The Demon

by Rick Bonogofsky

  “Then what really happened?” Ariel inquired. “How did the war begin, so we may better prepare for it? What must we watch out for?”

  Artemis sighed. He knew the dangers of revealing too much but Heaven deserved a better warning than the general threat of war. “Hades is king of Hell now,” he offered.

  Ariel nodded.

  “He will have a son soon. This son, Pluto, will have his own son, named Lucifer.”

  “And this Lucifer will bring about the war?” Ariel asked.

  Artemis shook his head. “No. Although he will accidentally begin a new religion, but not with the outcome he wanted. His son, Satan, will become the devil in that new religion. Amusingly enough, angels will be revered as saviors.”

  “Is it Satan, then?” Ariel asked.

  Artemis held his hand up to interrupt her. “Calm yourself, Ariel. No, it will be Satan’s son, Damien, who will begin the war. Damien will seize the throne of Hell and march upon Earth in hopes to expand his kingdom. He will attack a major city, murdering millions.”

  Ariel stared at Artemis, amazed that such an occurrence was even allowed to happen with the archangel watching over Earth. She realized Artemis may have had a hand in the beginning of the war, for Artemis’ hands were tightly clenched into white-knuckled fists. Something had happened to the archangel when the war had started and the memory was causing him some distress.

  “Then we assassinate Damien before he can take the throne,” Ariel suggested.

  Artemis shook his head. “That would only ignite a war directly between Heaven and Hell,” he replied.

  “There is to be a war in any case,” Ariel quipped.

  “The original war was Heaven defending the humans until the humans had the means to fight back. Once the humans were sufficiently trained and armed, I led them and the few remaining angels personally to victory over the demons.”

  “And Damien was killed,” Ariel surmised.

  Again, Artemis shook his head. “No, he lived. He ran back to Hell to lick his wounds. However, when he went back, his people revolted. He was thrown in prison to suffer for eternity. Even in my time, Hell has no king.”

  “Why does a kingdom have no king?” Ariel asked, confused.

  “When Satan died, with him went the knowledge of the last heirs to the throne of Hell. Three heirs remain in my time. One refuses the throne, while the other two simply don’t know of their lineage.”

  “Why not tell them? Certainly one of them may be willing to take the throne.”

  “They don’t have the honor, will, or discipline to rule a kingdom.”

  Ariel pondered this. “And I suppose putting a king on Hell’s throne would alter too much, correct?”

  Artemis nodded. “Exactly. Therefore, I must leave this time and go back home before I alter any more than I already have.”

  Ariel nodded, beginning to understand. “I would hate to see you leave,” she sighed.

  Artemis stood and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We will meet again. Ironically enough, you have a hand in training my younger self. You and I will meet again in time. It will be a different point in my timeline, and I won’t know you as I do now, but it will still be me.”

  Ariel looked up at his blindfold, wishing he had eyes for her to look into. “What is my future like, in your own time, I mean.”

  Artemis removed his hand from her shoulder. His visage was hard and his frown told Ariel more than she wanted to know. But she had to know.

  “You were made an archangel during the war,” Artemis explained. “You left Heaven with your legion in order to aid the other two archangels and myself as we defended Earth.”

  “What happened?” Ariel pressed.

  “You should know what happened,” Artemis muttered. “I’ve told you before that I was the only archangel that survived the battles on Earth.”

  Ariel was shocked. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out. “I… I died? Did you witness my death?”

  Artemis nodded grimly. “You were not prepared for the carnage and a demon used that distraction against you.”

  Ariel shook her head. “But I know now. Surely I can prevent it.”

  “Even so, you were not prepared for battle. You are a great councilor but you lack the stomach for battle. You have too much compassion to be a ruthless killer, and that is exactly what is needed in the war. Honestly, I prefer you outside of battle.”

  “Is that… is that why you do not return my love for you?” Ariel asked. She was surprised that she had the courage to ask, but after nearly half a century of giving her affection to him with no returned emotions, she felt she was owed an answer.

  Artemis stared hard at her. Even without eyes, she could feel the intensity of his gaze. “No,” he stated flatly. “I simply cannot afford to allow myself to grow feelings for someone in a different time than me.” He knew that he had broken her heart and that he possibly could have let her down more easily, but he just could not bring himself to do so. Perhaps if she hated him or at least wasn’t distracted by her love for him, she wouldn’t leap into a war and get herself killed.

  Ariel’s eyes welled up with tears and she shook her head in denial. However, she blinked away her tears and composed herself. To Artemis’ surprise, she said, “I understand. Anything between us could irreparably alter time and cause untold calamity.”

  Artemis smiled, glad to see her finally seeing reason. He knew she was just putting on a façade, acting calm until he left. He had seen the act before in many women in his lifetime. He knew she wanted to get a reaction out of him. She would not get one.

  “I must take my leave, now,” Artemis stated. He walked out of Ariel’s chamber and left her there to think of what he had said. As soon as the door closed, Artemis heard her collapse at her desk and begin sobbing uncontrollably. He almost felt bad for the woman. He sighed and shook his head. He needed to be elsewhere at the moment, not stuck here. There was no telling how much damage may be done to his time period without him there.

  Artemis wended through the halls of the palace, making his way to Heaven’s mausoleum. The underground structure was immense, housing the corpses of every angel slain in battle. Generally speaking, that was the only way angels typically died. The few who died outside of battle usually died in their sleep at an incredibly old age. The youngest to die in such a way was at least a few thousand years old.

  The archangel reached the doors to the mausoleum and paused. The gleaming obsidian double doors stood twelve feet tall with ornate carvings of heroic battles edged in abalone. Each angel pictured on the double doors was interred in the mausoleum, and a new figure appeared every time an angel died. Artemis smiled. He wished the doors were the only such epitaph in his time. Then, however, the obsidian carving had spread to encompass the entire room beyond the door.

  Something was off. Artemis’ eye caught a flaw in the carving. One angel’s face had been chipped away. He had been in front of these doors just a few days before. He had seen when the new figure was added, watched it magically take form.

  “What is this?” he gasped. His mind raced back to his own time. The obsidian was chipped in dozens of places, exactly the same as this, though on a much larger scale. Artemis had thought it caused by the passage of time, but this told him otherwise. This obsidian carving was relatively new. He pushed open the double doors and raced inside. Running through the halls, Artemis had no time to admire the black marble tiles or the arching ceilings painstakingly painted to resemble a starry night sky. The walls rushed past in a dark grey blur, the occasional plaque bringing a silver streak to the darkness. Down several flights of stairs and through half a dozen doors Artemis ran, knowing what he would find. Finally, he burst through the last door, entering Victor’s tomb. There stood the sarcophagus, white marble shining in the silver light. Artemis pushed against the lid and slid it onto the ground. The half-ton slab shattered as it hit the marble floor and cracked the tiles underneath its weight. Artemis did not care. He looked into the sa
rcophagus and shook his head. There lay Victor’s corpse, dressed in the burial robes he was interred in. His sword was placed on his chest, his hands lifelessly grasping the hilt. His visage was peaceful and serene.

  Artemis looked from the body to the armor on its stand in the corner of the room. Every angel was interred with his or her armor, a silent guardian to stand watch through eternity. However, the armor never again shone with the light of the owner’s life-force. But here was Victor’s armor, bathing the room in a bright silver light.

  “So, Victor,” Artemis sneered, looking back to the lifeless body in the sarcophagus, “this is when it begins, then. This is when you begin your hunt.” Artemis shook in anger and left the mausoleum. He moved listlessly through the palace to his chambers and slipped his ring off his finger. Back in his normal colors, Artemis unsheathed his sword. He held it in front of him and stared into the blade. Its hellish features began to writhe and contort into faces. Thousands of faces screamed silently at him as they flowed throughout the confines of the blade. Finally, the face Artemis was looking for appeared. It fought harder than most of the others to be free, but it was trapped eternally.

  “I hope you are happy, Victor. I hope you had fun,” Artemis hissed at the face. It glared at him, as if hearing his words, and disappeared. “I’ve had enough of the past. It is time I returned to my own place.” Artemis buried his anger and slashed at the air in front of him. A glowing, multi-colored rift in the dimension opened and he stepped through, disappearing from the past he had so regretted visiting.

  With his next step, Artemis found himself back in his own time, more than a century after the Great War for which he had tried to prepare Heaven, to no apparent success. He stood atop a tall building amid the bustling metropolis of New Manhattan. Shining skyscrapers covered the land in all directions for several miles. The sun shone in a clear blue sky and the sounds of the city floated up to Artemis. He was glad to be home, away from the politics of Heaven. Here he did not need to worry about the petty differences between demons or angels or humans. Here, in his own time, he was king of it all. He was the one being who ruled over all of them. Angels, demons, humans, lycanthropes, vampires, everything that lived did so under his leadership and guidance as a god.

  Artemis stretched his wings and breathed in the familiar air. He was finally home, and could relax.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Dante awoke in his home: a hollowed out nuclear submarine left on a beach during the war. Half of it was buried under the sand and the other half lay on the shore like a beached whale. The half on the beach had broken off during a violent storm, during which Dante was looking for shelter. He had fallen in love with the place immediately and planned to come back when the mission he had been on at the time was over. When he came back, he built a section of house over the bottom half that connected it to the top half and moved in. It had taken a few days to clean the place out, moving leftover sand and debris out of the hull - even finding that the engine had long since been removed - but soon the place was livable.

  He was glad to be home. The sound of the waves on the shore greeted him and the smell of the sea and the old metal of the submarine wafted past his nostrils. After being in the past for forty years, all he had wanted from the first day was to be back in his home.

  Dante slid out of his large, comfortable bed and stretched away the stiffness in his muscles. He was dressed in his old clothes from before he left for the past. His dark pants, ragged shirt, long coat, and combat boots fit like the day he had left. Not like he had done much physical growing, but it was still nice to be wearing synthetic fabrics again. Even his old sword, a memento left to him by his father, was still in its usual place, leaning against the wall in his bedroom. Dante went to the door and pushed it open, strapping his sword to his waist along the way. He walked through the familiar halls of the sub and took in the welcome sights. For nostalgia’s sake, he wandered throughout the submarine’s lower half, running his fingers over the worn walls, the broken gauges, and the creaking doors. He made his way to the stairs he had built to get to the ground floor and resumed his exploration. The main room was lit by the mid-morning sun and the scent of his tiny garden wafted in from outside. Everything was just the way he had left it. He was not surprised by that; Death had promised to return him to the exact moment he had left. Dante was pleased; he had done his job and was now back at home. Back to his peaceful life, free of needless killing and unwanted hardships.

  Dante felt his head begin to ache, new images swirling into his mind. They were new memories, rushing in to sit next to the old ones. On one side, Dante could remember his old life and old history lessons, and on the other, he saw the new, altered history of Earth after his task was completed. There were only subtle differences, slight changes to the overall timeline of Earth. The cities Dante had destroyed were saved from nuclear attack, if not demonic attack, and the general population of Earth was still the same. The only real difference now was the reduced levels of radiation all over the world. Earth was more livable now, thanks to Dante.

  The aching in his head subsided and Dante pondered these new changes. His own life had been unaffected by the changes, leaving him glad for the most part. He was who he was because of the paths he had taken and the circumstances that led to this point. But now that the world was better suited for life again, he felt the urge to explore again. It had been thirty years since he had seen the rest of the world in this timeline - seventy if counting the forty years he spent in the fourth century B.C.

  Shrugging the trip off as something to do at a later time, Dante left his home and made his way up the coast. He traveled north for several miles and smiled when the familiar ruined skyscrapers filled the horizon ahead of him. Manhattan was still in ruins and likely would be for another few decades. The humans may have bombed themselves back to the Stone Age, but they were tenacious. They would eventually rebuild their cities and thrive once again. When that happened, the world would go back to what it was before the war. It would not take long.

  Dante had no idea what that was like, though. He had been born close to the end of the war, trained at a very young age to kill demons. His training resumed even after the war had ended for fear of a renewed assault. It was all the better for him; his swordsmanship was brilliant, his hand-to-hand combat skills unrivaled by his peers. Dante almost laughed at the thought. He had no real peers. Not anymore. He had trained with other orphans: human children without any family to take care of them. They became the perfect soldiers, for a time. Then several decades passed and left the rest of Dante’s class aged and decrepit. Most of them were dead now, rotting in the ground or scattered as ashes in the wind. There were only three of them left, Dante included. Alphonse, the youngest and sharing a birthday with Dante, had his eighty-second birthday celebration with his children and grandchildren a few days before Dante had left for the past. The other was slightly older than the demon. His name was Gerard.

  Dante walked into Manhattan and wandered past fallen buildings and rubble strewn across entire city blocks. He was used to seeing this. He had been born in a military medic’s tent in the heart of the city near the end of the war. Manhattan had already been destroyed by the demons, but when the angels drove them away, humans began to repopulate the area. The story was the same all over the world. Where the angels swept aside the demons, humans gathered and made homes amid the ruins. In places where the radiation was too thick some angels had used their power to cleanse the areas to make them habitable, but there were too few angels to cleanse all of Earth, especially towards the end.

  One building stood tall among the rest of the rubble, still mostly intact despite the ravages of the war and time. That building was Dante’s goal. He walked inside and absently brushed his fingers along the walls, much like he had done as a child. When his fingers slid across a button, he pressed it without looking. As a child, his parents would tell him of a time before the war when a person could press a button to call a box that would take the
m to any level of the building. All at the press of a button. That was all gone, though. After the nukes had done their work, very few electronics were spared and those that did function had been hoarded by looters and would-be rulers.

  When the nukes had gone off, Earth was engulfed in a planet-wide electromagnetic pulse that wiped out all electronics. The few bits of old technology that still worked were rebuilt from the debris of the war. Some major cities still had power, but only because of brilliant scientists working day and night to rebuild the old generators. They had to figure it all out from the ground up. Most of the human population had been decimated in the war, leaving the younger generation orphaned. Many of the survivors had gone mad from the horror the demons had wrought. Until the outbreak of the war, demons and angels were nothing but stories; humans knew nothing of the reality of the world around them. Angels, demons, and all manner of mythical creatures had all learned to adapt with the ever growing human population. They hid themselves among the humans, living mortal lives until the demons invaded. Then everything changed, albeit very slowly at first.

  The first reports filtered out of the New York, the first place attacked by the demons. No one knew why New York was the first target, but it was hit the hardest while the rest of the world thought it nothing more than a hoax. They laughed it off, especially when reports claimed a single angelic figure had swooped in to defend humanity. That is until they lost communication with the city. New York went dark within two days of being attacked, despite the valiant efforts of the lone archangel; he simply was not able to be everywhere at once. Soon after, more reports came in from Maine, Washington D.C., and Chicago. The demons spread like wildfire, accosted the whole time by a single archangel and his two friends. Yet, even then, when North America fell, the rest of the world thought it was simply a biological weapon or an experiment gone wrong, not an attack from Hell. They readied their nukes and waited. They watched as the invaders made their way to them. A year after New York fell, the demons reached China, Japan, and London after spreading to Canada and Mexico.