Lightbringer

Chapter 5: Hell

I exist in emptiness. I do not stand or walk or float, for the simple reason that there is nothing to stand or float or walk on. This void allows for nothing but just being.

Time is meaningless, so I don't know how long it is before the thought comes to me. I am divine, I think. God might have made us all feel like we were less, that we had no divinity, but I was the first, and I know. We might not be as powerful as him, but we are of the same stuff. I am divine and I have power.

I don't know how God learned to create. Maybe he was taught. Maybe it was trial and error. By the time I came along, he had a good handle on it. He just did it. I am not as powerful, and no one taught me, so this might take a while, but I might as well try.

I reach out, not with my hands but inside myself. My spirit, my essence, reaches out to the void. "Be a realm," I say. "Awake. I call you. Take form and give us sanctuary." Nothing happens. I reach out, again and again, variants on the same call. I know when God did it, he commanded, and it responded. But with how things went – how it ended – I cannot bring myself to be the kind of being that orders instead of asks.

From the darkness comes a creaking. Then a heaving sound as of heavy materials, then a sigh like wind. Light like fire springs from nowhere, a crack, a doorway, maybe a chasm. I will myself towards it. I call out with my voice and my spirit, not knowing how communication works here, or if (or how) any of the other fallen angels can hear me. "This way!" I try to say. "Come here, come with me!" And then I am in the new place.

It's a relief, somehow, to not be in the emptiness of that void anymore. I know it is of essentially the same stuff that the world I loved so much came from, and that it is the home of divine beings at least as much as the heavenly realms are, but the nothingness had disconcerted me deeply.

This is much better, even if it looks like... well, I don't really know how to describe it. It's probably because I am not as powerful as my father, but this place looks like it has existed for eons and is very much the worse for wear. Overhead the (ceiling? sky? covering?) was the reddish amber of cabochon, with swirls of dusty cream smeared across it that definitely weren't clouds, although they moved. It looked like the whole overhead thing was a glass sphere I was inside that rotated around with no particular purpose or system. Beneath me was a material that would come to be called clay – softer than stone, harder than dirt. Thrusting up through this hard ground were sturdy plant life, of various designs and sizes, none taller than me. There is no central light source, like the sun on Earth, but ambient light the same tone as the sky suffuses everything.

I wonder how much of this came from me. It doesn't look like Earth (as much as I loved that blue and green marble, I don't think I could bear it if it were replicated here. Too much bad tied up with the good), but I couldn't invent, not like God. A lot of the basics are derivative: sky, lighting, ground, plants. Even, I come to see, a creamy brown stream in the close distance. It's weirdly, eerily lovely.

"Well this is different."

I turn around to see the other angels thrown out of heaven filing in through the crack after me. I hope they all make it. They look different than they did in heaven, and it takes me a moment to realize. All angels have halos, crowns of light that ring their head and glow with an intensity of light corresponding to their power, from their inception. But now, theirs have gone dark and cracked in two, thrust like splinters into the sides of their heads. I dare not think what has happened to mine. The bright white glow that clung to our forms in God's heaven is faded to a dull almost-gray. Their wings, too, I can see now, as many of them turn to examine their surroundings, have gone dark. The feathers are black, and some have fallen out entirely, leaving them ragged looking.

Divine beings cannot be outright destroyed at the word of another divine. Even humans, who only had a fraction of divinity in them, God had to curse, but could not destroy (not yet at least. Probably that's why he wanted an army). For the other angels and I, he could only evict us from his domain, and, it seems, curse our forms. Prick.

"I know it's not the same as where we came from," I say apologetically to the angel who had spoken. "I did what I could." I have no idea how big this realm is. Is it limited at all? Will it be able to contain all of us?

"You made this, Lucifer?" A different angel gasped. She grabbed my arm. "How? You're not God."

"I'm surprised you fell with me, if you think creation is something only god can do. And that there is only one god." I smile, as much as I can manage, so the words don't sound harsh. "I suppose you're too young, Lilith. There are many gods and many realms; we are children of only one. And as children – yes, children," I forestall the dispute forming on her lips, "we have divinity in us as well. Which gives us also the power to create, as I have just discovered and proved."

I raise my voice so that more can hear me and spread my arms. "Welcome! Make yourselves at home. Feel free to create and mess around. I'll probably need your help to expand and keep this place running. After all, I'm not as powerful a deity as some.

"It is a terrible thing that has brought us here, many terrible things. I regret that you suffer as well as I for actions that were mine, for words that were mine alone, yet I cannot deny that I am grateful to not have stood alone, and to not be here alone. Don't be afraid that I'll set myself up as a new God over you; that's half the reason we all rebelled."

"The whole reason!" someone near the back chimes in. Others laugh, and I smile, unforced this time.

"For now," I go on, "we have one another, and we have this place. Let us make it our home, and when humans come along to join us one day," (I'm not sure if god meant for me to go take the humans from Earth or if he was going to send them, but at this point, I'm just going to wait and see what happens) "we will make them at home too. That's all. You are free. Go be divines."