[45] Wrath / Envy

Within a headless skeleton a small red heart beat. Slowly. Tiny twitches and shivers. Everything in every direction was dead and brown. Particulate matter floated thick.

These bones were too sturdy to break. Everything else flaked and disintegrated. Even the corpses of the snake, the spider, and the hare came apart. So why not the corpse of Kedeshah's mother too? Why could Kedeshah not break free and find some way to die? A sick, hollow lack ate at her stomach. Mom was everything. Kedeshah loved her and now she was dead. What else existed? What purpose?

Her own purpose. The one she sought when she first fled mom's side. She remembered that distant past with confusion. Why had she struggled so much to become her own person only to fall into the arms of Ubiquitous Bal Berith?

Something thudded distantly. Again. Rapid but evenly-spaced intervals. Something running.

Out of the murk of dead flakes a bright monstrosity burst. They leaned forward, their arms pumping forward and back, their knees arched high, and their gaze fixed ahead with bulging eyes and a horrible scowl. They wore a navy blue uniform and cap. Moloch, Prince of Wrath. Each step caused flakes of dirt to shake off his uniform. He was obviously pursuing the group of humans ascending the tower.

Perfect. It took nothing to make Moloch angry and he already looked livid. All Kedeshah needed was to draw his attention from the fixed forward point at which he stared. It'd take him only a moment to expend the full force of his fury upon her. Even the bones of her mother meant nothing to his power, and finally the longed-for death would come, joining her in oblivion to those she loved and lost. Those? No, there was only one: Mother and father, in a single flesh.

She leaned against the curvature of the ribcage and stuck her arm between the bones to wave. Moloch's gaze failed to wander. No problem. A shout, then—

Live.

That word came from nothing, nowhere, it reverberated within the bones she gripped, it transmitted to her as a pulse.

"Mom?" Kedeshah whispered. Her hand fell.

The others seek the memory of themselves in their annihilation. But I already attempted that long ago. I destroyed one half to make more pure the other. And now I am destroyed entirely.

"Mom..."

I have left only one thing besides these bones. The others considered me lowliest of their rank, yet I possessed one advantage. My sin is the only that creates. So persist—persist when I am gone, my love.

Moloch ran past without even glancing at Kedeshah. He squeezed through the doorway to the next level and the reverberations of his footsteps subsided.

Become the thing I ceased to be long before my death. My beloved Kedeshah...

The pulse dwindled into dust. The hand around Kedeshah's heart unlatched its fingers; Kedeshah fell back against the twisted spine of her mother's corpse and stared at the dull sky of this particular room in Pandaemonium. The urgency of death now felt remote. Her body lost all tension, and a languid peace descended upon her.

In the dull sky, Kedeshah noticed a white sliver. The beginnings of a new moon.

—

[7:00]

Shannon was the first to appear at the top of the stairway behind Jay and Perfidia. The second was Mallory. While Shannon stopped and took in the room and Beelzebub with a confused awe, Mallory wasted no time. She bounded onto the head of the nearest statue of Lucifer—this room contained hundreds of statues, all of them different, yet it was clear at a glance each one depicted Lucifer—launched off with obscene speed and agility, and tore across the room while lashing her sword and sending two crisscross beams of light into Beelzebub. The beams sliced into the swarm of insects that enveloped him, but either failed to reach or failed to damage Beelzebub himself.

Since Perfidia gave a tight seven-minute deadline for reaching Divinity, and Mayfair would appear shortly, it might make sense for Jay to rush in as recklessly as Mallory, waving his bat at Beelzebub with the aim of killing him as quickly as possible. No such urgency gripped Jay, though. Instead his mind kicked into a clear and tactical method of thought.

First, Jay assessed what he knew about Beelzebub. Perfidia once mentioned using Lalum's powers to control him, which Kedeshah considered impossible due to his insect swarm; she claimed it would instantly eat through the strands. Lalum was no longer relevant, but the issue of the swarm persisted.

Jay initially struggled against Ashtoreth due to her birds. The swarm posed a similar problem: It didn't matter that his bat killed anything it touched if there were a thousand, a million, a billion things he needed to touch. Those bugs would bite or sting him to death before he beat a path to Beelzebub.

Okay. What about the terrain? This room, though large, was much smaller than where he fought Ashtoreth and Rimmon. It seemed about the size of a basketball court, with its dimensions more rigidly defined by its tall, shining, crystalline walls than many of the nebulous rooms of Pandaemonium. It possessed a long table in the center, like the table of a boardroom office, and a few ornate chandeliers above, and the statues of Lucifer. The only entrance was behind him—now with people—and the only exit was barely visible behind Beelzebub.

If Beelzebub possessed even the most basic intelligence, his goal would be to fight defensively and wait out the seven minute timer, at which point—according to Perfidia, at least—Lucifer would finish his fight in heaven or wherever and return his attention to the lower terrestrial plane. With Beelzebub's large size, he made a perfect barrier to a narrow doorway. The only way past was through him.

Next, Jay considered his options. Perfidia possessed Makepeace's shield and Viviendre's staff. Briefly he contemplated whether the shield would protect him from the swarm long enough for him to reach Beelzebub with the bat. It'd protected Perfidia from Ashtoreth's birds, after all. But birds and insects moved differently. Birds relied on gliding and thus followed predictable patterns; they couldn't maneuver however they wanted. The shield would not prevent a few thousand bugs from simply buzzing around it and descending on Jay from behind. Potentially, the staff could split Beelzebub in half, which might create an opening to run through him without needing to kill him, but the staff also did nothing to mitigate the swarm.

If he had some way to survive the swarm, any way, even for only a few seconds, he'd make it work. How?

Mallory danced back and forth between the heads of statues. She slashed her blade and cut insects apart with the broad rays of light that emerged from it. Beelzebub swung his scythe-like arms in response, but her nimbleness carried her over the arc and onto the nearest chandelier, which she used as a launchpad. Her body drilled forward like a dart, pierced the waves of insects, and struck directly against Beelzebub's carapace.

The attack did absolutely nothing. Didn't even budge him. Mallory kicked off and propelled herself to safety. Her fair face and white arms were marked by thousands of red bites, parts of her flesh looked raw, but once she escaped the swarm's range the tiny marks healed in a matter of seconds.

In the fight against the Elf-Queen, Mallory had taken an absurd amount of abuse. Her wounds would've killed any ordinary human. Mallory wasn't superhuman, though. What gave her so much vitality was something anyone could use. Her relics. In particular, her armor.

"Jay!" Perfidia said. She'd actually been yelling the whole time, but he'd tuned her out. "What's the plan Jay?"

Jay knew the plan. It was simple. Simple didn't mean easy, though. Certainly not under these circumstances.

He snapped his fingers at Shannon, who was meandering between the statues to him. "Get your girlfriend to give me her armor."

"What!" Shannon said. "The Armor of God?"

"Whatever it's called. I need its power to protect me from the swarm. I have to hit Beelzebub with this." He held up the bat. "It's the only way to kill him. Mallory won't do anything with her sword."

"Then just give Mallory your bat!"

That—made perfect sense. It'd be quicker to hand off the bat than remove and put on the armor anyway. Why hadn't he thought of that?

"No, no, no," Perfidia said. "Whoever takes out Beelzebub is gonna be the person who reaches Divinity first. Especially if they've got that speedy armor. It's gotta be Jay. What kinda world ya think that battle junkie queen makes if she suddenly got the power of God huh?"

"Divinity? What the fuck are you talking about? Jay, don't tell me you're listening to this tax cheat devil, she already fucked us once before—"

"We could let Mallory kill Beelzebub and then kill her with Viviendre's staff," Jay said.

"No! What?" Shannon said.

"What did you say?" said the hornet girl, who dropped down beside Shannon. "If you even think of harming the queen, I'll have your guts out on the end of my stinger."

When she attempted to demonstrate what she meant by jabbing out her lower body, Shannon stepped in her way. "Tricia—he's my brother. Dammit, what the fuck is going on?"

"We don't have time to argue." Jay kept an eye on the doorway leading into the room. More people crammed through: Whitecrosse knights, American soldiers, random citizens of Cleveland. More and more among their ranks were corpses, though, mangled almost as badly as the ones in Belial's zombie movie. "Shannon. You need to trust me. Okay? I'm not fucking around anymore. So trust me and get me the queen's armor."

He stared straight into her eyes and she stared back. It was just like Shannon to get bothered by every little detail of every little thing, to need to put it all together in perfect order, but even she should be able to realize the urgency of the situation. She was his sister, and they were the only family they had left, and Jay prayed just this once that counted for something, anything.

A sharp breath escaped her. None of her features softened, her sunken raccoon eyes still looked ready to kill—if not Jay, then at least Perfidia, who grinned foolishly—but she said: "Fine. I'll fetch you the armor. Tricia! Help me get close to the queen safely."

Tricia seemed even less pleased with the arrangement than Shannon, but Jay's threat about killing the queen worked exactly as intended. She knew what that staff did and how quickly it did it; she had no choice. She grabbed Shannon under the arms and beat her wasp wings to carry Shannon into the air. Jay didn't have time to worry whether being half-insect would give Beelzebub some kind of control over her; he just had to hope not.

"Do it quick," Jay said. "We only have seven minutes."

"Six." Perfidia held up her watch.

"There he is!" someone yelled. The crowd of people and corpses pressed between Lucifer's statues parted. Atop the stairway at the entrance of the room, seated atop the deer, Mayfair pointed her staff at Jay. "He and that devil must be stopped at all costs!"

Jay gripped his bat. Alright. Time to fight.

—

[6:00]

Lord of the Flies. What a creature. Its curved carapace, its shiny compound eyes, its hooked claws that swung like scythes to reap the heads of the statues littering the battleground. About it buzzed all manner of loathsome insect, and every time Mallory darted in for a blow they bit at her flesh with pinprick mandibles that left a stinging tingle on every unprotected inch.

Mallory Tivania Coke. Daughter, descendant of John Coke, the only hero their world ever knew. Here was a tale to notch into her own history: a foe more fearsome than ever her forebear fought, the penultimate devil of all Hell. The pain on her arms and neck was the same sensation that spurred her smile as she slid back on both feet avoiding the near instantaneous snap of one of his claws. No, she didn't avoid it entirely. The skin on her cheekbone opened and a wave of warm blood ran down her face, along the contour of her chin to pool in her jugular notch. Her armor clicked as her body reoriented. Her eyes darted, a lightening of the waves of insects became clear to her, an angle toward the thin joint of Beelzebub's shoulder. Thus far her attacks proved ineffective, but this creature of Envy surely harbored a weakness.

John Coke pricked across the plain with his white cross shield... Dragons, fae, infidels he fought. Mallory leaned cross-legged on the bear fur, her spine arched in painful attention as she stared up at her governess seated upon the rocking-chair, reading: John Coke pricked across the plain...

Dresses. Dolls. Etiquette. Golden ringlets in her hair. Bows and soft silks, jewels and sweet perfumes. All such things they gave her. Having them, she found them tiresome.

They refused to give her a sword.

The knights, the men, her father, in the courtyard they sparred. Through the window she watched them. Such things are not for little girls, her governess told her, her mother told her. Not having it, she wanted it. Every loathsome creature around her conspired to deny her what she wanted, the only thing she wanted, the thing John Coke had. Every loathsome one! Her father, the dukes, her children, her kingdom. Here it was. A heroism greater than John Coke ever dreamed. Here it was! A battle to eat away her body under the thousand bites of a thousand clicking parasites!

She braced for her next lightning-quick strike. But she stopped when Beelzebub mouth split open and a buzzing voice emerged:

"I deny you."

Tongues of devils offered no words worth hearing. Her eyes skittered for a new path, the old having closed in her second's hesitation.

"I am the zzpirit of denial itzzelf. I am what izz wanted but can never be attained. I am every creature who izz not you. Infinite: multitudinouzz! Pullulating, breeding, until my many zzelvezz are a wall to deny your every desire!"

The compound eyes gleamed. Beelzebub spoke not at her, but at the air, the sky, at the thousand statues of the archfiend Lucifer who attended him.

"Zzloth! Luzzt, Gluttony, Greed, and Wrath! They have zzlowed you all they could. I zzhall be the lazzt zzeven minutezz, the final divizzion between you and all your dreamzz, the touch of bitter at the tip of your tongue! Zzeven minutezz izz all I am; everything in the world izz all I am. Know, mortal, that you came thizz clozze for nothzzing, nothzzing at all! In zzeven minutezz HE will reign over Heaven—and all will long for hizz love, all will Envy hizz glory!"

Seven minutes. Then he was wasting her time with this speech, just as they always did, just as they talked and talked and talked and talked—the dukes, her daughter, even Shannon—

"Mallory!" Shannon said.

A long, rasping breath escaped Mallory's throat.

Shannon hovered in air. Tricia supported her, her wasp buzz melding into the buzz of Beelzebub's insects. Tricia kept her away from the swarm, but near enough to Mallory for her shout to be heard.

"Mallory. I need your armor!"

What an absurd request. This armor belonged to her, the Queen of Whitecrosse, passed down from generation to generation. The same armor John Coke once wore.

"Mallory. You asked me to be your tactician. You will not accomplish anything attacking Beelzebub with that sword. We have a plan, but we need your armor for it to work."

Though Mallory had not moved in the past few seconds, she remained outside Beelzebub's range, and so he did not bother to attack her. He remained fixed. His fixedness was a taunt, a joke, and paired with his speech it only spurred Mallory to want to drive her blade deeper into his heart until all those pretty words about envy and desire curdled to dust.

"Mallory! Listen to me! We don't have much time. My brother knows a way to kill that thing. He needs your armor!"

Her brother. That skulking, hat-wearing fool. Yes. Give her birthright to him. Cede her battle to him. Bestow upon him her glory. What sage advice, Shannon Waringcrane.

Mallory said: "No."

She closed her ears to any further entreaty. Shannon's voice became a buzz like all the other insects, and Mallory threw herself at this Prince. This climactic battle to be told to children a hundred years hence. Tilting, leaning, listening to the sonorous voice of that fair-featured governess, her pretty ankles crossed and her pretty tongue licking her thumb to turn the pages. Giving to all these embryonic little humans, these wriggling small hairless creatures a dream, a desire, a spur to make them strive for greatness, a thorn to prick their hearts whenever they sat still!

Into the mass of insects she descended once more, and as they nibbled at her flesh she whirled her body at Beelzebub's eyes and saw herself reflected in their compound parts.

—

Perfidia didn't waste time. She wasn't a fighter but she'd been slow on the draw before and that fucked her. The instant Mayfair sicced her goon squad on Jay, Perfidia drew the Staff of Solomon from her coat and aimed it at—dammit there was no good view of Mayfair herself. Not behind the absurd profusion of antlers on the deer nun. Condemnation. That was the nun's name. Pythette had called her Demny. Whatever! It didn't matter. Perfidia would divide Demny and hit Mayfair next.

She pointed the staff at Demny, said the magic word—"Divide!"—and watched as a random corpse that flung itself in front of her split apart and dropped semi-bloodlessly to the ground.

Fuck! Slow again. Now a crowd of corpses shambled at her and she stumbled back between two leering statues of the head honcho and where the fuck was Jay? She caught a glimpse of his iconic hat rushing toward Demny. Okay sure nice but what the fuck was Perfidia supposed to do without him protecting her?

Her back butted against the boardroom table in the center of the room as the gaps between the statues filled with bodies. "Divide!" she yelled. "Divide!" The problem with this shitty fucking staff was that it only worked a second time when the first body finished coming apart. Shit for crowd control.

Corpses came at her from three sides. Arms outstretched, mouths open to rend. Just like Belial's movie. If only Ubik left a fucking lawnmower in his coat.

Instead she gripped the Shield of Faith with her other hand and rammed it into the first corpse that came for her. The body flew back and that bought her enough time to shout "Divide!" at the next one. Perfidia climbed onto the table and beat at the zombies at they climbed after her. One relic, then the other. These bodies were nothing more than random civilians of Cleveland. Many of them already lacked certain parts. They weren't Dalt Swainos, they were shambling things. She could handle this. She could handle it!

A zombie grabbed her ankle and yanked and she fell on her ass hard enough that her next Divide came out a wince. The word still worked and the body fell apart but the half attached to the hand that gripped her kept gripping until she snapped the bone at the wrist with a sharp blow of the shield.

There weren't as many corpses as Perfidia expected. Mainly because they had to filter through the chokepoint entrance. But more and more were coming, growing closer, their arms reaching, their hands ready to draw and quarter her and feast on her pieces even though that was only the stupid movie unless Mayfair seeing the movie got inspired and nononoNO this was wasting too much time!

Not this close. They couldn't fuck it up this close.

She beat a corpse off the table with the shield and divided another. As the body split apart something leaped out at her. She barely had a chance to register what it was before a hand gripped her with huge fingers. One throw and she slammed straight down into the marble tabletop.

For a brief instant her vision flashed black and she thought—No. No. I can't be knocked out. If I'm knocked out it's over. But her eyes opened and framed by the swaying chandelier above the face of a goliath peered down at her. She thought: Dalton Swaino. No. It wasn't him. This one wore a maroon jersey with no sleeves. A basketball jersey. The word CLEVELAND emblazoned on the chest over a number: 16.

He lifted his foot and prepared to stomp on Perfidia's head. She screamed "DIVIDE!" and he went rigid before coming apart. Any momentary relief at this last-second salvation ended when a second basketball player tightened a vise grip around her ankle and swung her off the table, into a statue that broke apart and followed her to the ground in a rain of rubble.

Perfidia turned over groaning and coughing. Her blood dripped onto the rocks as she tried to rise. Above her the chandelier twinkled and through the sky drifted—papers. Papers? One came to rest on her face. The parchment was old, tactile, with a different feel than modern paper. Her blurry vision focused on the words and she recognized the handwriting instantly. It was hers.

These were the Whitecrosse papers. But how?

A jolt of adrenaline or excitement or something shot through her and she sat up in time to lift the shield and block the oncoming kick of the behemoth who'd thrown her. She skidded back on her butt but her attention remained riveted to the papers. They were swirling from the direction of the divided basketball player on the table. In one of his hands he held a case that had split open when it fell, and from it the papers flew out. The one who kept kicking her shield held a case too. So did the four other basketball players who approached between the statues.

Mayfair did always prefer the strong ones. She'd ordered her basketball players to protect the papers!

Then this wasn't misfortune. It was opportunity. Perfidia grinned despite the stinging pain of a split lip and a chipped tooth. Despite the iron taste of her own blood which she spat out with a quick funnel of her lips.

She was getting back those fucking papers.

Mayfair's page must be among them. It'd take only few jotted lines—and Perfidia would show her who the Master of Whitecrosse truly was. Mallory, Tricia, all of them would be brought to heel in a matter of moments. Perfidia knew what to write, knew exactly what magic words to use.

"Divide!" she yelled at the basketball man kicking her. It took about three seconds for a body to split apart fully. That meant she only needed to delay twelve more seconds and the four remaining basketball men were done. She blocked the next attack with her shield and shouted the word and the next split apart. Then the next. The next. It was easy, they were stronger but they lacked the raw numbers of the horde, it made them simpler to withstand thanks to the single-direction protection of the shield. The cases full of pages struck the ground one after another. Only a single basketball player left. Where was he? She turned and—

His arm gripped her head with fingers long enough to wrap around her skull and lifted. Perfidia rose, dangling until his eyes met hers.

Perfidia somewhat followed local human culture. Though she lacked interest in it, it helped her deal with humans day-to-day. She knew the face of this man. How could she not? It was everywhere in Cleveland. Some might call him the hero of the entire city. The only hero such a desolate, rusted place knew.

His lips parted. His teeth showed. His jaw opened wide. He was going to eat her brains.

Her watch, dangling from its chain, ticked over the next minute. At the same moment, someone snapped their fingers. The basketball superstar lost interest in Perfidia instantly. He dropped her and everything else and bounded back toward the entrance of the room—where Mayfair was. Perfidia hit the floor hard but it was only another lump added to the pile. She didn't care. Around her sat the cases of papers.

She reached for them. Behind her, the fingers continued to snap. Snap, snap, snap. When her fingers gripped the handle of the nearest case she froze. She realized what the snapping was.

Shit.

—

The instant that Her Highness ordered her corpses to attack, the hero moved. That was expected. His eyes had always been shrewd. She saw it in him at the monastery. At the castle. He understood that to defeat the dead, he must kill the princess.

He abandoned his devil companion to fend for herself. He used the terrain to his advantage. His quickness was inhuman. Between the statues he darted: Lucifer, him, Lucifer, him, Lucifer, him. The moments of "him" were a split second each while the moments of "Lucifer" were eternal. In this method he closed the distance within the span of an eyeblink and each time "Lucifer" became "him" he was closer than he should have been.

The walls betrayed him. They were crystal, purest crystal. On them he showed always.

So when he lunged out from the nearest statue and swung his bat, she lifted her sword to block him. The motion of her arm was smooth and direct. The sword went exactly where it needed to go. His bat and her blade clashed in an exact crisscross.

All that speed.

All that activity.

Came to "zero."

The crystal walls and crystal skies and crystal floors showed them in this state: Stagnant, straight, split apart at all seams. In the gap between their weapons her eyes met his.

She supposed she ought to engender some emotion within herself. If she did not take this moment seriously she would die. His bat was the same as her blade: coated in the stink of death. So that was how he killed Pythette without leaving a wound upon her.

"I am Condemnation," she said. "I have outlived all my sisters. I am the anchor to which their souls are tethered. Though I myself am 'zero,' I bring down the weight of their lives upon your head. This is how your journey ends, hero. Crushed beneath those who died for you to reach here."

The mirrors made them a million. Under the brim of his hat his sharp eyes softened in surprise at her words. Was it Lalum he thought of? Pythette, Charm, Charisma, Pluxie, all of them?

Whatever the cause, that was the advantage she needed as she pushed her blade against the bat and knocked him backward. But Condemnation was only a "zero." She resumed her placidity as she began the fight in earnest.

—

Reflected in the mirror, flipped around to the other side, Jay stared at this deer, whose name he thought was Demny but who said she was Condemnation. His goal had been to cut through her quickly to reach Mayfair, who sat on her back, but in the blankness of her face, the blankness of her eyes he saw something flicker, a singular emotion possessed of terrifying purity. "Zero," she'd said, and in that word was everything, the fingers of Flanz-le-Flore splintering, the bear's body sinking into the swamp, and Lalum—Lalum—

Before he realized it he was stumbling back. She broke the lock of their weapons and already she pressed the advantage. Her Mul Elohim sword—where did she get that?—slashed at him and he had only one foot on the ground and was slowly succumbing to the pull of gravity. His only option was to give in.

He flung out his remaining foot and dropped straight onto his back as the sword whipped over him. This did not improve his situation; her front hooves reared up and prepared to crush him.

That instant when she loomed above him lingered, frozen. Her antlers reached out sharp, split, stellated, endless paths sparking from endless paths, blotting the whole of his sight as they were mirrored in the crystal wall behind her, rippling against the uneven and rounded reflection to become a seething, living thing of infinite arms, and in her blank eyes some spark of wrath that did not belong to her lived.

Jay rolled to the side as the hooves came down and cracked the crystal beneath her, the cracks creating more fragments, stellations, rhizomatic mazes. He considered swinging his bat for her hooves, but on the ground he would be slow and if she avoided it'd put him in a particularly shitty spot. Instead he somersaulted backward and rose to his feet, putting distance between him and her. His shoes glided across the crystal until he bumped against a statue or a corpse or something. The corpses weren't bothering to get in his way. They were focused on Perfidia. Even Mayfair, on Condemnation's back, wasn't looking at him. So she was that confident in the deer's ability? Or maybe she thought that if she killed Perfidia, it'd prevent Jay from taking the Divinity.

But he didn't need Perfidia. And he was getting that Divinity.

He whirled around and swung his bat. Not at Condemnation. His arms sent the full brunt of his power into the charming, pleasant, pretty face of Lucifer. Or at least his image. The head snapped at the neck and launched like a rocket. Targeting Mayfair was impossible behind all of Condemnation's antlers, but when a bullet-speed projectile of solid stone went straight at Condemnation's face she had to respond.

She did. For a moment the pitiless blankness of her eyes vanished behind the black emanation of her blade's pure and total death as she raised it to block the attack. That was Jay's opportunity. If he moved in to strike her body she would recover in time, and getting close was trouble. She not only had the sword to strike with, but also her hooves.

Instead he swung at her antlers.

Antlers were bone. They were part of the skeleton. Part of the body. Even antlers like these, so large and all-encompassing, holding within their patterns and designs the faces of them all—Charm and Charisma, Pluxie and Pythette, even words that seemed to appear in the same jagged script he once saw in a web: WIN HERO. YOU MUSTE WIN HERO—even these antlers were part of the body.

All those bodies he trampled upon. As the hero must.

The bat smashed straight through the endless span of antler jutting out of the right side of Condemnation's head. Segment after segment shattered into fragments that sprayed every direction as he tore down through the entire mess in one motion. Condemnation jerked her neck and her blank eyes registered a moment of shock.

Jay kicked off the ground at the end of his downward swing and lurched aside in case any dying momentum of her body brought the sword near him. In the mirrors the falling shards were a pattern of unfathomable depth: pieces upon pieces.

But Condemnation did not fall. The bone-white pieces that pattered against him dropped to the crystal floor with a hollow patter.

"Fossil," Condemnation said. "Not bone." Her head yawed oddly under the asymmetrical weight of her remaining spray of antler. "I am 'zero.' I am the anchor of their souls."

Fine. Jay didn't care. Getting rid of the antler was still a good move. Now there was a completely unprotected half of Condemnation's body. Jay had a perfect line onto Mayfair. She sat sidesaddle, facing the opposite direction to watch the roster of the Cleveland Cavaliers pile toward Perfidia, waving her staff like a conductor's baton.

He rushed Condemnation from that side and raised his bat as though he intended to swing. Condemnation, still unused to her unbalanced state, readied her sword to parry. It was a feint, though. Jay twirled past the shallow reach of the blade and finally slipped through Condemnation's guard. Mayfair, sensing something was amiss, perked up her head in time to watch Jay barrel toward her.

Condemnation kicked up her hindlegs. Her body bucked and Mayfair went flying off, trailed by a tiny scream of surprise. Condemnation sacrificed everything for that maneuver, though. Now her unprotected body stood directly in Jay's path, her hindlegs already lifted off the ground to ensure she could not quickly dodge him. The brown and spotted fur fluttered placidly against a background of endless rhizome and Jay thought: If you're the anchor of their souls like you say, then this is how I set them free. An apologetic twinge went through him. In Condemnation's blankness he could find a sort of kinship. But it was only a twinge. Apology or not, he would allow nothing more to stand between him and his goal.

As the bat came down—

Snap.

—

[5:00]

That ominous bat left Jay Waringcrane's hands. Jay Waringcrane no longer had hands.

Snap.

Nor did a centaur remain before him. Now, a tiny fawn slipped on the crystal floor with twig-like legs.

Snap.

Princess Mayfair, midflight, was changed: a pink salamander, which bounced against a statue and landed on its back.

The black bat, the black sword, and the Staff of Lazarus each clattered to the floor one after another.

Curiously, the Staff of Lazarus leaving the princess's hand did not immediately affect the army of corpses she commanded. One brutish human, wearing a bright maroon jersey with the word CLEVELAND and the number 23, dropped the devil woman named Perfidia Bal Berith—the onetime Master of Whitecrosse, according to rumor, and a single look confirmed it—and charged amid the broken statues with rapid, long-legged strides. So did all the other corpses who had not been split in half.

No matter. Flanz-le-Flore possessed mastery over such things as relics, now.

Snap.

The fallen Staff of Lazarus became the Rose of Joy & Love, its magic transmogrified from the macabre to the gorgeous; its only power to be the most beautiful of any rose, a worthy accessory to the wonderment of this crystal room, with statues that reformed and rearranged before her eyes to visages of exceeding loveliness. At the same time, every single corpse became what it once was, what it always should have been: a corpse. The bodies slumped and fell, inert. Death was once more death, and life was life; natural order returned to the world.

The rather trite diversion in the theatre below had somehow left Flanz-le-Flore spellbound for quite some time, but that was hardly surprising, as in her court the theatre of her subjects might enrapture her for similarly opaque intervals. She had been slow to emerge from her daze, and Wendell Noh slower, and when he did emerge he pawed at his eyes under his large glasses and muttered: "The video games again. The video games again." He continually made less and less sense as they ascended this tower, but he had held himself together and they only had a little longer to go. Unfortunately, though, Jay Waringcrane and Princess Mayfair managed a head start on them, and the crowd of corpses clogged the way, so it took some time to join the fray. Fortunately, this tardiness proved auspicious; concerned so with each other, none had time to notice her.

At the far end of the room, Queen Mallory warred with a monstrous insectoid creature, shrouded in an army of its kind. Mallory may prove troublesome to overcome, as her speed and range were frightful, but as long as she was distracted she was not the primary threat.

Perfidia Bal Berith, erstwhile Master, held the Shield of Faith. Hidden behind it, her clenched red hand jabbed out another relic, a most insidious relic indeed, a relic that took but one word to work its magic.

It was not Flanz-le-Flore's tendency to feel fear. Even when the hero Jay Waringcrane shattered her fingers, even when he struck her with his bat and melted off half her face, she had remained strategic and composed (if furious). Seeing that relic, there was no time for composure. Her heart ceased beating. She had not known they possessed that relic, it lay outside her expectations, it was unplanned. All sense of serene grace evaporated. Her body tensed painfully. Her fingers pressed together.

The word range out:

"Div—"

Snap.

"—ide!"

The word and her snap occurred concurrently and in the all-swallowing silence of the next instant Flanz-le-Flore wondered whether she were already dead.

The moment passed. The sounds of the battle resumed. The thing Perfidia held pointed was no longer the Staff of Solomon, but the Sprig of Ineffable Longing, which did... something! Flanz-le-Flore had not much time to think about it, but it was assuredly worthless. Perfidia realized the same and dropped it, retreating her hand behind the shield.

"It's all nonsense," Wendell said. He aimed one of his guns—a regular one, not the Gun of Wendell—at the thing Jay Waringcrane had become: a small tortoise that plodded across the ground. He closed one eye to focus but did not shoot.

"Hero, dear," Flanz-le-Flore said, "the thing behind that shield is a devil."

That statement altered his condition instantly. He turned and fired at the shield without a moment's pause for deliberation. The bullet ricocheted off harmlessly, of course.

The Shield of Faith. What a nuisance. Oh, Flanz-le-Flore knew relics now, could transform them at a snap, but the Shield of Faith was special. Its magic was to deflect any physical and magical force that struck against its front. Flanz-le-Flore snapped for good measure, but as she expected, nothing happened.

Oh well. A situation easily rectified. "Get on the other side of that shield, dear," she said to Wendell as she surveyed the crystal walls for a reflective angle that might allow her to see behind it. She could, but Perfidia Bal Berith kept her head tucked within the collar of her long and strange coat, which was not a normal coat and not something Flanz-le-Flore "knew." Clever! As expected of the former Master.

Behind Flanz-le-Flore, Temporary hurried up the last few steps, tripped on the final one, and flopped onto her face. She winced as she lifted her head to report: "Someone's coming from behind! They sounded really big and mad! Ohh—what a cute baby deer."

Someone from behind. Yes, the animals she left to contend with the corpses, who clambered up after Temporary, chattered about something similar: a large, angry, red man rapidly approaching. Wendell advanced on Perfidia, who adroitly maneuvered between the statues to manage line-of-sight, but if Perfidia was disarmed then she was no longer the chief priority.

"Wendell," Flanz-le-Flore said. "Wendell, dear. Wendell!"

Wendell's gun went off. It struck only the shield. Oh! He was being so useless right now!

The ground started to shake. A distant shout reached her faintly.

Fine! They'd deal with Perfidia quickly. It was for exactly moments like these Flanz-le-Flore had gone to the trouble of enlisting Temporary anyway. The floors were coated in blood from all the divided corpses. "Make a portal behind her," Flanz-le-Flore said.

"Huh? Me?" said Temporary.

"Who else! Do it quickly!"

"R-right!"

As Temporary bent over the nearest patch of blood and prepared to use her animus, Flanz-le-Flore turned her attention to Perfidia. She was moving rather oddly behind the shield. These were not random movements between the statues to magnify her defense, as Flanz-le-Flore first surmised. What was she doing? Where was she going?

Then Flanz-le-Flore saw. The two weapons on the ground. The black sword and the black bat. They emitted a malefic aura; they possessed something Flanz-le-Flore did not know. Perfidia had been moving toward them all along. The bat was right by her foot, not far from the plodding tortoise that was Jay Waringcrane. And Wendell, who kept following Perfidia, was now in striking distance.

"Wait!" Flanz-le-Flore shouted. "Make the portal there. There!" The bat had rolled onto a puddle of blood. "Make it there, now!"

"Uh! Uh!" Temporary placed her hands into her own puddle. Light flashed. The portals were connected.

The black bat fell through the floor at the exact moment Perfidia reached for it. Flanz-le-Flore reached down and caught it by the handle.

It burned like flame in her palm but she held on. Oh. Oh—so this was what it was. Dreadful. Terrible: Death incarnate.

The voice behind, much louder now, accompanied by much stronger tremors as the feet of some goliath struck the ground, shouted: "DO YOU FUCKERS HEAR ME? I'M COMING TO KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU SHITS!"

"Oh no! He's here!" Temporary said.

Snap.

The black bat changed form.

"Take this, hero!" Flanz-le-Flore threw the thing that had once been the bat at Wendell. This time he did not ignore her. His reflexes took over; he reached out and caught it effortlessly.

"DEAD! YOU'RE ALL DEAD! DEAD, DEAD, DEAD, DEAD, DEAD!"

There was no mistaking. The thing was right behind her now. Her creatures, her lovely animals, were throwing themselves in front of it to slow it down, they were being ripped to shreds and their anguished cries rang out in unison. Flanz-le-Flore went pale. That emotion of fear she felt so rarely she felt once more. There was no time to move, to fly away, to hide. Temporary's face showed abject horror at the thing at Flanz-le-Flore's back.

"DEAD, DEAD, DEAD, DEAD, DEAD—"

Wendell Noh cocked the Shotgun Mul Elohim and blasted Moloch's head off.

—

Jay was involved in some hogwash back at the entrance, but Shannon could only hope he was successfully doing whatever he intended to do, whatever made him speak with such clear-eyed resolution. Whatever he saw in that movie theater; whatever he saw in the dead bodies of those girls that'd always followed him around.

She understood the urgency at least, finally. Beelzebub taunted Mallory with it: A matter of minutes before Lucifer—the Lucifer, ostensibly—conquered Heaven. Then, perhaps, there would be no way to stop him. Then, perhaps, this world would remain disordered. Then, perhaps, everything would have been for naught.

But if behind this big bug was the power of God—

"Put me down," Shannon said to Tricia. Tricia gripped her around her midsection, carrying her back and forth at a steady ebb against the patterned motions of Beelzebub's swarm.

"It's dangerous."

"Put me down now! There's no time to argue."

Tricia hesitated a second more, then acquiesced. Shannon's dangling feet touched the floor. The statues of Lucifer rose up around her, shifting and endless in their profusion and their mirroring along the walls and floor and ceiling; only where the murk of Beelzebub's swarm grew too dense did the ceaseless repetition give way to a crackling like television on a dead channel. When dead channels still existed.

Convincing Mallory was always going to be impossible. Wasn't it? All this time Mallory kept her around as her tactician, her confidant, her partner, but at the end of the day, nothing had changed since that time in the bath, had it? Shannon was her trained pet dog. Mallory was a tempest, a force of nature, stirred only when conditions were correct, but then no technology or organization of mankind could prevent her descent upon them.

Lower down in the tower, Mallory told Shannon she was like the dukes, the ones who had always held her back, the ones who enchained her. Shannon silently apologized, then. Those words were about to be proven true.

She retrieved the Trumpet of Jericho.

Mallory caromed at wild angles, erratic, rapid, random. Or so a careless observer might think. But even a hurricane has a pattern.

Shannon blew the trumpet.

A hard, heavy iron wall shot from the floor. It emerged at the perfect time, at the perfect trajectory. Beelzebub slashed his claws and Mallory dodged away from them and into the wall. Her eyes had been elsewhere, focused on her foe, and so she slammed into it with her back. Her head bent at an angle as she ricocheted down, through a statue, and into the ground.

"What are you doing!" Tricia yelled.

Mallory's eyes turned toward Shannon. Wrath imbued her features, but no more than any other time when she entered the frenzy of battle, no more than when she darted blows at Beelzebub. In fact, if anything, her expression seemed confused. She hadn't been looking, so maybe she thought Shannon intended to help with the placement of the wall, and mistiming caused the collision. Or maybe she knew exactly the intent. Maybe only the motive confused her. The look lingered only a moment; Beelzebub swiped again, and Mallory rolled to evade, and then scrambled to escape the insects that constantly devoured her flesh.

Shannon, sole emblem of order left in this tower, in this world, sole mechanism of fate amid these madhouse escapees and their devilish fantasy, blew the trumpet again.

Again Mallory was knocked down. She remained within the insect cloud longer than before, and on her face red welts spread. Blood ran onto her shoulders. She shot Shannon the same look. It'd take only a careless swing of her sword to sever Shannon into pieces.

She didn't do that. As the confusion ebbed away, a new emotion took its place: Hurt.

All along Mallory was just like them—Dalt and the others. All along she was just like dad. Eleven years old and her cold look of reproach. First he met it with confusion; then with that same solemn pain. Then he died.

The machine cannot love. It can only chew bodies. No matter how much they, in their sad and misplaced hopes, mistake the chewing of bodies for love. Gears slot into gears solely to propagate the machine's endless motion. It isn't love. It can never be love. Love is the fantasy that gives meaning to the truth of lust.

Shannon blew the trumpet again.

This time she blocked off the angle Mallory used to escape the cloud. She bounced back a reddened mess. You have the choice, Shannon thought. Thought so loud, in case it could transmit to her, in case she might understand. You can do as the machine wants. Or the machine can crush you between its gears. Or you can obliterate the machine—but the machine is yours, and you protect what's yours, don't you? So choose.

"You're trying to hurt her!" Tricia said. Finally catching on. Shannon hadn't had time to worry about her, but she advanced toward Shannon—still a little sluggish, still not fully certain of herself—and if she got in the way it might be trouble.

"I'm doing what must be done," Shannon said.

"If you blow that horn one more time!" The lower folds of Tricia's gown were pushed aside as the long barb of her stinger emerged. "Shannon, stop it. I won't warn you again."

Between them ran a figure. "No, Tricia! You mustn't interfere."

It was Gonzago. He drew his own rapier and levied it at Tricia, though his hand wavered. Tricia stared at the point with complete incredulousness.

"She's hurting the queen."

"She is the heroine," Gonzago said. "The queen is not. She is the one who'll save us—not the queen!"

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Shannon returned her attention to Mallory and blew the horn. This time, Mallory managed to see it in time—or perhaps react to the sound—and instantly shifted her body to avoid it. Though even in avoiding it she remained within the cloud longer than she liked. Her wounds were compounding more quickly. Her forays into the fresh air were not healing them in their entirety before she submerged herself once more for a pointless volley against the immobile Beelzebub. All she needed to do was quit fighting. The choice was hers.

"Gonzago, if you abet this naked treason, I have no choice but to slay you where you stand," Tricia said. "This is not as it was when we were children. I am faster and stronger now. You'll die in an instant."

"Then kill me," Gonzago said.

For a moment, maybe, he even appeared dashing. Tricia did nothing. They had known each other a long time. There had even been talk of an engagement, Shannon remembered them saying. There was history, a friendship. Good. Anything to buy a few more seconds.

Shannon blew the horn.

As before, Mallory moved at the sound of the noise, although she was blind to the wall rising behind her. This was fine. Her abrupt shift in posture and trajectory carried her a new direction, at the same time Beelzebub's scythe came down.

Flesh split. A severed arm shot upward. The cloud of insects tore off every bit of meat before it reached its apex; it became only bone. Mallory staggered back, blood spurting from the stump.

You can do as the machine wants, Mallory. You can do as it wants. Please do as it wants. Please understand. The machine does not feel. The machine does not feel, Shannon thought, remembering Mother in the theater, feeling the hot streams of tears renew their path down her face.

Tricia forgot about Gonzago. She shot toward Mallory and yanked her back as the second scythe came down, missing them both by inches. Mallory's motions were sluggish and imprecise. Please Mallory. Please give up. Let the wrath leave you. Give up the armor and let this world be saved. Please!

A gunshot tore the air. There'd been gunshots before, but this sounded different, it sounded like the scream of death itself. Shannon's nerve failed, she whipped around to face the entrance. The big red man from the bottom of the tower, Moloch, stood there. His head was gone.

From the stump of his neck something bubbled.

—

[4:00]

Finally... you join us... Isn't this fine? This relief? This release...?

Embrace the freedom from yourself... the ultimate negation... empty and serene... Is that not what your Aspect was truly about, O Prince of Wrath? Fury... unabated fury... But upon whom did you turn this fury...? The angels, God above... or yourself most of all... Yes. Of all our brethren you were the one who sought death most...

I remember that first council after the Fall... when we debated our next strategy to regain Paradise lost... I remember well what you advocated, Moloch... Futile, empty furor... A final frothing burst of activity against Heaven... So that we might all be annihilated in an instant...

Simply give up now... cease striving... you've attained what you always wanted. The humans will prevail... it's inevitable... Beelzebub cannot stand against their power alone... So bestow upon them the respect their ceaseless battle merits... Wreath them with your honorable, ultimate surrender.

Mammon... Rimmon... Ashtoreth... They've already given in... and let's face it, their Aspects are far more diametrically opposed to mine than yours... Their desires promote life rather than obliterate it.

FUCK YOU.

FUCK YOU.

Ah... but you've lost your head, Moloch. Have you any other option than to succumb to me...?

FUCK YOU ALL.

FUCK EVERYONE.

I WON'T GO OUT LIKE A BITCH. IF I WANTED TO JUST DIE I WOULD'VE FUCKING DONE IT. I WON'T DIE UNTIL THEY'RE DEAD TOO. I'LL KILL THEM UNTIL THERE'S NOBODY LEFT TO KILL. THEN I'LL DIE. ONLY THEN WILL I DIE.

Ah... so there's still a spirit within you... very well. Do as you feel you need... I can wait. I can always wait...

WAIT IN HELL DUMBFUCK. WATCH THIS SHIT. I'M WINNING THIS SHIT SINGLEDHANDEDLY MOTHERFUCKER. THEN I'LL DIE. I'LL DIE WHEN I'M FUCKING DEAD. I'LL DIE WHEN THE FLAME OF THIS WORLD IS EXTINGUISHED AND ALL THE LOVE OF GOD IS CINDERS.

If you insist...

WATCH.

—

A smile grew across Wendell's face. It swallowed the whole span, and his eyes behind his giant glasses boggled with joy. He pumped his gun and fired a second catastrophic shot into the big red man's body, then a third. Manic laughter slipped out between the blasts as chunks of red goo burst off and splattered the mirrored walls.

"Wendell," said Flanz-le-Flore uncertainly, "Wendell dear."

The red shimmer of the body, of the blood, played across the lenses of Wendell's glasses.

"Nothing left," he laughed, "until there's nothing left. The devils! And the fantasy! Until the machine's in order again. Until it all proceeds in order!"

The big red body bulged. The places where it was blown apart bubbled, and bright red ichor poured out like a flood. It streamed over the mound of inert corpses. At once the flesh of the corpses disintegrated, leaving only bones.

The ichor continued to flow and flood, more kept coming out, the body discharged more than could fit within a body, sweeping to wash over them all, and with it came the echo of a hateful, spiteful laugh in synchronization with Wendell's as he fired again and again and again.

Flanz-le-Flore seized Wendell from behind and floated up to the ceiling moments before the flood of ichor crashed over where they had been. Temporary, who had watched everything with a complete lack of comprehension, began to move without realizing. Her unsteady gelatin legs gained a little rigidity as the ichor approached. She wheeled around and ran—

—Directly into a statue. The hard stone bounced her back and as her feet flipped out from under her she watched the statue's smiling pleasant face, as though in a taunt.

Temporary dropped directly into the portal she'd created to grab the hero's bat. Before she knew it, she was popping out the other side. A hand seized her by the nape of the neck and yanked her away as the ichor streamed out the portal after her.

"You're with me now," shouted the devil—the one Mayfair called Perfidia. She was shoving something into her coat. A shield, followed by a case full of papers on the ground. "Run!"

They were running. Temporary didn't trust herself not to run into another statue, so she kept on Perfidia's heels. Perfidia dove forward, scooped a small cute tortoise off the ground, and tucked it into her coat. Her coat seemed to hold a lot of things.

But that wasn't important! The red swell was coming. It frothed amid the statues, it devoured every inch of flesh it touched. There were a few living humans among the corpses, they ran and crawled and tried to get on the big table, some escaped, others fell back screaming into the waves and—Temporary tried not to look, tried not to think, tried to focus solely on following Perfidia. Now more than ever, she couldn't trip. She couldn't trip!

The statues were a maze. They were everywhere. Perfidia dipped between them, Temporary dipped to follow, their delicate fingers snagged her shirt which ripped as she fought to follow through a bramble of stony outcroppings. All the faces of all the statues were staring at her, smiling. There were more than before, there were so many, everything ahead of her was fine-carved stone, the same person in a thousand different permutations, they thronged together, even Perfidia started to have difficulty finding a route through them. Temporary and Perfidia cleaved to the mirrored wall to at least have one side that was stable but then a solid wall of statues barred their path, one leaning against the wall and twenty more grouped so densely as to be impenetrable. All smiling. It made Temporary shiver. She wanted to go away. She wanted to go anywhere else. Sansaime—Sansaime!

"Shit," Perfidia said, "we're boxed in." The statues stood so high, they could not be climbed. She pulled one of the cases of papers from her coat and rifled through them with extreme speed and dexterity. "Where is it. Where the fuck is it. Shit! Did she destroy every useful paper?"

"Ah!" Temporary gripped Perfidia tight. Behind them, over the heads of the leering statues, the ichor crested. "What do we do?!"

"Idiot! Make a portal! The wall's a mirror!"

That was—that was right. "Where—Where do I go?!"

"Anywhere idiot! But remember this room, cuz we're coming back!"

There was no time to think. Temporary clapped her hands to the mirrored wall. She stared back at herself, her hair a mess, the crystal surface turning red all over, while Perfidia waited impatiently beside her, still sifting her papers.

Where to go. Where. Someplace with water—or a mirrored surface.

It was the first place that popped into her head. The crystal wall gave way to a portal. Temporary and Perfidia toppled through—and then down.

Down onto the hard surface of the basketball court. A tent cushioned their impact. People clambered away, aghast. Seated in the first row of the stands ahead, Sansaime glanced up from her video game machine and set Temporary with a hard, cold, and confused glance.

A cry arose. Temporary turned her head up. From the screen of the giant television suspended over the court, which had become a portal, the red ichor flowed.

Oh. Yeah. It would follow them through, wouldn't it? Now everyone—this entire arena full of refugees from the violence outside—was in danger.

As always, Temporary really fucked it up.

—

This place was awful. The voices of the dead spoke loudly here. Dead, dead, dead, all along they had been surrounded by them, and now that they went finally still and peaceful only the one voice remained: There's no need to hurt anyone, okay? In the theater, Mademerry saw that woman speak again, to her son and daughter. Nobody else seemed to see. Mayfair and Demny, who sat nearby, watched some play or pageant on the stage. Mademerry saw her, though. The woman she slew. Avery Waringcrane. Only a faint outline.

When the lights went on, Mayfair came to her senses first. She blinked, and stood up, and stretched, reaching her thin and pretty arms over her head while expelling a great big yawn—then she abruptly remembered herself, snapped at Demny, and demanded pursuit of the hero and heroine. Mademerry, however, had remained rooted to her chair. She could not escape the stupor that enveloped her. Mayfair had not noticed or remarked upon her in her haste, but that was how it was between them now, she considered Mademerry so little, and the lack of consideration only plunged Mademerry deeper into her seat.

Then something came to her. A wisp. A slight, silent voice: I don't blame you. The voice of that woman.

Mademerry's head tilted. She sought a source. Saw none.

I don't blame you. It's all very confusing for you, isn't it? You're different from everyone else.

"You..."

I knew what I was doing when I stood in front of you. I had to protect my friend. I understand what it's like to feel like a balloon, floating around with no connection to anything. Weightless... drifting... every day like the last... every day missing anything to remember.

Yes. Mademerry remembered. Floating in that milky pink egg sac as she waited to be born.

It's so confusing, isn't it? But when you find something finally that matters, something you connect with, you'll do anything for that connection. Won't you? I think I understand it well...

A single voice spoke to her in that drifting emptiness. A single voice that gave her identity, meaning, and purpose. When later that voice rejected her, it drove Mademerry mad. Then she saw that elf, and her feelings only grew more frenzied and incomprehensible.

Your friend is confused too, I think. I don't know if she really knows what she wants. So go. Protect that thing you hold dear... Protect it.

Mademerry had woken up after that.

Now, she hurried between the statues in this strange place. The statues encroached upon her, they hemmed her in, and the red deluge that came from the Prince of Wrath pursued her. Her wings, which she rarely used, extended and prepared to carry her above the heads of the statues, but she reconsidered. If she entered Flanz-le-Flore's line of sight it might all end in an instant. Though the statues impeded her progress, they also kept her hidden. She would not get a better opportunity.

She placed Mayfair and Demny on the crystal floor. They were both much smaller than before: a pink salamander and a newborn fawn, respectively. They both looked up at her expectantly, though Demny even in this state maintained her frigid demeanor somehow. The rush of the red flood grew louder at her back, so Mademerry wasted no time. She reached into her clothes and retrieved the relic Mayfair had wordlessly implored her to steal: The Eye of Ecclesiastes.

It had not been pleasant acquiring it. Mademerry had dug through the body of the nun Lalum, and while she never met Lalum personally, it still proved a gruesome affair. Now, though, it was worthwhile. She spoke the magic words: "Nothing new under the sun."

Mayfair returned to her form. Mademerry spoke again: "Nothing new under the sun," and Demny returned as well—though she still had only one antler from when the hero destroyed her other one. Mademerry had set them back the minimum amount of time, as it would become more difficult to explain afterward otherwise.

"The eye," Demny said in her harsh and emotionless tone. "So you did defile her body—"

"No time! We have to get away from that red flood—it'll devour our flesh!"

The moment she spoke, the liquid seeped through the nearby statues and swept over some of Mayfair's corpses, which had been split in half by the Staff of Solomon; instantly they became skeletons.

Mayfair began to speak, but Demny moved much quicker and hoisted her off the floor. Demny then turned, as though she intended to barrel away and leave Mademerry behind, perhaps as retribution for the grave robbery Mademerry had committed—compounded on all her other sins Mademerry supposed it would prove fit punishment. As long as Mayfair was safe, the syrup of this liquid wrath might devour her; but Demny loosed a sharp sigh and then gripped Mademerry too, albeit by the collar of her shirt.

Rather than find a way through the statues, Demny smashed through them. Even as stone heads flew from stone bodies, those smiles remained serene and surrounding. Mademerry had little time to look, however. Mayfair, seated on Demny's back, leaned forward and pointed a finger under Mademerry's chin to get her attention.

"The sword. Do you have Demny's sword?"

"Yes—yes, Mayfair!" She took it from the folds of her clothes where she had stashed it. Instantly Demny snatched it up—and to keep her other hand free, she tossed Mademerry onto her back, where she rode right behind Mayfair.

"Good," Mayfair said. "You've done well, Mademerry. Very well." She smiled—a real smile. It only lasted a moment, but that smile swelled Mademerry with life. "We've lost the Staff of Lazarus, though, and the Mustard Seed is useless in here. Our only option is to push forward. We kill Beelzebub and take the Divinity!"

"Yes!" Mademerry wrapped her arms around Mayfair's waist to hold on as Demny smashed through more statues. Mayfair did not react, it was as though she didn't consider the action at all beyond its utilitarian purpose of ensuring stability, but even so it emboldened Mademerry. "Queen Flanz-le-Flore is still behind us, I think, and the hero is a tortoise. If we move fast—"

"There's another obstacle," Demny said.

The obstacle became abundantly clear once Mademerry looked past Demny's head (on the side without an antler). Beelzebub remained where he had always been, but there were others already fighting him. Or perhaps not fighting him. They stood just beyond the range of the cloud of insects, engaged in argument. Their conversation took on an absurd character, because one of the participants lacked an arm, which did not prevent her from gesticulating wildly and letting blood flick upon the statues.

"Well." Mayfair looked where Mademerry looked, on that person with the missing arm, on the queen, on her mother. "I knew it would come to this. At least she's already weakened. Demny, hold nothing back. We cannot allow senseless sentimentality to make us waver here."

Demny nodded, before bounding over the last group of statues and coming down on the group with her black sword bared.

—

[3:00]

When they asked Sansaime whether she wanted to accompany them on their grand adventure to the tower, she said no. She'd rather play video games.

It was so much easier that way. You dive into a pit, you die, you do it again. On the rare occasions you live you get a shining moon and a number goes up. Stimulation without the burden of emotion. Now she lacked even the displeasure of seeing Avery's killer skulking around from time to time. Out of sight, Mademerry slipped into nonexistence. Negated herself from Sansaime's mind. In such fashion Sansaime reached peace. Even as bombs rocked the world outside this fortress. The priest, Vance or whatever, ran everything now.

Should have known it wouldn't end so easily. As her avatar—Mario—faced off against a monstrous black dragon atop a tall tower, a gasp arose among the people who lived here. Their pointing fingers led to the giant television over the court. It had, somehow, turned on. This fact interested Sansaime enough to let her gaze linger. The television hadn't worked before. If they fixed it, maybe they could watch a movie. She would like to watch another movie. The video game was fun, but all things grew tiresome. A movie she merely need sit and let sweep over her.

The screen showed a room shining with crystal and filled with statues. Before Sansaime could look any closer, two figures fell out and landed on the court below.

Her hands gripping the game console lowered as she watched the fallen figures ignore their bruises and roll to their feet. One was a devil. That alone caused the people seated on the court to scream and run away. The other was—

Tch. That fucking elf again. Temporary.

(On the screen, Mario died to the dragon's breath. Oh No!)

Out of Sansaime's lassitude something sparked. That clumsy oaf. Always gnawing at Sansaime's heels. Always seeking friendship. As if she didn't know what Sansaime was and why she and her could never coexist, as if she didn't know what happened the last time Sansaime was en route to Faerie Land...! Sansaime's teeth clenched a moment, then loosened. No. It didn't matter. All was past. All was released. Everyone she ever cared about died and without them to prop herself against what was she? Nothing.

"Sansaime, get out of here now!" Temporary shouted, before the devil grabbed her wrist and dragged her into a stumbling run.

From the television screen poured a wave of red fluid. It came down upon the scuffed surface of the basketball court and splashed in every direction. Most of the people on the court had already started to flee the moment they saw the devil, but those who were slower became swept up in the deluge—and instantly turned to bones. Their flesh sizzled and dispersed in the translucent fluid. Unmade in an instant.

The liquid swept toward Sansaime and she remained seated and watched it. Good, she thought. Here's an ending for her at last.

"Sansaime!" Temporary's voice called from far away. "Run! You're our queen, Sansaime! You have to live!"

Queen? What a joke. What a fucking joke.

Beside Sansaime stood the little kid who lent her his video game. He gawked at the encroaching flood, frozen to the spot. Looked like he'd die with her.

She leaned back in her chair and expelled a final, pent-up breath as her face turned up to the television screen. Ah...

Something in the screen caused her to sit up with a jolt.

No. How? It couldn't be—not her. She must see it wrong. It must be one of the statues, distorted by the red liquid still flowing past. Then it spoke, and erased all doubt:

Sansaime... Please. You're not alone... Remember? You were going to have that child and be a better mother... I was going to help you...

But you left me, Sansaime thought.

Sorry Sansy, said the voice of another figure—another statue. I always was a lying cad when it came to women though, wasn't I? Not all bad though, hey? You've done what I never could. Made it out.

You assholes. You fucking assholes. All of you left me.

I couldn't take you to Faerie Land, said a third voice, buried, hidden within the other two. I'm glad I failed. My sweet little girl... Please. Make your own Faerie Land.

The screen shut off. It showed once more only a screen.

An electric shock ran through Sansaime and she bolted upright, intending to scream some hideous foul language at the shades before they fully vanished, but the moment she moved she saw the fluid rushing toward her and her body kicked into action unconsciously. She seized the child next to her and leapt onto the next rung of the stands moments before the wave crashed. Droplets flew up and landed on her legs and back, they sizzled, she screamed and staggered on, over the rows of chairs as she clambered higher with the kid in tow.

The arena was large, which meant it would take time to fill up, even with so much red liquid pumping through the screen. The routes upward were clogged by the refugees as they tried to climb over each other to reach higher ground. Chaos, disorder everywhere. No sign of that Vance—he was never around when needed.

"What are we going to do?" the kid in her hands asked. His Nintendo hat had fallen off and floated atop the growing pool of liquid, beside the game console Sansaime dropped.

These idiots. Like the fire at the megachurch where Avery died. Fleeing and blocking themselves from escape. Sansaime perched atop the backs of two seats, feet balanced precariously. She stood tall, able to survey the entire arena. No more sign of Temporary and the devil. Had they been consumed?

Their queen, Temporary had said. Oh, what a laughable concept. But as the humans teemed in such disarray...

"Quit shoving! This way, through the rows. Yes, this way! Come on now. To the control room. We'll escape that way. Move!"

Her voice cut crisp and clean through the mayhem. Somehow, the humans saw her standing atop the seats, her body long and tall and still showing no sign of the life she harbored within her, and they turned to follow her command.

—

"Sansaime! Run! You're our queen, Sansaime! You have to live!"

No, Sansaime could die in Hell for all Perfidia cared. They needed to live first and foremost.

She dragged Temporary along. No particular direction; they weren't staying here. This whole situation had gone to shit but Perfidia was no longer going to let setbacks get her down. She had her papers back at long last. She'd retrieved the thing that was once hers.

It was through these papers she sifted now.

Though Mayfair had rearranged them in their cases, Perfidia made them and she knew the most efficient ways to sift them. Her fingertips glided over only the edges of each browned page as she ran, revealing only the barest sliver of ink, and from that sliver she instantly knew which page was which. She was looking for one page in particular.

It wasn't the first one she'd looked for. When encountering the problem "Jay Waringcrane is now a tortoise," her first thought for resolution was, obviously, to recover the Eye of Ecclesiastes. Jay forbid her from fishing it out of Lalum's corpse and given his mental state at the time she refused to push him on it but she knew without a shadow of a doubt Mayfair lacked his squeamishness over his dead not-girlfriend. She'd cut the spider in half if she had to.

When Mayfair got turned into a newt or salamander or whatever, though, the eye hadn't dropped out. So where the fuck was it? The deer lacked it too. And while Mayfair had destroyed or lost (probably destroyed) the pages on herself, her deer, even Mallory and the hornet and seemingly every other fucking character who mattered, she hadn't destroyed the page on the eye itself. As she and Temporary ran through the Boardroom of the Princes, she'd sought the eye's page. Finally, she found it.

So who had it? The dragon girl of course. Mademerry. The one Perfidia sure as shit didn't make. Damn!

Scratch that idea then. Mademerry hadn't been transformed by Flanz-le-Flore, which meant she'd definitely have fixed Mayfair and Demny by now. Perfidia had nothing to deal with the deer. She needed another way to turn Jay—and his weapon, which Flanz-le-Flore gave to Wendell—back to normal.

What other ways were there?

There was one. Oh what a turn of fate. That such a seemingly inconsequential decision made so long ago was about to save her now. Save everything now. Save this entire stinking world.

Her fingers flipped through her papers. Flipflipflipflipflip. Difficult maneuver mind you. Running, searching the pages, and dragging Temporary along. So Perfidia didn't realize the bright EXIT sign she scrambled toward pointed to a door that the humans had barricaded with heavy crates. She skidded to a stop and glanced around. They were in a narrow corridor between two high rows of bleacher seats. Essentially, a dead end.

"Uh oh," Temporary said stupidly, like the ditsy moron she was.

Perfidia dropped to her knee and dug through her papers in earnest. The arena's size bought them a little time, the ichor would have a lot to fill up before it reached them, but it poured out fast from the screen.

"Close the portal you dumb fuck!" Perfidia screamed. She couldn't believe she had to scream it at all, that Temporary hadn't already had the thought herself, but of course! It was Temporary!

"R—right!"

Temporary clapped.

The portal shut off, but that only slowed the spread. This was Moloch's ichor after all, it wouldn't go placid so easy. Perfidia bit her lip. Come the fuck on where was the paper. It couldn't have gotten destroyed too right. Why? This one hadn't been involved in anything related to Mayfair since the monastery. It had to be here. It had to be!

"Uh, ah!" Temporary said. Perfidia didn't waste time looking up to see what she was reacting to.

"Get ready to make another portal," Perfidia said.

"There's no mirrors here, or liquid!"

Except the ichor, Perfidia thought, but Temporary couldn't make a portal out of that. She focused everything on her papers. Without the one she needed it was all—

There!

At the same time her eyes scanned the page to discern where this particular individual was now, she reached into her coat. Ubik left almost nothing useful, but he did leave some crap that would be useless under any other circumstance. Her hand came out of the coat gripping the neck of a wine bottle. Some ancient vintage.

She smashed the bottle onto the floor. The wine shot out, creating a glossy, reflective surface.

"Now!" Perfidia yelled at Temporary. "Make a portal to—" She read the appropriate line on the page and would've sighed with relief if she had time. It was someplace Temporary knew.

"Make a portal to the elfin court!"

—

Mallory whipped the stump of her arm and slashed a spray of blood across Demny's eyes, blinding her for long enough to dip under the arc of her black sword and drive the Sword of Faith into her stomach. The blade burst out the deer's back and fired an extraneous beam of light skyward to glint off the crystal ceiling, but even this level of gratuitousness was not enough. Demny, undeterred, loosing only a shallow grunt of pain, gripped the blade embedded in her body with her free hand and tried to pull it even deeper as she angled the black sword to lop off the queen's head. Even one-armed, though, Mallory only wrenched once and retreated less than an inch out of its arc.

"They've given me a useless strip of metal I see," Mallory said, panting, blood running down her body and her armor, the jagged scar on the edge of her lip smiling. "Come on girl, how about we trade weapons. Then it's fair, no?"

Demny said nothing.

Beelzebub said nothing. He did not move or interfere, though the battle raged just outside his range. He presided; he watched. The buzz of his insects crackled like static.

The statues watched too.

Shannon formed a wall that cut the room in half. Her goal was to keep the flood of red ichor from reaching them. In a chamber of such neat and perfect dimensions, it was possible to prevent even a drop from oozing through an airtight barrier of steel or iron. The problem was that Flanz-le-Flore remained on the other side of the wall, hovering over the flood. She wanted to reach the other side and kept snapping the wall to nothing, to paper sheets that floated into the tide, only for Shannon to blow a new wall to replace it. Then that one was snapped, and the next, and each time Flanz-le-Flore—and Wendell, whom she carried, and the red liquid—inched closer, closer, closer.

And time was ticking. Ticking. Ticking. Where was Jay? Perfidia? Dead? The entire wall to her right had briefly opened up and shown the interior of a basketball stadium, maybe he escaped through there, but it was impossible to know for sure. Shannon had to recalibrate. The primary goal was killing Beelzebub and reaching the Divinity at the top of the tower, if such a thing truly existed like they all kept claiming. In the end, it didn't matter as much whether Mallory, or Shannon, or even Mayfair got it. They fought now, but all of them assuredly wanted this devilry to end—well, maybe not Mallory.

It was hard to think when she had to keep blowing this horn every second though. She couldn't let up for even a moment. So what was the point? She couldn't offer a truce in this state. If any of them would even accept it. Mallory would not. Dammit Mallory. Shannon tried to speak to her in a language she understood and it worked but not fast enough.

And Beelzebub watched.

He simply sat there and watched with his wide compound eyes. His claws twitched against the crystal, scratching it. His wings fluttered. He wanted in. He wanted to join them in this mindless battle, he hated to be excluded. But he was a creature of infinite patience. Wanting and never having.

Demny did everything in her power to prevent Mallory from reaching Mayfair. That left an opening, which Tricia exploited. She shot at Mayfair, already incensed beforehand and now brought to a boiling point, and would have perforated the princess with her stinger if the dragon girl didn't get in her way and take the blow instead. Like Demny, even an impaling didn't stop her, and so Tricia and Mademerry revolved in a slow, almost dance-like motion without either accomplishing anything against the other.

That was it. The situation. A stalemate. Nothing happening. Time ticking. It couldn't continue. If it continued like this much longer they'd all lose. Didn't they see? Shannon wanted to scream at them but couldn't. She had to blow the horn. If only Gonzago was here to blow the horn for her, but even the time it would take to hand it off would let Flanz-le-Flore through and—

Gonzago!

Oh my God Gonzago!

He was making his move!

A sharp and sudden thought penetrated Shannon that this could not possibly end well but in the hoarse, throat-rending retch of her tenth consecutive horn-blow that thought turned to cinders. Gonzago was running straight at Mayfair, sword drawn. Every single fragment of his effete, dandyish existence peeled away. In his eye was a look of sheer composure and determination, the gaze of a man of action, a vision unburdened by doubt. Demny could not break away from Mallory. Mademerry could not break away from Tricia. But there was nobody else, nobody left to protect Mayfair. Mayfair wasn't even looking at him, of course not, he was Gonzago, he was nobody, a tagalong, a glorified butler. Only as his pounding footsteps pushed him into her periphery did she turn and grow aghast at his manifestation as an entity to be noticed and reckoned with.

Shannon kept expecting it to fall apart. For Gonzago to trip, slip, something stupid and comedic. Nothing. His feet moved with perfect sureness. Mayfair staggered into a statue and pawed at her clothes, pulling a piece of brown parchment from her pocket, but it would take too long to even unfold.

"Mademerry!" she shrieked.

Mademerry twisted her head around from her grappled lock with Tricia. She couldn't run to Mayfair's aid. Tricia ensured it. Instead she retrieved a small shining sphere—the one that had once been embedded in Viviendre's eye. Tricia instantly struck Mademerry's wrist; the eye flew out of her grasp, ping-ponged between the statues, and disappeared somewhere.

The paper fell out of Mayfair's fumbling hands and her fingers went to her throat as she stared in white horror.

"Mother!" she shrieked.

Instantly a beam of light shot across the room. Gonzago stopped mid-step. He peered down at his blade, befuddled. The sword was cut clean in half; he held only a handle and a small sliver of steel. The statues past him fell apart. Whatever spirit had possessed him in that brief moment departed, and in a daze he sat down upon the floor to ponder his broken weapon.

Flanked by the static of Beelzebub's insects, Mallory stood. A wreck of a woman, more scar and blood than flesh, her sword outstretched trembling before her and her eyes rooted to it as though she herself did not understand what had just happened. Beside her, Demny tilted in the backswing of a deflected blow, suspended in that stagnant instant as the insects swarmed, and swarmed, and swarmed into a black mass of ceaseless motion beside her. For a moment all stood still.

Then Demny swung the thorny mass of antlers on the side of her head directly into Mallory.

The jagged spearpoint tips impaled Mallory in a dozen different places, finding in their mass alone the myriad tiny points not covered by the Armor of God: hip, arm, armpit, collar, neck, throat, chin.

Demny jerked her head. The antler mass snapped off near the skull. Mallory, entangled with it, hurtled through a statue and then another—both turned to rubble. Her body rolled and skidded to a stop.

Nobody moved. Nobody said anything.

Get up, Shannon thought. Mallory. Come on. Get up.

Tricia howled something unintelligible. She tried to break away from Mademerry, but now Mademerry became set on keeping her from moving.

Get up Mallory. Mallory. Get up.

Mayfair slid down the side of the statue she leaned against. She clutched her face and peered through spread fingers.

Get up. Get up, get up, get up.

Demny watched.

Heal her you shitty armor. Shitty fucking Armor of God.

Beelzebub watched.

Mallory did not get up.

—

[2:00]

Ha! Yes! This was the life! Look at these idiots. Ah yes, languishing in abject misery at the dissolution of their union with the whole. Tiny twigs without even the roots to stand upright. Look at them! One elf traced curlicues in the sand. Another swayed her head and drizzled slobber onto her knees. Not a sense among them. How did it feel, losers? How did it feel to lose everything?

For the past, say, thirty-six hours Olliebollen Pandelirium had sat on the clear glass throne that once belonged to the Effervescent Elf-Queen and harassed the few remnants of her court with such invective. By now though Olliebollen's throat was hoarse and it was no longer any fun. The elves never even looked up or demonstrated a modicum of consciousness. Boring!

The throne was about ten sizes too big for Olliebollen, but it sat anyway, kicking its feet over the edge. In the silent moments it became all too clear Olliebollen was still a twig itself.

After leaving the hero at Whitecrosse, and giving Lalum the stupid spider the slip after she tried to re-recapture Olliebollen for no-doubt nefarious purposes, there'd been a lot of wandering, a lot of going places, and lot of doing nothing. Olliebollen first went to the court of Pandelirium, which was, of course, still totally empty.

Still totally dead.

Still totally lonesome.

The idea was Olliebollen now inherited the title of Queen—or King—or Something—and thus it was his/her responsibility to give birth to new faeries and repopulate the court, but...

So eventually Olliebollen had decided to go somewhere with someone to talk to, and other than human society there seemed to only be one place left for that. Here. To yell at those stupid terrible elves. Which happened. A lot. And now Olliebollen hunched in the throne, propped its head in its hand, and kicked its feet.

The elfin court was a weirder place than Olliebollen expected, a hybrid of architecture natural and not. Ornate crafted tiles covered the floor, and a fountain stood in the center with a carved statue of the Elf-Queen pouring water from the eyes on her spread hands, but there weren't any walls. Just trees. Even there the collision of styles didn't cease, though. The trees were so well-kept. The leaves trimmed in uniform fashion, not a branch—or twig—out of place.

When you looked up between the break in the canopy, you could see that ominous black tower even from here. That hadn't been intended in the original design, no way.

Bah! What a bore. Time to go back to Pandelirium. Try again with the whole repopulating thing. Plant that twig and sprout a mighty tree. Make something whole and vibrant and alive. This place with its sad, sad elves was just another reminder.

As this thought graced Olliebollen's mind—not for the first time—the dire lifelessness of the well-kept courtyard broke. A something burst out of the fountain. Two somethings! Olliebollen bounced off the seat and a spray of startled dust cascaded around it.

The somethings flung themselves over the lip of the fountain and sprawled onto the tile sopping wet from the tears that spurted from the Elf-Queen's image. The first something barked at the second: "Cut off the portal now!"

The second something quickly clapped. The strangeness that exuded from the fountain in the brief moment after they appeared dispersed. Other than these two foreign elements, everything became once more placid.

Olliebollen's shock settled too and it squinted to scrutinize these new somethings. With a slump of the shoulders the realization dawned: They weren't new at all.

That dumb elf from the forest with the stupid name. And the Master.

The Master took one glance around the court and settled her eyes on the throne. She snapped at Temporary to stay by the fountain and sprinted (full speed!) at Olliebollen.

"So you decided to come at last, huh?" Olliebollen said.

"No time to argue." As the Master skidded to a halt she pulled something out of her big coat. The thing she pulled out was a tortoise. "Sprinkle your faerie dust on this thing now!"

"Nah."

"Do it!"

Olliebollen stared at the tortoise. It didn't even wiggle its legs as the Master held it; it looked like it just wanted it all over with. Of course Olliebollen knew from just one whiff who that tortoise was.

"I told the hero I'm done. I got what I wanted. Why would I ever—"

"I'll make it possible for you to have kids," the Master said.

Olliebollen shivered. It was like she read Olliebollen's mind. Well, duh. Of course she had. She was the Master.

"I'm the only one who can do it. Fix Jay and finish the adventure. No negotiating. We've got less than two minutes left. Do it now or get nothing."

That was all she said. With authority, she turned on her heel and started running back toward the fountain without waiting for Olliebollen's answer. She yelled at Temporary to get ready and Temporary leaned over the fountain obligingly.

Olliebollen's hands clenched at its sides. Oh. That Master. That tricky, tricky Master. So that was why Olliebollen was—this way. Incapable. Inert. A final trick to exert control even after the elves were defeated.

Well! That's the Master for you.

Truth be told, Olliebollen had been bored anyway.

Before the Master cleared half the distance back to the fountain, Olliebollen zipped forward. A trailing arc of rainbow powder descended upon her, the tortoise, even the stupid Temporary elf who'd accrued no small amount of dents and bruises probably just from falling over all the time.

The Master grunted as the tiny tortoise she held turned into a full-fledged human. She and the hero tumbled against the ground but the hero was already rising, already staring straight ahead at the fountain with a look in his eye that made Olliebollen shudder. He didn't say a word to her. Not even "Hi, how do ya do!"

"Temporary! Do it!" The Master reached into her coat again. "Hero—it's all you now! Take this!"

She pulled out the human prince's shield relic and hurled it with all her might at the hero. The hero, only barely slowing his run, turned and caught it at the same time Temporary placed her palms on the surface of the fountain.

The water became a portal. The hero vaulted the edge and flew through and Olliebollen flew after him into a totally different world.

They dropped out of the ceiling. Jay landed on a crystal chandelier that swayed under him and Olliebollen plopped onto his shoulder. No time to take in the scenery. A bunch of stuff was happening. There was a wall that kept disappearing and reappearing, and Flanz-le-Flore was behind it. With that Wendell guy.

"Shannon," Jay shouted below. "Drop the wall NOW."

The wall dropped. Jay swung forward on the chandelier, wielding Makepeace's shield, and launched himself at Flanz-le-Flore.

—

Condemnation. What a worthless one to deliver a blow this dreadful. Nobody at all. An urchin elevated by means of magic. Bah. But Mallory could not move her body.

The deer reacted before any of the others, breaking the stillness of the moment. She plodded toward Mallory and raised her sword to make a clean end of it. Mallory shot her a glare—best she could muster.

"What are you doing!" Mayfair said.

"Finishing her off," said Condemnation. In those eyes were everything. Such utter coldness. Lurking behind them was nothing at all, but also everything altogether, like a thousand eyes watching. A thousand corpses, a thousand women, maybe even the eyes of Makepeace and Mayfair. Who knew in this strange place. Let it end.

"We're running out of time." Mayfair's voice came out slightly stammered. Lacking all poise. "I order you—turn your sword on Beelzebub instead. We must make it through him in less than two minutes!"

Condemnation said nothing. Those eyes struck Mallory with all of her sins, and she had many, almost as many as had been inflicted upon her. A peace in it. Mallory was sad to see the eyes turn away as the deer threw herself against Beelzebub. Let's see if you can do more than I did, Mallory thought. Even with that sword of yours. Not a thing in your eyes will hurt one such as that.

In the distance, Shannon kept blowing her trumpet. What coldness to continue such an asinine task despite her lover falling. Or perhaps Mallory thought too highly of herself. Or perhaps she thought too lowly of Shannon. Tricia said something—"The eye, where'd the eye go!"—and buzzed between the statues searching the ground. So the eyes that replaced Condemnation's above Mallory's motionless face were those of her daughter, Mayfair.

"Stay away from her," said Mayfair's dragoness attendant. "She may still be dangerous."

Mayfair heeded not the warning. She drew nearer. Her face pale. "Mother—you saved me. Why—"

Why indeed.

(In the edge of Mallory's vision, the deer thrust her black blade at the center of Beelzebub. The strike parted the swarm around him, but the tip bounced off his body. A dry chuckle escaped the devil. "The prototype?" he said. "Garbage! Unrefined inferiority to itzz final form! I feed on zzuch a zzhadow. I am itzz patron zzaint!")

Why indeed.

How much had Mallory hated you, Mayfair. Had you been her shadow? Or was Mallory merely yours. Your dreams unmolested by the rigors of reality. Your fantasy allowed to grow within its tiny plot of land. Mallory had dreams at your age too. She had not been allowed to dream them.

(Beelzebub watched.)

Ah... perhaps that was the root of it. You possessed the thing Mallory once had but lost. In the vacuum of her heart Mallory held nothing save the light emptiness of rage.

"Where is it!" Tricia said. "Where did it go?!"

"Help her find the eye," Mayfair said to Mademerry. Mademerry took one more look at Mallory, decided she was no longer a threat after all, and disappeared.

All of it was leaking out now. Leaking out these thousand holes. Mallory knew she could never speak the words she ought to Mayfair. Had neither the strength nor the capacity. Only because she could not speak them could she realize them. Besides, she had something more important left to say and needed to be able to say it.

Her hand reached up and gripped Mayfair's. There. That was it.

Mayfair's hand softened. Perhaps the thought transmitted. Perhaps it was not too late for Mayfair. Why did it ever come to this? Seeking her own catharsis. Seeking it at the expense of all others. Inflicting on her children the horror of her own life...

The mirrored crystal ceiling above vanished and the sky appeared overhead, ringed by trees. A young man carrying the Shield of Faith leaped down and landed upon a chandelier. For a moment she thought—it must be Makepeace. The spirits of the dead swirled strongly in this place; had she not seen them play upon the stage for Shannon and her brother? But it wasn't him.

"Shannon. Drop the wall NOW."

The incessant blare of the Trumpet of Jericho pealed once more and ceased. Makepeace—no, it wasn't him—well he swung from the chandelier and out of sight.

Shannon ran over and knelt beside her. Now it was time for Mallory to say what she needed.

"Take—take my armor."

"The armor's the only thing keeping you alive," Shannon said—at the same time Mayfair said something similar, so that their voices overlapped and they glanced oddly at one another.

"No—time," Mallory gasped. God could she use a little water. "Take it—take it! You must—you must put it on. Shannon! It must be you!"

Shannon's face might rend a heart. Poor girl. So bitter and formal, but even she could be broken down, they all could, anyone could. Her nature returned to her swiftly. She stiffened. She glanced another way—perhaps at Tricia, who was thankfully preoccupied on her fool's errand—then nodded at Mallory. Yes. Good. That was why it must be you, Shannon. That was why you needed to wear the armor.

"I don't understand," Mayfair said, "Demny will break through Beelzebub soon enough. Why are we removing the armor? Shannon! Shannon, stop!"

Shannon ignored her, bent over, and fumbled with the breastplate.

Mallory only regretted wasting so much of their time already, hurling herself with no point—even she knew it to have no point—against that ever-watching Beelzebub. Now that everything was dripping, dripping, dripping out of her, all the anger and resentment, she wondered why she ever did any of the things she did. A husk held together by a suit of armor. Ah. Did that ever describe her.

Goodbye, Mayfair.

The armor came off. Mallory shut her eyes and flowed away.

—

The steel wall disappeared, then reappeared. Again. And again. Snap. Trumpet. Snap. Trumpet.

Flanz-le-Flore held Wendell by wrapping her arms around him from behind. Despite her small stature and minimal musculature she managed to keep him afloat above the slowly rising tide of ichor. The corpse of Moloch, now lost within the sloshing red sea, continued to expel more and more of it. When the room's crystal wall had disappeared, much drained into the basketball court on the other side, but now that the wall was back, the room was filling up. The fluid was three-quarters of the way to the ceiling. It drew nearer and nearer to their dangling feet.

Carrying Wendell was within her capabilities, but she could not move with agility while doing so. That was how Shannon Waringcrane managed to keep her penned by this frustrating reappearing wall. The heroine was shrewd. She formed her walls from the ceiling down, ensuring Flanz-le-Flore's view was blocked as soon as possible and preventing her from transforming that irksome and wretchedly unmusical trumpet into something far more unpleasant to blow upon. That strategy possessed consequences for Lady Waringcrane, however. She was not simply trying to keep out Flanz-le-Flore. Moloch's ichor threatened to encroach upon her too, and by prioritizing her walls in such a manner, the ichor flowed further each time before the wall reached the floor to temporarily block it. That improved Flanz-le-Flore's forward progress. A shame the ichor were not less viscous. If it flowed more like water—or blood—Shannon's gambit would have fallen apart instantly. As it stood, however, Flanz-le-Flore needed only patience. She would reach the other side of the room faster than the liquid reached the ceiling.

The ichor. What was it? No ordinary substance. No—perhaps not a substance at all. The physical manifestation of an emotion? Nonetheless, not something Flanz-le-Flore "knew." Given what it did to the poor creatures who followed her when it touched them, she rather disliked the idea of knowing it, but it may prove necessary to sacrifice a finger (obviously not her thumb) to learn.

She would do whatever was necessary. Her goal came so close within her reach, such a simple collection of fools barring her path. Wendell's black gun capable of laying waste to them all, even the false insect Beelzebub—for neither he nor the creatures swarming about him were such as one would find buzzing in contented plentitude within her forest.

Falsehoods and mockeries. Life in lifelessness. Like that wretched gun Wendell carried. A tool of negation.

This dead world required a queen of life. How could they not see? Why had they always rejected her? Who better to revitalize the broken and the empty than the Faerie of Transmogrification? All ills alchemized to something else. A release from the suffering that bound them—a catharsis! Fine and frolicsome players to gambol about her stage while she and her hard-earned king consort watched upon a modest throne. Perpetual pleasantness no matter the season. Endless variety to titillate every jaded palate! The theater in the room below had played such nasty little stories, but even those had been enough to quiet them all for a time. All these bitter enemies who now killed one another in pointless strife, they had felt peace watching, had they not?

Flanz-le-Flore's court was such a place, and she would welcome all to fill her rows of seats. Her entertainment would be delightful and full of life, and they would be full of life to watch it, and peace would reign, and strife would come to an end. How could they not see? She promised them exactly what they always wanted and had the power to make it so from the most mighty to the lowliest—How could they not see? Even Wendell Noh, her hero, locked her out of his thoughts. Even him!

Even I had children who left the paradise of my court... said a voice below.

Her eyes flitted. Reflected in the surface of the liquid, reflected back on the ceiling, a face she recognized, a face she hated: the Effervescent Elf-Queen... Before Flanz-le-Flore opened her mouth to reply, she rippled away into nothing, and had never been there. For she was dead. The dead are not alive. They cannot be anything. Inert. Empty! These phantoms!

The wall ahead flickered. In the brief instant it was gone and she could see the room ahead, a face glittered in the shards of a crystal chandelier. A face she thought she recognized. An old man, wearing the armor the human queen now wore, and why not? She was of his lineage. He said nothing. His face was gone the moment it appeared, exactly as he had left her life the moment he appeared, unable to hear her begging for him to stay with her in perpetuity, to sit upon her throne together and watch the frolicking of the beasts upon her stage. Yet he went to the Elf-Queen. Why? What did she offer that Flanz-le-Flore could not? Was it simply that the Elf-Queen was willing to let him go?

She waited for the wall to drop again, so that she might see John Coke's face once more upon the chandelier. Her fingers snapped and the iron became a thin sheet of wax that crumpled. But John Coke was not there.

Instead, upon the chandelier, stood the new hero: Jay Waringcrane.

"Shannon. Drop the wall NOW."

The wall dropped. It did not reappear. Jay Waringcrane launched himself through the empty air at them, wielding nothing but the Shield of Faith.

—

[1:00]

In this room, Da-rae spoke. Dalt spoke. Wendell ignored them. Tuned their voices out. They were dead. They no longer existed. If they spoke to him it was an extension of the fantasy that needed to be eradicated. Wendell could no longer conceive of the differences between one set of machinery and the other. The gears interlocked and could not be extricated. But firing the gun cut through all of it. He learned that when he killed that big red devil. Firing the gun released everything he felt.

Shannon's brother swung off the chandelier toward them. Finally the wall was down and he had something to shoot. The brother caused everything. It all started because of him.

Apologies, Shannon, but this must be done.

Wendell aimed the black shotgun. Not at the brother himself. No. He carried that unreal shield, the one that absorbed bullets like nothing.

A different strategy would be required.

The brother—what was his name. Jay. The brother Jay—was at the far end of the long room. Between him and Wendell was one other chandelier. Both chandeliers remained suspended from the ceiling even though the ceiling now no longer appeared to exist, but that was simply another unreality, a falsehood, Wendell could not become mired in such asinine horseshit. Jay's path was clear. He intended to jump onto the second chandelier and propel himself from there to attack Wendell.

So, immediately after Jay launched himself from the first chandelier, Wendell shot the chain that suspended the second.

What a simple, elegant, logical solution. Jay Waringcrane could not fly through the air. He needed something to land on, and the chandelier no longer served as solid ground. Wendell's head cleared watching the perfectly ordinary effects of gravity take hold. All confusion dissolved at once. The chandelier was composed of a thousand tiny crystal parts arranged in rings and tiers. Mathematical in their composition, and as they fell the dangling shards twisted in perfectly circular patterns as equivalent forces enacted themselves upon each and every component. Jay Waringcrane's legs churned through empty air as he came down upon something that was no longer where it had been. The same force of gravity that worked upon the chandelier worked upon him.

Oh, God. What had happened. How had he gotten so confused? The drapery they placed over this world could be whatever they wanted, but the underlying structure remained the same.

A sigh of release seeped out of him and the mad wrath that reddened the insides of his eyeballs dispersed.

Then the chandelier started to rise again.

No. No it didn't. That didn't happen. That did not. It was wrong. It was not correct. It could not happen. That was not real. It wasn't. No.

Flanz-le-Flore's fingers were snapping. But nothing was changing. She screamed: "No. It's you?! It's you?!"

A tiny thing that could not exist, a little faerie Tinkerbell flitted erratically around Jay Waringcrane. It spewed puffs of glitter and powder. Within that cloud the chandelier rose to the exact spot where it had been, as though time reversed, and the chain that Wendell's black gun had blasted to pieces reformed into a single unbroken series of links as though nothing ever happened. As though Wendell had not exerted the will of reality upon this place.

The voices of the dead swarmed in his ears.

"Disappear," he said, and then he fired his gun like a maniac.

Jay bounced off the second chandelier moments before it blasted to pieces from two, three, four consecutive shotgun blasts. The crystal shards swirled in every direction but only until the growing cloud of pixie dust worked its fake not real magic and sent them all back to the center.

The shield, sporting the white cross of Christ, slammed into Wendell with momentum that had no right to exist. His gun went flying out of his hands. The shined and polished metal of the shield crashed against his chest and against Flanz-le-Flore's hands, which were wrapped around him. Meat sizzled and Flanz-le-Flore screamed. Her grip loosened; Wendell plunged down. Down, down, down.

Into the ichor of wrath.

It enveloped him. Warm. Smooth and soft. An enfolding embrace. Everything became red.

Ah.

The voices of the dead kept speaking, whispering, but he could not hear. All he heard was one voice, the voice of the ichor itself: DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE.

So he was dying. As he watched his hands dissolve painlessly, as he watched his glasses float away from his face, he understood.

A single snap rang out. Everything red became something else: clear, white, like milk. What had once been wrath was now transformed. To what?

The voice of the ichor quieted. It didn't disappear. But it quieted. Instead of a droning, thunderous boom it said simply: Ah. So this is peace.

Peace. The voices of the dead, the voice of Da-rae and the voice of Dalt and the voice of all of them, they finally became audible in this quiet peace. And he understood at last: Wendell Noh was no longer part of the order of things. He was the fantasy now.

—

Shannon Waringcrane put on the armor. Mallory lay dead at her feet. Mayfair knelt by her mother and shed tears. Shannon understood her pain, but that was all.

In this armor she felt power. Nothing clung to her except the resolve to finish it.

A voice screamed from above. Perfidia: "Thirty seconds!"

Jay's body appeared over the edge of the last wall Shannon erected to keep the ichor out. From the angle, she thought he was somehow standing on the ichor itself. Only then did she notice the ichor, which had oozed over the top of the wall, was no longer red. Instead it was a milk-white color, and it no longer flowed—it was solid. Jay actually was standing on top of it. He turned and faced her.

In his hand he held his baseball bat—the black one, the one with the power of death.

He had the weapon. She had the armor. She'd put on the armor partly because Mallory asked, but also because time was running out. Thirty seconds—it wouldn't be possible for Jay to climb down, suit up, take out Beelzebub, and continue to the Divinity in time.

Under the brim of his hat Jay's hard eyes stared down at her. He realized exactly what she knew already.

"Throw me the bat," she yelled.

It was the only way. They had no time. She wore the armor. Only she could fight through Beelzebub's insect swarm. She needed the tool to kill him.

About seven minutes ago—an eternity ago—Jay had refused the option of giving Mallory his bat. He didn't want her reaching the Divinity and warping the world in her crazed image. Shannon, despite her intimacy with Mallory, perfectly understood his hesitation. She understood better than he did; she'd seen Mallory up close. A world of endless war, endless violence, endless death—that was what Mallory would make.

It was not what Shannon would make. Jay knew that. Despite everything, despite their constant arguing, despite a mutual detestation for one another and what they stood for, he knew that.

For only a second did his eyes scan the room in front of him. Then he decided. He threw Shannon the baseball bat.

Shannon ran track and field in high school, but she was not particularly coordinated. Under normal circumstances, she would've been reluctant to try and catch something so dangerous whirling toward her. With the armor, though, everything changed. The bat seemed to float in slow motion. She reached out her hand and effortlessly caught it by the handle.

She turned to face Beelzebub.

Beelzebub turned to face her.

The entire time he was watching. Even as Demny barraged him with an onslaught of attacks, which fell ineffectually against his body. Silent, with the omnidirectional sheen of his compound eyes. The weight of that gaze landed upon her, upon the corpse of Queen Mallory, upon them all living or dead.

Shannon took a single step and it carried her instantly ten feet toward the curved hulking husk of an insect. His flies buzzed, forming a thicker shield in front of him, targeting Shannon specifically even though Demny continued to clink the sword this way and that. Shannon plunged into the mass. Instantly a million tiny bites opened up across her body, gnawing at her, devouring the flesh from her bones at the same time the armor regenerated it. The pain remained, enough to make her stagger, but her foot hit the ground and she regained her posture.

Everything around her was black and flies and buzzing and pestilent. Like the static on a television screen late at night when the movie in the VHS machine ended and the credits played and nothing at all was left but Mom and Dad were both asleep and you were too young to know how to turn the machine off yourself. Back when you still had a VHS machine, before the onward march of technological process rendered everything of a certain age obsolete, and in its obsolescence it was allowed to decompose slowly watching its shinier, newer replacement work magic on an entirely different scale. A machine beyond functioning, a machine capable of generating only random noise, all its orderly little parts slotting together exactly as intended and nothing, not a single thing to show for it.

Mother. Mallory. Shannon swept Jay's bat and cut through the noise. Flies dropped dead in waves as she charged forward blind, her eyes shut lest they be devoured. She no longer needed them. No longer needed their approval, their care, their comfort.

Something, some sense imparted to her by the power of the armor, told her to jump. She jumped. Beelzebub's scythe claws reaped the empty air where she had stood instants earlier. They moved so fast when he used them against Mallory, but now they were slow, so slow she intuited their exact position in space and landed upon one mid-swipe to launch herself off and up. Toward those compound eyes.

Mother.

Mallory!

Here's something to impress you!

She burst out the congealed mass of insects and brought her bat down on Beelzebub's head.

His head exploded. His eyes remained, a perfect pair of speckled spheres. The incessant buzzing, buzzing so incessant it had droned in the background of her mind since she stepped into this room, dropped dead in an instant. The eyes hovered before her; they twinkled. They spoke:

Nonsense. It has already been twelve minutes. It is too late. It is all futile. It cannot be only seven minutes. Twelve! The time is up! I fulfilled my task. Why won't he tell me I did it? How is it still within seven minutes? Why? Why won't... why won't he... where... O—Lucifer...!

The eyes imploded into specks that sparkled and went dull. Shannon dropped to the ground.

It was—so easy. A single hit. Perfidia somewhere screamed: "Fifteen seconds!" Nothing but a single staircase lay ahead. At its apex light shined—Divinity.

Even a half-formed glimpse of that light proved to Shannon instantly Jay and Perfidia hadn't lied. That was power beyond comprehension. With it anything could be done in this world. Anything. The machine set aright again. The working order restored. Efficiency, production, perfection, all on a scale never possible before. Advancement and prosperity, purpose and meaning and—and—and love. Yes, even love might have a place.

The deer, Demny, came at her from the side with the sword.

Only the enhanced reflexes of the armor roused her from her reverie in time to parry the blow. She skidded back and Demny pressed upon her, wielding the sword like a maniac, matching Shannon's speed, and though she clearly lacked professional training Shannon lacked it too and she was far more unaccustomed to her weapon. It took everything to keep the tip of the blade from nicking her, and not even the armor would protect her from a nick from that blade. Her skin still stung from the bites, and though she healed quickly, with only fifteen seconds left—was the deer insane? Was she trying to annihilate the world?

"Princess," the deer said calmly. "The way is clear. Run."

Mayfair, still kneeling beside her mother, blinked. Her motions appeared comically sluggish in Shannon's view. Understanding crept nonetheless. She rose. She ran for the stairs.

No. Not her. That power couldn't be given to her!

Demny beat Shannon back, ensuring Mayfair's safe passage. Shannon glanced around for someone, anyone to stop Mayfair. Anyone could do it, she was a teenage girl. Gonzago remained seated in stunned confusion or perhaps despair. Tricia was still among the statues with Mademerry. They both remained looking for the eye—they hadn't even realized Mallory died. Perfidia and Temporary peered down from above, but they'd break their legs if they tried to jump from that height. If Shannon still held the trumpet a wall might help, but she dropped it before she charged at Beelzebub.

Mayfair was already halfway up the stairs. Even if Shannon shouted Gonzago or Tricia back into action—and in her current form she knew she could—they'd take too long. Perfidia was screaming the seconds now, counting them down: "Ten, nine, eight—"

Something sprinted past. Back straight. Arms and legs bent. Pounding footsteps across the crystal. Something flew off its head and swirled in the air. A hat. A hat with the Cleveland Browns logo.

Jay Waringcrane ran for the Divinity.

—

When Jay destroyed Flanz-le-Flore's arms with his shield he'd needed someplace to land. That someplace was Flanz-le-Flore herself. As Wendell dropped into the ichor, Jay slammed against her and gripped for dear life. The shield fell out of his hands and they spiraled at a strange angle, twirling into the liquid.

Flanz-le-Flore screeched as the liquid touched her. She went in from the right side, and instantly her upper arm and shoulder dissolved. The side of her face touched to the surface and sizzled as Jay fought to stay atop her and keep from being submerged himself. The liquid seeped against his jeans and boots. He glanced around for somewhere to go. Olliebollen flitted uselessly overhead and gave him a shrug as if to say, "All you now buddy."

Then Flanz-le-Flore lifted the half-disintegrated remains of her hand. Immediately before the tendons ate away into nothing, pressed her thumb and forefinger together and snapped.

Jay thought he would turn into a turtle again. Instead, the red liquid became white. It ceased seeping and flowing like a living thing; it was solid, hard, inert. Jay pushed off Flanz-le-Flore's body and onto his feet.

Flanz-le-Flore was a wreck. He shivered, remembering when he hit her with his bat at her court, how her face melted in front of him. Then he shook his head. It didn't matter. What mattered was ending this.

"Why," Flanz-le-Flore groaned. "Why..."

Olliebollen floated over her, watching without a word.

Jay went to the edge of the white stuff, where Shannon's wall blocked it. Shannon stood below, wearing Mallory's armor.

"Throw me the bat," she yelled.

And let her seize the Divinity? Jay sized up the situation. Every moving part still functional. No. He saw the angle. He saw exactly how everything would go.

Jay threw Shannon the bat.

Then he jumped down the side of the wall.

Shannon thought she knew everything. She'd formed the wall at a slight slant. Like a dam. She lacked even the least comprehension of the engineering necessary for a modern dam, but she had a layman comprehension that dams were slanted—to better disperse pressure or something like that—and so made her wall slanted.

He slid down the slope. The slick white substance Flanz-le-Flore generated out of the ichor reduced his friction. He built momentum, the mirrored crystal floor and all the statues of Satan staring up at him grew close in an instant. His legs hit the floor hard, buckled a moment, but he straightened and stabilized against the nearest statue.

"Fifteen seconds!" Perfidia screamed.

Beelzebub was already dead. And, exactly as Jay expected, Demny or Condemnation was fighting Shannon. Clearing the way for Mayfair, who was up and running for the stairs.

Jay bent forward and sprinted.

The way was choked with statues of Satan but somehow none seemed to be in his path, a direct route opened ahead, his speed built, his body shifted into a flawless athletic form he never before knew. "Ten, nine, eight," Perfidia said. His hat flew off as he dashed past Shannon and Demny. The latter turned as though she planned to stop Jay but this time Shannon pressed forward and attacked and Demny had to respond or die and Jay bounded onto the first steps.

"Seven, six, five."

Mayfair was near the top. There was no new room at the top, only a bright orb of light. Jay took the stairs three, four at a time. Mayfair reached out for the light, her hand incapable of casting even a shadow upon it, and Jay reached too and wrenched her back by the shoulder. She fell away and he propelled past. Something whizzed out and struck his head, it bounced away, it was something the size of a plum pit but yellow, Mayfair had pulled it out of somewhere and thrown it in desperation, it did not matter.

"Four, three, two!"

Jay climbed. Here it was. Here it was. Divinity! His hands groped. They too were lost in this divine light.

"One!"

Jay seized Divinity. Everything changed in an instant.