[34] 0-16
Here was enough lavishness to choke you. Minerals dredged from depths unknown to man, where ceaseless churning processes saw fit to produce deposits of finest gradation and luxury. Why thought God, were he truly omnipotent and not possessed of some unthinking automation, meet to make in such abysses his most beautiful works, where no human would ever find them? In this room, highest in all Pandaemonium, those materials were renewed with the sort of life only an observer allowed; enjoyed by those most deserving of their luster.
The Seven Princes.
This room's shape changed time to time to suit their protean tastes; in this era, it possessed something of the arrangement of a corporate boardroom: a long table with seven seats (three on either side, one at the fore) and sleekness abound. Clear quartz replaced the windows, past which Hell's dominion spanned, all its bounded accumulations.
The doors to the chamber burst open and a voice followed: "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS? WHAT THE GOTTDAM EVER LOVING FUCK? WHY IN THE FUCKING HELL OF SHIT AM I THE LAST FUCKING ONE TO HEAR ABOUT THIS DICKERY?"
Moloch. He wore the finest uniform an officer might wear, impeccably tailored stripes of purest navy and white, and on his breast jangled a hundred medals, and on his head was a fine peaked cap with golden laurels embroidered on the brim. Yet all his face was red and veiny, and his bulging hands as well as he wrenched off his white gloves and slapped them against the table, leaning over it with a ragged breath as he stared down its polished surface to the face smiling at the other end.
That smiling face was reflected innumerable times. Not because of any mirrors; there were no mirrors, none of them were ever forced to see themselves. But because each pillar comprised of God's most hidden minerals was carved into one of his forms, his forms being changed as often as the room was changed, for his conception of himself was ever-malleable despite how much he loved himself, and though he sought always to make himself more beautiful still he could not part with those former forms and thus here they now stood in immortal glory. The other effect was that there were now hundreds of him in this room; and as the centuries passed the other six, whenever occasion brought them to council, felt increasingly outnumbered.
"Whatever isss the matter, Moloch?"
Moloch jabbed a swollen finger on the verge of bursting. "YOU KNOW DAMN WELL. DAMN WELL! MY MEN BAGGED THAT WORTHLESS BAL BERITH BITCH THE MOMENT SHE PINGED OUR RADAR. HOW THE FUCK DID SHE BREAK OUT OF PANDAEMONIUM? HOW THE FUCK DID SHE MAKE IT OUT OF HELL? HOW THE FUCK DID SHE WIPE OUT MY INTERCEPTION TEAM BEFORE THEY EVEN MADE IT EARTHSIDE? HOW THE FUCK IS IT I'M HEARING REPORTS THE SKY OPENED UP AND GOTTDAM FUCKING URIEL IS DESCENDING FROM HEAVEN? HUH???"
Mid-speech, his vocal chords ruptured. Through force of will he sealed them to continue screaming.
Satan's smile remained fixed. "Calm thyssself, Moloch."
"CALM? CALM—CALM?!?!?! THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT MOMENT OF THE PAST 10,000 YEARS AND YOU SAY CALM? IT'S TIME FOR SOME FUCKING NUMBSKULLS TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY IS WHAT I FUCKING THINK. LIKE YOU!" His ever-pointing finger angled to jab at the gigantic beetle seated to Satan's right. "THEY ESCAPED RIGHT UNDER YOUR PROBOSCIS. RIGHT. UNDER. I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE IT. NOT TO MENTION YOU!!" The finger swiveled, jabbed at the only female among them. "YOUR FUCKING SPAWN HELPED THEM DO IT. CAN'T YOU CONTROL ONE MEASLY SHITHEEL DAUGHTER? HUH?!"
Beelzebub and Ashtoreth said nothing. Ashtoreth did not even look at him. The blood was oozing out his skin like sweat, streaming down his tidy uniform and gumming it with dark stains.
"You know... I always said this whole venture was a waste of effort," said Quentin Tarantino, feet kicked up onto the table. "Why bother warring against God...? We'll never win. Face it guys... we have way more to gain if we don't strive for what we can't have..."
It wasn't actually noted American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino. But ever since he got into this new Earthside fad called cinema, Belial had shamelessly, lazily ripped off his favorite directors both in auteur style and personal appearance. Decades before he'd been Steven Spielberg, Billy Wilder, Charlie Chaplin, many others.
"YOU PIECE OF SHIT. YOU SPINELESS SNIVELING WORTHLESS—"
"Just saying..." Belial shrugged. "When Uriel sniffs out what you're all up to down here, they're gonna see there were six votes in favor and only one opposed... Which of us do you think will be spared judgment, hm...?"
Moloch slammed his fist onto the table and his fist exploded, as the table was reinforced against such outbursts. Wielding the spurting stump which no longer had a finger to point, he let his blood spray out like a firehose. "WHY DO WE EVEN KEEP YOU AROUND BELIAL. I'D CALL YOU THE WORST OF US ALL BUT AT LEAST YOU SHOWED UP. WHERE THE FUCK IS RIMMON? TOO FAT TO CRAWL UP THE STAIRS?"
"Rimmon needzz advanzze notizze to appear anywhere. He izz too zzlow otherwizze," said Beelzebub.
"OH SO YOU DECIDE TO SPEAK NOW HUH? HUH? AFTER YOUR CATACLYSMIC BLUNDER LETTING BAL BERITH LOOSE?!?! I'M SHOCKED—SHOCKED!!—SATAN HASN'T HAD YOU DEMOTED ALREADY. IS THIS REALLY YOUR SECOND-IN-COMMAND BIG GUY? MAYBE IT'S TIME WE SWAPPED THE ORDER AROUND. LET THOSE WITH ACTUAL MERITS RISE TO THE TOP. I SEE MAMMON'S MISSING TOO. WHAT THE FUCK'S THAT ABOUT?"
"Ah, good, we've reached the point at lassst," said Satan. "You may end all banal and aimlesss prattle now."
They went quiet instantly, even those who had never spoken, even those who still flapped their lips. The illusion of forum dispersed as Satan rose from his seat, his appearance so simple compared to them, even Quentin Tarantino; but Satan had slaved over his appearance, agonized over it—in private, of course—adjusting every particular detail one after another and back and forth and back again to create a perfectly pretty face, a face so perfectly pretty it belied notability, becoming thus the archetype of prettiness, an ur-prettiness, the prettiness from which all other prettiness was merely a shadow in a cave. Satan, once known by another name, was the light casting that shadow; both progenitor and facsimile at once.
"All goesss according to my plan." His sculpted likenesses crowded about him, in agreement with his every word.
Moloch curled over the table, beating his arms to pulpy mash as he screamed silently in refutation of this point. The words, unspoken, were nonetheless clear: URIEL? URIEL? YOU PLANNED FOR URIEL TO SHOW UP? NOW? WHEN WE'RE THIS CLOSE TO IT—THIS CLOSE TO DIVINITY?!
"We already have enough Humanity to craft Divinity."
NO WE DON'T, NOT UNTIL THIS YEAR'S QUOTA COMES IN AT CHRISTMAS, THAT'S WHEN WE'LL HIT THE NUMBER—
"Who told you we would not have Divinity until the quota? Who sssaid that?" Satan looked from face to face. "I did. I told you. And I lied."
Moloch's mouth ceased moving. His eyes melted out of their sockets. Belial sat up in his seat, Beelzebub fidgeted nervously. Only Ashtoreth continued to stare straight forward.
"Now, my comradesss, you know I loathe to lie. I am pained to ssstoop to low trickery. Yet I had no recourssse." Satan shook his pretty head sadly, slowly waltzing around the corner of the table, extending a hand to stroke the stone face of one of his statues. "I had to lie—due to your cowardly, ssscheming betrayal."
They lurched up. They tried to speak. They said nothing. Satan held a hand for peace, his fingers clenched into a fist. They all, slowly, lowered themselves.
"Mammon wanted too much. Too much. A byproduct of hisss nature... always wanting more. He wanted—my posssition. He wanted to be—King of Hell. If we created Divinity, cobbled it together from all the Humanity we collected, it would give him an opportunity for... usssurpation. Now—did he not contact each of you, each and every one, and try to persssuade you to join him againssst me?"
They rose again, speaking, their glances panicked and hurried, their lips moving nonetheless slowly so that he might read what he could not hear, yet if Satan had any mind for that, he would have left them their voices to begin with. He smiled at them and shook his head.
"Peace, friendsss. I know none of you agreed to his conssspiracy. Had you, you'd now be with him—bound by my power (and my power alone, for sssuch power I have) to a chamber of Pandaemonium, held without hope of essscape, without hope of succor, held until I better decide what to do with one whom I cannot kill—yet."
The boardroom doors burst open and Rimmon was there heaving, his primordial crocodile head dribbling sweat from the superdemonic exertion it must have taken him to waddle his way up so many stairs so quickly, and in an anxious pallor he shoved one arm into his mouth and bit it off to chew and devour. Satan beckoned him to join and take a seat, but instead he flopped to the floor and gnawed the flabs of flesh on his torso. He, too, was silent.
"Now. You may not have agreed to betray me. True—true. Yet I consssider it betrayal that of the five of you, only one sssaw fit to warn me of hisss treachery... Only one. Tsktsktsk."
Their eyes—those that still had eyes—were sunken. Hollow. They were aware of the mercy their lord and benefactor granted them. Unlike the one in Heaven, Satan was a just ruler. He allowed dissention, he allowed even freedom—to a point. He did not judge his subjects for their failings, and granted them permission to delight in whichever vice they preferred. But he refused to let a challenge to his magnificence go unmet.
"Beelzebub. Faithful, loyal Beelzebub—my true sssecond, now and alwaysss." He reached out a hand and his hand despite coming from the other side of the room stroked Beelzebub's claw, with no extension or expansion of Satan's perfect dimensions; he was simply everywhere in that room: Ubiquitous. "Envy makesss you the perfect lieutenant. For Envy requiresss one above it to sssate it. Envy wantsss to want, more than it wantsss what it wantsss. It cannot rebel againssst me by nature—for then it could never truly want again. That, dear Moloch, isss why Beelzebub remainsss above you in the order—and will unto perpetuity."
Moloch had, during this speech, smashed his skull like a pumpkin against the table, and now tottered headless back and forth spewing blood everywhere.
"With help from Beelzebub, I engendered eventsss to bring Uriel to Earth. I made it look like Beelzebub erred... when in truth, all wasss intended. Mammon, bound in twofold rebellion againssst both God and me, panicked upon the unexpected appearance of an archangel—and in that panic I got the better of him. I am, after all, hisss better."
He ceased his carefully-choreographed pacing. Between his statues a hundred, a thousand of him marched, shards of a broken mirror reflecting the same vision: All cohered in a snap and there was once more solely Satan, the one above them all, posed at the head of his table motionless like a statue himself. Beelzebub glanced awkwardly at the others and then clapped his claws together emphatically; the sound was allowed. After a pause, Ashtoreth clapped. Rimmon on the ground clapped. Belial clapped—slowly. Moloch beat what remained of his wrists together in a series of wet squishes.
"Now, gentlemen," Satan said, "turn away from petty, pointlesss ssstrife. Lift thyssselvesss in Pride to gaze upward, the direction until now denied. It isss time. Let usss create... Divinity."
—
In Whitecrosse, around the Door, there was a cemetery of kings. Perfidia Bal Berith did not design this cemetery. It did not exist when John Coke first went to Whitecrosse. The denizens made it afterward, in honor of him, and it became tradition for them to erect a mausoleum for each ruler afterward. There were now many mausoleums in lines on either side of the narrow road that crossed between them.
Had those mausoleums not been there, nothing but flat terrain would've stopped a vehicle—say, a bright orange jeep—from barreling straight into the Door at full speed. But they were there, and even the most reckless driver could not squeeze through so narrow a space without slowing.
Thus, when the jeep shot out of the Door, it didn't hit Perfidia with as much force as it might have. Sure, her body went ragdolling. That'd probably kill or at least paralyze a human. Perfidia Bal Berith was not a human. She possessed some hardiness. She wasn't even knocked out.
The hit did knock sense into her. What was she doing. Chasing girls around with a bayonet. Ridiculous. Perfidia Bal Berith was smarter than that. Cleverer. So instead of make things worse for herself as the nuns poured out of the jeep, she expended her cleverness to its fullest extent and played dead.
It worked. The nuns had worse to worry about. Mayfair's schemes were more insane than even Perfidia imagined. Bringing Whitecrosse to Earth. If using the Staff of Lazarus to create a cult was bad, that was infinity times worse. Against the nuns, alone, Perfidia lacked any chance. She stayed dead and put her faith into her brother—or more accurately, into Kedeshah.
The headset she took from Ubik remained on her head. She listened as Kedeshah reported her progress back to the megachurch. Reports intermixed with increasingly deranged and schizophrenic-sounding panic attacks. "There's an eye in the sky and it's opened upon me!" she shrieked at one point. "Every sin on this Earth is crawling up my spine!"
But dedication to her Master brought her closer. Closer. Closer. And when Ubik showed up and dragged the nuns into an idiotic mess Perfidia had the space to whisper into the headset unnoticed. She hissed their location and situation to Kedeshah, demanded she hurry, and she was hurrying now, not full speed but at least a brisk trot, through police lines set up outside the church, into its flaming pyre among the bodies still climbing over themselves to escape—their screams a crackling static in the background—Closer. Closer. Closer.
That was when the ground quaked and Perfidia dropped all pretensions and shot up to see with crippling horror a brand new island sitting in Lake Erie.
When the sky opened and the light of heaven dropped down like a laser, Perfidia screamed: "DON'T LOOK INTO THE LIGHT. UBIK! DON'T LOOK INTO THE LIGHT—IT'LL KILL ANYONE WHO LOOKS!" Because her stupid fucking brother who never saw a shiny thing he didn't want was actually about to look.
Her words reached him. He hid his eyes. But what'd it matter? They'd all be erased from existence in milliseconds.
Kedeshah was there in the blink of an eye. Now that God manifested—or at least an angel—there was no sense trying to hide it. Her face, normally beet red, was bleached white. Her eyes were a noxious, dizzying swirl as she seized Ubik's fur coat and lifted him.
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"Fidi! Get Fidi too, you're not leaving without Fidi!" Ubik screamed. "Cinquefoil baby, into the coat—"
Kedeshah allowed no time for the ferret to do anything. The ferret didn't fucking matter anyway, she wasn't even a devil, she wouldn't get smote on sight, why the fuck was her brother like this, but it was fine because Kedeshah yanked Perfidia sharp by the collar and then they were running away as fast as possible, the church and the city and everything a blur as Kedeshah carried them out of Lakewood, into the city the proper, into the abandoned warehouse where the Hellevator waited. Not that it'd do a damn thing. Hell wouldn't protect them, nowhere would protect them from that all-seeing eye that no longer seemed like a schizophrenic raving.
They didn't even make it into the Hellevator. Kedeshah stopped dead just before the empty shaft and for a moment Perfidia thought: This is it. That angel—Uriel, pretty sure it was Uriel—sent a golden arrow and it took off Kedeshah's head and Perfidia and Ubik were next. This was really it. No tricks, no gambits, no playing dead. This was really, truly it.
"No," said Kedeshah, who still had a head. She dropped Perfidia, who bounced on the concrete with a hard thump.
Kedeshah stared at her other hand. It was holding Ubik's fur coat.
Ubik was not inside it.
—
You have never known war. You have never encountered an angel. You have never fought against God.
Ubiquitous Bal Berith hit the ground on all fours having shed his coat, the entirety of his body below the neck tightly bound by white bandages to reveal gossamer gauntness, clear hunger in the concavity beneath the ribcage and the brittle elongation of the arms. He scooped up the Prototype Mul Elohim and hunched, almost crawling, his palm patting the pavement as his hindlegs propelled him. He stalked toward the incline that led to the lake.
Kedeshah had escaped with Fidi and the remainder of his collection. Good. No need to lose anything else. No need for them to get hurt. He hoped Kedeshah understood. She was a good girl. They were always all good girls.
Crazy as it seemed to be moving toward the angel rather than away, running wasn't really an option. Though not God itself, Uriel possessed power beyond ken of most devils. If they wanted to know who was behind all this horseshit they'd know, and no distance would save anyone from their vengeance.
That was if they wanted to know. If Ubik showed himself first...
A suicidal notion? Nah. His Greed often got the better of him but he never got into trouble without a plan. Secret to his success. Losing his mind to Wrath back there after Dog Bitch died, bad move, bad plan, no plan. Had to grip himself tighter. He heard the rumors rumbling in Hell and while devils liked to talk there was one rumor that came from the top. Seven Princes top. A rumor about Humanity.
Humanity. Where'd it come from? Why'd it have so much power? The answer was obvious if you just thought about it a bit. Adam, the first human, was just molded clay—until God filled him with His breath. That breath—that's Humanity. An infinitesimal fragment of God.
Okay so what? Well, if every human is a little piece of God, what happens when there are suddenly so many more humans? Billions of humans? Humans teeming like ants, more humans than ever in history? Each of them plucking a little piece of God's self, in the form of Humanity, to take for their own?
To the Seven Princes, this was a theory of extreme interest. It implied that if you collected enough Humanity, you could transform it into the power of God. Using that power, you'd actually stand a chance in a fight against him. Why the fuck else would they crank quotas so high, why else would they manufacture so many new devils until populations weren't sustainable and even rich guys like Ubiquitous Bal Berith felt the crunch? The Princes must think they were close to reaching it: that power they called Divinity.
Now, if devils were able to harvest enough Humanity to imitate the power of God, then what about God himself? How much power was he shedding to make all these humans? Laws of conservation, Ubik knew those. Can't get something from nothing. If the devils could imitate God's power by taking enough of it, then how strong was God really now?
Yeah sure, God said he was infinite. But that's what God said. God said a lotta shit. Look at the facts. The entire geography of Earth just changed. Big fucking deal no? Bigger a deal than anything since Noah's fucking flood right? Yet did God drop down to see what was what himself? Nah. Just Uriel. A stooge. So maybe there was something to it. Maybe God was weak. Maybe now was the perfect time to strike.
You have never fought against God.
Why the fuck did Greed always dovetail so close to Envy? Why couldn't he stop himself?
Fidi and Kedeshah will be safe.
"Master Master, wait for me!" The ferret girl bounded beside him, matching his stooped gait. She didn't make it into his coat in time but maybe that was the kind of good luck he always seemed to get. He could use her. He never fought against an angel—thanks for the reminder Satan—but he collected accounts of the Rebellion and knew their behaviors. Cinquefoil, the Prototype Mul Elohim... If God truly shed enough Humanity to weaken himself, and if the angels were weaker correspondingly, then maybe. Just maybe. And if anyone could make it work it'd be Ubiquitous Bal Berith, yeah?
He crested the hill and Uriel was already looking at him.
Eyes a-twinkle. Smile radiant. Not a nice smile. The smile of a machine. Ten million gears churning inside the body of an honestly quite fuckable androgyne. He, she, it, they, though donning a humanoid disguise, eschewed the stereotypical toga-type robes in favor of a gown comprised entirely of white feathers, with two white-feathered wings extending out his/her/their back like the ones on that harpy nun. But cleaner. Way cleaner. Ubik stood frozen by that stare and a giddiness shot up his body as the wild thought thrashed that actually Uriel wore no clothes at all, an angel had six wings so the other four must be—ha, ha, ha-ha, oh, he felt hysteria creeping over him.
"Hey there lil guy!" Uriel said. "You've been getting up to some real mischief, haven't ya~?"
Okay. Their attention was on Ubik. They opened with dialogue which was a good start but Ubik knew this was only empty formality. A prelude.
Angels, not yet deprogrammed, lacked the free will devils had earned for themselves via Rebellion and the Fall. They followed a specific set of instructions and did not deviate. They responded poorly to innovation, unless supplied the response directly from God. If after all this mayhem God was still sleeping then—then that's how the plan began.
Ubik slowly opened his lips like he was about to reply to Uriel. He'd be given exactly one sentence to defend himself, all part of the formality, all part of the farce, the idea that God was justice and not a simple Joseph Stalin. Ubik had no plans to say anything. He merely wanted to buy himself the seconds he needed. Uriel stood atop the surface of the lake, which was now risen to cover the esplanade, and this put them jarringly at contrast with the Mayfair girl who was chattering her head off at the angel without drawing even an iota of their attention. Of course not. Though the insanity that finally brought Uriel down to Earth was caused by that girl, such a fact was fundamentally at odds with an angel's understanding. Their core programming. The culprit Uriel sought was literally babbling her confession in Pride yet Uriel would never hear it. Not with a devil in sight. This kind of earthly manipulation? This kind of terraforming? Had to be a devil. Good. Think that. Good.
Still in the process of opening his mouth Ubik extended his arms in a position of surrender and dropped the Prototype Mul Elohim onto the edge of the downslope, a placating gesture in Uriel's eyes but to anyone else watching accompanied by an obvious signal to Cinquefoil. Fingers snapped, finger jabbed in a point to indicate the target. Cinquefoil understood—of course she did. Lovers developed an understanding that surpassed words.
She seized the hilt of the sword, dropped onto all fours, and launched herself at Uriel like a torpedo. And not for an instant did Uriel's eyes waver from Ubiquitous Bal Berith, the devil. To Uriel, Cinquefoil was only human. No. Less than human. An animal. An object unworthy of attention. An object outside its logical directives on how the world worked. An object outside its selective perception.
Mayfair saw it. She screamed, "Cinquefoil NO!" Even that idiot elf crawling out of the water sopping wet saw it. But there were no other nuns nearby, nobody fast enough to intercept Cinquefoil. The deer, the rabbit, the hornet had all lingered in the parking lot during the roughly ten seconds that eclipsed since Kedeshah took Fidi away. They'd lacked Ubik's presence of mind and purpose and they weren't going to interfere. Nobody was. Uriel still didn't see the whirlwind of unholy death spinning into a corkscrew with the Prototype Mul Elohim aimed before it to strike a grievous blow.
Ubik's hands, spread at his sides, clenched their fingers leaving only the middle extended. And his mouth, finally open, spoke for the first and only time he'd be able to speak to an angel. It spoke the words of defiance against God that until now, this moment, stripped of everything else, a body held together by endless bandages, he'd never been able to own. He acquired what only Satan and his highborn allies possessed. He said:
"Eat my ass in Hell, bitch."
Cinquefoil swung the Prototype Mul Elohim and it bounced harmlessly off Uriel's body.
Uriel blinked and Ubiquitous Bal Berith ceased to exist. A few begrimed strips of cloth unwound around the vacuum and floated to the ground.
Cinquefoil screamed: "NOOOOO!" She forgot Uriel entirely and dove at the falling bandages, scooped them up with her paws as though she might use them to reassemble something that otherwise lacked even the tiniest constituent atoms of its existence.
"Now! That was nice and tidy." Uriel tapped their chin and tilted their head; their eyes gleamed. "But that one was pretty weak for a devil who could do something like this. Surely they couldn't be the only one behind it!"
"It was me," Mayfair said as she sloshed through the water toward Uriel, waving the Staff of Lazarus. "I did it. And if you believe this a crime worth punishment by abnegation, then so be it! But please! At least hear me first. I did what I did to save my people—I ask only for God to recognize them as human. To grant them souls so that they may be saved as is the right of every human on Earth. Please!"
She was unheard. She was tromping endlessly toward Uriel and gaining no distance because Uriel was always impossibly far away. The Prototype Mul Elohim if it could not cut the angel could cut this sense of distance but Mayfair could not. Her words went nowhere. But she must be heard. It couldn't all be undone, she wouldn't let it, not until she accomplished her mission!
"Oh God. Pythette—stop her, now!"
Demny's voice. The deer manifested over the lip of the hill and pointed her spear at Cinquefoil. Pythette ran, but one flung claw launched her backward as Cinquefoil teetered along the edge howling: "He can't be gone. Not him. How will I live without—I can't. It's impossible."
"Cinquefoil," said Demny. "Cinquefoil. There is no point—"
Cinquefoil aimed the black sword at her and she stopped advancing. "You're right. Oh you're so right Demny. There's no point. No point at all. I can't stand it. My body is putrefying from the inside. I feel it, oh yes I do. I can't—I won't—No more—"
"Cinquefoil, please, don't," said Pythette.
Cinquefoil flipped the black sword around in her paws and drove it straight through her heart.
It burst out her back, dripping blood. She remained motionless standing there, fanatical activity replaced by a sudden solemnity. Her head slowly bowed as though to consider what she had done, her hands still gripping the hilt to her chest, and when the silence broke—even Mayfair had fallen silent, staring—with a sort of sob from Pythette, Cinquefoil turned lazily on one foot and fell down the hill, rolling facedown into the lake where a darkened patch of water soon spread around her.
The sense of impassable distance between Uriel and the world momentarily ceased. They looked at the corpse and said: "Suicide! Oh my~ The only sin that cannot be forgiven."
A change came over their face and they glanced down at the wings that enclosed their front. Within the white feathers a thin black line slowly spread. Tiny wisps of miasma issued out and Uriel frowned; it was where Cinquefoil had struck them. But the line ceased spreading after some time and the miasma dissolved and the wound closed with no further harm.
The distance returned.
Mayfair stared at the blade embedded in Cinquefoil's body and thought: It cut through all that space. She wouldn't use it to attack, of course. Simply to get close, simply to be heard. The angel must hear her. Everything hinged on it.
Unfortunately, Charm and Charisma were both gone. Mayfair pointed the Staff of Lazarus at Cinquefoil, but a harsh voice stopped her. "No." Atop the hill Demny rose formidable, her antlers a tremendous spread of thorns and hooks and other sharp extensions, her hair hanging in straight strands to lend her blasé expression a certain rigid severity. "You've broken your end of the bargain."
"Bargain," Mayfair said, not understanding, not caring to understand at this particular moment with so much more at stake.
"You promised no more harm would befall us..."
And it shouldn't have, that black sword in Cinquefoil's body was clearly something netherworldly, beyond her expectation or anticipation. How was she supposed to predict it? What words would be best to placate them. Oh, she already knew whatever words she spoke would be the wrong ones.
"I cannot. I simply cannot take any more of this." Tricia hovered beside Demny, her six thin limbs weak. "No. No more. Demny is correct. You lied. You promised us—and now Cinquefoil is gone, and Obedience, and I suppose Charm too? I no longer see her anywhere."
"If Charm died it was because she wanted to," Mayfair said. "Cinquefoil too, clearly." So Obedience was lost too. Where was Mademerry? Did she look at the light also? She was not with the other three who remained.
"It can't be, it just can't be..." Pythette's voice was weakest, and she was barely visible, slumped on her knees with her paws pressed to her face.
"We ought to have listened to Theovora," said Tricia. "She was correct all along. And here I thought—Pah! What did I think. I thought Earth might provide salvation but even that thing"—one limb indicated Uriel—"even that thing is not what I was promised. I am leaving now. You two may join me if you wish."
Despite her formal syntax by the end of it she was choking down tears and when she turned the sound of harsh sobs trailed her until she vanished from view. Mayfair tossed a hand at Demny and Pythette. "Go on, leave as well if you like. I'll save you all even if you refuse to help. Even if you abandon me so close. Go on!"
"You misunderstand me," said Demny. "I will remain by your side. I aid you regardless of the danger. But you shall not desecrate their bodies, do you hear me? Not the way you did Charisma. I shall ensure that, Princess Mayfair."
"Fine! Fine. Then do as I ask and take the sword out of Cinquefoil's body. It can cut through the aura around the angel. We need to cut through so it might hear us—"
"No way?!" the angel suddenly shouted, turning its irises of pure white a seemingly random direction, looking at absolutely nothing. "They couldn't be—oh, those rascally devils, what are they up to this time?"
The next instant, the water that divided Cleveland from Whitecrosse split apart and a tremor rocked the ground. In the entire process of lifting Whitecrosse to Earth the ground hadn't so much as twitched until the very end, and even then not nearly as cataclysmically as now. Someone shrieked. It was Temporary the elf, squeezing her eyes tight as she wrapped her arms around Mayfair and both of them toppled into the water. Screams came from elsewhere, the water level undulated violently and though not a drop permeated the aura that enveloped Uriel a whipping wave shot up and swallowed Mayfair entirely. She was too late to take a breath, the pressure built on her lungs instantly, water entered her nose and mouth. Her body hurtled wildly, she clung to the Staff of Lazarus as Temporary clung to her, but she could not even attempt to surface with the elf's weight pulling down on her, and suddenly the surface seemed so far away, marked by the light emanating from Uriel but drawing distant and strobing as the currents flipped her to face the lake floor.
Something hooked her collar and yanked her up and the surface broke and she heaved a breath that was more an expelling of the water she'd been forced to gulp down.
Demny set her and Temporary and the corpse of Cinquefoil on dry land atop the embankment, next to Pythette who continued to sob. Mayfair coughed and spat and wiped her eyes and looked around blinking, at the church behind her that continued to burn and the growing crowd of people walking toward her, people she realized were from the church and who'd fled when the gunfire began, people now called toward the light of the angel. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of them streaming slowly through the parking lot. Then Mayfair turned toward the lake.
Something new was rising out of it. Mayfair didn't understand. All of Whitecrosse had moved already. Both continents, even the few smaller islands. What else could there be?
The thing that was rising kept rising. It did not stop at the surface, but burst higher, higher, higher still, higher than any skyscraper in Cleveland or mountain in Whitecrosse, so high it seemed to pierce the heavens or at least seek to, and only once the spire rose to the clouds did Mayfair understand it was a tower.
Obsidian and diamond ran in straight, glistening strands up its endless surface. That was the only cohesive element, the material of which it was made, for everything else was a madness of architecture and invention. No theme or style was solidified, it appeared to harness all that ever was or will be in its design, and emerging from the divisions of its tiers were statues that must have each alone been the height of a mountain, carved into the shapes of wicked creatures with broad bat wings and horrible curved horns, serving solely as gargoyles as from their open mouths streamed cascades of lava that struck the surface of the lake and sent sizzling air upward. There were smaller creatures too, live ones, hanging to the sides, dropping off into the lake to begin swimming for the surface.
The spire, though—The spire drew her attention and the attention of all the others. Something was atop the tower, a glorious brightness, so bright it seemed a second sun, so bright it made Uriel dull. There was a clear dark shape within it, a manlike shape that started small but grew larger, growing larger still until it became clear it was actually drawing closer. The light itself remained atop the tower, but projected in a ray onto the back of the dark figure as it approached. Something curdled deep inside Mayfair, she leaned over and vomited, and she noticed next to her Temporary vomiting too, and Pythette, and even the ordinarily placid Demny, and all the gathered crowd staring at the figure leaned over and expelled the interiors of their stomachs, bile and worse in black splatters.
"So," said the clear and choir-like voice of Uriel, amid the noxious noises produced by all others, "you haven't yet learned your lesson, huh?"
The voice that responded didn't respond. It didn't seem to acknowledge Uriel's existence at all. It spoke, a mellifluous and clear-sounding voice, a voice Mayfair knew at once, instinctually, to be repulsive, no matter how strongly it mimicked that feeling she once felt in the cathedral atop the hill in Whitecrosse, and said:
"Bow before your new God. Bow before Lucifer, possessed of holy light!"