Go To Hell, For Heaven's Sake

[Ada Wong]

Continued from A Darkened Destiny.

“Did it hurt?”

The spoken words were faint. Whispery, like the secretive tang of bay leaves and juniper simmering on the surface of a stew.

Crowley ignored them. It was truthfully more out of necessity than anything; the pinewood forest around him was burning, scattered fires easily splitting the blackened trunks of trees into twain. A thin sheen of snow encrusted the ground, the ice crystals seeming almost like a halo of glass lazily curling around the red-gold flames. His lungs sucked in a breath he didn’t need, the taste of soot and crackling cinders coiling as smugly as a cat at the back of his throat.

He could not afford to be distracted.

“When you fell from heaven,” the voice continued. As if he did not know. “What was it like, heaven? Do you miss it?”

Crowley grimaced, running one shaking hand along the lines of his face. The white curve of his wings was bent over his head, feathers rustling on the smoke-clogged breeze, trembling down to where the socket and joint met. Jaws of metal tethered him to the earth, thwarting him in his every attempt to take flight. He tugged sharply at the bear paw-sized trap gripping his leg until the metallic teeth drew blood.

It didn’t hurt. Not terribly so, in any case. The bones of his leg were splintered apart by the force of the trap clamping down upon it, but that would all heal in due time, as most things had a tendency to do. It might take several centuries and swimming around in a wine-dark sea most of the time, but all aches healed sooner or later. No matter how close they drew to the heart.

“An angel banished to the Underverse. Strange, that.”

Finally, Crowley looked towards the pale poplar tree beside him, its skinny boughs almost skeletal in appearance. The long patches of shade cast from the pine trees standing all around thoroughly dwarfed it in size, an oddity which had lured him into the trap's clutches just as an unknowing calf goes to the slaughter.

The demon’s eyebrows furrowed, shoulders and spine stiffening into an almost painful bend with his crouched position. A cobra forming itself into a warning curve, ready to strike.

His voice broached beyond a whisper, though it was by a very thin margin. “What did you say?”

“It is strange that you would come here,” the tree replied, the mouth on its twiggy branch twisted and gnarled by the bark. The lips visibly cracked as they shifted, nearly translucent brown ichor oozing from them as it spoke. “Here, where the pink fingers of her ladyship dawn may not cast her touch. Oh, I would give anything to see her tender blush again! But instead I am here, condemned to my horrid woodenness for all eternity.”

There was a pause as the lips spread, a piebald tongue mottled all over with sores darting out to dab spittle across them. When the tree appealed to him once more, it groaned most pitifully, “Please, angel, fallen though you may be. The flames will devour me utterly before long. Tell me of heaven.”

Crowley stared at the tree. Tell this wretched sapling of heaven? No, absolutely not. The dread inferno, a banner of twisting sinews and heat, snarled and licked its chops in hunger. It crept nearer with each passing moment— wolfish in its design, predatory to a degree that blistered and steamed akin to a furnace, its ashen putrescence turning the sky black.

(Heaven had been cold. Perfect, like a sculpture shaped from marble by some old master. But Crowley had longed for warmth. Just as a reptile basks in the fierce glare of the sun, he had sought out heat— grasping, slithering and shivering into the hungriest of furnaces. And oh, how he had burned—)

He had no time to spare for lighthearted storytelling, thank you very much.

Before Crowley could answer, another voice, dry like the creaking of an old wooden step, broke in, “Now, now, Ophelia dearest! Must you be so crass? The poor beast has his leg caught in a trap. If he does not make haste and escape, the nearest earl’s scouts will assuredly find him and tear at his softest parts. Such a craven, spineless lot they are. Leave him be!”

Turning to look, Crowley beheld a pine as scruffy and unkempt as a used toothbrush. Unlike the poplar, its limbs were heavily laden with strong-smelling bristles, green and enriched by a crisp, heady scent that made the sickly sweet smoke almost bearable. It was what Crowley imagined a woodsman might smell like after cutting down several scrawny tree-limbs in one fell swoop, stubble frosted over with beads of snow and sweat. Parfum de Lumberjack – Midwinter Edition.

“Ah! I had forgotten,” the pale poplar, Ophelia, demurred.

“You forget many things, Ophelia.” The pine replied with a hum, a sage sound that sent a tremor through its fragrant needles. The demon, feeling bolstered by someone being on his side for once in a millennia, ventured to interrupt this inane conversation.

“I’d rather not be burnt to a crisp or have any of my soft parts torn apart, thank you.” Crowley said, speaking truthfully. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind— how might I free myself from this blessed trap?”

But the pine was not to be moved. “Humph! You would think an angel would harken back to those old laws of spirits. You are an insolent one, not so much like the noble Tyrael. Why, when that warrior of Heaven glided through our field of wretched sticks and came to be as haplessly ensnared as you are at this moment, he was certain to never offer a token in return for our council. The likeness of a pigeon is cast upon your words— you would fit in better amongst the dimwitted dead, methinks. Best to let the flames lick the flesh from your bones.”

“Goneril—” Ophelia began, sounding unsure.

“Shush!” said Goneril, the pine tree seeming to puff up in a self-aggrandizing way.

At this Crowley frowned, fingers twitching around the red-hot wound on his leg. Pain and discomfort buzzed about like gadflies in his brain, and it was with a shrill, rising sense of alarm that he regarded the rust speckling his hands, eyes narrowed until only the thinnest of golden-yellow slants remained visible.

A hard, wild look overcame him then, adder’s teeth bared as he gritted out his next few words. “But you just said—“

“Never mind what I said!” The pine tree wheezed, a branch swishing about in what the demon assumed was irritation, and Crowley could just make out beady little eyes and a swollen, moss-dusted nose fused almost imperceptibly into its trunk. Those beady, hateful eyes glared at him with all their might. “The laws of old must be upheld. Now, angel, devil, whatever you are; why don’t you better your own pathetic self before seeking to help others, hm?”

Crowley’s expression spoke volumes— volumes that were thick, old as sin, and showed quite some fading and rubbing along their spines, but were solid even so. And printed over and over again between their pages were these three words: What the fuck?

“What?” Crowley choked out, so appalled that he simply couldn’t form any further words.

“Not the brightest, is he?” Goneril remarked to Ophelia, sotto voce.

“I don’t know. He’s trying his best, I suppose. You can’t rush these things.”

“Only you would think that. He’s certainly no Morningstar. Not very bright. Small wonder that they booted him outside of the pearly gates, hum-hmm.”

“I like him,” Ophelia said. (“Can’t imagine why.” the pine tree mumbled. Crowley wondered at the fact that he would never again grow to like the smell of pine needles.) “Let’s help him, I say. I don’t care if he gives us anything or not— what use do we have for trinkets? A fool’s comfort they are. I say— I say, let’s help the poor thing. For pity’s sake.”

“For pity’s sake. The worst reason in all the world! Can’t you decide on another?”

“Here, now,” said the poplar, ignoring the pine’s interruption. “Tear at my roots and branches, angel; let my dark blood flow freely and soak the ground and bark. Once you have spoken my funerary rites, the blood will cause the trap’s metal to soften into butter.”

“Fat lot of good instructing him will do. Stubborn as a blind cow, that one— you can see it in his eyes. Or, er, you could, if he weren’t wearing those dark eyeglasses.”

Presently Crowley began to pick and peel at the poplar’s bark, the wooden bowels of the tree spirit within his reach letting out a deep stomach-rumbling groan as he worked. The roots were hopelessly entangled, thick as sausages, and burst like sheep’s intestines, black liquid weeping out whenever his fingers dug in and punctured. The stench produced was vile, redolent of rotting corpse fluids and aged cheeses; Crowley very nearly retched, observing with a reluctant scientist’s keenness as the blood stained the soil.

“That’s it. Good. Now paint it over your shackles— do not make incomplete smears, angel. Keep at it!”

So, Crowley did.

When at last it seemed the poplar had no more black ichor left to give, its shrunken husk set all aquiver by every brush of the wind, Crowley glanced carefully up into its bizarre, twisted face. Every last drop speckled his metal confines, burbling and sizzling in the quiet. His expression betrayed nothing of his thoughts, save for the slight worried pinch between his eyebrows.

The poplar sighed, a weary thing. “I was mortal once, dearest angel. You must understand this. My life was filled with hardships that I felt I simply could not bear, and yet my wooden spirit persists here still, in this fiery grave. All I long for is heaven’s glow, or even just a simple word or two about it, to imagine. Please, O shining one, tell me of heaven.”

It wasn’t just that he looked a teensy bit out of his element. Oh no, that would have been far too simple. Crowley seemed supremely uncomfortable with existing at that exact moment, his face taking on a nasty twist that made it seem as if he were attempting to swallow a healthful lump of pepper and sawdust. More uncomfortable than if he were standing in the sun shadow of a stained-glass portrayal of Jesus H. Christ.

“I don’t know if I’ll be any good at this,” the demon admitted, reasoning that this must be what people felt like when they entered a dreary-shaded confessional box. Not that he would’ve known anything about that.

“Try,” urged Ophelia. “Please.”

“’Please,’”  Goneril sang contemptuously.

Right, then. Crowley smoothed down his pant legs, fumbling with the fabric as he tried to compose his thoughts. Then, he spoke. Quietly, at first, and then with a greater sense of urgency.

“A geometric shape ringing about your head doesn’t make you holy,” he began. “Everyone believes you had to have done something wrong to fall, but that just isn’t true. It’s simple, really. Consider a worm, will you? One of those quiet, wriggly, cold things in the ground. What’s their issue? Raindrops call them up to the surface to breathe, ineffably— it was rather like that, you see. A bunch of angels, hanging around in empty space, quiet as anything, ‘til some bloke comes out and says, ‘What are we all standing around for? Aren’t we a grand bunch, watching the mud monkeys run about from our cosmic perch? I say we get out there and cause a ruckus, too wondrous are we in being and shape to be content. Say, Crawly— get up there and stir up a mite of trouble, will you?’ And that was how it went. Worms to raindrops.”

When he had finished speaking, the demon cringed. That metaphor had admittedly eluded him just a small amount. Well— more like it had spent the past sixteen years occupying space in his flat, eating his food and watching his television and running up the internet bill, before abruptly deciding it was fit to survive on its own and seeking emancipation. That kind of thing.

“That didn’t make a lick of sense,” griped the pine. Crowley had to agree.

“Heaven, though. It was all-right. It wasn’t all harps and halos, if you really want to know. I don’t miss it,” he lied.

“Oh,” said Ophelia, barely an exhale, and Crowley discerned a note of disappointment. Without really knowing why he did it, the man-shaped demon hastened to elaborate. Perhaps it was pride at giving up something everyone professed to be so wonderful. Perhaps it was something entirely different. Whatever it was, he became despicably set on making heaven out to be as magnificent as the scripture professed.

“The place was beautiful. Think of everything you’ve ever tasted and liked, every song you wanted to hear played ten times over. Or— or a balloon slipping out of someone’s hand, drifting up into a sea of white cotton. That’s your soul, see? It’s, uh, maybe red?— scarlet skin reflecting the sorrow of something lost, a lone red blot ascending into the heavens, contemplating a sky blue future up There. And your soul is that balloon. Lovely. You’ll love it.”

“Oh,” Ophelia said again, now a gentle sigh. The demon grimaced in kind.

“I’m no good at these sorts of— err, poetic, — things. Lived over a thousand years, not a single week spent at university,” he blurted, suddenly defensive.

“You don’t say!” said Goneril.

“No, no. It was quite good. I thank you, angel. You have done me a great service,” said the poplar. The demon watched those sore-riddled lips curve upwards into a feeble facsimile of a smile. “My end will be a happy one.”

Feeling mighty awkward, Crowley scratched at the side of his nose and averted his sunglass-clad eyes. The poplar continued to speak, voice waning with its steady decline into oblivion.

“I can hear their dreadful wingbeats already, yea— they are gifted with feathers that slice at the air like steel knives. Blood draws them near. You must take flight at once, bright one, when my magic has freed you.”

A glimmer of light fluttered at the edge of Crowley’s periphery vision, causing him to give a start; it was far nearer to him than the steady roar of the forest fire, drawing his attention like a fly to sap. As he watched in confusion, the blood on the trap shimmered and sparked in flecks, tiny glimmers of orange crackling like the dying embers of a campfire.

Flouncing upwards and swirling like the silver-threaded ends of gossamer ladies’ skirts, fireflies of light took to the air, conflagrating into a train of small little droplets of brilliantine fire crawling along his limbs, surrounding the trap in a radiant band and causing him to squirm. Dancing and glowing brightly one final time, they vanished into the ether, leaving behind a very muddled demon.

“I feel violated,” he muttered under his breath.

Glancing down, he discovered that the poplar had not lied to him. The trap easily gave way with the lightest of tugs, a gummy string of liquefied metal tracing the movements of his leg in wet strings. His foot slid somewhat in the goopy mess as he got to his feet with difficulty, hurriedly straightening the wrinkles in his jacket while trying not to fall over and face plant in the dirt.

He glanced over at what remained of the poplar. It was paler than it had been before, nearly glowing against the sky painted all over with the echoes of flames and gusting smoke, and the face fixed onto the branch was much more visible than it was before. The bicep-shaped branches, the curved calves gently sloping out from the trunk— all of it completely drained and darkened by the deluge of sap. The eyes were empty, sallow thumbprints pressed into the bark, while the mouth was twisted part of the way open, gaping in a perversely euphoric rictus, making it crystal clear that the tree’s soul had slithered out from between its lips only seconds ago.

Shaking off a case of the willies, the demon noticed that his leg let out a most alarming crunching sound whenever he tried to shift his weight onto it. Still, he was free— free! – and could now caper about all he wanted, so that was good enough for Crowley. Small grinding sounds, like shards of glass across gravel, accompanied his movements as he made to stride off on his merry way.

“Hey!”

Of course, it was too good to be true. Crowley pivoted on his heel, wincing as his leg shuddered under him. “Yes?”

“Just where do you think you are going? You won’t get far without my guidance— I can bid you the swiftest route to the city whose name is Dis, for a price!” If he didn’t know any better, Crowley could almost say that the belligerent pine sounded…. worried?

“Mmm,” Crowley hummed, glancing exaggeratedly at his fingernails. A smattering of rust ringed about his cuticles; he would have to see about washing up later. Looking up, he bared his teeth in a wolfish grin at the pine. “Pass.”

Goneril gave off a displeased squawk, babbling almost incoherently as the demon once again moved to leave it to its fiery fate. “The scouts shall get you! Just you wait! Abominable creatures, vile in both appearance and behavior. Every day when the sky grows dark, or when their own twisted hearts so advise them, they land upon my branches and strip them of the bark so that the sap flows and I sting with every drop shed. They will tear out your eyeballs, feast on your tongue—“

Putting all that behind him, Crowley squinted against the hot cinnamon wind, the blackened sighs of flame and bark commingling drowning out the pine tree’s frantic pleas (interspersed with colorful threats, of course). There was snow underfoot on that blistering plain, giving off a dazzling glow under the fire’s lavishing breath. Stones dark as the lyrics of an Evanescence song crackled under his feet as they shifted; an avalanche of smoke shrouded everything in a confused muddle.

It looked a bit hellish, he supposed. A good deal different from his idea of Hell, though.

“Freeing Ophelia has no doubt sealed your fate,” droned the pine at some distant, whiny corner of Crowley’s selective hearing. “The land itself will rise—“

A tremor simmered under his feet, barely there. Minor shocks sent a pebble scuttling like a tiny crab from the ocean’s crushing waves. The demon, too caught up in his thoughts to pay this any mind whatsoever, rubbed his chin and let his forked tongue taste the air.

First it swept left, the brownish noodle-y appendage turning about in a precisely snake-like way. Finding nothing of import there, his tongue twisted over to the right, quavering a tad when a burst of fiery hot ash alighted upon it.

By the taste of things, that seemed to be where the forest fire had originated. Crowley decided then and there not to go that way.

The ground shook again, but with more feeling than before.

“You will regret ever setting foot here, prime!” the pine wailed.

The demon’s tongue slipped back into his mouth as he watched a measly pebble bounce off from the toe of his shoe.  

“Hm,” Crowley hummed.

His eyes lifted when an alarmingly loud crack! shattered the calm. There appeared to be a very, very rapidly-widening fissure forming beside him, great heaping handfuls of dirt tumbling into it at a time. A small tongue of fire leapt out in a flare that nearly singed his right wing, setting a patch of the crisp white feathers to smoking.

“Ah,” he said.

The red earth beneath the pine tree started to bulge upward— truly, the entire plain seemed intent on rising up, what with the way it was quaking— startling Crowley into clinging onto the pine for dear life. It was at this point in time that he thought it prudent to listen to what the old tree was screaming about.

“You fool,” the pine hissed, even as its roots began to unfurl from the gravity-loosened soil like a jellyfish’s coils. “Any true angel should know that the only sentiment to hold towards a sinner is disdain. You don’t even realize what you’ve done!”

“What I have done? I haven’t done anything!” Crowley retorted, his fingers clawing at the bark as the ground continued to churn and fold.  A deluge of pebbles and dust rained down on his head from above.

Crowley squeezed his eyes shut. A sensation like rising up to the highest floor of a building in an elevator choked him with its suddenness, sending his stomach into a nauseous flip. It was when his body had nearly been completely wrapped around the tree that he even dared to open his eyes, cringing at the sight he beheld there.

Empty space occupied by nothing but reddish vapors drifted below him. His shoes gleamed as he blinked down at them, dangling perhaps twenty three meters off from the ground.

Beneath his legs, he could see now, were much, much larger legs. They belonged to the walking mountain he and the pine were clinging desperately to— a metal behemoth covered in dirt, with ancient guns and strange doors grafted into its iron sides. Its heavy, stomping feet sent shudders through the ground, the flames lapping without effect at its armored skin.

“The earl’s magicks are at work!” Goneril screeched. The soil of the beast’s belly that it was entrenched in juddered and made another stomach-wrenching turn, antique cylinders spewing smoke and nearly sending Crowley flying with the force of it.

“I didn’t ask for this!” the fallen angel yelped, his grip on the rough bark slipping as his agitation grew. “I didn’t ask for this at all! This is the furthest thing from what I would ever even dream of asking for, don’t you see?!”

The burning expanse of hide nearest to him shuddered, icicles glinting like tinsel as they broke off from the rocky ledge and plummeted down towards the fiery abyss below. The creature stomped forward like a beast possessed, unconcerned by the shouts of its passengers.

One of the pine’s branches swung out and struck him across the face, leaving the demon spluttering.

“Pull yourself together, idiot!” the sentient plant cried.

“No!” Crowley shrieked back, hugging the trunk more determinedly.

Quickly then came a winged beast dusted over with shade, darker than a meadow veiled beneath midsummer heat. The babble of embers was drowned by its shadow, gutted by its blade-claws which pierced the glade, oftentimes devoured its meat. Drips wept from the creature’s lone red eye, sizzling as flesh does when burnt to gristle. It was circular and dotted in the center, a fiery bulls-eye, plunging with tidal rage and crushing force toward the unfortunate fallen angel.

The masses of black quills dotting its hide converged around it in a miasma of gloom, then whisked away as fall leaves do when a cool wind blows, crawling across the frost-dusted behemoth’s flank with the utmost care. Swarming fingers like spider’s legs trailed behind the unknowing demon, who was still rather preoccupied with trying not to fall to his doom.

Feelers, distinct and skeletal in their form, skittered over his limbs with the lightest of touches, disturbing scarcely a feather on the wings of his back.

"Foolish flesh-house," they jeered at the back of his skull, whisper-soft.

Spindly claws pricked at his skin. "Such a tasty thing!"

A thousand moonshadow eyes leered, impatient but kept in check by their lord. "Shall we gobble it up?"

The hovering monstrosity hummed, the mantle of sentient feathers returning to ring about its long, giraffe-like throat, upon which a circular head was largely taken up with its single fiendish eye. It was vaguely man-shaped, with dark grey skin and six limbs that hung loosely in the air, the swollen pudge of its stomach a sharp contrast from the emaciation of its appendages and upper rib-cage. All six of its limbs were tipped with three sickle-sharp claws, wickedly curved, and for a moment they hung in puppet-like stasis.

But only for a moment.

“I have no idea of what’s going on, but it feels like some horrible thing is skittering on my back,” Crowley babbled to the pine, his yellow eyes bright and feverish. “Please tell me there’s nothing there.”

“Fine,” said Goneril, with a bit more sass than Crowley would’ve liked. “There’s nothing there.”

Before the demon could even begin to make heads or tails of what was happening to him, a huge clawed foot had wrapped around his middle and wrenched him into the air. Its iron-taloned grip held him fast, his ribs cracking like the piano’s ivories in a concerto; sharp nips of pain snapped at his lungs, all needles and pins and glistening red.

Through his pain-blurred vision, the demon watched as the pine tree was wrenched from the soil, screeching crow-coughs spurred on by the gales that flogged at its needles. Then, woosh! The cantankerous tree was gone, having tumbled too far into the abyssal zone for it to be perceived any longer. The enormous beast continued to lumber along on its four legs, oblivious to the loss of its two hitchhikers.

Higher and higher they ascended into the starless sky, Crowley and his predatory captor, howling winds tearing at the demon’s eyes and face, splinters embedded under his fingernails from where he had frantically grasped for the pine.

Naturally, Crowley flipped the fuck out.

The demon’s body jerked like a serpent that has just realized it’s been caught in the talons of an eagle, whip-like and visceral. Despite the hideous ringing in his ears and the first bitter dredges of panic skittering along his spine, he was able to contort into a frankly impossible position and dig his teeth into the creature’s clawed foot.

It tasted of leather and ash, sandpaper scraping across the fork of his tongue; the beast screamed in agony, its massive orange glare spotlighting over him as its fiendishly glowing eyeball roiled about in its skull, and then suddenly he was dropping like a stone, spinning, the whole world whizzing past in a flushed haze of wind and shrieks of lamentation as his wings beat uselessly against the air.

Well, thought Crowley, lips peeled back over his teeth in anticipation of hitting the ground. That wasn’t the best idea.

A rippling banner of… something whistled past, the folds of his clothes billowing outward in a parachute curl. Loose and towering structures hurtled by. A very bad idea, really.

His grimace became more thoughtful. The worst.

He had scarcely finished this thought when he splashed into a drum full of nectar, the liquid inside like drops of sizzling oil swallowing him up, dark and thick and foul, boiling him inside like a greased eel.

It was a basin, immense and barrel-shaped. It was loaded onto the back of an ancient, rocking-horse style buggy, and its contents sloshed spiritedly about with every bump the cart’s wheels struck. Clay pots burnished with honey-glaze and smoothed over by rocks or shells were cluttered in beside it, sparkling against the dark umber skyline.

The cart’s driver, to all appearances a flesh-colored sack stuffed with potatoes, sunk further down into its wooden seat without much aplomb, thick calves waggling slightly. The great number of lumpy human faces disseminated across its form did not stir in the slightest as a raucous splashing arose from its cargo, occasionally sprinkled with shouts of ‘Help!’ and ‘Is this blood?!’.

At last noticing a spray of reddish fluid and the spluttered cries, one head twisted and writhed in a horrid stretch of skin to face its neighbor. A chorus of strained moans came from the other noses, eyes and mouths layered into its skin, all of them stretched far too thin to speak by this movement, the bloodied whites of their eyes glistening and weeping in the gloom.

“Did you hear that, Lefty?” it asked.

“No,” the other face, Lefty, said. “I don’t have ears on our rear end, I don’t think.”

“Oh. Well, something’s making an awful lot of a din back there, shrieking and sniveling and what have you. D’you think we ought to stop for a bit and see what it is? Might be something good.”

Last time it had been something good. They’d fed off of that poor sucker for weeks, and he’d made a pretty new face for the abomination’s bumpy rear— well-groomed eyebrows, aquiline features, the whole shebang. They’d also been able to corpse-rob some Greek wine with a sharp-tasting pine smack to it.

Righty loved him some Grecian goodies.

“Not really. I’d rather we made it on time for once,” explained Lefty. “This whole gig’s a right big deal, mind you; the beasties need their lunch. It wouldn’t be right to get rid of any extra nutrition that often, neither.”

“I heard it, too,” remarked a third face, located directly above them so that the three heads together formed some kind of unholy, Cerberus-like trinity. “It screams mighty prettily.”

“Like a bird!” agreed Righty, far too cheerfully for someone talking about potential murder.

Lefty glared to the best of its ability between the two of them. “No. We will not stop this cart, not for the end of the world or otherwise. Think’ve the nutrition, boys.”

“I s’pose you’re right,” Righty glumly said, snaking round to face the front again. They traveled in relative silence then, the only sounds being the hysterical splashing from the cart’s backside and the squealing of the wheels.

A hand clawed against the basin’s rim with a spatter, the skin stained a grotesque and sticky red. A head soon followed and, accompanied by a set of dripping shoulders, Crowley spluttered as he rested his chin atop the ledge. His sunglasses were miraculously still covering his eyes, the hair atop his head slicked down across his scalp, making him seem like a drowned rat. The soles of his shoes brushed the bottom of the vessel and held firm, allowing for him to linger in place.

It was just blood, and while that was twelve varieties of disgusting, he probably wasn’t going to die.

Strange bits and bobs of mysterious and squishy origin brushed up against his submerged form, a subtly metallic and salty stench to it. What looked like the blown-apart skull of a pig bobbed to the surface and brushed against his chest with its snout, staring up at the demon with its deadened eyes before he hurriedly slapped it away with a disgruntled squawk.

They were on a bridge, that much was clear. Below the bridge steamed a river of hot, partly molten rock, somehow sustained by a few meager metal chains and wooden planks despite the heat. Giving a light sniff, Crowley squinted at the back of the cart’s driver, wondering if he could convince the gruesome fellow to stop and let him clamber out.

“I still think it wouldn’t hurt to take a nibble or two,” he heard it mumbling to itself, even as a chorus of whines seeped out from the porous-like orifices covering every spare flap of skin on its body. All of the faces of its backside drooled and wept up at him, sweat and other gross fluids dripping from their faces. Crowley tried not to stare too openly.

He started when a different voice replied, seemingly from the same general vicinity. “I said no! No nibbling, capiche?!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Diverting his attention from the mumblings of his chauffeur, the fallen angel looked towards wherever they were headed. The bridge, while a terribly twisty thing that seemed about ready to dump them into the fiery moat below at the drop of a hat, looped towards what appeared to be a great walled city.

From what little Crowley could see, a shadow towered above the streets of this polis, a coliseum-shaped structure as lofty as the Tower of Babel itself, half-finished still, crumbling in its efforts to become one with the dome of the arterial red sky above.

At the base of this theater was an altar set alight with golden flame, the tall shrine made from the thighbones of a beast so large that the Prime Evil was said to have grappled fiercely with it himself before at last subduing it. In the shadow of one dense bone stood a broad-shouldered demon equipped with a large double-edged axe, a cool slice of steel against the gloom. A hundred mouths slavered as each fiend present jostled one another for a spot at the front of the horde, the glow of the torches lending to the glint of evil delight slanting in their rat-like eyes.

A screech like a pig being slaughtered pealed out as two bodies were half-dragged towards the blaze, wriggling against the grip of the attendants holding their arms. They were a man and a woman, both human, their forms rubbed down with gleaming oils and painted with rich lapis lazuli and a warm cinnamon glimmer, clothed in naught but slings of velvet-soft cloth laced about their hips.

Priests cloaked in thick smoke approached with wooden bowls full of clear, shining water and placed them at the victim’s feet, meant to capture the blood. A short invocation was spoken— a delightful sound to the waiting mob’s ears. A lock of hair was then sliced from the victims’ scalps, first the ewe and then the ram, before being burned in offering— a shine like that of fallow gold lapping at one magician’s fingertips as it was set alight.

In one great swing the blade of the axe shone, slicing cleanly through the neck tendons of the first sacrificial lamb. Dark arterial blood flowed freely, the disjointed limbs seized by the attendants and turned so that the remaining stump bled into the bowl, turning the crystalline water nearly black. A golden wine cup was filled to overflowing with the ruby-colored liquid and tipped upon the lips of the other victim before they, too, were dispatched with equal ceremony.

Savories for tasting were passed all around, four-tined forks glistening with heat rending flesh from bone. Menflesh was burned on the spits, the dribbling fat casting a visceral and sizzling glare over the coals, screeching steam billowing outward to warm the pageantry roiling around it in a sea of grasping claws and gnashing teeth. The raw strips of flesh were strung out like the strings of a fiddle, a twang of deep echoing dread simmering down to the last piece of burnt gristle ‘til naught but sparkling white bone remained.

Arriving at the edge of this crowd, a solitary imp carefully picked her way through it, but not before knocking shoulders with a random spectator. Turning, the lower half of their chin slathered with bright carmine like a beast at kill, they held a chine of glistening manflesh up for her inspection.

“A nice cut, eh?” The other demon asked, grinning gaily down at her.

The imp’s eyes hungrily shifted to the dribbling strip of meat in his claws, swiveling down and away after a single distant drumbeat had tolled, her manner all nonchalance and feigned distraction.

It was a nice cut, and she would very much like to take it. Sadly, Threshya was out for blood, and she had to move quickly if she hoped to evade his ire.

Turning in a sweep of her cloak, the scrawny imp ducked into the thick of the crowd, blood-drunk sighs and spatters of finger-lickin’ good red raining down upon her head as she squeezed through. Her ordinarily blue wrap looked like strawberry rhubarb gorge when she finally emerged from the crowd, the fuzz on the tips of her ears and cheeks spiking up from the humidity generated by over a dozen bodies. Unperturbed, she continued on, footsteps quick and light across the cobbles as she cut a sharp left down one of the polis’s numerous alleys, interconnected bridges swaying overhead and pleasure seekers crammed into every doorway.

The stale air coursed invigoratingly through her bluish fur as she loped down the narrow passage. Time was oh-so-malleable beneath the vaulted walls of the city, mere seconds seeming to stretch on for hours while surrounded by the stench of ammonia and leaking wounds. It was only in the heart of the amphitheater that time seemed to run its normal course, the fire of fight fending off the bindings of suffering and monotony.

Over the sound of her claws clicking against the stones and the distant calls of revelers, she heard a stone trickle with a funky click-clack-plonk across the ground ahead of her. Ducking into the shadows, the imp’s cheek fluffed against the slimy brick as she instinctively veered away from where a row of torch sconces was melded into the wall. An archway that led into a stairwell stood just before her, right within her grasp, when she paused.

She heard the sound of feet— many of them— plodding heavily down the stone steps. Footfalls reverberated against the walls like thunder, and the imp watched with mounting unease as numerous shadows were cast across the curved wall.

Fear surged up the imp’s spine like an injection of ice water when she heard a familiar voice barking out orders in demon-speech. Two companions trailed behind a tall, obsidian-skinned demon as he stalked down the stairs with leonine ferocity, bright fuchsia frills raised in an effervescent slice about his neck, belying his flesh-merchant status.

“Tha jellybrains, silently beest! Thum wiserly windowscrapers, comen thuswise the wench shall! (Be silent, you fools. If my sources are correct, she will be passing through before long.)” snarled Threshya, his tail thrashing about so that the spiny barb on its end glinted in the dim light.

Something else glinted in the shadows as well, from beneath the folds of Threshya’s fancy fuchsia garb. The smaller imp leaned close, small rodent-like nose twitching as her bright orange eyes gleamed.

Metal. Sweet-tasting on the air— bloodied, and freshly. Perhaps corpse-robbed?

Her movements were cloaked by the noise and clamor, the pulse of the snare drum rattling her teeth until they chattered. The bustle within the crowded alley-space hid the sway of her cloak as she moved nearer to the trio, footsteps measured and careful as anything.

The shadow of her fingers dipped inside of Threshya’s coin purse and then grew motionless as a viper. Little by little, skillfully, the smooth metal slipped into her palm and relief warmed her chest. The imp’s breath stalled in her throat until she had slunk far enough away to inspect her prize.

Sunbright gold flashed under the starless sky. She grinned down at the two golden flakes nestled in the palm of her hand, fangs too wide for her grill peaking over her bottom lip.

There was something about gold that was different than other precious metals, and she found that she straight up favored it when compared to other stolen treasures. She smirked, pinching a piece between her thumb and forefinger. It was warm against her fingers, almost slippery, shifting with dozens of hypnotic yellow gleams slanting across its surface. Like a dance.

Threshya turned, frowning and digging around in his pockets until he sighted the two gold pieces glimmering delightfully in the imp’s paws.

She froze.

He froze.

Her heart froze and the blood seemed to freeze in her veins, as well. That is, until the leathery demon’s lips peeled back into a nasty snarl at his quarry, exposing two sets of needle-like pearly whites. He summarily abandoned the language of hell in favor of a more malleable vernacular.

“Why you little—“

He came barreling towards her with grasping claws and a face full of teeth, flesh-rending spines erupting from beneath his skin in a matter of seconds. Reacting entirely on reflex, the imp lashed out and threw the two measly flakes of gold at him, diving after them once she realized what she had done. They nipped off from his skin and dealt minimal damage, but they distracted Threshya for just long enough that it was possible for the bluish imp to snatch the gold up once more and duck around his spiky dukes, paws skittering across the brick.

One of Threshya’s companions lunged towards her with a roar; she could hardly sidestep in time to avoid the blade’s bite, two scimitars clanging in a vicious ‘x’ pattern where her throat had been a second before. The third demon had apparently taken the time to draw back a bow and arrow, the arrow shaft that stuck into the brick by her cheek vibrating so fast that it was nearly invisible to the naked eye.

Eyes stretched wide with fear, the imp chirped in alarm at the spike of sharpened wood embedded next to her head. She was willing to admit that she was a coward, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have brief, shining moments of canny as fuck bravery.

This was not one of those shining moments.

The imp ran. The imp ran for her life, and also across a rooftop— after scaling the nearest market stall to reach it, that is. A dizzying view of both sky and hell-dirt reeled alongside her like colored tickertape, the sounds of dancing and music undulating upward from the light of the cooking fires that dotted the street below. With a frosted glare more unforgiving than winter’s snow, swiftly across the street and after her did Threshya go.

Her thoughts slid and skidded, lurching up into her throat with the rabbit-quick thumping of her heart. The soles of her sandals did little to keep the tiles from searing into her feet, the rooftops having grown hot under the sauna-like conditions, and so it was with only a fleeting glance over her shoulder that she watched them fly off from her feet and go sailing down towards the crowded street below, never to be seen again.

One of them— the left sandal, she had always had a little trouble with the strap— struck Threshya squarely across the chin, sending him barreling into a wall of hanging cutlery and metalwork.

An enormous clatter coupled with a boatload of curses rang sweeter than any of the music cruising through the air. The imp stopped for a breather upon the chimney stoop of one soot-stained building, panting hard. A grin lilted her lips upward as she looked down, watching as pots and iron skillets flew every which way, richly-colored fabrics from a nearby vendor tangled in the mix.

The flesh-merchant jerked his head up, the spikes lining the violet-colored frills on his neck letting off a gleam as he glared daggers up at the impudent imp. “You rat! I’ll slice off yer fingers and eat ‘em like Vienna sausages once I get ahold of you!”

Purposefully ignoring threats to one’s life was surprisingly easy when the one speaking them looked scarcely bigger than a squeaky rodent from three stories up. The yellowed brown tips of the imp’s teeth glinted in the firelight as she replied with a lightning-fast series of hand signals— (Put it on my tab, will you?)

She didn’t wait around to listen for a reply, slipping across the roof and into a new side street within a few minutes’ time. His outraged shrieking was soon swallowed up by the festivities whirling around her, the Jericho-like streets pulsing with motion and the heady scent of cedar smoke crisping on the wind.

This day was one of celebration, in which even the lowest of circles felt confident enough to venture up from the nether districts and into the greater city to sell their wares. Many of them were weirdly shaped and unable to speak in the common tongue, bodies grafted from crustacean shell ceramite and so pale in color that they almost glowed when brought into the light. Blindness may have cast a milky dullness upon their eyes, but their other senses were made all the stronger for it, making them especially dangerous in combat— something which her own circle had learned the hard way in a skirmish over territory.

The circles were usually distinguished from one another by the particular souvenirs they corpse-robbed, but these creatures were different. Instead of stealing things like jawbones, molars, canines, and rotten, cavity-ridden teeth like her clan did, they simply devoured their victims and regurgitated the sticky, acidic remains.

Needless to say, the pale Gorgers had triumphed over the Jawbreakers and were able to muscle in on some prime turf. No one was enthusiastic about being made into a goddamn puddle, which showed good sense in her opinion, and so they pooled the zone caught between the upper city and the canal between them and tried to play nice most of the time. Most of the time.

A dirty string hung from a nearby terraced window, laced with animal teeth that gleamed weakly in the light. Her racing heartbeat slowed, the tension in her muscles loosening like warmed elastic. This was joint Jawbreaker and Gorger territory, she knew, and it would be foolish for one of the Meatgrinders to chase her this close to the canal, though she wouldn’t put it past them to tail her a short ways in just to push their luck.

Pausing by a stand to investigate an amphora made of glass, the imp thumbed the chips of gold in her pocket with a longing sigh. Gorgers always brought fine things to barter with to the surface. The thing was the size of a grandfather’s gin jar, and her fuzzy face was reflected back at her in an amusing, pear-shaped slant from the polished surface. Other goods were littered across the stand, each one endowed with the fluid grace of a musical instrument; tall flute goblets rested on dusty and torn burlap, buttersoft gold adornments scattered in a shimmering array alongside, chiming softly against her claws as she trailed past.

Eyes skirting to look over her shoulder, the short imp ducked her head and slipped away from the stand, ignoring the white crustacean merchant and the way its eye stalks swiveled to track her movements. Yes, she had to keep moving. Gorgers wouldn’t do anything to defend a Jawbreaker, fancy territory treaty or not. She took the nearest series of steps in leaps and bounds, chipped mortar and lazy brickwork winding down, down, down— down to where the canal’s waters stained the city foundations black, hundreds of twisted souls scrabbling in the muck.

Her feet sunk into reddish sediment and slippery silt. A spouted jar with handles was nudged aside by her foot, other pieces of discarded pottery swarming into a broken shoreline of shattered clay, bones and jumbled debris further on. The canal’s walls shimmered with glossy salt minerals— cumulating into a tapestry of veiny quartz-like pinks and sparkly star-specks that made the waterway’s contents glisten and shine— and it would have been positively magnificent if not for the aorta of lifeblood pulsing warmly through it, flecks of it clinging to her toes like soft and gooey pine pitch wherever she stepped.

The river gushed and flowed forward, very nearly steamed, an aorta of red that shot over the rocks like whiskey sings through a barfly’s blood. A stone bridge held firm overhead, shifting bodies and carts crossing over it. Several slender boats dabbled about, hollow knocks from underneath rocking them against the walled sides; countless demons dithered about alongside the canal, bright flare-ups of colored fabric shifting like flamingoes in shallow water. No fiend was the same, some with horns and some without, others with massive spiked crests latched onto their necks or horrible, slavering mandibles, and even a few that seemed to be flat, dark shadows, formless and shifting through the crowds. The incredible diversity to be found in the Underverse was something to marvel at, indeed.

“There!” The imp whirled around at the snarled shout from behind her, face cycling through shock, dismay, and then determination all in a second’s time. Threshya and a few other Meatgrinders had arrived at the stairwell she had just left behind. The sounds of clattering scraps and other rubbish smashing against one another trailed behind her as she ran, the much larger demons moving quickly despite their size.

She skidded to a stop when she reached the bridge, one random passerby jarring into her and hissing a curse before moving on. Her eyes swept frantically around before at last alighting upon something. It seemed that a cart was just about to cross over. The driver was a bizarre, lumpy brute with many faces, and the beast leading the cart might have been an ordinary horse if not for distinct lack of a head above its brawny shoulders and leaning neck.

What the imp was most interested in, however, was the large basin on the back of the cart. Taking a running leap, she briefly swung down beside the screeching spokes and dust before hoisting herself over the rim, only having the time to catch a brief glimpse of Threshya’s snarling face behind her before being dunked inside.

8,211 words

[Ada Wong]

Crowley startled when a splash came from behind him and hastily reeled around, fearing the worst.

Taking in the short, terrier-like ears flouncing atop the stranger’s head, the wide, aye-aye eyes and the smattering of tufted blue-grey fuzz on her cheeks, however, he was sure that the look on his face was totally priceless.

This impish stranger blinked at him, the animal jawbone fitted snugly against her paw wavering mid-strike. Yes, paw— sort of long and akin to a raccoon or weasel foot, Crowley thought, only dexterous enough to wield a weapon and obviously gifted with opposable thumbs…. strange, that, but not the weirdest thing he had ever seen.

He huffed, teeth showing in a grimace. Not by far.

The blue-grey imp’s face abruptly split into a grin. Distractingly enough, the little creature’s mouth was chock full of shards of glass, needles, and other heinously unsanitary and only vaguely teeth-shaped bits and pieces that most certainly were not actual teeth. A real dental hygiene nightmare, it was. It also happened to be just enough of a distraction for the imp to launch herself forward and latch onto his face, shoving her grubby mitts into his mouth without so much as asking him to dinner first.

She poked and prodded at his mouth, feeling around the hooked barbs and tines lining his jaws, occasionally making soft little chirps of…. presumably approval at the superb quality of his teeth. They were so clean, so sharp, and so very real! She’d wager he had been made with them, even.

Too stunned to move, the snake-eyed demon would have leaned as far away as he was physically able if it weren’t for the imp’s face-hugging grip, and thus was made to suffer through his impromptu dental appointment. It was like having a giant crab or something from Alien attached to his face. A giant crab with a lot of fur.

“Ya gnowth, youth cood hath asthed first.” the demon slurred around her fingers. He spit out pieces of fur and grit once she withdrew them and squinted up at her with his uncannily yellow eyes, scowling.

She beamed back at him, her smile apparently indifferent to whatever strangeness had just transpired, and then began to make a bunch of hand gestures at him. For a moment Crowley just stared at her, eyes unblinking over the brim of his sunglasses and his mouth flattened into a line. He squinted at her hands, specifically, which shaped into different gestures like she was trying to make shadow puppets on a far wall. What in the name of…?

Realization hit. Oh. Oh.

A light bulb had blinked on in his mind’s eye. Sign language! He knew that. Of course he did.

The imp chirped every once in a while as she signaled at him, seeming more and more anxious by the second.

(—chasing me. We must flee immediately, initiate!)

“We?” Crowley asked.

Baring her teeth in frustration, the imp furiously nodded. (There are Meatgrinders here.)

Raising one eyebrow at her archly, Crowley crossed his arms under the bloody liquid’s surface. “And I am supposed to be worried about meat processing units…. why?”

Smack! The imp whapped her forehead in clear agitation, kitten-like nostrils flaring. She appeared to glance imploringly around, as if searching for inspiration, how to possibly explain. Then, her eyes lit up with a terrifying gleam.

Orange eyes slanting to focus on him once more and her tufted ears twitching, the blue-cloaked imp pointed to something over his shoulder. Turning, Crowley squinted confusedly when all he could see were crowds of demons and tall buildings with numerous smokestacks and funnels on the tops of them, the architectural flairs reminiscent of something from 18th century France.

A flourish of violet fabric drew his attention. There appeared to be a few angry individuals with nasty, ugly, brutal-seeming weapons coming their way, all snarling faces and steely flashes of metal. He inhaled sharply, his brain working furtively.

“They friends of yours?” asked Crowley with some cheek, though an underlying tremor of anxiety fouled his words.

Looking away from the flowing masses, the demon heaved an exasperated sigh when he realized his companion was scrambling up onto the cart’s ledge, paws slipping after being submerged in the dark blood. Soon, she was standing on the ledge, shielding her eyes against a gust of vile ash. The hoofbeast’s clopping mingled with the noises of the street as she craned her head upward, eying the sky beseechingly and swallowing around the acrid stench of the air.

“Where are you going?” spluttered Crowley, pulling himself up onto the cart’s edge as well. His wings surfaced with a wallowing splish, drops of bright red spraying outward and turning the once pristine feathers almost black.

The imp glanced down at him imperiously as she balanced like some kind of tightrope-walker on the basin rim, her tail flicking in a markedly cat-like fashion. (I’m getting out of here, what does it look like I’m doing? Stupid initiate.)

Tongue clicking against his teeth, the demon looked behind their cart and into the hodge-podge of rollers, lurkers, and clods of filth sent flying into the air by the wagon’s wheels. Their driver’s whip cracked over the rolling, sweating back of the beast leading it. Like a horde of drunken centipedes the crowds stumbled along, parting dizzily before the demons who were still stalking towards the pair of them, spiritedly kicking aside any unfortunate soul who dared to get in their way.

“MOVE ALONG,” bellowed the one at the front, the fellow with the gaudy neckwear. “OUTTA THE WAY.”

Crowley glanced down and immediately wished he hadn’t— it was an awfully long drop over the bridge’s side, a spitting stone gargoyle with a giraffe’s neck snarling up at him from where it crouched over the dark water. The stench of mildew and pond life tinged the air, the cold grey stone and garbage lending a rancid, greenish pallor to the attire of those strolling across the bridge.

Over the low stone side of the bridge was a slender barge, several demons standing on its platform and picking their way along the canal’s bottom with long, stick-like oars. It seemed that it would pass under the bridge and reappear on the other side in only a moment’s time; a short window, for sure, but certainly doable.

His legs dangled over the basin’s side as he sat beside the imp, jolting with the cart as it tottered over the cobbles.

“Budge up, pal!” A demon walking by slurred, words running together as they nudged Crowley’s legs aside on their way past.

“Ah, pardon,” Crowley murmured, shifting his legs to the side and never once taking his eyes off his unusual guide. “So…. you’ve…. done this before, have you? And survived. Obviously.”

The imp sniffed, shooting him a sly look. (Of course.)

She peeked over his shoulder, her ears just barely reaching his chin even while he was sitting down. Satisfied with her quick scan of the crowds, then, she raised one eyebrow at him as if to say, ‘Well, pal, it was nice knowing you. See you on the other side.’ And suddenly, in a gap of displaced space and a swoosh, she was gone.

Crowley swallowed. He peered over the edge of the bridge again, his wings giving an agitated little shiver at the great height.

A tiny blue figure waved up at him from the barge, hands then coming to rest on its hips.

“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” Crowley muttered to himself, shifting forward a half-inch. A short, hot breeze tangled in his hair, fading into nonexistence as swiftly as it came.

“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t….” The fallen angel looked over his shoulder. A snarling, leathery face riddled with scars jerked into view, wide-set teeth glinting with traces of saliva.

…. Oh, damn it all.

And then, the snarling face, the bridge and the bustling crowds-- all of it was gone.

9,541 words

[Ada Wong]

He landed with a solid ‘thump’ on the end of the barge, the added weight causing that end to dip down under the water so it was submerged under the current, waves of sewage flooding over the planks. Thankfully, the boat soon righted itself with a gurgling splash, but his already much-abused leg buckled as soon as it hit the wooden planks, and without anything nearby to hinder his fall, well…

“Urk,” Crowley grunted, crumpling to the ground in a clumsy heap. It took him a moment to succeed in rolling over into a sitting position, his elbows scraping against the boards that, er, bundled the raft together.

A demon pulling in a fishing line nearby cast a suspicious sideways glance his way. What appeared to be a turtle shell weighed down on their shoulders heavier than any cloak, a beak-like snout clicking in annoyance under a pair of round, orange eyes, the dust-scratched orbs ticking dully off to the side, clearly dismissing him as little more than some scratched-up beanpole. An old, foggy yellow lantern hung from a stick that was lashed across their covered back, illuminating the man-turtle’s warped, scaly musculature and plated abdomen.

“Idjit,” they rasped. Crowley watched as their hands worked at the lines, their fingers coarse and webbed. Soon the man-turtle had succeeded in hauling up a wriggling, twisting mudfish onto the logs, the greyish-brown membrane and whiskers of the fish the very color of a murky riverbed. It’s gasping, pebble-wide mouth turned towards the fallen angel for a brief moment, black eyes the size of marbles seeming immeasurably sad and pathetic.

A squelching sound followed as its head was smashed under the man-turtle’s clawed foot. Crowley quickly looked away, feeling rather unwell.

His imp friend swung into view before long, tugging at his feathers and signing with quick, jabbing rigidity. (Do these things even work?)  She demanded of him, scowling. It took Crowley embarrassingly long to realize she was talking about his wings; if her insistent tugging hadn’t hurt so much, he might’ve flushed red from embarrassment.

“No, no. Not anymore.” The fallen angel hissed, batting her paws away. She was too handsy.

The imp looked at him a moment, her expression unreadable. He imagined that a moue of disgust had made her lips turn downward, but it was probably just that: his imagination.

Crowley noticed that right beside the lightly-furred shells of her ears were a number of greenish insect eyes, three of them speckled like splendidly twinkling dewdrops on both sides of her head. They blinked entirely out of sync, winking at him while their possessor stewed in silence.

Logs and sticks tickled the bottom of the raft, many hollow knocks sounding underneath. Crowley finally lost his patience and broke the silence with an exasperated, “Yes? What is it?”

She looked at him with a sharp turn of her head, eyes bright and alert. (My name is Magda.) The finger-spelling of her name was thorough and surprisingly easy for him to follow, but he was still confused by it nonetheless.

“Magda? As in Mary Magdalene?” Crowley huffed out a rough bark of laughter, hardly believing his ears— erm, eyes. “Peculiar name for an imp.”

Magda scowled. It was an absurd expression for such an adorably furry face to make. (No one asked you, initiate.)

Ah, something else Crowley found he was concerned about. The mysterious ‘initiate’ label she had taken to calling him by in the short time they had known one another. It was definitely something he would have to put the screws to, Crowley thought, his eyes narrowing at her. “You keep calling me that; I have no idea of what it means, here.”

(Perhaps if you gave me your name I would call you something different.)

There was an obvious question in that, Crowley just knew it, and yet….. The fallen angel hesitated, two syllables simmering right on the tip of his tongue. A thousand ‘What if….?’ questions arose in his head, a painful twinge at his temple reminding him of all the very bad things that could happen to him, had already happened to him, and could very well happen to him again. Despite all that, he sighed, shoulders falling into a defeated slump in the face of Magda’s near-palpable interest. Hopefully he wouldn’t live to regret this.

“…Crowley.” He watched as the imp’s eyes immediately lit up, orange shimmers pinging around her pupils like fish swimming in a bowl. There was no glint of recognition, however, and certainly nothing other than the usual malice in her expression.

(Very well, then. Crowley it is!)  she took great care in signing his name, it seemed, her mouth splitting into another one of her signature glass-shard grins. Against his better judgment, Crowley found himself smiling back, albeit a great deal less viciously.

A few scraggly creatures with fishing poles glanced up as their barge winged past on frothy ripples. Without thinking much of it, Crowley looked back, curiosity sparking in his eyes.

One of them hissed at him like a feral cat, sharp teeth flashing.

Crowley quickly glanced away.

“Fantastic,” the fallen angel drawled, looking around for something to lean up against, because Go- Sata- someone forbid he should support his own weight every once in a while. Finding a crate that was suitable enough and settling comfortably beside it, he glanced back at Magda, sunglasses sliding perilously down his nose. “So, what does it mean? Initiate?”

The look she fixed him with was distressing, but what was even more distressing was that he couldn't place just why that was.

(It means that you are coming with me.)

Crowley jerked to attention at that. “What? ….Why?”

There was no answer, but he felt it soon enough. He stiffened as she pressed something slick against his wrist, followed shortly by a fiery red, stinging pain immediately shooting up his arm at her touch. Crowley yelped, jerking his arm out of her grip and to his chest. Scowling fiercely at her, he glanced down to inspect the damage.

A small, wriggling and squirming maggot creature nibbled at the flesh of his wrist, dozens of very small teeth burrowing under the skin and sending tiny pinpricks of discomfort spiking through his fingers. Rather than the immediate and violent terror he was sure he should have been feeling, Crowley merely stared with a calm expression on his face as the flattish, slimy worm dug under the median nerve of his arm, the muscles of his thumb and palm twitching reflexively as it made its home there.

It settled into a stomach-churning purplish bulge under his skin. A puzzling sensation caught between drowsiness and unease clouded his brain, chilly fogs gathering at the forefront of his mind; a tiny voice at the back of his mind was screaming as he realized that he didn’t really care.

“Am I being shanghaied?” he asked, yellow eyes turning up to meet Magda’s own.

Magda flapped her hand in a clear ‘don’t worry about it, honey bun!’ gesture. (It’s just a little something to erase your cares. Visitors of my mistress tend to have…) she paused, mouth tugging wryly as she sought out the right word. (… stage fright. Hearing her name is enough to inspire fear in most; the coercion larva is necessary, I’m afraid.)

“Ah,” replied Crowley. He blinked slowly. The toxin coursed through his veins like a mixture of honey and hyacinth dew, pooling as sweet and syrupy liquid heaven on his tongue, but then— then, the secretions from the larva gradually began to harden. A leaden weight pulsed painfully along the length of his arm, jarring against the bone. It was almost as if a solid barb of iron was being deliberately moved inch by agonizing inch through his bloodstream.

He was aware of his teeth grinding together as his mouth did its level best to grimace at the pain, but his facial muscles continued to remain curiously blank and confused all the while. So, it was a pretty alien sensation. “Ow.”

The imp pursed her lips, face pinching only a little in a show of remorse. (Yes, it does hurt for a small time.)

The barge nudged against the shoreline, one of the demons manning it using a long stick to shove off from the rocks again. Stacked crates towered by the water and muddy shoreline, chests and sacks full of grain piled unceremoniously beside a wooden pulley loading barrels onto the docks. From what Crowley could see, there were several archways leading into passages beneath the busy street above, indistinct traces of graffiti lining the walls like in a train system or maybe a particularly wide sewer entry.

(Come. This way,) Magda waved quickly to the fallen angel, bounding onto the shore with ease. Crowley followed shortly after, feet settling onto the ground heels-first so that his wings wouldn’t carry him too far forward.

A trail of wooden planks was arranged flat in the sludge and gloom, barrels and slimy swamp plants scattered all about as demons shoveled, lugged, pushed, stacked and shoved their way along it. Loose pieces of dirt shifted underfoot as they ran madly about, instable as the roiling sky above. They began to walk along the trail, like a pair of holidaymakers out for an evening stroll.

Magda waved her arms around, gesturing grandly at the chaotic spectacle. (Welcome to the Nether District of the Necropolita of Dis, garden of our most tyrannical and odious Lord Azmodan, may his tremendous girth continue to stink forever, etcetera, etcetera...)

“H-hrk!  Help me,” begged a carcass lying beside where he stood, wheezing breaths causing the emaciated body to shudder and its limbs trailing halfway into a puddle. It was kind of indecent to be so pathetic in public, really. “Please! Help me. ”

“Er, is he quite alright?” asked Crowley.

Magda gave him a long, assessing look. (What does it matter to you?)

Well, that was a good question if he’d ever heard one. Through the fog in his head, Crowley realized that he didn’t rightly know! “Hm,” he settled on, and took great care in stepping over the body, its moaning only seeming to grow louder and more despairing the further they moved away from it. Crowley was in good spirits when they ducked inside an alleyway, glad to be rid of the abominable noise and clatter of the open dockyards. It was shady, too, and the only complaint he might have had was that it was a fairly tight fit for someone of his size. Surprisingly enough, even the tiny Magda had trouble slipping from one end to the other.

The rattan covering overhead creaked ominously in warning, shadows threading across the passage as vendors and street-goers walked over it. Magda continued wiggling her way through despite the strong scent of mildew and the chilly stone cobbles pressing into her smallish frame. Crowley pressed on, as well, battling against gossamer cobwebs and airy chips of dust flaking down to tickle his nose from the ceiling of the dim, constricted passage.

Three weights of stone pressed inward from all sides, thick enough to blot out the sound of their movements— hot breaths and quick-footed shuffling, suddenly accompanied by the dry crackling of the rattan ceiling as it frayed and contorted. Was someone walking over it on the busy street above? It was dark, and dreary, and hopelessly nerve-wracking to make the trip. What if they became stuck? No one would ever know, and he would turn to dust after days of slowly starving. This thought alone was enough to set a fire under Crowley’s feet and get him moving, even if the coercion larva beneath his skin begged willing deference either way.

It took some creative writhing to free himself from where he was wedged in between the walls of the alley. Something that had been tight and hot in his chest loosened, a mild blanket of calm replacing the claustrophobic presence from before as his feet met the reddish-colored cobbles of the outer walls.

They entered onto an open courtyard, nearer to the outskirts of the city. Demons sang, drank, and made love in both dark corners and in the light, paying no heed to propriety. Dirty-faced vagrants crowded beside warmth-emitting chimneys and beds of glowing red coals, rubbish littering the streets and splintered wreckage from destroyed buildings cumulating into a nest-like clutter. The complex interweaving of alleyways turned the city into a labyrinthine maze of interiors and rooftops, torches and sprinkled fires making it seem as if the streets were trapped within an endless sunset.

It was, in a sense, beautiful. If someone were to have good sense or that mysterious adaptation known as "Common Sense", however...

But, no. Unfortunately, it simply wasn't so.

11,666 words

[Ada Wong]

Crowley felt really, really weird.

The bug Magda had coaxed into crawling under his skin was probably— maybe— possibly— could have been?— the cause of it. But, Crowley imagined that he was plenty all right with that. Because Magda was skipping along before him— well, not really skipping, more of a skitter like rats do in the dark corners of a storage closet— and she’d guaranteed that she was taking him somewhere great. And, once he’d discovered that he couldn’t really disagree with that, Crowley had readily given in and followed her when she asked him to.

“You’re so short,” he told her, just about tripping over his own legs when they began to climb a staircase that went all spirally around the corner of a building, a lot of the stones breaking off and tumbling down, down, down in what was surely worthy of a work zone hazard sign.  

Everything was lit up orange and gold, painfully bright and kinda annoying in his opinion. The building was on fire, too. Everything was on fire? Was that even safe?

As Crowley pondered this mysterious mystery of mysteriousness, some random demon swept by him on the way up the stairs. They had an angel’s head, all stretched and covered in eyes of all sorts, shaped into a big ol’ mushroom cloud and hollowing inward with a kind of cerebral dignity that made their head seem like a raw chicken breast.

Ha! Breasts.

The angel-headed fiend gave him a confused look. He wondered if he had said all that out loud. But— oh! Oh! There was Magda, grabbing his hand with her soft little paw-fingers. She tugged him along, a frown on her face and Crowley thought he might be in trouble. She didn’t hit him or anything, though, which was okay, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much if she hit him. Her hands looked so soft? Softer than Cottonelle or Aziraphale’s couch in the back-room of his bookshop. And— and she was so helpful, like a fairy godmother without the wings or sparkles. Magda was awesome.

Where were they going? Crowley didn’t rightly know. It was all crazy dark and shadowy, the crowded streets all seemed much the same to him. He hoped Magda was right about wherever they were headed being decent. He hoped it had ducks. He liked ducks.

Suddenly Crowley snorted, stumbled, and then sneezed when a tickle in his nose became too much. Must’ve been from all the black ash flying through the air. What in the damn hell did they need all this ash for? Some people, important people he was sure, had, er… had… allergies! ALLERGIES! The scourge of our times, last time he checked. Hell was stupid.

Magda whacked him on the nose and just as predicted, it didn’t hurt one bit, like being bopped with a foam finger or a whack-a-mole hammer. Wait, was he supposed to be paying attention to something? It was hard enough to keep track of where to put his feet when walking.

He looked down at Magda. It took a while for her fingers to stop multiplying into an indecipherable blur.

(Quit talking. You’re attracting unwanted attention.)

He continued to stare down at the imp. She had her paws bunched up and set on her hips, one foot rapping pointedly against the ground. For the total of thirty minutes he had known her, Crowley had begun to notice how her cloak utterly swamped her short frame, sleeves falling down to her elbows and the wide neck revealing just enough to show that she was probably covered with grey fur everywhere.

Not to mention that not a word had slipped past her lips, either, besides small chirps and trills. This was curious, as Crowley was one to vocalize most ex-quis-ite-ly at every opportunity.

( You’re in love with the sound of your own voice, Aziraphale had said to him once, reading from a sensationalist column in the papers. It’s a vanity thing narcissists do, you know. A comfort.

If you had my voice, Crowley replied, You would love to hear yourself talk, as well! )

He just didn’t get it. But, he wasn’t about to judge, and if that was truly what Magda wanted, he would absolutely do it! She was so nice to him, and perfect, and smart, and looking at him strangely once again...

She squinted at him, like she was suspicious or something. (Let’s go. And remember, be quiet.)

“You got it, boss!” Crowley said. And there she went, always looking out for him, walking ahead and glaring other, bigger demons out of the way with sheer force of will. Magda was the best.

Unfortunately, they soon arrived at a concrete barrier that Magda could not simply glare out of their path. He was standing so close that he could see the grains in the stone, stippled and pocked all over like an orange peel. Tilting his head so far back that his head swam with dizziness, Crowley realized that what he had assumed to be the sky was, in fact, a Big Red Wall.

He startled and turned when Magda began to move again, her tiny figure already headed toward another flight of stairs. This new set of stairs, however, went down, and Crowley soon grimaced against the rush of stale air emanating from the tunnel entrance. There was no way he was going into some rancid hole in the ground. Places like that had mites.

Crowley turned to Magda, a complaint primed and ready upon his lips, but stopped a second later. The drug dulled the negative before it could have a chance to negate, leaving him very much confused with his mouth open and no words spilling out. He closed his mouth, blinked, glanced confusedly off to the side, and then looked back at Magda.

Slowly, shyly, a smile crept onto his face. The fallen angel smiled as if some secret had just been imparted to him, marveling at the imp and appreciating that she had waited so very patiently for him to catch up, a steady warmth already blossoming in his chest.

Somehow they ended up in a catacomb-like place that wasn’t exactly underground but more of a shallow depression beneath the Big Red Wall. It smelled like a tube system, with all the graffiti and illegible, multi-colored scrawling needed to complete the picture. Huddled figures scuttled behind trash bins or peered out from jagged crevices, the thick odor of rotting flesh cloying about their ragged clothing. Crowley could have sworn that he saw large plastic bags hung up from the highest point of the low ceiling, the dewy imprints of hands pressed against the clear elastic and jumbled, murky limbs bundled up inside like a child’s Easter basket stuffed full of candies.

Weird, yes.

12,800 words