Chapter 9

Caelel Silverhawk sat on her bed and peered, through the artifice and magic of what might be the most potent wizard to have ever walked the realms, at the mortal wife of Arral, the Lord of Ruin, as she knelt in a deep and secret part of Heaven and spoke to an angel ... that should not exist. The levels of winding implausibility beggared Cae’s mind – the idea that this book might be penned as a journal for the wizardess Alia, and that she might delve so deep and discover a secret so utterly impossible, and that the book would then be found by her, possibly the only creature in the vastness of Hell that might grasp the profound importance of it?

If Cae had not ardently believed in the will of the vast and omnipotent Creator, this would have surely convinced her.

Unfortunately...

It also made her begin to think maybe the Destroyer had as much sway in the realms as his divine opposite.

Lucifer Morningstar.

The Dawn-Bringer.

The Shining One.

Lucifer Morningstar was one of the most famous angels in the annals of Heaven’s vast catalog of martyred heroes. His exploits remained spoken of by Proctors and Scholars alike, telling newly born angels of the heights they might accomplish. But they were old legends. Old stories. Old heroics. His stories were respected, yes. But the age made them glow less and less, even in the eternal glories of Heaven – as newer, brighter sparks caught, flared, and then dimmed in turn. Cae had only passingly paid attention to his stories, more fixated on mortal heroics and mortal skill – but she could still remember the most notable events.

He had saved an entire realm by luring a demonic army from the ever duplicating House of Betrayal into the edge of the Eversea, where the sun set every day, and brought the sky down upon their heads. The boiling steamwall still marked the edge of mankind’s dominion on that world. He had once faced the demon known only as the Time Tyrant by cleaving between falling raindrops with his wings to smite the beast with his spiked mace, the Dawn. He had once matched wits and wills with the Queen of Sharos as her world boiled into prismatic vapor under the weight of her overset and uncontrolled magics, and after three days and three nights of debate and discourse, he had ushered her and the realm of Sharos into a five century golden age.

But, like many of Heaven’s heroes, he had died valiantly in battle.

Only, as it seems...

He had not.

Cae did not dare move. She did not dare breathe. She did not risk even fidgeting her wings – anything that might disturb Alia’s journal was to be avoided. She leaned forward, watching as Alia rapped her knuckle against her chin, her eyes hooded and focused as she peered at Lucifer Morningstar.

“I have read a lot of books,” she said, quietly.

“And I have asked a lot of angels a lot of questions. And none have managed to answer the most important one.”

“Oh?” Lucifer asked, his voice amused.

“What the hell even is an Archangel?” Alia asked, shaking her head as she snapped one finger to conjure a small and comfortable chair from glittering sparks. The wood had barely formed from the ether when she sat down upon it, leaning back and cocking her legs to the side, assuming a pose of such pure comfort that it startled a laugh out of the bound and nude Morningstar.

“I have not the foggiest,” he said, his voice amused as his lips skinned back – his teeth glowed, as much as his eyes did, as if the light was trying to escape from him.

“They called me it – for a time. Until I was cast down here.”

“And why was that?” Alia asked.

“They learned how I did it,” he said, quietly.

“How I became like this. And once they knew the truth, the only answer was to un-know it. To un-learn it.”

Alia leaned forward.

“So, you know a truth that the angels don’t?” she asked.

“I’ve been meaning to ask about the origins of the universe – all their historical epics are woefully short on mathematics and awfully thick on florid prose and grotesque metaphors about jizzum.”

This startled another laugh from Lucifer.

“Who are you?”

“Alia,” Alia said, simply.

“That is all?”

“Do you want my titles? They’ve been applied to be my a horrendous string of horribly bloated would be lovers, sycophants and supreme sovereigns, each as useless and meddlesome as the last.” She flicked one hand, shaking her head.

“They describe me roughly as well as your name – Morningstar, really now, name the angel that glows in the dark after a star? But I did meet an angel named Hawkdive, and ... would you believe it, he had the wings of a hawk and he enjoyed diving.” She sighed.

“I think more mortals should visit Heaven, it would shatter enough illusions that we might have some genuine progress in the mortal realms for once in the past thousand years.”

Lucifer was silent for a moment.

“I didn’t glow,” he said, his voice amused.

“Until I became the archangel.”

“Ah,” Alia said.

“And yes. I would like your titled, if only so we might have something to make mirth with over,” Lucifer said, smiling at her.

“I admit, this is me trying to prolong the conversation. When you’ve been trapped in an isolated cell for ... what is the year?”

“It is the 5^th year of the Suzerain of the Comet,” she said.

“Huh. Six thousand years,” Lucifer said.

“Seemed shorter.”

Alia chuckled.

“So, the origins of the universe, as you are six thousand years closer to it than any other angel I’ve met...” She arched an eyebrow.

“I don’t know,” he said, simply.

“You don’t know?” Alia asked, sitting up in her seat.

“How in the Fundament can you not know?”

“Because those poetic histories were just as bloody useless back then as they are now. Because they’re not histories. Heaven loves to crow about ten thousand years of unbroken history, of an eternal vigil over the Creator’s creation. A place for everyone and everyone in their place, down to the last T. It’s absurd on the face of it – you can’t have a continous chain of knowledge and history while fighting an eternal, constant war against an infinite enemy and half of everything tha tis ever learned is declared a secret, to be kept only in heads that are so easily seperated from the shoulders of their bearers. It’s shocking we know even half as much as we do!” He sighed, sagging back in the chains.

“ ... sorry, I was a bit of a historian in my day.”

“You were?” Alia asked, sounding curious.

“I always assumed angels had no jobs. Hence why they appear to come pre-assembled with internal rectal scaffolding.”

Lucifer chuckled.

“Oh, a few of us have things we enjoy. I know...” His face fell.

“I ... knew ... an angel who once gardened.”

Alia nodded, tapping her knuckle against her chin, fascination burning on her features.

“So, the history Heaven teaches is a lie?”

“To a lie, they’d need to know they’re wrong. More ... a guess.”

“Remarkably charitable, for someone chained up for six thousand years,” Alia said, her voice dry.

“Again. It seemed shorter.” Lucifer smiled and ducked his head forward, his hair the glossy black of a raven plunging through darkest night. The bangs covered his glowing eyes, but their light still shone along those plush, kissable lips.

“I admit, it will seem quite long, once you take your leave, my title-less Alia.”

She shifted in her seat.

“ ... one of my titles was The Incomparable Apple,” she said.

“Delicious, “ Lucifer crooned.

Alia, her cheeks showing two dark spots of a blush, shook her head.

“No, ahem, in the culture of the Suzerain, where I was so named, calling a woman an apple is another way of calling her ... a bitch.” At Lucifer’s expression, she continued.

“Beautiful, delicious, but my seeds are poison.”

Lucifer tilted his head, his grin growing whimsical.

“ ... so, delicious?”

“You are a very silly angel,” Alia muttered, those spots growing across her cheek. She was pointedly looking up at his wings, not down. She leaned forward, steepleing her fingers against one another like a vizier of old.

“N-Now, not to get distracted, but what you’ve said begs repeating: there is no concrete history of the universe’s origins? No actual documents? No records? No memory stones?” At each question, Lucifer shook his beautiful head, his glowing smile thin and amused. Alia sat back in her chair, frowning as she flattened her palms against her thighs.

“Well, damn.”

“I’m sorry that your quest needs to end in failure, “ Lucifer said.

Alia sighed, slowly. Her eyes thinned to slits and she closed them.

“ ... assuming, of course, it was knowledge you sought,” Lucifer said, his voice faintly edged – a catch in them, like a notched blade rasping against a whetstone. The note caught on Alia’s ears and she jerked her head up, frowning at him. Their eyes met and for a moment, suspicion darkened the air between the two of them – Cae leaned forward, her breath catching, her own body so forgotten that the faint throbbing of her buttocks from sitting with her legs crossed and settled onto the edge of the bed was a mere faint annoyance. She bit her lower lip, thinking furiously as she did so. What was it that Lucifer was worried about? Was it his own personal power?

Had others come, seeking that power?

What was it that Ruti had said? That she had been four times more potent when-

“I am not some mortal servant of the Proctors, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Alia said.

“How often have they come down here, trying to wring power from you? It doesn’t take an expert in transmogrification to see that your soul essence is nearly overwhelming.” She cocked her head slightly.

“I thought you had been put down here to be forgotten. That’s not entirely true.”

“Heaven is nothing but secrets and lies, at a certain point,” Lucifer said, his voice dry.

“Just as Hell is remarkably honest in what it desires – the House of Betrayals, for all that they are ... renowned ... never truly deceived me for I knew every word they said was a falsehood. They could no more tell the truth than I can fly from this chamber. Destruction cannot help but destroy. Pestilence cannot help but spread plague. Ruin ... must fall. They cannot help it.” He shook his head.

“Angels have a choice, when they do things for the greater good.”

Alia frowned.

“Why did they imprison you? Truly?”

Lucifer sighed, slowly. A thin, glowing fog seeped between his lips.

“The Creator left us in charge of the universe – we exist to protect Her grand plan. Correct?”

Alia nodded.

“And yet ... in the farthest reaches of the most distant realms, beyond Heaven, beyond Hell, I found a place where ... the worlds themselves started to bleed away into something that was worse than nothingness.” He leaned forward, chains clinking and clattering against the wall, straining against those glorious, muscular arms.

“Nothingness returns, you know? The darkness of death leads to new life. Birth and rebirth. Even angels and demons can be reborn, as mortals once more – you see it, if you have as long a time as I to stay. But there’s something out there, a true... unreality. An unmaking of things. I think of it as an echo, for the Creator spoke us into being. And the echo comes back, distorted.” He sighed, softly.

“And it was there, looking at this echo ... that I realized something.”

“What?” Alia sounded as if she had never listened to something so intensely in her life. Cae felt herself mirroring the future and former wife of Lord Arral, her body tingling. She wondered fiercely at the holes in Lucifer’s story – why had he gone so far? What had driven him?

Lucifer frowned at her.

“That I could stop. Not return to being a mortal – not become a demon. I could end. And ... there ... for a single fleeting moment, heard it.”

“Heard ... what?” Alia whispered.

“The same thing you do, when you walk upon the roof of a tall building, or peer into rushing rapids. The voice that sings to you, when you contemplate the edge of a blade. The song of Thanatos. The call of the void itself.” Lucifer bit his lower lip, his eyes somber.

“I had walked every Realm. I had fought every demon. I had done good ... and great evil, in the name of that good. And for a moment, I wanted ... to jump.”

“What happened then?” Alia asked, almost sliding off her chair in her attentiveness.

“I hesitated.” Lucifer chuckled.

“And it was then I learned the truth about myself. An angel’s soul...” He started to explain – and as Alia learned what Cae already knew, Cae herself ... felt a ringing bell deep in her chest. Many different facets of knowledge, small and large, were whirling about inside of her mind – and they were coming together. Snapping into place. An errant word here. A vast revelation there. The cliff that she had stepped near ... and drawn away from. Siren like, the void called to her, and she plunged into the realization as Alia took the notes that would lead her to being exiled from Heaven, and then, to understand Hell. The notes that would lead her to becoming the Lady Ruin ... and Cae realized, if there was a plan, that she had been seeing the vitality of it backwards. The Lady Alia was not important – not truly. Her great power and her wisdom, her sagacity and her beauty, all of it was of a secondary nature to the true goal.

To bring this knowledge to Caelel Silverhawk. To give it to her at a moment where she had at her hands the might of a demonic army.

She couldn’t turn from it, from the terrible realizations.

Heaven claimed that the Creator had a plan.

And yet ... demons and angels were two breeds created by two different divine forces. They were, instead, merely parts of the same singular continuum. Two end points along the same line. A mouth, clamped around a tail, an ouroboros that endlessly rotated. Order. Chaos. Mortality. Endlessly reborn and killing itself.

Heaven claimed that they protected the Creator’s plan. That they enforced Her will.

And yet ... their histories were mere pagentries. Poetic allusion to things no angel remembered, inference. Guesswork. The next best thing to lies – and oh, how many other lies had the High Ones kept behind their tight lips? They had said angels fell ... and yet, not a single angel had fallen, according to Degi. Yet, the description of those fallen angels were of black wings and honeyed words. They had described not a breed or type, but a single man: Lucifer Morningstar. They had feared a second following in his stead. And why?

Because it was the chink in the armor. The hole between the rhetoric. The revelation.

The truth.

Cae whispered, very softly.

“The Creator didn’t plan for this,” she breathed.

“What?” Alia asked.

For just a moment, Cae thought that she was looking right at her, that their eyes were meeting in the face of history and magic. But then Alia continued.

“I hear footsteps. I should go.”

“Will I see you again?” Lucifer asked, curiously.

Alia licked her lips.

“Maybe. I will need to speak to ... others. I have to test all you’ve told me.” She flickered a smile.

“I ... be ... I...” For the first time in her life, it seemed that Alia, the Lady Ruin, the most potent wizardess that had ever walked the many realms, was taken aback. At a loss for words. Instead, she put her dark fingers to her lips, then gently placed them against Lucifer’s brow. Even that touch caused a thin hiss and a tiny puff of steam to rise, as if he was boiling hot. Yet, Alia did not flinch away, even though her fingers did clearly sting. She turned and started to go – and the world hazed away, the journal entry coming to its natural end. At the last moment, Lucifer’s eyes closed as he resigned him once more to solitude.

To silence.

Cae laid back in the bed, staring up at the ceiling.

Heaven claimed to know the Creator’s will.

They didn’t.

“The Creator wanted us to do this,” she whispered, quietly.

“To question. To grow. To be more than we were. She wanted us to ... to... be. To breathe! To live! To love!” She was almost hyperventilating, her breath coming fast and fierce.

“We grow – she made us to grow!” She put her hands to her face and felt that vast weight of hers slip away. She was not sinful. She was not wrong to be here. Her feelings for Arral, for Ruti, for Citri, for Shale, for Degi, even for Degi, they were not mistakes, they were not aberrations! Lucifer Morningstar had gone to the edge of time and found himself – she had fallen to the depths of Hell, and found herself.

What could Heaven do, if her angels could all do likewise. If they could all be more?

Her eyes flashed and she laughed quietly, her wings rustling against the bed.

“Yes... yes!” Her voice echoed with a shimmering resonance – but only for a moment.

She sat up, then, her wings mantling, spreading and flapping in her excitement. She opened the book and spoke, eagerly.

“Lucifer, second meeting.”

The pages remained still ... and for a moment, Cae worried that there had been no second meeting. That Lady Alia had tested her theories, been caught by the Proctor, then been chased from Heaven. But then the pages began to twirl and flip forward, whisking forward, then settling. The world began to melt away as Cae eagerly lifted her gaze up – wondering what revelations she might see now. She doubted it would be anything as shocking or world shaking as the truth that the world she lived in had been shaped by lies and misunderstanding for thousands upon thousands of years.

She saw darkness.

Then...

Again.

She saw light.

It shone along the Lightbringer’s body, glimmering from a gentle palm held aloft above him. Alia whispered, quietly.

“The angel’s body appears to still require sleep – the fundamental truth that only the Creator needs no dreams seems to be the case...

“She shifted her hand around, quietly dictating as she shone the light along glittering pectorals with skin that shone with pearlescent highlights. Her fingers almost brushed against his shoulder as she swept her hand up to the restraints.

“The restraints are remarkably crude, considering the nature of the being being constrained – mere mana dampeners, with moderate levels of structural enhancement.” She pursed her lips.

“I think...”

Her fingers sparked with magic. A bolt came free – and then the other hand, the one still lashed in chains – swept out. It caught her wrist and Lucifer drew her close against his chest, his chains clinking and rattling as he used every bit of their give to draw her close. The hand that had been so suddenly freed cupped the small of Alia’s back. His eyes flashed as he growled.

“Did you ever think that if they were so easily removed, that I might have reason to keep them?”

Alia, her slender body pressed fully to the naked archangel, the fallen angel, gasped quietly. His broad palm rumpled her wizard robes, and her feet peeked from underneath – dainty and clad in simple slippers.

“This may shock my compatriots...” Lucifer mumbled softly into her hair, his breath a brilliant steam that left her cheeks flushed as if she had run half a mile.

“But I do not actually wish to ... kill ... any of them...” He chuckled, quietly, as Alia nodded mutely.

“Bruise a few, perhaps.”

The calm reserve in that voice made Cae feel quite shameful. He had waited, patiently, day after day, hour after hour, for the moment that his movement might matter. And she had barked and snarled at her chains in a few simple days? But then her eyes widened as Lucifer’s wings rasped and shifted and the hand he still had bound wrenched free of the chains with a spray of sparks. His lower left wing cupped around, and a few glittering beads of bright iron flecked on the feathers. A twitch of it sent them skittering away from Alia.

She chuckled.

“I, uh, cast a heat protection spell. That is why, ere now, I don’t scald, touching you, Fallen One.”

“Ah, well, my graciousness has been thrown in my face,” Lucifer murmured.

“What are you doing?” Alia asked as his hand reached up, brushing bright white fingers through her dark, dark hair.

“I said I wouldn’t wish to escape, lest I wound my fellow angels. I never said I had no heartbeat, that I was laid as dead as a pile of bones in a sepulcher,” Lucifer murmured. His mouth, devouring and skillful, pressed to Alia’s lips and her own muffled sound of surprise sounded sweeter and more fiercely eager than dewdrops beading on the edge of rose petals. Her body squirmed, and those four wings of his swept around, cradling her, lifting her as if they were other limbs, while his two human hands did what only human hands could: They gripped, and they tore. Her brilliantly dyed and expertly stitched fabrics came apart in his fingers like leaves caught in a hurricane gale, and her toned, tight little peach of a rump was almost immediately cupped, then smacked by one of his hands. Her dark cheeks jiggled fetchingly and Cae watched with wide, wide, wide eyes.Is this ... no, this was before she met Arral, so ... Cae blushed.Despite the utter absurdity of the thought, it couldn’t leave her mind she was watching Alia be unfaithful to her husband. She chided herself for such foolishness – as this Alia had never even met the demon that would later be her husband. She did break the kiss, a thin line of spittle connecting their desperate lips, their lustful tongues. Her breath came ragged and eager.

“Have you ever ... I thought you angels were all virgins...” She panted, squirming, grinding her modest breasts against his muscular chest. Cae wondered how her nipples might feel, against that chiseled perfection.
Then she remembered her own aching pleasure, at being squished into bed by the mighty wall that was Arral. Her cunt was getting more and more moist by the second. She pressed her thighs together, her cheeks burning as she watched, unable to tear her eyes away as the Fallen One casually swept one palm beneath Alia’s buttocks, lifting her up, his other hand cradling her back, so that when she bent backwards, she was given support enough to be quite comfortable. She giggled and laughed, a gay, eager noise that did not befit this dank and dour cell ... but by now, Lucifer was glowing brilliantly enough to cast away all shadows, exposing the perfect beauty of Alia’s dark brown skin. Her nipples, a pair of dark, eager, jutting points, thrust out as she arched her back, and lifted one arm up, draping it over her brown, as if to say: Oh, what will an angel do to little old me?

Lucifer was oh so very eager to show. His mouth, roiling with that energetic steam he seemed to release with every breath, closed around one nipple. He sucked greedily, his hand squeezing her buttocks fiercely enough that Alia let out a quiet hiss, then a gasp, then a most wanton moan of pure pleasure.

“Oh ... Lucifer...” She groaned, squirming and bucking her hips gently against his gripping hands. But still, Lucifer didn’t hesitate – didn’t slow. Didn’t stop. He kissed between her breasts, to her other nipple, which he sucked upon with the same lavish attention he had given the first. Alia’s cunt dripped down his wrist ... she was leaving a puddle at this rate.

Mortal juices didn’t glow, not like angelic eagerness. Cae blushed and wondered ... how had Alia tasted?

Lucifer, it seemed, wondered the same question.

His mouth, his questing tongue, started to trace a path of wet, glistening fire along the golden-brown dawn of her belly. His tongue traced the lines of her softness, down, down, to her prominent little hip bones. His tongue traced, then, to the small snarling curl of pubic hair above her sopping wet human pussy. There, and only there did Lucifer slow in his eager questing. His breath drew in and he whispered huskily.

“Oohhh yes, yes... “ His tongue thrust out and up, and he lapped from the base of her cunt to the tip of her clit, and the motion caused her entire body to undulate in time with his slow lapping gesture.

“Creator...” She moaned.

“Oh Creator.”

“I think that she made women like this because she did so dearly love you. Us males? We climax but once and need to rest. Or fall asleep, if we’re uncouth... “ Lucifer’s grin was close enough to her clit that every breath had to spike excitement along her spine. Alia bit her lower lip as Cae’s own hand dipped down between her thighs. She felt some shame, like some reflexive action, some half-cast off chain. She squared her shoulders, then plunged her hand down between her thighs, jostling the book with her wrist – but fortunately, not closing it. She leaned in as her own fingers brushed the tufted feathers above her cunt, then down to her folds. She slid her fingers lazily around her lips, not quite ready to fully touch herself. She was stoking her fire – and it was growing hotter and hotter by the second as she watched.

Lucifer’s mouth closed around Alia’s clit. His left hand slid up to her shoulders, while his right swept down to her hip, holding her firmly in her place as his wings fluttered gently. Her legs looped around his shoulders and she let her entire weight fall against his face – and the archangel was oh so very eager, so very ready, to accept the burden of her. Of course, he could have carried a ten ton boulder with one hand. A human woman’s slight weight against his lips? It was nothing. And so, he was more than happy to focus his attention not on the trails of keeping her aloft, but instead on plunging his glowing tongue into her snatch.

“Oh Creator! Creator!” Alia moaned, her hips bucking as she rolled her head back, her long raven black locks spilling down towards the ground – a waterfall of pure obsidian, glossy and black, that Cae wished so very badly to bury her nose into, to breathe in her scent. She finally gave herself her own pleasure: Two of her fingers, knowing only where to go thanks to Citri, Ruti and Arral’s own questing, plunged into her tight, greedy cunt. Cae bit her lip, hard enough to nearly draw blood, her ears perked as she watched as eagerly as Alia did – for Alia had tilted her head a bit, so she could watch down the slender line of her body. Her eyes and Lucifer’s locked, and the fallen one did not look away as his tongue worked within Alia.

Cae could not see him.

But she could remember how Ruti had...

How Cae had...

How ... oh...

“Oh!” She moaned, unable to stop herself.

Her two fingers crooked. Her thumb rubbed her clit. The pleasure that had started as a blazing furnace was beginning to rock through her body, reverberating through her bones, her muscles, tingling along the inside of her skin. She clenched on her own fingers, watching through hooded eyes and lust hazed vision as Alia’s back arched and she screamed incoherently, her hair swaying as she bounced and rocked. Warm, frothing girl-cum splashed around Lucifer’s lips as he drank and drank from her, drank from her like she was the only oasis in a vast and dry desert. And still, he didn’t give her a single moment of respite – his hands held her firmly as he drew his mouth back. Warm girl-juices splashed onto the ground and his lips closed around her clit. He sucked on her and drew from Alia an almost pained whine. Her body was wrung so fiercely of pleasure that it was beginning to ride into over stimulation ... and still, Lucifer pushed on. He went back to lapping her cunt, watching her through bright, amused eyes. Alia gasped and moaned and squirmed, then started to whimper aloud.

“I ... too much! I-It’s too ... to ... ah...”

Cae’s thumb rubbed her clit fiercely. That warm reverberation in her body had hit a plateau – and yet, watching this, she was able to drive it up more. Her other hand held the book in a quivering grip as she drank in the details as greedily as Lucifer had drunk Alia’s cunt.

“I ... stop, I ... I’m losing my mind!” Alia moaned and gasped, her back arching. She was cumming again – or maybe for the third time? Or fourth? Cae was not sure – but as she watched, more of her juices splashed onto the eager Fallen One’s lips, his chest, soaking him with her arousal as he continued to lick her out mercilessly.