Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Avirgin birth, they called it.
Word trickled down that Heaven was curiously divided on what it meant for the theology they dispersed among the humans, but the new host was a win for their realm, nevertheless.
Heaven’s King would receive the recognition, the energy, the worship, whether sources were to be believed, and their god had taken on mortal flesh, or if the presence was merely a divine teacher.
Hell saw what was coming.
The specifics were negligible.
Facts carried little weight with the faithful. Details and methods and practices were fuzzy among the humans in every pantheon. Intention was the only thing of consequence. It was the aqueduct that funneled the power to their deity.
Love was thirteen when the news of Heaven’s development reached our realm.
It was another life on the surface. I weathered the side-eyes whenever I returned to my kingdom, then returned topside, remaining anonymous as I navigated the human realm.
I hung behind the veil, helping her in whatever ways I could, as she grew up in a small Syrian village that did not lend itself to the presence of mysteriously white wildlife or marble-pale men.
I heard the news at roughly the same time she did.
It was mildly interesting, but it didn’t change the way we lived our lives.
At least, not at first.
And something odd happened over the next century.
Stories of the now-dead teacher spread. Well, his death was under investigation and hotly contested, but for all intents and purposes, he no longer walked the earth.
He was the heir to Heaven’s throne, as the rumors went.
The stories caught fire, the likes of which we’d never seen.
A man called Paul—born Saul of Tarsus, author of many famous letters, a human who loved the new Messiah, as he called him—believed the end was near.
So near, in fact, that he was quite sure it would happen in his very lifetime.
Word rippled amongst Heaven’s mortals of a new message.
The end of the world wasn’t unique to their worldview.
I had a handle on the cosmic Grand Finale and its comparative broad strokes, with or without the nuance.
The Nordes had Ragnarok, Buddhists had Shambhala, the Hindu had Kalki’s arrival.
The similarities were an offensive stretch when connecting paradoxically opposite pantheons, save for a common theme: nothing would last forever.
Heaven procured the concept of Armageddon. In 96 ADE, John the Elder wrote the book of Revelation. In it, he declared that the world’s end would be preceded by a figure whom he called the antichrist.
Lore rose and fell every day. Legends, myths, stories of gods, their children, and their prophecies, occurred by the hour.
This one was different.
There was a lure to it, an urgency, a seductive violence that turned stories of the humble carpenter-turned-teacher and his messages of love, charity, and acceptance, that took root among the kind and bloodthirsty alike.
The tension throughout Hell was palpable. The heavy silence as the breathless kingdom watched and waited. We didn’t know what this would mean for the stalemate of our cold war, but the tides were turning. We had to be ready, whatever that meant.
Speculation regarding the world’s end was fascinating and new. Guesses became accusations. Beliefs became wars. Heaven and Hell left the spiritual realm as Heaven’s faithful took up swords, spilling blood across the land in the name of their god.
Some of Heaven’s believers proposed the antichrist would be a political figure. Rome’s next leader, perhaps. But given John’s creative imagery of the Beast, lore took a strange, new shape.
This antichrist was to be the child of Satan, some said, though who or what ‘Satan’ was remained unclear. By definition, a satan is an adversary—anyone who stands opposed to the one in power.
Ba’al of the Phoenician pantheon was appropriated and bastardized as Beelzebub, one of many to be twisted and contorted as a lesser, as an opponent, rather than a deity from another pantheon.
Satans and devils of the emphatically lower-case noun variety found themselves with new, insulting monikers as time marched on.
Sometimes one would be given descriptive titles, like the mocking bastardization of Baal’s name, as the neighboring culture adopted his name and Ba’al became baal– a pile of dung in their language.
Stripped of his dignity whenever the people spoke of the powerful Canaanite storm deity, they birthed “Lord of Flies” as a name for the Devil (now proper noun—a singular entity).
Sometimes satans became demonized through other anomalous appropriations, like the fallen angel cast from their Heavenly King’s grace, Lucifer.
Azazel, literally translated as “scapegoat,” was an autonomous entity until they shifted sin and its blame.
Moloch, once known by the Canaanites for ideological sacrifice, such as giving up temptations, donating wealth, abandoning pleasures for the greater good, to a shameful bastardization of a once-beautiful practice.
What was once known for its moral humility twisted throughout Semitic polytheism.
A curse upon the deity’s name came from the King of Heaven himself.
Moloch’s name was slandered. Pure offerings of self-denial became rumors of child sacrifice by the neighboring nations.
Holy defamation swelled as a million brushstrokes painted the final image: every deity, entity, or adversary who stood in opposition of Heaven was conflated with this infamous “Satan.”
And so, the merging continued.
Who, then, would be this electrifying enemy?
Who would be worthy of the ever-growing hype as humans crackled with excitement at the very thought that their enemies might be tossed into the flame, punished through eternity?
After all, who didn’t want to see a nemesis squashed?
And what better excuse than to say that such a sentence was divine, rather than twisted, unhealed human pleasure at another’s suffering?
As with all lore, it’s hard to know where the story began.
Occasionally, prophecies come from a singular source, like the booming voice of a flaming angel to a shepherd on a starry night.
More often than not, it’s the legion who spreads the word. A message disseminated between lords and gods and pantheons so quickly that it’s challenging to know who started it or where it began.
And such was the whispered lore of the antichrist.
The Christ was born of a god and a virgin.
The antichrist, so they said, would be the spawn of Satan and his whore.
Hell’s heart fell with collective emptiness as all eyes turned to me and the inextricable pull I’d had to one mortal soul from life to life to life.
I, the demon, and my human were to be their missing piece.
We were prophecy in the making.
I’d never experienced panic or struggle like I did in the moment of seeing the global wheels turn. Pantheons at large understood Heaven’s ever-growing expansion was a threat, and Hell was their only chance to save their people from colonization.
This god, this King of Heaven, did not respect borders. He was a war deity, and he was bent on conquering. He overthrew kingdoms, lands, peoples, and minds. Temples were destroyed, holy texts were burned, priestesses were slaughtered, and for the first time, we were united against a common enemy.
The war was no longer Heaven versus Hell.
If the King of Heaven had his way, it was Heaven versus everybody.
My days of speeches and diplomacy were coming to an end. Centuries of building connections across the globe had built to a moment we’d hoped would never come.
I never traveled unarmed, but a visit to Hell’s armory ensured that whether I needed steel to slay a member of the fae, or something stronger to end a god, I was ready.
Hell’s Prince was now on the frontlines. The kingdom braced ourselves for our new reality: life would never be the same for demons. Now, it was kill or be killed.
Distant gods allied themselves with Hell at unprecedented rates.
Inter-deity relations thrived like never before.
My father was overjoyed. He looked at me with new eyes, ones that brimmed with hope and pride and compassion. My human, once a source of royal shame, was now Hell’s greatest treasure.
I felt as though I was gripping at the thinnest part of a waterfall as I tried to take hold of a flimsy prophecy, to battle it, to fight against it. I didn’t want it. I didn’t believe it. I wouldn’t accept it.
Though I’d loved my human fiercely before, my need to protect her expounded a thousandfold. Prior to this, I’d feared her exposure to the world. Now, her soul was left to ravenous wolves, and many of them had fates in mind far worse than death.
The gods had their prophesized demon.
The only thing they needed was to make his human a whore.