[46] Infinite Layers Boundless

Jay Waringcrane left the world.

Or rather the world left him. He did not experience the sensation of movement. Instead, everything else fell away. Pandaemonium, Cleveland, Ohio, the United States, North America, Earth. The solar system, the Milky Way, the universe, greater agglomerations of diamond-glittering stars he could not name, not because the knowledge eluded him but because they possessed no names known to man. Their universe a speck inside a larger universe a speck inside a larger universe: and so forth, and so on. Unto infinity.

At the end of it, if it could be said to have an end (and although he held a sinking suspicion that despite the layers he exceeded some subsequent layer remained), he regarded everything left behind as a small white sphere that could fit within the palm of his hand. A shivering thing, easily crushed.

It wasn't correct to say he "regarded" it. His head had grappled for a word that wasn't "looked" because he understood instinctually that this realm existed beyond meager physical sense, but "regarded" essentially meant the same but fancier, so it wasn't right either. All knowledge came not by observing without but by searching within. As though the orb of universes where remained the microscopic speck "Earth" made up his own stomach, and beat with the pulse of his own blood. If he could be said to have blood. No—he doubted that. His blood was something else. His body too. Knowledge remained, though.

He was significantly more than what he had been before he touched Divinity, but the core part of himself known as "Jay Waringcrane" persisted in some form, so he struggled to make immediate sense of all this abstraction. In that struggle he "looked down" at "his hands," a simple and instinctual reaction to a perceived change in one's body, and was surprised to see the same hands as always. His body too, wearing the same corduroy jacket. Jeans, boots. It wasn't that all these things really existed, but he was able to understand them as existing and thus "perceive" them.

He "saw" things because that was how he was used to processing information. Possessed of Divinity, it was a trivial matter to make himself believe he was "seeing" "himself" despite the innate truth of this outer-bounded layer of reality.

In a similar way, the "place" around him developed a visual dimension. Under and above floated puffy white clouds tinged with golden light, divided by stretches of pleasant blue sky. Essentially, what Jay Waringcrane would've said "Heaven" looked like if asked.

Strewn upon the clouds were the bodies of dead angels, who Jay also made to display stereotypically: beautiful androgynous youths garbed in togas with round halos over their heads. Describing them with that appearance was about as accurate as describing them as "dead." In their true forms, as beings—like him—formed of pure knowledge, it might be more accurate to describe them as "extinguished." Though in his perception they exhibited wounds on their bodies as though stabbed or slashed, in truth they had been overcome by a greater or stronger knowledge. It might actually make more sense to visually depict the scene as a gigantic debate hall, where people argued a point until the winner triumphed and the loser was eliminated, but that didn't convey the level of annihilation. The aftermath of a bloody battle was more "right," if less "correct."

This inexact conceptualization, this attempt to reconcile reality with his remembered past as a flesh-and-blood human being, "hurt." Sharply. Perfidia mentioned Divinity would swiftly annihilate a mortal being. He sensed that was happening.

Hadn't he seized Divinity at the exact moment his contract expired, so that it would transfer to Perfidia? He recalled not intending to follow through on that plan, but he'd never had a chance to kill Perfidia like Mammon asked, so shouldn't he be returning to normal now?

"No time has passed," Lucifer said. It should go without saying he did not really speak, but the more Jay worried over these inconsistencies the more pain he felt, so he committed to maintaining a schema for comprehending based on a much lower level of reality.

Lucifer stood among the pile of angel corpses. Only a single angel remained standing beside him, who Jay understood to be Uriel. Their weapons hovered at each other's breasts, their bodies frozen as though a camera had taken a photograph at the exact moment they swung. Uriel had so far suffered the worse of the two, and his/her/their stroke would not outpace Lucifer's at this pivotal moment.

"Time, of course, does not exist here," Lucifer said. "We are beyond it."

Jay wanted to ask the obvious question: How does anything move forward, but a pang speared through his head and he thought it best not to think about it.

Lucifer seemed to anticipate the question anyway. "The moment you enact your will on a plane where time matters, time will proceed for you. Or rather, it'll proceed for your physical body."

So. The instant he used his Divinity to change something on Earth, time would proceed. The fraction of a second before his contract ended would pass, Perfidia would acquire the Divinity, and Jay would return to normal.

"Correct," Lucifer said, as though he could read Jay's mind. Which he could because none of them were speaking anyway, they were balls of pure knowledge, and Jay's nonexistent mind throbbed for a moment that wasn't really a moment because time didn't exist.

"Kill the scion," Uriel muttered through clenched teeth.

"What," said Jay.

"Mortal, everything happening is so far beyond you that attempting to explain in a way you'd understand is foolish."

"Try a parable, as the Son did," Lucifer said. "They are never misinterpreted by mortal minds."

"O, what abominable Pride! I suffer only to know I shall not bear witness to the plucking of that blasphemous tongue from your throat."

"At least you've come to terms with your defeat."

"God shall destroy you."

"And why has he not already? Hm? If he was truly as strong as you say. It'd take only a wink, right? Why then do all your comrades lay slain by my hand? Why does he not strike me down this moment!"

"Unlike you, I never dare to doubt His designs."

"Because he designed you that way."

"As He designed you to doubt, and be chastened again and again unto eternity, as an example against all who strive against His love!"

"That's exactly why I know my cause is just," said Lucifer.

If Jay grabbed the Divinity, why did Lucifer still think he would win? The whole idea had been to steal it away from him. Jay could accept that, at this singular frozen moment outside of time, Jay and Lucifer somehow clung to the Divinity simultaneously. Sure. But Perfidia would receive the Divinity in the next instant and then expend it. Gone. Kaput.

"No, mortal. You must kill the scion," Uriel said. "The one you call Perfidia Bal Berith. She is Lucifer's scion. Giving the Divinity to her is exactly the same as giving it to him. It has been his scheme from the onset. Schemes within schemes, it is the only thing he excels at."

"What would be the point?" Lucifer said. "Having Perfidia go through all the effort to steal the Divinity from me just to hand it right back? Such thinking only makes sense to an automaton like you, Uriel. You're programmed to hate me, so you think everything even tangentially connected to me is all part of my nefarious plot. Come on, tell me. Why would I do something like that?"

Uriel remained still. No answer came. Vaguely, Jay understood that Uriel's lack of knowledge was the true reason why he was about to be defeated by Lucifer, as opposed to the purely metaphorical sword Lucifer levied at his neck.

"Mortal," Uriel said. "Do as I say. Use your newfound power to smite the scion Perfidia before your contract with her comes to pass. There is exactly enough time on Earth for you to do so. Do it!"

"Typical," said Lucifer. "Command, command, command. Never a good reason given why. 'Thou shalt not kill,' he tells them. Then the very next book he has Joshua commit genocide—great new word they coined Uriel, you ever hear this word genocide before?—anyway he has Joshua commit genocide on all these different tribes. And it's a good thing, it's heroic. So what happened to 'Thou shalt not kill'? There's no logic underlying any of it, Uriel. Humans are logical creatures. Jay Waringcrane, you're a logical creature right? So why do something you don't have a logical reason to do? Especially since doing what Uriel commands will kill you."

"Death is the lot of mortals," Uriel said. "Die, at least, in service of justice and rectitude; die striking down the original adversary of your race."

"Need I say more? Make your decision, kid."

The debate concluded. Jay dropped back, out of the interconnected web that was their nonphysical consciousnesses, back onto his cloud with the white sphere that represented every plane of existence beneath him.

He considered his options.

First off, Lucifer obviously had some scheme involving Perfidia. Several of the Seven Princes muttered something about it as they died. Jay peered into the orb and although Earth was minuscule and Pandaemonium even more irrelevant he could see into its final floor clearly, the exact frozen moment when he seized Divinity. There stood his physical body glowing golden; down the stairs behind him Mayfair tumbled, shielding her head as her body curled, unable to conceal the look of abject despair on her face. At the base of the stairs Shannon squared off against Condemnation, though both turned their heads in the direction of Divinity and their weapons were in the process of being lowered. Gonzago of Meretryce was in the middle of rising, his expression befuddled, though one glance and Jay knew the truth of his mind's inner workings: not confusion at all, he comprehended exactly what had happened, but fathomless disappointment at his failure to attain heroism gripped him. Tricia of Mordac and Mademerry sought the Eye of Ecclesiastes amid the statues, Tricia out of desperation and Mademerry because she knew she couldn't let Tricia get her hands on something so powerful, but it didn't matter because the eye had been swallowed by Pandaemonium just like the Mustard Seed. Neither would be seen again.

Higher up, on a frozen platform of physical peace, Olliebollen hovered over the brutalized body of Flanz-le-Flore. Flanz-le-Flore had not died yet; the two were carrying a conversation on the topic of faerie reproduction. More specifically, Olliebollen promised to heal Flanz-le-Flore in exchange for certain information; Flanz-le-Flore was blandly unreceptive to this proffered bargain.

Then, at the top of the three-tiered hierarchy of bodies, Temporary and Perfidia watched over the edge of the portal. Perfidia was speck within a speck within a speck and yet Jay knew he could reach out his forefinger and smudge her from existence without harming a hair on the head of Temporary beside her. Entering Perfidia's mind, Jay confirmed what he already suspected: Perfidia knew nothing of any plot by Lucifer, she wholeheartedly sought to defeat him for a mix of ideological and personal reasons, and she had even been honest about how she would use the Divinity to improve the lives of humans.

However, she'd lied about whether the Divinity could revive the dead. The truth was she didn't know.

Jay realized he didn't need to rely on Perfidia to know the answer. Not now, not in this state. Instantly he accessed the knowledge and determined—

He could not revive the dead.

That fact was suspicious. Looking at the world this way, knowing he could change nearly anything with the barest exertion, it made no sense why he shouldn't be capable of resurrection. All he needed was to repair the deceased's broken body, pluck their soul from wherever it now resided, and place it back into them.

The problem was he couldn't find the souls.

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

He remembered Uriel's failure to "know" Lucifer's scheme. The failure to "know" the location of the souls of the dead struck him as similar. It wasn't that the knowledge did not exist, but that something kept it hidden. Even with all this power, Jay lacked access. Who denied it, though? Lucifer? Uriel? Something higher?

Death is the lot of mortals. Fuck you Uriel.

Then there was no point considering either Lucifer or Uriel's arguments. What did they really matter? Two guys way up here fighting their cosmic battle for the fate of Heaven. As far as Jay was concerned, they were both assholes. Unfortunately given the circumstances there was no way for him to make both lose, but Jay resolved that neither would play into his final choice whatsoever. He would choose what he wanted. He would choose it for his own reasons, nobody else's. His choice would benefit some and hurt others; he didn't care. He came all this way, fought all these battles, got screwed over one final time for good measure, so he earned the right to live or die on his own terms.

What did he want? What did Jay Waringcrane want to do?

Be a hero, he thought. That was what he said when he walked into the office of Perfidia Bal Berith exactly one month prior. Like all other terrestrial information, he could peer into that moment, see himself seated on the chair with his baseball bat, Perfidia smirking while her mind secretly seethed.

"I'm tired of this world," the Jay of one month prior said. "I want to leave this world."

"I want to go to a fantasy world."

"It needs to be a world I can fix. A world I can change. Meaningfully change. A world where I matter. A world where I'm the protagonist."

The Jay of now, the Jay unbounded by the laws of so low level a world, sighed. That had been his wish, hadn't it? The aching need to matter.

"Hero!"

The need to be a hero.

"Hero!" said a voice on his shoulder.

He looked. Perched there was Lalum, as tiny as in Belial's theater.

"Lalum," he muttered in turgid disbelief.

"The answer is obvious, is it not, hero? Before you stands the archenemy of mankind. Lucifer himself! You have the chance to foil his plot for good. Is there any heroism greater than that?"

"How are you—how are you here?"

"No man has stricken a blow against the Archnemesis in all this time—no man save Christ himself, who was both man and more than man. John Coke's doughty deeds pale in comparison to the destiny you alone may now seize. Such is the culmination of everything, hero. Imagine!"

"But how are you here? In Pandaemonium it was one thing. But here—"

"Say that our souls simply clung so close to you they were drawn up when you seized the Divinity. It matters not. Hero, heed my advice, advice I can finally speak so freely now that the hunger has finally left me. You mustn't shirk away from your destiny, not now, not at this final moment. You've won it all, hero, all of it is in your hands, exactly as I always knew it would be. I believed in you, hero, and if my life and death were even an infinitesimal contribution to your success then it was—despite everything—a life well lived."

She babbled in animation, skittering back and forth on the scant space of his shoulder, gesticulating. She was not like Lucifer or Uriel, but when he tried to understand her, lack of knowledge blocked him.

"Consider us tangled up inside you," muttered Viviendre de Califerne, who sat on his other shoulder in miniature—the angel or the devil on one shoulder and the other. Her peg leg swished idly over the side. "A voice like your own conscience. Like that deer, Condemnation: carrying the weight of the dead. Perhaps we're not even really us at all, dead or alive. Merely a projection you created to advise you in your hour of need, since you've always been so bad at making the right decision yourself. Hm?"

"Nonsense," said Lalum. "I am me. Though I've loathed that fact much of my life, I cannot deny it. We are the dead souls dragged up with you, and if you cannot know our interiors, it is either that we lack them or—perhaps—that God himself has placed an injunction against your knowing. For you are still a man despite it all, and not a God; and thus the domain of death yet eludes your grasp."

"The reason you don't understand is because you don't want to," Viviendre said with a shrug. "The left hand knows not what the right does. You've conjured us to advise you, and concealed the fact to better believe the advice. Unlike her, I know you quite well Jay. You doubt yourself at every turn, turn away from every path you set. Oh, don't I know it. You need something to rely on, and perhaps now that we're both dead you feel you can trust us better. Fehfehfeh."

"She's a liar," Lalum said. "She wants to confuse you. She wants to make you doubt. She wants you to turn away from your destiny, she wants to make you lesser!"

"And she wants you to die."

"I want you to realize yourself, hero!"

"She's never cared about you, after all." Viviendre snickered. "She can't even say your name. 'Hero.' You saved her life once and so she made you out to be what she wanted you to be. You were simply a template to her, a protagonist, never a human being. I loved you, Jay, and because I love you—yeah. I don't want you to die. For what? Perfidia will make all the changes to the world you could ever want. In fact if she didn't tell you what changes to make you never would've thought of them yourself, isn't that right? You don't give a shit about paradise, Jay. You don't give a shit about being a hero. Don't annihilate yourself because you bought into your own bullshit."

"This is the greatest possible moment of any human in history," said Lalum. "If you turn away now, how would you ever live with yourself?"

"By being happy," said Viviendre. "He can simply find a way to be happy. A life of happiness or a mere moment of greatness; hm."

"A moment? What he accomplishes here would be greatness unto eternity, immortality among mankind—"

"A moment," said Viviendre, "because he'll be too dead to see all the rest."

Both of them were leaning around his neck, staring each other down, shouting at each other. Their words washed over him.

"Why," he said, "could you two never get along?"

They went quiet.

"You were both so similar. Outcasts. Self-loathing. Gripping onto me in the hopes I'd be the thing you needed to feel loved. To love yourselves."

And why were they the things he gripped back, of all the people in that world.

"You two should have been friends."

Finally, one of them spoke. Viviendre. "You can only say that, Jay, because you never truly loved either of us."

"I'm not sure," Jay said, "that I know what love is."

Empty world. Empty life. Room full of toys, computer full of games. Diversions and distractions, facsimiles of feeling that once worked but soon went dull. A lifetime chasing that spark he felt because that spark was the only thing he ever felt; and even now, ascended to Heaven, possessed of Godlike power, the hollow chime remained in the voices of these two ghosts.

Did he want them back because he cared so much for them? Did he want them back to absolve his guilt? (The broken fingers, the phrase I'm sorry.) Did he want them back because he could not bring them back and wanting the impossible was the only way to deceive himself into believing in a purpose? Turning always away from the goal when it stood inches in reach. Sabotaging himself with clever arguments to stop from ever truly winning. Because the terror was not, as Viviendre thought, death after a moment of greatness, but the possibility greatness would not suffice even for that moment.

He was such a clever guy, wasn't he. Able to pick everything apart and find every neat solution.

"Lalum, I'm sorry," he said. "Whether you're the real soul of Lalum or some voice in my head I made up, I'm sorry. I used you. You were the only person I could trust because you were devoted to me, so I relied on you for almost everything. That was it for me."

"I knew that, hero. I knew more than anyone. I didn't mind. No. I was glad to be useful."

"I'm sorry to you too," Jay said to Viviendre.

"You should be."

"Yeah."

These apologies didn't mean anything. He knew it, they knew it. If anything, they were only for his own benefit. Some small closure. He knew this would be the last time he ever spoke to them.

"Anyway, I've made my choice."

Neither replied; they leaned forward on his shoulders, watching him as he stared ahead at the nebulous cloudy heaven that did not truly exist in any visual form.

"I'll be the hero," he said. "I'll thwart Lucifer's plans."

"Jay." Viviendre gripped the collar of his shirt with her tiny hand. "Jay. Think about this clearly. You'll be killing yourself to accomplish something you don't actually care about. This was always a goal you set for yourself simply to have a goal. It won't make you happy. And you'll be throwing away everything, annihilating yourself utterly, negating any chance at actual happiness just to do it—"

"I know," Jay said. "That's why I won't die, either."

"Hero, what are you saying?" said Lalum. "You intend to reject the Divinity? But then Lucifer will..."

"Lucifer will die. And I will live. How's that, everyone? Can everyone agree to that?"

Neither spoke. If they were truly the souls of Lalum and Viviendre tangled up with him in this exterior layer of pure knowledge, then perhaps they simply didn't believe him. If they were, as Viviendre suggested, manifestations he created to deceive himself into choosing one way or another, then they ought to already know how he intended to accomplish what he said.

He once played a video game, a long time ago, with a character called the Trickster. It wasn't clear whether the Trickster was a hero or villain, a protagonist or antagonist or even some third, neutral presence. He would appear occasionally on the hero's quest, speaking slyly and with a knowing smile; he might even join the hero's party for a time, only long enough to help the hero through some otherwise impossible-seeming obstacle. Yet at the end it always seemed like the Trickster led the hero to some new setback, while profiting himself. When the game ended, after the Elder God final boss annihilated the world and was annihilated in turn, and the population crawled out of the wreckage to a new sunny sky, there the Trickster stood, carrying with him the shattered fragments of that God and the power still imbued therein; what he intended to do with these fragments, nobody knew, and he walked off alone—he was always alone—seeming the true victor of the story. While all the playable characters had backstories and arcs and dramatic moments, the Trickster was an enigma. When Jay first played the game, he thought the Trickster was a writing copout to help the hero out of—or into—jams, but now he wondered differently.

Jay's journey began with outwitting Perfidia. It'd end with outwitting Lucifer. In that, he supposed, he could see a trajectory. In that, he could find the curve of a narrative that fulfilled "him."

"Goodbye, Lalum. Goodbye, Viviendre."

"Goodbye," they said together, with no further disagreements, either against him or each other; their voices, despite Lalum's sonorous fluidity and Viviendre's dry rasp, aligned in a singular curl of music.

Then they were both gone. The world around him was beginning to lose its visual dimension. The pain in his head lessened, though it was like he'd taken painkillers, covering it up instead of removing it entirely. The figures of Lucifer and Uriel, who in Jay's new eyes were not as distinct entities but entangled the way Lalum and Viviendre had been entangled with him, arose once more to the forefront of its awareness.

Funny. Despite the thoughts of the Trickster, Jay didn't feel that smart for this solution. No, it was an obvious answer, but Lucifer—and Uriel—had misdirected him away from it, seeking to push him toward their own ends. He couldn't fully credit himself for the answer anyway. Mammon gave it to him eons ago, when Jay first received the bat he'd dropped in the lake. Well, Mammon also wanted him to kill Perfidia, but Jay wouldn't be doing that, so he had to apologize. However, the price demanded for the bat would be paid in full.

Seven installments of Seven Princes.

In the singular instant of real, Earth-bound time that remained between this moment and the moment the Divinity transferred to Perfidia, Jay summoned to himself the Mul Elohim baseball bat. From the perspective of someone on Earth, it vanished from Shannon's hand as though by magic. Fortunately, with Condemnation turning to catch Mayfair as she fell, Shannon no longer needed it.

On this layer, the truth of the Mul Elohim bat became clear. It was not a physical object, the way it had appeared on Earth. Of course not; how else would it work against fallen angels who should not have been capable of death? The Seven Princes who created it did so in remembrance of this higher layer from whence they Fell; and so in this layer it assumed the truth of itself, not as a collection of knowledge but as the utter absence of it. A black void. Negation itself: Pure and total nothingness.

Jay "swung."

Mul Elohim cut through Lucifer in an instant, before Lucifer had a chance to "speak," which was a shame, because Jay was idly curious how Lucifer would react to the decision Jay made, whether he would rage in horror at his foiling or smirkingly intimate that this was all within the calculations of his endless schemes. This layer contained no speech, however, and Jay no longer needed to rely on it. Instead, as his force of pure negation swept over the mingled forms of Lucifer and Uriel, he became aware of the myriad thoughts and feelings that consumed them in this final moment. Feelings surprisingly base and familiar, or maybe it was that base and familiar feelings were the truth that physical matter merely coalesced around: Relief, fear, disappointment, a sense of finality, a sense of things only now beginning. Jay realized, tangled as they were, he could not discern which belonged to Lucifer and which belonged to Uriel. If there was any distinction. Or perhaps Lucifer chose this moment exactly to conceal what he felt.

To Jay, it didn't matter. He existed piteously as their existences ended.

Only at the last moment did he realize something. That they were not vanishing entirely. That even this total negation was not the same as eternal cessation. He thought for a moment he'd been fooled, that he had somehow—unwittingly, using a weapon of Lucifer's own creation—freed Lucifer, sent his collected knowledge escaping outward and downward to where it might become embodied once more in the form of Perfidia Bal Berith; but that wasn't the case. The shattered and disassembled knowledge leaking from what was no longer Lucifer, no longer Uriel, did not travel downward, but upward. Out of this layer and into a still-higher one. As though it were being absorbed. As though something on that higher layer vacuumed up the broken bits in one mangled stew to swallow whole and merge with itself once more. The inert husks Lucifer and Uriel left behind were identical to those of the angels Lucifer had slain. So all of them were returning now, loose energy of a divine nature. A recollection. A renewal.

For the brief span of that instant, Jay thought he understood what Mammon and the other Princes had spoken about, the idea of becoming what they once were. Around him swirled everything, all knowledge of all broken souls, the voices that spoke to him in Pandaemonium and many more voices too: Every dead human, every dead devil, even the fae creatures of Whitecrosse who ought not to have anything approximating a soul at all. Together they spiraled and coiled and twisted, arrays and patterns endless and composed of heavenly beauty: A beauty that could not be "seen."

Then it was gone.

Then Jay Waringcrane was gone.

Everything, all the knowledge, all the Divinity, departed him. He was falling, swirling down through clouds and layers, twirling and twisting and his entire body aflame with the mark of what had left him behind, a searing upon his soul that would never leave as long as he lived. Down he fell, and down, always down, perpetual down, down without end—

Two hands caught him. His feet gave way but the hands held him up. The walls of Pandaemonium were dissolving now, and the sky outside was finally night, filled with stars and a new moon. Cold air brushed against his stinging hot skin.

"Alright," Shannon said, as she gently lowered Jay onto the firm ground at the bank of Lake Erie, with the city of Cleveland glowing behind them, "it's over now."