In which Glasya comes across an old trinket.
Why is it, if Malbolge is a part of her, that she can never find the thing she wants when she wants it? Oh, certainly she could make a new dress, but that’s besides the point—recreated angel-feather drop-sleeves are not the same as the genuine article. She’s hardly going to make the impression she wants in imitation celestial sacrifice couture, now, is she?
With a huff, Glasya hauls another iron chest down from its shelf. The walk-in closet, deep in Ossiea, stretches back an unnecessary series of miles, and she’s already wasted most of her morning scouring them. Archdevils don’t tire the way lesser beings do, but metaphysically she’s sweaty and exhausted and about ready to overthrow a small mortal nation for the stress relief.
The suffering she endures is honestly too much.
“If it’s not in here, I’m sending a hunting party to Mount Celestia,” she mutters under her breath. “Daddy dearest can just cope.”
Glasya is, of course, precisely the kind of person to start an interplanar incident for the sake of her own vanity. Or such is the image she likes to cultivate, anyway.
The chest thuds to the floor and Glasya thuds next to it, legs akimbo, highly unglamorous, but there’s no-one around to mock, so she’s safe to indulge. She scratches one elegant copper claw over the lock and it falls open with a faint sigh. Within are piles of fabric, which is a promising start—she plunges her hands in and tosses out item after item in search of that unique softness that only comes with angel feathers.
This would, she knows, be easier if her palace weren’t wholly warded from locating spells. Truly, the sacrifices one makes for a pittance of security in the Hells are never-ending.
Then, just as she’s ready to give up and go crusading into the Seven Heavens; “A-ha!”
She lifts a waterfall of shimmering grey fabric into the light; long skirt, sheer bodice, and those perfect, perfect sleeves that will trail like broken wings from her perfect, perfect arms. Shining patterns of vivisected angels weave across the material in pale thread, their agony almost audible. She presses the dress triumphantly to her chest. See Baalzebul say no to her in this, there’s no way he’ll—
A glint at the bottom of the chest catches her eye. Glasya lowers the dress, cocking her head. Setting it carefully aside, she grasps the glint and lifts out a small, clear crystal. A golden sheen dances over its glittering facets as she turns it in her hands. It sends a whisper through her fingers that lights up her veins with the desire for more, and she has a brief yet powerful urge to own everything.
Even before she looks into the heart of the crystal, she knows what she’s going to see.
Herself, pressed against the side of another Archduke with beautiful, dark gold skin, and a scattering of verdant scales along his shoulders and sides. Her hand is resting on the centre of his lean, muscular chest, slightly curled—his own partly covers hers, his other arm around her shoulder. The image is cut off at the waist, but she remembers clearly that she had knelt on the snake-coils of his lower half; had to climb up on them to get high enough to fit them both into the enchanted image.
In the crystal, Mammon is looking at her, endlessly, like he loves her. In the crystal, Glasya is looking at him, endlessly, like she—
She tosses the crystal back into the chest and slams the lid shut. She snatches up her dress and, with a neat little kick, sends the chest spinning down the long and improbably endless miles of her closet. She has what she came for.
She stalks back to her rooms and finds that the dress no longer fits. In a fit of pique, rather than altering herself, she tears off the sleeves and goes to her meeting with Baalzebul wrapped in shedding angel feathers.
She gets what she wants. She always does.
Except for the times she doesn’t.