackniss, Raguel pulled his massive pistol into place so that it's barrel was brushed against Arackniss' chest. But Angel Dust, with reactions that bordered precognitive, managed to fire a bullet into that pistol, one that deflected off of its blatantly superior craft, but did manage to by virtue of lead, precision and velocity engage Raguel's safety, so that when he tried to pull his own trigger, nothing happened.

Growing confusion curdled into annoyance. There was a flare of Raguel's wings, a blinding pulse of light, and a shockwave of force that lifted Striker from his feet and threw him a couple of yards past where the Sinners were sent sprawling. It didn't actually hurt that bad, nor stun him that much. Not as much as it did the Sinners, at least. Raguel flicked the safety off again, and fired off three calamitous shots at Angel Dust. And Angel Dust, in movements that defied the concept of reflex-lag, managed to evade all three, and the pistol locked back, empty. Angel Dust took that for his moment, and levied a hell of gunfire at the Godfriend, while Cherri Bomb hurled bombs that detonated on impact with the armor.

Striker paused, feeling a pain in his chest. Oh, that wasn't good. He thumped his chest for a moment, then pressed his fingers into his neck. He had no pulse. Fucking now, of all times? Well he couldn't afford to have a heart attack right now, so he dug through his pockets as the walking artillery barrage closed in on Raguel, until he pulled out a syringe that was almost as long as his horn. He bit the protector off the tip of it, then with a muttering of an oath to Satan, he jammed it between his ribs and at a slight angle. Only a fool went straight through the bone; that was a good way to break a needle, and he only had one of these. Once the injector was against his jacket, he pressed the plunger. Instantly, there was a painful lurch in Striker's chest as the drugs forced his heart to beat whether it wanted to or not. There was a reason not to use Heartstopper Toxin if you could manage it. Of course, now he had the best of both worlds; no heart attack, and a body supercharged on drugs.

By the time he ripped the injector out of his chest, he looked up to see that the formerly silver armor of Raguel was now black and grey, and he was holding his place against the endless shockwaves of Cherri Bomb's barrage. But with his insanely-attuned senses, Striker could feel a shift in the contest of songs that underlay this whole fight. He could sense it clear as day, that every action Raguel took was according to his song, and by hearing it, Striker could move between the Archangel's movements and actions. Forever untouchable, but not necessarily victorious. Now, though, there was something more overt, a note that actually shook the air and made Angel Dust – who was reloading three guns at once – shudder. The magazine fell out of the Archangel's pistol, only to have another appear in its place, and the massive slide slammed forward of its own volition.

Striker understood the dynamic now.

He, the Gun of Satan, could see a 'telegraphing' of the Archangel's movements, possibly because he was a Gun of Satan, possibly because he was off his tits on drugs.

Angel Dust, Triarch-Killer and now seemingly retired pornstar, now freed from a medicine-cabinet's worth of shit that slowed him down, was so fast that even without the 'warning' that Striker got, he could dodge the worst and deadliest of the Archangel before him.

Arackniss, empowered mafioso, struggled with the arm of Raguel, and that Raguel didn't just ignore him outright told Striker that Arackniss was even if not Raguel's equal, then at least was in the same vague region of Raguel's might.

But Cherri Bomb?

She just had bombs.

With a movement that nobody could stop, and with Angel Dust out of position to mess with, Raguel snapped his arm up and held it out, firing a thunderous shot that struck Cherri Bomb in her elbow as she was hurling something at him. The bomb tumbled to the ground next to her and detonated, staggering her aside but not harming her otherwise. Raguel tracked her, and fired again. The second bullet hit her other hand, as it materialized a massive explosive something-or-other; the impact caused that device to detonate, which knocked Angel Dust on his ass and kept Striker from rising past his knees. Now she was scrambled, still not hurt by her own explosions but clearly surprised. And now lacking any hands.

The next shot hit her in the navel, blowing off her lower body with a distinct explosive effect. Her upper body was thrown upward as well as back. She was upside-down, staring with her one large eye at the Sinner and the imp behind her, a clear bafflement in her face. A 'how could this happen?'. But at the apex of her arc, there came a fourth shot, which shattered and burst her head, and sprayed it in gory chunks at Angel Dust's feet.

"CHERRI NOOOOOO!" Angel Dust shouted, his body shuddering and his clothes starting to tear as his slender, effeminate arms suddenly gained bulk, as his narrow shoulders broadened and hardened, and as various parts across his face began to blossom with black, hate-filled eyes. He started to charge, but Raguel just dropped his pistol, clamping that hand onto Arackniss' face, and with a grunt of effort tearing him free of his sword-arm. He dismissed the sword, using his other arm to grab the grey mafioso at the crown of his head. And then, with a loud, clear snarl of anger, he began to rend. And though Arackniss was tougher than any Sinner that Striker had ever known, he was not immune to the sheer force that was being imparted on him. Arackniss' fighting stopped even before his skull popped open and split; Raguel didn't stop until his head was cloven from crown to collarbone.

In a blink, Angel Dust was on Raguel, moving so goddamned fast that even Striker's drugged-up eyes could barely track him. And though he fired until his guns went dry into every 'weak' point of Raguel's armor, though he shanked him in the neck and the groin with his knives until they snapped, Raguel did not flinch or stop. He simply spiked Arackniss into the ground, then with swings that Striker could sense were not intended to bludgeon but to ensnare, he backed Angel Dust into a spot where his dodge caught a carcass and sent him sprawling to the ground. He almost got up in time to dart clear of Raguel, in that fraction it took for Striker to grab where he'd dropped his fancy pistol and put it away, but Raguel clamped his fist around Angel Dust's ankle. Then he hoisted.

The last thing that Angel Dust had up his sleeves was a hair-spray flamethrower, which he, in his inverted state, sent up and into Raguel's face. Raguel did not flinch. He just grabbed Angel Dust by his hip, and with a fresh grunt of effort, ripped the entire leg off.

When Angel Dust fell, screaming in pain, the armor wasn't even smoking. Angel Dust tried to grab for his Thompson, to empty a burst into the Archangel, but the only sound that it emitted to a trigger pull was 'click'. Unable to dodge, he could do nothing to stop Raguel's massive stomp that rendered concave his chest cavity. His limbs started to curl, his face practically red with rage, still trying to fight even as his life ebbed. "I warned you, little spider, what your hungers would cause," Raguel said. "Sow cruelty. Reap ruin."

And then, with fist driving down like a piston, he turned Angel Dust's face into a canoe, spraying blood, bone and brain in all directions. With that, he rose, beckoning with a hand and having his massive pistol return to it. With movements that seemed slightly amateurish, but regardless well drilled, he turned it toward Striker, and fired a shot. But Striker saw that shot coming, felt the moment of inevitability that allowed him to launch himself aside of the bullet that would have popped him like a melon. And though the heart in Striker's chest was beating with all the regularity of a cinderblock banging around a clothes-dryer, he was able to dodge the next three shots as well, ending with the massive pistol locking open again.

"...One of Satan's chosen, then," Raguel said, and Striker had the sense that his eyes narrowed behind his face-mask. "It is a shame war has brought us here."

"Yeah. Shame," Striker said, gasping for breath and covered in flop sweat. Raguel's other hand flexed, and the blazing sword burned into being. Raguel was not happy to be killing Striker, but he'd do it anyway. Such was war. Of course, Striker wasn't about to just let somebody kill him, not even if that somebody happened to be a fucking Archangel. So when there came a flap of Raguel's wings, that sent him surging in a streak toward Striker, Striker was able to limbo out of the way of the first strike, dodge aside of the second, and then launch himself forward past the ones that followed it, all according to the song that Raguel was bound to follow but Striker was free to violate. When he landed, it was only two yards from where the carcasses of the spider brothers had been dropped. Their wounds weren't grey and choked with Demon Bone Ash. They were still kicking.

Why hadn't the Archangel finished them off?

Not his problem, he realized. He reached for his other Portable Hole, and he hoped like hell that this would work. He cranked the maw size to minimum, and the penetration to maximum, then hurled that sucker down right between the three of them. And when the hole landed, it let out a sucking noise, as air felt like it was being drawn in like a chimney, drafting upward and sending what cinders the fight had resulted in floating in an updraft that the hole produced. Maybe? Well, no choice but to do or die. He dove in, grabbing Angel Dust's arm with his mechanical hand, and Arackniss' foot with his tail as he went.

The Portable Hole went straight through the foundation of Cloud One. And below him – far, far, far below – he could see the surface of Pride. The momentum dragged the two Sinners with him, and they began a long plummet back to their domain. Striker turned to see Raguel appear over the hole, looking down into it, something like shock on his face. Striker released the Sinners; now that they were falling, his duty to them was done. They'd be fine. So Striker, staring Raguel in the face, reached into his back pocket, and pulled out a parachute.

He hadn't known he'd need a parachute, but always better to have one when you don't need it. And it turned out, he needed it. He got it on quickly enough, pulling the rebreather from another pocket – heaven could require aquatic infiltration, how the hell was he supposed to know? – and putting that on so he wouldn't lose consciousness during the fall.

Striker got out alive. He even dragged two idiots with him.

He could call that a win.

---

"That's the cohort spent," Octavia said, who watched as Raguel stared down a Portable Hole (how in the fuck had an imp gotten his hands on one of those, by the way?) for a moment, then flapped his wings and Transited away. She then glanced up at the map, which by hook or by crook she'd managed to get to about the point where it was updating regularly, and then to Agrippa. "Is it time?"

"With Raguel dislodged, maybe. Only if he is reported on another –" Ambrosius began, but was cut off when there was a call.

"Legio Tempestus has sighting of Raguel at Wing Beta," the call came. At that, Agrippa gave a satisfied nod.

"If he is distracted, then we are ready," he said. He turned and faced the hitherto unused teleportal at the front of the bunker. "Ignite the portal! Loft and move the machines! Gunners forward doubletime!"

With his roaring of orders, the scene through the teleportal shifted from being a murky sort-of-blue to crisply showing a rather shitty rooftop, which was lashed with sunlight and had heat sweltering through the portal and into the bunker. Per Agrippa's design and orders, they'd ordered the portal to open onto the very top of the Towers before them all. And when one of the machines was telekinetically shifted through, it landed with a thud and a crunch, then a metal crack as pilons drove down into the roof structure rooting it in place. And at that, it unfolded slightly, spreading out to reveal an artillery piece which one set of gunners quickly set about to start firing, and an anti-aircraft gun that another set of gunners manned even as it opened. It started barking fire almost immediately, targeting Cherubs that had stayed to reconnoitre the bunker, and blowing them out of the sky. The teleportal shifted. A new roof. Another gun emplacement was shoved through it. Before even waiting to see it set up, the portal shifted to another roof, and another emplacement.

As Octavia watched, new symbols began to appear on her magical map, displaying the roofs of Towers that had been locked down by her guns, new images flaring into life on the map briefly; the sites of heavenly mortars that'd had the same idea that Hell had. But Hell's industry counter-batteried them before they could react, and they were on the map for no more than a minute.

Outward, as the teleportal shifted and the guns were shifted through, more and more of Heaven was claimed, and the reserve Legions began to stream out of the sides of the bunker, making true what Heaven had presumed for a ruse. Without heavenly artillery raining down on them, they easily reached the towers. Another snap, another roof, and another gun went out onto it. And then, one last, as the gun was shoved through.

Octavia looked at the map. The guns were set down on only a percent of a percent of Cloud One, but they had long arms, and some amount magical protection from indirect fire. The amount of area they policed was vast.

"Agrippa? Have we done it?" she asked, as Ambrosius returned from his exhorting.

"Listen," Agrippa said. Though the yammering and people talking over each other continued, there was one thing which until now had been a constant companion that now the whole scene that Octavia stood in now lacked. The bass thud and shuddering of the Redoubt being hit by a terrible blow. The symbols on the map started to flare orange, then yellow, then blue, as they reported no further targets to aim at, starting from the first and radiating out the half dozen layers deep that they'd managed to get. Agrippa clapped loudly, getting the attention of a group of military runners. "Send General Order Two to all Legions, retreat and press out into the Occupied Territory. I want that place as clean on the ground as it is in the sky."

"Yes, Legatus," the one speaking for the runners said, before the whole group began to sprint through the portals that were open to the flanks of Heaven. The legion which had been prepared to move to add to the surge was redirected out of the bunker, and thus into the 'city'.

"We've occupied Heaven," she said.

"We should continue the pressure. We could have half of the Cloud by weeks end at this rate," Agrippa said. But there was an eagerness to his tone which was unusual to him, which was clear because he was speaking against his own advice – to her – about strategy that he'd given.

"No. We consolidate," she said. "You told me yourself, the worst thing an invading force can do is spread itself thin against a defense-in-depth. And Heaven is that."

Ambrosius looked like he was about to override her, but realized no doubt that to do so would be to call his own advice foolish. It was to call himself a fool for offering it. And when put between a warrior's desire for naked conquest, and a soldier's desire not to have to fight the same battle for the same stakes twice, the soldier won. "Of course, my Domina. I had momentarily forgotten myself," he said.

Octavia nodded, and looked out at the chip of Heaven that would soon be administered and exploited for the benefit of Hell. This was a plot that would not work twice; the lines would be dug in even harder for the next battle. But she was also sure that she didn't need the Redoubt to be the heart of all expansion into Heaven. Heaven was a big circle; there were almost infinite degrees of ingress.

She was sheltered from the fact of her own lack of ego that people were watching her in surprise and awe. That what one generation had eked out in desperation, the next had turned into unmitigated success. Thus born was the legend of Octavia the Ingenious, the greatest conqueror from Hell since the Paradox Kings themselves.

---

Consciousness returned to Angel Dust with a splitting headache and a pain with every breath. He couldn't move the lower two pairs of his arms, let alone his leg. He could feel his spine pulling itself slowly together, but until the cord reattached, he was paralyzed.

He was staring up at the cleft orb of Heaven's Gate. Which meant he was staring from Hell.

"Finally alive again? Took you long enough," the imp's voice cut in on Angel Dust's pain and confusion. He could just barely turn his head over to where Arackniss was sitting with his face in his hands, and Striker was perched up on a split stone. He held his hands out before him, palms toward the ground. "Will you look at that? Steady as a rock."

"Wha' happen'?" Angel Dust slurred.

"You got your face staved in, and yer bro had his head split like a log," Striker said. "That's exactly what you get when you start too early and fly off the handle. People die. People you like. Let that be the lesson you take from today."

"Cherri? Cherri – where's Cherri Bomb!" Angel Dust asked.

"Dead, and in Heaven. You saw how she went out," Striker said.

"We gotta–" Angel Dust began.

"We ain't gotta do shit," Striker cut him off. "We will do nothing, because we can do nothing. She's gone. And that's on you."

"If I could stand up I'd..." Angel Dust threatened, but Striker laughed at him. Laughed!

"Let me tell you exactly what went wrong there, Sinner. You got it in your head that haste was more important than good planning and a good team. You settled for less when you should have held out for more. And your impatience cost you that 'Cherri Bomb's' life. Your impatience, Angel Dust. Nobody else's. The Swindler Incarnate sure as shit didn't tell you to go now."

"My sister's up there alone and..." Angel Dust tried to stress the importance of this, but Arackniss just shook his head.

"Stop, Bro. Just stop. We lost. We swung too early, and we struck out," he said, resignation painting his tone as grey as his hair.

"Yer brother gets it," Striker said, practising a quickdraw with his hand, and smiling at how smoothly it came out. "I've been doing this for a while. Maybe not as long as you, Sinner that you are, but long enough to have learned a few things. I was a Gun of Satan for ten years. You know how long a typical Gun lasts? The Oath's only binding for five years and a day, and most ditch when that's out. Or they die. So most either bitch out or drop dead in five years. I did neither. And do you wanna know why I survive when most people die? Because I make sure I plan things out. I make sure I don't fly off the handle like today. And just as then, I kept to my rules: Don't let your powder get wet. Don't let your knives get dull. Don't let someone you don't trust," he flipped his gun and pointed with its grip at Angel Dust as he spoke, "stand behind you."

He stood up, and slid his gun into its holster, and stared steely-eyed at the horizon. "Know how to kill your enemy. Take what you want, and pay the price for it. And for Satan's sake," he turned that disappointed look at Angel Dust. "don't fly off the handle half cocked. Half-cocked is half-assed. And people with half an ass tend to be dead ones. You've got something broken in your mind, Angel Dust. You don't have the sane kinds of fear, the kinds that you need to be smart. But you're stubborn, and you're gonna do this again. And you know, I might even be willing to help, but on the following conditions."

Striker walked up to where Angel Dust was still cratered into the surface of Pride Ring. "Next time, we don't go until I say so. We don't go until we have people I approve of. And when we go, I don't care about whether you splinter off after yer sister, all power to you; but I am going to stand in Cloud Four, to a place no imp has ever stood before and may never again. So heal. Mourn your friend. Then get your shit together. When your shit's in a row, we'll talk, and we'll make an actual plan to save your sister. Until then... do whatever you Sinners do. I'm going to go get laid."

And then, Striker started walking toward the highway in the distance, leaving the brothers alone in the far-flung outlands of Pride, with nothing but failure tasting like ash in their mouths, regret pressing down on their shoulders, and Angel Dust actually wondering if what Sam said the last time Angel Dust saw him might have actually been true.

---

"Hell invading was the best thing to ever happen to us.

Never thought that those words would ever come out of my mouth, but there they are. It was a bit touch and go for the first couple of months, because Hell invaded without actually knowing the pile of crap that they were getting into. But it turns out that while Sinners by-and-large are assholes, there's a few of them with working hearts. It didn't hurt that a few of the invading army had family up here, right up against what used to be the wall.

So imagine if you would the circumstances we were in. Afraid and starving, drinking water that tastes at least half like sweat, when an army comes in and demand allegiance, then starts handing out bland, third rate food. I guarantee that food was the first that a lot of people have gotten since the famine began. And while it didn't instantly turn us against the Angels who we increasingly saw as our captors instead of our benefactors, it certainly started things in that direction.

As things got more intense, as Hell built up Fort Abandon and expanded its grasp on Cloud One, the polarization became ever more intense and obvious. Those who were under Hell's guard got to eat every other day. Those under Heaven's might get a meal a month. Sure, a lot of us were being conscripted to bolster their army, but by that point, a lot of us were angry enough to do it willingly. And those that refused, like the Penitent who mostly sided wholly with Heaven, had other uses. Like going down to Hell and helping Wrath make more food. Have you ever been to Wrath, miss Killjoy?

...

Don't be obtuse. A no could have sufficed, and there's no reason you can't now. My point is, hunger and boredom are mind-killers. And by the time they occupied us, that 'forced labor' was 'forced' only in name. Plus, if you go to Hell, two meals a day! Really makes me wonder why we Innocent were so afraid of damnation when we were alive."

- Megumi Takemoto, Betrayed, Magistrix for Interplanar Trade and Transit