Wayne Barlowe: God's Demon

“Eligor, what we did was wrong. Catastrophically wrong. Of that I am now certain. Lucifer’s truest gift—no, his greatest curse—was his ability to convince us to follow him. Of course, there were far too many of us who needed no excuse to go to War. The rhetoric, the very words were like shards of ice; once plunged into you they melted and flowed deep within, permeating your soul with their coldness. It was impossible not to hear them again and again, even in moments of rest. It seems never to have occurred to us what we might lose if we heeded them. I, for one, was entirely seduced.”

Sargatanas was silent, his head bowed.

“My lord, it all made sense at the time.”

“And now?” Sargatanas’ voice was a husky whisper. Embers floated languorously from his head.

Eligor shrugged.

“Now we must try to be what we are, not what we were,” said Sargatanas. “That, at least, is the theory.”

“And what of humanity?”

Sargatanas slowly shook his head.

“Look around us—look at them, at what ‘knowledge’ has granted them. They are the saddest casualty of our War. They have become everything Lucifer might have hoped for. A triumph of disappointment to those Above.”

Eintsaras walked to their table and, with a curious look upon his face, placed an old, heavy book atop the stack before Sargatanas. A small cloud of its dust puffed up and dissipated after a moment.

Eligor nodded. It was true; whether he had been prophetic or hopeful, Lucifer’s world had come to pass. Could he have dreamt that it would have failed so spectacularly?

Eligor picked up the sheet of vellum he had been taking notes on. It twitched in his hand.

“‘He Fell, and it was like the stars torn down… the entire sky was afire with his descent,’” read Eligor. “‘I saw him, like a bolt of lightning, streak down toward Hell…,’ and, ‘Lord Lucifer Fell, slow and deliberately, a trail of fire behind him…’” He put the page down and looked directly at Sargatanas. “Which of these is true? They cannot all be.”

“I do not know,” said Sargatanas, shaking his head. “My feeling is that there is probably some truth to all of them. Perhaps at various points in his descent it appeared differently. We all saw things when we Fell. The agony did things to all of us.”

“Where do you think he is, my lord? In hiding—ashamed? Or waiting? Or when he Fell, was he destroyed outright for his efforts?”

“I could not begin to say. Our very first Council of Majors addressed that question. I, like all the others of my rank, sent out countless parties to search for him. Some never returned. We found nothing. Not even a hint of where he might have Fallen.”

Eligor picked up a carved jet book-weight and rotated it, considering what he had just heard. It still seemed impossible to him that Lucifer had simply vanished.

Sargatanas stood, straightening the heavy folds of his robes. The charred seraphic wing-stumps that floated behind his shoulder blades flexed and relaxed. He picked up the book Eintsaras had just laid down and put a hand on his captain’s shoulder.

“We can manage without him and his gilded words. This is no place for them. Hell rages around us and we have risen to its challenge and, in so doing, we have tempered ourselves against sentimentality. Against nostalgia, against the memories. And that is how it should be, Eligor,” Sargatanas said, standing. “That is how it has to be.”

Eligor smiled and his chest filled with devotion to his master. He was truly privileged to be in Sargatanas’ company.

As Sargatanas swept past him, Eligor caught a glimpse of the title of the book his lord was taking back to his rooms. It was an ancient book, as old as any Eligor had ever seen in the Library, and carved into its wrinkled and liver-spotted cover were the words “The Secret and Blessed Recollections of the Above.”

Time flowed past in blood and fire, and Eligor watched Adamantinarx-upon-the-Acheron grow into the most enlightened metropolis in Hell. Sargatanas not only encouraged a degree of leniency toward the souls in his keeping that followed the letter of Beelzebub’s law, if not its spirit, but also promoted the growth of the Arts, both Dark and Light, among the demons. Souls with any recollection of craftsmanship were given the chance by patron demons to ornament buildings, tile floors, and sculpt the myriad statuary that dotted the plazas. It was, Eligor thought, a dark renaissance—an echo of what had been lost.

Adamantinarx blossomed into an Infernal anomaly. The city could never be confused with its counterparts Above, but there was enough of a resonance to lessen the demons’ burden somewhat. The palace, indeed the whole city, was an amazing melange of architecture. Eligor saw not only buildings nearly identical to those of the Above but also wonderful human architecture gleaned, he knew from his research, from the memories and skills of the worker-souls. Huge basilicas flanked pagoda-like towers, which sprouted up from between the souls’ densely packed quarters. All were, with the exception of the palace complex on the central mount, a uniform gray-olive color, which somehow made the odd juxtapositions less jarring.

Surrounded by the howling wilds of Hell, populated by the countless twisted human penitents, and governed by the most learned of demons, Adamantinarx became the bitter envy of all of Sargatanas’ rivals. They neither understood nor tolerated his goals, and a gnawing resentment began to grow in the provinces around him.

Sargatanas and his court sensed their growing animosity. Visitors from afar became less frequent and forthcoming, bringing fewer gifts and even less news from abroad. Demons Major, other than true friends of the court, stopped coming altogether, sending in their place minor officials. Eligor saw this as not only insulting to his lord but ominous as well. Why, he wondered, was Adamantinarx not seen as the best model of a city but the worst?

It was with a sense of urgency that he met with Sargatanas and Valefar, and after very little discussion it was agreed that the borders should be made less porous and that entry into Sargatanas’ wards would only be by special permission. Eligor applied himself happily; it was good to have a specific and important task at hand. And to his delight, he was invited to participate in the conjuring sessions with which Sargatanas bolstered the borders. Acting as second to his lord, Eligor watched with profound admiration as a variety of complicated guardian-glyphs, abstract and beautiful, were created, only to speed off by the hundreds to the farthest corners of Sargatanas’ wards. There, Eligor knew, they would take up position, hovering and expanding to hundreds of feet in height, fiery warning-beacons in the ashy gloom.

Even with such insurances the wards were not entirely safe from spies. They could take nearly any form that a Demon Major could imagine, and Eligor always brought the more baroque infiltrators before Sargatanas or Valefar to show them their enemies’ ingenuity. All manner of walking, crawling, tunneling, and flying creatures were interrogated, examined, cataloged, and then summarily destroyed. They were much too dangerous to keep imprisoned.

The Great Lord Astaroth, in particular, began a persistent campaign of espionage and theft, flooding the fringes of Sargatanas’ wards with innumerable stealthy flyers.

“His capital and wards are a shambles,” said Valefar in his chambers late one day. Quartz-paned cases filled with odd curios lined his rooms, reflecting the dim light of Algol, which was sinking behind the horizon. “I cannot understand how one so venerable could have let this happen. Who are his advisors?”

“Deceitful puppets standing firmly with Beelzebub,” Sargatanas said. “I do not believe that the Fly ever really wanted him as a vassal. He has never had much use for Astaroth and regards him more as an antiquated curiosity than as a noble ally. His interest in Astaroth has always been nominal.”