No one moved. Not Kasita. Not Tenebrael. And certainly not Alyssa. All three of them knew that this was bad. Even Kasita, who had read through the notebooks Alyssa had been making during her stay in this world. Seraphim were protectors of the Throne. The final line of defense. Tenebrael had said that their power was second only to the Throne itself. They were able to destroy planets with a thought or tear reality itself apart.

Once deployed, the Seraphim never lost. According to Tenebrael. Though she had never actually seen one in action first-hand. All she had were tales from other angels around the Endless Expanse. Many of whom had likely never seen a Seraphim fight either and were just repeating what they heard from others. But even with that small hope and the power of the Throne at her fingertips, Alyssa didn’t know what she was supposed to do. If it did come down to a fight, even being this far away from Lyria might not save Brakkt and Irulon.

The nervous energy winding up inside her almost made her laugh. It didn’t help that there was plenty to laugh about. First of all, everyone was acting like this was some sort of T-Rex. Like it wouldn’t be able to see them if they stood still enough. Which was obviously false. A Seraphim should have the same sense of souls that Alyssa had. Probably an even better version.

Then there was its general appearance. Alyssa could honestly not decide whether it was creepy or humorous. The Seraphim had a humanoid body, with its six wings crowding out space behind its back, but its proportions were all wrong for a human. Its arms and legs were lithe and thin, spindly and long. Its arms especially so. Even with the length of its legs, were its arms at its side rather than crossed over its chest, its long fingers might have dragged on the ground. If it were standing on the ground, that was. At the moment, it hovered over the lake, looking toward the house.

Its torso, however, was bulky and short. Not in a muscular sort of way. At the same time, it wasn’t even really in an obese manner either. Its bulk was just like someone had taken some soft clay and slapped it all into a rough body shape without knowing how to work the clay to make it into a proper sculpture. That said, most of its bulk was hidden beneath a dress-like armor. It looked like a bathrobe that wasn’t designed to close fully with several pieces of ornate silver metal around its shoulders, hips, wrists, and ankles. There were a few inches of bare chest exposed between the two sides of the golden robe. Nothing actually held the robe closed, but Alyssa wasn’t sure that it was a robe in the first place. Looking closer, she was pretty sure it was actually part of its body. Which just further compounded its strange nature.

On top of it all, its head was just a bit too small. Like a young boy wearing a suit with padded shoulders. Its androgynous face displayed no emotions at all. A blank face even worse than the likes of Bastiel or Rhoziel. That, more than anything else, pushed it into the uncanny valley, making it just a little more creepy than it could possibly be humorous.

“What do we do?” Kasita said, breaking the silence first as she looked to the two who had slightly more experience in these kinds of things.

Alyssa grimaced at the noise, tensing. It had to happen at some time, but she would have preferred a few more moments of peaceful silence.

The Seraphim, thankfully, did not move. It didn’t even turn its head a fraction of an inch. Were mortals and even Dominions simply so far beneath it that it didn’t take any more notice of them than Alyssa took of an aphid crawling across a leaf? Or was it because of its programming? It responded to an intrusion against the Throne, found nothing here, and went idle? That would certainly be the optimal outcome of this situation.

“Fighting… is impossible,” Tenebrael said, putting voice to Alyssa’s immediate thoughts.

“So run then? Mind teleporting us to the opposite side of the universe?”

“If it wants to follow, that wouldn’t be far enough.”

“Your prison then,” Alyssa said. “That place is separated from the rest of reality, isn’t it?”

“It would probably notice. If an idiot like Iosefael can figure out how to get inside after seeing it only a few times, a Seraphim would likely not have to think hard at all. It might even know our destination before we left.”

“So what? We sit here and hope it leaves on its own?”

“That’s an excellent idea, Kasita. Let’s just back away slowly. Don’t aggravate it. In fact, why don’t we pretend it doesn’t exist.”

“Like Alyssa and I did when Bastiel showed up?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

Alyssa took a short breath. “While I agree that leaving is the best option if it will let us do that… I might be able to do something—”

“Don’t you dare. Your Spectral Chains might be able to tie down the likes of Adrael and Iosefael, but they don’t work on me and they definitely won’t work on that thing!”

“I wasn’t going to try that. I’m not an idiot.” Kasita made a noise that might have been the start of a giggle, but it died out before it could fully form. Alyssa didn’t even need to glare at her.

It was the Seraphim that killed the laugh with nothing more than a slight turn of its head.

It didn’t even look toward them, yet everyone immediately went silent again. Tenebrael’s wings were wrapped around both Kasita and Alyssa. They hadn’t moved away from her after returning from the parallel world, meaning that she could teleport them all away. Which she was obviously planning on, despite having just said that it would be useless.

The Seraphim’s head stopped after turning only a slight angle. It moved from looking at the house to looking at the portal next to it. Then it just… stared. Like it had been doing with the house, it didn’t make any motion otherwise. Its eyes didn’t even move with the subtle motions that living beings did unconsciously. Even Tenebrael could do that.

The eeriest thing was its utter silence. Angels were a talkative species. Iosefael and Tenebrael would hardly close their mouths while around. Adrael and Kenziel were perfectly willing to discuss their plans and thoughts even in the middle of tense situations. Bastiel and Rhoziel, while not talkative in the traditional sense, would maintain an almost unbroken pattern of mutterings, repeating numbers and errors and whatever other nonsense they observed, commenting on everything around them. In order to get those last two to be quiet, Alyssa had to directly order them to not ramble on.

But the Seraphim didn’t move its mouth. Looking from this new angle of its head, Alyssa wondered if it could move its mouth. Its face resembled that of a marble sculpture. The Venus de Milo or David. Incredibly detailed, yet just not quite right.

Thinking about those other angels made Alyssa remember something. Something Adrael had said the last time Alyssa saw that particular angel. Adrael had been investigating not just Alyssa, but people like Alyssa. Abominations, she had said. People who could see angels and interact with them like they were regular mortals. The Seraphim’s true purpose, according to Adrael, was not simple defense of the Throne. It was to hunt down aberrants like Alyssa.

Was that why this one was here? It wouldn’t move for a being like Tenebrael because corralling an angel that had gone astray was not in its job description. No matter how much Adrael wished otherwise. But detecting a mortal interfacing with the Throne was its true purpose, so she was what it reacted to.

Though why only one? Was it just pure overkill to send more than one? No sense in expending the energy? Or was it something else? There had been a hole in the Throne’s defensive line back in that adrift place. One Seraphim missing. She didn’t have any evidence, but one Seraphim was supposed to be the leader of the Astral Authority… It made sense for this one to be that leader. That would explain the hole in the defense. And might explain why this one was more active than the others. It had slightly different orders.

Alyssa bit her lip. Her companions hadn’t spoken since it turned its head. The tensions was just too thick for even Kasita to pierce.

Fleeing wouldn’t help. Alyssa was positive of that. With how she could see souls across galaxies, even if she couldn’t distinguish them, she was sure that the Seraphim would be able to as well. Distracting it might work. Demons would probably annoy it, and Tenebrael, given its suspected leadership position over the Astral Authority. She wasn’t willing to throw Tenebrael under the bus and she didn’t exactly have any demons handy at the moment, having banished most of them from the face of the planet. Perhaps she could open a new pit right here.

If Seraphim were as powerful as everyone said they were, no matter what distraction she used, it probably wouldn’t distract it for long.

Its head started moving again, turning slowly toward their group. Tenebrael’s fingers tightened around Alyssa’s shoulders, squeezing down to an almost painful extent.

“Stop!” Alyssa called out in her most authoritative voice. It was what she had planned on doing just a moment ago, before remembering that these things were supposedly designed to hunt down people like her. But it was the only thing she could think of at the moment. It didn’t talk, but maybe she could still convince it that she was some unknown angel acting with authority outside the Throne’s control like she had with Bastiel.

Surprisingly enough, it did stop moving its head before its full line of vision completely crossed their group.

For a moment. Its head started turning once again.

“Cease hunting all aberrant beings,” Alyssa tried. “Return to defend the Throne and remain there for eternity.”

It stopped again. Wings widening and spreading out made golden white feathers start floating through the air around it. Much like what happened when an angel teleported.

For a moment, Alyssa thought it worked. Even to the point where some of the tension drained from her shoulders.

But Tenebrael’s fingers only tightened further. Black wings folded in around Alyssa and Kasita. Alyssa felt the ground removed from beneath her as Tenebrael teleported high into the sky. High enough that Alyssa could barely see the lake, let alone the house and the Seraphim. Yet, focusing, she could somehow still see down there. A benefit of being connected to the Throne, which was connected to everything, perhaps.

And with that power, she watched.

Down below, right where they had been standing near the lake, one of the feathers landed on the ground.

A brilliant beam of blindingly bright light obliterated everything in the area.

More feathers touched down. The lake exploded. Dirt and molten rock was thrown up into the air. Some even reached them, bouncing off a mystic circle that appeared between Tenebrael and the planet. More and more flashes of blinding light dotted the landscape, reaching out into the forest and the base of the high hill that her home had been set atop.

The light cleared as soon as it came. Nothing remained but a gouge in the planet, reaching clear down to the mantle. There was just a crater there now, deep enough that the five hundred Burj Khalifa’s wouldn’t reach the top even if they were stacked on top of each other. Alyssa’s strongest Annihilator had only carved out a few hundred feet of dirt. This thing…

What had once been a peaceful mountaintop was now a burgeoning volcano.

Teneville was fine, Alyssa noted absently. At least for the moment. The crater was narrow. Big enough to encompass the hill her home had been built on in its entirety, but Teneville was several hours of hiking away. Whether or not the ground remained stable was another matter entirely.

One that Alyssa didn’t exactly have time to worry about.

Down in the heat haze, the Seraphim stood unmarred by dirt or debris. Its head was already facing Alyssa. And, despite the distance, when it opened its stone-like mouth to speak a single word one syllable at a time, Alyssa heard it as thunder against her ears.

“In. Ter. Lop. Er.”

“Shit.” Alyssa didn’t know what else to say to that.

She didn’t get to watch any further either. The familiar tug of Tenebrael’s teleportation activating pulled her off to who knew where. Some place that Alyssa had never seen before. It was somewhere on Nod, that much she could tell by the ring around the planet. Beyond that, she didn’t think that she had ever seen such anywhere covered in snow before. Calm and pristine…

For the moment. The Seraphim had yet to arrive.

“Is it not following us?” Alyssa would have expected the Seraphim to have teleported at the same exact time as Tenebrael, somehow knowing where she was heading practically before Tenebrael knew. “I thought running wouldn’t help.”

“Don’t count on it.”

“Even if we can run temporarily, we can’t just be on the run for the rest of our lives. Would severing the connection make it stop chasing us?” It worked on the Astral Authority, so…

“Possibly, but it is now aware of me. I can’t so simply sever my connection to the Throne.”

“Was it talking to you? I thought it was talking to me.”

Kasita, voice soft, chimed in with, “Pretty sure it spoke to me.”

“Great. It spoke to all of us?”

“Let’s find someplace safe for you two,” Tenebrael said. “Cut your connections. Then I’ll…” She trailed off, eyes widening.

They teleported again, this time over an ocean. A flat blue ocean with no islands or coasts to be seen. Alyssa hadn’t even seen a threat at the snowy area before they left. Was it just a crater now as well? Had they escaped just in the nick of time? Or was Tenebrael…

Alyssa, wrapped up in the angel’s wings, stared, realizing… Tenebrael’s entire left leg below the knee was missing. A bit of light escaped, shining out from the wound just like Adrael had done when Alyssa severed the Archangel’s arm.

“You’re injured.”

“I’ll heal,” Tenebrael said, voice stressed, but in more of an emotional sense than out of pain.

“Not if we keep getting chased.”

“Stick with the plan. Sever your connections and—”

“And what? Get chased forever? That isn’t a plan. That’s desperation!”

“You have a better idea?”

“They—”

Alyssa felt something. Some twisting in reality itself. Were it not for her connection to the Throne, she might not have notice. But now…

Her sense of time slowed down. She could see everything around her with hyper-awareness. That twist of reality was somehow familiar. Maybe from the Astral Authority? Or the demon? It didn’t matter now. She knew what was coming before it actually hit. An attack. She didn’t know what form the attack was taking, but she did know that they had to leave. Immediately.

Tenebrael wasn’t teleporting. Distracted by her injury? By worrying over the mortals in her arms? It didn’t matter.

Alyssa had never been able to teleport before. Neither had she been able to make portals. But now, having felt what Tenebrael was doing combined with some innate understanding provided by the Throne, she felt she knew.

The ocean vanished.

Lyria, the Grand City, stood in its place.

Eyes widening at realizing that latching onto someplace familiar might have brought the battle to someplace she cared about, Alyssa immediately shouted to Tenebrael. “Take us somewhere else!”

Angels weren’t supposed to harm mortals. That seemed to be mostly true for all the other angels that Alyssa had met. Something told her that the Seraphim would not care. They had to leave immediately.

Thankfully, Tenebrael was quick on the uptake. The city vanished, turning into an afterimage in Alyssa’s mind almost as quickly as it appeared. A mountain replaced it. Rocky and covered in sagebrush. She didn’t know if people lived here or if there might be a monster community hidden beneath its surface. But the thought was fresh on her mind.

They had to leave Nod. They couldn’t go to Earth. An uninhabited planet would be best. Somewhere that the Seraphim could destroy the entire planet if it escalated to that point.

Or…

“The Seraphim listens to the Throne, right?”

“I hate this plan already,” Tenebrael said, grinding her teeth together.

“Take us to the Endless Expanse!”

“You’ll die there!”

“I’ll figure something out. More importantly, the Seraphim cannot destroy the Throne.” Alyssa didn’t have any proof for that, but it seemed like a silly thing to allow its guardians the ability to harm it. “We just need to take a seat and tell it to stop!”

“There are other Seraphim there.”

“I’m not going to live under the thumb of these—” The world shifted again as the rocky mountain backdrop swapped out for another empty segment of the ocean. Alyssa didn’t let that stop her rant. “—stupid computers! Severing the connection might not work anyway! Even if it does, that thing will chase you around. If it gets frustrated enough, it will probably just destroy the whole solar system! Running and hiding is no good. You want to fuck up the whole angelic system? Tree diagram or whatever? Now is the time! We’ll end it or die trying!”

“Likely the latter!” Tenebrael shouted back.

But Alyssa felt the pull of teleportation once again. This time, there was something a little different about it. A more distant pull than any of the previous ones.

That pull did not stop. Alyssa felt herself pulled apart. Split down into component pieces, which were then dissected and split. It all reverted in an instant. Alyssa refreshed herself. It was an unconscious action, one that she had been carrying on with ever since connecting to the Throne. If not for that…

Pain struck her for an instant as she felt herself form back together. Compressed into a blob of meat and bone, crushed down to a single point. Refreshing fixed that, but only for a moment.

Pushed and pulled. Torn and restored.

The shifting iridescent fractal world of the Endless Expanse might as well have been Hell.