Hell’s Consort

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The Empress Luna

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"I assume you are an Archangel?" Luna wet her dry lips as she stared at the creature's thousand mouths and their moving tongues as they speak.

She cowered in fear with her elbows pressed into her side, making her body small as possible.

Goddess!

There were so many lips opening and closing.

"And you are an Archdemon." He said without a doubt. "For some reason, I am considered a Fallen Angel, and we are almost cut from the same cloth except I work with the Creator." He answered in that same manner, and those sentences alone made Luna wanted to stab her ears.

The monster's appearance and his many voices could give his audience never-ending seizures.

She pressed her lips in determination to ask the creature with questions. Luna needed answers.

  She gave strong eye contact even if she didn't know where to look and said, "God sent me here." 

Luna waited for his reaction, and there was a long pause before he blinked.

"Ah." The creature inclined his head in a curt nod. "I am in trouble, sort of."

A thousand eyes looking away to its left before bringing his gaze back to her.

"The Creator had led you to me, so it meant I hadn't broken any Cosmic Laws yet and it still belonged to the boundary of my responsibility in this Universe." The Archangel glanced pointedly at her, and she squirmed in discomfort. "I am also known as an Avenging Angel. I avenge those who had been wronged in their life." 

She winced.

"I have been wronged and fucked over in my life ever since I had been driven out of my home," Luna replied bitterly, and it left an acrid film on her tongue. "I was living peacefully worshipping the Goddess Artemis."

A long-winded ancient scroll with brown and yellowish stains faded with time and a tear here-and-there materialized in front of him, and he squinted at it for minutes, scanning if he was looking for something.

Luna assumed he had found her name on his list before he waved a dismissive hand and it faded. "It is your destiny, Archdemon."

So the Archangel could check her records and what she had been doing with her life the way a stalker can.

Luna's soul went glacier at this realization, but as fast as the chills swept over her, the fear stopped.

  "No." Luna shook her head in denial. "The Creator wanted to see me suffer and fail many times, testing me and all that."

She wanted to give herself a pat in the back to have said that with a straight face.

Luna was stating a fact.

"I'm not bitter about it because I know I'll survive." She declared, "The Universe will owe me a lot on my next life."

"Oh, the Universe will surely pay you back because you are here." The Archangel shrugged with nonchalance. "The Creator sent you here with his protection even if there was only one per cent chance you would emerge when I called you with the Bardo Sigil."

Luna's head snapped up. "The Bardo Sigil?"

"The Bardo Sigil embodies the Liminal Realm where a soul's death is judged before one's next birth. You see visions that no longer exist and life not yet lived—a place to forgive the unforgivable, to say the unsaid, to see the unseen, to love the unloved and to let go of all the things that cause us pain. This Realm can give terrifying hallucinations. " The Archangel explained. 

Luna lowered her voice to a whisper. "You look creepy and horrific, so mayhap, you are a hallucination."

There was a long pause before he responded.   "This is my true form. The mere sight of me could not only kill a human. It can drive lower class angels, demons, and Archdemon to madness."

It was fortunate that he spoke in a snail's space and enunciated each word clearly, but it still gave her a headache.

Luna was slowly getting used to it but her leg muscles impulsively tightened by instinct.

If she could run away far away from here, she would. "You do."

"Only my Archangel Brethren and the most powerful demons and gods are immune to my form, so that meant you are stronger than a fledgeling Archdemons."

"I admit I am uncomfortable in your presence,"  Luna replied as she awkwardly glanced down into her palms. "You have too many eyes watching my every move and your pupils move in a millisecond progression which sent shivers down my spine."

Grimacing, she swallowed hard as she addressed him. "It gives me the chills that I want to vomit."

His thousand eyes blinked in unison.

There was amusement in his tone when he asked, "I look hideous and terrifyingly awful, aren't I?" 

"Yes." 

He smiled, and a thousand corners of the Archangel's disconcerting lips curled up. "You are really similar to her."

"Who is this 'her' you are talking about?" Luna asked, and the Archangel looked flustered by her question.

  "I am doing this to help her. She didn't have much time." His thousand smiles dropped, and his lips pressed into tight lines to reveal cooler darkness and that was horrifying than the thousand eyes and thousand voices. "I will bring you to her, but you aren't allowed to see the lady for everyone's own good."

"You have dodged my question earlier, Archangel." Gaining confidence, Luna's tone was as hard as steel as she smirked, "Who are you?"

"I am an Angel of Hell, but I work with the Creator." The Archangel's words were soft, clearly amused by her feigned bravado. "The Creator's Tree of Life situated below his Heavenly Throne dropped a leaf forty days before the death of a person." He explained further. "I read the name of the person. The legions of angels I lead were tasked to hunt these people down and segregate their souls to Heaven and Hell."

"I think I know who you are." Luna snapped a finger and said. "You are the Grim Reaper, then. The Angel of Death. You are Archangel Azrael."