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“But God is dead… how can you sin against Her?”
“I don’t know how it works. Honestly, I assumed that’s how things worked down here too, why you all look like?—”
“No. It is the mere nature of this realm that warps us, remakes us in its image.” He looked at my fingers again, inspecting them from every angle before asking, “How did you sin?”
“I… accidentally killed some mortals. I hadn’t meant to. Now I wear their blood on my hands.”
Malachi’s eyes narrowed, “None of what you say sounds possible. The fact that you’re here, and that you came here through the Pit, tells me you could be lying.”
“I’m not lying. I swear it.”
“You’re telling me you fell to Earth; how did you wind up in the Pit from there?”
“That’s way more than one question. I’ll answer if you let me ask another, if not, we should get on with this—your fellow demons must have lost feeling in their arms by now.”
Malachi nodded, and—to their relief—gave his rebels the order to put down their weapons. “Very well,” he said. He ran his blade across his forearm, then took some of his own blood and smeared it on my hand. Given what we had just talked about, I wondered if the symbolism was done on purpose.
“Is that it?” I asked.
“That’s it,” he confirmed. “Now, come with us.”
The demons made way for us to move through them and fell into step behind us. Together we walked a short way along the mountainside, toward a natural crevice against the mountain that couldn’t be seen from the air, or even from where we had landed. I thought we were heading into a hidden cavern, only the crevice ended up being a solid, black, rock wall.
Malachi approached the wall, turned his head to look at me, and then stepped through the wall as if it weren’t there. One of the demons at my back nodded for me to proceed, so I did, walking confidently into the wall and closing my eyes as I reached the threshold.
Crossing it didn’t feel like… well, anything. There was no resistance, no strange tingling, nothing at all to tell me I had just walked through a solid rock wall. It was un-magical and also a bit disappointing, until I reopened my eyes.
I was standing on the lip of a circular walkway, hewn out of the mountain rock and lining the edge of a central chamber—a hole that seemed to be as wide and as deep as the mountain itself. In the middle stood a tall, stone structure, perfectly cut and carved, with many bridges set at different levels connecting the central column to the outer ring we were on.
Lights shone from the many windows and doors along the structure, and everywhere I looked where demons, their voices carrying and echoing throughout the mountain. There were so many of them, all taking different forms, and in different stages of their transformation; it was hard to believe that some of them had started as angels at all.
The whole place made me think of a busy marketplace, albeit underground, but just as vibrant and active. I could hear music from one of the levels below me—Music, in Hell?—and I was fairly sure I spotted a demon walking some weird half crocodile-half fish pet. At least, I hoped it was a pet.
These demons looked content in their damnation, happy even.
And I stood out like a sore thumb.
Malachi and his group led me around the external ring and toward the closest bridge, instantly attracting the attention of every demon in area. Though I wasn’t the first angel they had seen down here—they had all arrived as angels, after all—I was apparently the first to still retain their angelic nature and their Light.
It seemed to raise hackles in some places and draw curiosity in others. Malachi had warned me against making contact with them, but I didn’t particularly feel threatened. Or, at least, I felt about as threatened as one would expect in a city full of demons. Still, there were whispers, discussions held in hushed tones as we passed; they were all talking about me, perhaps wondering whether I was a prisoner or a prize.
I wasn’t sure which I was either.
“It doesn’t look like they hate me,” I said.
“Hate is a strong word,” said Malachi. “They are curious about you, to be sure. But we are outcasts. Sinners in the eyes of your masters. Once the curiosity is gone, the bitterness will rise.”
I gave Malachi a determined look. “Heaven is not my master.”
We walked down the central structure in a spiral until we reached a door about halfway down. I tried to glance over the edge, to see the bottom of the gigantic cavern, but the further down it stretched the darker it got and the dizzier I felt for looking.
Malachi knocked and opened the door, gesturing for me to step through. On the other side of the door was a room that honestly looked more like a torture chamber, though thankfully it was not covered in blood.
There were racks against the walls on which grizzly looking weapons hung. The heads of monsters, killed and stuffed, mounted above them as trophies. On the floor, in the center of the room, was a rug made from the fur of a serpent-looking creature with large, bulging, amber eyes and teeth as long as my fingers. Such a thing should’ve been covered in scales, not deep green fur, but I wasn’t about to question this hellish bestiary.
On the other side of the room, sitting at a desk covered in parchments, was a demon with only one leathery wing, and clad in scraps of metal that had been fastened into armor. This demon’s crimson skin was marked and scarred from countless battles fought against other demons and worse. When she looked up at me, her eyes burned with he same inner fire as Azaroth.
But when she spoke, her voice was soft and almost inviting.
