Imagine being some kind of space-station. A weaponized, fortified, AI-controlled, space-station, roughly the size of your average, non-magical, moon. Now imagine a bunch of mayflies, those small, short-lived, little flitting things that show up over fields and around bodies of water in the summertime, decide to try and attack you.
Mind you, these are ordinary mayflies, and it's not even a swarm of the things, it’s somewhere between 10 and 20 ordinary mayflies, suddenly trying to attack you. They don’t have any special powers and they are only roughly as intelligent as you’d expect a mayfly to be. How do you react? Do you even immediately recognize that you’re being attacked?
After all, you’re just a space-station, and even if insect infestations are included in your programming it’s a bit of a question whether 10 to 20 mayflies counts as a full infestation. I mean, there’s no water on board, and it's honestly a bit of a mystery how they even got to you.
That’s the kind of situation I randomly found myself in, when I was taking a walk within the wilderness of a certain planet. One moment, I was taking in the beauty of the planet’s alien nature. Suddenly these weak, (disgustingly weak even for mortals) weirdos had jumped out from a hole in space-time and they were trying to attack me. I did what the “space-station” would do, and erred on the side of caution. ‘
Wiping the group out like they were a serious threat, because who knows, maybe someone out there might have come up with something extremely clever and discovered a weakness that I hadn’t been aware of.
However, the fight took barely seconds, and as I held my attacker’s souls in a quarantined space for question, observation, and potentially future shredding if need be, I found myself wondering exactly what the hell had just happened.
“Mhm...So, that’s what it was?” said a voice at my side. Making me jump.
It was the extra. One of two extras, funnily enough. The second extra hid in her shadow. The angel that I’d been advised to take along with me, on the say-so of my wife, my bosses, and the Angelic Host that for whatever reason had parked itself annoyingly close to our mountain in the Prism Spine. Her name was Ellison Scholar. The one that I barely noticed was hidden behind, within, and around her, was called Florence Moody. One was a half-angel. The other was a fallen angel. Yet the two still served with the Host, as was oddly more common than you’d think.
Ellison Scholar was...as her surname would suggest... a scholar. While officially speaking, she was here to render aid, in a part of the Empty-Bell Complex that was in some vague way lacking sufficient support, I believed her real purpose was studying me. I wasn’t sure why she was studying. My best guess was that our Empty-Society had somehow drawn some not-entirely-good attention from the Angelic Host.
“What?” I said.
“Hm? Oh, sorry...I happened to take a look at some of the souls you were locking away. I hope you don’t mind. It seems our enemies within the Dark Song Orchestra have proceeded to try and infect the minds of the mortals being born within this world, to try and get around your defenses that way…” said Ellison.
“Huh...I never thought they’d stoop to corrupting the flow of souls….That’s really risky,” I said. Surprised.
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I quickly began to read that area of the world’s meta-data and I was floored by how reckless our enemies were being. Touching the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth directly was something to be done with extreme caution, because the cosmos was quite sensitive to such things. It was easy to suffer from a backlash of epic proportions by doing so, and I had no doubt that a direct attempt at turning a portion of the newborn souls born directly in a world into their soldiers, in clear violation of the laws that protected free will, would have been extremely costly for them.
Which was why I took no small pleasure, in twisting the knife by neatly removing their handiwork from the Empty-Bell Complex, and creating a series of protections that would forestall any follow-up attempts to corrupt the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. After all their efforts were reduced to nothing, I added injury to insult by triggering a karmic backlash in the worlds that had been affected. Basically, tossing a pebble into the secured areas our enemies had been invading, and causing the cosmos to react.
“Hm...Okay, that’s resolved now. Thanks for the head-up,” I said. Nodding towards Ellison.
She laughed. The sound was gentle, and just slightly musical. Reminding me of why angels were way up there in the standards of immortal beauty along with the elder-fae, and the most powerful devils of pride and lust.
“What?” I said.
“You’re an odd one. Thanking one of the host for getting you to correct a cosmic imbalance...It’s a bit like thanking a bee for buzzing around and collecting nectar,” said Ellison.
“Ah...I see,” I said. Vaguely seeing it, but also not really getting what was so funny.
The kindness of the angels was partially due to their nature. They needed their environment to be peaceful, stable, and orderly. They needed the worlds they inhabited to be filled with beneficence, and their culture adapted to reflect that. It wasn’t to say that there weren’t angels who were genuinely kind, and good, and upstanding, but their very natures inclined them to stand on the side of cosmic “rightness” as a default. Their selfishness manifests as benevolence and the pursuit of the greater good, no matter how bright, or bloody, that might end up being. Which made me all the more concerned regarding the Angelic Host’s interest in me.
“So…” said Ellison. Blushing a little.
“Hm?” I said. Getting startled again because I’d gotten distracted inspecting the data, energy, and laws of the Empty-Bell Complex's cycle of life, death, and rebirth. I hadn’t really been able to take a good look before on account of not wanting to have that seen as an invasion. However, now someone else had stepped on the landmine ahead of me, so for the time being, I was able to properly look deeply into this most hallowed, and most secretive, portion of the cosmos.
“Uh, what is it?” I said.
“Er...Um, When does sexual stuff start happening?” said Ellison. Looking a little embarrassed.
“.....” I blinked.
“Um...I beg your pardon,” I said.
“Well, I was sent to seduce you, right? But...Like we haven’t done anything yet…” said Ellison. Frowning. Reminding me that for the most part angels were generally non-sexual beings. Often reproducing by simply making a new angel from the data of an old angel, or sharing data, to construct new angels. The ones that fell and had offspring generally were in mortal guise and were thus susceptible to the temptations of the flesh. Or they fell for their partners emotionally first, with the sexual interest coming afterward.
“Huh...Er, well, first I’d need to get to know you better as a person...and then I think we’d go from there,” I said.
“Ah...I guess that makes sense,” said Ellison. Nodding.
I continued my walk while my mind whirred away at a million miles per hour. I sent data on what I’d discovered to the Division’s HQ, then I looked through all of the Empty-Bell Complex’s core-programming, and meta-data, to see if there’d be any other attempts at cleverness by both our current foes, and the gaggle of others who no doubt were hoping to fly below the radar while our Empty-Society was distracted.