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Tirzah smelled it before she entered the dungeon.
The putrid stench almost made her stop at the top of the stairway, the heat of acid rising from her rolling stomach into her esophagus and threatening to spew out her dinner. But her father and the patrolmen carried on as if it didn’t exist so she swallowed down the bile and followed behind. It worsened as Tirzah descended, the foul smell enveloping around her, thickening, utterly suffocating her. With every breath, she was hit with immense vertigo and the increasing awareness that it had to be a truly wretched creature they had captured to produce such an odor.
Her day began and ended as normal. Tirzah awoke before the sun rose to perform her duties around the Temple, completing her spiritual reading and prayer for that time, then helped at the morning gathering. She handled the children during and after the gathering, guiding them through the words and hymns, then teaching them about a new chapter of the Holy Scrolls. By midday, the children left and she returned back to her reading and prayer. From then until late afternoon for the evening gathering, Tirzah was left alone. She was free to do whatever she wanted as long as she stayed within the Temple’s walls. However, she always stuck to her father’s side, hooking onto every word he said.
She had to if she were to take over her father's role as Priest and become Priestess of the Temple.
When she retreated to her private chambers, feet aching from the evening gathering and her nightly duties, she did her final reading and prayer of the day and went to bed. Such a demanding day required the utmost amount of sleep. Instead, Tirzah was startled awake by her father shaking her, demanding her to get properly dressed.
“What’s going on?” she questioned, rushing to yank on her robes. The shadows granted by the moonlight peeling through her window only accentuated the deep lines across her father’s grave face. She couldn’t see his eyes through the glint of his small, round glasses.
“We must take care of a wicked evil,” was all her father stated.
At the Temple’s tall and arched front doors, a small group of the patrolmen waited on their horses in the frigid night. Tirzah stood behind her father, her arms wrapped around her in an attempt to keep herself warm, but gusts of winter air were harsh and merciless against her body. In contrast, her father endured without a tremor as he stared down the men.
When her father lifted the lantern in his hand, the light illuminated enough to see each of the men’s pale, worn faces, their haunted and gleaming eyes, and the blood still dripping from every crevice of their silver armor.
Once the story unraveled from the trembling lips of the few who could speak, Tirzah learned that the small group of patrolmen were the officers that were left from their encounter.
Tirzah rode with her father on one of their horses from the Temple’s stables. Just like the Temple was a sanctuary for humanity, it was a haven for all the animals that remained. One of the teachings from the Holy Scrolls was to protect all of God’s teachings. The horse that they rode on was called Sweet Step, a gray dappled mare. It was the horse Tirzah most paid attention to when her father brushed her away, citing that her presence was not wanted nor needed for that empty time in between.
They arrived at the edge of the Temple’s barrier and she swore her fingers and lips were blue by the time they did. Her face was burning numb and her teeth clattered against one another. But despite the involuntary movement of her body, a heavy dread settled in her gut. Before, the area near the barrier was an escape from her obligations then deemed monotonous in her naive and youthful mind where she could play with her four younger sisters.
Now, she understood the dangers of the evil that lurked nearby; an opportunistic wolf awaiting for the ignorant lamb.
“It’s already inside? Properly detained?” her father asked as he stood at the mouth of the dungeon nestled into a hillside. It had been uncovered, presumably by the patrolmen, and it revealed a spiraling staircase of stone that delved deep underground, its steps disappearing into the darkness. Tirzah had only been down there once, long ago, and she had never reached the bottom. Although this time, the smear of red embellished the entrance accompanied by the rancid smell.
“Yes, Priest Mikal. Officer Jalon, one of our best, made sure to on his dying breath,” one of the patrolmen answered. Her father solemnly nodded.
“May his soul rest in peace,” her father muttered, then took a step down. The rest of men hesitated, the shaking in their body much more than just the freezing temperatures, before also following. Tirzah was the last one to enter, whatever was left in her stomach, churning.
The stone walls, adorned with unlit torches, ashes of its last fire long gone, were cracked and lined with dust and cobwebs. The faintest chittering of critters could be heard, disturbed by the echoes of the disjointed rhythm of clanking metal armor. With her father far ahead of the group, his lantern provided slivers of light, barely enough for Tirzah to avoid any crumbling steps and enough to hide the blood splattered against the walls.
Minutes into the dungeon and they had reached the end of the spiral stairway, her father’s lantern spilling light into a larger hallway. The stench was a thick cloud around them, nearly tangible in Tirzah’s lungs. She had to cough and it only allowed for more of it to taint her insides.
The speaking officer cleared his throat, the noise bouncing throughout, and took the lead and led her father and the rest down the dark hallway. It took a moment for Tirzah through the reeking haze to realize and hurried to follow, narrowly missing the puddles of blood drenching the dungeon floor. As she trailed her eyes around, vision adjusting, she realized blood was not the only thing coating the surfaces of the dungeon.
An untethered eye looked back at her.
Tirzah stared ahead to the back of her father’s head. She ignored the shattered metal armor and weapons, the glistening, red chunks littering across the floor, only growing in number and size, becoming entire flayed limbs of only muscle and tendon, as they delved deeper into the dungeon.
Her heart slamming against her ribcage, blood thundering in her ears, was the only noise to combat the deafening silence endowed by a vile beast.
Her father and the patrolmen stopped at towering double doors with a giant iron bar held in front to prevent anything inside from leaving. Tirzah held her breath when two officers stepped forward, raising the iron bar and setting it aside. One of the doors broke the silence with a long, whining creak like a dying animal when it became ajar once unsecured.
With a nod from her father, the patrolmen drew their swords and nudged the doors open further. The lantern’s light bled into the pitch black room. Tirzah finally raised a hand to cover her nose and mouth as the rotting stink bellowed out from the source.
The patrolmen crept into the room, surrounding a large box shape covered entirely by a ragged and worn cloth on top. A circle of blood was smeared around it, sigils she recognized of protection and imprisonment inscribed hastily. Her father stayed behind, eyes narrowed behind his lenses. Tirzah tentatively padded to his side.
“Father, what is it?” she whispered to him, afraid he wouldn’t answer her.
“A demon,” her father said. “One I must exorcize from this mortal plane immediately.”
His words made Tirzah shiver, no longer from the cold, but the terror gripping her. Her eyes slid off of her father and to the covered box that stood at most a meter tall. Hidden underneath the cloth was one of the most unholy things to grace this Earth. She knew the stories, from the Holy Scrolls and word of mouth, how the gates of Hell tore open in the ground and demons not even nightmares could fabricate gushed out and ravaged humanity.
The Temple and its holy barrier were the only thing to shield them from those monsters, perhaps even holding the last tidbits of humanity left on Earth. They would never know.
For a demon to break through the barrier and cause the amount of bloodshed and chaos it did before its capture, Tirzah didn’t want to imagine what would have happened if patrolmen weren’t enough. Looking at how many men were left still standing, it had almost transpired.
“What do we do, Father?” Tirzah asked quietly. Her hands shook. She didn’t know what to do for an exorcism, ignorant of any methods, materials, or scripture to recite. She was unaware that it was possible for a demon to cross the barrier. Her tongue felt heavy in the curses she wanted to throw at her father for leaving her so unprepared when she was supposed to be Priestess one day.
“Words will not be enough for this caliber of demon,” her father responded. “We must make sure it won’t return once casted back to Hell and reinstate the barrier.”
“Then…” she trailed off.
“We have to return to the Temple,” her father continued and shoved his glasses to the bridge of his nose. “To collect—”
A low hiss like nails screeching against metal struck the air and everyone winced, ducking down as the ringing permeated through the dungeon, striking Tirzah’s eardrums. The shrill noise was then followed by the box, Tirzah realizing it was a metal cage, rattling with invisible energy, dense with malice, and quickly teetering side to side. The patrolmen shouted to one another, only inviting the demon to give a blood-curdling shriek of fury.
“Hold it down!” Her father shouted to the men, traces of fear lacing his voice Tirzah never thought she would hear from him.
The men brave enough to get closer and step over the only barricade between them and the demon, most left stuck to the floor and unmoving, complied at the shaking cage, arms agape to hold it down. But when one officer touched the demon’s cage, a clawed hand of withering shadows lashed beneath the cloth and grabbed at the man’s hip with a sickening snap of bone. Using the man to pull forward, the cage finally fell to the side with a squelch of flesh and the cloth fell aside.
“Don’t stare at it! Don’t stare at it!” Tirzah’s father screeched like a man possessed. “That’s how it damns your soul! Don’t stare at it!”
Tirzah stared at the demon—no, it couldn’t be a demon, could it?
A demon wouldn’t be so beautiful.
Bright eyes stared back at Tirzah, round and hemmed with long, sweeping lashes below arched brows. It wasn’t shadow that enveloped around the creature like the ghoulish hand of before, instead it was milky white skin devoid of any mark or imperfection, the only blemish being the glowing pink at the cheeks. Red lips, jutting out in reminiscence of a pout. Long, white hair flowing down in waves to the waist framed the ethereal face. The creature her father called a demon was in the shape of a lithe, young woman, body dressed in white drapings. Instead of wings of scales and stretched, leathery skin, there was a pair of ruffled, white feathered wings belonging to the angels Tirzah read about in the Holy Scrolls.
Tirzah was staring at an angel.
The cloth returned to its place over the cage, concealing the angel once more from sight. Tirzah almost mourned the loss, her knees quivering to herself from collapsing and begging. She tore her eyes away, looking at the man who was her father, the Priest who dared to call the angel a demon. She didn’t understand, but why would she when he never told her anything?
“Nobody looked at its eyes?” he asked the men, glancing around frantically. The impassive father she followed down to the dungeon was suddenly a weary man, anxiety reverberating off his sweaty skin. “Nobody?” He turned to look at her and the lenses of his glasses no longer could conceal the panic in his eyes. “Tirzah?”
“No,” she answered. She was human, his own flesh and blood, but if she told the truth, would her father lock away just as he would an angel from the Heavens?
He slowly nodded and ran a shaky hand through his graying hair. He swallowed then addressed the men in the room. “We have to return to the Temple.” And at the order, the remaining men pulled away from the cage still in the circular trap and followed her father. Tirzah began to turn her body away to follow, but stopped when a dainty hand peeled out from underneath the cloth and through the bars of the cage. Slender fingers reached out to Tirzah and she could see two glowing eyes in the darkness.
Tirzah’s heart beat faster. No more was it from the fear, but the yearning and desire to reach back to the angel. Her foot slid across the bloody stone floor and back toward the cage.
“Tirzah?”
She whipped her head around, meeting her father’s gaze. His skin crinkled around his concerned eyes. Tirzah lowered her head.
“I’m coming, Father,” she said and hurried past him to the group of men.
Climbing back the spiral stairs, trailing her fingertips against the bloodstained walls, Trizah wondered how much of the blood was from the angel. It was nauseating to think such a celestial being could be injured by blades wielded by men who couldn’t— wouldn’t understand. No wonder so many of them had died. The poor angel only fought back in defense. When the men brandished their weapons without thinking, the angel could only do the same.
Her father and Tirzah rode Sweet Step back to the Temple with the men in freezing silence. Winter continued to be unforgiving, but the only sensation she could feel was a heavy emptiness inside of her. It chipped away at her insides the farther she went from the trapped angel, leaving her hollow. She clutched at her chest and tried to breathe.
“...zah?”
Her father was looking over his shoulder down at her. There was an indiscernible expression across his face that she couldn’t read. He had returned back to his stoic demeanor. Tirzah clenched her jaw. He turned away from her and let out a deep sigh.
“You will stay at the Temple,” he suddenly ordered.
“F-Father, you can’t—” She stuttered out, a jolt of panic rushing through her, heightened by the void within her, bouncing around in each of her body’s cavities and scrambling her thoughts. “No, I—”
“It was a mistake to bring you there,” he continued tersely unbeknownst to her state of near hysteria. “You aren’t ready yet—”
“Because you never let me be ready,” Tirzah tore back. “I can’t be ready if I go in blind and show me that—that—” Immoral sin , she almost blurted back, but the thinnest thread of common sense hit her before she uttered those words. She clamped her mouth shut.
A moment of pause from her father then, with finality, he spoke, “you will stay.”
“Yes, Father.”
Tirzah stood in front of the Temple doors as her father and the men left for the angels after collecting whatever he needed, ignoring the nuns trying to usher her back inside from the cold she could no longer feel. She felt like a string puppet as she was dragged back to her chambers. Once left alone in her dark room, moonlight long gone, she stripped herself from her robes, rubbing the hem for a long moment when she noticed the remaining traces of blood.
Holding the stained outfit to her chest, she crawled underneath the bedsheets and wrapped her limbs around it. She deeply inhaled and the overpowering smell that still clung to the fabric overwhelmed her senses. It brought deep euphoria to Tirzah, rocking each crevice inside of her that left her wanting more. She closed her eyes.
“Tirzah.”
The voice that spoke caressed each syllable of her name, so gentle and beautiful. It echoed majestically through her skull and fulfilled every throbbing desire. Her attention captured, she scrambled to yank away the bedsheets from her body and stared at the origin of the voice.
There stood the beautiful angel, a glow of her own radiance and moonlight around her feminine figure. So divine in her beauty that Tirzah felt blessed simply laying her gazing on the angel. The angel hummed, comparable to a heavenly chorus, sending waves of tranquility over Tirzah. A hand slid up the angel’s hip, accentuating her curves, rising past her breasts, curling then extended her arm with an open palm.
Tirzah stepped off her bed, her gaze focused on the holy woman in front of her. She lifted her own hand, wanting to reach out, but too hesitate to touch the angel without tainting her with Tirzah’s own sin and desire.
“Tirzah,” the angel said in her mesmerizing voice. Tirzah wanted to melt away, to be forever cocooned in that warmth. “Do you want to go with me?”
“Go where?” Tirzah breathed out.
Suddenly, there was a ruffle and the two white feathery wings spread from her back, casting an even greater holy light into Tirzah’s chambers. The angel giggled, an alluring melody to Tirzah’s ears. Instead of waiting for Tirzah to touch first, the angel moved forward and pushed a lock of black hair behind her ear. The angel’s hand trailed down, fingertips lightly stroking down her cheek, and stopped under the slope of her jaw. Her hand was cool to Tirzah’s heated skin.
“Anywhere,” the angel answered sweetly.
The angel brought her hand to wrap around Tirzah’s bony wrist and gently tugged her toward the open window. Tirzah stumbled over her own feet when their bodies unexpectedly touched, feeling a soft puff of air against the shell of her ear, and was blessed to hear another twinkle of a laugh.
“Will you allow me to take you? ” the angel asked and Tirzah could only nod. Then a finger rose and swiped at her bottom lip, the touch sending coils of warmth within her. “I need words, Tirzah.”
“Yes.”
At her approval, the world rippled around Tirzah like a rock tossed into a pool of still water. The pressure in her mind increased, then amplified, pulsing like a steady heartbeat, something twisting and expanding besides her skull. Pain blossomed down her neck, an agonizing fire set upon her nerves, licking every corner in her body, to the tips of her fingers and toes.
Something snapped and everything in that excruciating moment evaporated. The darkness around her dissolved and faded to the edges of her vision. She met the soft gaze of the angel.
Isn’t this beautiful?” the angel asked, stretching out an arm to guide what she wanted Tirzah to see.
They were several meters above the ground. The wind blasted across her cheeks, whipping her hair around her, sending a shiver around her body. Arms held Tirzah closer and she realized the angel was carrying her, white wings gliding through the clouds. Fear pricked at Tirzah’s heart and she leaned into the angel.
“Shh,” the angel cooed. “I have you.”
And Tirzah felt safe and warm.
The angel soared through the night sky, the halo around her body magnified by the luminous moon that was their only witness. Tirzah peered over the angel’s shoulder and her eyes widened at the sight of the Temple fading away in the distance. For a moment, she thought about her father, the nuns that she engaged with, and the children she taught. Her life had not been perfect, especially with how their small world was constructed, but Tirzah tried her best to follow all the rules and standards, dedicating herself to the Word of the Holy Scrolls every day since she was chosen to become the Priestess one day.
Yet, somehow it felt like it had all gone to waste once the blindfold of her father’s lies and falsehoods were ripped off when the angel crossed over the barrier.
Sunlight welcomed her, stinging her eyes like the sense of betrayal brewing in her. Hours of listening and reciting readings about the outside taught her that it was a hellscape, scattered with savage demons and the souls of the damned. She was told that she would feel the searing corrupt flames against her skin, scorching her until her bones became charred. That the screams of the tortured would blend with the cacophony of depraved laughter. That there would be no sky, only blood.
Tirzah saw nothing of that and only saw a paradise.
Bliss wrapped around her as the landscape of lush green and sparkling blue emerged, a sight she only heard from the stories of the fragile elders who survived the initial cataclysm. They spoke with longing for their previous life; a world the Priest decided to seal from all of them.
With a flap of her glorious wings, the angel held Tirzah closer and glided down in smooth circles to the Earth. They broke through the white wisps of clouds and Tirzah saw a divide of white between the forests and expansive water. She didn’t know what it was even as they got closer. The angel landed without jostling Tirzah at all and graced her with a smile.
“Thank you,” Tirzah whispered.
When she placed a bare foot down onto the ground, her foot sank deeper as the unfamiliar ground warped around it. She yelped, clambering up to the angel’s hold again. The angel laughed and whatever worries had arisen were brushed away.
“It is safe,” the angel promised. Slowly, Tirzah tried again.
Both her feet returned to the strange ground; it wasn’t soil, more like the grains they harvested during the season, but softer, finer. She wiggled her toes, watching the silky terrain shift between the digits. A laugh bubbled out of Tirzah’s chest.
Her attention was pulled away from the warm ground by a hand tenderly touching the bottom of her chin that lifted her head until her gaze met the angel’s. In the newfound daylight, Tirzah could see the sparkling pools of gold within the angel’s eyes, swirling and captivating.
“Join us,” the beautiful angel murmured, the breeze tossling the white waves of her hair, in sync with Tirzah’s heartbeat.
The angel led Tirzah into the neverending expanse of water that shimmered under the rays of the bright sun. The water, warm and thick, enveloped around her ankles as they stepped inside. It rose past her knees, to her hips, then her neck. The weight of the water pressed against her and her lungs struggled to expand. The angel never faltered, completely unfazed and silent to Tirzah’s increased endeavors to take a single breath.
The sun, previously high in the blue sky like a reigning king, loomed behind the angel’s figure, now a sphere of red and orange tainting the rest of the sky and darkening the water into an abyss. It encapsulated the angel in a halo of brilliant red light like a flame across the expanse of her pale skin. The wind blowing at Tirzah’s face felt bitterly cold despite the radiant sunlight draping upon her, the two contradictions fighting within her.
“I have a dream, Tirzah,” the angel said softly. There was an underlying degree of perversion intertwined with each syllable that made Tirzah’s skin crawl. “That one day we can be together, my kind and humanity, without any barriers between us.”
The angel floated closer to Tirzah, peering down at her with those golden eyes that shined with desire and lust, almost identical to her own that clouded her mind and thoughts. Her slender hands touched the sides of Tirzah’s head, so gentle and kind that she wanted to nuzzle into the hold, but found herself unable to move anymore. The angel’s thumbs skimmed over the arch of her flushed cheeks as tiny pinpricks sank into the back of her skull.
“Wouldn’t that be nice, Tirzah? ” The angel’s lips no longer moved to stretch over the words, the disembodied heavenly voice piercing Tirzah’s mind, further intensifying the strain of the bone on her brain.
“Yes,” Tirzah said, laboring to speak despite the air squeezing out of her, “I swore the day I saw you, I’d get you out of there and our dreams wouldn’t have to be dreams anymore.”
Then the darkness engulfed her whole and Tirzah opened her eyes.
Ribbons of sweltering red and orange flames danced around her, crackling like viscous and mocking laughter. Ash flickered through the winter air, dancing gracefully as the smoke rolled in thick clouds. Each inhale left her unsteady and teetering. She blinked through the embers biting at her eyes and stared ahead.
The barrier was now cracked open and revealed a swirl of darkness from the outside, jagged and scaled hands digging into the edges and reaching for an escape. Inconceivable roars and cries of fragmented voices bellowed out like a hot breath on her body.
It was a devastatingly holy symphony.
“Tirzah.” The voice boomed in her ears, low yet still familiarly mellifluous.
Bright eyes appeared before her, round and golden with slitted pupils. Dark red scales spread across the canvas of her curved body like her skin had absorbed the red sunset. Dark lips were pulled back and stretched over white teeth arched into fangs, dipped in blood. Long, white hair flowed to her knees, the ends dipped in a dark orange color. Two horns jutted out from the top of her forehead and bent into a serrated hook around her elongated and pointed ears. The pair of wings were disjointed and larger, scales shining underneath the peeling feathers.
Giant claws reached to the sides of Tirzah’s head, no longer small, slender, and soft, but still warm when they grazed her skin. Gathering scraps of courage, Tirzah raised her own hands to wrap around the other. Her hands and arms glistened in the wildfire surrounding the both of them, the dark blood dripping down her bare body.
Tirzah leaned closer to the angel and their lips brushed together for the first time.
“Thank you for this victory, Tirzah,” her angel—her savior—whispered against her lips. “Your body was cherished until the cessation of its utility.”
Her skull fractured under the pressure, the obliterating anguish only lasting a fraction of a second as all thoughts ceased to exist.