Day 4 Evening

[Ada Wong]

Pre-Challenge.

Things weren’t looking particularly good, no sir.

Everywhere he turned, his cheeks and chin scuffed up by the sharp, biting winds, the slightest shade appeared to slant and prowl along the edges of his vision, footfalls and the silent shuffling of cloth seeming to form chillingly deft contours from the dry crackling of dead leaves.

Crowley felt hunted. Trapped. No kind of patience, resilience, or naturally attuned instinct towards survival could quell the desperately fragile feeling crackling in his chest. It was almost as if he had sprained his heart, the poor muscle working overtime to go through all of the adrenaline-devouring motions of just staying alive.

He glanced towards Magus, a wide-eyed but haggard pull to his normally unruffled features. The forest canopy dappled over the pair with an almost paradisiac beauty, lovely green chasers of shadow smoothing across the gathered leaves and the snarling trunks of trees, occasional bashful pinpricks of heavenly sapphire peeking out amid their effervescent growth. They could just make out the whispering sounds of rain in the distance, brimming creeks and dripping moss contributing to their profound immutability.

At last the demon spoke, albeit with a hesitant, yellowish tang curdling upon his tongue, the words crawling with their underbellies low to the ground in a rushed approximation of speech. His shoulders hunched as he idly dipped the barrel of his gun towards the dirt.

“I don’t think we’re going to last much longer, you and I.”

It was true. Whether they deserved it or not, others would come. The Fiendlord wordlessly nodded, touching briefly at the terrible wound gouged so severely into his throat, the curl of his fingers coming away faintly rusted and wet.

They hadn’t bothered to talk about Kopaka. Not because of some bizarre cultural artifact that carries the uncalled-for pressures of needless aloofness among men, but because not saying anything somehow came close to all that really needed to be said. Grief was a language mutually understood between them. And, it also happened to be mutually understood that they should keep their traps shut.

Gritty bits of shattered bone ground to the forefront of his throat, sharp and agitating. The demon stretched his legs out in front of him on the dewy grass, staring forlornly at the mud-scratched tips of his shoes.

A silly little thought popped into his head with all the subtlety of a wine cork— he could just cut and run, right now. Take his piece and hike through the viciously hurtling winds, tangled jungle undergrowth, and stormy grey clouds to reach the marble sanctity of the temple. Maybe then he could hunker down until the others inevitably trampled all over him. Yeah, that would work.

This wasn’t a slice of life drama from The Golden Girls. Death was a very real possibility, as his numerous injuries told him, and the much more grievous wounds coloring Magus’ skin only affirmed that. Crowley just wasn’t sure if he was ready for that kind of commitment. And, to be honest, he almost kind of wanted to live.

Wait a minute. Crowley sat up fast, cringing and hissing sharply through his broken teeth when his eyesight careened roughly to the side along with about half of the goddamn island. The battered mage’s eyes swept over towards him, narrow and ardent, but when the demon didn’t immediately begin to flee in terror he resumed silently regarding the remnants of the scant meal they had managed to scrounge up.

Crowley had scaled at least four tall oaks before he had managed to find those birds’ nests. It wasn’t a meal of champions, to be sure, but when you have an overzealous firearm chirping along to Purple Rain at you, it certainly isn’t anything to complain about.

The demon stared at his hands, then at his knees and the bloody tears running through them. He… really wanted to live. Truly, this was quite the revelation. For a while there he had thought otherwise, believed that there wasn’t anything much worth living for when your own kind rejects you, but in these horrible, life-threatening circumstances, he had somehow come to terms with his own continued existence. Crowley wanted to live.

Conspiratorially, he looked sideways at Magus out of the corner of his eye. Well. He would like for that guy to live, too.

That resolved for the moment, the dynamic duo continued to sit in a peaceable, yet unspeakably uncertain quiet. The dismal clouds lurking in the upper echelons of the sky curled and wept, drizzly streams wailing down from above. It only took all of a heart-skipping minute for Crowley to notice that something was off.

“Hey, Magussss,” the demon said, his tongue coiling a little around the words. “Do you feel that?”

Stirring, the devilish mage squinted critically at him. “¿ʇɐɥʍ”

Crowley blinked, eyelids inching bit by bit, as if he wasn’t the type to blink very often. Then, he began to outright cackle, every loose snicker pittering out in some weird looping fashion that very nearly matched the kind of whooping his weapon of choice was prone to.

“¿ssssnƃɐɯ 'noʎ oʇ ƃuıʎɐssss ɯ,ı pɹoʍ ɐ puɐʇssssɹǝpun noʎ uɐɔ ¡ʎllɐǝɹ 'ǝlqıpǝɹɔuı ˙˙˙ʇssssnɾ 'ʇɐɥʇ oʇ uǝʇssssıl ¡pǝlqɯnɾ llɐ ǝɹɐ ssspɹoʍ ɹnoʎ”

This was just absolutely absurd. Something eerie was going on, no matter how hilarious Crowley found it. That Warlock was up to no good, and they had best prepare themselves for it. Just as he was about to share these preliminary inclinations to Magus, who would undoubtedly agree with him and at the same time understand very little of what was said, reality proceeded to go all topsy-turvy and dropkick him someplace entirely new.

In response to the challenge!

A meteor wailed down on them from above at the Warlock's behest, the grassy prairie only lightly disturbed by the brilliantly burning corona of gaseous flame suspended in the sky. Time swung like a pendulum, melodious and crooning.

As the pair of devils made their way towards the center of action, Crowley attempted to figuratively break the ice a little. Magus seemed genuinely surprised to see him, offered a frustratingly inscrutable look, and then had the gall to say he 'appreciated' Crowley.

"Yeah, well," Crowley spluttered at Magus' retreating back, clearly at a loss for words. He hastily cobbled together something legible enough to spit out. "I appreciate you, too! Ha!"

Nice one, Crawly, a voice that sounded suspiciously like the Duke Hastur purred. Tell him you'll have his back forever and always next, yeah? Lend 'im a 'get out of Hell free' card, why don't you?

Stewing quietly in his own broiling thoughts, Crowley's gaze fled skyward once more to regard the impending meteor. It burned and bled thick, crystalline globs of smoggy vapor in its wake, mercurial veins of silver and molten bronze shimmering all around it. This would be one hell of a reckoning.

"Where's the Antichrist when you need him?" Crowley hissed under his breath, smoothing down the tattered lapels of his jacket before taking off after Magus at a quick, jilting step.

They entered the Warlock's concentrated sphere of influence with little resistance. Crowley found that more than a tiny bit unsettling; they were expected, then, and the impending battle would undoubtedly be a terrible one. Still, even as they strode inside, the air closed around them and murmuring like thousands of sudsy bubbles in his ears, he did not shy away.

One of those few they had fought before— clad all in green and equipped with a fiery determination that cumulated and burst into a lithe, gemstone-colored vulpine, dashed ahead of them into the fray. At Magus' signal, Crowley hefted his gun and unloaded a whole host of wailing sirens upon the hovering Warlock, the winds and the flaming energy of the moment rippling around him.

He was just a hop, skip, and a jump from insanity. It was a good thing his leg was likely to be out of commission soon, then, if these random blasts of explosive energy were anything to go by. Crowley yelped as one went off near to him, tremors traveling through the earth and temporarily making him deaf to the battle spinning around with all the tumultuous fervor of a hailstorm.

Along the steadily thinning extent of his attention, worn threadbare by the crashing noise and crushing pressure, the serpent saw Magus go flying through the air, the chainsaw snarling loosely in his grip as he slammed into a rocky outcropping. A fearsome, whiskered cartoon mouse entered the fray in that same instant, a determined set to his shoulders as his allies spilled in behind him.

I'm fighting alongside Mickey bloody Mouse, Crowley thought, dazedly, straightening up just in time to fire off another wingdinging shot at the Warlock. No one back home will believe this.

That is, if he ever made it back home. Alive.