Yue

 17th November

20:57 GMT -5

Jade stares impassively at the image. "Huh."

"Yeah."

Ambrose rubs his chin with his right hand. "I'm not sure what I was expecting, but that wasn't it."

The grim tower and headless praying torsos are gone. Soldiers in blue/grey power armour now patrol a city that looks like something the Amazons might build. There are.. demons, but they have an icon of flickering black flame flickering on their forehead: the curved horns surrounding a lightning bolt which Satanus appears to have taken as his icon. As I watch, one attempts to lash out at a rag-swathed man being politely escorted by a soldier. It doesn't even manage to draw its fist all of the way back before the icon flares and burns its face down to the skull. The damned man looks around in fear, but a soldier pats him reassuringly on the shoulder and the group continue onwards.

"John..?"

"This is new." A demon knight in full plate stomps up to the one with the skull for a face, picking it up in his right hand and dragging it off. The sigil burns on his forehead as well, but he also wears it on his tabard. "That's Duke Sterocax. Nergal's younger brother and Rosacarnis' uncle."

"I thought that she kept him in a drugged stupor in her basement."

Ambrose frowns at me. "How the fuck do you know that?"

"I've had an interesting life. I suppose that Rosacarnis might have handed him over, but I doubt he'd be a willing participant in any scheme that benefited her."

Jade's watching him closely. "What can he do?"

"He's strong, and his body is supposedly impervious to attack. I'm not sure what sort of muggins would attack a powerful demon with conventional weapons anyway, but they won't do anything to him. Internal attacks like poison and.. presumably whatever Satanus is doing to keep him in line work just fine."

Ambrose shakes his head. "That's not all he can do. He's also really good at possession. That body wasn't his originally."

"I didn't know demons could possess other demons?"

"Neither did the Duke of Lethe. The way I heard it, he invested really heavily to get a perfect lukhavim bodyguard made, and Sterocax just walked off with it."

Jade nods slowly. "Can he possess other things too?"

Ambrose nods. "Of course. All demons can. But as far as I've been able to find out, he hasn't dared leave that body since he got it. Probably because he knows that Duke Malthous commanded it to kill him the second he did."

"How vulnerable are we going to be to getting possessed?"

"Depends. Have you sold your soul to a demon?"

Her jaw tightens. "No."

"Done any demon magic?" She glares. He raises his hands. "I'm just asking. The answer is 'not very easily'. Whatever you've done in life, you still own your soul until you die. Unless you run into one of the demons whose nature matches your vices really well, and they'd have to recognise that and it still wouldn't be immediate."

"And then what happens?"

"Ah…" He glances at me. "It depends. Sometimes they keep your soul around and just use your body for a bit. Sometimes they send your soul straight to hell. Sometimes they eat it or shred it… Nothing good."

"I still want to know how Satanus managed this sort of redecoration. Has he just..? Shipped matter in?"

John's eyes flare golden as he resets the map. "Satanus having a human father always made him something of an outsider in Hell. But when he and his sister began amassing power, it amused Lucifer to grant them Limbo."

"Together? They've always hated each other."

"That's probably why he did it. Not only did he know that they'd never actually rule it together, he knew that demons get barely any power from Limbo."

I nod. "Which is why Blaze created her pocket Hell rather than even try."

"Right. But aside from souls turning up there, Limbo's just a place. Naturally it's a barren wasteland, but aside from the fact that it's infinitely big there's nothing actually stopping someone from bringing matter in."

"Except that it wouldn't have the arcane attachments needed to work properly. Because it's in Limbo rather than on a living planet. Hades had that problem before he connected everyone to Erebos, and the people there still can't quite pass as living."

Ambrose nods. "He's getting a lot of power from somewhere. And he's being clever about how he's using it."

Jade turns towards Ambrose. "Who goes to Limbo?"

"Really minor sinners, usually. Not evil enough to get drawn into Hell-proper, but who don't have anywhere else to go. Sometimes agnostics and atheists from pagan societies who had an idea of 'divinity' but didn't have enough to do with their people's gods to go to their afterlife."

"What's it like?"

"It's-. It was like being half asleep for eternity. Souls there can answer questions, but they didn't have much agency. Not until Satanus did whatever he's done."

Jade nods, then calmly regards the map for a moment. "If Satanus is improving Hell, do we really want to stop him?"

"We don't specifically want to stop him doing that, no. We just want to remove his ability to operate on Earth. If this was all he was doing, I'd offer to help."

She nods. "Could he be getting the power from his allies in the other parts of Hell?"

John shakes his helmet. "No. Not unless entire countries were taking Devil Jizz and he was receiving all of the power. And if that was happening we'd all know about it. Agony and Ecstasy could probably help with a connection, but they couldn't power it directly."

"Is the power invested in the long term, or can he immediately redirect it?"

Another shake. "Unless I could watch him creating the spell, I'd have to go there and see for myself."

"It will probably come to that. I don't want to engage him directly if we haven't got a hope in hell." Ambrose shakes his head sadly. "Now, us. How do we get in and how do we hide?"

Ambrose nods at me. "Your tattoos should still work. Demons won't be able to feel your soul through it, so you could do a convincing damned soul act as long as you don't bleed. I could use magic to hide, but actually using spells in there would set off their alarms."

"John Constantine had the Seal of Solomon tattooed on his skin. I know the woman who did it. Worth doing?"

He shakes his head. "That only works when you're corporeal and on Earth. And it would be really easy for them to detect." I nod. "I could hide Jade as well, but hiding a Lord of Order is way above anything I could do."

John lifts the Helmet from his head, the orb's illusions vanishing as he does so. "Leaving off the Helmet of Fate probably wouldn't work; by now I've had too much exposure. So I can act overtly, or I can act as support."

Jade's eyes narrow slightly. "Put the hologram back on. If that's where we're going, I want to study everything that's happening first."