Chapter Text
Hell is just like earth.
Well.
There are cultural differences.
But really it’s not so different. See, Hell doesn’t have layers like a cake, how Dante described it. Hell has layers like a globe. Hell is a globe. And Hell isn’t below Earth or above Earth or somewhere away from Earth. It’s exactly where Earth is. Exactly. And Hell is exactly where Heaven is, and Purgatory, and the Veil, and the Empty. Six realms existing in the same space, sometimes moving like tectonic plates and crashing into each other, opening up huge cracks where realities bleed through. Hand pressed to wound, blood still spilling over fingers.
Hell’s just like Earth; it’s an universe unto itself. Not one you’d want to explore, because the sun is purple-dark and fire is everywhere and in space there are creatures as big as moons with thousands of tentacles that may eat your planet if it looks juicy enough. No one lives on the surface of Hell, no, they’re safe beneath layers and layers of rock and lava and obsidian. That’s what makes people think Hell is underneath Earth, if they visit and don’t stick around to learn about the rich cultural history and traditions.
Which is a pity—because Hell and Earth used to have a good working relationship. When the Bleeding first happened, the humans, as you’d call them, saw that the demons were so completely opposite of themselves, and the demons saw the same, and they came to a grand conclusion.
But before I tell you about that Grand Conclusion, let me clear something up. You are human. Perhaps you are one of the few who understand, but it is unlikely. The Untirya are a secretive group, and the Men of Letters are dead. So let me explain it to you.
Do not use the word demon.
They are Kerikai.
You need to take the ideas you have of demons and set them aside. To begin, call that race by its proper name. Kerikai. Roll it over in your tongue a couple times. And never again use the term demon to describe a Kerikai. At least, not to its face.
The Grand Conclusion was this: The humans (though at that time the Kerikai called them Vacir, and that is name you will find on the contract) and the Kerikai saw that they were different. Very, very different. And like the sensible peoples that they were, they did not go to war over it.
They made a trade.
Among the humans, some lived who did not fit. They were too loud, too impulsive, too rageful. They built bonds too closely, and got hurt, and didn’t give up. They fought and loved fiercely, and died badly and came back laughing. You cannot imagine them. Stop trying. They are more, and less, than all the humans you have ever seen. To look in their eyes, you would burn with cold and shake with heat. You have never seen the like. The human you are thinking of now, who most fits the description I have given you, is the smallest dulled notch in the gleaming gold sword that was this group of humans.
Among the Kerikai, some did not fit. I’m sure you understand what I am about to say. They were soft. They did not love deeply; they were independent. They could accept the loss of a partner and move on, something the Kerikai found abhorrent. They enjoyed occasional solitude. They sought the open skies regardless of danger. Sound familiar? It’s you. You are the descendent, in some small part, of these Kerikai.
The Kerikai and the humans, Hell and Earth, saw their differences and the small group of similarities and came to a very sensible conclusion. They made a trade. And they continued to make trades, whenever more were born to the world that was unhappy to have them and would only serve to make them unhappy.
And it was very, very good.
Obviously, the story doesn’t end there.
After all, I have just described to you Hell. You know Hell. A place of torment and melted bone and screams. I have not dissuaded you of this notion. My description of the humans-who-became-Kerikai has not been too dissimilar to what you have been told of demons.
Because Hell and Earth were the first to Bleed. But then, then came Heaven.
I will not use the word angels and neither should you. They do not deserve that title. The creatures who inhabit Heaven have had many names for themselves over the centuries. Currently, they are known as the Children of Castiel.
The Children were…oh, well, I’m sure you know the adjectives. Everything that you would associate with good. What they truly were was powerful, skilled in manipulation, and quite sure of their superiority. And just like the Kerikai and the humans were opposites, the humans and the Children were opposites, and the Children and the Kerikai were opposites, and so it went on with all the realms. But the Children saw the contrast and decided that it could not stand.
You know the Children’s teachings very well. They are ingrained in you. Their morality, their language, their tendency to violence in the face of anything different. They wanted to conquer what was different and make it the same.
That’s why you believe what you do. About yourself, about Hell, all of it. The Children of Castiel got to you, just like they got to all the realms, and twisted them up into mocking tapestries of Heaven. Never the same—but no longer the brilliant contrast that Heaven and Hell and Earth and Purgatory and the Empty and the Veil were created to be.
Daddy went away and the Children came out to play.
Now, you think of Hell as the Bad place where Bad people go, because that’s what the Children decided it was, and one of the very first things they did was throw one of their own through a Bleed into Hell because he dared to suggest that humans might have some worth just the way they were.
Oh? Now we’re back into familiar territory for you? Of course. Everyone knows the story of Lucifer, Oldest of the Children, Morningstar, Prince of Air.
Sent to live underground.
Lucifer was angry, Lucifer was powerful, Lucifer took over Hell, and the Children remade all the realms the way they wanted it to be. Humans who could not conform were sent to Hell in an awful parody of the Grand Conclusion and Hell ROTTED.
Under the rule of a ruthless Child, used by all as pawns in wars between realms, the Kerikai civilizations crumbled. Culture was lost, and even language fell to the side of the road like an empty water bottle. Now is when the word demon came.
You do not yet understand?
The Kerikai were a people! I know it is difficult for you to separate your conception of them from the Children’s teachings, but you must try! They were different. And they were happy. And you think of everything that defined their people as evil?
The Kerikai fell further and further. Humans were sent to them that which did not belong. Kerikai who knew the old ways died. And they were nothing more than Lucifer’s hands and feet in the Bleedings, pursuing his goals, his hatreds, from realm to realm. Decades turned to centuries to millennia.
But then—!
Well.
You know the story.
Two humans, born. Light, hope, returned. They didn’t know it yet. But the Kerikai’s savior, Lucifer’s true vessel, had finally arrived.
A human. But a Kerikai too, if the old contract, the Grand Conclusion, had still held. Who loved too deeply, and fought too hard, and refused to lose the bonds he had formed. Who laughed with death and could barely be looked upon for the Wrongness (as the Children would call it) the Otherness (as it was known before the Children came) in his eyes. The burning cold. The biting heat.
You know this part of the story. How he locked away Lucifer. And years later, how he sealed Hell, himself with it. He gave the Kerikai a priceless gift. The isolation they needed to heal.
And deep in those caverns, under the slightest bit of purple-dark light from the Everlasting Fires, Sam Winchester, with human in his bones, Children in his soul, and Kerikai in his blood, began to heal too.
It did not happen quickly.
It did not even happen quickly by the estimation of immortals, who would be the only ones who could have seen it happen. Because it took millennia. Earth alone was destroyed and remade four times before the walls between the realms came down and the Bleeding began again.
This time, there was no fighting. The immortal, uncontested rulers of the six realms had all been friends, or something like mutually respectful acquaintances, lifetimes upon lifetimes ago, when they all walked the earth together. Sam Winchester, King of Hell. Castiel, Lord of Heaven. Billy, Queen of the Veil. Eileen Leahy, General of the Untirya. Dean Winchester, Ruler of Purgatory. And finally, Meg, Voice of the Empty.
They watched the realms grow up. They kept the peace. They watched magic flow from realm to realm uninhibited. They watched the magic form a new outlet for a new age as superheroes begin to rise on Earth in the turn of what the Untirya called the twenty-first century. They watched new realms Bleed, and welcomed them with open arms. Complacent.
And then, the six became five.