You see, about fifty years ago, the Almighty and Lucifer had a sit down. Weary of the battle for the hearts and souls of humanity, they decided they’d had enough. They wanted an end to the war. Rather than raze existence and start fresh, they decided humanity had, for the most part, come into its own and had too much history and character to simply be wiped away. I guess they felt pity for the chess board pieces they battled over for so long. So instead, they chose to abandon it, letting it evolve as it would. An instant after they made their decision, they disappeared into the void, leaving the whole of creation behind. The consequences of which were devastating. Connected to God in a way no other creature could claim, the angels were hit the hardest. It was as if the most important part of them had been ripped away, a festering black abyss left rotting in its place. Many went insane. As for the rest, well, let’s just say there are varying degrees of insanity.

I could see the strain in Scarlett’s eyes, their perfect green suffering from the loss of her Lord; herself. Her hand shook as it clutched the pommel of her sword, her knuckles white. I could see the tenseness in her shoulders, the quivering of her lip. Under the circumstances, I did what any gentleman would do for a woman whose whole world, whose life, whose very existence was crumbling down around her. I changed the subject.

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“So, what’d you do to piss off Baalth?”

She glowered at me, putting her hands on her hips. I could tell she wasn’t sad anymore. The snarl on her face kind of gave that away. Mission accomplished.

“I meted out some divine retribution,” she replied, her voice tinged with frost.

“Can you be more specific?”

She huffed. “I intercepted a shipment of guns last night.”