Kushiel snickered as he and his torturers left Azure's cell. The unfortunate angel had been beaten, cut, and bruised by Kushiel, and he had managed to ensure that it was all perfectly legal! Azure sighed, knowing she was most likely doomed. If Kushiel could secure a valid arrest warrent for you, you never walked free again. Everybody knew that.
As soon as the door slammed shut, a fiery red light surged through Azure's cell. Out stepped a cobra-headed demon. "Here sssssshe isssssss, Qessssssem," she said giddily to a tentacled demon emerging behind her. "Here issssssss the sssssssecond sssssssssssacrifice!"
"Our angelic benefactor has done right by us, Heka," Qesem grinned. He and Heka grabbed onto Azure's arms. Azure tried to fight back, but she was too weak from all the ghastly torture. She was swiftly dragged through the portal.
Azure found herself in a cave in what she guessed was somewhere in Hell. Cages full of Iron Knight souls filled the cavern, and demons with blank, blakened eyes stood around, watching her. To Azure's horror, she spotted a... a thing that used to be Tarfiel. The defiled angel gazed at Azure with those same black pools of soullessness, and her wings had been replaced by an inky mist that seemed to drink sunlight,
The demon called Heka dragged Azure into a magic circle, where some of the possessed demons stripped her nude and staked her hands and feet to the cave floor with metal spikes. Heka anointed Azure's unclothed body with strange oils and closed her eyes, beginning to chant in a strange language that sounded like yet another torture to Azure's ears.
Soon, Azure's mind began to cloud. Her memories went blank, and her consciousness was squeezed into a very small part of her mind. The rest was filled with a powerful Chaos shade. Azure's body no longer belonged to her; it was the plaything of Chaos!
"Perfect," Qesem chuckled vengefully.. "I do so love to put an angel through the wringer."
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Kushiel massaged his forehead as he prepared to contact Jehovah. Azure had vanished! The jailers had come to him and reported that Azure was no longer in her cell, though the door remained locked. Semyaza concluded that Azure had either died of her wounds or killed herself. Oh well. Kushiel could still spin this to his advantage.
"What is it, Kushiel?" Jehovah asked. "Is it about your investigation of Azure Skywing?"
"It is... in a sense," Kushiel said in a daze. "Azure appears to have... died."
"Died?" Jehovah gasped. "Please tell me that you didn't interrogate her too brutally!"
"We have two theories," said Kushiel. "She may have died of shame as a consequence of her shame over being outed as a criminal... or she may have been killed or whisked away by Belial and the others to protect Hell's schemes from our ears."
"Such a pity," Jehovah sighed. "Is the anti-cherub shield down yat?"
"No, it isn't," Kushiel sighed with impressive fake frustration. "She died before we could get her to confess what spell we used or how to cast it. It seems uncrackable."
"I have every confidence you'll figure it out eventually," said Jehovah.
"In the meantime, could you keep the Azure situation quiet?" Kushiel asked. "I'm still investigating the conspiracy, and I don't want Beelzebub to know that I know as much as I do."
"I won't breathe a word," Jehovah said. "Oh, and I should tell you that Jesus and Queen Asherah won't be able to help you take down the anti-cherub field for at least a week. They're investigating a damaged anti-Chaos ward on the planet Venus, and they'll be gone for seven days or more."
Kushiel forced himself to sound disappointed. "I suppose I'll just have to try to fix it without them. At least the caster is dead."
"I'm shocked and disappointed in Azure beyond words," Jehovah remarked. "I thought she was charting a different course than her father."
"Once a daughter of Belial, always a daughter of Belial," Kusiel scoffed. "She may have used her mother's last name of Skywing, but her soul belongs utterly to Belial's House Lackmaster."
"Well, I should be going," Jehovah said. "Keep up the good work."
Kushiel smiled as God hung up on him. Over the past day, Kushiel had completely repaired his image and made Jehovah trust him again. Meanwhile, the Grand Library was increasingly being seen as the center of a Heavenly center of the Chaos conspiracy. At this rate, Kushiel would be the new God by this time next year!