Angel.
Her.
She, daughter of Lilith, queen of Hell. She who remembered using her diamond sharp feathers to cut and slice and shield so instinctively that only now did she realize its significance. Like flexing her legs as she darted forth and back. Lashing out with sword and razor sharp pinions in unison. Parrying with buckler and wing in perfect tandem.
And what was a lord of Hell but an Angel who had Fallen from grace?
And she?
Strong hands gently squeezed her own. “To be born into madness is not the same as having chosen to embrace it.”
Jess shuddered, looking deep into the fiery gold gaze of the being who had once cherished her so deeply, centuries ago.
Morlekai smiled. “You never fell from grace, my Jess. You never Fell.”
As if sensing her very thoughts, he knew just the words to say.
Malek growled. "She knows we are wildcards, Jess. She knows what we really are. Fearing to face us directly, even here, in the heart of her Domain. Not until she has done her final, wicked deed. You must act Jess, now, before she reveals herself once more."
"I know." Quietly spoken, her words seemed to reverberate through the endless planes of the stormy Abyss they strode upon, even as she gazed upon Malek and Midnight both in an epiphany of sudden, terrible comprehension, her familiar's brilliant sapphire gaze piercing her soul.
“It is time, my Jezabelle.”
And Jess shuddered, falling to her knees as the final seal between the lives she had lived was broken, the most ancient and horrific of memories allowed to consume her once more.
60
A child, screaming with unspeakable pain, her abyssal chords ruthlessly cleaved in twain by a mother who coldly watched her daughter writhe and struggle upon the bones of long forgotten sisters, Lilith allowing herself a smile of icy satisfaction only when hours passed, her screaming daughter’s mortal soul catalyzed at last, refusing to let her die, even as the hands of time slowly spun, the Immortality Weapon slowly coming to life, ready to be catalyzed to its full potential.
Time was a broken jittery thing for that young girl left to suffer in unspeakable agony as her mother coldly dragged her across the broken planes of damnation. Her cries echoed that of the endless legions of shrieking souls fed upon by countless lords of Hell, all solemnly witnessing the forging of their greatest weapon against the Heavens above. Lilith coldly forced her sobbing daughter through dark passageways, shrieking rifts in the very fabric of the Abyss, vents that led to the great Void itself. A roaring ball of infinite blackness, surrounded by a brilliant fiery corona; the core of their galaxy devouring countless stars screaming their final deaths as they were pulled into its endless maw.
In some way that defied space and time, the lowest planes of the Abyss bore witness to that terrible storm of all-consuming destruction, even as Lilith hissed, slowly dragging her daughter to the very edge of the endless chasm that fell for eternity. She ventured closer to the edge than any other lord of Hell would dare, Lilith's own abyssal chords, shining like obsidian, kissing the edges of the dread Void itself.
"You dare much, Lilith," grated the voice of one lord of terror, glaring at her with bulbous, multifaceted eyes. "Your get will be consumed by Oblivion's storm. Your weapon shall fail, as all your other homunculi have."
Lilith had laughed, a terrible cackle of utter contempt and smug satisfaction. Jess remembered that, as nothing else. “So you would like to believe, Ecstiss! Lord of maggots and filth! We shall see who crows with victory when my daughter brings down the very Heavens, and all those who dared oppose me crawl like vermin before my feet, begging for scraps!”
“Enough! Do it, Lilith.” A dread voice from a being of utter darkness, crimson orbs blazing. All the mad Dukes of Hell knew to look away then, shuddering with unspoken dread. He, lowest of them all, most horrid, fixed his daughter with his dread stare. “Show us you are worthy. Force your get to take the path.”
Lilith herself had shuddered then, bowing low before the only hellion she feared. "At once, my sire." She turned her dread gaze, blazing with beautiful madness and without a trace of pity onto her daughter, still writhing with unspeakable agony, her soul ripped open, the eternal clock winding through her, fating her to a slow horrid death of decrepitude. For enduring the mortal coil, which all living things are a part of, was unspeakable torment to one born to immortality.
“Get up, daughter who has earned no name.” Lilith's voice, pitiless as the shrieking Void roaring in its infinity within the chasm that defied all natural law. The dread heart of the Abyss. The source of their power, the symbol of destruction that fueled all their darkest magics, feeding upon the infinite energy pouring forth from the destruction of countless stars swallowed within that terrible hole of absolute blackness.
“Get up, and take the path! Approach the Void, my child, and let its dread powers fill you!”
Her daughter whimpered piteously, so sick with agony that she could barely crawl, let alone walk. Her mother's contemptuous gaze made it clear no mercy would be shown, no quarter given, and the child screamed as her mother's soul forged boot hammered into her flank. "Crawl, whelp! Lest you'd have me break every bone in your body and throw you into the Void myself, you will move! Approach the Void and take that dread path down the gorge, deep as you can! And it better be so deep I see no trace of your pathetic countenance. Only then may you return, filled with all the dread powers of Oblivion, worthy to face me once more!"
The young child whimpered, curling up into a ball, shrieking when her mother had ruthlessly grabbed her, shaking her so hard her teeth cracked, pulling her daughter's hair, stretching her neck to the breaking point as she gazed into her daughter’s terrified blue eyes with mad orbs of purple flame.
Murderous fury instantly became a look of tender concern. Jess whimpered in horror, realizing even then that every expression of mercy and affection her mother had ever shown had been just as mercurial, just as false as her gaze was now. "My child," Lilith had soothed. "Oh, my dear baby! All you need do is make your way down the bleak path lining the vast chasm before us!" She gently stroked her daughter's tear-stained cheeks. "Go, my little one. Let yourself sink deep into the mad maelstrom shrieking even now to taste you. But don't fall off, my dear. Don't lose your perch, or you shall spend all of eternity spinning into the Void!" Her vicious grin made Jess shudder with horror. Her mother seemed almost to relish the fantasy.
"Go, child! Only when you commune with the Void, deeper than any of these upstart fools who dare to call themselves princes of Hell, only then will your chords be reforged, and you shall be made strong, my beloved daughter. Stronger than anyone who strode these blasted lands before your coming. Strong as eternity itself, with the power of the infinite embracing your mortal shell!"
Lilith laughed in triumph, even as she tossed her screaming daughter to the very lip of the Void, forcing the tormented girl to scrabble desperately, madly struggling to hold onto the ledge, feeling the dark tendrils of nothingness hungrily caress her flesh, seeking nothing more than to pull her in. Into that terrible maelstrom of utter darkness.
The girl desperately hung on with every bit of strength left to her exhausted, dying body, even as her mother and a thousand lords of Hell gazed at her with looks of cold contempt or sickened fascination.
"Go, worthless get!" her mother screamed. Shuddering, Jess found her body doing just that, feet desperately searching for a crevice, a foothold, much to her amazement finding the narrowest of such, barely a foot wide, etched into the face of the stony crevice. She carefully made her way down, then, hands desperately clinging to any rocky outcrop she could find, forcing herself to slide along the gently descending footholds carved by forces unimaginable into the face of the unspeakably vast chasm.
Anything to escape her mother’s terrible, loveless gaze.
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It was a timeless decent, a never-ending exercise in pain, terror, and exhaustion, her sundered soul still screaming for the
wound it had received, even as her fingers and toes trembled with weariness. A state of body and mind that seemed without end, every instant an eternity. And ever she would be jolted with fresh terror, heart hammering within her chest as more than once her feet lost their purchase and she slipped, bleeding fingers clawing desperately for handholds upon the freezing surface she slowly scaled down, until after a breathless moment, her feet found the narrow ledge once more.
Forced to endure what seemed an endless nightmare, the young girl struggled down the very precipice of existence, surviving only by existing utterly within the moment. One handhold carefully found after another was reluctantly surrendered, her now bleeding feet sliding carefully down the tiny ledge that supported so much of her weight.
Her exhaustion had long since been replaced by terror, pain scoring her flesh and soul so horribly that fatigue registered not at all. She shimmied along the face of the vast chasm, sinking ever deeper, until at last her mind was pulled out of its awful struggle by sounds so wondrous, so unexpected, she nearly slipped free of her hard fought purchase, falling to her eternal death below.
She shuddered, grasping desperately tight to her purchase, even as she perked her ears, recognizing sounds she had only heard in tales from the ghostly bard her mother had allowed to care for her back within the bleak stone fortress of broken basalt and twisted souls that had been her home all her life before.
She heard the shrieking gale of endless winds, impossible tidal forces of gravity consuming what even she could sense were massive stars into the heart of the terrible Void that fed within the very center of the vast cathedral of stars within which all resided, even as the very nature of the chaotic magics released allowed their twisted realm to stretch in all directions beyond the organized realms of mundus above, their realm itself but a massive distortion of gravity and power, forces inconceivable allowing the young girl to carefully tilt her head and behold the brilliant corona surrounding the vast dark Void at the center of their starry realm, somehow both above, below, and within the very heart of that terrible chasm her mother had forced her to scale.
And within that impossible maelstrom, she thought she heard it again. The plaintive howling of some lost creature, its infinitely mournful voice echoing through the endless realms, even as it spun about the terrible fiery corona surrounding the Void itself. Jess could sense another being struggling as well against the inescapable fury of the Void, two halves of an inconceivable whole. So terrible and mighty they were, having fought against the mad currents of Oblivion for endless ages, refusing to be pulled entirely into the heart of the Void, yet neither could they escape its dreadful pull, locked in their terrible orbit around its corona for eternity.
She smiled then, that terrified, shaking girl lost within the vast chasm overlooking Oblivion itself. She closed her eyes, almost imagining those two terrible beings, old as time itself, calling out to her. The cries of ancient gods of an earlier epoch. The fierce hot wrath of dying stars exploding in coronas of destruction even as their deaths held the seeds that would fuel the birth of later stars; the freezing stare of that which promised to be the beginning and end of all things, the endless blanket of darkest midnight, surrounding all the fiery balls of light and gas shining within the infinite heavens above.
The rage of a dying star, exploding in a fiery maelstrom against the midnight sky. The shivering girl felt her heart begin to race with an excitement she had never felt before, the agony rippling through her momentarily forgotten.
She could feel them calling out to her. A plaintive howl, a feline cry. Succor, never imagined. Mercy, unheard of in the terrible dance of destruction waged between ancient gods and the angels of a new era. The last remnants of a time before time, finding hope in the tear-filled gaze of a girl shaking in exhaustion, but moments away from surrendering to the oblivion which would claim her soul as well.
"Fight!" Roared a voice she could not name, but she could picture it, as her hands gripped the icy rocks with renewed strength. The voice of a mastiff. Gruff and strong. A worthy hound, her ghostly muse would say; a brave and loyal companion that any knight would be honored to have at his side to face his enemies. A true friend that would always be faithful, always be there to fight at his master’s beck and call.
Jess closed her eyes, imagining that hound. Or perhaps it was a great wolf, of inconceivable dimensions, leaping astride the bridge of pure, starry blackness she had somehow formed between herself and the heart of the terrible Void, even as her soul at last opened itself to reforming the Abyssal Chords her mother had so cruelly rended, reforming them deep within the very heart of the Void, deeper than any lord of Hell had ever dared before.
Yet she sensed her brave Mastiff’s eternal companion, the darkness to his fiery light struggling still with the utter darkness that was so akin to his own nature. She bit her lip fiercely, grimacing so hard blood trickled from her pierced lip, visualizing her brave hound diving his impossibly massive maw deep into the Void, pulling free a struggling kitten he held with utter tenderness within his jaws.
The pair turned to her, gazing at her with unreadable expressions even as they raced along the bridge of midnight that she had somehow formed within her mind’s eye.
She who knew her true name at that moment felt a surge of exultation as she sensed those two brave spirits that had fought the endless shrieking pull of the Void for countless ages, escaping its grip at last. She felt something else as well. A fierce sense of love and loyalty welling up from deep within her heart.
Her fingers suddenly strong and sure, she pulled herself back the way she had come, climbing up the steep ledge with utter surety of foot and grip, hands and feet now that of a young woman in her prime, having aged a decade in the endless time her soul had forged a link within the very heart of the terrible Void.
The significance of the transformation was lost to none of those who witnessed the young woman emerge from the lip of the dread chasm; indeed, many of those dukes and barons of Hell who had dared to accompany Lilith in the final step of forging her dread weapon in their war against forces Draconic and Angelic alike could not disguise the alarm they felt, distorted faces muttering guttural curses and hisses, all backing away in unison as the young woman who looked so very much like her dam emerged, accompanied by two beings whose origins were not lost on the hellish coven.
“Inconceivable!” hissed one chitinous creature amongst clamors of alarm from its cohorts.
“Lilith! What is the meaning of this?” Roared a massive demon cloaked in fire with the head of a wild boar, tusks flecked with panicked foam even as his eyes burned a blue, baleful flame. “Your get emerges transformed, aged before us, with our most ancient foes by her side!”
“The birth and death of stars, the darkness that swallows all. Old gods from a forgotten epoch. Consigned to Oblivion, but never destroyed,” said the ancient and terrible creature cloaked in shadow by Lilith’s side, gently stroking shadowy fingers up and down Lilith's armored shoulders.
The young woman, still stunned from her terrible ordeal, yet relieved beyond words to be freed of her awful agony hitched her breath, feeling a sudden wave of anxious panic ripple through her.
Her mother, whom she had helplessly adored all her young life, looked afraid. Her veneer of calm dark bemusement, always in utter control of every situation she found herself in, a source of assurance to a child who had seen all too often the horrific depredations and betrayals so commonplace in the byzantine halls of Abyssal power, that porcelain perfection her mother was so renowned for was cracking before her. In its place was a rictus grin as Lilith shivered at her own father's dread shadowy touch, the true lord of all the Hells of Oblivion. Lilith's gaze upon her daughter was oddly terrified.
"My sire. All can be explained, I am sure," Lilith whispered, even as she gasped, choking, one skeletal hand almost tenderly caressing her neck.
“I am sure it can, my daughter. I know it can. I eagerly await your explanation, for it would be best if you di
d not fail me in this, the forging of our darkest weapon.”
The terrible specter drifted back, even as Lilith collapsed in an explosion of gasps, taking deep breaths of the terrible ether, even as she gazed at her solemn child.
"Dear one, you have returned! Wonderful, my child. I knew you could do it. I had such faith in you. You have done Mother proud." Her gaze turned icy cold even as the young woman smiled, oddly relieved by her mother's strangely gentle words. "But I see you have brought distasteful things from the deep with you, child. Did I give you leave to do such? Were you instructed to?" Her voice, soothing but moments before, now cracked like a whip; terror transforming itself to outrage. "Answer me, get! Dare you challenge me, newly forged? Do you doubt I can break you still?"
And through all this the young woman had gazed at the crowd of panicked lords and generals of Hell in solemn silence, letting their madness, panic, and anger wash over her.
She could feel one of the ancient beings she had rescued whisper dark images to her mind's eye, reminding her of ancient paths to terrible power her challengers before her could neither comprehend nor counter, ways to leap between the abyssal planes, to strike one's enemies from pools of darkest Shadow, to squeeze the power of light to dimmest flickers in choking darkness.
Promises were whispered to her, the savior of the two ancient Powers she had rescued from the terrible brink of destruction. Promises of their devotion, promises of terrible power and the death of all things, should she but will it. For their enemies had near destroyed them once, and with the young woman of their enemy's blood anchoring them out of the Void, they need fear nothing. Nothing at all, as they painted a glorious canvas of screaming destruction, consigning their enemies to the supernova of dying stars, the choking blackness of endless night.
And the young woman chuckled softly, her hands stroking endless blackness, an act that horrified the hellish assembly witnessing acts they could scarce comprehend. And to the awe of all assembled, the terrible wrath of an ancient god was soothed. Shadow becoming the softest obsidian fur, the glimmerings of a thousand stars flickering in the canvas of darkest night shimmering from deep within his ebony coat. Sapphire eyes sparkling like distant stars opened then, looking up at last to register the face of the girl who had saved him from Oblivion.
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