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[b][u][center]The Mad Gods 2

Houses of Cards

For DuskCypher

By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]

Hell was in shambles, and there was only one man to blame. With the history of her traumatizing life, it seemed only right that Selene was related to him.

She stood at the edge of the devastation dragged across the realm of Wrath, staring at the rents and tears through the lands, the still-burning fires, and the bodies. Most of all, the bodies, where demons of Wrath, Envy, and Greed had fallen trying to keep Dusk from fleeing this petty place. They would never have the chance to rise again, not with what Dusk had done to them. They were gone, for good, and for what?

The light-furred, white-haired lioness walked along the path that he had taken, following in the footsteps of the black cat. She could still feel his pride in himself. It must have sustained him all the way through the realm, giving him the assurance and hope that he might be able to make it out.

She could have told him that it was a lie. Pride was as much a dagger in the back as it was a hand to hold.

All around her, wreckage burned and the realm itself heaved under her feet. The damage to the Wrath demon population would take…she didn’t even know how long to heal. Perhaps never. The realm had ripped itself in two, and only one faction still lived, and it was damaged. Horrifically damaged.

The echoes of their cry still lingered in her ears. ‘Wrath does not bow to the inevitable.’ It was almost enough to make one cry, if one was capable of it.

[i]Good thing Lucifer burned that out of me long ago,[/i] Selene thought as she continued up the near-invisible path. [i]Nobody needs to see that weakness.[/i]

Eventually, she reached the wreckage of what had been Dusk’s escape route. There, her father stood, and there, the land was no longer rent, but broken. The great fires upon which Hell rested lurched and lunged for the surface, climbing along the jagged rock before fading into ember once more. Even from a distance, she could feel it, the heat threatening to sear even her flesh from her bones. A mortal would have had no choice, even a mortal carrying the soul of Lucifer bound to him.

[i]He’s gone,[/i] she thought. [i]He’s actually gone.[/i]

It was almost embarrassing, realizing that she’d been carrying some hope that he actually lived. No chance of that; she would have felt him, somewhere, if he still lived in the realms of Hell. His sins, his powers, would have called out to her.

But there was nothing. Nothing but the emptiness that his vast presence created now that it was gone.

[i]If we had acted sooner…[/i]

No. There was no room for ‘ifs’ anymore. Her father, in his certainty of the dangers that a mortal Satan posed, made sure of that. Whether he had done it because he believed that only a demon could properly rule hell, or because he thought that someone should be on the throne to oppose Jehovah, or if there was some other reason that she had yet to hear, it didn’t matter. The older lion had taken it into his hands to seize the throne, and now…

Now, Dusk was gone, and so was the only hope that she’d had that things could change. Hope. Quite the novelty, for a demon, and now she understood why they never clung to it. As soon as it was gone, they were worse off than before.

Selene saw her father stand out of the corner of her eye. She turned, watching as he held the writhing mass of power that was Dusk’s and Lucifer’s combined soul. It twisted about his fingers, the raw energy of their souls demanding freedom while lacking the consciousness to take it for their own.

She watched, and did nothing, as her father consumed it. For her, it was the only petty vengeance that she could take on the gray-furred lion.

It tried to escape his mouth, straining against his lips, but Darith Sertus, the Lion of Pride, the greatest demon that their realm had ever produced, stood strong and swallowed. She watched the bulge of the soul meal pass his lips, going down, down, down into his core, and he almost vibrated as it hit.

The dust on his shoulders fell. The age in his face shrank away. His suit, torn and ragged, was restored. In seconds, the lion looked as if he had come out of a business meeting rather than barely surviving a war to bring down his greatest rival. He looked strong, and she knew that the hordes of Hell would see him as their new ruler.

“I have claimed it,” she heard him say, even at a distance. “I am the Second Satan. Let all know who rules them.”

Selene knew that the claim would be delivered across Hell, just as she knew that it would hardly be a unified Hell that answered. Lust was elsewhere, ruled by its own people, and would defy Darith to the end of days. Gluttony was damaged, as was Envy and Wrath; they would serve, but only factionally, and Greed would come in its own time, always delaying, always making things more difficult and more profitable for them than they had to. Sloth, as ever, would do what it willed, and few would bother, with only Pride serving him directly.

Just as she knew the politics of Hell, she knew that it would only stay that way for a time. The rest of the realms would tilt one way or another, and perhaps her father would be smart enough to tilt them to his advantage. Certainly, she had no power to do the same; she was the disgraced, once-married daughter of the new Satan. He might care for her, but that was all. The realms themselves would not care.

Only time would tell where Hell would go from here. None of the realms would accept someone else to rule them; that had been the way of Hell since the start. Perhaps Darith would break the cycle, or perhaps her father would be dragged down. Only one thing was certain; now that he was at the top, it was a very long way down, and he was the only one that everyone could see, a target to all.

Selene looked into the fires in the great crack through the land. For a moment, she contemplated throwing herself into them, but only for a moment. It was enough to shock her out of the deadness in her soul, and she shook her head as she turned away.

One way or another, she would have to find a way forward. Death was no escape. Pride could not give way to hopeless. There had to be –

Before she could complete that thought, the world shook beneath her feet, and the sky cracked. Hell itself quaked, and she knew something wrong, something much worse than losing their previous hope, had just befallen Hell.

#

Jehovah landed on his ass, and he stared at the portal before him with nothing less than open-mouthed shock. It took him a full handful of seconds to find his footing again, his breath coming faster and faster with each passing one, until he could no longer control himself.

“Those [b]ingrates![/b]”

The ruler of heaven, the co-creator of the Begotten, the benevolent one meant to be the shining example of goodness in the world, swept his hand through the air. All the pent-up rage that he had been holding back, all the fury of being denied, and every ounce of humiliation that he had suffered came loose in a clawing lash of lightning through the heavenly realm. He heard the screams of many in the distance and didn’t care.

“Those [b]imbecilic malcontents![/b]”

He threw a punch at the wall of his palace, and the great marble panel went flying, spinning and spiraling off into the edge of existence before disappearing. Its passage was followed by a tunneling of spinning air, cutting another furrow through the world of Heaven and leaving nothing in its wake.

Words failed him, but not action. If he could not destroy them, he would lay waste to all that he touched. His quarters were only the start, and each room of the palace was one more toy block to throw about the realm that he had created thousands, millions of years ago, breaking it to pieces one chunk at a time. Spit ran down the sides of his muzzle and froth decorated his lips as he all but babbled his rage.

They had the gall, the unmitigated gall, to kick him out of Elysium? They believed that they could defy his plans? First Dusk, and then the Reaper?

[i]I will destroy them. Armageddon or not, end-times or not, I will find a way to make them burn for eternity. Their pain will outlive their world. They will never know the meaning of peace again. I –[/i]

“Father, father! This is my room!”

Jehovah barely had the presence of mind to not strike out at Mercy as she grabbed him by the arm, but it was a near thing. She had no fear as she held him, not an ounce, but that was not what saved her. The only thing that stilled his hand was the knowledge that he had already lost one heir and he did not have the time to make another.

“Release me.”

“Then don’t break my room.”

“You think that you can tell me, the GOD of all that matters, what to do?”

“…”

“Let go of me!”

He shoved her away. She barely cushioned her blow as she nearly slammed into the wall, and he slammed his fists down on the edge of her windowsill. Four stories of palace structure broke beneath it, and the only reason that her room did not was the fact that she was holding it up against him. Even then, the floor was strewn with cracks, spiderwebs of broken stone running beneath their feet.

“That cat…that damnable Dusk…”

“You’re going to destroy everything, father.”

“Everyone deserves it.”

“Oh, please. They’re toys. They don’t know –”

“That’s the problem. Nobody knows better. Everyone should, but nobody does. Not even [i]you.[/i]”

“What, you think this is my fault?”

“Well, you certainly didn’t make it better, did you, you clueless kitten?” Jehovah whipped his head around, the rage swirling higher. “A witless thing like you should have at least been able to keep that bastard from making more problems for us, but instead, all you managed was to restrict yourself from the Begotten. Witless, useless. All you’ve done is create one problem after another for me.”

“Oh, you think that I have only ever made problems? Who kept Lucifer from coming up and making an issue of the whole crucifixion?”

“That could have been handled. [i]This[/i]…”

He gripped the edge of the windowsill again, all his attention going to keeping himself from obliterating Heaven. He still needed it; his forces were still required for the great End-Times that would bring all that were loyal to him to his bosom, and then, he could erase everything and start over. He needed them.

But oh, it was tempting. The rage, the humiliation, the fact that every carefully conceived angle of his plans had been cut off at the knees by one lucky mortal and a godling that he had dealt with thousands and thousands of years ago –

“You take too much after your mother. I should have changed you while I had the chance.”

“She must have done something right, if me and Jesus came out of it.”

“She did nothing right. I hated her.”

“Then you must hate me. For someone that I never even met.”

“She would have betrayed me just like you did.”

“I never –”

“You certainly never helped me. Just like she never did. Heh. You would have made a good pair.”

Too far, almost too far. He saw her again, saw Lilith in his mind’s eye, and he could no longer tell if he was angry or in deepest despair. Jehovah clenched his claws over the windowsill again.

“I should have left you with her.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Go to Hell and find out if I do.”

Even as the words left his mouth, he knew that they were the wrong thing to say. He tried to pull them back even as he looked over his shoulder, but he knew that it was too late. Mercy’s eyes were wet with tears, and she stared at him as if he had stabbed her straight through the heart.

Perhaps he had. Perhaps, in some way, he had finally done too much.

The fear faded as she walked silently from her room, and he turned to look out the window once more. Heaven was rent into seven pieces, broken apart and shattered. He would be all day pulling it back together, and he still didn’t want to. There were too many other things to break, and he wanted nothing more than to see the world broken as far as he could break it.

#

Mercy tried to put her father’s words out of her mind as she entered the Library of Heaven. Scholars that had long since turned off their minds for the sake of worshiping her father went ignored, almost ghostly compared to the solid books around them. Their substance fed the records rather than the other way around, and she had no business with them.

[i]Dusk…Dusk did this…[/i]

If there was any mortal that could break the plans of Heaven, Hell, and the rest of existence, it was the one man in all of time and history that had said no to her. It still rankled her even as the barbs of his denial refused to let her go. She knew that she should move on, that there were other souls that were more suitable for her –

[i]Dusk did this.[/i]

And she would show him his mistake.

She would show him what he had done.

She would make him pay, and she would make him hers.

The tigress all but stomped her way to the back of the library where the darker books lay. Here, where her father kept all the knowledge that Heaven had on the eldritch, had to be an answer. There had to be.

A lower angel, barely formed enough to have a proper glow, looked her in the eye as she approached. He started to greet her only to gasp as she grabbed him by the throat.

“You will answer my questions.”

“T-that is my p-p-purpose, Mercy Christ,” the angel – something canine – whispered. “What…what can I –”

“Look up the court case of Mercy Christ versus Dusk Von Doom.”

The angel nodded, turning to their records. He ran his fingers across old scrolls and older tomes, every so often having to deal with a tendril that tried to snag him and slow him down. Mercy showed no interest in his struggles. All she wanted was an answer.

Eventually, her clerk pulled down the appropriate scroll and unrolled it. A document that could have come from a modern printer was pressed flat inside, as if glued to it.

“You couldn’t have copied it over?” she asked.

“I-it’s important to have the original as often as possible,” the dog said. “It keeps us from –”

“It doesn’t matter. Read it.”

The clerk did. He nodded as soon as he reached the end.

“A restraining order against you. I am – I’m sorry that was the case.”

“I don’t care what you feel, and I don’t want your sympathy. What I want is a way down there.”

“Down – Mercy Christ, I don’t – there isn’t – this isn’t the best –”

“Is there a way around the restraining order or not? Like, if he’s in Hell, can I go looking for him?”

Elysium was close enough to Hell. She’d seen the same broadcast, knew what was going on as well as anyone else did. If Dusk was down there –

The new angel shook his head.

“N-no, I’m afraid – well, he’s still in Hell, and the restraining order and – well, it’s a – oh god, I’m sorry, I’m sorry –”

“Shut up. Just…shut up and give me an answer.”

“I…I will try, Mercy Christ.”

[i]Or I will cut you down,[/i] she thought, leaning away from the dog clerk as much as she could, trying to maintain some vague attitude of confidence and casualness. She was anything but casual, however. She wanted this done. She wanted to find him again, and she wanted things back to the way that they were supposed to be.

And all the while, she was fighting with what her father had said. ‘Go to Hell and find out.’ Her mother was from Hell, her mother the mystery, her mother the abandoned, her mother the empty space. If she was down there –

“I – I may have…something,” the dog clerk said.

“Tell me. Now.”

“The wording is – is surprisingly explicit at one point. The restraining order – well, there’s a part that reads almost like a marriage. ‘Until death,’ here.” The dog clerk tapped it. “I – well, it’s a long shot, but if he were to die and come back, for example, the terms would be null and void. Sentence served and all that. But…but that’s probably –”

“That’s perfect…”

Mercy’s lips turned up in a smile as she walked away without another word. The dog clerk stared after her for a moment, then seemingly decided not to bother her and pursue his own business instead.

As the tigress walked out of the palace and along the shredded pieces of Heaven, she thought of what she’d seen before her father had started ripping things apart. The broadcast from Elysium had been hazy this far away, but she had still caught the important bits, including the fight between Dusk and the Reaper. And how he had won.

[i]How can you kill what is already dead?[/i]

He was dead.

She was unbound.

It was a loophole, but all of their work had been done by loophole. Oh, the demons were the ones that always claimed that they were looking to get around the contracts, but Heaven had invented contracts. They knew every last piece. The only ones that could fight them on that were Cthulhu and his bunch, but that one was going to be busy for a while.

[i]He’s in Hell. I can kill two birds with one stone…[/i]

Mercy reached the edge of the clouds, looked down, and let herself fall. In short order, she split between Heaven and the Begotten, and a few seconds later, she split between the Begotten to Hell.

And it trembled below her.

#

Jesus and Michaela had been running for longer than either of them believed possible. The tiger kept hoping that they could finally settle down, that they would reach some safe place where neither Heaven, Hell, or the forces of the Apocalypse could actually reach them. He should have known that he was asking for something that could never happen.

He didn’t even remember where they were anymore. Every day, almost every hour, they were having to hop along to some new small town, some new place where nobody knew their names or faces, and hope that whatever was chasing them didn’t follow.

It always did.

And people always died.

“The world’s this close to going to Hell,” Michaela said, the puma shaking her head behind him as they crept through yet another alley to the parking lot on the other side of the buildings. “If your country’s not sick, it’s on fire, or something else that’s killing everyone in it.”

Jesus didn’t have a retort anymore. All the calm things that he’d said when they’d first come to the world Begotten were gone. He didn’t have any real faith that it would get better. Not anymore. Not after seeing what mortals did to each other and how they feared everyone and everything that might cause them harm.

[i]They’re trying to make it better,[/i] he thought. [i]They’re trying to find a way to fix this.[/i]

But it felt too little, too late. They were all just…desperate. Desperate to find some way to blame it all on someone else, desperate to survive, desperate to take whatever they needed from someone else to try and make it for one more day.

It was a nightmare.

“Anything behind us?” he asked.

“No,” Michaela muttered. “I think we’re in the clear.”

“I wouldn’t say thaaaaaat.”

Both tiger and puma paused, slowly lifting their heads to the rooftops. A silhouette in black and green looked down at them before hopping off the top, landing with a thump between them and the parking lot where their motorcycles were waiting. It slowly stood up, a long, black leather jacket running down the back of a zebra mare, and Jesus hissed as she started to glow with a green aura.

“…Pestilence,” he whispered.

“Ah, so you remember me. I’m flattered,” the zebra said, tapping long nails against her arms as she crossed them under her breasts. “You know, it’s been a long time since me and mine were able to just run rampant. Too long, indeed.”

“You’re free, then. All of you?”

“Enough of us.” She chuckled. “And we have our own missions.”

“Get behind me,” Michaela whispered.

“Oh? Trying to protect God’s son, are we?” Pestilence asked as the puma put herself between the tiger and the zebra. “The good little Archangel of Diligence. Trying to keep to her duty. Trying to keep the world a better place. Really, girl, what do you think you’re going to prove now?”

“I can keep you away from him for a bit longer.”

“Michaela –”

“Don’t try and talk me out of this, Jesus.”

The tiger bit his lips, looking back the way they’d come. The streets were a riot back there, the sickly and the dying rising up against the local police and demanding to be let into a hospital. They were being turned away in droves, the medical system already pushed to its limit and no longer able to accommodate new patients. The sickly themselves weren’t dangerous individually, but they were moving in packs, angry ones, and they would set on anyone weaker than them in desperation.

No going back. Not without exposing who they were on a global scale. He turned back –

Pestilence leaped for them. The zebra swung one hand forward, her nails glittering, only for Michaela to catch the blow on a blade. The green-striped equine chuckled.

“Fast, I’ll give you. Heh, and deadly…but not as deadly as me.”

A green miasma blew from the zebra’s mouth. Jesus grabbed the puma before she could take more than the slightest gasp of it, leaping backward until his back hit a dumpster. The hard metal clapped against his back, stopping him in his tracks.

“Nnngh…”

“Good instincts, kid. Now. Put the sword down, and we’ll get back to your daddy. He’s been [i]real[/i] concerned about getting you back.”

Jesus remembered where his father had kept him for thousands of years. Ever since the crucifixion, he had been trapped, a hostage, a piece that wasn’t allowed to be free. He had sat there, pained and tortured by his inaction, for so long that he had forgotten what life was like.

The tiger shook his head.

“No.”

“Kid, I can take you down without even trying. You don’t want this. Just put the sword down, and –”

“I don’t want to go back.”

“Do you want to die?”

“I’ll die faster than I’ll go back,” Jesus said, shaking his head as he leaned Michaela against the wall. “Do you think I have anything to live for, except this? Do you think that I’ll ever trust my father again?”

“Heh, nobody said that you had to trust him. We all know the score. Just like I know that it’s better to get you back there than to leave him hanging. I still got my job to do, you know.”

“He took Lucifer from me. He turned the world into something horrible. My father…my father does not know the meaning of the word good. I am not going back to him.”

“…Well, guess we’re doing this the hard way.”

The zebra leaped for them, trailing a shimmering line of green, disease rising from every pore. She was the embodiment of everything wrong that could be spread from one person to another, the killer of mortals, the slow death of wasting away, and the fast death of bleeding through every hole.

And as she leaped, Jesus’s fear of her faded away. It was replaced by something hotter, something darker. An anger the likes of which he had never felt before suffused him, running through his veins and demanding action. It was no longer anger, or even fury. It was rage. It was wrath and ruin and all the pain that he had suffered fed to the fire, and the fire was eager for more.

He roared with all the force that the power coursing through him allowed, and as he did, he cut with a strength that forced Pestilence back. She screamed, covering her face, his claws leaving lines down her cheeks, her neck, and over her chest –

And through reality itself.

For a split-second, he saw red skies, dark rock, and a yellow on the horizon that had no place on the Begotten. It flared with danger and horror, but it was better than staying here. Even with Pestilence on the back foot, he knew that wasn’t enough. They had to run.

He grabbed hold of Michaela as the hole in reality pulled at them, and let himself fall through. It closed behind them, and what lay below – Hell itself – trembled and rocked.

#

Dusk Von Doom held tight to the confident expression of victory on his face. So long as the Reaper was there, that confidence had to be obvious, had to be right there for the other cat to see, or all the power that he’d collected, all the plans that he’d laid, all the bluffs he’d put down, would be for nothing.

Because he was not out of this yet, and he knew that he had a long way to go to get free of Elysium.

[i]That bastard’s gone,[/i] he thought, imagining how Heaven would be fucked with God kicked up there. [i]And he won’t be able to stop me from getting loose. Darith is going to be so busy with my soul that I bet he won’t even think that I’m alive. Hell, I’m not even fucking alive anymore, so that doesn’t matter…[/i]

He wasn’t even upset about not being the Satan that had to run Hell. He’d been looking for a way to get out of it, anyway; if someone else wanted to take the role, then all that mattered to him was that they leave him the fuck alone and let him do what he wanted. So long as they didn’t make Hell that much worse and didn’t end the world, he was fine with that.

But…

That meant trusting that lion to not start a war with Heaven, and he didn’t know if he could trust Darith that far. He didn’t think that he could trust [i]any[/i] demon, except maybe Selene, that far.

He turned on his heel, looking around the immediate area. God had imprisoned him in Elysium, a piece of the realm of Sloth, well out of reach of the rest of Hell and with the power to put nearly anyone to sleep that came close. Even now, even with all that had happened, he was barely fighting that off, and the only reason that he still had that much strength was because there were other minds slowly waking up that the rest of the realm was putting back to sleep.

And the Reaper, and the Scythe. Those were all making it a little bit easier to keep sleep at bay, killing it before it could settle on him like a living thing. But even dead sleep was tiring, and he needed to escape before they could pull him under and make him sleep and dream once more.

But when he got loose…

That was where he would need some help. The realms of Hell would be hostile to him from now on. Darith would be crowning himself at any moment, and once he did, every demon loyal to the lion would be set against him. He had to make sure that he was ready to run as soon as he got loose. If he could get to the Hellspire, then there was a chance to make it back to the mortal world once more, and from there, he could start to get answers. All the black magic that he had learned, all the power that he had gained before getting Lucifer’s soul, could give him a boost. Not to mention his allies in the Hellspire and what he could do with the Scythe from there.

But that all relied on him getting loose, and that would be a task and a half, particularly as he could feel the world changing around him.

Dusk’s ears twitched as he heard mutters in the air, whispers that were half-spoken and half-thought. The land of Elysium was filled with many sleeping minds, and among them were demons of great power sleeping among the dead. What little he knew of Elysium suggested that they were descended directly from those Banished from Heaven, but even if they were generations removed, that was still more powerful than the average demon.

[i]For all the power I have, they’re going to be dangerous. Too many of them focusing on me, and it won’t matter how strong I am…[/i]

He’d just have to –

[i]Waking…

Waking…

Too much thought…

Too much sound…

Too loud…

Sleep…

Sleep…

SLEEP![/i]

A wave of pressure pushed down on his mind, warm and smothering and yet with the weight of a hundred minds behind it. Dusk stumbled backward, sinking the butt of the Scythe against the ground as he called it to him again. It cut the worst of the pressure, diverting some of the sleep magic around to either side of him, but his eyes were heavy and his thoughts dozy, distracted.

“Nnngh…”

[i]Sleep – sleep – sleep –[/i]

The demons all about him were calling for him to fall back into slumber, and only pure stubbornness kept him out of it. He felt like a kitten resisting a parent’s call to go to bed, but it was enough, and he embraced it with all the spite of every child that had ever been forced to sleep before it was ready. He gripped the long Scythe as tightly as he could, forcing himself to stay on his feet.

The Reaper was gone, disappeared, likely fucking off to somewhere safer once Dusk took his eyes off of him. The asshole would come back later, he had no doubt; that was a battle not yet won.

Before he could think of how to fight back, the world shook around him. The floor cracked, and he fell, dragged further into the sleepy depths of Elysium. Dusk screamed bloody murder as he dropped into oblivion, the realm of dream pulling him back into darkness. And yet, as he fell, Hell trembled, and he told himself that it was in fear of him.

[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]

Summary: A great many things happen all at once, and many people get angry.

Tags: No Sex, Fighting, Reality Shift, Angry Gods, Falling Cats, Yandere, Obsession, Series,