Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 5

been faced with, but Renat did so. A moment later the weight of his disloyalty snared him, and he was hurled into the sky and flung over the edge of Heaven. The last thing he saw as the fires of the new realm leapt up to meet him was Emiel's face, pale and shattered, diminishing into the distance until it was gone completely, and Renat was left utterly alone on a blackened piece of the waste that would soon become the Kingdom of Hell.
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    “Farewell, happy fields, Where joy forever dwells! Hail horrors! hail, Infernal World! and thou, profoundest Hell, Receive thy new possessor! One who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”
    ~ Milton, Paradise Lost - Book I
    CHAPTER ii
    The demon Renat liked to spend what time he had to himself in the Fields of the Damned. Broken souls were planted there, and it was the responsibility of the demons overseeing the fields to ensure that they grew as twisted and tormented as their sins merited.
    Renat himself was not an overseer of the damned. He was a powerful demon, one of the original Fallen and a Prince of Hell, but when the mood took him he would fly on ruined wings to the fields, alight on the black, charred ground, and go for a walk.
    With his wings folded away, sword sheathed and eyes half-closed and pensive, Renat could almost be mistaken for a handsome young man as he drifted through the fields, his arms outstretched towards the blossoming tufts of soul within reach of his fingertips. Tongueless mouths shrieked as he brushed them, the soul filaments flaming with the fire that burned inside the demon. Memories of lost passion and bitter regret flowed through creatures whose only respite was forgetting their transgressions. One touch and every wicked word, every evil action was brought back to them in full, and the cries of dismay his presence brought were a satisfying melody to Renat's ears. If he should suffer the consequences of disobedience, then the human souls consigned to Hell's thoughtful cruelties should suffer so much more. After all, they were the ones who had caused this hateful division in the first place. They should feel the price of their own existence.
    The newest souls, those who had no direct experience with him, occasionally begged him for mercy. From a distance Renat might be thought a mortal, vulnerably nude; up close it was clear he was a celestial being, second only to Satan in terms of his absolute beauty. Where he who was once the Morning Star was all light, though, Renat's hair was a stream of darkness that fell in a glossy sheet down his back, so clean and pure that each strand gleamed like a mirror, reflecting the twisted faces of the damned back at themselves and filling them with even more misery. His eyes were reddish-gold, shining with the strength of his dominant presence. His body was smooth and lissome, and his face was so perfect that it could only have originated in Heaven.
    No one saw the hellfire tattoo that burned against the base of his neck, placed there at the founding of Hell by the only angel with more strength and bitterness in him than Renat himself. No mortal soul saw the tattered remnants of his wings, the physical representation of every angel's grace. Very few ever saw the inside of his home, a vast obsidian castle that cut into the feet of all who dared to approach it without wings of their own. Renat held himself apart from the dark revelry of Hell, a pathetic offering to the memory of the one he loved, but a simple gesture was better than no recognition at all. Renat could never forget that he was damned, cut off from God and all of the blessings of his presence, but he could remember why it had seemed worth it at the time, and honor the source of that decision.
    Gravel crunched behind him. Renat turned and received the obeisance of the cloven-hoofed demon that approached him. The creature was over twice his height, horned and hairy and fierce, but he knew to show respect for his master. "Speak, Nergal." Renat's voice was as sweet and smooth as honey, mustering up such tender remembrances to the listening souls that they screamed with agony over the eternal loss they suffered.
    Nergal lifted his face to his lord. His eyes were black from edge to edge, and seemed to suck in the light of the hellfire. "My Prince, an angel has been brought through the Western Gate."
    "An angel." It wasn't unheard of for an angel to fall prey