I had always considered Overlord meetings a particularly effective demonstration of the fact that immortality did not necessarily make people more patient, more intelligent, or more tolerable.
Whenever several individuals powerful enough to each control a portion of Pentagram City were gathered around the same table, important matters inevitably became tangled with personal interests, old grudges, and endless contests to determine who possessed the largest territory, the greatest number of souls, or the best reason to despise their neighbor.
That was why I rarely attended.
I had nothing against the principle itself.
Maintaining at least some communication between the city’s major powers was perfectly reasonable.
I had simply discovered long ago that personally attending every meeting was unnecessary if all I wanted was to know what had been discussed.
Important information always circulated eventually, and anything that didn’t rarely deserved several hours of my time.
This time was different.
I watched Pentagram City pass beyond the car window as our driver made his way through surprisingly dense traffic.
The streets were as loud, filthy, and saturated with glowing signs as ever, but since the announcement that the Extermination had been moved forward, something had changed beneath their usual agitation.
Gun shops were advertising more aggressively.
The prices of certain goods had risen.
The groups controlling the streets seemed more nervous and, above all, far more attentive to their neighbors’ movements.
Six months.
Adam had probably announced it to Charlie with all the delicacy that idiot was capable of, then returned to Heaven without giving another thought to what his decision would cause down here.
Hell, meanwhile, had immediately begun adapting.
Badly.
As always.
I was sitting in the back with my lieutenant, who was silently reviewing the latest information we had received before our departure.
I had chosen a perfectly understated dark uniform for the occasion, accompanied by my cap and usual sidearm.
The latter rested in its holster against my hip, its angelic steel maintained as carefully as every weapon I had commissioned from Carmilla over the years.
I obviously had no intention of using it during a meeting.
But I had never considered normally, no one should try to kill me here a sufficient reason to walk around unarmed.
My lieutenant finally folded the document he had been reading.
“Nothing new concerning the convoys.
Since the incident, the main routes have remained quiet, and none of the groups under surveillance have shown any sign of preparing an attack against us.”
“At least that whole affair was useful for something.”
I turned my attention back to the street.
An enormous VoxTek advertisement covered the entire front of a building, displaying a smiling Vox large enough to be seen from several blocks away.
“I’m almost starting to feel grateful toward Katie Killjoy.
Since her report, half the idiots likely to cause us trouble seem to have decided to find a less explosive target.”
The lieutenant tilted his head slightly, his permanent grin filled with sharp teeth making it impossible to tell whether he actually shared my amusement.
“She also credited you with destroying three districts.”
“I said almost grateful.”
The vehicle slowed at an intersection before continuing on its way.
I let a few seconds pass, then turned my head slightly toward him.
“How long has it been since I personally attended one of these meetings?”
He thought about it before giving me an estimate that made me raise an eyebrow.
“Really?”
He confirmed it.
Damn.
Time had a particularly unpleasant way of becoming abstract when you stopped aging.
“I suppose some of them are going to believe my famous explosive return now includes a political reappearance.”
“It’s possible.”
“If anyone uses those words in front of me, I’m holding Katie personally responsible.”
The lieutenant slipped the document into his coat before straightening slightly.
“You could still have declined the invitation.”
It wasn’t criticism, merely an observation.
He knew my habits well enough to understand that it was precisely what I would have done under ordinary circumstances.
I crossed my legs and watched a group of demons arguing outside a barricaded store for a few seconds.
“The Extermination has just been moved forward by six months, prices are beginning to shift, several territories are becoming nervous, and a group perfectly aware of our reputation still decided that the situation was favorable enough to attack one of our convoys.
Individually, none of those things would have forced me to waste an afternoon around a table.
Together, they’re beginning to resemble a trend I’d rather not observe from several miles away.”
My lieutenant slowly nodded.
“And if the meeting teaches us nothing?”
I sighed as Carmilla’s building appeared farther down the street.
“Then I’ll have confirmed why I almost never attend.”
The soldier stopped the vehicle in front of the entrance a few minutes later.
My lieutenant got out with me and followed me inside, remaining slightly behind as we made our way through the corridors.
We passed several of Carmilla’s employees as well as a few guards, some of whom already knew my lieutenant from our previous transactions.
I knew this place well.
Carmilla was one of the few people in Pentagram City with whom I had maintained a commercial relationship long enough that we no longer needed to negotiate every detail of an order.
She possessed something that practically everyone in Hell desired sooner or later: angelic steel, and the skill required to turn it into something more useful than a simple piece of metal scavenged after an Extermination.
My sidearm was one example.
The blade carried by my lieutenant was another.
We reached the large doors leading into the meeting room.
My lieutenant stopped there because, as agreed, he would not be entering.
I turned toward him while absently adjusting one of my gloves.
“With any luck, this won’t take all day.”
His head tilted slightly.
“You expressed the same hope before your last meeting.”
I stood still.
He had no eyes.
And yet I was absolutely certain that bastard was looking at me with amusement.
“You know, I’m beginning to understand why some commanders prefer subordinates without personalities.”
“I can try making fewer remarks, Commander.”
“No.
Now that you’ve started, I want to see how far this experiment deteriorates.”
He politely inclined his head.
“I’ll remain here.”
“I had guessed.”
I pushed open the doors.
The meeting had not yet begun, but several Overlords were already seated.
The conversations did not stop when I entered, which frankly would have concerned me deeply if they had.
I was neither Lucifer nor some deity descending among them.
I was simply another power in Pentagram City, even if my usual absence from these gatherings attracted a few additional looks.
One of them lingered long enough to recognize my uniform.
Another whispered something to his neighbor.
I continued without caring.
Then a voice called from behind me.
“Well, well.
Looks like the famous explosive return continues.”
I stopped and closed my eyes for a second.
Fucking Katie.
I turned my head slightly toward the responsible Overlord, who wore a smile far too pleased with his own joke.
“I wasn’t gone.”
“That’s not what 666 News said.”
“If you use 666 News as your primary source of information, I suddenly understand several of your business decisions much better.”
A few laughs rose around the table.
I continued on my way before it could become a conversation.
Carmilla was already near her seat.
Her gaze briefly settled on me, and she gave me a nod that I returned.
“Tanya.
It has been quite some time since you took a seat at this table.”
“Usually, I prefer receiving the summary after everyone has finished insulting each other.
It’s much faster.”
A very faint trace of amusement crossed her face.
“And yet you confirmed your attendance quickly this time.”
I placed one hand on the back of my chair without immediately sitting.
“The circumstances are different.
Six months instead of a year is enough to make certain discussions more interesting, especially when the city is already reacting.
I preferred to hear what everyone had to say directly rather than receive fifteen contradictory versions tomorrow morning.”
Carmilla nodded.
“A reasonable decision.”
“I hope I can still say that an hour from now.”
I finally sat down.
An immense arachnid figure was seated nearby, wrapped in that ancient presence that made Zestial one of the few demons capable of making a room slightly quieter simply by standing in it.
We had known each other for a long time.
Not well enough to call it friendship, but more than enough to have stopped sizing each other up decades ago like two animals liable to fight over the same piece of territory.
Zestial turned his attention toward me.
“Long indeed hath it been since this assembly was graced by thy presence.
Strange must the winds blow, to draw thee thus from thy domain.”
I took a second to mentally translate the sentence.
After all these years, I had gotten better at it.
I still refused to consider it normal that a conversation with him sometimes required the same interpretive skills as an ancient manuscript.
“The winds started attacking my convoys.
So I decided to find out where they were coming from.”
A low chuckle escaped him.
“Ever art thou swift to seek the hand that moveth events rather than curse the events themselves.”
“Cursing a problem rarely solves it.”
“A wise thought.”
I settled more comfortably into my chair.
At least he hadn’t mentioned the news report.
The meeting began shortly afterward.
Carmilla wasted little time before addressing the main reason for our presence despite Alastor’s return: the Extermination, and especially its new deadline.
The reactions were exactly as varied as I had expected.
Some worried about their territories.
Others discussed commercial disruptions, population movements, and the risks created by thousands of sinners already searching for places to hide.
A few seemed primarily concerned with the opportunities that six months of panic might provide.
I participated when the discussion directly concerned my interests, particularly the commercial routes connecting Pentagram City to the outer territories, but otherwise I let the others speak.
I had come for information.
Not to hear my own voice.
And during the first few minutes, I unfortunately began to think I could have stayed home.
Then the doors opened.
I turned my head.
Velvette had just entered.
Late, naturally.
She walked in with the confidence of someone who clearly regarded an appointment time as more of a suggestion intended for other people than a personal obligation.
Her phone occupied almost as much of her attention as the Overlords gathered around the table.
Carmilla stopped speaking and watched her approach.
“Finally.
I assume Vox and Valentino will not be honoring us with their presence?”
Velvette barely looked up from her phone before replying with all the delicacy one could expect from her.
According to her, the other two Vees had far more important shit to do than waste their time here, and she was more than capable of representing their interests on her own.
I didn’t react.
I had never had much interaction with Velvette.
She was intelligent, ambitious, perfectly aware of the influence wielded by the Vees, and possessed that particular ability to turn every sentence into a provocation even when no provocation was necessary.
That wasn’t a fatal flaw in Hell.
Just exhausting.
Carmilla attempted to bring the discussion back to the subject of the meeting.
Velvette let her speak for a few moments.
Then her smile changed.
“Yeah, all that’s very interesting, but maybe you’re wasting your time talking about how to hide.”
She finally put her phone away.
“Because we found something after the last Extermination.”
Several gazes turned toward her.
Mine included.
Velvette approached the table with obvious satisfaction, then produced what she had brought.
Something rolled across the wood.
At first, I thought it was a mask.
Then the object stopped.
A head.
A pale head marked by the immediately recognizable features of an Exorcist.
For several seconds, I didn’t move.
The conversations around the table died almost completely.
My gaze remained fixed on the head.
I knew the Exorcists.
Everyone in Hell knew them.
I had seen their weapons, studied their methods, observed the aftermath of their visits, and adapted part of my domain’s infrastructure around the threat they represented.
I had spent decades considering their existence a fundamental fact of this place.
You could escape them.
You could protect yourself long enough for them to leave.
You could recover the weapons they abandoned behind them.
But you did not kill them.
That was precisely why angelic steel possessed such value in Hell: the wounds it inflicted upon demons were not temporary.
Yet despite all the weapons forged from that material and all the conflicts that had torn Pentagram City apart for decades, no one had ever produced proof that a sinner could turn that same mortality against the Exorcists themselves.
And now, one of them had her head lying only a few feet from my hand.
Well.
That finally justified the trip.
I leaned forward slightly without touching the corpse.
The visible injuries were limited by what Velvette had brought back, and a head alone obviously made it impossible to reconstruct the circumstances of death.
Even so, I instinctively searched for anything unusual—a mark, a burn, any clue that might provide an immediate explanation.
Nothing obvious.
Velvette, however, clearly had no need for any further explanation.
To her, the reasoning was simple: an angel was dead, therefore angels could be killed; if they could be killed, Hell could stop enduring the Exterminations and start paying them back in kind.
I perfectly understood the appeal of the idea.
Every year, Heaven sent an army into Pride to slaughter as many sinners as possible before calmly returning home.
If that army could truly bleed and die, I had no moral objection to someone brutally explaining to them that their annual visits were no longer free of consequences.
Morality wasn’t the problem.
The almost complete lack of information was.
Zestial quickly expressed his own reservations.
His tone remained calm, but his reasoning was obvious: one dead Exorcist was not enough to justify a war against a power whose true extent remained unknown.
Velvette received that caution with the expected contempt.
I let her speak until she began presenting inaction as simple cowardice.
That was when I intervened.
I leaned slightly against the back of my chair, my eyes never completely leaving the head.
“I have no problem with the idea of giving Heaven back what it sends us every year, Velvette.
If there really is a reliable way to kill Exorcists, I’ll even be among the first people interested in finding out how to exploit it.
But for now, all you’ve placed in front of us proves is that one Exorcist can die.
We don’t know who killed her, how she was killed, and most importantly whether the circumstances can be reproduced.
Declaring a war before answering those questions wouldn’t be courageous.
It would simply mean wasting forces on an assumption.”
Velvette turned her head toward me.
Her gaze briefly dropped to my uniform before returning to my face.
“That’s funny coming from the Devil of War.
Thought you liked blowing shit up.”
I suppressed a sigh.
Even here.
Thanks, Katie.
“I mostly like the things I blow up to die afterward.
That is precisely the information we’re missing.”
A few smiles appeared around the table.
Velvette gave a small laugh, not genuinely offended.
If anything, she seemed to enjoy being challenged as long as it gave her an excuse to keep pushing.
“You’re all the same.
Always need ten reports, twenty meetings, and a fucking authorization before you get off your asses.
Meanwhile, they come down here every year and slaughter us because they know we won’t do shit.”
I didn’t answer immediately.
Because on that particular point, she wasn’t entirely wrong.
If we discovered that Exorcists could be killed in a reproducible way, the equation would change completely.
And when that happened, I had no intention of hiding behind the eternal caution of certain Overlords.
Caution existed to prepare action, not to avoid it indefinitely.
Zestial spoke again, and Velvette’s attention gradually shifted away from me.
What followed deteriorated rather quickly.
Velvette began openly provoking the older Overlords, Zestial responded with his usual calm, and Carmilla attempted to maintain some semblance of order.
Then they started singing.
I blinked.
Fucking hell, not again.
After all these years in Hell, I should have been used to it.
I still wasn’t.
I gradually tuned out the musical argument and returned my attention to the head lying on the table.
Velvette and Carmilla’s voices continued around me, accompanied by that music appearing from absolutely nowhere that no one else seemed to find strange.
Seriously.
I did not understand this world.
An argument in a bar?
Song.
A declaration of ambition?
Song.
An existential crisis?
Probably a fucking song.
And now a political meeting gathering some of the most dangerous creatures in Pentagram City had also transformed into a musical number.
I had visited several worlds throughout my existences and faced enough absurdities to considerably expand my definition of what was possible, but Hell’s obsession with songs remained one of those things my mind stubbornly refused to adapt to.
So I let the others enjoy the performance and continued thinking.
The Exorcist was dead.
That information, at least, was undeniable.
The question was why.
An internal failure seemed unlikely, particularly considering the decapitation.
Another angel was possible, but that immediately raised the question of why a fight between Exorcists would have happened in the middle of an Extermination.
A demonic attack remained the most interesting hypothesis, precisely because it should have been impossible according to everything we knew.
I slowly rotated one of my rings around my finger.
Someone knew something.
They had to.
A corpse did not decapitate itself.
I finally looked back toward the confrontation.
And this time, I watched Carmilla.
I had known her long enough to know that she usually controlled her expression extremely well, particularly in a room filled with rivals.
Yet Velvette seemed to have found a subject that provoked something far more personal in her than simple irritation at her insolence.
It wasn’t proof.
Barely even a detail.
But I had learned long ago not to ignore details simply because they did not yet come with an explanation.
Velvette noticed it too.
That became obvious when she started pressing harder, directing her provocations toward Carmilla herself and the way she was reacting to the angel’s death.
I looked at Carmilla.
Then Velvette.
Then the head.
Interesting.
Carmilla might know something.
That didn’t mean she had killed the Exorcist.
She could know the identity of whoever had, discovered something about the corpse before Velvette arrived, or simply possess information she considered too dangerous to share with a room full of Overlords.
I probably would have done exactly the same thing in her position.
The confrontation continued for a while longer before Carmilla, apparently having reached the end of her patience, abruptly ended the meeting.
That prompted a few complaints, but no one seemed genuinely willing to prolong the situation.
Chairs began sliding backward.
Conversations immediately resumed among smaller groups.
I remained seated for a few additional seconds.
My gaze dropped toward the head one final time.
I had spent part of the afternoon listening to problems I already knew about.
Then Velvette had placed something on the table that could completely alter the way Hell viewed the Extermination.
I stood.
Carmilla was already supervising the removal of what remained of the Exorcist.
I passed near her on my way toward the exit and slowed just enough for her to understand that I was addressing her.
“If you learn exactly what killed her, I want the information.
I’ll pay if necessary.”
Her gaze met mine for a second.
“You and many others.”
I adjusted my glove.
“Probably.”
I continued walking.
That was enough.
If Carmilla wanted to speak to me, she knew where to find me.
And if she didn’t, standing in front of her for ten minutes asking questions she clearly had no intention of answering would only confirm that I had become suspicious.
The doors closed behind me.
My lieutenant was waiting exactly where I had left him.
He pushed away from the wall he had been leaning against and immediately came to meet me.
He didn’t ask anything during the first few seconds, simply walking beside me as we headed back toward the exit.
Only once we had turned the corner at the end of the corridor did he speak.
“Was the meeting useful?”
“Far more than expected.
Velvette brought the severed head of an Exorcist found after the last Extermination.
No one gave a credible explanation for how she died, but the simple fact that she did shatters a certainty Hell has operated under for centuries.
As soon as we return, I want the archives on the Exterminations opened, and I want our contacts to recover everything that exists regarding the last one: testimonies, photographs, videos, recovery reports, locations where the heaviest fighting occurred, anything that might help us determine where that Exorcist fell and what happened around her.”
My lieutenant slowed slightly.
That was his only visible reaction.
“A dead Exorcist…”
“Decapitated.
And intact enough that there was no doubt about what we saw.”
We reached the outer doors.
The soldier serving as our driver spotted us and immediately headed toward the car.
My lieutenant placed a hand near the pommel of his blade, almost unconsciously.
The blade Carmilla had made.
Angelic steel.
My gaze lingered on it for a fraction of a second.
Then on the holster containing my own pistol.
Same material.
I knew the properties of angelic steel against demons.
Everyone did.
A sufficiently severe wound inflicted with that material could accomplish what ordinary weapons could not.
Permanent death.
But moving from that knowledge to the conclusion that the same metal could kill an Exorcist would have been far too easy.
And, more importantly, far too dangerous.
Angelic weapons had existed in Hell for a long time.
If the answer had always been that simple, why had no one ever managed to prove it before?
Maybe because no one had tried properly.
Maybe because someone had, and hadn’t survived to tell the story.
Or maybe the steel had absolutely nothing to do with what we had just seen.
I refused to choose an answer simply because it was convenient.
We climbed into the vehicle.
Once the door closed, I removed my cap and settled against the seat.
The driver pulled away while my lieutenant was already taking out a small notebook to prepare the orders that would be transmitted as soon as we returned.
I watched Pentagram City recede beyond the window.
“Don’t limit the search to this year,” I added after a few moments.
“I also want the archives from previous Exterminations.
As far back as our records go.
If there’s another unusual case, even a simple rumor someone dismissed as impossible at the time, I want to see it.”
The lieutenant wrote down the instruction.
“That represents several decades of documents.”
“Then start with the most recent years and work backward.
I’m not looking for one specific report.
I’m looking for an anomaly we had no reason to consider important until today.”
He closed his notebook.
“And if we discover how she died?”
I turned my head slightly toward him.
The question deserved more than an automatic answer.
I had no particular desire to declare war on Heaven.
War was not an objective in itself, and only fools confused a willingness to fight with a permanent desire to do so.
But I wasn’t afraid of it either.
For centuries, Heaven had enjoyed an advantage so absolute that Hell had eventually come to regard it as a natural law.
The Exorcists descended, slaughtered sinners, and left with the certainty that no one could truly strike back.
If that certainty was false, I wanted to know.
And if I could exploit that weakness, I would.
“Then we’ll verify whether the method can be reproduced,” I finally replied, watching the city lights slide across the window.
“And if it can, we’ll adapt our weapons, our soldiers, and our plans accordingly.
What we do afterward will depend as much on Heaven as it does on us, but I refuse to let the Dominion remain incapable of fighting back simply because everyone has spent centuries accepting that it was impossible.”
The lieutenant inclined his head.
“Understood.”
I turned my gaze back outside.
A few hours earlier, I had entered that meeting expecting to discuss trade routes, territories, and the economic consequences of an accelerated Extermination.
I was leaving with something far more interesting.
For decades, the Exorcists had been a constant.
A threat that could be anticipated, avoided, and integrated into any strategy, but never truly eliminated.
Even I had eventually accepted that limitation because every piece of available information led to the same conclusion.
Today, Velvette had taken that certainty and thrown it onto a table in the form of a severed head.
Someone had killed an angel.
I didn’t know who yet, and I didn’t know how.
But somewhere in Pentagram City was the answer to a question no one had ever seriously had a reason to ask before today.
And I now had less than six months to find it.