“Oh, that’s got to be tough,” someone said sympathetically behind me. Too many parts of me had broken apart inside of me to gather enough sense to be startled at the sudden appearance. Azazel, still curled into herself and sobbing, didn’t move, but I felt the prick of recognition from her in this man’s voice.

“Olivier,” I stated, trying to slow my tears. Wiping at my face, I moved to stand, but he put a hand to my shoulder and said softly, “No, no, no, don’t move.”

“What do you want?” I whimpered, falling into my tears again.

He huffed and sat down next to me, and he said, “We want you, Amor. We want you to do something for us.”

In the grand hierarchy of the demons and their relations, I had no idea who Olivier was, but he was far enough before Azazel’s time for her to believe that he was one of the original Lords. Olivier, Destroyer of Angels. He had killed ore of Azazel’s brothers and sisters than any of the other Fallen. There was a thick layer of hate the coated his image, and it reared up like a quick plume of fire, but there wasn’t enough focus and energy within me to really concentrate on the emotion. Already weary from the emotional roller coaster that was apparently hell, all I cared to know was what he wanted and be done with it quickly.

In my chest, I could feel my heart had thoroughly shattered, the biggest pieces that clung desperately to who I am, ached in the only way a truly broken heart could ache. Each individual piece burned like coals. Each part desperate to not so much deny the truth, but to pretend it didn’t know, going back to the precious moments before reality truly set in.

Azazel’s heartache was near maddening and it was suffocating. I could feel her pain desperately searching for something to latch on to, to torment and destroy and create even more pain. It was too much to handle, too much to overcome, and I had no doubt it was evident on my face. Dragging tearful glaring eyes back to Olivier, I asked, “What do you want?”

“You might not need to do anything,” he murmured, crouching down and taking my face by the chin in his hand. His hands were gloved in a soft leather, and he wore a black overcoat with a dark gray hoodie beneath. The pants he wore were fitted and black with a red, splatter design across the ankles. He peered out at me from beneath a black cap. His hair was white and it looked soft. His eyes were a deep and unreal blue against an imposing white, but he had no pupils. There was a familiar black triangle on his chin. His face was gentle and almost angelic. It pained me to say it, but Olivier, Destroyer of Angels, was beautiful.

“Ah, I see, okay. That’s what’s special about you,” he said, letting go of my chin. Taking a seat across from me, he crossed his legs and said, “Let’s make a deal.”

Upon hearing the word, Azazel looked up from her ceaseless sobbing, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at her.

“What kind of deal?” I asked tiredly, the tears still streaming down from my face.

“It’s a simple deal, and I’m not like Pythius. I won’t hold anyone hostage and force you to take this deal. It is all up to you whether you want to take it or not, but obviously you know the repercussions,” he said almost affably.

Shaking my head gently, I said, “No, I don’t.”

“If you don’t take the deal, bad things will happen. I won’t make it happen, but they will happen,” he answered easily. I took a deep breath and wiped at my eyes, and I asked, “What do you want?”

“Amor, you cannot take that deal,” Azazel called out past her weeping. Olivier turned to her and said, “You just found out the love of your soul almost killed you. What reason do you have to not take the deal?”

“Leave her alone,” I grunted. “What is the deal?”

Shrugging, Olivier said, “Accept this corruption, and I will give you any piece of information you desire.”

“Corruption?” I asked.

“Yes. That’s why you’re here. We are trying to corrupt you,” he said easily.

“I—I really cannot stand you people,” I muttered, shaking my head and thinking out loud. “How do you do these things so easily?”

“What? Corrupt people?”

“No—I mean, yes, that, but, like everything else. How can you tell me this so easily?” I groaned, wiping more tears from my face. My mouth was growing dry at the lack of moisture.

“We can lie and deceive and coerce and force things upon man, but I personally find it’s easier to just be honest,” he said, nodding.

“Oh, my God I think I hate you most of all,” I sighed. “Fine. Yes. I will let myself be corrupted.”

“Fantastic,” Olivier clapped, “and I am a creature of my word, so I will give you any piece of information you desire.”

Glancing at Azazel, I had this feeling that I would soon find out what they were plotting. At that point, I didn’t care what happened. I really just wanted to be left alone to pity myself and sulk, but I was curious about one thing, and I know she would have wanted the answer to that as well. Holding out my hand, Olivier pulled a glove free and reached toward me.

His hands beneath were covered in bandages, but the bandages quickly uncurled and slithered away to a expose pale, smooth hand.

His hand was soft in mine, to my surprise, and I asked, “Why is this called Abaddon’s floor?”

“Oh, that’s easy. This actually was his floor,” Olivier answered, a smile curling at his face.

It wasn’t malicious or conniving. It was just a simple smile for a simple answer to a simple question.

Azazel’s head shot up, and she lunged at Olivier, but her restraints stopped her in place.

“Liar,” she howled.

“Stop that,” Olivier frowned. Still holding my hand, he pointed down at our hands together and he said, “No, I’m not lying. Look, we shook on it.” A second later, there was a prick on my hand, and I knew then that the deal had been sealed.

Ignoring her, I asked, “How was this his floor?”

“I said I would give you a piece of information. Not multiple pieces,” he said, wagging his finger in front of me.

“Make another deal with me,” I insisted. He frowned and said, “That’s not fun.”

“Why, because I’m the one who’s proposing it?”

“Well, yeah. You don’t have anything that I want anymore. You’ve already given yourself to us, so there’s nothing I can gain from this,” he said, letting go of my hand.

“Come on!” I whined. Olivier studied me a second, then he said, “Fine, we’ll make another deal. If you give me a kiss, I’ll tell you more.”

“Fine,” I said, leaning forward and planting a kiss on his cheek.

“That isn’t how this works,” he said.

“Amor, what in the world are you doing?” Azazel asked, still fighting against the shackles.

Glancing at her, I said, “You want to know this information.”

“Do you understand what will happen if you kiss that monster?” she cried.

“Does it matter?” I asked, and turning to him, I leaned forward and placed my lips squarely on his. At first, I simply just mashed my face against his, but he deepened the kiss quickly and darted a sweet tasting tongue against mine before nipping my lip sharply. Reeling back quickly, he licked his lips and said with a smile, “You angels really do taste good.”

“Give me what I want to know,” I snapped, wiping at my bleeding lip.

“That wasn’t unenjoyable,” he pouted.

“It was a deal,” I hissed. Rolling his eyes, he said, “When the first of the god’s creations—the Fallen—began to rise against it, there were nine that rose above to rally them all together and surge. One of them was Abaddon. Back then, even before you were created, Miss Angel,” he pointed at Azazel, who paused to listen, “Abaddon was named the Sower of Discord. He was one of the first to instigate it all, but as time went on and he learned that it’s actually pretty terrible living down here, he finally decided to ask for forgiveness. The god was ready to accept his forgiveness; the only thing was that he needed to permanently and perfectly reject everything he had been before, and the single most perfect way he could do that was by becoming the First Destroyer Angel and setting out to kill the rest of us down here.

“Everyone hates Abaddon the most, so once word of what happened to you got out, we devised this plot, and here we are now,” Olivier finished, pointing to Azazel and I.

“Olivier, shut the fuck up,” Pythius yelled, his voice echoing all throughout his floor.

“Time’s up. C’mon, it’s time for your corruption,” Olivier said, jumping up.

Looking up at him, I groaned quietly, “Man, I really hate you.” Azazel was looking up at me now. There was mixture of anger and confusion and sadness and pain and defeat on her face, and she asked me quietly, “What have you done?”

Dusting off my pants, I said, “We’re about to see.”

“Olivier, grab the angel, too,” Pythius called, his voice receding. “Bring them to Astaroth’s floor.”

She seemed to deflate slightly upon hearing his name, and she whispered, “Not him.”

Shrugging, Olivier said, “You don’t have a choice, Miss Angel.”

“What are you all planning?” she asked, watching him as he went to remove the clasp-less shackles from around her hands and feet. Before taking them off, he looked up at her curiously, then got close to her face and peered deep into her eyes, grabbing her by the chin much like he did me. He was at least a head taller than both of us, so he had to stoop down a bit to look her in the eye.

“I’ll tell you once everything’s done,” he answered slowly. Before actually taking off her clasps, he shot a look down to her wing and, realizing the black rope wasn’t there, withdrew another from a sleeve and tied it back around her wing. She sucked in a breath instantly, and my own wing twitched painfully. Azazel’s eyes went glassy then, and she slumped down, slackening against the restraints. Watching silently, Olivier seemed to dissolve the shackles and caught her effortlessly.

He looked down at her for a second, then over at me, and he said, “I can see why Astaroth would be willing to betray us for this one.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, furrowing my eyebrows as he walked forward. I followed without thinking.

“Astaroth was the third to fall, after Satan and Beelzebub. The three of them were part of the very first Trinity, so when all three of them fell, they formed a solid foundation of how our world would run. Then Omnis created us three, its Final Trinity. There was something about how he made her. She was different from the others. We three in the Final Trinity were all different, but she was especially different, and I guess it makes sense. Look where she is now. None of Omnis’s angels would do what she did, and look where it got her.

“Astaroth craved that most about her, this innate affinity for rebellion,” Olivier murmured as I walked along beside him. Despite the evident situation, I didn’t feel any fear beside him. Our steps echoed harmlessly in the floor, as did his voice. It traveled only as far it would in a normal empty warehouse, echoing back so softly.

“She’s not rebellious,” I protested.

“She killed many people. That’s rebellion,” he pointed out.

Changing the subject I asked, “Why do you still have a triangle on your face?”

“All this triangle means is that I’m a Destroyer. It’s in my makeup to destroy things, whether they’re angels or demons or people.”

Why wasn’t I scared? Searching my own emotional inventory, there just wasn’t any tension left to keep me on edge. I wasn’t worried or afraid or anxious. I was just moving through and waiting for things to happen, just like before, except there was no guarantee I would see whatever happened next. In fact, it was quite certain I wouldn’t see it, and yet here I was, accepting all of what would come next. Some part of me had been defeated back in the room, and upon reliving Azazel’s betrayal, it was her defeat that broke me down. I’d already lost.

Standing beside a Lord of Hell, I was at ease, having accepted my fate.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked as we walked on through the vast floor. He threw a look down at me, and he said almost wistfully, “You and her are the same. You’re both two different possibilities that got a chance to see what would happen. Me telling you this is like talking to her, and I can’t really do that. I don’t even think she remembers me.”

“What are you to her?” I asked, looking up at his pupil-less eyes.

“I’m her brother,” he said easily. “I’m her younger brother, actually.”

A pang of disgust shot through me, and I asked, “Why did you ask me for a kiss like that?”

He shrugged and said simply, “Thought it might be enjoyable. Kind of was.”

Shaking my head, I asked, “What about Artiya? In her memories, Abaddon was the oldest, Azazel was second, and Artiya was youngest.”

“Azazel’s the oldest. Artiya is middle, and I am the youngest. We were created differently than the rest of the angels,” he started, “She was the most rebellious, Artiya was untamable, and I was . . . I don’t know what I was actually. We were the tragic Trinity, if you think about it, but once Abaddon repented, it was a chance to even things out. Abaddon would take place as eldest and guide her as best as possible and try to keep Artiya together, but I guess not even the powers of the great Abaddon could control them. And me, I just took his place down here. I feel more at home here than I ever did up there.”

“What does any of that mean?” I asked curiously. None of that was anything Azazel knew. “Tragic Trinity? And what did happen Artiya? He was there one day, and then it was Sol, Selin, and Aion.”

Olivier glanced down at me again, looked up and said, “There’s things about Azazel that she herself doesn’t know. I don’t think the triplets know, either, nor Azrael. It’s best left that way. I’d rather she have ease of mind before passing.”

“What do you mean ’passing’?” I asked quickly, giving him a sharp look.

“She will pass from this plane of existence, if all goes to plan,” he said easily. Clenching my jaw shut, I had the sudden and surprising urge to protest, to get my mind back to where it needed to be and get out of here with everyone I said I was. Turning my head straight forward, I said nothing as I squeezed my hands into tight, painful fists, trying to keep myself calm and figure out what I could do. Even as I tried to put together a plan, figure out my escape roots, there was nothing I could have done.

I’d never fought against a demon, let alone a Lord of Hell, who was actually more or less a Fallen angel. Even if I could manage to wrench Azazel from his grip, it took me entirely too long to figure out how to find her in the first place. It would probably take me just as long to find the elevator again.

Taking a deep, distracting breath, I asked, “Are you still considered Fallen?”

“I’m the Exception.”

“But you’re the Destroyer of Angels?”

“That’s how they keep me in check down here. They make me kill the angels they capture so it forces me to be like them,” he said indifferently.

“And that doesn’t bother you?” I asked, trying to contain the incredulity.

Shrugging again, he said, “It’s the place I chose. After a while, you just go through it all because it’s all you know. Besides, I can’t go back to Omnis’s graces. My best chances of even showing my face again is to just hit the reset button but, well I can’t just do that.”

Looking at him with a cold sort of sympathy, I said, “Your existence is sad.”

“My existence,” he said pointedly, “is what I make of it.”

Eventually, we came upon the elevator, and there were three other sets of footsteps echoing adjacent to us. Looking up, coming from the opposite direction were three monsters. The only thing about them that resembled humans were their upright posture, and they each dragged behind them people shackled by their arms. One had broken looking legs and clacked and cracked with every step he took, where his belly should have been was an empty torso scraped of organs, and a bag covered his entire head. The other two looked like over-muscled werewolves.

“Pick them up,” Olivier snapped, and I recognized them immediately from just their hair alone. Three pale angels were slung over the shoulders of the monsters, their heads bobbing gently on their backs. Each head had an almost identical crown of hair that was nearly white and fell over their faces. The monsters slung them over so they lay across their arms, their heads facing up. Two girls and a boy. One girl had a red triangle on her chin, the other had a blue triangle, and the boy had a black triangle on hers. His eyes fluttered open briefly, and the bloodshot of the whites made the pale yellow stand out even more. Their wings were dirty and shimmering, but it was undeniable that the outer feathers of their wings were black tinged with scarlet.

“The Triplets?” I whispered, horror slowly dawning on me.

“I kept my siblings here with me. It was the closest I could get to them, even if I had to torture them,” Olivier said in a frighteningly apathetic voice. My head shot up to him, but he said nothing and didn’t look my way as he pushed past me to into the elevator. Swallowing, I followed behind him, and I thought to call out to Madison, but even as I thought of her, I found my mind had seemed to hit a blank wall. There was no response, or even any indication she might have heard, and a new wash of cold flowed over me as I realized then that I was alone.

The three demons holding Sol, Selin and Aion squeezed into the elevator with us, and I found myself right smack in the middle of everything. Four angels, four demons, and then there was me. Not quite human, not quite angel. Clenching my jaw, we all stood in a heavy and stagnant silence as the elevator worked to bring us down to Astaroth’s floor.

“Tell me,” I spoke suddenly, so as to at least end the deafening silence in the elevator. I seemed to be the only one that was breathing, and getting self-conscious about the loudness of my breath, a large and noisy indicator of how different I was from everything else in there, I broke the silence with my voice. Olivier cocked his head in my direction, and I said, “Tell me, why does Pythius hate me so much?”

Olivier smirked, and he answered, “Pythius loved Astaroth. Pythius would go to the ends of the Promise Land for him and even fell from Omnis’s graces for him, but when Astaroth saw Azazel, he fell in love and cast Pythius aside like it was nothing. When he did that, Pythius couldn’t stand to be in our world anymore, so he took to the Promise Land and vowed to hunt you down in every life you were born in until you were born as her.”

A question was begged then, trying to put my place in all of this into perspective so I could try to understand why this was happening to me and not someone else. It could be said with certainty that I was the Chosen One here, but I couldn’t fathom why. Nothing about me particularly screamed heroic, and the trauma I lived couldn’t be called ‘extraordinary’. I was just a depressed senior in high school contending with the cusp of adulthood and everything that it meant and stored away for me. Why couldn’t I just go on living that narrative? Why, now, did I have to ask why it was important that I was born as Azazel? What did that even mean?

I said nothing, the questions and gesticulations and ruminations swirling in my head, revolving faster and faster until the only question that made sense was “Why me?” I’m certain there were many more, qualified people out there, but no, it was me arriving on the floor of Astaroth with my angel doppelganger, three of her unconscious (probably near-death) triplet siblings and her turned-Lord-of-Hell brother and his three lackeys. In my head, I knew I couldn’t make this stuff up and thus was forced to deal with the simple reality of it, but how in the world could this be called ‘reality’?

When the door opened, whatever was left of my senses fled for a brief moment at the terrifying familiarity of the sight. Astaroth’s floor was a large and black cave, lighted by a huge pyres here and there. Lit by smaller pyres surrounding its perimeter was a black pond, and reaching up from that pond were, dancing gently on the surface and unable to tell whether they were reaching out for help or beckoning me forward, were dozens of pale white hands that churned the water softly. I fell back and happened to fall into Sol. The demon holding her, roughly righted me.

“Looks familiar, doesn’t it?” Olivier asked as he ushered me along. Not saying a word, I shook my head tersely. “Since our classic corruption didn’t work on you, we had to get a little creative with it, and this is to make sure it actually works.”

My mouth suddenly dry, I said with terrified watery eyes, “This is probably going to do the trick.”

“Ama!” Bond suddenly called out, and stepping out of the elevator, my head shot to the side to the sound of his voice. He was strapped to an ornate chair next to Jo and Vance. Vance’s head was hanging limply, and Jo had a blindfold over her eyes. She kept her head upright, but she was very pale, her lips the faintest hint of blue. The blindfold looked dark and she appeared to be crying blood, and her fingers looked dirty and ragged. Agatha was laying atop a table some distance before them. She looked even more pale and was motionless. A jolt shot through me wondering if she was still alive. Pythius stood behind her, and I belted out, “What did you do to them?”

Pythius, arms crossed and a smug look came onto his face, said, “We haven’t done anything yet, but we get three chances to get this right, so you better hope it works this time around.”

“What are you doing?” I bellowed, moving to surge toward them, but one of the demons caught my arm and yanked me back painfully. I pulled my arm back with animosity and resisted the urge to break his neck as Azazel had done through my body with the minotaur demon.

Pythius snapped his fingers, and Mammon appeared from the shadows behind him.

“Take her,” he said, and Mammon moved to me and grabbed me up and threw me over his shoulder with too much ease. Renewed with this anger, which probably wasn’t mine, I fought against Mammon and screamed out, “What did you do to them? What have you done?”

As Mammon carried me around the curve of the pond, I could see eight other figured emerging from the darkness of the shadows. No one spoke as my voice echoed uselessly back at me. Still fighting against his concrete-like strength, Mammon slammed me into a large, throne like chair and pulled my wing out painfully. Chains shot out from beneath the chair and shackled my arms, legs, and head in place. Mammon tied the same black rope around my neck, chest and wing, and I gasped as sharp, needle-like pricks stabbed into my skin from the points of contact.

Three large stone slabs erupted through the waters directly across the pond. Three more demons emerged from the waters and moved toward Jo, Bond, and Vance. Unsure of what else to do, I started to scream obscenities and all kinds of curses, trying to distract them, get someone’s attention, create some sort of diversion, do something, but my incessant yells did nothing as the demons brought them to the stone slabs. Bond fought as hard as he could but one of the demons decided to knock him out. They laid their limp bodies atop the stone slabs, and demonic looking symbols began to burn themselves into the stone. Olivier, behind them, moved forward, and his three demon lackeys followed behind him.

Around the edge of the pond, the other figures stayed just out of discernible sight. I followed Olivier with my eyes, still at a loss of what to do next. They eventually moved around me. Unable to turn around, I relied on the sounds I was picking up to tell me all of what was happening. There was the sound of stone rubbing against stone, and I figured more stone slabs erupted from the ground. Out of the corner of my eye, the three demons carrying the triplets walked around the pond to stand parallel to where I was sitting. I could just barely see the stone slabs if I strained my eyes enough to the side. The demons set the angels down atop the slabs, and moved back around.

Looking around frantically, I couldn’t see or hear what had happened to Azazel. Wanting to fight against the ropes, I chose not to. More and more of my strength drained away from me the longer the ropes stayed in place. The elevator opened suddenly, and several pairs of feet exiting. Pythius, Olivier, Mammon came to surround me, and the other figures hiding in the shadows emerged as well.

“Gentlemen, other various creatures,” Pythius said in a grandiose tone, splaying his arms out wide, “We have here the product of hundreds of years of work and progress.”

There were nine of them all together, and I remembered there were nine floors for nine Lords. The group studied me in silence for a few moments, looking me over from head to toe. I felt like a lab rat under the scrutiny and at the whim and terror of these scientists and their cruel experiment.

“Huh,” one of them finally said. This one appeared female. She had long, deep red hair and fair skin with sharp jutting cheekbones and reptilian, ‘go’ light green eyes and black where the white should have been. Her lips were painted a deep violet, and she was startlingly beautiful. Upon closer inspection, I could see scales climbing up her neck and around her face, and she was tall, standing before me now and bending down to study me. “She looks exactly like Azazel.”

“I told you it would happen,” Pythius said triumphantly.

“Did we really have to wait until the incarnation looked like the angel to get to this point?” another asked inquisitively. He had an accent I couldn’t quite pinpoint and his voice sounded dry and winded. This man was bald and frail, and his skin appeared to cling to his bones, much like Pythius. His eyes were completely black, so I couldn’t quite tell if he was actually looking at me. His whole demeanor was gray, and looking at him made me sad.

“I agree. I don’t see how having the physical appearance of the incarnation would have lessened its value any,” a creature with bloody red skin and distorted features spoke. This was probably the most unsettling of the bunch. While Pythius looked like an emaciated, faced and gray Slenderman, this one looked like the trademark devil, but seeing it stand before me then made me shudder. His hands and feet were bare and clawed, but he wore a pristine, dark suit.

His face was perplexing, as his features individually made sense: a straight aquiline nose, slanted, deep crimson red eyes, full mouth. However, taken all together, his face failed to make sense. It seemed focusing on one feature blurred out the others, and trying to take double takes at the whole didn’t make much more sense than the initial viewing. The only thing that made sense about his whole head were the long, sharp curving horns the same color as his skin.

“I admit, there was a fine specimen that could have attempted to set the wheels in motion some years ago, some many lives ago, Satan, Beelzebub, but I knew there was a more perfect piece of this puzzle coming along, and it just so happens to be identical to the angel on our hands,” Pythius said, reaching over to touch my hair and the triangle on my face. I jerked my head away, and one of the men, spoke up with a light, almost playful voice, “I see she has much of the same spunk as Azazel.”

Pythius almost seemed to freeze up, but turned to look at the man anyway and said, “Yes, Astaroth, you will find they have many of the same attributes. The only difference is you did not fall in love with this one.”

The man—Astaroth—just shrugged with a cool smile and said, “Who wouldn’t love a face like that, a passion like that?”

Astaroth was a lynx-like creature, in my opinion. Next to Olivier, he looked the youngest of them all. He had golden hair and feline, golden eyes against black. His teeth, from what he happened to flash, were sharp and dangerous, and his hands were clawed at the tips of his fingers. There was even a cat-tail that swished gently behind him, and there was an odd almost seductive beauty about him. I hated to admit he brought out an almost lustful feeling within me, but it was greatly overpowered by the various other emotions each of other creatures created out of me.

“I suppose it’s time we made proper introductions,” Pythius snapped. “Amor, this is Satan, Beelzebub, Astaroth, Mammon, Asmodeus, Merihem, Belial, Olivier, and of course you know me.” The devil-like creature was Satan. Beelzebub was the man who made me feel sad.

Astaroth was the lustful feline, Mammon was the bandaged man from before, Asmodeus was the lion-like man from before, Merihem was the reptilian woman, and there was another woman I hadn’t quite noticed. She was Belial. She was thin and quiet and seemed to be watching everything with a calculating and disarming gaze. Her eyes were all black, just like Beelzebub’s. That was the only thing any of them had in common. The discoloration of their eyes was extraordinarily off-putting, and their appearances ranged from grotesque to beautiful, and I wondered to myself how or why they looked the way they did, but I said nothing as I studied them all, trying to memorize as much of them as I could.

“She killed one of my own,” Belial suddenly spoke, her voice sounding like nails on a chalkboard. Glancing at her, Beelzebub exclaimed, “This one?”

“I don’t know how she managed to do it, but she did,” she seethed in a low voice.

“Atta girl,” Astaroth said in a husky voice. Ignoring my instinct to respond to the tone of his voice, I simply sat and stared past them across the pond. I could see the profile of Jo, Bond, and Vance lying almost motionless atop the slabs. Worry permeated my being, but I had nine Lords of Hell all eyeing me up and down.

“She also resisted your corruption. Are you that surprised?” Olivier finally said. Without a warning, a bony hand shot up and slapped him hard across the face, and she hissed, “You do not have the right to speak on this matter, reject.”

Unfazed by the attack, Olivier turned to look at her, and the whites of his eyes blacked slowly, completely engulfing the surreal blue. He said in a measured and cool voice, “Yet you commission me to destroy the angels you manage to trap, if you can get them.”

Belial said nothing but instead turned away, hatred rolling off of her in waves. I didn’t need any special ability to see that.

“Be nice, say something,” Astaroth said softly and suddenly, a smooth smile on his face as he leaned down close to mine.

“Let’s get this over with,” I said in a tight voice, pushing myself closer to the chair.

“How forward. I love it,” he purred. Clenching my teeth together, they all moved away from me then, and took up various spots around the pond wordlessly. Someone slammed a hand on top of the back of the chair, and I was instantly falling straight down. Caught off guard, I had no time to scream as I immediately shot up through chilly, freezing water and directly in the middle of the pond. Panic stabbed in at me from every part of my body that the hands touched.

Suddenly shivering, all of the blood drained away from me as the hands reached up to grasp at my ankles and feet. As within the white room from before, where the hundreds of spiders bombarded, I felt myself twitching and convulsing anxiously. The hands were cold and clammy on my ankles, and I swore I could hear the sounds of jangling chains.

I was too familiar with this place. To cope with my depression, I often allowed it to take form and shape in my mind. If I could look at it, maybe I could see all of it and its weaknesses and maybe I could fight it, then. If I made it definite, I could definitely handle it. I didn’t have any control over the form or shape they took on in my head. I just allowed them to be and shape itself however it saw fit. The worst manifestation I’d had to deal with was a murky-black pond, this pond. In my mind, when I was first learning how to live with it, I always felt I had been dragged down and was drowning in this pond, far away in a cave where no one could find me.

My screams would echo back at me in mockery, and bodiless hands would reach up from the depths of the water, pulling at my ankles and played with my body in the water. Before I would totally and completely drown, though, they would suddenly let me up, and gasping for air, the hands would again grab me, pulling me down and drowning me, letting me bob up and down like an apple in a barrel.

Looking down at those clammy, pale hands now, my head began to fill and swim as memories flooded back to me. Dealing with such a terrible and incomprehensible feeling; I was too young. I was too young.

Stay level, stay above the water.

Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and tried to count in my head. Forwards and backwards, forwards and backwards, forwards and backwards up to ten and back down to zero.

This was a different type of fear. Back then, I was no match for this sort of monster. The shadows of the darkness of my past continue to haunt me, and even as I sat facing my greatest demon here and now, I didn’t know if I could overcome it. This had been the worst monster I’d ever needed to fight, and I only won by doing nothing and surviving. I didn’t know if I had it in me to try to survive it this time—even if my heart hadn’t been broken and my mind dragged through glass—to try to endure this type of torture. It was the mental equivalent to waterboarding, and here I was now, likely about to be physically drowned.

The Lords around the pond began to chant in low tones. They took on an inhuman, terrifying unity that sounded like one, multi-tonal voice all of the same note but emitted from too many different mouths. As they chanted, their volume increased, and so too did the movement of the hands from the water, which reacted in turn to the intensity of the chanting. The hands began to scratch and claw at my feet, and I began to notice that what had at first been thoughtless movement, unintentional swaying of the palms and fingers, turned into directed motion that all reached and moved towards me. The hands gripping my ankles tightened the grasp on me, clenching painfully around my feet and legs. My eyes shot skyward as I tried to focus on something other than the chanting following an inevitable crescendo, and the snake-like hands responding to the diabolic music of their multi-tonal voice.

My own fear seemed to react in kind to the growing intensity of their voices around me, and I quickly found myself struggling to hold on to anything as the hands reached up my legs, grabbing for my knees and squeezing my thighs. I thought I could almost see shoulders attached to long pale arms, but I don’t think I wanted to see what bodies were attached to the rest of these nightmarish arms. The chanting all around me seemed to close to their climax as they repeated one phrase in frantic, desperate calls and shouts, “[We beseech the darkness within].”

All at once, their voices sudden shot up several octaves, far beyond what any human could produce, and my hands shot instinctively to my ears, but remained tied to the arms of the chair while I closed my eyes and bowed my head, trying to escape the terrible shrieks. There was something about their voices, having fallen apart and broken from their solidarity, that pushed past my control. The voices, their insistent, forceful screaming was in my head then, reverberating against my skull and echoing back in thunderous roars. Throwing my head back, my eyes rolled to the back as wild convulsions took ahold of me, my body doing anything to get voices out of my head. I was within my head and without, facing the exact same image: me, trapped in the middle of a dark, murky pond with devilish hands trying to drag me down and
pull me under.

Just as suddenly as the horrendous shrieking had started, it dropped to a painful silence. My head dropped back down to my chest, and then there was nothing but my heavy breathing. Even the hands had suddenly retracted back into the water. There was a suspicious buzzing within my skull, and I quietly reminded myself to keep my head above the water.

The gentle lapping water at my feet mixed with the ebb and flow that played on the beaches of my mind, syncing together and becoming one giant body of water. My eyes drifted close as I listened to the sound of the lapping water at my feet, trying to find something to anchor myself to. I deliberately forced my attention to just the sound of my breathing and the water, desperate to feel some sort of control, of certainty. I quickly lost myself to the rhythmic metronome of the water and my breathing. Before I knew it, I was descending quickly, but I wasn’t panicked then. Somehow, I knew where I was going, and when I opened my eyes, I was standing on the watery shores of my mind.

The manifestation of my mental interior was much like I imagined my own thoughts to be: a barren landscape, at the bottom of what could have been an ocean. There was no sun in the sky, just an endless white tinged red, casting a hot glow on everything. In the distance, there were towering walls, which could have been land, but more miles all around me, it was just this empty land, covered in an ankle deep layer of water. That’s the level I know that I am stable, but I was acutely aware of my instability. As soon as I had gotten a good enough look at what my mental brain looked like, the waters suddenly cascaded from the walls so many miles away, and in an instant came crashing down on me.

Panicking, my head snapped up, and I was sitting in the chair again, breathing uncontrollably as I braced for impact. Looking around, I was back in the cave again, still sitting in the middle of the lake, but two distinctive hands shot up from the water and grabbed hold of my ankles in an iron-vice grip. Looking back down, startled, there was a pale, brutalized version of my pulling herself up from the murky-black water, and I screamed, my body instinctively jerking away.

Back in my mind, I was thrashing wildly in the water. Within me, a dark heaviness set in, and my limbs began to disobey me. The water was cold, and then I could feel myself slowly giving in. The water was all around me, my own thoughts indistinguishable one from the other.

Everything felt very helpless then. Hope had long since abandoned me, and hopelessness had dissipated, too. In my mind, where the waters had risen so high that I didn’t have any footing left, I obstinately existed against my own will. My thoughts flowed in and out of attention like blurred shadows. They slipped through my fingers as I gave them acknowledged them, allowed them to exist and breathe, but not letting them stay.

In the sky above me, lights began to flash and play, as if behind thick messes of invisible clouds. Different images began to intrude with clarity into the apathy I had allowed myself to sink into. Each flash of light in the sky was a different memory in my head. Angry memories were highlighted in bloody flashes like explosions. Guilt and jealousy slinked in with green, sadness was blue, happiness was yellow, and love was pink, and there were so many others in between that melted into each and created faceted, dimensional memories that didn’t just show my perspective. There was a lot of blue, and there was a lot of red, but there was more yellow and pink than I had expected, and they played together in such beautiful ways. As I gazed up at the flashing, colorful sky, I couldn’t help but think that I’d never seen these things so clearly laid out for me, all these things that I had done.

There were so many other moments before me where I experienced happiness and I brought it to people, so many other moments where I was valued and valued those around. There were so many different hues all above me that glittered all of the different colors of my life, and despite the pain I had suffered, despite the sadness and the numbness and the guilt and the anger and everything that made me want it all to stop, there was every reason here above me why I should have kept going, and I was utterly fascinated. The fear I’d felt before dissipated away as I gazed up at my life above. As much as my mind wanted to focus on all the bad and all the negativity I had brought on myself and to the people around me, the colorful parts of my life lit up even more in some places. There was no sudden feeling to uplift or elation, no ecstatic joy, it was just a wondrous and beautiful fascination, and as badly as I had felt in much of my life, I also felt so good.

Despite myself, I smiled.