Scorn of Angels Read Online Free PDF

sure his punishment was just, Nyx poured her energy into him so that his physical form could break free from the Hellstone.
    He split away, eyes wide and mouth screaming with the agony of the Hellfire. He kept his form only a moment before the flames took him. The Hellfire lake, so merciless on Angelic flesh, was catastrophic to the physical forms the souls took when they came to Hell. The lake of Hellfire consumed his flesh almost at once, leaving only a skeleton, its mouth wide with agony, to float up to the surface. The currents of the lake, slow-moving and twisting, would eventually carry him to shore, to be picked up and tortured by the other Descended Angels.
    And just before the madness took Nyx once more, she managed to put one broken finger against the slit in the side of the box, and felt that it was wider than it had been before.
    It’s a start, Nyx thought as the madness came again.
    When sanity returned, Nyx once more poured her power into one of the souls trapped in the Hellstone. This one was a woman who had cheated on her husband with all manner of men and had poisoned him when he found out about it.
    The next one was another woman. She had kidnapped babies from their mothers and used them in a hideous ritual meant to bring her own stillborn child back to life.
    The next was a man. A professional mercenary who’d killed two hundred in his time: soldiers, old men, women, and even children.
    Two dozen more times Nyx came back to sanity, and two dozen more souls she released from the sides of the Hellstone box to be consumed in the Lake of Fire. And when the twenty-fourth soul had been freed, the hole in the side of the box was big enough for her to squeeze her head through.
    She was still broken from head to foot. Every bit of her had been smashed. To heal it all would take more power than Nyx had. Once more, she let herself go still.
    Five cycles of madness later, Nyx knew how she was going to get out.
    Now, each time the madness receded, Nyx focused on her body, forcing her bones, held together solely by Angelic will, to move themselves inch by inch out of the box.
    She straightened her spine first, which forced her crushed skull out of the hole. Then she let her skull heal back to its proper shape. She kept working on her spine until the shards of her collarbones were free of the box. Then she healed those. Her arms were next, and those took a very long time, for she had to break and bend and twist the bones again and again until they pulled free from the box. Then she focused on healing her hands until they became claws that sank into the bed of the Lake of Fire. And every time sanity returned after that, she pulled with those hands, drawing her body inch by inch out of the box.
    And because Nyx was the Queen of the Descended Angels and Queen of Hell, and because her body was Angelic flesh, when it was no longer trapped under the jagged, bone-breaking edges of the Hellstone box, it began to truly heal itself.
    Ribs, pelvis, legs, feet: all came together and healed. Muscles began to regrow over bone, and skin over muscle. And as each part of her healed, Nyx gained a little more strength to maintain her mind against the Hellfire. The anguish was still there, the reliving of the pain and suffering she had inflicted no less agonizing than it had been before. Only now she could create a space in her mind where she could keep part of herself separate and sane while she suffered.
    My time in this lake is nearly over. Then I will be revenged.
    She let the currents carry her healing body where they would, using only as much energy as was necessary to keep her deep in the lake, well below the sight of the Angels and demons who prowled the edges. Nyx had no intention of being spotted because if Lucifer found her, it would not only be he she would have to contend with, but with the entire might of the Legions of Hell. Lucifer was now the unchallenged master of this realm, and Nyx would not take him on head-to-head. Not