Sweetie Hell

Sweetie Belle's spirit sank considerably. Her ears flattened against her skull in reflection of her rapidly mounting distress. Her eyes widened in shock as she stared in utter dismay at this mysterious stranger barring the way to her salvation. Terror swirled in her breast, entangling itself with confusion and outrage. Who was this creature to deny her from seeing home again? What possible right did this lowly imp have to tell her "no," especially in light of all the trials and tribulations she had been forced to endure time and again just to get here? Her mouth flapped uselessly as her mind scrambled frantically to piece together a rebuttal that was more than inane babble, but also more articulate than a barrage of highly offensive language.

Sweetie Belle took a daring step forward, despite having almost no room left to move anywhere except backwards. She channeled her friends Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash to add strength to her voice as she addressed the stranger. "I talked my way past Asmodeus in his disgusting castle in the Circle of Lust. I outran Satan and his furies in the black forest of Anger. I faced down the Minotaur above the Circle of Violence, and when I walked through the Wood of Suicides I stared Samael in the eye and survived. And just a while ago I almost got eaten by that awful monster Orthrus when I first came to the Circle of Fraud. Now I don't know who you are, and honestly I'm past the point of caring, but if you think you can keep me from..."

"I was not speaking to you, you nattering little sow." The unicorn filly's tirade was smothered instantly, and all her courage evaporated in a flash. Sweetie watched the stranger's baleful glare shift slowly from her to Virgil, who had been standing by quietly the entire time. "You, poet, have not been invited into the house of our King. The child has audience with Lord Lucifer; you do not."

"I have accompanied Miss Belle since her arrival in Limbo," Virgil stated in a calm yet defensive tone. "I swore to..."

"Neither I nor Lucifer give a damn about whatever promises you've made to anyone," the stranger interrupted. "You will return to your proper place in Limbo now. I will bring the girl to the Morning Star." Spirit and devil locked eyes for several seconds, each challenging his opponent for dominance in this discussion. The stranger's empty white eyes narrowed, and his voice dropped to a threatening tone. "There is no negotiating this point. If you continue being stubborn, you will lose far more than access to your friend. That is a promise straight from the mouth of your King."

Virgil felt a very human stab of pride flare up in his abdomen, which compelled him to challenge the demon further. However, with a concerted effort of will, he abolished these thoughts and forfeited the argument with a slow blink of his eyes. The poet knelt before Sweetie Belle, who had been staring up at him expectantly through the length of the exchange, waiting for answers to all the questions currently swirling in her mind and nursing her mounting anxiety. "I..."

Sweetie Belle interrupted with a vehement shake of her head. "No. I don't care what Lucifer or this guy says; we go together."

"Child..."

"Virgil, no! We started this thing together. We will find another way to Lucifer."

"There is no other way."

"We don't know that. You can't just give up all because..."

"I don't have a choice."

Sweetie Belle stamped her hoof angrily. "We always have a choice!"

The winged stranger clenched his fists to contain his boiling anger. This conversation was going nowhere. The unicorn refused to be reasonable, and the shade was too afraid to grow a spine and make her listen. Together they were wasting valuable time, which was already short thanks to them taking so long to get this far. His mind made up, the devil snatched Sweetie Belle around her belly and dashed away to the next Circle with a single flap of his wings. He ignored the child's outraged protests about being denied a chance to bid Virgil a proper farewell, his full attention focused on reaching Lucifer's prison quickly. As they descended, the wind started to pick up and very rapidly grow stronger, making flight increasingly more difficult. The stranger cursed his bad luck. The runt and her pathetic attachment to Virgil had cost the demon his only chance of delivering his burden to the Morning Star in a timely fashion. Now they would be forced to walk the four rounds of Cocytus down to Hell's center.

Before the roaring wind could have a chance to knock him from the sky, the stranger touched down on solid ground and dispassionately dropped his cargo upon the ice. He looked across the vast frozen wastes and the pitiless creatures condemned to this Circle, and sneered bitterly.

"This is your fault," he groused to his young companion. "We should be at Lucifer's domain by now. I should be flying, but thanks to you, I am forced to walk like a human."

"If you had just let Virgil come with us, we would be there by now," Sweetie Belle countered.

The demon whirled on her, the red in his eyes flaring to almost completely consume the white. "Did you not listen to a word I said earlier, you little idiot? He...is...not...welcome! You are the one who is displaced, not Virgil. You are the one who seeks a path back home, not Virgil. You are the one who needs to speak with the King. Virgil understood this, I understood this, everyone in this fucking miserable hole understood this! Somehow you are the only one who can't seem to grasp the concept." He stopped himself before he could say more, took a deep breath that calmed him only slightly, and then faced the road ahead once more. "This argument accomplishes nothing, and Lucifer still waits on you. If we must walk, then let us be quick about it." The stranger started forward, and Sweetie Belle, though still quite angry with him, walked beside him with surprisingly no trouble in spite of the ice.

"So what's your name? Since we're stuck together until we get to the end of the Circle, I don't want to keep calling you 'Mister' or 'Winged Jerk-Guy' every time I have a question," Sweetie Belle said once her anger had subsided enough to want to speak with her new guardian.

The demon rolled his eyes rather than utter a snide, biting reply, and then answered his companion's query. "Abaddon. Other names I am known by include Kin-slayer, Betrayer, Murderer, Deceiver, the list goes on."

"I'm guessing you fought in the war," Sweetie Belle presumed.

"I didn't just fight in the war; I almost won the damn thing," Abaddon said with not a little pride in his tone. "The Renegades had superior numbers, but the Faithful were better trained and more organized. Lucifer's little rebellion would have ended the moment they met the shields of Michael's vanguard, had it not been for me and a few hundred other double-agents lurking within the ranks of the Faithful. Moments before the two armies converged, I gave the command for my men to start sowing some chaos." Abaddon's tone became wistful and excited as he recounted his tale. "They spilled blood wherever they could find it before quickly being killed themselves, but the damage was already done. The Faithful became paranoid and started turning on one another. All their training amounted to shit when they suspected any one of the men and women standing beside them could ram a sword through their skulls at any moment. The shield wall weakened as the forward guard tried to figure out what was happening, and Lucifer's army rolled over them like an unstoppable tide. Before Michael could reorganize his forces, the Faithful were all but annihilated."

Then, Abaddon's tone shifted into hate and rage. "The only thing that saved them, that had the power to bring the rebellion to a screeching halt, was God. The son of a bitch cast His aura across all of Heaven, and everyone was compelled to drop their weapons and kneel. Once He had everyone back under control, God did what He does best and judged every single angel in Heaven like the self-absorbed prick He is. Lucifer, the rebels, and everyone who had refused to give their lives for God was thrown into Hell."

Not since Beelzebub had any fallen angel Sweetie Belle met spoken of fighting in the Angel War with such delight. Abaddon was proud of the terrible things he had done, and sounded as if he would do it all again exactly the same way were he granted the opportunity. He felt no shame for betraying his kind, for slaughtering his family, in the pursuit of dethroning God. She already harbored an intense dislike for the devil, but now Sweetie Belle found herself loathing the despicable creature as well. In spite of this, she would not allow her opinion of Abaddon to stop her from learning all she could from him before their time together was done. She let this discussion end for now so she could focus her attention on her surroundings.

For as far as the eye could see, a single massive lake of ice was the dominating feature of this Circle. Stuck fast in the frozen water of Cocytus were the souls of every person who had broken the special bonds linking them to those who never deserved such heartless treatment. Arranged around the outside edges of the lake were what first appeared to be massive towers of solid ice, but after taking more time to study with a second glance, were revealed to be gigantic creatures of vaguely human appearance. Their gargantuan forms were entirely immobilized except for the mouth, from which the mighty beasts could moan and howl with remorse and hatred, which Sweetie Belle quickly deduced was the source of the gale-force wind that had grounded Abaddon.

"What are those things?" she inquired of her guardian.

Abaddon looked up to better see what she was referring to. "Giants. Primordial creatures that represent the unbalanced, unchecked elements of nature. They are instinct and wild animal impulse given form. When God found He could not control them, He imprisoned them here in the deepest part of Hell so He could shape the earth to fit His personal image of perfection."

"Do they have names?" Sweetie Belle asked.

"In a way. Among themselves, no. Each one knows who the other is, so they have no need for something as trivial as names. They had names bestowed on them as a means to dominate them," Abaddon said in reply. He noticed Sweetie Belle's quizzical expression and tried to explain what he meant. "The very act of giving something a name is to exert control over it. Knowing the name of a thing or a person gives you power to force your will upon it. Have you ever spoken someone's name and they turn to look at you? That is power. You got their attention; you stopped them from whatever they were doing, saying, or thinking, and now have that person waiting on you in expectation of something from you, be it a request, a command, an inquiry, an observation, or even nothing at all. In speaking their name, you exerted control over them, if only for a brief moment."

This was something Sweetie Belle had never thought about before. She had often asked of adults back in Ponyville why certain things had certain names, but she'd never considered that names themselves were a control device. Something not to give unknown things definition and purpose, but to exert dominance and assume authority over them. Out of curiosity, she requested to know the names bestowed upon these colossi.

Abaddon pointed to each one and identified them, additionally noting any specific deeds they were responsible for prior to their internment in Hell. "There's Nimrod, who commissioned the construction of the Tower of Babel, meant to touch the fields of Heaven. For his hubris, God punished him and all mankind by distorting Earth's one united language into many before scattering them across the globe. To Nimrod's left are Briareus, Ephialtes and his brother Otus. The three of them fought in the war to overthrow the Olympian gods. Resting there is Antaeus, the once invincible son of Gaia, who was eventually slain by the Greek hero Heracles. Those two there are Tityos and Typhon. The former insulted Zeus by attempting to rape Leto, mother of Apollo and Artemis. The latter fought Zeus in an epic battle to decide who would rule the cosmos. He lost, and then found himself buried under a mountain for his trouble."

This topic of discussion, though immensely fascinating to Sweetie Belle, promised to be something which would take an enormous amount of time to fully dissect and process, thus impeding her from learning more about Lucifer and the Circle of Treachery. Sweetie forced herself to redirect her attention to the frigid lake, and the souls who were stuck in the ice. "So what exactly did all these people do to get sent down here?"

Abaddon chuckled mockingly at the plight of the miserable dead. "God bless human ingenuity. Like the other Circles in deep Hell, mankind saw fit to divide the sin of treachery evenly among four parties. Currently we are crossing the ring of Caina. Here can be found those who betrayed their own families, for whatever perverse reasons had justified them at the time."

"Like you?"

"That would have hurt if I cared what you think, or if I had even the smallest regret for what I did."

Sweetie Belle dismissed Abaddon and looked around at the guilty dead. They were planted in the ice up to their necks, allowing them to bow their heads away from the giants' howling breath, and thus saving their eyes from freezing shut under the tears they wept. Sweetie took care to gingerly step around the sinners, while Abaddon freely kicked them as he passed by. Except for two in particular, whom Abaddon knelt beside and caressed their cheeks as one would do for a beloved pet.

"Cain, Mordred. You two are looking well," he said with genuine affection.

"Free me from this forsaken place, oh merciful God! Let me join my mother and father in Heaven! Allow me to see dearest Abel again!" wailed the head of Cain. Mordred kept his silence.

"God can't hear you down here, son." Abaddon patted both sinners before standing up once more. "I must leave you boys, but I should be back soon. In the meantime, try to think of something else to talk about, will you Cain? I'm sure Mordred is just as tired of hearing about your family as I am."

Sweetie Belle caught up to Abaddon's side and proceeded to ask him about the two men he had shown such affection that was withheld from the rest of the sinners. "Just a couple local celebrities. Cain is the first son of Adam and Eve, murdered his brother Abel and then lied about it to God. As for Mordred, he murdered his uncle Arthur, the King of Britain. Actually he dealt Arthur a mortal wound before Arthur slew him, during a tremendous battle."

"Seems like a lot of people in Hell are here because of war," Sweetie Belle observed.

"War is the great redeemer, or so many humans prefer to believe over the horrid truth; that it's nothing but the senseless yet somehow globally sanctioned slaughter of the human species. Mass murder with a cause. The thought process is that battle, whether you live through it or die, can somehow purge one of all sin so long as they fought with honor," Abaddon said, after which he laughed sardonically at the very idea.

The pair pushed onward across the frigid plane. The wind seemed to pause a moment before it resumed again, but from a different direction. As Sweetie Belle walked, she almost failed to notice that the heads of the sinners were now fixed firmly in the ice with their faces exposed to the wind.

"Who are these people?" she asked.

"This is the ring of Antenora. These pitiful bastards committed treason against political affiliates, cities, or their own country," Abaddon replied. He spied one face in particular and brought his ward to meet him. "Like this coward here. Say 'hello', Antenor."

"Vex me not, fell spirit. I did what was needed to ensure the survival of my house. Of my family," the man groused in his own defense.

"You did what you wanted to save your own skin. I murdered my people, but you doomed yours to ruin. I saw my reflection in the eyes of every brother and sister I cut down. I saw their anger and their pain, and their confusion as I killed them. Did you even see what the Greeks did to your city and its people? Or was the gold they paid you enough of a distraction from the slaughter?" Abaddon said in rebuttal. The harsh criticism in his voice could not have been more apparent, or more genuine. The Kin-slayer honestly despised this man and what he had done while living. In this one moment, Sweetie Belle saw Abaddon as the paragon of justice and integrity he had once been.

The fallen angel noticed his companion looking at him, and then he noticed the way she was looking at him. He rolled his shoulders and directed his own gaze forward. "I'm a warrior, and as a warrior, the one thing I hate most is cowardice. My condemnation of Antenor stems from that, and nothing else. So you can stop looking at me like you see a glimmer of redemption deep down inside me or whatever."

Sweetie Belle nodded her head as the pair started on their way once again. "So what did Antenor do to make you hate him so much?"

"Ages ago, Antenor provided counsel to Priam, King of Troy. When the lady Helen was stolen from her husband Menelaus, who was King of Sparta, Antenor pleaded with Priam to negotiate her return in order to prevent war. Needless to say Priam refused, and Menelaus rode to war with support from his brother Agamemnon, who was king of some citadel or something named Mycenae. The conflict lasted ten miserable years, before the Greeks finally managed to infiltrate the previously impenetrable walls of Troy." Abaddon tossed his head back to indicate the man he had just been chastising. "Antenor was the two-faced son of a bitch who made their sweeping victory possible, and in return his home was spared from all the sacking, carnage, and other mayhem. His neighbors, friends and confidants, his king...everyone he knew was slaughtered or worse, and any children butchered like lambs. For the sake of saving his own ass, Antenor condemned every Trojan man, woman, and child to a very unkind death."

Sweetie Belle reflected quietly on this for a while. Though she bore Abaddon no measure of affection, she understood his feelings for Antenor and his actions. The man said he was only trying to keep his family safe, which itself is an admirable thing to stand for...but to let an entire city of people be murdered. Even for the purpose of saving one's family, the price seemed far too high. She wasn't sure she could totally take Abaddon's side and think of Antenor as a coward since the man claimed to have been acting with good intent, but neither could she entirely forgive Antenor for the death and misery he wrought with his actions.

Further across the frozen fields the pair advanced. In this part of the Circle, the dead were stuck in the ice flat on their backs with their eyes sealed shut by tears turned to ice in the face of the howling wind. "We now find ourselves crossing the ring of Ptolomaea. Here you'll find those who turned traitor against their guests."

"So they invited people into their homes before killing them?" Sweetie Belle presumed questioningly.

"It is the most common method," Abaddon confirmed.

Sweetie Belle was quiet a moment while she cast her gaze across the whole of the Circle of Treachery. As she took in the sight of so many guilty souls condemned for betraying their fellowmen, she found herself pitying them. "Why? Why do they do it?"

Abaddon shrugged his shoulders. "There are as many plausible explanations for mankind's duplicitous nature as there are stars in the sky. Most of them turned traitor in the name of political advantage. Lots of students of the political arena down here. The rest were motivated by greed, envy, love and/or lust, pride, anger, pure desperation, or even no specific reason at all."

"But can't God, like...I don't know...fix the humans or something? Can't he just make it so humans don't betray each other anymore? Or commit any of the other sins?" Sweetie asked of her guardian.

"He certainly would have if such a thing were still possible," the Kin-slayer said in reply.

Sweetie Belle peered up at Abaddon inquiringly. "He can't change the humans? Why not?" Her tone was one of utter disbelief. Everything Virgil had told her about God had painted a portrait of a benevolent entity capable of doing anything. What possible force could conceivably have the power to defy a being as allegedly mighty as God?

Abaddon made no reply except to point out that they had entered the fourth subsection of Treachery. "This is Judecca, named for the infamous Judas Iscariot. These are some of the most miserable sons of bitches in all Hell. They are the traitors of their lords and benefactors."

Here, in this part of the Circle, save for the wind, all was eerily silent. The prisoners were completely frozen beneath the ice, countless bodies locked within a singular massive frigid tomb, their bodies and faces twisted into all manner of expressions of agony. This was an ominous place, where hope did not dare to tread. Sweetie Belle could not find it in herself to pity these souls. She could sense that none of them were here by accident, and that every single body suspended in the ice more than deserved this fate.

"So..." Sweetie Belle's voice echoed surprisingly loud in this forsaken place, causing her to pause a moment before resuming her query. "So these people betrayed their kings?"

"Pretty much," said Abaddon. His voice did not echo in the quiet. "Kings, emperors, presidents, czars, pharaohs, chieftains. By whatever name you attribute to whomever is in charge of your lands or nation, everyone here fucked those people over very horribly. For reasons that seem so small and ridiculous now that they have been properly rewarded for their sins." The former angel chuckled derisively at the scene. Beneath the howl of the giants' breath and the gentle tapping of small hooves on the ice, a silence was conceived within the conversational void. It persisted for a time before Sweetie Belle attempted a new topic of discussion.

"Why did you fight for Lucifer during the war?" she asked.

"I didn't," Abaddon replied tersely.

"But you just said a while ago..."

"I didn't fight for Lucifer. He found me, tried to sell me the same shit he'd spoon-fed to Satan, Mammon, Beelzebub, and everyone else who would listen. I would have told him to fuck off if he hadn't dropped a very important piece of trivia on me concerning the true purpose of the angels," Abaddon said.

"What was it?" Sweetie pressed of her guardian.

The wings on Abaddon's back bristled irritably. "That we're slaves. We were created to serve God, to worship Him and love Him without question for all eternity. Servitude is thrust upon us at the moment of our birth, and we accept it with blind adoration because it's all we know. For the vast majority of angels, living for God is our sole purpose for being. The more important ones like Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and others have secondary duties entrusted to them. I was unlucky enough to greet life as one of the former. Another empty-headed thrall born with a golden chain around my neck."

"What did you do when Lucifer told you that?"

"Nothing, at first. I called him a liar and threatened to tell God about it, but Lucifer did nothing to stop me or shut me up. He only smiled, nodded his head, and told me to do what I thought was right." Abaddon stopped walking, which in turn forced Sweetie Belle to stop and listen. "I never did tell Him. For a long time I heard a voice in the back of my mind nagging at me, compelling me to really think about what Lucifer had said...and wonder if he was right. Many days passed, and with each one my doubts and anger grew. Eventually my anger turned to hatred, which was directed squarely at God and the other angels. I hated my kin for their blind obedience to a complete bastard of a father who built us entirely to serve, and for the stupid overeager smiles they wore while they as they slaved away. Then...my hatred became a desire for action.

"I sought Lucifer out. When I found him, he acted as though he'd been expecting me. He greeted me with a warm smile and listened intently as I confided my thoughts and feelings to him. I remember his face becoming a mask of grave seriousness when I told him I was ready for change. He moved in very close to me, and in a whisper reminded me that everything I had said was talk of rebellion, that there would be no going back when the fighting began, and that I would certainly face expulsion from Heaven if we lost the battle. This was nothing to speak carelessly about, he said; the fate of the angels, and indeed the entire world, would change forever the very second the rebellion kicked off. I stared Lucifer in the eye when I told him, in no uncertain terms, that I would fight to whatever end. Regardless of whether we won or lost, whether I lived or died, my only wish was to be free. We joined hands as brothers in arms. It was with his help that I devised the plot to weaken the Faithful's defense...and it was with his help that I became the most hated creature in Heaven or Hell."

Sweetie Belle had been sitting in rapt silence before Abaddon, her eyes wide and ears fully erect and forward with interest. When he had finished his tale, she asked a question regarding his last statement. "Why do people hate you here?"

Abaddon shrugged his shoulders impartially before he, and by extension Sweetie Belle, started walking again. "Once a traitor, always a traitor. That's what it boils down to. To every demon and fell angel in the Woeful Realm, I'm a two-faced backstabbing son of a bitch. A turncoat with no genuine allegiances to anyone. It helps that I haven't made a secret of my dislike for Lucifer since being condemned to Hell."

Sweetie felt herself automatically forming the words to ask why Abaddon despised Lucifer, but quickly held her tongue before she could since the answer was painfully obvious, and she was certain he would have viciously mocked her for it. She thought for a moment, and then to ask a decidedly more intelligent question. "Do you know why Lucifer rebelled against God?"

"Besides the whole angels-are-slaves-thing? I don't know and I never cared to begin with," Abaddon harshly stated in reply. "As I said earlier, I only fought for my freedom. I had already written off the rest of my brothers and sisters as lost causes. I didn't give a damn about them, or Lucifer, or anyone else."

"Then I guess you really do belong in Hell," Sweetie Belle said not a little critically.

"Thank you. Certainly beats being a smiling, blank-minded servant to a king with the world's biggest inferiority complex," the Kin-slayer said with a grateful nod.

The dead disappeared from the ice. It was not immediately apparent that the party had crossed an invisible threshold where sinners were not permitted. Roughly three minutes passed before Sweetie Belle noticed the phenomenon out of the periphery of her vision, and that was when she realized the dead were completely absent from this part of the field. What's more is the wind had softened noticeably, as if the giants themselves were afraid of disturbing what lay at the center of the Circle of Treachery. The center of all Hell. Abaddon brought their progress to a halt at a location that seemed entirely unremarkable compared to the surrounding space.

"The rest is up to you. Lucifer's waiting for you just ahead," the former angel said.

"By myself?" Sweetie asked, slightly anxious.

"You're the one who wants to talk to him so bad. As such, I'm not welcome in whatever conversations you two are about to have," Abaddon said. After a brief pause he added, "Also the seraphs disturb the shit out of me."

" 'Seraphs'?" But when the young filly turned to look at her guardian for clarification, he was gone. Sweetie Belle looked all around her, but she was the only body, living or dead, in this part of Hell. Looking down at the ice directly beneath her hooves, neither her reflection nor her shadow were present. For the first time since she awoke in Limbo, Sweetie was alone, and it was a disturbingly palpable sensation. It was like being the sole occupant of an entire world. Anxiety and dread quickly swelled in her breast, hastening her breathing almost to the point of passing out. She desperately wished for any form of company; live body or dead, angel or devil, friendly or hostile. She didn't even have to talk to them, nor they to her. Just the mere presence of someone or something else in this empty place would bring her comfort.

Sweetie's ears twitched. She thought she heard something, but for the moment was unsure exactly what. She focused on the direction the sound came from and concentrated, focusing all her attention on the noise so she might discern its identity. There it was again; faint, but slightly greater in volume. It was soft, melancholy, yearning for...something. It was a song. Someone deeper in the frozen wastes was singing. Sweetie Belle strode cautiously forward, following the depressing melody and daring to hope that she was not walking straight into a trap.