Loved by Heaven Fouled by Hell Pt. 01

Above the Earth, there is a city. It is a city of a myriad spires, their architecture an impossibility in the eyes of man. It is a city made of ivory and silver, its roads paved with gold, its rooms awash with eerie, unworldly music.

It is a city of wonders, where clockwork birds and animals, automata of unimaginable complexity, prowl and sing and walk along its roads. Plants grow across its great plazas, their leaves shedding rainbows consisting of alien colors all around them. Great glass libraries, filled with every possible book in existence, dot the landscape. They are books that tell of lives of men that have been, or could have been. They are books that speak of histories that couldn't have possibly come to pass, where dystopian--or utopian--alternatives of humanity's history are outlined in great detail.

The city is called the Silver City, but men call it Heaven.

Upon the Earth, there is a city. It is a city of great towers, behemoths made of concrete, steel, and glass, each one a testament to man's architectural prowess. It is a city made of asphalt and stone, its roads paved over the blood and the bones of the countless sacrifices made in its name.

It is a mesh of constant cacophony but also of unexpected beauty. Great machines roar across its streets, purring anxiously at each traffic light. What few plants grow here are of an ugly, but sturdy kind, one that has learned to shrug off chemicals and noxious fumes and has taught itself how to grow through the cracks in the walls. It dreams of tearing down the skyscrapers, of drowning everything in green silence; its dreams are the reality of its primordial ancestors. There are libraries in the city too, but almost no one ever reads their stories anymore. The greatest stories take place in the minds of its people.

The city needs no name, but the men call it Sidon.

Below the Earth, there is a city. It is a city built of bronze and stone, with a single great tower jutting out from its center, like the rusted tip of a spear; from there, its lord surveys his dominion with his one great, burning eye. The city's mad shape stretches out for infinity to every direction, below the rock and up the rock, designed at first by its immortal denizens, who wished to build themselves a refuge from the eternal dark.

It is a web of terror, of screams interrupted by long silences. In its bowels, machines of a nefarious nature toil and grind their gears, crushing rock, metal, and living things alike. There are no plants in this city. Only the crudest facsimiles of life, created by its denizens, using lead and other base metals, their leaves and trunks covered in rust exist here. It dreams of boring its way downward, of reaching so deep under the world that it will find something else waiting below it. The optimists dream of another world, perhaps made of light and green, free from the grip of God, who imprisoned them here against their will. The cynics speak of another prison, a nightmare of far greater magnitude than their current one, inhabited by creatures far worse off than they, so that the misery of those inhabitants might provide them solace.

The city is named Abaddon, but men call it Hell.

***

In Sidon, Eli Mandrake felt a great pain rise in him, and his breathing grew suddenly weak and ragged. He clawed at his wrinkled old flesh and dug his nails so hard against his chest that he could feel the bones of his rib cage pushing against his fingernails.

After a century's worth of fouling the world with his depravity and corrupting it by his very presence, his time had finally come. He opened his mouth and called out for his daughter, his voice a hoary thing, sounding impossibly weak and distorted to his own ears.

"Lucretia!" he shrieked. 'I need you here, woman!'

He was about to call out to her again when the pain in his chest rose and white-hot lotuses of agony blossomed in his field of vision. He felt a familiar, metallic taste in his mouth. From the depths of his bowels, he could feel his very essence rising up from him, seeking to leave his dying body. He had prepared himself for this. He had taught himself mantras and had exercised so he could suppress his fear of dying, so he could keep his mind and his self-control when this terrible day did come. He took deep, controlled breaths, and the pain abated. To still the pounding in his chest, he imagined flowers blooming in a field where dead men lay.

But then the pain rose again and Eli forgot about his decades of preparation and screamed his daughter's name once again, at the top of his lungs.

"Lucretia!"

***

In Hell, he was known as Andrealphus. To men, he introduced himself as the Marquis of Hell, commander of thirty legions of the damned. Now, as he felt Mandrake's soul struggle to leave his body, he threw away his pickax and laughed uproariously at his fellow damned, letting loose his great leathery wings. Then, with a mighty leap, he left the tunnels of Hell and climbed up the face of the rock, propelling himself with claw and wing and tooth up to Sidon.

At last, Andrealphus was going to collect the prize he was due.

***

In Heaven, the angel who was called Hael was resting in the shade of the trees in the great Garden, contemplating the impossible spectrum of colors, when he suddenly heard his name called out and was given a vision of the man he was to deliver. Without a moment's hesitation, he flew to the edge of the Silver City and willed his wings into being before jumping down to Sidon.

As the weight of his corporeal form started dragging him down to Earth, Hael was suddenly filled with a sense of inexplicable dread.