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.

21. Melancholia

The winter was finally coming to an end, which the people of Pride were quite glad for. Most buildings in the ring of Hell's Glory didn't have adequate heating, because those built in the last hundred centuries had been subject to Lucifer's more vernal desires. Pride could have a lengthy, wet spring, a scorching, storm lashed summer, or a chill, lazy autumn, but a winter like this was a once in a lifetime event. It wasn't always the case. Cain remembered the days before, when Vai ruled Pride. He was a more hiemal personality, allowing for billowing blizzards to lock the whole Ring into their homes for days on end. He enjoyed the sensation of being within while terrible things went on without.

There wasn't nearly the same homeless problem during Vai's rule. Vai and Satan saw eye to eye, and made sure that such a problem as that wouldn't transpire.

Such things were things of the past, though. Vai was the old breed, the Paradox Kings now betrayed and dead (with one obvious exception). Vai, portrait of humility, who served to humble the arrogant. Elucis Vak the endling, last of her species, a serial monogomist in charge of Lust. Queen Seber the magnanimous, who gently shoved the grasping to a better way. King Melanchol the Unthroned, who sacrificed his entire Ring for the good of All Hell. All of them gone. Only Satan the forgiving, King of Wrath remained.

"Thou hast a certain look about thee, Cain," Satan mentioned, as he sipped at the golden elixir that he was fond of. Cain had tried it, once. Its flavors didn't agree to him. Too sweet, too sour, too bitter and too tart all at once. "As though trapped in memories of things long past."

"I am not one who can claim such a state in the presence of yourself," Cain said. He hadn't picked much at his food, but then neither had Satan. Rozarin, on the other hand, wasn't so abstemious. Having died in a battlefield cut off from such niceties as food that didn't come in cans, she was all-too-eager to accept the dinner invitation of the King of Wrath. If nothing else, it got the two of them out of the Hotel. A nice place to spend an evening, it was a terrible place to spend a sequestered month.

"Please. That thou hast lived a fraction of my lifetime does not negate the weight thine life and travails have put upon thee," Satan said. "What of thou, soldier Ahmadi? What memories wouldst thou say pull at thee?"

Rozarin looked up at Satan; he'd caught her chewing, which injected an awkward pause in the conversation. But Cain knew Satan well enough – a sentence few humans could utter honestly – to know that he'd done so exactly on purpose. His humor tended toward the subtle and the dry. Comedies not of errors, but of manners.

"I'm," she said, having cleared some of her backlog and allowed speech in a capacity which wasn't embarrassing for all, "surprised to be invited here at all."

"Nonsense," Satan said with a wave of his massive hand. "I only had a single chance to speak to the last of thine kind who chanced into Hell. And he was already walking a path that would see to his end and destruction. The story of the Demiurge is not a happy one. Not for anybody, least of all himself. But thee, thou Gifted but not burdened with world-shaking responsibility, thou interest me also. Thou may not shake the foundations of Heaven with thine deeds, but one need not be the greatest of the world to hold interest of a conversation. So please, regale us of thine life and deeds. This is a meeting of friends and would-be-friends."

"I wasn't aware you considered me a friend," Cain said. Satan sighed, glancing toward a window at the far end of the hall that was all pale, lacquered woods and portraits of now dead Old Kings and Queens.

"I have not had the luxury of being so discerning of late," Satan admitted. "Sinope is a fine guest to have, but she hath designs of her own in Lust. And while thou be human and damned by thine own hand, I find thine nature to be least displeasing of such ilk. God was right in consigning thee to Hell for thine crimes against thy brother. But in the long period thereafter, at what point did a monster thou become?"

"That would depend upon you you asked," Cain said.

"I would argue that thou hast not," Satan said with a shrug. "But enough of old men talking over themselves. Miss Ahmadi; tell us of the world thou hast left behind. I have had little chance to hear stories from God's little passion project."

"It's disturbing to me that you call my entire universe a 'little passion project'," Rozarin said.

"Would that thou saw the projects God abandoned, thou wouldst understand," Satan said with a roll of his eyes.

"What is there to tell? I was born the latest generation of an ongoing sectarian war, surrounded on three sides by forces that want me dead for the minutia of my faith. Of course, then ISIL showed up, and I started shooting them. I grew up with a rifle in my hand, an old clinker of a thing that probably is older than my father, with maybe one part in ten still intact from when it was made. The rest are all bodges and jury-rigs. That rifle saved my life too many times," she paused, her tone growing distant. She puffed out something like a laugh. "Did you know that those zealots from the south thought that, if they were killed by a woman, they would be denied Heaven and its bounty and consigned to Hell? It turns out whether I killed them or my brother did, they got sent down here anyway. I shudder to think what all those fanatics did when they got down here."

"Doubtless got swept up as cannon fodder in Turf Wars, or walked into the Pride Wall in despair to know that Allah was not the only and true name of God," Cain said with a chuckle. "The fanatic is a brittle creature. Though sharp edged and capable of rending great wounds, the slightest pressure on its world view may shatter it. And many men shattered down here in Hell."

"You speak from experience?" Rozarin asked.

"I have gone mad before. Time has a way of restoring lucidity," he said off handed. The truth was somewhat more complicated than that; between Cain's unusual heredity and his long durance down here in Hell, there was little more psychological harm he was vulnerable to. All the rest rolled off him at this point like rain off of a duck's back. "But this 'Isil' has not had such time as to rouse themselves. Those that were redirected from fanaticism in one faith into fanaticism in another are no doubt lackeys to those snapping their whips. And those that are not? Well, the Meat Wagons don't care if you gibber or not when they butcher you."

"The... what?" Rozarin asked.

"Do you really think that Hell will allow all that dead human meat which drops on a day-to-day basis just lay there in the gutter? No, there's enterprising people to collect it and sell it to well-paying cannibals."

"And other fiends with a taste for the flesh of the damned," Satan nodded, a look of distaste on his face.

"Is it usual to discuss cannibalism at your dinner table?" Rozarin asked of their host.

"When guests are invited, the conversation often devolves swiftly to the scatalogical, and is all the better for it," Satan sounded quietly pleased by that. "It pleases me to know you lived well. Didst thou die cleanly, at least? I know that humans have... proclivities... towards women that they feel have wronged them."

"No, I avoided that, by Allah's grace," she said. "I'd gotten shrapnel in my legs and couldn't make it to the escape vehicle. My brother and our families were getting away, and I could slow down the Turks for just a little while to see them safe into the hills. So I made a pill box of the dead and kept shooting until they got sick of me, and started hurling grenades. I almost threw all of them back."

"Splendid defiance, I approve," he said, reaching over from his place at the table and taking up a fountain pen the dimensions of Cain's leg, jotting something down on a ledger nearby, before returning his attention to his meal. So Rozarin had spent less than a month in hell and already earned the approval and graces of Satan? Lucky girl. "Tell me now of your families. Had you a husband?"

"Not as such," she said. She paused for a moment, turning a look at Cain, then shook her head. "I had a daughter, though. She was young. Eight years old. I had her when I was... perhaps seventeen? Or eighteen it's hard to say. I keep better track of her birthdays than my own. At least my brother will see she is raised well. He owes me that much."

"And what were they like?" Satan asked, settling into his chair. And at that, Cain finally understood the invitation. He wanted to hear about families. He always did. Cain should have guessed that his acrimony with Satan had faded when Satan first talked Cain's ear off about Adam and Abel and Ayla and Mari, about the children that he'd had before his... mistake. His grievous damning error. Satan was a clannish one. He wanted the feel of closeness that family gave. And as an Elder Devil, he could have none of his own, so lived through others vicariously.

Let him. Satan had earned that much by now. Cain just sat back and ate what his appetite would allow, and listened to Rozarin tell the story of the Kurdish soldier who died to keep her family safe.

---

Chapter 21

Melancholia

---

Ordinarily, spring in Pride Ring was a joyous thing; you were literally as far away from getting murdered by an angelic automaton as the calendar would allow, which meant that people let their guards down and did what they did best; whatever was the worst for them. Charlie hadn't been doing this long enough to break them of that habit, because there were a billion Sinners in Pride, and she was just one woman, but she would find a way. This spring, though, differed than most. There were still sightings of Exorcists, dropping in at random in Imp City, in Pentagram City, and the numerous other, lesser cities of Pride. Rumor had even reached Charlie that some had violated the Pride Wall and begun to attack Greed. That meant that people usually jubilant were clock-spring tight and testy.

Husk, for example; he had a good old grump on, his eyes glaring at the middle distance as he steadily drank. He must have a truly unusual digestive tract, because it seemed like he was attempting to gain all of his nourishment through alcohol. But when she tried to ask him what was wrong, he just shrugged her off. That seemed to be a way with him. He had a cloud-choked temperament at the best of times, and there were days when grim moods just wafted in like a fog bank.

Vaggie wasn't immune to the grim mood of this uncomfortable, wet spring. When Rachel gave her an earful about the problems that bored soldiers would wreak, she actually started dedicating an hour a day to seeing to it. One hour a day became two. She was now nearly at two and a half, and looked more frazzled and at-wits'-end with every passing day. It was things like that which made Charlie wish she could just be the Legatus of her only legion to spare Vaggie the dreadful responsibility. But Vaggie would have none of it. Charlie was financing the Happy Hotel, and Rachel was de facto in charge of its programs. Cain continued to offer his protection – and more importantly his reputation – to the Hotel for as long as it would take for him to run down all of the relics of his previous life, and the wealth that had been pilfered from him. That left Vaggie with essentially none of her original roles in the hotel for her to undertake.

So she, like bored soldiers, threw herself at a problem and claimed it with a death-grip.

Alastor was happy. When wasn't he? Of course, he was seldom seen, of late. He wafted in to intimidate the soldiers and the guests from time to time, but he didn't linger and mock as he had during Sam's stay. Whatever he was up to now, it was beyond Charlie's ken, and she didn't particularly care to dig into it.

Niffty was her usual, deranged self, save for when Cain was in the building. At that point, she became almost unconscionably horny over him. It was distracting and probably even disrespectful to the guests who had problems with licentiousness. But Charlie had learned pretty clearly and pretty immediately that the 'game' that Niffty and Cain were playing would not be interrupted by the likes of her. She distinctly regretted asking Cain what the nature of that game was, a week ago.

"The rules are very simple," he had said, "over the course of the play period, we score points on an honor system based on victories and defeats social and romantic."

"And when the course of play is over?" she'd asked.

"Then whoever loses is tied to a bed, and the one who wins can do whatever they so please to them," Cain had said, quite proud of himself, leaning forward against the bar to collect his martini. "Last time I simply left her tied there for a few hours to get some reading done. I'm half convinced that if I hadn't given her some satisfaction at the end she would have hunted down a way to kill me."

It went without saying that Cain won most games.

She'd call him a pervert, but some days, she could definitely see the appeal of tying somebody to a bed. Or being so tied. With Vaggie in the state she was in, perhaps some light bondage away from the ledgers for a day would do her more good than sex would? It was a thought to consider.

"You've got a grim look on your face," Jun-ho said, startling her as he appeared at her side. The Betrayed had the typical Gapped Halo of his ilk, but now that he was no longer skeletally famished, he had swollen into a broad-chested and thick-armed man of what Vaggie called 'ambiguously asian descent' and the face of a thug. She didn't quite know what he meant by that, other than that he had strikingly dark eyes with an odd shape to them, the likes she only saw in young Devourers and a few more human-like Sinners she'd run into. And oddly, similar to Rachel, now that she thought about it. Those eyes put to lie any thoughts that he was a brute. There was too much brain behind them by a half.

"How do you do that? Is it just a Betrayed thing that you can appear suddenly like that?"

"I was standing here for five minutes. You wandered up to me," Jun-ho said, crossing his thick arms. "What's that look on your face mean? You're usually in a better mood than this."

"I'm worried about Angel Dust," she said. Jun-ho puffed out a breath, and nodded. "Did you see him since... when was even the last time I saw him?"

"I think you and I saw him last on the same day," Jun-ho said. "And for the record, I think you're smart to be worried about him. The last time I saw somebody with that kind of expression on his face, it was an hour before he Went Numb."

"Did he talk to you about it?" Charlie asked. She'd been on her way out when she saw him, unable to delay herself to do the kind thing, which now was lodged as a splinter of regret in her brain.

"I sat beside him as he drank, but he didn't do much talking," Jun-ho said. "He cried a bit. Did it quiet, so that people couldn't hear him, but I saw it. Didn't call him on it, because that wasn't my place."

"Did something happen to him?" she asked.

"That's just it. I don't think something happened to him," Jun-ho said, gesturing vaguely as though trying to illustrate something. "I mean, there was shame in him, I'm not so blind as to miss that, but no, Miss, if I would peg what he was weeping over, it wasn't the shame but the guilt."

"Angel Dust hasn't felt guilty over anything since... well, since he got here!" Charlie pointed out.

"Ain't true," Husk piped in, an impressive feat of ventriloquism since he was currently drinking. "He feels guilty all the time. Mostly 'cause a' the shit he'd been before offing Valentino. Why d'ya think he spent so much time in the kitchen last year? Penance, that's why."

"Did he say anything to you?" she asked, quickly crossing the distance to the bar. Now that Husk was talking, maybe...

"Didn't need to. The fact that he was sitting there putting tears into his beer tells me everything I need to know about his sitchi'ation," Husk plunked the bottle – now empty – down. He didn't immediately thump for another one. "He's got a sister topside. Wanted to bring 'er down here where it's 'safer', which is fuckin' stupid if y'ask me. But he did the damned fool thing of going early without a plan. And of the five that went up, I hear only three come back."

"Who went with him?" Jun-ho asked.

"His brother – still here – a Presbyter named Nicodemus Carsteven – dead – a Gun of Satan called Striker – still here – and that Overlord you don't like," he said, gesturing to Charlie.

"There's a lot of Overlords I don't like," she contended.

"The one we went drinking that night with Sam with," he clarified.

"...Cherri Bomb? The Anarchist? What happen ohhh I can do math," she said as the count resolved itself. While she and Cherri Bomb were about as opposed on the community ethos scale as could be, Charlie was well aware that Angel Dust considered the woman to be his very best friend. And if she died in Heaven? All of Angel Dust's behaviors made sense. Sam was gone, Cherri was gone, and his sister was trapped in Heaven. What did he have left?

"Yeah. That's the price of bein' hasty," Husk said. "Didn't even bother lookin' for an Innocent to be pointman."

"That would be a critical thing to have," Jun-ho said, nodding.

"See? Even a newb like him gets it," he said, pointing with a cigar which was about ready to burn to a stub.

"Well I've got to find him," Charlie said.

"And why's that?" Husk asked.

"Because he's distraught and he's going to do something drastic. If I can stop him, I am obligated to try," she said. She might be hands-off by and large for most in this Hotel, now, but damn it all, Angel Dust was her first client, and she was not going to let him jump into the Abyss out of despair.

"Do you think that's likely?" Jun-ho asked.

"For Angel Dust? Not usually. This, today? Today ain't usual," Husk admitted.

"I'm going," she said.

"I'll come with you," Jun-Ho said.

"No, I'm not putting you at risk like that..." she began.

Whereupon Jun-ho flexed his fists, producing a strange note in the back of his throat as magic swirled around him, before snapping and resolving into a form concealing armor with an antlered helm, all plates of silver and gold. That wasn't Angelsong. But it was close to being Angelsong. As though a human had forced themselves to learn a language that their throats were not equipped to speak, and through sheer audacious stubbornness, speaking it anyway.

"I was wondering what your deal was," Husk said, eyes widening a bit.

"Getting ahold of an entire suit of armor is easy. If you're willing to steal it one piece at a time," Jun-ho said. He then sang a slightly different note, and the thing fell off of him, vanishing before it could clatter to the floor. "I am the farthest thing from defenseless. And frankly, I would like to see with my own eyes what Hell has to offer. Could you really deny a man imprisoned for three centuries a leisurely moonlit walk?"

"...Fine," Charlie said. Compromise was increasingly becoming a necessity to her. "But I'm bringing us back the instant that somebody recognizes what you are!"

"There will be doubtless hundreds of me in Hell by now," Jun-ho said, and shook his head, before jogging back into the rooms to get something. What he meant by that, Charlie wouldn't learn for a few years yet.

---

Rain made the night cold, sapping what heat that Arackniss' suit could contain as he moved through the dingy streets of the West Side. His temper was fraying. He could feel it, popping strand by strand as the control he'd had to have for his entire existence now struggled to keep him sane.

Arackniss had always had to be the cautious one, the quiet one, the subtle one. He was weaker and less handsome than his younger brother when he was alive. When Henry – the man who in Hell would become Henroin – decided that he was going to make a play in New York, it had been Arackniss' job to make sure that all the pins were lined up, not by charisma but by bribery, chicanery, and blackmail. Intimidation, strong-arming, and threats, those were given to the man who would become Angel Dust. And when all that work was done, they barely had their reward for a year before the Genoveses landed on them like the wrath of God. Molly was killed first. Shot in the back of the head outside her apartment by a guy she didn't even know the guy was there. Angel Dust was already dead for weeks by then, overdosed on all that shit he was on. And Arackniss?

Died taking a bullet for his ingrate father. The next twenty rounds, which he was too dead to intercept, finished the Ragnie crime family right then and there.

Hell had been a continuation of duties he hadn't enjoyed when he was alive. He wasn't so vain or so grasping as to say that he wanted to take Angel Dust's birthright as the heir to the Ragnie family back when the two of them were alive. Having to do the bitch-work of the family taught him exactly how fucking precarious that big chair was, and how much effort needed to be put in to keep it propped up. Of course, Hell did have some changes. No heir, for one. Arackniss wasn't even considered, but then again nobody was, so it was an insult not just to him but to every one of Henroin's direct underlings. Henroin used raw strength and force of personality to browbeat his sliver of Hell into a shape he wanted, and then expected it to stay that way.

Heh. Like he'd even done that much. All that Pops had, in terms of criminal empire, had been built by Angel Dust in the two years after his arrival in Hell. Henroin just kinda sidled in and claimed it all for his own behalf, before kicking Angel Dust to the curb because he could not stomach 'a sad fuckin' faggot' as a part of his organization, regardless of the fact that said organization existed because of the previously mentioned sad fuckin' faggot.

Arackniss was getting really fucking tired of things. A lot of things.

He could have removed the door from its hinges with barely a shove, gone for shock and awe, but at the moment, with the pissing rain and his own grim state, he wasn't in that kind of mood. So he knocked, and he stewed as he waited.

There was a buzz at an intercomm that it took Arackniss a minute to even find. It'd been painted over by so many layers that it was indistinct, and the voice coming through it was heavily muffled. "What the fuck are you doing here, Ragnie? I ain't got any more sling for ya."

"Open the door, Saul," Arackniss said.

"Why should I do that?" Saul asked, while Arackniss scraped a quarter inch of paint away from the intercomm's speaker with his fingernails.

"So I don't stick you with a bill to replace the fucking door," Arackniss said. There was a sullen silence on the other side, as Saul Rott no doubt considered his options. Frankly he had few. It was becoming a known quantity amongst the Veloce crime family that Arackniss was not the pushover he once was. And Saul had seen the spider-demon's strength first-hand. There was a clattering and clacking, as locks were disengaged and a chain released. The door opened, showing the skink-like form of Saul Roth, his eyes dour and his scaled mouth tight.

"What d'ya want?" Saul asked.

"To not stand in the rain. Move, jackass," Arackniss said, moving Saul out of his way with very little effort. For all Saul had become one of the less impressive forms of lizard, it hadn't deprived him of his stability. In life, Saul had been rock-steady. He kept that same trait down here in Hell. As soon as Arackniss was out of the rain, he shook off his coat and draped it on a hook, looking around the apartment flat that he'd entered. It was ill lit, and fairly hot and dry, the heaters no doubt having cost Rott his tail in keeping the place what he could consider livable. The kitchen table was home to several piles of cocaine, and all the accoutrements to bag and weigh it. No money piles.

"Look, I've been doin' my part. Your Pa's gotta know that," Saul said.

"Let's not talk about my Pa for a minute," he said, pulling off his hat and shaking it at the kitchen sink for a moment. It was goddamned saturated. Hanging his hat on the back of a chair, he sat down at the table, and puffed out a breath. "Because frankly, I don't wanna think about that shit right now."

"If... you're not here on Ragnie's business... why are you here?" Saul asked.

"Oh, I'm here on his business alright. Just let me get to it when I get to it," Arackniss admitted. He looked around the room. There were pictures of dames on a lot of the walls, dating back all the way to the 70's. Unlike most, Arackniss didn't give a shit that Saul survived the Genovese purge. The dames all seemed to have something common. Tall, blond, and visibly toned muscles in the arms and legs. Well, if little Saul liked his women buff, all power to him. "Ain't got any family down here, I hope."

"Used to. Got Purged," Saul said, sitting at what was obviously his place at the table, staring warily at Arackniss from behind piles and bricks of cocaine. "Same as most people."

Arackniss nodded. While Arackniss' and Angle Dust's mother died fairly young, he'd been close to his stepmother, who was mother to Molly. And she got Purged in '62. "Yeah. Same as most people," he said. Then he looked up at Saul. "I gotta ask a question, and for the sake of my sanity, be straight with me, bud: why do you stick with Henroin?"

"He's my don. Simple as," Saul said. And Arackniss ripped up a chip of the table, only partially by accident. Staring Saul in the eye, Arackniss squeezed that chip of wood until it started to heat and emit smoke, before dropping it, smoldering under compression, onto the remains of the table.

"I asked you for honesty, Saul," Arackniss said.

Saul looked at the near-cinder that Arackniss had created then wiped a hand down his face. "I don't know what to tell you, kiddo; you dance with the one what brought ya. Henry Ragnie did me good back when I was a kid. I owe him."

"You don't owe him shit. You outlived him by fuckin' decades," Arackniss muttered. "You're just spoutin' excuses that you've run into the fuckin' ground. Why are you loyal to my Pops?"

Saul pulled in a breath, about to offer another snappy, false answer, but the look on Arackniss' face forestalled him, gave him pause. He hesitated, and he slumped in his chair.

"You don't know, do ya?" Arackniss asked.

"I can't say that. Not out loud, not to you," Saul said.

"'Cause if he ever caught wind that you were flagging in yer loyalty, he'd pitch you through the Pride Wall," Arackniss said with a nod. "You're loyal outta fear of him. Fear of what he'll do when he sees you waver. Everybody's wavering, Saul. Everybody. Saluzzo? Wavering. Tucci? Wavering. I didn't even fuckin' see Old Tom at the meeting where Pa lost his most recent shit," Arackniss slumped as Saul had, his face falling into three and a half hands. "Fuck me, I think I'm wavering, too."

"It ain't safe spouting this kinda talk, kiddo," Saul said.

"Fuck you, I'm three days older than you," Arackniss said.

"Yeah, well, I lived t'ree decades longer than you did, so mind yer elders," Saul said, with a somewhat strained laugh. One that was just contagious enough for Arackniss to catch it. He chuckled for a bit, before puffing out a breath. "...are you seriously putting into the air what I fear you are?"

"I think Henroin is done," Arackniss said. "I think he's a spent resource, just coasting on inertia. And I think he might'a been for longer than we like to think."

"This is treachery were talking here," Saul said.

"He ain't got you bugged. If he did, he wouldn't a' sent me to figure out why his figures weren't adding up," Arackniss said.

"The boss thinks I'm skimming?" Saul sounded offended at that.

"Of course you're skimming. I skim. Everybody skims! This is organized crime, not a fuckin' charity!" Arackniss pointed out.

"You'd be surprised about charities, kiddo," Saul chuckled.

"Knock it off, I said," Arackniss griped. "I ain't here to lay down the law like the old man says. I know you're already followin' it. He just wants to send his brute of a boy around to knock down some walls and look tough, to shore up what his own damned decisions have been costin' him."

"Well if you ain't here to break my legs, why'd you even bother with the rain? Why not just hit Lizzie's and tie a few on?" Saul asked, beginning to set his hands to the task of measuring out and bagging cocaine.

"'Cause I think I might be losin' my fuckin' mind," Arackniss said, rubbing at his temples while another pair of hands propped him against the table. "It ain't like me to be having these kinds a' thoughts. You neither. Fuck me, I'd expect this kind a' shit outta Old Tom, moycenary that he is, a long time 'fore I thought I'd hear it outta either of us."

"This is Hell. Sanity ain't exactly growing on trees like Coke, ya know?" Saul said, waggling a baggie. "Going insane is a protective measure a mind takes when it reaches a point where the present becomes unacceptable. I ain't saying its a good protective measure, but that's what it is."

"So you're sayin' I'm driving myself nuts over this shit because I can't accept it?" he asked.

"You come knocking at my door on orders to fold me like laundry, and instead sit down and spit wind about how Henroin's entire power base is crumbling out from under him. You tell me," Saul said.

Arackniss didn't like to think about that kinda shit, that was true. He'd always been raised to listen to the older voices, and especially his Pops. Looking back on it from here in this seat, it was becoming increasingly clear that he'd had a sort of unthinking obedience to Henroin Veloce hammered into his head even before he died for the man. And now, his loyalty – however it got there – was at war with his basic common sense. That was another thing which was in fucking short supply down here. And since he had it, he could see what was coming as though he had visions of the future.

He sat back, sighing and trying to not just blather and bitch, and think about what he was going to say to this guy. Rott's contribution to the warchest of the Veloce family was a trifle in the big picture. He'd stepped down as the Dust King years back, letting somebody much more eager – if less capable – take his place. Rott might be skimming as all mafioso did, but for all he survived the Genoveses he was still old school, beholden to the old ways, and adhering to an old code. He didn't fuck over his Don, just collected his slice before passing on the pie.

It was probably Marco Scutello, the current Dust King, Arackniss realized. Scutello moved a frankly monumental amount of product throughout Pentagram City, outfitting thousands of Pushers and tens of thousands of vending machines. That volume meant that his slice was bigger by far than Rott's... but unlike Rott, Scutello lived a generation later than any of them and died during the 80's. He was a greedy fuck. And if he thought he could throw an old man under the bus to get a little bit more money, he absolutely would.

At this point, Arackniss knew that his move was to leave Saul unmolested and go after Scutello, whether he had the Don's favor or not. To visit upon Scutello the same shit that Henroin had, in his rageful flailing about, set upon the wrong target. But Arackniss wasn't going to do it, he realized. He felt a chill run through him, despite the hot, dry air that surrounded him. He wasn't going to sell Rott out for Scutello's benefit, and he wasn't going to do the 'right' thing and slap Scutello for being a little shit either. Scutello's operation was a significant portion of Henroin's quarterly earnings. And Arackniss had him dead to rights. He didn't need to slap him down.

Traitorous thoughts were swirling in Arackniss' mind. And when Saul looked him in the eye, he seemed to see them. "So it's that kind of night, is it?" he asked.

"I'm 'fraid so, old man," Arackniss said, quietly. Sadly.

Saul nodded, rising and going to his fridge. He pulled out a bottle of cold-wine, pouring out a measure of the strange Hellish red that somehow tasted better cold into each of a pair of mugs, then handed one over to the guest of the house. He then clacked his own mug against Arackniss'. "To the Don," he said, neutrally.

"To the Don," Arackniss said, and sipped at the sweet, complex wine.

He was really gonna have to fucking do this, wasn't he?

---

Angel Dust lurched back to life having not even fallen off of his bar stool. His Regenerating internal organs let out a flush of pain which sadly sobered him and flushed the alcohol from his system. He was probably going to have another nasty piss in a few minutes, when the rest of his Damned physiology responded to the most recent attempt by a Sinner to drink himself to death.

He still saw her confused, questioning face, in the instant before her head exploded. The liquor couldn't kill that memory, no matter what or how much he drank.

The bar was a rustic sort, alive with the noise of pinball machines and arcade cabinets even at this ungodly hour of the night. Not exactly teeming, but refusing to go to bed, either. It was also about as far as he could get from Pentagram City. As close to the edge as his kind were allowed to get.

"'Nother," he said, not even slurring. Damnation was unkind to the damned. It didn't even leave him partially inebriated as his drug-induced suicide was undone and left him still sitting here, paralyzed by a pain that no torment of the flesh could match. The bartender, a buff looking imp that in better circumstances he'd consider making a pass at, gave a glance not at him, but at somebody else, before pursing his lips the nodding, pouring out a pint of beer for the Sinner who payed in Souls that smelled slightly of stale spunk.

"Working up courage, are you?" a woman's voice interrupted Angel Dust's misery.

"Fuck off, I'm drinkin' here," he said, turning to see a succubus come over with hair he was too drunk to be confused by approaching, a pint in her own hand. She had the usual succubus slutwear on, but it was covered over by an overcoat which even in his bereaved and pseudo-drunken state could tell was spellwoven to stop bullets smaller than a .50 caliber. She also had some sort of badge pinned over a tit. He didn't particularly care.

She sat down on the stool next to his, raised her own pint, and then guzzled that bitch in a single pull that Angel Dust severely doubted even Husk could better. "So am I," she said, inelegantly wiping the head from her mouth as she did.

"Well, how 'bout you fuck right off, then? I need to be way drunker than this to even think about doin' goyles," Angel Dust muttered.

"And I'd need to be way drunker than I am to think about having sex with men. Or women," she said with a shrug, exchanging one empty pint for one that the bartender just seemed to have ready for her. So she was the more regular customer to this place then? "Name's Truly. I'd say the rest of it but you'd think it was a porn name."

"Yeah, right," he said.

"...Delicious," she said with a look of dismay.

"Yer name is Truly Delicious?" Angel Dust asked with clear suspicion. "You tryin' to get a laugh outta me?"

"Is it working?" she asked with a smirk that betrayed that she likely had almost as much alcohol in her as Angel dust had a few hours ago when it killed him. "Fact is, I know about you, 'Angel Dust'. My parents are pornstars. Big surprise, a pair of Concubi in the porn biz; who'd'a thunk it? Well, they figured I ought to have a name that would make me a shoo in. Didn't turn out that way."

"You kidding? A name like 'Truly Delicious' and you didn't do the obvious thing?" Angel Dust asked. As much as he hated himself, his life, and everything right now, this was too fucking strange not to comment on.

"See this?" she asked, tilting her head and lifting her hair out of the way. There was a gnarly scar there, that started just outside her hairline and as far as he could tell wrapped all the way around to the back of her skull. "I had to get a surgery done when I was twenty. I might have morphed female, but... well... I have no desire to fuck. Anyone. Ever."

"Yer point?" he asked, drinking the new shot of vodka which was provided to him. Room temperature and foul, it suited his situation nicely.

"Didn't anybody ever tell you, pornstar; for a Succubus, asexuality is a life-threatening illness," Truly said. "So I had them dig around in my brain for twenty fucking hours, trying to fix me so I wouldn't starve to death out of lack of desire to eat. And it didn't work. Not really. Sure, I'm not as repulsed as I was back before, but I still could only care less if you held a gun to my head and demanded it. Actually, holding a gun to my head might make it easier for me, come to think," she paused, giving it a moment's thought.

"Why the fuck are you even talking to me?" Angel Dust demanded.

"Because I have no desire to see you take a walk through the Pride Wall," she said. The fuck... "It's obvious you're drinking your courage up to start walking. Billiam told me the amount you were pounding back was threatening his supply, and there's only one reason a Sinner drinks that hard in a place like Black Tooth."

"The fuck do you even care?" Angel Dust asked.

"Two reasons, you can pick which one you believe," Truly sat back, drinking heavily but not looking particularly glassed for it. "One? Removing the incinerated remains of suicidal Sinners is a messy and awkward business, and I'm not exactly built for upper-body strength. If you off yourself, you're likely going to do it somewhere that they'll bitch to me to move your charred husk, because from here to the Pride Wall is all buildings and yards."

"And two?" he asked.

"Because I don't like seeing people in pain. And you're in agony right now," she finished her next beer, and instantly had another replace it. "I am forced by a quirk of my broken-ass brain to have to drink most of the way into a coma so that I can feed myself. I don't like it, but it is what it is. And what you're going through seems more painful still. Just 'cause I'm a Succubus doesn't mean I don't understand empathy. Hell, I'd probably understand it better than most."

"...I got a friend killed," Angel Dust said, put the words into the air.

Truly just nodded. No blame, no requests for elaboration. Just the sigh, and the nod which said, 'I know. I know.' and a sad look in her eye. "To the Exorcists?" she finally asked.

"To the fuckin' Archangel Raguel. And it's all my fault," he said, his voice hitching.

"What the hell were you doing staring down an Archangel?" she asked, sipping now at her beer instead of guzzling.

"Because I'm stupid and a fuckup and I jumped into something without a fuckin' plan! That's why!" he said.

"But she followed you anyway," She said.

"She was always the smarter one 'a us. Head on straight. Straighter than mine, at least... And I got her killed 'cause I was an impatient little shit. Fuck me... is that all I'm good for? Gettin' people killed?" he asked, trying very hard not to let tears leak. And like many other things in his recent life, at that he was a failure.

"There was a guy who I cared about. Barclay Timmon. A Mutant," she said. "I think the guy was in love with me. Which wasn't fair on him because there was literally no way I could have reciprocated it. But he still stuck around, even with me being what I am. And then, when Gabriel pitched his shit fit... well, Now he's six feet under the yard at the Chapel to Satan."

"That ain't nothin' like me and Cherri," Angel Dust complained.

"Is it? If I could have just pushed him off, made him break off his unrequited 'romance'; if I'd been strong enough to break ties with a very dear friend, he'd be alive. But because I was weak, because even despite his problem he was important to me, I never got around to it, and because of that, he got a spear through his heart. This is Hell, Angel Dust. There's no happy endings for people who care about other people. We just have to live on regardless. Even if we're doing it out of naked spite."

"You livin' outta spite, dame?" Angel Dust asked, getting his shuddering breath back under control.

"It's all I've got," she said. "And maybe you'll have to do it, too. It's not fair, it's not comfortable, but when has Hell ever been either of those?"

Angel Dust wished he could just tell her to fuck off and let him drink, but the fact was, he had enough booze in his blood to make him suggestible, and that meant he listened at what he would have ordinarily dismissed out of hand. Living out of spite wasn't what Cherri would have wanted. Cherri Bomb was vivacious, what others would call 'effervescently alive', driven to her purposes. She wanted to tear down plutocratic, autocratic structures and would accept any personal pain to see it done. He'd never had her verve or drive. And even now, he knew that he couldn't take up her flag and march her path, because even the part of him that was her dearest friend knew it would only be mocking her.

But he could do something else.

He could try again.

He stopped drinking, staring at the liquor as his back ached and his mind settled into a decision. He was going to get Molly out of the prison that Heaven had become. Having seen it with his own eyes, he knew it to the pit of his stomach that he would never allow Molly to remain caged in concrete, metal, and wood, assailed by the smell of piss and fear and starvation.

He would try again. And this time, he would do it right. He would go into Heaven not on the back of a fit of impatient pique but with cold blood and furious intensity bound in his heart. He would find the best of the best of the best of Hell. He would do everything in his power to give them every weapon and tool that they needed. He would even get out of the way of his own ego and let that Striker guy, the only one of them who knew what he was doing the first time, to do the tactical plays.

Angel Dust was going back to Heaven. When he was ready. When he was prepared. When his anger had been honed into a knife so sharp that it could cut the face of God.

"There you go. I figured there'd be something that'd set a fire under your heart," Truly said. "Not going to walk into the Wall now, are we?"

"I don't think I will," he said. And he finally understood what Sam had told him, that day in that dead shithole, and that weird afternoon where he cut off his own arm. Fear and anger. One he needed. The other he failed to harness. Now he would do both. He leaned back from his seat, almost falling off the stool because it as all stools do had no back. "Don't s'pose you could give me a ride back into Pentagram City? It's a fuckin' long walk from here."

"Do you really think I'm in any condition to drive?" Truly asked.

"Fuck if I know. I ain't a Succubus," Angel Dust said.

"Eh, I think you'd do well as an Incubus, Sinner. I'll call my bud over. He'll set you right," she said. And when Angel Dust took a step away from the stool, she quickly caught him by the shoulder. "And seriously. If you need to talk, us broken bastards got to stick together. This town gives me a lot of spare time."

"...thanks," he said.

He was going back to Heaven. And this time, however long it took – even it if it took his dumb ass years – he was going to do it right.

---

Machiavelli sucked in a surprised breath, blinking at the unfamiliar environs that he found himself in. Well, this wasn't good. He sat up, finding himself naked under the blanket, and then immediately growled under his breath, letting a quite pleasing string of Italian profanity grace the skies of Heaven at the implications thereof.

"Now who the sweet fuck killed me this time?" Nick asked. He wasn't in his room on the Barracks. That was strange as all hell. That arrested his thoughts for a time. He should have returned to his room. Not this... cubby. The air smelt of ozone and muck, the light dim and the walls having water ooze through them and puddle in spots on the floor. It felt strange. Familiar but distantly.

As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he spotted a small table with a change of clothes laid out on it, and he wasted no time undoing his nudity. The question of what and who killed him last continued to pound at his mind. The question of why he wasn't in his own bed was even louder. But once Nick slid his feet into his boots, he had a moment of fresh confusion and a brand new question. These boots were comfortable. As though tailored exactly for his feet. No set of boots he'd ever worn since his admission into the Auxilia were so heavenly.

Something altogether strange was happening. He looked at the door, which had light leaking around its margins and giving this basement what little illumination it contained. He gave it an experimental tug, finding it locked. But locked from the inside. From his side.

"I didn't want anybody to impose on you as you returned," A voice drew a start out of Nick, who reached for a revolver he didn't have. New light blossomed into the basement, as there was now a chair in one corner of it, and seated in it was the unmistakable form of the Demiurge. Yaldabaoth stared for a moment, scrutinizing him from head to foot, as he lounged still wearing the Plate of the Demiurge. "I see you were not badly done by the shell that landed on you."

"What are you doing here?" Nick asked.

"What does hate lead to?" Samael asked. Nick rubbed down his face.

"Please tell me you're not basing your opinion of me on that book," he asked.

"It contains a germain observation to the current situation. I know your preference to the Discourses on Livy," Samael said. "Hate leads to rebellion. And fear, given time, decays into hate. Those of the Host who are more clever than their ilk can see what your words are pressing toward. Nobody wishes to be the obsolete piece in a machine."

"Explain why you're even here. You're an enemy of Heaven! My enemy!" Nick said. He didn't quite storm up to him, but that was because Machiavelli had long experience of being set upon by beings with a lot more power than him.

"Why?" the Demiurge asked.

"Excuse me?" Nick asked.

"Why am I your enemy? Have I attacked your soldiers? Destroyed your fortifications? Opposed your ideologies? Or have you fallen prey to the same fear that you have coached against implicitly?" the Demiurge asked, continuing to sit and stare. He had the privilege of the powerful. He could afford to sit there and speak, and leave Machiavelli standing.

"You have wounded Angels," he said.

"The same Angels who allowed an artillery bombardment to land on you without warning," Yaldabaoth pointed out. "We are not enemies, save for the power of propaganda. Heaven, or rather a certain section of Heaven, is afraid of me. I mean and intend no harm upon any human or former human who finds themselves living here, and in fact don't even want to harm most of the Angels. They have a job to do. A job which they're neglecting, but still a job to do. And Heaven needs to be kept safe from Lucifer. If I have an enemy on this board, he is certainly one of them."

"You would fight against Lucifer?" he asked.

"Fight? I have beaten him before. And I may have another chance to," the Demiurge said with a melancholy laugh. That had to be a lie. The only one in all of Creation who could beat Lucifer in a straight fight was Michael. Unless... unless...

"Why don't you repulse them, then?" Nick asked, now allowing himself to storm into the face of this strange outsider. "If you could beat Lucifer in battle, surely you could throw back the tide of their filthy hellspawn!"

"Are you hungry?" the Demiurge suddenly asked.

"Don't avoid my question!" Nick asked.

"Answer me, master Machiavelli. Are. You. Hungry?" Yaldabaoth asked, his face serious.

And Niccolo finally noticed what he had been explicitly missing this entire time.

Hunger pangs.

"As much as I loathe everything that Lucifer stands for, and the horrors that his underlings are capable of causing, it's obvious to me that they have something that Heaven needs. The edible output of Heaven is insufficient to feed its populace, hence forty years of famine and twenty of outright starvation. Hell, conversely, has such land and resources to provide food for a quarter of a trillion people, if perfectly shepherded," the Demiurge said.

"So you want Hell to invade Heaven so they can... feed them?" Niccolo asked. "Are you insane? No Hellspawn would ever..."

"A few of them would. And that few is enough. You're fighting against the tide. Soon the Innocent will be carrying guns against you, paid in bread and circus," the Demiurge shook his head, as though in dry amusement. "I brought you here, instead of your bed, so that I could warn you about how bad that this war is going to become. Heaven is going to steadily lose land to Hell. I cannot stop that. And I would not if I could. But you must not Lucifer claim the throne of Heaven. God will not defend it, because God cannot defend it."

"So you give me two contradictory imperatives, that it is impossible to defend but must do so anyway," Niccolo said.

"Not so. It is impossible to dislodge Hell from Cloud One. So prevent them from getting into Cloud Two. Heaven wants a Maginot Line Defense. Introduce them to the concept of Defense In Depth," the Demiurge said.

Then the door opened, the various locks of it coming undone even though the two men were on the business side of them. Opened, the door revealed a form that Machiavelli was quite glad to see, all things considered. She may not have been a martial ally to any degree, but an army – even an irregular one – had its morale dependent strongly on how full its belly was. And she if nothing else could provide food. "Gloria? Could you be so dear as to tell me where I am, before explaining how you found me?" Niccolo asked in genial tone.

"...I thought I had lost my mind," she said, walking past him, her three green eyes not on Machiavelli, but on the other. The Demiurge lost his wistful and distant look, surprise and shock replacing them. He stood, taking a step away from a chair which seemed like it was unwilling to disappear now that he wasn't paying attention to it.

"Wendy?" he asked.

"Sam," she said back.

Machiavelli took a step out of their path, because it was obvious to him that he was only intruding. "So," he put into the long pause, as the two of them stared at each other. "How do we know one another?"

"This is Sam Scailes," she said, gesturing toward the Demiurge, who did something that nobody who had ever seen him do since his Apotheosis. He smiled.

"And this is Gloria Gwendolyn Monday. You got out. Oh... You have no idea how relieved I am to see you here and not down there," he said.

"What the fuck are you doing, Sam?" Gloria – or perhaps 'Wendy' – demanded as she stalked up to him.

"Not the same thing you are, obviously. I presume you're why there are still workable fields down on Cloud Three?" the Demiurge asked.

"Yeah. That's a thing I can do now. What the hell is all this?" he said, batting his armor with her knuckles.

"Nothing serious. Just finding a way to kill God without unravelling Reality. You know how it goes," he said. And then he opened his arms.

"I'm still mad at you," she said. But she did embrace the Demiurge. They had the same kind of Halo, the two of them, a circular pane of light always on the far side of their head. When the two were together for that moment, the two Halos merged briefly, becoming one still circular, slightly larger Halo. She then extracted from him. "You dropped the wall on a hundred thousand people."

"Not my intention, but there was no other way for me to enter Heaven," the Demiurge said.

"Sam wouldn't have hurt that many people to get what he wanted," she said.

"The stakes are higher now. I can't whinge and whine over every sacrifice – sacrifices I'll remind you are capable of healing under their own power once pulled out of the rubble," he said.

"Are you so desperate to do what you said you wanted to do that you're willing to throw away everything that you were to do it?" she asked.

"A hundred thousand in momentary pain, compared to eternal trillions in bondage and slavery. I chose the former then. I would again. I healed those I found and could heal," Sam said, his happy expression starting to curdle.

"This. Is not. You," she said, thumping him in the chest with her fingertip. "I can think of hundreds of things you'd be better off doing than fucking around here on the slime of Cloud Four, on a quest of fucking suicide, against the creator of our realm of existence."

"It must be done," the Demiurge said.

Wendy took a step back from him. Her expression was not disgust, exactly, but disappointment and perhaps dismay were clear in it. "What have you done to him?" she asked.

"I beg your pardon?" the Demiurge asked, brow drawing down.

"There's still some Sam in there, but there's a lot more of something else. What did you do to Sam? To my Sam? The one who got me up here in the first place."

"I don't know what you're trying to say, Wendy. I'm still me. I'm still Sam," he said.

"No. No you're not. You're not even 'mostly' Sam anymore," she said, glancing not just at him but past him at the far wall for some reason. "Sam isn't even a skin-tag on the back of whatever the fuck that thing is. How fucking dare you wear Sam's face and claim to speak his words!"

"...I'm sorry that you believe that," the Demiurge said, his everpresent melancholy returning to his face. "There is no convincing you of the facts, then. I am what I am. And I must do what I am going to do. I hoped that your path would be happier than mine. At least I have the comfort of knowing that it, for the most part, was."

"You can still turn back from this. There's no point of no return," she said.

"I crossed it in a ransacked shower in a strange, naive hotel. It was too late for me then," he said.

She slapped him.

Machiavelli blinked in shock, at somebody having both the audacity to attempt, and apparently the permission to succeed at, slapping the Demiurge.

"Get the fuck over yourself!" she demanded of him. The Demiurge turned, face impassive to her. "You told me not to give into fatalistic thinking, and that got me here. Think of what following your own fucking advice could get you!"

"God must fall. Creation must be freed from Him," Samael said. She tried to slap him again, but this time he caught her hand. "The circle must be broken. It has to end. Now. And I have the power to do it. I won't let your world come to be. Earth deserves better than what you died in."

"You can't change my history," she said.

"Watch me," he said, releasing her hand. He took a step back, glancing toward Machiavelli. "Keep secure the Clouds of Heaven, Machiavelli. You may be the only one in Heaven who can. And as for you, Wendy..."

"Don't," she demanded.

"I am glad that you're alright. And I'm sorry we had to leave like this. I don't believe we'll speak again."

"Sam, don't you fucking dare..." she said, striding toward him, but he snapped his fingers, there was a flare of light, and then he was gone without so much as a pop. She stood there, staring at where he had been, as Machiavelli cleared his throat, and waded into the piranha tank that had been thoughtfully arrayed before him.

"An old friend of yours, I presume?" Machiavelli asked.

"Nick... not right now," she said, turning and storming out of the room. Machiavelli saw little else to do but follow. When he cleared the doors, it was to a place that glistened with muck. The rolling hills up toward that red thumb of a mountain in the distance were all a practically fecal brown, as though some brown powder had been wetted and then let to dry where it lay. That mountain twigged Niccolo's memory for a frustrating moment, before he finally took a second look at the hills surrounding it, and overlayed on them instead of soggy muck, thousands of trellises and vines, covered in innumerable grape-plants.

"How is this possible?" he asked, quickly catching up to Gloria and catching her hand.

"Impossible is a suggestion. Could you be more specific?" she asked, turning a glance back to him as she continued toward a farm-house that the root-cellar he'd awakened in was not directly attached to.

"Humans are barred from all passage above Cloud 3. We have been for more than two centuries!" he said. To see Cloud Four, the breadbasket of Heaven, in such condition, it suddenly explained every hungry day and meal of sleep that he'd had for the last two decades. All of Heaven had to be starving. Not just the former humans.

"Things change. Those rules weren't put there by God. It didn't take God to tear them back down again," she said, as though that were any kind of answer. Her hand became intangible, flowing out of his grasp as she entered the building by walking through its closed door. Machiavelli had to do the human thing and open it. And within, he immediately saw the Thirdborn Audiel, who was holding a blazing Thompson Machine gun, but not pointing it directly at anybody. Machiavelli blinked at the strangeness, and when he rounded the corner to see whom Murphy was watching, added another strangeness to the mix, in that there was an Angel sitting at the kitchen table, sketching idly using a half-spent pencil onto slightly water-damaged paper.

"Is he Anchored?" Machiavelli asked, as the dark-skinned Secondborn looked up at him for a moment, seemed to discard him as not immediately relevant, and went back to sketching.

"He claims it's unnecessary," Murphy said, fingers flexing on his Angelsung firearm. He seemed himself like he wasn't sure if that were the case.

"How did you capture him?" Machiavelli asked. "When did you capture him?"

"False premise," the Grigori said, not looking up at him, as he paused in his sketching, then put the sheet atop a pile of its brethren and started anew. "You are asking how and when I was captured by your motley band of rascals and Thirdborn 'outlaws' – Gabriel's words, not mine – when the truth is rather a bit more mundane. I was invited here."

"By me," Gloria said.

"She has made quite a splash up at the Taxiopolis. Saving young Audiel from being murdered at Gabriel's hand was a spectacle that perhaps was not best timed," Azazel said. He started drawing again, this time seeming to sketch out a sort of metal framework that could encapsulate a human. "It served to galvanize the Gabrielite faction against the Thirdborn, whom may even be the only effective fighters in a war that Hell is increasingly gaining initiative in, by declaring them to be catspaws of Beings Outside. You and I both know better. But the average Angel, sadly, is not as insightful as a decently educated human."

"I'm aware," she said, not looking very happy with the world right now.

"Indeed. I presumed you would. To answer your unstated question, master Machiavelli: I am here for the benefit of Heaven."

"Says the man who works with the Demiurge," Audiel said.

"The Demiurge has done me an unmatched service. And by my hand he is now going on a suicide mission that doesn't have the likelihood of dooming all Creation when he completes it," Azazel said with a subdued smile. "So please shelve that particular bugbear for the time being. It serves nobody. What I offer you, Niccolo Machiavelli, is my best approximation of the capabilities of the new weapons that Hell has mobilized against you. And as master Murphy," he gestured toward Audiel, "has made it very clear, knowing the weapons of your enemy is a useful piece of intelligence."

"Alright. Supposing you are indeed doing as you say, answer me this," Niccolo said. "Why?"

"I want there to be a Heaven remaining once Samael makes his end-run. And so do you. So in that, at least, we are allies," Azazel said. And damn him, he was right.

---

"Jun-ho?" she asked. The rain continued unabated, deflecting off of her umbrella and almost managing to clean the filth from the streets of Pentagram City. Charlie was in a part of the city she'd never been to before, a slum in South East Pentagram that she used to form an image in her mind as to Rachel's description of Heaven. Charlie was unwilling and unable to comprehend at how much worse the physical state of Heaven was, at how much more crowded it was, how much more precarious. There were limits to her imagination, and she'd never actually gone up there yet.

Yet another thing to put into her schedule.

"Saying my name like that somewhat defeats the purpose of invisibility," Jun-ho said, as her perceptions seemed to pop and allow him to appear off to the side of a building, standing under an awning and letting the rain miss him.

"Why were you invisible?" she asked. "How were you invisible?"

"I've picked up a few things over the last few centuries," the Betrayed who moved with her said. He was wearing a hood and a robe that made him look like a Penitent of Satan, and unlike Rachel he seemed to be able to conceal his Gapped Halo by some means. "He's not down here, we might as well turn back."

"You just got here," she said.

"An hour ago," Jun-ho agreed. "There's only a few places a Sinner like him could hide in that imp-warren. As an aside, did you know that imps were hermaphrodites?"

"That's only imps from Pride, and even then not all of them," Charlie said. She puffed out a breath that was still a little bit visible even with the rain and rising temperatures. Another dead end. There was a lot of city, though. Pentagram City boasted a population that, according to Jun-ho, no city on the Human World could equal, even to the point that many entire nations had less population. He called it a 'megalopolis on tip-toes', that most cities would spread out and branch off rather than go hard as Pentagram City did. Considering that there were whole districts which were folded outside of space so that they could technically overlap, no great surprise. "So we need to go to the next place."

"We're running out of places in this section of the city. And I remind you that we are only two people," Jun-ho said, stepping out and letting the rain sodden his hood as he matched her as she walked the crooked roads that pressed out toward where this petal of the city came to a point. Beyond that point were the Pride Wilds, long expanses of naked and underutilized farmland, wasteland, garbage waystations, derelict pump-jacks, and minor settlements. The southeast didn't play host to much, except if you went far enough down the highway to reach the crossing into Greed. The Poisoned Lake was there, but what use was it?

"I think I'm spinning my wheels," she said. "I need more eyes."

"We could ask Husk," Jun-ho said. "Despite his frequent grousing to the contrary, he actually has a very firm grasp of the comings and goings of Pentagram City, and likely all of Pride Ring."

"Do you think I'm not?" she asked, waggling her Hellphone at him.

"Ah, that. I'm still getting used to that thing," Jun-ho said. "Considering I spent much of the last three centuries moving actual, physical mail between the three Clouds of Heaven humans are allowed to live in, you'll forgive my lack of technical savvy."

"We've had these things for decades," she said.

"Heaven has not," Jun-ho said. Which corroborated Rachel's telling of things. And Addam's. The walk-sign flickered and fritzed, not surprising since the pole it was attached to was bent to a strange angle either by one of many car-accidents that happened in the city every minute, or by something a bit more 'external', and they started to cross the expanse of rain-washed street. The cars still pounded horns at her. She ignored them. "Are all people like that? Impatient like they're going to die in an hour?"

"Hell doesn't attract good people," Charlie repeated the observation that Rachel had made.

"I suppose it doesn't," Jun-ho said, glaring at the car as they reached the relative safety of a crosswalk. Well, safety, but for the muggers that tried to demand their wallets. Charlie, unwilling to be sidelined by such an inconvenience, punched both of them with a single blow that left them cratered into a nearby brick-wall.

"Even if Husk knows more, he doesn't know everything. We actually need a network of..." Charlie began.

"Spies?" Jun-ho provided, eyes wary on the barely-twitching forms of their would-be muggers, embedded in bricks.

"I was going to say observers," she said, not liking the implication.

"That's a polite way of saying spies. And you should have spies. You're a Princess. As a Power of your own right, you should know what's going on in your corner of the realm," he said.

"Has Vaggie been talking to you?" she demanded, catching him by the arm.

"Miss Charlie, I have served Princesses before, when I was alive. And you're only doing yourself harm if you neglect any avenue of strength that you can claim," Jun-ho said.

"Really? You worked for royalty?"

"...unofficially," he said with a wink.

"That doesn't clarify anything!"

"Plausible deniability is also a valued commodity. Come we're just about to reach... Cannibal Colony? That's real?" Jun-ho said, recoiling from the sign that hung over the old-fashioned architecture that the town had swerved suddenly into.

"Don't be rude and they won't jump you like hyenas," she recalled the advice that Husk had offered to Sam, way back when.

"That's all it takes, hm?" he asked, but then kept his opinions to himself as they crossed into one of the worse sections of Pentagram City. Despite the effects of the Purge Unending, Cannibal Colony was doing just hunky-dory, as befitted its old-fashioned aesthetic. People walked around in fancy suits and fine dresses under colorful umbrellas, talking about things which didn't matter and silently eyeing each other up like walking menus. If Charlie had any say so in the matter, she'd have done as Sam recommended and burned this whole district to the ground. No good would come of it.

"Ho there, sweetheart! You look a bit lost! Have you travelled our little community before?" a man in a zoot-suit said, smarming his way out of a shadow with a nearly startling quickness.

"No thank you, I know my way," she said, waving him away.

"But in this weather? I couldn't possibly let a young dame like yourself be left unescorted," he said. Unescorted? She glanced to her side, and just as quickly as this interloper had appeared, Jun-ho had vanished. "Come on. I can think of a sock-hop you'd be embarrassed to miss!"

"I'm flattered, but I'm quite busy. I simply can't," she said. The smile on the Sinner's face grew a bit wider, and no longer reached his eyes. His back teeth were still slightly pinked with blood.

"Don't be a stick-in-the-mud, lady. This is an inside-of-doors day. No reason to be out in the rain, now is there?" he asked, and she could hear clear threat behind his genial words. She stood there, staring at him for a moment, wondering how this man had the unmitigated gall to make that demand of her, before she realized that he had no idea who she was. She was not a common sight in Cannibal Colony, after all. And there were many leggy blondes in Hell, of many Aspects and provenances.

"My answer is still a firm no," she said. And she let a whisper of her frustrated anger lace her words, heating them to something that threatened to boil the water off of her jacket.

"I don't think you quite..." the intruder said, but was arrested when a knife erupted from his chest, blood spraying for a moment but being washed away by the rain. He stared down, at the blade that severed his descending aorta, and then glanced over one shoulder. Resolving seemingly out of the rain itself was Jun-ho, who released his obscuring magic to reveal himself.

"The lady said no. It won't do to be pushy," he said into the Sinner's ear. And then with a tearing rend, he ripped his blade out, in doing carving a curling wound though his entire torso and stepping out of the way before the first heart-launched spray of blood fought against the rain and lost. As the Sinner fell to the sidewalk, paralyzed and exsanguinating, Jun-ho took a moment to wipe his blade off on the back of the Sinner's suit. "This place is awful," he opined.

"I know!" she agreed. She turned a heated look at the other cannibals who had paused in their social knife-fighting to witness the 'transaction' that the three over here had just been through. Perhaps deciding that prudence was the better part of survival against an attractive woman and her fearsomely sneaky bodyguard, they picked a different direction to walk instead of continuing to shadow the incognito Princess of All Hell. "I don't know why Dad even let this place be built."

"Your father was amused by its primal cruelty, maybe?" Jun-ho offered, sliding his knife back into wherever it was hidden under his robes. "Whatever the case, we're not going in there, as Angel Dust was not a mighty man. Even at his most self destructive, I don't think 'allow myself to be repeatedly eaten by cannibals' was on his agenda."

"I hope you're right," she said, taking a turn that quickly directed them out from this corner of Cannibal Colony without even bothering to try approaching its heart. There was nothing worth salvaging in this entire district. If it fell into the Abyss tomorrow, nobody would mourn, least of all Charlie.

Walking out of the Cannibal Colony as quickly as they'd walked in brought them toward the edge of the 'leaf' that made up South East Pentagram; there was a bypass highway that banded the thing and allowed traffic pretty quickly across the face of the city, but the moment you crossed from one side of that concrete non-wall, the buildings stopped mounting up into skyscrapers and started to look more 'small town', before the whole structure of Pentagram City dissolved down into trailer-parks, hovel-slums, and then naked wilderness. She wanted to turn, to continue her search in the City Proper. But that was digging through a hay-pile for a particular strand of straw. So to clear her head if nothing else, she entered the 'suburbs'.

The walk didn't go long, just a striding along a street that was home to innumerable homeless people with tents set up under the overpass highway. She didn't look at them. If she started to worry herself over their hurts and wants and needs, she'd get distracted for the rest of the day, and that would be another day lost in the search for a self-destructing Angel Dust.

"You're going to be alright," Jun-ho suddenly said, which broke Charlie's concentration as she reentered the pouring rain.

"What?" she asked.

"That look on your face. It's not your fault, even if you don't find him today. The burden is only there because you've chosen to pick it up," he said.

"Somebody has to. Hell doesn't have a lot of people willing to pick up the slack," she said, but Jun-ho shook his head.

"Maybe it didn't when you started. You might be surprised how many will now," he said.

Whatever musing she was going to retort with was cut off when a wall of water hit the two of them, catapulted into the air by a passing taxi. The impact of the wave knocked Charlie to the side by a step and destroyed her umbrella under the force of it. The sheer frustration of the last few days ticked a bit higher, the clockspring of her failing patience ratcheting almost to the exploding point. And when she turned, she saw that the taxi even had the gall to immediately slow to a stop and pull over. With a growl in her throat and a snarl on her face, she turned to the cabbie who had drenched her, heedless of horns which forced their way through her hair and uncaring at her dress being strained by her shifting anatomy as her anger started to win.

But her angry comments were killed in the crib when the back door of the taxi opened, and out stepped Angel Dust.

And they died even harder when she got a look at him. His eyes were hard. The black-and-red one now glowed as though his iris was a cinder, refusing to die even as the rest of the fire guttered. All six of his arms were out, looking somewhat thicker than they had last time Charlie saw them. But what arrested her most was his colors. When Sinners started to despair, they went grey. Wendy was practically a charcoal-drawing when she'd arrived at the Hotel. But Angel Dust, whose palette was usually one of smooth whites and pastel pinks, had shifted, to a cold and abrupt ivory, and a scarlet like fresh spilled blood.

He was in the opposite of despair, right now.

"Hey, boss," he said, still sounding more or less like himself. "Sorry 'bout the splash. My drive is a bit hammered."

"Angel where have you been?" she asked, choosing to shelve her anger for relief for a moment and embrace the mobster. He let out tutting and tried to push her off of him – coming closer than he ordinarily would have – but she let him go when she was ready. "I was so worried about you! I'm so sorry about Cherri Bomb. I know how close you two were."

"Yeah. Yeah, I know," Angel Dust said, quietly. "Fact is, what happened to her is on me. And I've gotta make it right now that it's done. I just needed to clear my head. Talk to somebody who knows 'er shit. You know how it goes," he said.

"You..." she tilted her head. Had he gone out to talk to a friend that she hadn't know about? What other friends did Angel Dust even have?

"And besides that, I can't leave Nuggz all by himself. He'll starve without me feedin' him. And you don't wanna deal with a hungry pig in yer hotel, I guaran-fuckin'-tee that," he said with a laugh which sounded more usual for him. He then turned to the Betrayed in his robes beside. "An' who's this then? You startin' to do the smart thing and hire a bodyguard? Wait, who the fuck would you need guardin' from?"

"Nobody, really. Just some pushy cannibals," she cast a gesticulation behind her.

"You up to gacking some man-eaters, bud?" he asked, and when Jun-ho pulled his hood down, Angel Dust's smile grew a bit wider. "Oh I likes the look a' that."

"Flattered but no," Jun-ho said. "Try with Cain. He's more flexible in that manner."

"Ah shucks," Angel Dust retorted, snapping his fingers in faux dismay. Then he looked at the group of them. "Well what the fuck are we doin' standing around in the pissin' rain for? We got a hotel to get back to!"

"Yes. Yes we do," Charlie said.

---

Heaven was still agony to behold in the flesh. To be here was to be blown apart by the force of a nuclear bomb afresh each moment. Lucifer didn't care. Pain was temporary. The Throne of God was eternal. And he was standing not inside a shuddering bunker, rippling under constant attempts by Angelic assholes to dislodge it. Now, he stood on the cloud itself, where the white fluff gave way to gravel, then to concrete, and finally to those hideous towers that he'd been told about.

"What the fuck have you morons been doing up here?" Lucifer asked the wind. His kingdom was growing stronger by the hour, and this place seemed to be decaying at about the same rate. Well that just wouldn't do, now would it? By this standard, he didn't just have the justification merely of being the true and anointed successor to God for taking that Throne; now, he had to shake down all of the fucking incompetents that had clogged up his homeland and turned it into the steaming shit-pile he saw before him.

Frankly, this place made even the shittier parts of Greed Ring look like a resort vacation spot.

"I presume this is much changed from last you saw it?" Lilith asked evenly. He could forgive her for not sharing his outrage at the state of things that he beheld before him. Lilith had been Created on Earth, and then hurled into Hell immediately after showing that she wasn't a cowering simp before the white-robed Tyrant who sat up there on Nine. She had no frame of reference for what Heaven should or should not be. His stories, when he deigned to offer them, failed compared to actually being there, back then. Or being here now.

"Much changed," he agreed grimly. Michael had some part to play in this, because he always fucking did, but the whole of it reeked not of that lap-dog Taxiarch, but instead of the casual cruelty of Gabriel. Oh dear lord, how Lucifer despised Gabriel. Not with the same poison that he did with Michael, obviously; while Lucifer could point to ever misdeed and insult that Michael had done to earn Lucifer's undying enmity, Gabriel was just somebody who in every angle and ounce of him rubbed Lucifer the wrong way.

It never occurred to Lucifer that he hated Gabriel as much as he did because they were so alike.

"It's certainly peaceful without the artillery strikes," Lilith opined. He presence here was not just because she was the hottest meat in Hell being given a tour of Heaven. No, she was here because as long as she could anchor him, he wouldn't start to crumble physically and flake away under the power of the Highest Censure. It was perhaps a bit nasty to do to his wife, to vampirize her like this, but she had offered and gave no complaints. Her being alive gave certain perks.

"And we have one in particular to thank for this," he said. He turned and started toward the edge of Heaven again, sweeping with a hand, while Lilith made a subtle gesture of her own and actually opened the portal that he was pretending to. He had little power up here. At least, little as long as the Highest Censure was in effect. The portal showed the inside of the bunker which had now actually started to claim and annex land in Heaven in the name of its proper ruler. The aquiline Sinner whom was before them bowed deeply at Lucifer's arrival, not straightening as the King of All Hell took a moment to fuss with his clothing, before saying "It seems that there's a preponderance of aptitude localized in a particular branch of the Ars Goetia, Sinner. A large number of surprisingly competent people, all working towards my goals with alacrity and verve."

"I was ordered to gain ground, so I gained ground, Caesar of Hell," he said, still not rising.

"That you were, and that you did," Lucifer said. "Rise."

He, and the other Ars Goetia that he had under his proverbial wing, both stood properly from their bow and curtsy respectively. Lucifer flicked a look at the first angel born in Hell, before bringing it back to the Sinner. "I wish I could say I had simple good news," Lucifer said at her, opting to be a bit professional right now. "Paimon is not happy with you. You have no authority over his legions, and yet directed them as though you had."

"I..." the young owlet began, but the Sinner shot a glance over his shoulder that silenced her. Prudent.

"Paimon is extremely loyal, which is of intense value to me. And he provides a vast muster of legions to Hell's vanguard. Were you any but who you are, he would have demanded a rather savage pound of flesh from you for the insult you levied to his ability of command," Lucifer continued, staring down the taller Angel and making her feel an inch tall. "My servants can kill each other's legions when I say, how I say, and where I say. And right now, those answers are never, no-how, and nowhere. Do. Not. Fuck. With. Another. Man's. Legions."

"I understand, your grace," she said, shuddering under the intensity of his stare.

"You had better, because Paimon's pound of flesh is closer to an ounce, a largess he would give only you, his granddaughter, out of all the people in Hell. He wants an apology. A public one. And a vow to never interfere with his power base again, upon Naked Law."

She again turned a look to the Sinner, but nodded after a moment. "I will do it," she said. Smart girl.

"Good. Now onto the actual good news. You, Sinner. Aebutia, was it?" Lucifer asked.

"Agrippa, my Caesar," he said. "Ambrosius Severus Agrippa."

"Whatever," he waved the unimportant part away. "You've shown some aptitude above and beyond your call of duty, and done so for the second time in this war. Whereas her intransigence needs some humbling, you've done well. To that end, I grant you the title of Dux Bellorim, and the privilege to overrule your fellow Legatio in matters of battle, and battle alone."

"I am honored, my Imperator," he said, bowing his head.

"Damned straight you are," he said. He didn't particularly care that he'd just punished one for doing what he'd then given the other permission to do. Hypocrisy was only a sin to the weak. "I'm expecting big things from you, Sinner. And I want the rest of this Cloud, tout suite. Start working on that. Couldn't be that hard. You managed to get this much already. Just don't step on the toes of of the other Dux Bellorim. I don't want to have to come back up here again for reasons of infighting or incompetence," he said.

"...I will begin drawing up plans," he said, then offered a deep bow, before backing toward the Ars Goetia and guiding they both away.

"He has other ambitions," Lilith said into his ear as he walked toward the portal that would lead him back to his kingdom. "That girl is the centerpiece of many of them."

"Didn't know the old bird liked them that young," Lucifer said with an unkind smile.

"No, nothing of that sort. His interest in her is strictly mentor-protege, I can tell that much at a glance," Lilith said. "He's playing a game that he's keeping close to his chest. Even from her, I believe."

"Will it be a problem for me?" Lucifer asked the only question that mattered.

"I don't believe so," she said.

"Then fuck 'em," he said. "Let's go home. Even in the pain I'm in I have a raging erection and I want you to do something about it."

---

"Long have I said that despair, not cruelty, is the great ruin of Hell and all who dwell within it. I have lived incalculably long and seen its depredations again and again. Despair, not cruelty, saw to the beginning of the Elder Devils' decline. Despair, not cruelty, caused the Innocent to turn off their minds to avoid their plight. And it was despair, and not cruelty, which transformed the Sinner, once a fertile ground for redemption and atonement, into the base creatures they were under Lucifer's kingship.

The melancholy of the age infested everyone, even I. Mayhap I suffered it more even than most; for who else was there than I who had seen what Hell could have been in its brightest days, reduced to the state it had become? It is a terrible thing, melancholy. A creeping doom that chokes ambition and hope and joy. It is a trap strung by a cruel maker baited for a mind which can suffer. It was not lightly that the end of the Age of the Rotten Kings came when I hurled the whole of Despair Ring into the Abyss. To put such a cruelty in the path of redemption was insult to the notion of it.

No, journalist. Thou art correct in parroting mine old opinions. The Sinner was a base and petty thing, in the age after the Paradox Kings. But it was base and petty not by its own nature, but because a hand soaked in heedless despair bade them so. Where in elden days I would discard the entire Sinner race – for since their arrival little good hath come of them – I see now that they who art at their deepest nadir are capable of the most explosive growth.

Just because I see much, does not mean I see all. And that development shocked even I."

- Satan, Embodiment of Wrath and Pontifex Vermiculii