“Wait,” I said. “You’re saying… I was only chosen to become the Heroine… to hurt Eena’s mom by killing Eena?”

“That is likely correct,” Doll confirmed. “At the very least, I find it hard to believe you were chosen by coincidence.”

Her voice was flat. Emotionless. Like she didn’t care that she’d just ripped the rug out from under me. Not that it was her fault or anything, but… I just… I didn’t… 

“Lucy,” Eena said, turning to look right at me. I could hear the concern in her voice just from how she said my name. “Whatever the reasons behind you being chosen, whatever the reason for this war, it doesn't change who you are. It doesn’t change what you’ve accomplished - the good you’ve done with your title, the help you’ve given to others, and the work you have started with me-”

“I know!” I interrupted. Which was really rude, but I just couldn’t help myself. I didn’t want to hear her listing my accomplishments... “I know I… I’ve done a lot of good! I’ve helped a lot of people! Or at least I want to think so? But… this whole time I thought I was special. I thought it was fine to do things my way, because I had the Goddess backing me… I was so sure that I was right, and the church was wrong… that you were wrong… But… What if I’m the one that’s wrong? How do I know if what I’m doing is right or not? I’ve preached to all those people, told everyone that the goddess wanted them to be good, but… how do I know if I was ever right to begin with?!”

“You don’t.” Eena’s voice was soft, but warm. Suddenly, her arms were wrapped around me - awkward, but gentle, a classic Eena hug. This time, though, I didn’t have armor getting in the way. This time I could feel her warmth as she hugged me. I guess she could tell how desperately I needed it. 

“You follow your heart,” she continued, speaking softly into my ear. “Nobody ever really knows for sure whether what we’re doing is right or not, Lucy. We just… follow our hearts and hope that the people around us will correct us if we’re in the wrong.”

“I… I never… I mean…” I bit my lip, not sure what I even wanted to say. “You’re right. I know you’re right! But… I… I don’t…”

“But nothing!” Abigail chimed in. “You’re doing good, alright? From everything you and Devilla have told me, anyways. I mean, you’re trying to end a genocidal war! You don’t need a goddess to tell you that that’s the right thing to do, do you?!”

“N-no,” I whispered. I didn’t. Even if the war had been going on for thousands of years… and I couldn’t rely on the Goddess to tell me my heart was right, anymore… I still knew that this much death and destruction was wrong!

“What was that?” Abigail asked. “I can’t hear you! Maybe you think demons actually do deserve to be wiped out or something?”

“N-no! I don’t need the Goddess to tell me I’m right! I’m doing something good! I’m helping people! I’m… I’m doing what feels right in my heart!”

“Then what’s there to worry about?!” Abigail demanded. “You’re the Heroine, aren’t you? The first real Heroine, so far as I’m concerned. Who the fuck cares if it started off as some petty idiot’s revenge plot when you’ve got the power to turn it back on her and tell her to shove it up her ass?”

I couldn’t help but smile a little, but it didn’t last long. “But… If… if things had gone according to her original plan, I’d…” I bit my lip as tears welled up in my eyes. I didn’t want to even think about it, let alone say it, but… “I-I would have killed Eena… I… I would have felt good about it. Proud.”

“But you didn’t,” Eena said, squeezing me even tighter. Tight enough that it even hurt a little, but I didn’t ask her to loosen her grip. “Her plan has been derailed and now you’re on our side as a proper Heroine of love and justice.”

“...I don’t think love has much to do with my job, Eena!”

“It made you laugh, though, did it not?” she pointed out. 

She was right, too! I… I was smiling! Despite everything, I was smiling!

“Besides,” she continued, “it’s not like love has nothing to do with it. Considering we’re partners in justice, as well as love, are we not?”

“Partners?” I asked, a little confused.

Eena nodded. Not that I could really see it, with us pressed so tight together, but I could feel her head move! “We’re on a quest for peace together, are we not? The Heroine and her partner, here to bring love and justice to the world!”

I giggled. I couldn’t help it. Something about Eena talking about love and justice in such a serious tone really tickled my funny bone! Or maybe I was just feeling a little hysterical after everything we’d been told?

“That’s right,” I said. It didn’t matter if it was legitimately humor, or just a weird reaction on my end! Because the truth was the truth, either way! So I wrapped my arms tight around Eena, and said, “We’re partners! To the end!”

“I guess it’s good to know dirty jokes and talking about love are good ways to cheer you up,” Abigail cut in from the side, “but we have more pressing concerns to worry about. Not to ruin the warm and fuzzy feelings going around, but… why isn’t this the end? Aren’t we sort of openly discussing our plans to ruin Luci’s? The super powerful evil one in the sky, I mean.”

Doll nodded. “Indeed. By all reasonable assumptions, Luci should have noticed that something was amiss long ago and acted upon it. While she can’t force the Rite upon you, I would have expected her to make some form of move by now. Yet she hasn’t… Which has led me to believe she cannot.”

“What do you mean she cannot?’” Eena asked, giving me another gentle squeeze before parting with me. “She is the leader of the angels, is she not? Who would dare to stop her, let alone be able to?”

“The Goddess.”

Silence for a moment, then all at once, 

“What do you mean ‘the Goddess’?” 

“Didn’t you say she was gone?!”

“I thought you said she left before all this even started?”

Doll nodded, but otherwise stayed silent, waiting for us to calm before speaking again. “The Goddess’s journey was never meant to be a long one, from my understanding. In fact, I am fairly certain that Luci has manipulated the timestream of this plane to speed things along during her absence. Whatever manipulations of time may have occurred, however, it was never more than a matter of time before she returned.”

“Then why isn’t she helping us?!” Eena demanded. “Why hasn’t she descended and fixed her mistakes?”

“Perhaps she does not care,” Doll replied. “Perhaps she views mortal troubles as insignificant. Or perhaps she intends for us to fix our problems ourselves, regardless of their divine origin. I lack the necessary information to give anything beyond idle speculation. However, I do believe she is the only one powerful enough to keep Luci from interfering.”

“Then… we still have a chance of fixing things?” I asked, hopeful. “We can still bring an end to the war?”

“With your position and Devilla’s there is certainly the possibility,” Doll confirmed. “So long as direct divine interference remains at bay, at least. You should still remain wary, however. Luci, whatever her manifold flaws, was appointed as head of the angels for a reason and as part of that appointment she was given access to divine magic - a step above holy. Although she can only wield it in limited capacity, it would nevertheless be enough to make capturing you both a trivial task at minimum. Much as the fail-safe she left within me was meant to do.”

“Fail-safe?” I asked, worried.

“As in… something that could go off at any moment, or…?” Abigail asked, edging a bit away from Doll.

“It won’t go off,” Eena said with a frown. “It lacks the power to do so. you channeled it all into the tower, correct?”

“All the holy magic, yes,” Doll confirmed. “However, the fail-safe was fueled with a small cache of divine magic, which is still there. Fortunately, as it’s triggered by holy magic it is by and large inert unless Luci manually triggers it from heaven. Even then, you would only be trapped for a limited duration, perhaps a few decades, before your release.”

“A ‘few decades,’” Eena muttered dryly. “Wonderful.”

“I’m not going to get wrapped up in all this, am I?” Abigail asked. “Because I don’t know about those two, but I’m not sure I could survive in magic captivity for a couple decades.”

“You are an anomaly,” Doll said, looking at Abigail with renewed interest. “An outside party who should never have been brought in on things. Worse - a potential threat, should you ever gain access to a significant amount of unholy magic.”

“Don’t talk like Abigail about that!” Eena snapped.

“Yeah!” I said, throwing in my own glare. “She’s a really wonderful girl who totally deserves to be here!”

“...Thanks?” Abigail replied. “I think. Kinda missing how I could be a threat, though.”

“You are descended from true demons,” Doll said. “Beings of negative-aligned energy. Although your kind have been largely stripped of your dependence upon it and placed within mostly-mortal shells, you still retain the ability to store unholy magic. Specifically, you absorb trace amounts of it when feeding upon someone’s lust. However, as you lack the ability to properly utilize it for anything but your own survival, your presence here represents only a minimal threat.”

“...Thanks,” Abigail repeated. I could tell she was definitely being sarcastic this time, though! I’m pretty sure she was rolling her eyes!

“Regardless,” Doll said, “my role as a fail-safe shall soon be moot. As soon as I remove my hand from this console I will cease to function and collapse.”

“You’ll die?!” I asked with horror. Sure, Doll had told me a whole bunch of things I really didn’t want to hear, without even trying to be nice about it, but… she was still a person! She didn’t deserve to die!

“Your concern for me is touching, but misplaced,” Doll said, looking between me and Eena with a hard to read expression. “You two really are strange - her caring about a mother she’s never met and you caring about an artificial construct you barely know, who’s done nothing but upset you and upend your sense of self. I have been in operation for over two thousand years, you realize? During that time, I have watched dozens of Demon Queens come and go. I have shared countless letters from mothers to their daughters, begging for forgiveness from children who will have to suffer as they did. And I did nothing to stop it. I only act now because I fail to foresee a better chance ever coming. 

“My only regret is that I leave without teaching you more, Devilla… though it has not escaped my notice that you already know more than I would have expected. I’m quite curious as to how you know what video games and computers are.”

“That’s…!” Eena swallowed before shaking her head. “I suppose there’s no point in denying it. When the Rite failed, I apparently cast some other spell instead - one that awoke the memories of my past life as a… human from Earth.”

I grabbed Eena’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze. I’d heard the way she hesitated before saying human, and while I wasn’t sure what that was about I still wanted her to know that I was here for her!

She smiled in return, so I guess my message got across?

“A human from Earth,” Doll said pensively. For the first time her expression changed, her eyes widening. “A soul shifting between worlds should not be possible under normal circumstances… though the fact that a secondary spell was cast supports my hypothesis that the Goddess is present in Solla again. She is the only one who’d be capable of creating a new spell to do what you’ve spoken of, and the only one capable of setting new spell passwords. As such, she may have created the spell you claim to have cast.”

“Spell passwords?” I asked. “Do you mean the holy words?”

“Indeed,” Doll nodded. 

“I thought they were supposed to be a language…” Eena muttered. 

I was pretty shocked, but compared to everything else I’d learned today… Well, it didn’t seem to matter all that much!

“Regardless,” Doll said, refocusing her eyes on Eena, “I should make one thing clear. As a former human, you may think that you are still the same as a mortal. You may believe that your soul remains unchanged. Strike the thought from your head. When a mortal soul is used to make a new angel, the body converts the soul to fit its needs. You are an angel, Devilla. An immortal entity in the truest sense, meant to last far past the end of this or any other universe. Beware your mortal entanglements, for they shall wither and die while you endure.”

“Thanks for the information,” Eena said, squeezing my hand even as she narrowed her eyes at Doll, “but right now I’d rather talk about your existence than mine.”

“If you seek to punish me for my previous abandonment of you, then I’m afraid I will have to disappoint you. As I have stated on multiple occasions now, the moment I remove my hand from this device I shall cease to function.”

“Unless I recharge you, right?” Eena asked. “I’m assuming there’s a way to do so, yes?”

Doll actually paused for a moment before speaking. “...To do so would put you at risk. The fail-safes within me have not been removed, only depowered. I was able to work around them because your ‘Rite’ was seemingly designed to trigger the same visual cues as the Rite of Insight, fooling the fail-safes, and because I avoided direct confirmation of the truth. Now that I know it, however…”

“You’ll be stuck coming after me?” Eena asked. “Is that what you mean to say?”

“...Indeed.”

“Then teach me how to remove the fail-safes.”

“What?” Doll asked, her eyes widening much more noticeably than before. “That is… No! Why would you do that?”

“To make sure you can face the punishment you deserve,” Eena declared with a smile. Not a smirk! Even though her words sort of sounded like they’d fit one… I was pretty sure she was just being ominous for no reason again! She could honestly be a bit of a drama queen. “You abandoned me, as you said. You’ve stood by as dozens of Demon Princesses were marched first to their enslavement and eventually their doom, doing nothing for two thousand years. And now you intend to bow out of it without seeing it through to the end? To go quietly into the night, never to be heard from again? No. You are going to bear witness to what happens next. You are going to watch as I prove that you were wrong to abandon me when you did. That I wasn’t as far beyond saving as you, and everyone else, thought. You are going to live.”

“...Is that an order from my Queen?” Doll asked. Her voice was as flat as ever, but somehow I thought I could hear a trace of hope in her words anyways.

“It is,” Eena declared.

“Then I guess we’d better begin.”

~~~

Author's Notes

You know, I've gone over these reveals many times in my head, and yet I've never once been entirely sure how Lucy would take them... better than I feared, I guess!

The rest of the chapter also went a bit different than expected. I mean, I only had vague plans to begin with, but it was a lot more condensed in my head... Kinda hard to make a mass of exposition fun to read like that, though, so... I'm just going to go with whatever works!

Many thanks to FallingLeaf for the editing! And many apologies to my readers for the recent slowness, and the lateness of this chapter... I didn't even get the final draft edited for Patrons until today, I fear - and I'm still working on chapter 74, besides. Depression hasn't been this bad in years... I'm getting through it, though! And I have an appointment with my health care provider already lined up... for the end of the month.... Ha.... (I'll do my best.)