Promises and Lies
12: Woundikins
Rating: PG-13
His return to power was not without its difficulties. It seemed as though, in the vast eons and mere second he was gone, those who should have been loyal, those who clawed their way into his hierarchy and fought tooth and nail against his enemies, had forgotten him. It was easier for them to think only of themselves, not of their lord, their master in all things.
Those loyal to him had risked much to release him: His dear Azazel, who fought beside him against Heaven and their former brothers, who descended into the Pit with him without regrets. His lovely Lilith, the first of the humans he twisted into something more.
He did not mourn, for he knew not how. Instead he gathered the dust of their spirits to him, and the others who had served them well, and breathed the chaos of existence back into them. His enemies had long since lost the ability to create life and, therefore, it had become his domain.
He, backed by those that had been gone, bellowed into Hell for there to be darkness and the fires of Hell extinguished.
In the deepest black the denizens of his kingdom crawled to him. They exulted, they cowered, they obeyed. He swept through their most hidden thoughts and yearnings, snuffing out those demons he found unsatisfying as surely as he had the flames.
The energy of Hell fed him, strengthened him. He no longer suffered from the weakness of his prison, was capable of more than simple threads of influence and corruption. He released into the worlds his will and felt it echoing back through violence, through destruction, as the humans took him into themselves.
As the last of his legions flitted by, Lilith and Azazel came to him, lesser demons scurrying behind, awed by the greatness they witnessed. The two bowed and he smiled, Hell and Earth both quaking with his pleasure.
"My Lord," she murmured in one of the old tongues, in the first language gifted to humans. "You are among us and our Enemy is without a leader. You can have your revenge, you can have everything."
"Father," Azazel hissed in a language older even than they, which only angelic tongues could carry. "Our Enemy is fractured and weakened. You can take your proper place, you can have everything."
"Everything," he decided. And the hellfires blazed high once more, ignited by his pleasure. "I shall have it all, my children, and we shall know joy once more."