Phantom Pain (trilogy)

Hell

Chapter 32: Hell

Ramie,

Ramie,

Ramiel.

Went and poked his nose in Hell.

What he saw, he'd probably tell,

So we ripped his wings off

and he fell.

I was in Hell. I knew that the second I came into consciousness. The poem echoed in my ears like a high pitched sound, Lucifer's voice having pulled me from the darkness of sleep. There was no manufactured kindness in it now, no feigned righteousness. He was himself. And it was malicious, and twisted, and frighteningly childish.

He was insane and I had no idea how I had failed to noticed it until now. Shut away for as long as he had been, completely alone. This was a monster of our own creation. No longer was Satan a power hungry strategist. What he had been, what he had strived for, that was gone. And that was what the angels were fighting: a memory, and that was why they would lose.

He had trapped me here, in a multidimensional cell, in which I could see no escape. My friends were in danger, an unimaginably powerful weapon now in his hands. And I felt pity. I pitied the devil, finally understanding what he'd meant when he'd said we were alike.

"Stop it!" The poem stopped repeating, and I was bowled over by a wave of red hot anger.

It was gone as soon as it has materialized, replaced by the regular condescending calm.

"Enjoy your stay, brother."

I heard the voice aloud now, no longer friendly, or flirtatious, no longer beautiful. But it wasn't angry either. It was cold and emotionless, and I felt the emptiness in full force as Lucifer left. Left me alone.

When he came back I felt as if I had been there for a thousand years, and there was no way to know whether or not that was the truth of time, or a part of his torture. Lucifer spoke to me then, his words spinning webs of confusion in my thoughts.

"No one exists but empty space. Empty space and you. And you are just a thought, Ramiel Cecidit. Cecitit. Cecidit, clever brother. Latin for fallen, my clever little brother."

I pressed my palms to my eye sockets, in the utter darkness of my mind, the floor somehow still stone against my knees.

"You have been alone far too long," I hissed, words intangible, and I worried he could not hear them, in his insanity.

"I have missed them so very much." Though still enthralling there was a different tone in Lucifer's voice, one I could not remember. "The humans, with their silly games and customs. Round and round they run, never going anywhere. You must see it, being as immersed as you are? At least you have learned a valuable lesson. The rats will always crawl to the cheese, no matter the hand that holds it. They are deplorable, really, and yet you defend them over your own brothers."