In spite of the choice to have a pacifist assassinated, Gabe found he liked what he'd heard of Grand Mage Meritorious. That the sorcerer could take pity on his enemies after a long and costly war said a great deal about him, and most of it good.

What surprised Gabe was the extent of the conflict. For some reason, he had been assuming it had been an Irish civil war, although on reflection there had been every reason not to--Skul had said the Faceless Ones had ravaged the planet, hadn't he? "It wasn't only a war limited to Ireland?" he asked. "There are other churches, elsewhere in the world?"

Possibly in other 'cradles of magic', as Skulduggery put it. It did make the Archangel wonder how everything to do with them seemed to come down to Ireland alone. Weren't there worshippers, or potential openings, in the other cradles too?

Gabe smiled slightly. "Politics as a concept is pretty good. It's just when it's put into practice it tends to fall apart. Some people are too controlling and some people not enough. But it does make things interesting."

He chose not to mention that Hell was run somewhat like a modern democracy. Somewhat. Lucifer was too powerful for his younger cohorts to simply overthrow, but that didn't mean they couldn't make his life, pun intended, Hell.