Nova's Direction
The massive pit had deepened just a bit more than before. Under the blood-red sky, scars from yet another battlefield gouged into the earth. Rak stood at the pit's edge, peering down for a moment. The hunger of Gluttony. And huddled within that hunger, a single shadow. Bell.
"Nice name you picked."
A low voice drifted up first from the black depths below.
"Nova."
Bell slowly rose to his feet. The shadow stretched out, crushing the remnants on the pit floor once more beneath it.
"Looks like it could burst a few more times just by looking at it."
Rak descended slowly into the pit. Stones and bones crumbled under his feet.
"As long as something's left after it bursts."
Rak said.
"Better than a battlefield with nothing left at all."
Bell snorted a laugh.
"Fair enough. It's starting to look halfway decent now."
When the distance between them shrank to about twenty paces, Rak spoke first.
"They'll move from above soon."
Bell's eyes narrowed slightly.
"Heaven?"
"Yeah."
Rak didn't bother denying it.
"Even just one severed prayer line makes them peek down once."
"If they sense the incense didn't 'take hold properly,' they'll bring something bigger next time."
Bell slowly turned his head, scanning somewhere between the pit's vast rim and the crimson-cracked sky.
"So they're coming again."
"High chance."
Rak said.
"Something to plug up Gluttony—this time, they'll bring it from the start."
The corner of Bell's mouth twisted faintly.
"The bastards are getting bolder."
Rak took another step forward.
"The incense—how much have you eaten?"
Bell fell silent for a moment. The air inside the black pit grew slowly, oppressively heavier.
"Not much."
Bell patted his chest once.
"A single drop."
"The tough part's the problem."
He shrugged.
"If I swallow it all at once, I'd burst first."
"So like you said, I'm gnawing at it slowly."
As Rak pressed, Bell lowered his gaze.
"Think you can absorb it?"
Bell laughed lowly.
"I hate the idea of becoming a 'Great Demon without Gluttony.'"
The corner of his mouth twisted.
"But if I finish eating this thing."
"Next time they bring the same, it won't work."
Rak fell silent at that answer. Eating the incense was akin to killing one's own authority once, then reviving it in a 'different form.' High chance of bursting after eating it, low chance of gaining the incense's power too. One or the other.
Rak stated only the conclusion.
"Don't eat it too fast."
"Heaven still thinks the incense works."
Bell raised an eyebrow slightly.
"...Isn't eating it too slow a problem too?"
Rak's voice was even.
"That's why I'm saying eat it slowly."
"Until we've figured out how to use it on our side."
"'Bell, struck by the incense' holds."
Bell pressed his lips together, then released them.
"So we're fooling them like that."
Rak said curtly.
"Because there's room to fool them."
"To Heaven, it's 'Bell that the incense worked on.'"
"To us, it's 'Bell pondering how to eat the incense.'"
"We refine Nova in that brief window."
Silence flowed briefly. Rak spoke again.
"So I came to ask one more thing."
Bell gestured with his chin: go ahead.
"With your Gluttony."
Rak's gaze fixed straight on Bell.
"Can you make another 'Bell' just like you?"
Bell giggled.
"You're such a pain."
Then he looked at Rak with a more serious glint.
"Exactly like?"
Bell asked back.
"Scent too."
"Weight too."
"Hunger too."
"Even the way it shakes when swallowing a whole battlefield."
Rak nodded.
"Enough that what comes down from above won't suspect."
"At least polished enough to fool an Archangel properly."
Bell closed his mouth and thought for a moment. The air filled with the stench of rot mixed with heavenly afterscent, settling heavily.
Bell's answer came surprisingly quick.
"Possible."
"Peel off a bit of what's inside me."
"Mold the shell and patterns into one lump."
He opened and clenched his hand once.
"The problem's after that."
Rak continued.
"The incense."
"Yeah."
Bell glanced at his chest.
"Can't split this."
"Only one original stuck here."
The incense's wound. Not embedded in flesh, but a nail driven into the structure of Gluttony itself.
"If I have to share this with a clone, it's no different from ripping myself in two from the start."
Rak nodded.
"So the incense wound stays only in the original."
"Make the clone you before the incense touched."
Bell smiled faintly.
"Me from the days when I was really at my peak long ago?"
Rak said.
"The 'Bell' Heaven first remembers."
"The one that devoured entire battlefields whole, never once blocked by Gluttony."
Bell clicked his tongue.
"Then where does the real me go?"
Rak's answer was firm.
"Can't be seen."
"Only the 'Bell without incense' steps onto the battlefield."
"In the Hell that Heaven sees, only that Bell exists."
Bell laughed quietly.
"You're pulling me off the battlefield."
Rak denied it.
"Not off the battlefield—just out of Heaven's line of sight."
He glanced up at the ceiling.
"Prayer lines."
"Surveillance."
"Heaven's planted eyes."
Rak said lowly.
"Yield those spots to the clone."
Bell stood wordless for a moment. His final verdict:
"You're such a pain."
The words that followed:
"...But it'd be fun."
Bell curled the corner of his mouth.
"From the perspective of those looking down from above, the 'Bell struck once by incense' should show up as normal."
"But when they come down, there's a Bell without a trace of incense standing there."
Rak nodded.
"Between those who believe the incense 'worked'."
"And those actually hit but not fully eaten yet."
"Buy time on that battlefield boundary."
Rak added.
"At first, just make it resemble the shell."
"Heaven's eyes from above aren't that discerning."
"Scent."
"Movement."
"The way it devours everything at once with Gluttony."
"Nail those three, and most will buy it."
Bell chose his words deliberately.
"And the Archangels?"
Rak said.
"Raphael's already seen it once; next time, he'll look deeper."
"So make it aware from the start it's a 'clone.'"
"Doesn't need to be fully 'Bell' inside."
"Just look like it from Heaven's view."
Bell nodded slightly.
"Guess I'll whip one up when I feel like it."
He said, half-amused, half-annoyed.
"And later, when the grubby little worms start counting 'how many Bells died,' wondering."
"That'll be pretty hilarious too."
Rak didn't dwell on the image. What mattered wasn't the number.
It was who decided the number.
Bell subtly shifted the topic.
"Nova, then."
"Keep running it as is?"
Rak thought briefly.
Nova. The base rebuilt from battlefields. Balrag's defensive line. Gart and Morcan's training ground. El and Jan's veil. Astamar's processing yard. Where Nas and Navriel strung together lines and numbers.
Rak said quietly.
"Nova isn't a warzone."
"It's a place to reuse battlefields."
Bell nodded lightly.
"How far you planning to build it?"
Rak's answer was short.
"Until Heaven can't see Hell anymore."
"Sever every line rising from Nova, make it so the white grubs descending from above have nowhere to dig in again."
Rak continued slowly.
"So they can't turn Hell into their lab."
Bell twisted his mouth.
"Tired of them twisting things to their taste?"
Rak briefly recalled Earth's sky, the crumbling world.
"This time."
Rak's voice was drier than ever.
"We're the ones breaking fingers from below."
"That's why we're here."
"Nova's no longer just a base to endure."
"It's a base to snap the fingers Heaven uses to toy with Hell, one by one."
Bell laughed slowly.
"Sounds good."
This laugh held genuine amusement for once.
"Then I'll make the clone."
"You lay the groundwork."
Rak nodded.
"Yeah."
"Soonest, a few years."
"Latest, within decades, they'll come down."
The speed of fully consuming the incense. Prayer line recovery patterns. Heaven's movement intervals.
Rak had calculated the time between.
"Before then, Nova becomes the place Heaven can't see into Hell."
Whoooosh───
A gust swept over the massive pit under the red sky.
Bell gauged in that wind how far to scatter his scent.
Rak calculated atop that wind how far to drape the veil.
Preventing Heaven from reshaping Hell to its whim.
That was Nova's path ahead—the first goal Rak and Bell fully shared.
The wind swept once more. This time, it wasn't from Nova.
───Yes.
The air stilled.
From some unknowable place, a low voice echoed.
Neither Rak nor Bell could voice a reply.
The voice resonated not from above or below, but permeating all of Hell.
The shadows at the pit's edge flowed backward for a moment.
As if all of Hell's laws inverted for one breath, then snapped back.
Rak recalled the name once.
Satan.
From Hell's deepest depths, the one who deceived and enforced all—had quietly approved Nova's 'direction' in that instant.