Chapter Text
Cole never would have called itself a workaholic as such. Motion was motion, whether driven towards work or recreation, and both directions had their place and appeal. However, when current standing orders stated it couldn’t actually spend time with its favorite person unless it explicitly took vacation time, well, that meant that motion generally went towards the work direction until Cole could know for sure that Raye was present and available.
(The train had made it to Rome on time, and the pigeons had all been fully-healed and safely delivered back to their home roosts before Raye had to leave them, which made the mission a resounding success as far as Cole was concerned; the real tactical flaw had been depending on the Italian rail system for any kind of logistics. A giant slingshot would have been more efficient.)
Except when an Elohite Friend of the War had looked over the latest mission report and then turned its examining eye towards Cole, it had declared the Ofanite in need of a minimum one month leave before taking on any further on-call mission work. That was ridiculous, of course. It had only been a dozen years since its last vacation.
It had sent out messages—so many messages—to tethers Raye was known to frequent, to most of her corporeal friends and acquaintances, even to a couple of her siblings. No one had seen her recently, and that was concerning but not all that unusual. After all, she was more the type to stay in infrequent casual contact with many people than cling to just a few close friends.
Cole wanted to think that flighty, darling creature was doing fine and just caught up in the thrill of some new idea that had captured her fancy. Or maybe she had found an interesting way of helping someone out. If only she’d write back to tell it so, and perhaps invite it along, so it could have something to do beyond spinning its rim about in a bar in the canopy above its tent run by a Wordmate in service to Wind, awaiting some kind of reply.
The waiting was the worst, not quite dissonant, thankfully, but still frustrating. And boring. Raye would have been the first to say that boredom was an invitation to make something to do, but Cole would rather spin and orbit here and wait for the chance to maybe make something to do alongside her than settle for something to do with more distant acquaintances. Though the second idea was becoming more appealing by the spin. It could seek out other Creationers here in the Grove, and see who might have an odd job (or an Odd job) to hand out that could make for a fun story to tell Raye when she finally caught up and came back into contact.
It had been about to do just that when a Mercurian landed at the entrance of the bar and spread her fluffy white wings towards it in greeting. She looked vaguely familiar: dark and statuesque. Her outfit—standard issue cargo pants and tank top into styled into a fashion even Cole could recognize as deliberate—marked her someone more comfortable with groundwork than command. Not an officer then but someone Cole had worked alongside for a few missions before. Maybe? Maybe she had come with a mission in hand, and Cole’s vacation could get postponed to a better time.
“Cole, right? Ofanite of Creation in service to War?” Miranda—it remembered her name before the meeting could get too awkward—took a stool near an edge of its orbit and ordered her own beer. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“That would be me.” Cole adjusted its orbit to center around the other angel in a casual arc, close enough to stay in conversation range, far enough away that the path wouldn’t come across as aggressive or too overeager, one of the nuances in positioning it had needed to learn after becoming a spinny, spoked wheel of fire. “New assignment?”
The Mercurian uncapped the bottle and shook her head. “Not so much an assignment, let’s just call it some unofficial intelligence. We ran into a demon downstairs. You came up in her social network, and I wanted to pass that info on to you before someone—possibly me—advocates for some more decisive action.”
“Someone from Lust? I’ve moved on.” It had and would keep going until it could be as far away from that corner of Hell as possible or perhaps, until it came right around again and could mount an ambush from behind.
“Probably not Lust. She wasn’t someone you knew directly. More like someone who—” The Mercurian’s gaze moved towards the canopy above while she searched for the correct term. “—cares about someone you love. Or has an obsession with. Hard to tell the exact difference between the two relational states when a demon is involved. Have you checked in with your Kyriotate friend recently? The one who was involved in that incident with the electric kettle and the spaghetti noodles?”
It paused and reduced its arc to a narrow angle centered on the Warrior. New information brought new directions to go in and with it the reminder that new didn’t necessarily mean pleasant. “Raye? She showed up in a demon’s social network?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s her.” Miranda punctuated her statement with a proper swig from her bottle. “The demon used a different name for her, but the social connection between you and her line up. And we found these in the room she was hiding out in before we sent her to Trauma.”
She pulled out a set of crystals, of the kind that would look right at home on a chain as part of a necklace. Each was wrapped in a web of thin wire, to an interesting artistic effect. It could see integrating one of them into the sculpted hands of a clay figurine or onto the lid of a stained glass box. They didn’t look terribly menacing, but Cole knew, despite what it’s former Prince had taught, substance mattered more than looks.
“What are those?”
“Force Catchers,” Miranda said, “Kyriotate or Shedite or someone with the song of Possession tries to jump into someone or something wearing these. Boom. Forces get caught in the crystal and can’t get out. Each one is big enough to hold all of a nine-force angel, maybe even ten force one. Whoever is using these wants whole celestials. Our mission leader was only able to get away because they still had enough forces free to animate a couple of birds.” She waved her hand casually, as though dismissing the thought. “Normally, I’d just report this up, but I thought you might be able to provide some useful input due to your relationship with that Domination.”
Cole’s arcs turned to long narrow loops while it thought. Details started to line up—beads on string, birds on wires—until Cole had a conclusion to leap to, like going off the end of the branch holding this bar and diving into the groves below all momentum and forward motion and just barely a split second to consider where it needed to go first.
“Thanks for the info. See you around.” Because that was all a goodbye even a Mercurian could expect from an Ofanite newly pressed into action. It was already half-off the branch before it could say even that.
Her words echoed behind as it sped away. “I’ll be down in my tent!”
—
Cole’s first instinct was to go straight to Raye’s last known Corporeal location. Its favorite Kyriotate was probably in trouble, and, while some of Raye’s friends might tag along on a rescue mission given adequate details—such as an actual plan—Cole might be the only one willing to lead the operation. Raye’s mother might be equally motivated, but she wouldn’t, not tied down as she was to the Grand Hyena.
Warriors were never terribly original with their metaphors, but Cole liked that one and had adopted it happily.
The second, better instinct was to gather some information up here first. Setting up a rescue mission was all very well and good, but having the right starting point was even better, and where better to start than the heart of the matter?
The Heart, it could say.
Cole couldn’t remember the last time it had taken a solo trip to the Halls of Creation. It had been decades at least. Usually on its visits here, Raye would be at its side weaving butterflies between its spokes, a mouth or two telling stories while a third and fourth asked it for its own. Her absence registered here in a way it never could in the Groves. It could deal with the barren Cathedral of its Archangel, but the more personal emptiness threatened to consume it.
It shook the thought off and left it behind. Raye was missing. Cole was here to help rectify that.
The main entrance was as grand as ever, and where the path split Cole turned away from the one that led to its favorite workshops and kilns and towards the empty remnants of the once great Heartrooms. It knew the correct starting point, the precise spot where once upon a time—but not even a century ago—Raye had set her newly-forged heart beside Cole’s own solitary one and declared her friendship for the dubious Ofanite she’d only met that day. While their Hearts no longer rested side-by-side, the bonds that gesture had forged had remained indelible in the years since.
Said bonds might already be reduced to the traces in Cole’s memory.
Cole immediately spun away from that thought. It hadn’t come to this spot to dwell, but to make its way to the studio deep in the Halls of Creation where, after a few poorly-timed visits from the Inquisition, Raye had sensibly hidden her Heart. Little signs along the way could lead someone who knew her well in the right direction, while remaining opaque to strangers and Hyenas.
It knew Raye well; that wasn’t in doubt. It could follow her traces through these deserted buildings as easily as it could follow its own resonance to the nearest coffee shop. Cole let its sense memories lead the way. Images of crows and cats signaled the correct turns. The overwhelming scent of mint hung just at the door to the correct building. A faint trace of dance music got louder as it moved through the corridors (Raye enjoyed dancing, even if she never did it well. It made dancing with her a fun challenge.), and of course the butterflies, the ones that always fluttered between its spokes whenever they met on this plane of existence, provided a visual guide. The unmistakable sound of her laughter, echoing hollow for being an imitation of the real thing, led it straight to the correct door.
Finally the studio opened up to Cole. Like almost every room in these halls, the lights were dim, and the whole place felt conspicuously quiet without its occupant. The clutter was as it had always been—tables along the walls full of multitudes of unfinished projects, pictures of humans on the Corporeal she had helped, correspondence everywhere, old celestial sketchbooks, handcrafted decorations, including a number of glass and ceramic ones that Cole had made itself and given to her personally. All these it took in briefly while it sought out the one object that mattered right now.
Raye’s Heart rested on the corner of one unassuming worktable. Pictures of itself and her mother surrounded the glowing orange-gold sphere. Raye had set them about where she would see them immediately after ascension. Cole had appreciated the detail when she had first led it here, and it would take the time to appreciate the same detail again once it knew she was safe. All it appreciated now was that her Heart was neither shattered like an angel lost to Heaven’s, nor cracked and dulled like an Outcast’s. The fire in its spokes, gone taut with tension since its conversation at the bar, released and flared back into its rim.
Cole drew near to better view the Heart. Up close, flecks and cells of green and pink appeared, disturbed the smoothness of the Heart’s normal surface, and then dissipated. Cole blinked. Had her Heart always done that? Did it even matter? It shook the question off and focused on the image inside. It was the nature of a Celestial’s Heart to reveal its owners location, and while Raye’s Kyriotate nature might make pinpointing an exact location difficult, Cole could still use the image as a clue.
Despite its expectations, the Heart only focused on one image: a single box-shaped object that put Cole in the mind of a particularly menacing karaoke machine.
(And if—when—Raye could visit again, it would have to introduce her to the concept of karaoke. She would like the activity, not for its utility as a skill to pass on to a host but as something she could enjoy as herself, for herself.)
It took in the background image, looking for any clues that could give away the location. The Karaoke Machine of Doom rested on a Formica table, pushed back towards a painted cinderblock wall. Fluorescent lights lit up the scene from outside the frame. That was…less than helpful. These details could be found almost anywhere in the world that had the materials and cared more about function than form. There was a hazard sign on the wall behind the box. So maybe, it was a laboratory or, perhaps, a factory—some kind of place that might post warning signs with skulls and lightning bolts. Only, the signs were not in English (the most-commonly spoken language in the parts of the Corporeal that Raye frequented), nor did it resemble any other Corporeal language Cole recognized. But oh, it did recognize the script from a previous life.
Cole paced circles around Raye’s studio, to and fro, glancing back at the Heart every time it passed to see if the image would change. Was Raye alone? Or would the demon the Mercurian had mentioned eventually show up? If the demon’s only vessel had been lost to Trauma, Raye might be alone right now.
Or someone else might pass by and give Cole some more clues as to where she might be.
Hours passed, and then a flicker of movement caught its eyes. Cole dashed back to the Heart. While no faces could be seen, the image in the Heart was no longer devoid of non-Raye life. Fingers tipped in wire-laced metallic claws moved possessively over the box. Bony wrists and forearms laced through with more fine wires blocked out the view. Those hands were human-shaped, but no trained eye would mistake them for either a human body or a human vessel.
This wasn’t Earth at all, but a different plane of existence entirely.
The flames in its spokes went thin and taut again. “Oh darling, what did you get yourself into?”
—
Cole criss-crossed through Raye’s studio and let its thoughts move in time with its ring. Its initial idea of a corporeal rescue mission, the one that it had almost looked forward to pursuing—the action of the rescue, not the necessity of it—had to be scrapped. Not even that urge towards forward motion could push it into Hell in search of a captive, especially when it couldn’t even use the scene in Raye’s Heart to identify the unknown location’s Principality (Hades? Tartarus? Gehenna?). Cole could tell the atmosphere was all wrong for its native alleyways of Shal Mari, and that was it.
Perhaps if Raye had been at its side, hand in hand or hand on paw or hand on spoke sharing a conspiratorial look, it could consider such an adventure.
Or perhaps they would have traded a knowing glance, shook their heads at the same time, and worked out a less dangerous idea. There were an ever growing number of things it wanted to share with Raye. Hell would never be one of them.
So, a direct rescue mission was right out, but Cole still had the itch to do something, any little thing that might get Raye back home safely. It crossed the studio again and grabbed a blank sheet of paper from a drawing pad and Raye’s favorite felt-tip pen. It wrote a couple of lines down, folded and addressed it. There. It had written a message to someone who needed to know and who might have the resources to help. It could finally leave off pacing an arc around Raye’s Heart and exit the studio in search of an idle reliever.
The Halls of Creation didn’t hold many these days, and those it did generally did not idle along near-deserted hallways to be coincidentally found by distraught Ofanim. Cole finally caught up to one on the path heading back out to the Groves.
“Deliver this. Recipient’s eyes only.”
The reliever saluted, an absurdly serious gesture for a creature who dripped golden glitter everywhere. “Yes, sir! Right away, sir!”
While the little Helper delivered that message, Cole rolled its way back to the Groves in search of the Mercurian. Once Cole passed on the information it knew, she might be able to provide more details about the demon in question. Of course, too, there’d be the matter of tactics to discuss. If the Habbie—and those were Habbie hands it saw in Raye’s Heart—would bring her up to the Corporeal, then maybe there was a chance at a rescue. Conversely, if the demon were exterminated the next time she came up and Raye still down in Hell…
Cole pushed forward. It didn’t like leaving a rescue to mere chance, but a snowball’s chance was better than Hell.
Unexpected essence dropped into Cole—just one, enough to refill what had been spent at the bar earlier. A brief message had come in via Celestial Tongues: Let’s meet now, Halls of Creation, the rooms with the stained glass.
It reversed direction mid-motion and rolled back towards the place it had just left to see what Jubilee had to say.
—
Due to its location and Choir, Cole had thought it would be the one pacing the room while it waited on Jubilee. To it’s surprise, the enormous Seraph—and a much smaller Cherub—already awaited it at the entrance of the stained glass rooms.
Jubilee nodded her head and flapped each set of her feathered wings, and Cole returned her greeting with a few casual orbits around the Seraph. The Cherub, a snow leopard who was also a Hyena and absolutely incapable of protecting a Seraph almost half-again as big as it from any real trouble, stood by and observed.
Normally, Cole might have had a hard time determining which of the two had the more Judgmental expression, but today that honor went to the Guardian. Jubilee merely looked worried in how her three sets of eyes furrowed together and how her tail-tip lashed back and forth involuntarily, like an agitated cat on the corporeal.
(Or like an agitated Kyriotate in a cat on the Corporeal, and God, it missed Raye.)
Cole had thought they would just meet-up and exchange what information could be safely shared within earshot of a Hyena. Apparently not. Jubilee tilted her head in a ‘follow me’ motion and led Cole through the stained-glass corridors it had never paid much attention to before. Sure, the work was beautiful on an aesthetic level, if a touch hollow for not knowing a crafter’s touch, but the whole production always struck Cole as a bit irrelevant. The family units displayed in the glass were not made for celestials like Cole who had redeemed without any strong attachments to anyone—or even an understanding of what the Word of Creation had meant beyond just ‘sex rite’ and ‘hypocritical focus on feelings’.
But to the Seraph next to it, who had created perhaps a dozen relievers from her coils (never did get an exact number from Raye), moved reverently through each illuminated space until she came to her own portrait in the glass, surrounded by lovers and children and those childrens’ other force-parents and so forth, the very epitome of Creation’s focus on personal bonds. Cole spun a tight circle around Jubilee while it honed in on Raye’s image, a spray of the beautiful golden orange butterflies that made up most of her celestial cloud and let itself feel a small, sharp pleasure at the presence of blue spoked wheel in the background that marked its own connection to her.
The images rendered in the glass were never exact and always shifting, but another motif in the background of Raye’s portrait, barely visible, bothered it.
“I check here regularly, so I know Preerana is neither dead nor fallen.” Jubilee said as the start of the conversation. “But that does not mean she is alright. Have you heard from her recently? Do you know if she’s doing well?”
Cole glanced towards the Hyena-Cherub who paced the far end of this room and seemed to be pointedly ignoring the conversation before it spoke. “No to both questions.” It said, as nothing would reassure a Seraph if the direct Truth could not. “I haven’t heard from her recently, and after checking her Heart, I doubt she is doing well.”
Jubilee’s wing feathers ruffled up, and her Cherub padded closer in response. “How long ago was this? What happened to make you check her Heart?”
Cole flared out, and sorted out the minimum amount of information necessary to pass to Judgment while giving Jubilee what she needed to know. “Earlier today, and an acquaintance of mine told me she saw signs in a demon’s social network that indicated Raye could be in trouble. So, I went to check on her Heart to track her location down for a rescue mission.”
Jubilee scowled. Angelic would not allow for lying, but Cole certainly made use of some of the more evasive tones in that explanation, and those tones always got a rise out of Seraphim—when they weren’t the ones using them. She tilted her head and expressed that Cole should continue.
“The good news is that Raye is alive, unfallen, and not Outcast.”
Jubilee’s coils relaxed slightly. “Truth. So, now we can plan—”
“No.” Cole cut her off before it had to confront the necessary inaction head on. It tensed up a bit, spokes between center and rim pulling thin and taut. “That’s the bad news. When I looked in her Heart, I saw a sign written in Helltongue glyphs, and the one pair of hands I saw definitely belonged to someone’s celestial form. She’s not on the Corporeal. That demon must have dragged her down to Hell at some point.”
The Seraph’s gaze moved downward in a three-part ripple. “Truth,” she muttered. Her body moved in restless figures of eight. “That does make a rescue mission more complicated.”
Cole understood that anxious movement. It took its orbit a bit further out and faster. “War would not...War definitely won’t authorize a direct rescue attempt, even if we could figure out exactly where in Hell this demon was keeping her.”
“Judgment would not either.” What went unspoken by the Seraph was the knowledge that their boss, their shared boss probably would have let them plan a rescue. At least, he would have understood what was at stake. “I’ve been forbidden from pursuing the matter, or even consulting with those who might be able to help directly. All I can do is send messages to her until she comes home. Or until she’s confirmed lost to us. So that’s what I’ve been doing.”
Well, wasn’t that something? Cole took its orbit directly to Jubilee this time. “How long has she been missing?”
“I don’t know for sure.” Jubilee slithered past Raye’s image again. “Almost two years of messages and a year or more before that where I hadn’t heard from her.”
So about three years then, and that was…news. Cole measured the Ofanite urge to immediately press forward against the time that had already passed. Matters felt urgent, but they might not be. A number of terrible things happened to angels down in Hell, but most of the incidents Cole had heard about happened within a much shorter time frame—hours, days, weeks at most. If the demon had already held Raye for multiple years and not subjected her to those fates, then Cole would let itself be somewhat mollified by that fact. So long as Raye stayed alive, her escape would be possible, and it sounded like she had managed to survive for years now.
Cole rolled in silence, its celestial body keeping time with its own racing thoughts.
If the Mercurian’s reading of the relationship was correct, Raye had turned up in the demon’s social network and not as an enemy. The Kyriotate had her own abilities. If anyone could make a friend in Hell, would think it possible turn a demon towards the bright side, and would have the audacity to actually try, she would be that one.
And the problems with the vitreous scene before it clarified. The butterflies were still mostly the right colors, but just like the discolored flecks in Raye’s heart, hues of green and pink had started to come in along the edges of the butterfly wings. And that wasn’t the only change. The rendition of Cole’s wheel wasn’t alone anymore. In the background of the mural, clawed hands rendered in clouded-white glass clasped themselves around the smallest, most distant butterfly.
It tried to recall the explanation given to it. Clouded-white. Right, the color of the deceased and the damned, and Cole had seen those hands recently. It didn’t know how these stained glass murals decided which figures should be rendered, but it saw the implication.
“Raye’s doing something!” Cole said, sparks shedding from its rim as its rotations grew faster. “That’s why her image has changed. The hands in the background are the same ones I saw in Raye’s Heart. She’s trying to work on the demon from the inside. She has a plan!”
Jubilee snaked up and examined the picture up-close herself. “So the image has changed. That doesn’t mean Preerana has a plan. The Symphony hasn’t confirmed it one way or another.”
Cole kept its sigh entirely internal. That was the issue it found with Seraphim in general, and Judge or Judge-adjacent Seraphim in particular. Cole felt sure of the Truth in what it had said, and the Symphony could keep its final opinion to itself. “No, she has a plan.” Cole kept its rotating wheel of eyes on the picture while a more depressing thought occurred to it. “Or there’s something else going on down there that Raye believes is worth risking herself over.”
Jubilee blinked her three sets of eyes in a rapid flicker. “I’d rather have her back here. Hell is no place for an angel.”
Cole didn’t disagree, but it wouldn’t say so out loud. For how many decades had Raye been its partner in Heavenly antics? Pretty much ever since their first meeting on her fledge-day. How many messes had they made and then cleaned up together? So, so many. So what if Cole couldn’t put together a divine rescue party to storm whatever literally God-forsaken corner of Hell kept Raye captive? There were other ways to help Raye pull off her plans.
“Will you keep sending her messages? If so, tell her we met, and that I plan on talking with the Warriors. I can at least see if they’ll hold off on soul-killing that demon until Raye’s back home.”
“I will.” And a simple declaration of intent was as good a promise coming from a Seraph. Not even an ‘if they will let me’ modifier that came so often from those Wordmates now in service to the Hyenas or the Swordies. Dominic’s minions had not yet purged all the Creation from her. In fact, based on the agitated expression planted on the Hyena Cherub’s face when it padded back up to her flank, Jubilee was probably here against orders right now.
“Good. I’ll let you know if I hear anything else I can pass on.” Cole spun towards the exit with no more parting words than that. Its business here was done. It had new information to take to the Groves and an improbable request to make. Whatever antics Raye was up to in captivity, Cole would do what it could to move them along.
That’s what Ofanim did best after all.