I made a huge mistake. Like, a really-REALLY BAD HUGELY BAD MISTAKE.

Oh wow, this diary is supposed to help me calm down and it's just stressing me out. Ok, focus. Speak my thoughts out loud, put them on paper, and let the turmoil pass with them. That sounds like some really stupid zen bullshit but I'll try it anyway.

I've been trying to do the whole distant puppet master thing for this mission, and things were playing out like I figured. Markus wasn't getting along with Sweaty Hector, but Markus put his foot down and sweat boy changed his attitude. Again, I figured on that. I even looked at the mural again, just to see what I'd need to do to keep things moving.

I watched all the different scenarios play out across all the different possible futures, which is what I'm supposed to do. There were a lot of futures where things went wrong. I even saw an ending where Hector was turned into a chick and tried to hook up with Markus. That's some weird shit but I know there's a market for it.

Erotic fan fiction aside, I finally settled on some ground rules for my evil plans to succeed. Not evil plans, morally grey plans. But are they really? Do I even care? I will later but for now, I need to run this through again. Just to make sure I said the right things.

Ground rules:

1) Don't stay at Castle Sombra. Keep mobile and preach in public before the big conference. That'll raise the stakes and keep the government and the boys in the Vatican from disappearing you all.

2) Don't kill anyone yet. Do the Jesus thing and forgive all their trespasses. That includes murder attempts and blackmail. Markus and the other Legionaries can just beat up the bad guys and Hector can use his psychic bullshit to control them. Unless they are Hunters or Exorcists, then you need to refer to rule four.

3) Have a team monitor the current headquarters for Project Chronos. That should be common sense but some people forget that breaking dimensional barriers just to communicate isn't a good idea. Meaning our boys on the ground need to be on their toes.

4) If you see exorcists from the Vatican or hunters from the Order of Worthies: do not engage. You need to distract them and send them in a different direction instead. They already know there's supernatural shit going on, so if they see supernatural shit that's specifically from The Void, they're gonna end you.

5) Finally, the most important rule is: Keep Markus' parents under constant but discreet protection. Only intervene if they are directly accosted by enemy agents. But do not allow them to meet Markus under any circumstances. I like Markus, but I know him too well. He'd spill his guts to his parents and we'd either have to eliminate them or bring them into the Void. Markus wouldn't like either end and that would just create more problems. So we keep them out of danger to keep our boy focused, and away from him so he doesn't have a crisis of faith.

Those are pretty simple rules, right? There's nothing about sacrificing newborns or seducing virgins in there. Demons do that shit but we don't. Yeah, that's a pretty low bar but it's still important, and those were my rules.

With my law, the law of someone who's beaten down gods finally laid down: I figured I wouldn't have to check in for a bit. Sweaty Hector is a good talker and he's handled himself while he's been our main guy on the eastern US. He should be solid, even if he's kinda gross. The things he does in that hot spring with his inner circle...

And Markus? Markus is a trained soldier with a personal code of honor and a family he wants to come home to. He's not gonna dick around, right? I certainly thought not.

Now I had to let everything play into the next stage. Which meant either waiting until the conference, because ABSOLUTELY NOTHING was going to wrong before then. Or I could find something else to do while my highly talented and EFFECTIVE subordinates did their jobs.

I left the mural behind and visited Dad in his study. This time he'd set it up as a lakeside picnic. Literally. I passed through the big doors and stepped into a beautiful grassy field next to a clear lake. Hell, Dad had even set up some woods, birds flying overhead, and a bunch of horses drinking at the lake.

But on the closer side of the lake was a picnic blanket. It was laid out with all kinds of fruits and drinks on plates and things on top. I don't need to eat things, but I can still taste food. There was even a cherry pie, I love cherry pie.

Dad wasn't there but...Layla was.

"B! How wonderful to see you!" Bitch. I can still hear stupid-fake-fucking British accent. "You've grown since I've seen you last. How long has it been anyway? Two hundred years I think?"

Gee, I don't know, Layla. How do they keep time at the factory for spray-tanned, plastic-chested, dye jobbed, sweatshop knockoff wearing, saggy assed whores?!

I didn't actually say that...I really wanted to though.

Nope, I played nice.

"No idea. But it's great to see you, Layla." I smiled, raised a middle finger behind my back, and tried not to melt her face with my mind. "Oh, is it safe for you to be out here? In the sun?"

"Not to worry, your father granted me protection against sunlight for this visit. I never get the opportunity to see the sun back home." She laughed with her stupid aristocratic oh my, how scandalous laugh. And that smile. Why do vampires think it's cute when they smile? Why do walking corpses think they're fuckable-I hate it!

"Luckily, you'll never have to rule a world of your own." Yeah, she went there. "So you'll never be constrained by such tiresome responsibilities and functions."

"You're right. Ruling just one random word in the entire multiverse would be the worst. Thanks, Layla." I was trying to keep calm, and there was pie there. Deliciously beautiful cherry pie. I figured if I had to wait with Necrophiles-R-Us, then I might as well sit and eat. "Do you mind if I have some of that pie? It looks delicious."

"Of course, go ahead. I had my own cooks make it." Layla had just made cherry pie disgusting. "It's very light you know, as far as pie is concerned. I know you work hard to keep as needle-thin as you are."

"I'm a void god. I don't gain weight like you do."

"Oh? So..." She just pointed at me and scrunched up her face like she was sniffing a dead rat. "This is a choice? You're braver than I thought."

"And you're as barren as the plastic in your boobs." I'd been waiting to use that.

And this bitch decides to stand up in her knockoff heels and hiss at me with her chalky teeth and corpse mouth. She drops the accent, starts cussing in a bunch of different languages, and the grass around us starts to shrivel while she summons the powers of darkness, I guess. She called me a "bug molester" in ye olde Assyrian. I'd never heard that before.

She threw ice spears at me, but they broke against my skin. She summoned two nova dragons, but it was just Daniel and Asmodeux. They said, then took off and said they'd meet me at Mordred's surprise party later. Finally, she tore upon a vortex in space and time and tried to send me to Hell.

That was stupid.

First off, distorting a pocket dimension inside a realm that's already outside creation causes catastrophic breakdown. Any first-year mage or psychic knows this. This means the specific laws of that pocket dimension will be the first things to go. Specific laws such as the protections from the sun that Dad gave to Layla.

It wasn't even five seconds until she burst into flames and started melting. Just like I planned.

Then the portal to Hell grew and demons started to claw their way into Dad's study.

That was not according to plan. Really, I didn't mean to...

Two demons came out. I summoned my god-killer chains, and I beat them down. Then more start coming, and more, and more...Until I'm standing on a big pile of at least seventy giant demon corpses and forty more are surrounding me. Then out from the portal comes a full-blooded Demon Prince. How? How did things get this fucked so quickly?

I was covered in demon gunk, which actually does cling to interdimensional entities, and alone with a prince of hell and his personal guards. I couldn't see which one it was, because of all the shit in my eyes, but I could feel his power like it was hail blasting against my face. I've never felt that before. Not even when Aunt Artemis took me to Olympus.

Whoever it was, it disappeared in a flash of starlight. The other demons started screaming and by the time I cleared out my eyes, the portal was gone and the demon prince with it. The pile of corpses was gone too, same with whatever was left of Layla. Daniel and Asmodeux had come back. They waved at me a little but were too embarrassed and scared to say anything.

And then there was Dad.

I was going to say something, but he motioned for me to keep quiet. He didn't yell, threaten, or hit me. But what he did felt worse, honestly. He brushed away the blood on my face, with his own hands. He used his powers to clean and freshen my clothes, and he even healed a scratch on my neck. A burn mark actually. There aren't many things that can hurt me, but Hellfire is one of them.

He must have looked me over two more times just to make sure I was ok. He put a hand on my cheek and sighed like he was relieved...I've never seen him do that before. Whoever that demon was must have been dangerous. Not more dangerous than Dad obviously. But enough that he was actually worried about me.

I wanted to cry.

"Summoning heaven's refuse into my private Sanctum does not engender trust." He stood straight and was back to being his usual serious self. "Neither does an attempt at murdering my daughter. So I shall not hold Layla's death against you, B."

He turned and pointed at the demons that had been left behind. He'd frozen them in time, but I could see their eyes move. They knew how screwed they were.

"Though it was on impulse, goading the vampiress into ensuring her own demise was your original scheme. Yes?"

I nodded my head, still not saying anything.

"Dear child. I would applaud your cunning: if it did not bury your wisdom." He snapped his fingers and instantly unfroze the demons still stranded here. "You helped bring them here, regardless of intention. So, you will clean them from my study."

He teleported away, the demons scattered in different directions, and I begged my friends to stay and help me. That last part didn't take too long, Nova dragons hate demons. Plus, Asmodeux always likes to fight. We always got in trouble when we'd try and sneak into other dimensions and steal god treasures.

And Daniel was almost always there to pull us out of trouble. I could have fought my way out most of the time, but he stayed with us and always watched our backs. He's very quiet, but not in a shy way. He listens to everything and acts how he likes, and he only speaks when he has something worth saying. I've never seen him in humanoid form though. He's a teenager by dragon standards so I wonder what he looks like.

You know what, I have no time for that. I want it, but later.

Even with the three of us working together, hunting the demons was a pain in the ass. Some fought, some used invisibility magic, and at least three of them tried to open other portals to Hell. One of them even finished, and we had to fight off a horde of lesser demons while shouting out sealing spells before something worse crawled through again.

After two and a half Terran days, we finished. Everything was cleaned up, my friends went home, and Dad made one final examination before letting me go back to my mission.

"Learn from this. It will aid you both in your own efforts and in directing the efforts of others." There was something in that tone that made me uneasy. I wasn't getting punished anymore, and I knew he still loved me and whatever. But something about his tone made me shiver.

When I got back to the mural, I found out what he meant.

In the two and a half days I was hunting demons, everything on Terra had gone to shit. I'll write more about it later but for now, I need to keep Markus from murdering Hector. I don't blame him; Sweaty Hector murdered a Bishop in front of Markus' parents and framed them in his place after all, but...I don't know how the hell I'm going to fix this.

(equivalent) Terran Day who gives a shit.

3rd entry by me: the fuck up.