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My timeline included a rather horrific feature of Hell that involved what was called "Punishment". Yes, yes, I know. Not the cleverest name, nor does it offer much clarity on its own. While the whole of Hell was indeed considered eternal punishment for sinners, it didn't become the anarchist, hedonistic, real-life horror movie we knew it as all by itself. Even damned souls couldn't have accomplished that on their own, seeing as not every sinner in Hell was completely evil or corrupt.

Punishment was, for all intents and purposes, a rite of passage. The ritualistic hazing of new pledges, if you will. The Morningstar's sentence was more than just not being able to harm sinners. He was also tasked with assigning them appropriate retribution for their misdeeds before they could be unleashed upon the Pride Ring. You see, when a soul fell into Hell, it was still fresh and unmarred. Darkened, perhaps, but still very much human. It wasn't until they were subjected to their Punishment that they took on the unsightly forms you all know and love to draw lewd pornography of.

It was a process through which a soul was broken and twisted every which way imagineable, a special, unique kind of Hell designed just for them. Mine, for example, involved countless months of powerlessness at the mercy of my wretch of a father, unable to lift a hand to stop him. As you may know, though, this wasn't so different from the very life I had lived, so it didn't take very long at all for my soul to be corrupted. I was already halfway there by the time I was murdered, after all.

Thus was created the second half of Lucifer's damnation. He couldn't harm us, no, but he also had to live with the fact that he was the one who shaped us into the monsters we became. There was hardly a soul worth redeeming after receiving Punishment. We had had all traces of our humanity stripped away from us in its entirety. That's why I found Charlie's little "Happy Hotel" to be such a fascinating, delusional idea. It truly brought me so much amusement to watch the scarce few sinners who thought they deserved something better come crawling onto her doorstep, naive hope in their eyes that was almost always blotted out by the sin that compelled them over and over again.

Of course, my decision to "help" with the hotel wasn't wholly my own. That didn't stop me from seeing its charm, though, futile as it might have been. For a short time, at one point or another, I even found myself harbouring something that might have been akin to affection for Charlie. She was so blind to the torment those she called "her people" had suffered, though, that it was difficult to see her as anything less than foolish. Oh, when she found out the truth about Punishment, the look in her eyes was devastating. It brought me a sick kind of glee to watch her dreams shatter in front of her.

At the time, I had had my eyes on a different prize. Regardless of my obligations to the holder of my leash, I wanted something more than just strength. I wanted power. Undeniable, unparalleled power—the kind that only the Morningstar himself possessed. Yes, I sought after Lucifer's throne. I felt he no longer deserved it; hadn't in quite some time, in fact. He was too weak, too domesticated by his own shackles to bring Hell to its fullest potential. I just knew that, in my hands, I could achieve the impossible.

I certainly felt I deserved it more than that phony scam-artist of a walking TV. Our "rivalry", if it could even be called that, had gone down in history the moment it began, but only on account of the fanfare. "Radio vs. Video" would remain a timeless classic in the mind of mankind, but it was never really any contest. The only time that Vox had ever stood a chance of coming close to my level was when I let him beat me as a means to my own end. It was a little pathetic, really. Or a lot.