He was in his fighting leathers again, but he was soaked from head to toe, his wet hair plastered against his forehead and his green eyes wild with panic.
“What happened!?” Lilith cried, and I leapt to my feet, my spine tingling with a sudden sense of dread.
“He’s lost it. He’s finally fucking lost it,” Shem hissed, the blood draining from his face as he approached.
“Who’s lost it?” I asked, though I already knew theanswer.
“Yahweh.” He turned his wide eyes to Lilith, a pained look of devastation crossing his face. “He’s flooded the entire fucking planet.”
The influxof souls was unprecedented, and Lilith quickly became inconsolable. So many souls were forced to remain in limbo while our teams struggled to keep up with the massive intake. Millions of them lost several generations of residual knowledge due to Yahweh’s flood, and mankind more or less needed to start over.
“This will be a massive blow to the progress of their species,” Lilith whispered as she furiously ran through life after life in the catalog. “How could He do this? I knew He was upset, but I never thought He would dothis.”
No matter what Shem or I did, we could not pull Lilith from the throes of despair. She worked day and night to get as many souls cataloged as quickly as possible. She stopped sleeping, and the light slowly began to die from her eyes.
I was enraged at what Yahweh had done, not because I particularly cared about mankind, but because I cared about Lilith.
I found her one day, sobbing over the glowing dome of the catalog, and I pulled her into my arms, rage and concern at war in my chest.
“Lilith, what is it? Please don’t cry; you’re doing all that you can,” I murmured into her hair, and she shook against me. Each tear she shed split a piece of my heart. Each sob made me want to burn the world to the ground.
“You don’t understand. I’m losing some of them. Some of them have deteriorated to the point where they cannot be reincarnated,” she whispered against me, quivering in my arms. “He calls me the devil, but what He has done is unforgivable. So many innocent souls, gone forever.”
My love for her fueled my anger and my hatred for Yahweh. I had known that He would try to hurt her, but I hadn’t expected Him to do something like this. He couldn’t get her to leave Hell against her will, but He hadn’t needed to. He had managed to hurt her just the same.
That night, she collapsed from exhaustion. I found her unconscious on the ground before the catalog, and I nearly smashed the fucking thing to pieces. Knowing that destroying her invention would only hurt her more, I summoned Shemhazai instead.
Hazai and I tucked her into bed, watching as tears continued to stream down her cheeks, even in sleep. We hovered over her while she rested, neither of us able to form words. I was shaking with rage, and Shem was white with fury. I had never seen him so angry.
“We cannot allow this to go unpunished,” I finally said, my voice quivering in the darkness of our bedroom. Shem clenched his fists at his sides.
“No. We cannot,” he hissed, his pupils dilating to a pinpoint. “Yahweh will pay for this.”
We looked at each other, our limitless love for Lilith burning between us.
“Tomorrow, we go to war,” I announced, and Shemhazai nodded.
“Yeah. Tomorrow,” he agreed, and that was how the first war between Heaven and Hell began.
Earth became a battlefield.
Yahweh’s angels and Lilith’s demons clashed through the echoing emptiness of Earth’s continents for nearly a century. Without a thriving population of mortals to rule, Yahweh and His angels had time and energy to spare. Lilith, on the other hand, grew more and more weak and tired as she continued to try to save the never-ending flow of souls trapped in limbo.
Shemhazai led legions of demons into battle, and it soon became apparent as to why his initial title had been General when he had been serving Yahweh.
Shem and I had always loved the game of chess, and planning for battle was very similar. The basic concept was the same. Sacrifice the pawns to protect the queen. War strategy came naturally to us, and before long, I found myself wondering why we hadn’t fucked around and started a war sooner.
I loved it.
I loved the cutting and the stabbing. I reveled in the sprays of crimson that exploded from angelic bodies as I sliced them down. I basked in their screams as wings were torn apart and eyes were gouged.
In chess, even the king is second to the queen, and this was no different. It quickly became clear to both sides that I was willing to do anything to ensure that we won this war, and it was all because of my love for Lilith.
This mentality was what ended up being our downfall.
It started as every other battle had, with our demons running an aggressive offense. Our legion was dominating, and it was clear within minutes that we would capture and dismember most of Yahweh’s forces that day. The battlefield was scarlet with the spray of angel blood. Wet feathers gathered in fluffy, sanguinous pillows beneath our feet. I was consumed with bloodlust and was ripping into what felt like the thousandth angel when I was suddenly cut off from the rest of my legion.
At first, I was not worried. I was powerful enough to take on several angels at once. All I needed to do was rot through the wall of feathers to get back to Shemhazai. However, it soon became apparent that their plan had been to separate me from the rest of my legion from the beginning. Soon, I was overwhelmed and surrounded by an endless sea of white. I was swarmed by alabaster, writhing wings and bloodshot, lidless eyes.
