different than any other Demon Major, am I? Surely you have better things to do than to sit about in such 'deep' thought. How is the northern border these days?'
'Secure as always. To be truthful, Lord, I was also trying to remember you as you were. I only saw you in the Above a few times, and those were from afar.'
'That is strange, Eligor. I was trying to remember that, myself, a while back. I almost could. Much time has passed.' Sargatanas sat back down. An unidentifiable expression clouded his features.
Eligor closed his book. He could see some deep emotion working at his lord.
'Tell me, my lord, if you would. What was he like?' Eligor asked. 'I was just a lance-wing in the War. I never met him. And you were so ... close to him.'
'Him. Him I can remember. After all this time. I can see him just as he was. Lucifer,' said Sargatanas. 'I have not said his name aloud in millennia.' The Demon Major paused, looking up toward the vaulted ceiling. 'He was the best of us, Eligor. Something truly special among us. He shone with ... with a ferocity that made us pale by comparison.'
'Everyone I have spoken with, or read, says the same of him,' said Eligor.
'He was beloved by the Throne and he knew it. But that was not enough,' Sargatanas said as if he had not heard Eligor. 'He was not content. There was something that he had to fulfill. He called it ... his restless vision.'
Eligor looked quizzically at Sargatanas.
'He could not understand the purpose behind the creation of humanity. They seemed, he said, like a new and unthinking child, suddenly thrust into the world and loved just as much as the old. Because of this he felt they were a threat and Lucifer wanted the Throne and all of us to see their potential flaws. Many of us agreed with him. Too many.'
'Or not enough, depending on one's point of view,' said Eligor. But his attempt at vague levity fell on deaf ears.
'Eligor, what we did was wrong. Catastrophically wrong. Of that I am now certain. Lucifer's truest gift—no, his greatest curse—was his ability to convince us to follow him. Of course, there were far too many of us who needed no excuse to go to War. The rhetoric, the very words were like shards of ice; once plunged into you they melted and flowed deep within, permeating your soul with their coldness. It was impossible not to hear them again and again, even in moments of rest. It seems never to have occurred to us what we might lose if we heeded them. I, for one, was entirely seduced.'
Sargatanas was silent, his head bowed.
'My lord, it all made sense at the time.'
'And now?' Sargatanas' voice was a husky whisper. Embers floated languorously from his head.
Eligor shrugged.
'Now we must try to be what we are, not what we were,' said Sargatanas. 'That, at least, is the theory.'
'And what of humanity?'
Sargatanas slowly shook his head.
'Look around us—look at them, at what 'knowledge' has granted them. They are the saddest casualty of our War. They have become everything Lucifer might have hoped for. A triumph of disappointment to those Above.'
Eintsaras walked to their table and, with a curious look upon his face, placed an old, heavy book atop the stack before Sargatanas. A small cloud of its dust puffed up and dissipated after a moment.
Eligor nodded. It was true; whether he had been prophetic or hopeful, Lucifer's world had come to pass. Could he have dreamt that it would have failed so spectacularly?
Eligor picked up the sheet of vellum he had been taking notes on. It twitched in his hand.
' 'He Fell, and it was like the stars torn down ... the entire sky was afire with his descent,' ' read Eligor. ' 'I saw him, like a bolt of lightning, streak down toward Hell ... ,' and, 'Lord Lucifer Fell, slow and deliberately, a trail of fire behind him ...' ' He put the page down and looked directly at Sargatanas. 'Which of these is true? They cannot all be.'
'I do not know,' said Sargatanas, shaking his head. 'My feeling is that there is probably some truth to all of them. Perhaps at various points in his descent it appeared differently. We all saw things when we Fell. The agony did things to all of us.'
'Where do you think he is, my lord? In hiding—ashamed? Or waiting? Or when he Fell, was he destroyed outright for his efforts?'
'I could not begin to say. Our very first Council of Majors addressed that question. I, like all the others of my rank, sent out countless parties to search for him. Some never returned. We found nothing. Not even a hint of where he might have Fallen.'
Eligor picked up a carved jet book-weight and rotated it, considering what he had just heard. It still seemed impossible to him that Lucifer had simply vanished.
Sargatanas stood, straightening the heavy folds of his robes. The charred seraphic wing-stumps that floated behind his shoulder blades flexed and relaxed. He picked up the book Eintsaras had just laid down and put a hand on his captain's shoulder.
'We can manage without him and his gilded words. This is no place for them. Hell rages around us and we have risen to its challenge and, in so doing, we have tempered ourselves against sentimentality. Against nostalgia, against the memories. And that is how it should be, Eligor,' Sargatanas said, standing. 'That is how it has to be.'
Eligor smiled and his chest filled with devotion to his master. He was truly privileged to be in Sargatanas' company.
