~~Day 82~~

~~David~~

The next day. The group had grown.

Up on the top terrace edge, the mountain reached high on David's right. On his left, there were maybe thirty giant steps that went down, each growing closer to the nigh bottomless ravine at the bottom. So many steps, each ten meters wide, and a pit at the bottom of the canyon, meant the Scar was almost a kilometer wide at the highest point, where he walked now.

Kind of annoying to get from one side to the other. The demons knew it, too, so they stuck to his side. Thousands of demons walked behind him and on the lower steps, volas with little bits of armor, barely enough to cover their chests and some soft spots. The volas wielded weapons, swords and axes, but the tigers, satyrs, gargoyles, brutes, vrats, bat girls, and a couple minotaurs, didn't. Without weapons, volas weren't all that scary to fight, according to them. They could fight without weapons, so they gave them to the sex demons.

Betrayers followed with them, many naked, some wearing tattered and 'ugly' versions of the silk the volas coveted, not dyed, all shades of gray. None carried weapons, but a few carried a rock they found. Better than nothing.

Not good enough.

David reached out a hand beside him, summoned a shard of blackstone, condensed it as hard as he could, and cut it off from the ground. A sharp point wouldn't do; it'd break against anything hard. A sword or spear wouldn't do; he couldn't make it dense enough to not shatter smacking something while also making it thin enough to be wielded. But a twenty-inch club, with a thick handle and a thicker head? The most classic weapon. And damn, blackstone was heavy.

It might last a few hits against rock or metal, maybe more. It wasn't meera metal, but it was a shitload better than nothing.

He handed the club back to Daoka, and she clicked at him, tilting her head. She still had her axe.

"Pass it on," he said. "The betrayers need weapons."

"Do they?" Laoko asked, looking back. She walked ahead, the angels at her flanks. "You want betrayers armed? They are betrayers, David. Not trustworthy."

He looked back. Naoko walked with Tacharius, and she looked David's way long enough to give him a quick smile.

"We're in this together," he said. He crafted another club and passed it back. Daoka took it, handed it to Tacharius, and Tacharius gave it to a betrayer. David summoned another.

Laoko frowned, but didn't push it. Moriah glanced back instead, wearing the same frown, but probably for a different reason. Angels had issues with the damned, and it was probably worse for betrayers.

David met Moriah's eyes, didn't flinch, and summoned another club as they walked. Like it or not, they were in this together, and he needed all the help he could get.

The imps and grems grew in number, too. They came out of tunnels no one even knew were tunnels, small holes the little creatures squeezed through, but David's sixth sense mapped out their shape. Long, skinny little tunnels, some that could only fit a single imp or grem at a time; any caught meeting face to face would get into a major traffic jam.

The little demons followed beside him, getting between the legs of other demons. They were excited. Some looked at the volas and bigger demons with apprehension, but once they spotted the Las cheering and marching like a part of the group, they relaxed. They blended in, copied the Las, and mingled with the insane crowds. Some had weapons, some had armor, most didn't, but that didn't scare them at all.

If a lot of the imps and grems died, David wasn't sure he could take that.

Caera had suggested the crew take the top step of the Scar, so they did. If the angels weren't a threat anymore, it'd be easier to fight from the top where enemies couldn't drop on you. And David was happy to get away from the deep tunnels. Each was a peek either into an ongoing sin-fest, with orgies and rape and murder and devouring hearts, or caves full of caged souls, begging for freedom.

Some demons took it even further than that, and the Hellraiser decor became even more fitting. Spiked chains wrapped around limbs. Hooks dug into flesh. The screams of the dying. Flowing blood. David could only take so much.

He closed his eyes against the memory and ground his teeth. When he was in charge, this place had to change. It didn't matter that they were damned souls. Letting this sort of insane behaviour continue was unacceptable. Killing the damned for food? Fine. Torturing them for kicks? Not fine.

But how much could he change this place before the demons took issue with it? How much sense did it make to change it at all? They were damned souls. Some fuckers getting tortured were the absolute scum of the earth.

Naoko seemed okay, though. She seemed like she'd changed a bit. Or she was a sneaky woman manipulating him, like Caera thought.

Figure it out later. Get ready for war now.

David peeked down over the edge to the terrace steps below. More demons, more betrayers, and especially, more imps and grems. They all chatted among themselves, talked about the changes they were going to make when Tarkissa was gone, about how they'd no longer need to pay him tribute or bend over backward to please him and his demands. No more risky missions in the dens, getting demons killed trying to raise deadly hellbeasts. No more bringing him hundreds of damned souls he hadn't earned, like bringing a fat king his food on a silver platter. Time for a change.

After a few hours of walking and a couple hundred clubs summoned, the group came to a stop. Priscillian had come to meet them, and he didn't come alone. He'd come with a few volas, but it was the brutes, vrats, and gargoyles that were the problem. A satyr and two tigers, too, all wearing more armor than any of David's demons.

Problem for Priscillian. He'd come with a couple hundred soldiers. David had a couple thousand demons. And sure, most of them weren't ready for battle against some veteran soldiers, but there were a damn lot of them.

And David wouldn't need them, not against these fools.

"So you're the unmarked," the incubus said. No need for introductions, it was obvious who he was, with a full set of meera metal covering most of his body, heavy metal chunks strapped to him with a complicated array of leather belts. He was big, for a volarin, with a huge sword hanging from his hip. Even the spade of his tail looked big. And a couple hundred demons stood behind him on the terrace step.

"I am," David said.

The incubus came closer. Moriah and Laoko stayed in front of David. Caera and Tsila stayed at his side. Jes and Daoka were further in the back with the Las and Acelina, and the other demons congregated around them.

Conflict. This was going to be the first proper fight with Tarkissa's forces. The beginning of the war.

"I've already sent word to Tarkissa," Priscillian said. "This is your last chance to turn around and walk away."

"You think you can stop us?" David asked.

"Dealing with the tetrad and the two angels will be difficult. You? Why would I fear a human?"

Oh. The demon didn't realize David was legit.

David stuck his hand out to the side, summoned a spike of blackstone, molded it into a club like it was made of clay, broke it free from the ground with a silent note, and handed the club back. Daoka took it without question, passed it back, and the club disappeared into the crowd behind them to find another unarmed betrayer.

The incubus's eyes widened for a moment. "You're... like the unmarked coming at us through the Red Pits, from the Navameere Fields."

"I am. I figured the demons who spotted me fighting angels had rushed ahead and told you by now."

"Word has reached my ears."

Laoko laughed. "And you thought the demons were exaggerating."

"I did."

Well, at least this incubus was honest.

David pointed a hand at the incubus and summoned his armor. In a red glow, black metal encased David, replaced his red toga with spiky black armor decorated with small rubies, and red silk hanging from between the joints. A black wizard's staff with spikes appeared in his hand, ruby jewel head already pointed straight at Priscillian. The incubus's eyes opened wider.

"You have two options," David said. "We fight, and I kill you all." If he could do it without summoning the void aliens. "Or you let me pass, and I kill Tarkissa."

Priscillian hissed. "You want to kill Tarkissa?"

"I don't want to. I have to. He'll stop me from passing through the Scar."

Apparently, the volarin hadn't heard about that part of David's goal.

"You just want to pass through?"

"Yes."

"Tarkissa might--"

"Even if Tarkissa said he'd let me pass, you know damn well it'd be a lie. He'd just be looking for an opportunity to grab me when my back is turned."

The incubus shook his head. "You underestimate his capacity for negotiating."

"Liar!" someone behind David called out. Tacharius stepped up and flicked his tail. "Priscillian is a liar. Tarkissa is a psychopath, and he's only gotten worse with the decades. He can't be trusted."

"He can be trusted!" Priscillian took a step closer, but jumped back when Moriah raised a hand and summoned her armor.

A flash of gold lit everyone's faces, faded, and revealed the mikalim in her gold, white, and silver armor, sword in her right hand, shield in her left. One wing still smaller than the other didn't stop her from being terrifying. She pointed the sword at the incubus, blade so polished it was a mirror.

"The Heavenly Islands trust no spire ruler," she said.

Intimidating, but the incubus stood his ground. "That's funny, because angels visited Tarkissa only a couple weeks ago."

Moriah lowered her sword. "Explain."

"It's a secret, but considering the circumstance, I guess I have no choice." The incubus came closer and met the angel eye to eye, gave Laoko a few glances up, and walked between them and stood in front of David. "Angels from Azoryev and Yathael came to Tarkissa, and told him he should kill the unmarked. But Tarkissa is no fool. You can't trust angels. They do not lie, but they do not speak the truth, either."

He came a little closer. Laoko turned and looked down at him, but she hadn't drawn her four swords yet, either.

"The angels want the unmarked dead," Priscillian continued. "We don't. Tarkissa wants to speak with you."

David clenched his jaw. The angels wanted the unmarked dead, but only because that was the way to stop them from reaching False Gate and the Forgotten Place. Far as he, Moriah, and Tsila could tell, the angels left the other unmarked woman from the Navameere Fields alone because she wasn't trying to do that, for whatever reason.

"Tarkissa," David said, "wants to do more than talk to me. What has he told you?"

"I told you what he told me."

"I don't believe you. He and Azailia have plans."

A moment of surprise cut across the incubus's face. Got him.

"Azailia? What does--"

"You know what," David said. Mia tactic. Say less than he knew and let the other person assume the worst. "This is your last and final warning, bailiff. Get out of my way."

Of all the ways this could have gone down, this wasn't actually too bad. David was half expecting Priscillian to show up with a colossal army, as if the man had spy drones and was keeping tabs on everything David did. But this was Hell. Information took forever to move, and that meant Tarkissa and his bailiffs could never communicate the extent of David's actions, or even keep their information up to date. As long as David kept pushing forward, he'd catch them off guard.

"You don't know Tarkissa," Priscillian said. "If I let you walk on by, he'll tear me open and put me on display on a wall. And he won't let me die for weeks." The volarin flicked his tail. "And your army is nothing but a bunch of lazy volas, and betrayers armed with clubs. What few real demons you have, I outnumber."

The man didn't even mention the thousands of imps and grems crawling along the mountain wall, perched on spikes and boulders, and flowing over the terrace edges below. What was it about imps and grems that made other demons not even recognize their existence?

Moriah aimed her sword at the man again. "If you don't step aside, I will kill you. Do you think I need the powers of the unmarked to slay half of you myself? And our army will devour the rest of you."

Priscillian sneered. "Says the angel with half a wing."

Moriah took a step forward, but David got a hand on her and gave her a gentle tug backward.

"Or," David said. "You can join me."

Everyone looked at David and went quiet, eyebrows raised.

"What?" Priscillian asked.

"You're here because you have to be. You're here because you serve Tarkissa, and it's your job to stop me and capture me. But I'm going to take the spire, kill Tarkissa, and make the province mine. And unlike with Tarkissa, you'd be a lot happier under my rule." David came closer, only a couple meters between him and the incubus. "Zabulon, Tacharius, do you think I'd make a better ruler?"

"Definitely," they said.

Priscillian squinted down at David, looked past him, and squinted at the hundreds of demons behind him. Taking stock. He looked up at Laoko, down at Caera, back at Acelina and Tsila, and back to Moriah too, eyes scanning. Maybe looking to see if anyone was willing to switch to his side? He'd looked shocked not only by the number of people following David, but by the fact he had two angels, a spire mother, and a bolstara tetrad with him. He wasn't ready for this fight.

"Give me a moment," Priscillian said, and he turned and faced his demons. A lot of heavy hitters, big demons with the scars and armor to prove it. They whispered with each other, cast glances back at David over each other's shoulders, and flicked their tails if they had them.

Laoko leaned down to David. "You cannot seriously believe this is a good idea?"

"Why not? If they don't want to fight, then their only real option is to join us, right?"

"They are loyal to Tarkissa."

"You sure about that?" He motioned Zab and Tacharius forward. "You two know the politics here better than we do. If Priscillian decides to join us, or at least get out of our way, what do you think he'll do after?"

"Stab us in the back, maybe," Tacharius said.

Zab shook his head. "Priscillian wants power, and Tarkissa gave it to him. That's why he's loyal. Give him power and he'll obey."

"Maybe," Tacharius said. "I agree he's power hungry, but he thinks Tarkissa is the best way to get power."

"Then we just convince him David is the best way," Zab said.

David sighed. "I could keep him as bailiff, I suppose, if he agrees to my new rules."

"No," Laoko said. "This is too great a risk. Kill him and be done with it."

"If we fight, that's a fight. People could die."

"If we surprise him--"

David held up a hand. "I'm not here to kill everyone in our path, Laoko. The less fighting, the better. Wasn't the original plan to seduce everyone? What happened to that plan?"

The demon rolled her eyes, but stepped back and out of the way.

Priscillian came back, two brutes on his flanks, and some gargoyles and vrats nice and close. A tiger stayed right behind him, muscles tense, eyes locked on David.

"You have us outnumbered and out... gunned, is the term?"

David smiled. "Outmanned and outgunned."

"Yes. I'm sure Tarkissa would prefer we all die trying to capture you, but that'd be pointless, wouldn't it?"

This incubus had a head on his shoulders. David was half expecting him to fight, just because it'd be a fight, and demons loved big battles full of carnage.

David came closer, and Laoko and Moriah walked with him. "So you'll join us?"

"I have no choice. If I step aside, Tarkissa kills us. If I go with you, maybe we'll come out of this alive."

David snuck in a breath. Finally, some progress that didn't require a bridge of corpses. He held out his hand.

"I'll be a much kinder ruler than Tarkissa."

"I hope so, unmarked." The incubus shook his head. "That other unmarked pushing through the Red Pits is destroying Khazeer's forces, and--"

The incubus's head fell from his shoulders. David froze, hand still gripping the incubus's own, and the dying man's body clenched with the last spurt of life.

His blood splattered across the mountain wall, painted by Laoko's blade.

Laoko unleashed hell. She jumped forward and brought two of her four swords down onto the two brutes, the biggest threats. Tough as their skin was, the tetrad got her swords a few inches into their skulls, like axes getting stuck in hard wood, and that was enough to kill them. Her other two swords cut down the two vrats as they brought up their swords.

She was so damn fast, and ambidextrous.

"No!" the tregeera roared, and she pounced forward. Straight into hellfire.

Laoko unleashed destruction on the demons. A couple hundred soldiers ready to fight, and Laoko bathed their frontline in fire, using the small width of the terrace edge against them. Not quite funneled, but ten meters wide wasn't much, especially against an explosion of fire that flowed out. It crashed into the tregeera, poured over her, and buried a dozen demons behind her in flame. And when they went down, screaming, the fire flowed past them onto demons beyond.

David yanked his hand free of Priscillian's corpse. It fell to its knees and crumbled in front of him, neck squirting blood around David's feet. He looked at Laoko, the hellfire she breathed, and the four swords at her sides, dripping crimson.

Fuck.

"Attack!" David yelled. The words were out of his mouth before he even knew what he'd just done. He'd unleashed the tide.

Priscillian's demons weren't retreating. They should have, but they weren't. They ran around the flames and came straight at Laoko. Fools. Blood-addicted fools.

Moriah charged forward and swung her sword. A golden arc of energy shot out from the blade and crashed into a gargoyle. The woman exploded, gold energy colliding with her breastplate and tearing through it; meera metal wasn't aera metal. A vrat behind the gargoyle ran over the corpse, covered in the blood of his companion, and struck at the angel. Moriah blocked and cut him down in three moves.

Caera dashed forward and covered Laoko's side. The swarm came for the tetrad, and Caera cut down a riiva charging in from the flank. Jes and Daoka joined her, and they worked together to bring down a brute pushing forward through the flames. Only a brute could get hit with hellfire and not immediately give in to the pain.

Tsila took to the sky. David had forgotten about her, but a gold line shot down from the sky and landed with a small explosion, and then another, and another. The angel, far outside the reach of demons, bathed Priscillian's forces in gold rain, and they died in droves.

Demons behind David pushed forward. Demons in front of Laoko pushed to meet them. A brute charged past, crashed into Laoko, and sent the tetrad to the ground. He was too massive to stop, bowled over another demon, and got his hands on an incubus from David's forces.

David summoned a spike of blackstone underneath him, straight up between his legs, up into his chest cavity, and out through the top of his head. But he wasn't fast enough, and the incubus in the brute's hands gargled on blood in the dead brute's grip, and died in seconds.

Some of Priscillian's demons hopped down a terrace step and tried to get to David from below, going around the battle. A few hundred imps and grems waited for them. David looked down long enough to see the demons wade through the little ones, kill a dozen with swings of their enormous weapons, before the imps and grems swarmed them.

Ants, biting flesh out of someone alive. David looked away, but not before witnessing a dozen mouths bite into a vrat, and each rip out a chunk.

Moriah flew forward. One and a half wings was enough for her to almost fly, and she jumped into what remained of the demons. They couldn't touch her. She cut them down fast, many already half-burned and half-dead by hellfire. Jes followed behind her, covering her back and cutting down any Moriah injured but didn't finish off.

Laoko got back on her hooves and glared at the brute that'd rushed past her. She rotated her shoulders, turned back toward the pile of burning corpses she'd created, and nodded, apparently pleased with herself. Tsila was quick and methodical, shooting down the few demons that ran with sniper fire, and the ones that'd jumped to terrace edges below disappeared under a sea of imp and grem wings.

The tetrad hooked her four swords on her back and stood triumphant over dozens of corpses, many of them burned to char, or still burning. It smelled too close to cooking steaks.

No one said anything. Moriah and Tsila, still dressed in their armor, came back to David, but kept their eyes on Laoko, and Tsila kept an arrow nocked. Jes, Daoka, and Caera came back to David too, each taking a moment to stab any dying demons on the way. Just a casual day at the office.

David glared at Laoko, squeezed his staff until his fingers went numb, and took a step toward her. She faced him, wearing a subtle smile, even as blood dripped down her tall body. None of it was hers.

"Now," she said, "we need not worry about this fool bailiff and his inevitable treachery."

A headless corpse lay beside David, its head having rolled a few meters away. David looked down at him, Priscillian, a man who'd obviously do anything he could to come out on top. And David was prepared to work with that, to give concessions, to negotiate, to keep as many people alive as possible. Keeping your friends close and your enemies closer was a legitimate tactic.

David gestured back at the brute who'd run past Laoko and killed an incubus. They'd lost a man.

Laoko looked at him, waiting, two hands on her hips, two arms folded across her chest. A staring match, and she didn't so much as blink, her flat-ish alien nose giving her an almost mask-like, beautiful face.

He met her stare and gestured down at the terrace edge below, where demons had backed off, and imps and grems squatted around their dead comrades. Some whined, some growled, a few cried. More emotion than he'd seen in other demons.

"Necessary sacrifices." Laoko shrugged, reached down, picked up a dead gargoyle by her head, jammed her fist under the gargoyle's ribs, up through the stomach, into her chest, and ripped out a heart. Satisfied, she set her eyes back on David, and took a bite of the heart, a small thing compared to her hands and mouth. And she ate it like a sexy woman eating a large strawberry for an advertisement, showing off her lips even as blood poured down her arm.

David walked up to her, staff at his side. "I didn't tell you to kill him," he whispered.

She nodded, subtle smile unrelenting, and took another bite of the heart.

"You didn't, but it had to be done."

"Says you."

"Yes, says me. I have walked this land for thousands of years, David. I have known the machinations of demons both less and more cruel than I. I have spoken with spire rulers, and tasted the power of spire auras. I have seen that all demons are predators, and they will pounce upon any weakness they find."

"I convinced--"

"You convinced him you were naïve. You convinced him you would easily let your guard down. You convinced him you were weak, and that you would be easy to usurp, to murder in your sleep, to kill and devour your heart and perhaps steal your power." She squatted in front of him and leaned in closer. "You created an opportunity, and I took advantage. I needed your naivety, your kind heart, to lower the bailiff's guard."

He ground his teeth. "You used me?"

"You wish to take down Tarkissa. I wish to see you successful. You wish to save Hell, and the Great Tower. I wish to see you successful." She leaned in closer again until her forehead brushed his. "Even if that means saving you from your own stupidity."

Moriah came closer, sword at the ready, but David held up a hand and she stopped.

"You got some of our demons killed."

"And yet we killed Priscillian and his entire entourage. Did you not see their number? Their weapons and armor? And they were not vola. They were warriors. I had no choice but to take the element of surprise to save as many of our forces as possible."

"You didn't ha--"

"Yes, I did."

He glared until the muscles in his face hurt.

"Is this going to be a thing, Laoko? You think you're in charge, so you'll just do whatever you want?"

"Last I checked, little boy, you did not want to be in charge." With a wicked little grin, Laoko stood back up, walked back to the pile of dead, and fetched another heart. She'd bathed the whole area in hellfire. She needed them.

David looked down and watched blood ooze past his black metal greaves. She was right. She was right, and he was being a fucking idiot.

He peeked down over the terrace edge again. The imps and grems lamented their comrades, but when other imps and grems and other demons came for the hearts of the dead, the little demons didn't stop them. That was the circle of life in Hell. Friends die. Eat their hearts.

They'd lost few, and Priscillian had lost everything, his life and his small army, all because Laoko was willing to kill him when his guard was down.

The idea made David sick.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They found a cave, and David set up some walls so everyone was safe and sound. No one was hungry. The girls had had their fair share of demon hearts, and while Moriah and Tsila didn't look happy about eating them, they did.

The conversation between David and Laoko had been done in whispers. No one had heard it. As far as Tacharius, Zabulon, and the small army following David were concerned, this had been a tactic to win the battle. He'd have to rectify that someday, ensure the demons he was not the kind to say something and do something else. He was not a liar.

His crew sat in a circle, though the Las sat off to the side in their own circle, examining each other's wings. Acelina set David's egg on the ground in front of him, and he picked it up and brought it to his lap. Everyone watched. No one said a thing.

Lasca left her kin and squatted beside David. "Laoko did something bad?"

Everyone traded glances, but David kept his eyes on his egg. He gently stroked the leather shell, and tried hard to spot the shape of something inside, a shade of black within.

"Laoko," Acelina said calmly, "did something without anyone else's knowledge."

David looked up long enough to spot Laoko wearing her usual, subtle smile, and he looked back down at his egg.

"I did what had to be done," the tetrad said. "David is far too trusting. Priscillian would have betrayed him, as would all bailiffs if given such mercy by the young soul. Tarkissa had the incubus in the palm of his hand, likely bound to some deal or promised a gift of power." Laoko gestured to Moriah. "Do you think Priscillian would have honored his word?"

"I... do not know," the angel said. "Demons have surprised me many times these past couple months."

Laoko snorted; even her snort was a quiet, practiced, feminine sound. "I saw an opportunity, and I took it. I have dealt with other demons more than anyone here, by many, many years. I recognized the signs of a deceiver in Priscillian, and I saw him and his forces let their guard down."

Jes snorted and gave her wings a hard flap. "You could have gotten us killed."

"And yet it was I at the front of the attack. I risked my neck before yours, because I realized the opportunity was too important to let slip by."

Tsila sighed and shook her head. "But now demons know David will kill someone when their guard is down."

Laoko shrugged. "And? All demons assumed that immediately."

"But it's not true," Tsila said. "David is not that sort of soul. And that is part of the contract we have made with all these demons following him. He will change the Scar, and they expect that change to fall in line with a righteous soul worthy of Heaven."

Righteous? David stared down at his egg and traced its bumps and grooves with his fingertips. He'd never heard someone call him righteous before. He wasn't sure he liked it.

"Then you may explain it to them," Laoko said. "Explain that one of David's generals was overzealous. I care not. Demons do not need to believe David is a saint to follow him. They will follow him because he is powerful. And when he takes the spire and proves to all of Hell how powerful he is, the demons of the Scar will serve him. Then, if he chooses, he can be a merciful, naïve fool."

Moriah pointed a wing at the tetrad. "It is not naïve to show mercy."

"In war? Yes, it is."

Caera nudged her head against David's shoulder. "David?"

He shook his head and kept his eyes on the egg. What could he say? David could kill. He'd done that already, plenty of times. But killing someone who'd agreed to peace? Stabbing them in the back? He wanted to vomit.

"The issue," Moriah said, "is the future, Laoko. No one will trust David's word. We are now forced to fight every group of demons we meet if they serve Tarkissa."

"Are we? We killed each demon in Priscillian's forces."

The angel shook her head. "Plenty of other demons saw, some that do not follow us. Word will spread of what happened, and now we are committed to a single path: war. This is your doing, bolstara."

"It was the only path. Or did you truly think David's kindheartedness would bring all the Scar to its knees? It was always going to go this way, angel. We have no choice but to walk through Hell to reach False Gate, and while that remains true, I will do what I think is necessary to see David reach his goal."

Daoka sat beside David, opposite of Caera, and nudged some horns into his head. She clicked at him, heavy, quiet sounds, and she stroked his egg near his hand.

Jes snorted. "She agrees with you, David."

He smiled and leaned into Daoka and her ram horns.

"Do you?" he asked the gargoyle.

"Not sure."

Caera let out a long sigh. "I don't."

David sat up straight and looked down at the tiger beside him, blinking.

"You don't?"

"No, I don't. I agree with Laoko. Angels don't know how demons fight. I do. Demons aren't armies, facing off, making deals, trading for territory and food, or negotiating politics. Demons are predators. They hunt, not trade. They fight, not negotiate. When a meal turns its back or runs away, that's a signal to a predator to attack." She nudged her head against David's shoulder. "Laoko did what should have been done, and no demon will hold that against her or you." She nudged a little harder. "Sorry."

He didn't reciprocate. Hands on his egg, he pulled it to his stomach and chest, gently hugged the warm oval, and kept his eyes on it.

"David?" she asked. "David, I--"

"Thank you," he said. "For not lying to me."

Caera sighed and lowered her head, but he didn't watch to catch her expression.

Daoka rubbed her ram horns against his hair more, and he leaned into her long enough to return the rub. Caera got up, walked away, and lay on the floor beside the cave wall. He didn't stop her.

He'd felt horrible when Laoko had killed all those demons. He felt a thousand times worse now as the girl he liked lay by herself. But like a fucking idiot, he just sat there and held his egg.

"Regardless," Acelina said, "Laoko has committed us to a path of war. But that is the path everyone expected. Even you, Moriah, and Tsila. Or am I wrong?"

David didn't look back to see the two angels, but from the silence, he knew the two of them were both trying and failing to think up a good counterargument. That was fine. He was wrong.

They were going to have to slaughter their way to Tarkissa, and after Tarkissa, and through the Red Pits, and the Navameere Fields, and probably through False Gate, too. A road of blood.

He stood up, took his egg with him, and sat in a distant corner of the cave. Daoka clicked at him and got up to follow, but Jes held out a wing.

"Kid just realized how rough this is going to be, Dao. Let him be."

They let him be.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Everyone fell asleep but him. He stared down at his egg, traced more of its bumps and grooves, and did his best to see the creature living inside it. It was a huge egg, as big as his torso, and pretty damn heavy; thank god he had Acelina to carry it for him.

An egg born just for him.

"How much of a fool am I?" he asked no one. The egg couldn't answer.

For a moment, just a stupid, fleeting moment, he'd thought he'd made ground with Priscillian. Instead of making another pile of murder, he'd negotiated, convinced people they didn't have to slaughter each other, and together they could work together and bring down the bad guy.

He was sick and tired of murder. He was sick and tired of people getting hurt. The angels he'd killed. The Cainites. The random damned souls. The demons. He was fucking sick of it, and the others just didn't understand. The girls, Caera, even Moriah and Tsila, didn't feel bad about slaughtering people. Or if the angels did, they masked it well. Too well.

He looked down at his right hand and squeezed the air. A rock in his hand, crushing bone and brains. That memory kept coming back to him, more than the others. Why? Over and over, every time death filled the air, the sensation of Greg's skull giving way to his blows filled his mind. Almost like it was a sensation he was familiar with. Something familiar, and nauseating, and thrilling.

Something moved. He scanned the room, the amber veins glowing softly now that it was night. Tsila came his way, footsteps silent, enormous wings snug to her back. She sat beside him, smiling gently. He recognized that smile. That was the 'I know you're hurting, let's talk' smile. He didn't want to talk.

"I have worked with many like you," she said, eyes on his egg.

He said nothing.

"Intelligent people struggle to accept when things don't go according to plan. But also empathetic people who absorb the emotions of others all too easily. You burn out merely by being in the presence of others, and must create an emotional barrier between others and yourself, or you risk being burned alive by their emotions."

He raised his eyes and stared at her, but she kept hers on the egg.

"I suspect you have experienced that a few times in your life, being surrounded by the pain or joy of others, and found yourself overwhelmed. Perhaps you witnessed a cruel accident, and the cries of those nearby, strangers, brought you to tears?"

"A... A... funeral I had to attend, for one of my guardian's relatives. She died in a car accident."

Tsila nodded, smile remaining, but eyes focused. "You hurt because of the terrible deed done today. That is understandable, for a soul worthy of heaven. But"--she snuck him a quick flick of her eyes--"that is not only what bothers you."

"Yeah?"

"You cannot stand it when things do not go your way. You pride yourself on your ability to both craft plans, but also to craft them quickly, to respond to scenarios quickly and act efficiently. When they do not go as intended, often to some obscenely unlikely circumstance, it grates on your mind. 'How could this happen?' you think to yourself. You are too smart for this. Your methodology too perfected. How could you fail like this?

"Combined with your empathy and your sensitivity, to see your plans backfire, or fail, and for death and destruction to follow, it tears you apart from the inside out. It hurts you in ways you cannot even comprehend, like claws dragged along your soul."

He stared at her, blinking. "How do you know this?"

"I am many centuries old, David. Many. And many more, if you include my previous lives."

"Previous?"

"Yes. Many angels have been reborn many times, seeking to escape the dread that weighs on us all. Some of us have been reborn so many times, the memories of our past have become... fuzzy." She shook her head. "But we are not talking about me. We speak of you. Of your pain." She gestured down at his hand. "You were sincere with Priscillian, a man you did not trust."

"I was."

"You knew he might betray you."

"I did. But I also thought if... Maybe if I could get him on my side long enough to see I can do things better than Tarkissa, then he could be the first step to making everyone get along."

"You thought you could change Hell."

"I..." He looked down. "I guess I did. But apparently I'm the only one who thinks that."

"You think you can change Hell, and the demons within."

He tilted his head and eyed the angel. "I recognize the sound of therapy speak. My sister was in university to become a psychologist."

The angel beamed. "I'm sorry. But I am speaking like this for a reason. I am trying to suggest to you possible truths, while at the same time digging through your mind, your reactions, to see where real truth lies."

"How blunt of you."

"You seem like the kind of man who appreciates blunt truth."

He smiled. "I am."

She nodded toward Caera. "And you've become very attached to the tregeera."

He glanced Caera's way, but looked back down at his egg and kept his gaze safely there.

"I have."

"Hearing her disagree with you hurt you."

"A bit." He held up a hand. "But I don't need a therapy session. Everyone was right. I was wrong. If we're going to get through this, I need to just kill everyone in my way. That's the only way I can guarantee success. If they're in front of me, they have to die. Fuck metaphor. I might as well just line up dead demons and build a literal bridge to the Forgotten Place."

Silence weighed on them, and the angel looked down at the floor as her wings drooped.

"One does not need to be gabriem to see you do not belong down here, David. I can understand why Moriah helped you, against the orders of the council."

"I figured that was because I made a good argument."

"You did not. Anyone can lie, and many can lie convincingly. But when push came to shove, your kindness showed through, and no angel has ever struck down a soul worthy of Heaven."

"Ever?"

"Ever. I do not even know if a soul in Heaven could be struck down. If a soul in Heaven is injured in such a way that they would die, Heaven simply does not allow them to die. They remain in their body and heal on their own, or we gabriem heal them faster."

"No matter the injury?"

"I have never seen an injury too gruesome in Heaven to not be healed. Perhaps it is simply the nature of souls in Heaven, but they are never torn apart or left headless. It never happens. The will of Heaven."

He nodded, caressing his mystery egg. "I suppose if Hell is alive and aware, then Heaven is, too. Might even be the same entity."

"Perhaps. No one has spoken with the Great Tower directly as you have since the archangels." She brushed his back with her wing. "You veer the conversation away from yourself when you do not wish to speak of what hurts you."

Damn it. "Mia told me the same thing."

"She is a smart young woman." She hit him with her feathers again. "I see you look at your hand every so often. Why?"

He looked at his right palm. Tell her? The others were asleep, or faking it, but it wasn't like it was important information.

But it felt personal. It felt deeply, overwhelmingly personal, and he didn't know why.

"I thought... I thought it was because of how I killed that unmarked man, Greg. An absolute asshole who deserved to die. He was unmarked, too, by the way." He shook his head and released the tension in his chest. "I killed him with a rock. Smashed his brains in."

"I see. Your first kill?"

"No. I... I'd killed a soul before then. Not on the surface! I--"

"You need not convince me of your earthly innocence, David. You drip with it."

He looked at himself. Drip?

"Before that, I'd killed a soul, on a hunting trip with Caera."

"And yet that is not what bothers you."

"I guess not. I mean, it still bothers me, but I don't really think about it. She was a damned soul, and... and we needed food." He shook his head and looked at his hand again, squeezing a nonexistent rock. "But smashing in a man's head like I did? I'd jumped him, mounted him, and just... smashed his brains in. I didn't stop until I knew he was dead. Until the quakes stopped. Until I felt brains on my skin."

"A fellow unmarked."

"A... fellow unmarked, yes."

"How biblical."

David tilted his head. "What?"

Tsila leaned in close. "How much do you know of the Christian Bible?"

"A fair bit. Read about it a bunch in mythology deep dives."

The angel smiled. "Plenty of humans on the surface would take offense to calling it mythology."

"Heh, I suppose. And a lot of it turned out to be true, kinda." Shrugging, he traced shapes on his egg. "I know about Moses and Noah. I know about Elijah and Elisha. I know about Jesus, and Job--what a fucked up story, by the way. I know about Adam and Eve, the snake in the garden, Cain and Abel, and--"

"What do you know of Cain and Abel?"

"Uh, Cain and Abel were the children of Adam and Eve. Evolutionary science aside, it's a story about two brothers vying for attention from their father figure. Uh, God, in the Bible. Cain sacrificed some crops. Abel sacrificed an animal, a costlier sacrifice. God recognized Abel's sacrifice, but not Cain's. Later, Cain was so envious, he killed Abel. The first murder." He gave the egg a gentle shake. "This about Cainites? I hear they think they can become super powerful if they eat an angel's heart? There any truth to what? I wonder--"

"Cain, David. How do you think he killed his brother?"

"How he killed Abel? I don't know. I mean, considering the possible time period, and how emotional a murder it was, he probably just grabbed a..."

He slowly looked up at the tall woman beside him and stared at her. She said nothing, only waited, like a typical therapist waiting for him to come to the conclusion himself.

"He probably jumped him, and... and bashed his head in with a rock."

"A powerful image. The first murder."

"I don't believe that was the first murder."

Tsila tilted her head. "Oh? I suppose as a scientist, you believe in the evolution of life. But surely, for the first time in the history of apes, one ape killed another not for resources, not for the right to mate, not for territory, or survival. Surely at some point, one creature killed another for no other reason than deep, personal envy, for the first time."

"Envy." He stared down at his hand. Murder. Brutal, bloody, heated murder. The first murder. "You really think there was a Cain? That killed a brother named Abel?"

"I do not know. I am many thousands of years old, perhaps millions, with many lives blurring together. Not even Moriah knows how many times I have been reborn. And neither do I. But the story of Cain and Abel remains, even in Heaven, and many angels believe it."

Slowly, David sucked in a deep breath and hugged his egg closer to his chest.

"You think Cain has something to do with me?"

"I do not know. Perhaps it is a memory that lives in the entire human race, the sensation of brutal murder done in such a way. I do not envy your experience." She patted his far shoulder with a wing, and closer shoulder with a hand. "The girls can tell you hurt, David. Moriah can. Even the demons can; perhaps not the Las, but you understand. They understand you do not like killing. They understand this world of Hell, of pain and misery, is not meant for you. But they are demons. They are bound to their hungers. They will forever struggle to understand your pain."

"But you can?"

She shook her head. "Gabriem know the pains of humans in the way a human who has never experienced war still empathizes with those she reads about in the news, or sees in movies. I can offer you a mountain of knowledge, and I can empathize, but I will never understand, not truly."

"You... don't know how bad it feels to commit murder?"

"It aches in my heart, in my bones, deep down in my grace, when I see another human in pain. It aches when I see humans hurting each other. The sight of a damned soul is almost enough to bring me to tears. But I can never truly understand your pain, never truly share your woes. No angel has struck another angel, ever, since the First War, long before my time. And no angel has ever struck down a soul of Heaven."

David frowned for a moment. Moriah had really crossed a line, then, when she'd killed Galon. How much had Heaven and its angels changed over time?

Tsila leaned in closer to him and gently knocked on his egg with a light rap of her knuckles. "I can only watch with admiration, at the sheer depth of the human soul, the strands, the connections your emotions make within the deep web of your spirits." Nodding, she gestured at him and the egg he held. "What pain I feel when I kill a demon, I fear, is nothing but an echo of what you feel, a soul worthy of Heaven."

"What if you had to kill another angel?"

"I fear even then, it would not be the same. Just as what love an angel can feel for another angel is but a shadow of what humans can feel for each other, the same can be said for the sadness or rage we would feel, if we killed each other. We are not the same." She nudged his shoulder with hers. "There is a reason so many congregate around you, why so many demons are following you. You are a soul, and unlike betrayers, you are not weighed down by tainted resonance. People will be drawn to you, and demons and angels alike will want to be near you."

He closed his eyes and found a smile. It was all he could do.

"I don't want to kill."

"I know." She patted his shoulder again and gestured to Caera. "But you are not on the surface. Take comfort in that you have found demons, demons of many kinds, willing to meet you halfway. They resist their predatory instincts around you. They have changed for you."

Changed. He hadn't really thought of it like that.

"Daoka--"

"Even Daoka, sweet as she is, is still a predator. The best surface comparison would probably be a ferret. Full of joy, and more than willing to rip a rabbit to shreds with her teeth."

He bit back a laugh, but damn it was hard, and his ribs hurt as he pushed down the sound. Better the others kept sleeping.

"I guess that's true. I just never thought they were really meeting me halfway, with all the arguments we have about it. And with what Laoko did today... Even Caera agreed with her."

"And yet, if they did what they would naturally do, each step into the Scar would be full of battle, death, and they'd bathe in the blood of the damned. Find it in your heart to understand."

"Easier said than done."

"Yes, it is." She nudged him a little harder. "Go to her."

He looked at Caera. She was still by herself, lying like a sleeping cat.

"The egg--"

Tsila lifted the egg from him and gestured forward with her wing.

He smiled at the gabriem, got up, and joined Caera. No one wore armor at night anymore since David learned to block off the path, and the demons took advantage, cuddling each other. Not Caera, not tonight.

He crawled up to her side and nuzzled against her.

Her eye opened. "David?"

"I still don't agree with how Laoko did things. How you want to do things." He shrugged at her and cozied up against her chest. "But that's okay."

She rumbled softly, slipped her arm over him, and pulled him snug against her breasts.

"Good." She licked his head. Predictably, his hair caught on her tongue and probably raised into a giant cowlick.

She closed her eye, smiling, and went back to sleep. But he looked at his empty hand and squeezed a nonexistent rock again. It felt so familiar.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~Day 83~~

~~Mia~~

The next day. Time to talk with Raphael again.

They went back to the room with the bone wall and the giant eyeballs and even bigger hearts beating in the corners of the cavern. The floor, the other walls, all pulsing fleshy muscle. She almost felt like a med student, nose-deep in anatomy class.

"Raphael," she said. "Can you help me reach False Gate? Um, the Unholy Lands."

A glowing rune flowed over the wall of bone. "I can teach you some runes." Mia read the runes out loud for the benefit of the crew.

"Some?" she asked.

"There is little power left in this body. The sparks of eternity flowing through its veins no longer carry the presence of Raphael. What remains is useless, but for a few."

Sighing, Mia reached out and touched the bone. "A few?"

"Runes that will aid you. And to bestow them upon you, to awake them in you, will drain what is left of eternity from this vessel. This echo will die."

Mia looked back at the others. The angels were back in their royam clothes, masks on, on their knees, but they stood with Mia's words and removed their masks.

"Die?" Yosepha said.

Mia nodded. "That's what it reads. If Raphael teaches me some stuff, it'll kill him. I mean, he's already dead, but there'll be nothing left."

The angels looked at each other, sharing heavy, somber expressions.

"Wait," Yosepha said. "We must... We must learn more, before such a thing is done. We must know about the past, about what happened at the beginning of time. We must know--"

"Raphael told us," Noah said. "He told Mia about the beginning, the creation of the Great Tower, and our purpose in it. The purpose of existence. The purpose of humans. What more could we wish to know?"

"I... I don't know. Surely there must be something."

"Raphael," Mia said. "What can you tell me about... what's been happening in Heaven and Hell since you died?"

A moment's hesitation, before a thick rune slowly wrote across the bone.

"Nothing."

"But you can still see the surface world. You can even see beyond the tower. Why can't you see what's happening in Heaven and Hell?"

"They are protected realms, sealed by the threads of existence. They hide their contents within, protecting them from the outside, and from the inside. Even when I was alive, my awareness of Heaven and Hell was limited to my senses. Those senses are gone."

Azreal grunted. "We speak to a corpse."

"Yes," Yosepha said, sighing. "I... I should be happy for this moment. Not angry."

Mia shook her head. "Fuck that, be angry. This sucks. The situation, I mean. We were so close to learning about what's happening, what the council angels are doing, where Ramiel got the egg, maybe even ask about the rider."

But the angel shook her head harder and gently patted Mia's shoulder with a wing.

"We cannot think that way. This has already been a great boon. We--"

Vinicius stepped up, and everyone looked up at him, confused.

"Can the dead angel teach you a rune that would make you more powerful?"

"Powerful?" Of course that'd be his first idea.

He nodded and waited, no explanation given. No explanation needed.

Mia sighed, nodded, and faced the bone wall.

"Raphael, I have to journey to the Unholy Lands, and find a way across the sea to the Frozen Heart. Is there any rune you can teach me that'd make me more powerful? Directly more powerful? I have to fight. I can use two angel runes -- I don't think I need royam -- and they're great, but I do all my actual fighting with the music."

An array of runes wrote quickly across the bone. "Be careful. The music will summon the void. You must be quiet."

Ah shit.

"How loudly can I use the music, then?"

"I do not know."

"Okay, so, anything you can teach me?"

"No, child of Hell. Runes are not power. Runes are instructions."

Mia clenched her hands into fists. "There has to be something! Something I can use to make this journey easier. You said you'd teach me."

"I will teach you."

"But you have nothing to teach me! You--"

Vinicius rumbled softly, enough to stop Mia mid-word.

"Our most immediate threat," Vin said, "is the spires and their auras. We have been lucky so far. We need ways to deal with them, should Dobasi use one."

Romakus laughed. "The big guy has a good idea."

Mia smiled up at the child of Belial and nodded. "It is a good idea. Raphael, can you show me the runes for spire auras, and runes that could suppress them?"

"Spires," the wall of bone said, "are creations of Lucifer. He stole the purpose of the runes for his war."

"I get that, but now demons own the spires, and they might use an aura against us. Any way I can block them?"

Instead of a rune, Raphael drew a tree made of runes, and the tree itself was a rune, the rune of existence.

"Only my Father knows how to navigate all the runes," the wall read. "But the runes that create auras are here."

That, was a lot of runes. She spotted the sex one instantly, and knew it intimately, like a lullaby she'd known all her life but had never seen written. The strings Mia could touch were music, and the runes were kinda like lyrics, and sheet music? There was no direct comparison. Whatever the runes did, they allowed spires to create auras the same way Mia did.

"I can create these auras," Mia said. "Without using a rune. Or... Or maybe I was using a rune all along and not realizing it." Some runes did look more like ambient things, instead of things to be read out loud.

"You are a child of Hell, an entity of music."

"Does that mean I can use all the runes naturally?"

"Yes."

Mia took a step back and looked back at the others. "I can... do anything?"

"If you can understand it, and have the power to play it, you can use any rune. You did not need to learn batlam from the angels. If the circumstances were correct, you could have summoned that power on your own. But your own power is tiny. You are weak."

She frowned at the wall and raised a fist, and laughed at her own silly little hand. Weak was a word for it. For all her ability to play music, the big stuff, the really big things that allowed her to fight demons and angels, that was done with the help of Hell herself. Her own music was weak in comparison. She was getting better at it, could kill a demon on her own with it, but nothing like what she needed to accomplish her mission.

She scanned the runes again. At the top of the giant tree was a rune for... ignoring? Blocking? Covering the ears? Ignorance? Mute? It meant so many things.

"I see the rune," she said, "but it's like all the other runes. I don't think I can just play it without learning it. You say I can learn it on my own?"

"Yes, but it will take time, perhaps thousands of years. I will teach you in seconds, but for each rune I teach you, this echo will fade away."

She gulped. "You'll die."

"I am already dead."

Sighing, she looked back at the angels. They looked sullen.

"It must be done," Azreal said. "This is too important. And perhaps this will give Raphael some peace."

Noah and Yosepha nodded, grimacing.

"Okay," Mia said. "We need to be safe from spire auras."

The runes changed, and nine remained.

"Each spire has a voice," Raphael wrote. "Each their own instrument. You may block their voices by burning the spire rune on your bodies, adjusted."

Julisa hissed. "I've been marked before. I don't want to be marked again."

Kas grunted, too, tail flicking.

Mia touched the bone wall. "I can't use a rune to block all auras?"

"No. You cannot block existence, only aspects of it."

"Damn." She looked back to the demons. "That--"

Julisa hissed. "No."

Mia held up her hands. "I get that, but nine runes somewhere on your body so you never have to worry about a spire aura affecting you again. That's good, right?"

"Runes you write, little soul. Runes only you can read. You are asking me to trust you."

What did Mia have to do to convince this bitch that she wasn't going to betray her?

Mia looked down at Cerberus. "Raphael, do hellbeasts need protection?"

"Hell can create auras that affect hellbeasts. The spires cannot."

She sighed with relief and rubbed Cerb's heads. "And angels?"

"Heaven can create auras that affect angels, and Lucifer tried to capture that power in the spires. He failed. Angels will feel the affects of spire auras, but can resist."

Nodding, Mia took a deep breath, and looked back and up at Vin.

Vin nodded.

"Okay, Raphael," she said. "Teach me the runes to block the nine spires and their auras."

The runes vanished, and nine new runes appeared with modifications on them. Suppression. Sort of like adding a Japanese suffix to a name.

"Wait. These runes, they look..." She peered at one close. "This one for the Black Valley's spire. It kinda... looks like Asmodeus. Why?"

More runes wrote above. "When Lucifer created the spires, he poured his power, his might, and his fury into them. He created runes of his own. He changed Hell. He changed the Great Tower, something my brothers and I could not fathom. And when he changed Hell, the act was done in two parts. To change Hell, and to change life on Hell. Each was an act of tainted creation, done together in a vile ritual."

That was a pretty scary idea, an entity so powerful they were basically a god themself, enacting a ritual that literally changed how the afterlife worked.

"So the spires... birthed the Old Ones?"

"Yes," Raphael wrote. "The act that sealed their connection to Hell, just as Hell herself births hellbeasts to perpetuate the great cycle. Lucifer left his mark, nine marks on the land, and nine children that sealed their function."

No wonder the Old Ones, or at least Asmodeus, were so stupid huge. He was the literal counterpart, or side-effect, of the spire of the Black Valley. He was the size of a spire.

"Okay," Mia said. "I'll learn the runes to block spire auras. That'll let us move through Hell without having to worry about them, right?"

"Yes."

She nodded, took a deep breath, and touched the runes. They wanted to be touched, to be listened to, the way sheet music wanted to be played. And sure enough, the moment her fingers touched the hot amber runes, information shot through her like electricity. The web of runes in her mind lit up, and a path of strings vibrated, guiding her awareness along a path.

Strings. The music that bound everything. The runes for the spires and the Old Ones, sister runes, looked different from the others, like someone else had written them. And if she attached suppression to them, she could block the auras of the spires, and of the Old Ones they were attached to.

There were other runes, too, connecting concepts and ideas. But she couldn't understand them, not really, like trying to read a crazy math equation she'd never seen. That was what Raphael meant by learning. If she asked him, he'd teach her to understand them, lyrics and composition that allowed the conductor to manipulate anything connected to the strands of Hell.

She could learn them herself, supposedly, with time. But judging from how complicated they looked, that'd take her only God knew how long. Raphael was guiding her through something absurdly complicated.

The book in the spire had put the awareness in her head, the web of runes. James didn't have that awareness. Maybe that's what Raphael was talking about?

She pulled her hand away. The strands that connected the runes remained lit in her mind, just like potram and batlam. And it made sense. They made sense.

"Okay," she said, turning and facing the group. "I... I need a way to actually make the runes. Draw them, I mean. I can draw them in my head. That's how I use the angel runes. But how do I get them onto you?"

Azreal gestured to the wall with a wing, and the amber runes burned onto the bone.

"You burn them on with... amber!?" Mia stepped back and shook her head. "Uh, I don't want to do that. Amber is encased lava, right? Hell's lava? Ow?"

"You are altering the flow of the music," the wall read. "There are multiple ways to write the music, but destruction is Hell's tool. Use it."

"But I don't know how! I mean, I know spires have tools to do it, but how can I do it?"

"You must direct and control resonance, and morph it into essence, into result, into action."

This whole conversation was driving her insane. The moment she thought she'd made progress, she needed something else.

"I--wait." She summoned batlam. The heavy rune engulfed her, buried her in red light, and she emerged in her wizard's armor, black metal and red rubies. Her wizard's staff awaited in her hand, black and covered in spikes, with a red ruby at the tip. "Batlam gives me a staff. The staff seems to make it easier to wield music."

"Just as angels use batlam to direct their resonance into essence of gold, righteous destruction, you can guide your resonance into essence with yours. Batlam makes it easier, nothing more."

She nodded and faced her demon crew. "Okay, who wants to go first? It'll be my first tattoo, ever, so... it'll probably suck."

Kas approached and held out his giant wrist.

"You sure, Kas?" she asked. "I know you've had bad experiences with Zel before."

"All the more reason." He waited, hand still out.

"It could hurt. Fuck me, it definitely will hurt. I don't know what I'm doing."

He waited and shrugged his tail.

She gulped, held out her staff, and pressed the ruby against his wrist. Nothing happened yet, but she was still impressed her big bodyguard didn't so much as flinch.

His tail flinched when Mia poured the image of the rune through her mind and through her staff. Convert resonance to essence. It sounded complicated, but it was really simple: turn fuel into force. Normally, that force was used to pluck the strings and play music that manipulated the body of Hell. But if she knew the lyrics, the sheet music, she could do other things. And the way Hell did things, was fire.

Kas rumbled, but Mia held the staff tight to his wrist, and he didn't pull it away. Something sizzled, but still he didn't move.

Mia took a breath and stepped back. A small circle of tiny runes now decorated the demon's wrist, burned in, charring his dark red skin to black.

"Small," he said, clicked once, and brought the wrist up to his eyeless shark face. "Intricate."

"I figured it'd be better to go small, than brand some giant rune on your chest. The size shouldn't matter, I don't think."

Kas nodded and held out his wrist to the others. They examined it, an eyebrow raised, and Romakus sniffed the burn wound.

"I don't know if it works," Mia said. "I mean, I think it did." She touched Kas's wrist and listened. "I can feel it on him, changing him. It's like he used to be a shape that certain notes could make resonate, but now they can't, or something."

Romakus got on a knee in front of her and held out his wrist. "I can resist spire auras, barely, but I'd prefer not to risk it. Just don't brand me and turn me into a slave."

"Ha. I... You know, I might actually be able to do that. Seal in an aura, the same way spire rulers do."

He scrunched up his nose. "Don't you--"

She pressed her staff's ruby against his wrist, and he hissed. But he didn't pull away either.

"Oh you bitch."

She grinned up at him and let him go. "You are now immune to spire auras."

Sighing, Julisa came for the same treatment. "You write the language of the archangels and the Old Ones."

"I guess, yeah. But the only thing I'm doing is changing how you react to auras. Spire auras, specifically, because they vibrate like music." She nodded and branded Julisa the same as the others. Unlike the others, Julisa didn't so much as make a sound, only glare at Mia the whole time.

"And demon and angel auras?" she asked.

"They're different. I mean, maybe I could create a rune to block those, too? Do we need that?"

"No," she said, walking away and examining her wrist. "Angel and demon auras are no threat, just a nuisance."

Vin joined her last, got down on a knee and three palms, and held out his fourth. Damn wrist was almost as wide as her waist.

He said nothing and waited. Vin was strong enough to resist spire auras, being a child of the Old Ones and all that, but better not having to resist at all.

She branded him. Might as well have been branding a statue, with how much he reacted. She lifted her staff, and the titan examined the tiny circle of runes.

"And the rider?" he asked.

"What?"

"The rider. His aura is unique."

She shivered and squeezed her staff. It was a unique aura, but it'd been a while since her encounter with him. It'd been like standing in a wind, trying to resist getting pushed over. Maybe when she ran into him again, and she probably would, she could get a better understanding of what he did, how he did it, and how to stop him. The last thing she needed was everyone in her crew succumbing to an unstoppable urge to fight and kill.

Romakus held up a wing. "False Gate. The demons there are bound by Belor's old aura. It'd be great if we had a way to break that."

Julisa hit her boss in the thigh with her tail. "We will avoid the demons of False Gate."

"Might not be possible. I don't know about you, but I know I'd sleep better if I didn't think a bunch of psycho, rabid demons were hunting for me in the middle of the night."

"Demons don't hunt at night," Mia said.

"Usually. I've been stuck in a few nasty circumstances, I'll have you know." He flared his wings, and the skulls dangling from them swung back and forth. Scary. "I've been ambushed in the dead of night. I was terrified!" And not so scary.

Mia nodded and faced the wall. "Raphael. The Unholy Lands have been trapped by an aura that a child of the Old Ones sealed on the demons there at least a couple thousand years ago. The aura's gone, but the seal on those demons remains. We think demons there might even be recreating and re-sealing the aura on new demons. Is there a rune I can use to break that seal?"

A new rune wrote across the bone wall. Freedom. Break. Stop. Mute.

"How do I use this?" she asked.

"You must brand the demon."

"Oh. So I have to capture any demon with the seal, and this will wash the seal away?"

"Yes."

"Is... that the only way to do this?"

It took a minute for Raphael to respond.

"Yes."

Because of course it had to be the most difficult thing possible. But it made sense. To actually make changes at the personal, music level, they had to touch. It was how she learned potram and batlam, how she learned the rune alphabet in the spire tower, and how she'd transferred it to David. It was how Raphael was teaching her now.

She touched the rune, and the same mental dance occurred, strands coming to life like Christmas lights. The rune to destroy a seal lit up and stayed lit.

She sighed and sat beside Cerberus, panting. Without hesitation, he pressed up against her, yelped when his nose hit one of her shoulder spikes, and pulled away. She whined and held out her hand to him, and he came back and rubbed his chins against her palm.

Romakus joined her, squatting beside her. Ten feet tall with a huge wingspan. Easy to forget sometimes just how big the joker was.

"Better than nothing," he said. "If we get jumped by demons in False Gate, we capture one, break the seal, and make them escort us to the best path to the river Styx."

"I guess. I--"

The world trembled. She jumped to her feet, and everyone looked around. Like someone had hit a wet tree and dislodged the water, a fresh layer of gold tears fell from the ceiling, and they all landed together, a sheet of gold in the dark. Another tremble, and the giant eyes above looked around in random directions, pupils scattering.

"Music," Mia said. "I hear music. Someone's hitting the strings hard." She pointed toward the source.

"That's toward James," Azreal said. "Is he sending us a message?"

Mia waited and listened, but instead of a specific beat, there was only chaos, random vibrations that said nothing. Random sounds, and distant on the strings, it was like trying to identify a gunshot from a mile away. James wasn't as good at playing the music as she was, and the sounds proved that, weird madness that sounded loud but inelegant.

Kas grumbled and gestured to the bone wall. "Explain to Raphael that we must keep moving. If James summons the invaders..."

Vin shook his head. "Then he dies."

"If Mia approaches him," Romakus said, "that will only summon more of the invaders. We have an opportunity here for our special little girl to learn more magic spells for her wizard book."

Again, the mountain vibrated, a tiny thing that buzzed along their feet.

"We saved him once," Mia said. "We can save him again. We can't just--"

Yosepha sighed and patted Mia's shoulder with a wing. "We cannot reach James quickly. Even if Raphael both unblocked our path, and guided us to him, we would probably arrive too late."

"You don't know that!"

The angel shook her head. "But we can accomplish real things right here and now, powerful, useful things. We must be pragmatic."

Mia glared and looked at Noah and Azreal, but she knew what they'd say. They'd agree with Yosepha, not because she was an angel, but because they were about to say the same thing before Yosepha did.

Julisa, of all people, gestured to Mia with her tail. "And besides, those infernal volarins are with him. And your friend Adron. And Livian, Silvina, and Yulia and her brute friend."

"They all good fighters?" Mia asked.

The fujara tetrad nodded and sank the claws of her feet into the ground.

"They have killed many demons. Do not underestimate them."

Mia definitely underestimated them, especially Faustinus and the gang, Gallius, Locutus, and Oudoceus. Maybe she shouldn't have, considering how badass those names were. Livian was a bolstara tetrad, with a set of hooves that'd probably crushed thousands of skulls in her lifetime. Silvina was a tiger, and Yulia was just a dainty bat girl, but her mute brute friend was a hulk of muscle. They could fight. And Adron had more than proved himself.

They wouldn't be able to stop Dobasi's armies if he found them, though.

"Let's do this fast, then." Mia got back up and faced the wall. "Raphael, what else can you teach me you think will help me on my journey?"

No response. She raised a brow, dismissed her batlam rune, and touched the bone wall.

"Raphael?" She looked up. The eyes were looking at her again, and the distant vibrations of battle had faded. "Raphael?"

"The echo weakens," the archangel wrote across his bone.

"Shit. Can you unblock our path to James?"

"Done."

Oh thank god. Why the asshole corpse had to block her just to have this conversation, she didn't know. Maybe the idea of 'asking' wasn't something an ancient entity, the echo of an ancient entity, and borderline deity, didn't understand.

"Raphael. You said you'd teach me. Did you have something you wanted to teach me specifically? Something you think can help me?"

A new rune wrote across the bone. Mia read it, sucked in a quick gasp, and took a step back.

"Um... you sure you want to teach me that?"

"The essence left in this vessel wanes, child of Hell. You must learn this rune, and when you do, I will be gone."

She gulped and looked back at everyone. Everyone stared at her, waiting for an explanation.

And she wasn't sure if she should give it.

New runes wrote across the bone, but she didn't read them out loud. 'To survive the invaders, to save the Great Tower, you will not be able to do this with only the power of Hell. You must learn how to reach Heaven.'

"You waited until now to bring this up!?"

"Mia," Yosepha said. "Please, do not keep information from us. What is Raphael saying?"

More runes. She read them. "I taught you until I knew I could teach but one last thing, a thing most vital."

"No," Azreal said. "What did the runes say before? What is that large rune at the bottom? Explain, Mia."

She winced and looked down. Why was she afraid to tell them?

Because it could end badly.

"I can go to Heaven," she said, and let her head drop.

Vin snorted and squatted in front of her, almost blocking her vision of the group.

"What?" he asked, voice dark and sharp.

"I can go to Heaven! I mean, I think I can. This rune"--she gestured to the big rune at the bottom of the bone-wall message panel--"is some sort of travel rune. I don't know how it works yet. Haven't absorbed it yet. But... But that's what it says. It's some sort of rune that'll make, um... I don't know, some sort of pathway between Heaven and Hell."

The angels looked at each other, wide-eyed. Kas growled and looked at the wall. Julisa grinned and approached.

"We can go to Heaven?" she asked, licking her fangs.

"I don't know. Not that I'd let you go! You'd try and eat the souls."

"I would not."

"You'd try and eat the angels."

"Perhaps."

Mia scrunched up her nose, ready to start a fight, but Noah held up a wing.

"Archangels can travel between realms," he said. "Angels can only do it flying the edge of the vortex, something Lucifer created to enact his attack plan on Heaven. Archangels can use runes. Why didn't Lucifer use this one when he was banished to Hell?"

Mia relayed the question to Raphael.

"Lucifer," Raphael wrote, "had that rune stripped from him by our Father. The vortex was his response."

That made sense. She'd heard some metaphors for the casting of Lucifer into Hell, like having his wings burned off and stuff.

"So if I absorb this rune," Mia said, "I can just... go to Heaven whenever I want?"

"If you can play the song," the runes read. "You must grow stronger. Hell cannot play the song for you."

She gulped down a boulder and looked at the others again. She didn't know what to say. They didn't know what to say.

"What would happen," she asked Raphael, "if I go to Heaven? I'm a child of Hell, right?"

A delay, before the archangel's corpse responded. "I do not know."

"If I learn this rune, can you help me with using it? Or... anything?"

"No. I will be gone."

She pulled on her hair and bit back a scream. "Can you... Can you tell me anything else? Why can I eat as many hearts as I want and never get full? Why do I absorb the memories of the people and demons those hearts belong to? Do you know?"

"No."

"Can you tell me why I died randomly when I did?"

"No."

"Can you tell me why I can use angel runes? I mean, I know I can use runes, but the angel runes seem specific to angels. Can you tell me why I can use them?"

"No."

"How about... Can you tell me why my body is stretchy? Like, it can stretch in some pretty... extreme ways." She blushed.

"No."

Because of course he couldn't tell her! It wasn't fair she get so angry. She had some answers, and knowledge about the universe, knowledge the angels didn't have. But now she had a billion more questions about herself, what she was, who she was, what the fuck a 'child of Hell' even meant, and she couldn't get them. The archangel didn't know.

Lucifer would know.

"You are concerned about going to Heaven," Noah said.

"Yes! Yes I am. I..." She hugged her arms and looked down at her skimpy red clothes. "You heard the archangel. I'm a child of Hell. And you know what happened to all the unmarked. We couldn't go into Heaven."

The angels looked at each other, each nodding as they considered.

"We won't know unless you try," Yosepha said. "But to what goal? The woman in aera armor has insisted we reach the Forgotten Place. She saved your life. She saved more lives when she stopped Alessio. It would be foolish to ignore her warnings."

"Yes," Azreal said. "And we do not know the state of Heaven. Why the angels no longer patrol the skies is a question, but learning it could spell our deaths."

"But," Noah said, "if Mia enters Heaven with the power of the runes, that would perhaps prove she is worthy of Heaven to the council."

Yosepha shook her head. "They would not believe it unless she passed through the gate. There is a reason one council angel always watches the gate."

Right, the giant, androgynous angel with extra wings. Scary.

"But," Mia said, "Raphael thinks the only way we're stopping the invaders is with the help of Heaven. That might mean going to Heaven and negotiating?"

"Yes," Noah said. "But I fear we have no choice but to continue our journey, rather than risk visiting Heaven. Yet."

"So maybe I should learn a different rune?"

He shook his head. "We have no idea if you would survive the journey to Heaven as we do, by flying the winds of the vortex. It could very well burn you to ash. And this rune could be the tool needed to prove to Heaven that you are not some harbinger of Armageddon."

She gestured to her red clothes again. "I don't think Heaven is going to accept that I'm not the bad guy, just because I showed up in their home without permission."

New runes wrote across the bone wall, and she read them. "Heaven will acknowledge the power of an archangel."

She sighed deep and found the last question, the one she was terrified to ask.

"Can we trust Lucifer? Prince of Lies?"

A long delay. "Lucifer is no liar. He did not think that humans were worthy of his protection and servitude, and that is why he was bound to Hell. When he warred against Heaven, our Father punished him again and bound him to the Frozen Heart. But he did not lie."

If there was anything sentient left in the archangel's corpse, it probably hurt him to write that. The edges of the runes had harsher edges, like he wrote them with an angry hand.

"Then... I guess we keep going to the Forgotten Place," she said. "And once we get there and figure out what the fuck is going on, we can see about visiting Heaven." She looked back at the group. "Agreed?"

Everyone nodded, except Vin. The big guy rumbled quietly and stepped back, glaring eyes locked on the wall.

Mia didn't ask what was bothering him. Maybe she should have. Instead, she reached out for the rune, and touched it.

She almost screamed. Lights shot through her mind, a straight line down through the web from top to bottom and back to top. It coursed through the Great Tower, through the strands that bound it, to the base that floated on the black ocean like the hull of a ship, to the tips at the top that reached out into the black, like branches, growing leaves of existence in the endless nothingness.

And the line coursed back down through the glass sphere in the center, the world of the material.

Mia fell on her ass, and Cerberus was on her in a second, nudging all three heads against her.

"I'm okay, I'm okay, Cerb. Just... wow." She took a few hard blinks for a mental reset.

Noah stood beside her and held out his hand.

"I... I can use this to go to Heaven," she said, taking his hand and getting back on her feet. "And to the surface... To Earth."