Clarice studied the pyramids curiously as they drew closer. “What’s up with these pyramids? I doubt they’re burying pharos on this world.

  “They appear to be some kind of power station,” Calypso commented as she studied them. “I can see a lot of electrical current flowing through them. There are aquifers running underneath them into the ocean. The water is creating a resonance that is affecting the quartz and granite with some kind of electrical discharge. It looks like it is creating electrical current in the cables they have running through the passages. This must be how they are powering those factories.”

  “And another crazy fringe theory turns out to be true,” Clarice shook her head ruefully. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at this point.”

  Clarice smelled the stench of rotten souls in a large building at the edge of the city. They flew down to the ground, landing at the entrance to the unattractive building. Her sharp angel hearing picked out the sounds of screams or agony coming from deep inside.

  “This must be one of their purging centers,” Clarice grimaced as the smell of blood combined with the stench of corrupted souls. “Let’s go purge it.”

  She pushed through the large front door and strode into a large room. There was a desk near the back with a man wearing the peasant coveralls. When he saw them enter, he quickly prostrated himself to the floor. She ignored him and went through a door that led further into the building. It opened to a long hallway with doors appearing every twenty feet. The screams were coming from several of the rooms.

  “Calypso, go with Aria,” Clarice instructed briskly. “I’ll take this one.”

  “I can go alone,” Calypso spoke firmly, but the bond was filled with hesitation and reluctance.

  “Nope, you’re coming with me,” Aria declared, hooking her arm in Calypso’s. “You leave the killing to us, and we’ll leave the healing to you.”

  Calypso sighed but nodded. Clarice could tell she wanted to do more to help. As much as she despised these angels, the thought of Calypso defiling her pristine soul with the ugly acts of murder made her feel sick.

  Clarice vaporized the door in front of her and stepped through the opening into a medieval nightmare. It was like the inquisitions all over again, with implements of torture and humiliation arranged on the walls and benches. There was a nine-year-old girl bound to a chair with some kind of vice driving a bolt down into her wrist, breaking it in slow motion. The girl’s legs were covered in additional vices and her bones were disjointed where the bolts had broken them. Clarice felt tears nearly blind her as she stared at the girl in horror and rage. When she saw the angel standing behind her, rage overwhelmed horror.

  She quickly vaporized all of the bolts pressing into the girl’s bones and blurred across the room to the archangel. His eyes had shown surprise that quickly turned to anger, and then to fear as he beheld her angel fire blasting the bolts from the chair of pain. She imitated Aria’s jamming field to make sure he couldn’t teleport away. He backed into the wall at the back of the room as his eyes sought for an escape. She felt the need to make him suffer for the horrors he had wrought, but she knew in the end that he was going to be dead either way. The longer she spent destroying him, the longer the girl would have to wait to be healed. With a murderous glare, she blasted him with a beam of angel fire and returned to the girl.

  She was groaning in agony with no position that would allow her to find relief. Clarice pushed her aura out with an intensity that overwhelmed every other sensation the girl could feel except love.

  “Lyra, your safe now,” Clarice told her in a tight voice, barely holding tears in check. “Calypso will be here to heal you soon.”

  Calypso entered the room before she even finished speaking, her face filled with horror from whatever she had seen in the other room. When her eyes fell on Lyra, golden tears filled her eyes as she rushed forward and spoke several words of power. Clarice felt like the words were just on the cusp of her awareness. She fervently hoped that she could learn to heal as well, so that she didn’t have to rely on Calypso for cases like this.

  Lyra shivered as all of the pain was expelled from her body while her bones fixed themselves. Calypso pulled her into a hug, angel tears splashing onto Lyra’s head.

  “Calypso!” Aria called from further down the hall. “Need healing!”

  Calypso regretfully released the girl and blurred out of the room to join Aria in the third room.

  “Lyra, I need you to repeat after me,” Clarice told her gently. “Say ‘I will vanquish evil’.”

  Lyra looked up at her with hollow eyes and repeated the words. Clarice patted her shoulder as the change began, then left the room at high speed down to the next room of horror.

  There was an old man in the room, lifeless on a table he had been bound to. If she had a stomach, she would have puked everything up as she observed the blood and guts littering the room. At least the soul trap is gone. He’ll be going back to the light realm.

  There were a total of eight additional victims. Clarice felt her anger rise in sync with her horror as she witnessed the atrocities that angels had inflicted on the humans of this world. She was beginning to understand why they had made the decree that all angels both high and low experience mortality. The immortal angels toying with humans like domestic cats playing with a mouse had no concept of pain and merely viewed it as a curiosity. They felt no empathy or compassion. They seemed to thrive on the power being able to inflict pain gave them.

  “We need to move faster,” Clarice told Aria and Calypso firmly. “We’re going to have to start moving at full speed if we want to purge this planet of its disease. I know we want to offer comfort and help, but we can’t take longer than the moment it takes to kill the angels and heal the humans before moving on to the next place. Too many will be suffering while we console others if we don’t speed things up.”

  “Agreed,” Aria nodded, her eyes haunted. Calypso also nodded, her eyes full of tears.

  “Let’s go,” Clarice breathed, then poured every bit of power she had into speed.

  They flashed in and out of buildings in a blur, leaving vaporized angels and healed, awakened humans in their wake. Even moving at high speed, it took over two days to cover the entire planet. There were several billion people spread across three continents. They worked nonstop at speeds too fast for humans to see. The few angels that could see them were dead before they could process what they had seen.

  As they finished cleansing the last house of horrors, Calypso collapsed onto the ground, her shoulders shaking with huge sobs as she finally had time to reconcile the nightmare they had just witnessed. Aria knelt and wrapped her arms around her, golden tears streaming down her cheeks. Clarice knelt with them, leaning her head against theirs as she could finally allow her tears to flow.

  “This is why they tried to unmake us,” Clarice whispered as she finally understood how they ended up where they were. “We knew the only way to stop angels from indulging in their sadistic fantasies was to experience pain and loss themselves so that they could learn empathy. They didn’t want anything to change. They didn’t want empathy or compassion. This is worse than anything the demons have done. This must end. There are too many worlds where this must be happening for us to fix them one by one. We need all of the divine instruments so we can finally right reality and remove this cancer from existence.”

  A portal suddenly appeared in front of them. Lexi rushed through with Mandy, her eyes filled with concern.

  “What happened?” she asked, kneeling and taking Clarice’s hands in her own.

  “Let me show you,” Clarice answered in a fragile voice. “I don’t think I could repeat it in words.”

  She made a mental connection to Lexi and Mandy, quickly reviewing the memories of the last two days. Mandy’s hand flew to her mouth in horror, her eyes filling with tears. Lexi paled and tightened her grip on Clarice’s hands.

  “But they were angels!” Mandy exclaimed in outrage. “How could angels do something so horrendous?”

  “Now you know why we are in a war over heaven,” Clarice replied in a bleak voice. “They wanted to keep doing this kind of thing while we wanted it to stop and make all of them experience mortality. This is why we cannot fail. These horrors are happening on billions of worlds with quintillions of people trapped in a nightmare stuck on rerun for every incarnation.”

  Mandy stared at her in growing horror as the magnitude of the suffering and pain pervading the cosmos started to sink in. The numbers alone were unfathomable to an individual from single planet with fewer than ten billion people. How many of the planets were like this one? How many people were subjected to an endless loop of torture and humiliation just to entertain a sadistic class of angels with no mercy, with no hope of ever escaping?

  Mandy covered her mouth as a sob escaped, and silver tears ran down her cheeks. Clarice could feel how overwhelmed she suddenly felt, how hopeless their plight must seem in the face of such numbers. Aria released Calypso and enfolded Mandy in her arms, opening the floodgates of her love and filling Mandy with hope and comfort.

  “It’s not hopeless,” Clarice told Mandy gently. “Today, we liberated one planet’s worth of people from this nightmare. We’ve destroyed thousands of soul traps. While it is a drop in an ocean, it is still a drop. The reason they are so afraid of us is because they know that we can change it all with the divine instruments. We can fix this cluster fuck and give all of these souls a chance at true happiness. I’ll remind you that we are still together working toward that goal thanks to you saving Aria. If this were a story, and I’m not sure that it isn’t, you would be one of the starring roles, Mandy. Don’t give in to defeat or let something as small as numbers shake your confidence. We are going to fix this cosmos. This will happen. It’s not a matter of if, it’s just a matter of how much ass we have to kick to get it done.”

  Mandy let out a startled laugh between sobs, squeezing her eyes tightly as she drew strength from the love surrounding her. Lexi smiled gratefully at Clarice as she reached out a hand to rest on Mandy’s shoulder. As pep talks went, Clarice felt pretty proud of herself.

  Calypso closed her eyes and took a breath, then began singing one of her songs. It was one of the all-time favorites from her YouTube channel, a song about the fight between good and evil and never giving up. It was hailed as being a song that had saved more lives than antidepressants and therapy combined. She had worded the lyrics and woven the music with such mastery that even the most forsaken and defeated of individuals felt hope burst inside of them like a supernova, burning away the doubt and despair and replacing it with indomitable resolve and hope.

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  Mandy’s tears slowed and then stopped as she was drawn in to Calypso’s vivid vision of a world where love and compassion flourished, and hope was always bright. Clarice realized that Mandy had probably never heard any of Calypso’s music since coming back to this reality. Her eyes were wide and full of sudden determination as she stared at Calypso in wonder. Calypso’s harmonizing voices serenaded the air around them, adding weight and dimension to her words. When the song was over, there was no trace of defeat in Mandy’s eyes. She looked ready to march on the Seraphim right then and there.

  “Wow!” Mandy exclaimed in amazement. “That was the most transformative song I’ve ever heard.”

  “Now you know how she became the most famous musician in the world,” Aria told Mandy with a proud grin. She beamed at Calypso, sending waves of love and respect through the bond.

  “Is it time to go to the light realms now?” Lexi asked expectantly, her eyes filled with determination.

  “Yes,” Clarice nodded with the ghost of a smile. “Yes, it is.”

  “I’m pretty curious about what this light realm looks like,” Mandy declared excitedly, her positive energy fully recharged. “I wonder how different it is from the mortal realm.”

  “You might be in for a tiny bit of a disappointment,” Calypso informed her with a wry smile. “The reason they call it the light realm is due to the increase of ambient energy there. Compared to the light realm, the mortal realm almost seems devoid of light.”

  “Wait a minute,” Mandy said slowly, her eyes disbelieving. “You’re saying that this positive energy filling my body is almost non-existent here compared to what it is in the light realm?”

  Calypso nodded with a small smile.

  “It’s going to freaking incapacitate me then!” Mandy exclaimed in amazement. “How could it be more powerful than what is already flowing through me?”

  Calypso stood up and walked over to Mandy, pulling her into a hug. Then she opened the floodgates of her Seraph aura, filling Mandy with a deluge of light.

  Mandy’s eyes glazed over as she stared into the distance with a look of intense bliss on her face. “Is this what it feels like?” she whispered in ecstasy.

  “Yes, this is what the lowest light realm feels like,” Calypso confirmed with a nod. “You become more accustomed to it after a little while, though you’ll still notice the difference. The hard part will be coming back to the mortal realm after you have become accustomed to the denser atmosphere.”

  “If this is what the lowest light realm feels like, how can anyone even survive the higher realms?” Mandy asked in awe.

  “If we went straight to the highest realm right now, we would be incapacitated for a few weeks,” Calypso admitted with a glance at the other three. “It takes that long to acclimate to the denser light. Though, you know...that gives me an idea.”

  “What is it?” Clarice asked curiously, studying the beautiful musician inquisitively.

  “Our souls are linked now,” Calypso stated with an introspective frown. “What would happen if I went to a higher level than the rest of you? Or if a few of us went to a higher level? Would whoever remained in the lower realm feel an influx of light through the bond?”

  “That’s easy enough to test,” Clarice noted with a grin. “Let’s have two of our number wait behind for a few minutes before following.”

  “I’m game,” Aria grinned at Clarice excitedly. “I want to see how strong the bond remains between realms too.” She paused and looked at Calypso curiously. “How much recall do you have of the light realms? You seem to be remembering quite a bit.”

  “Some of my memories returned after seeing Doriken,” Calypso’s mouth twisted with distaste as she spoke his name. “I remembered the energy disparities between realms and some of the places we had been when we were dealing with the Cult of the Pristine.”

  Clarice gasped as memories suddenly surfaced from deep in her soul at the name of the cultists. “I remember now...” Clarice breathed softly. “The Cult of the Pristine. You just jogged some memories loose, Calypso.”

  Aria was similarly undergoing a bout of recall, holding a hand to her head as if she was suffering from a dizzy spell. “Those narcissistic cowards,” Aria growled in disgust. “They claimed we were tainting the pure souls of angels by experiencing mortality, and that the spiritual growth that mortality stimulates was a perversion of the natural order. They didn’t like the way angels returning from mortality seemed so much happier. They really didn’t like the profound sense of compassion that most of the Ascended exhibited.”

  “What should we expect when we appear in the light realm?” Lexi asked warily. “Do you think we’ll be attacked when they realize that we are ‘Ascended’, as you put it?”

  “The light realm is an enormous place,” Calypso told her reassuringly. “It’s unlikely that we are going to enter in a populated area where a mob of angels will be waiting for us.”

  “Even if we did, it wouldn’t matter,” Clarice pointed out with a wry smile. “We can wipe the floor with anyone stupid enough to get in our way.”

  “Is it just like the mortal realm, but with denser light?” Lexi asked, her eyes fascinated. “Stars with planets, galaxies, and all that jazz?”

  “No, there is a pretty big difference between the mortal realm and the light realm,” Calypso explained. She connected a tendril of energy to all of their thought nodes. “It’s one large plane that goes on for infinity. It isn’t like the mortal realm, where everything is finite. There are some plants, but there are no fruits, seeds, or other methods of reproduction, because everything in the light realms is immortal. The light is so dense that it can be used to create whatever your thoughts can imagine. There is no such thing as weather, oceans, mountains, or any of the other objects you see in the mortal realm. Unless someone has created these objects with their creative potential, you won’t see them naturally. The flat, infinite expanse is just a drafting table for angels to create whatever the imagination can express.”

  “Which is part of the reason the Cult of the Pristine became so enraged with the Ascended,” Clarice noted darkly. “The Ascended’s creative potential grew exponentially after returning to the light realms. Creative potential is the only kind of possession that angels define as property. There had been a class system for eons, where angels with higher creative potential were considered more affluent than those with lower creative potential. The concept of possessions, greed, power, and wealth didn’t exist in the light realms before the mortal realm was created. Creative potential was as close as angels came to a class system similar to what you would see on the mortal realm. In the mortal realm, class is typically based on wealth. When the Ascendent returned to the light realms, their creative potential had increased exponentially. It created an immediate uproar in the ranks of the common angels. There were many who were convinced to go to the mortal realm in hopes of increasing their creative potential. When they succeeded, there was a flood of angels queuing up to experience mortality. That’s when things got ugly, though. The majority two thirds of angels had observed what mortality was like and seen the changes it wrought upon the souls of other angels. That’s when they started the Cult of the Pristine and tried to petition us to ban all Ascended angels from the light realms, forcing them to live out the rest of eternity in the mortal realm.”

  "I’m guessing they fell on deaf ears, since you had been through mortality too?” Mandy asked, glancing between the three of them.

  “Not yet, we hadn’t,” Calypso answered slowly, squinting with the effort of recall. “I haven’t had full recall yet, so I’m just piecing things together from what I do remember. After talking with the other Seraphim, we decided that some of us should go down to experience mortality so that we could make judgements on the issue with actual knowledge of the experience. Lucifer, Aria, Clarice, and I volunteered to become mortal. When we returned, it was like a blind person experiencing sight for the first time. We tried to convince the other Seraphim to go and also encourage all angels to experience it once. That’s when all of the drama began. After experiencing mortality, we finally recognized just how egregious the actions of some of the angels were. We began taking actions against the worst offenders. Lucifer began organizing all of the Ascended in an attempt to protect mortals from the evils some angels reveled in committing. It was Lucifer who initially created the rule that turned an angel into a demon if they purposefully harmed an innocent human with malicious intent. It was meant as a warning to those who sought to undermine the mortal realm by making the experience so horrible that nobody else would dare to go there.”

  “Is there anything else we should know before we go?” Lexi asked intently. Her face had been filled with interest as she learned of a past she couldn’t remember.

  “Just remember that thoughts can change the structure of reality in the light realms,” Calypso warned them. “The creative potential varies from one angel to the next, but it increases dramatically based on an angel’s class. As Cherubim, you and Mandy will have a great deal of power over reality in the light realm.”

  “Will the other Seraphim sense us when we go there?” Mandy asked with a note of concern.

  “Without a doubt,” Calypso nodded with a wry smile. “While the power available in the light realms is enormous, so too is the amount of power that Cherubim and Seraphim consume. Between the five of us, we are definitely going to leave a ripple in the power flow of the light realm. They won’t be able to tell where we are, but it will be obvious that we are there.”

  “Okay,” Lexi grinned brightly. “I’m ready. Let’s go to the light realm!”

  Calypso smiled at her fondly, then opened a portal. Clarice grinned at the expressions on Mandy and Lexi’s faces as they stared at an endless expanse of what looked like salt flats.

  “Okay,” Aria flashed Calypso a smile. “You go on ahead and we’ll follow behind in a minute. I want to see how well the bond works between realms.”

  Clarice went through with Calypso and Mandy while Lexi waited with Aria. Calypso closed the portal, leaving nothing but white ground around them as far as the eye could see.

  Mandy had staggered to a halt as soon as she had stepped through the portal, her eyes going as wide as teacups. She let out a moan of bliss as her immortal body was immersed in the dense energy of the light realm.

  Clarice let out a relieved sigh as she felt the dense light flood her system. It had been so long since she had felt this much energy. She knew it was nothing compared to the realm she had originated in, but after hundreds of incarnations as a human, it felt divine.

  Calypso was also staring at nothing with a look of relief on her face. “It’s so good to be back.”

  “Yes, it really is,” Clarice agreed with a smile at Mandy. “It’s altogether possible that Mandy has never felt the power of a light realm. If she was created in the splinter reality as a new spirit, then this is all going to be new to her. She won’t have the soul memory that the original Mandy has.”

  “I can still feel them,” Calypso noted with relief evident in her voice. “Just as strongly as if we were still with them.”

  “I forgot we were testing for that,” Clarice facepalmed. “I suppose I would have noticed if the bond had diminished.”

  A portal opened up a moment later and Aria stepped through with Lexi. Aria had a broad grin as she entered the light realm. She froze as the higher density energy hit her. A look of blissful relief swept across her face as she soaked in the high energy field.

  Lexi already looked as stunned as Mandy as she came through, staring off into space with a look of bliss in her eyes.

  “So?” Clarice asked Aria curiously. “Did you feel anything through the bond?”

  Aria nodded vigorously, her eyes wide with wonder. “Yeah, it was almost like we were here,” she answered with a brilliant smile. “It was like you two were channeling the power back to us through our soul link. Lexi almost passed out at first. I think she’s getting more than she would naturally get, since she is connected to three Seraphim.”

  “I’d call that a perk,” Clarice declared with an impish smile. “She gets to feel all of the wonderful things her Seraphim feel.”

  Aria smacked her arm playfully as she fought down a blush. “You behave. We’re in heaven now, so you have to be on your best behavior.”

  “I think we should put on some disguises,” Calypso suggested thoughtfully. She wavered for a moment, then took on her human form. “Let’s try to fit in and just look like regular angels.”

  Clarice studied Calypso intently, noting the way she used millions of tendrils of energy to create a shell of another person around herself. It tickled loose another memory, and she suddenly remembered how to mimic the effect. “How do I look?”

  “You look just like you did when I first met you,” Calypso told her with a reminiscing smile. “Still gorgeous.”

  Clarice felt the need to express her gratitude in more than words. She stepped over to Calypso and pulled her into a tight embrace, feeling every curve of her body as she held her close. “You’re a smooth talker,” she whispered silkily.

  Calypso’s face had frozen, and a deep blush appeared on her pale cheeks. Clarice leaned her head forward and gave her a lingering kiss. She had only meant for the kiss to go on for a few seconds, but the positive energy in the place had pushed her longing into a higher state of desire. Her kiss became more passionate as she pulled Calypso’s body up tight against her own. She heard a pair of soft moans behind her and suddenly remembered what the bond would be doing to Aria and Lexi. Her lips formed into a smile against Calypso’s as she finally pulled away.

  “We are so going to continue this conversation when all of this nonsense is behind us,” Clarice promised Calypso with a final soft kiss.