Oh yeah, for new comers, there is shoddy sketch art of this on my dA. There is more, but I have to scan them yet.
One Wing in the Fire (4)
Over the course of the next several weeks, Castiel was either on his own or with either Amon or Astaroth. During the times he was on his own, he wandered freely about the castle, trying his hardest to ignore the angry and sneering glares of some of the demon servants.
And either the Demon Lords' palace was bigger on the inside or the rooms kept changing because just when Castiel thought he had explored every inch of one hall, when he went back the next day he found a door he had missed before. Sometimes, when he reached for a door handle, the collar around his neck would tighten painfully and wouldn't release until he backed away. But it only happened a couple of times.
When he grew tired of wandering, he would retreat to either his room or the massive library he had discovered. When he asked Amon about it, the demon had laughed and said that it was Astaroth's as if that was a reasonable enough explanation. Castiel did not press him for information, still fearful of the Demon Lord's wrath, and continued exploring.
He made several acquaintances within the castle. The demon woman Ruby who was given to Astaroth by Asmodeus as a peace offering and had become something of Astaroth's on-again, off-again girlfriend, the nervous and twitchy Chuck who kept records of every soul in the Demon Lords' possession and wore a bruise purple collar (the same color as Castiel's, the angel discovered) which signified that he belonged to both Amon and Astaroth, and finally Barry, the head of the hell hound stables, who allowed Castiel into the pens to watch the monstrous beasts prowl their cages.
But he remained closest to Amon and Astaroth.
The two brothers were drastically different. Where Amon was a wild force, willing to try anything new head on, charging in with little thought, swinging between moods of joyous teasing and brooding silence, Astaroth was almost his opposite. He enjoyed new experiences, same as his older sibling, but he observed before taking part, he was more cautious but more willing to trust than Amon, eager to spread his circle of friends, but was a chilling force when it came to his duties as a Lord of Hell.
With Amon, Castiel could expect something akin to "adventures". The Demon Lord of Wrath and Revenge would take him to the Obsidian Garden behind the castle and race him in flight (once Castiel's wings had healed completely) between trees of volcanic glass and rock arches, he would passive-aggressively force the angel to eat with him, and he especially enjoyed brining Castiel along to pick on the new souls, to show him the progress from human to demon.
When he was with Astaroth, the times were quieter. Castiel learned demons customs and politics. Astaroth taught him that the cleaning of horns and wings was as intimate to the demons as touching wings was to the angels, that bargains and trades were often made with the other Demon Lords to keep the tentative and strained "peace" across Hell, that the particularly nasty souls, the worst of the worst, were dropped into The Cage where Lucifer was sealed for all eternity, a ritual to keep away the boogey man. Even demons had to be scared of something.
Together, Amon and Astaroth would show Castiel the ropes of the castle, the inner workings that made the two regions run together smoothly. Amon's half of the region was angry geysers, fissures of skin burning steam, lakes of molten lava, and jagged structures of volcanic glass and steel. Astaroth's half was the stuff of nightmares; heavy fog, flickering lights, noises that came from nowhere, black shadows that crept across the ground without bodies, screams of soulless things echoing off the dead trees of stone and glass. The castle was built on the border between the two, taking in a little of both, and Castiel could see how easy it was to break down a human's soul in a place like that.
What he didn't understand was the technology.
"Why do you have a castle full of human toys?" He asked one day at the dinner table. He now sat a little closer, across from Astaroth but not quite next to Amon, "It seems terribly…out of place. Like the wrong time period."
Amon laughed and even Astaroth chuckled before answering, "They're fun. Watching television and playing video games are a great way to pass the time but mostly it's convenient. Imagine having to light candles all the time. Too much work."
He still didn't know what to make of the demon brothers' behavior. They were generally nice to him, true, but there had been several times when Amon had lost his temper and smacked him across the room or Astaroth had once given him a glare so cold that Castiel had sworn his soul had frozen. He was still scared of them but they were all he knew, all he had, and so all he could trust as solid.
Until, after a month and half of living with them, he woke up to find something had drastically changed.
As an angel, Castiel did not technically need sleep but he indulged in the activity in the same way and reason he did with eating. Because the Demon Lords wished it. And besides that, he found the experience to be somewhat rejuvenating, especially after a day with Amon.
But when he opened his eyes that morning, he instantly knew that something was different.
At first, Castiel couldn't put his finger on what it was. His Grace had fully recovered after a couple of weeks at the castle but the collar prevented him from using it in all but healing himself. So when he awoke with the feeling akin to being covered in something oily, he immediately probed outwards with his Grace, wings ruffling as he tried to discover what the source was. Nothing became apparent.
Disconcerted, the angel rose from his bed and stepped to the full length mirror beside the window, intending to check his body for signs of damage he might have missed after his race with Amon. To his horror, he discovered that the problem was not with his flesh but with his wings. His gorgeous, perfect wings.
Ashamed, humiliated, and crushed, Castiel dove back into the bed, yanked the translucent curtains closed, and wrapped himself in the blankets, fighting back tears of anguish.
His wings…his wonderful God-given wings…
A knock on the door made him jolt but he did not rise.
"Cas." It was Amon. The Demon Lord opened the door and looked around, "Cas, are you seriously still sleeping? Come on, you lazy ass excuse for an angel, we're going down to the Pit today to check on the new souls I threw in there."
Castiel did not move from the bed. Instead, against his better judgment, he muttered out a pathetic, "Go away. I do not want to do anything today."
Amon let out a low growl, "I don't care what you want and don't want." The demon tore the hangings aside, green eyes glowing behind the countless straps across his face, "Get up. Now."
"I…I cannot." Castiel could feel Amon's glare on him through the blankets and he peered out from underneath them, fearful blue eyes taking the tense stance of the Demon Lord's frame. He quickly hid himself again, "Please, Lord Amon, I do not want to go out today."
"What the hell is wrong with you! You never call me that!" Clawed hands dug into the blanket and tore it from Castiel's body, "What's wrong, huh! Something you eat not agreeing with you?"
Castiel exploded from the bed in a combination of fury and distress. He thrust his wings forward, feathers erupting into the air, spreading them wide around Amon so the demon could get a good look at them.
"My wings!" The angel cried, voice aching as he shouted at the Demon Lord, "My beautiful wings!"
"What about them?" Amon apparently was as thick as Astaroth joked he was.
Castiel grabbed a handful of feathers and pulled them so they were directly in Amon's face, "Look at them! This is what you have done to me! You! You and your sordid brother did this to me! I am tainted! I am corrupt!"
Amon stared at the feathers in front of him for a moment and then realization dawned on his features. Castiel's wings, once pure white and glowing, were now a dull gray, flat and matte like drywall or the very stones of the castle itself. The demon raised a hand and deftly plucked a feather from one of the angel's wings, turning it over in his fingers. A grin spread across his face and he showed every one of his sharp teeth in his glee.
"Perfect. So an angel can be corrupted." He hummed happily, dropping the feather to the floor to peer up at Castiel's wings, still spread out for him to see, "I wonder how far this will go…?"
"It will not go any farther!" Castiel shouted and Amon's attention snapped back to his face, "I refuse to stay here any longer! Release me and let me return to Heaven! Let me reunite with my brothers so I can wash the demon taint from my Grace!"
"Insolence!" Amon snarled and he was suddenly on top of Castiel, straddling the angel, holding him to the bed, clawed hands pinning down those dulled wings, "You belong to me! You belong to Astaroth! You can't ever go back to Heaven!" His own wings burst from his back and seemed to fill the room with their angry power, "You're stuck here with us for the rest of eternity! I should throw you into the hellfire for this! I should let the hounds tear at you!"
As Amon continued to bellow out all the things he should do to Castiel, the angel himself was staring in wide-eyed fascination at the demon's soul. It was still wrapped in fire and bared wire, still writhing with the flames of hell and the black pits of rage, but there was a light in it. A soft, muted, golden-green glow that flickered like a dying candle, vanishing amongst the raging coils of hellfire only to reappear again for a brief instant. Castiel watched it in wonder. That light…it almost felt…
"Amon!" Both demon and angel looked around to the door where Astaroth was standing, looking like a cross between disgusted and angry, "He is not for your harem!"
"I wasn't doing anything like that!" Amon shouted back, sitting back on Castiel's legs, wings partially folding in, the meathook-like ends catching fabric and tearing it, "It's the dick's fault for pitching a fit." A horrible grin suddenly spread across Amon's features, similar to the one he had worn earlier, "Check it out, Astaroth, I think we're starting to taint the little fellow."
Astaroth still looked a bit peeved but he strolled over all the same. He leaned in close to Castiel's wings and angel watched him with a mixture of emotions boiling inside him. He had never felt anything like this before; he was angry with the demons for tainting his Grace, he was hurt by Amon's actions, he was ashamed and saddened by his ruined wings, and he was scared of what they would do to him now.
"Interesting…" The Demon Lord of Fear and Chaos murmured, running a clawed hand over the feathers, "I wonder if the feathers will shed to be replaced by membranes or if this is the extent of the change." Those pitch black eyes turned one Castiel, "What does it feel like?"
Castiel let out a groan as though someone had physically injured him, "It is shameful. My wings were my pride, they were considered very beautiful by my brothers. And now they are tainted with demon scum." He closed his brilliant blue eye, " It feels as if some black worm is burrowing deeper and deeper into my Grace. I did not—I do not—want this." He turned a pleading gaze on the demon brothers,
"Please, let me go home, please. Let me return to my family…"
"No." Amon growled, sliding off of Castiel and pulling his own wings back in, "You're not going anywhere." And with that, he shoved past Astaroth and left the room, tail grabbing the handle to slam it shut behind him.
Castiel groaned aloud again and curled his tainted wings about himself as if this would fix everything.
"I'm sorry about him," Astaroth's voice said from outside of the curtain of feathers, "I think there is a small fraction of him that still remembers what it was like to be human and he is somehow still aware, however minutely, that he can never go back to that life."
Castiel's wings parted in a flurry of graying feathers, his blue eyes wide as he stared at Astaroth, "He was human once? The Demon Lord of Wrath and Revenge was once a human soul?"
"Eons ago." Astaroth muttered, shrugging his shoulders as if this was a detail of no importance, "So was I, I think, but I cannot recall it as Amon seems to. And I'm not even sure he does. I think he just feels things sometimes. Anyway," The Demon Lord straightened up, "You should probably stay out of his way for now so you're going to spend the day with me instead."
Castiel actually wanted nothing more than to hide in his room all day but he knew that would not be the wisest decision. Instead, he got dressed and followed Astaroth from the room, watching the wing-like cloak hanging from the demon's shoulders sway as he walked.
So.
Amon and Astaroth had once been human.
The explained it then, the odd sensation he'd been sensing beneath their hellfire, the flickering light he had seen in Amon's soul. His humanity was still there, hidden and wrapped in agony and rage and a needless desire for revenge. Watching Astaroth, Castiel searched the Demon Lord's soul for a sign of that humanity and, yes, sure enough, there it was, a golden- white light flickering in and out of existence, barely making itself known through the fire and brimstone.
But it was still there.
The more time Castiel spent with the Demon Lord brothers, the more his Grace would become twisted and darken until he too began to succumb to demonic whims.
But the more time that Amon and Astaroth spent around him, the more their former humans souls would be drawn to his Grace.
It was only a matter of time.
Perhaps this was his answer. Perhaps this would be how he escaped.