[I wonder what they did next,] Ripper says innocently.

[Oh, turned around, gave up, went home,] says Bella merrily. [It's kind of an anticlimactic story, I don't know why I bothered telling it.]

He cracks up.

[Nah, they wouldn't leave, and the angel let Amariah describe what she wanted but turned her down, and they still wouldn't leave, and the angel charged up some kind of light bolt attack and swatted her and Cam and Kas. Kas torched on the spot - Jokers don't load up on wards the way Bells do - and was kinda stunned. Cam hit the ground. Amariah recovered faster, she's been flying since she was little because witches do, and she got her dagger out and fought the angel.]

[Oooooh, did she win? I'm in suspense!]

[She stabbed him in the gut, offered him a chance to surrender, he told her to die and started charging the beam again, she cut his throat, he dissolved.]

[Damn,] laughs Ripper. [Remind me not to piss her off.]

[Oh, it's safe to piss Bells off under normal circumstances, it's just not safe to get in our way when we are trying to end the torment of several billion suffering creatures.]

[Got it.]

[Not that I advise pissing Bells off, it's just that summary execution isn't the standard response. Anyway. They went on up through some magic fog they couldn't see through even with the see-through-specific-stuff power I invented, and felt around for a way into the mountain, and found it. And in this mountain was a crystal box with no openings that contained a wrinkly faded old angel.]

[...uh-huh,] says Ripper. [Wonder who that was.]

[He wouldn't say. She tapped on the glass to get him to wake up and talk to her, but he almost fell apart. He couldn't remember who he was. The alethiometer knew, though. It was the Authority.]

[Thought so.]

[He didn't want to do anything. He just wanted to be left alone. He wasn't going to get in her way. So she left him alone. The other angels, on the other hand, continued to be a problem. They wanted - on the Authority's behalf, but they didn't know how far he'd dwindled - complete control of everything. Everyone in unthinking obedience. Cam tried to talk to them, but they didn't want to talk. The mountain still forbade wishing, but not enchantment. Amariah made an angel tank that slurped them all up and kept them there and gave them food and water, and made it so new angels would get their own compartments in case they weren't friends with the main flock, because the alethiometer said not all angels followed the Authority. And she stuck the mountain where it was, since it was conveniently in a subworld that didn't have any life in it.]

[That is convenient.]

[And then everything was set up for her to design her own land of the dead. She made a subworld, from scratch, that worked how she wanted it.]

[...That's a thing you can do?]

[With a big, big coin. She tried an arrow and it didn't work. She got Brilliance to make some tenners for her.]

[Neither can I. Unboosted humans can't even make evils, and pretty much need magic to survive making stars. But Brilliance can.]

[Wow.]

[Yeah. He made a significant batch, they got handed out to the peal, Amariah needed two - one to make the subworld work how she wanted it, and one to make sure it caught forthcoming dead people instead of the old afterlife.]

[That is incredible.]

[There's a reason she's the one I described when I was contending that I am not the most interesting Bell.]