On feathered wings the angel flew; a great descent, from the thirteenth heaven to the four hundred and ninth, so far and so fast that the divine song that filled her ears during each and every moment of her existence was all but drowned out by the sound of rushing wind. She flew and flew, between rings of light, past sunbeams of radiance from the highest high, and through choruses of her fellow angels, their hands joined in as they offered up their eternal litany of praise.

Then, it was all gone.

The angel slipped through a sempiternal crack in the firmament, no wider or deeper than a heartbeat, and with that, she was plunged into shadow. She spread her wings, letting them arrest her fall, and after a few moments her feet touched down onto something solid. The angel looked about herself fearfully. If she’d had a heart, its beat would have quickened. This strange space — a world behind the world, a gap carved into reality — was of a darkness the angel had never known. Here, the divine song was muted and distant. It was a place no heavenly being belonged.

“An angel, in my home!” came a voice as soft and deep as the shadows themselves. “To what do I owe this unusual pleasure?”

The voice raked shivers across the angel’s back. She drew her wings in close, keeping them about her like shields, and pulled her tunic tight to her form. The pearlescent halo above her head cast a pool of light, but it was so small compared to the abyss beyond.

“You are a demon,” the angel whispered. Instinctively, elemental revulsion filled her voice.

From all around her, the darkness laughed. “Of course.”

The angel shuddered. Antipathy toward all blasphemous things was written into the innermost fabric of her being. She yearned to become a blade and strike at the demon’s heart, or else to take wing and fly back into the light. “Abomination!” she hissed.

More laughter, and closer. The angel shrank into herself. The crack of light that shone the way back to safety was so far above.

“Let’s not get too far ahead of pleasantries,” the demon replied. “What’s your name, little angel?”

She knew she should not speak it. Names were power. “Suriel,” the angel answered.

“Suriel.” The name seemed to melt in the demon’s mouth. “Welcome, Suriel, to my domain.”

Her domain. A demon’s domain. The angel knew she should flee — if still she could. The cloying deep of the sunless space felt far heavier than any air.

“What are you called?” Suriel asked. The question seemed absurdly quaint under the circumstances.

“Beleth,” the demon replied, and stepped out of the dark.

Although not completely. She couldn’t. The darkness clung to her like rich cloth. It covered her, in fact, rippling across her form like the purest pitch, glossy and thick, reflecting the meager light of Suriel’s halo. But beneath that veil of ichor, the angel could still make out Beleth’s physique. The demoness was resplendent in form; queenly and proud, she carried herself with a vanity and sensuality that Suriel knew had driven mortals insane with lust. But lust was yet unknown to Suriel; instead, Beleth’s shameless proportions simply made her itch with shame for her own budding physique.

“I love the way you look at me,” Beleth laughed sardonically, and the darkness laughed with her. It then occurred to Suriel that these shadows were not merely her home or her shroud. They were part of her. Suriel could sense it with every throbbing beat of the demon’s corrupted heart.

“You’re…” Suriel tried to find the words to sum up all that she felt about the demoness, “wrong.”

“Yes,” Beleth replied simply. “I am.”

She sounded like she was smiling, but Suriel couldn’t be sure. The demon had no face - or if she did, it was hidden behind cascading waves of that unholy, oily blackness. In fact, she had no features at all that Suriel could make out, save for a pair of strange, jagged horns and two immense black shadows that might have been wings.

“How could you?” Anger, unwise as it was, came to Suriel. “How could you turn on Him? How can you stand yourself? It’s disgusting! Your… your sin.”

“What do you know of my sin?” Beleth asked.

“I can smell it,” Suriel hissed. “The stench.”

More laughter. “My, my. The little angel knows what sin tastes like.”

“I should strike you down!” Suriel cried furiously, but the darkness made it seem small. “Put an end to your foul words!”

“But you won’t,” Beleth retorted with a snake’s swiftness. “I know why you’re really here, Suriel.”

Her boast was a knife through Suriel, but the angel kept her composure. “Why am I here?” she challenged.

“Curiosity,” Beleth answered simply. “It’s no sin,” she added mockingly when Suriel shuddered.

No, curiosity was no sin. But sin was for mortals, not angels. For an angel, curiosity was something worse: a flaw.

“You know nothing of me,” Suriel snarled, though her cheeks burned as she did. Her denials were as instinctive as they were meaningless. If it was not as the demon had said, she would not have been here.

“I know nothing?” Beleth replied archly. “Perhaps. But I see plenty. I see why you hide yourself… girl.”

At that, Suriel could only flinch. She pulled her tunic tighter still, but it did her no good. Yes, the demon could see. All could see - even the fellow angels of Suriel’s flight, if only they would deign to look. The garments Suriel had taken to wearing to hide her shame were a ridiculous affectation. What need did an angel have for clothing? None; no more than mortals before their fall.

But Suriel could not help it. She could not help the fear that if she went naked, all her heavenly fellows would see the budding body beneath her clothing.

“I’m not… a girl,” Suriel insisted. The claim was mud in her mouth.

“Not yet, perhaps,” Beleth offered. “But you’re well on your way.”

On the angel’s chest, twin mounds of soft flesh were swelling up. Her face, softening. The proportions of her torso, her hips, her legs - all of them had been subtly shifting, as slow as a glacier might move, but just as implacable. And most sinister of all was the change born in Suriel’s mind. The thing that had slipped in amongst the divine clockwork of her thoughts and fouled them. That word, the one that came to mind whenever she thought of herself.

She.

“I…” Suriel closed her eyes and clenched her fists - and decided to cast away her pride. At this rate, she would get nowhere. “I… am alone. The others in the heavenly host know nothing of this… transformation. They are a harmony; I, a debased note. I wish I knew how to return to them. To be an unthinking conduit once more. And yet…”

“And yet.” Beleth picked up the thread of Suriel’s thoughts with confident ease. “Your curiosity remains. A burning seed. You want to know more.”

“I want to know what I’m becoming,” Suriel pleaded. “That’s what I want to know. I simply… if I knew that, perhaps I could-“

“No!” Beleth cut her off. The demon seemed to be drawing closer. Perhaps growing. Or perhaps it was all just a trick of the light. “Don’t lie to me, little angel.”

“I’m not-“ Suriel took a step back, but it put no distance between them.

“You want to know more,” Beleth pronounced. “You want to know everything.”

Her words were tinged with dark promise and, unguarded by pride or secrecy, Suriel was seduced by temptation. “Yes,” she whispered. “I can feel things now — so many things — but they’re just… just fragments. Just shadows on a cave wall.”

“They could be more,” Beleth offered. “You could plunge into them. There are so many things in this world to be tasted, little angel. There are flavors you can now only dream of.”

Suriel shivered rapturously at the prospect. Deep within her, vindication purred. This was why she’d come here. She had been right. Beleth could sate her cravings.

But if she did, what would that mean? It was the most desperate heresy. The awful magnitude of what Suriel was considering gave her pause. Angels had been cast down for less. Perhaps she should turn back. Perhaps she should fly back into the light.

Yet… was the divine not all-forgiving? Suriel meant no harm, she reasoned. She just needed a taste. A real taste. Something to put an end to these appetites. Once she had that, she wouldn’t need this all-consuming curiosity. She could throw herself at His mercy. She could content herself with being a good little angel once more.

What was so wrong with all that?

Suriel nodded and sealed her fate with three words: “I want it.”

All around her, the shadows laughed, roiling with mirth like the primordial seas. Glistening oil poured forth from Beleth’s form, coating the ground.

“Whatever forbidden little tidbit led you to me,” the demon said, “did it tell you what must be done?”

“No.”

“It’s simple.” Beleth told her. “That thing.” She raised a hand and pointed a dripping finger. “We must break it.”

She was pointing straight at Suriel’s halo.

A wave of instinctive disgust washed through Suriel, and she stepped back. The demon might as well have suggested severing one of her limbs. “What? No!”

“It’s the only way.”

“You would mutilate me!”

“I would free you,” Beleth insisted. “Your halo is not what you think, little angel. It keeps your mind caged.”

Suriel would not believe it. “It is my light!”

“Then,” Beleth hissed, “you will never know.”

That threat gave Suriel pause. It was clear the demon would not be swayed. That left Suriel with just one choice. The same choice she had already made. She could press on, or return with nothing but a need that would only swell and swell. Already, it was beginning to possess her, drawing out strange curiosities.

“It will… hurt?” Suriel asked. Her voice cracked.

Suriel was sure she could sense a grin behind Beleth’s glistening mask. “Oh, little angel. It will do much more than simply hurt. You can’t even imagine.”

The angel quivered. That was all she needed to hear. She had to know. In the end, it was that simple.

“L-Let’s do it,” Suriel said quietly.

At once, Beleth surged forward and was all but atop her. At that distance, her greater height was staggeringly evident. The shadows seemed to draw in, and Suriel thought that she could see strange tendrils, like darkness given form, extending toward her from the blackness.

Suriel should have been terrified. She was terrified - but she was excited, too. The sheer strangeness of the experience was like a red rag to a bull. Her inner voice whispered jubilantly: this was it. This was what she had been craving.

Beleth raised a hand toward the angel’s halo. “Have you ever been touched here?”

“N-no, of course not.” Suriel’s brow furrowed. The question struck her as strange. Why would she have? Why would anyone touch her halo? “That’s not how we-“

Beleth stroked her fingertips across the halo’s gleaming surface, and the very first moment of contact robbed Suriel of her words. Nothing came from her lips but a short, harsh gasp. The sensation was transcendent. It was something far deeper than physical; it stroked a part of Suriel’s very being. Something it should not have been possible to touch, yet that was overwhelming in its sensitivity.

“W… w-w-w-… w-w-what i-i-is this?” It took an age for Suriel to force out the stammered words. “W-w-what d-did-“

Idly, Beleth drew the tips of her fingers around the rim of Suriel’s halo, tracing its circular arc. As she did, Suriel fell silent and twitched violently, her back arching. She had never felt so acutely vulnerable, or so acutely helpless.

“Your halo is a kind of receptacle,” the demon explained. “By its nature, it keeps you attuned to nothing but the divine. But as it turns out, it can just as easily receive all kinds of things. Although it does tend to be a little sensitive.”

'Sensitive’ was a malicious understatement. Suriel’s entire body was wracked with sensations, all of them new and foreign, each of them blossoming through her deific nervous system with each touch, each caress, each stroke. Suriel closed her eyes, hoping that would somehow keep them at bay, but instead she was assailed by shards of bright color that appeared behind her eyelids.

“I-i-i-t’s… t-t-tooooo,” Suriel stuttered. “S-s-s-stop!”

She was almost surprised when Beleth paused her ministrations. “That’s just a taste,” the demon promised. “A mere hint of what’s to come. Of what can be.”

Suriel let out a slow, deep, ragged breath. “W-wow.”

It had all been too much. Too overwhelming.

Which was exactly why she needed another taste. She needed to grasp all those feelings, one by one. To understand them. To know them. She was beginning to understand what Beleth meant about her halo.

And why they needed to break it.

“Are you ready?” Beleth asked.

Suriel looked up at the demoness. It seemed all but unfathomable that she was about to entrust herself to such a being. Her form, rich with allure, coated in that seeping, shining blackness, laid her malevolence bare. Those claws, those tendrils, spoke of a clear and present danger. But so far, she had been as good as her word. And she overflowed with exactly the kind of knowing Suriel craved.

The angel steeled herself. “I am ready.”

She had dared to hope that, now that she knew what to expect, she would be able to bear it better. As soon as Beleth took hold of her halo, Suriel was disabused of that notion. This time, there was no gentle stroking. Beleth simply placed one of her hands on each side of Suriel’s pearlescent ring and gripped it tight.

Suriel had thought herself overwhelmed before. Compared to this, that had been nothing. Now she understood what Beleth had meant when she’d described it as a taste. With the demon’s hands squeezing tight on her halo, her ability to control herself failed completely. Suriel began to thrash madly; not trying to squirm free, but simply caught in the grip of cascading spasms as her body flew out of her control.

And her mind was set on fire.

The flood of new sensations was far more than Suriel could possibly hope to process. It was a tide; a flood, washing through her, over her, crushing in its path all her most basic mental faculties: her powers of discernment and distinction, her ability to tell one thing from another, her ability to recognize any of what she felt for what it was. It was all simply a torrent, indiscriminate and unceasing, so merciless in its flow that Suriel could not tell herself apart from it.

Yet somehow, through all that, there was pleasure.

It was simple. Elemental. Brutal. Pain and unpleasantness meant nothing; all Suriel knew was that every single part of her body that was capable of feeling was being lit up with violent intensity.  There was something about that which seemed so right. It obliterated all doubt. All fear. It reminded Suriel, a little, of how she felt when she sang at the highest peaks of the heavenly chorus and felt divinity thrumming through her entire being.

But this was better. Fuller. More consuming.

“My, my,” Beleth cooed. She made no secret of her mockery. “Look at you, little angel. Look at that little face.”

Suriel looked up at her stupidly in response. Making sense of the demon’s words was an immense struggle. Once they came to her, Suriel realized that her eyes were blinking and flitting unevenly, one stretched open wide, the other hanging lazily. Her breaths kept coming in ugly, ragged pants. As she tried to reply to Beleth, the words simply drooled out of Suriel’s mouth in a messy, incoherent froth.

“And we’re only just getting started,” Beleth remarked. “Here it comes, angel. Time to fall.”

Beleth flexed her fingers, then gripped tight and began to wrench her arms apart. Suriel was blinded by the flood of raw sensation, but at first, nothing seemed to happen. After a few moments of straining, though, Suriel’s halo, its surface already stained by the black ichor dripping from Beleth’s body, started to stretch. The shift was minute, barely perceptible, but still, Beleth’s hands were moving apart. As they did, a sound like the shattering of glass filled the cavernous gloom of the demon’s domain.

And Suriel felt a crack open right at the heart of her very existence.

The great rift forming within her was so deep, so fundamental, it managed to shear through the magnificent cacophony of sensation Suriel was experiencing. It sliced her to her core, and the cold shock of that rupture brought with it panic. Suddenly, the sound of her halo breaking was deafening. It brought with it an agonizing awareness of loss.

“W-w-w-wwwwait,” Suriel had to fight agonizingly hard just to find that simple word. “S-ssstoppp.”

Beleth didn’t. She kept pulling, prying Suriel’s halo apart little by little.

“S-stop!” Suriel insisted. Though she could barely control her flailing limbs, with great effort she was able to throw her arms up and start batting at Beleth, trying to fight the demon off.

It was like trying to fight a tidal wave.

“Stay still,” Beleth instructed. She sounded more irritated by Suriel’s resistance than genuinely hindered.

“SS… sssstoppppp!” As Suriel begged, her halo cracked apart a little further. Suriel’s voice splintered along with it, jumping up in pitch and slipping into a stilted, broken cadence that barely sounded like speech. Through it all, she kept struggling as best she could.

“I warned you,” Beleth hissed.

Out of the shadows, tendrils surged toward Suriel. Within moments, at least half a dozen of them were wrapping themselves around Suriel’s body, each one dripping with sticky, black, viscous ooze. They wound their way around the angel’s legs, her arms, her waist, tightening and tightening, pulling her into a spread-eagle pose. Suriel kept struggling and straining with all her failing might, but Beleth’s tentacles were relentless. Suriel was nothing more than a fly, caught in a spider’s web. And the sensation of all those slimy appendages wrapping tight around the angel’s body only added to the cacophony of sensations that were overwhelming her.

“That’s better,” Beleth mocked. “Don’t worry, little angel. It won’t take much longer.”

Now that Suriel was held stationary, the demon could bring her full strength to bear. She tightened her grip still further and renewed her efforts to wrench the halo apart. It began to distend, cracks appearing all over its surface, and — to Suriel’s growing horror — a strange fluid started to leak out from within. It was all colors and none; pearlescent, almost white, when caught in its own glow, but as it dripped down to stain Suriel’s head and shoulders, it seemed to separate into distinct, refracted bands of every shade of the rainbow.

And Suriel could feel it. Not just dripping onto her, but flowing out of her.

“S-stop!” Suriel cried out again, in blind panic. “Ssst-… sssttt-… sst-“

Another crack, even louder and more frightening than the last. The void within Suriel cracked wider with it,  yawning open, ready for her to fall into it. Suriel convulsed from the metaphysical shock of the moment, the coherence she was forced to fight so hard for once again dashed, and her words reduced to nothing more than a set of bleated, repeating sounds.

“Stop, stop, stop!” Beleth mocked. “You wanted this, angel. You asked for it. Didn’t you want to know?”

More cracking. More splintering. The halo was beginning to come apart into pieces, but still, it held together, as it resisted its own destruction by some force of inner, divine magnetism.

“No… k-know?” Suriel found herself confused. She simply couldn’t keep the words straight in her head. “Know… n-n-n-o. Noooo. Know. N-n-… know?”

Beleth simply laughed at her. The worst part was that Suriel was no longer sure what she was even attempting to say. Her panic brought forth a desire to stop, to pull back, to salvage what could still be salvaged. But still, even now, the demon’s promise of knowledge rang in her ears. She could feel it, coursing through her. Fresh sensation, fresh experience, rewiring her nerves, burning itself into her being. It was terrifying, yes, but the pleasure it all brought was undeniable. Suriel’s body had started responding to it in earnest. The tentacle snaked across her chest, and the one forcing its way between her legs — both of them radiated warmth through her, a fleshy, unfamiliar warmth that was instantly addictive.

“That’s right,” Beleth cooed. “Soon, you’ll know everything. No going back.”

Beneath Beleth’s claws, Suriel’s halo was distending hopelessly. It had already become a crooked, twisted thing, stretching and cracking, only just managing to hold itself together in a single shape. Its former perfection was long gone. The dripping of ethereal, pearlescent fluid through the cracks had become a torrent, drenching the twitching angel from head to toe. The colors within the fluid were beginning to blend, darkening as they did, leaving the substance a distinctly dirty shade of grey-brown.

“B-b-ack?” Suriel moaned, her voice jumping wildly across three octaves. “B-ba-… s-st-… b-b-baaaack?”

She kept twitching and thrashing, although Beleth’s tentacles held her so tight she was barely able to move. Her struggles had long since lost their purpose; mostly, it was simply the random misfiring of muscles and nerves, but increasingly, Suriel was finding herself held in the sway of a strange, pleasurable rhythm, making her throb and gyrate, pressing herself ever more insistently against the tendrils that bound her.

The gratification was unspeakable.

Every touch, every instant, a new delight. A new sensation, and no matter if it was good or bad, right or wrong, sinful or divine, Suriel wanted more. More, more, more. Before, her appetite had been mere curiosity. Now it had truly been whetted, and her hunger was endless. Nothing could slake it. The concept of satiety had become foreign. The more Suriel felt, the more she wanted. The more she wanted, the more she instinctively welcomed all that Beleth offered.

But that did not mean she didn’t understand the gravity of what she was about to lose.

“L-l-lord!” Suriel cried, a wet-lipped moan for deliverance that would not be answered. “S-sa… saaaaave… m-me!”

Now, with her halo on the brink of giving way, Suriel could clearly see the foolish hubris of her former fantasies. There was no coming back from this. Black and stained as she was, she would never be able to crawl back up into heaven and take her place amongst the host. She was being changed far too deeply. She would know everything, but never again the sweet, soporific bliss of that perfect, divine harmony. As Suriel dwelt on that, the prospect grew to haunt her, and regret joined the cacophony of her emotions. Pearlescent halo-fluid started dripping from her eyes too, staining her cheeks like tears.

“No salvation,” Beleth promised, with malignant glee. “Not here. Something better.”

The demon wrenched and heaved once more — and at long last, the halo broke.

When it finally came apart, it did so in a great shattering. In one moment, there was a twisted, crooked, distended disk of fading light above Suriel’s head. In the next, there were a thousand golden shards flying in all directions. There was a deafening crack, like thunder splitting the sky, and Suriel’s arms and legs stretched themselves out, cruciform, as she felt her very essence as an angel die.

It should have horrified her. Instead, all that was Suriel was swept aside in an ecstatic torrent. In a single instant, she realized that, all along, Beleth had been right. The halo had been an instrument of binding. Since the dawn of eternity, it had kept from her all the wondrous sensations Beleth offered. Now that it had been utterly destroyed, nothing was holding them back. Suriel felt it all. She knew it all. But the knowledge and the feeling no longer paralyzed her. Instead, she experienced a kind of tranquility amidst the flood. She had found the eye of the storm.

Within just a few moments more, the halo-fluid drenching her body had curdled and darkened still deeper, leaving it was a perfect, oily, lightless black.

“There you are,” Beleth said. She released Suriel and peered at her closely. “How does it feel?”

Suriel peered back at the demon. In the demon’s reflective face, she could see her own, equally featureless, equally coated in that strange ichor. And in her face, Beleth’s, and in Beleth’s, hers, and so on, into infinity. Suriel could barely tell the difference between them. She even had those strange, shard-like horns, where two large fragments of her former halo had embedded themselves into her head.

The fallen angel — the demon — felt a grin come to her face. The same grin she had heard in Beleth’s voice ever since she had entered her domain.

“Oh, sister,” Suriel cooed gleefully. “I feel divine.”