Vogitek store next to the food court, Persephone Hills Shopping Center, Caligula Boulevard, 18:30. That's what we were told. That's what we prepared for. That's not what happened. It wasn't a bomb that went off. It wasn't a blast that could be categorized by any humane scale of destruction or mayhem. It wasn't anything that could fall into the reasonable scope of imagination. It was genocide. Butchery. The bombs erupted at the time we were given beginning, sickly, exactly in the shopping center. Then the neighboring corner store, then the apartment complex across the street and one after the other, like dominoes, the blasts rippled throughout neighborhood after neighborhood, street by street for 30 uninterrupted minutes. The boroughs proud, haughty infrastructure was reduced to nothing, like using tissue paper to protect against a landmine. Clauneck Row was erased, Plutus Heights and most of Hermes Plaza fell shortly after. The tall spires of the biggest banks in Hell were like the heel of some colossal, uncaring giant as they fell across the borough, crushing Marketside and Tycheville before the first hour. Then the fires spread. The fire, it was the fire that wormed its way where the bombs couldn't get, it was the fire that cornered people, trapped them, gnawed them away into charred bone without so much as a single gram of pressure being applied. It was the fire that killed Persephone Hills.

We could still hear the city dying within the impenetrable walls of House Goetia. It was like a howling wind, how the impossible cacophony of tears and shouts and sirens melded together to form one singular acoustic battering ram that pounded at the marbled granite and stone of the palace's walls. Bram had contacted us soon after most of Clauneck Row had collapsed. We were at Ornthir's apartment when he got the call. Zora and Isaac went to their actual home down in Wrath while Elias and I stayed behind. It was a quick conversation begetting a calm and swift exit out into the dust filled streets. We were even escorted by Bram's own personal chauffeur, a succubus who, as I found out later, lost her family when The Mammon Union Bank Building collapsed on Tycheville. She was the only survivor, herself still dressed in a thick coat of ash and soot, blood and dust. Her empty eyes never left the road, her hands locked tight around the leather of the wheel. When we left her in the horseshoe driveway to climb the palace steps, I thought I could hear her weeping.

Bram was busy in his study, conferring with the Lords of Hell and the other Goetic Kings through his scrying mirror as the city rotted with flame. I knew Clauneck was present, a honeysuckle voice like that was impossible to forget. Even with the destruction of Hell's entire financial system, most of their muffled voices never surged above a conversational, if jaded, tone. Ornthir and I had to wait outside of his study. There were never places we could sit in the palace, not because there was a scarcity of chairs, but because we weren't permitted to idle in any other way. The burgundy dressed candlelit halls felt small, as if they were bowing in from the weight of those hoarse lamentations wailing from the carnage across the river. I couldn't look at Ornthir. My rage and disappoint in all of us, in me, in him, in the whole fucking guard; it was caustic, radioactive. I felt like I actively radiated hate, emanated anger and wrath and fear and horror that I was sure that the minute Bram saw us, he'd have us both hung over the burning embers of the city.

One seventh. One seventh of the city. 25 square miles of uninterrupted concrete and steel and brick, all in flames. All consumed. More than half a million people lived there, all in some way integral to the wide growth that was Hell's economy. I didn't know how Hell was going to recover after that. It felt like armageddon, that an end, a true end, had finally befallen the indomitable city.

"Elias!" came a pleading cry from down the hall. I didn't want to see him, fuck, I didn't want to see anyone at that time, but the rushed storming of his footsteps rained down toward us and before I could look up, I heard Stolas fall to his knees and slam into Ornthir, his childish fortitude clamping him around this chest.

"You're alive!" he wept, clutching onto him, "I was so worried that something had happened, and then father wouldn't say anything and-"

Even at 9 he was tall, around 6 feet. I could see that he was still wearing the necklace Isaac gave him in Charon Bay, the curved metal horse head twinkling in the candlelight. I felt concern shoot through me, I didn't want him getting in trouble with his father, but as I thought that, I saw Ornthir's hand creep up behind Stolas' neck and deftly unlatched the necklaces' hook.

"What did I say, kid?" he asked gently, "not in the palace."

Stolas looked confused for a moment before his hand went to his chest, his eyes welling again with tears,

"Hey," cooed Ornthir, "hey, it's okay kid, it's okay," he took Stolas' hand and tenderly opened it, placing the necklace square in his palm before closing it, "just keep it out of sight here, alright? It doesn't matter if it's on your neck or in your pocket, right? All that matters is that it's with you. Okay?"

Stolas nodded before Ornthir continued, his voice so calm that I too found myself feeling comforted, "And hey, when you come over, you can wear it as long as you'd like, alright? Isaac wouldn't want you to lose this."

Stolas didn't look surprised that we knew about his midnight escapes from the palace to meet Isaac. All of the maids and servants maintaining the palace were imps and most of the time a few of them helped him get to Ornthir's apartment, usually by car and always armed. The inner corners of Stolas' brows raised as his beak began to tremble. He looked into Ornthir's eyes, bright weeping red staring into dim yellow, and he hugged him again. Ornthir's body, that proud, stoic mass of impervious granite, began to tremble. He hugged back. Tight.

"It's alright, kid" he said, "I'm not going anywhere."

The dense creaking of Bram's study door moaned open and the king stood in the doorway, expectant and proud. His dark gothic attire robbed him in a black and red satin veil, his cruel, unforgiving eyes the vibrant, burning shade of hate. He casted his gaze downward, his autocratic stare boring into us, into Stolas. Ornthir quickly took his arms off of him and went into a crisp salute, as did I. Stolas got up and glared at his father, dwarfed in his shadow.

"Father I-"

"Go to your mother, Stolas."

"Father-"

"Now."

His voice was that of Jericho. It was not powerful in volume or depth, but in its sheer unfathomable density. When he spoke, when he really spoke, you could feel your bones splinter, could feel the very foundation of your soul quake and shatter. It was as if his words were inescapable singularities that, like the whirling typhoons of The Scylla, would crush your entire being. There wasn't a single imp, a single hellborn denizen that could deny him, that could bite back at the strong and dominant hand that he would extend. He was our king. He was the person in which we would light entire kingdoms ablaze just to watch dance in his eyes the undulating flames of those ashen empires. He was undeniable. But not to Stolas. Even within his astronomical shadow, he sent defiant asteroids screaming up to him, whole entire planets of sedition and rebellion, galaxies of resentment all in that one unbroken glare that burned hotter than a supernova…hotter than the flames that raged outside.

Bram didn't move, didn't budge, not a single muscle moved out of turn in his tall, oppressive body, not even a single dark grey feather twitched from the burnt city wind rolling in from behind him. All he did was turn his gaze to Ornthir, who instantly made his way into Bram's office. I stayed behind. I don't remember what stayed my hooves, what cemented me firmly to the ground. Even today I couldn't rightly say why I didn't move. But I didn't, and as I stood sentinel from their imposing personage, I felt the closest to death. It wasn't cold nor was it warm as I came to expect it to be. It was a vacuum, a silent and airless vacuum.

"Stolas Goetia!" came a voice from down the hallway. It was The Queen, Violeta.

"Mother I-"

"You were to stay in your room, were you not?" she said. She was shorter than Bram, but made up for it by the resolute way she carried herself. The only thing delicate on her was her gown, it being dyed a faint purple with white accents. Her gentle features were rigid with an intended authority, like a lioness disciplining her cub.

"People are dying," shot back Stolas, "do you not get that!?"

"Do not yell at your mother, boy."

"Do not call him boy!"

"Why aren't we helping them!?"

It was almost a scream, almost a shout. The tall gilded picture frame of a nearby portrait of Bram's grandfather ossified into stone, its new encumbering weight sending it thundering to the ground as it cut deep scarring gouges into the wooden wall. The floor buckled slightly, crunching at the impact, causing a few splinters to leap forth through the torn carpet and splash against Bram's cloaked shoulder. The air froze over. A faint trailing wisp of scarlet rolled out from Stolas' eyes like the sharp peaks of a bonfire. I saw Ornthir behind Bram, his face as rigid as the stone slab that idled indifferently between us. He seemed to be at an uncomfortable ease, as if a routine but sore topic was broached. Stolas' breath was almost trembling, his hands clenched into fists. Violeta looked shocked, though her composure held fast. Her hands were distant, unsure of whether to comfort or reprimand. I saw his parents' eyes go to the stone, to him, and then finally to each other. That small space we all inhabited felt as if it were full of an ominous foreboding. After a few fragile seconds, Ornthir crept back into the recesses of the study. I saw Violeta look at Stolas with a longing pain, as if he were a transparent phantom she had unuttered words she wished she had shared with him.

"Stolas.." she began, her hand reaching for him.

"Not now," Bram said.

"Then when?" she bit back.

"Not. Now."

Stolas' fire lingered, seeping out of his defiant eyes. He looked over to me, and I wasn't sure if I was looking at him or Bram. It was that same density, that same pull I felt in Bram's vast uncaring shadow, yet there was no trace of arrogance in his bright compassionate eyes. There was nigh a shred of malice or conceited hubris or any of the many quiet hateful notions that flooded though Bram's eyes. There was, instead, a beckoning tenderness like moonbeams. It was the night's breeze, soft and calm, a gentle calling like the distant sounds of some far off brook that made you lean in, made you listen for the wisdom tucked underneath its lithe whisper. I felt a familiar need to help, a compulsion of complete disregard to my own being at the behest of his gaze. It was not born of magical influence or any artificial subjugation of will, but from a purity of means. There was, within his flaming eyes, a genuine call to aid him simply because it was the right, virtuos thing to do. It was chivalry in its most undiluted purest form.

My body ached. My chest burned with an acrid fire as if I had swallowed acid. I wanted to join him, wanted to fall in by his side and serve. Perhaps it was a Goetic trait, perhaps leading us lesser hellborns was a genetic inheritance passed on from Goetia to Goetia, but what I saw in Stolas' eyes was a uniqueness that Bram or Clauneck or any of the other Goetia's never once possessed. I felt a need to help Stolas, but not out of societal necessity. It was out of an independently sovereign understanding that he would lead with the fullest intent to help those he was placed in charge of without the slightest intent of betrayal. There was such confidence behind the thought that I alone felt untouchable, felt immortal. He inspired me and for the first time since I had joined the guard, though I stood in the shadow of death, I felt hope.

It didn't last long. There was a gangrenous rot in my gut, the fermenting, pressured reality that existed outside of his utopic gaze. I couldn't do what his eyes asked for. If I inched so much as a millimeter towards him, Bram would have exacted an instant and lethal repudiation. I knew that to acknowledge Stolas, especially under the tyrannical eyes of Bram, would be the surrendering of my life. Stolas didn't understand the cruelty of Hell, of the sharp gouging truths that I knew would break his heart one day. The men he knew were monsters, his own protectors a stinging irony to that very title. The fact that I too was a part of it only quickened the sickness I felt, so I did nothing, and when Bram sent a suffocating look over to me, I bowed my head and silently entered his study.

The fire glinted off of Bram's crown as he gazed out his balcony. The dense French doors were open wide and the hot fermented air wafted through the room, though the pungent smell of death was absent, overpowered by the passive sterilizing sigal's circumscribing the palace. Bram's hands were behind his back, locked together with a hard, didactic resolve. The ends of his cape and coat gently bristled at the nudging of the wind as his steady breathing held the room. Ornthir was behind him, his shoulders stiffly thrust back as he stood as tall as he could, awaiting Bram's instruction. I idled behind Ornthir, near an end table that almost matched my height. We were dwarfed by the supple accommodations populating the room, making even the most benign object imposing.

"General," he said, not taking his eyes off of the frenzied inferno outside, "Who is responsible for this?"

"The Men of Sodom, sir," his voice was dry like kindling, though the marshal authority of his tone never wavered.

"Mm," was all Bram said for a moment. The faint roiling from across the river washed against the edge of the balcony. Ornthir's tail went to move, but as it did, Bram spoke, "I want you to find them and extend an invitation to meet me."

Elias froze, though his voice never failed him, "Sir?"

"They set an entire borough ablaze outside of my balcony, now why is that?"

"A message, sir."

"Yes," he said decisively, "To get my attention. Your efforts as of late in protecting the crown have been lackluster. Lacking forethought. To protect the crown is one thing, but to remind people as to why I have it is another; something that these Men of Sodom seem to understand."

"Sir, with all due respect, I don't think they'd be in a talking mood."

"An animal is nothing without the hand that commands it," he sharply replied, "You'll do well to remember that."

"My apologies, sir."

"Find them and bring them here. Kill those who resist in the most public fashion. I want them on their knees when they get here. I expect results, General. Dismissed."

Ornthir went into another salute, as did I, before he turned around to leave. I'm still not sure if I was looking at the same man I walked in with. His eyes were drained, hollow, empty, and in his face I thought I could see defeat. I went to open the door, the budding need to be alone with him hastening my desire to leave.

"And Ornthir," Bram said before I could reach the doorknob.

"Sir?"

"Talk to my son again and I will have you hung."

"Yes sir."

It was silent as we left, the soft thumping of us walking down the hallway's fine velvet rugs the only sound that followed us. Violeta saw us out, though I could hear Stolas' worried footsteps not too far behind hers. From the amount of hide-and-seek he used to play with Ornthir, I knew that even Violeta herself could have been unaware of his trailing presence. She bid us farewell and told us to be careful before Chip and Bug, the door imps, opened the thick oak doors and ushered us outside. I knew their real names, Morgan and Galen respectively, but to attempt correction was meaningless.

The air stunk of death and flesh and singed hair, making the very thought of drawing breath sickening. When we drove down the Lucifer Bridge I remember hearing a great many people weeping, even through the closed windows. I had never heard Hell sound as it did that night, even in its most tortuous places. The cries of the damned were from pain; a reaction to harsh, negative stimuli that, though guttural and raspy, were softened with the impossible hope that one day such horror would end. The cries I heard that night did not have that.

Ornthir didn't seem as bothered as I was, his mind seeming to be elsewhere. His hands clutched the steering wheel with an angry fortitude, the knuckles turning white as if they were close to exploding free from their restrictive fleshed prison. I could see his jaw was tight, the muscles tensed and full. I knew that there were no words in existence that I could employ that could soothe him, so I stayed quiet, consigning my efforts into ignoring the haunted whaling chorus that traveled like the breeze down the streets of Pentagram City.

We pulled up to the cowering backlot behind Safehouse Alpha, directly across the river from the tragedy. The empty, skeletal frames of abandoned cars there were already covered with a thick film of pitch black ash, making them look as if they were nightmares bulging out from the darkness. The thin amber glow of that fiery inferno projected dancing shadows of half eaten buildings at sharp, desolate angles across the shuttering river, as if ghouls titillated from the destruction. Ornthir departed with a quiet vigor, slamming the car door as he accosted towards the entrance. I followed weakly, my body doing what my mind could not fathom at processing. My memory enters a fog after that, though to call it as such is wrong. The memories are not foggy; but absent, depleted, signed into cinders by the great flames that greedily gnawed away at the city that day. My recollection becomes more vivid inside that crowded supervisors office. Away from the fire.

The first thing I remember was Durin sobbing. They were angry tears, accented with rageful bouts of accusation with a fair amount of finger pointing. He jabbed at Ornthir and I as if he intended to kill us. Rom held him back, but he glared at me with a look as vile and betrayed as the wallows of Durin's lament. Malik was in shock and paler than I had ever seen him. He clutched onto Nim's arm with an asphyxiated desperation as if he was quietly dying. She had on a good face, but we both knew we were lying. We were all there save for Flova and three others. We were unsure of where they were until Molidan made the disconcerting observation that they all shared a common zip code. 6660: Persephone Hills. Not much conversation followed after that.

Ornthir was the only person that remained silent and still, himself ensconced in that old rickety supervisors chair, his eyes fixed to the vast blaze outside the window. Molidan and Nim tried to talk to him, but all they got was silence. They talked with me about our next move, about what Ornthir had as contingencies and what our alibis would be. I told them what Ornthir would say and found myself lying to them. It assured them, impressed them even, and I think it actually made them feel better. We stayed there in the dark, the only light being that flickering hell that threw our wavering shadows across the walls. Durin and Rom left together around midnight, Nim and Malik followed shortly after one. Molidan took Flova's effects left in the room and departed a few minutes after. Ornthir continued to stare at the blaze, the only light painting our tired faces being that burning amoeba that for what felt like years burned uncontested.

Ornthir never moved from his spot and I didn't try to get him to move. We knew what we had done, and all of the world fell silent in our cognitive peripherals. Hell didn't exist anymore to me, nothing did except for those four cold walls and Ornthir's withered body slumped in that fragile chair. I felt as if I was floating, as if my body had died with all of those other unaware souls those many hours ago and that I was simply untethered to the ground beneath me, to the soul within me. I was tired, yet I did not yawn, my head buzzed with the trilling silence of the space and I found myself grabbing a folding chair and sitting next to Ornthir. We watched the firefighters spray oceans of water against those colossal licking tides of flame that lashed and flicked for the night, not even thinking of looking at each other. The air hummed with sirens as the pentagram above became covered in a black haze, the smoke choking the red out of the sky as a dim orange eerily took its place. His tail never moved, his breathing was calm and mellow. We didn't say a word until the first spears of dawn broke across the horizon.

"We're going to burn it down, Oswald," he said, "We're going to burn the whole fuckin' thing down."

What terrified me the most was that I believed him. We passed the threshold, the thought of safe return vanished in that grand fireball that I still see in the corners of my eyes, that I still smell on the ends of the city's wind. There was no way out at that moment, and when I realized its validity, it had passed me by. I wanted to turn around to see if it was there, as if I could catch a fleeting glimpse of its final dwindling glimmer. But I knew it wasn't there.

I suppose, after reviewing these pages, that it is easy to say that Ornthir was broken, that he wasn't himself in those final burning hours. You would be correct, but there was some immovable, unconvinced part of me that held onto the loosening notion that Ornthir would be the harold of our victory, that he would be the breath of life that would rush through the corroded lungs of Hell and begin anew the vivacity of days gone by.

Perhaps I believed that the grand numerous leviathans that we would fight were nothing but inevitable victorious conquests on our war path to bring life back into Hell. Perhaps I believed that we were Achilles and Hell was Troy, a clamped shut oyster in need of loosening to shine forth its pearlescent multitudes of color and love for life that I knew existed below the fathomless muck and grim. Or perhaps I, simply, was too afraid to acknowledge the fact that we were drowning in a current too strong for us to fight, too powerful for us to wrestle free from its grasp the destiny that we so rightly deserved. He believed in the idea that every man, that every born soul deserved the right to live and to live without inhibition, without censor or prejudice or condemnation. He believed in the drifting laugh of a lulling brook, of the infinite multitudes of beauty that Hell had robbed us from, barred us from seeing until we too became consigned again into the dry and withered dirt we walked upon. He believed in the light; that elusive belief that one day we too would walk the fields of Elysium, that we too would feel the sun on our baked and broken skin and that we would weep in adfinium for the inconceivable reality of a life never once thought possible. But in the valley of the shadow of death, as it turns out, light never wins. I knew that somehow our lives had horribly, and irrevocably, changed. We were at war. Ornthir made sure of that.