High above the Infernal Realms, the Heavenly Host drifted in the vastness of Heaven, their radiance shining through the darkness below.
At their forefront was none other than the Messenger of the Lord.
Gaze fixed upon the Infernal Realms that had opened beneath the Silver City, Archangel Gabriel headed straight for the gathering storm, contemptuous words spilling from his lips. "How dare you taint the Silver City with your filth, Demon?"
A flash of lightning tore across the sky in response, briefly illuminating the space below and revealing the Demons scattered across the burning volcanic formations.
Some stood motionless upon the molten stone, seemingly unbothered by the heat and hazards surrounding them.
Others moved through the air, gliding just above the ground as their eyes flickered between strange, shifting colors. Yet they did not remain there. One by one, the Demons began to ascend, heedless of the warning in the Archangel's gaze.
They rose through the darkness toward Heaven, their forms climbing higher as the storm gathered above them, its clouds dimming even the Silver City's eternal light. At the same time, the darkness of the Infernal Realms seemed to rise with them, spreading outward like cancerous tumors seeking to engulf the Heavenly Host whole.
"Why wouldn't I dare?" The Demons echoed in unison, the wriggling worms jutting from faces, backs, and even the chests of headless Demons, causing the halos and wings of the Heavenly Host to flicker erratically in disgust. But they were merely fodder. Clones. The real perpetrator had yet to reveal himself, though he had never truly been hidden. He had arrived with the storm.
Gabriel narrowed his eyes as his supernatural vision pierced the rolling clouds, revealing a gargantuan beast carrying the Demon upon its back.
The Archangel silently raised the Sword of Azazel, willing it to wreath itself in a flame that was neither forgiving nor merciful, but violent and destructive as the Fury of the Lord, as the Beast lumbered forward.
"You think you can stop me? Alone? If it were Michael, or one of the Endless, perhaps I'd take this more seriously. But you…? Just you…? Call Daddy, Blower."
The Demon chuckled. It was neither soft nor gentle. The sound grated against the ears and gnawed at the soul.
"A King and a Messenger walk into a bar…"
Gabriel's lips twitched at the slight as billions of voices joined the laughter.
Another bolt of lightning split the dark, revealing an army so vast that, were each of them to spit but once, the Heavenly Host would drown in the waves. "You're a king of nothing. Even those you call subjects are little more than soulless, worm-ridden corpses, Butcher. To invite Father against one such as you would be the highest disgrace."
"Was that… Vanity I detected?"The Demon's grin widened ever slightly, tainted crimson light spilling from its maws. "Touched a nerve, did I?"
"Enough talk!"
Gabriel's Sword blazed, its light chasing back the darkness as he charged headlong into the storm.
Far beneath him, the Demons surged against the high walls of the Silver City.
The first to reach the Heavenly Host was a Demon clad in red, a lightning bolt emblazoned across its chest. Its hand vibrated with such impossible speed that it slipped through an Angel's armor as though neither plate nor flesh were there. The collision of Demonic Energy, Grace, and the Speed Force blew the Angel's chest apart in a bloom of Grace and rendered the Demon quite literally unarmed in the same instant, obliteraring the offending limb to its shoulder.
And yet, it did not seem particularly bothered…
It merely skipped onward as a red flash, tearing through the Heavenly Host, weaving between blades and bolts of Grace at speeds that would have twisted Space-Time into knots, had the Silver City been governed by such things.
On and on it went, even as its appendages were reduced, one by one, to bloody scraps.
Disarmed and legless, the Demon flopped onward on its belly, snapping at whatever Angel came within reach, biting even after its teeth shattered, and its lower jaw was torn loose and left dangling by thin strips of flesh.
Still, it kept going, worms writhing beneath its decaying flesh. A beam of light finally descended upon it, reducing the Demon to ash, but it was only one among countless such corpses parasitizing the Speed Force. In a fraction of a fraction of a nanosecond, the entire front collapsed into disarray as the Hosts of the Speed Force ravaged the Heavenly Host.
Following close behind came towering Demons clad in futuristic black fabrics, their eyes blazing like miniature suns. Beams erupted from their gaze, meeting the Angels' Grace shot for shot and filling the skies above the Silver City with colliding light.
The howling Horde surged right behind them…
Many changed shape as they battled, their flesh grey and decaying, though the lingering tint suggested it must have been green once.
A third stretched and unfolded into towering masses of tentacles, their limbs dividing again and again until there was scarcely a body left to slash at, much less organs for the Angels to inflect grevious wounds.
Another third swelled outward, flesh piling upon itself in pulsating folds as mouths tore open across their bodies and teeth erupted in every direction.
The rest reshaped themselves to meet whatever opposed them, growing wings to take to the air, multiplying limbs to scuttle across the walls, or simply collapsing onto newly formed appendages to drag themselves through the Heavenly Host.
Others wielded Magic with a proficiency that would've put most mortal practitioners to shame, hurling Spells into the Heavenly Host from the back of the advancing tide. Yet for all their differences, their hideous nature showed most clearly in their writhing shadows, within which countless wormlike silhouettes twisted, packed so densely that the darkness beneath each Demon bubbled like boiling water.
They coiled around the outlines of their vessels and poked from every edge.
Yet at times, even the shapes they assumed failed to conceal their wretched nature, shadowy worms squirming beneath and tracing ridges as they moved, poking through pores and wounds and eyes and crevices, slipping into gums or peering from empty sockets.
Up until this point, Heaven had seen its fair share of battles and monstrosities, but this… This violation of the Natural Order invoked fear even in the mightiest of its warriors. Certainly not in the Hornblower, though. Not even after he was lashed at by the Leviathanic Beast and bombarded with red bolts so thick they could have consumed entire solar systems.
Unfortunately, though, the Spirit might be willing, but the Archangel found his Vessel wanting.
He winced in pain, biting back the grunts that would have betrayed the Lord and him, ducking and weaving beneath the bolts of red and lashes of wind, until he found himself just above the Leviathan's neck, behind the Son of Trigon.
He could see it already.
He could see victory within reach…
And so he shot forth like a shooting star, his light tearing across the stormy clouds, only for the Demon to grab its own head and twist it around with both hands, breaking its spine and tearing muscles from bones as it forced its neck farther and farther beyond anything its stolen flesh was ever meant to endure, until all six of its eyes, dripping blood down its cheeks, finally met Gabriel's with mirth.
It was an act of mockery as much as it was one of terror, and to his horror, Gabriel found it successful, for what manner of creature would do such a thing to itself?
What manner of abomination would break its own spine and tear apart its own flesh merely to turn and look at him?
What could possess so little regard for its own well-being that it would… Mutilate itself for no apparent advantage?!
"In the Name of my Father!" He roared, as though that'd change the outcome. As if his unbroken Spirit would grant him the victory he so desperately desired.
And if this were any other story, perhaps it would've been enough.
Perhaps he'd have won…
Instead, its blackened claws reached for his Sword, which had incinerated Demons as old as Time itself, and closed around the blade before yanking him forth.
Then, and only then did its body catch up with its head, twisting after the already-broken neck, until the wretched thing faced him once more.
Its free hand clawed around Gabriel's throat, dragging him closer as the Demon leaned in.
"Cool toy…" With a violent backhand, the Demon tore the Messenger's lower jaw from his head, leaving his bloody tongue to dangle freely beneath what remained of his face. The impact, combined with the vice grip around the Sword's tang wrenched it from his grasp and sent him tumbling back into the clouds.
His wings flickered erratically as he struggled to arrest his fall, yet his eyes never dared leave it.
But the Demon hadn't pursued.
It hardly spared him another glance, bringing the Sword of Azazel to eye level instead, turning the weapon this way and that and inspecting the blade like a child that had gotten its hands on something it found jusr… Mildly interesting. Then it placed the Sword against its chest, where its heart would've been had it been mortal, and pushed.
Fire erupted from its pores.
Fire that would've laid low cosmic horrors of unimaginable scale.
Fire that died, extinguished by its Shadow. Were it not for the intense glow of its eyes, the Messenger of God would have lost sight of the Demon within the Darkness.
"Call Daddy, Gabe…"
It singsonged, slowly but surely gaining upon him, and the Darkness followed.
At first, Gabriel mistook it for the shifting of the storm, until he watched the light surrounding the Demon recede, swallowed inch by inch by the Shadow pooling around, behind, above, beneath, carefully obscuring its form as it remained just shy of the Light.
And then… Another stretch of illumination disappeared, and suddenly it stood at the new cusp, closer than before despite Gabriel having seen no movement that could have carried it there.
"Call Daddy…"
It repeated, sounding a little less patient this time while the Shadow swelled, consuming yet another stretch, and another… And another! And another!!! AND ANOTHER!!!
The Darkness gained faster still, drinking the Light in greater and greater gulps as the Demon flickered along its advancing edge, there and there and there, its six eyes flashing whenever the boundary shifted, until at last there was no more Light to consume… Nor distance left to shorten. Where Gabriel's path had been unobstructed a moment before, six bleeding eyes now stared directly into his own. A single hand reached out from the Dark and yanked his hair back to meet its eyes, but there was no possible way the hand could have been the Demon's. Certainly not from that angle…
"Call Daddy." It glared at the defeated Archangel, and though its eyes might be but glowing orbs, there was simply no mistaking the unfathomable hatred and madness swirling within as it barked, "NOW!"
As much as it wounded him to admit, the Silver City would surely fall at this rate, and so, Gabriel pleaded, "FATHER!!!" From above, the Source of the Source shone upon a darkening Silver City, chasing away with ease the Dark against which the Hornblower had struggled so desperately.
"At last…"
With but a swat of his hand, the Demon attempted to toss the Archangel away again, only for it to feel as though he'd struck an immovable rock. Not that any rock could've endured such a blow, but there seemed no better way to describe it.
For the first time in their admittedly short exchange, Gabriel's Light dwarfed the Dark, forcing it back even as the shadows continued to writhe and wiggle restlessly beneath the radiance. Slowly, the Hornblower turned, his detached jaw knitting itself back into place, only to find the Demon glaring at him with naked spite.
Yet he could tell the hatred was not meant for him, but for the Source from which his newfound strength was derived. "How long will you continue to elude me, Presence?! Show yourself! Show yourself, or I shall sink your City in a deluge of angelic blood!" For once, there was a change in its expression. Gone was the bemused smirk that had frayed his nerves, leaving behind a look of such ancient grievance that Gabriel could imagine it only upon those who believed the Lord Himself had wronged them beyond forgiveness.
But Gabriel was never one to feel sympathy, much less for a creature that had torched the Walls of the Silver City and laid waste to the Heavenly Host, and so he struck. He struck with such force that it caved in the Demon's chest and launched it across a distance so vast that it might have stretched from one end of a universe to the other.
He immediately gave chase, snatching up the discarded Flaming Sword as it blazed to life with the fury of the Most-High. Bolstered, the Messenger of the Lord compressed enough Grace to birth several more Big Bangs into the Flaming Sword, then brought it down with all his might, only for the Demon's own blade to meet it head-on.
Its was a simple, rustic blade, long and narrow and almost offensively plain compared to the Sword of Azazel, forged from some dull grey metal polished just enough to catch the light along its edges.
There was no leather wound around the hilt, no jewels set into the pommel, no ancient inscription or ornamentation to allude to any lineage or purpose.
The grip was nothing more than bare metal shaped for the hand, separated from the tang by a twisted, asymmetrical crossguard of equally unremarkable make.
Altogether, the weapon resembled less the weapon of a king than a slab of sharpened steel someone had hammered into usefulness and never bothered to beautify.
And yet, it greedily feasted upon the Flame, transforming the holiest of Grace into putrid black energy. A deeper inspection through his graced eyes revealed a well of Souls, nay, of Demons wrought into its making, the strongest of which pulsed with such Greed that only the Emotional Entity representing the Aspect, or the Demon of Avarice himself, could possibly possess.
"Mammon?" Gabriel gasped in recognition. Heaven rarely concerned itself with the sewage filth festering in Hell, but rumors travelled far and wide, and with all the Magicians, Exorcists, and Knights affiliated with Heaven, even those Gabriel believed beneath the Heavenly Host's notice were bound to reach them eventually.
One such rumor had spoken of the Fall of Mammon, though to see a Lord of Hell reduced to thoughtless energy and wrought into so unassuming a Blade was shocking enough.
More shocking still was the taint of his wayward Brother, to whom his Flaming Sword had once belonged. 'Azazel too?' Gabriel had never possessed any love for the Angel of Sacrifice. Or so he had thought, until he saw hisEssence weakly pulsating within the depths of the Blade.
"They spoke of a Demon that had rendered the Fourth Circle a barren wasteland and forever changed its metaphysical energy from Greed to Hatred and Terror… A Demon who wreaked havoc upon the filth." The words were devoid of pity for those who had fallen short of his Father's expectations.
It was merely an acknowledgement born of curiosity.
If its targets had been the filth, why then had it brought itself to the Silver City's doorstep? Had it simply run out of things to kill?
His thoughts drifted to the aggrieved look it had worn moments earlier, only to be cast aside beneath iron-hard determination. "You'll find that the Silver City is under the protection of Powers far greater than the Lowly and the Unworthy, Demon. Its Walls shall not fall today, and neither shall I…"
"Heh… What are you without Daddy's protection?" It spat contemptuously. "But fine… If He will not show Himself, then I shall reduce the Silver City to dust."
"I would like to see you try…" Gabriel raised the Flaming Sword challengingly, only to stiffen when he heard Him. His eyes wandered, almost involuntarily, toward the empty stretch above before lowering to the Demon's chest. The Lord had commanded him to pierce its Heart. Not that Gabriel would have done otherwise, but there was pressure from above now. "I shan't disappoint, Father."
Outside the epicenter, the Heavenly Host, emboldened by the Almighty, renewed their assault upon the army of corpses and the Leviathan, finally finding purchase against the Adversary. Neither the Demon nor Gabriel paid it any heed, though, far too occupied with one another. Matching each other blow for blow, strike for strike, they finally ended in a clash in which Gabriel would surely have lost, if not for the surge of strength granted by his Heavenly Father.
He roared, swinging with such force that even the Emptiness itself was cleaved open, nearly bisecting the Demon in the same motion.
Seeing it hurtle toward the Silver City, completely open to attack, Gabriel pursued, only for red bolts to swarm him from every direction, locking his muscles in spasms and briefly severing his connection to Grace. 'Filthy Beast!'
Blinding beams erupted from his eyes and tore into the Leviathan, instantly searing half of its enormous body to ash.
And yet it persisted.
Outside, the Demon hauled itself from the gigantic crater left by the impact and growled through gritted teeth. Its gaze flicked toward its Beast, then toward the arm dangling from its shoulder by little more than a strip of flesh.
It spat a broken tooth from its mouth, then opened its jaws so wide that the flesh along its cheeks nearly tore apart before clamping down around the head of one unfortunate Angel. Its fangs punched straight through the glistening silver helmet, spilling blood and brain matter into its waiting maws.
Almost at once, its wounds began to mend, though at a pace far slower than it was accustomed to. Then it charged back into the fight, surrounded by billions of piloted corpses that hurled themselves at Gabriel from every possible angle, if only to arrest the strike that would've sundered the Beast's very Essence. Under any other circumstance, Gabriel might have found such loyalty respectable, alas…
"Begone!"
A single slash was all it took for them to perish, but they had accomplished their purpose, which was to die and buy the Demon the time it needed. Above, its red fist swelled until it was the size of a galaxy and swatted toward him, only for Gabriel to cleave its fingers apart. But it seemed he had never been the true target. Not entirely, at least.
Instead, the enormous hand curled around the Beast as it rapidly shrank, cradling the corrupted Elemental with such adoration and protectiveness that the Archangel had not thought the Demon capable of. It was a shameful thing to do, especially for one as himself, but as the humans put it, all was fair in war, especially one where the Silver City itself was the prize, and so Gabriel continued his relentless assault upon the Beast, forcing the regenerating Demon to meet him head-on.
And meet him, it did, its colossal fist seizing the Beast before the arm went taut and ripped the Demon across the intervening space, hauling it into Gabriel's path.
"COWARD!!!"
It roared.
'There!' He thought, the Sword of Azazel already poised for its exposed, blackened Heart. 'I dedicate this strike to you, Father…'
Hurriedly, the Demon brought its arms up to protect its chest, only for his Flaming Sword to pierce through both forearms, break through its ribs and find purchase in its Heart. It glared at him hatefully even as its body erupted into Holy Flame it could no longer extinguish.
'Coward…'
It mouthed the word, and shame ballooned within Gabriel even as pride surged alongside it, the two emotions warring bitterly as he stared upon the victory he had wanted and suddenly found far less glorious than he had imagined.
He grunted as it retaliated by stabbing his stomach with its claws, Corruption surging from its black blood and latching onto his Grace. And then it screamed, its Psychic Shriek birthing and collapsing entire universes of unimaginable horrors. And he with it. In an instant, it shed its dark claws, red skin and erupting eyes, while Gabriel himself felt as though he were falling from Grace.
His hair was black…
It had always been dark, ever since the moment of his Creation, but his wings were not and should never be. They were white, and pure, and beautiful, yet as he turned to look at them, the Messenger was horrified to find them darkening into a shade of black that seemed to swallow all Light. Where the Demon was baptized and returned the humanity it had long discarded, he… He was falling?
"No… Nononono! Save me, Father!" The Archangel pleaded desperately, despite knowing better than most that the Lord did not cast His children from His Light. They fell by their own hands. And still Gabriel begged, even while the Light of Providence began to forsake him. What would become of the Silver City if he too fell? Michael was God knew where, Lucifer was bedding mortal women in what would be the quaint city of Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Archangels were either preoccupied, indisposed, or caught up in matters he had never thought to ask about.
Why'd He allow this?! What transgressions had Gabriel committed to warrant such a Fate?!!
'Why?'
Had he done not His biddings?!
'Why?!'
Had he not stood vigil while his siblings, Angels and Endless alike, warred and killed and fucked?!! A burst of unadulterated Hatred consumed in his heart, fed by the Pride of one who had long considered himself closest to the Lord, and with it, his Fall hastened.
"WHY?!!"
Gabriel's roar shook the Silver City to its foundation, and for the very first time since the Beginning of Creation, Heaven was deprived of its last Archangel. They had won, yes… The corpses, without the Demon piloting them, had begun to drop like flies.
And yet, they had lost all the same.
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A/N: As promised, here's the first Chapter of Book 2. I know, I know, so many questions, but it'll all be revealed in due time. Hellbred will return in a few months time, though if you wish to read ahead, you can here: P 4 tr 3on . C0m (slash) Regularrr