Chapter VI - Asunder
Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2019 4:04 am
January 20th, 2026
Anders Street had once been one of Hope's financial thoroughfares, one of the core's less-assuming areas but that still managed to hold over sixty distinct office spaces and a sizable cluster of the city's banking outlets. It had been a stone's throw away from both Centennial Park and the city's stock exchange, as well as one bus stop away from Wolfram and Associates' terrestrial offices. People hardly lived there, but lives were quietly shaped in that concrete, glass and steel canyon. There had always been a certain sense of life in that corner; the business of financiers and moneymakers, the ordinary vanity of mid-range salarymen needing to find themselves new off-the-shelf Oxfords without necessarily heading for the Green Hills Plaza, Hope's prominent shopping mall. This had been a space someone of Melmoth or Herbert's stripe would've called home, some time ago. Now, it was nothing except an expanse of supernaturally rusting vehicles, powdered glass, gaping skeletal remains and the encroaching brambles of the Pit's poisonous flora. You'd hear chattering noises in that small jungle, sometimes punctuated with trilling screams and bursts of gunfire, or the singing clash of Celestial or Fae weaponry. The demons that nested there weren't sapient by any stretch of the imagination, having manifested as something close to eerily quick and agile iguanas, their flexible jaws lined with multiple rows of tiny and venom-laced teeth. It was one of many of Hope's Exclusion Zones, where no contingent of the Army dared to so much as set foot.
Washington had its own troubles, and President Jones' Air Force One had landed in Walpurgis a few weeks ago. If you could catch the airwaves or managed to connect to one of the few remaining satellites, you'd hear that while the enemy didn't manage to pierce past Nergal's defenses, the opposite was also true. Several had called for the wholesale bombing of all zones affected by the planar incursions, but what was left of the United Nations balked at that prospect. America, Russia and North Korea were virtually the only ones left with a few gung-ho generals brazen enough to try and stop an endless horde with ICBMs. Predictably, their attempts were routinely quashed. Whether it be through Congress, the Duma or the recognition of the Il regime's ineffectual armaments, anyone who claimed to have a bigger stick to waggle was rhetorically beat back without an ounce of mercy.
In an instant, the Vienna Accords had been rendered moot. The existence of demons and angels was obvious to everyone now; all that was left was to debate over the significance of such a fact. Nergal was Nergal, Melmoth was Melmoth, and none of the allied forces so much as bothered to wear Veils, now. Ever since the incursions had begun, those who used concealment spells were typically spies or enemies attempting to gain a tactical foothold. Looking mundane now mattered far less than simply not being seen. The restaurants in Tom's food court were frequented by winged humanoids of both a feathery and leathered persuasion, with neither having much energy to spare for the olden tradition of coaxing their mortal peers one way or another. Another instant had forced things to take a turn for the worse, as a contingent of Pitspawn lured Ciaran, the butlers and their few harbored refugees out of their walls' offered safety.
Archie remembered that instant in vivid detail: his car gone aloft, maintained by Meris' willpower - giving him a privileged seat for the sight of his home's summary destruction by a widening pit of Hellfire. Holden Hall was a jagged and riven mess now, the two wings split apart by a massive and magma-filled cleft. So many keepsakes, so many memories of his family and mundane past - all of it erased in one casual and determined flash. Tom had designed Shield's extension in his tower to feel like an extrapolation of the Hall, but the effect brought him only partial relief. The wainscoting in his office was spot-on, the two big ferns and their pots were right on the money as far as his tastes were concerned, the books that lined his bookcase flattered his sensibilities - but none of them were his mother's or father's. None of them carried old sensory ghosts he'd deeply memorized, none of them triggered memories of happier or more innocent times.
He'd gone back to the mansion's still-smoking ruins, only to save one hatbox and the one thing which truly mattered to him: his violin. Tom might have furnished an apartment for him, it didn't offer him the kind of solitude he would've needed in order to exorcise his growing melancholy with a few forlorn pieces. Spirits were solid within Tom's protected boundaries, but he never really did feel like producing some of the old airship shanty melodies he still remembered or his collection of Gypsy ballads. He had no passion, for now. All that mattered was the civilians' survival, all that deserved focus was the war effort - the only exceptions being Crystal and Anjali. The two of them brought smiles back to his features, and it was chiefly with those two that he allowed himself to feel the full breadth of his despair. Otherwise, he kept it for the battlefield. He threw his anxieties onto his enemy, skewered them with all the rage and resentment he could muster, and then could spend a few minutes kidding himself, assuming he was back to his old self. He wasn't. Ciaran, Gubbin and Bagley had all survived, along with the refugees - but none of them mattered as much, it seemed as what they'd lost. As he knew he wasn't the only one with questing roots still looking for decent soil: Aidan and his family had lost their respective apartment and home, and living next door to Prometheans, angels and demons hadn't exactly been part of the Drake family's plans.
Things had changed. Magnus Tower now stood as the city's social and administrative nexus, with even the Biggs cartel moving its don to one of the smaller penthouses, as had Nigel Griffin. With the Pitspawn clawing at every inch of ground, maximizing a single surface area mattered more. Nearly all that remained of the world from before the incursions now lived, slept and partially worked in Club Ishtar's purple and blue spire, protected by mile after mile of wards and what had to be the second largest circle of protection put into place by a single practitioner. The roads around the campus were virtually unused, with travel to and from the tower using shuttles. People now lived well above-ground, wherever Celestial influence had carved out islets of safety. Otherwise, the only safe recourse was to go underground, as the Pitspawn still had trouble opening portals beneath the Earth's crust. As creatures who'd always emerged out of Hell's bowels, reaching anything other than Earth's surface proved taxing. Only Ahriman and Meris' friends and followers had an easier time of it. Engineering efforts and arcane prowess had at least allowed Magnus Tower and the underside of Meris' fortress to be connected by a single long tunnel and a repurposed electric rail cart.
Under Rupert Isaacs' influence, morals seemed to be changing as well. There'd been no news of Rendell for weeks, but the scientist had immediately gone to work. He'd requested for prisoners and test subjects and had turned a forlorn, remote and poorly-lit corridor in the depths of the bunker underneath the tower into his private triage area. Beyond a set of motorized doors waited tables and industrial-grade sinks, all of them stained with demonic blood. No findings had been made, but his reputation had been enough for some of Pride's Knights to rethink their strategy at the sight of that bushy and wide-eyed man scrutinizing their lines like a discerning chef looking for slabs of prime beef. Anton, it seemed, had found something of a kindred spirit in the good doctor. Both felt that the ends justified the means, and were known to state that their ends wouldn't allow them to keep existing as this city's protectors for long.
They were turning stable and their fighting chances were improving on a daily basis, but the Goat hadn't bothered to wait for them. Yesterday, Aidan had woken up to the sight of President Jones decrying what he referred to as the New Year's Betrayal. The Black Goat, a self-styled President-elect carried to office by his own twisted peers without so much as a nod of thanks towards democracy, now stood in an office he'd brazenly stolen. Like Nereus for Meris, Dafyd Jones' offered updates weren't encouraging: key staff members had been possessed or won over, and the Nativist and Nationalist arms of the Republican party had torn one another apart. Now Democrats were in jail, while a new caste of self-styled Infernal apparatchiks moseyed and sashayed around Washington in expensively-procured and stolen bodies, all of which were now shamelessly altered after possession.
None of it was official for now. Cops still resisted, the Army still resisted, but resistance was waning away. All the Pitspawn had to do involved fixing problems. An oath, a promise, a piece of your soul; and your kids would be fed. You'd be flown to secure districts patrolled by Pitspawn or you'd land a job crucial to the early reconstruction efforts. What the Damned built or had built by someone else, the resistance tore down.
Slowly, insidious viewpoints were slithering their way onto the airwaves. If you followed the supergroups' rhetoric, you were a terrorist in the making. The Prince of Pride knew his deepfakes quite well, and had no problem with displaying people such as Aslinn McConmara, seemingly saying things in public about her allied demons that she never would've so much as thought.
* * *
Nine AM and the world was coming undone.
Aidan brushed his teeth while casting an absent look in his smart mirror's direction, watching as forecast details and newsreels slipped past his face's reflection and its glob of foamy toothpaste. Mid-January and the weather called for shorts and sandals in the northern East Coast. Mild Brimstone showers, said the forecast, with a Celestial Protection Index of 78,2%. It looked like Melmoth would want to throw another barbecue party on the rooftop; he'd already posted a poll on the common boards, asking of the tower's residents of note if they'd like Polish sausages or the usual wieners. Rolling his eyes, he whisked the poll aside with a flick of two fingers. Sarah padded into the bathroom as he spat his mouthful into the sink.
"Hey, bro," she absently said. "What's today's menu like?
- We're pushing past the Slab," he replied, "stress-testing the new bridge Alkaev's NGOs partly financed. Herbert managed to finagle a non-aggression pact for the week, so both engineering teams should be able to connect. If that works, we won't need shuttles to go back to the mainland.
- Does Team Jackass know you're pushing past them anyway?"
Three sighed. "I'm sure the Goat knows, Sar. The thing is, we need this. The official byline is we want to connect to the UISA's infrastructure, but the new bridge's underside has a dark chamber the Freaks can use to ferry people and equipment around. We need some kind of fast-travel option, or else the resistance can't stay organized. It's getting harder by the week to burrow plans in the Dark Web, and Paradise says it's already working on our behalf. On what, though, nobody knows."
Sarah grimaced. "The United Infernal States of America. The way some people say it, it's like a lot of the old establishment just realized they could stop pretending, you know? Being a craven asshole nets you points with the Dictator-in-Chief...
- The UN hasn't ratified anything, they're stuck applying as much red tape to the transition process as possible. Everyone knows Jones is still President in most people's hearts; we're just down to how things were in France during the occupation. There's Washington for the Pit's elite, and Walpurgis for the plucky survivors and the democratically-elected dragons.
- Or like the Holy Roman Empire, back when Rome and Constantinople yanked on the same blanket."
Three laughed bitterly. "I'd never have believed Texas would end up being the Republic's last bastion, of all places. I guess when demons take over, even Neocon bastions wake the fuck up.
- Houston and Walpurgis are both pretty freaking Liberal," noted Sarah as she brushed her hair. The Bliss marks the spot where our hold on things ends and where the demons' begins."
Aidan had momentarily gone silent, remembering the sight of Times Square's massive billboards blasting Mammon's sigils in swirling red patterns on a mottled black background. Even the Statue of Liberty had been beheaded by an army of Infernal engineers. The Bliss was how they'd taken to calling Gabriel's conjured river of Celestial Light, which had been spilling into the Atlantic for weeks. The exact opposite to Hell's effects on Earth's fauna could be observed in Hope's delta, as a result: the waters there were cleaner than they'd ever been in the past three centuries, to the point where species that usually avoided the Atlantic's coasts and stayed further away now huddled closely together. If you could push past the demons' front line and managed to follow the Bliss' stream, you'd end up in the string of islets campers sometimes used in kayaking trips. It made for a surreal landscape, with Hellfire giving the horizon a lurid orange tint, all the while baleen and beluga whales popped up in the glowing waters, seemingly comforted to the point where survivors and refugees could interact with them freely. The Celestial Light was bringing so much life to the Hillard's delta that coral reefs had begun to form.
"You havin' breakfast with us today, or are you still planning things out with the others?
- I'm stopping by the corner store in the atrium," replied the soldier, "and grabbing a muffin and some coffee. The Horowitz situation needs a wrap-up ASAP; we're almost out of concrete and the rabbi's not interested in letting one of the Thones guide him through the procedure. We're getting by with scraps of arcane power Herbert collects from spies or dealers that Leonard and Rhadamantus end up prosecuting, but the Pitspawn are attacking our one good link to the Centennial Tree again. We also need to make a push for Renton to try and secure that link. There's that, and Sophia wants us to take Doherty off her hands. He means well, but all he does is cause plans to unravel and hang while he tries to come up with replacements.
- Any news from Rendell?"
Three shucked his tee-shirt on. "The Row's cameras are all fried, everyone inside is either dead or gone. The last image we have is of Rendell glowing red, butt-naked, surrounded by a crater of broken glass and crawling for the reinforced window in his closed-off courtyard.
- Why glass?"
Three's father, Gavin, popped by the condo's central corridor, electric razor in hand. "Break down concrete and you get sand, kiddo," he explained. "Heat up sand and it melts. You get rough glass."
In the meantime, Three texted Aislinn and Tom.
Will be at office in five, stopping by Ben's for essentials. Anyone want anything?
A few seconds later, Tom texted back.
Black coffee, two sugars. One pack of Sobranie Black Russians. Thnx for texting, almost slept in.
That made Aidan grimace. "Why does it bother me that Tom looks like he's the only one who even remotely likes the way things are now?"
* * *
Keep your enemies close, and your friends closer.
Tom knew his maxim was backwards, but he didn't care, to be honest. As horrible as things were outside of Magnus Tower's campus, he now had the microcosm he'd spent thousands of years dreaming of. His little Iram of sorts, with everyone collaborating, everyone sharing, everyone pushing past the same growing pains and misfortunes, clutching at the same successes. There hadn't a single morning he hadn't spent since the incursions had begun without some nugget of secret glee lodged in his chest. What they all achieved together thrilled him, and every single day came with another reason for him to be proud of someone, to hug someone else, or to simply go to bed in the knowledge that his exhaustion had been earned and deserved. It made everything significant, and the weight of his and Aislinn's love was now warm and comforting, like a ratty old fleece blanket he'd always forget he had draped around his shoulders, as comfortable as it was. His old lust sometimes peeked through, but a slow half-hour under the covers sated it for the rest of the week. Full to bursting with satisfaction and tenderness, he coasted past Archie's gnawing frustrations and found solutions quickly enough, but he could sense how his happiness wasn't shared by everyone. All he could do was choose to keep a straight face for a few hours. For some reason, however, he just couldn't work on Gabriel or Archie's sometimes dour countenance. The Black Goat be damned, he had hope. The only thing that brought him out of that hopeful streak was Swinburne's memory, and the notion that the man was still out in the wild. One touch, one kiss, and he'd felt aeons of work be neatly pushed aside.
What if his hopes could be dashed just as easily?
Banishing these wispy and dark thoughts, Tom yawned, snorted and sat up and out of bed. "Up and at 'em, honey," he said, glancing back at Aislinn, "we've got a lot on our docket, today!"
Anders Street had once been one of Hope's financial thoroughfares, one of the core's less-assuming areas but that still managed to hold over sixty distinct office spaces and a sizable cluster of the city's banking outlets. It had been a stone's throw away from both Centennial Park and the city's stock exchange, as well as one bus stop away from Wolfram and Associates' terrestrial offices. People hardly lived there, but lives were quietly shaped in that concrete, glass and steel canyon. There had always been a certain sense of life in that corner; the business of financiers and moneymakers, the ordinary vanity of mid-range salarymen needing to find themselves new off-the-shelf Oxfords without necessarily heading for the Green Hills Plaza, Hope's prominent shopping mall. This had been a space someone of Melmoth or Herbert's stripe would've called home, some time ago. Now, it was nothing except an expanse of supernaturally rusting vehicles, powdered glass, gaping skeletal remains and the encroaching brambles of the Pit's poisonous flora. You'd hear chattering noises in that small jungle, sometimes punctuated with trilling screams and bursts of gunfire, or the singing clash of Celestial or Fae weaponry. The demons that nested there weren't sapient by any stretch of the imagination, having manifested as something close to eerily quick and agile iguanas, their flexible jaws lined with multiple rows of tiny and venom-laced teeth. It was one of many of Hope's Exclusion Zones, where no contingent of the Army dared to so much as set foot.
Washington had its own troubles, and President Jones' Air Force One had landed in Walpurgis a few weeks ago. If you could catch the airwaves or managed to connect to one of the few remaining satellites, you'd hear that while the enemy didn't manage to pierce past Nergal's defenses, the opposite was also true. Several had called for the wholesale bombing of all zones affected by the planar incursions, but what was left of the United Nations balked at that prospect. America, Russia and North Korea were virtually the only ones left with a few gung-ho generals brazen enough to try and stop an endless horde with ICBMs. Predictably, their attempts were routinely quashed. Whether it be through Congress, the Duma or the recognition of the Il regime's ineffectual armaments, anyone who claimed to have a bigger stick to waggle was rhetorically beat back without an ounce of mercy.
In an instant, the Vienna Accords had been rendered moot. The existence of demons and angels was obvious to everyone now; all that was left was to debate over the significance of such a fact. Nergal was Nergal, Melmoth was Melmoth, and none of the allied forces so much as bothered to wear Veils, now. Ever since the incursions had begun, those who used concealment spells were typically spies or enemies attempting to gain a tactical foothold. Looking mundane now mattered far less than simply not being seen. The restaurants in Tom's food court were frequented by winged humanoids of both a feathery and leathered persuasion, with neither having much energy to spare for the olden tradition of coaxing their mortal peers one way or another. Another instant had forced things to take a turn for the worse, as a contingent of Pitspawn lured Ciaran, the butlers and their few harbored refugees out of their walls' offered safety.
Archie remembered that instant in vivid detail: his car gone aloft, maintained by Meris' willpower - giving him a privileged seat for the sight of his home's summary destruction by a widening pit of Hellfire. Holden Hall was a jagged and riven mess now, the two wings split apart by a massive and magma-filled cleft. So many keepsakes, so many memories of his family and mundane past - all of it erased in one casual and determined flash. Tom had designed Shield's extension in his tower to feel like an extrapolation of the Hall, but the effect brought him only partial relief. The wainscoting in his office was spot-on, the two big ferns and their pots were right on the money as far as his tastes were concerned, the books that lined his bookcase flattered his sensibilities - but none of them were his mother's or father's. None of them carried old sensory ghosts he'd deeply memorized, none of them triggered memories of happier or more innocent times.
He'd gone back to the mansion's still-smoking ruins, only to save one hatbox and the one thing which truly mattered to him: his violin. Tom might have furnished an apartment for him, it didn't offer him the kind of solitude he would've needed in order to exorcise his growing melancholy with a few forlorn pieces. Spirits were solid within Tom's protected boundaries, but he never really did feel like producing some of the old airship shanty melodies he still remembered or his collection of Gypsy ballads. He had no passion, for now. All that mattered was the civilians' survival, all that deserved focus was the war effort - the only exceptions being Crystal and Anjali. The two of them brought smiles back to his features, and it was chiefly with those two that he allowed himself to feel the full breadth of his despair. Otherwise, he kept it for the battlefield. He threw his anxieties onto his enemy, skewered them with all the rage and resentment he could muster, and then could spend a few minutes kidding himself, assuming he was back to his old self. He wasn't. Ciaran, Gubbin and Bagley had all survived, along with the refugees - but none of them mattered as much, it seemed as what they'd lost. As he knew he wasn't the only one with questing roots still looking for decent soil: Aidan and his family had lost their respective apartment and home, and living next door to Prometheans, angels and demons hadn't exactly been part of the Drake family's plans.
Things had changed. Magnus Tower now stood as the city's social and administrative nexus, with even the Biggs cartel moving its don to one of the smaller penthouses, as had Nigel Griffin. With the Pitspawn clawing at every inch of ground, maximizing a single surface area mattered more. Nearly all that remained of the world from before the incursions now lived, slept and partially worked in Club Ishtar's purple and blue spire, protected by mile after mile of wards and what had to be the second largest circle of protection put into place by a single practitioner. The roads around the campus were virtually unused, with travel to and from the tower using shuttles. People now lived well above-ground, wherever Celestial influence had carved out islets of safety. Otherwise, the only safe recourse was to go underground, as the Pitspawn still had trouble opening portals beneath the Earth's crust. As creatures who'd always emerged out of Hell's bowels, reaching anything other than Earth's surface proved taxing. Only Ahriman and Meris' friends and followers had an easier time of it. Engineering efforts and arcane prowess had at least allowed Magnus Tower and the underside of Meris' fortress to be connected by a single long tunnel and a repurposed electric rail cart.
Under Rupert Isaacs' influence, morals seemed to be changing as well. There'd been no news of Rendell for weeks, but the scientist had immediately gone to work. He'd requested for prisoners and test subjects and had turned a forlorn, remote and poorly-lit corridor in the depths of the bunker underneath the tower into his private triage area. Beyond a set of motorized doors waited tables and industrial-grade sinks, all of them stained with demonic blood. No findings had been made, but his reputation had been enough for some of Pride's Knights to rethink their strategy at the sight of that bushy and wide-eyed man scrutinizing their lines like a discerning chef looking for slabs of prime beef. Anton, it seemed, had found something of a kindred spirit in the good doctor. Both felt that the ends justified the means, and were known to state that their ends wouldn't allow them to keep existing as this city's protectors for long.
They were turning stable and their fighting chances were improving on a daily basis, but the Goat hadn't bothered to wait for them. Yesterday, Aidan had woken up to the sight of President Jones decrying what he referred to as the New Year's Betrayal. The Black Goat, a self-styled President-elect carried to office by his own twisted peers without so much as a nod of thanks towards democracy, now stood in an office he'd brazenly stolen. Like Nereus for Meris, Dafyd Jones' offered updates weren't encouraging: key staff members had been possessed or won over, and the Nativist and Nationalist arms of the Republican party had torn one another apart. Now Democrats were in jail, while a new caste of self-styled Infernal apparatchiks moseyed and sashayed around Washington in expensively-procured and stolen bodies, all of which were now shamelessly altered after possession.
None of it was official for now. Cops still resisted, the Army still resisted, but resistance was waning away. All the Pitspawn had to do involved fixing problems. An oath, a promise, a piece of your soul; and your kids would be fed. You'd be flown to secure districts patrolled by Pitspawn or you'd land a job crucial to the early reconstruction efforts. What the Damned built or had built by someone else, the resistance tore down.
Slowly, insidious viewpoints were slithering their way onto the airwaves. If you followed the supergroups' rhetoric, you were a terrorist in the making. The Prince of Pride knew his deepfakes quite well, and had no problem with displaying people such as Aslinn McConmara, seemingly saying things in public about her allied demons that she never would've so much as thought.
* * *
Nine AM and the world was coming undone.
Aidan brushed his teeth while casting an absent look in his smart mirror's direction, watching as forecast details and newsreels slipped past his face's reflection and its glob of foamy toothpaste. Mid-January and the weather called for shorts and sandals in the northern East Coast. Mild Brimstone showers, said the forecast, with a Celestial Protection Index of 78,2%. It looked like Melmoth would want to throw another barbecue party on the rooftop; he'd already posted a poll on the common boards, asking of the tower's residents of note if they'd like Polish sausages or the usual wieners. Rolling his eyes, he whisked the poll aside with a flick of two fingers. Sarah padded into the bathroom as he spat his mouthful into the sink.
"Hey, bro," she absently said. "What's today's menu like?
- We're pushing past the Slab," he replied, "stress-testing the new bridge Alkaev's NGOs partly financed. Herbert managed to finagle a non-aggression pact for the week, so both engineering teams should be able to connect. If that works, we won't need shuttles to go back to the mainland.
- Does Team Jackass know you're pushing past them anyway?"
Three sighed. "I'm sure the Goat knows, Sar. The thing is, we need this. The official byline is we want to connect to the UISA's infrastructure, but the new bridge's underside has a dark chamber the Freaks can use to ferry people and equipment around. We need some kind of fast-travel option, or else the resistance can't stay organized. It's getting harder by the week to burrow plans in the Dark Web, and Paradise says it's already working on our behalf. On what, though, nobody knows."
Sarah grimaced. "The United Infernal States of America. The way some people say it, it's like a lot of the old establishment just realized they could stop pretending, you know? Being a craven asshole nets you points with the Dictator-in-Chief...
- The UN hasn't ratified anything, they're stuck applying as much red tape to the transition process as possible. Everyone knows Jones is still President in most people's hearts; we're just down to how things were in France during the occupation. There's Washington for the Pit's elite, and Walpurgis for the plucky survivors and the democratically-elected dragons.
- Or like the Holy Roman Empire, back when Rome and Constantinople yanked on the same blanket."
Three laughed bitterly. "I'd never have believed Texas would end up being the Republic's last bastion, of all places. I guess when demons take over, even Neocon bastions wake the fuck up.
- Houston and Walpurgis are both pretty freaking Liberal," noted Sarah as she brushed her hair. The Bliss marks the spot where our hold on things ends and where the demons' begins."
Aidan had momentarily gone silent, remembering the sight of Times Square's massive billboards blasting Mammon's sigils in swirling red patterns on a mottled black background. Even the Statue of Liberty had been beheaded by an army of Infernal engineers. The Bliss was how they'd taken to calling Gabriel's conjured river of Celestial Light, which had been spilling into the Atlantic for weeks. The exact opposite to Hell's effects on Earth's fauna could be observed in Hope's delta, as a result: the waters there were cleaner than they'd ever been in the past three centuries, to the point where species that usually avoided the Atlantic's coasts and stayed further away now huddled closely together. If you could push past the demons' front line and managed to follow the Bliss' stream, you'd end up in the string of islets campers sometimes used in kayaking trips. It made for a surreal landscape, with Hellfire giving the horizon a lurid orange tint, all the while baleen and beluga whales popped up in the glowing waters, seemingly comforted to the point where survivors and refugees could interact with them freely. The Celestial Light was bringing so much life to the Hillard's delta that coral reefs had begun to form.
"You havin' breakfast with us today, or are you still planning things out with the others?
- I'm stopping by the corner store in the atrium," replied the soldier, "and grabbing a muffin and some coffee. The Horowitz situation needs a wrap-up ASAP; we're almost out of concrete and the rabbi's not interested in letting one of the Thones guide him through the procedure. We're getting by with scraps of arcane power Herbert collects from spies or dealers that Leonard and Rhadamantus end up prosecuting, but the Pitspawn are attacking our one good link to the Centennial Tree again. We also need to make a push for Renton to try and secure that link. There's that, and Sophia wants us to take Doherty off her hands. He means well, but all he does is cause plans to unravel and hang while he tries to come up with replacements.
- Any news from Rendell?"
Three shucked his tee-shirt on. "The Row's cameras are all fried, everyone inside is either dead or gone. The last image we have is of Rendell glowing red, butt-naked, surrounded by a crater of broken glass and crawling for the reinforced window in his closed-off courtyard.
- Why glass?"
Three's father, Gavin, popped by the condo's central corridor, electric razor in hand. "Break down concrete and you get sand, kiddo," he explained. "Heat up sand and it melts. You get rough glass."
In the meantime, Three texted Aislinn and Tom.
Will be at office in five, stopping by Ben's for essentials. Anyone want anything?
A few seconds later, Tom texted back.
Black coffee, two sugars. One pack of Sobranie Black Russians. Thnx for texting, almost slept in.
That made Aidan grimace. "Why does it bother me that Tom looks like he's the only one who even remotely likes the way things are now?"
* * *
Keep your enemies close, and your friends closer.
Tom knew his maxim was backwards, but he didn't care, to be honest. As horrible as things were outside of Magnus Tower's campus, he now had the microcosm he'd spent thousands of years dreaming of. His little Iram of sorts, with everyone collaborating, everyone sharing, everyone pushing past the same growing pains and misfortunes, clutching at the same successes. There hadn't a single morning he hadn't spent since the incursions had begun without some nugget of secret glee lodged in his chest. What they all achieved together thrilled him, and every single day came with another reason for him to be proud of someone, to hug someone else, or to simply go to bed in the knowledge that his exhaustion had been earned and deserved. It made everything significant, and the weight of his and Aislinn's love was now warm and comforting, like a ratty old fleece blanket he'd always forget he had draped around his shoulders, as comfortable as it was. His old lust sometimes peeked through, but a slow half-hour under the covers sated it for the rest of the week. Full to bursting with satisfaction and tenderness, he coasted past Archie's gnawing frustrations and found solutions quickly enough, but he could sense how his happiness wasn't shared by everyone. All he could do was choose to keep a straight face for a few hours. For some reason, however, he just couldn't work on Gabriel or Archie's sometimes dour countenance. The Black Goat be damned, he had hope. The only thing that brought him out of that hopeful streak was Swinburne's memory, and the notion that the man was still out in the wild. One touch, one kiss, and he'd felt aeons of work be neatly pushed aside.
What if his hopes could be dashed just as easily?
Banishing these wispy and dark thoughts, Tom yawned, snorted and sat up and out of bed. "Up and at 'em, honey," he said, glancing back at Aislinn, "we've got a lot on our docket, today!"