Chapter Thirty-three: Longing Hearts

Chapter thirty- three; Longing hearts

The center of Benzosia’s universe was exactly three feet tall, a tumble of midnight hair, and eyes the impossible, shifting gray of a Stygian glacier at twilight. Glasya. She was the final, devastating answer to every question Benzosia had ever posed to fate. Glasya was the antidote to the venom of the Nine Hells, a secret, perfect garden of pure light and innocent mischief growing in the heart of the Malsheem. She was the only part of Benzosia left that had not bowed to the Ruby Throne.

Benzosia watched her daughter now, a relentless, consuming fire in her chest. Glasya sat on a plush carpet—a tapestry depicting the torment of damned souls—and laughed as she commanded three giggling succubi from the harem to build a tower of carved ivory bones. The sight filled Benzosia with a familiar, cold surge of purpose: Glasya must be strong, yes, but she would also be pure. She would grow up untouched by the corruption, wielding her power to one day challenge Asmodeus for the Infernal throne and restore order and balance.

“Your Majesty, Your Highness…”

The teaching paused as a servant presented a tray of crystalline, sugar-dusted infernal sweets. Benzosia smoothly intercepted the tray. “Not now, darling heart. Much too sticky before lunch.”

Glasya’s three-year-old face twisted into a scowl—a perfect, devastating echo of Levistus. “I want them, Mama! Now!”

Benzosia’s breath caught, the icy terror a sharp, physical agony. “Glasya, please. You know the rule about sweets before a meal.”

“But I want them!” Glasya’s displeasure at being denied was a sight too familiar, too disturbing, and far too heartbreaking to bear. It was undeniable proof of her secret, the betrayal worn in her own daughter's eyes. Benzosia’s hands trembled slightly as she shoved the crystal sweets into the child's hands. “Fine! Just… eat them quietly. And don’t get them on your dress.” Glasya’s scowl of having been denied was identical to the one her father had worn any time Benzosia had been forced back to Asmodeus’s side. She needed the look of pure innocence restored, needed the secret hidden again at all costs.

Then came Basileus, and a sickness curdled in Benzosia's gut. He was a violation, sickeningly beautiful, radiating the smug assurance of a creature Asmodeus held in absolute confidence. The air thickened with the cloying scent of his success, and a tight, burning wire of rage hummed beneath Benzosia’s skin. To see her daughter, her Glasya, running so happily to the Herald—"Uncle Bas!"—was a deeper betrayal than any infernal blade could inflict.

Basileus caught Glasya, and his amused, possessive chuckle ripped through Benzosia. She surged forward, a primal instinct overriding all else.

"Glasya, come back to Mama now!" The command was sharp, urgent, torn from her.

But Basileus blocked her path, his smile thin and patronizing, holding her Princess higher, just out of reach. "Ah, Queen Benzosia," he drawled, her title dismissed with a casual weight that grated on her very soul. "The King has become displeased with the... celestial nature of the Princess's tutelage. It is far too fragile for an heir."

"She is my daughter! I am the Regent of this realm, and her mother!" The words were a defiant roar, yet they felt hollow even to her own ears.

"Indeed, Your Majesty," Basileus replied, infuriatingly smooth, as he adjusted a ribbon in Glasya's hair. His gaze skimmed over her daughter, reducing her to a fragile, inconvenient piece of furniture. "A role which demands much of you, I'm sure. Fortunately, the King recognizes the need for someone less... sentimental to mold his future. I have been appointed to oversee all aspects of Princess Glasya's education from this moment forth." He shifted Glasya to one arm, a casual, devastating movement, and addressed the shadows behind Benzosia. "Guards. Restrain the Queen. She is not to approach the Princess." Basileus's voice was flat, final, like a hammer blow.

Benzosia was stopped, not by the imps' presence, but by the cold, devastating realization of her own powerlessness. She watched the light of her life led away by that serpent, the triumphant, chilling laughter of Basileus echoing in the vast, silent halls. Her soul went instantly rigid, locking away the raw, tearing grief. She would not beg. She would not break.

"You may relay a message to the King, Basileus," Benzosia said, her voice precise, cool enough to shatter glass, a deliberate mask over the inferno within. "Tell him I demand an audience. Not as his consort, but as the only mind in the Nine Hells capable of advising him on the Triad's inevitable response to this foolishness."

“It is none of your concern…” Basileus, initially dismissive, began to interject, but Benzosia cut him off with a frigid glare that dared him to continue.

"As you command, my queen." Basileus's smugness faltered, replaced for a brief moment by a flash of envy and shame, a tiny, satisfying crack in his impenetrable facade. With a curt bow, he turned and led the way, his earlier bravado replaced by a simmering resentment.

The audience took place in the King's personal study, a chamber designed to amplify his power. The air was heavy, charged with the crushing weight of infernal authority and the dangerous, possessive heat of the King himself. Asmodeus sat upon the large seat, a predator cornering his elusive wife, his gaze fixed on her with an unsettling intensity.

"Basileus tells me you wish to dispute my sovereign decree," Asmodeus said, his voice a low, dangerous thrum. He didn't want a debate; he wanted her submission. He yearned for her to be broken, compliant, stripped of the unshakeable certainty she still carried.

"I question your strategy, My Lord," Benzosia clarified, dropping into a low, agonizingly impeccable curtsy. She used her mind as a shield, forcing her heart to remain locked away.  “As i see it, the purity that Basileus seeks to destroy is the only thing that provides plausible deniability," she argued, every word a deliberate, cold masterpiece of law. "Glasya, possessing the softness of the celestial, is an ambiguous weapon. Her purity is her defense against the Heavens when they accuse you of overstepping your boundaries upon the realm of men."

He watched her, this creature he had claimed. Her logic was pristine, but he had always seen her celestial nature not as strength, but as inherent weakness—sweet, pure, and utterly incapable of true infernal cruelty. Of course she would mold the child in her own feeble image. It was this self-defeating softness that must be eradicated, this lingering light that constituted the real threat to his throne.

"Your logic is… flawless, Benzosia," Asmodeus finally admitted, a faint, cold smile touching his lips. "It is truly the mind I chose above all others."

A blinding spike of hope—unbearable, agonizing—pierced Benzosia’s chest.

"However," he continued, rising slowly, his great, dark form dwarfing her, the air growing thick with his power. "You failed to account for the one thing you, the scholar of law, never mastered: Prophecy."

He gestured to the corner, where a captured Soothsayer materialized from the shadows, bound with chains that shimmered with dark magic, weeping silently. The Soothsayer’s voice, raspy and raw, scraped across the cold stone with the dreadful, undeniable certainty of fate.

“Inform the queen of what you have foreseen.”

"My Lord sought confirmation of his path, a path shrouded in the deepest machinations of the Hells. It was revealed to me, in the tumultuous, crimson flow of the Blood War, that Glasya, the cunning and ambitious Princess of the Nine Hells, will one day rise and strike the killing blow against her own father, Asmodeus, the very King of Hell."

“Impossible..”

Benzosia staggered back, the sheer, crushing weight of the prophecy stealing the breath from her lungs and shattering the flawless geometry of her meticulously crafted plan. She had covered every loophole, every intricate detail, but she had never anticipated the true, fatal flaw: her daughter's destiny was already irrevocably written in the infernal tapestry of the Hells.

“I understand your shock, my dear” Asmodeus stepped forward, his eyes locking onto hers. "You wished for her purity, Benzosia, to ensure she kept the strength—the moral core — of a celestial."

He seized her chin, his grip painfully hot, carrying the metallic heat of the Ruby Rod itself. His touch was possession, a branding. "She is not an angel,Benzosia, she a demon. That dangerous softness that would have her turn against me, is yours Benzosia, and I will burn it out of my daughter entirely."

He gestured to Basileus, the move a raw, spiteful blow aimed entirely at Benzosia's sense of self. "The decree stands. Basileus will ensure she is thoroughly, irrevocably corrupted by the Ruby. That prophecy dies today, not in battle, but by the weight of her own soul. This is my true victory over your precious, treacherous purity."

Benzosia stood rigid, the cold of her failure sinking deeper than the ice of Stygia.

"Go, Benzosia," Asmodeus commanded, his voice cold and flat. "Contemplate the meaning of true obedience."

She turned, her shoulders stiff, walking away not just from the King, but from her last sliver of hope. She did not look back. Basileus's mocking, pitying gaze was the last thing she saw as the heavy door slammed shut.

The Malsheem’s halls were a suffocating tapestry of red velvet and polished black basalt, a fortress of opulence designed to remind her of her eternal, golden cage. She walked blindly, the air thick with the metallic scent of failure. She was the Queen, the cleverest mind in the Hells, and yet she was entirely helpless.

When she reached the private observatory—a chamber where celestial charts had been replaced by mirrors reflecting only her magnificent prison—the rigidity of her posture snapped.

The rage did not rise slowly; it exploded. It was the soundless, catastrophic fury of a star collapsing in on itself, the stored energy of a thousand years of compliance finally tearing loose.

Benzosia screamed, but no sound escaped the vacuum of her despair. She spun, her hands clenching into fists, and unleashed the full, unbridled force of her fury. With a guttural roar, she brought her fist down on the nearest mirror, the blow cracking the polished surface with a sickening crunch. Again and again, she struck, not with magic, but with pure, desperate, physical force. Shards of silvered obsidian flew, embedding themselves in her knuckles, drawing crimson lines, yet she felt nothing but the consuming fire of her wrath.

She kicked out, splintering the ornate legs of a velvet-draped table. The priceless, captured, corrupting artifacts that sat upon it clattered to the marble floor, and she stomped on them, grinding them to dust with her boots. Her hands, already bleeding, tore at the heavy velvet draperies, ripping them from their moorings, leaving scorch marks on the stone as she flung the tattered remnants against the walls. The marble floor buckled and cracked under the force of her desperate, animalistic assault. She did not stop. She threw her entire body into the destruction, a whirlwind of agony and fury, until the magnificent prison was reduced to a brutal, blood-splattered ruin, and her hands and feet were raw, bleeding testament to the depth of her rage.

When finally out of breath, she fell to her knees in the wreckage of her chamber, gasping, her body shaking not from exhaustion, but from the terrifying, exhilarating shock of her own power. Her body, now a vessel of aching muscle and raw adrenaline, had not felt this alive since she fell. She had fought her weakness, but the weapon she used was the very light Asmodeus despised.

She pressed her face into the cooled, ruined stone, tasting the dust of her broken rage. Her original plan—to mold Glasya into the one who would conquer the Ruby’s corruption—was childish folly. Asmodeus had sealed that path. The prophecy did not matter if her daughter’s soul was annihilated first. Her goal was no longer the throne; it was the survival of her child’s light.

Benzosia stared at the destruction around her. The terrifying truth solidified: to save Glasya from becoming the corrupted weapon of destiny, the source of the corruption itself must be broken. She would not raise a queen to conquer the Ruby. She would become the traitor who destroyed it.The rigidity of her posture snapped the moment she reached the private observatory—a chamber where celestial charts had been replaced by mirrors reflecting only her magnificent prison. Rage did not rise slowly within her; it exploded, a soundless, catastrophic fury of a star collapsing in on itself, the stored energy of a thousand years of compliance finally tearing loose.

Benzosia screamed, but no sound escaped the vacuum of her despair. She spun, her hands clenching into fists, unleashing the full, unbridled force of her fury. A guttural roar tore from her throat as she brought her fist down on the nearest mirror, the blow cracking the polished surface with a sickening crunch. Again and again, she struck, not with magic, but with pure, desperate, physical force. Shards of silvered obsidian flew, embedding themselves in her knuckles, drawing crimson lines, yet she felt nothing but the consuming fire of her wrath.

She kicked out, splintering the ornate legs of a velvet-draped table. The priceless, captured, corrupting artifacts that sat upon it clattered to the marble floor, and she stomped on them, grinding them to dust with her boots. Her bleeding hands tore at the heavy velvet draperies, ripping them from their moorings, leaving scorch marks on the stone as she flung the tattered remnants against the walls. The marble floor buckled and cracked under the force of her desperate, animalistic assault. She did not stop. She threw her entire body into the destruction, a whirlwind of agony and fury, until the magnificent prison was reduced to a brutal, blood-splattered ruin, and her hands and feet were raw, bleeding testament to the depth of her rage.

When finally out of breath, she fell to her knees in the wreckage of her chamber, gasping, her body shaking not from exhaustion, but from the terrifying, exhilarating shock of her own power. Her body, now a vessel of aching muscle and raw adrenaline, had not felt this alive since she fell. 

She pressed her face into the cooled, ruined stone, tasting the dust of her broken rage. Her original plan—to mold Glasya into the one who would conquer the Ruby’s corruption—was childish folly. Asmodeus had sealed that path. The prophecy did not matter if her daughter’s soul was annihilated first. Her goal was no longer the throne; it was the survival of her child’s light.