The sheer little-bitch energy of Uller's spite kept him awake, staring at the ceiling of the RV above Krieg's bed. Again and again, Uller arduously reminded himself that he had a good life now, and that to do something rash would fuck it all up and send his world crumbling down, and it would be on nobody's head but his own. Uller wasn't stupid. In fact, he was one of the smarter imps around, having found ways to alchemically accelerate his own mind, even if only to a fraction of the utterly impossible intellect of Moxxie Rough. He was sensible. He was rational. In those two things, he stood head and shoulders above a lot of other imps, those whose lives were dictated by the cruel vagueries of fate and their own heedless passions.

All the sense and rationality in the world couldn't save him from his own heart, though.

He felt an impostor, laying here with Krieg cuddled up next to him. She was well and truly asleep, a state which Uller envied. Perhaps she hadn't intended it when she stole her way out of Clan Cruac those years ago, but she was now everything that an imp could hope to strive toward. Powerful, audacious, backing up arrogance with oceans of competence. And then there was Uller. Unsure. Unable. Forever a hanger-on.

He pulled himself away from his girlfriend and mentor, sliding out of the blankets and into some clothing. It was clear that he wasn't going to be sleeping tonight. There were some nights that a romp in the bed sized for humans and thus well large for imps was more than enough to konk him and bypass this grim twilight in his soul. Being too tired to fret pushed him into dreams instead. And those dreams were either nightmares of captivity and torment at the hands of shriek-laughing Nuckelavees, or other manifestations of his seemingly perpetual generator of little-bitch energy.

Honestly, fuck you, Blitz, for introducing him to that term (But not really, because the guy'd been through some rough shit, even losing a damned leg). Uller was quite content having no name for the formless ennui that swarmed over him at night. Little bitch energy. A name for ennui.

He deactivated the alarms and slipped out into the night, the sweat pulling from his skin even though the night was victorious over the day, as this heat-wave was not going to be stopping any time soon. Come to think of it, there'd been a big heat-wave last year, too. Maybe Lucifer's casual cruelty was gleaning some form of amusement from watching people sweat who weren't him. Whatever the reason, the weather of Pride Ring was swampy and heavy.

Uller walked, away from the RV and away from the building where he worked, just navigating out into the random warrens of Imp City, those hovels and slums which jumped up with shocking speed before the architects and land-developers could arrive on any given plot of land. They usually had to hire Realty Agents, which was a polite way of saying 'headcrackers with big pistols' to clear out squatters, sometimes several times in a row before any construction could begin.

In this neighborhood, there was exactly one empty lot, and true to form, there was a well-stacked impish slum already there in it, pinioning against the buildings which flanked it and stacking until it was two stories taller than either building, precarious the whole way up. Likely a stern shove by Moxxie's wife could send that entire thing crashing down.

Frankly, if Uller could have ripped out his own heart, to stop feeling the way he did about his tutelage under and romance with Krieg Miller, he would have, no matter the pain of it. He had to stop this, or it would kill him. Either physically, or spiritually.

So he looked at his options.

Break off from Krieg and try to make a go on his own.

He rejected that for a plethora of reasons, least of all that it was clear even to himself that he was in love with Krieg.

Stay with Krieg and just swallow his own emotions.

Sadly, that remained his best option, despite how poisonous it was.

So he kept walking, looking for another path.

And he kept walking for a while.

Imp City was a different beast than it had been when he first arrived here back in 2022, like a diseased man slowly starting to heal now that his festering organs had been lanced, drained, or transplanted with new and vital flesh. Centuries of urban blight and decay, undone by an act of wanton violence by people who abjectly hated the Hellspawn, opening the path for a renewal that Imp City would never have seen otherwise. For he, who lacked the context of an Imp City that was only and perpetually swirling the drain, it was a heartening change, one that didn't lay outside of his paradigm because he hadn't had enough time for that paradigm to be crammed into his thinking.

Maybe that was why he was having such trouble with his heart and his brain, he pondered as the streets passed by. A few times somebody tried to waylay him, either trying to sell him drugs or soliciting by a prostitute, or else to simply mug him. And almost on autopilot, he navigated those problems through passing words and the timely application of three rounds of .2666 Magnum. He wasn't even sure where he was going.

Perhaps Uller was just walking and letting fate guide his feet. Destiny may be toothless against the imp, but experience had shown that fate was a different beast entirely.

He walked, and he could hear gunfire ahead of him. He didn't change his pace, or alter from his path. He could with a press of his power protect himself from paltry lead and the tyranny of velocity. And tonight, he needed something other than his own little-bitch thinking to distract him.

So at a casual amble, Uller followed the sounds of combat through the night, past the shockingly free-of-homeless alleyways and the dumpsters more full of garbage than vagrants, past the parking lots mostly filled with workers sleeping in their own rides so they could avoid a long commute to work, likely finishing the buildings nearby which still had their upper stories a crown of steel spikes and spires naked to the sky. He continued past a pair of Sinners, man and woman, who were overdosed to the point of death on the sidewalk. They'd get up eventually. But for the moment, Uller just walked over them, outright stepping on the man's face to do it. His pride might be somewhat poisoned by his thinking, but even he knew that he was above a lowly Sinner, now.

An imp, believing himself better than a human and being able to back it up? Well, if that wasn't a change to the status quo…

The gunfire was petering out by the time he approached it, and he started to hear engines roaring to life, and the peeling of rubber. He rounded a corner, only to have to immediately step back as a car which was driving on the sidewalk ground along the side of the building and almost pancaked him. He didn't offer any rebuke other than a baleful glare at the car, which made it only one intersection further, before plowing into the corner of a building. The driver, not buckled in, ended up spread like jam across two perpendicular walls. He'd take a while to Regenerate from that one.

Uller looked around the corner, and saw other cars roaring away, though these ones managed to stay on the road itself, racing into the distance. The rig at the back was belching black smoke and one of its back tires, which had been blown out by something, was outright on fire. That's why you don't use magnesium for tire-rims, you damned fool, Uller thought.

He shook his head, and then started toward the direction that the cars had fled from. And there, only a couple of blocks away, he saw a line of factories. One of them, he knew from personal history, was Imp City's incognito Temple of Satan. And directly next to it was another building which looked equally dilapidated, as though they had avoided the renewing touch of the modern age. Arrayed in front of that second factory were two other cars, both of them so shot up that it was clear they'd never drive again. And littered around those cars were a bunch of bodies.

With curiousity piqued, Uller approached closer. Well, there was one Sinner, who was crawling down a storm-drain and away from the carnage. The rest of them seemed to be fiends, most of which were Consumers. He started to get closer to actually see who they might be.

"Stay right where you are!" A call came out and a spot-light swiveled from the front of the factory to blind him with light. Uller stopped his advance, but didn't raise his hands. "You'd best find some other place to wander, imp."

"Hold on, I think I recognize that guy," another voice came from that place, behind the glare. "Maelstrom? Maelstrom!"

"What?" a third voice piped up.

"Get over here. Do you recognize this guy?"

There was a pause, then the lamp was tilted down, so that it painted a long cone of light, into which Loona's coworker appeared, back-lit and holding a rifle in one hand.

"Uller? What are you doing here?" the former slave-soldier asked. He turned to the others near him. "He's alright. Let him up."

"If you say so, Maelstrom," the first voice noted. Uller continued walking.

"It's a weird hour in the morning to see you out here," Uller said, trying to focus on something other than his internal pettiness for at least a little while.

Maelstrom stepped out, glancing up and down the street and then shrugged to the imp approaching him. "Not as weird when people keep trying to firebomb our factory," the Hellhound said.

"Why?"

"Why else? Hellhounds getting uppity," Maelstrom said flatly. "Now get inside before somebody shoots you."

Chapter 46

The Audacity

Passing through the rusted, heavy doors of the crumbling manufactorum gave much the same feeling as Uller got when he visited the Temple of Satan which, oddly enough, was right next door, several years ago. Despite not being of their faith, they saw fit to tend his gaping infected head-wound and keep him from dying long enough to get back on his feet, before his humiliating introduction to Tilla Miller's children's manhandling. And the transition from the outside of the building, which was all urban decay and the sensation of wasted potential, to the inside, which was vital in a way that seemed impossible from without, it called forth memories.

He'd thought it strange that the Satanists would care for an imp they didn't know, see him healthy and then send him on his quest to find The Wayward Cruac. Even with what he had learned since of their creed and tenets, it still baffled him that such an organization could have been born in Hell. Altruism was not something which came naturally to the hellborn, after all.

Within the factory, just as within the temple, was alive where its outside was dead. It was like watching a city be built inside the corpse of a dead Leviathan. And that was something he had some experience with. Lonely Bones was exactly that; a nation built inside of a carcass, down in Envy. Apparently there was a reason why few of those ancient Leviathans opted for such titanic size. It made it surprisingly easy to kill them, and surprisingly hard for them to defend themselves.

He was, of course, the only imp, and the Hellhounds within first gave snarls and growls at his entry, but a glare from Maelstrom silenced them, especially when Maelstrom took up at Uller's side. Some of them, though, leaned back as though in shock, and began to whisper to the others. The growls ended then, and those who had been so defensive took on shame-faced looks. The machinery here was all fairly basic, all looking cheap, and no less than half a century out of date to the current standard. And a lot of them had bullet-scars in them, as though they'd been used for cover.

Considering a broad metal fab was forming something of a barricade from the entry doors to the places further back in the factory, maybe that was more true than Uller knew.

"Mal, how in the hell the Hell–" a brown Hound that looked a lot like Maelstrom asked, pointing at Uller with an arm which was clearly an augmetic.

"You know what he is. I know Liss took a bullet, let's not waste any more time," Maelstrom said, staring that similar dog down.

"F….fine," he muttered, and began toward the back, away from the line of hellhounds with rifles. Now that Uller was on the other side of them, he could see that they were very much dug in for a siege. There were scrape-marks on the floor, indicating machines which had been shoved into this position repeatedly, no doubt they having realized that the heavy fabricators served as good bullet-shields from encroaching nasties. How long have they been doing this, Uller pondered? Long enough to establish some best-practices, obviously.

There was red blood, droplets first, before they became a splat, then a streak, leading toward a small room on the wall shared with the Church next door, and into a small office that had all of its paperwork stashed in netting above the desk. Which was likely the best for the paperwork, because there was currently a badly bleeding Hellhound bitch on the table, with one of her bullet-holes cauterized shut using stopper-sticks, but the other still pulsed blood out weakly in accordance to a heartbeat. She would be dead in minutes at this rate.

"I'm not doing this for free, I hope you know," Uller pointed out, as he rolled up his sleeves.

"Hellhounds pay their debts," Maelstrom said. So be it, then. Uller squeezed past the other Hounds trying desperately to keep this woman alive, and simply laid a hand on her, focusing his magic in his blood and feeling his eyes begin to pulse. And with the magic that he had in him, that Hell-replenished wellspring that even when it ran dry was full again in but a few hours, he could feel that this woman's innards were pulped and she likely was entering a state of sepsis. But he didn't need to worry about that. While he did learn about the consequences of wounds, he didn't need to know the treatment of them. Just the nature of them.

So he turned the clock backward. Unchanged what had been changed.

The Hellhound let out a scream, as her internal organs spasmed, then began to pull themselves back together. The bullets that were still inside her were forced up and out of the tracts, coming to rest on her pelt, red, bloody and laced with fur. He could do more, rewind the wound all the way so it couldn't scar, but he knew Hellhounds valued scars, instead of reviling them. He left the wound just a touch open, so that it'd knot and scar visibly, just how their kind wanted it.

With a showman's sweep of his hand, he swiped the bullets off of her abdomen and let them clatter to the floor, the other Hellhounds having taken a step back to watch him. Now freed from agony and approaching death, the bitch lapsed into more sustainable unconsciousness.

"We'll discuss the payment for this later," Uller said. Never do for free what you can get paid for, after all.

"Yeah. We will," the brown dog said, collapsing into the chair beside the now sleeping, no-longer-dying woman.

He stepped out, pausing to wipe some of the blood off his palm onto the pants of a Hound nearby. The Hound didn't complain. Good, Uller wasn't interested in hearing it right now.

"Got a second?" Maelstrom asked, upon saying his words to those within the tiny office. Uller glanced back at him, then shrugged.

"Can't sleep, so I've got hours," Uller said.

Maelstrom gave Uller a flat look, then jerked his head toward the stairs up to the catwalks which seemed to be little used for this factory. None of the machinery reached up this high, nor did any of the stacks of stock. What even was this place?

Up he went, and as he ascended, he could see from above that there were actually two layers of defenses on this factory-floor, if he was reading the scrape-marks correctly. A barricade preventing any use of the back door, and an inset barricade making the front entrance into a kill box. And behind those, there were crates arrayed to form a fall-back near the office, looking nowhere near as robust as the machines.

Maelstrom didn't go far up there, opting to lean forward on the rail, looking over the Hellhounds below him. Uller, lacking anything better to do, sat down and let his legs dangle over the edge.

"Hellhounds don't have the good kind of luck needed for you to be here when I needed you like that," Maelstrom said, his angry voice now departing, leaving him sounding just plain old tired. "So why were you in The Guts at this time of night?"

"Is that what they're calling this part of town now? The Guts?" Uller asked.

"I didn't name it," Maelstrom said, before letting out a groan and sitting down like Uller was, his legs dangling below and his arms holding the guard rail to keep himself upright. "You just saved Liss' life. I'm not going to forget that."

"I'm sure," Uller said. He looked around. "What is this place?"

"Last Chance Armaments and Munitions," he said. He gestured with a foot toward the big machine that the other Hounds were now starting to settle down to guard behind. "We've got an old metal-stamper that we use to make receivers," he then pointed to the machine blocking the rear exit, "a wood-mill to make furniture," then he pointed to the tables in the middle of the room that were all mismatched and oddly sized, "and a spot to put guns together, as fast as we can make 'em."

"So you're making guns… and that's upsetting people?" Uller asked. There was a war going on, and people were bitching about there being more guns? That didn't add up.

"It's not that we're making guns," Maelstrom said. "It's that we're making guns."

Oh. Right. Uller had gotten so used to the idea of solidarity amongst the people in the Miller's inner circle that he just sort of forgot that people tended to view Hellhounds as animals who had the gall to consider themselves people. Even the lowliest imp could, with some financial scrimping, legally own a Hellhound. That put them at the lowest of the low, sharing the dangling, lowest link of the Chain of Being with the imps themselves.

"So who in particular is angry at the idea of an armed Hellhound race?" Uller asked.

"Fuck if I know. They're not locals," Maelstrom said. "I think somebody's hiring them all the way from PC to throw at us."

"That seems like a lot of effort to burn down a decrepit factory," Uller nevertheless said. "The goons are always gonna be goons. But the people payrolling them? I would have thought people would care a lot less about Hellhounds making guns."

"Take a guess where the best guns go," Maelstrom said with a chuckle.

"...Of course," Uller said. By making the guns themselves, they verified that only good product remained in their own hands, while all the rest could be sold off to people who needed any gun that was better than no gun at all. "So who do…"

There was a loud beeping from Maelstrom's hip that cut him off. Maelstrom snatched his Hellphone from his pocket with remarkable speed, speed that only Moxxie and Millie could better, managing to answer the call before its second ring.

"Go back to sleep, Loona, I've got this," Maelstrom said in lieu of a greeting.

"What?" Uller muttered, but didn't press the question. There was a pause as Loona Miller no doubt said something half-awake and less than happy to Maelstrom, who sat there on the catwalks with a distant look in his eyes.

"And despite that, the building's not on fire, and nobody's dead. If you keep trying to beat out every reported fire, you're gonna die of sleep deprivation. Just let me handle this, for tonight at least," Maelstrom said. There was another long pause, throughout which Maelstrom slowly developed something of a wistful smile. And Uller had enough understanding from personal experience of zoning out when somebody else was talking and just being happy to be in the room to know that look even when projected onto the face of a different species. "And yet I can see her right now walking it off. Reggie panics. It's what he does. Go back to sleep. I'll make sure the building is still standing in the morning."

There was another long pause, no doubt as Loona gave more orders, but Maelstrom ended with a chuckle. "Yeah. G'bye," he finally said, and hung up. He stared out into the distance, that longing look on his face. And Uller just watched him with the flattest of expressions, for the entire gulf of time it took for Maelstrom to remember that he wasn't sitting up here alone.

He turned to Uller and let out a start, one fist clenched and ready to punch, as was his instinct when surprised. Uller very purposefully hadn't moved during all that, to ensure that the clenched fist would remain at the Hellhound's side while he leashed his instincts to the call of his reason. "When are you planning on telling her?" Uller asked.

"What?" Maelstrom asked.

"Don't you 'what' at me. I know that look," Uller said. Despite the fact that Maelstrom was years older than him, in his twenties when Uller was still tentatively still in his teens, he felt almost older than the Hellhound. That the mileage of his fewer years had seen him somehow the elder of an older person.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he lied blatantly.

"You're in love with Loona Miller," Uller refused to allow ambiguity to reign. Maelstrom shot a glance first to some of the Hounds below, then a warning glare delivered to the imp beside him.

"You're talking nonsense," he now tried lying to Uller as unsuccessfully as he had in lying to himself.

"Maelstrom, do you know why exactly I was wandering the streets of Imp City at these awkward fucking hours of the morning, away from my incredibly hot girlfriend?" Uller asked.

"Beeee-cause… you're… cheating… on her?" Maelstrom stabbed into the dark and hit absolutely nothing.

"No, you dumb ass," Uller said. "I'm here, in this factory, for reasons much like yours. Because both of us are romantically entangled with obvious legends. And we don't feel that we deserve it."

"...She is a legend," Maelstrom said, his expression growing very sad. While Uller was not an expert at reading the emotions of others, he certainly was better at it than Krieg, who saw the whole skill-set as 'useless in the face of raw thaumaturgical power'. She could afford to hyperspecialize, when her mountaintop was so massively higher than his own zenith of expected potential. And he had to pick up the rest. So he ensured that Krieg didn't get taken by charlatans and hoodwinkers, sharing that responsibility with Tilla.

Krieg was many things, but a good judge of character was not one of them. If she had fewer friends and loved ones, she'd have been taken for a very lethal ride by somebody in her first year up here in Pride, and few would even know to mourn.

"And because of that, you think… why you?" Uller said, nodding, since he understood completely. "You see somebody who has a very real chance at changing the way Hell works, and you can't see yourself as anything but a hanger-on. A parasite, leeching off of something glorious. And it burns you inside."

"...She brought me back from the dead," Maelstrom said.

"And then you brought her back. The debt is paid," Uller reminded him. Maelstrom, though, shook his head, vigorously.

"It'll never be paid. It wasn't the first time. She keeps saving me, and I can barely keep up with her. I'll never be good enough to be at her side."

"Why not?" Uller asked.

"...I just told you," Maelstrom said.

"No, you told me what has happened," Uller said, gesturing behind him metaphorically. "And let me tell you… you're not the pathetic dog that you seem to view yourself as. Maelstrom; you, as your first act of freedom, killed a Remit-augmented Gargoyle, and brutalized the ex-Proxy of Lucifer. You have killed one of the best assassins that don't work for your boss that Hell has to offer. You regularly kill horrifying Creatures From Outside in their own seats of power. That is not the act of a pathetic anything."

"She does more. Every time, she does more," Maelstrom said. He paused, then turned to Uller. "Oh. Oh, I'm not very bright. You're here because… the same applies to you."

Uller nodded, staring at the Hounds who were starting to somewhat relax, retake their places at the barricade, and at least one of them who was completely behind it lay down on a stack of torn-down cardboard and take a nap. "Legend is a curse," he said. "Because it blinds people. I know that, even if Krieg achieves a tenth of what she wants with her life, she will go down in history as one of the most influential people that Hell has ever produced. Not imps, Maelstrom. People. And who am I? Who is this mushroom-farmer's son from the dankest, rankest cave in the back corner of Envy trying to compare himself to the likes of that? It's laughable to the point where people would forget to laugh."

He was quiet for a moment, thinking of those cold, wet, dark halls that made up most of his childhood. How he only saw open sunlight a few times a year until he finally made his gambit to learn Thaumaturgy. The sunshine outside had blinded him in the beginning; he had to go around looking through a blindfold so that the glare didn't cause him migraines. He was just another bottom-of-the-barrel Imp, in a place which created no shortage of the same. There were a thousand of his like born the day before, and another thousand would be born the day after, and he was no different than any of them.

"Legend," he said again, spitting it out, like it was a bitter candy. "If I was a quarter of the legend Krieg was, then I'd be half way to being worthy of being at her side. I want to marry her, you know?"

"Really?" Maelstrom asked.

"A shockingly hot she-imp sorceress with ambitions that are trying their mightiest to eclipse Lucifer's own? How could I not?" Uller admitted. "That she actually wants me around, it sets off this feeling of unreality. How could this black-blooded Goddess want somebody made out of mud?"

Uller leaned back until he was laying on the catwalk behind him.

"Legends do what they want. And people like us? We do what we have to. I want to marry that woman. But I know that in my heart I'd never be happy in that marriage until I… I don't know…"

"Proved you were worthy to be there," Maelstrom said with a nod, turning so that he now sat with his legs tucked under him instead of having them dangle off the edge. The Hound nodded, but it was a furtive and seemingly pained motion, as though he were having to dig through his own mind to admit it, and to put it to movement. "Both of us are where we are, stuck up here at a ridiculous hour of the morning, because we can't see ourselves with the women we love."

"Unless we do something to prove it," Uller said.

Maelstrom tilted his head at the imp. "What do you mean 'prove it'?" the Hound asked.

"Exactly what it sounds like. We do something that only a legend could do. We do something that, by common reckoning is on-the-face-of-it impossible, and insane to even consider. And we survive it," Uller said, sitting up and staring Maelstrom in the eye. "No 'blazes of glory', no leaving behind larger-than-life stories. We come back, and we tell that story our-fucking-selves."

"And how?" Maelstrom asked, suspicion clear. "How would a practically illiterate Hellhound and a cave-born Envy Imp do that?"

"First of all, you're more literate than 60% of Hell at this point, so stop calling yourself illiterate. If you can read the Codex Crauc, you can read goddamned anything," Uller said. "And second of all, I'm starting to think that it doesn't matter where our beginnings are, not as much as where we're going. You might have been any of a million Hounds whelped that day. But you survived the Infernal Legions, you survived the Bleeding Pits, and most shockingly of all you survived Nathan Birch. How many valets did he have before you, anyway?"

"I didn't ask," Maelstrom said, looking suddenly and entirely-reasonably uncomfortable.

"Many. Most not lasting two months before he got them killed, either for his own amusement or because they displeased him. How many years did you survive in that house again?" Uller asked rhetorically. He gave his head a shake. "What you do is more important than who you are, at least to people as low down on the Chain of Being. My great grandfather, as it turns out, is The Bard."

"What?" Maelstrom's gaze narrowed on him.

"I was shocked to hear that my own self," Uller said. "Not that it means much. It just means that I arose from a cohort of about two hundred as opposed to one of a million that Hell spawns each day. Every single thing that I did, every action that I took, every adventure, every lesson I learned? I got exactly none of that from The Bard. He might be a part of my story, but the story is still mine."

Uller turned to Maelstrom with a very clear-headed look.

"And so is yours, for you," he said.

Maelstrom sighed and leaned forward, lowering his face into his hands. "Everything I have now, I owe to her," he said.

"Bullshit. The only reason you think that is because Hell wants you to think that. That we're all tied with chains up and down from those we control to those who control us," Uller said. "Are you, or are you not, a Free Hound?"

"Since when do you go into this rabble-rousing kind of thing?" Maelstrom muttered, staring wanly at Uller with his head tilted and rested on a palm.

"Krieg is terrible at it," Uller said. Flattery was very much her worst enemy, and she needed people to cut through it for her benefit, else it would lead her to her destruction. "Somebody out there has to keep her from getting rolled by sycophants."

"Fine. Fine, I'm a Free Hound, as though that needed repeating," he said. Apparently it did, since it just had. "That still doesn't tell me what I can do.

"I can think of something," Uller realized. He frowned, then looked through his Hellphone's 'client listing', which was copied over from Tilla's at the end of every week. And when he scrolled down to the bottom quarter of it, he found the name that had offered a job and been soundly rejected in a rare show of Krieg-borne prudence.

Arackniss Veloce.

"That… I know that face," Maelstrom said, when Uller quickly image-searched the man. He was apparently something of a mafia boogey-man that had suddenly erupted from the shadows, shedding decades of reputation as a 'pissant' and a 'weakling'. And according to his Sinstagram, he had recently taken over his own crime family.

"...Right, the shootout," Uller said, finally having the penny drop. It was a shame that the gun only had six bullets in it, and there were six mobsters to kill with it. Those bullets were pricey, and tricky to source. Finding such things were one of the few areas imps had an advantage over Hounds.

"What does he want?"

"Well, a couple years back," Uller began, before pausing and realizing it had indeed been two years ago, now, that he'd had that call-to-action which was soundly refused. He gave his head a shake. Maelstrom, who likewise was not in the clearest-headed state didn't call him on it. "...he comes into the office asking for a Thaumaturge to help him invade Heaven."

"Why would he want a Thaumaturge?" he asked. "There's plenty of Presbyter Mages looking for work."

"Couldn't tell you why, only that the did. And Krieg told him fuck no, because she saw going to Heaven as a sure suicide with extra steps," Uller said.

He gave it a moment's thought, and then sighed, and nodded. He was gonna call the number.

"What are…?" Maelstrom asked as Uller gave the call. In the piss-poor hour of the morning, it'd likely go to his voice-mail, but it was now, or perhaps never when his sleep-deprived courage failed him.

Shock of shocks, after two rings, Arackniss picked up.

"Who d' fuck is this and why are you callin' me right now?" the spider mafioso on the other side of the line demanded.

"I'm Uller Cruickshank, representing Blitz-Krieg Magical Solutions. I was calling to know if you still needed the assistance of…"

"Don't call me for that bullshit. Call my brother the fruit," Arackniss said, a patience-starved grumble in his throat. "He's the one spear-headin' that bullshit."

"What's his number?" Uller asked. Arackniss rattled off the twelve digits, and Uller let the man hang up afterwards.

"So he was working for his brother? Wait… Wait! It's Angel Dust who wants to go up?" Maelstrom gestured upward, symbolically indicating Heaven.

"What, d'you know this Mobster's brother as well? Is there anybody in Hell you don't know?" Uller asked.

"Angel Dust was another guest at the Happy Hotel when I was living there. Gay and horny would be the kindest way to describe him. Why would he want to go to Heaven?" Maelstrom asked.

"Well, we're about to find out, now aren't we?"

Maelstrom looked down at the Hounds on the factory floor below him. At the bitch who was now slowly eating a sandwich and not stressing her scabbing-over wounds, at the Hellhound who looked so similar to Maelstrom who was hovering over her. Why… oh; oh right, that must have been Regicide, Maelstrom's brother. Uller thought he'd seen the Hound back at Denny's. Reggie had been one of the luckier ones, who was untouched by flying lead or hurtling glass. Hellhounds staring to push up against the establishments of Hell, and reaping consequences writ in lead.

Uller could see this getting worse as time went on. And time would prove him to be prophetic.

Still, it was an hour to Pentagram City, the hour was small, and Uller wasn't getting any sleep any time soon. So if he could find a moment's peace in hunting down the impossible, it was hours well spent.

While for most people, getting a call at the hour he had would have seen them snorting and blinking their way back into consciousness, the fact was that Angel Dust was a different breed of guy. His typical day began at the ripe and early hour of 1 in the afternoon, and everything else was pushed into the evening as a result. So a call in the wee hours of the morning, while unexpected, was within his tolerances.

'Business' they said. What kind of business did a magical imp and a Hellhound have with him, he thought? Well, considering they were coming through the doors and the guards outside hadn't tackled him, it obviously wasn't an assassination. Although why anybody'd want to assassinate a pornstar was lost on Angel Dust. It wasn't like he was an Incubus. He wasn't intruding on their market.

He entertained briefly that they might be here for the up-top-job, but guessed that his luck wasn't that good. So that left a bunch of mafia shit, which he really had no control over, and hadn't had control over for near half a century. He gave a glance to Truly, who was passed the fuck out on the Recovery Couch, so tired when she lurched in after gunning down some smugglers of nasty shit that she didn't even bother trying for her room. He'd put a blanket over her at least so she'd be comfortable.

As comfortable as she could be in a lobby now as perpetually busy as the Hotel's was.

Fuck, he could remember when the lobby was essentially vacant of everybody, considering that Husk seldom worked for more than five hours a day.

So it was now, that Husk wasn't at the bar. Angel Dust knew it was because he was up with Rachel, likely fucking her, and good on him. Angel Dust's only regret was that he didn't get a chance to snap off a piece of that tom-cat before somebody grabbed him, but he wasn't gonna fixate on that. As it was, he still had free reign to rampage through some of the hotter warriors in Charlie's Legion of the Damned, a surprising number of them were bent in the ways that he liked.

He would'a gone after Cain, too. But even now, it felt gross. Goin' after a grieving man like that.

The first through the doors was the Hellhound, and instantly, Angel Dust's grim expression fled before a grin. "HEEE~Y MAELSTROM BABY!" he said, standing behind the bar with his arms spread wide in exuberance. Maelstrom gave a mildly embarrassed chuckle, and in the distance the imp muttered something at him that Angel Dust couldn't hear.

"I lived here for a while, remember?" was Maelstrom's barely audible answer, so Angel could guess what the question was. The other, the imp, was a new face to Angel Dust. Little dude had wings, which not all imps did, and his pale hair was cut very short, so that it was little more than stubble, while his horns curled rather lazily, which if nothing else might serve to protect his head if he fell off a ladder or something.

"What 'chu doin' back here at the crow-piss hours a' the morning?" Angel Dust asked, opting for bourbon instead of beer. Fall was starting to kick out Summer, so drinkers wanted something with a bit of heat to it.

"What else? Talking business," Maelstrom asked. He motioned for the imp to continue. Well, so that was how it was, then? Damned shame. If somebody else was holding the leash on Maelstrom then it'd be a lot harder for Angel Dust to get a piece of him. Hellhounds were fun to get fucked by.

"What kinda business is that?" Angel asked, offering vodka to the imp, as imps just seemed to gravitate toward vodka. The imp took the cup and slid it away from him, a very serious look on his face. Oh, so it was that kind of business, then.

"What's the status on that mission of yours that I keep hearing about?" the imp asked.

"Why do you care? And for that matter who the fuck are you?" Angel Dust asked, suspicion digging in. Striker had been right as hell, sitting on that rock. Angel Dust's instincts were kinda fucky, and gave him bad decisions to choose from. So he had to act against his instincts, often enough. Maybe, in time, that would become an instinct all its own. So when a rando came in and started asking about a secret rescue mission… well, what is a fella to think?

"Uller Cruikshank, with Blitz-Krieg Magical Solutions," the imp introduced himself, not offering a hand to shake. Angel's eyes narrowed at him.

"Wait a minute, you guys told my bro 'fuck no' when he tried to hire 'em last time," he pointed out.

"Partially correct," Uller admitted. "Krieg told you 'fuck no'. And as we can tell by my lack of breasts, I'm not Krieg."

"So why are you going behind yer boss's back to approach me on this?" Angel Dust asked the question that seemed an obvious one to ask.

"That's my business," he said.

"How fuckin' much are you tryin' to bilk outta me, then?" Angel Dust then asked the next most pressing question.

"Less than you'd think," Uller said. He reached into a pocket, and pulled from his fancy looking vest what looked like a restaurant menu. "Most of the prices listed here are for Krieg's direct intervention. And I'm not Krieg; I can't demand those prices. So instead I'll say this; my rate is negotiable."

"Negotiable," Angel Dust repeated.

"Yes. So let's negotiate," Uller said.

Angel Dust turned to the Hellhound who he'd known only briefly a few years back. "And what about you? What's your part in this? You here to gouge me, too?"

"I'm going to Heaven, and you can keep your money," Maelstrom said, eyes becoming distant and glassy for a moment. "I'm doing this for the sake of my honor."

"Honor? Fuck me you must'a had a weird one out there last couple of years if you're talkin' about honor and shit."

"You would scarcely believe," Maelstrom said.

"What do you bring to the table?" Angel Dust asked him, and that question seemed to shock the Hellhound, as though he managed to find a query to which the poor bastard had never considered an answer.

"He's monstrously strong, very fast, and is a terrifying killer of things that otherwise cannot die," Uller offered. He gave the Hellhound an elbow, getting Maelstrom to start reacting to the now and shake off that blue-screen he'd crashed to. "He probably knows more about Things Outside than most killers alive, and a lot of it's practical experience."

"Oh right! I keep forgettin' to look at you that you fought in them Bleeding Pits," Angel Dust admitted. It was easy to forget; for all Maelstrom was clearly covered in muscle, it was all subtle and could be hidden under clothing like what he was wearing. He wasn't muscular for the sake of aesthetic and bulk. He was muscular because those muscles killed things.

And with Arackniss now stuck babysitting the Veloce Crime Family for the indefinite and unforseeable future, Angel Dust would need a heavy-hitter to replace him.

"Fine. You're in," Angel Dust said. Maelstrom gave a nod, and Angel Dust turned back to the imp. "So what exactly are we talkin' here? Money for days of service?"

"There's no reasonable rate that I could offer that you'd be able to afford. Because, as it appears you've failed to take into account, Heaven is rather large. And traversing it on foot? That's going to take a very, very long time."

"So… what are we negotiating?" Angel Dust asked, his suspicion mounting once more.

"Do you have somebody with a head for business?" the imp asked.

"The fuck?"

"It's gonna get complicated," the imp pointed out. So Angel Dust grumbled to himself, then went to the intercomm, pressing the buttons that led to the Korean's room.

"Hey, hotcakes, you up?"

"If there's one perk of being dead and not damned, it's that sleep is a luxury rather than a requirement," Jun-Ho immediately answered.

"Well fuck me, wish I was one'a yous, then," Angel Dust thought aloud. "Could you come down? I think we've got a maybe-wizard joinin' us."

"What stripe of 'maybe-wizard'?" Jun-Ho's voice was somewhat lazy.

"The impish kind," Angel Dust said. There was a pause. "You still listening?"

"A Thaumaturge. That fills a gap we desperately need plugged. I'll rouse Cain."

"Would 'ya?" Angel Dust asked, and released the buttons. He turned to the hellborn who were near him and gestured for them to drink the drinks he'd offered them. Maelstrom took a sip, but no more than that. The imp remained dry. It was only about two minutes before there was a light popping sound, and two men appeared in the lobby, one in some sort of body-hugging suit with fine pipes and shit all over it, and the other in a bath-robe. Maelstrom turned a concerned look to Cain. Obviously he wasn't enjoying that Cain was one mis-step and a mistimed flop to reveal a desirable bit of himself to the eyes of Hell.

"A Thaumaturge and… and a Hellhound," Jun-Ho said, pausing to fiddle with the fit of his attire which called to mind a diving-suit, but with more weird stuff on it. He stared at Maelstrom for a bit, but then shrugged and turned to the Damned beside him. "What do you make of this, Cain?"

"Not just 'a Hellhound," Cain said, stifling a yawn, before reaching past the imp and draining the shot of vodka that the imp was ignoring. It seemed to belt him back to awakedness. "That, my young friend, is the New Champion of the Pits."

"Really?" Jun-Ho asked. "I didn't recognize him with clothes on."

"Now now, don't be speciesist," Cain joked. "So why have I been roused from my slumber, Angel Dust? Recruitment?"

"Hiring for a job," Uller said.

"A mercenary then, instead of a crusader," Jun-Ho gave a nod.

"I'll be frank with you. None of us knows exactly how long it's going to take to reach your objective. Which is what, remind me?" the imp asked.

"My sistah, who's locked up in Cloud Three," Angel Dust said.

"Three Clouds of transit, that's going to add a lot of deployment time," the imp muttered, rubbing at his face which was beginning to show pale stubble along his jaw. He looked up to Cain for a moment. "You know Thaumaturgy; this much is known about you from legend alone. So why do you call my skill-set 'a gap needing filling'?"

"I have never been to Heaven. And when I go to Heaven, there is no guarantee how long I will be part of Angel Dust's party," Cain said, which earned a 'what the fuck' from Angel Dust who was just now learning this. "Oh, I apologize, I thought I had discussed this with you. Just as you have your sister to find, so too do I have my own family to return to. And when I learn of their location, my aid to you will abruptly end."

"So you're warning me now that yer gonna bitch out at the most inconvenient moment?" Angel Dust asked, his anger starting to well.

"No. I'm warning you that our paths will split at some point, and that you not be taken off-balance by that. Just as Jun-Ho will not be able to aid you in your return once you have your dear sister."

"First I'm hearin' of this shit, too!" Angel Dust turned his glare to the Korean.

"You know that my service is predicated on my desire to reach the highest possible cloud, so that I may… recover some favors, which are centuries-owed to me," Jun-Ho said evenly. "I will be with you the entire way up. That will be the harder part, as getting down is much more elementary; get to Cloud Probity, then jump off the edge. Those who are mortal should best bring a parachute when they do," Jun-Ho pointed out, leaning in toward the imp and the Hound.

"Obviously," the imp said flatly.

"So it behooves you," Cain continued, as though not waylaid, "to have a source of the Imp Magic, which is some of the most valuable healing magic not locked in the control of the Angels. The imp can heal many wounds that even angels may not. And I hold no illusions that it will be a bloodless ascent through Heaven."

"What about you? Besides your terrific violence, what do you bring?" Jun-Ho immediately stopped and clapped his brow with a palm. "Forgive me. I'm so used to seeing lupine-Sinners I forgot for a moment you are a Hound. Your nose functions well enough, correct?"

"Not as good as Loona's, but I can smell things," Maelstrom seemed leery about where this questioning was going. Frankly, it confused Angel Dust, so he could see why.

"Then we have our general-tracker in him, even without the added benefit of him being able to rip men in twain," Cain said with a sure nod. He turned to the imp. "So granted that you seem to be dangling us hiring you two before our eyes, I trust we have reached the discussions on price."

"I guess we have," the imp said. "Two of the most dangerous individuals in Hell, to be seconded to an unknown-quantity – no offense intended, but you're not one of the Great Players in Hell right now."

"Oh, fuck off," Angel Dust said with a wave of his hand, and the imp continued.

"...for an indeterminate amount of time, subject to hazards at the highest possible scale and level, and requiring the highest sorceries available with complete irregard to material focus costs. If I were offering this to a Goetia, the price I would be demanding would be seven figures long, and not on the lower side of it, either."

"...I'm sensin' a but, here," Angel Dust said, and somewhat felt off-balance that his brother wasn't around to make a faggot-joke of him 'always sensing butts'. Fuck it was a pain that he had to babysit his fucking mafia right now.

"But I have personal incentive to push the up-front hiring costs to a 'back-end' cost, deliverable upon completion of the job," Uller said. Which was still a lot more money than Angel Dust had. A lot more. He might have a mill floating around. But it was clear that Uller was asking for a lot more.

"I…" Angel Dust began, knowing that it was a pain in the dick that he'd been given a gift-horse and he had to go and fucking look-it-in-the-mouth.

"Charlotte will cover it," Cain said as though dismissing an errant notion.

"She will?" Uller asked, his face tightening.

"She will?" Angel Dust also asked.

"She would, now that I think about it," Maelstrom offered. He turned to Angel Dust. "Have you actually told Charlie about your sister?"

"Why would I do that? It ain't like she's gonna help me go get her," Angel Dust said.

Maelstrom just stared flatly at him. "The most bleeding-heart royal in all of Hell won't leap at the opportunity to see the family of one of her patrons ensconced safely in New Purgatory, having to do nothing for it but cut a check," he said with dripping sarcasm.

Well shit, when you put it that way…

"There's still a down-payment, mostly for consumable purchases," Uller pointed out. "How many mortals are planned to go up, including us?"

"Mortals?" Cain asked. "Just you two, and then Striker, the survivor of the previous attempt."

"That helps," Uller said. "We're going to need to bring several months worth of food, for 3 people, of which two of them are imps and thus have lower caloric needs. That's still looking about several hundred pounds just in food and water."

Cain was nodding. "Because there is not, in the lower Clouds of Heaven, food to be bought for any amount of money, or stolen for any amount of blood. I see you've put thought into this. Good show."

"If you've got to do something stupid, you'd might as well be smart about it," Uller said. "My price will be tallied at the end, but it's got a down-payment of 120,000 Souls, an amount which will be deducted from the back-end. I trust that Striker knows enough to bring his own food?"

"I would check," Jun-Ho pointed out.

"A hundred grand? Shit, I can float that," Angel Dust said. "Yer in."

"Later today, when the sun is up, we'll speak with Striker, as we've agreed," Cain said, driving a pointed look at Angel Dust, who sighed and nodded.

"Yeah, I know. No misfirin' out 'a impatience this time," he said.

"Take heart in the fact that we're probably just shy of a trigger-pull as it is," Jun-Ho said. He paused, then glanced to his wrist, which began to display a little screen. Well that was neat. Wonder what that was about. "In fact, I think I'll go inform him of it right now. We could have a yea or nay sooner rather than later, which works wonders for us."

"Then get to it. And my young friends," Cain said, then turning to all of Angel Dust, Maelstrom and Uller, "prepare well. We are about to do what no sane mind could contend, and by insanity alone may we find success."

Bombproof had many nickers. There was the 'I'm hungry, go kill something for me to eat' nicker, which was throaty and displayed a sort of barrel-chested annoyance, one that the Hell Horse seldom used nowadays. A fully grown specimen, it was fully capable of killing prey on its own, now. It had the 'a bigger predator is nearby' nicker, which in recent years only came from the Hell Horse, high and tentative, when in the presence of some of Striker's clients. Bombproof might have been an animal, and thus not gifted with sapience, but it knew that those things were monsters worth fearing. Another nicker that it gave was loud, shrill, and piercing, a combination of warning and alarm. A nicker of 'you are far too close to me and I want to attack you'.

The shrill call of Striker's horse pulled him out of his light dreaming, sat as he was against a wall of a building abandoned to common use here on the very outskirts of Pentagram City, in that strange grey-area where the skyscrapers ended but people still tried their hand at living near the heart of Lucifer's ambitions. Houses like this, shoddily constructed and only designed to last a few decades, were ten for a penny, and quite a few of them ended their pitiful lives abandoned, no longer livable by those who held themselves to 'civilized standards'. But for those willing to live harder lives, those willing to smell the rank air and face the weather of another approaching winter without heating or air conditioning, willing to let the rain drip on them, there was shelter enough to survive.

There had been a clutch of squatters here who'd had that idea before Striker got here.

Now their corpses were stacked in a corner, their heads cut off and hurled into the sewer so they'd Regenerate somewhere more convenient to Striker, if distinctly less convenient for them.

Striker had his gun in his hand almost instantly, gently tugging back the hammer to the hair point, so that a particularly strong breath would trigger it, and stood with his back to the wall, sidling to the nearest hole through the wall. The building had seen better days, considering that it looked as though somebody shot a cannon through it. A glance revealed Bombproof, who was now snorting and sucking down whole chicken-breasts that were being offered by a Betrayed. Striker's eyes narrowed.

What was Jun-Ho doing here? How had Jun-Ho even found him?

"These bullets won't kill ya, but they'll sting for a bit," Striker announced, not willing to let this trespass on his privacy stand.

"Don't waste lead on my account. I'm here to discuss the mission," Jun-Ho shouted back, and Bombproof offered his contentment nicker at the back of it. Damn you, you treacherous horse, Striker thought. Able to be bought by three chicken's worth of meat. Striker frowned, but decided that his annoyance at being run down like a duck was secondary to his desire to prove himself the deadliest imp in Hell. With a sigh, he eased his hammer back down, holstered his iron, and stepped the long-way round to where there was an actual way outside. He didn't sleep in that spot for no reason, after all. It was hard to reach from outside the house.

Though the sun was out, it was cloudy, and the winds were chill, promising that perhaps another winter like the one at the start of the War was coming in. He stood before Jun-Ho, the Betrayed, the dead spymaster. His confederate in an impossible dream. He flared his hands, allowing his still-extent annoyance an avenue of escape that didn't involve overt violence.

"Alright. I'm out. What's this about? Did you find somebody to add to the group?"

"I bring bad news and good," Jun-Ho said. "Arackniss is out."

Striker leaned aside and spat on the dead turf beside this sad little house. "That's damned inconvenient. Havin' somebody as strong as him last time saved what lives could be saved. I'm guessin' from you delivering the bad first, its that the good is pretty good."

Jun-Ho nodded, then reached inside his business suit and pulled out a pair of file-folders. He took a couple of steps closer to Striker, then halted, making it clear that he had no intention of encroaching on the spot that Striker had holed up in any more than that. It was this kind of professional courtesy that you just didn't see from humans, most of the time. Striker could get damned used to it.

Striker came forward, swiping the folders from Jun-Ho's hand and retreating to a weather stained lawn chair, sitting on its leading edge and then blinking in confusion at the picture.

"How in the sweet fuck did you talk the New King of the Pits into this madness?" Striker asked around a laugh.

"I offered no incentives. He seems entirely pride-driven. Like he's proving something to himself," Jun-Ho said evenly. Striker nodded, and began to leaf through the dossier that the Betrayed had given him. And if a quarter of the shit that the pair of dead humans in that hotel, be they androsphinx or be they Betrayed, had dug up was to be believed, then Maelstrom was flat-out a direct improvement over Arackniss. Just having a Hound for his nose alone would have been acceptable. But no, they had to bring him a Hound with a proven track record of surviving impossible fights and killing the unkillable.

The last picture in the dossier looked like a camera-shot of Maelstrom, looking rather beat-to-shit admittedly, but still sitting on the ground alive next to a butchered Angel. Well, twist Striker's arm, why don't you?

He moved to the next file, and when he saw the picture, he scowled. He knew that face from somewhere. But where?

Oh. Right.

The Witch.

He gave a chuckle and opened it up. A glance could tell him that Jun-Ho hadn't pulled a second miracle out of his ass and landed Krieg Miller onto the squad. That was entirely too much to ask. The picture was of a man-imp, looking unshaven and tired but clearly having some kind of fire in him even still. Uller Cruikshank. The apprentice.

So Jun-Ho couldn't land the master, so instead reeled in the student. While not strictly ideal, it was a damned coup of a get nonetheless. And granted what the file contained, he was far from the lick-boot that most wizards forced their apprentices to be until those apprentices finally got sick of their master's shit, stabbed them in the liver, and stole the master's secrets for themselves. According to the document in front of him. Uller seemed to be being trained to be competent.

Such an alien notion, of somebody actively training a subordinate to be perennially effective, rather than immediately useful. Maybe that was how Krieg managed to kill her however-many-greats grandmother. Because she was capable of basic long-term-planning where most imps – and Hellspawn in general – were not.

"I think," Striker said, carefully, considering the addition of the likes of one of the Journeywoman Witches of Cruac to his endeavor, "that we might have our team."

"Excellent. I had hoped they would meet your expectations," Jun-Ho said.

"Do they have their shit together?" Striker asked of the human.

"They are currently working to corral said shit at this moment," Jun-Ho said. "And if I may offer a recommendation?"

"...fine, out with it," Striker said.

"They are loading we non-mortals up with what amounts to several hundred pounds of staple-foods for the trip," Jun-Ho began.

"Oh, I've got food for years," Striker said, reaching into the magical pocket just above his tail and extracting a can of water and a ration-block. They were grim, grim things to eat, but you would stay alive and healthy forever with what they offered to a body. He had a full year's worth, ensorcelled to be gravity-neutral, hiding in that magical pocket. Like fuck was Striker ever gonna starve to death, be it in Heaven, Hell, or on the fucking Human World for that matter.

The food tasted like eating cardboard, but Striker could stomach it. After all, despite his impish nature, he was built different. More than that, he was built better.

"I'll take a look at 'em, make sure they're not blowin' smoke. But if they ain't… we're pretty much good to go," Striker admitted. All of the holes he wanted closed were getting closed. All of the weaknesses he saw from last time had been shored with strength. Now, just a long walk up the face of a place that wanted him dead just for being an imp.

So no real difference from his usual day-to day. Striker still found himself smiling distantly, even as he dismissed Jun-Ho with a nod and scanned the dossiers again. He was gonna stand on Cloud 4.

Krieg felt oddly cold as she woke up.

She blinked, her eyes sticky with eye-guck that always crusted when she fell asleep. Fie on the impish body to produce such effluent, and deposit it in such a sensitive area! She wiped her eyes, dislodging the 'eye-boogs' and blinked at the light peeking in through the window of her new, mobile home.

Where the hell was Uller?

Well that certainly explained why she was cold. She'd fallen asleep with minimal blankets, as was her custom, because Uller had an added utility along with being a very receptive romantic partner in that he released a veritable furnace's worth of heat. To tuck in next to him was akin to sitting beside a fire, in the best ways. And while it was usual for him to not be here when she woke up, something was off. He'd always dump blankets onto her to keep her toasty while he lurched into the kitchen to awaken her with the smell of expensive, human-native coffee (finally, something from the Human World worth investing in, that 'Robusta' coffee).

Maybe he'd started to be party to the dreaded 'night piss', which Blitz now complained about given his artificial geriatricity, then couldn't get back to sleep. Well, if that were the case, he should have damned well stayed here, and provided much needed body-heat for his paramour. Blast that man for leaving her shivering, here at the day where autumn began to die. She got up, dragging her blankets up around her like a shawl, if nothing else to minimize the chill. She stepped out of the bed-room, and saw immediately their problem.

They'd left the windows open in the main area.

So the frigid airs of night had snuck in and refrigerated her waiting stationary. It still didn't explain why Uller was not in attendance.

She essentially mechanically moved to the coffee maker and, having prepared the grounds last night, activated it. Well, Uller had better show up soon. He was the one who knew how to cook eggs properly. She always got them stuck and burnt, and eggs once scrambled were not meant to become crunchy once more. She wondered why eggs managed to elude her.

While she was distracted with albuminic considerations, she suddenly frowned.

She hadn't left her stationary out last night.

She turned, and looked at the desk, which she had absolutely pushed out of the way last night, in its ready-for-work position. And amongst the stationary left out, there was a sheet of paper, folded in thirds. She blinked at it, and annoyance began to swell in her heart. If somebody had gone and kidnapped Uller right out from under her, she was going to be very cross. Both murderously with whoever did the snatching, and also privately with herself for allowing such a snatching to take place. There'd been enough kidnappings in her life already!

She opened the letter, and found, contrary to her grim expectations, that the hand of the writing was clearly Uller's, because the letters were utilitarian and clear, clean, and even. It wasn't a hasty drawl of a kidnapper. And it certainly wasn't her own hen-scratch calligraphy.

She sat down, as the coffee percolated, and read.

And immediately got annoyed at what she was reading, so went back and read it again.

"You've doubtless noticed that I've been distracted lately. I haven't been doing a very good job at hiding it, and you're a lot smarter than most imps, so this can't be a shock to you, but I've got business that I need to take care of, and it's business I have to handle on my own," Uller's script said.

"Damned prideful fool," she muttered.

"My father and my brothers are subjected to what amounts to slave-labor, day in and day out, for all the years of my life since my birth and doubtless to today. And the longer I spent away from them, the more guilty I became that I could live such a blessed life, with you and your family, while leaving my own to scratch amongst the squalor. So I'm doing something about it," Uller's script continued.

She shivered, then remembered to shut the damned windows. Slowly, the cold became less oppressive, with the heat of a carafe full of coffee radiating into the room no longer being sucked out and trying to heat all of Hell. She was definitely off this morning. Wine was going to be henceforth an 'occasional' treat, and in smaller amounts. She didn't feel 'hung over', as Blitz described it, but her mind certainly wasn't with it.

Krieg had a brief spike of panic, pausing in her reading to cast a spell on herself, quickly checking how many imp souls there were in this RV.

The spell told her the answer was one.

With a puff of relief that she hadn't failed the lottery of birth-control and made a liar of herself in her pledge not to be yet another teenaged parent descended from a lineage of teenaged parents, she put the thought out of her head and returned to the letter. She still had weeks to go before her second decade of life tipped over and the third decade began.

"Looking back, I should have realized that Dad was an Indenture, with the work they had him doing, and the people he had to work for. So that means I can't even start looking for him where I saw him last. He could be literally anywhere in the Ring of Envy. And the only people who will know are those who are holding his contract," Uller said. There was a fat dot at the end of the sentence, no doubt where he'd rested his pen for rather a while, trying to find the right way to put what came next.

"I'm sorry, but this is going to take some time. And that's not fair to you, or to your business, but if I don't do this, I'll never be able to look myself in the mirror again. Bart will surely be able to pick up some of the slack while I'm away. Truly, I am sorry, but I have to do this. I need to get my father out of those bastards' hands. And I have to do it my way."

"Damned fool," she said, without any real heat to it. If she had been in a position similar to Uller, she could see herself doing likewise herself.

"It might be weeks. It might be months. And I had to tell you like this, because if I did it in person, you'd tell me to stay, and I would. I can't. I have to do this. But I swear to you, I will find them. I will save them. And I will come back to you," Uller's letter said, his words beginning to reach the bottom of the page. "I love you. And I will come home to you. Uller Cruikshank."

Kreig just shook her head slowly at this. Of course he did it like this. It could have been a lot worse, as this was about as far from a 'break-up' letter as she could have found. He seemed damned dedicated to stressing that he was coming back.

And he'd actually written down 'I love you'. What a romantic ass.

Well, somebody in this relationship had to be the romantic one, and if he wanted to be the one making loving poems and commissioning heroic artworks of her, then she was not going to stop him. On some level that she barely knew how to enunciate, some level damaged by her time in Cruac but not broken completely, it felt… nice… to have somebody so blatantly, unequivocally and unabashedly desireous of her. Well, she'd just have to ensure she was somebody worth wanting.

The buzzer of the coffee machine went off, and pulled her out of her musing. That was an entire pot of coffee to herself, then. She refolded the letter and tucked it into a drawer in her desk. If he felt a need to be heroic, however inconvenient it was to her, she could abide it.

And to be frank, she was a touch curious about the kind of man who managed to raise Uller to the imp he was today. So she just re-assembled her schedule for the foreseeable future into one where he was 'indisposed' and got on with her day.

She'd be reading the letter again after the last clients were gone, anyway. While he was by far the greater romantic of the two of them, it didn't mean she wasn't one at all.

"Pride is a very dangerous thing for the damned and the living alike. It drives men, or hellspawn as the case may be, to dangerous excess, and into positions untenable by even the slightest glance or moment of forethought. But in the same breath, Pride is the engine which drives innovation and enhancement, both on the societal scale and on the personal. When pride is driving us, it can lead us to our destruction, but it can also lead to our benefit and betterment.

It is a lesson made manifest by Baphomet. Despite being for ten thousand years named Pride Incarnate, Baphomet renounces their throne the very instant that the law allows them to, and vanishes from the power-structure of Hell entirely shortly thereafter. And why? Because Baphomet was not pride-driven? No. Baphomet very much was; it was just that the pride that drove them was not the same kind that props up kings or gathers empires. Baphomet's pride demanded personal perfection, personal betterment, personal enjoyment, and personal supremacy. Endeavors and goals which they found aplenty in Europe as part of that troupe of theirs.

No, I cannot abide their music. It is discordant and unpleasant to my ears.

You seem to be being drawn aside. Baphomet abdicated a throne that nobody knew could be abdicated precisely because of Pride, in its sinful aspect. Baphomet's pride demanded of them that they leave a system which forced them into stagnation when they clearly wished to transform themselves. The Earth was an ideal fit for them, and no better fit than Finland exists on all the Earth for one so strange as they.

Pride comes in different forms. Pride demanded Baphomet abdicate. Pride saw to the death of Lucifer. And Pride, pride in self, in the act of perfecting one's being, saw to the ascension of the one who now sits the throne as Pride Incarnate. I should have expected it of him, in retrospect.

Yes, you're not wrong, Miss Killjoy. Strange to have an embodiment of a virtue as the Queen of all Hell, given our surfeit of sins.

– Cain, Terror Incarnate and First of the Damned.