By Ruin Redeemed

Emerging from the dungeon and into the pounding rain, Cae did not receive her first uninterrupted vista of the Realm of Ruin, home to one of the Lords of Hell - the sheeting, grayish rain was too thick, too fierce, too uninterrupted to provide more than a few lumpy hints of building and hill and landscape that sprawled out beyond her. However, she was shown the courtesy of a demon, when Baron Citri clapped his hands twice and one of the guardsdemons that flanked them held aloft a small shaft of metal which unfurled with a creaking

thump

into a kind of mobile covering, which kept the rain at bay. Citri, looking rather pathetically relieved, stepped close to Cae, his shoulder brushing against hers - his lava bright skin feeling shocking and distractingly warm. Cae's cheeks blushed silver and she stepped a bit to the side, freeing herself from the contact...and now, soaking her other shoulder and her wing in the rain. Behind her, Baron Ruti, still rubbing his belly, seemed as unconcerned by the rain as the other guardsdemons.

"Sorry about the weather," Citri said, his lips quirked up ever so slightly, his red-on-black eyes glittering. It was as if he knew that his touch had...felt so...

Intense.

Cae frowned at him. "Isn't this realm your Lord's? On Heaven, it never rains lest the Hosts will it. No droplet falls where it isn't wished."

"Ah, of course it would, in Heaven," Citri said, his eyes actually rolling, as if they sought to escape the absurdity of his fellow traveler. The sight of it made Cae quite forget the warmth between her thighs and the tingling on her shoulders and replace it with anger. Her frown transmuted into a scowl - even as a shape loomed in the rains ahead of them. They were walking across damp, brownish grass that squelched unpleasantly between her toes, and ahead, Cae couldn't tell if she was approaching a hovel or a home or a small mountain. The rain allowed through only shapes and the faint glitter of hellish lanterns.

"Because we run our realms properly," Cae said.

"Yes, with whips and chains," Citri said.

"Ah, chains, of course," Cae said, making quite a show of rubbing her golden wrists, the darkening bruises of her only recently released shackles still quite visible. "I'm sure you know nothing of that in Hell."

Citri, to her annoyance, shot her a little smile - as if he was pleased - and they came close enough for the shape to resolve into an awning, a double set of doors, and a pair of lanterns at the very least. There were two wings sweeping to either side of this entrance, the wings of a vast manor house, but the rain and darkness left the door feeling queerly disconnected from the whole. Giving it a look, Cae found that Ruin's tastes were decidedly old fashioned by the general standards of the Realms. The doorway was narrow and high, the door ending in an elegant arch, with the wood itself craven with geometric reliefs and designs that evoked a strange sense of oblique sadness - the patterns at the top unraveling as they reached the bottom, as if the entire door was running down. The only decorations that had true form were the knockers: A pair of great iron rings grasped in the claws of somber gargoyles the size of her fist, set into the wood and left to wait. Citri did not knock, nor did he wait. He simply snapped his fingers and the doors swung open with a ponderous groan, revealing a foyer with a crackling fireplace at the end, red carpet on the wood paneling, and archways that led off to the wings. There was a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, and hell light glimmered on each candle: Red and brooding.

Leaning against the wall near one of the fireplaces was a cloaked figure that stood two, three heads taller than Cae or her companions. A towering darkness that made her entire heart still for a moment. She could see nothing save for the cloak, the high collar, midnight black hair, and the spreading of horns above his head like a thicket. They were not the horns of a ram or goat, but the horns of a mighty stag.

Next to him, slim and taut, was creature at once finely dressed and slovenly put together. His tunic was black, his jerkin and hose impeccably matched in hues of red and dark gold, but everything seemed to have been thrown on. None had been pressed or laundered in some time - while he was not stained, he had the lived in look of a mortal who had been on campaign for weeks, not a demon in the height of his finery. The man within the clothing looked midway between a human being and a scuttling thing from the darkness. His skin was chalk pale, and his eyes were faceted orbs that glittered in eyes that never seemed to blink. Curled antenna jutted from his brows, and his whole body seemed to move in starts and jitters, like any number of verminous insects.

"My lord," Citri said, looking past the ill-dressed demon.

The cloaked figure sighed. He turned, slowly, to face Cae.

Cae's throat went dry and her heart lumped in her chest.

Arral, the Lord of Ruin, was a figure cut from obsidian and smoke in equal measures - his features shrouded in a glittering cloud that promised darkness and quiet and peace all in equal measures. His jaw was chiseled, while his nose slightly too hooked and broad for what some might consider classical beauty - his lips thin lines of black-on-black flesh more meant for frowns and stern pursing than for smiles or laughter. His eyes were lined with worry despite his immortal age...and were of the most arresting deep hue of pale silver on charcoal black. It was like looking into the pools in the deepest parts of Heaven's libraries, seeing the holy water gleam in carved hexagons of stone, waiting to be tapped for battle or sacred duty. Beneath his cloak...well, he could look like anything. Cae found her mind catching on stray thoughts, like a finger tugging on a splinter in the wall.

Is he muscled like his Baron of Fire? Or scrawny and emaciated like his Baron of Rot?

She pushed the thoughts away, trying to instead focus on the here, the now.

"Ruti! Citri! What have you done!?" The faceted-eyed man, who by process of elimination could only be Degi, the Baron of Despair snapped.

"Don't yell at me," Citri said, holding up two hands in a warding gesture. "Glower at our little Ru!"

"I-I...I just..." Ruti stammered.

"You let her

go

!?" Degi exploded. "She could flee right now - she could plunge her hand into the Lord's heart and rip it out. She-"

Arral lifted one hand from his robes - his fingers large and firm. Calloused, even, Cae noticed. His Barons silenced, all of them looking at him as he regarded Cae. Then he bowed his head. "Do you want a room, General Silverhawk?" he asked, his voice a deep, bassy rumble that made Cae's bones buzz. Her eyes widened - but then she nodded, curtly.

"And my clothing. Armor. Weapon."

Arral nodded. "Those can be provided," he said.

Cae narrowed her eyes fractionally, suspicion dripping from her words as if they had been freshly envenomed. "Will they now? Without my parole?"

Arral's chuckle was as deep as ever other part of him. His sheer size seemed that his every word, no matter how softly murmured would quake the world around him. "I believe, as Dee's worry has already been proven false and you have not immediately smote me with Heaven's fury, that we can take a risk on you not choosing to go against every legion of Hell with a single sword and suit of plate armor. By now, I think you've already seen why it would be...a waste of your talents, hmm?"

He arched an eyebrow at her. Cae considered all she had seen, and felt as if she were being tested. The very idea offended her - these demons had captured her to use her to defend themselves, and this overgrown brute thought she needed yet more harrowing, yet more examinations? And that his parlor questing could be anything next to the holy flames and the chastising whips of her mentors and elders? Hah!

She sneered up at him, her wings mantling. "Hell is as divided as their thoughts - your Houses plot against one another. If I slew you, Destruction and Pestilence would both swoop in and claim these areas. It would be as if you had never existed. And..." Her sneer faltered for a moment as the logic of what she was saying caught up with her confidence - she had been more focused on how fractious Hell was, she had missed the fact that...

Well.

If there were enough Lords of Hell that any single Lord could be lost...

Compare that to Heaven. If the highest of the high, the Council of Eleven, were to lose a member, how many centuries would it be before Heaven could select a new?

The hesitation had been slight. But it had been enough. Arral's lips quirked in the closest thing that she thought a Lord of Ruin could put into a smile. Cae's anger flashed bright in her, but not bright enough to cover for her shame at being so hoodwinked. He started to open his mouth to speak, but then his eyes fell upon something - and at once, the smile was snuffed away, transformed into a fierce scowl, a scowl that showed terribly sharp fangs. Before Cae could move, his hand had rushed forward and snatched hold of her wing. The feeling of those blazing hot fingers against her damp sinew and muscle made her tense and gasp in shock - even his other hand swept along her feathers. Then, in a voice of pure murder, he snarled. "Who

clipped

her wings?"

The Barons exchanged a glance, and Degi stepped forward. "I-I did, my Lor-"

"We shall deal with you," Arral snarled, releasing her. "Citri, you will see to it that her wings are repaired posthaste. Degi, your punishment..." He sighed. "I will consider what it shall be. Dismissed."

Degi opened his mouth to speak, then ducked his head, his antenna curling in on themselves. "Yes, my lord," he said, woodenly.

He started to stalk away, a shadow vanishing into the archway to the western wing. Cae noticed, faintly, that the kindest of the Barons she had met so far, Ruti, had already vanished as well, leaving her alone with Citri and Arral. While the idea of being with the two alone in nothing but a shift and short leggings was...strangely appealing in a way that Cae couldn't explain, she was more focused on Arral's order that her wings were fixed: "How can you

fix

anything?" She asked, frowning intently. "You're the Lord of Ruin."

Arral shook his head. "Take her to her chambers, I will send the servants. I...must discipline my Barons." He turned and started to leave as well, the heavy sounds of his footfalls ringing against the wood - his feet were cloven, she could tell. Cae brushed her wings against her back, drawing them in tight while Citri ambled to her side, his hands slipped deep into his pockets. His voice was soft. "Sorry you had to see that," he said, quietly. "Dee and Arral often butt heads - but they make it up in the end."

"Why would you even have such a creature?" Cae asked. "Fire can smelt, you say. What can despair do?"

Citri was silent for a time, considering. "Have you ever wept and been seen?" he asked, curiously. Cae shot a look at him - her brow furrowing. Her eyes flashed and she scowled at him, her wings tightening as her shoulders tensed.

"Angels have no need to weep," she said, quietly.

"Hm. Well. Come," Citri said, starting away from her, his hands still within his pockets as he headed for the rear of the foyer. There, a pair of staircases swept up to the second level, and he began to take them two at a time.

Cae shook her head and let out a soft 'tsch!' It seemed that these demons would be perpetually throwing absurdities and lies at her, until she couldn't know up from down, good from evil. She would stand steadfast against them - and, as she started to walk up the stairs, she affirmed her resolution. She would learn all she could. There

would

be a weakness of Hell that she would find here. If she could save the House of Ruin, then doom the forces of the Destroyer? Well, then. Maybe it would be all worth it, no matter how shameful and degrading it was.

She took the steps one at a time.

***

The home of Arral, the Lord of Ruin, did not constrain itself. It sprawled over the hillside it was built upon, with two wings which themselves covered more space than Cae thought possible - but rather than being like the vast splendor of Heaven, nor the endless teeming masses she had expected of Hell...nor, even the mortal extravagance of some of the Realms, this place felt as if it had been lived in. Once. Long ago. The rooms that she walked past were full of dust and cobwebs, and a sense that life could be breathed into them again, were conditions right. Cae paused at one such door, looking in at a sitting room with a writing desk, a small stool, a window looking out into the gray streaks of rain that swept along the window. For some reason, she felt like crying - a deep sadness welling up within her breast. She pushed it aside and frowned. She needed to think more like a general.

Each Lord held reign over a part of the amorphous mass that was Hell - the worrying part, the part that made it so frightening for Heaven and her Hosts, was that Hell did not simply remain as the Creator had made it. It grew, and it shrank. It shucked off realms that had been corrupted but were now subsumed back into the vastness of the World - some remained corrupted, some seemed as pristine as the day they had been spoken into existence. Always churning. Always

changing

. What place did this old, static monolith have in that chaos? Was this idea, Ruin, a splinter in Hell's perpetual change, something as against the grain as...

An angel that wants to be a general?

She squashed that thought, deep within herself. She didn't

want

to be a general. She simply had always had the aptitude for it. She wanted to fulfill her place in Heaven's plan. There was no ego in this, no grandiose visions that her mentors had warned her of - nothing that might draw her from the path of righteousness.

"I suppose there can't be a ruin if there was no past for it to be tumble from," she said, softly, more to affix the idea in her head than to make conversation with Citri. He paused at the doorway that was flush with the far end of this long, long corridor. He turned and placed his hand on the knob, smiling slightly as thin wisps of smoke rose from his orange fingers.

"Very astute," he said. "Might I ask what inspired this realization?"

Cae quirked her lips back at him. "You may ask."

Silence stretched between them.

Citri laughed. His smile was broad. "I can see why Ruti wanted to free you," he said. "You're not what we thought an angel would be like."

Cae cocked her head. "What did you expect an angel to be like?"

Citri shrugged, then leaned against the door. His shoulders slumped and he took on a posture of exaggerated relaxation as he let his head loll to the side. This posture made Cae think, most unusually, of a moment in her first campaign where she had first seen what mortals referred to as a 'cat.' The absurd creature had tried to beg food off her by placing its paws upon her gold-clad shin, then when she had looked down upon it, quizzical and confused, the creature had seemed to slough its bones to some otherspace and become a puddle of black fur sprawled on its back, paws in the air, eyes glittering like golden pools. Those eyes had said:

Feed me! Pet me! Care for me!

Quite ridiculous. Citri had that mien right now.

"Oh, stuffier," he said.

Cae arched a silver eyebrow.

"Stuffier," she said, her voice as stern and stentorian as she could make it - aping her mentor of the swordswoman's art, the Lady Fireblade.

"They say that not a raindrop falls in Heaven without the High Council knowing of it- that everything is measured and cut well before it comes time. That when an angel dies off schedule, they will crawl from the grave to report in once more," Citri said, dryly. "But you? You have a fire in you like a demon. You

want

things."

Cae bit back her immediate response.

Angels want things, you absurd creature

. Instead, she let that enigmatic smile dust her lips again. "And you have the spine of an angel somewhere in there."

As if becoming aware of his absurd slouch, Citri stood a bit taller, frowning. He didn't ask a question with his voice, but he did furrow his brows at her. She took mercy, her wings mantling and then settling for a moment.

"You obviously have plans beyond what you've told me," Cae said, dryly. "Some angels think demons can't plan. But clearly, you can. Now, is that plan going to be to try and woo me to your side? To corrupt me into a demon as well?" She stepped closer to him. "The first step on that would be to seem kindly and gentle to me - and what better way than to have your right hand clap me in irons, then your left release me?"

"For a general, you love giving intelligence to your enemies," Citri said, standing to his full height, his lips pursed in irritation.

"Just scouting the ground, Baron," Cae said. "Now, you are going to have my clipped wings healed - another example, by the way, of fixing what you broke. That is

not

a deception."

Citri sighed - and his breath came with sparks. "There truly is a disunity in the House of Ruin. Lord Arral does not know himself. His plan is flying to pieces."

"Oh?" Cae asked, already guarding herself against whatever falsehood that Citri would drop in her ear - poisoned honey, she was sure. Citri rolled his eyes to the ceiling, then gripped the door and opened it, revealing that the chamber he had led her towards was a large stone room that had been set aside for bathing, dominating the entirety of the west wing's endpoint. The place was warm and moist, humid even, and the floor was warm enough that Cae was sure that furnaces were built in the level below, worked by who knew what servile demon or magic deviltry. She took a step in as Citri took a firm grip upon the door's knob behind her.

"He thought you were a homely man before we got the armor off," he said, then closed the door behind her.

Cae started, then spun to face the door, wings flaring. "What in Heaven does that mean!?" She exclaimed - but she could already hear Citri's footsteps - fierce, clomping, angry footsteps. She scowled fiercely. It was no great loss for her to play her hand on the matter of recognizing the obvious subterfuge - after all, had she been a slow angel, they wouldn't have wanted to capture her in the first place. And it had revealed something...but what? What ground could her body have to do with Lord Arral's plans? Surely, he was not some mortal, who could imagine that the subtle distinctions between man, woman, or anything in-between would have any grounds on a battlefield that was won more in the mind and the boardroom than it ever was fought out on the surface of a Realm. So, what was it?

Maybe Citri was trying to mislead her into thinking that his master's house was divided - so she might trust Ruti more? But could she imagine that pathetic creature truly carrying off a deception? Or-

"Oh, you're here!"

The warm, female voice caused her to turn back around and see that she was not alone in this bath. She had not expected to be alone. What she had not expected was to see a succubus here, in the House of Ruin.

The demon was clearly a succubus, one of the many thousands kinds of demons that Hell had cataloged and sorted and named and given classification. The only reason Cae tended to simply think of demons as

demons

rather than, say, an abakuthi or a lerandor or a druge, was that the actual specific distinctions mattered less than one might think while in a battle. While yes, there were taxonomic and arcane differences between the turgarghes and the guldors, both did fly, and both were violent, and thus, you could dismiss the needless complexity of their distinction and focus on what mattered on the battlefield. Outside of a battlefield...