Young Writers Society

Lucifer blinked. Those words weren't what he expected. Granted, this was a different God, but he couldn't help but remember his own father.

He didn't like him.

"...Right then. How about we put down the weapons and go get a drink and talk this out, shall we?" he suggests.

The trio all turned to look at each other, Lucifer awkwardly standing there with the squirming baby snakes as they tried to come to a nonverbal consensus. Luckily, they had known each other awhile, and could easily read the familiar looks on the faces of their friends. Unluckily, they had never really had a situation like this before, so the facial expressions were a bit more difficult to read.

God rested his bat down on the ground beside him, and Apophis took back his snakes from Lucifer.

"Okay," God agreed. "Just a word of warning: I don't drink, Luci doesn't drink and Apophis rarely drinks, so we better find somewhere that's got some good coke."

"Or milk," Lucifer quietly added.

"Or milk," God confirmed.

Apophis looked up from his arm, which his baby snakes had been slithering up and down ever since he had taken then back from Lucifer. "We're going to need to get our clothes," Apophis said. "Lucifer, do you know a spell that could do that for us?"

He nodded.

"While you're at it," God chimed in, "could you get me my bag out of the space you keep it in? Something tells me I'm going to need it."

Another nod.

Lucifer began to recite the words to the spells requested, first focusing on the spell that Apophis had asked for. He couldn't get them their exact clothing, but he could get them replicas of that clothing. In Apophis' case, that clothing was a graphic t-shirt with the name of some anime he was watching right now, cargo pants and a pair of sneakers.

In God's case, that clothing was a black t-shirt, black jeans, black boots and a black leather jacket. He added in a cross, too, because God had always loved making puns about his religion.

And then, in his own case, that clothing was a nice, big hoodie that he had zipped up over a plain t-shirt, a pair of jeans, and sneakers. He tucked his pencil back behind his ear just as Apophis was slipping his snakes into the pockets of his cargo pants.

Now for the second request. It wasn't like he was trying to bring the bag from where they had come from - he wasn't sure he would have been able to do that. But what he could do was summon it from the rift in space that it occupied, so all his spell had to do was get it out.

The backpack appeared on God's shoulders.

Swinging it off one shoulder, he popped open the top and slipped his bat inside - a feat that should have been impossible given the larger size of the bat, but Lucifer had designed the bag with a whole host of magical spells.

"Uh, Father," Apophis murmured as Lucifer opened his mouth to speak. "We have a small problem."

"What?" he asked, turning and scanning his surroundings.

"The same one who killed your brother," she answered. "You won't be able to see him or smell him but the bastard's not cold blooded like his father was - I can feel the heat."

God looked between Lucifer and this reality's counterpart. "Wait, let me get this straight. You have a nephew who's out to get you, and he's already killed your brother?"

A pause.

God blinked, stared down at himself, and then looked back up at the other Lucifer with alarm clearly written across his features. "Wouldn't that mean I'm dead, then-"

"I don't think so," Apophis interrupted. He crossed his arms as he studied God. "This is a different reality, and it plays by its own rules. It might not follow mythology with the other Apophis being Lucifer's daughter, but, if the Bible is anything to go off of, you're Lucifer's father."

God's tense shoulders relaxed, and he let out what sounded suspiciously like a sigh of relief.

Throughout this brief little exchange, Lucifer had been standing behind his two friends. He had silently listened to everything that had been said, but, now that the crisis had been averted, there was something else he needed to address. He hesitated, took a deep breath, and stepped out from behind God and Apophis.

"Um, excuse me?" he nervously said. "Did your brother actually die, or did he regenerate? And, uh, can either of you actually die?"

"They're dead, truly this time. All the Princes are dead except myself. Cornyx took the throne along with the lives of the few of us who were left. Except me, obviously," Lucifer explains. Apophis is getting quite distracted by her counterpart's serpentine pets. They certainly aren't very old.

God straightened, startled by the name that he had mentioned.

"Cornyx?" he repeated. He looked wildly between the Apophis and Lucifer of this other reality, seeming to be searching for something that would confirm what he had been told. Lucifer remembered God mentioning a Cornyx in the list of names of people he had encountered when he had been brought to that ghost and demon-infested town. But was it the same one?

"Cornyx isn't a common name, is it?" God asked. Lucifer guessed this was meant to be more of a rhetorical question than anything else. Standing on the very tips of his toes, God drew a line in the air. "We're not thinking of the same Cornyx, right? He'd be about this tall, and is a stuttering mess around anyone who looks vaguely intimidating."

"Cornyx Blackthorne," Lucifer says. "Like 6' 5", ridiculously tall and pale. Black hair and eyes. Needlessly formal. Always carries a pocketwatch. The son of Sathanus and now the King of Hell."

"That sounds exactly like him," God said incredulously. He paused, then added, "Except that last part. He'd never last a day in a position like that - he'd be too intimidated, and he could never have killed all those people you mentioned. He's too frightened."

"He killed then alright, I watched him stab his own father in the back," Lucifer days. "He's realizing his power."

God crossed his arms. "That doesn't make any sort of sense. He could me sir every time I spoke to him, and would have called me Mr. Dean while he was at it if I hadn't stopped him." He frowned and shifted his weight from one foot to the other; he was very disturbed by the possibility of Cornyx of all people being a cold-blooded murderer.

And, dang, he had been a Christian.

Which meant that Cornyx would be sent to his afterlife, and that he'd have to throw the guy in Hell - then again, it wasn't like this was his reality. He probably wouldn't have gotten Cornyx in the first place.

"Did-Did something happen between them?" Lucifer asked. "Because I-I don't see how someone could do that to someone so close to them..."

"I mean, there was that whole thing with Zeus awhile back," God pointed out, "but we all knew he was an ass anyways."

"But Cornyx isn't from what you told me," Lucifer argued.

Meanwhile, Apophis had noticed his counterpart's interest in his baby snakes. And while he might not have condoned her murdering the person they found in the dumpster when there had to be some sort of alternative, he had no objections to showing her his newest pets. The snakes had managed to escape from his hands and were currently in the process of climbing up his arms. So, rather than try to get them back into one place, he held his arms out in her direction.

"Sathanus and Cornyx were never close - for a lot of reasons - but he surprised even me being willing to take the life of his own blood like that. Came up right behind him and sent a spike of ice straight through his heart," Lucifer explains. "Cornyx didn't used to be a bad guy, but times change, I suppose. At some point he was sick of playing the victim from what I understand but I never was close with him. Mikael was, but I'll be damned if I'm going to him for help," he spits.

A smile lit up Apophis' face as her counterpart extended the snakes towards her and she put her hand in front of them, allowing them to become accustomed to her scent. "How old are they? Not more than a few months, surely. Are they rat snakes? They look like rat snakes. They're so cute!"

Apophis smiled. "They're only a few months old," he confirmed, giving the one closest to him an affectionate tap with his fingertip. "And they're albino rat snakes. I bred them myself." He took pride in that last statement; these were as much his children as they were their birth mother's, especially when he had spoiled them rotten.

God's frown deepened. "There has to be some sort of misunderstanding. Cornyx would never do something like that. Are you sure that it was Cornyx and not someone pretending to be him?" He paused, thought for a moment, and then sighed. "Never mind. Of course you'll say it was him - me asking that question isn't going to make you change your response."

Lucifer glanced between his counterpart and his brother.

"What if we went to Mikael, instead of you?" he asked. After a moment of hesitation, he even went as far as suggesting, "And what if God goes to see Cornyx? His-His life shouldn't be in danger because they know each other, and they didn't have any bad interactions."

She held the rat snake up to her face and smiled at it. "Ach, they're wonderful!"

"I don't think you understand," Lucifer says with a dry chuckle. "He betrayed all of his allies to work with Hell, and then killed everyone between him and the throne."

His smile grew. "They really are," Apophis agreed, giving the snake currently trying to slither up his neck a gentle little pat. As long as his babies were happy, he would be as well.

Meanwhile, God was growing more and more frustrated with the idea that Cornyx - of all people - had somehow managed to become evil and kill his own father. He knew that family relationships could get tense, especially in the supernatural world, but he had never once suspected that Cornyx would succumb to the urge to actually harm his relatives. And for power? That just didn't seem like him.

What had happened to him?

And how the heck was he supposed to get him back to normal? He didn't care that this wasn't his reality, and that Cornyx had never truly been his friend because the time they had spent together in that town hadn't been enough to form a strong bond. But he knew Cornyx, and he knew that he was better than that.

And that was all that he needed.

"Tell me where he is," God insisted. "Tell me where he is, and I'll go march right in there and give him a piece of my mind. He knows that he can't leave even a scratch on me."

"Unless the rules of this reality have altered how our souls work," Lucifer quietly argued. He pulled his pencil out from behind his ear and began to fiddle with it.

God opened his mouth to protest, then promptly closed it. Unfortunately, his brother had a very good point.

"But someone's got to knock some sense into Cornyx," he finally said, sighing, "and I'm the best person to do it right now."

"I just hatched a few Golden Lanceheads," she says. "They're still only a few days old but so adorable oh my goodness."

Lucifer snorted. "Feel free to try, he's not exactly difficult to find. Just waltz into Hell and I'm sure you won't have any trouble finding yourself in his presence."