Demi-Sin of Deceit: Part Two

Cain

I opened my eyes to see a canopy of trees above me, smoke weaving between the bright, jade-green leaves that were edged with the beginnings of autumn reds, disappearing into the night sky above.

The pile of leaves that I was laying on was slick, but before I could sit up and check what it was, somebody whistled from behind me.

Poddux emerged from the trees in front of me, a carved wooden bow on his back, a weaved basket on his arm, and he dipped his chin when he saw me, ordering, “Stay where you are.”

The male who had whistled from behind stood, walking around me to reveal himself with a bow, a grin on his face as he said, “Welcome back to the land of the living, Prince of Demons.”

It was Erelim, now wearing a plain, white-cotton shirt, the top two buttons undone, a carving half-finished in his hands. The carving knife he held appeared to be the only weapon on him, and I grimaced in pain, rasping, “How the Hell did you get out alive?”

“The same way you did… sort of. I challenged Agron once he found me in my rooms, he hired me to kill some old Fae thing in a cave, and I ran. Thanks to Tatiana listing us as citizens, the wards let me out without a problem. Limbo was pretty rough, though,” he turned around, showing me a burn that ran down the back of his left arm with a wry grin. It had peeled away the skin directly around the burn, the outer edges made entirely of welts and a deep red colour- dried blood.

“Your cousin has a good aim, Prince.”

Lyna had done that?!

Before I could question him further on how he had gotten off the island that the Sun Palace resided on, Poddux placed the basket down beside me, pulling back the leather cover to reveal pale white flowers, some of them smaller than my thumbnail.

“Scara,” he said proudly, “They were hard to find, since it’s heading into autumn, but I managed to get hold of some.”

Erelim peered into the basket, before snorting and returning to his carving, muttering, “You’ll have to eat a hundred just to take the edge off the pain.”

“What happened, anyway?” The last thing I could remember was free-falling with Sellan and Poddux trying to slow the three of us down. To my surprise, it was Erelim who sheepishly said, “I hit you. It was an accident, of course, but you took the full brunt of an ability I call the Holy Fire. It was a mistake, and I’d cast it at the wards hoping to bring it down, but it slid through a hole that Lyna had made. I learnt after I’d escaped that it had hit you.”

“So… what happened to me? What does Holy Fire do?”

“It’s an Archangel ability,” Poddux explained, “Sometimes it can be found in the Fae, although rarely. I’m surprised you have it, Erelim, given your Fallen status.”

Erelim shrugged, wholly unimpressed by this so-called rare talent, before Sellan stepped in, adding, “It melts away anything unholy, or in this case, Demonic. That single shot nearly went straight through you. Instead, it exposed a shit-ton of flesh. Pretty sure I saw the space where your heart was meant to be.” He nudged Erelim, who rolled his eyes, saying, “In Demonic things, it brings on necrosis. You came from Earth, so I’m certain you know what it is.”

Necrosis… When your flesh rapidly dies. How lovely.

The Fallen Angel took a seat on an abandoned tree stump, still carving away at a small wooden rose, and remarked, “Once your body comes out of shock, it will be agony. You’ll be out for quite a while, even with regular Scara treatments.” As if the word jolted Poddux’s memory, he reached into the basket, handing me a bunch of the tiny flowers, and I reluctantly popped them in my mouth, grimacing at the taste.

“I need to go to Korath,” I said around a mouthful of Scara leaves, eyeing the rest of the basket with distaste. They certainly weren’t the nicest tasting things, especially when they were plucked directly from the ground.

“If you go to Korath,” he said dimly, knowing exactly why I wanted to go, and understanding, “You will die before you make it three feet from the Divider. I know you wish to rescue Destiny, but Holy Fire is dangerous, and the first month is crucial to recovery. You will need frequent medical attention, regular Scara treatments, and what I can only akin to a nursemaid hovering around you. Eventually, it will hurt enough that you won’t be able to walk.”

“I have Demonic healing,” I said with a smug grin, and Erelim sighed, “It’s HOLY Fire for a reason, smart-ass! Archangels use it to snipe your kind. I’m honestly surprised that Seraphina didn’t use it when Seth killed her. She could have decimated everybody in that room, and yet, she chose not to. She allowed herself to be taken out by a mere blade. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad she didn’t murder Seth, Destiny and Jane, but it doesn’t make any sense to me why she would simply die.”

“The Demon Lords say that Destiny is Archangel-Chosen. Maybe that’s why?”

Erelim hummed, considering it, before muttering, “I wonder why she’s Archangel-Chosen if she’s a Demonic-being. That kind of thing is reserved for people destined to save the world, or whatever. The last Archangel-Chosen person I read of was Jezebel.”

Jezebel. There was that name again, the one that Jason had made a huge fuss over. Chewing on another pile of flowers, I mulled over the thought. Jezebel had been Archangel-Chosen? To do what?

Jason had hypothesized that she’d been gifted a way to kill the seven Sins and Lilith of Hell, but why? If Archangels had this Holy Fire thing, then why couldn’t they just kill Zeella and the other Sins themselves?

“How did you read about Jezebel?” I questioned. Our Manor had very little knowledge on her, despite Lilith’s main goal in hunting down her parents, so how had Erelim gotten a hold of information like that?

Erelim pressed his lips together, quietly saying, “My family is only newly fallen. My father was an Angel, so he had access to the knowledge that all Angels have, which he used to educate me. I believe his father, my grandfather, was present when Seraphina kidnapped Destiny. His name was Caleb, Son of Evalin. He used to ramble that he met your cousin, Prince of Demons. It’s how I recognised her when she was first brought in as Tatiana’s prisoner.”

Caleb, Son of Evalin… Evalin? As in, Zeella’s lover Evalin? Mother to Angel, Destiny’s half-sister?

Angels aged slowly, very slowly, so it was entirely possible that Evalin had birthed a child before Angel, but she’d never made any mention of it to Zeella, perhaps to protect Caleb and his lineage from him.

Even ignoring the fact that he had supposedly met Destiny, this information was new to me.

Feigning surprise by a few minutes, since I’d had the time to mull it over and accept it, I cried out, “You’re related to Angel Maladur!”

Erelim raised an eyebrow, confused by my sudden outburst, and I explained, “You said that your grandfather, Caleb, was the son of Evalin. Evalin is Angel’s mother.”

“Evalin would never have slept with a Maladur,” Erelim said in disgust, adding, “No offence meant to you, of course, Cain. She simply wouldn’t have slept with Zeella.”

“Well, she did. She’s the mother to Angel, the youngest of Destiny’s half-siblings.”

Still clearly believing that I was full of shit, Erelim muttered, “Yeah, whatever. You better pray Angel doesn’t have Holy Fire, then. It will literally burn her from the inside out, since she’s half Demonic.”

I hadn’t thought of that. Thank the depths of Hell that Zeella hadn’t known about it, either, because he would have kept breeding with Evalin until he got a child with Holy Fire, just so he could experiment with it.

Chewing on the last of the Scara flowers, I winced, my back beginning to sting, as though a bee had stung it. Poddux and Sellan, seeing my discomfort, helped me sit up, the former swearing at my back, the latter pressing leaves into the open wound. I hissed, cursing with pain, and Erelim waved his hand.

“And… begin.”

What followed was the most excruciating pain I’d ever felt in my life. It stung, nay, it scorched my skin, my flesh peeling back from my bones, before my bones were slowly chipped away with a cheese grater- at least it felt like it, and eventually, Poddux had to fetch me a stick to bite down on, blood flowing like a river down my back. I bit down on the stick, rolling onto my stomach until I realised that the cool night air was just as bad as the pressure of the leaves, and I rolled back, groaning, unable to continue sitting up. Erelim, clearly used to the sight of pain caused by his magic, said, “It’ll fade in a few minutes. It’s one of those pains that comes and goes.”

“How…” I gasped out, “fortunate for me!”

Poddux snorted, Sellan stuffing another leaf onto my back, and I roared with pain, feeling it skitter along my spine. Someone was pressing a branding iron into my back, digging it in until they felt bone, and then pressing it down even further, melting away all nerves, flesh and blood, and Poddux eventually snapped, “Can’t you do anything for him?”

Erelim shook his head, saying, “Unfortunately, he’ll have to endure it. Luckily, it should be fading anytime now…”

The pain, true to Erelim’s word, did begin to fade, but the process left me shaking, covered in a layer of sweat, and exhausted. The Fallen Angel, eyeing the night sky, said, “We have to rest, so set up some beds. I’ll build a canopy that we can hide from the sun under. There’s no use trying to walk back to Karmona, so we’ll wait here until someone can find us.”

Poddux and Sellan quickly cleaned up my bed, working around my shivering body, and I pressed my shame-covered face into the makeshift grass pillow. I didn’t display pain, not easily, and to be literally screaming with it…

It was humiliating.

That is, until Sellan said, “Heaven above, Cain, I’m impressed. I would have taken my own life if I was in so much pain, judging by the display you just put on.”

I muffled a weak thanks, knowing he only said it to lighten my humiliation, and Poddux added, “I’d prefer to never be struck with Holy Fire.”

“Actually,” Erelim said, “For Faeries it can act as a hallucinogenic.”

“Great,” I groaned out, “I get the burning pits of Hell itself, and those two get a good time.”

Sellan pulled a small dagger from his belt, and I scowled. I didn’t remember them wearing armour, much less having weapons, and yet, Poddux had a bow on his shoulder, and Sellan a dagger. Nodding to the dagger, I breathed, “Weapons?”

“We managed to scavenge some armour from the Demonic-being bodies that were left here, as well as some weapons. We got pretty lucky, actually- your kind make decent weaponry, despite relying on tooth and claw.”

“We’re instinctual. We know how to fight with weapons, but when our lives are in danger, we do what animals would do. It takes a lot of training and discipline to not go into Blood-Lust on a battlefield.” Sellan stood, giving us a nod of goodbye as he left to find materials to build a makeshift shelter, and Erelim hummed in thought, saying, “Your cousin and yourself are remarkably calm on a battlefield.”

“Destiny’s first battlefield was when she was thirteen. I was sixteen. By then, both of us had gone through the Dome, and a battlefield wasn’t much to blink about.”

“Thirteen,” Poddux whistled, his eyes glazing over, trying to imagine Destiny on a battlefield as a child. That was thousands of years ago, now. Destiny died so often that, in all that time, she’d only aged three years. Hell below.

I hadn’t thought about it at the time, but to be thirteen, and able to gaze out at a battlefield without so much as blinking… it was sad. She was so desensitized to death.

At the time, I might have noticed it, but it really struck me now. I had relished teaching Destiny to enjoy things again, once she’d left the Dome. Reading, drawing, even just lounging in bed and watching a movie- At first, none of those things had interested her anymore. She didn’t care for toys like any other kid, or clothes, or leisurely activities- only training; training to kill, to maim…

“The Manor isn’t a nice place to be, I take it?” Erelim said as he hammered a stick into the ground, and I finally managed to sit up, shuffling over to prop myself up against a tree.

“It was home,” I said nonchalantly, knowing it was a bullshit answer. The Manor had never been home, just a place to stay. It was home to Lyna, to Abel, maybe even to Destiny, but never me.

The rest of the night fell into place, becoming strangely peaceful as Poddux fried a few fish he had managed to catch from a nearby pond, while Sellan polished the weapons he’d found, and Erelim made plans to take back Tarvenia. I simply watched the three of them, only pausing when another wave of pain would send me rushing for the brambles on the edge of the shelter to vomit into the leaves there, the fish I’d eaten soon rushing back up.

Camping wasn’t unusual to me. It was being in significant pain. I was used to wounds from training or war, but not anything like this. It scorched my body, leaving me exhausted and shuddering ten minutes later, the two Faeries and one Fallen Angel dripping water from leaves onto my forehead in an attempt to wash away the pain.

Eventually, we managed to fall asleep, Erelim keeping the first watch…