Savage Divinity

Total Word Count: 44000



The Other shook its head. "In all seriousness, milord – there are problems that require immediate address." The Other paused significantly. "Milord, we are under attack."

Attack? How was that possible? Lucifer turned, his face slack, eyes wide in surprise. "Attack?" he echoed. "From who?"

The Other raised a hand. "Milord, are you that dense?" it scolded. "The Heavens have united to fetch their own back! They are marching on us as we speak. Your realm is under attack. What would you have us do?"

Hell, under attack. The Underworld, being assaulted, set under siege. Lucifer smirked. What a futile proposition for those from Heaven. Hell was impenetrable. It would be impossible for the forces of Heaven to succeed. "Let them come," he said, rising to his full height. "There is nothing they can do to us. We are impossible to uproot, impossible to remove. Come – we will rally the forces of the Underworld to meet their assault. They will regret coming for their kin… Which, aren\'t kin any longer." The smile adorning his face was one of malevolent joy. It burned.



"Get up." Voices. Reson shook his head slightly. His body was sore, overworked and overused. It hurt to move. But the voices were still demanding that he rise, and eventually, he gave in, easing his body upwards with care. Then there were hands, grabbing at him in the darkness and leading him away from where he had been asleep. Where he was being taken he knew not. He didn\'t really care much either.

As if anything matters anymore. He\'d resigned himself to his fate, to the fate that awaited any and all who were foolish enough to let themselves in for what had happened to him. He kept wondering what would have happened if he had continued to fight instead of giving in and letting Lucifer take away his innocence. If there had been something else he could have done, he told himself he would have taken that route, but in all seriousness…hadn\'t there been another option he had considered and rejected? Death as an alternative was always possible, though the Lord considered suicide to be a sin of itself. Wouldn’t that have been preferable to the sins of the flesh…?

He wasn’t sure, and that insecurity about his decision hurt as much as any physical wound ever could. Reson closed his eyes as the Others led him from the darkness into the light. It burned his eyes, even through closed lids. He hadn\'t been long in the darkness, but it was surprising how quickly one could become accustomed to it. When light was scarce, one\'s eyes made the best of one\'s surroundings, even if that meant it hurt later on, when they were slow to adjust to brightness.

The Others led him, stumbling, down a path. He neither knew nor cared where they were going, though his mind thought it recognized the path a few times – a stumble here and there that seemed at regular intervals, as if stones had been laid out to trip in code. Here is where you are, there is where you are going.

When they finally stopped pulling him, then they were pushing him, shoving him to his knees and then tugging his head back. He opened his eyes then, their threats enough to make him face the light. Thankfully it wasn\'t too bright. Not like facing a sun – more like a campfire. It was still painful, but a sort of tolerable pain, like the injuries of long past, just aching to make trouble. Lucifer was there, sitting on his throne.

Reson stared at him, eyes narrowed in dislike and pain. Not rage –he was beyond feeling anything so strong as rage now. He was incapable of anything deeper than shallow emotion and the most basic feelings of what his body was experiencing. Once he might have registered the tiny rocks digging into his shins, the way the ground was uneven beneath him, but gone were those days and those times, wiped out as thoroughly as if he had been a slate covered in chalk, then immersed in water to be thoroughly cleansed.

Or a slate marked up, and then painted over. He still bore the marks of previous years, of a pervious life – he considered it previous, for hadn\'t it passed on into something entirely different? – but they were invisible under the added colorings the Devil had brought to his skin. The tainted blood that had been created to run through his veins.

The redheaded Vilyte – no, he was no longer Vilyte, could no longer consider himself as such… What am I then? Traitor? Blood lost? It was a puzzle for solving at a later date, assuming there would be a later date left open for him to use as a time for solving. Reson, then, simply Reson, not defined as angel or Angel-stock or Vilyte or a member of the Arc or anything else; he looked up to Lucifer\'s face, scanning it with a small bit of hope that hadn\'t completely died.

The other male was in black, as was befitting his station as the ruler of the Underworld. It was a color Reson had come to detest. The black hair hanging in lank strands around Lucifer\'s face reminded him of a frozen waterfall, stopped in a moment in time, curling slightly with the force of water waiting to be unleashed. His eyes drifted from the flawless, the beautiful, to the less than perfect throne that the King of Hell sat in. It was black as well, but black of a different sort. Where Lucifer\'s clothing was dull and almost aggressively dark, this was marble – polished until it shone. Almost the opposite, almost aggressively light for all its darkness.

Black, like everything in this place. It was the color of the Underworld; Reson understood that now. Lucifer had chosen black as his symbol.

There were noises behind him, but he couldn’t turn his head with the Others\' hands tangled in his hair still, holding him in place. What he could do was close his eyes, to hold himself apart from Lucifer. The sound of footsteps, faltering and slow, came to him then, and he heard identical thuds of knees on marble moments later. From his peripheral vision, the redhead could see flashes of ash and chestnut. So Aron and Asher were here as well. He wondered if their blood still ran white.

Lucifer stood, moving in a gust of black flame. The King of Hell looked utterly magnificent in a terrible way, standing with his glory pulled around him after the fashion of pagan gods. For a long moment, Reson stared up at him, into his bottomless eyes. Then Lucifer stepped down off the dais and came forward, dipping to one knee. A hand came up under Reson\'s chin, taking hold of it. He felt the hands in his hair release at the look the Devil cast over his head.

"There is a thing I would discuss with you." Lucifer\'s voice was soft. Reson guessed he was talking to all three of them. With the hand under his chin, locked around his airway, it was hard to breathe.

Don\'t kid yourself – you found it hard to breathe around him anyway. A mixture of fear and anger and obscene lust could do that to a person.

"Heaven has decided it isn\'t done with you yet." A finger brushed across Reson\'s lips, gently. "It wants you back." Lucifer\'s face was close – too close. His hot breath steamed across Reson\'s face, making it so uncomfortable to be in that position…

"Please, let the others go back." What else could he plead for? There seemed to be a waiting in Lucifer\'s eyes. He wanted Reson to make a plea. He wanted to be asked for something. Reson knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was no longer welcome in Heaven; he could hope, at least, that Asher and Aron were fine still, that they had remained untouched. In that way at least.

He could beg for their lives.

Lucifer tilted his head slightly. Those black, depthless eyes – "Why?"

"Why?" Reson echoed, not understanding.

"Why would you want them to go back?" the Devil questioned. His words were caresses, deftly stealing Reson\'s breath away. "Why would you let them escape? Aren\'t they the enemy?"

He\'s just playing with me now. "They\'re my brothers, as much as the others ever were," the redhead answered defiantly. "Let them go. They deserve better."

"Better than me? I\'m hurt, Reson."

"Don\'t use my name," he whispered, eyes breaking contact, looking away. To hear his name, spoken with that amount of lust surrounding it, was just terrible. He couldn\'t stand it.

"Reson, Reson, Reson," Lucifer murmured, seeming to take particular pleasure in pronouncing the fallen\'s name. "You want them to go home? Heaven won\'t stand for it, little one. They want all three of you back."

All three…? "But I\'m not –"

"I know you aren\'t," Lucifer replied. His voice was too soft for the others to hear now. It was a voice meant for Reson alone. "I know you, and I know what you are and what you are not. You know what you are now. Do you really want to let the other two go? I could keep them here for you. You know you can\'t go back… But do you want to stay here, alone?"

I wouldn\'t be alone. "Let them go." I\'d have my misery. "They deserve better." I\'d have my shame. "They deserve to go home." I\'d have my prayers. Though I do have to wonder…can God hear prayers from Hell?

"Such a selfless little thing," Lucifer murmured into his ear. "Are you sure? Is that your last request? Think carefully now – this is where you can break even. I know you from the inside out. They destroyed you didn\'t they? If it hadn\'t been for those two, you wouldn\'t be here. I should thank them, really… Maybe sending them home is a thank you for delivering you to me."

He\'s twisting it. Twisting my words, Reson thought desperately, but at the same time, he couldn\'t help but think that the King of Hell was making an awful lot of sense. If I hadn\'t kept Asher alive, if I hadn\'t brought – or tried to bring – Aron to him, then we wouldn\'t be here. It\'s their fault as much as mine, but I don\'t know if I ever could have killed them. A conundrum then, impossible to solve.

"Let them go." He had decided himself on his choice of action – all he needed to do was keep the words frozen in his head, repeating them until whatever decision was reached was out of his control. "Let them go."

For me. He almost added that in, a plea that would have been the begging of a lover shamed aside.

"Why?" Lucifer\'s lips were too close, breathing hot air across his face.

Reson closed his eyes. "Just do it."

"But why?" the Devil pressed.

"Please…"

"Why."

No more a question, but a demand. He wanted to hear him say it, Reson realized. Wanted to realize the power he had built over one of the previous children of Heaven.

"For me," the redhead said, miserable as the words left his mouth. Not a love story on any level – more a destroyed chance.

"For you, then." Lucifer stood, but his hands lingered on Reson\'s face for a moment longer, possessive to the extreme. He was speaking louder now, but though the words were meant for all ears, Reson was deaf to them, shivering as the Devil\'s hands left his face.

For me. A damning phrase, one that he guessed would haunt him until the end of his days. That was assuming, of course, that he would reach an end of days.

I will, he promised himself. One day, I will sin beyond recall, and escape him. Return to Him, if at all possible.

Can sin return sinners?



"Milord?"

"They\'re coming for him." Lucifer\'s voice was grim. "They want him back, don\'t they?"

"Milord – "

"They only say they want all three back." His tone was aggressive, hard. "They only pretend to need what they don\'t…"

"Milord?"

"They only pretend to want him back. They need him, don\'t they?"

"Milord, you\'re not making sense."

Lucifer\'s pacing stopped. "They won\'t get any of them back. See to it."

The Other bowed, confusion etched across its face still, but it knew better than to question the King of Hell. One did not question one\'s ruler, especially when said ruler was rather out of sorts at the time of the presumed questioning. It then began its trek out of Lucifer\'s presence, moving rather more quickly than usual. The Devil was volatile at the best of times, and this most assuredly was not the best of times.

Lucifer continued pacing even as the Other disappeared. Heaven was coming. To think they\'d sent a force against him, had put aside their differences for three angels – one of whom wasn\'t even technically an angel any longer – was phenomenal… and very distressing. If the split accords of Heaven could lay aside their differences after such a great divide had been created, then what else were they capable of doing?

Split, unsplit, divided, undivided – united they attacked, divided they fell. There was something so unsettling about the whole thing.

And he didn\'t know how to put a name to it.



"I can\'t see anything."

"Neither can I."

"It\'s been ages."

"I know…I know…"

There was a creaking noise. The door, maybe. If there was a door. A window. Assuming this room had them. Assuming it was a room.