A shard of the Heavens is brought down, yet Hell cannot rejoice. The divine light within it still blazes untainted. Kashran takes a last long draw of her cigarette, before flicking it over the obsidian railing into the chasm. It will be her job to extinguish it.

She winces across the void at the corona of shining metal hovering inert on the other side. It’s a thing plucked from some obscure apocrypha. Golden rings lined with robotic eyes and vast mechanical wings arranged around an orb of a body which hovers in defiance of gravity. This is the shard- one of Heaven’s new war machines. 

The first appeared two months ago. A larger battle, two infernal legions clashing with a smaller angelic host in the ruins of the spent earth they now warred over. The angels, with their swift wings, took full advantage of the ample cover and firing positions the crumbling skyline offered them, but they were outnumbered, and Hell was well used to combating aerial foes. Kashran remembered the radio chatter, celebrating imminent victory. One of her comrades had bellowed with laughter, promising that her aviary would soon be full to capacity. She remembered the polite platitude she responded with, her cohort clearly unaware of how much work that would create for her.

And then came the trumpet.

It didn’t sound like that, of course. There was just a sudden blare of noise, blowing out her comms and hitting her ears like open-handed slaps. She’d hear later about the way the sky was rent open by eye-scorching light, and the great spears of fire raining down to burn holes into the legion formations, and the sight of the thing, just barely visible by the way the light glinted off its rings as they twisted and spun. Just like that, the battle was lost. The Archangels themselves couldn’t have turned the tide so quickly or decisively.

And then these machines were everywhere. Heaven’s artificial behemoths, devouring Hell’s armies. Victory became nigh impossible outside of smaller skirmishes too minor to draw the monsters’ attention.

But now, through cunning and no small amount of sacrifice, they had captured one. That destroying metal shard of Heaven, and the little light inside it. A pilot.

Kashran turns away to the Spire, a horn twisting up from the frozen realm of the damned towards the hated Heavens. The demoness folds her four leathery wings about herself as she enters, not to keep out the abyssal cold but to create the illusion of wearing a long, dark coat. Presentation will be important in the task to come. Her mark waits in the lower chambers, down a staircase into the icy bowels of Hell and behind a heavy wood-and-steel door. She pauses a moment, tucks her long dark curls back behind her polished crown of horns, and then enters.

The angel hangs in darkness, suspended from the ceiling by their ankles. Stringy ropes of frostbitten meat twist around their bare flesh, binding their legs together and their arms behind their back, Their ivory wings are stretched out to their full span by tendons reaching out from the walls. A parody of the cross their kind so exults. A hood of flesh engulfs their head, leaving only their nostrils uncovered. The only light comes from the golden shimmer of their halo, and even it’s only a candleglow in the hungry dark. A constant shiver wracks their body, which has hung here in the void ever since their capture four days ago. Kashran runs a forked tongue over her bottom teeth, the sight stirring a hunger she’s honed into a tool.

Pulling the door too behind her, the demoness sizes up her prey. Dark rot covers much of their body, smudging their pale skin with specks of gore. Even so she can tell they’re a scrawny thing. Too skinny to be a Power. And yet, they must be a warrior of some sort. Surely the hosts of Heaven hadn’t just stuck a random messenger in their shiny new juggernaut. 

She sets her claws against an exposed stretch of their belly. “Are you awake, little light?”

The angel shivers- from the cold, Kashran knows. Not from her. Not yet.

With a thin smile, Kashran drags her claws down their smooth skin. Their muscles tense but they make no sound.

“Come now,” she coos. “Won’t you sing for me? Nod.”

They do not nod.

Licking the sweet golden blood from her claw tips, Kashran considers. She sends out a psionic command to the meat, the cold-burnt muscle and sinew another tool of hers. With a sucking wetness, it recedes from the angel’s mouth. A moment as they gasp and spit gristle from their lips. Then, with a girl’s sweet clear voice, the angel says, “Fuck off.”

“Hm.” Kashran runs her touch down over the flesh-ropes, down the angel’s throat and lips. There, she jams her fingers into her captive’s mouth, letting the angel both feel the hooked claws and taste her own blood. “Perhaps I should do Him a favor, and tear out this filthy tongue.”

The angel gags and squirms in her restraints. Kashran relishes the feeling of her tongue spasming against her fingers.

“Or…” the demoness withdraws, saliva arcing after her claws from the angel’s mouth. “I can teach you. Give you all sorts of new blasphemy to dirty it with.”

The angel coughs a hacking laugh. 

“You don’t want it?”

“I say again.” The angel swallows, delicate throat working against gravity. “Fuck off.”

Kashran’s smile widens. The feisty ones are such fun. 

She has the meat pull the angel upwards, bringing her to eye-level with herself. Then, the demoness has it recede from her head-

-letting dark curls, tomboyishly short, tumble free. 

Kashran pauses. Her mind has caught on something. A biting sense of familiarity.

She dismisses it. “Please, little light,” she continues. “You know you don’t want that.” She works her fingers into those pixieish curls, soft as down. Kneads it until the angel flinches as claws reach her scalp. “Not when it’s so quiet down here. So dark and cold, where you’re so used to the sun on your wings and the choirs in your ears.”

“I can take it,” growls the angel. Such a little soldier. 

“For now.” Kashran grabs a handful of that hair and jerks the angel’s head back. The little soldier grunts as her throat is bared to the demoness. “I could always leave you down here again, though. Maybe another four days.”

The angel grits her teeth, but has no words to force through them.

Bringing her fangs closer to that thin neck, Kashran asks, “Did you know it had been four days?”

“Doesn’t matter,” replies the angel. “Keep me as long as you want. I’ll not tell you anything.”

Kashran chuckles and runs her tongue up the center of her captive’s throat, tasting sweat and stale, sick-sweet decay. “Yes, you will.” She’s broken plenty of angels. Sometimes for information. Sometimes to corrupt them as she herself had been, inducting them into the demonic ranks. This one is to be interrogated about the machines. How are they made? How do they work? How does one pilot them? Kashran is to break this pretty doll open and collect all these secrets as they tumble out. 

Of course, what she does with the angel after she gets these answers is up to her.

“You’re wasting your time.” So devoted to her false Lord.

“I assure you,” purrs Kashran, bidding more of the flesh to peel itself from the angel’s body. She watches hungrily as her present unwraps itself. “I am-”

From the tangle of rot receding from the angel’s lower body, a small flaccid penis falls free.

Kashran examines the angel again. Smooth skin. Small but developed breasts. That full, soft hair. And yet, a cock. Her mark being a tranny isn’t what throws her off, though. It’s that sharp pang of familiarity, chiming in her head again. 

But that can’t be the case.

She wouldn’t be piloting a war machine.

She wouldn’t end up here.

But now Kashran has to be sure. 

She pulls the meat from the angel’s eyes. Lets her mark see her. For a few moments the angel just blinks, trying to adjust her eyes to the dark. But by then, Kashran has already seen it.

And once she stops blinking, the angel’s face goes slack. She sees it, too. “Kash…?”

Kashran keeps her smile in place. Every muscle, the demoness maintains in a perfect mask. “You will use the name I give you, little li-”

The angel’s defiant voice has shrunken to a whimper. “Kashariel?”

Taniel spits in her face.

Again, that near-slip of the mask. Kashran rebounds fast, flicking out her tongue to lick the spittle from her cheek. “That’s hardly angelic of yo-”

“Traitor.” The word drips like blood from Taniel’s tongue. What paltry sparks of hatred the angel holds in her sanctified heart have been poured into it. Crystalline tears run from her eyes down her forehead.

“You said you were tired.” Taniel strains to keep the fury in her voice. She mostly just sounds hurt. “You were tired and you didn’t want to serve anymore. You wanted out.”

“That’s what I said, yes.” Kashran runs her thumb up over the angel’s fine brow, collecting the fresh tears as she goes. “But-”

Taniel snaps, “This isn’t out, Kash.” Her fury is back but begins to fizzle at once. A spark on a winter night, brief and futile.

The demoness tilts her head. “It seems you’ve changed as well.” As she reaches Taniel’s eye the angel tries to twist her head away. Kashran grabs her hair again to hold her still. “When did my sweet little sis get so snippy?”

Taniel scoffs. “You know when.”

“Hm.” Bringing her damp thumb to her lips, Kashran laps the tears from them. She locks eyes with the angel as she savors the salt and fruit-sweet of her sorrow. Taniel watches through narrowed eyes, red at their edges. When she’s done Kashran adds, “I’ve realized something since then.”

Taniel glowers in silence.

“I wasn’t tired of serving, exactly.” She raises a fist, and unfurls its pointer finger upwards. “Only of serving Him.”

Taniel still says nothing. She’s heard this before. It’s the reason many a demon-to-be sheds their feathers and swaps their halo for horns.

Kashran brings her face closer to her mark. “Would you like me to explain why?”

“I don’t care why.” Another shaky little spark, snuffed a heartbeat after its birth.

“I know.” Their faces are so close now that the angel’s sky blue eyes fill Kashran’s vision- and Kashran’s gleaming violet fill Taniel’s. “But I’d like you to understand. Another lesson from your big sis, for old time’s sake, hm? And since you’re here anyway…”

“I thought this would be about the Ophanim,” Taniel blurts.

“Oh?” An interesting diversion, one Kashran hadn’t expected. Did the angel think she’d be allowed to keep her grace if she spilled her guts about the machine? “Ophanim. That’s what it’s called, then?”

Taniel gives a quick nod, a songbird dipping its beak for seeds.

Kashran hums in thought. Technically, her mission is just to get intel on the machine- this Ophanim. But perhaps she could kill two birds with one stone. Those she interrogated often ended up broken even after they’d given her the information she needed. Besides, wasn’t there a small, sad part of her all that time ago that wished her little sister had fallen with her? Taniel would no doubt sing such lovely songs about her metal monster once she’d gotten pretty little horns of her own.

“We’ll come to it,” Kashran says, “in due time. An exchange of truths.”

Taniel narrows her eyes to dagger points. “There’s no truth down here.”

“So you think now.” Kashran releases her little sister’s hair. Then she raises her hand between them. “I could explain why I tired of serving above, but perhaps it would be better to show you.”

“There’s nothing to see.” Taniel’s voice is stone.

Kashran snaps her fingers. Her little sister winces as a twisting violet flame cracks to life between them. Taniel tries to shut her eyes against the umbral glow but Kashran has the blackened rot slither its tendrils into her eyelids to hold them open.

And then, in the fire’s dance, Taniel starts to see.

“Not so bad,” says the demoness, holding the flame out so its light tinges Taniel’s face a sickly lavender. “Is it?”

The angel grimaces as she tries to shut the fire out, to turn away from it, anything. A faint shrill whine, like a kettle near boiling, emanates from it, half-hidden amidst its popping and cracking. “What cheap trick is this, Kash?”

For a moment, Kashran feels something like warmth in her chest. Something adjacent to fondness. “I see you haven’t changed that much. Still so impatient. ‘Big sis’,” she teases, “’When will the morning choir begin? When will we receive our tasks for the day’?’” Her smile softens at its edges, a slip she allows. Taniel can’t see it through the flame.

Taniel struggles but Kashran orders the meat to cocoon her again. It slithers damply to cover everything but her wings and her face. The fire reflects in her eyes, giving their blue the faintest tint of purple. “You remember all that,” she snaps, “and yet you can do this?”

Kashran chuckles, more to herself. “Of course I remember, little sister. Every moment you spent huddled under my wings or clinging to my arm. Every little whine and coo and doe-eyed question.” She lets the memories surface from the abyss she’d sunk them into. Just for this moment. They’re too warm for this place. “My dear little sis, always fluttering at my heels.”

“Then how could you leave?” Taniel asks through gritted teeth. 

“You know how,” Kashran retorts, with an air of mocking. That’s right- these things are too warm, too soft. She feels the glacier within her chest start to drip at their heat. “Not to worry. We’ll bury those memories, and make new ones down here, hm?”

The flame twists and flickers, and Taniel has eyes only for its dance now. “Kash,” she asks, a little distantly. “Do you still love me?”

“Of course.” A faint bitterness stings the demoness’s tongue as she admits this. For a long time, it was easier to just forget she ever had a sister. 

“Then please.” Taniel’s eyes twitch, and Kashran lets the tendrils release their lids. The fire has her now. “Please, just ask me about the Ophanim.”

“I will, little light.” Kashran fits her false smile back into place. A demon’s cold, sharp smirk. “But you’re not just going to spill every secret at once, are you?”

“I...” Taniel swallows again. “No.”

“Well, then.” The demoness tilts her head, and brings the fire closer to her mark’s face. So close Taniel winces as its heat bites at her nose. “Keep watching the flame.”

“No.” The word comes out clipped. Defiance bleeds from Taniel’s face and voice.

“It’s pretty how it dances, isn’t it?” A little induction, part of Kashran’s opening salvo. Softening her prey up so the rest of her tools can pierce deeper. Elder angels, those jaded old eagles, can resist it. But little doves like Taniel tend to be less resilient. The fledgling’s gaze dulls as the writhing light takes her. The soft crackle and popping, mostly drowning out that sharp whine. The offer of warmth and illumination in the frigid black crypt of Hell. All of it, lulling her into its obliterating comfort. 

“Hm.” Kashran pushes through the facade. “Let it speak to you, little light. Feel its warmth.”

“N...” Taniel blinks slowly. Her resistance is already becoming a pretense. Just words mumbled over glassy eyes. “K-Kash...”

“Yes, Tani?”

“Why is it that color?”

The demoness runs her talons through the angel’s cloud-soft hair again. “To melt your halo,” she purrs. “And burn those feathers away, so you can join your sister.”

Taniel gives a small, shaky groan.

“What’s wrong?” Kashran tilts her head around the flame, so Taniel might just be able to see it. “Don’t you trust your big sis?”

Taniel’s perfect lips tremble, before she whimpers, “Y-Yes.”

“Well, then.” Kashran takes a moment to stare into the flame as well. “Just watch and listen.”

***

“What have you learned?”

The first interrogation is over. On a higher floor of the spire, Kashran kneels before her Lady, the tips of her claws still painted gold. “The machines are called ‘Ophanim’, Your Eminence.”

Sat upon dozens of frostbitten corpses frozen into the jagged shape of a throne, the Lady of the Spire tilts Her head, ivory hair tumbling through sets of twisting horns. “This is all?”

“The pilot proved hardy at first.” A lie. But Kashran is trusted with this work. No one heard her derailment upon recognizing Taniel. “I’m breaking through.” So long as she makes steady progress from this point on, there won’t be any problem.

Big sister, I... I don’t know what to do. Something is wrong.

“Do it faster.” The Lady’s voice is gravel wrapped in silk. “The enemy flits about with near-impunity above while My legions cower down here.”

Kashran bows her head lower. “I understand, Your Eminence. It will be done within a fortnight.”

Tani, there can’t be. He wouldn’t make you flawed.

“See that you do.” The Lady raps Her talons on the arm of her throne. “We have spent more than enough time hiding from the light already. This war must see it extinguished.”

Hulking guards stand on either side of Her, brutes of chitin and meat twisted around organic weaponry. They hardly look like natural demons anymore, products of weaponized flesh-warping magic. Faintly, Kashran wonders if the enemy looked at these moulded soldiers and saw an arms race, and the Ophanim are their answer. She focuses as she notices their dark eyes staring daggers at her. “So it will be, Your Eminence. I’ve snuffed many little candles for You before. I’ll snuff as many more as You require.”

It all just... Feels wrong, big sister. Like this isn’t my voice, or my face, or my hair...

Tani, please. Stop and breathe, okay? This must be part of His plan.

“So it will be.” The Lady brokers no compromise in Her words, each one enunciated with the precision of a needle and the firmness of a hammer blow. “You will make it so, Kashran.”

Kashran nods, the weight of the words settling upon her back. “Yes, Your Eminence.”

Big sister, what do I do?

I... I will seek an audience with Him. This is part of a plan.

“You will resume at first melt.” Settling back in Her throne, the Lady fans out Her topmost set of wings as a pair of attendants shuffle out to begin washing the ash-hued leather. “Dismissed.”

Kashran wanders back down to the chasm’s edge, across from the Ophanim. The dark dots of menials and engineers swarm over its hull. Trying to pick it apart. Trying to decipher its workings. She swears, as she pulls a fresh cigarette from her belt and lights it with a snap of her talons, that the war machine is watching her back. Those dozens of lidless golden eyes, glaring from their rings. They’d cry their fiery tears upon her now if they could, incinerating her with gilded flame. She’s sure of it.

And as she takes her first draw of acrid smoke, biting at the walls of her throat and lungs, Kashran wonders if that would be so bad. For a moment she swears she can see something else in all those robotic eyes. A reflection, repeated in each. A small boy angel, who is in truth a girl, huddled up in her big sister’s arms and wings and weeping inconsolably into her shoulder. Desperate for answers not even big sis has.

Kashran sets her jaw and finishes the cig in three long drags. The evening frost has already started to spread over the railing.

***

“I must say.” Kashran holds fire pinched between her fingers. “You have blossomed so beautifully, little sister.”

“Mmhm.” Running her hand back down, Kashran presses her hand into one of those pert breasts, groping wantonly. “Remember what a fuss it caused, when we first figured out how to grow these?”

“Whn...” With a slow blink, Taniel seems to claw her way back from the trance. Just enough to look past the flame at Kashran. “What...?”

“Do you not remember?” Kashran does. All the scrutiny, all the debate. Sometimes, in the deep quiets between her work, she swears her ears still ring from the thunder of the Lord’s voice as He questioned her. Taniel being a girl, it seemed, had not been part of his plan.

“I...” Another slow, stupid blink. Flecks of sapphire dart in the violet haze. “I remember some...”

“You caused a lot of trouble.” Kashran bids the flesh ropes to pull her captive forward, pressing Taniel’s breast harder into her hungry grabbing hand. “For me, especially.” Moving the fire aside, she leans closer to Taniel. Brings their lips within inches of each other. “Maybe you owe me for that, hm? Maybe you should let me have a little fun with this lovely new body of yours.”

“I-It’s okay now...” Another blink, and a little more of Taniel’s own light in her eyes. “It’s okay. They’re not mad anymore.”

Kashran had figured the Heavens had gotten over Taniel’s transition. They presumably wouldn’t have entrusted an Ophanim to her otherwise. An uncharacteristic show of open-mindedness from their stony old Lord, the demoness would admit. But Kashran still isn’t lying. Having to give her big sister a little recompense for all the interrogating, all the accusations of heresy, is the least of the pains before Taniel.

Besides, Kashran is almost drooling herself. There is a thrill to this, a level of depravity new to even her. What kind of demon would she be if she didn’t indulge? “Maybe,” she whispers, “I am still a little mad.”

“Kash-?”

Kashran flicks her tongue out over the angel’s lips, between her teeth, lapping up her spittle as it goes. “Hold still,” she purrs. “You owe your big sis.”

Taniel tries to wriggle away but her bonds hold her tight. She has nowhere to go as the demoness seizes her by the back of the neck and brings their lips together. The angel is sweet, a faint taste of metal and bone mixed in with the fruit. Kashran snakes her tongue around in her soft mouth, over her teeth, towards the back of her throat, gorging on her taste. All the while Taniel whines and gasps. Finally she whimpers something that sounds like words. Kashran pulls away. Why not toy with her a little? This work isn’t quick, and so she considers it important to enjoy herself. “Yes, dear sister?”

Taniel’s breath hitches as she stifles a sob. “Was it because of me?”

Kashran forgets the taste of fruit and bone. “What?”

“Did you lie?” The angel sniffles, before trying to force some iron back into her force. “When you left, did you lie to me about why?”

Now it’s Kashran’s turn to stupidly blink. She has no more answer than the unfurnished truth. “No.”

“Please, don’t lie now.” Taniel’s eyes are bloodshot and damp, but their blue is utterly clear. “Did you leave because of me?”

“No.” Kashran blurts the answer- says it too quickly, she realizes. On the defensive. “Grow up, Tani. I left because of Him.”

But Taniel got her with that. The angel’s eyes harden as she spots the dent in her captor’s armor. “Then why would I owe you?”

“On His behalf.” Kashran throws her reply together as she goes. “When we dethrone Him, I won’t be the one to do it. So, you suffer as proxy.”

“I told you not to lie to me.” Taniel trembles in body and voice, but her wits are about her again. “You resent me. You always did.”

“I re-” Kashran cackles in her sister’s face, so she doesn’t do something more rash. More revealing of how much that accusation actually stung. “I wore myself to the bone advocating for you, Tani. I loved you.”

Taniel strains forward against her bindings. “Do you not anymore?”

“No,” snaps the demoness, “because this is war, and we’re enemies now.”

That defiant light dies in Taniel’s eyes. She nods slowly. “Of course.”

Kashran dons her practised smile again and hopes it doesn’t look as strained as it feels. “Of course.” She leans back, lets her wings fan a little. Settling back into her authority. “But,” she adds, “I could again.”

Taniel lowers her face, as much as her prison will allow.

“On two conditions.” Kashran snaps her fingers, conjuring a new fire. “First, you tell me everything about these Ophanim.”

The angel’s dark curls obscure her face, but Kashran can make out how her lips tighten.

“Second.” Kashran takes Taniel’s chin and raises it. Forces their eyes to meet. “You join me.”

“Fuck you.” Taniel’s answer is a hoarse mumble.

Kashran scoffs. “When did you get to be such a fucking brat?” With that, she holds the fire between them, so Taniel must look into it again.

“St-Stop.”

“I did miss you, Tani.

With that, they’re back where the session began. The blue in Taniel’s eyes fading to lavender. The resolve melting from her face as the flame’s dance ensnares her mind. She becomes stranded upon its desert island of warmth and light. “Sssss... Ooop...”

Kashran lets her voice soften. “This is how we become sisters again.” Then, once Taniel is deep and dazzled, she raises the flame so it licks along the angel’s halo.

***

“The Ophanim are made from the same metal as the halos,” Kashran explains, knelt again before the Lady of the Spire. “Reinforced with a titanium alloy, possibly made by their mortal supplicants. This is how the pilot controls it. The rings of the Ophanim resonate with their own halo, allowing them to-”

“So we cannot use these machines,” interjects the Lady. The air tightens around Her words.

Kashran’s horns are almost touching the polished obsidian floor, she bows so low. “No, Your Eminence. We cannot.”

Petrified flesh cracks as Her grip tightens on the arms of Her throne. “And the angel?”

Something in Kashran’s core tightens. But she answers, “I could, in theory, leave her grace intact enough to pilot but bend her loyalties to us, yes.”

The Lady’s clutches relent. “Then do so.”

Still that tightness. “I must warn You, that may take more than a fortnight,” Kashran explains. “Making her one of us is easier- I purge her of grace, so Hell’s power can infuse and change her. This, on the other hand, will require me to reconfigure what she already is t-”

“Then do so.” For a moment there is no air in the throne room. Only the crushing vacuum of Her will.

Kashran cannot argue. “So it will be.”

So, she tells herself as she descends the staircase twisting down the spire, Kashran will do it. She’s never done this exactly, but she’s ruined enough angels in similar ways to figure it out. But an image haunts her. Taniel as she could be. Skin the color of ash and eyes a pretty flickering violet, her wings now supple leather and the charming little nubs of new horns upon her forehead. Perhaps, after the war, once the false Lord is dethroned and creation belongs to the children He rejected, this Taniel will still be able to exist. Kashran will remove her halo altogether and finally have a little sister again.

But how much longer will the war drag on?

By then, what will be left of Taniel?

She steps out into the sulphurous air and wanders down the path broken through the jagged brimstone and glacial ice away from the Spire. She won’t go far. All she needs is a little distance. A short time away from Taniel as she is now. Drooling, empty-eyed. Mumbling for the big sister she remembers from so long ago to save her.

Kashran digs her talons into her belt pocket for another cigarette. The pocket is empty.

***

Thin fingers of liquid gold slither down Taniel’s forehead, mixing with the tears running from her unfocused eyes. Kashran holds her flame beneath her halo, which has begun to warp and melt as the infernal heat laps at it. This is the eighth day of interrogations.

“Last you knew,” asks the demoness, “how many Ophanim were active?” She watches the gold bubble on her sister’s skin, so she doesn’t meet that dull stare.

“Twenty.” Taniel’s voice is thin and distant, as if heard through the wall.

“How long to construct new ones?”

“Eight months.”

“How do you fuel them?”

“The reverence of the faithful.” The angel’s eyes begin to drift shut.

“It can’t only be that.” Surely too few mortals survive on Earth to power dozens of these monsters. “What else?”

“I…” Bruises and claw marks both fresh and half-healed score the angel’s body, from times when the hypnosis proved insufficient to make her sing. Deep bags have collected beneath her eyes and her lips are chapped for thirst. Kashran tries not to see these things- tries to content herself in the knowledge that they are necessary to fulfill her own duty, and then to put them out of her mind. But when Taniel speaks again, her voice sounds far too similar to that little girl clinging to her big sister’s skirts, up in that white haven without ice or sulphur. “I don’t know...”

That little warmth in her chest again.

“You know,” Kashran says, her voice softer than it’s been in many, many years. “I am glad to see you again.”

Taniel blinks into nothingness.

“Even here.” She lets her hand holding the flame drop, the violet fire twisting against the obsidian floor. “Even now. Big sis is proud of you.”

There’s no defiance. No retort. Taniel doesn’t spit or accuse her of lying. Her lips twitch, but only from the violating stimulus of her melting halo, not because any words stir behind them.

Kashran studies her little sister. Taniel would still be with her after this work is done. A version of her, at least. But how much? Even a minor mistake could leave vast swathes of her unrecoverable, for this task is new to Kashran.

But the Lady has given her orders. The war depends on this.

“I just need you to hold still.” The demoness dons her false smile. The minute muscles of her face strain against it. “And answer a few more questions. Just for a little while longer. You can do that for big sis, right?”

A withered moan falls from Taniel’s lips.

“I just need to do this.” Kashran wipes away a finger of gold before it flows into Taniel’s open mouth. “Then we can win the war, and then we can be a family again. Won’t that be lovely?”

“Biiii...” Hardly a whisper. “S... Ssiiiiss...?”

Kashran lets her flame puff out. She leans in a little. “Yes?”

“Fffeeell...” The angel wavers in her restraints, and Kashran tightens them just enough to hold her up. “S-Straann...”

“I know.” Kashran says the words quickly, before she can feel them. “I know, Tani. It’s going to feel strange for a bit longer, but then everything will be alright. Okay?”

A slow, uncomprehending blink. “Promise?”

“I promise, little sister.” Kashran brushes her thumb over a soft cheek darkened with a day-old bruise. “Just a bit longer.”

Taniel leans into the touch. “Okay.”

Kashran nods. The task before her is doable. Melt the halo. Reforge it, imbued with Hell’s power. Give it back to Taniel to facilitate reconditioning. Difficult, but doable. Taniel trusts her to do it. Tani trusts her to make them sisters again. Someday, when the war has ended. If the war ever ends. If Hell is triumphant. If there is anything recognizable as Tani left.

The demoness considers.

She has her orders.

The war depends on this.

But she has truly missed her little sister.

“You did miss me too,” she asks, “right, Tani?”

“Yes...” A little more firmness in the words. A little more clarity in the way Taniel stares down into her own lacerated lap, speckled with gold-melt.

“You trust me?”

“Yeeess...”

Kashran swallows. “Denounce Him.”

“What...?”

She takes Tani’s chin between her fingers and lifts the angel’s face to meet hers. “Denounce the false Lord, the tyrant on high.”

A flicker of understanding in Taniel’s stare. Recognition, however faint, that she was being asked to defy the purpose branded into the core of her being. “Wh... No.”

“Remember what He did to you? What He did to us?” Kashran places a hand tenderly on Taniel’s breast. “Over these. Over you not fitting into His perfect design.”

Taniel tries to twist her head away- a feeble attempt to shake it. “Kash, nnn...”

“Remember what they all did to us?” The demoness squeezes, prompting a whine from Taniel. She ignores it, presses her body closer. “In accordance with His law?”

“Stop.” Taniel struggles. Mind and body and soul, she struggles. But all of those have been well worn down, and Kashran has wrapped an arm around her waist to pull her in, so their bodies now touch.

Kashran snaps, “You don’t remember?”

“I do, but..” Taniel pauses as the demoness unfurls her wings and wraps her in them. For the faintest moment, it pacifies her, eyes going soft again. The little sister, remembering when her sibling would wrap her up like that to give comfort and shelter. The moment ends as Kashran grabs her cock.

“Then denounce Him.” Kashran brings her face closer so their cheeks brush, so she can whisper it into Taniel’s ear. “Why serve Him, when He hurt us so badly?”

“That was long ago!” The angel squirms, as if she’s not getting hard. “Kash, it isn’t like that a-!”

Kashran begins to stroke her.

“K...” Taniel’s back arches. She keeps trying to force the name out, “K-Ka, Kaaa,” but it keeps collapsing into haggard moans which tumble stupidly from her tongue.

“Denounce Him and His tyranny,” Kashran breathes. “Do it for your big sis.”

“Nnnnooooo...” Hitching protest warbles from Taniel’s mouth but Kashran feels precum running against her fingers.

“Come on, little sister.” Kashran peppers the angel’s pale cheek in light kisses. She purrs the words between them, speaks them into Taniel’s flesh. “Be a good girl. Make me proud.”

“Kash.” Taniel speaks between breathless huffing as Kashran tightens her grip, strokes harder, trying to squeeze and rub the resistance from her. Trying to milk her of sanctity. “Kash. No. Please.”

So Kashran stops stroking.

The angel’s eyes roll. “Wha...?”

Nuzzling into her hair, Kashran gives her sister an ultimatum. “Denounce the Lord and His Heaven and His false claim to dominion, and I’ll let you cum.”

For all the angel’s wriggling and whimpering, Kashran can feel the already-meagre fight bleed from her tired body. “Don’t. Please don’t, sister.”

Kashran pauses.

Just for a moment. Just long enough to recall how they soared together in the sunlight. How she once taught Taniel the hymns of the Holy Choir, and how to care for her feathers, how to-

She resumes stroking. “Please, Tani,” she says through stinging eyes. “Make us sisters again.”

“Kash, stop,” but it’s already happening. The angel’s body shudders with approaching orgasm.

Kashran stops. “Do it.”

“I denounce Him,” wails Taniel, the words rending at her soul. Coppery anguish reeks on her breath and strains the muscles beneath her skin. “I denounce the Lord, and His Heaven, and His claim to dominion over it and the Earth below! I denounce it all!”

“Good girl.” Kashran screws her eyes shut as she makes the last few motions. “That’s good, little sister. Go ahead.”

Taniel screams again, this time in a twisted semblance of pleasure. Body shaking, hot cum splattering against the front of Kashran’s uniform. A profaned baptism, heralding her rebirth.

***

Three days pass. Kashran, the Spire’s angel-breaker, does not emerge once. The Lady of the Spire allows her some lenience, for she’s skilled in her work and has made adequate progress in this case. But finally, Her patience reaches its end. A pair of guards are sent down to Kashran’s breaking room. One of them knocks on the heavy door. No answer. He tries the knob. It’s locked. Finally, the brute rams it down with his shoulder, and they lumber in.

As angels are devoted to their Lord, lesser demons are devoted to their archdevils. Kashran has, in her own way, always been a loyal supplicant to her Lady. So, neither guard is prepared for the state he finds her in.

Kashran is slumped against one wall of the breaking room. She’s a ruin; uniform spotted with dark stains, eyes glazed, dishevelled hair tumbling down around her horns. She was meant to be breaking an angel. The war effort relied on her doing so. But there is no angel here. Instead, there is half of a warped halo where the angel should be kneeling, and a second demon in the breaker’s lap, cradled by her wings and arms. The new demon mutters to herself, too softly for the guards to hear. Black ichor has dried to a crust on her shaking hands- left there by the other half of the halo, now embedded in the breaker’s throat.