Lucifer's Creation, Saturday
For a long while, as he lay in a heap on the cold floor, Aziraphale thought the room was filled with noise. His senses were overwhelmed by it, a sound that he couldn't identify, but that seemed to oppress him as much as the pain. And the pain was intense. Even now, that he was alone, was no longer hearing the crack of bones and thwack of fists and feet hitting flesh, the pain ebbed and swelled anew.
Blood pooled around him, staining the strewn feathers, soaking into the wing that stretched mangled on the floor. And still, that sound pounded in the angel's ears. Drowning out the voices that sometimes seemed with him, and sometimes seemed only in his memory.
Mostly of Wilson. Sometimes, a little girl he'd never met. Once, a frightened woman, heavy with child. A rare laugh that he knew belonged to Lucifer.
He couldn't hear the words, although it seemed important that he listen to them. Seemed important that he do something. If only the deafening noise would cease.
It was hours before some awareness stirred in Aziraphale long enough to realize that the room was filled only with a chill silence.
Leaving the angel in his cell, bloody and physically broken, Scoria made his way back to his workshop still furious over the angel's stubborn refusal to bend to his will. Not even taking that perfect white wing and crushing it beneath his feet was enough to stem the fury rising within him over this failure.
Trying to calm himself, he poured over his schematics, revealing in their brilliance, their abstract beauty that only a genius such as himself could understand. He would have stay like that all night if not for the interruption of his other, but no less unwelcome, guest.
"Great Scoria," Susano-O said in that wheedling voice of his. "I thank you for your hospitality, but this errand on which I am is one of great haste."
Scoria ignored him, holding up a blueprint for his masterpiece instead. "My legacy, my monument! Things no one else would dare to dream of building!"
The storm god's expression became strained as he continued to play the part of the polite and courteous guest. "A monument that will outlast bronze, Lord Artificer."
"My greatest work will put all of these to shame," Scoria continued, seemingly oblivious to the subtle mocking in his guest's words. "Come! I will show you!"
"With deep regret, Great Maker, I find myself unable to accompany you on this journey as I must continue on my wa-"
Scoria grabbed hold of Susano-O's arm, pulling him along with him forcibly. "I will show you! I will show everyone!"
He barked an order to one of the mechanical servants. "You all will see."
Aziraphale was whispering to himself, when the door was flung open with a heavy clang. The words were an unintelligible mixture of languages, some no longer even recognized by human ears. Some that never were. At times, they seemed like bits of poetry. At other times, like bits of prayer.
The whispering continued, even as the angel curled in on himself, as if expecting yet more abuse. The broken wing shuddered at the movement. Even when cold steel closed around his arms, dragging him up from the floor, the words were broken only by a soft cry of pain before they resumed.
Hostem repellas longius...when will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove...and blood and wine were on his hands...pacemque dones protinus...
And they walked. Or rather, two were dragged along as they were marched down, further and further. It seemed as though the stairs would never end, that they would reach Hell itself before this was over.
Nearly a vertical mile down into the bowels of the earth they finally stopped in a great cavern filled by a clear and bright pool of water, completely out of place in this home of cold and mechanical iron. "My greatest work! Here it is!"
Susano-O held back a sigh. "Celestial Artisan, I see, but I do not understand, expound on this to me," He replied dully.
"The mind of God," Scoria said, scooping his hand through the water and letting it slip through his fingers. "I used a drill, one so small, so very small that the tip was a diamond sharpened down into an invisible splinter."
"The mind of YAWEH?" The storm god blinked in surprise. "How is such a thing even possible? Surely it is a miracle."
Scoria grinned cruelly over at the angel. "A miracle, yes. That I should know such things, that I should be the one with the wisdom to do this! Do you see now little bird?" He grabbed Aziraphale by his hair, yanking him forward into the pool and out of the hands of the mechanical guards. "Do you see what your master's thought's are?!"
At first, Aziraphale's reaction was one of anger at the impudence of Scoria, to think that he could even suggest such an achievement. To think that he would have the nerve to attempt something so impossible, so blasphemous.
It wasn't until he felt the water close around him that he understood the full implications of what Scoria was telling them.
His scream was silenced by the water, and he fought the hold that forced him down.
Beneath the water the same series of scenes unfolded one after the other, over and over again.
First came two men engaged in battle, the first battle ever known to their kind. It was a civil war, brother against brother and they both fought fiercely but with no intent to kill each other. Soldiers fell around them as their battle grew heated, they were too well matched for there to be a finish to this fight, it would continue indefinitely as a draw as neither had the will to finish the other, not matter what they fought for.
Then there was the same man from before, wings great black and bat like. He knelt on the ground, face clenched with pain as a pale man sawed through the thick muscles holding his wings to his body. He made no noise of pain, keeping himself carefully in check as it continued.
The second man from the battle appeared next, also kneeling but with a deep sadness upon his face. He looked up, as if silently begging for answers, for a reason why.
Then, as if a video stuck on a loop, it started at the battle again.
Lucifer. The entire reason Aziraphale was in this place.
Why, if HE thought so obsessively on the Fall, on what had happened to HIS brightest child, had HE even allowed it? Did HE regret the path HIS creations had taken?
Had HE, in fact, abandoned them all?
Aziraphale began to fight in earnest, tears pouring from his eyes to mingle with the water. This was blasphemy, betrayal, abomination. It could not be allowed to stand. The angel was in a fury, and his thoughts now entirely turned to putting right a wrong that should never have existed.
Scoria yanked him back out of the water, gripping his hair painfully tight as he pulled the angel's face close to his own. "Now do you see just how much your pathetic god cares for you?"
Held tightly in that grip, Aziraphale met Scoria's gaze with eyes dark with rage. He realized that he'd assumed long ago, his name was not one that came swiftly to the Creator's thoughts. And although it hurt, the way a child hurts when he realizes that he isn't the center of his parent's life after all, it didn't diminish the fact that Aziraphale would fight in HIS name until HE chose to cast the angel out.
And even if the Creator no longer cared, Aziraphale had others to fight for now as well. People who were, in fact, as obsessively burned into his mind as Lucifer and Michael had been into God's.
The feathers were so close, and yet mere inches were too far. Aziraphale's eyes, black with rage, turned for a brief moment to Susano-O.
There was a danger in arrogantly breaking down the very foundations of an angel's psyche. As Aziraphale examined the shreds of everything he had believed, there came the need to wipe away the taint of betrayal with the healing catharsis of fire. Brazenly returning Scoria's gaze, the angel envisioned the whole of the blasphemous tower around him in flames, and with a narrowing of his eyes, called those very flames to him. Soon the brilliant light of an inferno flared in the corners of his tear-stained vision as Aziraphale's shattered dreams and eternal will fueled the fire until nothing in the tower could escape its purifying destruction.
Flame shot upward along the walls, poured across the floor, engulfing everything in its path. Wood became instantly ash, metal melted and scorched, even the stone began to slowly burn, and the air itself became filled with fire.
The stench of burning rose up from the structure, as it was consumed in a fury. Until it was no longer a tower, but merely a pillar of flame, reaching toward the heavens.
[[ooc: NFB or interaction, preplayed with the wonderful a_phale]]