The cavern was vast.
Shadows danced across the walls, flittering and jittering in twisted shapes backlighted by dancing flames of unknown origin. The temperature was a cosy 444 degrees Celsius – just hot enough to melt sulfur without getting too much into the gasphase to clog up the sinuses.
There was a rustling of wings being folded and a scraping of hooves as a horde of horned, thick-scaled denizens of the Nether Regions took their seats.
“I, Majox the inutterably archevilness call this 314159265th meeting of Angels Anonymous to order!“ boomed an old archfiend whose features seemed to have been carved from the eternal rock itself.
“Brothers and sister...”
He was interrupted by snorting and suppressed laughter from the assembled fiends.
Mo’hbb threw up her talons in disgust and hissed.
“What’s this brother and sister crap, Majox? Everyone knows that angels are androgynous!”
“Silence!” bellowed Majox, and little flames spurted from his nose.
“That’s why I said brothers and sisters!”
He settled back down.
“Now... we will hear the testimony of Pokos.”
A furtive demon stood up, clearly embarrassed to be presenting himself so openly to his fellow fiends.
“Hi, uhm... I am Pokos,” he hesitated briefly, “and I am a fallen angel.”
“Hello, Pokos,” came the echo from the assembled demons.
Pokos jerked involuntarily, and continued in a squeaky, insecure voice.
“I’ve been trying to mend my ways, you know, try to redeem myself. Ever since that day we were all kicked out of Heaven I’ve really tried and tried – but it’s so hard to be good!”
“That’s okay,” said Lev’che’ead, “we know how you feel.”
“I mean, everything is looking good and then – bam! I steer someone from the path of righteousness, I tempt them, I make them doubt!”
He rustled his wings sadly.
“Only yesterday I coded another set of peer-to-peer MP3 sharing tools!”
There was a commotion amongst the assemblage.
“Yessss?” hissed Majox in a dangerous tone of voice.
Xitor’ng’everci held up a tattered, leather-bound tome with a shaky hand.
“Actually, your very extremely honorable lordship, that’s not on the list of sins anymore.”
“Oh,” grumbled Majox with a raised eyebrow, “splendid. Pokos, continue.”
Pokos stuttered.
“Oh, well, great, hm? Anyway, I really think that if I set my mind to it and work really, really hard at redeeming myself in the eyes of you-know-who, the maybe there is a chance! I mean, there’s still one thing we have, right? Even after falling so low, right?”
There was an expectant silence. Pokos looked around desperately.
“You know... hope?”
In the silence that followed, one could have heard a pin drop (on the head of which an undefined number of angels could dance).
“Buahahaha!”
Amidst the ensuing raucous laughter, Pokos dejectedly folded his wings and slunk out of the great hall.