Lucifer's Blessing ch 1

[note: dumb website...everything Satan says is supposed to be in bold. Gah. Whatever.]1

Chapter One: Hellbent2

“Up, ya sons of dogs! Come on come on, keep movin’!”
They stumbled over the hefty chains that bound their ankles. Whips cracked on shredded backs, cries, moans, screams, sang their stinging chords. They were unyielding as days, months, years, passed. How long would they be here? How long had they been already? There was no possible way to tell, or to find out. They would be here forever, forever bleeding, burning, in this horrific place known as Hell.
The rocks crowned the hollow basin, a green-eyed storm always brewing close overhead from some distant place. Time and time again, white lightning would cleave the sky, leaving red scars to map the atmosphere- had anyone but the lost sheep been here, they would have immediately leapt for cover, with an almost certain notion of the effort being hopeless. This was, of course, assuming they hadn’t already fled from the hissing geysers of flame or the multitude of nasty torturers that were currently employed there.
As the blackened clouds swirled dangerously overhead, wicked fire exploded from the ground below their feet. One moment you were pondering the physics of such heavy clouds swirling for centuries while there was no trace of wind, and the next you were being thrown into a chasm of hellfire, the ground below you exploding with almost no warning at all.
One of the residents, a drained boy looking in his teens, had done just that.
“Alright, up, boyo,” came a glowering voice from behind him. “Don’t got all day for you to bum around.” He climbed out of the magma, flesh dribbling off his bones before slowly healing over. He was wincing now, placing one hand on his arm, wishing it was cold. The hiss slipped by his ears again.
“Felt good, di’nit? Haw.” More of that detested sneer.
It was one of the many vulture-like demons that patrolled the place, carrying thorned whips and laughing terribly at all the soul’s fates. They were always amused, always somehow making Hell even more detestable.
It chuckled at the boy’s red flesh and torn back with merriment. He raised the whip to strike yet again.
Preparing himself, Dundalis roared in his mind, eyes narrowing as he looked back at the beast. It was only another feeling. Another sparse moment to endure.
As the whip fell, he screamed the saying to himself in his mind. It’s the only thing that ever kept him going, knowing the pain would go away for a moments rest. Unfortunately, this pattern usually turned into a cycle.
No, no…he couldn’t think like that. He couldn’t stand the torturous melody of this place, the screaming and the groaning, the fire and the blackness- he had to fight back.
It wouldn’t work. If anything, it would just hold them off for a few seconds. It might make things interesting, anyway.
He spun on the hooded, clawed, vulture and pounced. All at once, a wall of flame separated him from the demonic creature like a blockade. Mid-leap, the flames went screaming upwards and threw him violently back. His stomach churned at the sound of his own teeth clenching in agony, distracting the screams and yelps of the sinners around him.
The fire had a tendency to pick sides.
Damn this place, Dundalis thought loudly, heavily. Damn this terrible, wicked evil place.
The vulture men hawed with humor. They could hear his thoughts, yet another way to make torture all the more worse.
“It doesn’t get more damned than Hell, boy.” Emitted from a sharply-hooked beak. Dundalis’s body clenched, preparing to attempt another pounce on the bird. Again flame rose around him. His skin screamed and blackened, drying out and crumpling, just to be healed over in an instant.
“It’s no use boy,” he laughed, “you’ve already lost, like all those before you. And, like them, it’s time you /learn your place/.”
The vulture, tattered black wings chained to its back, leapt down from his rocky red pillar. Fire snapped behind him like a billowing crimson cloak, his taloned feet extending towards his victim. He landed directly on top of Dundalis’s head with his clawed raptor foot, crushing his skull against stone. Dundalis heard the crack. He felt himself dying within death, writhing on the floor, forever living, forever dying.
Hell.
He had misjudged it.
A rough heated beak pressed against his face, still flat against the rock. Blood scarlet eyes were mere inches from his, round wide and ugly, while his squinted in misery. “Up, boyo.” The bird repeated, rank breathe filled with rotting flesh brushing his cheek. Dundalis didn’t respond. The vulture man raised a fierce clawed hand, black talons reflecting the angry firelight…
Before his talons fell, a wall of fire separated Dundalis and the demon. The creature took several steps backwards out of shock, as the fire remained, stumbling. Dundalis’s head turned and he pushed his body up, staring through the red to the bird. He stared at the shocked face of his foe on the other side of the blaze. He seemed to be watching it as if he was seeing something besides fire, like a screen. The wall smoldered away and the screaming continued again.
Well. That was odd. The inferno had a nasty habit of leaping up from the rock in the most inopportune moment. Never before had they separated a sinner from his punishment. Dundalis glared coldly at the creature, waiting for its reaction, a sudden dreadful foreboding overcoming his heart.
The vulture’s cold round eyes looked away.
“He…wants to see you…” the demon mumbled dejectedly. Dundalis stared, confused. The bird’s eyes turned towards him. “You don’t want to keep him waiting. Trust me.” Dundalis’s eyes narrowed dangerously. Trust was the last thing on his mind.
“/Who/ wants to see me?” He said quietly, carefully.3

Dundalis felt himself rising, rising, red hued around him and heat exploding below. It was like being launched out of a brimstone cannon. He hated it when they did that, shoved his unwilling soul into a crater and letting the fire do the rest. And you could always hear them laughing like maniacs as you left them far behind.
His body leveled and he started falling again, arms flailing before him. After a moment or two of his gut in his throat, he landed with a sickly thud and crack, hands first, then head. He rolled several yards forwards, broken, like a doll. He felt himself die again, life slipping from beneath his cracked skull and spine. He stayed there, crumpled, lavishing his inability to move. He wanted to stay here for always. He wanted non-existence. He wanted out, he wanted an escape.
But, in the long run, there was no such thing.
He felt his marrow sew together and all his bones reconnect. It didn’t matter. He stayed flat down on the ground; hoping people would mistake him as an oddly colored rock. He was now on another cold stone level of Hell, one he’d never been on before, and it made him worry.
“ Up .” Came a hefty voice. He ignored it. He was dead, forevermore. Right? “ Rise, Dundalis .”
His name…he hadn’t heard it spoken in…he couldn’t remember how long.
“Hey sleepy head.” Came another voice from directly above him. It was sweet and young, sounding like water through all the smoke and fire. He felt a finger poke the top of his head. “Hellloo?” The young female voice continued. Dundalis looked up.
A seven year old girl, with blond curls and huge blue eyes stared directly back at him, squatted down. She had small freckles, and a pink-lipped smile that caught him quite off-guard.
“Hi. I’m Lucy.” She waved sweetly. Dundalis stared in utter bafflement.
“…Lucy…I thought…I mean I figured…” he stopped. “Wait. Are you supposed to be…Lucifer?” Instantly her eyes grew smaller and swiftly changed from an ocean blue, to heated red, then back to blue again. He could have sworn he heard a hiss. Either way, he could tell she despised the name and took a careful note not to say it again.
“That’s a common misconception.” She grabbed his hand in hers and tugged him back further into a cave. “Want to play with me?”
“I…I…” Dundalis was completely baffled. He allowed her to lead him in to a small white table. It wasn’t until after he had sat down in the one of the undersized chairs that he realized they were made of bone. Well he couldn’t really be sure. She didn’t give him much time to check.
“Tea?” she asked. He couldn’t help but smile and almost laugh. Tea? She seemed sweet enough. He nodded once, unused to such kindness, already speculating a trick but deciding to enjoy it anyway.
The tiny matching white teapot seemed almost too big for her to lift. A pale liquid poured into another white china dish. He nodded in thanks when she had finished pouring his, and lifted it to his lips.
Instantly he gagged and spit it back in the cup.
“This...is this gasoline?!” he asked frantically, recognizing the smell from the inferno. Her head tilted.
“So? You don’t like it?” She asked cutely. Dundalis opened his mouth to respond but was interrupted.
“ Enjoying ourselves, aren’t we? ” Came a disdainful voice from a corner he had yet to notice. Dundalis set the cup down. His head slowly turned…
/Oh/.
It was gigantic, making up almost the entire wall of the cave. Dundalis had to crane his head up just to see its entirety. It was terrifying, a skeleton with a thin stretch of rank flesh stretched over its ribs. All of the bones protruded, and on its front arms and legs, the skin was completely gone- bones with small amounts of rotten muscle clinging to the joints, and three long sharp black fingers gripped the ground before it, chained completely, and inescapably bound. Its feet were together and apparently wedged into the ground, rocks swallowed up the lower portion of its body. The thing’s face was like the skull of a ram, with long extended horns, eye sockets empty but emitting a fiery light which seemed to blink on its own. Black smoke and little tongues of the fire squeezed out from its mouth and around its protruding tusk’s like that of a boar’s. Dundalis leaned back as it’s tattered wings whisked open and shut again, blasting him with an unfamiliar wind. Dundalis was speechless.
“ Lucy, I must speak with him. ” It spoke without moving its mouth. The voice made the entire cave shake, not exactly a hiss, but not so much a deep rumble. Maybe both. A brackish smog puffed out its nostrils, like a smoker holding a casual conversation. The haze seemed to fill all the craters in the room, pulsing along with each breathe the thing took. He noticed the weird designs seeming etched into the bone, changing colors. Its claw’s clenched on the ground. Dundalis might’ve been able to wrap his arms around the very tip of the pinky claw. If he tried hard enough.
“Go ahead.” Lucy said formally, taking a petite sip of her tea, pinky raised.
“ …Alone would be best. ” The beast continued, head swaying slowly from one side to another, jaw snapping. Dundalis thought he saw a tail behind the beast, but it was hard to tell. Everything behind him was utter blackness, intangible. Smokey.
“Oh, don’t let me stop you.” She replied. Amazing, a little twiggy girl standing up the very definition of fear, looming hugely over them. Dundalis stared with utter terror. Lucy looked at him through her lashes. “That’s Satan. He’s a grumpy gus.” The creature growled like one whose throat was congested with phlegm, annoyed, canines clenched and a wild mane of spiky hair on its back needled upwards.
“But wait,” Dundalis interrupted, throat dry, “I thought Satan and Lucif-…Lucy…” he corrected himself carefully, “were the same person?” Well, he wasn’t completely sure. No one really cleared that bit up while they were hacking away at him. The beast calmed a little, still shifting back and forth.
“ I was indeed created by Lucy; I am of her old soul and inner being. Cast into Hell by the being known as God, she unwillingly condensed all her undeniable anger, hate, and fear into one single form. All that was left of the ordeal was an innocent child… ” Lucy’s head went on an axis.
“That was a boring story. You’re bad at telling stories. Can I try?” Satan sighed. Which sounded very peculiar.
“ If you wish. ”4

“Once upon a time, there was no sin or evil or anything, and everyone, including God, saw it was good. The angels celebrated the pureness of the world. There were only two humans, one named Adam, and one named Eve.” Lucy stopped and whispered “God let me name Eve.” She giggled, kicking her bare feet. “I was the cutest angel of all, right there next to God all day every day, with my cute little white wings and my pretty white sundress. I wasn’t little like I am now, not back then…” Her eyes trailed, but then she started again. “Everything was so happy. Sariel sang all the time and I would go listen to him.” She sighed longingly at the memory.
“But then something odd happened.” She continued. “God told Tobias, who’s another angel like I was, the one who’s supposed to guard the Tree of Life, to go save a baby sheep that had fallen and broken its leg. He wasn’t little back then either. Before anyone knew it, Adam and Eve had eaten from the tree and sin entered the world…” Her eyes drifted off. Dundalis’s brow furrowed. This part of the story stood out to him for some reason. Shaking off the feeling, he continued to listen intently. “Heaven was in chaos that day…I remember…
“Azrael was the only calm one. Michael was yelling at everyone. All the angels were shooting everywhere, I was scared and confused. I went to God, knowing I was his favorite, and that he would talk to me about anything.
“’What’s going on?’ I asked him. ‘Why did you send Tobias off like that if you knew what was going to happen?’ He didn’t really answer me, and I got really confused. It had all been so perfect…’why change the way things were? Why create sin and disease and hunger and suffering? Why? It doesn’t make sense. You shouldn’t have done that. I can’t follow a ruler who would do that to his /favorites/…’” She nearly hissed the last word, suddenly bitter.
Dundalis looked up. Did this child refuse to be silenced by anyone? Not Satan? Not God?
“As you can prolly tell, right then all the angels stopped and just kinda looked at me funny, in shock. Next thing I know I’m falling through space, through nebulas and around comets and stars, all the angels watching as I fell for weeks towards this barren rock. Turns out it was the same rock Adam and Eve were on. I landed so hard I went straight down into the center of the planet. I think I ended up making some dust cloud and killing off all the dinosaurs too, when I landed. Opps.” She smiled widely and giggled again, creepily. Satan and Dundalis were silent.
“So then I felt myself…changing…without God there and all alone…without my alliance to him, my power was drained and I became small.” She shuddered. “I felt so weak and defenseless…it was so hot I think I felt myself die…and with the last of my strength I separated this place from the earth, and made it it’s own spiritual realm. A place of my own to rule. And then for the first time I felt….something new, something…different….” Dundalis leaned in.
“I…felt…anger…”