Ascension: To become One with Mount Celestia is to sacrifice oneself for the good of all
That damned poster of a single lantern archon looking up towards the impossibly high peak of the heavenly realm was meant to be inspiring, motivational even. However, it only made Taraliel reconsider the choice she had made when she crossed over from the infernal bureaucracy of the Nine Hells to the infernal bureaucracy of the Seven Heavens.
Taraliel hadn't always been her name. But it was customary for those who moved up from the lower planes to change names as a symbolic first step towards the greater good. She'd been a devil, a few centuries ago. A pawn in the infernal machine that was the Nine Hells, dedicated to the corruption of mortal souls to fuel the eternal Blood War.
She had been excellent at that. Sometimes, she missed it.
"Morning, Tara," a cheerful, ringing voice said as an enormous stack of papers was dropped onto the cambion's desk. "Another day, another soul saved!"
"Yeah, morning," Tara replied tiredly, looking up briefly at the jolly archon who was pushing about a cart filled with paper enough that even Moradin's forges might have proven insufficient to burn. She didn't stare at the brightly-lit creature for long, though, as its luminescence was almost blinding to the devilish woman.
Many were those who thought lantern archons to be floating balls of light. But beyond that blinding light, Tara could clearly see the outline of a
very
feminine form. She wondered if that might have been what the soul's owner might have looked like in life.
Lantern archons were the most recent additions to the celestial host and had not yet been worn down by ages of fighting against the evils of the lower planes. They were the only tolerable of the celestial creatures that inhabited the plane of lawful goodness.
"Any big plans this weekend?" the light-creature asked, smiling down at Tara. "I'm hosting a little gathering at my place, if you feel like coming. I mean, it's for the newbies like us, so I think it'll be good to meet new people, don't you think? Not that you're a newbie! You've been here two hundred years and me a measly hundred or so, but, you know..."
"Thanks, Duriel," Tara said as she began looking through the massive stack of papers that had been dropped onto her desk, sorting them into smaller, more manageable piles. "But I think I just want to relax a bit... Maybe next time?" the red-skinned she-devil offered, trying not to sound too dismissive of the invitation, a slight smile on her lips.
"Oh, of course!" the bouncy Duriel nodded. "Let me know! Oh, uh. I guess I should be distributing these! See you around!" she said as she started pushing her cart towards the next desk. Had the adorable creature been granted that capacity, Tara was convinced there might have been a blush on the archon's cheeks.
It was true that she was exhausted. She had not become a celestial being yet, despite endless promises, and simply staying on Mount Celestia, even at its base, proved a rather draining affair. Especially after two centuries.
She had hoped that her hard work would pay off someday, that the higher-ups would see how dedicated to Good™ she was. She didn't want to be sent back to Malbolge.. But at least she could get promotions there, and she was the one doing the torturing and teasing, not...
"Don't give up, Tara, you'll get that promotion soon enough," a snicker pulled her from her thoughts, then.
Azuriphel had once more turned up to tease her, wearing her usual office attire: a beige blazer with a white shirt along with a beige pencil skirt. Definitely more expensive than anything Tara could currently afford.
"What do you want?" Tara asked, red glowing eyes boring holes into the angelic creature, a pin in the shape of a blade at her breast identifying her as one of the sword archons. Already visibly annoyed by the unwanted presence, Tara's fist squeezed around the pen she had in her hand. Nothing at that moment would have brought her more joy than to jam the thing into the smug angel's neck.
But she held back and dismissed those violent thoughts. For Good™, of course.
Azuriphel's fiery orbs looked down at the papers on Tara's desk, taking a nonchalant sip of her morning coffee. There was no such thing as morning or evening on the bottom layer of Mount Celestia, but that didn't stop anyone from pumping themselves full of that holiest of caffeinated drinks. "Oh, just checking up on you. You know, we're kind of worried. Most infernal transfuges end up being promoted after only a century. You're nearing your third..."
Of course, the devil knew exactly why that was. She worked hard, but she couldn't help a few evil acts here and there. Harmless, mainly. Things such as
accidentally
littering or
inadvertently
forgetting to return books to the library of Heart's Faith. Her current minor crime was the theft of office supplies. It was the only way she could really survive in this place. Allowing herself those simple pleasures made things that much easier.
And Tara knew, also, that the archon's presence did not come from a place of kindness and compassion. She enjoyed seeing Tara suffer. The longer one had been in service to Lawful goodness, it seemed, the closer they got to the sadistic urges of the evil Baatezu and Tanar'ri.
"Yeah, thanks. Really appreciate it," the red-skinned woman replied, tucking a loose strand of black hair behind a pointed ear. Her eyes scanned over the papers before her, trying her best to ignore the enormous winged archon now sitting on the edge of her desk.
A chuckle left Azuriphel's lips then. "No matter how hard you work, or how much you lot get promoted, you'll always be the same evil souls, deep down," Azuriphel half-whispered, leaning in to make sure Tara heard her. "All it takes is just a little prodding for the real you to come out," she said, grinning as she stood up and knocking over one of Tara's paper stacks onto her desk and onto the pure white marble floor in a pretend-accident. "Oops! Well, I'd help you pick those up, but I've got evil to smite."
"I should go ask Zariel how she feels about this issue," Tara casually said as her eyes scanned over a petitioner's soul-chart, slowly stacking the papers back neatly on her desk, unperturbed by the archon's bullying. "Heard she knows quite a bit about the irreformability of souls."
It was all Tara could do to keep a smirk from forming on her lips as tense silence filled the air. Zariel's downfall had always been a sore spot for the goodly beings of the Seven Heavens. Celestial beings fell to evil now and again, but Zariel's position had made her downfall that much more painful for the denizens of the plane.
Not only that, but the legendary Solar had become one of the greatest advocates for the redemption of evil souls and had put many programs in place to aid creatures from the Lower Planes. She had been backed by Lathander himself, much to the dismay of those other goodly deities who thought evil should simply be crushed underfoot rather than given a chance at redemption.
Tara had been one of those saved by one such program, though she had never met Zariel herself.
A single hand came slapping down violently onto Tara's work, forcing the cambion to look up at her interlocutor. "Listen here, hellspawn, you're fucking with the wrong archon. Maybe I can't slice you open here and now, but I'll make sure you
never
ascend."