The Dark Lord's Vessel

Prologue

Prologue

Have the gates of death

Been opened unto thee?

Or hast thou seen

The doors of the shadow of death?

.

― Job 38:17

.

SHAY'TAN

The Infernal Palace rose out of the darkness, the place where the material world ended and primordial chaos began. It was an imposing structure, infinitely tall, long and wide, pitch black, shaped to provide a place for She-who-is and He-who's-not to meet. All around it swirled the Nothing; a howling, maddening storm of darkness, the Song of Destruction in its rawest, most terrifying form.

Shay'tan ran his paw down the enormous carved gate, a pair of double doors which dwarfed even him, a fire dragon. On that gate was carved the root system of the Eternal Tree. He traced a root all the way up into the branch which nurtured the galaxy he shared with Hashem. As he feared, the fruit had become speckled with a hideous, p***y brown color.

His internal fire flickered with a sense of fear.

"Grant me entrance," he spoke softly to the gate. "I come in answer to a summons."

The doors swung open, drawn by invisible hands.

Inside the palace was completely dark, which meant She-who-is was not in residence. The doors shut behind him, leaving him in darkness except for the fire he carried within himself. Doric columns stretched up towards a vaulted ceiling. Shadows detached from the walls and crept up to lap at his paws, his tail, and his wings; curious about his light. Everywhere they touched he could feel drains of power.

"Not too much," he rumbled. "Just a sniff, and then be gone with you! I have business with your master."

The shadows parted, leaving him standing on an enormous chessboard delineated, not by color, but by the texture of the opposing squares. He lumbered past chess pieces so large they dwarfed even him. He paused when he reached a pair of stools placed around a table. As he feared, the galaxy the two elder gods had at play was his.

He turned to the shadow which led him to its master. Shadow cats, the goddess called them. The Dark Lord's thought-forms. Some of them had existed for so long they'd begun to gather sentience of their own.

At the end of the nave, the floor rose sharply into an enormous throne. Seated in the chancel towered a muscular black male with leathery wings, a scorpion tail, and a stern, handsome face surrounded by six curving horns. From those high cheekbones stared a pair of pitiless black eyes.

"You summoned me?" Shay'tan asked the elder god.

The Dark Lord unfurled his bat like wings, causing his wing-spikes to rustle like a pair of swords. The foundations of the Infernal Palace trembled as HE spoke in a terrible, deep voice.

"SHE thinks she has rehabilitated her brother, but I do not trust it. The game is, once again, at play."

"Why was I not told another Morning Star had been reborn?"

"SHE is angry you failed to protect her sister, so she gave him to Hashem to raise."

"Lucifer?" he guessed.

"Aye. She did it to spite you. Only it turned around to bite her in the wings."

Shay'tan rubbed his brow-ridges. He should have suspected something was amiss when his adversary adopted a Seraphim woman's bastard child. That the child had later turned out to be Shemijaza's biological son had been frustrating enough, but now Lucifer was a Morning Star? And he had gone and given the man a human wife.

Shay'tan's wings drooped.

"I see."

The shadow cat swirled around him, draining a bit of his light, but in the creature's touch he felt something else, sympathy. As the Dark Lord's ability to feel had grown, so had that of his thought forms.

"You don't see," HE said. "Hashem did an even worse job of safeguarding his charge than you did. Moloch used him to begin rebuilding his Caliphate. If the Morning Star proves incapable of keeping him contained, I have no choice but to destroy everything he touched."

Hashem's empire? Yes!

No. He touched -my- empire as well, and gallivanted off with half my fleet.

Nausea settled into Shay'tan's gullet.

"SHE will never allow that."

"SHE doesn't have a choice. I exist to protect her. But only last year I found out SHE hid Earth and pretended humanity was dead. It makes me wonder, what else has my dear wife hidden from me?"

Shay'tan's voice lilted up with alarm. "You want me to destroy the human homeworld?"

The Dark Lord gestured with frustration at the chess board.

"HER favorite daughter calls that world her home. I sent a champion there to protect the woman, but then SHE taught her Chosen One how to manipulate his memory so he'd fall in love with her!"

Shay'tan stared guiltily down at his clawed hands. He, better than anybody, understood how complicated things could get when a player's judgment became blinded by love.

"Who is this champion?"

The Dark Lord's expression grew wary.

"He's a mortal creature, damaged enough by tragedy to stumble upon the key to wielding my power."

"A mortal?" Shay'tan flared his wings with surprise. "No mortal has ever wielded your power and lived!"

The Dark Lord picked up the shadow cat which begged for attention and began to stroke it absent-mindedly.

"Have you ever placed a wager you regret?"

"Yes."

The Dark Lord's expression turned pensive.

"I knew he was searching for his chéad phósadh, but I had no idea the Other One was the key to controlling his power."

The chill of the Nothing rippled down Shay'tan's scales.

"How much void matter can this mortal vessel wield?"

The shadow cat bared his fangs and hissed.

"All of it."

Shay'tan's tail convulsed. Now probably wasn't a good time to tell HIM that Ba'al Zebub had just stolen the planet from him.