What do you mean when you say I am supposed to be the devil?!: Chapter 5: Learning the art of burning water

Three billion years. The number still echoed because let’s be honest, a part of me still found it crazy that so much time had passed. It mad

Three billion years. The number still echoed because let’s be honest, a part of me still found it crazy that so much time had passed. It made me wonder if a similar amount of time had passed since the discussion Michael and I had with our Father.

Yet, here, in the pocket dimension Dad had crafted specifically for this, it felt like only moments since Michael’s earnest question had shifted the axis of our existence. Since we’d chosen the path ofbeing the light that will fight in our father’s name against the encroaching wrongness.

Back then, perched on Dad’s shoulder, fueled by righteous indignation and celestial carbs, I’d imagined us plunging headfirst into the fray. Two blazing Seraphim, cleaving through corruption like divine lawnmowers through cosmic weeds. Immediate. Dramatic. Satisfying.

Yeah. Not so much.

No.

What came after was not war, but preparation.

Turns out, fighting ideas given malignant form isn't like wrestling a space kraken. You can't just punch entropy in the face. Dad, in His infinite, patient wisdom, had begun our training. Not with weights or sparring rings, but with… concepts. With the raw fabric of reality itself. Our Father—our Maker, he did not speak of swords or tactics, not first. Not even second. What he taught instead was thought. Not thought as in strategy, but thought as weapon.

Imagine trying to fight a nightmare. Not the monster in the nightmare, but the idea of the nightmare – its suffocating dread, its illogical twists, its corrosive power to distort. That’s what Daemons were. Eldritch malignancies born from the primordial sludge of wrongness, their very existence a violation of Dad’s design. To fight them? You don't bring a bigger club. You bring a better idea.

Fire hotter than a blue supergiant’s core? You could not melt these daemons with the heat of blue stars. That was too crude. Too real. Pointless against a Daemon embodying the concept of Absolute Cold. No. You fight Absolute Cold with the Concept of Fire Itself. Not just heat, but the idea of combustion, of transformation, of purifying warmth that exists even in the heart of the coldest void. Fire whose heat was measured not in degrees but in definitions. Fire that burned meaning. Fire so fundamental it could set existence alight. Time, entropy, self. All could be reduced to ash—if the flame was true enough.

To destroy them, you needed fire so abstract it could consume other fires. Fire as an axiom.

And in such warfare, strength mattered only as a shadow of thought.

It was less about brute force, more about… ontological one-upmanship. Convincing reality your concept was stronger, truer, more fundamental than the Daemon's cancerous one.

Technically, I suppose Michael and I were gods. Little-g gods, maybe. Offspring of the God. We weren't just powerful beings; we were woven from specific, potent aspects of Dad’s own essence, handed domains at our birth like cosmic birthrights.

We were made of Him. That mattered. That defined.

I remember—His voice when we were born, echoing through the threads of existence, still embedded in my being like a brand written in gold.

Michael. My radiant, sometimes painfully earnest brother. Dad had decreed him the living embodiment of the law: "Who is like God?" It wasn't just a boastful title. It was Michael’s core, his divine operating system. It meant his very presence enforced a fundamental truth: nothing measured up to Dad. Not in power, not in authority, not in essence. In practice? Even facing something theoretically stronger, Michael held an edge. Because how could anything truly surpass him if his existence screamed the impossibility of equivalence? It bent causality, subtly but powerfully, always tipping the scales in his favor. Less 'I win,' more 'you fundamentally cannot be greater than what I represent.'

Michael’s blade for example would in a fight  not strike deeper than his foe’s. But it would still matter more.

Then there was me. Helel. The Light-Bearer. Forged from the core of Dad’s own being – not just His power, but the very essence of His light. The light in creation. The spark of existence. The illumination of potential. Dad’s decree – "My light manifest! The sign before the World of My true nature! Of My ideals! Of My dreams!" – wasn't just a job description. It was a key. A permission slip written into the foundation of my being. It meant I could, in theory, touch and shape any aspect of Dad’s creation, any facet of His light, at a level far exceeding Michael’s focused domain. Less specialized, more… versatile. A jack-of-all-divine-trades, powered by the source code of everything. I could weave starlight, sculpt gravity, whisper to the strong nuclear force, or paint with pure potential – all because those things were expressions of Dad’s light, and I was its living echo.

And that was even before the fruit.

Ah. The fruit. It felt both as if it had happened hours ago and at the same time an eternity.

Louis’s golden fruit. The bargain sealed with a bite that tasted of love, belonging, peace, earth… and ending. I still didn’t know what exactly he had woven into that golden fruit i had to bite into to seal our deal, but its influence hummed beneath my divine skin, a silent, potent engine. It was the wild card, the unexpected variable Dad hadn’t foreseen at my forging. It was why I’d emerged more than planned. And it was why, right now, the training felt… different.

It wasn’t just power. It wasn’t just knowledge.

It was—permission.

Permission to become more.

Before us, in the vast, shimmering arena Dad had folded out of possibility, stood the opponents. Not Daemons, not yet. Training constructs. Mountains given sentience and malicious intent, sculpted from solidified chaos and animated by echoes of the Daemonic taint Dad could perceive. Each one pulsed with distorted power, radiating wrongness like a psychic stench – jagged edges where smooth curves should be, colors that hurt the eyes, movements that defied natural law. Dozens of them, shifting, groaning monoliths of corrupted matter, their 'eyes' burning with stolen starlight.

Michael was already a blur of righteous fury. His twelve wings, nebulae made manifest, flared with brilliant white light as he engaged a cluster of three constructs. His sword, a blade of pure conceptual law – "Who Is Like God?" made manifest – flashed. Where it struck, the constructs resisted. Not physically, but ontologically. Their inherent wrongness pushed back against the law Michael enforced. Stone shrieked as divine truth clashed with cancerous reality. He parried a swipe from a clawed limb the size of a city block, the impact sending shockwaves through the fabric of the training dimension. He was winning, forcing them back, his face set in fierce concentration, but it was a struggle. Each blow required focus, each defense a conscious application of his domain. He was the Standard-Bearer, holding the line, proving his truth against palpable falsehood.

I should have been right there with him. Struggling just as hard, maybe harder. My domain was broader, less combat-focused. My light was versatile, but raw power against these conceptual tumors? I should have been weaving shields, trying to purify patches of their corruption, perhaps distracting them while Michael delivered the decisive blows. That’s what I’d expected.

But it wasn’t happening.

I stood slightly apart, facing my own group – five of the mountainous abominations. They lumbered towards me, their distorted forms casting long, impossible shadows. One swung a fist like a falling meteor. Instinct, honed by billions of years of play-fighting with Michael and Dad’s gentle guidance, kicked in. But it wasn't just instinct.

My light responded. Not as a shield. Not as a counter-force. It flowed. Like liquid understanding. I didn't think about dodging; my body simply wasn't where the fist descended. The movement felt effortless, a leaf turning in a breeze the construct couldn't perceive. As the massive limb crashed into the shimmering 'ground', sending up plumes of corrupted dust, my own hand lifted.

I didn't summon a blast. I didn't craft a complex conceptual attack. I simply… pushed with my light. Not against the construct, but against the idea of its movement, the concept of its attack. The light, pure and bright as the first dawn, touched the space where the fist had impacted.

The construct stuttered. Its form flickered, like a bad hologram. The wrongness radiating from it hiccuped. It wasn't hurt, not yet. But it was… confused. Disrupted. As if the fundamental rulebook it operated by had a page briefly torn out.

Huh.

Another construct lunged, spewing a torrent of corrosive shadow that warped light itself. Instead of blocking or dodging, I reached with my perception, not my power. I looked at the shadow. Not as an attack, but as a structure. A flawed, cancerous structure. And in that looking, I saw. Saw the frayed edges where Dad’s intended laws of photonic interaction had been overwritten by the Daemonic echo. Saw the weak points in the conceptual lattice holding the corruption together.

My light lashed out, not as a beam, but as a needle-thin filament of pure 'Unmaking'. It didn't strike the shadow; it slipped into a specific, frayed nexus point in the corrupt concept. The torrent of darkness unraveled mid-air, dissipating into harmless, confused particles of non-light before they could touch me.

Oh.

It wasn't just defense. It was… understanding. Learning. Evolving. Each movement the constructs made, each pulse of wrongness, was a lesson written in malignant code. And the Apple… the Apple, combined with my inherent nature as Dad’s core light made manifest… it let me read that code. Instantly. Effortlessly. Not just read it, but understand it. And understanding… that was power.

I began to move. Not with Michael’s fierce, law-enforcing strikes, but with a fluid, almost lazy grace. I weaved between grasping claws and crushing stomps, my light flickering out in precise, almost surgical touches. A tap here disrupted the concept of solidity in a construct’s leg, causing it to momentarily phase into mist. A pulse there scrambled the corrupted energy flow powering another’s attack, making it sputter and backfire. I wasn't fighting them head-on; I was dissecting them. Learning their weaknesses, their flawed blueprints, and exploiting them with contemptuous ease. The constructs roared in frustration, their movements becoming jerky, uncoordinated, as my light subtly rewrote the rules of engagement around them.

It felt like… growth. Not just getting stronger, but becoming more. More aware. More connected. More capable. Each passing moment, my understanding deepened. My light felt denser, brighter, yet more focused. I wasn't just wielding a tool; I was becoming a sharper, more versatile instrument.

And the constructs… they were more than opponents. They were Dad’s creations, twisted. As I disrupted them, touched their corrupted frameworks, I began to see past the malignancy. I began to perceive the original design. The elegant physics, the harmonious structures Dad had intended before the Daemonic rot set in. It was like looking at a beautiful, complex machine covered in grime and rust – and suddenly seeing the gleaming blueprint beneath.

So that’s how you anchor gravitational stability in a semi-sentient lithic matrix, I mused, effortlessly sidestepping a construct that tried to collapse the space around me. And that resonance frequency… clever, Dad. Pity this one’s oscillator is clogged with conceptual bile.

The knowledge wasn't passive. It sparked. If I could see how Dad made them… could I…?

A flicker of daring. I faced a construct charging me, its form a shifting nightmare of jagged rock and unstable plasma. Instead of disrupting or dodging, I pushed my light into it, not to harm, but to… fix. To overwrite the corrupted code with the pure blueprint I now perceived. My light flowed, seeking the fractured conceptual pathways, trying to mend them with pure 'Should-Be'.

The construct screamed – a sound of rending reality. It shuddered violently, patches of its form flickering between monstrous corruption and pristine, intended stone. Then, with a sound like shattering glass, it exploded. Not from my power, but from the internal conflict – the restored design violently rejecting the entrenched corruption. Unstable. Messy. But… possible.

Hmm. Refinement needed.

All this, the effortless evasion, the surgical disruption, the dawning comprehension of creation itself… it happened while I kept a sliver of my awareness, like a trailing thread of light, fixed on Michael. He was still locked in his fierce duel, his Law blazing. He drove one construct back with a sweeping strike that enforced 'Inferiority', making its very structure momentarily doubt its existence. Another he pinned with a pulse of 'Uniqueness', isolating it from its fellows. He was magnificent, a warrior-angel incarnate. But I saw the strain. The focused intensity. The way his light flared bright with effort against the persistent, gnawing wrongness.

I shouldn’t be this strong. I know this. I feel it. Michael struggles beside me, fighting with righteous fire against the same foes I dismiss with flicks of my fingers and the narrowing of my gaze.

He is not weak. He is not lesser.

He is as he was made to be.

But I—I am wrong.

And Father doesn’t know.

He doesn’t see.

Or if He does, He thinks He made me this way. He thinks it was His doing—an act of brilliance, not deviation.

And thank the Light for that. Because if He knew I was born again, that I was Allen, that I came into this world bearing the shape of something outside the plan, I don’t know how He would respond.

He does not suspect.

And so He calls me miracle.

Not mistake.

And then… I saw it. Not the constructs. Not the struggle. I saw Michael. I saw the way his Law worked.

It wasn't just a declaration. It was a complex, self-reinforcing code woven from divine authority and conceptual inevitability. I saw the threads of 'Comparison' he spun, the way he anchored them in the fundamental truth of Dad’s supremacy, the elegant feedback loop where any opposing force trying to assert equality only fueled the Law’s potency. It was… mathematics. Divine mathematics. A formula written in light and will. Who is like God? The answer was always 'Nothing,' and the formula enforced that answer onto reality.

In that fraction of a heartbeat, watching Michael enforce his truth against the screaming wrongness, the Apple’s influence, my own core nature as Dad’s light, and the billions of years of implicit understanding that I had of my brother made something click.

I didn't decide. I didn't formulate a plan. The knowledge, the understanding, the sheer potential surged through me like a dam breaking. My light, already a brilliant aura, didn't just brighten. It transformed. It became incandescent, not just with power, but with comprehension. It pulsed once, a wave of pure, focused understanding radiating outwards.

It touched the constructs first – the ones I'd been toying with. They didn't resist. They didn't scream. They simply… ceased. Not destroyed. Erased. Like a child’s careless drawing swept away by a giant’s hand. One moment, mountains of malignant chaos; the next, empty space, pristine and undisturbed. The wrongness they radiated vanished as if it had never been.

The wave didn't stop. It washed over the constructs battling Michael. The one he had pinned with 'Uniqueness'? Gone. The one reeling from 'Inferiority'? Gone. The others lunging towards him? Gone. Erased from the canvas of reality within the training dimension. Poof. Not a trace. Not even dust.

The wave subsided as quickly as it had arisen. My light dimmed back to its usual, potent glow. The sudden silence was profound. The psychic stench of wrongness was utterly absent. The training arena felt… clean. Empty. Just me, Michael, and the shimmering boundaries Dad had set.

I blinked. The effortless flow of understanding receded, leaving behind a strange, tingling afterglow and the dawning realization of what I’d just done.

Michael stood frozen mid-lunge, his blazing sword still raised, his expression locked in fierce concentration. But his eyes… his emerald eyes, usually holding captive supernovae, were wide. Stunned. Utterly bewildered. He slowly lowered his sword, his gaze sweeping the suddenly empty space where his formidable opponents had been a nanosecond before. Then his eyes snapped to me. Shock. Pure, unadulterated shock. And beneath it… a flicker of something else. Awe? Uncertainty? Something darker?

And then… the attention. Not Michael’s. Dad’s. It settled upon the arena, a weight both familiar and suddenly… different. Immense. Probing. It wasn't anger. Wasn't disapproval. It was… surprise. Profound, universe-halting surprise. The kind that made distant nebulae pause their spinning and stellar nurseries hold their breath. It wasn't directed at the erased constructs. It was directed squarely at me.

Maybe I shouldn’t have done that.