.quietus
ragequit, but ~poetic~
There just wasn't a lot of light in Hell.
What was there to be found instead was darkness -- and not the soft, velvety sort that almost felt like an invitation to close your eyes and drift off to sleep, but the gross, wet kind that all but seemed to crawl deep into your bones and stay there, both a reminder of your poor choices and a punishment in itself.
Nemain, the Marchioness of Gnawpit, didn't tend to dwell on such pointless details, though it was hard not to notice the contrast whenever she was leaving the dimension. Annoying. That was the demoness's first thought; it pretty much always was. It didn't at all matter whether she was spilling the blood of lesser beings, dealing with the paperwork that really ought to have been done by someone else, or, like now, drawing blue, glowing sigils on the wall, with the rivers of magma sizzling somewhere beneath her teeth. Why me? That, by the way, happened to be her second thought with the kind of regularity that was almost startling.
What would humans call it? Something like 'statistical outlier?'
Yeah, statistical outlier her fucking ass.
It was no longer an outlier of any sort in Nemain's book when it was always her who was sent to handle this kind of bullshit, and she couldn't help but think back to Duchess Lilith, sitting on her throne made of skulls (pretty cheesy, if you asked her) with that infuriating smirk curling her lips.
"Well, well, well, dear Marchioness. Aren't you the thoughtful type?" And wasn't it funny how that worked? Even if Lilith had said 'thoughtful' for sure, Nemain had also heard about a million other things behind the adjective, none of them quite as nice. Mostly, she'd heard 'nosey,' though if she tried really hard, there had also been a shade of 'nuisance,' 'foolish,' and, yes, even 'annoyance.'
Why she had learned her Dark Lady's ire was something Nemain had never quite understood, but she supposed she didn't really have to understand everything.
Day by day, being stupid actually struck her as the far more superior lifestyle.
Back to the memory, though!
"What a nice report you've written. Full of... personal touch." And there it had been again, the venom that was all but dripping from her words but also hiding behind the veil of plausible deniability far too well to be called out. Not that Nemain would, of course. She rather liked her limbs, for one, and those who talked back to Lilith didn't tend to keep them for long. "Clearly, this is important to you. Isn't it? Far be it from me, then, to break your heart and assign the mission to someone else." Oh, Lilith had definitely been fucking with her. Nemain had known from the very beginning, but what she'd added next all but confirmed it: "Besides, a bird told me that you have a special someone up in the clouds. About time to finally pay her a visit, hm?"
Nemain had wanted to scream. She'd wanted to break something, and while it would have been ideal for that something to be Lilith's skull, anything would have done. She'd wanted to quit her fucking job, pack her things, and go on a long, long vacation, far from any demons and angels and the bullshit that always seemed to follow in her footsteps somehow.
Nemain, of course, had done none of that, because see point A above -- she liked her goddamn limbs.
Even now, she could still see Lilith's voice ringing in her ears, as well as the parting words she'd offered. "Aren't I such a great boss? You could have been stuck with Mephistopheles, girl!"
And sure, Mephistopheles may have been famous for cooking alive those who failed to bring him appropriately warm tea in the morning, but as the portal opened in front of her, shining with the same blue light that had imbued the runes, Nemain was utterly convinced that she would have preferred that.
At least you don't get to think anymore when you're just meat. Thinking too much was the root of her issues - she was convinced of that by now - and so perhaps it would be better to do... well, less of that. No thinking meant no ideas, no conclusions, and certainly no weird theories about even weirder humans that she now had to present to the Heavenly officials, if for no other reason than that nobody else gave a single flying fuck.
This was her life now, Nemain supposed.
As if those winged fucks will ever help. The demoness had had some... experiences with angels, and every single one had cemented the position she had brought with her from her Fall. They were rude; they were stuck-up; they were sanctimonious, somehow believing themselves to be better than she was just because they hadn't yet managed to violate the one weird rule they knew nothing about and that would be their undoing.
In some respects, Nemain almost felt bad for them.
Awakening to the truth was cruel, but living a lie was always the far crueller fate.
Any and all pity she may have felt for them evaporated into nothingness, though, when she reached the pearly gates and the angel who was guarding them, a snot-nosed brat with far too many pimples covering his parody of an actual face, sized her up and down, as if he couldn't quite believe his eyes. Maybe he really couldn't. Nemain could understand that, but did he have to give her the look you usually gave to the shit you'd just stepped into?
"Errr," he drawled out, "I don't believe this is the entrance to Hell, Miss. If you've come to file an official appeal regarding your... unfortunate state, you may do so at--"
"A meeting," Nemain interrupted him, "I've booked it and everything. As in, with an official representative? My name is Marchioness Nemain of Gnawpit and I demand the entrance I am owed." She hadn't quite voiced the or else she was thinking, but she also didn't have to.
Not at all.
What was there to be found instead was darkness -- and not the soft, velvety sort that almost felt like an invitation to close your eyes and drift off to sleep, but the gross, wet kind that all but seemed to crawl deep into your bones and stay there, both a reminder of your poor choices and a punishment in itself.
Nemain, the Marchioness of Gnawpit, didn't tend to dwell on such pointless details, though it was hard not to notice the contrast whenever she was leaving the dimension. Annoying. That was the demoness's first thought; it pretty much always was. It didn't at all matter whether she was spilling the blood of lesser beings, dealing with the paperwork that really ought to have been done by someone else, or, like now, drawing blue, glowing sigils on the wall, with the rivers of magma sizzling somewhere beneath her teeth. Why me? That, by the way, happened to be her second thought with the kind of regularity that was almost startling.
What would humans call it? Something like 'statistical outlier?'
Yeah, statistical outlier her fucking ass.
It was no longer an outlier of any sort in Nemain's book when it was always her who was sent to handle this kind of bullshit, and she couldn't help but think back to Duchess Lilith, sitting on her throne made of skulls (pretty cheesy, if you asked her) with that infuriating smirk curling her lips.
"Well, well, well, dear Marchioness. Aren't you the thoughtful type?" And wasn't it funny how that worked? Even if Lilith had said 'thoughtful' for sure, Nemain had also heard about a million other things behind the adjective, none of them quite as nice. Mostly, she'd heard 'nosey,' though if she tried really hard, there had also been a shade of 'nuisance,' 'foolish,' and, yes, even 'annoyance.'
Why she had learned her Dark Lady's ire was something Nemain had never quite understood, but she supposed she didn't really have to understand everything.
Day by day, being stupid actually struck her as the far more superior lifestyle.
Back to the memory, though!
"What a nice report you've written. Full of... personal touch." And there it had been again, the venom that was all but dripping from her words but also hiding behind the veil of plausible deniability far too well to be called out. Not that Nemain would, of course. She rather liked her limbs, for one, and those who talked back to Lilith didn't tend to keep them for long. "Clearly, this is important to you. Isn't it? Far be it from me, then, to break your heart and assign the mission to someone else." Oh, Lilith had definitely been fucking with her. Nemain had known from the very beginning, but what she'd added next all but confirmed it: "Besides, a bird told me that you have a special someone up in the clouds. About time to finally pay her a visit, hm?"
Nemain had wanted to scream. She'd wanted to break something, and while it would have been ideal for that something to be Lilith's skull, anything would have done. She'd wanted to quit her fucking job, pack her things, and go on a long, long vacation, far from any demons and angels and the bullshit that always seemed to follow in her footsteps somehow.
Nemain, of course, had done none of that, because see point A above -- she liked her goddamn limbs.
Even now, she could still see Lilith's voice ringing in her ears, as well as the parting words she'd offered. "Aren't I such a great boss? You could have been stuck with Mephistopheles, girl!"
And sure, Mephistopheles may have been famous for cooking alive those who failed to bring him appropriately warm tea in the morning, but as the portal opened in front of her, shining with the same blue light that had imbued the runes, Nemain was utterly convinced that she would have preferred that.
At least you don't get to think anymore when you're just meat. Thinking too much was the root of her issues - she was convinced of that by now - and so perhaps it would be better to do... well, less of that. No thinking meant no ideas, no conclusions, and certainly no weird theories about even weirder humans that she now had to present to the Heavenly officials, if for no other reason than that nobody else gave a single flying fuck.
This was her life now, Nemain supposed.
As if those winged fucks will ever help. The demoness had had some... experiences with angels, and every single one had cemented the position she had brought with her from her Fall. They were rude; they were stuck-up; they were sanctimonious, somehow believing themselves to be better than she was just because they hadn't yet managed to violate the one weird rule they knew nothing about and that would be their undoing.
In some respects, Nemain almost felt bad for them.
Awakening to the truth was cruel, but living a lie was always the far crueller fate.
Any and all pity she may have felt for them evaporated into nothingness, though, when she reached the pearly gates and the angel who was guarding them, a snot-nosed brat with far too many pimples covering his parody of an actual face, sized her up and down, as if he couldn't quite believe his eyes. Maybe he really couldn't. Nemain could understand that, but did he have to give her the look you usually gave to the shit you'd just stepped into?
"Errr," he drawled out, "I don't believe this is the entrance to Hell, Miss. If you've come to file an official appeal regarding your... unfortunate state, you may do so at--"
"A meeting," Nemain interrupted him, "I've booked it and everything. As in, with an official representative? My name is Marchioness Nemain of Gnawpit and I demand the entrance I am owed." She hadn't quite voiced the or else she was thinking, but she also didn't have to.
Not at all.