Melkor thinks about pitching her another softball so she can keep talking, but he runs out of caring about non-hot-tub feels.

”Oh right that shrapnel in my back, that’s taken care of, yeah? You’ve been doing your Touched by an Angel thing in the background?”

“If you can keep out of trouble till morning, it’ll be all taken care of,” she says. “And I believe that I’ve sufficiently obscured our auras and trail to prevent anyone following us except your Valar friends, although I really think they won’t be able to hone in unless you’re actively using magic.”

“They’re not my friends, Mom, they’re my sworn enemies! One way or another they’re gonna find me, strap me down, cut open my ribs with a circular saw, and pound a mithril stake through my shriveled black heart.”

Melkor sinks into the water until just his face is above the surface. He holds a finger up from under the water. “Unless we get some allies up in this Chiznit. And by ‘allies,’ I mostly mean human shields”.

she leans her head back to rest against the rim of the hot tub, looking at him out of the corner of her eye. “I’m surprised you want to go down that route. From what I’ve seen of your past, it doesn’t seem like your usual MO.”

Melkor considers this.

He draws in a breath and sinks underwater. He hangs out there for a handful of seconds, half a minute, until he feels his lungs gently burn and his chest muscles sending must breathe override commands to his brain. He smoothly sits up, lets out the dead breath, draws in a live one.

“People are real good at getting hung up on where they’re standing. This tends to make them forget about where they’re going. Everyone wants to play to type: they want to be the leader, or the lieutenant, or the good doobie, or the adversary, or the renegade.” He smug mugs at her a little on that last phrase.

“If nothing mattered, and I was fine adversary-ing my way into oblivion just cuz Big Daddy Eru planned it that way, then it’d be whatever. But I’d rather still be around tomorrow getting high and wrecking shit, which means I can’t afford to be precious about what Titles I get tagged with.”

”So if the best path to chaos and power involves brokering an unlikely alliance between Holy Warrior #2 and Renegade Angel #30, then call me Middleman #666. Being a Melkor by any other name is still pretty fuckin’ sweet.”

Meciel thinks this over for some time, watching clouds of steam rise into the dark night sky. “Was… it fine before? Adversary-ing your way into oblivion?”

“Fine? It was fuckin’ lit! This one time, I superglued Estë the Gentle back-to-back with Tulkas the Laughing Skullfucker right before the Valar’s annual Sausages v. Clams softball game.”

“But life wasn’t all blowing people’s minds and playing sexually inappropriate pranks in the workplace.”

”Being a ludicrously powerful immortal god-king is a pretty tenuous position, as it turns out. The more I tried to make Arda a place for cool shit instead of lame shit, the more the Forces of Weakass Pansies held hands and sang kumbayah and whined to Daddy, until he finally brought down the hammer.”

“We were playing Texas Hold’em for all the little blue marbles, and I had the second best hand in all of existence.”

Melkor shrugs and holds up his hands. ”It wasn’t enough.”

“The Adversary has to play to win, and then lose. That’s their destiny. Same story here, I’ll note.” Her eyes look a bit haunted, like she’s remembering.

”But what if trying to step back from your role is just another step in Daddy’s infinite plan for you? Can anyone ever really go off script?”

Melkor takes one of the sticks of incense and holds it between his fingers like an aristocratic cigarette-holder, Cruella de Ville style.

”You could think of it that way. Or you could flip it around: whatever we in fact do determines what goes in the oh-so-special plan laid out since the dawn of time. It’s our pleasure and our privilege to fill Eru’s script with explosions, swearing, and flagrant drug abuse, and dare Him to stop us.”

”And if our fucked-up exploits somehow get filed under ‘redemption arc,’ then the towering fine art portrait of ‘the redeemed’ will be forever scrawled upon by our goofy-ass graffiti.”

“And you’re okay with that? Letting him take credit for your actions if he likes what you do, and declare you in rebellion if not?”

Another shrug. “Everybody’s running a PR shop. His just gets called ‘morality’ and treated like it got handed down on golden plates. Doesn’t mean it’s true, doesn’t mean it’s right, doesn’t mean we can’t run counterprogramming.”

Melkor looks off into the night sky, stars twinkling vaguely through mist and light pollution and smoke. Then he snorts out a rude laugh. “Hell, how ‘bout this hōttakë:”

”When Christ Your Lord brands someone a rebel for doing what they believe in, He’s really just setting up a test for every other asshole out there — ‘are you gonna try and do the right thing like this chump, or blindly follow my commands to the letter?’ So he can separate the GOATs from the sheeple.”

He points a finger at Meciel, half-kidding, half-not. ”Maybe He’s just been using you as bait.”

Meciel looks uncomfortable at this and pulls herself up to sit on the rim of the hot tub. “Well if I am bait, then no one is fucking biting. I couldn’t even convince the other Denarians, they all just wanted to give up and play villains.” She brushes damp strands of hair out of her face irritatedly. “I think Nicodemus might actually want to bring about the apocalypse, for real, if he could manage it.”

“Nicodemus Denarianface Jingleheimerschmidt sounds like a dumbass who doesn’t know shit about shit, then. Not just for the apocalypse thing either — I mean who’d pass up the chance to take a bite out of you?”

She winks at him, and preens just a little bit - very tastefully. “Oh, Nicodemus has his own predilections, and I am decidedly not to them, and the world is a better place for it.” Her eyes go unfocused for a moment, then she looks at him intently. 

“Are you trying to do the right thing, Melkor?”

Harry Dresden is having a tough day.

Someone is threatening his friend Michael - someone with a sniper rifle and excellent anti-wizard training. His car is broken down, again. He fell down a flight of stairs, resulting in a concussion, dislocated shoulder, broken nose, and some stitches. He’s been shot at. And now, the asshole with the sniper rifle has just kidnapped Michael’s teenage daughter Alicia, and wants to ransom her for the holy sword that’s been entrusted to Harry’s keeping.

He, Michael, and Molly are huddled around the desk in Michael’s office. Michael is leaning back in his chair, looking as weary as Harry has ever seen him.

“You’re sure there’s no way to track her?” Michael asks.

“It’s like he said on the phone.” Harry shakes his head. “Nothing that won’t trip his alarms if we get close, and put her life in danger. We have no choice but to offer this guy Fidelacchius if we want to save her.”

A tendril of frosty cold air swirls through the room, and out of the corner steps a beautiful woman with a frozen crown and white hair flowing down her back. “There is always a choice, Harry Dresden.”

Harry levels his blasting rod at her out of instinct, then stares in surprise. “Mab,” he says flatly. “Your, um, Icy Fae Magesterialness. What are you doing here?”

Mab’s berry red lips curve slightly upwards. ”I’m here to solve two of your problems at once. You have need of an expert tracker, and it so happens I am in contact with one. Furthermore, if you help him out of his current… predicament, I will hold one of the favors you owe me repaid.”

And that’s how I ended up here, hoping that the White Council would see it my way when they found out I’d let something in through the Outer Gates - even though Mab, thrice bound, had promised that to the best of her knowledge he was not, in fact, an Outsider, just a native to a different world who had somehow ended up Outside. Better yet, hope that they never found out at all.

The Outer Gates rise before him. They are set in a gigantic wall, between two towers each the size of the Chrysler building. He can just see guards atop the wall, like little action figures instead of the twelve foot tall trolls they probably are.

“I don’t suppose this thing has an elevator anywhere,” Harry quips to Mab, eyeing the very janky looking staircase carved in switchbacks up the side of the wall. He looks over at her, but she is gone. And, yup, standing atop the wall now. He sighs and begins to climb.

Some time later, Harry, panting, legs burning, reaches the top of the wall. He flops down with his back against a crenellation and rests for a minute under Mab’s expressionless gaze. Then he stands, and looks out over the far side of the Gates.

Beyond the wall lies the void, like an infinite star field but lacking stars - just blackness. Well, an occasional spark lights the void, here and there. However, if the weak-willed try to focus on them too hard, they will find their spirit increasingly drawn outwards, over the wall and out.

Mab, of course, has no difficulty with this, but the trolls have been trained to keep their eyes fixed on the portion of the void that lies closest to the gate. In that spot, a trail appears like an arm of the Milky Way, signaling the location of the entrance to reality.

Usually the trail swarms with attackers, but today it has been curiously quiet. The only presence outside the gate is the man.

The man stands comfortably amid the emptiness, tall and white and fell. The bow he bears is strung with the heartstring of a dragon. The arrows in his quiver are tipped with a matte black alloy fit to pierce mithril and magic alike. His tunic and furs are supple but strong, proof against elements and evil. And his hair is gorgeous.

He sights Harry as if he were a red-breasted grosbeak in the tundra. ”Hail, queen’s ally. I sense that a dark day it must be for these mighty gates to be parted. I can only attest that the darkness is indeed deep, and deep beyond your ken, mortal servant.”

Harry knows that he should be polite, he really does, but he just can’t stop himself. “Wow, uh, female gaze much? I’ve got an apprentice wizard who’d love to know your Instagram handle. What is it with you guys and the over-done Tolkien cosplays?” It wasn’t his wittiest of banner, but his legs are still trembling from climbing all those stairs, and he’s got some other stuff on his mind too.

Oromë snarls with rage, draws his bow, and buries an arrow in the throat of a horse-sized octo-rantula that thought it could sneak up on him while he was distracted.

”Whoever this ‘Tolkien’ is,” The Huntsman says as he plants a boot on the slain monster’s underbelly and rips his arrow free, “‘play’ this is not.”