Grim Forge

Story by spacewastrel on SoFurry

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When the Apocalypse happens, it doesn't go according to plan at all.


People who die and who go to heaven realize that some of the people who they cared about in life were sent to hell and that they're no longer allowed to interact with each other. The split shifts, from being simply between demons on one side and angels on the other side, to being between demons with angels who think that all of the damned belong in hell on one side, and to demons with angels who think that they don't on the other side. Demons go on strike and refuse to continue to torture the people who were sent to hell until they have a clearer understanding of why they belong in it, and of what demons themselves are supposed to be getting out of torturing the damned.

Radical demons with angels try to help some of the damned break out of hell while some less radical demons with angels submit proposals to the celestial authorities for long-term rehabilitation programs for the damned. Some demons with angels want to free some of the damned while leaving others of the damned in hell whereas other demons with angels want to free all of the damned without distinction. Demons remind angels that getting demons to do their dirty work doesn't keep the angels' hands clean from collaborating with punishing the damned by torture, and that if it's worth doing at all then angels should be willing to do it themselves.

Torture work shortage causes low-ranking angels to be assigned by the celestial authorities to work as scabs to replace striking demons, which some angels accept to do but which some others refuse to do to join the ranks of the striking demons instead. Some of the angel scabs remain angels but some others begin to develop demonic features over time as a result of the work they do. Some angels go to hell as willing hostages because they don't want to be in heaven if the damned can't get into heaven as well.

Some angels with demons are willing to submit to torture themselves in exchange for some of the damned's release. Some demons don't trust the angels who want to help the damned because they think that meaning well can't compensate for the blind spots of heavenly privileges or because they think that the angels are infiltrating them to betray them later on. Some angels who want to free some of the damned don't trust the striking demons because they suspect that the demons must have unspoken selfish reasons for striking since demons have a cruel nature, or suspect that the demons are following celestial orders to draw out traitorous angels.

A few of the suspicions on each side do turn out to have been founded, but some of the suspicions that weren't founded end up having been about demons and angels whose efforts make a significant difference. Some demons realize that they were really some of the damned themselves, who were being punished by being put in a situation in which they had to torture others, and that it's having been kept in this situation that had made them become demons instead of angels in the first place. What use are supernatural powers if someone else gets to determine what they're going to be used for, who gets to determine the use they're put to, and based on which criteria?

Some angels realize when they try to take action that their leash is much shorter than they'd been assuming that it was, that what they'd been told was part of heaven is really a golden cage in which they're forbidden from sharing what they're given with others and in which their hands are tied, so they begin to look for ways of untying the knots. Angels with demons on each side capture some from the other side to try to persuade them to switch over to their own side of the struggle. Some revolutionaries think that they should have consensus so that they can present a unified front while others think that they should all go their own way doing what they think helps the most regardless of what any of the others are choosing to do. Angels with demons on the side of the status quo also disagree about which methods they should use to quell the insurgency.

Revelations said that no one could change a single word of it without going to hell, that was the birth of copyright and prosecutions on copyright infringement have been quite vindictive ever since, but copyright eventually runs out, and Revelations was written over 1000 years ago, which makes it public domain open for fair use by now. We no longer belong to it, it is it which belongs to us.