SAM: The Devil Went Down to Sunnydale III (Patreon)

TEN YEARS AGO (Six Year old Sam, Gramps, Grammy, in Image 1-3) Being a Devil was fun. A High-Class one, even better. At least since his si

TEN YEARS AGO(Six Year old Sam, Gramps, Grammy, in Image 1-3)Being a Devil was fun.

A High-Class one, even better.

At least since his sixth birthday, at least.

Sam sat cross-legged on the crimson chaise lounge, pretending to read the massive leather-bound tome balanced on his knee. The library around him stretched impossibly in all directions—shelves climbing toward a ceiling so high it disappeared into shadow, row after row of knowledge spiraling outward like the rings of a particularly well-read tree. This wing of the Ash-Shaytan estate was, objectively speaking, absurd—a monument to intellectual excess that would make the Library of Alexandria weep with inadequacy.

But today, Sam couldn’t focus on the words swimming before him. Not with Mother’s voice carrying from the adjoining parlor, each syllable crystal-clear despite the distance and the theoretically sound-dampening enchantments woven into the walls.

“—of course, darling. The Gremory have always maintained their position. Blood doesn’t lie.”

His mother’s laughter tinkled like expensive crystal threatening to shatter. Always so poised, so perfect. One of Lilith’s most celebrated descendants—a fact she never let anyone forget, especially her children. The Gremory lineage practically glowed in her veins, marking her as devil aristocracy even among the aristocratic.

Sam’s fingers tightened imperceptibly on the book’s spine.

It wasn’t that he disliked learning about his heritage. It was that he’d heard this particular speech thirty-seven times. He’d counted.

“The true mark of our line is in the eyes,” his mother continued, undoubtedly touching her own as she spoke—those luminous blue irises that four of his sisters and himself had inherited.“When Lilith bore her sixth daughter to the Morning Star, they say her eyes contained the cosmos.”

At least that’s a cosmic inheritance I haven’t missed out on, Sam thought, turning a page he hadn’t read. Would be tragic otherwise.

He might not have had much knowledge about Highschool DxD, except for the names of like three or four characters. Some girl had wanted to watch it with him, years ago, but he just couldn’t get into anime like that. Although, apparently, boobs, dragons, and war were very important parts of it and he thought boobs were cool, so really he had nothing to complain about when his memories came back in force as a little kid.

The memories had filtered in slowly—dreamlike fragments at first, then with increasing clarity until, around age five, he’d found himself sitting in his nursery constructing a perfect scale model of the Golden Gate Bridge from blocks, suddenly and acutely aware that he’d once been someone else entirely. Someone ordinary. Someone human.

Someone who’d died in his sleep at 27 and woken up screaming in the arms of a devil.

Things started to get odd, though, the more he grew up and started to do some noticing.

Hell was very… organized.

And populated.

And Devils weren’t as evil as they were supposed to be.

Sure, they were bad and had different moralities and whatever, but this was DxD. Where were the cackling devil villains that talked about how evil they were and bullied their own children for being weak or bullied their own children for being strong?

That particular disconnect had bothered him for years. The cartoonish villainy he’d expected was largely absent, replaced by something far more insidious—a society of beings who simply operated with an entirely different moral framework, applying the same banality of organization to suffering as they did to afternoon tea.

Sam set his book aside and stood, stretching with the deliberate grace his tutors had spent years drilling into him. A prince never hurries, never slouches, never reveals tension in his limbs. 

Even alone, the habit remained.

He drifted toward the window, gazing out at the sprawling grounds of the estate. Beyond the manicured gardens, the landscape of Hell stretched toward the horizon—a realm of impossible beauty and lurking dread, perpetual twilight casting everything in shades of crimson and violet.

He was sure that was missing.

He knew that for a fact, considering his great-great-great-great-grandfather was literally the fucking Satan, great honking Lucifer himself. And not only was the old man still alive, he was far too fat, relaxed and happy to be waging war… and might actually be Santa Claus, but refused to admit it anytime he asked about it, simply giving him a suspiciously jolly laugh and patting him on the head.

The first time Sam had met Lucifer, he’d been six years old and utterly terrified. He’d expected horns, brimstone, perhaps a dramatic cape billowing without wind. What he’d gotten was a massive, barrel-chested man with a beard like avalanching snow in red suspenders, a suit and  positively jolly laughter that shook the foundations of the mansion.

Lucifer had swooped him up as if he weighed nothing, deposited him on a knee solid as granite, and asked him what sorts of mischief he’d been making.

“None, Great-Grandfather,” he’d answered stiffly.

Those ancient eyes had twinkled like stars seen through ice. “Then you’re not trying hard enough, are you, little prince?”

It didn’t make sense otherwise. Devils could control how they looked if they felt like it. Why choose to look like that? Also, why did Great-Grammy Lilith like baking cookies so much otherwise?

It was too suspicious.

Truth be told, unlike his myriad menagerie of brothers and sisters, Sammael had never quite adjusted to the casual oddity that was having the First Couple of Damnation ever so occasionally pop in for family dinners. 

Granted, the dinners themselves were never casual.No, nothing in Hell was casual at this level, and even less so when Gramps and Grammy were around. So, at every family feast, his siblings preened under Grampa Lucy’s attention, and vied for Grammy Lily’s approving smile. Sam watched, calculated, and wondered privately if he was the only one who found it all vaguely ridiculous—like finding out Cthulhu enjoyed soap operas and miniature golf.

A noise from the hallway drew his attention and it was all he could do to repress a wince, the distinctive sound of expensive shoes on marble, followed by muffled laughter the way only centuries of life in Hell as nobility could teach. With a sigh as quiet as any church mouse, young Sam released his shoulders before they could tense up properly, a breath escaping him in the process.

“—hiding in the library again, no doubt.” The voice of one his elder brothers rolled in, Dominic Ash-Shaytan, as handsome as he was a dickhead, and with a voice twice as smooth as he was good-looking “The runt loves to read, where else?”

“Dominic, must you always be such a… what’s the word? Ah, a tool.” His third-eldest brother, Adrian Ash-Shaytan, half as pretty as Dominic but twice as smart, and always the moderate. “Not everyone needs to be the center of attention.”

“No, just you and me, right, Adrian?” A laugh, sharp as broken glass. “Come on. Let’s find Cassius. Mother wants us all presentable before dinner. Can’t have the youngest shame us in front of the Phenex delegation.”

Sam slid back to the chaise lounge, retrieving his book just as the library doors swung open. He didn’t look up.

“Dearest younger brother, there you are,” Dominic’s voice dripped with affected relief, the red-haired black eyed lunkhead he knew as his brother waltzing in with swinging arms. “Your beleaguered elders have been searching everywhere for you.”

“Clearly not everywhere,” the six-year old  replied back, turning a page with slowness just as deliberate and affected as his brother’s sense of care, “or you’d have certainly found me much sooner.”

Adrian snorted, earning a glare from Dominic, the white-haired caramel-skinned boy catching himself before he caught a blow. At nineteen, Adrian was the closest to Dominic in age among his brothers, though that hadn’t translated to any particular closeness or kinship worth the name. 

At the very least, he was less cruel than Dominic, perhaps, but no less dismissive.

“Mother wants you dressed and in the grand hall in twenty minutes,” Dominic said, straightening his already immaculate cuffs. “Try not to embarrass yourself this time.”

Sam finally looked up, meeting his brother’s gaze with a placidity that never failed to unnerve him. “When have I ever?”

Dominic’s smile was all teeth. “There’s always a first time for everything, little brother.”

The two older devils departed, their laughter echoing down the corridor. Sam remained motionless, his expression unchanged, even as the book cover beneath his fingers warmed from the heat of his contained irritation.

More than that, it honestly took years for him to discover what went right in this universe to have so many pure devils running around — not that there weren’t still plenty of reincarnated ones running around in Peerages.

Why there were so many generations of Pure Devils.

Years of research, disguised as an interest in history.

It took long enough that he almost missed it entirely—the pivotal divergence buried in a footnote of a translation of a commentary on an obscure text. Not the sort of thing anyone would notice unless they were specifically looking for what didn’t make sense.

In this reality, Lucifer had never abandoned Lilith.

That single decision had cascaded through history like a stone dropped in still water. No rage-fueled rebellion against God. No bitter vendetta against humanity. No doomed war that decimated the devil population and drove them into the shadows.

Instead, a negotiated separation. After Lucifer’s fall, it was basically just a divine divorce with remarkably civilized terms, all things considered. I mean, yeah, Job happened, but Grampy was the Devil, he was allowed a little evil, right?Anyway, God had His angels, Lucifer and Lilith had their devils, and humanity wandered in between, courted by both sides but ultimately free to choose.

The cost of this peace? Hell was crowded.

Unimaginably, impossibly crowded.

Where Sam had expected a scattered population of survivors desperately trying to rebuild through Evil Pieces and reincarnation, he’d found a thriving, expanding civilization of purebloods. Billions of them. Generation upon generation of devils, all tracing their lineage back to those first children of Lilith and Lucifer.

And where did that leave the sixth son of a sixth son, six generations deep?

Nowhere. A footnote to a footnote to a footnote.

The youngest son of the Ash-Shaytan name rose to his feet, the book in his hand placed aside with careful precision. He had too much respect for the literary form to do anything else, a left-over from his past life, maybe.He knew he had at most twenty minutes to prepare for tonight’s dinner. To prepare watching his five older brothers posture and preen for the Phenex delegation. For enduring his mother’s loving but still cutting and constant reminders that he had enough power on his own to stand up to his brothers, especially those that were of his father’s mistresses.

For smiling and pretending he didn’t see the mathematics of his existence—the inescapable equation of too many devils and too little domain. Even the Nine Circles couldn’t expand fast enough to give every devil of noble birth their own territory to rule. Not anymore.

Sam’s reflection stared back at him from the darkened window—blue eyes gleaming like trapped lightning against his dark skin, red hair in tight clean curls atop his head. The image of a prince. The reality of an afterthought.

“Young master?” A servant’s voice, soft and deferential, from the doorway. “Your mother requests your immediate presence.”

If Sam was in any inclination to move, the way he kept his body still as a statue gave no such hint. “Tell dearest mother I’ll be along shortly.”

“But young master—”

“Archibald, I said shortly,” he repeated, tone brooking no argument even as he refused to look up.

The servant bowed and withdrew. Sam remained at the window, watching as carriages began arriving at the front gates—the Phenex delegation, right on time. Another evening of politics and posturing. Another reminder of his place in the vast, crowded hierarchy of Hell.

His fingertips pressed against the cool glass, leaving no marks despite the heat building beneath his skin.

There had to be more than this. Some purpose greater than being the eternally overshadowed sixth son. Some domain where he could truly rule, instead of scrambling for scraps of influence in a realm bursting at the seams with devils.

“There’s always a first time for everything,” he murmured, echoing Dominic’s taunt with a smile that would have made his brothers take a step back had they been there to see it.

Yes. Perhaps there was.