Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

[Ada Wong]

Caught in a landslide
No escape from reality;

Open your eyes
Look up to the skies and see—

Crowley opens his eyes.

As his luck would have it, there isn't much to see; just a lot of blank nothingness that stings his eyes enough that he actually has to blink a few times in a convulsive way that makes it seem as if he is attempting to clear an entire wooden stake out of his tear ducts. Invisible drums in his skull and quivering air be blessed, he isn’t about to go stumbling about blindly when he has no blinking clue as of to where he is.

It had started out as any ordinary day should. Ordinary in the sense that there were no Antichrists to be transported, no meteors hurtling towards the earth, and certainly no infuriated Dukes of Hell barging through the front door of his building to drag him down to face a whole long list of folks who would be very interested in wearing his intestines about their necks in accordance with the latest seasonal fashions.

He had received a call earlier that morning, too, which made the day slightly less ordinary than usual. Things had returned to normal levels of ordinariness once Crowley had finally answered to find out just who was calling, but that little dip in the normality of the demon’s life is a far cry from what he is experiencing now.

Nonetheless, Crowley had answered the phone. He was strewn across his lounge chair at the time, staring blankly up at the tiny little grains meticulously etched into his ceiling. Crowley had a tendency to do that when he was feeling a bit more philosophical than usual, but in that particular instance he wasn’t thinking much of anything that held any value. His limbs dangled over the side of the cushion, considering.

It was Aziraphale who had called.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said. Crowley perked up a little. It was kind of embarrassing, if he was being honest with himself. Which he hardly ever was. In an effort to preserve his ego, Crowley assumed the most bored tone possible to ask the angel why on earth he was calling at such an early hour for.

The angel had then gone on to say something about going out to eat lunch together, to which Crowley heartily accepted after a few minutes of trying to remember where his sunglasses were.

Soon after hanging up the phone, which might as well have been a child’s plastic toy with how Crowley disinterestedly chucked it across the room, the demon swung his legs over the side of the seat with a huff. He got to his feet in a slow way that made it seem as if he were exerting some great, momentous effort to do so, while in all truth he really wasn’t at all bothered by this sudden change in his busy schedule for the day. Hell runs a tight operation, after all.

The fact that his schedule was actually as sparklingly spotless as a hospital’s shiny linoleum floor can be overlooked.

In any case, Crowley started to move about his pleasant little residence with a puttering air about him, behaving as if he actually had dozens and dozens of important things going on at once: watering the houseplants and tossing all manners of threats at them; poking at the sink which was empty save for one sudsy dish covered in last week’s takeaway; sweeping his dark hair back so that it was tastefully sleek and taking a good long look in the mirror subsequently, even peeling his lip back to check that nothing was wedged in-between his immaculate teeth.

He was almost out the door when the world he knew was unexpectedly swept out from under his feet— sort of like a terrible magic trick that involves a tablecloth and a whole mess of silverware and wineglasses, but infinitely worse.

It should be remembered that angels are very otherworldly. So otherworldly, in fact, with all their many eyes and wings and limbs and halos burning brighter than any solar flare and approximately the size of Jupiter, that they actually operate on a whole separate plane of thought that those born of the mortal coil cannot even begin to fathom.

Oh, they might make a grand show of acting human by landing in an undignified heap after tripping over the curb or stumbling drunkenly into moving traffic mumbling about green flying saucers, but the thing is that they are never quite as caught up in the human mindset as they feign to be. Even for fallen angels, it’s rather hard to claim to be a singularity when you’ve got all of Hell looming over your shoulder all day long. The only way in which this dynamic is different for the goody two-shoes angels is that this looming figure sometimes gives them a cheery pat on the back and occasionally a lollipop.

So, there Crowley was, in a place so dark that he couldn’t see much of anything. Which was quite a feat, to say the very least, as Hell usually has the lights on so dim that he would often find himself tripping all over the place in the dark.

He attempted to say something sensible along the lines of, “Why’s it so dark?”, but the words just couldn’t seem to get the right amount of oomph to get from his brain past his lips. This was around the time when a smiling face appeared from the murky black that continued to fluctuate around him, which wasn’t reassuring in the slightest. The being began to speak to Crowley and wave glowing balls of energy around, seeming quite pleased with itself and its captive audience.

The whole thing was pretty indecent, if you asked Crowley— especially since the pale white being speaking to him didn’t appear to be wearing any pants. Didn’t seem bloody right to babble on about something at someone when they couldn’t say anything back. He was so frustrated with his inability to speak that he settled for flipping the bird at his captor until the whole thing was over and done with.

That one-sided conversation really couldn’t have ended fast enough, although the new plane of existence Crowley found himself standing on wasn’t much of an improvement.

The decorators of this place must be terrible, Crowley reasoned, looking up, then down, and then all around. Or underpaid.

The stark white land around him, expanding towards a seamless horizon in all directions, was far too bright for his tastes. Brighter than that time Crowley fell asleep in the backroom of the angel’s bookshop with a absurd amount of alcohol in his system and the angel flipped the overhanging light on. That bright.

The existence of earthen ground beneath his feet did not even seem to be a reasonable probability anymore. When he glanced down to check, snakeskin shoes cast in startling reddish-brown relief in the painfully luminous area, there wasn’t a speck of soil to be had.

A frown curling his lips downwards, Crowley took a look around at his more immediate surroundings. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen them before, it was just that he had finally caved and decided to grace them with his full attention. Naturally.

As stated before, for reasons unknown, he was no longer in his cozy abode with its nice carpeting and embroidered dish towels. Crowley didn’t even do his dishes to begin with, but it was still gone and that alone really niggled at him.

Whoever this Omni is better have a reason behind all this, Crowley thought. Then, he thought a little more. What’s the point in having a lift if it doesn’t go anywhere?

It was a very reasonable question to ask, I’ll have you know. Crowley turned to regard the shiny glass platform that spindled with reflective light towards the presumed heavens; the tinted shades over his eyes glinted as his head craned back to better accommodate the contraption’s immense height.

Movement, slow and unsteady like a newborn deer trying to gain control of its knobby knees, flounders about in his peripheral vision. There were plenty of colors, all blurred and fuzzy as he peered over at them out of the corner of his eye. Texture and form were there, too, but he ignored that in favor of drawing a general conclusion.

This ragtag group is waiting in line for that deathtrap, Crowley mused, totally ignoring the fact that he had quite liked most elevation devices due to his express lack of desire to do much of anything. In short, laziness. Selective activity, he would insist to Aziraphale.

But, then again, Crowley wasn’t one for lines. Or waiting. Or trans-dimensional displacement. Yet, here he was.

The thing about Crowley, however, despite all of his innumerable shortcomings in infernalness and in his line of demonic work, was that he had conviction. And right then, with a displeased look on his face and his jacket all rumpled from being dragged into some strange dimension against his will, Crowley was feeling an emotion so focused and intent upon one unlucky subject that it should be nigh incomprehensible to the mortal mind. Kind of like cats to dog people.

Crowley, to say the very least, was pissed. Pissed at this blank dimension, at the crowded people waiting in line for the elevator that went absolutely nowhere, at his lack of embroidered dish towels, and, most importantly, he was utterly furious with himself.

His head mostly cooled off after a while of glaring at the elevator, mostly because it took him all of five minutes to recognize that the elevator was, in all honesty, no longer an elevator. This was just plain silly, because he had already committed to near-photographic memory the location and dimensions of a rather nice and accurate elevator, but there he was glaring balefully at some dumb fountain with elegantly curved stallions rearing up among leaping shafts of puttering water.

“Well, shit.” Crowley hissed. That wasn’t a right thing for an elevator to go and do, transmuting into a fountain like that. It just wasn’t right.

An unexpected peal of laughter rose up in his breast, like fizzy and fine golden-pale champagne. Crowley blinked once at the fountain, because he must have truly been off his rocker if that whole situation had been even remotely funny to him.

After a moment more of staring blandly at the fountain, as if willing it to go on and change shape one more time, Crowley seemed to realize this. His eyes fled to the wristwatch on his arm, then, and he judged that he had spent far too much time hanging around in one place. With a huff and a shrug of his shoulders, Crowley tucked his hands into the pockets of his jacket and strode off in a random direction. He even whistled lightly under his breath.

Might as well roll with the punches, the demon thought, still trying to discern if there was anything of substance fluttering about in the distance. There wasn’t, but he still made a nice effort to look for anything of interested while he walked.

The rest of his long trek across the Nexus was hardly eventful, and filled with a large amount of thinking. Thinking about what that Omni fellow had said, what the future might hold for him, and whether or not he could locate a nice local to slither into and imbibe heavy amounts of alcohol in.

Needless to say, Crowley’s priorities were most definitely in the right place for most of that journey. Still, it was all pretty boring and filled with repetitive motions and steps, and wouldn’t you like to get to something much more interesting? I bet you would. Let’s go with that route, shall we?

The swanky fellow in the snakeskin shoes and with the preposterously handsome countenance perceived something in the middle distance after a very long time of walking. He knew just how long he had been walking, too, for he was wearing an expensive golden-inlaid watch that he had checked about every sixth step across the entirety of the Nexus, but he didn’t much care to reiterate the time to himself when there was something much more interesting taking shape before him.

There were roughly three armored persons dressed up in whitish gear standing around some kind of swirling portal. Crowley wondered what they were even doing, standing around like that, all in military fashion. It wasn’t as if there was anything remotely dangerous skulking about the steadily illuminated expanse behind him. He would have seen something, at the very least.

One of their whitish helmets turned towards him. A crackle of radio static or something of the like resonated waveringly in the air, like the crinkling of dry leaves in a silent redwood forest. Crowley hunched his shoulders and sauntered over, casting a long look over his shoulder as if to check for whomever else they might be looking at.

He realized, with a small hiccup of unease in his throat, that he might be one of the somethings that they were watching out for. Whatever must be behind that portal has got to be good.

“Hey,” Crowley said in greeting, straightening up once he had gotten within ten paces of the trio of watchmen. He squinted at them through his dark sunglasses, a thought wriggling about at the back of his mind in some semblance of recognition. “Er.”

They started speaking among themselves, hard-glinting masks bobbing around as they regard him. Crowley felt plenty awkward, and so he dug his hands even further into his pockets while he waited for them to get over whatever verbal mountain was preventing the group from directly addressing him. He also gave up on maintaining perfect posture and once again ducked his head down in-between his shoulders.

Finally, one of the group approached him. He then proceeded to talk about something Crowley didn’t much care about.

“Blah blah blah,” he said. “Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.”

See? He just didn’t care.

Beyond that, however, the number one life hack in Hell is that if someone bothers you, you hack them to bits. End of story. Thankfully, even as the soldier guy in the shiny armor continued to pester him about something or other, codes and equipment and regulations, ugh, the only hacking Crowley did was blessedly psychological. He did make a rather big show of turning his face towards the sky, though, a heavy sigh on his lips, as if to seek the answer to some great question there.

Shockingly enough, an answer did manifest itself in Crowley’s mind, with such sudden and brilliant clarity that the demon could have gladly wept for joy if he were not so preoccupied with basking in its majesty. He could just— pop on down to Hell, slip through an infinitesimal crack in the grand scheme of things, and figure out what’s going on, all in the blink of an eye. It would just take a little focus, maybe some hocus-pocus, and he would be able to arrive right at the source of the problem after some tactful snooping.

It was then that Crowley did something which he hadn’t thought to do earlier, which was just drop right in-between a few metaphysical planes and land himself on the most infernal and fiery layer. Unfortunately, there was some kind of wonky interference that ricocheted all kinds of incorrect quantum mechanics back at him from all available directions in tremendous waves of algorithms and squiggly chalk figures, and it wasn’t long before Crowley simply passed out from the sudden change with nary a whimper.

The thing about angels and their whole operating on a separate plane of existence gig is that they are really, really good at mathematics. They read advanced textbooks of a university edition like the Sunday paper, hot off the press. Now demons, or more specifically fallen angels, are of angel stock, and most are devilishly good when it comes to maths. This same attribute does not extend to human souls that have been corrupted into demonic entities, predictably, so most algebra teachers are not, in fact, of Hellish make.

Still, it should come as no surprise to anyone that this sudden flip between basic earthly physics to some kind of baby-rattled pancake of complete and utter nonsense took quite a toll on Crowley.

This, as in right now and how this whole story began, is when Crowley opens his eyes. He is splayed out right on his back, and he notes with some panicked feelings leaping about in his gut that his shades are frazzled somewhere around his hairline rather than securely upon his face. After floundering about for a moment for them, he is quick to shove them back atop his noticeably arched nose. The second thing he notices from his prone position is that one of the armed guards from earlier is leaning over him.

“Oh. He’s not dead, see?” There is a noticeable hint of disappointment in the person’s voice, as if this might have really livened up their day. He backs off a few steps as Crowley starts to mumble some nearly unintelligible stream of numbers under his breath.

Crowley sits up and regrets it almost immediately. Painful pinpricks of pure pernicious pain cavort about in his skull, like a dozen little elves with pointy-toed shoes have decided to have a merry get-together up there. Well, jingle his bells, Crowley isn’t about to let that keep him down. Especially with all these strange and unfamiliar people hanging around.

The niggling thought from earlier returns to the forefront of his mind, and the demon sits up and squints suspiciously at the dodgy guard nearest to him, dark slitted pupils just visible over the arch of his sunglasses. They’re from some kind of film, he just knows it. Something about space and politicking in it. Now, if only he could remember the name. Star Trek?

Forehead crinkling dramatically, Crowley shakes his head to clear it of any further painful discomfort, which doesn’t exactly work out well and only serves to compound the throbbing in his skull. Whatever, he’ll figure out the name of the film later. Right now he’s got business to attend to.

“You lot wouldn’t happen to know where Hell’s gone, would you?” Crowley asks, getting totteringly to his feet and making a huge show of brushing imaginary dust off of his cuffs. When he ceases these demonstrations and finally glances up, there are three sets of eyes fixed firmly upon him.

Silence. Crowley begins to wonder if he’ll start having to do some kind of interpretive dance in a desperate bid to get his point across, because one of these three has to be the linchpin of this operation. At last, one of them speaks, although he couldn’t say which with the funny masks they are wearing.

“You mean the Underverse?”

A bit of a hiss creeps into his voice at this juncture, but he can’t quite bring himself to tone it down. “Listen, pal, whatever you want to call it; Hell, the Pit, Hades, I literally couldn’t care less. The fact of the matter is, this universe’s math is all wrong and I can’t seem to get a bead on it. Where’s it gone?”

“Uh, it’s where it’s always been. You want to go… there?”

Crowley sniffs, crossing his arms over his chest defensively. Finally, they’re getting somewhere! Magic him up some butternut squash and Cinderella is definitely going to go to the ball tonight. Or to Hell. Whichever pathway works itself out first.

“It’s not where it’s always been! Just… look. Point me in the right direction, and I’ll be out of your hair. Fair deal?”

The assorted group of Stormtroopers who have been gathered here today look appraisingly at the obviously stark raving mad man who has been gesticulating wildly about in the air, trying to describe horrors unimaginable with a tremendous waggling of his eyebrows and ridiculously complex hand motions. A few beats of silence pass until someone gets a bright idea.

“It’s that way,” one daring fella points in the polar opposite direction across the Nexus, where the gate to Camelot is located. He can hear his buddies stifling their snickers behind him, and this only spurs him on, albeit a tad too rambunctiously. “Has a few guys in fancy medieval garb roaming around the gate. Don’t listen to anything they say, it’s definitely Hell.”

Crowley nods once, satisfied with this new information. You would think a demon would be better at picking up on blatantly obvious lies. With an assured look on his face, he turns on his heel and strides off towards Camelot. Not that he’d know that.

Muffled snickers peter out behind him, gradually fading away into nothing as he once again crosses the empty white of the Nexus.

[Koren]

Koren laughed inside as his bladed body cut through the gaps between dimensions, flinging past the millions of bright stars, swirling, dusty galaxies, planets of all shapes, sizes and beautiful, shifting color schemes, clouds of rock-filled nebulae and many other extravagant celestial bodies as he flew along in his sword form, the fourteen crystals of power radiating from the golden-plated cross-guard and pommel as the magically infused, engraved steel blade cut through the minuscule, imperceptible gaps that linked every universe together.

Koren had gone through this journey a million times over, and yet it never ceased to amaze him, always seeing a billion different, unknown dimensions each time that each had brand new sights to see and explore. Even revisiting dimensions never felt like a chore, seeing the brilliant new colors splashed across the dark void and the newly created brightly-colored lights all around.

As Koren passed from one dimension to the next, the brightly-colored gemstones guiding him on his journey, he passed by the one dimension out of all he'd seen that just seemed to be just out of reach of his vast knowledge of millions of years of travelling through time in order to be in multiple dimensions that needed his skills at the same time. This dimension seemed to have a barrier around it that even at full strength, Koren still couldn't pierce its veil. The whole thing seemed very ominous, with hundreds of beings beings somehow being teleported through the barrier on a daily basis. Sometimes, the force grabbing these chosen beings would strip an entire planet, while other times it would skim through and pick one in billions, specifically choosing them out for seemingly no reason.

Whatever this thing was, it seemed to be creating a very strange collection of sorts, sometimes plucking war heroes or creatures with unique abilities, although sometimes, for no apparent reason other than to exercise the fact that it can, the... "thing" ...whatever it was, would take a handful of ordinary beings native to their planet, with no special abilities at all.

It all seemed very strange and just plain unusual. Koren was contemplating these thoughts when all of a sudden, he came to an abrupt halt, and darkness enveloped his metal, bladed body.

A white, pure white humanoid creature appeared in front of him, completely featureless except for a bright grin that spread across its face.

“My name is Omni. This is not the world you know. This is the Omniverse. You interest me, so I have made you part of it. The Omniverse is a place that reflects the wishes of those who are part of it. But! There are rules. I will explain them only once, so listen carefully.”

The being spoke with an authoritative tone, but it also seemed welcoming and inviting at the same time, and yet at times, Koren thought as though it had no tone at all, and simply was a voice.

The being extended a hand with an orb swirling and spinning with the colors of the rainbow, similar to a planet Koren had seen at some point, the bright colors constantly changing and mixing across the surface.

“This is Omnilium. It’s what ties the Omniverse together. Without it, you are nothing. With it, anything you desire can be yours. But you will need more than this. If you desire it enough, you will find it. You will find that using it comes naturally. Just think of what you desire most."

The prospect of being able to create anything he desired sounded interesting, although Koren had some doubts as to what he would do with it, being a sword and all.

“You will not be alone in the Omniverse. There are others. Of course, they, too desire Omnilium. Do not fear death. For as long as you interest me, you will be reborn."

Koren took a moment to process this.... He had just been pulled into a dimension by a strange being that tells him that there are others in this universe as well, and most likely he gave them the same treatment. Could this potentially be the blocked-off dimension?

“That’s all you need to know right now. You’ll figure out the rest soon enough. I’ll be watching … and waiting.”

The being faded away, leaving Koren to contemplate what had just happened. The darkness however, remained.

Koren clunked against what he could only assume to be the ground, and yet, he couldn't see any thing with his senses. The Bejeweled Blade checked himself for a moment and found that all of his gems were missing, as per usual when he entered a new universe in order to aid its inhabitants, and as per usual, he could do nothing more other than wait for someone to come by and pick up the hilt of his legendary, time-travelling blade.

645 non-quoted words.

[Ada Wong]

It was almost as if the universe was actively seeking out new and interestingly improved ways to screw with his life. Crowley personally found that hilarious; it just figured that the whole of creation would be against him, as much as he had tried to save it.

There he had been, minding his own business in the way that most reasonable people should, scuffing his shoes beside the Fountain of Infinity with nothing to do but amuse himself by watching the strange, whimsical manner in which it transitioned into something new roughly every half hour. Bafflingly, it most commonly took the form of a deserted hot dog stand. After searching it for the better part of thirty minutes, at which point it became a miniature swimming pool, Crowley had unearthed absolutely nothing of apparent universal significance besides a few crusty, cobwebbed bottles of mustard and ketchup.

He had grown alarmingly used to his blank surroundings by the time something actually happened.

While he was standing around with his hands in his pockets, a loud, metallic racket rang out behind him. The fallen angel turned with some wavering trepidation, and then a confused, utterly mystified look passed over his features at what he beheld there.

A sword with a fancifully gleaming golden hilt was laying upon the ground, having apparently fallen out of the boundlessly empty sky. The demon meandered gingerly towards it, all the while eyeing the sky for any other pointy-ended projectiles. After casting a quick, shrewd glance around, Crowley concluded that the sword was simply ripe for the taking so long as no one else was after it.

Stooping into a brief crouch, his dark-colored tie swaying just above his bent knees, the demon hefted the— surprisingly lightweight— sword into the air, and observed the light glittering along its steely edge. It was like a tiny shadow running through blades of grass just as the sun was setting, short-lived and slippery as a muddy riverbed.

“Alright,” Crowley said, turning the weapon this way and that to get a more critical look at it. His eyes gleamed behind the dim shades of his sunglasses. “This isn’t half bad.”

Why, I should hope not! A completely flippin’ random voice replied from somewhere in his head, activating some hindbrain instinct that urged Crowley to jerkily toss it as far away from himself as possible. It collided with the Nexus floor with a wobbly, reverberating clang, and then was as still as the glittering waters of the kiddie swimming pool beside him.

Crowley stared at the sword. It did not stare back, for swords, to all appearances, do not have eyes.

“Hheehhh.” He wheezed, looking up, down, and all around for the source of the voice. When one was not made readily apparent, he again looked to the sword. The air was still and silent. Out of the corner of his eye, Crowley watched as the swimming pool inexplicably morphed into a hot air balloon, the striped canvas thrumming as the fire feeding it flared to life.

One minute and a light shrug later, Crowley was once more holding the sword, although he wasn’t exactly happy about it. Talking weaponry was almost always a bad idea. Not that he had any experience with that kind of thing, it just seemed….. off.

[Koren]

Koren's spiritual personification smiled excitedly, only a few minutes into his ordeal of not being able to anything, since he could only use his senses of touch and hearing on something of very close vicinity without a gem that gave him the Enhanced Senses he most desperately needed, as many people -- well... he could only assume there were many people nearby as he had absolutely no way of sensing them -- went about busying themselves, a humanoid creature, drawn to him most likely my the large clanging noise he had made as Omni -- the white-faced being in control here -- rudely dropped him into this area as though he were nothing special or important. This humanoid creature clearly had an eye for quality, because no sooner had he stopped nearby, most likely to inspect Koren's craftsmanship, that he picked up the blade, implying he knew right away that it was of exceptional quality.

Koren became quite excited at the prospect of his first sword-bearer in this dimension, which seemed to be a human as its skin followed the same, usual pattern as humans did. Koren let himself be examined as he waited for an opportunity to introduce himself. But the first words that came out of the man's mouth made all of his happiness and excited emotions turn sour, like a wine gone past its expiry date.

"Alright," the... well Koren supposed it was man based on the sound of the voice as well as the feel of the skin identifying it was at the very least, part human... said. "This isn't half bad."

ISN'T HALF BAD?! Koren thought angrily, surprised at the response of, what would have been and potentially could still be, his first sword-bearer. I'm The legendary, time-travelling Bejeweled Blade, and he brushes me off as not half bad?! Why do I always have to put up with this....

"Why, I should hope not! Koren responded telepathically, and quite tartly at that. But before he could continue, he found himself slicing through the air and landing with a large, jumbled clatter on the ground.

Koren would preform a facepalm if he could, but alas, he was just a sword, and could not move on his own without the aid of magic of some form or another. Even in this dimension, which is filled of being and creatures from almost every other dimension out there, people are still startled by a telepathic sword? To me, that makes no sense, but it would seem to be the case in this situation.

Koren, after a few minutes of darkness and nothingness, once again found him in the hands of this idiotic creature, since it couldn't tell a "half bad," moderate quality sword from a legendary one of supreme craftsmanship. Despite the earlier mishap, Koren figured this ignorant, dull, and outright blasphemous creature would have to do as his first sword-bearer.

"Hello!" Koren said, putting his telepathic skills to good use. "I am Koren, the legendary Bejeweled Blade. What might your name be?"

[Ada Wong]

Downright blasphemous indeed.

"That's, uh... Quite the name you have there," Crowley replied, feeling rather unsure. Still he soldiered on through this peculiar conversation. "I'm Crowley, the...." he trailed off briefly, trying to find a fitting title to match up with something as puzzling as 'the Bejeweled Blade'.

Crowley the idiot? Crowley the fallen angel, turned demon? The Crowley unwittingly responsible for the Spanish Inquisition? Crowley the bloke who somehow lost the infant Antichrist? That Crowley?

No. No way. Not happening. As far as he knew, no one here knew him as that sucker. Which likely meant no more passive-aggressive, er, most overwhelmingly aggressive summons from Hell. Which was just fantastic, if you asked him.

The only problem was— well, his car, and then Aziraphale. What would the angel think, if he were to disappear and never return again? Unless there was another Crowley running around somewhere on that old blue marble, fresh as a daisy and causing all sorts of problems. In which case, and it really hurt him to even think it, he wouldn't be missed.

".... The serpent." There. That title worked. Fittingly ambiguous.

Feeling mildly disgruntled out in such an undefended, wide open space, Crowley shot a glance over his shoulder. Yes, right. Still alone with the talking sword. He really was having an off day.

"Well, erm. Sorry," he winced a tad melodramatically. "I tossed you like that. Koren, was it? Didn't expect to hear a voice bouncing around in my head is all. A new one, I mean."

The demon chuckled falteringly. He didn't have any other voices in his head, other than his own and occasionally one that sounded suspiciously like Aziraphale whenever he was tempted to do something less than pious. Which was, all the time.

[Koren]

"That's quite alright Crowley," Koren responded, still unsure as to whether this humanoid was a full human or not. He figured he'd find out soon enough. "Things like that have happened before on multiple occasions.... It can still get on my non-existent nerves though." Koren chuckled. "So, in case you haven't noticed, I don't quite match my title at the moment, seeing as I am not embedded with any of my gems. The indents in the gold plating along the cross-guard and the pommel of the hilt are slots for the 14 gems I must collect in order to reach my full power, which have unfortunately been scattered across this universe. The different gems correspond to the different elements of magic and their forms, such as fire, water, earth, wind, nature, and even more obscure things like technology. These gemstones are usually hidden in places associated with their attribute, such as the Ruby of Fire usually being present in an area of high volcanic activity. They may not sound like much, but each one grants me new powers and abilities based on the element it is designated to."

Koren paused for a minute or two to let Crowley soak up the overload of new information, then he continued. "Usually, wherever I enter a universe, the Quartz of Balance is nearby and is the first gem I collect. I will call out to it now."

Koren called out to the gem's telepathic wavelength, making the sword vibrate and resonate as it established a connection with the nearby gem, and then, just as quickly as it began, the sword ceased its shaking.

Just as the shaking of the blade finished, the ground of The Nexus rumbled furiously, and the fountain-turned-hot-air-balloon began to shift, the white material forming a small pyramid-like shape. The top third of this shape caved in on itself, creating a flat platform at the top, as a well as a small pedestal which carried the clear resonating gem, The Quartz of Balance. The beacon of light shining from the crystal illuminated the already blinding white landscape even further.

A final ca-chunk sounded, and stairs protruded from the four sides of the pyramid. Suddenly, the violent, sadistic rumbling stopped.

"Well, that was a bit dramatic...." Koren said, oblivious to everything but the rumbling, being a sword that couldn't perceive anything but darkness at the moment. "I bet you can see the gem now! Let us go forth and retrieve it!"

[Ada Wong]

Once the ground had ceased its rumbling and the world stood still once again, Crowley was startled to observe that the fountain had transformed once more.

“Aha,” the dark-suited demon said, a mixture of childish joy at having discovered a new toy and wonder mingling in his voice. “That’s a neat trick.”

Indeed it was. The glittering, fantastically iridescent pedestal that had arisen from the Nexus floor distinctly reminded him of the cool, killing frost shine of a star, when he had once fanned out his wings and soared beneath a tapestry of celestial bodies and the furling dust of creation. Its pyramidal shape sloped sharply upwards, almost prismatic and marbled with dashes of light and the faintest hint of shadow.

This certainly wasn’t one of the fancy, fire-starting parlor tricks that most of demonic ilk could pull off with a singularly complicated hand gesture. The talking sword didn’t even have hands. Incredible.

The flaps of his jacket swung nigh imperceptibly as Crowley approached the steps. After a moment of attempting to ascertain where the first step was without tripping and falling flat onto his face— the steps were terribly bright, after all, and even with his black-lacquered shades it was a bit difficult to tell— Crowley hopped up a grand total of four shallowly-dipped stairs.

A bemused smile tugged at his lips as he peered at the shiny little gem resting atop the pedestal. “So, these grant you new abilities? What does this one do?”

“Nothing,” the sword replied blithely, its telepathic voice practically swelling with pride. “Nothing, and everything! Isn’t that just grand?”

Crowley frowned. “Uh, alright. I suppose it is.”

His hand hovered for a hesitant moment just above the jewel. It shone brilliantly, smooth edges barely indiscernible with such a soft light wafting over it. As he plucked it up from where it was resting, he braced himself for any more earth quaking tremors or for some unhappy trap to be sprung.

Nothing happened. The demon breathed an obvious sigh of relief before he began to inspect the pommel of the sword with great interest. There were several different spaces where the jewel could fit, concave and ringed with winding streams of some precious metal. Across their telepathic link, even though the sword was largely silent, Crowley could feel an infectious, sweet note of excitement.

“I’ll just….” He fitted the jewel into one of the indentions that seemed to be the most correct.

Fwoosh! The blade, Koren, ignited with a potent halo of greenish-gold energies, a shimmering white afterglow harmlessly illuminating the demons surprised expression . After a span of several seconds, the flares dimmed down, a few shining specks of light trickling down to pitter ineffectually against the Nexus floor.

“Marvelous!” Koren declared, the Bejeweled Blade humming with unrestrained delight. Crowley wondered if this kind of thing always happened when Koren was around. “Only a few more left to collect, then!”

“Really?” Crowley asked, still stunned after the sudden display of colored lights but thrilled despite himself. He squinted a few times or twenty with an odd blink mixed in every now and again, dizzy spots of fuzzy white and rainbow sparks coloring his vision.

“Oh yes. Just thirteen left.”

Crowley balked at the blade in his hands. “Eh?”

“Thirteen, yes!” Honestly, how many times would the magnificent weapon have to repeat himself for this slow-witted humanoid creature?

Turning his face to the side and pointedly away from the blade, Crowley’s eyebrows raised a few inches above the rims of his sunglasses as he mouthed the word once more. Thirteen? And one was in an active volcano, apparently. Hoooo-boy. What an unlucky number.

Right as he was about to say something else, just to get the conversation flowing again, a rather large portal opened up right under his feet. With hardly an instant to spare for exclamations of surprise or terror, Crowley dropped like a distinctly person-shaped rock. A sharp, slender shape sliced through the air shortly behind him, the motley pair falling down, down, down....

[Koren]

Koren felt the familiar burst of new-found power flow through him, igniting his senses briefly before returning to the darkness that was to be quite common until he found a gem that gave him his Enhanced Senses. But now that he had the Quartz of Balance, Koren would be able to see through his bearer's eyes using Fusion. The Bejeweled Blade just needed to explain to Crowley what it entailed and have his consent to fuse with the sword.

"Marvelous!" Koren broadcast, letting Crowley feel the full extent of his feelings of excitement and happiness. "Only a few more to collect then!"

"Really?" Crowley questioned bluntly. Did this idiot creature even listen to my little speech? Koren thought. This man either needs to pick up the pace, or I'm inclined to find a new sword-bearer.

"Oh yes, just thirteen left!" Koren responded, clarifying his earlier statement for this dim-witted block-head.

"Eh?"

Clearly this man either had a telepathic hearing problem, or his brain didn't function properly. How many times do I have to repeat myself? I'll just have to whip him into shape at some point.

"Thirteen, yes!" Koren responded, trying hard not to let his anger, annoyance, and frustration boil over, he might need this idiotic character as an ally.

All of a sudden, the blade dropped from Crowley's hand and began falling.... Koren was unsure to exactly what had just transpired, seeing as his senses were completely offline, but he found himself falling into a black abyss, unsure where The Serpent went, and the familiar tingling feeling of passing through a portal....