Chapter 3
Waking up laying in a bed, I stare at a ceiling fan above me for a few minutes. When I sit up and glance around, I can’t help but notice that this room looks exactly like my bedroom at my house.
Rolling out of bed thinking that was one hell of a crazy dream, I open the dresser drawer finding that it is completely empty. “That’s weird,” I mutter, then move over to the closet. It’s empty too. “What the hell is going on?”
I move into the bathroom and turn the faucet on, but there is no water. I start to freak out a little just as the door swings open, revealing the girl from my dream. I can’t believe it.
“Am I still dreaming?”
“I don’t know why they do this to people, all it does is fuck with their minds,” she says, shaking her head.
What was her name, Freda? No, Frada. No. “Frida,” I yell without thinking.
She looks at me. “Yes, Evander?”
“How do you know my name?” I reply.
“You don’t remember, do you?” she asks, looking at me.
“Remember what?”
“You don’t recall turning and killing the demon soldier, do you?” Frida laughs.
“How do you know about the dream that…” Before I can finish what I was saying, someone shouts.
“Let’s go, what’s taking so long?” The voice outside the door is familiar.
Losing their patience, my door swings open. The armor-clad man with the wings from my dream fills the doorway.
“Calm down, Uriel. Evander is trying to come to terms with everything that has happened,” Frida replies.
“Well, hurry up, we don’t have forever. He needs to start his training,” Uriel yells.
“Fine, we will be out in a minute,” she shouts back, turning to me, she whispers. “Don’t worry about him, he’s just impatient.” Uriel storms out the door and Frida looks back at me. “So, what questions do you have? Fire away.”
I take a deep breath and glance around. “Okay, first thing, where the hell am I?”
“Nope, want to guess again?” Frida giggles back at me. Confused by the question, I just stare at her. “Wow, okay. I’ll spell it out—you are not in Hell. Where you woke up, that’s Purgatory… Are you following me so far?”
Bewildered by what she is telling me, I blurt out, “So, Uriel is an…”
“Yes, Uriel is an Archangel,” she says, interrupting me. Next thing I know I’m on the floor and Frida walks over and sits on my bed.
“You okay?” she asks with a concerned look.
“Yeah, just fine, apparently everything that I believed just got turned upside down,” I mutter.
“I can keep going or do you need a minute?”
“Well, fuck me, how much crazier can it get from angels are real and so is Purgatory and Hell? Fuck, if Christopher could see me right now he wouldn’t let me live this down. Wait, so that would make this Heaven, right?” I ask looking up at her.
“Yes and no. This is Heaven, but not the Heaven you are thinking about.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“There are infinite parts of Heaven, but the one that you are currently in is kind of like its military section. Think of it as the base for Heaven’s army, but we will get into that later.
Now, when we found you in Purgatory you were between the gates of Heaven and Hell.
That creature that attacked you was a demon soldier. ”
I stop her there. “What do you mean ‘when you found me?’ You’re telling me you watched that thing…”
“Demon,” she cuts in.
“Whatever, attack me and you just watched?”
“Yes, that was your test to see if you could handle your gift,” she replies, nonchalantly.
“What gift?” I ask.
“When it attacked you and you hit it and sent it flying, did you think that you were actually that strong by yourself? Because the answer is no. God has chosen you, like he did me, to bestow this gift upon. After you punched it, what did you feel?”
“I felt an overwhelming rage and hunger build in me, and then the worst pain that I have ever experienced. I heard a voice screaming at me, demanding I kill the demon. Then something happened and my body started doing things on its own,” I answer.
“That pain was your first lycanthrope transformation, and the voice you heard and what took over was the wolf spirit that’s bonded to your soul, its innate instinct is to destroy anything that is evil,” she explains.
“Wait, wait, wait, what? Lycanthrope? Wolf spirit? You’re telling me I’m a fucking werewolf?” I reply with shock.
“Why are you talking to her about me?” a voice shouts. I freeze and look around to see who said that.
“Yes, you are a Lycanthrope, or ‘werewolf’, if you prefer. Killing the demon soldier was your test to see if you could handle not only the change, but prevent it from consuming your soul. What are you looking for?” she says with confusion on her face.
“I swear I heard a voice, didn’t you?”
Giggling, she rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I heard him, that’s your wolf talking to you.”
“So I can hear him, but if he is in my head, how do you hear him? Also what would have happened if I failed the test?” I ask.
“I’ll explain that later, that’s one of the reasons that Uriel and I were there. If you couldn’t handle it, your body would have exploded from the sheer power that the transformation releases. And if you couldn’t control yourself, Uriel would have smote you from existence.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I yell.
“Not at all. If you couldn’t have controlled it and turned back like you did, then you would have failed the test and we would have had no choice,” she replies earnestly.
“But don’t worry about that, you passed and that’s what matters.
Now, how about I give you the grand tour before Mr. Pissywings comes back in here? ”
Overwhelmed with everything I was just told, the only thing I can manage to say is, “okay.” Getting up, we head out the door and find Uriel in the hall.
“Took you long enough,” he mutters, annoyed.
“Well, what did you expect? That someone who never believed in all of this would just simply accept it?” Frida retorts, then looks at me. “You will get used to him. Okay, let’s go.”
We head down the hallway and it suddenly opens up into a huge courtyard with marble pillars. As we continue on I notice people standing inside huge rings sparring with each other.
“Here we have our hand-to-hand training grounds. This is where you will practice your transformation and learn how to control it. Once you can do that, you will move on to the combat arms training ground,” Frida says.
“If you look to the end of the courtyard, you will see where we have our infirmary.”
“I swear that I saw my arm heal on its own, so why would you need an infirmary?” I ask cutting in.
“Yes, you have healing abilities, and so do the angels. But the healing abilities that we have only work to a certain point. As Archangels, we have divine weapons that can kill anything in existence. Just keep in mind that Lucifer was an Archangel, and still has his divine sword. He also found a way to give his demonic generals weapons that can kill angels. Those weapons can severely harm an Archangel but not kill one,” Uriel replies.
“As for you, those weapons would do the same thing as a sword or ax would to you back on Earth,” he continues.
“The infirmary is to allow those who have been injured in battle time to heal. If you sustain a wound from a demonic weapon, it will greatly reduce your healing ability; if you sustain a wound from an Archangel blade, you could be wiped from existence,” Frida says.
“Most of the battles that we have fought only have one demonic general in command, but they are enough to completely turn the tide in any battle. They should never be underestimated,” Uriel remarks.
“So, you’re telling me that these demonic generals have the ability to not only kill us, but might even be able to wipe me from existence?” I question in shock.
Frida shakes her head. “No, only the Archangel blades can potentially wipe you from existence. And the only one who has one in Hell is Lucifer.”
“Not if we kill all of them first,” my wolf butts in.
“Some of them, like Lilith, have the ability to corrupt us and force us to do their bidding. Lilith has been known to corrupt the strongest of us and when that happens the Archangels step in to dispatch of them. If power that we are given is corrupted, it becomes so overwhelmingly destructive that it can even kill an Archangel. The strongest one of us that she corrupted was our last commander, Rathor,” Frida tells me.
“When we were dispatched to smite Rathor, I led the charge against him and he was so corrupted that in a single blow he cut through our ranks.
Eviscerating, dismembering, decapitating angels, and his own comrades that he fought next to for centuries without hesitation.
Before I could react he had his claws dug deep into Azrael.
Just as he went to deliver the killing blow, Frida intervened, pulling his focus away from Azrael.
She tore off his right arm. Freed, Azrael took his Archangel blade and slashed his chest just before Lilith swooped in and saved Rathor, retreating from the battle, which was almost a thousand years ago.
“Lilith, along with her Knights were able to heal Rathor’s arm, using a combination of black magic and blood magic, they imbued his arm with an Archdemon blade.
Giving his right arm the same power as an Archdemon weapon.
In his human form he bears a black spiked arm with shards of blood-red obsidian embedded in it.
When he shifts it changes as well, becoming more grotesque and jagged, resembling demonic steel more than flesh.
Every battle since that day that Rathor has been a part of, has been a complete massacre.
Nothing has been able to stop him and he has killed countless angels, Lycans, and even some Archangels,” Uriel says, lowering his head in shame.
“You see, when one of us gets corrupted, the rage that you felt toward that soldier demon changes to a hatred toward everything divine and pure. And unlike us, when we are no longer in the presence of evil, it subsides. That hatred never goes away, growing over the centuries. It consumes them and, for the lesser of us, makes them savage. But, Rathor being the strongest of us has found a way to use it to increase his power with every battle. I fear that if we don’t stop him soon, even the Archangels won’t be able to,” Frida replies, frowning.
“How long has this war been going on?” I ask.
“Since Lucifer rebelled against God and Heaven,” Uriel responds.
“And when did you start using werewolves to help?”
“Lycans,” Frida butts in with a smirk.
“Sorry, Lycans,” I correct, amusing her.
“The tide was turning against us about five-thousand years ago. God decided that he would enlist exceptional warriors who either didn’t have faith or who he saw as deserving a second chance to prove themselves.
God imbued them with this gift to test them and increase their battle prowess.
This turned the tide for us to the point we thought we would end the war.
Then Lucifer corrupted the first Lycan and everything changed,” Uriel says, as we continue to walk.
“If a Lycan falls in combat and is seen to have done enough, they are given a choice by God, they can either ascend into Heaven or return to battle. If they have not proven themselves, they get to choose to either return to the battlefield or cease to exist,” Frida says.
“All of the religions that have ever existed have worshiped the same divinities. God has gone by many names; Chaos, Atum, and Ymir. The Archangels have gone by different titles as well. Even Lucifer has been called by other names: Set, Hades, Loki, and Mors, just to mention a few,” Uriel says, glancing at me.
“So, every single religion has worshiped the same God?” I reply, perplexed.
“Yes, all the different cultures all worshiped the same God,” Uriel replies. “This allowed God to pull the strongest and most talented warriors from Earth through the centuries… Let’s go, it’s time for you to meet the rest of your Lycanthrope division.”
“You said my division—how many divisions are there?” I ask.
“We used to have a lot more, thousands even, but now we only have a few hundred remaining because of Rathor,” Frida answers with a look of deep sorrow on her face.
“Each division consists of five Lycans and the strongest in each division is their commander. Your Division consists of Perseus, Lucius, Frida, and is led by Achilles,” Uriel says.
“Wait, Achilles? Perseus, are you serious?” I question, bewildered.
“Yes, the very same. Achilles and Frida are the only ones from Rathor’s division that survived. Frida, introduce Evander to your comrades. I have things I need to attend to,” Uriel orders, then walks away.
“Yes, Sir,” Frida replies with a smart ass salute, making me grin.