Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael all stare at the door to the room Azrael claimed for himself until he leaves. After a moment's hesitation, Michael steels his nerves and knocks on the door. And then a bit louder, when they don't hear anything but some indistinct murmuring after a moment.
Finally, the door opens, Azrael poking his head out with a scowl on his face. His expression turns to surprise for a moment, his eyes narrowing before all three younger Archangels quite literally see some kind of front going up as he adopts a laid-back attitude. "Well," Azrael says, lounging in the doorway, positioned so that they can't get in without having to push past the older Archangel, "to what do I owe the visit this time?"
Gabriel asks "Az…can we talk? Please?"
Azrael gets an easy grin, ruffling Gabriel's hair as he says "We're talking right now. And we can talk right here."
Raphael says "It…it's about Lucifer and Calliope."
Azrael rolls his eyes, saying "I can just imagine what you're going to say. You'll say I should stay away from her, for my own safety. Don't eat her food, don't let her use her powers on me. Who knows how she could affect me without my even realizing it. Does any of that sound familiar?"
Raphael and Gabriel look down at the floor, having told Lucifer that countless times brfore his Fall, but Michael says "We had no way of know-"
"Well, even if I were so inclined, it's far too late for me. I've been eating every bite of her cooking I can get my hands on since before Lucifer's bogus 'trial,' we're sparring partners to let off steam so she's used her powers on me countless times before, and, what else…oh, yeah, we've worked together since I first started working with Death. It's far too late to stay away from her, guess I'm just trapped under her thumb forever and ever. As for you not knowing…did you ever try to find out?"
All three Archangels shake their heads mutely, and Azrael says "Well, that's not my problem or Calli's. Night!"
Michael quickly shoves his foot in the door before Azrael can shut it in their faces, and says "Azrael, we…we screwed up."
Azrael raises an eyebrow, and says "No shit. That doesn't explain why you're outside my room."
Raphael wipes at his puffy, swollen eyes, and says "We…you know Calliope really well, right? Sera's been trying to reach Lucifer, but none of the calls are connecting, the texts keep erroring out, saying they can't be sent…"
Azrael laughs humorlessly, saying "Yeah, that'd be Calli's doing. You remember what she said? That any and all communications from Heaven would have to go through her? That wasn't just an offhand statement. As of the moment she finished that sentence, it became magically impossible for anyone residing in Heaven to contact anyone down there except Calliope. Good luck with that. Now, if you'd like to let me get back to what I was doing…?"
Raphael says "We want to try and make things right, Azrael."
Azrael blinks, staring at Raphael for a moment, then slowly says "You…want to make things right. With Lucifer, Lilith, and Calliope." When all three of them nod, Azrael asks "You don't even know Lilith whatsoever, but has Calliope ever struck you as a particularly forgiving woman? She doesn't care what you try to do to her - shit doesn't stick with her, not injuries or even dying - but hurt someone she cares about and you've made an enemy for the rest of your life. And every word she said about what Lucifer went through after his Fall was true - I should know, I was there for much of it. And Lilith is best friends with Calliope, and just as protective over Lucifer as she is. The two of them will rip you to shreds, Lilith with her words and Calli with her magic, before letting you anywhere near Lucifer."
Gabriel says "We have to try! How are you such good friends with her if she's so awful?!"
Azrael snorts derisively, saying "She's not - she's actually really easy to get along with, if you only put some effort into it." The look Azrael gives them is more than enough to say everything he's obviously thinking - they didn't, even after two hundred years of Lucifer knowing her.
"Please?" Raphael says, wobbling lip coming out, "Can we come inside, Azrael?"
Azrael sighs, running a hand down his face, and mutters "Damn that puppy-eye look…" Getting out of the doorway and pulling the door open, Azrael says "Fine. Don't make me regret this, understand?"
All three nod, and then enter Azrael's commandeered room. Gabriel looks around, asking "What were you doing, anyway?"
Azrael glances at all three of them, obviously trying to decide whether to tell them the truth or not, then says "Trying to figure out why Calliope was so completely drained when I got here. I know for damn sure she never would've set foot back in Heaven without being at full strength, yet she barely had enough magic or blood to make that pendant for Emily right before she left."
All three blonde Archangels blink in shock, and Gabriel asks "What?! You mean she…she did all that while being about to collapse? Nearly bringing down the courtroom, scaring everyone witless, all of it?!" Just how powerful is Calliope, then?!
Azrael snorts, saying "Doubtful. From what I've heard, she nearly went on a rampage that would've razed half of Heaven to the ground. No, she was absolutely at full-strength for that. But…nothing happened after I got into that meeting. Even when she was cowing you two, or yelling at Sera, or when she was about to rip Adam's head from his body had I not pried her off him, there was no magical outburst. And her magic doesn't just sit back and watch from the sidelines. I can guarantee she was absolutely exhausted by the time I got into that screaming match. So…what happened?"
Raphael blinks, then says "She went through a portal right after demanding the new meeting. Is that why she kept bringing me to tears? So I wouldn't realize she was running on fumes?"
Azrael rubs at his temples, and says "I've no doubt, even aside from the detail that she most definitely holds a grudge against everyone even remotely involved in that trial. Calli's a lot of things - stupid isn't one of them. Stupidly stubborn, yes - just plain stupid? No, not in another thousand years. Lucifer talked you up as the greatest Healer in Heaven more than enough times for her to know you don't miss things unless you're really distracted. Great at taking care of people around her, absolute shit at taking care of herself. You said she went through a portal?"
Gabriel nods, saying "Shortly after…who is this Roo, anyway?"
"After she found out Roo had made Hell?" Cursing to himself, Azrael quickly waves his hand and an image of Calliope in the courtroom appears - he has the ability to scry a soul's past if he has enough context, find out what happened to them. It tends to make Calli's part of the job a lot easier…even if most of the souls still went to Hell regardless.
He watches as Calliope orders a new meeting, then runs through the portal she made…into near-total darkness, the only light being what's coming off Hedwig's body.
Michael frowns as Calliope starts making her way through, seeming to know exactly where she's going even as her armor melts onto both her and Hedwig's bodies, and asks "Where is that? Where did she go?"
"That," Azrael says, hands wringing his staff in the process, "is what's left of the ninth Ring of Hell. C'mon, Strawberry Shortcake, do whatever it is you went there to do…"
Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael trade looks, and Gabriel slowly says "What's…left of the ninth Ring of Hell." They didn't even know there were nine rings of Hell, much less that one of them had been destroyed!
Azrael nods his head, saying "There was a big fight. That's where it ended."
Raphael asks "With this Roo person?" At Azrael's short nod, he says "You never said who Roo is."
Azrael runs a hand through his hair, gaze never leaving the image he's anxiously watching, and says "Her full title is 'The Root of All Evil' - Roo is just what she decided she'd call herself. Roo and our Father came to be at the same time, Calli said it had to do with balance. Keeping this reality from getting torn apart one way or another. At any rate, about eight-thousand years ago, Roo started making moves - big ones. She wants nothing more than to watch not just the world burn but this entire reality. Calli went down to stop her, and it ended in the Eighth and Ninth Rings of Hell getting completely destroyed in the process."
All three other Archangels swallow nervously, and Raphael says "The image she made on the orb…that was Roo? The woman with the hat and trench coat?"
Azrael shrugs, saying "I assume so, never met the woman personally. Did Calli freak out at the sight of her?"
Gabriel says "She freaked out at the possibility that Adam had been in contact with her."
"Shit, yeah…that's something to freak about. Calli…Roo is the only enemy Calliope was never able to defeat. Not as thoroughly as she'd like, at least."
All three Archangels stare at their older brother in horror, and Michael says "Wh- but, you just said-"
Azrael snaps "I know what I said, Michael, don't question me! Calliope wasn't able to kill Roo, or weaken her so much she couldn't try anything ever again - the best she could do is trap her, and that's even after a Deal she made with Magic concerning stopping Roo specifically. She pulled out all the stops to trap Roo forever, keep her Sealed away in the Ninth Ring - hell, she and Magic made stops just to pull them out. She used the most overpowered combination of magics from her old world I've ever seen to Seal Roo away forever, a complicated combination of Runes, Parselmagic, and Blood Magic, and it was barely enough. If it had been anyone other than Calliope, it wouldn't have worked in the first place. C'mon, Cals, c'mon…"
Finally, the image of Calliope gets to what looks like a massive cavern, illuminated only by countless brilliantly-glowing symbols etched into the walls and floor…and the brilliant green chains wrapped up and down a figure kneeling in the middle of it all.
All four of them know, even before the figure looks up, that it's Roo.
A chilling, sharp, blood-chilling laugh echoes around the cavern, and Roo rasps out "Peverell, how kind of you to visit. Finally remembered I exist?"
Calli glares at Roo, drawing a sword and pointing it in Roo's direction, and says "Trust me, I couldn't forget. Where are they, Roo? What have you done?"
Roo throws her head back in another laugh that seems to warp the very air around her - like even reality itself wants to draw back from her - and mockingly asks "What makes you think I've done anything? I've been trapped down here, all alone, ever since you scraped yourself up off the ground and went to lick your wounds."
Calli takes two steps closer, gaze frantically darting around - checking the Runes, they all realize - and says "Bullshit. What did you do to Eve? Where is she, Roo?"
Roo bursts out into laughter once more, one so malevolent that even Calli looks scared - Gabriel starts panicking just from the sound alone, Raphael trying to talk him down from a panic attack even as his own wings start fluttering in sheer fright, and Azrael has to pry the sword out of Michael's grip before he hurts someone with it, and that's just from a projection of what's already happened. None of them can possibly imagine actually being there in the flesh, truth be told. Calliope apparently has a spine and nerves of steel.
"Oh," Roo coos, "you finally remembered her, how cute. I didn't do much of anything to Eve - I never needed to. Those fools up in Heaven, his insipid little creations, they did all the hard work for me! She was so angry, so scared, all it took was a little nudge from me."
Green arcs off of Calli in her panic, and she asks "What did you do?!"
Roo laughs once more, saying "I just told her the truth, nothing more. You three weren't coming back for her, she'd been left to fend for herself. Heaven would come for her, and when they did they'd put her under their power so completely she'd never be able to even think ever again. It wasn't hard to get her to see the truth. Lucifer was gone, you had taken Lilith and weren't coming back…"
Calli shakes her head, sword lowering to her side as she does, and says "No, we had no choice! Lucifer was-"
"Banished, near-dead, I know. And Lilith was in just as much danger now that she'd been found. Eve wouldn't have understood the technicalities, though. All she needed to know was that the sanctuary she'd been offered, the promise of safety she was given, was all just smoke and air in the end. And all that was left was her, Heaven…and me. I was her only hope of staying herself, of staying free from Heaven's control. She accepted my offer, and gladly."
Calli glares, ignoring the tear tracks running down her face, and asks "Why should I believe a word you say? I'm well aware of who and what you are."
Roo grins, revealing what seems like endless rows of yellowed razor-sharp teeth in her skull thanks to her horrifying too-wide smile, and asks "Why lie…when you won't leave here again!" What can only be Roo's tongue suddenly shoots out from her mouth, looking like some monstrous horror all by itself, and Calli quickly flies out of the way as it crashes into where she was just standing.
Raphael and Gabriel immediately jump onto Michael with shrieks, the older Archangel's wings spreading out protectively on sheer instinct - that thing is absolutely horrifying, he's sure he'd be frozen in place from sheer terror.
And yet…Calliope seems completely unfazed by it, dodging attacks as Roo taunts her…and threatens to eat her and escape her weakening prison.
That'd be when Calliope sees some of the symbols on the floor are flickering, and narrowly avoids Roo's tongue once more. Quickly slicing her wrist open, Calli waves it and splatters her blood across the runes closest to her while quickly downing some kind of liquid from a red vial with a black stopper. As soon as the vial disappears, Calli starts hissing and the runes start glowing brighter.
"No!" Roo screeches, "I'll destroy you and your damn bird, then your pathetic little family, then this entire world!"
Calli grits her teeth, slicing open her other wrist and getting blood on the Runes surrounding Roo - and paying special attention to the flickering ones - and keeps hissing...making several new chains and even a muzzle wrap around Roo as the entire room lights up from glowing green Runes. Roo screeches in fury, thrashing and yanking her body back and forth as she does, but this time there's no flickering whatsoever in any of the ridiculously-complex Runes carved into the cavern that any of the four Archangels can see.
And then, apparently to anchor all the spellwork, Calli makes the same knife from earlier appear - the same one she used back in Sera's office - and...stabs herself through the heart.
Between the way Roo screeches - which seems to send the very air trembling - and how the entire cavern quite literally blazes brilliantly with Calli's magic, that did domething important.
Calliope staggers backwards into the far wall, Hedwig landing on her shoulder in a familiar scene, and collapses as the last of her blood drains from her body. Hedwig starts glowing brightly, sealing the wounds on Calli's body after a few minutes, and the red-head eventually groans before slurring "Thnx, Hed..."
As the four of them watch, Calliope pushes herself to her feet, staggering a bit as she clutches at the wall at her back, and knocks back a second vial - different than the first - then says "Let's go, Hed. I've got several idiots, backstabbers, and hypocrites to yell at..."
By the time Azrael lets the image go black, his younger siblings are literally shaking in their shoes - Raphael in particular looks like he's either about to be sick or just have a panic attack. Michael swallows several times, then eventually asks "How is she...?"
Azrael raises an eyebrow, saying "Not dead? She can't die, her heart literally won't stop beating. Why did you think she set the new meeting for an hour after the first?"
Gabriel mumbles "To maybe calm down..."
"Ha! No, not even remotely." Rubbing at his temples, Azrael says "Well, one potential disaster was headed off...now, we get to go find Eve. D and his siblings are gonna flip their lids." He won't deny that Eve having been influenced by Roo is preferable to Roo being free...it's still a disaster in the making. Who the hell other than Roo knows where Eve is now or what she's been up to for the past ten millennia?!
Azrael gets his phone out and texts Calli up, giving the three Archangels a look that clearly says 'don't interfere.'
Cals, pick up. It's important.
You looked back. Roo's still sealed, at least.
How long were you up here? You know you can't be exposed to angelic energy for too long anymore.
Since 10. The meeting was at 3.
Ur telling me you were slowly poisoning ourself for 5 hours, whipsawed to the complete other end of the spectrum via Roo, and then back again? How did u not go into shock altogether?
M'fine, really. Talk tomorrow.
Also, heard nobody can get a hold of Luc, and nobody but me has ur #. Want me to give it to them?
Let 'em stew a few days. If Srra bugs you about it, tell her I'm doing what's required.
I'll start looking for Eve. Night. Tell Luc I'm sorry about everything, and I hope it works out alright.
I will, thnx.
Calli sighs as she puts her phone down, feeling Lucifer shift slightly from where he's curled up in her side. As soon as she got into the Hotel, she got full-body tackled by a hysterical Lucifer, arms wrapping around her like an octopus as he sobbed his lungs out. He finally cried himself to sleep about ten minutes ago, the two of them curled up together on the couch and Lucifer hidden away under two of her wings.
Gods, as much as she wants to throttle Heaven altogether, she also just wants to leave them all behind for good - fuck redemption and sending souls up there, they don't deserve to have any human souls in the first place.
Just make Hell a better place, in her opinion, leave Heaven to stagnate and rot like they apparently want to. They can have Adam, their little Golden child, and Hell will gladly take the rest.
She can just expand Pride Ring again and again and again.
Staticky humming nears, and Alastor comes into view asking "How is he?" He wanted the short King to feel bad about ignoring Calliope's calls for months...he didn't want the man to be full-on sobbing his eyes, lungs, and every drop of liquid in his body out. Mainly because he had zero idea of what to do about it - lucky for him, the sobbing didn't start until Charlie blurted out that Lucifer hadn't actually created Hell, but someone named Roo did.
Running a hand through her hair, Calli says "Dropped off about ten minutes ago. I swear, those damn morons up above…"
Alastor nods, sitting Calli up slightly so he can slide in behind her, and says "I must say, the revelation of Hell's actual creation was quite a shock for everyone."
Calli nods, saying "Nobody had any idea…they just showed up out of the blue, threw Lucifer into a sudden trial…it was a mad rush to save him and then get to Lilith…" And then…then they just forgot about Eve. There's not a lot she regrets about that time - aside from not taking Michael's head off his shoulders with that beam of pseudo-Angelic magic, anyway - but leaving Eve up on Earth just made the list a little bit longer.
They'd thought, before they even freed her, that Heaven wouldn't go after her a second time - if they ever found out she was free in the first place.
Eve was one mortal, and Adam had already gotten a few kids out of her by then. Theoretically, not worth the trouble of re-controlling when she'd already done what they needed her to do.
They hadn't thought Roo would take an interest in her, though - they hadn't thought Heaven would just jump at any half-baked excuse to get Lucifer out of their feathers, either.
Lifting her two wings up for a moment, Calli reveals Lucifer curled up, arms wrapped around her waist and his face buried in her side. After a moment, she adds "Any particular reason Lucifer kept apologizing between crying?"
Alastor says "I may have showed him how to clear out his voicemail after you, Charlotte, and Vaggie left. It was that or get him drunk in terms of what would keep his mind off your whereabouts." At Calli's horrified look, he adds "I hadn't anticipated Charlotte's announcement, in my defense. Nor had I thought his phone could hold that many."
Calli snorts derisively and rubs at her temples, muttering "Nobody expected Fate to say that…nobody thought Heaven was that stupid. Cruel, self-righteous, arrogant…but not so stupid as to just pick the first half-baked excuse they could to get rid of someone as powerful or wonderful as Lucifer." His only 'crime' was to dare to dream, to see what could be instead of what was - his so-called 'crime' was simply existing, being who he was.
And they nearly killed him for it.
Alastor's fingers appear over hers, and he asks "Head hurts, I take it?"
Calli hums in appreciation as he starts rubbing - somehow managing to make her head throb so much less with just four fingers - and says "Throbbing. Screaming matches, draining one's magic, and recharging blood wards all in the same day tends to do that."
"Oh? Do tell."
Calli finds herself angling her head into Alastor's fingers, then quickly asks "You recognize this woman? Ever hear the name Roo before today?"
Alastor glances at the flickering image Calli generates, and silently shakes his head in a negative.
"Oh, thank fuck…she's called the Root of all Evil. Not a nice person to be within a hundred miles of, much less be at the center of her attention. We fought about eight millennia ago, I won…had to go down and recharge the Wards I trapped her in today."
Alastor nods, moving his fingers from her temples into her hair - and hearing her drawn-out hiss from between her teeth - and starts dragging his fingertips along her scalp lightly. Running one finger along the edge of her top wing experimentally gets a full-wing twitch out of Calli, but by then Alastor's moved on to rubbing her shoulders and the base of her neck. Calli quickly melts into a boneless puddle once he starts straightening out her feathers, sucking in shaking breathes and trying to keep her breathing even and not twitch or squirm at the intense sensations - her wings haven't gotten that hard a workout since the last time she fought Roo, unfortunately, as she hasn't gone flying with Lucifer since his Fall. And, even after he got his wings back, the three of them were always so busy between running Hell and raising Charlie...she hasn't been flying on her own two wings in far too long, it seems.
Angel quickly grabs the bottle of Vodka Husk was holding before it hits the floor and shatters, Vaggie claps a hand over Charlie's mouth, and Pentious quickly scoops up two of his Eggs before they can alert the pair.
After getting a hold of herself, Charlie walks over and asks "How's Dad?"
Calli points at her wing, Alastor's fingers still buried amongst her feathers but having gone completely - tortuously - still, and Charlie nods before saying "Well, given everything that came out today…how 'bout a slumber party out here? I'm feeling exhausted, and I'm not even the one that went off on Heaven."
Calli nods, saying "Don't be surprised if you wake up feeling like shit tomorrow. We were up there way too long, Charlie. Too used to Hell and the ambient energy down here. I'll explain tomorrow."
Alastor snaps his fingers, and several sleeping bags appear scattered over the floor.
And, if he notices Angel showing Husk something on his phone that Husk is staring slack-jawed at…he doesn't have it in him to care right now. So long as it isn't about him, it's not his concern.
Husk, unknown to Alastor, is staring slack-jawed at a video Angel somehow secretly managed to record of Calli and Alastor dancing together in the library from two weeks ago.