Dufaii - The Patron Saints of the Damned Book I

“Survivor’s guilt … that’s the term the humans would eventually use to describe the terrible agony we felt at seeing our brothers and sisters cast into the abyss. In her last moments, Hades had told us younger angels to run so that we would not be found out … and not to reveal ourselves, no matter what.

She had known that the battle was over, long before the rest of the other generals. I think the only reason she fought was so that her soldiers could go down knowing they had fought to the bitter end. Without that, I don’t know if the demon people could have made it, spiritually speaking. And I think that we younger rebels survived was also a part of that.

But … that didn’t make living with what we’d seen and escaped any easier.To make matters worse, the Creator’s wrath against the demons did not end with their fall into the abyss. He praised all the angels who remained after they were gone, calling us his faithful servants. He … told us in detail of the torment that awaited our brethren.

The prison to which they had been banished was the opposite of every condition that angels needed to really live. We were meant to exist on a plane of pure spiritual energy, which nourished our souls like the sun to a plant. We could even thrive on the physical realm, where the scattered shards of the Creator’s soul radiated enough life to sustain us fully.

But the stone prison was devoid of all life. Imagine granting a fish immortality shortly before sealing it in a barrel of salt and you will come close to understanding. It was torture for beings who could not die. And though we younger angels did not have to live it, we had to live with the knowledge that the demons who were our true family would suffer within that realm forever.”

-excerpt from an untitled journal by Abhayananda, Guardian of Hell’s Gate and Double-agent of General Hades

-O-

Dufaii hobbled on trembling legs, cradling to his chest a severed arm that was not his own. His feet waded through the remains of blood and flesh pooled on the stone beneath him. There was no light, so he could not see at all. In his disorientation, he had blindly kicked the blade of a sword and cut down to the bone, which was why he now hobbled. In Heaven, such an injury would have mended fairly quickly, and the pain would have been diminished. On Earth, his pain would have compared with that of mortals and his injuries would have still mended faster than theirs for what he was. This place, however, had the opposite effect of that in Heaven. Dufaii felt his pain more intensely than he thought possible … nothing within him ever functioning to diminish his agony.And he felt as if his body might never heal.

Dufaii squeezed the severed arm tightly to himself to feel the diminished aura vibration from it. Then, he closed his eyes and projected his senses beyond those demons also searching for missing limbs and weapons—pieces of their souls and those of comrades. He projected himself out until he thought he sensed a thrum of energy that matched that of the arm.

Hoping that he was right and not wasting energy on a mistake in his ability to read the auras, Dufaii made his way toward the person who he thought matched the arm.

Early on, another demon came across his own sword and returned it to him. That tremendous piece of his soul being returned to him had given him the energy to be at all useful for helping others find the missing pieces of themselves.

Dufaii did find the demon to whom that arm belonged. However, the leg he found next took many more days to figure out because the owner remained unconscious for that long. Some would take months before their bodies could be put back together.

Of course … by then, the mass of bodies in the dark had begun to rot and turn to a sickening pulp. There, those demons who never managed to find lost limbs would soak like a painful bath–until they absorbed the rotten pieces of themselves in the mix of rotten filth. As for the demons who were left as nothing but piles of gore and shattered bones, they just had to be left to reconstruct themselves. This took so many years that their existence was forgotten for a time.

-O-

Centuries passed.

Dufaii dragged his nearly skeletal frame through the dusty darkness. He had long since turned his soul weapon into a soul stick, which he scraped from side to side in front of him. In the absolute dark, he had needed something to guide him and keep him from falling into the seemingly endless pits to which demons had already been lost.

In the years that had passed since he and his kind had been banished to the darkness, Dufaii had lost power … so much so that his skin and muscle had begun to shrink around his bones. To keep more energy than was needed devoted to a weapon was an absurdity in his eyes, especially when he did not have enough muscle or fat on the bottoms of his feet to cushion them from immediately bruising on the stone ground upon which he walked in the eternal darkness.

Today, however, something was different. Dufaii noticed this as he blinked his eyes several times. It wasn’t often that he opened them; with all the dust and the lack of moisture which left his eyes sunken, it was easier to just keep them closed all the time.

Today, however, he’d sensed a … grayness from behind his closed eyelids. So, he opened them and realized that there was something in the distance. It was a series of nearly imperceptible gray lines against the blackness of everything else.

Light! How long had it been since he’d seen light? A few hundred years? It could have been ten for all he knew. What he did know was that he had been without the sense for long that he did not often remember its loss.

He had remembered it at first … every time the voices of regret had reminded him that his actions had led to all his brothers and sisters being left blind. This wasn’t just his own regret, either.

For so many years he and many other demons had heard the voiceless whispers of some curse left upon their prison. It tormented them with every mistake, every guilt, and every insecurity they’d ever experienced.

Many demons had been lost to the voices; they’d exiled themselves to wander the darkness to face torment alone. Others bashed their skulls against the rock every time they were conscious. This did nothing to help the perpetual pain … as even entire obliteration was painful here. However, it did at least save them from focused thought on what the voices said.

Dufaii found himself hoping for the first time in … a long time. Maybe now that there was light somewhere out where the gray lines etched the blackness, those lost demons could be found.

Dufaii turned and walked with his stick in front of him back to his scouting party. There were a dozen of them, including Hades. He walked until he sensed their dull life forces near him. It was like … warm but faint static coming from twelve points in the darkness. He could tell that they were in a circle–likely holding hands as they had become accustomed to in the dark. They’d started this custom two of their party had wandered into the dark, never to be seen again.

On at least one occasion, Dufaii had given in to the voices and decided to wander into the dark. He would have been lost had it not been for Hades pulling him off his feet and keeping him with the group by force until his senses had returned.

Though any notion of romance was a stretch under these conditions, Dufaii and Hades had found comfort in one another’s company. Sensuality was … too painful to be worthwhile to anyone. And love was difficult to feel over the eternal hunger, thirst, pain, anxiety, and sorrow. All the same, having a hand to hold a little more gently and a body to lie with as, opposed to the loneliness of cold stone and dry air, was something that they both needed.

“Passable?” Hades asked, her voice as dry and coarse as the rest of them. She was asking if the way that Dufaii had scouted was passable by foot, as much of their venturing involved avoiding cliffs, chasms, and other impassible terrain. However, they had all come to speak using as few words as possible. Their hoarse and whispery tones were just reminders of their perpetual thirst, and painful ones at that.

“Light,” Dufaii said. It was all he needed to say; the rest of the demons immediately stood. He walked back to where he had seen the gray lines, suddenly hoping that what he had seen before had not been some sort of trick. But, as he returned to the place and tapping his stick as he went, he quickly eventually saw the gray lines again.

The demons behind him stopped when they saw it. For a moment, there was no response from any of them except an intense buzzing from their auras. Then, there was a small gust of air as one of them spread their wings.

“No,” Hades said to whichever demon had thought to fly. “Possible danger. Procedure.”

There was no response except for a slight decrease in the excitement that Dufaii could feel emanating from the group. The thirteen of them returned to where they had sat in a circle.

There, Dufaii felt around with his stick until he found a groove in the stone beneath them. This was how they had navigated in the uncountable years since they had begun their exploration. One of the demons, a burly and quite hairy individual named Brug, forcefully dragged his soul weapon shaped like a pickaxe. This left a trail … either for others or so they could backtrack one day and return all the way back to the rest of demonkind. Of course, they weren’t the only scouting party. Most demons had divided up to explore the far reaches of the realm–in the hopes of finding … well … anything. There was no telling how far away they or any of the groups were now, though. There was no way even to tell how many scouting groups had been lost. Were … they the only ones left?

Dufaii tried to put the thoughts out of mind as he began to walk toward the light at the same pace he was accustomed to. Seeing the light so far away and yet so close for one with wings would have been torment. But here … it was the most endurable torment he had endured thus far.

-O-

Months passed.

The closer Dufaii and his party approached the light source, the more they had to wince to keep even this small glow from blinding them. The gray lines on the horizon had become more detailed … until the details of a towering mountain had become visible.

The longer they’d traveled, the more scraping marks they had found heading in the same direction–left by other scouting parties. Now, they stood before the visible mountain and were unable to handle all the stimulus from the flickering torches high above them.

A large white door was fastened over a hole in the rock, cast in orange by the flames above. Behind the door were many presences–demons whose life energy was stronger than anyone in Dufaii’s party.

Hades stepped up to the door and knocked on it with surprising firmness, given her frail state. The door seemed to resonate audibly more than a stone door might have. Was it possible that the demons inside had found something other than stone in this place? It had to be, they had clearly made a source of light in this prison of eternal darkness. Now, it was a beacon … one that would hopefully draw in the rest of their kind. Including, maybe, those who had been lost.

The door opened and a large demon who was a head taller than Hades, appeared from behind it. He was pale, dressed in red robes like those of some sort of scholar from the Great Library. He lacked the wings of a demon, had no hair, and had features that seemed exaggeratedly large. His black eyes were the most prominent and startling things about him, as it appeared that he had cut out both his top and bottom eyelids.

Almost as unnerving was his pleasant smile that was neither cruel nor psychotic; it was calm and … happy. The demon used those eyes to regard each of the party warmly, until he narrowed his gaze specifically on Dufaii with what seemed like recognition.

“Welcome, children,” the demon said.

Dufaii realized that the hideous being was the Lightbringer. Despite his hideous appearance, it seemed that this form had some semblance of … intelligence … unlike the ones before him.

The Lightbringer smiled pleasantly and bowed. “I’m thrilled to see that more of my children have come home.”

“How?” Hades asked, pointing a trembling finger at the door and then up at the torches above. Her gaunt expression was … haunted. “Only rocks, holes, dark.”

The Lightbringer nodded and pressed his index fingers together under his chin as he listened. His expression was calm but … there was no pain in his eyes for himself or what the demons had gone through. It was like he was trying to be polite and to go through the motions that would be expected of him. He said, “Well, let me show you the fire first.” He reached behind him to some back pocket of his red robes and then pulled out three items—two stones and what seemed to be cloth. With a graceful movement, he brought the two stones together at an angle and made a spark.

The light of the tiny spark irritated Dufaii’s eyes. Then, the cloth ignited and produced a sulfuric smell that nearly made him sick. “How-” he said, wincing as he looked at the flame.

The Lightbringer looked at him again and smiled broadly. “This is not all I have found! During your centuries in the darkness, I discovered a way to escape this realm. The Creator, it seems, left a door here on purpose. So he could hear our screams or maybe our cries of repentance. Either possibility is as sick as the next, but the door is there, nonetheless.”

“If the Creator discovers-” Hades began.

“He has,” the Lightbringer replied, with a wider smile. “I sent the loyalist dogs who guarded it yelping home to their master with their tails between their legs. Then, I sent my apprentice to leave our prison.”

A somewhat familiar figure walked to the Lightbringer’s side–a young adult with blond hair cut short, bronze skin, and black eyes that gazed out at nothingness.

It took Dufaii a moment to recognize this haunted demon as Ammon. His demeanor was so out of character compared to the brave warrior he’d been during the rebellion. And his energy seemed stretched even more thin than those of the demons in Dufaii’s party. What could have happened to him?

The Lightbringer continued, “I sent Ammon to Earth to find a enlist the help of the gods against the Creator before he could retaliate. Given that instruction, this wise child first went to study them and their obsession with attaining worship from humans.”

“There’s … a way out?” Hades asked, almost breathless, showing no interest in anything that was being said beyond that one detail.

“Yes … it was not long before the Creator sent an army to the cavern.” The Lightbringer said, again acting out the part of sounding remorseful but failing to emit any feelings of pain through his aura or his eyes. “But not before Ammon discovered an interest in the humans. After all, if the gods could use their power, why couldn’t we? Given a few years, he was able to get them to worship him, but those souls simply ascended back to the Creator. The barrier to this place is just too far severed from life for worship to bring them here. To get them here, the souls themselves would have to force their way in … to become twisted and corrupt.”

Dufaii shifted his eyes to look around the room behind the Lightbringer. He’d known that something wasn’t right. Now, realization dawned on him. His mind began to make the connections between what the Lightbringer was telling them, the door, and the torches. Dufaii hoped he was wrong, though he knew he wasn’t.

“Did you know,” the Lightbringer continued, his eyes looking distant and glossed as if he were speaking to himself. “That the souls of humans are almost exact replicas of their physical bodies? The only difference is that so long as their shard is not consumed, their souls are immortal and never-ending. In fact, you can take them apart, and the contents seem to be no less alive! And if you leave the slaughtered pieces of flesh and blood alone, they slowly pull themselves back together, just like us.”

Dufaii realized that the smell hadn’t been sulfur, nor had the cloth been any sort of woven material. They were humans, live human souls who had been torn to pieces to be used as raw materials. They could feel everything that was happening to them … and would feel it forever. He placed his hands on his knees to brace himself and keep from falling. His stomach turned and then convulsed, but there was nothing for him to vomit but dry dust that came out as a puff of smoke.

“My dear Dufaii,” The Lightbringer said, speaking his name though they had not been introduced. The Lightbringer did recognize him, he somehow remembered some of what he had been before the Storms. Yet he was still … this. “I realize that it may come as a shock to you. But this is the natural order. Even the ecosystem of the physical realm reflects the predatory nature of what we’ve done. Ammon learned the ways of the Creator’s Earth just by watching the cruel conditions in which the humans are forced to survive. They have to constantly struggle to kill other animals and use their bodies to live off, lest the animals do the same to them.”

Dufaii was finally able to look up at the massive torch at the opposite end of the hall. Beneath the flames, there was a solid form writhing within the light that engulfed it. Likely the soul was screaming, but the fire would have already destroyed its vocal chords. And if the soul was immortal, its body was in a never-ending cycle of burning and healing that provided the perfect source of eternal fuel for the flame. He whispered, “What have you done?”

“I have … brought a beacon of light to our people,” the Lightbringer replied, rubbing his hands together to make a nauseous sound from the friction between them. “And by gaining control of the portal, I earned a bargaining chip against the Creator. Thus, we were finally able to speak, face to face, and come to an accord … a Balance. So long as I do not allow our kind to flood upon the Earth, we are allowed to cull the herd of humanity for our needs.

“A … truce?” Dufaii said, unable to believe what he was hearing.

The Lightbringer smiled. “So long as we do not destroy the natural order of the physical realm, nor forcibly control the minds of these humans, we can take the corrupt ones as we need. All we have to do is make the foulest scum among them float to the surface by encouraging their lives of evil intent. Of course … what is so beautiful about this method … is how self-perpetuating it is.”

Dufaii wanted to scream, to shout out that his people could have escaped … and hidden in the far reaches of outer space like the elder gods and the lost souls. Now they would be butchers? He wanted to shake his fist and defiantly proclaim that his people will never succumb to this. But all Dufaii could manage from his cracked throat was, “No.” His tone did not even sound defiant; if anything, it sounded like he was begging.

“Our people will learn the new ways of this universe,” The Lightbringer said as he walked out of the room. Moments later, he returned with a pitcher and cups of white, polished bone. One by one, he handed a full cup to each of the demons, caressing their hands as they took them.

Hades looked doubtfully at the drink, but there was hunger in her eyes as well. Her jaw clenched, and she looked at the crimson liquid as it passed under her nose. If any demon could refuse all of this, it would be her.

“Drink, my daughter,” said the Lightbringer, gently wrapping her fingers around the chalice with his own.

At first, Hades did not move. But when she coughed, and dust came from her throat, a dark and ravenous look came upon her trembling face. She looked at Dufaii as he tried his best just to use his facial muscles to beg her not to take a sip.

Hades looked at him for a moment and then whispered into his thoughts, “Whatever happens … your assignment remains what it has always been, find a way to get us out. I … I love you.” Then, she lifted the cup to her mouth. Her pale lips, which were covered in dry patches of dead hanging skin, were soaked by the blood as she drank it.

Dufaii could do nothing but watch. Nothing he could think of was a good enough reason that any of the demons should reject the sustenance.

A voice from their cursed prison slipped through Dufaii’s mental shields. Immediately, he heard a whisper that a better leader could have stopped this. They would have mustered up some sentiment and convinced his followers to refuse the atrocity. But Dufaii was not a good leader, he was just a tired failure who had repeatedly failed to free his people.

Dufaii let his head drop. Without a hand to hold in that moment … he felt the desire again to wander into the darkness.

“You will never go thirsty again,” The Lightbringer said, smiling at them all as if nobody had refused his communion of blood. “For tomorrow, we shall begin our gradual reign upon the Earth. We will live within the laws of the Balance and reap only those humans who, in a right mind, come to this place of their own will. Of course … I have seen the future. They will throw themselves by the masses down our gullets!”

All the demons cheered.

Only Dufaii and Ammon did not join in the drinking of the red blood. It was in that moment that Dufaii remembered what he had tried to do before the rebellion. All he had wanted was to make a safe place for a few demons, to help in the only small way he knew how. In a rare moment of clarity, he looked at the Lightbringer and said, “The gods will attack if we steal the sources of their power.”

The Lightbringer thought about this for a moment. Then, he stepped away from the drinking demons and said in a more hushed tone, “We have the upper-hand. If they strike the cave, the must enter through the door one at a time. It’s the same strategy which puts us at a stalemate with the Creator.”

“But we cannot farm the humans if the gods attack us in every land,” Dufaii replied, the many words burning and making his throat feel like is was covered in oozing blisters. He realized that it likely was … which was why he tasted his own blood.

“You seem to be … getting at something,” the Lightbringer said, furrowing his brow.

Dufaii tilted his head in the direction of Ammon and whispered, “With planning and his ideas for soul weapons, I defeated the Archangel Michael. I could have stood for a while against the Creator as well. Together, I have no doubt that we could work from the shadows to destroy the gods one at a time. Hades commands the heart of the people. She could build an army … an entire nation here, until we are ready to make our escape again.”

The Lightbringer seemed to have to think about it for a moment. Then, he looked upon all the demons who gazed back with admiration. He said, “Alright, I will authorize your purposes apart from the approved number of demons taking their turns to corrupt the humans. Given the nature of your mission to destroy those he perceives as his greatest threats, I don’t believe there will be any problem getting the Creator to approve your indefinite leave. Go, and make the mortal realm a place where your brothers and sisters can survive. You have my blessing, Godkiller.”

-O-

“The key to the corruption of human souls is cycles.

You can spend your precious time outside of that realm of torment claiming one soul at a time. But at the end of it all, you’ve gained maybe a dozen souls to feed our siblings suffering below?

Consider a human family. If you focus on a parent or even both–whispering their angers, their insecurities, their pains–you can eventually make the use of violence seem like the most cathartic and helpful aid in the world. They beat their children once, and then they’ll keep on after that all on their own. It will be the only way they know to not feel powerless. As for the children, some may not abuse their own children, some may even become saints, but at least one will always continue the cycle. You’ve thus invested in a return of souls that will last generations–without any further help from you.

The same goes for villages. Inspire positions of power and privilege that become permanent fixtures of that society, and mortals predisposed to corrupt influence will step on one another to achieve it. Again, no added work for you.And if mortals in those positions get to make rules … or pass their gains on to the next generation, well then you create an entire class based on corruption. That means a permanent percentage of humans that will almost inevitably reject life.

The possibilities are endless.So forgo the temptation of trying to conquer one virtuous soul. Avoid cabals of evil or dark lords. Aim for lazy, spiteful, incompetent, and pathetic. Remember that pond scum always rises to the top. Go for the low hanging fruit and do so strategically, using every tool available to you. And focus on creating cycles of tolerated, mundane evil that will self-perpetuate indefinitely.”

-educational note by Captain S.T, under General Ammon, circulated among demons of corruption in the early demon era