“Out of everyone in this beautiful land, you have been chosen. You, and only you, have seen the light beyond the clouds above Jericho! And you, and only you, can guide that light back to it, back to us!”

The old man’s voice sounded as severe and resentful as it always did, the very wind from his words shaking the thin candle on his hands— the only light in that whole dungeon. And this was, of course, by design: the lights would only be lit when needed and not a single moment longer than that, usually during the times He lectured them or when He needed to take notes after yet another attempt.

He was always like that, pragmatic and spiteful, a tall and cruel shadow that lurked around the dungeon at least once every day just to look for something. None of the children in the cages really knew what he was looking for exactly, some had even fully lost their notion of day and night! Most of them, however, knew that this had also been part of the Demiurge’s design.

Everything in the room had been deliberately deployed: from their pathetic rations designed to keep them weak and force them to relieve themselves as little as possible, to the porous volcanic rock bricks the dungeon itself had been made with. It swallowed all sound perfectly, which was why some of the children who came from “the building outside” never even knew of the dungeon’s existence in the first place. No matter how much they cried and screamed, not a murmur could be heard— again, a sign of that bastard’s genius.

Just… a bit closer… come on, almost…

The texture did provide some sort of comfort to little Baraqiel, though. With their legs refusing to work for what felt like years, and while the Demiurge refused to stop his inane screaming, the little kid would crawl until they could slide a single hand between the bars of their prison. After humiliating, eternal moments of feeling the skin on their stomach grind against the rusty floor, the child could finally caress the ground outside. To them it was oddly calming, feeling the many holes of the cold rock against the tip of their fingers was one of the few positive sensations they had left.

Of course, all this had to be done without the Demiurge noticing. That’s what made it so hard.

“Each of the twelve of you hold a piece of Her Will, an Echo of the magic of yore! A hope for the return of Humanity’s Golden Age! Isn’t it obvious then, that your solemn duty is to hone this gift? To improve yourselves beyond humanity? To exploit this spark and nurture it into a pyre of inspiration!?”

Improve ourselves…? How is this improving anything, you… crazy…pudgy idiot…!

Aggressive thoughts, that’s all the rebellion they could muster, for Baraqiel did not have enough energy or courage to answer out loud. And really, no one in the dungeon did. There were times when some of the children (usually the new ones) would spit on his face, scream, cry and demand explanations for the madman’s nonsense! But those times were always short lived, for even in the times when the Demiurge allowed himself to entertain a single question, his answers only vexed them further. He spoke of “Realms of Ideas” and “Abysses of Oblivion”, he spoke of “Inspiration” and “Runes”. He spoke of “Echoes”, “Old Gods” and “Will”, he spoke of a “long lost Tree”. He spoke of many, many things, but there was one constant to his madness: he never provided context to any of them.

After all, the Demiurge was not talking with them, he was talking at them. He talked towards them, in their general direction, aiming for something that was not them but was somehow inside of them. Something that was so much more important to him than the children themselves, that he didn’t even bother learning the names of the body carrying that “something”.

In fact, the first thing he did upon the arrival of a new child was to utterly destroy that name.

“So listen to me, O Angels! O bearers of the gift of the Gods! O precious, untapped potential! Together we shall find a way to correct the history of this wretched world, and the Sun shall brightly shine upon the lives in Jericho once more, as we rest under the shadow of the Tree of Origins!”

Angels. He kept calling, yelling, weeping to those Angels, while the children that carried them suffered, cried and rotted in the cages he kept buried in this dungeon. Some children had even forgotten their own names already, caving under the torture of the Demiurge and reluctantly clinging to the titles that insane man had given them. Baraqiel could barely remember what used to be theirs, before the Demiurge bought them on the slave square… it started with an A, that they were sure of

Angels this, angels that… What even is an angel…

Before their imprisonment, Baraqiel had never heard the word Angel in their entire life, not once! They still remembered the tales a voice with no face used to tell them, tales of Stars looking upon the Planet and heroes following the whims of giggling spirits. They heard of faeries, pixies, elk spirits and chaotic stars, but never of angels.

They sometimes tried to remember more details, to give a face to that gentle voice who spoke such wondrous tales. Closing their eyes and letting their little body squirm in place, as their fingers traced little circles on the floor outside. Oh Baraqiel, who did you used to be? Did anyone ever tenderly call your name? Not likely, considering how easily it vanished into the aether from whence it came. Were you ever the child of someone’s eyes? Is anyone looking for you outside? The child seriously doubted it, they doubted everything at this point.

And even if they did have a family outside, they didn’t want to have anything to do with the people who let them fall this deep.

I hope they choke on the money…!

As far as Baraqiel was concerned, if they ever had something akin to a family, it had sold them to the Demiurge and was probably as bad as the Demiurge himself. Sometimes the child wondered if maybe it was for the best to be trapped here, away from such a disgusting household— but no chance. Not when they had to endure the howling man and his theatrical suffering.

“Then why!? Why, o why must you forsake me!? What pushes you to ignore my plights!? How much more blood must I spill for you, o Angels!? How much longer will I have to suffer this damnation!?”

The man exploded into a fit of anger, as he usually did, unleashing his wrath onto the cages in front of him. His kicks shook them all, making some of the lively children squeal and whimper in fear, while the older ones simply mumbled under their breaths. It was always like this: he begged, screamed, and then lashed out his frustrations over the repeated failure of all of his ambitions.

In a way it was terrifying, not only because it highlighted how unpredictable the man’s mood was, but it also showed the unholy strength hidden under that wide frame and his ever reddening face.

My ears! Is his throat as strong as his arm!? How does he keep howling!?…Seriously, my ears will pop one of these days!

A dungeon is not usually big: it was meant to be tight and uncomfortable, easy to observe, and this one was not the exception to any rule: When coming through the reinforced iron door, the entire left side of the room was occupied by the twelve cages, each usually inhabited by a child. Every cage had a shiny, golden label with the name of the Angel they supposedly held inside, but besides that everything else about the cages was rusty and about as badly kept as the children inside.

In front of the door, right at the other side of the room, sat the Demiurge’s desk: it had some books, a quill and an inkwell, and flasks full of Saint knows what. Also the one candleholder in this entire room, used only when the man finished his work for a night and furiously wrote in his log— he was never happy to do so, it felt like he never had anything good to add.

After all, he was yet to produce a single “success” with his beloved Spire.

That gods forsaken Spire…

The bulky, monstrous contraption claimed the entire right side of the room. Four stone "thrones" with thick leather straps bolted on its armrests and supports to hold the poor soul who would be sitting upon them; the clawing marks were signs of despair and pain, memories of many failed attempts to escape the Spire’s thunderous embrace. Some children swore upon themselves to not even try to do so, for scratching stone only destroyed their nails, but the light flowing into their bodies was so intense that the very primal need for freedom took over every single time, without exception.

It steals the breath from your lungs, the feel from your flesh, and the motion from your legs…

Baraqiel sighed. They were still awaiting the return of sensitivity to their lower body, but to no avail: their legs just hung down from their hips, useless and cold.

The straps on those thrones had never failed to restrain any child while the Spire itself did its job: some sort of rusty metallic pillar bigger than any of the thrones bowing to it, made out of innumerable metallic cogs, nuts and bolts weaved together in a symphony to sin itself. Staring at it was like looking into the open insides of a still living, still suffering deer, its fuming brass muscles letting out columns of smoke and gasping for air when the Spire sang. Baraqiel still remembered being mesmerized by the intricate network of steel, brass, leather and wood right there, even while the children sitting down screamed and shook.

I swear I felt them…I felt how that heart beated, throbbed inside of my veins…!!

Ah yes, The Heart.

Baraqiel regained enough energy to shoot a hateful glare to the very center of the mechanism. In the center of the Spire, nestled neatly in a space carved just for it, rested the Heart: a huge piece of yellow, cloudy, polished rock. It needed to rest right in that crevice before the Spire could even start to heat up, somehow extracting the energy hidden within the mineral and pushing it through a million metallic tendrils that sprung from the top of the Spire itself, each ending in a thin, bloody needle. That’s how it connected to a child’s body, piercing elbows, shoulders, legs, back, neck and sometimes even the back of the head of some unfortunate sod, before letting lightning run through it all and boil the very juices inside their bodies…

And all for what…?

No one really knew.

The Spire was a marvel of technology and probably the closest thing to magic in this Age of Silence that any of those children ever saw; it was the real pride of the Demiurge’s work. The only thing everyone knew for sure is that whatever the Spire was supposed to be doing, it was failing to do so. Catastrophically. And the Demiurge blamed them for it.

Oh, of course the bunch of rocks and metal scrap he mashed together couldn’t possibly be to blame… it has to be us, we are totally the problem.

Baraqiel’s anger kept them functioning when the anguish failed to quell its flames. They knew there was a smaller, weaker version of it in the room right outside of this dungeon: a sort of “test” that all Angels had to “pass” before being put here. Baraqiel still remembered their turn out there —the very first time really felt like the end of the world, but after a single session in this Spire, they knew that the one outside was but a mere tickle in comparison.

But it was like comparing the sting of a sword and the one of a dagger: both of them hurt, and both of them kill.

The Spire kept taking victims one after the other, and for each Angel that fell, the Demiurge needed to find a replacement outside; and each time it took longer for the cages to refill— even now, after at least a week, Uriel’s cage remained empty, and this had only made the Demiurge’s mood even worse.

Baraqiel nodded to themselves. Yes, it had to be a week. Their counting was still intact in their mind.

“You better start shaking your vessels into shape, for I will not tolerate any more failure!” He screamed, as he always did. “When I return tonight, I expect a new breakthrough… I mean it!”.

He did not mean it, at this point the children knew it: He needed them alive, and each death was an absolute accident.

With more empty threats, the man snuffed out that one light shining under his chin, and stomped right off of the dungeon with a loud slam of the iron gate. He kept doing that, speaking of “night” and “day” as if they meant anything to the children in the cages; it was quite annoying to most of them but it at least allowed them to keep a little grasp on time, as useless as that was.

Not too long after the Demiurge made his exit, children began to let out soft, nervous little whimpers that soon broke into shaky sobbing. Baraqiel brazed themselves, trying so hard not to join them! But the helplessness pushed so heavily on their shoulders that it somehow squeezed the tears right out of their eyes. Frustration, sadness, anger, it all mixed into nonsense right inside the children’s heads, and that’s not even mentioning the pain.

Come on… come on, old pal… don’t, just, don’t. Take a deep breath, and just…!

Their bodies were left mutilated by the process, with brown spots on their burnt flesh, and many bleeding wounds marking the points those needles bit into their bodies. They were all too young to really understand pain despite feeling it so vividly, their hearts still holding some semblance of wonder that prevented cynicism from setting in and dull the reality around them even a little.

Depression without cynicism is a special kind of hell: the feeling of helplessness doesn’t sink into resignation, keeping a never ending yearning for a solution that may never come. When the nihilistic realization finally arrives, the fall was all the more painful: The spirit crashes on the ground like cheap porcelain and Apathy finally rooted into their hearts, leaving an emotionless husk too afraid to cling to hope ever again.

What’s even the point of crying, now?

Maybe some of them knew it unconsciously, and feeling their childhood slipping from their grasp, the braver children tried to reassure the others.

“We… we will get out of here… I am sure we will…!”

A nasal voice spoke up. Travis was always like that, heroic to the core. Some children groaned in annoyance, curling a bit tighter to continue crying. “Shut up!”, they cried, but others sniffled and slowly contained their tears, to listen better. Baraqiel was not specially hopeful but something inside drove them to pay attention every time the Hero whispered.

Mostly because they wanted to make sure they all were still on the same page about the plan.

“If any of us gets out: we run, alright? We run. Don’t try to free the others. Just run, get out, find help and then come back! It can be done, I am sure of it!”

That’s all we can do, right…?

Some voices mumbled a vague approval, others spat in disgust. Baraqiel was among the few quiet ones. That was the plan.

None of them wanted to end like Sachiel.

The Sachiel incident was still very fresh in everyone’s minds. A relatively young Angel, one that had spent so little with the Spire that still kept the energy in her body, somehow managed to sneak out of her cage when the Demiurge forgot the lock. If it hadn’t been for that moment of hesitation she had right before the door, when Sachiel turned back and considered opening more cages…

Her cage was not vacant, but it was not the same Sachiel anymore. Saints only know what happened with her after the Demiurge pulled the girl out of the dungeon that night, the only hint they had was a cut ear that the monster had thrown at them the next day as “a lesson”.

A rat took it the other night, I think… no one ever cleans…

Baraqiel winced just from remembering, sighing and hugging their cold, unfeeling legs closer to their face for a moment. How long has it been since he was able to move them? A month and around two weeks. The angel’s obsession with keeping time had become both a torture and a lifeline to sanity these days.

Without tools, help or hope, Baraqiel could only wait for a miracle. A true angel descending from Heaven to free them all, somehow. Maybe an earthquake, or righteous thunderbolts falling from the skies. Volcanic eruptions, furious winds. Anything really, anything that could destroy this dungeon and break their chains.

But without that… Baraqiel could only sigh.

They could only ignore the writing in the walls for so long, and every night that passed it was only clearer: they were alone in a room full of people, and each of the prisoners there was absolutely, completely doomed.

Someone… please… anyone!

We’re still here… please…

Save us…