A Night In The Second Circle

Hell on a Tuesday night isn’t particularly like a Tuesday night anywhere else. Hell on a Tuesday night isn’t measurably different from Hell on a Friday night, for instance.
The Squad finished training at eight pm or so, everyone had dined and socialized a little and headed off to bed by about eleven, with a couple of stragglers like Eddie and Freija and Modi staying up in the main hall for a while to drink mead and swap adventure tales.
Fionn cleaned up - leaving that layer of stubble that he hated shaving off because he felt a couple of scarlines through stubble were less unsightly than a mass of scar tissue on a baby-smooth face- and changed into one of the suits he’d picked up down here. This one was a simple affair, black as always, single breasted with a thin black tie, combat boots.
He walked down to the basement of Castle Fronkenschteen and opened a door, walked through it to emerge on a street in the second Circle of Hell. Since Proserpine taking the throne that had been in the care of Asmodeus, the place had changed considerably. Princess of Hell, purveyor of Agony, her influence was a lot more positive than Asmodeus. Her aspect of Agony could be taken to mean many things, from the pleasant sexual roughness that could come with heightened consent, to the simple transportation of physical release, what some call ‘the sweet agony’. Under her influence the Second Circle was a place of free expression rather than a place of victimisation, but to some the best of all was that this was no longer a place of forced sexualization. Anybody could go to the Second Circle for a drink now without being accosted by pimps, without being compelled to take part in sexual activity simply to be allowed safe passage.
Couple this with the influence of Belphegor, The Belph, and you found a far, far different place from a couple of months ago.
Fionn walked to The Spoonful, named with characteristic vulgarity after the concept that gave name to such bands as 10CC and The Lovin’ Spoonful - or so they said. Either way it was a rock club with some great tunes and Fionn liked the atmosphere.
He was pleased to see the bouncers stepped aside for him with a smile rather than due to the compulsion that allowed him to enter all places. One of the bouncers was truly gigantic, he reminded Fionn of something the Jim Henson creature shop would make, which made him seem oddly approachable - to Fionn at least. The other was thin and snakelike, his scaled features forbidding but capable of a smile just the same. These demons had been indentured servants to Asmodeus and remembered well how different their lives had been then.
Entering the club Fionn smiled a little as the waves of sound washed over him. The 27 Club were visiting, Hendrix taking the lead to “All Along The Watchtower” as Fionn entered.
He reminded himself to find out what they were up to these days, but tonight they were playing here and that was good. The music felt like a welcome, like his own intro music- and perhaps it was, Hendrix shooting him a quick grin as he spotted him at the door.
To the rest of the patrons the music seemed to get louder and sweeter all at once, so perfect the moment was almost aching. It wasn’t just coming from the stage, there was a second source and soon their eyes found the heavily-scarred but still handsome young man walking in the doors in the killer tailoring. Some felt fear, deep in their bones, guts turning to water at the sight of The Godkiller. Remembered crimes and misdeeds looming large in their own minds they turned their eyes away.
Some felt a powerful curiosity, was he all they said? What was his plan, now that they’d seen him strangle Satan himself with his bare hands? Would he really restore his father to the throne?
To some it was simpler, it was just a thrumming need to be near him, to be close to him and experience whatever there was to feel around him.
Fionn stopped first at the bar where several Sisters of the Whip congregated. He kissed some of their cheeks and had his own cheek kissed, observant watchers noting an unmistakeable tell-tale intimacy in some of those touches that spoke of past encounters, but no awkwardness. He had a couple of drinks with The Sisters, avoiding any ‘work’ talk and instead talking about music and movies and finally straying into hope, that new feeling that some dared not speak of but others held close to their hearts.
While talking to the Sisters he noticed a beautiful woman with long black hair and black eyes like his own, moving through the crowd. She had a self-possession that called to him, though he didn’t consciously recognize how much she looked like Apate. He almost broke away from the Sisters to talk to her but then didn’t, not quite knowing why.
A woman dressed a little like someone’s idea of a sexy but very deadly ninja walked up to Fionn, approaching close. She radiated confidence and raw power, seven white russians were far from enough to blind Fionn to that. The Sisters began to cluster around Fionn to form a barrier but he gave the slightest shake of the head that managed to convey thanks by the slight crinkling of his eyes, and they let her approach.
“Do you think your work is done, Godkiller?’ She asked.
Fionn had a wry moment to think that the name people chose to address him by often gave an indication of how the encounter would go.
“Far from it, but I get the feeling that was just an opener, so why don’t you say what you came to say,” he said mildly.
“I was loyal to Satan since time immemorial. When Lucifer started the rebellion he turned my head like he did all the others, but it was Satan’s wrath, his absolute implacable rage at the unfeeling arrogance of Yahweh that won my loyalty forever. I served him all this time, never faltering, always in battle as needed. You took that from me, so I challenge you: prove yourself worthy. Enter a duel with me and show me you weren’t just lucky that night in the Arena, catching my lord off guard as you did.”
Fionn thought a moment about his response. He actually thought for a while, by his standards, but the speed of his mind made it seem the barest hesitation.
“I don’t know when Satan turned. I had hoped to turn him back. His aspect made me hope he was just frustrated, needing something to fight, needing to face the right way again. I spoke with him several times to try to find a way to rekindle his loyalty to my father but could find nothing. Not just his loyalty to my father, but his loyalty to the ideals that made you all rebel in the first place. You didn’t rebel so that you could align yourself with another god who would regard you as nothing but chess pieces. Satan lost sight of that. You stayed loyal all this time, never faltering. It’s not your fault that he failed to do the same.”
She let him finish, it was hard not to, somehow when he spoke the words seemed more than words. His way of holding himself, the raspy but still distinct quality of his voice, the way he held eye contact, they all combined to make whatever he said feel like he was merely using words to chip away the rock that hid his heart from yours and yours from his. By the time he talked a little while it felt like he bared his soul to you and saw yours just as clearly.
Her breath was catching a little, she hated herself for being so drawn into this. Just like his father, though she’d never known Lucifer well. But perhaps not just like his father, perhaps something more, or at least different.
As she gathered her thoughts she realized a few things: she had come here to die, and he knew it. He fervently wished to avoid it, and hidden in his words was more than talk of loyalty and bravery, there was a naked appeal, almost a sense of him begging her not to die over this, even beyond his own desire not to be the one to kill her.
She wondered how long she’d been silent. He waited patiently, his eyes so black but not dead, not empty. She looked at them and realized she was being drawn into them, inexorably until she saw something that made the earlier sensation of seeing his soul come into an entirely new light.
She saw him standing naked to the waist on a grassy field by a chainlink fence, a thick leather bracelet wrapped around a fist, bloodied and barely standing as he fought boys a little older than him. In the logic of a dream she knew he was not yet the Godkiller in this moment. He swayed on his feet but he remained standing knocking down enemy after enemy, always getting hurt a little more as the price of putting his foe down. She could have wept for how alone the boy was in that moment, no-one to defend him or take his side, no-one to even see how bravely he stood against impossible odds.
She saw the battle played out again and again, with different opponents and settings each time. She saw him battle each of the Four Horsemen, figures she knew as objects of fear even in Hell, saw how close he came to dying at War’s hand. One of those scars on his face was from War and she saw what was almost a killing blow: War burying that scythe in Fionn’s abdomen.
Her soul still burning with his, her body moved seemingly without her bidding, sliding a hand inside his shirt to place her palm against the wicked scar there. She wasn’t even breathing now.
She saw him standing on a stage and wondered if this was a moment like his speeches in the arena in Hell but realized it wasn’t. A red-haired girl of transcendent beauty wept on stage beside him and ran from him and she felt his heart break in that moment in a way that was yet to be mended. With a terrible guilt that made her feel like a voyeur she saw the cracks in his heart, not yet shored up. She saw the pain was more than the loss of the girl, it was the pain of having hurt the one he loved so much he could never ask her to love him again.
The final thing she saw was Fionn alone, on his knees surrounded by night. A killing moon shone down on him strangely like a spotlight in the vision and she could see the blackness on his hands, arms and chest was really the red of fresh blood. In the vision she drifted closer to him and saw that he looked into a pool of water, perfectly illuminated by the moonlight. His reflection was hideous, a grinning mouth of massive fangs, too-large eyes of bright yellow. Eyes without a soul, without pity, without compassion. Close enough now to see his real face, his real eyes, she could see the tears coursing down his face as he wept for those he’d slain and for what he feared he would become.
By the time the Soulgaze ended she was in his arms, kissing like it was the last night either of them would ever live, like this physical intimacy could wash away her heartbreak at Satan’s betrayal and his heart full of terrible fears.
She’d heard about his womanizing while preparing to challenge him - to die, she now realized- and she realized how badly that rumour missed the point. There was a terrible emptiness in him, a terrible pain that could be shored up sometimes, for a little while with company, with intimacy. That night she spent with him she saw none of the casual contempt of the womanizer, he was absolutely present with her in every moment, absolutely honest about how little he could give her, without ever having to say a word about it.
In the small hours before he left he returned to the bed and leant over her, murmuring in her ear, a final gift for her like he was telling a secret or giving a benediction.
“I saw such bravery in your soul Sariel, it moved me. Such bravery and such steadfastness, I know there is a place for you, there will always be a place for you. Never feel so alone again.”
With that he kissed her once more, gave her an unutterably sad smile that combined so many emotions she found it faintly dizzying, and was gone.
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