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[b][u][center]Heaven Damned 4

The Damnation

For DuskCypher

By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]

“Is she –”

“She’s gone, my lord,” Lucifer said, shaking his head as he looked at the children in his arms. They squirmed, the male reaching out for the empty husk of the vixen on the table, the other looking around for the new voice. “Completely.”

“…And the children?”

“Alive, and healthy.”

“Give them to me.”

Despite the order, the panther felt a hint of hesitation at the back of his mind. Already, he felt a strange connection to the pair of tigers. They felt…precious, in a way, and he had to make himself turn and offer them to the striped, white-suited feline behind him. God took them in hand, holding them close for a moment, and the panther saw a hint of the love that he had always remembered from his lord and master.

And yet…

There was something that he had always missed, something that he saw in the tightness of God’s eyes as he took one after the other. Had it always been there and he’d missed it, or was it new?

[i]It isn’t new,[/i] the panther thought. [i]He had that look with Gabriel…[/i]

And with other angels, now that he thought about it. Lucifer wondered how he could have missed it all those times, how God had managed to drop the mask of love and leave him believing it was still there.

[i]Protect them…watch over them…[/i]

Lucifer shook his head at the ghostly echo of Lilith’s last request. For now, he would put it out of his mind. For now –

The first shock rocked the realm beneath their feet. Lucifer flared his wings, but God stood still, weathering the shake. As the first rise and fall faded, a second arrived, sheering one of the walls of the Birthing Chamber against the other and leaving a crack behind that was so wide that one could see out to the red skies beyond. Lucifer stared, his eyes widening for a moment before he turned to his lord once more.

“We should go,” he said.

“Yes. Yes. There is nothing for us here,” God said.

He felt the power of God in the air. There was nothing of Lilith’s will left behind, no great power that might have stopped them. If anything, Hell itself was letting loose, breaking down and opening itself up little by little. Lucifer wasn’t even connected to it and he could feel the quakes going right to the borders of the realm, ripping it apart and leaving gashes in the walls between it and the other worlds.

And as the quakes continued, the screams of the demons outside filled his ears. The archangel knew that he should feel no sympathy for them; their ‘freedom’ was uncontrolled hedonism under the eyes of God, but…

He looked once more at the husk that Lilith had left behind. Her body was already changing, the white fur becoming almost crystalline at the tips of her ears and spreading. Over time, it would become something else, something no longer even vaguely god-like. And when it was done –

“Come.”

His legs moved on their own as his master called him. Lucifer stepped through the golden arches of God’s power and felt the light of Heaven welcome them home.

At once, they were surrounded by the hymns of the lower angels, and there was a soothing sensation like gentle hands running from his shoulders down his spine. It was a warm embrace to him and the other archangels, and he knew from the sudden relaxation that ran through the tiger’s shoulders that God felt it even more keenly.

Yet, at the same time, he saw other things that he had missed before. He saw the smirk that curled at the corner of the feline’s lips for the slightest of moments, and he knew that there was more there than just satisfaction. There was…condescension, and patronizing disdain.

For all that God had created them, there was something in the tiger that looked down on them. Another little crack formed between them, and Lucifer had a harder time putting that one out of his mind.

“God?”

“What?” the tiger asked.

“Hell. What is going to happen to it now?”

“It will fall. Just as it should have done a long time ago.”

“Fall?”

“Into nothingness. Lilith is gone. If we’re lucky, her death will take all those demons with her, and damnation take them all.”

It wouldn’t be damnation, Lucifer knew, but the Void itself. The entirety of Hell would be swallowed up, and even those that still had their souls – and Lilith had granted souls to many – would be destroyed. The Void had only been kept at bay with Lilith’s power, just like Heaven had the Void kept at bay with God’s power. Without the vixen at the helm, without her presence to stabilize it, there was nothing that would keep it from fracturing completely.

He looked at the children again. They were…sleeping, he supposed, though he couldn’t tell if it was natural or not. Considering the sheer frenzy that the little male had been working himself into, he wouldn’t have been surprised if God had exerted himself to force them into slumber to make things easier.

The more that he thought about it, the more that he realized that God had done that many times. Not putting someone to sleep, not literally, but making them…ignore things. The conveniences in his laws, the way that everything benefited him, everything flowing upward rather than downward. That was the way that God lived, but almost nobody saw it.

Except him. Now, he saw it…and he wondered at how he had not seen it before. He had seen the flaws in the system below, but God had always told him to look for ways to solve it, always keeping him looking down at the bottom of the system rather than looking up.

[i]What would I have seen if I looked up?[/i]

Even with the distance between Heaven and Hell, he could feel the microtremors. The other angels would not, and he doubted that the other archangels would notice for a time; they were not so sensitive as he was, nor were they aware of what had happened in the same way. But they would feel it, eventually.

“Will the children be alright?” Lucifer asked.

“They will sleep for a while. I have to…I have to think.”

“Do you need my insight, my lord?”

“No. No, I…I need to be alone.”

It was a rare moment to see his master so unfocused, and perhaps that was why the tiger wanted to be alone. Lucifer had already been ‘privileged’ to see his lord distracted, even hurt. He doubted that any other angel would ever have the same right, and he doubted that God would allow him a full memory of the day once things had settled down. If he was allowed to remember that God could feel grief, could feel anything –

No. He doubted that would go well. Not at all.

“Then, I will keep myself busy.”

“Yes. Do that. Take care of things for me,” God said. “I will make a nursery or…something.”

Something that Lucifer imagined he would have to touch up to make sure that it was still viable for the children. Something that would need fixing and upkeep. Something that would keep things comfortable for the children.

[i]…This is going to be a great deal more troublesome than I thought.[/i]

Bowing his head, the white-robed archangel made his way from the clouds at the edge of Heaven to the great library, wherein was stored all the knowledge of Heaven. Most angels were not allowed to look at most of the archives, but there were privileges to being among the first of the archangels. The entirety of creation and its knowledge was there for him, and he had much to learn.

#

Lucifer had spent three hours among the books, poring over them and looking through whatever God had managed to gather about the creation of Heaven and the other realms around the great bar in the middle of existence. Little by little, he managed to piece together the tidbits that would let him fix things.

He had felt the quakes continuing all that time, and he knew that Hell was close to rattling itself apart. Lilith’s last words had obliged him to care for the children and her World Begotten, and so he had little obligation to care about Hell itself, save for one thing: the demons within would seek any escape, and the rips and tears could take them to the new world.

[i]How to fix this…how to fix this…[/i]

God and whoever had stood with him in the beginning had a number of theories on that. The power of the different realms of creation lay in their gods, their creators, and that power ran by faith. In that respect, it stood to reason that the power of Hell was shattered with the passing of its god, and that explained the quakes. Yet, at the same time, that didn’t explain the stability of the World Begotten, for they had no intelligence, no understanding of the world around them, and certainly no god to put their faith in.

It took him much time and thought to understand why that worked. The World Begotten was stable in its mortality because it was born of two gods, each of which had poured something physical into the world itself. The ‘Big Bang’ that had created that realm had been born of God and Lilith, and while lacking a creator god the way that Heaven and Hell did not, it was physically made of their substance. It would degrade over time, of course, as there was nothing to bind it together forever or refresh where it had started, but it would hold together stably until then.

Hell, on the other hand, had been maintained by its god, and now, there was no god. Or was there?

Lucifer leaned back in his seat. On either side of him lay a small mountain of books, discarded as he read through them and forming a pseudo-throne of parchment, leather binding, and cloud fluff between the pages. Bookmarks torn of the world around him and formed into substance stuck out in random intervals, forming a chaotic piece of furniture that framed his body to either side, and his wings arched out over them like great shadows. The library itself gleamed about him, casting almost no shadow anywhere; he was all too aware of the shadow that he himself created by being in it.

At that moment, he felt as if he was in a place meant to be more of a monument than a resource. Everything felt tailor-made to remind everyone that stepped into the library that they were trespassing on a place of beauty, that their presence marred it and made it less fantastic, and that it was better to be observed rather than touched. It was…starkly wrong, in his view, and he felt worse than he had upon entering.

[i]Lilith, what did you do to me?[/i]

Lucifer rubbed his face, pinching the bridge of his muzzle as he remembered what his life used to be. He had been an advisor, a speaker, and a persuasive one at that. He had managed the angels beneath him, guided them, pushed them to be better and better. Their pride in themselves, in God, came from him. His silver tongue had encouraged them to love themselves and what they had become because of God, and that, in turn, had brought more worship and love to his master.

And now…

Now, he wondered if he had been fooled himself. If his tongue was silver, then perhaps God’s was gold.

Once more, he shook his head, looking back at the book. His theory, based off the fact that the World Begotten was stable from the physical presence of two gods’ leavings, was that Hell could be at least partially stabilized with the corpse of its dead god. She had, he remembered, been tapped into Hell itself during the birth of her children, and that meant that there had been, at one time, an intensely powerful link between the two of them.

If he could reestablish that link, if he could install her in Hell proper, then perhaps it would be enough. Perhaps.

[i]If I go now…[/i]

God would be busy, at least for a little while longer. Lucifer took a deep breath as he got to his feet, looking down at his hands. The black fur running down his arms, covering him from head to toe, had always been a luscious black stain. It had shimmered in the light of Heaven, and it still did.

The difference now was the single red line that arced around the ring fingers of each hand. It was so faint, so barely discernible, that he would never have noticed it under the light of day. It was only here, in a library that was so bright and so intense, that he could make it out against the darkness of his natural fur. It was the same red that came from Hell, and he had no idea what it meant. Was it a gift from Lilith? A curse for his more aware thoughts of his master? Or was it something else entirely?

It didn’t matter. The red linked him to Hell in a way that he had always been linked to Heaven, and it would get him there without needing God to open the way. Lucifer focused on that red, and in a moment of inspiration, held tight to his pride.

For a brief moment, pain fell upon him. An angel, let alone an archangel, was forbidden to take too much pride in oneself. The virtue of Heaven, humility, was supposed to be theirs. To give away, to pass aside praise, to see oneself as less than those around them: that was their place. But Lucifer had never entirely gotten that, and his pride, his understanding of his worth, had made Heaven better.

And as he held that pride, as he looked at himself as someone worth something, someone that was better than his station, he felt the realms bend around him. Not light, not darkness, but a deep red like the blood of mortals opened a portal before him, and he stepped through.

Hell crashed around him. He had emerged in what had been the Birthing Chamber, but a few hours of constant destruction had rendered the palace that held it nothing but rubble. The skies danced with yellow lightning strikes, each one exploding with the power of celestial obliteration where it landed. The great fields of Hell were broken open, with both stars and lava streaking through the gaps. The skies themselves were filled with demons that desperately flew for the heights, hoping to find a rent in the skies and break through, but most were shattered with the flying bolts of chaos and sent back to the ground below.

The great cities of Hell had been crushed. From here, he could see. From here, he could feel far more than he felt he should. Lust and Greed were shattered, their bodies and possessions stripped from them by the destruction. Envy had lasted longer, feeding on its own hunger for the possessions and power of the others, but it had little left of itself. Sloth had slept through its own starvation as the world had collapsed around it, and Gluttony had all but died in the first few quakes.

Only Pride and Wrath still stood with any strength, though he could feel them shifting as well. They prompted the flights of the demons going for the skies, feeding them the rage that it took to challenge the dancing bolts of lightning, and it empowered those that held tight to the lands that had sustained them for the entirety of their existence. Rage kept those aloft in the sky, and Pride allowed those that stayed to hold tight and never let go.

It was strange indeed to see the powers of the vices used in such a way. He had always imagined them as something broken, something too lowly to give anything good, but seeing them now…

Lucifer pushed that out of his mind. He walked over to the fallen body of Lilith. She was half-transformed now, her body more crystal than flesh and fur. It would continue, according to the records, until she became the core of a star, and at that point, she would explode, dying forever and taking her world with her. Those that had managed to leave might survive, if they reached a realm that was capable of sustaining them. Those that were not able to get free…well, not even Pride would save them.

He lifted her in his arms, feeling the stiffness of her body against him. What had once been a god so lively that she had changed everything in her presence was now nothing more than a decoration. Shaking his head, the panther took to the skies. The bolts of lightning flew around him, some arcing his way, others avoiding him. His eyes glowed brightly, and for the first time, he seized hold of the power of Pride for himself.

Somehow, it told him where the bolts would fall. The panther twitched his wings in minute fashion, barely adjusting his flight again and again. Each time, he felt the lightning searing the air around him, and each time, he could feel it take a feather or three with it. Even his power couldn’t contain this. Not for long.

Further, faster, farther he flew. Bit by bit, his wings were stripped, until finally he reached his destination.

An island stood out from the lava lakes that had filled one of the great plains of Hell. It was blasted with heat, the ground cracked and broken from the lava around it. Even he could barely stand to be there, and yet, he had to. Lucifer stomped the ground, resorting to the power of Hell, giving himself to the vice of Wrath for the strength to break open the ground. A rough grave appeared in the red earth, and he lowered the crystalized body of the vixen into it.

Huffing and panting, he dragged the earth over her once more, another quake almost throwing him over her, and the one after it nearly tossing him into the lava. The black-furred feline stumbled around, eventually dragging enough of the ground over her once more to make it a grave.

Only the magic was left.

Lucifer gritted his teeth as he drew a seven-pointed star along the grave. He felt for the remnants of each of the lands of Hell, drawing them together to Lilith’s grave. Each point was like a compass, drawing out a map of the realm that surrounded the grave itself. He marked each one with the rune that stood for the vice, mixing the power of Hell with his knowledge of Heaven. It was a hybrid magic, something no angel should have ever lowered themselves to use, but there was nothing else that would be strong enough to hold this place together.

With the last rune laid over Pride, the quakes stopped. He slumped forward, falling on his hands and knees as he panted for breath. Minutes passed as he recovered his stamina, and the lightning stopped falling in that time.

When he could finally look up, he saw that the tears in the sky were mostly healed. Here and there, he saw holes that had not disappeared, and he knew that there would be rips and tears throughout the realm of Hell. The damage of the quakes had been too great, too severe. It would have links to many other realms, now, both to the World Begotten and perhaps even to Heaven. If so, he doubted that God would appreciate that.

He doubted that God would appreciate what he had done, either. The realm of Hell had been Heaven’s…not quite enemy, but rival for some time. Having it held together would go against his lord’s plan.

He would have to come up with a good lie for this one. And the fact that he would have to sell a lie to God himself was an irony that was not lost upon him.

#

“What did you do?”

Lucifer supposed that he should have expected that question to be the first. Not what had happened to him – for the red lines on his fur should have made it clear that something had – nor whether he was alright. God wouldn’t be so kind as that. No, it was only ‘What did you do?’ What had he done that he hadn’t gotten permission for?

The panther shook his head as he bowed at the waist. He had been summoned before God’s throne. It was a ‘meager’ thing, as thrones went. Made of white marble-cloud with striations of gold through it, it had a richness to it, but it was short, squat, meant to look almost more like a judge’s chair rather than a throne of kings.

It was a false humility, in his eyes. He could see the pride in it, now, the wealth that it displayed and the power that it offered the one that sat in it. He wondered how he had been fooled by it for as long as he had.

“I preserved the balance of the World Begotten, my lord,” Lucifer said as he raised his head again.

“By preserving Hell?”

“By keeping the demons from fleeing it.”

“Hmmph. They were on the verge of death, destruction. What was the point of saving it?”

“Would you prefer that they fled to your second world and started making their own mortals?” he asked, cocking his head to the side. “If sufficient numbers got through, my lord, they would have done that, and more. The creations that you had left would have been completely subservient, rather than coexisting with the ones that did get through. And from there…”

He left it unstated, knowing on some level that God would take it further than he ever could. The demons would already be likely breeding partners for the mortals, once things were taken further, but it would be less bad than what would have happened if there’d been an even greater exodus. As it stood, the World Begotten would be its own world, not a second Hell. If the breaking of Hell had gone any further, if more demons had taken to the skies…

God shook his head. The tiger got to his feet, his suit looking tighter than usual as he paced before the throne. Lucifer said nothing as God looked off into the distance, likely looking down at the world itself.

“Lilith…did many things to that world. She poisoned it. It will be a miracle if my creations don’t become like the demons themselves as it is.”

“Indeed.”

“I didn’t need things to get worse.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“You…did well, Lucifer.”

It was a begrudging statement, but it was enough to tell him that his lie had been bought. That was something, at least. He didn’t let the relief show on his face as God turned to him.

“She has…a good resting place?”

“A respectful one, yes.”

“…That will do,” he said, shaking his head. “I didn’t care for her, of course, but…she did mother my children. And if nothing else, she made them strong. Stronger than they otherwise would have been.”

Lucifer nodded. God sighed.

“I have another task for you. Go down to the Garden that she made. I want you to poison the tree. Let it die, and we can start anew.”

“…Poison the tree?”

“The mortals won’t be of any use with intelligence and free will. Not the way that they are right now. I need to perfect the design, fix them. Make them better. Then – then they can fulfill my designs. My plans.”

Lucifer didn’t let his disdain show on his face, but it was a struggle. At every turn, God seemed to find another way to show that he couldn’t be trusted. Every time that Lucifer thought that he’d plumbed the depths of what he’d missed in the past, God found another way to throw another wrench in his understanding. Was there no depravity that his master wouldn’t fall to?

“And the mortals?” he asked.

“Once the tree is poisoned, I’ll allow them to eat from it. They’ll think it is a gift. What better way to serve me than to go out quietly, without a word, so I can start fresh?”

“…As you say, my lord.”

He turned, already making the decision to ignore God’s orders. If he wanted the mortals removed, then he wanted to start over with the world as a whole. And that meant that he would want to bring in something different, something untouched by Lilith’s last blessing. And if he wanted that, then it would stand to reason that the best thing to do was to oppose that.

[i]I’m signing my death warrant here…[/i]

And yet, he could do nothing else. It was as if the red marks on his fur were already pulling him along, driving him to a course he could never turn away from.

“Lucifer.”

“…Yes?” he asked, turning to look over his shoulder.

“The children are growing quickly. When you return, I want to introduce you to them properly.”

“I…look forward to that,” the panther said. “Have you named them?”

“The girl will be Mercy. The boy will be Jesus.”

“…I will return as swiftly as I can.”

#

What followed was a seven-year lie. Seven years in which he managed to come up with lies to fool God into thinking that the tree needed time to die. Seven years in which the children came of age and he spent time with them. Seven years in which he saw Mercy become ever more God’s creature, and in which he fell in love with Jesus.

In those seven years, Lucifer fought to keep his promise, but more and more corners had to be cut over the years. He had been bound to protect the World Begotten, Mercy, and Jesus, but as time passed, he had to make decisions on which he protected most. Mercy, as God’s daughter and his favorite, was often pushed in ways that poisoned her, but she was the least willing to be corrected, believing that the more that she followed God’s rules, the more that he would love her. She became something almost sadistic, as prideful as one could be without the touch of Hell, and as much of a hypocrite as her father.

Little by little, Lucifer shaped his response to his promise to protect the World Begotten and Jesus first, Mercy second. She still had his protection, the shadow of his wing falling on her indiscretions in the World Begotten when God wasn’t paying attention, but it was a shallow thing compared to what he offered Jesus in their many meetings in the shadows and what he did to protect the World Begotten from God’s wrath.

And at the end of those seven years, when he finally managed to persuade the drone woman to touch the fruit and eat it, and then share it with her mate, there was no lie that he could tell to protect himself.

God banished him from Heaven, and with him, a great number of the angels that had come to see the truth of their master. Lucifer fell, and as he was forced through the portals from Heaven to the great red realm below, he burned. His robe came loose, seared to nothingness, and his wings cracked and burned from the fall.

All around him, the other angels were afflicted as bad as worse. Some fell with screams, others in stoic silence, but they all knew that their fate was sealed. God had turned his back on them, and they were cast out.

They hit the cracked, burning earth of Hell one after another. Some died on impact, or at least, allowed themselves to. Others groaned and whimpered as the reality of their fate truly set in. Others, like Lucifer himself, dragged themselves to their knees, and then to their feet, looking around the world that they had been cast to.

His spell long ago had pulled the realm back together, but he could tell that it had never truly recovered. The seven Vices had been strong enough to keep Hell from flying apart, but the surviving true demons were not sufficient in number to actually bring prosperity back to it. Even with all the angels tossed out of Heaven, he could feel the lack of true numbers here. The great destruction at Lilith’s death had indelibly marked the realm.

In some ways, the lower population was good. The blasted realm doubtlessly would have struggled to support the old population of demons, and…and…

Lucifer clenched his hands at his sides, slowly turning his head to the heavens. The great hole that had banished him and his from one realm to another had closed, and his body [i]ached.[/i] A great pain wracked him from head to toe, nearly throwing him to the ground, and only his own fury and thwarted pride kept him aloft. The sheer pain grew stronger and stronger, and with it, he let the vices of Hell rise with it.

“Lilith…damn you for this…”

She had bound him with his promise. That last request had been a spell, and his agreement had been her key to lock him to it. She had bound him, changed him, charged him to follow through with his promise to protect every one of her children, from her babies to her world.

And now, he couldn’t.

The panther screamed at the top of his lungs, his arms out to the side, his burned wings seared and ragged as the heated winds of Hell blew them out behind him. His anguished shrieks deafened the angels at his sides, sending them falling to their knees and covering their heads from the shrill sound.

“Lilith! Damn you!”

The scream was tinged with tears, but they burned on his cheeks, turning to steam as soon as they fell. He screamed again and again as the pain kept rising until he was so furious, so full of rage, that he picked up a boulder and threw it.

A mountain range was leveled in that moment, and the pent-up mountains roared their fury with him, erupting and bursting with heat and destruction. It was only the possibility of it washing down the slopes and burying his few allies that pulled him to his senses, and he flew at a speed that was greater than anything he had as an archangel.

As he gathered his allies to him, his fallen angels and the curious demons that came to see the newcomers began to mingle. They were different to each other, made by different gods but with the same home. They would never entirely coexist, but…

What choice did they have?

Lucifer tried to force the fury down, but the more that he calmed himself, the more that the pain of failure threatened to overtake him again. Only grasping at one Vice or another allowed him to keep the pain at bay. If he did not hold onto Wrath or Pride or any of the others, he knew that he would be taken to his knees by the pain of the broken promise again.

And so, he held to Pride. Pride, for now, as the closest thing to what he had been. That, at least, was something he knew, something he was familiar with, and for now, it did enough to keep him sane.

They gathered together in a great plateau at the foot of one of the mountains that was still whole. Demons and fallen angels alike looked at him, waiting for orders. He looked back, shaking his head.

“Why do you follow me?” he asked the demons.

“You saved Hell,” one of them said. “It would not be here without you. That buys you some good will.”

“Though the exploding mountains were a bit much,” one of the others muttered.

They followed him. That was enough. That was [i]enough.[/i] Lucifer nodded, flaring out his wings.

“We will build a new city here. A new capitol. Half of you get started with helping me plan and getting the materials. The rest of you…the rest of you, search out the holes in the realm. Find those that lead to Lilith’s World Begotten, and any others that we have. And from there…from there, we’ll decide what we do next.”

For there would be other holes between the realm from its near-death. If he could find them, then there was a chance that he could interfere and still protect the World Begotten, and if he could get to that world, then there was a chance, however small, that he could get messages to Jesus.

As the demons and angels scattered to the seven directions of the compass of Hell, Lucifer looked back at the sky. He wondered, briefly, if God knew the sort of torture that he had sentenced his once-favorite archangel to. Probably. The tiger knew more than most credited him with. But whether he knew it or not, God would take great pleasure in knowing that more than the pain of banishment had been leveled upon him. The loss of love, combined with the searing torment of his cursed oath to Lilith, was almost more than he could bear.

But he wasn’t done yet. Not by a long shot. The World Begotten had free will, now. It was enough to keep God from just destroying it and starting over. He’d have to be smarter…and Lucifer doubted that God was smart enough to trick the mortals into self-destruction. And he looked forward to reaching out and doing what he could to disrupt as many of God’s plans as he could.

[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]

Summary: Lucifer is afflicted with the corruption of his promise to Lilith, and finds himself doing things that he never otherwise would.

Tags: No Sex, Corruption, Lucifer, Panther, God, Tiger, Realm Travel, Hell, Heaven, Magic, Series, Fantasy,