Hi, everyone! Sorry about yet another long gap, BUT huge week for me. I'm basically tech support for a bunch of folks who've never gone remote before, so lots and lots and lots of work getting them all settled. Also a big remote b'day party for my hubby one night, a writer's group get together on another night. Anyhoo. I have almost the next week dedicated to writing. I'm hoping I'll be able to wrap up the story and post more frequently. :)
As always, thanks for reading. Thanks for the comments and reviews you've left. I always welcome more ;) Take care of yourselves!
Btw, if you are a healthcare worker of any kind, or anyone still working in an essential capacity - thank you. Stay well.
Mazikeen woke to a cacophony.
The screams of a multitude, the mutterings and whimperings of a overflowing realm. The incessant whispers of millions. A constant torrent of plaintive cries, every word as clear as crystal and laden with imagery of acts both banal and unspeakable, saturated in lust, rage, in wicked delight and crushing guilt.
Mazikeen screamed, clamping her hands over her ears, curling into herself in an attempt to escape the roaring in her head.
But it persisted, unabated.
She screamed again, her eyes opening wide to take in the space about her, to understand what was happening - could she kill them all to silence them?
But what she saw made no sense!
Smooth swirls of stone arched before her - overhead, around her, a grand chamber of some sort opened to the familiar ash-laden sky of Hell, obscured by branching weaved points of the same stone.
And Michael was standing there, his face wide with shock.
Where in Hell was this?!
How was she alive?!
"W-what," she started, before the cacophony rose again, drowning her in scenes and cries of desperation, depravity, and despair.
"STOP!" she roared, but knowing it would not, for there hadn't been any crowd about her to cause this!
It was inside of her, inescapable and absolute, and she knew, as it rose in volume and number again, that she would go insane with it - for where did she start and end in this mess? The thoughts, imagery and screams were slipping between her own - a serial killer stalking his prey, a woman poisoning her child, a gun fired in rage at a friend - weren't they her acts? Why were they in her head if they weren't? Why and when had she done these things?!
"NO!" she roared, rejecting it all, shuddering on the seat of stone as the realities pressed even closer in.
Movement came with a flash of white to her right - a threat?!
Michael!
Mazikeen's eyes snapped to him and branching spears of stone slammed down about the angel like a cage.
Grasping at the weaved stone of his prison, he stared at her wide eyed, his mouth pulling back in a strange grin.
How is this possible?! he called. The soulless Lilim cannot claim the throne! How are you doing this?
"SHUT UP!" she screamed at him. As if in answer, as if to block the angel from view, the stone weaved more tightly about him. "Everything is in my head! IT WON'T STOP!"
And she screamed again, tearing her nails down the skin of her scalp, overwhelmed by the multitude once more.
Let me out and I will help!
The voice was an agony on top of the cacophony - with a wail she folded in on herself, her arms wrapped around her entire head, her nails now cutting deep into the skin of her palms.
"Stop YELLING!" she roared, watching rapid fire scenes of war, murder, assault, torture - and while she was no stranger to anything she was seeing - some small part of her taking notes on the torture particularly - everything was saturated in the emotions of perpetrator and victim, ramped to the extreme.
She did not know how to cope.
Mazikeen had dabbled in emotions, she'd weathered unfamiliar highs and lows, and they'd been devastating to someone so new to them.
But this was everything. EVERYTHING ever felt and it was taking her over and she couldn't-
"You are Hell's ruler now, Lilim! A conduit!" Michael said, his voice reaching her somehow, shifted to her race's speech. "You hear the prayers of the damned! You are the warden of every soul here - their sins, their punishments are opening to you!"
She roared at him, her eyes wide with rage.
The stone weaved tighter about the angel. She smelled his fear upon the air - a welcome distraction that lasted only a second.
"STOP THEM! MAKE THEM SHUT UP!" she screeched, ramming her head back against her stone seat.
But it finally reached her, what the angel was saying.
Hell's ruler?
"WHAT?!"
Was this the throne?! Why did it look like this?
A man ran over another man with a car in her head, laughing, as a child threw a kitten into a pen of wild dogs - she sucked in a breath and started screaming again.
"Release me and I will help you," Michael's voice came faintly from the dense stone cage.
"I don't know HOW!" she snarled, gritting her teeth until they felt they would crack.
"Will it, demon. The realm is yours - it responds to you. Will it!"
"Lilim can't rule Hell!" she yelled back, grasping the only thing that made sense in all of this. "You're doing this to me!"
The stone cage shook with a sound like thunder. Small cracks appeared with another impact, and finally it exploded as Michael struck it a final time, showering the chamber with branches of stone that simply melted back into the floor.
"I am NOT doing this to you!" he yelled, storming at her. "YOU are doi-"
Something shot forward - a sweeping arch moving as if liquid - and Michael was slammed sideways onto a wall where branches weaved swiftly over him, locking him in place.
Shuddering, assailed by thoughts and feelings and scenes she did not understand and did not want, Mazikeen began to laugh.
She was sliding under the lip of sanity - she could feel it.
"I don't LIKE YOU," she growled at him, and watched with satisfaction as the tines weaved closer, their points turning inward, pressing against his skin.
CLEARLY he grunted, struggling to break off what he could as they pressed closer still.
And blood began to flow.
Could you perhaps not like me a little less? he asked, his blue eyes widening as the lattice grew denser.
Mazikeen blinked.
It was true.
Everything he'd said was true.
Hell was responding to what she wished.
"But why won't it shut up?!" she cried, ramming her fists into her eye sockets.
Would she still see what they'd done if she didn't have eyes? What if she tore off her ears?
"Yelling at the air will certainly help," Michael snapped from his prison. "Listen to me - it is like pain - you must put it somewhere, behind a wall, in a container in your mind. Lock it away, feel it when you are ready." He sighed, resting his head against the stone. "I have heard the prayers of the faithful my entire existence; they've only increased with the passage of time. I deal with it by doing this. If you do not, you will go mad."
Mazikeen growled, grasping the arms of the throne in shaking hands, the knuckles white.
"I don't contain pain!" she spat, offended by the very concept. "I don't hide from it - that is something the weak do!"
Michael glared at her through his stone prison. "I am NOT weak!"
"You are," she purred, piercing his skin further. Was it her imagination, or could she taste his blood? Was the stone drinking it? Someone in this Hell had drunk another's blood and died from the diseases it carried.
That was funny. She laughed, and the sounds mingled beautifully with the screams tearing through her mind.
The angel was shouting at her, the sound almost lost in the cries of the suffering.
"Demon! You fight beyond what most could endure - what do you do with the pain, then, how do you keep fighting?!"
Sucking in a breath, Mazikeen pressed back against the throne.
She was losing herself to madness! She was stronger than this!
And she answered the angel's question, anchoring herself with each word.
"I embrace pain!" she screamed, shuddering, her gaze fixed on the swirling portal far above. "I devour it and it feeds who I am!"
Michael's answer was desperate, "Then embrace Hell, demon! Devour the screams and the prayers of the damned! Do that insane thing, and show me how strong you truly are!"
Mazikeen roared at him, feeling a rage and fear unlike any she'd ever felt.
But she did it.
She opened her mind further to the soul stream of Hell's throne - she welcomed it all, took every nuance of evil and guilt and suffering into herself, accepted every scene of their sins and every prayer of those imploring the ruler of Hell for deliverance, for power, for lust, for wealth. She screamed through it all, at them all, for them all, she wept and laughed and came. She circled through a darkness that turned her new soul to tar, then sloughed it from herself, releasing it to fuel the growth of the land about her. She slid into insanity, but used it to twist the land into more creative shapes, before clawing her way back to herself again. She cried, mourning the lives damaged, the lives lost, for every single victim of her charges, and she cried for the damned themselves...
...for she'd delved deep and uncovered the wounds that had shaped them so, and she'd seen in herself the same wounds.
And that's what saved her in the end.
An unexpected love.
She brought everything they had into herself, their darkest hate and pain and the horror of their actions, she devoured it all and gave them her love.
They were her wayward, suffering children now, every single one.
And she loved them all.
The screaming that had surrounded her, filled her, and come from her, grew soft - lowering to the murmurs of the reverent in church.
She relaxed against her throne, feeling its warm, welcoming embrace.
Her breaths grew gentle and deep.
God in Heaven
Michael's voice simmered against her senses. Mingling with the undercurrent of the faithful damned.
You have done it...
Mazikeen opened her eyes slowly. The tears she'd shed still clung to her lashes. To her skin. She drew a finger over them and licked the salt from her fingertips.
She smiled.
She released the angel, letting him fall to his knees before her.
Crossing her slender legs, she fixed him with a gaze she knew held the embers of a great flame.
"You asked my name before," she purred. "I think I'm finally in the mood to share it."
And she basked in the cries of her children as she spoke.
"You may call me Mazikeen, Queen of Hell."
