"In less than forty-eight hours, Yaldaboath will have an army of soulless humans marching with him towards the gates of the Pleroma. They will obey him to the letter and sacrifice everything until the place becomes entirely his."
That sentence sums it all up, and it comes from one Archon who now forms a steeple with his hands. He reclines on his leather seat, with two of his brothers sitting on each of his sides.
Black-cladded demons strong under their hood, crimson-twisted long nails over pale frail hands—all embed into the cold decor of a room made of a shattered darkened glazed mirror wall. There are only six of them here, but their cast reflections made them appear to be an army of them, chopped into all directions.
That's the Archons' headquarters, and from there they control everything happening in the material world. There is a screen in a corner instead of the glass showing the disastrous consequences of a war, with on its opposite side the same information shown from the perspective of another country supporting it.
That's how hate rules the world by dividing the minds.
The video suddenly freezes on Norea; her image enlarges and displays all over the room. She is back in the material world.
"We could have Norea eliminated by now if it wasn't for you, Astaphanos!" He says as his crimson eyes glow under his hood towards this one Archon in front of him—this one Archon that doesn't fit among them. She is filing her long red nails in her glittering metallic tube bowknot jumpsuit, with her long silver hair resting over her left shoulder.
Silence thickens and becomes unbearable, and yet she has answered nothing back to the accusation thrown at her. The first Archon who has spoken taps his fingers over the rest-arm of his chair in impatience before his mood escalates to frustration. A loud grunt escapes through his gritted teeth as he removes his hood. Crisscrossed in many red streaks and ridges with craters that form into the thin lips of a mouth and tall cliffs to become ears. That is their face—the face of all the Archons without distinction over an eyeless, hairless clay skin. This one doesn't differ from another, and he hits his foot on the ground, waking Astaphanos up from her daydream. Among them, only she possesses the face of a human.
She only gives him a hmph. "Excuse me, I was outnumbered there!"
Another indivisible Archon stands up. He moves in front of Astaphanos, his hands violently gripping on the base of her seat, making her jerk back. "Maybe if you were with us at the ballroom instead of getting yourself into that ridiculous outfit, they'll have been dead by now!"
Astaphanos raises on her feet, unafraid of the threat. "Nothing wrong with getting the best outfit for the job, right?"
"Our job was to eliminate Norea and Lilith from this lifetime?" Another Archon interjects and Astaphanos silences him with an ugly stare.
"I always wonder what was wrong with you, Astaphanos, for quite a while now?" The first Archon says before clearing his throat for a sip of a red liquid from a black cup. "That doesn't look like you!"
"That!" The Archon standing in front of Astaphanos repeats with a laughter of mockery as his eyes stare at her from head to toe. "That has never been you or any of us?"
Protruding her eyes, Astaphanos leans closer to him. "Define, what's us then?"
None of them dares to answer apart from the last one of them who hasn't made himself heard yet. "We are the Archons, male demons, engineered by Yaldaboath to assist him!"
"Male?" Astaphanos chuckles.
"You're just strange since you swallowed that crystal!" The one standing before her says this before pushing her back into her chair to draw his face closer to her. His icy breath whipped over her, causing her red iris to squint. "Maybe we should show him his part so he can't remember what he truly is!"
On that menace, a knife materialises in his palm and he aims it over Astaphanos' crotch. She swallows down her saliva with a big thump sound. Just as she is going to strike back, one grabs her fist from behind, while another takes hold of her other arm. All the five of them surrounded Astaphanos. She squirms on the spot, defenceless under their imminent attack. Her main tormentor then hoovers the tip of his weapon over her stomach, making her rose quartz glowing over her flesh.
"Maybe we should extract that crystal and make you like us again!"
"Don't you dare touch it?" Astaphanos kicks him in the face, pushing him far away with her one remaining free leg, but he stands up. With slow steps and a frightful smile, he approaches her again. Astaphanos retaliates the best she can with a throw of her spit right into his face. "I don't want to be a soulless being like any of you. This crystal is mine, and it taught me more than you had ever done about who I am really on the inside, and this body is nothing like me!"
He wipes his face clean and tilts it to the side. "We should see that Astaphanos!" Drawing his knife closer to her stomach, she writhes again, and he knocks her out with a punch to the head. "Hold him tight while I'll cut him open to get that poison out of him!"
As the knife regains its course, coming closer, Astaphanos' heartbeat increases with images of her life eddying before her eyes.
Obey.
Kill.
Fail.
Punishment and repeat was all it was.
She was only an instrument in Yaldaboath's hands until she tasted one apple from the tree of knowledge. Everything suddenly has a purpose for her; her actions come with a sense; her mind could reason and evade the prison of her body—the one that doesn't match her soul.
Tears freeze on Astaphanos' face at this moment. She can't lose it all. The crystal can't leave her body yet. Despair forces her eyes to shut, and this is when a bright light blast to their left side. The side of well-being, healing, and protection, the blasted entrance to their head quarter suddenly open on an angel, Astaphanos' knight in her darkening armour—Lilith.
She floats there above the lava sea of her wrath on her huge crimson bat wings, motionless and yet full of rage to the rim. Lilith only has one sentence hanging from her lips.
"An eye for an eye, a kiss for a kiss, Elaois!"
The latter drops his knife at the invitation and spreads out his eagle wings. This Archon is a dragon-shaped one with lion claws and a long snake tail. Elaois is the embodiment of chaos that threatens to eat any damned soul when their lives are over, just like he did to Lilith.
He flies over to her. The pair rise high and soar together, whirling and tumbling in flight. Then she strokes his face, revealing the Archon symbol of Mercury bleeding under his right eye. Lilith drags his face closer to hers, each flap of their huge wings covering them until she seizes his neck, and within a heartbeat, Lilith bit on his lips, lowering his body enough so she can chop his lower parts.
Spitting out his mouth, Lilith flares her nostrils into his face. Her skin reddens as her grip tightens around his throat; she can't ever forgive this one Archon—the one who took Abel and Cain from her. "It seems like without the other half of your body, you're useless now, Elaois!" And with this, his head catapults itself off his body. Both parts of Elaois fall down and crash into the volcano of Lilith's hungry open wound in Eden.
Before she can look back at the other Archons on their lower floor of Yaldaboath's spacecraft, the shot of a spear pierces one of her wings.
Iao, Elaois' loyal comrade, smiles while holding the other end of the stick. Lilith doesn't spare him either; she pulls his weapon through her injured wings until he is near her, then her head busts into the huge, firm jaw of a wolf. Twenty large canines are dripping saliva in her upper part with the same equivalent, and two more are at the bottom of her new mouth. With one bite, she devours this Archon to the stomach, where the symbol of Jupiter glows over his belly. As Lilith chews on his remains, her face regains her usual form again. She then discards the rest of his body with his pathetic weapon on the molten floor of Eden.
The other Archons in their head quarter let go of Astaphanos, with another one of them shooting out into the air to greet Lilith. Twin blades materialise themselves in each of his hands, along with the symbol of Mars in them. He fights Lilith above the hellish Eden, striking at a weaponless opponent who doesn't even bother to retaliate against him. She only pushes him further and further above where the four rivers of Eden join. There, she takes hold of his weapons and crosses his arms, pinning him with them to the chest over this sacred ground. Sabaoth died with his eyes popping out through his blank face, staring back at Lilith with the deafening voice of Sophia ordering him to repent himself for her.
Lilith doesn't need to do more with this one as she returns to her position right in front of the spacecraft that is the Archons' home. This time, Adonaios, the Archons leader and second in command to Yaldaboath, leaves their base to meet Lilith midair on his equal bat wings like hers. The wind of his speed blows the hood off his head, revealing the carved symbol of the sun on the top of his skull. Now reaching across his body with his right hand, Adonaios grips the handle of his sword and unleashes it right before Lilith's nose.
Only against him does Lilith draw her weapon out.
Their steels cross above hell, the outer darkness where flames lick on their feet. There are shrieks between each of their blows and the gnashing of the teeth. Blood sparkles across their armour bodies, Adonaios' weapon becoming inflamed, while Lilith only wipes her mouth clean from her last wound.
Adonaios drags his weapon with both of his hands under the war cry of his own rasped scream. With all his strength, he dashes towards Lilith, ready to cut her in half in one move while she holds her ground, only spitting out a mixture of blood and saliva on her right side.
Blood rushes out, painting a crimson phoenix on the black canvas of Eden's sky.
Lilith remains still, with only a crimson splash across her face, while Adonaios falls in two pieces behind her.
Astaphanos's knees surrender at the edge of her house at the death of her brethren, her mouth still hanging open. Lilith just killed them all, and the latter now throws her sword at her only spectator. Astaphanos sniffs at the sight of the air and smoke swirling and settling within Lilith's weapon, her reflection in it clouding and becoming real again. The choice is in the hands of Astaphanos, and in extremis, she seizes the hilt of Lilith's sword and turns back right on time to behead the last Archon standing behind her, Horaios. He collapses on the ground as he approaches her, a knife in this hand, the one whose left shoulder glows into the form of the moon, Lilith's symbol.
Panic surges in Astaphanos' body as she can now see Lilith flying high in parallel with their spacecraft to meet Yaldaboath.