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Skizz wasn’t sure how far he’d gone. His sight still hadn’t returned from his Fall. All he was doing was stumbling, occasionally crawling, across the ground of the Material Plane. Chasing that sense of a great power on the horizon that could maybe give him his vision again.
His toes got caught on something stubbornly unyielding and he crashed back down onto his hands and knees in a mockery of supplication.
A rock? A root? Didn’t matter. His bare feet hurt all the same.
He shifted his hands to try and stand. His fingers touched paving stones — not laid like a road, but like a path.
The power felt like it was coming up from the path. Skizz stumbled back to his feet, and forced himself to ignore the feeling of the sharper edges of the stones digging into his skin as he made his way up the path.
Still blind, still guided by his senses.
His toes hit another raised stone edge and he couldn’t get his balance back fast enough. Flapping his wings just made the nerve endings shriek and made him ‘feel’ how crispy his feathers had become.
His body hit uneven stones and planks and he groaned in complaint at the impact.
There was a sound of a door opening and then closing ahead of him. The sound of boot heels on wooden planks, carefully advancing towards him.
The source of the power he’d been chasing glowed in front of him.
Skizz reached out weakly. “I can’t see,” he rasped, hating how shaky his voice was. “Please …”
Whoever was there, they knelt and muttered something in Common. Skizz felt their fingertips trace a pattern on his forehead, and then pain tore through him, but in comparison to his Fall it didn’t hurt as bad.
He squeezed his eyes shut, and then cautiously opened them.
Shapes began to blur into focus, and he wanted to cry with joy as he regained his vision, letting him see who he had stumbled across the Material Plane to find —
Skizz’s ichor ran cold.
The last time he’d seen that face, the Archdemon had been clad in infernal steel armor painted black and gold, wielding a sword stained with the blood of countless angels. 15 feet tall, with massive leathery wings and a cadre of warriors at his back, all sharp teeth and coiled muscles.
Even shrunken down and softened to more closely resemble a human, his old nemesis’ face hadn’t changed even over centuries.
His ichor went from freezing to boiling in the space of a heartbeat, the long-dormant hatred flaring up in his heart and mind; all higher thoughts replaced with the primal desire to finally see his enemy broken before him.
Skizz pulled his hand back as a snarl twisted his mouth, calling on the magic innate within him — he was Fallen but still an archangel —
His grasp came up empty, a pitiful sparkler burst being the only result instead of the holy fireball he was going for.
His actions did not go unnoticed.
The Archdemon grasped his throat and hoisted him up, and Skizz’s vision swam, from abruptly going from lying horizontal to being vertical. His enemy’s mouth was twisted in a nasty mirror of his own, glowing yellow eyes narrowed at Skizz and sharp canines bared; all the old grudges painted plainly on his face.
Skizz tried to take a swing. If he was about to die to his old enemy, he refused to let himself die without landing a blow first.
The strike connected, but not strong enough to bruise. He doubted the Archdemon even felt it.
The Archdemon tilted his head at his feeble attempt at fighting back.
Darkness welled up in the corners of his vision, and Skizz felt alarm at the idea of losing his sight again — an absurd notion, when he was about to die.
A short sentence chased him into darkness. Blunt and biting.
“I still hate you.”
—
Impulse had been living on the Material Plane for the better part of two millennia, ever since the end of the Original Wars. He and Bdubs had abandoned the Nine Hells together, seeking something new to escape to. Bdubs had wandered off to find his own happiness — last he’d heard, he was off chasing horses — and Impulse had found a place to settle.
He’d built himself a home, sized to match his now-human-like body proportions, and he’d tried putting the war behind him. Tried living quietly. Something that had become harder as mortals began settling nearby.
Though he couldn’t really complain in the long run. By that point it had just been him and Crux for the last eighty or so years, and the part of his mind that always chased success and excellence and doing things had been getting bored of his quiet retirement. He’d offered a fair Deal to the leader of that tiny group — their tribute for his protection — and both he and his mortal neighbors had benefited from that Deal.
The original settlement of some-odd 100 beings had grown strong and steadily under his eye, prospering even with a permanent gate to the Fae of the Winter Court close by. The mortals rarely had to deal with bandits — all but the most foolish or desperate avoided trying to prey on those under his protection. And governing the lands he had claimed as his own gave him something new to fill his days.
He’d been here long enough that he could feel his eternal memories’ sharp jagged edges dulling and rounding off, and he came to believe that his emotional attachments to those harsher times were fading too. But all of those notions had vanished in the heartbeat of time that had passed when he had opened his front door and he’d seen the Archangel that had been the biggest thorn in his side during the Origin Wars, body and wings charred and sprawled over his front steps.
And the mere sight of his old nemesis, the bell-ringer that had consigned so many of his cohorts to oblivion, had made the old hatred boil back up like the War had only ended yesterday.
So much for self-improvement.
The Archangel (did that title still apply when he had clearly Fallen?) had fallen unconscious soon after Impulse had restored his sight, and he’d wanted to snuff out that light for good. No more struggles, no more time wasted. Just the satisfaction of having finally sent his most frustrating enemy to the same nothing as his soldiers.
But Impulse, for a reason he couldn’t yet verbalize to himself, spared him. Took him inside his home, despite hearing Crux protesting in his ear. Set the angel down on the bed of one of his guest chambers and walked away.
It was the first time he’d left an encounter with celestials without golden ichor dripping from his hands.
It wasn’t until he was a fair distance from the angel’s guest rooms that Impulse called for the spirit of his home. Crux slithered out of a dark corner and bobbed in the air in front of him.
“Will our magic protections hold, with the angel here?”
“Dunno why you’re asking me, I’m literally an extension of your magic, Boss,” Crux grumbled. Impulse raised an eyebrow, and the spirit sighed, swirling through the air like a leaf on the wind. “I’m not sure. You’ve never decided to take a Fallen home before.”
“You make it sound like he’s a stray dog I found.”
“You’ve called him a dog before. Among other things.”
“That I have.”
“Then the analogy stands, Boss. He was right on the cusp of death. Your nemesis was at your mercy. You could’ve put him out of his misery, and yours. Why didn’t you?”
Impulse was quiet for a moment as he pushed open the door to his study and locked it behind him, Crux bobbing in the air before lighting onto the desk to vainly try and bat at his glass quill, the spirit’s hands passing through the object like it was made of water.
The demon looked out the big window that overlooked his garden, which spiraled over the grounds, almost too big for one person to tend to, but within his means: he didn’t need a gardener just yet, though he might hire one just to keep invasive plants out of his normal flowerbeds.
He made a note to bring that up to his butler later. He’d tend to his magical plants himself, regardless.
He turned away to face Crux again, who had abandoned trying to knock his glass quill off the desk and had switched to peering over the parchments in his incoming paperwork basket.
“I’ve had time left alone to change, on the Material Plane. Time to move away from what I was in the Original Wars and in the Hells. Maybe I’m just curious if he’ll change. And maybe I’m just past old grudges.”
“Yeah right. You’re one of the pettiest bastards in the Planes.”
“True.” Impulse let silence hang between him and the spirit for a moment, before pulling his chair away from his desk and taking the first parchment out of the basket. “Don’t let the servants enter his rooms unless he’s not in there or he’s unconscious. Angels heal fast, but I don’t have a clue how long it takes to recover from Falling. Only you or I will directly interact with him.”
“Sure, Boss.” Pop!
—
”You just gonna sleep forever, Crispy-Fried?”
Skizz’s eyelids felt gummy and stuck together, and it took what felt like excessive effort to pry them open again. For a moment he wondered why he only seemed to have two — but being on the Prime Material Plane seemed to compress him down, reducing his form closer to being mortal.
Regardless, he only needed two eyes to see the blob with purple eyes floating nose-to-nose over him.
He yelped and flailed — more out of surprise than anything else. The creature yelped as well, darting between Skizz’s fingers and out of his (much shorter, now) reach.
“Overreacting, much? Do they not get up close in the Heavens?” the creature drawled, flipping right-side-up while they spoke. “Did I get into your personal bubble?”
Skizz decided to ignore the mocking tone for now, in favor of looking around him.
He was in a room — sparsely decorated. A big window with curtains over it, a sofa with a small table in front of it, and a writing desk seemed to be the main furniture, aside from the bed he was lying on. Despite the fact his wings were under him, they didn’t seem to be hurting. Maybe the injuries from his Fall were dulling into one big ache.
Regardless, he carefully turned himself over so he could take his new weight off of his feathers. The creature watched him intently, and Skizz wanted to squirm a bit under the gaze.
No. He wouldn’t show signs of discomfort. Fallen or not, he was still a General of the Original Wars. He had stood perfectly for all the disciplined marches Above; he wouldn’t be made uncomfortable by a single onlooker.
“What are you? Who are you?” he asked instead.
The creature’s eyes were a solid, flat purple, but he could swear that they rolled at his question. “Aren’t angels supposed to be observant? All-seeing? Something like that?”
“Clearly you haven’t met a lot of angels.”
“Nope!” they said far too cheerfully. “You’re the first angel I’ve met. Though Boss talks about them a lot.” They floated closer, lighting down on the pillow Skizz’s head was on. “C’mon, Crispy-Fried. Take a good long look at me. You’ll get there.”
Skizz put aside the insulting nickname for now, instead squinting at the creature, which was now folding their arms over their front and peering at him in turn.
The creature seemed smaller than his hand. Humanoid in form, like his own now, but black and outlined in purple energy, the same color as their eyes. Besides that …
Skizz’s eyes widened as he noticed the thin horns that crested out of its forehead, familiar even in miniature.
He took a swipe at the creature, but his hand passed straight through it. An attempt at using magic failed again — still drained.
“You’re made from him.”
The spirit smirked — a near-perfect mirror to the Archdemon’s own expressions in miniature. “There we go. The name’s Crux. An embodiment of my Boss’ magic, seated in this building. I’m the walls and the roof and the floors of this place. And you —” the spirit took flight, rolling through the air like it was made of smoke “— you’re the Archangel he always talks about. The First and now Fallen.”
Crux twisted into what looked like a respectful bow, but the wide smirk on its face turned it into a parody. ”Greetings and defiance, Oh Ancient One. Though I was under the impression that the Archangels were simply too perfect to Fall.”
Skizz turned his head away, pressing his face back into the pillow. The lack of extra eyes was a blessing now, letting him fully not look at the spirit.
“Imperfect angels Fall,” he said quietly. Not really to Crux, not truly to himself.
“Is that right?” Crux’s voice sounded like it was moving to try and see his face, but Skizz had fully pressed himself into the pillow. “I guess even the gods don’t get everything right first go around.”
Skizz didn’t dignify that with any response or reaction. The high discipline of the Heavens, keeping his wings from twitching in reaction or making his face betray anything, was coming in handy for ignoring annoying demonic house spirits.
Crux didn’t speak again afterwards, and soon after Skizz fell asleep.
—
When Skizz woke again, it was to the sounds of clattering, and his mind snapped awake with the impression that he was hearing plate mail clanking together —
He held still and kept his breathing slow and even, like he was still asleep. If whomever was beside him intended harm, he could ambush them —
“Just set those on the table, Alyssa. Crispy-Fried can get the plates himself.”
Crux’s annoyingly-familiar voice rang out somewhere over his head, like he was perched on the bed headboard. There was a slightly-louder clank, like whatever was rattling was set down on wood, and then quiet footsteps heralded a door shutting.
A moment of silence was broken by a loud yawn. “She’s gone, Crispy-Fried. You can stop pretending you’re asleep now.”
Apparently Skizz couldn’t bluff a spirit as well as he’d thought. He shoved his annoyance aside and rolled over on his bed to see what had changed.
The room itself looked the same, but there were several trays placed on the coffee table: one with several mugs and glasses on it, another with plates of food on it. Beside it was what looked like a pile of white clothes folded neatly on a chair.
A giggle made him look up, to where Crux was sitting on top of a bedpost, kicking his legs in the air lackadaisically. “Never seen food before, Crispy?”
“My name is Skizz.”
“Names are boring. Nicknames are better.”
“You called whoever came in by a name.”
“Mortals are different. And Boss told me to call his staff by their names or positions only.” Crux rolled his eyes at that notion. “He says it’s because they help keep the house — and me — looking perfect. I say it’s because he’s bad at remembering names and needs reminders. Don’t distract me. Ever seen food before?”
“I’m not a neophyte, I know what food is!”
“But you’re an archangel. I would’ve thought you’d never come down from Mount Celestia to mingle with mortals.”
“I’m an imperfect archangel, remember?” Skizz snapped back. “What’s the food for, anyway?”
The spirit shrugged. “Boss said to have it brought up to you. He wasn’t sure if angels needed to eat or not.”
Come to think of it, Skizz wasn’t sure if he did, either. For all that his body resembled a winged human now, when he actually tried taking stock of himself he didn’t feel the pangs of hunger or thirst mortals seemed to feel. Though he did seem to have the necessary organs needed to eat and drink, when having those had been optional prior to his Fall.
“Do demons need to eat?” he asked instead of answering.
“No. Boss does, but it’s partly from enjoying it and partly to make himself relatable to mortals.” Crux hopped off the headboard of the bed and landed on the table. “He thinks it makes him regenerate his magic, though he’s never done a full test to see if that’s true.”
“And the clothes?”
“I better not have to explain how clothes work for you.”
“I was wearing clothes when I Fell!”
“And they were all scorched and half-destroyed when you wound up on my doorstep. Gave quite the eyeful to some of the maids when Boss carried your mostly-dead carcass inside.”
Skizz shoved that mental image out of his head before it could finish crystallizing, in favor of lifting up the covers a couple inches and confirming that yep, he was naked. He turned back towards Crux. “Could you go away for a bit while I put some pants on?”
“You know I’m the house, right? Me going away isn’t that simple.”
Skizz sighed and tried again. “Could you put your corporal form somewhere else while I get dressed? Like you presumably do for the staff?”
Crux opened his mouth to speak — presumably to keep arguing — but then paused, turning his head over his shoulder like he was seeing through walls, and maybe he was.
He turned back around, folding his arms over his chest as he did. “Lucky you. Boss wants to talk. I’ll be back later. Don’t go wandering.”
Pop!
Staring at the empty space where the spirit had been, Skizz just muttered “Don’t think I’ve got that much strength back yet,” and carefully eased off the bed, snatching up the clothes and putting them on.
They were loose linen pants, shirt, and underwear with appropriate slits cut to accommodate three pairs of wings. Easing them through the slits took a bit of work, and while the pain seemed to have eased overall, folding his wings and getting all his charred feathers through still sent sharp bolts lancing through him and eliciting sharp hisses under his breath.
Out of a lack of ideas on what to do next, Skizz sat down on the sofa that faced the door — which had not been built with his wings in mind, forcing him to sling all six over the back of the furniture — and took a look at the plates of food and pitcher of water on the table.
They were still warm, steam curling up off the food and filling his nose. He still didn’t feel a need to eat, but while the food was different — it looked a bit fancier, on nicer plates — it reminded him of nights in crowded village inns when he shouldn’t have been there, but sought out company.
Skizz frowned down at the plates, contemplating.
Intellectually, he knew the Archdemon had had plenty of time to kill him from his bouts of unconsciousness. But he couldn’t shake the suspicion that the food might be poisoned. He’d seen enough feints and false maneuvers from his enemy to make him suspicious.
His hands traced a circle around the plates, and he began to recite an incantation in Celestial —
The next thing he realized was clawed hands on his shoulders, shaking him awake.
“Are you just trying to die?” the Archdemon snarled, long canines bared and eyes glaring into his own, way too close for his liking.
Skizz leaned back as far as he could — enough to not be nose-to-nose, at least. “You sound like my death isn’t what you want,” he sharply retorted, though the blind fury that filled him before had faded away, after a third instance of his nemesis not taking an opportunity to slit his throat.
“It’s not what I want.”
The blunt response caught Skizz flat-footed enough that he just gawked at the Archdemon, too astonished for words as his nemesis took his hands off of him and stepped back.
“What?” The word came out as a whisper, as the Archdemon took a seat in the chair across the table from him.
The Archdemon made a face. “Correction. I don’t want you dead yet.”
Well, that made a bit more sense.
“Don’t have the guts to kill someone half-dead?” Skizz managed to sneer.
“If I was going to kill you,” the Archdemon replied, tone rising in what sounded like irritation, “I wouldn’t have bothered healing your eyes before I killed you on my front doorstep.”
“Like you wouldn’t have wanted the satisfaction of me knowing that you healed me,” Skizz launched back, reveling in the satisfaction of seeing the Archdemon’s teeth grit and his tail lash in frustration at his tone, scraping the wooden floor with the spaded tip but not leaving gouges in the planks. There was still marks showing where he’d cut off most of the tail and the Archdemon had been forced to regrow it. “Struck too close, did I?”
“I’m starting to think I should’ve killed you just to be spared hearing you run your mouth.”
“Such a shame that you’ve gotten soft enough to let me run my mouth.”
A dangerous look appeared on the Archdemon’s face, and Skizz tensed up unconsciously, only realizing what he’d done when his old enemy smirked.
“Would someone whose grown soft chose to spare his weakened enemy so he can regain his strength and I can finally slay you after a real fight?” the Archdemon asked in an a soft, relaxed voice that was completely at odds with his agitation.
Skizz made a face. “I guess not. Though it feels weird to put it off.”
“There’s no satisfaction in killing someone who’s mostly dead already. When I kill you, I’m going to have earned it.”
“That’s assuming I don’t kill you instead.”
“It is. I guess we’ll find out.”
For all of Skizz’s reputation for being a bit forgetful, he was quick to realize that accepting his old enemy’s hospitality was his only safe option. Even if he refused and he was just thrown out, who was to say he wouldn’t be watched and attacked once he’d reached a state close to his old self?
He resented it, but there was no getting around the knowledge that he was down on the cards while the Archdemon was up on the dice. At least accepting this would give him shelter and let him keep his enemy close.
Skizz exhaled through his nose. “I guess we will, then.”
“I’m glad you see things my way,” his host smirked. “But depending on how long it takes for you to finish healing, we might as well give names to call each other. So what should I call you?”
Skizz’s true Name would take over an hour to fully recite in Celestial, and while wasting his enemy’s time by making him take that time to address him would be delicious, Skizz had a bit more respect for his own time than that — and he knew he would get frustrated with his own idea the third time it happened, anyway.
So he gave the name he had used in the times he’d walked among mortals, instead.
“Call me Skizz. And you?”
The Archdemon smiled, showing all of his sharp teeth. “My name is Impulse,” he replied, offering his open hand: mostly pale skin, but tipped with black claws where the last knuckles would be on a human, with smatterings of dark scales peeking out. “And until we’re ready to settle the score at last, you will be my honored guest.”
“Beats trying to prepare myself alone in the wilds,” Skizz said, taking the offered hand, giving it a firm shake, and then releasing it as fast as he could.
“I’ll leave you to your breakfast, then.” The Archdemon rose from his chair, curling his tail and wings closer to him as he moved to the door and opened it. “The manor is open to you, if you wish to explore — though I would ask that you leave my staff alone. If you need something, ask Crux and he’ll either point you in the right direction or ask me to provide it.
“Rest well, Skizz, and recover your strength. I would hate to kill you at anything less than your best.”
The door swung shut with a click.
—
It took a few days before Skizz got around to walking outside his room.
Not because he was still weakened by his Fall, certainly not! He was just perfectly content sleeping on and off in a barely-furnished room that didn’t have many things to entertain him.
… yeah he had gotten bored pretty fast. It just had taken him a while before he was feeling strong enough to move without needing to rest. Wouldn’t do to collapse down the stairs he was sure this place had and mess himself up more.
So far his host had been … oddly gracious to him, given their history. Skizz wasn’t in any hurry to give that a reason to change, at least until he gathered up more magic again.
Pop! “Finally got tired of that room, Crispy?”
Skizz glanced over at the spirit now hovering over his left shoulder. “Got bored a while ago. Just needed to be able to walk without needing a break every few minutes.”
“Did you literally Fall, or is that just a fancy way to call an angel a disgrace?”
Skizz narrowed his eyes at the spirit, annoyed that he was limited to two. “You’re a real tiny bastard, aren’t you?”
“It’s almost like I was made by an Infernal. Funny how that works.”
Skizz exhaled sharply instead of doing what he wanted to do; which was to keep arguing. He’d rather use that energy exploring this house and getting a better feel for his surroundings, now that he wasn’t blind and his wings didn’t explode into pain each time he caused his feathers to adjust.
He took a step toward, the soles of the boots that had been added to his room a day ago quietly clicking on polished wooden planks.
The house was clearly old, but well-maintained; the walls cut from polished white marble and the doors built from dark wood that contrasted heavily against it. Crux floated alongside him, occasionally pointing out some of the rooms, but more frequently preening over how flawless ‘his’ walls and structure were.
“So just how old are you?” Skizz asked, cutting off the spirit’s third tangent along those lines.
Crux shrugged carelessly. “A few hundred years old? I don’t remember for sure. I’m about as old as this house is; it was built to make me.”
That pulled Skizz up short, and he stopped walking. It took Crux a moment to realize he’d stopped, and the spirit floated off on his own for a few steps before quickly returning to Skizz’s shoulder. “What, Crispy? There something weird on my walls?”
“Just confused on why he made a house for a spirit, and not for his own shelter first.”
Crux shrugged. “Just part of how Infernal magic works, Crispy. He needed the structure built so I could emerge from the spell frame it was built on.”
The spirit moved forward again, clearly not interested in continuing the topic, and Skizz quickly moved to catch up, passing another heavy dark oak door in the process.
A brass plaque was mounted on the door, with a name in Common etched into the surface when Skizz paused to read it.
“Bdubs?”
“Boss’s oldest friend. He left a long time ago, but Boss keeps his rooms the same in case he ever visits.”
“His friend?”
Crux suddenly vanished and then reappeared immediately in front of Skizz’s face, forcing him to take a step back to not go cross-eyed and see the spirit’s wide sneer. “Yeah, his friend. Got a problem with that, Crispy-Fried?”
“Crux!”
The phrase was short and bitten out, and in a second the spirit was gone from Skizz’s field of vision. Skizz spun around, looking for his companion —
The Archdemon was standing at the end of the hallway, one hand raised up in a fist. Crux’s tiny horns and head were poking out of the top of his hand, held up to be just below eye-level.
“Crux,” the Archdemon repeated, sounding frustrated, “what have I told you about giving insulting nicknames to my guests?”
“You’ve called him worse, Boss!” the spirit complained.
“I recall that being before our current situation.” His grip around Crux relaxed, and the spirit floated out of his fist, but seemed to get stuck in place before the spirit could get past eye-level. “Do you remember what I told you when you mocked Lord Athre’s appearance five years ago?”
The spirit made a noise that sounded like a sigh mixed with a complaining grumble. “Not to insult your guests to their face.”
“Correct. So I need to fix that.” Impulse’s eyes glowed, his slit pupils becoming swallowed by the golden light. “Do not call my guest by that name ever again. Am I clear?”
“I understand,” the spirit droned in a frustrated tone. “But what am I supposed to call him, then?”
“By my name?” Skizz cut in.
Crux stuck out a forked tongue and blew a raspberry. “Boring!”
“Whatever you call him,” Impulse said, a cold tone coloring his voice, “you’d best say it in front of me, in case I need to correct your attitude.”
A long, annoyed sigh escaped Crux’s mouth, but it seemed that Impulse had released whatever hold he’d kept on the spirit, because the shadow managed to float back towards Skizz. “Fine,” he grumbled. “I hereby dub your guest Choir Boy. Is that satisfactory, Boss?”
“I’m not the one you should be asking, Crux.” And Impulse looked pointedly at Skizz as he said so. Choir Boy was a misnomer, as far as Skizz was concerned — he was no singer even before he’d been cast out — but it was still an improvement.
“It’s a better name.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Crux, if he wants you call him by a different name, obey.”
“I’m not calling him by his name, Boss.”
“Hey!” Skizz protested.
“I don’t think that’s unreasonable,” Impulse said over Skizz’s shout, smiling and showing his canines. “You don’t need to address him by his given name if you don’t want to, Crux.”
The little spirit cackled gleefully, and then swooped over to Skizz again. “Don’t be so upset, Choir Boy! Real names are boring! I’d nickname everyone if Boss would let me!”
“Crux.”
The shadow spun in the air to look at Impulse. “Boss?”
“You’re dismissed for five minutes. Return afterwards.”
“Yes, Boss.” Pop!
Skizz held still as he could, aside from feeling his wings tense and the feathers instinctively fluff up as the Archdemon approached. Up close with them both standing, it was clear to Skizz that he was taller if he didn’t count his host’s horns and wings into the measurement. Unlike the simple white clothes Skizz had been provided, his host was wearing black with golden trims, with little splashes of purple here and there, particularly on a gold and amethyst ring wrapped around the base of his right horn.
“I see you’re up and about.”
Skizz shrugged, trying to get his feathers to lie flat and stop prickling. “Able to walk around, at least.”
“But not ready to pick up a sword yet, I take it.”
“Let’s not jump ahead. The fact I haven’t fallen over yet is impressive to me.”
“Presumably it helps that you haven’t tried casting spells again since you fainted,” the Archdemon pointed out dryly.
He had a point, but Skizz wasn’t going to admit to it. “I’m just glad I still have magic after I Fell. How do you still have your magic? You swore Oaths, didn’t you?”
The Archdemon shrugged carelessly. “I did. Douse the flame of hope. Rule with an iron fist. Strength above all. Those were the tenets I swore to obey as I ascended. It seems ruling myself with an iron fist still qualifies.”
Skizz clenched his jaw and looked away. His former Oaths echoed hollowly in his mind: Honesty, Courage, Compassion, Honor, Duty. But they no longer rang like a perfect note in his heart anymore. They were merely words.
(When Skizz had been made, it had not been by accident.)
The Archdemon tilted his head, a tiny smirk on his face. “I’ll have Crux direct you to my library. Give you something to do while you recover your strength. Once you’re able to stand, I’ll find you a weapon that would suit you.” He took a step back, and then walked around Skizz. “I’ll not delay you further. Good day.”
—
Weeks passed.
Crux reported that the angel had started moving around more after their talk. He was eating more, looking less frail, even starting to use magic again without passing out in the process. Impulse had moved a selection of some of his book collection to the room in hopes of keeping his guest entertained, for all that he seemed more inclined to stay in the guest rooms after their conversation in the hallways.
Impulse still was uncertain how long it would take for the angel to heal. Being able to cast spells again was a good start, at least. For a demon, that would indicate a few more days. But he had no frame of reference for an angel, and certainly not for a Fallen.
He shook his head and carefully threaded a wide sunhat over his horns, before picking up a bucket and his supplies before stepping out into the warm afternoon sunlight.
Fretting over the state of Skizz the Fallen Angel could wait. Contemplation was all well and good, but it wouldn’t get his garden tended to, and Impulse had a recurring invasion of morning glories that needed to be rooted out.
He hadn’t expected to enjoy raising plants as much as he did now, when he’d first stumbled onto the Prime Material Plane after the Wars and made himself disappear. But a piece of him was always enraptured by the sheer variety of colors and leaves and roots he could never have found in the Hells. He’d learned and he’d raised up his garden; mortal herbs and flowerbeds and magical plants alike.
Though the magic plants required a lot more strategy on where he placed them. Fire-breathing snapdragons needed to be kept away from other plants so nothing ignited out of turn; similarly his Winterfae snowbells couldn’t be allowed to freeze anything delicate.
Silent Princess flowers grew best when left alone, so he let them grow wild on the edges of his garden, mostly intervening to make sure the stubborn morning glories that kept creeping in wouldn’t choke them out. The Choir Rose bushes were planted further from his home, so their singing would be kept faint and non-intrusive to him and his staff. Snapping cattraps away from the paths so they didn’t swipe at passersby, but close to the steel gladiolus to keep parasitic insects from weakening the blooming flowers.
And then his newest plant. He’d acquired a handful of Crimson Horn seedlings a year before from the Spring Court, and had planted them near his herb bed earlier in the spring. This year they should be blooming, and he could experiment with their supposed properties with energy boosting and magic enhancement.
He checked the leaves: still young and green, but growing healthily. The wolfsbane plants were getting a little too greedy, encroaching on the patch of earth he’d set aside for the Crimson Horn, and the spidervines were as always getting their little creepers into every bare space it could.
He let time flow by him, indifferent to it as he pulled up spidervines around the Crimson Horn seedlings; trimmed back the wolfsbane from encroaching. The sun warmed his half-open wings and horns, a gentler heat than would be found in the Hells.
The Hells had birthed him to be a warrior, and later a general; forged him to be sharp and strong as he’d torn his way up through the ranks. But the Material Plane gave him the space to grow to be more than that. The younger Impulse had never heard of gardening before coming here, after all.
Something drew his attention, out of the corner of his eye. He turned to follow the flicker of movement, tilting his head to see past the brim of his hat, looking to the second-story windows of his home.
A curtain was swaying, like someone had been spying on him and had fled when he started looking around. Normally he would dismiss it as one of his servants indulging in curiosity, but that window looked out from Skizz the angel’s rooms.
Let him look. He didn’t pose a threat now.
Impulse returned to his work, quiet except for the sounds of the material plane around him as he slowly worked through his garden.
Until something moved in front of him, when he was digging a morning glory root out of the ground.
Not a shadow, because it cast no darkness over him despite its size. Instead of light being blocked, it felt like sunlight was being magnified, condensed and purified into something akin to Holy. Not strong enough to truly cause him harm, but enough to make his scales crawl.
A golden blade was leveled at his face, and Impulse went rigid, looking up it to see —
A snap of a language he knew but rarely spoke spat down at him. Even with him being out of practice hearing it, he knew the angel in front of him was ordering him to his feet.
Impulse carefully stood up, acutely aware of how ridiculous this situation looked from the outside. He was dressed down, in his most ratty clothes that had years of grass stains worn into the knees and sleeves. A straw sunhat to keep glare out of his eyes, with a couple holes poked in the forehead to accommodate his horns.
His armor and all his weapons save for his dagger were inside his home, but he didn’t have the blade drawn. He had a gardening trowel in his hand instead.
All that, and he was surrounded by enough angels that could dance on the head of a sewing pin, each with weapons drawn.
They were still talking. His Celestial was rusty, but he knew they were arguing. Arguing on what to do with him. The leading voice in this particular choir seemed to want to banish and bind him back to the Hells by virtue of him being a demon not in their place in the Hells.
Considerate, though that was probably because he didn’t see a single Archangel amongst them. This bunch had power by virtue of numbers and him not having one of his weapons in-hand, and none of the power needed to truly kill him. None of their voices or names were registering to his memory. Likely none of them had been around during the Wars, and had experiences with him.
To their misfortune. His jagged memories of the War might’ve smoothed their edges over time, but once he learned a skill he never forgot it.
And while a trowel wasn’t the ideal weapon, it was still a sharp metal implement.
His hand flicked out.
The leading angel screamed as the trowel went from his fingers to piercing straight through its chest. Angels didn’t have hearts like mortals did, but Celestial and Infernal bodies weren’t that much different from humans.
And while the host reacted to one of their own collapsing from a trowel being sent through their core, Impulse had a moment to draw his dagger and strike the ground, a incantation in Infernal leaving his lips in that same movement.
A wave of energy rippled through the earth. His skill with magic let him keep it from harming his home, so all of it hit the opposing choir, knocking many of his enemies to the ground and tangling their limbs together like overgrown blackberry vines as their flesh started to decay.
The wave passed over his garden, leaving every plant unscathed. The angels wouldn't care about the work he’d put into this place, but he did.
Crux appeared at his ear in a second, called by the magic the spirit was made from.
“Have everyone move to the opposite side of the building and take cover until I signal you,” Impulse said quietly in Infernal as he straightened up and took a ready stance, dagger poised.
“Yes Boss.” Pop!
That was all the time he had to give an order before those he hadn’t knocked down fell upon him.
Some of their steps stumbled as they crossed an invisible line thirty feet from him. Some of them froze up entirely. But enough managed to close the distance, and Impulse lunged for one that was about to trample his Crimson Horn seedlings.
Cross blades, strikes, slit throat. It would’ve been far harder to kill an angel if he was a mortal.
Gold ichor splashed down into the grass, followed by a sword and a body. Less than six seconds to dispatch, and he sank into the magic he held as an Archdemon, letting more of his scales rise up to cover his skin.
Impulse was already moving to the next one, an incantation on his lips making his dagger glow as he advanced on a much larger angel.
Larger than the first two. But not as dangerous as Skizz the Archangel had been in his prime.
The Angel swung its blade, cutting through the shoulder of his clothes but glancing off of skin and scales — enough to hurt, but not enough to break through. Impulse let his spell take hold as he cut them back, lashing both at their body and mind with his dagger, carving them open as they staggered under the force of the spell scrambling their thoughts.
Ichor flowed, but Impulse had no time to celebrate. Only three were dead, and he had so many more angels to fight. Most of which had armor on, and three of which were at the head of those charging him.
He measured the distance: not enough to get his sword.
His dagger would have to do.
Three more fell upon him, barely stumbling from getting too close, and Impulse let his active mind fall quiet in favor of old instincts, now tempered with the desire to protect his garden and home from uncaring steps.
He’d made himself into more than a weapon for the Princes to wield, here on the Material Plane, but in the end a blade was a blade.
A hand reached up, a fireball on the cusp of launch swirling on the fingertips. He grabbed the hand by the wrist, snapping bones and ignoring screams to change its aim into the thickest tangle of morning glory vines. Maybe holy fire would do the job in burning out the roots where his digging kept failing. He gouged out the core of the casting angel as the spell was launched, and then kept going. A thin green line of the Weave erupted from his fingers at his barked incantation (Aqua regia!), striking another angel and turning it to dust.
But more were still bearing down on him, even with them stumbling as they came within 30 feet of him. Still not enough space to summon his sword.
A new incantation passed his lips, and Impulse tore a rift in the world in the shape of his blade, striking at the angels around him, making more golden rivulets pour into the grass. A steady ache began in the back of Impulse’s head as he focused partially on maintaining the spell, and primarily on cutting down another attacker that threatened his focus.
A mote of light tore through the air and struck him, burning his clothes and searing his flesh. He hissed at the pain crawling under his scales, not enough to truly injure — then launched an angel that was about to crush his Winterfae snowbells into the blade of his spell.
A minute gone, still too many left. The trouble with Celestial legions was that they tended to get stronger the longer a fight carried on. Impulse’s garden was littered with white-winged corpses and he could see spells starting to light up amongst the ranks, too fast and too many to cut them all off —
Another blade rose up as one of the biggest angels of the choir charged him, not stumbling as they crossed the thirty-meter threshold. Impulse caught the blade with the flat of his dagger, straining with the unequal distribution of the force to break the clash and shove the angel back —
The sword glowed bright enough to hurt his eyes, as the angel attacked him again, the blade barely touching his skin before he felt the searing pain of Holy burning him. It was something he’d felt countless times before, but not for many centuries. Distantly, he felt his spell-summoned blade vanish as the pain broke his focus.
Impulse didn’t give his opponent the satisfaction of hearing him react, instead grabbing at the angel’s shoulder and letting magic tear through his claws, hellfire returning the pain in equal measure.
His opponent either didn’t share his discipline or his pain tolerance, because they howled at the burning feeling — and still pressed on their attacks.
In the corner of his eye, Impulse saw the other angels starting to circle them —
Then most of them froze in place like statues. Impulse shoved his opponent aside, but before he could investigate, the big angel made an odd, slightly-panicked sound and expression as his sword fell to the grass, leaving his hands empty as they rose up to his sides and —
Impulse’s thoughts stopped dead in their path. Why was this angel flapping his arms like wings?
He glanced around immediately and amended his question to be about multiple angels, with the ones unaffected seeming just as confused as he was about why their comrades were doing some strange dance.
A familiar voice cut through the abrupt silence, made all the more so by the wide grin Impulse could hear long before he turned around and saw it.
“G’arindiel! How’ve you been? Haven't see you since you smashed my armor and broke my halo! Guess you're just the same as usual, following orders!”
For a split-second Impulse’s breath caught in his throat, as old hate and even older fear tore through his mind as he saw the origin of the spell and the voice emerge from a side door in his house.
The Archangel Skizz no longer looked like a pale imitation of his past self, even if he could never fully look as he did in the past. His feathers were still black, his halo still in shattered orbit around his head.
But the expression — gleeful, vindictive — was a perfect mirror for the First Archangel, in all the battles he’d waged against Impulse, the only Archdemon that had fought against enemies so much stronger than him so often that he could best him; the bellringer that had burned legions of demons with the radiance of all his Eyes opened and had scarred Impulse with the same; the First and Fairest, dispatched from his place on Mount Celestia to smite Impulse for his audacity in daring to claim victories against him.
And despite seeing Skizz snatch up his lessers in his spell and force them to dance, Impulse started pointing his blade at him out of long-worn instinct.
Instinct he overruled: that was for later.
Instead he kicked the Celestial blade up off the ground, ignoring the blunted pain of its radiance going through his boot, and knocked it towards the Fallen Angel.
It spun through the air, landing point-down in the grass, hilt quivering from the movement, and Skizz drew the sword, wincing as it touched his bare skin.
It seemed that Celestial weapons burned the flesh of Fallen as well as demons. Not that it appeared that Skizz was going to let that deter him, spinning the blade to quickly test the weight before lunging for the compelled angels with a familiar battlecry: “LET’S DANCE!”
Impulse didn’t let himself get distracted. The rest of the choir was too far away to interfere in his summoning now.
He tapped into a different piece of his magic, the kind he’d learned upon his ascent to Archdemon and had become powerful enough to make Deals. The magic his Warlocks could call on was his own, after all, and all of their abilities were his gifts.
A burst of golden hellfire in his hands manifested in the shape of his sword: black infernal steel, stained golden by ichor that had seeped into the blade too deep to ever be scrubbed off. The shape became solid, and he sheathed his dagger in favor of his sword, the hilt an easy, comforting weight in his fist.
His Blade of Disaster spell worked just fine, but his hands missed the heavy, familiar grip.
Spinning it, the motion sent magic thrumming through the blade and carried him forward, wind roaring in his ears as his blade cut through five different angels — three helplessly dancing, one trying to flee, and the last just a fraction of a second too slow in raising their weapon. Shouts filled the air again as he stopped, and while he didn't turn to check he could feel Skizz’s feathers barely brushing against his wings as more angels fell; heard the wind of displaced air howl in the wake of their passing.
(It wasn’t exactly how he felt with his cohort in the Original War, surrounded by leather wings and spaded tails —)
A surge of magic jumped between him and Skizz, and his blade glowed a dark blue-black that made it tear through the next angel’s armor effortlessly, like sharp tailor’s scissors through thin fabric.
(— but it was close enough to almost feel comfortable.)
Where before the fight felt like it had dragged on, Impulse felt himself blink and saw his entire garden was empty of living white-winged angels, and filled with bodies that bled golden. None had stood against him and lived to escape.
All but one.
Impulse instinctively half-opened his wings and pointed his sword accusingly at Skizz, whose body was shaking from effort and whose hands were burnt from touching Holy steel barehanded — still, the other raised his sword in preparation.
For a moment, they held their positions: Impulse, with his infernal steel sword in hand, pointed at the Archangel Skizz, whose arms trembled from exertion but still managed to hold up the looted Celestial sword.
Six seconds stretched to eternity.
Then Impulse lowered his sword and dismissed it back to his armory, folding his wings behind him as he did. Across from him, Skizz stabbed the blade into the ground, taking his hand off the hilt.
It wasn’t time yet.
—
Long ago, before time began to flow and the Prime Material Plane was yet to be made, the first angels were spun into existence from light. Some were made stronger than the others, to lead the rest by example and by might.
In the Nine Hells, the first demons were torn from the bedrock and carved into shapes before receiving the first breath of life. Amongst them, several were made larger and made more powerful, to command and dominate the rest.
In the Heavens above, Skizz tested his wings, opened his many eyes, and felt the song of existence thrum through him; heard his Oaths in his heart and moved through space to take up his role as a leader of warriors as six others were sculpted from light.
In the Hells below, a nameless imp tested the heft of a blackstone axe in his claws and briefly turned his attention towards the nine Archdemon Princes that stood above him and his fellow, lesser demons. A golden fire burned in his eyes as he promised himself: he would soon stand amongst them.
—
It wasn’t until they’d gone about gathering up the bodies that the uneasy silence was broken. Impulse had taken charge of recovering all of the armor and weapons, apparently better-used at handling Celestial steel than Skizz was now (whose hands were still blistered and blackened from the enchantment that suffused the sword Impulse had kicked towards him).
“So,” Impulse said, sounding far too casual for someone whose hands had smoke curling off the blackening flesh, caused by prolonged contact with Holy weapons and armor, “you chose to come out here and fight, instead of taking cover when Crux signaled.”
“That’s right,” Skizz replied, not looking up from where he was folding the hands of the dead angels over their chests and closing many eyes. He wasn’t of their ranks anymore, but he had recognized several faces amongst the choir and he wouldn’t see their bodies defiled.
(Even if they had helped shatter his halo before casting him down from Mount Celestia.)
“Mind satisfying my curiosity?”
“About what?”
“You could’ve stayed inside. Followed Crux’s instructions, stayed hidden. So why did you come out here?”
Skizz took a little extra time laying the next angel into a position of repose while he mulled over his answer. Truth be told, he didn’t exactly know why he had stopped Crux from guiding him to a place of safety, and instead had ordered the spirit to show him how to get outside to the garden. Logic would have dictated that he should stay hidden, or just let the angels take down Impulse the Archdemon and save him the trouble.
(They wouldn’t have been able to kill him.)
But there had been no logic involved with his choice. No reason. Just a basic, emotional desire to force out what his darkest thoughts had considered as interlopers.
For how long he and Impulse had known and fought against each other, even with all the centuries of mutual hatred and fury baked into his mind, it was almost like friendship.
And between his oldest — some could say his perfect — enemy, and those that had cast him out, he preferred taking his chances with his host.
“Felt like a foul to let some other folks horn in on our agreement and attack you before we can settle things,” Skizz said, deliberately keeping his tone light as he closed another set of Celestial eyes.
“Just a foul?” Impulse inquired. Glancing over, Skizz saw the longsword he’d been kicked during the fight in the Archdemon’s hands, the skin turned black from all the Holy enchantments that he’d been handling.
“Alright, maybe I also didn’t like the idea of someone else beating you instead of me.”
Impulse snorted. “That I can believe.”
“How so?”
“I also don’t like the idea of someone else beating you.”
“Clingy.”
“I prefer ‘a proper nemesis’, but whatever lets you sleep at night. More surprised that you didn’t help them throw me back into the Hells and try to throw away the key after me.”
“Even if I did they would just kill me after, anyways. They made it pretty clear they didn’t want me back when they broke my halo. And what do you mean ‘try’? Pretty sure they’d be successful in banishing and binding you if they managed to bring you down.”
“Even if they had, Crux would still be here, on the Prime Material Plane. And he’s perfectly capable of working to break any binding upon me from here.”
“So you made him to be your escape hatch?”
“Only partially. I mostly wanted someone to talk to.”
Skizz raised an eyebrow. “You don’t strike me as the kind of guy that talks to himself a lot.”
“And yet, if I go too long without speaking I don't feel right.” Impulse flipped the sword over in his blackened hands and drew one claw down from the pommel across the flat of the blade. Golden sparks arced off the metal, and in their wake the magical sheen that had covered the sword disappeared.
Flipping the sword again — and continuing to ignore the blackened skin that was cracking and bleeding rubedo-purple where the edge cut into his palm — the Archdemon held the sword out towards Skizz. “Should be more comfortable for you to hold now. And I have the means to put new enchantments on it, when the time comes closer to our final duel.”
Skizz carefully stepped the three paces across the garden paths to wrap his burnt fingers around the hilt, wincing as his blackened skin stretched and cracked, but to his relief no further pain came from the Celestial steel itself.
Impulse’s unbloodied hand landed on top of his closed fists, and Skizz tensed up as a spell’s energy released and flowed between where their hands touched. It stung, but in comparison to the bright, unfamiliar burning of Holy Magic (and boy was he not used to that causing him pain!) this was a familiar pain. The kind of pain that had returned his vision to him weeks ago.
As Skizz watched the burns on his hands melt away into unblemished skin, he sent a jolt of his own magic through those same connection points, eliciting a startled hiss from the Archdemon Impulse as his own hands shed dead and burnt scales and heathy, shiny scales replaced them.
It should have been disgusting, but Falling had had a funny side-effect of reprioritizing what Skizz found gross.
Skizz broke their contact and held the sword carefully at his side, tip pointed to the ground. “Thank you,” he said, trying to express all the ways he could be saying that into just two words.
(He’d never been good at keeping things short, but he’d try now.)
Fortunately, Impulse seemed to understand, smiling around this long canines. “And thank you. Let’s finish this up.”
—
“So what do demons do for fun?”
Impulse glanced up from his ledger to see Skizz sitting opposite of him at the table, one of the silver coins he’d been using as a visual aid in his right hand. The angel was walking the coin across his knuckles fluidly, but his attention was on Impulse.
“Depends on what you mean,” Impulse replied, cleaning the ink off his glass quill and setting it aside. “What do angels do for fun?”
Skizz made a face. “I asked first.”
“Yes, but I don’t know what your frame of reference is.”
Skizz grumbled a bit, grabbing another coin off the stack and adding it to the one he was already walking on his knuckles. “Not a lot. Mostly music. There’s training drills and sparring, but that’s for work, not for fun. So what do demons do?”
“Sparring. There’s always gladiator fights happening in some of the Circles, either to watch or to participate to work on climbing the ranks.”
“Did you?”
A heartbeat, a breath, a larger demon throttling him — instinct tearing at him to drag his blade through his opponent’s stomach — standing up, covered in the rubedo blood and gore of his enemy, and seizing his second Ascension —
“Yes,” Impulse said simply, squashing the memory down.
“Ever played poker?”
The demon furrowed his brows — the phrase sounded familiar, and he remembered watching some of his staff playing with cards, but he couldn’t remember any personal experience. “What’s poker?”
The coins slipped and fell out of Skizz’s hand, as the angel stared in surprise.
“Seriously?”
“Are you going to explain it to me?”
“It’s a card game! Gambling! There’s gambling in the Hells, right?” Skizz half-shouted, picking up a coin back up off the table and flicking it up into the air, not watching the silver disc spin as it rose and fell back into his palm.
“Sure, but it’s not with cards. Those burn up in the Hells too easily. We gamble using dice.”
“Wouldn’t all the dice be loaded?”
“Obviously. Everyone makes and loads their own dice. The trick is to be the demon at the table that loaded their dice the most subtly, so the table goes after the most blatant cheaters first.”
He still remembered carving his set of dice alongside Bdubs, freshly named and ascended above being imps, carefully making their dice and finding the best way to sneakily load their sets in a way that would make the dice roll almost like they weren’t tampered with. Bdubs had given Impulse his set — carved from the bones of long-dead monsters that were scattered across the Hells — when he'd set out on his own path on the Material Plane, and he kept the set alongside his own obsidian dice in his vault.
“So I think I could beat you in poker,” Skizz replied, snapping the coin back up into the air, catching it again, and then starting to roll it between his knuckles again.
“Do you even know how to play?”
“Of course I do. Do ya think I’d challenge you to a game I don't know anything about?”
Accurate, but Impulse wouldn’t tell him that.
“And how would an angel learn to play? I wouldn’t think the Heavens would approve of their angels gambling.”
A flash of something crossed Skizz’s face, but it was gone before Impulse could think too much about it, replaced with a sly grin. “I can’t give you all my secrets just because we’re on better terms now. Feel like that would be a prize for beating me.”
“Do you plan on teaching me how to play? There’s not a lot of sport in beating a novice over and over again.”
Skizz shrugged carelessly, and pulled a deck of cards out of nowhere, separating them in half and making the cards fly between his hands. “I guess I can. But after the practice game is over I’m not playing nice.”
“Fine by me.” Impulse put his quill and ledger aside and replaced them with a few piles of copper and gold coins that he divided about evenly between them. He added five silver coins to the center of the table, and Skizz dropped the coins he’d been playing with into that pile to match his ante.
“So!” Skizz declared, fingers nimbly shuffling cards between them, “we start by dealing five cards each and we privately look at our hands. That’ll be our starting hands, and we bet on our cards after we get a look at them.”
“How are the hand values ranked?” Impulse asked, eyes fixed on the cards as they were dealt, sliding across the polished wood grain to his side of the table.
“This is a practice game, so we’ll play through it with your hand showing, mmkay? I’ll explain as we go.”
Impulse nodded as he gathered up his cards, careful to not poke holes in them with his claws, and flipped them over: 8 of clubs, 8 of hearts, 6 of diamonds, 10 of spades, and the Queen of clubs. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a Mage Hand scrawling a table of information onto a scratch sheet of parchment.
“Not a bad opener,” Skizz mused, tucking his own cards away. “You’ve got a pair, which is better than nothing but there’s stronger hands than that; you’ve also got a face card in the Queen. At this point, we decide if we’re going to continue with our hand. If we don’t, we fold. If we continue, we bet on our hands, and then we decide what cards to swap for new ones.”
Impulse looked down at his cards again, noted which ones looked like liabilities, and then looked back at his opponent. “So what’s your bet, then? Considering this is a learning game and all.”
“Let’s go with matching our antes.”
Ten more silver coins joined the pile, and Impulse removed the 10 and the 6 from his hand; across the table, Skizz glanced at his cards and removed two of his own, setting them face-down on the table before grabbing the deck and dealing replacements.
Impulse flipped his new cards over: the Jack of hearts and the 5 of clubs, with the angel hissing through his teeth.
“Not a good set of replacements,” Skizz remarked over his own cards, “but we’ll keep going. After we get our new cards, we bet again, and if neither of us fold, we call and reveal our hands. Whomever has the stronger hand gets the pot.”
“So it's like Liar’s Dice with cards, then,” Impulse remarked, dropping ten silvers into the pot.
“I guess so,” Skizz shrugged, matching his ten. “I’ve never been much for dice games, though. Wanna call?”
“Sure.”
Skizz flipped over his hand and pushed it towards the center of the table: the King of spades, the Jack of clubs, the 9 of clubs, the 5 of hearts, and the 4 of diamonds.
Impulse took a quick glance at the list of hands at their descriptions, just to confirm what he was thinking. “So … I win, I think.”
“Yeah, I didn’t even get a pair.”
A grin crawled across the demon’s face. “Maybe this game isn’t so hard, if I could beat you in my first round.”
Skizz scoffed, and the cards flew off the table to rejoin the rest of the deck as the angel’s hands made them dance. “I was playing nice while I taught you the game. Practice game’s over. Let's play.”
Impulse pulled the pot over to his side of the table, and put another five silvers in the center as ten cards were dealt again. This time he was careful to not reveal them.
4 of diamonds, 5 of hearts, 9 of diamonds, 10 of hearts, ace of spades. A couple of starts for a straight, but no solid lean in either direction.
Skizz’s loud, confident voice cut through his mind. “I’ll wager twenty silver on my hand.” A clattering of coins on metal and wood followed.
It felt too early to fold. “I’ll match.”
The angel grinned, and almost carelessly removed two cards from his hand. Impulse frowned at his own cards, and then separated the 4 and 5, setting them facedown with Skizz’s discards. Four more cards were dealt and added.
6 of spades, and the King of hearts. Definitely not good draws, especially with the quiet 'hoo-hoo-hoo!’ from Skizz as he looked at his own hand.
“I’ll bet another twenty,” Skizz declared with a grin. “You matching, Impy?”
Impulse made a show of rolling his eyes at the nickname while considering his options. He wanted to match, to see the round through to the end — but he didn’t even have a pair this time. The chances of Skizz having a pair, or more, or something even better, were very high.
Better to cut his losses.
“I’ll fold,” he replied instead, putting his cards down face-up. Skizz grinned and claimed the pot, flipping his own cards up in the process: 6 of clubs, 7 of diamonds, 8 of clubs, King of clubs, ace of clubs.
“Not that much better than mine,” Impulse observed, peering at the cards.
“Yeah, but you folded and I didn’t, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Deal again. I’m not losing like that again,” the demon declared, making his ledger and quill disappear with a wave of his hand and fully focusing on the shuffling cards.
—
The sword no longer burned Skizz’s hands, despite it looking so very similar to the sword he’d wielded back when he'd been in his prime. Same balance, same weight to it — if it hadn't been for the fact he’d seen his sword being shattered when his halo had been cleaved apart, Skizz was almost inclined to believe it had been handed off to G’arindiel immediately after his body had been tossed off Mount Celestia.
This blade, stripped of Holy magic, would suit him just fine.
Carefully, Skizz raised the sword so the point was facing the sky. The courtyard’s paving stones beneath his boots seeped warmth through the soles.
Slowly, carefully, he stepped through the first few katas in his usual practice routines. Slower than how he’d preformed them on Mount Celestia — his training katas back before his Fall had been far faster — but with his wings still chasing off the last few aches, he’d start slow.
His muscles stretched, but without the pain he’d felt in the aftermath of the Fall. Gradually, he began to speed up: still not as quickly as he could in his prime, but still faster than most mortals he’d observed.
Pop!
Skizz didn’t bother looking up as he continued to preform his katas. “Hey, Crux.”
A quiet thwip heralded the spirit warping from wherever he’d manifested to stand on the very tip of the blade. “Thought angels didn’t need to train.”
“Most angels don’t Fall and burn themselves up in the process. But we do spar.”
“Gonna spar with Boss?”
“Feel like that would be contradictory to us settling things in one last duel.”
“Meh. We’re kinda sparse on suitable opponents for you, in that case.”
Skizz couldn’t help the grin starting to spread on his face as he paused. “So you’re not going to be my opponent today?”
“Oh, don’t mind me, I’ll just grab a knife from the armory and I’ll be on my way to provide you with a fight,” Crux drawled, rolling his eyes. A small shadowy imitation of a sword appeared in the spirit’s hands, and Crux made a few half-hearted swings before the blade melted back into wisps that blew away like smoke.
“In that case I’ll just keep doing my katas, if you’re not going to fight me.”
“I doubt a wall would help you ‘grow back your sharpest teeth’, as Boss told me.”
“That a demon thing, an Impulse thing, or a you thing?”
“Demon thing, I think. Though they obsess over claws and horns more than teeth.”
“You think, or you know?”
“Considering the only demons I know are Boss’ occasional visitors and whatever memories occasionally bleed over through his magic, yeah, I think.”
Skizz cackled, and went back his katas. Crux floated off the blade after a moment of riding along on the flat, levitating a short distance away and watching as Skizz continued to speed up.
He only spoke up when Skizz lowered his sword to adjust his stance.
“Got a question for you, Choir Boy.”
“You’ve just asked one, but I feel like you’re gonna ask anyway.”
“Damn right I am. Anyway. Back when the angels attacked, would you have gone with them?”
“They would’ve killed me too if they could, so no.”
“So you wouldn’t go back to Mount Celestia if you could?”
Skizz snorted derisively. “Why would I? It’s not home.”
“So what’s home for you? The Material Plane?”
The thought brought him up short. Was this Plane home? He’d slipped down from Mount Celestia plenty of times to linger with mortals; gone into taverns and inns to listen to gossip or find a table to play cards at.
He’d had his responsibilities up in the Heavens. But aside from that, very little had truly tied him there. Responsibilities, comfort and nostalgia, and —
He shoved that thought aside, before the name could float to the top of his mind. She hadn’t been one of the angels that had attacked a month ago, he knew that with all the certainty his long life afforded him. But thinking about her would make the familiar resentment rankle — and more importantly, he didn’t want to give Crux any more reason to pry, if the little twerp knew about her.
But with all of that in mind, he had to admit he did feel more comfortable down here. He hadn’t been able to visit a tavern since he Fell, but the card games with Impulse had almost been as good since the demon figured out how to not be so easy to read.
“Yes,” he said out loud, and Crux darted backwards in surprise.
“You’d pick the Material Plane over the Heavens?”
“I went back to the Upper Planes before I Fell because I was expected to be there. I was expected to have never left without being told to go somewhere. But …” Skizz focused on his katas for a moment before finishing the thought, “I always wanted to come back to the Material Plane. I was made in the Upper Planes. But this … this was where I felt the most at home.”
—
The rain outside made a soothing white noise as it pattered on the tiles of the manor roof. It was a quieter background sound than the sounds of the Hells — the shifting stone, the geysers of flame that belched intermittently in the cracks between brimstone, the hammers of the forges creating armor and weapons from infernal steel, roars of gladiator fights in the pits of the higher Circles and the riots that were always happening somewhere in a lower Circle — and Impulse welcomed the soothing sound as he worked in his office.
The slight chill of the weather change made his wings ache slightly. He tried to keep them out as much as he could. They were the last big physical change he’d had on his path to Archdemon, and a part of him was still unused to their weight.
He’d earned his Name first, after ascending past being an imp, and he’d chosen his given name — Impulse — at that time too. Growing taller and stronger and tapping into more magic with each ascension past the nameless imp, and earning his wings upon ascending to High Demon; the rank just below Archdemon.
(Sometimes he thought the wings were withheld and then bestowed as a last-ditch attempt to dissuade him from climbing further. If it had been, it had been a failure. He’d decided a long time before that he would not be satisfied with anything less than becoming an Archdemon, and obtaining wings at last had not changed that.)
Pop!
Crux appeared to perch on the end of his glass quill. “Choir Boy’s coming along, Boss. Should I bar him?”
“No. Let him in if he wants to come in.”
Crux shrugged, and then hopped off the quill to sit on Impulse’s shoulder instead. Rainy days seemed to sap the spirit’s energy, making him quieter and less inclined to snark at anything that caught his attention. Not that Crux would ever admit to that observation holding any weight.
Not even a moment later, the study door opened, and Skizz passed through, tucking his wings close to his back as he closed it behind him.
Something about the Fallen’s expression and how his halo’s shattered orbit seemed to be sped up made Impulse’s tail curl uneasily. Why, he couldn’t tell. There was an almost pinched look in his brows, that he read as being similar to how Bdub’s tail would wrap around his ankle when he was anxious. When his first oldest only friend was steeling himself for a discussion he wasn’t looking forward to.
(Bdubs hadn’t enjoyed telling Impulse he was hitting his limit when it came to climbing the ranks, that he didn’t want to stop climbing but he felt he’d slow Impulse down in his pursuit of becoming an Archdemon: a heavily-martial position when Bdubs was finding himself having difficulties making it halfway up the ranks.
Bdubs had told him to leave him behind. Impulse had refused, and they’d made an unofficial Deal: that Impulse would fight on his behalf if anyone tried to use Bdubs as a stepping stone. And that Deal with no power but loyalty behind it had held until long after the Original Wars, when Bdubs had ended their contract and gone to see what the Material Plane held for himself.)
Impulse pushed the comparison aside. “Hey, Skizz. Needed something from me?”
The Fallen Angel made a noncommittal noise and shook his head. “No. Just too quiet.”
“It’s not going to be much different in here for a bit,” Impulse warned. “If you give me fifteen minutes I’ll be done with my work and we can play cards.” Impulse still wasn’t the best at poker, but he was at least figuring out how to hide his tells.
Skizz made another similar noise. “Yeah, sounds good.”
Impulse could sense Crux moving to keep their guest in view as he reapplied ink to his quill and continued writing his letter to his closest neighbor, a fellow marquis of the kingdom his manor and his settlement close by were part of in terms of territory. Never mind that Impulse had been ruling here longer than the mortal conquers whose descendants now claimed divine right to rule.
He hadn’t been interested in another war when those first rulers had come to call, and had merely agreed to take a mortal title and pay tithes to the capital in exchange for life continuing for himself and his territory as it had before.
Better to roll with the punches for now, even if it was responsible for straining his Oath’s connection to his magic to not being the sole ruler of his lands. One day he might do something about that, but for now he’d had enough of war.
Skizz’s voice broke him out of his thoughts as he dried the ink and began preparing his seal. His voice was in a strange accent, vowels stretched in places and his pitch a bit deeper than normal (though not as deep as Impulse knew it could go; he knew it was deeper when all of his Eyes were open).
“So, Sir Steel. How would you like to hear the story of how I Fell?”
Impulse just barely kept himself from snapping his quill in half, and with the same movement restrained Crux from speaking at all. If his guest wanted to speak, he wasn’t going to let his mouthy spirit interject.
Impulse looked up and saw that Skizz was looking away from him, all six wings folded and feathers bristling as the angel addressed the ornamental suit of dwarven armor he'd added to the study on a whim a few years ago — the freshly-dubbed ‘Sir Steel’, presumably.
The quiet stretched for a second, and then Skizz continued, correctly assuming an affirmative.
“I guess it started when … when I was made. The first angel, forged in the Heavens. Supposedly perfect in every way the gods intended me to be. Though the fact they deemed me as Fallen and cast me down indicates their standards were a bit skewed, Sir Steel.
“How much do you know about the Heavens? About Mount Celestia?”
The question hung in the silence for a second too long before Impulse realized that Skizz wasn’t addressing the armor anymore, but was instead asking him.
“Not much, beyond what I was told during the Wars. Stretches between the Material Plane into the Upper Planes. Stepping into it hurts Demons worse than touching Celestial steel. Home of angels and other Celestial creatures. Am I missing something?”
“You got the important parts correct, but it doesn’t cover what living there is like. Which, for the record, is extremely quiet and still. Everything we need is provided. There’s no need to grow crops, or smith weapons. We train, we drill in our formations. We sing for the gods we were made for. Nothing else is needed, and we need nothing else to fill our time.”
Impulse could feel his expression furrow, reflecting his confusion. “There isn't any way to change? Any advancement? Anything to make yourself better and stronger, or even personal improvement?”
“We were made to be perfect, Impulse. Exactly as we were created, eternally. It would go against that to be able to change.”
Impulse could feel a headache coming as he tried to wrap his mind around such an alien concept. Sins as mortals described them were baked into the culture of the Nine Hells; feeling desire, ambition, and wanting more was simply how things worked. Life down there was a nonstop clip of rising higher, reaching for whatever you could claim without being struck down by a rival in the process.
Impulse had run that race, made the full climb from Imp to Archdemon, brought Bdubs with him as he’d scaled the ladder; fought in the Original Wars and then decided to see what all the fuss over the Material Plane was about for himself. But even as exhausting as the chaos of the Hells felt after centuries in his garden, Impulse had a hard time wrapping his mind around the idea of a perfect, sterile stillness. Where nothing was strived for. Where you merely existed.
Even here, mortals chased improvement, both in themselves and their lives. For all that they seemed to dream of a day when they didn’t need to work, were the Heavens truly what they wanted in their lives?
Impulse couldn’t truly understand it. Perhaps it had something to do with their origins, with one of them being made intending to be eternally perfect and the other with the expectation to achieve perfection or die chasing that outcome.
Skizz was talking again.
“Anyway … I was okay with that, for a while. Went through the Wars, watched mortals living on the Material Plane. And … I guess I got curious. Snuck down from Mount Celestia to see more up-close, disguised as a human.”
“What did you do?”
Skizz shrugged — almost carelessly, but Impulse could see the tension coiling in his shoulders. “I walked around. I spent time in inns and taverns and markets. I … spent time with mortals, learned to play poker and chess. Listened to their music, heard their songs. And … I guess it started rubbing off on me. I started paying more attention to the Material Plane than what I was doing on Mount Celestia.
“And … I started wanting more of what I saw on the Material Plane. Stuff to call my own, that wasn’t just my armor and my weapons. I looked at mortals and saw how they had close companions, friends and family … I looked at my fellow angels and didn’t see even a fraction of that connection, even with those that I had fought alongside in the Origin Wars.”
“Was that the reason you Fell?”
“Kinda.” Skizz took a long breath in, and then exhaled through his nose slowly. “I came to realize that there were … relationships. The kind that didn’t exist in the Heavens. I didn’t understand them at first. But eventually, I started … wanting. More than I’d already wanted. Wanting a connection that didn’t exist in the Heavens. And that’s what tripped me up. That’s what got me caught.”
Impulse could feel his brow furrow. “Like a romantic relationship?”
“Something like that.”
“That’s just … natural. Mortals feel desire. Want. Even the Hells has relationships like those.” Impulse left out the part that most of the time those relationships tended to be transactional. Even his own close friendship with Bdubs had those elements to them.
“Angels aren’t mortals, Impy. We’re not supposed to want for anything.” Skizz’s breath shuddered as he exhaled. “Anyway … I got caught. I never actually did anything with those feelings aside from a distant admiration for another angel. But that didn’t matter when you weren’t supposed to feel those feelings at all.
“I was cast down. Stripped of my rank and my armor, my halo broken. And I wandered blindly in the Material Plane until I wound up at your door.”
Impulse’s mind’s eye painted a picture of Skizz, forced to his knees before the legions of the Upper Planes: humiliated, beaten, his halo breaking with his pride. He’d had similar fantasies in the past, usually after particularly brutal battles against him and the desire for payback was seething in his mind.
Once upon a time, he would’ve reveled in hearing the story of his nemesis’ fall from grace. But now —
Impulse wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do in the face of all this. He may have written the book on combat with the Heavens, but he’d never had to bear witness to an angel telling the story of how they Fell. There wasn’t really an equivalent to that for demons. So how did mortals treat something like that?
He quickly racked his brains — and found his solution.
Impulse finished sealing the letter and set it aside, along with his cleaned quill, and stood up, Crux vanishing from this shoulder in the moment. Skizz turned quickly to face him.
“Let’s head downstairs. There’s a parlor there where I usually entertain nobles.”
“Why are we going there?”
“Better chairs, for one thing. Getting drinks, for another.”
—
The tall, thin bottle was set down on the table with a clunk, and a pair of crystal glasses were set down beside it. A braided cord around the bottle’s neck had a tag attached, and Skizz saw both the snowflake of the Winter Court and some minute Sylvan writing on the tag.
Arvai Ice Wines
“What’s that supposed to be?” Skizz asked, pulling the tag off for better examination as Impulse removed the cork from the bottle with a pop!
“Ice wine isn't a thing on Mount Celestia, I take it?” Impulse replied, clawed fingertips tapping the glass as he scooped up the first glass in his other hand.
“If it is I wasn’t privy to it.”
“Ice wine is wine made from frosted grapes. Apparently the juice is concentrated from the water being frozen; makes the wine sweeter.” The bottle was tipped forward, and a light golden liquid flowed from the open mouth into the goblet. “That’s how mortals make it, anyway. If the Unseelie Courts have different methods, they don’t share them.”
“So … what’re we drinking this for?”
Impulse set the crystal glass down back in front of Skizz, now two-thirds full, nudging it close enough that Skizz could smell the strong, sharp tang of alcohol from the mouth.
“Because we can,” he said simply, taking the second glass and filling it similarly. “Because Faewine vintages are consistently strong enough to make me tipsy, let alone drunk, so it should be strong enough to affect you too. And if the heavens cast you out for enjoying the mortal emotions they gave you — well, call me a corrupter, but I say not enjoying them would just make you feel worse.”
Skizz’s fingers wrapped around the thin stem, careful to not shatter the crystal. “Isn’t drinking your bad feelings away a mortal reaction?”
“Something like that. I’m not gonna claim this is the right way to deal with something like a Fall, but it beats wallowing alone.” The bottle was set down again, the second glass now similarly-filled as Impulse raised it to his lips and took a sip, eyes closing contentedly.
Skizz raised the crystal up and followed his example. The liquid burst on his tongue: cold, but bright and sharp in flavor, tasting as tart as apples and sweet like honey. Lighter-feeling than the ale he’d tasted in mortal inns before, almost like drinking liquid sunlight reflected through clear ice. Skizz inhaled sharply through his nose as he swallowed the mouthful.
“Good?” Impulse encouraged over his own glass. Skizz wordlessly nodded, starting to get an idea why there were mortal stories warning against consuming food meant for the Fae — though as an angel, he couldn’t be affected the same way.
The other man smiled, showing his canines, and lightly clinked their glasses against each other. “Here’s to the Material Plane, and the freedom it brings us.”
Skizz couldn’t help but crack a smile at that notion. “I’ll drink to that,” he said, taking another sip of the wine and letting it wash through his mouth and down his throat.
“Pull out your cards. Let’s play a few hands. I might not be playing to get a prize, but I want to improve.”
—
Skizz woke the next morning with fuzzy half-drunk memories of laughter and taunting in his mind and the headache and dry mouth of a hangover in his body.
At least he was in his bed.
He sat up carefully, acutely aware of all his feathers again but it wasn’t causing him pain like they had in the days after his Fall. For all that his wings looked like the wings of a bird layered thrice, he didn’t molt.
A tray of food was already set on the coffee table, the steam curling gently off it indicating it had been placed recently. Closer to him was a large silver ewer, sitting on his nightstand with a silver goblet next to it. Small droplets of condensation on the sides of the ewer indicated it had also been placed down recently.
A note was next to the ewer. Skizz took a moment to pour and drink a goblet of water before opening the note: written in Impulse’s hand.
Skizz,
Faewine hits pretty hard in the morning after drinking it. I’d drink all of this before getting to having food.
I’m going to be busy today — you probably won’t see much of me or Crux.
Impulse
Skizz looked at the note and the spread of food thoughtfully set out for him — and remembered that the person that had arranged for all this was the same person that planned to either kill him or die by his hand in the near future.
He exhaled sadly, and drew his cards out again — now a bit more worn out and clawed at than before. He distantly remembered one particular round of poker where they’d gotten into an argument, when he’d managed to bluff Impulse into folding on an hand he would’ve easily bested Skizz with otherwise (“Doesn’t matter that you had three Queens when you fold to three fives, Impy!” he’d smugly laughed in the face of his competition’s ire, before taking a drink of the Faewine they’d moved on to after the ice wine, an herby infusion Impulse had called absinthe), and smiled a bit at the memory before pulling one card out.
The Ace of Spades’ worn face stared blankly at him for a moment before Skizz covered the card with his thumb and poured some magic into it.
Time had been an aspect he’d had some power over as the First Archangel, and while he wasn’t as strong as he’d once been, he still retained a sliver of that magic. That sliver he implanted into the card, and slipped it up his sleeve. Another card manifested to take its place, indistinguishable from the original.
Impulse wouldn’t need to know about that spell. Not yet.
Skizz put the deck away, and poured the rest of the water out for himself.
—
Weeks passed. Skizz’s time in the courtyard kept extending, his katas with the looted Celestial sword lengthening and accelerating. Impulse was able to see him through the window of his study and sometimes when his gardening took him by the courtyard, and he saw that his guest’s steps no longer wavered. No longer stumbling through the halls, when his feet didn’t move as expected.
Strength was returning. Maybe not all the way back, but he was close.
Even knowing that he had been planning for this to be the end, it still worried Impulse, to see it coming up so quickly. This wasn’t a battlefield anymore. Neither of them had their cohorts and their soldiers to assist. This would just be their own strength and skill and magic clashing, and seeing how everything shook out when the dust settled.
He didn’t let himself dwell on it too much. That was the way to drive himself mad. He just focused on the things he could prepare for.
He brought his armor from the Original Wars out of his vault and checked it over for damage. Put together a set of Celestial armor for Skizz from the pieces he’d kept from the attack eight months ago and sent it to his rooms, to be re-enchanted with magic that wouldn't burn Skizz. He selected a proper location for the fight to take place, far away from his home and removed from any outside interference.
Two days before his self-imposed deadline, Impulse sent all of his mortal staff home, with instructions not to return for two weeks and a year’s pay in their pockets. His butler was given more detailed instructions: if there was no response from him or Crux when they returned, they were to inform the town’s mayor of his disappearance and no longer return to the manor.
Impulse was perfectly capable of running the house himself for these last few days, and he welcomed the extra busywork to keep his mind off of his plans.
The night before the duel, he didn’t sleep. He stayed up in his chambers, lights flickering in his hands as he paced restlessly. Crux manifested himself just past midnight, and lighted upon Impulse’s shoulder, uncharacteristically quiet as the Archdemon reached up towards him.
Spirits were incorporeal, so Impulse couldn’t actually touch Crux with his fingers, but the action of trying to pat Crux’s head with his index finger was soothing in its own way.
“This is it, then, Boss?” Crux finally said quietly, voice flat.
“Yes.”
“You’ve had a lot of boneheaded choices, but this is probably the stupidest one I’ve seen since you made me.”
The blunt insult got him to laugh. “This is stupid, isn’t it? Could’ve avoided it if I just stabbed him like you wanted me to do when I found him.”
“I’m always right! But here we are, and you’re only admitting to it when it’s way too late!” Crux spun up off Impulse’s shoulder and hovered so they were eye-level. His form was tensed up, stretched like a bow string ready to loose an arrow.
Impulse had stared down the possibility of his existence being cut short plenty of times in the Wars. But Crux had never needed to until now.
For the first time, Impulse realized that the spirit was afraid.
“I know,” he sighed quietly. “And I’m sorry, Crux, for dragging you into this. If I win, I’ll be back here soon. If not … I’m sorry, again, for making you go along with this.”
—
A door opened in the air, and two armored figures stepped through.
Skizz rolled his shoulders as his boots touched the ground. It was almost like he’d never Fallen, being clad in golden Celestial armor that was so polished that it was almost white, now enchanted to not harm him and a blade in his hand. As Impulse closed the door behind them, he took a look around them, surveying the battlefield his host had picked out for them.
Long, lush grass almost as far as the eye could see stretched out to his left side, with white oxeye daisies bobbing over the tops of it. Scattered amongst them were smaller golden flowers — buttercups, he thought they were called.
To his right, the meadows continued for a bit, but they eventually hit a forest of dark oak trees, the overhanging canopy casting increasingly-dappled shadows onto the grass the further back it went.
The grinding of metal on metal and a burst of flame behind him made Skizz spin around.
Impulse had drawn his sword, the massive slab of sharp infernal steel gleaming like his armor in the early-morning sunlight. He looked almost exactly like how he had during the Original Wars, minus the cadre of soldiers beside him and about ten feet of height.
Though the serious expression on his face had an edge to it that Skizz didn’t remember from the Wars and couldn’t quite put his finger on yet.
“This a suitable place?” the demon asked, spinning the blade between his hands.
“Feels like a shame to fight in somewhere so pretty.”
Impulse shrugged. “I would’ve had us fight in my garden if I thought Crux wouldn’t interfere. He would, though. So I picked a place far away from anyone, but still beautiful.”
“You’re really serious about that?”
“If I’m dying at the end of this, I’d rather not die looking at a place that reminds me of the Hells. There’s no green there.”
Skizz couldn’t really argue with that — he didn’t particularly want to die looking at Mount Celestia either — and instead spun the blade in his hands, loosening up his grip. “This will work.”
“Good. We’re hundreds of miles away from the nearest mortal settlement. Nothing we do here will directly affect mortal lives, and we won’t have our fight interrupted.”
Impulse held his blade still, and raised it into a ready position. “As … surprisingly pleasant your company has been for the last year or so, I am glad we’re getting down to business.”
“Mmm. It’ll be a shame. I’ll need to find someone new to fleece at poker.”
Impulse smirked, showing his sharp canines; behind him, his wings unfurled slightly. “And I’ll need to find someone else to destroy at Liar’s Dice.”
“Hey! Those dice were loaded!”
“And I told you they were loaded before we started, so that’s on you.”
It was comforting to fall back into their banter, the year-long pattern holding just before they fell back into their oldest pattern of behavior. Skizz felt like he was standing on an impossibly-skinny cliff ledge, toes gripping over the rocky edge and being buffeted by a howling updraft coming from below —
Just waiting to let go and to fall back into the jaws of the Nine Hells.
No more words. No more banter.
Anything more, and —
Both moved before they could finish that thought.
Impulse’s body blurred across the grass, leaving fiery after-images behind in his wake, and Skizz’s boots left charred imprints behind in the soil as he charged across the ground. Their blades locked briefly before both shoved the other away, with Skizz taking the opportunity to launch himself into the sky.
With all six of his wings wide, he released the spell he had been holding. Clear skies immediately went dark as clouds formed, and the grumble of thunder on the horizon heralded the storm he’d called up starting to churn the air —
A bolt of golden energy streaking up from the ground just barely missed his face, and Skizz hastily dove, dodging fireballs that rained down on him as Impulse rose up to meet him.
The Generals’ blades clashed.
And the night fell upon both.
—
The dust settled slowly, the wind picking up new flurries around the broken remnants of the landscape, torn apart by the battle that had ravaged the place for what had felt like eternity but could not have been longer than three unbroken days and nights. Up above in the sky, the weather crashed in a storm, churned up and set free from its former control by the magic unleashed.
At the center of the destruction, where once had been a verdant meadow but would soon become a desert, those responsible were in the eye, clad in battered, half-destroyed armor; the remnants scattered about them like metallic leaf litter. One was slammed to the ground on his back, his sword broken into pieces beside him; the other standing over him, wings half-stretched and holding his blade to his opponent’s throat.
Scraps of vegetation floated like confetti around the Archdemon’s impassive face, staring down the line of his arm and blade to where the edge lightly pressed against the Archangel’s skin. Close enough to cut through and reveal bone, marrow, ichor, with just a twitch of his hand.
Once again, Impulse had his most hated enemy at his mercy, and he’d earned it this time.
One motion, and the Archangel — First, Fairest, Fallen — would be extinguished at last.
So why couldn’t he kill him?
The thought rampaged in Impulse’s brain. He’d killed thousands of angels before without thinking in the Original Wars. There had never been any personal malice involved: it was war, and the Princes of the Nine Hells had tasked him with seeing their victories through. When it came to drawing steel against each other, he had no interest in dying.
But with Skizz, it had been personal. The greatest obstacle in his path, the slayer of uncountable numbers of demons under Impulse’s command, the one that he’d clashed blades with countless times in the Original Wars but had never led to a satisfactory conclusion until this moment.
It had been personal.
He had all the reasons in the universe to finally put an end to his greatest rival —
And one reason to not do so that overwhelmed all the others.
He’d been without equal company for decades now, and they’d known each other long enough that it was already almost like being friends. Being in close proximity without needing to fight had made that almost vanish in his mind.
At the end of his blade, Impulse saw his friend.
For a fraction of a second, his infernal steel sword, stained with millennia of angel ichor, relaxed; the edge falling away from Skizz’s skin.
His opponent did not hesitate to punish his carelessness.
The heel of the Archangel’s palm struck the flat of the blade, a spell in his hand and a focused expression on his face —
And with a burst of celestial song, the black blade shattered, the fragments scattering across the ground like hail.
Impulse barely had time to curse his stupidity before his opponent was springing back up and lunging. The hilt of his blade tumbled from his hand, knocked aside by beating wings and errant boots and eventually being buried and forgotten.
Their fight was not a majestic and awe-inspiring clash, now. The Fallen Archangel and the Ascended Imp abandoned their magic and their weapons, and like mortal men they fought each other with their hands, staining their skin with each other’s blood.
Without their armor and their swords to keep them apart, in barehanded combat they rapidly discovered that while Skizz had the longer reach and stronger arms, Impulse’s claws were sharper than Skizz’s nails, tearing stripes off of Skizz’s skin and making gold flow in rivulets when he managed to duck around the Archangel’s wingspan to strike.
Skizz didn’t remember the circumstances, but eventually the Archdemon managed to get in a lucky strike and had knocked him back down. Clawed fingers dug into his throat and squeezed down; a crazed expression on his enemy’s face, painted with streaks of purple-red and gold, promising his final death with each breath stolen —
His fingers brushed the card in his pocket, grasped it —
The ace of spades was drawn and flourished, the spell he’d stored inside flaring to life and striking his enemy dead-on. The paper tore apart from the force of its eruption.
The Archdemon reeled away, his hands releasing from Skizz’s throat with a howl as the spell tore through him (the fight must’ve really taken it out of him if he hadn’t managed to counter or avoid it,Skizz woozily thought), stumbling away a few paces and collapsing to his knees —
Crack!
What sounded like the breaking of sun-bleached bones, or the crack of a whip, ripped through the air.
Skizz took it as a signal and scrambled back to his feet, lunging at the Archdemon again. Once more they tumbled to the ground, all of their many limbs tangled like branches again until Skizz managed to finally pin his nemesis to the ground again, magic poised to finally smite the upstart Archdemon —
And paused.
Six seconds stretched to eternity, the whole of the universe seeming to hold its breath as time seemed to crystallize around them.
The moment passed.
Beneath him, the Archdemon Impulse looked the worst Skizz had ever seen him, even counting all the times they’d clashed in war. His skin and scales looked pale and almost papery, his hair turning silver and the leather of his wings ragged; his immortal Infernal physiology almost feeling the damage time’s accelerated march would do to mortals. His horns were worst-off: a spiderweb of cracks forming from the base to the tips, with a massive chunk gone from the right-side horn and threatening to take the rest of it on the way.
“Well?” the demon rasped, glaring up at him, still defiant. “Get it over with.”
Skizz didn’t consciously dismiss the spell in his hand, but he felt it evaporate. “No.”
“You hit me with whatever spell that was, you have me dead to rights, and you’re not killing me?” Impulse demanded, trying to sit up and failing, grimacing at the failure.
Skizz took a step backward, hands open and palms facing out. “You didn’t kill me either.”
“And look where that got me. Weak.”
“No. Not weak. You still almost killed me.”
“Does it really matter?”
“Yes it does!”
Impulse growled deep in his throat as he finally got his feet under him and slowly stood up, wincing from the sounds of his bones cracking from the movement. Whatever that spell had been, it had been incredibly potent. “How, then? How does it matter, when we’ve hated each other from the second we were made aware of each other?”
(Melted scales, torn feathers; a battlefield covered in dead angels and blast shadows of demons slain by Holy fire — Impulse, half-blind by the radiance that was burning him, striking and being rewarded by screams torn from hundreds of voices — he’d worn the three Eyes he’d taken from his enemy as a trophy necklace until the next time they’d fought, when the Archangel had returned with all his Eyes regrown, and Impulse could never be sure if he’d been more furious about losing the trophy or from needing to regrow his tail after most of it had been lopped off)
((Now he wondered if Skizz had regrown his Eyes naturally or if he’d been forced to pretend he’d never been injured at all, to continue pretending to be perfect))
“That was then!” Skizz shouted, flinging his arms wide for emphasis and hoping that whatever his expression looked like didn’t completely undercut his intent. “That was when we were charged with war! That was before either of us came here! Before you left the Hells, before I started descending! When we walked amongst mortals!”
Impulse started to speak but Skizz verbally bowled him over; he was on a roll and didn’t want to lose his point. “Back then, we hated each other because we had to, and because we were fighting each other! Self-perpetuating, but not here! We’ve had a year of not fighting now, not giving each other new reasons to hate each other.” Skizz forcibly folded his wings down so the feathers weren’t puffing out instinctively from the force of his emotions. “And while the Archdemon General sucked to fight against, Impulse is pretty good company.”
Impulse stared, face apparently frozen in a mask of confusion for a moment, before he looked away. He sounded frustrated with himself when he finally spoke. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
Skizz grinned, relieved. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s kinda fitting, that my first friend was my oldest enemy.”
“Maybe your actual oldest enemy, now.”
“Sorry, sorry — I can fix that. Unless you can?” Impulse had let Skizz heal him before, but maybe he’d prefer to fix himself.
“Can’t. Strength above all. You beat me, so my magic’s weakened. I won’t be able to shake this off unless I prove myself stronger, and that isn’t happening anytime soon.”
Skizz’s brow furrowed, mouth twisting in contemplation as he sought out a solution. He could cast off the effects of his spell easily, but leaving his friend (his friend!) weaker than he was supposed to be left a sour taste in his mouth.
The idea came in a flash in his mind, and he grinned. “Then we make our own Oath. We’re something new. Nothing that the Material Plane has seen before, nothing the Hells and Heavens could imagine. We stepped out of the roles we were made for — let’s make our new path, together.”
Impulse’s mouth curved in a curious smile, faded eyes lighting up with ambition. “I like the sound of that. Do we do this now?”
“Probably for the best, since I gotta fix what I did to you.”
Skizz decided he’d be the one to approach, given the damage his backup spell had wrecked on Impulse’s body. This time, he was the one to open his hand, palm out and arm extended to offer a handshake. This time, Impulse was the one to take it, and they didn’t let go so quickly this time.
Their hands clasped together, their sweat mixing with golden ichor and rubedo blood as their spells flowed, magic linking together as the effects of Skizz’s spell on Impulse marched backwards: hair changing from silver to brown, skin and scales changing colors and textures; his horns healing as the membranes of his wings filled back in.
For all the thousands of words that could be said to swear their Oath and bind their magics together, the ideas that they dallied with in milliseconds before discarding, they only needed four to become Pact-Brothers.
“Let’s not stop.”
“Never.”
—
Impulse carefully trimmed a dead stem off his Crescent Moonbeam plant, and then let the pot float back up to join the other potted plants in his study, bobbing in the air, and he pulled down the next plant — the Golden Bat Lily — for inspection.
After a few moments he found nothing wrong, and sent the pot back up. The study had a set of windows that would always optimally catch the light regardless of the time of day, and the potted plants would float to follow the light. All he needed to do was to keep them cared for, and their scent would be a comfort while he worked.
The castle he and Skizz had conquered over a decade ago as the capital of their new kingdom had been suitable for the mortals that had once ruled from it, but the halls had not been built with demonic or angelic wingspans in mind. Nor had the builders had the magic the two of them could bring to bear in mind. Even being as gentle as he could, the castle’s body had shattered under their assault. Fortunately, while it wasn’t what Impulse’s magic was best at, both of them were capable of wielding magic to create and build.
Within two years of their conquest, the castle had been built back up, properly scaled for their needs — and in his own not-so-humble opinion, looking far more grand and impressive than it had been before they’d laid siege to the city.
He doubted he would be fully-pleased with it in a few decades. Things always advanced as society did, and Impulse was curious how he could make improvements in the future. Perhaps new wings, new towers …
But for now, his focus was on consolidating power, building up the kingdom they had forged. Unrest was settling down when multiple attempts to kill them had failed, and rebellions had been quashed. But victory was not the same as good governance, and Impulse had had centuries of practice on a smaller scale.
Resistance was to be expected, so now he needed to show that his rule would be beneficial. But until his work bore fruit, Skizz and his soldiers would be kept busy.
It did mean more paperwork for him — while he’d brought seedlings from his old garden and started cultivating a larger one as the castle had been rebuilt, he’d quickly been forced to hire gardeners to tend to them for him — but the unrest would eventually lessen and die down.
For a few hours he buried himself in his work, reports and requests for his attention being moved to his outgoing work tray as he dealt with them.
Pop!
Impulse glanced to his left side, where Crux had appeared sitting on his hand. “What is it, Crux?”
“Visitor at the gates requesting to see you, Boss.”
“Wannabe assassins, or something else?”
“Something else. Said you were looking into a new horse? Certainly had enough of them in his wake to back that up. Choir Boy’s keeping an eye on him for now.”
“Good to know. Inform Skizz I’ll be down in a moment.”
“Sure, Boss.” Pop!
Impulse took a moment to clean and set his glass quill aside before he stood up. A small loop mirror on the wall reflected him: a bit cleaner than even when he’d been a marquis. A gold circlet was around his head, with the black diamond he’d taken from the old crown of this kingdom when he and Skizz had conquered the capital seated comfortably on his brow.
Curling around his horns were delicate golden filigree cuffs, contrasting the black and covering up the scars left behind from his and Skizz’s ‘final’ duel. Their magic had healed most of the damage, but they consistently left scars on each other.
(Impulse had contemplated letting his scars be easily seen, since only Skizz could injure him like that. Skizz had talked him out of it, given they were still consolidating their rule on the kingdom. Maybe once they’d settled that he’d leave his horns uncovered again.)
He swept out of his study, the door slamming and sealing behind him as he strolled down the corridors. Unhurried and unbothered, with Crux’s giggle in his ear to accompany him.
Crux had spent the campaigns dormant, the spirit slumbering within the keystone brick of his old manor that Impulse had taken with him. With all the magic sunk into the rebuilding of the castle, seating the gilded blackstone brick into its new location in the heart of his personal chambers had reawakened Crux instantly, and it was like he had never been asleep at all, aside from grumbling about how much bigger his new abode was and how many more people were around.
It was a familiar walk down to the front gates, and Impulse stretched his wings to their full span outside before folding them back again. At the gates, he saw the crispy black feathers of Skizz’s six wings opened in a threat display, the pieces of his shattered halo orbiting his head just a little faster.
“Skizz!” he called out, and a slight twitch of his Pact-brother’s head indicated that the Fallen Archangel was listening. “What’s going on?”
Behind Skizz’s screen of feathers, a head of curly black hair with a pair of small horns crowning them popped over the General’s shoulder, like their owner was jumping to be seen. They heralded a fountain of indignant, familiar, yelling.
"General! King! Whatever. Impy! Can you call off your attack birdbrain?! I brought some hawsies for you to pick from!"
It was rare for the Archdemon to be brought up short from astonishment. But an unexpected reunion would do that.
“Bdubs?! You’re here?”