In The 7th Circle of Hell Sinners Must Endure —-A Bespoke Suit
Crowley stared out at the seventh circle of Hell morosely. Hands buried deep in his coat pockets; he stepped out into that lower region of hell and acknowledged that his handmade Italian loafers would never be the same again.
Being there in that place always made him ponder the eternal questions, the old homely of: Which came first, chiefest amongst them. Here, the question didn't involve poultry, but still remained relevant. Had Dante's divine comedy, or this section of Hell, come first? Had the poet somehow become privy to the workings of the underworld, or had his imaginings been so perfidious that they'd seeped into the very fabric of Perdition and warped its make up?
Could one thirteenth century, Italian poet, really have transformed his kingdom with a scribbled missive in terza rima; while he, the place's titular ruler, was forced to struggle to implement even the smallest of changes?
How often he regretted not asking Lilith while he could. Now she was dead, a broken seal to fuel a failed apocalypse, he would be forever cursed to wonder.
Sadly, the ranks of the old guard had been terminally thinned, thanks in no small part to the Winchesters, and chances of getting a coherent answer from those who remained was slim to none. Knowledge was power, and demons weren't creatures happy to share such an asset. But there was another reason why Crowley doubted he'd get an answer.
The eternal essence of perdition, combined with the territorial nature of most demons ensured that few in the constant flood of the newly damned got picked to serve Hell. The rest became dross and fell through the cracks into the system's meat grinder, to be eaten up by the ponderous gears of Hell's mindless, ever churning machine.
In a place where piling up yesterdays was an exercise in madness and peering forward towards tomorrow only served to deepen the despair of one's situation; few damned retained the brainpower to cognise the finer aspects of their own afterlives. The ins and outs of history were only one victim of that attrition.
For the vast majority of Hell's inhabitants—especially the demonic rank-and-file, there was absolutely nothing to look forward to. As a consequence, most lost all sense of purpose and the ability to reason after internalising the situation. Knowing there was no chance of escape, they would stop marking the passage of time, just seeing it as a pointless luxury and torment.
Eventually those sorry sods forgot their own names and cast off anything that reminded them of their previous lives. Gave themselves over to existing in a constant state of now.
It never ceased to annoy Crowley how much history could be snuffed out if a stray bullet from the Colt, an angel blade, or that damnable Kurdish knife got stuck in the wrong demon. He mightn't miss many of his erstwhile colleagues, whom the Winchesters had so helpfully offed over the years. But he did regret the knowledge he'd allowed to slip through his fingers, simply by not asking the right questions when he'd had the chance.
Shaking his head, he pushed those old regrets aside and blew out a pensive breath as he walked. Then raised his eyes to survey his surroundings.
Far off toward the west, a group of six demons made their eternal rounds with bows slung over their broad naked shoulders. Every now and again the group would pause, loose a few arrows; and more occasionally, let out a raucous cheer. (No doubt, after one of them made a particularly difficult or amusing shot down into the river below.)
Crowley followed the group's progress with a wistful eye, thinking he'd always vaguely envied Ixionidae and his lackeys.
They weren't the sharpest knives in the draw, true, but the seventh circle inhabitants were far more gregarious than most demons. And seemed like solid company men, who carried out their tasks with a manic kind of good cheer, which contrasted rather refreshingly with the competitive dog eat dog atmosphere of the crossroads.
Watching them now, Crowley toyed with the idea of approaching and joining in on their fun. It would be, he thought, a welcome diversion: to take up a bow and release an arrow, then hear that satisfying thwack of impact.
Perhaps he could even venture to ask Ixionidae a few subtle questions about the seventh circle's provenance?
But he shook his head again with a sigh, and regretfully reminded himself that those days had passed. He wasn't a company man any longer, not a punk-ass crossroads demon either, or even, head of that division. He was the King.
When he'd ascended the black throne of Hell, he'd painted a target on his back. So, whatever easy camaraderie might once have been possible in his earlier years; it was unlikely to stand now he'd elevated himself to such a lofty position. Asking questions about his own kingdom's history would only betray him for the upstart usurper so many whispered him to be.
And it wouldn't do to let the riffraff know any part of his kingdom was a mystery to him.
He'd come to suspect that none of Hell's previous rulers had understood their kingdom as well as they pretended. Hell wasn't just a piece of substandard real estate in need of a little gentrification. The place was organic in ways he'd never suspected before donning the crown and ascending the throne. Hell was not composed of blood, bone and sinew just for the shock value. It Behaved like some kind of lower organism; something not quite sentient, but with a mind of its own. Sure, it might do its ruler's will, after the proper inducements. But unfortunately, the place was a little like an old dog, with a stubborn tendency of falling back into old habits once it was left to its own devices.
Crowley had learned that lesson, to his chagrin, when he created the eternal line of waiting, back in the first years of his kingship.
The concept had been sound, the numbers good, and the prototype had worked like a dream. What he'd failed to calculate was buy in. There hadn't been any. Not from his minions, and not from Hell itself.
The eternal line of waiting had the potential to churn out a steady stream of fresh-hatched demons, while requiring significantly less staffing than in any other region. But none of that had mattered.
Despite providing better conditions and a lighter workload for all he posted to his new division, the ungrateful prats soon started grumbling. Harping on that mind numbing boredom wasn't a proper kind of torment to inflict on people. Wringing their hands that the new method was too big a departure from the time-honoured way of doing things, and that bloody Lucifer of all people, would never have approved (like that self-absorbed git had approved of anything except himself—Ever.) The way his entire bloody kingdom insisted on clinging to archaic cliches from ages past, while sulking and baulking over the simplest change, maddened Crowley beyond words. As if being made to listen to the endless litany of spurious complaints from the demons he posted there wasn't enough. He'd also been forced to maintain the eternal line of waiting constantly; by endlessly reminding Hell of the form it was supposed to be taking. If he didn't, the place inevitably started unravelling at the seams, like a badly sewn garment.
Sometimes, he wanted to wash his hands of the entire idea but doing so felt far too much like losing. After all the effort he'd already expended, he'd be doubly damned if he'd give in to all the bloody-minded resistance or prove the naysayers right — Especially knowing his underlings would gossip about the failure, saying they'd always known the place was a pointless exercise in futility. Doomed to failure—Just like him as their king.
Finally, reaching a vantage point on the precipitous banks of the river Phlegethon, Crowley stopped to take in the view. Phlegethon was a river of boiling human blood and comprised the outermost ring of the seventh circle of Hell. It housed those condemned for their brutality against others. A place where the violent damned languished perpetually in shed blood and were tormented by it. Sunk at depths corresponding to their sins and shot with arrows by Ixionidae and his lackeys if they attempted to escape; the damned had little recourse but to regret their sins, flounder and moan. Their cries reached Crowley's ears only faintly, mostly drowned out by Phlegethon's seething roar.
Here at his vantage point far above, Crowley could still smell the reek of boiling blood. It perfumed the air, with a noxious miasma of old pennies, tugging fitfully at the half-buried remnants of his one-time blood addiction.
Sometimes, when the metaphorical weight of Hell's crown weighed heavily on his brow, Crowley would come down here and look out over that seething scarlet tributary in a kind of misplaced nostalgia.
Fergus MacLeod hadn't been a good man. And Crowley held no illusions that he wouldn't have ended up in Hell, one way or another. In his black heart of hearts, he often fancied that the seventh circle called to him with a siren song, something akin to that of a true home.
In life, Fergus MacLeod had been a violent man. A mean drunk who'd taken out his frustrations on anyone and everything close to him; most notably his son, Gavin. Until that was, the lad finally washed his hands of his father's abuse and ran off to sea in search of a better life. Only to end up dead for his troubles.
Fergus MacLeod had racked up a fair component of sins during his years on god's green earth. He'd lied, he'd cheated, he'd stolen; but it was the sins belonging to the purview of the seventh circle of Hell that had weighed on him most heavily. Since Sam Winchester attempted to cure him of his demonic essence.
Once or twice, he'd even waded out naked, into the roiling wash of the Phlegethon's scalding sanguine, as if he might somehow baptise himself in that broiling gore; and blot out his iniquities. But today would not be one of those days.
Today, he had other plans. Crowley lifted his eyes from the Phlegethon and appraised Legno Autoassassini, the wood of suicides, beyond. The middle ring of the seventh circle of Hell. The place was home to those damned souls who'd committed violence against themselves. Either by taking their lives, or wasting them in pursuit of pointless, hedonistic pleasure.
It hadn't been lost on Crowley, that if Fergus MacLeod hadn't sold his soul for those extra inches of willie and thus been sentenced to hang on the racks; he would have done time across the Phlegethon in Legno Autoassassini. Deal or no deal, he'd been a drunkard and a wastrel, prone to heedless excess.
He could acknowledge Legno Autoassassini's claim on his unworthy hide—Twice over, if you considered his preferred means to end his life had come by application of copious amounts of liquor. By that measure, he would have been judged as both a suicide and a profligate.
In Legno Autoassassini, suicides were entombed inside the petrified limbs of the forest's trees. Aware and fully sentient, with their feet and legs fused into gnarled trunks and thorny roots. Arms raised immobile in perpetual splintery torsion, towards Hell's ashen sky. That was the punishment for destroying your own body; to be made into sentient lumber. To feel every injury meted out by the ravening flocks of harpies that nested in your branches. A snapped twig perceived no different than a fractured bone. A carelessly plucked leaf as painful as a fingernail extracted by rusty pliers. Cruellest of all, those thus transformed were given no means to express their suffering. Immobile, voiceless and tongueless, left only with their human eyes; to weep endless tears of thick, bloody sap.
The profligates were another story. Those wasteful degenerates had spent their lives topside, chasing after their own pleasures. Poured their money, time and energy down the drain in the pursuit of their own hedonistic excess.
Those miscreants woke in Hell to find themselves stripped naked of everything they valued and chased through the forest of the damned by packs of eager hellhounds. Pursued for pleasure as they once pursued pleasure. To be endlessly run down, torn apart and devoured. Only to start the process all over again.
Crowley knew Legno Autoassassini wasn't much fun for the damned dead consigned there, but for the hounds it was delightful fun. Which was what had brought him there today.
—Speaking of, a clamour of harpies boiled from the treetops a short distance inside the tree line, accompanied by a medley of raucous screeches. Moments later, a snapping of sundered tree limbs reached Crowley's ears, and a massive pack of hounds broke from the wood. They came gambolling out onto the far bank of the river, Phlegethon.
Crowley lifted an arm in a gesture of greeting, and the hounds sent up a chorus of joyous baying in response.
Their excited clamour made him smile. Of all the denizens of Hell, he enjoyed the hounds most. Their sheer canine enthusiasm at the sight of him was never feigned, and they felt neither jealousy nor resentment over his rise to power. They were his only minions whose loyalty he'd never been given cause to doubt. It delighted him to know that Hell had seen fit to reward them for their service with a small slice of Hellhound nirvana, set here within the reaches of humanity's own Hell. Especially for one particular hound.
"Juliet," he called out. Shading his eyes and squinting in an attempt to make out one particular body amid the swirling mass of romping hounds. "Juliet, come to Papa."
At his call, one laggard hound burst from the cover of Legno Autoassassini. In a flurry of shattered twigs and churned earth, it bulleted across the space dividing the wood from the river and dived over the bank. Juliet hit the roiling blood below with an almighty thwack. Sending a tsunami of frothing gore outwards to sweep a clutch of murderers and abusers from their precarious footing. With a tumult of spluttering screams, the poor bastards were swept off downstream by the current, like so much flotsam and jetsam.
Crowley smirked and shook his head in fond amusement. Only half a furlong further along the bank, there was a perfectly serviceable bridge. Juliet had ignored it in favour of making a beeline directly for him. Straight through the river of boiling blood.
No matter, his good girl was near-on indestructible like all Hellhounds, and the boiling blood would probably do her coat a world of good.
Watching her progress across the Phlegethon's filled him with a swell of quiet pride. Juliet had never been the largest hound in the pack, but she made up for it with loyalty and tenacity. Every time he saw her in action, he was reminded anew of what a truly magnificent beast she was.
When she reached the near bank, Juliet performed a massive vertical leap to land in front of him with a grunt and a shower of sulphur laden gravel. As she trotted closer, Crowley saw that she was carrying something in her mouth. It twisted and thrashed in her jaws, attempting to escape.
"Darling, you brought Papa a souvenir. Aren't you just the most thoughtful one?!"
Juliet grinned a canine grin around whatever her gift was, blood slicked spectral tail thrashing so hard it was almost a blur.
Crowley stepped closer to try and ascertain exactly what his favourite hound had brought him—Just as Juliet executed a bone rattling shake and spattered a thick rain of steaming gore in all directions.
With a huff, Crowley palmed blood from his face and looked down at the carnage done to his favourite Armani.
Then tensed in mortification as he heard an ill-concealed snort and the sound of several individuals approaching from behind.
"What do you think, Ixionidae?" he asked, voice raised in faux casual nonchalance. And executed a showy turn like a model on a catwalk to face the demon and his underlings, with arms stretched wide and a showman's smile on his lips.
"That the damned beast has ruined your pretty little business suit," the demon sneered in response, barely concealing a look of mocking contempt.
Crowley eyed Ixionidae mildly, but behind his placid mask he couldn't help but grind his teeth in irritation.
~Seemed he'd forgotten the worst part about company men.
Many of them felt the need to act out, and pretend they were bigger men than they were. Which made them prone to stupidly challenging authority in front of their subordinates, and explained why they'd never managed to climb the rungs of power.
Ixionidae was just another moron who suffered from proverbial tall poppy syndrome. Which might well put Crowley in the irritating position of having to nip his disrespectful attitude in the bud.
"Nonsense!" he demurred, affably offering Ixionidae one last opportunity to play nice. "It's bespoke. Nothing like adding a pop of red to truly bring an outfit to life."
Ixionidae rolled his eyes and wouldn't be drawn.
Bloody typical! The stupid little prick actually thought he could start a pissing contest with the King of Hell. Probably assumed Crowley was the same punk-ass crossroads demon Lilith had dragged around like a beleaguered puppy.
Behind Ixionidae's back, the demon's underlings shifted uncomfortably, eyes moving nervously back and forth between their betters.
Crowley flashed Ixionidae an edged smile and raised an eyebrow, asking silently if he really wanted to try it on.
Waited to see if the moronic bastard really wanted to cash the cheques his mouth was writing.
It was then that Juliet decided to present her trophy.
Absentmindedly, Crowley noted that her catch had been a harpy. A decidedly unimpressed harpy. One who'd been snared by a Hellhound, dragged bodily through a river of boiling blood and shaken until its teeth rattled. Which was to say, a harpy who was now looking for someone to punish for the mounting pile of indignities it had suffered in the past half hour.
The creature wasn't, however, keen on going another round with Juliet. And instead chose to take its wrath out on Ixionidae and his crew.
It flew at them in a shrieking, clawing ball of near-incandescent fury. And caught the entire lot of them off guard. Started to rip into the laggard demons like a Tasmanian devil hopped up on PCP.
The whole rigmarole was brutal and messy—and really couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of chaps.
Crowley draped a companionable arm over Juliet's back and watched proceedings. It appeared from his vantage point that harpies were significantly more durable than demonic archers. Given the advantages of surprise, superior speed and flight, the harpy looked like it might be the victor of the scuffle in the end; even though it was six onto one. If anything, numbers appeared to be a disadvantage, forcing Ixionidae and his gang, to waste precious energy tripping over each other.
After a few minutes of watching proceedings, Crowley found himself growing bored with all the flapping, yelling and rolling about.
With a dismissive gesture, he knocked the harpy away from the group of beleaguered demons and snapped his fingers. The harpy plummeted from the sky and burst into a cheery ball of flames.
"Anyone else up for barbecue?" Crowley asked mildly, snapping his fingers again to douse the flames.
And was gratified by the slight flinch the second snap extracted from the battered group.
Facing him, and still panting with exertion, Ixionidae dropped his gaze, his mocking smirk, long gone."No."
"Pardon?" Crowley asked, cupping an ear and tilting his head to one side with a dangerous smile playing over his lips.
Juliet mirrored the head tilt, teeth bared.
Ixionidae swallowed, eyes flicking furtively between the still smoking harpy, the Hellhound, and his suddenly much more threatening-seeming ruler. He looked positively panicked. "No-thank you-Sire," he amended, hurriedly falling to his knees in the dirt for good measure. Head bowed in newly schooled subservience.
Around their leader, Ixionidae's five lackeys did likewise.
Crowley hummed and tilted his head to the other side and gave them all a knowing smirk.
"Well—If you ever change your mind—" He left the offer hanging.
Ixionidae shook his head furiously, eyes still focused down at the earth between his knees.
With a small gesture, Crowley sent Juliet to fetch the partially charred harpy from where it had fallen.
She obeyed blithely. Every line of her frame radiating a smug kind of canine delight as she returned to his side with the still smoking harpy clamped in her jaws.
Studying the hound, Crowley paused to wonder if his clever lass had planned the entire thing. She was more than a little fond of barbecue. Maybe she knew that if she saved him the bother of schooling Ixionidae for his impertinence, he'd be in a generous mood and allow her to eat the entire creature herself, without sharing with the other hounds back at the kennels.
"Well, lads, this has been fun, but I really must be off. Kingdom won't run itself."
Ruffling Juliet's ears in appreciation, he decided she did deserve the entire harpy, even with what he'd done to his suit.
In fact, he decided he would carve out a little time in the afternoon to toss the rubber chicken for her as well. He was a benevolent King, and he rewarded loyalty. Juliet completely adored fetching the silly toy that Demon Dean had given to her as a joke. It was one of the few items she didn't bring back looking like something that had been up close and personal with a wood-chipper.
Now he thought about it, perhaps her fondness for chasing the counterfeit foul had something to do with the harpy debacle. It was a possibility.
Either way, the seventh circle manager and his crew had been taken down a few pegs in a most fortuitous way, and Juliet had earned his gratitude once more.
Brushing past Ixionidae close enough to make the kneeling demon cringe. Crowley paused and eyed the demon up and down with an amused hum.
"Oh, and Ixionidae — Love the suit. Very bespoke."
To add insult to injury he ruffled the other demon's hair, then stooped down to swipe a finger through the runnels of blood oozing from the wounds on the demon's naked chest.
"Nothing like adding a pop of red to really bring an outfit to life. Sure, you'll agree."
With that, he tipped the other demon a wink and sauntered off with Juliet by his side.