The Days Of Hellfire

Prologue

Athens, Greece.

The Parthenon

1816.

IT WAS A BLEAK Winter morning in the city of Athens.

The air was frosty, the atmosphere foreboding. The gentle exhale of Mother Nature sighing whipped through the trees, ever so slightly impelling the leaves back and fourth. In the distance, the sun began to crawl its large yellow- orange head towards the skyline, making its ascent near the misty violet sky.

 With his back to the rising sun, a man stood alone. Head held high, with his body stiff, he took a sharp intake of breath. And when he did, he took in the earth. All sound in the world halted. Mother Nature's face took on a deep shade of lapis, causing the leaves and the trees to halt their near silent dance. The earth walkers, along with their abundance of creatures, froze on the spot. Moments of complete silence passed by, the nothingness in his ears being almost blissful to his rapidly beating heart. 

When the man exhaled, everything returned back to as it was. 

With disdain, he ground the heel of his bare foot into the earths tough soil, effectively creating a hole the size of a fist into the hard dirt. 

It was Christmas morning.

He and his brother had both decided that Christmas would be the best day for them to meet. But now, as he stood alone with nothing but time to contemplate his clearly shortsighted decisions, he could not understand why he would agree to such an offer.

In the letter he sent to his counterpart several months prior, he inquired of an appropriate place and time to meet- he even let his sibling decide, not fully feeling the need to map out every detail as he usually did this time around. His brother had sent back a response not even a day later, the message straight forward. They were to meet Christmas day, and, reluctantly, he had agreed. But now he could not fathom why.

Perhaps it was because this was made to be the holiest day of the year, and both he and his twin sibling- his younger brother, The Light, enjoyed the perspective of it being so? Or, because of some unusual reason, since this holiday was typically to be spent with family, some small shred of both of them wanted to spend it together?

As soon as that thought entered his head, he  dismissed it. They could both barely stand the sight of each other, and rarely could they ever manage to be near one another long enough to handle business before a fight broke out. Perhaps they both just believed that Christmas would give them some kind of unforeseeable strength to get through their meeting without trying to maul each other alive in the process... or something along the lines of that reasoning. Trying to find common ground on a mortal man's holiday was as far fetched as anything they'd ever done. 

The Brother of Darkness shook his head and chuckled. The all black wool mask he wore over his head muffled the sound of it, making it seem more like a strange cough rather than a laugh. He'd acquired the guise from a local pawnshop on his way here, nearly two days and three nights ago. It was shamefully practical, its main purpose to assist mortal men who worked outdoors all day during harsh weather to keep their faces protected. In a sense, it was keeping his face protected, too. The giant ball of light in the sky made the skin on his face burn. The mask helped keep him at bay to an extent, but not by much. 

The feel of the wool against the course skin on his face and his silky hair made him itch uncomfortably. It was more of a pest than an actual problem, but it still bothered him for the reason that it was yet another thing to be annoyed about today. He cursed himself for having not brought something from home like he usually did whenever travelling to the Sustainable Level.