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“I don’t think so. I think there’s part of you that regrets the things you did, the way you turned on Her. On us. You never wanted to be thrown in here. You never wanted to hurt anyone, not really.”
“What are you, my therapist?” Lucifer hissed. “I told you to save it.”
“Look at them… angels, demons, they were made in your image. They all looked up to you, and you let them all down. But you have a chance to make it right. Here. Now.”
“It’s too late for me, just like it’s too late for all of you. When I get out of here, I’ll show all of you what happens when you cross me.”
Missolis took a step toward the edge of the Pit, to stand out from the other angels and demons assembled in the cavern. “For the longest time,” she said, “I hated you and everyone who followed you. I thought you were a liar, a traitor—gutless and craven.”
“Anything else you want to add to that colorful list?” asked Lucifer.
She shook her head. “I was wrong,” she said. “You’re damaged, just like the rest of us. I should’ve seen it, maybe we all should have. But I see it now.”
Lucifer rolled his eyes. “Congratulations,” he said, sarcasm lacing his voice, “you can make an observation. What else can you do with only one working eye?”
Missolis took a deep breath. “You set us all on this path. You were responsible for the creation of this Pit, and for the Hell into which we were all thrown. The Hell we have endured all this time. But here, standing amidst my closest allies—and my new allies—I want you to know,” she paused. “I forgive you.”
“You can keep your forgiveness,” said Lucifer. “I don’t want it.”
The demon Etari came up beside Missolis. “I forgive you,” he said, in his gruff, deep voice.
From behind him, supported by two other demons, came Malachi. He glanced over at me, then looked up at Lucifer. “I forgive you,” said Malachi.
One by one, the demons gathered around Lucifer stepped up to offer him their forgiveness. I wasn’t sure what he hated more, being chained up, or this. It wasn’t long until an angel stepped forward and joined the demons to pardon Lucifer for all the wrongs he had committed. Then, others joined.
Lucifer didn’t seem to know where to look, or even what to say anymore. He’d had a lot to say at first, but now he was just watching the crowd as it gave him… well, not exactly what he wanted, but hopefully what he needed.
When Lucifer had told me about the threat he felt from other deities and their minions… that was when I knew, he was scared. He had been cast out, thrown into the cold, and left there to endure an eternity of suffering. Cut off, alone, abandoned by the only family he could ever know.
He felt like he had no one. No one to protect him, no one to care for him; no one to remember him after he was gone. For the first time since he was created, Lucifer had been brought face to face with mortality, and he had been terrified of it.
Lucifer was the first of us to fall, the first of us to endure God’s wrath, but he wasn’t the last. God developed a taste for dishing out vengeance, and I couldn’t blame Her. Vengeance was like a drug. An addiction. But God wasn’t like every other creature to have ever existed. She was omnipotent, omnipresent, and all-knowing. I had to believe it was all for something. That there was meaning to all of this.
And maybe the meaning was this.
That angels would rally around the first of their kind, the first of an imperfect species, the one who suffered the brunt of God’s displeasure… and find a common thread none of them had ever considered was there.
Not that we were angels of Light, or that we were noble, and good, and that to behave in any other way marked us as other at best, or as demon at worst. We were supposed to realize that we were in fact all flawed, imperfect beings who would one day have to rely on each other to survive in a world that wasn’t built for them.
Because one day She would be gone, we would all fall, and we would only have each other.
I didn’t have all the answers, and it would’ve been nice to have been told all of this beforehand. It would also have been good for someone to tell us that sinning against God’s commandments and rules turned us into eternally hungry, mindless monsters driven by an insatiable desire to consume the Light of other angels.
But God wasn’t terribly good at communicating Her intentions with others.
I stepped up beside Micah and the others and looked up at the first angel. He looked directly at me, silently staring, waiting to hear what I had to say because that was all he could do.
“I’m a Lightbringer,” I said. “I’m closer to you than most, and… I feel like that gives me an insight only I can have. I feel your pain, Lucifer. You were thrown out of your own home by a creator who was distant, vengeful, and maybe even cruel. Then She made us, and we turned out to be just as broken as you were, so She made all these rules for us to follow. But it didn’t work.”
Lucifer scoffed. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
I paused. “She died of grief.”
Lucifer stared me down. “How do you figure?”
“She wanted us to be perfect. We weren’t. We were meant to guide humanity, to lead them towards good—towards science, and kindness, and love. Instead, we warred amongst each other; angel against angel, eternally locked in the struggle over the soul of humanity that infected our entire species, divided it, made it rot from the inside. We fought because we all thought we knew better than each other. She couldn’t take it anymore.”
“Is that meant to make me feel bad?”
