Chapter Text
Returning to the Corporeal feels…not quite like coming home, but like encountering a familiar road after spending years at the bottom of a deep sea: A little less pressure around us, and a little more faith we’ll be home soon. Sure, we’ll likely have incoming pursuit sooner rather than later, and there’s still a Habbalite in the middle of a spiritual breakdown holding on to our chain. But still, we [I, and also Mariah, but not anyone else] are in a better place than we were even five seconds ago.
(Getting anyone else out had always been a small chance. Some of us already knew that; most of us just didn’t want to believe, and none of us wanted to give up until we had to.)
(We had to.)
(We are out of Tartarus!)
(So-fucking-long and goodbye. We won’t be back.)
Beyond the initial decompression effect of finally arriving on the corporeal plane after so long in Hell, our actual sensory input hasn’t changed. We still don’t have our sight, touch, temperature, taste, anything like that back, but our hearing remains as keen as ever—keener, in fact, than it was before we left. There’s a new subtlety to silence we never noticed before, the tenor of which is as much a giveaway that our location has changed as our innate sense of Earth vs. Hell. This silence is no longer air wooshing through ventilation ducts, never-idle machinery, and the skittering of gremlin claws. Now we hear the rattle of the wind going through dried leaves and the softer skitters of less malevolent creatures.
(Actual leaves! Plants! Nature!)
And then a train whistle in the distance cuts through this silence. But that’s not a Tartaran noise—at least it’s not a noise of the Tartarus we just left a minute ago—just a reminder that wherever Mariah has popped out of Hell isn’t entirely devoid of humans.
(There’s a world outside, and it’s not Hell!)
Mariah’s steps crunching over leaves (Autumn? Or just leftovers from an autumn past?) become a foreground noise we focus a mind or two on. Her motion here on the corporeal plane has a confidence it lacked back in Hell. That weighted-down slowness from the Resonance hasn’t worn off yet, but she carries burden differently.
We should say something.
Mariah doesn’t seem interested in initiating conversation, and we’re not sure how to start one up ourself. Everything we could talk about now seems either too big or too small for the moment. (Are those individual insects we hear going about their business? Is that an actual spider we hear spinning its web?)
“Where are we?” we ask at last. (In English! A Corporeal language! Imperfect, but beautiful! Not so unforgiving of imprecision!)
That gets Mariah’s attention. “Central United States, or close enough. Southern Illinois, near Missouri if that means anything to you.” Her voice sounds as blank as our internal voices are not. “Some bit of woods just outside a town. Well, for some definition of ‘town’.”
(Woods! Towns!)
So we’ve landed a little outside our normal range, but it not so far away that our knowledge stops being useful. We remember visiting a Wordmate in the area back in the 30s (1930s—as if we've spent enough time on Earth ourselves to differentiate centuries) to help with paperwork. We’re well within range of that Lighting Tether we plan on suggesting to Mariah. There might be closer Angelic Tethers, but will they be suitable for Mariah and have selection of wildlife to sink into once we’re out? Probably not. She’s shown zero interest in either flora or fauna thus far. “That’s not too bad. We should get going before people start catching up to you.”
(Us, perhaps?)
Mariah stops moving and lowers herself down. We feel her lift and pull us up—out of a pocket most likely, given our relative positions. Then she settles us down nearer to where she used to carry us back in Hell. (Perhaps 20 minutes ago.) “Not yet.”
“Aren’t you concerned about hunters.”
“Sure. Someone might have followed me here, but if so, they’d have shown themselves by now. If not, any Renegade hunters will have to go through a Tether. And even assuming they have a way of tracking me, it’ll still take them a while to get here.” We have to listen closer to get the audio cues we’re used to. Mariah’s nails are shorter here than they were back in Hell, and the surface she taps against is softer, but those are thoughtful taps. “So why run without a direction in mind.”
(A car zips down a road a fair distance from us.)
“You need a plan, then?”
“What I need is to start feeling things again before I make any big decisions.” A pause. “Any more of them. Going Renegade is already plenty big. At least, it’s big enough that I can’t go back.”
“No.” We agree, and then dare to ask, “Do you regret it already?”
Mariah stays still and silent, the beat of her vessel’s heart (Heart beats! Physical bodies!) and the motion of her chest as she breathes our only cues to her presence. “That’s the problem. I don’t feel anything about it yet. Maybe I will regret it. Or maybe I won’t.”
We think we follow along with Mariah’s thought process. “And you don’t want to do anything else until you can tell the difference?”
Dry leaves stir and scatter about beneath us. “No. Because that won’t matter. Even if I regret what I did, I can’t undo the action. That Heart isn’t ever going to un-break. It’s more that I don’t want to do anything right now. Do you know what the resonance did to me? To my mind.”
We think about the times when Mariah has resonated us, which is way too often when we consider the effort it takes her. “Your mind tries to attach cause to an emotion as a way of coping with it. If the emotion makes sense, it’s slightly easier to manage.”
“Right.” She goes silent, just the slight sound of air in her lungs meshing with the light rustle of the wind. (This isn’t Hell! Air moves here!) “And the cause of this was…realizing how much of what I cared about was based on a delusion. My own divinity. My quest to overcome my setback. The thought that you might—” Mariah cuts herself off before we have to talk about what none of us wants to discuss right now. Her body tilts back, like she’s leaning against something. Perhaps a tree? “Maybe Djinn have the right of it. Nothing matters, so fixate on whatever's a little less boring than everything else.”
(She’s trying to change the subject.)
We decide to give Mariah the graceful way out. “Did you ever get that choice? Of what Band to become?”
“No. I was made in this form. And even If I weren’t, Habbalah and Djinn fledge from different kinds of demonlings.” She snorts in something that could almost be—but is too muted for—amusement. “Of course. Demonlings. It really should have been obvious. What about you? Did you choose to become a Kyriotate? Or were you made that way.”
We think about ourself as a reliever, back when we were as singular as most people believe themselves to be. “Technically, I chose. But I’d known I was going to fledge this way ever since I was the size of a human child. The moment I learned what a Kyriotate was, I fell completely in love with the concept. There wasn’t anything else for me to be.”
There’s a slight nudge at the crystal. We move. Mariah doesn’t. Therefore, she’s gesturing at us. “I’ve always found Kyriotates fascinating. What about the Choir attracted you to it?”
We let a few minds think about the answer, some of them brightening to talk about what we love, and others dimming because so much of it remains out of our reach. “The everything-ness of it, I guess. Little me never wanted to choose just one thing to see or do or learn at a time, and so the idea of existing in multiple places at once, and getting all these different perspectives, and never being stuck in a single form sounded perfect.”
(Not said directly: We love everything these past months—years?—haven’t been.)
Mariah snorts again. “And was it as good as you thought it would be? When you finally fledged?”
“Better, mostly. I had heard what it was like from other Kyriotates before I fledged of course, but it didn’t compare to experiencing it myself, both in Heaven and on Earth.” Our life as a Kyriotate had been everything Reliever-us had wanted right up until that moment we chose the wrong person to help and ended up in this sticky, rock-candy trap. “What about you? What would have you chosen if you could have fledged as any other Band? A Djinn?”
“No. Probably not…I don’t know…” Mariah trails off. “I couldn’t live with this lack of emotion all the time. It’s bad enough right now. I’m not sure what Band I would have chosen. I’ve never seen myself as enough of a demon before to think about other Bands as things I might have become instead. I still don’t quite believe I am one now.”
We pivot. “So, what Choir would you have chosen, then? If you could have picked one?”
Mariah takes her time to think about this one, and we tune our ears to the outside world. An owl calls out in the distance. Ah. This background silence is nighttime. (Circadian rhythms!) “I don’t know. Maybe Malakite.”
We’re neither surprised nor encouraged. We imagine many completely demonic Habbies would see the appeal of being a Malakite. A Choir created after the Fall and divinely ordained by God to smite the unworthy? That’s how most of the Punishers we’ve observed already see themselves. “Why a Malakite?”
Mariah’s breath rises and falls softly beneath us. Her mind is even more opaque to us than usual. “It seems solid,” she says at last, “Seeing what people have done and figuring out what they deserve from that. Setting oaths based on a personal code of honor. And since Malakim don’t become anything else, there’s no ambiguity about what side is what.”
Huh. So not smiting? At least not as a primary draw. “You want the clarity, then?”
“Maybe that’s the word for it. But a better clarity than this one.” Mariah goes quiet, and we listen to the sounds of her body—her vessel, which does not function exactly as a human body does but still has more incidental noises to make than a celestial one.
“How much longer is the resonance effect going to last?”
Mariah shifts her arms slightly. “Translating duration between planes is unreliable. Not too much longer. Probably before sunrise.”
And it isn’t. We feel Mariah’s resonance trip finally wearing off in the way that incidental motion returns to her body. Fingertips start to fidget. A leg slides forward on the leaf litter. Her vessel’s resting heart rate beats a little faster. We brace ourself for Mariah’s next actions. A lot has happened these past few hours, and we can’t count on her taking any of it well. Her reaction could be anything from complete denial of what happened to exacting punishment for our role in it.
But neither of those happen, at least not yet. She just asks a question. “Do you want to know why I chose you? The real reason, not just the divine whim?” Emotional rhythm has started coming back into Mariah’s voice, and we realize that her lower speaking pitch isn’t just the lack of expressiveness brought on by the Emptiness but an anatomical change from her previous vessel.
We’re curious. The answer thus far has always been some variation on divine whim without further explanation. The hint that there’s a real answer, and that Mariah is willing to give it to us intrigues us. “Sure.”
“I liked your catcher. Most of the ones I carry come in various quartzes: clear, rose, smoky, occasionally an amethyst or two, but yours was actually a different mineral—all pink and green in gradation. The dealer called it watermelon tourmaline. It was a beautiful stone. Almost too pretty to use. But I did, and it brought me you.”
“Really? The rock was pretty? That’s all it took?”
(Reminder, we don’t actually understand this Habbie.)
(Pretty rocks! Which we will see again someday!)
“Well, there were practical reasons too. You weren't Outcast like most of the ones I brought in. You acted friendly towards me, even though you were afraid and uncertain, so it seemed plausible that you could cooperate, given sufficient motivation.”
“Pragmatism?”
Mariah sighs. Breathing isn’t optional on the corporeal, whether that breath filters through a host or a vessel. “In a short-sighted sense, maybe. I thought those signs meant I could master you and gain back what my Discord had lost me. I should have known.”
“Should have known what?”
“That your friendliness wasn’t a sign of complacency. That it was your opening to try and change me once I let my guard down. That I was vulnerable to change in the first place.”
(Well, she makes us sounds a lot more devious than we really were. There wasn’t any master plan. We just couldn’t stand being helpless.)
(Plus, when hosts need to be protected, friendliness is a much better default starting point than hostility.)
Mariah continues over our internal discussion. “If it weren’t for you, I’d still be in Hell, safe in my divinity with a job to do and no reason not to do it.”
“What would you have done differently? If you had known?” A squirrel runs across the leaf litter and up a tree trunk behind us. (Squirrels! Little paws!)
A finger taps down on a solid surface below us. “I don’t know. It might not have made a difference at all. I wanted what I wanted, and I might have thought myself invulnerable to the threat that came with you. Or maybe I would have thought twice and just handed you over to Tizzy like I should have.”
We shudder.
“Or maybe I chose you, with my divine whim knowing deep down something like this would have to happen eventually. Do something risky long enough, and something will eventually blow it up. If not the Lilim’s blackmail, then something else. And my life as a hunter of heaven-angels was always going to be short.” She sighs. “All said, I lasted a good long time. More than a decade and a half. Most of Tizzy’s assistants are lucky to survive their first trip to the Corporeal. She doesn’t even bother training them until then.”
“She doesn’t sound like a good person to be stuck working for.”
“She’s not.” Mariah agrees. “Whatever else comes from breaking my Heart, I’m glad to be away from her. From all of them, really.”
That’s encouraging, a sign that no matter when or how we leave Mariah, she’s better off in at least one way. We don’t hold the same Dissonance-bound (that note is still there) obligations towards her as we might for an actual host, but not caring about what happens to her because of that technicality is not a habit we want to get into.
“So, what’s next?” we ask. Mariah has as many options as we could give her: find another Prince, remain a Renegade, Redeem. Of course, we have our preferences. (Let’s get her to an angelic tether!) But she’s the one with a functional body, and we’re the ones trapped in a crystal.
Mariah stands up, sudden upward motion that comes from her core. Thick fabric or leather slides against a thinner fabric. Velcro unfastens. (A wallet? Out of a pocket?) Fingers rustle to flip through paper. (Counting money?) “It’s still fairly early for humans. But my immediate plan is to walk into town, get something resembling breakfast, and then use most of what’s left of the cash to buy an old car from a guy I know.”
“And in the longer term?”
Mariah picks a direction and starts walking through the woodland. Each step is marked by the crinkling of leaf-litter and the occasional twig-snap. “I can’t go back to my Archangel, can I? Between stealing my Heart to break it and that Lilim’s hook in me, that’s a permanent decision.”
(Archangel? Oh great, the delusion must be back.)
“Nothing is truly permanent. Except death, maybe.” The beautiful truth of our existence, though we think most people feel differently, in that there are specific things they would like to preserve forever. “But in the immediate sense that you can’t go back to Vapula tomorrow and pick up your old job like nothing ever happened, I suppose that counts as permanent enough. So, what about other Princes?”
“There aren’t any other important Habbalite Princes in Hell, and I’ve never wanted to serve a demon.”
“So it’s either Renegade or Redemption for you?”
“Pretty much. Unless you have a third choice you want to offer up.”
“Not particularly.” There are still parts of us marveling at every chirp and rustle. The leaves are autumn-dry right now, and whatever soft breeze is coming through them is shaking out a staccato rhythm. (Wind! Leaves! Seasons!) “I’m already biased towards the one decision.”
“You would be. Heaven-angels usually are.” Her tone is not as sharp as the words might imply. We wonder if that’s an after effect of the resonance trip or a long-term change in her perspective. “But then, you’re not the one with anything to lose from that decision, are you?”
(No. We’ve already lost from this all we’re going to lose.)
(We hope.)
“We think you’ll make it through the risky part,” we say, and deliberately choose the plural. This is a whole chorus of concurrence, not one voice speaking out the best answer amongst many. “And we think you’ll be happier as an Elohite.”
“Assuming they even let me try. They could just smite me on sight.”
“There’s a Lightning tether less than a day’s drive from here,” we say, “They’re practical, and a new angel is better than a smited—smoted—”
“Smitten.” Mariah interrupts, voice impatient.
“—than a smitten demon,” we finish. “I’ll vouch for you. Plus, you have information about ongoing Tech operations. They’ll give you a chance.”
“Assuming I even want it.” Mariah shuts down the conversation. She doesn’t even correct our use of ‘demon’ in reference to her.
After a bit, we [I] realize that dawn has officially arrived. (Sunrise! Essence! New Day! Not Hell!)
(Eight dawns until we can make an escape attempt!)
“Sun’s up,” we say.
Mariah’s footsteps turn to a bit of a petulant stomp. We’ve just received our daily Essence (Our first daily Essence! In however long!) while Mariah has to wait for sunset as demons do. The Habbalite delusion might be in effect again, but Mariah’s version of it seems more fragile now than it was before. The resonance effect goes away, but the memories of what happened under it don’t fade so fast.
“Sun’s up,” Mariah echoes. She stops for a second and turns her body—towards or away from the eastern horizon, we can’t tell, but surely, somehow, in relation to it nonetheless.
—
Humans are very noisy creatures, whether they want to think so or not, and even sleepy little towns—like Mariah assures us this one is—will drown out the the surrounding world with its human noises. It’s not that animal noises disappear completely (Three—no four—crows caw around us.) but that the noises of human activities foreground themselves in a way that those of most other corporeal critters don’t.
Vehicles on Earth sound much like their celestial cousins in Tartarus. There’s perhaps not so much active hostility within the heart of the average corporeal motor, nor do the few drivers who pass by us seem to take Mariah’s pedestrian status as a personal challenge.
“I wouldn’t have taken you as someone prefers rural areas,” we say, as we marvel at the increasingly human sounds around Mariah. A few pairs of shoes walk along the pavement, one of them particularly squeaky. Cars go by. Rhythmic creaks from what might be a poorly maintained porch swing. There are a few stray “Good Mornings!” spoken to Mariah as she navigates that she barely acknowledges.
(No Taps! No Signals! No worrying about being caught by a stray demonling! We can just speak! In English!)
“I don’t really. Small towns like these are just better to hunt in.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Smaller towns mean fewer celestials. Which means the Outcasts who do show up tend to be more isolated. Less chance they have a support network to run to or that other parties might interfere. And rural celestials also tend to be less cautious with the disturbance than city-based ones are.”
It makes sense. Even as a solitary multitude, we still knew about half a dozen angels of Creation in the vicinity of Chicago, and they knew of us. Plus a handful of other celestials and Aware humans from either side that we could track based on their disturbance. Oh, and a number of known Tethers in the area. While we didn’t exactly know of any long-term Outcasts or Renegades in our old stomping grounds, that didn’t mean they weren’t there. It just meant they’d kept hidden well enough to avoid our notice.
It also occurs to us that Mariah probably knows as well as anyone how unaffiliated celestials get caught, and that might help her stay safely Renegade for as long as she wants.
(That’s not encouraging.)
(Oh! Hey! We recognize that song!)
(Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise…)
Mariah gives a disgusted noise. “Would you stop that? The humans around might notice! And if it’s not as deadly as Tizzy noticing, it’s still awkward.”
We clam up. This might be an improvement on Tartarus, but we still don’t have the freedom we need: To exist as ourselves. To move. To sing, even, without worrying about the dangers of an unexpected audience. To, in fact, have audiences again who might want to hear us.
(Mariah has never properly appreciated our singing.)
—
Like any other celestial, Mariah doesn’t actually need to eat breakfast (or at all), but she walks into a restaurant anyway and gets seated in a booth. (Cute little diners! Daily specials!) She makes polite sounding chit-chat with the waitress who comes by and orders a plate of biscuits and gravy and a small orange juice.
Mariah flicks through a newspaper while she waits. (Newspapers! Crinkly pages!) Or she does until she jerks and drops down dramatically.
Did she just suddenly hide under the table?
The rhythm of her heart beating beneath us has gone from a steady relaxed thump to a rapid pound-pound-pound. Her breathing has gone shallow and unregulated. We’ve felt this kind of reaction from her before, back in Hell, under the Resonance from her Bandmates but the only Punisher around is Mariah.
(That we know of.)
(If she’s not, and the other one knew enough to Resonate her, we [Mariah and I] have a very different, much larger problem to contend with.)
We keep our voice low, but we do with Mariah what we’ve done before on a different plane of existence. “Breathe in 2, 3, 4. Hold, 2, 3, 4. Out 2, 3, 4.” While we do that, the sound of a plate being set on the table above us tells me that Mariah’s breakfast has just arrived.
And then the reaction stills and Mariah climbs back up to the bench, and tries to go on like nothing happens. But we can hear feel the slight tremble in her hand, and the unsteady taps of the fork she picked up.
“What happened?” we ask.
“What do you think happened? It’s my new Discord.”
Of course. Heart breakage comes with Discord. Something here must have triggered whatever Mariah’s new one is. Fear, maybe? Or some kind of general Panic, which we’ve never heard of before but can’t actually rule out. Mariah’s had bad luck with rare Discords before.
“Which is…?”
“Annoying.”
The second time Mariah seizes up and goes under the table, we keep one of our minds in on Mariah and encouraging her to try the breathing exercises (Do they even help if the cause is clearly not mundane? We’re not sure, but it’s better to try something right?), but we also turn our ears outward to the environment. The diner isn’t super-crowded; there’s no sea of noise like there was in the cafeteria down in Tartarus, but it’s not completely deserted either. Nearest to us, two old men talk about their grandchildren. A bit further away and one person complains to another about their work schedule getting shifted around and plans for the weekend getting disrupted. A group across the diner bicker about an upcoming election. Music pipes in from a jukebox. We don’t recognize the song. It might be a newer one. Kitchen noises come in too. Eggs frying in a pan. Coffee brewing.
(New music! Breakfast foods!)
The attack ends, and we notice one noise has also stopped. We’re not surprised Mariah didn’t figure it out the first time. We might not have, except that we’re specifically listening for it.
“Damned random panic attacks,” Mariah mutters.
(Do we tell her?)
(It won’t make her any happier to know?)
(Or that we figured it out before she did.)
(She needs to know. Wherever she decides to go from here.)
“It’s not random,” we tell her. “It’s probably tied to the sound of the coffee—”
Hands slam down on the table, and we hear the slight pause in the restaurant activities as the sudden rattle of china, cutlery, and glassware cut through the conversations elsewhere.
“You’re always so helpful, aren’t you?” Mariah says with bitter sarcasm, once the normal diner noises have resumed. Her voice becomes more conversational. “I’ve dealt with worse before. I’ll deal with this too. Be strong. Endure. Overcome.”
But we notice that Mariah pays the check and gets out of there as soon as she can.
—
By the time Mariah procures a certified beater—nothing wrong with it that a roll of duct tape and a little bit of elbow grease won’t fix—from the guy she knows, she’s back on her balance, almost cheerful even. Maybe because—despite her unreliable Resonance and inconvenient Discords—she’s on the plane of existence where she’s stronger, smarter, and faster than most of the natives.
The car takes a little bit more than duct tape to get running—there’s a request to borrow the guys tools and a trip to a hardware store to pick up something he doesn’t have and several hours of repair reminiscent of her time in the workroom—but eventually the engine turns over with a deep-throated growl to make any street-legal Tartaran sedan proud.
(This isn’t Tartarus!)
“Still not great. But that and a few tanks of gas will get me where I need to go.”
We’ve spent these past hours (Radio announcers! Time measurements we understand!) silent and eavesdropping, but now we speak up. “You’ve chosen a destination, then? Where to?”
“Wait and see. Won’t that be a lovely surprise?”
(Considering her tone of voice, we’d probably debate the ‘lovely’ part if we knew.)
She can’t go back to Technology. But she’s a demon on the corporeal with no assigned task and no immediate pursuit on her tail. Her world is full of options.
All we can do right now is wait and see what she’s decided.