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.

22. The View From The Ends of The Spectrum

The crashing of metal was muted to Octavia, not just by the fact that she was ensconced inside a bespoke panoply but by the fact that she'd become very adept at ignoring noises that didn't matter. She shifted her stance, thrusting one leg further and heaving with all of her body and augmented might, and the great golem of steel she had grappled with was lifted off of a foot, which gave her sufficient rotation and momentum to twist hard, sweeping the other leg out from under the ten tonne machine and slam it hard onto the concrete. The crater and dust that resulted flew outward from the violence of her slam, and even before the golem had a chance to bounce she depressed the thumb trigger which activated her Inferno Launcher.

The Golem's armored screen of a face displayed a red skull, and the machine went limp, acknowledging that she'd killed it.

Then her entire armor went dark, except for the display claiming that she had just 'been hit by Heavenly Artillery' from behind, and was as such dead. Damn it.

She stood, rolling her shoulders and looking at the chamber that she'd taken to training in. With so much of Mum's stuff moved out of the palace, this was technically her room, now. So she used it, knocking out her old training room's divisions and creating a massive platform of deep-rooted concrete, with bunker-thick walls. The side of the chamber hosted auto-repair cradles for a dozen metal-skinned golems, sized from three to ten tonnes. The lights, high overhead, cast a sort of merciless, nearly shadowless light on the ground and made the place feel less a training arena and more a surgical theatre.

She puffed out a breath, then sent the signal to zero the golems. The four that she'd 'beaten' rose from their craters and the one that killed her just turned and departed, trudging or even limping to their cradles, before the clever little arms of the cradles began to pick them apart and fix what she'd broken. Her own armor reported damage, both simulated and real, which essentially meant that even without the 'killing blow' she ended that fight with a nearly destroyed panoply. Even small-arms fire would have killed her if she'd continued, in such a theoretical case.

Four. Not six or even five: four. She growled in the back of her throat in annoyance. It seemed no matter how tirelessly she trained, she could never run the full gauntlet of these things. Having been up in Heaven even as protected as she was in Hell's Redoubt, she knew for a fact that the Angels were not going to be merciful to her if she showed her face up there. They would kill her in half a heartbeat and without a whisper of regret. And the only way she could hope to fight them was in this steel can that had been bought for her at great personal expense.

She grumbled, swore, profaned, and complained as she walked over to her Gyrfalcon's personal cradle, and opened her way out of it. Never mind the fact that a six tonne combatant fighting a ten tonne golem was actually a fairly harsher challenge than what the rank-and-file Angel was capable of, and thus being able to reliably best just that one proved her ability to stand in the fields of Heaven, no it was her lack of perspective and her own nature that made her feel that if she couldn't beat all of the golems she owned, at the same time, she wasn't ready.

She walked over to the desk which was nearby, dropping herself into the chair that sat before it, sighing and flexing her hands, which felt slightly spasm-y and wrenched. Not by the fight per se, but by how many times she'd pushed herself in the last few days. Things weren't going well anymore. The moment that she was pulled out of Heaven, Hell got stupid ideas and tried to expand past the protected bubble of her guns and gotten slapped down. She could hope that they wouldn't blame the stupidity of others on her, but that was asking for a kinder Hell than this.

Octavia muttered darkly under her breath, not even bothering for a coherent litany of anger, thinking to the embarrassing display that she'd been forced to put on for her 'Grandfather', Paimon. To beg and scrape and prostrate herself to that useless fossil who managed to strike fully fifteen entire Legions from his rosters in the time it took her to, with a fraction of a Legion herself, fully secure and lock down a section of Cloud One. They must all be laughing at her even still, a month later.

The door opened, showing Ambrosius entering with a few scrolls that he set on the desk next to her. "Anything urgent?" she asked, somewhat hoping that there would be some overboiling pot that she could distract herself for a few hours with. Her body was strained, but there was still something she could do today.

"Nothing of major import, my Domina," Agrippa said. He looked her up and down, dressed as she was in heat-sinking jumpsuit and little else. His attention seemed to be on her calves, and at the set of her shoulders, and his brows drew down. "You have been overtaxing yourself again, I see. What do I always say about overtraining?"

"I still can't take all twelve," she muttered.

"Nobody in Hell is expecting you to go into battle against the martial equivalent of a dozen Royal Golems, let alone one of that monstrosity," he gestured lightly toward the Ten Tonne which was already displaying a green thumbs-up on its armored screen, that she'd done no meaningful damage to it in the spar. "Training when you're already at the edge of exhaustion will erase what gains you've made, not add to them. And it is obvious even in your posture that you have passed the edge of exhaustion long ago. Sit. Cease. Recover. Then, begin afresh."

"I need..."

"As master of your ludus, your physician, and as a family friend, I must insist," Agrippa said, then reached into the Gyrfalcon and pulled the boot-drive from the slot that when active would rest against her spine. That was a pointless gesture in actuality; she had a dozen of those things to slot in there if she actually needed to. But even pointless gestures sent a message. He would have no more of this from her, not now. And while she was the Marchioness, he was still a Dux Bellorim. In matters martial, his word was louder than hers. "In any other case, I would commend you for your diligence, but you've somehow made a sin of it. Does this have something to do with Paimon's demand of your obedience, perhaps?"

"No. Not really," she said, and was actually honest in that.

"I had hoped that the case. The fact that Paimon considered you worth assailing, even as lightly as he had, has actually increased your caché amongst the Ars Goetia, not lessened it," Ambrosius said, moving to the other chair next to the desk and sitting down there, reaching to one of the scrolls he'd set down and opening it. "It is said that Paimon does not even bother to memorize the names of his other fellow Ars Goetia. So that he demanded concessions from you by name puts you in a more exclusive club even than those who followed Lucifer to their peril."

"So him making me beg and scrape has improved my image? I find that hard to believe," she said.

"Some people are good enemies to have," Agrippa said. "In this place, where spite is enshrined in virtue, enmities carry as much weight in social circles as alliances do. People can tell much about you by who you were unafraid to anger. And that you did it to Paimon, who is not only your 'grandfather'," he used air-quotes for that, as was proper, "but also one of Lucifer's most ardent followers has begun to build something of a reputation for you."

"A tinker and a money-lender," she said.

"Someone unafraid to stomp flat obstacles. While Paimon complains, Bathin knows that it is by your hand, by your guile, and by your artillery/anti-air positions that he has walked the streets of Heaven for the first time in an eon," he paused, and looked her in the eye. "When I was young, I feared that I would make no mark upon the Republic into which I owed everything, that I would pass from history silently and without note. My family became one of the highest of Rome's elite, off of the back of the sacrifices I and my relatives made. Do not think because I achieved that in a human's lifetime that I was special. You are ageless. You have all the time in the world. And you are already coming far. That you cannot see with blinkered eyes the furrow you have cut in your passage does not negate that the furrow has been cut."

"Thank you, Ambrosius," she said. She really needed to hear that, right now.

"It is my honor," he said with a small nod. "As said, practice and mastery are good things. But there is a golden mean that you are well outside of. Ease, and start seeking the mean in other areas. I am given to understand that you have declined no few invitations for social events."

"There's a war going on," she pointed out.

"And the people progressing that war, the people whose paradigms are locked into the previous conflict, would be less likely to cry foul if you were to speak to them in calmer environs. Go out, and be a socialite, however uncomfortable such is. I doubt that it was comfortable to start using that," he gestured to the Gyrfalcon that rested in its cradle. "Straw-men may be good at a single thing. Politicians and nobles must be good at many. Go and be a politician."

"For the record, I hate politicians," she said.

"Then learn to take that self-hatred and vent it to the benefit of Hell," he said, which was very close to a joke coming from him.

"You're an ass, sometimes," she said.

"It is, again, my honor," he said, rising, bowing to her, then handing her an invitation to a party that she'd been ignoring since the Purge Unending started. Fine. If they wanted her to be sociable, she'd be sociable.

---

Chapter 22

The View From The Ends Of The Spectrum

---

Loona's new apartment was not exactly dingy. She'd obviously had enough pride to keep the garbage from piling up, but considering it was one floor lower in the same building that Blitz's was, it had all the hallmarks of poor building maintenance, including cracks in the ceiling, a chunk of the wall which had to be torn out because it was infested with black mold, and an electrical socket which served as a space heater.

In ordinary circumstances, Maelstrom would have seemed a bit out of his depth being in here. But the fact was he was not alone. There was a relatively quiet get-together happening, with his brother and his brother's mate here, along with Tex and the massive she-Hound he'd partnered with, and a new Hellhound who was somewhere between the massive build of Tex and the more lithe form of Maelstrom, but perhaps as slender as Loona, who was watching all this take place.

"You seem on edge. Come on, drink a beer and settle," Reggie said, handing one over to him. "Nobody's gonna ambush you in this apartment."

"I know. Old habits die hard," Maelstrom said, his discomfort clear even from across the room. Eventually that excuse was going to stop carrying water not just with her, but with Maelstrom himself, but until it did he would continue to use it. Maybe it wasn't that he was uncomfortable out of the lingering echoes of cruelty, or out of fear, but because he was just a socially uncomfortable person. It wasn't like he was given a lot of time for personal introspection until the last few months when Loona sprung him from slavery. And a lot of that time was clearly spent trying to unlearn the most damaging of his personal habits. To Loona, Maelstrom was an open book. She could practically read his goddamned thoughts.

She wasn't exactly the calmest of nerves, she had to admit. The whole thing with the Adjacent still haunted her dreams. Just the idea that there was something out there so viscerally and unimaginably wrong was bad enough. To have it only one plane away, fucking round on Earth where Loona made her money? Nightmarish. But for the sake of the collective sanity of the Free Hounds of Denny's, she had to keep her shit on lock and not blubber like a terrified pup because something scary had come up. There were all kinds of scary things in Hell. Focus on those, first.

"So I hear you're new to Imp City," she said, parting from Maelstrom who nervously sipped at a beer and moving to the newcomer. In a lot of ways, she reminded Loona of Maelstrom, in that she was an impressive beast that flinched and recoiled at the slightest provocation. She even flinched when Loona spoke to her. "Where are you from?"

The eyes of the Hellhound bitch darted around, as though searching for a threat, before she tried offering any words, and even then those words came out stammering and uneasy. "P-Pentagram City."

"PC is a big place. What part?" Loona asked. The bitch shuddered, pressing her back against the wall a bit tighter, drinking from a quivering cup of water. Not even beer? That simply wouldn't do. "I'm guessing from the size of you, a kennel somewhere, am I right?"

The bitch gave a nervous nod, not trusting her voice with words. Fucking hell whoever had her last left her a nervous wreck. But then again, Birch had pretty much shattered Maelstrom and that dragon asshole's minds as well. And at least one of those two was doing a lot better, to Loona's delight. Loona puffed out a breath and grabbed a chair that Reg was sitting on the arm of, and slid it toward the bitch until it was right beside her. Then, Loona sat down in the chair at the Hellhound's left side.

She wasn't sure why that was the right move. That was the weird thing about her instincts when it came to social situations, ever since that bullshit up in Purgatory. She always knew exactly what to do, but didn't always know why that was the perfect move. So she was somewhat confused, even if unsurprised, as the Hellhound woman seemed to stop recoiling from Loona's presence now that Loona was sitting down and the Hound was at her right hand.

Oh fucking hell, that was probably something she'd been trained into, Loona realized as the shaking of the bitch's hands lessened and she was able to drink without spilling nearly so much onto the carpet.

"Tex didn't tell me your name," Loona said, her tones light and casual, not looking at the Hellhound that stood over her but at the far wall. "Just that Reggie found you while on shift. Ordinarily, Hounds learn about us through the grapevine at Denny's. Not just wandering into the job-site."

"I... Had to..." she whispered, as though trying to summon words but finding them lacking to her purposes in describing what twist of kismet had led her to asking for help at Loona's warehouse of Earthly drugs and medicines.

"I bet you did," she said, not forcing the girl to expend her apparently very small tank of social gasoline to offer an explanation which in the grand scheme of things didn't matter in the moment and could be tackled safely later. "Still haven't heard your name."

"I... ah..." she glanced around. Then she tried to take a calming breath that looked like it didn't work very well. "Cookie."

"Cookie. Who the fuck names a Hellhound 'Cookie'?" Loona asked, making it clear that her confusion, annoyance and bemusement was not upon 'Cookie's head.

"I... ah..." she tried again, but this time Loona cut her off before she spent more of her diminishing cache of chutzpah.

"Loona, because our species became sentient when we were slaves on the Moon of Hell. Regicide, the killing of a king. Maelstrom, a ship-breaking tide. Vortex, which tears down buildings. These are Hellhound names," Loona said, stabbing the arm of her chair with a fingertip as she did. "Names that remember the violence of our lives and the savagery that we have to endure in order to press on through a Hell that couldn't give less of a shit about us if it it tried. We are children of spite and defiance and rage. And then some motherfucker takes a look at you and calls you 'Cookie'?"

Cookie, who was no doubt feeling for at least a moment swept up by Loona's diatribe, offered a slightly contrite shrug.

"Well that ain't gonna do. You're obviously not a Show-dog, they're way sluttier-looking than you. There's no good fucking reason you should have a Show-dog name when you look like you could punch out Reggie."

"Excuse the fuck me?" Reggie said, getting pulled into the conversation. "There's no way she could..."

"Back straight, dear," she said on pure instinct, and Cookie stopped hunching, showcasing that she had both the height and arm-reach of Tex, despite being significantly less bulky. After a moment where Cookie seemed to remember where she was and who she was surrounded by, she hunched back on herself, the moment of clarity lost.

"She's got reach on you, bub," Loona said.

"Maybe, but has she got training?" he said, raising his flesh fist and his prosthetic one in a boxing stance, before throwing a few jabs at the air.

"Isn't he adorable? He thinks he's threatening," Loona said over her shoulder to Cookie.

"A bit," Cookie agreed at a reluctant whisper.

"Fuck you!" he said, backing toward his mate with middle fingers directed at Loona.

"Fuck you too, Reg!" Loona said back around a laugh. "See? We're good people. Better than the shits that had their claws on you, at least, but I imagine that's a pretty fucking easy bar for us to clear."

"And despite that fact, there's always another asshole out there who limbers up to limbo under it," Tex said, as he moved to minutely adjust the myriad dials and knobs on Loona's stereo to an effect that was outside Loona's perception. He seemed to be pleased with whatever inscrutable musical sorcery he was enacting, nodding to himself. "Fact is, for every decent boss, coworker, or elevator-sharer, there's a dozen that'd step on your cooling corpse for the extra foot and a half it'd give them to fuck over their brothers. It's a shitty system, but we're forced to play in it."

"Until we destroy it," Loona said. Tex paused, having to turn farther than most Hound would have to give her a glance, because his blinded eye was on that side of her and he needed to bypass it. "Hounds have been slaves since the dawn of sentience. We're the oldest sentient race that aren't Elder Devils."

"Or Concubi, or Litigators," Tex pointed out her simplification's shortfall. "Or Vampires, if those still exist."

"Only on the Human World," Loona said. "We have to do something drastic or we'll be the slaves of the other races until the end of time."

"As much as I like your spirit in this," Tex stopped fiddling with her stereo and tucked his thumbs behind his belt, staring down at her not like the friend, but like the mentor that he tried to be, "the fact is, there've been slave-rebellions amongst the Hellhounds before, here in Hell."

"And how'd that turn out?" the deep yet feminine voice of Tiffany, Tex's barge-sized other half, intruded.

"Extermination of every sapient Hellhound in Hell," Tex said. "Most other species, that would be the end of us as a thinking race. But Hellhounds Pop at random, so within a generation there were more Domestic Hellhounds. They felt no compunction of doing it then, back before Lucifer. What makes you think that Lucifer would be any more merciful than they were?"

"That kind of thinking is why we're stuck where we are," she answered his charge. "Forever too afraid of yesterday's punishments to even hope for tomorrow's opportunity. The fact is, they can't kill us all now; there's too fucking many of us in their armies! Lucifer may be a lot of things, but he's not so much of an idiot that he'll kill a seventh of his entire military force during a war against Heaven because a few of us get 'uppity'. No, he'll tell his people to 'give them what they want so they keep fighting', and our lives as a race become a bit better."

"And when the war is over, then we all die," Tex said. Honestly, now that she gave some thought to it, he was using the same tone as some of her old teachers at Killgrave School. Maybe he'd missed his calling as a history professor because of a need for savage violence to pay the bills.

"I should..." Cookie said, gesturing away.

"Naw, stay and listen. This shit is important," Loona said.

"The future of the Hellhound species isn't sitting on a mousetrap, Loona. It's sitting in the middle of a mine-field, all of them so rotten and faulty that a snowflake would set them off," Tex said.

"So we start digging," she said, tensing her feet as she did. "Evolution gave us these bastards for a reason. Go under them, and dig our way out. Why sit in a shitty situation that isn't going to get better and will absolutely randomly get worse, when we can do something to avoid it?"

"There's avoiding trouble," Tex said with a nod. "And then there's looking for a fight. And most people expect us to fight, so they'll presume that's our intention."

Loona sighed, shaking her head. "How long have you been pulling on that spike-collar?" she asked, again following the currents of her instinct. And it made Tex flinch away from her as though she'd just stolen the moon from the sky. "I get it. You've managed to claw out a decent life here, on the shitty side of Hell. And you'd hate to lose what you've sacrificed an eye and a lot of your blood for. But this... all of this," she gestured at him, "it's just fear. Fear driving you into inaction when you should be wanting to do what I do, as badly as I do."

"Some things are worth fearing," Tex said, a grim tone to his voice. She'd obviously managed to by sheer Purgatorial Bullshit find his most sensitive spot and then jam her finger into it. She didn't feel like pushing that button twice.

But her Purgatorial Bullshit wasn't just fixating on knowing what to say or who to say it to to get what she wanted. She also had an ability to connect with people, to share those things that were hers to them, and even to some extent to share what was theirs with she herself. And she also had something of a low-level ability that allowed her to read rooms with an almost synesthestic quality. She could feel the comfort and happiness of Reg and Maelstrom, over there beside the much larger form of Tiffany. She could feel the grim contemplations coming from Tex as though they were cold mist wafting off of a block of ice in summer. And she could feel... alarm... coming from Lissa.

Alarm?

"One second, Cookie. Don't run off on us, these nights get better, I promise," she said. Cookie made an ambivalent noise but Loona chose to take that as assent and went over to where Lissa was at the window that lead to the fire escape. "What's up?"

"I saw something," she said, unlocking and lifting the window. The window didn't have a great view, having all of fifteen feet and then the brick wall of another building. Lissa, though, was looking down, through the bars in the fire escape. Toward ground level.

There were body-armored fiends stacking up by the laundry room door.

"That ain't good," Loona said as she pulled her head back in.

"Maybe they're here for the guys down on the second floor," Lissa said.

"I'm not that lucky," Loona said. "Mal?"

She nodded sternly toward the door, and though Maelstrom was interrupted in the middle of an anecdote, he did follow her to the entry into her new apartment. "What's going on?" he asked.

"My nose is better than yours, your ears are better than mine," she said. "What do you hear?"

"Music and drinking," Maelstrom said. She stared at him flatly, and he started. "Oh, you mean... right."

He stood beside the door staring at the floor with his ears twitching as he focused hard on what was going on outside.

"Heavy footfalls. Five – no – six people, more 'round the corner, probably body armor. I can't... unclear how many total. I hear metal on plastic. Electric hum. Tazer or prod. Not sure."

"Where are they going?" she asked still keeping her voice quiet to not disrupt the party any more than she absolutely needed to, just in case, but as her life so often did, it decided to shit into her cereal.

"...here," he said.

She took in a deep breath, and could smell a mutant who hadn't been in the hallway before. If there was one mutant, there were probably others. She turned to Tex, who winced at her expression, reading her properly. He reached over and turned up the music, then snapped his fingers toward his mate.

"Why's the music so loud?" Reggie asked.

"Incoming raid," Maelstrom answered, his face hardening into a mask of merciless focus, the likes of which she'd only seen the like when in that warehouse in Vladivostok. Tex looked around for weapons, and only found the Force Pulser that Dad wouldn't let her move into her own apartment without. It was an inelegant looking thing, and not the easiest thing to use well; seeming to grasp that, Tex threw it directly toward her, and she caught it, priming and charging it as Maelstrom stacked up behind the door, and Tiffany sidled over to gently displace him at the fore.

Now, with her ear to the wall, Loona could hear them out there. She could smell them, too. And they were approaching carefully, slowly. Slowly enough and carefully enough that had they not been trying to sneak up on Hounds, they might have succeeded. She glanced, and saw that Cookie was heading toward the window. She whistled high and pointed from Reggie to Cookie, the order clear. Don't let her run, they're already out there.

She closed her eyes, ignoring music and just focusing on the sounds. A few foot falls passing to the other side of the door. A gentle whump of a shoulder against the wall. A few seconds later, a second, another body stacking there. Then, she waited for a particular sound. It would either be a splut or a muted click. That would be the difference between a door-breaching charge and a battering ram.

There came a muted click, the ram set against the door just for a moment, before it was swung back to batter the door open.

And with a roar that almost made Loona shit herself, Tiffany exploded that door outward into the faces of those about to charge in.

---

The gala was being held at one of the manses of the varied aristocrats of Hell, those who weren't even members of Octavia's extended family. It was a hilariously ostentatious venue, which shone with gold, silver, and rarer metals in an attempt to out-rich all of the attendees of the party. But if there was one thing which could be said about the Von Eldritch dynasty, they certainly had a sense of showmanship. The gaudiness of the displays were only a part of the whole scene that Octavia had found herself trapped in. There were entertainers performing tricks in the various corners of the room which defied easy explanation, but used no magic so could only be sleights of hand impressive enough to train in thievery. There was music played on antique instruments that in some cases were as old as the homeworld of the humans. Outfits pulled from the deepest recesses of the most opulent closets of the hyper-privileged gleamed against the backdrop that Frederick's money had established.

She hated just about every single one of them.

They were nothing but a bunch of do-nothing, upward-failing dilettantes, debutantes, ingenues, social climbers and trustifarians. In fact, the only person that she didn't hate on sight was that one guy she was pretty sure was a con-artist who'd crashed the party and was working the crowd for all he was worth. He at least was doing something with his life, even if that something was bilking the foolish of their money. He didn't give her much effort or time, possibly knowing an impossible nut to crack when he saw one. Fitting, that the only one of appreciable skill in this entire party was the thief and the outcast.

Of course, that didn't mean she was standing on the sidelines and watching the thing take place without her. No, Octavia was technically involved in a conversation right now, if one that she only allowed to keep going with one-word, ambivalent responses and 'yes-and?'s so that she didn't stick out like the unhammered nail. Hammering did sound like a good idea, all things considered. But for all her status as a Goetic Marchioness, she was 'too young for such libations', according to the people working for the Von Eldritch household. Fuck you all, thought she. She'd turned eighteen on the first day of spring.

"I'm going to go now," she extracted herself from the conversation mid sentence, leaving her 'conversation partner' off balance and stammering. Fancy dresses and faux uniforms abounded in this place, none of them looking quite like what Octavia was wearing, though they did try. Her own dress for the evening was a mixture of the attires of the two Exorcists which had invaded her home and died by she and her mother's hands. The coat was clean whites and greys, the decorative frogging so intense and pervasive that it almost looked like chain mail, tailored in for her narrow shoulders, while the pants had been from the one she'd burned; the pants were the only really salvageable cloth from that one.

These people wore designer clothes to ape and imitate what she had earned by tearing it off of of the hostile bodies of the enemies of Hell.

Fuck these people were useless.

"I know what you're thinking," a man's voice came to her, seated as he was at the edge of the gathering whence she was retreating toward. "You're thinking 'Fuck these people are useless'."

She looked to him, and saw a Mutant Aristocrat sitting in a chair that faced a fireplace which burned Qliphoth wood to unearthly blue-green flames. His eyes weren't the same color, one of them having a broad streak of raw wound-tissue near it, as though he was in the process of regrowing an eye after severely traumatic injury. "It wouldn't be polite to say out loud."

"Well, this is my house, and I can say it all I want. Fuck those people are useless," the young-seeming man said. He snapped his fingers, and a pair of impish valets hustled to drag a chair over near his, likewise facing the fire but allowing her to get a better look at the aristocrat. He sat as though bone-weary, his nearly-black green hair showing a shock of gray reaching back from his forelock. The scales on his hand were uneven, mismatched in a manner that no Mutant aristocrat would allow. Signs of more regrowth, that he'd likely regrown an entire hand. And his eyes, green or orange on red, didn't look at her at any point. "It's so intolerably hard to find somebody worth talking to at these parties. My sister loves them, though, so Daddy must oblige."

"I honestly didn't think I'd see you out here, at the edge of things," she said, as Seviathan Von Eldritch lifted a brow at her. "Mum says you tend to throw parties, not hide at them."

"Well, your Mum was right... a year ago," Seviathan said. He continued to swirl the dark liquor in the snifter in his hand, kicking up aromas as he continued to smile unhappily. His attire was, like everybody else's formal and impossibly expensive. But even sheltered Octavia could tell that it was lined with kevlar, and likely spellwoven as well to prevent damage from flame, acid, electricity and radiation. A suit to kill in. "I've seen dress like that before. How much did it cost to get it?"

"It almost cost me the lives of me, my mother, and my Legatus," she answered.

"And not a Soul spent," he said, a sort of spiteful glee filling his eyes. "I'm guessing that you got those when Gabriel went mad and sent his pet tin-men out to kill us all? If so, kudos. You've shown more skill than most. I should have expected the like of that from the Iron Princess's daughter."

"To be fair, she was a Duchess at the time," she said. He gave a chuckle, then took a sip, deliberating before turning his mismatched eyes to her.

"To answer your question in a broader sense; this kind of party isn't my scene, and doesn't have my cadre. Too much tittering about about dresses and affairs. Not enough liquor and duels," he gave a shrug. "It's one of the perks of having Leviathan blood; we can afford to be rather fast and loose with violence. Not nearly to the extent that a Sinner would, but still. We can... recover from things," he stared at his discolored, asymmetrical right hand that was cupped around his snifter.

"Ah," she said, as the implications finally lined up to a conclusion. "You were with Asmodeus in the First Wave of the war, weren't you?" Octavia asked.

He again chuckled. Dry, and mirthless. "The Aristocratic Families fought to have their little legions involved in the First Wave. Father's more than most, which was why we were there. Of course, the week before the call to advance, he comes down with a case of liver-spikes, and sends me in his place," Seviathan said.

"That's remarkably cowardly," Octavia said, guessing and hoping that she was judging his tone correctly.

"Prudent, more like," he didn't seem insulted so she was at least in the ballpark. "If Frederick Von Eldritch dies without either my sister or I having a grandchild for him, the Von Eldritch family's power, wealth and influence is split down the middle. The Law says that either my twin or I could be heir, but without means of proving it, it's easier to just split and let Lucifer eat the remainder. Which would leave Von Eldritch unspeakably reduced in the eyes of the power bases of the other Aristocratic Families. After the work I've done to bring us into the current century, even I would find that unacceptable."

"I'm surprised you haven't just arranged for a child, then," Octavia said.

"Easily said for an Angel," he chuckle darkly. "It's a steeper thing than you're thinking of. There's a reason Father waited as long as he did to have us, after all."

"You could just form an alliance with your sister," Octavia pointed out.

"As easily ally with a summer breeze, for both can be quite fickle," Seviathan said. He puffed out a breath. "I don't hate my sister. We are just very different people. And Father knows that he can't have Von Eldritch reduced; that just won't do. So he sends me. Just as well, to be frank. He was middling with a sword at best, and didn't even know how to reload his own revolver."

"I suppose it's a dark miracle that you made it out alive," she said.

"You could call it that. I could call it being moderately cowardly in the face of Heavenly Artillery, getting an eye shot out by an Innocent, and negotiating my hand so that I could get away from that white-armored juggernaut that put Satan's boogeyman to shame," Seviathan said. It wasn't even thick with self reproach. He was just relating what had happened, and accepted it. "I never did thank Asmodeus for my education in warfare. I can tell that, through whatever means, you've had the same education. About the 'glory' of war."

"War isn't glorious," she said, nodding and staring at the people playing at soldier on the dance-floor. "But sometimes, war is necessary."

"Exactly so, Goetia, exactly so," he said. He then poured a dozen drams of that strange brown liquor into a second snifter and pushed it toward her. "I have a feeling that I had better attach myself to you to some extent. The New War For Heaven is growing, and you're already setting yourself apart."

Octavia blinked at him. Had he said what she thought he said? "I'm... flattered," she said diplomatically, "but I don't think it's prudent to change my marital status any time soon."

Seviathan leaned back from her as she said that, and then chuckled again. "Fuck, I hate being an Aristocrat sometimes. People hear things you didn't mean to say," he said. He pointed at her with his snifter. "I have absolutely no intention of demanding a betrothal out of you. For one thing I am a Baronet and you, a Marchioness; you're on a different social plane than I am and if I were to manage that coup another Family would have me killed for it. For another, and to be frank, I am two centuries old. You, young Goetia, look like a child to me. And there are some depths of deviancy I have no desire to plumb. I prefer women closer to my own age and experience, thank you."

"Oh. Well. I suppose that's for the best," she said, probably doing a half-rate job of hiding her relief. Marriage was the last thing she wanted spilled onto her plate right now, the current conflict being what it was. She could deal with that when she was older, more settled, and more ready. "So what did you mean by what you said?"

"What I meant was few have the audacity to even be a nuisance to Paimon, and you've done your best to nearly become an enemy of his. I mean that the caché of your family has been increasing stratospherically since Hell's Redoubt was built, and will expand again in the future, I don't doubt," he said, quaffing the remainder of what was in his glass, setting it down with a clink. He steeped his fingers before him, turning to her. "And I want in on the things you're changing. Consider me a financially interested party."

Well, this party suddenly had something going for it.

---

The pandemonium was abrupt and absolute. Within a blink of the door bursting into flinders and sending the man about to smash it down in the other direction now cratered into the far side of the hallway, Tiff grabbed the first armored fiend she could find and slammed him to the ground, while Maelstrom darted out even faster than Loona could and tackled a second away from where he was preparing some sort of weird looking gun to shoot her. Loona made it out that fraction of a moment later, and pointed her Pulser at the biggest of them, firing at him center mass. The 'kthunk' of the weapon going off and launching an overcharged bolus of pure force at the man put an exclamation mark on the end of this sentence of sudden and unexpected violence.

The impact drove the brute of a man from his feet, bowled over from the impact. It would have punched his ribs out through his spine, except that he was wearing a pretty robust plate-carrier, which took the hit and deflected inward by about an inch.

"Everybody stand down or I will start popping heads! What the FUCK are you doing here?" Loona demanded at a roar.

Somebody responded by trying to electrocute her with a taser. Seeing him twitch before firing, she was able to deke the second prong so that instead of a paralyzing fry, she was given an annoying jolt. She then shot the guy who had tried to taze her.

"Hold your fire evil-damn-it!" the big one said as he pushed himself off of the floor. He was a Taurian Consumer, a bull like mass capped with a bull's head standing on two legs with a dented armor suit. "If you shoot another of my men I swear on your mis-bred ancestors that I'll slaughter every fucking person in this building!"

"Boss, are we allowed to do that?" one of the others asked, as he switched from a net-launching gun to something that fired naked lead.

"I'll get chewed out some, but I've been chewed out before," the bull said. He reached down to his leg, and pulled up a plate, staring her in the eye as he extracted the shattered metal that she'd punched inward on him, and replacing it with a fresh one. From the shape, his was a Two Plate vest. Even shooting him on the change-over wouldn't have guaranteed the kill. "Brinkley! You still alive over there!"

"Still breathing sir!" a slightly panicked sound came from where Tiff had him pressed immobile to the floor.

"Then I'd say it's to your best interest, mutt, to loosen your grasp 'round Fellweather's neck. I was sent to retrieve, but if I gotta bring back corpses, I'll fucking do it," the bull said with what was obvious to Loona was utter sincerity.

"Who the fuck are you?" she demanded, pointing her Pulser at him.

"At what point did you think I owed you one fucking word, mutt?" the bull snapped at her, his eyes practically ablaze with rage. "At this moment, you are only alive by my mercy, and if you do anything to my guys, I will reveal to you how fucking tenuous my mercy fucking is. Do we understand each other, dog?"

"Funny you should say that," she said, not willing to bow to another cruel asshole in her own fucking home. "Because it looks like we've got two of your guys dead-to-rights for trying to bust up my party. And since you don't have any Peacekeeper Crests, I know you're not Sallos' people. You have no fucking right to be here. So I think you should collect your people, recheck your actual target, and politely fuck off."

"Ordinarily I'd say a bitch's mouth was only good for sucking dicks, but your kind aren't even useful for that," the bull spat at her, stomping one step forward when he did. The others in the same dark-grey uniforms pulled back, allowing him a direct line to the three Hellhounds in the hallway, and the two hostages that they held. "So you're going to let them go. Right now. Or I'll make you regret ever being whelped."

"You're doing a lot of talking, but the fact that you haven't already gunned us down tells me that you're either unable or unwilling to kill your own people," Loona countered. "So it looks like we're stuck. I can't let them go without you murdering us. You can't kill them to get past us. How about you actually tell us what you're doing in my home with all this iron? Who do you work for?"

The bull gave a snort, then ripped the patch from his shoulder, idly tossing it at where she and Maelstrom were standing. It landed on the floor, face up. She didn't recognize the sigil displayed there. Maelstrom, though, did a double take at it.

"Reveal to the class, Maelstrom," she said, keeping her Pulser pointed at the bull.

"He works for Drapetomane," Maelstrom said. She gave an oblivious shrug. "They hunt down runaway slaves from Sloth to Pride."

"One of you knows how to read? What a fucking waste," the bull said.

Maelstrom squinted at him. "So that means you're either Fergus or Blehmet. They're the only Taurian Rundowners in this Ring."

"And at last I see an inkling of actual thought in you fucking animals," the bull said. "I am Arno Fergus. I take it you've seen our work before, mutt?"

"I've seen what you leave of the people you hunt," Maelstrom said, his grasp tightening on his hostage, causing the poor fiend to start to panic a bit. "Your entire business is built on the back of savage cruelty."

"I know. Ain't it grand?" Fergus gave a bass chuckle.

"Why are you here? I don't have any fucking 'runaways'. We're all free Hounds," Loona snapped.

"Like that's even a thing," Fergus rolled his eyes.

"Uh..." Maelstrom said, shooting Loona a look, and that look informed her that there was at least one Hound in that apartment of unknown status.

"Fourteen hours ago, Sweetie Cookie Dough jumped the rail at the Pumarola Hippodrome and beat feet into the city. A tip said she was spotted entering a warehouse owned by Last Chance Foreign Medicinals," Fergus said, pulling a folded-over writ from a hip pocket and hurling it at her. Probably his 'warrant'. "We searched the warehouse four hours ago. Didn't find Sweetie Cookie Dough. So logic dictates that one of you animals brought her home. I hope for your sake you haven't fucked her yet. Her bloodline's worth actual money."

"Fuck you! She's a person, not a bloodline!" Loona said.

"ALL HOUNDS ARE PROPERTY!" Fergus roared, taking a stomping step forward. "The fact that you can squawk legible words doesn't mean you actually deserve to be heard. Hellhounds are fucking animals, every single one of them. Eventually they'll finally learn their fucking place and stop being so goddamned uppity with us actual people."

"I should blow your fucking head off."

"Not with that gun you won't," Fergus grinned most unkindly. "The only reason you're still alive is that I don't want to take the pay cut for losing my agents on a fucking milk-run. And if it reaches a point where I'm annoyed enough to no longer care – which it rapidly fucking is – then you're going to see why we're the best in this business."

Loona tried to convince him that Cookie was free, that all Hounds were free. No words came out. She then tried to convince them that slavery was a fundamental wrong, to which silence emerged from her throat.

She then tried to even put forth the point that Hellhounds were people. And she knew by instinct alone that there was no collection or arrangement of words, that could be said in any language, from any individual or authority, that would convince Fergus of that critical fundamental axiom of her world view. She knew without speaking that Fergus did not see them as people. They were animals, to have value extracted from them until they died, and then have their meat sold so they wouldn't be stuck with burial or cremation fees.

It wasn't even that Fergus hated Hellhounds. She could work with hate. Her new social instincts could turn bilious spite into begrudging sympathy, which was all she'd need to talk her way out of this. No, the problem with Arno Fergus is that fundamentally there was no conversation to be had with him. He did not see Loona Miller, or any of the others in the hall, as people. They were not worthy of conversation, explanation, or mercy. They were obstacles to his path, that nobody would care about if he killed them, and Hell would not mourn.

And at that, she knew that this was going to end in a bloodbath. One that she was ill equipped to be on the winning side of. Tiff was a large target; she'd die first in a hale of gunfire. Maelstrom had a human shield, but that only protected him from one direction. Once Tiffany went down, he'd be riddled from the back. She could dodge a few shots, but her own gun didn't have the refire rate to kill all of the fiends in front of her before they chased her down with lead. And once the three of them were dead, all that was left was a shell-shocked pedigree guard-dog, a maimed ex-Legionary, and a party of non-combatants like the race-dog that didn't know how to fight at all.

This was a lose.

Not just a lose, this was a rapidly approaching certain death, for everybody involved.

So she rejected the scene in front of her, and used some bullshit to manufacture another option.

With the resonating note of her personal power, she reached for the metaphysical connection between her and the imp she had named as her father. Instantly, she could feel him a plane away, up in the Human World on a job. Through his eyes, she could see him unscrewing a laundry ventilation duct to get into a high-rise, a knife between his teeth, while Fatty tried to hide a body under bags of garbage. She willed the connection into place, as she had with Maelstrom, and then forced her thoughts along it.

I need help, bad. They're going to kill us.

Blitz instantly straightened, glancing around in alarm. "Loonie? Where are you?" he asked aloud.

The new apartment.

A testament to the wounded and broken love that he had to give to her, he immediately abandoned the job and grabbed Moxxie by the back of his collar. "We're aborting! Some greasy FUCK is trying to hurt my kid!"

"It'll be okay," Loona said aloud, as she allowed the connection to pass into the back of her thoughts. "We've got help coming."

"Nobody is going to help you. Nobody will even care," Fergus said.

"You might be surprised," Loona said grimly. Just let him get here in time.

---

"You want... what exactly? The Blasphemer?" she asked. "The Blasphemer's production allows for individual picks. Especially if you buy from the Wrath Market," she said.

"I don't want that tinker-toy bullshit that you give to the common soldier. While clever, it's clunky, slow, and cheap," Seviathan said. "I want the armor that Stella Goetia had when she lead the Toehold Charge."

"She's not going to want to sell it," Octavia pointed out.

"Then I want the armor you have," Seviathan pressed. How did he even know about that?

"I'm not going to sell mine either," she said. Somebody in the palace was blabbing.

"I can pay..."

"Not for any price. That armor saved my mother's life and kept my home from being reduced to rubble. There is no amount of money you can pay to take it from me," she stabbed the arm of her chair with a claw as she laid out the facts. Seviathan sat back, a look of distinct annoyance on his face.

"I also hate when people are sentimental. It keeps them from seeing cold reality," he noted.

Octavia stared at him for a moment, then realized his angle. "You don't want my Gyrfalcon. You want a Gyrfalcon," she then said.

"Exactly so," Seviathan said. He sat forward again. "Killing monsters is one thing. If I may be so bold, I can say without too much conceit that I'm extremely good at it. But if there's one thing my recent education has taught me, it's that I'm at best a middling battlefield commander. What I excel at, above most other things, is dealing with single, extremely potent opponents in concentrated combat. I couldn't fight against Raguel last time, because I was poorly armed and poorly armored, comparable to what I was facing," he drained his glass, then poured another measure into his snifter, staring into the distance. "I've killed a Scorpii. It was nothing compared to Raguel," he said, then turned to face her once more. "If I want to reclaim my pride and face in the view of the other Hellish Aristocracy, I need to be able to stand in front of an Angel and slap his ass sideways. And by your mother's example in the Towers, the Gyrfalcon allows a person to do exactly that."

That might be because she was wearing a massively expensive, intricate and hitherto unique suite of armor and enhancements, or it might be because Stella Goetia was herself an Angel, if a long-hellbound one. But Octavia laced her fingers and pulled in a breath. "Gyrfalcons have to be custom tailored to their bearer. I'm still presuming that mine's going to need to be rebuilt in a couple years when I stop growing."

"Your point being?" he asked, lofting a brow.

"If you have essentially infinite money, getting a Gyrfalcon – a pre-production model with all the frailties mine does – is possible," she said.

"Define 'essentially infinite'?" Seviathan asked.

"It took nearly five centuries of my Dux Bellorim's combined back-pay to commission my suit," she said, not factoring in that he'd demanded a 'rush job' which no doubt vastly increased the price. Seviathan leaned back for a moment, his eyes going hooded as he did math in his head, estimating the likely rate of pay for Stolas' Legatus, the amount of years he'd been of service, and the paltry amount a Stoic would spend each year. He looked less than thrilled with the answer.

"It will be uncomfortably tight, but I think one hundred ninety million Souls would be well spent if it keeps this scion of the Van Eldritch family alive," he said, a smile returning to his face. Wait, the one she'd bought cost that much? Christ on his magical stick, and she thought the price Goopty and Lyle had quoted for the prototype was rich. Then again, they were shitty businessmen compared to the imp, and it was a rush job.

"Well there you are, Sev," a voice cut in on their talks, which made Seviathan's face drop for a moment before he plastered a genteel smile onto it and turned it toward the socialites who approached their island of isolation from the useless bastards of this party. "I'd heard you were invited, but imagine my surprise to see you here, hiding away with..."

The one speaking was tall, his body milk-white and suited in crimson and gold, with black hair and straight horns. And there was another beside him who looked identical to him, only differing in which of his eyes was red and which green, marking both as a Geminon Consumer. While it was obvious to say that there were two of them, through a twist of strange demonic bullshit, the two demons were actually one person, spread out over two bodies. At his back were a few other Consumers of the various other sub-clades, looking at her with derision and disdain and talking quietly under their breath behind the Twins' back. It was odd, seeing Geminons with white skin. Usually they were much more colorful, usually in yellows, oranges, or greens.

"Primus, Secundus, how lovely that you decide to show up to my sister's latest gathering of fashionistas," Seviathan said. "Ordinarily, I'd love to exchange pleasantries, but right now I'd prefer a more select company."

"With this Goetia?" one of the twins asked. She decided since he was slightly further away, he was Secundus. "And here I thought you know where your loyalties lay, Sev."

"I know exactly where they lay, Von Ketterman," Seviathan said, his smile losing some of its artificially infused pleasantness. "And I might take it somewhat askance if someone were to impugn otherwise. After all... I don't recall seeing either of your face on Cloud One back in November."

"Bowing and scraping to military leadership is beneath me," the one who by her metrics must therefore be Primus said with a roll of his eyes.

"It must have been such a hard decision to withhold the House Von Ketterman's no actual legions to the fight," Seviathan continued. "They must have been utterly shocked when the forces you don't have didn't show up for muster."

"Soldiering is their pursuit," Primus gestured at Octavia, which saw her brow draw down in annoyance. "Petty, and beneath good taste. We are better than that."

"Really?" Seviathan forced an incredulous tone. "The defense of the realm which contains our manses, our power bases, our wealth and the symbols of our status is beneath us?"

"I think he's trying to rile you into something, but he's being a bit idiotically lump-fisted about how to do it," Octavia opined, picking up the snifter that Seviathan had pushed toward her and swirling it around to a burst of distinctly woody and cherry notes.

"Well, that's probably the case then. Shall we ignore these pests?" Seviathan asked, turning to put the intruder socialites over his shoulder and facing the fireplace once more.

"I can't see a reason not to," she joined him. But no sooner had she settled herself then there came a wooden creak and a twisting sensation as Secundus forceably spun her chair toward the dance floor containing its many idiots, and Primus gestured outwardly.

"You should probably leave, Goetia. Your interloping kind have no place in these kinds of conversations," Primus said. She blinked at him, and sighed, preparing to raise and go. So much for having a useful meeting.

"I'm sorry, Von Ketterman, but at some point did you become the First Family of Hell?" Seviathan asked, staring at the not at the Consumers, but at the fact that their spinning of her had knocked over his snifter and spilled his brandy.

"What?" Primus asked.

"Because I don't think it's within either your power nor your social clout to say whom I can or cannot speak to. So do be a good little peon and turn her chair back the way it was. I'm not done," Seviathan said, forcing a polite tone. But even Octavia could hear that the tone was paper thin, and that there were razor blades beneath it.

"How dare you speak to me in such a manner!" Von Ketterman snapped.

"I'll speak to willful children however I damned well please," Seviathan said. He turned a glance with one, discolored eye back at Primus and Secundus, who were now seething, and the rest of the Consumer cadre who were tittering and otherwise being useless. "Now politely and expeditiously fuck off."

"I shall not be spoken to in such a manner!" Primus declared. Seviathan turned in his chair, now smiling genuinely but not at all kindly, as though things had gone exactly as he wished.

"Are you going to do something about it, boy? Or are you going to flap your lips like the massive queefing cunt that you are? Well boy? What say you!"

"I demand satisfaction!" Primus said. The Consumers all gasped.

"Excellent. You may use whatever weapon you like, I choose anything I have within arm's reach."

"Excuse me?" Secundus asked.

"Do you accept?" Seviathan asked. Primus, though, pulled out a flintlock and pointed it at Seviathan's head. "Fantastic! I also grant you the honor of taking the first shot. Do you think you can make it count? Do you even have the will or gall to pull that trigger? Do you know who I am, Von Ketterman; do you know the minefield that you've walked into by dint of your childish pique? Pull the trigger. Do it! I dare you! I implore you! Claim the life of a killer of real monsters! Pull that trigger and make this duel interesting! It's already begun! Your ten paces were spent getting here, now pull that fucking trigger!"

Octavia glanced from Seviathan who was now ranting like an excited lunatic, to the rest of the party which had gone quiet and rather still. She could see Helsa over yonder, making terminating gestures at her twin brother, who was pointedly ignoring them. And Primus was starting to sweat.

"But you know what happens when you pull that trigger, don't you? The instant the hammer starts to drop, you might have a one in ten chance of actually killing me outright. And maybe a one in ten chance after, that I'd be wounded such that I would be unable to retort. But for all your lack of foresight and social self control, you did learn your basic mathematics," Seviathan said, leaning forward in his seat until his forehead was pressed against Primus' pistol barrel. "You know that it leaves me with an 81 percent chance to shove this brandy bottle through your eye socket and plunge this snifter through your other body's jugular. Are you willing to die today because of childish outrage? Not just forfeit one of your bodies but both of them? Do you have the courage, boy?"

Primus was starting to shake, now.

Seviathan stared them down. And Primus and Sucundus Von Ketterman flinched.

"What a disappointment you are, you spoiled, useless children," Seviathan slapped the pistol out of Primus' hand and into the fireplace. It fired the instant it hit the log, sending the bullet ricocheting up the chimney and causing just about everybody in the room who weren't Octavia or Seviathan to flinch. Primus bristled even while shaking. Seviathan calmly, deliberately, picked up the brandy bottle and poured another measure into his snifter. "The next time you want to play a man's game, make sure you have a man's balls. And not the kind that only flop against your chin with every thrust. No wonder your father thinks you're such a disgrace. Get the fuck out of my sight!"

With that, the young aristocrats retreated. In the distance, Helsa was rubbing a throbbing vein on her head. Honestly, that was a bit impressive to behold.

"I apologize for that," Seviathan said. "These children think that because we don't constantly flag our bluster that we lack the power to earn such things. They need to be reminded from time to time."

"I'm just surprised that didn't end with a death and a blood feud," Octavia noted.

"I've dealt with the impetuous youth before. The trick is to not give them time or room. They lack the grit to follow through if you put them on the spot in the moment," Seviathan said. He puffed out a breath, then recomposed himself, looking quite a bit less dour now than when she'd first walked up on him. "A shame they didn't follow through. I haven't tested my reflexes against a gunbarrel in a Hound's age."

"Did you really think you were going to dodge a bullet?" she asked.

"It's easier than you'd think. You don't need to be faster than the bullet," Seviathan said. There was a blur of motion, and then he was standing at her side with the bottle of brandy cocked to pour into her own snifter, "you just need to be faster than his finger."

"Noted," she said. Well that display was a clear indication that he'd probably do a lot more good in a Gyrfalcon than she would. "I will put you in contact with my underlings at GLW. I trust them to know the figures as to cost and tailoring better than I could recall in the moment."

"Fantastic," he said, pouring her a finger of brandy, then sauntering back to his seat. He seemed quite pleased with himself. "And here I thought tonight was going to be hours of wasted time."

"I can drink to happy coincidences," she said, lifting her snifter and tinking it against Seviathans, before taking a deep sip... and nearly gagging on it, because it was a lot stronger once it reached the back of her tongue than she had ever considered possible. While she didn't quite spew it at the fireplace, it was a near thing, and she was fairly certain that she rather ruined the mouthful she had with stifled coughing and it burned in the annals of her sinuses where a bit managed to work its way up and in there.

"And with that display, I'll ask you to get a bit of experience with brandy before I invite you to one of my parties," Seviathan said with a grin before taking a long sip of brandy. "I can't have you choking to death in front of my chums."

Hell never lacked for ways to embarrass Octavia Goetia, did it?

---

"I'm running out of patience, dog. You're running out of time. Let them go, and you won't die gut-shot and dragged behind my trucks," Fergus growled.

"I'll go, just..." Cookie said from the apartment.

"You're staying right fucking there!" Loona shouted over her shoulder, then continued to aim her Pulser at the Consumer in charge of the raid. "How much will this job bring you in if you complete it with all your guys? Ten thousand Souls? Maybe fifteen? Then I'm guessing losing a guy on these things must have a penalty rate of five thousand each. Meaning if two, or," she shifted her aim so that now it was pointed at the imp standing next to Fergus, "three die, you succeed and come home with nothing. And if we kill any more, then you're just as far ahead to cancel and pretend you never got this contract, because you'll be paying money for getting the job done."

"I'm not intimidated by napkin math, dog," Fergus said. "Though I am a bit disgusted that somebody bothered to teach it to you. The state of education in Hell these days, teaching these fucking dogs to read. Am I right, boys?"

A few anemic 'yeah's came from the people who were trapped in stalemate with the Hellhounds, but they didn't sound nearly enthusiastic enough for Fergus' liking, so he spurred them to do it again. This time the 'yeah's were louder, but even less enthusiastic. There was a vein bulging on Fergus' neck from his nearly ruptured temper. Come on, Dad. I've got less than a minute left of stalling I can do.

After a long and pregnant pause, there was a fwoosh as one of the walls burst into flame and opened to reveal the Human World. Blitz strode through first and immediately upon entering, saw a fiend holding a gun pointed at his adopted daughter, and without a moment's hesitation pulled his Luger and shot him. Instantly, half of the guns turned toward Blitz.

"Flank! Flank!" came the call.

"Who the fuck are you assholes and what are you doing with my kid?" Blitz asked, looking across the line of them. One of them, who was standing directly behind him, opened fire, a shotgun-blast launched directly into the back of Blitz's head. But the buckshot scattered and peppered the walls instead of killing him. Without glancing back, Blitz pointed his pistol behind him and put a bullet through the fiend's eye.

"Kill him!" Fergus shouted.

But the next through the portal was Moxxie, who held out his arms, his eyes overtaken by blackness, as he called prismatic magical walls to their protection. The incoming dump of bullets hit the wall and vanished, not even deflected so much as unravelled into dust. When the Drapetomane agents realized that not only were they not killing the pair of imps, but they were wasting expensive ammo to fail besides, they stopped.

"Who the fuck are you supposed to be?" Fergus said, storming in toward Blitz, eyes glaring balefully at him. Blitz just pointed his pistol up at Fergus' face as he approached.

"I asked the questions first, fuck-face. So you answer mine, and maybe I'll answer yours. Why. The fuck. Are you. Hassling," he pulled a shotgun from inside his coat and racked its pump with a single hand, not wavering in his aim. "My daughter?"

"I don't see any imps here, filth. You're gonna pay for costing me my bonus," Fergus said.

Loona, though, still had her connection up. He's a slave hunter, she sent through the bond connecting parent to child.

"A slave hunter? Who the fuck are you lookin' for? Got some humans that run from the markets or some shit? Get the fuck out of my home, big man," Blitz said around grit teeth. "You can either do it standing up or feet first on a stretcher. I don't give a FUCK which."

"Big talk for somebody hiding behind a wall. Boys, aim at the bitch," Fergus said.

All guns that had been pointed at Blitz now swung and pointed at Loona. And the rage that was writ on Blitz's face went from the hot, explosive and bombastic that she'd known from the day she'd been adopted by him, to the absolute cold, seething frenzy that he'd learned in his decade trapped int he Human World.

"You've got one chance to survive today, fucko," Blitz said, his words almost eerily calm. "And that chance vanishes if you harm so much as a hair on her pelt."

"Like I'm gonna be intimidated by an imp," Fergus chuckled.

"Uh, boss... A word?" the one Maelstrom had in a neck-lock asked, raising a hand.

"Shut the fuck up, Fellweather, you'll be outta there in no time," Fergus said.

"I think we've already lost this one, boss," Fellweather said, gesturing at Blitz.

"Fucking coward. You're not getting paid for this job, you wuss," Fergus said.

She glanced from Fergus, who was reaching for the shotgun that hung in a holster the way most people would keep a side-piece at their back; Fergus was about to start killing people. She looked at her adoptive father, and forced a message through to him. He's reaching for a gun.

"Good enough," Blitz said.

And then there was a blizzard of movement. The shield blocking Blitz from Fergus dropped, while the other protecting the imps' backs swept like a door, catching two of the Drapetomanes and flattening them into a splat of crushed bone, blood and gore against the wall where it met the perpetually out-of-order elevator shaft (the one place where they wouldn't simply be shoved through into somebody's apartment). Loona took her shot, firing with a heady whoomp followed by a crushing noise as a fiend's face was shoved through the back of his own head.

Blitz was off at the shot, eyes locked on Fergus. Even with his target locked in his eyes, he still managed to pull a knife from his boot and drive it through another Drapetomane's shoulder, nailing him to the wall, ducking under the arrival of the shotgun and using his tail to drag it wide into another of the slave-taker's goons just as the hammers fell and disgorged two barrels of 4-gauge buckshot. Not only was the goon who was about to shoot Loona cut in half, the wall was blown down causing the neighbors to shriek and duck out of the way as viscera redecorated their apartment. Blitz and Tubbie, though, hadn't been the only people who Loona had established a link with.

Through her connection to Tiffany, she could see the massive Half Blood tear her own chosen victim in half, throwing each half at two of the people who were about to shoot at her. Another, who had been missed, got off exactly one shot of his burst – which unfortunately did hit Tiff – before a set of thick, dark arms erupted through the wall at either side of his head. Tex's mighty mitts didn't need to quest for a chin and shoulder; despite lacking conventional line-of-sight, he was able to effortlessly grab the Dream Eater, and then with a sickening crunch wring his neck into paste.

Maelstrom showed more restraint than most, instead of decapitating his victim through sheer force, he simply torqued tighter and denied Fellweather the luxury of new blood to his brain. Loona fired again, breaking the arm of a chick about to gun down Moxxie while the little lard-ass made a weird motion with his arms. A weird blue light surrounded Moxxie for a moment, then there was a new snap sound. Instantly, all of the gunmetal black of the armor, uniform, and even the weapon of that disarmed Fury, were bleached deathly pale, and her eyes instantly went blood-shot, before she collapsed to the floor and started to cough violently, disgorging cups worth of her own blood as she did so.

Dad, meanwhile, scaled the mountain that was Arno Fergus. The hulking Consumer tried to grab him as he raced up the north face of the giant, and got a knife stabbed through his forearm for his trouble. His second attempt, to sweep Blitz off with his shotgun-hand, only served to deposit Blitz on an arm and bear him upward toward what was his real goal. The instant he was more or less at eye level. Blitz pulled his wing-knife from his coat, and launched himself at full force at Fergus' head. The sheer force of a furious father flinging himself flagrantly at a fucker's face fulcrumed him forward to the floor; the wing-knife had already outright cut-out one of his eyeballs by the time the two of them landed with a slam.

Fergus screamed and swept hard, managing only to reposition Blitz in front of his remaining eye. "Wait! It's just business! I'm just here for the dog!"

"Shouldn't'a made it personal then, you dumb fuck!" Blitz said, and then jammed his wing-knife into the brute's skull, the first few strikes stunning but not breaching the skull, but soon the frenzy of Blitz's protective streak overcame the limitations of impish physiology and the thickness of a Taurian Consumer's skull; he didn't stop until brains were laying on the hallway carpet.

Then, there was silence.

"You okay, sweetie?" Blitz wheezed with effort, standing up from the guy he'd just murdered the ever-loving shit out of.

"Better now," Loona admitted.

"That's great. You havin' fun with all your friends?" Blitz asked, even as he leaned down to saw the head off of the big bull's body.

"Holy shit, Tex! Why didn't you tell me being shot hurts this much?" Tiff said, where she was sitting against a wall clutching her thigh where the bullet had hit her.

"I thought it was obvious," Tex said. "And haven't you been stabbed? A lot?"

"Being shot is worse, obviously!" Tiff said.

"We're having a great time," Loona said flatly.

"Are... are they dead?" Cookie asked, leaning around the door to look into the hall. And what she beheld was indeed a massacre. Of the twenty Drapetomane agents and the Rundowner directing them that'd come to ruin their party, fifteen and the Rundowner were messily dead. Three, who had been guarding the exit until the gunfire started, were now cocooned in horrifying bindings that seemed to heed Moxxie's hand's every movement. That left the one that Maelstrom had choked out, who was still living but now thoroughly unconscious, and the one that Blitz had nailed to the wall. And one, maybe, who was vomiting blood onto the floor with skin that started to sag like sun-melted candy.

"Yup. All's well," Loona said.

Blitz, though, dragged that head up and held it beside his own, flipping his Hellphone around and taking about the least gleeful selfie with the head that Loona had ever seen him partake in. Then he pointed at the nailed guy. "What's your phone-number, fuck-head?"

"What?" the guy asked, just standing there as it had become obvious he couldn't pull the knife out of himself with the leverage he had.

Blitz answered him by dropping the head and pulling his Luger out again, pointing it at the fiend who was in no position to defend himself at any degree. "Tell me your phone number, or I shoot you and wait for that guy," he nodded toward Maelstrom's victim. The fiend didn't need any more convincing. As soon as he spilled them, Blitz... emailed that selfie to him. Then he stared him in the eye. "Now you're gonna go back to that fuck-face's boss, and you're gonna tell them that if you ever, ever send anybody after my daughter," a finger thrust at Loona, "again, that is going to happen to them, their families, and everybody they love. I will burn your company to the FUCKING GROUND! THEN PISS ON IT!"

Blitz finished by yanking hard on the knife and un-nailing the man, but left the knife penetrating through his shoulder. "You're gonna want to leave that in there so you don't bleed to death," Moxxie said with a rather smug grin. The stabbed soldier gave a mildly terrified look, then limped to Maelstrom's victim to shoulder and drag him one-armed out of the hallway. Moxxie then released the three he'd snagged, and gestured to the Fury who stopped vomiting blood and now was... looking like she was melting into the floor "And I'm pretty sure you should clean that up before she dissolves."

"What the fuck did you do to her?" the only imp of that captured trio asked.

"Killed her," Moxxie answered.

"How?"

"Painfully," Moxxie said, and turned back to Blitz. "Sir, I think if we go back to the job, we can still finish it. We hadn't set off any alarms, after all."

"First good news I've heard all day," Blitz said. Then he took a few steps toward Loona and pulled her into a fast but very tight embrace. Time was she would have punted him in the nuts for a gesture like that, especially one in front of her friends. But this time – just this time – she allowed it. She did roll her eyes for all she was worth, though. "If you have any other problems with these dick-wipes you let me know and I'll come and kill them, alright? Alright. Back to fuckin' work we go!"

Blitz pulled out his book and quickly flicked a portal back to the Human World, looking vaguely like where they'd returned to Hell from. Moxxie didn't say anything, following after just before the portal closed.

"So... are we alright?" Tex asked from where he was binding the wound on his girlfriend's leg.

"Yup," Loona said, framing the Pulser across her shoulders and sauntering back into her apartment. Cookie was near the middle of the room, half-way between the door and the window. "See? No problem. You're safe with us."

"They'll send more. I'm worth 52,000 Souls," Cookie said.

"Wait, that's all?" Loona asked. "Fuck me, I could buy and manumit you out of petty cash."

"What?" Cookie asked.

"Simply," Maelstrom said, backing into the apartment, his attention on her shattered doorframe, "Loona doesn't care about what is 'sane and proper' in Hell, from a logical perspective," he said. "I'm going to put a curtain there at least."

Loona nodded. But before she could add to his point, Cookie clenched her fists and shouted. "What the Hell is going on?"

"Not only are you free, you were free the moment you reached my warehouse," Loona said. Cookie started to gesture toward the one corpse that was visible through the doorframe, but Loona laughed and shook her head. "You're worrying over nothing. You know that imp you saw hugging me?"

"What about him?"

"One, that's my dad," she said. Cookie tilted her head, not seeming to understand what she implied by that. Lots of Hellhounds were bought. Few were actually adopted. "Two, he's the Proxy of Lucifer. If Drapetomane, or any of their shitty, cut-rate pretenders show up, he is in the right. Not them. And my dad does love killing idiots."

"Is... is this actually happening?" Cookie asked, dropping to a bewildered squat on in the middle of Loona's apartment.

"You're using the wrong tense," Maelstrom said as he took one of her spare towels and a bunch of nails, heading back for the door. "It's actually happened."

He didn't even use a hammer, driving the nails to hold the towel up with a press of his thumb. Fuck Maelstrom was stronger than she gave him credit. She turned to Cookie and held out the hand she wasn't using to hold her firearm. "Welcome to the Free Hounds of Dennys."

---

The newspaper hit the desk in front of Desjardins with a plap, causing him to look up from the report he'd been piecing his way through. Ordinarily, he would ask what new piece of drama his superiors had put into his lap, but in the last couple of months, he swiftly found himself in a position where there was nobody in his department who could claim such a title. An entirely new bureau was being formed just for the things Rene now had to do on a daily basis. But that bureau had its own overseers, and one of them had come to give him a call.

"What is this?" Rene asked, managing not to mangle the German he was speaking.

"What does it look like?" Hans Draml said, pointing at a photograph of an imp gesticulating wildly while holding a bottle of liquor in one hand and lambasting a priest in front of a congregation.

"It looks like somebody has been slipping their security detail," Rene said neutrally.

"These are literal hellspawn, Desjardins! We cannot afford to have them 'slipping their security detail'!" Draml pounded his fist on Desjardins' desk, causing the newspaper to jump.

"And when this 'hellspawn'," Rene used finger quotes with his free hand, "broke containment, the sum of his devastation upon our meek and vulnerable world... was that he got drunk and started an argument with a priest during mass."

"That is eighty nine people we have to find some way to silence!" Draml shouted.

"I'm sorry, were you somehow under the impression that the factual existence of Hell, its creatures, and the existence of magic was something that the European Union was going to be able to cover up?" Rene asked, leaning forward with a shake of his head. "The genie is out of his bottle. No putting it back in. Sooner or later they're going to do something that doesn't warrant fifth page of the... Allemeine Zeitung, and they're going to have their faces in front of someone who matters, like Reuters, the Associated Press, or WolfWire."

"So you're saying you're going to do nothing?" Draml demanded.

"Monsieur Draml, please look at this," Rene took a moment to image search something that he'd referenced to numerous other people before in the past. It was a still of that inane show Sweetie I'm In The House, showing what was clearly an imp in a paper-thin disguise hamming it up for the cameras. "While we are fortunately not quite as blind or stupid as the Americans, people are gullible. If you offer them an NDA on behalf of a gag-show or a social media jokester, this thing will vanish without a ripple, and people will be even more incredulous about the next time a drunken imp shows up. Calm yourself, Hans. We have protocols to handle this."

"How can you be so fucking calm about these demons?" Hans said as he dropped his bulky frame into the chair opposite Rene's desk. "Are you sure they're not bewitching you somehow? Because that's starting to seem like something they can do."

"Hans, Hans, Hans," Rene shook his head. "Our job is not to keep Earth blind to the presence of Hell. Hell has made it very clear it exists, and few people seem to care. No, our job is to prevent a wide-scale attack from Hell and keep Earth safe and secure. That messiness in Varia is just an object example," Rene said. That Greek mess was going to haunt him for the rest of his days. "If playing nice with a few abandoned soldiers earns us peace? It's a price easily paid."

Draml sighed and rubbed at his walrus-moustache. "Do you think they're being honest? About that war against Heaven, I mean?" Hans asked.

"I don't know, but I don't need to care. If there is war, then Earth is neutral. If there is no war, then Earth is, and I repeat, neutral. That's why you've installed me in this office, Hans. Trust that I will keep Earth out of the fire. The shitshow we have in Greece is bad enough without having to add another war on top of it."

---

"Wars are messy business at the best of times, and any war that was started as a pique of narcissistic rage is going to be messier even than most. It should be no surprise I hold no appreciation or good regard for Lucifer. He was the worst of Hell made manifest, and then inflated to the point of absurdity. Even when Purgatory was still attached to Hell, Lucifer's paradigm of running a society reduced its effectiveness to practically Soviet levels of incompetence. Heaven still tried, back then, but the Angels cannot do all of the work. I think some of them are still trying to this day. It speaks volumes as to their character, I suppose.

I was referring to the concept of collateral damage. You might be insulated from the worst of Hell's usual tide, but the war represented something of a storm surge; even those ordinarily immune to the worst that Lucifer put in motion now found themselves with flooded basements and ruined foundations, metaphorically speaking. It wasn't always the case, though. During the Third Regency period of Hell, when it was run by the Paradox Kings, the mighty suffered with the meager. Does it come as any surprise that the overwhelming majority of Penitent arrived in Heaven in the eons before Lucifer got his army thrown here in defeat? Economic flatness inspires solidarity, discourages crab-bucket thinking, and allows for those who can grow, to grow.

Your point has little merit, Killjoy. Trickle-down has been proven explicitly and exhaustively false as an economic theorem. Consider how much money only left Lucifer's direct grasp when people took it from his cold, dead hands. In the elite-class, the velocity of money comes to a dead halt, as people like you or your former masters clutch to it as though it would stop the guillotine blade that descends toward their necks.

...

And yet in the Post War Era, socialism is winning. Isn't that curious?"

-Rachel Scailes, First of the Betrayed