Alyssa… was not quite sure what was going on. She was adrift again. Or that was what it felt like. No sights or sounds anywhere. No real sensations at all. Yet it was different this time. Every other time, there had been something of an apathetic warmth surrounding everything, which she had decided was either angels or the Throne. Possibly both. Whatever divine magic filled them radiated out through the otherwise void to create a sea of comforting magic.

That was all gone. The first thing Alyssa did was stretch out, looking for Tenebrael. But there was nothing. Then she tried looking for the burning engine that was the Throne. Again, she found nothing. She was alone in a vacant world, void of anything at all. No people. No magic. Nothing.

A cold fear set in, gripping her tight. The idea that the Seraphim had torn her soul from her body and cast her from reality into some void domain filled her with dread. She would be alone for eternity. A hell likely worse than wherever the demons actually lived. Even being consumed by Tenebrael would have been better.

Probably, anyway.

But she wasn’t ready to just lie down and give up. If there was one thing Alyssa was good at, it was pushing forward. Even if she didn’t know exactly where forward was. Even if forward wasn’t really a concept that existed here. The important thing was that, because she could think, it should be possible to do something as well.

To start with, was she really in some sort of hell designed by the Seraphim? After thinking a bit more, Alyssa wasn’t so sure. Which was oddly relaxing, even if her effective situation hadn’t actually changed in the slightest.

The last thing that she could remember was Kasita’s voice, amplified with the power of an angel. Maybe even something more than an angel. Whatever it had been, it had ordered everything to stop. And now… Everything had stopped. That was the only explanation that Alyssa could think of. The only reason why she would be unable to find the Throne in this strange place. Unless someone like Tenebrael was shielding it from her once again, but she doubted that. There was nothing around her, shielding included.

So, assuming that theory was correct, she was not in hell.

Was she still in the Endless Expanse? If the Throne itself had shut down with Kasita’s command, what happened to the Endless Expanse? Did it still exist? What about the rest of the universe? What were Irulon and Brakkt experiencing at this moment? Was life on Nod carrying on without noticing any difference? Were they all trapped like Alyssa was? Or had time simply stopped without the Throne and the Ophanim to keep things moving?

And, of course, what could she do about it?

Could she just wait? Kasita had clearly managed to do something with the Throne. It stood to reason that if anyone could get things moving again, it would be the one who had stopped it in the first place. Then again, what if Kasita had stopped along with the rest of reality?

So many questions. None of which Alyssa could answer.

Despite everything, she was only human.

Thinking about the Throne being shut down got her thinking. Though at the moment, thinking was really all she could do, so everything had her thinking.

But if it were merely shut down and not destroyed, then it stood to reason that the Throne was still out there somewhere. Kasita was probably sitting on it, but Alyssa couldn’t count on that. She needed to try to find it herself.

Easier said than done. She suspected that she was able to move about—for as much as moving about made sense while adrift. Just imagining herself translating through the empty place probably did the same thing that she had been doing while trying to connect to the Throne or even Tenebrael. It was just that she had absolutely no frame of reference to anything around her.

That seemed like she was still thinking of it in terms of human perception. Which likely didn’t matter here. The Throne existed and, importantly, was everywhere. So wasn’t she already where she needed to be?

Wishful thinking, probably, but it was all Alyssa had to go on.

Imagining herself sitting on the golden seat, she tried to picture herself flipping a switch that would get everything going again. Reboot the clockwork engine of the universe. Get the Ophanim rotating again. And, most importantly, start with the very beginning. The very first, the simplest spell.

“Let there be light?”

The moment she spoke, she felt it. A lurch and a lunge. The universe coming back online. It started as a small spark at her fingertips. That spark expanded into a roaring flame. The world around her—the Endless Expanse, reappeared in an iridescent gleam as light washed out from the Throne, flooding over the room and the world beyond. Sitting at the center of it all, she could see everything. The universe, the cosmos, the invisible threads linking it all together, weaving a great tapestry of reality together.

Humans, aliens, monsters, insects and animals, trees and asteroids, all of them starting to move once again. Worlds upon worlds of beings. More than Alyssa could count even if she tried… The Throne knew the exact number and it even whispered it to her, but it was such a large number that it was effectively meaningless to her human brain. And even with all those thinking beings out there, most took no notice of the brief pause of reality. A few did, those more attuned to the workings of reality. But even they shrugged off the entire universe crashing to a halt as nothing more than their imaginations acting up after a moment or two.

Around her, the Endless Expanse expanded outward indefinitely. It truly was endless. Filled with all manner of angels who were all, without exception, lying on the ground. Around the Throne in particular, it looked like a horrifying sight of a mass grave. From the lowly guardians to the great Seraphim, they were all collapsed and unmoving. The Ophanim were turning, but even they weren’t actually conscious of their motions. Alyssa could tell. She could peer into their inner workings as if she were looking into a bowl of water. They weren’t moving on their own. It was Alyssa’s finger that was gently pushing against them, forcing them into motion with her will. If she stopped, reality would once again grind to a halt.

Mostly. She was pretty sure that the Throne would continue operating at the moment unless she did something to turn it back off.

Her first thought was to get the angels all moving again so that she didn’t have to worry about reality crashing if she stopped paying attention, but immediately thought that doing so might be a less than genius idea. There was no guarantee that the Seraphim would now ignore her just because she was sitting on the Throne. She also wasn’t sure if she was in full control of the Throne or just accessing surface-level features. She sure didn’t feel like some all-powerful god despite being able to watch the goings on of practically the entire universe at once.

A consultation was what she needed. Getting Tenebrael going again without activating the other angels. And Kasita too.

Where was Kasita?

Unless Alyssa hadn’t been right about what happened, Kasita should have been sitting on the Throne. Yet she wasn’t. When reality rebooted, had she been shoved back into whatever parallel dimension held her real body? That was all Alyssa could think of at the moment. She spent a moment trying to find the mimic, but found herself utterly helpless against the flood of information that came in when she tried to peek into other worlds. There were just too many of them. Billions of billions. She couldn’t even filter out where Earth and Nod were, let alone focus in on her friends and family.

She did realize one massive problem. The universe had continued turning. People were living out their lives. And deaths. Yet the angels, every single one of them, were offline. That meant that every person who died would rot along with their bodies with no one to collect them. She still didn’t understand exactly what happened once they reached the Throne, but she knew it was better than what they were getting at the moment.

Turning on the angels became just a little more of an imperative.

Where was Tenebrael? If Alyssa was going to start with anyone, it would be Tenebrael. Before everything had gone dark, Tenebrael had been blasted off into some corner of the Endless Expanse by the Seraphim. Even now, Alyssa could see the hole the angel had made when crashing through the roof of the throne room. Being offline, was she just falling for eternity? The Endless Expanse was, after all, literally endless. That included vertically as well. She would fall down alongside those tall towers without stopping…

It shouldn’t hurt her. If she hadn’t been killed by the crash through the soul crystal wall, a fall wouldn’t hurt her in the slightest. Since she could teleport, she should be able to get back up to the Throne as soon as Alyssa figured out how to turn her back on. And that was such a strange way to think about someone who she had talked with, laughed with, and gotten angry at. Like she was a robot that needed a switch flicked on her back in order to resume moving.

But really… that was what the angels were. Living autonomous programs designed to carry out tasks for the Throne. Offloading some responsibility on them had to serve some purpose, though that purpose eluded her at the moment.

To start with, Alyssa adjusted the rotation of the Ophanim. It was surprisingly easy to do. Just a metaphorical finger against their rotation slowed them down. Wheels covered in faces and wings, all looking roughly identical yet all having slightly different purposes. Through a bit of testing, she figured out that three of them controlled the forward progress of time for the entire universe outside the Endless Expanse. Stopping them from moving stopped the universe at large, giving her a effectively as long as she needed to figure out how to get the Principalities back online for soul collection.

They would have to be the first ones that Alyssa tested with. She had no idea how to get to Tenebrael at the moment, so she was out. There were practically uncountable numbers of Principalities lying around the room. Alyssa selected the closest and…

And what?

She couldn’t exactly get up and walk over to the angel. First of all, she had a feeling that leaving the Throne at the moment would be… bad. Like it would shut back down without her there to keep it running off sheer willpower. Second of all, she still knew that the Endless Expanse was a broken and twisted mess of reality. Her body was a mortal body at the moment and she didn’t feel like she was connected to the Throne in the same way she had been earlier. When it had rebooted, she lost that connection.

That meant that reconstructing her body on the fly might be impossible. Maybe it wasn’t. Sitting on the Throne, she felt she could do anything, but that might not last once she stood up. But she needed to get an angel to test things with.

Something must have clicked with the Throne. An angel simply appeared at her feet. The angel, one with simple yet long brown hair, white wings, and a blue and white dress, was still crumpled up in a pile of limbs. If not for the fact that Alyssa knew better, she might have believed her to be dead. As it was, Alyssa felt a bit disrespectful reaching out with her foot to prod the angel. At the same time, if she had to lose a limb at the moment, better it be her big toe—she moved slowly, ready to stop if she felt one of those rifts break her apart.

The moment her foot touched the angel, a flood of information rushed into Alyssa. Principality Belldandiel. Eight thousand years old. Dutifully carried out her tasks as a Principality since creation. Each and every one of the souls she had carefully collected hit Alyssa along with the areas of the world they had been collected from. It was some far off place, not Earth or Nod. A different world.

Most importantly, Alyssa saw a way to reactivate the angel. She almost flipped the switch right away, before hesitating. There were billions of the Third Sphere angels. Going through each one manually would take… years. Even if time acted differently in the Endless Expanse—and it did, based off the rotation of the Ophanim, which Alyssa could control—she didn’t think that she would ever finish. There had to be an easier way. Some master control switch to turn only the Principalities back on.

Alyssa wanted to talk to Tenebrael, get some angelic insight. Although Alyssa might view the Principalities as generally useless, that was mostly because of Iosefael and no one else. For all she knew, if she turned them on, they would immediately attack her just like the Seraphim had done.

She had pulled the Principality to her. Reason stood that she should be able to bring Tenebrael to the Throne as well. And, as she considered that, the area directly in front of the Throne started changing. It wasn’t that Tenebrael was being pulled through space. The Principality hadn’t been pulled through either, now that she looked back. It was more like the world in front of the Throne warped so that the angels Alyssa wanted were always in front of her and had never been anywhere else. Or maybe some wormhole opened up that brought them directly to Alyssa.

Whatever the case, she had a groaning Tenebrael lying on the steps leading toward the Throne.

The groaning—and associate movement—was something of a surprise. None of the other angels in the Throne room were moving in the slightest. Not even a faint rise and fall of their chests.

Tenebrael, wings crumpled and gloved arm completely missing, actually looked like she was trying to sit up.

Alyssa’s first instinct was to help her, but unfortunately, whatever twist of reality brought Tenebrael here had brought her just far enough away that she would have had to leave the Throne. So instead, she did the only thing she could do.

“Are you alright?”

“I think I’m going to throw up.”

“I didn’t know angels could throw up.”

“Not feeling very angelic at the moment.” With another groan, she flopped over. She tried to catch herself on her missing arm, but, being missing, didn’t have anything to catch herself on and face planted against the golden steps leading up to the Throne’s actual seat. “My wings don’t work. I can’t work any miracles. My vision keeps blacking out. Is this what it is like to be mortal?”

“Mortals don’t usually black out all that often.”

“You do! Every single night!” Tenebrael shifted, making it into a sitting position on the stairs. She slumped, wings dragging limply against the ground. Her grey countenance did look surprisingly sickly for an angel and her eyes weren’t even glowing anymore. Rather than the bright white, they were just the same slate grey of her skin. “I… uhhh.” She actually looked like she was trying to hold down a stomach ache. Maybe it was something she ate? Too many people?

“None of the mortals out in the universe noticed reality screeching to a stop a bit ago. But all the angels…” Alyssa pointed a hand around the room. “Since you’re still moving around, I assume it is because you’ve got a bit too much mortal in you. Maybe your angelic parts are still offline?” Alyssa asked, remembering how Tenebrael looked like a computer with organic parts slapped onto it during her recent visit to the adrift place.

“You’re on the Throne.” Tenebrael didn’t sound surprised, shocked, or even mildly alarmed. She simply stated fact. “Can you fix it?”

“I have no idea what I’m doing. I kind of expected an instruction manual to be shoved into my head. Everything I’m doing is basically instinct at this point. Luckily for you, I did look at that other angel for a moment and think I might be able to turn you on. Your angelic parts, anyway.”

Tenebrael grinned… or maybe just grit her teeth. “Kasita not around to make a joke of your phrasing?”

Alyssa pressed her lips together. “I don’t know where she is. I assume that reality crashing forced her back into a single dimension, so she is probably in whatever parallel world held her actual body. I’m not sure how to find her—there is so much to reality and the universe that I can’t even keep track of it. I’m amazed that I don’t have a headache. I can maybe try to bring her here like I brought you—”

“I’m sorry I brought it up,” Tenebrael said, grin definitely more of a grimace at the moment. “Just make me normal.”

“I have no idea how to remove your programming stuff. If I turn your angelic components back on…”

Tenebrael’s clenched grin turned to a forced frown. For a long moment, she didn’t say anything at all as her head turned so that she might stare at the rest of the throne room. Or, more specifically, at all the angels crumpled on the floor. Eventually, she looked back to Alyssa. “I don’t know that I have a choice,” she said softly. “I don’t think I’m designed to… well, do whatever it is I’m doing. It isn’t pleasant. I feel like I’m falling apart… And if I keep falling apart, I don’t know if I can be put back together again. It’s… Oh dear. Is this actual fear I’m feeling? I don’t know how you people handle this.”

“Maybe it is time to learn? Unless you’re actually falling apart. Then we should probably fix you before you… uh, die?”

“Please.”

With a nod of her head, Alyssa held out her hand. Carefully. She didn’t want to pass it through any fractures.

Tenebrael didn’t hesitate in taking Alyssa’s hand. The moment they touched, Alyssa saw deeper inside of Tenebrael than she could really comprehend. Much like with the Principality, she instinctively felt like she knew what it was she had to do to put her back to normal. A simple push of the restart button had Tenebrael’s eyes glowing white once more. The black feathers on her wings regained their luster as Tenebrael straightened her back.

“Better?”

“Much.” Tenebrael tilted her head left then right like she was cracking her neck. “Yeah. Much much better. And I don’t even feel like I need to drag you off the Throne, which I was a little worried about after you mentioned programming.”

“Thanks for mentioning it so that I could have had a chance to prepare.”

“Mhm. In any case, you’re the boss now, I take it?”

“Again, I have no idea what I’m doing. Other than that I’m keeping the universe running just by sitting here. Everything outside the Endless Expanse should be stopped though. Don’t want souls rotting in corpses without Principalities to collect them.”

“Wise. What do you say you and I put our heads together to try to figure out how to put the rest of reality together.”

“After I find Kasita.”

First Kasita. Then the rest of the universe.

That surely wasn’t a strange priority, but it was the way things would be.

She was, as Tenebrael had said, the boss.