Scorn of Angels Read Online Free Page B

the will of God until I can speak to him again.
    She turned a wide circle and began winging her way forward until she was moving at nearly the speed of sound. I will find a way back to Heaven, and then I will ask God what is to be done to Nyx. And then, if it is his will, I will put an end to her once and for all.

Chapter 2
    S anity came to Nyx in flashes, like glimpses of treasure on the edge of the sea, one moment there, the next buried under waves of pain and horrific memory.
    The Hellfire had long since stripped Nyx’s bones of flesh. It had burned away nearly everything of her mind. But her Angelic body, meant to heal no matter what, and trapped in Hell, where nothing could die, kept trying to rally, kept pulling her out of the madness and into sanity.
    When those moments of sanity came, Nyx fought to keep them longer, to grasp every moment of clarity before the Hellfire once more drowned her mind in pain and remembered cruelty. I must get out! was always Nyx’s first thought when sanity returned.
    Nyx tried. She willed her body to heal in those rare, lucid moments. She willed a hand or foot or part of an arm to heal enough for her to push against the sides of the too-small, jagged-edge-filled box that Lucifer had locked her in. She even tried healing her face enough to bite at the Hellstone of her too-small prison. And each time the box proved too strong, and her hand or foot or arm or jaw would break again. The pain would flash through her, tearing away her will. Then the Hellfire would once more gain the upper hand, eating her flesh and burning into her mind. And Nyx would slip into madness.
    The Hellfire was cruel. It burned away flesh and muscle and organs with a cold flame that chilled rather than warmed. And as it burned, it made its victims experience every vile deed they had ever performed. Every pain or cruelty they had inflicted upon another, they would feel as if that pain or cruelty was being inflicted on them.
    Nyx, Queen of Hell, had inflicted untold suffering upon millions, and the agony of reliving it was far greater than the continuously breaking bones of her battered, abused body.
    The last thought Nyx had every time the sanity faded, and the Hellfire took control once more, was, There is no way out.
    When the Hellfire took her mind, Nyx murdered herself, gutted herself, ripped her own throat out, tortured herself for information, buried herself under a hundred tons of rubble just to hear herself scream. She killed or maimed herself in a hundred different ways, and every act she had to live through magnified her madness. She cowered in terror from herself. She pleaded with herself. She laughed at herself, and then it all happened again. And again. She had a thousand names, a million names; she was everyone and no one.
    And that was only the violence she had inflicted on the living. To the dead she had done far, far worse, for she was the Queen of Hell, and she had punished the sinners with relish. And the Hellfire made her experience those punishments as well.
    Her skin was flayed away again and again.
    Her throat was torn out with her own teeth.
    She was cut slowly to ribbons with her own talons.
    She fed herself to demons.
    She gave herself a thousand, thousand other tortures, without end.
    And those were still not the worst.
    The worst memories were the memories of Heaven and the rebellion she had led there.
    Nyx had led an army of Angels against God. They had marched to the base of his mountain to demand free will for all of their kind. And at the base of God’s mountain they had met God’s host and engaged in a battle that lasted eons.
    And so, as the Hellfire burned her, Nyx became all the Angels she had destroyed under her blade in Heaven. Nyx felt the pain of her sword ripping into flesh and screamed the screams of those she’d killed. She felt the pain of the rebels in Hell as she and hers fought for dominance. Worse, she felt the limitless, unending disappointment and sorrow of God as he