Moloch’s fury burned brighter than the fire his dragon breathed down upon the world. It was a well within him, ever-flowing with blue-white flames. He rode on the back of his mightiest dragon, Goliath, a bronze-scaled drake he had stolen from its mother as a cub. The world was a flat expanse waiting to be burned over beneath the two of them. His dragon, named for his late son, felt the same wrath as he did as a witchling came to meet them, as another blocked his titan’s pyre-stream with her wicked light-magic. 

Moloch’s single eye twitched, and he grinded his fangs together inside his mouth. 

Once again, some tiny little thing had risen up to face him. 

The littlest of the witchlings flew across the sky, aiming directly at him with an impressive speed. Speed would not spare her from his rage, however. 

He held a flattened palm to his side, in the direction of the dark pink witchling. Black bile ignited like gasoline in his veins, and an explosion of black Hellfire launched from his palm with a deafening boom and a cathartic rush. For a moment, Moloch’s rage dissipated. 

It left him hollow. Despondent. Confused. He yearned for the simple clarity of his Sin of Wrath. 

So he recalled, for what was most certainly not the first time, the sight of his son, Goliath, laying fallen on the battlefields north of Jerusalem, his beautiful purple eye gouged out by a stone launched with a blasted slingshot; his brain pierced by a pointed stick wielded by a jumped-up yokel drunk on the rush of his own combat prowess, laughing madly as he had felled the giant who had slain so many of God’s Chosen People. That this was merely the beginning of the maniac’s rise, the first domino that would fall towards him becoming a king, was the greatest insult of all. 

Moloch’s fury reignited, a flint sparking onto a pile of dry sticks and leaves, kindling a fire hotter than the sun. 

Moloch grinned, revealing his myriad pointed teeth, and looked towards the clearing smoke. 

His eye bulged wide as he realized the witchling had dogged, falling from her broom and plummeting to the depths below before landing on the back of her yellow-clad comrade’s broomstick. A fearsome growl escaped his throat, resonating in the air. 

A web of shadows stretched around him and his dragon, growing thicker and tighter as the light was gradually snuffed out around him. 

This one was Astaroth’s spawn. 

He’d been warned about her, and given specific instructions for when he dealt with her: kill everyone but her. Make her watch them die. 

He screamed with conviction. He would see his mission through. For the honor of Grand General Astaroth, and the vision of the Morning Star.

***

The stench of fish and brine and carbon dioxide all curdled Astra’s olfactory receptors, and she struggled to keep the grimace off her face. The cold, wet bite in the air gnawed at her exposed skin, no matter how bundled up she was with a gray down jacket over her torso and a black scarf around her neck. The breeze was like jagged nails on her nerves, the scent an unwelcome sting on top of it all. 

She forced herself to smile, as she often did. She had to get through this- it was unlikely she would win Debbi over by force. The poor idiot girl thought she was playing a terribly clever game with her, and she was better at it then a mere human had any right to be, but it wouldn’t be enough. 

Not after today. 

The whore that Debbi lied with- Harriet was her name, maybe?- stood before her and transformed into her witchling’s attire; she had no idea how much she resembled one of the Devil’s Coven, those hideous little trollops, in that uniform. 

Astra knew she would do well to try to win the green witchling to her side. It would make it easier with Debbi. She could work on fixing them both later on- surely they’d see reason eventually, after the application of enough pressure and enough pain. She could afford to take three with her. The rest, though, Nicholas and Cassandra… They were expendable. 

“Get behind me, Richard,” the green witchling snarled, balling her fists together. 

“What? Why? I just wanted to have a nice dinner with my family,” Astra said, in an even tone. Satan, how she hated speaking- the vibrations in her throat were like a dull itch she could never scratch. 

“Sure you are, Astra, sure you are,” the green witchling said, winding up a fist as the boy retreated into the house behind. 

“Heather, don’t,” a familiar, dulcet baritone rang out from the house. 

Patrick marched towards them, clad in a tight t-shirt and a pair of jeans and wool socks. A familiar stirring went through Astra’s stomach and chest as her breath briefly caught in her throat. Dammit, even after all these years, it wouldn’t go away. What she felt for Patrick had remained, even still. 

Dammit, dammit, dammit-

“Dad,” Debbi said from behind him, “I should-”

“Let me handle this for right now,” Patrick said in an even tone.

“Dear,” Victoria, the damned woman, said. “Are you sure-”

“Yes,” Patrick said firmly, stepping outside and closing the door behind him. 

Astra gritted her teeth as she stood on the door step of her ex-lover’s house in the freezing cold. “Pat.”

“Astra,” he said, folding his arms in a way that accented the rippling muscles in his shoulders. Damn, for a mortal he was still in fantastic shape. Dammit dammit dammit-

“How are you?” Astra said. She hadn’t expected to have to talk to him one on one.

“Furious,” Patrick said, his intense emerald eyes boring into her. Dammit, dammit, dammit-

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“Don’t fucking start, Astra,” Patrick growled. She’d heard that growl before- she suspected he wasn’t doing it on purpose, but… His instincts were kicking in, the same way hers were trying to reassert themselves right now. 

She hadn’t been with anybody since Patrick. She may have been old as the planet, but for a succubus, twenty-two years was a long time to go without a proverbial dance partner. Not that she wanted a new one, not that she needed a new one, not that she had to listen to anything her body was telling her. 

“Then what do you want me to say?” Astra asked. 

Patrick ran a hand through his short brown hair. Satan, Amy really did look like a female version of him. She hardly took after her mother at all. That needed to be fixed. SHE needed to be fixed. They all did. “You know something? I thought about what I would say to you, what I would ask you, if I ever got the opportunity. I thought about all the things I wanted to call you out on. All the things I wanted you to know about what you did to me, and what you did to my daughter, when you left.”

My daughter. Not our daughter, even when she’d carried the girl inside her, let the damn parasite fester inside her womb and make her fat and bloated and hideous, ruining the body she wasn’t supposed to have, the body she wasn’t supposed to want to have; not when she’d let the girl pump hormones through her that made her want to stay, made her want to hold that damn brat to her breast and let her drink, made her want to hold the child in her arms and never let her go and tell her she would be protected and loved always. 

The daughter that nearly made her into someone else. Someone she wasn’t supposed to be. Someone she wasn’t supposed to want to be. 

He was right. Amy was his daughter, not their daughter. Same with Debbi. They wouldn’t be her daughters, not the daughters she needed them to be, until she was through with them. 

Patrick had wanted to have her on his terms, and for a second there, she’d agreed to his terms. 

Never again. 

“And?” Astra asked. “What do you want to say?”

“I want to ask why you left,” Patrick said. “Not for Amy, not for Victoria, not for any of this ‘fate of the world’ ‘war for the throne of Hell’ bullshit. I just want to know why you left me the second our daughter was born.”

Our daughter. He’d said it. Probably slipped out. Probably didn’t even realize he’d said it. Probably didn’t realize that hearing him say that, hearing his strong, reassuring voice, big and solid like a mighty redwood, say ‘our daughter’ like she still meant something to him, made her feel… 

Feel… 

Good. Made her feel warm and soft and beautiful and wanted, like there’d been a chance there to begin with for something she wasn’t supposed to want. That she didn’t want. That she couldn’t want. Not on his terms, anyway. 

“We wanted different things,” Astra said. 

Patrick gave a bitter laugh and leaned against the door. “Care to elaborate on that?”

“You wouldn’t like the answer,” Astra said. 

“So?” Patrick said. 

“So you don’t want to hear it.”

“What I want clearly doesn’t matter to you,” Patrick snarled. “It never did. Not that I should be surprised by any of this- you’re a demon, you probably don’t even understand why what you did was wrong.”

Astra’s eyes narrowed, and she tried to repress the part of her that was hurt by that, the part that could be hurt, that part that… Let herself be hurt by him. Was this how he felt all the time? How humans in general felt? “Excuse me?”

“You heard what I said,” Patrick said, returning her glare. “Now, I’m guessing you’re here because of all the superhero business my daughters are caught up in? Do I have that right? This is all part of your evil plan to rule the world or some such nonsense?”

She balled her fists. Nonsense- this was just like him, just like all humans, so obsessed with their tiny little mortal lives while disdaining anyone who cared about the big picture. “It’s a bit more nuanced than that-”

“Oh, save it,” Patrick sneered.

“I’m trying to accomplish something important-”

“Save it. For someone. Who cares,” Patrick rolled his eyes. “I’ve got two goddamned Magical Girls behind this door- if you think you intimidate me, you couldn’t possibly be more wrong. Now fuck off already, and stay away this time. Maybe take some of that endless life of yours for self-reflection and do something actually worthwhile instead of this puerile control freak bullshit you’re so terribly obsessed with.”

This man. Had the gall. To speak with her this way. This little maggot who she’d deigned to deigned to lie with? Who she’d allowed to know her, to… To change her, like none of her previous lovers had. He had the audacity to call her-

No. No, she couldn’t allow him to do this to her again. She’d spent nearly two decades reeling from the last time he’d made her feel… 

Made her feel… 

Made her… Feel. 

Sparks of black Hellfire jetted from her fingertips. 

She heard a shifting in the sand to her left. 

She pivoted just in time to catch a fist to the face from the green witchling. Astra stumbled backwards, the world spinning and multicolored stars dancing before her eyes.

“Nice shot, Heather,” Patrick said, reaching into his pocket and retrieving a cigarette case. He put a cigarette in his mouth, lit it, and took a long drag. 

Heather, meanwhile, kept in her fighter’s stance and squared off with Astra. “Let’s go, bitch.”

***

Winona sat in her chair inside the group therapy room, staring daggers at Belial as he sat across from her in the circle. She’d only known the old bastard briefly before she was trapped beneath the Floodwater, before he signed on to Uncle Samael’s War in Heaven, before he’d been banished to Hell and trapped in a physical body with clipped wings. Grandfather hadn’t deigned to strip her or her father’s compatriots of their Angelic Grace- perhaps because they’d only made war on earth, rather than in Heaven. 

Belial sat with his arms folded across his chest and a smug smile on his face. The overhead light dangled from the ceiling, casting a sickly yellow glow over the ovular concrete room. Belial’s shadow was long and intricate, an array of gears and eyes, an echo of the angel he’d once been. “Well, ah do declare, ah think ah’ve come to see the error of muh ways!”

“Oh really? Have you now?” Winona said, shaking her leg and raising an eyebrow. 

“Winona, please, it’s not your turn yet,” Dr. Shriver said. 

Winona grumbled under her breath. Aidan, sitting to her right, put a hand on her shoulder. Oh, that was nice. 

“As ah was sayin’, before ah was so rudely interrupted-”

“Why do you have a Deep South accent?” Aidan’s mother said, sitting on Aidan’s right. Her hair had gone gray very rapidly over the past few weeks, and she was barely eating. Pretty soon, she’d be reduced to a skeleton in a wheelchair unless she started taking better care of herself. 

“Pardon?” 

“You’re a Fallen Angel, you’re not from the American south,” Angela said. “You’re not even really from Earth. But the closest you have to a place you’re from here would be… What, ancient Mesopotamia?” 

“Ms. DiLorenzo, please,” Dr. Shriver said, “Mr. Belial has the talking stick right now-”

“Nah, nah, it’s a fair line of inquiry,” Belial said. “If y’all wanna get real technical about it, ah spent the first stretch of my time on Earth in Sumer. But ah’ve had dalliances here on this world, all across time and across every which spot on this wonderful blue-green marble as it dances across the cosmos. Ah’ve adopted many tongues and many accents in muh time, and muh southern drawl is just muh personal favorite at the moment.”

“You know, we call that cultural appropriation now,” Aidan said. “It’s really not cool.”

“Babe, I’m not sure you’re in a position to judge,” Winona pointed out. 

“What? Why not? I’m guilty of plenty of things, but never pretending to be something I’m not!”

“Aidan, kiddo, you’ve spent your whole life pretending not to be a Cambion,” his mother said. 

“Oh come on, that’s completely different-”

“I agree with Aidan,” Sloth… Or Asmodeus, as she was going by now that Nicole had apparently fixed her, said. She sat halfway between Aidan and Dr. Shriver in their circle, the bags under her eyes gone and her, admittedly, very pretty heart-shaped face, beaming with a bright, toothy smile. “He’s just as much human as he is demon, there’s nothing wrong with him favoring his human side.”

“Thank you,” Aidan said. 

Winona side-eyed Asmodeus. It was bad enough Winona had to worry about Nicole potentially stealing her man, but now she had to deal with this bitch too. Unbelievable. 

“People, please,” Dr. Shriver said, “We really need to get back on topic-”

That was when the roof exploded, and a blue dragon stretched its wings in the sky above. A symphony of gunfire sounded, but the bullets were flattened and lost all momentum on impact with the dragon’s scales.

Dr. Shriver screamed. 

There it fucking was. Winona wasn’t surprised by any of this- the only surprise was how long this had taken.

Belial stood up and snapped his handcuffs off like they were made of paper, dusted himself off, and said, “Well, that’s our cue. Let’s get out of here, Sloth.”

“I’m not going with you,” Asmodeous said, still sitting in her chair with happy expression. “I’ve decided I wanna put in the work.”

“Suit yourself,” he shrugged. 

Guards rushed into the group therapy room, all camo-clad soldier boys and girls. Belial leaped into the air onto the dragon’s back in a single bound, and the dragon released a sheet of fire from its mouth directed at all of them. 

Winona rolled her eyes and scoffed. She spread her wings and wrapped it around Aidan, Angela, and Dr. Shriver, but Aidan jumped over her and stood in front of the soldiers. He held his arms aloft and absorbed the brunt of the fire, a sheen of black Hellflame around him devouring the lesser blaze. 

“What are you doing?” Winona and Angela both shouted. 

“Felt like the right thing to do!” Aidan smiled. “Or at least, that’s what Nicole would say.”

“Yeah, you’re right!” Asmodeous said, standing behind Aidan, doing the same with her Hellfire. Together they absorbed the entirety of the dragon’s burning breath. 

“I’m very proud of the progress you’re making, Aidan! Same with you, Asmodeous!” Dr. Shriver said with a sincere smile. 

Winona rolled her eyes again. Did it really count as the right thing if he was only doing it to impress a girl? The two of them really needed to have a talk about this.

That was when a new source of violence erupted from behind them- a whirling dervish of blades and blood, two quick for the naked eye to see. 

Well, for a naked human or demon eye to see. Fortunately for Winona, she had angel eyes, and plenty of them, at that. 

She broke free of her manacles and flew over to her stupid boyfriend and the stupidest of Astaroth’s stupid generals and caught the edge of a blade on one of her wings. Beelzebub, ArchDevil of Pride, stood holding twin katanas, a trail of dead soldiers behind him creating a winding path of plasma and entrails. 

“Hey, kid,” the pale, gaunt, tall demon smirked from behind a sheet of long black hair. “Been a while.”

“What the fuck is all this?” Winona hissed. 

“What’s it look like?” Beelzebub cackled. 

“A prison break?” Asmodeus chirped- fucking Hellfire, her perkiness was starting to rival Nicole’s. It was infuriating. 

“Nah, it’s the opening shot of a war,” Beelzebub said. “Hence all the dead combatants behind me. 

The soldiers Aidan and Asmodeous had been shielding open-fired, only for Beelzebub to break free and slice them all to ribbons. Crimson paint splattered everywhere, the stench of iron nearly overriding the sulfur. 

“You bastard!” Aidan shouted as he lunged for Beelzebub, hands awash with Hellfire. Beelzebub simply side-stepped him, and Winona struck a blow of her own. 

They were so busy they didn’t notice what was going on with Angela until she started screaming. 

An emaciated little girl had toppled her from her chair and plucked her heart from her chest. Mephistopheles, ArchDevil of Gluttony, was taking a bite out of her heart. 

“NO!!!!” Aidan screamed. 

The distraction was enough for one of Beelzebub’s swords to go through Aidan’s ribs. He spat out blood as his knees hit the ground. 

At that point, Winona’s fury and shock boiled over. With a scream from deep within her soul, she slipped free of her human skin, and the Angelic half came out to throw down.

A swarm of dragons flew down from above as she did so. 

***

Astra spat out a mouthful of blood as Heather wound up another blow. She dodged, and finally, she decided it was time to drop the pretense. A show of force was necessary to remind these maggots of the proper order of things. 

Everyone and everything had a place. It was time to start putting people where they belonged in her Great Machine. She would retake Pandemonium, and she would sacrifice as many souls as was necessary to the Infernal Engine to gain control of Hell, and to march on the Earth with her armies.

She curled her hand into a fist and struck Heather in the gut. Her wind was knocked from her at the same time her spine snapped. 

Heather dropped to the ground, gasping for breath and unable to feel her legs.

Astra glared at Patrick as the cigarette fell out of his mouth and his jaw dropped and his eyes bulged. 

“Still not intimidated by me, lover?” Astra smiled. 

***

Nicole flew like a pink arrow through the sky as she charged her hands with White Holy Light, into the weave of shadows Amy had drawn, and punched a dragon in the face. It hissed as the Light made contact, and its scales were soon covered in frost.

Interesting. 

She summoned more Holy Light, and struck and struck and struck, only for the one-eyed demon to rake its hands across her arm. She grimaced as she fell onto the dragon’s back and used her spare hand to heal herself while still channeling White Light. 

When she did so, her hand gave a warm tingle, and the White Light grew bigger and brighter. Stronger, by the look of it. The tingle expanded into a hot, vibrating sensation that sang through her right arm, as if God’s Light was energizing every last cell in her limb.

Interesting.

The demon charged across the dragon’s back, drawn to Nicole’s light as it cut through the darkness. Nicole brought her glowing fist down like a hammer onto the dragon’s back, and the beast yelped as it flash-froze and plummeted out of the shadow-trap. 

Nicole jumped off and took flight on her broom as the dragon crashed into the maple forest behind her old school. Amy and Iris- oh Iris, she had done her first full transformation, she would need a hug when this was over- flanked her as the demon lumbered off the back of its frozen mount and stared them down. Sunlight sparkled on the fog that clung to the air, and the screaming song of terror emanating from the school cried out from behind them.

This could go no further. She would put a stop to this, and she would save everybody. And then she would find Astra and put her in irons so she could never hurt anyone again.

“You guys ready for this?” Nicole said, fists still glowing. 

“Always,” Amy said, cracking her knuckles. 

“Not even close,” Iris said with a heavy, exhausted sigh. “But I’ll try anyway.”

“That’s all I can ask you to do, sis,” Nicole smiled. “Just remember I’m proud of you no matter what.”

“Thanks,” Iris said with a weak smile. 

The demon charged at them, and the three Magical Girls took flight and aimed straight for the cyclops.