Hell is not a place of punishment. Hell is a prison, and if it is a world of suffering it is only because demons in their immorality and their iniquity make it so. Hell is not of the scourge and the whip, the pain that purifies and makes a soul whole; it is the trash heap that burns beyond the City's walls, the crawling hive crushed beneath the heavy stone. Hell is a realm of the damned and deposed, the tyrant-kings of primordial Creation left to wallow in their own anarchy, every instinct turned against every other. Every hand raised against every brother. It is a cage for those things banished by the Sun's almighty fire and the Moon's solemn gaze; by the grace of the stars and the virtue, the valor of the Dragons who serve as their eternal jailers. Hell is a City raised by no human hands, a universe of brass and black basalt where a sickly green sun shines eternally. The raging, agonized heart of a half-mad cosmos, a realm beyond any hope of redemption.
Men are not bound for Hell. Men rise and fall in their spiritual station as the wheel turns, as they walk the path. The moral and just rising to join with the five Immaculate Beasts that ward the known world and safekeep all souls within. The unvirtuous reborn as filth, as vermin, as- hah. As helots. Those things to be trod underfoot by the righteous. The clean.
But...even those wise and holy preachers, those Listeners to Countless Sorrows, wouldn't really know would they? It's not as if they would ever lay eyes upon the place. In all their stories Hell is a place of merciless light, of heat. A place of acid seas and silver deserts and you will not find a drop within its walls that does not scorch the throat or smoke in the stomach. A place of self-made torment, of oppression and torture, of ancient things that destroy and are destroyed in turn. But those are just stories. In a very real sense Malfeas is what you make of it.
Maybe those wise and holy men were wrong then. Maybe Hell is cold. Dark.
Draped all in red.
And what does it say about you, oh what does it say about you that given the choice you would go back? Hah. Maybe they're right about you. Maybe you are a demon king.
The armor you stole doesn't fit you. A grey breastplate and back piece, each section gleaming like a leaden mirror; the hinges clicking and the closed, clamshell thing rocking with every step, the bottom knocking against the tops of your hips. A jacket of heavy, wine-colored cloth beneath it with a cloak to match, and you have to keep shaking back the sleeves, keep brushing back the billowing fabric even as the hem trailing behind you is splattered with mud and melting sleet, soaked through with frigid water. Leather strips about your waist in what's supposed to be a short-skirt -that's really just "a skirt" on you- and boots that you're sure would have seen you stumble at least once if balance wasn't such a trivial thing now. A helm you have to tip back over your brow just so it doesn't slam down over your eyes, but at least the chain veil covers most of your face. In every direction you're just a few, painful inches deficient. In every way you're utterly unsuited for it. Not quite in the territory of a child dressing up in his father's clothes but so distressingly close..
Even with all the gifts your Deathlord gave you, even with that shard of a dead sun breaking you, remaking you, you're still too slight. You're still too short. Your shoulders too narrow, you limbs too thin. Oh you have strength, you have strength out of all proportion to your build, strength in defiance of anatomy and the mechanics of human physiology. There's a kind of obscene, monstrous power contained in your lean frame and when you clench your fist and flex the muscle that stands so stark beneath the skin is dense, defined. But there's only so much any of that can do to make up for childhood malnutrition. Behold the power of a Lord of the Underworld! Power to shake all the foundations of Creation!
No match for not getting enough wheat and meat as a growing boy apparently.
But the fact that you're in a mood to whine about it all, even if it's just in the comfort of your own thoughts- that's a good sign isn't it? You're being petulant. You're being petty. You finally feel something besides that impotence, that anxiety, that surety that you are failing everyone, disappointing everyone, that in time they will see the mistake they have made and cast you out, give you back to the garbage and refuse. And the realization of that...of that missing weight, that absent strain, that alone twitches the corners of your lips up in a small, sincere smile. And- ah, even if you could take or leave the borrowed clothes, you have to admit that this is nice. This is welcome. This was needed. And so you grin to yourself, just to yourself, and savor the sensation. Feeling the curious luxury of those fine features you wear, that dark hair, that tanned skin -so convincingly blanched by the cold!- that once belonged to you, that still belong to you, and you wrap it all around yourself like a warm blanket as you walk through the camp.
This Hell.
This home.
