“Much better,” Calypso congratulated Mandy as she held the projection of a regular angel’s face and wingless body in place. It had taken Mandy almost a half an hour to grasp the subtle variations in energy manipulation necessary to maintain her disguise. It helped that she had a Seraph for a teacher who could directly link with her mind and show her the memory of how she did it. As the newest angel in their group, Mandy had the most to learn. She wasn’t very far behind though, considering the others had only been angels for four months. Given the eternal nature of angels, they were just babies. At least, until they finished unlocking their soul memory.

  “There,” Aria beamed in satisfaction. “We look like a couple of regular angels now. If we run into any other angels, we can just let them know that we are just regular angels.”

  “Definitely make a point of telling them we are just regular angels,” Clarice agreed seriously. “We do things that regular angels do, because we are just regular angels.”

  Calypso’s lips quirked up slightly as she watched Clarice affectionately. “Clarice, you could never be regular anything.”

  Aria agreed wholeheartedly as she watched Clarice stare at Calypso with hungry eyes. They definitely needed to have a vacation after they finished removing the Seraphim from power. Clarice glanced at her and a smile bloomed on her face as she studied Aria’s face.

  “I missed those gorgeous green eyes,” Clarice told her with a tender smile. “Not that I don’t love your golden eyes, mind you. I just grew up loving your green eyes. I’m glad I get to see them again.”

  Aria felt a rush of warmth suffuse her core as she stared back at Clarice. Ever since Clarice had linked her inner soul with her, she always saw the true version of her mischievous sister. She was more beautiful than words could convey. Aria found herself just watching her sometimes, enchanted by the purity of her spirit and how it transposed the image Aria saw when she looked at her.

  A slow trickle of memories had begun arriving in her conscious mind as the dense positive energy of the lower light realm watered her soul. She could remember some of the experiences she had with Calypso and Clarice eons ago. They had been close before their first experience with mortality, though it seemed to be such a pale thing now that they knew what true closeness was. They had enjoyed each other's company enough that they spent a lot of time in world building sessions together, designing the cosmos and setting up the laws that would govern the mortal realm. Designing the mortal realm had been an exhilarating experience. The only reality they had known up to that point had been the infinite planes of the light realms. Creating something with finite limits assigned to every single particle and object had been a completely new concept to their immortal minds. The idea that everything in that realm was governed by an expiration date had opened new possibilities to how they viewed reality. The idea that one of them might one day no longer be there had been a traumatic realization. They had begun spending even more time with each other and grown closer in their shared sense of discovery and creativity.

  Then they had visited the mortal realm. They had never known each other in their first incarnation, but they had learned what passion and love were. When they had regained their memories after fully ascending, their relationship had developed to something much more physical. The idea that they had been genderless immortal entities for billions of years, regardless of their feminine appearance, still felt wrong. They had lost out on billions of years where they could have been experiencing the passions that having a real gender made possible. The fact that the majority of angels were still genderless entities merely mimicking the outward appearance of a gender had presented its own questions. Why had they created angels that looked male and female, and yet were neither? What was the master plan of this god entity where they had found all of the instructions for creating first the angels, and then the mortal realm? Where had the Seraphim come from originally? Before experiencing time as a mortal, the idea of not having a beginning had never concerned her. Now, she was curious where they had originated and if they were the product of someone else’s work.

  “You experiencing recall too?” Clarice asked curiously.

  “Yeah,” Aria nodded slowly. “It’s making me dwell on existential questions, like where we came from, originally. Before mortality, the idea of something not having a beginning never occurred to me.”

  Clarice stared back at her thoughtfully, her eyes introspective. “There was just the nine of us and God in the beginning as far back as I can remember.”

  “Where is this God entity?” Mandy asked intently, her eyes fascinated. “Is he really all around us or something like the religions teach?”

  “First of all, God isn’t a he,” Clarice corrected her with a small smile. “It just is. You can only access God from the highest realm. It’s inside of a tree in a garden. I suppose you could think of it as the light realms’ version of the Garden of Eden. When you go inside of the tree, you can feel its presence. The instructions we received for creating the light realms and the mortal realm all came to us while we were inside of the tree.”

  “How big is the tree?” Mandy asked with a puzzled crease to her brows. “How do you go inside of a tree?”

  Clarice shared a look with Aria and Calypso before turning back to face Mandy. “It’s about the size of reality, plus a little extra,” she finally answered with a contemplative frown. “It appears to just be the size of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, but when you go inside it stretches out into infinity. You can feel a connection to God as soon as you enter. It was mostly incomprehensible for the first billion years. We spent a lot of time studying all of the information before we could make any sense of it. We created the light realm after eons of puzzling through all of the information available. I suppose you could think of God like the Akashic Records, in a way. The only difference is that we started sensing a kind of intelligence to God after a long time. It was the kind of intelligence that is so vast that you can’t comprehend it as intelligence until you have been exposed to it for as long as we were.”

  Mandy was staring at her with wide eyes. Lexi was also eyeing them strangely.

  “You’re talking about billions of years like it’s nothing!” Mandy spluttered in incredulity. “Billions of years is beyond insane!”

  “When you are immortal and have never been exposed to the concept of beginnings and endings, time has no real meaning,” Calypso told her patiently. “You don’t feel time passing like you do as a mortal, because there is no such thing as time.”

  “I still feel time passing, and I’m immortal,” Lexi pointed out archly.

  “Because you’ve been mortal,” Calypso explained with a wry smile. “When you unlock your soul memory, you’ll remember what it was like to have no concept of time.”

  “Can’t we just consult God on how to turn off the power in the highest light realm?” Mandy asked curiously, looking between them questioningly. “That’s our ultimate goal, isn’t it? To chase the other Seraphim out of the highest light realm?”

  Aria shared a thoughtful look with Calypso and Clarice. “Yes, I think that could work,” Aria nodded slowly. “The whole reason we came here was to try and unlock some memories. We’ve managed to remember enough about this place to know that consulting God is an option now. We’ll have to do this in stages though. If we go straight to the highest realm, it’s going to incapacitate us for a while.”

  Mandy looked around at the endless expanse of nothingness. “You weren’t kidding when you said we probably wouldn’t run into anyone. This really goes on forever?”

  “Forever,” Clarice confirmed with a confident nod. “I know your brain won’t accept that right now. You’ve been conditioned by mortality to see beginnings and endings applied to everything you understand. Somewhere in that mortal mind you’ll convince yourself that there is an end somewhere, but that the distances are just too great for even our minds to comprehend. That’s not really the case though. It really does go on forever. We can teleport to anywhere in the light realm we want, but when you try to teleport to anything resembling a boundary, you’ll never find one.”

  “How can you apply coordinates or any kind of mapping system to a place that goes on forever?” Mandy asked in confusion. “What can you even use as a point of reference when teleporting if it is infinite?”

  “I want to teleport twenty feet this way,” Clarice replied, teleporting twenty feet away. “Just like that. You pick a direction from where you are currently at, and teleport.”

  “There’s also a psychic web of consciousness that allows you to feel where other intelligences are at,” Aria explained, pointing in a direction to the right of herself. “I can feel multiple people in that direction. You get used to matching distances up in your head with what the web of consciousness feels like. They are probably a few million miles away, based on what I remember this feeling like.”

  “So where should we go now?” Mandy asked, looking around at the endless flat expanse with a helpless look in her eyes.

  “I’m curious how things are going with the returning souls now that we’ve destroyed several thousand soul traps,” Calypso answered with a concerned frown. “We should visit one of the processing centers and see if any of them are using them to reform the template of their physical bodies from mortality. Otherwise, they are just going to become genderless angels again, which can be disconcerting after being mortal for so long.”

  “Okay…” Mandy looked around with a lost look. “Which way to a processing center?”

  A portal opened in front of her. She stared in surprise at the remains of what had once been a large building. There were several angels in the distance milling around in front of it, along with several thousand additional angels angrily watching from further away. There were trees, bushes, flowers, and a wide expanse of green meadows surrounding the remains of the building.

  “Looks like the cult has destroyed this facility,” Clarice observed darkly. “I’m guessing the other facilities aren’t much different.”

  “Let’s go talk with some of the Ascended,” Aria suggested, walking through the portal.

  “We should have disguised one of us as an archangel,” Clarice commented with a frown. “If anyone sees us making portals while we appear to be normal angels it’s going to blow our cover.”

  “Good idea,” Calypso agreed, her shape changing slightly as archangel wings appeared on her back. She followed them through the portal a moment later.

  Their small group made their way over to the disconsolate looking group of Ascended, keeping an eye on the crowd of angry angels in the distance.

  The first Ascended they came across was a woman with long golden hair and lavender eyes. Her eyes were filled with wonder as she wandered around the ruins. Aria remembered the Ascended were probably still reveling in the powerful light permeating their souls after being denied for so long.

  There was a sudden flash of angel fire and one of the Ascended vanished into motes of light. Aria spun around as a Cherub floated down to the ground with a look of disgust on his face. He looked at them like he had found a bug running across the kitchen counter. His eyes glowed for a moment before a beam of light shot toward Aria. She blasted it out of the air with her own angel fire. As the Cherub stared in shock, Clarice flashed up to him and dragged him down to the ground, her hand clenched around his throat like a handle.

  “So, this is how you think you are going to deal with the Ascended,” Clarice growled in anger. “You think you’re just going to vaporize all of them.”

  “Who are you?” the Cherub spat in anger, struggling to free himself from Clarice’s grip. He might as well have been a toddler for all of the good it did him.

  “Caleb,” Clarice glared at the Cherub with disgust in her eyes. “I should have expected no less from a piece of excrement like you. I guess it’s time to depopulate the ranks of the Cherubim.”

  He sneered as he stared at her hatefully. “I’ll be back, and we’ll see who gets depopulated.”

  The sneer left his face as he attempted and failed to teleport away. He suddenly stared at Clarice in dawning horror. “You!”

  “Yes, Caleb,” Clarice agreed as her eyes began glowing. “Me.”

  Caleb screamed in terror as angel fire lanced into his face. He lasted for a few seconds before dissipating into motes of light that diffused into the light energy surrounding them.

  The Ascended had begun running away when they saw Caleb attack, but when they saw Clarice vaporize him, they slowed down and watched her nervously. The crowd of angry angels in the distance were staring at Clarice in shock. They had clearly seen a Cherubim of the first order get destroyed, which was supposed to be impossible. There was only one entity that could hope to do such a thing. Their faces grew more nervous as realization swept through them like a wave and they began muttering to each other.

  Clarice turned to face the crowd of suddenly fearful angels. She unfurled her Seraph aura and spoke in tones of ultimate authority. “Anyone found harming an Ascended will answer to me. Get used to the idea of Ascended, because you are all going to the mortal realm soon, whether you like it or not.”

  They cowered away from the force of her aura, stunned into silence. Seraphim never left the upper realm. Very few normal angels had ever seen a Seraph. The sight of one in their midst overwhelmed any negative sentiment they may have had toward Ascended. They stared back at her, frozen in awe and fear.

  The few Ascended among the rubble were staring at her in sudden hope as they heard her words. They began moving toward her slowly, their faces a warring mixture of fear, awe, hope, and excitement.

  “Was this facility recently destroyed?” Clarice asked the first of the Ascended to reach her.

  The woman nodded, her face filled with awe. “Yes, Seraph. There was a group of Dominions that dismantled it not too long before you arrived.”

  Aria and the others joined Clarice as they observed the devastation of the mortality processing center. More of the Ascended arrived in front of them, staring at Clarice like a god.

  “I suppose this might be a good time to test out the divine instruments in the light realm,” Calypso suggested, sharing a questioning look with Aria and Clarice.

  “Agreed,” Clarice and Aria spoke simultaneously. They shared an amused look before turning back to the group of Ascended.

  “We are going to repair the facility,” Aria told them, her Seraph aura no longer hidden. “We will be using divine instruments, so we will need to move you to a safe location until we are finished.”

  The Ascended gaped as they found not one but two Seraphim standing in front of them, and with the divine instruments. Clarice made a portal that opened up a few million miles away and gestured to it.

  “Go through here and wait,” she told them in a gentle tone. “We’ll open it back up when it is safe to come back. Lexi and Mandy will keep you safe in case you run into any trouble.”

  “The rest of you should leave as fast as you can, if you want to live,” Aria told the crowd of angels in the distance. “You won’t survive at this range.”

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  They stared in sudden terror as she pulled out her tin whistle and Calypso pulled out the harp. The instruments glowed brilliantly in the light realm, as if they were drawing the light into themselves.

  “Get lost!” Clarice shouted at them irritably.

  That seemed to break their trance. They turned and fled, small disc platforms appearing under their feet and carrying them away at high speeds.

  The dozen Ascended hesitantly moved through the portal, staring at the three Seraphim and the glowing instruments in awe as they moved through. Lexi and Mandy followed them through, and Clarice closed the portal.

  “Let’s make sure nobody can destroy it this time,” Aria suggested firmly as she raised the instrument to her lips. She connected a tendril of thought to Calypso and Clarice, linking their minds together.

  Calypso began playing her harp and Aria joined in after a few notes. The area around them warped as reality shifted, turning the lesser matter around them into putty in the hands of their minds. Aria felt a tsunami of power wash through her and Calypso as the divine instruments opened the power of creation to their minds. Their minds synchronized into one as the harmonies and rhythm forged a mental link and combined their creative potential. More memories floated up into their consciousness from their soul memory as the power of the divine instruments awakened more of their spirit. Aria remembered the first time they had built the mortality processing centers. They had not used divine instruments, relying on the malleable energy of the light realm to construct the facilities. This time, they forged the materials with immortal materials that couldn’t be destroyed by any power, be it Cherubim angel fire or Seraphim will.

  The process was fast, now that she had access to her previous memories. They constructed the structural and mechanical layout first, followed by the more complex technological infrastructure that interacted with the different states of matter. As an added bonus, they increased the efficiency of the process, allowing a much higher number of Ascended to access their mortal templates and apply the transformation more quickly.

  Aria lowered the instrument from her lips and smiled down at the new facility in satisfaction. Clarice pulled the two of them into a warm embrace as they restored their instruments into their soul space.

  “Well done, my beautiful angels,” Clarice congratulated them proudly. “You two are amazing.”

  Aria leaned into the group hug, reveling in the increased flow of power hopping across their meridians in the light realm. She shivered as another window in her soul opened up. She felt Calypso and Clarice do the same in her arms. Her understanding of the energy that acted as the building blocks of reality expanded and she smiled radiantly as she realized they no longer only had one healer.

  “Oh, wow,” Clarice breathed in astonishment. “I can’t believe you’ve been working with energies this complex since you were a child, Calypso.”

  “So, this is destructive energy,” Calypso murmured thoughtfully. “I haven’t really needed it, since I’ve had my protectors with me the whole time.”

  “And that’s not going to change,” Clarice informed her warmly. “We’ll always be together now.”

  Aria squeezed the two of them tightly as she thought of how long they had been together. They had grown so much in a few thousand years, so much more than they had grown in the billions of years before the mortal realm had been created. She marveled at the strength of her love and emotional attachment to her oldest friends. She would never have imagined how deep her feelings for the other two Seraphim could go, before their mortal experience.

  “I suppose I should invite the others back now,” Clarice murmured with a small sigh. With a final squeeze, she released them and made a portal. Lexi and Mandy hurried through, staring at the new facility with excited eyes.

  “Wow!” Mandy exclaimed exuberantly. “You just built that whole thing in the time that we were gone?”

  “Yep,” Clarice nodded with an indulgent smile. “Easy peezy lemon squeezy.”

  Lexi snorted a laugh as she gazed at Clarice affectionately. “I wish we could have watched. Too bad the divine instrument pulverize anyone but Seraphim.”

  “I have a feeling that you’ll get your chance,” Clarice told her with a mysterious smile.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Lexi demanded suspiciously.

  Aria stared at Clarice as well, curious as to what she meant.

  “You’ll see,” Clarice grinned mischievously. “All in good time.”

  “Oh, it’s like that, is it?” Lexi scowled at her petulantly, eliciting a laugh from the others.

  The Ascended didn’t waste their time returning through the portal. They stared in astonishment at the restored facility, their eyes hungry.

  “We made it indestructible this time,” Aria told them in satisfaction. “Even the other Seraphim couldn’t destroy this place now.”

  “Can I go in now?” a woman named Daloris asked hesitantly.

  “Have at it,” Aria gestured at it grandly. “Gendered bodies await.”

  The woman blushed but laughed as she moved toward the entrance to the large building, followed immediately by the other Ascended.

  “What do you think?” Clarice asked them with a raised eyebrow. “Should we go clean up some Cherubim and make sure they understand that if they attack the Ascended that they’re going to die? It shouldn’t take too long for them to chicken out and stop coming down here.”

  “Agreed,” Calypso nodded quickly. “We can’t let them indiscriminately start killing Ascended like this.”

  “How many Cherubim are there?” Mandy asked curiously.

  “Once upon a time, there were seventy of the first order,” Aria replied with a satisfied grin. “But there are two less now. I killed one that tried to kill my mom, and Clarice killed Caleb. So there are only sixty-eight now. Actually, make that sixty-nine, since you are a new Cherub, Mandy. You’re the first new Cherub in several million years.”

  “So let me get this straight,” Mandy breathed, her eyes full of amazement. “There are quintillions of angels in existence, but only seventy Cherubim and nine Seraphim...and I’m actually one of the Cherubim?”

  “Yep,” Aria nodded with a smile just short of laughter. “You are one of the most powerful beings in the cosmos. There are another four-hundred-ninety Cherubim of the second order.”

  “Wow,” Lexi murmured in awe. “I hadn’t really thought about it before, but wow. How did so many Cherubim end up in one place? Your parents, your uncle, and the two of us. That’s a really big coincidence.”

  “The same thought has occurred to us several times,” Aria assured her with a helpless laugh. “We were actually wondering if God had something to do with it. It was the perfect storm to create a chance for us to escape the mortality prison and retake the light realms.”

  Clarice suddenly frowned. “We were supposed to bring Redgart with us when we came to the light realms,” she murmured quietly. “Maybe we should wait to bring him until after we deal with the Cherubim. I would hate for him to get killed after finally making it back here.”

  “Well, let’s go clean this place up for him then,” Aria suggested with a grin.

  Clarice’s answering grin was wolfish.

  “Do you have a way to find them?” Mandy asked curiously. She had walked up behind Lexi and wrapped her arms around her, leaning her cheek against the back of Lexi’s head. Lexi had a dreamy look on her face as the higher energy of the light realm increased the crosstalk of their meridians. Aria could feel the thrill of happiness pulsing through the part of her soul that represented Lexi as she melted back into Mandy contentedly.

  “I know where the other MPC’s are,” Calypso answered, smiling as she observed the two of them affectionately. “I doubt this was a one-off event with Caleb. I’m expecting there to be other Cherubim causing trouble.”

  “MPC’s?” Lexi repeated questioningly. “Like Monster Player Characters?”

  “Mortality Processing Centers,” Calypso corrected, giving her a peculiar look. “What are Monster Player Characters?”

  “I don’t know,” Lexi shrugged, a faint smile on her face. “I just thought it was a spin off of NPC. You know what NPCs are, right?”

  “Did you forget?” Clarice asked Lexi dryly. “Calypso is a little behind on pop culture and video game terminology.” She looked at Calypso with an amused twinkle in her brown eyes. “NPC refers to Non-Player Characters in video games. Jason would probably tell you that we are all NPCs in a simulated reality.”

  “We should probably get going,” Aria interrupted with an anxious frown. “They might be vaporizing people while we chat.”

  Calypso’s look grew stricken, and she hurriedly made a portal to the next MPC. Angel fire was arcing through the sky before they even stepped out. Aria recognized Azriel, firing off intercepting beams of angel fire as he sought to protect the Ascended below. There were two Cherubim attempting to fire past him. She recognized Raphael and Gabriel as they tried to speed around Azriel to fire on the Ascended. Azriel was doing pretty well, but he only had to miss once, which would inevitably happen eventually.

  Clarice blasted through the portal like a lightning bolt, snatching Raphael out of the air and pinning him down to the ground. Aria was only a split second behind her, grabbing Gabriel by the throat and slamming him into the ground below.

  “Hello, Raphael,” Clarice purred, her eyes burning with rage. “Did you miss me?”

  Raphael gasped as he stared at Clarice in sudden recognition. He immediately tried to teleport away. His eyes grew wide as his teleportation failed.

  “Can’t have you leaving before I vaporize your worthless ass,” Clarice told him sweetly. “Goodbye, Raphael.”

  “No!” Raphael screamed as angel fire burned into his face. He lasted a few seconds before turning into motes of light that dissolved into the light.

  Gabriel began thrashing in her grip as he panicked, his golden eyes full of fear.

  “You seemed totally okay with people being burned away with angel fire a minute ago,” Aria told him coldly. “I should have done this to you a long time ago.”

  Gabriel screamed as the angel fire seared into his soul, burning him from existence.

  “That was unexpected,” Azriel commented as he landed on the ground next to them. He was tall, like all Cherubim, and had black hair that contrasted with his golden eyes. He was watching them with a look of jubilation, a grin stretching across his face. “And I mean that was really unexpected. I didn’t know Cherubim could be killed.”

  “We never got involved in the fighting before,” Clarice answered with a shrug. “We tried to remain impartial. It’s personal now, though.”

  “Well, I’m glad you showed up,” Azriel declared fervently. “I’m sure they would have eventually gotten past me. Grodek told me that Aria had killed Kadmiel, but you never know if Grodek is just pulling your chain.”

  “You can add Caleb to your list of Cherubim vacancies,” Clarice informed him grimly. “We need to keep moving to other facilities. We’re pretty sure there will be additional attacks going on.”

  “There’s going to be a lot less Cherubim after this,” Azriel noted with a pleased grin.

  Calypso was already making another portal as they spoke.

  “We rebuilt one of the MPCs if anyone asks,” Aria informed him as she prepared to go through the portal. “We’ll be back to rebuild this one as well. They are immortal objects now, so those asshats won’t be able to destroy them again.”

  Azriel’s eyebrows rose at her words, but she was already rushing through the portal as she sensed angel fire.

  There was a much larger crowd of Ascendents at the MPC they had just travelled to. Aria felt her blood boil with anger as she watched five Cherubim blast anyone who tried to leave the packed crowd of Ascended. They were slowly picking them off, clearly drawing out the suspense and reveling in the terror they instilled. Aria felt Calypso blaze to life in fury beside her. Before she could say a word, Calypso shot through the portal and was blasting Dredel in the face with angel fire. Aria flew through the portal and grabbed two of the Cherubim as Clarice did the same.

  Jerinel and Fortenel were too shocked to put up any resistance at first. As she slammed them into the ground and began burning the face off of Jerinel, Fortenel began flailing about wildly. It didn’t do him any good. Once Jerinel was nothing but motes of light, she switched targets and blasted the screaming Fortenel. All five of the Cherubim had been of the first order. They really were going to depopulate the ranks of the Cherubim at the rate they were going.

  Calypso was shaking as she hovered in the air, her face a mixture of anger and grief. Aria could feel the turmoil in her soul as she struggled with the guilt of killing an angel. Aria flew up to her and pulled her into a tight embrace.

  “Calypso, I want you to look at that woman down there,” Aria told her in a gentle but firm voice. “She’s still alive because of what you did. She would have been dead before Clarice, or I could stop him. You’ve saved a life today, and I love you for it.”

  Calypso nodded, her eyes glowing with golden tears. “I know, Aria. I just hate that reality has people in it who can do things that make me want to murder a person. I really hate this reality.”

  “I know,” Aria sighed sadly. “I really hate it too. We are going to fix it though. When we are done, reality is going to be a beautiful place that you will be able to play your beautiful music and bask in the joy of all of the other people who no longer live in the worst kind of hell. Now come on, let’s go save some more people.”

  Calypso wiped her tears away and opened another portal. The process repeated more than a dozen times as they visited all of the MPCs and destroyed Cherubim. The Cherubim had clearly decided that the answer to the soul traps being destroyed was to just kill any Ascended who came back to the light realms. They had killed more than half of the existing Cherubim before word had finally reached the other Cherubim that they were being methodically hunted and destroyed. Aria felt it when they exited the lower light realm. There was a definite feeling of psychic weight in the realm that changed when a more powerful angel visited. She judged that at least a dozen of the Cherubim had escaped.

  “I wonder how many of the Cherubim who supported us managed to stay here in the light realms after the other Seraphim attacked us,” Aria pondered aloud. “We know Azriel remained. I wonder if there are any others.”

  “I would be surprised if there weren’t a few others,” Clarice commented with a concerned glance at Calypso. “Though they certainly managed to send most of them to mortality with us.”

  They had moved on to restoring MPC’s after the Cherubim fled, hoping to give the Ascended some comfort by having the bodies they had paid so dearly for in mortality. Calypso had played her harp and remained communicative, but her spirit link companions could all feel the darkness consuming Calypso as she lamented her role in killing the Cherubim.

  As soon as they completed the last MPC, a familiar irritating voice spoke up from behind them.

  “It looks like the giant chickens have finally flown back home to roost,” Grodek snickered evilly as he glared around at the excited crowd of Ascended. They were coming through a portal Aria had sent them through to stay safe while they played the divine instruments. They were moving toward the new MPC with hopeful expressions. A few of them saw Grodek and shied away from his glare. “I’m not sure what you thought you were going to accomplish by letting a trickle of angels back into the light realm, unless your plan was to lure the Cherubim down here to kill, in which case, I salute you on a plan well executed.”

  “We had hoped an influx of angels would make it easier to slip into the light realm without being noticed and recover more of our soul memories,” Clarice told him dryly. “But...we didn’t keep a very low profile, did we Grodek?”

  “About as inconspicuous as a clown at a funeral that keeps accidentally honking its nose,” Grodek agreed with a disgusted shake of his head. “It looks like you got some memories back anyway though. What are you going to do with those memories that you think will help you get the divine instrument pieces? I’d say that I’m surprised to see you up here instead of looking for the remaining pieces, but you jackasses tend to go off of the rails even when the tracks are straight.”

  “The other Seraphim have been setting traps on the other pieces of the divine instruments,” Clarice told him with a growl in her voice. “They’re going to keep throwing shit at us like the monkeys they are until they hit us if we just let them hide in their little sanctuary. We need to flush them out so that they’ve got their own problems to worry about, leaving us to finish collecting the divine instrument pieces in peace. We are going to reroute the power in the highest realm so that it is no longer a safe place for them to stay. Once the power density has plummeted, we think they’ll exit the upper realm and start being more concerned with how they’re going to deal with surviving in lower density realms.”

  Grodek gaped at them in disbelief. Aria nearly laughed at seeing the imp so out of countenance. He spluttered for several seconds before groaning and smacking his palm to his forehead. “How are you so damn stupid?” he groaned mournfully. “I knew you were empty headed Hufflepuffs, but I thought that after getting some of your memories back you would stop being so mind numbingly ignorant.”

  “It takes a lot of work,” Clarice assured him with a cold smile. “You just keep trying, and you’ll be able to emulate us eventually.”

  “Do you know what would happen to the other realms if you rerouted the energy density to bypass the source realm?” Grodek demanded caustically. “You would drop the lower two realms into a hot soup of light density that would fry everyone living there. Not to mention, it would trickle down to the mortal realm and have untold effects on finite matter. You might as well nuke reality.”

  “We didn’t say we were going to reroute it to the lower realms,” Clarice told him pointedly. “We just said we were going to reroute it.”

  “Reroute it where?” he demanded, narrowing his eyes.

  “Somewhere that won’t even notice it,” Clarice answered with a shrug. “And it’s only temporary. We just need those drinkers of yak's piss out of the realm where they feel safe and think they can’t die. We want them looking over their shoulders for vengeful Seraphim wielding divine instruments so that we can finish finding the damn things.”

  “So, you have no idea where you’re going to reroute the energy,” Grodek retorted in disgust. “You’re just going to start throwing shit at the wall and hoping it sticks.”

  “In this case, it will be holy shit,” Clarice pointed out coolly. “Cause we’re in heaven.”

  Grodek stared at her, his evil eyes full of frustration as he grimaced at her. “First of all, I’m not ever sure it’s possible to reroute light from the highest realm. Second of all, where do you think the power in the lower realms comes from? If you cut off the supply to the highest realm, it’s going to cut it off for all of the realms.”

  “I like the sound of that,” Clarice smiled approvingly. “Not only will they lose power in the source realm, but they also won’t be able to go to the lower realms to find any kind of relief. They’ll be like heroin addicts on a desert island. I’ll bet they won’t make very good decisions in that state of mind. That should give us some breathing room.”

  Grodek glared at her, but Aria could see that the wheels were turning in his head as he thought about their idea. After a moment, he grunted sourly and spoke. “You would have to go to the Garden if you wanted to reroute power. You might be able to do it with two instruments. Might.”

  “That’s where I had planned to go,” Clarice told him with a satisfied smile. Her smile disappeared after a moment. “The only problem is that we’re pretty sure that we’re going to get overloaded by the light density when we go there. We might end up stuck in limbo until we acclimate. It wouldn’t be good for them to find us in such a state.”

  “Unlike the lower realms, they’re never going to know that you have come to the highest realm unless you land in their laps,” Grodek grunted, eyeing her as if he expected them to do exactly that. “The energy is too dense for them to notice a ripple in the light distribution. Just open a portal far away. And I would suggest that only the two of you with divine instruments go there. There’s no point wasting an able body for weeks of adaptation when you won’t be able to help anyway. Do something useful while they’re acclimating.”

  Aria frowned as she felt a sliver of fear at the thought of letting her sister out of her sight. Clarice also frowned, her eyes calculating. “The bond will feed Lexi and me the same level of power that you’re getting when you go there, so we’re going to be incapacitated anyway. We might as well be incapacitated together.”

  Grodek snorted a disdainful laugh, then vanished.

  Aria sighed in relief, glad that her sister wasn’t going to leave her.

  “What do you think?” Aria asked them with a nervous grin. “Shall we go to the highest realm?”

  “Let’s do it,” Clarice nodded, her eyes eager. “That’s why we came, after all.”

  “Okay,” Calypso agreed, her voice subdued.

  “We’re ready,” Lexi grinned, looking at Mandy, who nodded with excitement.

  “Okay, here we go,” Clarice took a deep breath, then opened a portal to the source realm.