Young Writers Society

The McDonald's had a few tables scattered around on the premises, and Lucifer managed to find a good one underneath an old tree. The table was covered by the tree's shadows, but it seemed like a pleasant place to eat. Apophis grabbed some of the food Lucifer had gotten for the two of them, and quickly helped him bring it over to the table.

"What should we start with?" Apophis said, unwrapping his burger and taking a large bit out of it.


"Oh, you have no idea," God replied, lips curling up into a smile. He could reveal who he was and the fact that he was immortal right now, but where was the fun in that? This woman to play games with him. He'd happily comply.


"So, uh," Runi said, sheepishly rubbing the back of her neck, "where exactly are we? I feel rude for asking, but you never mentioned any sort of kingdom, soooo...." She let out a sigh. "I honestly have no idea where we could possibly be right now."

"How about we establish how in the world you got here?" Lucifer suggests.

~<**>~

"Good," she said, her smile widening. "I love to play first."

That was when she struck. Her form shifted as she lunged forward into that of a serpent made of coalesced shadows, and the only fully corporeal part of her were here eyes and teeth. Her open maw revealed rows of boa teeth, with a viper's fangs towards the front and rear, boomslang-type fangs in the back. She was a mix of every deadly and terrifying snake thrown into one.

Kratzer fell back and let her take on Dean herself; he wasn't entirely mortal, but he wasn't unkillable, either.

~<**>~

"Uhm...well, we're in Hell, which I only started ruling as of less than twenty-four hours ago, which would by why I never mentioned it," he explained. "I, uh, was also not clear on my heritage at the time. So it never really came up."

"We were having a movie night," Lucifer quietly said. He reached into the little cardboard box in front of him and pulled out a chicken nugget. "We were all ready to watch the movie we had picked out, but we had forgotten the popcorn in the kitchen. I-I tried to use a spell to get it, but I got distracted by Apophis' baby snakes and messed up on it..."


"Ooh," God said, holding up his arm and letting the woman - who was now a snake - bite into it. It definitely hurt, but it wasn't the worst pain he had been through before. "A snake. Haven't seen one like that in awhile, and especially not on a job." This wasn't officially a job, technically, but it felt like one.


"Oh, cool," Runi nonchalantly said. Then the words sunk in, and her jaw dropped for a second time. "Wait, Hell. You're in charge of that place!? Wait - again - does that mean we're in Hell right now?"

He nodded slowly, unsure how this could happen; magic just worked differently. That was the only explanation.



She disengaged and raised herself up again for a second strike.



Cornyx nodded. "Yes, and yes."

Lucifer misunderstood his counterpart's reaction, and ducked his head down in embarrassment and shame in response. "I know it was a big mistake to make," he said, voice trembling as he thought about how much trouble he had gotten himself and, more importantly, his closest friends into. "I-I should have been more careful."

Apophis finished taking a slurp of his coke.

"Luci, it's not your fault-"

"It is," Lucifer said. He took a solemn bite out of another chicken nugget. "I cast the spell that brought us here. Now you and me are eating McDonald's with our counterparts from another reality, and God's trying to deal with the new king of hell."

"So that's where he went," Apophis muttered.

"And, most importantly," Lucifer said, resting his head on the table, "I ruined our movie night! God's not going to have another free night like there for at least a week, and he was really excited for it. And I had to go and ruin it."


"You're not even going to give me a reply before attacking?" God asked. He raised his bat up to block an attack from his front, though he was sure she was going to try to go from another angle instead. That was fine. Tiring her out was the goal - once she was too distracted by her exhaustion, he'd easily win.

"You sure are rude," he concluded.


Runi finally closed her jaw. A smile began to spread from one ear to the other, though her expression quickly grew serious when she realized the implications of Cornyx suddenly becoming the ruler of Hell.

"So, er, your dad would have died, wouldn't he?" she hesitantly asked. Gosh, this was getting awkward. Not only did she suddenly barge in on his life, but she barged in on it right after the death of a loved one. "Do you want a hug, or would that be invading in your personal space too much?"

Lucifer shook his head hurriedly. "No, it's not that - everyone makes mistakes, goodness knows I have, I was just...how does magic work in your world, exactly? Does it require an incantation?"



She didn't respond as she began to sway, calculating her next strike. Kratzer attacked from behind, lunging forward with a few swift slashes.



The temperature dropped right about then. There wasn't ice, but the chill was definitely noticeable.

"Uh...it's fine, I appreciate the sympathy, but...we didn't have a great relationship, to say the least," he said with a bit of an awkward laugh.

Lucifer shook his head. "Not all of the time. It just depends on the person." He raised his head up and hesitantly looked at his counterpart. "I have to use incantations for most of my magic, but there's people like Apophis who have more elemental magic."

Apophis took another sip of his coke.

"I have darkness magic," he said, "since I'm supposed to be Ra's counterpart. At least, that's what we guess. None of us know why we were given the magic that we have."


He let Kratzer cut into him. It hurt, but pain like that was nothing after having been around for as long as he had. He could deal with a scratch or two; his body was already working to fix the damage caused by the attacks from both Engel and the woman he worked for. If they were paying close enough attention to his injuries, they would have likely noticed that his wounds weren't sticking around.

He feigned a yawn. "Is that really the best that the two of you can do? You're working with the king of Hell, after all - I would have expected something a little more unique."


Apparently, Cornyx's father was a sensitive topic. She could feel the cold slipping through the fabric of her clothing, chilling her skin and causing goosebumps to rise up all over. Even if he said that they didn't have a great relationship, it did seem like something about the guy's death was bothering him.

But she wasn't going to bug him about it. He'd tell her when he was ready, and she could wait until then - after all, it wasn't like she had anywhere that she needed to be in the near future. "Ah," she said. She took a nice big step back. "So what's it like being king of Hell? My knowledge on Hell is immediately trash thanks to, uh, my heritage-" She gestured at herself. "-so I honestly have no idea what being in charge would be like. Kings gets knights, right? Do you have knights? If you do, I've always wanted to try on a suit of armor and you could totally let me do that, right-"

She took a deep breath.

"Sorry," she apologized. "I'm rambling. But, in all seriousness, what's it like being the ruler of Hell?"

"Right," Lucifer nodded slowly. "Gotcha. That makes sense."



"Call it testing the waters," Boomslang chuckled. "Just to see what we're fighting. And it's not human, is it?"



"Well, I wish I could tell you, but it's been less than twenty four hours," he said with a small laugh. "So I don't have much of a frame of reference yet."

"King Blackthorne," a voice said from the doorway as a dark-haired demon poked his head in, frowning a little as he took in the scene.

"Yes, Ilrath?" he sighed, turning around and giving an apologetic look to Runi.

"Your Majesty, Levia-" he started before Cornyx cut him off.

"Did you kill her?" he inquired with a cold tone.

"No, sir."

"Did you get the information?" Cornyx asked, the chill in his voice dangerously monotone.

"No, sir."

"Then what, exactly, are you doing here? We need that and we need it soon or we're going to have issues. More accurately, you're going to have an issue, and that's not ending up in the Pits like Ajax did. So, go and get the information," Cornyx advised, his eyes returning to their full draconian form as he spoke the words. The demon hesitated.

"Now."

The demon bowed, mumbled a 'yes sir,' and quickly departed before things got unpleasant. Cornyx turned back to Runi. "Sorry about that, Miss Runi. Does answer your question, I suppose. About being king, not about knights - which, no, I don't have any, unfortunately."

Lucifer looked at his counterpart.

"What's magic like here?" he hesitantly asked, curiosity shining in his blue eyes. Then, after a moment passed, he hurriedly added, "You don't have to tell us if you don't want to! I just thought it would be a good thing to know..."


God gave a grin that stretched from one side of his face to the other.

"Bingo!" he said, snapping the fingers of his free hand. "It took you long enough to realize it. Was it after the first time you tried taking a chunk out of my flesh, or was it after Engel over here got all stabby?"

He waited a moment, then shrugged. "Not that it matters, really. I'm just glad we've gotten past the part where you think I'm human. Good old Cornyx met me when I was using the name Dean, but something tells me you might recognize me by another name." He held up his bat. "Does the name God ring any bells?"


She stared at the back of the other demon as he retreated out into the hallway, his fear clear to see as he hurried to whatever task that Cornyx was referring to. Runi didn't want to jump to any assumptions, but something about the scene she had just witnessed felt wrong. She got that ruling a place involved a certain amount of confidence, but the intimidation just didn't feel right. It didn't feel something that Cornyx should have been doing.

She turned her attention back to her friend.

Asking about something like this was dangerous. She could remember the way that she had reacted to questions about her well-being after she had changed - how she had forced her to do more, and had even thrown her in the dungeons when she protested too much. And while she thought that Cornyx would never do something like that, she had thought the same thing back then.

She took a deep breath.

"Cornyx?" she hesitantly asked. She felt absolutely terrified as each word left her mouth, knowing that they could be the reason that this trip suddenly became far from pleasant. "You-You haven't been in contact with any strange ruins or artifacts lately, r-right?"

"It's pretty straightforward, really," Lucifer explains. "It depends on what you're doing but essentially you tap into your energy and then focus on willing the thing into existence."



She laughed, the malicious sound echoing through the chambers. "Another one? Looks like we're on a roll, aren't we, Engel? First God, then his sons, and now a second!"



"No," he said with a small frown. "I haven't. Why?"

"That's incredible," Lucifer said, eyes widening in awe. He was already beginning to wonder about the magical possibilities that offered - could he do something like that, now that he was here? His magic relied heavily on his soul back in his own reality, and he had been able to access that magic, but was there anything to say that he wouldn't be able to use the magic from this place as well.

"Our magic comes from our souls," Apophis said. He took another sip of his drink. "I'm not sure how, but our souls dictate what our individual abilities are. In the case of gods, it also depends on what people believe we're like."


He hesitated. The way that she worded it suggested that something had happened to this reality's version of God. But that was impossible, wasn't it? Gods couldn't die. It was a basic rule of how his world worked-

But that wasn't how this world worked.

And that would explain why no one had mentioned his counterpart yet.

"So you killed this reality's God, then," he concluded. "I'm not going to question how you managed to do that, but I will say that I'll be far harder to beat than that guy."


Runi took another deep breath.

If Cornyx hadn't come into contact with any mysterious places or things, then that meant that this was him. He had always been like this, and she just hadn't noticed because he hadn't been in his comfort zone back in Grimmore? Or had he just changed as a person in the time between when they had last met?

But if his reaction to what that demon had said was anything to go off of, he wasn't going to have a pleasant reaction to her admitting the reason for her question. "I was just curious," she said, giving him a grin that she could only hope reached her eyes.

(It didn't.)

"We have to draw our magic from our souls, and souls can be turned into magical energy," Lucifer says. "So, it's connected, but differently."



"Of course that's what you think," she says. "It's what everyone thinks and then they die."



Something was off. He knew it. He could tell from the look on her face, from the way the smile didn't reach her eyes, from that scent that was just a little bit...off. Not fear, just...something almost similar. Cornyx didn't say anything about it, however, and instead moved to stand beside her, leaning on the back of the throne. "How did you get here, Miss Runi?"

Lucifer nodded at what his counterpart said. It made sense, seeing that their souls were capable of similar feats. But he did have another question about how things worked in this reality. "Earlier...Earlier, Apophis, you mentioned having a vessel. Do gods need vessels here? And, uh, what does having a vessel involves?"


God grinned.

"Oh, I'm not going to deny that," he said. "On my last job, I died...hm...I'd say four times at most, depending on how you counted some of my more fatal injuries. And that was a partial, so I'm sure you're going to be a bit more of a challenge. But here's the fun part - I can't permanently die. Kill me all you want, but I'm just come back to life and kick your ass."

His grin grew. "I am immortal, after all."


"Well," she started, glad for another topic to take her mind off of the tense situation that had passed. (But even as she began to give her answer, she still couldn't shake the feeling that something was horribly wrong and that she was in danger.) "I was out in the woods, just walking around. I don't think I touched anything funny, but I must have. One minute I was standing underneath a tree, and the next I was here!"

"Nope," Apophis says. "Vessels aren't necessary. For most of us, anyways; there's some kinds of demons that need them to leave Hell or to take a corporeal form. But for the Princes, and for me, they aren't needed. I took this vessel because we needed to get to her before Mikael found out she existed and before my sister got ahold of her."



"That's what the last one said, but there's only one being I've ever encountered that's immortal in the truest sense of the word," she answered with a sly smile.



He frowned. "How curious. Must've been some kind of barrier spell or trap, like a rune or ward, or some very advanced tech."

Apophis spit out his coke. "Wait," he said, wiping the little droplets of his lips with his arm, "you're a demon?"

Lucifer stared at their counterparts after Apophis proposed his question. It took him a second, but he soon understood what he was talking about - if the other Apophis was referring to demons needing vessels, and saying that she was an exception, then she must have been a demon, too.

It quickly became apparent that the question posed by Apophis was more of a rhetorical one than anything else - he quickly launched into even more. "You said that you needed to get to the woman you're possessing before Mikael did," he slowly said. "Why is she so important?"


That admittedly was a bit worrying, but it wasn't like he was from this reality in the first place. "Back where I come from," he said, readying his bat once more, "our gods can't ever die. Even Hades didn't permanently kick the bucket, and his soul was shattered. So I hate to break it to you, but you're not murdering me."


"I guess so!" she agreed. She still couldn't get over her anxiousness, but she knew she was doing a better job at hiding it than before with her responses. Keep things light and cheery, and Cornyx would never be the wiser. And, if possible, avoid saying anything that could possibly come off as irritating or annoying. If he was anything like she had been, he wouldn't take nicely to that.