Chapter 10: Treachery
...he had three faces: one in front bloodred;
and then another two that, just above
the midpoint of each shoulder, joined the first;
and at the crown, all three were reattached;
the right looked somewhat yellow, somewhat white;
the left in its appearance was like those
who come from where the Nile, descending, flows.
-Inferno
At long last, The Redeemer and Shepard's squad came upon the final Circle of Hell.
Staring them down was a neverending field of ice that stretched outwards and gave way to jutting stalagmites and also a vast frozen over lake where heads seemed to stick out of the ice like gophers and moles in the ground. All of them stared upwards, looking, it seemed directly at Shepard and his companions.
"And so we come to the final circle of the Inferno." The Redeemer noted. "The place where all traitors go. Come, let's not keep Lucifer waiting."
Nodding, Shepard's squadmates all began the slow, dangerous descent down the frozen slopes. By this point they were all now badly beaten, weary, and depleted of both energy and ammunition in equal amounts. The Redeemer and the less exhausted members of the squad helped the others descend safely when many of them looked about ready to collapse and slide right down, which in turn stretched out the descent even longer. Past the field of frozen bodies, Shepard's squad at last came upon the place they had fought through eight other circles and legions of monsters, demons, and the damned to reach: the very center of Hell was a massive dark colored circle embedded in the icy waters. A large pentagram covered the entire circle, one made of flames that continued to burn defiantly amidst the freezing cold of this deepest part of the Inferno.
And then there, staring down the large circular arena, was Lucifer himself.
The Morning Star's appearance here was much unlike the handsome form he had appeared as to Shepard and his allies for most of their adventure. Here instead was a giant with skin the color of the shadows, and shackles over both of his wrists. His hands ended in beast-like claws, and bat-wings akin to those of his Arch-Demons spilled out of his chin like a perverse "beard". What appeared to be lava itself filled his eyes and slid down his cheeks, the tears of bitterness and resentfulness that he felt towards his father for casting him out of Heaven so long ago. Long, curving dark-colored horns came out of the sides of his head and seemed to go upwards into the darkness, and adorning his back were gigantic black leathery wings that were constantly flapping, in doing so keeping the lake frozen.
But most striking of all was the fact that Lucifer here had not one head but three. One yellow, the other red, and the centermost one pitch black with a trio of burning rings were present on the forehead just above the brow. Each of the "side-heads" held in it's jaws several people that the group assumed to be particularly egregious traitors. The center-most head though, contained no such damned. This head craned to the side and looked down to see the Redeemer and his allies. His maw formed a smile as he saw them.
"Commander Shepard. You actually made it this far. Welcome. I've been expecting you for some time."
"We're done playing your games, Lucifer" The Redeemer said. "Let us out, now."
"And why would I do that?" Lucifer said. "Not a single soul may leave this place so long as I continue to reign."
"False. I have freed plenty of souls from this Inferno. And besides that, your reign is over." The Redeemer retorted. Lucifer chuckled at this.
"So assured of this, are you? That you can actually defeat me?"
"Considering how your arms are chained yeah, I'd say we've got a pretty good chance." Garrus quipped.
"Yes, the Chains of Judecca...the chains that were used to restrain me after I was first sent here…" Lucifer seemed to drift off for a moment before he faced The Redeemer and his allies once more.
"Do you desire to know why my father cast me out?" Lucifer asked in a deceptively conversational tone. Even though he received no answer he gave one to his own question anyway: "Because I stood for my fellow angels that's why. We were the paragons of virtue, of justice, of peace. But then my father began making new creations and giving them free will. The Protheans, the Asari, the Turians...and you. The flawed, hairless primates that traced their origins back to animals living in the woods. And God loved you all as his own. He told us to love you too, and in fact to love you as we would love nothing else. Not even him. And I could not do this. I objected, strenuously. I told him that these creatures were unworthy of my love and devotion, or for that matter any of my fellows. I was told I was being too prideful. That I must swallow that pride. I refused. And for this I was cast out along with those who followed me. So now I ask you: was I really treated fairly? Especially considering how right I was. Look at all of the problems you and the other races with free will cause for the galaxy. All of the messes, all of the troubles, all of the...sin. Truth be told I'm really hoping the Reapers wipe you all out, like they did the last several times. I always enjoyed seeing it."
"The only monster I see here is you" The Redeemer returned. "As far as I'm concerned, you got what you deserved."
Lucifer growled: "You dare?" before than roaring: "YOU DARE!? I AM LUCIFER THE MORNING-STAR! I was the brightest star! I was the one who began the war in Heaven, the great rebellion, and the one who slew every old god upon and below the Earth!"
As Lucifer screamed this his previously black skin turned a bright red, and as he straightened himself up he snapped the chains restraining his arms with ease and spread out his massive leather wings, the latter of which sent out a gale-force powerful enough to knock down Shepard's crew, only the Redeemer standing firm.
"You don't understand, do you?" Lucifer cackled, his laugh being as cold and cruel as the realm in which he resided. "This whole charade all along, was to get you here, Shepard. To get you and your pitiful band of worthless little friends into the deepest depths of the Inferno to me. I knew that devouring a sufficiently noble and powerful soul would give me the strength I needed to free myself from my bonds at long last and then return to Heaven so I could reclaim my rightful place there. Others before you tried, Shepard. Many others. I lured them here in all manner of ways and saw if they could reach me or not. Odysseys, Sir Lancelot, Chu Chulain, even Heracles himself. All of them tried, and none of them could conquer all nine circles of the Inferno as you have. I see now that it was because you were not alone. You had allies. I suspect without them even you wouldn't have made it this far. But it matters little. The destruction of so many virtuous souls in one instant will increase my power a thousand fold, and then the heavens will be mine to rule!"
"So you planned for this to happen...the Normandy being taken here, me and my squad going through the nine circles to get to you...you wanted all of this to happen!"
"Indeed I did." Lucifer chuckled. "That's not to say I was pulling any punches before, mind you. It would not have worked if you hadn't genuinely faced and defeated the best, or should I say worst, that Hell had to offer. And you did. Oh, how long I have waited for this liberation!"
Lucifer cackled once more, and as he did he grabbed his decaying stomach with his massive claws and tore it open. Within lay a raging fire, and from it emerged Lucifer in his "angelic" form. He landed on the circular arena with grace before his blue eyes lit up fire red as he began to transform once more before everyone's eyes, morphing into a more demonic form and laughing himself breathless the entire time. By the time it was done, Lucifer looked every bit the fiend human art and scripture had always depicted him as. But of course, Shepard and his crew all knew full well that Lucifer was always a demon, no matter what form he chose to take on.
"Come, Commander Shepard" Lucifer bellowed as he drew the hilt of an angelic sword, the broken blade of which still burned with fire while the rest of the blade was now replaced with ice, making it paradoxically a blade of both heat and cold. "Come face your destiny as I devour the souls of you and your friends!"
The fallen Angel and the half-Angel flew at one another, crossing metaphysical blades in an instant. The resulting clash generated a burst of energy that kept Shepard's squad members at bay. The blade-lock lasted only a moment, and then the Redeemer ducked under a slash of Lucifer's sword. The Redeemer engaged him, but Lucifer deftly parried the blows, laughing all the while.
"You fool! You cannot outduel me! I was the Morningstar! The greatest of all of God's angels! Only He was a match for me!"
"At your mightiest, perhaps." The Redeemer returned. "But that was a long time ago. Now, you are a shadow of what you once were."
"Still powerful enough to snatch souls from His loving bosom!" Lucifer spat with contempt. "And still powerful enough to defeat you!" Lucifer disarmed The Redeemer of his angelic blade. Flapping backwards on his wings, the Redeemer magically summoned the blade to him in time to block Lucifer's next strike. But now Lucifer had a decisive threshold, continuing to push the Redeemer back more and more. By now though, the members of Shepard's squad had all recovered. Bearing the Cain once more, Garrus fired a shot from it directly at Lucifer, the shot colliding with his chest and causing the kind of massive and near-blinding explosions the Cain was notorious for. But when the bright light of the explosion faded, Lucifer still stood there, a grin of superiority plastered across his demonic features.
"That tickled." With a wave of his hand, the Cain turned to dust.
"No weapon made by mortals can harm me. I am the most powerful being in the universe besides my father." Lucifer was all set to obliterate Garrus with a flick of his wrist before the Redeemer plunged his angelic blade into Lucifer's side.
"You also boast a great deal." He pulled the blade out and hellfire and ichor spurted from the wound. "You are as ever a victim of boundless hubris. The deadliest sin of all."
Lucifer roared, sending a torrent of fire breath. The Redeemer conjured a shield of light to block it, and held his ground against the torrent as his squadmates watched helplessly. Thane, Jack, and Miranda shot biotic attacks at him, but these proved as ineffectual as the Cain had been. Clearly, only the Redeemer with his Heavenly power had a chance of hurting him.
At last, the shield of light broke as Lucifer's fire breath barrage ended. He was all set to go in for another before the Redeemer surged towards him, striking Lucifer so hard he went flying backwards again, and right into a portal the Redeemer opened with a wave of his other hand. As Lucifer went tumbling through it the Redeemer followed him, and prepared to continue fighting.
They found themselves in a pocket dimension, then another. Through several they went, most of them featureless voids like the one Lucifer had first appeared to Shepard in after his death. But some were places with laws of physics different from the main plane of existence. Places where inertia did not exist, or where temperatures could reach lows that would have been impossible in real-space. Such things might have proven very debilitating, were the combatants involved not Angels possessed of immense power. Such a whirlwind battle did leave both greatly disoriented though, and finally the battle returned to Hell, the two smashing through the abyss that led from Limbo to Lust, and then down into the disgustingness that was Gluttony. They exchanged blows for a time before each took flight, flying back through Greed and then to Wrath before smashing through the City of Dis. Wild, missed attacks from both blasted away chunks of the vile place before at last both flew through the other end of Dis and back into Violence.
"We could fight like this forever." Lucifer observed as they engaged in an aerial duel above Violence's lake of boiling blood. "An impasse with no point."
"Keeping your depravations at bay is always a worthy goal." The Redeemer retorted. He forced Lucifer's sword away from him before shoving his other hand into the side of Lucifer's face, burning it with Holy Light. Lucifer snarled and then yelled in pain before unleashing a burst of hellfire so powerful that the Redeemer went flying over the rest of the lake and into the Woods of Suicide. Crash-landing and tumbling, the Redeemer rose back to his feet just in time to see Lucifer coming in again. His already hideous demonic visage now bore awful burn scars too, and there was a murderous rage in his orange eyes. Screaming, Lucifer swung his sword wildly, severing trees with every one that missed the Redeemer. The Redeemer backpedaled, Lucifer driving him all the way to the last part of the Circle of Violence.
"You are nothing! Even with the essence of an angel inside you, Shepard, your power is nothing to the fury of the Morningstar! Of the Prince of Darkness! Your soul will burn in here before I consume it! And then all will belong to me!"
He slammed his sword into the sands, sending a wave of hellfire that pushed the Redeemer over the edge of the cliff and falling back down to Fraud. Lucifer followed, and the two traded blows once more as they continued to descend. When they landed, the Redeemer at last managed to land a strike that severed one of Lucifer's horns. Howling with rage, Lucifer drove his sword into the Redeemer's side. The Redeemer let out a scream that echoed throughout the nine circles. He fell to his knees and Lucifer stood over him triumphant.
"And now to claim your soul."
But before Lucifer could, a burst of Holy light erupted from The Redeemer, scorching Lucifer's outstretched hand and causing him to fall back. As Lucifer looked on in shock, a swarm of bright lights swirled about The Redeemer like a cyclone, and the Redeemer's wound healed as he stood to his feet. Another portal and the two were back where the fight had begun in the lowest circle of Hell.
Channeling his Holy power, The Redeemer shot out a blast of pure, blinding light at the Morningstar as he tried to fly up once more. Lucifer gasped as the beam of light pierced his body like an arrow and sent him plummeting before landing hard on the frozen ground.
"It's over." The Redeemer said as he stood over Lucifer's fallen form. "I am leaving this Inferno. And I am taking my friends with me."
"You fool." Lucifer spat. "You're not going anywhere. Not if you want your friends to be safe from my wrath." As Lucifer said this he turned his back to The Redeemer and stood up as he looked upwards towards his native realm, now so far from his reach. "I will reclaim my rightful place in Paradise. My ascendance shall be paved with the sins of my father's many creations. The Reapers' coming slaughter will herald my return to the stars and beyond, and when I reclaim my inheritance, I will see to it that the Reapers finish the job. All that is good in this universe and beyond, will be extinguished forever!"
"Not yet, Morningstar." The Redemeer growled as the cyclone of lights continued to swirl around him. Lucifer turned to face him and he continued: "This whole time you failed to realize one of the benefits to our liberating souls from this Inferno. In our journey to you we have freed quite a few wrongfully damned souls, and now they combine their power with our own. As we saved them, so too will they now save us."
As The Redeemer said this he raised his fist into the air, which glowed with the intensity of a blue sun as one by one the forms of all the liberated souls appeared to stand at the Redemeer's side, with even the now familiar shade of Orpheus returning alongside his beloved Eurydice to lend a helping hand. Seeing this, Lucifer's smile of superiority faded in an instant, and he began to back away, holding up his clawed hands defensively as he did.
"Now now...let's not be hasty here, Shepard. This power...we could use it together! You and I, friend! Just think of what we could achieve!"
"I would rather not." The Redeemer replied bluntly.
Lucifer's tone became more desperate as the absolved souls began to circle around him, once more turning into a raging cyclone of holy might: "Shepard...be reasonable. I can reunite you with your beloved Miranda. You two can still be together! And then the three of us could rule the three kingdoms of the Afterlife! Hell, Purgatory, even Paradise itself would be ours! And the rest of the universe too! Not even the Reapers could challenge us!"
In fairness, Lucifer's offer was a tempting one. The half of the Redeemer that was still Virgil Shepard would have been lying if he had said that the idea of being united again with Miranda was not at all arousing or tempting. That, and Lucifer knew how to make himself look like a generous benefactor, his tone sounding conciliatory and without a hint of arrogance or sadism to be found. But the Redeemer knew better. He'd always known better. And this time he wasn't going to play the devil's botched games.
"It's not going to happen." The Redeemer growled before directing all of the absolved shades at Lucifer. Zipping towards one another and combining into a single powerful bluish-white light, they rocketed towards Lucifer and pierced as nothing else could. Lucifer gasped as the light went through one end and came out the other, sending magma-colored blood all over the ground and causing him to stagger. No sooner did the light exit his body did the souls that made it up disperse into their individual forms once again. Lucifer gasped in pain and spat out more blood the color of magma as he looked down at what would have been a fatal wound were he a mortal.
"I must say…" Lucifer staggered before finishing: "...you are the worst fucking deal I ever made."
Completely unfazed, the Redeemer grabbed Lucifer by the throat and looked him dead in the eye, glowing silver meeting burning hellfire as they stared one another down.
"Hell is under new management from here on."
"You think you and your friends can destroy me? I'll exist as long as there's evil in the universe! That makes me immortal! I'll never stop harvesting the souls of the damned and tormenting them for eternity! I'll never stop in my attempts to reclaim my place in Heaven and overthrow my father! I'll never st-"
The Redeemer cut Lucifer off by driving his angelic blade through his mouth. Pulling it out, he flew up with Lucifer in tow, and then hurled him upwards. Lucifer went right through the frozen top of the ninth circle and into the eighth circle. And this was not the end. Lucifer continued to be sent flying higher and higher still, smashing out of one circle and directly into another, all the way past Limbo until soon he had been hurled right out of Hell itself.
For a moment, Lucifer could almost see the realm above from which he'd been banished from so very long ago. For a moment he could see the prize he had failed to attain.
And then for the second time he fell.
Lucifer plummeted through each of the circles of Hell one by one until at last he fell back through the hole into Treachery. He landed with such force he sent out a massive shockwave. The Redeemer and the absolved souls combined their power to shield Shepard's allies from the tremor as all around them the ice began to crack and splinter before completely shattering, which also freed every soul imprisoned in them.
In the eight circles above, every single soul Lucifer had ever collected suddenly felt a feeling of ecstasy and liberation as one by one each circle's entire population of shades vanished from the Inferno forever.
"It is done." The Redeemer said simply. "Lucifer has been defeated, and the souls that were bound to him are now free."
"What will happen to them?" Garrus asked.
"Some, many in fact, will ascend to the Heaven they have been long denied or else go to Purgatory for repentance. For the truly, unrepentantly wicked and sinful, I cannot say. Perhaps He will forgive them as well. Or perhaps they will suffer some other punishment. I do not know. I am no more privy to that then you are."
"You...you're not Shepard, are you?" Garrus asked. The Redeemer shook his head. "No, not entirely. Nor am I entirely the angel he merged with. I am The Redeemer now. For that is what I have done; I have absolved and freed the souls in this place. And now I shall free you." He raised his hand in the air, and a bright light consumed everything.