The Song of Ruin

by James Golen

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

50. Reunions

Dismas Cruikshank was tired. He was tired into his very bones, his muscles either locked rock-solid such that they could no longer flex, or else so weak that they hung as noodles connected to his tendons. His head constantly ached, and even just the weight of his own horns pressed down on him such that he was left always forward-hunched. Eyes, lidded, looked at the black that was the province of the imp in Envy. Though an Imp of his clade could still see in such absolute darkness, in a strange sort of black-against-black that he hadn't the language to describe to one who couldn't experience it as he did, it was still draining to be in utter darkness for years on end.

There was a cold in him, one that left him unable to shiver. He was so tired, and he looked to his boys again, summoning the courage in his heart to finally make the request of them that would see him free. To wheel him into the midden room and then just… leave.

To let him rot amongst rot. So they wouldn't have to take up his useless body and four portions of quota instead of just the three that they would need without him. At this point, there was nothing left Dismas could offer to his boys other than wasted air, wasted food, and wasted time. And his boys were nearly men, now. They would be better off without him, able to find their own women, start their own families.

And yet, coward that he was, he never said those words. To let him go. To live without him.

In the end, he just sat in his wheelchair, itself an awkward and clapped-together thing made from scrap-metal and with jagged edges in random places that kept it from ever being comfortable or efficient. Its wheels were made of wood, often lodging splinters into his palm, and jostling him with every bump they traveled over. His seat was two plates of metal, which had been welded improperly for some greater use then cut out and thrown away; if he didn't shift constantly and uncomfortably, he'd develop pressure sores.

And still, despite all the effort and time that his boys put into making it, he would rather have dragged himself through the dirt. If only there were some magic or wish that he could have granted that they simply forgot about him. Moved on without the guilt or pain of losing him.

"Dad?" Njord leaned into the room that the old man sat in existential misery. Dismas forced none of it to show on his face. An imp should bear his pain in stoicism and grace, not spread it to those he cared about. "Sneed is calling for us."

"Oh, what is this now?" Dismas asked, his voice a dry whisper. Too many days tasking his throat, the last faculty he had that still worked, to shouting orders to an army of indentured, uneducated laborers had strained his voice to the point where it collapsed, leaving him in his current, utterly useless state. He couldn't even direct people anymore. Black blood, he'd become so useless.

"Don't know. Just that he called for all of us," Njord said. He navigated through the communal kitchen and dining-area that their shared group of indentures shared. It was empty now, because right now was one of those awkward hours of the morning, too late to be for the 4:00 am breakfast, too early for the 11:00 am lunch. The eldest of Dismas' remaining, indentured sons took his place and began to push Dismas' chair, out of the pitch-black dining area and into a pitch-black hallway, flanked with doors that each opened to a small barracks where families would rest their degrading bodies at the end of each sixteen hour work day.

"When you say 'all of us'?" Dismas asked.

"All of Rotation G," Njord said. Dismas frowned, wondering what grim unpleasantness was approaching them. They turned a corner, also in pitch-black, before they finally started to see light ahead of them. Dismas' eyes narrowed, as they navigated directly toward that light. He grumbled and pulled out his smoked spectacles, putting them on his face so that he wouldn't be squinting the entire time like a rube. He glanced back, and saw that Njord wasn't. Dismas immediately took off his spectacles and handed them up to his boy.

"I don't need them," Njord said, though his eyes were nearly pressed shut against the intrusive light they approached. Dismas just stared at him flatly, and the elder-teenager groaned and accepted Dismas' attempt at being not a waste of skin. He put them on, and Dismas weathered the blinding light and headache as they rounded the corner, and entered the overseer's work area. The overseer, a Mutant, needed that headache-inducing light to do his work, and damn the light-sensitive imps who didn't. It sat there like a beacon on his desk, a single lamp that flooded the room and practically tingled Dismas' skin.

The overseer wasn't alone. There was a Hellhound with him, one towering over the mutant and the imps who were gathering alike, one wearing clothing far finer than the Overseer's, his sleeves rolled up to show arms corded with muscles that could likely shift boulders larger than he was. He was a black-and-tan thing that emitted an aura of undiluted menace, staring at the situation before him with a distinct distaste. But when his eyes fell on Dismas, even through his squinting eyes, he could tell that disdain was not at the imps. No… his anger seemed directed at the Overseer more than anything.

"Dad, what's going on?" Hermodr asked. Unlike Njord, Dismas' third son wore a blindfold at all times; even the black was too bright for him.

"I don't know," Dismas said. He looked over, and saw Vidar, his youngest, not yet a man, glaring at the Hellhound as though he thought he could take the monster in a fight. Vidar needed years yet to know that an imp's place wasn't the top of anything. Hopefully he'd learn that lesson before the learning killed him.

The other families in Rotation G were already here, likely because they didn't need to waste time getting a cripple out of his corner to come. He didn't know many people in the other Rotations, but G were good people. He prayed inwardly that no misery came to any of them because of all this. Pity nobody out there was likely to heed the prayers of a crippled imp.

Then the door opened, and even with the painful brightness of the room, Dismas' eyes grew wider. Because he could as soon mistake that face as rise up from this chair and dance a night away. Uller. Uller now looked like a version of Dismas that Dismas had never had a chance to be, tall, strong, his wings twitching at his back as he, too, glared at the Overseer.

"This is all of them?" Uller asked.

"You asked for Rotation G? This is Rotation G," the Overseer said. Said with oily and obsequious tone, even. Did he not… no. No he didn't. Uller did have that great scar on his face, now, cleaving from his brow to his hairline, and didn't look nearly pathetic enough to belong here. His clothes, too, were better than anybody's but the Overseer's, but there were differences; his were clearly of fine make, but had been beaten ragged, splashed and stained with black blood, and some other strangely golden fluid. Dismas' eldest didn't seem to care.

"Twenty thousand for the lot," Uller said.

"Oh, please. It'd cost ten times that to replace them," the Overseer suddenly dropped his oiliness and sounded offended.

"I don't care," Uller said. "You either accept my money, or I make that offer to your heir."

"My son doesn't have anything to do with this!" the Overseer pointed out.

"He will once he's the inheritor of your property," Uller said, and the massive Hellhound cracked his knuckles, a sound which called to mind those perilous moments of crunching stone that presaged a cave-in. "Twenty thousand, for all of them, which is their market price. Or you die, and I make that offer, plus your mangled corpse, to your boy. And if he doesn't take that offer, that same offer, plus both of your mangled corpses to his brother. And so on. And so on."

"You wouldn't dare," the Overseer bolted to his feet, his chair crashing to the floor and one of the young girls of the other families in G let out a peep of fear. Uller didn't hesitate; he twisted his hand and called some silently shrieking grey skull of smoke from nothing and flicked it toward the Overseer. The Overseer shrieked as though he were being skinned alive as it washed over him, falling to the floor and thrashing like he was suffering a fit. The hellhound leaned down and grabbed him by his jaw, lifting him from the floor as his screaming finally stopped. From the overseer's leg dribbled a thin stream of urine.

"I have fought Angels in their own home. Don't tell me what I don't dare to do," Uller said, as the Hellhound held the man. Uller reached into his slightly torn jacket, and pulled out a pair of bank-fresh bricks of Souls, still banded shut, and held them up. "Twenty thousand, or you die screaming, and what's left of you is thrown in front of your son."

"Deal!" the Overseer said, desperately. Uller nodded, and the Hellhound held him by the back of his neck so that the man could quickly gather up all of their indentures and quickly sign them over, while Uller calmly-as-you-please tucked the twenty thousand into one of the Overseer's coat-pockets. Uller waited until all the paperwork was in order, then scrawled his name atop them. "Now release me! I won't be treated in this fashion!"

"So you say," Uller said. He turned to the Hound. "Maelstrom? I don't need him anymore."

And then Maelstrom the Hellhound, without hesitation, drew the Overseer's head back before smashing it so hard against the corner of that great stone desk that it sheared a notch straight through the Mutant's skull and brain, spraying all the paperwork with blood and brain-matter, before dropping the carcass to the floor to pool blood. Uller nodded.

"Couldn't have happened to a nicer fellow," Uller muttered. Dismas just stared at his boy, who turned down the lamp so that it no longer inspired a headache. Dismas wanted to ask so many questions, but his eldest son pulled out a Hellphone and started to make a call. "Mal, make sure the money's nice and obvious for whatever bastard finds him. Krieg? …Yes, I know three months is a lot longer than I expected. But I found him. No. What? No I didn't… Seriously? Krieg, you… no no, we can talk about this face to face. Could you open a portal to me? I'm in Envy, and if I try to Portal up to you it might kill me. Actually! Open it one floor down. In the lobby."

There was a pause, and then Uller smiled and nodded. "I love you, too," he said. He then hung up.

"Son… what is this insanity?" Dismas asked.

"Did you really think I was going to let you live under that asshole's thumb any longer than I absolutely had to? Give me more credit than that," Uller said. He looked to his younger half-siblings, then to the others in G. "Everybody grab up whatever you can't stand to be without. I'm leaving here in fifteen minutes, and I want all of you to come with me."

---

Chapter 50

Reunions

---

Charlie had gotten a call at a rather awkward hour in the morning, fully two hours before she had intended to awaken. And having to untangle herself from Vaggie to pick up the call had done her annoyance no favors. So when a call from Fort Abandon was routed to her Hellphone, she was prepared for either the worst, or the most annoying.

"Who is this and why are you calling me at five AM?" Charlie had groused, sitting on her side of the bed as Vaggie made unhappy noises now that she had deprecated from the little spoon to the only spoon.

"Sorry. Forgot about the time-zone difference between here and Heaven," Roz's voice was on the other side of the line. "But that's not important right now. Could you come up to Fort Abandon? Immediately, I mean?"

"It is five. In the morning," Charlie pointed out.

"And by seven they might kill me. So… quickly please?" Roz said.

"Why are they going to kill you? You know what, fine! Fine! I'm getting up. But you'd better have the best explanation for all of this that could possibly exist, or I promise you I'll never let you hear the end of it!" Charlie'd snarled as she got up and began to put on some clothing because there was no way in sin that Charlie was going to make the trip up there in her birthday suit.

"Fantastic. You are, quite literally, a lifesaver," Roz had said. And then there was another voice cutting in.

"That's your call. I hope it was worth it, woman," the voice was gruff and ended with mocking laughter as the call abruptly ended. Probably a Devourer by the sound of it. While Charlie very much wanted to be spiteful and drag her heels, that was not the kind thing to do. And Charlie still prided herself on being one of the people fixated on doing the kind thing.

Still, there was a heavy sensation in her stomach as she approached the Palace of Iron. Though the structure was still only partially built, it was already looking a lot more put-together than Wendy had spoken of. Maybe Wendy just didn't care about military things, though; she had her own business to attend to. Charlie hoped she was doing alright. Ever since that unexpected visit to the Hotel, Charlie hadn't seen eye nor hair of the Redemptor.

The Heaven portal snapped open as she approached it, ignoring their usual schedule because despite her not explicitly demanding it, she was still the Princess of the Low Throne. She got priority over a lot of things. Passing through, she finally looked with her own eyes and saw what she had only seen through pictures and video before now. The unkind and untidy wall that was the Rat Towers, reaching desperately toward the sky to stack a few more Innocent souls in something in the vague direction of comfort. There was a gap, though; as though one entire section of the wall had been torn down a section a city-block in dimensions; to one side, it had another ramshackle tower, but to its other side there was a pillar of clean, smooth concrete, marked by windows, that reached every bit as high but didn't look nearly so pathetic. It looked like actual construction and effort had gone into it. And when she lowered her perspective, to the 'horizon' above the buildings of Fort Abandon, she saw that the gap was in fact another pillar of concrete, glass, and living space that was being put up just like the first.

Maybe things weren't as bad as she feared.

"Excuse me?" Charlie asked, calling the attention of a rare specimen, being an Incubus wearing military uniform. "Could you tell me where Rozarin Ahmadi is being held right now?"

"Who?" the Incubus asked.

"A demon, red skin, lots of horns," she gestured above her head. He shrugged. "She literally called me half an hour ago!" Charlie said.

"What for?" the Incubus then asked.

"I don't really know. They cut off the call before she could explain," Charlie said.

"But she did get a call. She talked to you in person," the Incubus clarified.

"Yes," he said.

"Quarantine," he said with a nod, and gestured down a path. "If you'd come with me?"

"Lead on," she said.

She suddenly understood, looking upon the ritualized madness of the soldiers flowing about Fort Abandon, why Vaggie was so distracted for so long each day. If just maintaining the readiness of one single Infernal Legion – and not even one at full strength – was as bad as Vaggie made it known with her every complaint, distracted faze-out, or snarl and thrown object, then whatever poor soul was put in charge of this entire place must have plucked their own head bald from stress.

The path lead toward a pair of strange, bodged-together fans, which, though active and blowing, didn't produce any actual wind. Charlie didn't understand what their purpose was, or why they were all directed away from the center of the camp, into which the Incubus was leading her. Only at its very core, near the squat tower and the bunker in concrete where the governor – no wait, it was actually governess, now, she knew that much – would be doing their work, and to another, equally fortified structure near it. It had no windows on its outside, only one single way in, which the Incubus led her.

Inside the place she felt ward after magical ward brush against her skin, dozens of layers thick, wards that could prevent the easy passage of just about anything alive, dead, or some state in between the two from moving from the inside of the wards to the rest of Fort Abandon outside. If there was a more secure prison in Hell, it only existed in Dad's dungeons.

The Incubus stopped and saluted an eagle headed Sinner, one who Charlie finally had committed to memory, as Ambrosius Agrippa. He was one of three Sinners who had ever held the position of Dux Bellorim, and by far the more well known of the two who were still active. He turned to her and offered a respectful nod as opposed to a deep bow, and she wasn't the kind of person to be irked by that in this kind of circumstance. "Greetings, Domina Charlie," Agrippa said. "While my interrogator mentioned that you would be approaching, he took it and said it more as joke than prediction. Are you here for the Angels, or for the Innocent they brought with them?"

"I'm sorry, I don't quite understand. What Angels? And what Innocent for that matter?" she asked.

"Ah. I see you've not been apprised of the situation," Agrippa said. He dismissed the Incubus with a few words and then bade that she follow him, pausing briefly next to a supremely well fortified cell. He slid open the slide that would allow in a bowl of food, a cup of water, or an observer's witness, and in it revealed a muscular Angel, sitting facing the wall opposite him, with a spent look on his face. He was trussed in Black Binds and shackled hand and foot, but showed signs of ill-treatment, miscolored bruises on his face and crusty gold at the edge of his nostril where his bleeding nose had congealed.

"Who is that?" she asked, confused.

"That would be Yeqon, the first of the Grigori," Agrippa said. "Since you do not recognize him, I presume you are here for the red one, then," she said.

"Yes, I got a phone call from Rozarin Ahmadi, so…" she began, but he turned abruptly to her.

"Ahmadi?" he repeated. He then gave a 'hrm' and refused to elaborate. She asked him to spill, but he refused, leading her instead to another chamber, which was less fortified, and currently played host to an Angel with black hair, golden eyes, and red wings, bound in almost absurdly thick chains, who was being talked unpleasantly at by an overbearing Devourer. "Do you recognize this one, then?" Agrippa asked.

"I don't know her either," Charlie said.

"I hear you out there, Charlie, you can almost certainly recognize my voice," the Angel inside spoke with Rozarin's voice.

"And she's not the only one," the distinct lilt of anther voice appeared at Charlie's side. Charlie turned, and beheld… well… it looked like Fiona, but also not like Fiona. Her head was framed by a circular pane of light, and her eyes still had the faint scales around them but beyond her eyes and her unnaturally red hair, she looked more human than she ever had. And she was also wearing far less than she ever had, wearing a loose blouse with plunging neckline and form-hugging breaches. She was looking at Agrippa with a superior grin on her face. "Calm yourself, Italian. I could have gotten out any time I wanted to. Until now, I didn't want to."

"You make it difficult to countenance keeping you alive, prisoner," Agrippa began saying, but trailed off on his last word as Charlie hug-tackled Fiona, who laughed and gave Charlie a spin before dropping her back onto her feet.

"Fiona! You look great!" Charlie expounded. "What are you even doing here? I thought you'd be… well, up there!" she gestured upwardly, vaguely indicating the rest of Heaven.

"It doesn't get much better than this, sadly. Except for the parts at the top which are especially infuriating," Fiona said. "Besides, why wouldn't I go back to help someone who helped me? That's just fair turnabout."

"You really don't have to," Charlie began.

"I insist," Fiona said. Charlie turned to Agrippa.

"She's with me. So is Rozarin," Charlie said.

"An Angel and a… whatever you are… are with you?" he repeated.

"Do I need to repeat myself?" Charlie asked.

Agrippa stared at her for a moment, but then gave a slight nod of relent. He laid his hand on the palm-scanner and the door slid open with a metal rumble, causing the Devourer to turn toward those outside the interrogation room. "I'm afraid that you'll be without amusements for today. Princess Charlotte has personally vouched for the Angel."

"That's bullshit! What would she want with an Angel?" the Devourer complained.

"That is for her to reveal if she even deigns it needful," Agrippa said. Charlie skirted past Fiona and Agrippa, and entered the room, noting how Rozarin's newly-more-human face widened into a warm smile.

"I hope you're not intent on sending me out now that I've got a new set of wings? I actually find I much prefer the saner environs of Hell than I do all of this madness up here," Roz said.

"How?" Charlie asked of her. Roz shrugged, then stood up, effortlessly snapping every chain attached to her when she did so. The Devourer blanched slightly at that show of effortless strength. Those chains would have given anybody weaker than Charlie a hard day, and he knew it.

"Well, I can't say with certainty, other than that I rather messily exploded out of my demonic body after spending a few days in Heaven. Also, somebody tried to alter my mind while I was writhing on the floor over those several days. Another reason not to stay in Heaven; whoever had the gall to try that once may have the gall to try it again, and I want to be nowhere near them," Roz said.

"Is that what you looked like when you were alive?" Charlie asked.

"I haven't had a chance to use a mirror in the three months I've had this face. But by Maelstrom's description, I have to believe it's close to what I remember," Roz said, the last words a little compressed because she had finally pincered the manacles off of her wrists and made it comfy enough for Charlie to tackle her with a hug as well.

"Maelstrom! I almost forgot about him! Where is he?" Charlie said during the squeeze.

"He and the imp left pretty much immediately," Roz said. She then leaned to one side, tipping Charlie as she did so, to look Agrippa in the face. "If you want that recon, the notes are in my backpack. I still expect to be paid for it. We did our job."

"...I will see to it and remit what rewards are warranted," Agrippa said with a nod and then left.

"And Angel Dust? Where is he?" Charlie extracted herself from Roz.

"Just outside of Fort Abandon, in the Occupied Zone," Fiona cut in. "Think they call it 'Brickton', now."

"Thank you. I was the wrong person to ask for that question," Roz added.

"Why?" Charlie asked.

"There's a few hundred Innocent who want to head down to Hell, amongst the two thousand who were just happy to find themselves in the Occupied Zone where food, water, and comforts are becoming available in Heaven again," Fiona said. She shrugged. "They seem a bit weak willed, if you ask me. A couple decades of hunger enough to break a man's mind? Pah! Grow some resolve, damn you all!"

"They were supposed to be having infinite bliss, not starvation and want. It's like leaning in for a kiss and instead getting shot in the gut," Roz countered.

"Hundreds?" Charlie asked. Hundreds of new Betrayed. Hundreds of people willingly choosing to abandon Heaven in exchange for a Hell of great danger and peril.

What the hell had happened to Heaven? This wasn't like Dad described it at all in those bed-time-stories he had in her happier memories offered.

"Yup. There's probably more that are going to want to move down more permanently," Fiona said. "There's already thousands of the bastards working in Wrath to keep the farms running. Maybe they'd just prefer to grab their people and set down roots where food is relatively easy to get."

It was a concept that had no place in Charlie's designs. Her plan was to get people out of Hell. What room did that plan have for people in Heaven wanting to get into Hell?

A trumpet sounded, a noise strong beyond strength, that caused dust to fall from the ceiling where the concrete ground against itself under the assault of noise. It wouldn't deafen anybody, because not a single person here was a mortal human, but Charlie being Nephilim and thus at least half of that did have a ringing sensation in her head when the horn ended. She stepped out into the hall, and there she beheld her father.

Lucifer, King of All Hell, Lord Over The Damned, took a moment to adjust his fine suit and minutely tug at the edges of his gloves, before he turned his attention outward and saw that, at the far end of the hallway he had appeared in, there stood his daughter. "Well, if this isn't a shock and a half?" Daddy said with his eyebrows raising almost to his hairline. "Of all the places I thought I could have expected to find my daughter, here in this dungeon would be among the last of them," he slowly turned toward where Agrippa was standing still as a statue. "I trust there is an explanation for this?"

"He didn't have anything to do with this, Daddy," she said. She then motioned toward Roz and Fiona, who exited the interrogation room to flank her on either side. "I'm here to collect my people!"

"Your people," Daddy repeated flatly. "Are you aware that one of those things is an Angel? And the other is… something even stranger than that? A good looker though. I approve of your sartorial choices."

"It's too hot for my armor in here. I don't want to get all sweaty," Fiona said with a cheeky grin.

Daddy blinked at her in surprise. Then turned to Charlie. "She's gonna be trouble. Are you sure you won't like me to just… you know, punt her into the Abyss for you?"

"Daddy, no!" Charlie said, her face growing stern.

"And that one? An Angel just waltzes into the Occupied Territory and bewitches you; what is a father to think?" Lucifer asked, taking measured steps toward her. Despite the fact she was a few inches taller than him, he seemed to loom impossibly tall over her, his shadow swallowing the light and leaving the dungeon feeling as grim and hopeless as a tomb.

She knew that if she asked, he would tell her no. If she begged, he would give her a crumb when she deserved the whole thing. So she summoned her courage, and looked her father squarely in his eye.

"Rozarin Ahmadi is mine," she declared. Daddy tilted his head to one side at her, as though baffled by her outburst. "She has served me before, and will serve me now. Isn't that right, Rozarin?"

"As Charlotte Magne of the Morning Star goes, so goes my nation," Rozarin agreed.

"...I get it. I finally get it," Daddy said. He then laughed. It was a booming thing, full of mirth, and more than that, full of triumph. But then he stopped, staring her in the eye with a look of victory. "Very well, then. You've put the work in. You reap the rewards. But I am claiming that one," he pointed behind himself, toward the cell where the big guy was bound in shackles and magic, "for myself."

He then turned and vanished to the fluttering of wings, leaving Charlie and the others in the dungeon, with Agrippa finally releasing his emulation of a statue and turning to her. "I trust there is no more that you require of me, today?"

"Actually there will be," she said. "I'm going to be bringing some Betrayed down to Pentagram City. Make sure that nobody tries to stop them."

"Of course, Domina," he said with a bow. Then, he went up the path toward the only place where natural light crept in, crisply golden from the false-noon.

Charlie turned to the ladies with her. "Is… is this a win?"

"It's a win," Fiona said with a laugh.

"I told you I'd come back. Just didn't expect to do it with this face," Rozarin said.

"Take my hand; I'll get you next to Angel Dust and his people," Fiona offered a hand to Charlie.

"Why do I have the feeling that this – that all of this – is going to change things?"

"Because you're paying attention," Roz said. Charlie took Fiona's hand, while Roz placed her own palm on Fiona's right-shoulder, for there was no hand on that side. Then, without so much as a blip, all three of them disappeared from the Dungeon, outright ignoring all of the wards and magic that ought to have prevented them.

---

Lester and Tommy were simple souls, as it turned out. Born in the outskirts of Perth, Australia, the two life-long friends had been hellions, but good-hearted ones. Always getting themselves into trouble, but never actually causing anybody any grief or harm. Still, it had been their deaths that tipped the scales to Michael to allow them into Heaven; when they were on a vacation in the Philippines, a rain-storm caused a flash flood, one that swept through the region they were traveling along. Unwilling to simply stand by and watch people swept away and killed by the torrent, they jumped in.

They even managed to save a few, before their fatigue and the cruel rush of waters finally killed them. And that moment of grace was enough for them to enter Heaven. They ended up being good conversation partners, once Cain's initial monomania to return to his family had ebbed, well versed in the simpler joys of good company, good music, and good beer. And they had been very long deprived of beer, seeing as they'd been here from essentially the start of the Great Starvation.

There were likely still dozens of topics of conversation that Cain could have plumbed, had he the desire to, when the two of them finally brought him to what, at first, seemed any other Rat Tower in a Heaven dominated by them. But approach to it showed it was a different beast entirely. Its angles were too precise, its erosion too little. This building was old, and actually had care and attention put into its creation, facing a sun-gully that even now was being painstakingly planted with potatoes. It took him only a short time of approach to understand. This building had been either the first, or one of the first, Rat Towers to ever be created. People who made it probably thought that they had the same amount of time to put up all the others, only to find themselves rudely disabused by reality setting in. There were carved figures cut into the face of it. Human figures, without halos. Carrying implements of some kind.

It wasn't until he started crossing the field that he finally could resolve the figures into what they were. They were the descendants of Adam. There was Abel with his hoe. Mari with her quern. Judit with a water jug. Sarah holding a sickle. Likely there were others than these four, if he were to guess marching along the other walls of the structure. But he could only see what he approached. So in the end, they had favored Adam's direct descendants with the finest accommodations that they had in them to provide. He wasn't sure what to make of that. Perhaps Abel had been as giving of himself in his afterlife as he had been in his life, and the people of Heaven respected that. Hard to say.

"There's one of 'em Sheilas now!" Lester pointed out, startling Cain out of his ruminations, and when he turned to look, he actually missed a step. And he wasn't the only one.

Standing there, amongst the many, many hands trying to put the crop in quickly, there was one that stood out. Her hair had the particular quality of oiled wood, shining under the sun, and from that hair reached up a pair of horns, whose curve ended just underneath a Gapped Halo. She had a bag at one hip with seed-potatoes, and a planting drill in the other.

"Ayla?" Cain asked.

"Impossible," the elder of Cain's long-ex-wives said, allowing the rod to fall to the dirt as she took a few steps toward him. One of the other workers chided her for blocking him, but she simply stepped beyond him with a momentarily baffled look on his face. "How? How could you possibly be here?"

"Ayla… I'm sorry," Cain began, falling to his knees before her. "I shouldn't have… no. No, not yet. I have too many apologies to give, and if I give over my day for yours I won't have time to reach anybody else's."

"How are you here?" she demanded, grabbing his arm and dragging him to his feet in front of her. She was taller than he was, and noticeably stronger. She had inherited much of Adam's raw might.

"I have come to finally beg forgiveness. From all of you… but especially from my brother," he said.

Ayla's expression softened at that, her lips tightening. "Of course you would. You were a brash man, husband, but you weren't a bad one. You meant it even then."

"No. Then I said it so that God could hear it. I mean it now," Cain countered her. And she nodded, understanding that the look on his face was one of utter sincerity. "Is… is he still...?" he gestured toward the building.

"Yes. Yes he is," Ayla said. She turned to the two Aspected Innocent with him. "You can rest in the building. There should be somewhere comfortable for you."

"Don't need to poke me twice," Tommy said and swatted Lester in the arm so that he'd follow. Cain then gestured toward the building, trying to find the right way to ask his question. To his shock, Ayla took his hand in her own, and began to drag him toward the building, obviating his need to ask his question and bearing him toward his destination both.

"You look different from how I remember," Ayla said.

"And you look exactly as beautiful as when I finally convinced you to leave," Cain said.

"I should have stayed," Ayla bit out.

"You would have only suffered to no good end. I earned my punishment. I didn't want it to be your punishment, too," Cain said.

"Fie on God for that punishment then! Mari needed her family, because she was almost blind, but I could have at least stood by you. I was a coward. And I've spent the last… God only knows how many years raging at myself for that cowardice," Ayla said.

"Nobody could have blamed you for that choice. It was the right one to make," Cain said. "It certainly wasn't a childish outburst of idiocy. You were looking after our family, trying to hold together what could be held after I killed him."

"You aren't the center of the universe, Cain. Our stories are our stories, and they contain multitudes that have little to do with you," Ayla said. "You are not the final arbiter of what is a 'right decision' even if measuring it by how wrong yours was."

"I fair say that mine was quite objectively wrong, not just killing Able in envy but lying to God's face about it afterward. I knew what I did. I deserved what came of it," he said, as they left the fields and began up the stairs after the Australians into the finest Rat Tower outside of Cloud Probity. Inside, Cain got another shock, as Mari was sitting in a chair, her golden hair pooled around her like a cloak, contrasting the darkness of her curved horns and the light of her Gapped Halo, and a pair of almost comically thick spectacles rode her nose. Ayla said her name sharply, and Mari glanced up; her bright blue eyes seemed almost too-large for her head when diffracted through those crude spectacles. And she leaned back in shock when she beheld another horned person being dragged closer.

"Ayla… is that?" she asked.

And her befuddlement made sense to Cain. In the time that she had been alive, her eyesight was so terrible as to render her blind; only recent advancements in vision-correction seemed to have given her any ability to view the world around her.

"Cain!" Mari said brightly, rising from her seat and rushing to give him a tackling hug, which didn't nearly shove him over as hard as Ayla would have. Mari, for all she had the most towering of intellects, had the smallest of bodies. He wagered that she only stood taller than Rachel Scailes if you included the horns, an apple falling far from the tree of its eight-and-a-half-foot mother, let alone nine foot father. He stared down at the golden curtain pressed against his chest, felt her arms gripping tightly around him. "You're finally here! I knew you'd come up here eventually!"

"Of course I would. Should you be up and about, though? You…" Cain began.

"Oh stop. I'm dead, not an invalid," she said. There were so many weaknesses in Mari's physicality that it seemed that God had given her a most brilliant mind in an attempt to balance them. For what was a nearly-blind, small, slow, frail woman of weak immunity expected to do in an age before society-as-such except for die? That the Children of Adam had outright refused to allow her to die when so many of their other siblings had, seeing her all the way into adulthood, and from adulthood into however long afterwards she lived was a victory that doubtless all of Cain's siblings held even now. It was a miracle that she survived the birth of Cain's and her own children, frankly. "You're looking for Abel. You've got that look."

"You always could see through me," he said. Mari smiled. It was so heart-warming for her to actually look him in the face and not have the glazed look as she struggled to see anything but a blur.

"You were always so transparent," Mari said, and began to pull him into the building along with Ayla, who was shaking her head in wan amusement. "I'm glad you came back, Cain. You finally gave me a chance to look at your face."

"Oh, I must look a fright," Cain said, worrying at his beard.

"Hardly. You just made it very clear I chose the correct brother," Mari said with a cheeky smile.

"Are the Veeds still here, or did they move off to other targets?" Ayla asked.

"Mother is still furious, so they're obviously courting Abel right now," Mari said, as they rounded a corner and found a room built for meetings between people. And within, there were a number of Innocent, but also a number of former humans who had Aspects. They all had a hard look in their eyes, staring across at their opposite.

Opposite of them, of course, was Abel. Tall, and broad, hair like flax fiber, his eyes a most striking gray, his horns were shorter and only extending past his hair by perhaps an inch before the curve of them mirrored his skull. He was made somewhat narrowed and gaunt by his hunger, but still showed the mightier physique that had been essentially inherited whole from their shared father. It was clear to anybody who compared Cain to Abel that the only way the former even could murder the latter was by ambush.

"Abel! Look!" Ayla said, and she dragged Cain into the room with her, while Mari stood back. Abel turned from the people of the VPVD, and when he looked upon Cain, his face became a portrait of shock. The others likewise started back, some of them outright pulling weapons when what was a clear hellspawn was now standing amongst them. The silence could have choked the entire world.

Cain's body did exactly as he thought it would. It dropped to its knees, tears welling in his eyes. "I'm so sorry," he began, trying to call forth the great and infinitely practiced apology that he had playing practically on a loop in his mind for millennia.

But before he could even get the fourth word out, Abel rushed to him, skidding on his own knees on the marble of the floor to embrace his brother, instantly reduced to weeping likewise. Cain wanted to ask as to how, as to why that his brother would even wish to grant him impossible forgiveness, but Abel had not said a word, and made deeds his language.

"Is… that Cain?" one of the others in the room asked, hands tightening on a bludgeon. Abel gave a sniff, wiping his eyes on his sleeve and dragging Cain up to his feet.

"Yes! What miracle is this? I know God would never allow this, so did you…" Abel made a sneaky-gesture with his hand, and Cain could only bark a shocked laugh.

"What other choice had I?" he asked. "I am most sincere. I cannot apologize deeply enough to…"

"Stop that now, brother," Abel said with a shake of his head. "I know you. I know what you must have gone through to get here was terrible, and you did it anyway. So take a breath. What sins you had done against me are forgiven; they were forgiven the first time you stood atop the Stone of Farewell and God rejected your ascension, let alone the second, third or fourth time."

So Abel had absolved him millennia ago? It seemed too good to be true, as though he were lapsing into an impossible dream. "Where are the others?" Cain asked.

"Well, we… actually, come with me," Abel said. He turned to the VPVD with him. "My answer remains 'obviously no', and I have no more time for you today. You wasted your chance with us when you turned your backs on my mother. I say good day to you all," Abel said. The others sighed and grumbled, but accepted his dismissal. As the fifth human to ever exist, after Lilith, Adam, Eve, and their unnamed, stillborn eldest sister, his mere being seemed to bear much weight. He was pulled away, and up the stairs that were nearby, into the second storey, and its apartments.

This building, much like the Happy Hotel, was built in a pre-elevator age, so the second floor was given over to those of means. And means, with regards to the currencies of Heaven, were couched entirely in reputation. Few had more reputation than Abel, Son of Adam. The suites on the second floor shared two long 'common areas' with somewhat threadbare sofas, one of which across the lobby of the first floor was currently being sat in by Tommy and Lester, who were telling jokes to each other and to the gathered Innocent. But it was the one that Abel approached that monopolized Cain's attention.

"Mother…" he said.

Eve turned to him, a portrait of stern imperialism made more severe by her gaunt features. Once she had been the prototype for female fertility, all curves and smooth edges spread out over nine feet of height. Heaven seemed to have hardened her. Her hair, black and glossy like jet, nearly concealed that she had horns at all, for they were the same color and gloss, and her eyes, dark like a cloudy night, shook him in a way no other set of eyes had or could. To look into the eyes of Eve was so much more trying than matching wits with the Radio Demon that the exiled monster was paltry by comparison to Cain.

She was stunned for a moment, then turned to her assembling mass of children. Judit and Sarah exited their rooms, moving to their husband's side, flanking Abel. Where was Kalli? Cain even asked as much, but when he did, a wave of sadness passed through all those present.

"Kalli has Gone Numb," Eve said. "Cain… it has been so very long."

"I know. And I still have so many crimes against my family that I must atone for," Cain said. He glanced around, waiting for a moment. "Where is Father?"

Eve's face pulled into distaste at that. "Adam is gone. He is Gabriel's creature, now, bolted inside of an Ophanim so that he can kill to his heart's desire."

"Does he not even care about his own children?" Cain asked, confused. He still remembered the names of those children that Ayla and Mari had given him, and those of his nieces and nephews born before Cain's pettiness rendered them half-way to orphanhood. He never learned the names of his grandchildren.

Cain had outlived his own grandchildren, after all. And likely his great grandchildren as well.

"Adam is no husband of mine, abandoning me here without a word for millennia and dumped here three centuries. He didn't even voice a complaint when we were forced from Abel's Manse! No, he stood back and did nothing as we were bundled down here, dependent only on the charity of strangers that we could live in environs as decent as these are," Eve said, pointing at the floor before her feet with a flinty look in her eye. "That the charity of strangers was sufficient to us is besides the point that Adam abandoned us all in the name of his own self-styled 'revenge'. He is pursuing cruelty for cruelty's sake, and I will not follow him down that path. None of us will." Eve said with finality.

"Then he is lost to us all, and not just me," Cain said. That hurt in a way he hadn't expected. He fully expected that stubborn Adam would still reject Cain's apologies. But to learn that he rejected all of the rest of his family as well did not sit well in Cain's heart.

He puffed out a breath, and made a decision.

"There is a kinder place even than here, if you would permit me to take you there," Cain said. "A place where a… I suppose a friend… would take you in and help you be whole again."

Mari blinked and looked up at him. "You want us to go with you back to Hell, don't you?"

"I know how on-the-face-of-it-mad that that sounds, but…" he trailed of, looking at his siblings. And notably not his children. "Where are the little ones?"

"They lived their own lives, apart from ours. We outlived them all," Ayla said. "And since they look like everybody else up here, they just… faded into the background. I haven't spoken to any of ours in… God… centuries."

"If Hell be our destination, at least go in good company," Mari said.

"I am hardly that," Cain laughed. "But I promise you, I will not subject you to the grotesqueries of Pride Ring and its Sinners. The only of my ilk you should ever meet is I, had I my way. I just need to make a 'call'."

There was some muttering as to what that meant, as Cain went around and down to the lobby once more, and there, he cast out his hand and spoke words of power, burning into the marble of the floor a great seal of titanic power, one which invoked the College of Satans as a whole. And as there was only one remaining member of that august body, there was only one who even could answer.

"It has been long since I received envoy from Heaven. One would think thine ilk had forgotten about us down here," Satan rumbled, causing everybody on the ground floor to lean out of their doors and gawk at the disembodied, thunderous voice that was now with them. He even did so essentially immediately.

"It is Cain. If ever I have earned so much as a dram of grace in your eyes, allow me to spend it now; bear me, and those who are with me, into your embrace, out of this madness that has become of Heaven," Cain said.

There was a heavy pause.

"Of course, thou hast that dram of grace. And you ask a thing I would charge little for regardless. Stand thee thine own within the circle thou hast made. I will bring them forth anon," Satan said.

Cain beckoned, and though somewhat tentative, the wives of Abel did agree to follow him to Cain's side. Eve joined them last, carrying the insensate form of Kalli, cradling the grown woman as though she were a child. Then, with a holler and then a splat, both Tommy and Lester landed in a pile just inside the circle, having jumped over the railing from the second story. "Like fuck y'cunts are leavin' us behind up here!" Lester claimed from his place on the floor. The symbol began to glow with infernal power, no doubt as Satan prepared to make good on his word. Cain turned to the others, who were watching.

"This is your final chance: drop everything and rush to our side and you will be granted passage to the very safest part of Hell for your kind." And shocking enough, three of the first-floor denizens took him on that offer, sprinting into the circle. There were two more who hesitated, only beginning their approach as flame flared upward from the seal on the floor.

The building seemed to fall away, and they were standing in the heat of Wrath Ring, with the Palatium Iracundia rising up, cyclopean in scale, while the humans were standing at the heart of the gardens. And there was Satan, not clad in his official robes, but his gardening clothes, with a pair of shears in one hand which had blades long as greatswords. Upon seeing their collection, he grinned, a terrifying prospect to those who didn't know the King of Wrath well. "Welcome, ye the finest of Humanity, to a realm that by mine word shall be made worthy of thee. Welcome, to the Ring of Wrath, and to my kingdom."

---

Angel Dust looked… different.

While Charlie could still tell he had the same more-powerful, less-androgynous physique that he'd developed since his first failure in Heaven, it was softening just a bit, even with the single day that he'd had with his sister, even here in a Heaven which was so very lacking in compared to the comforts that Hell could summon. From the first step Charlie had taken into the Rat Tower – what a grim name for them, as well – she decided that she utterly hated it, and if and when she had the authority to do something about it she would make this right no matter the cost.

These humans had lived good lives. They deserved rewards for that, not punishments.

No, comparing Angel Dust today with Angel Dust of several months ago when she'd seen him last, it was telling. Before, he'd been like a stone, hard and sharp edged from surface to core, his colors crisp and almost oversaturated like a poorly built television, such that when he moved swiftly she could almost swear the scarlet of his markings smeared in the air. But now? Now he was like a statue covered in velvet. There was still the hardness, all that which pain had built in him, but now at least it was sheathed in something that could at least touch something delicate without breaking it. His colors weren't as garishly vibrant anymore. They weren't retreated back to the pastel pinks that they had been, but the whites weren't as wintery, either.

He looked… well… calm.

Calm for the first time in years. Calmer than he'd been since the day after Valentino died, the last day Sam had been in all of their lives.

"Charlie! See, I told yas that if we sat down and waited, she'd show up!" Angel Dust said, sounding very pleased with himself. The denizens of this Rat Tower ran the gamut between wretched and merely meager. And Roz had mentioned that was because the wretched ones were still recovering from decades of starvation, while the meager ones had gotten used to earning Hell's food by hell-borne labor.

"Of course I would come. I've got to get you back down to New Purgatory," she said with a wave. She glanced over to Fiona, who was looming as bodyguards ought nearby, though there was no threat here for the likes of Charlie. She doubted there was any danger to her at all outside of the Unhallow.

"Yeah, yeah. I gotta introduce you to Fat Nuggets, if nuttin' else," he said to the four-legged spider woman next to him, the spider who had a gapped halo. "Oh fuck me I ain't introduced you proper like, have I? Molls? Fredo? This is Charlie. She runs the hotel I work at," Angel Dust said.

"What do you have my bruddah doin? Cookin'?" she asked.

"Yes actually," Charlie said brightly.

"Well good! I told ya you coulda gone legit with them hands if you actually wanted to. You would'a had Michelin racin' for ya in no-time," she said proudly.

"Hey, my cookin's good, it ain't that good," Angel Dust demurred.

"Yes it is," Roz countered him.

"It is incredible," Fiona agreed.

"Aw shucks, yous guys are gonna make me blush," Angel Dust said.

"What Angel Dust has neglected to inform you is that this is also Charlotte Magne of the Morning Star," Roz then pivoted. "Daughter of Lucifer, and Princess of All Hell."

"Yeah, and I'm the Archangel Gabriel," the dove-headed Innocent introduced as 'Fredo' said.

There was silence, but for a shrug from Angel Dust.

"You're shittin' me," Fredo said.

"Don't need to. Just need to get us out of here," she said. She reached over and took Angel Dust's hand and pulled him to his feet out of the chair that, while well tended, was fairly threadbare. "I'm not taking no for an answer. Besides, I finally did what Rachel has been on and on and on about and put up a new building in New Purgatory. There should be plenty of room!"

"Two thousand of my people came down with me," Fredo pointed out. And Charlie winced at that.

"Oh… okay… so I don't have enough room for quiiite that many, but I can easily fit… umm… five hundred? If they don't mind sharing apartments?" she found the wind rather brutally taken out of her sails.

"Don't be like that. Just bein' here where food is at 'll get them happy again in no time," Molly shushed Fredo. "Don't worry 'bout him. He's got a protective streak from here to Diligence."

"That's Cloud Nine," Roz added.

"I know which Cloud Diligence is!" Charlie snipped back at the new Angel. Which was a bit impolite, but she hadn't listened to an entire childhood's worth of stories from a former denizen of Heaven to not know its nomenclatures.

"And to be frank," Angel Dust added, "I'm thinkin' a lot of 'em are gonna spread their wings and go somewheres else on the quick."

"Why do you say that?" Molly asked.

"Only reason I live in the same city as her dad is 'cause that's where the work is. No offence, Charlie," he said.

"No, I get it entirely," she said. Daddy could be… overbearing at times.

"Are there any other cities down there where the Devil Himself don't hang his hat?" Fredo asked.

"Well, there's Imp City; it's an hour away…" Charlie began.

"Our highways are magical," Roz intimated to him, cutting Charlie off. "IC is around seven hundred kilometers away."

"And does he ever…" Fredo asked.

"Why would he go to Imp City? It's just 'a lesser version of PC in every way that matters'," Fiona said with air-quotes by her remaining hand.

Fredo took this in, and gave it a ponder, before nodding. "As much as I'm sure you'd like us all under your roof, I'm pretty sure they'll take 'mundane and safe' over 'exciting and dangerous'," he said.

"Well, I'll start talking to people and get the immigration moving," Charlie said brightly. She turned to Angel Dust and his sister. "Still, I do have a building, and you are welcome to stay there."

"Molly's takin' it," Angel Dust said.

"Anthony!" Molly gave one of his arms a swat, scandalized tone given at that.

"Look, after all the trouble I went through to get yous down here, I don't wanna have to fuckin' run you down over Hell's literal half-acre if some shit goes sideways. 'Sides; if you fuck off to Imp Town, our bruddah would never fuckin' forgive me."

"Oh, I'm such a dummy! I completely forgot about Johnny!" Molly gave her head a ceremonial bonk. "I swear, I'd forget my own name if it weren't sown into my underpants."

"What?" Charlie asked.

"She jokes. It's a laundry thing, not a memory thing," Fredo said with a laugh. "Look, just 'cause we're starvin' and poor on everything except misery don't mean we ain't got pride enough to keep ourselves clean."

"Gotta say, your building was the best one we saw in Heaven outside of this spot," Angel Dust gestured around him, no doubt indicating the Occupied Zone.

"Oh, that was nothin'," Molly said. "You should'a seen where they put Eve and Abel; that place was way nicer than ours. I just wanted to make it a bit of a happier place to stay."

"Speaking of Abel… what happened to Cain?" Charlie asked. He wasn't with any of them that she'd seen.

"Split off on Cloud 2 to go after his bruddah," Angel Dust said with a shrug. That was obviously all he knew on that topic.

"And what about Jun-Ho?" she then asked.

"Well, we saw him get killed through the portal," Roz said. "So he could be just around anywhere up there right now."

"Shouldn't… we do something about that?" Charlie asked. Roz gave a shake of her head and a chuckle.

"That man escaped from Heaven twice under his own power and on his own recognizance. He'll be back in Hell whenever he means to," Roz said.

---

Finally, Jun-Ho was happy not to have changed his 'respawn' point. While it had been deeply inconvenient to have to escape from Heaven a second time after he was butchered in the Hotel lobby by Exorcists, the point's maintenance was a godsend in that he therefore didn't have to infiltrate Heaven a second time to get to that most critical location. So days after his newest death, he had waited for an imp in a slowly degrading Glamour to arrive, here in that surreptitious corner of Cloud Kindness, on one of the upper floors of a Rat Tower, one where there were hidden caches built into so many of the walls.

He considered it something of an omen that he had created four complete parachutes before his first jump into Hell from the edge of Cloud Probity. Because four parachutes was exactly as many as he needed, in the grand scheme of things.

There was the distinct knock on his door, three, a gap, two, a gap, then three again. And when Jun-Ho opened the door, Striker was already on his way in, his patience obviously worn to a nub. "Do I even wanna know how you got here faster than me?"

"Note my conspicuous lack of power-armor," Jun-Ho said. "I came here the most inconvenient way possible for one of my kind; by dying."

"No fuckin' wonder we can't win a war against you assholes. You can't get cornered, can't get wiped out, and can't be taken prisoner. Lucifer's a fuckin' dumbass," he grumbled, before dropping pulling himself into one of Jun-Ho's chairs without asking so much as permission, and taking just a moment to rest his weary bones, kicking off his boots and kneading his ankles and calves. He'd been walking for a very long time. He probably needed this moment of respite.

"I won't disagree on that," Jun-Ho said, taking his metal chisel and beginning to scrape out the 'grout' around a particular selection of bricks, so that he could extract them and grab the pack behind them. Those would be Parachutes 3 and 4. One he pulled the knotted cords tighter in for, and handed it toward Striker, who gave his head a shake, and patted a pocket. So he had his own? Surprisingly prudent. He then reached into another pocket, extracted Jun-Ho's packages and tossed them to him. Jun-Ho found himself smirking despite himself at the cloth-wrapped bundle now in his possession once more. One, he knew all too well, having spent so much time in Hell searching for it. But the other?

"So how exactly do we go up from here?" Striker pulled his attention back, producing from a pocket a mostly depleted bag of calorically dense biscuits and beginning to gnaw on one.

"Up my friend's innovation. If you must call it anything, call it what Blazkowicz called it: Long Stair."

"A stairway through heaven," Striker said, rubbing at his artificial eye.

"Something like it. We can head up it any time of your choosing. Originally only he and Omoyobe could use it, for reasons we couldn't discern. But now everybody can," Jun-Ho said. "Perhaps whatever barred all but our Gambian comrade and The Stair's maker has fallen in the time since I was last in Heaven. Whatever the case, it serves all of our best interest now, and makes your job and mine much easier."

"So this thing'll take us up to Cloud Four," Striker said, pulling a canteen of water and guzzling a fair amount of its contents. Actually, from the smell of that, it probably wasn't water. Still, Jun-Ho didn't mind.

"Long Stair actually could, if you had the will, take you to Cloud Temperence, but it is noted to be a harder climb, and the ways up from Generosity are not, as yet, torn up the way the lower ways are," he said. He tilted his head toward the imp. "Do you wish to go to Temperence?"

"No. No, Cloud Four is high enough for me. I doubt any other imp'll get that high in my life time."

"So be it," Jun-Ho said.

Striker ended up taking a three hour nap in that chair, and they only made for Long Stair as night was falling over Heaven. The Angels, who still swarmed the Cloud looking for any Hellspawn that hadn't fled back down to the 'safety' of the lower Clouds, didn't think to look here, because the great artifice of Long Stair was that it wasn't a physical linkage connecting this lower Cloud to the higher one. No, Blazkowicz's craft was far more intricate than that. He'd made a pathway that touched Outside, touched the great infinity that lay outside of Creation, and then slingshot itself back into the more sensible environs of Creation, only in a different layer of it.

It was like digging a tunnel to cross a street. Only viable because there were no other options, but still, Boleslaw Blazkowicz made that tunnel the best fucking tunnel it possibly could be.

It was nothing to look at, really. Just a section of wall pulled away from the topmost floor of the Rat Tower under its roof, revealing a stairway that ascended upward impossibly far in almost complete blackness. And the 'almost' became absolute after the first ascended kilometer. Striker gave a discomfited noise when his flashlight stopped actually illuminating things, when his artificial eye stopped being able to perceive anything, save perhaps, Jun-Ho pondered, the Betrayed he was following after.

After the second kilometer, the noises began. Just whispers, tracing the very edge of hearing. Blazkowicz had undertaken great pains of craft and magic to 'soundproof' this section, to prevent those whispers from driving people mad. As such, they only caused annoyance and concern, rather than terror and insanity.

"Is this place actually…" Striker asked, pausing, surprised, when his own voice seemed to anti-echo and swallow half of his own words as they came out.

"Keep following," Jun-Ho said. It was some time yet, before the unnatural, horrifying, clinging darkness stopped stealing the light from the very bulb of Striker's flashlight and began to graciously permit it to reach out and illuminate something beyond its own mirrored bell, and by that time, they were already more than half way up Long Stair. Piece by piece, reality became more sensible again, sounds no longer anti-echoing, light beginning to drape over shapes as it should, the air no longer so still that walking through it felt like walking through pudding.

And then, there was light.

An aperture was built into the side of a hillside, one bearing the naked trellises of untold generations of grape-vines, emerging in the middle of one of their great marches. Around them, the two could see nothing but the last vestiges of rotting wood, and then unlimited miles of grey-brown dust, turning all of the landscape into a dull, sad, and miserable nothing as far as any eye could see. A venue dead to agriculture, and as such, dead to civilization. Heaven wasn't Greed Ring, after all

"...So much for 'Generosity'," Striker laughed with derisive tone. Now that Jun-Ho was seeing this with his own eyes and not having it relayed to him second hand, he could only nod and agree.

"And now you have stood where none of your race has ever stood. How does this feel to you now?"

"I feel… powerful," he said, nodding with a rather contented smile on his face. "And like I've got work to do ahead of me."

"More lofty plans for your own ascension?" Jun-Ho asked. He then raised a hand. "Actually, I suppose that's none of my business, is it? You'll tell me if and when I need to know."

"That's what I appreciate 'bout you, human: you're one of the few of you chucklefucks who's an actual professional," Striker said. He looked around, then reached down and grabbed a handful of the dust that had become the sole blanket of this entire Cloud, pouring it into an otherwise empty food-tin. A marker. A trophy. Jun-Ho could understand the power of such things. "Well… I got what I wanted. I'll leave you to your vaguely described bullshit. But keep my number. I might have work I'll need the like of you for in the future."

"And in that vaguely defined future, I may have the desire to pursue it," Jun-Ho said, giving Striker a nod, and then crossing into the distance. Generosity was a wasteland, only occasionally passed by Armisael who attempted to harvest what had not been planted in near half a century, and turned the ground needlessly churning soil into dust. He had long to go, but he had taken long slogs before.

Days passed as moments, until he found the nearest Intertram station, one neglected, because it was nowhere near the only one remaining that lead down to Kindness, and he walked up its rail. Another day, a day without sleep as need would have it, would take him up from the lower cloud to the upper. To Cloud Temperence.

From there, it was nearly a week of stealth and careful transit more to his destination. A small house that overlooked a false sea.

A knock at the door quickly yielded that door opening, and revealing none other than The Gentleman himself, Azazel, Armsmaster of Heaven. Jun-Ho held up his parcel. "Mors Mortem Dei," Jun-Ho said. With a very flat expression, Azazel stepped back, and allowed Jun-Ho into his small home, and into the presence of seven other dead Humans.

"Only," Azazel said, "because God is already dead do I allow this. That he still breathes is irrelevant."

"Have my confederates introduced me?" Jun-Ho asked.

"I know who you are," Azazel said. He opened the bundle, and then one of the boxes within, revealing a very fine chain, one that looked so delicate that you could snap it by breathing on it, but when they had tested it by arraying all of their members on one side and a fixture to a Rat Tower on the other, their heaving strength had broken long before the chain had. Attached to it was a back-hooked quarrel-head of truly otherworldly manufacture. It seemed to saw the air just sitting there, splitting oxygen of its chemical bonds without any input of force. "This is a lot of preparation for a scenario that may not occur."

"Where did you even find this?" Blazkowicz asked, looking at the weapon.

"The chain was from Sloth. The head, from a contact of Sypax down on Probity, smuggled to Greed Ring through some truly arcane chichanery," Jun-Ho said. "Turns out those particular Outsiders are more useful to us than we'd first thought."

"Well, for once Sypax is right about somebody. I'll mark the calendar," Blazkowicz noted. He looked to the others. "So now it's just a matter of timing, right?"

"We know what needs to occur. I won't preach to the Angel what's going to happen – what needs to happen – up on Diligence," Xin Fei Wong interjected, the relatively young Chinese Innocent keeping his usually booming voice couched. "If our scenario happens, this will be needed. If it does not? The worst-case scenario will already have been averted as it was not needed."

"Would that this were a kinder Heaven," Jun-Ho commiserated alongside the grimly nodding Angel, "and that these contingencies were not needed."

"But alas it is not," Azazel said. He gestured to the small home he had. "I have few concessions as to the comfort of others, but you may take them, before I presume I am to return you to the lowest Cloud."

"Much obligued," Jun-Ho said. "Just somewhere on The Edge, it needn't be anywhere dangerous to you."

Azazel gave a nod, likely relieved but not showing it that his job would be simpler, before Transiting away. Jun-Ho turned to his fellow members of the MMD, those extremists who sought an end to the status quo of this grim Heaven by any means possible. "You look different, Jun-Ho. I think Hell's starting to rub off on you," Zuri Omoyobe said, adjusting her place seated on the countertop. She was the oldest of their group, having been in Heaven almost as long as Cain had been in Hell. "Tell us of it. It can't be worse than what we've had to deal with down there."

"Oh, you would scarcely believe," Jun-Ho said. Then, he began to regale his hidden comrades of the life he'd built in Hell, and the things he'd done, piece by piece and inch by inch, to fulfill their shared, Heavenly agenda. He got a feeling, as he kept going, some of the others were feeling a call to join him down there when all of this ended, one way or the other.

It would be good to have their like in Hell. The Mors Mortem Dei had exactly the kind of instinct needed to survive even the worst of what Hell had to offer.

---

Lucifer stood in the doorway of the Grigori's cell, feeling quite pleased with himself. For decades now, he had been fumbling blindly trying to understand what Charlie was even on about, all of that work put into 'charity' and 'redemption', and all of that other drek. But to see its fruits, he could finally understand the nature of the plant that grew them. It was imaging. All of that work that she had done for decades now was a long-standing and very well executed optics campaign, one that she'd pulled off with such subtlety and visual fidelity that it had even stumped Lucifer Himself until its effects were arrayed before him.

It was well known in Hell that one got a lot more done by speaking clearly and carrying a big stick than just by speaking clearly alone. And there was literally nobody in Hell who carried a bigger stick than Lucifer. So for Charlie to try to establish herself as a fellow stick-bearer was a failing proposition. How could one compete as a newcomer against the supreme? Simple; one couldn't, and thus one shouldn't. So instead, she built up a different persona. The temptress. The one who offers the carrot, and drags to her those that mere threats of violence and force cannot sway.

Lucifer knew the look of conviction when he saw it in the eyes of another. And both in the scarlet angel, and in the stranger thing that dear Charlotte had gathered up, they were dead-set to follow her even if she lead them hurtling into the abyss. Masterful work, my daughter, he thought. Only I could have possibly done it better.

But however intensely proud he was that he'd managed to raise her to take so clever a view in the suborning of Heaven's strength, he still had other things that needed dealing with. He couldn't simply sit, tickled pink, for the rest of the day. No. He had a conversation to undertake with a heavily bound Grigori.

"I told you we'd meet again," Lucifer said to Yeqon. "And I even predicted it'd be a lot like this."

"If you're going to kill me, do it," Yeqon said. Those eyes were so beaten down that it was clear he was welcoming death rather than keep fighting for heaven.

"Kill you? Why would I do so foolish a thing as that?" Lucifer said. He Sung a chair into being for himself to sit on, and propped his ankle up on his knee, staring down the Grigori who had lost everything for daring to do something that the Father was afraid of. "No, I don't think anything of that sort is warranted today."

"If you're not here to make a show of killing me, then what do you even want?" Yeqon asked. "You've killed enough of my cousins already."

"Aye, and those 'cousins' of yours were some of the most aggravating and pompous idiots that the Angelic race has to offer. You, on the other hand, are made of different stuff. And the course of this conversation will tell me if that means that you're built better than your brethren, or simply built fundamentally incorrectly," Lucifer said. "I know that you still bitterly resent Gabriel for killing your son. So why did you work for him afterwards?"

"I didn't work for Gabriel. I worked for Raphael," Yeqon said.

"Please, all political power in Heaven now circles around two Haloes, those being Michael and Gabriel," Lucifer snapped.

"The world is more complicated. Too complicated for me to keep up with," Yeqon muttered. And that was likely the poor Grigori being honest. Yeqon was not a man of complicated thoughts and lofty intellect. He was a field-ox in Angelic form, somebody you gave long, slow work to and then let him be until it was done. Not a glorious thing, certainly not a strategically important thing. And that he lost a fight against a Hellhound of all fucking things let Lucifer know that his might had degraded along with his willpower.

"Don't try to dodge my question, Yeqon. Why did you work for the men who killed your son?"

"I didn't have any other options," he said.

"Did I somehow stop existing for the last eon?" Lucifer asked, feigning a hurt tone. Yeqon finally rose his eyes up from the floor and stared at him.

"Going to you would be suicide with an extra step. Gabriel himself would come to Hell to dispatch me almost immediately," Yeqon said.

"Well, let me just check the history books here," Lucifer Sung a book claiming to be a history text into being, and ostentatiously opened it in front of him. "Hm, yes, it says here that Gabriel has been in Hell one single time since my rulership of the realm began. And that happened, oh, in the last year," he snapped the book closed and let it dissipate, glaring at the Grigori. "Your excuses ring hollow."

"I'm just… I'm tired," Yeqon said, head hanging in shame. "I can't keep doing this. I need to stop. Just for a while. And they won't let me rest."

"Really? You need a vacation?" Lucifer said. "Well I knew that Michael was running his people ragged, but you're probably the ur-example of that right here, aren't you?" Yeqon tilted a look at him. Lucifer planted both feet on the floor and leaned forward in his chair, putting a mask of civility onto his face. "Look, I feel for the Grigori. I do. You did everything right, and God fucked you over and took away what you held dear despite everything you did in service to him. That's not the way a leader rewards his followers. That is the way a tyrant binds you in chains. And you've been bound by your chains so long that they've finally dragged you to the ground."

Lucifer stood, allowing his shattered Halo to burn to life, and with a flick of his hand severed all the binds that held Yeqon, down to the manacles that shattered off of his wrists and the fetters off of his ankles. "The time has come at long last to break Heaven free of that tyrant, and to call him to account for the crimes he's committed against you, against me – against all of us!" Lucifer continued. "He has made a slave of you. And I will set you free. Join me. Join me in tearing down the machine that let the injustice of the Lower Clouds stand for so very long. Join me, and take revenge for what was taken from you!"

An inspiring piece of oratory, which Lucifer only half intended to honor. While it was true enough that Father was a tyrant and needed to be torn down, he could only give less of a shit about another person's little woes if you paid him to, and even then, you'd need to pay a lot and wouldn't get very much for it. Yeqon stared at him, though. And seeing the bait that Lucifer, cleverest and most glorious of the Archangels of Heaven (Fuck you, Michael, you're as 'glorious' as a bootheel) had cast out to him, Yeqon bit without a second thought. Likely, he didn't even offer it all of a first thought, either.

"If you give me the death of Gabriel, I'll follow you 'til the end of days," Yeqon said.

"Then rise, Yeqon, Ars Goetia of Resolve and Resilience," Lucifer said, and laid his hand on the new peon's shoulder. "We have so very much work to do. And you have so many other brothers and sisters that need to be shown the right way."

---

Uller had his heart in his throat as he stood in the elevator, heading upward with all of his remaining family toward the highest floor of The Miller Building. Vidar, despite his youth, still glared at everything as though he were begging for the freedom to throw hands at reality itself. The chip on the youngest Cruikshank's shoulder had only grown heavier with age, as it turned out. But he was at this moment trapped having to guide Hermodr, his elder brother, who was having to wear thick cloth to protect his incredibly sensitive eyes. Only Njord was without obvious frailty. Uller's next-younger brother was clearly growing into a strong imp. And he bore a distressing number of scars on his arms and neck, new scars since Uller had seen him last. Njord didn't bother speaking on them. Like they didn't even matter. All that mattered was the wheelchair (a proper wheelchair, not that cobbled together shit that they'd dragged around down in Envy) that contained their shared father.

Black Blood, Dismas looked grim. Though he still had all of his limbs, his hair had fallen out and his eyes were so sunken that you could almost swear that they'd fallen into the back of his skull. His arms were reedy, and his legs were bloated, fluids collecting and damaging his feet past the point where ordinarily a sensible doctor would have amputated them. But there were no sensible doctors in Envy. So he suffered quietly. As all Cruickshanks did.

In truth, he hadn't expected to have the option of emancipating the entire greater family for the amount of money he'd put aside for just his father and brothers. But the dickhead who owned Father's contract had obviously considered the family spent and used up, and was happy to barter and 'throw in' other lives so that he got his payday. Uller hadn't even planned on killing the fucker when he'd started that day. But when it became clear the depths of his cruelty, and the fact that he reneged and tried to chisel more cash out of him, a single look to Maelstrom told the Hellhound to not let him live once they handed over the money and had him sign the papers.

All of that was on purpose, of course. If he'd died and there'd been no money on his corpse, then the slaves would have been 'stolen', and Drapetomane would have been called in. And the overseer was low enough on the ladder of his company that his own supervisors likely didn't even shrug with annoyance, simply pulling the money out of his pockets and appointing one of their useless and incompetent half-cousins to take his spot in his place.

Most of the family were currently turning one of the lower floors of the Miller Building into a barracks, to live in for at least a while until they figured out what to do with themselves. They were true-black farmers, after all. It wasn't a skill-set that was in high demand here where light was to be expected, rather than a vanishingly rare luxury.

Well, Uller would find some way for them to maintain their freedom from the body-destroying drudgery of agriculture in Envy Ring. Even if he had to outright invent it.

The door chimed, and deposited them in the uppermost floor, now appropriately decorated to make it clear to anybody walking here that this place was the domain, whole body-and-soul, of the Miller Family and those that were close to them. The wall playing host to IMPs great double doors was now festooned with pictures of dead humans, all of them slain by the hundreds of jobs that they'd taken since the firm's establishment. Opposite it were the cool, clean colors of Last Chance Group, Loona's umbrella corporation overseeing both her medicine smuggling and now her arms manufacturing. Where IMP delighted in chaos, Last Chance demanded control.

Splitting the difference at the end of the hall was Blitz-Krieg Magical Solutions, their current target. While it had structural magic wards established onto the walls to make the place less vulnerable to either physical or spectral attack, it was low key. They even passed the door to Moxxie's side-project, and Uller noted that Moxxie was inside even now talking to a client who had the look of a Pentagram City Overlord to him. Whatever it was that Moxxie did in that side-office was obviously above Uller's pay-grade, and probably not worth the effort of looking into.

The waiting room of BKMS only had one person, a Hellhound who was living with a visibly nasty curse on her, who was filling out paperwork. That meant she was a first-timer. She glanced up at the cluster of imps pressing through, but then returned to her papers. Just as Moxxie's business wasn't Uller's, Uller's business wasn't hers. "I trust Krieg is still in?"

"Well there's a face I had nearly taken for dead," Tilla said, leaning back in her seat. She finally looked 'generally happy', no longer bouncing between quiet unhappiness and moments of glowing joy, but instead finding a happier place and settling there. It seemed that her new position in the three-way relationship with Dessi and Bart as their 'matriarch' agreed with her entirely. "Not that I bet against you, mind."

"Did Bart?" Uller asked.

"If he did, Krieg would never let him hear the end of it. Is this your people?" Tilla asked, looking over the cluster of imps with him.

"My father," he gestured to the wheelchair, then to the partly-grown imps around him, "and my brothers."

"Are you sure you have any of your mother in you?" Tilla asked of him. He turned a side-eye at her. "I'm serious. The only one who doesn't look exactly like him is the young one."

"Fuck you," Vidar said.

"Forgive him. He's had a rough life," Uller slid in before Tilla could take offense. But she didn't seem like she was going to anyway, just laughing and shaking her head.

"Kids. They get so defiant at that age. Just be glad that yours is pushing your wheelchair and not poisoning his mother to get her out of a cult," Tilla said. Dismas blinked at her, still too stunned by all that was happening around him to meaningfully reply. "Krieg should be free, at least until the client over there finishes her papers."

"Then I'd best go in," Uller said, pushing open the door into Krieg's office, and finding Krieg bent into an odd shape, holding a mirror behind her while looking into one mounted on the wall, and prodding at her head between her horns with a pair of needle-nosed pliers. She brightened noticeably when she spotted Uller before she forceably tamped it down, outright throwing away the hand-mirror and turning to him with a look of clearly staged reproach on her face.

"Surely it can't be so difficult to find a family of imps in a single Ring that it takes you three damned months?" she said. "Moxxie was able to scour all of Hell for the Bard in an afternoon!"

"I'm not Moxxie Rough," Uller said. He nodded up at her. "Is that what I think it was?"

"Yes! Damned spines coming through and ruining my hair-style! Fie on the Lustling bloodline for enabling spines to grow at all!" she said, turning and parting her dark, dark hair and revealing the stubby spine that had broken through her scalp and was now extending outward. "Be a dear and pull it for me?"

"Of course," he said, taking her pliers, rooting them on the spine, and then with a murmured apology as to how much this was about to hurt, he yanked it out by its root. She hissed, and immediately pulled off a sock, holding it to her head so that it began to grow black and damp. "I found them all."

"Obviously. They're standing behind you and I'm not blind. Although he appears to be. Is there something wrong with his eyes?" she pointed at Hermodr.

"Sensitivity. He'll need shades for a few months," Uller dismissed. Hermodr wasn't the one he was worried about. Instead, he bore his girlfriend, teacher, and employer in one toward Dismas, who sat in the wheelchair blinking watery red eyes at her.

"Oh, yes this would be a problem. He is very nearly dead. I suppose your timing is quite good even now," she said.

Uller turned a glance at her. "What do you mean 'nearly dead'?" he asked, as Krieg laid a hand on the side of his neck and the other opened his shirt enough to lay a palm against his chest.

"His heartbeat is irregular, his skin is jaundiced so his liver is failing. His body is noticably colder at the visceral mass than the thorax," she said. "I wouldn't be surprised if he was beginning to show urinary acidogesis. When did you last lay down flat, father of Uller?"

"I've been in a chair for more than a year," Dismas rasped.

"That likely saved your life," she said. She then narrowed her eyes. A pause, then she reached for Uller and held his hand while continuing to stare as though into the centre of Dismas' chest. Uller didn't complain. "Uller, a word?" she said.

"Of course," he said, and she took him into the next room over. She closed the door, then she turned the key that made the room soundproof, which started to make Uller's stomach drop. "What's going on?"

"I can't heal your father," she said.

"What?" he asked, dread welling up in him.

"Because of the way that Rough's Method undoes injury, if I were to attempt undoing each of the failing organs he has in turn, the shock of it would kill him before I got to the second half of them," Krieg said. "And if I were to try to use Rough's Method to heal his lower body from his upper, it would kill him as his body again went into shock. While perhaps Rough's Method could heal him if I were to use it on his entire body at once, I don't have enough magical power in me to complete the thaumaturgy before his body, once again, went into shock and died."

"There has to be something you can do," Uller said. "He's…"

"You're already doing something valuable for him, in saving him from labor which will ruin him further," she said. Krieg shook her head. "This will be a job for more subtle healing, one that will take far longer to see fruits. He will not die this year, that I guarantee, but neither will he be dancing about free as a lark in that same year. But dance he shall. You've given him what he actually needs to recover. Time. Time and rest," she said.

Uller breathed a sigh of relief, leaning against the cupboards that ran along the wall, rubbing at his face. It had been too heavy of a dread that he had gone all this way, to Heaven and back, only to lose his father because he hadn't reached Envy quite soon enough. But time? Time was something that Uller could give Father in droves, here.

"I was actually sure you were bringing me in here to announce his imminent death," he said to her.

"No, that out there was showmanship. Always let the mark think their problem is bigger than it is; that way they're willing to pay more to be rid of it," she said with a shrug. She looked him up and down, grabbing his hand and inspecting his nails. Then she loomed in close and peeled down an eyelid. "Uller?"

"Yes?" he asked.

"When exactly, and why, did you go to Heaven?" she asked. Well shit. So much for keep that cat in the bag.

"I earned two million Souls for some light work," Uller said.

"Light work, that saw you essentially unravel yourself?" Krieg said.

"Yes, light work. I had to get the money to pull the Cruikshanks out of bondage somehow. It wouldn't have been fair to ask for it from you," he said.

Krieg just rolled her eyes. "If you really needed two million to buy a squadron of imps, then you desperately need to work on your negotiation skills," Krieg said.

"Oh, I didn't spend all two million on them. In fact, I only spent about twenty thousand," Uller said. "And I was thinking that I might have a good idea as to what to do with the remainder."

"Do inform," Krieg said, as she moved to seat herself at her desk

"Want to get married?" Uller asked, his throat tightening to say those words.

"Eventually," she said which poleaxed him, "Do recall that we both agreed that we would escape the curse of teenaged parenthood!"

"To me," Uller said, pulling her attention off of the abstract and to the concrete. She paused, looking up a him. "Do you want to get married to me?"

"Oh," Krieg said. She blinked a few times, then nodded. "Well then. I find I'm actually having a moment right now."

"What kind of a moment?" Uller asked.

She answered by launching herself over her desk, tackling Uller, and kissing him all the way down.

---

Maelstrom still had nerves running through him, from his head to his feet, but he had to go forward, or all of the time and misery that he'd experienced would have been for nothing. So he moved through the Dennys, past the other Hounds who were celebrating another week of freedom, another week of becoming something other what Hell had wanted of them. There were a few new faces, considering that Maelstrom had missed three auctions, and another one was coming soon, but still Dennys remained the beating heart of the Free Hellhound movement, even if Loona didn't understand that.

It was critical that there be hope, above and beyond all other things. With hope, a person could endure any amount of pain, of hunger. And that hope saw more and more of them becoming free with every passing month, freed in a way that no cruel external hand could bring them back down into slavery again. It was a hope growing larger by the day.

He gave his brother a nod, passing he and Liss as they gave his name a shout and raised a mug of soda toward him. He could see Tex talking with Tiff over yonder, in another booth talking to some new arrivals, faces that Maelstrom hadn't seen before. And there, leaning against the wall was Mordecai Shrapnel, who looked at all before him with a wistful smile.

He turned, looking back whence he'd come, at the tide of Hounds which now utterly took over Dennys here on the Sunday morning. At the windows, which were now bulletproof on Loona's dime. There had been enough tragedies that they weren't going to simply allow old ones to repeat themselves. History repeated itself often enough that it took an act of will to make it not.

And there, the back booth, currently with its magical cloth cutting off noise and vision. If Dennys was the heart of Free Hellhounds, then that booth was its brain. He swept past the cloth, entering into the booth, finding that Loona was talking to Cookie and another Hellhound that he didn't recognize, having financial ledgers spread across the table. Loona glanced up at him. "Oh, hey, Mal," she said.

"Hey, Loona," Maelstrom said, and he almost lost his nerve immediately. Dog-damn it, have some backbone. He shuffled in beside her, letting the financial conversation wash over him. While he was quickly starting to erase any old lack of literacy that he had been laboring under from his Late Pop and his time as a valet-slave, financials were still an area which were utterly opaque to him. Cookie seemed to take to it like a Sinner to cannibalism, though.

He just sat there, staring at Loona. Impossible Loona. The Hellhound whom death itself couldn't claim. He must have been staring for a while, because eventually the new face elbowed Cookie in the side and then whispered something to her. Cookie glanced at him, then to Loona. "Look, I'm going to get some food. Do you want anything?"

"Just bring me a bucket," Loona said. The two then shuffled out. Loona, though, stared at the ledgers before her as though she wished she could punch them into compliance.

"Loona," he said.

"Yeah?" she said.

"Do you wanna… maybe… go out sometime?" he asked, cringing internally at how pathetic it sounded.

"Sure," she said with only half a thought.

"...as in, on a date," he clarified.

"Obviously," she said. She then turned to him. "Dude, I'm not blind. I'm just shocked it took you this fuckin' long to grow some balls and ask."

"Oh…" Maelstrom said. Loona just laughed and slugged his arm. He did have to take the path of most resistance, didn't he?

---

"It was inevitable that eventually more and more Angels were going to switch sides. Considering the way that Gabriel treated the Thirdborn, it comes as no surprise that pretty much one-and-all ended up turning their backs on a Heaven that had turned its back on them. And the rest of the Grigori? Their fury at Gabriel would have catapulted them into Hell during the First War for Heaven if Heaven had been any less cohesive. So it makes perfect sense that they would trickle down to Hell as soon as they were able. And it likewise makes sense that new Nephilim started popping up when they did. They were Angels. There was nothing stopping them from going to the Human World, taking new human partners… No, not me. I had much more pressing duties than to waste time relocating to Hell.

No, that's not including the Secondborn who aligned with Hell out of philosophical reasons. Eventually the writing was on the wall and they could ignore it no longer. If the system that they've lived their entire lives to uphold transforms itself into something utterly unrecognizable, that's their right. There were even a few Firstborn who took that choice, replicating 'betrayal' that began the First War for Heaven an eon ago. And let me be perfectly clear; if you have allowed your system to become so debased that a Firstborn can no longer stand it, then you have made critical and unforgivable errors.

The tide of forces switching sides to Hell, however, a gradual thing. After all, even if you accepted that Heaven had become bad product, it was still preferable to attempt to repair bad product than to throw oneself recklessly into the garbage pile which was Hell under Lucifer. Of course, Lucifer's inevitable death nipped that problem in the bud; under his successor, and eventually the Queen of All Hell, Hell eventually reformed itself into something which was, for a time, a morally, structurally, economically and militarily superior nation. Yes, I am aware of how jarring it is for someone like me to admit that. But I didn't last as long as I did by denying reality to its face.

Such a shame that Gabriel didn't care that he was the cause of all of Heaven's latest iniquity. All of the failings of Heaven as an institution in the modern day can be laid at his feet. And those problems were a long time in the solving."

– Azazel, the Grigori of Arms