"By the way," Ashtoreth said. "Don't think that I've forgotten that you knew who that angel was."

She was lying on her cot inside the house in HQ. Dazel was flying around and inscribing runes on the walls that would function as simple alarm spells in case the humans came to kill her in her sleep.

"What?" said. "No."

"Yes, you did," Ashtoreth said. "You saw a level 300 made of question marks, one who looked human and was dressed like a creature from human mythology and you instantly assumed it was an angel."

"It was the question marks!" Dazel said. "Angels can hide themselves from the system."

Ashtoreth frowned. "I've never heard that before."

"Why would you? It shouldn't have been important."

"What's the point of an ability like that, though?" she said. "If everyone who sees it in use just immediately knows that the person in question is an angel, it's hardly hiding anything."

"I don't know," said Dazel. "It's the same as with the abyssal spawn of the Near Ones. You see a bunch of scrambled letters and you know it's one of them. Question marks mean angels."

"Or maybe they mean a bunch of things," Ashtoreth said. "And you just knew it was an angel because you knew that guy."

"I didn't know that guy," said Dazel. "I can't believe you find it easier to assume that I knew that guy than to believe me when I say that angels can hide their System tags."

Ashtoreth let out an exasperated sigh as she stared at the ceiling. "Can't you just trust me, Dazel? When you hide things from me, I have to assume that you're not telling me what I want to know because I really, really won't like it."

"I don't know anything else about the angels!" Dazel said. "Honest!"

Ashtoreth frowned. "You know that if I ever find someone else who can hide their tags like that, it'll be obvious you lied."

"Well I don't know what else to say," said Dazel. "Since nothing I can say will get you to trust me."

"I guess," she said, idly wrapping her tail around one wrist. "Look, we can't just go on with obvious secrets between us."

Dazel waited a moment before answering. "Yes we can?" he said dubiously. "We're both infernals."

Ashtoreth shook her head in regret. "How much of your silliness do I put up with just because you're cuddly?"

"Hopefully none," said Dazel. "The proper answer to that question is definitely zero silliness, boss."

"Yeah, hopefully," Ashtoreth said. Then she yawned.

"Look, boss, you seem pretty grumpy right now. How about we finish this conversation in the morning after you get up and get something to eat?"

"Nah," she said. "You sure you don't know what Heaven wants with Earth?"

"I'm sure."

"Mmm," Ashtoreth said, turning over and burying her head in her pillow. "Whatever it is, it might be the chance I need to kill my father."

A pause. "Uh. Sorry, but maybe you could run that by me again."

"Oh?" Ashtoreth said. "I thought it was bedtime, Dazel."

"Yeah, but then you went and said something like that."

"I dunno," she said, bundling up one her covers to hug to her chest. "It's pretty comfy. Maybe I'll just nod off."

"Ugh. You got me. Okay? You got me. Now do you maybe want to elaborate?"

"Sure, Dazel! If those archangels were working for Heaven, then Heaven wants something from Earth. And if Heaven wants something from Earth, that opens up a whole lot of plays. We just have to go after whatever it is they want."

"Uh… I'm not so sure that's such a good idea, boss."

"You hate all my good ideas," she said, waving a hand dismissively. "Whatever Heaven wants, they haven't just outright taken it already. And the fact that those Horsemen were level 300 implies that they can't. If we play our cards right, maybe we can influence them in the right direction."

"'The right direction' being…"

"The list of things that could potentially threaten my father is very, very short," said Ashtoreth. "But if the King of Hell has cause to fear anything, it's the Authority of Heaven."

"Okay, true," said Dazel. "But also, if we have cause to fear anything—and we do—it's also the Authority of Heaven. Maybe think of that."

"I'm just saying, we'll keep our eyes open for opportunities," she said. "Now, unfortunately, I didn't get to see Conquest and Death dying through the gigantic nova of hellfire, so I don't know if they leave hearts behind. But hopefully I can eat War or Famine's heart during the election to get some valuable intel."

"I thinks it's the same as with archfiends," said Dazel. "Unless they're anchored someplace like your sisters are, they'll make a corpse."

Ashtoreth frowned. "Well that doesn't bode well, then. Maybe we can think of a way to break the anchor before I kill them."

"It's definitely possible," said Dazel. "But at the same time…."

"What?"

"Look, boss. The humans have this thing where sometimes they say, 'no offense.'"

"—And then say something offensive," she said, peering at him.

"You're an extraordinary fighter, boss," said Dazel. "I don't ever get to just sit back and watch you work, and you're rarely actually challenged, but you're amazing—even when considering all the training you've had."

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"And my superior race," she said.

"Yeah, okay, uh… maybe lets unlearn that phrase now that we're on Earth."

"Eh," she said, shrugging. "You're worried about the Horsemen."

"There's no shame in struggling to beat an ancient archangel," said Dazel. "Especially not when you're a teenaged archfiend. But as it stands…."

He let the sentence trail off.

"Unfortunately, I know," she said. Then she sighed. "I've beaten a lot of really old immortals, you know. Even the masters back in Paradise. They're like… like dodderers fumbling at the door to find the right key. They shift between a half-dozen styles because they're so sure that their comprehensive knowledge has to contain the silver bullet that's going to take me out. But they don't have the ingenuity, the speed, the momentary flashes of creativity that make a fighter good."

"But these archangels aren't dodderers."

"No they are not," she said, groaning. "And I've gotta 1v1 two of them to take the Monarchy, unless the humans really do surprise us with a miracle fighter."

"Have to be some human, to overcome the stat disadvantage."

Ashtoreth sighed. "I've got some ideas," she said. "Pretty clever ones. But I'd rather cheat than be clever."

"Atta girl," said Dazel. "A true fiend."

She flashed him a smile. "Now can you think of any way we can outlevel those angels before the System triggers an election?"

"Nope!" Dazel said. "Not without killing all the humans that the world leaders levelled with the cores you brought—which I'm assuming you don't want to do."

"The Ashtoreth-Earth relations are at what I'm hoping will be their all-time low already," she said. "So no, we're not killing all the strongest humans. That'd probably wind up costing millions of human lives, in the end."

"Yeah, I figured," said Dazel. "So you'd better hope there's something good in the levels you can gain with the cores you saved, because that's all the power boost you're going to get for fighting the Horsemen."

"Is it, though?" she asked, tilting her head and smiling.

"Uh. Yes? That's a strange look you're giving me, boss."

Ashtoreth grinned. "Okay, look," she said. "Hear me out. I have a great idea"

"My first impressions are overwhelmingly negative."

"You haven't even heard it yet!"

"Boss, you prefaced with 'I have a great idea,'" he said. "That's not exactly inspiring."

"Look, just listen, okay? I know it sounds crazy, but—"

Dazel sighed dramatically as he drifted closer to the bed.

"You're not even listening to hear what the idea is!" she protested. "Come on, Dazel!"

"If you stop and think for a second," he said. "My entire existence has been nothing but me being dragged from one of your crazy ideas to the next ever since I met you."

"It's true! We have a lot of good times together. We're a fun team!"

"I hate you so much sometimes."

"I want to use our captured nexus bastion to assault the oncoming forces of Hell so that we can gain some levels before the election."

Dazel sat on the end of the bed, then buried his face in a paw.

It was a difficult expression to take seriously. "You look like you're posing for a meme photo right now," she said.

"This is why I wanted to destroy that bastion," he said.

"We'd have lost against the Horsemen if we did."

"We should have destroyed it after that fight," he said. "Ashtoreth, you could reconnect Hell's whole communications network. They could start reinforcing their dwindling invasion."

"Hear me out," she said. "We put the bastion back into its old position, right? The infernals on the other side can't come assault us yet because they're too high a level. Then we warp from the bastion to the next nexus down the line. Their levels will be as high, or higher, than ours."

"Wow, Ashtoreth," Dazel said flatly. "What a crazy plan. 'Let's fight an army of more than a million infernals who are a higher level than me.' You're so free-spirited and spontaneous."

"We wouldn't need to kill them all," she said. "Just… oh, a few thousand or more of them. And you know how the bosses like to make them line up in formation—they love standing on balconies and precipices while they look out over all the rows and columns of tens of thousands and lord over them. We'll probably warp in and get even more than one shot."

"So to be clear," Dazel said. "You want to warp into an enemy stronghold without your level advantage, do a quick scan of the surroundings to see if you can spot a mid-speech Saruman—"

"Or several Sarumen," she said.

"—whatever, and throw some hellfire to cause a chain-reaction that will kill everyone and get you a huge amount of cores."

"Uh-huh! Then I drop a novaheart in the sea of resulting hellfire, and either the enemies give us the time and space we need to leave… or they cluster around my giant bomb. We'll be in and out in no time—think of like a heist, but instead of stealing valuable objects, we steal the lives of tens of thousands of enemies."

"So… a massacre."

"A heistacre," Ashtoreth said, grinning.

"No. There's no heist. Your plan is exclusively mass-murder."

"The heist is in the element of surprise," she said, gesturing vaguely. "In the subtlety."

"Okay, Ashtoreth. I hate to tell you this, but I think you're operating under a misconception, here."

"That being?"

"You're not subtle. You're an archfiend of pride and you act like it, which is about as far from subtle as one can possibly be."

"Okay, sure, fair point maybe."

"Not maybe."

"—but," she said. "I am surprising."

"I didn't try to argue you weren't, and never will," said Dazel. "For example, I'm surprised you're crazy enough to propose such an insane operation right now."

"But you just said that your existence is—"

"—Yes, I know, nothing but being dragged through your craziness time after time. Take it as an indicator of just how crazy this idea is that it surprised me."

"Great!" she said. "I'm topping my record!"

"Not great," he said. "Ashtoreth, you're going to have to move the old nexus bastion back into its original position relative to the others."

"Uh-huh."

"Then you're going to have to jump deep into the midst of the rest of the approaching bastions, kill enough enemies to give you the edge you need to face War and Famine, and jump back out to the original bastion. The whole time you're working, the old nexus will be vulnerable to capture. Hell could re-establish contact with its invaders. Worse, they could cut you off from escaping their armada and then kill you."

She shrugged. "So? If we don't do something, I'm going to lose the election. Can you think of anything else?"

"Well… okay, hear me out—"

"We're not killing all the high-level humans."

"You didn't hear me out."

"Was that your plan, though?"

"...It would still have been nice of you to hear me out."

"Looks like we're going with my plan," she said. She swung her feet over the side of the cot and stood. "We'll tell the others in the morning, but for now I'll level up and we can go get the bastion moving."

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