Chapter 182 181: Weapons and Angels**

belamy20

The room behind the bar was wide and quiet. Guns and cold steel covered the walls. Tobacco and machine oil hung in the air.

They sat on the couch in the middle of it.

Rodin leaned back, crossed one leg over the other, and lit a thick cigar.

"Talk. What kind of Devil Arm are you after?"

Soren's brow tightened. The man had skipped the Armitages like the name wasn't even on the table. He let it go and laid out the design he'd been turning over for weeks.

"I want a weapon that can change shape."

"Base form is a tachi."

"When I feed it magic, the blade and the scabbard shift together and lock into a greatsword."

The idea had come from Nico. She'd taken Yutun's antler and forged him a pair of short blades. Push magic through them and the tangs snapped together into a bow that hit like a siege engine. If two blades could join, a sword and its sheath had no reason they couldn't do the same.

Rodin tipped his head back and blew a slow stream of white smoke. Behind the sunglasses, something like approval flickered.

"That's a sharp design."

He looked at Soren. "You know what that asks of the forge. And of the materials. Compatibility has to be damn near perfect."

The merchant tone dropped. This was his work.

"Show me what you've got. Without a top-grade core to carry it, that idea dies in the fire."

Soren didn't hold anything back. He listed the stash one piece at a time.

Rodin sat up. Both feet hit the floor. He let out a low, unreadable laugh.

"The Spear of Destiny. So that's where it landed."

"Against angels, that's a rare piece of stock."

Soren said nothing. He already knew how Rodin felt about Heaven.

"A wrecked Alastor?"

Rodin's eyebrow climbed. "Kid, ruining an ancient Devil Arm that still has a mind of its own isn't easy."

"You using it as a fire poker?"

Soren gave an awkward smile.

"On top of that, a crowbar of unknown alloy, and demon bone that's been cooked in hellfire."

Rodin exhaled smoke and thought it over.

"Not a bad pile."

"The Spear will give it killing power most things don't walk away from. Use Alastor as the spine. The meteorite handles self-repair. Fold those together and you've got a weapon that ends fights."

"But—"

Soren sat a little straighter. He'd been waiting for that word.

Rodin turned the point. "Your design lives or dies on a clean shift between forms."

"Everything you've brought is hard and extreme. None of it wants to bend that far or fuse that deep. You need a binder—something with give and compatibility—to hold the rest together."

"Drop this lot in a furnace as-is and you get a single-shape weapon. Force the fusion anyway and the first time you try to change forms in a fight, the materials reject each other and the whole thing blows into scrap."

Soren nodded.

Nico had flagged the same problem when she'd seen the pile. Back then he hadn't had a clear design, so she'd talked compatibility in general. Rodin was talking about the specific joint the transformation required.

"You have a fix?"

"Of course."

Rodin smiled like a man who already knew the price.

"I'll supply the binder. Condition is you kill an angel with your own hands."

Soren went still. "Kill an angel."

Rodin snorted, disgust raw in his voice.

"Heaven was supposed to be a sanctuary. Now they treat the human world like private property and gamble with souls against Hell."

"Your so-called God is just another greedy tyrant."

Soren coughed twice. Rodin could say it. Soren was not about to pile on.

He knew the story: Rodin had stood near the top of Heaven until his power made the wrong people nervous. They cast him out before he could threaten the throne. Listening now, the reason for the fall sounded less simple than that. The hate, at least, hadn't changed.

Rodin crushed the cigar out.

"Power should serve freedom. Not rule. Not chains."

Soren gave a short nod, then asked the practical question.

"When an angel dies, its origin goes back to Heaven. How do I prove the kill?"

Rodin had been waiting for it. He opened the drawer in the low table, took out a metal disc no bigger than a palm, and tossed it over.

"I built this. Wear it. When you drop an angel, the device drinks the origin that tries to leave and turns it into an angel halo."

The smile that followed was ugly.

"With that on them, even angels get a real death."

The disc was cool and heavier than it looked.

Soren stared at it.

This was a live grenade. Take it and he was in their war whether he liked it or not.

On the human side he already had the Armitages and that nameless witch circle. In Hell he'd killed Satan's son; that blood didn't wash off. Did he need Heaven on the list too?

He stopped.

He was already on it.

Gabriel had run the Mammon descent. Soren had killed the demon prince, dragged Satan into the open, and blown the plan. Gabriel had lost his authority for it. Before that, in Haddonfield, a low-rank angel had come hunting a prize and ended up locked inside Silent Hill.

Soren glanced at Rodin.

The old smith had smelled something. The demand wasn't random. He was handing Soren a reason to keep cutting angels and calling it business.

Soren was already in the hole. One more creditor didn't change the math.

"Deal."

Rodin nodded, satisfied.

"Good. Bring me the halo and we trade. Extra halos, we talk extra terms."

The weapon was settled.

Soren hesitated, then pushed the second item.

"The Armitage family."

Rodin set his glass down. The smile thinned.

"The family itself isn't worth the spit. The ones standing behind them are."

He sounded bored already.

"I'm a merchant. I care about our deal. Your grudges are your problem."

"If you really want the dirt under it, I'll throw in one piece of intel. No charge."