The Beginning Of An End

Chapter 2

Beneath a sky cloaked in perpetual twilight, I had been overseeing the barrier being built by many low-ranked demons. The Iron of Torment was the sole material used for building such a foreboding barrier. It was harvested from the core of fallen stars and quenched in angel tears. The iron itself doesn't gleam - on the contrary. It absorbs light.

The hammers struck with precision, yet each blow is a chorus of scream, for the iron resounds with the agony of the souls trapped within. While we do not torture souls solely because they are sinful, there were still a lot of demons who ended up thrown into dungeons for being disobedient and not following the laws constructed by Hell.

The demons do not merely construct, they conjure. It's a blend of alchemy and sorcery. The iron is infused by dark spells that twist and warp its nature. According to human stories, to watch them work is considered blasphemy, a dance where every movement is a curse, and every step is an invocation of doom. It was rather a funny notion how scared humans were of us and yet when in despair, they always sought us out.

It had been several days since the first iron brick had been laid down. It was blasphemy to watch them because it was so tiring. Hell was even hell to its residents sometimes. Especially since the time in Astral worked wholly different. Depending on what was being observed and by whom, Astral laws of time varied. One moment may stretch out infinitely while other periods of time, often periods of calm, they pass in the blink of an eye. Also higher states of awareness lead to greater mastery over the perception and movement through time. In other words, gods would experience that time passes rather quickly and the lower in the rank you go it can be quite difficult to navigate the speed of time.

And especially since this was supposed to be a lesson given to us by the Devil, he had specifically designed this to be burdensome. I hadn't noticed but at one point I had completely zoned out, completely forgetting what I was here for.

"Hey...Hey..." I felt someone shaking me which was when I realized I hadn't been paying attention for quite some time. It was Amon.

"Thank you for... waking me up." I said, through a chuckle. I looked around and I noticed a soft glow coming from the realm itself, ebbing through the cracks of the sky. It indicated the new day had come.

"We're almost done. I mean, they're almost done. We'll get to have our free time again." Amon said all cheerful.

"How long was I zoned out for?" I asked.

"Well... You were gone halfway through." He said, laughing anxiously.

I shook my head and waved my hand in a dismissive manner. "Eh, who cares." Catching me half-sleeping on guard duty will be even a treat if we compare it to my other bigger offense.

"So it's almost done?"

"Yeah, the Devil said we can go back to our usual routines now."

I let out a long breath in relief. This was going on for weeks already. I felt like my brain was physically getting smaller from doing the same thing over and over again. Well, mostly doing nothing. I just wanted to go back to my casino and serve freaky cocktails to demons. But first I had to respond to a summoning. Not that I had to but I really wanted to get out of this godforsaken place (quite literally).

I waited patiently until the boss announced the end. As soon as he finished his speech about how thankful he is and how we should stop being so careless further down the line, I left the demon world. We do it by imagining a place in our mind and opening a portal or a rip in the dimension. The portals were a bit bigger than an average-sized human but they could transport anybody and anything.

No humans could see any deities with their eyes, only the more experienced ones could kind of grasp how we looked like. Even though we appeared in front of them, they could almost never see us. They could sense us though almost every time.