UPDATE: Hey! Been a little busy, but planning on having a new chapter up tomorrow. :)
Hi! I posted two chapters tonight, to make up for the big gap. lease make sure you read the chapter before this one (Chapter 32: Burnt In Anyway) if you haven't already.
Btw, the events of this chapter happen concurrently with some older chapters. Time works a little differently where we're headed now ;)
If you're enjoying the story, I hope you'll let me know with a comment or review. :) Thanks for reading!
Hell was burning.
As per usual.
And as per usual, Michael was bored.
But he'd tried to do the right thing, as his older brother had suggested - acting as a good king of Hell should.
He'd taken a personal interest in the punishment of every single soul that landed in his realm, and amplified their punishment, until the air was filled with the screams of his charges, reaching even to the upmost spire of his throne.
He hoped that was a good start.
Another improvement had been battles in a newly-constructed arena, where semi-willing Lilim and some of the more robust souls were dragged into a fray. He enjoyed these battles immensely, often swinging down from his lofty chair to join in during the more pregnant pauses in action. Astounding all with his prowess at dispatching every single participant within at speed.
And a smile.
He couldn't truly kill the souls of course, they were already dead, but the extra suffering simply reinforced that they were here to be punished.
And that seemed to be a good thing.
A battle was playing out now, as he stared out over his realm, watching the demons below torturing and executing a few of the more fascinating residents. The acts were repeated ad nauseum, and he was starting to suspect the demons were crafting a kind of music out of the cries and moans of their charges.
He tapped his slender fingers against the newly rebuilt armor over his thigh and nodded to himself, his impeccable blonde hair bobbing briefly.
There was a definite tempo of sorts, building. Some rudimentary attempts at a key. He tried singing along, his perfect lips shaping the crystalline tones he sang of no meaning, but the occasional wail or screech in an inappropriate flat or sharp spoiled the effect.
With a sigh, he sank back against the throne and stared at the portal above.
It had been fascinating, briefly, to see Samael again. To see him so new, so filled with the vigor of righteousness. Michael had quickly realized his brother did not know him, which stalled his intended attack, leaving him somewhat speechless as he was shown a wayward Lilim and asked where to place her.
In hindsight, it would have been a great opportunity to shed this seat - to convince his newly naïve brother that Hell was worth his ruling.
But again, he'd been too stunned to do much but point to the arena.
Where the roars of the crowd were growing even stronger.
What was going on down there?
Steepling his fingers against his lips he glanced down, expecting to see the Lilim female Samael had brought lying in some state of dismemberment or death.
He raised an eyebrow the slightest amount.
The female still lived, surrounded by a large number of motionless, limbless, headless, and most certainly lifeless, assailants.
The eyebrow rose further.
Michael turned his full attention to her, leaning on the arm of the carved throne, his chin propped on his hands, to watch as a horde of souls were released from the gates at the far end of the arena.
The horde rushed her, roaring in a desperate kind of bloodlust. They'd been told that defeating their enemy would win them freedom from Hell. A complete lie, but a necessary one. Most of the souls just cried, cowered, and begged for their illusionary lives without that powerful motivation.
The woman, half her face carrying old scars, her body marred by far fewer wounds than seemed logical, snatched a curved blade from a nearby corpse, matching it with the sword she'd wielded so far, and held both forward in pointed welcome.
The smallest of smiles tugged at the corner of Michael's beautiful mouth.
And he watched, in growing interest, as the Lilim female decimated every single soul that came near.
Without truly intending to, without negotiating the nature of his intention at all, Michael left the throne, his white wings catching the ever-present thermals as he lowered toward the arena.
He took his time. He watched another wave swarm the woman, this time Lilim much more heavily armored and armed.
She took two wounds for their efforts - one to her arm, one to her thigh. Neither deep.
And she laughed with a scissoring sweep of her blades as she decapitated the last of her attackers.
She was still laughing, the sound rising above the sudden silence of the crowd, when he descended behind her, stepping softly to the blood-soaked ground with plated boots.
Silently he stood, his great wings arched majestically, awaiting the moment of her turning and recognition. The fear and obeisance that would surely follow.
The woman rolled her shoulders with a satisfied sigh, stretching her head from side to side.
"Mmmm," she murmured, a deeply content sound, before she finally turned to face him.
Then crossing her arms, blades still in hand, she smirked, the skin pulling oddly from the scarred side of her face.
"What," she said flatly.
In English.
Michael stared at her in disbelief. His wings drooped somewhat, an embarrassing tell he would remember later.
Your King stands before you, and that is all you say?! he finally sputtered. 'WHAT?!'
The power of his voice stirred the ash and sand of the arena floor, washing over the demon in a cloud.
It settled, revealing a slightly dustier demon, somehow even less impressed than she had been before.
"You're not my King, asshole," she snapped. "My King dumped me here after acting like he didn't know me." The woman pointed her blade at his face. "What'd you do to Lucifer?!"
Michael stiffened. His eyes grew alarmingly wide. His hands clenched into fists.
When he spoke his voice was as low and dangerous as one could speak in the celestial tongue.
Address me properly, in the language of your kind, or I will kill you where you stand
"Tell me what you did to Lucifer," she shouted back in English, her head cocked sharply to the side, punctuating the words with her blade, "or I'll kill you where you stand!"
Michael stared at her.
He'd never met a single demon who did not cower before him or comply without question.
Not a one.
He found himself in a rather odd state.
Complete speechlessness.
The woman waited for him to act, adopting a stance of readiness.
Michael simply studied her in fascination.
After a while, whispers rose from the crowd around them.
She straightened slowly.
"Speak or fight," she snapped, flicking one of her knives at his chest in a careless gesture. The blade skittered off the gleaming metal of his armor, thudding into the ground harmlessly. "You're boring me."
Michael found a strange smile on his face.
This was something new.
How delightful.
Why not both? he said, adopting his own stance, his eyes bright with expectation.
When the cloud of ash settled again, she rolled her eyes.
"Whatever."
And in a movement lost within the space of a breath, the woman struck, delivering a kick to his head that would have killed an ordinary man.
Michael blocked it, and held her leg for a moment, noting the steel-toed boots.
Human in design.
Uncomfortably so.
I did nothing to Lucifer he said, looking back at her with a smirk.
The demon twisted, freeing herself, and swung in with another kick - one that caught him in the side, unbalancing him momentarily.
"You lie," she growled, pointing at him again. "You've done something to him. Or someone in his family has. He didn't KNOW me! Why didn't he know me?!"
The energy of her rage carried over into three deadly strikes to his head - he blocked them all, noting their impressive strength and accuracy. Smiling, he returned a punch, seeking to crush her chest.
She merely flexed backwards, out of his reach, then swung back with a strike to his throat.
Which he blocked.
His smile grew.
Excellent. Who taught you to fight?
She glared at him, twisting to free her hand before stepping back for better footing.
"I did," she spat. "Who taught you?"
His grin grew somewhat feral.
I did
She gave him the slightest arch of an eyebrow before launching into an attack of such speed and ferocity he began to sweat twisting and parrying her blows, landing frustratingly few hits of his own.
You have fought three of my brothers, he said appreciatively, attempting to knock her off her feet. I see their styles in your attacks
"I don't care," she snapped, jumping free of his attempt and lashing out with a high kick.
Uriel... before he was destroyed, he continued, blocking the kick but grunting as she landed a solid blow to his side again. Amenadiel too, before he fell. You were... quite intimate with him, were you not?
"Shut up," she growled, blocking another of his attacks and following through with a strike to his jaw.
Dodging it, he moved to change the tide of the battle with a different kind of weapon.
And Samael, before he was remade
The opening came, as he knew it would, when the demon's eyes widened in shock.
"What?!"
And he landed the first satisfying punch of the fight, sending her stumbling back over the bodies of the defeated.
He advanced, smiling warmly, as she finally got to her feet.
"What do you mean remade?!"
Michael blocked her half-hearted attempt at a blow to his face, and kicked her in the chest, sending her flying and breaking quite a few ribs.
Finally, he was getting somewhere!
The demon coughed blood as she stood to her feet - a promising sign - and looked so incredibly lost he felt the generous urge to explain his meaning as he closed the distance between them.
"The Samael who returned you is new," he said in Lilim, just to drive the point home. "I believe Father remade him. This Samael carries no taint, no trace of the old Samael at all."
"No," the demon whispered, her eyes wounded. "That's not true."
"It is. Much like the old Samael, I do not lie. I cannot speak for the new Samael though," he grinned, knowing the effect it would likely have, "perhaps he does?"
He was not disappointed.
With a raw roar of rage and something close to despair, the woman lashed out at him, with strikes to his throat, face, and vicious kicks to his chin and chest. The furor of the melee made his heart swell in joy, and he joined her again in a battle that shook the walls of the arena around them.
He marveled at her throughout, and swiftly added to her wounds, breaking her wrist and shattering her cheekbone.
But she refused to fall.
And at some wild point, when they'd wielded every form of weapon strewn upon the field and fallen back to the raw purity of unarmed combat, after he'd shed his dented, cleaved and shattered armor and taken more blows than he could count, he realized something that made no sense at all.
He was losing.
The end came very swiftly after the revelation, for it was his turn to be lost, dulling his strikes and neutering his defenses. As the blows rained down upon his head and torso, he stared up at this demon with eyes wide with wonder, and saw what else she held in eyes flared in desperate rage.
Grief.
The woman had been crying throughout their entire fight.
It pulled from him words he had never spoken before, as she looked ready to rip open his throat with a clawed hand.
I am sorry
He said this between labored breaths, from lips split and bleeding. The effect was immediate. The demon froze, long enough for the hand raised for his throat to fall.
And with another desperate roar, the Lilim swung her head forward, cracking the full weight of her skull against his own.
