#but imagine the fiends as basically gargoyles
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queen-of-prophecy · 18 days ago
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Vine sighs.
She's pretty tired. She imagines this is what mothers go through....albeit she can't name a mother who birthed over 666,000 spawn all at once.
The demons....her fiends, as she's come to call them, are busy building. Like the gargoyles that haunted the towers of cathedrals on Earth, they are more stone than flesh. Some have patterned skin like marble, or portions of their bodies where gemstones jut out. Some have divots and empty spaces with crystalized geodes. All of them have eyes like crystal. Ideal for the dark, but in the light, it is too amplified. Too harsh.
The first thing a fiend came to ask was their name.
They knew enough to understand a name was important.
That had been the first process. Letting them all come, one by one, to receive a name. Their names had existed already, written into the future, only now Vine would recite those names back.
Their "elder siblings" were given very powerful names.
Cronos was the Guardian that resembled them the most....albeit it hundreds of times bigger. Cronos was so large his wings could fold over him as he slept...and he merely resembled one of the enormous black mountains in Heresy's wide environs. Cronos was often flocked to by the friends. Cronos knew how to deliver instructions, and seemed to have an understanding with his Queen how to handle things. He commanded many legions of fiends on his own, directing them to begin the building processes.
Cerberos was the fastest. He had three heads, each of whom answered to "Cerberos", but each still thought with their own mind. Vine felt no compulsion to differentiate each head. They were Cerberos. They ran as one, so fast and agile that they practically flew across the jagged rocks. They could smell everything in Heresy, and followed trails, carried messages, and seemed anxious to always be moving.
The sisters, the Erinyes, were more particular, more individualistic. They wanted names of their own, even if they shared a name. Megaera, Alecto, and Tisiphone. Each with their sharp talons and burning hair, they were as impatient as Cerberos and just as swift. They flew through the skies, and worked alongside their three-headed brother, likewise organizing the labor force building houses and palaces, carving into black and white stone.
Styx was busier still. Her hair was so, so very long, pale as death. Her mouth was a maw of sharp, needle-like fangs, not unlike the deep-sea monstrosities on Earth. And wherever she passed, her river grew. Water simply poured off her skin and hair like a fountain, and began to drive its path through the cold stone, cascading into Treachery below and forming into ice. Styx either spoke in a soft melody, or in a piercing screech.
Morpheus was the most idle. But his duty was far less mobile. Vine kept him in a temporary station, hanging from the city as it was constructed. Like his sister Styx, he exuded a force of his own....heavy, thick clouds of pale pink vapor. The early fiends who had attended him were caught in the vapor, and Morpheus made to leave so they could wake up after the clouds sent them into a dreamy stupor. Morpheus hung from his little home like a burner censer, yawning as he guarded the entry to Treachery with his plumes of heavy smoke.
Busiest of them all, was Charon. He had not asked for his name first. He had gotten his last, as he had gone to the abandoned pile of supplies and immediately began to hammer together a ship. With wood and nails, and enchantments Vine had not taught him, he forged a massive barge with a mighty oar to ply it, the single oar larger than he himself. Vine had been amazed at his diligence, and at the flying ship he now piloted. Vine thanked him, gave him his name, as well as several gold coins. He had more names to remember....future passengers of his vessel.
"All my children." She sighed. "And thank God, none of them born to be wailing infants."
She watched them. There had been designs provided, of what the Ring of Heresy was to look like. There were fiends who worked the stone yard, cutting great slabs of marble and granite. Then more who carried them in large groups. The fiends were uncommonly powerful. And when a freak rockslide buried workers in stone, they simply climbed out, and shrugged it off. Only one fiend was injured in the process, but he felt no more than simply being "cracked" and let his siblings rub him down with Styx's water and filling the cracks with dust.
Interestingly, there was little to differentiate males from females. They all looked terrifying, and bore traits of physical might. But given they all robed themselves the same way, with whatever Vine had to offer, they might all be mistaken for males.
Vine watched. The cities and townships were being built. The Guardians did their labors, and with each hammer and brick, the Ring was coming to completion.
Only Lucifer was expected now. And despite how things had changed for the better, Vine felt afraid of his visit. There was a question in her mind, one that preceded the very real dangers lurking in the dark.
"....I will not know." She sighed. "Not until he comes."
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