Faustus finds himself facing a paradox. It is strange for him to think that he finds solace in Hell. Had he not warned his friends to heed his downfall, his demise? Had he not thought himself damned? Still, there are small things, rational things, which are a relief to him in a place where he had expected no relief to come.

“I am beginning to believe that you lied,” He says one day to the figure that seems always beside him.

“You expected something other than lies?” Mephistopheles’ answer is casual, amused, and Faustus thinks that perhaps he simply has not understood the complete implications of what he was trying to say.

“I am beginning to believe that every word you spoke to me was a lie,” he says, and his companion vanishes without comment.

His is a Hell of contracts, of business and schedules, of timely terror.

He had spent fifteen years in university for his title, first studying Greek and Latin, dissecting the words of Aristophanes and Plato, and then studying holy texts, The Bible, in detail. In the end of it all he had only been left with more questions, with the desire to tear apart each discipline and discover its goal, discover the miracle that drove it logically forward.

Despite all that he has learned and lost, he still considers this to be a noble quest.

“Could I have had it? If I had managed myself better, risen to my potential?” The idea of the secrets of all kings, the ease that being rid of all ambiguities could have brought haunts him still, though by his reckoning in the timelessness of Hell he has been resident here for more than sixty years.

“Do you still believe it was yours to have?” Mephistopheles never sounds anything less than amused, and Faustus grows tired of every question being answered by yet another question.

His is a Hell of research and theory, of orderly queues, of frustrating patience.

He sometimes thinks of predestination and remembers Cornelius listing out his virtues: his education in astrology, languages, alchemy, classical texts. All of those things which made him well suited for the study of magic and the knowledge he could drag from its darker recesses; all of those ways in which he could climb the heights of Olympus and learn the secrets of God himself.

“I cannot actually believe I had a choice in this separation from my God.” He tries this tactic, this trick of language, when he feels Mephistopheles at his shoulder, expecting no more and no less than another empty question in answer. In his heart Faustus knows that he is right, though. Given the same choices, what man could have resisted what was offered? What destiny would have turned away from the knowledge he was promised?

This time his demon considers the statement, then smirks, and the look that makes a home on Mephistopheles’ features is all the affirmation Faustus needs. Still, he is shaken when Mephistopheles answers, “Doctor, you are not separated from your God.”

Clever as he is, Faustus spends decades considering the answer.

His Hell is an academic, scholarly Hell full of mercenary drudge and law and pragmatism.

He realizes, later, what Mephistopheles meant. He had found a new god. He had found it mounted upon a dragon’s back with his wings parting the subtle air. He had found it while he was proving cosmography and the secrets of the universe; while learning more about the costs and measures of the kingdoms of Earth than could ever be counted by another man. He had become omniscient, if only in his own dreams, and knowledge had become his master. The secrets of the cosmos themselves had become his God. Why should he not be? A lifetime of study had taught him that Genesis imbued God as the measurer, the analyzer of creation. Why could he not do the same?

“Was this my fall?” He asks it in a whisper that he knows echoes across a thousand Hells. “The same God jealous of Icarus’ flight was jealous of my own? Conspired against me in return?”

The answer comes, “A shadow followed your wings. A swarm of pupils and debaters, of logic and need.”

“Your shadow, then. Those things you tempted me with.”

“Blame me not, Faustus.” Mephistopheles’ smirk is an echo that reminds him of his place. “The shadow is of your own choice. It follows you still.”

His is a hell of limits, and of no limits. Not a place, but a state of shadow and of the need imprisoned in his own spirit.

Mephistopheles had lied about a thousand things: the nature of Heaven and of the absence of God, the nature of goodness and of despair and of pride and insolence. In the end, though, the altar upon which Faustus worships and sacrifices is made of nothing but absolute truth. The House of Shame and the Abyss and the Gullet and the Pit and even the Dissension are only the gaping desires of his own insatiate heart.

Where we are is hell, and where hell is there must we ever be.

But this Hell is also a paradox. In this Hell, Faustus is not alone. Eventually, he feels more of his own potential here than he ever had been able to feel when he was bound to the Earth.

He echoes words that he knows he has spoken before. “Come, Mephistopheles, let us reason and dispute again.” When Mephistopheles comes, just as he always has, Faustus finds that he is relieved.