Holystone defies the pulpy understanding of human minds, trapped in the Newtonian constraints of their mortal realm. They do not understand that matter is merely a front for other things, and the faces shown to them by holystone are not permanent, that holystone by its nature is multipotent. Some facets more than others. The archangel Misery Nomaki is right now turning, turning, and turning those faces, disrupting the ecosystem of the Heretic warship, pushing its guts inside out, deactivating all the functional slices of its machines. Imagine, if you will, a human body, its liver transformed into bone and blood into keratin, and you will understand the particular nature of the destruction that spreads through the Heretic ship. The ship bucks, desperate to shake off its executioner, an animal screaming as the butcher’s blade opens its spine. But it cannot stop what is happening.

Underneath the archangel Misery Nomaki the Heretic warship crests into agony. The corruption of its innards has reached the vicinity of energy lines that feed its stonecores. Turn, turn, turn, and a slab of holy pearl transforms into holy tigereye, and the sudden surge of energy rips those lines apart, one thing leads to another, then the stonecores are out of control, energy spiraling from them like the hearts of suns, then there is no Heretic warship, only a furiously expanding ball of heat and light, visible from every portal on Angelsteeth, so bright it obliterates the shape of every combatant on the battlefield.

When the light clears only twelve slender figures hang in the velvet of the void: the three servings, and the archangel Misery Nomaki. They are victorious. They have prevailed.

“What I don’t understand,” says the General, “is why you said nothing.”

They’re not in the interrogation room. This is where Misery first met Ono Red-2, the large and long conference room at the top of the station. It feels like an interrogation, however. The same layout erected, with Lightning and Misery on one side. The princess has a hand—long, cool, hard—latched around hers. On the other side, the same panel of stakeholders: Diamond, the Duke, Major Tsung. And the General, leading the charge. Misery can read them so much better now: the threads of unease and dismay, the echoes of the shock they felt still rattling around, surfacing on their expressions as little bursts of anxiety. They don’t understand why they were lied to. They thought they kept enough secrets that no fresh ones might ambush them. They’re suspicious of what else they don’t know. What other truths are concealed from them in places they can’t see, in places they can’t reach, in places they wield no power. Foolish. Misery has nothing but contempt for their worries. After all that’s been done, after all that’s been achieved, they still worry? They need to be set straight.