God’s Eye View: Lucifer
January 1347 AD
Transylvania, Romania
The winter winds ripped through the cavemouth to introduce shards of ice into the dark, wet lair where rats ran about freely and bats hung from the rocky ceiling. Looking out to the nearby village from his mountain castle that was now buried in snow, a large creature stood atop the statue of the crucifixion where instead of the Christ being killed, it is Lucifer. This creature was divine, but he was not a god. He was not so much a god, but not a monster either. He was just a demon, in layman’s terms that is.
The dark god’s skin was dark as burnt stone and, unlike other deities whose forms radiated with brilliant colors, his body devoured all light surrounding him except for his eyes which glowed black. His demonic head was adorned with a crown of bone horns, his maw of sharp teeth releasing tarlike saliva, and his muscular arms spanning longer than any man’s to end in five sharp claws that burned black fire the same as the demon’s eyes. Along with a great pair of wings with white membrane protruding from his broad shoulders, the Black God wore a sash of dark bear fur and a loincloth of silver chainmail, and in his monstrous hand he wielded a spiked diamond shaped ball on a barbed chain. His name was Chernobog, Slavic God of Evil who had been demonized by the descendants of his former worshippers who now followed a New God who offered them his flesh and bore the power to resurrect the dead.
Chernobog was in dire need of sacrifice; he could feel the power slipping from the divine blood in his veins, but he had prepared for a sacrifice greater than any other. He spun the metal flail in the air, the barbed chain catching black fire as it whirled around, and summoned an army of rats before striking them. The fire did not burn them into an instant pile of ash, but made them larger and more aggressive, each rodent acting as a courier for an ocean of small insects. “Go my children,” the Black God commanded, “I give up my flesh to my followers, and in time, I will reap my rewards. Infiltrate the Slavs’ ships of trade and convert them into altars to me.”
Over the course of three years, most of Europe would perish to a deadly sickness, all for an elaborate sacrifice to Chernobog which brought him much power. The God of Darkness could make nights with longer moons and winters with colder winds. The deity roared into the air, but a blade suddenly cut through his chest. It was like a solid beam of sunlight had burned through him.
Bielobog, the White God of Good, brother to Chernobog, wore a white robe and had a more humanoid appearance, although a pair of intricate antlers sprouted from his blonde hair like pale sticks in light dirt. “What have you done!?” The White God barked at the Black God.
“Brother, I needed sacrifice. I was dying, Bielobog, you must understand that. I only do what I do because I need to do what I do. You bring Spring and Summer, and as such, I must bring Fall and Winter. You are Life, I am Death. Love, Hate. Fertility, Sterilization. Good, Evil. Our worshipers thought you White God because of your golden hair, and so they thought me Black God, worshiped me as Black God, and so I become Black God. That is only reason why you think me a devil.”
“You lie, Lucifer!” Bielobog swung his sword again, but this time Chernobog caught his arm and dropped the White God to the ground. That is when he saw what was under the former White God’s now brown locks.
“Why do you bear crown of thorns on your head, brother?” Chernobog backed away. “You coward… you embrace the Christ’s attributes as your own. What does that make me? The Devil? Their Devil? Fine. I live as demon for all my life because of you, and now I am stuck with that life… hundreds of millions have been sacrificed to me; still am I your equal. And now that you make me Christian god, I share your worship.”
Bielobog, Christ now, said nothing as Chernobog, now Lucifer, flew away into the night in the form of a multiheaded dragon with skin of coal. In time, he would become his own god once again, but the disgusting thought of being a Christian god would always stick with him. The thought of receiving worship from the Christians’ hate of him.
May 1412 AD
Rouen, Normandy, France
The black smoke from the pyre rose through the air as the young girl burned. Chernobog watched from atop a church roof clad in armor of dark iron plates and silver chainmail, the shoulder pieces, breastplate, and gauntlets molded into the forms of dragons, and six silver daggers with ebony grips were sheathed along the sides of his abdomen. His skin was pale, his long hair black as ink, his beard sharp as a halberd’s blade, and his frame strong and broodingly tall. Chernobog drew two of his slender blades and sharpened each other’s edge back and forth. Suddenly, another figure joined him on his perch.
“Hello there. I see you’ve decided to see her death as well.” The man with skin of olives wore golden armor with silver wolf heads, a red cloth around his waist, and a scarlet cloak around his shoulders. The Black God did not sense a threat from this other man, who clearly was a god himself. Typically, gods wouldn’t attack each other without reason.
“I have, though I am only one from my lands to see her. Tell me, what is name of girl?”
“Jeanne d’Arc. You know, they say that she spoke with the angels, others go as far to say that her god consorted with her. She joined in France’s war, won battles, and then went to Compiègne. She was captured by a group of Frenchmen associated with the English, and now we watch her burn.” The armored god explained, his red eyes examining an arquebus (a stick of iron that produced a metal ball with the power of fire) with a small metal wolf carved into its barrel. “You’re the one they call the Black God, aren’t you? The God of Evil and Darkness.”
“Yes. I am Chernobog, and I know who you are, Enyalios.”
“So you have heard the stories?”
“Yes.”
“And do you believe them?” Enyalios asked as he aimed into the sky with the hand cannon.
“No. My pantheon demonize me as well. Unlike you, I embrace fabrications. I am seen as monster, so I become monster with dragon’s wings and demon’s face. My followers view me as Prince of Darkness, so I change into armored prince with hair of raven’s feathers. I may not be warrior like you Avenger, but I am monster – the first and original that these mortals call Lucifer.” When Chernobog looked back to Enyalios, in his place was an iron-gray wolf with red eyes that was twice as large as the greatest tigers of Russia.
The Wolf ran west and left the Black God to smell the smoke, reminding him of the sacrifices the Slavs would perform to the Slavic Gods.
July 1918
Moscow, Tsarist Russia
The Palace was barely visible through the large flames. Adrik Temno walked through the giant mob of Bolsheviks wearing his coat of pitch and dark hat. He was a tall man with a muscular frame that had locks of black hair swept back, dark eyes, and a fair complexion. Chernobog watched as the Palace burned and the cries of people filled the air. The Royal Family of Tsarist Russia would be the perfect sacrifices for the Black God and would last him for centuries to come combined with the millions killed for him.
He would follow his indirect followers to the Alexandrian Palace where the last Tsars of Russia were imprisoned; where Chernobog waited until the time was right. Out of the shadows, Adrik walked to Nikolai II, his wife Alexandra, their children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Alexei, and the young, still hopeful Anastasia. Adrik emerged from the shadows and let his flail fall to the ground with a hard, metallic bang. “Who are you!? Why have you taken us here!? Answer to your Tsar!” Nikolai demanded of the Black God.
“A thousand apologies, your majesty. Although, I thank you for your sacrifice.” The only sounds emerging from the Alexandrian Place would be the cries of the Romanov family. Mortals would dump their bodies in two unmarked graves while the believers would hope to their god that green Anastasia managed to escape this gruesome fate. They were sorely mistaken.
Adrik walked through the streets of Moscow later that night, reveling in the anarchy taking place around him. Anarchist were his modern followers that prayed to him whenever they vandalized landmarks of importance or anything else in general that displeased them. A group of these vandals, though, began to follow the Slav. One, most likely the ringleader of the posse, wore a cloak of lionskin and had a 1911 pistol in his hand. Adrik gripped his flail so tight that his knuckles went white, his incisors sharpened and elongated into fangs, and his fingers ended in claws. “What is your business with me?” The God of Evil asked.
More men surrounded him, all of them armed with guns and knives.
“Lucifer, surrender now or we will use unnecessary lethal force.” Said the man with the lionskin cloak, drawing his 1911 and aiming right for Adrik’s head. “We know of the millions of lives sacrificed to you in the Black Death, but that won’t stop us from incapacitating you. Stand down, comply, and this goes quickly.”
“I am Chernobog, God of Evil and Prince of Darkness, and I will not yield to you! What is name of mortal that thinks a god will bow to him?” Adrik spun the flail as he saw how many more men were waiting on top of the buildings. These were not simple thugs. These men were assassins.
“I am Abraham Van Helsing, the Golden Knight, and I was praying to God that you would go with difficulty.” Van Helsing smiled before commanding, “Open fire!” Countless iron barrels lit up as they fired upon the Black God.
Chernobog swung his flail at a five-person row of assailants, knocking them all back hard into the buildings and cutting deep into them with the barbed chain. Two more lost their legs when the Black God wrapped the chain around their knees before sending the diamond-shaped ball into a man’s head, creating a terrible, wet crack. Bullets flew through the air as countless mortals tried to kill Adrik Temno, only for all of them to fall victim to his dark ball-and-chain that extended out to hit enemies dozens of feet away. A man wearing a black parka and an orange helmet adorned with the horns of a bull carried a shotgun and fired upon Lucifer at pointblank range. Adrik fell to the ground, his breathing strained and blood trickling down his chest, but the sheer power of fifty million sacrifices kept him alive. The vampiric deity slashed the large man’s throat with his claws, opening his carotid artery, and using his fangs, Adrik drained the lifeblood from the juggernaut of an assassin.
“Taurus!” Cried out the Golden Knight, and running from behind him was a figure with a maroon parka and a whip of a giant scorpion’s tail in his hand.
“Die, demon!” The scrawny maroon man yelled as he swung the scorpion tail with amazing speed. With every crack of the whip, blood was drawn from the Black God. Kicks and punches and cuts came from all sides of his body before he could react and fight back against the Maroon Knight. Every cut was strategic, coordinated.
Every attack was taught.
Adrik yowled a nightmarish war cry and punched right into the face of the Maroon Knight, his two front teeth flying out in a stream of red liquid. As he tried to strike again with his whip, Adrik caught his arm and kicked him in gut. Lucifer extended his flail at the Maroon Knight, the ball hitting his center and knocking all air from his mortal lungs, and swung a second time that wrapped around his body, the spike on the ball locking itself in a chain’s hole to prevent the wrap from breaking. The Black God pulled, and the Maroon Knight lay dead in a pool of blood and intestines separated from his waist. Before the rest of the assailants could fire again, Adrik removed his coat to reveal the six daggers at his sides, unsheathed two, and ran to the closest men.
Blades cut through flesh, blood flew and bathed the Black God, and bodies fell in the violent massacre of Chernobog. Bullets drew red from the paleness of the vampiric Slav, but they did not stop him as he carved out the throats of the gunmen. Finally, when the only man left standing was Van Helsing. “You killed them. All of them! You son of a bitch!” The Golden Knight threw his rifle at Adrik, who caught it, snapped it in half, and thrust the jagged end of the broken barrel at the Knight.
A blade cut through Chernobog’s side before he could even touch Van Helsing. The dagger had a dark iron blade with gold and bronze accents, the blade connected to the red handle by a silver wolf head.
Adrik fell to the ground soaking in his own lifeblood, the agonizing pain of the wound akin to being hit by the axe of Perun, Chief God of the Slavic pantheon. The world darkened, and Adrik heard the roars of automobiles, orders given in what he assumed was English. He felt as men grabbed him and rested him on a bed of metal. But before he could sleep, Van Helsing drew his knife and jammed it in Adrik’s mouth. “Keel over and die, Chernobog… the King demands it,” The dagger ripped through his left cheek, “or you can stand and live… and let the King unleash his wrath upon you.” Helsing cut through Adrik’s right cheek and left him in a pool of his blood.
The wounds would heal, but that was when Adrik realized that the blade was forged from adamantine, metal of the gods, and that his cuts would leave terrible scars. That the Golden Knight of Leo, Abraham Van Helsing, gave the God of Evil, the Prince of Darkness, the Black God, an eternal smile.
Modern Day
Somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains, United States of America
Thick shackles of titanium and large chains of steel bound Adrik’s wrists and neck, the weight of the bonds so great that the deity had to live on his knees, the bindings so short that the god couldn’t move even if he could. He was imprisoned in a small, subterranean box with five-foot thick concrete walls, bulletproof glass panels on all surfaces from the floor to the ceiling that never ceased to emit lights bright as the sun that lightly burned Adrik’s skin, and a door of reinforced steel. Above him was a rusting pipe that, once every week, produced an ounce of pig’s blood laced with potassium cyanide. His captors knew that the poison couldn’t kill him, but so too did they know that it would keep him incapacitated.
Adrik’s once strong body had now been reduced to a gray-skinned, waifish figure due to a century of starvation, burning light, and an ocean of poison. Along with his skeletal frame, the Black God’s once flowing black hair had thinned and grayed to the point that one could call it white, his divine skin was extremely wrinkled and had a leathery texture, and the fangs that had intimidated so many had now blacked, became crooked, and some even fell out of their sockets altogether. Chernobog’s life of imprisonment was a living hell. But every afternoon, the one thing that brought him happiness visited Adrik through the reinforced door.
“Hey Adrik.” Greeted Roxanne Emily Lee, the Purple Knight of Gemini. She was a young woman – age twentyish – of Latin-English descent with a short stature – maybe five-foot-four – a strong build, olive skin, a small nose, and black hair that was always kept in a ponytail. She wore the standard armor of the Knights – a bulletproof tactical vest with protective pads over the shoulders, elbows, crotch, and knees, a utility belt holding a first aid kit, a Ka-bar knife, and in Roxy’s case, a Glock 19 – her variation being purple. “I was deployed again.”
Adrik could no longer talk from a hundreds of malnutrition, so he and Roxy developed a code based around the amount and lengths of breaths: inhaling for numbers, exhaling for letters, and nose breathing for special characters like question marks and commas. “Where did you go this time, Roxy?” He wheezed.
“They sent Michael and I to Portland… we burned down a bed and breakfast run by two goddesses. Their names were Vesta and Demeter, and, for some reason, we were instructed by the King to not kill them, which made me happy because I don’t like killing in general but confused the absolute heck out of Michael and I.”
“Vesta and Demeter? I remember them. Is good that you do not kill them. They are nice – wait, Vesta is nice. Ceres is very… let’s just say mean.” The two would continue to talk about the deities Chernobog had encountered in his godhood, how Gemini was feeling, recent events in the world, and the health of the relationship between the sweet Roxy and the respectable Gray Knight of Libra, Michael Coal. A relationship that Adrik envied, but he knew could not reveal to a woman that had been trained ever since the day she was born to kill gods.
“Huh… noted” Roxy returned a curious smile with her perfect white teeth. The radio on her shoulder beeped and a muffled voice contacted Gemini. “Confirmation that this is Gemini… yes sir, thank you sir. Sorry Adrik, I gotta go. Bye!” The Purple Knight exited the bright cell, leaving Adrik to his lonesome.
“Goodbye…” He breathed in their special code.
Suddenly, the ever-present lights shut down, the century-long humming of electricity came to a loud halt. For several moments, everything was dark. Then, light filled the cell, but it was not from the panels. Chernobog stood once more in his prime form with his black hair and broad shoulders, a pair of horns extending from his head, a devil’s wings upon his shoulders. He stood in his draconic armor on a great mountain surrounded by green forests and blue skies. He stood with his wings spread before an elder wielding a diamond sickle and wearing a robe of what could only be described as Time.
“Hello, Chernobog! Hail Satan, it’s great to see you!” The old man exclaimed with an Englishman’s tone of voice. He now wore a beige trench coat over a matching suit, though he still gripped his crystalline weapon.
“Tick Tock Man… so this is your doing?” Adrik said, his dark armor and wings replaced by a fitted trench coat over a slim black suit, his flowing black hair now a shorter, spiked variation of itself along with a sharp Van Dyke’s beard, and his black eyes saw through a pair of dark glasses lenses. Although, his smile still prevailed through the god’s great form.
“It is, O Prince of Darkness. I have come to relay news to you and offer a proposition.”
“Speak, Wily One.”
“Speak I will, Mister Temno. Ragnarök is upon us, and with it, a great war is too. Gods are dying faster than they should be, most of our fallen comrades gruesomely murdered by a currently unknown assailant, and I have sent my champion to collect as many of our brothers and sisters as he can before Christmas so that I may make the same offer to them as I am to you right now. As you know I am the Titan of Time and with that name I see two futures for you.” Said the Tick Tock Man, his tone deep and with the accent switching from English to Italian. “In one of these futures, you remain imprisoned in that chthonic cell of yours – just as I was in Tartaros. In this future, still do you suffer hunger and still do you grow weak. I this future, a pair of Twins that you hold so dear to your heart dies in a great war, and so too do you over the course of several millennia. The Black Death served you well Chernobog, but it will also punish you with thousands of years of torture – a torture on your body as you feel your life seep out of you every second of every day of every year for the rest of your miserable life… and a torture on your heart and souls and mind as you mourn for the Twins, wishing you could join them in Vyraj.”
“There are flaws in your prophecy, Time Lord: my Twins are not born from the mighty Slavs.”
“You didn’t know? They are Ukrainian, Lucifer.”
“They are? Hmm… what is second prophecy you bring?”
“It is one where escape from this prison with the whole of your power restored and the pair of Twins by your side. It is a future where you join in this glorious war and live as a powerful King God on a throne of swords and skulls where you rule over a New Underworld. A future where two queens rule by your side on thrones of rainclouds and stars. A future where a Dark Prince is your morbid executioner and follows in the footsteps of the terrible God of Evil, Chernobog!” The Tick Tock Man relayed, thunder booming as he cackled a conniving laugh. “So I ask you, Chernobog… when the time comes… will your flail swing?”
Chernobog gave him a grim, solemn face disguised by a scarred smile, and with it, the blue of the sky blackened, Bielobog’s rays of joy were replaced by Chernobog’s beams of sorrow. The Creatures of the Night roared, the savage wolves and malicious ravens mutilated the tranquil fawns and benevolent doves, the Animals of the Day cried. “When the time comes, my flail will destroy all and I will bathe in their blood. And when I am finished with them, I will gift them with my mark. I will make them smile at the fact that their armies were all but massacred by me… I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
“And I am become Time, the destroyer of all.” The Tick Tock Man parted with those words as the worlds turned black once more. The lights of the small cell reactivated, and Chernobog, despite being bound and starved, smiled. This was not a scarred smile. It was a genuine smile.
Chernobog smiled at the sheer though of tasting human blood again.
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