023 – Beacon of the Profane

Time to Seal: 01:58

The family was already reacting. Jason had started scrambling away from me, while Roslyn was frantically patting her legs—whether the corruption felt like bugs or like flames, I couldn’t tell.

There was that purple glow on them, the signature of Hell’s attacks. On them it was faint, on me it was a beacon. With the swipe of a paw I slashed the tent open and bounded off. I didn’t understand what the attack was doing, but I understood my presence was bad news for them. Even their dots on my minimap had turned red. Where previously there had been the list of party members, the interface now just stated:

[You are alone.]

I ran. Not to the fire station, not anywhere. Just away. My UI kept flickering, showing threats I couldn’t see. There was a debuff.

[Beacon of the Profane – Duration: Infinite]

Wherever my paws touched ground a circle of red started spreading. And I could feel it seeping back into me. How it tainted Angel’s shape further than any demon ichor could. I canceled the shape and kept walking.

“Gabriel, what is happening?” I asked.

“Sorry, dear,” Lucy said. “No one here but you and me.”

“Am I Fallen?”

“Not yet. You know how we use those places that were molded by the worst of humanity to form our breachheads? Well, you do carry a lot of bad, Eve, and now you are our beacon. Bummer you left that fire station, might have snapped the sanctification immediately.”

“Why me? Am I that bad?”

“Not just you, it hits everyone. You are just providing a much better conductor. Already touched profane ground, got me, made a deal, you’re carrying a piece of me in you, which is technically speaking, a piece of the Devil himself. Not to mention, that your mind isn’t exactly a fortress. There is your insecurity, your doubt, your—”

For the umpteenth time this night, I felt sick.

“Enough. I get it.”

I sat down at a bus stop. The night was still cold, but the unnatural chill of the storm quickly gave way to the natural summer warmth. The red circle spread below me, fast at first, slowing down as its radius increased. Lucy appeared in front of me, right at the edge of the expanding circle.

“You have to see the bright side,” they said. “This affords you more privacy than you ever had this night and gives you the unique opportunity to do your devil a favor.”

I looked up, meeting their unusually sincere smile with a frown. “What?”

“I promise I won’t make this a habit, but—” they held out their hand “—will you take a stroll with me? Unless you, or we, do a hell of a job of messing this place up, I won’t get many opportunities to experience the outside. Unbound by spaces of humanity’s failures or virtues—only bound by your presence.”

My instinct was to slap their hand away. But cruelty was not my style. They were only a couple of hours old at this point and wouldn’t get this opportunity again for a while. If the Blessing punished me for showing kindness to my enemy it could piss right off.

I took their hand and got up. They smiled, and to my surprise, took my hand into theirs again as we began to walk.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll take this opportunity to talk a lot. You aren’t hunted right now, the demons see you as one of their own, and you aren’t going to carry this corruption anywhere near the others. So we have some time, and there are things I can only say right now.”

“Is that so?”

“Privacy, dear. Privacy.”

I shrugged. “Sure, go ahead. You claim you are still bound by honesty, I assume?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“The Blessing is fucked, Gabriel is out, you yourself said no one was watching. How am I to know that whatever limits you to truth is still in place.”

I saw their grin, their pointed teeth, out of the corner of my eye.

“That’s why I like you, Eve. You optimize both directions. See an advantage? You start mathing out to a way to maximise its impact. See something new? Extrapolate the worst case this could screw you over.”

“There is only an eternity at stake and I’m not a gambling person. Go ahead, give me your speech.”

While we walked, we came across more signs of humanity failing than succeeding. There were dead demons here or there. Mostly lesser, and types I hadn’t encountered at all so far. But far more human bodies than any other. I avoided their dead gazes while I let this devil give me their pitch.

“This first part isn’t exactly lived experience, this comes directly from daddy. So—”

“Please don’t use that word to refer to Lucifer. You’ve used too much innuendo to call anyone daddy tonight.”

Lucy’s laugh was bright in a contagious way and I found myself smiling in turn.

“Can do,” they said. “So, what’s the objective? You probably think we are doing this entirely out of malice, or to punish, to conquer. But that’s not exactly it. The malice has to be part of it, because the opposition has excellent PR, but also because of the nature of Hell and the Adversary.”

“I thought we didn’t use that name?”

“Well, I do now. Because that name matters. We oppose. It is our nature. And this part you, specifically, should understand well: The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

“You are saying you have to play the villains, because you are opposing the good guys? That doesn’t make much sense, does it? If you oppose the good guys, you are the bad guys because of that.”

“If they were good, yes. But they only have the aesthetics. I have explained the method, not the motive. The goal is to topple or kill the Creator.”

“Yeah, sure, you’re going to kill God. And after how-ever-long this conflict has been going, when you finally take control, you’ll ditch all the villain aesthetics and embrace kindness and equality for all.”

Lucy stopped and let go of my hand, facing me. “You are too cynical, Eve. You think I’d explain all this if that was the point? Why tell you at all in that case?”

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They were right. Obviously they were smarter than that. “You are right, please do go on.”

They took my hand again and resumed walking. I wasn’t sure if the touch was necessary for us to have this walk. Or if they wanted the reassurance of touch.

“Da—The Adversary, was not always that. Your stories got it more right than most, he started out a servant of the Creator, but rose to become his equal. But now there isn’t another name left, no other identity. In becoming the Adversary he became nothing but that. What do you think happens to the Adversary when he has won and there isn’t anyone stronger to oppose?”

“He has a bit of an identity crisis?”

“He ceases to be. When the Creator dies, there won’t be anyone to take the throne. The power structure of existence becomes a lot flatter. The next most powerful entities are broken. Neither the Wyrm nor—” they paused for a moment before they continued. “Entities like the Wyrm can not take power. They are too single-minded. That leaves everyone on a lot more equal footing.”

I hadn’t missed what happened and filed it away. The moment had nearly been an exact mirror of the one in the pawn shop, when they had complimented Jamie. I was developing a pretty good guess as to what that second entity was, and I did not like it.

“You explained the method, vaguely, and the goal. But why? Going by that name he is the one who created all this? And is still creating more?”

“First: If he falls, his power won’t be lost. It just won’t be in the hands of a single entity. Second: Freedom. Equality. Fairness. You know perfectly well how systems end up when power is in the hands of the few. How those that don’t fit in are marginalized. How power corrupts. I don’t deny that there is good and evil. But his rule is of moral absolutism. The entire Blessing is a farce, rewarding you not for fighting against us—which he could perfectly do on his own, mind you—but doing so by following his arbitrary rules.”

I had been pretty pissed at this Blessing a couple of times already. I hadn’t noticed our direction, but we had been heading back toward Mammon Inc and the deli. The massive tower was pretty hard to miss.

“What even is the point of the Blessing?”