~Heaven~
I thumbed the papers of the manuscript repeatedly, knowing that each time my fingers brushed the paper it degraded just a little bit. As did my mind which, brushed repeatedly by the same gnawing thought was beginning to fray.
"I think that will be plenty for today Iaoel, you may leave."
"Oh, oh really? Thank you sir!" The eyes of my somewhat erratic apprentice lit up from within with an enviable easiness and excitement at the prospect of a shortened session of scroll study. One day I hoped he would be as excited for studying our history as he was at this moment for its absence in his life. Maybe that was foolish of me.
I watched as he carefully but clumsily gathered his books and scrolls and pushed the chair back behind his desk, before presenting me with a bow that was still slightly lacking grace but was improving. "I thank you for your wisdom." He recited before straightening and waiting for my reply.
"As I have been given the wisdom of God, so it shall be given unto you." I finished the custom between master and apprentice, permitting him to exit the room. Maybe there was hope for the young angel after all.
With my apprentice gone I could allow my appearance to slip somewhat, revealing the worry that had been wearing me down. Slouching in my seat I gathered the papers that I had been unable to focus on into a neat pile as I thought aloud.
"What if they did not believe me?"
The paranoia that had been snaking it's sinful grip around my mind since the day I had informed the High Council of the great threat lurking like rotten fruit in the underworld had finally come to the point where I could no longer ignore it. How I myself could be infected with its darkness from so far away was proof enough of the power of it's evil, and as far as I knew there had been nothing done apart from the expulsion of Remiel from Heaven.
This in itself went some way to calming my fears that I had been taken seriously, but proved only that they had found guilt in the actions of the young seer, and not that they believed that an ancient race of demons had somehow been resurrected. And this I suppose was my dilemma, if they did not believe, then nothing would be done. And if nothing would be done then there could be only one outcome, this outcome being the disease of sin being spread at an unstoppable rate throughout the human world. This could not happen. The demon had to be destroyed, and if not by the high council, then surely it was God's will for it to be destroyed by me.
___________________________
~Hell~
Ten green bottles, sitting on the wall,
Ten green bottles, sitting on the wall,
And if one green bottle should accidentally fall...
There'd be nine green bottles, sitting on the wall.
Nine gree-
Is singing that song going to help in some way or did you just blow a fuse trying to get your stupid little brain to think a way out of this?
Shut up it helps me think.
You need a lot more than a nursery rhyme to help you think.
NINE GREEN BOTTLES, SITTING ON THE WALL.
I had been reduced to arguing yet again with that snarky little voice that lived inside my head as I lay in motionless contemplation beneath the floor of the grand hall. The grand hall which, to the best of my knowledge still contained not one, but eight probably angry and definitely ridiculously powerful demons. One of whom just so happened to be the King of Hell, who it seemed I had royally pissed off. Again.
You can't lay here forever singing annoying rhymes like it's going to save your sorry ass.
May I remind you that yet again, the reason I am in this shit is because of you?
Oh yeah cause the alternative was so much better, I saved you and you know it.
From one situation, but what the hell am I supposed to do now? The only place I've been to that isn't this palace is the slave camp of eternal damnation. I don't know what is out there, who is out there or even where is out there. Knowing my luck even if I can get outside the palace grounds I'll die as soon as I stick my head above the ground.
All valid points, but as for your 'what who and where's' did you forget that you are essentially sitting in the underworld's version of Google? It can tell you all of those things if only you would stop singing that fucking song for two seconds and ask it.
Touché
I stretched my arms out in the living rock that surrounded me, marvelling still at the undying enthusiasm with which it curled around my palms and swam between my fingers.
Please take me to a place where I won't die. I commanded. The rock sent shivers down my body in acknowledgement of my request and ever so slowly, I began to move.
____________________________
My eyes flew open at the first touch of a breeze that flowed gently over my skin. It seemed that I'd fallen asleep somewhere between the palace and wherever it was that the rock had decided I wasn't going to die. I rubbed my head, dazed by the light that now surrounded me.
All natural light in the demon world was tinged an odd red colour that I still found very noticeable even after having been here for so long. It never seemed to get beyond a certain level of brightness either, nor did it ever get completely dark. The world of demons was trapped in an eternal day that had no sun and no moon. It was probably just a coincidence with its positioning under the earth, but I suspected it was more purposeful. So that you could never count how many days you had been trapped for, never feel their beginning or end.
The usual faint smell of smoke and dust in the air was now mingled with something else, something sweet. Blinking my eyes to clear the blurriness from them I saw the source of the smell; a myriad of flowers moved and swayed above my face like dancers in the wind.
Their sweet heavenly smell quickly became overpowering. It stuck to the back of my throat and choked me with its intensity. I sat up, gasping for air that wasn't saturated in the sickly sweet scent. Though indescribably beautiful, the flowers stank of rotting fruit and flesh and left me retching with tears streaming down my cheeks.
"How peculiar for a demon to be disgusted by the filth of its own creation."
I frantically stood from the flowers and wiped my eyes, looking around for the voice that somehow managed to sing like a nightingale and bristle with hatred at the same time. Finding it I stumbled back a few steps, nearly tripping at the sight before me. Sat nonchalantly on a moss covered boulder was a man entirely in white, a man with giant wings of pure snow that caught the red light of the underworld and shimmered a faint dusky pink.
He scoffed at the look on my face with incredulity.
"What a coincidence that you should appear in the very place that sin was born. Though I doubt if you would care to know, this garden is the place where the snake that first tempted the humans to sin was created. And now, a second snake has been born." He looked at me in disgust as he stood from his position on the boulder, his movements flowed like water. "But I shall not worry over what you may have whispered into the ear of humanity given the chance, as you will never get so far as to even look at a human."
Words finally found their way to my mouth as I gawped at the perfect man that burned holes into me with his hatred. "W-who are you? And what are you talking about?"
"I have come to cleanse the world of your sins, by destroying you so that the filth of your existence may never taint anything of purity."
"Listen, I think you've got the wrong person, I-I don't want to drag the humans into sin or- or whatever you're talking about..." I stuttered under the rage that boiled from his skin as he took a step towards me. The smoke tinged breeze blew gently at his shoulder length copper hair and ruffled the feathers on his stunning wings.
"Person?" he spat, "The audacity that filth like you could refer to yourself as a 'person' really quite beggars belief, especially since it is people themselves which you crave to destroy."
"What?!" I shouted. Stumbling back another step I tripped on a hidden root in the grass and lost my balance but quickly regained it. Taking another step I now found that I was backed up against a tree. "I honestly think you've got the wrong end of the stick here... I don't want to destroy anything!"
"What pretty lies a demon tongue can spin, you have already infected the heart of one bright young Angel, his youth made him vulnerable. But I will not be so easily fooled."
"Y-young Angel... do you mean Remiel?"
The mention of the fallen Angel's name made him stop in his advance and breathe in sharply.
"How do you know this name?" His eyes narrowed at me as I frantically tried to think of how to get away from this mad Angel, so much for the rock taking me somewhere I wasn't going to die.
"H-he fell, fell down here. He's at the Devil's Palace right now, I-I could take you to him..."
"They cast him down this far..." The Angel's voice softened and his gaze finally broke from mine, a mixture of sadness and guilt swam in his hazel eyes.
I took his lapse in concentration as my chance to escape. Using my unnatural speed I peeled away from the black bark of the enormous tree that I had been pressed up against and ran. His attention however obviously hadn't been so taken up that he didn't notice what I was doing and less than a second into my escape I was slammed in the shoulder by an unimaginably crushing weight that sent me hurtling to the damp moss-covered rock.
I tried to look at what had hit me but was blinded by a white light so powerful I could feel my eyes begin to boil in their sockets as soon as I opened them. I screamed in pain at the searing heat as it ripped through the flesh of my shoulder, digging and scraping into my bones it felt as though the light was puncturing every cell in my body as I writhed against it. I had never felt anything like it.
"In the name of the Lord I cleanse the sin from your body, demon eternally damned. For that is the power of the Holy Spirit, thy demon flesh shall fear it until thy body is clean and thou may no longer lead others to unholy sin."
The words left his mouth in a towering crescendo of noise, with each one that he spoke the heat spreading from my shoulder intensified, the light becoming so bright that it blinded me. With my face pressed in desperation to the dark slick rock that I had been pinned to the words of my people left my mouth in short, shuddered gasps, unheard by the Angel who continued to command the light above me.
"Sarsin-sine e-esch al...ta, sensil esch oana... " I breathed as my head began to swim. "Kill- him, kill him...KILL...HIM."
The warmth of a different kind of fire began to fill my body, it bubbled through my veins and into the tips of my fingers where it froze like ice, wrapping around every spark of the Angel's light and crushing it from within. I heard the choked cry of the Angel with every spark that I destroyed. The light began to dim and the rock flooded power to my eyes so that I could open them to face my attacker.
Tendrils of liquid black rock climbed over his robes and began to constrict like hungry snakes. They hardened around his limbs like steel as I commanded them higher and higher until they flooded over the bare skin of his cheek. Where they touched him they hissed and bubbled furiously like acid, seeping through his skin and poisoning his blood. The white light in my shoulder faded to a dim glow as the Angel lost his grip on me. Standing from the ground I faced him directly as he fell to his knees, unable to move in the cage of rock that now surrounded him.
"P-please..." he begged, eyes bulging from his head in pain.
I tilted my head to the side a little and smiled, my teeth glistened white and sharp in my mouth as I glared down at the life which I held in my hands. I could see the black shadows at the edges of my vision and paused, waiting for them to take over my conscious. But they did not. Intrigued by this new sense of control I raised my hand to the face of the Angel. With a touch gentler than a feather I brought my index finger to his lips, smirking as he recoiled from me.
"Shhhh..." I breathed quietly, letting a single shadow curl from my finger and slither into his eye socket. The loud, piercing cry that left his lips echoed around the garden as I let the shadow slip slowly around his brain, its keen edges slicing ever so slightly into the organ as it glided around the inside of his skull like a little black fish.
Continuing to control the shadow inside of his head I softly pooled the black liquid rock to the base of his skull, feeling every particle filter through his skin and the change in density from muscle to bone as it reached his spine, my eyes closed in bliss at the feeling of power that surged through me. I clenched my fist and the rock set like stone, snapping his neck instantly and leaving his body to fall loosely against the bonds that held it.