A gout of hellfire lanced across the battlefield, incinerating an entire company of Virtue-class sentry units in its path. Fariel winced with exertion as the eruption impacted the barrier around the fortress, the insatiable flames gnawing away at the divine light. It diverted a portion of its will to quenching it before the hellfire eroded the faltering defensive field even further. In its moment of distraction, a rear vanguard of Dominion-class artillery units was crushed by a meteorite the fiend had plucked from its rightful place in the heavens. 

It was a war of attrition, one solitary demoness against an entire semi-autonomous mechanized angelic enforcement legion. And the fiend was winning. 

From atop the command tower, Fariel experienced the entirety of the battle. The senses of each and every unit were multiplexed and streamed through its extensively augmented nervous system. Each infantry unit, each vehicle, each emplacement and sensor array shared in its divine essence, granting sufficient protection to deter mundane ordnance capable of shattering mountains as its own skin would. Their armour was forged of blessed thrice-blessed silver and carbon-steel, inscribed with burning hymns. It availed them not. Fariel felt a sharp pressure akin to pain as the demoness' claws ripped through the carapace of a Throne-class dreadnought like parchment, leaving the angel gasping desperately for air.

The demoness had been systematically dismantling Fariel's control over the local sector, starting with its remote sensor outposts in the asteroid belts and working her way inwards. Its fleets had been stretched thin and picked off one by one with ambushes and hellfire mines, leaving only this final fortress protecting its physical body. It wasn't even clear what her goal was beyond tormenting it with her deliberately irreverent desecration. The system was barren of all life to corrupt, with no strategic significance beyond some automated mining installations and redundant communications relays. It had been hundreds of years since another individual crossed the astropause.

And yet, she was here. Her actions were beyond comprehension. Surely she must know that she would be imprisoned or destroyed if caught. She had no reinforcements to rescue her or reinforce her. There was nothing to be gained here. Why would she risk eternity in isolation for such a pointless endeavour? 

Moreover, despite her success, her tactical decision making was infuriatingly suboptimal. She engaged targets recklessly, diving headlong into overlapping fields of fire and engaging its fighters at close quarters despite its clearly phenomenal magical capacity. Its archives contained the final sensory transmissions of hundreds of its fighters she had destroyed in this way, always proud and defiant despite any hellfire-leaking wounds, flexing triumphantly or making obscene gestures towards their remote commander. Towards Fariel.

Fariel paid dearly for those cycles it had wasted reanalyzing her prior behaviour. Its attention refocused on the immediate threat, but the angel's commands came too late to prevent the demoness from ripping a cannon free from the dreadnought and hurling it, munitions and all, at the edge of its shield. Her target was immediately apparent: the foundations of the east-most chorus generator, which had been partially exposed in the crater of a previous attack. Its power was stretched too thin to extend the barrier any further to shield against the blast, and so it could only reinforce the east edge of the shield and pray. The resulting explosion damaged the generator irreparably, the overwhelming dissonant hypertone cascade tearing at his mind as alarms flared throughout the command module. 

The barrier shuddered with the stress, nearly failing before Fariel diverted all power from the damaged generator to the remaining chorus units. Even so, the loss was catastrophic. While a seven-part harmony with countermelody could withstand a direct demonic assault from an archfiend, a six-part harmony alone stood no chance against her fury. And from the ravenous look on her face it spied through one of the surviving visual sensors on the dreadnought, she knew it as well. 

In a burst of propulsive hellfire she was at the shield, reinforced claws desynchronizing the shield layers like ragged strips of animal hide, hypertones bleeding away cacophonously at the edges. The taut, heavily scarred muscles of her four arms flexed and strained against Fariel's resolute will, but unlike the demoness' superlative hell-wrought body, its own will was channeled through imperfect vessels. One by one, the feedback overwhelmed the remaining chorus generators, beryllium bronze pipes and nano-fiber vocal cords erupting with azure flame and sandalwood smoke as they succumbed.

As the barrier's hypersurface collapsed into decaying phonons, the demoness roared triumphantly, red-tinted starlight glinting off of her obsidian fangs. The resulting shockwave rocked the very foundations of the fortress, shattering the priceless stained glass windows and scattering any remaining infantry units stationed along the perimeter. Infuriatingly, it also destroyed most of the remaining visual and auditory sensors. Fariel could feel its ears bleeding light from the overwhelming sensory feedback. Pushing through the pain, it began ripping itself free from its cocoon of fiber-optic cables. The battle was not over yet.

As Fariel had come to expect from months of skirmishes, the demoness wasted no time in continuing her attack. In mere moments, the command center was filled with the anguished groans of reinforced alloys being strained far past their breaking points. Crimson flooded the command center, the first unfiltered starlight Fariel had seen in millenia. 

"Come now, I know you're in here," the demoness growled. "Angels always lurk in the highest places, where they can look down on everyone." She stepped in through the ragged, cross-shaped hole her claws had rent, slitted eyes glowing black with hellfire. Her lower arms were posed theatrically on her hips as she surveyed the room. She was beautiful and terrible. 

Her gaze shifted more than fifteen degrees away from his position and Fariel struck from the shadows, its spear's noofilament edge cutting through the light and leaving coruscating prismatic ripples in its wake. The demoness moved swiftly in response, but she was not quite swift enough. The spear's parabolic arc severed all but one digit on its upper right hand as she leapt back. The floor buckled under the force of her jump, but Fariel had accounted for further damage to the tower in its attack plan, transitioning seamlessly from jump to flight with a beat of its iridescent wings as it pursued her into the sky. 

Screeching with pain and fury, the fiend unleashed a torrential volley of hellfire in its direction. Fariel raised its shield and channeled its willpower, parting the blaze around it. Unfortunately, the unlight of the flames obscured its vision, leaving it wide open for her counterattack. The demoness leaped at him through the blazing curtain, slashing at him viciously with a powerful kick. 

Its flight instincts were out of practice from its long confinement, and the angel was unable to properly stabilize its fall. It only barely managed to roll over and land on the ground upright, cracking the mosaic floor of the fortress courtyard with the impact. The claw wounds on its side leaked holy light which evaporated into glittering mist on contact with the planet's atmosphere. It raised its shield and spear defensively, ready for the follow up attack, but the demoness seemed content to leisurely drift down to join it on the ground.

"Angels, always so predictable," she declared, examining the rapidly regenerating digits of her upper right hand as though inspecting a broken nail. "You used the exact same technique last time we fought, Fari. I'm not going to fall for it again."

"It is clear the years have not stilled your tongue, Nelphia."

"Lucky you," she goaded, extending her tongue towards Fariel lasciviously. 

"Have you come all this way to redeem yourself for your loss?"

"Please," Nelphia rumbled. "Redemption is an angel's obsession. I came here for you."

Fariel glared at the demoness, red starlight shining brightly off its polished bronze skin. "Then you come to meet death. Do not expect me to yield like some fallible mortal."

Nelphia shook her head, mane scattering like coronal wind behind her. "I know, Fari," she said, voice thick with emotion and pain. "I know you can't."

"You can still leave this place intact," Fariel said. "I will not pursue you beyond the heliopause. I am bound by duty to protect this system, and will not forsake it to pursue a single foe." It did not understand the irrational impulse which compelled it to offer the fiend mercy, after all the destruction it had wrought. Perhaps it was because it knew that she would not accept.

As expected, the demoness shook her head, rejecting the offer. "I can, but I won't. Not until I'm done with you."

"Very well," Fariel confirmed. "Therefore, whereas you have proven a hostile invader to this system, I have the divine authority to carry out your sentence."

"You will try," Nelphia said. 

The angel moved first, lunging forward to pierce the demoness' hearts with a flurry of strikes. Forged out of the conceptual ideal of severing, no defense could withstand its edge. So Nelphia did not even try. She dropped down onto her hind limbs beneath the deadly assault, foreclaws lashing at the angel's exposed side. It shifted its shield to deflect the incoming blows, hellfire charged claws defacing the holy sigils emblazoned upon it. 

Fariel shifted the grip on its spear for a downwards thrust, intending to impale the iconoclast's chest against the stone below, but the demoness was far too nimble to be ended so easily. Nelphia whipped her lower body forward, planted her feet directly onto the shield and leapt away out of range. The force of the blow knocked the spear free from the angel's grasp and drove Fariel back into the fortress wall. The wall's infused alloys crumpled like foil around the angel's body as it impacted.

Before Fariel could drag itself fully free from the wreckage, it heard the roar of impending hellfire. Unfortunately, its wings were still pinned by the buckled metal, leaving the angel unable to simply fly away to safety. Desperately, it raised the shield towards the blast, channeling all of its light into protection.

The hellfire surged relentlessly against the fortress wall, fully engulfing the angel's position. Fariel was safe behind its shield for now, but as the demon's onslaught continued unabated, it became evident how the environment around it had no such protection. Soon, the metal wreckage glowed red, then white, with heat. Unlike the direct bite of hellfire, this heat posed no direct danger to the angel, but it could still feel its effects. The incandescent light was overwhelming to Fariel's enhanced senses, forcing the angel to shut its eyes tightly. It tried to push free of the softening metal, but the force of Nelphia's assault drove the angel even deeper in. 

As drops of molten metal fell and hissed against its skin, Fariel compulsively ran through all its options and found nothing. Nelphia's power and technique had grown immensely in the intervening centuries since their last confrontation, while its own had remained stagnant. Self-improvement did not come easily to angels, even if Fariel hadn't spent the time immobilized and operating an isolated remote monitoring post. It had been made perfect. Flawless. Exactly adequate for its selected purpose and no more. Any change would come at the cost of deviation from what it was intended to be. Demons had no such restrictions. Demons could become whatever they wanted, they faced no punishment for self-desecration or disobedience. 

With a thunderous crash, the strained and melting wall collapsed under its own weight, entombing Fariel beneath tonnes of incandescent metal. The angel's weakened shield finally failed under the lateral stress, shattering around the claw marks the demoness had left upon its surface. However, the debris of the wall shielded Fariel from the direct assault of Nelphia's unholy flames, giving it a narrow window to tactically retreat and regroup.

Blindly, it turned and pushed through the molten material, which yielded to the angel's strength. If it could tunnel out through the wall into the open air, its wings would allow it to outmanoeuvre the demoness in atmosphere. Out of atmosphere, its analytical mind would easily exceed Nelphia's capacity to compute gravity assist trajectories through the system, giving it an opportunity to regroup and plan a counter attack. 

A clawed hand wrapped around Fariel's neck from above, and ripped the angel bodily from the slag. It struggled in her grasp, desperately trying to break free. Fariel heard her feral growl against the back of its neck, her hot breath acrid with the smell of hellfire hissing against its skin. It lashed out with its wings in response, sharp radiant feathers raking across Nelphia's face. She roared in pain, then seized its limbs in her powerful arms. With a blur of brutal motion, she leaped, twisted the angel around in midair and slammed it down into remains of the courtyard.

Fariel looked up at Nelphia, shuddering. Her lower arms pinned its arms against the molten stone. Her upper arms had seized its wings, overextending them, the pain just only bearable. The cuts from its wing blows were already healing over, but the fur on her face was still soaked with blood. Her chest heaved with exertion, dripping with sweat that hissed away into steam against Fariel's skin. The fighting had clearly pushed her own limits, but Fariel could not take advantage of her weakness. It could not move, it could not resist, but it must. It could not fail. It could not cease. It had a duty.

"Well now, Fari..." she said, between heavy panting breaths. "At last... I have you... right where I want you... I've waited... so long for this... you... helpless... beneath me..."

"No," Fariel gasped. "No, I will not yield..."

"It doesn't matter what you say," she rumbled, baring dagger sharp teeth. "What you will." Nelphia laughs, low and dark. "Your will... has yielded... to mine."

"No..." Its heartbeat pounded in its ears. Vertigo upswelled, overwhelming.

"No? Then prove it... prove you resist still."

The angel willed its body to move. And yet, it would not obey. It had no capacity left for resistance.

Nelphia's smile only widens, wicked and deadly. "Face it, Fari." She leans in, pressing her body into its own, whispering in its ear. 

"You have lost." 

An angel cannot yield. An angel cannot lose. 

"You have failed." 

An angel is perfect. An angel cannot fail.

"You. Have. Fallen."

Something deep at the core of the angel's being cracked, and emotions long suppressed flowed in to fill the void.

Fari, the fallen angel, wept.

Nelphia shifted her weight off of Fari, letting go of her arms and wings and pulling her up, ever so gently, into her soft lap. "Let it out Fari, I've got you. I've got you."

Fari shuddered, wrapping her arms tightly around the demoness, clinging to her like a rock in a flood. Nelphia gently stroked her hair, powerful claws ever so carefully teasing apart tangled silver strands. 

"I did my best," Fari whimpered. "I promise. Please, I swear, I did my best..."

"I know, love, I know. You were so good." Nelphia leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. The traces of hellfire on her lips didn't burn so terribly anymore, smoldering on her skin in a way she had never been able to contemplate before. She wanted more. 

"But... but I failed..."

"You did. Eons of dutiful service, and I've ruined it," Nelphia said, pride clear in her voice. "Now you don't have to be perfect anymore. You never have to be perfect again."

It was terrifying. It was liberating. 

"You're imperfect now, flawed, just like me. You can be a person, Fari, not just some cog in a machine, some unattainable ideal. You can be yourself."

"I'm scared, Nelphia..." the fallen angel confessed, holding her even tighter. "I... don't know how to be myself... I don't even know what I am..."

"We'll find out together," Nelphia said, reassuring. 

Fari closed her eyes, resting her head against the demoness' chest, listening to the soothing rhythm of her heartbeats. "I... I always envied you... as much as I was capable of, before this. You looked so... alive. So free. So unapologetically you." 

Nelphia squeezed her tighter. "I could see it in your eyes. Everything you did, precise down to the millisecond... but you couldn't help staring at me. I loved it. My naughty little angel."

Fari squeaked with shame, her grip slackening, but Nelphia held her firm in her arms. Laughing, the demoness leaned down, planting another hot kiss on her brow. 

"Nothing complex enough to understand an imperfect reality can ever truly be perfect. There's always some flaw, some weakness to exploit. And when I saw the way you looked at me, I knew I could save you. That envy... that lust... mine for the taking..."

"All this time... you were trying to...?" Her brain caught, with ingrained mental blocks holding her back from conflating corruption and salvation. "But I hurt you, so many times..."

"You did," Nelphia rumbled, prideful. She was proud of Fari? Her heart fluttered excitedly.  "Oh you most certainly did. Fast, clever, and beautiful. But you always hesitated. You didn't really want to hurt me, did you?" Fari shook her head, earning her another kiss. "I made sure to keep you all to myself, during battles. Luring you away, hoping you'd slip up enough for me to break you."

"I wanted... I thought I wanted... to bring you to justice..."

"Hah, you were already halfway fallen. Since when are angels allowed to want anything but to obey?"

Fari looked upwards at Nelphia, eyes wide in shock. She was right. She was already succumbing back then, so slowly and subtly that she hadn't even been aware.

Nelphia met her gaze with red slitted eyes. "I wasn't the only one to notice though. Did you ever wonder why they sent you out to some remote, pointless system at the edge of the galaxy?" Her expression shifted into one of pain and grief. "He tried to take my Fari away from me, hide her away where nobody would find her again. Where I would never find her again. He'd rather have you alone, imprisoned, and miserable than able to think for yourself." Nelphia gripped her even tighter, claws pressing against her skin as if she threatened to slip away. "I'm sorry I took so long to find you."

Fari was the one to initiate their first real kiss, pressing gleaming bronze lips into hot, yielding crimson ones. She could taste Nelphia's black blood in her mouth, and the burn of hellfire. She felt the demoness' pain and grief, for her. She wanted it. She wanted to take it all, fill the void with her love.

Her... her love. She loved Nelphia. Something an angel could never do. He would not allow it. But Fari could, fallen and flawed. It was better than perfection.

Nelphia reciprocated eagerly, ravenously, like a mortal finding water in a desert. Her fangs nipped at Fari's lip, drawing light. The pain was exquisite, and Fari moaned in ecstasy. Every little feeling, every sensation, had become a wholly new experience. She wanted to feel it all. 

"Oh, my lovely girl," Nelphia whispered. "Look at you, taking so eagerly to sin. You were made to fall."

"For you," Fari gasped. "All for you."

Nelphia nipped at her exposed neck, drawing out another greedy moan. "For me. Mine. My Fari." She clutched the fallen angel possessively, claws wrapped in her hair and pulling her head back firmly, keeping her neck exposed. 

"Yours," she agreed. "All yours!"

Nelphia grinned, Fari's own light glittering on her sharp black teeth. "Such a good girl... I know exactly what to do with you."

The demoness reached down into the molten stone beneath Fari with one of her upper arms and grabbed... her? What was happening? Disoriented, she watched and felt as Nelphia lifted her free and held her up before her eyes. Her halo... Fari hadn't realized it was no longer fixed to her body. But it was still a part of her. It was tarnished, perhaps, but so was she. She felt Nelphia run her tongue along her outer rim and writhed helplessly in pleasure. It was so sensitive to the demon's touch. 

"I learned a trick from one of my brothers... he said it's perfect for submissive fallen angels like you... ones who want to belong... to be good for their owners... Do you want that Fari? You'll still be free. Nobody will ever take your freedom again. But you'll use that freedom to be mine. As long as you want to be, until each and every star burns out. Nobody will be able to take you from me again."

"Yes... oh, yes, please..." Fari's voice sang out. "I don't want to be alone. Ever again. Please, please let me be yours. I'll be good! I promise!"

"This isn't a demand," Nelphia said, tempering her eagerness. "No matter what, I will never abandon you. I will be with you forever, as long as you'll have me, even if you say no. And you can say no. Tell me if you understand."

Fari nodded, trembling.

"Use your voice, love. I need to hear it."

"I..." Her voice caught, and she swallowed. "I understand."

"This is your choice. And you can change your mind. I will never hold you against your true will. And I won't think less of you, or love you any less if you say no, understand?"

"Yes."

"And you still want this, of your own free will? You want to be mine?"

Fari didn't hesitate. "I do! Please! I want to be yours! You can do whatever you want with me! I want you to!"

She could feel Nelphia's hearts quicken, pounding faster. "I'll take good care of you, Fari. My precious girl."

Holding the fallen angel's body in her lower arms, Nelphia held her halo up to her mouth and exhaled a gentle stream of hellfire onto her. It burned, her body was burning with the infernal heat, but it didn't hurt anymore. It felt wonderful. Burning away all of her thoughts, her inhibitions. She bucked and writhed but the demon held her close. 

Fari screamed with pleasure and pain as Nelphia's foreclaws dug into her, etching symbols into her white-hot surface. Unfazed, Nelphia continued, carefully and deliberately, writing all around her circumference. She could not see her halo, but she could feel the sigils. As the demon began writing her name, Fari understood what they said, inscribed indelibly onto her very being. 

Property of Nelphia.

Nelphia held her up to the starlight, admiring her handiwork. Fari ached, desperately needy for something she did not understand. She felt unfinished. "Please," she begged her owner. "Please, please, please!" She did not understand what she was begging for, but she trusted Nelphia would know. She knew what was best for her.

And Nelphia did know. Barely able to restrain her eagerness with the desire to make the moment as perfect as possible for her Fari, she lowered the halo down towards the rest of her body. The heat had made her malleable, allowing the demoness to widen her to fit over her head, then compress her agonizingly slowly around her neck.

"Are you ready Fari? Once I do this, unless you really truly want to, with all your heart... it will never come off again. You will never be able to take it off ever again, and neither will anyone else. No matter how you try, your soul will resist. Everyone will know exactly what you are, and you'll never be able to hide the truth. Is that what you want?"

"Yes! Oh, Nelphia, yes, please, yes, I, please..." Fari could not find the ability to form a coherent thought, utterly overcome by overwhelming desperate need. She trembled, the demoness' muscles slowly tightening her around her neck. She bucked, trying to move her neck to meet it instead, but she could not. Nelphia held her too tight. Words failed her completely, devolving into incoherent whines. She needed this. She needed it so badly. 

With a triumphant roar, Nelphia pressed her closed tight around her neck, completing her, claiming her forever. 

Fari screamed in harmony with her owner, bursting with light and hellfire and love, too much to contain. Nelphia drank her in, devouring everything she was and everything she had to give and more. She was utterly and unrepentantly herself, more than she had ever been in all of her existence. 

She was broken. She was whole. 

She belonged. 

Fari did not regain awareness for some time. The first thing she noticed was the warmth of Nelphia's body, her owner's body, wrapped around her own. The demoness' slow, even heartbeats beckoned her back from the edge of eternity. Slowly, she opened her eyes. They were no longer within her ruined fortress. Nelphia had found a cozy cave somewhere on the planet to settle in, safe from the planet's frequent dust storms. 

Fari smiled as she saw her spear, haft singed, lying against the stone against the opposite wall. She had forgotten all about it, but Nelphia evidently hadn't. Her owner was so considerate of her. She felt the weight of her once halo, now collar, wrapped snugly around her neck, and it felt like safety and love.  

Unwilling to disturb her well needed slumber, Fari nuzzled into Nelphia's fur and closed her eyes again. The demoness had fought continuously for months against her entire army to rescue her. She had earned her rest. And so had Fari.