About Taste Test: A Hope in Hell

by Molly Church
29 pages / 12000 words
ISBN-13: 978-1-60370-561-5
ISBN-10: 1-60370-561-9
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc

Captured and trapped in hell, angel Yare'ach suffers, beginning to fade. Demon Lord Ayve knows he must try to reach the angel, and he knows the best way to help is to try to help Yare'ach find some peace. Under the most trying circumstances, Yare'ach and Ayve eventually find a way to come to terms with each other, and with their life in Hell. Can they come to understand what they mean to each other, and find the peace they so desperately need?

Sample

They captured him at the Tower of the Blind. He was injured, feverish, and delirious. The poisoned landscape had begun to change him, but the Hellborn who found him could react only with curiosity, despite the pathos of his condition, for they were not capable of pity.

They bound him tightly, carefully, because despite his injuries, he still presented a considerable danger to them, and they took him to their Lord.

The Hellborn captain, who loved her Lord above all things, presented the broken spy to her Lord privately, though every warrior's instinct within her cried out to drag him to her Lord's court and lay the spy at Lord Ayve's feet. He was an enemy whose capture would earn her name glory. 

But glory wasn't enough. 

"He is exquisite," Lord Ayve remarked. 

The captain nodded. "I tended to his wounds, my Lord, but his fever has not yet broken--"

"No." Lord Ayve shook his head. "It wouldn't have. He'll simply have to work through it like the rest of us."

She said nothing. She'd been born here. She knew their history, knew that the Fallen had suffered as they'd adapted to their new home, but she'd never truly understood it. Watching the angel writhe, his body wracked again with pain, she had an inkling of what her Lord had endured. Turning from the sweat-slick and broken creature before her, she tried to imagine Lord Ayve, epic failure still fresh in his mind, as he first caught sight of the prison created, in a moment, for them, before fever-madness and pain took him.

But she said nothing of this. "We'll not be able to question him until it passes," she continued simply, as if he had not spoken.

"It will likely be long irrelevant by then," Lord Ayve told her. 

"Ah," the captain said sadly. It would have been interesting.

"Yes," he agreed. "Still, we will wait. See if there is something. If I could be certain--" 

He trailed off then, and she was puzzled. Her Lord was cautious, but rarely uncertain. She looked at him, curious.

Lord Ayve's strong features were suddenly sad, and it struck her all at once how much paler he was than his prisoner, whose skin was a golden tan, and his hair a still darker brown. The Fallen were pale, bone white, with hair like straw. She thought they were beautiful. She knew that the Fallen considered their new forms but shades of their former ones. She had previously thought they'd been lamenting the destruction of their once magnificent wings. Most of the Fallen still had them, bar a few whose wings were so broken and twisted they had to be removed; and perhaps, so the rumors went, a few so saddened by the damage they could no longer bear the sight of them and mutilated themselves further.

"It would be a kindness to slay him now. I do not like to see him like this," Lord Ayve said.

Ah, she thought. Kindness. Compassion. Like the other memories of the time before, they meant little to her. She looked at the angel again, more carefully. She liked to see him like this. It excited her. She tried to understand, but it meant nothing to her. But they were in private, here. She could venture an opinion. 

"I do not see it," she admitted.

He merely looked down at her sadly. "We should never have made you. It was very wrong of us."

"But you were lonely, and had never before been able to create anything..." She knew the Cant.

He nodded.

"But why would death be a mercy? He is suffering now, but it will not always be so. All creatures seek survival." Even as she said it, a line from the Cant came to mind, unbidden: Only things that live can die. The Fallen were immortal. It was not the same. 

As if he read her thoughts, Lord Ayve continued, "We had thought, though we might fail, and we knew that we would -- must surely -- fail that we would be... annihilated. Or un-made. No more. But He didn't have even that much mercy. Eternal imprisonment is so much worse. They say there is no hope here. It is because there is no hope that it will end." 

He left off, and though he was controlled, contained, she had long ago learned to read his subtle shifts of mood -- and the look he pierced her with was appraising. Expectant.

She was sorry to disappoint and lowered her head. "I cannot say that I understand, my Lord."

"I should not expect you to. This is your home. For us, it is a prison." With a small gesture of his hand, he indicated an 'us,' and she knew that he meant the few Fallen among his household, and the angel that was his prisoner. 

***

When Yare'ach woke up, he was startled to find himself being stared at. With sudden terror, he recognized the female's features -- dark pink-red skin, black hair -- for what they were: Hellborn. She was wingless, too, meaning she had been born into one of the later generations. She regarded him with open curiosity. Clearly, she did not consider him a threat. 

As he felt the weight of her gaze upon him, his anger and fear became something else, and he found himself pulling his bedding up around his naked body. She smiled. He stared at his hands in horror. Shame. He'd never felt it before. She smirked at him, and he looked away.

They were all clothed here. Those few that he saw, anyway. The clothing didn't seem entirely functional, either, attachment points for this or that. She was the only one who wore a uniform. No one ever spoke to him, and she never allowed him to be alone with the others.

The first time he ate, he nearly choked.