by Andrea Allen
“We do not see you here at the Astral Ocean as much as we should, O Ambriel.”
Though the voice was gentle and the words kindly, delivered in a pleasant lilt, the suddenness of them jarred Ambriel from her reverie, nearly made her lose balance entirely. Without thinking, her eyes opened and cast themselves to the source of the sound, and there she found a face, youthful and impassive, sticking through the surface of the water in the space made by her crossed legs. Hovering above the figure became impossible the moment she caught sight of him, Ambriel cried out and swung backwards, unmoored from gravity and wheeling. She tipped entirely over, falling into the ocean with a dull thunk, a splash that disrupted the perfect reflection upon the surface of the water completely. Still sinking, she righted herself and stood within the water, looking over the interloper.
“Taliahad,” she said, slowly, the water offering no difficulty to a being such as her. “I would have thought you busy. I wished to be alone here.”
“Then I am sorry to have interrupted you,” the Angel of Water and Emotional Healing said, dropping a low bow. “I am busy, but I am also here. We are as this ocean itself, Queen of Cups. We contain multitudes.”
“So I speak to an aspect of you,” Ambriel nodded, now understanding. Taliahad was second only to the Archangel of this particular element, separating his consciousness to go about Paradise’s work would be as child’s play to him, even as Ambriel herself struggled to perform the same feat. “What can I do for you, Healer?”
“You are troubled,” Taliahad said, his tone bespeaking certainty in his conclusion. “Your Descent did not go as planned, and so I understand why. I have done the same many times, perhaps I could be of service in contextualizing your experiences for you?”
“I do not know if I would be of use in even describing what I saw, Healer,” Ambriel said, and returned to her cross-legged repose, now below the surface of the ocean. “There were demons, the creature Crowley and his manservant. They preempted me, tempted the human I was there to parlay with—”
“Tempted her with sex,” Taliahad nodded sagely. “Do not look so askance, Ambriel. You would not have such difficulty describing the sin involved were it otherwise. I know how it is, for those whose virgin feet first touch mortal soil. It is the thing that would trouble one such as yourself. Did you see it?”
“In detail. The hulking thing that accompanied Crowley did not see fit to stop his congress as we spoke,” Ambriel frowned.
“So you saw, and by the expression you wear, I surmise that you felt, too. Is this what troubles you, Ambriel? That what you witnessed held some temptation for you?”
“It does trouble me, Healer,” she nodded. “Are we not supposed to be above such things?”
“Above indulgence,” Taliahad replied, “not temptation. You object to the wrong act. Regardless, it is not sex that is sinful, but infidelity. The latter is what you were dispatched to stop, was it not?”
“Yes—”
“Precisely. And the First Among the Humans were required to breed, despite being sinless in their original state. Sex is not the issue.” Taliahad shook a hand vaguely, causing bubbles to rise due to the motion. “Thus, thinking about it cannot be problematic for you. You worry for nothing, Queen of Cups.”
“Healer, I worry because the woman invited me to join them and for a moment I considered it,” Ambriel said, her words gabbled and pushed together. “It… exerts a pull, Taliahad. A pull that has not completely left me.”
“Temptation, added to curiosity, is a powerful thing,” Taliahad replied. “If we alleviate the curiosity, perhaps we will lessen the temptation.”
Ambriel said nothing. The Astral Ocean’s tides pulled them slowly back and forth, a gentle ebb and flow that carried with it a slight rushing sound. She stared at Taliahad. Taliahad’s handsome face remained expressionless, itself a mirror onto which others could project whatever they wanted. Still waters, running deep.
“You seem to be suggesting something there, Healer.”
“I am. We are angels, Ambriel. We share sensations all the time.” Taliahad swam closer, took hold of Ambriel’s gaze with a penetrating look. “This one is not inherently different. Come to me. Let me show you that what you fear you are missing is not something to be missed.”
With that, the angel of water reached out, stroked one hand along the curve of Ambriel’s jaw, cupping her cheek, and in that moment, she realized the painfully physical nature of their bodies in this place. Angelic nerves pinged, skin heated up beneath Taliahad’s touch, and as he leaned forward, Ambriel felt her lips part thoughtlessly, water rushing in to fill the space. They kissed, a tentative, small thing, a brush of the lips, the two of them approaching the act they had set themselves to do as though from a great distance. For a time, nothing else entered into Ambriel’s mind, but like all things, this passed. In time, she felt the wrongness of it all, the subtle differences between this person in front of her, and who she knew Taliahad to be.
“Perhaps next time,” she said, reaching up to grasp the impostor by his hair. “You could do a better job of making your illusion convincing up close.”
“You’re right,” Taliahad shrugged, his voice changing mid-sentence, and his appearance with it. In a moment, he was something far more terrifying; Ambriel felt her guts seize inside her.
“Gabriel,” she breathed, flailing instantly away from the Archangel of Water, her lord and commander. “My liege!”
“But then,” the Archangel stared down at Ambriel, the water of the ocean swirling around him. “The point of tests is that they be completed, Queen of Cups. You uncovered my ruse, but you did so at the point that you failed the test. Would Taliahad truly have offered to lay with you? And had you not been confused in mind and in soul by the temptation of that, would you have ever truly considered it?”
“Deceit is a sin also, Archangel, yet one we permit if it comes with a purpose,” Ambriel felt her voice shaking, even though that made no sense underwater. She tried to force composure, but it was an attempt doomed from the start. “If familiarity breeds an end to temptation, then Taliahad’s offer was one of comfort, not sin.”
“Tawdry justification, nothing more,” Gabriel shook his head. “Remove your clothes, Ambriel.”
Shivering, Ambriel paused. It was clear, from the expectant look in the Archangel’s eyes, that this was merely another component to his test. Nudity was not, in itself, sinful. The First of Man had been naked at the beginning of Creation, after all. His difficulties had not begun until knowledge had turned his nakedness suggestive. Connotation was the source of sin, not bared flesh. To one not already thinking of sex, being naked would be no great thing. Modesty belonged to those with a conception of what they should be hiding, after all.
It seemed, therefore, that Ambriel ought simply to obey, without hesitation or shame.
Doing so didn’t take much more than a thought, an angel’s raiment being little more than an extension of their physical form anyway. Her robe faded from her body all at once, leaving Ambriel clad in pink and pale skin alone. She had an obviously female body, exactly as anatomically correct as she needed it to be at any given moment, and in that particular moment, much to her distress, it was anatomically correct with a degree of accuracy that Ambriel had not, previously, thought herself capable of. She knew she was blushing, but she also knew that every part of this was not something Gabriel had to know. Forcing herself to her full height, Ambriel positioned her wings correctly, put her hands to her side, and assumed as close to a normal posture as she could get.
She looked the Archangel in the eye, somehow challenging him even though she knew such defiance was both unwarranted and deeply dangerous. Yes, she was naked: nudity was just what one did, it carried no inherent moral alignment, one way or another.
But there was always the flush to her cheeks, the fact that her breasts had nipples and the place between her legs contained a functional hole, things that were unnecessary to her current form and spoke only of wha
t she was really thinking of, commanded to strip before an authoritarian male presence. In that moment, bare and looked down upon by the Archangel of her element, Ambriel had never felt more exposed, the weakness of her thoughts laid bare.
Gabriel remained silent for a long time, an elongated moment that seemed fashioned to test Ambriel further, to allow her to marinate in the tension she was sure he knew she was feeling. His gaze pierced her for the duration, and Ambriel did her best to look back, unperturbed, but the longer she did so, the more she noticed things that did not add up. The Gabriel she knew would know how to keep a steady gaze, for instance, without the darting, furtive looks down her body that the man in front of her gave, nor the predatory twitching of the lips that this Gabriel seemed unable to stop.
“Is this a further test, I wonder?” Ambriel ventured, tentatively, hedging her bets as best she could. But she caught the twitch of Gabriel’s lips, the first smile she had ever seen him wear appearing momentarily on a face that simply had not been made for it, and in that moment, she knew. “It is, isn’t it?”
“Come here, Ambriel,” was all the Archangel said in response.
“But—”
“Come here, Ambriel.”
She obeyed. Of course she did; as… off as everything had been since Taliahad had first shown up, there was a deep, divine instinct within Ambriel that compelled her to do as the Archangels commanded. Her flight wings fluttered through the water, stirring bubbles as she propelled herself across the space between her and Gabriel, stopping just a few inches from him. Wide eyes took in the Archangel—this close, he looked deeply imposing—but there was no hesitation on his part, and with a wide sweep of his hand he pushed her wings aside and slid in between them, right into her personal space. His hands moved through the water, one up, one down; one reaching out to clasp her throat, the other sweeping in between Ambriel’s legs.
A moment of silence, and then:
“As I thought,” Gabriel said, his voice quiet, tone clipped. A finger moved. There was no way that he could not feel the hole down there. His eyes narrowed.
“You really are too easy,” said Crowley, his voice issuing from Gabriel’s mouth. “I thought I would have had to work harder, Queen of Cups. A little challenge, at least.”
He didn’t move, continued to grasp Ambriel, but the illusion that had wrapped around the demon unfurled, faded away into nothing. Crowley stood below the surface of the Astral Ocean, somehow having breached the gates of Paradise itself, a smug, victorious smile on his face. Ambriel, for her part, didn’t move either, shocked into stillness by this brazen trickery and stunned, in equal measure, by the strange sensation of pleasure caused by the pressure of his hand between her legs. What could be said, in such moments?
“You.” Nothing particularly cogent, apparently.
“You seem shocked, Ambriel,” Crowley shrugged. “Lies-within-lies, remember? It is in my nature to conceal my plans under further deceit.”
“I-I am mostly surprised that there would be anything you would want desperately enough to risk sneaking into P-Paradise to obtain, demon,” Ambriel was helpless to stop herself stammering, as strange new feelings bloomed for the first time within a body not equipped to feel them. Her thighs clenched uselessly around the demon’s palm, though she knew she should be fighting, not merely twitching.
A demon had infiltrated Paradise.
“Would a demon need much to break the rules, angel?” By the tone of Crowley’s voice alone, Ambriel could tell he had an escape plan already lined up. Of course, his simple presence here was proof of that. Crowley was many things, but unprepared was not one of them. Nobody spoke as confidently as he did without knowing where their exits were. “Would I? You give me a rule, I probe it for weaknesses. Stay out of Paradise, I’m told. The day hasn’t ended before I have three or four back entrances figured out, just in case. It’s in my nature.”
“So is dying, Crowley,” Ambriel growled. “Remember what happened to the last demon to step upon these grounds.”
“I don’t need to,” Crowley shrugged. “I’ve met him. You Paradise people do like to speak of mortality in metaphors, don’t you?”
“Why did you come here, demon?”
“An invitation,” his smile pierced the water. “One I know you won’t pass up. I’ll be waiting at the bridge between our two worlds. The closest thing to neutral ground that we have. Come find me at the riverside, Mayflower.”
And here, the demon brushed one ashen thumb over the clit that Ambriel had, but should not have. The angel shuddered, a gasp leaving her throat and sending bubbles of air rising to the surface of the water. Two fingers curled inside of her, the first truly sexual touch that Ambriel had ever felt, and the effect it had resounded through her, making muscles unused to such things tighten and tremble. Without thinking, her hips pressed down against the intrusive touch, but before she could get more, Crowley had withdrawn, and retaken his angelic disguise. Not Gabriel, but Taliahad.
“I know you ache for what you’ll find there,” the demon said with the angel’s voice. “See you soon.”
All around them, ancient security measures that were woven into the fabric of Paradise itself began to activate, having woken to the presence of a demon among them. Sigils, inscribed in the First Language of Creation itself, swept through the water, up above its surface, forming complex circles and interlinking chains, old divine mechanisms connecting together for the first time in centuries. All of which were seemingly having trouble dealing with Crowley, whose angelic disguise was apparently quite convincing. He rose, false wings flapping, to the surface of the Astral Ocean, and for a moment before he vanished, he looked down through the ripples he had created at Ambriel, waving just once before a burst of magic took him away from Paradise entirely, through pathways that clearly only he knew.
Devilish creature…
Others soon swept into the space above the ocean, the Powers who were the Creator’s muscle, searching for the intruder that had somehow slipped the security systems. Ambriel remained below the water, out of easy sight, staring up at the space Crowley had occupied, her thighs clenched together and a dreamy, absent look in her eyes. Wetness of an entirely different sort, apart from the washing liquid pressure of the Astral Ocean around her, had seeped between her legs, warm and sticky, something Ambriel did not even have a name for. She stared. Slowly, she let herself rise to the surface.
Ambriel almost let herself break through without putting her clothes back on. That damned demon…
Chapter 3
Crowley felt the passageway strain around him, what little of Paradise’s security that had managed to adhere to him attempting valiantly to pull him back. The path he was using was not meant to exist. It was a doorway slung between two fundamentally incompatible planes of existence, and he could see the walls of it flexing with the strain of staying together. The midpoint crackled and seethed, where the two realities met and bucked against one another, and passing through it was a great relief for the demon. Safety lay on the other side.
It had been a risk, going after Ambriel like that. A calculated one, but a risk nonetheless.
The path spat him out some distance from solid ground, its exit point hovering a good fifteen feet or so above the shore of Styx, the river of the dead, and it sealed up behind him almost immediately after Crowley made his way through it. The demon felt the tension leaving his body at that point, the effort he exerted maintaining the spell suddenly relaxed, and so he glided gently to the ground, sauntered downward as though gravity were something that happened to other people. By the time his feet touched the dark soil on his particular side of Styx, he was almost entirely lethargic.
In truth, he would have preferred Cocytus as a meeting place, whose bubbling banks sounded mournful and sad, grieving for things lost. But one, sadly, could not have everything. Crowley sighed.
“Are you done with your game yet, Crowley?” There was a rumbling from off to one side, and Eo emerged from the black sands, h
uge clumps of earth falling away from his statuesque figure. “You aren’t just wasting my time, are you?”
“Remains to be seen,” Crowley replied, in a rare spasm of honesty. It was still possible, he acknowledged, that Ambriel would not arrive, which would leave him alone with an irritable, rather large demon. “But I don’t think so. You didn’t see the look in her eyes, but I did. She’ll come. You’d best keep hiding, my friend.”
“I’m not your friend, Crowley,” Eo growled, but he did as he was told, sinking back into the earth to wait for the appointed time. They may not be, as Eo said, friends, but that didn’t mean that the other demon didn’t know a good time when it fell into his lap.
And Crowley was always good for a good time.
Chapter 4
Ambriel could not say for sure how long it took her to get to the river Styx, at least not in terms of how much time had passed for Crowley. She knew for herself it had only been a few minutes, as long as it took for her to extricate herself from the massive heavenly host that had answered the security breach and find a series of points between planes that would lead her from one place to the other. She would never admit to how quickly she had answered the demon’s summons, though; frankly, she hoped it had been quite a bit longer from Crowley’s perspective.
Styx could be a strangely beautiful place, when looked at from certain angles. Its banks were composed of black sand, a sort of desert of the stuff extending all the way to the cavernous walls that contained it. On one side was as close to Paradise as a mortal could get without being explicitly invited in, the entrance to the planes that contained the dead, in one way or another. Branching paths could be seen extending off from the wall on that side, tunnels and trails that led to all the places the souls of the departed could go: Paradise at one end, Hell at the other, and a near infinite series of additional afterlives and purgatories, fit for purpose after the dead had crossed the river and found their place among the departed.