A/N: Yeah, another new story. I figured I might as well post some of the stories I've been working on to show I'm still alive and well. Writer's block is definitely an annoying thing. My only saving grace is that I can usually muster up the inspiration for other ideas in the meantime. No guarantee on when I'll update these snippets or where I'll take them. Who knows, in the end, I write because I like to write and share my ideas.
Feel free to review, take an idea another direction (but no plagiarism, please), and I'll do my best by any story I post here.
Thanks for listening to me ramble.
Long, long ago, the worlds of Assiah and Gehenna coexisted in relative peace. Demons would travel to the material world occasionally, but for the most part, humans stayed ignorant of their dark visitors.
For the most part, except for the few who interacted with the strange spirits and gained insight.
What is known today as a masho – a wound inflicted by the denizens of the other world 0 opened the soul to the previously seen as if a veil was suddenly stripped off.
And not only seen but heard.
Their lesser kin told the humans stories. They spoke of greater beings of power, masters of their home world.
The eight sub-kings and the ruler of Gehenna.
These nine great beings back then did not interfere with the material world beyond Gehenna restricting themselves to watching from afar, incapable of manifestation unlike their weaker vassals who could take on a physical (if borrowed) form there.
But as more and more humans passed on their kin's stories of the nine rulers, their words began to give them shape.
Until one day, the forbidding spirits took an actual shape in Assiah.
Sight. Sound. Touch. Smell. Taste.
Their new bodies opened a new realm of possibilities and reasons to visit Assiah in more than spirit.
It was luxurious. It was decadent.
It was a temptation pulling every one of the eight sub-kings into the material world from their very first day of not merely observing but experiencing.
It was the moment of their fall.
Assiah and Gehenna were not meant to be so closely tied. They whose very essences embodied the darker spirit realm could not last.
After a bit, a timer began to tick away; a race between regenerative capabilities and the corrosion eating away their new bodies.
One could liken it to a defense mechanism, as if Assiah's immune system slowly recognized the Ba'al as a dangerous foreign body and mercilessly attacked them if slowly.
Bodies eroded, starting with the greatest of them: the oldest of the Ba'al, Lucifer King of Light.
They would then vanish back into their original state in Gehenna; for the most part, the kings would try to return, taking over a new body from Assiah with a thirst for physicality plain.
Over time, the bodies of the kings would erode sooner and sooner, pain and agony searing into memory as the kings decayed even as they walked the world of Assiah.
To continue the analogy, the world's immune system got better at identifying then eliminating the foreign entities it rejected in its entirety.
Turning the clock forward, the King of Light's possessed bodies don't even last ten years in the present day.
How that galled these ancient beings, gods among mortals and spirits.
Humans paid the price for the kings' frustrations.
Why should they, a people so fragile and weak, have the privilege of a physical body?
Thus, a vicious cycle emerged.
Slaughter, disease, war, and unnatural disasters swept through Assiah as the Ba'al convinced one another to lay siege against humanity, their kin following along.
Mischief turned to mayhem.
Some of their kin never forgot the uncensored heights their lusts reached in those bygones days and eagerly continue even as some of the kings withdrew.
Lines were drawn. Some demon kings saw how humanity, their bane and blessing as both the envied and mocking and the only way they can experience the world of Assiah consciously, would disappear if the Ba'al continued their rampages.
Over 2000 thousand years ago, these enlightened kings gave humans the means to fight back.
The True Cross Order was born.
One of those kings to guide the first generations of exorcists was the King of Spirits and Air, Azazel.
He, along with the two members of the Sol Shemihaza and Armumahel, chose not to seek new bodies, allowing their first incarnations to return to nature and the world that created them.
The King of Spirits returned to Gehenna. Tired greatly from extending his existence on Assiah for so long, far, far beyond physical and spiritual limits, he slept, soul drifting within the dream plane, one of the few access ways between the worlds aside from Gehenna Gate.
Seldom used since only spirits travel their ways to observe, never to manifest according to the restrictions.
Of all the eight kings, Azazel was considered the only truly passive one, capable of genuine kindness unlike his much more violent and selfish brothers.
Human in the ways they did not, could not, understand. Azazel would admit the management of his domain played largely into his strangeness, specifically the care he took to certain kin including ghosts, demons born of humans and emotions.
He tended to his them as dutifully as the others, human origins and all. So, as a consequence he learned to understand humans, too, better than most of his brothers.
Even Samael admitted his older brother knew more of humans than himself.
Time passed.
His soul twisted closer to waking, disturbed.
The thoughts and emotions of the lesser and greater demons flooded his resting place.
They whispered.
Something unspeakable happened. Their god of Gehenna, the highest king of demons Satan left their world for a time.
Satan has incarnated onto Assiah for the first time in eons.
His kin, other minor demons, and even his own brothers reported the Ego as something truly unnatural.
Insane, the braver ones thought in the darkest part of their minds.
It should not have happened, never should have been a possibility for a proper vessel to support their sire who wholly embodied their world in the ways the eight kings did not.
He would tear into Assiah even as the world struck back.
It was no natural occurrence or process, a feat possible due to his brothers' scheming and overt interference in the material world most likely.
Either way, the true king of Gehenna would never be the same again.
Like them, the concept that was Satan evolved into something else: the Ego who craved Assiah like human stories said.
Long ago, the King of Spirits fell asleep in Gehenna.
Only to awake to a voices unfamiliar in the world of Assiah.