"OK, it went like this. Saminga had just shown up, all Repentant and the Seraphim Council had convened – again – to do a mass Redemption/Trial/Debriefing – again. We’re all sitting there, or perching, or hovering, and let me tell you: we just knew God was going to do that ‘Shiny New Archangel’ thing again.

"Weirdest Council I’ve flitted around in a long time. Michael and Dominic were actually having a conversation that didn’t include laser death-beam eye-glares, David and Marc were seen entering together, and Blandine was actually whistling. I haven’t heard her whistle since the Song of Solomon. Some Servitors of Trade were outside, running a betting pool on what the new Superior’s Word was going to be, and a Triad walked right up and placed a bet. Dominic sees this, runs over … and puts down some Essence himself. ‘Final Rest’, I think it was (I had a relic on ‘Transformation", myself).

"I know what Eli means when he says that he suspects that he’s accidentally ingested something illegal.

"Anyway, here comes the Repentant One. We do the ‘trial’. It’s supposed to be all solemn, like, but the Seraphim and Malakim all relaxed as soon as they pinged Saminga, Yves looked calm, and Dominic is practically radiating good cheer (good cheer for him, at any rate), so nobody cares too much. We’re all here for the show afterwards. Haagenti’s orbiting around me in that smiley face he’s been sporting lately, anyway, winking at Saminga every time he thinks no one else was looking.

"So, end of trial, beginning of Redemption. The Council does "the Full light of the Symphony" deal, Saminga opens himself up, and the Presence of God appears. Now, all joking aside, this is a solemn moment, so we quiet down and watch as our new brother is washed of his past misdeeds and emerges to meet his new family.

"We are more of a family, now. It’s … better.

"After it’s happened a couple of times, it gets kind of easy to detect when an angel becomes a Superior. The Word’s fairly clear, too. We’ve developed a ritual for that, and let Saminga say it aloud.

"Of course we didn’t tell him that he was probably going to be made an Archangel by God. Are you kidding? We don’t know that it’s going to happen, after all. God might have decided to just bring him up Higher, or obliterate him. It wouldn’t have been the first time. He probably wouldn’t have believed us, anyway: these Repentant Princes tend to think that they don’t deserve anything better than a merciful death for their crimes.

"Where was I? Oh, yes, the Word. He says, "Fulfillment", in that new five-part-harmony voice Kyrios do, and the Council relaxes. Nothing disquieting there: maybe not what you’d expect to be Superior-level, but this crowd doesn’t argue with God. If we did, we wouldn’t be here. So, we all go down to meet him and welcome him officially to Heaven. Of course, some of my fellow-fighters are doing the patented "Malakite grudgingly deciding to not destroy former demonspawn" look, so I figure that we’re going to have some awkward moments later on.

"Now, ‘Genti and Malphas have told me that Saminga’s a lot smarter than he used to be, and I believe them. What he did later on was really intelligent. I get a message from a reliever telling me that Saminga wanted to show me something. So I go over to his temporary quarters, and whom do I see but Laurence, Michael, David and Gabriel? When we’re all there, Saminga tells us to watch what he’s about to do, and translates himself to the corporeal plane.

"A little background here. Saminga, when he was a Prince, had developed this nasty little relic called the Coffin of Undeath. Really nasty: it could turn a human into a vampire without needing minor details like the victim’s consent. Now, a bunch of Sorcerers had gotten hold of one, and was "entertaining" that charming Hatiphas, Demoness of Sorcery and front-runner to take over the Word of Death, by preparing to use it on a Soldier of David that they had just caught. The ritual had been completed by the time we tuned in.

"Naturally, David was livid. He was about to jump down there himself, when Saminga appeared on the scene. He had possessed the Soldier just before the climax of the ceremony, and apparently his presence in the host kept the soul from being ripped from the Symphony. The look on the head sorcerer’s face when his victim casually broke his bonds, levitated across the room, and generally blew it up was priceless. For about three seconds, after which you couldn’t really make out any recognizable features. Meanwhile, a couple of the Kyrios he had already recruited had quietly possessed the zombies that were lying around the temple and began to kick ass. He had apparently kept that trick when he changed sides, and adapted it for his new Choir-mates.

"Now, Hatiphas has absolutely no freaking idea what she’s walked into, here, so she tries to do her "Queen of the Damned" routine, thinking that the gate-crashers are Renegade Shedim. Saminga grins and proceeds to obliterate her vessel, and came within a cat’s whisker of obliterating her as well. She missed being soul-killed by about a fragment of a smidgen of an inch. After she booked back to Hell, the new Archangel casually goes around and rips apart everything he sees that’s even remotely connected with sorcery, grabs the Coffin, tells his Kyrios to see the Soldier of Stone home (after they burned the place down) and launches himself back up here. All of this with no attempt at concealment, mind you.

"Now, David’s shocked, Laurence is shocked, Gabby’s purring and Michael looks pissed off because he didn’t think of it first. Me, I’m wondering what the encore is. Saminga appears in front of us again, with that stinking coffin, smiles, bows slightly and smashes it in front of us. He looks at all of us and says, ‘one hundred, twenty-seven". Then he goes inside his temporary headquarters.

"And I’ll be blessed if one hundred, twenty-seven more piles of broken, fragmented wood and metal didn’t appear in Heaven in the next few weeks. The literally damned things were everywhere: the Groves, in front of the Church, at the opening of the Catacombs, even by the lip of the Volcano. Michael and I didn’t need any convincing at all. Gabriel was all warm and fuzzy by pile #8. Laurence started to warm up by about #79. David, though, David doesn’t say a word until #128 appears. He then recounts them all. Twice. Saminga’s just standing there, slightly singed, scraped, cut and boiled, and with all of his eyebrows (the ones not burned off) raised.

"David looks at Saminga for a minute, cracks his face open in what can be only be called a smile, says ‘Welcome to Heaven’, nods slightly and goes along his merry way.

"And that’s why I like Saminga now. He does what he says he’ll do, does it with style, and has a sense of humor.

"And, apparently, he can work minor miracles."