To stand before the Throne of God was an overwhelming thing for most. And even two years ago, Birah would have easily counted himself numbered amongst 'most'. But times were changing, and he changed along with them. It was awkward, and felt very against his very nature, but he did indeed change. Because he had to. Because the questions he needed answered required it of him. So he changed. However much it hurt. And it hurt almost as much as the perplexing and mind-scrambling face of God, who stared without expression towards the far end of infinity.
"It's not often you come up here, little Secondborn," Gabriel's voice dragged Birah's attention down, and to the small seat that rested near where the Father's foot touched Cloud Nine. It almost drew a sneer from Birah's face to see where Gabriel was trespassing. He sat in the seat of the Taxiarch, the seat that was Michael's by right of creation. And he didn't even sit properly. No, Gabriel lounged in that chair, sitting across its seat with his legs dangling over the side, his ropy, muscular arms resting on his – as usual – bare chest with his fingers laced. "Did you have a nightmare and need to tell Father about it?"
Birah tried to ignore him, and walk toward the throne. But Gabriel wasn't going to have that. He shifted, pulling himself into the seat more properly.
"Speak to me when I address you, Secondborn," Gabriel demanded.
"You shouldn't be sitting there," Birah said.
"Why not?" Gabriel asked, propping an elbow on his knee and lowering his chin onto his knuckles.
"That seat belongs to the Marshal of Heaven," Birah pointed out the obvious. And then there was a sudden cracking sound in the stone, as the toe that Gabriel had been tapping suddenly impacted the floor and sent a spiderweb of cracks out and before Birah. A not-so-subtle warning to stop. To not take another step lest you meet the fate of the floor.
"The Marshal of Heaven hasn't sat in his seat for months. Somebody has to take up the slack. Who better than I?" Gabriel asked.
"That is not God's Commandment," Birah said.
Gabriel sighed, shaking his head. "Just when I thought you might have something interesting to say, you have to go and bore me. What are you bothering Father for, little Secondborn?"
The small but prideful part of Birah wanted to snap at Gabriel that he had a name, but he knew that Gabriel hadn't the respect in his entire body to offer it. So instead he choked that angry part of him down. "I need to speak to Famine," Birah said. The excuse was a valid one. Famine without a capital 'F' was an ongoing problem in Heaven. Why shouldn't a spellbinder wish to its very embodiment?
"And why should I let you do that?" Gabriel asked.
"Excuse me?" Birah asked.
"Why should I let you take one step farther than you already have? The Horsemen, without Father's directives driving them, have been spectacularly useless thus far. It's a waste of my time to sit here while you flap gums with them."
Well, Gabriel wasn't supposed to be there at all. And for that matter, where was Raguel? Or Raphael, even?
"Are you adept in the ways of entropy-magic?" Birah asked, forcing his tone to be patient.
"I don't bother with such esoterica," Gabriel said with a wave of his hand.
"So you admit that you have no idea why a sorceror would need to speak to Starvation Incarnate while we're currently undergoing a massive famine," Birah said.
Gabriel blinked at him, his distant amusement curdling. "I don't like your tone, little Secondborn," he said.
"My duty is, as it always was, to the greatness and glory and wholeness of Heaven," Birah said. "So please. Allow me to fulfill my mandate."
Gabriel glared at him. No doubt trying to parse why a Secondborn dared showed backbone to him. But in the end, it was clear that his contempt for the Secondborn outweighed his cruel cunning. He dismissed Birah almost viscerally, and waved idly.
"Very well. Go talk to that freak in the arm-pit of Heaven for all I care," he said. Birah gave a nod, and then took a step forward. There was a blur of movement, and then suddenly Gabriel was in front of him, towering over him, with a hand on Birah's head that cupped his entire skull. He could feel the overwhelming force just in the slightest tensure of Gabriel's fingers, that if he wished, he could pop Birah's head off like a bottle-cap, and with as little effort. "Just see to it that you learn some proper respectful address in the future. It's fortunate I was here. Others may not be as forgiving."
The tiniest squeeze, and Birah felt a sharp, splitting pain in his head, as the sutures of his skull cracked and came undone to the slightest tension of Gabriel's fingertips.
Then there was another blur of movement, and Gabriel was lounging on Michael's seat once more.
Birah staggered forward but didn't fall. He ignored the quickly mounting headache which he knew would only grow worse until he fixed it, and half-staggered past the warding line of Gabriel, and toward the back of God's Throne. Toward the shadow where Father put all of those things which he wished not to see.
His vision became watery, and he stumbled to a halt, holding himself from falling with a hand on the warm stone of Father's Throne. He focused his magic on the reconstruction of his casually broken skull, of putting his own head back together. Fools said only a Vigil could heal an Angel. Birah knew better and much swifter ways. In a way, Birah was lucky that Gabriel had done that to his head. If he'd done it to Birah's halo, it wouldn't have been nearly so quick a fix. It took only seconds to mend the worst of the damage. The headache remained. He would live with it.
And there, sitting at the edge of where God's Light became Oblivion's Shadow, was War. The living scar sat with his lance mostly dangling onto the floor, with a section of it up on his knee near the head. As Birah came close, War pulled the pin holding the bronze head on, and threw it away, before replacing it with another head which, unlike the first, still looked to be sharp and pointed.
"That's far enough, angel," War said, gently pushing the pin back into place and locking the new spearhead onto his lance. "You're a new face to this dark sliver of Heaven. Are you sure you're not lost?"
"No. No I'm exactly where I need to be," Birah, mostly suppressing the nervous swallow his instincts asked of him. Unlike many Angels, Birah wasn't blinded by the lay form of the Horsemen, and didn't have the luxury of thinking their appearances were a useful guide to what they were. With his intense vision, he could see what they actually were. The intense, elemental nature of these things. More powerful in their own way than any Son of Heaven.
The Platonic Thing that was War turned its scarred head toward him, as though glancing at him through the corner of his non-existent eye. "Braver than some, angel. Come closer."
Birah did as asked, walking toward the edge of the shadow. As he did, the sound became distorted. No longer could he hear clearly the songs that were played at all times in Father's presence, because they had become bent and twisted until on a fundamental level it was no longer music. The Shadow of the Throne was something akin to an Event Horizon, but for sound; the closer you came to that critical tipping point, the stranger that sonic phenomena behaved. Already, he knew that any words he said now would be lost even before they reached Gabriel, who trespassed still on Michael's place.
"You don't bear my touch. That's rare in one of you," War said, giving a shrug.
"My brothers and cousins wouldn't let me," Birah began.
"Oh, it's not an insult. Not all things should be wars," War said. "And what is the value of war if it's not reaped in peace?"
"That's not what I'd expect to hear from the likes of you," Birah noted.
War smiled, then. It was an ugly thing, his lips unable to form a curve by the rents and sutures that tugged his mouth in directions they weren't meant to go. It almost looked like a sneer. It almost looked like despair. But he had a feeling the actual feeling behind it was somewhere in the area of wistful. "War is a cruel subject, and I'm forced to be a cruel teacher for it," War said quietly. "Be thankful you haven't learned all those lessons. God wouldn't have it any other way."
"Wait what?" Birah asked. War chuckled, and shifted his lance so that its butt-spike was dug into the floor and its length ran up and over his shoulder.
"Oh you didn't know? Did you really think about why the demarcation of 'Secondborn' began with you, young angel? Why you are the First of the Second? The old man yonder," War idly tipped the head of the lance toward where God was sitting before letting it rest again, "isn't the cleverest when it comes to invention, despite what his gospel would have you think. So why don't you ask yourself this question: 'Why am I so unlike Hepsut, who was the last angel made before me'?"
Birah's mind turned with that information. The physical differences between the Firstborn were mostly superficial. Secondborn, though, could vary dramatically, sometimes even impossibly. Matariel, for example, refused to remain in a man-like form. And comparing Firstborn to Second was like comparing oranges to Demon Cores, believing there should be similarity between them because they both were round.
"Was I a prototype?" Birah asked.
"All Secondborn are," War said. "And you are a Prototype amongst Prototypes, an attempt to see just how far the sword can bend and still remain a sword."
"I don't think I'm a sword at all, actually," Birah muttered.
"Well, the difference between a sword and a plowshare can be fairly minimal. Maybe Heaven needed more plowshares than swords," War said, giving a shrug. "It'd explain the gap. A thousand years is a long time to come up with a new paradigm." A thousand years? Impossible. Birah had been made months after Hepsut. "I can say that you're in the same boat as the Thirdborn. There might be amongst them students of war, but not all of them are. And not all of them need to be. The Redemptor? Even less the case."
"Gloria Mundi isn't a warrior, then. That's a relief. The last thing we need is somebody with her power who was one," Birah said, shelving his worry for the moment and starting toward the shadow again. Who could he trust more? Hepsut or War?
Did he really want to think about the answer to that question?
"Oh, you didn't hear about that either, did you?" War asked. Birah paused, ten meters from the point where the Light of Heaven went dark, and turned to the Horseman. He gave a dry chuckle. "You'll figure it out in due time. Don't you worry."
"I need to talk to Famine," Birah said flatly.
"They're in there. Folly's out, breaking up an empire in the Human World," War said, and he slowly pulled a short sword from his belt. It was green, likely made of bronze with a patina of incredible age on it. He gently pulled a dull grey stone, and began to glide it along the orange-hued cutting edges of the sword. "But if you're actually looking for Death? He's waiting. Like always."
How could he guess?
Birah turned away from the one who sat vigil over the resting place of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Despite having no eyes, War had a way of seeing through people. Famine was the cover story. While talking to that living un-entity might have been useful to somebody like Bourlagim, Birah was a spellbinder, was a Hexbreaker, not a farmer. He strode forward into the dark, and a chill ran across his flesh as he departed from that which God Saw, and into that which God Wished Not To.
And in the lee of God's Throne, rising up in the gloom was a second, smaller throne. This one made of the bones of dragons and Leviathans and humans, backed with the limp standards of dead ships, states, and ideologies. Death was staring at his long, sladestone table, which now had a flat-screen television perched on its surface. Despite the cord dangling disconnected, it was powered on and showing programming from another plane of reality.
Death, gaunt and pinched and dark, sat in his throne, eating popcorn.
Birah took a few steps further, and the shift in parallax showed that Famine was there sitting leaned against the far arm of Death's throne, watching the same screen. Almost without his conscious choice, Birah emitted a low cough. And that was enough for Death to slowly pan his head over toward him, his dark, impossibly deep eyes registering him for just a moment, before turning back to his programming, and plucking another single puff of popcorn from the bag with his slender fingers.
"The Dark Side of Heaven has become oddly busy, ever since this whole foolishness began," Death said, his voice trembling with terrifying undertones that only didn't twig Birah's primal fear reflex because he, unlike humans, didn't have that particular evolutionary holdover. "I'm always surprised by the creativity that comes from sheer limitation. Limitation of budget, limitation of location. Limitation of perspective," he turned another half glance at Birah. "Limitation of lifespan."
"I need to speak with you," Birah said, his voice almost cracking, but he managed not to shame himself that much at least.
"Popularity is such a tiring thing," Death said, and he slowly pointed down and at his side. As Birah watched, bones clawed their way up through the floor (from whence Birah couldn't even guess), scrambling over themselves until they formed a high-backed chair without any of the pomp of the likes of Death's throne. Birah winced at the thought of sitting on the dead. But Death was looking straight at him. And pointing. And Birah could see the impossible age of Death. To look at God was to see something older than Creation itself. But to look upon Death, was to look upon something older than sanity could contain.
Birah sat in the bone chair.
The program before them was actually from Hell, not even from the human world. The various Hellspawn going through dramatic scenes of overwrought emotion and scenery-chewing.
"They are a vibrant culture," Death said.
"Excuse me?" Birah asked.
"Hell. They are vital in a way your kind aren't," he said as though that were a plain conversation and not a grisly insult to his entire race. "More inventive. More striving. More prone to pathetic lows, true, but capable of more shocking heights as well."
"I'm not here to discuss Hellish daytime dramas," Birah kept his cool.
"Then you're not paying attention," Death said. "In the last few centuries, Hell and Heaven could scarcely be more apart. But where do the humans drift, when placed between those two points on the spectrum? Toward Hell, you may say, but that's an inversion of causality. Humans aren't becoming more Hellish. Hell is becoming more human."
"This seems extraneous…" Birah tried to pull Death off of his calm diatribe.
"New philosophies are born in Hell, and on Earth, but not in Heaven. Why is that?" Death asked, plucking another single puff of popcorn and consuming it. He turned to Birah. "I was not being rhetorical."
"It's not relevant," Birah said. Death's expression didn't alter one whit, but he could somehow still tell by his eyes that Death was disappointed with that answer.
"Pretend for the sake of argument that it is," he ordered flatly.
Birah glared, but forced his tone to be level. "Because Angels are, by their natures, static."
"And out of stasis, what innovation can there be?" Death said, as though continuing Birah's thought to its logical extreme. "You had release valves for whatever creativity your kind could amass, but then decided in a fit of pique to break them off. Split the Cherubim. Execute the Nephilim. Exile Sahaquiel. Each an action as though perfectly formulated to render the angelic race motionless as a society. Shackled by chains that may not even be there at all."
"And you can think of a better way?" Birah asked.
"Of course. Make more Nephilim; they were always a great bridge between the best of the Angel and the fleeting mortal, and actually look into your own potential. But that one," he cast a thumb over his shoulder, pointing back toward the spine of God's Throne, "wasn't going to have any of that. So your best bet was to cling to Sahaquiel as though your culture depended on it."
"So you're saying that we're already doomed," Birah said.
"Do you disagree?" Death asked with a lofted brow toward the Secondborn. Birah ground his teeth. "Every single option your kind could have taken to save themselves you not only rejected but burned down. I will be reaping a great many of you in the next few decades, and you know full well where the fault for that will lie."
"You could… not," Birah offered.
Death turned to him, a mildly insulted look on his face. "I could not follow my nature. I could not," he said, obviously disappointed that somebody could say something so on-the-face-of-it stupid.
"No. No I suppose you can't," Birah admitted. Death nodded. Death was neither enthusiastic nor malicious about collecting those lives which destiny, or later mere circumstance would end. It was what he was. He could allow the dead to go unreaped as well as a human could pluck the moon from the sky and tuck it into his pocket. "Was this always the way it had to go?"
"There is no destiny anymore," Death said, facing the Hellish dramatics once more. "And now that destiny is gone, there is only the consequences of your actions. That you are so easily predicted may make those like Eistibus and I seem prescient, but it's to your failing, not our power."
"Do you know who the Song of Ruin is?" Birah asked, in the pause after Death's statement.
"The Demiurge, obviously," Death said.
"And who is the Demiurge?" Birah asked. And at that, at long last, a smile came to Death's face.
"And there, there at last, somebody asks me an interesting question," Death said. He handed the bag of popcorn over to Famine, and the bag spaghettified into oblivion over the course of a few seconds, while Death turned to face Birah once more. "Do you hear the music here, Secondborn?"
"What music?"
"The music of Syncretization," Death prompted.
"No," Birah said, his back straightening at the realization that the underlying melody that he'd heard his entire long existence was at last absent, and he could hear the silence that lay under it. "But what does it have to do with…"
"Syncretization is God's desire for everything to be in its clean, distinct little box. A place for everything, and everything in its place," Death said. "No other pantheons; syncretize them into Angels, or syncretize them into demons. No other Heavens; allow his rampaging son to put them to the torch to the very last. No virtuous humans not given to his paradigm of 'innocence', no they would starve and perish with finality. No beings from outside his Creation; they are to be massacred on sight. He tried to incite a pogrom against the imps, once. Did you know that, young angel?"
"How could God fail at that?" Birah asked, because the only reason that the imps would still exist today was if God had failed.
"Because of what imps are. So he syncretized them, not as individuals but as an idea, and bound them to Hell; even then, with what they are, it was a half-measure. He can't keep them out of the mortal world, even with all His power. Only make them dread living there. That, this partitioning-off, is what God does. A place for everything. Everything in its place," Death said. He gave a chuckle. "He tried to use that little trick on us as well. But my companions and I are of… more steady stuff."
"So what did God Syncretize to the Demiurge?" Birah asked, understanding where the thrust of this conversation was going.
"Yaldabaoth," Death said.
Wait.
"Are you saying that Yaldabaoth isn't the Demiurge? That God just… conflated the two of them together?" Birah asked.
"Indeed, young angel," Death said, daintily resting his chin on the point of his index finger, leaned as he was to one side. "He tried to further conflate Yaldabaoth with Satan, to bind the whole messy business to a body which could not under any circumstances threaten Him by leaving Hell. And in that He failed."
"Because Yaldabaoth is the Son of Chaos," Birah said.
"Exactly so, young angel," Death said. The powers that Samael had were massive and terrible, but they were Like God, down to being able to create at a whim. His word could transform an angel into a petty god. And his hatred toward God seemed more philosophical than vengeful. Birah felt a dryness in the back of his throat, one that made it uncomfortable to swallow, but he did it anyway. If only to give himself time to gather courage, to ask the next and most blasphemous question of all.
"Is God the Demiurge?" Birah asked.
Death offered a tight-lipped smile, shifting in his seat a bit, turning with one ankle braced up on his knee.
"Not anymore," Death said. "And also not yet."
"But God is… GOD! How could he also be the Demiurge?" Birah asked.
That seemed to disappoint Death. "What is God's most critical commandment to your kind, young angel?"
Birah stared at him. He knew God's Commandments to the Host. And he knew which one was first.
"To 'Obey Me above all other causes and leaders'," Birah said.
"Not 'protect the safety and wellbeing of His creation', not 'improve the wellbeing of Heaven and Earth'. Obey Him. That is the first for very clear reason, Spellbinder," Death said. "What kind of 'loving' creator god instills a primary need for obedience before all other concerns?"
"Lucifer is exactly why that commandment is in place," Birah said.
"Lucifer is the perfect example of why that commandment is an admission of failure," Death countered. He rose from the throne, which crumbled on the side he approached from, leaving Famine to watch the Hellish melodrama and moving to stand over Birah's seat. Despite the fact that Death's form ought to be exactly 180 centimeters tall, it somehow towered impossibly over the Secondborn. "God's most critical demand of his followers is to do exactly what he wants them to, forever. And any deviation from this is not seen as failure, but instead rebellion. Do you know why I told the Godfriend that I won't kill Lucifer?"
"You won't?" Birah asked.
"Because God is going to die. He shall not not rouse from His fugue. I have seen the choices that led Him to His catatonia, and He has made none since that will lead him to revanchism and a return to glory. Ask Eistibus the probability of God's return. They will agree that it is now flatly zero," Death said. Then he stooped, looking Birah directly in the eye. "To kill Lucifer, a mere God-writ-small, is beneath me, an insult to my capabilities, and a waste of my time. Besides, someone who has made his choices will be doomed by them soon enough on his own timescale."
"So what…" Birah began.
"The Demiurge will die. Causality will rein supreme in creation, as it had before God's arrival here. All will be as I remember it, as I waited eternal over the Abyss, before God's interference on my home," Death said.
"And what about Samael?" Birah asked.
"You heard what I said. The Demiurge will die," Death said, turning back to his throne, which reconstituted itself as he approached.
"But if Samael isn't the Demiurge, then…" Birah began.
"Names are objects," Death said, as he lowered himself back onto his throne. "And objects can be given away. The Demiurge is doomed, in all manner and in all factors. What else is there to say?"
"Why?" Birah finally asked, the confused frustration bubbling up. "Why is it that everybody I talk to seems to say the same thing? That God is wrong and Samael is right?"
"Because you are talking to people who see reality," Death said, leaning back and settling into a comfortable posture. "And through their words, you are forced to interface with it as well. An alienating experience, isn't it?"
The next auction happened on a Friday, so Loona had enough time to set up security for the get-together of the newly freed Hounds of Dennys the following Sunday. And this time, despite her paranoia pricking at her hide with every clatter of cutlery and every thunk of a bucket hitting the table, there were no bullets flying through the windows, none of her brethren experiencing mere hours of emancipation before dying in a pool of their own blood.
And it left her throwing confused glances at Maelstrom.
There was so much about that shit she went through in Purgatory that she hadn't exactly explored, but the ability for her to force a Hellhound to Pop was a game-changer in-and-of-itself. With only a whisper of mental effort, she could essentially erase the number-one fear of every set of Hellhound parents. Only the most domesticated of Hellhounds, those who were like Loona herself, had any real certainty that their pups would become people. The further back toward the wild, and the more of the physical exceptionalism that such a regression caused, the more pups would be born to a whelp and the fewer of them would Pop.
Loona wagered, a Hound like her? She'd likely make them one or maybe two at a time. Tiff, conversely, would likely bloat up with eight to ten.
Maelstrom should have been Brained and worse than that should have been dead. But he continued talking to the old man Shrapnel and to the newcomers as though nothing in Hell were wrong. Because for him, there wasn't. But she knew there was something different about him. Not just from when she'd first spoken to him in the street outside that fucker Birch's house. More recent than that. There was something that had changed since the Massacre at Dennys.
Moxxie hadn't told Loona what happened on that shit-show of a job a few weeks back, but he had told Millie, and Millie in turn blabbed to Loona. And that thing that they fought? That was an Outsider. One of the ones that Moxxie and Millie were made enemies of. And it had stomped them flat. Only Maelstrom had been able to break free of its False World aura and wreck shit.
A feat that she was pretty certain that he wouldn't have been up to. At least before he got shot in the brain.
She'd changed him. On a fundamental level, on an irrevocable level, even, she had changed him. Turned him into something which was able to see through mind-control and illusions, to power through magic and kill the one who wielded such terrors. She wasn't regretting doing it, not even a little bit. But she was alarmed that she could.
If this was what she did to Maelstrom by accident, then what was she capable of doing on purpose?
"You've been eye-fucking him all afternoon," Tiffany said quietly. The get-together at Dennys had quickly spiraled into an all-out Hound Party, with a swathe of them bombing into vans and taking the Hellevator all the way to Gluttony where the shitheads couldn't get them down and they could drink to their liver's content.
"I'm not eye-fucking anybody," Loona said.
"And yet every time I glance in your direction, you're looking at Maelstrom. If you want him, just take him. He'll appreciate it. He seems the type," Tiffany said.
"Yeah, no. I think we're better as coworkers," Loona said. It's not that she was repulsed by him, but right now, relationships were the last thing on her mind.
"Your loss, child," Tiffany said, then took a swig from a keg of Beelzejuice. It turned out, that the Hound Party that she'd fomented became the tinder for an indiscriminate rager, pulling all kinds of people in from the nearby area to throw in more kegs of booze, jugs of moonshine, bales (yes, bales) of pot, and even a male Fury who wore nothing but an apron and a jock-strap, barbecuing up a storm.
So the merriment of a hundred hounds quickly found itself swamped under about two thousand imps and fiends, and one Elder Devil who just sat in a chair with one bale of pot sticking out of his pipe and the most baked expression she'd ever seen on one of their faces.
She continued to sip at her drink, not willing to indulge to the point of mania. She knew how bad she could get when she slammed liquor into her system. The first Hound Party she went to saw her drinking practically to a vomitous point, then passing out on a near-stranger's couch. She'd apparently started a fist fight that she had no memory of, but since her opponent didn't remember it either it was no harm, no foul. And while she could drink at the sedate get-togethers that she could hold in her apartment, she wasn't about to cut loose when she was thousands of miles from home.
For all she knew, she might be the one who had to drive.
"I'm going to go get some pizza. You want anything?" Tiffany asked.
"A burger would be nice," Loona admitted. Perhaps it was better to just not think about Maelstrom, and her particular brand of Purgatorial bullshit. The massive Hound gave a nod and began to wade her way through the crowds.
Loona looked out onto the scene, and she felt a moment of peace. There were a hundred more Hounds free in Hell, no longer tethered to their master's leashes. And they were partying like they'd never have another chance to, likely ejecting a lifetime of stress and strain and heartache in a bacchanal of debauchery, one she wouldn't deny them in the least.
"There's my bitch!" a new voice cut in on Loona's pondering, and she turned to see a truly strange being approach. Though she had the face and ears of a fox, the glimmering, prismatic wings on her back, the four arms, and the bizarre, colorful furnace she had instead of an abdomen put those to a lie. Everybody around this approaching newcomer just partied out of her way, as though subconsciously avoiding her. And they had every reason to.
One did not impose lightly upon a Deadly Sin.
"Uhhh, who?" Loona asked, trying to pull back into the crowd, but realized she'd picked this spot precisely because nobody else was here. As the shapeshifting Ring-Monarch approached, she had no options other than vaulting the rail behind her and seeing if she could survive a four story drop. Which nowadays she probably even could. But it'd still suck.
"You, bitch!" Beelzebub said with confusing enthusiasm, rather than condemnation. "I've been hearing that somebody's been setting up ragers up here on the top-side of Hell for a while now! What are you doin', girl?"
"I'm… ah… letting them blow off steam?" she asked.
The other party-goers seemed utterly oblivious to who this new stranger was. Maybe they saw her exterior, the fox with the bee's wings and a lava-lamp for an abdomen, and they just accepted it. Loona didn't have that luxury. Her nose told her that there was a Deadly Sin less than a handful of yards away from her.
"Oh, look at that, sashaying up to you and not even introducing myself. I'm Queen Bee! And you must be that Loona Miller that so many people are talking about."
Queen? Beelzebub was a Princess. Loona chose not to pull that thread. "I hope they're saying nice things," she said, suddenly feeling the same awkwardness that her Purgatorial bullshit hitherto had erased from her. Maybe it was short circuiting in the face of something as powerful and foreign as itself.
"Oh most of them don't even have your name right. They don't sweat the small stuff. But they're talking, girrr~rl, and they're talking about you," the Deadly Sin said, her voice still sing-song and betraying exactly none of the threat her words were offering.
"Hey I can spend my money however the fuck I want to!" Loona said.
"No way, that is so weird," Beelzebub said, leaning a little closer with an almost disarmingly curious look on her face. "It's not just me that's gettin' all fucked up right now. It's like I can't put five words together in a row right now. Is that you doing that? Or is that 'cause the two of us mad-bitches are too much for THIS PARTY TO HANDLE!"
There was a distant roar at the four words she chose to release as a shout. The party had instantly stopped circling around Loona (which she was thankful for), but now was instead using the Deadly Sin of Gluttony as its hub. Beelzebub turned back to Loona, a grin wide across her stolen, almost-familiar features. "Why are you even here? There's nobody important at this party," Loona said.
"Biiitch, you're here, and I'm here. That's plenty of important people," Beelzebub said. Loona was looking very, very hard at every word that came out of the Deadly Sin's mouth for signs of threat, of danger, or even just of sarcasm. But for all her Purgatorial Bullshit was stuck switched off right now, she couldn't see much sign of any of them. One of the Deadly Sin's hands rose to her mouth. "Oh, you mean why is the big bad Queen Bee of Glutton-ee crashing your little soiree? Because nobody can stop me, that's why, and you people know how to PARTAY!"
Another dull roar from the crowd, which even included Tiffany and Tex, much to Loona's dismay.
"So you just randomly slip into any party you find hosted by the scum of Hell because we… what? Amuse you?" she asked.
"So sharp! Damn, girl, I wish I had one of you around all the time. You're, like, the perfect generator for harsh energy. I could use some harsh energy around me. The bitter makes the sweet hit higher heights," Beelzebub said, snapping her finger and having a martini-glass filled with her trademark golden quadruple-distilled and triply-cursed Beelzejuice appear in her hand. She didn't drink it, just swirled it. Loona, even were she not a hound, would have been able to smell it all the way from over here. That shit was ripe. "So between all that magical whatever around you and your own incredible aura, I figure I just had to. And it's not like we're that different."
"Said the ruler of Hell to the former slave," Loona muttered, her mouth managing to get away from her for the first time since Purgatory. Holy shit, was she like this all the time before that ritual shit? How could anybody put up with her? Beelzebub didn't look offended or driven off. Rather, she lifted her drink and clacked it lightly against the cup in Loona's hands.
"Here's to escaping enslavement, then," Beelzebub. She then downed the entire glass and threw it over her shoulder to plummet several stories and shatter on the sidewalk. "You're not the only bad-bitch who had to claw her way up. It took me a lot more time and I had a lot less help than you. But this isn't a pity party. This is a KEGGER, BITCH!"
"Could you please stop calling me a bitch?" Loona asked. Under the sheer and unrelenting tide of energy that the Deadly Sin of Gluttony was blasting out with her every breathing moment, Loona felt herself withering like a tree that hadn't seen rain in decades.
"Come, don't be like that! I'm using it as a compliment!" Beelzebub said, swooping both of her left arms around Loona's back and guiding her gently but firmly away from the secluded nook that she'd more or less retired to, and began to navigate her into the party. Loona didn't fight hard, but she knew full well that if she actually put up resistance, she'd find it easily outmatched by the Princess of Gluttony.
Gluttony was the second Ring to fall to Lucifer for a very good reason.
"So settle a bet between me and Leviathan, would you honey?" Gluttony said. "Are you really gonna burn down Peake's Point like they say you will?"
"What? Why would I do that? HOW would I do that?" Loona asked.
"So that's a no, then? Well, it looks like that old lizard owes me some MO-O-O-NAY!" Beelzebub sounded very pleased with that. Considering Peake's Point was the port that lead into the Royal City of Envy, that was like asking some random peasant what his king's military strategy was. Foolish and useless besides.
"I'm not looking to start fights. I'm just spending my money on…"
"On sheltering your fellow slaves from the repercussions of your strategy. I get it. It's smart. If enough of my sisters were smart enough back when Lucy was stomping up, I'd probably have done the same thing," Beelzebub gave a shrug. "Ah, well; not every drone can be on my end of the Bell Curve. Damned shame. I'd love to meet another me. I bet she'd party like a beast!"
Loona, though, saw an escape hatch in Tex and Tiffany, who were on Beelzebub's apparent path. "Tex! Have you met the newest face?" she said, waving to the pair of them. Tex perked up for a moment, then looked a bit… guilty, maybe? Tiffany, though, set down her keg and rose to her full height, a large smile on her face as she trod toward the very quiet hostage situation that was going on in the midst of this party.
"I can't say I've ever seen somebody that looks like that," Tiffany said. "You've got to be half Mutant, am I right?"
"Oh, I'm a mutant alright," Beelzebub said with a proud grin. She then turned to Tex. "And correct my ass if I'm mistaken but is that not Vortex Pedigree Five Oh Nine over there beside you?"
"We don't go by numbers anymore. It's an insult to our race," Tiffany said.
"Yeah, I can see why you'd think that," Beelzebub said. "Tex! It's been a long time, hasn't it sweetie?"
"Sweetie?" Tiff asked, lofting a brow and turning to her massive but still tiny-by-comparison mate.
"Yeah, Tiff. Bee and me, we used to have a thing way back when. Before you got me loose, I mean," Tex said.
"No kidding. You ran with a half-Mutant who looked like that? Did you think I was gonna be jealous of you or something?" Tiffany said, gently cupping his cheek (and by extension most of his head) with her palm.
"Oh, he and I did a lot more than just run," Beelzebub said with a proud and sultry grin. Tex's ears wilted.
"Wait. Wait wait wait wait wait," Loona finally pulled free of Beelzebub, but between her own malfunctioning social superpowers and the intense awkwardness of the current situation, she didn't take that opportunity to run the fuck away as she'd ought, but instead pointed a finger at each of them. "Tex, did you seriously sleep with the Deadly Sin of Gluttony?"
"What?" Tex asked, his voice peaking. "No. I mean, Bee and I had a thing for a couple years when I was a young'in, but…"
"WHAT IS HER FULL NAME?" Loona pressed, walking up and taking the larger hound by his shoulders.
Tex stared at her. And then the truth dawned on him, helped on some degree by her barely functioning social-fu feeding the actual clues past his rationalizations; his entire body wilted as though he wanted to melt his way through the floor. "Oh no," he said.
"Oh yes, bitch!" Beelzebub said with a fist raised into the air in apparent (if nonspecific) triumph.
Tiff turned to Tex. "You seriously didn't know?" she asked.
"Yeah, ah, I mean… It never occurred to me," Tex stammered.
"Oh, don't be like that: you were a catch then and you still are now. Oh wow, what happened to your eye, puppy-dog?" Beelzebub asked, invading his personal space to look at his gouged, scarred eye.
"How do Hounds lose anything? He lost it in a fight," Tiffany answered.
"Do you want me to go kick their ass for you? Maybe grow your eye back?" Beelzebub asked. What the fuck game was she playing?
"At this point I think I'd be better off just accepting the hand I've got instead of angling for a better one," Tex said.
"That doesn't sound like the old Tex. The new Tex decided to get all boring at some point. Booo on New, boring Tex!" Beelzebub decried.
"A Hound's gotta grow up at some point," Tex said.
"And what about you? Shit you're a big bitch. How many eggs do you put away in a day? Three dozen? Four?" the Deadly Sin turned her attention to Tiffany.
"Eggs are expensive," Tiffany said. "Why exactly did you latch onto Tex back when, again?"
"Bullshit, 'eggs are expensive'. What's the most they could cost? Ten to a Soul?"
"Inflation's a bitch; it's up to nearly a Soul each," Tiffany said.
"Well that shit won't do. Imma talk to Mammon and sort some shit out," Beelzebub said, then she scowled. "Tomorrow. I'll do that shit tomorrow. Tonight is party night! C'mon, Loona Miller, we're doing keg-stands."
"No thanks," Loona said, as the window of opportunity slammed shut and Beelzebub gathered not just Loona but Tex and Tiff as well, guiding them into the pulsating, throbbing heart of this party.
"So I gotta ask: why Miller of all things?" the Deadly Sin asked. "I figure somebody making moves like the shit you're doing would have some bitching kickass name. Which let's be frank: Miller ain't."
"Finally making some moves, Loon?" Tiff asked, looking over Beelzebub's head at Loona. And pointedly not looking at Tex, who was walking hang-dog in their scrum.
"People keep saying that but I'm really not!" Loona complained. "And what else am I gonna call myself? I am a Miller."
"Mill pup," Tiff clarified.
"Oh shiiit, that suddenly makes so much sense!" the Princess of Gluttony exclaimed. "That's just like what I did!"
"You did what now?" Loona asked.
"Oh yeah, when I started nope-ing the bullshit, I figured I needed a name instead of a pheromonal designator. What better than 'The Lord of the Flies', am I right or am I FABULOUS?" she asked.
"Hold on, just hold the phone for a second," Tiff said. "Are those rumors true? Are you actually just an overgrown Drone?"
"I like to think of myself as more 'evolved', but they're pretty accurate," Beelzebub gave a shrug.
"Why do you look like that?" Tiff asked.
"Ask your puppy," the Deadly Sin said.
"Did you seriously take that form just to fuck my boyfriend?"
"Kinda! Then it turned out it was really popular so I kept using it," Beelzebub said, as their path through the party finally brought them to a table near the bar. Loona could smell that Beelzebub exhaled a waft of pheromones ahead of her, such that the people sitting there suddenly understood, biochemically, that they were being given the bum's rush. And that if they were still sitting there in fifteen second's time, they would be taking an involuntary swim in the decorative fountain over yonder.
The Deadly Sin gently settled Tex into his seat, allowing Tiff to join him of her own accord, and then gently, but again firmly and resolutely press down on Loona's shoulder until she entered the seat that had been offered to her. The Princess gave a smile and a nod, then rounded to the seat next to Loona, tucking her legs up and under her and leaning with an elbow on the table, facing the Hellhounds whom she had very enthusiastically and politely taken hostage.
"So tell me all about this Hellhound Revolution that you're whipping up," Beelzebub said, her eyes dancing with mirth.
Oh for the love of Dog.
Michael still ached.
The Vigil was one of the few true advantages of healing that an Angel such as himself could meaningfully expect. Most gutter-magics that touted healing benefits would fail if used upon an Archangel. And Raphael's Healing Miracle would have only deal with the most superficial of Michael's problems. Even the Miracle In Truth would have solved perhaps half of what a Vigil was capable of, and the Miracle In Truth was also called The Gift To Lazarus for good reason.
A Miracle that could bring back the dead still fell short of what Michael needed.
He hadn't entered Vigil often in his long, long life. Once, during the Expulsion of the Leviathans when he was younger, more foolish and brash, to heal a grisly wound so that the infection of it wouldn't cripple him. Another time during the Great Heresiarchy, when Lucifer's duplicity was revealed through the Poisoning Of The Host. Many Angels died even in their Vigils, so virulent was the toxin Lucifer used. Michael had survived. His sense of taste still hadn't recovered, an eon later. He still couldn't really appreciate spicy food, and the damage to his seldom used digestive tract left him tentative about consumption in general.
And now, a third Vigil, not because of unspeakable monsters born in the impossible geometries of Creation's obtuse corners, not due to deceit and cruelty of a powerful and malevolent once-brother. No, he had been reduced to Vigil because he had been beaten to within an inch of his life, and his body declared 'no more'.
It was almost shameful, to lose a fight in that way. He could have stomached it more readily if he'd literally fought until the Demiurge beat him into unconsciousness. But to be pushed to the very brink of it, and then ignored while Michael's own native weakness and frailty ensured Michael's defeat stung at him in a way that no upset by the hands of Lucifer ever could. Not just because Samael defeated Michael without The Great Enemy's duplicity, but because he didn't even fight with all of his strength.
The Demiurge was toying with him, not respecting his millions of years of expertise in combat and leadership. The Poison of God was mocking him, by allowing Michael's body to deal the final blow in their fight.
"Ho there," Eraniel declared from his cushion near the door, turning the band of eyes that was his head toward Michael as he rose from the niche in the wall where he had sat his Vigil. "Coming or going?"
"Going," Michael said, and immediately launched into a thick, wet cough. One that he had to pause and lean against a nearby pillar until he finally dislodged whatever it was in his throat disrupting his speech and spit it onto the floor. It landed with a splat, looking like a half-congealed yellow-brown wad of oatmeal.
"Perhaps 'coming' would be a better choice for you, brother. It seems that your Vigil did you little good," Eraniel said. He offered a chuckle, and oily incense smoke wafted up from his body as he did. "Maybe a century or two would do you more good than this little nap you and your kind have been using for the last little while. Surely a millennia can be spared for some wholeness of body and mind. Particularly in your case. You seem to have not much of either working to your favor right now."
"Time is not kind to Angels," Michael said. The Principality Eraniel was an odd thing, something of a bridge between the Seraphim and the Archangels. He had a trace of God's Word in him, but mostly he had been crafted by God's Hand. So while he wasn't as given to truly alien forms of thinking and obedience to The Word that the other Seraphim were, Eraniel was still very, very odd. His complete inability to understand the importance and relevance of time was just one aspect of that.
"Time is a brother to all of us, dear nephew," Eraniel said with another laugh that billowed with incense smoke. "And more fool to any who thinks that they can steal more of it. But if you truly are going, then by all means go. But I'll be seeing you again ere-long, I'm sure."
"Let's pray to the Father that you're wrong," Michael muttered.
"What a capital idea. I think I shall," Eraniel said, and the ring of eyes lowered down to the neck-level of the angel's body, and the carved-jade-like ring of Eraniel's Halo blossomed into being. Michael knew that he had this brief chance to walk out without being seen as rude. He took it.
Shame was Michael's primary emotion as he crossed the doors to Vigilance and emerged into the streets of Cloud Diligence, the ninth of nine, and home to the power-base of the Holy Host. Shame because he had been forced to walk the lowest streets of Probity and Kindness and see what they'd become. Compared to Nine, the bottom three Clouds may as well be in Hell. And every moment since the Walls fell, he was forced to grapple with the knowledge that this failure could be laid at the feet of the Angels and they alone. The Mightier of the Host, the Seraphim and the Thrones and the Virtues? They didn't have enough of a mind, enough agency to blame for anything. As well blame a cliff side for a flood.
The sun was low, the sky crisp and clean but the artifacts of approaching twilight nevertheless painting the clean and well-tended buildings a universal wash of oranges and reds, and making the shadows of those who worked in the dying of the day stretch long and away. Most Angels these days didn't sleep; it was an extravagance for something like them, and it didn't call to them as powerfully as it did to the mortals. The dreams of an Angel weren't a powerful thing. They seldom inspired, unless you were of an ilk with Sahaquiel. And precious few Angels were.
Other angels didn't speak to him as he moved, stiffly, through the streets, on the even and interlocking flagstones cut of stones which had a marbled pattern through them but came in more colors than the rainbow; the middle of the streets tended to default to a muted blue or green, while the edges near where buildings began were bricked with red. The yellow bricks, the most common to have been Willed into being, were used in the lower clouds. With the day retiring, the streets just looked black, like tarmac, while its lining took on the contrast of concrete. All of the glory and splendor of Heaven vanished with just a slight shift in the color of light falling upon it.
It was all skin deep, he realized.
All that he'd been fighting for, for so long, was a symbol of a thing that maybe never existed at all. He'd walked these streets millions of times, but never saw them as he did now. This unchanging venue had never triggered his sense of dread, of approaching finality. Of failure and blame.
He didn't know if he could win this war.
And what did that leave him, as the Taxiarch, if he couldn't win a battle? What did that leave him, as the Regent of Heaven, if he couldn't keep it from ruin? He forced himself not to answer that question, not even in the security of his own mind. The misery of it must not be allowed to encroach. With all of Michael's actual, physical battles to contend with, he didn't have time or capacity to deal with an emotional one as well.
The Taxiopolis finally emerged from the buildings in marble and brick and pillars of treated wood, a hulking edifice which would hold thousands of his brothers, sisters, and cousins as they argued endlessly on petty points of minutia while the initiative of Heaven slipped away from them. So divided, they had become. As he approached, a heavily androgynous figure seemed to emerge from the stone, beautiful in a way neither masculine nor feminine but drawing heavily on both in a way that mortals (and some Angels, frankly) found confusing.
"Michael? Why have you come from Vigil so soon?" Sandalphon's voice was musical and smooth, again perfectly half way between being obviously male and obviously female. "You… brother, though crude to say, you look terrible."
"My duties demand my presence, and I lack time," Michael said. Sandalphon frowned, the worry clear on his face as Michael continued forward. But when Sandalphon moved instantly when there was a hitch in Michael's step, steadying him, and guiding him toward the smaller, side entrance into Michael's own house. "Sand, please…"
"I've half a mind to drag you back to Vigilance and warn Eraniel to watch you closely this time," Sandalphon said. "I swear, you almost look worse than you did when we put you in there!"
"I need…"
"You need to be alive to see us through this, brother," Sandalphon cut him off. Sandalphon had been in Michael's corner, and at his back for the entire time Heaven existed. In every conflict, against every foe. And while Raguel was a dearer friend, it didn't discount that Sandalphon had fought against the Leviathans, had fought against Lucifer, and was still fighting beside him now. Raguel, now? Now, Michael didn't even know. "In fact, you're not giving me a good reason not to drag you to Vigilance. I'm fairly sure I could right now."
"Because every moment I waste in there is a moment Gabriel consolidates his power and sways the wavering brothers of my side. I will not have him dictating the course of Heaven. He was not chosen to be Regent of Heaven, and he doesn't have the temperament for it," Michael pointed out the grim, underlying fact of things. And Sandalphon clearly was unhappy but accepted it. Michael gave a wet cough, but allowed his ally to guide him through the narrow 'servant's' passages that bypassed the floor of the Taxiopolis and lead to his much more humble abode tucked into its back-end. "How are things in the human world?"
"The tide of prayers is growing… brackish," Sandalphon said. "More fevered, yes, as they always do as times take a turn for the bad. But many are now praying specifically for cruelty towards people they abhor. And it is not God's policy to answer prayers based in cruelty."
Yes, it absolutely was, but Michael didn't say that. Many, many times in humanity's old history, God caught wind of even a single prayer for the extermination of an entire ethnic group, and sent a cadre of angels to see it done. Why Father would choose those causes and not others? That was beyond the horizon of Michael's knowledge.
"They've become sickening to me, frankly," Sandalphon muttered. "That the poor and destitute not pray for an end to their own poverty, but instead that others face worse privation and violence than they. I sense the Devil Himself's hand in such thinking. Prayer should not be a call to violence. It is a corruption of the medium. Father would be ashamed to see His creations reduced to such base pettiness."
"Hell has initiative," Michael said, passing through another door that ordinarily would have spread out through the manse but instead moved relentlessly forward, past the ad-hoc infrastructure of Heaven's governance. "They have sufficient numbers and guile to secret themselves amongst the mortals and corrupt their thinking from within. This war will be growing more messy in time, not less. I shudder to think what grand schemes Lucifer has enacted using the Mortal World."
It never even occurred to Michael that Lucifer was ignoring the Mortal World entirely, and that their deprivations were entirely human in origin, with only a slight (read significant but localized) assist by some greedy impish assassins whom God wouldn't have been able to see coming anyway.
The next door opened not into another long hallway, but into the tiny apartment of Michael. There were few amenities left here. He kept no kitchen, for he didn't trust his own innards not to rebel should he eat. As an Angel, he produced no waste. He didn't sleep, as the only dreams worth having to him were to be had while awake. He had few visitors, because if people needed him, they could find him while he worked. But still there were a few chairs for those nights when the work had ended and Raguel would come to speak, perhaps reminisce on better days. There along the wall were his panoply and arms, and the bench by which he ensured they remained viable and potent. His armor, broken by his encounter with the Demiurge, was spread out across the bench's surface, not even begun to be fixed. He felt a dread, looking at it.
Maybe he should just ask Azazel to repair it. The Grigori of Arms was far more reliable than most of his Grigori siblings.
Sandalphon essentially shepherded Michael into the chair that now-dead Cecutus would use when he came to discuss plans for a better Heaven. Neither of them fit the dimensions of the one favored by Raguel; Sandalphon, perhaps to make a point, lowered himself into the chair that usually Michael took for his own.
"There have been some… developments," Sandalphon said, looking deeply uncomfortable as he did. Michael narrowed his eyes at his effeminate brother. "Prayers of a sort I didn't expect."
"Better than the vile ones, then?" Michael asked.
"There are Innocent praying to be allowed to go to Hell," Sandalphon said. Michael stared at him blankly. "I know. It is on the face of it utter madness. But the prayers are as sincere as those vile pleas for sectarian violence. It makes no sense, but still they pray for it."
"So Hell has begun to corrupt the minds of the Occupied Zone," Michael muttered.
"The prayers are coming all the way from Cloud Kindness, in some cases," Sandalphon said. He leaned forward. "If they're already up that far, then they've got something truly unpleasant coming for all of us to handle."
"I need to see to this at once," Michael said, trying to get to his feet, but Sandalphon beat him there, and with a gentle hand pushed him back into his seat.
"Michael, no," he said. "Let us do this for you. You don't need to do everything in Heaven. Save your strength."
"Don't speak about me like I'm dying," Michael muttered.
"Are you not?" Sandalphon asked.
There as an instinct to run his fingers over a very particular pocket, to feel for the tool that may save them all. Michael ignored it.
"Very well. I'll trust this into your hands. Find the source of this vile manipulation and snuff it out," Michael said.
"Of course we shall," Sandalphon said. Michael could tell that Sandalphon wanted to say more, but kept any other opinions to himself. He rose, and left Michael alone in his tiny abode. Michael tried to Sing a smartphone into being, to call Azazel and commission the repair of his armor.
His Song failed.
With a snarl, Michael slapped his helmet off of the desk, to a song of metal clattering as it bounced off of a wall and then rattled along the floor. And the pad of his middle finger had split open under even so light an impact, oozing miscolored blood.
Sandalphon was right, and Eraniel were right, in that Michael wasn't even close to healed. But a more proper Vigil might leave him sidelined for a decade, and knowing Lucifer, that was a decade that Michael didn't have. There had to be another way to restore his power and defend his homeland.
It never even occurred to Michael that throwing away the Shard of Ruin he kept in his pocket would have achieved all of that.
"I'm telling the truth! I am not trying to cause any goddamned rebellion!" Loona said.
"Y'see, that's the funny thing about where I'm standing. It looks an awful goddamned lot like you're putting one in motion from over here," Beelzebub said, but again though her words and the implications they contained were dire, her tone was utterly conversational. "More than a hundred ex-slaves with Scrubbed Tickets. One of them a well known military leader with Naberius' legions, now completely out of the Old Crow's grasp. You've got people whispering, girl. You've got people scared."
"I didn't know who Mordecai was when I bid at that auction. He was just an old Hound who'd had his arm cut off," Loona said.
"And you see, the thing is, I can believe that," Beelzebub said, summoning another glass full of the deadly liquid that she took great pains to distill here in her native Gluttony. She turned to Tex and Tiffany, and then out into the crowd to Maelstrom who was speaking rather animatedly with his brother and his brother's mate. "But you've gotta admit, it's a liiiiittle suspicious that you keep managing to get incredibly special, powerful Hellhounds on your side everywhere you turn up."
"Leave Maelstrom out of this," Loona said.
"Oh I don't think so," Beelzebub said. "In fact I think he's the perfect example of this shit. You see," she raised an academic finger on one of her four hands, "That little puppy over there has been making quite a name for himself for the last couple of years. Not only did he survive being a slave of Nathan Birch, which two hundred other slaves didn't – not counting the 'help' he kept in that shack – but he also became famed as the New King of the Pit. A simple Hellhound with no weapons and no armor, without magic, even, lasting how many consecutive days in that piss-hole?"
"So what, you think I head-hunted him? Goddamn it I just didn't want to kill him while my Dad murdered Nathan Birch!" Loona blurted out, which she blanched immediately after.
"Wow. This is juicy. I am so glad that our magic is fucking with each other, 'cause I'm pretty sure I could'a never gotten that out of you otherwise," Beelzebub said, taking a long sip of her honey-like liquor. "So if you're not gearing up to fill Hell's streets with black blood, what are you doing?"
Loona knew that if she tried to lie, the Deadly Sin of Gluttony would see through her. So she didn't try. "I'm setting my people free, one broken chain at a time."
"And you said you weren't a rebel," Beelzebub said, patting Loona on one shoulder as she did. "You've gotta accept the facts, girl; nobody, and I do mean nobody is gonna be happy if you take away their slaves. There's too many people dependent on 'em."
"You, too, I bet," Loona said. Beelzebub seemed to lose some patience at that.
"Bitch, my entire species is stuck in a hive-mind under the fucking Devourers. You ain't got any kind of monopoly on being born into bullshit. I'm so fucking glad I'm genociding those shit-fucks."
"You're what now?" Loona asked.
"Oh, shit, right," Beelzebub gave a shrug and a surprisingly sincere look of contrition. "Whoopsie! Let's pretend I didn't say that."
"What the hell is going on?" Tiffany raised a finger from the sidelines of their verbal sparring match.
"What does it look like? We're learning things!" Beelzebub was instantly back to her manic energy. The Deadly Sin reached for the bag hanging in Tiffany's hand and plucked the small tub of fries from its paper embrace, before a touch of her finger massively enlarged it to a portion size that no fast-food-outlet outside of her own realm would match, before beginning to munch on them. "So tell me this. Where is all your money coming from? Somebody's gotta be bankrolling all of… that," she gestured with a few fries toward where the core of partying Hounds did their best to shake off years of privation and trauma.
"I sell human medicines in Hell. And before that I killed people," Loona said.
"Oh yeah, that's how I met her," Tex cut in. "They were up in Florida killin' people while I worked as security for Verosika Mayday."
"Ooooh, Verosika! I haven't seen her in a squid's age!" Beelzebub asked. She then leaned toward the two larger Hounds and stage-whispered conspiratorially. "Is it true they say she got some sort of weird human clap that fucked up her insides?"
"No, it was an assassination attempt," Loona said rubbing at her brow with her fingers.
"Who would want to assassinate a Succubus? Let alone that Succubus?" The Deadly Sin asked. She turned to Loona. "I mean, I don't usually swing that way, but if she sauntered in here, I think I'd have a damned hard time saying no, if you get my meaning."
"I wish I didn't," Loona said, and tried to walk away. Beelzebub chose to get up and follow, which again slammed the window on Loona being able to escape. But this time it was entirely her fault. If she hadn't been so frazzle-brained, she could have bolted a half dozen times by now.
"Still, I've got to admit, bitch like you coming as far ahead as you did at the age you are – what age are you again?" Beelzebub asked. Loona sighed, and offered it. "Twenty three? Biiii~tch that's incredible! When I was twenty three I was just learning how to read! Still, you've done something special. And people are askin' questions about it, because this kinda thing ain't s'posed to happen."
"Yeah, I know. Hell doesn't like it when Hellhounds get uppity," she muttered. This time, when she looked at Maelstrom, their eyes met. And even with all of her bullshit completely going haywire, that look was enough to get him to abort his conversation with his family and begin to wade through the crowds in Loona and Beelzebub's wake.
"If they don't like it, Fuck 'Em! That's been my credo for twelve thousand years. You've gotta learn when to let the shit slide off of you, or you'll be caked in it forever," Beelzebub said. "You gotta hit that defiance, girl, use it to klatz the haters and be what you actually are instead of what those shit-fucks want you to be. I managed it. Why shouldn't it happen again?"
"So what? Over the course of one admittedly shitty conversation you're suddenly accepting that I'm not rebelling?" Loona asked.
"If you were trying to cry a rebel yell, you'd have bolted by now. I figure you're more confused than afraid right now," Beelzebub finished her glass of her signature liquor, and then as seemed to be custom for her, she smashed it on the ground and walked away, while still eating from a tub of oversized fries. "And I appreciate how psycho you have to get in order to break free of the rut."
"So what are we even doing right now?" Loona asked.
"I'm basking in your energy, bitch!" Gluttony's avatar said. Maelstrom was getting closer, but the crowds were thick, and Loona wasn't sure where Gluttony's ruler was taking them. "And I'm sure there's more going on in that head of yours than all that. These fries just ain't doin' it today. I need something with substance."
"We're… going on a munchie-run?" Loona confirmed.
"Oh yeah we are," Beelzebub said. The flow was driving them out of the complex that the party had more or less taken over, and Maelstrom was continuing to catch up, but he likely wouldn't reach her before the Hound and the Sin crossed through the exterior doors. "So tell me, sweetie-pie; why is it that my brain goes all fuzzy when you're around. It's not 'cause I wanna sleep with you. At least I'm pretty sure I don't. But even if I did that wouldn't be the reason."
"I don't know," Loona said, in her least convincing tone.
"Y'see, I think you do know, but you think if you tell me it'll make me wanna kill you and take it or some shit. Girrrr~rl I've got plenty on my plate as it is. Do you think I want your special flavor of insanity on top of it?"
"You're Gluttony Incarnate. You tell me," Loona said, as they passed out of the air conditioning and into the late summer heat. It lingered late into the evenings at this time of year.
"Oh come on, babe. I can't just eat up everybody who catches my eyes! That'd leave Hell empty and nobody to party with!" Beelzebub exclaimed. A glance over Loona's shoulder showed that Maelstrom was even now reaching the doors. "Oh is that your boyfriend comin' up on us? I might not be down to clown just between us girls, but I'm all for playing the unicorn in a threesome."
"Could you please not?" Loona snapped, and Beelzebub gave a mildly offended look, but stopped bearing her toward the sidewalk, the crosswalk, and the Doomburger that was across the street from them.
"Loona! What's going on?" Maelstrom asked, finally sliding past an arguing trio of imps that Beelzebub's mere presence forced out of her way as she'd come.
"Hey hey, Maelstrom! It's good to see you all dressed up! I thought I was only ever gonna see you mostly-naked and covered in gore," Beelzebub said with utmost enthusiasm, sashaying toward him but aborting the hug that she was obviously going for when Maelstrom's body language promised a counterattack at the first touch that reached him. "Oh wow. I see why you two are a thing. You've got almost the exact same energy as she does!"
"What?" Maelstrom asked, obviously baffled and on edge.
"This is Princess Beelzebub. She apparently wants me to buy burgers with her," Loona said.
"...why?" Maelstrom said.
"You are so paranoid, puppy. You've gotta learn to let loose. You'll have more fun that way," Beelzebub said said, daring to boop Maelstrom in his nose, which cause him to flick his head away and start to snarl under his breath, before turning to Loona. "I'm serious, bitch, where did you find him? I've been around for thirteen thousand years, and I've only found, like, three puppies like this in all that time. And every fuckin' one of them was this year."
"What?" Maelstrom added to his list of questions asked.
"Three?" Loona clarified, because that was what stuck her to the ground. She had what she had because she had bent her soul into a shape where the only way for the universe to accept her continued existence was to turn her into this. If Maelstrom was indeed like her (which she doubted, because he didn't show any of the kind of Purgatorial Bullshit that she did), then it happened because she'd accidentally made him that way to save his life.
"Oh, yeah. Some Hellhound up in the Human World running around with some weirdos," Beelzebub waved the issue away, as though it were beneath concern, which it absolutely wasn't. "That's not the point, baby. I wanna know where you've been hiding all my life."
"I have no sincere idea what you're talking about," Maelstrom said. "Is… is she really a Deadly Sin?"
"Yeah," Loona said, rubbing at her brow.
"Why does she look like that?" Maelstrom asked.
"Oh don't you be critiquing me now, puppy. I've seen your Human Disguise. Where's all the panache? You're a champion for Satan's sake!"
Loona's eyes narrowed. Oh, that was a slip up to make. Beelzebub had to have been watching Loona for a lot longer than she'd admitted if she'd ever seen Maelstrom turn on his Human Disguise. She pointed at Beelzebub, letting her suspicion bloom onto her face in full. "When exactly did you see Maelstrom put on his disg–"
She was cut off by a tremendous, calamitous bang, and feeling her body twist on its feet. She'd been spun a full one eighty, facing out into the street and the Doomburger that the alleyway framed like a portrait. Something was wrong. She was off balance. It didn't exactly hurt, but she felt weird. She looked own, and saw that her shirt had been blasted off. And while she was usually the kind of person to immediately recoil upon realizing that she was naked, she also noticed that she could see the gory insides of her own chest cavity.
Her left arm, shoulder, and all the ribs on that side were missing, reduced to gory paste which painted Maelstrom and Beelzebub in sticky red and greasy black. Both of them stared in shock and horror, and Beelzebub in outrage, while Loona realized that the dizziness she was feeling was because her heart was actively pumping blood toward a lung which wasn't there, launching alternating sprays of scarlet and tar against the wall. No. How did Fatty do this? Right, focus.
Even as she wavered, growing closer to outright falling down (in fact it was a miracle she was still standing to begin with), she focused all that wellspring of magical bullshit that she now had into fixing things. If it could fix a stab-wound, it could fix half of a missing torso. She didn't need to feel it working; she could watch as internal organs blossomed out of nothing, daisy-chaining along ragged blood-vessels which restored themselves to every press of her mind's effort.
But then she looked up.
That was an infrared scope, throwing a cone of light invisible to most creatures who weren't Loona. Crouched on the roof of the Doomburger was a fiend of some kind, with what looked like an anti-tank cannon. And so unbalanced was Loona, she didn't have the wherewithal to try moving, or even to fall down, before the fiend finished cycling the old shell for a new. He didn't hesitate to fire.
This time, there was nothing Loona could do but die.
The sheer horror of watching the massive shell tear Loona apart ignited an almost animal hatred in Maelstrom. He could feel his clothes tearing as his musculature strained and twisted, launching himself out of the ally and across the street in a mere four bounds. Another bound upward launched him from street level to the roof. The killer there was a mutant, one built like a tank. Pity for him, Maelstrom was feeling like a can-opener.
"Oh shit!" the Mutant exclaimed, and immediately pulled a Sonic Gun from his holster and hip-fired it at Maelstrom. If he'd actually cared about what his ears were telling him, that might have actually hurt. As it was, he ignored the shrill pain in his head and the sensation that one of his eardrums had maybe popped. The Mutant, backing away from the approaching maelstrom of his own demise, tried to drag the anti-tank gun with him, but Maelstrom was well inside its radius.
He didn't opt for any kind of subtlety or restraint. He simply swiped up the side of the Mutant's face, gouging out an entire half of the creature's teeth and tearing one of his eyes from its socket, causing a fetid spray of dark blood to lace across the roof-top. The assassin was good. He didn't lose his bottle completely when he was half-blinded and in melee with a raging Hellhound. He tried to pull a knife on Maelstrom, but rather than even interface with it, Maelstrom lashed forward with a kick directly into the Mutant's kneecap; the force of the blow shattered the patella and bent his knee the wrong way. He went down in a heap, the likely-poisoned knife clattering away. Maelstrom grabbed him by his bullet-proof vest, hauling him up with lunatic snarl on his face, unspeakable hate in his heart, and a claw raised to rip him to shreds.
But there was another here. Towering to a nearly Satanic degree, there was Beelzebub, the Embodiment of Gluttony. And she grabbed his hand between two of her fingers, preventing him from lashing down with a deathblow that this fucker absolutely deserved for what he'd just done.
"Let me go," Maelstrom growled over his shoulder at the Deadly Sin, for once in his life not caring in the slightest who he offended.
"Oh no. He doesn't die quickly," Beelzebub said. "Who paid you to kill me, idiot?"
"What?" the Mutant asked.
"That's some heavy firepower. The kind you'd need to crack my shell," Beelzebub said, and with a flash of magic had abandoned her titanic fox form and resumed her actual, Gluttony Drone Writ Terrifyingly Large that was her native flesh. "So who thought they could take a swing at the queen while she was out drinking?"
"Law of Proxy! I claim Law of Proxy!" the assassin begged, spitting out a few shards of broken teeth and chips of jawbone.
"Denied!" Beelzebub said. "Bad enough you tried to kill me. You just had to fuck up and kill the most interesting Hellhound I've met in decades…"
"You weren't the target," the assassin flubbed, blood running freely out of the rent in his face. "The Hound was."
Beelzebub leaned back. "Wait. You… It wasn't… You better talk fast, shit-for-blood, because I've got half a mind to let this puppy here kill you by inches."
"I wasn't here to kill you. I just follow orders I get from the drop-box; I don't ask questions," The assassin pleaded. He fished the missive out of one of his pouches with a bloody hand. It bore a Goetic seal. "Whoever it was that hired me, paid me money for..."
Chapter 35
The Assassination of Loona Miller
To Be Continued