Melancholy Wings: Decadence
Read Melancholy Wings: Decadence Online
Authors: Matthew Ashworth
Melancholy Wings
Part 1
Decadence
By Matthew Ashworth
© Matthew Ashworth 2011
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form or by any means without the
written permission of the author
First published on 19
th
of December 2011
Contents
Map of the Underworld
In the beginning there was only the Universe, which had two faces – the Creator and the Void.
The Creator filled the Void by devising two worlds inside it – the Internal World and the External World. The Void, due to its hollow nature, had no consciousness.
The External World held many radiant gaseous bodies, called stars, and solid bodies which circled those, called planets. The Creator populated the planets with various creatures. One of the planets contained humans.
The Internal World at first only consisted of a Utopia, the place where the Void’s effects were minimal, and was populated with angels.
Naturally all the creatures in the External World were subject to the vile effects of the Void and therefore could only stay there for a finite amount of time. After they departed the External World into the Internal World, they needed to be cleansed off the Void’s corruption.
The Creator constructed a facility in the Internal World, called the Pandemonium, where cleansing of the souls of External World creatures could take place. After a soul was purified, it could then be in eternal peace in the Utopia. The Creator assigned His most trusted angel to oversee the Pandemonium. The angel’s name was Lucifer.
However, eventually Lucifer himself succumbed to the effects of the Void. He felt abandoned and therefore refused to serve the Creator, making the Pandemonium his own home place.
Out of love for His creation, the Creator did not destroy Lucifer or the Pandemonium. Instead He devised many more sectors for where the cleansing of souls could take place. The entire facility was now termed the Underworld, as it was located directly beneath the Utopia, and each sector of the Underworld was assigned a deity, to be its overseer, and many guardians, to serve that deity. The Creator knew those deities could follow Lucifer’s path, but He refused to destroy everything, for that was against His nature.
The sectors were separated with five rivers of the Underworld: Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon, Lethe and Cocytus.
Lucifer, however, was not content. He began attacking other sectors and waging wars on the Utopia itself, attempting to destroy everything that the Creator devised. In order to do that, he used the Void’s energies to create highly destructive creatures, called demons. Since creation of anything was against the nature of the Void, the demons were very unstable and chaotic, often revolting against Lucifer himself. Using corrupted human souls as vessels, however, resulted in demons which were much more stable and reliable, and that got Lucifer hungry for more human souls in order to build terrifying demonic armies.
In response, the Creator assigned certain angels to take the battle against the demons to the Underworld and to reside in the Underworld sectors, under the orders of the deities in charge. Having spent a lot of time in the Underworld, those angels ended up changing. Some fell from grace and got termed fallen angels. The others, who remained loyal to the Creator, only ended up changing in appearance, and were termed dark angels.
Although the Underworld was full of conflict all the time, once every few hundreds of years Lucifer would attack the Utopia with full force. The last such devastating battle occurred just over 500 years ago. Now Lucifer was about to transgress again.
Guardians of the Underworld
Is there such a thing as purpose, or is it merely something our minds conjure up just to feel significant? Those were the thoughts passing through Adelais’ head as he was patrolling around his home sector of Erebus, the leader of which was Hades. Adelais liked patrolling, because not only did he want to carry out his job properly as being one of the guardians of the Underworld, but also it gave him a lot of thinking time.
Being a dark angel, he was extremely loyal to the Creator, despite his rather intimidating appearance. The dark angels looked a lot like other angels, except their skin was of darkened greyish, ashen colour, and this darkened look made them seem rougher than regular angels.