"Make your peace with it!
Now Hell and Heaven grapple on our backs,
And all our old pretense is ripped away -
Make your peace!... Peace. It is a providence,
And no great change; we are only what we always were,
But naked now. Aye, naked! And the wind,
God's icy wind, will blow!"
-The Crucible, Act 2
Arthur Miller
It fell through darkness, through the void, gleaming light catching and entrancing the eye, like charms dangled above a child's head, just out of reach. Darkness and night clutch at it, screams of terror and wails of indescribable pain shuddered through the vacuum about it. The half-suggestions of flames danced about it, transforming the blackness into faces, millions upon millions of faces screaming in torment, begging, crying, pleading for some release. Uncaring, unnoticing, it twisted, and fell, onwards in the impenetrable darkness.Now, it moved past the layers of pain, the layers of torment, is downward course carrying it beyond the places where any conception of mortal time held the slightest grip. Here, there was no agony, no constant chaos, no roaring of flames and chafing of demonic whips leaving firebrands of pain in your sides. No prancing of monstrosities, no blatantly voluptuous succubi tearing out your throat and gnawing, bit by bit, at your entrails. There were no more chains to pull, spines to pierce, poisons and fires to burn. There was, simply, nothing, vast and terrible. As it fell into that eternal pit, even its own brilliant light dimmed slightly, changing, dampening away. For a brief moment, before it surged back, something circular was visible inside that oppressive, burning aura.
As it fell, things moved in the night. More suggestions of motion, half-sensed impressions in that stretching, all-consuming darkness, they ride upon the senses, playing them like a master minstrel plays his harp into an elegant symphony of fear.
This is where rest the Fallen Ones, those whose brilliance was too fierce to be seen upon the earth. Angels, yes, those driven near unto death by their fall from paradise, but there are others, down the long lineage of Order and Chaos: Great Old Ones, those few men of the First Age who were brave enough to stand upon their tower, secure in their own might of magic, mind, and technology, and challenge the Throne. Deeper and deeper grows the Pit, and more and more does Power feed its maw. Those prisoned there, sleep. What they dream, fools are too foolish to comprehend, and the wise are too wise to wonder.
Still, it fell. And fell. For an eternity and more, climbing all up and down the ladder of time, it fell. Its speed now was far greater than anything it could have achieved in the old world, far greater than sound, far greater than light, far greater than all the universe could comprehend. The darkness tore at it, as it fell deeper, siphoning off the radiance, seeking to incorporate it, to break it apart so that no longer did the very concept of atoms and energy intrude on the infinitely simple perfection of the Endless Pit.
Then, gradually, it began to slow, loosing speed. Its light faded, gradually, to a faint glistening upon the metal as it fell.
For it was metal: a crown, a silver circlet gleaming in a way that metal borne from the bosom of the universe does not. The further it fell, the more it slowed, until, gradually, it came to a stop, hovering in midair.
The circlet twisted itself about in the darkness. There was just enough light left in the metal to see that it settled itself upon a head of blond hair.
The figure stirred in the dark, once. Twin eyes opened, blazing black fury against the night. Movement twisted the eternal, grasping silence as it rose to its feet, feeling the joyous weight of the Diadem upon its brow. It laughed, but not the laugh of a villain, of an egomaniac. The figure laughed the soft laugh of someone who knows, completely and incontrovertibly, that he has won.
It spread out its fingers, and a spindly hair of light twisted out, shrivening the darkness. As it moved, other bits of light broke off, thin strands sliding through the Pit, while still others broke off of them, a network of off-white cracks of light and noise in the endless silence. Through those cracks.... the figure could see the unthinkable. It laughed.
As one, both hands clenched into tight fists, and the spiderwebbed lines bulged, growing, pushing themselves outwards, upwards, fighting to expand.
The darkness shattered like a pane of broken glass, and an odd light, almost the absence of illumination more than its presence, flooded the Pit. Hovering in the timeless silence, their imprisonment broken, the Others groaned. The space about the figure was a mass of twisting, flailing tentacles, of barbed spines and spears, wings of flame, eyes black and cold as the Void itself. They stretched on, and on, on all sides, in every direction. The figure could see people, humans, aliens, beings from ever dimension he could care to name, stretching on towards the Realms of Torment above. They looked at the figure with the hungry, searching gaze that only the hordes of the eternally damned can ever quite get right.
Black ichor seeped out of the figure's clenched fists, and he grinned, the skin of his face flaking, cracking, and falling away. The demons Above would soon begin to notice what had just happened. It was best if he would bring the news to them, first. He was the Harbinger, after all. It was his duty.
His flawlessly white leather jacket strained, then burst, as wings unfolded from his back. Not angel's wings, or even those of demons, bat-winged and scaly. These were a blight of the world, a perversion of the fabric of hell itself to serve the figure's ends.
Pestilence grinned, black eyes sparkling with excitement, the Diadem gleaming like a fallen star upon his brow. The wings beat against the airless depths once, and he rose.
The Demons of the Pit followed with him.
* Two knocks on Stell's door were enough to rouse her from her state of almost-slumber. The events of the night before still loomed in her mind, grand, terrible, and vaguely threatening. It annoyed her to no end that she could not figure out why she felt this way. After all, people had made speeches before. Very seldom did anything come of it. And yet, there had been a power in the way that man looked in to the camera, something she was convinced, somehow, that not even death would stop. It was very confusing.
So, she had slept, after the Gent's limousine dropped her back at the SLJ headquarters. She lay atop her bed, not even having bothered to pull the bedclothes over her naked form as she lay, looking at the ceiling and letting her mind wander. The red dress with its nebulous sash lay discarded upon the floor, with a great tear marring the expensive fabric where the laces had caught on each other when she was undressing. Morning had come, night, and another dawn, and still she lay there, unable to shake the feeling of exhaustion that overwhelmed her very soul.
The knock came again, hard and insistent. Shakily, she pushed herself up out of bed, staggering the few feet to the closet, where she found a loose blue bathrobe. Shrugging it on, she gave herself a quick once-over in the mirror, nodded approvingly, and strode stately to the door, a faint smile on her red lips.
Whatever she had expected, it certainly wasn't the Khazan Police Department. Two officers stood there, looking quite nervous in the core headquarters of Khazan's premier superhero organization. They looked out of their depth, something she immediately sympathized with. The oddities of a life in Khazan continued to dawn on her every morning. Her smile widened, and their nervousness increased.
One of the blue-clad officers, a middle-height fellow with long lamb chops and a scraggly mustache, sketched a small bow, as if unsure what, exactly, he should say. Her smile became tinged with amusement, which, she supposed, only heightened his nervousness. "Ah.... Good morning, ma'am. I'm Officer Barclay, and this is Officer Hutchison. We're with the Khazan Police Department."
She nodded, resting between the edge of the half-open door and the wall, and waved in the general direction of their uniforms. "I guessed. What do you boys want with me?" One eyebrow arched inquisitively.
"Ah...."
Finally, Officer Hutchinson, a tall, rake-thin man with all the good looks of a skeleton, broke in. "Ma'am, what my partner is trying to say is, we have orders to detain you for a deposition regarding the incidents at the Grand Ball. Normally, we wouldn't come so soon, but with everything else thrown in to the bargain..."
She nodded, not fully understanding what he meant by "everything else", but willing to go along with him so far. "All right." Suddenly, an impish thought seized her. "What are you supposed to do if I don't want to come?"
"I- ah- we are empowered to use all reasonable force to ensure your compliance." Barclay swallowed hard, contemplating the full implications of what he had just said.
Stell nodded, resting her head against the wall. "I guess I better come along, then." She laughed. Barclay swallowed, sweat beading on his forehead underneath the rim of the dark blue cap with its insignia. With an eloquent gesture and a toothy smile, she indicated her barely-clothed body. "Can I take some time to get dressed, or do I have to go like this?"
Barclay was completely astounded, leaving Hutchinson to carry on in his slow, dreary monotone. "We'll wait, ma'am."
"Thanks ever so much." Nodding affirmatively, grin still wide on her face, she firmly closed and latched the door.
So, a date to the police department.... What to wear?
* Even as the Diadem was a long time falling, Pestilence and the Horde of the Pit were a long time rising. Fortunately, time was subjective in Hell, contracting or expanding as the client so desired. During his rise, Pestilence had a lot to think about.
He thought briefly about the dreams, about the terrible, rending chaos, fire and ice raining from the skies onto a plain that was, somehow, just another sky... Doors opening unto doors opening unto doors opening onto a great mouth, betoothed and burning, tentacles pulling him ever closer, waiting for him to snap, urging him to break, to give in and let the dream take over. He had not, but neither did it please him to remember. So, he thought about other things.
A warm smile wormed across his face as he remembered the feeling of his Brother's woman's skin, so soft and pale, like silk. He thought of her scream, of the beautiful plagues that wormed through skin, flesh, and bone, eating away at her very soul, muscles quivering, bones loosing their cohesion, brain cells bursting as they were overwhelmed by viri of another sort. The scream had been marvelous, one to shake the halls of Heaven itself. The look on his Brother's not-quite face had been almost as priceless.
Perhaps, more than anything, he thought about how good it would be to see Sam once again, how good it would be to crush his bones, break that damnable Scythe, tear the shattered remnants of the soul from his broken body, and then begin the true fun. In Hell, there were things one learned to do with souls. They were so much more pliable than living bodies, so much easier to torture, and they didn't have even the comfort of death to escape to. Torment could be drawn out over aeons, over millennia, over the entire Age, and Pestilence would enjoy every picosecond of it. The very thought sent chills of joy running up and down his spine.
He dwelled on that thought for a long time, until the Pit itself opened onto the flames of Pain. The wings of corruption beat once, twice, his arms spreading out like some infernal messiah, rising into the flames. He shot out of the Pit like a young bat, searching for prey on the night winds.
When the burst of speed gave out, he hovered in midair, far above the vast, cracked plains of Hell, studded with barbed wire and broken glass, flames and spines, poisons to burn the heart and corrupt the soul. Flowers of fire and geysers of blood gouted from foul wounds in the land, horrible imp-shapes, the Neiblungand, dancing amidst the horror, light gleaming off their claws and jagged teeth. Everywhere there milled the untold hosts of souls, writhing in their special agony. He saw the Tartarean Wastes, where several of the Old Gods dwelt, screaming perpetually as their bodies were dismantled, one muscle, one fiber at a time, only to regenerate over the evening, for the great, ravenous beetles to begin their work anew the next morning. In the distance, he could see the Domain of the Tyrants, burning with unholy light, where butchers and mass murderers suffered all the tortures all the demons could bring upon them. Wire ripped, teeth bit and tore, claws severed, racks pulled, the sheer force of demonic will drove the pain to constantly renewing heights.
It was beautiful. And, he thought, skin tingling with excitement even as it fell from his naked torso, revealing seething masses of squirming darkness, yellowed, decaying remnants of bone, it was his.
Beneath him, the newly-released hordes surged out of the pit, their forms and figures solidifying once more as they were admitted to the eternal, tormented reality that was Hell. The First Men were there, three meters tall, eyes burning with their own private Flames, borne and nurtured over centuries to be more than a match for any petty wizard's magic or technologist's tricks. So, too, were the Elders, indescribable, seething masses of tentacles, eyes gleaming a cold ice-blue, and teeth, everywhere teeth. Those few of the Fallen who had been so weakened to be cast into the Pit surged upwards, wings beating, skin and flesh hanging from their body in ragged tatters, faces twisted into blissful expressions of agony as they found themselves free once more, their powers returning slowly, carefully. Flame surged about them as they siphoned into the energy of Hell itself. Of all the newly released Powers, though, none of them flew quite so high as Pestilence himself. They were all still bound by the laws of the Torment, prisoners and victims. He, on the other hand, was not.
Amber and black fires danced in the depths of his eyes as they swept the plain. Arms still extended, half in embrace, half in warding, he opened his mouth, and spoke.
"Come."
The word was soft, spoken almost under the breath, but it carried, infecting the poisonous, sulfuric wind of the Nether Realm like a disease, spreading and spreading, faster than thought, faster than light, until all of Hell's infinite expanse echoed with the single, chillingly simple, sound.
"Come."
And they came.
* "That'll be two hundred for the first month, love. We can discuss the rest later."
He nodded. "Thanks, Mrs. Wiggins. I'm sorry to give you such little notice, but I just came back to Khazan, and..."
"Nothing to worry, dearie. You'll get it all settled before long, and 'till then, I'm glad to put you up."
The Hand of Justice grinned winningly, and sketched a little bow. "I'm most grateful."
"How long are ye planning on staying in Khazan, then?"
Justice shrugged. "I don't rightly know. I've been out of the loop for a while, so I figured getting back would be the best thing for me." A brief frown crossed his face, but before Mrs. Wiggins could think to ask what troubled him, she saw the hard silence in his eyes. She blinked, startled, and had to restrain herself from taking a shocked step backwards.
"W-Well, then, here's your key, make any copies that you like." She nodded once, like a disturbed mother hen. "The other tenants are downstairs, I'm sure you'll introduce yourself." Before Justice could reply, she turned and scuttled away, leaving the former superhero alone in the hallway, holding his purple flower-print suitcase.
He blinked once, straightened the lapels of his trenchcoat, and walked in to his new apartment. Hopefully they hadn't changed the TV schedules. Dragonball Z would be on soon.
* A woman moved through the shelves of a vast library, silent and soundless except for the soft creaking of leather against leather as she walked. A visored face scanned the spines of great tomes, bound with leather and the shimmering scales of dragonhide, titles traced in gold, silver, and precious jewels. Occasionally, she paused, picking a volume off the shelf to page through it. As she scanned the leaves, words ran together, glowing in an unearthly light that was, somehow, simultaneously comforting and absolutely terrifying. Illuminations traced in silver ink portrayed scenes and diagrams that would shatter to pieces the human mind that beheld them. Softly, the woman shook her head, replaced the book, and walked on, red leather boots not even leaving tracks in the inch-thick dust.
Finally, she came to the end of the row, a great wall of gleaming, golden light, chiming softly as if echoing a song a thousand miles away. The woman paid it no mind, and continued searching the shelves.
One hand shot out faster than sight, and returned clutching a slender book, almost a pamphlet, most of its mass consisting of the twin covers, a leather that throbbed beneath her fingers like a living thing. It bore no title, and upon its cover were traced four simple sketches, crudely made, as if the lines had been drawn before the things they described were ever invented. A ruby sword, ebony scales, and an oddly pale, off-colour scythe rested beneath a crown of gleaming alabaster. With red-gloved fingers, she opened the book, eyes falling upon the first Word.
Around her, the vast library shivered, and yet did not move, as if it was the multiverse itself which shook. Light shot out from the books, from the shelves, from walls, floor, and ceiling, from the woman herself. Reality stretched like taffy, strands slowly parting and springing away, curling back on themselves, events looping over and over again inside an endless void of perfect light and unity...
As soon as the quake began, it was over. The woman still stood there, apparently unchanged, the Book in her hands glowing a soft, internal light, gleaming like the light of a solstice fire upon an unsheathed knife, oddly comforting, while at the same time terrifyingly insistent.
Beneath the mirrored visor of the woman's motorcycle helmet, something shifted. Any observer would be quite convinced, without knowing why he was convinced, that she had smiled.
The multiverse screamed as its fabric warped around her, twisting, tearing, and she was gone.
The library remained, waiting.
* "Right this way, Ma'am."
Stell nodded, striding gracefully after Hutchinson and Barclay. She wore jeans, a white tank top, and her leather jacket, sensible, down-to-earth, and, perhaps most importantly, real. That, more than anything else, worried her about staying in Khazan. It was so easy, so tempting, to just buy into the lifestyle, to live as nothing more than an aggregate of powers and abilities, not as a human being at all. It terrified her, how easily some people made that slip, how easy it was to lose everything in the search for a perfect hero, a perfect villain.
She shook her head. That was something to consider later. The present was much to vital to waste time on fruitless reverie. "So, where are you two boys taking me?"
Barclay's back shook as he swallowed, rubbing his sweaty forehead with the back of one stubby-fingered hand. "KPD central, ma'am. That's where we're holding the depositions." They reached the elevator, and Barclay keyed for the basement. The doors closed behind them, and, with a sudden lurch, they began to descend.
Now, that was odd. She didn't know much about the intricate workings of Khazan's finest, true, but it struck her as a little... odd... that something so simple and ordinary as a deposition would be held at the very core of the operation. "Why there, and not a precinct house?"
Hutchinson turned, his narrow face open in evident surprise, pencil-thin eyebrows raised. "Ma'am, have you been watching the news channels?"
She shook her head, biting her lower lip thoughtfully. "No, I've been in my room since the Ball." What had she missed?
Before Hutchinson could respond, they reached the basement level, doors opening with a soft, tri-tone chime to reveal the vast expanse of the SLJ parking garage. Vehicles of every type and description, from levitating sleds, chariots and magic carpets to simple, Earth-type automobiles clogged a space almost as large as the Arena playing field itself. The squat, box-like KPD vehicle sat in its own, reserved space, paint chipped and torn, looking like a refugee from an old war movie.
Stell blinked in evident shock. Where all the KPD vehicles she had seen during her own short stay in Khazan had been sleek, expensive-looking lozenges, designed for speed and power, gleaming with chrome, sapphire, and mirrored windows, this was something completely different, all hard edges and projecting gun barrels, the bright silver and chrome KPD shield marred with long, ragged bullet scars. Where a normal vehicle had wheels, this possessed glowing maglev platforms, ready to propel even such a massive excuse for a car into the stratosphere. A single weapon barrel, long and thick, glowing with armed indicators, projected from the cab. "What is that?"
Hutchinson swallowed. "Riot control car, ma'am."
"And why are you flying it?"
"Long story." Barclay was trembling visibly now as he drew the keys from the pocket of his blue vest. "Ma'am, while you've been sleeping... there have been some troubles."
"Troubles?" An image rose in her memory, unbidden, a policeman who distinctly resembled Barclay running through the streets of Dublin, early twentieth century, in the midst of a vast mob, uniform and body aflame in the adhesive blast of a petrol bomb, screaming, skin melting, and yet he refused to die.... She banished the image harshly, but it left her shaken. Could it have happened so quickly?
"Yes, ma'am. We'll tell you on the way."
* They had gathered haphazardly, one at a time. The first man, Abel Carey, an unemployed primary school teacher, appeared in the square outside the Khazan Police Department's central office at dawn after Watson's broadcast. His sign proclaimed, in frank block letters, "Watson Lives". His gaunt, hauntingly chiseled face traveled across the information networks like wildfire.
Before an hour passed, television cameras were fixed upon him, and he found himself but one man in two hundred, a tightly clustered throng of protesters, each with their own sign, each endlessly relieved that they were not alone. They made no speeches, just stood there, not moving, not acting. In another hour, a thousand joined them, and the chants began. "Fight for freedom! Fight for life!"
In a few more hours, Khazan's limitless portal system was clogged with new arrivals, pilgrims bearing signs and standards, or nothing at all, streets and sidewalks crowded as they moved, slowly and inexorably, towards the KPD headquarters. Bryn Shima was there, they knew. They remembered a face slick with Watson's blood, holding a sword, its blade the gleaming thickness of an instant. From border to border, the square was filled with them, pressed so tightly that a man could have easily run from one end of the square to other stepping only on the crowns of their heads. They came from all levels of society, male and female, ragged and upright, human and alien. The one thing that they all held in common was anger.
The square was filled, but still people came, all throughout Khazan city, filling the JLA plaza, the main streets, side streets, cafes, convention centers. The space around the Arena was filled with them, with their signs, with their fury.
Eggs flew, rotten fruit, stones, bits of metal clattering against walls of adimantium, staining impersonal glass windows with the dull red juices of living matter.
All in all, it was only a matter of time."
* Seryph Gibbons stood alone on the highest floor of the KPD building, hands clasped firmly behind his back, staring down upon the raging sea of sentients below. His lips were pursed into a thin, fine line, face all planes and angles. He considered.
"Shocking, isn't it? That it would come to this?"
If he was surprised by the Limey's voice, Seryph didn't show it. "I'm not sure." His eyes refocused on the window glass. The Limey stood behind him, in the flesh, wearing a loose black jumpsuit, shoulder emblazoned with the JLA logo. Shaking his head, he looked out on the city. "We've been asking for it for a long while, if you think about it."
One of the Limey's eyebrows rose inquisitively. "How so?"
The former Avatar sighed. "Maybe not us, exactly, but...." He shrugged eloquently. "We should have seen it coming. When the world has no limits, there will be people without them as well. Where there are unequal conditions, there will be jealousy, hatred. This Warden thing was a perfect example. We can't deal with everything, the universe doesn't work that way. If we took that much responsibility upon ourselves, to guard these people from everything they fear, than we wouldn't be any better than any of the tyrants we've fought so often." He grinned briefly, lost for an instant in the sea of memory. "That's part of the reason why I... quit."
The other padded silently across the floor and stood next to Seryph, looking out, looking down. "Try telling them that."
"That's another part of the problem."
"You bet it is. You know where I just came from?"
Seryph smiled openly this time. "A meeting, probably. One of the things I miss least about the JLA."
The Limey grinned in response. "Yeah. Some of those bloody civic leaders wanted us to crack down on the protesters, and on anyone else who might have had something to do with Taylor. Stuff like that almost makes me feel that the man was right." He paused, thinking. "Almost."
"And he was." The Limey's startled stare almost made Seryph laugh. "In letting things grow uncontrolled like this, we have created a system that isn't fair with everyone. For every Vadakhan, there are twenty billion people working in factories, slaving away at clerk jobs, having their businesses bought out from under them, only to be sold again. For every Jordan Kennedy, there are hundreds used as test subjects. How much damage have the LOTMU caused during their rampages through Khazan?" This time, he did laugh. "Don't worry, I'm not saying that we all deserve to die, or anything like that. I'm just saying that we should have been looking for something like this to come for a long time."
"But what are we supposed to do about this, now?" The Limey waved down at the stormfront of humanity. "The multiverse is on the verge of falling apart. Or haven't you been watching the news?" Seryph made no show of having heard. "Lord knows I sympathize with the buggers, but if nothing happens soon..."
"We'll be facing rebellion." Seryph nodded.
"And anybody who tries to stop it, will only validate these people's claims."
Again, the ex-Avatar nodded.
"It's a good thing that Crinos is dead, then. And that SonicHunter's out of the city. Can you imagine what either of them would do to this crowd?"
Seryph grinned thoughtfully. "Well, lich-boy would probably execute them all in some incredibly bloody way, and end up stabbing himself in the foot in the process.... SonicHunter would just step on them."
The Limey laughed. "Yeah, that's about the shape of it. 's a shame. It's so much easier when the enemy is someone you can touch. Things don't work very well when he's already dead."
The other man nodded mutely. Together, they watched, and waited.
* The inside of the KPD riot control car was tight, cramped with devices and instrumentation, and, in short, entirely unfit for human habitation. Obviously, thought Stell, squeezing herself into one of the narrow gunnery seats, the designers had been far more concerned with function than form. Even if she wasn't very comfortable, she did at least feel safe. Even though the indicators on the weapons console meant absolutely nothing to her, she felt absolutely sure that it was more than capable of dealing with anything a crowd could throw at it. Her only disquiet about this form of transportation came from the fact that it was necessary at all. "So, is it this bad already?"
Hutchinson was driving, which left Barclay sitting in the other gunnery chair behind her, ready, but willing to talk. "They haven't done anything yet, but there are just so many of them...."
"How many?" She frowned. For things to degenerate this quickly....
"Maybe a few hundred thousand in front of the KPD, to start with. Add in the others, all around Khazan... we're talking maybe....." He broke off, swallowing furtively. "Well, maybe a few million."
The flier lurched as Hutchinson activated the maglev sleds, using brute magnetic force to lift the thirty-ton mass of weapons and armor into the air. "We're off."
Stell leaned back in her chair, wedged her hands firmly into her pockets, and thought. Several million people, in less than forty-eight hours.... Even considering the time differentials between Khazan and the Outer Probability Spheres, that was pushing it. She didn't open her mouth to ask how. There was no need. She understood what was happening, but it was still startling that it had come to such a juncture so quickly.
Silence pressed close about the trio as Hutchinson guided the windowless craft to the high air-lanes, then angled it downwards again, evidently towards the Khazan Police Department's skyscraper. She squirmed uncomfortably, feet shifting in the footwell. She was starting to get as nervous as Barclay. Things couldn't be that bad yet, could they?
She wished she knew.
* "How long?"
"Another few minutes. The last time I came in, they were just getting ready to finish up." The officer shrugged. "Ten minutes or so, maybe."
Seryph turned to the Limey, shrugged, then turned back to the officer. "Could you do me a favor?"
"I'm sorry, we can't rush things any more than they've been rushed-"
Gibbons laughed openly, eyes flashing. "No, that's not it at all. I was just wondering if Officer Yamato was on duty."
"No, I'm sorry, sir. Officer Yamato was transferred to extradimensional operations a few months ago."
Seryph opened his mouth as if he was about to make a reply, but was interrupted by a loud complaint from the door. "I say, is this truly necessary? You could have interviewed me perfectly well back in my hotel room."
A small crowd of police officers gave way before the outraged frame of one mister Lester William DuLupin LaCroix XVIII, his slicked back close to the scalp, his garment a deceptively simple pinstriped suit. Its only difference from a normal pin-stripe was that, if one looked closely, the stripes were not lines at all, but rows of miniscule planets, each one beamed realtime from a seperate world controlled by LaCroix industries. His eyes were dark, and angry, the single gem stud in his ear flashing with wrath. "I am a very busy man, especially with all the chaos you people seem to insist upon allowing to continue." Lester shook his head. "Can't you go find some jaywalkers to arrest? Or even those rioters outside. Who's in charge here?"
He stormed upon the main desk, insinuating himself between Seryph and the desk sergeant, who looked as if she wanted to melt back into the comforting shadows of the deposition room. "I am, mister LaCroix."
"Well, can't you tell these people to go guard crosswalks or something? These riots have decreased stock prices on the Khazan market by four percent already, and the market's only been open for the last half hour!"
"I'm sorry, we've been ordered to depose all available witnesses today, no later. Chief's orders. We can't let you go yet."
"You're going to let one petty criminal's futile gesture of defiance interfere with quintillions of planetary economies?"
"I have my orders."
Lester snarled. "Orders be damned! This is important. These riots have been going for months, in some of my most vital probability spheres. Natural resources extraction has decreased by six percent, the interdimensional transit structure is falling apart. Can you possibly think that this deposition is more important than the livelihood of trillions of people? Are you even listening to me?"
At that, the duty officer regained some of her mettle, eyes blazing as she straightened. For one minute, Seryph felt certain that she would slap the business baron, and maybe do more besides. "Mister LaCroix, Look out that window. Those are the millions of people that depend on your business. They don't look too happy right now with the way you've handled their livelihood, and, frankly, I don't blame them. Now, you can either stay here and submit your deposition, or I can throw you out into that square to try and fix these riots yourself. Do you understand?" The finality in her voice made eminently clear that it was not a question.
LaCroix stood there for a long moment, staring with a gaze somewhere halfway between surprise, amusment, and veiled rage, before turning on his heels and walking over towards the window, lip twisted in a haughty sneer.
Seryph sighed, and turned back to the Limey. "At least we'll be out of here soon."
* "Where are we now?"
"About half a kilometer above the KPD building. Safely out of the rioters' range."
Stell sat upright, suddenly alert. "They have weapons?"
Hutchinson shook his head. "No, not yet, just rotten fruit, eggs, chunks of masonry, that sort of thing. Still, that stuff can clog intake valves, gum up rotors, and we that's just another problem we don't need right at the moment." He shrugged, hands dancing across the riot car's console, playing it as if it were one large, incredibly complicated piano. Although she could not see his face, his back was arched forwards in concentration.
She cleared her throat, trying once again to catch his attention.
"Yes?"
"Is there any way I can see these protestors?"
Hutchinson paused, swiveling around in his chair. He had an earnest expression of concern on his face. "What on earth for?"
She shrugged eloquently. "I don't know. Just curious, I guess."
He nodded, pawing his hollow cheeks with one hand. "Well, I suppose..... Barclay, can you activate the targeting computer for her?"
"On it." She turned just in time to see the shorter officer's trembling hands key a quick command into the gunnery panel, pudgy fingers surprisingly agile as they traveled over the gleaming metallic keys. "I-it'll take a moment for the cameras to power up."
"Thanks." Even as she turned her gaze to her screen, the darkness resolved itself into a shockingly distinct image. The car itself was moving too quickly, and was far too high to boot, for her to make out individual protesters, but they were visible in a great mass, completely filling the square, spreading out on all sides through streets and side alleys like the limbs of some giant, many-tentacled beast. Rather than defining boundaries, providing limits to the insanity, the skyscrapers rose out of their midst like birds, fleeing some movement on the ground below, viewing against one another to be the furthest from the danger, to be the safest. The KPD building, highest of them all, with the great shield emblazoned upon its summit, came off as the most frightened of the lot, the faces of leering protesters reflected and distorted by the mirrored windows into those of half-formed, hungry beasts, mouths open in a ravenous quest for food. In the middle of the image sat twin green crosshairs, deadly and ultimatly terrifying in the simple, quiet assertion of their existance. The fire control loomed large in Stell's vision, blocking out the rest of the cramped cabin, even the two officers. The crosshairs sat there, phosphors burning, blinking, tempting....
Before she had a chance to regain control, the targeting computer blinked off, and she sank back into her chair, face slick with nervous sweat. What had just happened? How could she almost loose it like that?
Hutchinson spoke softly, words echoing through the hollow silence. "We're coming in for a landing."
* When he awoke, he was unsure where he was. Nightmares of death and suffering had torn his soul, shredded his memory, leaving nothing but hanging tatters of what was once a mind, floating upon the brim of a great abyss. And, amidst those images, no matter how terrible, there was always something else, something that made him quail more than any other torture, real or imagined. You are nothing, cackled the voice in his mind. A single scream amidst the endless ranks of other screams. A man broken, a failure, not even a man at all. Images flashed before him in the darkness, legions under his command, ships more vast than modern human minds were capable of comprehending floating through the void, armies that obscured the heavens and the earth... Lost, gone, vanished in a mist of time and blood. Nothing remained to him. He was nothing but a broken ghost, crying in the night. You see? Nothing.
And the voice was right.
His eyes... or what had once been his eyes... opened suddenly, viscous light sinking its hooks into his soul and dragging him up towards wakefulness, kicking and screaming. There were... Others... about him, and one other, with wings born of the death of worlds, rising towards the sky, towards freedom....
Nothing remained to him but instinct, and he followed it. Muscles long unused coiled and surged beneath palsied, pale skin, and he surged upwards, pulling and lashing out against others in a nearly vain attempt to follow. He pushed off of walls, grabbed rising tentacles, clawed, raked, tore handholds in gigantic masses of flesh. When he reached the top, he was torn, buffeted, bleeding from head to toe, from every orifice of his body, and free.
The rocks cut his hands as he pulled himself up, tearing flesh and muscle away from the bone. He did not cry out, did not even wince. Nothing remained to him, except the thought that maybe, if he could climb out, things would be better again, he would be somebody. He would lead once again.
For a long time, he lay there panting upon the barbed rocks of the plain, wracked with poison and sickness. He vomited, blood and fire raging from his mouth to soak the stone in bubbling acid. His blood steamed as it fell, despite the burning heat of this new place. His mind raced, not knowing why it should, or how. Where was he?
Finally, he caught his breath enough to push himself up, shaking, onto hands and knees.
The first thing he saw out of the Pit was a great, razor-edged talon. His eyes followed it up, up, to where it joined with other talons and became a leg, strong as steel, covered with blood-matted fur. It towered over him in his crouching position, always changing, never having exactly the same shape for long. A few things remained constant, however. It was tall, corded with thick muscle and claws, topped with a grinning, jagged-toothed maw and gleaming, empty yellow eyes.
The second thing he saw out of the Pit, was more of them. They stretched on forever, in front, to the left, to the right, seas of them, oceans. It laughed, a choking, guttural noise, and in a blur, one of its hand-claws rested at his throat, pressing into the skin just on the verge of cutting. "KHumankh.... Bhkow, hkhuman. Khizkh mykh khfeet." Again, the laugh. Its companions laughed with it, laughter rippling through the ranks, all the way to the furthest horizon, beyond. He felt the thing's will press down upon him, urging him, compelling him to kneel, to kiss its silvery talon. The claw at his throat pricked insistingly, a deadly reminder of the punishment for disobedience.
He was supposed to feel afraid. Perhaps he did, a little. What he felt primarily, though, in the tattered ribbons that passed for his mind after all these aeons... was angry.
"Khizzzz, khu-"
The thing, whatever it was, never finished the sentence. While the words still hung on the monstrous, purple tentacle that passed for its tongue, he moved. His movement was not a thing of the muscles, not a thing of the mind. It was something else, a thing of the spirit, of the breath.... A thing born of the fire of his mind and body.
His head jerked back, skin catching and tearing upon the leading edge of the claw. Before the thing could respond, he grabbed its arm, pulling it forward, back arching to twist his foot around in a tight, arced circle, toes back, muscles of his leg hard and tight like a blade.
Had he let loose the arm, his strike would have caused the thing, whatever it was, to topple backwards, give it time to rethink its actions. That was the way, he knew somehow, that weaklings taught inferior pupils to fight, letting the enemy live, giving them time to collect their breath, to think. He was not a weakling. The creature did not even have time to pull away. His foot struck it in a blur, not even slowing as it tore through armored skin, steely bone, sinew, flesh. Its head thumped loudly upon the jagged, stony ground, eyes no more empty in death than in life. His foot continued on its spin, barely even slowed, and he used its momentum to spin, coming sharply to his feet. Around him, a section of the... creatures... thirteen square moved forwards, roaring in anger. He did not move. He did not know what these things were (hell, he didn't even know who he was), but-
The thought cut through his mind as easily as hot lava through the streets of a Roman village. Imps. They are Imps, a Claw of Imps. You have angered them. Submit, and they will let you live.
"Never." Bile surged in his mind as he remembered the voice of the Pit, its snide insistence, and sweat slicked his naked skin. "Never."
The Voice laughed. Well, its your funeral.
And then they were upon him, descending in a flood of tearing claws and crushing teeth, bodies crushing, tentacles probing for eyes, nose, anything vulnerable. A red mist obscured his vision. He was not going to fail.
The world dissolved in blood, gleaming steel, and motion. He was a piece of paper, blown aside by the force of the attack, a sword swiveling to deal justice, a flower and a fortress. He was nothing.
When it was all over, he stood atop a pile of bodies, skin burning as acidic blood melted it away. An imp stood next to him, gaping in astonishment. It tottered, and fell. Black ichor leaked from its throat, clutched in his clawed hand.
Around him, the sea of Imps stood motionless, laughing, not moving.
The Voice returned, sarcastic. Are you satisfied, young one?
He nodded, grin vicious and jagged-toothed. He was satisfied. During the fight, something had snapped. He knew.
He was Cacan Itoryx, Prince of the First Men, commander, general, Warlord, sometimes fool. He had allowed himself the luxury of failure last time. It would not happen again.
Cacan looked up to the skies, eyes burning in thankfulness, as he bowed to the creature that hovered over the vasty plains of Hell, skin peeling and falling from its bones, shod, booted, and gloved in white leather. As he bowed, the Diadem upon the being's forehead flashed.
"My lord."
Pestilence smiled.
* All in all, the loss of one Claw, one hundred sixty nine imps, was no matter, Pestilence thought to himself. A preacher and fool during Earth's middle ages, a man named Martin Luther, had once estimated the number of demons in the cosmos at ten thousand billion. This estimate was wrong. Ten thousand billion would barely fill one tenth of the force of imps arrayed before him, and they were the least of his armies. Any imp was more than strong enough to destroy the average ten humans, of course, but for his purposes, that would be nowhere near enough.
True demons came later, having settled all their own affairs, wearing their own favorite form, vast expanses of putrid flesh, towers of flames, humaniform sculptures of thorns and impaled bodies. More came by the thousands, by the millions, rank upon rank upon rank, hovering above the Imps in clouds of noxious smoke and fumes.
Some rose angrily, challenging with fire and strength, with swords, spears, javelins of lightning, with seas of poisonous gas. They never rose higher than Pestilence. Their attacks melted to nothing centimeters away from his skin. Once, after three seperate Lords attempted to attack simultaneously, to overwhelm him, the Diadem flashed, and their flames turned back against themselves, tearing through hastily-erected defenses as if they were wet toilet paper. Their essences flamed once, brightly, before the corruption overcame them, energies twisting and spiralling out from their body, power darkening, decaying. They wilted like a fading mushroom cloud, and were gone. After that, there were no more challenges.
It was a good thing that Time did not hold sway over the vasty plains of Hell. In the mortal world, where pain was not eternal and all things had an end, it would have taken all eternity and more for the demons themselves to assemble, coming as they did from the furthest corners of the Domain of Darkness.
After the greater Powers arrived, the nobility began to show their faces, twisted as they were into shining ruins of their former pride. Not all were fallen angels. Many had risen later, or even earlier, in some rare cases, dark dreams of the Creator in the vast, timeless expanse before creation, when great cities and worlds lived and died in the depths of a dream. They wore forms like a cloak, manifesting in bodies human or alien, strong or weak, feeble or potent, or coming naked of the soul, burning with incandescent power, as was their wont. Lesser creatures tattered around them, preening their fires, filtering them for impurities, carrying sacks full of departed souls for leisure consumption. The lesser nobility came first, with their hovering retinue, rulers of provinces, cities, overseers of successful Realms. To Pestilence, they were of little consequence, ants playing at being men, and not men at all. The true power lay not with them, but with the Others.
Next came the Lords, the Dukes, rulers of plains and fields, vast lands where souls were twisted into a grotesquery of monstrous shapes, lords of vanity and storm, genocide and hatred. With them came their own personal armies, Imps and other creatures twisted by their masters' insidious designs into something even less than demon, mere extensions of a sovereign will, bodies composed of mutable, solid flames that would neither bend nor break, veins filled with poison, empty eyes carrying the mental barb of the master's eyes. The forms of the Servitors were as myriad as those of their creators, large and small, whip-thin or massive as a small house, but they shared one thing in common: they were all, universally and without exception, deadly. Their numbers filled the lava sky and the burning land, as far as the eye could see, which, in Hell, was far indeed. Allowing humans to see some limit would give them hope to overcome that limit.
They did not challenge Pestilence, did not speak, did nothing so rash as the previous ranks of lordship. They knew, or thought they knew, why they had been summoned, and they did not want to risk their ultimate victory over anything so fleeting as a moment in the sun. Pestilence grinned at their arrival, lips splitting open, ichor oozing out to drip upon the ground, and discounted them.
As the chattering and roaring of the assembled hosts of Hell drew to a climax, the Shining Ones themselves arrived, cloaked and hooded, floating in midair, bodies shrouded and enrobed with the shadows they so coveted. They did not approach him, nor did they speak, or make any gesture of recognition. They simply hovered, watching, waiting. For some reason, dispite his newfound strength, despite the Diadem of Conquest burning upon his forehead, despite all logic of prophecy and might, he feared them and their needless silence.
About him, the confused cacaphony grew louder and louder, each errant spirit striving to outwit his brothers, sisters, and kin, screaming, bellowing, beating their chests and playing on drums carved out of giant's skulls. A few of them experimented with the method of crying out, summoning human spirits and tearing at their viscera until they erupted in musical screams of pain and terror. It grew louder still, pressing against the eardrums, forcing its way down into the deep pathways of the mind, the halls where the sacrosanct soul lies in its fat opulence, to resound forever in one's sleeping mind, the cry of absolute chaos, destruction, creation.
It stopped.
The black sky of Hell, ever-bright and flickering with the reflected flames of ten thousand pools of molten souls, darkened.
Pestilence turned, seeking angrily for the cause of this new disturbance, and, despite himself, gaped in astonishment.
Storms were common in Hell. They happened all the time, raging down with lightning and acid rain, burning and striking demons and lost souls alike in their unpredictable fury. Their clouds flashed with all the colors of a demented rainbow, black, orange, a dark, sickening purple, the white of a bleached skull. This was not one of those storms. It did not flash, did not rage, did not boil, did not burn with acid or pour forth molten lava, did not erupt with lightning. In fact, nothing precipitated from it at all. What it did, was loom.
The clouds were higher than Pestilence could see, completely enveloping the sky, the front stretching from horizon to horizon, a dark, deep black like the pit of a dead man's soul. It moved rapidly, eating up the land, covering all of the eternal flames with its dusken shadow. Challenging flames leapt up from the limitless ranks of demons, trying to tear apart the cloud, to burst it to the eight corners of the multiverse, trying to do anything at all against it. They struck the dark mass, and disappeared. The cloud rolled onward, drawing ever closer to where Pestilence hovered in midair. As it came, the ever-present heat vanished from the air. Goosebumps stood out against Pestilence's flesh, filled with pus, and burst in an instant, the pale yellow fluid flowing down off of his body to hit the ground, steaming.
This had gone far enough. He narrowed his eyes, the Diadem upon his forehead flashing angrily, and extended his Will.
It touched the edge of the clouds, and stopped dead. He could feel the barrier, feel how it was woven between the particles of cloud, each particle a soul, each soul a tormented sea of energy, clutching at every other in their panic and fear, binding their brethren to them in a desperately misplaced effort to find freedom. Instead of pulling themselves out of the darkness, every soul sank its own barbs into every other soul, and none of them could flee. Their screams and curses resounded throughout the Aetherial plane, growing louder and louder as they tore at each other. There were no demons tormenting these souls, only other souls, and mortals could be far more inventive than any demon.
In spite of himself, Pestilence swallowed nervously. The cloud was impressive, it was perfect, and it was utterly beyond the power of any demon upon the field below him. Perhaps it was above the power of all of them put together. It was a work of art, of pain in motion, unlike anything he had seen in all his aeons of existance, across infinite dimensions. The beauty of it was almost more than he could bear, so heart-rendingly simple, yet wickedly complex.
Closer, it came, closer, closer, until the whole world was a massive wall of cloud, of souls, of screaming faces and clawing fingers, tearing, rending, crying for release, even if oblibion was its twin.
A mouth opened in the dark mists, and swallowed him.
* "I'm worried about this, Jamiro." She pursed her full, red lips, hugging her red-caped shoulders black-gloved hands. "We can't run all the time."
A smile crossed her face as Jamiro's hands rested upon her back, his voice softly comforting. "I know, Rosa. I know. But we can't live like this forever. These riots, they've been going on for months now. How many of our friends have died in this damnable persecution?" A creaking of leather resounded in her ears as he shook his head. "We can't count on any help to come from the Inner Spheres. One of our days is a moment for them, a week for them could be a century or more for us. We must leave, before things get any worse."
She turned in his grip, hands coming up to grip his strong forearms. He pulled her close to his chest. "Damnit, I know! But... it just seems so stupid, to go on running like this forever... There has to be something else we can try, something else we can do."
Jamiro raised one of his hands to stroke her raven-dark hair. "We tried. All our friends tried." His voice broke, and she felt his tears upon the back of her head. "Jociera is lost. Damn Watson Taylor to all the nine hells, but our world is lost. We must move on." The hand crept down from her hair to clutch at her stomach, already swelling beneath her costume. "For the child's sake, if for nothing else."
Rosa sniffed loudly, fighting hard to keep back tears of her own. Her back shook with the effort.
He held her more tightly, if anything. "You were always the strongest of us, Rosa. Be strong now." He bent down so that they came cheek to cheek, his tears mingling with hers. "Be strong now."
She nodded, a small, broken movement. "Yes."
He nodded, his all-black nightsuit emblazoned with the crescent moon rippling as he gripped her tightly. "Now, do you have enough strength to take us to Khazan?"
"I-I think so."
* The interior of the cloud was dark as the pit Pestilence had just flown out of. The only light came from the Diadem, its muted, sickeningly brilliant radiance slicing hopelessly through the artificial night. Winds of agony sweapt him along, subtle shifts in the pain of the trapped souls propelling him inwards. He did not fight them. He knew who summoned him. There were few in the cosmos who would dare that, but this one had.
The further the wind drew him into the darkness, the colder it became, heat flowing out of his body into the air, where the prisoned souls lapped at it hungrily, sucking like beasts in labor at the momentary surge of energy. He did not care. Heat was of no use to him, anyway. The Diadem flashed, and Pestilence laughed as those few souls lucky enough to siphon away the heat of his body erupted in a brief, blinding flare of power, their subtle fabrics sagging and giving way as thousands of their fellows ripped at the stuff of their spirit, sending the fragile remnants of conscious spiralling away as the fibers of soul were torn concept from concept. Pestilence walked on. Their annihilation brought him nothing save for a little pleasure, but there were some appearances one had to keep up.
Abruptly, the wind died, and he was left in darkness, empty and freezing. In the realms of Light, it was well known that no temperature could ever descend to absolute zero, the point where all atoms and electrons ceased their motion completely. There was simply no place that the last minute bit of energy could escape to, no place lower that the energy could go.
This was Hell. There was always someplace lower to go.
Pestilence's body ceased moving. Diseases stopped infecting, skin haulted its decay, heart slowed and stopped, neurons paused in their firing. For the first moment in all his existance, he was absolutely and totally motionless. The darkness was so absolutely cold that he could no longer even feel the subtle prickling of quantum particles as they blinked in and out of existance in the depths of his body. There was nothing. There was a nothing that went beyond nothing, that made completely and terribly clear that there was, in fact, something out there, in the cold darkness, and that it was watching.
So, thought Pestilence in a medium that transcended thought, life, motion, the space-time continuum itself. His consciousness permeated itself through the universe, through the aether itself. No simple hurt of the body was enough to defeat him. The ones who summoned him knew this, and they knew that he knew that they knew. A test, then. In the moment beyond Time, Pestilence smiled. The Diadem flared, motion spreading out from his body, the notational particles of Hell beginning to move, at first slowly, then faster and faster, the movement spreading like an infection, catching from one particle to the next, each newly infected aether-atom moving faster than the one before, screaming out through the darkness at considerable fractions of the speed of light, heat building, building, although the darkness remained dark. He could feel the trapped souls fleeing in rage, dodging futilely to keep the particles from striking them, from melting their fabrics and fibrillating away their essence. Some rushed to embrace them, hoping only for oblivion, only to discover, to their horror, that the sloughed-off particles only made them move, shaking and shivering inside their spectral manacles, the barbed bindings of the other souls tearing and pulling all the more. A new note of terror touched the symphony of pain.
One corner of Pestilence's mouth twisted up in a half-smile, chilling as a newly-sharpened torturer's hook.
"Are you quite finished?"
A Voice echoed through the darkness. "Forgive us. It was one of the Tests. It was written."
He flexed his wings, more for effect than anything else. "I'm sorry if I harmed your artwork. That was not my intent."
"It was not harmed. You have even given Us a new idea, if one crudely executed. If this inducement to motion could rise from inside the mortals themselves...." The Voice laughed. "It is much more skillful to make them do it themselves. And, they are so willing."
"I see." Pestilence nodded. "You know who I am, then?"
"Yes." It was a plain response, simple, to the point, without argument or pretense. The Voice needed none.
"And what I must do?"
"Yes."
"You must reveal yourselves. It is part of the Rules."
"We understand." Seven flames flared, shattering the darkness.
Pestilence floated in the midst of a vast cavern composed of screaming soul-cloud, boiling with faces and tears. Before him, standing upon nothingness as easy as if it were a floor paved with human skulls, stood seven figures.
They were human, four men, three women, crafted with the perfection of an Inquisition torture chamber. The men's faces were simple, not particularly handsome, not particularly ugly. Their bodies were lean, muscular, though not particularly impressive. They dressed in simple, sensible styles, Armani suits and jackets, colors ranging all around the rainbow. One of them puffed sedately on a pipe that looked as if it had been plucked straight from Basil Rathsbone's mouth. The women were beautiful, yes, but not outlandishly so, figures that would suit a modeling career as well as a life in business. In any profession, they would have drawn looks for their above-average beauty, but no one in their right mind would have counted them amongst the most beautiful women in the world. Their stance was relaxed, reposed, without any particular hint of threat or deception, the simple, waiting stance that would be adopted by anyone who had been waiting for an exceptionally long time. One of the woman tapped her stiletto-heeled foot on the ground, plucked a cigarette on a long holder out of her mouth and flicked the ash down into the rolling cloud of souls. Their eyes.... their eyes were normal, eyes that would have not drawn a single comment on any planet in the multiverse.
Their utter normality terrified Pestilence more than anything he had ever seen or felt, more than the Pit, more than the Fall, more than the Wrath he had seen visited upon the darkness during the early moments of Creation. They needed nothing, no shapes of unearthly beauty, no spikes, no jagged swords or flapping wings to remind them of what they were, of who they were, of their power. Over the aeons, they had grown so secure in themselves, in their power, in their pride, that they had become... perfectly... normal. So normal that it was all he could do not to cringe, not to wait for the other shoe to drop. There was absolutely nothing about them that would have suggested to an observer, "We are the Maskim. We are the Seven Supreme Lords of Hell. We are the outcast children of the Universe, and we are about to reclaim our own." Nothing. Nothing. Simply contemplating it made Pestilence, diadem and all, want to turn tail and flee, return to the Pit, return to safety. He forced the urge down with a savage effort of Will.
At the apex of the small arc stood a man in an impeccably tailored Armani suit, features like the rest, handsome but not exceptional. He smiled. When he spoke, it was with the sound of ten thousand swarms of flies all buzzing in unison, the sound of corruption, of rot, of decay and horror. His skin flared into a brilliant, consuming fire, chiselled into darkly perfect features.
Beelzebub, at least, was willing to ease Pestilence's mind that much.
"Peszzzztilenzzzze."
"Lord."
"It isszzzzzz timeszzzzz."
Pestilence nodded. "Yes."
Beelzebub raised his hands, bringing them together with a clap so loud it would have shattered steel were they back in the realms of the living. The cloud parted, melting like a morning mist. They were high above the Plains of Hell, and below them, the Host was gathered, in its quintillions, Imps, Lesser and Greater Demons, the Noble Lords, all resplendant in their fineries of horror, all pale before the awesome normality of the Maskim. A wave of motion sweapt the plain, as every creature, soul, Demon, Imp, or former prisoner of the Pit, fell cowering to their knees.
Beelzebub extended one of his fingers. It trembled for an instant, and a spot of brilliance flared in the distance, just against the horizon.
"Let usszzzzzzzzzz go."
Pestilence turned, and began to walk. The Maskim came with him. The Hosts of Hell followed behind.
* In the SLJ skyscraper, a girl woke with a short scream, quickly cut short. She clutched her pillow tightly to her body, holding it for all it was worth, as if it was her last anchor to reality in the whole world. Beads of sweat stood out on her forehead, and her guileless eyes were wide open in sudden terror. She sat there for a long time, in the dark, hugging her pillow, knees clenched to her chest. She trembled, eyes searching the dark for a threat that she knew had to be there, somewhere.
Some minutes past, and she found the courage to rise and walk to her kitchinette, switching on the lights with one hand while the other groggily rubbed her eyes. She was small, barely five feet high, bright blonde hair cut close in little ringlets. Opening the refrigerator, she got out a carton of skim milk and poured herself a glass. It glistened dully in the darkness. Her purple and blue pajamas trailed across the cold tile floor.
The glass clinked musically as she lay it down upon the metal bottom of the sink, turned, and walked back to bed. A worried smile crossed her face as she snuggled beneath the covers, waiting for exhaustion to take hold, and terrified that it might.
Pajama Pockets was troubled by nightmares, and she had the feeling they were only going to get worse from here on out.