Sweetie Hell

The duo of poet and pony now strode through an immense field within a grand mausoleum decorated by sarcophagi, tombs, and coffins as trees and shrubbery would accent the scene of a lush and vibrant countryside. The naked burial crates, though individually shaped with unique craftsmanship by unknown makers, were all cast from iron which glowed a brilliant red from fires that heated them from below. The lids which would normally have completed the coffins were removed and had been spirited away to elsewhere, granting passersby an unobstructed view of the sinners writhing and wailing within.

"Behold the heretics," Virgil said with a sweeping gesture of his arm.

"What did they do to be sent here?" Sweetie Belle requested to know.

"They preached that there is no second life after death, that the human soul dies with the body upon expiration," Virgil explained. "In punishment God makes them to lie in a bed of His wrath until the End of Days."

"What happens then?" the young filly pressed.

"The tombs shall be sealed, and the sinners trapped forever even as the rest of Hell's imprisoned rise to meet the Lord's final judgment."

Sweetie Belle looked around at the scattered coffins and contemplated the gravity of this punishment. Though it most certainly must be painful, given how loudly the dead gave voice to their agony, this did not seem as severe a punishment as she had expected to see. Virgil had mentioned more than once that the torments of lower Hell were far worse than in the aft section. So far, even with the promise of endless pain after the End of Days, the real view was less than the picture Virgil had painted with his words. She brought this point up with her guide in request of an explanation.

"Heresy is the denial of God's existence, which is considered a form of violence against the deity. However, it is a lesser degree than what you shall see further on, and thus the punishment is less severe. It is also important to note that the sin of heresy can be conducted in multiple fashions. By comparison these sad creatures are arguably more fortunate than the heretics found deeper in this chasm of woe," Virgil expounded to his ward.

As they pressed on Sweetie's ears turned this way and that in response to certain cries in particular which resounded from some of the coffins. These were not the feral anguished cries of an animal in pain, but coherent statements being exclaimed by the people trapped in their burning graves. Many of them Sweetie Belle could not understand because they were spoken in a language she was unfamiliar with. Those who did speak a tongue strangely similar to Equestrian common had some rather interesting things to say.

"That rat fuck Macgregor! Hell's going to be a vacation compared to what the Brothers will do when they learn the truth!"

"You don't know what you're doing! Don't let her marry that man! He'll kill our daughter, God damn it, please!"

"Go back to school, son. If you want to live to see forty, for the love of Christ go back to school."

They cursed names, begged for favorable outcomes to certain situations, prayed for fortune or misfortune to visit friends or family or business affiliates, and so much more from within their metal crates. Sweetie Belle listened to them all, and was utterly confused by what she was witnessing. "What's going on?" she inquired of her guide. "What are these people doing?"

"The Lord Almighty has seen fit to grant the dead total knowledge of the future, but has made them asquint to events which are current or have already happened," Virgil informed her.

"Is it totally against the rules for them to ever know the past or present?" the young filly pressed.

"Only through knowledge shared by an outside party can they learn such things. I leave it to you to guess how often that happens," Virgil said.

Sweetie Belle said nothing more as she and her guide proceeded through the cemetery grounds. The sarcophagi laid out the winding road before them, eventually bringing them to pass by a circle of cleared ground wherein stood an enormous specimen of man. He was a rugged sort who would have stood ten feet tall if he hadn't been kneeling, with tan skin and raven-black hair on his head and face, had an admirable musculature, and wore light armor so rusted and tarnished it was impossible to tell the metal's type. Before the man sat a helmet that was entirely untouched by the effects of weather and time, but it did have a hole in the space directly between and above the eyes. Upon closer inspection, it was possible to see a deep indent in the giant's forehead in the exact same position and shape as the hole in the helmet.

"There sits Goliath of Gath," Virgil said without needing to be asked.

"What happened to him?" Sweetie Belle inquired as she gazed upon the man.

"He was killed in battle by a shepherd-boy named David, who would later become king of Israel. David slew Goliath with a single stone fired from his sling, piercing the Philistine warrior's helmet and knocking him dead," Virgil said in reply.

Sweetie Belle looked up at the poet with a mask of utter disbelief. "Are you serious? That huge man died after getting hit in the head with a rock?"

Virgil nodded his head. "'Twas the power of God which imbued David with the strength to fell mighty Goliath."

Sweetie Belle shifted her sight back to the warrior, who ignored the pair as they passed him by. "What's he doing?"

"Contemplating the nature and power of God, who so easily smote the greatest living challenge to His supremacy. It is why Goliath is here," Virgil answered. The young unicorn imparted a look of confusion on him, compelling the poet to elaborate on this lesson. "Goliath represents the struggle between God and the ancient pagan cults which had been leading mankind down the inglorious path to damnation, a path paved by the blood of people and animals sacrificed to appease volatile deities. Where these cults promoted violence, the Lord sought only to spread a message of harmony, kindness, and brotherhood between all His children."

Sweetie Belle pondered this for some while. It was difficult for her to truly understand Virgil's talk of cults, but she immediately recognized the importance God seemed to place on the principles of peace and harmony between kinsmen. The state of unity within Equestria was founded on the friendship born between the three pony tribes so many generations in the past after countless years of animosity and conflict. It seemed God had been attempting to achieve something similar by doing away with these cults Virgil spoke of.

As the pair pushed onward their surroundings gradually changed from a field to the inner belly of a penitentiary. The floor was polished black stone with rows of closed cells stacked one on top of the other, stairs which led to the upper and lower sections of the prison, and roughly twenty armed guards patrolling each floor. Within each cell was housed a group of heretics who writhed and screamed in terrible agony as their bodies were consumed by undying flames. Temperatures rose to such a high degree that the bars keeping the prisoners penned in glowed almost neon orange. As Sweetie Belle listened to the wailing dead, she realized that there was a strange synchronicity in their calls. The more she listened, the more she also came to hear something akin to coherent speech, though the language was unsurprisingly foreign to the unicorn. Unbeknownst to her it was a hymn the sinners were singing, or rather a corrupted, macabre version of one.

The guards appeared as towering men with the heads of lions, only their flesh was a very dark shade of red edging on black, their eyes blazing yellow, and their manes were dancing infernos. In their armored paws they carried a greatsword with a wide blade and a long spike drawn from the cropped head. Sweetie often had to maneuver around the patrols lest she be crushed underfoot by the imposing creatures. They did not march with the intent to harm her; in fact they behaved as if neither she nor her guide existed at all. The beasts glared about themselves with wide-eyed attentiveness that bordered on paranoia, constantly alert for the slightest hint of danger.

Virgil noticed his young ward staring at the guards in wonder. "They are fallen angels. Former members of the cherubim, to be precise; the vanguard of Heaven's defenses," he informed her. He passed an impartial gaze upon the behemoths before making one more remark. "Now these once beautiful gladiators serve the Light-bringer as his protectors."

"Can we ask them about the war?" Sweetie Belle inquired.

"I'm afraid not. Cherubs do not possess the capacity for speech, their entire purpose for being to destroy anything which presents a direct threat to the life of their master," Virgil answered.

The young filly looked at the guards again with an expression of worry. "Sure hope that doesn't include me."

Virgil dismissed her fears with a wave. "You're as safe as houses, dear child. If they had even the slightest suspicion you were here to harm Lucifer, you'd already be dead."

"That's...comforting," Sweetie supposed, though she tried to keep at least one of the guards in her sight at all times just to be safe. "So how many types of angels are there?" She asked to change the subject.

"Only a handful," replied the poet. "Highest and foremost of the choirs is the seraphim, who tend the Throne of Creation and enact God's will where it concerns the bureaucracy of Heaven. Next are the archons and archangels, who personify all of the core qualities of just and righteous living in addition to observing the political, commercial, and military matters of the human kingdom. The cherubim make up the third choir, and lastly are the malakhim, whom God entrusts with dispensing His grace and wrath upon the humans."

Sweetie Belle was thoughtful for a time. "Mammon said he used to be the angel of generosity. Beelzebub said he was the angel of...temperance, I think. And you told me Satan had been the angel of kindness. Did they used to be archangels?"

"I think you mean archons, and yes they did," Virgil said.

"What kind of angel was Lucifer?"

It was the poet's turn to take a moment to reflect, however it was not long before he delivered his reply. "I do not know," he said with a shrug. "I am not certain any of the choirs existed prior to Lucifer's birth. Perhaps you can ask him when we see him."

The duo continued onward, the penitentiary around them soon becoming a barren wasteland of crumbled walls, cracked floors, and cells which had caved in on themselves long ago. There was no light anywhere save for that which emanated from Virgil's naturally luminous form, and the road ahead turned into a series of climbs and deviations from what should have been a straight path. Any bodies were either buried deep within the rubble, or had been cleared away following whatever grand event had destroyed this wing of the prison.

"What happened here?" Sweetie Belle asked, her voice echoing in the quiet. Dust, which had sat undisturbed for many long years, fell like tiny waterfalls as the sound of Sweetie's words shook it free.

"Many years ago," Virgil began, "God sent a savior to the earth in order to lead humanity on the true path to Heaven. This man was granted extraordinary power to perform miracles meant to prove the existence and nature of the Lord to mankind. I will spare you a great deal of the main story which ultimately led this person to be arrested by fearful lords and summarily executed. His death shook all the world, from the tallest spires in Heaven to the lowest dungeons of Hell. The destruction you see here is the direct result of that quake. This is the harrowing of Hell."

For Sweetie Belle, it was incredible to think that one person's death could have such a calamitous effect on the world. Then again, if this man really was as powerful and important as Virgil said, perhaps it was not as far-fetched as it sounded. The Princesses of Equestria are both incredibly powerful beings who literally control the cycles of the sun and moon, and Luna is even the warden of the dreamscape as well. Sweetie was confident that if even one of them were to die suddenly, the consequences would be extremely destructive for the entire nation, possibly even the world. The thought of both ruling sisters unexpectedly passing away, and the resulting turmoil which would follow, did not bear thinking about.

Before long the wreckage of the prison opened out to a large chamber where the walls contained thousands more coffins which burned with everlasting fire, and the souls of the damned screamed from within them. A staircase led down from this high point to parts below and unknown, and wound around an enormous robed man whose stately countenance had been immortalized in stone. Virgil led the journey down the steps, along the way enlightening his young ward as to the statue's identity. It was Epicurus, the man who first posited the notion of permanent death for body and soul alike, who in the Circle of Heresy loomed over his descendants in a mock facsimile of how God stood over all mankind. At the base of the stairs was a bridge which spanned the breadth of several small ditches which each housed large numbers of burning heretics. So dense were the crowds that they could neither sit nor move, only stand in one place and suffer the agonizing bite of hellfire. More of the leonine guards kept watch atop the ditches, but their attention was not on the sinners below. Like their brothers above, they secured the road which led to Hell's king and kept a weather eye for travelers with nefarious business in mind.

"How do you suppose Lucifer got them to fight for him?" Sweetie Belle asked rather abruptly.

Virgil's gaze danced briefly between her and the guards. "The cherubs? I cannot say for certain, given that the war was many years before my time. What little I do know about the angels and their species...I'm afraid I am unable to even hazard a guess as to Lucifer's methods in rallying the cherubim to his side. Unless..."

Sweetie Belle waited with rapt attention for her companion to speak further, but he was so caught up in his own thoughts that nearly five minutes passed before she grew impatient. "Unless what?"

The poet was jarred out of his trance. "Apologies. I was just thinking that the cherubim are answerable only to three authorities in Heaven; God, their commander Uriel, and archangel Michael in emergencies. Lucifer was the first angel, which implies he likely had considerable influence over all his kin, from seraph to malakhim. However he likely knew that sweet words could not shift the cherubs' fanatical loyalty as he had done with the others. It is possible that instead of conning them into allying with him...he may have simply commanded them." Virgil considered this a moment longer, his expression growing pinched with deep concentration, and then he shook his head. "Ordering the cherubim to abandon God would not have been enough. Lucifer is powerful, but not so much that he could override God's instructions of service with a set of his own. He would have had to somehow alter their perceptions of lord and enemy so they would fight for him."

Sweetie Belle tried her best to follow Virgil's frantic train of thought, and felt she actually understood the gist of what he was saying. "So...Lucifer brainwashed the cherubs?"

Virgil shook his head slowly. "Not exactly. It is more like he went into their heads and manually changed their ideas of who was friend and who was foe."

"Oh, so he hacked them." The poet turned to her with an intrigued expression, spurring Sweetie Belle to elaborate. "A couple of my friends read a lot of comics. In some of them the hero has to deal with magically created guards called golems, which are really hard to kill but aren't very smart. Kind of like the cherubs." Sweetie indicated the guards with a nod before continuing. "Anyway, he does this thing called 'hacking' where he uses his magic to change the golems' instructions so that they fight the bad guys instead of him."

"How fascinating," Virgil remarked once the lecture was concluded. A silence fell over the couple as they continued their jaunt through the Circle of Heresy. The poet spent this time wondering about something, and considering every outcome of bringing the matter to attention. The question festered in his mind, demanded in increasingly higher tones that it be set free through the power of speech, until at last Virgil was compelled to ask. "Do you believe in an afterlife?"

The randomness of the shade's inquiry briefly struck Sweetie Belle dumb, and she had to ask him to repeat what he'd said. "Excuse me?"

"Back in the Circle of Lust you told me about the world you come from and all the ways it is similar to the world I know," Virgil elaborated. "As we have journeyed through Hell I have observed your numerous states of confusion not only at what is going on in each of the Circles, but why each of the sins are punished so harshly. It begs me to wonder if your people believe in some form of existence beyond death."

Forward progress was halted momentarily so that Sweetie Belle could ruminate on this. "Not really," she finally said, and then they resumed walking again. "I don't know how different it is in other parts of the world, but in Equestria death is kind of...it, I guess. We're born, we live, and when we die there's nothing left. Ponies don't go to Heaven or Hell, or anywhere after we die."

Virgil looked aghast at the very idea of an entire civilized culture having no theories or suppositions of what fate lie beyond death. "Truly? Is there not even a recorded history of such beliefs?"

Sweetie shrugged her shoulders. "Not as far as I know. Princess Twilight would probably have some books or scrolls about it stashed somewhere in her castle. Luna and Celestia would be the best ponies to talk to about that since they've been around forever."

The ghostly Roman was blown away by this knowledge. The very notion that Sweetie Belle's countrymen had never even considered the possibility of an afterlife was nearly impossible for him to imagine. One of humanity's most prominent and often tragic features was their curiosity. The insatiable need to understand anything bigger than themselves, including but certainly not limited to death. Countless generations of men and women had postulated the existence of life after death, or in some cases many lives. To learn that an entire society had never acquired such an interest in the subject was close to inconceivable. Truly this land of Equestria and its citizenry were quite peculiar, but perhaps there was a form of beauty in such ignorance. If these "ponies" honestly had no religious beliefs to speak of currently or ever before, then maybe they were a more contented people than the human race had ever been since the inception of such things. A fact which would become immediately apparent in the Circles to come.

At last the mausoleum opened out to what had once been a high and mighty cliff, but had since been reduced to a sloping pile of rubble in the wake of the world-shaking tremor Virgil had spoken of earlier. The ramp descended gently down into a dark world which, at present, was too far to see in great or poor detail. Looking back the way Virgil and Sweetie Belle had come, they saw a solid metal gate which would have been quite impressive it wasn't so severely dented and folded over in places. The gate's state of disrepair was in fact the only reason they had managed to leave Heresy proper without having to confront any guards. However, before they could advance any farther, a steady tattoo of heavy stomping indicated that a new obstacle was on its way.

Rising up over the crest of the ramp and growing larger with ever step was a savage-looking beast with a thick scarred hide a dark ocher color, and a snarling bull's head armed with two black horns which pointed directly at any poor creature unfortunate enough to find itself in its sights. In both meaty hands it carried a massive cleaver with chips bitten out of the blade and smears of dry blood staining the metal's already dull finish. Plumes of smoke burst from the beast's nostrils with every breath, and its lifeless black eyes seemed to sap all the heat from Sweetie Belle's comparatively diminutive frame. It stopped roughly ten feet from the pair and glared balefully at its quarry, lips pulled back to reveal sharp carnivorous teeth stained orange from a lifetime of devouring living prey.

"The Minotaur patrols the road leading from Heresy to the Circles below," Virgil said in a moderately nervous tone.

"Is there any way around?" Sweetie Belle could sense the answer before her guide could speak it.

"No. However with the proper leverage, we can perhaps have him removed from our path." Virgil pursed his lips and blew out a short high-pitch note which belied a substantial heaviness that was more felt than heard. It was an unnerving sensation that caused a shudder to run down Sweetie Belle's spine. The sound had no echo, yet it seemed to travel far and deep into the world below, calling out to whatever entity or event that was meant to hear it.

Sweetie Belle stood motionless as she and her companion waited for something to happen. "What do we do now?" she inquired of the poet beside her.

Virgil leveled his gaze on the snorting behemoth barring the only way forward. "Now...we wait."

The Minotaur snorted angrily, its fingers tightening their grip on the cleaver. The barest hint of a sadistic smile tugged at the corners of the beast's mouth.