After leaving Natasha’s city, I contacted Arkady and explained the situation; he congratulated me on my escape, however involuntary, and plotted various experiments that might be facilitated by my position on the other side of the portal, but had no particular suggestions for how I might return. The difference in timescale was annoying; Arkady took days, from my frame of reference, to reply to simple questions that ought to require but a moment’s thought. I helped with the research for some time, but eventually, frustrated at the slowness of their progress and the intractability of the problem, I gave up trying to solve travel between planes, reasoning that if I annoyed the tyrant enough I could get the same effect.

Instead, I studied the Earth in greater detail. The physics implemented in its creation, I knew quite well, but its implications were vast and fascinating; I could easily while away centuries uncovering new aspects of the humans’ world. When I felt more practically inclined, I worked on circumventing the prison plane’s flaming torture. It was much easier to think of creative solutions when the problem was not quite so immediate; I came up with several workarounds that might be feasible, sending the ideas to Arkady for testing. Some of them had already been tried, and failed. His team ran into security blocks against most of the rest. A few worked, but the energy expenditure involved was prohibitively large. Even this qualified success was encouraging, though: through careful optimization of one of these or some other system, we might eventually make a tolerable home out of our plane of exile.

About two centuries after the tower’s completion, I returned to the desert. Babylon’s tower still stood and had become the center of a growing city by the side of the river; Nimrod and Natasha’s tribe had grown into a relatively powerful nation, ruled by a king according to laws inscribed in stone. Like the rest of scattered humanity, the Babylonians had invented their own gods to explain aspects of nature they could not yet scientifically understand. When I inquired after a deity whose followers worshipped no other gods and claimed him as Creator of heavens, earth, and angels to enforce his will, I was directed west.

West of Babylon, in the desert countryside dotted with herding settlements and small towns, an angel followed a barely-visible track eastward through hills and low mountains. I ran to intercept him; stopping startled in his tracks, he drew a flaming sword and pointed it at me.

“Relax, Michael. I mean no harm.”

“Why are you here, Lucifer?” Michael sounded annoyed, but put away the sword.

“I was summoned to Earth and have not yet found a way back. Why are you?”

“There are two cities Gabriel and I were sent to… investigate.”

“Investigate how?”

“Go there. Judge their evil. Destroy them if it is sufficient.”

Direct quotes all, if I was any judge. “How was ‘sufficient’ defined?”

“Per Abraham’s demand, if ten righteous men are found within Sodom’s boundaries, the city shall be spared.”

I processed that. “Who is Abraham?”

“Abraham is our illustrious Creator’s new favorite human. A covenant was made and witnessed… he will have a son, and his multitudinous descendants will rule these lands.”

“All right… so you are searching for ten honorable people in Sodom. What about the other city?”

Michael spread his hands in apology for matters beyond his control. “Abraham did not demand any exceptions for Gomorrah. Presumably because his nephew does not live there. It will, as a result, be destroyed regardless of most anything Gabriel finds.”

“That is ruthless and unjust.”

“I have my orders, Lucifer. Would you have me disregard them?”

“Do you want to?”

“My preferences are immaterial.”

I sighed. “I’m going to come with you. Are you going to try to stop me?”

Michael considered it. “No. But don’t interfere.”

I agreed to his condition, and we walked in silence the rest of the way to the city’s gates, as I wondered exactly what pressure kept Michael loyal to the tyrant but left him unable to directly argue against me. I had never entirely understood the way he thought—which was strange, since we had been friends from before time was well-defined. At times he seemed reformist in principle, and I was never sure how much of what he said was irony or word-for-word quotation of sentiments unfelt. But no principle had ever kept him from obeying orders to the letter.

Dusk was falling as we entered the city. A worried man jumped up from where he sat, just outside the city walls, to greet us obsequiously. “My name is Lot, and I am your servant,” he announced, pressing his face into the dirt in front of Michael’s feet.

Abraham’s nephew, Michael explained silently. Likely the beneficiary of some inside information.

I stepped forward, pulled the man to his feet, and brushed some of the dust out of his hair. “My name is Lucifer. I would prefer to call you a friend.”

He looked a touch confused, but did not seem to recognize the name. The fall of Nimrod’s civilization had its advantages, I supposed.

“I am Michael,” Michael completed the introductions. “We would like to visit this city.”

“Ah… certainly,” Lot agreed, slightly panicked. “How about you… stay at my house? You can rest there tonight, wash the dust off your feet, have some nice food, and leave early tomorrow morning. Sound good?”

Michael sighed. “I think not. As comfortable as your hospitality sounds, we need to see the city, not one man’s home. We will camp in the town square for the night.”

“I—please, sir, that’s really not a good idea. You would be far more comfortable as guests in my home. I beg that you accept my offer. Tour the city tomorrow, if you must… in daylight.”

We may as well accept, I pointed out to Michael. He and his household will count toward your ten, yes?

Michael nodded in reply to both of us, economically. “Thank you for the invitation, Lot. Will you show us to your home?”

Looking noticeably relieved, Lot led the way through the city’s twisting streets. His house was only a few blocks from the city gates, and we met no one on the way. Once we were inside the house, Lot shut the door and lowered a heavy wooden bar across it.

“Expecting an assault?” I queried.

Lot returned an uncommunicative strained grin. “Um… would you like some food? I have salted meat, bread, and some fresh apricots from an orchard near the city.”

“There is no need to go to any trouble on our account,” Michael declined. “We don’t need food.”

Disappointed, Lot said, “I’m sorry… I offer you food as a sign of hospitality…”

“The apricots sound very tasty,” I accepted diplomatically. “We’ll have to decline the meat. Is the bread made with salt?”

“Just a little.”

“Might be all right, then, depending on to what extent it’s ionized… I should have worked out the chemical reactions in the food your people have invented. I think I started to, a few decades ago, but stopped after I noticed the single-celled fungus… biochemistry is rather complex.”

Lot looked understandably confused, but waded through the technical language and uncovered the general sense that salt was bad. “Ok. I can make you some bread without salt. Would that be good?”

“I thought it took rather a long time to make bread,” Michael pointed out.

“I’ll make it unleavened,” Lot replied. “Takes a lot less time that way, and it’s still tasty.” We followed him to the kitchen, where he handed us each an apricot and began getting out flour, water, and some nuts.

The apricots were delicious. Soft, sweet, and just high enough in water content to dissolve easily without squirting juice everywhere, they reinforced my awe at the power of biological systems. If I could not manage to return to Lilith and my compatriots, I would settle for spending the next few years studying the chemical mechanisms that produced apricots’ tastiness. Hopefully, though, the chance to become an expert on apricots would not arise.

As Lot pounded flour and water into something resembling dough, a woman of about his age wandered through the kitchen, looking for something. “Lot, have you seen the—never mind, I’ll find it later,” she cut herself off, seeing us. “I take it we have company. Hi, I’m Kali, Lot’s wife. Since Lot is apparently busy making bread, want to go talk with me in the other room? Can I get you two some wine? The local vineyard is very good. The same people run it as grow the apricots,” she nodded to the apricot pits we had left on the table.

Nodding our agreement to everything, we followed Kali back to the room at the house’s entrance, a comfortable sitting room with low chairs arranged in a circle. She poured three glasses of wine, diluted them with water, and offered them to us; after we had taken two, she quickly took a sip of the third. All in accordance with slightly paranoid custom… I looked uneasily at the firmly barred door. Kali smiled brightly and asked, “So, what brings you to Sodom?”

“We are travelers… Lot kindly offered us a place in his home to stay the night,” Michael equivocated.

I glanced over at him, startled. That is probably the most misleadingly incomplete half-truth I have ever heard from you.

Do you want to know why they defend their home like a fortress, or merely what they think the armed and dangerous angels want to hear?

He had an unexpectedly subtle point. “Kali, what is troubling this town?” I asked. “We could not help but notice your fear—of your neighbors?—though you try to hide it before visitors. Perhaps we can help in some way.”

“I don’t see how you could,” Kali said, sighing. “We are lucky to have thick walls and a door difficult to break down. Lot’s herds keep us prosperous, so we have enough coin to hire guards when we need to walk through the darker streets. I’ve lived here all my life, and I’ve come to accept that perfect safety is unattainable. The men of Sodom will not change their ways.”

On that ominous but somewhat uninformative note, Lot walked into the room, carrying a plate of fried round, flat pieces of bread with nuts. Setting it down in the center of the circle, he took another of the chairs and poured himself some watered wine. His bread tasted like a hasty creation, missing something—I saw why the humans seemed to put salt in everything; I expected it would fill these gaps in flavor—but was nevertheless quite good.

Lot steered the conversation toward unexceptionable topics like his herding business and the agricultural ventures of the people he traded with. The flour and nuts of our bread, like the apricots and wine, were the products of farmers outside Sodom’s boundaries. Lot traded with these farmers directly, avoiding Sodom’s marketplace whenever possible. Ignoring Michael’s indirect questions, he did not explain why.

An hour or two after nightfall, when we had been talking for some time and Lot and Kali were about ready to go to sleep, a thunderous pounding shook the doorframe. Indistinct shouting reached us through the stronghold’s walls. Lot ran to the door, raised the bar and stepped quickly through, pulling it shut behind him and letting the bar fall. Michael and I followed to listen at the door and open it if Lot needed us to.

Slits in the wall at either side of the door let us watch the scene. Lot stood on his doorstep, arms folded; two hundred men, by a rough count, stood packed into the surrounding street. How big is this city? I asked Michael.

These are all the men who live here, he replied. Without exception… save for Lot and his two sons-in-law.

“What do you want?” Lot demanded of the crowd, steel in his voice. I had the impression he was not new to such confrontations.

A man standing near the door called out, “We saw the men who came to stay with you tonight.”

“Yeah!” the mob echoed.

“Where are they?”

“We want them…”

“Get them out here!”

“Now! Now! NOW! NOW!...” All the men took up the chant, stamping their feet in time with the monosyllabic demand. The wine glasses on the floor shook.

They want us? Odd… I commented to Michael as I watched the crowd. They shook their fists and shouted, but did not appear armed or immediately hostile… they weren’t trying to storm the house. Yet.

It’s not every day that an angel and a demon walk through the streets of Sodom, I suppose.

Right. Your wings are kind of a novelty, I joked.

What happened to yours? Michael sounded concerned. That, I had not expected.

They burned away. It happened to all of us. Oddly selective fire… burns wings, but not hair or clothing; inflicts continual pain without significant damage. I can’t fly any longer save by projectile motion. Or I suppose I could summon lift. But it would not be the same as pushing the air away, feeling it rush under the wings’ surface…

Lot broke through the mob’s chant and my nostalgia with harsh words… probably for the best in both cases. “This is evil. Don’t do this. Look… I have two daughters. You have seen them. They have gone to the market on occasion, in daylight, under guard. They are betrothed to good men I have found for them, but are not yet married—have never known a man’s touch.” Kali, listening closely from her chair, let out a soft gasp and ran to a different part of the house, anticipating her husband’s next words. Confronting the mob, he sighed. “I will call them outside, now. You may use them however you wish. But the men who walked through the streets with me are guests in my household: under my protection. You will not touch them.”

There is absolutely no possibility of our allowing this, I preemptively informed Michael.

You would give yourself up to be raped, rather than allowing two arbitrary humans to suffer the same fate? Michael sounded intrigued by the hypothetical dilemma.

I shrugged. I cannot say what I would do in such a situation, but the question does not arise. The two of us against an arbitrarily large number of unarmed, untrained humans?

Point, Heaven’s military commander replied, the flaming sword strapped to his side beginning to glow with golden light that, while not particularly tactically effective, looked very shiny.

The humans outside began to close in on Lot and the door he defended.

“Out of the way, self-righteous foreigner!”

“How dare you judge us?”

“We’ll show you.”

“When we’re done you’ll wish you let us through!”

“We’d not have hurt the pretty boy with the wings. Much. You, now…”

With a glance that conveyed enough meaning to make telepathy unnecessary, Michael raised the bar of Lot’s door, which opened inward… the hinges on the inside. He pulled it open just enough for me to reach through, grab our host, and pull him inside. Michael slammed the door shut again, crushing the fingers of a few of the enemy who had attempted to seize the opportunity to enter Lot’s fortress.

Breathing hard, sitting against the doorframe, Lot advised, “They’ll get a ram and try to break it down. Words will not stop them now.”

“Lightning might be a more effective deterrent,” I proposed.

“Or fire,” Michael agreed, drawing his sword.

“Wait,” Lot protested. “I know they are evil… but these are my neighbors. Do you have to kill them? Can’t you just… make them blind, or something?”

“Is that likely to work?” Michael sounded dubious.

I shrugged. “Might as well try it.” Humans’ eyes transmitted visual information to their brains as electrical signals along a pair of thick nerve cords. These were easy enough to disrupt by breaking the chemical bonds between the atoms within them, creating a high-entropy mixture of light gases. Following this procedure, Michael and I blinded the mob. They… did not adapt well to the loss of their vision.

“I can’t see!”

“Where’s the blasted door?!”

“Ow! That’s my leg! Let go!”

“Damn you all, fucking idiots!”

Michael sighed, whispered, “I can do that…”

Disregarding the chaos outside, I moved to stand in front of him. Ten. Remember.

Lot is one. His sons-in-law I have not met but am willing to assume ethical. That is three. The city falls short by seven.

I raised my eyebrows in disbelief. What of Kali? The daughters? The rest of the women and children in this city? We have encountered only the men.

Abraham’s language is ambiguous, Michael explained. When speaking of groups of mixed gender, the plural of the masculine word is used. The Creator interprets Abraham’s exception—that the city be spared if ten righteous “men” can be found therein—as narrowly as possible. Thus, only adult males can affect the count.

Underhanded, Michael.

He spread his hands, refusing to take responsibility for what he was about to do. My orders are clear.

You will kill them all, then?

I expected another evasion, or a flat refusal to admit his orders could be wrong. But a spark lit in Michael’s orange-gold eyes, matching the fiery gleam of his sword. …No. No, I will not. He jumped up and turned to Lot. “Gather your family and any possessions you can easily carry, and leave this place. We are about to destroy the city, for the Lord recognizes its evil and will not permit its continued existence. You and your family alone will be spared.” I… have that prerogative, he added silently.

Lot nodded, and ran off, calling, “I’ll go tell my sons-in-law.”

During either the battle—if so it could be called—or the rapid-fire telepathy, Kali had entered the sitting room, along with two tired, scared girls in their late teens: her daughters. “Thank you for warning us,” the mother said quietly, “but what of our friends? Not everyone chooses to live in Sodom. Many are born here, with no real means of escape. I have cousins… there are women with small children who live nearby…”

Michael sighed. “I cannot lead a mass exodus of the city. My saving a single family of righteous servants of the Lord, who gave the hospitality and protection of their home to his messengers, will be overlooked. Perhaps even praised. But these others… the most you can say of them is that they mean no harm.”

“Is that not enough to justify leaving them alive?” I demanded.

Michael shot me a glare. Quiet. I remembered my promise of non-interference, and fell silent.

After a few minutes of awkward tension, Lot ran back into the room. “They won’t listen,” he reported breathlessly. “They think it’s some sort of idiotic joke. ‘Blast you for getting us out of bed at this hour of night, Lot.’ Would you come help me convince them? Just standing in the room, looking all golden and dangerous, ought to be sufficient.”

“If they refuse to listen,” Michael said, staring at the flames of his sword, “then let them die with the rest.”

I stayed silent. With difficulty.

Startled, Lot studied Michael’s face, trying to read his emotions. I could have warned him that he would learn nothing. Eventually, the human gave up, saying nothing in protest. Kali had waited for her husband to complete his analysis; now, glancing at him for some cue, she joined in his silent resignation. But the older daughter, irritated by her parents’ complacency, spoke up.

“Rokam is going to be my husband in a year or two. I like him—he’s a nice guy. He and Timor have lived with us since we were all little kids. We’ve learned and played together for as long as I can remember. If he’s never heard of an angel except as part of Great-Uncle Abram’s—sorry, Abraham’s, because having an h in your name makes you so much closer to God—random one-man religion, how is that his fault?”

“A righteous son must follow his father’s orders, no matter his personal thoughts.” That sounded like a direct quote from the tyrant, though I could never be sure.

“By your logic, all the men in Sodom whose fathers still live are perfectly justified in everything they do. Whatever. Dad, I’m going to go talk to the guys.”

“No. You are not. They have had their chance.” Michael did not move, though he still had the sword in his hand; he managed to look threatening anyway.

Michael. Why exactly are you being so inflexible on this point?

Why should I not? Would you have me save everyone? Not all things are possible, Lucifer. It is past time you learned that.

Fine. Not all things are possible. But this is not even particularly hard.

Michael declined to acknowledge that. In the following silence, Kali suggested, “Why don’t we all go to sleep. Perhaps we’ll understand each other better in the morning.”

I doubted her strategy would work particularly well, but was not inclined to dispute the matter. As the humans walked off to sleep, Michael and I claimed places in the sitting room as far apart as possible. I had given my word I would not interfere with his actions here. I knew he must follow some sort of logic, but found it completely incomprehensible—and negotiation is impossible without common ground. Thus, though I hated to allow the purposeless murder and damnation of the completely innocent large fraction of Sodom’s population, I could see no alternative. I sat frustrated in the dark, tracing equations in pinpoint flames on the ground to pass the time. Since the entire city would be a husk of smoke and ash by this time tomorrow, I saw little harm in a few charred integral signs marring Lot’s wooden floors.

When the first light of daybreak edged its way into the room through the narrow window slits, Michael abruptly stood up and went to Lot’s and Kali’s room. Summoning a barrage of photons from the empty air behind him, he pushed open the door and hovered, wings spread, several centimeters above the floor of the hallway, backlit with brilliant, piercing light. “Lot. Wake up quickly. Take Kali and your daughters and leave this place now, or this city’s iniquity will bring you to destruction.”

Why the intimidation, Michael?

Expediency. Michael slammed the door by pressurizing the air behind it, turned, and woke the girls, who shared a room across the hall from their parents, by similar means. I watched from the shadows as he bombarded the children with light and threats, then left them to their own devices. In approximately the time it would take Michael’s light to travel a fifth of the distance from the earth to the sun, all four humans were standing, tense and wary, wearing arbitrarily chosen clothes, together in the hallway. Expediency, indeed.

Lot’s elder daughter trembled with the others, but masked her fear with defiance. “I take it you didn’t wake up the guys. I’ll go get them.” She ran off down the hallway, straight into a wall of force of Michael’s making; it threw her backward as she intersected it, and she barely managed to catch herself with her hands as she hit the floor. “Um. Ow.”

I winced in sympathy at the impact; it looked painful, especially since the girl had no way of gradually decelerating with heightened air resistance. “You could have told her you were about to do that.”

Michael, still playing the angel of terror, refused to dignify my words with a response.

Lot cautiously pointed out, “The boys will be down for breakfast soon. Perhaps the obliteration of the city could wait an hour or so.”

“We do not have time for this,” Michael sighed. Lucifer, help me teleport these people outside the city gates. The rain of fire is scheduled for full daylight.

Certainly. Teleport?

It’s mostly physics. You don’t…? Ah. Yes. We worked through certain implications of the quantum principles, after… Diagrams and equations poured through my mind, describing a method of moving between two points in space without traversing the intervening distance. Very logical, albeit complicated. Arkady would be impressed.

You have my thanks, Michael. Perhaps he had not thought beyond the immediate implications of our collaboration… but he risked much in teaching subtle points of sorcery to a once-and-future enemy. I took Kali’s left hand and her elder daughter’s right, and brought them out of Sodom in a clap of displaced air.

Lot, Michael, and the younger girl quickly followed. “Run for your life,” the archangel cautioned, releasing their hands. “Do not look back. Do not linger in the valley. Reach the safety of the mountains as quickly as you can, or you will die by fire.”

The nearest mountain is kilometers away, I objected. If you want them there, why not simply teleport them the rest of the distance?

Lot appeared to be thinking along similar lines. “No… please. Great ones… I admire your mercy in preserving my family from destruction.”

“(Some of it, anyway),” the older girl interjected quietly.

“But I’m not a young man anymore. I can’t be sure of reaching the mountains before evil and death overtake me... Look. Just a little way down the road, there’s a small town. Very small. Barely more than a settlement where a few of the farmers I trade with have grouped their homes together. Might we not go there, to be safe?”

“Fine,” Michael agreed with some reluctance. “Once more I honor your request: as you ask, the little town shall be spared. Go there quickly… I would prefer not to have to stall for too long.”

With that, he launched himself into the air, flying to a vantage point in the gathering clouds high above the valley. The humans ran as fast as they could away from their condemned home, carrying nothing but the clothes they wore, grasping each other’s hands to be certain no one was left behind. I stood alone on the road between the departing angel and the fleeing mortals, considering… then teleported into the clouds just as Lot’s family collapsed inside the boundaries of the little town and the sun broke away from the horizon.

The tyrant, perched completely illogically atop a delicate frond of water condensed on scattered particles of dust, stared down through a gap in the clouds at the valley below, Michael and Gabriel hovering at his back. Swirling blades of flame streamed with seamless grace from his hands to the cities that had so offended him, engulfing Sodom and Gommorah like a horde of ravenous, screaming birds of prey, and the fertile valley swiftly blackened into a sulfurous wasteland under the anger of his gaze—the little town remaining scrupulously untouched. At my appearance, the Creator paused in his destruction. “I might have suspected you were somehow involved in this.”

“I do not normally destroy entire cities for the crimes of an incomplete subset of their inhabitants.”

“This place will be an example to all who would defy me.”

“You seem to be steadily accumulating those.”

Examples? Or people who would defy him?

Exasperated, I replied to Michael, Both.

The supreme ruler of heavens and earth grinned in maddened delight. “So long as wickedness remains a taint upon this world, there cannot be a surfeit of examples of its consequences.” The fires covering the valley leapt and danced with ever-greater enthusiasm for the chaos they wrought, turning the skies ochre with smoke and reflected light.

In the little town below, the family began to recover from the sprint; they stood up, stretched, spoke quietly to one another. Detached and conflicted, mourning for the city of her birth and the friends whose screams were audible even from the clouds where we watched, Kali slowly turned around, saying a final farewell to her past. She watched in solemn silence as the preternatural flames destroyed wood, brick, and stone with all-consuming hunger.

“They were told not to look back,” the tyrant stated, evolving some plan I knew I would not like.

“…Yes,” Michael confirmed slowly. “I did relay that message.”

“You destroy the only home she has ever known, slaughter her blood family without justice or mercy, and expect her not to watch?”

“I demand obedience!” the celestial despot shouted, his eyes glinting with reflected firelight as he turned to glare at me. “I realize that you fail to comprehend the value of it. But these pathetic mortals can at least serve me better than you, Satan.”

That was not a name I had heard before.

“In Abraham’s language, it means ‘accuser’… or ‘wanderer,’” Gabriel clarified, seeing my confusion.

“I have wandered every continent of this planet, lived in three worlds, spoken with and given aid to humans with more different languages than there will be bricks left intact in this valley when you are finished with it. I accuse you of violating the free will of those you have created, of consolidating power through terrorism and violent reprisals, of mass murder and debilitating torture. I accept the name.”

The tyrant raised an eyebrow. “Impressive speech. Your childish defiance continues unabated, I see. I really do not care; soon enough you will be back where you belong.”

Thank you, I managed not to say.

“This woman, in contrast, cannot be permitted to disobey.”

“Leave her alone!” It was stupid. I realized that even as I said it. But… even if I could never succeed in changing my enemy’s mind, I had to at least try, or else sink into an eternity of hopeless depression. I have never enjoyed hopeless depression.

“…And how, exactly, do you intend to enforce that demand?”

Need everything be decided by force? Yes, in his mind, I answered myself. “If you kill her and cast her into the flames, I will shield her as best I can. If you harm her but leave her alive, I will repair the damage as best I can manage…”

“Then I shall ensure that you can manage very little.”

In a few tumultuous instants, Kali’s feet turned to white, translucent crystal, softly diffusing the orange-gold light of the fire. The transformation spread with the speed of a crashing wave upward from the soles of her sandals; flesh, bone, blood, and clothing merged into a solid glassy pillar retaining the suggestion of her shape. Panicking, she did not have time to draw breath to scream before her arms were petrified, her eyes, still staring at the burning city, forever blinded, her flowing hair made brittle and static. She was beautiful—a creature of ice, perhaps, or quartz; a sculpture of reflected fire, appearing to burn from within—but utterly frozen.

Catching a glimpse of his wife’s destruction, Lot cried out in fear and tackled his daughters, putting one hand across the eyes of each.

“Salt,” I realized with sudden certainty. “Of all the exploitative stunts—is she trapped there? Immortal and powerless, standing in false safety and mute grief for all time?” Kali had not been killed—merely transformed. Her soul would be trapped in the salt statue until someone with fewer metaphysical constraints than I condescended to change her back. Or perhaps until the pillar of salt was destroyed… but that would likely destroy her as well. Overwhelmed with indignation at his disproportionate retaliation, I could not think of anything further to say to the Creator of us all. I turned to Michael instead. I have no part in this. Can you say as much? What are you doing, soaring among the clouds, following orders you cannot possibly believe ethical…

The sky turned slowly to dark stone, the flames of the valley to a deep and expansive lake of fire far stronger and more familiar, and I fell several meters through the orange-gold plasma atmosphere. Wait and see flashed briefly through my mind before I blinked the sulfur out of my eyes, braced myself against ever-present burning agony, and went to find friends I had some hope of understanding.