Chapter Text
Kira rose up from that shattered crystal like so much vapor—a misty cloud of luminous pink and green, like the vital version of the stone that had held her. And the butterflies—Butterflies! Mariah would not have expected to see those of Kira—fluttered and danced within that cloud. Ink-colored eyes opened and blinked in asymmetric perfection. A chorus of voices—no longer muffled by any barriers—sang out her curses in such sublime Angelic harmony it made Mariah’s ears nearly bleed with its beauty.
She was glorious, as beautiful as that one Flowers Kyriotate had been long ago. More so even, for Mariah having known her.
Mariah could have observed Kira for hours, cataloging her features, tracking the darts and flutters of each moving piece, measuring how the light glittered off those eyes. She wanted to see deep within that cloud of Kira and determine whether those butterflies went all the way down.
Then, as Kira’s Forces found corporeal homes, her celestial form evaporated.
More than three years together, and those few seconds were all Mariah would be allowed to keep.
The hammer fell from her grasp and clattered to the ground. It missed her foot by centimeters. Mariah looked down to see her favorite force catcher sitting on the concrete barrier, shattered and useless, which seemed appropriate—a broken stone in exchange for a broken Heart, both the literal one now in shards on the floor of a supply room in a building that no longer meant anything to Mariah and the metaphorical one inside her.
It felt odd to regret losing someone. Mariah had lost many things before—possessions, abilities, esteem, potential—and had regretted those, but she’d never cared enough about an actual person—not in her first, more promising research career and definitely not in her second one as an expendable minion—to miss anyone one way or another. No one else had ever been worth holding on to. But Mariah had held on to Kira. She had built Kira a home—the case that was her finest piece of engineering, and when that had proved insufficient, Mariah had carved Kira a second home in her own celestial body right where a heart might have been were it a vessel. Mariah rested a hand to her sternum as though it could cover the hollowness of Kira’s absence.
Had Kira really needed to leave so soon?
Yes, Mariah had chosen to let go first, but she hadn’t known even a minute ago exactly how losing Kira would feel.
For a Lightning Tether, this place was surrounded by nature—forest and grassland, the perfect place for Kira to scatter her forces into some nearby wildlife. An owl landed on a tree across a small stretch of water, invisible but for its slightly darker silhouette against the gaps in the foliage.
Was that Kira? Had she come back?
Mariah’s hands curled into fists. Nails pressed into her palms. Were this her celestial form with its claws, she would have bled. Kira needed to be by her side—not even in human shape, just that owl body would be fine, if only Mariah could have her close again. Kira needed to be long gone—no hosts of any kind at all near by. Just leave Mariah to Redeem or perish. None of this liminal observation! Kira needed to choose one extreme or another—here or far away, everything they could have been together or nothing at all.
Emotions welled up, and Mariah could do nothing to mitigate them. She had no whims to sublimate them into, and no suitable target to resonate them out towards. No Emptiness effect muted them. Even hiding them proved impossible the way her sobs leaked out her mouth despite her best efforts and the way her legs gave out beneath her body. Her knees hit the grass. All she could do was let it pass through.
The owl finally flew off to do whatever owls—or Kyriotates—did.
And eventually, Mariah calmed. The emotions didn’t entirely disappear, of course, not like they might after a Resonance effect wore. These were Mariah’s own emotions triggered by an actual event that wouldn’t un-happen just because Mariah wished she had done it differently.
She brushed a hand across her face and scowled at the evidence. Still weak even now, and she wasn’t even alone in the privacy of her workshop. Heaven angels—actual angels—looked on. If Mariah were them, would she accept herself in this state, weak as she was? Were she them, would she believe herself worthy of the Heaven denied to her as a Habbalite? Or would she only be worthy of burning to ash in a Tether locus like the common demon she still couldn’t quite believe herself to be?
She considered her options. Was it too late to just leave?
Mariah got to her feet and looked at her surroundings. Running away would be useless, embarrassing even. Her escorts stood between her and the mobile trash-heap she drove to get here. No. She came here. She asked for the chance to redeem and the Heaven angels here would either give it to her or not. She had to go forward. Change or die. It would hurt, but how much worse could the pain get compared to that time on her former Archangel’s—Prince’s—examination table?
Mariah took some deep calming breaths—she couldn’t help but hear Kira’s voice in gentle, patient Helltongue coaching her through it—and put her mind in order. Kira by her side or not, Mariah was making this choice, and no matter what happened as a result she would remain strong until the end. She’d endure. Maybe, she would even overcome.
She walked back towards her escorts. “I’m ready.”
—
For Mariah, the strangest part of her walk into this Divine Tether wasn’t the location itself. That was a given for what she intended to do. No, it was the relative lack of touch by her escorts. This wasn’t like the motel room where one of the War Angels had held her in a lock while they discussed her fate. Nor was it like it had been when her Discord first appeared, where each step from promising research assistant to disposable minion had been undergone with someone dragging her along. Her escorts trusted Mariah to come along willingly, and gave her little more than verbal guidance when directions were needed.
And she did. What else would she do?
They took her to a small meeting room in one of the smaller buildings. Mariah turned down the offer for coffee—she’d hold onto the small dignity of not displaying that Discord—or any other hot beverage. Her stomach already fluttered. However, she did take an offered seat. Carl sat with her, while the Seraph said something about the Seneschal and left.
Mariah fiddled with the mood ring while she waited and considered her escorts’ emotional states. The Seraph had been anxious, more so after Mariah had freed Kira, and it was frustrating both that Mariah cared about the reason why and that had no way to figure that out short of asking, which she wouldn’t. Had it been something Mariah had done? Or did was it something about the situation itself? How often did Tethers get visitors like her?
Carl had been…and Mariah realized she couldn’t quite name the emotion the ring reflected or even the color given off. She might call it solemn interest perhaps, as though Mariah’s presence here was a topic of both utmost importance and deep curiosity. Not that he showed it as he sat across from her and focused on a diagram sketched out on his legal pad. Every couple of minutes he looked up as if he were inviting her to say something.
“I wonder if becoming an Elohite will make all this easier.” She twisted her ring compulsively. Her fingers wanted to fidget, and she had to stop herself from tapping down on the table. She couldn’t bear the reminder. “I mean, having to say good-bye someone you like and not knowing if you’ll ever see them again.”
Carl nodded and looked back down at his paper, and Mariah wondered again what Choir he might be. Her initial thought had been Cherub, with his somewhat stocky body type and the way she found his presence quietly reassuring in the exact opposite way Tizzy’s presence used to induce anxiety, but now she wasn’t so sure.
“Ease is difficult to define,” he said at last. “A situation like yours would prove difficult for any choir, your future one included. But it’s likely you will be able to contextualize it better once you’re an Elohite.” Despite his detachment, Mariah had the sense Carl had a personal understanding. “If your separation from that Kyriotate you were entangled with was truly for the best, it will be what it needs to be.”
“And what if it wasn’t for the best? What if I really do need to find her again?”
“Then you would find a way to pursue the issue in a manner that would harm neither you nor her nor your Archangel’s interests.” He raised an eyebrow up at her, which clearly expressed his evaluation of the matter. “If you couldn’t do that, then it wouldn’t be for the best.”
That explanation made sense for all that Mariah disliked it. She nodded. “Are you happy being an Elohite?”
She did take a small amount of gratification when he blinked twice.
“Happiness has plenty of nuances.” Carl said, and Mariah could watch his face to see him organizing his thoughts for her. “I have meaningful work that makes use of my skills—” He held up the notepad he worked on, schematics for a complicated machine that Mariah couldn’t fathom the purpose of. “—competent and usually pleasant colleagues—” He gestured to the door the Seraph left from. “—and a few hobbies to indulge in when it becomes optimal to take breaks.” He procured a cube built of multicolored squares and passed it over to Mariah. “Occasionally, I want things my nature does not allow me to pursue, but I’ve never yet found those desires unmanageable or even persistent. So, I suppose in a general definition, yes, I am happy.”
Mariah examined the cube he’d handed over and realized it contained sections she could rotate in various directions and shift the multi-colored squares into different positions, all except the centers. “This is a puzzle to try and get all the same colored squares on a side?”
“Yes. Do you want to try and solve it? See if you can figure out the algorithms.”
Mariah fiddled with the cube and watched how it changed as she rotated it. Trying to figure out the logic behind the movement was a perfect, trivial distraction while she waited for the next terrifying step in this process to begin and tried desperately not to think of green and pink butterflies.
The Seraph returned not too long after and alongside her was the Seneschal.
—
The conversation with the Seneschal had not gone how Mariah had anticipated. She had expected glowering lectures and harsh interrogation, but there was none of that. He was an affable man—a Mercurian actually—with an easy smile under his mustache and a receding hairline, and despite her previous apprehensions, he had no question of whether Mariah was worthy to attempt Redemption.
When she asked if there would be he merely said, “You’re here,” as though those two words alone sufficiently answered any inquiry she could have along that line. Perhaps they did.
Instead the bulk of the conversation had gone to logistical matters and obligatory disclaimers. The Redemption process had its risks, and was Mariah aware of them? Yes. She had come to this Tether with the full knowledge that both soul death and Force loss were possible outcomes of a Redemption attempt. What would happen if Mariah weren’t ready to redeem yet? Arrangements could be made to take her to another location—even to a Tether of a different Word if she preferred. Sessions with a pre-Redemption counselor could also be set up, if that would be more comfortable for her. Mariah said no to both offers. The sooner the terrifying part happened, the sooner it would be over with.
The Seneschal did have one request. Would Mariah permit her information to be added to the data set of redemption candidates? Mariah hadn’t realized that such a thing existed—either a data set itself or the ability to opt out of research. Consent meant nothing in Technology. Whether specimen or servitor, a test subject was merely a test subject.
She almost said ‘no’ just for the novelty of refusing someone clearly more powerful than her. However, when she thought about it for a few seconds, she found she did want a record of herself to exist in Heaven, even if it was just an entry in a database to say that she, Mariah, had been here, and she had gone through this process.
“That’s fine.”
Mariah set the cube aside, and looked at the what the Seneschal passed over to her. Two pieces of paper stapled together, type-written front and back. The top page asked for basic biographical information: Name, Band, age, Force count and so on down. Discord was mentioned, of course. There were spaces to describe her former work for Hell—Mariah wondered how poorly these Heaven angels would react to that—and to summarize previous encounters with the Host. “Do all these fields need to be filled in?”
“Participation is entirely voluntary and answers are deidentified as much as possible. Answer what you feel comfortable with now. If you find you want to give more thorough responses later, you will be given the opportunity to do so. If you need help interpreting a question, Carl or Lois will be able to clarify.” Carl and the Seraph both nodded their heads.
Mariah mirrored the gesture back at them before focusing back on the Seneschal. “I understand, sir.”
The Seneschal stood up. “Before I head back to my office and queue up a message to the boss, is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Just one thing. If Kira…if she ever comes back here and asks about me…someone will tell her, right? No matter how it works out, I want her to know what happened.”
Mariah’s mood ring turned a pale and dusty shade of blue. The Seneschal smiled at her, small and serious. “If anybody by that name asks, we’ll make sure she gets the news.”
That was all Mariah could let herself hope for. “Thank you.”
—
The Archangel Jean waited for Mariah at the top of a metal staircase next to the upper third of a towering machine clearly built for a type of research both larger and smaller than Mariah could fathom. Stern eyes examined Mariah, and she had the distinct sense that the Archangel saw not only her vessel but the celestial inside, Discords and all. He nodded and motioned for Mariah to approach, his gestures all carved out through precision tooling.
Mariah climbed towards him. Each of her footsteps echoed through the expansive chamber. Static electricity raised the hairs on her arms and possibly her head. Was that the energy of the Tether locus or the Archangel himself? She stood before him and her body fell into the familiar posture of attention—back straight, trying to keep her shaky hands open-palmed on her thighs.
“You came here to talk.” The Archangel’s voice was harsh in a way her ex-Prince’s had never been, not even after her first big mistake. Mariah should find it intimidating—and it was, a bit—but his lack of sugar-coating felt like a mercy. He would not lure her into a false sense of security.
“I have.”
“So, let’s talk.”
They had a utilitarian conversation. A Habbalite’s uncertainty: Mariah did not know how well she would serve Lightning. Her current skills and experience did not match up with a career in research. An Elohite’s reassurance: Lightning could be versatile. A Word transfer could be arranged, if desired. Options could be explored until the best fit was found. The topic of Kira never came up at all.
They had a metaphysical conversation. Mariah still could not quite believe she wasn’t an angel, not even with the Emptiness inside her just over a day gone. Nor could she shake the idea that an Elohite was not merely the imperfect larval state of a Habbalite but its divine opposite. She laid out her explanation and the foundational points of her existence: she had been part of the Choir in Hell tasked with punishing the unworthy, and the Voice of God had driven her actions, right up to the point where its infallibility snapped. Even knowing better, she still saw herself as divine. Not even an Archangel could completely convince her otherwise, not with words alone.
When she started to repeat her points a third time, the Archangel Jean held up his hand again.
Mariah stopped her speech in its tracks.
“I can help you understand,” Jean said, the conclusion of their current conversation, and the start of the next one. He offered out that hand to her. “If you would give me the honor of showing you.”
There was no examination table here. No straps held her down. An Archangel had simply made his offer, and Mariah could say, “No, not yet,” to it. She could turn around and descend those noisy metal stairs and return to the Seneschal and ask to take advantage of one of the several options already offered to her.
But she didn’t. Mariah had made her decision two days ago, and she would follow through. She took his hand with her own trembling one, and wondered if this would be her end or her beginning. “Yes.”
His grip tightened around hers. “Very well.”
For all that Mariah had ever believed about Elohim and their many weaknesses, the Archangel of Lightning certainly knew how to explain a concept.