Samael pulled a piece of black chalk out of his robe and began drawing a circle on the ground. He made it really wide. It was nearly twenty feet in diameter. Then he started drawing symbols on the ground around the circle.

More magic circles. Great. As if I hadn't seen enough of those in my lifetime.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Doing magic. What does it look like?" he said.

"What for?" I asked. I knew what it was for. It was for removing Cain's mark. What else would it be for?

"Removing the mark, obviously," he said.

"Obviously," I said. "What are you going to do after that?"

"I'll tell you in a bit, but right now I have to concentrate," he said.

Samael spent his time drawing symbols around the circle. I teleported around the circle on my back, trying to brush away the chalk markings, but it didn't work. I brushed away the dirt underneath the chalk, but the chalk stayed in place.

It was like the chalk wasn't written on the ground. It was written on the air. It was written on the fabric of reality. So I gave up on that and tried to attack Samael again. All I got in reward for that was a broken eye socket and blindness in my left eye.

So I gave up on that too and just waited for Cain to land. Cain landed shortly after Samael stopped drawing symbols. He sent up a ton of dirt and sand, but was unharmed.

He got up and tried to leave the circle, but it was like there was an invisible wall keeping him from escaping.

"Hey, let me out! Samael, I don't want this!" Cain yelled.

"What you want doesn't matter anymore, Cain, darling. I'm giving you what you asked for. Now I get what I want," he said.

He finished drawing the symbols and placed his hand on the ground among them. A nightmarish flash of black light—if that can even be called a thing—shot up from the circle and obscured Cain from view. I could hear him screaming, though. Apparently, the process wasn't painless as one might expect.

"How does this even work? Shouldn't it be impossible to break God's judgement?" I asked Samael.

The mark removal process wasn't instantaneous, like I thought it would be. Cain just kept screaming. Man, that guy had incredible lung capacity. He didn't sound like he stopped to take breaths.

"Demon magic. It's the key," Samael said, smiling like he was the smartest son of a bitch alive. The smug piece of shit.

"Aaaahhhhh!!!" Cain screamed.

"Why? I don't understand. How could something that God created be powerful enough to defy him? That just doesn't make sense," I said.

"That's the thing. God didn't create demons. Do you really think God would create such self centered, hedonistic, narcissistic creatures? No. He didn't create them. He just found them in an alternate dimension where life really did start from a primordial ooze, like scientists used to think life on Earth started," he said.

"He just subjugated them and put them to work. They're very useful creatures. By themselves, they aren't much, but gather the magic of millions of them, and you can defy gods, or rather God himself."

"You've gathered the magic of millions of demon deals? Then how did we just notice the excess celebrity deaths?" I asked. This didn't make sense. Surely, if they had been doing this since the beginning of time, when Cain was first marked, someone, anyone, would have noticed the higher number of deaths among celebrities.

"That's because Cain got impatient and sloppy. He knew we were close to having the magic, and he ramped up his killings. He couldn't wait any longer. You know how so many celebrities seem to commit suicide or overdose on drugs or get in car accidents or get murdered? Hell, even plane accidents have killed several celebrities," he said.

"Those were you? You faked all those deaths? Even Elvis?" I asked, incredulous.

"No, the king did himself in. He was good like that. You may be surprised to know the king didn't have any demon juice. That was all him," he said.

"Why does my butthole burn?!?! It feels like I ate a years supply of spicy food!!! Ahhh!!!!" Cain wailed.

"He's probably the only human I've ever respected for that. He truly did it on his own. No wonder he went out like he did, though. That shit takes a toll on you. Although, he did steal rock and roll from black people. So he wasn't perfect. But I digress. All the other deaths were us. Good old Cain and me." He smiled fondly, like he was feeling nostalgic.

"Why is it starting to feel good now?!?! My butthole, I mean!!! Oooooohhh!!! Oooohhh God!!!!" Cain roared.

"If Cain and you have been partners for this long, why would you betray him now?" I asked. Was this guy really that evil?

"Cain and me were friends, but the hundreds of angels that were sealed in the Abyss are family. Sometimes you have to choose one over the other and in this instance, I choose family," he said, shrugging like it was no big deal.

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"Wait, that's what this is about? The fallen angels sealed in the Abyss?" I asked.

"Yes. That's what this is 'all about' if you must use such simplistic language," he said, scoffing. "The Earth should be ours. Not humans. Humans had their chance to enjoy this world, and they squandered it. We deserve a chance to enjoy all the things 'life' has to offer and more. Not be slaves to some faceless overlord in the sky."

"Huh. Ok. I don't agree with it, but I understand it," I said.

After several minutes that probably felt like hours to Cain, the 'black light' finally flickered and subsided. Cain collapsed to the ground like he was being held up by the light. I ran up to Cain and grabbed his hand, and wrapped my other arm around him in a hug. I don't know why I did it. It just felt right.

Despite barely knowing each other, he had just been through an ordeal. To have someone you had been partners with for millennia betray you must have been hard. On top of that, he went through a ton of pain.

"Hey, buddy. Are you ok?" I said.

"Yeah, actually, for once in my long miserable life, I am. I think I just had my first prostate orgasm," he said, with a smile that said he was still riding that high a bit. The afterglow feeling after sex, I mean.

"Congratulations. Been there, done that. Welcome to the club," I said, still lying on the ground outside the circle. I hadn't suddenly healed all of a sudden if you were wondering.

"How do you feel?" I asked.

"Good, considering the circumstances," he said.

"That won't last," Samael said, grimly.

"Why?" I asked.

"I still need to open the Abyss," he said, clenching his jaw.

"What's required to open the Abyss?" I asked.

"The blood of a virgin," Samael said.

"There are no virgins here, you idiot! Right Cain?"

Cain didn't say anything.

"Right, Cain?" More desperately this time.

Still more silence.

"Come on, Cain. Don't tell me you're a virgin," I said.

"Sorry," he said.

"Oh, shit," I said. "We're screwed."

"Yes, you are," Samael said. He crossed out some of the symbols with the chalk and then drew more symbols.

Cain got up and tried, but failed, to leave the circle again. "Samael! You don't have to do this! I thought we were friends!" he yelled, desperately.

"We were friends, Cain. 'Were' being the operative word. Consider this my official resignation as your companion," he said, expressionless.

"Alright, I'm breaking your dumb friendship bracelet you gave me!" Cain said, ripping the bracelet off his wrist and stomping on it. The beads broke on the ground.

"Noooo!!! Why did you do that?" Samael said, glaring at Cain. "You're going to pay for that."

Samael pressed his hand down on a symbol and four giant black spikes stabbed through Cain's body diagonally. He spat out blood and died almost immediately. The light went out of his eyes and his upper body collapsed forward against one of the spikes.

There was a massive rumbling sound as the ground around us opened up, revealing a deep black abyss with millions of writhing figures inside. Then the spot of land we were on started to descend into the Abyss.

Some of the writhing figures tried to attack us, but they bounced off an invisible wall marked by a larger outer circle that Samael had drawn. The figures tried to escape out of the Abyss next, but they were rebuffed by another invisible barrier. Apparently, the Abyss wasn't actually open yet.

As we slowly descended further into the Abyss, I figured it was a good time to pry more information out of Samael and get him monologuing.

"Lucifer said the other fallen angels got sealed away in the Abyss. How did you escape getting sealed away?" I said.

"Because I'm sneaky, like a snake," he said, transforming into a giant snake. This one had a split tail that turned into two tails at the end. Then he transformed back into a Jesus impersonator.

"I'm actually the one who disguised themself as a serpent and convinced Eve to eat the apple. Technically, it wasn't an apple though. Apples hadn't been invented yet. It was just a fruit. It was a fruit that was actually just called 'fruit'. 'Fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil', specifically, but 'fruit' for short. But I digress," he said.

"So Lucifer never told you about me, huh? He must have kept me a secret out of some misguided sense of loyalty or brotherhood. He was always sentimental like that. Not me though."

"Lucifer wasn't the only one who escaped the Abyss. I wasn't either. Lucifer, me, and eleven other fallen angels escaped. Thirteen in total. We were labeled as devils. Aberrations. Azrael hunted us down."

"Lucifer was the only one allowed to live since God needed someone to run Hell, and he was technically the most physically powerful. I escaped, obviously—due to my considerable talents," he shapeshifted into a pineapple for an example, "but my other brothers were slaughtered. Like cattle. Much like how the humans are going to be slaughtered."

"While I normally enjoy having conversations with talking fruit, this one I don't like so much," I said.

Samael changed back into his homeless Jesus form, which I suppose was just Jesus, but he made it look weird. "Better?" he asked.

"Not much," I said.

"Well, you're going to have to deal with it," he said. "This is my preferred form."

"Why? Why not just be comfortable in your own skin?" I asked.

"Because my skin is this," he said, transforming again. His features changed and morphed until he had none. He looked like a biologically accurate mannequin with pure white skin.

"Oh god! That's awful!" I said, recoiling in horror.

He changed back to hippy Jesus and said, "See?"

"Yeah, I see now," I said, still a little disgusted by his previous form.

The platform of dirt and sand we were on finally stopped its descent. There was a circular half wall on one side of us and on the other were bars to a cage. The wall had an inscription on it in what looked like Aramaic—from what I saw of the bible text that Purgy had dropped on me and Judas—but I obviously couldn't read it.

If only I had Judas with me. A cooperative Judas. But that bastard was still a selfish, angry person with serious issues that he should seek professional help for.

Sometimes I felt like a lot of Hell's inhabitants could be reformed if they just got the proper therapy they needed. Maybe that would be my next initiative. While God never said I could do that, he never said I couldn't do that either.

I know I pulled the same trick on Lucifer, but don't knock it if it works. No need to change or innovate if you have a solution that actually solves the problem.

Sure, there were the people who were fundamentally broken, but those were few and far between. It would really alleviate my circle guards if I could send most of the souls to Purgatory. That wasn't important right now, though. I needed to focus on what was happening at this moment.

There were people behind the bars. I guessed they were the fallen angels that Samael had mentioned. Among them were men and women. He ran up to them and said, "My brothers and sisters. Today you shall be released and we shall take back the earth!"

They all cheered in some form or another. Samael went over to the wall and read the inscription. He walked to the wall next to it and pressed several stone bricks in a specific order. After a few moments that seemed to stretch on forever, a great grinding noise could be heard throughout the chamber.

The bars came up and walls shifted. The angels poured out of the cage along with every monster held within the Abyss. I watched as they flooded out.

Samael looked back at me. "Farewell, Dave. May we never meet again." He sprouted massive wings and flew away from me, leaving me alone in the bottom of the Abyss.

I was about to teleport back to the Red Valley hospital to get fixed up again, when I noticed something strange lying on the ground.