The Son of God and I continued down the Dark Stair to its very bottom. We stood at the final door of corrupted iron and infernine.

Here we paused.

"It is time for us to part ways, Darius," he said to me. "This final door is Death itself. Opening it and stepping through was the reason I was born. I died so that Death itself may come to an end."

I stared at the door. "Does that mean people won't die anymore?"

He shook his head. "Patience. That day will one day come. My passage through here will make that future possible."

I frowned at him. "But we knew about this already, right? Your pharisee buddies have been teaching us about the judgement, about the raising to life of the just and the condemnation of the wicked, all along. What about those of us who didn't go to synagogue every day and pass your test?"

He looked thoughtful.

"Do you recall the parable I told to Caiaphas when he asked me who his neighbor was?"

"Sure. What has that got to do with what I asked you?"

"Do you remember my parable about Lazarus and the rich man?"

I grunted. "Again, sure. That's the story where the rich man dies and goes sheol. He gets tormented with fire and no one is even sent to give him a drop of water to cool his tongue. I happen to know that really happened, by the way."

"Do you recall when I described the judgment, the separating of the sheep from the goats?"

"Yes," I said, feeling my old anger start to creep back. "Again, the goats get thrust into sheol and tortured forever. It's the same old injustice."

My soul flared with light and smoke. "I thought I was going to get answers. I thought you were going to change the world."

He took a step toward the door. Placed his spiritual hand upon its surface. "My teachings will affect the world slowly. A day will come, though, when all will understand what I have taught. Instead of dividing the world between the chosen people and the outsiders, all humanity will be mine--distinguished neither by whether they are male or female, rich or poor. Slavery will end."

With a mighty jerk, he pulled at the handle of the infernine door. Its hinges creaked as the most feared chamber of the universe's darkest realm was opened.

I took a step back, not knowing what to expect.

The place beyond was empty, just a cave with nothing inside. Somehow, the sight of that emptiness made me cringe and retreat. All sheol's power, everything we'd wielded was not only corrupt at its core, but a lie or illusion. I was nothing. We were nothing. Seeing it, I felt weaker, smaller.

But, no. The nothingness inside pulled at me, hungry. It wasn't simply the absence of light or power, it was negative, less than nothing. It would devour anything it touched, living or not.

"Don't go in there!" I shouted.

The Son of God, however, boldly stepped inside and vanished. "Jesus?"

If he was there, he gave no answer.

Summoning my courage, I charged forward and slammed the door shut, locking the terrible emptiness away. No sooner had I done so, however, than the whole thing collapsed into dust. There was no door, no cave. Even the less-than-nothing was gone.

All there was to see was Cassia, whom I watched with my detached eye, the one she still wore. She now knelt beneath the cross, holding the golden chalice, the cup Jesus had used at the Passover, in her hand.

What was she waiting for?

As I watched, a Roman soldier, a man I'd possessed, thrust his spear into Jesus' corpse. When it pierced him, blood and water flowed from the wound.

Cassia caught the water in her cup and bowed before it, an expression of reverence on her face.

I growled in frustration. "I suppose God and the angels will congratulate themselves forever over this little show they put on."

I spat. "In the end, I guess there are no answers and nothing really changes."

It bugged me, though. I'd been so sure he understood when he cried out those final words, that we'd convinced him to change everything.

Well, one thing was different, at least for me--Mikal. She and I would be together here. Who cared if the only place where that could happen was a scorching desert in the underworld? I'd have chosen that over heaven on any day of the week.

I flew up and out over the blasted and scorched plains, over the ruins of the Dark Stair, searching. With its power broken, I was no longer bound to walk the Dark Stair's scarred paths.

When I found Mikal, she was crouched before a pit of fire, shaping clay. A group of children sat around her in a circle, watching her. The older ones tried to copy what she did.

Gently, I landed beside her, admiring the tenacity with which she worked, ignoring the heat.

"Hey," I said.

"Darius," she smiled.

It was a smile to make me forget where I was, what I'd seen. There was enough beauty in her face alone to let me forget my disappointment at not getting the answers--the ones I felt I'd been promised. Was that supposed to be the point? Love was the answer? As non-answers went, there were worse ones.

But, no, that couldn't be it. I saw no straight line between the final parables Jesus reminded me of and love.

"Did you get the answer?" she asked said, smoothing one side of her pot.

"No. All I got were more parables. It's okay though. I guess."

She shot me a dark look. "It most certainly is not okay. The people of sheol need water."

What was I supposed to tell her? No can do? Eternal thirst is part of the punishment? Somehow, I didn't want to. This was not a time for disappointment, it was a time for appreciating what victories had been won.

How to phrase my response? Should I say, "We can"t have water, but we can have each other?" or should I say, "Being with you is better to me than drinking from the coolest spring earth has to offer?"

While I was pondering which foolish line to use, I watched Cassia with my other eye. She was carrying her golden chalice through the skies of sheol. She landed at the top of mount Charnel, a ragged black mountain made of volcanic rock. Magma boiled from many openings along its steep sides--but at its summit, miles above the infernal plains, was a small flat space.

She landed there, armor glinting.

Could it be?

"I might know the answer to your question," I said. "I'll check."

She thrust a clay pot into my hands. "Take this, you'll need it."

As I tucked my love's creation under my arm, I said, "Why do I feel like you know more about what's going on than I do?"

She shrugged. "I only know what Cassia told me, that you're supposed to meet her on a mountain somewhere and bring us water."

That made sense, I supposed. Cassia had spent time with Mikal while defending her. I'd thought my old demon friend was too busy to chat while she was slaying dark spirits, but maybe there'd been time for her to say a few brief words?

"I'll be back soon," I said and launched myself upward.

With all the speed I could muster, I flew toward Mount Charnel. It took longer than it might, on account of the fiery winds that blast the skies near that place, but at last I landed on the summit beside Cassia where she stood with that golden cup.

I looked into it. The water was not pure but mixed with a few drops of blood.

"Darius." She set the chalice down and gave me a hug. "It's good to see you again."

"Yes, it is." I looked at her again. "Somehow, I thought that archangels would blaze with glory like the sun or cripple me with holy dread or something?"

She shrugged. "I could do that if I wanted. It's not my style."

Part of me wanted her to do it, just to see what it was like, but I had other, more important questions.

"So, what are we doing here?" I asked. "The Son of God may have forgotten to fill me in on his plans."

"Yeah, he's never been good at explaining things, and becoming human didn't change that. Here's how it is, Darius. The paths between sheol and Earth are closing. Demonic possession is going to end--with a few rare exceptions. I won't be able to visit sheol, and you won't be able to come to Earth or heaven."

So, the big changes I'd been promised consisted of being locked away. More disappointment.

"But we will be able to meet here," Cassia said. "On this mountain, once every hundred years. I will fill whatever jars you have, and you will carry them throughout sheol, giving water to all the souls who dwell here."

I squinted at the small chalice. "I don't know how to make that small amount of water last a hundred years."

"It will not run out," she promised. "That is one of the big changes. This place, sheol, will still exist, it will still be unpleasant, but no corner of the afterlife will be without God's mercy. Sheol will have water, Darius, and it will be your job to carry it."

For a moment, all I could do was stand there in awe.

Mercy, in sheol. Yes, it was far less than I'd hoped for--but it was so much more than I'd expected.

I mean, don't get me wrong--the Dark Stair was a bad thing, but that had been a creation of the fallen. We'd built that as a testament to what God allowed. In some ways, its destruction had felt more like the silencing of our protest rather than mercy itself.

This, however, was at last something that was meaningful. That I was allowed to have any part in the distribution of this mercy was an honor beyond anything I'd expected. For several long moments, all I could do was look out across the vast infernal desert and stare, lost in wonder.

"What made you decide to switch sides, Cassia?"

"The same thing that almost made you do it. Love. It made me stop caring about whether God was right to allow suffering. Instead, I just worked to try and make things better."

I snorted. "You could have just become one of those mendicant demons. The ones who protest by helping people and raising their voices to God decrying the situation they just fixed."

She smiled. "God particularly loves those guys. Every time they do that, he laughs. They're still allowed on Earth, you know. They can even possess people, but they usually do it to make them do heroic things."

Somehow, I had a hard time picturing God laughing. Of course, I hadn't truly seen him since my fall, and my memory was hazy. What I thought I remembered was this ineffable light full of power, radiating peace and joy like some kind of ultra-powerful drug.

"I'm having trouble remembering, is laughing a new development?"

"Maybe? Or maybe he never let us hear it before? I don't know. I've only heard it since the Son of God appeared on Earth."

"Huh."

It was still hard to get my head around that one. God laughing. The whole idea was philosophically baffling. Obviously, at some level, it couldn't be real. God didn't breathe or have lungs. For that matter, all our perceptions of him were flawed projections of the infinite upon the finite.

"He also weeps," Cassia said.

That got my attention. "Almost, I wish I'd not thrown away the forgiveness Jesus gave me, if only to witness that. We've been trying for so long to get him to feel what we're feeling, make the infinite mind finally understand the finite one and its suffering."

I shook my head.

Cassia nudged my arms. "Funny you should say that. One of the times he cried was when you threw that gift away."

How did I feel about that? I stared across the infernal plain, listening to the distant cries for water as I tried to decide.

I smiled. I liked it. It made me feel good. It took us thousands of years, but maybe we'd finally gotten through to him.

"There are souls who need me," I said. "So I guess I'd best be on my way."

"Sure. And there's Mikal waiting for you." She winked.

We laughed about that, then filled my clay jar from her cup. Though the jar was larger than the cup, it was full by the time we were done.

She also restored my eye. Though the process was painful, it was good to be whole again.

With a final hug, I started down the mountain. It turned out that while carrying the water, I was unable to fly. The path leading down was a rough one, full of sharp turns and jagged rocks. Despite my boots, my feet ached long before I reached the bottom.

As I walked, I found myself pondering what I'd just learned from Cassia. The laugh we'd shared had been real. Had that ever happened in sheol before? Well, there was the derisive, mocking laughter of demons, an expression of bitterness more than joy.

So laughter in sheol was something else that was new. And tears in heaven? Yep. New.

When I reached the base of the mountain, I found my first customer. He was as miserable looking a bag of bones as are many in sheol. He was chained, standing up, to a dead tree--the only kind we had in this place. Somehow, trees grew while dead here, always having dry limbs and never bearing leaves or fruit.

I broke the chains with my sword. The ragged half-man thanked me and settled on the ground. "You have no idea how good it is to sit."

"Let me offer you a cup--"

It was only then that I realized--I had no cup. All I had was the clay jar.

The wretch reached into his filthy garments and withdrew a cup forged of infernine. Sometimes, in sheol, when souls cried out in thirst, the demons fed them their own blood in vessels such as these. I poured, and the man drank.

As he did, his scant flesh regrew and became whole, covering his bones and skull. His hair was dark, his eyes a pale brown. Almost, he looked healthy. He smiled and let out a long sigh.

"I never thought to receive water from a demon," he said, holding out his cup for a refill.

I poured. "A lot of strange things have happened lately. I saw the Son of God put to death on a cross."

The man nodded. "I heard he rose from the dead and ascended back into heaven leaving an empty tomb."

I supposed that made sense. Whatever his inscrutable purposes were for visiting Earth, they were doubtless complete. I found I missed the man, the way he challenged me and infuriated me, the way he insisted on calling me friend while I did everything in my power to hurt him.

With a snort, I said, "I'll bet Mary Magdalene was the one to discover it was empty. I'm pretty sure none of the apostles would have been at the crucifixion without her."

The man shrugged. "You may be right." He paused, then added. "I never thought I'd taste water again."

"Yeah. Jesus claimed he was going to change things--and he did. There's this water, of course, but he also silenced all our demonic protests. He broke the Dark Stair and blocked us from going to Earth to cause havoc."

The man laughed. "First you complain that God allows so much suffering, then you complain when he stops allowing you to cause it?"

I frowned. The man had a point.

As I looked over, I noticed he wasn't drinking. He handed the cup back to me. "Surely, you deserve something to drink as well."

I wasn't particularly thirsty. As Defender, I suppose I wasn't subject to the same weaknesses as most of the souls in this realm.

A drink, however, did sound good. I took the cup. Before I could raise the cup to my lips, the man spoke.

"Which would you rather have, Darius, answers to the reason God allows suffering, or to know that God goes with you on all your journeys and suffers with you?"

Only then did I recognize him--the pale brown eyes, the smile. "Jesus?"

But as soon as I spoke, he vanished as if he'd never been here with me.

"Just like him to ask a rhetorical question and disappear," I said to myself with a smile.

When I took a sip from the cup, the water had turned to wine.

HERE IS THE LIST OF SOULS WHO'VE WALKED WITH DARIUS, WARLORD OF THE DARK AND DEEP, TEMPTER OF THE SON OF GOD, AS HE TRAVELED THROUGH THE DESERT, THE PATHS OF SHEOL, DOWN THE DARK STAIR, AND FINALLY TO MOUNT CHARNEL:

_SpaceCake_

WillFlyForFood

A/N: Happy Easter, whatever the day means to you. Thanks for joining me. If you comment and ask, I will add your name to the list of those who've completed this journey with Darius.  If this story was fun and made you think a little, then it's done what it was meant to do.