Uninvited Guest #2
Do I feel an ounce of guilt for corrupting them? Fuck no…because free will and all that. It’s a tool. A tool for Heaven just as it is for Hell. A knife’s blade that humanity walks along, but only for so long before they choose sin or salvation.
Plus, this right here is the very reason I was created. To test their will and tempt them toward war and sin. My purpose met, my conscience is clear.
Pollock
The nagging unease persisted, settling deeper with each passing hour.
The city felt it too.
Not in any way that could be named, but in the subtle shifts of daily life. Voices lowered. Movements quickened. Even the air seemed heavier, as though something unseen reached out with ghostlike fingers to disturb their hearts and minds.
When I could no longer sit idle and wait for the cause to reveal itself, I convinced Kahill to act—pressing him to send contingents of his best soldiers to fortify the city walls and additional men to reinforce the nearby settlements.
He agreed to do so after many hours of deliberation, and not without reluctance.
He could not dispute one truth, no matter how hard he tried. That was the growing wrongness of each second we wasted, and the not knowing what was coming meant we had to prepare for anything.
With orders delivered and supplies gathered, we made plans to ride out at first light.
It took us six days to narrow our search.
We did not follow tracks, nor rumors, nor signs easily read. Our guide became the slow creeping dread and death that rode the air like a separate entity, the farther west we traveled, thickening with every mile and settling like disease in the marrow of bone.
All the while, souls slipped from my awareness, blinking out of existence with no rhyme or reason.
A rapture, in a sense.
Though not one of our making.
Heaven was discontent as well.
The message came not in words, but in sensation—waves of unrest that spoke to the divinity within me as we crossed unforgiving terrain beneath punishing skies. The storm felt like a warning.
One that had come too late.
God couldn’t part the veil to send an angel with word of this directly, though I sensed his desire to do so.
The turbulent fury filling the clouds above us was a reflection of his wrath.
But it was part of the deal he had made.
No interference once we breached this plane, and as long as the Devil held to his end of the bargain, neither of them could interfere.
No guidance would come.
No light would be shed to steer our path.
Heaven was bound.
My brothers and I would face whatever new threat this was alone.
If Kahill spoke true—and I had no cause to doubt him—the gates between the two planes had opened. Demons now walk among us where they were never meant to tread.
What kind… how many… remained to be seen.
This revelation offset the balance and brought the potential consequences to the forefront of my mind.
Factions of soul-starved demons upon a war-torn Earth, countless souls teetering on the brink, and we had little hope of righting the balance if this manifested beyond our control.
Chaos would soon ensue.
The scales had begun to tip.
The stakes were not merely the fate of this world for the next thousands of years and Heaven’s ability to maintain order. But the fate of it for ages to come and Heaven’s dominion over order itself.
Should the final measure weigh in Lucifer’s favor, he would not merely claim victory. He would unmake the world from God's image and remake it in his own.
Such is his nature.
He would cast God down and crown himself in His place, subjugating God in ways beyond comprehension.
His vengeance, having been fueled since being cast out, will not likely end before the concept of time does.
And any retribution he exacts will not fall upon God alone.
Angels. Man. All creatures. All worlds. All of creation will bend to his will.
Fallen lords will rise, bringing the deepest horrors of Hell’s realm into this one. Together, they will tear down this world as they had the underworld, and make every being suffer for every imagined slight they have carried since the fall.
All will be punished in the vilest of ways.
All will pay.
An undeserved reckoning with no end.
At that point, it will not matter what the contract states. Because the Devil will rule in God’s stead, and create and destroy as he sees fit to do. These thoughts, and darker still, are what consume me as we ride toward whatever doom awaits us.
Ash blankets the landscape in a thin, pale film. Our cloaks and masks protect us from the worst of it, but it still layers us in death more steadily as we race through the night.
Fiero, far larger and faster than Cali, keeps a measured gait to match our pace.
As Kahill’s bonded, she’s ridden beside us for ages. Yet in all that time, Cali has never grown comfortable with her presence—due in part to the heat radiating from her and the scorched earth left behind with each of Fiero’s hoofprints.
That, and Cali understands what most do not.
Fiero is no mere mount.
She is a living flame—an immortal beast bred from the hottest infernos of Hell. A gift from Kahill’s maker, and one with questionable loyalty.
A few angels in Heaven recognized this and called for her exile, though more for the fact that they saw her existence in their pristine, utopian realm as a blight in need of removal.
Seeing as Kahill treated her as if she’d been birthed from his own damn loins, he wouldn’t hear of it. And that put him further at odds with many of our brethren.
There, they were the things that didn’t belong.
Here, they are the most unnatural.
And below, they could pass within the hellscape unnoticed.
Now, whether by coincidence or design, their fire, strength, speed, and other abilities may just be the most valuable assets we have against the demons who have risen.
Both are indestructible. They can go days without food or water and show no signs of fatigue.
Where Cali and I must stop for rest, they could simply press on.
I nearly tell Kahill to do just that—go ahead, leave us behind, reach whatever this is before it’s too late. I open my mouth, and the thought settles heavy on my tongue.
Wrong.
The sky splits open.
A bolt of lightning tears through the darkness and strikes a lone massive tree ahead of us. Dead branches catch like tinder, and within seconds, they’re engulfed with flames devouring them from the inside out.
Cali rears beneath me, a startled cry breaking from her throat. Fiero answers with a low, rumbling chuff that leans closer to a snarl, heat rolling off her as smoke curls from her nostrils.
I still.
The fire has nowhere to spread. It’s—contained, deliberate—a single large tree burning bright in the center of our path.
Kahill huffs under his breath, gaze fixed on the blaze. “Subtle,” he mutters. Then, after a beat, quieter, he asks, “His doing?”
Somewhat in awe, I answer, “I think so… yes.”
We stare at the tree for a long while.
“A warning?”
Yes, not to rush ahead.
Not to divide.
A sign, perhaps of what happens when something stands alone.
“Looks that way.”
When we move forward, we do so as one—carrying with us the faint, fragile hope that God is watching. And though His hands may be tied, He will aid us in whatever ways He can manage.
I just hope time proves forgiving… and doesn’t make a liar out of me.
We leave the burning tree behind us, its light fading at our backs as the night swallows it whole.
Kahill is the first to break the silence. “Any luck locating Orán?”
“Not yet.” The answer comes easily, even if it sits like an anvil on my chest. “I’ve searched, but I can’t find his spiritual or emotional signature anywhere.
For whatever reason, he’s muted himself,” I add, more to fill the space than anything else.
“Something he'd better have a damn good reason for.”
If not for the quiet certainty that he still lives, I would be incapable of thinking with any amount of clarity.
I change the subject to distract myself. “Tíarnach’s on his way. That, at least, is something we can place trust in.”
Kahill hums as if in deep thought. He scans the sky for a moment. “Yes, but a continent and an ocean stand between us… and you and I both know he won’t risk the jump. Based on how strong the scent is that we’re following, we’re close.”
The words settle heavily between us.
And then—nothing.
Silence takes hold again, thicker this time. Weighted.
It takes three more days of hard riding before we find evidence of demon activity.
Sulfur mixed with the scent of smoke and rot. It instantly curdles the breakfast in my stomach. Not just decay either, but the coppery smell of blood, bitter and acrid on my tongue.
The closer we get to the settlement, the more devastation we witness. Homes pillaged and burning. Plumes of black smoke are rising from multiple points into the sky.
We find the dead. Not whole humans, but parts of them. Limbs. Viscera. Torn flesh.
We follow the trail and try to ferret out how many demons we may be facing.
When we first come upon the settlement, all is quiet.
Too quiet. But bullet holes scar concrete walls.
Blackened impact marks bloom where weapons were fired in desperation.
Rifles, handguns, blades—human tools turned into weaponry—lie discarded among what remains of the bodies strewn across the streets as if death simply dropped them where they stood but didn’t leave them unmolested.
A light dusting of ash coats it all, relaying that deeds done here have been marked by time. The fall of it has softened the edges of the carnage without hiding it. A massacre preserved beneath a grey shroud.
This place did not fall quietly. These people wanted to live.
When the quiet breaks, it’s with a cackle. Laughter, unlike anything I can describe. A heckling that’s both fiendish and ear-piercing, delivered in a pitch capable of damaging our eardrums.
It rings out over the vast land, echoing for miles as it tapers off.