2_winged_angel

Characters: Lucifer Morningstar, Dairine Callahan
Rating: Probably Pg13
Time Period: Modern Day
Location: Lucifer's rooms
Relative Two days into the power outage
Status: Closed

Lucifer sat at his piano and played. His mind was positively humming with speculation, and he found that this simple and familiar act helped to soothe his nerves, so to speak. It was exciting, in a way that he was not used to being excited, to find himself enmeshed in a game that he did not fully understand the rules of, and to need to learn them as he went along. There was a process of discovery that had been largely unknown to him for many long ages. There was also an anger and frustration mixed up in all of that, but at least for the moment, he was committed to channeling that into a constructive goal. The goal of destroying or dethroning his odious doppelganger. The question of how to do so, though... that remained elusive, and would be so until he could gather more information than he presently had access to. And in order to do that, he would need to do a bit of outsourcing. Towards that end, he had already made a phone call, and was now waiting for his subcontractor in this project to arrive.

Lucifer had slipped out of his room in the dead of night. As pleasant as Rose's sleeping form was, the fact of the matter was that for an angel, the lack of capacity for sleep meant that laying there, conscious and inactive, was a waste of his time. Time he could better spend working towards important goals. Besides, to the extent that he even thought about the matter, he doubted Rose would notice his absence for a few hours.

He tracked his way through the castle, looking for Azrael. The other angel's presence was like a beacon in this place, and having interacted with him before, one he found easy enough to locate the source of. He was reasonably certain that Azrael would still be up and active at this time of night; he should have no more need of sleep than Lucifer himself. And if he should find the erstwhile angel of death pretending to sleep? That would mean nothing to Lucifer; he would simply rouse him and have his discussion regardless.

After a few short minutes, Lucifer closed with Azrael's location. He made no secret of his presence; surrounding himself with a faint nimbus of daylight, as was his habit. He made towards Azrael, waiting for the younger angel to spot him.

((OOC: I have no idea what Azrael would be doing in the middle of the night, or where he would be, so go ahead and supply those details yourself))

Lucifer never lies outright, but almost always gives people just enough truth in just such a measured dose that they can draw the wrong conclusions on their own.

But let's say, for just a moment, he were in the mood to give a full and honest answer to any question posed him.

In this thread, ask any question, based upon canon, Crowded Hour, philosophy or whatever, and receive a "from the heart" answer from the Morningstar.

Lucifer has a way of simply... Knowing things about you. Things which you might not even know yourself. And often things which you would prefer not be made known, even to yourself.



(From Lucifer #1)

It had been three long, frustrating days since Lucifer had fallen to Earth.
 
Frustrating first in that he had found himself consciously aware of the fact that he was falling, rather than soaring the space between realities in silent contemplation. Frustrating second in that this awareness came too late and too slowly for him to correct this fall until after he had left a significant crater in the Siberian tundra that he then needed to crawl, rather indignantly, out of. And frustrating, thirdly, and most egregiously, in that he found himself on Earth at all, after all of his efforts to leave this universe entirely and permanently.
 
His initial attempts to simply depart, via familliar and well-known paths, had proven entirely futile. For whatever reason, the metaphysical routes through the cosmos which he had for so long relied upon to move between the planes, seemed to be simply absent. He had known, when the universe came under new management, that Micheal’s daughter, Elaine, had planned on making some changes to the structure of the universe, but he had not anticipated them being so thorough and so complete. Perhaps he should have paid more attention to her excited chatter before absenting himself from the silver city for the final time.
 
And so he had been reduced to simply flying about the skies of the world like a common bird. It was galling, but no other options immediately presented themselves. He had made efforts to contact various of his former friends and associates, in the hopes that they might be able to provide some insight into the matter. Their absence was more than a little unsettling, and no less was the fact that, by and large, the fact that the world had not, apparently, taken notice of their disappearance.
 
Finally, on midnight of his third day, he had had enough. He would have his answers, even if he needed to rip them, screaming, from the body of the first being he could lay his hands upon that might provide them. Taking to the ground near the city of Los Angeles, he had sought out a stray cat, out for a midnight prowl, and beguiled it into following him into a field well beyond any prying eyes. He was not entirely thrilled to have found himself reduced to such pedestrian means, but animal sacrifice was not an entirely worthless method of breaching the walls between worlds, as humans had discerned countless eons ago. And if his own traditional means were for some reason denied him, then he was willing, just this once, to subvert his usual methods in order to pursue his goals.
 
The animal’s yowl of pain and surprise as it found its entrails spilled upon the ground was short-lived, and entirely unheeded as Lucifer set about inscribing a summoning circle made from its cooling blood upon the ground. “Come, oh lowest of the fallen”, he intoned, his voice a monotone, “Answer my call, and make yourself known. In this small death, I do open the path between worlds. In these words, I do bid you welcome. In these runes, I do bind you.”
 
He wasn’t entirely certain what to expect; the spell was deliberately ambiguous. Any imp or lower order of demon would suit his purposes, and he wasn’t feeling terribly picky. He assumed that any such entity would at least be able to begin to answer his questions. As such, he was not entirely displeased to see the blood upon the ground begin to stir and ripple like wind upon the surface of a lake a moment later, and a small, child-like and bat-winged form emerge, dripping with blood and viscera, a few moments later.
 
“Who dares to summon me?” It shrieked, its voice high-pitched and grating, cat’s blood spraying from about its mouth and flaring nostrils as it screamed, “I would know thy name, o hell-bound mortal, oh food for worms, that I might learn whose flesh I shall soon have the pleasure of stripping from the bones of, whose blood I shall boil in thy veins, whose...”
 
“You can dispense with the theatrics,” Lucifer cut him off, scowling, “And the threats. I’m no more concerned with what you believe you can do to me than I am concerned with the threat posed by this cat.” He nudged the cooling carcass with the toe of his shoe, indifferently.
 
“How darest thou!” The imp howled, pointing a clawed finger at Lucifer. “Dost thou have no notion of whom thou dost address?”
 
“I neither know nor particularly care about the name of someone so desperate for attention that they feel the need to resort to faux-Elizabethan English in the hopes of impressing rubes. Moreover,” he stood up from his crouching posture, “I think you’ll agree that it’s your failure to grasp my identity that is the more significant issue here.” With that, his shirt and jacket exploded from his frame, torn asunder as his black, leathern wings burst forth from his shoulders, spreading out ominously as his eyes began to glow with a baleful light.
 
The imp, for his part, was suitably taken aback. This was not what it had expected at all. “What... uh... Who are you, then?” It asked, its theatrics abandoned in the heat of the moment.
 
Lucifer tilted his head in thought. It was one thing for his human disguise to have allowed his identity to remain a mystery. That was, after all, the point. But for his natural form, worn for so many thousands of years in the pits of Hell, to be unfamiliar to ANY demon? This was genuinely bizarre. Either this was one of the most ignorant demons alive, or else one of the best liars he had ever seen. If so, there were ways of dealing with that. Picking up the knife he had used to disembowel the cat, he made a few swift, sure incisions into the palm of his right hand. Just deep enough that his blood began to bead upon the surface of his skin. He reached out with this hand, plunging his hand into the circumference of the circle which contained his guest. The imp flailed at his arm with tooth and claw, vicious as a trapped animal, but succeeded only in placing himself within Lucifer’s grasp.
 
His palm pressed against the beast’s face, and his blood, describing the rune for Truth, wetted the demon’s flesh. It shrieked with pain, as the searing heat of Lucifer’s blood branded its own infernal flesh in the shape of the rune.
 
“Now, you will tell me only the truth, little creature”, Lucifer said, his tone matter-of-fact. “Do you not know who I am?”

The imp fluttered his wings, deeply agitated. “Buddy, I got no friggin’ clue,” it exclaimed, rubbing its wounded flesh bitterly. 
 
“Curious.” Lucifer replied. There was no doubting the thing’s words now, but that made the situation no less suspect. “I am he who was once known as Samael, first among the host, Lucifer, the Lightbringer, and more recently lord of Hell. Does this mean anything to you?”
 
The imp scowled with confusion and a mounting discomfort. “Listen, I don’t mean to call you a liar, but... if you think you’re the big guy downstairs, you got another thing coming, you know?”
 
“The big guy downstairs?” Lucifer asked, his voice betraying a hint of scorn. “And who might that be?”
 
“Uh... the devil? The Great Beast? Beelzebub? Satan? Ringing any bells?”
 
Lucifer took a moment to digest this. The imp plainly believed what he was saying, whatever the truth of the matter truly was. There was someone claiming his name, in a realm which, to all appearances, was Hell. Well.
 
That wouldn’t do.
 
“You will take me to this entity at once.” He informed the imp.
 
“Whoa, hey!” The demon sputtered, glancing around wildly, as though searching for a route of escape. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here! I’m... how do you wanna say... a lower functionary? I can’t just hand out invitations like that! Not if I want to keep my insides on the inside!”
 
“What makes you think I care about the arrangement of your insides?” Lucifer responded.
 
“Okay! Okay! How about this? How about if I deliver a message for you? Let him know you wanna talk?”
 
“You swear you will truthfully and honestly deliver this message? Swear it upon the rune burnt into your flesh?”
 
“Uh, yeah, I guess,” it replied, petulantly, fingering its smouldering flesh.
 
“Very well. Tell your master this: Lucifer Morningstar requests the pleasure of an audience with him, and will be awaiting his reply at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport Hotel. I will not wait long, however, and I advise him that he will not enjoy the consequences of keeping me waiting longer than... oh, let’s say midnight tomorrow.”
 
“That’s it?” It asked, plainly eager for this thoroughly disconcerting meeting to be over.
 
“That’s it. You are dismissed.” Without another word, Lucifer waved his hand, ending the summoning ritual. In a moment, the imp was gone, leaving only a pool of cat blood and organs where it had stood.
 
“Well, then.” Lucifer muttered to himself, folding his wings back within himself and causing his suit to re-knit itself about his form, “This ought to be interesting.”
 
 
 
The next morning, there came a knock at the door of the room which Lucifer had spent the remaining evening and early hours of the morning in. He looked up from the bible he had found in the drawer of the bedside table. He was always curious to read some new mistranslation, to see what new lies and misinterpretations of events were being told about him, and he wasn’t familiar with this particular edition. Setting it down, he answered the door.
 
“A letter for a Mr. Sam White?” The uniformed clerk at the door asked.
 
“Very good.” Lucifer replied, taking the envelope from the young man’s hand. “You may go.” Without another look, he closed the door upon the fellow, his expectant look and hopes of a tip going unanswered and unheeded.
 
Within the envelope was what appeared to be a ticket, and a small note. Unfolding the paper, he scanned it quickly.
 
‘Morningstar. Please forgive my servant’s rudeness and confusion. Enclosed, you will find a ticket for a helicopter reserved under this name, which will be awaiting you at LAX. Please accept my invitation to come and meet with me, so that things might be made clear between us.’ The note was unsigned.
 
It was almost certainly a trap, but so be it. There had yet to be a trap devised which could hold him indefinitely, and at the very least, he might learn a thing or two about the pretender to his name which was laying it. With a shrug, he pocketed the letter and the ticket, and made ready to check out. He glanced out of the hotel window at the airport not far away. At least now he had a destination in mind, and the City of Angels was already losing its appeal for him at any event.