Hell, Friday
Lucifer sighed as he found himself in familiar surrounds after his encounter with Setsuna. He had been hoping to avoid this little visit but not that it had been taken out of his hands, he might as well make the best of it. He looked up at the gate he had left behind less than a year before, a gate to which he no longer held the key.
Luckily, he had very little need for one considering who now reigned here.
"Home again, home again, jiggity jig."
So he walked. Past the minor demons who did not believe he would come back to this place. They were quickly set into their place. He walked past the damned souls, looking to him for some sort of relief. He would offer them none as it wasn't his to give. It was, and always had been, theirs.
By the time he approached the tower in which Remial and Duma had made their home, a majority of the hordes of Hell had assembled, some following him, some waiting there once it was made known his presence there. Silly little creatures. They hoped he would return and cast out these angels.
High up in the tower, standing on a balcony a flustered figure stared down into the masses with wide, almost panicked eyes..
"Insuportable. Simply insuportable," he -well, technically 'it'- muttered before turning in a swirl of robes and racing for the steps.
Ah, Remial. There was one of the Host that Lucifer would happily destroy if it wouldn't cause so much of a bother.
"Little pig, little pig, let me in," He said quietly, stopping for only a moment before continuing up the steps to the doorway.
The figure that burst through the door seemed to resemble a slightly befuddled chicken as it raced forward, arms flailing.
"This is no longer your domain Lucifer Morningstar. You have no right of entry here. No right to even walk on this ground without our leave!"
Lucifer hummed thoughtfully, continuing on up the stairs without a care as to how the being quickly approaching might force him to leave.
If he even could. "In my day we took anyone who happened by. That's part of the point, isn't it?"
The angel was small and obviously easily flustered despite the way he tried to stand up on a higher step than the Advesary, pointing as if he might shoot fire from his fingers.
Or wished he could.
"You will not face me down and you will not sway me. Our work of redemption is at a delicate stage and your pressence here drags everything back into question!"
"Redemption?" Lucifer echoed, sounding as if he was truly trying to keep from laughing. It was just so terribly difficult when faced with a self righteous angel such as him stood before the Adversary.
Oh but the self righteous little angel wasn't done yet, he continued!
"You've come back here with all your old arrogance -like a visiting head of state, when the truth is you've ended your responsibilities. You resigned Lucifer!" It was all together possible that Remiel's voice sort of pitched higher as he ranted on, kinda of like the yapping sound of a small bothering dog.
Closing the distance between them, Lucifer extended an arm with which to wrap around Remial's shoulders. "Your grasp of current affairs is as keen as ever."
Crossing his arms and poking his nose in the air as if he were smelling something foul, Remiel sniffed.
"Spare me your sarcasm. I have nothing more to say to you."
"Remial..." Lucifer turned them both so now their backs were to the ever growing crowd of demons at the base of the tower. "How many demons stand behind us? I reckon at least a third of the Infernal Host," He said, tone light and conversational. Like they were old pals discussing a sports game.
"If you don't let me come in inside, I will humiliate you so badly that your prestige here-- which I imagine is also at a delicate stage-- will catch cold and die."
Really, what could he say? Remiel actually started to tremble and he looked back towards the Infernal Host, fingers coming up to his mouth as if he might chew nervously at his nails.
Lucifer gave him a small, less than reassuring pat before moving past him and up through the doors. "Good lad. Always knew your limitations, eh?" He called back, not even turning to see the effect his words had on the other angel.
Finding Duma in the tower was far easier than one would expect. The angel radiated a sort of serenity that felt terribly out of place in Hell. Lucifer, however, welcomed this oddity here. He found Duma in his garden, also something that was out of place here. It felt like Duma had managed to bring a spot of the Silver City here.
"'Annihilating all that is made to a green thought in a green shade.' Do I intrude, Duma?"
Turning towards the sound of Lucifer's voice, Duma merely smiled. It was an expression that radiated welcome and a sort of peaceful warmth that went with the silent serenity the Lightbringer had walked in on.
"I carried this burden for long enough to know how irksome it can be. Nor would I trespass here now except that I am in ther service of..." He paused, words dying on his tongue. With a small shake of his head, Lucifer chuckled ruefully. "In the service of Heaven. That was harder to say than I anticipated."
Duma looked at Lucifer, his expression expectant as if to say he did not think this was just a whimsical jog down memory lane and then he turned and resumed watering the plants in the garden.
There was a slight angle to how he held his shoulders and wings, an opening of his posture that seemed to say I'm listening without a word or sound passing his lips.
Lucifer nodded. "Before you took up your place here, you were a tutelary spirit. You had care of silence. It is in that capacity that I come to know you now," He told Duma, examining the plants before him. "I was never a guardian, of course, but I always felt that you go the shitty end of the stick. Adam's children allow so little room in their lives for silence-- and yet, despite it's rarity they seem incapable of valuing it."
"But there were ages of silence. Do you remember, Duma? Before they crawled out of the sea-- when you could still hear your self think?" Lucifer asked, leaning down to smell a particularly beautiful rose. "My own tastes tend to more the Baroque, but I did appreciate that."
Strangely enough there was no sense of rush or impatience in Duma though it remained obvious by his body language that he was listening to Lucifer. One thing about being a Guardian of Silence, you definitely learn how to hear and Duma was certain that Lucifer's words were not idle chatter spoken only to hear the sound of his own voice.
That was certainly one of the things he found... tolerable about Duma's company. "And even when the hominids arrived, they couldn't speak so they were still your charges. Your golden ages, wasn't it? Mine too. When the gas clouds were coalescing into suns and I was God's lamp lighter."
"I did drop in on Earth once in a while," Lucifer continued, glancing over at Duma. "I remember the silence-- like an ocean with no tide. And the little gods, they floated in the air like flies. That brings me to my point, actually. The poor, naked half-men, scared of their own shadows... they made the best gods that they could, but they had no language to shape their imagination. So the first gods were thing grey shadows, without form and without speech, dredged into being by the dumb longings of their worshippers."
Flowers forgotten now, Lucifer turned his attention entirely onto the other angel. "For three hundred thousand years these shadow things were the only pantheon there was. We called them the Voiceless gods. Then we ignored them," He continued. "When the others came along, the gods with firm handshakes, it was easy to forget about the little silent ones."
"But it wouldn't take much to keep them going," Lucifer said with a rueful smile. "Just the occasional heartfelt prayer to no one in particular. The 'Oh thank God' of people who don't really know which god they mean. They're still there, aren't they Duma?"
Samael had never been one to like having answers he was already aware of parroted back to him, so Duma merely paused in his watering to look at the Lightbringer as if asking him to get to the real point of his questions. It wasn't an unkind look, simply patient.
"Now there's a power loose on Earth that manifests itself in silence-- that seems drawn to silence. A Velleity. I recognized it because I made one myself once, when I was less patient and had less foresight," He admitted. "But this one belongs to them, the Voiceless ones. Perhaps the general wash of belief as the new millenium passed gave them the initial surge to make the weaving. It's a dangerous magic, Duma. It grants wishes and accumulates power from the wishers feelings of gratitude or guilt. It gets bigger all the time."
Lucifer looked Duma closely in the eye so that there would be no miscommunication here. "The spell must be unwoven before it devours the world. Please. Tell me where I have to go to find them."
Now that sounded like a question that Lightbringer genuinely needed an answer to and so he calmly set aside the watering can and used his hands to communicate what his voice was incapable of.
One finger, pointed downwards.
"How far down?"
Gracefully, Duma unfolded the four fingers of his other hand and crossed them ahead of his inverted index finger.
Lucifer's eyes narrowed. "I see. Thank you Duma."
Giving Lucifer a simple nod of his head, it was strange to hear his hair whisper across the preternaturally soft fabric of his robes. Then, figuring the interview was completed with the Lightbringer now in possession of the knowledge he'd sought, the other angel turned back to his care of the garden.
With a voice tingling along the back of his mind, Lucifer left Duma in his silence to retrieve a mortal who seemed incapable of staying out of trouble. [[ooc: NFB or Interaction. Unless you're in Hell, in which case WTF? Pre-played with the ever wonderful dr_JWilsonMD]]