Chapter Text
Consider, if you will, The Tempest.
Perhaps you were forced to read it in a literature class and received poor marks on an exam because you couldn’t recall what sort of pentameter was used.
Or maybe you saw a local production of it and realised that there was something far worse than parsing out Shakespearean prose: community theatre.
The specifics hardly matter. Instead, consider a third, more relevant scenario:
Imagine you are a demon seated in the audience with King James watching the play debut. You perhaps had a hand in the playwright’s rise to fame eight years prior in what you’d vehemently deny to be a kind gesture towards a fussy angel.
And so, here you’re sat, two scenes into the Bard’s latest work, when an actor says the damndest line: “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
Were you a mortal, you might deem the writing a scathing remark on the state of world affairs, or even reason to dismiss Shakespeare as a blasphemer and resign yourself to never viewing one of his productions again.
But if you were, say, one of the devils the Bard was referencing, you would immediately see the flaw in such a statement.
You might suggest a revision to the line to more accurately represent the situation, such as “Hell is full of devils, and Earth is full of devils, too.”
Or, perhaps, “Hell is so full of devils that you can’t even walk down the hallway without bumping into someone who will then hold a grudge against you for eternity. Oh, and Earth is there, too, also full of other demons of both the occult and human variety.”
Unfortunately, it doesn't quite slip off the tongue the same way.
The fact that Shakespeare penned the line in a metaphorical sense was irrelevant, particularly to the crowd of demons tasked with his eternal torment. They cannot even spell the word “tempest,” let alone understand figurative language.
There is, however, a former bookseller—who, naturally, has read all of Shakespeare’s works a hundred times over—pacing Hell’s busy corridors, and he’s having himself a bit of a laugh at the irony.
He replays the scene in his mind, latching onto the memories of bright laughter and thunderous applause to drown out the abject misery surrounding him.
“Why, that’s my spirit! But was not this nigh shore?”
He remembers the original Prospero, a talented young man destined for the stage. Oh, he hopes his soul is not one of the many sent here for eternal misery.
“Close by, my master.”
He frowns. Should that even be a worry of his anymore, considering…Hmm. Considering what, exactly?
“But are they, Ariel, safe?”
He may have lost his train of thought, but he knows the next line: “Not a hair perished.” But is that even true? Something, undoubtedly, has perished for good.
Now, if only he could remember what exactly it was that’s gone missing…
Hell’s denizens give him a wide berth as he walks, stepping on one another and instigating angry fights rather than being too close to his orbit.
The gnashing of teeth and gurgling of blood has all but faded into background noise by now, and the stench of sulfur is hardly worth turning his nose up at.
He would certainly appreciate it if they could give it a rest with the staring, though.
“Alright, who’s messin’ with my queue?” an angry voice booms.
A sea of fingers—some more pustule-covered and decaying than others—point in his direction.
“You?” the demon in charge hisses.
The bookseller straightens his back and strides towards the familiar figure.
The list of things he remembers is regrettably short, but apparently the Lord of the Files made the cut. (As did Shakespeare, the Dewey Decimal system and Julia Child’s original recipe for boeuf bourguignon, for some reason—not that he recalled the French necessary to follow it.)
Dagon bares his teeth. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“I don’t believe so, no,” the bookseller replies.
Or, if it is, he certainly isn’t in on it. What kind of joke would involve someone forgetting their own name?
(Perhaps the hilarity comes from the obvious knowledge that you, Reader, have of this particular entity’s name, and the suffering you are now enduring as the author attempts to substitute said name with a variety of nonspecific descriptors and needlessly gendered pronouns.
This is Hell, after all.)
“What file is Heaven after this time, then?” Dagon asks, annoyance clear. “Just so I know which one to burn first.”
“Oh, there’s no need to do any burning!” the bookseller says.
Just the thought of books—loosely defined enough to include sheafs of paper, naturally—being set alight makes his nonexistent stomach hurt.
“Excuse me,” the soul at the front of the queue interrupts. “But it was my turn to get paperwork signed, not yours.”
Dagon blinks at the haggard shell of a woman before him, her file already spread out upon his desk. The shiny scales around his eyes seem to darken.
Then, the wretched soul screams, clawing at the bodice of her moth-eaten dress until a spider tumbles out of the top and onto the dirty ground.
Dagon cackles. “Back of the queue, now!”
“But I’ve been waiting for 200 years!” the woman protests.
She takes a step back as the spider scuttles up the side of Dagon’s desk and crawls onto his shoulder.
“Now!” Dagon repeats. “Or you won’t like where I send my pet next.”
The woman hurriedly grabs her papers and scampers off, leaving the former bookseller to frown after her.
“Was that really necessary?” the bookseller asks.
“I am the Master of Torments,” Dagon replies. “Of course it was necessary!”
Dagon suddenly takes a long, drawn-out inhale—an odd practice for a being without a body or a need to breathe. He pauses, considering, and then sticks his tongue out to presumably taste the air.
The whole display is horribly unnerving.
“I don’t believe it,” Dagon says.
He takes another hearty whiff. “Not a trace of holiness! Oh, when the Duke hears what I’ve found…”
The demon wraps his clawed hand around the bookseller’s wrist, yanking him down another hallway. A gesture with his free hand summons a small sign onto his desk, proclaiming “OWT FOR LUNCH. BE BAK IN 10 YEARS” in barely legible writing.
“How did this even happen?” Dagon asks as he pulls the bookseller along.
“I’m not sure.”
“Ohh, you wanna impress Shax, I see. Well, at least tell me what name She gave you. I’m a demon, not a saint!”
The bookseller hardly had the wherewithal to parse through Dagon’s words at their abrupt pace, let alone come up with an answer to such a nonsensical question.
Once again, Shakespeare comes to mind; What’s in a name, indeed.
“Romeo,” the bookseller replies.
Cut him some slack—he’s a book seller, not a book writer! (Well, he was, at least.)
“What sort of outlandish name is that?” Dagon laughs. “It’s worse than Crawly!”
The being—who, for the sake of simplicity, we’ll now call Romeo—frowns. He’s yanked to a stop by Dagon before he has time to truly ponder his response, his nose nearly slamming into the pair of heavy black doors.
“I request an audience with Duke Shax,” Dagon says. “Tell her that the principality has Fallen.”
(Romeo—or whatever his name actually is—does not know why Dagon is speaking the final word with an air of capitalization but, judging by the quality of the demon’s spelling earlier, he doubts that grammar is of any concern.)
One of the two lower-ranking demons guarding the entryway takes one look at Romeo and scurries inside, while the other peers at him with a mixture of disgust and curiosity.
“Is this really him?” the demon asks.
Dagon nods, his chin held high.
“And the other one?”
“What other one?”
The guard demon scratches at a boil on their scalp with a clawed finger. “The snake. Thought he’d be here celebrating.”
“Why?” Dagon asks. “This was my victory, not his.”
“But when—“
“Enough,” Dagon interrupts. “Remain here silently, or I’ll tell Hastur to make room for you on the rack.”
The other demon gulps, hunching their shoulders. “R-right.”
Dagon smirks at their fear; Romeo may not have been here long, but even he understands that fear is not your friend Downstairs.
Their partner, seemingly of the same mindset, scoffs at the sight that greets them upon reopening the door. “Duke Shax will see you now,” they tell Dagon.
Dagon nods and drags Romeo into the room with him.
“Duke Shax,” he says to the demon seated on an ornate throne inside. “I bring good—well, bad good—news!”
He thrusts Romeo forward, standing proudly behind him like he’s parading a show dog. Romeo awkwardly waves.
“How is this possible?” Shax asks. “She hasn’t cast anyone out in six thousand years. And when She does, it’s him?”
Romeo isn’t sure if he should take offense to that, so he remains silent.
“You should take him to show the Adversary,” Dagon says. “And when you do, make sure you tell Him I found him.”
“Pardon me,” Romeo interrupts. “When you say the Adversary, do you mean Lucifer?”
“Satan,” Dagon corrects harshly. “His Most Wretchedness.”
Romeo’s stomach hurts. “I see.”
“Don’t act like you have the authority to tell me what to do, Lord Dagon,” Shax says, the emphasis on his inferior title bordering on excessive.
Dagon falters. “Right, of course. I was merely suggesting—“
Shax holds a gloved hand up, silencing him. With her other, she withdraws a slender mobile from a previously nonexistent pocket. She pokes at the screen a few times, squinting at it and mumbling to herself.
(If making such a conjecture wouldn’t lead to eternal damnation, one might compare Shax’s struggles to someone’s elderly grandmother attempting to open Facebook to share her daily conspiracy theories—that is, funny, disheartening and quite a bit scary.)
She holds it up to her ear after a moment, a determined look on her face. She lowers the mobile and scowls at it a few seconds later, then jabs at the screen before once again holding it up to her ear.
The process repeats itself three times, and the pure Wrath radiating from Shax after that final failure makes the already dank air nearly unbreathable.
“He wants to play games?” Shax hisses. “Fine.”
She snaps her fingers and a ring of flames erupts on the ground a few paces in front of her.
“Are you sure this is necessary?” Dagon asks.
Shax glowers at him. “How long do you think we have until all of Heaven comes barging in here demanding him back?”
Dagon shrugs. “I don’t see why they would care about a Fallen angel.”
The words are like a metaphorical dagger to Romeo’s even more metaphorical heart. He understands, now, what Dagon had meant earlier.
He’s an angel. Was an angel. And now, it would seem, he’s a demon.
The disorientation makes sense all of a sudden. Wasn’t it said that the Almighty stripped the Fallen of their memories of angelhood? Is that what’s causing all this horrible aching and emptiness?
”They would if he was the Supreme Archangel.”
The circle of fire reignites, the flames burning even hotter this time.
“Demon Crowley,” Shax commands. “I summon thee.”