Monarchs were clashing over Copper’s head.

With the Dream shattered by the conflict, up and down had stopped working almost completely. Without gravity or a reference frame, there was no way to keep track of directions. That was bad enough, but if that was all there was it wouldn’t be hard to keep track. But on top of that, the Dream was being bent and twisted like a two-dimensional pretzel. Distances weren’t constant numbers, and the space itself warped uncontrolably. Even if he’d actually wanted to join the fight he couldn’t.

He didn’t want to. The Monarchs were too scary.

Copper couldn’t count them properly, because that wasn’t how entities like this worked. The Fae Monarchs weren’t bound to even one body, and they were much more solid creatures than any of these things were.

At a guess, he’d say there were four of them, each gripping their claws into the dream and ripping it to shreds around them. The first, and the heaviest, was the Archangel. There was no doubt that it was the strongest, but it felt brutal and clumsy. There wasn’t a sense of balance in the structure, and it acted like a mindless beast.

It was threaded through the entire dream, deeper than the others. He could feel it inside his own skin. Its physical form, however, was a mismatched pair of wings of steel, or the impression of that. In reality, there were thousands of feathers, each disconnected from one another, but close enough you could mistake them for a coherent whole. The feathers seemed each comparable in size to a skyscraper, and were surrounded by a sparkling sheen in the air. Copper suspected it was a cloud of glass, metal, or sparks. He wasn’t sure which; it was probably all of them. He suspected the thing was still entering the dream, and would get bigger once it was truly inside.

The storm surrounded, and appeared to be trying to kill, the second and third Monarchs. Copper wasn’t entirely certain they were separate, but he was certain they were two, despite their many bodies. Seven women, each no larger than he was, flashing through the air, had been lebelled the Goddess. He could tell they were all the same entity. Nine massive snakes, each large enough to swallow him whole, had been deemed the Beast. The Goddess and the Beast felt more similar than the others, but different enough he couldn’t be certain they were the same Monarch. The Goddess’ bodies cast spells to defend themselves against the Angel and the Judge, but only rarely struck back. In contrast, the Beast’s snakes swam through the air like water, but simply allowed themselves to be hit, growing to bleed worse with every blow. They were almost certainly going to be the first to fall, but he’d seen one of them manage to bite the Archngel’s wings, for all that it was covered in massive burn scars for the trouble.

The last one was the Judge - William. Copper’s eyes seemed to slide away from him to his weapons. In one hand was a book. In his left hand was a flaming sword. There was, somehow, an impression of a crown about him, but his head was bare. He was less than twelve feet tall, but he felt heavy in the same way that Fae nobility did. Power flowed through the air around him like gravity. He lifted the book to attack the Goddess and the Beast, but whatever his attack vector was, Copper couldn’t even perceive it. Somehow, he got the feeling it was working, even so.

Copper felt very glad that he had his wing spell, and very thankful that he was beneath their notice. Unfortunately, he could also feel that he wasn’t alone.

Of course he wasn’t, Hector had warned him about this. As soon as William showed up, he would bring thousands of individual angels with him. Most of them would be fighting alongside the Archangel, but some of them would get loose. Those that did would be desperate to find allies to turn against William.

Some of them would try to tie themselves together, forming something greater than the sum of its parts. Some would foolishly charge William alone. The rest would try to shove themselves into a person, or an object, to hide, or to fight.

He was the only person in range. Absently, in the back of his mind, he could feel his bullets transforming. He couldn’t decide whether that was a bad thing or not, but in either case, he couldn’t do anything about it.

It might be better to not use his gun for a while. If the Angels did decide they minded being flung at a Monarch then they’d probably do something about it. He didn’t fancy discovering what they’d do if it wasn’t neccessary.

An Angel slammed into his mind. It was early, he’d expected them to not resort to possession until all the alternatives were taken.

It blasted him with a stream of thoughts and demands, “Entrance/pact/together/power/wisdom/fight”

He listened, but felt at the edges of it. Underneath all the scars, it was best translated as “Heroism”, with a heavy emphasis on combat. He decided “No”.

The good thing about Angels, compared to Demons, was that Angels couldn’t enter people without permission. They had their own advantages to make up for it, of course, but it meant that as long as he kept saying no, he would never be possessed.

He didn’t intend to say no forever, but he wouldn’t sell himself to something he couldn’t trust.

---

Insofar as Copper had a side - Hector had very loudly claimed that he did, but Hector was demonstrably a two-faced snake - his side was the one that was losing.

Six of the Beast’s snakes had been slain, and two of the remaining snakes were barely moving. The Goddess was doing better, but not nearly enough. All of her bodies remained alive, but six had been forced to retreat from the Archangel’s body, and that alone seemed a sign they were tiring.

The Archangel had made further progress when coming through. Copper wasn’t sure how much more there was to fit through, but the thousands of new glass rings and increasing size of the cloud were hardly promising.

It wasn’t actually getting stronger, but it was becoming more present, which amounted to much the same thing. The only meaningful difference was that the further it came, the more it could be hurt in turn, and that there would be a point where it could grow no stronger.

By now, Copper was certain that before that happened, it would have shredded both Goddess and Beast completely.

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William was occupied, at least. There was an almost constant storm of feathers surrounding him, and each one was an angel, compressed into as small of a body as they could. Every few seconds, one of the feathers would catch fire, and Copper could tell that they died.

Another Angel’s message slammed into his head, looking for him as a host. None of them had been acceptable yet, but he took every offer seriously.

This one slammed into without the courtesy of the others “Ours/Power/Stolen/Retake/Share”.

It took Copper a few seconds to attempt to parse it, but it was promising in a way most were not. “A power that should have been [Angelkind’s] was stolen. Pact with me, steal it back with me, and we’ll both share in its benefits.”

That was actually an intriguing offer, more so because it was so unangelic. The offer was genuine, and it expected him to steal back the Flaming Sword of Eden from William. He almost expected the angel to be bleeding corruption, because that was such a person-like desire, and healthy angels weren’t people.

Its soul was pockmarked with scars and scabs, but that wasn’t enough damage to endanger it, or his own soul. It made reading it a little harder, and he peered at it for seconds trying to piece together what it was. It felt subtle or abstract in a way that made it harder to guess. Even so, it felt more compatible with him than any of the others had yet.

“I’m interested. What terms do you demand?” He asked.

The reply slammed into him like seeing a contract slapped into his brain. It would’ve been at least twelve extremely dense pages long, but he interpreted it easily. The angel would own partial rights to his body, but he would keep all rights to his sense of self, and full control of the vessel. As such, he couldn’t make any similar pacts without the angel’s consent. There was also a disclaimer that using angelic power would apply the same restrictions as being an angel.

The slam of information let him get a better feel for the Angel. It didn’t quite map to “Hope”, but that was the closest word he could find. ‘Taking risks to change the world for the better’ was the farthest he could accurately summarize it, and even that chopped off a significant amount of meaning.

It was bizarrely compatible with him. It had a price, it wouldn’t be free, but it was a much better match than he believed any other Angel would be.

He wasn’t going to get a better offer, at least not in this regard. Even if he did, it didn’t completely preclude making another contract afterwards, if he received an offer worth having.

That left only one question - was he willing to fight William for this?

The answer was obvious.

He agreed, and Aspiration pulsed under his skin.

--- Eris ---

Eris had won, at least in one sense. The Metatron had been unbound just enough that it could finish the job itself, if it wanted to. That was all she could hope to do to it, and her life now laid in its hands.

For an instant, she allowed herself to hope, as a million chains shattered at once. It didn’t feel wrong to hope. The Metatron truly was greater than William had ever been, and it might have been able to shred him.

It lashed out with one of its smallest threads, and wrapped around William’s left arm. In an instant, his arm rotted and sloughed off. She could feel one of William’s gifts being ripped out with his arm. She didn’t have the insight to name his gifts, any more than he had the insight to name hers, but she guessed it was the one that had allowed him to bind angels.

Then the Metatron had shattered, violently. The Dream shattered with it, and she allowed herself to fall backwards into the Abyss. She hoped Ashlyn was alright, because Eris was in no shape to offer further help.

As she landed in the Quicksand Ocean, she realized that she wasn’t alone.

Ashlyn’s Goblin friend, Copper, had followed her, which wasn’t really an issue. Hopefully she would be able to move him to safety, and he was more able to protect himself than most of the Abyss. At the minimum, he was successfully staying above the Ocean with careful flaps of his radiant, weblike wings.

Some of the Angels from the Metatron or from William’s power had also followed her. They buzzed angrily in the air, but they didn’t try to attack her. Most of them seemed angry at William, or to merely be here by chance.

Unfortunately, William had also followed her. He glared down at her remaining bodies, his arm regrowing as she watched. He clutched his sword in his intact hand, and hesitated for only a moment before charging one of them.

William was her equal even without the Metatron, and she was almost bled dry. He was hurt worse than her, the damage to his power irreversible, but he was still almost certainly going to win. His sword was made for combat, and she suspected his third gift was as well.

Her gifts were restructured for healing and corruption, and lessened in the process.

The Crown of Corruption had once been a weapon that ripped at the soul, but she had turned into an array of gifts for her people instead. It could corrupt in a thousand ways, but not one of them could harm another. Malice’s Blood was still toxic, but it was a thousand times less than it had been before, to make its corruption into Mercy’s Blood easier. The third gift had been nearly destroyed the day she became Eris, and it was meant to empower others. She couldn’t hope to turn it on herself, and it wasn’t strong enough to balance out.

This wasn’t a fight she could win, unless William let her bleed a small ocean on him. That required still having a small ocean of blood left, and she didn’t. At this point she’d be lucky to fill a swimming pool.

She didn’t try to fight him, because she already knew she couldn’t hope to win. Her bodies scattered, and desperately fled through the most dangerous areas of the Abyss. She had a vague hope that he’d manage to lose track of some of them, or that somewhere would be dangerous enough to hurt him. She wasn’t optimistic. She expected to die.

All she could do was stall. She didn’t remember how long she spent running. She wasn’t faster than William, but she knew the terrain better. That let her stall far more effectively than she had dared hope for. William still caught her bodies, one after another. Far sooner than she would have liked, she was down to only one left.

She started preparing to throw her remaining power to K and Ashlyn, in the hope that they could finish the job she started. Then, as William caught up to her again - Copper showed up, and closed the distance to William in an instant.

William slashed dismissively with the sword. It went slid through Copper like he was nothing more than air.

Eris closed her eyes. She’d watched enough people die, and she didn’t need to see Ashlyn’s friend join that number.

“That knife is ours.” Copper said, with the horrible voices of an Angel, “You don’t get to keep it.”

She opened her eyes. Copper was unharmed. He had managed to rip the sword from William’s hands, and it had turned into a flaming knife that glowed like a star.

She let out a relieved breath, as Copper began enthusiastically trying to stab William. She began to corrupt William’s wounds to be more debilitating and his attacks to be weaker. At the same time, she poured as much power as possible into Copper, to give him a fighting chance.

William was still much more powerful than Copper, even with an Angel or two at his back, but she could try to bridge the gap.

They were both probably going to die, but at least they wouldn’t die alone.