Within the void, Melkor snaps off one of his middle toes and turns it into a doobie.

”Mannnn… have you ever thought about how ‘privilege’ is like… a euphemism for getting dicked over?”

Melkor gets some real good DMT going in his system and engages in some extreme subjective time acceleration.

“It’s like… that time Ender light-sped his way through Narnia… and the Statue of Liberty ended up being on the Planet of the Apes for some reason,” he says over the course of the next 100 years.

The void looks exactly the same.

He chills. He vibes. He takes up crochet. He contemplates swearing vengeance against those who wronged him and landed him here in the first place, but then he’s like, mehhhhh. 

“This almost makes me feel bad for those dudes I threw in an infinitely large bucket of whale piss. It’s like… they probably never even got to hang out.”

Melkor gestures at a speck in the distance… what might be another void-resident, or might be the world’s teensiest, twinkliest hallucination.

The two voidpoints come together instantly, like an ant walking across a fold of cloth. The speck is a silver coin, blackened with age in its crevices. It twinkles at him invitingly

High Melkor arches an eyebrow. He’s torn between hanging out with the first non-him physical object he’s encountered in gigaseconds vs finishing his full-size crocheted tapestry map/replica of Middle Earth.

He sucks in air through his black teeth and let’s the yarn fray back into his own loose eyelash hairs.

”Yo, sup, hail and well met, inanimate object — are you horny on main or what?”

The coin slowly spins, and he can see the image of a serious looking woman, glowing softly. A bare whisper of consciousness drifts over to him. It smells of unexpected fondness, betrayal, and smoldering ambition.

Melkor feels a rare spark of empathy: he too smells, though perhaps less of ambition and more of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

”What’s your name, Chuck E Cheese token?”

“I am Meciel, Renegade and Temptress.” He tastes the words, as they roll around the doobie in his mouth.  “And I can help you, oh great one.”

He licks her face.

She winks. 

“Hmm!” Melkor hums, impressedly. “fwiw, ime most entities get that freeze response when an exiled supernatural being rips up the script.”

”You’ve got 60 seconds added to your time trial clock before I turn you into one of those stretched penny souvenirs. Tempt me, Messiér.”

She gestures behind her, where a thin trail of spirit leads… somewhere. It seems she retains a tether to her home reality, but lacks the power and skill to follow it from this end. “Come on in, the water’s warm.” Her words taste of freshly pressed grapes and honey.

Shit man, a tether? Melkor would have blown an army of clowns to have a tether.

”Alright Hotpants, you hooked me. And not in like a way that’s a crochet reference. But first, we got some dancing to do.”

He stretches the sweat from his fingertips into taffy. He wraps the candy around the coin and flips it, over and over and over. Through the connection, an acidic residue enters both their minds and (along with the sudden pumping EDM music) tips them over into ecstasy.

Melkor’s face is basically all dilated pupil at this point. “You’re, like, the world to me right now Mess.” 

The void pulses around them and he feels her whole backstory rush through him, not in episodics but as a series of vibes and metaphors. It feels disturbingly good.  She’s staring at him with wide eyes as if he’s a god.

“Lucky for you babe: I am a god.”

And Melkor pulls on the tether (shave-and-a-haircut:two-bits!), wraps a spirit-arm around spirit-Meciel, and plunges his deific will into the virgin shores of whatever freaking world this is that’s about to get Melkor’d.

“Bye bye void, bye bye!”

The void vanishes.

There is an instant of blinding sunlight before a lid slams thunderously into Melkor’s head, and he is once again in darkness.  He has been knocked into a pile of something squishy, soft, and… he sniffs. Stinky as hell. He feels around at a couple of heavy metal walls before pushing up on the lid above him, which opens with a clang. He is standing in a dumpster in the corner of a parking lot. A very large building behind him is casting the dumpster in shadow. In his hand lies the physical manifestation of the coin from the Void.

“Haaaaaaa what a goddamn comedown! Disgussssssttiiiiiing.” He picks up a rotting salami between two fingers. He drops the salami and stares at his fingers really hard.

Wow.

Without looking away from his fingers, he stirs the crock of shit he’s in with one leg.  ”Yoooooo Ms. Mess, you in there? Need any profoundly nauseating CPR?”

“My host,” a melodic voice speaks in his head. “I am here.” A beautiful woman with dark hair and sparkling silver eyes abruptly appears, perched gracefully on the edge of the dumpster. She looks around. “Welcome to Chicago. Care for a refreshment?” She opens her hand, which holds several small, colorful, translucent objects that appear to be in the shape of cartooning bears.

Melkor snakes his tongue around her hand and slurps up the gummy bears, Lickitung style.

They’re, like, electrifyingly good.

”Damnmnmng… this meatsuit has some Eru-flippin’ taste buds. Meciel, put crab tacos on my bucket list.”

“Crab tacos added to your bucket list,” she says in an awkward flat intonation. She watches him chew and swallow, and for Melkor, the world suddenly goes very chill. He realizes that standing in a dumpster is actually a pretty pleasant experience.

Mmmmmmm.

”You know…”

“I like this ‘Chicago.’”

“I think I’m gonna keep it.”

It took him the better part of five minutes to get that out. Mixed in there was some staring. Some lip-smacking. Some toe-wriggling. Some drool.

“We really will get along famously, I think,” she says with a broad smile. She is swinging her legs back and forth off the edge of the dumpster, looking up at the blue sky. Meciel takes a deep breath, savoring the crisp air. She doesn’t seem to be in any hurry.

Melkor shifts his weight. Like, the way an iceberg might carve the Titanic out of a fjord. Forward, forward fjord! Ford to the fore! 

Arms limp, he teeters his torso over the edge of the dumpster; cries “Hi ho silver!”; and slides down the outside  face first, languorously colliding with the asphalt.

A door opens and closes behind them and a tall, muscular middle-aged man walks into sight, dressed in chain mail and a white cloak with red cross over one shoulder.  He is carrying a large bag of garbage, and tilts his head to one side upon noticing Melkor. “Hello there,” he says, in a steady, friendly voice. “Need a hand up?”

Melkor, laying bonelessly on the ground, raises an arm and extends it toward the man. “Yesssss. Thank you kindly LARPer.”

Michael grasps Melkor’s hand firmly and pulls him up with the perfect amount of counterweight, easily balancing the garbage bag over his other shoulder. He tosses the garbage into the dumpster.

Melkor flexes his hand. Stings. Dude must be squeezing resistance putty all day and eating cans of spinach all night.

“Hey kid. Wanna join a boy band?” He nods his head back over his shoulder at Meciel. “Co-ed band, technically.”

Meciel has vanished.

Michael notes, but does not react to Melkor’s odd nod. “Not today, I think, but I will keep the offer in mind. Are you alright? That was quite a faceplant you had going.”

Melkor’s like, hmmmmmmm. He’s also like “hmmmmmm…”

“…mmmmno I’m good, that was just my sun salutation. Eyyy tho, you got any crab tacos? This charnel canister lacks all culinary charm.”

Michael blinks, the most surprised he has seemed to be by any of this. “As it happens, my friend Father Forthill, inside, just received a gift of fresh crab meat from a grateful parishioner, and we had just been debating whether to make it into tacos or sushi.” He thinks for a moment, looking hard at Melkor. “Well, I would call this a happy coincidence, but,” he chuckles and gestures skyward, “I have long since given up on believing in coincidences. Would you care to join us for a meal?”

“Awww yeah, everything’s comin’ up Melkor. Let’s feast, chainmailed-skyworshipper — I’ve got the munchies like you wouldn’t belieeeeeve.”

“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Melkor. My name is Michael Carpenter.” He shakes Melkor’s hand, and walks him over to an old but well maintained blue minivan. 

After a short drive, they pull up to a beautifully maintained classic colonial home with a white picket fence, get out of the car, and walk up to the front door.

Melkor, still shell-shocked, gestures back at the van. “Let me get this straight: you just mount up in your azure explosion chariot, on, like, the daily?” He shakes his head, amused. “Chicago, man.”

“How do they do it where you come from, Melkor?” Michael asks, pausing with his hand on the knob.

He waves airily. “Walking, horses, piggy-back, that kinda thing. Pretty sure I saw a big beefy guy on an elephant once.”

Michael opens the door. “Y’know, I think we had a man on an elephant here in Chicago once, too.”

“Charity, love, I’ve brought company for dinner,” he calls as he gestures Melkor in.

Melkor feels a tingle ripple down his spine as he crosses the threshold.

“Again?” A voice calls playfully from inside the house. “Michael, if I had a carrot or potato for every time you’ve brought unexpected company for dinner, we could feed an entire army.” As she speaks, a woman appears from the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron. She is tall, blonde, and beautiful, though not in a way that particularly invites unwholesome thoughts. She smiles warmly at Michael and pleasantly at Melkor. If he looks carefully, he will notice that underneath her comfortable, loose clothing, she is broad shouldered and quite muscular.

Could probably start a cult where the only ritual is watching these two do push-ups together.

He reaches out a hand to Lady Skyworshipper for a fist bump. But he pulls it back at the last second to cough into his elbow, and a cockroach gets hacked up and skitters to the floor. Lickety-split he crushes it beneath his heel and grinds it into the flooring.

*heh-hem*, he clears his throat. “Garbage in, garbage out, amirite?”

Charity takes a long beat to process this. Then she nods briskly. “Quite right. Here, I’ll get you a broom to clean that up with.” She grabs a brush and dustpan with well practiced motions, and hands them to Melkor with Very Clear Expectation, also well practiced. Then she looks over at Michael, raises an eyebrow as if to say ‘what have you gotten us into now,’, and walks back into the kitchen.

He looks at the brush. He looks at the dustpan. He looks at the squished cockroach. He looks back at the brush again.

”This is… for like… a cleansing ritual?” 

Melkor is incredibly torn, deep in his gut, between his basic nature as a dude who never cleans shit up, versus his fleshly desire for crab tacos.

Ehhhhh what the fuck is a basic nature anyway?

Melkor sweeps up the smushroach.

He’s instantly overcome by an intense nausea, and urgently inquires of his host where he could find the nearest vomitorium.

Michael claps him on the shoulder. “First door on the left down the hall.”

Melkor runs right in there and empties the meager, bilious contents of his mortal stomach in some receptacle or other.

Then he shuts the door behind him and rubs the silver denarian in his hand three times. He mumble-mutters: “Come on out, tiny temptress thing, I know you’re innnn therrrrre.”

Meciel appears immediately, but since the hall bath is tiny, she chooses to manifest her illusion in the mirror over the sink.

”Melkor, I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you before - I don’t actually have a body, this form” she gestures to herself “only exists in your mind. No one else can see it.” She pauses.

“Yeah nah that’s cool this happened to me on the DTs once with a sexy catgirl who only spoke in riddles.”

“You should also know that Michael is one of three Knights of the Cross, an order specifically dedicated to eliminating the Fallen - that’s me - and helping free those who have come under their influence - that’s you. Well, at least he will see it that way, I’m not sure it would really be fair to say I’m influencing you. In practice, they often stab first and ask questions later.”

“You’re the Fallen? Sheeeeit, where I come from I’m the Fallen! So sick.”

Melkor fogs up the mirror with his breath and starts doodling elves dangling from trees.

”Also, just three dudes? That’s anemic for, like, a book club. The crew that took me down had that many goddesses whose name started with the letter ‘V’”

Meciel offers him a high five through the mirror. “Twinsies!”

He slaps the mirror so hard it spider cracks. “Hells to the yes.”

“Also, you really should rinse out the trash can before you go back out there.”

He does so, using the high spout jutting from the wall.

”And just so you know Messy Pants: as soon as I finish getting me my crab tacos, I’m melting this house into goo and brain-slaving everybody inside.”

“Not the kids, Melkor. I don’t do kids.” She vanishes.

“Hahaha these Chicago fools brought kids into this world? Whaaaaaat? Who’s the real monster here.”

He makes his way out, training his nostrils on the sweet meaty scent of oceanic arthropod.

It’s me. I’m the real monster.

Michael finds him in the hallway, now dressed in jeans and a worn tshirt. “Had to change out of my, ah, LARPing gear,” he says sheepishly. “But good news, I think dinner is just about ready.” He gestures for Melkor to precede him into the dining room.

The dining room is full of cheerful chaos. Charity is directing three older children in setting the table and carrying in food, while a teenage boy supervises some littles as they wash up. A young woman with pink and blue hair sits at the table, talking seriously with a small older man in priest’s robes. And on the table sits an enormous bowl of steaming crab meat, surrounded by all the fixin’s for the dankest tacos you ever heard tell of.

Melkor’s stomach rumbles cartoonishly, he licks his lips, he rubs his hands together in anticipation, the whole shebang.

He plops himself down in an open chair and assembles three tacos: 

1. kimchi sriracha pepperjack 

2. grilled onion red bell pepper jalapeño black currant 

3. butter guac sour cream

All filled to bursting with succulent mother effing crab meat.

By this time everyone is more or less seated, but no one else has gotten food. There is actually a rising silence. Charity is annoyed with him but covering by shooting looks at Michael, and Michael is actually kind of amused but also sending apology in Charity’s general direction.

But it is the girl with pink and blue hair who intervenes. She leans over and puts a hand on his as he reaches out to take a taco in hand for his first bite. “Gotta slow your roll one sec, dude,” she whispers with a smile. “We say a pretty serious Grace in this house.”

“Ohhhhhhh riiiiight,” he says, and pulls his hand back. “The sky thing.”

It is as if everyone was secretly waiting to find out if Melkor would respect the Ritual. Total silence falls. Michael nods at the small priest. “Father, would you care to say grace?”

The priest rises. “Of course.” He bows his head and closes his eyes, and everyone else around the table does the same. Cotton-candy-hair gently nudges him with her elbow.

Through heavily lidded eyes, Melkor surreptitiously stares down at his fingers.

The Father allows a moment of silence, then speaks. “Bless us, oh Lord, and these your gifts which we are about to receive from your bounty. We offer thanks for the culinary gifts of our host, Charity, and for the generosity of Jamie in offering us the centerpiece of this meal. We are grateful for the opportunity to make new friends and break bread together. Through Christ our Lord we pray, Amen.”

A round of quiet “amen” choruses around the table.

“Amen!”

And Melkor slaps the silver denarian onto the table next to his plate.

And he picks up Taco #1 with both hands and takes a big ol’ bite.

The taco is rapturous. Kimchi, sriracha, and pepperjack fold into each other, tease, interweave. The cross-cultural notes of tang and spice, rotting fermentation and fiery pain, play contretemps over the starchy pre-sweetness of the tortilla and the rich, tender crab.

Rarely had wine so intoxicated, or fattened calves so sated; rarely had sensory excitement rung with such clarity, unstained by preoccupation; rarely had consuming been so all-consuming.

Fuck I love crab tacos.

A whisper of fond resignation blows through the back of his mind. “Oh, here we go.”

The reaction around the table is sudden and very disparate.

Michael jumps to his feet, hand flying to an empty spot at the back of his shoulder.

Charity, halfway through cutting a tortilla into cute triangles for the toddler, goes white with shock and immediately reverses her grip on the knife into a stab-ready hold.

The priest freezes and his eyes flicker back and forth rapidly.

The teenage boy half stands, clenching his fists, but bangs  his hip into the table and is bounced back into his seat.

The younger children seem largely confused, looking at their parents with growing anxiety.

He looks over to see what bubblegum hair thinks of all this. But she is gone.

So is the coin.

So is his napkin.

He’s flummoxed as hell for a microbeat. Then:

Nobody out-bullshit-speed-chesses High Melkor!

”If you ever wanna see bubblegum princess again, everybody put your hands behind your head and chill your friggin’ balls, alright?!”

Michael and Charity share a look and Michael nods. Charity slowly puts down the knife. They sit.

“With the coin gone, I see no reason why we cannot sit and discuss this calmly,” Michael says.

High Melkor takes a breath through his nose, and hardcore remembers about tacos #2 and #3.

”I can be down with that, Sky-LARPer. I do expect the coin on my plate by the time I finish these truly excellent tacos.” 

He stuffs the rest of taco #1 in his mouth.

In the kitchen, a chunk of the ceiling melts into a globule of lukewarm black tar and splorches down onto the counter. Another splorch can be heard from upstairs. Then another.

In another world, a hard-forged silversteel charm glows with heat.

Its bearer swears a string of mighty expletives.

Charity goes back to helping the littlest with his food, and that seems to signal everyone else to start fixing tacos again, though with much less of a festive atmosphere.

“How much do you know about the coin?” Michael asks him quietly.

“I hear it has this, like, subtle ability to manipulate grown men into taking up LARPing.”

Melkor bites into taco #2, which, let me tell you, is just a crunchy zesty spring garden in his mouth.

Michael laughs a little in spite of himself. “True enough. Why did you come here though, if you know what I am? Not to mention that if you meant us any harm, the wards would have reacted as you came in.”

Melkor shakes his head. It feels like all of his recent highs are draining out of him at once. He’s feeling positively growly.

“You just bumble around thinking everybody in the whole universe is split into Yay Tribers and Boo Tribers… fighting in the pits, rooting from the stands, not wanting to get picked last for the kickball team.

”You ever imagine some of us just wanna flip over the table? Reset the game, burn up the rules, put a new Eru-damned episode on the screen for once?”

A glob of tar the size of Michaelangelo’s David’s head splatters onto the steaming platter of crab meat. A brand new skylight shines down from the roof into the dining room. Melkor finishes shoving taco #2 in his mouth.

Michael does a double take. “Are you… melting my roof?” he asks with some alarm. “Please stop.”

“Give me back my hot illusion chick and I’ll consider it!”

“You do realize that as a member of the Order of the Blackened Denarius, the Fallen is every bit as much of the ‘Yay Triber Boo Triber’ dichotomy as I am? Do you consider yourself allied with their aims?”

“Holy guacamole,” he says, picking up the honestly kind of gloopy taco #3, “is Chicago just a bunch of Orders of This and Orders of That?” He tuts disapprovingly. “I can see I’ve arrived none too soon.”

Abruptly, bubblegum is back in her seat. “You don’t know the half of it, pal,” she says, and stuffs a taco into her face with intentional casualness.

Melkor startles. Girl should have a friggin’ bell on her.

“Congratulations Skyworshippers! You’ve passed my test and I’ve returned your prodigal roommate to you. All hail Melkor the Merciful.”

Gloopy though it is, taco #3 is still a glorious, succulent mess.

While he is engrossed in his gustatory experience, he sees motion out of the corner of his eye. Charity is pulling her hands away from his plate, on which have appeared three more tacos.

4. Sweet potato, chipotle mayo, and crispy Brussels sprouts

5. Pineapple, pork rinds, and cojita cheese

6. Mango avocado habanero salsa

Melkor bursts out laughing. “Aaaaaah you tricksy chicks are alright! You oughta take notes, Knight of the Bearded Table, you just might become a real boy someday.”

Melkor snarfles the eff into his fourth taco and the crispity-crunchity fillings prove a savory salve to his spirits.

The silversteel charm dies into cool rest.

“A false alarum?” one voice asks.

The bearer shakes his head. “Nothing but a fleeting lull. We mount the hunt without delay.”

Two-tone is examining the glob of tar in the center of the table. “This isn’t any kind of magical effect I’ve ever seen,” she says with a look over at Michael. “Is this some kind of weird evocation spell?” she asks Melkor, “or something totally different? You put a lot of power behind it, for sure.”

“Eh, that was Melkie just messing around. You wanna see some real power, I’ll take you on a tour of Angband someday.”

He sighs to himself wistfully with a faraway look in his eye. “Ahh Angband.”

Molly looks at him, and mouths the word “angband,” as if she is trying to piece something together but can’t quite.

Melkor’s mouth is already moving into pork rinds and cojita cheese, which mesh unimaginably well with that sweet sweet crab meat.

”So if I wanted to break the backbone of the blackened denarian book club — for fun — what’s step one there? Steal a glowy sword maybe?”

Michael looks startled. “No,” he says slowly, “the swords only work for those that have a calling to them.” A pause. “If you truly want to ally on this, I would be happy to have your help. But it is a longer conversation, and not one well suited to my family dinner table.”

“I, uh, jeez, sure, uh…” He stares down at the gold and green slices within his remaining taco. “I don’t know these things I guess, since I never had a family. Or a sword.”

“We all have things to learn in this life,” Michael says solemnly. “And when we know better, we do better.”

He’s gonna nod sagaciously and finish his taco in a calm, orderly manner. A glint of sunlight reflecting off the oozy pile of crab-tar-tar catches his eye, and he gives a peaceful smile.

”Anyhoo, I should prolly get going… you’ve got dishes and synchronized push-ups and roof repair to get to. I’d hate to overstay my welcome >:~)”

Michael lets him finish and graciously sees him to the door. “I can’t quite say it was a pleasure meeting you, Melkor, though it did have its moments. Give me a call if you want to go hunting Denarians.” He hands Melkor a business card and offers his hand.

Melkor takes the card and hands him a spliff in return.

“Just remember: since Eru is all-powerful and obviously ordained our meeting with that delicious crab, all of my subsequent actions are ultimately his responsibility.”

Michael obviously has no idea what the spliff is but he takes it with a nod. “Good night, Melkor.”

“See you on the —“

Melkor vanishes in a cloud of spores and a clap of mild thunder.

MIchael shakes his head and goes back inside. He walks over to the dining table, bends over, and pulls two broadswords out from beneath it. “Glad we didn’t have to use these,” he says, looking at Molly. “Quick thinking, Molls. Where did you stash the coin, anyway?”

”Tank of the upstairs toilet,” Molly replies promptly. “First place I thought of.”

Father Forthill stands. “If you wish, I can see to it that the coin is taken to the Church’s sanctuary for such things.” Michael nods. “Just get me a rubber glove and a blessed handkerchief and I’ll take care of it.”

A sudden condensation of dust and a strangely localized blast of wind rattle a small section of the exposed 108th floor roof of Sears Tower.

“— flip siiiiide auuuugh holy effing elven ballsacks my skin’s on fire!”

Melkor stops, drops, and flip flops until the flames go out.

It is extremely frickin windy up there. The view is incredible though. He can see a service door, which is locked, and two huge antennas.

Melkor rolls a blunt on his third try after having his first two snatched away by the frickin’ wind. He surveys the glass and metal towers, the sprawling gray ribbons of road, the distant expansive sea that the city abuts.

Abutts, more like. Sheeeeit.

He stands on the ledge and feels the spirit of this wacky, human-infested iron forest beneath him. “You’re mine, baby.”

”Just as soon as I get coin chick back. And figure out how to not set myself on fire too much.”

Melkor flips around and shoots a sticky black rope at the door. He shakes the rope a few times until the hinges turn into imitation lime jello, then he makes a pro women’s tennis grunt and pulls. 

The door pops out of its frame and clangs to the floor. There is a stairway that leads downwards for five flights before he finally reaches a door. Though it appears that he could also just keep climbing down stairs forever.

To saw through a wall or not to saw through a wall…

His wrists are a little toasty from where he did his little webslinging. He opens the door.

He emerges into a room done up to look kind of like a… queue area at a movie theater. “103” is painted on the wall in huge red letters. The queue setup is for an… elevator? There are half a dozen people waiting and some dude in a uniform guarding the front of the line. Beyond the waiting area he can see some informational displays, a gift shop, and some windows looking out onto a view that is not *quite* as good as what he just enjoyed from the roof, though it is much less windy here.

The back of the door he just came through has a sign that reads “service stairs, do not enter.”

Melkor decides to play it cool for once in his thrice-damned existence.

He walks over, quiet but casual but stealthy, and sidles up to the ever-so-slightly loner-looking guy in line. “Yo… fellow mortal, what a day, sure would be nice to share some kush with a total stranger.” He pats his jacket pocket suggestively.

”Hey though I was just trying to remember — how do our rulers make significant pronouncements? They obviously don’t stand on the roof and yell, but like… what do they do? Right?”

The guy nods animatedly, pulling a phone out of his pocket. “One second,” he says, with a heavy accent, pushing the large camera around his neck out of the way so he can type on the phone. “Say again,” he says, giving Melkor a big smile and shoving the phone near his face.

“Aw shit let’s see most of my lines are improvised… Uh, fellow mortal, I’ve got some kush, but uh, my memory’s not so good, from all the drugs, so you should remind me how Chicago’s rulers make their pronouncements to us, and then we can go get high.”

Melkor waits expectantly.

After he finishes, the phone emits a few long strings of Japanese words. The guy listens, looks startled, concerned, then enthused. He gives Melkor two thumbs up. He types some more on the phone and shows Melkor the screen.  Most of it is in kanji chharacters, but at the top of the screen he sees a small blue bird icon. The guy types some more and the word “Chicago” appears with a blue check next to it, and a feed of video clips that the guy scrolls through. He gestures at the phone definitively.

Melkor’s eyes go wide, and then he rocks back and cackles. “Haha no fuckin’ way! You guys turned my Twitter idea into a thing? Chicago is friggin’ boss.”

He pulls a dank juicy eight ball of the green goodness out of his pocket and slaps it into the hand of Mr. Very Helpful Guy. In the same smooth motion, he steals the guy’s phone and starts navigating to the login screen while he walks back to the service door.

Melkor seems to have done this smoothly enough that the guy is focused on his new acquisition for the moment, goggling and then working to stuff it into his messenger bag. 

But when he reaches the door it is locked. Also the guy guarding the elevator is eyeing him, as if trying to decide whether he is going to get in trouble if he ignores this situation.

My one true nemesis: doors that lock behind me.

”Fuck it! Snake time!”

Melkor sloshes through the resulting pile of vibrant, vibrating vipers where the door used to be. He’s on the login page for the “✅ Chicago” account. “Now to just use the universal backdoor that that Sauron nerd told me about…”

People start screaming. The stairs are now accessible. The guard dude grabs for a walkie talkie and starts gibbering.

Melkor climbs the stairs. He types in the backdoor into the password field (“mellon-illuvatar-420”) and hits submit.

He stops a flight or two up and shakes some hangers-on off his pant leg. Wham! — a searing pain shoots through Melkor’s heel. The red-yellow-black snake’s fangs are stuck right through the thick white rubber of his sneaker.

“Oh come on, a snakebite? What are the odds!”

A weird chill runs down his back, like someone is watching him - but there is no one else in the stairwell.

He is now logged into @Chicago.

“That’s a lock. You were dead right Hunter, target has slipped the void.”

The bearer of the glowing hot charm stops short. “Sister, please. Bespeak your thoughts in the timeless form; lest the ways of the First Enemy outlive our own.”

A sigh. “I sight the quarry. Your doom, Brother, proves meet: the Black Foe dwells in blackness no more.”

The Hunter’s eyes gain the iron of his spirit. “Then let us make haste in our pursuit, and with Angainor bring this mad dog to heel.”

Using a dark intelligence honed over millennia of global domination and eons more of contemplation, Melkor figures out how to record and upload a video.

”Hello Chicago. My name is High Melkor, and I’m coming to you from the rooftop of the magnificent Minas Sears. Really looking forward to meeting each and every one of you over the course of my reign here. Right now though I’ve got this problem… and this problem? Is a girl.

”My plan was to propose on top of the city tonight under the midnight moon with the blackened silver Roman coin that brought us together in the first place. Is it a little weird? Yeahhhh. But that’s how she likes it, heheheh.

“Sadly, in a gross violation of property law, guest right, and table manners, the coin was stolen from me by an agent of St. Mary’s Church — it’s the one on 32nd, just go down Morgan and hang a right after Pulaski Savings Bank, you can’t miss it. If you get to Pomierski & Son Funeral Home, you’ve gone too far.

”Chicago, I’m not a perfect guy. I’ve got my flaws, just like everyone else. So don’t retake this blackened denarius by whatever means necessary and bring it to the highest point in the city before midnight just for me. And don’t do it just to right the horrendous wrong perpetrated by St. Mary and her followers, thus allowing them to begin walking the path of penitence. And definitely don’t do it just for my extremely hot girlfriend, cuz I’m not letting her blow anybody over this.

“Do it for this 1-liter Nalgene full of tiny, perfectly cut diamonds. Hey, I think I’m gonna flick ‘em down to the street one by one while I wait though, so tiktok y’all.”

In a tasteful office on the top floor of a high rise a few blocks away, a voice comes on over the intercom. “Mr. Marcone, sir? There’s a new player in town - it looks like city of Chicago Twitter has been hacked.” A strongly built man with greying hair and green eyes watches Melkor’s video without blinking. 

On a sprawling estate tucked in the countryside between Verona and Venice, a man with dark eyes, elegantly dressed, receives a notification on an automated search parameter. The light of the phone screen flickers over his face, casting an eerie shadow on the wall behind him. “There you are, Meciel.”

Detective Sergeant Karrin Murphy brushes blonde hair out of her eyes impatiently props her boot-clad feet up on her desk, nudging aside her ancient government issue computer keyboard. She pulls out her phone and opens Twitter, refreshes, then starts upright as she sees Melkor’s video. She replays the entire thing twice, then swings her feet down and straps on her pistol.

A painfully tall, dark-and-handsome man in a black leather duster looks from a printed piece of paper up to Molly Carpenter.

“You’re telling me this guy just materialized in the dumpster behind St Mary’s, slapped a Denarian coin down on the dinner table, and melted holes in your dad’s roof without batting an eye. And now he’s putting a public bounty out on the coin by hacking into some official government account, and broadcasting from the top of Willis Tower, which for some reason he’s calling ‘Minas Sears’?

“Hell’s bells.”

Flick.

Melkor stares out at the fiery orange watercolor being painted over the city of Chicago by the setting sun.

Flick.

Some part of him wonders if Chicago has always had a sun and moon, or if it had to go through the awkward adolescent cosmic lamps and magical trees phase first.

Flick.

Another part of him wonders if you could breed a super dog by filling that stadium over there with strays and running it at 1000x speed.

Flick.

Another part of him wonders what’s taking them so long to get his Hot Mess back.

Flick.

He can see blue and red flashing lights moving towards the base of the building.

He can hear a huffing and puffing that gets gradually closer. Then the uniformed bellhop from inside appears. “Please man, you gotta get rid of these snakes, it’s a nightmare!”

“Tell me about it dude! Look at my shoe, it’s friggin’ ruined.”

Melkor holds up his leg and shows off the bloody heel of his white sneaker.

The guy looks down at his shoe, trying to figure out if there are secretly like a hundred snakes on it. There are not. He looks back up at Melkor. “Yeah. Yeah, it sucks about your shoe man. But please. Please get rid of the snakes downstairs.”

“Listen, there’s a lesson in all this for you man. What’s your name kid? Is it Feanor?”

“N-n-no, nope. My name is James.” He lifts up the name tag on his chest, angling it towards Melkor.

“Well Jamie, I know I might seem cool enough to solve your problems for you. But in fact, I’m much cooler than that.”

He puts a hand on the guy’s shoulder and looks him in the eye. “I would never rob you of such a valuable chance to prove your mettle against a writhing mass of deadly snakes.”

“I - um - what? I really don’t think that’s a good idea-”

“Alright kid, let’s do the pill thing.” He holds out a red pill and a blue pill, but actually they’re both just diamonds with some food coloring on them.

”You can either fight these snakes by turning into 40 duck-sized horses…” he wiggles the red pill suggestively, “or one horse-sized mongoose,” and he shakes the blue pill.

As Jamie sputters, there is another clattering of footsteps on the stairs, and a plainclothes police officer appears, gun drawn. “Detective Rudolph, CPD,” he shouts, pointing his gun alternately at Melkor and James, “which one of you scumbags loosed the snakes on the Skydeck?”

Melkor throws his hands up over his head. “Thank Christ our Lord you’re here Rudolph! This maniac said he was gonna go through some kinda manhood ritual where he turns into a lion-tiger-bear thing and fights an elevator full of snakes to the death! Was really chewing’ my ear off about the OH GOD — “

James’ dandy bellhop uniform bursts into shreds as he suddenly transforms into a horse-sized mongoose.

In Glasgow, Scotland, several serious looking men and women wearing grey cloaks and swords are sitting around in various degrees of alertness. A bell rings. “We have a hit on Dresden’s tracking setup!” one woman announces, leaning over a map on a table. “Willis tower. Transmogrification. Could be our warlock. Morgan, you take-” but one of the men has already jumped up and run out the door. 

“Morgan, wait! Damnit,” the woman sighs, before turning back to the others. “Ramirez, Yoshimo, go after him. Chandler, get ahold of Dresden and make sure he knows there’ll be Wardens coming down on his city.”

Rudolph’s gun swings definitively towards the giant mongoose. “What the FUCK?” He screams, stumbling backwards. “Is this another bullshit loop garoo trick? Stay the fuck away from me!”

Melkor briefly considers swinging up onto James Mongoose’s back and riding into battle against the snakey horde. A wave of wooziness passes over him from the snakebite he already got, and that ambition is swept from his mind.

He sits down criss-cross applesauce on the roof. “Ima just take a breather, maybe do a line. I got a long night ahead of me. You got this Rudolph.”

Rudolph shoots Jamie the Mongoose.

Or rather, shoots at it - his shot goes wide, and J. Mongoose, enraged, charges him, shoulders him aside, and barrels down the stairs in the direction of the snake infested Skydeck.

Melkor pulls out a little baggie of white powder, a sparkly pink compact mirror, and a 2 dollar bill. 

“So ‘Detective,’ huh? Not too shabby. Is that mostly just paying your dues? Having friends in high places? Reading all 127 Boxcar Children books?”

Rudolph staggers upright and points his gun vaguely in Melkor’s direction. “Who the fuck are you? Identify yourself! Hands where I can see ‘em!”

“Jesus dude, watch the video.” He pours out a line of coke onto the mirror, as foretold in prophecy, and rolls up his faded green Jefferson.

“What-” Rudolph takes a deep breath and steadies himself. “We’re gonna sort this out back at the precinct after I go take care of that… bear… that you somehow smuggled up here, dipshit. You’re under arrest. Hands behind your head with fingers interlaced, I’m sure you know the drill.”

“Oh I know all about the drill. Remind me to tell you about Angainor sometime… maybe after I’ve chained you to the top of that antenna and cursed you and your family to misery and hopelessness.”

Melkor snorts his line while the snorting’s good.

Rudolph doesn’t quite know what to do with this challenge to his authority that doesn’t quite seem like it could be plausibly described as a threat on his life. He practically vibrates with tension. Then he remembers. He pulls a taser out of a holster on his belt and fires it at Melkor.

The two flying darts stick into Melkor’s chest. Electricity arcs between them through his skin and his muscles, which smoke and spasm respectively.

The searing/shocking/burning grips Melkor’s torso like a pissed-off balrog bookie here to collect on payment overdue. His back muscles sit him up ramrod straight, and he gets that rabid jaws-and-fists-clenched look. The sparkly pink compact mirror gets flung free of the electrocution and shatters.

When the current cuts out, Melkor slumps to one side, feeling all roasty toasty.

Fuuuuuuu…

Cautiously, Rudolph approaches him, his gun still drawn, cuffs in his other hand. “Like I said, asshat, you’re under arrest.”

…uuuuuuuck youuu!

Rudolph’s handcuffs change from a couple dinky steel rings into a beefy set of black iron manacles, chains, and leg irons. Which proceed to wrap Rudy up like a tryhard cosplay of Jacob Marley from the Christmas Carol.

Melkor jerks a thumb, and the chains fly their captive up to one of the two antennas and straps him on tight.

Rudolph is panicking and starts screaming obscenities at Melkor, but they are carried away by the wind. There is a moment of relative peace on the rooftop.

Melkor is pissed. Melkor is also coming up on a big mean high. Melkor is also putting a lot of miles on this meatsuit in not a lot of time.

I think I’m done being “what’s behind door number 1.” I can’t just keep taking potshots from assholes with lightning guns, or… bazookas that shoot truck tires, or whatever the fuck.

He catches his breath, then pulls a Bubblegum Chick and turns invisible.

He also makes an illusory double who sprints to the edge of the roof under Rudolph and jumps off, just to fuck with him.

Rudolph gapes, and his body goes slack in despair.

A drone slowly approaches the tower, cameras aimed at the rooftop. It hovers in the shadow of the other antenna.

Melkor paces restlessly. He’s still flicking a diamond down onto the street every so often, just in case anyone’s checking.

I took down a detective. I could absolutely take down the CPD. I could take down 10 CPDs piloting mechs all standing on top of each other in a trenchcoat. I fucked up Valinor and Beleriand till there was no up left to fuck. Chicago’s got nothing on me. NOTHING.

His tongue tastes like he licked a car battery. He’s favoring one leg. Everything smells like soot and tastes like ash.

“I beg you Brother: do not invade this strange world alone.”

A thick, laughing baritone contributes. “We are four that have been drug already into the void. The Corrupter is a fine-fettled foe, even weakened, even bound. He must be not chased, but crushed!”

The bearer of Angainor shakes his head. “He is my prisoner; I am his warden. To level wrath upon an innocent plane is the work of the one we must detain; my work is to ensure justice done justly. No less. No more.”

The bearer grips the white hot charm tight in his palm. “Await me here. You must safeguard the void in case our quarry turns tail.”

“I must ride alone.”

Melkor is huddled in a corner of the roof out of the wind with one eye on the open doorway. He’s having a whispered conversation with an important ally.

“I still think that if divide-and-conquer was good enough for Napoleon Teaches Math, it’s good enough for Chicago.”

“Oh Melkor, I’m so attracted to your brash overconfidence and laser-sharp grasp of history.” She tosses her hair back. “Kiss me, kiss me you fool!”

Melkor pulls back. “Cool it, Mess. First we take apart all these Orders and Powers who think they’re gonna get a slice of the deep-dish pie. Then we can fool around all we want on top of their graves.”

Quiet footsteps from the stairwell, and someone clears their throat nervously. It is a young man in priest’s robes. He is fidgety.

Melkor takes off his ally and stuffs it in his pocket. This guy’s looking favorable in Melkor’s “getting coin vs getting shot” algorithm.

From the safety of the shadows, he calls out to robe boy.

”Yooooooooooooo.”

“I have what you want!” The kid shouts, trying and failing to sound like he’s done this before. “Show me the diamonds!”

A Nalgene that’s like 95% full of diamonds floats toward the priestling at about chest height, as if carried securely in the arms of an invisible man.

He looks very freaked out, but gamely draws forth a ziploc containing a white handkerchief with silver embroidery that’s folded around something coinlike.

I bet the coin is right there in that coin-sized bag.

“Catch, kid!” The Nalgene shoots up in an lobbing arc that would take it over the kid’s head and land it just behind him… this gives him about 50/50 odds of getting it in the air vs having to crawl after it.

In yet another snatch-and-grab move, Melkor reaches out and grabs the ziploc while robe guy is distracted. Then he rips open the side of the bag, pulls out the holy hankie, and shakes out the coin into an outstretched palm.

“Oh thank fuck,” Meciel’s voice says in his mind. Immediately, the pain in his foot eases and the foul taste in his mouth is replaced by a fresh fruity flavor.

The young priest bobbles it twice but manages to keep hold of the nalgene. “Um, pleasure doing business with you,” he forces out quickly, then bolts for the stairs.

“Uh, hey Meciel.” He scuffs a shoe against the roof. “Sorry I kind of got you kidnapped by the murder squad for no reason.”

He smacks his lips pleasantly. “Is that… papaya?”

“Do try not to let it happen again, but yes, I forgive you, Melkor.” An illusory breeze brushes his cheek. An illusory papaya cocktail with a little umbrella appears in his hand. “Thank you for finding me again so quickly.” He can feel her rifling through his memories of the evening. “Hopefully you didn’t have to do anything too crazy to get the coin back.”

“Eh, I basically did the first thing that I thought of and it worked.”

He lights an e-cig.

“By the way, do you know how to cure snakebites? Asking for a friend.”

“Wait you did what?” Her illusion appears in front of him, aghast. “Aaaaaaa. You probably have no idea how many hornet nests you’ve kicked over on this one. You basically sent out a beacon saying ‘hey I’m new in town but I’m a powerful meddler’ to everyone who has a stake in the city. Our dance card is going be full to the brim for the foreseeable future.” She takes a breath. “I think we need to cloak your aura and get out of here as soon as possible. I’m surprised you haven’t already gotten more overt trouble than that buffoon.” She jerks a finger at Rudolph.

“Can’t kill a bunch of hornets if you don’t kick their nests first.” He taps a finger against his temple, tilts his head forward slightly, and scrunches up his face to emphasize the genius of his statement.

Grudgingly, he adds “…but you know this town better than I do. If you think we should take a long rest and replenish our spell slots before mxrderfxcking everybody, I’m in.” Super grudgingly.

“Oh, now you want to throw down with everyone?”

He just does this look. The look in the image here. It’s his fuck all y’all I’m fucking Melkor look, and it means that he means business and that he’s gonna enjoy it.

“Alright, alright. Most of them deserve to be taken down a peg anyway.” A pause, and she looks suddenly serious, and a bit earnest. “Perhaps time to lay my cards on the table. One of the groups whose attention you have no doubt attracted is the rest of the Denarians, led by Nicodemus Archleone, and he has been at the top of my kill list for centuries.”

“Two names, four syllables each? Sounds like a douchebag.”

“You have no idea.”

“All that as may be, it is my considered opinion as the resident Chicago expert in your head that we should take that long rest before we start taking out the trash.”

“Lez do itttt.”

Melkor walks toward the edge of the roof, mulling over what zany-ass flight mechanism he should cook up. Transform into a giant vulture? Summon a malevolent icy breeze? Sling some more webs?

Sky’s the limit.

Meciel snaps her fingers and appears on his shoulder in miniature. “Okay, I’ve cloaked you physically and both our auras, and-”

“Melkor, do you know that you have some kind of tracker on you that followed you out of the Void? I didn’t even know that was possible.”

“Uh, I didn’t know that, because it isn’t possible.”

Melkor stands at the ledge. He’s suddenly not in the mood to leap off, do a double 360 backflip, and be carried away by a current of tiny malevolent ice vultures.

“The Valar don’t know shit about this place. Or anywhere else outside of Eru’s Funtime Adventure Camp. Because if they knew, I would know, because I’m High Fucking Melkor.”

”So even if Aulë could pull it off, there’s no conceivable reason he would build Angainor to survive intact and still bound to me across the transition between realities, except out of some bizarre autistic worst-case-scenario craftsmanship fetish.”

“Oh shit that totally sounds like Aulë, they’re fucking coming for me.”

He feels Meciel flicking lightly through more of his memories. “Hellfire, this man is like Da Vinci with his helicopter. Ugh, no, he’s actually much worse than Da Vinci.”

Then he feels something less gentle in his mind. The smell of sulphur rises, and there is a distinct burning sensation just behind his left ear. His vision flashes orange and fiery. But then it all stops, and he feels the impression of Meciel in his mind sagging. “I cannot destroy it, at least not without more preparation than this. I have blurred it somewhat, but I can’t really tell how much - maybe the distance of a building, maybe a few blocks.”

Melkor feels a tense knot in his stomach. Is this… anxiety?

“I gotta test something real quick. Keep an eye on the wrought iron fishhook thing going through my skull.”

He unfolds his hands in front of him to reveal an exceedingly twee music box featuring fourteen delicate porcelain figures riding around on a carousel, singing “It’s a Small Arda After All!”

Oromë stalks through the void, toward immense gates set in a towering bulwark against chaos. His link of Angainor sears with heat. The First Enemy has unleashed another burst of mad destructive power upon a defenseless land.

“Yes, that is what sets it off. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you may need to ease up on the magic usage somewhat. It’s just as well. The higher powered stuff seems to have been doing some damage to your mortal body.”

“I don’t have a problem, Meciel! I can stop anytime I want, and you can’t make me! Man but nah those assholes wouldn’t just kill me, they’d probably throw me in a volcano for 20,000 years. I gotta cool my em-effing jets.”

“…Which I guess means I shouldn’t jump off this tower?”

Meciel is conspicuously silent on his shoulder.

Melkor heaves a big melodramatic sigh and walks over to the door down to the stairwell.

A tear in reality is slashed through the air to Melkor’s left, about ten feet off the ground, dim light shining through it. The tear opens into a portal, through which he can see a craggy mountaintop, and feel a fierce wind even stronger than here.

An instant later, three figures in grey cloaks leap through the portal in rapid succession, rolling to dissipate their momentum. They rise in a tight outward facing triangle, weapons drawn, scanning the rooftop for threats.

Oh shit, it’s the mighty morphin’ power rangers.

…which is something Melkor would normally just quip out loud, but A) these greycloaks don’t look like they’re cosplaying and B) he just started his new low-magic diet. Bad form to start making exceptions 1 minute in.

He puts eyes on them and slowly backs down into the stairwell.

The oldest of the three, a man with a ponytail, speaks first. “Looks like we just missed him. Air still reeks of power, but no active aura. Yoshimo, do a sweep of the rooftop. Ramirez, go downstairs and find the poor bastard that got transmogrified, see if you can undo it before his mind goes to goo. I’ll see if I can pick up a scent on the warlock, figure out which way he went.”

The young woman starts circling to her right, and the young man turns towards the doorway, heading straight towards Melkor.

Melkor makes careful, silentish steps backward down the stairs. He subvocalizes to Meciel, as quietly as a mob rat with laryngitis in a library. “Any chance you can turn this buttsniffer around without —“

The next step where he places a foot is unexpectedly, inexplicably slick with snake blood. His weight goes out from under him and he careens/caroms down the stairs, hitting every available surface on the way down.

Meciel’s voice is a clarion call inside his head. “Melkor, run! Once they know where to look for you I cannot disguise you, you’ll have to lose them before I can get the cloaking back up!”

Melkor groans in a black-and-blue pile at the bottom of the stairs. He hears what sounds like a Ramirez shouting something irritating. He hauls himself to his feet and hobbles as quickly as he can down to Lobby 103.

”Stupid… frigging… balance issues…”

Bootsteps pound on the stairs behind him. Ramirez shouts “Morgan, I got eyes on him! He fell down the stairs - I’ll try to head him off. Scutum!”

The bootsteps turn into a much faster thunkthunkthunkthunk, and about five seconds later the young man comes into view, sliding down the stairs on a large metal shield he appears to have conjured, popping it up to bank off the wall when the flights reverse direction. He makes it down to the 103 landing just before Melkor and hops off the shield, leaving it to clang its way down another couple flights before coming to a stop.

Ramirez brandishes his sword, his other hand gauntleted and held in a defensive position.

Melkor pees himself.

Then, Melkor peels himself off the wall where he scrunched up to avoid getting trample-stamped by a crazy dude riding a flying shield.

”Hey, you’re a pretty cool guy who doesn’t take ish from anyone. You oughta work for me! Audition starts now.”

(sotto voce as an italian schoolgirl whispering about her turkish crush at a funeral during WWI: “Got any tricks for sword-fighting dingbats?”)

Meciel’s voice comes to him at the speed of thought. “These are Wardens of the White Council, a collection of human wizards. They are probably here as enforcers of the Council’s ban against so-called black magic. This man is much younger than the Wardens I have known, but he doesn’t seem inexperienced, unfortunately. The sword and gauntlet are both magical, though the gauntlet is his primary spell focus. Wardens like using fire magic.

“You’re in a choke point here in the stairwell. You need to get past him so you have more options. Their magic will disrupt modern technology, so if you could force them into the elevator, you might be able to get them stuck. 

“Wait - are those grenades on his belt? If you can get ahold of those you might be able to create some better options.”

“Thanks man,” Ramirez says, “but I’ve already got one more boss than I like to have, and she’s both tougher and better looking than you. You’re under arrest for the use of black magic; come peacefully so that you can stand trial.”

The other two Wardens are running down the stairs behind Melkor.

More freakin’ after-school clubs. Bubblegum hair wasn’t kidding.

Still, law and order types. Those I know how to handle.

“Coming peacefully is an option? Oh thank Christ our Lord, I surrender. I said I surrender! Oh god, don’t burn me alive you loose cannon, aughhh, AUUUGHH!”

For this last part Melkor just has his hands cupped around his mouth, shouting up the stairs.

Morgan and Yoshimo come barreling around the corner and Ramirez puts his hands up. “I’m not doing anything to him, he just randomly started screaming.”

“Hellfire, maybe I was wrong about him not being inexperienced,” Meciel laughs.

Melkor lunges for the grenades.

Ramirez pulls his hands back into a guard position but wrongly assumed Melkor was lunging for him, not his belt. 

Melkor now has one grenade in each hand.

“Fire in the hooooo!” Melkor pulls one grenade pin with his teeth, drops it, and uses his free hand to swim around Ramirez and into Lobby 103.

The lobby of 103 is empty except for a large pile of snake corpses with a sated-looking James passed out on top. There is snake blood everywhere and all the gift shop displays are knocked over.

Ramirez yells “Shit! Shields up guys!” He also takes a swing at Melkor as he goes past, nicking him on the arm. 

“Fuck me, cloaking’s down entirely. Can’t fix it till we have a quiet minute.”

Melkor shoots a finger gun at James Face Killa, hits the elevator call button, and runs toward the clothing section of the gift shop. “Guess we’ll just have to do this the old-fashioned —“

BOOM.

An explosion rocks in the stairwell and shrapnel flies through the doorway, piercing Melkor and throwing him to the ground. His body feels like it’s on fire for an instant, before Meciel numbs the pain, but his ears are still ringing and he can’t seem to draw breath. 

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

Amidst the stunning pain and disorientation, Melkor suddenly realizes he might not have time for his original plan of swapping clothes with a mannequin in the gift shop, throwing the mannequin out the window while shouting that they’ll never take him alive, and calmly taking the elevator down to ground level.

Eh, you win some you lose some.

Melkor scrambles forward and gains his feet in a headlong rush toward the nearest precarious-seeming glass viewing box.

He splats, hard, against the glass, which turns out to be quite thick and not even close to breaking under his weight.

The three Wardens pile through the doorway. An icy wind presses him back up against the glass wall, the floor is trying to reform around his feet, and Ramirez points a revolver at him.

His face is suitably smushed. Honestly he’s lucky that thing didn’t happen where your nose gets smashed up into your brain and you instantly die. That would have been humiliating.

“Hasta la vista, suckers,” Melkor attempts to quip, like the badass that he is. But with the beating his ribs have taken from the explosion and the apparently invincible super glass, he wheezes out something more like “Hhhhhhnng ehhhh fuck it.”

Instead of teleporting four miles like he did to get to Minas Sears, he teleports four feet, to the other side of the glass. The second grenade pin comes with him. The second grenade does not.

There is a moment of shock. Everyone is shocked. The Wardens’ shocked faces are visible through the glass; Meciel feels shocked inside his mind. His body feels shocked at the sudden sucking emptiness underneath him.

Then he starts to fall. The wind catches him and tumbles him sideways as the rows of windows flash by faster and faster.

Willis tower is 1450 feet tall - 1730 if you count the antenna on top. The Skydeck is 1353 feet above ground. On Earth, in free fall, it takes about 10 seconds to fall the first thousand feet, and five seconds for every thousand after that. So Melkor has about twelve seconds to do… something.

First thing Melkor does is flip the double birds to the so-called Wardens as he falls out of view.

Then he orients down/sideways on the ground hurtling toward him — wow that doesn’t look even a little bit survivable — and deploys his flying squirrel suit to catch the intense subjective updraft and glide him to victory*, several blocks thataway.

At the Outer Gates, the parley between Oromë (in the void) and the gatekeeper and the queen (in their fortifications) comes to a standstill. A flare of heat and light emanates from the silversteel link in the hunter’s palm.

”This is the bauble that draws you toward our world?” the queen asks archly.

”No bauble this,” Oromë replies seriously, “but a sure portent that the chaos of destruction has begun in earnest its errand of corruption.”

The link flares bright and hard and urgent once again.

”Very well. Know that my gatekeeper spoke true: we cannot and will not open this way for you. A mortal of our world must be recruited to do this deed.”

”Fortunately,” the queen continues with a predatory grin, “there is a suitably able-bodied soul available, and he owes me a small favor.”

On floor 102 of Willis Tower, an athletically built woman waits patiently, flicking a knife up into the air and catching it. Her earbud crackles to life. “Looks like all the players are cleared out up there, Gard. Boss says to proceed, with caution.”

“Copy that,” she replies, and starts climbing stairs.

She emerges onto the rooftop with caution, checking with her gun drawn to confirm that it is indeed, empty… except for CPD Detective Rudolph, still chained to an antenna, who is of course why she is here.

As soon as she comes into view he starts calling down to her, though his voice is muffled by the whipping wind. He sags with relief when she begins the climb up to his position, and has moved onto babbling prayers of thanks by the time she reaches him, clips in her harness, and begins to pick his cuffs. They are certainly not standard police issue; fortunately they fall within the range of possibilities she planned for.

The man clings to her desperately once he is freed, which poses no threat because of her harness, but is somewhat distasteful. Nevertheless she tries to behave comfortingly. As she assists him down, she starts to draw forth his story of the evening’s events, waiting for the right moment to offer him his shot at revenge.

As they leave the rooftop together, she flashes a thumbs up in the direction of the surveillance drone which still hovers at a discreet distance.

“Unnnnffff…”

Melkor slides lower in the hot tub, luxuriating in the heat of the steaming water and the shiatsu massage from the jets. Along the railings, thirteen sticks of incense mix their smoke and scent into the refreshing mist.

:You know Mess, I think I could get used to this mortal body thing.:

Meciel’s illusion sits opposite him, bare shoulders rising just above the bubbling water. :I’m just glad you’ve got the hang of speaking to me mentally: she thinks at him before switching back to an auditory hallucination. “It was getting awkward quickly.” 

“As awkward as a churchmouse showing up to prom with a… you know what, fuhgeddaboutit.”

He luxuriates a little more.

”How did you know about this place anyway? Pretty sweet digs for a hologram who lives in a coin.”

Her eyes go a little distant and sad. “My previous… host, knew the owner of this condo, and lets just say it’s a safe bet that she would not be in Chicago this time of year. A bit of luck that the key entry codes hasn’t been changed, but people do tend to be creatures of habit.” She shrugs. “If we clean up before we leave, no one will ever know we were here.”

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.”

“The bargain is this,” Mab calls out, “Harry Dresden, mortal wizard, shall open the Gates long enough for Oromë, Valar huntsman, to pass through. In exchange, Oromë shall track and return the mortal girl Alicia Carpenter from the grasp of enemies into her family, before he continues with his own business in our reality.

“And Oromë shall owe me favors three, to be called in at a time of my choosing. One for the discharge of the favor owed to me by Harry Dresden, one for brokering this deal, and one for safe passage through Winter to the mortal realm.”

She looks from the wizard to the huntsman and back again. “Do all parties find the terms agreeable?”

Oromë nods grimly. “Know only that should mine favors owed unto thee be mere coinage minted to thwart my quest or abet my quarry, the surety of the Valar shall be arrayed behind me in pursuit of relief or restitution from said usurious treachery.”

Harry lets out a startled guffaw.

Mab just nods gravely. “Understood, Hunter.”

The magnitude of what he is about to do - and risk - is starting to hit home for Harry. He squints at the man outside the gate. “And you’re sure you can find Alicia without setting off this guy’s traps?”

“Did The Great Enemy’s duplicity and subterfuge prevent the herald Eönwë from tracking him to the very depths of Angband and reclaiming his ill-begotten Silmarils? And is not the Lord of Forests greater than a mere herald?”

“Uh, I don’t know what any of that means,” says Harry. 

Oromë growls and draws his gleaming hunting knife. In the span of three breaths, 13 cornerhounds lay bleeding and gutted at his feet.

He takes a breath. Speaks slowly and simply. “The mortal girl Alicia Carpenter shall be found. And safely returned to her family. On my honor as a… guardian of life.”

Harry nods slowly. “I respect that,” he says. “Thank you.” And to Mab, “I accept the terms.”

She inclines her head minutely. “I think you will not regret it, Dresden. He has killed more outsiders in the space of our negotiation than my forces typically destroy in a week’s time. Whatever else he may be, he is extremely skilled, and very powerful.”

This does not particularly make Harry feel better - he’s about to turn this guy loose in the mortal realms - but he thinks of Alicia and keeps his nerve. Then something occurs to him, that he really should have thought about sooner - “I don’t suppose the Gatekeeper is around?” he asks. “So I can, uh, try to explain…” Stupid to forget that one of the Gate’s guardians was literally a member of the White Council’s leadership.

The faintest hint of smugness crosses Mab’s expression. “Funny thing,” she says. “Rashib was called away on other business. He should return within the hour.”

“Well I guess we’d better do this.” Harry looks around. “Is there a… lever, or something?

Knock knock knock.

Melkor knocks on the door of a house that, if anything, looks even more wrecked than the place he ate those crab tacos. There’s wires sticking out, exposed piping, and entire walls missing, down to the studs.

“This place looks like a hurricane hit it with a baseball bat fifty-six times and left it in an alley to die.”

Michael walks around the side of the building, wearing a flannel, work boots, and a leather tool belt. “That’s because it’s only halfway built, Melkor,” he says, pausing a few feet away, a large crescent wrench held - unaggressively - in one hand. “How did you find my work site, anyway?” 

Melkor rolls his eyes and gives a flat response. “Oh you know, just my usual zany, harebrained antics: I went to the address on the card you gave me, and I asked the office manager where I could find you. And it’s just like I told her: I need to talk business with you.”

He peers around warily, checking for any peeping spies hiding in bushes or atop poles. He stage whispers, “Denarian business.”

“I am aware that you successfully retrieved Meciel’s coin,” Michael says levelly. “You’ll be glad to know that Father Levi was not badly hurt by the men who took it from him in order to claim your reward.”

Melkor processes that sentence for a second. “Oh, Father Leviiii… young guy, nervous looking, about yay tall? That’s terrible. Well whoever it was must have stolen his priesty costume too, the rascals. I bet he was a sorry sight showing up at the church bloodied, empty handed, and in his jammies.”

“How do you…” Michael’s face falls. “Oh dear.” He bows his head for a second. “May I take a minute to make a call?” At Melkor’s nod, he pulls out a phone and dials, walking back around the side of the unfinished house. 

“Hello, Father Forthill, it’s Michael Carpenter. I need you to put Father Levi on lockdown. Yes, well, I… no, he’s the one who gave up the coin! I don’t know if he still has the diamonds, but you need to…” He goes out of earshot.

But true to his word, he returns a minute later, putting his phone away as he walks back into sight.

“Thank you. Now, what is it you want, Melkor?”

Melkor puts out his palms in the air like he’s the visionary producer of the next great epic fantasy film trilogy. “What do I want? Nothing less than to scour the earth of the demonic scum who would twist human souls and threaten to bring about the apocalypse itself!”

”And I need your help to do it,” he says, jabbing a finger at him for emphasis.

“And how does Meciel feel about this plan of yours?”

“She’s totally on board with like 96%, 97% of the plan, and I figure that’s a pretty dank starting point.”

Michael looks at him very closely for a good long second. He has a very discerning gaze. Then he nods. “I suppose she does have the ability to be helpful, and having gotten the chance to read up on her a bit, I am willing to extend a bit of trust that we share… common enemies.

”You said you want my help. What were you thinking of?”

Meciel has remained quiet throughout all this, but he can feel her rolling her eyes in his mind. :Self righteous blowhard. Though he’s actually less obnoxious than most of the Knights. I wonder what they have on me in the Church’s archives.:

“Now now Meciel, no need for that kind of language,” Melkor says out loud. “Us M-names gotta stick together.”

He looks the carpenter in the eye. ”I got three words for you Michael: Joint. Strike. Force.”

”We pool enough information to set up a surgical attack on one Dee-bag after another, working together to execute the ops. And don’t just think it’ll be swinging swords and melting roofs: we can do two-man cons, pincer formation, the Albuquerque Ambush, the reverse hot potato, the fastball special… whatever it takes to pull those coins out of circulation.”

“You’re going to have to sit down with me and catch me up on these ambush tactics,” Michael says seriously. “It sounds like things have changed a lot since I was a young man…” He loses it and cracks a grin. “Just kidding. Where do we start? Got any leads?”

There’s a gleam in Melkor’s eye. “Let me tell you a little ditty about a house on Lake Michigan…”

“… so then I slammed my boot right into his windpipe and bam! Duel complete, Melkor: 1, Fingo-Fango: 0.”

Melkor is sitting in the middle of a pretty narrow bench of seats in the back of a banged up, rusty VW bug. After the Carpenters’ spacious chariot, this coach truly does feel like cramming inside the exoskeleton of a blue beetle.

Sitting shotgun is Michael, stone cold badass with a holy sword of destiny chilling in the trunk waiting for him. Sitting behind the wheel is the gangly, ill-mannered chauffeur, who looks like he got his hair cut 6 months ago in the dark by himself, and smells faintly of cat urine and stale Coca Cola. He’s got a staff or something.

They are headed east along the shore of Lake Michigan, the two lane highway increasingly encroached upon by greenery. They could have made faster time on the interstate, but Harry didn’t want to go that way for some reason. They’ve already crossed over into Indiana and will have to go just over the border into Michigan before they reach Lake Providence, where their destination lies.

“But enough about my sick exploits.” Melkor leans forward, elbows on his knees, and turns toward Michael. “What doubtlessly rad shit have you been up to since Crab Taco Night?”

Michael looks over at Dresden, then at Melkor behind him. “Well - and I should start by saying that this all turned out fine - my daughter was kidnapped yesterday from her softball practice.”

“It wasn’t me man! I had nothing to do with that, you gotta believe me.”

Michael smiles a little bit. “To the best of my understanding, the timing was a coincidence. I know that you weren’t involved. It was actually another rogue agent of the Church.”

“So weird how that works. It makes sense when there’s a rogue agent of like, a rogue’s guild or something. You’d think members of the church would be better at conformity I MEAN matters of loyalty and conscience.”

“Yes, it’s not a great look for the Church. There clearly needs to be a re-evaluation of trust.

“The man wanted an artifact that had been entrusted to Harry’s care, and thought to threaten one of my children as a bargaining chip.”

Meciel, who has been sitting next to Melkor and staring out the window, looks over. “Two Church agents in the inner circles of the fight against darkness, betraying their oaths in the space of forty-eight hours? He may think it’s a coincidence, but God is not the only one who can orchestrate behind the scenes.” She thinks briefly. “We may find a bit more than we are bargaining for at this safe house. It’s unusual enough for void-crazed Denarians to operate independently, and if someone is corrupting Church agents…”

Melkor stares grimly into the distance. “Then the death-fox may be loose in the soul-henhouse.”

He shakes it off. “Sorry, how rude of me Michael, please continue. Your daughter got kidnapped, your bodyman Harry here had the artifact…”

Harry jumps in. “The guy thought he had me dead to rights, with his extensive anti-magic training from the Church. Which, in fact, he did. I couldn’t get anywhere near without setting off a bomb he had strapped to her, the bastard. But he didn’t count on us calling a… outside operator. This guy was able to track her down and extract her without using any magic at all. Hell of a thing.”

Hmmmmmmmm…

:That outside operator might be nobody.: he talkthinks at Meciel. :Might be a hostage-sherpa from the Amazon, or whatever. Or it might be my old nemesis from the other side of the void, Hunty McHuntface.:

Melkor shifts his weight uncomfortably, and adopts a blasé tone. ”Huh, quite a feat to pull off. This guy sounds like a god among men.”

Dresden looks suddenly cagey, but is playing it cool. “Hah! Good one. For all we know he could be, wouldn’t be the first time we accidentally worked with a lowercase-g-god, eh Michael?”

”Now Melkor, remind me how you know about this place, and what we’re expecting to find?”

It takes every ounce of Melkor’s not not insubstantial willpower to stop himself from saying “divine revelation.”

”Well my super secret sources tell me that the Denarians operate a private bed ‘n’ breakfast slash hidey-hole for their agents out of a fancy-pants little mansion in Lake Providence. Which is on Lake Michigan. Not, like, on the lake, it’s not like a lake on top of another lake — it’s a town. Next to the lake. Lake Providence is the town. Lake Michigan is the lake.”

Melkor collects himself. ”A pair of none-too-sane coin brutes sustained major injuries after a recent bout of thuggery gone wrong. So this is like, the tutorial level, where we drop in on some no-name demons getting their bedrest, and exorcise their heads from their bodies.”

“Lake Providence, huh?” He remembers a house steeped in suffering and black magic, going up in flames. “Oh goody.”

”And is there a plan, beyond ‘waltz in there and blow em up?’” Not that he really has any room to throw stones about that level of planning.

“Waltzing in there and blowing them up are steps 3 and 4, respectively. Step 5 is smoking cigars and drinking miniature bottles of champagne.”

“Step 1 is to sneak in undetected and ensure the intel is up to date, identify any electrified doorknobs or cans of paint hanging above stairways, confirm the position of the targets, etc. That’ll be me playing scout. I’ll have a dead man’s link going with both of you so you get timely picture-in-picture updates, and if I step on a well-hidden rake and knock myself out, you’ll be the first to know.”

”Step 2 is for you two to lock down all known escape points and wait for my signal to start the waltz. Step 0 is to actually you know what I think this bit is played out, you get the gist.”

Dresden looks at him in the rear view mirror. “Not gonna argue with you there, pal.”

“And Meciel is confident that she can pass your sensory data on to us while we are outside?” Michael asks. “This isn’t something I’ve heard of Denarians being able to do before.”

Melkor waves off Michael’s pretty reasonable concern with a chuckling pssh. “Dude, Meciel is the Renegade. She can do all sorts of cool shit the other coin-op crazies can’t do. Except for basically any offensive magic, tying her own shoes, or seeing why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch.”

“God himself can’t see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Melkor, why would I be able to?”

“Michael,” Melkor says with utmost seriousness, “can God himself see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch? And follow-up: is your god seriously named ‘God,’ and you just, like, capitalize it?”

“That is how we call him, in this day and age, although He has been called by many other names.” Michael says serenely, but then gets a glint in his eye. “The origin of the term is actually quite interesting, Molly did a paper on it back when she was in school. Popular folk etymology relates the word god to ‘good’ but this is not historically accurate, and indeed, the word itself predates the religious notion that god would, in fact, be good.

“Our word ‘god’ actually derives from an old Germanic word, ‘gutham,’ which is of uncertain origin. It may come from the Proto-Indo-European word ‘ghut’ - ‘that which is invoked.’ But some trace it to the same language’s ‘ghu-to-‘ from root ‘gheu-,’ which means to pour, and could refer to the poured earth of the burial mound, hinting at a link to the notion of the spirit which is present at a grave.”

Melkor is wowed into silence by this nigh-elven display of word-nerdery.

He does elbow Meciel in the ribs when Michael mentions that not everybody used to think God would in fact be good.

He does not press the CTC question, and rides the rest of the way in relative silence.

Harry navigates the Beetle through Lake Providence, where it is quite out of place due to being a rust bucket, and not in a cool, ironic sort of way. He decides to park in the lot of a convenience store along the road through town, which will leave them with a bit of a walk, but hopefully not alert the Denarians to their presence.

Melkor crouches down on the asphalt and opens his Meciel-provided illusory briefcase, bottles and blister packs and blunts packed volumetrically within. He scans over his options with a outstretched finger.

”Shaddle-dee-dum, shaddle-dee-dee, what kind of me should Melkor be…?”

Harry watches this little ritual with mixed feelings. A little disturbed, somewhat entertained, and maybe also a bit wistful, though he wouldn’t admit that to himself. As he watches Melkor pantomime, his eyes widen a bit. “Is… the coin providing you with a bunch of different ways to get high?” He asks incredulously.

“It’s how I do my best work,” Melkor says, pinching an invisible postage stamp between his fingers and planting it on his tongue.

Harry pinches the bridge of his nose. He knows exactly what that pantomime means - although it was a long time ago - though frankly it was awesome, and now he kind of wishes he’d realized - Lash could’ve hooked him up! But he firmly halts that thought. “This might get weird,” he mutters to Michael instead.

Michael does not at all know what the pantomime means. But he nods to acknowledge Harry’s warning.

“Let’s get busy lyserging or get busy diethylamiding!” He swings his heel around and knocks the briefcase shut, and strides off toward the lake house.

Before they’re out of the parking lot, Melkor executes the agreed-upon signal for Meciel to take him into stealth mode, namely throwing an imaginary smoke bomb at his feet and then making hissing noises and breaking into a crouching run.

Meciel rolls her eyes at him but does the cloaking. Her illusion runs silently alongside him, and she crafts the spell which will show Michael and Harry what he’s seeing.

Harry puts a Veil over himself and Michael (though it’s not nearly as good as the Denarian’s), and they also start off towards the lake house, more slowly. 

As Melkor trots along the winding side road toward the lake, the houses go from “serviceable trad house” to “did somebody say McMansion” to “actually tastefully designed, dang.” At the same time, the sky goes from a last dregs of spilled ember sunset to soft star-emblazoned purple velvet, and the blossoming flowers and plump wild fruit and buzzing bees riotous in the flowing joy of their own automaticity —

“Oh man I think it’s starting to kick in,” Melkor reports, as the multi-story glass-and-steel lake house is birthed from the parting willow trees.

Michael is looking at the ‘through Melkor’s eyes’ inset which has appeared in the lower right of his field of vision. “Harry, I think something might be wrong with the spell - are you seeing this? It’s like looking at a modernist house as designed by Escher through a kaleidoscope. With tiny rainbows all over it. I mean, it’s gorgeous, but definitely not ideal for surveillance.”

Harry coughs. “I’m, yeah, I’m seeing the same thing. I don’t think there’s really a way to fix it anytime soon, unfortunately. That’s just what Melkor’s seeing right now. Just hope we’ll be able to make sense of it if he runs into trouble.”

They are following behind Melkor, more slowly. Once they reach the house they’ll split up to cover the front and back entrances.

Melkor walks sinuously up the driveway, each silent footfall a rocking horse journey from heel to sole to toe, a quadratic equation of his weight smoothly entering and exiting the smooth silver gray cement.

Tall ominous predatory black rhinoceros pickup truck on his left. Electric atom sharp flying knife yellow Italian sports car on his right. Checkered matte portcullis of Minas Anor to his front — where’s Grond when you need him?

His body weight shifts like a great ship avoiding a greater whirlpool. He curves around the incalculably complex building and stops at the padlocked plexiglass and spiderweb and sunflower and mud incision point for his intrusion. The Basement Window.

Except it isn’t even padlocked.

Melkor lifts the bulk section lid. Climbs down into the window well. Peers inside.

The Basement is an unrelenting hellscape, and not the good kind. Towers of moldering cardboard cinderblocks, writhing webbed shadows, the living stench of death, roaches skittering confusedly away from mixed signs of air pressure and invisibility. The soaked carpet squelches beneath Melkor’s feet and hands as he crawls, cowering away from the malevolent ceiling and flinching from the sucking walls.

He finds a light switch at the bottom of the stairs and things suddenly look a lot better! :Just some old boxes and water damage, eh Meciel? Nothing soul-threateningly grotesque about that!:

He hears voices upstairs.

A woman’s mezzo, speaking coldly - “For the last time, I am here to help. Nicodemus informed Tessa that you had been injured by the forces of Winter as you traversed the Ways through the Nevernever, and she knew I was close enough to travel here overland, so she asked me to come.  Look at me. I am not attacking you. I am carrying a first aid box. We are all here to fight a common enemy. Let’s put aside our rivalries and work together. Let. Me. Help.”

Melkor feels Meciel go on high alert inside his mind.

A growling male voice from upstairs, ponderous, labored. “Fine. But no tricks, sorceress, or we will rip off your head and drop you in the lake.”

 Another male voice, also deep, but thready and scratchy. “You will tend to our wounds?“

The woman’s voice, with forced patience. “Yes, I will tend to you. And then I will formulate a plan for how to flush that bitch Meciel out of hiding so we can take her down together.”

:Holy shit, did you hear that?: Melkor talkthinks, braced against the hand railing, the stairs swaying beneath him like a rope bridge in high wind. :Either I’m really good at hallucinating, or one of bruiser/cruiser is really good at ventriloquism, or… sexy evil nurse sorceress dot dot dot?:

:That is Rosanna,: Meciel speaks in his mind, :Tessa’s second in command. This is going to get interesting. I don’t suppose you feel like sending a warning back to our allies…?:

Melkor modifies the agreed upon signal, which was going to be doing two fingers to his eyes, pointing them at the door, then a tomahawk chop for go.

He starts by putting up three fingers, then waves them back and forth as the fourth dimension of time lapses itself into trailing finger light.

He does two fingers on one hand, and the pinky finger on the other.

Then he draws the number 3, and the letter D.

Then, at last, the tomahawk chop.

:You know I once considered being the god of writing sonnets and shit?:

“Uhhhhhh, do you have any idea what that means?”

Melkor calls out in an ethereal falsetto, “Sorceress, the extraplanar allies you’ve summoned for leverage have arrived!”

He kicks open the door at the top of the stairs, then immediately judo rolls/uncontrolledly tumbles backward down the stairs with his hands over his head. It’s like being an apple in a dryer.

“Is that the signal?!”

“Wait, ‘sorceress’? Wasn’t the intel just for Akariel and Urumviel?”

“Never mind, go!”

“What the - she’s here! Meciel and her new host are inside the building!” The woman’s voice, and Rosanna appears at the top of the stairs, long brown hair flowing down her back and golden eyes flashing.

“Tricks! Betrayal!” The rasping voice cries out.

“You shall pay for this, woman!” He ears very heavy footsteps accelerating across the floor.

Crumpled in a heap of boxes, body thrumming bruisedly, muffled chaos unfurling above, Melkor eyes the top of the stairs.

:Is she an angel?: Melkor wonders about the gorgeous, golden specimen. :Cuz she looks like she fell from heaven and hit every branch of the pretty tree on the way down.:

:Technically, yes,: Meciel thinks at him. :In practice, you should watch your fucking back around her.:

“Hello, Meciel,” Rosanna calls down the stairs. “We were just discussing how to best hunt you, and here you are, like a bird fallen right out of the bush into my hand.”

:Don’t worry Meciel,: Melkor talkthinks to the magical illusion being that’s living, in some metaphysical sense, inside his own head. :Pretty sure Angel Sorceress is bluffing, it’s like, physically impossible for her to know that you’re here.:

:Unless she knows through some sort of… magic?!: 

:I’m pretty sure you have a foot sticking out, Melkor. I suspect you have about two seconds before she starts throwing Hellfire at you, unless you can distract her somehow!:

Melkor replies in a straining, effeminate tenor. “Spare me the ‘bitchy overconfident gloating’ act, Rosanna.” He gets up out of the pile of boxes, moving his limbs in as puppet-like a fashion as possible, and stands at full height, hands on hips, chest thrust out.

”We both know I’m your only hope of coming out on top of the Tessa-Nicodemus power struggle. Or of coming out alive.”

Rosanna stares. “I - what - is this the host speaking? God’s balls on a skewer, Meciel, you sure know how to pick ‘em. How the mighty fall!”

“Better to fall than to never have been mighty at all,” Melkor calls, stalling, while groping around next to him in the scuzzy basement for some kind of weapon.

His hand lands on a nice thick handle — probably a guisarme, or at least a sick iron mace — and he switches back to his easily-heard-at-a-distance ethereal falsetto: “Excellent sorceress! This ritual we’re conducting in the basement shall surely succeed in castrating your former allies!”

He brandishes what turns out to be a tennis racket, and positions it as a face shield.

Rosanna rolls her eyes but also looks somewhat nervously over her shoulder.

Just in time for two monsters to come crashing through the door behind her. “This betrayal will not stand!” shouts the growth voice, coming from an enormous ground sloth of the kind that is supposed to be a) extinct, and b) actually vegetarian. This guy does not look like he is either.

They barrel into Rosanna, who gets a shield up in time to deflect the claws, but doesn’t manage to deflect the kinetic energy and is knocked down the stairs.

“You absolute fucking fools,” Rosanna hisses from the bottom of the stairs. “I’ll-”

Melkor coldcocks her with his racquet rim.

“Congratulations milords! By defeating my mistress you’ve earned the granting of wishes three! For your sake let’s hope one of those wishes is better battlefield awareness.”

Harry Dresden knows an entrance line when he hears one. “Forzare!” he yells, aiming a strong gust of wind at the hulking Denarians. As they, too, tumble down the narrow basement staircase, under the control of Mr. Newton and unable to dodge, he unleashes his force rings on the big furry one.

Michael rushes in behind Harry, sword drawn. He leaps over the side of the staircase, lands with a roll, and rushes to engage with the other Denarian, who looks sort of like a human-mantis hybrid with wings and horns.

Melkor kneels down to the hot woman on the ground, whose face is that of the goddess who spurned his advances 10,000 years ago and also this chick he worked with who collected beetles.

”Dear Heaven,” he prays, hands held hovering over her, “please reveal to me where this flesh-woman has stowed her angel coin, preferably in the form of haptic vibrations.”

Rosanna bursts up from the ground, her skin going crimson. Wings, horns, and tail burst forth and a second set of eyes open above hers. She clenches her fists, and a sheath of fiery magical power encircles her. The air reeks of sulphur.

“Meciel,” she turns burning eyes at Melkor. “This is your fault.” And she throws a fireball at him.

:quickdoanillusionofmeburningtodeath: “AUUUGGGHHH!!!”

From one perspective, Melkor’s really riding the line on this one. Trying not to use any magic, and belly flopping this hellfire with the uncertain hope that this ol’ fleshbot will survive it and Meciel can work her magic fingers on him once the battle’s over.

From another perspective, a Melkor-shaped civilization of affective neurons screams white nuclear hot destruction as the air and the earth and the water and the ether all become / are consumed by FIRE! FIRE! FIRE STINKING OF DAMNATION! THE NANO-SCALE TEETH OF THE HUNGERING MAW OF EMPTY DEATH FRACTALLY INCINERATES THE HYDROGEN-BLIMP-FARCICAL CONCOCTION OF EGO THAT IS MELKOR!

(Years from now, Melkor will look back on this trip fondly :) )

:?👍:

On fire, Melkor crumples to the ground and beats the fan wings of his searing stinging hands at the oil slick lightning storm flames, auggggh, auuuggghhh, dear sweet Illuvatar what the fuck was I thinking, auggh

Michael is still battling the leathery demon mantis but is visibly distraught at Melkor’s apparent(?) plight. “Harry!” he yells, “anything!”

Harry just got punched by the horned ground sloth and narrowly dodges its giant teeth snapping at him. But he points his staff in Melkor’s direction, and cries “Aquilevatus”, and a wide spray of water goes his way. He gets punched again.

:Should I…?:

Beneath fire and confusion and excruciation, Melkor ends.

“Fuck this,” declares Morgoth Bauglir.

Emanating dark anti-flames which chill the air and atomize water jets into hoarfrost. Clad in blackened plate-layered mithril armor. Carrying not a fucking tennis racket, but Grond, Hammer of the Underworld.

Morgoth floats erect at the base of the stairs, and with a crushing gauntlet seizes Rosanna by the throat.

“You are a wasp feeding on worms. I am a god.”

And he snaps her neck.