[Yeah. This didn't really bother Amariah on a theological level, of course, since witches have this pantheon of goddesses they call on for spells and don't go in for human religion, but it gives you an idea of the kind of power this fellow was throwing around when things were made. So, she figured first she'd investigate the afterlife, fill in the gaps in what the alethiometer could tell her. She could leave her daemon Pathalan - he's a cute little owl - behind, because she's a witch and got that taken care of when she was younger. And her boyfriend did the same thing, later in life, to save her and Path from some asshole, but that's another story. Anyone else who tried to walk into the afterlife without dying first would leave a daemon behind who couldn't get in, which, as aforementioned, is pretty unpleasant.]

[Doesn't sound like she'd be getting a lot of volunteers.]

[Most of us turned her down. I didn't particularly want a firefly-soul, personally. But she got a few. Aianon, Ansharil, and Ghosty all showed up without daemons appearing for them. They weren't the right species. Ghosty wound up having to leave some of her presence outside the afterlife, but otherwise could move around normally. Aianon and Ansharil were different - as long as they didn't try to go into the afterlife, nothing happened, but the alethiometer said that if one of them went the other would acquire daemon properties. Bear that in mind if you ever consider touching Ansharil - daemon-touching is a huge thing, even if Joker daemons are a little more gregarious than normal.]

[Got it,] says Ripper.

[To deal with the discomfort of separation, they used a couple tricks. First, daemon-touching is a huge thing for both positive and negative reasons. Sarion went with a wish on to prevent her from getting a daemon and snuggled up to Ansharil while Aianon went to make it less unpleasant. Shell Bell went too, and she brought her girlfriend - a Sherlock nicknamed Pearl - along, to hold her smew. Smews are a kind of duck, they're pretty. Cam used a different trick - his magic notebook, the alethiometer suggested, could turn into a daemon, but before she did that, there was nothing stopping him from being as far away from her as he liked, so he put her down and went the requisite distance and then made a contingent wish stating that if she would be his daemon instead of a new one appearing out of nowhere, that could happen. And then his notebook flew out of the woods where he'd left her and landed on his shoulder. She can switch between notebook and bird shapes now.]

[Flying notebook bird. All right.]

[She's a Cooper's hawk, when she's a bird,] Bella adds. [So you've got Cam and Amariah and Shell Bell and Ghosty and Kas and Aianon, prowling the afterlife, and on the dock by the river that runs around the place you've got Pearl holding the smew, Sue coordinating everybody, and Petaal and Pathalan and Grace just sort of hanging out. Sarion and Ansharil weren't on the dock, they were just by Amariah's house.]

[All right. And what happened?]

[Well, they didn't really understand how harpies worked. The alethiometer told them there was some danger about and it was hurting the dead people but it couldn't be more specific. Kas found one, but it took one look at him and flew away - Jokers don't really do guilt. And then,] Bella says, [Shell Bell found one.]

[...And Shell Bell does guilt?]

[She shouldn't really, but she does. The thing she feels guiltiest about is that when she died she wished Pearl was there with her to help her. So when the harpy screamed at Shell Bell, Shell Bell's smew started bawling and apologizing to Pearl and feeling bad about being comforted by being held and trying to get away.]

[Owww,] says Ripper.

[Yeah. And the topography of the land of the dead is all screwed up, wishes don't work there, and you can't teleport to destinations inside of it - you can leave, but nobody could teleport to Shell Bell, she wasn't listening to anything people said over Sue-link, they couldn't wish the smew asleep and hope he'd drag Shell Bell with him, the alethiometer could give them directions for how to get to her but it wasn't very quick about it. Pearl got fed up with waiting. She's a Sherlock, and they can find stuff - she flew over the river, left a gyrfalcon daemon behind her, and located Shell Bell. The harpy screamed at Pearl too, but Sherlocks are pretty good at working through negative emotions; she scooped Shell Bell right up and teleported her out to the dock to recover.]

[Good for Pearl,] he says, impressed.

[Yeah, she is intensely devoted to Shell Bell. So newly-split Pearl reassured newly-split Shell Bell. Everyone else who was exploring the land of the dead got alethiometer directions so they could converge on each other and not get caught alone, and they found a group of more harpies.]

[Did that end in tears and horror?]

[No, they talked to them, and Bells aren't all that diplomatic, even Cam, but the Jokers did a slightly better job of not antagonizing them and telling them non-guilt-related stories to keep them happy, and Amariah eventually got them to agree to work for her in the revamped afterlife, to make sure no one too awful returned to the world of the living. Jane does that, Downside, and I'm muddling along without her here; in Alethia it's reformed harpies. But I'm getting ahead of myself; the harpies said that they'd been made by the Authority, and the alethiometer couldn't tell them all that much about him, and Amariah was concerned that if she did anything to the land of the dead he'd made, he'd just undo all her work. So obviously he had to be handled next.]

[So of course she dragged everybody off to have a friendly word with God,] snorts Ripper.

[Well, Shell Bell and Pearl went home.]

[Right, that makes sense. And how did the word with God go?]

[They couldn't teleport directly to him. They had to go to the base of this floating mountain and fly up the rest of the way, and they got interrupted by some angels. Not the same kind as Angela.]

[What kind, then?]

[A semi-insubstantial magical kind, whereas Angela's ancestors just genetically engineered some of them to have wings and warm blood and pretty singing voices and good muscle tone. So a flock of these little angels who could barely hurt a fly all tackled Aianon. He could have gotten them off, but he'd have wound up killing six of them if he so much as beat a wing, and Amariah wasn't quite ready to authorize lethal force, so he just sort of let them carry him off.]

[...This is an incredibly hilarious mental image,] giggles Ripper.

[Isn't it just? So everyone else kept flying up, because I guess they weren't as high a priority as the literal demon, and they meet this bigger, more substantial angel, and he said they had to leave.]