The Angelic Wars I - Heaven

by Andrew Gille

Some fell only into pits on the surface from which they attempted to crawl to back to the surface. When confronted by the blasting metal storms, showers that alternately rained acid and liquid metal, burning under a searing sun, they crawled back below the surface like cockroaches exposed to light.

  An odor of sulfur permeated the entire planet and seemed to get worse when they crawled below the surface through caverns whose floor, ceiling and walls were covered with jagged razor like black rocks. However, the subsurface was protected from the burning precipitation, violent winds, and blistering sun and therefore made for a less harsh environment. Molten rivers running through the caverns made them hot and stifling but provided a source of light in the darkness.

  For an extended period, they lay motionless, dazed by the suddenness of their situation. Prostrated in the darkness and heat, some did not know if they still existed or had been reduced to scattered energy that would soon fade away.

  But Os, Shalos, and Entera had not been so merciful as to destroy them for their transgressions. No, they soon rose wheezing on the black soot, crawling through the charred wastes to realize the reality of their horrible new home. As they faded back into consciousness, they found that they had been changed. They had once been beautiful, perfect beings, but now as they looked around and down at themselves, they realized that he had taken their beauty. All of them now bore the features of monsters. Scales, horns, scars, blisters, their features now matched the ugliness of their sins. No longer angels, they had become an entirely different breed of being. Now collectively they were known as demons.

  Machenrauch’s skin was no longer the fair soft skin of the angel he once was but was now covered in a strange short light blue fur. His feet now took the form of hooves, and his face was simply no longer there. Two burning yellow eyes were buried in his otherwise featureless face covered by cracked charred skin. His fair blonde hair had turned into a shock of white that jutted from his leathery skull. Painfully he picked himself up off the razor-like shards that had embedded themselves into his chest and stood awkwardly on his new hooven feet.

  Far away from the cavern where Machenrauch now discovered the horror of his condition, another rebel angel picked himself off the razory ground. The searing heat burned him and the acrid, sulfuric air made him choke as the first breaths filled his lungs. In the orange glow of the magma river near which he had landed, he looked down upon himself. He was covered in red scales, he too had black hooves jutting out from the bottoms of his scaly legs. He felt his face, it no longer bore the fair features of one of Os' angels, but instead were more akin to a monster. His mouth contained sharp fangs and a forked tongue. His hair was gone, and horns protruded from his head. Two massive black horns jutted from the sides of his head beneath his pointed calf-like ears. Lucifer now stood the memories of his defeat in the duel against Michael, like a horrible brand burned into the folds of his brain.