Chapter 36: Slaughter in the Vatican Catacombs
"How did he get in here?! How can this demon, without even tiny hellish wings, withstand the very atmosphere of this place?!" The priest’s roar choked amidst the static of radio chaos and the prolonged wail of sirens.
The massive corridors built beneath the Apostolic Palace were drowning in smoke, the biting stench of sulfur, and fresh blood.
"Units Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie are not responding! All three wiped out in the corridor of Holy Inquisitor Damien!" the priest screamed into the microphone from the command post. "Sections Delta, Epsilon, and Foxtrot have made direct contact with the target on level minus four! Units Romeo, Sierra, and Tango are preparing to defend the command post!"
"For God's sake, how can he still be moving with two consecrated swords driven into his guts and so many bullets in his demonic body?!" the hysterical shout of the field commander crackled from the speakers. "Fortunately, he is weak when it comes to demonic manifestations. He doesn't set men ablaze from a distance, he doesn't hurl them around with telekinesis… but his pure physical strength, brutality, and resistance to consecrated silver are extraordinary for a demon! He attacked the entire Armed Wing in open combat, without a shred of fear for his existence in this world! He cannot survive this, pull everyone back! All reserves to the lower levels!"
The heavy steel door to the command sector ruptured with a deafening crash, buckled inward by a titanic blow from a shoulder. A thick cloud of gray dust erupted from the breach, and the stench of sulfur and charred flesh assaulted the nostrils of those gathered inside.
From the haze emerged Wiktor Adamski.
He looked like a nightmare forged in the deepest abysses of war. Protruding from his abdomen and right hypochondrium were two consecrated swords forged from cast silver alloy. Their blades, engraved with Psalms, sizzled in raw flesh. Steaming black gore streamed down Adamski's body. His entire torso was riddled with dozens of bullet holes—consecrated rounds embedded deep in muscle and shattered ribs, yet powerless to stop him. Through Wiktor's veins coursed the power of the Blasphemer, tempered by weeks of methodical, suicidal torture in Pułtusk. Instead of catching fire, his tissue smoldered with thick, dry ash, knitting closed around the wounds with a demonic, downright archdemonic obstinacy.
Before him stood a barricade formed by the armed men of Romeo Section. Six operators in heavy armor opened fire with assault rifles, cutting through the air with silver tracers.
Wiktor did not even slow down. He crossed the distance in two massive bounds, ignoring the impacts tearing at his flesh, and slammed into the center of the formation like a runaway battering ram.
He seized one of the soldiers by the chest plate of his composite armor with both hands and, with an inhuman roar, hurled him against the wall with such violence that the helmet cracked and the bones of the skull gave way with a dry snap. From another, he ripped an automatic shotgun, bent the steel barrel in his hands like a lead rod, and crushed the man’s sternum with a knee strike. The third shooter, knocked to the floor, dropped his weapon and raised trembling hands, sobbing in Italian and begging for mercy before the monster's black, pupil-less sockets.
Adamski halted his raised, ember-forged fist a mere centimeter from the man’s battered face.
He breathed heavily, wisps of gray smoke curling from his split lips. He looked down at the fallen operator, then drove his combat boot into the rifle lying beside him, crushing the magazine into scrap.
"Stay on your ass and don't move," he growled in English, his voice a guttural, cavernous bass. "And you live today."
He was not seeking senseless slaughter. He pressed forward like an engine of war, his sole objective being the command sector of the Armed Wing and the Vatican satellite control systems. He bypassed the saints' tombs situated higher up, trod carefully around reliquaries, and walked past the underground chapels with complete indifference. He spared anyone who threw down their weapon and raised their hands. To the soldiers of the Armed Wing, accustomed to fiends craving blood and entrails, this conduct was incomprehensible—this demon was not killing in a frenzy; he was not consumed by a desire to butcher everyone without distinction.
A soft, hydraulic hiss broke through the air. At the far end of the command center's main hall descended a heavy, armored elevator bearing the crest of the Vatican City State.
When the steel doors parted, stepping through the haze of gas and smoke came the Pope himself. Behind him walked merely three venerable cardinals clad in simple scarlet cassocks. In their eyes, there was not a trace of base fear. These were men who had devoted their entire lives to a pure, uncorrupted faith in the Christian God, untainted by politics.
They did not run. They did not shelter behind the shields of soldiers. They walked slowly among the bodies of the fallen in the subterranean chill, holding vessels of holy oil, kneeling beside the wounded to quietly and solemnly administer the sacrament of the last rites to the dying.
Wiktor came to a halt in the center of the room, lowering his bloodstained arms. The two swords still protruded from his flank, the consecrated silver eating into his vitals, yet he stood upright, calmly allowing the clergy to complete their ministry. He did not approach, he did not attack, nor did he utter a single hostile growl.
Only when the Bishop of Rome had traced the sign of the cross over the last wounded soldier did he rise and look straight into Adamski's Abyss-scorched visage. Wiktor took three heavy steps forward.
"It is their fault," Adamski spoke, his voice vibrating through the bare walls of the crypt with grim, crushing solemnity. "They sought to murder my offspring in cold blood. He has done no wrong, and I will personally see to it that he never becomes the thing you dread so desperately."
The Pope looked upon him without hatred, bearing the sorrow of one witnessing the agony of all creation.
"I understand you and your desire for vengeance, but it cannot be ruled out that he is the Antichrist. If any fragment of humanity remains within you, demon, do not allow Lucifer to use him for his own designs. Kill me as well, for it was I who sanctioned the order for the Armed Wing. I know that I will most likely end up in Hell for it, but it was the decision I made in seeking to protect this world. Sadly, it was in vain."
"No, I am ending this," Wiktor cut him off, gesturing with a blood-drenched hand toward the wrecked command center. "I will destroy nothing more, nor will I strike you down. Serve your God in peace, pray in your basilicas, but never dare reach for the life of my son again. Perhaps through penance you will reclaim your place in Heaven, but remember this once and for all: I couldn't give a damn about Heaven, about Hell, or about their sick, endless dispute. I am no servant of Lucifer, nor will I ever be a servant of God. I am the Blasphemer. Do you understand that, old man?"
The Pope looked him dead in the eye and inclined his head.
"I understand."
"Do not follow me. Simply let us exist in peace upon this earth—the Countess, my son, and me. I know full well that she, just like him, is the embodiment of evil in the eyes of your dogma… but I adore her. I adore my son. She is my bride, and I will suffer no one to harm her or my flesh and blood."
He took two strides away, then paused, tossing over his shoulder with biting scorn:
"Besides, as you can see for yourself, your God clearly couldn't care less about you. You sent your entire host down here to the slaughter, and from on High, they didn't even dispatch the lowliest angel to stand in your defense."
Suddenly, the space within the crypt detonated.
It was not an explosion of powder, nor was it the fire of the Abyss. It was a flash so pure, so white and absolute, that in a fraction of a second it vaporized every shadow, turning the air into a vacuum-roaring furnace that burned with the heat of the stars.
Before Wiktor could even contemplate raising his guard, a monstrous, unfathomable force hurled his two-hundred-pound frame clean across the hall. He collided with the wall with such titanic momentum that the reinforced concrete ruptured to a depth of several inches, entombing his shoulders in a shower of pulverized debris.
When the dust settled, there stood He.
An Archangel.
A colossal, statue-like entity whose form radiated the brilliance of molten gold. His countenance was inhumanly flawless, devoid of any mortal frailty, and from his eyes radiated the glacial chill of absolute, divine order. The archangel's hand came to rest upon Adamski's throat, pinning him to the fractured wall like vermin.
"How brazenly you revel in your blasphemy, demon…" The Archangel's voice carried no emotion; it was like the resonance of grinding tectonic plates, driving straight into the condemned soul’s consciousness. "You take pride in strength clawed from pitch, holding in contempt a power your withered intellect cannot fathom."
The archangel's wings rippled, unleashing a gale that swept the scattered firearms and helmets of the soldiers across the floor.
"Yet you spoke truly on one matter," the envoy of the Heavens continued, never tearing his blazing gaze from Wiktor's face. "The child is blameless. For now. And may it remain so. Heaven does not pass judgment on deeds yet uncommitted, nor do the sins of the forebears burden an innocent vessel until it chooses the darkness of its own accord."
The Archangel raised his left hand. Without the slightest exertion, he seized the pommels of the two consecrated swords lodged in Wiktor's abdomen.
Slowly, methodically, he wrenched both blades from his vitals. Black gore erupted from the wounds, and Adamski doubled over in convulsions, choking back a howl as the consecrated steel tore through the regenerated muscle fibers.
Before the damned could draw breath, the Archangel reached to his own hip.
He drew a blade of light—a sword of trembling, white flame whose very presence caused the hellish essence in Wiktor's veins to boil and evaporate with a hiss.
The Archangel gazed directly into his blackened eyes, and with a slow, surgical motion, began driving the point of the white sword into Adamski's chest, right beside the sternum.
The agony that erupted through Wiktor's body bore no resemblance to infernal torments. It was not the rending of flesh or boiling in brimstone. This was the agony of Heaven—a pure, blinding fire of grace that purged his damned shell, tearing and stitching his soul piece by piece. Adamski roared, digging his fingers into the crumbling concrete; the veins in his neck swelled, and a torrent of liquid light mingled with blood gushed from his nostrils and mouth.
"You fear not Hell, condemned one…" the Archangel hissed, twisting the blade slightly within the wound. "Thus your punishment shall be of another kind. The sentence is amended. Heaven strips you of your damned status. By the will of the Heavens, you shall become human once more, a creature of flesh and bone."
The Archangel pressed the sword a fraction deeper. With a deafening hiss, a black plume of smoke drifted from Wiktor's chest—all the infernal power of the Blasphemer, infused into him by torment in the depths, was erased without a trace.
"Yet you shall know no peace," the Archangel whispered directly into his dying senses. "Neither to Hell nor to Heaven shall you ever return. The gates of both realms are barred against you for eternity. You are condemned to this mortal coil. Let us see how long you endure by the side of your hellish paramour in a fragile, mortal shell, when she begins to carve you up during her nocturnal amusements. You shall not perish by her hand, but your healing will be slow. Faster than an ordinary mortal's, true, but far slower than that of an infernal demon… and the pain of your wounds will no longer be deadened by any hellish hardening. Every cut you will feel with the utter, helpless frailty of a man."
The Archangel wrenched free the burning blade of light.
Wiktor's blackened eyes suddenly shattered—the crimson fire died out forever. To his irises returned a plain, human, exhausted brown, while the whites were flooded with blood from vessels burst by sheer agony. His chest sank with the dull, heavy thud of a man whose lungs were once again greedily and painfully drawing earthly oxygen.
Adamski collapsed limply to his knees, folding in on himself and vomiting fresh, red, unmistakably human blood onto the floor. He felt every single wound. Each of the dozens of bullet impacts tore at him with a blunt, rending pain, stripped clean of the numbing aegis of his demonic form.
A hushed, reverent silence reigned in the corridor, broken only by the quiet prayers of the Pope kneeling in the distance and the steady drip of Wiktor's blood.
Adamski planted his trembling hands—stripped of their superhuman resilience—upon the floor. With great difficulty, panting from unimaginable, rediscovered pain, he forced his fragile muscles to exert themselves and staggered unsteadily to his feet.
The Archangel stood bathed in blinding radiance with his sword lowered, staring down at the standing man choking on human blood. The Pope and the three cardinals silently raised their hands toward the light, deeming the matter definitively settled by the will of God Himself.
And then Adamski, fixing his gaze upon the floor, slowly lifted his head:
"No… fuck… no…" he rasped from the depths of his torn lungs. The words were quiet, mingled with the rattle of a dying man, yet they vibrated with a stubborn, iron resolve beneath the surface. "I do not accept this sentence. I do not accept the decrees of Heaven. Do you hear me, dog of God, celestial messenger?! I do not accept it, just as I never accepted the sentence of damnation!"
The ground around the underground complex shuddered.
Wiktor forced his eyes upward, looking directly at the blazing entity. In his human, bloodshot eyes, the final barrier broke.
"I told you, I am the Blasphemer!" he roared in fury. "Your blade of light is mighty, but I don't believe in the fucking thing! I reject the sentence!"
In a fraction of a second, the choking stench of sulfur, charred meat, and ash flooded back.
The dark, human gore spilling from his chest boiled instantly, vaporizing in black, tar-like smoke. The wound carved by the sword of light, like the earlier bullet holes, began to knit closed at terrifying speed, driving the shards of light and silver rounds outward. Into Adamski's sockets returned an abyssal, pitch-black void, within which vertical crimson pupils blazed anew. From both clenched fists, tongues of living, infernal fire erupted with a deafening roar.
This was not merely strength clawed from the depths. This was power born of the very identity of the Blasphemer—from the absolute, unyielding certainty of a damned soul that, at the bottom of the Abyss, had bowed its neck neither to its torturers nor to Lucifer himself. But above all, an unbreakable bond with Elizabeth Báthory flared within him: the Blood Countess's faith in her champion, and the memory of hundreds of thousands of damned souls upon that scrap of hellish territory that he had carved out of eternal chaos alongside her.
That domain, torn from the soil of the Depths, had endured. The butchers, the criminals, and the specters bound by their iron law still remembered their executioner and his lady. Adamski's monstrous, merciless, yet—within the realities of Hell—just law, enforced for decades, formed a foundation whose memory now fueled him across the dimensional veil like a colossal reactor.
"Did you think a century in Hell at my lady Countess's feet, as her champion and her lover, left me unprepared for this?!" Wiktor bellowed, looking down at his restored demonic hands.
He did not wait for the angel to move. He lunged forward like a living shell. Adamski's fist, blazing with black and red embers, drove straight into the Archangel's sculpted jaw.
The thunder of the blow tore through the air like the detonation of a breaching charge.
The towering, winged entity, regarded as an untouchable pillar of the Heavens, was violently swept off its feet. The angel's body flew dozens of feet with horrific momentum, shattering a marble column and carving a deep furrow into the floor of the command center until a cloud of golden dust and smoking, fractured feathers billowed into the air.
Wiktor stood over him, panting steaming sulfur. He was a demon fully reborn and remade, more formidable than the moment he had crossed the Vatican threshold.
"Hell may be terrible!" Adamski spat toward the Archangel struggling up from the ruins, his voice churning with the bass resonance of hundreds of thousands of tormented souls. "But your decrees are an utter farce! You wanted to tear me from my beloved?! Shove a human body into me and watch me rot in helplessness?! No! A hundred times, no! Neither Hell nor Heaven shall hold dominion over me! Understand that at last! I'm starting to fucking see why Lucifer raised his rebellion against you in the first place!"
The Pope backed against the wall, tracing the sign of the cross with a trembling hand at the sight of the Blasphemer's blazing aura, which, in clashing with the golden light of the angel, not only refused to die out, but brazenly consumed and warped it.
Wiktor measured the rising winged being with his gaze. His fists still dripped with flame, primed for the next strike.
"I am going home, Archangel," the former cop rasped with icy gravity. "And don't you dare raise that sword of light against me again. For I might ultimately fall to you… but I swear to you upon my son: that perfect mug of yours will never look the same as it did before this bout!"
He took a step back toward the exit, and around his throat materialized for a fraction of a second an unnatural, dual timbre—the deep, bone-crushing voice of the Lord of Darkness himself, who had been watching the carnage from the floor of the Abyss:
"Lucifer himself has just spoken to me. It seems that happens rarely for him. He asks that I kill you. He also bids me tell you up on High that you made a monstrous error condemning me to the torments of Hell… And he told me to tell you that while I am a wretched Blasphemer and hold him as no master of mine, should I choose to grant his request, he will lend me all of his destructive might just to grind you into dust."
The Archangel, with a split lip and a shattered cuirass, tightened his grip on his sword, but did not strike. His wings trembled before the paradox of an entity that held both thrones in contempt, yet commanded the backing of Lucifer himself.
Wiktor turned without haste. Leaving charred, smoking footprints upon the Vatican marble, he made his way toward the subterranean exit to return to Mazovia—to the fortress, to his newborn son, and into the arms of the Blood Countess.
A dozen or so days later. A house in Białołęka.
Cezary Wójcik stood by the espresso machine, pouring freshly brewed coffee into two porcelain mugs, while Adelaide, materialized in her flawless human form, scrolled through the latest news from the capital's theater scene on her phone. The golden chain upon her collarbones gleamed with a calm, warm luster. An uncommon, almost idyllic atmosphere hung over the entire house, far removed from Vatican raids and infernal intrigues.
The chime of the doorbell shattered the morning quiet.
Adelaide glanced through the glass panel beside the front door, then froze instantly, phone in hand. Her sapphire eyes widened in unmistakable, aristocratic outrage.
"Cezary, what in the devil's name is this?!" she snapped irritably, spinning around toward the lieutenant colonel. "Agnieszka is walking arm-in-arm with some strange, pampered dandy! She was supposed to be in her parents' fortified residence under the supposedly ironclad watch of Fugas the devil, yet the moment she steps over the threshold, she’s already found herself a man! She must have been bored out of her mind… But why on earth is she dragging him to our house?! We can hardly speak frankly about the Vatican or Wiktor’s child in front of an ordinary mortal! Cezary, we have to play normal human beings."
Wójcik set down his mug, furrowed his brow, and walked over to the door, opening it with seasoned police detachment.
On the threshold stood a laughing, radiant Agnieszka Burzyńska, and at her side strode a tall, broad-shouldered man with wide lats, a square jawline, and thick, dark hair. He looked like a model straight out of a magazine.
"Hey, Adelaide! Hey, Cezary!" the stranger greeted them in a deep, surprisingly confident voice, flashing a grin of even, strong teeth.
Adelaide tilted her chin haughtily, looking him up and down with a cold, scrutinizing gaze.
"How do you know our names, young man?" the mare enunciated icily.
The man burst into laughter, scratched the back of his neck with a bawdy, familiar manner, and shot a wink at the lieutenant colonel:
"Come on, how else? It's me, Fugas!"
A dead silence descended upon the entryway, so absolute that the only sound was the faint hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. Adelaide's hands dropped to her sides, her eyebrows shooting nearly into her hairline.
"What?!" she gasped, completely losing her composure. "What the holy fuck happened here?! You lost weight?! This is what you look like now?! Where did your lard go, where is that mountain of burnt tallow?! What is going on?!"
Cezary leaned against the doorframe and, for the first time in weeks, burst into genuine, loud laughter. He swept his eyes over the devil's chest muscles, sharply outlined by his fitted shirt, and shook his head in disbelief:
"Well, well… Agnieszka is an exceptionally alluring woman, so I understand the motivation, but let's not get carried away! You must have joined a gym and bought an annual pass! Confess, Fugas, what are you cycling? What gear found its way into that hellish bloodstream of yours? Trenbolone from the depths, or pure testosterone straight from Lucifer himself?"
"Oh, give it a rest, Cezary, don't even remind me—it turns my stomach!" Fugas huffed, stepping inside. "I can't touch that regular food at all! She serves me these fancy, healthy meals! Kale, lettuce, lean chicken breast with plain steamed white rice… Christ almighty, for an imp from the Abyss, this is torture worse than banishment! But…" The devil paused, an unfamiliar, warm grimace softening his rugged features. "…from Agnieszka's hands, even small, dietetic portions satisfy me a hundred times more than entire cold rooms of stolen beef. A gift from a pure heart literally burned away all that old lard."
Agnieszka laughed, stepping up to Adelaide and unceremoniously planting a kiss on her cheek in greeting. She slipped her arm under the transformed devil's, stroking his prominent bicep with open pride.
"We're together," the girl announced with a smile, looking into the stunned eyes of the Germanic princess. "It just kind of happened… We spent a few weeks under the same roof. The fat simply vanished under the influence of gardening and home cooking, revealing a devil worth sinning for! And to my genuine surprise, this devil actually knows how to talk to a woman and knows the most intricate details of history! So, bored out of my mind at home for weeks on end, I thought: why not?"
Half an hour later…
"So you go to church with your mother and father every other day?" Cezary asked, leaning against the kitchen island and passing steaming mugs to Agnieszka and Fugas.
"Yes, exactly that," the girl sighed, shaking her head in amusement. "Though I have this overwhelming impression that whenever I kneel in the confessional and start to confess, our good parish priest on the other side of the grille seriously considers calling an ambulance with a straitjacket from the psychiatric ward… Although recently, someone new appeared in the parish. An Italian, an elderly cleric, supposedly sent straight from the Vatican. And you know what? When I knelt before him, he listened to me in absolute, stone-cold silence. He didn't flinch, didn't sigh, didn't shake his head in pity. He looked at me completely differently… As if he knew perfectly well that none of this was a delusion."
Adelaide and Cezary exchanged a swift, knowing glance. A sharp investigator's vigilance flashed in the lieutenant colonel's eyes, and the golden chain against the mare’s décolletage trembled slightly from cold tension.
"The Vatican is sniffing around your family, girl," Adelaide said softly, tapping her nail against the countertop. "But don't worry. We'll tell you how Adamski handled the business in Rome and why we were all finally able to leave that damned house arrest."
"Seriously?!" Fugas froze, fork in hand, genuine bewilderment flaring in his dark eyes. "Wiktor resolved things with the Vatican all on his own? I've fallen completely out of touch with the news lately… Ever since I've been spending time with Agnieszka, I haven't contacted my sources in the Abyss. What the hell happened down there?"
"Listen closely, Fugas," Adelaide began with the predatory smile of a seasoned court intriguer. "Wiktor and Elizabeth were utterly convinced that their little reclaimed territory in Hell collapsed the moment Lucjanhir dragged them back to the mortal world. They thought the butchers and demons had ripped it to shreds. But picture this… that land survived! The other damned souls and the stronger entities who stayed behind didn't plunge back into senseless chaos. Quite the contrary: with iron consistency, they continued upholding the law and order that Wiktor established alongside the Countess!"
"What kind of law?" Fugas scoffed, scratching his muscular neck. "In the Depths, the only law is the whip of the strong!"
"That's just it! Who would have guessed that the damned souls who settled there would remember the reign of the Blood Countess and her consort with such boundless nostalgia?" Adelaide laughed melodiously, resting her elbows on the counter. "They instituted a hard ban: on their land, no one has the right to senselessly, just for sport, tear weaker souls to pieces once their sentence is served. Exhausted by eternal roaming, fleeing the unchecked sadism of stronger fiends, the damned from the farthest reaches of Hell began flocking to their borders the moment rumors of such a sanctuary reached them!"
"Flocking?" the bewildered imp echoed.
"Yes, flocking," the mare confirmed, leaning toward him. "Because now the situation has taken on an entirely new dimension. Lucjanhir himself confirmed it: Lucifer, seeing this phenomenon, began contemplating reforms! And he introduced them experimentally across several key regions of the Abyss. Those who have served their time and completed their ordained torments, and who don't want to wander the wastes defenseless, can now move safely into designated protected zones. And do you know what's most staggering about this? Lucifer's own power has surged at a terrifying rate from the sheer, unforced gratitude of millions of damned souls!"
Adelaide looked deep into the eyes of the transformed demon, deliberately emphasizing every word:
"Think logically, Fugas. If Wiktor, while merely a damned soul, managed to knock out an Archangel in the Vatican because he drew strength from the memory and faith of that one small territory… imagine what happens if all of Hell institutes a strict code protecting the damned once their punishment is complete! They will be grateful to Lucifer for the stability, and his power will explode. A time of great reform has arrived in Hell! Of course, the cauldrons, the tortures, the boiling pitch, and the penitential baths continue—justice for sins must be served. But once the sentence is finished, no stronger resident of the Abyss may butcher a weaker one for sport."
Fugas released a heavy breath. He planted both hands on the counter, his dilated pupils registering pure, primal shock.
"Holy shit…" he croaked, clutching his head. "That turns all of metaphysics on its head! The possibility that Wiktor and Báthory's newborn brat might become the Antichrist one day is probably the least of those stiffs' concerns up on High, now that Lucifer himself is growing so terrifyingly powerful off the reforms and the gratitude of the damned…"
"Precisely!" Adelaide agreed, the same predatory spark dancing in her eyes as when she had once observed palace coups in Bavaria. "From the very beginning, one of the primary elements of the Morning Star's punishment was that ceaseless, degrading squabbling with millions of howling wretches! His basalt palace, the dungeons, and the torture chambers for newly arrived souls were under his direct, iron rule. But the rest of the realm? Pure, bottomless chaos and the primitive law of the jungle. The cursed dumping ground of creation, ruled by no one."
The mare rested her hands on the kitchen island, leaning in toward the flabbergasted Fugas:
"And now? Something is happening that shakes the very foundations of the infernal underworld. The damned souls themselves, who in their subjective perception of time have spent centuries, some even millennia, at the bottom of the Depths, are voluntarily enlisting as enforcers of Lucifer's new law! Former soldiers, past judges, ruthless commanders… All those who tasted the rule of Wiktor and the Countess firsthand are organizing regular garrisons, establishing order and structure across the boundless wastes. As Lucjanhir says: safe zones are cropping up across Hell like mushrooms after rain!"
A silence settled over the Białołęka kitchen, so thick that only the faint breathing of a stunned Agnieszka could be heard.
"And that's not even the worst of it… or rather the best, depending on which side you're cheering for," Adelaide continued in a sultry whisper. "Do you remember the massive shackle on Lucifer's right leg? That indestructible fetter forged by divine wrath, which chained him to the throne and kept him imprisoned in the throne room ever since the Fall? That chain is beginning to lengthen, Fugas!"
"What the fuck are you talking about…" the fiend choked out, paling beneath his fresh, human tan. "The divine fetter was meant to be eternal and unyielding!"
"And yet it's yielding under the pressure of the raw, immense power granted to him by the unforced gratitude of millions of organized souls!" the mare proclaimed triumphantly. "Lucifer can now freely leave the throne room that was his solitary tomb for eons. Word is, just a few days ago he took his first steps outside, passed through the iron doors, and stood before the palace gates, looking out at the sulfurous sky and the basalt vault! He immediately summoned Marquis Ronove and issued a brief, undeniable decree: no more endless wasteland and chaotic torment. He commanded the immediate, organized construction of mighty cities of basalt and iron for the settled damned! Hell is ceasing to be a wild dumping ground of agony; it is becoming a stern, disciplined empire with its own army and damned citizenry."
Cezary Wójcik shook his head, finishing the last of his coffee. At the corners of his mouth lingered the bitter smile of a cop who was finally putting all the pieces of this macabre puzzle together:
"To think that this entire revolution in Hell started because one discharged Polish cop decided to set things straight in the afterlife, because he couldn't stand seeing the strong brutalize the weak right under his woman's nose… Heaven is really screwed now. Honestly… I don't feel sorry for them," Wójcik said flatly, setting his empty mug onto the counter with a loud clatter. "From a human perspective, I did something completely natural: I used my own body to shield a woman in labor and the helpless child in her womb. And what did those sanctimonious bastards up on High do? For that single instinct, they wrote me off without batting an eye, stamping me with a one-way ticket to the Depths. Down there, I only took two lashes from the whip, because Lucifer at least offered me some form of reward for what was fundamentally a good deed… He understood that better than the angels."
The lieutenant colonel folded his arms over his chest and looked out the window, a cold deliberation settling into his gaze:
"It makes you think. How many damned souls down there, condemned under sentences that were completely unjust in my eyes, spent centuries in Hell for petty offenses, for a sharp tongue, or for genuine matters of the heart that didn't fit into their heavenly rules? I think there are far more damned down there than chosen ones up on High… Though I have to say, I wouldn't want that chain to stretch too far or snap entirely. The prospect of Lucifer breaking completely free and walking the Earth one day still turns my blood cold."
Adelaide broke into musical laughter and waved her hand dismissively. The golden necklace rippled across her décolletage as she raised her chin with sensual pride.
"Oh, give it a rest, Cezary!" she scoffed with the utter condescension of an ancient aristocrat. "If things keep going like this, the Morning Star won't even think about climbing out here! Do you have any idea how much fucking work goes into running a realm that vast? I know it all too well—my husband ruled an entire country before I ended my own life. Politics, budgets, rebellious vassals, organizing supply lines, and keeping the aristocracy in line is a nightmare that drains every ounce of strength you have!"
The mare leaned her hip against the kitchen island, looking at the amused Fugas:
"Think about it logically: Lucifer now has billions of souls under him who, instead of screaming aimlessly in brimstone, are organizing regular provinces for him and raising basalt metropolises. Before he sorts out the administration, appoints judges, stations garrisons in the furthest corners of the Abyss, and cleans up that entire urban mess with Ronove, centuries will have passed! Domestic affairs will consume him entirely. He'll be so buried in infernal bureaucracy and maintaining the new order that he simply won't find a free afternoon for some idiotic apocalypse on our mortal soil. He wouldn't have the time even if he desperately wanted to!"
Source: r/u/Feeling_Pea5770 · by /u/Feeling_Pea5770