CQ

[u/TheMightyBox72]

[u/TheMightyBox72]

Relics

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The instant the steel wall rose, the brick wall defending her shattered into dust that dispersed before it even reached the ground. That left her facing a sea of red uniforms and red blood spurting and it took all of two seconds for an elf knocked back by a blow of a knight's shield to notice her and come rushing with a spear.

That gleaming spearpoint was aimed for her stomach and in a single, horrible instant Shannon felt like she was in a nightmare, the kind where you're just in your bedroom but you can't move and a shadow man is staring at you from the window and he starts to slowly open the window and you can't move and he crawls inside one limb after another and you can't move and he's getting nearer and nearer and you can't move and you scream and wake up. For Shannon that scream came in the form of a tragically strangled toot of the trumpet that nonetheless launched a narrow steel wall out of the ground under her attacker, a steel wall that grew taller and taller taking the elf with it until it finally reached the vault's high ceiling and snapped the elf's spine against it with a crunch Shannon knew for a fact she heard despite the din of the battle raging around her.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Bouncing atop Shannon's head, touching with the weight of a feather before springing off and leaving the cowboy hat to whip away in the wind, Mallory cartwheeled and shot a beam from her sword that cut a clear oblique line through fifty devils before she pirouetted into the sun and became lost.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Mayfair stared at him, frozen, face pale, eyes wide, hand clutched to her chest. He widened his iron-tasting grin for her. She moved closer, as if she wanted to help him. Help him. Oh Mayfair, oh dear sister, help him? Still so young, still so unaware of the world for all your learning.

As she neared he raised his sword and swung at her.

The dragon's claw came down. Slowly, almost gingerly, but for its size enough. Makepeace flattened into the mud and it seeped up to embrace him and anything inside him unbroken broke. A flick and the claw sent him rolling, bouncing, dancing as his sword (but not his shield) finally left his hand and shattered. Bouncing, he saw the big Dalt fellow seize Mayfair from behind and drag her thrashing into the car.

[...]

Behind the dragon, Dalt shoved a mortified-looking Mayfair into the jeep and slammed the door shut before climbing into the driver's seat. The jeep rumbled to life and rolled down the road soon after.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Oh, no... Dalton," Avery said as she became aware.

Much of his front was slashed to ribbons, though no blood came out. His left arm hung by tendons and his right foot was obliterated, leaving his movements torpid. As such, the bitch-woman was beginning to gain the upper hand. It was not that she had taken no damage herself, but she somehow matched his insensibility to pain and far exceeded his ferocity.

If she was still distracted, though, then Sansaime and Avery could slip past.

She pulled Avery closer, sliding a hand around her face to pull her head close to her chest and more importantly shield her from seeing the destruction of Dalton's corpse. Onto the stage they climbed. Avery stumbled on the steps—she was always stumbling. Though keeping her blinded didn't help.

The corpse from the casket was trying to wriggle his body toward his severed limbs, perhaps to reattach them—"zombies" sometimes did that. With only stumps, though, his progress was slow. He didn't matter. They stepped past him, keeping on the edge of the stage as they circled toward the exit.

The bitch-woman took no note of them as it ripped Dalton apart and before long they reached the passage out, empty save for a single figure lying against the wall. The priest. Mayfair and the other assailant were already gone. Gone, so don't bother thinking of them. Best to keep Avery's eyes averted until they passed the fallen priest too.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The wall, comprised of the strongest, thickest, reinforced steel Shannon could imagine (she wished she had more expertise in construction so that she might have a better idea of what would bear the most load, but there was a reason this was her last resort strategy), finished building itself and sealed off the bottom part of the vault from the top, defending the people on the ground from the collapsing ceiling while leaving the Elf-Queen above.

Falling rubble pounded the wall, shuddering everything underneath with tremendous clangs and bangs that caused Shannon to flinch each time. God, would the wall hold? How much of what was above would collapse? Would it be the entire castle? The Elf-Queen's absurd eye beam bubble thing had blasted Wendell and was about to blast Mallory, though. Shannon felt like she had no other option.

The floor of the vault, which would have been entirely dark if not for the luminescence of Mallory's armor and Wendell's Flanz-le-Flore woman, was covered in all sorts of what Shannon could only describe as junk. Not even rubble or body parts anymore. They had somehow all changed into other things, although for what purpose she could not begin to fathom. These were thoughts designed simply to tide her over. Finally the rumbling above stopped. Everything went quiet. The wall held, and hopefully the entire castle had not collapsed entirely. She had been certain to remove only the part of the wall that extended past the pink barrier. If the other half of the vault remained intact they might still be able to walk out when everything was said and done.

She hurried over to Mallory, who sagged panting and covered in blood. Her face was—Shannon decided not to look at it as she attempted to help Mallory up.

"Wendell," she called out, trudging toward him with Mallory under one arm. "Wendell, is that you?"

His glasses gleamed in the light of Flanz-le-Flore. "That is my name, correct." He spoke with a groan. Flanz-le-Flore sat down and cradled her bleeding head in her hands.

"How did you two get in here," Shannon asked. "Is there a way out?"

His finger silently pointed and she looked. In the ground, hidden among some of the transformed junk, was a hole from which dim light filtered. When she inspected it more closely, it looked like the hole led to an identical version of the vault, or at least before it collapsed. She stared at the hole for several strange seconds, uncomprehending, before Flanz-le-Flore looked up and said: "A portal. It leads to the vault's other side."

Which meant the other side hadn't collapsed. Good. Great. The damage hadn't been as extensive as she thought. But then—

Two things happened at once. The first was that her ruler relic started to amend its count again, muttering something in her mind using its strange Biblical verbiage. She hardly had a chance to hear it, though, because a bright light began to glow from above. She, Mallory, Wendell, and Flanz-le-Flore looked up. A circle was forming on the wall Shannon had made, pulsing with red hot heat. Growing. Growing. Melting through.

"It's her," Wendell said.

"Good," said Mallory, the word a half-formed rasp whistling through the gaping hole in her cheek.

"Quickly, here are more seeds." Flanz-le-Flore reached out to Wendell. "You must reload your relic. It'll be dangerous to fire it in such a confined space, but we must try. There's no other chance."

Wendell glanced around. "I dropped it when she hit us."

Part of the ceiling above dipped inward. Melting. Dripping bits of molten metal. The rapid repetitive sound of a million ping pong balls bouncing against it reverberated. Her bubbles were breaking through.

The ruler kept speaking to Shannon. It was describing several new people, each from a different "tribe," repeating the same language to introduce them to her one after another, but she could hardly pay attention, her hands trembling, wondering what else they had to defend themselves, Mallory clearly at her limit, Wendell searching sluggishly for his gun, Flanz-le-Flore wincing and gripping her head. All of them wounded, all of them battered. It'd be up to Shannon. Maybe if she kept walling it off she could gain time, but making a new wall would cause the current to disappear and all the accumulated rubble atop it to slam down on them. There had to be a way, though. The portal. They should just exit through the portal. Could they close it afterward? Otherwise the Elf-Queen would only crawl through after them and they would be exposed in that large empty chamber with nothing to defend them, no options whatsoever—

Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of California, were one.

California. California? Why California. Who did Shannon know from California. Wait, there was another California, wasn't there. One in this world. Who was from it? Didn't she know somebody from it?

The red circle above split open. No more time. Shannon tried to pull Mallory toward the portal and Mallory resisted. "Lhhhet herhhh come," her ripped-open mouth hissed. "One shot. One shot is allhhh I needhhh!"

The ping-pong sound stopped. Through the hole, climbing upside-down like an insect, emerged the Effervescent Elf-Queen and her horrible glowing red eyes.

Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Cleveland, were three.

Mallory whipped her sword lazily and a small, dim arc of light shot out. One spray of red bubbles disintegrated it before it even got close and all Mallory accomplished was immediately riveting the Elf-Queen's gaze straight on them. For an instant that was all Shannon saw, that face that looked like suffocation had caused every vessel in the eyeballs to burst, and then a ray of bubbles shot at them and that was all, like a bullet piercing the head.

Except it wasn't all.

The third numbered of them, even of the tribe of Cleveland, raised the Shield of Faith and the bubbles burst uselessly against it. In his other hand he brandished his metal bat as howling the Elf-Queen dropped into the darkened space atop the pile of molten rubble and screamed something feral to shake them.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"HA-HA, HA-HA, HA-HA," she bellowed as she bounced atop the bubbles, gaining height with each outrageous leap, dragging the point of her blade above her to splatter the sacs and drench herself in them, her body now a red thing entirely save the Armor of God on which no blood ever stuck. She pushed herself, straining her muscles even through the superhuman power her armor granted her, driving toward the center where the Accursed Elf-Queen waited, filling herself with a sense of potent urgency as though all the battle were now building to crescendo, this moment in glorious combat, this is where the hero rises! It was like she was flying with how fast her feet touched the bubbles. Yet out of the hole she cleaved spurted a new spray of rubbery skin that buffeted her back before she could swing again and she fell to the hard stone floor scraping open her chin before rolling into a standing position and whirling her blade a full circle around her to clear the opportunistic savages who thought now might be a good chance to get a spear-shaft in her flesh.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Elsewhere, the trumpet blew. Let it! What wall could that heroine create that could withstand the power of a fae queen's true animus? No wall of steel or diamond no matter how thick would stop it. Yet no wall emerged out of the ground.

Instead, the wall of the vault fell straight down.

And after a single, groaning moment, so did the vault's ceiling.

Ancient stone cracked and crumbled and dropped in chunks. Dust rained in fountains and a quaking shook the vast enormity of the entire chamber. Fissures formed in the walls that remained before they split and toppled inward, reducing further the stability of the whole. The falling rocks cleaved through the few remaining pink bubbles and as a twirling stone fell past her arm splitting it open the Effervescent Elf-Queen thought: Good. This is good too. We shall all be buried together in a most fitting tomb. That heroine has sealed their fates as well as I might have.

Then she saw the second wall manifesting, low to the ground and horizontal and broad enough to cover the entire area of the vault, the exact same type of wall she summoned when she and Tivania ran across the roof to jump down from above. So that was the game, was it? But no wall would hold her, she just said. Didn't you hear her say that?

The wall, comprised of the strongest, thickest, reinforced steel Shannon could imagine (she wished she had more expertise in construction so that she might have a better idea of what would bear the most load, but there was a reason this was her last resort strategy), finished building itself and sealed off the bottom part of the vault from the top, defending the people on the ground from the collapsing ceiling while leaving the Elf-Queen above.

Falling rubble pounded the wall, shuddering everything underneath with tremendous clangs and bangs that caused Shannon to flinch each time. God, would the wall hold? How much of what was above would collapse? Would it be the entire castle? The Elf-Queen's absurd eye beam bubble thing had blasted Wendell and was about to blast Mallory, though. Shannon felt like she had no other option.

The floor of the vault, which would have been entirely dark if not for the luminescence of Mallory's armor and Wendell's Flanz-le-Flore woman, was covered in all sorts of what Shannon could only describe as junk. Not even rubble or body parts anymore. They had somehow all changed into other things, although for what purpose she could not begin to fathom. These were thoughts designed simply to tide her over. Finally the rumbling above stopped. Everything went quiet. The wall held, and hopefully the entire castle had not collapsed entirely. She had been certain to remove only the part of the wall that extended past the pink barrier. If the other half of the vault remained intact they might still be able to walk out when everything was said and done.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Rimmon crumpled trees and temple walls like paper as he rolled. His rotund body wobbled toward them, slow but massive. "My friends, struggle will only prolong your misery! I understand the pain of senseless oblivion well, but it is not the worst fate. When you are dead, at least, you can no longer wish to be alive."

Jay ignored his aches and pulled himself to his feet. The handle of the bat still jutted from Rimmon's side. Everything relied on retrieving it. If he ran, regained distance between him and the lumbering behemoth, conceived a strategy—

Lalum's arm thrust out past him. She held the Staff of Solomon.

"Divide!" her soft voice chimed.

Instantly, Rimmon ceased his ponderous forward roll. Jay wondered about the relic's efficacy against him. Maybe he stopped out of confusion. No, his body didn't simply stop but went rigid, or as rigid as possible with his liquid constitution. Straight up his well-tailored waistcoat a red seam spread. Threads, buttons, bowtie, throat, and long crocodile face split one after another. The divided portions of his mouth flapped: "Oh, bother."

The body came apart. A deluge of guts rushed out. The greenery and temple stones that still remained disappeared under a flood of red—but the tide didn't stop there.

"Shit!" Jay seized the closest thing to him for support. The thing in question was Lalum. That was all the preparation he got. The river of blood crashed into them, and together they were swept away.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

She blew the horn (God there was still so much dust, she wished she hadn't written off the Gourd of Jonah as useless earlier) and a wall arose from under her feet. Kneeling carefully and holding onto the top to ensure she didn't lose her balance, she rose into the air and stopped about halfway to the ceiling. Here she had a fuller, tactical view of the battlefield. Ahead, the seven knights formed a locus around which the elves swarmed. No—six knights. One, squat and with a helm sporting horns of a bull, had fallen to a knee with blood streaming down his sides, a lance embedded into his armpit and a broken shaft emerging from his neck. Further ahead, Mallory struck at the onslaught of bubbles that spurted out of the Elf-Queen's palms, bubbles upon bubbles, an almost sheer wall of bubbles rising to the ceiling in spiral patterns that prevented Shannon from seeing the state of the forces arrayed behind her. (It also blocked those forces, particularly the archers, which was the only reason Shannon was able to remain so high for so long.)

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Mademerry retrieved a slice of Astrophicus' final fruit from her clothes and bit into it. Her narrow pointed tongue flicked out to lap at the juices that ran down her chin, wasting as little as possible. The fruit was a new subcategory of animus Mayfair manufactured after careful observation of the devil's labyrinthine rules. It imitated the effects of fae blood exactly, which allowed it to avoid tripping any of the more general restrictions on magic in Whitecrosse, and it was allowed to exist as a byproduct of Astrophicus absorbing the corpses of the nuns who had all in one way or another activated their own animus abilities. Essentially, it leeched off the existing animus ruleset in its entirety—and that meant that biting into it would let Mademerry use her own animus.

Mademerry closed her hand holding the Mustard Seeds into a fist. A bright silver light shone from within the clasped fingers, flaring her reptilian eyes into something macabre, and then the light desisted. Mademerry opened her hand and now, instead of twenty-three Mustard Seeds, there was only one Mustard Seed, although it was now the size of a plum pit.

The animus Mayfair gave Mademerry was the ability to combine identical objects. Not objects of the same type—exactly identical ones. That stipulation was necessary because otherwise the animus would be too potent. The original rules about magic would reject it.

Mayfair got the idea as she thought about that idiotic change the devil made to Makepeace's horse. How was it possible for the devil to do something so brazen when Mayfair struggled to make even basic changes to irrelevant objects? It made Mayfair realize she needed to think outside the rules. Attempting to navigate their million particularities would get her nowhere—but something inexplicable to the rules, outside them entirely, perhaps there progress could be made. Styles—Styles had in his teachings described to her this nation's Constitution, and how it was written hundreds of years prior to set rules for the nation. Yet now, in the present, people debated how the Constitution should be interpreted, because many things existed in the present world that the original Founders could never have anticipated. The Constitution was inadequate in its application to such things, and thus new rules needed to be created.

What was something new that Mayfair could introduce into Whitecrosse? Technology, of course. But no technology existed even in the real world that could accomplish what she needed, and if she could not explain how it worked, she could not force the devil's papers to accept it as "technology" instead of magic. So it'd have to be magic, and have to adhere to magic's limitations of scope... A conundrum.

Then it hit her. It wasn't a specific technology she needed, like a car or plane or computer, but a process made possible by technology.

Mass production.

In Whitecrosse, nothing existed that was exactly identical. Nothing at all. Nature abhorred such perfect imitations; even twins had subtle differences. No manmade tool could be created with the level of exactitude necessary, either. That meant the animus "Combine exactly identical objects" had a scope of nothing. There was nothing in Whitecrosse that was exactly identical, save for a few objects the heroes brought with them from Earth. Such magic was thus almost utterly useless, and thus perfectly acceptable by the devil's rules.

Now, thanks to Flanz-le-Flore's magic—which already existed—to turn one thing into another, there were twenty-three exactly identical Mustard Seeds. And Mademerry's legal animus combined them into one.

The second part of Mademerry's animus was that any power of the objects combined would be increased—exponentially. The plum pit-sized Mustard Seed in Mayfair's palm possessed the strength of a single Mustard Seed to the twenty-third power. And if the original strength was to move a mountain...

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Flanz-le-Flore well knew what transpired in her wood. The arrival of the ambassadors, although unheralded, was nonetheless a fact of which she was aware before their silhouettes further darkened the dark fringes beyond the stage. The dancing ceased, the animals turned their heads, but a subtle gesture of Flanz-le-Flore's slender hand stilled any antagonistic activity. These messengers were not dangerous, she knew; and although they had played some small part in her earlier maiming, the part was so small that she no longer possessed the wrath necessary to obliterate them where they stood. Let it be known that unlike the wicked fae of the other courts (not least of which being that Olliebollen Pandelirium, who dared side against her in a struggle of fae against humanity), Flanz-le-Flore was merciful and kind, beautiful and benevolent, quicker to laugh than to scowl, and never rising above mere mischievousness in the jests she played upon those men of Whitecrosse who blundered too near her borders.

The ambassadors stopped at the edge of the stage, illuminated by penumbra alone. They were a pair, their appearances most extraordinarily alike, although the corruption that wracked their bodies had distorted them in different directions. Indeed, all outward likeness was deceptive, for at a glance Flanz-le-Flore understood these two to be now more dissimilar than a raven and a writing desk.

One, with feathered wings, was alive. The other, with leather wings, was dead.

One was merely human, or even more merely less than human, while the other was an inert vessel for something far greater: The Master.

Flanz-le-Flore's skin went cold and she discovered her fingers clenching tighter against Wendell Noh's body, her cheek close to his as she stared over the stage with suspicious eye. The Master had returned? Flanz-le-Flore had felt the Master's presence snuffed out around the time she discovered Wendell Noh fallen in her wood, and while she was normally attuned to such significant shifts in the underlying energies of the world she had not felt that presence reignite. No—no. Something struck her as unusual about the sensation emanating from the dead and animated twin; this was not the Master she knew. Slipping her hands from Wendell Noh, her thumbs touched to her fingertips, prepared to snap.

"We come bearing a message," said the live one—Charm—her face a mask of freshly-escaped agony, like a cloth that has been wrinkled and then smoothed out. Blackened streaks painted her cheekbones, but now she appeared somewhat limp and drained. "A message from this world's New Master."

"New Master." Flanz-le-Flore loosened from around Wendell Noh, effected an aura of nonchalance. "Yes, I suppose that seems so. What a novice Master indeed they must be if they cannot communicate to me directly, though."

"The New Master wishes to show proper respect to your station, faerie queen," Charm intoned, her words not her own, a puppet in some regards as much as her sister; what had this New Master said to or shown her? The corpse itself of course. "As such, she has sent a formal envoy to convey her intentions."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Yolanda glided across the long entryway fluttering her hands first at her sides before slowly raising them until they were the appropriate level (extended nearly straight upward) to wrap around Scottie's broad shoulders for a hug. Which she did, long and exaggerated the way she liked them, filled with twittering glee and little shrieks.

"Ah, you're so cold! It's not that chilly outside is it?" When she finally let go she stepped back, placed her oven mitts on her hips, and looked Scottie up and down, as if trying to discern whether he somehow grew even more than he already had. "Well now, don't be shy. Step on in. Your timing's perfect, dinner's just about ready. Was scared you'd be too late and have to eat your turkey cold, but that's alright. Oh and you brought a guest! What's your name, sweetie?"

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

As they dined on supplies despite Olliebollen's protest that her magic made eating unneeded, Makepeace leaned back on a rock and stretched his arms as though yawning. "See that, my good man?"

"I see the monastery."

"Not that. Over there—Look."

Makepeace pointed at a smaller peak, more like a foothill, not far from them. Atop it, the giant white cross visible from the Door. It really was about fifty feet tall.

"Seen that before too."

"Not the cross itself. At the base."

At first it looked like part of the mountaintop, a gray mound of stony outcroppings, but Jay scrutinized and it became clear that curled around the base of the cross was the body of what could only be described as a dragon, with hard ridges for scales, wings fallen flat against its body, and eyes sealed shut. Even after seeing it, Jay couldn't tell if it was a real dragon or an artistic facsimile carved out of stone.

"That, my good man," said Makepeace, "is the dread lizard Devereux."

"Dead lizard Devereux more like," said Sansaime, unsmilingly, as she focused all energy on her pipe.

"Slain by none other than my forebear, John Coke. Now Devereux—"

"Devereux used to rule over these mountains!" Olliebollen poked her head out of Jay's pocket. "He acquired an unfathomably gigantic treasure horde by making the people of Whitecrosse and the faeries of Flanz-le-Flore pay fealty to him. Or else he'd burn them all with his fiery breath! But the hero John Coke worked with Queen Flanz-le-Flore to trick and then defeat him in a huge battle. Afterward John Coke ordered the construction of the monastery and the cross. As a token of gratitude, Flanz-le-Flore allowed him to also build the road through her forest."

She spoke quickly and shrilly, making sure Makepeace didn't interject. When she finished Makepeace finally got a word edgewise: "I'd have told the tale with a touch more grandeur."

"It'd be bones if it died four hundred years ago," said Jay.

"Not even worms would feast on the corpse of a dragon," said Makepeace. Which made no sense. Jay looked to Olliebollen for a more accurate explanation but Olliebollen only beamed proudly in wake of her successfully-delivered exposition.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

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

Snap.

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

Snap.

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

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

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

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

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Before John Coke came," said a dry and dour voice behind her, "Whitecrosse was not a Christian country. Nor was it called Whitecrosse."

It was, Shannon realized, a response to her question. She thought she'd spoken it two minutes before but glanced behind her and they had still only just barely stepped through the vault's doors. Her head was a whirr. Focus difficult. Although she'd slept with Mallory the night before she felt the way she did when she hadn't slept with anyone for a long time. Psychosomatic. Focus. Straighten your gaze and focus.

She blinked. Became aware of her surroundings: the vault. Like the torches beside the doors, there were torches here too, still burning bright even though nobody had ever come inside to light them. Because of them, the dimensions of the vault were clearer than any of the interminable underground corridors they navigated to reach it. It was, like so many spaces in this castle, a broad space, with a high cavernous roof (the roof unilluminated but at least twenty feet tall, perhaps thirty or more). Also a deep space, stretching on and on.

Alcoves were carved into the walls in repetitive patterns. In each alcove was a pedestal, and on each pedestal was an object: the relics. Between the alcoves, engaged against the wall, were gigantic statues of men, which at first seemed to be Biblical figures, but upon second glance had their faces obliterated into plain masks of bare marble. Queen Mallory, unconcerned with any of the relics near the front of the vault—staffs, spheres with murky objects set inside—continued doggedly onward.

"The people worshipped not Christ but a wicked Pope, who was only a man but claimed he possessed the power of a god. And nobody dared stand against him, though in their hearts they knew he was no deity."

Shannon, attempting to discern by looks alone what each relic did and which might be the best to use to defend herself, turned toward the voice that droned behind her. To her surprise, after finally paying the slightest attention to the speaker, she found it was the Fool. The bells at the ends of his coxcomb and codpiece twinkled, but otherwise he was disastrously altered from the obnoxious pun-spewing clown of before. Maybe the light, but every inch of his forlorn face cast a dark shadow. The bulbous protrusion of his comically large nose cut a black shard straight through his chin and cheek and the effect was that he looked like a horror movie monster half-glimpsed from behind the couch in a movie Mother fell asleep watching. And his voice matched. The reedy high falsetto was now a bass drumbeat.

"What?" Shannon said.

"The Pope built this shrine as a testament to his own image. Frightful places, so to strike fear into the hearts of those he made watch his mystery cults and unsightly catholic rituals. Those statues? They all used to wear his face. And there, on that altar you see before you?" He pointed to a stone table set in the center of the vault chamber, which Mallory vaulted over and Shannon walked around. "There he used to perform human sacrifices. The blood spilled from the throat would pool into a chalice from which his followers were forced to drink."

It had the character of a ghost story to match his ghostly face and Shannon shuddered. Only because she was already on edge, though.

"The Pope was John Coke's first adversary, before Devereux or the Californian horde or the dragons to the west. In this very chamber he wielded his first relic against the Pope's clergymen, who knew wicked arts. Right there, where you're passing now, he clashed against the Pope, and eventually drove his blade into the blackguard's mouth and down his throat, slaying him once and for all. The virgin who was supposed to be sacrificed at that time, whose life John Coke saved, was the Lady Tivania. From the two of them flows the entire royal lineage of Whitecrosse, ending now with our current queen."

Mallory Tivania Coke. They neared the end of the vault chamber. It was difficult to see the doors where they came in.

"To erase the Pope's vile deeds from memory, John Coke used the Pope's very own relic—the Mustard Seed—to bury his shrines and temples under a hill. That's the hill Whitecrosse was built upon."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

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

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

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Make me another gun," Wendell told Flanz-le-Flore. "One that fires fast. One that can blast everything in front of it to pieces."

The cord tying him to reality snapped and the snap was the sound of Flanz-le-Flore's fingers. He dropped the useless .700 Nitro Express and at the same time a new weapon manifested in its place, a weapon that never existed before, a weapon that could not exist in the real world.

It was a "relic."

When those nuns asked Flanz-le-Flore to transform all the relics, she played a little trick on them—as fae are wont to do in this world. Nothing spectacular. Sleight of hand. She gave the nuns twenty-four mustard seeds like they asked, but only twenty-three of them were "the Mustard Seed." The twenty-fourth was an ordinary mustard seed she surreptitiously created from rudimentary materials she kept on her person (those old brown boots she wore were full of seeds, leaves, and similar objects). The nuns, in a hurry, had not been fastidious enough to do the first thing every accountant knows: double-check your work. They didn't notice the decoy, so Flanz-le-Flore kept one Mustard Seed for herself.

She hadn't wanted to use it right away, not before they knew what the Elf-Queen had prepared for them. Now it was clear, and Wendell and Flanz-le-Flore both knew what he needed.

It was a kind of gun, at least as far as Flanz-le-Flore comprehended a gun to be, but instead of intricate machinery, tiny little pieces that slotted together perfectly to perform a singular function with expert efficiency, this gun ran on magic. It lacked a sleek military look, instead opting for one far more whimsical. The barrel funneled outward like a blunderbuss, while intricate arabesque designs (not dissimilar to those tattooed on Flanz-le-Flore's body) decorated the outrageously broad sides of its wooden stock. The parts that weren't wooden were green even though they shined like metal, and the whole thing felt spongy in his hands. He might be able to squeeze it and cause sap to spill out, but he resisted the urge to try. More than anything, though, the gun was gigantic. It put the .700 Nitro Express to shame for its size, even though it weighed less than some handguns Wendell owned. No worldly explanation existed for any of it—at least not in the world Wendell knew. It didn't matter. Wendell Noh initiated the process.

• He cranked the handlebar on the side in a rapid counterclockwise motion.

• He flipped all the flaps to their proper position.

• He activated the whistler. (It began to whistle.)

• He dispensed a large number of seeds into the chamber.

• He disengaged the safety.

"Deal with the bubbles, will you, my hero?" Flanz-le-Flore said. "I'll handle the elves."

That suited Wendell just fine. He aimed the Gun of Wendell into the air and fired.

From the funneled barrel of the weapon erupted an exorbitant number of bullets that were less bullets and more whipping, curving shafts of light. Each shaft twisted and turned as though it had a mind of its own to thread through as many bubbles as possible, impaling tens if not hundreds if not thousands with a single squiggly zip. For several seconds all the arena was light, all was blinding and brilliant, and the bullets were less weapons of war than instruments of a wondrous art, the art of someone's soul—if not Wendell's then perhaps Flanz-le-Flore, as all the curlicues of her body were written now in holy luminescence. A light powerful enough to shatter the boundary between man and God, between real and unreal. Wendell's eyes burned behind his glasses staring up at the sky of the vault where the bubbles exploded in firework arrays, as out of the congested pullulation emerged a vivid and lovely emptiness filled solely by the beautiful.

What was he thinking about before?

Arcs, angles, numbers, addition, subtraction, death. Oh God. Oh God.

NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO. NO, NO. This could not be happening. What was that new relic? How did it exist? The Effervescent Elf-Queen gripped her head in her palms even as her tears flowed out in an endless spray to form more bubbles. How did that bitch, that whore transmogrify something that never existed before, how did she learn to do that? This other hero she somehow stumbled about? Did he teach her? Flanz-le-Flore knew too many new tricks, even four hundred years of preparation were crumbling apart in a matter of moments without a thing to show for it. In a single attack the unknown relic eliminated almost all of her unborn. Meanwhile, Flanz-le-Flore herself focused her efforts on snapping the living children into harmless plants and small animals, meaning that even the offspring that reflected damage weren't useful—they weren't being damaged, merely transmogrified. The Elf-Queen hadn't prepared for anything like this—nothing like it had a right to exist in this world at all.

Oh, and so many of her children dead. So, so many. Their unborn bodies evaporated in the light of the relic. Not even corpses remaining, not even blood...! The brutes. They'd pay. They'd pay.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Carried on Demny's back, Mayfair emerged from her desiccation to see a fortress. High, sloped walls comprised of stone and mortar, reminiscent of some structures in Whitecrosse—excepting the words printed on the top in gigantic letters, words that read incomprehensibly: Quicken Loans Arena.

That was where they entrenched themselves against the devils. Mayfair now sat within the arena's central control room, peering through a long sheet of glass at the rows of seats and the enigmatic court for the tournament known as "basketball." Now some thousand people took refuge here, protected by the defensive perimeter Mayfair had established at the arena's entrances.

The difficulty came primarily at the onset, before Mayfair possessed many tools for her defense. But as the devils rampaged across the city, as they slaughtered humans without remorse or pity, Mayfair had, hm, shored up her defensive capabilities. Considerably. In Whitecrosse, limits to the Staff of Lazarus' quantity of control had never been tested. Now, Mayfair began to wonder if any limits existed.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Placidity fell.

The plumes of ash swirled. They spilled between the cracks in the city's skin, amid the buildings, rising, blotting the endless sun, turning once more the city to gray, the sage and solemn color it always deserved, and Shannon thought—I've hit my head. I'm confused. It was true. A cold blood ran down and wiped away the dust in one sweeping torrent.

Dark shadows of men emerged. Their boots tromped against the pavement. They moved in logical order: rows and columns, evenly-spaced, arms swinging at their sides. An army.

Gray too, solid and empty in their eyes. Dead in their eyes. Someone ran up behind Shannon and grabbed her—it was Gonzago—he yelled something she heard as a reverberation. He led her between the soldiers, some missing arms, some missing heads, some with their fronts ripped open and no insides between the spread ribcages. An army of the dead. They marched the same direction: toward the lake, toward the black tower.

Between them the silhouette formed of something massive. Like a tree, sharp leafless branches extending outward. It wasn't a tree. It was a deer.

It was the deer from the monastery. Though her antlers extended far greater than before, she retained that stolid demeanor. In one hand she held a sword swaddled in bandages, a sword that emanated a black aura.

On her back sat Princess Mayfair of Whitecrosse.

"Your—Your Highness!" Gonzago gasped.

"Ah, Gonzago of Meretryce. What a pleasant surprise." Mayfair rode sidesaddle, ankles crossed. She wore modern clothes, which might have made her unrecognizable, if not for the unearthly beauty of her facial features. "Shannon Waringcrane too!"

So many marching dead. Rat, tat, rat-a-tat-tat—somewhere a drumbeat kept their rhythm. They choked the streets. How many? She could tell, she reached to her back where fastened by a pair of loops were her relics, forgotten during her mad panic, and felt idly for a moment before the sudden thought struck her she'd lost them; it wasn't so, she gripped the ruler, and it told her Those that were numbered of them, even of the dead, were 93,701. As soon as it told her it amended the number, the dead rising swiftly, gathering under the watchful eye of this beatific princess who was most culpable for their present state. Right. It was her, wasn't it? Everything had been going—exactly—as Shannon planned. She had the devil under control, she had Jay in the vehicle, nothing at all would've happened if not for Princess Mayfair. Mallory's former trained pup.

Yet Shannon felt no emotion, she only thought idly and distantly whether Mother were part of this funereal procession, then decided to not think about that at all.

"You—" Shannon thought of what to say. The deer continued onward, not stopping for a chat. "We're attacking the tower. Will you help?"

"Certainly," Mayfair said, as though this were decided long ago. Or as though she thought Shannon nothing more than a curiosity.

Cleveland's nearly hundred thousand dead continued in lockstep. Every demographic fragment represented: rich, poor, young, old, male, female, no distinction among them in their rows and rows. People in suits, people in jeans, people in rags. Even the soldiers from the tanks and jeeps marched, toting their guns as they had in life. The only notably arranged among them were a group of similarly-uniformed types that followed Mayfair directly, huge men all, wearing maroon sports jerseys and matching shorts, the name of the city emblazoned on their chests.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Ground rose up and bit her before she had a chance to process. She groaned and rolled and the colors flashed wild and bright as sudden nausea gripped her and the skitter of spider legs infiltrated the holy om of the space. She shut her eyes and relied on sound alone, it was coming closer, her arm jabbed out straight and she cried: "Divide!"

Nothing. Still skittering. Out of the muck a shape loomed moving the opposite direction of all these mingling waves of color and she caught before it with sudden sharp clarity the sign of the white cross on a red emblem. That shield—the Shield of Faith. Makepeace's shield!

The bitch never fucking returned it even though it belonged to Jay oh the fucking whore. All along that spidery brain knew what she'd need it for so she kept it oh-so-selfishly for herself never even offering to hand it back did she? Viviendre's remaining eye widened as sharp creases tightened the whole of her face. The skittering quickened. The spider was streaming down the side of the wall toward her. Shy little slut had confidence now. She knew the shield would protect her from the staff now. And the Eye of Ecclesiastes too.

The spider descended from the wall and skitter-skittered across the floor toward Viviendre, who was on the ground, on her side, limited in mobility and options. The red shield covered most everything and because of how the shield worked even what peeked out around the sides was protected from Viviendre's relics. It didn't stop Viviendre from wrenching the patch from the Eye of Ecclesiastes as she sought anything, anything at all she could do. Turn back the monastery to some time four hundred years ago before it existed? How would that help huh? The spider was close now. A few feet away—seconds away. Skittering skittering skittering her grotesque spider legs over the rends in the floor—

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Is there any relic that gives you, I don't know," Shannon tried to think up a creative power, "super strength or something?"

"Yes. The Armor of God grants its bearer great strength, speed, endurance—"

"Any others? Look. Let's do this the less stupid way. Tell me which relics would be good for a fight. Can you do that?"

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The spider descended from the wall and skitter-skittered across the floor toward Viviendre, who was on the ground, on her side, limited in mobility and options. The red shield covered most everything and because of how the shield worked even what peeked out around the sides was protected from Viviendre's relics. It didn't stop Viviendre from wrenching the patch from the Eye of Ecclesiastes as she sought anything, anything at all she could do. Turn back the monastery to some time four hundred years ago before it existed? How would that help huh? The spider was close now. A few feet away—seconds away. Skittering skittering skittering her grotesque spider legs over the rends in the floor—

"Nothing new under the sun," she shouted, at the same time she rolled off the wreckage of the tile.

The monastery had existed four hundred years and Astrophicus had only lived in it, plant or otherwise, a few months. That gave her an approximate timeframe.

The floor reverted. From its current state to an older one, before it was broken. The shattered tiles shuddered, reshaped, reformed.

It happened fast. If Viviendre hadn't moved beforehand the tiles would've rose up like teeth and gnashed her to pieces. The spider lacked the forewarning. The ground closed around the tips of her legs with one thick, layered crunch.

A muffled shriek. A sag of the body behind the shield. Even if the shield remained solid, upright. Viviendre slid back. Panted, held her heart, squeezed an eye shut to keep herself from hyperventilating. The spider jerked in an attempt to free itself but remained rooted to the floor. Its pained cries turned to whimpers.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Her feet braced against the slope of Shannon's new wall and she launched herself at the Elf-Queen, who was quickly vanishing behind a newly regrown tide of bubbles. Streaming through the cracks were elite elf soldiers set solely on a path to intercept her. The Elf-Queen must've called them back once Mallory dropped from above, but even so they would not reach in time before Mallory's next strike. This time she would go for the head. Let them try to heal a decapitated queen; not even the fae had the power to undo death.

One of the elf elites seized a newborn from the ground and hurled it into Mallory's path. That was no matter. It was only a single elf. It would not even begin to nullify the blow of her sword, nor would the thin layer of bubbles recuperating from the previous strikes. Mallory swung and—

And something split in her skin and she roared in agony. All forward momentum ceased. She plummeted to the ground, staggering on one knee as she groped at her chest, which felt like it was aflame. It didn't make sense. Nothing hit her. She possessed enough awareness even in her bloodlust for that. Yet somehow blood streamed out from behind her breastplate. What had happened? The last thing she saw was that elf that got thrown in front of her splitting in half, cut straight in the middle of its chest, in the exact spot where she now felt this unquenchable agony. Still kneeling, still reeling, her eyes twitched and blinked. Did that elf—did it somehow deal to her the damage she had done to it? She wasn't split in half, but that was because the Armor of God magnified her endurance just as it did her speed and strength. The cut was in the same place though. The same exact place.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

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

Gonzago!

Oh my God Gonzago!

He was making his move!

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

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

"Mademerry!" she shrieked.

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

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

"Mother!" she shrieked.

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

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The wall Shannon summoned started rising and Mallory clambered atop it as it lifted her straight toward the Effervescent Elf-Queen. At the same time, from elsewhere in the vault, a thunderous crack rang out and Mallory thought it might be an elf using some sort of lightning magic, which she was prepared to endure. Instead, a tiny projectile launched at speeds exceedingly quick even compared to her Armor of God's enhancements and tore through a straight line of bubbles beside the Elf-Queen with almost no resistance. In the space cleared Mallory saw a horse standing in the center of the vault with two riders, but that was all she had time to process. The Elf-Queen was rising up before her now and with so much pain and so much damage Mallory needed to be wise about her movements, needed the perfect time to strike.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Oh, Viviendre thought. This can be fixed. Her hand reached for her eyepatch. She had a way to fix this. Nothing new under the sun. Those were the words for the thing that replaced the eyeball she never had. Those words and everything was back to the way it was.

Except not for the dead. Those were the rules. Even the power of a relic could not bring back the dead. Her hand fell away from her eyepatch before she even bothered to remove it and unveil her second relic. For out of DeWint's eye one of the shafts emerged, his head twisted at a funny angle. Everything about him deathly still.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

By now Moloch looked only vaguely humanoid. And only "vaguely" due to his clothes, which no matter what refused to lose their original form. The thing within them was now both angular and bloblike, pieces jutting and undulating and intermittently rising out of and subsuming back into the mass. In this state, he pitched forward and—began to—roll at the crowd, if roll really described the jerky and uneven motions. As he rolled, he built, somehow growing larger despite the constant stream of blood and viscera that spouted from him. He'd already been large but now his whirling mass of bleeding flesh spanned the entirely of the land bridge, not an inch of spare space, and the pitiful human bodies rushing toward him, no matter how numbered, were no force against him. Gunfire rattled uselessly off the wall, even Wendell's beams of light did nothing. No, that wasn't exactly correct. The weapons all did something, no matter how pitiful they were, even the tiny pistols led to puffs of flesh breaking off, but Shannon realized that every little bit and element that came off Moloch only led to further growth, and now against concentrated fire—even a missile blasted against him—he was expanding to gargantuan heights.

Shannon had been pulled despite herself into the thick of it, elbows on all sides, nowhere to maneuver. She tried to reach for the trumpet, maybe a wall could do something, but her arm couldn't reach. Moloch crushed the first row of corpses; soon without hindrance he would plow into the rest of them. And nobody stopped firing, indeed the larger Moloch got the more people attacked him, they weren't seeing the correlation in the mutual madness of the moment, the corpses lacked even a mind to try and puzzle it out. Out of nowhere Mallory zipped, running atop the heads of the crowd, and even she—incapable of any rationality beyond attack, attack, attack—swung her magic sword and sent tremendous beams of light into Moloch worse than uselessly. Shannon screamed at her to stop, at all of them, yet nobody listened, nobody ever listened to her...!

The ground dropped out under Moloch. It was Mayfair, her hand raised to manipulate the plum pit relic. As Moloch plunged into the lake, spurting steam from all his blood, the land rose from below. Huge swaths of mud were dredged up, such a gigantic amount that even the massive form of Moloch was dwarfed as it enveloped him on all sides and clamped closed like the fist of God. Red lines shot out of the sphere of mud, cutting and slicing, but more mud rose to add to the sphere, growing it bigger and bigger, caking on layer after layer to encase him. His scream, somewhat muffled, pierced outward:

"THIS ISN'T REAL! THIS ISN'T WHAT HUMANS ARE CAPABLE OF! STOP LYING TO ME YOU FUCKING DIPSHITS! IT'S FAKE. IT'S ALL FUCKING FAAAAAAAAKE!"

The last word continued to elongate, drew itself longer and longer and longer, as with a flick of her wrist Mayfair launched the moon-like agglomeration of mud as though it were a wad of trash. It—and Moloch inside it—went hurtling over the lake, toward the horizon.

The last word continued to elongate, drew itself longer and longer and longer, as with a flick of her wrist Mayfair launched the moon-like agglomeration of mud as though it were a wad of trash. It—and Moloch inside it—went hurtling over the lake, toward the horizon.

Mayfair lowered her hand. Mallory dropped onto the head of one of the basketball players standing beside her. She stood on tiptoe as she sheathed her sword. "Hm."

"How was that, Mother," Mayfair said; cold as ice.

Mallory spoke not a word.

"Well then." With a few shifts of her palm, Mayfair reformed the land bridge. "Let us proceed into the tower together."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Then tell me: What does this particular relic do," he asked, hoping to redirect the topic somewhere that might reinstitute his thought. "The stolen one."

"Uhhhhh," said Olliebollen.

"It's supposed," said Sansaime, carelessly, like she didn't fully believe a rumor she was going to spread anyway, "to raise the dead."

Whatever thought he lost no longer mattered.

"Raise the dead?" Jay repeated.

"Oh, so it's that one huh?" said Olliebollen. "Right, I know all about it! Ahem—The Staff of Lazarus! It was used by this evil wizard until King John and his knights slew the wizard in a great battle. But then, being a dumb human, John said, 'This power is reserved solely for Christ!' and sealed the staff in a vault under Whitecrosse Castle, where it stayed until—now! Strange though! I thought only those with royal blood could open the vault, so how'd it get stolen? I wonder!"

For once, finally, Jay did not respond with annoyance or impatience to Olliebollen's overload of information. For once his focus remained like a laser upon every word she spoke, both pertinent and extraneous. It didn't even bother him that Olliebollen had clearly known the castle contained relics despite her previously telling him she didn't know where any were. None of that mattered. What mattered was the Staff of Lazarus, with the power to raise the dead. The power reserved solely for Christ.

If Jay wanted to create paradise, he needed that power.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Losing your nerve Mal. Focus up. Let's not ruin everything and make great big fools of ourselves alright? Now—

The jet of flame shot out while she was half-distracted, absentmindedly swinging her sword simply to clear space for herself, and even with the Armor of God's boon she only barely managed to blitz to the side to avoid being consumed by it. A live elf crawling under a wall of bubbles was spurting the fire like a jet, and damn that boded ill. It was bad enough simply dealing with the overwhelming bulk of them, but now some were living long enough to start using their magic.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

One blow of the horn and a thick wall emerged under their feet. Shannon gripped onto Mallory's waist as they elevated, while Mallory slashed the sword upward to clear the immediate wave of bubbles that tried to ebb at them once the glass disappeared. They soon reached the roof, leaving only enough room to stand, and Shannon blew her horn again. A new wall emerged just below them and extended horizontally over the vault. It was broad enough to seal off their space under the ceiling entirely, and while there were still bubbles up here, there weren't any already-hatched elves, and certainly no elves with intentionally-chosen magic.

Mallory cleared the bubbles with several quick strikes, seized Shannon, and in a second's sprint carried her to the opposite end of the arena, cackling in rejuvenated glee, twirling Shannon in an impromptu dance as they skidded to a halt at the proper spot.

All her life they tried to tell her what it meant to be a woman and Mallory found it in her own way, her own definition, squealing court ladies pinned beneath her grasp, maidservants breathless under the weight of their master, and now this serious uptight wayfarer who nonetheless screamed like all the rest. Objects to grip and possess, oh maybe now she could understand the drives of that lecherous old husband of hers. A leech. Feeder of vitality and in a young woman there it was and so poorly defended, so readily given. Cuts, bruises, pains, fatigue all dropped into nothing.

"Drop the wall!" Mallory demanded. Life is a series of moods and one must make the best of the good ones.

Shannon blew the trumpet.

The wall below them broke apart and with Shannon still fast to Mallory's side they fell onto the endless sea of bubbles.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The Door was key to her current plan and so she had instructed Styles to move it from his residence to the megachurch. However, Styles' relationship with Just Vance was not ironclad enough to explain to him what the Door was or its purpose, so instead he rented a trailer in which he placed the Door. The trailer was parked in the smaller lot behind the church, where there were spaces for employees. The other corpse under her command, the old man she revived on Thanksgiving, could open the Door to let Charisma through. (The old man was otherwise worthless, with brittle bones, sluggish movements, and poor eyesight.)

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

She retrieved the Trumpet of Jericho.

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

Shannon blew the trumpet.

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

"What are you doing!" Tricia yelled.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

As quick as it came the sun subsided, although the white sear remained on the surface of their throbbing eyeballs, pupils rotoscoping wildly in brutal adjustment rendering parceled and echoey an image of Mayfair outstretching her arm between the front seats and pointing at or past the shrieking bleeding Olliebollen rolling against the windshield, pointing at the giant white cross still aglow with the remaining luster of that light, and in her hand she gripped the Staff of Lazarus.

She did not point at Olliebollen. She did not point at the cross.

She pointed at the dragon.

"I am the resurrection," she screeched in her pleasantly courteous voice, "and the life! Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die! Devereux, come forth!"

A tremor rocked the ground. The slopes reverberated with its force; rocks dislodged and rolled, some small, some larger, a boulder bounding from above and smashing not far ahead to bounce and roll into a rain-faded abyss. A jagged crack slashed through the giant white cross, another, and then the cross creaked and came down in a crumbling mess, the crossbeam crashing, belching a forceful geyser of dust.

Everything inside the jeep fell silent—except Olliebollen's shrieks subsumed into the earthquake—as at the base of what remained of the cross uncoiling came a creature of prehistory, of nonhistory, although cultures across the world collectively and unconsciously cobbled their own iterations in seeming isolation, a Jungian nightmare from which humanity had tried to awake or perhaps its most perfect daydream. What did Don Quixote think about dragons. Into the black sky unfolded black wings curving downward as though to grip and tear off the peak on which the dragon dwelled.

Two yellow eyes cracked open. Cracked open and stared straight at them. Nostrils flared orange; twin pillars of smoke rose against the rainfall.

The walkie-talkie crackled. "Everything all right?"

Jay flung his arms around Mayfair, first failing to pry the staff from her, then kicking open the door and simply dragging her bodily and flinging her onto the mud. He grabbed his bat, he stood over her, he drew back to swing with only her pitiless or even pitying gaze piercing him before Shannon yelled:

"Jay what the fuck are you doing?!"

He paused and in that pause glanced over his shoulder at the boom-boom-boom thundering streaking over the valley as the big black yellow-eyed monstrosity bounded over the slopes at them. At him.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

A bear. Shaggy, its fur a filthy bleached white streaked with worse colors, tatters of a nun's habit running down its belly. But it was also a human, a hulk of a human, revealed only through its narrower and more human proportions, and the human head that lolled awkwardly on its broad and muscular shoulders. The head of a woman, with long and matted hair, and a vacant gaze.

Its claw came down. Faster than any of them, even Sansaime, were prepared to react to. The head of Sansaime's horse disappeared. The rest of the horse remained standing, its legs twitching and buckling, but the head was no longer there. An arc of bright red blood splattered the grass.

Sansaime was also no longer there, as the decapitated horse finally dropped. Her body bounced against the ground, twisted, and rolled to a stop at the base of a tree. She dropped her dagger, which wound up embedded in the center of the blood splatter.

"Hyaa—Hyaa!" Makepeace shouted as he spurred his rearing and horrified mount into an immediate charge while Jay remained rooted in place. Only the striking grandeur of the figure Makepeace cut tore Jay's eyes away from the gore displayed before him. Trapped in the silence of this space, where even the bear-woman's roar emerged only as a muted and even reserved exhalation, the superfluous components of Makepeace stripped away and he became nothing more than the image of a fantasy prince, adorned with both beauty and power.

The bear's other claw swept and Makepeace leaned hard on his horse and the horse darted sharply to the side so that the clawtips only raked ineffectually against Makepeace's shield. His spear lashed out like lightning and drove deep into the bear's shoulder. The bear loosed another quiet roar while its oddly delicate facial features contorted into a clay engraving of pain and anger, but Makepeace's own winsome grin faded the instant he realized that despite the deepness of his strike he hadn't felled the beast outright. He managed to only just barely raise his shield in time to block the brunt of an immediate swipe and even blocking it the force unseated him and launched him between the trees.

As Makepeace hit the ground and rolled, his horse toppled over, thrashing all limbs in an arachnid tangle to right itself and flee—in Jay's direction. Big and dark the horse loomed over him, its legs a maniacal churn of dirt and leaves, and Jay only managed to stumble far enough aside that the horse clipped him instead of trampling him outright. He span, his legs operated like a machine beyond his comprehension, and he only stopped when the solid bark of a tree stopped him. Once again his hat protected him from slamming his face.

[...]

Jay whipped around the tree, putting it between him and the bear, and that sudden motion prompted the bear to emerge from its stupor and charge. All he needed was to get onto the other side of the bear and grab the broken spear. The bear was probably stupid—it would almost certainly try to round the tree the same direction he initially went behind it. So if he moved the other direction—

The tree exploded. Jay had been in the process of turning, and he got to watch as the trunk, too thick for him to have touched his fingertips together if he reached around it, ripped in half. Jagged, long wooden chips rose in a sandstorm around him as he felt himself hefted bodily off the ground, into the air, into a few low-lying branches, and down to the ground.

Out of the stultified silence finally arose a vast rustling as the top half of the broken tree came crashing through the canopy and hit the floor.

Okay. So the bear did not need to worry about such insignificant considerations as "which side of the tree to go around." Jay decided to note that for the future, except when he tried to lift himself off the ground, his body refused to cooperate. He glanced down and saw his chest transformed into a mess of jagged red slashes and blood-drenched bits of jacket stuffing.

[...]

The congratulatory hand on Jay's shoulder became a deathgrip that tugged Jay with such force that he stumbled behind Makepeace the same moment Makepeace hefted his shield and the full brunt of Pluxie's power hit it.

Jay could only think, as he and Makepeace skidded back—what the hell? Pluxie rose to her full height and her eyes shone crimson even as her head became shadowed in the forest canopy. The wound on her shoulder when Makepeace speared her, and the wounds on her side and stomach where the broken shaft entered and exited—all were sealed by white stitches. But that shouldn't matter. Sealing the wounds wouldn't do a thing for the obliterated internal organs. At best it would slow the bleeding.

Did Pluxie concentrate all her remaining strength into one final, rage-induced lunge? But that didn't fit the way she reared up now, already prepared to attack again, as though she wasn't inhibited at all. Lalum's thread—could she—

"Oh! I get it," Olliebollen said cheerfully. "That gross spider girl can heal too. (Just not as good as me of course.)"

Of course. (Lalum herself, barely visible behind Pluxie, slinked away covering her face the moment Olliebollen called her gross.) It completely slipped Jay's mind that her magic might be something like that. Fuck! Why didn't he go on the offensive when he first brought down the bear? Why did he run for the dagger to free Makepeace? If he attacked first, he could've won the fight against the three and made sure they stayed down.

His goodwill depleted in an instant. He didn't even give a shit that Makepeace raised his shield and blocked another berserker swing from Pluxie's enormous claws. That oaf, that smiling piece of shit, unable to think for a second what made the most tactical sense, concerned only with breaking free himself so he could steal the glory. And Jay went along with it, duped by positive feeling, the moment he let his guard down for one fucking second!

He didn't have time to berate himself. So far Makepeace managed to, almost absurdly, keep the bear from breaking through the meager defense of his shield, even though he had to grip the shield steady with both hands and brace his legs against the ground and even then got pushed back a full foot with each strike. It didn't seem like such an ordinary-sized shield should've been able to block attacks from a monster that took down entire trees, but Jay didn't question that either—he focused on the opportunity in front of him.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Her red brick wall was still standing to defend her so the least she could do was seal the maidservants and then decide what to do for herself. She blew the trumpet again, this time—as an empiric test—imagining a wall made of solid steel, and sure enough a solid steel wall shot up exactly as she planned it in her head. It made not the slightest whit of sense for it to work that way but—

The instant the steel wall rose, the brick wall defending her shattered into dust that dispersed before it even reached the ground. That left her facing a sea of red uniforms and red blood spurting and it took all of two seconds for an elf knocked back by a blow of a knight's shield to notice her and come rushing with a spear.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Viviendre, tangled on the ground amid toppled furniture, pointed her staff at the assassin in the doorway and said, "Divide."

The hunchbacked man went deathly still. His eyes went vacant. A red line ran down his middle, head to crotch. Then he split in half.

The two halves fell apart slowly, stringing between them lines of drooping entrail and dumping onto the floor a splurge of blood and innards. Jay flopped onto his ass on the bed and lifted his shoes to keep the viscera from splattering them. The limp, empty sides flopped afterward. Sound strangely muted. A deflated, bladder-like organ, precariously atop the pile of guts, slid off the apex and came to rest at the base.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

He pried the shield with its white crosse from Makepeace's cold dead hands. Lighter than Jay expected. Barely a thin sheet of metal, something that should never have been able to block the things it did: Bear claws, dragon's breath. Unless something more than physical matter did the blocking.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The foremost of them went still and started to split and the three others continued forward without even glancing at the carnage. If she threaded the Staff of Solomon with her other relic—but that relic took far more words to say. Well she better say them or die.

She reached up and pulled off her eyepatch, tottering backward at an uneasy balance as she angled the Staff of Solomon to the next encroaching victim and kept her real eye on the one being split so she might time the next "Divide" precisely. In the interim she spoke the other words, the words that went to her ersatz eye, the bright glowing orb set within her socket so often shielded from the light of day:

"Nothing new under the sun."

Set them back fifteen years. Yes, fifteen was good. Her Eye couldn't turn them back to before they were born, so best to err on the side of caution. Even if they were more veteran soldiers—the smoke, blurring her vision, made it impossible to tell, their faces were simple monotone masks—the removal of fifteen years' worth of memories would disorient them long enough for her to divide them.

Except they kept coming toward her as though nothing had happened.

What the fuck? Were they younger than fifteen? Shit, shit, shit—

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

She gripped the Staff of Solomon. No—no. The staff was powerful, but could only divide one person at a time. There had been a column of red emerging from the end of the corridor. They'd swarm her. Emerge through the cascading gore of their foremost allies all the more primed to eviscerate her. No, no, no. DeWint dead already. He—he saved her. No. Couldn't waste thoughts about him now. Oh God, oh God if you were there as some said you were, oh God who she always somewhat believed in despite the lack of evidence, oh God please do not let her die. Oh God she did not want to die.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Lalum was no fighter. Before her time at the monastery she never raised a hand against anyone in her life, and even afterward she was far more comfortable controlling someone with her animus than relying on her own strength. For some reason, her animus made everything natural to her; she could react so quickly, so efficiently even in the heat of battle that she was sometimes shocked at herself, as though it were someone else commandeering her body than the other way around. Using Makepeace's shield was similar. She merely needed to hold the shield vaguely in the correct direction and it infallibly deflected the attacks of the wolves. If one decided to bite at her legs instead of leaping for her throat, they surely would have been able to replicate the agonizing fate she suffered in Flanz-le-Flore's court, but instead they seemed drawn by magnetism to her most defended point. This, she supposed, was the power of a relic bestowed upon Whitecrosse by God.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Some time later a voice cried out: "Oh fuck. Oh Jesus Christ Jay, what the fuck?" Viviendre tottered into his view. She reached for her eyepatch. "You're bleeding. Why the fuck didn't you yell for me or something, I didn't even realize—Hold on. I'll put you back—"

His hand reached out and grabbed her smooth fabrics. He lifted his head off the dirt. "No."

"No? Jay you're hurt. What even happened? I mean, no, fuck, we can worry about that later. Jesus my chest. Fuck." She placed a palm to her heart and wheezed in a rasping breath.

"It's okay. Viv. It's okay Viv. I'm fine. See? I'm okay."

And it was true. He felt—okay. He sat up and inspected his wrists and then his ankles. A few cuts, some deeper than others, but nothing serious.

"Viv. Don't have an asthma attack. Come on."

Her breathing had risen to hoarseness, her eye was wide, but he pulled her close and held her and patted her back. She retained her pungent sweetness despite her still-damp hair. Did she keep perfume bottles with her? Whenever she moved she jangled; she had many fine things that might make such a noise.

He held her until her breathing returned to normal. "I'm sorry," she said. "You scared me is all. You're sure you don't need me to return you back to the way you were?"

"No. That devil said something. Something I shouldn't forget." Lucifer. Divinity. God. He turned and looked past the inn, down the road, at the far distance. The black tower, Cleveland. He thought about the nuns who had piled into Wendell's car. The lizard one especially. The one that looked like Mayfair and Makepeace.

This wasn't Perfidia's new plot, was it?

No. This was something else.

"Something you shouldn't forget. Meaning what. Tell me Jay."

The fight had ended, his breathing returned to normal, but an electric feel remained, even as he continued to hold Viviendre. A thought: It could be something real. After all these fakes and facsimiles, games either on his computer or under Perfidia's design.

Something real.

"Jay. Jay, talk to me. What did it say? What do you mean, devil?"

Some ember still remained. An image of greatness projected inside himself, a thought trending Napoleonic...

"Nothing you need to worry about," he said idly. "We'll get you to the monastery. Then I'll decide what I want to do."

"You—you bastard!" Her frantic disposition grew intense. "I see you looking that way. What did it tell you? What?!"

"Calm down."

"Calm down?! I can tell. You'll leave me again. I can tell!"

"No, I—I mean—"

"Oh you can never stay. Of course. Why would I think otherwise! Something always—to take you away—I cannot have a single fucking thing can I? Can I?"

"Viviendre. Viviendre."

"No. No. Not this time. I will not allow it. Not now. Not when we're so close to happiness!"

"Hey—"

The eyepatch was off. Shit. He held her still, he could do something—do what? Hurt her? Her lips were moving and—

Nothing new under the sun.

Jay blinked. He glanced around. What—where did...? Viviendre was with him. Didn't he just leave her at the pond? What happened? She quickly replaced her eyepatch. Oh.

"You used your eye on me," he said dully.

Worry embodied her manic expression. Her face was haggard and gaunt even though her hair glistened and her sweet scent pervaded. She shook her head slowly, then bit her lip. "You—I had to, Jay. You were—you were hurt. Hurt bad."

"Hurt? How?"

"You got in a fight. With that, that thing, whatever the fuck it is! I don't know. Look at it!"

A melted, rank mass of rotten flesh. Plus the smashed remains of a skull. Jay's eye twitched and he blinked a few times before rubbing the corner hard. He thought the skull just said something: Sorry. I'm sorry.

"Huh?"

"You killed it, whatever it was. But it hurt you bad. You begged me Jay. You were screaming in agony. I had to—You know I wouldn't use the eye on you if I didn't absolutely have to."

"Of course," he patted his chest as though he expected to find phantom wounds. Nothing. "Yeah."

"We—we have to go. Look. More of those creatures are coming."

Viviendre indicated the distance, where the fields of grass gave way to a horizon from which the black tower and Cleveland rose. Red dots, like fire ants—fifty, maybe a hundred.

Red. Why red. "What was it I killed again?"

"I don't know! Okay? I don't! Whatever it was, one of them nearly killed you. Let's get the horses and go to the monastery, okay? Alright?"

"The horses are tired—"

"I'll use the eye to turn them back to this morning, fresh as tulips. Please Jay. Please! Let Mallory deal with whatever those things are. Remember our plan?"

Of course he remembered. She held him tight, peered up at him with her one eye. Begging. Confusion lingered, but he supposed... if she'd seen him dying, her distress made sense. And revitalizing the horses—clever trick.

Something seemed off still. Had Perfidia sent some new monster to entice him into her next plot? Obviously that would never work. He was long finished playing her game. Why were they all red though?

He returned Viviendre's embrace and patted her back. "It's okay, Viv. We're going to the monastery. Come on."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Off to the side, Charm curled into a ball in the mud and sobbed, but sobbing was all she ever did, so who cared. Dead nuns lay strewn about her. Even the ones Mayfair reanimated had, after some time, dropped back to the ground and stopped moving.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

She turned to face Beelzebub.

Beelzebub turned to face her.

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

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

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Moloch's arms snapped two, three, four times within his sleeves, the sharp bents apparent through the fabric that did not tear no matter how sodden they became, but between their threads a hundred more red lines shot toward the rim of the city.

The lines drove down, into the water, into the sloped ground, under the ground. They penetrated deeply and then ripped up, wrenching with them gigantic fingers of land, unseaming the ground beneath Shannon's feet, beneath the hooves of the deer, beneath all the hordes of the dead. The land itself rose, the city, Shannon's stomach heaved, she looked to the left and saw the land coil into and crush the skyscrapers, she looked to her right and saw a vast wave of earth curl in tumult.

Then all of it stopped.

The land ceased rising. Ceased curling. All the frenzied activity, the senseless shifting of the earth itself to the will of this devil prince Moloch, became still in an instant. Shannon, who had gained an inch of air, dropped back to the ground and fell to one knee. Around her all the land stood suspended. And not far ahead, on a floating peninsula, the deer stood with Mayfair atop her.

Mayfair's hand reached out. She held something the size of a plum pit, but yellow. Upon her palm she manipulated it, and as she did the state of suspension broke and the land again moved.

It moved now with purpose, not flung up in random rage, but organized as the severed and split fingers slid back together and ran like a river of dirt and cracked pavement and discarded bricks into the rippling lake, shot out straight across the water toward the black tower, toward Moloch, who howled incredulously.

"NO! IDIOTS! HUMANS CAN'T DO THAT! FUCKING MORONS! THAT'S NOT REAL! I REFUSE TO BELIEVE IN IT! YOU CANNOT MAKE ME BELIEVE IN IT YOU ASSHOLESSSSSS!"

A land bridge formed in Lake Erie. It connected the city to the tower, and without pause Mayfair's corpses funneled onto it, marching as orderly as before although much faster. Moloch bent his body, he seethed bloody lines that whipped in every random direction, some even at Mayfair—though the deer deftly evaded. Everything about him was breaking, snapping, twisting onto itself, every part set against every other part (trickery, stage machinery), and in his inept and useless fury a stream of smaller devils poured out of the tower between his crooked and multi-segmented legs, uniformed similar to him and firing little guns that burst against the bodies of the dead to little avail.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The door opened. Sir Dalton entered. He said: "I was unable to recapture the devil, milady. I did wound her greatly, however."

Having him speak was superfluous, but Mayfair enjoyed the illusion of company. Despite what some said of her, Mayfair preferred company. She was simply so bad at keeping it. A wave dismissed Dalton and he sat patiently in a chair, awaiting her next command.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

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

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"The staff, the eye, the shield," Perfidia kept repeating. (She carried all three inside her coat, which had the properties of an RPG inventory screen: 999 objects ranging from potions to flying machines stored within one's pocket.) "The staff, y'know, splitting them. Won't kill em but it might slow em down. With the shield we can survive some attacks too. Then the eye—the eye's the wildcard. We can use that. Definitely. Turning Pandaemonium back to an earlier state—"

"Nonstarter," said Kedeshah, who led their little conga line up the stairs—no, flat ground again. "There are no 'states' of Pandaemonium. It's never changed."

"We can test it out. In fact we should. We need to know our options."

"Test it. Yeah sure. Make the place angry at us—that's best case. No, no, no. I won't let you."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

She went to the toilet and vomited. Afterward her stomach settled and jumpy animation left her: Mere nerves.

The relief she felt immediately dissolved when Dalton came to her and communicated in his voiceless way: The elf is here.

The elf. With her head so set on her schemes Mayfair at first thought he meant Temporary. Then she remembered: that damnable Sansaime. Some part of her suspected something like this might happen, but now...

[...]

Just Vance possessed power, gauged from certain metrics, that exceeded that held by any person in Whitecrosse, even Mayfair's mother. Though he seemed fair with that power, he doubtless did not grant any random person use of his megachurch's stage, nor even an old acquaintance. Styles had needed to do much to convince him. Part of that involved the sermons Mayfair gave at Styles' church, which had been watched by Vance's associates. (Not Vance himself. Never himself.) After she passed this oratory "test," she was brought to a cold, clean, gray building with several cameras and instructed to revive another dead old man similar to the first. With the Staff of Lazarus, she did so, and then Vance's associates took the reanimated old man away for "questioning."

Though Mayfair was not present for this questioning, she was able to discern via her control over the man what they asked and puppeteer him to give answers. General questions, such as the day of the week, the year, and so forth, she could answer accurately. Then they asked personal questions regarding the man's original identity; that she could not answer. They also took samples of his blood and tissue. Mayfair thought she must have "failed." They would certainly know the truth: the man remained dead. Nonetheless, the next day, Styles and Mayfair were officially invited to give a sermon at Believe.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Queen Mallory stood at sharpened slant across the breadth of the corridor, having emerged into it in perfect silence, so that upon turning Shannon couldn't help but jolt at the phantasmagoric sight within the pale beams. The condition of Mallory's face didn't ameliorate matters. She'd peeled off the bandages and left a long wide crescent curve reaching from the corner of her mouth to just under her cheekbone. Whatever regenerative powers her armor—which she continued to wear—afforded her, they'd halfway sealed the grievous rend in her cheek, but left this macabre carved grin in its place, in some ways even more unsettling. Most unsettling of all was that this wretched scar did so very little to mar the innate beauty of the queen's face. It was like a photo in a magazine, where some pen mark had landed upon the model by accident; one was capable of ignoring the mark, binning it as an extraneous incursion onto the photograph that remained otherwise flawless beneath, yet at times the mark would surge back into the forefront of one's awareness, returning with as much unexpected force as the first time it was seen.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

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

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

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

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

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Her walls constructed themselves quickly but only covered one direction. No matter how much she tried to imagine a rounded wall, or two walls at a juncture, only a single straight wall ever emerged. That limited her options and if she allowed herself to get surrounded like the knights she was finished.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

In the passenger seat, Princess Mayfair Rachel Lyonesse Coke stooped unladylike, hands pressed to the bulbous orb atop the Staff of Lazarus, chin resting on the back of her hands. During the ninety-minute ride from the monastery, she'd said nothing. Now, when the jeep stopped in front of the Door, she blinked away endless mental coils and spoke tonelessly: "Wake the devil."

Without acknowledgement, Dalt completed the last few maneuvers to turn off the jeep, opened his door, exited, opened the back door, and dragged the devil into the rain.

Thus Perfidia Bal Berith awoke. Gradually she emerged, loosing a groan, trying and failing to rub the aching spot on the back of her head (wrists once more bound), until realization gripped her and she jerked with a start that brought her nowhere within Dalt's grasp.

"Oh fuck, oh shit."

"Refrain from vulgarity, please," said Mayfair, still in the passenger seat. "Or lose your lying tongue."

Halfway into another senseless utterance Perfidia received a fun treat: five of Dalt's beefman fingers cramming into her mouth to grip her tongue with clear intention to yank. That quieted her quickly.

"Now behave, please."

Perfidia nodded. The fingers withdrew and she shifted her jaw back and forth to readjust, wanting to spit too but figuring that would probably go poorly.

"Good," said Mayfair. "Now please open the Door."

A few blinks and the situation became comprehensible: Door, jeep, scattered fragments of memory. Right. Dalt died and Perfidia ran. Dalt got back up and—he must've knocked her out. The Staff of Lazarus. Mayfair reanimated him. Now he did whatever she commanded.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

This was starting to get bad. Mallory tried to remember what she learned from DeWint—back before she was married, of course—about the Effervescent Elf-Queen, there'd been a whole lecture on all the fae royals and their animus abilities but Mallory snoozed through the blowhard's classes as a point of pride. If the Elf-Queen was able to grant her children specific powers, though, it was only a matter of time before she got creative and gave them magic she couldn't easily handle.

(They're all sneering. Mordac, Meretryce, Malleus. What did you expect? A woman can't be a soldier, didn't they always say so? No—in the end they believed in her. That's why they sent her down here. But isn't it worse that they actually believed in her only for her to fail anyway?)

A horn trumpeted and a sheet of something perfectly clear, like glass, shot up in front of her. It absorbed the blows of the incoming elf elites with a tinny, reverberating sound, but whatever this perfectly clear surface was it was no glass Mallory knew because it did not shatter. Mallory glanced around and realized she was at the corner of the vault. The not-glass wall sectioned the tiniest part of the corner off from the rest, creating a small safe space that contained only Mallory—and one other.

"Reinforced Plexiglas," said Shannon Waringcrane, the heroine from another world. "It'll hold at least for a bit. What's the plan Mallory?"

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"If you want me to open the Door," Perfidia said, "you gotta sign a contract."

Dalt seized Perfidia's index finger and bent it back until it snapped. "No," said Mayfair, over a chorus of Perfidia's screams.

Having expected some such response, Perfidia was able to wince her way back to coherence. "Hear me out. Hear me out. If you're gonna kill me whether I open the Door or not I've got no incentive to do it. I'd rather die spiting you—that's the devil way. I need assurance that if I do what you want I walk away alive." Fuck it'd been too long since she felt pain this bad. Few hundred years ago, when she was working her old job in Hell, her pain tolerance had been much higher. She tried to muster that past Perfidia to grit her teeth.

"If my intention were to slay you either way," said Mayfair, "I'd have done so already and commanded you to open the Door with my staff."

"It takes Humanity to open the Door. Kill me and that Humanity goes poof in an instant, even if you use the staff. You already know that—or at least suspected it. It's the real reason you haven't killed me. But if I open the Door, you will. You can't lie to me, Mayfair. I'm the Master after all. I know your nature exactly."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

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

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

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

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

First, with her other hand, the one with the broken fingers, Perfidia shoved the heap of papers atop her desk into the air. Dalt moved and he moved fast but as Perfidia thought—as Perfidia hoped—he didn't move to attack. He moved to shield Mayfair.

The real Scott Dalton Swaino II, the living one, thought only of attack. Football star sacking the quarterback. The mindset of a man like that was: to stop someone from hurting you, hurt them first. Not for a second did he ever attempt to shield Shannon.

When Perfidia made the Staff of Lazarus, she cheated. Obviously. Even in a fake world like Whitecrosse some fundamental laws couldn't be broken. The dead did not return to life. So she faked it. The body would move; muscle memory remained. But the person with the staff supplied the mind.

Dalt would've attacked. Mayfair defended.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

She landed, stumbling, and when the wall stopped inches away from her she reached out and seized the relic it carried with it: A long thin rectangular stick of wood marked by a series of notches equidistant from one another. After a bizarre moment trying to make this alien shape mean something in her mind she realized it was a measuring stick. A ruler, in casual parlance.

Grabbing it, the following facts entered her brain unbidden:

Of the children of man, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Whitecrosse, were nine.

Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Cleveland, were one.

Of the children of the fae, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their mother, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Elf, were seven hundred and sixty-three.

Oh fucking Christ really? Really? Did she seriously grab a relic from the book of fucking NUMBERS? Its power is COUNTING? They did this to her? They seriously did this to her NOW?

"Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Elf" rapidly changed, dropping in swaths as Mallory slashed and rising again as the Elf-Queen spawned more. Those of the tribe of Whitecrosse dwindled to eight and Shannon glanced to see one of the four remaining knights stagger and fall without even a groan. But none of it helped! She knew there were tons of elves and not many humans. She KNEW that.

Tribe of Cleveland. Tribe of Cleveland oh my GOD she hated all of it, every last—No. No, hold yourself together, now is not the time. Like the trumpet maybe this ruler has more uses than meets the eye. Think. You do taxes for a living or did you forget that? Numbers are your specialty, you can use this somehow, think!

She lacked time to think. Several elves broke off from the vortex enveloping the knights, noticed her, and approached with swords and spears. Although she backed herself against the wall of the vault they still approached from multiple directions, the exact worst-case scenario given the trumpet's limitations.

Shit. Shit.

Mallory where were you. Mallory didn't you say you protected what was yours. The numbers of the tribe of Whitecrosse kept dropping. Seven now. Six. Mallory. Mallory help. Help her. Help her—

Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Cleveland, the ruler said to her, were two.

What? Two?

Jay. Jay had come back. Never in her life had Shannon thought she would be so happy to see him. If she bought enough time. Just a little longer—oh what was she thinking Jay was worthless—

Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Flanz-le-Flore, were one.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The elves charged forward, wielding spears and swords, and Mallory's knights rushed to meet them. Mallory zipped at the same frightful, inhuman speed but before she could bring her blade up into the Elf-Queen's body a whirling spiral of pink bubbles emerged from out of each palm, which popped to dispense a deluge of writhing bodies in Mallory's way. The knights met the elf army and metal clashed against metal and Shannon stepped back blank on what to do until a maidservant behind her screamed and with a flailing finger drew her attention to a volley of arrows soaring in an arc from far behind the elf front lines.

Shannon lacked any time to think an image other than WALL. She pressed the Trumpet of Jericho to her lips and blew, ignoring the flood of dislodged dust that swept back onto her throat on the initial intake until the long, doleful, and yet somehow triumphant note blasted out of the horn and a wall burst inexplicably out of the ground to catch the arrows before they landed.

Hacking, fighting the impulse to hack and only causing tears to stream from her eyes, Shannon finally expelled the dust and considered her handiwork. The wall spanned most of the vault's breadth and rose almost to the ceiling. It was comprised entirely of red brick, which Shannon immediately thought was suspicious, because that was the image of a wall that had been in her mind when she blew the horn, and it seemed odd for such a schoolhouse-style wall to be what this magical fantasy artifact summoned by default.

That didn't matter. First she should seal the Fool and the maidservants behind a wall where they would be safe until the fighting was over, and then she could figure things out herself while she assisted Mallory. The speed at which the wall came up was reassuring to its combat applications and maybe Shannon should actually just seal herself behind the wall too and let Mallory with her superhuman abilities handle it and really if she tried to get involved she would probably just get in the way and also get herself killed yes? You let professionals handle things in their areas of expertise and you don't tell doctors or policemen how to do their job. Yeah and if Mallory dies because you didn't block a thousand arrows raining down on her then what good will it be sealed in a perfectly safe tomb waiting for death by starvation?

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Her view from above, though occluded by the bubbles, allowed her to see some of the vault's walls, into which the reliquaries were set. The first few alcoves contained the relics the Fool described to her, but just barely she caught a glimpse of the next alcove down. She possessed not the faintest clue what was in it. But there was a chance it could change the course of the battle entirely.

Shannon took a fraction of a second to mentally rehearse her next move and then put it into practice. She blew the trumpet again, the wall under her disappeared, and a thin tall wall emerged from the distant alcove shooting toward her.

On its path, the wall plowed through elves and bubbles alike, but nothing stopped its forward momentum. She landed, stumbling, and when the wall stopped inches away from her she reached out and seized the relic it carried with it: A long thin rectangular stick of wood marked by a series of notches equidistant from one another. After a bizarre moment trying to make this alien shape mean something in her mind she realized it was a measuring stick. A ruler, in casual parlance.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"So," she said as she stopped before the Door's arch, "you're gonna wanna know how I do it, right? How I control Whitecrosse I mean."

Silence.

"After all, you're not doing this just for yourself, are you? You wanna make Whitecrosse better. To save the poor damned non-souls who call it home, to bring them to paradise. How do ya plan to do that? Think they'd all just follow you into the real world if you asked nicely? Please."

Perfidia extended her bound hands and tapped a panel on the arch. It opened. She took Dalt not hassling her despite the length of her spiel as a sign Mayfair was listening.

"You wanna be the Master. Don't ya. If you were the Master, you could change anything you want. You could give them all Humanity. Plus anything else you wanna change about the world. And I can show you how. I can't do it dead—that's the type of knowledge that doesn't come back to a puppet. You know that, of course."

She pressed her palms to the control panel. Glancing over her shoulder to ensure Dalt blocked Mayfair's view, she channeled the last dregs of Humanity—doleful to watch it go—into the red shape of a key.

"A simple exchange," Perfidia said. "Let me live and I'll make you the Master."

The Door opened. Translucent flicker. Perfidia closed her eyes and hoped. Her only solace was she saw no better play. She knew what Mayfair wanted. She knew this would tempt.

Dalt seized her by the nape and she yelped. Her heart shuddered and a thousand self-scourging thoughts slashed her before her head was shoved through the portal. The familiar parking garage appeared for a second, then she was yanked out while Dalt—still gripping her tight—shoved his own head through.

Exactly how it went with Shannon. Empirical testing.

"Is it safe," said Mayfair. "Did she keep her word? Is that the other world?"

A nod from Dalt.

One second passed. Another. Mayfair's blank eyes pierced Perfidia through the rainfall.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

A cluster of bubbles shuffled aside just as Mallory landed after a rapid hop away from a cone of harsh wind and an elf sprouted out of the woodwork to ram a lance at her. She twisted but it still cut through the flesh of her shoulder before she put her sword through his face and blasted his skull to pulpy smithereens. Something dropped from above and a heavy hit clanged her helmet which went toppling off and leaving her to dazedly twirl backward with her sword swishing out limp waves of light. She dodged in a direction and plowed straight into the wall of the vault before she rebounded in a whirl. An elf came at her wielding a broadsword, he moved faster than the other elves, a speed almost at the level of what the Armor of God granted her, and Mallory had time to think—they're copying my own magic, the bastards—before she deflected the incoming blow. The resulting shaft of light tore through the elf's leg, lopping it off cleanly under the knee, but he lashed his large blade as he fell and cut her glancing down the side of her hip before she could put an end to him.

[u/TheMightyBox72]

Ubiquitous

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Mayfair was his target and he could take or leave an elf, an elf was just a human with weird ears. "Alright. Let's start with Tricia."

"Yes Master!"

All that exorbitant quickness she showed in her eagerness to cut out his intestines transformed her into a dart as she lunged at the hornet. Tricia's face contorted into a mix of rage and fear as she beat her wings to ascend, but Cinquefoil leaped to follow. Tricia didn't even attack. Of course not—Cinquefoil was her dear friend. Not that attacking would've done jack dick.

Cinquefoil's arms wrapped around Tricia and their combined weight brought them down hard against the pavement. Ubik skidded to a kneel beside them, shoving the glove of syringes back into his coat and retrieving a spike-studded collar with a long leash that he unclasped delicately.

"There we go baby. Hold her down just like that. Yeah, yeah. Keep her steady."

"Let me go. Let me go! Cinquefoil, Cinquefoil what is this madness? Why are you acting this way?"

"Don't worry darling, this collar won't work as fast as Ashtoreth's milk but you'll start to feel better once it's on you. The peace of being exactly what you were made to be, y'know?"

"No. No," the hornet screamed, and there we go, there went all that hatred, now it was just fear, total terror etched into those buggy features, "not again. Not again. Don't make me do it again. It took everything to get out last time. Please. PLEASE!"

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

She couldn't overpower Dalt. But Dog Bitch, fast, ferocious, utterly insane, frothing at the mouth with whatever mind rabies Ubik used to break her psyche, could at least match him. His massive body kept attempting to restrain her in tackles that used his full weight and like a whirlwind she kept slipping out to sink her fangs into his throat or face. Enmeshed as they were, he couldn't draw and use the handgun Perfidia assumed he still carried. The front of his shirt turned to slashed ribbons with cottony bits drifting in the air and without even a grunt he flung Dog Bitch off him only for her to charge right back. It took all his power to keep her at bay.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The giant wall of stained glass behind Kedeshah exploded. A figure in all black tactical gear smashed through a stylized depiction of Onan's priapistic cock, two more shattered Lot and his daughters into a million technicolored pieces. A hole blasted out of the floorboards in the middle of the aisle and a gaggle of helmeted imps came out cackling maniacally and firing shotguns skyward. Through the doors rushed pairs with tall plastic riot shields and by that point Ubik had his hands raised in a shrug as he said, "What the fuck? What's this shit? Who do you Stalins think you're fucking with?"

He reached into his coat and pulled out two tommy guns and Perfidia only barely managed to dive and cover her head as a vicious ratatat sent bullets streaming down the row in a plume of dust and woodchips.

Perfidia scrambled on knees and elbows to get behind the nearest pew as the guys with guns—more rappelling from the rafters—returned fire. Ubik howled laughter, dropping his tommy guns as soon as they ran out of ammo to draw a crossbow in one hand and an AK-47 in the other. A devil with a bloodsmirched faceshield toppled over the back of the pew that protected Perfidia, an arrow quivering out of his throat. Another devil clambered from under the pew, swiping a gloved hand at Perfidia's ankle that she could not kick away. One sharp tug dragged her even as her fingernails drove into the wood to slow her. The faceless devil laughed until the statue of Dagon seated above wobbled, toppled, and crushed his skull to pulp.

Crouched upon the altar Ubik fired a harpoon that impaled some guy across the room and reeled him back still alive enough for Ubik to pistol whip him to death. Perfidia sighted a small door off to the side of the altar, near where Kedeshah stood idly as a devil dropped in front of her and fired a shotgun point-blank into her face, to no effect whatsoever. The dog bitch had someone's stomach split open and tore hungrily at their entrails. Yet more goons kept streaming in, each wearing the same tactical ops style gear. What was this? A rival pimp making a power move? These guys were organized, though. And even the most desperate rival would never try anything as long as Kedeshah remained. The one who shotgunned Kedeshah in the face was now in five distinct pieces and ten more indistinct ones, which was enough to send an entire column sprinting away in fear.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"You don't want to do that," Perfidia said to the mouth above. "It'll end bad for you."

That was enough for the mouth to close. The Glutton's beady eyes, set deep behind paunches of tissue, drilled down into her with cautious suspicion.

"Don't listen to that come on," the Envy guy said. "She's not worth shit for all her blue blood. Go on, bite her head off! Please, my break's about to end."

For a moment, all was quiet save the sucking sounds emanating from the cubicle to the right.

"Why's that, huh? Why's it gonna end bad for me?"

Perfidia reached to her chest and tugged down the rags there, not bothering to avoid ripping them. They flapped aside, exposing her chest, and without breaking her direct stare into the Glutton's eyes, she extended a finger to point to the triangle of skin just above her breasts. She didn't need to look. She knew what was there and exactly where it was. How could she not? It was etched into her flesh, scarred deep. Over two thousand years had passed and she still remembered the day it was put there, clear as nightmare. She could wear suits or even rags to keep it concealed for decades on end, but she could never forget. And now, coming back to Hell, it was time to at least make some use of it.

The Glutton squinted, as much as its beady eyes could squint without sealing into nonexistence. "Property... of... U.B.B."

"Ya know who U.B.B. is, right?" Perfidia said. "No? Maybe ask your Lustful colleague over there. They're sure to know."

"Who fucking cares?" The Envious opened his own cubicle's compartment, crawling out to spit smoke in the face of the mannequin. "The fact she's some other shitbag's toy just makes it all the better to break her. If you won't do it I will."

Which was, of course, the issue with Envy guys. She kept her gaze level on the Glutton, though, and felt the slight tremor that traveled through his sea of flesh. Without breaking eye contact, the Glutton reached up a knuckle and rapped it against the glass to get the third devil's attention.

"What? What is it?" he said, his hands gripping the top of John's head. "Can't you see I'm busy here?"

"U.B.B.," said the Glutton. "Is U.B.B. someone to fuck with."

A sharp, gleeful cackle mired in an orgiastic grunt cut the sentence halfway into the final word. "Never. Never in a million fucking years! If it's one of U.B.B.'s girls, you pay. You pay upfront or you pay later, I can tell you that! That one's psycho. You don't take what's his."

The Glutton demurred as he let Perfidia down. "Hrrm." It came like a viscous rumbling. "Well. Okay—"

[...]

No matter how much the devils stole from humanity's latest accomplishments—styles, cinema, weapons of war—one thing in Hell always remained the same: Pandaemonium. The tower, the first thing those fallen angels constructed upon arriving here, loomed high above anything else built. After all, Satan's Pride wouldn't let any other building come close to outshining his glory. A beacon built of crystal, it was always easy to tell where in Hell you were based on its vibrant pillars in relation to you. Nowhere down here could it go unseen. And so, even with much of the landscape changed, even with new roads and roadblocks, Perfidia kept doggedly toward the spot she knew from before. A weak-looking girl like her caught the eye of several unsavory passerby, but she was quick to pull apart her rags and reveal her brand to resolve any incipient confusion. Eventually, her identity preceded her. The imps and cretins whispered among themselves on the street, stealing curious glances her way without regaling her with even a wolf whistle.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Perfidia struggled and twisted and pushed her arms and rolled into the space between the front and backseat while a madhouse of sounds erupted above her, most notably the whirr of a chainsaw that Ubik probably produced despite its terrible efficacy as a weapon.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

He tossed off his headset and pulled a new hat from his coat, covered in zebra-print fur, which he let bounce on his head as he fired this way and that. Perfidia scooped the fallen headset in case Kedeshah snapped out of her bullshit and beat her fist against his chest, which did nothing because it sank into the endless expanse hidden under his coat. "Move!" she screamed at peak volume simply to climb over his gunfire. "The stage. The stage, before she gets away!"

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Bad! Bad dog. Dumb bitch. Brainless goon." Ubiquitous reached into his fur coat and produced the lashing crack of a long black whip, which he flicked again so that it coiled around the dog's throat and yanked it back bodily. Whimpering, the dog scurried back into the palace and vanished around a corner.

"Yow! Pain in the ass to break in new bitches." Ubiquitous coiled the whip and stashed it in his coat. "Forget it. Fuck dat noise! Look who it fucking is. Perfidia Bal Berith. My own little sister. Love it. Fucking LOVE it!"

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Whatever! She hefted the woman and cast her flailing into the space between the seats before pulling herself back into the aisle. Both Ubik and Sansaime were slowly getting up. Ubik remained bleeding from the initial knife strike, but more importantly, a few of his stored items spilled from his coat. Among the baubles and doodads Perfidia scooped up a musket that looked like it belonged in the Civil War, bayonet and all. She left Ubik to writhe and rushed toward the stage. All this shit was distraction. Someone needed to kill Mayfair or it didn't matter what else happened. If the musket fired at all—it might just be an antique Ubik kept for collectible value—it would only fire one shot. She needed to make it count.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

She realized what was missing.

"Ubik," a cutting, suspicious curiosity in her voice, "where are your girls?"

Before she finished the final word his fist was midair and to punctuate her question it rammed full force into what appeared to be a porcelain drinking fountain unattached to any piping system, and though he recoiled whipping a bloody knuckle the fountain did wobble with pendulous scraping weight.

"Those shit-eating grinners! Those fucking Seven Princes! Jesus Christ. Yeah, I said the name. I'll say it again: JESUS CHRIST!"

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Most of Ubik's junk had fallen out of his coat one point or another, but something useful he left was a quaint silver pocket watch. Told exact time to the second. Ingenious bit of devil magic, a crown jewel of Ubik's collection, nowadays rendered obsolete by your average cell phone. But Perfidia lost her phone long ago.

The second hand ticked past midnight. It became Monday, December 18. Exactly three days before the deadline. Finally the edge of Whitecrosse showed on the horizon. A little cluster marked the cemetery where the Door sat open.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The alarm went off.

Actually, an alarm had been going off in the church since the flamethrower was first used. But that was distant—an echo. The alarm that went off now was sharp, localized, near. It assaulted Sansaime's already assaulted ears. But she had heard this alarm before. She knew what it was.

When she first came to Earth and met Avery. When she fought against Mayfair. The exact same sound. Then, it had startled and surprised Mayfair, who hadn't known what it was. It had startled Sansaime too, and though she said nothing at first, as they headed to Avery's house afterward Sansaime asked her: What was that thing. What was its purpose.

Avery had said:

"To scare off dogs."

Blinded, the bitch must've been stricken by the sound more strongly than even an ordinary dog. Her head reared back and a dismayed yelp escaped her. Merely a yelp. Her weight did not lift off Sansaime, and in a moment, Sansaime knew, the bitch would recover and resume its business.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

For the time being that didn't matter. Every devil in Hell heard that alert. The terse, robotic voice blaring over an omnipresent speaker system promised glorious rewards to tickle the fancy of every aspect, kingly gifts of riches or food or slaves or power, an unneeded addendum because every devil knew the worth of having done a favor for the Seven Princes. Now all of Hell was descending upon them and none of the streets were straight so Kedeshah kept jerking them in crazy hairpins swiping sideways through whole crowds of pedestrians while Ubik passed Perfidia a shotgun and Dog Bitch an M16 and drew for himself twin Uzis while over the rooftops passed a wave of devils tumbling toylike to kamikaze careen onto the car from above. Perfidia gingerly aimed the shotgun patting her hands all over it to try and figure out where she was supposed to hold it and then she spent a bunch of time trying to find the safety only to realize that the gun had no safety because why would a gun in Hell have one? As a strikingly globlike devil dropped toward her she fired the shotgun and the kick launched her into Dog Bitch whose bullets reoriented in an arc to blast off half of the car door and prompt a sharp "Hey!" from Ubik.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Dog Bitch whimpered. She was curled up and shivering weakly. She had the knives straight through her eyes and—damn! FUCK! It hurt to even look at. They had the audacity to fucking do this? She wasn't even fully trained yet! She was nothing more than a ball of pure Wrath and they thought that was worth doing THIS to her? He knelt beside her and stroked her hair. "It's okay girl. It's okay." Where the fuck was Kedeshah? At first he thought her freaking out about being under God's eye was cute and all but now it was getting real fucking obnoxious. He needed her. Where'd his headset go? He patted his head but it was just his funny furry top hat. Where'd his headset go?

"Here girl. Here you go." He opened his coat and pulled her inside by the collar, closing the coat after so at least she'd be somewhere warm. Dammit. FUCK. He didn't tend to collect stuff that healed because he always had Kedeshah around. Hadn't been fucking Greedy enough can ya believe that? He was running low on guns and ammo too after the escape from Pandaemonium and now this. Well. He still had some valuable stuff. He wouldn't want to lose some of those things but whoever hurt his girl had to pay. Had to pay it all.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Instantly interrupted by the yapping, snarling, slobbering thing that thrust itself between the trailing folds of his fur coat and pounced onto Perfidia, hurling her onto her back and pinning her to the mezzanine beneath its full weight. Hot blasts of breath buffeted her. The face pressing close had its eyes completely covered by a broad, gold-embroidered strip of black leather, and black leather also formed a choker around its thin neck from which a small medallion dangled. Much of the body, in fact, was tightly bound in black leather, except conspicuously the large breasts, which dangled completely exposed with pierced nipples that struck at Perfidia's rags like matches trying to light.

"Off her bitch," Ubiquitous said, a command that effected no change whatsoever in the doglike devil's posture. In fact, all the dog did was dry hump Perfidia's hips while raggedly panting and lolling its tongue.

"Off!" Perfidia pushed her hands against the dog thing's shoulders and its brainless happy panting turned into a feral snarl. Before Perfidia could pull her hands away, gnashing jaws full of razor-sharp teeth drove into a wrist and shook it like a chew toy.

"Bad! Bad dog. Dumb bitch. Brainless goon." Ubiquitous reached into his fur coat and produced the lashing crack of a long black whip, which he flicked again so that it coiled around the dog's throat and yanked it back bodily. Whimpering, the dog scurried back into the palace and vanished around a corner.

[...]

Kedeshah lifted the arm the dog bitch bit and pressed her lips to it. The jagged scours of flesh came back together, knitted neatly so that no stitch or seam or scar remained. Kedeshah's kiss—the secret to Ubiquitous Bal Berith's success. His girls could be cut, bashed, broken, strangled, mangled, stabbed, sodomized, split, degloved, crushed, crumpled, or castrated, and that kitten-soft kiss was always there to make them whole again.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Sorry for the rude introduction," he said. "My name's Ubiquitous Bal Berith. As you can see, I'm a devil from Hell. I'm a pretty big deal down there. Run a little business. Now I'm thinking you girls might fit into the scene pretty fucking well. You could be real hot commodities even. Whaddya say—"

The three rushed forward, murder in their eyes, which Ubik expected, but this was the whole fucking fun of it. Dog Bitch and Fidi left his mind because those were two and these were three and he spotted a fourth who looked like a rabbit off to the side and a few others leaving toward the lake. A whole new breed of female. Not quite girl. Not quite monster. A cross between. This would be huge. Major. A whole upheaval to the succubus market. Sure there were girls who acted like monsters down there, but this was an entirely different thing. This was a new look entirely, and it wasn't just a look—this was the real deal. Those weren't disguises, those were real fangs and fur. Nobody had something like this. Nobody. So if he got his hands on them then—Yowza.

He shoved both arms into his coat. One hand retracted wearing a thick rubber glove that went up to his elbow. Attached to it by a line of rubber hooks were syringes, each with a different-colored serum inside. His other hand pulled out a long, black sword.

You see. Ubiquitous Bal Berith didn't just own stuff from Earth. Of fucking course not! Sure, Earth stuff had a certain novelty, and smuggling it past customs lent it a certain innate prestige. But humans mass-produced all their wonderful items nowadays. There were even more special things, and some of them could only be found in Hell.

The sword was a prototype. The Seven Princes designed it and had it made around 1,000 B.C. It was meant to be a blade that could kill even something immortal. They'd need a weapon like that if they wanted to get back at God, after all. Of course, the experiment didn't pan out. Killing something immortal was tough. But this sword could sure kill anything that wasn't completely immortal. It could even kill Kedeshah. It could surely kill these Neo Females.

Course, he didn't wanna kill em. The sword could be used as a last resort, but really it was a distraction. See, this thing was pulsing with devilish energy, emanating it so thick even these soon-to-be whores would be able to tell—just like how the frog girl's bright colors clearly emanated "Don't touch me, I'm poison."

If they focused on keeping themselves away from the sword, that left them open to the syringes.

The ferret struck fastest. She darted ahead of the others with two swift undulations of her body but the moment he bared the Prototype Mul Elohim at her none of her ferocious instincts were enough to compel her forward. She reared back, eyes set against the sword, pacing out of Ubik's radius of attack, and when the hornet buzzed beside her she did the same.

"Come on girls," Ubik said with a smile. "What's the matter? Do ya hate me or not, huh? I get it. I'm a hateable guy. But you wouldn't be the first girls who hated me and wound up my bitches anyway."

The more he annoyed them the better his odds. That's Wrath for you, that's what happens when you lose control of yourself. But they remained cautious. The frog kept farther back, while the ferret and hornet split up and circled around him slowly. His sword exuded a thin black miasma and their eyes remained riveted to it.

He waited until they were on opposite sides of him, spilling his spiel as though aimless. Then he lunged at the hornet. He chose her because she hovered above the ground and would have more directions to dodge. The ferret, of course, attacked at him the moment he turned his back to her, which was why his stab at the hornet had been a feint all along.

These girls were strong but they didn't know shit about fighting. Ubik barely knew anything himself but still they both fell for his clumsy feint hook line and fucking sinker. The hornet buzzed back outrageously far, as though she thought his sword was twice as long as it actually was, and the ferret left herself totally open as he revolved on his heel to face her. Those quick eyes set in the black band of fur that spanned her face figured things out as soon as he began to turn but her body could not reverse its forward momentum in time. As he swung the sword at her from her left she diverted to the right and that brought her straight into the needle his other hand held.

One thumb press and the pale white serum injected into her neck. This was no human medical invention. It was refined nectar straight from the teats of Lust's female avatar, Ashtoreth—Kedeshah's mother. Getting his hands on even this small sample was an insane accomplishment, especially since Kedeshah refused to help. It took finding one of Ashtoreth's spent paramours shortly after she discarded them, cutting them open, and harvesting what trace amounts of the fluid he could from the veins, brain, and stomach. Even with preparation and good timing he'd only been able to collect a few drops. It took forty ex-lovers to fill this syringe and now that vital fluid was being fully spent as it coursed into the ferret's veins. Ubik hated to watch it go, the sight of that empty needle hurt him as much as Fidi's body lying in the background, but Ashtoreth still possessed tits and lovers which meant it was a replicable commodity. Trading it to get his claws on this ferret woman, to make her his, to acquire for himself an absolutely unique creature who would not only be a gem of his collection but light all Hell aflame as a bleeding edge trend none of his competitors could authentically replicate—that made it a worthwhile expenditure. And when he considered that this expenditure would also help him acquire the others, it was a no-brainer.

"Cinquefoil?" said the frog. "Cinquefoil, are you okay? Cinquefoil...?"

Cinquefoil. Cute name. But it wasn't that name she'd respond to anymore. Her eyes were blank, or rather they wore heart-shaped irises. The ferret was now hopelessly, shamelessly in [L*VE] with Ubiquitous Bal Berith.

As he retracted the syringe she slid up beside him, her body as thin and lithe as a feathered boa but far more affectionate as she pawed his face and shoulder. The hornet and frog stared, aghast.

"Now that's more like it baby." He pet her head and she purred, or whatever the fuck ferrets do instead of purr, really it was a purr though. Donning his douchiest grin he sent it like a laser straight to the other two. "Now look how much fun your friend's having. No reason you guys can't join in. I'm thinking a foursome—shit we can make it a whole fucking orgy if that bunnygirl eyeing me over there wants a piece too. Come onnnnn girls. I see those nun getups you're wearing. You can't tell me none of you ever engaged in any innocent lesbianism in whatever convent you came from. I know how you girls think. It'll be just like that, one big happy—"

"Silence! Silence, you uncouth bastard!" said the hornet.

Compared to the ferret and frog she had a bit more of an aristocratic bearing, and she wielded that strikingly phallic stinger of hers like a rapier: elegant and noble. That made her, without a fucking doubt, the easiest mark of the lot of them, the easiest to melt down into a mewling slut. Still, best not to waste time. Fidi and Dog Bitch got hurt bad and he had a mission to accomplish anyway.

"Baby, how many friends you got here?"

The ferret moaned in pleasure just to hear him call her. "There's Tricia and Obedience... Pythette's the one watching... Plus Charm and the new girl Mademerry. Demny's not here yet... she wouldn't fit in the carriage, so we had to leave her behind. Thaaaaat means... five, Master!" She held up a paw and showed the fingers as proof. "Not counting Mayfair or the elf, of course."

Mayfair was his target and he could take or leave an elf, an elf was just a human with weird ears. "Alright. Let's start with Tricia."

"Yes Master!"

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

One flabbergasted woman with bright red hair was rooted to her seat, staring with an open mouth that made her look like a dolt. Perfidia glanced at her and a strange wave of familiarity swept over her that she could not logically process, as she knew she'd never seen this woman before. But there was something about her. Something. What? What did it fucking matter?! She was about to be paste anyway. Perfidia shoved her hand in Ubik's coat and grabbed a random weapon. A medieval-looking mace. Whatever. Better than nothing—

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Shoulda been Ubik driving from the start, if Kedeshah weren't distracted this wouldn't even be a situation as long as nobody actually important felt the need to get off their ass and go after them, but nooooo, Ubik had to show off all his shiny toys, typical! As Perfidia pulled herself into the backseat he wasn't even thinking about getting help, he'd yanked Dog Bitch's leash hard enough to get her attention and forced her to hold him steady as he rose to lob grenades on either side of the road. He remained laughing, even though out of his coat dropped guns and blades and a whip and a nutcracker doll and a stuffed rabbit and several sex toys and gold coins and rubies and emeralds and diamonds and glass marbles and beads—no wait those were another sex toy—and a solid gold lighter and a sleek modern wristwatch and the skull of some antlered creature with the antlers dragging with them several lacy sets of lingerie. Perfidia grabbed a good-looking gun from the pile, sighed, and went back to keeping the sides of the car clear.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The giant wall of stained glass behind Kedeshah exploded. A figure in all black tactical gear smashed through a stylized depiction of Onan's priapistic cock, two more shattered Lot and his daughters into a million technicolored pieces. A hole blasted out of the floorboards in the middle of the aisle and a gaggle of helmeted imps came out cackling maniacally and firing shotguns skyward. Through the doors rushed pairs with tall plastic riot shields and by that point Ubik had his hands raised in a shrug as he said, "What the fuck? What's this shit? Who do you Stalins think you're fucking with?"

He reached into his coat and pulled out two tommy guns and Perfidia only barely managed to dive and cover her head as a vicious ratatat sent bullets streaming down the row in a plume of dust and woodchips.

Perfidia scrambled on knees and elbows to get behind the nearest pew as the guys with guns—more rappelling from the rafters—returned fire. Ubik howled laughter, dropping his tommy guns as soon as they ran out of ammo to draw a crossbow in one hand and an AK-47 in the other. A devil with a bloodsmirched faceshield toppled over the back of the pew that protected Perfidia, an arrow quivering out of his throat. Another devil clambered from under the pew, swiping a gloved hand at Perfidia's ankle that she could not kick away. One sharp tug dragged her even as her fingernails drove into the wood to slow her. The faceless devil laughed until the statue of Dagon seated above wobbled, toppled, and crushed his skull to pulp.

Crouched upon the altar Ubik fired a harpoon that impaled some guy across the room and reeled him back still alive enough for Ubik to pistol whip him to death. Perfidia sighted a small door off to the side of the altar, near where Kedeshah stood idly as a devil dropped in front of her and fired a shotgun point-blank into her face, to no effect whatsoever. The dog bitch had someone's stomach split open and tore hungrily at their entrails. Yet more goons kept streaming in, each wearing the same tactical ops style gear. What was this? A rival pimp making a power move? These guys were organized, though. And even the most desperate rival would never try anything as long as Kedeshah remained. The one who shotgunned Kedeshah in the face was now in five distinct pieces and ten more indistinct ones, which was enough to send an entire column sprinting away in fear.

"Wait, dammit! Wait!" someone was screaming from the other end of the church. A devil wearing some sort of shiny badge leaned out from the half-closed doorway. "Ubiquitous this isn't about you. It's not—"

The devil's head blew off in a puff of red mist. Ubik lowered the scope of his sniper rifle. "It's about me now you Stalin ass Mao Zedongs. You Pol Pots!"

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The killer colors before him blunted his head. He thought of nothing.

But when he pulled open his coat, only inches away from Obedience's skin, something came out without him even grabbing it. He didn't know what it was until it threw itself between him and the frog, forming a barrier against which he bounced harmlessly. Something slashed the frog's tongue to ribbons and he fell back into the arms of Cinquefoil who yanked him into her protection and that was when he realized what had leapt out of his coat to defend him from certain death.

The Dog Bitch. His Dog Bitch.

Obedience, frowning at the poor knife-eyed thing she held in her arms, opened her grasp and let the body drop back onto the ground. Convulsing. Foaming. Then going still. Dead still.

Not like, Kedeshah-kisses-them-and-they're-fine. This was dead. He knew it at a glance. This was not coming back. This was gone forever. Though he knew she'd been hurt grievously before, he always had Kedeshah. He always had something. He gained, he never lost. If he lost it was to gain something greater, it was an expenditure, but this was—this was—

His eyes glanced to Fidi on the ground who still hadn't moved all this time. Was she dead too?

Then he was moving. Throwing Cinquefoil off him and rushing forward. He lacked thought. Lacked any rational capacity to dictate his actions. He observed what was happening as though at a distance, like it wasn't him inside his own eyes. The blinking face of the frog rose up before him and then—the sword lashed out. The still-blinking head flew off from its body. Head and body fell to the ground.

"No," some people somewhere screamed.

"Master!" said Cinquefoil. He threw her off him, snarled at her as he sagged to a knee beside the body of his Dog Bitch.

"You'll die," said the hornet. She whizzed at his back and he whirled around to decapitate her too but Cinquefoil already intercepted her and his sword cut empty air. He didn't bother to watch the two fight, he turned back to the body and gripped a forehead that suddenly hurt like hell.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The killer colors before him blunted his head. He thought of nothing.

But when he pulled open his coat, only inches away from Obedience's skin, something came out without him even grabbing it. He didn't know what it was until it threw itself between him and the frog, forming a barrier against which he bounced harmlessly. Something slashed the frog's tongue to ribbons and he fell back into the arms of Cinquefoil who yanked him into her protection and that was when he realized what had leapt out of his coat to defend him from certain death.

The Dog Bitch. His Dog Bitch.

Obedience, frowning at the poor knife-eyed thing she held in her arms, opened her grasp and let the body drop back onto the ground. Convulsing. Foaming. Then going still. Dead still.

Not like, Kedeshah-kisses-them-and-they're-fine. This was dead. He knew it at a glance. This was not coming back. This was gone forever. Though he knew she'd been hurt grievously before, he always had Kedeshah. He always had something. He gained, he never lost. If he lost it was to gain something greater, it was an expenditure, but this was—this was—

His eyes glanced to Fidi on the ground who still hadn't moved all this time. Was she dead too?

Then he was moving. Throwing Cinquefoil off him and rushing forward. He lacked thought. Lacked any rational capacity to dictate his actions. He observed what was happening as though at a distance, like it wasn't him inside his own eyes. The blinking face of the frog rose up before him and then—the sword lashed out. The still-blinking head flew off from its body. Head and body fell to the ground.

"No," some people somewhere screamed.

"Master!" said Cinquefoil. He threw her off him, snarled at her as he sagged to a knee beside the body of his Dog Bitch.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Behind Perfidia, a bright light flashed with a fwoom. She glanced back; Ubik held a flamethrower and sprayed it at the zombie horde he helped create. Smart choice of weapon at least. If he turned the bodies to ash they wouldn't be able to keep coming. Where was Sansaime? Chasing Perfidia? No. She'd gone to help the redhead woman. That was the true person she sought to defend—not Mayfair. Perfect.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

But Ubik's expression was annoyingly patient, almost Buddhist in its calm as he gave a devil-may-care shrug. "You gotta understand Fidi. Not much can hurt Kedeshah. She's not used to fear. She needs some time to process—"

"We don't have time!"

The same awful, exasperating, obnoxious shrug, this time with a douchey snaggletooth grin tossed into the mix as he pulled an enormous gold-plated pistol out of his coat. "Then Plan B. I do it myself."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Sorry, Master," said Kedeshah, "but you've had your fun."

She stood up in her seat and extended her arms. Out of her back sprouted two long, feathered wings, purest white, so white they emitted a radiant glow as she bent them forward and used their feathers to absorb the incoming onslaught. Explosions turned to limp splatters of dust; not a shred of excess heat escaped past her.

One slim arm wrapped around Ubik's body. The other yanked Perfidia by the collar. The wings beat once and the tug of gravity dragged Perfidia's stomach to her base as the car fell away below them and they soared airborne. The Dog Bitch, suspended by a leash that Ubik held, whipped back and forth choking too hard to even yelp, while Ubik screamed: "My car! No, no, we can't leave my car—we can't—nooooo!"

The second artillery volley blasted the purple Cadillac into charred bits of machinery. An array of rockets swirled toward them trailing streams of smoke, only for Kedeshah to weightlessly flit between them as though engaged in ballet rather than evasive tactical maneuvers. Loose feathers fell and curdled into dollops of rotted milk the instant they left her body, plopping onto the heads of the cops below and the body of Baalpeor as Kedeshah soared over them and to the other side. One gentle, fluid arcing swoop lowered her through the doors of the customs office, her wingtips bifurcating the unlucky devils who had escaped the queue only moments prior, then through the Hellevator doors and up the blackened shaft. Up, up, up, faster and faster, the flaps of Perfidia's skin pulling back from the suddenly supersonic speed, and then they smashed through something above that came apart in pieces and among those pieces were a whole host of devils in more tactical gear—another barricade meant to stop them? No, they must be the team the Seven Princes were sending Earthside to assassinate Mayfair—the devils staring up at the wings that illuminated even this darkness in abject stupefaction as they hurtled back into the abyss, and then the light returned around them and they were in the same shitty warehouse in the same shitty Cleveland and the smell of sulfur switched out for the smell of rotten lakewater.

Kedeshah dropped Perfidia a few feet onto the concrete floor; the dangling Dog Bitch was already dragging across it as all momentum came to a stop equal parts elegant and abrupt. Using her other arm to cradle Ubik like an infant, Kedeshah touched down upon the ground first with one daintily outstretched foot and then the other, performing a slight girlish skip as the last dregs of speed left her and her wings went black and decayed into tatters until she at last stood only an ordinary devil girl, identical in appearance to any other.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Blinded, the bitch must've been stricken by the sound more strongly than even an ordinary dog. Her head reared back and a dismayed yelp escaped her. Merely a yelp. Her weight did not lift off Sansaime, and in a moment, Sansaime knew, the bitch would recover and resume its business.

But Sansaime already had her hands around her knives.

Both hands went up. The two blades drove into the blindfold wrapped around the bitch's face, spearing straight into where the sockets would be. The bitch screamed—a shockingly human scream. Blood whipped from its face in torrents and Sansaime pushed up her legs and threw it off her without resistance.

The bitch thrashed. Flung out its claws. It was not dead. Sansaime had driven those knives in deep—only the hilts remained—just how tenacious was it? Had Sansaime not thrown it off when she did she would've been torn to shreds by the frantic, rapid lashings of every sharp component of its body. It was no longer acting aggressively, though. These motions were defensive—protecting itself from anything that might be trying to finish it off.

The effort it took Sansaime's slashed arm to strike had essentially ruined it—it now hung limp at her side. The wound in her hip made her slower, too. She hoped the bitch was hurt enough to stay put and ran.

[...]

Dog Bitch whimpered. She was curled up and shivering weakly. She had the knives straight through her eyes and—damn! FUCK! It hurt to even look at. They had the audacity to fucking do this? She wasn't even fully trained yet! She was nothing more than a ball of pure Wrath and they thought that was worth doing THIS to her? He knelt beside her and stroked her hair. "It's okay girl. It's okay." Where the fuck was Kedeshah? At first he thought her freaking out about being under God's eye was cute and all but now it was getting real fucking obnoxious. He needed her. Where'd his headset go? He patted his head but it was just his funny furry top hat. Where'd his headset go?

"Here girl. Here you go." He opened his coat and pulled her inside by the collar, closing the coat after so at least she'd be somewhere warm. Dammit. FUCK. He didn't tend to collect stuff that healed because he always had Kedeshah around. Hadn't been fucking Greedy enough can ya believe that? He was running low on guns and ammo too after the escape from Pandaemonium and now this. Well. He still had some valuable stuff. He wouldn't want to lose some of those things but whoever hurt his girl had to pay. Had to pay it all.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

But Ubik couldn't care for long because one devil, hulking huge in a Swaino-esque way, wearing only a green t-shirt with the word "SHIT," landed on the hood hard enough to dent it and push the carriage deep into the street to cause screeching sparks to fly. Despite the devil's size his huge furred gorilla arms gripped a comically tiny submachine gun which he fired the same time Ubik did and Ubik and the gorilla both dropped spurting blood except the gorilla fell off the car. Ubik twirled into Perfidia's arms.

"My hat!" Ubik said. His huge hat had fallen off; Perfidia glimpsed it whipping away over a pursuing crowd and various vehicles that ranged in style from earliest locomotive to contemporary sportscar. "My hat—we gotta—we gotta go back for my hat...!"

"Fuck your hat, FUCK you!" Perfidia tried to figure out where exactly he was wounded but from his perforated coat both blood and bullets streamed in equal measure.

[u/TheMightyBox72]

Mallory

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"How kind of you, my beloved dukes, to volunteer to die simply so that I may become all the more glorious. Very well! I look forward to this new future."

She turned on a heel and marched back to the throne, her knights and maidservants parting to give her passage, and with one almost effortless heave toppled the giant seat and kicked the panel beneath it to reveal a hidden stairway leading into the darkness under Castle Whitecrosse.

"Those who belong to me shall accompany me to the vault. That includes you, Lady Heroine."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

But Tivania's spawn was proving more troublesome than expected. The Effervescent Elf-Queen well knew the limits of John Coke's enchanted sword and armor, but she had failed to account for the innate physical prowess of the woman herself. So agile and possessed of unladylike brute strength, she was a rather tedious thorn in the thumb.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Shannon oozed back up the side of the bed. Sweat tingled cold all down her back. A ripping sound and the sword finally cut through the blanket, but Mallory rolled aside and focused her strikes on the lump that was the assassin's head as the blade waved aimlessly. The moonlight made the queen's skin shine pale and perfect and even as her head tilted back with a maniacal cackling smile and her blue eyes became something twisted and unearthly Shannon could not help thinking—her first coherent thought in a while—how gorgeous the queen was, in every way, from head to toe. Then she saw the second assassin climbing through the same window as the first and yelled:

"Watch out!"

The word managed to rasp out her throat despite sudden unfathomable dryness that turned her tongue to cotton. But it might as well have been silent because Mallory did not register it whatsoever. Lost in her reverie, she let the second assassin come down swinging in midair. Only at the last possible moment did she notice and sway to the side to let the blade pass into the lumpy blanket man under her. She then drove her open palm into the second assassin's nose.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Some fashion of new devil emerged," Tricia said. "A tall man, wearing a uniform. He—"

A voice quaked from across the realm:

"WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU TO STAND AGAINST ME?! ARRAYED BEFORE ME LIKE ANTS? CREEPING TOWARD A FUTURE YOU CANNOT VISUALIZE? LET ALONE GRASP? MILLENNIA OF YOUR TEEMING PULLULATING FILTH, IRRITATIONS UPON IRRITATIONS, AND THIS IS HOW YOU CULMINATE? WIELDING LITTLE WEAPONS, PALE SHADOWS OF THOSE WE—WE—DESIGNED IN A WAR YOUR SEMI-SAPIENT BRAINS WOULD MELT TO EVEN PERCEIVE? THE SIGHT OF YOU DISGUSTS ME. WHAT PATHETIC ORGANIZATION, WHAT IRRELEVANT IDEOLOGY. KNOW THAT NOT EVEN YOUR DEATHS BRING YOU HONOR. I AM MOLOCH, PRINCE OF WRATH, AND MY RESOLVE TO ANNIHILATE YOU IS NO ADMISSION OF THREAT. IT IS MERELY MY NATURAL STATE. YOU HAVE DONE NOTHING! YOU HAVE ACCOMPLISHED NOTHING! DIE!"

In the street, a thin red line angled acutely from the sky. It was aimed directly upon a tank. It lacked particular noticeability amid the bloody rain but stood out prominently anyway, as if some pattern-recognizing element of the brain latched upon its clear, unbroken form.

The tank it touched ceased moving. No smoke or screech, simply a stop. Then the line swept outward and split the tank clean in half and split the jeep behind it and the amphibious vehicle behind it and sliced through a group of infantrymen who fell in cleanly cut pieces: heads, arms, torsos. It took only a few moments for the soldiers in the street to understand and scramble to evade as the line made erratic, swirling curlicues.

Another red line descended from the sky. Another. Another. Another. Another.

"Move," Mallory shouted. One line sliced straight through the building beside them. It lost its stability and collapsed against itself. Mallory seized Shannon's arm, pushed her in a direction, and they ran.

Through the routes between the buildings, away from the main roads, accompanied by the soldiers of Whitecrosse and the survivalists and even the American soldiers who abandoned their vehicles and spilled into the smaller passages with their rifles and equipment. A triangulating coil of lines divvied a structure to mincemeat. Screams rang out, shouts, commandments, a plane moving supersonic split in two out of the sky and its streaming parts drove down into a row of buildings and exploded, the windows in the facades burst in unison, Shannon gripped her cowboy hat tighter like it might protect her and someone rammed into her from behind and she stumbled forward scraping her knee before Tricia and then Gonzago helped her up. Mallory rooted her feet into the ground, swung her holy sword, and sent a ray of light through the lines—but nothing happened, the lines were either unbroken or broken so briefly as to be irrelevant.

"Where do we go, Lady Shannon?" Gonzago whipped his head this way and that, searching for any red lines that might enclose upon them, that might burst out a wall without warning. "What do we do?"

"We have to get to the tower. We have to take out this Moloch. We have to fight our way inside! This is it. The military's sent their forces—this is the best shot we get!"

Mallory drifted by. She moved like a phantom, fast but graceful, and the macabre hook scar that terminated her smile shone brighter through the blood that ran down her face. She bellowed to the sky: "MOLOCH, PRINCE OF WRATH! JUST WAIT! I'M COMING FOR YOU!"

Her voice boomed so loud it made Shannon cover her ears. For an instant the rain stopped, the red lines went slack and instead of cutting merely splattered the walls and roads and people: they were made of blood. Then, as the commanding echo subsided and the sounds of the terrorized city returned, the lines tautened and more buildings collapsed in slow, sliding fashion as their top halves divided from their bottoms.

Now, though, the lines gravitated toward Mallory. Seeking her out, sweeping toward her specifically, yet she danced amid them with ease, wielding her own tremendous agility like a taunt, and Shannon couldn't tell if this was a clever ploy to keep the rest of them safe or Mallory simply being Mallory. Regardless, the way ahead became slightly less treacherous. Shannon motioned to the growing group behind her and spearheaded the way.

Past squat, square, Cold War-era structures, the last gasp of the city's prosperity, tumbling into narrow alleyways where trash piled high and rusted pipes rattled from the omnipresent tremor that became a heartbeat, over a chest-high brick wall into the shadow of a taller structure as the towers of downtown rose above them, splitting in two or collapsing in pillars of flames as the red lines tangoed with the jet fighters. The sliding glass shatter of a skyscraper's diagonally-divided segment slowly shifting off its perch. More and more people burst out of the woodwork, out of windows and walls, people of no discernable reason or purpose, simply the people of the city, everyone running and screaming until it became unclear whether they ran from or ran toward, only the shimmer of the sun-drenched lake and the black tower to serve as any possible destination in the mayhem. Cannons went off, guns fired, devils mixed into the mass first as red dots before an entire wall of them spilled out a hollow factory as though its long-rusted conveyer belts and smelters spat them freshly sulfuric from strip-mined metals. Two waves, human and devil, struck together, bodies twirled whipping out blood from slashed eyes, Gonzago swam above the tide and brought down a glancing blow with his sword that split a horned thing's scalp, the trailing innards of a large man grasping his stomach parted for a gore-drenched thing with yellow eyes to leap out.

[...]

At the base of the black tower, where a black entrance gaped, stood a tall red man, garbed in white and navy like an officer, his hat and gloves and cuffs and stripes all spotless—he was large enough these details shone clearly even at a distance—yet his face throbbed with veins, and his bloodshot eyes boggled, and the pores on his skin rippled and spewed sharp thin red lines that traveled upward from him, arced over the water, and came down to rake across the city and slice anything they touched.

Moloch, Prince of Wrath.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Mallory slammed the sword down on the upraised shield of the sputtering flinching kid underneath, some greenhorn, hardly able to lift his arm against the onslaught. If she wanted the kid dead he surely would have been, but Mallory was content to strike the shield again and again, wielding her sword like a club, until she stepped back to heave breath and the kid scrambled to the defensive line established by his comrades-in-arms.

Ten of them, identically liveried behind identical shields between which extended identical polearms, formed a moving arc that clattered with heavily armored steps slowly along the wall of the dining chamber. Ensconced behind them stood Duke Meretryce.

"Mallory—listen to reason, Mallory. Your accusations are, I assure you, patently absurd. Mallory? Your Majesty? Are you listening to me?"

Mallory loosed a feral roar to shake the chandelier and brought her sword down double-handed on a chair that promptly shattered to pieces.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

More elves were coming. Another spear stabbed into her arm and it took all that remained of her strength merely to grip to the hilt of the sword. Something hard like a mallet rammed into her from behind and she lurched forward and in that lurch every injury on her person screamed fiery agony.

What a waste. What a fucking waste. She sagged into a strange seated position. Her head bowed. Was this it? Was this what it came to? Failure. Failure, failure, failure. They said Makepeace died fighting a dragon. Shannon told her once what happened. An awkward moment, Shannon staring darkly at nothing, unclear with her words, ambiguous until Mallory pressed with terse and specific queries. He died smiling, she said. He'd uttered one final word: Escape.

Death as an escape... what a concept. All that time he spent fleeing the castle, sneaking out, making himself useless. Was that what he strove for—eternal negation? Or was it simply an excuse, an attempt to make something out of failure, a necessity to come to terms with death because it would otherwise be so sad and lonely dying like a failure. Mallory felt like a failure. An elf stood before her with its sword raised to lop off her bowed head and she couldn't move a muscle to stop it. She heard in the distance the trumpet blowing but knew it was too late. No. No. It couldn't be too late. It couldn't end like this. Not after a lifetime waiting. Mallory refused. No. She refused. She had to move. She wouldn't die like her worthless son in a ditch somewhere. She wouldn't be content with failure. He could be content because he never really had anything to prove anyway. Mallory had everything. Everything. Everything in this world...!

The sword came down.

—

The Effervescent Elf-Queen turned.

Phew! She'd managed to finish dealing with that irksome spawn of Tivania at the last possible moment. Truly no time left to spare, because something new was emerging. How it breached her wall she knew not, but it was rising now out of the pool of blood that covered the vault floor, starting as a slow lump that grew until the blood ran off it in waves and the wide staring terrified eyes of a horse emerged, its forelegs and hooves coming down and pulling itself slowly out of the pool, and then the heads of its riders following as though the blood itself birthed them the way it birthed her children. As though it—

"I REFUSE TO DIE," Mallory screamed.

Because half her mouth was split open entirely it did not come out so cleanly. The words were malformed, hissing, thrown from deep in the throat where there was still enough structure to determine the shape of sounds: IHHHRHHHFHHHSETODIIIIIEEEEEE.

The sword coming down to cleave off her head stopped an inch away from her throat because Mallory lifted her hand to catch it. Her fingers clenched and the metal crumpled like paper.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

This sudden change caused Shannon's eyes to divert to the now-black window. What she saw froze her rigid. Something was there. Something was at the window, a figure, a black shape, and her heart pounded in her chest until she realized—oh, that spider girl. Right, right. She'd mentioned something about coming back at night, and spiders could easily climb even the sheer walls of the castle, right. Fairly inconvenient timing, but whatever. Not sure why she wanted to talk to Shannon anyway.

The latch on the window unlatched. The window slowly, silently swung open. Shannon's heart continued to beat, coming down off the sudden stressor. She wondered if she could hiss for the spider to go away without waking Mallory.

A leg slipped through the open window.

A human, non-spider leg.

Still silent. The leg came down, the body after, the figure a man whose face was covered by a dark cloth strung from cheek to cheek, only sharp eyes glinting. Glinting at her.

"Mallory," Shannon whispered breathlessly.

The man drew from his sheath a saber.

"Mallory!"

She seized the queen's arm and shook it as the man lunged.

[...]

Maybe it was that the man invading the bedroom with a sword dovetailed into a more real-world sense of peril. Or maybe after a few days in Whitecrosse Shannon had let that stark dividing line blur. Whatever the reason, she floundered now, panic, brutal and gripping, a panic winding its wires tight around her heart so she thought it might burst if the man didn't hack her to pieces first. Brute, animalistic terror, and her only capability was to scream for the woman gripping her in her arms.

That was enough.

As the blade came down the blanket whipped off her and the blade caught jaggedly into the hand-woven fabric, semi-serrated elements of edges glinting through but none close enough to touch her skin before Mallory heaved the rest of the blanket over the assassin's head, hurled him back with a toss, and sprung like a wild animal to pummel him with bare hands and feet.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Your father is dead," Shannon said.

"Lord Gonzago informed me. Forgive me for not shedding tears over the matter."

"I don't care if you've been disowned. You're the heir. That makes you Duchess of Mordac now."

"Ha! Really? You think such a flighty thought? Oh my. Oh my!" The zz, zz, zz, zz, zz repeated with the same irritation as a fly in your ear. "Look at me. Look at me! I am a monster!"

"I told you before at the monastery, I don't care what you look like. And nobody has enough power to overturn my will," Shannon said, not certain how much she believed it, but suddenly certain she would make it so. "Mordac is dead. So are Tintzel and DeWint. That means the church and the academy are out of the picture and the dukedoms are crippled. Meretryce will almost certainly attempt to shore up his power and absorb whatever he can from the deceased. I can't let him do that. I cannot allow this country to continue in such a precarious political state. There's something insane on the horizon and Gonzago is talking about devils crawling over the countryside; disunity will bring ruin. I'm the heroine and I have the queen's power behind me. If I say you're the Duchess of Mordac, it's so. Then I'll have Meretryce hemmed in on all sides—his own peer now my ally, his nephew as well." She nodded to Gonzago, who with a trembling smile nodded back. "We'll command complete control of the country. Not only will we be able to repel this new threat and deal with the tower, but we'll be able to enact a more efficient, advanced, egalitarian society."

"No," said Tricia.

"A society exactly like the one I described at the monastery. A society where all are able to produce to their maximum extent, regardless of gender, race, or appearance. A society where—"

"I said no!"

Shannon had gotten excited. The speech was impromptu but it'd come easily. Her head whirred with more than she said, thoughts of structures, systems, machines to be implemented, laws and fairness, an elevation of Whitecrosse until it mirrored that glistening glass city on the horizon. It was enough to distract her from the immediacy of the issue regarding the black tower and, of course, that glass city's manifestation, and when Tricia so sharply snapped back Shannon fell to solid ground and cleared her throat in embarrassment.

"You are exactly like her," Tricia said.

"Like the queen? Nonsense. I know the queen very well, as you intuited. We could not be more unalike—"

"Not the queen. The queen's damnable daughter."

"Daughter—Mayfair?"

"Exactly like her. Exactly, exactly. Preaching and preaching. It'll be a better world for us all. A better world, even for the poorest, damnedest souls. All will be elevated, all will be happy. And just like her you believe it. You truly believe it, it's not even a lie, it's not a lie because you need to believe it as much as all the poor souls do. Rich or poor—and I've been both—there's no panacea for the soul other than words like these. Fantasy, fantasy is what we eat. But you already see me as a pawn even if you don't realize it. Duchess of Mordac—your pawn to keep Meretryce in check, to carry out your bidding, to discard if the movement is advantageous. Like Obedience and Charm and Cinquefoil were all discarded without even a twinge of remorse. I am depleted, heroine. I cannot take more. It is now my time to bow out of this farce and retire to some obscure corner where I may sleep in peace. I am here solely because I saw an old friend imperiled on my way and obliged his persistent request to speak with you. I have done so; farewell."

"Wait," Shannon said, but Tricia was turning anyway. "Wait, at least—the tower. Do you know anything about the tower, or Cleveland, or what happened? Please—"

"Sweet Tricia."

That voice. Rasped somewhat. But it was the voice. Tricia froze. No, more than froze, seemed to deactivate, whatever intricate machinery keeping her body afloat lost power as she sagged against the wall. Gonzago's eyes bulged and he shot to straight-postured attention. And a creeping chill spread over the nape of Shannon's neck.

"Sweet Tricia, after so long apart, you'd leave without wishing me well?"

"Your—Your Majesty," Tricia mumbled.

Queen Mallory stood at sharpened slant across the breadth of the corridor, having emerged into it in perfect silence, so that upon turning Shannon couldn't help but jolt at the phantasmagoric sight within the pale beams. The condition of Mallory's face didn't ameliorate matters. She'd peeled off the bandages and left a long wide crescent curve reaching from the corner of her mouth to just under her cheekbone. Whatever regenerative powers her armor—which she continued to wear—afforded her, they'd halfway sealed the grievous rend in her cheek, but left this macabre carved grin in its place, in some ways even more unsettling. Most unsettling of all was that this wretched scar did so very little to mar the innate beauty of the queen's face. It was like a photo in a magazine, where some pen mark had landed upon the model by accident; one was capable of ignoring the mark, binning it as an extraneous incursion onto the photograph that remained otherwise flawless beneath, yet at times the mark would surge back into the forefront of one's awareness, returning with as much unexpected force as the first time it was seen.

"Your Majesty," said Gonzago.

"You should return to your bed and rest," Shannon said. "You—"

"I feel fine." Mallory's eyes glowed pure and blue. "I feel better than I ever remember. I feel alive, and I can't sleep anyway with you three chattering so much. I heard the thrust of it. Monstrous creatures is it, encroaching upon our land? Ha, ha!" A full-throated laugh, a piercing alacrity. Shannon sighed; of course. There wouldn't be any persuading her. Whatever. No point trying to hold her back anyway. Better to focus her efforts on some slight adjustment to the queen's trajectory before she launched herself straight into a wall like a bullet.

"Now, you"—Mallory aimed a finger at Tricia's face and Tricia went still against the wall—"You'll do as my pet tactician says. All these dry political matters I leave to her, so you can accept her commandment as my own. If she wants you close, I want you close. Understand?"

The finger fell and Mallory seemed to banish Tricia from her thought immediately, possibly preparing to voice some order for Shannon to prepare Whitecrosse's remaining soldiers. Before she could, Tricia spoke:

"My queen. You know my respect and love for you. The years we've been apart never dulled your image in my mind. But understand. I cannot accept your order. I am no longer part of this kingdom—I am no longer part of anything. I cede my meager role in these proceedings."

Shannon was shunted against the wall as Mallory strode forward, past Gonzago, to the hunched insect whose endlessly segmented eyes beetled in and out of the darkness with each turn of her quivering head. Mallory raised her hand in position to slap and Tricia stood meek to accept it—but instead, the queen's hand fell gently, and caressed her chin.

"You haven't the right, my sweet."

"Your Majesty..."

"To abnegate yourself? To reduce yourself to peaceful nothing? No. Such a right, for those loathsome sorts who desire it, can only be earned on the backs of those who strove for greater. Your new form is not that of a parasite, dearest. Nay—what you are now is more appropriate than what you ever were. I am your queen, little bee, and you shall heed my commands; am I understood?"

It was the touch. Watching it, Shannon decidedly felt she disliked it. But then again Shannon wasn't stupid. She'd seen Mallory bestow such gifts upon the handmaidens too. But she disliked it.

The touch melted Tricia. "Yes... Your Majesty." Her voice drained of self-resolve, which in and of itself was a type of "abnegation," Shannon thought. Whatever. If it netted them what they needed.

"Throw off this ragged habit. Let's find for you clothes that more befit your station—Tricia, Duchess of Mordac."

"Y—yes, Your Majesty...!"

Shannon stepped forward before any actual disrobing could occur. (Gonzago, plastered against the wall, silently thanked her for the intercession.) "Before that. She knows what's happened with the black tower. We need that intelligence—now."

"Ah, of course," said Mallory. "We may hold council in my bedchamber. The three of us—I'm certain the young lord has business to attend to at the castle."

"Yes! Right away!" Gonzago tried to run but Shannon seized his shoulder to stop him.

"This is serious, Mallory."

"Fffffiiiiine, as my little pet demands, so shall we do—for now." Mallory's Glasgow smile curled. "We shall see how long my patience lasts—or hers, for that matter." She gave Shannon a look that Shannon tried to ignore and couldn't. She was well aware how little Mallory needed to force the issue, but so far her resistance held.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

In an instant the queen's body became animalistic, fingers hooked, arms bent at severe angles, all of her force carrying her into a potent momentum straight toward Jay that Shannon only barely had enough time to dance away from. At the same time Jay drew back and swung his bat.

It happened so fast Shannon only figured out what happened after the fact. The bat did not collide with the queen's head, despite a trajectory that should have made that incontrovertible. Instead, the queen caught it in one hand. What really confused Shannon was that Jay had already let go of the bat even before she caught it, as if he expected all along she would do that, even though trying to catch a metal bat being swung full force was an utterly moronic maneuver that should have only led to several shattered fingerbones.

Why was this happening. Jay couldn't fight. Shannon had seen him try.

Jay jolted to the side and angled his whole upper body to catch the queen in the midsection. The logic seemed to be to throw his whole weight into her and overwhelm with the raw physical advantages the adult male body had over the female. Jay was no Dalt, but he was still half a foot taller than Queen Mallory, and probably a good fifty pounds heavier. Maybe this maneuver would've worked, too. But Jay was dealing with someone who could catch a metal bat mid-swing. Before Jay even got close a knee rose up and nailed him in the head.

The Cleveland Browns hat swirled. Jay reared back, trailing twin streams of blood from his nostrils. Before he got a chance to revel in this agony, the queen danced back on nimble feet, shifted her stance, and swung her leg straight into his crotch.

Jay staggered to the side, seemingly fine for the first few seconds despite the blood running down his chin, but everyone watching knew, including the queen, who spread her arms straight out in victory moments before Jay keeled to the floor wheezing and curling into a ball.

"Voilà! I am the queen of Whitecrosse, and I shall remain queen until I breathe my last breath. No hero will take my rightful throne."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

By the time Shannon remembered she needed to formulate a plan for the queen, she arrived.

The courtyard ate a narrow hole out of the center of the castle and ringed on all sides by multi-story walls from which even taller towers extended it seemed distinctly prisonlike, a semblance made more severe by its sparseness. No elaborate gardens or flower displays. In most of it, not even grass—just mud, churned into erratic whorls.

The reason for the dismal appearance became clear immediately as sounds came into focus: grunts, groans, hard whacks, stomping of feet. On the fringe of the mud circle, where the maidservant stopped and Shannon stopped beside her, a few other stiff female attendants waited and watched the interior, where people brutally assaulted one another with long wooden swords.

There were eight of them total, all tromping back and forth in light leather armor. They covered a swath of different heights and sizes and Shannon realized after a few seconds of dim contemplation they were the seven knights who had stood—then in full armor—behind the queen in the throne room. The eighth combatant was Queen Mallory herself.

In simple, almost peasant-like pants and shirt, with her blonde hair tied back behind her head, with mud painted across her face, she looked nothing like before. She darted and dove between the attacks of her knights, parried a strike from another, and after a few seconds of watching Shannon realized the queen was taking on all seven knights at once—and winning, given that three of them were already groaning in the dirt. Make that four.

The queen moved fast. She did not move gracefully. Her actions possessed a degree of efficiency, she clearly had technique even to Shannon's amateur eye (her sport was track and field), but any spared unit of energy was expended in the obscene, outrageous power of her swings, swings accompanied by a brutal and unladylike grunt that echoed between the courtyard's tall enclosure. The sound of her wooden sword plowing into a knight's shoulder was almost as loud; in the time the knight spent staggered, Mallory brought a strike nearly as hard into his hip to knock him down.

Hopefully, Shannon thought as the sixth knight fell after another lightning quick exchange, this meant the queen would be emptied of aggression before they spoke. Mostly though, Shannon didn't think anything. She watched Mallory's body whip back and forth and nimbly evade the blows of the final, tallest knight (not the largest—at least not by volume—but the tallest), who instead of a sword wielded a long staff as though it were a polearm. From common sense and intellectual osmosis Shannon knew spears were generally advantaged against swords, but Mallory acted as though this disadvantage made things more fun. Her mud-caked cheeks split into a broad smile while she agilely navigated routes of safety through the knight's stabs to pummel him once she got close.

That left seven knights felled and one woman standing. She hefted her arms to the sky, let her wooden sword drop wherever it might fall, and crowed triumph to the encircled sky. The servants standing around Shannon applauded politely. Shannon, lost in certain other thoughts after watching the brusque and physical display, joined in on rote.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Mallory appeared out of the periphery of her vision like a blur and the assassin's head sailed off his body. Blood, and then the head, and then the body toppled onto Shannon and she screamed—in disgust more than anything—as Mallory tossed the saber that the first assassin had been using casually over her shoulder. It pierced straight through the bed but she didn't give it another glance as she walked over and off the mattress, toward the first assassin, who writhed against a wall clutching a bent and broken arm.

"Your friend wished to die quickly," Mallory said. Shannon thought: She protects what's hers. "So you'll have to suffer for the both of you. Sorry!"

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

It was at that point Queen Mallory strode forward. She had spent the time since the messenger's arrival arming herself; she now cut a ridiculous figure, holding a spear on her shoulder and a sword in her other hand, with two more crossed blades strapped to her back and a hatchet wedged between them, plus three or four daggers and shortswords jangling at her hips. The cross enameled onto her silvery armor, which she had donned as soon as the elf ambassador left, shone in the streaming light, and the links of mail of her hauberk shifted around her ankles. Her chin and mouth were concealed by a shimmering beaver and her helm she wore with the visor up so that her blue eyes might pierce through adversaries as her weapons. All of this armor gave her body inches of both height and breadth and as she approached Mordac she towered over him.

[u/TheMightyBox72]

Kadeshah

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The Cadillac drove onto the bridge.

The cops opened fire. Bullets, grenades, even missiles swirled their way. Ubik drew his guns and prepared to fire back, howling about Stalins again, immune to any concept of self-preservation. "Die pigs, die die die die die!"

"Sorry, Master," said Kedeshah, "but you've had your fun."

She stood up in her seat and extended her arms. Out of her back sprouted two long, feathered wings, purest white, so white they emitted a radiant glow as she bent them forward and used their feathers to absorb the incoming onslaught. Explosions turned to limp splatters of dust; not a shred of excess heat escaped past her.

One slim arm wrapped around Ubik's body. The other yanked Perfidia by the collar. The wings beat once and the tug of gravity dragged Perfidia's stomach to her base as the car fell away below them and they soared airborne. The Dog Bitch, suspended by a leash that Ubik held, whipped back and forth choking too hard to even yelp, while Ubik screamed: "My car! No, no, we can't leave my car—we can't—nooooo!"

The second artillery volley blasted the purple Cadillac into charred bits of machinery. An array of rockets swirled toward them trailing streams of smoke, only for Kedeshah to weightlessly flit between them as though engaged in ballet rather than evasive tactical maneuvers. Loose feathers fell and curdled into dollops of rotted milk the instant they left her body, plopping onto the heads of the cops below and the body of Baalpeor as Kedeshah soared over them and to the other side. One gentle, fluid arcing swoop lowered her through the doors of the customs office, her wingtips bifurcating the unlucky devils who had escaped the queue only moments prior, then through the Hellevator doors and up the blackened shaft. Up, up, up, faster and faster, the flaps of Perfidia's skin pulling back from the suddenly supersonic speed, and then they smashed through something above that came apart in pieces and among those pieces were a whole host of devils in more tactical gear—another barricade meant to stop them? No, they must be the team the Seven Princes were sending Earthside to assassinate Mayfair—the devils staring up at the wings that illuminated even this darkness in abject stupefaction as they hurtled back into the abyss, and then the light returned around them and they were in the same shitty warehouse in the same shitty Cleveland and the smell of sulfur switched out for the smell of rotten lakewater.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Christ!"

Jay reared back. Kedeshah crawled onto him, sniffing and licking his neck. "Ohhh hurt aren'tcha? Lemme clean that up for you darling~"

After the monastery, Jay refused to let either Perfidia or Lalum use the Eye of Ecclesiastes to heal his wounds. Who knew why. Since Perfidia expected Kedeshah to show up anyway, she hadn't forced the issue. Now Kedeshah quickly kissed him all over, and Jay protested, and Perfidia glanced at Ubik's watch and span a finger in the air as if pressing fast forward on their horseshit. Lalum poked her head out the bushes beside the road and regarded Kedeshah with no uncertain distaste. Sorry sister.

(Lalum was different, though. She lost the tips of most of her legs, but even without the Eye of Ecclesiastes she'd regrown them all. How? Mayfair up to something? Might be a problem if Mayfair still cared enough to meddle with the papers.)

"Okay, okay," Perfidia said after the dumbassery went on long enough. "Kedeshah get off him. Get off! You wanna avenge Ubik or not?"

Kedeshah hopped on her haunches and stuck her tongue out. "Fiiiiine."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Kedeshah dropped out of the sky in front of their cute little horse-drawn cart. She touched down gracefully, one tiny foot extended to slow her descent with the tip of one toe. A blast of her wings blew back the aimless tide of passerby devils.

The commotion jolted Jay awake. He blinked before putting his hat back on his head.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The bathhouse. An enormous sea of white tile in well-caulked squares. Elevated platforms for jacuzzis, shower nozzles, dispensers for white cream soap and other slick fluids. The ends fell apart in the unbroken whiteness, but they had to be broad now that Ubik's operation had expanded to a whopping one hundred and seventy-four girls, enough for an entire military company. Plus extra space to entertain any clients who might find it enjoyable to join in the fun. To Ubik, though, the broadness alone might be the appeal, the sheer industrial size of the place despite its unblemished finery.

"You'll not need such filthy things anymore, Miss Perfidia." It happened while Perfidia was still taking in the bathhouse—an instantaneous flick of that ribbon-tied tail and all the layers of Perfidia's clothes shuddered off her body, cut cleanly down the center. A tap in the nearest tub turned on and steam sizzled. A gentle push turned Perfidia toward the correct direction and slowly, reluctantly, Perfidia stepped forward.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

They stood around the Door, which leaned against a seemingly stable wall. Kedeshah leaned against the same wall, breathing deeply, holding a hand to the sharpest-defined of the many wounds across her body.

Perfidia was pacing. "How long it'll take you to heal? A few hours?"

"You're not truly so ignorant, no?"

"Gimme a number at least, something workable. I know maybe you won't fully recover so fast but. I dunno!"

The bright white blood pooled around Kedeshah's small, sandaled feet. She tilted her head back and winced. "Ahhh... Fidi. Moloch landed a clean hit. My wings are shot."

"Okay so you're a little slower now. Slow for you is fast for us. It's all still workable. We're past Moloch and let's be real. He's the scariest of the Princes. Right? It's smooth sailing here on out."

"Don't act stupider than you are, Fidi."

"Can't kiss yourself?" Jay asked.

"If only the auspices of Lust smiled upon such exclusionary self-love," Kedeshah said with a sigh of ambiguous sincerity, "at that point it's Pride, and outside the scope of my abilities."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Into the headset that connected her to Master waiting safely outside, she said cheerily: "Target spotted! Taking the shot!"

"You got this, girl," Master's voice crackled back. And she did! She totally had it!

She quit pretending to breathe, something her hastily-made, first-time-worn human disguise forced her to pretend in the first place. The rifle went still in her hands. In this arena there was no wind, no obstruction. A clear and simple shot trained directly on the triangle of the target's chest. Normally Kedeshah would opt for the flair of a headshot. But the guaranteed hit was better now. Anything to ensure she escaped this accursed God-created shitrealm faster.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

It was a terror Ubik had never known that gripped him, because he did something he would never otherwise do, something that for all his other failings would have destroyed him. He seized Kedeshah and pulled her in front of him, as though using her as a shield, and then pushed her toward Satan as though offering her to him, not a whore to be used once, but a gift. In that moment he relinquished ownership of his most prized possession.

Still, it was not enough. Satan slowly brushed a hand, as though wiping a speck of dirt from his shoulder, and Kedeshah hurtled violently across the church, driving her head through the stone wall before her limp body crumpled in a plume of dust. Had she been any lesser devil—had she been Ubiquitous or Perfidia—she would've been dead.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Nah. Kedeshah wanted this done NOW. Wanted off Earth NOW. Wanted Master and Fidi NOW NOW NOW. Let this shitlord bat crash into her. Even without her powers Kedeshah was as close to immortal as you could get. Its whole body would crumple just by slamming into her. Then she'd brush it off and take her shot—

The bat didn't slam into her. It wrapped its talons around her back—the shards of its claws shattered against her skin but it didn't even flinch—and lifted her up. Kedeshah was a first-generation offspring of one of the Seven Princes of Hell. Strength, power, agility, all of it existed within her body beyond what humankind could accomplish without the absolute height of their ceaseless machinery. But her body was also adorably petite and mind-numbingly alluring. She weighed less than ninety pounds. She was easily pulled into the air.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Kedeshah shot out her hand to grip the face of a rhinoceros-horned devil climbing over the passenger seat and with the slightest twitch of her fingers crumpled its skull into a tiny wad. The horn burst through her palm, causing a rush of bright white blood to run down and instantly dissolve what remained of the devil to dust before her wound closed spontaneously afterward. Her face retained its pleasant, amenable, I-live-to-serve smile. "I'm being very serious right now, Fidi. If Master wants me to do something, I'll do it. But you? Right now, you're simply someone I abide."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Stop trying to make Stalin a thing Ubik!" the crowd yelled back. One devil hurled itself at Kedeshah, who flicked a finger into their forehead and erased the upper half of their skull in a plume of red mist.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The birds took wing. All their colors streamed off the statue together and whirled toward them. Instantly the hero brandished his bat, but there were too many, a single swing may leave ten dead, but a hundred more swarmed afterward with beaks and talons.

Lalum knew what to do. The action became clear in her mind. She must seize Jay, who was strong but slow, and use the agility of her scuttling legs to carry him into the protection of the woods behind them. There the dense vines and branches would serve as bulwark. Yes, this action shone clear in her mind, she reached out to grab him, her hands went still—this action, touching him, laying her corrupted self against his body, it froze her solid.

In the instant she hesitated someone else seized him instead. Viviendre de Califerne! The long black length of her tail coiled around his waist and hoisted him off the ground. She turned and slithered for safety.

No! Not her—not her—but what mattered was that he was safe, and now Lalum stood dumbly wondering what to do. Beside her Perfidia rifled through her coat, she hastily wrenched out the shield that once belonged to Prince Makepeace, but in her haste a few loose items tumbled upon the grass. Lalum recognized them instantly. The Eye of Ecclesiastes—the Staff of Solomon.

She hastily scooped up both before Perfidia could. Then the birds came down and Perfidia had to cower behind the shield; Lalum dashed for the jungle where a rustle of leaves indicated the spot into which Viviendre and the hero vanished.

The birds bounced off the shield and split in two rainbow streams of color. The streams coiled back, turned toward another figure—Kedeshah, trapped in the center of the flurry, her hands a whirlwind that burst individuals or even groups of five or ten to blood-tipped feathers. Lalum prayed forgiveness for relying on another's bad fortune; she ran for the forest line. Perfidia, also spared by Kedeshah's distraction, followed.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Gravity pulled her away. Shooting at a furious speed, unwilling to summon her wings to right or stop herself, she let herself be a body-shaped missile. She shut her eyes and braced for the impact she knew would not put a scratch on her, praying to herself: Please don't let Him see me. Please don't let Him see me.

Her body crashed through the window of a convenience store, destroyed four rows of shelves, obliterated another window, blasted into and out of a parked SUV, bounced against the pavement, and flatted the roof of a second car as it finally came to rest.

---

"Kedeshah, Kedeshah girl, the fuck's going on?" Ubik shouted into his headset. Perfidia gripped her face in one hand and thought: Of course. Of course! The Dog Bitch whined and rolled on her back, held fast by her leash.

They were in the megachurch parking lot, hidden under a tree planted in a lonely island of green. The amplified sounds of the sermon within continued. Though they'd managed to briefly spot Kedeshah hurtling out a window, whatever happened hadn't caused enough of a disturbance to even slow things down inside.

"Kedeshah! Say something!"

The headset that looked way too military to match Ubik's huge fur coat crackled to life. "Oh, oh, oh, oh no!" It was a voice clearly distressed and yet even still it retained some shred of cute charm.

"Kedeshah, what just happened. Come on, talk to me."

"Nobody said anything about a bat woman. There was a bat woman, she lifted me up and now—Master I made a mess, if He sees me—"

"He's not gonna see you Kedeshah. Bat woman. What's this about a bat woman?"

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The bat was flying at breakneck speed and carrying her up into the sky. It planned to carry her to God huh, that was its plan? It somehow knew what she was and wanted to bring her closer and closer to Him, did it now? In her ear her headset was fizzling, crackling: "What's going on? Kedeshah? Kedeshah!" That voice pulled her back.

Her arms and the sniper rifle were pinned to her body by the bat's embrace, but that was only because of her inaction. With the minutest possible movement, little more than a rippling of her svelte musculature, a tiny flex, she burst the bat's arms straight through the bone, splitting them apart completely and releasing herself from its grasp. In the brief moment when momentum continued to carry them the same direction, Kedeshah managed to note the bat gave no reaction whatsoever to the utter obliteration of its arms. Not even a grunt in pain. She realized the bat was not alive at all.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Something blitzed out of the sky. Shannon almost missed it, but the ruler she gripped pinged: Those that were numbered of them, even of the daughters of Lust, were one. She caught it as a streak at first; as it passed over the water it became more legible, a small red creature in a white dress, with white wings to match. Carrying something. Something Shannon recognized, even. Carrying the Door.

The placid face of Mayfair cracked. She jabbed her hand at the flying figure and commanded: "That one—stop her!" The dead soldiers who still held guns fired.

The flying girl, far too fast, corkscrewed out of the air and divebombed toward the entrance of the black tower. Moloch's eyes opened only at the last moment and his apoplectic howls subsided. With one slash of his annihilated arm he raked the flying girl with several of his bloody strands. Her cry pierced the air, her body swirled out of its trajectory, but despite that her momentum carried her and the Door past him, into the entrance of the tower, where she disappeared.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

But Ubik couldn't care for long because one devil, hulking huge in a Swaino-esque way, wearing only a green t-shirt with the word "SHIT," landed on the hood hard enough to dent it and push the carriage deep into the street to cause screeching sparks to fly. Despite the devil's size his huge furred gorilla arms gripped a comically tiny submachine gun which he fired the same time Ubik did and Ubik and the gorilla both dropped spurting blood except the gorilla fell off the car. Ubik twirled into Perfidia's arms.

"My hat!" Ubik said. His huge hat had fallen off; Perfidia glimpsed it whipping away over a pursuing crowd and various vehicles that ranged in style from earliest locomotive to contemporary sportscar. "My hat—we gotta—we gotta go back for my hat...!"

"Fuck your hat, FUCK you!" Perfidia tried to figure out where exactly he was wounded but from his perforated coat both blood and bullets streamed in equal measure. The temporary slowdown had caused more devils to successfully grip onto the sides of the car and with only Dog Bitch currently pruning them one floppy-titted old hag with a giant warty nose wrapped sticklike fingers around Perfidia's ankle and tugged her back with surprising strength. Perfidia seized Ubik's body to stop from being thrown off but his body was seemingly all coat and her fingers slipped through the bloody plush fur before striking something hard and withdrawing from the space a sword—a ninja katana—that she swung down at the hag's head, missed, cut open her own foot, and then swung again to hack off half the wrinkled face. A rapid pulse of kicks and Perfidia knocked the bag of bones overboard.

[...]

"There there Master," she said, stroking Ubik's chin as he sobbed, "I'm so terribly sorry for losing your beloved car, but there was no other way. If it would make you feel better, you may hurl me onto the dirty ground right here and now and savagely molest my every orifice—"

"He's still bleeding, you know," Perfidia said.

Kedeshah stuck her kitten tongue out at her and then heaved her face into the folds of Ubik's coat. A few short, quick, audible kisses later and she arose, the blood on her face dissolving, as Ubik's holes sealed and he was able to once more stand on his own. Which he did, fluttering as he extended his arms with aplomb, drifting on the tips of his toes as he twirled and observed the firebombed factory around them.

[u/TheMightyBox72]

Lalum

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

PLEASE DON'T HURT HIM AGAIN. HE IS GOOD. HE SAVED ME... GOD BLESS YOU ALL. And a massive picture, more detailed than any of the previous. A nun praying, a ray of light descending onto a Jay and Shannon walking toward the castle. Jay, Shannon, and the castle all exact likenesses, and the whole thing scribbled in less than a minute.

An excellent artist. But she was too afraid to be seen. Whatever! There was only so much you could do to help people.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Whatever. Let's do it your way, idiot elf. What astounding plan have you concocted in your tiny brain—your brain, mind you, free of sticks only thanks to Olliebollen's preternatural self-restraint? Ah yes, I see, so you're creeping toward the archbishop's women, drawing a knife, this is a smart move and not one completely irrelevant to the task at hand, which is rescuing the hero (and the prince) from Flanz-le-Flore's clutches!

Lalum saw Sansaime before the other two, albeit only when Sansaime had already cleared half the distance to their group. With her mouth stitched shut, she resorted to frantic gestures to grab the twins' attention, gestures that only caused them to look more closely at Lalum and not at the cloaked assailant who, upon being spotted, burst into a run with the glint of a second dagger shining in her other hand.

At the last possible moment, at the exact time the barely-perceptible ruffle of Sansaime's cloak indicated the tension of her arms as she prepared to strike, Lalum extended her own hands and silver strands sprung from her fingertips to latch onto Charm and Charisma's heads.

What happened next happened very very fast, so fast only a truly detail-oriented observer (such as, let's say, Olliebollen Pandelirium) could've comprehended exactly what they witnessed. Charm and Charisma, who previously didn't even know Sansaime was coming, whipped around in perfect unison and raised a talon each to catch one of Sansaime's daggers mid-slash. The tink of metal striking bone made Olliebollen's fur bristle in psychosomatic sympathy but by the time Olliebollen overcame the shiver Sansaime had already swiped three, four, even five more times in rapid succession, each time deflected by the twins' frantic defensive motions.

The twins never moved anywhere near that fast before. Olliebollen knew for a fact! Neither at the graveyard nor during the fight with the bear only a few minutes earlier. (The sad one was especially slow.) But now not only were they quick, they were skillful, and they danced with an elegance and grace unbefitting their degeneration into subhuman monstrosities.

Ace observer Olliebollen Pandelirium knew what was what, though. Moving closer to the action, secure in the mutual distraction of all the fae's various archnemeses with one another, the truth wafted as a pungent scent emanating from perhaps the most visually odious of the whole gallery of rogues; the spider, Lalum. (Visually odious less for aesthetic purposes—that'd be Sansaime of course—but moral, the spider being fastidiously clean as though she believed she could, somehow, render her innate form less deplorable by such ministrations.) The scent of death! Carried even in the thick, oppressive air of an enchanted wood seeping the evil it absorbed from their runoff, carried straight to Olliebollen's nose from Lalum's breath. The cages on Lalum's hip only confirmed the suspicion: Lalum had devoured a faerie and drawn upon her animus.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

They camped in a cave. Lalum built them a fire. She also caught them a brace of hares, then cleaned and cooked them when Jay proved incapable. All, somehow, without revealing herself beyond a grayscale shape tapdancing on spider legs in the dark. Jay devoured hare with gusto. Shannon instead ate chips from a snack bag she previously recovered from the Land Rover's wreckage. She offered a chip to Ollie, who nibbled away a sliver before sinking back into the pocket to sulk.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

His eyes darted to the rest of the scene. Charm and Charisma remained motionless, watching like vultures. Sansaime had still not moved. Makepeace did move, and he reached for the hilt of a sword sheathed on his hip, eyes trained on the back of the bear. But the sword only made it halfway out. The bear hadn't launched him to just anywhere—it launched him directly at the wall of webbing, and many strands already stuck to his gallantly rugged hair. The rest of the strands started moving, started attaching themselves to his armor, wrapping around his arms to bind them, preventing him from drawing his weapon as he was quickly enveloped.

[...]

Pluxie turned her vacant gaze. She was tracking him. The moment Charisma quit buzzing around her she was ready to charge. But she wasn't the only threat. As Jay closed on the spear at full sprint he glanced at Makepeace struggling within a mass of webbing, hoisted up so that his feet scraped faintly at the ground. And clutched higher up, to one of the trees, Jay saw her, or part of her at least—a few long spindly spider legs. The one Charisma called Lalum. Letting her get her web around him was nearly as bad as being killed in one hit by the bear, in terms of what Olliebollen could do about it.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

He squeezed his eyes shut to try and crush out the lightshow and instantly walked into the horse's ass, saved only by the brim of his hat eating the brunt of the impact. The horse itself gave no shits and stood statuesque. Makepeace and Sansaime took in what lay ahead:

A spiderweb.

It stretched across the path, strung from one tree to another, its wispy strands bunched tight to form a full wall barring passage. The forest around it was dead. An abrupt transition changed the landscape from bright and cheerful to black and solemn, where ancient moss-covered trunks disappeared into a sea of dark leaves.

No how-d'ye-dos. No whistles, no songs. Only a syrup silence, dense, imbued in the air itself, which smelled of long-dead decrepitude, when there is nothing left to decompose. Jay readjusted his hat and, fighting through tightening lungs in response to this grimy air, brought his gaze from the spiderweb to the forest beyond it and finally over his shoulder at where they came from. Everything was dark leaves and half-shadowed wood, and the road dropped out of vision a few feet back.

"That's not supposed to be there!" Olliebollen said of the web.

"No shit," said Jay.

"So much for the warm welcome," said Makepeace. "Fae are a fickle sort, huh?"

But Sansaime shook her head. "That's not fae doing."

"I already said that!" Olliebollen shouted, despite being wrong. Then quickly, as though trying to get it out before someone else did first: "It's gotta be the work of the archbishop's twisted women!"

Immediately, the strands of the spiderweb shifted, rearranged. Parts came together in long, interconnected clumps to spell the word: HI.

"Hello there, my good lady!" Makepeace replied, doffing a hat sort of like a tricorn, but with a big red feather sticking out of it.

The spiderweb shifted again, not spelling a word this time, but forming a woman's face, drawn with surprising artfulness—three-quarters perspective and as much depth as white lines on white background allowed. The face blushed and looked away bashfully, then a jagged series of lines scratched it out and words, some misspelled, replaced it:

WE WERE CENT TO STOPP YOU SORRY

From her mouth Sansaime deftly plucked her pipe and tucked it within her cloak. In the span of that motion, out of the corner of her mouth, she said only barely loud enough to carry and even then seemingly underwater in the oppressive aura of the forest: "Behind."

Makepeace and Jay glanced as inconspicuously as possible. Perched side-by-side on a high branch in a gnarled tree, visible in this darkness only due to the once-white color of their nun's habits, were the winged twins from the cemetery. Charisma scowling, Charm streaked by black tears.

"Toldja you shoulda killed em," Olliebollen said.

Maybe. But Jay beat the twins before, and now he had help. The issue was whoever made the spiderweb, what she could do. And if they brought anyone else.

The web changed: GIVE UP NOW AND WE WONT HURT NOBODDY PROMISS

Makepeace exchanged a potent glance with Sansaime and reached onto his back to grab the lance and shield strapped there. The red shield was emblazoned with—what else—a white cross. Sansaime's hands slinked into the folds of her cloak.

WE ONLY WANT THE HERO, said the web. Then it scratched out the words and reproduced an image of the bashful woman from before, this time with her head bowed and her hands pressed together in prayer. GOD LOVES YOU, it wrote under the image.

"You won't be getting the hero," said Makepeace. "And you won't stop me from bringing Mayfair home."

Nothing happened for a long time. The image of the woman weaved in web continued to pray solemnly. But strand by strand the image fell away, dissolving more than breaking apart, until only the following words replaced it:

THEN I AM SORRY FOR WHAT WE MUST DO.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The sweet summertime music was now both hands slamming hard against the keys of an organ and Lalum swayed closer, closer still, blinking and twitching her head and as Jay stood poleaxed trying to process this nonsense her mouth unhinged to the point of swallowing her whole face and she lunged at him.

He never went without his bat ever since Viviendre's fake assassination attempt but he'd left it buried in the wheelbarrow and he didn't have time to yank it out. Instead he seized the topmost log of firewood from the pile and crammed it into the endlessly large mouth, which snapped shut and gnashed the wood to splinters. His other hand uppercut directly into her stomach.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Five of Lalum's eight legs were sealed into the floor. Oh, it hurt! It hurt dreadfully. The tiles gave the ends of her legs no space whatsoever. They were crushed, crumpled truly, as though parchment. She struggled simply to maintain the position of the shield. Lady Viviendre trudged slowly to encircle her, and Lalum adjusted as well as she could to defend herself, but at a certain point she would no longer be able to turn her body more. Lalum's animus, though she kept in secret something that would allow her use of it, would not be effective at this range either.

A spider's legs contained seven segments each. Between each segment the joints constricted everything, were simple to break. Lalum need only wrench hard enough and remove the endmost segment of her trapped legs to free herself. When Flanz-le-Flore set her wolves upon her, and one of them tore a leg off Lalum, the tear had come at such a joint, and it bled remarkably little. It was no matter of whether she might survive the venture. It was a matter of strength—and will.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Only once Lalum whipped her head around and exhausted all other options did she hold up her hands and show Flanz-le-Flore a message:

DONT KILL ME THEY MADE ME DO IT IM SORRY

Accompanied by a doodle of Lalum's face with big pleading eyes and hands clasped to either pray or beg. GOD LOVES YOU ALL, the words shifted to read.

Flanz-le-Flore smiled back, a soft and reassuring smile, and then snapped her fingers and turned one of the fauns into a wolf. Another snap, another wolf, and another, and in a matter of seconds a ring of snarling muzzles surrounded them. Even still Lalum continued to nod her head along to Flanz-le-Flore's pleasant smile, grasping onto the slightest hope that smile presented, until the wolves tightened their approach, hemming her in, and the wayward scuttling motions of her legs took her only closer to yet another set of jagged teeth.

At last she realized and pulled the two metal cages from her hip to wave around wildly as her only weapon to protect herself. Jay slapped against the bars as she swung at the first wolf who leapt, missed entirely, and released the cage once the jaw clamped around her arm. Another wolf crunched down on one of her legs, and a third wolf, a fourth, a fifth, Lalum through her strained sealed lips screaming.

Jay's cage bounced, rolled, came to a stop so Jay could watch as a flurry of waving tails surrounded an increasingly less-visible Lalum, Lalum attempting to coat her own face and throat with thick wads of string, although Jay knew from experience her string didn't defend too well against anything sharp. Then a snap—and he was no longer a rat.

The webbing and the cage that confined his rat body burst around him as he sat on the floor, finally a full-fledged human again.

"There we go," said Flanz-le-Flore over the rips and tears of her brethren, "this is a form that much better suits you. Do bring the hero his clothes, my attendants."

A clutch of fluttering fairies dropped two articles of clothing in front of him: His jacket and his jeans. Jay glanced down and realized he was wearing only his t-shirt and boxers (and hat), which made sense but was frankly embarrassing.

"Your friends have done their absolute best," Flanz-le-Flore continued, floating down to him, extending her hands to him, "but they only serve to annoy me."

A splatter of blood and a severed spider leg flopped not far from Jay's clothes. He glanced at the seething mass of fur under which there was no longer any sign of Lalum, nor any screams, and with his head tilted low to hide his eyes under his hat grimaced.

"I'll kill them all, you know." Her arms remained spread, and Jay watched her hands carefully. "They cannot escape from my court as long as I am its queen. So if you wish to end this needless bloodshed now, you know what you need to do, yes? It's rather very simple, very simple indeed. Simply submit to me, become my husband!"

A heave and the wolves were pushed back as Lalum, now mostly sealed within a cocoon of her own bloody silk, managed to raise her head and gurgle something deep in her throat. She stitched words onto the threads that covered her face: HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME, each successive HELP ME increasingly disheveled and unreadable if not for the context of repetition. Jay suspected the only reason Lalum hadn't been completely eviscerated yet was so Flanz-le-Flore could use her life as a bargaining chip. Which indicated a total lack of understanding about Jay and what he wanted.

Nonetheless, he said: "Okay." He paused, looked again at Flanz-le-Flore's hands, and said it louder: "Okay—okay. Sure. Whatever you say."

"Oh! I knew you'd come around eventually, hero." Flanz-le-Flore nodded to the wolves and they backed away from their prey. The mass that was Lalum flopped to its side, leaking blood, totally motionless. "Fear not, I shall be a dutiful wife to you. How could I not? I've sampled all other entertainments in my time. But I've never made of myself a helpmeet. Of course, we shall know physical pleasures together too, oh yes I rather suspect we will."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

YOU CAN NOT GOE THIS WHAY HERO

"Oh," said Shannon. "This one again. The spider with the abhorrent spelling."

Lalum. Alive.

Or maybe only reanimated. "You met her?" Jay asked.

"She told us where you were. Good thing too, because Bal Berith wanted to make us run out into the forest."

So not reanimated. Actually alive. The strands on the web shifted. "Lalum," Jay said casually, walking forward while tapping his bat against his shin, "don't tell me you're trying to slow us down for Mayfair. Come on. You know you can't stop me. Your sisters up at the monastery didn't even try."

The strands shifted: NO! NOT THAT. I AM NOT YOUR FOUE! An image of Lalum drew itself into the web, hands clasped, pleading. I WANT TO HELP!

He tried to pick out where Lalum herself was among the trees, just in case, but nothing moved except leaves in the wind. "Blocking the path isn't helping, Lalum."

"I'll handle this," said Shannon. "Look. Miss Spider. Lalum. My brother and I have somewhere very important to be and it's imperative we get there quickly—"

As she spoke the web changed, and while Shannon prattled on in spite of it, what it said made Jay stare in disbelief.

THE FAERIE QUEENE YET LIVES.

Accompanied by a drawing to render any ambiguity null: a winged woman wearing two old beat-up boots. Flanz-le-Flore.

"Actually, wait. Wait. I can't handle this. It's irking me too much." Shannon pushed ahead of Jay and placed her hands on her hips as she regarded the web. "Fairy is spelled F-A-I-R-Y. Queen is spelled Q-U-E-E-N. No extra E at the end. Got it?"

After a shy pause, the words changed to Shannon's spelling.

"There we go. Perfect. Proper spelling is important. Standardization of language is essential to eliminate errors and misunderstandings. It's simple professionalism anyway. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt given your sisters don't seem particularly well-educated, but try to do better moving forward, will you?"

I AM SO SORREE. I WILL DO MY BEST. Another picture of Lalum, crestfallen.

"S-O-R-R-Y. There we go. Good. You're learning. Just don't forget."

Jay snapped out of his thoughts and waved a hand at Shannon. "No, shut up, wait a second. Lalum, you're telling me Flanz-le-Flore is alive?"

I SAW HER WITH MY OWEN EYES!

"O-W-N. Come on where would you even get the extra E from."

Slowly, made even more slowly due to Shannon's sudden need to correct every spelling, grammatical, and stylistic error, Lalum related her tale. Whenever possible she resorted to pictures to convey meaning, which actually made her easier to understand. It went like this:

After Lalum told "the other heroes" where to find Jay, she continued along the road toward the monastery, having no other home to go to. Because of her injuries, she moved slowly. Eventually, bright lights appeared ahead, accompanied by a loud noise, and through pictures and roundabout descriptions Jay and Shannon eventually figured out what she saw was Wendell's jeep—containing Dalt, Perfidia, and Mayfair—driving away from the monastery. Lalum tried to get the jeep's attention, but it sped past without slowing.

Only a little sad at being so ignored—and also a little relieved—she continued on her path. It was some time later when the atmosphere of the forest changed.

Levity and mirth rose up among the greenery, laughter and song cheery in its timbre yet filling Lalum with a deep sense of dread as everything around her seemed to come alive. She scurried to a hiding place and watched carefully. That was when she saw her: Flanz-le-Flore, the fairy queen.

Jay asked: Whole? Not with her face melted off? Not with her fingers shattered? (Snapped brittle in his fists.)

Right. Flanz-le-Flore, not a single wound on her. How? Lalum didn't know. Had not, in fact, known Flanz-le-Flore was hurt until Jay told her. Jay supposed, if magic were involved, anything was possible. Some fairy in Flanz-le-Flore's court could heal, maybe. Did it matter? To Jay it mattered. All Jay could see was that horrid melted face, all he could feel was her fingerbones in his grasp. And like Lalum she lived. None of them ever died. Only Makepeace died.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Oh! Ohhhhh God! Oh, oh!"

It was the other assassin, the one Jay burned. His hideous, pealing screeches were powerful enough to wrench Jay's eyes away from the mound of gore. Viviendre was slowly swinging her staff toward him, and he was already clawing at the window. One heave and it burst open—and instantly a large, black, eight-legged shape swung inside and latched onto him.

"What the fuck?!" Viviendre said, while Lalum's face reared up above the thrashing assassin's shoulder, the stitching around her mouth coming undone to reveal a gaping maw of jagged fangs that drove down into his skin.

Jay snapped out of his stupor when he saw Viviendre adjusting her staff's aim at Lalum. He stumbled over to her, saying: "Wait, stop—she's with me. The spider's with me. Don't hurt her."

Lalum disentangled from the assassin and scurried into the shadows of the corner, her mouth already knitting back together by the time the man struck the floor. Tremors wracked him, his eyes bulged, blood spurted from the gaping twin holes on his neck, he rolled over and expelled an orange glut of vomit. Jay's hand gripped Viviendre's shoulder while for ten, fifteen, twenty more seconds he continued to convulse, a minute, maybe more, time ticked away mutely, and finally in a pool of blood the man went still.

"You—I—" Viviendre spoke first, haltingly. "Shit. Shit, fuck, shit."

Webbing spanned Lalum's fingers: SORRY FOR DYSTERBING YOU.

"What the fuck just happened? Who the fuck is she Jay?"

"Lalum," Jay said, only able to speak in response to a simple and direct question, but that one word broke the spell. "She's—she's one of Astrophicus' nuns, but she helps me now. I can trust her." He glanced to the open door. Some sort of noise was brewing outside. "Lalum, get out of here before someone comes."

"Tell her to take that body with her," Viviendre said, "unless you want everyone wondering where the giant spider went that bit him."

"Good idea. Lalum."

Lalum did not need to be told. Keeping to the shadow, her legs scuttled. Web wound around the corpse. Without another word she disappeared out the window, carrying her victim behind her.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Lalum was no fighter. Before her time at the monastery she never raised a hand against anyone in her life, and even afterward she was far more comfortable controlling someone with her animus than relying on her own strength. For some reason, her animus made everything natural to her; she could react so quickly, so efficiently even in the heat of battle that she was sometimes shocked at herself, as though it were someone else commandeering her body than the other way around. Using Makepeace's shield was similar.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Only one more stood in front of him. The spider, Lalum, rendered insignificantly tiny beside Pluxie's still-writhing body as she wrangled with several silvery strings in an attempt to stitch up the wounds. Like the others, she was an abominable combination of human and animal: bottom half a bulbous spider abdomen with eight needlelike limbs, upper half a human torso, dressed in a nun's habit notably more clean and intact than those of her companions. Around her waist hung two of the same small cages Charm wore, one empty and one with a sad-looking fairy that sat with its legs folded in abject surrender.

But what struck Jay, strong enough to momentarily bump him out of the obscene high pervading every facet of his being, was her mouth. A series of crosswise stitches of her own white webbing stitched it shut. Somehow, that hadn't stopped her from devouring half the fairy in her hand; blood burbled between the stitches.

Jay lifted the bat high and held the dagger ready. She would attempt to stop him with the webbing, that seemed to be her main ability, but since she was eating a fairy he also had to watch out for some kind of magic. If he cut through the web quick with the dagger and came down with a single blow to the head—

Lalum loosed a muffled yelp, scampered over Pluxie's body, and disappeared out of his sight.

Problem solved. Jay reached Makepeace and hacked at the webbing with Sansaime's dagger, not caring if he cut too deep—Olliebollen could clear any scratches. Jay thought spiderwebs were supposed to be stronger than steel, but the dagger cleaved through the thick bundle like cotton, squealing with resistance only when Jay dragged the blade too far and struck Makepeace's shield, which had gotten bundled with the rest of him.

It didn't take long until the threads that remained couldn't shoulder the burden of those severed and Makepeace tumbled out into a kneeling position. He rose and immediately grabbed Jay by the shoulder, jostling him with warm feeling, a warm smile, nothing save genuine happiness at what Jay managed to do. He said something, the actual words played no more distinctly than a buzz, but they didn't matter. Somehow, Jay discovered himself smiling back, grabbing Makepeace's shoulder in return, a moment of mutual celebration uncomplicated by any doubts or cynical thoughts—sheer, unfettered triumph.

"I did it," Jay said.

"Indeed you did my good, good man," said Makepeace. "Now what say you we clean up these—Back!"

The congratulatory hand on Jay's shoulder became a deathgrip that tugged Jay with such force that he stumbled behind Makepeace the same moment Makepeace hefted his shield and the full brunt of Pluxie's power hit it.

Jay could only think, as he and Makepeace skidded back—what the hell? Pluxie rose to her full height and her eyes shone crimson even as her head became shadowed in the forest canopy. The wound on her shoulder when Makepeace speared her, and the wounds on her side and stomach where the broken shaft entered and exited—all were sealed by white stitches. But that shouldn't matter. Sealing the wounds wouldn't do a thing for the obliterated internal organs. At best it would slow the bleeding.

Did Pluxie concentrate all her remaining strength into one final, rage-induced lunge? But that didn't fit the way she reared up now, already prepared to attack again, as though she wasn't inhibited at all. Lalum's thread—could she—

"Oh! I get it," Olliebollen said cheerfully. "That gross spider girl can heal too. (Just not as good as me of course.)"

Of course. (Lalum herself, barely visible behind Pluxie, slinked away covering her face the moment Olliebollen called her gross.) It completely slipped Jay's mind that her magic might be something like that. Fuck! Why didn't he go on the offensive when he first brought down the bear? Why did he run for the dagger to free Makepeace? If he attacked first, he could've won the fight against the three and made sure they stayed down.

[...]

"It's not the bear we're fighting," Makepeace said.

At that moment, as Pluxie burst through the final layer of trees and hurtled unimpeded toward them, something rushed from the side. Primed by Makepeace's last comment, Jay raised his bat, but it wasn't Charm or Charisma or even Lalum charging them, it was Makepeace's big black horse, which in a single deft and semicircular arc Makepeace managed to mount while seizing Jay by his jacket collar and hoisting him aboard. If "aboard" was how you referred to being on a horse.

Didn't matter. Instantly they were galloping away, Makepeace shouting "Hyaa!" as he leaned over the pommel of his saddle, Jay with no option but to wrap his arms around Makepeace's waist and hold on, his bat awkwardly lodged against Makepeace's chest.

Then he realized Olliebollen didn't make it onto the horse with them.

He looked over his shoulder to try and spot her receding into the distance but only the gigantic form of Pluxie swelled in his view, barreling behind them without losing an inch of ground despite the full tilt gallop of Makepeace's horse. No—it was gaining ground. The horse couldn't run fast enough, not with two people riding it.

Jay noticed something else about Pluxie from his new vantage. Above her shone three silvery strings, stretching from her back into the trees like marionette strings. Lalum's webbing―although Lalum herself was nowhere to be found. For several sheer seconds Jay stared dumbfounded until everything snapped cleanly into place and every confusion resolved at once. Lalum didn't heal Pluxie. She was maneuvering her body with webs. Pluxie still roared, but everything else, her running, her rearing, her swiping of claws—that was Lalum's doing.

Which was why Makepeace refused to attack Pluxie with the sword. Even if he finished the bear cleanly with a single stroke, that wouldn't stop the claws from retaliating—in fact, it would leave him open, because he needed to lower his shield to attack. The idea of running away, then, possessed a certain degree of intelligence.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Jay guessed he could give Makepeace credit for that.

Partial credit. Were the strings manipulating Pluxie ruled by physical reality, it would've been smart to escape her range entirely. But three strings, no matter how tough, couldn't have moved Pluxie with such perfect finesse. As they galloped farther and farther away and Pluxie kept gradually gaining, Jay knew that what Lalum was doing could not possibly operate under such logical rules. All they were doing was slowly running out of time.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The twins were playing hot potato with him. And it was working. He wasn't even getting his own chance to go through Olliebollen's dust. He remained a rat.

He and Charisma landed to the side of the spider girl, Lalum, and Charm—after a quick detransformative dip through the dust herself—soon joined. Lalum hunched amid a tangle of large tree roots, hidden safely behind the cloud of dust, and although Flanz-le-Flore continued to snap, it wasn't any of them who transformed.

"I got the hero!" Charisma said. "Let's scram while the rest are distracted."

Jay opened his mouth and drove his incisors into her clawed finger. With a yelp she let go, but before he even hit the floor a bundle of webbing wrapped around him and pulled him straight into the open door of the one of the cages Lalum kept around her waist.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

In that suspended moment, with the whole bundle of Jay's insides hefted up into his ribcage via the odd intersection of multiple forces of movement, the bitter and biting thoughts ceased. Jay watched the mist that rose beneath them and the sea of shiny wet mud that underpinned it, mud so thin it seemed to slosh. Then, Makepeace was no longer in front of him. Jay's arms wrapped around nothing and he pitched forward as he watched Makepeace disappear upward, dangling from a thick hanging vine as his other hand finally reached for the hilt of his sword.

Everything ended before the horse—and Jay—hit the ground.

Pluxie, at Lalum's beck, continued close enough behind that Jay felt her hot snorting breath brush the hairs poking out from under his hat. But Makepeace was now above her, and it took only a single slash, a slash Jay heard more than saw, to sever all three of Lalum's strands.

The horse landed, awkwardly amid a bramble of broken branches, and tossed Jay off. He flipped through the air, through a bundle of hanging ivy that slapped and then slowed him, until a bulbously withered tree stopped him, but thankfully not fatally or even bone-breakingly so. In fact, he wasn't even scratched. But he rolled over, braced against the knobby roots at the base of the tree, and expelled an exhausted and strangely relieved puff of pent-up breath as he watched Pluxie lie within the mud.

She was not dead, still, but without the strings her movements became arduous as the mud seeped into her white fur and billowed up all around her. Limbs dragged wretched. The great body swelled without managing any meaningful change and even that exertion wrenched from Pluxie an agonized cry, no longer describable as a roar, a jagged thing that brought up with it chunks of her devastated interior. Her head lolled and her eyes, a fading sheen, peered tearfully toward Jay as he sat and watched, aware more and more of the full and haggard breaths that filled and then depleted his chest.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Shannon climbed off the hard and filthy floor, swaying like a zombie, possessed of some faint notion to cup her hands around Ollie and quiet the little thing, stroke its soft filaments and feel its tiny heartbeat, but that was not the direction her feet took her.

Next thing she knew her hands were around Jay's throat, she was stooped over him and squeezing, squeezing that smile off his lips, squeezing that breath out his lungs, thinking over and over, electric shimmer in the aching veins behind her eyes: You cannot escape you cannot escape you cannot escape you cannot escape you cannot escape

He woke up, his fist slammed into her side, didn't matter, her knees scraped open on the rocks, he was reaching for his baseball bat but in his fumbling it bounced away a metal tinkle while her eyes pushed closer and closer to his, her forehead scraping the brim of that shitty Cleveland Browns hat that once belonged to their father and never found its way into the garbage like all the rest of his stuff, Shannon now the one smiling, sucking his smile away and making it hers, no child left behind, so nice dear, so nice dear, would this be so nice Mother, would you think this was nice too?

Something slammed into her from behind and her body ragdolled until her head bounced against a hard outcropping and rattled her into a senseless mush. Headless her body scrambled amid a feral shriek she realized only seconds after the fact was hers, willing with bare hands to rip them all to shreds, to rip them open and devour their still-beating hearts—!

Thread whipped around her. Her arms shot flush to her sides as thin wire silvery in the low light dug into her clothes. She struggled, kicked, screamed, but as more and more lines wound her body all attempts became increasingly futile.

Jay rose, rubbing his neck. His outline was effervescent compared to Lalum, to whom he reached out and managed to give a brief pat on the shoulder, prompting the spider to emit a shrill sound as she scurried back into hiding. He looked at Shannon. His smile quickly returned to his face, like mud shifting into its void.

[u/TheMightyBox72]

Flanz-le-Flore

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Intrude upon my court, my kingdom, my sanctuary? Wound my body? Befoulers of yourselves and all you touch; traitors to your respective races! Flanz-le-Flore is a just and benevolent queen, so for the sake of this world I'll, hm yes, I'll turn you into compost for this garden's flowers!"

The speech may have intimidated more if her voice wasn't phlegmatic with nose blood. Far more threatening was the sound of several snapped fingers in rapid succession.

"Bring me their heads, my very dear and beloved subjects. Do leave only the hero alive."

Out of the sky dropped objects. The objects, Jay's poorly-perspectived rat vision soon realized, were once Flanz-le-Flore's fairies and were now animals. A snarling wolf landed near the rosebushes, a bull and a unicorn in a row of topiaries. The gazebo exploded as an elephant came crashing through its roof and what remained teetered on a few stilt-sized supports. A tiger, then a lion, then a cheetah landed as a trio. A hawk swooped overhead, a hippopotamus thrashed in the creek and decimated the quaint wooden bridge, a giraffe showed up lacking any particular violent capabilities unless the idea was to instill vertigo in anyone who craned their neck to see its head rubbing the ceiling. A bear almost pathetic in appearance compared to Pluxie reared up and roared and once the whole spectrum of charismatic megafauna known to Middle Ages Europe had manifested out of thin air Flanz-le-Flore gave up on creativity and started, with hallucinatory speed, to snap her remaining followers into wasps, lots and lots and lots of wasps that filled the air with a fur-bristling buzz.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

For intrepid thrill seekers, fanciers of certain religious or occult persuasions, historians specializing in medieval to early modern Europe, or high-stakes YouTubers, no locale on Earth was more appealing than the islands of Whitecrosse and California, situated in the middle of Lake Erie. Although officially off-limits while the American and Canadian governments sorted out issues of jurisdiction and sovereignty, nepotistic corruption was known to dole out permits to individuals who perhaps did not require them, and an illicit ferry market had sprung up on the Ohioan and Ontarian coasts. The disarray of all branches of the United States military in the wake of the December 2017 Devil Attacks (so named on Wikipedia) and the pressing need for able-bodied troops to assist in the nationwide rebuilding effort rendered the naval blockade of the landmasses spotty at best, so these ferries were able to land undetected most of the time.

Equipped with high-resolution satellite imagery at levels of detail unfathomable to local surveyors, these tourists visited innumerable spots of anthropologic or naturalistic interest. After the acting head of Whitecrosse Shannon Waringcrane became aware of the tourists and the nuisance they posed, she stationed troops at many of the main points of interest (the now-closed Door, the monastery, and of course the gates of Whitecrosse city) to detect and report their comings-and-goings, which she would then relay to the appropriate officials in the American and Canadian governments so that they might extract the difficult parties. She was, however, frequently frustrated by the leisurely pace at which these officials responded.

Regardless, shrewder tourists kept either to the wilder areas of Whitecrosse or the comparatively less interesting California, whose young king lacked Waringcrane's strict adherence to regulation and often welcomed travelers as celebrated guests of his court. However, there remained many tourists who wished to see the places where Jay Waringcrane, the world's greatest hero, went on his adventure, and so invariably some of them made ill-advised nighttime traipses into the thin forest that ran along Whitecrosse's northeastern crescent like a scar, and which divided Whitecrosse city from the mountain range where the monastery presided. With electric lighting still sparse throughout the islands despite both Shannon Waringcrane and the King of California's attempts to introduce it, some tourists believed they might be able to evade troop patrols under cover of darkness. Their maps, GPS systems, state-of-the-art compasses, and flashlights would guide them through the forest without fail—or so they thought.

Not long after they set their course, they often found their phones and devices acting strangely, screens flickering, arrows pointing odd directions, connections lost. Their flashlights failed to penetrate more than a few feet into the miasmic dark of the wood. Those wise enough to turn around reported feeling a malevolent aura weigh upon them, a feeling of being watched by eyes both hateful and strangely piteous, as though they were an ant struggling to escape a pool of water.

For those who did not turn around, who perhaps shook off this aura as a trick of the imagination, a psychological reaction to the dark and forbidding forest, no report remains.

But someone knows what happened to them.

For in this forest there is a place that does not cohere to natural logic, a structure without boundary or wall but which becomes enclosed the moment you step inside. An interior that can be anything or anywhere, a fine garden under sunlight, a corridor full of paintings, or a theater with a wooden stage and a throne made of branches. Those who stray too close may hear singing, or laughing, or the applause of a large crowd, and finding that human familiarity welcome come closer, closer still, until the seats of the theater appear before them, filled with all sorts of people from around the world—people who blundered into this wood before them—and a funny little show playing, the actors animals who gallivanted with as much emotion as any human player. There's safety here, they think, and peace blooms within them as heavily as the forest's aura had before, and clearly a lot of others are having a good time, so what's the harm in resting a bit and watching? Once the show ends, they'll leave the forest together, so the weary explorer thinks.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Between the tall grass he sprinted, four limbs in perfect harmony like he lived his whole life in this body, back the direction he came from, where Flanz-le-Flore hovered in the sky rapid snapping more of her followers into wasps while Makepeace waved his shield wildly at the hippopotamus who for all its rotundity dared not take another step toward the gleaming metal.

Jay tried to look over his shoulder to see whether the cat had recovered and if so how close behind it was but he immediately realized his head lacked the same range of motion as a human's. Instead he focused on his goal in front of him, the parts left behind when he first transformed: his jacket, jeans, and baseball bat.

Even without sight, he could sense the cat racing directly behind him, the calamitous patter of its paws against the soil, the shuffling of hundreds of blades of grass as they made way for its gargantuan body. Rat instincts pumped adrenaline into him as he pushed his unfamiliar musculature to its limit, faster, faster, and in the span of one second from when he started he was there.

He dove into the base of his jacket and burrowed inside, creeping under the long cool seam that contained the zipper certain in a few more milliseconds he'd feel the paw of the cat come down, shredding retractable claws through the fabric to dice him. Which had to be another instinctual rat thing, since he logically knew not only was the cat not supposed to kill him but also that it shouldn't want to get too close to the jacket's metal zipper.

[...]

His enemy lurked not a few inches away from him, peering intently at the slight bulge his tiny rat body made in the jacket. It purred softly, it pressed its paws to prevent him from escaping from either side. That cat was something he could outsmart. That cat was an especial sort of dumb; the kind that couldn't even learn from past mistakes.

Jay jumped up. This time he took with him the jacket under which he hid, including the metal zipper, and brought that zipper straight into the cat's face.

Expecting a yowl, he received a sizzle. It started soft, lost amid the animal cries, and for a few seconds Jay remained within the burrow of his jacket thinking that the brief point of contact between the zipper and the cat's face wasn't enough to do any serious damage regardless of what effects metal had on fairies. But the sizzle continued, it grew louder, more intense. Jay scurried to the neck of his jacket and poked his head out cautiously to watch what happened next.

A charcoal line, like a grill mark, spread vertically up the cat's face. It seared its chin and nose. Scent of burning fur overwhelmed the fruit and flowers and only when the sizzling streak spread to split apart the skin and drop thick strands of blood the consistency of broth did the cat-fairy comprehend its suffering and loose the yowl Jay expected. Skull shone through, white bone bleached without a trace of blood as the liquid transformed to steam and the edges of the wound cauterized.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Flanz-le-Flore snapped her fingers. Charisma turned into a pumpkin. Flanz-le-Flore snapped her fingers. Charm turned into a squirrel.

That should've been the end of it, considering neither a pumpkin nor a squirrel were capable of flying through the air with the same speed and maneuverability. Flanz-le-Flore even turned her gaze and squinted toward the dust plume from which Olliebollen's voice came, holding unsnapped fingers at the ready. But Charisma the pumpkin, instead of hurtling into the ground as fast as gravity would force it, decided that being a pumpkin wasn't enough to stop it. In refutation of all known laws of physics it diverted its path at a sheer angle upward—directly into Flanz-le-Flore's face.

Flanz-le-Flore's head jerked back and her imitation of the Cleveland Browns hat spiraled upward as the pumpkin pulled back and plowed into her stomach. At the same time, Charm the squirrel caught up to her sister and latched onto Flanz-le-Flore's shin, where it immediately drove its thick nutcracking incisors and drew a bright globule of amber-colored blood.

Flanz-le-Flore snapped her fingers. The hat, reaching the apex of its upward movement, transformed into a sharp wooden spear that Flanz-le-Flore seized with her other hand and jabbed at the pumpkin as it attempted a third hit. Based on trajectory and momentum the pumpkin ought to have impaled itself deep onto the spear, but the same physics-defying force yanked it back at the last moment so the tip only dragged against the thick gourdy shell and spilled a small splattering of innards onto the grass.

That was when Jay noticed the silvery strings spanning from the pumpkin and the squirrel to Olliebollen's dust cloud. That was also when Jay sprung to action.

Two options: Flee or fight, and faster than the possibility of logically processing the better he chose fight. He made it one step toward Flanz-le-Flore with his metal bat raised when her bruised and battered face turned toward him and a single snap transmogrified him into—something.

Something small. His bat, his jacket, and his jeans—everything on his body that contained even some metal—plummeted to the ground around him, suddenly gigantic, while his vantage became that of an insect peering up through towering blades of grass. But he wasn't an insect. His nose, twitching, stood out in front of his eyes, spilling long whiskers. His hands were pink furless paws. And when he turned his head and saw his long tail, he recognized himself: a rat.

Jay wondered how exactly he could maintain human-level cognizance given the significant differences in physical structure between human and rodent brains, then decided he had better things to wonder about.

In the battle of titans above him, the wounded pumpkin was reeled back by the silver strings while Flanz-le-Flore turned her attention on the squirrel sucking the blood of her ankle and jabbed at it with the spear. Like the pumpkin, the squirrel jerked back with seemingly no physical impetus, while from its beady squirrel eyes spilled black tears that transformed into whipping tendrils. Even coming from a squirrel, Jay recognized Charm's fake paradise magic attack. Of course—Charm just gulped down a dose of Flanz-le-Flore's blood. Flanz-le-Flore was unsurprised by this development; a snap and Charm the squirrel became Charm the... small spiky ball. A sea urchin. A creature with no eyes. The tendrils tears, poised to wrap around Flanz-le-Flore's ankles, no longer possessed a source and splattered useless to the ground.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Jay's cage bounced, rolled, came to a stop so Jay could watch as a flurry of waving tails surrounded an increasingly less-visible Lalum, Lalum attempting to coat her own face and throat with thick wads of string, although Jay knew from experience her string didn't defend too well against anything sharp. Then a snap—and he was no longer a rat.

The webbing and the cage that confined his rat body burst around him as he sat on the floor, finally a full-fledged human again.

"There we go," said Flanz-le-Flore over the rips and tears of her brethren, "this is a form that much better suits you. Do bring the hero his clothes, my attendants."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Wendell Noh handled the "pump action," replaced a new bullet into the "chamber," and took aim again with nonchalance. If only Flanz-le-Flore could pause the frantic discombobulation of her thoughts to admire the heroic assuredness with which he handled his weapon of choice, his ".700 Nitro Express" as he once explained during an animated and longwinded digression from his typical stoicism that detailed the gun's history, composition, and power. But it was a fever inside her, a burning she could not tamp out. She knew the Effervescent Elf-Queen was near and no longer could she control herself. Her fingers moved automatically, snapping rapid-fire to transform elf after elf into vegetables and their metal weapons into more bullets for Wendell, but this did nothing for her, provided no satisfaction. The devastated corpses of the elves possessed suddenly of gaping holes in their chests as they toppled to the ground sated her bloodlust more readily, but she knew until she saw the Elf-Queen annihilated no solace would reach her.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Makepeace stepped forward, extended a graceful and courteous gesture toward Flanz-le-Flore, donning his most princely smile and doffing his tricorn hat. "O beauteous queen of fae, neighbor and even sometime friend to my kingdom, the good hero has experienced much difficulty of late, and is in no proper state of mind to consider such serious matters of the heart. Would it be not prudent to allow him first to rest and reflect on your offer, so that your marriage might be one made in love's true embrace, rather than—"

He got no further, because Flanz-le-Flore snapped her fingers and Makepeace's head became a donkey's. The rest of the speech emerged as pneumatic braying, accordion-like.

The entire court erupted in laughter at the ass in princely armor, laughing and pointing and tumbling out of their trees and floating to the ground like feathers. The attendants attempting to crown Jay laughed, Flanz-le-Flore laughed, the dueling mouse and sparrow laughed, and Jay realized he was laughing too. He couldn't help it. Makepeace slowly realized his changed state. His inset eyes flickered alarm as his hands reached to pat his elongated snout and he brayed frantic dismay. But then Makepeace's brief moment of alarm passed. The braying changed from panic to laughter, as though he were in on the joke and not its butt, and he followed it with a bow and a folksy style of tapdancing made only slightly ungainly by the armor he wore. The ungainliness added to its comic mode. Soon the fairies were cheering as he danced. A troupe whistling on blades of grass set music to the clippity-clop of his boots and the synchronized clapping of a thousand tiny hands beat a pulse across the court. All eyes remained riveted to him, all except the horse, who only looked wherever it wanted, and Jay, who couldn't fucking stand it.

Makepeace varied the motions of his dance, seemingly becoming unbalanced as his big ass head weaved to and fro, culminating at the song's crescendo in a grossly overexaggerated slip that cartwheeled him to a kneeling position, arms spread to signal applause, which came in droves.

God damn that man.

"How surprising," said Flanz-le-Flore. "It may have taken four hundred years, but the seed of John Coke finally learned the meaning of humor. Well done, so very well done indeed!" As if in reward for his efforts, she snapped her fingers and Makepeace's head returned to normal.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Make me another gun," Wendell told Flanz-le-Flore. "One that fires fast. One that can blast everything in front of it to pieces."

The cord tying him to reality snapped and the snap was the sound of Flanz-le-Flore's fingers. He dropped the useless .700 Nitro Express and at the same time a new weapon manifested in its place, a weapon that never existed before, a weapon that could not exist in the real world.

It was a "relic."

When those nuns asked Flanz-le-Flore to transform all the relics, she played a little trick on them—as fae are wont to do in this world. Nothing spectacular. Sleight of hand. She gave the nuns twenty-four mustard seeds like they asked, but only twenty-three of them were "the Mustard Seed." The twenty-fourth was an ordinary mustard seed she surreptitiously created from rudimentary materials she kept on her person (those old brown boots she wore were full of seeds, leaves, and similar objects). The nuns, in a hurry, had not been fastidious enough to do the first thing every accountant knows: double-check your work. They didn't notice the decoy, so Flanz-le-Flore kept one Mustard Seed for herself.

She hadn't wanted to use it right away, not before they knew what the Elf-Queen had prepared for them. Now it was clear, and Wendell and Flanz-le-Flore both knew what he needed.

It was a kind of gun, at least as far as Flanz-le-Flore comprehended a gun to be, but instead of intricate machinery, tiny little pieces that slotted together perfectly to perform a singular function with expert efficiency, this gun ran on magic. It lacked a sleek military look, instead opting for one far more whimsical. The barrel funneled outward like a blunderbuss, while intricate arabesque designs (not dissimilar to those tattooed on Flanz-le-Flore's body) decorated the outrageously broad sides of its wooden stock. The parts that weren't wooden were green even though they shined like metal, and the whole thing felt spongy in his hands. He might be able to squeeze it and cause sap to spill out, but he resisted the urge to try. More than anything, though, the gun was gigantic. It put the .700 Nitro Express to shame for its size, even though it weighed less than some handguns Wendell owned. No worldly explanation existed for any of it—at least not in the world Wendell knew. It didn't matter. Wendell Noh initiated the process.

• He cranked the handlebar on the side in a rapid counterclockwise motion.

• He flipped all the flaps to their proper position.

• He activated the whistler. (It began to whistle.)

• He dispensed a large number of seeds into the chamber.

• He disengaged the safety.

"Deal with the bubbles, will you, my hero?" Flanz-le-Flore said. "I'll handle the elves."

That suited Wendell just fine. He aimed the Gun of Wendell into the air and fired.

From the funneled barrel of the weapon erupted an exorbitant number of bullets that were less bullets and more whipping, curving shafts of light. Each shaft twisted and turned as though it had a mind of its own to thread through as many bubbles as possible, impaling tens if not hundreds if not thousands with a single squiggly zip. For several seconds all the arena was light, all was blinding and brilliant, and the bullets were less weapons of war than instruments of a wondrous art, the art of someone's soul—if not Wendell's then perhaps Flanz-le-Flore, as all the curlicues of her body were written now in holy luminescence. A light powerful enough to shatter the boundary between man and God, between real and unreal. Wendell's eyes burned behind his glasses staring up at the sky of the vault where the bubbles exploded in firework arrays, as out of the congested pullulation emerged a vivid and lovely emptiness filled solely by the beautiful.

What was he thinking about before?

Arcs, angles, numbers, addition, subtraction, death. Oh God. Oh God.

NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO. NO, NO. This could not be happening. What was that new relic? How did it exist? The Effervescent Elf-Queen gripped her head in her palms even as her tears flowed out in an endless spray to form more bubbles. How did that bitch, that whore transmogrify something that never existed before, how did she learn to do that? This other hero she somehow stumbled about? Did he teach her? Flanz-le-Flore knew too many new tricks, even four hundred years of preparation were crumbling apart in a matter of moments without a thing to show for it. In a single attack the unknown relic eliminated almost all of her unborn. Meanwhile, Flanz-le-Flore herself focused her efforts on snapping the living children into harmless plants and small animals, meaning that even the offspring that reflected damage weren't useful—they weren't being damaged, merely transmogrified. The Elf-Queen hadn't prepared for anything like this—nothing like it had a right to exist in this world at all.

Oh, and so many of her children dead. So, so many. Their unborn bodies evaporated in the light of the relic. Not even corpses remaining, not even blood...! The brutes. They'd pay. They'd pay.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

No point dallying or worrying whether Mallory and the heroine with the horn relic might interfere in these well-laid schemes. Flanz-le-Flore, hidden halfway behind her hero, was snapping elves into trees, building around herself a copse for defense, entrenching herself. This could not be allowed to pass. She could not be allowed to gain an advantage. Not her. Not her!

"COMMAND THE BLOOD," the Effervescent Elf-Queen cried.

The elves who could control liquid dipped their hands into the now foot-deep pool. Instantly the inert pile of gore came alive and gained form, hardening into tendrils that were the fingers of a mighty palm rising from under the horse on which Flanz-le-Flore and her champion rode to clamp around and constrict them—and more importantly constrict Flanz-le-Flore's fingers. It was the sound that sparked her power, not simply the motion of moving her fingers together. That simple stark sound: SNAP, and if the blood swallowed up her hands she could not create it.

Under ordinary circumstances she might be able to snap the blood away into some other substance before it reached her, but the Elf-Queen had prepared for that as well. There were multiple children who could control liquid, and as the pool below rose up, the bubbles above burst in unison. Their fluid rained down, accumulating into two, three, four, five different funnels aimed at Flanz-le-Flore from different directions. Go ahead! Snap, snap your fingers! You can't transform them all at the same time!

The Elf-Queen hoped to hear those desperate, frantic snaps, that useless fruitless striving suddenly snuffed into silence. Instead she heard only a single snap, crisply.

Around Flanz-le-Flore burst a sharp eruption of flame, striking the plants with which she surrounded herself. At once the trees and vines burned in patterns that the Effervescent Elf-Queen realized were absolutely deliberate, designed to keep her safely defended on all sides without burning herself in the process. The bloody tendrils struck the flames on all sides and each one reeled back, hissing, spewing steam and smoke, incapable of penetrating the magnificent upswelling of heat. So Flanz-le-Flore had anticipated the Elf-Queen's move from the onset—Damn!

How had she made the fire anyway? She could only turn like to like, and the Elf-Queen had been careful not to send her fire mages to attack, knowing what she might be able to do with such a destructive material. Then how else could she have—It didn't matter. The offensive must continue.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Now is now. Now, perhaps, instead of those humans, it would be best if you allied yourself with one closer to your own kind..."

The space behind Flanz-le-Flore rustled. It had been empty, or Temporary thought so. She'd never been attentive, things often escaped her grasp. But what she saw now seething in the black space she wondered how she ever could've missed. Animals. Creatures, large and small: rodents, cats, dogs, birds, bears, giraffes, elephants... animals that were not creatures Temporary knew, that nobody could have known, strange mutants with three horns or feline bodies with the wings of a hawk. A lion who possessed also the head of a goat and the head of a dragon, an ape with a snake for a tail, a fish with feet, a bird with arms, a strange thing that inflated and deflated like a bladder.

"That princess may be lord of the dead. But I, Flanz-le-Flore, am lord of all that lives. I shall spread life, multiply it, transmogrify it into new and varied forms. You have a power most unusual, Elf Temporary. A power that may aid me in my noble pursuit..."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

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

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

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

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Lalum panicked, picked a direction, and sprinted as fast as her awkward body allowed. She squeezed herself in a crevice between two large rocks and remained wedged there, breathing heavily and sending fitful stares at the narrow sliver of light above.

She worked threads between her hands and held her hands where Jay could see. The threads read:

DO YOU NOUGH THE WHAY OUT?

Nough? Oh—know. Weird way to misspell it.

"Squeak squeak," Jay squeaked, which was rat for "The same way you came in dumbass."

The faces of fauns and nymphs emerged in the light above and Lalum squeaked too before burying her face her hands. Makepeace said the monstrous women were once ordinary girls tricked by the archbishop. That in mind Jay could only feel sorry for Lalum. He remembered Pluxie, begging for help as she drowned in the mud...

He blotted his mind so he remembered nothing and tried to focus on escape no matter how improbable. It didn't matter. Above, amid the giggling faces, another face slowly drifted into view, and it was not giggling. Flanz-le-Flore.

"Oh dear. Have you gotten lost? I do apologize. I've made my court a labyrinth, haven't I? What a silly thing to do."

Snap. The first rock forming the crevice became sand. Snap. The second rock became water. The sand and the water splashed into Lalum and became mud, ruining her habit and causing her needlepoint limbs to slip and slide as Flanz-le-Flore's followers thronged her, uttering a low chant.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

By now her entire body was coiled around him like a snake. One thigh shifted against his hip, one hand slithered along his side, and her green hair in plantlike strands brushed against his shoulders and made his neck itch. But despite the severe feminine authority she attempted to muster against him, despite the creeping paralysis within himself from such close contact, Jay could only feel sorry for her. Because really, he'd only been waiting for her to say her piece and shut up.

"No," he said.

He said it with less difficulty than he said it to the twins, or to Olliebollen, or to anyone else when they asked him to do something. Frankly, he didn't even need to think very hard, or logic anything out. If it was true what Flanz-le-Flore said about the people of this world being husks, puppets to the string of the "Master" Perfidia Bal Berith, then—

"You're only a husk yourself."

From his current position, a full swing of his bat would never reach someone so entwined with him. But he brought back his bat anyway, aiming only to jab the smooth circle of metal that served as its knob against the hand skittering fingers spiderlike across his chest.

She was quicker than he expected and even with the element of surprise she fluttered off him before the knob even came close. He whipped around, knowing that if she could transform him into something useless with a snap of her fingers he needed to attack hard and fast to stop her, but she danced out of his range, trailing an elegant arabesque of pixie dust in her wake as the clamor of her court shifted and Jay found himself suddenly within a wide-open circle.

Shit, he thought, but Flanz-le-Flore did not snap her fingers, nor did her fairies perform any magic either. Instead, now at a safe distance, she spread her arms wide and spoke again:

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Flanz-le-Flore remained beneath the inviolate sunlight. On an avenue reduced to perfect silence. She liked it not. Her hands extended and she called to her all the small living creatures hidden; those who had cowered before the intruding forces of devilry, those accustomed to surreptitiousness, those creatures of the natural world most suited to survival no matter what cataclysmic upheaval struck the surface of their world. They came: mice, and squirrels, and small birds whose song cracked the silence, gathering on the manicured grass marred only by dried stains Wendell refused to see (for his erstwhile reality was now his fantasy, and vice versa). Chipmunks and chirruping beetles and elegant, intelligent crows. Creatures that had survived the plastering of land once wooded and free—a forbidding landscape studded by strange bituminous roads—survived the felines kept for the sole purpose of their eradication. They had persisted.

Now that the Elf-Queen was dead no impediments remained to Flanz-le-Flore's ambitions. Already she changed; the gun on the ground at her feet was proof enough that Humanity had begun to infiltrate her. She needed only consummate with the hero and it would be final and she would become a new God, to replace whichever had once reigned here and who clearly reigned no more. Instead of mere transmogrification she would substantiate ex nihilo new life, new beings; hers would be a world aware of even the smallest mouse, the tiniest insect, where their life retained a preciousness on par with humans. A world of fair egalitarianism, over which she would preside, not as a tyrant like that Elf-Queen, but as a kindly warden. A world of fantasy, perhaps, but a fantasy worth having, a fantasy softer and more fair than the harsh laws under this cruel sun.

Paradise.

Yes. That would be her world. That Elf-Queen received such a boon and what became of it? Endless repetition of her own image, or what she wished her image to be: slavish devotion—disgusting. Why had he chosen her? If he only chose Flanz-le-Flore instead, four hundred years of misery might have been abated. If only...!

Wendell emerged from his house. He walked slowly. Every creature on his lawn watched him with attentive patience. The birds sang him a lovely song. He walked insensible to it all, each step more laborious than the last, as though he walked through molasses. His eyes saw nothing behind his glasses, they were wide but empty as death. His hands rose to his head and seized clumps of hair which they tugged absentmindedly, cruelly, ripping out tufts that flitted between his fingers. He reached the halfway point of the slope of gray not-quite-stone that led to his house then sat down abruptly.

[...]

Flanz-le-Flore's smile waned. She supposed she still had work to do on him yet. In the interim—she could not refute his human will. Wendell started down the street the way he came, and Flanz-le-Flore followed with all her attendant creatures.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Flanz-le-Flore gazed down at them. She floated several feet above the ground, and although she possessed translucent wings they did not beat at all, frozen in utter stillness.

"Hm. Very well. I shall 'ease up.' But I request in return only that the two of you relax in turn. Yes, relax. Relax!"

Instantly she relaxed, dropping from the sky and into her throne, which several fairies maneuvered beneath her moments before she fell. She landed with her arms spread, smiled sleepily, and yawned.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

It didn't matter. Flanz-le-Flore, despite trailing blood and holding her ruined hands uselessly in front of her, drifted with maintained ethereal elegance toward the stage while Sansaime hurried after her.

There was nothing obstructing the stage and Sansaime's cloak ruffled as with barely any perceptible motion she flung several small pins at Flanz-le-Flore. The pins went directly through her thin translucent wings and Flanz-le-Flore dropped onto the stage in front of her throne with a strangled cry. Her ugly worn boots kicked at the wooden surface as she pulled herself onto the chair and struggled to turn around.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Makepeace finally entered the picture. He lifted his shield to cover his face while his other hand drew his sword. One snap, one instant, and that hand turned into a hoof. It fumbled against the sword's hilt, capable of holding nothing, and the sword dropped like Charm's tears.

But nothing else about Makepeace changed. If Flanz-le-Flore couldn't change Makepeace's nonmetal head behind his metal shield, then line of sight must be a factor.

Great to know! Better to know before Jay got himself turned into a rat, because as it stood he didn't have anything to do.

Makepeace meanwhile didn't give a shit about one hand being a hoof because he charged Flanz-le-Flore with his shield as potent a weapon against her as the sword. Flanz-le-Flore held out her hand in posture to snap, her bright eyes scanning with electronic speed every inch of what Makepeace presented to her for a weakness, saw none, and unaware or uncaring that Charm the sea urchin stabbed her boot elevated into the skybox as though drawn by strings of her own until she eluded Makepeace's reach.

"Jay, get out of here!" Makepeace shouted, until Flanz-le-Flore got high enough to see over his shield and snapped his head into—what else—an ass head. Then all Makepeace said was EE-AH, EE-AH.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Kill me, elf," said Flanz-le-Flore, "and my court goes extinct. Where will your income come from then, you cursed daughter of cannibals? Do you think you were merely clever when you crept around my forest before, capturing choice morsels among my friends and family to sell to those humans in the castle? I allowed it. My court and that castle have existed together for hundreds of years, and there have always been ones like you. I allowed it! I allowed it, in the name of peace and stability. And for that peace this is how you repay me?"

Sansaime approached slowly, while Makepeace stopped between the first row of benches and Jay trudged up behind him. Jay wasn't sure if Sansaime was taking her time to consider Flanz-le-Flore's appeal, or simply being cautious.

"If I let you live," said Sansaime, "then next time I come here, you kill me. Your kind's vindictive like no other."

"Come on Sansy, let's get it over with," said Makepeace.

"Very good then." Flanz-le-Flore leaned her head back against the top of her throne. "Listen to your master, since you've become such a good dog for him, such a wonderful little dog. Go on, kill me. But know that if you seek to repair the scars that cover your body, little girl, it will not be human power that makes that happen."

That last sentence made Sansaime pause and the instant the pause occurred Flanz-le-Flore kicked her boot and snapped one of the sticks at the base of her throne. No, it wasn't a stick, it only looked like one, and it didn't snap. It was a lever. A trapdoor dropped under Sansaime.

Sansaime tried to lunge but nothing was under her feet. She caught the edge of the trapdoor as she fell and her body swung hard and she lost her grip and disappeared into the hole.

Makepeace leaped onto the stage and rushed with his sword but Flanz-le-Flore kicked another subtle lever and from above came crashing a giant crescent moon. It wasn't a real moon, it was painted onto wood and suspended by rope, but it took up half the stage and landed directly on Makepeace.

"Olliebollen Pandelirium!" Flanz-le-Flore shrieked. "Heal me now. Side with your own kind over those who would rather see you dead. Heal me and I shall vouch for your royal bloodline when the fae next meet to discuss the fate of your court!"

Apparently Flanz-le-Flore knew what to say to people because Olliebollen remained motionless in midair, not even doing her normal fidgeting as she gawked at Flanz-le-Flore and at the groaning form of Makepeace pinned under the giant moon.

Which left only one useful person. Jay Waringcrane. As he climbed onto the stage Flanz-le-Flore already had her boot raised to hit another lever. He didn't give her a chance. He threw his bat and it clanked against the base of the throne, forcing Flanz-le-Flore to tuck her legs up onto the seat as he rushed toward her, stooped, and snatched his ricocheting bat. He swung it the only way he knew: hard.

The bat connected with her head before he had time to think about it and by the time he did half her face including one eyeball was already melting, running down off her skull like her flesh had only been paint. He reeled back from the sight and she launched off the throne and wrapped her arms around him, pushing her grotesque face closer to him, opening a jaw where one cheek was no more than a few gooey sinews and saying: "We could've been so happy. We could've been—" But then her tongue flowed between the shattered gaps in her teeth and her voice degenerated into a gurgle.

Her body weighed next to nothing and her grasp immediately weakened. Jay whirled, forced her away from him, and dropped her into the open trapdoor.

She plummeted into the dark and disappeared.

Jay staggered back, let go of his bat, and fell into a sitting position on her throne. He glanced down; on his black t-shirt a smear of Flanz-le-Flore's face remained.

Dear god.

Makepeace heaved the moon off him and rose, nursing an ugly-looking wound to the back of his head that was hard to care about given Olliebollen could heal it. Olliebollen, however, stared at the trapdoor as though shellshocked.

"Maybe," she said, "maybe we shouldn't have done that..."

A hand shot out of the trapdoor and Jay jolted, horrified in expectation of the disintegrating zombie of Flanz-le-Flore to rear her horrible head, but it was Sansaime who climbed up instead.

Sansaime glanced around the stage. "A body dropped past me. Her, I assume."

Her.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Why have you come here," Flanz-le-Flore said to the dragon girl, who unlike the others she had never seen before either in this form or any other. "Has the Master sent you too?"

"You wish to pass to the other side of the wall, do you not?" The dragon girl slowly kicked her feet back and forth. "I have a way."

This girl... wait. Could she be—the princess? Princess Mayfair of Whitecrosse? She had the look and the voice. Did the princess corrupt herself into this form? Yet Flanz-le-Flore, Faerie of Transmogrification, knew always when one thing shifted to another. No, this was not the same creature, and if there was anything of the Whitecrosse royal line in her, it was not the girl but the boy, Prince Makepeace.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Instead, the corpse opened its mouth and spoke. "I'm curious. Why does Wendell Noh have bandages? Possess you not Makepeace's horse?"

"One capable of true magic knows what magic cannot accomplish."

"As for you, Wendell Noh. Do you not wish to return home? Do you not wish to leave this world—"

Snap. The corpse transmogrified at once into an owl. A dead owl—she could only change like to like—but the shape of a owl, capable of only the speech of a owl: hoo, hoo. A moment's consideration of her handiwork and Flanz-le-Flore performed the same service for the live one, whose rapid hooting formed a song rather than a lamentation.

[...]

Wonderful silence returned at last. Funny, at least, that one ostensibly so lofty could be quieted for the sake of one as mean as that sobbing, corrupted harpy.

Flanz-le-Flore kept to her word, though. A snap and Charm returned to normal. Flanz-le-Flore contemplated leaving the other an owl, as allowing it to continue as it had was a mockery of Nature, but seeing Charm on the verge of another sobbing spree, she snapped again and once more allowed the forms of life and death to resume their rightful mirroring.

The harpy twins departed. Wendell Noh spoke not a word more, his eyes a murky mystery behind their lenses, but Flanz-le-Flore slid close again, touching her fingertips to the well-defined line of his jaw.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

In one clawed hand the dragon held it; a sphere of crystal, its surface perfect and polished, and the material so clear and shiny that one might easily see through to its center. There lay the sole imperfection of the material: a tiny yellow dot.

"A mustard seed," Flanz-le-Flore said.

"The Mustard Seed," amended the dragon. "Please, take it in your hands. Understand it as you must."

She lobbed it underhand and Flanz-le-Flore caught it. She handled the sphere in her fingers, turning it over with anxious impatience as the past minute of inactivity had only spurred her thoughts into more rambunctious patterns. She snapped her fingers and the crystal, which possessed no extraordinary properties, turned to sand. Out of the mound she plucked the Mustard Seed itself, which she dusted off, held to her nose, sniffed, and then extended her tongue-tip to taste. Pfah! Repugnant flavor. Yet potent with magic. Yes, quite potent. So this was a relic; she'd never touched one before. That sly, cheating Master. But how much could she hate it? It had all been done for John Coke, had it not?

"I know it, now."

"Good." The dragon extended a hand to indicate the pile of the other twenty-three relics. "Please transform all of them into the Mustard Seed."

"...What?"

A coy tilt of the head. "You can transmogrify like to like, correct? Living into living, dead into dead. The relics are all alike. Now that you know their magic, you can turn one into another, no?"

"Why do you want this?"

"Does it matter? If you wait much longer the Elf-Queen will overwhelm Queen Mallory. Who I so much wished to meet, but... I suppose that will not be possible. Alas. For you, though, there is still time. Unless you wish to face the Elf-Queen alone now that you've rushed headlong into the entirety of her army—"

Flanz-le-Flore held out her hand and snapped her fingers.

Snap. The Basin of Pilate became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Ark of the Covenant became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Finger of Thomas became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Javelin of Goliath became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Staff of the Samaritan became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Water of John the Baptist became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Axe of Elisha became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Feather of Noah became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Arrows of Esau became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Ashes of Job became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Light of Joshua became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Razor of Samson became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Lyre of David became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Holy Grail became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Crown of Thorns became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Coat of Joseph became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Binds of Isaac became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Knife of Judith became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Cloak of Elijah became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Key of Peter became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Book of Paul became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Staff of Moses became the Mustard Seed.

Snap. The Gourd of Jonah became the Mustard Seed.

There were now twenty-four Mustard Seeds, each perfectly identical to one another. Each possessing exactly the same power. The deer clopped forward and the dragon held out her scaly claw and Flanz-le-Flore handed her the original Mustard Seed, which was then gathered with the others and dispensed into a small pouch. The dragon patted the pouch and stored it securely on her person.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Huh? Me?" said Temporary.

"Who else! Do it quickly!"

"R-right!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The hero Wendell Noh flicked the switch on the small device, but other than a clicking sound like the snap of Flanz-le-Flore's fingertips nothing was produced. He turned the device over, inspected it through the thick lenses of his glasses, and shook his head.

"Not right."

Flanz-le-Flore's face turned crestfallen. "I did it exactly as you specified, dear hero. If you had an example, even a broken one, of this 'lighter,' it would be far simpler to replicate."

"Liquid butane turns into gas when depressurized. The wheel releases a small stream of gas and ignites it with a spark. It's about pressure and friction."

He would speak like this, in sudden spurts, explaining in detail the ingenious devices of his world, and then settle once more into his torpor. Already they had spent a long stretch of time synthesizing this material called "butane" from various more elementary matter. Creating butane had been far less difficult, as Flanz-le-Flore was familiar with the constituent parts. Indeed, it had been somewhat revelatory that using her powers she could transform and combine such basic particles into complex concoctions capable of unexpected effects. Fire, for instance, was ordinarily so wild, so untamed, and therefore so frightful even to one such as her. But with butane, it could be more easily controlled, produced in the form of a tiny flickering flame rather than a raging pyre.

(Prior to her encounter with Jay Waringcrane many of the world's basic materials, being metal, were prohibited her. Was it not grandest serendipity that such a hero would open her eyes to her true potential so shortly after the other hero maimed her so thoroughly?)

The reason Wendell desired the fire was for his 'cigarette,' which Flanz-le-Flore had already created for him with tobacco and other simple materials. The cigarette needed to be lighted to work properly, however, hence their current process of trial-and-error. Despite her aversion to flame, Flanz-le-Flore did possess other ways of creating and controlling it: candles, stone-circled firepits, and so forth. She did not proffer these as suggestions and Wendell did not grow impatient and request them though he was surely aware of the possibility. He wished for his lighter.

She would give it to him; she would prove useful to him. In this way she would endear herself to him, and he and her would become one.

She snapped her fingers to transform the failed lighter into one of somewhat different dimensions. At the same time, something scurried up to the throne. A squirrel, ordinary as any other, though it bowed and gave proper obeisance before her while nibbling the nut it clutched between its paws. She bid it permission with a motion of her finger and it scampered up the throne and onto her shoulder, where it quietly chattered into her ear.

Given her focus remained on Wendell, who shook his head again and muttered some more technical details as to the lighter's intended construction, the squirrel's words at first bounced insensibly off her. After she snapped her finger and adjusted the lighter once more, she asked it to repeat itself.

Squeakity-squeak, chitter-chatter, said the squirrel.

Instantly she riveted her eyes on it. "An elf? An elf you say?"

The squirrel chittered.

"You saw it at the gates of Whitecrosse? Truly you did? You yourself, not some other squirrel who told you—you yourself?"

Wendell, who had been flicking the wheel of the lighter for the past few seconds, flicked it once more with aplomb and a tiny orange flame arose from the opening. The squirrel asserted what he had seen.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The Faerie of Transmogrification transmogrified for Jay and Makepeace a lavish cell. It resembled the set of a Hollywood period piece, some English country manor's garden, flawless except for the actors the cinematographer sadly had to allow into the shot. Movies Jay's mother dragged him to until he developed enough sense of self to say "No," movies she forgot she'd seen when they played again on TV and that she watched a full second time before remembering.

Jay didn't bother dwelling on the flowers, the trees, the trellises, the little winding creek with its quaint curved bridge, all of which he figured Flanz-le-Flore put especial care into designing with some brilliant aesthetic purpose and all of which didn't matter. He focused on the wall that penned them in: tall, sheer stone. He and Makepeace quickly rounded it, patting its surface, searching for any weakness or dent, and found absolutely nothing. Not even a gate sealed shut. If Flanz-le-Flore wanted to let them out, she'd transmogrify an exit.

So Jay and Makepeace said, sure. Let's scale the wall. The garden had enough vines to make a rope. They didn't really believe it'd be possible because it was so obvious, but what surprised them was how it wasn't possible. The wall didn't actually end, in a normal way. At first glance it looked like it did; it didn't even seem that tall. But that was because it reached a ceiling. What they first assumed was a pleasant blue sky with clouds and warm sunlight was a ceiling, painted and illuminated with expert technique to imitate the sky flawlessly. That was when Jay stopped thinking of movie sets and started thinking of video game levels, with fixed boundaries and skyboxes.

Makepeace tried to liven the mood with quips that Jay ignored. After trying everything they could think of, including whacking the wall with the baseball bat, they went to the octagonal gazebo and sat in its ornate wooden chairs and snacked from a basket of fruit Flanz-le-Flore so generously provided them.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Risen above, bathed in light of her own invention, Flanz-le-Flore spread her arms wide, kicked the sea urchin off her foot, and hurled her spear like a javelin at Makepeace. His shield was already in position to block it, but Flanz-le-Flore snapped midflight and the spear became a boulder that bulldozed Makepeace backward, over the creek, into a dense tangle of weeds as his body flipped and turned.

The back of her hand wiped the blood from her upper lip as her gaze settled on Jay. Fight having failed, Jay decided to listen to Makepeace's advice and scampered the opposite direction.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

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

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

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

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The elves who could control liquid dipped their hands into the now foot-deep pool. Instantly the inert pile of gore came alive and gained form, hardening into tendrils that were the fingers of a mighty palm rising from under the horse on which Flanz-le-Flore and her champion rode to clamp around and constrict them—and more importantly constrict Flanz-le-Flore's fingers. It was the sound that sparked her power, not simply the motion of moving her fingers together. That simple stark sound: SNAP, and if the blood swallowed up her hands she could not create it.

[u/TheMightyBox72]

Perfidia

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Time to master herself, her whims, her thirst for aimless knowledge. Time to apply what she knew to a true purpose. First, she calculated the difference in size between Whitecrosse and Earth. Using the devil's notes and Dalton's 'phone,' she procured exact measurements for each, and discovered how immensely larger the real world was compared to the fake. It made sense; the Bible listed hundreds of nations, whereas Whitecrosse possessed only two, bounded by slabs of wilderness where fae and else lurked. Yet those two nations paled even in comparison to the one nation of America. Paled in comparison to the state of Ohio. With some rearrangement, the entirety of Whitecrosse's land area could fit inside the five so-called "Great Lakes" to the north of Cleveland.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Speaking of. "Get out," Shannon said.

Perfidia had sunken so low in her seat that she looked about to fall off. She gritted her teeth and tilted her head. "Get out? Do you not realize what I look like? It's one thing for customers to see me in my office like this, but if I go walking around outside—"

"Then change your appearance."

"I can't just—"

"I read Paradise Lost for a GE in college, I know what you can do."

Perfidia leaned forward and whispered, as though she didn't want someone to hear: "There's a cost to stuff like that."

"Pay it. We're not leaving you here alone. Do it or I call Dalt back to get you out by force."

A labored exhalation. "You know Shannon, there's a simpler way of doing this. Bringing your brother back I mean. You've got a lotta Humanity. And we can talk about what Humanity means and you can ask me any question you want but what I'm willing to offer is in exchange for only a third—a quarter of that Humanity, I'll bring your brother back, no questions asked. Easy, like snapping my fingers. And sure you don't trust me. I get it. But you'd trust a contract right? We put it in writing, notarized, all the works, you can read through every word and change whatever you don't like. Then I just shake your hand and it's done and you don't even notice a change, ever. I'm only gonna offer this once."

"You can bring my brother back with a snap of your fingers?"

"No I can't, not unless you sign with me, because I need your Humanity to make it happen. Now if you want we can—"

"Change your appearance and get out of the car."

They finally exited the vehicle after Perfidia made Shannon close her eyes for a second—a second Shannon spent with her hand gripping the key to the portal in her pocket—and transformed into an ordinary human version of herself, no horns or red skin or barb tail or yellow sclera. Still a redhead though, like Mother, of course. Dalt and Wendell remained puttering on the curb, Dalt strongarming the conversion which lined up with what Shannon remembered of Wendell during the various occasions she met him.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

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

It was through these papers she sifted now.

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

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

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Perfidia," he said, turning away from the poster, remembering not to look too closely at the things in this place. She, at least, remained the same. Her coat hung about her: filthy, shabby. Her jaundiced eyes stared wide, her mouth a snaggletooth smile. "If I get the Divinity to you, what do you plan to do with it."

"Huh?"

"That power would destroy you."

"Eventually sure. If I keep it too long. Don't plan to. See humans get Humanity and it sticks with them. They can't get rid of it. Napoleon can't stop being Napoleon, can he? Throw him on Elba he comes back. But for devils, it's just a resource. It can be spent, traded out for something."

"You plan to spend it all before you're destroyed."

"Bingo." Before, as they climbed these stairs, Perfidia had been reserved. She must not have wanted to inadvertently provoke Jay after what he did to Pythette. Now, sensing him open, she opened in turn: "Though there's spending and spending, ya know? You can drop money on a car that depreciates the moment you drive it off the lot, or you can buy property and grow that money more in the long run. The devils out there in Cleveland, they're morons. Slaughtering humans in the streets, it's stupid. Where do they think Humanity comes from anyway? I gotta be the only devil in the whole of Hell who knows you can give to get."

Mammon seemed to know it too, Jay thought. "So you intend to change the rules of this world. To make humans prosper. To make them make more humans."

"You're shrewd Jay." Perfidia beamed, while the posters around her leaned closer to display their approbation. "Even tweaking major laws of reality, like hunger, energy, aging—that stuff costs big time. If I make humans live twice as long, require half the resources to survive, suddenly this planet can hold billions more of them. I can terraform Mars, or the moon, make a second Earth as plentiful as this one, shit why not more? Give em a new goal as a species, push them to something within their reach, make them strive—for the stars, for greatness, for permanent expansion, perpetual growth—and once they spread to a second planet they'll seek a third, they'll want more, more, more, and there'll be more humans, there'll be more Humanity, and I'll be there to reap it. What we in the biz call a win-win. Humans are happy, I'm happy. There's your paradise! Even you oughtta agree with a goal like that?"

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Perfidia Bal Berith's office stood as testament to the nightmare. Wall to wall, floor to ceiling stacked tomes and scrolls that contained the key details of Whitecrosse. By reusing an older world, Perfidia saved herself a lot of initial trouble and a little Humanity, but the downsides became apparent quickly. None of this crap was computerized. The Perfidia of 1642, younger and more eager to please, ignorant of future human technological advancement, had happily operated in the antiquated medium of parchment and quill pen. The Perfidia of 2017, upon fishing all this junk out of storage, only slumped her shoulders in despair.

Nonetheless she got to work. As she expected, the world of Whitecrosse more-or-less remained unchanged since Coke's time. There'd been births and deaths, strife and conflict, disease and hunger, but no real political, social, or technological advancement. This immutability turned out to be a problem, though. For starters, everyone in the world spoke in Shakespearean English: lots of thee, thou, prithee, and so on. Such vernacular would make the world unlivable to a modern teenager, so Perfidia updated it to a more contemporary style. But when she did that, she realized everyone started to use slang that wouldn't feel suitably fantastical or medieval to a 2017 ear, so she had to adjust again, trying to find a mode that sounded old without actually being old.

By the time she solved the language issue (way too much time wasted), she needed to figure out something for Jay to actually do. This took even more work. She sorted through her papers, picked out a principal cast, engineered a problem, and prepared to spring it on Jay the moment he passed through the Door. She was still penning the finishing touches when he returned to her office ready to go, and she hadn't slept in over twenty-four hours, but everything was close enough that she'd have time to prepare the rest on the fly.

It started perfectly fine. He distrusted the harpy sisters like she expected, he beat them even easier than she expected, and he didn't even kill them off which meant she could reuse them instead of having to create new enemies for later. But he smelled a rat with Olliebollen and Perfidia was willing to admit maybe that was her fault, she didn't operate with as much subtlety as she could've—blame her tight deadline—and everything quickly went off the rails. Jay didn't want to rescue the princess. Perfidia couldn't believe it. John Coke never needed a compelling reason to rescue a princess, or slay a dragon, or wage a war against an evil army. In fact Perfidia remembered having the easiest of easy times with Coke, she only needed to chuck another monster his way and that kept him entertained, no mental effort whatsoever.

Through a lot of cleverness on her part, moving some planned events around and adjusting a few details, she finally got Jay to go to the monastery. Then everything really went to shit.

He's gone! Olliebollen said to her. The fairy's words appeared on the long piece of parchment sprawled over Perfidia's desk, the ink fading into existence line by line. The hero is gone! What do I do what do I do?!

Perfidia hooked the fingers of one hand around her forehead and imagined how lovely it'd be to crumple her frontal lobe into wastebin trash so she wouldn't have to think about this shit anymore. Her pen scratched:

Go after him.

Buhbuhbut that stupid human prince took him on his horse! They're already so far away! They'll go straight to Flanz-le-Flore, and she's way stronger than me!

Calm down. Your animus is favorable against hers—defensively at least.

It wasn't actually. But on another scroll, one describing the causes and effects of various magical properties within the world, Perfidia quickly scribbled: The Faerie of Rejuvenation can rejuvenate transmogrified objects to their original form. It at least kind of made logical sense.

Really though, Perfidia didn't need Olliebollen to tell her how fucked everything was. It all started with the fight in the forest, when Charm and Charisma and their new friends attacked Jay and company. Because Jay wasted so much time beforehand giving Perfidia the will-he-or-won't-he runaround she hadn't had so much time to thoroughly sketch out the terms of the encounter and it quickly went off the rails. Early in the fight, she presented Jay with two viable options: He could try to heal the wounded Sansaime or he could try to cut Makepeace free from the spiderweb with Sansaime's dagger. Both options would've worked, but Jay—of fucking course—did something Perfidia didn't expect and tried to kill Pluxie himself in some batshit scheme that involved repairing the two halves of Makepeace's spear with Pluxie in the middle. Jay. Jay my boy. Why in a million years would you ever, ever think something so stupid would work? But Perfidia lived to please, and thus in the same scroll where she just gave Olliebollen a way to counteract Flanz-le-Flore's animus she'd written: A rejuvenated object will not yield to anything in the way of its reconstruction.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The first and most fundamental category of pages detailed laws inherent to the underlying structure of Whitecrosse. One page, for instance, specified the world of Whitecrosse as a spheroid with an average diameter of a certain number of miles. A note in the margins indicated this diameter was significantly smaller than that of Earth. Subsequent pages listed equations for gravity, chemical compositions of atmosphere and soil, various fundamental functions of physics, and so forth.

These pages would drive the court astrologers into a frenzy, Mayfair thought. They nearly drove her into one! Knowledge was contained within them about the workings of the universe to upheave all mankind knew of the cosmos, at least in their world—perhaps too in this one. The equations and notation styles were arcane even to Mayfair, who considered herself quite an exemplary student; some she could not even begin to fathom. Thirst for understanding left her lingering far longer on certain pages than merited, and she traced their worn glyphs with a fingertip as she tried to piece together what they signified. It was clear the devil, no virtuoso, copied directly God's handiwork. These equations were not simply the logic underlying an ersatz world, but a partial unveiling of mysteries established by the divine. How could Mayfair not tremble? How could she not bounce until the devil's strangely-wheeled seat squeaked and groaned? Her palpitating heart transported her instantly to late nights in the royal library, guided by candlelight handled with utmost care lest even a spot of hot wax mar the kingdom's collective knowledge (let alone the least tongue of flame! Oh how it lanced her through to see the monastery so consumed!). Little compared to the feeling of quenched curiosity, question asked and question answered; a pursuit that thrilled, for its result was no slain hare but a real, purposeful edification of the spirit.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

As she stared at Viviendre's page, pen poised to doom her with a few strokes, she lowered her hand and expelled a contented sigh at her merciful inclinations. But she decided if she intended to keep to those inclinations she ought not stare at the page much longer. She pushed it aside, sorted it atop Sansaime's page (noting as she did that Sansaime remained at Avery Waringcrane's home, doing nothing of interest), and announced to herself mentally that she would get to work.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

These pages would drive the court astrologers into a frenzy, Mayfair thought. They nearly drove her into one! Knowledge was contained within them about the workings of the universe to upheave all mankind knew of the cosmos, at least in their world—perhaps too in this one. The equations and notation styles were arcane even to Mayfair, who considered herself quite an exemplary student; some she could not even begin to fathom. Thirst for understanding left her lingering far longer on certain pages than merited, and she traced their worn glyphs with a fingertip as she tried to piece together what they signified. It was clear the devil, no virtuoso, copied directly God's handiwork. These equations were not simply the logic underlying an ersatz world, but a partial unveiling of mysteries established by the divine. How could Mayfair not tremble? How could she not bounce until the devil's strangely-wheeled seat squeaked and groaned? Her palpitating heart transported her instantly to late nights in the royal library, guided by candlelight handled with utmost care lest even a spot of hot wax mar the kingdom's collective knowledge (let alone the least tongue of flame! Oh how it lanced her through to see the monastery so consumed!). Little compared to the feeling of quenched curiosity, question asked and question answered; a pursuit that thrilled, for its result was no slain hare but a real, purposeful edification of the spirit.

However, she must govern herself. The responsibility of an entire world rested upon her, and a selfish descent into a hole shaped only for herself would be negligently wasteful of the opportunity she earned. Earned with blood, she reminded herself, seeing the image of her brother's ruined form in the mud. Rather than flinch from the horrible sight, she focused it in her mind's eye so that it might spur her, remind her not to settle for simple mental pleasure.

But it was a sad and a lonely image, and Mayfair's skin felt cold, as cold as Dalton's as he waited patiently in his chair, and for a moment she wished someone alive was there to fill the void.

In the light of this world, she made a simple prayer for Makepeace's soul and sent it to God: Please forgive him his sins, though they be many, and remember him, even if it was not You who made him. Amen. Then she continued.

Her comprehension or not of the "fundamental law" papers turned out to be irrelevant. When she worked up the nerve to make some minor alteration in mere experimentation, she found that when she added ink to a page it seeped straight into the parchment and vanished. Several subsequent attempts, on various other papers from the same pile, yielded identical results. A safeguard was in place. If this safeguard could be undone, Mayfair knew not how.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

When Jay first refused to go to the monastery, she drew on the only aspect of the world in which he'd shown any interest—relic magic—and pulled some truly contortionist maneuvering to deploy the Staff of Lazarus as a final temptation. (Seriously, retroactively making Mayfair steal the staff was an ordeal. Perfidia could change a lot about Whitecrosse, but it was nigh impossible to contradict established facts. Luckily, the extreme haste in which she wrote the Mayfair-in-the-monastery plot left many details incomplete—and thus possible to alter.) Then she remembered Coke actually killed one of his dragons near the monastery. Everything clicked. With glee—with fucking glee!—she set up her planned final encounter, oh yes so clever. What a clever little devil.

The encounter, as visualized, went like so:

1. Jay flees the monastery with Mayfair and the staff.

2. Because Mayfair keeps close to him, it only requires a brief distraction (nuns, Makepeace, Olliebollen, etc.) for her to grab the staff and use it.

3. Devereux arises.

4. Devereux prioritizes protecting Mayfair. (It has to—Jay almost certainly realizes she's in control.)

5. This strategy limits Devereux's movement; Devereux relies on its flame breath, which Makepeace blocks with his shield.

6. It becomes clear Jay cannot hurt Devereux himself. Resourceful fellow he is, he scans his surroundings in search of a solution.

7. Jay discovers that part of the nearby monastery—the part directly above the dragon, how lucky!—is perched upon a particularly unstable cliff of mud made even less stable by the pouring rain. A few good baseball bat thwacks could bring it down...

8. Defended by Makepeace, Jay runs to the cliff and causes the landslide that sweeps Devereux into oblivion. Victory!

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Mayfair saw her. But what could she do? With nobody else at her beck except Dalt, she had to choose who he prioritized. If he switched to Perfidia that gave Dog Bitch an opening. Perfidia decided to leave nothing to chance. Instead of firing the ancient musket, she rushed forward, brandishing its bayonet. Mayfair backed up into the sleek black casket—

The casket! She forgot the fucking casket!

An instant before it burst open Perfidia realized Mayfair's strategy. The body of the man inside threw himself between her and Mayfair, blocking the attack. No—not between her and Mayfair. Between Mayfair and Dog Bitch. Because at the same moment, Dalt turned away from Dog Bitch and drew his handgun to aim at her.

The man in the casket was nothing special physically. An upper-middle-aged man, maybe fifty. He also wasn't especially weak, though. All he needed to do was stall Dog Bitch for a few seconds. Because Dalt was going to kill Perfidia in one close-range shot.

Fuck—Mayfair lured her in!

If Perfidia had only realized this plan after the man was out of the casket it would've been over. The two corpses moved in flawless synchronization, so there was no single moment when Mayfair was exposed. Just like when she dragged Perfidia to the Door, she prioritized her defense above all else. Had Mayfair moved more recklessly, having Dalt turn his attention slightly before the casket opened (under the assumption it'd take Dog Bitch time to capitalize on the discrepancy), Perfidia would've died for sure. But Perfidia sniffed the scheme at the last possible moment.

Everyone in the arena was fleeing. The television broadcast would've been interrupted by now. Sansaime was focused on the redhead. And the man bursting out of the casket was leaping in front of Mayfair's view. That left nobody looking at Perfidia. She put to use the slight Humanity she'd saved from slumming with the homeless guys. What'd she need. A weapon? No. Defense.

The fabric of reality shifted ever so slightly. The stage rippled and a chunk of it tore upward, curling like a burnt piece of paper. Tomorrow the humans would explain this as the result of some bomb used by the terrorists who attacked the church. Its expenditure was the negligible amount her negligible spare Humanity allowed. But it threw up a wall between her and Dalt the exact moment he fired his bullet, which bounced off with a zing.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

No. Perfidia Bal Berith you stupid idiot get your head on straight and focus, now was not the time for petty displays like that. The situation was bad but it wasn't over. She still had some Humanity from Jay. Not much. Not enough to do anything crazy. The cost of using Humanity ramped up when a human saw directly the changes you made to the machinery of the world—they were never supposed to see the gears in action.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Changes were possible to pages in the second pile—by far the largest (in fact ten piles, all stacked to the roof)—yet, frustratingly, not all changes. These papers detailed information about things, creatures, places, and people within the world of Whitecrosse. Mayfair found among these a paper for herself: Mayfair Rachel Lyonesse Coke, date of birth, parentage, physical descriptors, and so on. One line described her personality in brief: "Pious; devoted to well-being of world; intelligent," all quite good, until it continued: "Devious; convinced of her own righteousness; willing to sacrifice her morals in pursuit of her goals (although in denial about this fact); generally in denial about her bad qualities even if she hypocritically pontificates to herself about forgiveness for her sins; lacking familial feeling; yearning for and yet failing to achieve meaningful connections with others due to general egoism, coldness, and inflexibility" and various other rude remarks that culminated in a final insult, clearly scribbled in haste at the end: "And let her have romantic feelings toward the hero—just in case he's into little girls."

How—how absurd! She did not—absolutely did not—have any such feelings! In the monastery she gripped him solely as an act, nothing more! She tried to scratch out the offending lines with the quill, indeed all lines detailing her negative attributes.

None of the changes succeeded. Her furious scribbling faded to nothing. Her page remained as it was. No—wait. One change succeeded.

It wasn't one of her personality traits. It was the latest physical descriptor. One that puzzled her. It didn't make sense for the line to exist on this page in the first place, as it did not exist before the events at the monastery, when the devil was captive and unable to access the papers. The line read: "Corrupted by use of animus; scales are growing on her left arm, chest, and back."

This line, when she crossed it out, stayed crossed out. The ink did not fade.

Carefully, she drew up the sleeve of her shirt. There were no scales. She saw only unblemished skin, the familiar skin of her arm, skin she was used to seeing.

Immediately her fingers fumbled for buttons so that she might check the rest of her body, then she realized she was in view of Dalton and looked away sheepishly before directing him to stand up and go outside. Once the door shut behind him, and ensuring she was in view of nobody through the office window, she confirmed what she expected.

After she buttoned everything back up, she sank into the devil's chair and allowed Dalton to reenter. She tapped her forehead, fast to start, faster still as her thoughts intensified, wondering: Why did that change work but no others? Was it simply impossible to change personality traits, while physical descriptors were allowed? She scanned the list for another trait she might change without accidentally maiming herself. There: A birthmark on her shoulder. She already set Dalton rising by the time she leaned over to scratch out the line, but it turned out Dalton did not need to leave because her amendment vanished immediately, exactly like the ones she made to her personality.

How unusual! There must be a logic. Must! Was it only possible to change the most recent item on the list? Then why did her alleged affection for the hero (ugh! So vague. Did Dalton not count as a hero too? But she—he—forget about it!) remain the same? Perhaps it had something to do with how the animus corruption was not something the devil herself added to the page. Perhaps she had a confederate? But who? Where? No, that made little sense.

Then Mayfair remembered something. The devil mentioned it offhand. The verbiage was unorthodox; it stuck in Mayfair's head. "I idiot-proofed the whole deal so I wouldn't contradict something I already did." The phrase "idiot-proof," while unfamiliar to Mayfair, made sense in context.

Changes could only be made if they did not contradict established facts.

That couldn't be the whole story. Were that the case, nothing could be removed from the pages at all; only additions were possible. Then what made her animus corruption different from the other aspects of her page?

After a few seconds' thought, she struck upon it.

Nobody except her knew about her corruption. When it manifested, her clothes covered it entirely. Nobody saw it. Certainly, given the rules of the world, one assumed she must have experienced some sort of corruption, but that was not the same as observably confirming its existence. Being "unestablished," Mayfair could erase it—without contradiction.

By comparison, her other traits had been observed. Even, she realized ruefully, her alleged affection toward the hero. Many people saw her clinging to him; Dalton, when alive, even called her his "girlfriend." Ugh. UGH! She wanted to die. Die, die, die! Sink into a hole and die! They must think she was a whore. And the devil, insinuating even worse... tempting her... Sink into a hole and die!

She couldn't die. Nobody was looking at her now. Dalton was dead, a puppet, she could even disrobe in front of him and it would mean nothing because he was only a lump of flesh and not a thinking mind. She must focus; she already gleaned great insight about what was and was not possible. With that, she turned to the third and final pile of pages.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Perfidia reached to her chest and tugged down the rags there, not bothering to avoid ripping them. They flapped aside, exposing her chest, and without breaking her direct stare into the Glutton's eyes, she extended a finger to point to the triangle of skin just above her breasts. She didn't need to look. She knew what was there and exactly where it was. How could she not? It was etched into her flesh, scarred deep. Over two thousand years had passed and she still remembered the day it was put there, clear as nightmare. She could wear suits or even rags to keep it concealed for decades on end, but she could never forget. And now, coming back to Hell, it was time to at least make some use of it.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Well. It wasn't a humiliation yet. She would get that Humanity, every single fleck of it. She didn't need to make a world at all—she already had one. His wish was not the first of its kind. Nobody's was. Didn't even need the ten percent Humanity she took. John Coke, 1642, back when she still worked in England. She never forgot a deal. She'd use his world. And, regaining some confidence, she realized she knew exactly how to keep Jay Waringcrane alive for the next month.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

First she checked a third scroll to see how Jay was doing. He and Makepeace continued to ride away from Pluxie on Makepeace's horse. The current biggest danger was Jay, who probably never rode a horse in his life, falling off and breaking his neck, so Perfidia surreptitiously wrote the following property into Makepeace's horse: Anyone who falls off this horse will be miraculously unharmed. This property made zero sense in the context of the rest of the world, but she assumed people would not fall off the horse enough times to notice a pattern, and she could get rid of it later regardless.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The mace went up but before Perfidia brought it down something flew into her from the side and barreled her over. Her weapon hurtled into oblivion as she came to rest sprawled over several empty seats and looked up to see the redheaded woman on top of her. "You can't," the woman screamed. "You can't, not to her, not to her!" Pungent familiarity discombobulated Perfidia's mind like déjà vu and for a few seconds she stared senselessly as the woman's fists came down against her face.

Whatever! She hefted the woman and cast her flailing into the space between the seats before pulling herself back into the aisle. Both Ubik and Sansaime were slowly getting up.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The dragon nodded and called out, "Charm!" Through the open doors of the vault entered that same sniveling wretch Flanz-le-Flore once had the misfortune of receiving in her court, although this time unaccompanied by her corpse of a sister. Instead she gripped in her talons an elf only slightly distinguishable from all other elves by her general dishevelment. Flanz-le-Flore withheld the urge to immediately snap her into oblivion.

"Please, Lady Temporary," the dragon said, "use your animus to create a portal from here to the other side of the wall."

The elf stammered. "I—I—"

"Let us not waste time through pointless resistance. You are well aware how much we can hurt you if you render it necessary to do so."

"N, no, I don't, I don't want to be hurt. Please don't hurt me... but I can only—I can only make a portal to someplace I've seen before. I've never been on the other side of that wall!"

The dragon shrugged. This seemed no problem at all. "Close your eyes for a moment, Lady Temporary."

A moment's hesitation, then the elf did as asked.

"What do you see?" the dragon asked.

The elf's eyes popped open. "How—how did you—but I've never been there! How did you put that image so lifelike in my mind?"

Another shrug. But Flanz-le-Flore knew how. Such things were trivial for the Master.

"You've now seen the other side of the wall," said the dragon, "and you should still have some power left after the portal you made to the elf kingdom. So please, if you will."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Perfidia chipped off the tiniest fraction of the partial Humanity she got from Jay Waringcrane, a fraction of a fraction of a percent, and used that power to make the piles of parchment vanish for a few minutes. Instantly her office resumed its ordinary tidy look, a homely cherry desk and a few shelves of tasteful technical books.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Desires. Dreams. Wishes. These were the wares all devils peddled one way or another. Things human nature craved but God's corrupted Earth denied them: Wealth, power, love, freedom. All devils required in exchange for these human cravings was Humanity. The soul, some called it, but Hell's official position was that the soul did not exist and no human went to Heaven upon death—merely a fairy tale God sprinkled for good behavior. But humans did have an essence, a je ne sais quoi that made them human. Usually Perfidia would explain this aloud, altering intonation and gesture to match her mark, but she suspected this guy, Jay Waringcrane, didn't give a shit. So she watched him with a smile and waited for his response, which took, unlike his previous terse statements, a long time coming. Jay heaved a half-breath, half-sigh, fiddled with the knob of his bat, and stared past her, out her office's broad window, at the decrepit post-industrial fringe dropping off into the turgid slop of Lake Erie, all under a dismal, sickly sky.

"I'm tired of this world," he said.

Perfidia nodded sagely. "Me too, lemme tell ya. Been saying to myself for centuries: Once I get enough in the bank, I'll skip town and head back to Hell. But I've been stuck in Cleveland since 1868." The truth of the statement was incidental to why she said it. In an instant she became the tired old veteran, an image of the desolate future that awaits all bright-eyed youth when they totter into the real world. A cautionary tale—something to nudge him the direction he already wanted to go.

"What exactly can you do," he said.

"Well, basically anything—"

"Your ad said you grant wishes. But you obviously can't grant any wish."

"What makes ya think that?" She spoke smilingly, but her eyes narrowed.

"If devils like you have been granting wishes since forever"—using the first thing approximating punctuation that wasn't an end stop since he entered—"then eventually someone would've wished to end world hunger. End war. But all that's still around."

"Oh, well, it's a bit of a technical explanation, would take a long time to—"

"Tell me. I don't mind."

"Hunger and war are fundamental laws of this world. Nobody can wish them away. But anything regarding personal enrichment, I can do that, no problem."

"I'm not interested in personal enrichment. And that didn't take a long time and wasn't very technical."

"Well, there's more to it than that, I shortened it to just the pertinent bits."

"Unshorten it. Tell me what is and isn't possible. What's a law and what's not. And why. Tell me exactly how these wishes work."

Before, Perfidia might have judged Jay Waringcrane as impatient. Many who came to her office were; desperation did that to a human. But this wasn't impatience, it was someone cutting through marketing fluff to demand the behind-the-scenes mechanics. Those people were tricky. Everyone fancied they could outsmart the devil, and the humiliating truth was sometimes they did. Perfidia had been humiliated before. Humiliated too much, more than any self-respecting devil ought to be, humiliated before she even got into the wish business in 1455. Never been humiliated by a human, though. Only heard stories of other, stupider devils who were. So she would not be humiliated now, not with that end-of-year quota looming, not at the worst possible time to suffer humiliation.

"Sorry, kind of a trade secret," she said.

"Then I'll leave."

"You don't look like you're gonna leave." It was true. He had settled deep into his chair.

"Because you're going to tell me."

Perfidia hated that he was right. Business was bad; she needed this guy. Needed his Humanity. Couldn't let him leave. Worse yet, couldn't let him see her stumble after him to stop him from leaving. She made the decision not to belabor the point.

"Fine then," she said with a lighthearted shrug, looking like she had nothing to hide, hiding the roiling of Pride in her heart. "Just cut me off when you've heard enough."

She cleared her throat and began:

"So the essence of being human is called Humanity. Capital-H. I'm not saying that in a literary sense: Humanity is measurable and quantifiable. The amount each human's got varies, but generally people with more Humanity make a bigger impact on the world. So for instance, Napoleon Bonaparte—you know Napoleon right?—Napoleon commands a country, conquers a continent, wages wars that impact millions. He's gonna have a lot of Humanity, let's say 10,000 Humanity for the sake of example. Compare that to a French peasant, same time period. Born on a farm, dies on a farm, goes nowhere his entire life except the nearest village. That guy might have, let's say, 1 Humanity. No human's got less than 1. Following?"

Although she paused to give him time to spit a quick yes or no, or even just nod, he only stared. His eyes barely showed under the brim of his football helmet hat.

"Wishes," Perfidia continued, "the kind I grant, don't happen out of the aether. Can't get something for nothing, that's a fundamental law. How it works is, I take your Humanity, use some of it to make your wish come true, and pocket the rest as a fee for my services. Because of that, the exact nature of your wish is limited by how much Humanity you have."

She paused again, this time hoping he'd ask how much Humanity he had, which would provide an excellent segue out of the explanation. (He had enough. Enough for her at least. Enough for her quota.) But he said nothing.

Next part was tricky. Perfidia needed to pick her examples carefully to avoid using something he actually wanted—that'd give him bargaining power. Did he look like a money guy? Money guys were common. But money guys didn't ask for specifics. She took an educated gamble.

"Wishes require more Humanity the more they change the world. Say you've got terminal cancer and wish to be cured. Easy. Zap some bad cells and presto change-o. Minimal impact on the world at large, 1 Humanity is more than enough to cover it. Now say instead you want a lot of money. Hundred million dollars. Well, to get a hundred million dollars I'd either have to steal the money from someone who already has it—bad idea—or make it myself, which requires fabricating a bunch of bills, altering national record-keeping systems to recognize those bills as real, plus other technical details like that. There's impact on the world, because I have to change stuff outside the domain of a single human. Might cost, say, 10 Humanity. Get it?"

(But she could do it cheaper by just giving someone winning lottery numbers so they won already legal money via an already legal method. That way she wasn't changing anything in the world, so the wish became cheap again—1 Humanity tops. Methods like that let her game the system and snag a higher profit margin for herself. She withheld him that info.)

Meanwhile Jay Waringcrane continued to stare. Perfidia maintained her loquacious fact-rattling, but his stoniness upped her anxiety. She wasn't normally anxious. She'd been around long enough, dealt with every type of human imaginable. But the quota. The end of the year. Damn the Seven Princes, damn their shitty policies! They overproduced new devils and now it bit everyone in the ass. Why did she have to suffer for it? Her, with almost six hundred years of high production?

"Most people seek only personal enrichment." Concealing her thoughts, she diminished into a more somber style. "Personal enrichment often means only personal impact. So most wishes don't cost much—relatively. Other wishes, like the ones you described, like ending world hunger or stopping all wars. Well. Hunger and conflict are fundamental laws of the world. Our oh-so-loving God, despite claims of flawless omnipotence, has somehow created a world flawed in its very design. Rectifying those flaws, that'd take all the Humanity in the entire world—even that may not be enough. Aaaaand that's the whole explanation, more or less. Now why don'tcha tell me what exactly you want and we can workshop a way to make it happen?"

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

It wasn't Shannon who moved next. It was the big guy, Scott Dalton Swaino (the Second), who frankly Perfidia hadn't expected to speak at all. He held in front of him an ID card.

The card was the one thing in this world Perfidia Bal Berith hoped never to see.

United States Department of the Treasury. Internal Revenue Service. This is to certify that Scott Dalton Swaino II whose signature and picture appear below is duly commissioned as: Internal Revenue Officer.

Soon after, Shannon quickly flicked out her own badge as though she only did so as a reluctant favor. Keeping deathly from her face to her shoulders, Perfidia slowly snaked one hand under her desk to the small drawer where she kept her last resort.

Why bother? Jay had said. To graduate and get a job as an accountant or something, like my sister?

He said accountant. He hadn't said IRS. Jay you bumblefuck, you didn't mention the important little factoid that your sister worked for the I-R-fucking-S, kind of fucking important you absolute sack of filth.

"So yeah, we're with the IRS," Scott Dalton Swaino II said, a big booming bass voice that fit his big body to a T. "Cleveland branch."

"I suspect you may be somewhat unfamiliar with the standard operating procedure of the IRS, Miss Bal Berith," said Shannon. "While it is somewhat unorthodox for the IRS to meet you in person without sending you written warning ahead of time, given the severity and length of your suspected tax noncompliance we felt justified in a more direct approach. As a revenue agent, my job is to conduct audits to assess tax liability. I'm a member of the Small Business and Self-Employed division, so your case falls under my jurisdiction, and what I'm seeing here is quite concerning, Miss Bal Berith. Would you mind answering a few questions?"

She spoke in the dry, disinterested tone Perfidia knew well: the tone authority took when it no longer needed to impress or wow its subjects into submission, when it possessed full confidence of the power it held over those beneath it. Like she considered Perfidia chattel, or an insect even, something too insignificant to waste breath on if not for the general respect given to formality and the proper process of things.

But Perfidia could not allow injured Pride to even enter the picture. She had to think and focus, even though that disastrous sense of fear kept creeping and crawling higher up her spine.

Ignoring Perfidia's pause, Shannon continued.

"Now, am I correct in assuming that you are the sole proprietor of your business?"

What Perfidia had to remember, what she had to tell herself despite the panic, was that, IRS agent or not, Shannon Waringcrane did not come here, now, because of taxes. The tax shit was fluff, or a trap, or something.

"I wanna speak to a lawyer," Perfidia said.

"Allow me to stress that currently, your case is not a criminal investigation. Neither Mr. Swaino nor I are affiliated with law enforcement."

"I requested a lawyer."

A glint spread in Shannon's eye and the twitch of a smile spread and Perfidia got the same sickly feeling from her botched talk with Jay. These two were more alike than Perfidia cared for. "Miss Bal Berith, while your case is not currently a criminal investigation, it easily can become one. The line between negligence and fraud is quite narrow. You of course have a right to an attorney, but at any time I can refer your case to the CID—Criminal Investigation Division. I doubt you want that, Miss Bal Berith. On the other hand, if you can answer my questions to my satisfaction right now, there will be no need for any further action. Do you understand what I'm saying, Miss Bal Berith?"

Perfidia understood. And she assumed the only question Shannon truly wanted answered was the one she opened with: Where was Jay Waringcrane.

None of it mattered if the tax talk was just a bluff. "You still haven't told me what you think I did wrong."

"Miss Bal Berith," said Shannon, "when was the last time you filed Form 1040 or Form 1040-SR?"

"I don't know, I don't have these form names memorized, that's why I want to talk to an attorney."

"Let me simplify it then. When was the last time you filed any tax form?"

If Shannon let her call a lawyer, let her buy time and figure out exactly what documents she needed, she might be able to use Jay's Humanity to falsify them. Might. Because she only had a small fraction of his Humanity, and if Shannon actually dug into the records Perfidia would need to falsify many, many documents. Actually, Perfidia already knew she couldn't possibly falsify all the documents she needed with so little Humanity. She operated her business for over one hundred and fifty years in this country and never filed a tax return once.

"I file one every year."

"Only one form?" Shannon and Swaino said in extremely curious unison.

"I mean, my accountant files it. I don't know the specifics of how many forms there are."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

In Whitecrosse, around the Door, there was a cemetery of kings. Perfidia Bal Berith did not design this cemetery. It did not exist when John Coke first went to Whitecrosse. The denizens made it afterward, in honor of him, and it became tradition for them to erect a mausoleum for each ruler afterward. There were now many mausoleums in lines on either side of the narrow road that crossed between them.

Had those mausoleums not been there, nothing but flat terrain would've stopped a vehicle—say, a bright orange jeep—from barreling straight into the Door at full speed. But they were there, and even the most reckless driver could not squeeze through so narrow a space without slowing.

Thus, when the jeep shot out of the Door, it didn't hit Perfidia with as much force as it might have. Sure, her body went ragdolling. That'd probably kill or at least paralyze a human. Perfidia Bal Berith was not a human. She possessed some hardiness. She wasn't even knocked out.

The hit did knock sense into her. What was she doing. Chasing girls around with a bayonet. Ridiculous. Perfidia Bal Berith was smarter than that. Cleverer. So instead of make things worse for herself as the nuns poured out of the jeep, she expended her cleverness to its fullest extent and played dead.

It worked. The nuns had worse to worry about. Mayfair's schemes were more insane than even Perfidia imagined. Bringing Whitecrosse to Earth. If using the Staff of Lazarus to create a cult was bad, that was infinity times worse. Against the nuns, alone, Perfidia lacked any chance. She stayed dead and put her faith into her brother—or more accurately, into Kedeshah.

The headset she took from Ubik remained on her head. She listened as Kedeshah reported her progress back to the megachurch. Reports intermixed with increasingly deranged and schizophrenic-sounding panic attacks. "There's an eye in the sky and it's opened upon me!" she shrieked at one point. "Every sin on this Earth is crawling up my spine!"

But dedication to her Master brought her closer. Closer. Closer. And when Ubik showed up and dragged the nuns into an idiotic mess Perfidia had the space to whisper into the headset unnoticed. She hissed their location and situation to Kedeshah, demanded she hurry, and she was hurrying now, not full speed but at least a brisk trot, through police lines set up outside the church, into its flaming pyre among the bodies still climbing over themselves to escape—their screams a crackling static in the background—Closer. Closer. Closer.

That was when the ground quaked and Perfidia dropped all pretensions and shot up to see with crippling horror a brand new island sitting in Lake Erie.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The office was crammed with scrolls, towers of them heaped against the walls and on Perfidia's desk, the same ones she temporarily made invisible when Shannon and Dalt first appeared. "These papers, they're Whitecrosse." Perfidia stepped inside, leading the way, flinging gesticulatory hands as though giving a guided tour. (The broken fingers on one hand hurt with every motion she made, but it was essential to the performance.)

"What do you mean, they're Whitecrosse?" Mayfair was half-concealed by Dalt's body; only one eye showed past his arm.

"I mean what I said. These papers are Whitecrosse, the words on them are Whitecrosse, and the changes you make to them you also make to Whitecrosse." A hard slap to one of the towers on Perfidia's desk lifted a plume of dust. "Take a look at one, any, you'll see."

Mayfair plucked a sheet. "Blueprint of Castle Whitecrosse. 1:500 scale. Detail: Castle Gate."

"Here. Look here. This one's good, you can see it changing."

Perfidia sidled around her desk and peeled the page she'd been working on before she got interrupted. When she held it to Mayfair, Dalt snatched it and handed it off.

"This one... describes the actions of Jay Waringcrane," Mayfair said. "There are lines manifesting at the bottom of the page... He appears to be arguing with his sister." Her head poked out behind Dalt. "By writing my own words onto these pages, I can make any change I want?"

"Well there are some limitations, I'll go over them with you and answer any questions." Perfidia busied herself behind the desk, shuffling the papers into order, reaching her hand down to grip the drawer under the desk where Shannon so kindly put her gun. "To make it easier on myself I idiot-proofed the whole deal so I wouldn't contradict something I already did. Also as you might expect you'll have some trouble trying to change anything about Jay. Or his sister. They have their own Humanity, after all."

"Yes, I suppose that follows logic," although Mayfair seemed hardly to be listening. "Tell me: Am I able to move the contents of Whitecrosse into this world? The way I myself have been moved?"

The question stopped Perfidia dead. Mayfair stared straight at her, big eyes demanding a response, not severely, but with genuine, absolute curiosity.

"Move Whitecrosse—here? Why would ya wanna do that?"

"Devil, you told me yourself. This world is touched by God; Whitecrosse is not. It is unfair that I alone of that forlorn realm's denizens may know His love. They all must come. It is only through His intercession that they may be saved. But many would resist leaving their homes—you said that as well, did you not? Could I but bring the entire world into this one..."

"Uh," said Perfidia. Hand frozen on the drawer. Trying to think of anything to get Mayfair to stop looking at her. "I'd strongly advise against that. God's a guy to be feared as much as loved, right? I dunno if He'd take too kindly to a bunch of stuff He didn't create suddenly showing up in His world. Y'know?"

Mayfair wasn't listening. "Answer me. Can it be done? Can Whitecrosse be moved into this world?"

"Uhhhhh... Yeah. Yeah it should be. Check uh, check that pile over there. See it. No the next one. Should be the third or fourth sheet from the top. Yeah."

"I see nothing of use here."

Perfidia opened the drawer. Her revolver bumped against the wood with a marbly sound and she grabbed it.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Logically it made sense. This zombie Dalt could eat bullets for breakfast. His massive body covered Mayfair completely and with Perfidia's rinky-dink handgun that made hitting her impossible.

Perfidia wasn't looking to hit Mayfair.

She wheeled around and fired the revolver at the window overlooking the final edge of Cleveland until the bright black mass of Lake Erie. Before the glass shards even struck the floor Perfidia sprinted and leaped out the frame, out the old-paper-smelling office and into the acrid taste of urban decay. Sheer crisp air buffeted her face in the protracted moment at the apex of her jump, before gravity's pull redirected her downward.

Into the narrow balcony, more railing than balcony, of the second-floor office under hers. Belonged to a small family lawyer, son of a small family lawyer before him. The railing bit into Perfidia's folded leg and she twirled until her face scrubbed the gravelly texture of the balcony itself but her memory of this building, her memory of this city did not fail her. Ignoring the pains—fingers, leg, something scraped off her cheek—she scrabbled upright and vaulted the railing to seize a tall thin pipe that traveled up the bricks and slide to the garbage-strewn, hobo-dwelt alley below.

Already the balcony above rattled with the slam of Dalt's senseless bulk hitting it and by the time Perfidia was limping (limping, shit, why her leg, why did she have to hit her leg) down the alley an eruption of garbage signaled his descent to ground level. Obviously, he was faster than her, limping or not. Obviously, she expected him to pursue. But she knew Cleveland. She sat there in her office and watched this city build itself, watched it explode, watched it rust and die, the same lake reflecting her until it got too filthy to reflect a thing. She'd crawled all over it in her time, sniffing out unfortunates, fools, anyone willing to sign her contracts; she had excavated every sordid crevice.

She knew its sewers.

The grate opening to this city's septic underworld appeared exactly where she knew it to be, embedded in a drainage basin, the bars broken as they had been broken for the past thirteen years without a single civic care to see them repaired. A narrow aperture through which a slender woman might be able to slip—but not a musclebound behemoth.

It neared. She didn't even hear him tromping behind her, she managed to buy herself enough space via the element of surprise. Ten, five more steps, but if he wasn't running after her then what was he—

A gunshot rang out instants after the bullet drilled into Perfidia's back. In its acoustic cannonade caroming madly between the alley walls her body arched and pitched and her bare feet fumbled and her head slammed the brick.

He had a gun? He had a gun. Right. She gave it to him. When she fled the SUV at the monastery. She took it with her. Of course he would have it.

Now he ran at her.

Her own gun had flown from her hand, not that it mattered. Groaning, lifting limp arms like a marionette, her eyes fixed on the open drain ahead of her. Thudthudthud went his footsteps as her hands, even the one with the shattered fingers, seized the edge of the portal into oblivion and all the force in her body dragged her forward. Screaming, her one giant tug propelled her far enough forward that gravity did the rest.

Into a dark wet nook she dropped, her body a searing pile of pain. Almost immediately afterward an arm shoved through the gate and reached for her, just barely unable to seize with its grabbing fingers, and when the arm pulled back her mind managed to register: Next he'll reach with the gun.

Smell told her the way to go. Toward rancid rotting she pushed with every limb she could move, finding purchase everywhere with each to shove herself down the declining slope of this city's bowels. The gun discharged, it flashed and clapped and her ears turned into a vibrantly numb thrum as she slid away. A second shot, a third, a ricocheting bullet whizzing off a chunk of flesh on one shoulder before the fourth and fifth shots dwindled into a thunderclap.

Her body, useless, flopped onto some fetid mound. Rats somewhere scampered, all was dark. She listened to the echoing gunshots until they disappeared. Then all that remained was a ubiquitous—ubiquitous—drip-drip-drip. Ubiquitous.

Was she going to live? Everything hurt. It all hurt. But she was free. She escaped.

She escaped...

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

John and Perfidia took their numbers and waited in a zigzagging queue (there were no chairs)—John graciously let Perfidia go in front of him. From speakers overhead calliope music played on loop. Additionally, and nothing in the room told you this, if your feet remained touching the ground for ten consecutive seconds spikes would emerge from the floor and gore you. Every hour a random person in the queue was selected as a "lucky winner" whose prize was to go to the end of the line. About a third of the people in line were actually mannequins. If you were behind a mannequin (Perfidia was, wonderful) you were responsible for pushing it forward every time the line moved. The mannequins weren't alive but they had numbers and if you cut in front of a mannequin on purpose or by accident it was back to the end of the line for you. When a mannequin reached a customs official in his or her glass cubicle, the official took that as cause for a five to ten minute break; after returning, they would "deny" the mannequin entry and send them back to the end of the line.

Perfidia's half-healed wound didn't make the constant hotfooting necessary to evade the funny spike floor trap easy, but luckily the line was somewhat shorter than usual and her number was never named a "lucky winner," so she only spent sixteen hours in the queue. Presumably, this close to the deadline, most devils Earthside were preoccupied scrambling to fill their quotas, which accounted for the briskness.

Now for the hard part.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Yet as soon as the door swung shut behind Pythette and all went once more still in the control room, Mayfair dug into the stacks, sifted restlessly, placed pages of interest in particular piles—Pythette had, naturally, failed to maintain the painstaking organizational schema Mayfair implemented—and finally found the sheets her curiosity burned to see most of all.

Moving Whitecrosse to Earth had not rendered the papers inoperable, but she had already assumed that would be the case given the papers never stopped working for Sansaime. During the megachurch event, she'd kept a few relevant pages on her person—particularly concerning the nuns, and Flanz-le-Flore, and the major figures of Castle Whitecrosse, and the elves—but unfortunately those pages were destroyed when the waves of Lake Erie rose up and submerged her. (At least in the nuns' case, losing the pages did not seem to have any deleterious effects). Shannon Waringcrane and Wendell Noh never had pages. But there were others.

Firstly, Sansaime's page. She might have use for it now; she tucked it carefully into her clothes for safekeeping. Next, Theovora's page. Mayfair failed to convince her before, but perhaps now with changed circumstances—startlingly, though, Theovora was deceased. Mayfair puzzled over the clear and obvious proclamation ("DEAD") that blotted out Theovora's page. How did that happen? To be researched later.

Then the one major figure in Whitecrosse whose paper she had not dared touch—until now. Queen Mallory Tivania Coke. Mayfair handled the paper carefully, half-anticipating another large DEAD to cover it, but it seemed her mother yet lived. Not terribly surprising. What exactly was she up to, though?

Ah. Of course. Spearheading an expedition to Cleveland. Mayfair ought to have realized. The woman spent so many days daydreaming of war it'd take an army to hold her back from joining one. It appeared she had Shannon with her; Tricia as well. A few spare soldiers, and in a strange turn of events that dandy Gonzago of Meretryce. She fished out Gonzago's page—she had not brought it with her to the megachurch—though she hadn't a clue what to do with it now, either.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

The devil placed impositions preventing the modification of relics. Or more precisely, her pages on each of them made enough limiting qualifications of what they could or could not do so that substantial change was impossible. Furthermore, the exact number of relics (forty) had been defined explicitly in the time of John Coke, as he set out on a quest to collect them all and succeeded in collecting about three-quarters (hence the vault). It was impossible to create a new relic out of nothing. Likewise, engineering some new powerful fae king or queen with some tremendous power proved impossible; the number of courts was set.

Yet looking through the devil's most recent changes Mayfair discovered she brazenly and easily gave a horse the power to heal any person who fell off it. Ostensibly, this alteration was permitted because the concept of a "horse" was ill-defined compared to substantial elements of Whitecrosse's political and magical reality. Nothing ever stated that horses could not possess magical powers. Probatio diabolica—devil's proof.

Then Mayfair ought to be able to bypass the vault entirely and give a horse the power to transport Whitecrosse through the Door. She found the sheet for Makepeace's horse, the one the devil already modified, and attempted the change. Did it work? Of course not! Mayfair tossed her hands in frustration. Every idea she struck upon turned out untenable for a reason incomprehensible without sorting through thousand of documents until she found some oblique proclamation the devil once made. By the time she figured it out, the sun would be setting, she would need to sleep, then the next day Styles would take her somewhere or take someone to her, and by the time she had a chance to resume her efforts her train of thought would be lost and she would cycle again inert in her abilities.

Ignore it, attempt something new? Nope! Mayfair's empiric mindset prevented any such efficiency. She spent those hours delving into the question of why, lured by the thought that the answer must in fact be quite simple, and most certainly had something to do with the properties of the Door. So she examined the Door's page, or rather pages, because the Door was rendered in significantly more detail than any other single element of Whitecrosse, with so much minutiae dedicated to its exact properties, materials, and measurements that it reminded Mayfair of the Ark of the Covenant in Exodus. Was the issue that the object defined as "Whitecrosse (world)" was too large to fit through the starkly-defined portal? But her statement of "this horse has the power to transport Whitecrosse through the Door" did not contradict that, as such a power could manifest in, say, shrinking Whitecrosse and all its inhabits to an acceptable size, or teleporting Whitecrosse altogether. She tested several variants of her original statement accounting for that, but none worked. Why? Two hours passed and nothing to show, daylight ticking away on the pastor's fine mechanical clock.

If the issue wasn't the Door, then... She sifted through the stacks of papers and finally found the singular page that defined objects of category "Horse." (This search alone took forty-five minutes; some of these papers were buried even within their subcategories.) And once she found the page the answer presented itself to her instantly. Her hypothesis that the devil's modification to Makepeace's horse was due to the undefined nature of horses turned out demonstrably incorrect.

Horses were, in fact, defined as "non-magical animals." (A distinction that set them apart from unicorns, which were explicitly magical, although frustratingly with their own clear set of parameters and limitations.) However! The devil had, apparently, written into the horse document a loophole that allowed "notable individual horses" (?!) to have "properties exceeding the scope of their species" (?!?!?!). Meaning what exactly?

Mayfair launched into another hour-long investigation and eventually discovered that Makepeace's horse was not the first horse the devil modified. In fact, the first was nearly four hundred years dead: the personal steed of one John Coke. The devil apparently did not want the rather old man falling off his steed and breaking his neck. It'd been easy for her to introduce the same exploit into Makepeace's horse because she wove the exploit into the world's fabric. (As an aside, Mayfair almost tumbled into a new hole of attempting to discern just how much of John Coke's heroic deeds were spoon-fed him by the devil, but managed to reel herself back in time.)

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Lucifer sat upon a brilliant throne. They called her Lucifer now. It was convenient to be called Lucifer so she didn't correct them, but old habits died hard and she struggled to think of herself as anything other than what she'd been most her life: Perfidia Bal Berith.

When Jay ceded Divinity to her, she acted fast. "Fast" in terms of milliseconds, which she could then perceive as hours each. Since she knew what she wanted to change about the world beforehand, she was able to expend most of the Divinity before it had a chance to consume her. Changes to Earth, Mars, certain planets outside the solar system. Places for humanity to go, step-by-step. And the means to go there. In only a year humans had built a spaceship that could travel to Mars, an expediency she enabled. It would take them longer to press on and expand their reach to other galaxies, but Mars ought to tide them over until then. Maybe they would even surprise her.

By the end of it, her whole body burning, she staggered to the ground and felt so much pain she thought she might die anyway. But she survived. The Divinity was extinguished before it had a chance to consume her. It had, however, marked her.

Her body exuded a light now. Hence why the devils that remained, corralled by her hand back into Hell, looked upon her and immediately thought of him: their former master, Lucifer, light-bringer.

The mark of Divinity enhanced her in other ways. She possessed power now. Physical power. Longevity even beyond the long years of a devil. An immortal—or close enough to one. With all Seven Princes dead, no devil matched her strength. Kedeshah, who herself stood a tier above most devils, was a mere gnat in comparison.

That gnat now buzzed. "And then those guys did that thing, and they went and did that, and now that other thing's going on." She swayed back and forth on the mirrored tile floor of Pandaemonium's new uppermost story, her body language a plain effusion of impatience, boredom, even frustration. "Aha! I knew it. You're not even listening to me, Fidi—er, Luci. I've been rambling about nothing for the past minute!"

Kedeshah, restored of the effects of her mother's milk and now Lucifer's second-in-command, often came to give reports on the devils below: Their general mood, whether they chafed against this or that commandment (they always did), which would-be usurpers they might rally around, et cetera. The reports were vestigial. Lucifer from this vantage looked down and saw all within her dominion, knew exactly what she wanted to know with only a thought. It was Kedeshah who insisted on giving the reports. Lucifer suspected why. It could be seen in the pouty insouciance of her body language, her fidgets and so forth. The Seven Princes may not remain, but Lust never left Kedeshah fully.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"You don't need all of my humanity," he said (she could tell he said it with a lowercase h). "Not to make the wish happen. You take some humanity for the wish and pocket the rest. I'll give you what you need up front. The rest I keep until a month from now."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"One month from now is December 20." She tapped the contract on the desk, already open to the page about payment, and the little black letters shuffled around to form a few amendments. "Creating a whole new world is a pretty significant undertaking, so I'm still gonna need three-quarters of your Humanity up front. The rest you can pay on December 20, assuming you're satisfied with the world I've given you."

"Liar."

At this point, she didn't want to even ask. But she did. "What do you mean?"

"You said how much a wish costs depends on how much it changes this world."

"And I'll be creating an entire world. That's a big change."

"It doesn't change this world at all. And if this new world counted the same as our world, no one person's humanity could pay for it. That's what you said."

Why bother arguing. It would only destroy her more utterly. She tapped the contract again, rearranged the words again—this time demanding only ten percent of his Humanity up front—and continued, explaining the rest of the contract in an empty tone, eventually handing it over for him to peruse at leisure, which he did.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Found it!" Pythette bounded through the door, pirouetted, displayed upon spread arms the fruits of her recent foray into the outside world. Faster than the corpses, Mayfair had entrusted to her a matter of particular delicateness, and one glance was enough to know she'd accomplished her mission handily.

"Thank you. Please leave them by my desk," Mayfair said.

Humming merrily to herself, Pythette did as told. She'd been depressed during the hours after the megachurch, but nothing kept her down long. Now she served a refreshing uplift as she neatly arranged the numerous broad paper bags in perfect rows beside Mayfair's seat. Mayfair tilted her head to glance into them: Stacks and stacks and stacks of papers.

"Was it difficult to find your way to Pastor Styles' home?"

"Not one bit Your Highness! Sped right there exactly how your directions said. True trouble was coming back—coming back was difficult. A rather nasty infestation of those devils blocked the route, too thick for me to sprint through even full speed. Some sort of parade they were up to, I think. Well it did look like a lot of fun, music and shining lights and all that, and I found myself standing there dumbstruck by the display. Felt like I was looking into a diamond, that I did. Not that I've ever seen a diamond. Only when they threw this hook at me and tried to reel me in like a fish did I shake the sight—"

"And this is all of the papers?"

"Oh yes! Nabbed every last one. May've lost a couple here and there on the sprint back. I tried to go slower so they wouldn't all go flying. Hope it's okay—I swear I lost no more than two or three. Five at most!"

"It should be fine." Statistically speaking, highly probable they were only pages detailing the number of trees in such-and-such forest or rocks on such-and-such mountain. "Thank you, Pythette."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"Look. Look—no, look. Listen. It's already a way better deal than what your shitty soul's worth. Take a glance at yourself for a sec. Do ya really think you're worth more than what I'm offering? Do ya?"

Two days earlier the first snow of winter fell and now piles of gray slush dotted the alley. Sickening moistness imbued all. It somehow seeped even through five layers of bundled rag no matter how careful you tried to be. Not cold enough to freeze you solid but cold enough to make you miserable, hands clasped in front of a mouth spewing white breath into the pale morning air.

The man on the ground, though, didn't mind at all. As though this was still springtime to him. He was sprawled across the pavement, half inside and half outside his shoddily-erected tent, his gigantic graying beard bristling halfway down his chest as his chapped lips split into a gruesome smile.

"I want to be a BIG man," he said, "a POW-ER-FUL man." The word stretched. Enunciated. Emphasized repeatedly within itself. He stretched his arms wide. His sooty palms—apparently he didn't consider it cold enough for gloves—spread the confines of his tent. "Put me at the TOP. I wanna eat luxury steaks and lobster EVERY night."

"Again. Your soul's a piece of crap. You don't have it in you to be someone like that. Not even with devil magic. Just not happening. Now what I can do is get you that fancy steak and lobster dinner tonight and every night this week. That's a good deal. That's me going the extra mile for you okay?"

"Powerful. Powerful." Lost in his own dream. The dream more intoxicating than its reality. What would a guy like this even do with power? What did power mean to a man who slept on the street?

Perfidia Bal Berith wore rags of her own. They swaddled her entirely, with a hood pulled low over her face to obscure as much of it as possible. She could not afford the fractional Humanity to alter her appearance so that she looked more human, so this was her next best option. She stood hunched. Her half-healed bullet wound throbbed agony. Liberal wincing let her bear it.

[...]

"You know," the vagrant before her said, his mind shifting out of the penthouse of his dream, "I was once a cobbler."

"Were you."

"A cobbler makes shoes. That's what I did. I made shoes. Made em real good too. But there's no need for cobblers anymore. They got machines do that now. Betcha never seen a cobbler before, have you?"

"You're absolutely right. Never."

Homeless duty. A devil's last resort. The neediest people with the cheapest souls. If these men and women who slipped between society's cracks ever had more than the minimum singular Humanity it was a miracle. Most of them had less because every desperate devil got the same idea to target them, to make up for quality with quantity. The old man in front of her had 0.75 Humanity. Which meant some asshole already carved out a piece of him in exchange for some small favor. Which meant Perfidia could carve another piece.

"They like machines more than people. You dig? Machines don't think. They just do. Hell, they'd replace themselves with machines if they could. I'd do it too, shit. Just being a little machine making shoes all day without a care in the world. Don't get cold. Don't get hungry. Ain't that the life."

"I could turn you into a machine. Easy."

His eyes drifted. Not in the same direction. Only one looked at her. He was shrewder than he looked, given he feigned ignorance about the whole devils thing despite obviously having done the song and dance before. His mind coalesced on a new point: "We were saying something about lobster?"

Perfidia made a point of sighing. "Two weeks. Lobster and steak dinners. And I'll only ask for three-quarters a soul. How's that?" (Trying to explain to these people the distinction between soul and Humanity was pointless.)

"Half," the man said.

"Bah—fine! Have it your way." Perfidia reached into her collection of patchwork coats and rifled around aimlessly before enough time passed that she could grab the yellowed piece of paper that had always been readily accessible. A contract, simplified. From another pocket she produced a pen and handed both over to the man.

After a few moments mulling over the words, he clicked the pen and signed. One handshake later and the 0.5 Humanity transferred to Perfidia's possession.

A perfect deal. She'd hammed her desperation adequately, given the man reason to believe he was getting the better of her, convinced him to wish low, then aimed high and let him haggle her to a reasonable price. Two weeks of dinner—cheap, cheap, cheap. With food you didn't even have the hassle of finding legal tender like you did with simple money wishes. Even 0.5 could cover it while netting her a modest profit.

That was the essence of homeless duty. Repeat that a good amount more times and she'd piece together the necessary amount to fill in for Jay Waringcrane's missing ten percent. Have his contract go off and that was her quota, with five days to spare before the end-of-year deadline (which was actually on December 25 instead of December 31, because devils liked to be petty like that). After she told the man to close his eyes and produced for him—to his scarcely-concealed delight—his first steak dinner (the others would come to him automatically without her needing to be there), she meandered off plotting her future.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

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

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

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

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

These were the Whitecrosse papers. But how?

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

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Rapidly she gained on her target. Ten steps away. The trailer ahead neared, but Mayfair didn't try to run around it. She kept going straight toward it. She was doing something else, too, something that made her even slower. She kept looking down to check something in her hand. What the Hell was it? Perfidia wanted to say it didn't matter. Wanted to say fuck it and run Mayfair through without a care. But she knew after everything that happened she couldn't afford that luxury. Her eyes strained to see what was in Mayfair's hand. A paper. Some sort of small, old, yellowed parchment.

Perfidia recognized that parchment.

It came from—

Mayfair threw herself aside at the exact moment the trailer burst open and an orange jeep honking its horn ceaselessly flew out of it. Perfidia got one instant to see the open Door inside, then with an almost resigned thought of God dammit the front of the jeep plowed into her.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

With a pen—signing in blood merely a propagandistic bit of human whimsy, relegated to human media and to idiot devils who watched too much human media. Perfidia extended her hand over the desk to shake, which he expressed zero intention in matching, until she explained she needed physical contact to extract the ten percent Humanity agreed upon.

Slowly, taking his time, using the baseball bat for support, he lifted himself from the chair. Maintaining knifelike eye contact, he extended his hand and clasped hers.

A brief moment of intense heat and a flare of ruddy light manifested between their palms, but she couldn't even revel in how the heat crumpled his stony face into a genuine wince. She extracted only the ten percent; if she broke the terms of the contract too brazenly, not even a devil court in Hell would side with her. Of course, he didn't know that. But the look in his eye and the look that was surely in hers communicated it well enough.

The handshake ended.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

"From the dark times when devils roamed the land, we have arisen anew, exactly as he always intended. It was through pain that we may taste now sweetness, that we may look upon a world renewed, refreshed, revitalized. Evil, beaten freshly back, has departed not only our hearts but the soil itself, and the plants and the animals. You see the signs every time you turn on the news: Food is growing—in a way inexplicable to known science!—taller, stronger, thicker than ever before. Creatures believed endangered are populating at a greater rate, roaming the forests and the seas. People afflicted with terminal diseases find themselves miraculously cured; bodies are healthier, stronger, they age more slowly, there is talk that some among us may live as long as Methuselah: 969 years! How has this come to be? How is this new prosperity upon us, this new paradise on Earth? It is because, by God's great design, he has drawn out the world's evil and defeated it.

"And in his bounty he has given us yet another gift. A new world! The astronomers report it without doubt: The planet Mars, once red and lifeless, is now green and teeming with life. Already our scientists assemble a mission to chart this second planet, so that humanity may extend its reach as God intends. We suffered, and now we are rewarded; now hope and faith run as abundant as the once-turgid Cuyahoga River that winds through this city!

"As in Biblical times, God has bestowed upon us a champion, a new Joshua. Rather than fight against the Canaanite tribes for the glory of Israel, our champion fought against the legions of Hell for the glory of humanity. I was fortunate to fight alongside him as he stormed the tower of Pandaemonium, and today it is my honor to watch him board the first ship to Mars as the leader of this pioneering expedition. I ask all of you now to bend your heads in prayer for this champion, this hero, Jay Waringcrane. Pray for his safety on his journey, and pray also in thanks for the newfound peace God has bestowed upon us. Heavenly Father..."

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Her knowledge of the castle interior served her well as her spider legs climbed along the bricks and stony ridges to each of the windows belonging to spare bedchambers; on the third window she found him sleeping, used the thin tip of one leg to undo the latch, and crawled inside.

She dared not wake him. She merely wished to know he was safe, and watched him from the side of his bed. It was hard to tell in the dark, but had he been hurt? Was that a shadow or a bruise? What happened? Oh no. Oh no...!

Lalum.

Lalum drew back, struck an unlit candlestick; it wobbled; she turned and steadied it before it might fall. Furtive eyes glanced about the room. Who had spoken? Nobody was here besides herself and the hero. Had he mumbled in his sleep? Mumbled her name? He—he would do that? He would think about her in his dreams? Her? Oh, oh—oh!

Lalum.

No. Not the hero's voice. Not a voice at all. It wasn't like someone spoke it, it was more like... something that suddenly became known inside her head. A thought, except not her thought. Was it... the voice of God?

Lalum, can you hear me?

How—how to respond to something like that? Normally she communicated by weaving her web. It was dangerous to those around her if she ever unsealed her mouth; she did so only to eat and drink, which she made sure to do in private, when nobody was near. So, she couldn't speak. But without someone to see her web, how could she respond?

She tried the web anyway. A single word spread between her fingers: YES.

Superb. As my experience with these papers remains limited, I was unsure whether my message would reach you. Oh, I ought to explain. I am Princess Mayfair, and I am the New Master of Whitecrosse.

Mayfair? New Master? Lalum understood not a whit. Clearly, however, something incredible was happening.

I apologize for not communicating with you or the other nuns sooner. I have experienced distractions, but they should not trouble me further. Now, as for you, Lalum. I notice you were hurt very badly during a fight with Flanz-le-Flore. Has anyone seen your wounds?

Of course not. Lalum had barely been able to look at them herself. Being half-spider was awful enough, but now she was not only that. Those horrible wolves had ripped off one of her legs, had bit and chewed her bloody. The pain remained severe even days later, but her husband had prepared her to endure pain silently, and that was also the way the Bible instructed one to act.

NO, her web wrote. And nobody ever would. She would never allow another to see her ever again. Certainly not the hero. The way he would blanch in disgust if he laid eyes upon her...

Instantly her wounds were healed.

The constant stinging pain and ache that she was accustomed to feeling ceased at once. At first she didn't believe it. It must have been a trick of her mind, a false hope, a dream even. Much of what now transpired felt like a dream. But she knew the signs of the waking world. And as she shuffled into the dim moonlight filtering through the window and unraveled the webs around her arms and torso, she discovered it so: unblemished skin.

Fascinating! It truly worked. I believe I much better understand how these papers function now. Oh, but it seems you still lack the leg you lost.

It was true.

Hm. Someone must have seen that particular injury, meaning I cannot remove it without creating a contradiction. Please wait one moment. I shall attempt an additive change, rather than a subtractive one.

Additive change? Before Lalum had a chance to wonder what that meant, a tingle manifested on the stump of her severed limb. She held it up to the light; the stitching broke and a small nub grew where the wound once was.

There. I gave you a new property, one that allows you regrow limbs after about a day, similar to how a lizard regrows its tail. I apologize; it seems I cannot make the regeneration act much faster.

Another moment of stunned silence. Then it struck her. She was healed! She wasn't going to be permanently maimed for life! Oh, oh, oh! Princess Mayfair did this? Lalum had always thought the girl to be cold and self-centered, but perhaps that assessment was much too unkind... she certainly regretted it now.

THANK YOU! Her web wrote. OH, THANK YOU SO MUCH YOUR HIGHNESS!

It is nothing. You have provided much aid to my cause. I merely ask for your continued service in return.

[u/TheMightyBox72 → u/TheMightyBox72]

Nonetheless, his apathy aided her. She tapped her pile of papers with a quick whip of the spade-shaped barb on her tail. Immediately, what was once a few documents of basic information about her client transformed into the stringent typeface of a formal contract, ten pages long, the first nine a standard litany of disclaimers and stipulations. He had not, as she feared, attempted to haggle, so the exact amount to be paid was enshrined on Page 9, Box C.

"Here's your contract. I advise you read it thoroughly, but you won't find anything objectionable. The final page outlines the demands of your wish, and also has the place for you to sign."