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The Devil May Care

Part 45

for DuskCypher

by Draconicon

In the palace of the Lord Almighty, among the pillars of marble and cloud, in the house of the golden sun and where the light dwelled, something was breaking. In the Room of Seals, embedded in the wall for safekeeping until the time where it would be needed, were the Seven Seals of the End-Times, and of them, the third was cracked, and the crack was widening. Within it, deep within it, a power stirred that was greater than anything save for the King of Heaven, the power of the Almighty itself, and it was angry at its imprisonment.

It pushed at the crack, as it had done for days upon days, nudging, grinding, pushing to try and get free. The power within knew that it was close to gaining its freedom, and knew that it would be let loose to do its purpose as soon as it could crack its way free. It pushed again, feeling the prison around its body shifting, changing, breaking.

Again. It would be free, and it would do its duty. It would spread its grip across the world, touching all those that stood in its way.

It was Pestilence, Famine, a power of destruction and death that would ravage the world as it had been made to do, to bring those that did not have faith to that which they would believe in again. It would be the one that broke those that had turned away. It would -

Another crack, this one wider than the last, just wide enough for it to get a hint of its own aura through and start pulling at the rest of the little shatterpoints that ran through its prison. The Seal bent, twisted...and finally, it broke.

The crack of the Third Seal coming apart echoed through the holy realm, and of course, there would be some that would feel it throughout the various parts of reality. The Seals were meant to be closed until the End-Times, after all, and they...they...

Pestilence stood, forming itself once more, taking on substance to create something that could be seen, some form that could talk and interact with the world around it. The power of the Third Horseman seized hold of the clouds and stone around it, and bit by bit, a body was created. A striped figure, equine in shape, one that stood on two legs and yet was more than capable of running down the fastest of other creatures. She touched herself up, green stripes rather than white and black, and she made sure that she looked proper for her role. Half-rotted in the arms and shoulders, looking like she was wasted away in the stomach and middle, shivering and panting, huffing and gasping like someone on its last legs. That was what Famine was, what Pestilence was. Hunger, desperation, and more.

She had finally put her body together when the door to the Room of Seals finally opened. A tiger stepped inside, one that loomed a little taller than she expected, and who had the gut of someone that had been sitting on his ass for a little too long. She knew that it was God without asking, and she slowly smiled.

"Lord Almighty."

The green zebra slowly bowed her head, lowering herself until her spine cracked and her ribs creaked, several pointed bones almost ripping through her flesh in that movement. There was something to that which should have been painful, but to her, it was only the bliss of being corporeal again. Too long sealed, too long held back in that little pocket realm where nothing happened, where nothing could be felt, where everything was nothing and nothing was everything.

She was free now. She was grateful for anything.

"The time has...not come, has it?" she asked, realizing that the other Horsemen had yet to appear. "Where are the others?"

"Yet to be released," God said, brushing a few flecks of cloud dust off his sleeves and shaking his head. "Their time will come."

"You have released me...out of order."

"I have allowed you to be released. There is a difference, Horseman."

"...What are your plans, Almighty?" she asked, a slow smile growing on her face.

"...Already hungry, are you?"

"I am ever hungry. This is just one more hunger..."

"I'm not surprised."

God shook his head, almost in disapproval, but she did not mind. She had been locked away for a time, and though she had been one of those that had been bound to the End-Times, her power locked to the rules of the great treaties and the rules of existence, she did not mind playing with loopholes. Disease did not respect the natural laws of things, so she saw no reason why she should not behave the same.

As God gestured for her to follow, she fell in line behind the tiger, rather curious what she would see. Heaven seemed the same as it always had, bereft of the bacteria and more that she had power over, but there was something different to the feel of the realm, almost as if some great rot had settled into the core, as if the realm's own immunity to pain and suffering had been dealt a massive blow.

If she knew what it was, she might have seen if she could exploit it. As it was, she was still in the presence of the one being in the universe that was stronger than her, and she lacked her greatest powers just yet. She would wait until there was a better time, until there was a moment where she could take power the way that she wanted. The world waited for her and the other Horsemen, after all. They were to punish the mortals, to rain down pain and suffering on believers and non-believers alike. Much of the world was to die, and they were to bring that population to judgment, eventually.

Of course, that was the plan, but if she was loose before the rest of the Horsemen, then that meant that the plan had loopholes, and she could exploit that as much as God could. She just needed to know what the situation was.

He led her to the Rooms of Seeing, opening several portals to allow her to gaze down on the world below. She saw that the world had changed, that there were buildings of great size, that there were swamps and swarms of pollution, that there were graveyards that rivaled the mass graves that she had helped create in the old times with her powers of disease. The mortals had moved forward, but she could see more than that. She could see the great flus, the mega-bugs that they had created, the plagues that they were just waiting to unleash, the famines that were just waiting to occur.

They had primed the switches. All she had to do was flip them.

As she salivated over the possibilities, God reached out and changed the view. He turned it until she knew that they were looking further into the past rather than the present, leaving them staring at something that was falling from Heaven. She cocked her head to the side, and then looked to him.

"Was the Fall so recent?" she asked.

"This wasn't his fall, but theirs."

"What happened?"

"An angel turned against me. An Archangel."

"A second Lucifer? Almighty, Almighty, you are losing your touch."

"Silence, Horseman."

She smiled. It was a sore point, it seemed, and one that meant that she could use it against him if she really needed to make the Almighty mad. Knowing the sensitive points of your potential enemies was just as important as knowing the weak points, and she had always been good at ferreting those out.

"As you say, Almighty."

"My general, Michaela, turned against me, and she turned my son against me in turn. They are both down on the world below."

"My, my, my. Lost lambs, it seems."

"You are going to find them."

"Oh, really, now?" She smiled. "And what makes you think that I will do any such thing?"

"Do you know what is bound to happen to you when the End-Times are over?"

The green zebra narrowed her eyes. That particular piece of information had been hidden from all the Horsemen, never told to them even after they were bound to the Seals. She cocked her head to the side, and God smiled.

"You are to be destroyed. All of you. Ripped apart and then thrown to the ether, your power dispelled and dispersed. You will never come together again, save for at the summons of myself or one of the Archangels."

"..."

"However, that is a fate that I can spare you from, if you do me this task."

"...You want your son and the angel returned, then?"

"I want my son returned. The angels may be destroyed."

"Angels?"

"Michaela led a rebellion. A much more...successful one than Lucifer did, mostly because I wasn't present to deal with it. And now, they are hiding in the world below. I want them found, and I want them destroyed. A message must be sent."

A message. That was something that she could get behind, and she knew that God was willing to see the bodies hit the floor for this particular offense. She groaned, feeling her stomach pulling at her inners again, and the sensation reminded her that she was ever so corporeal now, subject to pain and suffering and misery just like the mortals that she was due to punish. She sucked in a breath, but that didn't take the smile from her face. There was almost a sense of pleasure in the pain, a wanting feeling in the emptiness.

"I can do that. I will do that."

"I knew you would. Take care of it, and ensure that they learn."

"And the mortals?"

"Not yet. I'm not ready for that. But if there happens to be mild collateral damage, that will be forgiven."

She smiled. Not even God could forgive her for all the murders that were soon to come. Then again, he hadn't forgiven anyone. Not really. Not in a very, very long time, if the population of Heaven could be believed. Even for the rebellion that had happened, there was no growth, nothing in the upper world. That meant that he was still as picky and stingy about those that got through the pearly gates as ever.

And that meant that all those that died would likely be going straight to Purgatory or to Hell. That was fine with her. She had no illusions about being able to stay in Heaven when this was all done. The more the merrier, down there.

"Fine. It will be done," she said. "How should I find them, Almighty?"

"You'll start in the center, and work your way out."

"And my ride?"

"Your former mount wouldn't be suitable. Not anymore. Instead, we have something...different for you."

"How different?"

"Different enough that you will never want to go back."

God watched as the green-striped zebra hid herself in leathers, putting on a helmet as she roared out of Heaven on the back of a motorcycle. He watched as she fell through the clouds, as insane as he had ever seen, and descended to the world of mortals. It was all for the best that she was out of Heaven. He had forgotten how much the Horsemen irritated him, and how much they loved to take their power for granted.

Even so, he let out a slight hiss of relief. For all that he hated their arrogance, he had to admit that they had reason to be so. He had forgotten the sheer power that they wielded, and just how much they could do against him if they ever believed that they could survive rebelling against his power. It was to his best interests that he never let them start pursuing that line of thought, and he made a mental note to keep them all very, very happy in his service to keep that from ever happening.

Shaking his head, he moved from the Room of Seeing to a different room, a very private room. He would have gone to the clouds where he had spoken to Sloth before, but he knew better than to try that now. Ever since his few conversations to the realms below, there had been angels that were curious what he was doing off on his lonesome. There were those that were desperate to prove their loyalty trying to suck up to him, trying to find him in every private place he had, and they were starting to get on his nerves. He needed somewhere where they wouldn't walk in on him during the wrong moment, when he had a chance to speak with no chance of being overheard.

So, he stepped into the Room of the Sun.

This room was a chamber that had been built for the glory of the light, when he had been going through his phase of putting one-up on the old sun cult of Egypt. He had wanted them punished for believing in Ra rather than believing in him, and he had taken this place to show them just how much more powerful he was. It had been quite the thing during the time of the 10 plagues, but he hadn't used it since then, mostly because it was bright and hurt his eyes.

It was also a place that nobody really wanted to visit for the fact that it was always filled with whispers. After all, the sun reached everywhere, and where the sun reached, the sun heard. He could hear anything in the world from here, if he knew what to listen for, if he knew what to pick out. The only reason he had not found Jesus and Michaela from this room was because they knew what not to say, what not to bring up. If they ever said the words that would catch his attention, then he would know right where they were...

But that was not the point of the room right then. The point of the room, rather, was that anyplace that he could listen in on, he could also speak to. The sun would carry his words down, and while it would be quiet, possibly slightly distorted, it would be sufficient for the agents in Sloth to know what to do. He leaned in to the sun, whispering.

He could almost feel the perking up happening in Sloth. Those that were obedient to him there knew to never ignore the voice of their lord and master. They would have paid dearly if they had.

"Come to me...come to me..."

They turned, and he could feel them, almost see them, their shadowy forms stirring from the endless slumber of Sloth. They were barely there, barely awake, but that was more than they would be even for the ruler of the dark throne down below. They were there for him, loyal to him, desperate for him. They needed the forgiveness that only he could offer, the chance to rise that only he could provide.

All lies, of course, but they were too desperate to know that. They wanted what he had to give, and they would take it without asking questions. Such was the way of the desperate before the powerful.

"Listen to me. Listen to me and fulfill my tasks. It is almost time."

"Mmmmph...mmmmph...mmmph..."

They did not speak, and would not, not easily. They listened, instead, and that was what he wished for.

"Send a message to Darith. Give him the truth of what happened with Dusk, and the meeting between him and Lucifer. Tell the great demon what it means that Dusk failed to fulfill his bargain, and how it gives him a chance."

"Yes...yes..."

"And then, send our agent. Send someone to collect him. Just in Wrath, so near to Wrath, when the betrayal happens."

"Yes...yes..."

"Do it, succeed, and you will be forgiven."

And that was all that he needed to say. God cut the line of speech, listening to the whispers of those in Sloth for a short time before stepping out of the Room of the Sun.

It is set.

The tiger was, for the first time in far too long, content. The pieces were arranged. Mercy might have been taken off the board, but God had many pieces besides merely his daughter, including pieces that Dusk didn't know were on his side of the board. God had the white pieces of this chess set, but that didn't mean that some of the black pieces wouldn't bow to his will, as well.

Pride...you always were an easily manipulated vice...

It was Pride that had led to Lucifer's fall. Pride and Lust, he supposed, but mostly Pride. Pride that he believed that he could challenge the great plan. Pride that he believed that he could get away with boinking God's son. Pride that he believed that the various sins would always be forgiven, and that he would merely have to take humiliation as punishment from time to time. That had been the Archangel's sin, and so too had it been the sin of anyone that poked their head up too high.

God had always been the supreme being, and he would smite down anyone that believed otherwise. The world of mortals needed to learn just how little room they had to rise. He had put this all together, and this? This was his stage to enjoy, his sandbox to play with. There was nothing here for ambitious mortals, nothing for them to gain. They would finally bow, or they would...

Well, he had other Horsemen that he could unleash, and they would kill for as long as he allowed. That was all there was to it.

A fine game, Dusk, but you are running out of time, and running out of pieces, he thought. There was a bit of fun here, but it's time for the game to end.

Deep down in the realm of Pride, Darith Sertus was gathering his pieces together. The various alliances that he had made, the little strings of influence that he was gradually threading through the different realms, were starting to come together. Envy had been the first, but it was far from the last. The lion smiled as he drew circles on the arm of his throne, for once feeling confident of his end-game.

"Gluttony...Envy...Greed..."

Three realms in addition to his own. Two were all but his, and in the third, the Guild leaders were becoming increasingly stymied by the new industries that they were being forced to incorporate into their businesses. They didn't like the power that the lower-ranking demons were getting, nor the freedom of the market that was allowing newcomers to start building their own Guilds to challenge the established ones. The very idea of that hierarchy being invaded, challenged, had brought them to his side without even a mutter of protest.

They would still need incentives to stay on his side, of course, but that was hardly something that he needed to worry about. Pride had all that they needed, and he could find ways of linking the world below to the world above. There were Hellgates in the various realms, and the Gluttony demons would be all too happy to allow him to use old Diel's former link to the world above. After all, it wasn't destroyed, merely buried, and that was a link that the Greed demons had been wanting for a very, very long time.

Gluttony was bound to him through the insult to their Pride, and the hate that they bore for Dusk. Envy was bound to him for the need to have Pride, and the constant feeling of victimhood that they perpetuated on themselves. Greed was slowly becoming bound to him by the need to maintain what they had, to not lose what they had Pride in.

Through all three, he had found a common thread that he could play with, and like kittens with yarn, he had snared their threads, pulling it into his own.

It had been almost too easy, particularly with the opportunities that had opened up with Dusk's various actions. There had been frustrations, stymied moments, but Darith had always been a canny one, and Dusk's lack of interest in taking a more firm hand had led him to being able to do this.

I just need a little more...

Against someone with the power of Lucifer and the seven sins, overwhelming force was all but required. Without that, without the advantage of either numbers or strength, strategy would be pushed to its limits. He could possibly make it happen, but without something to turn others to his side, without something to shift some of Dusk's weaker allies to the side, then he would be hard-pressed to manage things afterward. To win a kingdom only to be faced with rebellion immediately afterward meant losing it, more than likely.

He needed just one little thing, something to twist the arms of those that were still on the fence or only reluctantly with Dusk. With that, he could make a move. With that -

"Lord Sertus. There is a messenger at the door."

The gray-maned lion looked up, cocking his head to the side at the younger lion kneeling before him. He nodded slowly.

"Allow him in."

"He is from...Sloth, sir."

"Then send him in sooner."

From Sloth? That was rare, and certainly not something that he had expected. Though Hell was of seven realms, each constituting one of the sins, it was almost more common to think of the more active six. Envy, Wrath, Lust, Greed, Gluttony, and of course, Pride, were the ones always doing things, always politicking, always trying to find something that would give them an advantage over the others. Sloth was just...there, and whenever it did something, anything at all, it was somewhat remarkable that they had stirred themselves to do it. Even sending a messenger, regardless of the message, was out of the normal for them.

The lion withdrew, only for a cloaked, shaded figure to amble in, stiff and hardly moving with much in the way of intent. He fell to his knees, if indeed he was a he, and lowered its head to the ground.

"Lord Sertus..."

There was a hiss, a soft sort of rumble in the voice, as if it was on the verge of falling asleep. The head of the house nodded.

"I am he. What message do you bring?"

"A message...of Dusk Von Doom...and Lucifer..."

The Sloth demon obviously struggled to speak quickly, but Darith had always prided himself on his patience, and he used that now, listening to the demon rather than hurrying it along. The results were just as potent as he could have wished for.

"The once-mortal...had offered his soul to Lucifer...He offered it for pleasure..."

"Yes. As many have done with the Lust demons."

"He offered his soul, but it was not taken..."

"...What do you mean?"

"It was...a trade...but not the trade...originally bargained."

Darith's lips slowly pulled back in a slow smile. Already, there was an opening there. Every demon in Hell, no matter how great or small, took obligations and contracts very seriously. Any breach, no matter how slight, was something that could be brought before the courts of Hell to adjudicate, and that was if someone didn't end up dead before they reached the courtroom. If Dusk had done something too large to immediately cover up - and he had every reason to believe that the feline did not have the skills to cover up something like that - then the contract could pull him down, hard.

"What was the deal, and what was his trade?" Darith asked.

"He offered his soul...for a night of pleasure. Such was the deal made with...with Lucifer," the Sloth demon said, stiltingly and with many yawns. "But instead...it was a trade of soul...for soul...He pulled Lucifer's free, and gave his own..."

"But he is still mortal. Or part mortal."

"The power of your daughter...Selene...the once-concubine of Lucifer -"

"Do not remind me of that." He gripped the edges of his throne tightly. "Do not remind me of that. It was a mistake, and it will not be spoken of again."

"As you...wish...my lord..."

"Continue."

"She found the...soul of Von Doom...on the suffering Lucifer...and she plucked it from him. Dusk...now has his soul...never given for that night...A soul is still due...and the contract must be...fulfilled."

"You have brought me much to consider, demon of Sloth. You will rest here for the night?"

"If it is...allowed by the lord...of the house."

"It is. Take yourself to sleep."

Darith waved the visitor away, losing himself in a wave of excitement that was so strong that he had almost forgotten what it was to feel like this. The idea that Dusk had made such a basic mistake in the past, that he had been so unaware of the power of small print among demons, was something that was almost unbelievable. Yet, at the same time, he could entirely believe that a mortal would be too cocky, that they would think that someone would be unable to notice that they had done something wrong. Oh, this was brilliant. This was beyond brilliant.

The gray-maned lion smiled wider than he had smiled in years as he reclined back in his throne, already imagining what he could do. The contract...he would need to find some sort of physical form, or a proper witness, but he could make that work. If nothing else, the proclamation of a contract that had not been fulfilled when Dusk was basing his new empire on various contracts would throw doubt on the feline. If nothing else, that doubt would give him room to work, to show that he had always, always followed through on contracts, even ones that had hurt him, and show his record against Dusk's.

The power of demons would prevail. This mortal, no matter how demonic he had become, would lose his power, and the realms of Hell would settle back into proper demon rulership.

And in the background, Lilith watched, and worried.

In another dimension, far from Hell, Heaven, and the mortal world, lay a frozen shoggoth. The phone still clenched in its tentacles, the ice still firm around it, it felt its irritation growing by the minute as the call continued to struggle to go through. It had been how long now? It no longer knew, but there was still that horrible feeling of being stuck there, doing nothing when it could be doing something.

The ice was no longer quite thick enough to completely restrict its movements, but the shoggoth couldn't easily speak. Its mouthparts, summoned up and then cracked from the long-term deep freeze, had needed to be replaced three times with fresh mouths from the bubbling mess of goo that formed the center of its body. It grumbled every time that it did it, and grumbled worse when it had to do the same with its frozen eyes. The ones that had popped from the liquid within breaking the surface tension of the eyeball itself was something beyond messy, and it only had so many eyeballs, after all. There wasn't an unlimited supply in its organ sac in the middle of its goo body.

Days. That was it. Days in the ice, days in hibernation off and on, and days of utter boredom. The shoggoth twitched its body, cracking the ice in the middle in order to bring its ice-head down on the desk. More cracks broke through it, and a burbled word slipped through the cracks in the ice. Then another, and another, forming a sentence that got longer with each slamming crack against the desk.

"Why -"

"Won't -"

"This -"

"Call -"

"Go -"

"Through?!"

Each word was interrupted by a hard smack right to the top of the desk, followed by a groan of frustration that was just getting louder and louder. The ice reformed as soon as it stopped banging its head against the desk, sealing it into an even more awkward position. If it had had a skeleton, then the shoggoth would have been having a bit of a problem with positioning at that moment, but its mostly liquid body could handle the different pose well enough. Well enough, that was, provided frostbite didn't settle in any further.

The shoggoth made the decision that, if it lived through this, it was going to apply to be something better than a janitor. It knew the filing system well enough by now that it could probably suffice as a paralegal if it had a translator. More to the point, surely Cthulhu would be more than willing to have assistants that were able to eat the more bothersome clients. It would cut down on the problematic ones, and the shoggoth was happy to go after any residual cultists that that cat had missed the first time around.

It made the decision to do just that, as soon as the phone actually connected to the number it was calling. No more phone calls for it. No more drudge duty, no more -

The cold was settling in again, and it knew that more crashing and bashing would be necessary. It sighed, bloated itself, and started banging its head against the desk again. It deserved a bigger paycheck for this bullshit.

Selene was relaxing, as much as a Pride demon could relax in the realms of Greed. There were many little problems, many little discomforts that came to one of her status in this realm, ranging from the low-class goods that were being advertised as high-class, and the way that the Greed demons tried to judge others for status based on the sheer number of possessions that they had. The clutter, the mess, and the general discombobulation that came with the realm made her uncomfortable just being there, and it meant that she had latched onto Balthus with a will, holding tight to the Lust demon and using him over and over again to keep herself distracted from everything else that was going on.

She had just finished another round with him, slowly dismounting the rabbit's shaft and dabbing the mess away from her sex, when there was a soft ring, ring, ring from the side of her bed. The telephones that Dusk had ordered installed had started replacing the various magic mirrors that were placed throughout the hotel, and it was one of the various differences that she actually approved of. The convenience of calling had something more classy to it than the random opening of a portal through reality, though it was definitely less dramatic.

"Stay," she told Balthus, patting his belly as she sat down on the side of the bed. She pulled the phone to her ear. "Hello?"

"Darling, it's your mother. We might have a little situation with your father."

"Haven't we always?"

"Yes, hon, but compared to what he's plotting now, it makes everything he did before look like a vanilla prom date compared to a thirteen-man gangbang."

"Pretty sure that there's a fourteenth woman in there, just waiting for all that..."

"You know me too well, dear, but I'm not involved in this plan."

"I'd hope not, mother. Not after everything that he's done."

"Dear, honey, please listen to mommy. I'm a little busy at the moment, but I wanted to inform you before I get dragged off to another function. One of Ornar's associates is opening a portal for me in a few minutes, and I don't want to be late to the party."

Despite herself, Selene smiled a little bit. The happiness in her mother's voice was something that she hadn't heard for the entire time that she had been locked up with Lucifer, and while it had softened slightly during the initial shift in Hell after the former Satan's death, it had never been this happy. The fact that the various realms were starting to tighten up, to come together, to be willing to work together, had never been so proven as in that moment for her. To hear her mother happy, and to know that she had helped push the man that was making this happen? That made her feel proper Pride.

"Alright, alright. What is it?"

"Darith found out about what you did."

"What I did?"

"With Dusk's soul? Darling, come now, you're smarter than this."

"...Apparently not." She groaned, rubbing his head. "Alright. So, father has a plan. Do we know when he's going to spring it?"

"Wrath, dear. He's planning a big display."

"Thank you, mom."

"No problem, darling. Now, gotta go. Mommy's hungry for some cock tonight."

"Have fun."

They hung up, and she rubbed her head. For all that she knew for a fact that it had been a vain hope that her father would give up all the stupidity that he was pursuing, she had still hoped nonetheless. It looked like she was going to have to start taking steps, and hope that she was good enough to handle this.

"Balthus?"

"Mmmm?" the rabbit groaned happily.

"Go to Dusk. Tell him that there's going to be an attempt on him later. In Wrath."

"Mmmm...okay..."

"...On second thought, wait until your afterglow is done, then go tell him."

"You got it...mmmm..."

The End

Summary: A whole lot of shit happens at once, what with the Third Seal breaking and Darith finding out about the initial contract with Dusk's soul and everything else. Looks like things are moving to a head.

Tags: M/F, Off-Screen Sex, Nudity, Creampie, Lioness, Rabbit, Lion, Tiger, Horse, Equine, Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Uh-Oh, Modern Fantasy, Heaven, Hell, Shoggoth, Series, Manipulation, Magic,