First of the Fallen (Neophyte Series 1)

32. A Tale As Old As Time

        THE SCREAMS OF A million souls deafened the crusader as his body whipped through the sky, and into the black. His skin peeled, hair singed to the root as an amplified madness tore straight through him—through every cell of his living flesh. There was no passing out from the pain, the way history's soldiers had during amputations, just raw torture unfathomable by any human mind. Voice box torn like withered parchment, he could barley let out a shriek as his eyeballs burst like oozing grapes, brain boiling as though the Devil had morphed his skull into a bubbling caldron with a mere sadistic thought and nothing more.

    It was pain Michael had not known, beyond anything he had ever experienced or could ever imagine. He would forfeit any and all to make it stop, no price too high—no sacrifice too great. No thought could exist other than how much it hurt; not the mission nor his place in the pattern of the grand design . . . not even Urielle—only pain.

   Convulsing, twisting and turning, he tumbled up and into the chaos, until there was nothing left of him but a mess of wet bone and melted, deformed flesh, muscles dislodged like cooked prime rib, splattering and swirled into an inverted sea of the wailing damned.

    The profane stew spun and mixed like a dying star thousands of feet from what was left of the barren ground, the hush of millions silenced as one when the entirety of the sky combusted, and Belial's realm collapsed in on itself.

    A smirk in the darkness was felt somehow—a grin turned twisted that would haunt even the most profanely desensitized. The presence of prime evil was likened to a wolf pack surrounding its prey on all sides, but far more maleficent, a sinister intent which knew no bound; chaos—insanity—mindless, raw hate in its purest form.

    Upon the floor, unhinged and screaming like a madman, the warrior lay; hands twitching, nerves beyond fried but singed and burnt to the root. A dim and vague image pierced through a once penetrating darkness, in the form of thin, villainous slits.

    He could see, but how this was possible without eyes?

    Michael was unable to piece anything together in his state of utter shock.

    "How could this be?" A fragmented slip of a thought had somehow registered. "How could melted flesh function, burst eyeballs manage sight or a boiled brain conjure any thought at all?" A gasped breath exhaled the worst of his fear, a frail consciousness finally coming to. "Unless?"

    The bewildered crusader frantically patted his face, followed by his torso and limbs, ensuring everything was still intact. His skin was unscathed, a madman in mid-fit, laying in broken glass before his greatest foe.

    Evil Incarnate brooded over him like a taunting bully, chuckling in delighted amusement as Samael scurried to his student's aid, not amused in the slightest by Lucifer's games, but not surprised either, as this was his way. The ringing in Michael's ears calmed, the Devil's echoing laugh like distant bells, chiming their hymns of doom from afar.

    Shook to the core, his peripheral vision gave way through a mixed haze of bewildered panic and relief. The realization of what had just occurred took a moment to settle, the butt of a cruel joke that was anything but comical. The ruse felt so real—terror so ghastly it would scar him forever. Doubt remained a troubling afterthought; unsure which reality was so, the utter destruction of his being, or the madman on the floor?

    'Wha?' he barely managed to whimper aloud, his voice cracked from screaming.

    'Pull yourself together, brother.' Samael righted the bewitched Neophyte, pulling him to his feet, but his knees buckled under his own weight, groaning as Michael struggled to balance what equilibrium remained.