Falling Down (Mythklok, Chapter 11)
Title: Falling Down (Mythklok, Chapter 11)
Author: tikistitch
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Dethklok is going to hell! Well, maybe just Nathan. Prequel!Sariel gets what’s coming to him.
Warnings: Slash, non-con, AU, F-words, OCs, smoking.
Notes: Notes after the jump
This is a Metalocalypse AU which tiktaalikroseae gets credit for naming “Mythklok.” Here are the other bits, about an angelic visit (Chapter 1), a hunt (Chapter 2), a barbecue (Chapter 3), a ski trip (Chapter 4), a sword fight (Chapter 5), Bette Davis Movies (Chapter 6), a concert (Chapter 7), tall tales (Chapter WTF), a trial (Chapter8), an argument (Chapter 9) and a stray cat (Chapter 10).
THE STORY SO FAR: Boy, this thing has more hanging threads than an heirloom quilt! Let’s see if I can make some sense of this: Charles started out his existence as an angel named Sariel, but things didn’t end pleasantly for him up there. They haven’t been terribly pleasant down here of late. Some time back, Charles had Raziel, a somewhat ditzy angel acquaintance, take out a troublesome Archangel names Uriah, who’d been down on earth going by the name of Selatcia, which he apparently wasn’t quite certain how to spell correctly. Raziel and her main squeeze Wotan (who you might remember as head of the Norse pantheon, as well as Skwisgaar’s birth father) are keeping Uriah’s head and his soul imprisoned in their spare room at Valhalla. This has made Headquarters, the angel bureaucracy, awfully annoyed. So, they’ve been doing nasty things to Charles, like making him testify before an angelic show trial (which he kind of ruined) and sending him really bad dreams where it’s Hamburger Time for Dethklok (which sort of gave him a minor nervous breakdown). The latest is that they’re insisting he go down to Hell to visit Lucifer, who he doesn’t seem to like a whole lot.
Oh, and did I mention, last time, Charles sort of started seeing Ganesh, who’s a Hindu god. He’s a pretty good catch, as he’s a doctor and a lawyer, as well as rich and good-lookin’, although he also killed his own brother in order to take control of the family business, and he’s assassinated a lot of angels in the war, and in addition, he squeezes toothpaste from the middle of the tube, but hey, nobody’s perfect, right?
Oh, and in case you're having trouble picturing Hell, due to my bad writing or something, I've used Dante's Inferno as a map, so just Google that and look at all the pictures. This is one of my faves:
Although it doesn't show Satan's shinkansen. That was obviously built after Botticelli's time.
Falling Down (Mythklok, Chapter 11)
"Nathan," Ofdensen began. He sighed. It was like telling someone that there was no Santa Claus. Come to think of it, he had no idea whether Nathan knew about Santa Claus. Probably best to avoid that one for now, he decided.
"Satan is sort of a dildo!" Raziel cheerfully put in.
"Raziel, what are you doing on my desk?"
"Butterfly stitches!" she told him cheerfully, holding up her eternally half-completed scarf.
"Well, yeah, isn't he supposed to be a jerk? Isn't that the fucking point?" Nathan grumbled. "Satan is not a nice guy!"
“I just don’t want you to be … disappointed.”
“Disappointed? I’m the first death metal musician who’s actually GOING TO HELL.”
“Well, technically, no,” chattered Raziel. “You’re just the first one who’d gonna get to come back.”
“Really? Who’s down there already?”
“WELL-” started Raziel.
“It’s a trade secret, Nathan,” Ofdensen cut in, frowning darkly at an oblivious Raziel. “Nathan, I really have no idea what to expect down there. And that makes me nervous.”
“You told me that angel trial was gonna be the worst shit ever, and then it was AWESOME! WITH MONKEYS!”
“There may be aspects of this that will hold your interest. But, do you understand, you can get into a lot of trouble in Hell. Lucifer’s first wife got stuck there by eating a pomegranate.”
“What the fuck is a pomegranate? Is that like some gay diet shit?”
“It’s a fruit.”
“Wait. He had to marry her because she ate some fruit?”
“Well, yeah.”
“OK. So. Stay away from chicks with fruit. What else?”
“There is too much stuff to list! Just, for once, please, please listen to me. And stick close to Raziel.”
“You won’t bring any fruit will you?” Nathan asked the angel suspiciously.
“You don’t want me to bring bananas for the monkeys?” she asked sweetly.
“THERE ARE MONKEYS IN HELL?”
“No! No, Nathan, there are no monkeys in Hell.”
“How do you know?” Raziel asked. “Where do all the bad monkeys go?”
“Monkey Hell. They go to Monkey Hell.”
“Monkey Hell?” said Nathan. “Cool! Can we go there next?”
“Sure. Sure, Nathan. If all goes well, I’ll take you to Monkey Hell. I promise.”
After Nathan had departed, Raziel hopped off Ofdensen’s desk and started to roll up her knitting. “Raziel,” he said, “Just a couple things? We’re not gonna be able to speak Angelic down there.”
“True. There’s probably more angels down there than at Headquarters,” she laughed. “You have an alternate?”
“Have you picked up any of the Hopi language from Hon and Kwahu?”
“Ha! Sure thing, angel homeboy!”
“OK.”
“But how the heck did you learn Hopi? I thought you didn’t do the language thing?”
He shrugged. “I’ve lived a long time. You pick up stuff.”
They sat in Wotan’s cluttered office, Ganesh and the All Father, reviewing the latest reports on the security situation. As usual, there was nothing much new of note. Though Wotan looked much like a tall, broad-shouldered reddish-haired man of about 50 years, and Ganesh resembled a handsome, 30-ish Indian man, both men were in actuality immortal pagan gods of respectively the Norse and Hindu pantheons.
Both men were currently quite concerned about the activities of the Legion, the legendary angelic army. Both men had, in the past, fought against the Legion, with varying amounts of success.
And both men were, currently, bedding angels.
“All Father,” Ganesh started, “Would it be wise to begin including Sariel in our discussions?”
Wotan chuckled. “The man’s certainly got a lot of eyes out there. But I’m frankly not sure if all that paranoia is a good thing for my nervous system.” Ganesh laughed too, a fine, musical laugh. “But you’re right, as usual. I’ll see if my Lady minds bearing a message next time she she’s off for dueling practice.”
“Speaking of Sariel….” Ganesh started. “All Father. Might I perhaps have your consultation on…. On a personal matter?”
“You know you can ask me anything, son! I’ve known you since you were a calf!” It was a stupid thing Wotan always said, that nevertheless inevitably made Ganesh laugh. Wotan fished out a bottle of Scotch and a couple of glasses.
“It’s regarding, er, angels. You have been together with the Lady Raziel for a bit of time now…”
Wotan smiled. He grabbed the bottle of Scotch from the desktop and put it away, and instead stood up to reach into a cabinet. “Angels, eh? This calls for the good stuff,” he said, setting down another decanter and pouring out a couple of glasses. Wotan then fished in a drawer. “You don’t smoke cigars, correct?”
“I have a weakness for Indian cigarettes. Sadly, it’s been more than an occasional indulgence of late.”
“Light one up. Keep me company,” said Wotan, matching a Cuban and swinging his feet up on his desk. “Now. Angels. What do you want to know?”
Ganesh lit one of his own thin cigarettes and took a long drag. He sat forward, considering. “Um. I’m not certain how much you have ascertained regarding the present status of my relations with Sariel….”
“My Lady has supplied me the outlines.”
“This has come as a bit of a shock. I have spent a good portion of the last two centuries assassinating their kind.”
“Angels tend to drag you in, son. Kicking and screaming. Now, I had my rules, the first of which, don’t get mixed up in angel politics. You can see for yourself how well that fared!” He considered his single malt. “But,” he said more quietly, “as I also say, if one of them wants to crawl into your bed…. ‘Tis a sin for a man to refuse something like that.”
Ganesh put his head in his hands. “Would that I knew how to confine such matters to the bedroom.”
Wotan roared with laughter. “Been entertaining the servants, eh? I’m sorry, lad, but that doesn’t sound to me like much of a problem.”
Ganesh nodded. “If you’ll forgive me. Yourself and Lady Raziel: you seem a good match.”
“Well, I’ll tell you something. I’ll depend on your discretion, since this isn’t something I tend to share with many. You know I love my women. I’ll take one who can look me right in the eye, and give as good as she gets. I had heard of the Lady by reputation, for a number of years, but alas, our paths never crossed. I got it in my head for a time that I would seek her out….”
“Really?”
Wotan looked far off. “But, I talked to Mimir, and he said, no, Wotan, you wait, you wait for that one to find you. When the time was right. And so she did. And so she did.”
“Destiny had a hand in this then?” Ganesh asked, genuinely surprised.
“You could say that.” Wotan set his glass down and took a drag of his Cuban. “And on that topic, one thing I don’t do, and that’s on the matter my Lady and your young Sariel. I don’t much question what goes on between those two, not any more. I reckon at some point, she got it in her head she wanted a brother, and she picked him, the gods help him. Once my Lady gets an idea in her head, there’s not much talking her out of it. So, I let her have her fancies. But, angels, they’re not family, you know. And the Creator.” Wotan stopped for a moment, frowning. “That man is no one’s Father.”
“They say...” Ganesh started. He considered a moment, and decided to press on. “They say angels lack a conscience.”
“Well, that might be technically correct. I don’t think it works exactly the same as it does with your or I, humans or gods. There is something there, I believe. But that’s not what you wanted to ask me, is it?”
“Er. They seem to drop off to sleep with, er, amazing rapidity….”
Wotan roared with laughter. “Like a rock! That they do.” He looked at Ganesh. “They’re close, they’re so much like us. And sometimes, I’ll be talking with my Lady as if she’s a goddess. But then you’ll do or say something, and you’ll know. Or, you won’t know, I guess is a better way of putting it. I love a challenge, as you know. And at this point in my life, I didn’t think I could continue being surprised like this.
Ganesh stared at his whiskey glass, at the lovely smoky color. “As you know, sir, I am a most capable man. But I find myself feeling … flummoxed.”
“Ain’t an easy row to hoe, son. But, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. Hell, you’ve got eight good heads on your shoulders!”
Another stupid thing Wotan always said. That always made Ganesh laugh.
Many years ago….
Raziel rushed through the golden corridors, genuinely excited for the first time in so long. An assignment! Out of Headquarters!
Her first instinct had been to run and tell Sariel, but then she remembered that she hated him forever.
She found the golden door and yanked it open. “Father,” she called.
Her Father was there.
As were Uriah and Morningstar.
The present day….
“Uriah and Morningstar. Oh, fuck.” Ofdensen flicked ashes.
They were sitting outside on the grounds at Valhalla, although they were out of sight of the vast hall. It was a cold day, so they were wrapped up in coats, and sharing a thermos of hot coffee, but the winter sun was so bright and delicious, it seemed a sin to stay inside. Raziel scratched a very spoiled wolf behind its ear, and tossed a drool-coated stick an improbably long distance for it.
She nodded. “Uriah enjoyed himself that day,” she said. “He was like a pig in shit.” She spread out some seed over the rock she was sitting on, and watched her raven peck at it.
“Yeah, that was definitely his kinda thing. So what actually happened?”
“Well, Morningstar did his act. They bit. Literally. And then we - Uriah and I - expelled them from the Garden. We went full Seraphim, flaming swords and everything. Despite the fact they they’re these tiny, naked humans. But, orders are orders. So, then we’re standing there at the gate, and Uriah is gloating about cleansing the universe of sinners, blah blah blah, and I go, you know, I think I’m gonna go chat with them a bit.”
“Oh, no Raziel!” A furry wolf chin was resting on Ofdensen’s leg, a branch in its salivating mouth.
“I’m like, the poor little things, they’ve just had the worst day of their lives, I’m just gonna check on them, because you know. And Uriah came up with one of his stupid lines like, ‘TALK IS TREASON,’ or some other shit. But I was like, where has talk ever hurt?”
“Oh, god, Raziel, why?” He stood up and heaved the branch several miles, and then tried to wipe the sticky wolf drool from his hand with a handkerchief. “Why would you do that?”
Ignoring him, Raziel said, “So, I popped into Court Form and strolled over to the gate, and they were huddled there, still too upset to move. And I’m like hey. And He looks down at me, and He’s like, What do you want?
“And I said, Well, seems like you guys have had a bad day, so I just wanted to check up on you. Nothing personal, you understand, but you disobeyed, and, well, we were pretty clear on the consequences.
“And He says, the Woman tempted me, and now I find myself cast out, for nothing I’ve done. And you, how do you sleep at night?” Raziel wagged an accusatory finger at herself.
“And I’m like, well, I sleep very well, thank you. I’m just doing my job. But you - if you’re gonna pin this all on Her, I should think you might deserve to lose a night or two, know what I mean?”
Ofdensen laughed. He couldn’t help it. He was picturing Court Formed Raziel, all five foot two of her, sassing the father of Mankind. He wished for a moment that he had been there, but then realized, had he been there, the story would be all about how he had dragged her, kicking and screaming, back to Headquarters. Before she could do anything … like this.
“And, you know,” Raziel continued, “people have said a lot of terrible things about Her, but I found Her to be terribly nice, especially under the circumstances, and She said, You know, you’re right, we knew the consequences, but it was our choice, to live in freedom.
“And I told Her, you know, I can’t say, if I had been in your position, I would have decided any differently. And I wished I could do more for them, but I’ve got something, and maybe it will help? And I take out The Book, and give it to Her. And I tell Her, this is pretty much everything He has to say. It’s all above my head, but maybe you guys can figure it out, and it will help?
“And She said Thank you, though He was still kinda grouchy. And I pointed them down the river, where there was some nice fertile ground they could maybe think about farming. And they took off. And, well, you know the rest. It was never the same for me at Headquarters after that. I was never exactly cast out, for whatever reason. But, needless to say, that was the end of my job taking down the Secrets and Mysteries. And, no one at Headquarters would ever look me in the eye. Ever again.”
“So that was completely spur of the moment,” he asked. “Giving them the Book like that?”
“Yeah, it just seemed…. As I said, She’d had a terrible day, but She just seemed so kind and reasonable. Come to think of it, what would Our Father have done with the Book anyway? Other than making my life hellish, I never got the point.”
“Making your life hellish - maybe that was the point?”
“You said you have a copy of The Book?”
“Of course. And I’ll admit, there’s stuff in there, but I’ve never exactly gotten the point either.”
“I wanted to tell you one other thing. You need to promise me, this part, you will never tell Wotan. Never.” Ofdensen frowned at her. Raziel had switched to High Angelic. He stabbed out his dead cigarette.
“OK?”
“I mean it.” And Raziel frowned and held out her pinkie finger.
“Raziel…. OK. OK. I pinkie swear. What is it?”
“I’m telling you because I think you need to know now. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I told you, a long time ago, the reason I stay away from angel men.”
“You were raped. By a Seraph. So you killed him.”
“I didn’t kill him.” They were silent for a moment. “I didn’t kill him. I was really new. I didn’t know….”
“Raziel? Don’t. Just tell me.”
“He was saying horrible things about me. Just horrible things. I didn’t understand. Words were a new thing. But I realized there was something wrong. So I went to him. And I beat him. Really badly. I didn’t threaten him, or say anything, I whaled on him and left him bleeding and broken on the floor. I don’t know. If I’d have killed him, that might have changed so many things. But, after that, he left me alone. And, the talk stopped. For a while.”
His voice was very soft. “Who?”
“Michael. It was Michael.”
“Oh!” He fumbled for a cigarette. He took one out. It took him a couple of tries to light the match. “Oh fuck.”
“I ams not understands why dey ams onlies invites you, Nat’ans,” Skwisgaar groused, fingering his guitar.
Nathan looked up over his reading glasses. “Because I’m the leader, so I am therefore more fucking important than the rest of you douche bags.”
“I t’ink you ams just wants to fuck dat angel chicks.”
“I don’t wanna fuck Raziel!” Nathan protested. “Geez. She’s King Wotan’s girlfriend, that wouldn’t be cool. I just maybe wanna see her tits some time.”
“Dood, dis is all about angel tits?” Pickles grouched. His voice sounded slightly strangled from puffing on his water pipe. “Dat’s lame.”
“I heard you’ve been scheeing some angel dicksch, Picklesch,” Murderface grumbled, stabbing the coffee table with his knife.
“Yeah, Pickles, you need to quit fucking around with our manager, dude. It’s kinda gay.”
“Yoo know what’s kinda gay? Listenin’ to yoo jerkoffs tellin’ me what t’ do!”
Toki looked up from his knitting. “Guys, we shoulds not fights like dis!”
“Shuts up, Tokis,” Skwisgaar sneered. “What ams you gonna do, waves another scarfs at us?”
“Yeah, Toki, using scarves knit with magical love charms on your band mates, besides being totally gay and lame, is also sort of not cool.”
“Magical love charmsch don’t work on me! You guysch must be kinda gay!”
“Fuck yoo, Murderface. How long is it gonna take yoo t’ record dat fuckin’ bass line wit’ Knubbler, anyway?”
“Aschhole!” said Murderface, fingering his knife.
Nathan glared at his crossword puzzle. Why were they all being such jealous little dildos? Why did he even waste his time with these selfish pricks? He decided to tell Charles he didn’t wanna take any of them along to Monkey Hell.
Many years ago….
Sariel walked along the golden corridors.
He had heard. Like everyone had heard.
Man had Fallen.
And, loony Raziel had gone and gifted them with The Book. His Book of Secrets and Mysteries.
Oddly, they had not cast her out. It was widely rumored that He had a soft spot for her. No one knew why. The standing story was that He had Created her as a joke, one drunken night, very long ago.
He had decided, in an alcohol-fueled haze, to make his greatest Seraph warrior a female. At the time, he thought this was his most hilarious prank ever. It was said he awoke the next morning, with a blinding headache and double vision, to behold her. She had already created a ridiculously inappropriate Court Form, and she was sitting up on His work bench, kicking her short legs, blinking at him inquisitively with those mysterious dark eyes.
But she was never quite right. For one thing, she didn’t really love Him. Not the way his Creations were supposed to. She didn’t even seem to like Him a whole lot.
And she didn’t like the other angels, for reasons he could never really grasp. She avoided her Brother Seraphim in favor of consorting with mortals. When He created some New Ones, he had hoped they would catch her fancy. He thought humbly that Lucifer was His greatest work to date, his masterpiece. But then she took up with the deformed one, Sariel, the one He’d made at the end of the batch, out of the bits that were left.
In the end, He gave up, and did what He usually did, turned his attention to other things.
Anyway, that’s the story they told.
Sariel had heard this story, of course. To be an angel is to gossip, even if the meat of the matter turns out to be about you.
He had wanted to go ask Raziel about it, but then he remembered that he hated her forever.
He was going to meet Uriah for his weekly beating. He was in a strange, disaffected mood today, and he wasn’t quite sure why.
He pushed into Uriah’s chamber. Uriah was already there.
“Sariel! How splendid that you have come.”
“I always come. What’s the difference?” he groused, throwing himself into a chair.
“Are we in a mood today?” the big Seraph inquired.
Sariel followed him around the room with his eyes. “What happened down there, Uriah?”
“Down where?” Uriah smiled. But Sariel continued glaring at him.
“They disobeyed,” Uriah finally said. “And were cast out. His will be done.”
“Why did they disobey?”
“The Morningstar did his part,” Uriah said sweetly.
“Yeah, but, I thought the whole point was they were given a choice?”
“There is but one choice, dear child: the Righteous path.”
“Obviously not. Otherwise you guys wouldn’t have had a job.”
“What has gotten into you today?” Uriah’s teeth showed as he smiled. “I am so very sorry you are in a disagreeable mood. So very sorry.”
“What happened to Raziel?”
Uriah showed more teeth. “That one will not show her face again in our midst. I have made certain of this. I have given my full report on the incident to Him. You might fare better to forget you ever knew that traitorous trash.”
Uriah was on the floor. He was dazed. His nose throbbed. He blinked and rolled over.
Sariel stood above him, his hand still balled in a fist, his eyes grey as steel.
“Whaddya t’ink yer doin’?” Uriah sputtered.
“Honoring you. Want some more?”
Sariel sat at his usual seat at His Table, right next to an obviously uncomfortable Uriah. Sariel hadn’t been terribly careful. Not careful at all. You could clearly see that Uriah’s nose had been broken.
“Then His will is done?” Archangel Michael was asking.
Uriah and Lucifer nodded.
“Praise be,” said Michael.
“Free will doesn’t sound terribly free,” said Sariel.
“What do you mean, Honored Sariel,” Michael asked, a warning tone in is voice.
Sariel lit up one of his smokes. While Michael glared, and Uriah showed rows of teeth, and Lucifer just looked handsome and confused.
“Why bother with free will at all, if there’s only one choice?”
“Because Our Father wishes it,” Michael scolded. “Do you question Our Father?”
“Yeah, that seems to be what I’m doing,” said Sariel, flicking ashes onto his plate. “Why does He always have to be right?”
“It is righteous because He does it,” Michael stated.
“That seems more like a tautology than reasoning.”
“Your reasoning has nothing to do with it.”
“So, you’re admitting you all just kind of follow Him blindly?”
“We are not blind, Little Brother,” Michael snapped. “We all love our Father, as you should.”
“You love Him because you should? Not because He deserves your love?”
“Sariel. Do you not love Our Father?” Lucifer asked.
There was a silence.
Sariel looked up.
“Father,” he said.
Their Father stared at Sariel for a long moment. Then he turned and strode off.
Sariel finished smoking his cigarette.
It was somewhat later. It was Michael and Uriah, and a couple of even larger Seraphim.
The big Seraphs dragged him to a courtyard, the one overlooking the whole universe. They tore off his robes. Michael had started to say something, but then covered his mouth with his hand. Underneath where his robes had been, Sariel’s body was completely covered with bruises and welts, and scars from where the welts had partially healed.
Michael looked around accusingly at Uriah. Uriah would not meet his eyes. He simply frowned into space.
Finally, Michael looked back at Sariel. “Do you…. Do you have anything to say for yourself?” he asked quietly.
Sariel pointed to where his robes lay on the floor. “I left my smokes in that pocket.”
Michael frowned. “Do it,” he growled at the Seraphim. He turned and walked away, Uriah following after him.
They threw him over the balustrade.
The ground had come up very fast. Sariel pushed himself up on one elbow, dazed. He was somewhere in the middle of a wilderness. He was naked. And alone.
His eyeglasses were smashed. He sighed and tossed them away.
He stood. He peered around, with his weak eyes, to every horizon. There was no sign of anybody.
His eyes fell on the ground. He knelt down and picked up his case of smokes. He opened it. They were still relatively intact. He matched one, and stood a while, and smoked, alone, in his brand new prison.
The present day….
“Did you….” Raziel began. She was perched on the hearth, scratching a spoiled wolf’s stomach as it thumped its enormous back leg in glee.
“You’re gonna ask if I wanted to be cast out?” Ofdensen sat on the couch, cigarette dangling from his lips, gigantic wolf head in his lap. He had so far managed to avoid being consumed by said wolf through periodic scratching behind its ears.
Raziel nodded.
“I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. You weren’t around to tell me I was being an asshole.”
“Actually, I don’t feel terribly guilty anymore.” He looked around at her. “I think I may have encouraged you. I may have gotten you in even worse trouble.”
He smiled wryly. “Can’t get much worse than this.”
“Michael could’ve had you killed.”
“I don’t think He would’ve let Michael do that. I don’t think Our Father wanted to admit we were a mistake.”
“We weren’t a mistake.”
“You heard the rumors about you?”
“Yes.” Raziel grinned. “I wouldn’t be the first being who owed her existence to a drunken night!”
“Did you ever ask him?”
“Never. I don’t wanna know.”
“Why not?”
“I wanna be a joke. I think it’s a great story. I want it to be true!”
“You’re blustering. You must be. No one could think like that.”
“Tell me straight, Sariel. If you could, you would really rather be Michael? Or Uriah?”
“Don’t wanna be a head in a box.”
“You’d rather be Morningstar than you?”
“Oh, fucking Morningstar. We gotta go do that tomorrow. Fuck.”
“You sure we gotta do this?”
“I know you hate fucking Morningstar.”
“Well, beyond that, it just seems kinda dangerous. I mean, what if he pulls something?”
“Of course he’s gonna pull something! Why do you think I’m not taking the whole fucking band? That’s what he wanted. That’s what they wanted. We have to pretend we’re cooperating about the Uriah thing.”
“Why do they want him back so goddam much?”
“I think they need him. Though I don’t know what for.” Frustrated, he gingerly slid the wolf head off his lap. The beast responded by leaping onto the couch beside him and curling up. “Fuck!”
“Oh, Wotan hates it when they get up on the furniture like that. Geri and Freki have decided you’re their wolf brother, I think that’s why they’ve started acting a bit rude with you.”
“Their WHAT?”
“He’s dozed off. Listen to his dream.”
“You can listen to wolf dreams?”
“Sure, why not?”
Skeptically, Ofdensen put a cautious hand on the giant wolf head and leaned over for a moment. “Holy fuck!”
“That’s Freki. He’s the big Dethklok fan. Is he dreaming he’s playing in concert again? They’re such silly things!”
“The cook says dinner in ten minutes,” Wotan announced from the doorway. “Are we setting a place for you, Sariel?”
“Oh, shit, is it that late? I really gotta get back….”
“So, I’ll tell the cook to give your steak to Geri and Freki?”
“What? No! Uh. OK. Just dinner. But I gotta leave right after. Seriously!”
He ended up back at Mordhaus later than he’d intended. It wasn’t really his fault: Wotan had a new batch of cigars.
He appeared in his office, stifling a burp, and brushing wolf fur off his suit.
It took Nathan approximately 30 seconds to appear at his door, so he beckoned him in. He prowled through his desk drawers. “Help yourself,” he muttered distractedly to Nathan, indicating the Scotch bottle.
‘You lost something?” the singer asked. He made no move towards the bottle.
“You know those lint remover things?” Ofdensen asked. “Fucking wolves. Why would they be shedding in the middle of the winter?”
“You were up there today?” Nathan asked.
“Yeah.”
“All day?”
“Uh, pretty much. Did you need something?”
“No. Just wondering why you weren’t fucking here.”
“Nathan,” Ofdensen started. He tried to think how to say it, but soon realized, any way the words came out, would be wrong, and so he finally just said it. “Nathan, I need some time during the day when I’m not here.”
“Where else do you need to be?”
“Nowhere. Nowhere in particular. I just…. It’s a big responsibility, taking care of you guys. Taking care of all this.”
“So, you don’t wanna be our manager anymore?”
“No, no, no! Don’t take it that way! I just need some time to do my own stuff. Look! We’re gonna go to Hell together tomorrow! We’ll spend the entire day together.”
“Yeah,” Nathan muttered. And then, more darkly, “With Raziel.”
“I thought you liked Raziel?”
“Are you doing her or something? Is that what this is about?”
Ofdensen looked up from his desk. “Jesus, Nathan! No! We’re friends! And Wotan is my friend!”
“I thought you said you weren’t friends.”
“We aren’t! But, I mean…. Christ.” He slammed a desk drawer shut. “You realize it wouldn’t be any of your business, anyway? You know, you guys…. You guys told me you wanted me to stay away from Pickles, so I did, even if he now fucking ignores it. Like all of you fucking ignore me. But you don’t want me to have a life outside either. I mean, is that even fair?”
He stopped. Who was he, and why was he saying these things?
Nathan glared at him for a while. “You’re not going all fucking shiny.”
“No. No, this is just me. Just me. Being an asshole.”
“You’re good at it.”
“Yeah.”
Nathan took a seat. “Yeah, actually I am too, if you want the truth. Can we get a fucking drink or something?”
The winter sun had yet to rise on the day they went to Hell.
Nathan stifled a yawn as they stood out on the Dethcopter landing pad. “We ready to take off?” he asked his manager.
“Yeah we just need to wait for…. Oh, what the fuck, Raziel?”
“I thought you liked business suits?”
Ofdensen sighed wearily. “Secret Service?”
She peered over her Oakley sunglasses. “Rene Russo from In the Line of Fire!”
“Uh-huh. And, what does the earpiece connect to?”
“It goes to my iPod! I figure I’ll turn up the volume when Morningstar is speaking.”
Ofdensen considered. “You know, that’s actually not such a bad idea.”
So, Ofdensen and Nathan and Special Agent Lilly Raines took the copter to the limo. Then the limo finally pulled up at a hotel. The art deco architecture indicated a 1930s origin.
Ofdensen nodded at the concierge as they walked past. The lobby seemed crowded, but strangely quiet. There was actually still an elevator man. The old man silently waved them into the elevator. He remained outside, and closed the old-fashioned intricate wrought iron gate behind them with a clang.
The door closed. And then the lights went out.
And then the bottom dropped out.
Later, neither Ofedensen nor Raziel could quite place how long it was that they fell. It may have just been a few seconds, or it may have been as long as a full minute. But then they had landed softly somewhere, and the lights were on again, and Ofdensen and Raziel were both staring at each other, each one gripping one of Nathan’s arms.
“That was AWESOME!” Nathan said.
Raziel ventured to the door and opened it. She peeked out. “Wow. It’s so … clean!” she commented. She stepped out into what appeared to be sunlight.
It was true. Outside the elevator, it looked like the inside of the world’s biggest, brightest, cleanest shopping mall.
“Is this Hell?” Nathan whispered.
“No. Purgatory,” Ofdensen said, fumbling for a cigarette.
“I’m terribly sorry, but there’s absolutely no smoking here!” came a voice.
“Uh, no, I was wrong, this is Hell,” Ofdensen muttered.
He approached them. His skin tone came out of a spray bottle, and his smile revealed a row of bleached teeth. A tiny Bluetooth headset pulsed on his right ear.
His eyes looked slightly wrong. In fact, his entire face looked a bit stretched, as if when he smiled, which he seemed to do quite often, something was close to breaking.
“Sariel! It’s been a million years! Literally! Haha!” Lucifer said, pumping his hand. “And, Honored Sister Raziel?” She nodded over her Oakleys. “An unexpected pleasure! You are looking lovely! The climate at Asgard must agree with your complexion.” And then he looked expectantly at Nathan.
“Nathan Explosion, this is Lucifer,” Ofdensen grumbled.
“Such a pleasure!” blurbled Satan. “I am such a big fan. We are all such big fans here! I’ll have to show you are concert stage later! We need to talk about getting a Dethklok show down here!”
“Well, uh, Lucifer….” Nathan began.
“Call me Morningstar, everybody does!”
“Well, Morningstar….”
“Sorry, I have to take this!” Lucifer said, pointing to his headset. He suddenly turned his back to them. The smile faded. “Yeah, they wanna fuck me? Well FUCK THEM!” he snarled into his headset.
Raziel looked over at Ofdensen and pulled back the skin of her forehead.
“Facelift?” he mouthed at her. She frowned and nodded.
They had been walking across the underworld shopping mall for some minutes. Lucifer had provided intermittent commentary, but had seemed to spend most of his time nipping off to yell into his Bluetooth. Ofdensen found he didn’t mind.
“So, uh, what’s Purgatory, exactly?” Nathan asked, after they were nearly knocked over by another wave of happy damned shoppers carting armloads of bags.
“People who weren’t especially good or bad in life,” Ofdensen explained. “They probably spent a lot of their lives on earth … doing stuff like this, actually.”
“What do they do with all the stuff they buy?”
“What do people ever do with all the shit they buy?”
“Huh. Good point.”
Screaming, “Well, fuck them up the ass!” in to his headset, Lucifer distractedly pushed through a set of doors that said “EMERGENCY EXIT ALARM WILL SOUND.” But, no alarm sounded. So they followed him into some kind of tunnel.
“That’s the Acheron overhead!” Lucifer told him, as his Bluetooth had suddenly lost its signal. “We decided to just tunnel under. A lot more convenient than the old ferry system.”
“What happened to Charon?” Ofdensen asked him.
“He works at the Restoration Hardware back in Purgatory.”
There was a dim light at the other end of the tunnel. They finally emerged from the tunnel, blinking, into what at first appeared to be sunshine. But a look upwards confirmed that they were in fact still underground, although apparently inside an enormous, dome-like cavern.
There was a railing up ahead. There was a sign posted underneath, showing a falling cartoon figure. Ofdensen noticed that someone had traced tiny horns onto the falling figure, apparently with a marker pen. They walked up to the railing. And then Nathan gasped and took a step back. Raziel put a hand on his arm. He nodded to her, and she kept her small hand around his arm as he approached the railing once again.
It dropped off. And kept dropping off. And kept dropping off.
You could see the bottom, dimly, below. But it was so far away, it was almost worse than infinity.
Hell was conical in shape, like a giant icy and brutal Dethcone, although it was difficult to see from this angle. If you squinted across the top, you could barely see the other side. There is an old road that travels in a spiral pattern, from the first circle, at the top, down to the ninth circle, at the tip of the cone, far, far below.
“This,” Ofdensen told Nathan. “This is Hell.” He turned to Lucifer. “So, you wanted to talk about Uriah?”
“Oh, Uriah! That’s just Michael’s current obsession.”
“I thought the reason for this meeting….”
“The reason for this meeting is to pacify our Honored Brother Michael, who has his wings all up in a bunch. But we want to have some fun, don’t we? You want to tell everybody you’ve seen Hell, don’t you Nathan?”
“Yeah, I guesso,” Nathan agreed, standing well back from the ledge.
“We’ll just have a quick meeting in my offices, down in the Ninth Circle!” Lucifer told them.
“Uh, Lucifer, I’m sorry, but we’re not gonna have enough time to get down to the Ninth Circle.”
“Why, you’re not thinking we’re going to travel by that outmoded highway system?” Lucifer laughed. “We have a modern bullet train!”
“Uh, of course,” Ofdensen answered.
“I guess you surface folks are still living in the last century,” Lucifer told them sympathetically waving them into the gleaming new Cerberus Station. “And it’s all run on green energy!” he bragged.
Ofdensen bristled. “They have a shinkansen at Valhalla,” he muttered. “And…. And, we’re gonna get a bullet train at Mordland soon.”
“We are?” said Nathan.
“Really? When?” said Raziel.
“What? Sorry, I gotta take this call,” Lucifer told them. “Why the fuck are you calling me now?”
“That dude’s on the fucking phone more than Murderface,” Nathan muttered. They watched the shiny new train arrive with a whoosh.
Ofdensen looked around to where Raziel was nudging him. “The security guards?” she whispered in the Hopi language.
He glanced back, just as the train doors were closing. “Seraphim?” he whispered to her.
“Looks like,” she said, over her Oakleys. They exchanged a nervous glance.
“Dude. Isn’t this kinda … shiny for Hell?” Nathan asked. “I thought there’s be more, ya know, rotting corpses, and blood, and misshapen demons, and that kinda stuff.”
“We’re engaged in a rebranding effort!” Lucifer informed him.
“A … what?” Nathan asked. But Lucifer was cursing into his Bluetooth, and Ofdensen just shrugged.
They alit at Styx station, just above the Fifth Circle. This time Ofdensen made sure to cast his eyes around the station. “Fuck, there’s more Seraphs here,” he murmured to Raziel.
“He’s got the fucking Legion doing train station security?” Raziel replied.
“Uh, Lucifer, I thought you said your offices were down in the Ninth Circle?” Ofdensen asked.
“Just a brief side trip,” Lucifer smilingly assured them, hurrying out of the station and yelling into his headset.
They took an escalator down to what appeared to be the old highway at Hell’s perimeter. There was a huge wall blocking the way. Behind the wall lay what appeared to be a city hugging the rim of Hell.
The city was afire. It shown in lovely red-orange colors, like a permanent sunset.
There was a beautiful wrought iron ornamental gate across the path of the old highway.
“Wow,” said Ofdensen. “Graceland?”
“Graceland copied theirs from me,” sniffed Lucifer.
Though these gates, Ofdensen had to admit, were considerably bigger, as well as grander, than the ones at Elvis’ former residence.
“Nathan, you’ve gotta see this!” Lucifer grinned a stretchy, bleached grin. He waved a hand, and then stalked off again to answer a call. “I told you to fucking fuck them!” he screamed.
A damned soul emerged, holding a guitar.
“Hey, isn’t that…?” Nathan started.
“Huh. Didn’t think he would’ve made it down here,” Ofdensen said.
The guitarist spent a few moments tuning his Stratocaster. And then he started to play, slowly at first, but then segueing into a blazing solo.
As if in response, the Gates of Hell rolled open.
The guitarist smashed his Strat to bits.
“Whoa!” said Nathan. “That’s pretty cool.”
“Yeah,” agreed Lucifer. “It’s actually a security measure. Only a precious few guitarists can play well enough to open the Gates of Hell. And we have all of them down here. Well, almost all of them.”
“All the guitarists? Really?” Ofdensen asked, as Lucifer bustled through the gates.
“You don’t find the notion of musicians residing in my Kingdom to be credible, Sariel?” Lucifer laughed. It was an odd, unmirthful laugh.
“ALL of them?” Ofdensen repeated, a bit sourly to be fair. They were now walking through what looked like a small city. A city that happened to be on fire. It was weird, like walking through a movie set. Everything was on fire, but it was like an alcohol fire: nothing was actually being consumed by the flames.
“We are currently … re-theming this place!” Lucifer explained. He hurried along down the road. Raziel worriedly turned to see the gates slam shut behind them.
“Re-theming Hell? OK, Lucifer, enough with your bullshit. This isn’t your fucking kingdom. You work for Our Father, same as ever.”
Lucifer stopped in front of a huge doorway in one of the larger burning buildings. "As always, Brother Sariel, you are thinking too small. We are moving towards a more exclusive clientele," Lucifer explained.
“What? How are you gonna get that one by Michael?” Ofdensen scoffed. “That’s your job, collecting souls.”
“I’ve just made a deal that’ll keep the Legion out of here forever.” Lucifer motioned, and the giant doors creaked open.
A regiment of Seraphim marched out.
Raziel was instantly in front of Nathan, sword suddenly in her hand. She looked nervously over to Ofdensen.
He shut his eyes tightly. He shook his head.
Lucifer had escorted them to another room. Well, Lucifer and several very large friends.
They hadn’t even bothered to make this one into a room. It was just a cave carved into the walls of hell.
And it was just Ofdensen and Raziel. She peered into the narrow cave. It was dark. And it seemed to go back forever. Even with angel eyes, she couldn’t see where it ended.
He fished out a cigarette. Because, really, what the fuck.
“Why don’t you just fucking kill us?” he asked.
“That wouldn’t be smart, would it?” Bleached grin. “For one thing, I’ve heard her boyfriend has a temper.”
“When I come back, Lucifer, and I will come back, I’m gonna bring a hacksaw and take your fucking wings.”
“Some advice? You might wanna stand back from the edge. Wait, I need to take this,” and Lucifer began jabbering once again into his headset as ceiling at the mouth of the cave suddenly rumbled and collapsed. Ofdensen looked like he would stand there smoking, but Raziel got him in a flying tackle and pushed him out of the way just before they were both buried beneath the rocks. But then the ceiling overhead began to crumble as well, and she was half dragging, half carrying him for a while, deeper and deeper into the cave as the ceiling collapsed and collapsed and collapsed overhead.
They continued running like this, she wasn’t certain how long, when they rounded a corner and finally ran into the end of the cave. In desperation, Agent Lilly Raines threw Sariel to the floor one last time, shielding him with her body.
But finally, the rocks stopped falling.
As the dust cleared, Raziel cast her eyes around, making an assessment. Sariel lay there coughing. She figured he was probably too upset to think clearly for the immediate future, so she decided not to try there. They were now trapped in a sealed chamber at the end of the long cave, somewhere underground, with limited oxygen. Though they were immortal, things would begin to get quite uncomfortable in a bit, and if they stayed too long, they would probably become too incapacitated to go about obtaining help or effecting an escape. It was up to her, the stupid one, so she thought about the many stupid things that were possible. She wasn’t certain how long they’d run into the cave, as she had been a bit too distracted by dodging falling rocks and dragging Sariel along, but it may have been a mile. She reached out, but couldn’t locate the end of the tunnel any more. And it didn’t seem a good bet to just jump blindly, as she wasn’t entirely certain of the direction to the circles of Hell.
As for the other possibility, the surface of the earth, it was quite a long way up: she could just barely touch it with her mind. A jump would cut it very close, and trying it with two was probably crazy. It might be more in reach if she was True Form and had all her magic, but this chamber beside the fallen rock was far too small to transform. Besides, she tended to set off seismic activity in that Form, and that was probably not the best idea when you were so many meters underground. Raziel was stupid, but not quite that stupid. Morningstar probably thought about that when he had decided how to trap them. Clever guy, in his way.
But, no time for dithering. It was time to do what she did best: be really, really stupid.
She tackled Sariel one last time and jumped.
It was an awfully long way. She thought she would run out of all her magic, and the they would end up embedded in the rock together for eternity like a couple of idiots. Fortunately, they would no doubt be unconscious, so Sariel couldn't yell at her too much. Although he would probably find a way to be angry, even underground. He would probably go mad for a cigarette after the first hundred years, and then they would come bursting out of the rock in pure fury, no doubt surprising some poor tourists who only wanted photos of themselves standing in front of the geyser.
The geyser?
Oh, yes, they were on the surface. She felt Sariel’s weight on top of her, but then he jumped up and ran around and shouted some things and said some things. She was thinking she should have made a bet with Sariel before the jump, because she would have won and it would have been awesome. After a bit Sariel was back closer to her and she heard her name. And she said one thing, "Ha!" And then she didn't think or say anything for a while.
“We’ll go get him.”
Ofdensen looked up from where he was smoking and thinking. He crawled over to sit closer to Raziel.
“We’ll go back down. We’ll get him.” She wasn’t even trying to sit up. She was just lying there talking. It figured that when she could do nothing else, Raziel could natter mindlessly.
“How did you even fucking do that, Raziel? Through solid rock? We were…. I don’t even know how far down we were. Jesus. You’re crazy.”
“I’m stupid!”
“Yes, you’re crazy and stupid. Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I think I just used up my magic. I mean, all of it.”
“You’ll be OK. I have people on the way.”
“Why are you being calm?” she asked.
“I’m thinking.”
“Are you shutting down? Don’t shut down. It’s not good when you shut down.”
“Aren’t you the one who’s always bitching at me not to get my wings out?”
“You need to get your wings out. I mean, sort of part way out. You need to be upset. So you can be upset. You shut down. And then you get crazy.”
“Someone needs to get crazy.” He heard the Dethcopter approaching. “We’ll be back home soon, OK?”
“I need little cakes.”
“What?”
“Little cakes. And sherry!”
“Will that help … with the magic?”
“No. I just like little cakes. And sherry.”
“OK. All the little cakes and sherry you want.”
“Sariel.”
“Yeah.” He was standing now, waving at the Dethcopter.
“We’ll go get him.”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, aren’t you Nathan Explosion?” It was a line Nathan had heard a million times before.
Just never before in Hell.
He turned around.
“Yeah.” And then he did a double take. “Hey, aren’t you-“
Ganesh was concerned to hear knocking on his bedroom door. The servants had been trained to disturb him only in case of an emergency. Sariel… Well, Sariel simply turned up where and when he wanted.
He opened the door. And beheld the angel.
“Oh my! Look at you! Come inside, quickly. That’s no state for you to be out and about.”
He pulled Sariel inside and shut the door. Though it was terribly impolite, Ganesh simply could not help staring. He had seen his share of True Formed angels, but never anything quite like this. His eyes in particular were arresting. Ganesh found he could not help thinking of a knife blade.
He was clearly upset, but he seemed so much more like a frightened creature than a man.
The god was utterly at a loss at how to proceed. Finally, Ganesh softly touched his cheek.
“How can I help you?” he asked.
Sariel kissed him. He did not bother to Court Form himself first.
Ganesh had one last rational thought, “Oh, gods, I should not be doing this.” And then he was letting Sariel tear off his clothes and feast on his body.
Satan was a douche bag.
It was incomprehensible
Nathan Explosion sat in a bar in Dis, the burning city on the Fifth Circle of Hell, surrounded on all sides by damned souls, and considered such existential matters.
Nathan had spent much of his adult life in consideration of things satanic and evil. But this place wasn’t sinister; it was just kind of shiny and fake. As was Satan.
Dis wasn’t so bad, once you got used to the heat. The smoke was starting to bother his throat, but Dethklok didn’t have any concert dates coming up, so that was OK. And the beer was cold. And the company was good. Actually, the company was awesome. Everyone else in town was a musician. Everyone! It was fucking amazing. Of course, they were all dead, but Nathan was getting used to having dead dudes around after hanging out at Valhalla.
And, dead or not, a whole lot of people here seemed to be in Nathan’s situation: not exactly sure why they were there, or for how long, or what the fuck.
He wasn’t exactly sure what had happened to Charles and the crazy angel chick. The big scary dudes had taken them away. He figured they were those asshole angel dudes, though he wasn’t exactly certain what they were doing down there.
Charles had told him one thing, “We’ll come back for you.” But just one look in his eyes told Nathan that this was more of a hope than a plan. And when Satan himself told Nathan, “We’re just going to have a little meeting,” that’s when he knew something had gone seriously wrong.
There weren’t any managers here. Or agents. Or roadies. Or record producers. Or anybody else who could be of use to a musician. And the really frustrating thing, there weren’t any musical instruments of any kind. Not even, you know, a grandpas guitar. And nobody had any CDs. Or an iPod. It was fucked up. A city of musicians, without any music. He was sort of wondering what Pickles would make of it. Because, sometimes, that guy wasn’t stupid.
In fact, it was really too bad that Nathan’s band mates were a bunch of douche bags. Because. He sort of missed those assholes.
Ganesh was lying on his bed, rethinking some general principles about his life.
Sariel quietly returned from the bathroom. He had Court Formed at last. Ganesh had loaned him a set of pyjamas. They were too large, but Sariel seemed to dislike being naked. It was only one of a thousand puzzling things about him. Ganesh wondered if he was self-conscious about the scars. There were more than a few. But, it seemed to correct thing to do in this case was simply remain quiet and await Sariel’s explanation.
"I enjoyed the last hours perhaps more than I ought," Ganesh told him. “But I am also familiar enough with your kind to know that is not a good state for you to find yourself about."
"I’m not an angel any more. Anyway. It won't.... It won't happen again."
"You misunderstand, my dear one. I was not scolding, merely expressing concern. Can you now tell me what has happened?”
Sariel was sitting on the end of the bed, looking like his world had fallen in. “Lucifer tricked me.”
“He has been known to do that.”
“I brought Nathan down to Hell. And, now Lucifer has him.”
“Well. We shall simply go and retrieve him. I will inform my father. Is Lord Wotan apprised?”
Sariel nodded miserably. “Yeah. Yeah, Raziel came with me. She nearly killed herself getting us back out.”
“Then, it was fortunate you thought to bring her along.”
Sariel turned and shook his head. “Not fortunate for her.”
“Let us try and keep perspective, shall we? Lucifer is the villain of this piece. We shall gather what forces we may and strike against him.”
“Why is everybody acting like we’ll just stroll down into Hell and set things right? Lucifer’s got…. Lucifer’s got fucking Seraphim warriors down there!”
“We have arrayed ourselves against angels before. Including your Seraphim. The story did not end happily for them, I am afraid.” Ganesh smiled. It was not his usual bright smile, but a threatening, thin one.
"You've…. You’ve killed Seraphim?"
"Yes. Unfortunately, it is a most ungentlemanly form of combat, but we discovered techniques which proved quite effective."
Sariel was on top of him, suddenly. "Show me how. Show me how."
Ganesh smiled. This time it was his usually funny, large smile. "Might I be allowed to don trousers first?"
Author: tikistitch
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Dethklok is going to hell! Well, maybe just Nathan. Prequel!Sariel gets what’s coming to him.
Warnings: Slash, non-con, AU, F-words, OCs, smoking.
Notes: Notes after the jump
This is a Metalocalypse AU which tiktaalikroseae gets credit for naming “Mythklok.” Here are the other bits, about an angelic visit (Chapter 1), a hunt (Chapter 2), a barbecue (Chapter 3), a ski trip (Chapter 4), a sword fight (Chapter 5), Bette Davis Movies (Chapter 6), a concert (Chapter 7), tall tales (Chapter WTF), a trial (Chapter8), an argument (Chapter 9) and a stray cat (Chapter 10).
THE STORY SO FAR: Boy, this thing has more hanging threads than an heirloom quilt! Let’s see if I can make some sense of this: Charles started out his existence as an angel named Sariel, but things didn’t end pleasantly for him up there. They haven’t been terribly pleasant down here of late. Some time back, Charles had Raziel, a somewhat ditzy angel acquaintance, take out a troublesome Archangel names Uriah, who’d been down on earth going by the name of Selatcia, which he apparently wasn’t quite certain how to spell correctly. Raziel and her main squeeze Wotan (who you might remember as head of the Norse pantheon, as well as Skwisgaar’s birth father) are keeping Uriah’s head and his soul imprisoned in their spare room at Valhalla. This has made Headquarters, the angel bureaucracy, awfully annoyed. So, they’ve been doing nasty things to Charles, like making him testify before an angelic show trial (which he kind of ruined) and sending him really bad dreams where it’s Hamburger Time for Dethklok (which sort of gave him a minor nervous breakdown). The latest is that they’re insisting he go down to Hell to visit Lucifer, who he doesn’t seem to like a whole lot.
Oh, and did I mention, last time, Charles sort of started seeing Ganesh, who’s a Hindu god. He’s a pretty good catch, as he’s a doctor and a lawyer, as well as rich and good-lookin’, although he also killed his own brother in order to take control of the family business, and he’s assassinated a lot of angels in the war, and in addition, he squeezes toothpaste from the middle of the tube, but hey, nobody’s perfect, right?
Oh, and in case you're having trouble picturing Hell, due to my bad writing or something, I've used Dante's Inferno as a map, so just Google that and look at all the pictures. This is one of my faves:
Although it doesn't show Satan's shinkansen. That was obviously built after Botticelli's time.
Falling Down (Mythklok, Chapter 11)
"Nathan," Ofdensen began. He sighed. It was like telling someone that there was no Santa Claus. Come to think of it, he had no idea whether Nathan knew about Santa Claus. Probably best to avoid that one for now, he decided.
"Satan is sort of a dildo!" Raziel cheerfully put in.
"Raziel, what are you doing on my desk?"
"Butterfly stitches!" she told him cheerfully, holding up her eternally half-completed scarf.
"Well, yeah, isn't he supposed to be a jerk? Isn't that the fucking point?" Nathan grumbled. "Satan is not a nice guy!"
“I just don’t want you to be … disappointed.”
“Disappointed? I’m the first death metal musician who’s actually GOING TO HELL.”
“Well, technically, no,” chattered Raziel. “You’re just the first one who’d gonna get to come back.”
“Really? Who’s down there already?”
“WELL-” started Raziel.
“It’s a trade secret, Nathan,” Ofdensen cut in, frowning darkly at an oblivious Raziel. “Nathan, I really have no idea what to expect down there. And that makes me nervous.”
“You told me that angel trial was gonna be the worst shit ever, and then it was AWESOME! WITH MONKEYS!”
“There may be aspects of this that will hold your interest. But, do you understand, you can get into a lot of trouble in Hell. Lucifer’s first wife got stuck there by eating a pomegranate.”
“What the fuck is a pomegranate? Is that like some gay diet shit?”
“It’s a fruit.”
“Wait. He had to marry her because she ate some fruit?”
“Well, yeah.”
“OK. So. Stay away from chicks with fruit. What else?”
“There is too much stuff to list! Just, for once, please, please listen to me. And stick close to Raziel.”
“You won’t bring any fruit will you?” Nathan asked the angel suspiciously.
“You don’t want me to bring bananas for the monkeys?” she asked sweetly.
“THERE ARE MONKEYS IN HELL?”
“No! No, Nathan, there are no monkeys in Hell.”
“How do you know?” Raziel asked. “Where do all the bad monkeys go?”
“Monkey Hell. They go to Monkey Hell.”
“Monkey Hell?” said Nathan. “Cool! Can we go there next?”
“Sure. Sure, Nathan. If all goes well, I’ll take you to Monkey Hell. I promise.”
After Nathan had departed, Raziel hopped off Ofdensen’s desk and started to roll up her knitting. “Raziel,” he said, “Just a couple things? We’re not gonna be able to speak Angelic down there.”
“True. There’s probably more angels down there than at Headquarters,” she laughed. “You have an alternate?”
“Have you picked up any of the Hopi language from Hon and Kwahu?”
“Ha! Sure thing, angel homeboy!”
“OK.”
“But how the heck did you learn Hopi? I thought you didn’t do the language thing?”
He shrugged. “I’ve lived a long time. You pick up stuff.”
They sat in Wotan’s cluttered office, Ganesh and the All Father, reviewing the latest reports on the security situation. As usual, there was nothing much new of note. Though Wotan looked much like a tall, broad-shouldered reddish-haired man of about 50 years, and Ganesh resembled a handsome, 30-ish Indian man, both men were in actuality immortal pagan gods of respectively the Norse and Hindu pantheons.
Both men were currently quite concerned about the activities of the Legion, the legendary angelic army. Both men had, in the past, fought against the Legion, with varying amounts of success.
And both men were, currently, bedding angels.
“All Father,” Ganesh started, “Would it be wise to begin including Sariel in our discussions?”
Wotan chuckled. “The man’s certainly got a lot of eyes out there. But I’m frankly not sure if all that paranoia is a good thing for my nervous system.” Ganesh laughed too, a fine, musical laugh. “But you’re right, as usual. I’ll see if my Lady minds bearing a message next time she she’s off for dueling practice.”
“Speaking of Sariel….” Ganesh started. “All Father. Might I perhaps have your consultation on…. On a personal matter?”
“You know you can ask me anything, son! I’ve known you since you were a calf!” It was a stupid thing Wotan always said, that nevertheless inevitably made Ganesh laugh. Wotan fished out a bottle of Scotch and a couple of glasses.
“It’s regarding, er, angels. You have been together with the Lady Raziel for a bit of time now…”
Wotan smiled. He grabbed the bottle of Scotch from the desktop and put it away, and instead stood up to reach into a cabinet. “Angels, eh? This calls for the good stuff,” he said, setting down another decanter and pouring out a couple of glasses. Wotan then fished in a drawer. “You don’t smoke cigars, correct?”
“I have a weakness for Indian cigarettes. Sadly, it’s been more than an occasional indulgence of late.”
“Light one up. Keep me company,” said Wotan, matching a Cuban and swinging his feet up on his desk. “Now. Angels. What do you want to know?”
Ganesh lit one of his own thin cigarettes and took a long drag. He sat forward, considering. “Um. I’m not certain how much you have ascertained regarding the present status of my relations with Sariel….”
“My Lady has supplied me the outlines.”
“This has come as a bit of a shock. I have spent a good portion of the last two centuries assassinating their kind.”
“Angels tend to drag you in, son. Kicking and screaming. Now, I had my rules, the first of which, don’t get mixed up in angel politics. You can see for yourself how well that fared!” He considered his single malt. “But,” he said more quietly, “as I also say, if one of them wants to crawl into your bed…. ‘Tis a sin for a man to refuse something like that.”
Ganesh put his head in his hands. “Would that I knew how to confine such matters to the bedroom.”
Wotan roared with laughter. “Been entertaining the servants, eh? I’m sorry, lad, but that doesn’t sound to me like much of a problem.”
Ganesh nodded. “If you’ll forgive me. Yourself and Lady Raziel: you seem a good match.”
“Well, I’ll tell you something. I’ll depend on your discretion, since this isn’t something I tend to share with many. You know I love my women. I’ll take one who can look me right in the eye, and give as good as she gets. I had heard of the Lady by reputation, for a number of years, but alas, our paths never crossed. I got it in my head for a time that I would seek her out….”
“Really?”
Wotan looked far off. “But, I talked to Mimir, and he said, no, Wotan, you wait, you wait for that one to find you. When the time was right. And so she did. And so she did.”
“Destiny had a hand in this then?” Ganesh asked, genuinely surprised.
“You could say that.” Wotan set his glass down and took a drag of his Cuban. “And on that topic, one thing I don’t do, and that’s on the matter my Lady and your young Sariel. I don’t much question what goes on between those two, not any more. I reckon at some point, she got it in her head she wanted a brother, and she picked him, the gods help him. Once my Lady gets an idea in her head, there’s not much talking her out of it. So, I let her have her fancies. But, angels, they’re not family, you know. And the Creator.” Wotan stopped for a moment, frowning. “That man is no one’s Father.”
“They say...” Ganesh started. He considered a moment, and decided to press on. “They say angels lack a conscience.”
“Well, that might be technically correct. I don’t think it works exactly the same as it does with your or I, humans or gods. There is something there, I believe. But that’s not what you wanted to ask me, is it?”
“Er. They seem to drop off to sleep with, er, amazing rapidity….”
Wotan roared with laughter. “Like a rock! That they do.” He looked at Ganesh. “They’re close, they’re so much like us. And sometimes, I’ll be talking with my Lady as if she’s a goddess. But then you’ll do or say something, and you’ll know. Or, you won’t know, I guess is a better way of putting it. I love a challenge, as you know. And at this point in my life, I didn’t think I could continue being surprised like this.
Ganesh stared at his whiskey glass, at the lovely smoky color. “As you know, sir, I am a most capable man. But I find myself feeling … flummoxed.”
“Ain’t an easy row to hoe, son. But, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. Hell, you’ve got eight good heads on your shoulders!”
Another stupid thing Wotan always said. That always made Ganesh laugh.
Many years ago….
Raziel rushed through the golden corridors, genuinely excited for the first time in so long. An assignment! Out of Headquarters!
Her first instinct had been to run and tell Sariel, but then she remembered that she hated him forever.
She found the golden door and yanked it open. “Father,” she called.
Her Father was there.
As were Uriah and Morningstar.
The present day….
“Uriah and Morningstar. Oh, fuck.” Ofdensen flicked ashes.
They were sitting outside on the grounds at Valhalla, although they were out of sight of the vast hall. It was a cold day, so they were wrapped up in coats, and sharing a thermos of hot coffee, but the winter sun was so bright and delicious, it seemed a sin to stay inside. Raziel scratched a very spoiled wolf behind its ear, and tossed a drool-coated stick an improbably long distance for it.
She nodded. “Uriah enjoyed himself that day,” she said. “He was like a pig in shit.” She spread out some seed over the rock she was sitting on, and watched her raven peck at it.
“Yeah, that was definitely his kinda thing. So what actually happened?”
“Well, Morningstar did his act. They bit. Literally. And then we - Uriah and I - expelled them from the Garden. We went full Seraphim, flaming swords and everything. Despite the fact they they’re these tiny, naked humans. But, orders are orders. So, then we’re standing there at the gate, and Uriah is gloating about cleansing the universe of sinners, blah blah blah, and I go, you know, I think I’m gonna go chat with them a bit.”
“Oh, no Raziel!” A furry wolf chin was resting on Ofdensen’s leg, a branch in its salivating mouth.
“I’m like, the poor little things, they’ve just had the worst day of their lives, I’m just gonna check on them, because you know. And Uriah came up with one of his stupid lines like, ‘TALK IS TREASON,’ or some other shit. But I was like, where has talk ever hurt?”
“Oh, god, Raziel, why?” He stood up and heaved the branch several miles, and then tried to wipe the sticky wolf drool from his hand with a handkerchief. “Why would you do that?”
Ignoring him, Raziel said, “So, I popped into Court Form and strolled over to the gate, and they were huddled there, still too upset to move. And I’m like hey. And He looks down at me, and He’s like, What do you want?
“And I said, Well, seems like you guys have had a bad day, so I just wanted to check up on you. Nothing personal, you understand, but you disobeyed, and, well, we were pretty clear on the consequences.
“And He says, the Woman tempted me, and now I find myself cast out, for nothing I’ve done. And you, how do you sleep at night?” Raziel wagged an accusatory finger at herself.
“And I’m like, well, I sleep very well, thank you. I’m just doing my job. But you - if you’re gonna pin this all on Her, I should think you might deserve to lose a night or two, know what I mean?”
Ofdensen laughed. He couldn’t help it. He was picturing Court Formed Raziel, all five foot two of her, sassing the father of Mankind. He wished for a moment that he had been there, but then realized, had he been there, the story would be all about how he had dragged her, kicking and screaming, back to Headquarters. Before she could do anything … like this.
“And, you know,” Raziel continued, “people have said a lot of terrible things about Her, but I found Her to be terribly nice, especially under the circumstances, and She said, You know, you’re right, we knew the consequences, but it was our choice, to live in freedom.
“And I told Her, you know, I can’t say, if I had been in your position, I would have decided any differently. And I wished I could do more for them, but I’ve got something, and maybe it will help? And I take out The Book, and give it to Her. And I tell Her, this is pretty much everything He has to say. It’s all above my head, but maybe you guys can figure it out, and it will help?
“And She said Thank you, though He was still kinda grouchy. And I pointed them down the river, where there was some nice fertile ground they could maybe think about farming. And they took off. And, well, you know the rest. It was never the same for me at Headquarters after that. I was never exactly cast out, for whatever reason. But, needless to say, that was the end of my job taking down the Secrets and Mysteries. And, no one at Headquarters would ever look me in the eye. Ever again.”
“So that was completely spur of the moment,” he asked. “Giving them the Book like that?”
“Yeah, it just seemed…. As I said, She’d had a terrible day, but She just seemed so kind and reasonable. Come to think of it, what would Our Father have done with the Book anyway? Other than making my life hellish, I never got the point.”
“Making your life hellish - maybe that was the point?”
“You said you have a copy of The Book?”
“Of course. And I’ll admit, there’s stuff in there, but I’ve never exactly gotten the point either.”
“I wanted to tell you one other thing. You need to promise me, this part, you will never tell Wotan. Never.” Ofdensen frowned at her. Raziel had switched to High Angelic. He stabbed out his dead cigarette.
“OK?”
“I mean it.” And Raziel frowned and held out her pinkie finger.
“Raziel…. OK. OK. I pinkie swear. What is it?”
“I’m telling you because I think you need to know now. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I told you, a long time ago, the reason I stay away from angel men.”
“You were raped. By a Seraph. So you killed him.”
“I didn’t kill him.” They were silent for a moment. “I didn’t kill him. I was really new. I didn’t know….”
“Raziel? Don’t. Just tell me.”
“He was saying horrible things about me. Just horrible things. I didn’t understand. Words were a new thing. But I realized there was something wrong. So I went to him. And I beat him. Really badly. I didn’t threaten him, or say anything, I whaled on him and left him bleeding and broken on the floor. I don’t know. If I’d have killed him, that might have changed so many things. But, after that, he left me alone. And, the talk stopped. For a while.”
His voice was very soft. “Who?”
“Michael. It was Michael.”
“Oh!” He fumbled for a cigarette. He took one out. It took him a couple of tries to light the match. “Oh fuck.”
“I ams not understands why dey ams onlies invites you, Nat’ans,” Skwisgaar groused, fingering his guitar.
Nathan looked up over his reading glasses. “Because I’m the leader, so I am therefore more fucking important than the rest of you douche bags.”
“I t’ink you ams just wants to fuck dat angel chicks.”
“I don’t wanna fuck Raziel!” Nathan protested. “Geez. She’s King Wotan’s girlfriend, that wouldn’t be cool. I just maybe wanna see her tits some time.”
“Dood, dis is all about angel tits?” Pickles grouched. His voice sounded slightly strangled from puffing on his water pipe. “Dat’s lame.”
“I heard you’ve been scheeing some angel dicksch, Picklesch,” Murderface grumbled, stabbing the coffee table with his knife.
“Yeah, Pickles, you need to quit fucking around with our manager, dude. It’s kinda gay.”
“Yoo know what’s kinda gay? Listenin’ to yoo jerkoffs tellin’ me what t’ do!”
Toki looked up from his knitting. “Guys, we shoulds not fights like dis!”
“Shuts up, Tokis,” Skwisgaar sneered. “What ams you gonna do, waves another scarfs at us?”
“Yeah, Toki, using scarves knit with magical love charms on your band mates, besides being totally gay and lame, is also sort of not cool.”
“Magical love charmsch don’t work on me! You guysch must be kinda gay!”
“Fuck yoo, Murderface. How long is it gonna take yoo t’ record dat fuckin’ bass line wit’ Knubbler, anyway?”
“Aschhole!” said Murderface, fingering his knife.
Nathan glared at his crossword puzzle. Why were they all being such jealous little dildos? Why did he even waste his time with these selfish pricks? He decided to tell Charles he didn’t wanna take any of them along to Monkey Hell.
Many years ago….
Sariel walked along the golden corridors.
He had heard. Like everyone had heard.
Man had Fallen.
And, loony Raziel had gone and gifted them with The Book. His Book of Secrets and Mysteries.
Oddly, they had not cast her out. It was widely rumored that He had a soft spot for her. No one knew why. The standing story was that He had Created her as a joke, one drunken night, very long ago.
He had decided, in an alcohol-fueled haze, to make his greatest Seraph warrior a female. At the time, he thought this was his most hilarious prank ever. It was said he awoke the next morning, with a blinding headache and double vision, to behold her. She had already created a ridiculously inappropriate Court Form, and she was sitting up on His work bench, kicking her short legs, blinking at him inquisitively with those mysterious dark eyes.
But she was never quite right. For one thing, she didn’t really love Him. Not the way his Creations were supposed to. She didn’t even seem to like Him a whole lot.
And she didn’t like the other angels, for reasons he could never really grasp. She avoided her Brother Seraphim in favor of consorting with mortals. When He created some New Ones, he had hoped they would catch her fancy. He thought humbly that Lucifer was His greatest work to date, his masterpiece. But then she took up with the deformed one, Sariel, the one He’d made at the end of the batch, out of the bits that were left.
In the end, He gave up, and did what He usually did, turned his attention to other things.
Anyway, that’s the story they told.
Sariel had heard this story, of course. To be an angel is to gossip, even if the meat of the matter turns out to be about you.
He had wanted to go ask Raziel about it, but then he remembered that he hated her forever.
He was going to meet Uriah for his weekly beating. He was in a strange, disaffected mood today, and he wasn’t quite sure why.
He pushed into Uriah’s chamber. Uriah was already there.
“Sariel! How splendid that you have come.”
“I always come. What’s the difference?” he groused, throwing himself into a chair.
“Are we in a mood today?” the big Seraph inquired.
Sariel followed him around the room with his eyes. “What happened down there, Uriah?”
“Down where?” Uriah smiled. But Sariel continued glaring at him.
“They disobeyed,” Uriah finally said. “And were cast out. His will be done.”
“Why did they disobey?”
“The Morningstar did his part,” Uriah said sweetly.
“Yeah, but, I thought the whole point was they were given a choice?”
“There is but one choice, dear child: the Righteous path.”
“Obviously not. Otherwise you guys wouldn’t have had a job.”
“What has gotten into you today?” Uriah’s teeth showed as he smiled. “I am so very sorry you are in a disagreeable mood. So very sorry.”
“What happened to Raziel?”
Uriah showed more teeth. “That one will not show her face again in our midst. I have made certain of this. I have given my full report on the incident to Him. You might fare better to forget you ever knew that traitorous trash.”
Uriah was on the floor. He was dazed. His nose throbbed. He blinked and rolled over.
Sariel stood above him, his hand still balled in a fist, his eyes grey as steel.
“Whaddya t’ink yer doin’?” Uriah sputtered.
“Honoring you. Want some more?”
Sariel sat at his usual seat at His Table, right next to an obviously uncomfortable Uriah. Sariel hadn’t been terribly careful. Not careful at all. You could clearly see that Uriah’s nose had been broken.
“Then His will is done?” Archangel Michael was asking.
Uriah and Lucifer nodded.
“Praise be,” said Michael.
“Free will doesn’t sound terribly free,” said Sariel.
“What do you mean, Honored Sariel,” Michael asked, a warning tone in is voice.
Sariel lit up one of his smokes. While Michael glared, and Uriah showed rows of teeth, and Lucifer just looked handsome and confused.
“Why bother with free will at all, if there’s only one choice?”
“Because Our Father wishes it,” Michael scolded. “Do you question Our Father?”
“Yeah, that seems to be what I’m doing,” said Sariel, flicking ashes onto his plate. “Why does He always have to be right?”
“It is righteous because He does it,” Michael stated.
“That seems more like a tautology than reasoning.”
“Your reasoning has nothing to do with it.”
“So, you’re admitting you all just kind of follow Him blindly?”
“We are not blind, Little Brother,” Michael snapped. “We all love our Father, as you should.”
“You love Him because you should? Not because He deserves your love?”
“Sariel. Do you not love Our Father?” Lucifer asked.
There was a silence.
Sariel looked up.
“Father,” he said.
Their Father stared at Sariel for a long moment. Then he turned and strode off.
Sariel finished smoking his cigarette.
It was somewhat later. It was Michael and Uriah, and a couple of even larger Seraphim.
The big Seraphs dragged him to a courtyard, the one overlooking the whole universe. They tore off his robes. Michael had started to say something, but then covered his mouth with his hand. Underneath where his robes had been, Sariel’s body was completely covered with bruises and welts, and scars from where the welts had partially healed.
Michael looked around accusingly at Uriah. Uriah would not meet his eyes. He simply frowned into space.
Finally, Michael looked back at Sariel. “Do you…. Do you have anything to say for yourself?” he asked quietly.
Sariel pointed to where his robes lay on the floor. “I left my smokes in that pocket.”
Michael frowned. “Do it,” he growled at the Seraphim. He turned and walked away, Uriah following after him.
They threw him over the balustrade.
The ground had come up very fast. Sariel pushed himself up on one elbow, dazed. He was somewhere in the middle of a wilderness. He was naked. And alone.
His eyeglasses were smashed. He sighed and tossed them away.
He stood. He peered around, with his weak eyes, to every horizon. There was no sign of anybody.
His eyes fell on the ground. He knelt down and picked up his case of smokes. He opened it. They were still relatively intact. He matched one, and stood a while, and smoked, alone, in his brand new prison.
The present day….
“Did you….” Raziel began. She was perched on the hearth, scratching a spoiled wolf’s stomach as it thumped its enormous back leg in glee.
“You’re gonna ask if I wanted to be cast out?” Ofdensen sat on the couch, cigarette dangling from his lips, gigantic wolf head in his lap. He had so far managed to avoid being consumed by said wolf through periodic scratching behind its ears.
Raziel nodded.
“I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. You weren’t around to tell me I was being an asshole.”
“Actually, I don’t feel terribly guilty anymore.” He looked around at her. “I think I may have encouraged you. I may have gotten you in even worse trouble.”
He smiled wryly. “Can’t get much worse than this.”
“Michael could’ve had you killed.”
“I don’t think He would’ve let Michael do that. I don’t think Our Father wanted to admit we were a mistake.”
“We weren’t a mistake.”
“You heard the rumors about you?”
“Yes.” Raziel grinned. “I wouldn’t be the first being who owed her existence to a drunken night!”
“Did you ever ask him?”
“Never. I don’t wanna know.”
“Why not?”
“I wanna be a joke. I think it’s a great story. I want it to be true!”
“You’re blustering. You must be. No one could think like that.”
“Tell me straight, Sariel. If you could, you would really rather be Michael? Or Uriah?”
“Don’t wanna be a head in a box.”
“You’d rather be Morningstar than you?”
“Oh, fucking Morningstar. We gotta go do that tomorrow. Fuck.”
“You sure we gotta do this?”
“I know you hate fucking Morningstar.”
“Well, beyond that, it just seems kinda dangerous. I mean, what if he pulls something?”
“Of course he’s gonna pull something! Why do you think I’m not taking the whole fucking band? That’s what he wanted. That’s what they wanted. We have to pretend we’re cooperating about the Uriah thing.”
“Why do they want him back so goddam much?”
“I think they need him. Though I don’t know what for.” Frustrated, he gingerly slid the wolf head off his lap. The beast responded by leaping onto the couch beside him and curling up. “Fuck!”
“Oh, Wotan hates it when they get up on the furniture like that. Geri and Freki have decided you’re their wolf brother, I think that’s why they’ve started acting a bit rude with you.”
“Their WHAT?”
“He’s dozed off. Listen to his dream.”
“You can listen to wolf dreams?”
“Sure, why not?”
Skeptically, Ofdensen put a cautious hand on the giant wolf head and leaned over for a moment. “Holy fuck!”
“That’s Freki. He’s the big Dethklok fan. Is he dreaming he’s playing in concert again? They’re such silly things!”
“The cook says dinner in ten minutes,” Wotan announced from the doorway. “Are we setting a place for you, Sariel?”
“Oh, shit, is it that late? I really gotta get back….”
“So, I’ll tell the cook to give your steak to Geri and Freki?”
“What? No! Uh. OK. Just dinner. But I gotta leave right after. Seriously!”
He ended up back at Mordhaus later than he’d intended. It wasn’t really his fault: Wotan had a new batch of cigars.
He appeared in his office, stifling a burp, and brushing wolf fur off his suit.
It took Nathan approximately 30 seconds to appear at his door, so he beckoned him in. He prowled through his desk drawers. “Help yourself,” he muttered distractedly to Nathan, indicating the Scotch bottle.
‘You lost something?” the singer asked. He made no move towards the bottle.
“You know those lint remover things?” Ofdensen asked. “Fucking wolves. Why would they be shedding in the middle of the winter?”
“You were up there today?” Nathan asked.
“Yeah.”
“All day?”
“Uh, pretty much. Did you need something?”
“No. Just wondering why you weren’t fucking here.”
“Nathan,” Ofdensen started. He tried to think how to say it, but soon realized, any way the words came out, would be wrong, and so he finally just said it. “Nathan, I need some time during the day when I’m not here.”
“Where else do you need to be?”
“Nowhere. Nowhere in particular. I just…. It’s a big responsibility, taking care of you guys. Taking care of all this.”
“So, you don’t wanna be our manager anymore?”
“No, no, no! Don’t take it that way! I just need some time to do my own stuff. Look! We’re gonna go to Hell together tomorrow! We’ll spend the entire day together.”
“Yeah,” Nathan muttered. And then, more darkly, “With Raziel.”
“I thought you liked Raziel?”
“Are you doing her or something? Is that what this is about?”
Ofdensen looked up from his desk. “Jesus, Nathan! No! We’re friends! And Wotan is my friend!”
“I thought you said you weren’t friends.”
“We aren’t! But, I mean…. Christ.” He slammed a desk drawer shut. “You realize it wouldn’t be any of your business, anyway? You know, you guys…. You guys told me you wanted me to stay away from Pickles, so I did, even if he now fucking ignores it. Like all of you fucking ignore me. But you don’t want me to have a life outside either. I mean, is that even fair?”
He stopped. Who was he, and why was he saying these things?
Nathan glared at him for a while. “You’re not going all fucking shiny.”
“No. No, this is just me. Just me. Being an asshole.”
“You’re good at it.”
“Yeah.”
Nathan took a seat. “Yeah, actually I am too, if you want the truth. Can we get a fucking drink or something?”
The winter sun had yet to rise on the day they went to Hell.
Nathan stifled a yawn as they stood out on the Dethcopter landing pad. “We ready to take off?” he asked his manager.
“Yeah we just need to wait for…. Oh, what the fuck, Raziel?”
“I thought you liked business suits?”
Ofdensen sighed wearily. “Secret Service?”
She peered over her Oakley sunglasses. “Rene Russo from In the Line of Fire!”
“Uh-huh. And, what does the earpiece connect to?”
“It goes to my iPod! I figure I’ll turn up the volume when Morningstar is speaking.”
Ofdensen considered. “You know, that’s actually not such a bad idea.”
So, Ofdensen and Nathan and Special Agent Lilly Raines took the copter to the limo. Then the limo finally pulled up at a hotel. The art deco architecture indicated a 1930s origin.
Ofdensen nodded at the concierge as they walked past. The lobby seemed crowded, but strangely quiet. There was actually still an elevator man. The old man silently waved them into the elevator. He remained outside, and closed the old-fashioned intricate wrought iron gate behind them with a clang.
The door closed. And then the lights went out.
And then the bottom dropped out.
Later, neither Ofedensen nor Raziel could quite place how long it was that they fell. It may have just been a few seconds, or it may have been as long as a full minute. But then they had landed softly somewhere, and the lights were on again, and Ofdensen and Raziel were both staring at each other, each one gripping one of Nathan’s arms.
“That was AWESOME!” Nathan said.
Raziel ventured to the door and opened it. She peeked out. “Wow. It’s so … clean!” she commented. She stepped out into what appeared to be sunlight.
It was true. Outside the elevator, it looked like the inside of the world’s biggest, brightest, cleanest shopping mall.
“Is this Hell?” Nathan whispered.
“No. Purgatory,” Ofdensen said, fumbling for a cigarette.
“I’m terribly sorry, but there’s absolutely no smoking here!” came a voice.
“Uh, no, I was wrong, this is Hell,” Ofdensen muttered.
He approached them. His skin tone came out of a spray bottle, and his smile revealed a row of bleached teeth. A tiny Bluetooth headset pulsed on his right ear.
His eyes looked slightly wrong. In fact, his entire face looked a bit stretched, as if when he smiled, which he seemed to do quite often, something was close to breaking.
“Sariel! It’s been a million years! Literally! Haha!” Lucifer said, pumping his hand. “And, Honored Sister Raziel?” She nodded over her Oakleys. “An unexpected pleasure! You are looking lovely! The climate at Asgard must agree with your complexion.” And then he looked expectantly at Nathan.
“Nathan Explosion, this is Lucifer,” Ofdensen grumbled.
“Such a pleasure!” blurbled Satan. “I am such a big fan. We are all such big fans here! I’ll have to show you are concert stage later! We need to talk about getting a Dethklok show down here!”
“Well, uh, Lucifer….” Nathan began.
“Call me Morningstar, everybody does!”
“Well, Morningstar….”
“Sorry, I have to take this!” Lucifer said, pointing to his headset. He suddenly turned his back to them. The smile faded. “Yeah, they wanna fuck me? Well FUCK THEM!” he snarled into his headset.
Raziel looked over at Ofdensen and pulled back the skin of her forehead.
“Facelift?” he mouthed at her. She frowned and nodded.
They had been walking across the underworld shopping mall for some minutes. Lucifer had provided intermittent commentary, but had seemed to spend most of his time nipping off to yell into his Bluetooth. Ofdensen found he didn’t mind.
“So, uh, what’s Purgatory, exactly?” Nathan asked, after they were nearly knocked over by another wave of happy damned shoppers carting armloads of bags.
“People who weren’t especially good or bad in life,” Ofdensen explained. “They probably spent a lot of their lives on earth … doing stuff like this, actually.”
“What do they do with all the stuff they buy?”
“What do people ever do with all the shit they buy?”
“Huh. Good point.”
Screaming, “Well, fuck them up the ass!” in to his headset, Lucifer distractedly pushed through a set of doors that said “EMERGENCY EXIT ALARM WILL SOUND.” But, no alarm sounded. So they followed him into some kind of tunnel.
“That’s the Acheron overhead!” Lucifer told him, as his Bluetooth had suddenly lost its signal. “We decided to just tunnel under. A lot more convenient than the old ferry system.”
“What happened to Charon?” Ofdensen asked him.
“He works at the Restoration Hardware back in Purgatory.”
There was a dim light at the other end of the tunnel. They finally emerged from the tunnel, blinking, into what at first appeared to be sunshine. But a look upwards confirmed that they were in fact still underground, although apparently inside an enormous, dome-like cavern.
There was a railing up ahead. There was a sign posted underneath, showing a falling cartoon figure. Ofdensen noticed that someone had traced tiny horns onto the falling figure, apparently with a marker pen. They walked up to the railing. And then Nathan gasped and took a step back. Raziel put a hand on his arm. He nodded to her, and she kept her small hand around his arm as he approached the railing once again.
It dropped off. And kept dropping off. And kept dropping off.
You could see the bottom, dimly, below. But it was so far away, it was almost worse than infinity.
Hell was conical in shape, like a giant icy and brutal Dethcone, although it was difficult to see from this angle. If you squinted across the top, you could barely see the other side. There is an old road that travels in a spiral pattern, from the first circle, at the top, down to the ninth circle, at the tip of the cone, far, far below.
“This,” Ofdensen told Nathan. “This is Hell.” He turned to Lucifer. “So, you wanted to talk about Uriah?”
“Oh, Uriah! That’s just Michael’s current obsession.”
“I thought the reason for this meeting….”
“The reason for this meeting is to pacify our Honored Brother Michael, who has his wings all up in a bunch. But we want to have some fun, don’t we? You want to tell everybody you’ve seen Hell, don’t you Nathan?”
“Yeah, I guesso,” Nathan agreed, standing well back from the ledge.
“We’ll just have a quick meeting in my offices, down in the Ninth Circle!” Lucifer told them.
“Uh, Lucifer, I’m sorry, but we’re not gonna have enough time to get down to the Ninth Circle.”
“Why, you’re not thinking we’re going to travel by that outmoded highway system?” Lucifer laughed. “We have a modern bullet train!”
“Uh, of course,” Ofdensen answered.
“I guess you surface folks are still living in the last century,” Lucifer told them sympathetically waving them into the gleaming new Cerberus Station. “And it’s all run on green energy!” he bragged.
Ofdensen bristled. “They have a shinkansen at Valhalla,” he muttered. “And…. And, we’re gonna get a bullet train at Mordland soon.”
“We are?” said Nathan.
“Really? When?” said Raziel.
“What? Sorry, I gotta take this call,” Lucifer told them. “Why the fuck are you calling me now?”
“That dude’s on the fucking phone more than Murderface,” Nathan muttered. They watched the shiny new train arrive with a whoosh.
Ofdensen looked around to where Raziel was nudging him. “The security guards?” she whispered in the Hopi language.
He glanced back, just as the train doors were closing. “Seraphim?” he whispered to her.
“Looks like,” she said, over her Oakleys. They exchanged a nervous glance.
“Dude. Isn’t this kinda … shiny for Hell?” Nathan asked. “I thought there’s be more, ya know, rotting corpses, and blood, and misshapen demons, and that kinda stuff.”
“We’re engaged in a rebranding effort!” Lucifer informed him.
“A … what?” Nathan asked. But Lucifer was cursing into his Bluetooth, and Ofdensen just shrugged.
They alit at Styx station, just above the Fifth Circle. This time Ofdensen made sure to cast his eyes around the station. “Fuck, there’s more Seraphs here,” he murmured to Raziel.
“He’s got the fucking Legion doing train station security?” Raziel replied.
“Uh, Lucifer, I thought you said your offices were down in the Ninth Circle?” Ofdensen asked.
“Just a brief side trip,” Lucifer smilingly assured them, hurrying out of the station and yelling into his headset.
They took an escalator down to what appeared to be the old highway at Hell’s perimeter. There was a huge wall blocking the way. Behind the wall lay what appeared to be a city hugging the rim of Hell.
The city was afire. It shown in lovely red-orange colors, like a permanent sunset.
There was a beautiful wrought iron ornamental gate across the path of the old highway.
“Wow,” said Ofdensen. “Graceland?”
“Graceland copied theirs from me,” sniffed Lucifer.
Though these gates, Ofdensen had to admit, were considerably bigger, as well as grander, than the ones at Elvis’ former residence.
“Nathan, you’ve gotta see this!” Lucifer grinned a stretchy, bleached grin. He waved a hand, and then stalked off again to answer a call. “I told you to fucking fuck them!” he screamed.
A damned soul emerged, holding a guitar.
“Hey, isn’t that…?” Nathan started.
“Huh. Didn’t think he would’ve made it down here,” Ofdensen said.
The guitarist spent a few moments tuning his Stratocaster. And then he started to play, slowly at first, but then segueing into a blazing solo.
As if in response, the Gates of Hell rolled open.
The guitarist smashed his Strat to bits.
“Whoa!” said Nathan. “That’s pretty cool.”
“Yeah,” agreed Lucifer. “It’s actually a security measure. Only a precious few guitarists can play well enough to open the Gates of Hell. And we have all of them down here. Well, almost all of them.”
“All the guitarists? Really?” Ofdensen asked, as Lucifer bustled through the gates.
“You don’t find the notion of musicians residing in my Kingdom to be credible, Sariel?” Lucifer laughed. It was an odd, unmirthful laugh.
“ALL of them?” Ofdensen repeated, a bit sourly to be fair. They were now walking through what looked like a small city. A city that happened to be on fire. It was weird, like walking through a movie set. Everything was on fire, but it was like an alcohol fire: nothing was actually being consumed by the flames.
“We are currently … re-theming this place!” Lucifer explained. He hurried along down the road. Raziel worriedly turned to see the gates slam shut behind them.
“Re-theming Hell? OK, Lucifer, enough with your bullshit. This isn’t your fucking kingdom. You work for Our Father, same as ever.”
Lucifer stopped in front of a huge doorway in one of the larger burning buildings. "As always, Brother Sariel, you are thinking too small. We are moving towards a more exclusive clientele," Lucifer explained.
“What? How are you gonna get that one by Michael?” Ofdensen scoffed. “That’s your job, collecting souls.”
“I’ve just made a deal that’ll keep the Legion out of here forever.” Lucifer motioned, and the giant doors creaked open.
A regiment of Seraphim marched out.
Raziel was instantly in front of Nathan, sword suddenly in her hand. She looked nervously over to Ofdensen.
He shut his eyes tightly. He shook his head.
Lucifer had escorted them to another room. Well, Lucifer and several very large friends.
They hadn’t even bothered to make this one into a room. It was just a cave carved into the walls of hell.
And it was just Ofdensen and Raziel. She peered into the narrow cave. It was dark. And it seemed to go back forever. Even with angel eyes, she couldn’t see where it ended.
He fished out a cigarette. Because, really, what the fuck.
“Why don’t you just fucking kill us?” he asked.
“That wouldn’t be smart, would it?” Bleached grin. “For one thing, I’ve heard her boyfriend has a temper.”
“When I come back, Lucifer, and I will come back, I’m gonna bring a hacksaw and take your fucking wings.”
“Some advice? You might wanna stand back from the edge. Wait, I need to take this,” and Lucifer began jabbering once again into his headset as ceiling at the mouth of the cave suddenly rumbled and collapsed. Ofdensen looked like he would stand there smoking, but Raziel got him in a flying tackle and pushed him out of the way just before they were both buried beneath the rocks. But then the ceiling overhead began to crumble as well, and she was half dragging, half carrying him for a while, deeper and deeper into the cave as the ceiling collapsed and collapsed and collapsed overhead.
They continued running like this, she wasn’t certain how long, when they rounded a corner and finally ran into the end of the cave. In desperation, Agent Lilly Raines threw Sariel to the floor one last time, shielding him with her body.
But finally, the rocks stopped falling.
As the dust cleared, Raziel cast her eyes around, making an assessment. Sariel lay there coughing. She figured he was probably too upset to think clearly for the immediate future, so she decided not to try there. They were now trapped in a sealed chamber at the end of the long cave, somewhere underground, with limited oxygen. Though they were immortal, things would begin to get quite uncomfortable in a bit, and if they stayed too long, they would probably become too incapacitated to go about obtaining help or effecting an escape. It was up to her, the stupid one, so she thought about the many stupid things that were possible. She wasn’t certain how long they’d run into the cave, as she had been a bit too distracted by dodging falling rocks and dragging Sariel along, but it may have been a mile. She reached out, but couldn’t locate the end of the tunnel any more. And it didn’t seem a good bet to just jump blindly, as she wasn’t entirely certain of the direction to the circles of Hell.
As for the other possibility, the surface of the earth, it was quite a long way up: she could just barely touch it with her mind. A jump would cut it very close, and trying it with two was probably crazy. It might be more in reach if she was True Form and had all her magic, but this chamber beside the fallen rock was far too small to transform. Besides, she tended to set off seismic activity in that Form, and that was probably not the best idea when you were so many meters underground. Raziel was stupid, but not quite that stupid. Morningstar probably thought about that when he had decided how to trap them. Clever guy, in his way.
But, no time for dithering. It was time to do what she did best: be really, really stupid.
She tackled Sariel one last time and jumped.
It was an awfully long way. She thought she would run out of all her magic, and the they would end up embedded in the rock together for eternity like a couple of idiots. Fortunately, they would no doubt be unconscious, so Sariel couldn't yell at her too much. Although he would probably find a way to be angry, even underground. He would probably go mad for a cigarette after the first hundred years, and then they would come bursting out of the rock in pure fury, no doubt surprising some poor tourists who only wanted photos of themselves standing in front of the geyser.
The geyser?
Oh, yes, they were on the surface. She felt Sariel’s weight on top of her, but then he jumped up and ran around and shouted some things and said some things. She was thinking she should have made a bet with Sariel before the jump, because she would have won and it would have been awesome. After a bit Sariel was back closer to her and she heard her name. And she said one thing, "Ha!" And then she didn't think or say anything for a while.
“We’ll go get him.”
Ofdensen looked up from where he was smoking and thinking. He crawled over to sit closer to Raziel.
“We’ll go back down. We’ll get him.” She wasn’t even trying to sit up. She was just lying there talking. It figured that when she could do nothing else, Raziel could natter mindlessly.
“How did you even fucking do that, Raziel? Through solid rock? We were…. I don’t even know how far down we were. Jesus. You’re crazy.”
“I’m stupid!”
“Yes, you’re crazy and stupid. Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I think I just used up my magic. I mean, all of it.”
“You’ll be OK. I have people on the way.”
“Why are you being calm?” she asked.
“I’m thinking.”
“Are you shutting down? Don’t shut down. It’s not good when you shut down.”
“Aren’t you the one who’s always bitching at me not to get my wings out?”
“You need to get your wings out. I mean, sort of part way out. You need to be upset. So you can be upset. You shut down. And then you get crazy.”
“Someone needs to get crazy.” He heard the Dethcopter approaching. “We’ll be back home soon, OK?”
“I need little cakes.”
“What?”
“Little cakes. And sherry!”
“Will that help … with the magic?”
“No. I just like little cakes. And sherry.”
“OK. All the little cakes and sherry you want.”
“Sariel.”
“Yeah.” He was standing now, waving at the Dethcopter.
“We’ll go get him.”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, aren’t you Nathan Explosion?” It was a line Nathan had heard a million times before.
Just never before in Hell.
He turned around.
“Yeah.” And then he did a double take. “Hey, aren’t you-“
Ganesh was concerned to hear knocking on his bedroom door. The servants had been trained to disturb him only in case of an emergency. Sariel… Well, Sariel simply turned up where and when he wanted.
He opened the door. And beheld the angel.
“Oh my! Look at you! Come inside, quickly. That’s no state for you to be out and about.”
He pulled Sariel inside and shut the door. Though it was terribly impolite, Ganesh simply could not help staring. He had seen his share of True Formed angels, but never anything quite like this. His eyes in particular were arresting. Ganesh found he could not help thinking of a knife blade.
He was clearly upset, but he seemed so much more like a frightened creature than a man.
The god was utterly at a loss at how to proceed. Finally, Ganesh softly touched his cheek.
“How can I help you?” he asked.
Sariel kissed him. He did not bother to Court Form himself first.
Ganesh had one last rational thought, “Oh, gods, I should not be doing this.” And then he was letting Sariel tear off his clothes and feast on his body.
Satan was a douche bag.
It was incomprehensible
Nathan Explosion sat in a bar in Dis, the burning city on the Fifth Circle of Hell, surrounded on all sides by damned souls, and considered such existential matters.
Nathan had spent much of his adult life in consideration of things satanic and evil. But this place wasn’t sinister; it was just kind of shiny and fake. As was Satan.
Dis wasn’t so bad, once you got used to the heat. The smoke was starting to bother his throat, but Dethklok didn’t have any concert dates coming up, so that was OK. And the beer was cold. And the company was good. Actually, the company was awesome. Everyone else in town was a musician. Everyone! It was fucking amazing. Of course, they were all dead, but Nathan was getting used to having dead dudes around after hanging out at Valhalla.
And, dead or not, a whole lot of people here seemed to be in Nathan’s situation: not exactly sure why they were there, or for how long, or what the fuck.
He wasn’t exactly sure what had happened to Charles and the crazy angel chick. The big scary dudes had taken them away. He figured they were those asshole angel dudes, though he wasn’t exactly certain what they were doing down there.
Charles had told him one thing, “We’ll come back for you.” But just one look in his eyes told Nathan that this was more of a hope than a plan. And when Satan himself told Nathan, “We’re just going to have a little meeting,” that’s when he knew something had gone seriously wrong.
There weren’t any managers here. Or agents. Or roadies. Or record producers. Or anybody else who could be of use to a musician. And the really frustrating thing, there weren’t any musical instruments of any kind. Not even, you know, a grandpas guitar. And nobody had any CDs. Or an iPod. It was fucked up. A city of musicians, without any music. He was sort of wondering what Pickles would make of it. Because, sometimes, that guy wasn’t stupid.
In fact, it was really too bad that Nathan’s band mates were a bunch of douche bags. Because. He sort of missed those assholes.
Ganesh was lying on his bed, rethinking some general principles about his life.
Sariel quietly returned from the bathroom. He had Court Formed at last. Ganesh had loaned him a set of pyjamas. They were too large, but Sariel seemed to dislike being naked. It was only one of a thousand puzzling things about him. Ganesh wondered if he was self-conscious about the scars. There were more than a few. But, it seemed to correct thing to do in this case was simply remain quiet and await Sariel’s explanation.
"I enjoyed the last hours perhaps more than I ought," Ganesh told him. “But I am also familiar enough with your kind to know that is not a good state for you to find yourself about."
"I’m not an angel any more. Anyway. It won't.... It won't happen again."
"You misunderstand, my dear one. I was not scolding, merely expressing concern. Can you now tell me what has happened?”
Sariel was sitting on the end of the bed, looking like his world had fallen in. “Lucifer tricked me.”
“He has been known to do that.”
“I brought Nathan down to Hell. And, now Lucifer has him.”
“Well. We shall simply go and retrieve him. I will inform my father. Is Lord Wotan apprised?”
Sariel nodded miserably. “Yeah. Yeah, Raziel came with me. She nearly killed herself getting us back out.”
“Then, it was fortunate you thought to bring her along.”
Sariel turned and shook his head. “Not fortunate for her.”
“Let us try and keep perspective, shall we? Lucifer is the villain of this piece. We shall gather what forces we may and strike against him.”
“Why is everybody acting like we’ll just stroll down into Hell and set things right? Lucifer’s got…. Lucifer’s got fucking Seraphim warriors down there!”
“We have arrayed ourselves against angels before. Including your Seraphim. The story did not end happily for them, I am afraid.” Ganesh smiled. It was not his usual bright smile, but a threatening, thin one.
"You've…. You’ve killed Seraphim?"
"Yes. Unfortunately, it is a most ungentlemanly form of combat, but we discovered techniques which proved quite effective."
Sariel was on top of him, suddenly. "Show me how. Show me how."
Ganesh smiled. This time it was his usually funny, large smile. "Might I be allowed to don trousers first?"