It had been pretty easy to kill everyone. They were all human, after all. Sure, most of those who I guessed handled security and heavy lifting were shapeshifters, but I didn’t find one who survived me ripping out their heart and eating it. It got harder once they new I was there, but that had only made the impromptu horror movie I had subjected them to all the more entertaining.

I found a handful of lilin, who had posed even less of a threat but had lead me to deliberate more than their succulent compatriots. They were easy to deal with, my vastly larger soul strong enough to simply pluck the minor daemons out of their already dead bodies without the need for physical contact. It wasn’t even really magic, just the sin in their souls submitting to its progenitor. In the end, I decided not to eat them.

Firstly, it felt oddly like autocannibalism, consuming something that was already mine. It would have been practical, expanding my power and continuing evolution as much as a few human souls were worth. However, I still didn’t like the idea of destroying souls that were already on the path to salvation, even if these particular individuals were not the most impressive devotees of sin.

In the end, I chucked them into the cosmos to be swapped away and down to were I could farther address their existential failings later. They might not be getting unmade and absorbed, but I would take personal interest in their existential progress when I was available. I had a hunch they would have preferred being cast into outer darkness, or would shortly.

The nephilim were more entertaining, their magical tricks far more imaginative and varied than the more physical attempts of the shifters or lilin. It had all been futile, wards easily unwoven, attacks deflected or ignored and death curses eagerly broken apart and devoured by my soul’s protean nature. No, the casters did not do any better.

The hardest part of the whole thing, and the first thing I did, was sealing everyone inside. The spell I used was unnecessarily complex, requiring several human sacrifices to perform. Well, I had less sacrificed them than carved Celestial Script on their bodies to turn their flesh and souls into temporary anchors. One nailed to the wall at each corner of the building, and every door out would simply lead to another doorway within the building until the anchors died and their souls moved on.

That had been hard mostly because I needed to complete it before there was enough realization of what was happening for the escapes to start in earnest. After it was complete, that was not a problem, and I had my own personal spatially warped hunting grounds for the next few days.

It had been during this play time that I found Marian in a room not unlike the one I had woken up in. Debriefing, as much as I could get from her, revealed that she had been awake when they let her out of their trap.

Unfortunately for her, that meant that the cultists had started working on her before I distracted them, although they hadn’t gotten to anything metaphysically damaging. It seemed that time had passed faster outside the little Lady’s world, meaning a few days had passed before I awoke. Irritated, but not especially problematic.

“You’re the devil.” Marian’s voice broke through my concentration as I drew a Celestial Mark on the floor. Well, I was going to have to do that one again. I looked over at her. “I just figured it out. You aren’t just some sort of monster or karmic punishment for me trying to kill someone. You are literally the devil.” She was leaning against the wall of the mess hall I had piled the still living bodies in. I turned back to my work and started checking it for flaws.

“I’m not going to be impressed. I wasn’t exactly being subtle about it.” She continued to stare vacantly into empty space.

“You really are him?” She asked, voice utterly drained. I shrugged.

“I am the entity that your idea of Satan is derived from. I am the god of The Underworld, which is partially what your myth of Hell comes from.” I carefully dipped a finger into a pool of blood and, putting all of my divine will into it, drew a Mark. When I finished, I pulled away and examined it. “What made you finally realize?” I hadn’t been that secretive about my identity, but I was still interested to hear what made her realize now.

“I was thinking that I might have died and you were Satan torturing me for all eternity. But, then I realized that it would make perfect sense if you just were Satan. Everything you’ve said, everything you do, it all makes sense if you are the devil.”

I tilted my head at her. “Seriously?”

She stared into the distance, seeming utterly emotionally spent. “Am I dead?” She asked, sounding as if she didn’t really care.

“No, and we wouldn’t torture you for all eternity if you were.” She looked over at me, but still seemed to be staring past me.

“You don’t?” I laughed.

“Of course not. At least, not because you are damned.” I looked over the entire script again, searching for anything I could improve. “The Underworld isn’t exactly a comfortable place, not if you can’t make it so, but we don’t work to make people suffer for the hell of it.” I paused. “Pun intended.” I didn’t think there was anything wrong, but this needed to be as perfect as possible. Unfortunately, the living components weren’t going to stay that way for long.

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“Then what is it like? She almost sounded interested this time. I shrugged. “Lot like earth, but with magic and thousands of different species of daemons.” I was nearly sure it was perfect, but I wanted to be even more sure. “It can be dangerous, and people can take advantage of you if you aren’t careful around the wrong person, but that’s true here too.” I noticed a Mark that was right, but seemed like it could be better. “Most of all, it’s a place that rewards individual thinking and free will.” I carefully retraced the Mark, feeling it become ever so slightly more right. “If you think for yourself The Underworld will try to help you, whether you are kind or cruel.” I studied the script again, before finally concluding that it was up to the task at hand. “That is the biggest danger.” I added absently.

“You made it sound nice.” Even I couldn’t read the emotion in her voice.

“It is. It’s not gentle, but it’s not cruel either. In a lot of ways, it’s more like life than the living world is. It’s certainly a lot more like life than the other heavens.” She nodded absently.

“You are an angel, right?” I glanced at her.

“Yes, I am what you would think of as one. Although, you could just as easily say I am an æsir or olympian. It’s really just a matter of what parts each culture got right.” I frowned. “Though, I think the singular of æsir is actually áss, which seems problematic.” She nodded, not seeming to care about my ass related comment.

“So, you’re like a demon, you can’t lie?” I nodded, interested to see where she was going.

“Yes, demons have that because they are all aspects of Lucifer, one of the three original angels. Neither demons or angels can lie or break a deal.” She nodded.

“Are there other angels?” It was a strange question, with how disinterested her voice was, but I answered anyway.

I sighed. “ I don’t know, but doubt it. The demons don’t stop. They just go and go endlessly until their goal is achieved. Once they broke us, something that happened long before I fell, they would simply keep going until either side was utterly gone. They have no sin, so they aren’t physically capable of changing.” I shrugged. “It’s possible that some remain, beyond their reach. But, I think you can see for yourself which one of us is still around.”

I did a full circle of the complex Celestial script I had drawn in blood on the floor, using my divine sense to study the condition of the incapacitated nephilim I placed at selective points. Marian watched me with her tired eyes. “What will you do with me, after this?” I shrugged again.

“I will continue to do what I was created for until we are separated by something that I can not reasonably fix. You are only required to serve me for a month, after all.” The sacrifices were still fairly stable, but I probably shouldn’t wait too long.

“And, what if I end up in a situation where I have no choice but to swear another oath to you?” It was rather misleading calling them sacrifices, since I was going to kill them anyway.

“You always have another choice. I made sure to build into the compulsion that makes a daemon’s oath binding an exception that they could always kill themselves no matter what oath they made.” It wasn’t like the script was going to do any permanent damage to their souls, although that wasn’t to say it wouldn’t be awful for them.

“But, if you were to decide to accept another deal, I guess you would be bound to it.” I figured that with the stuff I had seen clearing out this place, it was pretty certain that they deserved however much this hurt them.

“And, what is your purpose?” I looked over at her again, interested by the question.

“It is rather complex, but it is basically to instigate change. I was created because the other two don’t have the ability to come up with truly new ideas on their own. They can learn from others, but they can’t invent something themselves. That’s what I’m for, the same way Lucifer is for keeping order and preserving the status quo, and Michael is in charge of all the weird moral shit.” I shrugged once more, sticking with what works. “I don’t understand how they worked or why they did what they did, but they didn’t understand how or why I did what I did either. It all just sort of worked, for a while.”

She seemed to think for a long moment. “You are trying to make me more like you.” She finally said, as if something had at long last fit together.

“Every human, including the daemons, have a piece of me in them. They have since the garden. I find it beautiful to see that seed of sin grow, seeing your ability to think for yourselves grow as you are faced with more and more things that only you can save yourself from.” She nodded.

“You would put me through more and more of… this.” She gestured to the room full of mangled bodies.

I nodded. “Not exactly this, but things with similar effect. Things that require you to evolve. Require you to develop your own path.”

I looked over everything one last time, just to be incredibly sure. I really didn’t want to screw this up. “So, if I stay with you, this is what my life will become.” I decided that I was as good as I could possibly be.

“Exactly.” Now, all I needed was the last part.

“I see.” I turned back to her, only to see the knife she had taken from the long-forsaken kitchen slide under her ribs and up into her heart. I watched as the long blade, likely the longest she could find, went through the one organ that magically tied a lilin to the physical world.

I shook my head, grinning. “Simultaneously somewhat impressive and so predictable.” I stepped over and picked up her rapidly dying body. I brought it over and dropped it on the spot in the script where the damned soul departing its body went.

The Celestial Markings began to activate, the motivating force they had been designed for finally present. I walked over to my part of the script, watching as it drew the souls out of the sacrifices. The now free souls twisted under the force of my will made physical, bending into a spiritual path.

I could see Marian’s soul depart its body, leaving far faster than it would in a living person. Luckily for me, she was already a daemon, meaning she was already going where I wanted. She tried to move out of normal space, but the script latched onto her. It didn’t actually stop her, but it did use the sacrifices’ souls to create a sort of string metaphysically tied to her soul as it moved through the spiritual plumbing of the world.

Instead of being lost to me, the string laid out a path. One that could be followed. I smiled as the other end of the string wrapped around me and my being was plucked from the material world. I still had stuff to do, and I knew exactly where I needed to look for said stuff. I was going to hell.