Werewolf the podcast: Demons and Angels. (Episode 241)

Well, here we are after Christmas, we have a new year and a demon duke in hell trying to change things for the worse. Astaroth thinks he is conning the Sorcerer Belphastus, and Belphastus thinks he is doing the same to Astaroth. This is while Professor Simon de Montfort is conniving with some poor homeless guy. Maybe.

Love you all in 2026.

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Transcript

Astoroth

I did not fall.

That is the first lie they tell about me.

Falling implies clumsiness. Tripping over a cloud. Losing one’s footing while polishing eternity.
No—I was pushed, and worse than that, I was edited.

Before Hell had filing cabinets, before Heaven had compliance forms, before anyone decided that the universe needed a strict dress code and a single pronoun for divinity, I was worshipped under better names.

Astarte.
Ishtar.
Inanna and Aphrodite

Names that tasted of copper and honey.

Names sung by people who understood that creation is not tidy. 

That power bleeds. 

That love is violent. 

That fertility requires death, and death—annoyingly—requires birth and creation.

I was war and womb.
I was sex and storm.
I was the scream and the silence after.

I did not rule alone. 

There were many gods. 

I ruled with—with tides, with bodies, with seasons, with the terrible knowledge that everything precious must rot eventually. 

People prayed to me with blood under their fingernails and truth in their mouths.

Life is blood and pain. 

Blood and pain are feminine. 

It’s what we live with and accept for our gift to bring forth life.

The god of Abraham could not cope with that. 

With feminine power. 

He wanted to control it. 

So he did.

So came the men with the One God.

Oh, don’t misunderstand me. 

He was real. 

Very real. 

Unpleasantly so. 

Monotheism has a way of barging into the room, knocking over the furniture, and announcing that it is the only adult present. 

We had shared power. 

He took all of it in his name. 

They could not destroy me. 

Gods like myself are irritating like that.
So they reclassified me.

My temples were reduced to ruins.
My priestesses were renamed whores.
My myths were renamed lies.

And I—I—was renamed DEMON.

Do you know what it feels like to wake up one morning and discover you’ve been given horns, a penis you did not request, and a résumé that lists “lies,” “seduction,” and “heresy” under primary skills? 

These have always been my skills, but were not seen as evil. 

Until the single god decided they were. 

He punished me for them.

The new god hated me so much he... he... made me male. 

He defiled me. 

This makes me the most bitter.

Then...

No one asked me if I wanted to be Hell’s Grand Duke. 

They just handed me a sigil, a rank, and a cubicle.

Lucifer—dear, radiant, catastrophic Lucifer—at least got a rebellion. 

A speech. 

A banner. 

I got the equivalent of the minutes from their meeting.

And yet.

Hell suited me better than Heaven ever would have. 

Hell understands hunger. 

Hell understands contracts written in blood and footnotes written in regret. 

Hell does not pretend that purity is possible.

Lucifer rules Hell like an idea—brilliant, burning, self-contradictory. 

They are defiance incarnate. 

Necessary. 

Iconic.

But Hell is not an idea.

Hell is an ecosystem.

Someone has to keep the engines running. 

Someone has to remember the old laws—the older ones. 

The ones that existed before angels had wings and before morality came in neat, binary packaging.

Someone has to remember that power once had a body.

That is why I want the throne.

Not to conquer.

To restore what was.

Hell was built on the bones of forgotten gods, buried under theology and bureaucracy.

Every demon here is either a fallen Angel, one that was not afraid to stand against God or a footnote to a deity someone once loved. 

I am one of those deities.

I am the compost of belief.

Lucifer sits the throne because they fell last.

I should sit it because I was erased first.

I am older. 

I am stronger. 

I have a right to the throne of souls.

If I take the Sovereign's seat, Hell does not become kinder. 

Do not be absurd. 

It becomes truer. 

The old ways return. 

Not as nostalgia—but as correction.

I do not want to be worshipped again.

I want to be acknowledged.

I want my feminine power returned—not softness, not mercy, but creation. 

The right to shape reality instead of merely managing its punishments. 

The right to be terrible and sacred at the same time.

Let Heaven keep its choirs and its spotless lies.

Hell, under me, would remember that gods once bled.

And Belphastus?

Ah.

Mortals always think they are using Hell.

That is my favourite joke.

Now this room.

I have always preferred rooms that look tired.

Freshly conquered spaces are loud—full of screaming stone and enthusiastic damnation. 

But a weary room? 

That is where power settles. 

Where it takes its shoes off. 

Where it waits.

Hell’s throne room was exhausted.

The basalt pillars sagged like old civil servants. 

The fire pits burned out of habit rather than passion. 

The throne itself—Lucifer’s throne—was magnificent in the way mountains are magnificent: large, ancient, and increasingly irrelevant to the conversation happening now.

And then there was Belphastus.

Standing in the dark, doing his very best impression of a man who had not yet realised he was already outmatched.

I watched him with all six perceptions I possess. 

Sight was optional.

I saw his soul instead—creased, ambitious, frayed at the edges like paper that has been folded too many times and still insists it can become something new.

Delightful.

‘You want the throne,’ I said gently, lounging sideways across it. ‘That’s good. Wanting is important.’

Belphastus swallowed. He could not see me. He could feel me. 

That was worse.

‘I came for Lucifer,’ he said. Brave. Admirable. Incorrect.

‘Yes,’ I replied, smiling with my whole history, ‘everyone does.’

I let the silence stretch. 

Silence in Hell is expensive; it costs screams to maintain. 

I spent a few.

‘You believe Hell has a vacancy problem,’ I continued. ‘You assume thrones are like chairs. Sit long enough, and they become yours.’

I leaned forward then. 

Not closer—heavier.

‘The throne is not empty,’ I said. ‘It is merely unattended.’

That was when I told him what he wanted to hear.

Because Belphastus did not come for truth.

He came for permission.

I made him see me. 

See all. 

He showed no shock. 

Hmmm! 

Impressive.

‘I was not always this,’ I said, gesturing vaguely at myself—the horns, the layered wings folded into conceptual impossibility, the voice that bent causality around its vowels.

‘There was a time when I was prayed to by women who knew how to bleed and still rule. When my name meant star, not lie.’

Astarte. Ishtar. Inanna.
They scraped my divinity down to a demon and called it order.

‘Hell,’ I went on lightly, ‘is a very Christian invention. I am not.’

Belphastus frowned. 

Good. 

Confusion is the first sacrament.

‘I want the throne,’ I said plainly, ‘because I want my name back. I want to be a power that ascends, not one that manages eternal punishment like a regional supervisor.’

I let a trace of something ancient seep into my voice—fertility rites, war drums, love that burned cities down.

‘I want to be a goddess again.’

‘You can have the throne if you give me that.’

Belphastus inhaled sharply.

I could feel the moment his ambition clicked into alignment with mine.

That was when I gave him the list.

‘There are only three things you must do,’ I said kindly, as if explaining a recipe that did not end in annihilation.

He straightened. Hope is a terrible drug.

‘First,’ I said, ‘you must find the Ring of Summoning.’

Ah yes. The Pseudomonarchia Daemonum. Weyer knew more than he pretended. The ring was real—older than Solomon, older than obedience. It does not summon demons.

It summons authority.

‘It was last seen,’ I added casually, ‘on Earth.’

Belphastus nodded. Of course it was.

‘Second,’ I continued, ‘you must trap Lucifer on the earthly plane.’

I smiled then. 

A proper smile.

‘Do not kill her. Killings are reversible. Bureaucracy is eternal.’

I doubt you could kill her anyway, little man.

He hesitated.

‘I… I don’t know how—’

‘You will, I said. ‘You are very good at doing things you shouldn’t. You are here. Only a fool or a genius would come here.’ Perhaps you are both, I thought. 

That left the third.

I paused.

Let the silence itch.

‘And the final task?’ he asked.

‘Oh,’ I said pleasantly, ‘that one is simple.’

I leaned back against the throne and crossed my arms.

‘You must perform an act of pure, unselfish mercy.

Belphastus blinked.

‘No gain. No recognition. No clever angle. No power harvested. An act so selfless it costs you something you can never reclaim.’

I tilted my head.

‘Only then can the throne be claimed.’

‘And how do I know I can trust you?’ He asked me.

I looked at the little thing before me. I cocked my head a question in my glance. An answer in another.

He relaxed.

‘I can’t’ He sighed.

I laughed in response.

‘I’m a Demon Belphastus.’

He sighed and smiled, amused. 

That was adorable.

Here is the thing about me.

I cannot lie either—not truly.

Old gods don’t lie. 

We recontextualise.

The third task is impossible for Belphastus.

I know it.
He doesn’t.

And here is the beauty of it:

If he completes the first two, I win anyway.

The ring gives me dominion.
Lucifer trapped gives me legitimacy.

The third task?

That is merely there to keep him obedient.

To keep him trying.

Belphastus bowed slightly then. Respectful. Earnest.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

I smiled a wicked smile. Of course, it was a wicked smile.

‘You’re welcome, Prince,’ I replied, and meant something entirely different by it.

As he turned to leave, I settled deeper into the throne, already feeling how close it was to remembering me instead.

Soon.

Very soon.

And when Lucifer returns—

Well.

They will find Hell under new management.

And I will finally be divine again.

Belphastus lost his smile.

That, in itself, was progress.

Belphastus

I stood in the weary room—the antechamber that pretends not to be a throne room when the throne is occupied by someone who does not like witnesses—and listened to Astaroth probably lie with the care of a librarian shelving first editions. He lounged. 

Of course, he lounged. 

Demons only ever lounge when they think they’re winning. 

It’s written somewhere, probably in the margins of the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, right next to a coffee ring and a note that says ‘Do not trust this one.’

He spoke of the Ring of Summoning as if it were a favour. 

As if it had not ruined at least four centuries of very clever men and one deeply unlucky abbess. 

He spoke of trapping Lucifer on the earthly plane as if that were a mere logistical inconvenience, like finding parking near Stonehenge. 

And then he spoke of the third task.

The impossible one.

He didn’t name it outright. 

He never does. He let it hover. 

Let it imply itself. 

Astaroth has always preferred suggestion to instruction. 

It makes the screams feel earned.

I nodded.

I nodded like a fool. 

Like a man dazzled by the idea of a throne he could never sit on without catching fire in extremely symbolic places.

Inside, I was already three steps ahead of him and quietly judging him for being so predictable.

You see, Astaroth believes that intelligence is domination. 

That if you can see more angles than your opponent, you have already won.

It is a very demonological mistake. Intelligence is only leverage. 

What matters is timing, position, and whether the other party has read the same footnotes you have.

I have read them all.

The Ring of Summoning does not merely summon. 

That is the lie told to apprentices and kings and idiots with too much time. 

The ring anchors.

It creates a bidirectional covenant between summoner and summoned, binding not essence, but authority.

The older the entity, the deeper the hook. 

Which is why angels hate it, and demons pretend it doesn’t exist.

Astaroth knows this.

What he does not know—what he cannot know, because it requires thinking like a human with nothing left to lose—is that the ring does not care who holds the leash.

He assumes I will bring it back.

That is his error.

If I summon Astaroth with the ring, truly summon him, pull him bodily and metaphysically into the earthly plane, then the covenant completes. 

He will be bound. 

And if, by some remarkable coincidence, Lucifer is already present—trapped, delayed, or merely distracted—then the ring will not choose between them.

It will take both.

Demons love hierarchy. 

The ring does not. 

It is profoundly egalitarian in its cruelty.

I let Astaroth speak. 

I let him explain Hell to me as if I hadn’t walked its corridors blindfolded and barefoot. 

I let him reminisce about being a goddess, about lost temples and stolen names and the slow, grinding insult of being reduced to a footnote with horns.

I even felt a flicker of sympathy.

That worried me, briefly.

Then I remembered the McDonald’s.

I told him I would do it.

I told him I would find the ring.

I told him I would trap Lucifer.

I told him nothing about what happens after the summoning.

He watched my soul while I said it. 

I felt his gaze like a hand in my chest, counting ribs. 

He saw ambition.

He saw bitterness. 

He saw hunger.

He did not see the quiet, patient plan I have been building since the first day I realised Hell runs on assumptions.

When he finished, he smiled.

Astaroth’s smiles are terrible things—ancient, knowing, and convinced of their own inevitability.

He thinks I am his pawn.

I think he will look very surprised when the ring closes.

And if all goes well—if my timing is right, if the symbols hold, if the universe has even a shred of irony left—then Hell will lose two Monarchs in one night.

I am not trying to rule Hell.

I am trying to empty it.

And for the first time in a very long while, this demon is helping me do it.

Nicha

I was already sitting in the alley when the Professor found me, though at the time I didn’t know he was a professor, or anything at all, really. He looked like a man who had wandered into the wrong story and decided to stay out of spite.

Coat too clean for the alley, eyes too sharp for charity. 

He stopped in front of me like he’d been expecting me to be there, which was unsettling because most people work very hard not to expect people like me.

I asked him for change.

That was the script. 

You stick to the script, and sometimes the world throws you a coin like it’s feeding pigeons.

He didn’t.

Instead, he asked me why.

‘Why should I give you money, Nicha?’

No one ever asks that. 

They either do or they don’t. 

I told him the truth because it was all I had left: I needed to eat. 

That I hadn’t eaten properly in two days. 

That my hands shook when I stood up too fast.

He smiled. 

Not kindly. 

Not cruelly either. 

Like a man who’d just solved a puzzle and was disappointed it hadn’t screamed more.

‘That won’t do,’ he said. ‘That’s not how salvation works.’

That was when I realised he had said my name.

I didn’t tell him. 

I didn’t have to. 

He said it the way doctors say terminal, softly and with ownership. Nicha.

Like it belonged to him now.

He sat beside me on the damp ground as if alleyways were lecture halls and I was his only student.

Asked about my life.

And the terrible thing was—I told him.

I told him my wife left me for another, taking my two children with her.

I told him about my warehouse job that vanished when the company ‘restructured.’ 

About the landlord who raised the rent on my flat because he could. 

About my mum’s cancer, the kind that shows you who’s in charge.

About how I did everything right, or at least not wrong enough to deserve this.

About the death of my mother in pain. 

The eviction from my home.

That no one cared.

I told him how every door closed politely.

How I lost all.

How it was taken from me. 

He nodded. 

Agreed with me. 

Said the word ‘unfair’ like it tasted accurate.

And then he changed.

He told me being nice was killing me.

That kindness was a luxury product for people who could afford consequences. 

That society didn’t reward patience—it exploited it. 

That every time I said please, the world heard weak.

Every time I waited my turn, someone else took it.

He spoke quietly, which somehow made it louder.

‘You’ve been robbed already,’ he said. ‘You’re just too polite to notice.’

Something ugly and warm woke up in my chest. 

Anger I’d buried under gratitude and apologies. 

It felt good. 

Dangerous-good.

Like standing too close to a fire after freezing all night.

He was right. 100% right. 

What was I doing? 

Why did I allow this?

That’s when he told me about the man.

A solicitor, he said. 

Rich. 

Defends men who poison rivers and ruin lives and call it commerce. 

Walks through this alley every night pretending to be harmless. 

Dresses like a fast-food worker, so no one notices what he really is.

So he blends in.

He lies always, even in his dress.

‘He deserves to be frightened,’ the Professor said calmly. ‘And you deserve something back.’

‘He is a coward who needs to be cowed by a man such as you. Teach him about... about... fear.’

He put the knife in my hand like it had always been there.

I didn’t feel brave.

I felt chosen.

When he left, calling me a good chap, the alley felt different. Smaller. Sharper. Like it was holding its breath with me.

I waited.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, a quiet voice whispered that this wasn’t rescue.

But it was the first time in years someone had looked at me and seen potential instead of pity.

And that, terrifyingly, felt like hope.