A Manager From Heaven (girlxgirlxgirl)

34. Tie up loose ends

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The underworld is a place of hallways and corridors, rooms and open spaces, cut into the underground. There is no sky in this realm, only dirt and mountain. The mountain is like one big cave, a large hole that goes deeper and deeper and deeper. It is so deep and so vast that the people working and living in the furthest depths of the underworld never meet the ones working at the very top, the edge of the cave. It is occasionally cold, dark and musty, and occasionally as hot as the inside of a volcano, depending on how close to an active pit of fire you are standing.

The underworld consists of two parts. One, the big pit in the middle, and two, the rooms, hallways and corridors of the demons who live and work here, surrounding the pit. The first area is called 'the pit', while the second area is called 'the spiral'. It looks quite like an ant colony, with tunnels and hallways so long and endless that they resemble labyrinths. The spiral is divided into seven parts, resembling the seven deadly sins, and each part is controlled by the strongest demon in that department.

Pride, Greed, Gluttony, Lust, Envy, Wrath and Sloth. These sins ultimately lead to other sins, and therefore the sins in charge of all other sins. The demons lead by the sin they are assigned to at birth.

Each demon is born from a sacred ritual, where a soul is pulled from the pit and united with a certain amount of power. The power needs to be partially from the ultimate sin, which is a demon loving a human, and partially from one of the seven sins, a human committing a deadly sin. A soul united with power gathered from a human committing the sin of Gluttony, will become a demon belonging and serving the department of Gluttony.

And the more power a demon gathers, the stronger they will get themselves. That, combined with intense training and the pass of time, can lead a demon into becoming the strongest. The strongest demon in a department becomes the head of that department, and therefore one of the seven leaders of the underworld. If they are incapable of holding that position, someone stronger than them kills them and takes over. That happens every once in a while.

And in this underworld, Hecate has spent her entire life as a demon building herself up from the very bottom, to the very top. She was nothing but a soul united with the power of a human committing the sin of Wrath, just a few hundred years ago, just like everyone else. But she worked hard during her first one hundred years, taking on more jobs than others, risking her life more often than others, killing angels, messing with humans, fighting her own peers until eventually, she had reached a respectable rank.

When Hela came into the picture, Hecate saw her as just another peer she had to defeat and move on from. They fought for years, and Hela became that one annoying person she just couldn't beat, no matter how hard she tried. Hecate had ambitions to become the best, and Hela stood in the way of that. Hela was also a social butterfly, unlike Hecate. She knew people from other departments, especially Lust, and Mazanin and other powerful demons supported her, while Hecate was forced to stand on her own. Still, she worked harder, never slept, fought and fought, numbed herself down and did everything in her power to succeed.

Eventually her obsession over Hela, over defeating Hela, grew into a different kind of obsession. When they fell in love, they had already reached the top ten. The highest in the entire department of Wrath. And Hecate knew, even back then, that her loving Hela would change everything. Her plans of becoming the leader of Wrath crumbled immediately. All she wanted was to be at a perfect position in Wrath, a place where she would be able to hold a good amount of power, and still be able to be together with Hela. Her fighting Hela over the leader position was simply out of the question.