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Rage bubbled up inside of me. I wanted to stop. I wanted to reach into his cage and disintegrate his soul, rapture it, and end him for even suggesting the nauseating trade. It was Malachi who noticed my anger. He placed a hand on my shoulder, and I snapped him a hard glance.
He didn’t speak, he only gestured down the road with a slight nod and encouraged me to keep moving.
You can’t help them, Sarakiel. Abaddon’s words echoed in my mind. I could no more help the lost souls in Heaven than punish those in Hell. At least in Heaven, I’d been soothed by the idea of restarting the Machinery and allowing the souls to pass peacefully, but that meant nothing down here.
There was no justice or salvation to be found in Hell, and who was I to mete it out anyway?
Reluctantly I continued to walk, trying my hardest to ignore the genuine cries for help, and blocking out the pleas for release. It wasn’t until I heard the grunts and barks of some demonic officer and the ringing of steel on steel that I could peel my mind away from what I had just experienced.
The line of pilgrims went past a courtyard full of demons clad in heavy armor wielding shields, swords, polearms and every other hand-to-hand weapon imaginable. There must have been hundreds of them, standing at attention and in formation, their swords raised above their heads. A single demon, easily seven feet tall with sinewy wings and cloven, goat-like legs barked at the crowd of soldiers, and the soldiers in unison changed their stances on command.
A demon army.
It was true then; Abaddon had been building an army here, and this was just one of many, many groups of soldiers. I could hear others, more shouting, more grunting, more metal on metal. I hadn’t even seen as many angels in one place on Earth in all my time there. If these demons ever got out, how would we stand a chance against them?
I was so… horrified by the display I had slowed down enough to get bumped into by a demon I didn’t recognize. They had been looking down at their feet, like they were supposed to, but they turned their head up at me and with a growl bared their teeth.
“Move, whelp!” the demon hissed. “Or do you…” they paused, as if something had caught their attention. The demon then leant in a little closer, their eyes widening, nostrils flaring.
My Light.
The demon can sense my resonance.
I was about to turn and run when Etari, the muscle-bound demon assigned to protect me, barged his way between us and shoved the other demon back a few paces. “You move,” barked Etari. “You’re holding up the fucking line.”
The other demon grumbled but, weighing up how much larger Etari was, accepted the command. Malachi came in beside me, turned me around, and urged me ahead.
“You need to keep walking,” said Malachi in a low voice, “and keep your eyes on the ground.”
“I’m sorry,” I hissed, “there’s just a lot going on.”
“I’m sure it’s all very upsetting, but pilgrims are meant to look at the ground the whole way to the temple. We can’t attract attention to ourselves.”
I nodded, then looked at my feet. “Right. I won’t do it again.”
It was easier said than done, of course. There was a lot going on around here. Too much, in fact. I wanted to see it all, not out of some kind of morbid curiosity, but for practical reasons. If there was an army down here getting ready to go to war on Earth—and I now knew that there was—then the more information I had about them, the better prepared we could be for when they arrived.
I was getting ahead of myself, naturally. I had to get out of here first, and that wasn’t a sure thing—not by a long shot. But we had made it through the city’s most populated parts, and soon we were filtering into a huge building in which every single footfall and brush seemed to echo for all of eternity.
It was disorienting and I was sure that was the intention. A quick glance up and around me revealed an absolutely massive, domed building lit entirely by green firelight. There were pews as far as the eye could see, columns that stretched all the way up into the darkest recesses of the ceiling, and murals carved into the stone walls that, supposedly, told the story of Lucifer and his rebellion.
But the details seemed a little off.
In the murals, Lucifer was depicted as a great towering beast, a gnarling, gnashing overlord who, with claw, fang, and sword, rent apart the armies of Heaven and plunged his sword deeply into God’s heart.
I saw angels being marched into the Pit, Lucifer crucified above it, but not the indifferent angel I had met—he was angry and trying to free himself from his restraints, promising to rain hellfire on Heaven, on Earth, and anyone else who dared get in his way.
They venerated him as some kind of war hero, as a paragon of violence. They portrayed him as a towering beast of claws and fangs and scales when really… he was just another angel in a robe, albeit with more wings. It made me laugh out loud.
I couldn’t help myself.
I had to stifle the chuckle that spilled out of my mouth, but by the time I did, the sound had reached the walls and bounced around the temple hall for all to hear. Malachi and Etari glared, though not directly at me. I was lucky there were hundreds of demons in here and no one could tell where exactly the sound had come from.
Still, the moment was tense. I had never stared at my feet so deliberately before.
When the moment passed, someone grabbed my arm, breaking me out of my silent panic. It was Missolis, and the touch of her hand on my arm made me jump. I stared at her, wide-eyed. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
She gestured with her head across my shoulder. “The door to the throne room,” she whispered.
