"Ellie! Tim! Elena! I'm here to save you!" After wandering Hell for days without Thea's support, fighting his way through demon hordes over and over, the Stranger's reserves of both stamina and magic were long since depleted.
But now, from some unknown wellspring, strength surged back into his limbs. One punch sent a demon guard flying, and his vision narrowed to those three silhouettes—his family from the mortal world. Or rather, the family he'd built over the past two decades.
He loved his wife. He loved his two children. He'd never imagined that he would be the reason they were dragged into Hell.
An ordinary woman and two ordinary children. They weren't Thea, who could trade blows with Darkseid for half an hour. They didn't have two sectors' worth of alien wealth at their disposal. They certainly didn't have the talent to carve out a fiefdom in Hell's wastelands. And with time flowing differently here, the Stranger had no idea how long they'd been wandering.
The sight that greeted him shattered his heart. His wife had her back to him, hunched over, gnawing on a slab of rotting meat. The light had gone out of his children's eyes entirely—they followed the column numbly.
"I'll kill every last one of you—" He raised his arm to obliterate the demons. He couldn't access even a ten-thousandth of God's power, but even that sliver meant he feared no enemy here.
The massacre never happened. Before his fury could find its target, a demon with a skull wreathed in flame stepped into his path.
His overwhelming power drained away, siphoned off in a steady stream by this unremarkable-looking creature. The Stranger couldn't comprehend it—how could this demon absorb the power of the Most High?
"Surprised, Stranger?" The flaming demon's voice dripped with hatred. "I'm you. Don't you recognize me? You've probably forgotten me entirely. You stole my name. My family. My happy, whole family—wife and children. Everything you see here is your doing!"
The Stranger recoiled. "Philip? The original Philip?"
The demon laughed—a cruel, jagged sound. "That's right. Take a good look at what you've done. You stole my identity. You lived with my family. And I sank into Hell. But now we're all together again—one big happy reunion!"
Philip wrapped his arms around the three broken figures—one woman, two small children—and laughed, and laughed.
Seeing his beloved wife and children reduced to creatures running on survival instinct alone, the Stranger's composure crumbled. "Everything is my fault. Please—let them go."
The power of the Most High vanished as though it had never existed. He was the sinner on the Field of Blood again—battered, stripped of courage and conviction and dignity, with nothing left but his knees on the scorched ground, begging for forgiveness.
Philip ground a boot into the Stranger's skull, his expression one of sadistic amusement, his laughter rich with satisfaction. "Not enough. Not nearly enough. This doesn't even begin to calm my anger."
"Do you know what it's like? Those suffocating memories. The pain that drowns everything else. I had a kind family. I had my own life. But you destroyed it all!"
The demon's foot bore down harder, grinding. "You're going to pay."
"Take me instead. I betrayed the Son of God—Jesus himself. I'm the most evil man in history. Chain me up and let them go. It's the only thing I can still do for them. Please!"
The moment those words left his mouth, Philip paused. After a long moment, he nodded. All around them, the damned loosed a collective howl—a shapeless, animal sound. Ghosts in the wasteland wailed in harmony, a keening that pierced straight to the soul. All of Hell seemed to shudder.
The greatest sinner in history had volunteered for damnation. Hell's will practically sang with triumph, celebrating its monumental victory.
The indestructible cloak was torn from his body by a swarm of lesser demons, ripped to shreds like cheap cloth. The Phantom Stranger became Judas once more—and this time it was no illusion of Thea's. He willingly cast aside the identity the Most High had given him and returned to what he'd been: a mortal man.
"They're yours now—heh—if you can walk out of Hell alive, that is. Move it, slave!" Philip cracked a whip across the Stranger's hunched back without an ounce of hesitation.
Mortal again, the lash bit deep from shoulder to waist, and blood flowed instantly. He didn't flinch. He lifted his unconscious wife and children onto his back and staggered after the column.
The weight of three bodies nearly crushed the breath from his lungs. But he believed he deserved every ounce of it. Along the way, he endured the mockery, the beatings, the abuse of every demon in the column. This was his road of atonement, and he would walk every step of it himself.
How long he walked, how far—he couldn't say. Each day blurred into the next: a mechanical, mindless march forward. Time lost its meaning. Memory grew hazy. Even the demons grew bored of his meekness and moved on to newer victims.
To help his wife and children recover, he instinctively gravitated toward the other humans in the column.
The human contingent turned over constantly. Some escaped. Some were killed. Everyone carried their own mountain of troubles, and before long, nobody cared about his identity as Judas.
"Hey, big guy. You've had plenty of chances—why don't you run?" A reasonably attractive woman sidled up to him.
Stripped of his power, he had no idea what crime had landed her here. But the way she carried herself—eyes calculating, flirting with half the humans in the column—made it clear she wasn't exactly a saint.
He had no energy for small talk. "I'm atoning," he said flatly.
The woman wasn't ready to give up. She glanced at the demon patrols and dropped her voice. "Word is, some undead archmage crossed over from the Underworld and is building an army to attack the demon lords. The pay's supposed to be unbelievable. Let's escape together—you're big, you'd be an asset on any battlefield. Fight, get paid, go home."
Home. The word cracked something inside him. He shook his head. "I'm atoning. I won't run, and I won't retreat."
The woman stared at him like he'd grown a second head. Finally, under her breath: "Idiot."
He didn't give it another thought. Somewhere down the line, he heard the woman had led a handful of human slaves on a midnight escape. Their destination: unknown.
The demon column churned like Hell itself—new faces joining, old ones vanishing. The only constant was Philip, who never tired of tormenting the Stranger. Long after every other demon had lost interest in the greatest sinner of all, Philip remained dedicated to his suffering. The irony was hard to miss.
"Keep moving, slave!" The whip cracked again. The Stranger maintained his pace, back bent under the weight of his family, feet bare on Hell's burning surface—his shoes had disintegrated long ago.
Eventually the demon band scattered. The region's war had escalated dramatically: the new undead archmage was trying to carve out a domain—a "City of Death" — and the local lord wasn't about to cede ground without a fight. The tug-of-war had been going on for some time, and most of the demons—everyone except Philip—had been drawn to the front.
Even the Stranger, dull as his senses had become, could tell that this remote corner of Hell had devolved into absolute chaos. The relative peace of the march was gone, replaced by the ring of blades on every horizon.
That one really knows how to stir things up…