"Oh, he wants to die? I can arrange that!" Sammael laughed, but he was honestly bored with the show. It had gone on and on for far too long and he had decided that it was the right time to end it.

"I have punished the two of you enough, it is time to lower the curtains and start a different play. Of course, you know who is the one going first, my naughty puppet." He killed the foxkin easily with his authority over the creations of the Divine Universe and watched her lover agonizing over her death with a smirk.

[Do not worry, you will follow her shortly.]

He tried to nudge him with his remark, but he ignored him as always.

"What a boring fool, die already." He pressed a few buttons casually again and watched Frei falling to the ground next to his lover.

"You can hold your hands in your grave, but you bore me. Enough with failures, it is time to choose the true Gabri'El." Sammael laughed and his finger began to dance in the air, touching multiple holographic buttons.

"No need, he is right behind you. Due to your actions, your lesson ends here." A voice spoke and Sammael stood up abruptly.

How could there be someone in the deepest part of hell? It was impossible, even Mikha'El could not access his private room!

"I have never thought your lesson would be this poetic. It should start happening right about now." The voice sounded again and Sammael started slowly turning around. He did it with reluctance, because he subconsciously associated that long forgotten familiar voice with only fear and hate. Yes, there was a third one, envy.

When Sammael finally turned around and saw the angel facing him, he flinched and made a step back. There was the figure of Gabriel standing in front of him, but not the hollow picture he had created to mock the original, it was the real deal.

"Impossible! You are not supposed to be here! What is happe. .. . UGH!" Sammael paused when excruciating pain assaulted his mind, forcing him to his knees.

"You have cheated me again! What have you done?" Sammael could not decipher what was happening to him. He felt powerless and vulnerable, feelings that he had not felt for eons. "Won't he even show himself? Are you his parrot again?"

Gabriel ignored his insults and even a hint of anger could not be seen in his expression. That was unsettling, because such remarks always ticked him off before at least a little.

"It is time to tell you the truth, before you will be whole again and confused about your new self." The archangel paused and Sammael had a feeling that he was about to hear what he really did not want to know.

"To show you the error of your ways you have been split into two beings, one to govern the kingdom you envisioned and wished for so much. That is you Sammael. And another one to feel what it is like to live there called Frei Galgani. Now the time has come for the two halves to reunite and show you how flawless the life in your system is. I will leave you with your thoughts for a time, you will certainly have something to think about and feelings to sort out." The angelic voice fell silent and Sammael could not decipher whether there was a hint of ridicule and malice or not contained in his message. Had he really heard it there in the words of the being he hated, or it was only because he had expected that tone given what had been said?

He had no time to brood about it any further, because his memories and sense of self began to merge with the other half, his soul becoming one again. He was furious at the trickster god that had granted his wish of building his own system and become a deity of his own universe, but at the same time twisted it to laugh at him in the end. However, his anger had been overshadowed by stronger emotions that were coming from his soul's other half.

Grief was the strongest. He had been used to feel pity towards himself before the Divine Universe had been created, contesting against a god was unfair and he had always lost, but this emotion was much more intense and felt towards another. It was so unusual and humiliating. Why should he feel pity toward some mixture of an animal and a human? Some insignificant filth?

The moment he thought that, one of his hands moved to gouge out his eyes and he was lucky to be quick enough and dodge, the attack resulting only in long gashes on his cheek. Although he had avoided most of the physical pain, the storm his insult towards the deceased induced inside of his mind had not been diminished. He wished that his personality would split and compensate for his different views, but that did not happen. He could only clutch his head in his claws and try to fight his rebelling other half, to dominate it, to suppress it.

However, it was not possible. He seemed to be equal to the unpleasant other part and could only search for a common ground.

"Are you laughing at me now? Have you not ridiculed me enough?" Sammael shouted and surprisingly the answer he received was not from Gabriel, but from the voice he had not heard for so long. The voice of the one he despised that could not be confused with anyone else.

"That was never my intention, you can see that you were wrong and underestimated the world's complexity. Was your choice worth it, Sammael?" It asked and Sammael remembered all he had gone though, the memories of Frei blending into his as well, indistinguishable from his own.

After a while, he responded resolutely and strangely, it was his other part that guided his words the most.

" . . ."

THE END