Azrael

The moment I first started feeling humanity slipping through my fingers, all those centuries ago, and among all the pain, suffering, and chaos that was in my mind at that moment, one clear thought seemed to remain, no matter the hardships: you came to Hell but your existence doesn’t have to be Hell.

That was not true for the first three hundred years of my stay in Hell though, mainly because the handler of my soul at that time was —is— not the nicest of demons. And that's an understatement. He's an asshole, but that's a long story that I don't wanna revisit right now.

For those of you who don't know how demons come to exist, I'll give you the Cliff’s Notes. When a soul spends some time in Hell —the actual time varies, but it's usually around the hundred year mark— that human soul starts to forget its humanity. Year by year the human loses most of their memories from their life, and, most importantly, starts to lose sight of what human emotions feel like. 

And the moment that soul forgets the last of its emotions, it becomes the core of a demon. A newly created demon doesn't have a domain, and will usually serve a Demon Lord —demons high in the food chain, basically. But, as more centuries pass, these fletching demons will grow into their place as Demon Lords, and get a territory for themselves. A territory that can be whatever they want.

Now, you need to remember one very important thing about souls who go to Hell, and it is that they are here for one of two reasons: incurring in malign actions, or forfeiting their soul to a demon when making a deal. Both of these reasons land you in Hell, and this creates a lot of unpleasantness in that soul. Anger. Frustration. And unsurprisingly those two are the feelings that the soul holds on to until the very end. 

A freshly created demon doesn't remember human emotions completely, but there's still a faint trace of anger and frustration on their mind. 

It is easy to go with the flow and try to perpetuate that trace of anger. 

So demons take to torturing. 

And the easiest targets are recently arrived human souls. 

Any Demon Lord will tell you that their greatest achievement is always succeeding in educating a low level demon in the arts of torturing. 

(Which I think is really gross, but oh well)

Demon Lords would spend hours, days even, lecturing their low level demon assistants about how to best inflict pain in a human soul.

The tricky part is that the body we have here in Hell is a projection that comes from our minds. There's no actual, corporeal body, but it is real and physical in all its sense to other inhabitants of Hell. If I touch someone, it's like I'm touching a real body, and that person can feel it as if it was his body from the mundane world.

So, any pain inflicted on the body is also the same as it would be in a “real” body. The only difference is that whatever physical damage you suffer in Hell, it lasts but a day, and then your body regenerates.

Which means that, in this torture scenario, a soul could be tortured, dismembered, flayed and anything that the demon can think of, for eternity, because the human's body will be constantly regenerating.

It is sick and fucked up, and definitely not for me, even though I was also trained in torturing.

I am sick of all that though. I refuse to let my existence be Hell.

That's why I always thought that when I had a domain of my own and souls to handle, I would do a better job.

And, all in all, I think I’m doing quite well. My little human souls are content, and spend their days wandering around spacious and beautiful surroundings.

Part of my resolution to not make my existence in Hell feel like literal Hell was to make sure my domain looked and felt pleasant.  

Many demons mock me for my decision to not go with most of Hell’s aesthetic choices. As if any of that was the essence of Hell. As if torture and flaying and screams are what Hell is supposed to look like.

In truth, Hell can be compared to prison. You are stripped down of your freedom, isolated from your loved ones, and you’re at the mercy of your handlers. Following that analogy, we can appreciate that there are prisons that are nicer than others, some that give the inmates a better quality of life.

That’s what I do in my domain. 

Because if I'm gonna handle souls for an eternity, the last thing I want is to see them moping around. Partly because I'm not that much of a monster, mostly because all that I get from miserable souls in terms of transmitted feelings is a downer.

And imagine what it's like to have a couple hundred souls bringing you down. Much better to have those same souls at peace with their “incarceration”. That way I can always reach for the immaterial chain that binds them to me, and through that link, feed a little from those human emotions I can only experience this way.

And right now I can't help but seek that tether that is linking me to him and get a taste of the volcanic eruption of feelings bubbling there inside him.

It's exquisite.

While everyone is dancing and chatting and having a merry good time, he's sulking in a corner, arms crossed, brow furrowed and lips pursed. It is very clear he doesn't want to be here partaking in celebrations. And I am extremely aware that if he knew the reason I wanted to celebrate he would probably storm out. But I need him here so I am not going to tell him, of course.

Feeling the intensity of his anger makes my whole body tingle. I feel his anger and it sparks inside me, but the feeling is so deep that it also makes me lightheaded. I am ecstatic. Never before any of the souls I handle had given me such a pure and rich connection to their feelings.

I can already tell I am gonna get addicted.

I lean forward in the chair I am sitting on, too intimidating for anyone to approach me apparently because I have been luckily not interrupted with idle chit chat this evening. Which is all the better because I can focus on poking the chain and sucking more of his emotional tidal wave.

His eyes turn towards me then, and all those feelings simmering suddenly start to boil. He holds my gaze firmly, and I wonder if the tumultuous beating in my chest is a mimic of his own, or something else entirely.

Several minutes later he is still looking at me, and before I know what I am doing I feel myself going to him. I don't know if I'm expecting him to be startled, or even angrier, or panicked, but there is no change in his expression. The silent fury is still there.

When I am close enough for him to hear me over the music, I say “Fancy meeting you here. I thought you didn't want to come?”

He purses his lips before responding “ I never said I didn't want to come.”

“You implied it though,” I say with a smile, enjoying the way his upper lip twitches in exasperation. 

“You shouldn't make assumptions.”

I quirk an eyebrow at him as he flashes me a smile that's full of teeth and hostility.

“Very well then, here's something that's not an assumption but a fact: you hate me. And before you can reply to this accusation, allow me to say that I absolutely don't understand why the sudden animosity towards me. The deal we made was fair and consensual. And aside from that, my only crime, if we can even call it that, is telling you to basically get over yourself and stop crying in a corner.”

His eyes flash with rage for a moment, and I can almost hear him gritting his teeth. The level of emotion he is exuding is amazing , and I only have to make the barest of attempts to reach for the chain that connects us to feel it. 

I feel elated. 

He is looking at me with murder in his eyes.

“What business of yours is what I do with myself?” He advances until he is crowding my personal space, and the amount of emotion I am receiving from him is so unfamiliar yet exhilarating to my body that I can feel my dick twitch in my pants.

I dart my tongue out without meaning to, and lick my lips. To my surprise, his eyes briefly turn downwards to follow the movement, before he is back to staring at my eyes with intense fury.

He's a bit taller than me, but having to look up at him doesn't bother me. I feel powerful, but I also feel like I want more.

In a decision that takes me less than a second to make, I am reaching with my hand to hook a finger on his belt, and pull him towards me. He is startled, but doesn't make an attempt to pull away. When his face is a few inches from mine, I breathe deeply and focus on any change in his indignant expression. 

He's staying very still.

I slide my hooked finger slowly to the right, still pulling a bit on the belt but not moving his body towards me anymore. He sucks in a breath.

I open my mouth to speak. “I will touch you only if you want me to.”

He exhales harshly through his nose, “Who says I want you to?”

I smirk at him, cocking my head slightly to one side, “No one. That's why I'm giving you the chance to say it.”

If looks could kill, I would be dead a thousand times over. He huffs and turns to leave, but my finger in his belt stops him. He makes an exasperated sound and grabs my wrist to force me to let him go.

And I know, in that moment, that we both feel the spark, because he turns his eyes towards me, surprised and is looking as breathless as I feel. Suddenly he grips my wrist tighter and a needy sound escapes my mouth, unsolicited. His eyes darken with a mix of emotions I can't describe, and he lets go of my arm like it's on fire.

In fact, my body feels on fire. I have a tingling sensation where his skin touched mine. I see him take a few steps away from me and I whisper his name, breathlessly, “Dante.”

He turns around in a rush, eyes still a mix of surprise and confusion, and then resumes walking away.

I take a few moments to collect myself as much as I can considering that my insides are burning. My dick is so hard it aches, and just remembering the way his hand grasped my wrist, the heat and the way I could feel his emotions intensified by that touch makes my head dizzy.

And I desperately need to do something about my erection, so I leave the ball, grateful that Dante was hiding in a corner, away from everyone else. Somehow the thought of others witnessing that exchange annoys me. 

As I'm walking towards my quarters and away from the crowd, I think that it's the first time in almost a millennia that I've felt aroused. 

Oh, I am definitely getting addicted.

Continue in part 2...