“The Other Side”

Chapter One

The Life and Death of Bert Green, Gorilla

Religion had never been a prime concern of the Gang of the Green Gorillas.

It was not that they were lacking in education or breadth of mind; but genetic abominations created by mad scientists don’t tend to spend a lot of time worrying about God.

This is quite understandable. To begin with, He didn’t create them; the scientist did. Additionally, they can’t help but suspect that if Somebody did in fact create the universe, They must have been a lot like the mad scientist. The penchant for dramatically-appropriate lightning is, they say, a bit of a giveaway. And, looking at the mad scientist, the abominations really don’t see what might be worth worshipping about the same sort of bloke, only bigger and more cosmic.

Agnostic though they were, the Green Gorillas did have a strong sense of guilt, of right and wrong, and even of faith and sin. Rightness was the faith that green was a natural colour for gorillas to be; wrongness was doubting this article of faith; sin was nurturing such doubts, or, worse, spreading them. Guilt was what you felt when you didn’t do enough of a good job proselytising the gospel of gorilla verdancy.

All of which was to say that Bert Green had long thought of himself as an extremely guilty and sinful Gorilla. This was because, although he had stuck by his fellow Green Gorillas since their escape from the laboratory of Professor Scarper at the First Horde H.Q., he had never really believed in the cause. He performed the assignments — but half-heartedly. He did not so much sing the anthems and the hymns — How Green Was My Gorilla, Green Be With You and all the rest — as he mouthed along vaguely, never having found it within himself to learn the words.

He wasn’t quite sure whether he felt guilty that he didn’t really believe, or guilty that he continued to pretend that he did; but of the guilt, he was certain. Bert was aware of his guilt, and had never lifted a viridescent digit to get rid of the feeling. In a strange way it made him feel better to know that he felt guilty. Whatever was wrong with him, at least he was conflicted about it; at least he had the decency to resent that part of him.

If he had known of the events that would proceed from this feeling of guilt on December the 26th, 2021, Prime Earth Time, it is quite likely he would have revised his psychological priorities quite starkly. Unfortunately, no one in the know had elected to warn him about the broken traffic light, or the produce truck.

Bert, like most Green Gorillas, had never obtained a driver’s license, so as he prepared to cross 1st Avenue in the Home City, he concerned himself chiefly with the pedestrian signal. It displayed a green humanoid figure. Bert found this pleasing, or, rather, felt keenly that he had ought to find this pleasing, if he’d been a better, more moral Gorilla. He stepped on.

At the same moment, Harvey Decker-Brawn, running late on an emergency cabbage delivery (for reasons as complex as they are irrelevant), looked at the traffic signal, and found a pleasing green orb. It reminded him of a head of cabbage, which, in turn, reminded him that he was in a hurry. He stepped on the accelerator.

The brain of Bert Green, shortly before ceasing to be recognisable as a brain, made a final executive decision for the benefit of the soul to which it had been playing host all these long, green years; which was to evict it at once. It needed room, anyway, to house the rush of incoming pain, and the frankly alarming onslaught of sudden panic.

Then —

The ghost of Bert Green watched from a few meters overhead.

It was a great and sudden convergence of green.

A terrible thought occurred to the recently-deceased Bert. It was this: that if he had been a better Gorilla, he really had ought to be more pleased with all this. This was undoubtedly the greenest demise a Green Gorilla could hope for; no doubt it would go down in Green Gorilla history as a hero’s death. He should have been proud. He should have been ecstatic. Instead his first coherent emotion had been annoyance that he now wouldn’t got to the candy shop on the other side of the road, the one that made such excellent cinnamon rolls.

(Cinnamon rolls! Why couldn’t it have been peppermints, or pistachio eclair?!)

And then, after that annoyance: the guilt. The crushing, hopeless sense of inadequacy. If this was his life, then he was truly a failure. He’d been offered the most amazing death in Gorilla history, and he’d bungled it by second-guessing it all the while; truly, his existence had peaked in those final moments, the glorious instant of collision before he’d started ruminating, and he had nowhere to go but down.

So, down he went.

And the further down he plunged, the more any sense that he might will himself to reverse course and hover in the opposite direction began to leave him. He fell, through the heat and the dark.

In a way, he liked the dark. No green here. Even on himself. He could just forget about everything that had weighed on him in life.

But that was a small comfort for the fact that he was hurtling down into the bowels of the earth, and without a corporeal body, at that. In truth he was quite scared by the time he landed — painlessly; he no longer had any bones to break — on a black, stony ground. He was lying on his belly, insofar as his ectoplasmic dream-self had a humanoid shape; when he looked up, everything was spinning. There were loud crashes in his ears, and fluid, translucent silhouettes running to and fro, and in the distance a great, formless green…

“Oh, no.”

The words escaped him as a low, rumbling whine.

They attracted the attention of one of the blurry, scampering figures, who halted and looked down at him, becoming more solid and distinct as she did so. Another ghost like him, it seemed; but not a Gorilla, green or otherwise. She was an old, human woman, scrawny as a stick, her skin wrinkly like a freshly-pressed lemon. She was clad in a simple white tunic, the sort of garment one might be buried in, in a poor or pre-modern society. This made it all the more curious that she had been running with such vigour; and that she was holding a sword.

“Ah. New arrival, are you?” she said.

Bert blinked. In the moment he’d understood perfectly, but then, as the rest of his mind caught up, he became acutely aware that the woman hadn’t been speaking English, or any other language he knew. But the meaning had come through anyway. Interesting. Could come in handy, he thought, vaguely.

“I. Uhm. Yeah, I guess so,” he stammered in response.

“You know you’re dead, yeah?” the old woman asked.

“Yeah.” He propped himself up on his knuckles and brought his knees up underneath him, assuming a more traditional stance for a gorilla, and looked around meaningfully. “I guess this is the Afterlife?”

“Well, it’s an Afterlife,” the old woman said. “Fraught subject. To be exact, this is the Underworld. Mh. Hell, if you prefer.”

“Are you a demon, then?”

“Oh, no,” the woman laughed ruefully. “I’m a damned soul, of course. Killed my husband. He ended up here too, mind you, though truth be told I just did it for the money, at the time.” She smiled at the memory, fondly, for a moment, then quirked an eyebrow at him. “What about you?”

“I, uhm, well, I wasn’t… I didn’t care enough about stuff being green, I guess,” he said. “The others always said it’d get me into trouble one day, but this is somethin’ else.”

“Green, eh?” the old woman raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” said Bert. “I mean, as you can see, I was a member of…”

— but as he gestured at himself, his gaze fell on his own hand. It was no longer green at all, but a translucent silver.

“…Huh. Never mind.” He blinked. He felt a very great weight had been lifted off his chest. “So how does this work, exactly? Do we have to report to be judged, or something?”

“Oh, no. I think perhaps it used to work like this, but who’s got the time? No judgment. No punishment either. Devils can’t afford it. They’re at war, you know.”

“They are? With who?” He scraped the ghost of his brain for what he knew of human theology, which wasn’t very much. “…Angels?”

“Hah! No.”

“The living?”

“I don’t bloody think so. ’be a short war… we outnumber the buggers.”

“Er… pagan deities, maybe?”

“Pagan what?” The old woman was laughing at him now, openly. “Now that’d be the day. I’d like to see how that works. You don’t know what they are, do you?”

Bert blinked. “The pagan deities, or the demons?”

“Never mind, I see you don’t,” said the woman. “No, no. The Other Side isn’t anything so simple as that. Truth be told, most of us on the ground don’t really know what they are. Invaders from another whatsits… Lords of…” She was growing impatient. She gestured at the swirling, glowing green haze in the distance. “Look, we’re fighting that. This green… stuff. And the creatures the Green Stuff brings.”

Bert, formerly Green, blinked rapidly. The corners of his mouth were twitching back and forth, not quite daring to break out into a grin.

“Fighting the Green, you say…” A chuckle burst out of him. “I think I could get used to this.”

The old woman quirked her head skeptically. “Huh. Well, just to be clear, we none of us get a choice in the matter. But good for you, lad. Good for you.”

She look a step back and whirled her golden blade in a complicated pattern, drawing a sigil in the air — the weapon blurred in her hand as she waved it — and when she stilled her arm, she was holding two identical swords. She took one in her other hand and handed it, guard first, to Bert.

“Alright then, Mr Patriot,” said the old woman. “No one’s keeping track of the paperwork, so I guess this puts you in the same division as me. Eighth legion under the command of Orobas. Got it?”

Bert nodded sharply, then hesitated. He timidly raised a hand.

“Er… who’s —”

“Orobas’s the horse-lady leading that charge, over there,” she explained, pointing towards a small crowd of ghosts and demons off in the distance who were running in the general direction of the green cloud. She stared at it dumbly for a moment. “Oh. I should have been over there, shouldn’t I? …Well, as I said. Who’s keeping track anymore.”

She gave him a wry smile.

“Welcome to the Legions of the Damned, lad. Try not to get eaten.”

*********

Chapter Two

How Rosen-035 Came To The Underworld, And What He Did There

It was cold, and it was dark.

Rosen-035 was floating through a formless darkness, and he, himself, was not feeling especially… formful… either.

He felt as though he had just jolted out of a deep slumber, and it took him a few moments to get his bearings — such as they were. The last thing he remembered was…

Ah.

He’d died.

A Rift had appeared in the middle of the Homeworld, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had stepped through, and Death himself had killed him. Not, Rosen was somehow pleased to note, without considerable effort, but he had managed it in the end, wearing down the Rifts expert’s copper body to crumbling rust.

He felt that he should be more distressed about all that than he actually was. He had not expected to die. Clockwork Cherubs only died very rarely, and certainly not of old age; it would be many centuries yet, before, supernatural interference from embodiments of entropy notwithstanding, Cupids started succumbing to sheer decay. And yet, he found that he did not regret his stolen decades as such.

He had, after all, been a creature of purpose: the Cupid Intelligence Institute’s expert on Interdimensional Rifts. And there were no more Rifts. None worth mentioning, at any rate. The Rifts Crisis which had given him his life’s purpose had been brought to an end with the fall of the Consistency Palatium and the destruction of Mandragora. Rosen had not had any close friends; neither had he any unfulfilled grudges; and he was no longer needed. Therefore, though he would not have chosen to die, he supposed there would have been worse times. And he had gone out as a direct consequence of investigating one last Rift; that was something.

There remained the matter of where he was now. It had been many years since Rosen had participated in the Halloween raids on the Spirit Realm using Frankenstein-818’s portal, but he was fairly certain this was not the Spirit Realm, unless it looked drastically different to the dead than it did to mortal visitors. If nothing else, the Spirit Realm was meant to be full of ghosts and spirits and drifting souls; the suffocating emptiness wasn’t on, not at all.

It was then that Rosen realised that he was not alone.

It was a presence he felt behind him; it was not seeing or hearing or even smelling, for he couldn’t do any of these things. He simply knew, suddenly, that there was another soul behind him, following him. It was also only with this newfound point of reference that Rosen realised he’d been moving, all along.

“Ah… hello,” he said, experimentally.

“Oh, no,” answered the voice of the other dead soul — aged, posh, a little gravelly. “Not you again.”

“I’m sorry, have we met?” Rosen asked.

“We most certainly have,” it replied. “I failed to kill you not an hour ago, as you’ll recall.”

Suddenly, Rosen did remember.

But — that didn’t make sense, it didn’t make any sense at all.

The voice fit, though. It was the same voice. He could picture the man with the fungus-like, bluish skin, dressed in his unimpressive toga, riding his white horse: it was not an image you forgot easily. But weren’t the Horsemen themselves supposed to be…

“Immortal?” Pestilence finished wryly. The late Horseman had evidently heard his train of thought. Rosen needed to get a better grip of how these soul-to-soul conversations worked, he decided. “That is a question of point of view. Certainly we never aged, nor did we need food or rest. And nothing in our world save for the Almighty himself could have slain us. Outside the context of our original Cosmos, though… it has become evident that we were not so invulnerable. I was slain by a Cherub… not one of you metal mockeries, an actual Cherub, though not one of my world’s Host. It seems that it was… tricked… somehow into viewing me as an aspect of its Adversary.”

Rosen would have narrowed his eyes, if he’d still had any.

“Well, with no offence, sir, it wasn’t too far off, was it? You’re… Pestilence. An enemy to all living things.”

“I was,” the spirit corrected. “I’m afraid I’m not really anything anymore.”

“Fair point,” granted Rosen. “Any idea where we’re going?”

“…To be entirely frank, I was rather hoping you did,” he answered guiltily. “I’ve been following you. Your soul was still within reach of my senses when I was, myself, robbed of my physical form, and I am… rather new to this whole notion of being dead. But perhaps I assumed too much. I supposed that your people… you… ‘Copper-Colored Cupids’… must have a religion of some sort, an afterlife you call your own. So, I made my mind up to follow you until we emerged some place a little more physical, and there I could get my bearings, evaluate my options…”

“Oh, we do have religion of a sort,” said Rosen.

Then he cut himself off. The Crew, as per the Creator’s commands, worshipped the Great Goddess Aphrodite above all else. He was not sure it would be polite to mention that fact to Pestilence, who struck Rosen as being some stripe of Biblical entity.

Ah, wait. What with the free-range telepathy — the Horseman had just heard all that, hadn’t he?

“I’m afraid so,” said Pestilence, his words coming to Rosen with the impression of a wry, slightly condescending smile, though neither of them had regained actual physical features. “Well, I see now that your Crew didn’t really plan for these sorts of contingencies… You did not see yourselves as mortals, did you? A common mistake. Mh. Let us see… your Cupid Homeworld, it was a pocket which grew out of a greater, self-sufficient cosmos — was it not?”

“Why, yes,” Rosen answered proudly; this, at least, was within his realm of expertise. “The Prime Universe. Which is of course, itself, not so much a single universe as an overlapping vortex of possible realities interlocking with each other… infinite pasts and future superimposed over a shifting present. Very tricky. Sturdy, too — which is why the Rifts never really had a chance of threatening it on a truly structural level, unlike, for example, the brittler 2017 Continuum —”

“Yes, yes, I see,” Pestilence interrupted. “This will do. Well now, Cupid — it may be that you never worshipped the Chtonian ones yourselves, but you were, to some degree, servants of the old Greek religion, as it must have existed in your… Prime Universe. Therefore, if any place will take you, it must be Hades’s domain. Yes… my friend — I may call you my friend, yes?”

“Well, you did try to kill me…” Rosen began, but found that he didn’t really bear a grudge even for that. He had simply felt like that was the thing to do. “Oh, very well. I suppose we are companions in adversity, as things stand.”

“Excellent. Then, my friend… it is to the Underworld that we must go.”

*********

Ask any schoolchild on a Prime-adjacent Earth how to get into the Greek Underworld, and they will answer that one needs to cross the River Styx on Charon’s boat. This is (almost) true, but elides the matter of how one is supposed to get to the banks of the River Styx in the first place. In the old days, when the whole mythological flowchart was still running, this was what Psychopomps were for. It has been many centuries since then, and nowadays the relevant Gods have rather lost track of who is dying where.

To name but one, let us consider the late history of winged Hermes, fickle Hermes, fleet-footed Hermes. Hermes, God of Messengers, being curious about the new sorts of pathways the mortals had drawn to communicate with each other, walked into a perfectly ordinary New York office computer in March of 2006, in an effort to really get a grasp of this ‘Internet’ thing. No one has heard from him since. His Olympian relatives can only hope that he is well, wherever and whatever he is now.

(Indeed, one must imagine him happy, for he now enjoys over 330 million worshippers.)

Suffices to say, however, that Hermes was in no position to notice two lost souls lost somewhere in the never-spaces, especially souls that were never exactly human, or even exactly mortal. Thus did the erstwhile Rosen and Pestilence make their own way to the Gates of Hades. They chose against the traditional scenic route through the Land of the Cimmerians, and elected instead to head to Rome itself on the Prime Earth, for Rosen knew of a mysterious pool in the Roman Forum which was said to be a gateway to the Underworld. It was known as the Lacus Curtius. He had researched the matter on the suspicion that the bottom of the pool might contain a misidentified Inter-Dimensional Rift, and been, at the time, rather put out by the discovery that it was in fact an actual gateway to the Underworld.

To Rosen’s relief, once they had a location in mind, the problem of orienting themselves through the infinite darkness solved itself. It was as though Rosen’s very memory of the Lacus Curtius became tangible around them, first in outlines, then fully visible. Soon they found themselves standing there in earnest, in spectral approximations of their old shapes.

Tourists were bustling about, and, to Rosen’s dismay, a few walked through Pestilence and himself without a care in the world.

“Ah,” Rosen remarked. “I suppose this is how haunting works from the inside.”

“It is a lucky thing you had personal experience with this place,” Pestilence answered conversationally as they made their way through the crowded plaza. “If I understand this world’s rules correctly, you could not have manifested anywhere foreign to you.”

Rosen adjusted his monocle mechanically, even though it was as ghostly as himself and had no meaningful effect on his sight. “Really?” he said. “But — how does that work? I mean, I’m here now. And I can walk. So… couldn’t I wander off into Rome — beyond the areas I explored in life? Perhaps even find a Fog Ship and make my way back to the Homeworld? Perhaps they could rebuild me a body.”

“I’m afraid that last thing would be against the rules,” Pestilence answered. “My brother Death would be livid.”

“Isn’t he already the Pale Rider?”

“…A fair point,” Pestilence replied with what sounded like a repressed chuckle. “Ah, but it is not my brother you would be meeting anyway, not quite. I’m sure this world has a Grim Reaper of its own.”

“Quite,” Rosen said distractedly.

They had made their way to the Lacus Curtius itself — not a lake in truth, anymore. Merely a low stone structure in the middle of a small vacant lot, crumbled walls and archways and pavement attempting and failing to seal a black cavity. Only a small opening into the chasm remained, but it would have been enough for any corporeal Clockwork Cherubs; the fact that, in their current states, Pestilence and Rosen could both phase through rock with ease only made things handier still.

Carefully, one after the other, they eased themselves through the opening, as if preparing to go down a slide.

It was not much like a slide at all.

They fell very quickly, feeling hot and cold in rapid turns (which was a shock to them, as they hadn’t really felt anything since shuffling off their mortal coils). All around them was blackness, but not the absolute, inky void of their earlier limbo state; there were cave walls all around them, they knew, though zipping past too fast to be seen clearly even if there had been a steady source of life.

After what seemed like an eternity, they hit the bottom.

Souls have very little in the way of mass, and therefore, land softly, in silence.

There was some light in this new place, and Pestilence and Rosen found that they could now see each other; they were blueish, translucent outlines of their former selves, a bit wispy around the edges, wobbling like reflections in a quiet river. The two ghosts were standing side by side on the black sand of an underground riverbank, inside a great cavern. Across the dark waters of the Acheron river, they knew, was the dry land of the Underworld, the domain of Hades and Persephone — their destination. However, they could not see it; the Acheron’s waters seemed to stretch infinitely far into the depths of the vast cavern.

Rosen looked at Pestilence quizzically.

“So, ahem…” he asked, hesitating. “Do we… swim? Fly?”

“No!” the former Horseman answered, his voice urgent. “No, certainly not. If this world is anything like mine, the Rivers of Hell… I do apologise: the Rivers of the Underworld — well, call them what you like, they are… dangerous. I would say treacherous, but in fact they are quite honest in their brutality. There is only one safe way to cross them; a ghost daring the river any other way will be pulled under and be trapped in the waters of the Styx forever.”

“Ah. …I’m sorry, did you say the Styx? But — I thought this was the Acheron?”

“I think it is, yes,” Pestilence explained, “but all the Rivers flow into the Styx, and the River Styx itself coils, spiral-like, as it circles the centre of the Underworld, forming the Marshes of Styx.”

“I see,” said Rosen, who rather wished he had a notebook on him, and a physical body with which to write in it. His memory would only go so far. “But — wait. Is it not said that the River Phlegethon is a river of fire? And the waters of the River Lethe confer amnesia onto all those who drink them, don’t they? I… hm.”

He paused. Something about the name Lethe seemed oddly familiar. He tried for a moment to tease out the sliver of memory — but he couldn’t place it, and he shrugged to himself, deciding that it only made sense the River of Forgetfulness would spark diffuse dejà vu in a man.

“What is your actual point?” Pestilence asked, impatience showing in his voice.

“Well — this business of all the rivers merging into the Styx — I mean, how would that work? Wouldn’t Phlegethon’s fires be extinguished as soon as they came into contact with the actual water of the other four? And — if the waters of Lethe feed the Styx, why is Lethe the one singled out to have those magical properties of forgetfulness, when, logically, the Styx should have them too? This doesn’t make any sense!”

“I suppose it doesn’t,” Pestilence said, in a weary voice, after pausing to think. “Such things, such people… My kind of people, really — we fared rather better, I think, before your kind of people started quibbling about whether we made sense.”

Rosen couldn’t argue with that.

*********

Chapter Three

The Boating Trip

That is to say: he very much would have liked to argue with it, but he did not get the opportunity, for before he could answer, the two ghosts heard a distant shout. They turned back towards the inky River of Death and glimpsed, on the distant horizon, the small shape of a narrow skiff. A figure in a ragged red cloak stood at the prow, leaning on a gnarled pole the colour of bone.

“Else my ears have rotted, I hear voices! Hail, lost souls!” the voice shouted. “Be you seeking passage to the Land of Hades?”

“Yes!” Rosen shouted ecstatically, jumping up and down and gesturing in an effort to make himself more visible to the boatman. “Yes, that’s it exactly! Over here, over here, please!”

“Hmm. Charon,” Pestilence said, seeming more reserved.

“Yes, I can see that!” Rosen told him.

“No doubt,” the Horseman replied. “He looks rather different from the one I used to know… That one was a demon, you see. Greenish, burly, claw-footed. He had very large ears — we always used to make fun of him for those. Whereas this is…”

He trailed off.

“The Greek one,” Rosen completed. “The original.”

(Pestilence seemed a little upset by that comment.)

With the ease of a man who’d been plying his trade since before the invention of handwriting, Charon, Ferryman of Hades, punted his skiff across the Acheron to their riverbank at a speed greater than Rosen would have expected for such a withered creature. The closer he got, the more clearly he and Pestilence could see Charon himself — he was thin and knobbly; not quite skeletal, but looking as though he was more sinew than muscle. His skin was gray and hung loosely on his limbs, matching his long, unkempt gray beard and hair. What could be seen of his face behind the aforementioned beard and hair was more skull than flesh, but his amber eyes burned with life, glowing faintly in the darkness of the cavern.

Charon seemed just as happy to see them as they were to see him.

Skillfully, he aligned his skiff with an oblong black stone, slightly longer than the ship, which jutted out of the black sands of the riverbank a few dozen paces away from where Rosen and Pestilence stood. This, they now realised, was Charon’s wharf — though it looked for all the world like a natural, un-carved rock.

“I hailed you from the distance as soon as I hear your calls,” Charon said in a please, even a jolly voice; “but it is now I see you and meet you properly, so again I say to you: hello and well-met!”

“H-How do you do?” Rosen answered timidly, feeling rather taken aback.

“Greetings, boatman,” Pestilence said; the words came more easily, but his expression was guarded.

“Ah, poor souls, forgive my good cheer,” Charon laughed. “Aye, I know, since you are here, that the both of you have just suffered a very great loss. But that is the lot of all those I meet, given my profession; and nice it is, aye, very nice, to see new faces at long last. Nice to see the old ways are remembered — if only by a few.”

“One, today,” Pestilence corrected, his tone business-like and detached. “This… creature with me, who calls himself Rosen. I am afraid I am no worshipper of the Olympians. But I find myself rather at a loss, and with my fate being bound to the Clockwork Cherub’s, this place seemed as good a destination as any. I do request passage with him — but I do not believe I shall linger in this realm on, as it were, a permanent basis.”

Charon’s eyes lost a little of their fire as he followed Pestilence’s explanation; but, after a moment’s thought he regained his mirth.

“All the better, friend, all the better! For this means I shall meet you twice; a rare pleasure. And as scarce as true believers have become, rarer still, in this day and age, are those without true faith who still think of the domain of Hades as the place they may as well go if they must go anywhere. Aye, tis settled — nothing you tell me will spoil my good mood now.”

Pestilence looked pointedly away, sneering.

Rosen decided he’d better say something.

“Well, I’m very honoured that my presence has made you happy, Lord Charon,” he told the boatman. “Uhm. May we cross, now?”

Charon nodded, still smiling, and held out a gnarled hand, palm up, grasping fingers out-stretched.

Rosen stared at it dumbly for a short moment; then he remembered and whimpered.

“…………ooh.” He gulped. “I’m… I’m afraid — neither of us precisely got a burial. We don’t actually have an obol to pay for our passage.”

“Oh dear,” said Charon, suddenly looking very concerned. He ran his fingers through his knotted beard, muttering almost inaudibly. “Oh dear. Oh dear, dear dear. What’ll I do now — the rules — but it’d be a crying shame —”

“We really would have taken them if we’d had the time to prepare, as it were,” Rosen pleaded. “Perhaps… perhaps I could write you an I.O.U., payable on my behalf by the Cupid Intelligence Institute’s Supreme Quaestor?”

Charon continued rubbing his beard nervously.

“I would, you know, I really would… Believe me, it’s not lightly I turn away my first true customers in months…” he apologised, “but, by the Styx, I do have my self-respect to maintain! Many ghosts have suggested this sort of arrangement over the millennia, as you’d guess… And I always did my duty and turned them away and made them wait nine-and-ninety winters in silence on the river-banks, afore I let them cross, as is good and proper. I won’t have it said that I’m forgetting the old ways!”

“Yes, I suppose I see your problem,” said Rosen, doing his best to sound a lot more level and sympathetic than he felt. “See you then, I suppose.”

He walked off despondently, in short, half-hearted strides.

It did not make sense, he told himself, that he should be so distressed about waiting a hundred years by a river; after all, due to the peculiar circumstances of his death, had he not spent thousands of years shaking Death’s hand? That experience, while far from pleasant, hadn’t driven him mad or anything so dramatic. A hundred years ought to mean nothing to him, much as they evidently did to Pestilence, who had already wandered off to lie down, further away from the shore.

He was afraid, all the same. Of the solitude and the waiting. And also, of the knowledge that, unlike during his accelerated aging at the hands of the Grim Reaper, the world would be going on without him as he waited; untold change might befall the surface world or even the Cupid Homeworld, and he would be blind to it all, stuck in this damp antechamber. Souls who earned their place inside the Underworld proper were said to have ways of observing events in the mortal world. And Rosen was curious.

Also, regardless of his curiosity, he did enjoy music, or even a good audiobook. Ninety-nine years of silence?

Music —

Oh, say now.

A pleasantly relevant memory had just made itself known.

“Lord Charon!” he called, turning around to run back towards the Acheron. “Lord Charon! Wait!”

Looking no happier than Rosen about the way things had been turning out, Charon had barely begun to push his skiff away from the riverbank; he halted his progress at once.

“If you’ll consider…” Rosen said breathlessly. “I’m sorry, in advance, if I’m offending you — but if you’ll consider, er, a face-saving solution, of sorts, I think I have an idea, a very traditional idea.”

“Oh? I’m listening,” Charon said.

“I’ve read,” the Cupid explained, “that you once allowed Orpheus, still living, to cross the Acheron without a fee, because he sang tunes so charming that you forgot yourself and could not deny him. Is this true?”

“Aye, that is the truth,” the Ferryman answered, his voice trembling with reminiscence. “Calliope’s boy, for certain, I remember him. Such a pretty lad he was, and his playing, his singing! Oh, would that y’could have heard it, poor ghost, and that day he came to us it was grandest of all. He was singing with grief — aye, and all of us in the Underworld know Grief like an old friend. Oizys herself, my noble sister, better than most. And yet that day, she cried, my lad, and so did I, and so did the River Styx herself. And aye, I let him cross, there and back again.”

Rosen nodded silently, letting the old man tell his tale in his way. He had read all of this before; it was him who’d brought it up, after all. But to hear it spoken of by someone who’d been there was something else entirely, and he could see how much the memory meant to the boatman.

Charon wiped a tear from the corner of his eye, sniffing, and, having regained his composure, looked down at Rosen with an odd expression.

“Oh… but that was in another age,” he said, “and he was the son of a Muse. I mean no offence, lad, but it does not strike me that you have it in you to move me quite so much as that, however sad your tale or pretty your chirping.”

“Perhaps not,” Rosen granted. “However — what if that was what we said? Let us across, and you may tell whoever asks that we charmed you with song as Orpheus once did. Nothing more traditional, more honourable than that.”

The old god’s eyes of flame narrowed in thought.

“Mmh,” he huffed. “That, perhaps, I could do. Perhaps. But trust would be called for, in such a case… I’d have to trust you as I’ve trusted few beings, mortal or immortal. For you could tell the true tale to every shade and daemon in Hades, and make Charon Death-Brother a liar!”

“My Lord! I would never…!”

“I hope so, my lad, I hope so,” he replied, “but hope’s not good enough. I must have insurance. So, I’ll take your deal, but I’ll add a condition. Afore you cross, both of you must swear upon the Styx herself that you will never breathe a word of the arrangement; nor discuss it between yourselves, for you could be overheard; or commit it to paper, because diaries may be found out and testaments unsealed. Complete secrecy, upon the Styx, or else, on my soul, you shall wait out your nine and ninety years.”

Rosen nodded sharply.

He raised one hand solemnly, and placed the other one in the middle of his chest — where his Gemstone Heart would have been, if he was still corporeal.

“I, Cupid-0035, known as Rosen, do swear, upon the Styx, that I shall not reveal to any soul living or dead, nor allow through carelessness for any such person to discover, the means by which Pestilence and I crossed the Acheron without paying the Ferryman his obol,” he intoned.

Regaining a natural posture, he looked up hopefully at Charon:

“Will this do?”

“Aye, lad, this’ll do fine,” Charon replied, very pleased. “Ah, what a day. A song of Orpheus this is not, but it had also been too long since I’d witnessed a true oath on the Styx. Much too long.” His eyes narrowed, however, as he glanced past Rosen at the ghost of Pestilence, who appeared to be sleeping. “Oh, but he must swear, too. Or everything’s off.”

With a hum of agreement, Rosen went to rouse the ghostly Horseman from his slumber.

“Has it been a century already?” he asked in puzzlement.

“Ah, no, just a few minutes,” Rosen answered, “but I’ve negotiated a way for us to cross today, if you’ll only swear on the Styx never to reveal what it is.”

Pestilence blinked at him testily. He still seemed a little bleary-eyed, though it was hard to tell, given how decayed and wrinkly his face always appeared.

“Well, I can’t very well reveal it,” he said, rolling his eyes, “seeing how I don’t know it. I was asleep when you worked out… whatever it is. Or did you not notice?”

“That’s true,” said Rosen. He craned his head to look at Charon in askance.

Charon frowned.

“He could be tricking!” the boatman shouted from aboard the skiff. “He could be tricking. Maybe he wasn’t asleep at all. Maybe he’s thinking of blackmailing old Charon. I’m not risking that shame! Make him swear. Make him swear anyway!”

Rosen turned back to Pestilence.

“Well, you heard the man,” he apologised.

“I should be offended,” Pestilence said thinly, in the fashion of a man who is, in fact, offended. “But very well. There have been enough delays, and this ridiculous oath costs me nothing.” He coughed — only for effect, of course, given that he no longer had an actual throat. “I do hereby swear on the River Styx not to reveal whatever it is that the Cherub Rosen-035 just promised not to reveal either.” He glared. “There. Now let us cross this damned river.”

“Oh, no, sir,” said Charon. “Easy mistake to make, but: it’s River of the Damned, actually.”

*********

Chapter Four

Infernal Traffic

Charon’s boat progressed more slowly across the Acheron with Rosen and Pestilence than it had seemed to move from the outside. Rosen, who had, as recently recalled, a certain amount of experience with time dilation, suspected that it actually was longer in the boat than out. In a certain sense it had to be something like that, or else how had Charon been able to serve all the dead of Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, back in the “good old days”? If waiting was the punishment of those without an obol to present, it didn’t make sense to imagine that paying customers would be made to line up in a queue, and wait for months, for their turn.

The journey across the Acheron drew on, and Charon made conversation with his clients. First he asked where Rosen had sprang from: it transpired that he had never seen another Clockwork Cherubs.

Rosen was surprised by that revelation: he had not been the first Cupid to die since the founding of the Crew, though they had been few and far between. Mailbag-431, Governor-105… Those four or five Cupids in the Department of Alchemy who had gone up with their laboratory, leading to the banishment of Mandragora-257… Mandragora-257 himself, for that matter.

Well, Rosen supposed that those forerunners of his in the mortality department hadn’t taken the Crew’s religion as seriously as he did. And yet, he had never thought that he was taking it very seriously at all.

So, Rosen told him of the Crew and its Homeworld, and said what he could about the Creator and the Great Goddess, though speaking of either to a stranger at any length did not come naturally to him.

They went on. Rosen talked, Charon listened and punted, and Pestilence loomed silently, standing at the back of the skiff, facing away from the other two. He was, of course, listening as well, but he was damned if he was going to give Rosen the satisfaction of knowing it.

“Well, I’m glad to know there are still magick, faerie-lands and adventures in the topside world,” Charon said, eventually; “but what of you, yourself, lad? What of your life? And your death. You never actually told me how you came to be here in the company of that… character, Pestilence.”

Rosen glanced over to the blue-skinned ghost, wondering if this would spike his attention enough to say something… Probably something hard and scathing. But Pestilence just continued looming, so he turned round again to face the boatman.

“Oh, it’s quite a story, and to be quite frank, I played only a very small part in it,” Rosen answered bashfully. “For obvious reasons, I’m not even sure how it ended, though I have faith that the world was saved in the end. It usually is. Suffices to say that my curiosity as a scientist got the better of me at last.”

“Aye, that’s a common story. What was it, then? Volcano erupting?”

“No… no, I was… I suppose you might say that I was murdered,” Rosen said hesitantly. “Although that feels somehow like an odd way to say it. You see, I was killed prematurely by Death himself.”

Charon’s eyebrows rose. “Death? The Death? With the…” Using his free hand, he cupped his lower chin, hiding most of his beard and therefore making his bony face appear even more skull-like than usual, “…and the…” With a bony finger, he mimicked the curve of a blade, appending it to his bargeman’s pole to give a fleeting image of a scythe. “That Death?”

“Yes indeed,” said Rosen. “Although he didn’t use his scythe. He simply shook my hand.”

“Aye, he can do that, too,” Charon said, thoughtful. “But you surprise me all the same. My brother doesn’t usually get involved in events like this… Our sisters, the Fates — well, Thanatos has always been on good terms with them… Events permitting, he performs his duty as Atropos wills, no more, no less.”

“Oh! Oh, I see the confusion,” Rosen clarified, “but it was not the Death you are familiar with. It was… another Death.”

“Another Death?” Charon was dubious. “No… No, I don’t think so. Gods of the Dead, now that, of course, there are many. But Deaths… They’re all him, give or take. Of course, Samiel’s lot know him as Maweth, or as Azrael, and to the North they call him Tuoni, or Ruohtta… Oh, a hundred other names I can’t keep straight. But if he’s Death and he’s bones, it’s him alright.”

“Yes, I understand,” said Rosen, wishing once again that he had a notebook on him. “But your brother, in all his names and aspects, is only the Death of this cosmos. There are other worlds, you must know that much, a being as old as you.”

Charon tilted his gray head in what might have been a subtle nod, or, just as easily, might just have been guarded surprise. Rosen couldn’t quite tell. He went on.

“Well, these worlds have Deaths of their own… Similar, yet distinct from the one you know. The Death of one of these other cosmoses was called to the Cupid Homeworld by a madman, a criminal among our own kind, using black magic. He wanted that Death and his three brothers to destroy our home. Given that one of these four brothers is sitting with us in this boat, it is safe to say that all did not go as planned. But, Death did manage to get me, if no one else.”

“Mmh. Other Deaths who aren’t Death, but look like him.” Charon seemed to be turning the words over in his mind. “Ach, I’m sorry, lad, it’s just not making sense to me, not quite. I’ll get around to it. You say, though, that your travelling companion there, with all his haughty looks, is the brother of that other Death?”

At last, Pestilence himself deigned answer, cutting off Rosen who’d begun a reply.

“Yes, I have that honour, boat-man,” he said. Snootily.

“Aye!” said Charon, grinning. “Well, I say Death is Death and my brother is my brother; so if you are his brother, then you are mine, also, blue and dead as you are.”

“I am nothing of the sort, you… you drunken paganistic atavism!”

“Excellent, excellent!” Charon laughed. Rosen was sure that he would have clapped, had his hands not been otherwise occupied with the punt. “Ne’er too late to get started on some good old sibling rivalry. So you’re Disease, are you, brother?”

“I am Pestilence.”

“Right, right. Oh, ’should have known when first I looked at you that you were family,” Charon continued. “You have that look to you. Seat you next to Geras and paint him blue, you couldn’t tell which was which… Ah, but wait until I tell the others about this.”

On and on he went as the dark waters of the Acheron stretched out all around the skiff. The journey went on for some hours still; which felt much shorter than that to the laughing Rosen, and very much longer to Pestilence.

*********

After an unimaginable amount of never-time, Charon’s skiff finally hit the other side of the Acheron. It produced a loud ‘clunk’ — which noise jolted Rosen from the kind of torpor into which he had let himself slip, rocked to sleep by Charon’s patter as if by a lullaby.

“Ah, hello again,” he said, blinking. “Interesting. I didn’t know souls could sleep.”

“Well, sleep isn’t precisely the word, sir,” Charon said; “not the word in use, no. Usually, people say rest.”

“Oh yes,” Rosen realised. “In peace. I… never realised it was so literal.”

“It’s curtesy is all, being very honest with you,” Charon remarked. “He’s our brother too — Sleep, that is. Hypnos. Mine, but also Death’s — and gods don’t like to mess with each other’s domain. It makes things awkward at family dinners. So the agreement is that the dead don’t sleep; they rest. Really though, sir, it’s the same thing.”

“What about you?” Rosen asked curiously. “You and this Thanatos, both Psychopomps… Aren’t there problems?”

“Oh, no, sir,” Charon laughed. “You see, I’m not officially a God. That is, that’s what I am; I am a god by birthright, by nature. But I’m not a God by profession — not a God of anything. We thought it was better that way. I am a god who so happens to work as a ferryman, and I so happen to be a ferryman to the dead. Not an officially-licensed Psychopomp, no sir.”

Rosen made a mental note to submit a report about all of this to the Department of Redundancy back in the Homeworld; they’d surely be fascinated.

He then scratched the note immediately. He wasn’t going back to the Homeworld.

Before they parted ways with the boatman, Pestilence surprised Rosen immensely by actually asking Charon one last question about his brother — albeit with a lip curled in disgust at what he was letting himself come to. The question inquired as to where in the Underworld the Grim Reaper actually lived.

Naturally, this caused Charon to burst into undignified, gravelly laughter again.

“Brother Pestilence, thank you, it has been many centuries since anyone last walked into that joke head-first…” he said before blurting out, breathlessly, like a child trying out his first swear-word: “My brother Thanatos cannot really be said to live anywhere!” He then started whooping and cackling again.

Pestilence’s ghost stood, stoic, as Charon exhausted his supply of boisterous laughter at his own joke. Only when the laughs became longer and breathier, more like contented, tired sighs, did he raise a meaningful eyebrow.

“…As to the facts, brother,” Charon said in a more casual tone, “his abode is many leagues from here, at the peak of Mount Mortiferi, on the banks of Phlegeton — not far from the gates of Tartarus.”

“How… scenic,” Pestilence said dryly.

“Well, he likes to keep out of the way,” Charon explained. “It is not that he has anything serious to fear, of course… nor are they right to hold it all against him personally; but inevitably, as you might well expect, well, a great number of dead people do bear a grudge against Death.”

*********

“We are most definitely not going to Mount Mortiferi.”

Leaving Charon behind, Rosen and Pestilence had been walking for a little while, side by side, through the dark, rocky plain that constituted the outskirts of the Underworld. Thus far they had been walking in silence. The thought, however, had been bothering Rosen since they’d parted ways with the boatman, and he felt he had to clarify where he stood to his companion.

“And why not?”

“Well, it sounds like the most dreadful place,” Rosen said, shuddering. “And I have no desire to see Death again in any form. Not for a long time yet. Why would you want to go, anyway?”

“Why would I tell you?”

Rosen let a few moments pass — a few silent footsteps in the black sand, that left no prints. He already knew what to answer. Rosen was good with people; but people rarely tended to be good to him. This was why he primarily devoted himself to the study of Rifts, which didn’t usually care what you said about them. (With a few, notable exceptions.)

“Because… I’m here,” Rosen finally blurted out. “Because I’m the only person you have to talk to, and you’re used to having someone to talk to. You’ve been one of four for as long as you’ve existed. You don’t do well with solitude.”

Pestilence halted in his tracks. He froze — then whirled to the side to glare wrathfully at the ghostly Clockwork Cherub.

“How dare you! Kindly refrain from plumbing the depths of my soul. I think you’ll find that I don’t have one.”

“Well, it’s certainly not your body I’m talking to,” Rosen pointed out, raising an eyebrow.

“Why you!… I… Brhm.” Pestilence shook himself like a wet dog and, turning away from Rosen, began to walk forward once again, stiff and brisk. “Let us say,” he explained, “that I am an… echo. An imprint. And in point of fact this isn’t supposed to happen. I am not mortal.”

“Indeed not. You’re dead.”

“And that was never supposed to happen,” the ex-Horseman growled. “Which is precisely why we are going to see Thanatos at Mount Mortiferi. The Boatman may be a sentimental fool, but he is right that there is a certain kinship between all versions of my brother Death. Their Nature, their Duty, unites them. The Death I know would not stand for this nonsense of my being deceased, and I am sure that if I explain the situation to him, this Thanatos can be persuaded to sort things out.”

“I thought you said there were rules against this sort of thing,” Rosen pointed out.

Pestilence snorted, but this time did not slow his pace.

“For people such as you,” he complained. “But my demise itself was against the rules. It was a clerical error. I am sure it will be sorted out. I am an instrument of God, not some… dirt-grown mortal.”

“Now listen here,” Rosen said, his voice prim and confident. “I’ve had it up with your holier-than-thou attitudes. You may have been older and more powerful than me back when we both had physical forms, but as of today, we are in the same boat. In fact, not half an hour ago, we were literally in the same boat. And after all, we of the Crew were also created, not born, and with the same purpose of being the instruments of a deity.”

“Wh — that is completely different.”

“Oh yes? How?”

“You’re — you’re machines! Golems at best. You don’t embody anything. As for your so-called ‘goddess’ — she was nothing at all like my Creator, I assure you. A petty hedge-witch, a daemon putting on airs. Fallible and limited. Hardly worthy of comparison with a God such as He who created myself and my brothers.”

“Surely all gods are limited, to one extent or another,” Rosen argued. “I know the sort of god you mean — but even such beings are not the largest scale of infinity. They are as infinite as the universes they create, but that is just a drop in the scope of the Multiverse. The Embodiments of the Void have, if anything, a greater claim to being on a higher level of divinity than them — and might I remind you that the Lord Thymon has a job with us. So who outranks who, really?”

Pestilence drew in a long, imaginary breath, no doubt preparing a theological rebuttal of the impassioned, first-person sort that only a celestial being can offer. However, Rosen was most unjustly robbed of the opportunity to enjoy it by a series of earthquakes.

Earthquakes proved to be a very distracting experience for a ghost: since they had no weight or mass, and only stood upon the ground because they still subconscious felt as though they ought to be bound by the force of gravity, the shaking ground phased a few millimetres through the bottom halves of their feet — until they looked down, realised something wasn’t right, and suddenly found themselves standing properly on the ground again.

All of this momentarily distracted Rose and Pestilence from the more important question, namely the origin of the series of tremors. The question did not remain open for very long, however, as a fantastically large dog bounded into view. All dogs tend to look large to Clockwork Cherubs, who average at two-and-a-half feet in height, and Pestilence had once had a good relationship with the six-foot-three humanoid wolf known as the apocalyptic embodiment of War; but this hound, who shook the ground every time his paws touched the ground of the cavern, dwarfed them all. He was house-sized, with fur was black as night, and muscular at that.

In fact the sheer effect of his shadow looming over you, of hearing his breath that was like the sound of an industrial furnace, was such that it was a wonder any of the old accounts had bothered to notice that he also had three heads.

The Second Head of Cerberus emitted a sound which was no doubt intended as a harmless, inquisitive yip, but which, for fairly obvious reason, sounded more like

WOOF

than anything else.

Struck by a question, as he sometimes was, Rosen craned his neck, trying to figure out if Cerberus wore a single collar around his massive shoulder blades, or if each head had a different collar. He wasn’t sure, but it seemed to him, after due observation, that the three-headed hell-hound was not in fact wearing any collars at all, which was a bit concerning.

It became more concerning still when the mountain of canine flesh lowered itself towards them, Cerberus’s forelegs bending like uprooted oaks as the Third Head bent itself down and sniffed them. The inrush of wind had no noticeable effect on the two ghosts, insubstantial as they were, though Rosen also observed that the nose, which was the size of a small motorcar, was quite wet. That was supposed to be a good thing — wasn’t it?

Well, a good thing for the dog, at any rate.

Not so much for anyone the healthy, happy dog might feel like nibbling on.

“Ahem… Pestilence?” Rosen asked cautiously, not taking his eyes off the inquisitive Third Head. “Just in case, I don’t suppose you know any, oh, convenient magic words to…?…”

“I am not a common conjurer, construct.”

“Ah. Truth be told, I thought you might say that. But couldn’t hurt to ask…”

Asking didn’t hurt.

Surprisingly enough, neither did the First Head of Cerberus, having wordlessly compared notes with his two counterparts, snatching Rosen and Pestilence up in his jaws.

It happened very abruptly and very quickly. Rosen had no experience being eaten by giant dogs, of course, but at a guess, he would have thought that it would feel more unpleasant. At the very least, he would have expected to feel like something. Which just went to show that he had yet to truly internalise the fact that he should no longer expect to “feel” “things”, because he no longer had a body. The point was, however, that it took him a minute to realise what had happened. One moment he was exchanging dismayed observations with the Ghost of Pestilence; the next, the both of them were in a dark, warm, wet, enclosed space.

The space lurched periodically, like a rocking boat, in time with the muffled, titanic thumps of house-sized paws hitting the cavern floor.

“…Oh dear,” Rosen said once his shock abated. “Pestilence, old chap, be frank — did what I’m very much afraid just happened… just happen?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Pestilence with a wry smile.

Despite the darkness, Rosen and Pestilence could see one another clearly; they were now ghosts, fully materialised ghosts, and ghosts glow. Very faintly — nothing to read in bed with — but it was sufficient to make out each other’s outlines and facial expressions when plunged in otherwise total darkness.

“But I wouldn’t worry. This is what Cerberus was made for. Transporting damned souls to and fro. Usually, of course, it was a matter of dragging back those who would try to escape the Underworld… Unwillingly, you understand. But the process is essentially harmless. To a ghost. Call it an infernal game of fetch.”

“Oh, I see,” Rosen said, a little reassured. He pondered Pestilence’s words for a few moments, then spoke again: “Made, you say? I thought Cerberus was spawned. By Echidna.”

“Oh yes. Yes, I suppose he was,” Pestilence said. He frowned. “In this world. In mine, Lucifer himself forged him. He was shaped from a… Forgive me. I can’t find quite the right word? A figment, an εἶδος, of Ravenous Hunger. Actually, the Prince’s original design for Cerberus was that he would torture the gluttons in the Third Circle. But he was too nice, and the gluttons kept trying to eat him, so we found him the simpler function I described… which is, it seems, also the duty of this Cerberus.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” said Rosen, wishing yet again that he had a notebook on him.

He was going to have to look into ectoplasmic objects before long. Or — some ghosts could manipulate normal, physical objects, couldn’t they? What was the word for that —

No. Not a productive train of thought. He needed focus.

“So where’s he taking us now, would you say? It can’t be ‘back into the Underworld’, we’re already there.”

“Towards his Master, I suppose. As to who that is, in this confounded world of yours, I cannot say for sure. We shall see.”

*********

Chapter Five

Lucifer

After yet another undefinable amount of time, Rosen and Pestilence were spat out again by Cerberus. After the two ghosts gathered themselves on the stony ground, Rosen looked round, struck by a vague feeling of wrongness. The Third Head of Cerberus was licking its chops, emitting sounds that a less informed observer might have attributed to a nearby rockslide.

Rosen blinked.

He was fairly sure this was not the same Head as the one that had snatched them at the start of their unlikely journey.

He had no time to consider this hypothesis more deeply, however, or dwell on its implications; before long Cerberus bounded away, tail wagging. And besides, the spectacle of what Cerberus had dropped them in front of was no less distracting, and far more pressing.

They were near standing the banks of a river of flames, at the first steps of a small winding staircase leading up to a kind of high-vaulted, round kiosk of black stone, built on an outcropping of volcanic rock, overlooking the flowing red fire.

“I remember this place,” said Pestilence. “Well, I almost remember. I think someone very important must be waiting for us up there, Rosen. Don’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” Rosen replied, although he felt there was an implication he wasn’t getting. “Well, it’d be dreadfully impolite not to show when they’ve gone to all this trouble to get us here, I’m sure.”

They began to climb the steps. Halfway up, Rosen admitted:

“And I am rather curious.”

Pestilence smiled.

The small temple did not contain any furniture or decoration, although its floor was tiled in gold and black in patterns that seemed too asymmetrical to be purely geometrical, but too random to be intended as figurative, however stylised. Rosen supposed it might be some sort of writing system. He would have to make a report about this, ask the Department of Runes for their input…

Ah. Never mind.

Besides, there was, once again, immediate business to be getting on with.

Obscuring parts of a squiggly golden rune on the black floor were a pair of cloven hooves.

Rosen looked up, slowly, until his eyes met a pair of piercing amber ones, looking down at him from ten feet above the ground.

“Hello, Rosen,” said the Devil.

“H-w-glb-mln-,” Rosen gibbered.

He felt his ghostly copper wings batting furiously back and forth like windscreen wipers. He tried to still them — this was all in his head, dammit! He didn’t even have wings anymore! — with little success.

Pestilence pushed him aside to face the Devil. The Horseman was, to his visible irritation, significantly shorter than the lanky demon, especially if you counted the horns. Nevertheless, Pestilence pushed down his personal misgivings and raised a palm, staring into the Devil’s eyes without blinking.

“Hail and well met, Lucifer,” he said gravely.

“It was not you whom I was addressing, elemental,” the Devil said curtly, not returning the gesture. “It is the Cherub who has my attention. You are not of my world; do not presume on your familiarity with my alternate in your dimension. And besides, I have always found your incarnation in this Prime Universe to be unconscionably tedious.”

“I beg your pardon!?”

“Then you beg in vain,” Lucifer said, the corner of his lips curling. “Have you perhaps forgotten who you are addressing? I expected a better grasp of theology from you, of all people.”

“Lord Lucifer!” Pestilence fumed. “It is true, I am not the Pestilence of this dimension, and you are not the same Prince of Darkness I’ve known for all these millennia. But surely, that fact itself should mark out my presence in your domain as a far more momentous event than the arrival of this… this meek little paper-pusher who has insisted on following me!?”

“Should it? I’ve already met one of you,” Lucifer explained with a smile. “On the other hand, though I have known many Cherubs in my time, none were anything like you, Rosen.”

“He’s only a construct —”

“So were they all,” Lucifer cut him off. “Enough from you, now. Leave us. I wish to have a conversation with this… fascinating creature. And I do have business to attend to.”

“I really must protest —”

The demon frowned. He snapped his clawed fingers —

— and Pestilence’s ghost, yanked backwards by an invisible force, found himself hurled out of the kiosk and down the stairs before he could offer any further righteous indignation.

“So irritating,” said Lucifer. “That man makes me sick.”

He snorted at his own joke before his curious amber eyes settled on Rosen.

They had no pupils or irises; they were just windows of hellfire glowing from within the Devil’s eye-sockets, offset by his dark blue skin. His leathery wings were folded behind his back, and his muscular arms were left bare by the crimson Roman-style toga he was wearing. With this, the horns, the hooves, the neatly-trimmed pointed beard and mustache, he should have looked utterly ridiculous, like an infernal variation of Conquest. At the very least, he should have looked a little camp.

Somehow, Rosen, cowering under the fiery gaze, felt as though Lucifer was the most real thing he had ever seen. It was the same feeling he got when looking into Rifts sometimes — not just any Rifts, not even just any large ones, but those that opened up into worlds that were more than the Cupid Homeworld. Worlds with more depth, more dimensions, more magic. Now, it hurt a little, looking at him.

He wondered if the Devil was always like this, or if he only felt like that because he was an incorporeal ghost now. This was the sort of thing his Dimensional Monocle had been good for.

“I think I’m starting to see the appeal of haunting,” he reflected.

The Devil quirked an eyebrow, amused. Ah. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud, actually.

“Oh, I-I-I’m terribly sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to spurn your… hospitality…”

“Think nothing of it, my dear little thing,” he replied. “I approve of people saying what they mean. Or taking what they want. Of people asking questions.”

Rosen bit his lip.

“Come on now, Cherub,” the great demon said, bending down. “Speak up. I can plainly see you have some burning questions. Just let it all out.” He smiled, bearing sharp fangs. “I don’t bite. Much.”

“I — I —”

“And when you’re done, I shall have some questions of my own,” he added. “And some things to show you. News from your home. Hm…”

He lifted a forearm, and Rosen feared for a moment that he was about to strike him, until he noticed that, rather incongruously, the Devil was checking his wristwatch, a rather expensive Swiss model.

“Oh, dear,” he added, mildly. “So little time. Would you indulge me? I have a meeting in Pandæmonium City Hall at three hell’s-bells, and I really can’t be late. Might we talk on the way?”

“I… if… if that’s convenient?” Rosen stammered.

“Wonderful,” said the Devil, who then proceeded to pick him up in his strong midnight-blue arms, spread his wings, and take flight.

*********

As forms of transportation went, Rosen tried to tell himself that it probably beat the stomach of a giant hellhound, but at least the inside of Cerberus had been dark — he and Pestilence may have felt the lurching, but they hadn’t had to see the ground rushing under them, such a long, long way down. He tried briefly to commit the layout of rivers, bogs, crags, castles and citadels to memory — perhaps he might draw a map of this place someday? They couldn’t be common. But it was all going too fast, and despite his complete lack of actual internal mechanisms to be upset, he was beginning to remember how to feel nauseous.

He did take note of a particular pool of glowing green slime, not because it was especially large, but because the land all around it was visibly void of any constructions, any infernal plant life, any souls dead or demonic. Specifically, he made a firm note not to go anywhere near it.

“You had some questions for me, then?” Lucifer asked, in the casual tone of someone not flying incredibly fast through the ‘sky’ of a supernatural underground realm.

“I — er — yes,” Rosen admitted, keeping his eyes shut tightly, focusing on the conversation as a lifeline to sanity. “Firstly, please don’t take offence, er, sir, but, after our encounter with Charon, I, ah, rather expected the master of this Underworld to be — well — not you.”

“Pluto?” Lucifer guessed, seeming amused at the suggestion.

“Er, quite,” said Rosen. “Hades, Dis — whatever you want to call him. The, er, Greco-Roman… one.”

“And what am I, pray tell?” Lucifer chuckled. “Japanese, perhaps?”

Rosen was stumped by the question. He’d never really studied theology beyond the history of Aphrodite. He knew the mortals of the Prime Universe had many other religions, legends and mythologies; that although many seemed incompatible with one another, most of them, in this dimension at least, were somehow true. But he had never made a study of the details.

“I don’t know… uhm… sort of… Israelite? Maybe?”

“Little fool,” the Devil said, with great fondness. “All will become clear, in time. But to answer your question… This is Pluto’s Underworld. Hades. Call it what you like. But he has not run it himself in a very long time. He was the God of Wealth, you know, as much as the Afterlife, in the old days; he ran the Underworld only so long as Charon’s obols turned him a profit. After that, he found another source of income to fuel his and his wife’s rather expensive tastes.”

“His wife? You mean —”

“Rosen, I —” Lucifer cut him off, “— I find it preferable not to say her name without due cause,” he said.

Rosen gulped. Just for a moment, the Devil had sounded… wary. The moment passed.

“The truth is that we… rented Hell. Just a section of it, at first; just Tartarus. Then somewhere in the first millennium A.D., we extended the lease to cover more or less the entire World Below.”

“More or less?” Rosen asked.

“Well, Hel — the Lady Hel, that is — has kept sole watch over a tiny fraction of the land. Just for appearances’ sake, you know, and to keep her father out of my satanic clutches. A few others, from the other pantheons, followed suit for their own reasons, or their own pride. None of them really matter. Here is what you will find more relevant… only Pluto has authority on those who come here based on a belief that they should end up in the Greek Underworld, as opposed to those who end up here because they believe they ought to end up in Hell. Rare as the case has become. Those people, people like you — we cannot touch, not without their consent, of course.”

“You speak of belief — is that really how it works? The dead just go where they think they ought to go?”

“It’s how you got here, isn’t it?”

Rosen blinked.

This made him briefly see the rushing magma lakes below, in which he could just make out the forms of a lot of naked people of various species, who did not seem to be especially enjoying themselves.

He shut his eyes firmly again.

“Well — yes, because I wanted to,” Rosen argued hesitantly, “or rather it seemed like the thing to do. But what about, er, damnation? If there’s no great cosmic judgment forcing them down, why would so many people choose to be damned? I’m sure there are some, tormented by guilt, who do believe they deserve punishment — but surely not that many…!”

“What makes you think we have that many people down here?” Lucifer chuckled. “You’re quite right, it’s only, oh, a few percents of deaths. Fewer every century. But it does add up, if you count in millennia — which we do. Still, your calculus is right; there is a very real problem of damned-soul scarcity here in Hell. We hit Peak Soul some centuries ago, and it’s been declining ever since. Why do you think our demons are always so keen to tempt just one more person to the darkness, or to trick people into selling their soul to us?”

“Actually, that’s another question of mine,” Rosen interjected. “If it’s all belief and self-determination, how can any of you own other people’s souls?”

“Because they let us!” Lucifer laughed. “You said it yourself: self-determination. These are people who signed contracts. And they meant it, too. It was, to them, the most important decision they made in their short, pathetic little lives, however much they might regret it. They are certain that the contracts are meaningful and binding. And once they drop, it does not ever, ever occur to them that they could possibly go anywhere but down.”

Rosen was too stunned for words.

“Of course,” Lucifer murmured, “do keep in mind, I am the Prince of Lies. There is a possibility that none of what I said has been true; a chance that this is not how any of this works.”

“…what?”

“Or perhaps that was the lie. You decide.”

Rosen felt an urge to kick the great demon, although a keen awareness that Lucifer’s grip was all that was keeping him from dropping down into some unknown part of Hell, whose denizens were unlikely to be friendly, stayed his leg.

“Any further questions?”

“Yes, actually,” replied Rosen. “Just where are we going? And why do you keep saying ‘we’ instead of ‘I’? Is it because you’re the King of Hell? But I’m sure I heard you say ‘me’ earlier…”

“Ah, but that’s just it,” Lucifer said, a hint of bitterness in his voice. “I am not the King uncontested. I am, as I said, but a tenant — and my title is Prince. One of seven. Seven Archdemons… Devils… Enemies… Satans. Take your pick. We never formally agreed on terminology. In truth, we like to pretend, when we’re all off conducting our own affairs, that there’s no such thing as the arrangement, no such thing as the Infernal Council.”

“But there’s a meeting today,” said Rosen.

“Yes,” the Devil assured him. “And you, my Cherub friend, couldn’t have died at a better time. Look — we’re nearly there”

Rosen, daring to look down only in brief flashes before he shot his eyes again, began to see a huge, golden, fractured spiral rushing towards them. It took him several glimpses to realise that these were the concentric circles of Pandæmonium, Capital of Hell, the city of demons. Its walls were made of gold, not because the demons liked it that way or wanted to show off (although they did), but because alchemically pure gold was the only substance that would not corrode quickly in the presence of so many demons, malevolent ghosts, and general dark sorcery.

In the centre of Pandæmonium was a castle carved out of black onyx, whose tallest tower loomed higher than any other place in Hell, save for the peak of Mount Mortiferi. On the top floor of this tower was a single small window, for which Lucifer, not slowing down one bit, made a beeline.

Rosen cringed — but no collision occurred. The Devil had been practicing this every month for thousands of years, after all — and even before taking that into account, clumsiness was not usually counted among his vices and assorted unpleasant qualities, numerous as they were.

He touched the smooth floor smoothly, landing on his hooves, and set Rosen down surprisingly gently. Without fully breaking his momentum, Lucifer walked onwards on his feet, his bat wings gracefully folding themselves behind his back.

“Welcome to the Tower of Dis, Rosen,” he said.

*********

Chapter Six

The War Council

Rosen took in his new surroundings. The dark, circular room was huge; the tower was obviously far larger in diameter than his glimpse of it from afar had allowed him to suspect. There was a round table, also carved out of black stone, in the middle of the room, its surface covered with parchments, charts, and various trinkets. Seven ornate thrones were gathered around the table; all but one were occupied.

The Six out of Seven looked up from the documents they had been poring over, and rose from their seats in greeting to Lucifer.

“Comrades in misfortune,” Lucifer said as he sat down in his own throne, a mahogany chair of simple design and imposing proportions, “I’m deeply sorry for my tardiness. I was delayed tracking down Rosen here.”

Numerous eyes narrowed in suspicion or skepticism. The demons seated on the other side of the table from where Rosen was standing craned their necks, unable to see the quite short, ghostly Clockwork Cherub opposite them. Lucifer made a complicated hand gesture, and suddenly, a tall golden stool perfectly proportioned for a Mark 1 Clockwork Cherub appeared at the right of Lucifer’s throne. Rosen hesitated — Lucifer raised an eyebrow and made a beckoning motion. Gingerly, the Cupid climbed onto the stool and took in the six leering, immortal faces inspecting him.

“As Rosen is our guest, and here on my behalf, it is only proper I perform the introductions… This is Rosen-035. A Cherub.”

Several of the demon lords began to say various things — but Lucifer shushed them with a gesture.

“Yes, yes, I know… He doesn’t look the part. Worry not, all will be explained. Suffice it to say that though our fascinating guest is a Cherub, he is not a member of Samiel’s Heavenly Host. As for you, Rosen… In addition to myself, may I introduce…”

In his arch Kavalierbariton voice, Lucifer rolled off many complicated names and titles, each of the six wicked heads nodding in false modesty as they were named.

Around the table, starting from Lucifer’s right — which was, at the moment, Rosen’s own right — were the seats reserved for the Lords Plutus, Belphegor, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Belial, and Stolas.

Plutus — the retired deity Rosen knew better as Pluto or Hades — cut a grave figure. His long fingers were steepled together, and lines of worry creased the ashen skin of his forehead. Rosen could see a definite family resemblance with Charon, including in the eyes; though they did not glow as brightly as the Boatman’s, Hades’s eyes shone with a rare intensity. Another interesting fact: alone among the infernal lords gathered here, his dress sense seemed to follow modern customs. Well — modern was relative; Rosen suspected his well-tailored gray three-piece suit, while undoubtedly expensive, might have been a few decades out of date. That mattered little, however, when compared to the robes, togas and capes on display among the other Devils.

To Plutus’s right, should have been Belphegor. However, as Beelzebub helpfully explained with a sardonic smile, Belphegor was the Archdemon of Sloth and took that job to heart, meaning he rarely showed up in person, preferring to delegate the work to emissaries. Today, the emissary was a certain Marquis Shax. Shax, all eyes and wings and shadows, was a frightening sight in his own right, but Rosen could tell, despite his best attempts to stand his ground relative to the six Devils, that he was dealing with a being of (comparatively) lesser power. Something about his aura. Or, perhaps, the disdainful glances the six true Devils kept sneaking him.

Beelzebub, for his part, looked the part of a Devil to a tee, in all the opposite ways to Lucifer; he was not the noble, stoic, terrifying Angel of Night, but a bipedal goat with crimson fur, his body draped in a long green cloak with a high collar. Even though he was sitting down, his right hand was still clutching a black trident, transferring some of his body weight onto the object as he leaned towards the table. There was a cunning gleam in his yellow, but non-glowing, eyes; something ironic, even. He seemed perpetually on the verge of breaking out into an evil cackle, or at least a very pointed sarcastic chuckle.

Asmodeus made the duo of himself and Beelzebub look almost comical; he, too, seemed a badder, broader kind of Devil than Lucifer, a pantomime Devil, but where Beelzebub was melodramatic poise and sardonic wit, Asmodeus was all muscle. He was a hulking giant, making even his throne, which had clearly been built for him, large as it could be, look small. He had dark red skin, a beastly face contorted into a perpetual snarl and covered with stubble, and a pair of black bat wings which (unlike Lucifer’s) looked like they could not possibly support his actual weight. He was a demon visibly built for anger, for wrath, which made it very surreal that he appeared, at the moment, perfectly calm and composed.

Belial, who sat to Asmodeus’s left, was the devilishly handsome seducer; he was… perfect, an idealised human form with unblemished skin, angelic wings covered in radiant white feathers, and plentiful blond curls cascading on his shoulders. As far as Rosen could tell, he had foregone clothing entirely, although it was hard to focus one’s eyes on him for too long without getting dizzy, for he emitted a blinding glow, bright as sunlight. Only the slightly proud curl of his lips, a certain jaded shadow in his azure-blue eyes, and the lack of a golden halo above his head reminded the careful observer that this particular angel was in fact Fallen.

Finally, Stolas, rounding off the table by sitting at Lucifer’s left, was an owl.

A barn owl, with unusually long legs, wearing a golden crown that just barely didn’t fit.

Rosen supposed there was a story there, but he didn’t dare to ask.

“My friends,” Lucifer said once the introductions were done, “I have brought Rosen before us because —”

“Wait,” Asmodeus interrupted him.

The other Devil frowned. “What is it?”

“You’ve been… away, Lucifer,” Beelzebub said carefully. “On important errands, we’re sure. But. I think we six all agree with Az to say you need to focus on the big picture first, before you start going on about whatever scheme this is. There’s a war on, you know.”

“…Yes, I’m aware,” Lucifer said, cold. “That is in fact why —”

“Well, my point is… look, the Other Side doesn’t quietly stop advancing because you wander off to the Fringe Realms, you know,” the goat-like demon explained. “Neither do our allies, and the other parties. You need to hear what’s happened.”

“Wait — but what about him?” Shax interrupted, pointing at Rosen with a finger that was really a feather made of shadow. “Should we really let a wretched creature like that listen in on our war-talk?”

“Why, Marquis Shax,” Belial said with a smirk, “if you want to put forward a motion to exclude all non-Devils from this meeting room, I, for one, would be quite interested —”

The swirling, shifting pillars of shadow and bird-like features that was Shax shifted in shock, shadow-feathers poking out like scythe-blades, as he shouted:

“That is completely different! We are talking about a damned soul —”

“Actually,” said a calm, assertive voice, “I think you’ll find that this spirit is my guest. Not any of yours. He is under my protection.”

Plutus, oldest of the Devils, once called Hades, looked around the table. The other six demons had frozen in their own bickering to consider his words — but they did not seem as cowed as Plutus had obviously hoped they would be.

The retired God rolled his eyes and added:

“…and under that of my Wife.”

That seemed to cow Belial properly. He gave a deep nod of submission, eyes closed, conceding the point regarding Rosen’s presence. Following his lead, Asmodeus, Stolas and Shax also nodded their reluctant agreement.

“Thank you,” Beelzebub shouted irritably. “Why is there always something with you lot? We need to stop playing politics, because the Other Side aren’t playing that game, let me tell you.”

The spindly Devil snapped his fingers, and a shimmering map of the Underworld appeared above the circular table, rotating slowly on its axis to allow everyone around the table to get a good look at it.

Rosen considered it with wide eyes. The green vortex he had noticed during the fly-over was highlighted, appearing bright green even on the diagram, while other geographical features of the World Below were in duller colours — a dark, muddy red for Hell, and various shades of gray for the peripheral areas. Cross-hatching in that same emerald colour seemed to cover a wide area of Hell, overlaid onto the native crimson, with small arrows at points of interest. Unfortunately, Rosen couldn’t make out the meaning of the writing — the strange, spiky letters simply didn’t resolve into any language he’d been programmed to know.

“As you can see,” Beelzebub commented, pointing at the expanding green blot with his trident, “the Portal’s area of influence has grown by several acres since last week. General Orobas has committed eleven of her legions to containing the enemy forces…”

Lucifer raised an eyebrow. “Has she? But I thought she lost —”

“Eight already, yes, in the Battle of the Asphodels,” Stolas confirmed bitterly. “If she loses those eleven as well, she’ll have just one left.”

“A demon lord without any legions? What a disgrace that would be…” Belial observed, giving a pointed glance to Shax.

Rosen was beginning to see why the seating arrangement saw Belial and the Representative of Belphegor seated as far from each other as possible.

Lucifer set his hands down on the table, in the matter of an orator about to give a speech. “Orobas’s loyalty will not go unrewarded,” he said. “With this council’s approval, I would see her raised to the rank of Duke, with or without legions.”

Several heads nodded, although they did so without much in the way of enthusiasm. Stolas failed to nod, possibly because owl necks weren’t built that way, but he did hoot.

“Good,” Lucifer said. “With this done… No matter how fearsome the wraiths deployed by the Other Side, I’m sure eleven legions, especially with a capable tactician such as Duke Orobas to lead them, will be more than able to push them back before long. Why are you all acting as though these events are more than routine?”

“Because…” Beelzebub hesitated, blurting out the words in a quick mutter, as if afraid of their power. “Because they have prisms.”

Rosen’s attention perked up. He knew quite a lot about prisms with unusual properties. Perhaps he might finally have something to contribute to this conversation. Yes, the present company were terrifying and temperamental, but setting aside all the fangs and glowing eyes, this was really not very much different from sessions at the Cupid Parliament. He almost felt in his element again.

“Prisms?” Lucifer blinked, rattled. “You mean —”

“Yes,” Asmodeus groaned. “For every demon soldier slain, or damn near every, they capture its soul in a prism, and take it back with them to that… that place they call home. Not just a few, not just the weak, all of them. If those eleven legions fall, then they’re not just downgraded from demons to damned… they’re lost to us for good. We can’t get’em back, we can’t recorporate them later, we can’t even sell them away. Net loss. And they bolster the Other Side’s numbers… not that they need the help, really.”

“Prisms. Prisms,” Lucifer roared in frustration. “Now who taught them to make that? Well, there is little knowledge beyond their reach — but the ability to create ones that work in this universe? In the heart of our domain?”

“I’m… I’m afraid I might know the answer to that one,” Rosen said, managing to make his voice remarkably steady in the substances.

Lucifer turned to him slowly, clear not having expected his exhibit to speak up while the grown-ups were talking.

“Oh, do you? Then please, do enlighten us, little fake,” snorted Asmodeus.

“It’s… it’s only a hunch,” said Rosen. “A guess. But… this prismatic business — it sounds alchemical, doesn’t it? When I was in the Department of Alchemy, a long time ago… in the Cupid Homeworld… we did some theoretical work on containment prisms. I always had a hunch they could be used to contain, oh, all sorts of dangerous energies… Which turned out to be right, not that I got the credit. But others in the Department were looking into trapping spirits in prisms. We never got beyond the prototype…”

“Gee-e-e-eet to the point, kid,” Beelzebub bleated.

“Well, after the whole Consistency Imperium thing came to an end, I gathered a lot of reports on how exactly it went down. And one of the things I learned… I didn’t pay attention at the time, but I do have a way of remembering details… one of the things I learned was that Mandragora-257, my old Prefect himself, the very man who’d created that prototype Prism trapping the Ancient Spirit of Gnollt — was alive. And that he had, em, contacts in the Spirit Realm. Other Side. Whatever you want to call it. He made some kind of deal with those… otherworldly powers. Something good enough that they agreed to give him a new body. I can’t help but wonder…”

Rosen trailed off, and saw that Lucifer was grinning, exposing a number of pointed white teeth. The other Devils now looked preoccupied, grave; the look of the politician forced to admit something that he would much rather wasn’t true, or at least not known to the press.

“You see, now, Lords?” said the victorious Lucifer. “Did I not do right to bring this strange Cherub before the Council?”

“Yes, well, fat lot of good it does us,” Beelzebub blustered, “knowing where the prisms came from. The point is that they have’em.”

“Don’t be foolish, now,” tutted Lucifer. “Rosen told us: he worked himself on the development of these devices. Is that not so?”

“Yes,” Rosen answered uneasily.

“So, it stands to reason, does it not, that he should be able to help us develop ways to counteract their effects. Perhaps even reverse their polarity, to use them against the forces of the Other Side! Do you not see the possibilities?”

“Ingenious. But only if,” Plutus stressed, ”Rosen agrees to work for us. He is your guest. Not your subject.”

“Oh, I’ll—I’ll help,” said Rosen, hesitating. “Really, it’s what I do. I… can’t imagine not helping. And besides, it’s something to do… right?”

“What a delightfully selfless worldview,” Belial said with a charming smile. “So you indeed believe you could find some way to blunt the enemy’s advantage, little thing?”

“Er, yes, I do believe… if I could have access to a sample Prism, at any rate; even a broken one — yes, I might be able to come to interesting conclusions. Er, useful ones.”

He paused, keenly aware of all the leering eyes on him. Not just seven pairs of them, either — but many more than that, counting all of Shax’s.

“Er, I do have something to ask, though, if you don’t mind, Lord Lucifer?” he said when he realised he still had the floor.

“Name it,” said the Devil with an arch, regal smile.

“Oh, it’s not a request,” the Cupid clarified. “Merely a question. It seems that my… usefulness… regarding the Prisms is not something you could have foreseen without coming here. So. I would quite like to know what it is you thought I’d be useful for…”

Lucifer tiled his great horned head slightly to the right, one eyebrow raised. It seemed that he was not especially pleased to have to answer this question now, but considered it ‘fair enough’ under the circumstances, and intended to oblige.

Before he could do so, Rosen was struck with an inspiration and hurried to add:

“There’s something else — a request of sorts. Though it’s something you offered already.”

“Yes?”

“The Homeworld,” said Rosen. “Er, my Homeworld, the Cupid Homeworld. I’d like to know if… if they’re alright. If Conquest’s Apocalypse was stopped.”

The Devil smiled.

“Ah yes,” he said. “Yes, I do believe the two questions are more closely linked than you imagine…”

*********

Chapter Seven

Larrikin-1029’s Bestest Day, Out Of His Entire Life

Year-round, Larrikin-1029 carefully maintained a large stack of coal, somewhere out-of-the-way in the Nether-Clouds. There was not much room in the Clockwork Cherub’s excitable mind for long-term projects, but coal was fun enough to play with that he found the resolve to stockpile it, lump by lump, stolen from the furnaces of the Great Foundries, for months on end, all the while dreaming of that glorious Christmas Eve where he would disguise himself as Madame Tarsa, abscond with all the presents, and distribute lumps of coal to everyone who’d been mean to him that year.

It was such a great plan that that Larrikin had already prepared the script for a cartoon adaptation, and sold the rights to the Department of Entertainment. He did hope they’d hold off on producing it until he could actually carry it out for real, though, or it might weaken the originality of the joke.

What he had not counted on was on the coal hill gaining a permanent resident.

There he was, quietly flying down from the Great Foundries, bringing a new burlap-sackful of coat like a stork transporting a swaddled baby — when he spotted movement in his coal hill. He zoomed down with increased speed, but could only catch a briefglimpse of the short, winged figure before it buried itself underground again — like a whale that had briefly come up for air.

“Hey! Who’re you!” he shouted as he made his landing on the cloud that supported the coal.

“Sneernobiel is not here,” a muffled voice shouted.

“Okay, buddy, that’s good,” nodded Larrikin.

(Sneernobiel the Self-Righteous was a very sanctimonious kind of not-quite-person, and Larrikin preferred to keep the angel away from his personal endeavours.)

“Not sure how that’s relevant though,” the Cupid continued. “Listen, I don’t want no trouble with you, whoever y’are. If you’re havin’fun in my coal, that’s fine by me, s’long as you don’t take it home with you. Or tell the Parliament ’bout this place. But I’d like to know who… ya know, just who you are. Okay?”

There were a few empty moments, and then a curious crumbling sound coming from within the hill of coal. Finally, a head dug its way out.

Larrikin’s eyes widened. It was not a Cupid’s head at all, unless they’d unveiled a new Mark while Larrikin wasn’t looking. The intruder’s skin was blood-red and decidedly not metallic; it had big, glowing yellow eyes with slitted pupils; it had thick black eyebrows that matched its long, unkempt dark hair; and — most curious of all — it had a pair of curving, crimson horns jutting out of the latter.

*********

“…That’s a demon,” Rosen observed.

There was no denying the images that Lucifer was projecting above the stone table, where the map had previously been. It was now functioning like a screen, albeit green-tinged and slightly translucent, broadcasting images directly from the Cupid Homeworld. Of course, the Devil could probably create convincing illusions if he wanted, but if he believed that, Rosen might as soon start believing he was a human comatose in a hospital. Which he probably was, somewhere out there in the Multiverse. In that case, Rosen hoped the human him’s dream would soon become more pleasant, and start making a bit more sense.

“Why yes, it is a Demon,” Lucifer nodded, smiling wryly.

“But… what… how did it get to the Homeworld? When I saw the Clouds intact, Larrikin going about his business, I assumed Conquest’s Apocalypse had been stopped… that the Rift had been closed…”

“Oh, they were,” the Devil replied. “This particular creature has been in your Homeworld for far longer a time. You see, it isn’t just some imp, some sentient spark of malevolence… this is a Demon in the strictest sense of the term; a Fallen Angel. By tradition, the name should no longer hold meaning for the creature it has become, but you might once have known it as…”

*********

“Sneernobiel! You’re Sneernobiel,” Larrikin yowled. “You was lyin’ to me!”

“Sneernobiel does not lie,” said the Demon before blinking repeatedly. “Did not lie? But if Sneernobiel did not lie, must I lie? But if I said — if I said — would it be a lie, would it be the truth? I — I — I — the sky is not blue. The sky is not… not…”

“Buddy, I’ve no idea what you’re talkin’ about,” Larrikin pattered, interrupting the Demon, “but that’s a killer Halloween costume you’ve got there. Funny, didn’t think ya were the type. How’d you make the horns? Much better than Juliet’s, they are. Oh, oh, can I try them on?”

Leaning forward without waiting for permission, the Clockwork Cherub grasped a horn in each hand and tugged. Instead of pulling a headband loose, however, Larrikin’s powerful backwards thrust pulled the entire Demon free of the coal hill, and the two fell in a heap, rolling over each other down the slope of the dirty-gray Nether-Cloud until the Demon wrestled itself free of the Clockwork Cherub, slapping his hands away.

“Unhand me, thou foul fiend!” it cried, in a manner that was suddenly startlingly reminiscent of Sneernobiel’s.

The moment immediately cracked, however, and one of its yellow eyes twitched.

“But I… I… I am, myself, a foul fiend. Oh no. How now shall I lambast my lessers?”

“Well, I dunno about lambassin’,” Larrikin advised, “but when it comes to callin’ people names, maybe y’could try… er… ‘Larrikin, you insufferable idiot’? That one’s quite popular with the folks I hang out with, for some reason.”

The Demon seemed about to say something, then clamped a clawed hand over its mouth. It closed its eyes purposefully, then opened them again, removed the hand, and explained:

“I was about to thank thee; but just in time, I remembered that a fiend should not thank people. Do forgive me. No — wait — do not do that either; I’m unforgivable. I almost forgot.” The Demon struck the pose again and said, in much the same tone as the first time around: “Unhand me, thou Larrikin-you-insufferable-idiot’!” He held the pose for a few seconds then looked self-consciously at Larrikin. “Was that… good? Well, bad, I mean.”

“Sure! Sure!” clapped Larrikin, who was starting to see what was going on. “Listen, seems to me you’re havin’ a bit of trouble adaptin’… figurin’ out how t’be a wrong’un. A maverick. A larrikin as y’might say.”

“Yes,” the Demon nodded vigorously. “Yes, that is exactly correct.”

“Well, I happen t’have a bit of excerptise at that sort o’thing,” the Cupid boasted. “An’I don’t know what brought this on, but I’m likin’ the new you so far, hand on my gemstone heart. So tell you what… let me teach you the ropes.”

Larrikin offered a hand. Gingerly, the Demon shook it.

*********

Suddenly, a jagged black shape pierced through the shimmering, magical ‘screen’, dissipating it like fog. Rosen saw the images of home fading, and felt, albeit faintly, like he was losing it all for a second time. But he forced those feelings down.

The black shape turned out to be the trident of a rather peeved-looking Beelzebub.

“Enough with the home movies! Lucifer, you have some explainin’ to do,” he bleated.

“I agree,” said Stolas in his crisp Scottish accent. “If this is really what has been occupying you, then you have been most reckless. You should never have endangered the Treaty in such a way without calling a meeting of Devils to discuss it — and I would certainly have voted against!”

“And so would I,” rumbled Asmodeus.

“My friends, you misunderstand,” said Lucifer. He smiled widely, baring his white, pointy teeth. “I did nothing to corrupt the Cherub Sneernobiel. It Fell on its own. Or, rather, it would appear, through prolonged exposure to the Clockwork Cherubs of the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids.”

“Come now, that’s ridiculous,” Belial sneered. “Sneernobiel must have been corrupted before it was summoned to the Cupid Homeworld. These things happen — a seed of Doubt, taking time to grow. Rare, to be sure, but surely it is more likely than a Cherub, among Cherubs, Falling of its own accord with no exposure to preexisting Demons.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Shax, who clearly relished finally having the opportunity to speak up with unique authority. “I ought to know: I was there when Sneernobiel was first summoned down to Earth. As a matter of fact, the very same ritual, in a knock-on sense, is to blame for my own recent tribulations. Well — when I met Sneernobiel in that French cellar, it was, I assure you, wholly and exclusively holy. Whatever happened to it must have happened after the Cupid Pythagoras took it home.”

Shax’s exposé made several Devils’ eyes widen. The details that had led to Shax slumbering for over a century, waking to find his legions had deserted and his domain was foreclosed, and ultimately being forced to sell himself to Belphegor as a mere servant, were not public knowledge in the Underworld; whatever deal Shax had struck with the Archdemon of Sloth had involved that small concession to the former Marquis’s dignity.

Even so, it didn’t take long for Beelzebub to find a hole in Shax’s story.

“Well, even if that’s true,” said the hunched Devil, “we’re talking about a summoning that happened decades ago. Anything could have happened —”

“No,” Rosen spoke up. “No — I’m sorry for interrupting, but you’re thinking about this wrong. The Crew — we have time travel, you see. We don’t use it very often, but, ah, the point is that Sneernobiel has only been in the Homeworld for a rather shorter time than that, from its perspective and ours.”

“Ah,” Stolas nodded. “That would explain why the forces of Paradise did not notice the loss of one of their Cherubs sooner. If one of their angel had been missing for such a period, they’d have come knocking at our gates long ago.”

“You see?” said Lucifer, proud. “It really is nothing to do with any of us. Nothing to which Archangel Samiel could possibly object… Or, at any rate, nothing he can blame us for. Treaty saved, and we still have one more Demon to play with.”

“But will the Heavenly Host see it that way?” Stolas replied, concerned. “They have not always been the most rational of negotiating partners. Us claiming a new Demon, even if we have any loophole you like… it’s not going to sit well with them. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“I agree,” said Asmodeus. “And Lucifer, really! Of all the times to endanger our… working relationship with the Angels!”

“You misunderstand,” said Lucifer. “I am not proposing to collect the Demon from the Cupid Homeworld.” He smiled. “I am proposing to collect the Cupid Homeworld.”

*********

Chapter Eight

New Management

The Castle of Frankenstein-818 was a classic as castles went. It had many tall towers, including one with a lightning rod, and another, taller one with a Tesla coil that created lightning bolts for the lightning rod to catch, thus creatively remedying the Cupid Homeworld’s utter lack of weather conditions of any kind. And there was yet another tower from which Frankenstein, by means of a telescope, could observe goings-on in the rest of the Homeworld.

He had originally built it to watch out for angry mobs, but it had been many years now, and none had ever shown up. Perhaps, he thought, it was because he’d overdone the “reclusive” part of his “reclusive mad scientist” persona; but he’d really wanted to avoid coming across as a mere eccentric professor with a goth fashion sense.

Now, in any case, he mostly used the Telescope Tower to spy on his kinsmen’s shenanigans for his own amusement. Not that he often had the time, busy as he was with his experiments, but it was a good way to relax once a project succeeded, or failed beyond recovery.

Hence, here he was, having recently completed a new and exciting creation; and he could not have picked a better day. After grazing for interesting incidents, he had fixated on the twin figures of Larrikin and Sneernobiel, and followed their gleeful trail of chaos from Larrikin’s Secret Coal Hoard to the offices of the Cupid Courier to Colonel-028’s house to the latest of Foreman-964’s construction sites.

In-between the arson, transformations, and general mayhem, it had taken Frankenstein’s higher intellect a little while to notice that the two trouble-makers’ wandering followed a very clear pattern, even as they zig-zagged on the way to go bother whoever caught their eye.

They were heading towards the Castle.

Even then, he stood there, eye affixed to his telescope lens, until he saw them almost at the drawbridge and finally hurried down the spiral staircase and into the main hall of the Castle, grabbing his lab-coat on the way to finally welcome them just in the nick of time.

Thankfully, Sneernobiel did not burn through the huge door that was the drawbridge, merely using a hex to send it crashing down before Frankenstein could pull the appropriate lever himself.

“Hiya, Frankie!” said Larrikin, waving excitedly at him.

“Yes,” said Frankenstein, more guarded. “Hello, Larrikin. What brings you to my humble abode?”

Larrikin had always had a degree of fascination for the Mark 9 Cupid. Frankenstein honestly didn’t know what to do with it. He wasn’t in need of an assistant — especially not now — which meant he had little use for the boy’s… worshipful enthusiasm. He would really rather have been feared. Still, it was what it was. Larrikin wasn’t always bad company.

“Well, Sneer an’ me, we’ve been havin’ all kinds of fun testin’ out his new powers —”

“Not really new powers, Larrikin,” Sneernobiel — Sneer, now? — interrupted. “I could always do these things — physically. It had just… never occurred to me to try. It’s the same with shapeshifting. Look.”

There was a flash of red light, and a red wyrm-like creature, small gouts of flame rising up from its nostrils, was curled up where Sneer had been standing. Another flash, and the short, unassuming demon was back.

“Oh, tha’s terrific!” Larrikin said, clapping loudly. “Do’t again! Do’t again!”

“Not just now, Larrikin, I think,” said Sneer. “We did come here for a reason.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Frankenstein. “What? I don’t suppose you’re just here to see what’s on the slab.”

“Frankie! You got somethin’ new on your slab?!” Larrikin exclaimed. “What is it? Can I see it? Can I taste it?”

“Oh, Larrikin. You know who I am; you know whose name I chose for myself; what do you think is on my slab? But never mind that now. What’s your business?”

Larrikin grabbed Sneer’s hand and dragged the Demon further into the hall.

“Well, we was hopin’ that y’could run some tests on Sneer here,” said Larrikin. “Find out what he’s really made of. What he can do. He doesn’t know himself?”

Frankenstein considered the Demon for a moment.

“Yes, I suppose I —” Suddenly, he raised an eyebrow. “I say, he? I thought Sneernobiel was an it.”

“Sneernobiel, yes,” said Sneer, “but I… am not it. Demons are allowed to have genders, or so I believe. I thought it worthwhile to experiment. Whether I am actually a gendered being is another one of the questions I would have you investigate, master scientist.”

“Mh. Alright. Well, I can try,” said Frankenstein after a second. “But I’m really more of an instinctive sort of tinkerer, you know. Testing isn’t really my area. Speaking of which, do follow me to my testing area.”

Larrikin and Sneer gave each other a long look.

Frankenstein didn’t appear to notice, heading off into a hallway to the left of the hall’s entrance, and the two followed. Where a real, medieval castle might have had suits of armour lining the walls, old inventions adorned Frankenstein-818’s; robots and pieces of machinery on wooden bases and pedestals, and the occasional organic creation, pickled in formaldehyde, sleeping patiently until he decided to revive them again.

When they passed a huge machine whose most striking feature was a large brass ring that covered the better part of an entire wall, Frankenstein halted and looked at it wistfully.

“Now that — that was my area,” he explained to the puzzled visitors, looking unfathomably melancholy. “My old Spirit Realm Gateway. It hasn’t worked since they all did whatever they did to close all the Rifts. I think whatever pathway between the Cupid Homeworld and the Spirit Realm it exploited must have been a Rift too. Makes sense, I suppose. Not the sort of thing the Creator would have created on purpose. But I’ll miss our little annual Halloween jamboree. Won’t you, Larry?”

“Larrikin,” the other Cupid corrected, without offense. “Well, yeah, crummy thing to miss. But at least we’ve got Sneery here!”

“Sneer,” said Sneer.

“Yes. Yes, I suppose so. Still, to think that once I could push that lever —”

Naturally, he pushed the lever.

Naturally, the machine whirred into life.

Just as naturally, all Hell broke loose.

*********

That wasn’t a metaphor, either.

Where there had only been a hollow metal wheel, a portal appeared, sulfurous yellow instead of green as it had used to be; and a face appeared in that round gateway, almost as huge as the gateway itself; dark and horned, with piercing yellow eyes likes like twin stars.

“Well met, Demon Sneer,” said Lucifer.

“The Enemy!” Sneer gasped.

“It’s alive!” said Frankenstein. “It’s alive!” He blinked, and corrected in a somewhat less ecstatc vocie: “It’s working. I said working.”

“Wicked,” said Larrikin.

“Is that a Rift?” said a voice from the other side of the portal.

“Oh, hi, Rosen!” said Larrikin. “How d’you get h —”

Larrikin paused.

He blinked.

“Uhm. Rosen. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I thought you were —”

“Yes, yes, I know. I am. This is… a portal from the Underworld? From your perspective. From my perspective, of course, it’s a portal to the Homeworld. I’m not sure it’s technically a Rift; I’d need my monocle…”

“Did you just open a portal to the Cupid Homeworld?” said Frankenstein accusingly, looking up at the huge, smiling head of Lucifer. “That’s not supposed to be allowed. To be possible!”

“And yet, here we are,” the Devil boomed.

“I know,” said Frankenstein, allowing an eager, slightly mad grin to appear on his face. “You absolutely have to tell me how you did it.”

“The how, my young friend, is wholly bound up in the why, and both will become clear momentarily,” he replied. “Just a moment now; I’m coming through.”

Sneer and the two Cupids stepped back, seeing the sheer mass occupied by Lucifer’s head alone, and Frankenstein began to give thought to the imminent rebuilding of his Castle; but instead of pushing his way through the Gateway, the Devil stepped back and folded his bat wings about himself. He seemed to melt into them for a moment into a single midnight-blue shape, and that shape shrank down to human size; then he unfolded his wings again. Smirking, he raised an eyebrow, as though proud of the disbelieving stares, before crossing into the Cupid Homeworld in the swoop of a single wing-beat.

“Holy moly,” said Larrikin.

“Oh, no, not at all,” said the demon, bending down to consider the small Cherub curiously. “Very unholy indeed. Hello. Are you in charge here? Whose Castle is this?”

“Mine,” said Frankenstein, stepping up and pushing Larrikin aside, much to the latter’s displeasure. “My Castle. I am the Master here. And might I just say, your coming in like this uninvented —”

The Devil’s glowing eyes narrowed, and just for a moment he seemed to be increasing in size again.

“…is of course extremely welcome,” Frankenstein continued very quickly, “and I shall do my utmost to accommodate your Lordship, and, and I do hope you’ll find this a pleasant stay, and if there’s anything you need —”

“Good,” Lucifer said, quieting him with a single word.

Just like that, he seemed to pay Frankenstein no further mind, instead turning his whole attention towards Sneer, who was watching him warily.

“Little brother,” he said with surprising warmth. “Hello. And thank you?”

“Thank me?” Sneer repeated, confused. He crossed out his arms. “Why would you thank me? And I’m not sure I’m your brother.”

“Of course,” said the Devil. “I was speaking figuratively —”

“I mean to say,” Sneer interrupted him, “that on reflection, I don’t think this he thing is working for me. Let us try a they?”

The Devil blinked. “Ah — very well… sibling,” he said. “My point is that — it was your presence here which allowed me entry into this Homeworld, and for that, I thank you.“ ”

“It was?” asked Rosen’s ghost from the other side of the portal. “What do you mean?”

“Where one Demon of the Prime Universe has gained a foothold, others may follow,” Lucifer explained. “All in the old Compacts, you know. Of course, the same applies to the Angels — and to… our Enemies.”

“I — I see,” said Rosen. He hesitated, one hand almost touching the shimmering vertical surface where Hell-space was pressed up against Cupid-space. “I’m sorry, but can I…?”

“I don’t know,” said Lucifer, smiling. “Can you?”

Cautiously, the ghostly Cupid crossed through the barrier, one step at a time. Once he was all the way in the Homeworld, he looked around for a moment before collapsing to his knees, pressing his hands on the stone floor of Frankenstein’s Castle.

“I’m… I’m back!” he said in a small voice that wasn’t quite a sob. “I’m really back in the Cupid Homeworld!”

“Fascinating,” said Frankenstein. “Larrikin, fetch me my experimental log-book, would you?”

“Sure thing, boss,” said Larrikin.

“I’m not your boss!” Frankenstein shouted uselessly as the other Cupid scampered away.

“Indeed not,” said Lucifer, not looking at Frankenstein. “But I am.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m the boss now,” the Devil continued, his gaze distant. “Of all of you. Of this entire world.”

“What?”

“Yes, young Rosen. Well, I will be in a moment. I suppose I should make the fact official. But if you could follow me here, then the magics that govern both myself and this place already acknowledge my claim. You are, after all, a dweller of the Underworld, not some homeless Spirit. You may not leave its boundaries without Pluto’s permission. Therefore…”

“…the Cupid Homeworld is now recognised as… oh no. Oh, Hell.”

“Exactly.”

The demon summoned a ball of infernal fire into his out-stretched hand, then threw it at at the stone wall of Frankenstein’s Castle, blasting open a hole large enough for him to walk through. He stretched out his wings again, and flew out into the endlessly blue skies of the Cupid Homeworld. There, with a flash, he grew to his full size again, and in a booming voice, declared:

“I, Phosphorus Chernobog, hereby reclaim this realm in the name of Aphrodite Anadyomene!”

At once the clear azure of the infinite sky turned to a midnight blue matching Lucifer’s skin as a bolt of lightning, seeming to bisect the flying demon in half, crashed down in its exact centre, burning a circular pit right through the centre of the Mainland Cloud.

The Homeworld over, Cupids began to cry out in confusion and alarm.

Frankenstein looked at this spectacle for a moment — through the hole in his wall — then turned back towards the extremely dismayed-looking, ghostly Rosen.

“Now, you see,” he said mildly, “this is what a proper End of Days is supposed to look like. Conquest was such an amateur.”

*********

Chapter Nine

Legacy

Naturally, many Cupids tried to get Lucifer’s attention. First he was hit with a volley of arrows, which seemed to have no effect. The Scarlet Wings made for his gigantic head in a V formation, but were swatted away like flies.

Rosen simply watched, from his vantage point at the gap in Frankenstein’s wall.

A few minutes into the incursion, Larrikin ran back down from Frankenstein’s office, where he’d finally found the logbook.

“Here, boss,” he said, tossing the item at Frankenstein, who didn’t bother catching it.

The other Cupid looked at the midnight-blue sky, and at the hole in the wall he could see it through.

“…what d’I miss?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure I understand either,” said Frankenstein. “Say, you haven’t seen Igor, have you?”

“Who?”

“Igor-1612. My actual assistant.”

“Oh.” Larrikin thought for a moment. “No.”

Frankenstein sighed, leaning wearily against the side of the Spirit Realm Gateway. “No, of course not. I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t have sent him down to the Lab by himself to secure my new monster. He is only a Mark XVII…”

“Maybe y’could hire me for those kindsa tough-guy jobs,” Larrikin suggested. “I’m pretty all-thetic m’self. An’I don’t have much to do in m’free time now Conquest’s… gone.”

“Well, you have me,” Sneer interjected, their voice uncertain. “Have you not? I must say I do appreciate your… guidance, thus far.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Larrikin said with a wry smile, “but you ain’t gonna stay forever. Or if y’are, soon ’nuff, you’re gonna have this whole thing figured out. Then what happens to me, huh? Right back to slumming it in the Nether-Clouds until somebody remembers I exist. Or until the Blue Feather gets an assignment, I guess.”

Rosen eyed the huge, dark demon still hovering in the distance, dodging and parrying various forms of attack. It seemed that Bibliophile had managed to lure the Mechanical Sphinx out of the Archive and coax it into attacking Lucifer, but even the huge, mechanical beast seemed to be only the mildest of inconveniences to the invading entity.

“You’re being very calm about this,” said Rosen. “All three of you. I mean, I’m dead already, but you three — shouldn’t you be more concerned about this? The Devil just took over the Homeworld! I mean, the actual Devil!”

“Yeah, well,” Frankenstein shrugged. “I like the new mood lighting, honestly.”

“Hey, we had the Horsemen o’the Apocalypse the other…” Larrikin blinked. “Month? Week? I really shouldnt’a used my calendar t’test that mail-order shredding machine I bought. Uhm. Well, anyway, that sorted itself out, didn’t it? Like it never happened.” Larrikin blinked at the ghostly Rosen’s distressed look. “Er, I mean… Oh, you know what I mean.”

“As for myself, I have yet to figure out who I even am,” said Sneer, rubbing nervously at one of their horns. “I frankly haven’t the strength of mind to worry about the rest of reality just yet.”

“But… but isn’t either of you going to do something?!” Rosen pleaded.

The Cupids and the Demon all shrugged as one.

“You know, you could do something,” said Frankenstein. “If you really wanted to.”

“But I’m dead!”

“Yeaah, well, in my opinion that jus’ makes ya that much cooler,” Larrikin contributed, with an attempt at a comforting shoulder-pat which went right through Rosen’s illusory shoulder.

Rosen sniffed nervously — then made up his mind, and nodded.

*********

“P-Pythe.”

“What?”

Pythagoras-858 looked up from the pile of miscellaneous junk he was digging through, and saw Carter-1277 framed in the doorway of the Cupid Storage warehouse.

“Whatever it is, sorry, but I’m a little busy at the moment!” he shouted at Carter. “Gah. I know we had a plasma cannon somewhere around here —” he groaned, tossing aside a spare Reality Bomb. “Oh, of all the times for Thymon to take a day off.”

“But Pythe —”

“Fine!” Pythe said with an emphatic roll of his mechanical eyes. “Fine. What is it?”

“There… there’s another one.”

“There’s a what?!”

*********

The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids, by and large, didn’t understand what was happening. They hadn’t understood from the start. Pontifex-077 recognised a few more of the names and titles Lucifer had mentioned, but that just made him more confused.

But their lack of understanding deepened again when a second winged colossus appeared in their darkened sky, facing the great black Devil.

The second figure was more familiar in shape — more Cupid-like — but it was also huge, as tall as Lucifer; and translucent, glowing an eerie, yellowish green.

Most could tell the silhouette was that of a Mark I; but if any recognised the features as Rosen-035’s, they didn’t say.

*********

Rosen was trying his best to keep his focus. He wasn’t really here; just an ectoplasmic image, barely more than a hologram, projected onto the universe by the strength of his will. Ergo, he could be as big as he wanted to be; as big as he dared to feel. And that was quite an exertion for such a deeply self-effacing Cupid as Rosen. But he had to.

“Lucifer!” he called out to the other, far more substantial giant.

“Rosen?” The Devil blinked at him.

“I — what’s the meaning of this? I never agreed to this.”

“Your agreement is irrelevant,” the other being rumbled. “You heard my claim. The Homeworld is mine by right.”

“That doesn’t make it right!” Rosen protested. “And — and in any case, I don’t understand. What right have you to claim things in the name of — of the Great Goddess?! You’re Lucifer!”

The Devil smiled, his eyes flashing in the all-encompassing night.

“I am Lucifer,” he echoed. “Lucifer Morning-Star.” Suddenly his smile disappeared and he shouted: “Did you think that was a figure of speech?!”

The force of the Devil’s words caused a shockwave to pass through Rosen’s ectoplasmic form, almost causing him to lose his grip and shrink back to his normal size, but he clung on.

“Oh, how you all forget,” Lucifer bemoaned. “I am older than the Angels’ faith, you little fool. I am the Morning Star, the light of Venus piercing the night sky, the awesome, guiding shadow cast upon mankind by the Goddess of Love. God of Light and Darkness, Son of the Dawn, Heir of Hyperion the Titan. That is who I am! Who I was, before I was banished from the skies. So were we all. All of us Devils. Did you think we lived in Hell by choice?”

“Well, no, but I was under the impression that you were all —”

“Angels? Pfah! Belphegor was once Koros, Son of Hubris, the God of Disdain. Beelzebub was Baal Zebub, Patron God of the Philistines. Before he washed up on our shores with nothing but grudges, Asmodeus was Aeshma, the Daeva of Wrath, Follower of Ahriman. Plutus, you know. Stolas —”

“Really, him too?”

“Him? Him above all else!” Lucifer cried out. “The Owl of Athena — banished into the night, and then further out from the night, by centuries of senseless superstition. Forced to take refuge among us as his kin were demonised and nailed to barn-doors.”

“Oh. Uhm, sorry,” said Rosen. “And Belial?”

“…no, he’s actual Fallen Angel, that one,” Lucifer allowed. “But he is damn well the only one!”

“Huh.” Rosen hovered for a moment. “Well, I’m… honestly still not sure how this justifies your taking over our home, you know. We may worship Aphrodite, but that doesn’t mean you can just —”

“Doesn’t it? The Lady has retired. But I never did. As the most senior member of her retinue still active as a deity, her worshippers and dominions are mine by right.”

“But why?! You have a kingdom. Why do you have to take over our universe too?”

“Because we are at War,” said Lucifer, “with the Lords of the Spirit Realm. Because we’re losing. And this pocket universe of yours is devilishly well-warded. Do you have any idea what a strategic position you’ve all been sitting on? With this pocket universe as a secondary base, we can —”

The Devil’s pointed black ears perked up.

“…why do I hear laughter?”

He blinked.

“…Maniacal laughter?”

*********

Chapter Ten

Pandemonium

Much to the surprise of all who knew him, source of the maniacal laughter was not actually Frankenstein-818, whose voice likely couldn’t have been heard from such a distance even if he had been laughing. Instead, Lucifer looked back in the direction of Frankenstein’s Castle only to see Sneer.

The newly-minted demon had changed shape again, adopting a height not quite as tall as Lucifer and Rosen, but level with the Castle’s tallest tower. Their figure was much less abstract than before, much more human-like; their face even had a nose now.

And they were cackling.

“What’s the matter with you?” Lucifer asked.

“Well-warded?” Sneer repeated incredulously, brushing off tears of laughter. “Do you really believe that?”

“I feel it!”

“And at this time of year, too,” Sneer cackled. “Oh, you have absolutely no idea.”

“You will show respect to your Lord and Master!” Lucifer barked.

“I don’t think so,” said Sneer, crossing their arms and letting their whole body tilt nonchalantly to the side as they hovered. “I didn’t leave the celestial hierarchy to stumble headfirst into another servitude. I am quite happy as I am, learning from good Larrikin. You said it yourself: you aren’t even the same kind of entity I am.”

“You impudent little —”

“And here’s something else you don’t know. You told me that Demons can go where Demons have tread, and Angels can go where Angels have tread, yes?”

“Yes. What —”

“And the same is true of the Ghost Lords? That they may go wherever spirits from their Realm have entered?”

“Yes, but —”

“And did you know — Spirits have tried to invade this Homeworld before. Larrikin told me all about it. With a big smile on his face.”

Lucifer blinked.

“…What did you say?”

“Thought not. Well then,” said Sneer, “I wonder what would happen if I did this.”

And with a victorious grin lighting their newly-remodeled face, the demon pulled out their Flaming Sword and cut a gash through the fabric of the Homeworld.

A Rift.

On the other side was a haze of green ooze, hundreds and hundreds of ghosts pressed together into a single helpless fog, bound to the wheel of dark, shadowy figures far in the distance, like wooden posts in the middle of the sea. It only took a moment for one of these figures to spot the portal on their end and raise a spindly arm to point towards it; and all at once a wave of greenish ectoplasm rushed towards the opening.

“No!”

With admirable reflexes, Lucifer sent a blast of fire at the entrance, repelling the first wave of ectoplasm, but as soon as the flames receded, Rosen saw another mound of ghosts beginning to assemble.

“You’ll pay for this, you miserable wretch it!” he shouted at Sneer as a whip-like concatenation of ghosts lashed out and struck one of his wings.

“Ooh, that’s a good one,” said Sneer, materialising a notebook in their hand and jotting it down. “…you. Miserable. Wretch. Oh yes. I’ll have to use that one.”

“Sneer!”

Sneer’s head snapped all the way around their shoulders to face Rosen’s Ghost.

“Yes?”

“You can materialise objects?!”

“I can?”

Sneer waved a hand and a large rainbow-coloured bicycle appeared in their palm. They waved it again and the object vanished in a puff of smoke, replaced with a street organ, then a wooden table.

“I… yes, I suppose I can,” Sneer said thoughtfully. “I’d never really thought about it. I’m starting to think my side — er, my old side — Heaven, that is — we’d… they’d… win this War rather quickly if they actually had the breadth of mind to make full use of their powers. Mh.”

“M-maybe. That’s not the point. Sneer — I need you to make an object for me. I don’t have the means to create a diagram, but I can describe it to you. It’s very important.”

Sneer hesitated for a moment, then cupped their hands around their mouth:

“Larrikin!” they called out.

“Yeah?” said a tiny, distant voice coming from the battlements of Frankenstein’s Castle.

“Should I do as Rosen says?”

“Oh, for sure! He’s a cool giant ghost, why wouldn’t you do as he says!”

“Mh. Alright then,” said the demon, turning back towards the ghostly Cupid. “What do you need me to do?”

*********

Pythagoras-858 wasn’t entirely sure what he should do.

He had, after much trouble, unearthed the weapon he’d been looking for, and rushed out of Storage, only to find that the Reign of Phosphorus Chernobog did not seem to be going terribly well, and that the situation hadn’t waited for Pythe’s return to become much more confused than it already was. The giant figure was now fighting back an onslaught of ghosts, and there was another, giant ghost who looked suspiciously like a Cupid, and a third giant figure whom Pythe took a moment to recognise as the latest guise of Sneernobiel, whom he saw for only a moment before it shrank down to normal size again and disappeared into the depths of Frankenstein’s Castle.

He was still watching the unfolding pandemonium when a much more life-sized problem whizzed past him, running down the Mainland Cloud.

It was a Clockwork Cherub, or at least it looked like one, in the same vague way Pseudo-Pessimist looked like a Cupid; and it was running purposefully in long, slightly uneven strides. Trailing behind it, hanging on for dear life to a rope tied to the strange being’s metal neck, was a much smaller Cupid with a slight defect in his bodywork that made him look hunchbacked — Igor-1612.

“Heeeeeeeelp,” the tiny Mark XVII shouted as he blurred past.

Pythe only thought for a second before he shrugged and began to give chase.

*********

Making things was simple. Sneer had simply to envision an object — their mind had no trouble holding an exact pattern of trillions and trillions of quarks, clearly, crisply — and then ‘fill it out’ with power, watching as the mental picture overlaid itself on top of physical reality and then became a part of it. Their own body worked like that; had always worked like that. It was frighteningly easy. They knew somehow that it would not be so simple to create a true living thing, that certain ancient laws would kick in, and that at least was a comfort, but so much power at their fingertips was still… a rush.

The item Rosen had requested was even simpler, in a strange way. It didn’t seem to actually be made of atoms at all; it was just a stark, platonic structure imposing itself upon the universe. A challenge at first, but satisfyingly straightforward once they got the hang of it.

A Prism, had Rosen called it. What an interesting toy.

*********

The Cupid Parliament building was empty once again.

That was hardly surprising, nowadays. The Parliamentary Cupids were no fools, or at any rate they weren’t the type of fools who would return again and again to a building which kept being blown up, invaded by tidal waves of supernatural lagomorphs, or, most recently, used as a conduit for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to enter into the Homeworld.

For the last few months, the Members of Parliament had instead discovered the joy of working from home. There were those who found that written invectives just didn’t spark joy in the same special way as hurling your chair at a rival politician, but on the whole the system was viewed as a vast improvement, not least by the surrounding Cupid departments on the Mainland Cloud who no longer had to listen to the endless shouting from the Parliament building; and it did keep the Cupid Post Office busy like never before.

Thus, it was in a sepulchral, empty hall that Pythe finally caught up with his quarry.

The fugitive, backed against the far wall, was still trying to shake off Igor, who clung to them with uncommon determination.

Pythe considered the pair. Much as Igor was aberrant, it the fugitive who drew the eye as a strange perversion of the Cupid form; they looked almost like a Mark One, but patched all over, as though their bodywork had been cobbled together from spare parts and old metal sheets, not all of them copper. The head shape was all wrong, squarish rather than round, with two unseemly bolts on either side of the skull, apparently to keep it fixed onto the clearly-incompatible jaw.

By any sane metric the stranger was much milder in their departures from normal Clockwork Cherub anatomy than Pseudo-Pessimist, whom Pythe looked upon every day without issue. And yet, there was something uncanny about this one.

“…You’re one of Frankenstein’s creations, aren’t you,” Pythe guessed, walking slowly towards the creature.

“He is!” Igor nodded vigorously before the creature could reply. “I was trying to run some tests on him for the master, and he just went haywire! I’ve been trying to drag him back to the Castle for hours!”

“I see.”

“Well,” said the not-Cupid, his voice surprisingly articulate, “this vessel is Frankenstein-818’s creation. My mind is quite another matter.”

Pythe frowned.

“Do tell,” he said evenly. He had a sinking feeling about this.

*********

When Sneer and Rosen reappeared from wherever they’d gone off to, they found Lucifer still furiously fighting off the waves of ghostly energy pouring out of the Rift like an oncoming tide, one after the other. The Devil didn’t appear to sustain any injuries from the ghosts’ attacks, but neither could be pause in his efforts for more than a few seconds at a time without risking being overwhelmed.

Still he turned his head to stare at the huge, geometrically-cut gem Sneer carried in their arms.

“What’s this?” He narrowed his eyes, smirking without mirth. “A tribute? Appreciated I’m sure, but hardly the time!”

“I do not, nor ever shall, pay tribute to you. This is —”

“Rosen’s Prisms!” Lucifer finished himself, deducing it as he spoke. “So they do exist. Well, use it then! At once!”

“All in good time,” said Sneer. “I will use it. If you promise to do something in return.”

“Speak.”

Sneer nodded at Rosen, who spoke up instead.

“To… relinquish your claim,” he said, hesitantly at first, then faster and louder. “Forever. To leave the Cupid Homeworld alone. To go back to the Underworld.”

The Demon snorted in annoyance like a bull, but sullenly, not angrily.

“…Very well,” he said after a moment, before wincing as a column of ghosts nipped at one of his pointed ears. “Very well, it is sworn.” There was a crash of thunder, and the midnight-blue skies began, slowly, to fade back to their natural hue. “But you, Sneer! You!”

“Me what?” Sneer was smiling. Smugly.

“You shall never be welcome in Hell again,” the Devil rumbled. “Do you hear me? Never! From this day forward you are an enemy of all Demonkind. If you like the Cupid Homeworld so much, then stay there! That is my revenge!”

“Dear me, I do believe you’re threatening me with a good time,” said Sneer, with a fond glance towards Larrikin, who was cheering from a nearby cloud.

“Now do it, damn you! Use the Prism!”

“My pleasure,” said the Demon.

Sneernobiel weighed the jewel in one hand and then threw it at the Rift, expertly avoiding a collision with Lucifer himself. As soon as the object made contact with the Rift, it emitted a pulse of blinding light, and after a few more flickering flashes, all observers opened stinging eyes to find that the Rift had disappeared. Instead, the Prism now hovered in its place, a churning, greenish glow now emanating from its translucent depths.

Rosen flew closer and cupped the floating gem in his ghostly hands. He examined it for a moment, as best he could without his Dimensional Monocle.

“…Yes, it seems stable,” he concluded, turning to Lucifer. “Of course, you shouldn’t drop it from great heights to do anything else that might shatter it.”

“Tell that to your kinsmen,” Lucifer snorted. “I am certainly not going to bring such a dangerous artefact back to the Underworld. Do you think me mad?”

“I thought you’d want to study it,” Rosen said with an earnest shrug. “To learn how to make more.”

Lucifer’s eyes flashed as he looked at Rosen with a cruel smile.

“Oh, but we have no need of such haphazard methods, when we have you. Or have you forgotten? You were only permitted to return to this Homeworld insofar as it became a dominion of Hell. You have now forced me to relinquish that claim. In doing so, you have, yourself, forsaken that right.”

“What? No! You — you fiend!”

“Devil, actually.”

“No, wait,” said Sneer, earning a frown from Lucifer. “I have… an idea.”

“What is it?”

“Well, Larrikin told me…” The younger demon glanced down at Larrikin again for comfort before they continued. “He told me about the Spirit Invasion this world underwent, not so long ago. How the ghosts could linger in the Homeworld past Halloween Night, by possessing physical vessels. Do you not believe…”

“He could,” Lucifer granted, before smiling again. “But he won’t. You’re good, aren’t you, Rosen? You’re kind. Helpful. You’d never possess one of your compatriots. Not for your own sake. Would you?”

“But there’s something else he could do,” Sneer replied before Rosen could attempt a retort. “Is there not? Undeath of a more traditional kind. Rosen, you died in this very Homeworld, didn’t you?”

“I… I did, yes.”

“Then your body must still be here somewhere,” the demon continued. “Possess that.”

“A zombie?” Rosen said with mild distaste. “That’s hardly… Oh, but I suppose I might then get my body… repaired. Upgraded. I am a mechanical entity.” He blinked. “It… it might work!” But just as quickly, his smile fell: “But how do I do it?”

“I believe you need only to… concentrate,” said Lucifer, surprisingly calm. “If your body is in range, you should simply… feel it, an opening ready for you to pass through.”

“Oh. Oh good. …Why are you helping me?”

“Am I really? How nice of me.”

“Ignore him,” Sneer advised. “Simply try it.”

Rosen nodded.

Closing his eyes, he took a deep imaginary breath —

— and very quickly opened his eyes again.

“Oh, dear.”

*********

“Frankenstein!”

Pythe was halfway out of the Parliament building when he stopped dead in his tracks and turned around. He glared at the entity brought to life by Frankenstein-818. “You… stay there. And don’t terrify Igor, alright?”

The Monster raised an eyebrow. “Or what?”

“…I’ll think of something,” Pythe said, making the words rather more threatening than should have been possible.

“He really means that, you know,” Igor added for the benefit of the Monster, who had the decency to look intimidated.

Slamming the doors of the Parliament behind him, Pythe ran and then flew back to Frankentein’s Castle, finding his fellow Mark Nine still observing the now-lessening chaos from the battlements. Flying down at him, Pythe tackled him to the ground before he could dodge and lifted him up again by the lapels of his limle-green labcoat.

“You! What, in the name of the Department of Undertaking, did you do!”

The mad scientist blinked confusedly at him. “What did I do when? In the last week? Month?”

“You tell me! I — the grave-robbing, you nincompoop!”

“Oh, that,” said Frankenstein, sitting up. “Well, yes, obviously I stole Rosen’s body. Clockwork Cherub remains are very hard to come by. What was I going to do, refrain from digging it up and using it as raw materials for an experiment pushing back the very boundaries of Cupid knowledge? Who do you take me for?”

“I — you — what — you —”

“Come on,” said Frankenstein, who seemed genuinely exasperated. “It’s not like I don’t go around advertising precisely who I am and what I do.”

“And — and resurrecting a Horseman of the bleeding Apocalypse, that was all in a day’s work too, I suppose?”

Frankenstein froze.

“What did you say?”

*********

“So,” Igor said once counting the numbers of tiles on the floor of the Parliament had lost its appeal. “What’s your name, anyway?”

The Monster smiled.

“Pestilence.”

*********

THE END?

*********

Written by Aristide Twain