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I couldn’t do that if I was withering away at the bottom of the Pit. Damnation be damned, I was going to get the hell out of this place and fulfill my promises.
“Almost there!” came the voice, much louder and clearer. I hadn’t expected them to stick around, but the fact that they did meant perhaps the wall wasn’t as thick as I had originally feared. The thought spurred me on, giving me a second wind, and I continued to dig for what felt like hours.
I was bleeding, cut up, and hurt. The pain I was in… I couldn’t even have begun to describe. It wasn’t just my hands anymore, but my knees, my shoulders, even my wings. There wasn’t a part of me that wasn’t receiving cuts as I bore my way through the wall of the Pit.
But I couldn’t use my Light. Not yet.
Not yet.
Just a little more, Sarakiel.
Those were the words I told myself, the small comfort I had in this dank, dark place. My one last flame of hope. Then it happened. My hand went right through the wall. I almost collapsed right into the wall, and I would have toppled over if I had not been grabbed from the other side and pulled straight through the wall.
I shut my eyes as I pierced what was left of the thin rock, grinning and bearing the biting wounds I took on the way out. I hadn’t just been grabbed and pulled, I had been thrown easily ten feet across a hard, stone floor only to land on my shoulder and go tumbling wing over arm.
I came to a stop on my side, gasping for air that—I had hoped—would be easy to breathe. It wasn’t. There was still ash in this hot air, even if there was less of it. Opening my eyes, I couldn’t make sense of where I was. My vision was blurry, and bright, glowing light smeared itself across what little I could see.
Green light.
It was difficult to make out shapes, but I thought I could see mountains, or hills.
I heard heavy footfalls approach. Instinct pushed my body to move, to roll onto my front so I could pick myself up. My arms were heavy and sluggish, I could barely breathe, and I couldn’t see very well—but I could hear.
“Look at that,” came a deep, baritone voice. “Finally, another one made it out of the Pit.”
A second voice; nasal, and high-pitched. “Been a while since the last one. Looks different though…”
Then a third voice that sounded like the crunching of iron. “Yeah, it’s wearing armor,” it said, “They ain’t supposed to be wearin’ armor—what if it’s part of an army or something?”
They were little more than dark, humanoid shapes to my blurry eyes. Three of them; two keeping their distance, and one of them approaching. All I could make out was the light from the eyes of the one walking up to me; orange and fiery, the same light that shone out of his throat when he spoke. I knew full well where I was, and whose company I was in.
I heard the ring of metal, then felt the tip of a blade touch the soft underside of my jaw.
“Not an army,” said the demon with the knife to my throat—the first one to speak, the one who had pulled me out of the Pit. “But maybe something much, much more interesting.”
CHAPTER THREE
The demons surrounding me cackled.
I was still weak from my escape from the Pit, bleeding, injured—and now I was being harassed by demons to boot. Of course, it was demons. Who else would’ve been calling out to me from the other side of that wall?
Who else was I going to encounter down here but the foul creatures that called this broken, prison dimension home?
“Look at it,” came the one with the voice like twisting iron. “It’s tryin’ to get up. We should break its wings so it can’t fly away.”
“Now, now, Gharol,” said the closest demon to me—the one with the deep voice and the eyes of fire. “Let us not be inhospitable to our newest guest. We have not had one for a while, after all.”
I had pulled away from the demon’s knife, but I could still see it in his hand, the gleam of its eyes and mouth reflected on the blade.
“Stay away from me,” I croaked.
The demon with the high-pitched, nasally voice cackled. “Is it trying to threaten us?”
The first demon angled his head to the side, and though my eyes were still unfocused, I thought I could see the makings of a crown on his head. “What is your name… angel?”
Despite the smoothness of his tone, he struggled through the word angel. Had I not been able to see him at all—and had I not known what he was—the unsettling way in which his voice had faltered just then would have given him away for what he really was.
“I won’t tell you again,” I warned, “Don’t come any closer.”
