“It’s been twenty minutes,” Kasita said, staring at Alyssa’s phone. “We’re almost to the point where we can leave, according to Irulon.”

“Let’s give it another ten, just to be safe.” As Alyssa spoke, she stared around their sphere, watching, trying to decipher exactly what the angels were doing off in that other world. The vast majority seemed to simply fly about, usually toward or away from the main tower. Every once in a while, two angels would stop and chat. Sometimes it looked entirely coincidental. As if they were two school buddies who just happened to stop at the same coffee shop at the same time. Others met with far more premeditation. Like the group inside the one room, they went to a specific spot and waited for other angels to show up.

There was an overwhelming amount of angels with only a single pair of wings. Members of the Third Sphere, Guardian Angels, Archangels, and Principalities. There were a few with four wings, but Alyssa could probably count the ones she had seen on one hand. Which made sense. Dominions would be off on their own worlds, running and managing things. Virtues apparently spent most of their time in some great archive near the Throne. Authorities… were probably the ones that Alyssa had seen. They were the repairmen of the angelic caste. And they had no relation to the Astral Authority.

Of those with six wings, the only ones that Alyssa had seen were the massive spinning wheels in the sky. Ophanim. Beings tied to the movement of reality itself. According to Tenebrael, when they moved, everything moved. If they ever stopped their languid rotation, everything would stop.

They were covered in eyes. Maybe it was Alyssa’s imagination, but it felt like a good chunk of those eyes were staring directly at her. Then again, that was probably just a coincidence. Each one of the Ophanim were supposedly the size of planets, and they were close enough to Alyssa’s points of view that it looked like something out of a science fiction movie more than how planets appeared from Earth’s perspective. With each one of them having perhaps millions of eyes, it was perfectly plausible that a number of them would have been facing in her direction no matter where she was.

Alyssa tried shifting side to side, but there wasn’t any obvious movement in the eyes. Whether that was because they weren’t staring at her or because there wasn’t enough room on the platform to get their eyes to shift wasn’t a question she could answer.

“Not worried about Irulon?”

“No. Whatever else is going on with her, I don’t think she is suicidal. She had a plan. A plan that you knew about but I got left out of, but a plan nonetheless. What was up with the violet flare, anyway?”

“Kill ‘em all.”

“Wasn’t that green?”

“That was the plan to kill ‘em all but we were taking care of the demon. Violet was the same but replace demon with the Justice.”

“And what was I doing during all this? How come I didn’t know—”

“I think you were holding your breath.”

“Oh… But that would have been before… Of course, who am I kidding. Irulon probably had all these plans ready to go before we even showed up, didn’t she?” Alyssa shook her head.

“She only got to yellow before you started holding her breath, but I gathered that there were several others.”

Alyssa almost asked what the other plans were before deciding that it probably didn’t matter. Both those plans were far more vague than the two plans they had come up with after Alyssa had joined in the planning session, so they were obviously vague prototypes that hadn’t been intended to be used. Probably.

“But anyway,” Alyssa said, “it isn’t Irulon I’m worried about. That Archangel has been gone for twenty minutes.”

“Worried she figured out that she could order the Astral Authority around and is now setting up an ambush while we’re trapped in here?”

“Well, I am now.” Alyssa eyed the sphere around her. No sign of any portals or feathers—aside from the feathers on the angels in the Expanse, of course. If she was setting up an ambush, it was taking a while. “I was worried that she just ran off even despite the executioner’s axe we’ve got over her head.”

“I’m sure it isn’t anything to worry about. Just trap her in those chains if she shows up. Annihilator the Astral Authority. I’ll hop over to the Expanse and start telling—”

Kasita froze solid again just as a flurry of feathers exploded into the sphere. She froze of her own volition, though. Alyssa had deactivated Accelero in order to monitor time accurately. With Accelero no longer active, the feathers fell with their usual speed. In an instant, Adrael flew between them and the wall, spreading her arms and wings wide as if to physically stop them from entering the Expanse.

“You promised,” Adrael said, voice barely above a whisper.

“I’m surprised you didn’t try to take our heads off with your shield.”

Adrael flinched, arms and wings both drooping. “Harming mortals is not something I take lightly.”

“You sure seemed to take it lightly back when you tried to kill my friends.”

“That was…” The Archangel clenched her fists. “You ruined hundreds of years of work and manipulation. In a single afternoon, everything I had been building up wound up demolished and shattered. I was not in a proper state of mind.”

“Is that the secret then? You just got so mad that you got to ignore your programming?” Tenebrael had been wondering about Adrael’s flouting of angelic rules. As far as Alyssa knew, she had yet to find out how Adrael managed to do so. Getting a little information couldn’t hurt, though she wasn’t sure about telling Tenebrael. First of all, telling Tenebrael that she would have to get really mad just sounded like a bad idea all around. Still, it was good to know for her own reasons. She might have to start being a bit nicer to Tenebrael in the future. Avoid touchy topics and the like.

Adrael nodded slowly. “I just… moved on my own. By the time I realized what had happened, you had just taken off my arm.”

“All I did was chain you up. You were the one who called your shield back to you and failed to catch it.”

“A miscalculation. As I said, I was rattled. I even thought you were an angel at the time. One like Tenebrael that had gone astray. After all, normal mortals can’t perceive angels.” Adrael’s eyes narrowed as she looked down at Alyssa. She wasn’t making any movements that might be considered hostile. Probably trying to avoid getting chained up again. Alyssa had her spell cards ready, but as long as she was getting information, she didn’t feel a need to change their precarious status quo. “It wasn’t until later that I realized just what you truly are.”

“And just what do you think I am?”

“An abomination. A failure in all the systems of the Plan. A dark secret, an aberration that has been kept suppressed for all time by the Throne. You are a being that the Seraphim were originally created to destroy.”

“The Seraphim were created to destroy me? I’m not even thirty. From Tenebrael’s talk, the Seraphim and the Throne have been around forever. Literally.”

“I’ve been doing research on you, Alyssa Meadows. It hasn’t been easy. The Virtues don’t respond well to questions involving you. It is tough. I have to find ways around it. But in doing so, I’ve discovered that you aren’t the first mortal who has been able to see divinity as easily as you might see a flower.”

It was a bit surprising that more people who could see angels was a surprise to Adrael. Tenebrael had mentioned someone else on Nod who had seen and conversed with her. Then again, maybe it wasn’t that surprising. If it was something innate to Alyssa that she had possessed for her entire life, only seeing an angel in the minutes before she was supposed to have died probably meant that lots of other people like her would never actually get the chance to use that ability. Tenebrael was extremely active on Nod, and possibly had been even more active whenever her other conversation partner had lived. So it made sense that she would have found one while other angels wouldn’t have.

Not wanting to interrupt Adrael while the angel was freely divulging information, Alyssa didn’t voice her thoughts, choosing to simply nod her head in a prompt for her to continue.

“I noticed something interesting. The first record of a Seraphim existing coincided with the first sealed record of something relating to you. The first mortal to have seen an angel? Or simply a coincidence?” Adrael shook her head. “My guess is on the former. But this has had other interesting and, in some cases, disturbing implications.” Adrael took her eyes off Alyssa. She turned slightly, drifting from one side of the sphere to the other only to turn back and drift over. Pacing, in a sense. “I had thought that Seraphim were the oldest among us. And that might still be true. But if the first Seraphim only came about after mortals began their existence, then they can’t possibly be older than other angels. In fact, they would be the youngest. And yet, no matter who I ask, no matter how old they might be, I can’t find a single angel who can remember a time before Seraphim were created.

“So what happened?” Adrael asked, staring at her upturned palm. “Were all angels from back then destroyed to make way for the new, current host of angels? If so, has such a thing happened before? How many times? If they weren’t destroyed—and there are some angels who do claim to be as old as the universe, quite convincingly, I might add—then what? Did they have their memories rewritten? The Throne would definitely have the power to rewrite every angel’s memories. Theoretically speaking, the Throne should even be able to rewrite reality to the point where Seraphim had always existed. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Or if it is the case, the records were left untouched.” Looking to her other hand, Adrael glared. “Or are the records wrong? If so, are the incorrect commits deliberate? A mistake?” Both her hands dropped to her sides as she stared around the sphere, looking into the Expanse from multiple angles. After a moment or two, she sighed, looking back to Alyssa. “Every time I think I’ve answered even one question, a hundred more present themselves. You are… beyond vexing.”

“Sorry,” Alyssa said with a casual shrug, not feeling sorry at all. “I’m just a normal person who has wound up caught up in all this nonsense thanks to Tenebrael.” Adrael scoffed—either at Alyssa calling herself a normal person or at the mention of Tenebrael’s name… or both—but didn’t interrupt. “I just have a question that might help you figure out some of those answers.”

“You have yet another question to add to my pile?”

“It’s something all you angels have been dancing around ever since I first started talking to you all. You all say ‘the Throne’ but you never mention the one who actually sat on the Throne. Who was it? What kind of person was it? Was it the kind of person who would rewrite memories? Falsify records? Or even destroy all the angels and start over from scratch?”

Adrael’s eyes flashed. For a moment, Alyssa feared that she had offended the angel. Spectral Chains were at the forefront of her mind, ready to contain Adrael at the first sign that anything had gone sour. But whatever anger had momentarily taken over Adrael dissipated. She sighed, looking away.

But she didn’t answer.

“You don’t know, do you?” Alyssa took a guess. Something about the way Adrael had been forthcoming about the history of the Seraphim and her theories on the subject only to freeze up at the mention of the Throne’s occupant made her think.

And it wasn’t just Adrael. Tenebrael, Iosefael, even Kenziel. All of them referred to the Throne. They never said a name or talked about an individual who directed the powers of the Throne. Alyssa hadn’t even heard the term ‘god’ which seemed highly applicable in this situation. There was no Zeus. No Buddha. No Jehovah. The Throne did this. The Throne wanted that. The Throne created everything.

An object, presumably inanimate and unthinking on its own, had risen to a state of ultimate apotheosis in the eyes of the angels. The Throne’s occupant didn’t factor into the equation in the slightest.

“The Throne is impossible to ignore,” Adrael said, staring off into the Endless Expanse. “You can’t avoid it. No matter where you look, it is there. You see it too, don’t you?”

“The large tower in every pane of glass?”

“Perhaps your senses aren’t as attuned as I thought,” she said with a ghost of a smile. “Even here on this truly cursed world, the Throne looms over us without needing these pale reflections of the Expanse.”

“Well sorry I’m not an angel.”

Adrael dismissed the notion with a shake of her head. “However, with as omnipresent as the Throne is, its occupant is… was not. I received my orders from the Throne. Only the Seraphim would get a direct conversation. Any direction, change in strategy or tactics, alteration to the plan, or other instructions that went out to the angelic host would come from the Seraphim, oftentimes not even directly from them either. They would tell a Virtue who would tell a Principality who would tell one of the elder Archangels who would finally pass down my mission to straighten out this world. In fact, since my creation, that was the only direct instruction I ever received from the Throne.”

“So you never once spoke with or otherwise meaningfully interacted with this… Deity. I assume you don’t know his name, so why don’t we call him that?”

“I don’t think gender applied at any point.”

“That’s really not relevant to my point, but okay. What about Tenebrael? Iosefael? Would either of them have interacted with Deity?”

“Doubtful. It would have been the same process. Throne to Seraphim to whoever to them.”

“So nobody at all would have any idea about a possible personality to Deity except maybe the Seraphim, who seem to have been intentionally created with no personality or even basic drive themselves and are currently completely nonresponsive.”

Adrael hummed, looking toward the panel that displayed the large tower most prominently. “They were created, at least in part, to act as a barrier between the Throne and the rest of the angelic host?”

“Don’t ask me. I don’t know anything about you angels and your organization. And I know even less about the Throne.” In fact, Alyssa could safely say that she had learned more about the Throne in the last five minutes than she had learned over the entire course of her interaction with other angels. Even that wasn’t that much. Mostly because it seemed as if angels didn’t have a good grasp on the Throne’s history or capability. Which might not be their fault. Not if the Throne had truly manipulated them, either by memory wipe or by remaking all the angels anew.

And the Throne manipulating them wasn’t even remotely far fetched. After all, as Tenebrael complained about, the higher up in the angelic hierarchy an angel got, the less free will they had. The more robotic they became. Tenebrael, through some deal with the demons, had managed to break at least part of that. It would be interesting to find another Dominion and compare them with Tenebrael, just to see how different Tenebrael truly was. But that wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon. It was just an interesting thought experiment.

“I think I have some more research to attend to,” Adrael said with a sigh. “More questions. Now about the Throne itself? If information about you is sealed away, I can only imagine how difficult it is going to be to dig up even minor details about… the Throne.”

Still referring to Deity as the Throne. Alyssa had to wonder if that was part of their programming.

“As for you,” Adrael’s eyes narrowed. “You keep yourself quarantined on this world. The Endless Expanse is not for mortals in general. They cannot survive the twisting and folding of reality there. But you… you would probably find a way to destroy everything. Shut all this down,” she said, waving around the sphere. “Just live out your life and then die like a good mortal. Maybe then I can go back to getting work done.”

Alyssa glanced over at the silent Kasita. She looked fine. Her arms were both there, at least. The twisting and folding of reality, as Adrael had put it, didn’t seem to have affected her. Which might have had something to do with her being more or less intangible. A dagger going through her head wouldn’t even be an inconvenience. Why would her arm folding in on itself be anything to worry over?

“What of the Astral Authority?” Alyssa asked, looking back to Adrael. “Did ordering them away work?”

“Didn’t find any,” Adrael said with a shrug.

“None?” Alyssa perked up. Had Tenebrael finally gotten around to kicking them off the world? If so, Alyssa and Irulon could have just sat tight for a short time.

“Not in the local area.”

“Oh. But elsewhere?”

“There were some on this world, but I interpreted your instructions as ordering away those that might have been near you.”

“I see.” So her efforts had not been useless after all. “No sign of the Cardinal Virtue of Justice?”

“None.”

Alyssa drummed her fingers against her leg, wishing one of the shards of glass showed outside the sphere instead of the Endless Expanse. Had the Justice disintegrated much faster than Alyssa had been expecting? Or maybe it was Irulon. “Were there any demons out there?”

“There was nothing out there. At all. Not unless I ventured as far as the local human city, but I suspect you aren’t asking about them.”

Tensing, Alyssa’s thoughts raced to Irulon, Fela, and the draken. Had they been caught up in whatever Irulon had done? But a thought occurred to her regarding the sphere she was in. “You checked in a place that was also surrounded by a dome like this one, right? Or did you go back to the rest of the world?”

Adrael looked around, not through the panels to the Expanse, but simply around the sphere. She had something of a sneer on her face as she did so. “You’ve borrowed a bit of Dominion Tenebrael’s power as a Dominion to create something of a partitioned world. If I didn’t know it existed from when the relic breached the barrier between here and the Endless Expanse, I wouldn’t have known that it existed at all. Frankly, I am surprised such a thing is possible.”

Alyssa let out a small sigh. That meant that the Justice could still be out there. It also meant that Irulon was likely still out there. Even if Adrael had simply gone one level up and found nothing, Irulon would be in another sliver of reality. It was odd that the Astral Authority wouldn’t be out in the forest, but if they had managed to hunt down all the infected in the area out there, there probably wasn’t much reason for them to stick around.

More of an interesting note… Adrael hadn’t found the bubble one level up. Alyssa filed that bit of information away as being potentially useful if she ever did have to fight angels. For the time being, however…

“Why don’t you stick around for a moment longer. It should be safe to collapse this spell. If the Astral Authority are still around, you can try to wave them away. And if you do so, I’ll make sure that no one runs off and informs the rest of the angels about your little… incident with your staff.”

“Which I still want back.”

“I said we would talk about that after you got rid of the Astral Authority. If they left on their own, you didn’t technically get rid of them, did you?”

Adrael narrowed her eyes, glaring at Alyssa for a moment before putting on a small smirk. “So you’re saying that I should go find some of the Astral Authority, bring them here, let them harass you for a bit, then send them away so that we can talk?”

Alyssa glared back at the angel. Even if Fractal Lock worked, she would still have to recast it every twelve hours. If she slipped up even once, Adrael would escape. Would she actually risk coming back with the Astral Authority, potentially risking recapture? Possibly. She wouldn’t actually need to come herself if she could order around the Justice.

It was too much of a risk for Alyssa to keep up the rules lawyering. “We’ll just play it by ear, how about? Let’s get out of here first and then we can talk.”