flame now licking at their ankles. There were creatures I had never seen before, and those that I had heard of as nothing more than a myth. Even Adam’s mighty beast, Abaddon, was among them, naturally being the largest of them all.
His representation was a flickering shadow of destruction starting with his birth in the deepest bowels of Hell. Then following on to the way he emerged in utter rage and one that, until Pip had come along, had never been contained before. It showed him destroying parts of Hell before being contained in the deepest pits of his prison with a tiny figure of Pip being thrown in there not long after.
His personal storytelling ended with his silhouette being merged with his mortal counterpart, Adam. And well, I never realised it until this moment but this was the reason that Adam had always seemed more like a brother to me than simply a friend. Because one look at Dariush and I knew this was true, as my sentiments were the same. After all, Adam’s inner demon was the creation of Lucifer, just as my own was and Dariush could claim the same. So, it was of little wonder then why I made Adam my second-in-command and out of everyone in the mortal realm, why he was the one that I felt most at ease with when being myself.
My most trusted friend.
Of course, getting back to the show and on the opposite wall, before the creation of Adam, came the Keepers of Three. A shadowed depiction of their dark tale, and one I already knew. I did wonder at Lucifer’s decision of why he made them the Keepers of the Tree of Souls but before I could ask this, we came to the next failure, one Lucifer stopped at.
The moving shadows were a silhouette of puppets that told the quick and brief story of a King who ordered three warriors to fight. This was before he ordered the death of another shadowed puppet, ensuring it was ripped in half by first being tied to two chariots. After this, all I could make out was the brief life of a tyrant king before he turned his back on any holy monuments or temples built in homage to the Gods. The very last of his life was of a God’s mighty fist shaking in the sky before lightening split the clouds and struck a large house. Beneath this scene was a figure of the tyrant king falling into Hell with shadowed flames consuming him.
However, despite his brief tale of ruin, my eyes took me back to the beginning, back to the three warriors he had commanded into battle. I narrowed my gaze and looked back to the keepers of three and their own tale of immorality.
“Ah, I see you are connecting the shadows, my Maru,” Lucifer said with a knowing look.
“Could it be?” I asked dumbfounded, making him grin this time, for I was rarely rattled about anything in his presence, and for good reason… this very reason in fact. For it meant that he held power over me and right now, that power was knowledge.
Something he confirmed when he told me,
“He started life as Tullus Hostilius and then, after having his rival Mettius torn in two, I granted him a new name, so he would be forced never to forget the sin that put him here…”
“And that is?” Dariush asked. However, I no longer needed it, as I now knew exactly who it was that had made it his mission to eradicate me and my people from all the realms.
“Saint Matthias,” I snarled, making Lucifer look positively gleeful, whereas my brother openly looked beyond shocked.
“Wait, you mean the guy who…”
“The apostle chosen to replace me when my name was Judas Iscariot. A replacement soon after Jesus’ death and that of my own… yes…”
I paused before finishing with a growl,
“…That bastard.”
12
Devil’s Distrust
I gritted my teeth and turned to our father with a growl.
“I think now is the time you start to explain what the fuck is going on, Lucifer.” His reaction didn’t help cool my anger when the bastard leaned back against one of the pillars and grinned.
“It turned out he wasn’t a gift of God after all, despite the meaning of his name, nor was he to be the prince I renamed him once I gifted him my blood,” Lucifer mused as if we had been talking about the fucking weather!
“Again, this is the part where you start explaining what the