#why must the wheels of creation grind like this all the fucking time

[shouyuus]

i wanna write (in concept) but i also don't wanna write (in actuality)

[xxxdragonfucker69xxx]

I'M BEHIND SCHEDULE

HOUR IN BLACK, PART THREE : THE UNDERWORLD

im skimming really fast because CHARMS have already dropped and i need to get there

!! the outline: lethe and the sea of shadows, but now islands jut out from it which are afterlives. some afterlives are ritual afterlives formed by funerary ceremony and ancestor worship, some are primeval afterlives about the manner of your death. big change! it's full of ghosts, who you mostly know. ghosts aren't their full living selves, death takes a lot from them and theyre defined by their passions and grow weirder after death,

soulsteel.....

phantom beasts! vesper-wolves and pyre-maggots.... cool

prehuman ghosts! omg even dragon king ghosts.... yes yes yes

the history of the underworld is so incredible. im usually sort of tepid on these sections, even though i like the idea of having a history, but for whatever reason this one is soooo cool to me

stygian archipelago!!!

"Bereft of stable stars or predictable trade winds, ghostly sailors develop other means of charting  their course, whether following in the wake of phantom leviathans, piloting their ships under the  auspice of oracular trances, or reconciling the movements of the Calendar of Setesh with local  geomancy" BANGIN!!!!

the old laws are so fascinating to e... the little hints have me a little bit obsessed. man imagine playing stories like the fallen london stories about correspondence and discordance but to repair the old laws... mmm

ugh i looove the different aterlives so much

whispers... and the labyrinth

"Specters in the thrall of Thundering Dissolution join their minds  with his in the Symphony of Omnipresence, a psychic whirlpool that shears away the borders  between their consciousnesses" oh y god i have to use this shit somehow

stygia!!! hot damn... extreme politics at the heart of the underworld

i have a soft spot for the calendar of setesh ever since i made The Wheel And Weight of Grinding Time Crushes All Beneath Its Passage, an abyssal obsessed with hijacking the calendar via pirate radio to install a new constellation

"Each district’s boundaries are reinforced on the first day of each year with a ceremonial  procession. The regent must touch each of the district’s ancient boundary-stones, and shifting  those stones as part of the rite allows one district to expand at another’s expense. Whoever  completes the procession is the regent; regents surround themselves with bodyguards to prevent  coups during that vulnerable time. " OH my fucking god. what a heist movie. holy shit

GFKDNGDSG GENTRIFIED BY THE SILVER PRINCE

theres a whole subsection for the sewers. this is worldbuilding.

culture... architecture... a dole of black bread and white cheese...

"Weeds signify  persistence and thriving in the Underworld; a dandelion represents passage into Lethe. Fish  symbolize ghosts, while a fishhook means either love or money, depending on who you ask. And  blood — or, indeed, anything crimson — holds many meanings depending on context, including  power, food, artistic fervor, endings, new beginnings, and Creation itself." why was this made specifically to caer to me

"A few places  specialize in stoking negative emotions, luring perverse customers with discordant choirs,  noisome odors, or the like. Several wineshops on Seawall offer bone-dry hardtack and skunked  beer; the Kudzu Bell’s boarding house specializes in stale bread, mildewed cheese, and  vegetables boiled into a sulfurous mass." oh my god

"Some ghosts hoard coins whose psychic residue resonates with their own feelings; money  changers sort obols by emotion for arbitrage." to me this is what exalted is about. this is what no other game has. lets take a wacky fantasy concept and do irl economics about it

:000 mausoleums! places where prayer distills down and bathes ghosts... sort of like a pseudo manse?

....huh! people heard of stygia as a heaven, expected to go there as a ritual afterlife, and now there are spots in stygia for them

collegia! the ultimate in dark academia. ghosts who keep ancient traditions and skills, and are doing quite a lot of politics about it

and the mansions, which are pimeval afterlives of sudden death. these and the collegia alone give stygia such incredible depth already

"In the Underworld’s first days, the Resplendent Mansion stood  foremost among its peers, comprised of a host of Exalted and other  heroic ghosts who’d died in battle against the world’s makers. But  new members slowed to a trickle, then stopped entirely before the  First Age’s end. Today, their ancient seat atop Shining Hill stands all  but empty, inhabited by a few reclusive timeworn ghosts and a host  of guardian spirits and automata." .... so now that primordials and neverborn are out in the world beefing again someone might suddenly take up that seat huh

oh wow i love the transcendent course as a cult. it feels so, ironically, alive. and the DUAL MONARCHS

"The Incarnadine Path was Stygia’s native religion before the Dual Monarchs. Its creed reveres  the River of Blood as the literal and metaphorical lifeblood of Creation and Underworld alike.  Ghosts of the Mansions find a sense of superiority in their ancient ties to the faith, while the  collegia uphold it in opposition to the Transcendent Course. Its stronghold is the rust-red steeple  of the Cruor, where Incarnadine blood-priests sacrifice animals brought at great difficulty from  the living world to anoint the faithful in gore. Since Stygia’s founding, the Cruor’s priests have  been a law unto themselves, offering sanctuary to fugitives; the Signatories show little respect  for these traditions, but citywide rioting the last time the Legion Sanguinary violated Cruor  sanctuary makes them cautious." MORE CULTS. MORE

and now the stygian pact, with thirteen signatories, wich do not correspond to al deathlords! which i thought was fun. skull pirate aikeret! fathom hermit puppet for the underwater eemi!!! ukhala enlightened-in-blood... i am free on thursday... white thyrsus the youth pastor for a cult to a ghost-eating forest, sesim ruseka the bird bitch. god frankly any of these guys would be fun deathlords as well

WOW namtar is fun

ok im gonna cut myself off before dari of the mists... charms one day i will reach you...

[bishopsorphan]

Trust (Ducifer AU-ish from season 10 on)

Oh, they were stupid. Stupidly, epically, stupid. Because of course they couldn’t see the warding. They couldn’t sense the warding. They weren’t angels.

Well, Sam wasn’t. Dean wasn’t, either, most of the time. Though it had become more of a nightly thing as of late.

Besides the point.

Warding. Old building. Locked doors. Running out of oxygen. Not a good situation.

Sam was trying to get through to Cas, but it was like nothing was getting out. So. Good warding. Angels, probably, trying to cut the brothers off from the only thing - weakened as it was - powerful enough to give them an edge. Angels working with demons, if the smell of sulfur was anything to go by.

Fuck.

“I don’t think Cas is picking up what you’re laying down.”

“Do you have any better ideas?” Sam snapped.

Well, yeah, Dean did. He had one perfect, luminous, annoyingly adorable idea tucked away in the back of his mind, but he knew his brother would freak out. Majorly. Because Dean’s idea was not supposed to be on the table. Like, at all. In a million years. Which was why Sam could never find out. He could never find out about Dean’s first few days as a Knight, the places in Hell Crowley had taken him, the things he’d seen. The things he’d done after.

The Cage. He’d seen the Cage. Crowley had wanted him to kill the Devil, but that close to the Box it was less icy rage and more all-encompassing loneliness. Dean had called it a suicide mission and left.

Then he’d gone back.

Alone.

No one had been watching the Seals after the Apocalypse fizzled out like a wet firework. No one had noticed when they’d started breaking.

Well, someone had noticed.

And that someone had waltzed into his room in a trenchcoat a year later, told him he had a nice ass, and disappeared in a flutter of wings and a flash of red.

Dean took a breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. He closed his eyes. Luce?

If silence could sound puzzled, well...

He tried again. Come on, Sunshine. Pick up the phone.

The voice that answered back in his head sounded fuzzy, weak. Dean?

Need some help. Running out of air. It wasn’t just the voice in his head that was fuzzy. Shit.

Excuse the shock. Not really one to be getting prayers anymore. A pause. A whistle echoed high in his mind. Damn. Uh. That is some warding.

Can you break it?

Not without a couple hours and some serious mojo. Guessing you don’t have that long? Another pause. Sam was starting to wheeze. There’s a break in it by a vent. Still guarded, just... weak.

Dean opened his eyes and scanned the room. Found it. You gonna action movie your way in here?

Not a big enough weak point. I doubt this body could make it through without ripping apart at the seams.

Dean chewed on his lower lip. Well, Sammy was probably going to find out eventually.

“You ok?” Sam was sitting back against the opposite wall, chest rising and falling with considerable effort.

“I was praying.”

“Cas can’t hear us.”

“Not to Cas.”

He could see his brother mentally scanning through all of the living angels they knew. It was a short list. “Chuck doesn’t care.”

“Got that right.”

Sam frowned. “Dean?”

“I’m gonna do something and you’re not gonna like it. But I can get us out of here.”

The younger man started fidgeting. “How much am I not gonna like it?”

Dean sighed. “Just close your eyes, Sammy. And trust me.”

Sam’s eyes slipped shut slowly and Dean tilted his head back. Get in here, asshole.

Formalities, Cowboy.

“Yes!”

It wasn’t the first time he’d said it. Not by a long shot. But he did appreciate the sentiment behind the constant request for consent. He hadn’t even asked for it. It had never even crossed Dean’s mind that  one ‘yes’ might open the door to spontaneous intrusions.

But Lucifer wasn’t like that.

Hell, he’d even asked Sam three times before jumping in.

That was Lucifer. His Lucifer. The real one, untainted by lore and slander. Oh, he wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but neither was Dean. Maybe it had been the demon in him, maybe just the lack of inhibitions, but he’d bonded with the Devil. With the sad guy in the Cage. The one who had been enraged to find out about Sam’s hallucinations (caused by Cas, he’d said, or whatever had been inside Cas, because there was no fire, no torture, only the endless expanse of cold dark nothing and the Cage was small but impossibly large and he’d been alone after Stull, so they all had). The one saddened by the angels’ fall. The one who told Dean about the Mark’s corruption, about the creation of the universe, about anything he asked about.

Dean’s Lucifer always asked consent. He’d done it after Amara had ripped him out of Cas, before he’d laid low in Dean, the day this whole thing between them had really kicked off. He’d helped hold all those souls, reopening old wounds in his Grace. He’d been pulled out, pulled out by Chuck, and Dean would have screamed at the loss if God hadn’t smiled and tipped him a wink.

A very whole, very happy, very blond Lucifer had been waiting for him in the bunker, and the rest was sappy history. Sappy history with something of a possession kink, because with Luce Dean felt safe. Wrapped up in the warmest, softest hug. Surrounded by love and light and the promise of something that no one else wanted, that no one else understood. Something he didn’t have to protect. Something that could protect him for a change.

Blue light started sifting through the vent. The angel normally travelled faster, slowed down by the warding, fighting his way to them. Fighting his way to Dean.

And then the light was there, in the room, in him, and he opened himself up fully for it.

It was warmth and sunlight and happiness and the barest aftertaste of something stale and bitter. Something that had once been the definition of wholeness but was now missing some parts.

It settled. Wrapped around his brain and heart and soul with a contented purr that was all Lucifer, all home, only reserved for him.

Dean felt his eyes open. Saw the room. Saw Sam.

He took a deep breath on instinct, even though he knew Lucifer didn’t need it. It just felt good to expand his lungs. He heard Sam do the same and smiled. It reached his lips.

“Rise and shine, Sammy.”

Sam cracked his eyes open. “I can breathe.”

Luce grinned. “You’re welcome. Gonna take some time to recharge enough to bust us out of here, though.”

“How’d you get in?”

Dean could... not hear, but more... feel Sam’s thoughts from across the room. Suspicion, concern. He knew he wasn’t talking to Dean. Didn’t know who he was talking to. Just knew that he could breathe again, so he was treading lightly.

Lucifer gestured up at the vent. The cover had been warped by his entrance. “Weak point in the warding. Not weak enough that I could break a vessel in, though.” He sighed. “You, uh, you ok with this?”

It took a moment for Sam to answer. He slid himself back up the wall and wandered over. Slowly. Dean appreciated the preservation instinct. “I heard him say yes.” He stopped a few feet in front of them, looking down. “Whoever you are, you must be pretty special to get him to consent so fast. I mean, he spent a year refusing Michael, and he’s...” The younger man trailed off. “Michael had a reputation. For being... pretty much the exact opposite of what he actually is.”

The Devil smiled, and Dean could feel everything. A wash of memories, good and bad. Hurt, betrayal, amusement at the fact that at least he wasn’t alone in disliking Michael. “Yeah. I know, Sam. I was there.”

A pause. Sam took a tentative step back. “Dean?”

Between the blink of his eyes, he was back. Still wrapped in the warmth of the angel, still surrounded by the purest sense of safety and love he’d ever felt. “Yeah, Sam, it’s me.”

Something about his demeanor must have changed for Sam to believe him. “What did you invite in here with us, Dean?”

Dean licked his lips. “An angel? You said it yourself, he’s a special one.”

“Cas. Zachariah. Anna. Gabriel. Raphael. Michael. Lucifer.”

“What?”

“Those were the angels, Dean. The ones that were there. Cas can’t hear us. Zachariah, Anna, Gabriel, and Raphael are dead. Lucifer and Michael are in the Cage.” Sam took another step back, the little wheels in his head turning and turning and turning. Revving. Grinding to a halt. “Right? They’re in the Cage?”

“We’ll explain later.” Lucifer was back in charge, sliding seamlessly into the driver’s seat as Dean panicked. He knew Sam wouldn’t get it, that he could never get it. Because he hadn’t had all that time sitting outside the Cage, hadn’t asked questions. He didn’t have the same gaping hole inside of him that needed to be filled. He’d had a life and a girl and an education. He’d gotten what he wanted. He didn’t need the Devil to come along and make it all better, make it all whole, make it so he didn’t feel alone and abandoned and worthless.

Suddenly Dean wasn’t sure what were his own thoughts and what were Lucifer’s. No wonder they fit so well.

Sam narrowed his eyes. “You said you’re not strong enough to bust us out now.”

Lucifer nodded. “Yeah, the warding took a lot out of me. Keeping the oxygen flowing isn’t exactly a cake walk with all this mumbo-jumbo on the place, either.”

Yeah, Dean would see it now, see it with what little overlap he had with Luce. Sigils lining every space on every wall, except over the vent. The grate had prevented whoever had trapped them from completing a seal.

“I’m not staying here with you unless I know who you are.”

“You’re definitely not gonna want to stay here with me after you find out, either.”

“Lucifer.” To his credit, Sam stood his ground.

“I’m not gonna hurt you, Sammy. Dean wouldn’t let me even if I wanted to.”

“I seem to remember you forcing me to beat him senseless in a cemetery.”

The angel cringed. It was an expression that traveled right down to the center of his Grace, so all-encompassing that Dean could feel it in his soul. “I made mistakes. Thought you guys were all about second chances. Dean-o here is, anyway.”

“Get out of him.”

“I’m not gonna let you die.”

Sam pulled a bitchface. “I’ll exorcise you myself if I have to.”

Lucifer let himself flop down onto the floor from where they’d been sitting. “Does this look like a new thing to you, Sam? Dean called me. Prayed to me - which was amazing and terrifying all at the same time - for help.”

“You can’t even get us out of here.”

Something niggled at the back of Dean’s mind. A bit of knowledge that wasn’t his own, something Luce was trying to keep away. He grabbed for it, as well as a floating consciousness of soul can.

“No, Dean.” Lucifer. Speaking out loud. Eyes narrowed. Thoughts turned inward.

“Fight it,” Sam pleaded. “Please, Dean, I don’t know who you thought you were letting in, but you can fight it. I did. And you are so much stronger than me.”

The angel rolled his eyes and waved a dismissive hand at the younger man. “Oh, come on. Stop trying to butter him up.” You are so much stronger, Dean. “I wasn’t even talking about that. He’s trying to pick my brain to get us out of here.”

The thought Dean had been tugging at had slipped through his fingers at Lucifer’s little aside in their shared mind. The angel loved little reassurances like that, statements of purpose and worth. Loved to receive them and give them. It never failed to make the hunter’s heart swell. It never failed to make him feel better.

“You wanna share with the class?” Sam crossed his arms over his chest. He was practically vibrating with nerves, with fear, with anger. 

This wasn’t how I wanted to tell him.

I know.

He hates us.

Me, yes. You, no. Never. We’ll explain once we get out. Hopefully the meatsuit Dad made me holds for a couple more days.

Won’t have to if you fill us both in.

The Devil sighed. “I can get a quick power boost and miracle up a jailbreak if you let me handle your sweet, succulent double A batteries.” 

Dean mentally facepalmed. No more youtube game animations for you. Didn’t think he’d ever have to be that freakishly specific.

“That came out wrong. Take two. Angels can power up on the quick by touching human souls. Dean would be the obvious choice,” since there’s really not much of you I haven’t touched, “but I can’t very well fist myself.” Fuck. “That came out wrong. Again.”

Or did it?

“So you need to get your dirty hands on my soul. Again.” Sam did not sound happy.

Lucifer shrugged. “I’m perfectly content to stay here.”

“Not in my brother.”

The angel sat back up in a quick, fluid motion that Dean was positive he’d never be able to execute on his own. “Look, Sam, this is a long story. We wanted to tell you when we had time. But you were hunting demons backed by angels, yeah? We need to stop them. We can sit here and wait for me to recharge, or you can trust me and we can go catch those sons of bitches now while they’re still gloating and take them by surprise. Then we go back to the bunker and Dean and I will explain everything to you from the beginning. Capital B, too, if that’s what you want. I’m feeling nostalgic.”

“Looks like you’ve already made up your mind.”

Lucifer frowned and followed Sam’s gaze down to his own arms. Dean’s arms. “That’s not me,” he said, smiling in bemusement as Dean rolled up his sleeve.

“Yeah, right.”

Dean flipped his brother off.

That made Sam pause. Made him take a step closer. “How is he doing that? How is he fighting you?”

“He’s not?”

“You can’t just let him take control like that.”

“People change, Sam. Angels, too, apparently, because I’d much rather spend time with your brother now than... just about anything else. And I don’t expect you to believe me. You never have.”

“But Dean did?”

Lucifer smiled. Dean smiled, too. “Yeah. He did.”

Sam nodded and folded himself onto the floor, scooting across the concrete to sit closer to the angel. “Dean trusts you.”

“I do.”

The younger hunter blinked at that, taken aback at the sudden pronoun change.

“He’s not holding me, Sammy. And this is not our first rodeo. I swear, you let him do this, we finish this hunt, and I’ll tell you everything. Or leave. Whatever you want me to do.”

“I don’t want you to leave. I just... Lucifer?”

Dean shrugged. “Like he said. Long story.”

“Yeah. I don’t trust him.”

“I know.”

But,” Sam licked his lips. “I trust you. So. Whatever we need to do to get out of here.”

Lucifer took a deep breath, sliding back into the forefront of the interaction. “You’re gonna want to bite down on something.”

~~End~~