Chapter Text
Her corroborator was acting up. Vaggie could feel it. It had been twinging since they arrived and now felt like it was being gouged with an ice pick. Whether it was aggravated by the smothering heat or Lucifer’s relief spell was wearing off, she didn’t know. Hopefully it wasn't the latter. All she could do was cling to Yris and grit her teeth through the pain. She didn’t speak, didn’t dare move.
The interlayer was baking, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the broiler. The air, while tainted with the pervasive odor of hot metal, was breathable, and Vaggie no longer felt like she was being slow roasted. Throbbing pain subsided to a bearable ache.
Yris flew high and fast, keeping close to conveyor belts and unattended worktables. Luckily, the nearest smiths were too focused on their work to pay attention to her.
Keeping her voice low so as not to attract eavesdroppers, Yris said, “We’re not supposed to take visitors off the hoverflats. We should stick to the maintenance hallways until we find Havyn.”
The air mercifully cooled as they entered the cold crust. Vaggie’s shirt was soon soaked with sweat, but that was something of a relief. Sweating was a reaction to normal, habitable hot weather. In the broiler, she’d been dry as a bone; any perspiration evaporated instantly.
Her corroborator flared and she sucked in a breath, reflexively lifting a hand to her midsection.
“Yris,” she croaked. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry. “Yris, can. . . can we set down? Just for a minute?”
Yris’s brow knit in concern, but she didn’t argue. Charlie watched Vaggie closely, worry clouding her face.
“Are you alright? Is your corroborator hurting?” she asked. Yris’s frown deepened.
“What’s wrong with your corroborator?”
“Nothing, it’s. . . I’m. . . I just need to sit for a minute. Please, just—”
“You don’t look good. Vaggie, you—you really don’t look good,” Charlie interrupted. “Yris, is there somewhere she can lay down?”
Looking thoroughly alarmed, Yris nodded.
“The Wing 3 dormitory. No one will be in there right now.”
As they navigated through the cold crust, the murmur of voices in the nearby halls grew fainter. Vaggie was glad Yris was carrying her, because she doubted she’d be able to fly on her own.
Soon enough, they arrived. The Wing 3 dormitory was a large, cave-like chamber that was mostly open floor space. Three hundred outcroppings jutted from the walls, stacked five high. Each one was a neatly made bed. Built into the frames were transparent drawers for clothes and personal effects.
There were some communal activity supplies—styluses and paper, paints, balls, cards, outdated newspapers, a few board games, all stored on a set of open shelves. One bed stood alone, closest to the door, and from the size Vaggie guessed it belonged to Brego. She thought she glimpsed a photograph of Nadine inside one of the drawers.
Yris took them to a section of beds on the wall labeled 3-14 and set Vaggie down on one of the lower bunks. Vaggie’s attention was drawn to the adjacent bed, where an afghan made of lumpy, colorful yarn provided a welcome pop of color. When she peered into the drawers, she saw balls of yarn and another half-finished afghan.
“Whose is that?” she asked hoarsely, nodding to bed.
“Ansyl. She crochets. She doesn’t have much time for it, but she wants to make blankets for our whole squad.”
Pity struck Vaggie’s heart. Ansyl was in the broiler right now when she’d probably rather be here, crocheting blankets for her fellow smiths. It was difficult to picture a smith working a delicate crochet hook with their massive hands.
“What about you? Are you doing any crocheting?” Vaggie said with a light chuckle, just to delay the inevitable tiresome explanation about her injury. Ignoring the twitch of pain (it had thankfully diminished now that she was sitting), she reached down to Yris’s bed drawers and opened one up.
Her breath caught in her throat. Dozens of intricate animal sculptures gleamed inside the drawer. She carefully pulled one out, feeling as if a rough touch might ruin it. She hadn’t thought it possible for Yris’s work to improve from the sparrow she’d made years ago, but it had.
The sculpture she pulled out was a beta fish. Each scale was meticulously outlined, and the eyes were round and gleaming. The frondlike fins were thin, flexible whispers of metal so delicate that they actually rippled as Vaggie moved the fish between her hands, so it appeared to be swimming through the air.
“You made this?” Charlie breathed, taking the sculpture from Vaggie. “It’s amazing.”
Yris looked uncomfortable, like she didn’t know what to do with the praise.
“Well, I mean. . . yeah, I did. I didn’t thieve the material for it, though.” A blush arose on her cheeks. It seemed important to her to clarify that the steel for her projects was fairly acquired. “Sometimes the batches have excess, or we find dregs in the refinement tanks when we clean them out. It’s not the best quality, so no one cares if we pocket it. And occasionally an order will be canceled when the steel for it is already prepared and registered. In those cases, we’re technically supposed to put it into excess storage, since it’s fully refined, but Brego sometimes lets us take a bit for ourselves. It’s not really thieving; I’ve never thieved.”
Her face suddenly lit up, and she rummaged through the drawer herself. She moved aside a few other animals, pieces of jewelry, and unused hunks of steel, and at last pulled out a preening comb. The wide handle was a wreathe of sculpted roses, and vines crept up the two sharp prongs.
She shyly offered it to Vaggie and said, “I made it for you when this meeting was arranged. I would’ve given it to you earlier, but I forgot to grab it when I left for the Embassy. I understand if you don’t like it. Or if you already have one. I just thought. . .”
She fell quiet, waiting for Vaggie’s reaction.
Vaggie stared down at the comb, turned it over in her hands. She hadn’t had a good preening the entire time she’d been in Hell—not that she’d needed it for most of that time. Even when she finally got her wings back, she didn’t pay much attention to the state of her feathers. She occasionally did some finger-preening in the shower, but she wasn’t particularly diligent.
Her eye stung, and she swallowed a lump in her throat. How much longer did she have before her corroborator gave out? How long would she have to use this comb? It was a work of exquisite craftsmanship, and a far kinder gift than she’d ever expected to receive.
“It’s perfect. Thank you,” she choked out. She wiped her eye on her glove and said to Charlie with a weak laugh, “I’ll have to show you how to use this. Preening’s easier with an extra set of hands.”
Guilt reared its head as she remembered what she’d come here to do. The more she thought about the steel she’d promised Carmilla, the less she wanted to acquire it. How could she go through with it now? How could she admit that she’d lied to Yris’s face about her intentions, and then have the audacity to ask for a favor?
She met Charlie’s gaze, silently pleading for her to read her thoughts and understand. From the way Charlie smiled and squeezed her hand, she was pretty sure the message got across.
Oblivious to the wordless exchange, Yris prompted, “What’s wrong with your corroborator?”
Vaggie tucked the preening comb into her waistband and heaved a sigh. She explained the ambush—skimming the details of the meeting with Carmilla, of course—and the injury that resulted, and the failed appeal to get her corroborator repaired. While recounting Cynthaeis’s visit, some choice language slipped out that shocked Yris and made Charlie visibly uncomfortable.
Rubbing the nape of her neck, Vaggie finished, “So, that about covers it. I’m fucking useless now—”
“Vaggie,” Charlie murmured.
“—and there’s no way to fix it because Cynthaeis was being. . .” She trailed off, scraping her brain for a suitably offensive word that she hadn’t already used.
“Cynthaeis?” Yris supplied, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah.” Vaggie looked over at Charlie and was surprised to see her deep in thought. She knew that look well enough to know that a new plan was forming.
Before Vaggie could talk her down from whatever insane thing she was thinking of doing, Charlie piped up, “My dad said an older angel could make a temporary substitute for a corroborator. Could Mendrion do that? Could he make a substitute for Vaggie?”
Vaggie looked at Yris, who was just as surprised.
“I don’t. . . maybe? I don’t know, I’m not sure he’s ever done that.”
“Because he’s never had to. But if he made Vaggie a substitute, that would give us time to convince Cynthaeis to come back and help!” Charlie was on her feet now, pacing in front of the bed, a fresh dazzle in her eyes.
“Hang on, we don’t know that he would agree to it,” Vaggie said, holding up a hand, but Charlie wouldn’t be talked down.
“If you have his support, Cynthaeis will have to reconsider!”
“Cynthaeis agreed to come down once, and only once, as a favor to your dad. She won’t—”
“And if we can get him to vouch for the hotel, too, maybe we can get another hearing! All of Heaven knows about the exterminations now, and Adam won’t be there to sabotage us, so we might actually have a chance to make them listen!”
Yris nodded vehemently. Charlie’s contagious enthusiasm had reached her.
“Then we can’t wait,” she decided. “I’ll find Havyn, and she can summon Mendrion. You two wait here.”
She hopped to her feet and hurried out of the dormitory, leaving them alone.
As soon as the door shut, Vaggie seized Charlie’s arm to stop her pacing. She’d been stewing on something since the broiler, but didn’t want to risk bringing it up in front of anyone else.
“Can you understand what I’m saying right now?” she asked. Charlie blinked in surprise.
“Yeah. Why do you—”
“You know Enochian?”
“Is that what it’s called? I was wondering.”
“Can you speak it? Did your dad teach you?”
“What? No, I’d never even heard it before Cynthaeis came over. Why?”
Vaggie gingerly reclined on the pillow and explained, “Enochian is the language of the angels—exclusively angels. Speaking it takes practice, but we can all understand it when we hear it. No one else can, though. Souls have tried to learn it, and demons have tried to translate it the few times they’ve recorded snippets, but they can’t.”
“Oh. But I’m not. . .” Charlie frowned and wrung her hands self-consciously. “Is it weird, then, that I can understand it?”
“I don’t know. You’re not an angel, but. . . I guess there’s not really a precedent for what you are. But your dad is a seraphim. Maybe you got a little more of him than you realized. Just keep it to yourself for now, okay? If you hear anyone else speaking Enochian here, just play dumb.”
Charlie took a second to process all of that, then resumed her anxious pacing. After a minute, she sat down and looked sideways at Vaggie.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, babe.”
“Why is Cynthaeis. . . like that? What happened between you two?”
Vaggie snorted.
“It’s not just me. She hates all the exorcists.”
“But why? Is it because of the exterminations?”
“No, it’s got nothing to do with that. Honestly, I don’t think she cares about the exterminations. She’s never really liked humans.”
“Why, then?”
Vaggie slowly sat up and leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, deliberating how much to tell her and how best to tell it.
Finally, she explained, “When new angels are brought to life, it’s a really big occasion. There’s this grand ceremony where their maker presents them before all of Heaven. The Speaker of God blesses them, they’re given a halo and a name, and they officially become part of the Host.
“When the exorcists were made, our ceremony. . . didn’t go as planned. Instead of naming us, Cynthaeis said we were a disgrace and her greatest shame as a creator. She handed us over to Adam and walked out.”
Charlie gaped at her, one hand hovering over her mouth.
“What?” she gasped. “But. . . but why?”
Vaggie shrugged.
“We weren’t what she wanted. Adam was in charge of our making, since he was going to be our general, so she had to follow his design. It was a rough blow to her ego.”
“Did you ever try to talk to her? Did you ever try to get an explanation, or an apology?”
“Yeah, we tried.”
“And?”
“And she didn’t want anything to do with us, so we stopped trying. Some of us reached out again when we were older, when we heard about her retirement, but she made it pretty clear that her feelings hadn’t changed.”
“Oh, Vaggie, I had no idea! I never. . . that’s. . . that. . .” Charlie’s face contorted in sudden anger. Vaggie jumped as she snarled, “That bitch!”
She seized Vaggie by the face, held her so close their noses touched, and said with manic fury, “We will drag her out of Heaven if we have to, and she will make you a new corroborator! That’s a fucking promise.”
Vaggie couldn’t help smiling at her fierce tenacity.
“Thanks, sweetie. But I’ve thought about it, and the truth is, she might not be able to. Angels don’t get to just retire; she was an exception. After the power she expended making the rough draft army, and then us, she—”
“Wait, ‘rough draft army’? Like, a different batch of exorcists?”
The first army—the ‘rough draft army’, as Adam had called it—was a whole other can of worms, one that Vaggie was hesitant to open up. The exorcists’ fraught history with their maker was bad enough without taking that into account.
She was debating where to start when the dormitory door opened and Yris trotted in, grinning.
“I found her, she’s in the kitchens! Nadine sent out an alert for us, but if we hurry, you might have time to talk to Havyn. I know a shortcut.”
She scooped them up again and took off, flying through the empty hallways.
The shortcut took them out of the well-lit passages and through a set of maintenance tunnels similar to the ones running in and out of the broiler. They passed by one room filled with panels of buttons, switches, and blinking lights, all surrounding a tall, pulsing cylinder. A plate at the top of the cylinder read CORE B.
“What’s that?” Vaggie asked.
“One of the power cores. There are two of them. A’s undergoing maintenance right now. Both cores need maintenance twice a year, but we can only do them one at a time. A squad is posted in each core room to keep an eye on them.”
Sure enough, a squad of smiths was milling around inside. Some looked busy, if not a bit bored, opening wall panels to check wiring and wiping down already clean surfaces. Some had stopped pretending to work and were playing a card game on an observation deck. Among the card players, Vaggie recognized Aarom, the naked smith from earlier (thankfully, he was no longer naked).
Next, they passed through the medical office. According to Yris, Medic was constantly on the move, summoned from one side of the forge to the other to deal with injuries, so the smiths in the cold crust used their room as a shortcut frequently.
They first entered the main clinical room. There was a chair for patients, an operating table, shelves of neatly labeled supplies, and a box of medical textbooks. Inside a locked antechamber were racks upon racks of charging snips. Yris took them through a sequestered side door into Medic’s personal quarters, and the change in atmosphere made Vaggie’s eyebrows shoot up.
Medic’s room was much homier than she’d expected, given how mechanical and insectoid they were. A large woven cot furnished with embroidered pillows and fluffy blankets took up half the room. On one side of the cot was a stand with a self-heating tea kettle, and on the other was a small bookshelf which, based on the titles, contained mostly sappy romance novels. There was a flowering orange tree ringed by bushes in one corner of the room, and a modest kitchenette with cheerful pastel appliances. Paintings of nature scenes from alien planets decorated the walls.
Vaggie, Charlie, and Yris froze when they heard the multiplous clacking of Medic’s approach.
“Shit,” Yris muttered. “Medic doesn’t like when we come in here.”
“You said you come this way all the time!”
“Yes, because Medic is usually elsewhere. They’ll write me up and bring you two back to Nadine!”
They ran to the orange tree and ducked behind the bushes—just in time, as the door opened and Medic scuttled in. They were even more frightening up close, filling the room with their mechanical coils, dozens of legs rotating them smoothly forward.
Vaggie peeked through the leaves. She watched as Medic turned on the tea kettle, curled up on the cot, and pulled the fluffy blankets around themself. They grabbed the novel sitting on top of the shelf, Feathers & Fidelity, and opened it, removing a tasseled bookmark. They didn’t look like they were planning to leave anytime soon.
Vaggie silently cursed them and their stupid romance novel. She and Charlie had limited time to talk to Havyn, and Medic was unknowingly making that time even more limited.
The cuff on one of medic’s arms beeped, and a voice on the radio called, “2-07 to Medic, we’ve got another firearm mishap in the interlayer. Quadrant 4-B, weapons production.”
Medic pressed a button, which sent off an affirming sound. A long, whispery noise escaped them, like the brush of dry fabric on cement. It sounded vaguely like a sigh. Medic turned off the tea kettle, set aside their book, and uncoiled themself from the cot. Despite their clear reluctance, they scuttled out of the room with unnerving speed and disappeared into a maintenance tunnel.
Letting out a collective breath of relief, Yris, Charlie, and Vaggie left their hiding spot and continued on their way.
They finally arrived in the kitchen. Rows of counters and appliances were diligently manned by one squad. Two smiths worked on twin stoves; another was in charge of fetching ingredients from a pantry the size of Vaggie and Charlie’s bedroom; four were chopping, dicing, stirring, and peeling at the counters; and three were scrubbing, rinsing, and drying dishes assembly-line style.
A few squads hung out in an adjoining dining area, playfully ribbing the squad on cooking duty and browsing a long buffet table where the dishes were regularly refilled and swapped out. Every few minutes, smiths who were between chores would dart in, grab some food, and leave.
There was no sign that scheduled meals were a thing here. Vaggie guessed the cooking was kept up continuously so that food would be available 24/7 to whoever needed it. The squads in the cold crust didn’t wear snips, so it was necessary for them to eat and sleep.
There was no shortage of distracting sights, sounds, and smells, but Vaggie immediately identified Havyn. She resembled Brego, bigger than all the other smiths and the same stony grey color, but she had fewer tattoos and close-cropped hair. She was helping in the kitchen, peeling potatoes and chatting with the nearby smiths. Despite how small the potatoes and the paring knife were in her enormous hands, she held them dexterously and worked with swift precision.
Charlie looked at Vaggie and bit her lip, suddenly nervous. Vaggie understood; their first talk with an overseer hadn’t gone well, and as they knew, Heaven in general wasn’t big on second chances. Vaggie gave her a thumbs-up, and that was enough for Charlie to work up the courage to approach Havyn. As they drew closer, they overheard what Havyn and the smith beside her were discussing.
“So, Miss Nadine said to keep an eye out. If we see the visitors, we are to detain them and radio her. Yris from 3-14, too. They convinced her to fly them out of the broiler,” Havyn was explaining.
“What about the other demon?”
“That one stayed put. Miss Nadine dropped it off in the lobby and locked down the hoverflat.”
“And how did Miss Nadine sound when she told you all of this? Tired? Sore? Like she was. . . in the middle of something?”
Havyn rolled her eyes and drawled, “She sounded exactly like she always does. If she and Brego stole away to enjoy their usual window of early shift change peace, they were quick about it. They never take more than five minutes. They’ll be done by now.”
The other smith said with a shrug, “I just don’t get why they’re always trying to be sneaky about it. Everyone knows. It’s not like—” Their gaze fell past Havyn, and they went abruptly quiet.
Havyn tensed at the sight of Charlie striding purposefully towards her, flanked by Vaggie and Yris. Other smiths took notice, and the murmur of conversation gradually died down.
“Hello, Havyn,” Charlie said, puffing out her chest. “I’m Charlie Morningstar, the princess of Hell. I’d like to talk to you about the Hazbin Hotel.”
Havyn’s surprise disappeared, and her jaw set in a stony expression.
“Maevol, radio Nadine. We’ve found the visitors,” she ordered one of the smiths. She stepped toward Charlie and said with measured calm, “I'm going to have to ask you to come with me, Your Highness.”
She reached for Charlie’s arm, but Vaggie checked her big hand aside. Her shoulder smarted as if she’d rammed it into a brick wall, but she tamped down the pain and placed herself between Charlie and Havyn.
“We need you to summon Mendrion out of the star. We came here to talk to him, and we’re not leaving until we do,” Charlie said stubbornly.
“Brego is overseeing the broiler. You should’ve gone to him.”
“We did! He wouldn’t do it! He said we’d just be wasting Mendrion’s time!”
“That’s his prerogative.”
Yris stepped forward and pressed, “Please, Havyn, just hear them out. It’s important, what they have to say. If you just—”
“Why aren’t you with your squad? Go back to the broiler. Now.”
Yris obeyed automatically, turning around to leave, but Charlie grabbed her arm, stopping her in her tracks.
“No, Yris, stay. I’m sure the broiler can function without you for a little bit longer. You’re an angel, not a slave.”
Vaggie cringed. Certain words were taboo in Heaven—words that weren’t simply crude or offensive, but implied dissatisfaction, even rebelliousness. Using “slave” or an equivalent term to refer to any angel, in any context, was one of those major no-nos. That stigma apparently carried over to the forge, as the surrounding smiths gasped and drew back, whispering behind their hands. Even Yris looked shocked. Charlie might as well have slapped her across the face.
Charlie seemed to realize she’d crossed a line. Vaggie could see her confidence wavering.
Vaggie threw up her arms and said loudly, “Is that wrong? Are you guys not slaves? We would hope not, but from what we saw in the interlayer and the broiler, it sure looks that way.”
“Vaggie!” Yris gasped, clutching her pearls.
Havyn threw down her paring knife and stomped over, glowering down at them. It was a terrifying sight, but Vaggie stood her ground.
“Who are you to shame us? You are fallen! Don’t act like you know what it means to serve Heaven.”
“That's right—I’m fallen. I know exactly what it means to serve Heaven,” Vaggie growled, clenching her fists at her sides. “It’s only a paradise for human souls. For angels, it’s indentured servitude. Eternal indentured servitude. We’re not people, we’re just cogs in the machine. You were built to make weapons, just like I was built to use them. You can sugarcoat it with that ‘servant of God’ bullshit all you want, if it helps you sleep at night; I did that for years. The only difference between you and me is that I woke up.”
Havyn’s face, at first slack with shock, darkened with fury. Her hands balled up into boulder-sized fists and heated until they were glowing white-hot. Vaggie tensed, balancing on the balls of her feet, ready to leap away if Havyn decided to swing.
The tension was pierced by a shrill voice in the hallway.
“WHERE ARE THEY?"
Nadine shoved her way through the crowd of smiths. She was quite literally fuming; her blue hair danced with flames, and her freckles threw off angry sparks. The smiths gave her a wide berth as she passed.
“You! And you!” she shrieked, jabbing a finger at Charlie and Vaggie. She turned her rage on Yris, who shrank in fear. “And you! What do you think you’re doing? What gives—what made you think—how you ever conceived—you—you disobeyer!”
Yris reeled back, gutted by Nadine’s words. The other smiths looked horrified. A few rushed forward to catch Yris as she swooned.
Nadine flew up to Charlie’s eye level and hissed in her face, “You are, by far, the worst visitors we’ve ever had! I advised against bringing you here, you know. I said, ‘They’re demons, they’ll only cause trouble!’ But no, Seraphim Mendrion’s sentimentality won the day! I respect Mendrion. He’s not my maker, but I do love him, and I will continue to serve him for as long as he’ll have me. But to heed the Morningstar! I don’t know what he was thinking!”
“Miss Nadine, calm down!" Havyn exclaimed, her own anger ebbing. She, too, was alarmed by Nadine’s outburst. She edged toward her with her hands out, the way one would approach a frothing animal.
“I will not calm down! They are discourteous! They are causing a ruckus! They—”
“They called us slaves!” someone shouted.
“Exactly, they—wait, what?” Nadine froze, her mouth hanging open and her face going blank. Her flames died, and she drifted down to the floor.
Another smith added, “They said we’re enslaved to Heaven. They said Maker built us to be slaves.”
All eyes were on Nadine. They seemed to be waiting for her to reassure them that they were not slaves, but she was speechless. Charlie spoke up before she could recover her wits.
“Come on, we just took a tour of this whole place! We saw the working conditions in the broiler and the interlayer. Most demons don’t have it anywhere near this bad!”
“Working conditions! I’ll have you know our working conditions are fine, Your Highness. We are efficient, organized, we have an excellent medic on call, and the SNPs have revolutionized production.”
“Those snips are the most dystopian shit I’ve ever seen! It’s inhumane!”
“Need I remind you, we are not human. We’re—” Nadine’s cuff beeped, and she stopped. She smoothed her hair, composed her earlier professionalism, and printed out a holographic message. She skimmed it, pursed her lips, and flatly said, “Emery sent another one.”
An ecstatic smile broke out on Havyn’s face, and she hurried forward to take the message. Vaggie caught a glimpse of it: a few paragraphs of neat cursive were scrawled beneath a rather provocative photo of a cupid. Like all the other cupids, she was stunningly beautiful, even by angel standards, with flowing red hair and lilac-pink skin. It didn't hurt that she was nude.
Another smith leaned around Havyn’s arm to read the message and remarked, “Wow. Her poetry is not improving.”
“Shut up! Her poetry is wonderful,” Havyn asserted, although she was too happy to muster any real anger.
“Enough!” Nadine snapped. “Follow me, please, Your Highness. I’m afraid you’ve overstayed your welcome. Yris, go back to the Broiler and report to Brego. He said he’d like to have a word with you about your disobedience.”
“Brego keeps a picture of you in his bed drawer,” Yris blurted. Vaggie looked at her in surprise. She hadn’t expected Yris to regather her crumbling courage.
Nadine opened her mouth, shut it. Her eyes were wide, and a blush bloomed on her cheeks.
“He does?” A confused mix of emotions flashed across her face.
“Yeah, but you wouldn’t know that, would you?” Vaggie pressed, jumping on the opportunity.
Charlie said to Havyn, “You’re an overseer. How often do you get to rest? Do overseers ever get free shifts?”
Havyn rolled her shoulders indecisively and answered, “Well, no. We can rest sometimes, if work’s going smoothly, but we have to stay vigilant in case a squad needs our help.”
“So even Brego’s ‘easy’ rotations aren’t really easy, are they? And Nadine, you said yourself you only get eight hours off every month. No wonder you can’t have more than five minutes alone with him.”
Scandalized, Nadine sputtered, “How dare you—we’re not—he and I—my schedule is—my work here—important—”
“Look, whatever you two have going on, do you really want it to be like that? Forever?”
“I. . .” Once again, Nadine was speechless. She fell back a step, compulsively smoothing her skirt. “I suppose I’ve never thought of it like that.”
“Because you don’t have time to think, and neither does he!”
Charlie turned to Yris next. “I’ll bet Ansyl would be able to finish blankets for half your squad by the end of the month if she wasn’t stuck in the broiler. Medic has all those novels they never get to read, and you showed us your sculptures, Yris. What do you think you could make if you had a full day to yourself to do it?”
“I have no idea,” Yris whispered. Her eyes became starry as the possibilities sank in.
Finally, Charlie turned to Havyn.
“I bet Emery would like to show you her poems in person. When do you get to see her again?”
Havyn’s smile faded. Her joy at receiving Emery’s message was replaced by resignation.
“My wing was in Heaven last rotation, so. . . three more rotations, including this one.”
The spectating smiths murmured about their own hobbies, about friends in Heaven they’d like to see. Charlie had struck gold.
“You know,” she broached, “in Hell, most places have standardized work hours. Forty per week, sometimes fifty or thirty depending on what ring you’re in. One of my hotel guests works seventy or eighty. But that’s a lot, and his boss is kind of shitty, so it’s not ideal.”
One of the smiths snorted and said, “No wonder Hell isn’t as advanced as Heaven! How do you guys get anything done?”
“Forty hours a week sounds horribly inefficient,” another agreed.
“It’s plenty efficient, actually, and Hell is plenty advanced, thank you very much. Forty hours was just an example.” Charlie was getting exasperated now.
Havyn tucked Emery’s message away and said, “Call us what you want. We serve Heaven, and we are proud to do it. If you’re suggesting we forsake this forge, forsake our maker—”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all!” Charlie said hurriedly. “I’m just saying you should ease up a little. Reconfigure the schedule so you can all have more personal time. Are worker’s rights just not a thing here?”
Judging by the puzzled stares, they were indeed not a thing. Vaggie wasn’t surprised. What did surprise her, however, was when Charlie exclaimed, “Well! Have I got a game changer for you guys!” and whipped out Labor Unions: A Comprehensive Guide for the Unfortunately Uninitiated. She’d probably smuggled it in the interior pocket in her jacket that was secretly a spacial rift (Vaggie had seen her store all sorts of things in there, from pens and chapstick to full luggage sets).
“Why did you bring that?” Vaggie whispered.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” Charlie whispered back. “I thought if we had to sit in a waiting room or something, it’d be a good idea to have some light reading on hand.”
Before she could explain unionization to the crowd, two surly looking smiths entered the kitchen, guiding a hoverflat between them. From the layer of sooty perspiration, the flecks of steel stuck to their hands, and the snips on their backs, they’d just come from the broiler.
“Brego wants to see the demons. You, too, Yris.”
“Right,” Nadine agreed, snapping out of her stupor. “Your Highness, if you’ll please—”
“He wants to see you, too, Miss Nadine. He wants to know how the new visitors got in without your escort.”
“New visitors? I didn’t—but—” Nadine’s face paled in horror. She looked close to fainting as she said in a breathless whisper, “I missed visitors?”
“They arrived unscheduled. They took a hoverflat and went directly to the broiler.”
Reeling from the knowledge that she’d failed to intercept the new visitors, Nadine stepped onto the hoverflat without a word. Yris resignedly followed, standing beside it. The two smiths closed in on Charlie and Vaggie, and one put his hand on Charlie’s shoulder in a way that, while not quite threatening, made it clear that this wasn’t a request.
Charlie thrust the book into Havyn’s hands and cried, “Read it! Your livelihoods depend on it!”
She and Vaggie were dragged away and loaded up on the hoverflat. They glided out of the kitchen, leaving Havyn staring down at the union guide, dumbfounded, while the other smiths gathered around curiously.
The ride through the forge was infinitely longer than before. No one spoke except Nadine, who muttered about the indecency of unscheduled visitors and what a disgrace it was that Gladys, a random lowborn demon, was better at following instructions than a princess and a soldier. Yris looked miserable, lagging at the back of the procession with her head hanging low. The tension was tangible.
“Do you think the book will work?” Charlie asked Vaggie as they entered the tunnels between the interlayer and broiler. She spoke so quietly that Vaggie barely caught the words.
“I don’t know. They might be too scared to even open it, since a demon gave it to them. We’ll just have to hope for the best.”
They drifted into the broiler, shielding their eyes from the blinding light of the star. Several smiths watched the hoverflat’s progress from their workstations. Vaggie spotted Yris’s squad glaring down at them from where they were monitoring their refinement tanks. Yris hid behind the hoverflat to avoid their judging eyes.
Vaggie started when Charlie sucked in a sharp breath and gripped her arm. Vaggie followed her frightened gaze to the rest platform. The new visitors were there, talking to Brego, who somehow looked grouchier than before. A chill shivered up Vaggie’s spine, and her corroborator twinged.
The visitors were exorcists.
There were three of them, and Vaggie recognized them instantly. Andromeda was at the front of the group, speaking loudly and insistently, flanked by Vulvanna and Ovaris, who glared around at the nearby smiths. As the hoverflat drew closer, Vaggie caught a snippet of the conversation.
“I don’t understand what the problem is. We have an order, and it’s your job to fill it. Lute wants these by the end of the week.”
Andromeda thrust a sheet of parchment at Brego, who read through it. His scowl deepened, and when he answered, his voice was trembling with restrained anger.
“This is the eighth order she’s sent in the last two days. We were already dealing with increased demand before she started asking for all these new weapons. We need more time, we can’t—”
“You’ll use the time we’ve given you. Just work faster.”
“We’re working as fast as we can,” Brego said through gritted teeth, keeping his eyes fixed on a spot above her head.
“Clearly not, or this wouldn’t be a fucking problem. It’s what you're built for. And hey, if all the smiths are too pussy to do it, just pull Mendrion out of the star. He can probably crank out this whole order in half an hour.”
The hoverflat landed. Charlie and Vaggie tried ineffectively to hide behind Nadine, but she put on her heat protection pendant, hopped off the hoverflat, and fluttered over to Brego.
“I apologize. I should’ve been there to receive you. I was busy,” she said, nodding curtly to Andromeda. With a sniff, she added, “Although, if you’d scheduled your visit, I might’ve taken more care to make myself available.”
Her eyes suddenly dropped to their hoverflat. She frowned and said, “That one was already in use.”
“No one was using it when we arrived. It was just sitting in the lobby,” Vulvanna said with a shrug.
“No one? But I left. . .” Nadine’s face paled, and she swayed in place. She had to brace herself on Brego’s arm to stay upright. She looked up at him and weakly said, “I left that demon alone in the lobby while I went to retrieve the others. I didn’t think. . . the hoverflat was locked, but she could’ve figured out how to access the map if she. . . oh, dear God, if she wandered off. . .”
Brego’s face was an unreadable mask. He turned on his radio and gruffly ordered, “Wing 3 overseer, calling all squads. A demon is loose in the forge. If you see it, apprehend it and contact your overseer immediately.”
“A demon? How did a demon get into the forge?” Andromeda demanded. She grabbed the handle of her scimitar and looked around, as if the demon might be standing behind her. She spotted Charlie and Vaggie, and her eyes bulged with rage.
“That’s—it’s—it’s them!” she screeched. She drew her scimitar and brandished it furiously. The other two exorcists followed suit; Vulvanna pulled out a mean-looking mace while Ovaris unsheathed twin sickles and twirled them with malice.
Logically, Vaggie knew she never would’ve been allowed to bring her spear into the forge, but she wished she had it now. Despite her lack of a weapon, she drew herself up in a fighting stance, ready to play defense. In her mind, she was calculating who would likely strike first, how they would strike, how she could disarm them and steal their weapon.
“Wait, no, we’re not here to fight!” Charlie cried, raising her hands. She looked pleadingly at Brego and said, “Gladys doesn’t even work for us, she’s a representative for. . . a family friend. Whatever she’s doing, we didn’t tell her to do it. We just came here to—”
“To kill more angels? Is that what you came here for?” Andromeda let out a manic cackle. “Killing an archangel wasn’t enough, huh? Aiming a little higher now?”
“What? No! No, we don’t want to kill anyone!”
“Now that Heaven knows what you guys were getting up to every year, Charlie wanted to pitch her hotel again. She hoped Mendrion would listen to her,” Vaggie interrupted. All eyes turned to her.
She took a deep breath and confessed, “Things are getting dangerous in Hell, even more than usual. Now that demons know what angelic steel can do, they’re stockpiling it. It was my idea to start a stockpile of our own. I hoped that if negotiations with Mendrion went well, we’d be able to take some fresh steel for ourselves, and for an overlord I’ve been corresponding with. That’s who Gladys works for.”
“What?” Yris moved forward, staring down at her. “You didn’t tell me that. You said—”
“I said what I had to say,” Vaggie continued, avoiding her gaze at all costs. “I knew you would still trust me, but I didn’t think you’d let us in if you knew what we were really after—what I was really after. Getting steel was my idea, not Charlie’s.”
The platform was quiet. Charlie gaped at her, shocked that she’d taken the blame onto herself. Vaggie caught a glimpse of the devastation on Yris’s face, but refused to let it touch her heart. She kept her own expression neutral, determined.
Andromeda cackled, low and mean.
“Only a smith would be thick enough to trust a demon,” she scoffed, shooting a reproachful look at Yris.
As if the betrayal hadn’t fully sunk in yet, Yris weakly said, “She’s not a demon, she’s—”
“She’s worse than a demon. She’s fallen,” Andromeda snapped.
Vaggie’s heart felt like it was shrinking. It hurt to stand tall, to keep her face blank. She barely noticed as Charlie moved protectively in front of her.
A commotion near the walls caught their attention. Havyn had entered the broiler and was now flying to the rest platform with another overseer—presumably the one from Wing 2—in tow. They landed on the platform, and Havyn marched right up to Brego.
“We need to talk,” she told him.
“Not now. I’m dealing with a situation here.”
“Yes, now. Summon Mendrion; he needs to have a say, too. It should be all of us or none of us.”
Vaggie noticed Havyn was carrying the labor union guide. Maybe Charlie’s spontaneous speech had worked after all.
Havyn’s serious tone gave Brego pause. He crossed his arms and brusquely said, “Fine, we can arrange an overseer meeting later. But not now, Havyn. I have work to do—so do you, Ambross. More orders keep coming in, and with the recent interruption,” he scowled at Charlie and Vaggie, “we’re already behind. I can’t just—”
“Havyn!”
Everyone looked up to see Aarom flying out of the wall, carrying Gladys. She was half-cooked from being flown through the interlayer and the broiler. Aarom plopped her on Charlie and Vaggie’s hoverflat, but kept his hands locked on her arms, pinning them to her sides.
Unaware of what he’d just walked in on, Aarom proudly said, “I apprehended the demon! I tried to contact you, Havyn, but you weren’t answering your radio. Maevol said you’d come here to talk to Brego. He also said something about starting a ‘labor union’ and organizing a ‘strike’? I don’t know what those things are, but—”
“Enough! We’re wasting time!” Andromeda shouted, slashing her scimitar. There was madness in her eyes as she hissed at Charlie, “You want round 2? I’ll give you round 2, princess, right here, right now. Oh, and Vaggie—Lute sends her regards.”
Striking with the speed of a snake, Andromeda lunged over the edge of her hoverflat, snagged Nadine’s heat-resistant pendant, and threw it over her own neck. Nadine collapsed, gasping for air, pale skin steaming in the heat. Brego lunged to grab her with a cry of distress. He was so preoccupied getting her to safety that he didn’t notice Andromeda charging toward Charlie and Vaggie.
Andromeda leapt onto their hoverflat, sending it careening through the air. They both dove out of the way as she swung the scimitar. The curved blade bounced off the floor with an ear-splitting clang, sending up a spray of sparks. Andromeda slammed the hilt into Charlie’s nose with a sickening crunch, then rounded on Vaggie.
She lunged. Vaggie dodged and grabbed her wrist, hoping to disarm her. Andromeda brought her knee up into her ribs, and Vaggie gave a choked shout as her corroborator smarted.
Andromeda raised the scimitar, brought it down. A giant hand seized Vaggie by the back of the neck and shoved her to her knees on the floor of the hoverflat, out of the blade’s path. Golden blood splattered, and she looked up to see that Yris’s face had been violently slashed open.
Yris howled, reeling back and clutching her face. All the smiths on the platform converged, shouting in Enochian. Andromeda was disarmed and brought back to her own hoverflat with the other exorcists, and the pendant was returned to Nadine, who quickly darted out of reach.
“Yris!” Vaggie cried, grabbing her shoulder. Blood trickled between Yris’s fingers, and Vaggie tried in vain to help her staunch it.
The wind was knocked out of her as Brego shoved her backwards and crouched beside Yris. He spoke rapidly in Enochian, tried unsuccessfully to pry her hands off her face so he could see the injury. The other smiths crowded around; their earlier judgment was gone.
“Call Medic,” Brego said to the Wing 2 overseer, Ambross. Ambross nodded and reached for his radio, but Havyn swatted his hand down and glared at both of them.
“I’ve seen enough. I’m calling our maker.”
“No!” Brego protested, but Havyn didn’t listen. She raised one hand and shot a jet of light into the ceiling of the broiler.
High overhead, a panel in the wall slid open. A massive ringer swung down and hit the pipes connecting to the star. A thunderous knell sounded, reverberating through the broiler, making the walls tremble. Vaggie’s teeth rattled as the deafening note rolled over her.
The mesh around the star shifted, and a slit opened, spilling raw light into the broiler. An enormous arm shot out, then another, then a third and a fourth. They grabbed onto the pipes, and a six-winged silhouette made of light—pure, blinding, holy light—hoisted itself out of the star. It was bigger than a skyscraper, bigger than a mountain, and impossible to look directly at. It launched off the orbiting platform and glided across the broiler. A wave of scorching heat rippled through the air, strong enough to be felt through the hoverflat’s protective shield.
Vaggie dropped to her knees, instinctively falling prostrate before this thing—one of the oldest, one of the first, one of those who had helped lay the foundations of Heaven.
As the seraphim drew closer, it shed layers of light, which dissolved into clouds of billowing steam. When he arrived at the platform, Mendrion had reverted to a solid form, taking the shape of a giant four-armed man with brass skin, a mane of dark, silver-streaked hair, and a neatly trimmed beard to match. Even in this minimized form he was huge, dwarfing the overseers. His clothing was simple, but elegant: a sleeveless shirt of fine gold mail, a long netted skirt wrapped around a set of loose, high-waisted pants, and simple leather sandals. A uniquely large SNP was hooked to his back.
The smiths swarmed Mendrion as soon as he landed, shouting over each other and pointing accusingly at Charlie, Vaggie, and the exorcists.
“Maker, the demons—”
“—the exorcists came without scheduling—”
“—that one is careless with her sickles, we have to make her new ones every year—”
“—they hurt Yris, Maker, and—”
“—my friend in Wing 1 said they caused a ruckus—”
“—called us slaves, Maker—”
“—set that fish demon loose—”
“—tried to steal from us!”
Cries of “Maker” “Maker” “Maker” bombarded Mendrion from all sides as the smiths tugged at his skirts and ran about under his large tawny wings.
“Alright, alright! I hear you, I—yes, I understand, now where is Yris? Move aside, please, just for—yes, I see you, Aarom. Move aside.” His voice was deep and resonant, with a rich, soothing quality to it.
He waded through the smiths and bent down to examine Yris. Brego had coaxed her to her feet, but she was still covering her face. Mendrion grabbed her wrists and gently pulled her hands away, murmuring, “Let me see it. It’s alright, I’m here. Let me see.”
Yris complied, allowing him to bare her face. The bleeding had stopped, but that didn’t make the wound any nicer to look at. It was a long, bone-deep gouge, crossing her face from her temple to her cheek. Her nose was cut clean through; a chunk of it dangled over her lip by a strip of skin.
“Is it bad?” she whimpered, her voice choked with tears.
Mendrion responded after a beat, “I’ve seen worse.” Securing her wrists with two hands, he cupped a third hand over her face and pressed two fingers to the edge of the wound. Light bloomed under his fingertips, and he moved them slowly up the length of the cut, sealing it inch by inch. When he removed his hand, there was no trace of an injury. Not even a scar was left.
“There,” he said gently. He pulled her close, and Yris huddled under his wings, sniffling. Mendrion looked up and took in the rest of the scene: three visibly agitated overseers, three exorcists trembling with bloodlust, and three visitors from Hell. Looking sternly down at them all, he prompted, “Would someone like to tell me what’s going on? One at a time, please.”
Aarom answered before anyone could properly fill Mendrion in.
“One of the demons wandered off, but I apprehended her!” he said excitedly. He was still holding Gladys, ignoring her defiant hissing and spitting. “She was sneaking around in core room B.”
Mendrion’s brow furrowed. Apprehension dawned on his face.
“What was she doing near the core?”
Aarom shrugged.
“We asked her, but she wouldn’t tell us, so I just brought her here. Orders were to bring her to our overseer if we caught her.”
As if on cue, there was a distant boom, not unlike the tolling of the pipes that had summoned Mendrion. The entire broiler trembled, shaking loose a few smiths who were working on the walls. It ended as quickly as it started, but a sense of foreboding lingered in its wake.
Vaggie looked up and saw that all of the conveyor chains had stopped moving. The low, ambient rumble that had filled the space earlier was gone, leaving an ominous quiet. The smiths fluttered around checking tanks, tapping meters, and muttering to each other in confusion.
All eyes fell on Gladys. She looked rightly terrified to be in the crosshairs of a bunch of angels and a seraphim, but had enough demonic audacity to sneer at Nadine and say, “Should’ve done that cavity search, bitch.”