The Cave

"So - and, forgive me for my limited knowledge but, when you're summoned... do you... magically appear to the person who called you?" he asked, trying to speak as gently as possible, and feeling slightly ashamed that he knew hardly anything of what Maahes was talking about. But for Maahes, he was going to try to understand. "I'm really unfamiliar with the concept, I'm... I'm sorry."

Something, he realized, was decidedly off. This was not the devil he'd expected nor the one he knew. Of course, Lucifer was a renowned con man, but this...his instincts didn't warn him against whoever this was. There wasn't malice. There wasn't vindictiveness.

There were, however, tears, and that's what truly confused the assassin - he killed people for a living with little remorse but somehow seeing the harm he'd just done made him feel guilty. He'd never been a cruel man by nature, ironically enough. He'd just survived the only way he knew how: killing.

"Ach, devil, who are you truly?" he asked, still in German, baffled.

~

She continued watching the glass figure and the others for several more moments before unassumingly slipping past them towards the hole in the wall.

Adeline's eyes widened at his descriptions.
"Mine- craftia?," she tested the word in her mouth, "it sounds splendid. Flying? Dragons? How does that work?"
She pulled her knees to her chest, preparing herself for a fantastic story.

"I do," Maahes confirmed. "They create a pentacle to summon me, and then I appear when they say the right words. They give me a charge, and I have to follow through with it. There can be many parts, or it can be just one. My last charge was to kill someone, which is probably one of the more simple ones I've gotten in the past."


When he heard Kratzer speaking to him, he frantically wiped away the last of the tears and turned around to face him. "I'm Lucifer," he said. "I'm the god that everyone hates, even more than all the others."


"Well," Kartiel said after thinking for a moment, "first you'd have to get the dragon's trust, Harry Potter style. Once you show them respect, they'll let you get on their back. It helped that my dad's dragon knew me from when I was a baby. Once I was old enough to hold on and not get distracted, I could go on my dad's dragon."

He shakes his head, getting more confused by the moment. "You don't look like him, you don't smell like him, and you sure as h*** aren't acting like him."

She nodded, not knowing what 'Harry Potter style' was.

"And what did these dragons look like?" She smiled, "sorry if I'm asking too many questions. Your world sounds beautiful."

And, more importantly, it distracted her from all the memories of her home that had been spoiled by its invaders.

"I'm Lucifer," he insisted. He crossed his arms and thought for a moment, studying the man in front of him. There was a simple answer to this, but he just wasn't sure how possible it was. It hadn't happened before, had it? Then again, he was dealing with a different sort of religion than previous ones had in the past. Monotheism made things easier to pinpoint than polytheism. "Maybe you're thinking of a different Lucifer? There could maybe be one that the religion was based off of..."


"Don't worry about it," Kartiel said, dismissing the apology with a wave of his hand. "It's...It's kind of nice talking about it. I haven't gotten to talk to someone about it in years. The dragons back home are beautiful. They've got long, slender bodies covered in beautiful black scales. And their eyes are this stunning shade of violet. I've never seen anything like it, especially on Earth."

He bit his lower lip unconsciously, a habitual act of contemplation that he'd developed when he was still human and his canines weren't sharp enough to cut him. It would explain things, but...more than one deity with the same name, that actually existed? He'd seen weird things but that was just beyond bizarre. Of course, there was a talking fox and hound so who could say?

"If that's the case then it seems I owe you an apology," he says with a dip of his head, still preferring his mother tongue over English since Lucifer understood it well enough.

"Hmm.." she made an appreciative noise in her throat, trying to picture them.

"Earth? Is that where this is?" She felt as if she had heard the word mentioned before. Where, she wasn't sure.

She pressed a hand to her chest, making sure that her heart was still beating. She wasn't sure why, but it had started stopping for periods of time recently.

"And once you're done finishing your charge, are you sent back home?" he asked.

"It's alright!" Lucifer hurriedly said. "It was just a big misunderstanding, that's all. I just never thought there would be another one of me. Does that mean there's another one of God, too?"


Kartiel looked around the cave and thought for a moment. "I think so," he said, "but there's so many people here that don't fit what I know about Earth. I'm starting to suspect that we're somewhere else."


"Sometimes." Maahes shifted uncomfortably, looking over at James and meeting his gaze. "It depends on the specifics of the charge. Most of the time, I would need my summoner to use a specific spell of dismissal. But my last two charges have been...different. The end goal was something that outlived my summoner, so the only way I can get back home is by doing exactly what I was told to."

He gave a grim smile. "Not that I mind it. I'd personally be very happy to finish this charge, just as I was to finish the last."

"Let's go check," Jaron whispered in Kendrik's ear. The hound glanced at Reyes, who'd been strangely quiet. Shy? Ran out of things to say? It didn't matter; he'd follow them, Kendrik reasoned. And so, the fox and the hound, hand in hand, walked around the boulders and up the beach, gradually seeing more and more of a scene that caused Kendrik's fur to rise and his ears to twitch.

At the edge of the beach, they saw the remains of a town.

It was barely large enough to qualify as a town; there were a half-dozen buildings stretching along a road, held up inches from the ground by wooden posts, and a few others carved into the rock of the surrounding cave. At least, Kendrik was pretty sure it had once been a road. It was now just a giant groove in the earth, one that had knocked a couple buildings onto their sides. Others had lost their roofs or random walls. Boulders had been scattered everywhere, sometimes inside those buildings.

And over their heads, a worn green banner fluttered over their heads. Kendrik looked at the strange symbols and wondered what they could possibly mean.

H E ' S C O M I N G

"I hope not, one is enough," Kratzer replies, still wary but beginning to come around. As he speaks, he glances up the beach as he sees movement and his eyes widen when he notices the masked woman approaching them.

Adeline nodded and stared at the cave wall. Finally, she stood up, wobbling a little in the boots, and crouched next to the small, dark cavern entrance she had seen earlier.

"I really need to find something to recharge myself, if you don't mind." She peered into the entrance. She guessed that it was probably a tunnel, as far as she could tell.

He had already let Kendrik know the truth about his regenerative abilities, so there was no harm in letting him also learn of his ability to create a weapon. He summoned the chain-sickle he had created back on the canoe in preparation for whatever they would discover in what must have once been a town.

"He's coming," Reyes read, staring up at the banner. "Now that's ominous."


Lucifer's face lit up. "I bet there is another God, then! He's going to get a kick out of that when I tell him-"

He paused, noticing the masked woman approaching them. Something about her didn't feel right. He couldn't quite explain why, but he was certain that he didn't want to get on her bad side.


Kartiel joined her. "What do you need?" he questioned. "I've already been down to the beach that's oddly underneath this cave. Maybe I can help you find what you're looking for."