A Taste of Hell: Eelis

He ignored the spire. It was already under Belor's control, it had been since the Third Age, and freeing it from Belor would accomplish little when another demon would simply take his place. No, they hadn't come here for the spire. They'd come for Belor, and the creature would be waiting in the grand cathedral.

The spire had many doorways, hundreds, lining from top to bottom, making it an easily assailed structure by those that could fly, if desired. The center cathedral of False Gate, on the other hand, was thick, tall walls of black metal, also adorned with spikes and chains, but no doors except the front door. A huge building with towers and steeples, though like the base of the cathedral, the towers had no windows. Instead, gigantic statues adorned their faces, statues of enormous skulls of many shapes and sizes, and made of the same black metal that gleamed in the light of the lava rivers.

The heat was intense. His reflection sweated within his armor, fighting off the heat as best it could, but this close to the False Gate Cathedral, it mattered little. In the end, only his grace kept the heat from breaking him as he approached the titanic black doors.

They were open, and battle echoed within.

He chanced a glance up to Hell's sky, and winced. The vortex continued to spin, the tornado of fire, ice, and lightning. A wound in the Great Tower that would never heal. The bottom of the vortex licked the top of the cathedral, forever marking the center of False Gate, and Belor's home. It was not a safe area for a building, and lightning struck the stones of Hell from the vortex every so often. Perhaps that was why Belor had taken the cathedral for his home, as a statement of his power? Or he deemed it worth the risk, to harness its forge. He'd certainly put it to use.

Whatever the case, the demon had overstepped himself. The conclusion was inevitable.

With each step up the stairs, the noise grew louder, and the heat grew yet more intense. Within, he knew Belor and his great forge awaited, the source of the heat, where the demon crafted the hellfire-imbued weapons that had killed so many of his brethren today. The creature would pay for this insult.

The doorway of the False Gate Cathedral was not as impressive as the True Gate, but that didn't mean Eelis didn't stand in awe of them. Open as they were, he stood before and between them, and risked another moment to stare up at each colossal, black slab of metal. Each was adorned with carvings of demons and humans, twisted and trapped in a permanent maelstrom of sex and violence. Upon the center of the doorway was an enormous statue of a demon skull, where the two doors shared each half in the middle.

Within the structure, Eelis found exactly what he expected: metal, blood, and death. Enormous rooms a hundred feet high, separated by walls and columns covered in the same spikes he found everywhere, with twenty-foot doorways at the walls' base. Braziers hung from many spikes, illuminating the otherwise dark building with almost blood red flame. Archways decorated the gigantic walls, spikes lining them, decorated with chains and metal skulls. From the ceiling hung cages on chains, each filled with one, two, or sometimes three humans cramped to the point of agony. They cried misery and begged for mercy. Eelis ignored the damned souls, and moved on.

The main room of the cathedral could fit thousands, and nearly that many demons and angels fought within. This close to the throne, fighting was pandemonium. Belor kept many of his most powerful within, more the terrible four, the tetrad. Gorujin and korgejin, and bolstara and fujara, titans all, ten feet in height and adorned in horns, claws and fangs, and all wore armor. Not the typical armor many demons created for themselves, lumps of bent metal strapped to body parts, held together by leather straps from local creatures, and mixed with the thick bones or horns of other demons. No, Belor had recruited many of the tetrad to his cause, and had crafted them armor of sleek, thick metal, not unlike what the angels wore save for the color. Black, and a bronze so stained it almost looked red.

And their weapons burned with veins of hellfire dancing along the shining black of their blades.

"Arioch!" Eelis shouted.

"Eelis! Guard the right wing!"

Eelis was no angel of Ravid, but he was no fool. Arioch led this charge, and he knew what he was doing. The mikalim soared high, and his blade glowed with the power of his grace as he drove it down through the right horn, and into the skull of a korgejin. The flying, hoofed beast came crashing down, knocking aside dangling cages and earning cries of pain and panic from the trapped souls within. The huge creature slammed into a host of lesser demons, and for a single moment, there was a clear line of sight between Eelis, and the throne.

A giant throne of black metal, like the rest of the cathedral, its outside lined with spikes and adorned with metal skulls. Before it stood Belor, and fear crashed through Eelis in a wave of paralyzing coldness.

A demon of the Second Age. An abdarin. A child of Abaddon.

To see the creature now, it was clear how the demon had managed to survive through the Third Age. A mythical beast of violence and power. How many thousands of years had this beast bided his time, building his forces? How many millennia had this colossal creature spent mastering the forge in the shadow of Lucifer's strike against Heaven?

Belor was at least twelve feet tall, with leathery black and red wings wide enough to bury them all in his shadow. Four great black horns raised high from his face, and two tusks of black jutted forward from the sides of his jaw. Black spikes decorated his elbows, knees, and back, and his claws were thick. A hoofed creature, Belor had two arms and two legs, and looked similar to gorujin, but far more ancient. Demons after the Third Age had faces often a cross of human and their ancient kin, but Belor showed his heritage on his face, its demonic shape a cross between a dragon snout and a skull. And his eyes glowed with the power of hellfire.

The sword in his hands was almost as long as he was tall, a black blade with hellfire glowing along its edges, and wielded by his two colossal hands. A demonic skull decorated the bronze guard, and its eyes glowed with the same hellfire as Belor's.

As the chaos raged around them all, Belor swung the sword to the side, and cleaved through everyone. Demon, angel, all fell before his sword, metal melting and flesh burning with the fury of hellfire. None of the tetrad let themselves get too close to Belor, they knew what would happen, but dozens of the smaller demons fell before the blade as the ancient creature swung for the angels. And the angels went down just as easily.

"No!" Eelis dashed forward into the fray. Arioch wanted him to guard the right flank where a couple fujara were fighting half a dozen angels, and he would, but only so he could close the distance to Belor. He would not let another angel die to this creature tonight.

With a heavy grunt, Eelis charged down the right flank, and smashed his shield into the surprised face of a treegera. The demon woman, eight feet tall when they bothered to stand on their hind legs, rolled over closer to the center of the huge room, clutching her shattered face. Eelis pushed past. A devorjin rushed him, a nine-foot-tall brute with no tail, spikes, or much in the way of defining features except that their skin was thick, and their faces bore a closer resemblance to a skull than most. Eelis braced himself against the charge, and the room echoed with the sound of impact as the demon forced Eelis to slide back along the black metal floor. Before the momentum could come to a stop, Eelis let the huge creature's weight push the shield in, and he spun around with spear stretched out, turning his back to the creature long enough to bring the weapon behind it and slam the mirror blade into the devorjin's back. Its plate-like skin prevented it from being cut in half, but did not stop Eelis from slicing through its spine with the spear's sharp sides.

Panting until his lungs burned, Eelis pushed forward. He was a First Shield of the Avinoam rapholem. He would not be felled by some lesser demon!

Sure enough, the moment the thought past through his mind, one of the fujara before him broke free of the six angels he'd been rushing toward, and came at him. The titan glared down at him with her four eyes, and swiped at him with one of her swords. She had four of them, one for each hand.

Fujara looked similar to their tetrad sister bolstara, four-armed titans with no wings. Fujara looked closer to demonic dragons than bolstara though, with raptorial feet, three long fingers with claws per hand, a long spiked tail, and a host of spikes on their back. Even with all the spikes on her body, Belor had forged meera metal armor to fit her limbs and torso, with reddened bronze dancing along its edges and seals.

Eelis must have looked like an easy target, bleeding, wings damaged, and almost limping. He was not.

As the fujara bore down on him, Eelis raised his shield, and poured his grace into it. It glowed gold, lighting the death and blood around him, and when the demon's four hellfire-imbued blades crashed down on the great wall, sparks as hot as lava splattered over the black floor. They sizzled as many fell into pooling streams of blood. And the colossal creature did not stop. Again and again, with each one of her four arms, she slammed one of her four blades into his shield, each impact hard enough to knock him back along the floor an inch. It would not be long before she pushed him far enough he fell over a corpse.

A glance past her revealed his kin were quickly surrounding the other fujara demon, but two broke away to come to his aid. Two mikalim, weapons held high and glowing bright, brought their swords down on the fujara. One sword bounced off the armor, but the other managed to break through the black metal of the forge, and the fujara screamed in fury and pain as she turned to face the two angels once again, gushing blood from a shoulder.

Eelis managed a nod to the two mikalim, and pushed on. To his left where the rest of the colossal room awaited, the battle raged, with far too many of the great four serving Belor's whim. The council hadn't expected this. They couldn't have. The tetrad demons tore through angel after angel, stepping on their corpses as they pushed through the chaos and brought their hellfire weapons upon Eelis's comrades.

But the angels pushed forward nonetheless. The might of Heaven had come to end Belor's rise to power, and his army could not stop them, no matter how many tetrad or lesser demons he had. Hundreds of the terrible four, and thousands of lesser demons, devorjins and gorgalas, ragarins and tregeera, all died to angel blades, or errant swings from their greater kin. Hellfire weapons, or hellfire breathed by particularly powerful demons of the four.

Belor stepped into the center of the chaos, pushing aside several of the greater demons, small compared to the child of Abaddon. The titanic abdarin beast opened his enormous mouth, and breathed hellfire over the swaths of lesser demons and angels before him. It burned the air until the room smelled of more than burnt flesh, but burning leather and melting minerals as well.

The screams of Eelis's comrades cut through the battle like a shrieking violin.

He charged forward through the madness, and brought up his shield against the inevitable flame. Belor looked at him, and the monster's gaze alone almost struck Eelis still. Those burning eyes, filled with rage, were overwhelming.

"Behind me!" Eelis stabbed his shield into the floor of the cathedral, breaking through the stone. With spear pointed behind him and wings snug to his back, lesson learned, he stayed out of the path of the imminent hellfire as best he could. "Rally! Behind me!"

The titan came closer, eyes burning red as his gaze moved to Eelis. Other angels who'd managed to survive the onslaught of deadly flame threw themselves behind Eelis. Many had lost an arm or leg to the incinerating blast, rapholem like himself who did not have the mobility of mikalim to fly high at a moment's whim. And as they fell in around him, those that could still summon their greatshields did, and set them by his own. Injured mikalim dove behind the growing wall of shields, and prepared themselves.

Belor's hellfire fell upon them, and crashed against a wall of greatshields glowing bright with the power of their grace. Gold, against the searing red. A tornado of heat and wind crashed against them and sent many greatshields sliding back, but none toppled, none fell, as Belor unleashed the deadly flame of Hell over them. A dozen rapholem stood against the heat, and every one of them struggled. But by the will of God, none fell.

It was the moment the mikalim needed, to gain footing in the chaos. It was what Arioch had hoped for, for Eelis to get close and create the opening, but the abdarin had fended off Arioch's spearhead attack, and now the mikalim were in disarray.

Not anymore.

"To the wall, brothers and sisters!" Eelis poured every drop of power, every scrap of grace he had left into his shield, until its light filled the whole of the False Gate Cathedral. "To me!"

And they came. Mikalim broke away from their battles with distant lesser demons, and flew overhead, dodging claw and blade and spear from greater and lesser demons alike, including the smaller creatures that hung from chains above. They soared over the great tide of flame that crashed against Eelis's phalanx, even as Belor stepped closer and closer, until Eelis could hear its roar over the carrying thunder of the flame.

Eelis looked up long enough to see a dozen mikalim, blades glowing bright, come down upon Belor. But Belor would not be distracted so easily. As their blades crashed against the colossal demon's armor and horns, Belor lifted his blade, and swung the weapon into the phalanx.

Eelis's greatshield broke, his grace depleted, and he flew back as the impact of the titan sent him back into the melted remains of the battle behind him, while the corpses of his friends rained down around him.

Darkness took him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~Three years before the Arrival~~

"Eelis, please, speak to me."

Eelis shook his head. High in one of the golden towers of the Heavenly Island Avinoam, he stood in one of the many archways of his room, and looked out to the sky to watch the angels come and go. Far below, humans and angels walked the streets. In the distance, the city opened up into its massive fields of green, and colossal white sanctums, gorgeous buildings that stood tall and wide, decorating rolling hills. The sky was glimmering obsidian and twinkled with the infinite stars of the universe, and Heaven was quiet.

"There is peace," Seonaid said.

"There is."

"Then why do you let the memories torture you so?"

"A stupid question." He glanced back at the gabriem stood in the center of his room. "Because I failed to save my comrades." How many times did they have to have this conversation? At her insistence, no less.

Sighing, she walked up to join him, and leaned against the other side of the archway as she pushed the see-through white silk aside.

"It was two millennia ago. You have changed your reflection four times since then."

"The memories remain." He looked at his hands and touched one to his chest, before slowly turning to look at the grand mirror in his room. The mirror, circled in silver and gold, and tall enough for any angel, showed his reflection's beige skin and eyes of lapis blue. Light blond hair flowed down to his shoulders in loose waves, and his beard was considerably long. His expression was serious and heavy despite his soft features, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not wipe the obvious moroseness from his gaze.

He was built as most rapholem, seven feet tall and thick with muscle, size needed to wield the great shields and towering spears of the guardians one-handed. And now, with only his potram rune held in his mind, he wore nothing more than a white silk robe, and sandals. This reflection wasn't much for jewelry, save for a single, subtle gold necklace, and two thin gold bicep bracelets. A far cry from the jewelery Seonaid's potram rune gave her.

Beneath his robe, however, he still bore the scars. They'd cut his previous reflection deep enough that they lasted four new reflections, marks that forever proved his failure.

Seonaid reached across the archway with a wing, and nudged the soft feathers of a gabriem against his shoulder and his own wing.

"Belor was killed. The cathedral was destroyed. The mission was a success, Eelis."

So they were told. Despite how the vortex pierced straight down into the center of False Gate, and stopped above the False Gate Cathedral, using it to approach the ruins was suicide without a grand force. And the council had decreed it best to leave it be, lest more angels died. From a distance, the False Gate Grand Cathedral, what remained of it, was quiet, and the False Gate spire produced only a fraction of the demons it once did.

A victory, so he was told.

"My comrades still died."

"They returned to the Great Tower, Eelis. Why--"

"Great? No. It is the Forlorn Tower."

She winced quietly and looked away. "You believe as the others do?"

"I am beginning to."

Sighing again, she stepped closer, and rubbed his shoulder with a hand. Seonaid, like all gabriem, was absurdly beautiful in a way rapholem and mikalim could never be. Six and a half feet tall, average for an angel of female tilt, she was quite thin, with sharp facial features and opal eyes. She would normally be platinum blond, similar to him, but she had... 'dyed' her hair sky blue, closely matching her eyes. Her eyebrows as well.

Of course Heaven could not create real dye, but the sanctums were more than capable of providing the means to create the effect. And it looked delightful on her. Many of the angels had taken to dying their hair, the women in particular, in the past sixty years. Would their reflections come with such wondrous colors naturally, some day?

"Eelis, you--"

"Yes, I know. I need to let the past go."

"I was going to say, you need to learn to enjoy yourself, you damn fool."

He managed a smile at that. A weak one, but one nonetheless. A powerful curse, for a gabriem to use, especially within the walls of Heaven.

"You've said that before as well."

"It still applies. These dreams that haunt you will only fade if you can find joy in the present. You are hereby banned from your post--"

"I--"

"I am your supporting angel, Eelis. You must answer to me, and I am giving you an order."

He frowned at that. It was only technically true. The Avinoam council had decreed that he was no longer fit to make his own decisions; the aftermath of two thousand years of his silent watch. Now, he was assigned a gabriem, not unlike the humans below and how many were assigned gabriem to help them overcome the scars on their souls. Though the humans and their new prime bodies rarely carried visible scars, Eelis's body was covered in them.

But was that not how it should be? No matter how many reflections Eelis went through, the memories would never truly fade. Why should the scars?

"Very well."

"Good. Now, your isolation has left you... hard. You need interaction. I suggest you spend time in the sanctums."

"With the human souls? Why?"

"Because you need contact with something other than angels."

"I don't think--"

"You will find their shortsighted views on life to be a pleasant change, Eelis. You think gabriem loathe our time with the humans? We adore them." She said it the same way he'd heard humans swoon over puppies. As much as Eelis had spent the past two thousand years avoiding humans and angels alike, they were everywhere, and he did occasionally overhear a conversation.