The tension drained from the Stranger's face, and Thea suppressed a smirk. The Most High had played this man like a fiddle.
You betrayed Him, and you expect Him to redeem you?
One only had to look at how casually the Most High had dumped the Stranger's wife and children into Hell—not a shred of moral hesitation. Human values didn't apply to a being like that.
An endless cycle of manipulation. An endless game of cruelty. Watching the Stranger thrash in his sea of suffering—that was the Most High's idea of entertainment.
Your family's happy? Into Hell with them. You want redemption? Here—let me hand one of your silver coins to Thea. Let you dangle between heaven and damnation, neither rising nor falling. The Stranger's position was identical to the moment he'd hanged himself two thousand years ago. He just hadn't realized it.
The Stranger wanted to reclaim the coin? Thea could have told him not to waste his time. Once something entered her possession, it stayed there. Until the end of the world, his road of atonement would never reach its destination.
She'd become a tool in the Most High's torment of the Stranger. Thea didn't mind. She cleared her throat.
"You interrupted me earlier. What I was trying to say is: the power has been beside you all along. Isn't that right, Your Highness?" She looked pointedly at the empty air to the Stranger's left.
Who's beside me? The Stranger looked left, looked right—nothing. But instinct whispered that he'd just taken a massive step closer to the truth.
"You shouldn't have called me out." A figure materialized from the void—radiant with golden light, enormous wings unfurled behind him. His arrival brought a chorus of celestial hymns and the simultaneous howl of Hell's will raging against the intrusion.
"An angel!" Raven blurted—and immediately clapped both hands over her mouth.
"Greetings. I am Thea Queen, of New Genesis."
"May Heaven's holy light shine upon the mortal world. I am Zauriel, Eagle of the Host."
Thea and the angel exchanged formal courtesies. His power sat a notch below hers—roughly on par with Diana's.
Zauriel spoke as though every sentence were a hymn. Thea had gotten what she came for, so she left the rest to him. The rest of this is between you two.
The Stranger looked at Thea. Looked at the angel. This entire situation was bizarre from every angle.
"You've been with me this whole time?" he ventured.
Thea coughed once, interrupting. "If I'm not mistaken, he's been with you since you were still Judas."
Two thousand years. An invisible companion for two thousand years. Through every identity, every family he'd built and lost—this being had been at his shoulder.
"That's impossible…"
"He loves all mankind. Even one as steeped in sin as you remains His child. Angels watch over every soul—each person has a guardian." Zauriel's voice carried that signature aria-like quality.
Raven shot Thea a suspicious glance. Every person? Do I have one?
Thea's face went blank. She rolled her eyes. What nonsense. One angel per person? That'd require trillions of them. With those numbers, Heaven would have steamrolled Hell ages ago. Zauriel's pitch was polished, but the rhetoric was laughably heavy-handed.
"From the moment you drew your first breath, I have been at your side, Phantom Stranger." The uncomfortably intimate quality in the angel's tone sent a shiver down Thea's spine. If she recalled correctly, Zauriel eventually died and was resurrected in a female form. Best not to get involved.
"My power—where is it?"
The angel produced the Stranger's former blue cloak. "He is always there, waiting for you. You need only understand the meaning of your own existence."
Thea watched the Stranger throw the cloak back on without a second's hesitation and knew he probably still hadn't grasped the lesson. But that was no longer her problem.
With a wave of his hand, the familiar energy surged up—from the fabric, from the deepest core of his own soul. His wife's and children's eyes regained their luster. Their ashen skin took on warmth and texture. They seemed to have come back to "life" — at least on the surface.
"Wait—something's wrong. Their condition…" The Stranger's elation curdled. His family was the wound that would never close; anything less than perfection set off every alarm. He turned to Thea and the angel.
"They can't be resurrected in the conventional sense. What you've restored is their souls. At least, that's my assessment." Thea examined them with genuine care.
Zauriel, by contrast, was considerably less invested. Casually, almost offhandedly: "Take them to Heaven. They'll be reborn there."
The blood drained from the Stranger's face. He knew exactly what "reborn" meant. A completely new life—memories, history, identity, all erased. His wife and children were gone. Permanently. Irretrievably.
"Help me save them. I'll give you another coin." A fragile thread of hope in his voice.
Thea's attention spiked. A second coin? With two, she could create an entire universe and observe its evolution from inception—the kind of experience that would catapult her comprehension to an unimaginable level.
But she severed that greed almost as quickly as it arose. Too much of a good thing. This was the Stranger's trial—but who said it wasn't also hers?
Heaven wanted the Stranger to release his family. What business did she have meddling in that?
A moment's inner struggle, and her mind settled into clarity. Her mastery over the emotion of greed had, she noted, taken a quiet but meaningful step forward.
"I'm sorry. I can't. They don't have much time left in this world." She ran through the examination one more time, delivered the bad news, and said nothing further.
The disturbingly affectionate angel gave her a warm smile, then escorted the Stranger's wife and children toward Heaven for rebirth. Afterward, he contentedly resumed shadowing the Stranger.
Before leaving, Zauriel extended an invitation for Thea to visit Heaven. She declined without hesitation. Going through Heaven meant borrowing their transit routes, which was worse than just leaving through Hell. And the environment up there wasn't suited to her—what was she going to do, hang a sign in the Pearly Gates reading "Everything bought and sold"? The Most High would teach her a lesson inside of five minutes.
Watching the Stranger and his angel depart, Thea let out a long breath. The lead actor had exited the stage. The play was over, and she could finally relax—no more walking on eggshells.
She and Raven tore through Nebiros's belongings and located his teleportation array. Where it led, nobody knew—Nebiros had been too poor to ever use it.
She inspected the array twice. Her best guess: Earth.
But she wasn't fully certain. The destination could be anywhere—including Apokolips. If she stepped through and found herself surrounded by hostile New Gods, she needed to guarantee she could retreat.
The conquered territory couldn't be abandoned, either. Hell produced valuable resources: a viscous fire-oil that burned for three consecutive days, geothermal cores buried deep underground that radiated immense heat, and the occasional artifact or demi-artifact left behind by some long-dead power. Countless idle mages had ventured into Hell over the centuries on a lark, died in spectacularly varied ways, and left their spellbooks scattered across the landscape.
Then there were the souls themselves—an endless supply of damned spirits. Thea still couldn't figure out how souls drifted from the Underworld into Hell. Was it because the Underworld was cold and Hell was warm?
The market here was enormous. The specialty goods were genuinely useful. And what she had to spend was almost nothing—she didn't even need Earthly resources. Random junk the Zerg picked off backwater planets fetched astronomical prices down here.
Since Hell's will showed no interest in evicting her, she settled in without a second thought.
Tuth's undead legions were absolutely loyal. But Mecanthut—the human woman turned succubus—was a less certain bet. Hell's ambient will was chaotic; even a psychic brand wasn't foolproof. And the local lordship required a demon face.
So Thea installed Mecanthut as the official ruler, with Tuth and the Bone Guard Nebiros as her deputies. A legitimate demon lord backed by powerful subordinates and the former lord's residual authority created a three-way balance.
When Mecanthut learned that Thea and Raven were leaving and that the entire domain was hers to manage, the now-even-more-alluring succubus prostrated herself on the floor in total submission.
"Your strength is still too low." Thea appraised the she-demon. Too weak to hold the territory. If this corner of Hell was going to serve as a gateway city between the infernal plane and the outside world, Mecanthut needed a serious upgrade.
"Consider this a gift." The chaotic energy Hell had been feeding Thea was useless to her—but it poured into the succubus's body perfectly.
After half an hour of physical restructuring, Mecanthut emerged transformed, wearing a revealing crimson silk robe with studded leather accents. Smooth pale skin across her exposed back, enormous wings, and a long, sinuous demon tail completed the picture. She was, in every sense, a proper demon lord now.
Demon loyalty could never be taken for granted. Thea implanted a deep-rooted thread of fear into the innermost recesses of Mecanthut's psyche—enough to guarantee two or three years of reliable service. Then she took Raven by the hand, and under the watchful eyes of her assembled forces, stepped onto the teleportation array.
One stride forward.
When she looked up, she was in another world entirely.