Usually, when somebody fires two anti-tank shells into your chest, that's pretty much it for you.

Hell, usually one was enough to cause any reasonable hellspawn to pop like a blood-sausage, after which the second would merely be following up injury with insult. Typically, as a general rule, one does not need to 'double tap' with a gun who's barrel bore is rated in 'inches', especially when that rating is higher than two. It's not like she was a fucking Scorpii.

Thus Loona found herself in a bit of a pickle.

She'd just gotten lit the fuck up with a cannon.

It had pretty definitively killed her.

And yet here she was.

Of course, her corpse was still there, a shattered mess with its head turned all the way around in the wrong direction, most of the torso open to sky, and her viscera turning this pale concrete alleyway a very rich shade of red with chthonic strips of black.

This warranted some consideration.

She glanced down not at her corpse, but at herself, and saw nothing.

"Oh, that's weird," Loona said. Or tried to. It didn't sound… normal. As though she somehow made a sound without vibrating air. So what? Was she a ghost now?

Do Hellhounds even leave ghosts?

She knew that humans did, sometimes. Hell, Fatty's house was full of those poor assholes. She knew also that imps absolutely did not. But Hellhounds were a gray area, one that the smarter people in Hell hadn't seen fit to really explore.

Without kneeling, she somehow managed to get closer to her own carcass. If she hadn't have been that thing and died standing right over there, she would've had a hard time recognizing herself in the mess of it. It was mangled.

"Well, that shows the limits of my healing bullshit, I guess," Loona muttered. Then she turned, looking to the Doomburger, of which the roof housed her cause-of-demise. With a scowl on her nonexistent face and a twist of resolve in her ephemeral heart, she moved to where her killer had waited.

It wasn't like walking, or even like flying, really. It was willpower translating into movement without a need for a body to get in the way. It drifted up away from the street, and she almost flinched as a car raced through where she perceived – incorrectly – that her legs were. The car passed through her as it would air, because that's all she was right now. Hunched forward over the Doomburger was a titanic form of a bee-demon wearing not fantastical regalia but clubbing clothes that translated, essentially one-to-one, to her more foxy form.

"That makes no sense. She's just a puppy," Beelzebub said, her words as threatening as an enraged swarm on the approach when you're locked out of your car.

"I don't know why they ask me to kill the people I do. I just do it. That's my job," her killer was properly fucked up. And it looked like Maelstrom was restraining himself with his very last dollop of willpower from killing him where he stood, pressed against a ventilation hood.

"And they told you to bring a gun which could hurt me to hunt for a Hellhound," Beelzebub said. "I'm not buying it."

"That's fine, 'cause I'm not selling it," the killer said, then coughed as blood leaked down his throat.

"Puppy, hit this little shit for me. Hit him hard but not hard enough to kill him," Beelzebub ordered. And Maelstrom needed little encouragement to drive a kick into the killer's ribs so hard that the bullet-proof vest he was wearing did nothing to stop the blow from shattering those ribs into pulp. Way to go, Maelstrom. The killer fell to his hands and knees, now blowing dark violet blood out with violent coughs. "I get ONE PARTY A WEEK. ONE! And you just had to go and ruin the vibe! Satan damn it this could have been a fun time. I coulda had a three-way with this one and the one you turned into a splatter…"

"What?" Maelstrom asked.

"What?" Loona asked likewise. Maelstrom's ears flicked.

"But no, you had to go and shoot her. So Imma give you a chance to come clean right now. Either you spill who gave you this job, or you disappear into my Hive and you will never know daylight, comfort, or peace for as long as I can keep you alive," Beelzebub's face was set with fury, her faceted eyes sparking with malevolent intent.

"...Naberius," the assassin said between coughs, gesturing to a discarded, Goetia sealed missive that sat on the roof nearby. "...it was Naberius."

"The fucking clearinghouse. Well that's just great. That just narrows down who actually did it to literally anybody in Hell. Puppy, rip his head off," Beelzebub said, turning away with a scowl.

"Wait no!" the assassin tried to plea for his life.

Maelstrom was having none of it. Maelstrom grabbed the back of the killer's neck with one hand, grabbed the far shoulder with the other, and planted his foot on the near shoulder, before peeling back as though opening a can. The killer got half of a scream out before the rib bones began to pop lose like the teeth of a zipper, and Maelstrom ripped the Mutant's head-and-spine off of the mutant's body, and threw it away, leaving gore and ruin on the roof.

Beelzebub was already waving her arms to summon a portal back to her Palace. And Maelstrom arched his back upward and let out a scream at the sky. Not even a howl. A scream.

Then he turned and dropped down with a shellshocked, empty look on his face, sitting on the gravel of the rooftop.

"Wow. That was a bit extra, don't you think?" Loona asked.

And Maelstrom's ears flicked again.

"So if I'm dead… and being dead is just being able to float around watching life go on without you… I gotta say, being dead kinda sucks," Loona noted.

"Loona?" Maelstrom asked, his eyes blinking rapidly. "Please give me this. Don't be me going crazy; Loona, are you there?"

"Whoa, hold on. Can you hear me?" Loona asked. Maelstrom popped back to his feet, looking around, incidentally walking directly through Loona at one point. "Maelstrom! Come on, don't blue-ball me like this."

"Loona, where are you?" Maelstrom asked.

"Directly behind you, my dude," Loona said.

Maelstrom turned, and looked through Loona without seeing anything.

"Yeah, I know. Hellhounds can leave ghosts. I'm just as shocked as you are," Loona said. "Did that guy literally just say that Naberius, the Goetia, put a hit out on me?"

"It… it doesn't work like that," Maelstrom said. "How are you doing this?"

"Dude, I have no fucking idea," Loona admitted. She tried to grab Maelstrom's shoulders and calm him down, but there was an obvious problem with that attempt. "Look, as bad as this is, and trust me, this is really fucking bad, it could'a been a lot worse. I think there's something I can do to fix this."

"Fix… Loona, you're dead!" Maelstrom shouted.

"Eh, temporarily," Loona said. She remembered the rambling that Fatty and The Kid had been fixated on for the last little while. The secrets of Resurrection and all that. "Come on. Look at… you can't see me. Continue looking directly forward because that's where I am right now. Maelstrom. I need you do calm down. Can you do that?"

"I just watched my closest friend get blown apart by a cannon. I am not calm!"

"I'm your closest friend?" Loona asked. Maelstrom shrugged. "Damn. You need more friends. I'm not that good of one."

"Like I needed more proof that you're you. Thanks," Maelstrom said with a nervous laugh. His eyes were harrowed. Teetering. About to break.

"Now listen," Loona said. "You need to get a garbage bag, and gather up as much of my corpse down there as you can get into it."

"What?" he demanded.

"Magic Resurrection bullshit needs the body to be there, obviously," Loona drew a reasonable conclusion from all of her pop-culture understanding of magic. "And we need to talk to Moxxie and Krieg. If anybody can do it, it'll be them."

"But… what about…"

"Oh, and whatever you do," Loona ordered. Maelstrom paused as she picked out the best way of putting this, and then had to settle with what her non-corporeal brain could come up with, "...don't tell my dad about any of this."


Chapter 36

The Assassination of Loona Miller II

Whatever You Do, Don't Tell Blitz


With the malaise of summer starting to fade and the dead feeling vengeful with the approach of autumn, IMP was working a steady, deadly business. And with the day's death-dealing behind them, Moxxie was at home, sitting with Beatrice babbling happily with her face mooshed up against his chest where he laid on the couch, his hands idly noodling on a guitar. There was a song somewhere in that riff, but he couldn't figure out quite yet where the words for it were hiding.

It was understandable. Most of Moxxie's musical oeuvre were songs of romance, cherishing an impossible goddess who had for some reason decided to make him hers. This song, though, wasn't about the second woman in his life. It was about the third. Beatrice made a weird noise in her throat, and Moxxie, having been caught surprised by that noise once in the past, was able to quickly flinch and hold Beatrice over the edge of the couch so that when she spat back a stream of half-digested milk, it landed in the bucket that Moxxie had prepared instead of digging deep into the upholstery.

Once the stream ended, Beatrice let out happy noises, beginning to flail her little limbs with enthusiasm now that her discomfort was gone. He shifted in his position, essentially tucking his baby up against him and putting the guitar atop of her. Only her head stuck out from the body of the guitar. It didn't stop her from reaching over the wood and grasping for the strings. Beatrice was a grabber.

There was a loud buzz, which interrupted Moxxie's domestic bliss. His Hellphone was ringing. Or ringing as much as he allowed it to when he wasn't on the clock. Moxxie reached for it, but it was half a room away. He narrowed his eyes and focused his will, checking again if telekinesis was in the cards for an impish Wonderworker. Sadly for lazy people everywhere, such remote control was beyond his ken.

"I'll just let it go to voice-mail," Moxxie said, and returned to his noodling, only to be forestalled by Beatrice grabbing one of his fingers and biting it. It didn't hurt very much, because she only had three teeth and none of them were in the front. Buzzing meant it was a work call from a work phone. He didn't have many comrades outside of work, but they weren't subject to such screening during Moxxie's off hours.

He kept picking at the song that was half formed in his head as the phone started ringing again. Moxxie put it out of his mind. Whatever panic Blitz was having right now, it could be safely dealt with in the morning. And it would be Blitz. It wasn't like the Hellhounds ever bothered him on his time-off.

He had a notion that maybe, just maybe, that was 'Desdemona' asking after something, since she was now officially on the payroll as a non-killer for IMP. That meant that while all the 'founders' and Maelstrom all pulled down one equal share for money when a job was done, she only got 66% of one share's worth. Moxxie was half way tempted to get her a full share; she was impossibly patient, impossibly polite, and impossibly pleasant. The survival strategies of merely enduring Clan Cruac under Nuckelavee had seemingly formed her into a perfect receptionist.

Frankly, Moxxie was of the mind to answer the phone for Des. She was good people, pulled from a bad spot. And the fact that she didn't have that fucking brand on her head meant she didn't trigger Moxxie's anger with every half-given glance. Of course, now neither did Blitz. Ever since he got his face split open by an Exorcist's whip the Nuckelavee brand on his own head had a white line of scar through it, as though somebody were post-facto erasing his involvement with them.

Although, Des was likely the source of why Tilla was currently taking up a bedroom upstairs, letting her own children fend for themselves for a time with Wayland's obvious exception. The last little while had not been easy on Blitz's mother's psyche. Not everybody got the fairy-tail ending. Not if you were in Hell. Not if you were an imp.

The phone was buzzing again.

"Honey, d'you hear that?" Millie asked.

"It's a work call," Moxxie said.

"Yeah, but who?" Millie asked. She approached wearing baggy pajamas and fluffy hoof-caps, more attractive to him in such schlubbery than the greatest supermodel in her skimpiest negligee. Crushing a yawn behind her fist, she sauntered to the table where Moxxie had his and her phones plugged in and recharging. She blinked at it. "Sweetie? Why is Maelstrom callin' us over and over again?"

"Maelstrom?" Moxxie asked. That was not a name he'd expected to hear at this time of the evening. He glanced to his guitar, and then to his spawn, and sighed. There would be no completing that song for Beatrice tonight, it seemed. He set the guitar aside, and hefted his babe up, ignoring how she immediately took the opportunity to wrap her little fist in his hair. He moved to Millie's side. And sure enough, the message on the screen was 'Maelstrom + 4'. Moxxie picked up. "What's going on? Why are you calling me?"

"Oh thank fucking Dog you're actually there," Maelstrom said. Instantly Moxxie could sense dread coming through the line as though he'd just ejaculated into Lucifer's shoes. "Moxxie, I need help. You and Krieg. Now. It's bad. It's so fucking bad…"

"Maelstrom, calm down. What's happened?" Moxxie asked.

"Just come to Gluttony! You know where I am, you've got that magic and… fuck I need to call Krieg, too. Come to me. Please," Maelstrom said, practically begging.

Moxxie turned a look to his wife, who had an expression nearly as dumbfounded as he. That was desperation in Maelstrom's voice. And while Moxxie had heard Maelstrom afraid, nervous, anxious, depressed, frustrated, annoyed, angry, and sick-of-it, he'd never heard the young Hound actually sound desperate. That was something that apparently Loona had exclusive privilege to.

"Are you gonna…?" Millie asked.

"He sounds really desperate. I think I've got to," Moxxie said. Millie nodded, then reached behind the table and retrieved Zahm. Moxxie swung his arm which wasn't holding his infant and formed a portal from their TV room all the way down to Gluttony.

The sky was yellow and dark, like honey left to partially dry out. The stars were few in Gluttony, as the dark of night never truly got very dark. Night was most often mere twilight in this Ring, because here as few other places, geo-centrism was the truth rather than a laughable delusion. There was a spot where the sun dipped lower in the sky for a few hours, but otherwise it ran a circuit from east to south to west before vanishing once more, never standing directly over head. And now the false night had dominion over the demesne of Beelzebub and the Devourers.

There was a bloody streak which probably should have warned Moxxie about the kind of madness he was walking into. It was broad and scarlet, the blood of Hellhounds, of Virgoan Consumers, or of humans. And it didn't take long to find its source.

Maelstrom was covered in gore, as though somebody had exploded in front of him. At his right side was a large garbage bag, which oozed red with strange black tracers in a slowly growing pool. The haggard Hound didn't even look up at Moxxie, too rapt was he on his phone as he no doubt tried to contact Krieg. "Maelstrom?" Moxxie attempted. And the Hound either didn't hear him, or else was too focused to respond. "Maelstrom, what's going on?"

That got Maelstrom to look up.

He'd been crying.

"You can bring people back from the dead, right?" Maelstrom asked.

"Oh. Oh, oh no that's bad," Millie said, one hand before her mouth.

"Calm down, Maelstrom. I can't do it alone. I'd need Krieg's help," Moxxie said. And he would only ever be 'the help' in that Wyrd, as far as he could tell. For all the work the purifying organ was doing for him, it couldn't purify him to the lofty levels he'd need to have in order to be the lead in the most transgressive of impish magics known to him. Maelstrom nodded mutely, the call already being made. Moxxie though, gestured to the bloody garbage bag. "What happened? And to who?"

Maelstrom didn't answer. Millie, stowing her now-magical axe on her back, opened it, and then was still for a moment.

"What is it, sweetie?" Moxxie asked.

"Moxx…" she turned a stunned look to her husband. Moxxie sidled over to her and peeked inside as well.

There was a Hellhound carcass in the bag, so folded on itself that it must have been killed with terrible violence. The whole thing was painted red with blood and gore, such that it took Moxxie longer than his bride to figure out what he was looking at. Beatrice stopped fussing, watching with wide eyes, fascinated rather than appalled. Millie gently turned the nearly-disarticulated head around.

That was Loona's face.

Oh, crumbs.

Blitz was going to lose his shit and burn half of Hell down.

"She's not answering," Maelstrom muttered.

"Try calling her again," Millie prompted.

"Well I don't have Tilla's number," Maelstrom responded, not looking at her. Moxxie frowned, then suddenly shivered as a chill ran though him. What the hell was that? Maelstrom looked past Moxxie and Millie at something nearby. "If you've got a better idea I'd love to hear it! We're three Rings away!"

"Who are you talking to, Maelstrom?" Millie asked, before having a sudden shiver herself. "What was that?"

Maelstrom looked something like guilty when he looked to Moxxie, then let out a sigh.

"I think I'm being haunted right now," Maelstrom said.

Moxxie narrowed his eyes, and narrowed his vision further. Deeper past the native magic of Hell, the ethers of power that drifted ever upward from the Abyss. Past his own confabulations where his aura interfered with the world around him (yes, apparently that was a thing he had to consider, now). Past even the oppressive Angelic lock on the continuity of time that had been imposed months earlier, and technically therefore had always been there. He looked deeper.

And he felt an echo of a familiar song there.

"Loona?" Moxxie asked, turning slowly until he found a direction where the echo was slightly stronger. "How is this possible? Hounds don't leave ghosts!"

"She says she doesn't know either," Maelstrom answered after a pause. There were fluctuations in the echo in the gap, indicating where and when she was speaking. Millie seemed utterly blind and deaf to all of this going on.

"Loona, stay exactly where you are," Moxxie said, one hand out as though trying to grasp something. He felt the echo, and he felt how it was different from his own fundamental melody. Like trying to pick apart two songs overlapping each other, it wasn't easy, especially since the second was quieter and attenuated. But he did find it. "Loona… say something."

"Like what?" Loona's voice was suddenly in Moxxie's mind. Not even in his ears. Millie gave another shiver, sensing subconsciously what she could not actively perceive. "Holy shit did that work? Hey, can you hear me too?"

"I can," Moxxie said. "What happened? You look like you were shot by a cannon!"

"I was," Loona gave a begrudging laugh. "Can you believe some idiot out there thought I needed assassinating?"

"Somebody had you assassinated?" Moxxie stressed.

"Somebody assassinated Loona? Why would they do that?" Millie asked, left behind in the conversation.

"Not murdered, not collateral damage, assassinated," Moxxie said.

"Hey, ask Maelstrom, he tortured the truth out of the guy," Loona somehow managed to give the impression of a shrug without having a body. Maelstrom gave a distant, shell-shocked nod. "I don't get it either. All I know is that some rich fuck panicked for no fucking reason and sent a guy to blast me."

"There's obviously a lot more to this than that," Moxxie said.

"I mean… probably? Beelzebub was there when it happened. Maybe dumping blame on me was an attempt to save face?" Loona asked.

"Or maybe what you're doing with the Hellhounds is starting to raise eyebrows, if not outright alarm," Moxxie finished the thought for her. He gave his head a shake. "Look, we can discuss all of this later. We need to tell Blitz and…"

"No! No no no no no! Under absolutely no fucking circumstances do any of you idiots breathe a word of this to my dad," Loona intruded.

"I don't think that's gonna end well, hon," Millie said at the same time, laying a hand on Moxxie's shoulder. "He loves his girl somethin' fierce. When he hears about this…"

"Exactly, Millie gets it: If Blitz hears about this, he's gonna go kamikaze on anybody he knows, believes, or outright imagines had anything to do with this. And even if he survives that, he'll piss off his boss in the doing it," Loona said.

"Well we can't just keep Blitz in the dark about his daughter's death," Moxxie said.

"You can and you must," Loona said.

"For Blitz's sake, I think you have to," Millie said with a regretful look on her face. Moxxie grumbled and rubbed at his face, only to be interrupted by his daughter pulling hard on his hair. Extracting his pale locks from Beatrice's fist took a moment, because that kid didn't like letting go of things when she had a grip on them, but gave Moxxie a chance to think. Considering his brain ran at around orbital velocities on a slow day, he had a lot of contextual time.

And having that what-amounted-to-fifteen-minutes to ponder it, he had to agree with both his wife and the ghost of his coworker. Blitz couldn't be told about this, because if he did, his anger would have a decidedly suicidal quality to it. And if Blitz took his anger out on people the likes sent assassins after the Deadly Sins, he'd upset Lucifer's status quo, and then be doomed for that.

The only way to keep Blitz Miller alive and sane was to keep him ignorant.

"Look, if she's not going to answer the phone, then I'll force the issue," Moxxie finally said. He paused to Unbreak the bag that Loona was in, so at least it wouldn't leak gore everywhere it was carried, then formed a portal to Krieg's office.

Tilla was absent, an hour away from there in Moxxie's guest room. Uller gave a start and darted away from the pane of the portal as though it would cut him. Although opening portals could cut with beyond-laser sharpness, it was only possible to kill somebody with them by fluke; portals actively resisted being opened through solid matter, and doubly so organic matter, for reasons that nobody saw fit to explore. Moxxie using portals to kill that one bitch was likely something he'd not be able to replicate.

"Moxxie? What are…" Uller said as the pair of imps stepped into Krieg's office in the after-hours, which was currently playing host to the Envy imp at their side, then through a door were Krieg and a mongoose-Sinner wearing a substantial neck-brace. Moxxie wasted no time for politeness, swinging the door open to bang loudly against its wall. He pointed at the Sinner.

"Leave," Moxxie ordered.

"Who the fuck do you think you are, you little shit-for-brains?" the neck-injured Sinner demanded, storming up out of his seat. Well, that simplified things. Rather than listen to any more of the ex-human's diatribe, Moxxie instead opened another portal under the Sinner's feet, with its exit being over the Poison Lake in the south of Pride Ring. While fantastically lethal for most hellspawn, for a Sinner it was merely fabulously unpleasant, something he'd take a long time to escape and recover from.

The ex-human dropped out of sight with a strangled scream, and Moxxie closed the portal above him. That'd teach him to call Moxxie 'shit-for-brains'.

"While I can only commend your showmanship, I must nevertheless ask what the fuck that was about," Krieg pointed out, looking annoyed as Moxxie turned to her. He offered no preamble as Maelstrom dragged Loona's carcass into the room.

"We need to bring back the dead again," Moxxie said as he carefully extracted Beatrice from his hair and handed the spawn to his wife.

"What, so soon? Did your mother trip and fall down some stairs?" Krieg asked with a mocking tone.

"Not now, Krieg. Not. Fucking. Now," Moxxie muttered.

Krieg's eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline. "Oh, so this is that serious, is it? Very well. Let's see what madness you've brought to my office," she said, moving to the bag which Maelstrom was still holding. She paused. "Of course, this would be far simpler a thing if you could find The Bard for me again."

"No such luck," Moxxie said. "He's gone over to Heck. Without the Grimoire, which is currently in Blitz's jacket, he's out of our reach."

"Blast and damnation," she muttered with very little venom. She then opened the bag and stared, blank faced, at its contents. "Oh. Oh I see why you are unwilling to bring my uncle into this."

"Can you do it if I help you?"

"The arrogant part of me wants to say yes," Krieg admitted. "But the pragmatic part of me says what the hell is that?"

Moxxie blinked, and then turned to one side. The spot that Krieg was staring was currently unpeopled, with Uller the closest person to it. The young imp inched away from that spot as though in alarm.

"Hold the fucking phone, can she see me?" Loona's echoing voice came.

"And what the hell was that sound?" Krieg demanded.

"Oh, yeah," Moxxie said. "I think that's Loona's ghost."

"Hellhounds don't produce ghosts!" Krieg said, pounding the desk she was sitting at with her fists. "What is this madness?"

"It doesn't matter. We just need to bring her back to life before Blitz finds out about any of this," Moxxie said.

"Well, that is going to be a problem," Krieg said, rubbing at the ritual marks scarred onto her face. "The ritual is different when being used on Hellhounds than it is when used on imps or humans."

"Can you figure it out?" Moxxie pressured.

"Not without aid," Krieg admitted, though she had a face on as though she'd rather rip out her own teeth than say those words.

"Well, who could possibly help us with this? We've just killed every other imp who knows how to Resurrect who's still in Hell itself!"

"You're not going to like the answer to that, Master Rough," Krieg said.

There was a long silence.

"Oh fuuuuuck," Loona's echo answered into the silence.

"Oh fuck indeed," Moxxie echoed.

"We will need to call for the help of the Radio Demon," Krieg said.


It wasn't often that people came hat-in-hand to the Radio Demon, because anybody with half a goddamned brain would realize that doing so would put you inextricably in debt to him. Husk had made that exact mistake a half a century ago. He was still trying to pay down the interest on that loan he'd taken out.

He'd probably meet his second death with it unpaid. Just like the Scarlet Fucker wanted.

So when a cluster of imps came asking after him, Husk almost told them to go pound sand somewhere else as a kindness to them. Whatever misery they were currently laboring under couldn't be worse than what the Scarlet Fucker would demand of them, inch by inch, for decades to come. But they wouldn't be waved off, wouldn't be threatened, wouldn't be cajoled (not that Husk was very good at 'cajoling'). They would speak to the Radio Demon this night.

So Husk stayed up a bit later than usual. The lobby of the Hotel was quiet, since the night was muggy and hot and everybody here was too fixated on sleeping where there was air conditioning to do anything rowdy. The sociopathic Sinner and the cluster of imps didn't go into one of the side-rooms, instead meeting at a cluster of tables near Husk's bar.

"So let me summarize your little conundrum," the Radio Demon declared, cutting off the smarter of the pentacle of imps. "You are looking to form a variant of one of the most closely guarded and ill-understood Thaumaturgies to be held in the jealous grasp of the impish race for the last five eons, and you want my assistance in its creation."

"That… is about right, yes," Moxxie Rough said. Of course, Husk knew more about that kid as 'Moxxie Knolastname', grandson of Cesar Knolastname, who was the last truly great don of the Knolastname crime family. Cesar, sometimes called 'Cesar Plata o Plomo', had taken a successful mafia organization and turned it into a magnificent one, only to have his son-in-law Crimson 'inherit' it and then through decades of consistent mismanagement and poor decisions drive it to irrelevance. The imp at that table over there must have taken his wife's surname to distance himself from that stench of failure that Crimson had produced.

The others were Mildred Rough, who was less notable. She was known faintly by Wrathians to be a violent and deadly sort, which coming from them was saying something, and had a babe in her arms. He knew more about the daughter than he did the mother, because Lust was shitting themselves over the kid; supposedly they'd started, and lost, a war over this spawn, and the power-vacuum resulting had gutted the clans of Lust.

"Well, it's fortunate that you came to me before you started experimenting. Not simply because of her species, you understand; that's paltry in the grand calculus of the universe. No, it's because of what she through her reckless audacity achieved in Purgatory, just like you," Alastor said.

"Wait, what?" Krieg asked. Krieg Miller, the Unrecognized, The Resurrector, the Crone-slayer, and a dozen other titles that she'd festooned herself with despite not even being old enough to vote or buy her own liquor. "Are you seriously saying that the Hellhound Variant would have failed?"

"Indeed!" the Scarlet Fucker said with a cheerful clap of his hands. "She is a much mightier thing than she was before Purgatory. And mightier things require mightier protocols. Which raises the question: What exactly happened to you, flinching cur?" Alastor rose from his seat and leaned in toward Maelstrom. The New King of the Pits didn't flinch back, as he usually did. The kid was in a state of shell-shock. Husk could still see bits of dried blood and scraps of gore on him.

Looking at Maelstrom was looking at any of a thousand soldiers limping home after Verdun. Not all wounds ripped the skin and shattered bones.

"What?" Maelstrom's words were pure distraction.

"You've changed from the last time our paths crossed each other. In fact, you're far closer to what she is now, even contained mangled in a garbage bag, than you are to that one," he cast a finger to Uller Cruickshank. Uller, now that was a hard dig, because his past was so banal, until he'd broken into Krieg's apartment. Just another dirt-grubber from a dirt-grubber clan. Well, there was a rumor that he was one of The Bard's numerous great-grandchildren, but that number had to be in the high dozens if not low hundreds at this point. His children and grandchildren were not known for monogomy, nor sticking around to raise their sown wild-oats.

"I don't see how that matters," Maelstrom said, his distant and stunned look transmuting into stubbornness. Good for him. Maybe deadly for him to do that in front of the Scarlet Fucker, but still, good for him. "I'm not the problem here. The fact that Loona's dead, is."

"Ah yes, and we should probably talk to the heart of the matter itself. How exactly did you meet your end?" Alastor turned to and faced a spot which currently contained no imps or Hellhounds or Sinners. There was an awkward silence. "Of course I can. Do you take me for a rank amateur? The only reason he can't see you as well is because he's specialized on the physical rather than the intellectual," Alastor said to that blank space with a gesture toward Maelstrom.

There was another pause.

"Well, he can. Vaguely. Because he doesn't know the right way to do it. He's using the wrong tool for the job, as it were," Alastor said, fiddling with the knobs of his microphone cane, and turning a condescending look towards Moxxie. "Really? Given your specialty, that seems rather excessive. Are you sure you weren't just collateral damage?"

Husk could hear the knuckles of Maelstrom's fists pop from here, as they grew tight enough to crush coal into diamonds.

"I'm simply joshing you! Of course you were the target!" Alastor teased. "And he was simply acting as a prudent assassin would: it's hard for your victim to fight back if they're blown to bits. No, I'm afraid not. It won't be as simple as it was for this one's mother, or for that one's lover," The Scarlet Fucker said, gesturing first toward Moxxie, and then toward Husk. "You see, bringing back the she-imp was a simple thing, plucking one of the many errant strands that had been cut from reality and restoring it to its original weave."

"There is nothing simple about Resurrection!" Krieg complained.

"Simple conceptually, little thaumaturge; even the simplest concepts can have fiendishly complicated executions," Alastor waved her complaint away. "The problem with this garbage-bag full of dead dog is that she is not merely an errant thread of reality. She is a fact of it. She is a fundamental aspect of it, one which reality will not allow lightly the manipulation of it by outside forces."

"Look, can you help us or not?" Maelstrom asked, getting to his feet and glaring at the Radio Demon, a particular strain of crazy in his eyes that Husk hoped he had a leash on. Because that kind of crazy didn't last long, or end well, in the presence of the Radio Demon.

"Of course I can! The question is, why should I?" Alastor said. Husk sighed and started reaching for the tranquilizer rifle which was hidden in the woodwork above the bar. Charlie had been explicit that he had to have at least one non-lethal means of 'dissuading' people. But though Maelstrom was growling and his face showed he was a hair off of launching into a rampage, Alastor continued, clapping his hands together in delight. "And I will tell you exactly why I should! Because helping the resurrection of this rather mangled canine will directly help me. And I am nothing if not a servant of my own self-interests."

"Resurrecting Loona will help you? How?" Moxxie asked.

"Do you need to know that? Do you deserve to?" Alastor asked.

"For once, I'm going to go out on a limb and say yes, yes I do, on both counts," Moxxie said. Though the little bastard was an imp, he had balls bigger than a minotaur's, that one. And the Scarlet Fucker seemed to agree with Husk's estimation of the little guy, because he launched into laughter.

"Oh, the sheer audacity of you! I knew there was a reason I so enjoyed your species' comings-and-goings. However, if I go rewarding audacity, I'll be stuck doing favors to people all day! No, little imp. You will learn nothing of what intend. I want it to be a surprise to everybody but me," Alastor leaned in close. "And you're going to accept my help, and my conditions, regardless, because you have nowhere else to turn."

It took the imp's wife putting a hand on his shoulder to pull the little bastard out of a look of violent anger. Now Husk had heard that those two had gone down the Lust and massacred a bunch of inbred yokels to get that particular baby back. But that didn't put him on a level with Alastor. Frankly, Husk knew of only two in all Creation who likely could stand toe to toe with that fucker, and both of them were busy in Heaven.

"Fine," Moxxie looked like he wanted to set Alastor on fire with his mind. Join the fucking club, kid. "So what do we need to do with her that we can't do on our own?"

"There is an apparatus which needs to be constructed," Alastor said, sweeping an arm down and having a fuckin' whiteboard appear. Since Husk was on the wrong side of it, he had no idea what was on it. "Call it a 'blind spot in the universe', a place where truly maniacal manipulations of What Is Real can take place without the rest of reality knowing, let alone working to undo them."

"And if we build that thing, we can bring Loona back inside of it. Then what happens when she steps out? What will 'reality' do then?" Moxxie demanded.

"It will have to sit and spin," Alastor said with delight and laughter. "That's the wonderful thing of entering into the playing field that I've introduced you to. You are just entering into the realm of being able to through sheer will and effort force reality into a shape of your liking, no matter its protestations. When the canine is returned, reality will just have to accept it. The same factor which makes her hard to revivify will also prevent Creation from simply and randomly killing her again to rectify it."

"You sound insanely sure about this, considering we've just dropped this in your lap a few minutes ago," Moxxie said, shoving the whiteboard aside with clear suspicion on his face.

"You say that as though this isn't merely running parallel to something which I've been working to for most of a century," Alastor waved the thought away. "Similar problems breed similar solutions. And be thankful, little imp, that I'm as thorough an investigator and researcher as I am. Otherwise, your only recourse, and yours as well, my intangible Miss, would be to hold your noses as her carcass rots."

"Great. That's just great. When can you start?" Maelstrom said, interrupting Moxxie's next point.

"Maelstrom, patience. You don't know this man's price," Krieg cut in.

"I don't care what the price is. I'll pay it."

"Oh, it's fortunate that you say that, my ambulatory German Pinscher. Because it will be you who pays it," Alastor promised.

"Maelstrom. Think about this. You don't wanna…" Millie began, but the look that Maelstrom gave her told Husk that if she kept talking much longer he might have smacked her to shut her up. Oh, the crazy went deep on this one.

"I. Will. Pay. It," Maelstrom said.

"Then we can begin at once. Though there isn't much real cause for haste in the state of the body – this form of revivification doesn't strictly require it and it would likely outright vanish when the rite is completed – I see no reason to delay my gratification any longer. Oh Husker? Be a good fellow and inform Charlie that I'm out of the building for a bit?"

"Tell her yer fuckin' self," Husk refused to be looped into this.

"Oh ho ho ho, Husker, you're always good for a laugh," Alastor said. He then reached with his cane and tapped on the front-desk bell in front of Husk. After a pause. "Just letting you know I'll be out for a bit. Don't let anybody into my rooms. Tah-tah!"

And with that Alastor snapped his fingers. There was a very loud metal bang that sounded, one that made Husk's ears fold back on his head. In the wake of that bang, all of them were gone, with only the bloody footprints that Maelstrom had made showing any sign that they'd been there at all.

Husk chose to drink heavily.

"What was that about?" Rachel's voice pulled him out of his drinking before he got very far in. Half a bottle of vile swill was nothing to a liver like his.

"What?" he asked.

"I heard somebody Teleport," Rachel said. "Is that blood?"

"Yeah. Some Scarlet Fucker Bullshittery is afoot. I think it's best we stay out of it," Husk said. She rubbed at her eyes and sat down on the stool opposite him. She was giving him that look. "What? I'm not stickin' my neck out for a bunch of desperate yahoos who go sniffin' around for the fuckin' Radio Demon'. That's just a good way to end up Double Dead."

"I didn't expect you to intercede. It wasn't your business. I'm asking why there's a picture of some sort of… I don't know, sensory deprivation tank over there."

"A what?" Husk asked.

She got up and turned the whiteboard, also abandoned by teleportation, around. On it was a geodesic solid made of many, many triangles, forming a complete sphere, but suspended above the ground on stilts with a robust airlock plunging in at its midpoint. Inside the thing was, well, nothing.

But Husk knew his way around structural magic. And everything, from the materials that it was listed to require to the very structure of it itself seemed to be about 'exclusion'. Just like the Scarlet Fucker had implied. It was a spot where all of what made Creation real was pushed out.

"I think they're gonna make a new Bleeding Pit," Husk said.

"That's bad, isn't it?" Rachel asked, returning to her stool and drinking the Manhattan he had subconsciously produced for her.

"As bad as things can be," Husk said with a nod.

"Then it's definitely for the best that you didn't get involved. That just sounds like it's going to end in pain and misery for everybody involved," Rachel said. Husk gave a chuckle at that. Leave it to Rach to give him the last opinion he'd expect to hear from another soul.

"There's the reason why I put up wit' chu. You know when we're outta our fuckin' league," Husk said, clinking his bottle against her glass.

"And if we're spectacularly lucky, some small fragment of that misery will land on and stick to Alastor. Because, and forgive my language, fuck that guy," Rachel said with a smile that was all schadenfreude.

"I hear that, babe," Husk said.


"Blitzie… are you alright?" Stolas asked. Blitz had been… distant, for a while now. And while Stolas' libido was screaming at him to get that lovely imp's motor running and then have it run through him like a train with no breaks, he had at some point after the shameful display at Ozzie's learned that when Blitz was troubled, his own personal sex-drive cratered through the floor.

"What? Nothing. I'm fine," Blitz said, but didn't move from his place at the table. He was eating, so he wasn't in complete despair, but there was that look on his face that he simply didn't have the language to express his ennui. To Stolas, that hurt more than most things. To see someone whom he wished to help, but being unable to. "This actually ain't half bad."

"I know. I had it imported," Stolas said. He reached out a hand across the much-smaller table that he'd taken to dining with his lover at. There was no reason for the long, oppressive plank that stretched from one side of the room to another. He didn't feel any need whatsoever to impose distance on his dining partner whenever Blitz was in the room. Instead, it was a stately little truncated oval of Choice Qliphoth that likely should have been used for magical fetishes, but Stolas liked the look of it so fuck it, a table it became. "Blitzie… you know if there's something bothering you, you can talk to me about it. I might even be able to help."

He didn't pull away from Stolas' touch, but he did go rigid for a second, his fight, flight or freeze reflex defaulting to the latter.

"Why do you put up with me?" Blitz finally asked.

"Whatever do you mean?" Stolas asked.

"Look, I know that I'm a shitty person, and you're way fuckin' smarter than me so you should'a figured that out a long time ago. So why do you put up with me?" Blitz asked, his tones clipped and more self-flagellating than they were angry. A dumber portion of Stolas breathed out a sigh of relief in that this wasn't something that he'd set in motion, like so many of the other missteps in this relationship.

"Do you remember what you said to me on the first night you stayed over?" Stolas asked.

"What the fuck… what?" Blitz asked, his doldrums vanishing into confusion.

"The first night you actually stayed over, rather than departing when I was… well… sated," Stolas prompted.

"I don't fuckin' know. That was years ago," Blitz said, aggressively stabbing his slab of meat. That had been tricky to even find. Hellatrices were almost extinct in Hell everywhere but Lust, and in Lust they tended to stay as far away from people as they could. Finding one worthy of butchery had taken no small amount of cash and cajoling from the Prince of Flowers. But the fact that he was consuming it even in his unhappy fugue perhaps showed that it was a happier memory that Stolas could rekindle for the poor, poor imp that had so very few of them to muster.

"And yet I, having lived for several million years, remember it as though it were still echoing in the room," Stolas said. He slid his platter aside so he could clasp Blitz's hand in both of his. "You said, and I quote: 'how do you even get out of this thing in the morning? It's so fucking comfortable'."

"What's your point? I mean, obviously that bed's fucking comfortable," Blitz said, clearly not getting Stolas' point.

"That was the first time since I had the thing installed that I actually noticed it," Stolas said. He bowed his head. "There's a supreme unkindness to longevity, Blitzie. The long ages erode what we think we know and what we think we love. And then people like me just… take for granted, certain things. Like how comfortable a bed is."

"I was just talking shit like I always do. It wasn't that important," Blitz still didn't grasp it.

"Blitzie, please. Do you want to know why I 'put up' with you? It's because you showed me that my bed was comfortable, rather than just a place to lay. It's because you showed me that there was a world worth living in, after endless millennia of believing that there wasn't," Stolas said.

"Oh, come on. All I did was rail you a lot. I didn't do all that fancy crap…"

"Don't discount the value of 'railing' on the shift of my world view," Stolas said coyly with a twist of a smile. Blitz rolled his eyes. "Did you know that I was suppose to die last year?"

"What? Why are you still talking about that? You're going to outlast the fuckin' sun!" Blitz said, finally looking Stolas in the eye.

"And yet I still had a fatefully appointed time of death," Stolas said. He released Blitz's hand with one of his own, so he could continue eating. "I came to you first, you know. After I impossibly survived battle on the field of Heaven."

"Wait, really?" Blitz asked, tilting his head to a side in confusion. "I thought you'd…" he gestured toward the walls separating Stolas' wing of the castle from Octavia's.

"Frankly and rather shamefully, in the moment of my impossible survival, she barely entered my mind. I knew she was safe, because Stella was with her. But I didn't know if you were. And that desperation consumed me. I needed something stable. Something real."

"You needed a fucking imp," Blitz said.

"Exactly!" Stolas said giving Blitz a tiny squeeze. "Something grounded where I am untethered. Something that can see what I've come to overlook. There are many things which drive me quickly back to you in any period of absence, and not all of them are stored below your belt." Blitz gave a short 'oh, really, in front of my dinner' expression. Stolas puffed out a breath. "In a way which I barely have the language to describe, I need you. I need you so that my life has texture. I need you so that my life has joy."

Blitz stared at his plate for a moment. "Why don't I believe it?"

"Because Hell has been intolerably cruel to you for far too long," Stolas said. Then he paused, tilting his own head. "Is that why you're so distant, lately? That you're having trouble accepting that this is truth?"

"Hey, in my experience anything that seems to good to be true, is a trap waiting to bite your dick off," Blitz said.

"I hardly think spending time with me is 'too good to be true'," Stolas said, nevertheless preening at the half-said compliment that the implication imposed.

"Well, yeah. You're rich as fuck, you can take dick like a champion, and you don't hate my guts. That Venn Diagram ain't supposed to have an overlapping middle bit," Blitz pointed out, pointing a chunk of bloody, pale meat at him.

"Isn't that exactly what all Venn Diagrams do?" Stolas found himself somewhat caught out by that claim.

"Well, not in my experience," Blitz said.

"Then I'm giving you a new experience," Stolas declared.

"Yeah. Sure," he said, but though dismissive, it didn't sound anywhere near as despairing as it had been before.

"So if I may ask… what brought this on in particular? You suddenly were taken by this mood, and…" Stolas began.

"Oh, fuck. Do you think maybe I was getting brain-fucked by a that weird shit in Alabama?" Blitz said, his distant look now replaced with ire. "Son of a bitch. I thought that job was a shit-show. How fuckin' dare you fiddle with my brain you eye-less cum stain!"

"There's my darling Blitzie and his wonderful defiance!" Stolas gave a delighted clap.

"Yeah, like shit am I gonna go moping around 'cause some dead fuck did his mind-bullshit on me. Gimme another plate. My appetite's back and when I'm done you better not be wearing pants!"

"Oh, my," Stolas said.

"Yeah, that's my seven minute warning, Stolas. When I'm done here, I'm startin' on you!"

Stolas snapped his fingers, eager to have his servants feed his lover all the quicker if it could lead to the expected result. As he was doing so, there was a strangled yelp from Blitzie's pocket. He picked it up. Blitz frowned at it for a second.

"What is it, my sweet?" he asked.

"Didn't get my 'everything's okay' call from Loonie, and the alarm went off," Blitz said.

"Isn't she an adult, that adopted daughter of yours?"

"Yeah, well, when she's out-of-Ring she promised to keep me up to date on shit, so that she didn't end up in prison somewhere in the ass end of Sloth or some shit," Blitz said. He shrugged. "But she's just in Gluttony. And in Gluttony she's more likely to get plastered and have a three-way with Beelzebub then anything bad."

"You say that with a surprising amount of confidence," Stolas noted.

"Oh, that big-bitch is famous for her slumming," Blitz said, as the first servant, a prideling imp not an inch over a foot tall, entered the room with the platter held above his head. Blitz ignored the food and quickly thumb-dialed something. "Eh, well, she's probably fine. She's got that guy, what was his name? Maelstrom! She's got Maelstrom with her. Nobody will be able to touch a hair on her back."

"It's good to see you shaking your doldrums. Although frankly I hadn't expected that you'd do it so quickly," Stolas admitted.

"There ain't much point in dwelling on bullshit when there's nothing you can do about it. And this food is actually fucking good; how in the shit did you learn these recipes?"

"I read a lot," Stolas said.

"Nerd," Blitz said with a degree of affection, then began to fill his gas-tank for the amorous race that he promised was approaching.


Given the many places that they could have built the exclusion chamber, Moxxie knew that there was one that was more ideal than most.

After all, what better way to restrict people from saying anything or interrupting its creation than by having all of the workers and supplies be routed directly to the Manse of the Proxy of Lucifer?

Wayland and Beatrice were scooting around, since Beatrice had started to proto-crawl nearly as early as Wayland did. Wayland, though, was on the verge of walking, still not yet quite able to keep himself upright, and defaulting to a four-limbed zoom to get around. The atmosphere in the building was getting more tense by the hour. Because every hour that passed was one that brought them closer to Monday Morning, and the IMP Group Founders Meeting that everybody was expected to attend. And when that happened, and Loona, being too immaterial to take up a chair, was absent, Blitz would learn what happened, and then immediately burn down half of hell in a suicide run against whomever killed her. Only the infants were immune to the tension. In that way, Moxxie envied them.

"I admit, I'm still at a loss as to what this is about," Saffron said, where she was shadowing Wayland to ensure he didn't vanish the way he had when Millie was still pregnant. And Wayland did his very best to repeat his performance, make no mistake. "Your bloody work obviously earned you a fair bit of money, but… I don't understand the point of it."

Moxxie gave a look toward the front door, which was open and had a procession of tiny Prideling imps file through, carrying electronics parts that they would likely have to install in very awkward places. Saffron followed his eyes, then sighed and nodded, gently pulling Wayland back into their TV room by his little tail and sliding the door shut in front of him.

"Remember how it nearly killed me to bring you back to life?" Moxxie asked.

"We're not revealing that to them, I guess. Fair enough. What of that?" Saffron asked, picking up Wayland and gently swishing him through the air so that he wouldn't get fussy.

"With Loona it's going to be worse, and harder," Moxxie said.

"I presume you owe some debt to this 'Loona', considering that she's not even of our race."

"She's a coworker. And more than that, she's a comrade," Millie piped up, finally having returned from binning a dirty diaper.

Moxxie gave a glance to the wall, but nodded. He spoke quieter, now. "Loona, Millie and I have been through… changes. Things that changed what we are and what we're capable of. Things that maybe even changed what Loona even is," Moxxie said.

"So you owe her for aiding this killing of that Nathan Birch fellow?" Saffron asked, with a nod as though that made sense. To a Satanist, one's debts were sacred, and paying back was an act of sacrament.

"It's more than that," Moxxie said. His mother lofted a brow at her. "The three of us… we're changing things. I can't explain really how an imp can make any claim of having a destiny, but… it feels like Hell needs all three of us, growing ever stronger, for something that's to come."

Saffron gave a distant chuckle, and gave Wayland a brief squeeze, halting in her swinging of the babe – which caused Wayland to immediately begin to struggle to be loose of her – and nodded. "There are days, when I fear that nothing I've taught you has stuck to you. That Crimson erased all the work I did in raising you. And then you say something like that."

"Is… that a compliment?" Millie asked.

There was a metal snap, cutting off Saffron's answer. The Radio Demon appeared in the TV room, and without a glance back immediately swung his cane back and shattered Moxxie's flat-screen. If it weren't Alastor, and Moxxie were about nine-tenths of a brain dumber, he would have offered a voiced complaint about that. But he knew better than to trifle with such forces. Besides, he could fix it with his bare hands and his magic, now.

"I presume that construction is continuing apace?" the Radio Demon asked, as he looked around the room. "And I must say, little Thaumaturge, you have a much better eye for the aesthetic than that wet-smack ever did. How positively homely!"

"Thanks. I've put the work into it," Moxxie said, flatly. Alastor turned to Saffron suddenly, and she recoiled, her hands crossed over her chest.

"And you seem to be returning to your place in the great flow of your kind. Do you still have nightmares of shadow and suffocation?" Alastor asked.

"That's enough," Moxxie said, moving to the Radio Demon's elbow and glaring up at him.

"You simply must develop a sense of humor, little fellow. The stress will wear out your heart otherwise," Alastor said. He flexed his arm, and his cane vanished from existence. While adjusting his monocle, he panned his gaze around their gathering. "So where are the lady-miracle worker and the winged one?"

"Downstairs, overseeing construction," Moxxie said. He picked up the slowly scooting Beatrice before she could dare get close to the Radio Demon, and passed the girl to Millie. Wait a second. Where was Wayland?

"Well, then that's where we need to go," the Radio Demon said. "Lead on; while I have some knowledge of the layout of this manor, it behooves a host to actually guide their guest."

"Bold of you to presume you're a guest," Moxxie muttered.

"Would you care to repeat that more loudly?" Alastor asked.

"You're not a guest. You're an aide. And when the job is done, so will you be," Moxxie said.

Alastor stared at him. Glared even. Then he laughed. "Oh, you really are starting to emulate your namesake. Keep developing that reservoir of chutzpah, and you might be able to throw fists against a Deadly Sin!"

"I'll put that on my bucket list," Moxxie said, sotto.

"Lemme just show him so he gets outta our hair," Millie again proved to be the diplomat when Moxxie's ire and the Radio Demon's cruelty was involved. Moxxie nodded, and she led them past the workers who were consistently moving up and down the little stairwell that ran under the front ascent, that lead to the thoroughly dungeon-esque basement of this place. The sounds of labor, construction equipment, and power-tools sounded as soon as they started down the stairs. The walkway toward the 'fun room' now also opened into another chamber, which Birch'd had bricked up with all of the people whom he wanted to watch slowly die, unable to feed or water themselves because of his commands. Now that the bodies were out and the stench of old rot was power-washed away, it was home to a new construction. It took up most of the space of that grotto under the basements of the high and mighty, its triangular facets pressed up against the rough hewn stone of central Pride Ring.

And it was cold.

Despite the number of people in close proximity, despite the welding torches and riveters and soldering irons connecting circuit panels, the room was goose-bump raising, as though the structure itself sucked the heat out of the room and left a strange dread in its place.

"Glorious," Alastor said. A Sinner nearby turned at the voice, let out a shriek, and then fled the chamber entirely. "I never thought I'd see the day when one of these was gracing the layers of Hell. I consider this a red-letter day for my durance down here in the pit."

"How much more work is there?" Moxxie refused to interface with the Radio Demon's nostalgia, asking the foreman of this strange work.

"Maybe an hour of structural work. The tech-work is the bitch of it. We'll be here all night," the unusually hairy Dream Eater said, rubbing at the beard that very few of his kind ever had the wherewithal to grow. Most Dream Eaters had moss, if they wanted anything approaching 'facial hair', and few had anything other than leaves atop their heads. They were a strange clade, those wandering plant-fiends of Sloth. "Might have been done faster if we knew what the fuck this thing was."

"Do you see him?" Moxxie asked, gesturing over his shoulder to the towering crime-against-sanity-in-a-red-suit that now formed eddies of terrified Hellspawn around him with his very presence. "If you don't know what you're building, you go home and I never contact you again. If you know what you're building, you end up leaving with him."

"Is that some sort of threat?" The Dream Eater seemed very unamused.

"I don't threaten workers, because that doesn't help their efficiency and survivability. I warn them," Moxxie said. He then turned and looked to the vague blob of energy that was floating nearby. "We're going to be cutting it pretty close to the wire… but I think we've got this."

"Wait, seriously?" Loona's echo asked. "Man, being dead is weird. You completely lose track of time."

"I imagine not having a heartbeat or a sense of hunger would do that to you," Moxxie said.

"Who is Moxxie talking to?" Saffron asked of Millie.

"Oh, 'parently Loona went and got herself…" Millie began, then broke off with a suspicious look. "Where's Wayland?"

Saffron finally looked at the empty bundle of blankets in her arms, and snarled. "Satan damn it! How does he keep doing that?"

"Now, if my memory serves me (which it infallibly does)," Alastor said, which baffled Moxxie how he could vocalize parentheticals, "I recall there being a discussion of… price."

Maelstrom, who had been glaring at the workers and silently keeping them on task and off of breaks the entire time, nodded. He sighed, rising to his feet and standing before the Radio Demon in the zone of exclusion that Alastor's simple presence always created. "Get it over with," Maelstrom said.

"You know, a few hours ago, I would have done exactly that, but I've had those few hours to ponder," the Radio Demon said. He leaned down toward Maelstrom, staring him in the eye. "And I realized that pulling that seed from the soil is a bit premature. It's only just germinated. I want to see what kind of plant springs from it."

"What?"

"Right, you don't know," Alastor said. He turned to the others with a showman's pose. "Do any of you care? Small imp woman? Little Thaumaturge? Other little thaumaturge."

"My name is Krieg damn it!" Krieg complained from her place up on the walkway surrounding the structure itself.

"Whatever. You, dead woman! I know you're interested!" Alastor said with a flourish.

"I'd say 'somebody just kill me', but somebody already did," Loona's echo muttered. Alastor answered by forming a circle with his fingers, then pulling it open as though stretching out a wire. When the ring he formed was about fifteen centimeters wide, he flicked it hard at Maelstrom's chest. The 'ring' which was merely notional until that moment, somehow flew across the distance and impacted into the Hellhound right outside of his heart; within that ring, meat and bone and pelt fell away, not even revealing his beating heart, but instead a meat-encased something which clearly made Maelstrom uncomfortable and unsteady.

"The nature of the Hellhound's soul is that of a dry gas, colorless but hot. So tell me, what do you make of this?" Alastor said, and then he struck out with his cane in a lightning-fast blow that nobody could intercept, lancing that fistula of meat and causing bright red smoke to escape from it. With a wrench, the cane was pulled loose, and Maelstrom fell onto his side; the red smoke continued to rise in the air, until it pooled on the ceiling like some inverted incense. Alastor beckoned, and the smoke came back down, hovering in a ring above his hand. "This is not a Hellhound's soul; it would be colorless. Or perhaps, it is not merely a Hellhound's soul. What did you do, dead Hound?"

"I… don't know," Loona's echo sounded deeply disturbed. Frankly, Moxxie was too.

"Did you make him like you?" Krieg demanded. With a gesture, the smoke slammed back into Maelstrom's chest and he stopped shivering. "Because if you did, I demand you do it to me also! I wish the strength to rip my enemies in twain!"

"Krieg, you can already do that in like, five different ways," Uller said, trying to be the chain to sanity for her.

"Not with my bare hands!" Krieg groused, holding up her fists.

"Yes, you have a spell that lets you do that, too. Don't be greedy," Uller said, again his patience frayed.

"If my theory is correct, it wouldn't work on you anyway," Alastor said with an off-hand gesture toward Krieg, before snapping the fingers of that hand and causing the hole in Maelstrom's chest to vanish. He took a deep breath, and pushed himself back to his feet. "After all, you are an imp, and he is not. So tell me, unchained dog; do you remember your dreams of late?"

"This isn't relevant," Moxxie said.

Alastor laughed. "I will decide what is relevant."

"All of them, to one degree or another," Maelstrom said, still hunched, as clearly whatever Alastor had done to him was painful.

"Since when?" the Radio Demon prodded.

"Since I I ripped Birch's face off," Maelstrom asked. Alastor's grin grew with lunatic delight.

"So much earlier than I thought! You!" he pointed toward the floating blob of energy which was the whole remnant of Loona's consciousness and life. "When you fought that pathetic waste of words and ego, what did you do to this young pup? What exactly?"

"I… I mean, I used my Purgatorial bullshit to come up with a way to convince him not to attack me, and then fed him some bacon…" Loona's echo began.

"No, not what you used on him. What did you do to him?"

"Wait, you used powers on me?" Maelstrom asked.

"Of course. Face it, Mal, if you and I fought, you'd rip me in half," Loona's echo stressed. She made a noise that called to mind puffing out a breath, but more strangulated because right now Loona didn't have a mouth to do so through. "Okay, talked to him, got him to calm down… Oh, and I made it so he was immune to Birch's voice bullshit."

Alastor stared at the empty space which was technically taken up by Loona.

"Did… did you not hear me? I said I gave him my immunity to–" Loona's echo repeated.

"I heard you. How?"

"What do you mean? The same way I share anything. I just… did it,"

"And you didn't question that his strength was such that it could break the armored skin of a Gargoyle Sinner, despite their skin being proof against some anti-tank weaponry?" Alastor pressed.

"Maelstrom is strong. We all know that," Moxxie said.

"There is strong, and then there is strength beyond strength, Little Thaumaturge. Tell me; who would Maelstrom be most closely associated with, in your eyes, in terms of raw output of destructive might."

"I mean, I'd say maybe he's close to Millie, but…" Moxxie said, and then trailed off. Alastor grinned smugly.

"Did… I turn him into somebody like me?" Loona's echo asked.

"Something like, not something identical. And given that he is still obviously in his metaphysical nascence, it would be premature to harvest that fascinating soul of his and see what makes it tick. Better to let it grow. See the shape of the tree it sprouts," Alastor said. "You might be a pale reflection of her, but even pale reflections are useful. And I guarantee you, unchained dog; when that topiary that is your being has flourished to its most fascinating extent, I will collect it. And there is nothing that any of you," he swept his finger along those gathered here, including the workers because he was inclusive like that, "will be able to do to stop me."

"So a stay of execution then," Maelstrom said.

"Until you begin to bore me," Alastor agreed. And then with a chuckle, he melted into the shadows and vanished from the room. Moxxie turned to the blob of energy next to him.

"Don't look at me! I just wanted Maestrom to be able to kick his boss in the dick!" Loona's echo stated.

"Which admittedly was fun," Maelstrom said.

"Look, Maelstrom," Loona's echo drifted toward him, coming to a halt directly in front of him. "I don't care what that red-jacketed shit-ass says. When I get back, I will be fucking damned if I let him take your soul."

"You can't stop him," Maelstrom said.

"Hey! You knock that pessimistic bullshit right the fuck off! We're Hellhounds goddamn it! You're not a slave to Birch, and you're not a slave to fuckin' Alastor either! Fuck that ticking-clock bullshit, fuck his ultimatum, fuck his promises, fuck his deals, and fuck him. If he wants you, he'll have to go through me first. And I figure most of the guys at Dennys would say likewise!" Loona's echo pressed.

Maelstrom got a little smile on his face at that. "I guess I'll just have to keep going, if only to prevent the senseless massacre of all my friends."

"That's the spirit," Loona said. There was a pause. "How long until it's done again?"

That answer could only be answered by waiting. Waiting, and watching as the clock on the wall ticked ever higher. Four AM. Five. Six.

Seven in the morning, the sun rising in the sky, and finally the massive construction 'turned on', pulling power from the power grid and emitting an almost suffocating silence. The workers exchanged high-fives, and began to file out, leaving only the Purgatory Crew, plus Uller and Maelstrom, in the chamber.

"So… how does it work?"

"Open the door," Alastor's voice came from directly behind Moxxie. He turned, but the Radio Demon wasn't actually there. "And throw the carcass inside. Then you start your little ritual."

"And why aren't you standing here watching?" Moxxie demanded.

"I will be when you start. Do you think I'm allowing you little hellspawn to monopolize my time? The plates I keep spinning each day are legion," the Radio Demon said.

Moxxie turned a look first to Loona's incorporeal echo, then to Maelstrom and his garbage bag full of slowly decomposing hellhound. Loona's echo seemed to catch his hint, drifting toward the machine. But at the door, it stopped. "Huh. I can't get in there," Loona said. "Should I just… pass through it?"

Maelstrom didn't answer her, merely opening the robust hatch that lead into the beyond-beyond black innards of the device. With the hatch now open, the ball of energy slipped past him and into the shadow. Even with a light-source staring directly into the doors, the light utterly failed to pass so much as a centimeter past the door. When Maelstrom stepped inside, he vanished as though falling out of the world for the few moments it took to deposit Loona's corpse with some small trifle of dignity, then come back out.

Kreig, though, was standing with her hands on the structure itself. "This thing alive is a wholly other beast to it inactive. I would very much like to know how you discovered how to make this," Krieg said.

"Research and provenance," Alastor said, as his body finally rejoined them in the gap around the device. "Go on then. Let's see this appliance in action."

Moxxie would have liked to interrogate that, but the clock was ticking, and they had less than two hours until they were expected to make a morning meeting with a deeply sentimental man. Instead, he arranged himself opposite Krieg on the narrow walkway surrounding the geodesic sphere which took up much of the device's volume. And he began to press his personal magic out.

Unlike in the Pride Wilds, not only was there no Vis Crux to supplement the resurrection, but the urban nature of Central Pentagram actively stifled it a bit. But still, he focused his mind, and bade his magic flow into a very specific pattern. It was the pattern that Krieg had been holding during the revivification of Saffron. And Krieg now held the much more intricate pattern that The Bard had wielded. But the pattern was different.

Very different.

And not just 'different because the target was a Hellhound'.

In fact, by the way she was leaning away from the sphere (breaching the 'horizon' of it in doing so), something entirely unexpected was happening. But considering that they'd put down no Vital Fluid or ritual oils, maybe that was it?

His confusion became alarm, as suddenly he felt as though the sum of his personal magic felt like something grabbed physically ahold of it, and began to drag it out of him, not in the metered rate that he was allowing but with incredible discomfort and dread. He wagered this must be what humans felt like when their intestines were pulled out; as an imp, Moxxie had little frame of reference for it, and didn't know that disembowling was actually insanely painful of its own right.

"Something is wrong! It's pulling my…" Krieg began.

Then there was a dull gong sound inside the structure, and the dragging sensation which had lasted no more than twelve seconds ended, leaving both Moxxie and Krieg to stumbled backward. Krieg outright fell off of the walkway, only to have Uller get flattened trying to catch her. Moxxie was able at least to not stumble off onto the floor.

"...what just happened?" Maelstrom asked, still standing at the bottom of the stairs up to the walkway and the hatch.

And then the hatch opened.

And Loona was standing blinking against the light, her clothes utterly unruffled, not so much as a drop of blood on her, looking as though she'd just stepped out of her apartment before work instead of out of an impossible, strange machine which now had a permanent residence in Moxxie's basement.

"Fantastic," Alastor said, with a broad grin. "Exactly as I suspected. Exactly as I had hoped."

He then turned and began to stride away without another word of explanation. As though he no longer cared what came of this thing, that he'd gotten what he'd wanted from it.

"Okay, can you guys see me WOW," Loona cut herself off. "I just heard myself. That is weird. That is so weird."

"Loona," Maelstrom said.

"Welcome back," Millie said with a happy smile.

"Oh thank God for that," Loona said. She paused, looking at them all. "Fuck, guys; you all look like shit."

"Considering the lengths we went in the time we had, you're goddamned welcome!" Uller was the one who was indignant at that. Krieg still seemed dizzy.

"Right, right. Sorry about that. Seriously, you guys kicked ass tonight. Hold on is that clock right?"

"Yeah," Moxxie said, the adrenaline fading and his fatigue setting in.

"We've got like an hour before the IMP Group meeting," she pointed out.

"Yeah, I know," Moxxie said.

Loona muttered something incoherent under her breath. "Well at least it all worked out. Maelstrom. Mal. Buddy," she said, planting her arms on his shoulders. "I owe you. I owe you biiiiig. I can't thank you enough for this. Until you started hearing me, I figured I'd just have to lay there rotting, which was scary as fuck!"

"Yeah, well… even dead you're really loud," Maelstrom said with a chuckle. And Moxxie joined him in that chuckle.

One crisis averted at least.

Or at least delayed, until Blitz found out about it some other way. But that was a future problem, which Future Moxxie would have to solve.


Despite now being half-way through his forties by dint of time-traveling bullshit, Blitz was not tired. He hadn't been tired when he spent twelve years wandering the Earth a half-step ahead of things trying to kill him. He hadn't been tired when he spent three years killing Nazis in the Red Army. And he hadn't been tired in the neverending buildup to the deeply satisfying assassination of Nathan Birch.

He had no wall he would crash into, no point to which there was an end to his endurance and his body would simply state (not demand, outright state) 'NO MORE'. While he might slow down a bit as fatigue started to set in, at no point did he collapse and cease until his body recovered. If his spirit was eager, then his body obeyed. Unless he passed out, but that didn't count, damnit.

So yeah, he'd ended up spending most of the weekend fucking the ever loving shit out of Stolas, which definitely cleared his head after that Evergreen bullshit, and left him with a spring in his step as he strode into the building. He didn't even flinch and recoil when he saw that Verosika was waiting on the same elevator he was.

"Somebody got railed," Verosika muttered, her tones more approaching envy than scorn.

"Forty straight hours," Blitz declared proudly, fists planted on his hips in a heroic pose.

"Bullshit. You always tapped out after two with me," the Succubus contended. He thrust a finger at her as the door dinged and the elevator closed.

"Name a time and a place, bitch: I'll show you who's tapping out after two hours!" Blitz said. It never occurred to him that he'd just side-ways propositioned her. But since Verosika rolled her eyes rather than interface with his statement, it slipped by as effortlessly as shame off of a Prideling Imp's personality.

The lift dinged as the doors opened, and the Sinner about to step on looked at the two of them, thought again, and let the doors slide shut and carry them further up without him.

"Still with that Goetia guy?" Verosika asked.

"Are you makin' fucking small-talk with me?" Blitz immediately turned to face her.

"What? Fuck you, I can be civil!" Verosika said.

"Like the time you burned 'Blitzø Has A Baby-Penis' onto my van door?" Blitz demanded. "Which happened FIVE FUCKIN' MONTHS before we actually broke up!"

"You mocked my tits!"

"I said that dress made 'em flop sideways, which it fuckin' did!" Blitz shouted back.

"And you were flirting with my assistant!" Verosika snapped.

"So were you! I thought we were about to have a three-way!" Blitz refused to be cowed.

The door dinged. It was Blitz's floor.

"I always flirt! That's my brand!" Verosika pointed out.

"Bitch I trademarked that shit!" Blitz said.

"You have to be the most frustrating little shit in all of Hell," Verosika said, her hands tensed as though she wanted to strangle him.

"And you've got to have the baggiest cunt on Creation. Are we done here?" Blitz asked.

There was a moment of silence.

"...that feels so goddamned nostalgic," Verosika said, her ire ebbing.

"Yeah. Like old times," Blitz admitted, his own anger fading. With chipper tone, he added, "See ya 'round!"

She just stared after him as he made his once-more chipper way off of the elevator and toward his office.

When he opened the door, he immediately heard snoring. Well that put a damper on things.

He moseyed into the board-room, which played host to Moxxie and Millie, who were both passed the fuck out in their chairs with their faces mashed against the table. Maelstrom looked not much better, his eyes unsteadily blinking and wavering as though he were only a hair's-breadth from joining the imps. Krieg and Uller were knocked out in their own chairs, with Krieg half-way from outright slumping out of her chair and onto his. Loona looked fine, sitting back with her feet up on the table playing on her phone.

"Welcome to the morning meeting, boss!" Desdemona said brightly, which startled the fuck out of Blitz to the point where he almost drew on her.

"What the fuck is this?" he asked, pointing at the fact that most of his crew was dead on their feet.

"I don't know, sir," the cheerful Lustling imp said. "I think they had a late night."

"Late night, why would you have a… You fuckin' reee—can't say that word anymore: you bunch'a nimrods know that you're supposed to party on Saturday night, not fuckin' Sunday, don't you? I mean, even I know that 'cha spend Sunday hung over so you ain't on Monday. This is just shameful. Shameful disgraceful behavior. I expected better out of you, Moxx."

Moxxie, who was thoroughly asleep, didn't respond to his barb.

"Eh, be easy on 'em. They had a rough weekend," Loona said from her seat.

"And why didn't you call me? I thought we had a system damn it!" Blitz demanded, stabbing his palm with a fingertip. She then held up her Hellphone. Her new Hellphone.

"Some shithead broke my old one. I got this one on my way in this morning. I still gotta set up all the fucking preferences…" Loona said, allowing her frustration into her voice.

"Fine, then," Blitz said. He leaned toward the pleasant new receptionist he'd hired. "You might wanna cover your ears, kid."

Des didn't question him, merely clapping her hands over her head near the base of her horns, while Blitz reached into his jacket, pulled out his Convertible Rifle, and then laced a bunch of shots into the ceiling. Moxxie and Millie both screamed themselves awake, and Maelstrom blinked his way into momentary coherence. Uller and Krieg remained unconscious.

"Good. Now let's get this business shit going. I don't pay y'all to fucking sleep!" Blitz declared.


"I'll be the first to admit, getting killed sucks.

It sucked the first time it happened. It sucked the second time it happened, and the third, and the fourth. And let's be frank, I didn't exactly help things by keeping on showing up after somebody spent a lot of money to kill me, and ended with an assassin swearing up-and-down that they actually managed to do it. But that's the thing about the Oaths. It wasn't the 37 Oaths which made me what I am. It was Maelstrom and the others. It was Vortex and Tiffany's kids. It wasn't me who started that landslide. It was all of us.

That was a surprise, too. I know that Samael apparently did some shit, changing people permanently, making them stronger. I just didn't expect that I'd be able to do likewise. And frankly, when it comes to humans, I can't. You creatures are too damned weird for my particular brand of bullshit to latch-on to. Are you alive? Are you dead? Who the fuck knows? My abilities certainly don't! But yeah. You put me next to a Hellhound and give me a couple minutes, I can make them into something new. Something strong. Something that we should have had a chance to be a long time ago.

What I've done for Maelstrom, I did for others. Why do you think so many of us survived that bullshit war your kind brought down on our heads? A lot of those ones, though… a lot of good people didn't make it. And even with all that my power's given him, Maelstrom's starting to get old. He deserves to have a chance to retire, no matter what he thinks. Fifty five fucking years in the meat-grinder is long enough. At least Hell's starting to get it's shit together to the point where Hounds can be born, Pop, grow old, and die without having some asshole holding them by the leash.

...

All of them. I'm not even joking. People, if you've got a pup that won't Pop, give me a call; I've got lots of free time these days, and it only takes a second. Every pup deserves a chance to be what we are."

–Loona 'The Undying' Miller