Music splits the cavern. Sacred chorus resonates through the fine atoms of Misery’s body. Soft light flares hard white, furnace-bright, too brilliant to look at. Misery’s eyes snap shut but still light comes through her eyelids, and sparks flash against the veiny pink of her vision. Stone moves around her and the timbre of the archangel’s song changes along with it.

With her eyes still closed Misery senses that the slit in the archangel’s chest has scissored open into a foramen. How does she know this? Inconsequential. Within this gap is a pilot’s hollow just like that of a seraph’s. But this hollow stands nearly three meters tall, with space for eight limbs and a horned head.

In Scripture the writings tell of similar findings in virgin seraphim. No human pilot has come for this archangel mech. It bears only the marks of the divine creatures who have made it.

If this is real, if this is no delusion-through-death, then truly she is in the presence of a holy artifact.

Come home now, Misery Nomaki.

Time to go. Time to fulfill her destiny.

Misery leans forward and puts her palm against the pearlescent insides of the archangel. The gap between the stone lattice and the pilot’s hollow is just narrow enough for her to climb over.

This is what she is meant to do. Misery clambers into the hollow on her hands and knees. The archangel’s skin welcomes her with friction enough to keep her from falling to her death. The hollow is too big and too many-limbed to suit her. The mech’s hum shifts in key and the stone begins to move, rippling like jelly around her soles. Then it begins the climb that Misery now knows too well. Up to her waist, past her elbows, creeping over her shoulders. She finds herself eager for this sequence of events.

All’s well, all’s well, and all will be well.

The stone closes over Misery’s head.

Silence.

Then a whisper. Then a song.