#cagcdbird

   Lucifer did not do home calls. He did not get his hands dirty -- he didn’t bother getting himself involved in the affairs of humans. He left that work to his council. Powerful creatures that do his bidding, each one bearing a mark of the Morningstar -- because that’s who he was. Venus. The God of sin. God of nothing. The Earth and the Underworld are his domain, yet in the mirror of his former self... they were nothing. They meant nothing to him. 

   Lucifer did not do home calls. Yet as the whispering rose, a murmur of a powerful weapon, a conduit of the universe -- he realized that this required a certain... finesse. Yes. That’s the way to put it. His demons are often clumsy. Unrefined. After all, they are creatures of instinct, bound to their own wills and desires. Irritating, that is. 

   Finding the lab is relatively easy. He just followed the stench. God, he hates doing his own work. Does that say something bad about him? He surpasses security with ease. Alarms blare, the pristine white of the keep turning crimson and bloody with alarms and bodies. His eyes are narrowed into thin, lethal slits -- like the opening of an abyss, his eyes sanguine. 

   Silence follows the collapse of their bodies. One by one they fall, steady as he makes his way through the lab. The stench runs deep in this place. A rift has been opened, tapped like a tree full of sap -- it’s ichor heady and causing an itch to run under his skin, gnawing and irritating. He rolls out his shoulders, staving off the urge to dominate. 

   The deeper he gets, the more violent they are, humans with clouded minds, affected by the dense and thick mist that seems to coalesce at the pit of the place. He doesn’t fight. No, that’s far too barbaric for him. He’s able to raise two fingers and see them drop -- like flies being zapped by a lamp. 

   Simple destruction. Clean, neat. Lucifer’s eyes raise, two great doors -- and in front, a feeble looking man holding a chambered gun. Lucifer can see him. All of him. The sap-like ichor radiating from the soles of his feet to his brain. Mm. This one has been in the thick of it, Lucifer assesses, eyes narrowing. He’s steeped in the chaos like a tea-bag. Reveled in it. “Where is it?” Lucifer queries. “I assume it’s behind this door, but I’d rather know now.” The man says nothing, quivering from head to toe in his boots.

   Lucifer tilts his head. “Chop chop,” he makes a come hither motion, palms dyed brown with blood. He’s trying to fight it. He has a resistance to it -- the mist surrounds him in a flurry. 

   “Inside,” he sputters out. Lucifer heaves a sigh and flicks his wrist. His neck crunches like leaves.

   “Well,” he sighs, dusting off his hands. He approaches the metal doors, examines them, paces up and down a few times. Sealed with technology. Iron and steel and locks that would take years to peel apart -- encryption by encryption. He hums to himself, and places both his hands on the crack, his fingertips finding purchase in the small slit that splits the center. 

   It’s easy to slide them apart after that, pushing them open with inhuman strength --

   He’s greeted with another white room. “They really need a better interior designer,” he rubs the metal shavings off his fingers, grimacing at the feel, and his eyes rake over the walls. 

   There’s a girl there. Lucifer tilts his head, looks around again. His frown clings to his brow as he approaches, slow and smooth, with the grace of a cat. “You... wouldn’t happen to know where a world-destroying weapon would be, no?” He gestures this way and that, listening to her breath. 

Kharon comes to  a stop, hand coming up to touch at his chest. Feeling the vibrations of a soul, one so powerful and sad, certainly unlike those around. So he turns to look for where it was coming from and heading in that direction without really thinking about it. Since it had been so long since someones soul would call to him in such a way, as normally they all blended in with each others as he was constantly feeling them all the time. So he goes, without thought, curiously looking for who he felt.

and how she seems to struggle so, wrapped tight in the hands of a cruel fate, as though she is merely some small bird with a clipped wing -- struggling to fly, free beyond the red sea of heaven. yet she does well enough on her own, it seems. sonia whispers to him, a chittering little thing upon his heavenly ear, spilling such divine secrets of the strange woman. of how she fights with merely her mind. is she a witch? like the one he had hunted and killed? ever so curious. though they often say that it is curiosity that kills the cat. but griffith does not believe in such boring fairytales. it is the cat that kills curiosity, plunging sharpened claws into her writhing body, sinking deep into flesh until all that needs to be known is spread open. ripe for the taking.

he leaps into rescue, body pure white with holiness -- the strength of mere mortal men cannot withstand his nature as an angel. quick, he slices apart the bodies that attempted to rob from the young woman before him. eventually, all that is left between him and her are the mutilated bodies of dead men, their corpses soon returning to the earth. that is ... if they are not eaten first by depraved monsters.

a closer look, gaze trailing across every bit of her body. it dawns upon the hawk, steadily, how she appears to embody the visage of godliness -- most like his own. purity in the white of her frame, so tender and gentle, sharpened by the wicked ways of the world. for a brief moment, a flicker of amusement passes through him. she is odd. so very odd. he desires to conquer her oddity, rip apart curiosity with his own talons.

drawn to you as a moth to open flame, without a drop of embarrassment or shame // accepting.

When she approached him with one of her so rare requests, when she demanded (-when she took, she could take what she willed, she deserved as much and more-) of him something so easily granted but never taken for it, Brom allowed her to see him in her way without protest or complaint. When lithe fingers drew over the contours of his weathered face he had not flinched, had not drawn back, had not been repulsed by his sworn sword in the slightest, for how many had come and gone in her place before him with none so much the worth for all their supposed beauty and wealth? Who were mere gods to decide one’s worth when hers was written in stone before his very face?  

“Fleurette.” He calls to her in kind, comes down from unwanted throne to kneel before her as though she were the lord and he her humble servant, and takes one of the hands that had seen him through touch to place once more against his cheek. “Look into my mind. See what I see whenever I look upon you, if you would.”

Likened to a fortress stone-built from so many memories and so many years of hardship and strife, the walls of his mind lower to reveal a measure of truth he has long felt but never been given reason to show.

Bedecked in silver armaments, the sharpness of her sword and swiftness of her strikes only outdone by the keenness of a mind that shapes a world she cannot see but conquers yet, Ser Fleurette is what Brom thinks the moon ought to have been. Were there any truth to the stories and legends of his people, the moon he once believed to be good would have surely been in her shape, would have surely shone in the same glory he sees burning within her as she takes to the battlefield and faithfully carries the weight of his, no, their cause on those thin and scarred but strong shoulders… there is no defining her any differently than beautiful and inspiring, for that is what she has branded herself as upon every memory and thought of which she is the focus- not by suggestion from her seeking mind (-she would never, had never-) but by virtue of her deeds and a heart buried beneath the scars that still beats with something preciously human.

LITTLE EPHEMERAL THINGS. Feelings are something that the Vicar has long stripped of any kind of importance, depriving them of their former brazen pigments and draping them in ashen monochrome: formerly a woman wrought in the visceral flames of the rawest sentimentalism, mere cinders now remain in the vacant spacing where her heart once used to be. And yet, despite the frigid and statuesque demeanor that she has ultimately grown accustomed to embracing at all times, the delicate features of her visage indeed soften once the younger woman’s vocalization breaks the tranquil silence inside of the library  ;  a curious yet fleeting glance is thus thrown to her side only to be afterwards anchored ‘pon the unfortunately yellowed pages of the ancient tome resting above her lap. 

To be missed... Truth to be told, Amelia has never indulged herself in such poignant thoughts before   ──   When she was younger, she was certain that her image would have remained deftly carved in the heart and marrow of her beloved ones but now, as the night grows longer and the moon becomes paler, there is no doubt that such a thing shall not happen  (  the dead should be buried, ribcages are gardens   ─   not graveyards  )  . A soft sigh, the turning of a page.   ❝  I believe that it’s too early to be already drowning in such doleful thoughts. However, if you want my humble and unbiased opinion, I am confident that your lovely memory will indeed haunt the hearts of many, for a very long time.  ❞

you are without understanding of the axis of violence that speaks you here. you are unsure of what calls out to you, a voice that shatters the silence in spite of yourself, in spite of the world around you. the chaos slows, and you feel your veins singing. blood is to you as the sun is to a flower. you turn toward it.

you had stepped out of a doorway and then when you had moved from it, when the world had unfurled before you, it was— this. a white, clean, viciously antiseptic wall. it blazes in your eyes so ferociously and you instinctively flick your hands inward to blow a lightbulb. turn back, young god— and the door leads, now, to another identical room. it’s the blinding pain of four walls to your eyes. the step of your boot provides a sound that resounds— the very literal reverberation of noise thrown up, back, around.

it is blood singing and singing from walls and the walls are symphonic with it. this place is something you barely understand. all of it is white, white, white. the ache is hard in the back of your head. it beats consistently as a war drum might.

your nose twitches with the cleanliness of it all. how did you...

he’s got no idea how he’s going to save her. he doesn’t know the first thing about medicine, knows even less about healing magic and his witch friend is off the radar. rushing her to the hospital seems like the best idea, but it was across town and an ambulance would take too long to get her here. it doesn’t leave dante with many options to save her. but he does have one option albeit, not a great one. hopefully, she ain’t the type to ask too many questions.