Chapter 57: An Emergency Escalation

The unmistakable blinding brilliance of holy magic shines through the clearing in bursts and flashes of light.

Every person still conscious drops to their knees, heads bowed, collectively deciding that witnessing an actual divine being is an event that calls for immediate, unquestioning reverence and humility.

Val, who has spent the entirety of the chaos calmly, methodically stuffing his face with whatever abandoned snacks he could scavenge from the fleeing crowd, finally steps through the field of kneeling villagers, wiping his mouth clean on one sleeve.

A snap of his fingers wreathes him in a brief curl of ash magic, and by the time it clears his suit sits immaculate once more, silver-grey hair perfectly preened, not a single hair out of place despite the pressure wave that flattened an entire village’s residents mere moments earlier. He looks, as ever, entirely unbothered by events that would send most mortals into a screaming panic.

He steps casually over two still-unconscious villagers on his way across the clearing, plucking a stray pastry off a fallen, overturned tray without breaking stride or even glancing down, and strolls toward the smoking crater where the bonfire used to stand.

He arrives to find Serenith on her knees in the ash, tossing aside charred wood and scorched earth in wild, increasingly desperate bursts of holy magic, searching for something that clearly isn’t there anymore.

"Relax," Val says, entirely relaxed, coming to a stop a few feet from the edge of the crater. "The Beast Mother took him. Whatever happens now is beyond either of us. No amount of digging changes that."

Serenith’s face is pure panic.

"You don’t understand. If we lose him, we lose the entire world. He’s our last chance at balance before the gods step in themselves."

"I’ve been around long enough to know how that goes." Val scoffs, "If the gods want to end this, they will, whether I’m invested or not."

"You might just get your wish." She turns on him, snarling. "I have to report this. Now."

"I look forward to what they have to say." He shrugs and walks off in the opposite direction. "If they even bother to say anything at all."

Serenith goes rigid, halo flaring bright with fury, arms locked straight down at her sides, and stomps the scorched ground hard enough to throw a flash of light and a shockwave of dust rippling through the clearing, fluttering the tail of Val’s coat as he walks.

By the time the dust clears, she’s gone, leaving behind a glowing crater and the feint afterimage of where her halo had just been.

He chuckles to himself, glancing back at the empty crater.

"Those too have been the most fun I’ve had in longer than I can remember." he mutters to himself.

A booming laugh follows, rolling out across the ruined clearing.

He shakes his head, genuinely bewildered at himself. "Can’t believe I actually care what happens to a demon lord and an angel."

Another laugh.

"Must be getting soft in my old age." he chuckles, shaking his head.

A moment later, or perhaps an eon, Serenith materializes in a flash of light atop a drifting cloud, in the middle of what can only be described as an angelic transportation hub.

It was vast beyond any reasonable measure of the word, stretching upward and outward and inward, overlapping tiers that fold back on themselves at impossible angles, and folding open to reveal entire realities, layered through each other.

Staircases spiraling through dimensions, platforms hanging suspended over platforms that shouldn’t be able to support their own weight, let alone impossible structures growing through them.

Golden light pours from no visible source, and somewhere in the far distance, entire cathedrals of matter seem to be rebuilding themselves out of falling light, over and over, like heaven itself is still deciding what shape it wants to be today.

Bridges made of solidified song stretch between towers that exist in several places and timelines simultaneously, and somewhere below, or above, or between, direction having quietly given up meaning the moment she arrived, an entire universe folds itself neatly into a coin-sized point of light before unfurling again a heartbeat later, whole and unbothered, as though nothing happened at all.

Billions of angels move through it all around her, weaving between platforms and staircases and realities and the gaps where existence seems to have entirely given up trying to make sense. They move with purpose, chatting easily amongst themselves about tasks and assignments and things Serenith can’t begin to follow.

Quotas of prayers answered, sectors of stars requiring maintenance, a minor scheduling conflict involving three separate miracles booked for the same mortal at the same hour. The failed birth of a universe that took three eons to prepare.

None of them so much as glance in her direction, too absorbed in the effortless, endless machinery of their own small corner of eternity, rushing to meet quotas and deadlines.

She arrives panicked, flustered, and completely unprepared for what heaven actually looks like while her angelic mind adjusts to the celestial surroundings.

Her eyes go wider and wider as she takes in everything around her, the mortal part of brain slowly and effortlessly crushed by the impossible logics of her surroundings.

Reality bends in ways that refuse to resolve no matter where she focuses, space folding over itself in layers upon layers, structures and people and entire horizons shifting through time and space in a slow, dizzying vortex that seems to wrap directly around whichever point in space her vision locks to.

Her own mind squeezed under the pressure of looking into and through an infinite infinities.

It’s strange, some distant part of her registers, she was born of this place, shaped from it, and still it comes at her now like a language she’s forgotten how to speak, every angle wrong, every distance lying about itself.

Her thoughts start fragmenting under the strain.

She drops to her knees, clutching her head, mouth stretching open toward a scream that never quite makes it out.

Her eyes roll white.

Her halo flares.

And then, all at once, her whole body goes numb.

Her eyes go dreamy and distant while a soft, contented smile settles over her face as she rises slowly back to her feet.

All her panic was gone, all the urgency disappeared, all concerns of Lucien entirely swept aside.

Replaced by something warm and blank and utterly, completely, blissfully... compliant.