Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

[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....