Chapter Text
Any demon who discorporated an Eric for pointing out flaws in their plan — he couldn’t help it, they were made to gather intelligence, even if nobody else remembered it — deserved what they got.
Obviously Shax was lying about not going up against an angel, since everyone knew Gabriel was missing and the reward for his capture was unprecedented. Plus you didn’t need a legion, or even 1/75th of one, to storm a human bookstore — you didn’t even need to storm it, you could just walk right in. How stupid did she think everyone was?
Eric considered the demons that made up her fraction of a legion. Well, she was probably right. Aside from Eric, these were the dregs. And every member of the Erelim was very careful about appearing to belong to the dregs; that ensured that nobody was ever the least bit concerned by their presence. Shax hadn’t even noticed that a new Eric had slipped in to replace the one she’d smote.
And she had no idea how to run an operation. All the demons were milling about with no instructions, because she still hadn’t arrived — probably wanted to make an entrance, the arrogant prat. So nobody was paying any attention to him, or any random miracles that might happen — an unexpected opportunity he was not going to pass up. He slipped down a side street and found a dark corner with a view of the bookshop, and then there were two of him.
One Eric headed back towards the mob of demons, the other one slid back into the shadows and stayed linked, right up to the point where the bookshop lit up with a Heavenly glow and the other sent he really is doing the thing with the halo. He didn’t know if he’d be pulled back down if they were still linked during that kind of holy discorporation, but there was no sense in risking it.
Once the sun started to rise he found a seat outside the coffeeshop and picked up an abandoned newspaper, the perfect urban veil of invisibility. He watched as Crowley led a group of angels into the bookshop. He wasn’t close enough to tell what was going on, so he called on the rest of the Erelim for a convocation.
there are archangels in the bookshop
:: Dagon and Furfur should also be there by now. They think it’s war, but we know what we saw. Aziraphale was out of options ::
:: Everyone from your mission is back except Shax ::
she went in during the attack, hasn’t come out
:: Beelzebub is still missing ::
The humans who had helped defend the bookshop came out. One of them headed towards the coffeeshop, her eyes passing idly over Eric, then snapping back for a second look, by which time Eric had done a quick miracle to change his distinctive hairstyle to something short and unmemorable. She blinked, shook her head, then opened up the shop to let in the long line of waiting customers.
Shortly after that: someone just went into the bookshop. Do we recognize him?
:: The Metatron, in a human corporation. ::
:: Unprecedented ::
the angels just left, guess it’s all over
wait, now the Metatron is coming over here, with Aziraphale.
The Erelim observed the Metatron offer Aziraphale the position of Supreme Archangel, and went into deep analysis mode.
:: We overheard Shax and Dagon when they arrived. Gabriel and Beelzebub have both abandoned their positions. ::
:: Yes, but why choose Aziraphale to replace him? ::
:: If they think he’ll make a good puppet, they’ve forgotten what Principalities are like ::
A wave of memories from the war passed through them. Principalities were built to protect; never surrendering, and nearly unstoppable in a fight. The Erelim were not. But a sufficiently large number of them could overwhelm a Principality, though not without losing quite a few along the way, which was where they’d first picked up their reputation for being “disposable”.
:: Coming between Crowley and his angel is not a wise move ::
…he just accepted it.
A long pause. :: The threat must have been too subtle for us to detect. ::
:: Or it happened out of our view ::
we’re agreed that there was one, right? Involving Crowley.
:: Yes. Focus on him. Having one of us up there may be more fortunate than we thought. ::