The last month had been an utter pain in the dick.
Blitz was an imp used to setbacks in his life. Hell, he had a twelve-year long one right in the fuckin' middle of it. But to come back from a pretty ordinary job killing a bunch of military junta assholes up on some island chain on the Human World, only to find that his fucking office building was leveled didn't sit fucking well with him.
And it didn't sit well with him that he'd had to dig all of their shit out of the ruin, shit which rather surprisingly included a bunch of other tenants, including his new secretary and fuckin' Verosika Mayday. All that time and effort getting the spot the way he liked it, and now the building was rubble. That shit just wasn't fair.
"So," Blitz said, sitting in their cramped convention hall that stank of mildew and malaise, "what the fuck are we gonna do now?"
"What do you mean, Mister Miller?" Dessie asked. Despite having been buried alive for a few hours, she actually seemed the least traumatized out of everybody that Blitz had dug out. As though she'd been through that drill enough times it no longer scared her.
"I mean we can't do our fuckin' job from fuckin' rented space!" Blitz said, motioning to the tiny meeting room which barely had enough room for the employees of his admittedly tiny company. If Krieg had shown up, she would have had to sit on the table itself.
"Sir, we always ran our business from a rented space," Moxxie said, tweezing the bridge of his nose.
"That ain't what I meant and you fucking know it!" Blitz snapped, pointing a finger at him. Millie was rocking that kid of hers, and shot Blitz a look of mild reproach. Well fuck you too! I'll shout if I wanna, Blitz thought.
"Aren't there other buildings we could rent from?" Maelstrom asked from his place leaning against the door into this tiny office space; as the last one in, his lot was standing-room-only.
"You think I didn't fuckin' check that! Those douche-bag machines tore down half the fucking city!" Blitz snapped. He stabbed the stained and ill-maintained table which took up a bunch of space at the center of the room with his fingertip. "We've come way too fuckin' far and earned way too much fuckin' money to operate like a fucking… I don't even know what!"
Moxxie, though, stopped looking aggravated and got a pensive look. Blitz turned to him.
"Share with the class, Moxx," he demanded.
"I was just thinking, obviously this isn't going to work," he said, gesturing around them, and particularly at one wall in particular through which slightly muffled screaming came. With Blitz's artificial ears being as preemo as they were, he could actually pick out occasional individual insults that the pimp in the next rented office was giving to his herd of whores, "not in the long term at least. So why don't we build our own?
"Our own what?" Blitz asked.
"Building!" Moxxie said.
"Our finances aren't that good," Loona dismissed, sitting in a corner of the room, a scowl on her face, and for once not distracting herself with her phone. Possibly because this office was in a sub-basement's sub-basement and had a negative amount of bars of service. "Fuck me for having to learn this, but putting up infrastructure takes a hundred million that we don't have."
"We might not have the hundred million to put up a building like our old one, but we don't need all that money, not at once," Moxxie said, as though he just realized something, his eyes flitting around for a moment before returning to stare at Blitz.
"Why not, hon?" Millie asked.
"Because we can put in a loan," Moxxie said.
"Explain," Blitz demanded.
"I've run our finances through, and we've got nearly three million in liquid cash-flow from this time last calendar year, not even including the Birch payout, sitting in our warchest," Moxxie said. That much, huh? That was surprising to Blitz. But then, he didn't tend to aggregate anything, only looking at the most immediate of causes and problems. "Loona's equity's even better. And considering all that's after we paid down all of our old debts, Beelzebank would likely extend a line of credit for thirty times our one year liquid on a twenty year loan at 8% annual."
"Which means… what?" Blitz asked, understanding little of it.
"We could literally take out a loan to build a new building, which we'd then own, and could charge rent to all the other assholes who work there," Loona said. "Well, fuck, that's actually a good plan. And we'd be able to kick people out if they pissed us off instead of just having to live with it like before."
"How long would that take?" Blitz asked.
"To put up a commercial building in Imp City? Maybe about six months, possibly more if it gets attacked by Exorcists while it's going up," Moxxie said. Hell, it should be said, did not lack for ways to speed up the creation of infrastructure.
"So six more months of slumming it like a bunch of winos and chucklefucks," Blitz muttered. While this wasn't his worst possible case scenario, of having to start all the way back at square one with nothing, it nevertheless felt really fucking close. Moxxie, though, sighed, and shook his head.
"There's one way we can make it… easier," he said, with the expression and tone of somebody having his teeth pulled out by pliers. "Your house in Pentagram City has a lot of unused rooms that you could run this business out of."
Blitz barely noted how Millie shot Moxxie a 'you shut the fuck up' look. "Run a business out of a house? What am I a farmer?" Blitz asked.
"Would you rather run it from a pile of rubble?" Moxxie asked flatly.
"Kinda!"
"Well, you got yer boyfriend, and he's got a whole big ole' palace that he's barely using. Why don't you run it outta there instead?" Millie offered.
"Run it out of Stolas' place? Come on, there's no way he'd go for that," Blitz dismissed the notion without properly thinking about it, as was his custom.
"Said the Proxy of Lucifer," Loona said from her corner. "They'll have space, the guy's about half way between here and PC so it's a fuck of a lot shorter a trip. And the guy would pretty much hand you the moon if you asked him for it. Why not?"
Blitz hemmed and hawed, but when Loonie was right, Loonie was right. "Fuckin' fine. We'll HQ for a little while at my fuckbuddy's place. But if this starts fucking up one 'a the few good things I got going for me, I swear on all that's evil I will run this company from a pile of rubble!"
Frankly, the plan made Blitz nervous. Familiarity breeding contempt was a concept that he was intimately familiar with. Anybody who spent enough time around Blitz inevitably discovered how much of a shithead he was. And it didn't help his deluded thinking in the slightest that he had been spending an unprecedented amount of time around Stolas and the big bird was only growing fonder with time. Some truths were hard to stomach.
"Alright, with that outta the way. On to bullet point two," Blitz said, quickly scrawling on the board, 'Angel Bounties'. Moxxie groaned, but Blitz tutted at him. "Don't gimme that shit. I literally got a paycheck in the mail for the shit you two pulled killin' Exorcists that wouldn't leave the Capitol," he said, pointing at Moxxie and Millie. It was a thing of legend-making that a pair of mere fucking imps had managed to do what previously only a pair of the Ars Goetia could manage, and 2v1 an Exorcist. And then they did it another six times, without ever having to leave their neighborhood, or stop for a break. People were already talking about the two of them as having some sorta bullshit 'Golden Bloodline' thing going on, that imps could do such crazy shit.
Well fuck you all you rumormongers; Blitz, Loona and Maelstrom tin-canned eight of those mechanical fucks in Imp City in less time when he'd bopped back from the original job. It wasn't even as hard as the one that they killed back in 2022. These ones fought dumb, were fragile, often got in each others' ways, and had less survival-instinct than that Chaz motherfucker. Still, Blitz didn't hear people making up some sort of messianic bullshit about him, compared to the Roughs. Of course, that was because he honestly didn't understand that when people were talking about 'the Legendary Bloodline', they were talking about him and his.
And when it turned out that Lucifer was offering bounties on every Exorcist that was killed, because apparently they were a finite resource that Heaven could run out of, IMP fucking jumped on that shit. And because of that, even losing a fucking building, they were still flush with cash.
"It's just that it's so much more risky than our usual jobs," Moxxie said, not showing his namesake in his words. "Humans are easy to kill, and former humans nearly as much; Angels aren't like that!"
"Says the guy who killed their purpose built killing machine. I don't wanna hear that whiny baby shit," Blitz said. "I got called in by the Big Hoss for some aristocratic bullshit," which was boring and dull and why he was in a bad mood today, "and he mentioned that he's offering two million per scalp. And while I can kill Exorcists, frankly I don't wanna, that shit is boring and long, and exhausting. Angels are way easier."
"Boss," Millie said, gently rocking her kid. "If we start doin' that, they're gonna come after us. Like, on purpose, not just 'cause we're around."
"Mills, you're a sweetheart, but you're not FUCKING PAYING ATTENTION!" Blitz shouted, slamming the back of his hand against the whiteboard which already had FUCK HEAVEN permanently stained onto its surface by somebody using the wrong kind of marker years and years ago. "Those shits are already hitting our homes! What the fuck more can they do than they've already done? Nothing, that's fuckin' what! So let's start takin' scalps and making money!"
"Look, tubby, how about we come up with a compromise," Loona said from her corner. "Specific targets only, in and out like we're doing jobs in the Human World. No fucking around, no 'slaughter bids'. Just nice surgical strikes."
"We both know that's now how our business turns out," Moxxie said. "And why do you keep calling me that?"
"I'm for it," Maelstrom said, which was to the shock of everybody present. He just looked at Blitz with a tired look in his perpetually worried eyes. "I've got enough shit to be scared of already. At this point I just want them to be so afraid of dropping within ten blocks of me that they'll never consider it an option."
"Offense as defense," Loona said with a nod. "I like it."
"That work for you, Moxx? Scare them outta retaliation by killing them when they sleep, eat and shit?" Blitz asked.
"That could work if we had access to Clouds 4, 5, or 6, which we don't. But keeping it contained… I can live with that," Moxxie said.
"Fantastic! I bring that up 'cause there's a human down here who wants to hire us," Blitz said.
"What?" Loona asked. "Why would a Sinner have beef with Angels?"
"Ah, but I'm not a Sinner. Would you say it's time to introduce myself?" a voice came from behind Maelstrom, who flinched and almost punched the newcomer. The human looked like he was still alive, except for that incomplete halo over his head. "Greetings. My name is Jun-Ho. And I have a few particularly unpleasant Angels I think Creation would be better off without."
"And how are you going to pay for it?" Blitz demanded. Humans didn't have much that Hell wanted, after all.
"Is money not acceptable?" Jun-Ho reached into a pocket of his shabby, tar-slathered clothes and pulled out a wad of Souls.
"I'm listening," Blitz said, not even wondering how a human had that much scratch.
Chapter 39
Grab A Shovel
"Alright, now close your left," the doctor said, his voice wet and crunchy like somebody gargling sticky gravel. When Striker closed his left eye, for the first time in near enough a year, he could still see. He slowly blinked, which felt really weird, considering a year of atrophy had made his right eyelid weak, but he felt his perspective darken for a flash and then return. The spherical device now implanted in his eyesocket wasn't an eye, per se, but something which functioned like one. It was clipped directly to his optic nerve, so even with his remaining biological eye closed, he could still 'see'.
He just saw in terms of heat, ambient magic, and other less tangible things, instead of color. When he opened his other eye, he beheld the burlap-sack-headed doctor man who was performing the surgery. "It's fucking weird," Striker said.
"If you had paid for a standard cybernetic, maybe it wouldn't be," the doctor crunched. Striker waved the thought away. Getting a standard replacement would have been an option, of course. But Striker had big things in his sight. And he wasn't going to settle for garbage when he could be something extraordinary. The malformed doctor nevertheless held up three injectors, still wrapped in plastic sleeves. "Take one of these twenty four hours from now, another seventy two hours from now, and the last one seventy two hours after that. If you experience any itchiness behind the implant, come back immediately so you don't suffer a brain-bleed."
"Alright, alright, I'll be fine," Striker said, grabbing the injectors and tucking them into a pocket. "Talk to my boss, he'll get you paid."
"Already dealt with," the doctor rasped. "Otherwise I'd never have done it."
Well, with that dealt with, and a distinct lack of post anesthetic wooziness (because he just had the doc inject that shit they use when drilling teeth instead of the harder stuff), Striker got up and moseyed on out. He didn't feel whole, exactly. He doubted that there was ever going to be another time when he felt like the big-dick champion he had been before getting roped in on Nathan Fucking Birch's particular strand of bullshit. But perhaps that was for the best. Early last year, Striker pretty clearly fancied himself immortal and unkillable. And all it had taken to shake him of that was to get his shit pushed in by something that could meaningfully throw hands at God.
He was reinventing himself. Sure, he was still the fine specimen, hard as boot-leather and hotter than the sun, the dashing glance and danger in the package you don't see coming. But he was also a bit older and a bit wiser; having your eye gouged out was a very effective lesson on one's limitations. It was part of the reason why he hadn't gone for a more ordinary toyborg eye. Scars were important to imps. They told a story in what you were too tough to die from, but too dumb to get out of the way of. The strange feed of muted, strange colors, the blurriness of moving beings compared to the shocking crispness of inanimate objects – be they still or moving themselves – and the odd feeling he got when his eyelid slid over it were a scar for him. A scar he'd better fucking learn from.
It'd been a little while since the Swindler Incarnate asked for his input on Angel Dust's redemption mission up to Heaven. That didn't mean that Husk was abandoning it. It just meant that they'd hit a snag somewhere, and until it was resolved, there was no point in involving Striker in that Pride-Ring tomfoolery.
It left him time to get back into his own personal groove.
Like hunting Angels.
The last month had been something of a second baptism by lead, fire, and steel. Whereas Husk asked nothing of Striker, Satan had not been so laissez-faire. The words of Satan's summons still echoed in Striker's mind when he tried to sleep, the tone like an artillery barrage reaching out not just to him, but to all of Satan's adoptive Sons and Daughters, and to every single one of the Guns who were sworn to Satan's cause, defense, and offense. 'If you would hold faith with Satan now or ever, rise and take arms, for the lands of Wrath need be watered with golden blood!' was Satan's demand. And while Striker was not a person who appreciated being pushed around by people who sat on thrones, Satan had not been anything like those space-wasters that he held such contempt for.
Satan had been at the front, stripped down to his battle-kilt that he had not worn since Lucifer landed in Hell, for there was no armor more effective than Satan's own skin and the powers he wielded. The only thing breaking his otherwise unmarred physique were the beyond-ancient scars on his back where he'd had to amputate his injury-crippled wings, from back when he was still but a ranch worker in the truly ancient past of Hell.
It had been a glorious fucking butcher-shop of a fight. Guns of Satan that Striker had met on the day he took his oaths and placed his hands on the Altar of Worms and then never spoken to again were at war at his side, and while in Striker's opinion they were poorer fighters than he was, they weren't embarrassingly so, able to keep up and assist him even if they couldn't outstrip him.
Angel Blood tasted remarkably bitter, he'd learned.
The town of Cutler was a nowhere backwater somewhere not quite directly between Imp City and Pentagram, thus was well off the useful trail for anybody of note. And it had been done badly by the recent nastiness that came to Pride Ring, a swarm of Exorcists sweeping through and tearing down two thirds of the town as they streamed toward the highway. There were a lot of places like this, he considered, as he whistled high and the Hell Horse which had been gnawing on a Sinner stupid enough to not know Bombproof didn't need Striker's help to find food turned toward him, strips of gore hanging from its sharp teeth. The horse gave a harrumph and slowly ambled toward Striker through the ruins of Cutler, shaking his head so that the strips could be caught by his equine lips and pulled in for consumption.
This fate had befallen a lot of places in Pride Ring during the Battle of the Harrying. Not just here in Pride, too. While a lot of towns got snuffed out by the Exorcists just running buck-wild in numbers that Heaven had never dared to release them before, towns like Killagrass and Black Tooth and Snaggel, the Angels that landed in Greed had been much more methodical in their butchery. If it had a factory, congratulations, that city was getting turned into glass. While Striker didn't really attach much sympathy to large numbers of unfamiliar dead people, it did irk him a bit that even with all of the murdering he'd done, Gabriel's Host managed to end the lives of millions of Hellspawn in less than a goddamned week.
And then the real dick move of Heaven: when the Angels pushed as far as they could get, to within about two thousand klicks of Satan's palace, they just fucking left, vanishing into thin air. And leaving behind a bunch of cherubs and Innocent like they were cannon fodder. Striker found it fucking hilarious that Heaven, for all its high-minded speech and claims to be 'better', would do something straight out of Hell's playbook.
"I presume the device works well?" Cain said, bringing his own Hell Horse up to where Striker was even now mounting Bombproof.
"What are you doing here, Cain?" Striker asked.
"Clearing my head," Cain said. The truly ancient Sinner leaned in a bit closer, scrutinizing Striker's newest acquisition. "Ah. Those had fallen out of favor in the more modern era. It's pleasing to me to see a piece of old craftsmanship in use."
"It's a lesson," Striker said.
"Against arrogance and folly," Cain seemed to grasp it innately. "Then I can only approve. And from the fact that you're upright, it stands to reason you weren't too badly done by the battles after Gabriel's tantrum ended."
"I had the time of my life," he said, only half joking. To stand in the mud and golden blood of a dying angel who you killed with your own two hands, as a 'mere fucking imp', as a son of a whore, as a 'person of no importance'? It fucking felt good. And he hadn't merely stood there once. He recalled a moment where the soldiers of Satan were causing a wash of gunfire to check the advance of the Angels, to keep their attention pinned on the hastily-dug position that Satan's local Daughter had demanded. How easy it was for he and another imp, and a pair of those two-body Consumers to slip right up next to them. How satisfying it was to crawl past their attention, aim their guns, and fire where the Angel's armor couldn't protect them.
It was the kind of killing that he felt good about. Not necessarily being stronger than the other guy, but being smarter, faster, and more ruthless.
It gave him aspirations.
He had big aspirations.
"So what's yer business up top?" Striker asked.
"Oh? After all this time you finally care about the motivations of someone not named 'Striker'?" Cain asked with a cheeky grin.
"I ain't blind, and I ain't stupid. You've been hoverin' around the whore's conversations like a fly-on-shit," Striker said, as he nudged Bombproof onto a road that led out of Cutler and back to the real civilization of this layer of Hell.
"I suppose you're not, on either case," Cain said with a shrug. He puffed out a sigh. "Well. I suppose it's a paltry thing, compared to your great ambitions. I myself am going to apologize."
"What's a ten thousand years dead Sinner got to apologize for? If not, well, everything?" Striker asked with a laugh.
"I slew my brother," Cain said. "In a childish fit of foolishness, I struck my brother with a stone and killed him. And I have had a very, very long time to come to terms with the fact that I have begged the forgiveness of my father Adam, my mother Eve, and my sisters, and even from God, but never from Abel himself. And if I must risk destruction after so long a time, I would as well best do it to his face. Even if he says me no, I will at least be able to rise a whole man for the first time since my folly and say to myself that I tried to my utmost. I would not forgive myself if I did any less than that, at this point." Striker found himself nodding along with Cain's reasoning. In the end, even when you danced to the tune of another, it was to yourself that you had to reconcile the steps you took.
"Fair enough. At least your business is less nebulous than 'I got some shit to wrap up on Cloud Four,' Striker said.
"Jun-Ho. Such a fascinating man," Cain said. "I never expected one such as him would pass Judgement, but there he is."
"And he'll be a good Point Man," Striker admitted.
"I don't suppose you know a more reliable sorceror than the one you went up with last time?" Cain asked.
"I was kinda hoping that you'd fill that niche, honestly," Striker said.
"I fear my attentions will be too distracted on the day to be what you need from me," Cain admitted, which was a hell of a thing to hear. Usually people talked themselves up well beyond their actual capabilities. It was a sign of utmost competence to be able to talk oneself down. "I'm not made of stone. And I've never before stepped into Heaven. I may aid, but I cannot be your primary mage."
"Then I guess we just wait until somebody worthwhile shows up," Striker said. He gave his head a shake. "It's a fucking pity that the Croneslayer's put up a comprehensive 'Fuck No' to any sort of action in Heaven. I think she'd be perfect."
"Ah yes, Krieg Miller. We'll have to scour Hell top to bottom to find somebody a third so ideal," Cain said. He gave a shrug, and his horse nickered as he did. "Another pity is that the Bard is beyond our reach."
"I'm here for wizards, not myths," Striker pointed out in annoyance.
"Oh, the Bard is far from a myth. I've met him. How he got that contract of mine I still don't know, but he was… formidable, for what he was," Cain said.
Striker turned a look at the First of the Damned, and was pretty sure that the ex-human wasn't just being glib and stupid. "Well I'll be fucked. The Bard actually exists."
How many 'legends' were there who were imps now? Striker ran a number of them in his head. The young Krieg was an obvious one, a wunderkind who had such potential obvious even to the blind and such clear drive to achieve it that it was clear that she would surmount and better those impish witches that spent all their times in the swamp by head, shoulders, chest, and hips. The Bard was, well, the Bard. The soft Thespian Wrathling and his spectacularly violent bride were quickly developing into mythology as well, now that they were confirmed to match the might of an Ars Goetia. And of course there was 'Blitzie'.
Maybe Striker had been born at exactly the right time to see a moment of inflection in the state of the Impish Race. Born to live, to strive, to excel in a time when his black-blooded kin were shaking off millions of years of dirt-grubbing and patheticness, and become something spectacular.
And come God or high-water, Striker was going to be remembered as a paragon of his kind, one way or another.
"The plan continues to compile," Cain said after a period of cantering. "But I worry that things might shake loose."
"You think one of the players ain't gonna hold up?" Striker asked.
"I do. But I won't speak more on it because I only have suspicions," Cain said.
"So… bitching out, or outright betraying us?" Striker tried to clarify.
"Again, suspicions," Cain said. He turned a look toward the horizon that held Pentagram City, then back to Striker. "If can offer you anything, it is this; moderate what you tell to Arackniss, Jun-Ho, and Rozarin. Angel Dust at least is dead-set. But the others? I need to know whom I can trust in this."
"Humans," Striker said with a shake of his head.
"I know. We're a most infuriating breed," Cain said with a chuckle. How right he was.
While ruin had come to Krieg's business and saw much of the advancement in terms of instrumentation returned to square one, she was by far smarter and wiser (not to mention wealthier) than she had been when she was running her first business out of a closet. So transitioning from an office to no office building to an ad-hoc office was an obvious step. And though Tilla wasn't happy to have her daughter move out under such conspicuous and destructive circumstances, she likely had a lot of thanks to give to the universe in general for the swarm of Exorcists that rampaged through Imp City missing the apartments where the whole Miller brood lived by about three blocks. And it wasn't like Krieg was relocating to the far end of Sloth.
No, Krieg had, by liquidating her 'starter car', moved her domicile and her place of business, together, into a 'Recreational Vehicle' that she'd bought with her now considerable monies, and ran her alchemy workshops out of a trailer that it could drag behind it.
"Behold, comfort incarnate!" Krieg said, as she flopped out onto the human-scale bed at the back of the vehicle; it could have held four imps chastely, and nine if they were involved in a polycule. Uller just chuckled from his place at the 'bedroom door' as Krieg and two of her younger siblings crawled over the bed. "All shall bow down to my cushiness and despair, for tomorrow dawns and we have to fucking work!"
"Language, Krieg!" Victoria said with a light swat at her elder sister.
"Oh please. Mother isn't here. We can say what we want," Krieg said with a laugh.
"You're not gonna move far, are you?" August asked, poking up from the pile of duvets that Kreig hadn't bothered spreading on the bed as yet.
"Farthest thing from it. I'm going to be parked over there," she pointed toward a lot nearby that had an electrical outlet nobody was paying close enough attention to, "until somebody finds me out and makes me move. So I could be here for years."
"So much has happened, so fast," Victoria said, sitting at the edge of the bed and kicking her feet. "All this makes me wonder if when I was little, all that was just a dream that I'm finally awake from."
"A nightmare, surely," Krieg said. Victoria gave an ambivalent gesture. That got Krieg's brow to draw down. "I assure you, sister-mine, it was a nightmare, and I would have spent ten thousand times what I had and what I did to get you out of it before your body betrays you."
"I know, and that's why I love my big sis," Victoria scooted over and gave Krieg a big hug, then released her and kept sitting there on the edge of the bed. "But as bad as it was for you… I had friends, Krieg. Friends who are still stuck there. An' I think one day Imma have to go get them out."
"Are you following after my own footsteps so closely? I don't know whether to be flattered or alarmed," Krieg said.
"Flattered," Uller offered.
"And what about you, standing there at the edge of things like a lump. Aren't you going to test the bed?" Krieg asked.
"I'm not going to be sleeping on it. I don't want to ignite an envy that I won't be able to fulfill," Uller said.
"So chaste, this one," Krieg teased. Uller rolled his eyes.
"A lot's changed," August said, emerging from his wool cocoon. "Momma used to be so sad all the time."
"Now she's only sad a lot of the time," Victoria said, giving a thumbs up.
"She was happy a lot of the time for a while," August said, his brow furrowed as he tried to set his pre-pubescent imp-brain to trying to sort through it, but he obviously lacked the pieces to that puzzle, so Krieg did him the favor of solving it for him.
"Momma wishes that she had your 'dad' all to herself," Krieg said.
"Why?" Victoria asked.
"Because I think Mother might be a…" Krieg glanced around, then leaned in close, stage-whispering to her little sister, "monogamist."
"Ew, language!" Victoria pleaded, making a warding gesture.
"Monogamy isn't a bad word. It's what Moxxie and Millie do," Uller pointed out.
"Yeah, well, they're weird," August said.
"They're Wrathlings. They can afford to pair off for life down there," Uller offered.
"So weird," Vic agreed.
"It's gonna be lonely, without you 'round," August said, squirming over to Krieg and glomping onto her arm.
"I'm literally an elevator ride and a walk across the street away. Don't take a page from Uncle Blitz's tome and require all of your loved ones around you at all times to be content!" Krieg demanded.
"N'uh uh. You can stay right here," August said. Krieg just rolled her eyes at the stubbornness of her half sibling.
"At least things changing isn't always for the bad anymore," Vic said.
"Yeah. Lust was bad," August agreed.
"You'll find no disagreement in this house-car on that front," Krieg said.
"Yeah. I think space and distance from those people," Uller installed that phrase with an entirely appropriate amount of venom, "is letting us become better versions of ourselves."
"An Arch-Crone instead of a breeder," Krieg said with a prideful grin. She toussled Vicky's very curly dark hair, "educated instead of stupid," and then pinched August's cheek, "and powerful instead of weak. Even you've changed in the time I've known you, Uller."
"I hope so, at this point," Uller said.
"I miss his accent," Vicky said.
"Oh yes, that was amusing," Krieg agreed.
"What accent?" Uller asked.
"It just kinda faded away. Like yours is doin'," August pointed out.
"Says the boy who refused to adopt the Cruac accent in the first place, settling for the swamp-garden patois," Krieg teased.
"Swamp-garden at least en't uppity!" August pointed out.
"What accent? I don't have any accent," Uller said.
"Oh you absolutely do. Or did. Now it's almost gone," Krieg cut him off.
"I think I'd know if I had an accent. You have an accent. Your mother has some of it, too. I just talk normally," he said in utter denial of truth.
"Really? So why do you add a 'y' sound to words that start with a schwa?" Krieg asked.
"...what?" Uller asked.
"Words that start with an 'uh' sound," Vicky said. Krieg gave a laugh at that.
"'Oh no, she's seen my yunderwear'!" she said.
"I do not sound like that," Uller said.
"'Why do they put everything yup so high'?" Vicky added.
"Stop it," Uller ordered.
"Face it, it's still there. The fact that you pronounce your name like that is proof of it," Krieg pointed out.
"That's just how Uller is pronounced!" Uller snapped.
"There's no 'y' at the beginning of it! I've seen how you sign your name on paperwork!" Krieg teased once more.
"You all suck," Uller grunted, his shoulders slumped in defeat.
"It's endearing. And considering it calls to mind no nightmares of misery, boredom and control, I prefer the sound of it even to my own," Krieg finally finished, allowing him at least a glint of light at the end of the tunnel.
"That's why swamp-garden is superior!" August raised his hands in victory.
"Fine. I will admit your affected accent is at least better than the one I'm trying to kill," Krieg said. August decided to do a boogie on the bed in victory. "And don't dance on my bed. You'll wear out my mattress before I even have a chance to sleep on it!"
"Stop me!" August said. Krieg just sighed, then grabbed him by the collar, hoisting him off of the bed and plunking him ungently to the floor. "You suck!"
"Yes, I do indeed suck, just as Uller claimed. Now, if that clock is at all correct, I'm going to have to tell you to run back to Mother; I'm going to open my business soon and it does my reputation few enough favors as it is to run as it does from this thing. Having you two running around making fools of yourself would scupper me for a decade."
"Fiiiiine," Vicky said. "But we're coming back after supper!"
"By then my business will be closed, and you're welcome to," Krieg said. Then she got to her feet, and began to shoo her younger siblings out. When it was done, Uller was already pushing the kitchen-stuff away so that the 'main room' of the vehicle at least looked like an office space. Krieg gave one more look at her siblings, making sure they crossed the street to the safety of their building's doors before putting them out of mind and turning back to the Envyling that shared the room with her.
"It's going to be fine," Uller said without prompting.
"Why would I think for a moment that it wouldn't be?" Krieg asked. "Of the many things that I lost when that building fell into its own foundations, my resolve was not one of them. And for all I grouse on my reputation, it has already increased the quality of my clientele that I can with a bit of extra effort replace all that was lost easily enough."
"I wasn't referring to the old office," Uller said, finally sliding a panel in front of where the stove was now hidden, and moving to sit in one of the chairs that were locked to the floor by powerful magnets, intended for clients. "This is a big step. You've shared a roof with your mother for your entire life. And it's going to be fine, now that you're not."
"Don't play the psychiatrist with me, Uller," Krieg said. "Our ages combined are barely enough years to earn such accolades."
"Yeah, well, we both had to grow up fast," Uller said. He puffed out a breath, looking around the office space, and to the cubby up near its roof that he had publicly claimed for his own personal bedroom; it was by far the inferior sleeping space, but given how things were he was unlikely to ever actually use it. "Do you still have nightmares?"
"Nightmares? Nightmares about what?" Krieg demanded.
"About what Cruac did to us?" Uller asked.
Krieg stared at him. She blinked a few times, processing what he said, the haunted look in his eyes as he asked it. She plopped herself down in the chair opposite him, thinking of the best way to answer it. And in the end, honest seemed the obvious winner. "Occasionally. Usually only as part of another nightmare, a trigger that tries to evoke pain and a sense of helplessness. But considering how seldom I recall my dreams in general and nightmares in particular, I think it safe to presume that I think less about my own rape than most other victims of my age do. Perhaps there is a luxury in my ambitions; I have built an entire life – a burgeoning empire, in fact – on the corpse of the girl who Ruut tied face down to a bench for it was feared she would bite. There is nothing of that old powerlessness left to strangle and mire me."
"You're so different from who you were when it happened that it doesn't feel like it happened to you anymore," Uller summarized.
"I'm presuming from your tone you lack that luxury?" Krieg asked, allowing her usual, arrogant tones to dim.
"It's the laughter that sneaks in. That shrill, cruel laughter," Uller said, his face twisting in remembered pain. "That I could do nothing. That they held me down and branded me like cattle, did things…"
"How did you get away from them?" Krieg asked. Uller sighed, and shook his head. He wasn't nearly as open with the assaults he'd suffered at the hands of the Cruac Families as Krieg could afford to be. As he'd pointed out, those cruelties had happened to Morgan Nuckelavee. And Krieg Miller had surpassed Morgan in every dimension.
Uller, though… He was still Uller.
"If you would like, I can go and help you kill them," Krieg offered. Uller gave a laugh, one that seemed to surprise even him.
"Unnecessary. Moxxie and Millie took care of that," Uller said.
"Wait… you never told me this was done by Nuckelavee," she said.
"I sought you out because you were the Nuckelavee-who-ran," Uller said. He sat back. "I got away from them because I was more willing to lose my blood than she was," he touched at the broad white strip of scar tissue running up at a slight angle across his forehead to the pale hair he kept as barely more than stubble. "If you're willing to head-butt a machete, you can get out of a lot of things."
"In a way, you have me beat on that regard," Krieg admitted. "You had to fight for your own freedom, and make your stumbling, desperate way, alone, bleeding and unaided, all the way to a Ring which legend said would kill you simply for being there. I simply happened to bump into my uncle at an opportune time, and my entire family was freed because of it. Your story of freedom is a much stronger one than mine is."
"I'm not here to compare misery dicks," Uller said with a shake of his head, puffing out a breath. "Imps in general tend to be hung from here to Sloth. No use quibbling over millimeters."
"Well put," Krieg said. "One day, the laughter won't bother you as much."
"Experience tells you that?" Uller asked.
"The further you go from being the person they laughed at, the less it will sting when your mind picks it up from the noise of Hell. Why not take a new name? You've certainly done enough to earn it," Krieg asked.
"Because one day I'm going to do for my Da what you did for your Mom. And he will look at me and know that it was a Cruikshank that got pulled him out of that hovel and gave him time to rest, to heal, and frankly to raise the rest of my half-siblings."
"You don't talk about them much," Krieg noted.
"My brothers… they're very different people than I am," Uller said. He gave his head a shake. "I never felt like I could actually talk to them, you know?"
"I'm fortunate in that I don't," Krieg said. Uller just nodded. "Still. While evicting my siblings was a good use of the 'opening' excuse, we should probably actually put things in order and actually open before they look out a window and see that we were lying, and then tell Mother that we just kicked them out so we could hump in my new trailer."
"Can't have them believing that," Uller said, with a laugh that finally evicted the melancholy that memory layered onto his spirit. He got up and pulled the desk out into the spot between where they'd been sitting, so now there was a client-facing space for somebody to sit at.
"Exactly. The humping is for after business hours," Krieg said with a grin. "Do you really think I bought this thing just to that I could continue running business while a building is erected?"
"It'll be easier than having to sneak around," Uller said, opening a lap-top onto the desk and turning it to face her. "Your mother has ears like a bat."
"Eh, even if she did find out, she'd probably approve of you," Krieg said. At some point in the last month or so, it just became more work not to be in a relationship with Uller. And considering he was already building himself to be what was, in her eyes, very nearly the ideal impish paramour, she saw no reason to take a difficult path when an easy one was just as fulfilling. "As long as you don't impregnate me and leave."
"I think neither of us is dumb enough to make that mistake," Uller said. "There's enough teenaged parents in both our bloodlines that we can at least wait a couple years before even thinking about spawn."
"Exactly. This is what I like about you. You're so beautifully pragmatic," Krieg said with a warm grin.
"Beats the hell out of digging turnips my entire life," he said blithely, and finally flicked the switch that turned on the 'Open' sign mounted to the side of the RV next to the sign for 'Blitz-Krieg Magical Solutions Temporay Office' that was painted on the side of the van (spelling error included, because neither of them was good with a paint-brush). It was only a half hour before a client showed up, and from there, word of mouth spoke of her new location well enough that she didn't have to spend a rusted dime to advertise it.
"There was another attempt to scale your fences," the door-guard of the compound next to Moxxie's said as he sauntered past.
"Again?" Moxxie asked. Time was, the footmen of the complexes and manses that Moxxie was in the middle of did their absolute best to utterly ignore the slowly but steadily increasing number of imps that were congregating under the roof of the Proxy of Lucifer. But when Gabriel let slip the tide of Exorcists, and many of them came down right in these neighborhoods, the people living here were forced to reckon with who exactly was living in that building that now stood proud where once it hunched as a sickened beast suffering from a rot in its heart.
"One of them didn't care about the electricity; he slipped and impaled himself on the spikes. When he crawled away to die, I called the Meat Wagon to dispose of him," the fiend said. Moxxie wasn't even sure what kind of fiend he was, which was odd, because the things Moxxie didn't know were quickly dwindling. Though he had no hair on his skull and his eyes were black against black, he was neither corpulent nor grotesque, and his mouth was far smaller in proportion to the hatchet of a nose above it, and the black bristles which weren't exactly hair forming something of a mustache under that nose. The ethers from him spoke of Gluttony, but this guy was not a Devourer, and he certainly wasn't a Drone.
Of course, now that he had a chance to think about it and to spin up his brain, he actually put some effort into understanding. So when he looked at the body plan, it was clearly derived from a Devourer, but as though one of them had shifted its priorities away from corpulent arrogance and near-Sinner levels of unkillability, and toward something more gracile, graceful, and self-contained.
Moxxie needed only three seconds of thought to realize that Beelzebub was quietly genociding the primary residents of her own Ring, and was just as quietly introducing these beings to replace them. And Moxxie could find no failure of logic in her doing so; at this point, the entire species of Devourer Demon was an utter waste of Hell's food, time, and law-enforcement effort.
Well, it didn't cause Moxxie any grief to stand back and let a Deadly Sin play a dangerous game that he had no stakes in, so he saw fit to just let her. "I trust that was the worst of it?"
"Oh, yes. Most simply get a shock and limp away," the Fiend-Of-New-Clade said with a nod. "If I may offer an opinion?"
"Why not?" Moxxie asked. This guy at least was civil, failing all else.
"Reduce the voltage. It will still dissuade all but the most stupid, and I won't be forced to endure the wafting stink of burning hair," the footman said.
"I'll bear it in mind," Moxxie said, and moved further toward his own building, continuing to rock his precious cargo in his arms as he did. The autumn breeze finally did the trick of putting Bea down to sleep, and now he had to get her into her crib before she decided to ruin all the walking around he'd done by crying until her voice gave out. It was fortunate that Moxxie was a Willworker, now. Any time this poor thing got colic, he could simply fix it. And she got colic often.
Rain began to patter down as he passed the gate and walked up the driveway to the manse, a thunderstorm rumbling in the distance. Based on the wind, the thunder would miss Low Central, but the rain wouldn't. He still made it to the 'porch' before the rain decided to fall in any great amount. He stopped, with his back to the front door, and looked at the rain as it began to dull the lights of Pentagram City's night, and as stars began to shine.
Stars being visible in Pentagram City was new.
Until last month, the light-pollution drowned them out effortlessly.
But then again, last month there had been a lot more of Pentagram City that was still standing.
As the rain began to pick up, and turn the dull gray sparks into dull grey sheets, he opened his door and stepped inside. And he didn't take long to spot his mother, pacing to and fro in the hallway. She started as she finished a circuit and found herself now facing him, and even opened her mouth to speak, but then halted, staring at her granddaughter. Moxxie knew that she was in agreement with him; the babe is put away first.
She followed him as he went up to the nursery, setting the still slumbering loaf that was Beatrice Rough into her crib and slid a blanket atop her so that no chill would find her. Without saying a word, he turned on the baby-monitor and left the nursary behind, quickly descending the stairs once more.
Once he reached the bottom, then and only then did he speak.
"What's happened?" he asked.
"I'm leaving," Saffron said. Moxxie stared at his mother for a while.
"I'm sorry… what? Where? Where are you going?"
"I'm going to Wrath," Saffron said, and joined him in sitting at the 'dinner table' that Moxxie and Millie used. "I know I don't fit here. In Pride, around you. Nothing makes sense, and I need to go to a place where it does."
"But why now?" Moxxie asked.
Saffron was silent for a moment. Then she moved to the TV room and stared out at the falling rain, and in particular to a section of the wall that, upon noticing it, Moxxie realized he hadn't fixed from that big fight. It was bowed in slightly from something heavy slamming into it at high speed, its mortar crushed to dust and its bricks hanging loosely in their places. "I saw who you are," Saffron said. "And it's although it's as far from Crimson as I can imagine, I still don't understand it. Imps are to have dignity in the face of ruin. Not be a living source of ruin."
"They attacked my home. Where my daughter was sleeping," Moxxie pointed out, an edge coming to his voice.
"I know, Moxxie. I know," Saffron said. "You did what any Son of Wrath would do. You just did it better than any Son of Wrath could. How you could be so perfect in the eyes of Satan and still deny Satan his divinity… I can't reconcile it."
"So you're leaving because I won't say that I worship Satan," Moxxie cut it to the heart.
"I'm leaving because what I believed to be real may not be," Saffron said. "I was taught that the only way to Love Satan and Stand Well was to do so under the caring gaze of Satan, to heed his commandments and ponder his parables. But you manage to live in Good Standing while believing in nothing. I just can't understand."
"I don't believe in nothing," Moxxie said. "I believe in Millie. I believe in Beatrice. And lacking anything else, I believe in myself."
"And if I hadn't seen what I saw of you, I would have thought that statement would be the height of arrogance. But I did see it. And now I need to go to Wrath and begin again."
"Begin what?" Moxxie asked.
"Learning what a Satanist even is," Saffron said, leaning forward until her horns clicked against the window pane. "Maybe I'll find some way to understand how it is you are who and what you are. Or maybe I'll just Take the Red. But Pride has no place in it for me."
"So you're just going to disappear from my life. Again!" Moxxie said. Saffron turned to him with a warning look, one that he understood because he risked waking Beatrice with outbursts like that.
"No. Not disappear. After all, I've got a granddaughter to make sure is growing up properly," Saffron said. She nodded, as though in pained admission. "I don't know how good of a mother I've been to you. But I know that I can be a better grandmother than that."
"You were everything I needed," Moxxie said, quietly. "When I needed it most. Until you weren't there. Until it was just Crimson."
Saffron offered a small laugh. "Then I'll just have to not do that last part to be better for Bea than I was for you," she said.
"When are you leaving?" Moxxie asked.
"I was going to leave tonight," Saffron said, turning to look at the rain which now came down in buckets. "But I have no desire to walk through that with three luggage-cases to a bus-stop a mile away from here."
"Have you told Millie?" Moxxie asked.
"Why would I? She's good Wrathling stock. She'll endure well enough without me," Saffron said.
"Yeah, but it's still common courtesy," Moxxie said. Saffron turned a look at him, then sighed and nodded. "You're not leaving without letting her know, too."
"For what it's worth, I couldn't have picked a better bride for you; Mildred is all that makes Wrath great, distilled into one woman," Saffron said, with a distant smile on her face.
"Yeah. I know," Moxxie said happily.
"And I swear, I'll be there as Beatrice grows up. She deserves no end of spoiling and presents," Saffron said.
"You're definitely falling into the 'grandmother' role easily enough," Moxxie chuckled. He gestured toward the sofa. "So spend one last night here. Let's watch some TV and make fun of what people call 'serious programming'."
"I think I'd like that," Saffron said.
Though it was far from the last time that Moxxie saw his mother – she did make good on being always in the background and encroaching from the woodwork every time Beatrice had a milestone of some description – it felt like that night was closing a chapter on her that would never be revisited. He knew in his heart of hearts that Saffron would not be happy here, and that her ideology had been baked straight onto her bones to such an extent that there was no going beneath it. Much the same way that Millie was a killer, Saffron was a Satanist. And if she needed to reconnect with her roots, then however long it took would be time enough.
It didn't matter to Moxxie. For all it didn't turn out the way he had hoped, he had still undone the great cruelty of his childhood, and rendered one of the last tethers of Crimson's control over him utterly impotent. When Millie got back from the job she was on, they'd have one last night together, and then Hell would continue to turn on as it always did. Time stops for no imp. No matter how hard you try to shove the clock-hands backward, they'd always start ticking forward again.
Gabriel was the last one into the room, but that was to be expected. He had no respect for the schedules of others. Frankly, Michael was beginning to suspect he had no respect for anybody or anything at all. The gathering today was small, only four, to keep the circle as tight as possible. One of them was Metatron, who was sitting staring to the far side of eternity in his massive chair. The next were Gabriel, the Might of God, and Michael, the Taxiarch. The last was Mattias the Greater Part.
"Finally you show yourself," Michael said, managing only barely not to cough as he said so. "You've dodged this conversation long enough."
"Conversation?" Gabriel said, spinning a chair backwards so he could sit with his legs astride it and his chest pressed against its back, his chin propped up on a pair of steepled fingertips. "I'd been under the impression that you wanted to give me a dressing-down. I've got better things to do with my time than listen through one of your dithering speeches."
"Enough," Mattias said. And Gabriel stopped speaking, a smile still on his face. Michael scowled just as hard. The Cherubim Unequal turned to Metatron. "Bear you witness to these words, Voice of God."
Metatron jerkily nodded his head. Up, down, done.
"You left a million soldiers to die in Hell for no good reason," Micheal refused to let preamble minimize the scope and scale of Gabriel's crime against martial dignity.
"Whatever do you mean? When Raphael called the retreat, I retreated my forces," he said with a sickening faux-innocence and a cherubic smile.
"You retreated the Angels," Michael condemned. "You left the Cherubs and the Innocent to get crushed and wiped out!"
"Don't be so catastrophic; there are plenty of cherubs popping in even now!" Gabriel said with a breezy wave.
"Less than ten thousand of them, so far," Michael didn't let Gabriel have an inch.
"And the Innocent? Well, killing them just gets them home faster than actually bringing them with us," Gabriel shrugged.
"We are not here to argue the efficiencies of letting our loyal soldiers die because it's too much of an inconvenience to bring them back!" Michael shouted.
"And yet the Innocent are, indeed, back. And vast tranches of Hell have been burned, exactly as you wanted, their utility despoiled so that Hell can't use them against us. I followed your plan to the letter, Michael," Gabriel said with a patronizing tilt of his head, as though explaining himself to a young and particularly slow child.
"And violated every inch of my orders' spirit," Michael accused.
"I got the job done. I even got Lucifer to do most of our work for us up in Pride Ring. And where were you?" Gabriel said, leaning forward in his chair.
"You can't squirm out of your guilt with whataboutisms," Michael deflected. "This meeting isn't about me. It's about your inability to lead."
"Really?" Gabriel asked. "So there aren't millions of our brothers and sisters who are asking for a change in the leadership of this war so that we return Hell to the cinder it always deserved to be? Why Michael, I think you need to have your hearing checked, because I can hear those words being uttered literally everywhere that I go."
"You claiming that you have a mind for leadership is at best laughable and at most realistic absurd," Michael said. "The only things that come out of your mouth are things that will make you popular in the eyes of your disgruntled mob, whether or not those utterances have any basis in reality. God is highest, Gabriel. Above All. Father would not want this sort of cultish behavior from us," Michael sat forward in his chair, a dire look in his eye. "You remember very well what happened the last time this happened."
"Oh, but there's a difference this time," Gabriel said.
"I fail to see…" Michael began, but Gabriel spoke over him.
"Because this time, it's me, and not Lucifer," Gabriel said. "That traitorous pissant was Created to cause problems. And all can attest that I have served God without question and with elan and verve since the very beginning. If your ego can't handle that my continued striving has rendered me a more ideal Angel in the eyes of Heaven than your creeping cowardice, then that's a problem with you, not with me."
"Moderate your tone," Mattias said.
"Why? It's obvious that Michael needs a reintroduction to the harsh edges of reality outside of his backward and insular bubble," Gabriel said. "I get results. That should be all that matters."
"And yet here we are," Mattias said, glaring at the Might of God. "You have toed the line of what our Father has asked of us for a very, very long time, Gabriel. And though aggravating, a line toed is a line obeyed. No, it's what you've been doing lately that vexes me. Not just toeing the line but utterly overstepping it."
"I've never overstepped…" Gabriel began, but this time Michael interrupted him.
"Sahaquiel," Michael said.
"That traitor needed punishment," Gabriel said with a dismissive gesture.
"That failure needed correction," Michael said, admitting now at long last that Raguel had been utterly right in his stance, and that his own had been a coward's move, bending to the mob. "And even were that not the case, it was not your place to unilaterally decide what should be done to a fellow Archangel. Just as it wasn't mine."
"Michael is correct. You acted out-of-order," Mattias said.
"And in a century or two, Sahaquiel will be back, essentially unharmed. I don't see why you're both being such sticklers about this," Gabriel said, a look of hooded contempt barely kept away from his fellow Archangel and the Cherub Unequal. He glanced to Metatron, who was still, as yet unmoving. "What say the voice of God about this? Does the Father have any reproach for taking a necessary step to ensure the security of Heaven from internal threats?"
Metatron was silent, almost still, only the minute expansion and retraction of his chest and the fact that his halo remained hovering over his head sign that he was not yet a corpse. For all it has been his call that this meeting occur, his eyes remained locked somewhere on the other side of Creation.
"At least one of the people in this room has a working head on their shoulders," Gabriel said, as though Metatron had agreed with him by one iota.
"And then there was unilaterally entering a state of Total War against Hell, breaking my treaty with Satan The Accuser which stood for millions of years," Michael said, but was cut off when he felt something phlegmy catch in his throat, and had to clear it several times to dislodge it and continue speaking. "...which made this not a war between Lucifer's closest disaffected traitors but with the entire population of Hell."
"They attacked us. Am I supposed to just allow them to, without ever granting them their due retribution?" Gabriel asked with a tone of disgust. He shook his head. "Surely any military leader worthy of his sash would know that you don't win wars by killing soldiers; you win by breaking resolve. And the resolve of the hellspawn that walk around Heaven couldn't be higher, bolstered by the sheer violation that they embody for even setting foot in lands denied by God to them. If you want to strike the heart of the war effort, strike at what they care about."
"They are hellspawn. They don't care about anything," Michael snapped. "You overextended us, and put us in a position where you gave the billions of beings in Hell had an excuse to formally mobilize against us and transition to war-economy. A war-economy which, I will remind you, Heaven has no ability to replicate."
"So burn down their economy. Like I did," Gabriel said, slamming his fist down the table, and having its wooden top splinter under the force.
"And all that brings us to the last beyond-the-pale action of your dubious 'leadership': Abandoning Innocent and Cherubs to death in the Rings of Hell," Michael said.
"That…"
"Those soldiers, loyal to our cause, capable of reaping many times their number in Hellspawn, which volunteered to act as auxiliaries to the Host as it marched, and served ably and even with distinction as force multipliers to keep the advance moving ever-forward. And for the blood and sweat that they'd spilled on the dirt of Hell, what reward do you give them? Abandonment! ABANDONMENT, GABRIEL!"
"You know what? I'm not going to sit here and be impugned upon by somebody who has no spine for actual leadership," Gabriel said, quickly standing, and there was a fluttering noise which instantly drew a cry of aggravation from Michael. But when the fluttering noise ended, Gabriel was still standing there. He blinked a few times, beheld that he was still in the same room with Michael, Mattias, and Metatron, and a sneer came to his face.
"You will leave, when I say that you may leave," Mattias said, a clear lack of humor clear on his expression. "Michael's complaints are noted and in the opinion of the Laws of Heaven and the Standards of Readiness To Battle considered to be valid. You will remain here while I consider them. Any further attempts to so much as leave this room by any means will be taken as an abject admission of guilt and I will draw all possible negative inferences from it," Mattias then sat back in his chair, pondering. Gabriel stewed, but sat down in his chair once more.
"You set this ambush up a long time ago, didn't you?" Gabriel demanded.
"I didn't set up anything," Michael said. "You did. With everything you've done since the Demiurge revealed himself, all of this is purely on your own halo."
"What say you, Metatron? Surely you can see the folly of this," Gabriel said. Metatron continued to stare through the walls. "Exactly how I thought," Gabriel said, as though Metatron's silence were consent.
"I have decided," Mattias said. That hadn't taken him very long to decide at all. Usually, Mattias' ruminations required days to see through to their other side. Michael was glad, then, that the case of Gabriel was so cut-and-dry, so plain on the face of it, that there were no confounding factors. "Gabriel, in the Name of God, you are henceforth stripped of the rights of command."
"What?" Gabriel asked.
"Your repeated failures in good judgment have made it clear that you cannot be relied upon to efficiently and effectively oversee the defense of Heaven," Mattias said. He gestured toward Metatron. "As such, With God As My Witness, award you Deprecation, that you shall be subordinate to the will of Michael and follow his orders without… Do I bore you, Gabriel?"
Gabriel's eyes had practically rolled out of his head, so it was a decent question to ask.
"I see the little game you two are playing. Trying to stick me in a box so you can have all the glory of killing Lucifer and ending his tantrum," Gabriel said. "But look at yourself, Michael. You're practically rotting where you sit. If you were to try to ward Lucifer's blade of Avarice with your own… what do you even call that damned thing?"
"It is my sword," Michael said. Unlike Gabriel, Lucifer, and many other Angels in Heaven, Michael saw no purpose in the vanity of naming his weapon. It was Michael's Sword, as that was the whole point of it; if it wasn't at his side, fighting his enemies, then it wasn't his sword.
"As though I needed more proof that you are a living failure of imagination," Gabriel said. He thrust a finger at Michael, and Mattias' eyes narrowed, as the Greater Part readied himself to prevent another outburst. "If Lucifer were to face you in battle, he'd cut you down like a duckling fresh tumbled from its nest. This artificial inflation of your own ego by suborning me will not stand. My people will not stand for it!"
"I don't care what the clique of angels you've gathered to your half-formed ideology think," Michael said. "I can't have you making these decisions that deprive us of vital manpower, betray our oaths to safeguard the Innocent, and frankly make a mockery of what the Forces of Heaven are supposed to be. I will not have it. I will not stand for it."
"Just because Father had you lead armies before doesn't mean He intended for you to do it forever," Gabriel pointed out. "And in the state you're in, I doubt many in Heaven, even amongst your own, would disagree with me in saying that there's obviously need for a change."
"You overestimate your position," Michael began.
"You couldn't even beat the Demiurge with a cadre at your side," Gabriel cut him off. "How can you be trusted to fight against the likes of Lucifer?"
"You waste your breath, Gabriel. Mattias will not be swayed," Michael said. But the look that Mattias' eyes flicked back was a warning all its own. Oh. That wasn't good. Gabriel caught it, vexingly enough.
"Perhaps you overestimate your own position as well," Gabriel said glibly.
"This is piffle," Mattias said. "For your inability to effectively lead forces, you will be rendered subordinate to Michael, and must follow all orders he gives you in battle, or regarding the order of battle, henceforth. So shall it remain until God Wills otherwise."
Gabriel just glared, though, and an unkind smile came to his face. "I think you won't much enjoy trying to hold my leash, Brother," Gabriel injected that word with a venom usually only used to speak of Lucifer Himself.
"I already hate it. But to prevent you from murdering more angels to prove a point, I will do it, so help me God," Michael said.
Gabriel stared at Michael, gauging his will. And though Michael's body felt utterly horrible, his will remained steadfast. His flesh would fail long before his spirit did. Finally, Gabriel turned to Mattias. "Is that all of the pomp that you've assigned for me today?"
"Yes. You are on desperately thin ice, Gabriel," Mattias said. "See to it that you don't step arrogantly, and plunge through."
"This will not stand. Father will not have it," Gabriel claimed.
Michael, though, turned to Metatron. "And what exactly does the Father have to say about this change in status?"
Metatron was silent.
"Exactly as I thought," Michael turned Gabriel's own words on him.
"Then I'll take my leave," Gabriel said. And this time, when came the fluttering of feathers against the wind, the Might of God vanished from the room, leaving Michael in his chair, Mattias standing on a table, and mannequin-still Metatron in the chamber.
"That won't stop him for long," Michael said. "He'll find a way to slip this chain, mark my words."
"Doing so will be in violation of your orders," Mattias said, as though that would somehow make right whatever foulness that Gabriel's rebellion would cause. "He will be punished for that as well."
"How can I control something so… so heedless?" Michael asked, gesturing at the space that Gabriel left behind. "If I can't bring him to heel, I shudder to think what will come of it. First alienating the Thirdborn, then abandoning our soldiers… what will be his next folly?"
"That is no business of mine. Until and unless he transgresses, he is your responsibility," Mattias said. Then, he flared his wings, and to a fluttering of feathers Transited away. Leaving only Michael and the Voice of God.
"I wish you were here, Father. I need to know how to stop him before he does something terrible. I already have one Lucifer to face. How can I battle and win against two?" Michael asked of the Voice of God, however rude it was to use the proxy for God The Highest as a mere speaking-board. No wisdom was granted to Michael, though. No insight from lofty places and greater minds than his own. Just silence, and dread, and a steadily unraveling sense of tenuous control.
Then, he too transited, leaving Metatron alone in the chamber.
Once the others were gone for a hundred slow, deliberate breaths, Metatron blinked. He stood, his halo brushing the ceiling, and reached into a pocket of his clothes. From it, he extracted a device, a 'smart phone', which was utterly dwarfed in his hands, and delicately poked it open. Since there was only one number worth calling, it was to that number he called.
"Gabriel has been suborned to Michael. The path to Cloud Humility is open," Metatron said. The listener on the other end didn't answer, for the listener wasn't a fool. He simply hung up, message received. Metatron put the small device away, and then with a much louder whooshing of air being upset by his passage, he vanished from the chamber as well.
The hotel, even in its damaged state, ended up being one of the more intact Burroughs of Pentagram City, in that it was lucky enough not to have been struck by a wayward and wild swing of the Holy Sword WANT, nor smashed by the heedless power of Gabriel. It was merely – yeah, merely – attacked by near a dozen Exorcists. Its damage could be repaired with just a bit of effort and a bit of manpower. And she had both.
The facade of the Hotel was changed, now. It didn't have the same aged, weary splendor that it had when she first chose it as her place-of-ambition. Now, there was a new style clashing with the other signifiers of decade's-craft. Along with Art Deco and Baroque and Brutalism, now there was another one, which she dubbed Desperate Practical. The lines not straight and clean for the sake of aesthetics, but because winter was coming and straight lines got built fast, and goddamn it she wasn't going to let her hotel have a draft.
Things had changed even with the people here. She hadn't known when she'd made it back to see the dying and the dead in the lobby that there were many hundreds and hundreds of area locals who had taken shelter in the back and the core of the Hotel, hoping it would offer them protections that their own buildings had not. And for those lucky ones, protection had been theirs; except for a few whose luck was worse than Vaggie's, they all survived without having to be intercepted by an Exorcist ambushing through the rear. Even Angel Dust only brushed against that thing, and apparently it didn't see fit to bother properly killing him.
It was the faces she didn't see that upset Charlie so.
There were other people cleaning now, a full half-dozen of them, pulled from the 'locals' who had nothing left to do and nowhere else to be. The six of them barely kept pace with what Niffty could do all by her lonesome. But Niffty was gone. There would be no returning for her, for she died to purified wounds and bloodloss. And with her gone, the atmosphere of the Happy Hotel grew just at touch more grey, and a touch more hopeless.
Cain mourned her, though he would do so only briefly. He explained to her even as he set her grave-stone into place that the curse of living and being damned as long as he had, was that even pain became muted. So he gave Niffty, with whom he'd shared a rather perverse love-affair, all of the grief that someone such as he could muster. Maybe it would have felt cheap to Niffty for 'her man' to have his sadness for a few months, then move on as though she never was. Charlie wasn't in a position to say either of them was wrong.
This was Hell. Hell was not, by its nature, kind.
The existence of the Radio Demon, even now that he was banished from the Hotel, was proof to that point.
Just as Cain mourned Niffty, others mourned also. Charlie, for what it was worth, turned out to be spectacularly lucky. Vaggie had made it through just fine. And though Rachel had died – again – she was back the next day without so much as a word to get things back in order again. The events clearly had had a bigger impact on Husk than they had on Rachel. Ever since she died in front of him, it was seldom that one could see Rachel without having Husk lingering somewhere nearby in a fit of protective pique. Addam had likewise returned, immediately getting back to work as though the gruesome death he'd faced had been nothing of note, taking a page from Rachel's playbook.
Jun-Ho, though, didn't immediately reappear, as Rachel and Addam had. She half expected he would be there, helping their work, just as Addam was, but instead days went by with no sign of him. Days became a week. Only as the end of the second week approached would Jun-Ho finally be spotted storming through the lobby of the Hotel and heading toward his room, and when he did, it was noted that he'd been wearing shabby clothes, was covered in mud and roofing tar, and had a look of utmost fury on his face.
A very directed and pointed kind of fury. One he wouldn't speak about the particulars of when he returned to the Hotel after his suspicious absence.
Though with the Betrayed she could have faith they'd be fine, on the whole, it was the others that tore her heart out. To the point in fact that she almost felt numb, watching how people would come in to identify bodies that were beginning to putrify in the back yard. There would be no Meat Wagons in New Purgatory because of this. They would be interred with respect in the yard, marked and named. They died because of her. She owed them all that much dignity if nothing else.
As Charlie was going through her dark ruminations, about how many more heartbroken parents, how many shell-shocked orphans, and how many grief-choked spouses she would have to offer her condolences to today, there was another figure that approached, one who by dress alone put her apart from the pack.
Few were the fiends of Lust who stayed in New Purgatory to her recollection. For all Incubi embodied a superficially splendid male form, that prettiness didn't translate directly into strength, and the Concubi as a group tended not to follow orders well. Soldiers amongst their kind were comparatively few. So one of them approaching up the street wearing the usual Concubus minimalistic-dress (a polite way of referring to 'slutwear'), she stood out because she had a torn and burnt long-coat of patch-leather thrown over them. One of her sleeves was torn off, and that arm had a bandage cocooning it from shoulder to elbow. And she was moving only half in the sort of mind-broken haze that a lot of residents of Pentagram City had taken to. She was heading toward something. Or perhaps looking for something.
Charlie broke free of her doldrums to move toward the anomaly in the lands of her project. She left the front area of the hotel, crossing the street and heading down until she reached the cafe area of the as-yet-rebuilding Pascal's Mugging. She managed to draw close enough that she wouldn't have to shout, then cleared her throat loudly at the Succubus.
"Can I help you with something?" she asked. The coat the Succubus was wearing had a mangled piece of metal stuck in it that looked like it had once been something, before being smashed. She leaned back, looking Charlie up and down. The two women were roughly the same height, but there the similarities ended. Charlie's pale skin was contrasted by the Succubus' hot-pink. Charlie's crimson eyes were far brighter than the nearly black that this Succubus had, save for the jagged ring of pink around her pupils. And whereas Charlie was golden blonde, this Succubus had a baffling, dark head of hair which couldn't agree which 'dark' hue it was, seeming to change from nearly black green, to nearly black red, to nearly black pink as often as Charlie blinked. And she looked starved most of the way to death, cheeks hollow, eyes sunken, and skin pulled tight around her forearm and hands. This starvation didn't look exclusively to be the province of the 'recent', it seemed.
"That would depend," the Succubus had an almost Wrathian drawl. "Is Angel Dust still alive?"
"Yes. Why? If you're coming to cause trouble…" Charlie said, stepping into the emaciated woman's way toward the Hotel itself.
"Trouble? I've had enough trouble the last few days; no point in spreading any more of it," the Succubus said. She then puffed out a sigh. "Still. Good to know that Angel is still with us. I've lost enough friends."
"Oh. Oh, you're a friend of Angel Dust's?" Charlie asked. She wasn't aware that Angel Dust made many friends. But then, he had mentioned he was taking trips… so maybe that friend was this woman. "I'm Charlie. And you are?"
"Truly Delicious," The Succubus offered a hand. When Charlie took it, she found it very, very dry, like her skin was caked with desert dust. Only that dust was her skin. And now that she thought about it, Charlie could see this Miss Delicious' skin cracking at the corners of her mouth, and eyes, and any place that skin folded. The only time the skin grew that unwell was when a Succubus was about to drop.
"That's certainly a name," Charlie said. "Are you alright, ma'am? Do you need to sit down?"
"You know, that sounds kinda good right now," Delicious said. She accepted Charlie's aid to take her to one of the still-intact tables, and to put her in the chair next to it. Charlie knocked on the wall next to the drape serving as a door to the Mugging. One of the imps running the place leaned out, tenting the drape out with her curling horns.
"She needs some Pep, can you get her some?" Charlie whispered urgently. The Imp glanced at the Succubus, then to Charlie. "It doesn't need to be cold."
"It won't be," the imp said, then darted back inside. Charlie picked an only somewhat broken chair and set it down across from the starving Lust Fiend. Charlie had never seen one with so little fat on them before. It was honestly a little uncanny, and didn't do much to make her attractive.
"Do you need medical help? Where have you even been?" Charlie asked.
"Black Tooth," Delicious said, reaching up and tapping the mangled symbol pinned above the breast of her jacket. When she did so, she actually looked down at it, and saw that it was now bent beyond recognition. She let out a hiss and pulled the thing off; the flopping of her coat showed that her chest was bandage-bound just as her arm was, the bandages dirty as though they had been allowed to stay on for quite a bit longer than is prudent. Yet she still had her top looped 'round her neck like a medallion. Maybe it was the only bikini-top she had left. "Only now there's not a Black Tooth to be from. Adam saw to that."
"What?" Charlie asked.
"Adam? Ophanim asshole riding an Exorcist? Fuck that guy," Delicious said, setting the ruined symbol on the table next to her. The imp quickly jogged out, putting a can of Pep on the table. Considering that was essentially concentrated sugar, metabolites, salts, carbohydrates and just a smidge of methamphetamine in a can, one could potentially (if not comfortably) live off of those things. Charlie leaned over, opening the can and then edging it toward Delicious. She, in her weathered state, took the thing and essentially guzzled the entire can in one pull, before belching and crushing the can on the spot between her horns. She didn't look much improved by it. She must have been starving the other way, then.
"What happened out there? All of the lines past Imp City are cut, so I don't…" Charlie began.
"They burned it to the ground. And a lot of the other towns on the highway, too," Delicious said. There was a buzz at Charlie's hip. She ignored it. "One of the guys I pulled out knew how to work the radio. Called for a bus to the gas station. We only needed half of it. Town of two thousand. Fitting onto a goddamned bus."
"I hear it was that bad a lot of places," Charlie admitted with a sad nod. "This war… it's getting worse by the week."
"Yeah. I get that," Delicious said, looking across the street at the hotel and the people milling around it. There was another buzz at Charlie's hip. This time, she wasn't in the midst of a conversation, and checked it. Yup, Angel Dust. 'Is that Truly down there?' he texted. She sent him an affirmative, then returned her attention to Delicious.
"Have you not… you know… fed… for a while?" Charlie asked, unsure how to broach that subject. For all the Concubi were absolutely a part of her subjects, she found she had little reason or cause to interface with them. And that was biting her in the tuches now that she didn't know the 'polite' ways to address their biological needs.
"Huh? Oh. I guess I haven't," Delicious said. She gave a somewhat feeble smile. "These things they get away from you, ya know?" She then sat back, staring at the mangle of the symbol on the table. "I guess I need a job, now."
"Really? What did you used to do?" Charlie asked.
"I would point out my badge, but, well," she pointed and gave a flare of defeat. "I was Black Tooth's Reeve. Kept the peace out there, kept people honest, and kept the Mafia from throwing Sinners through the Pride Wall in my town, if only because it's a pain in the ass to have to clean up the burnt corpses."
"So why not keep… right, no town, no Reeve," Charlie cut herself off when her own point occurred to her. She tilted her head at the oddly dressed Succubus. "I've never met a Succubus who took that kind of responsibility before. What drew you to the job?"
"Honestly?" Delicious asked, lofting a brow. "I just wanted to not have to smell burnt hair every morning when the winds turned. So I start bitching to the old Reeve to do something about the mafia and the corpses in my neighbor's yard. Bitching turns to formal complaints. Formal complaints turns to 'let's see you do better', and that turned to me actually doing better and putting that lazy fuck out of a job."
"Oh. Well then," Charlie said. "I suppose it felt good to prove him wrong?"
"Eh. I don't really do 'feeling good'. But the perks were alright. Nobody knocking on my door when I don't want 'em to, people having to do what I say. Easy money for simple work. Basic stuff," she said, then fell still for a moment, her eyes glazing over, and her body starting to tip over to one side, before her eyes suddenly lit up once more and she jerked upright, catching herself before quite falling out of her chair.
"Are you alright, though? You look injured," Charlie said, having moved to stand next to her since it had become obvious she needed steadying.
"I'm fine. I've gotten worse from better folk," Delicious said.
"Charlie what the fuck is goin' on here!" Angel Dust shouted, as he jogged toward Pascal's Mugging from the area of the Hotel entrance.
"I think your friend needs medical attention," Charlie pointed out.
"I'm fine. I just gotta find a new job," Delicious said, waving Charlie's concerns away, as though they were so easy to brush off. "Can't live forever on no money, can I?"
"Oh, fuck me, Tru," Angel Dust said as he reached Delicious' other side. "How long's it been since you et?"
"What? I mean… I had a bagel a couple hours ago," Delicious said.
"Not that kinda food, bitch, come on, be straight with me."
"Uhhhh you know? I don't really know," she said, scratching at her hair and having a clump of it shed loose in her fingers, turning grey when it did. "I can't quite remember."
"Fuck me sideways, she's starvin'," Angel Dust said. He gently pushed Charlie away from her other side. "How about we put a couple quarts of vodka into you, and get you a nice semi-conscious gang-bang? Does that sound good?"
"Angel Dust!" Charlie said, scandal clear in her tones.
"Oh, leave off it, boss," Angel Dust said, his face showing shocking seriousness. "She's got a thing wrong with her brain which keeps her from eatin' properly."
"A thing wrong with her… Oh!" Charlie said, her displeasure with what seemed like a planned date-rape-by-proxy suddenly made less sense when the 'victim' was plagued with the most dreaded of Concubus incapacities; asexuality. Similar to how some Consumer demons were born without a sense of traditional hunger, and thus had to be constantly cared for to ensure they didn't accidentally starve themselves, Truly Delicious seemed to have the succubus equivalent with her… other feedings.
"There's got to be a better way than getting her drunk," Charlie said, refusing to be left behind by Angel Dust as he guided her toward the Hotel, and to the well stocked bar that lay within.
"She's had her melon cracked to fix it, which failed, and lived for ten years like this aftawoyds. I think she knows betta' then you," Angel Dust pointed out the fact that Truly was probably the expert in how Truly survives.
"It seems just so unfair, though," Charlie said.
"Since when do Hell care about fair?" Angel Dust pointed out the primary problem with Hell (and in fact Creation in its entirety). "We all gotta do what we gotta do, even if it sucks, even if it's painful. Once she gets that liquor into her, she'll be able to drain some 'a yer soldiers a bit and she'll be back up and right as rain. Speakin' of, why the sweet fuck are you in the City? I thought you hated it here!"
"Black Tooth's fucked," Delicious said, as Angel Dust plunked her onto the stool in front of Husk, who took one look at her, leaned to one side, looking at her face more closely, at her hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, and the sheer cracking state of her skin, and then grabbed a bottle of grain-alcohol and started pouring an eight-ounce cup of it. "Got nowhere else to be right now."
"Wait, the fuckin' town's gone? How the fuck did that happen?" Angel Dust asked.
"How do you think, dumbass?" Husk said. He leaned to Rachel, who was leaning against the pillar nearby with a martini in her hand. "Can you believe this guy?"
"I didn't know that Black Tooth in particular was destroyed until now. Does that make me a dumbass?" Rachel asked.
"Don't you fuckin' start with that!" Husk demanded. Rachel just smiled. She then looked to Charlie. "And far be it for me to interject myself in this… event… but a Reeve without a town might be of use to you putzes."
"Are you sayin' there's a job to be had here?" Delicious asked, as she took the cup of essentially pure alcohol and began to drink it. Even she made a face at its potency, which told Charlie everything she needed to know about the contents of that particular bottle. It was probably almost as potent as the unmarked bottles that Husk now sipped at, for there would be no replacing them once he ran out.
"There's going to be an influx of new people to replace those that died, and then even more when news gets out that the Hotel stood where ten Exorcists fell," Rachel said, tipping her martini toward the front of the building. "And that's even discounting how much safer it is when you're actually here."
"So…" Charlie asked.
"People are going to pack into this neighborhood of yours, this 'New Purgatory'," Rachel said. "And we're going to need law-keepers. One of them just stumbled into your building."
"She's a smart one. Keep ahold of her, if you can," Delicious said, as she finally got half way through the cup, while her pink skin grew more red and she started to sweat. She still made unhappy faces with every drink, but refused to set the cup down.
"She'd betta'," Angel Dust said. He looked around, then whistled sharply at Jun-Ho, who was just returning to the building. "Yo! Ring-top! I need you to grab a couple a' soldiers. They gotta not be Sinners or Imps, can you do that?"
"What for?" Jun-Ho asked.
"To bang my buddy back to good health," Angel Dust said, gesturing to Delicious.
Jun-Ho's brow lofted at that. "I'm sure I'll find somebody willing to undertake so onerous a task," the Betrayed said with a laugh.
"Hooo holy shit this is vile," Delicious said. She turned to Jun-Ho. "Do you have a lot of him, or is this stuff hitting me faster than anything I've ever had before in my life?"
"Ninety five percent by volume. It should be landing on you like an atom-bomb," Husk said.
"Have him join them. Even if I don't want to, I think I'll win a record or something if I'm the first of my kind to nail a human that's neither alive nor a Sinner," Delicious said. Neither Charlie nor Truly realized at that moment that said record had already been given out months ago.
"So will you consider working here?"
"Lady, I am very rapidly becoming drunk. I cannag give you a useful answer to that until I'm hung over tomorrow," Delicious said, before muttering something dark under her breath, and then slamming the rest of the grain-alcohol back in a single stomach-melting pull. When she finished, Truly Delicious looked like she was deeply considering vomiting it immediately back up, but after a few seconds of flop-sweat and reddening complexion, she stood, somehow more steady than she had been before, and clapped a hand on Angel Dust's shoulder. "Okay. I think by the time they get to me, I'll be drunk enough to do it. Bring on my dicks!"
"Yeah, yer drunk enough," Angel Dust said. He gave a glance to Charlie. "Don't worry 'bout her. I'll make sure she's gettin' what she needs."
"Yeah, would you?" Charlie asked.
"Let's get you properly dicked-down," Angel Dust said to Miss Delicious, and guided her into the back of the Hotel. A few seconds later, the doors to the lobby were kicked open as a Dream Eater soldier and a Caprican Consumer were hauling ass through the lobby in the direction that Angel Dust had departed. Jun-Ho was the last to come back, sauntering along with a grin on his face.
Oh, the things Charlie did for the good of her people.
"Frankly, the demolition of most of Pride Ring ended up being a boon. It gave civic planners the long-overdue kick in the ass to finally tear down structures which weren't up to code when they were erected, and start putting something useful in the place of old, picked over bones. I'm told that before my birth, Imp City, by way of example, was a rusted-out mockery of an industrial city, with as many shuttered factories as homeless people – and I assure you, homelessness in ante-natal Hell was rampant. And those factories were allowed to sit and rot for decades, or centuries, because it was more cost effective to built another one further out than it was to tear down the old one and get rid of the asbestos.
Because of the comparative clean-sweep that this offered to Imp City, it quickly found itself anchoring a new industrial renaissance as Glowtown decided to give up trying to expand out in the sticks and become tycoons of their own right. Imp City went, over the course of, oh, about five years, from a laughable backwater only useful because it was an hour's drive from the Capitol, to being one of the foremost economic hubs outside of Wrath Ring. Factories reopening for war materiel and civilian goods begat increased employment. Increased employment reduced homelessness, boosted the wellbeing of the city, and pulled it out of a nose-dive it'd been merrily plunging on for decades. All because Gabriel felt like being a shithead and trying to stomp Pride Ring into a wafer.
The other benefits were a bit longer in appearing. LCAM and Black Dog Armory gave guns to our people up on the front, but it also served as something of a hub of an at-that-point unrecognized underground railroad that pulled Hellhounds out of slavery and quietly manumitted them, before immediately putting them to work in the swelling Hellhound industrial base. For a few years, it was overlooked, because Hellhounds were considered beneath notice in general. But by the time people started noticing, it was already too late; every third gun in the hands of a Sinner or Demon was assembled by Hellhounds. And the deeply ill-conceived 'war' that got levied against them leading up to the Second Heresiarchy only embedded them further.
Rebuilding is something that Hell has a lot of experience with. It doesn't surprise me in the least that we managed to out-build Heaven. After all, I think it's safe to say that slave labor – whether admitted on the face of it or not – always results in poor craftsmanship, whereas a motivated workforce will hand you miracles.
Come to think of it, Imp City was where the first Betrayed not associated with the Redeemer Princess settled, wasn't it? Forgive me. Sometimes the little details evade me."
– Tabris Goetia, the Song of Freedom.
