“So… What do we do now?” Abigail asked after we’d all successfully gathered near the glowing wound in reality. “Just dive through it?”

“Oh heck no!” Liz replied. “You’d get torn apart!”

“Even as we are?” Lucy asked, no doubt referring to the dramatic changes she and Abigail had undergone. Particularly dramatic in Lucy’s case, seeing as she now had wings. Wings she was flappinging like a hummingbird, as if she were afraid of falling between beats. 

Did she not realize that our wings were merely part of keeping our magic activated and not physically keeping us aloft? I would have to talk to her about it later.

“Even as you are,” Liz confirmed in a serious tone. “That thing we’re looking at right now is a hole, not a tunnel. The only place it currently leads is ‘out of reality’ - it’s going to be up to me to extend that into a stable passageway… I should probably be able to do it by reclaiming the divine magic still burning at the edges of the tear.”

“That sounds… intense,” I remarked. “Are you sure you can do that from your prison cell?”

“Yup! Just jump in the hole and I’ll take care of the rest!”

“Just… What happened to it ‘ripping us apart?!’” Abigail demanded.

Lucy looked torn. “I… really want to believe Liz has a plan, but… that does sound sort of bad!”

“Of course I have a plan!” Liz promised. “I can use Devilla - and the spell I put on her - as an entry point into the world to reclaim that magic! She just needs to not be torn apart for, like, a fraction of a second!”

“That doesn’t sound too bad…” I remarked.

“Oh, it is,” Liz replied in a voice that seemed far too calm for the topic she was discussing. “I mean, you’re basically throwing yourself into pure nothingness that’ll try to erode your sense of self and scatter you in the void… but if you can hold on, for like, just a second I can get everything sorted!”

“Wasn’t it a fraction of a second just a second ago?!” Abigail demanded.

“There has to be another way,” Lucy added, giving me a worried look.

“Well, you could always hold onto her by the ankles,” Liz suggested. “She only needs to get most of her body into the hole for this to work, and that way you can pull her back if things don’t go right.”

“...Seriously?” I replied. “You’re saying that we can overcome the void of nothingness with just their hold upon my flesh?”

“In theory?” Liz replied. “I mean, mortals obviously couldn’t, but they aren’t mortals anymore. None of you are. They’re as strong as you, in case you’ve forgotten! Plus, I might have been exaggerating about the pull of nothingness just a little? It sounds dramatic, but I think it’s probably going to end up being more like a temporary psychotic episode than anything.”

“Because that’s reassuring,” Abigail muttered.

I shook my head, and sighed. “Nevertheless, it does seem to be our best…and honestly only route forward. If the two of you would be so kind?”

“Are you sure?” Lucy asked. “I mean, it feels really weird for me to speak out against Liz, considering who she is, but… she doesn’t seem all that put together so far…”

“That’s an understatement,” Abigail grumbled. “I wouldn’t even be sure you are the Goddess, if you hadn’t done that creepy ass thing with your voice.”

“Totally true and I don’t blame you for doubting me!” Liz agreed. “But trust me when I say I wouldn’t risk my future step-daughter if there was any other way. And I will get it right, too, don’t you worry about that!”

“If this is to be our one and only chance to end this I won’t waste it on fear. I can hold onto myself well enough - just by remembering who’s waiting for me.”

“...If you say so,” Abigail muttered, clearly against the idea. Nevertheless, she let herself drop a little before grabbing hold of my ankle.

“I know you can do it, Eena!” Lucy replied, smiling brightly. Her own descent was more cautious, almost nervous. Nevertheless, she managed to position herself properly and grab ahold of my other leg.

“Then let’s get this over with,” I said, trying to project as much determination - and as little fear - as possible as I flew forward towards the hole, taking the girls with me.

Up close, the wound in reality looked even worse than it had from far below. A gaping emptiness nestled inside a light so bright it would have blinded a mortal. A nothingness I had to willingly step into.

Taking a deep breath - and then rapidly releasing it, just in case the rules of outer space applied to the void - I closed my eyes and flew into the hole. Even with my eyes closed to the world, though, I could tell the moment I’d passed through it. Everything went still - or no, still required there be something there to be still. There was nothing here. No light or air, obviously, but also no space, no time, no anything.

Anything that is, except me. The one thing that didn’t belong. The one thing that shouldn’t be here. The one thing that had no right to exist within this place, where the very concept of being was anathema. It rejected me, tore at me, pulled - not at my flesh but at the holy spell that made up my existence, as if it were trying to unravel me, to reduce me down to the nothingness this space craved.

Only two things kept me sane - the two hands wrapped around my ankles. They weren’t holding me in place physically, though. No, they were simply keeping my mind from snapping, reminding me of a place where existence existed. A place part of me was still present in.

Though I’d admittedly thought the idea somewhat ridiculous when Liz had brought it up, I nevertheless found myself thankful for its grounding effect now… It kept me sane for half a second. Just a fraction of an instant, really. Just long enough for the Nothingness around me to violently seethe and suddenly there was something. A light. Warmth. A sense that almost bordered on familiarity - like I was being welcomed home. 

The light flared, bright enough that even I could see it through my closed eyelids and when I opened them again I was left blinking at what I saw.

A lamppost. A modern lamppost, sticking out of a proper sidewalk, with what looked to be a softly glowing bulb inside of it. Several of them lined the street at regular intervals, keeping the area nice and bright despite the time of night. The lights allowed me to see the houses. Two rows of identical houses on each side of the street.

Oh, there were minor differences, of course. One person had painted their door a slightly different shade of brown than the natural wood, for example. Another had a potted plant on their windowsill. It was like a suburb with a particularly strict HOA.

“Oh good! You landed in the residential section!”

Oh, how I wished I had a camera… the look on Devilla’s face when she realized that my angels lived in a normal - if somewhat creepy - suburb was just priceless! But also, seriously, what was with the same-yness? I knew Luci ran a tight ship, but… seriously?! I’d given my angels the capacity for self-expression, so I’d sort of expected them to use it!

“Why does this look like an Earth neighborhood?!” Devilla demanded.

“Why not?” I countered, grinning at the TV screen that currently showed her. Maybe after Luci was taken care of I could steal back the TV remote and rewind the footage to save her image? “Modern day suburbia is comfortable! You’ve got reclining chairs, big TVs, cars to take you all over the place…:”

“I’m pretty sure I can run faster than a car,” Devilla pointed out.

“I mean, yeah, but that’s not the point! It’s about getting to sit back and relax in your nice comfortable car while listening to the radio or whatever and enjoying your commute to work!”

“Can’t people just teleport?” Abigail asked. “Not that I have any idea what a car is, but if you can teleport that basically means no commute, right?”

“Well, yeah, if they wanna be spoilsports about it,” I grumbled back. “I did my best to make this place a realistic Earthen experience, you know? Though without the need for money - everything is free here!”

“You mean more than just housing and basic food?” Abigail asked, seeming surprised. “Luxuries, too?”

“Yup!” I confirmed. “Everything! Anything! …At least so long as it’s programmed into the divine systems. I’ve got something sorta like a replicator - or… uh… it makes whatever you need out of holy energy. It’s very cool. And convenient! And enables the whole ‘post-scarcity’ thing to make everything free! …Or, well, as free as it can be considering it does still take holy energy to run and create stuff. I uh… may have given everyone a pretty strict energy budget, but I promise it was going to go away once Solla got up and running!”

“Wait, do people in the tower get free housing and food?” Lucy asked. I guess she was more fixated on the mortal side of things than actual heaven, which… y’know… fair?

“Well, yeah,” Abigail replied, blinking at her. “I mean, it’s just basic rations for the food, usually whatever the tower’s grown in surplus, and housing has to be planned out pretty carefully since all the demons are in the tower together, but… Why am I even explaining this? Don’t humans do the same thing?”

“...Not really,” Lucy admitted, looking downwards. And no wonder! The girl had seen her share of poverty over time - though even the poor tried to put a brave face on things from what I’d seen during the few times I’d caught the activity on screen. They always thought the Heroine would be more worried about their souls than their stomachs, but I knew Lucy had a big enough heart to care about both.

“Well that sounds… bad,” Abigail replied a little lamely.

“As happy as I am to know my people are cared for,” Devilla interrupted, “I do think we should focus more on the fact that we’re in enemy territory right now?”

“Right!” Abigail replied a little too forcefully as she did her best to refocus before eyeing the area around them. “Wasn’t I supposed to be using some sort of spell to cover us?”

“Yep! I…uh… I was supposed to make that, wasn’t I?” I let out a nervous little laugh even as I went to work. Conjuring a holographic screen and keyboard in front of me, I started by going into my folders and searching for a spell I’d worked on in class. It was a pretty basic task - creating a spell that would put a dome of divine magic around us like a bubble. I just needed to copy that over and modify it for unholy magic… to begin with. I also needed to change its focus from defense to stealth, which involved having light curve around the bubble to make them invisible to the naked eye. Of course, that would leave them in total darkness too, but where the eyes failed (un)holy senses could take over and fill in the gaps!

...For Abigail, anyways. Lucy and my precious future step-daughter would be able to see their immediate surroundings well enough, but their holy senses wouldn’t be able to poke out of the bubble any better than the other angels could poke in. I mean, I could maybe code in a solution to that? Figure out a way to make the bubble one-way? But that would take more time, which we didn’t have.

“Abigail’s going to be the only one who can see out of the bubble,” I warned the others. “So she’s going to have to lead the way!”

“I don’t even know where I’m going, though!” Abigail protested.

“Don’t worry, I’ll lead the way to the door,” I promised. “You just need to lead the others!”

“What door?” Devilla asked.

“The door that leads to the divine realm, of course! Specifically to my home office. It’s in the work hub. Something like a five minute commute by car? Less if you run.”

“Right… Maybe we should have asked for a few more details before agreeing to this crazy plan?” Abigail suggested.

“Too late now!” I declared even as I added the final touches to the spell. Thankfully most of the code I needed already existed - the shield, obviously, but then there’d been that invisibility mutation from the cat thing that had spooked Devilla in the woods; made for great inspiration - honestly, I’d only needed to splice a few things together. “Now time to cast the spell!”

“You still haven’t told me the words, yet,” Abigail pointed out.

“That’s because I haven’t set the password yet… How about ‘Devilla is super cute and lovable?’”

“You can’t be serious?!” Devilla demanded, looking apoplectic as she actually began to glare at the air in front of her. Which was actually pretty damn close to the camera angle I had on her. “That’s… that doesn’t even sound like a spell! It has recognizable English words!”

“Well duh,” I replied, trying not to roll my eyes even if they couldn’t see me. Devilla had plenty of experience with noticing that sort of thing, thanks to Abigail. “It’s a password. I can set it to anything!”

“A password?!” Devilla demanded. “Are you saying that those mismatched syllables I’ve been working so hard to get just right aren’t even part of the damn spells?!”

“Well… No? I mostly just wanted really secure passwords…”

“Then the reason my spell behaved so differently with a singular shift in pronunciation?!” Devilla pressed. “The reason that petrification and depetrification are merely a letter apart?!”

“Well, it was hard enough to nudge you into pronouncing one syllable wrong,” I replied. “And who the heck wants to risk forgetting the depetrification spell right after they’ve gone and cast a petrification one? Making the passwords similar just makes sense!”

“Right, I’ve got no idea what’s going on,” Abigail interrupted, “but… Devilla is super cute and lovable?”

Instantly, the spell - which I’d of course entered into the system during my little tiff with Devilla - sprung into action, surrounding the girls with an orb of pure darkness. An instant later they disappeared from sight.

Including their image on my screen. 

“Uh… that isn’t good…” I muttered. “This… might be a little… or maybe a lot harder than I thought..."

~~~

Author's Notes

Everything felt a little... off when writing this one. I'm not sure why? I don't think the quality's bad, but... the mood wasn't quite there. I'm still struggling a little with it, to be honest - but I think part of it's just nerves from being this close to the end.

Many thanks to FallingLeaf for the editing as well as the title suggestion. And many thanks to all of you for reading!

Speaking of reading, did you know you could read ahead on Patreon for as little as $1? I've currently written up to chapter 89! They're admittedly unedited, but I'm getting back to work on Naughty Magic, too, and you'll get two chapters ahead on that as well if you join~! (Plus, you get permanent access to the discord, and that's where I post all my pictures of Autumn! The real reason to join, obviously. :P

...The link is actually available for free members too, though. Feel free to drop on by if you'd like!)