I Was Waiting for Those Words
The Morning Star rose, as if it meant to burn the sky—dazzling beneath the shadow that covered the world.
Lucifer's opening stroke.
Rage had marred the beauty a god had sculpted, but the star he thrust forth was without a flaw.
Boom!
The archangel's sword swept the radiance aside. The Morning Star, scattering ill omen as it came, was crushed beneath holiness.
"How do you have that?!"
"Can't you tell by looking?"
Another One swung Michael. A five-colored corona of light surged like a wave.
Holy power—familiar, and hateful.
Lucifer met a strength that had once been his own, long ago, with devil-flame.
The wave of holiness and the demonic flame tore into each other. The five colors darkened and recovered, over and over, while the demonic flame was purified into white ash.
A sight he had buried beyond memory rose up. Heaven's Father looking down. The hosts of the heavenly realm charging in. His only blood kin, standing at the vanguard with a gaze cold and clear. An archangel more arrogant than he himself, who had committed the sin of pride.
Him. Why him?!
Why was a being who should never have fallen standing here?!
"I understand the wish to deny it. He was a fated rival you could not escape, and a trial you had to surpass as a god."
And yet, what could be done.
"Without meaning to, I scattered the ashes. Well, it could not be helped. He came staking his life to protect his Father, and it would have been poor form to send him back half-heartedly."
He had sent him off along with the other archangels. Quite politely, at that.
"Even so, he lived up to the name of Heaven's archangel. Dead, though."
"Shut your mouth!"
He could not accept it.
Dead?
That one?
Truly?
"Over nothing but a single weapon!"
"Lucifer, I had taken a liking to you, but you are beginning to sour. Did you not hate your younger brother? Why cling to a being who died tens of thousands of years ago?"
Ah.
"Did you love him, perhaps? Love and hate as one. A creature of Heaven indeed. To love even an enemy in earnest—I must offer my praise for that warmth."
A tongue more cunning than the serpent that tempted the first humans. For all the immense power he put forth, his manner was vulgar, and he talked far too much.
But Lucifer knew. This was only one of the man's faces.
He meant to drag out what lay deep in an opponent and stab at the weak points of the mind, to unsettle emotions like an iron fortress and call frailty forth. It was a contradiction, possible only because he was simply too strong. He was idle and at ease enough to provoke an insect and toy with it. Whatever he did, the result would be the same. He was only trying to make the process a little more amusing.
A baseness even a third-rate would not stoop to. An ugliness beneath his station. And yet the words and gestures came as naturally as if he had practiced them dozens, hundreds of times—as if somewhere he kept a manual that read, When facing the weak, this is how I do it.
Lucifer barely forced down the heart boiling with rage.
The last time they had fought, a few words had led him by the nose. Even in the moment the man killed the demon kings of hell with one hand stuffed in his pocket and only the other free, that mouth had never rested.
"Hah."
He would not commit the sin of wrath. Better to leave the old name the world had called him in the past.
Another One swung Michael. Four stars lifted from the blade.
Four stars shone in the sky of shadow. They took their places at the four directions—east, west, south, and north—and their arrangement drew a cross.
The star at the head of the cross caught fire.
His light. His flame.
A sword in one hand, a holy fire in the other. A flame meant for him alone, unlike Michael's, came falling.
Lucifer's twelve wings spread wide. Feathers that had hung slack stood rigid, and those steeped in pitch-black demonic flame poured down, hunting the holy fire.
The two flames met in the air. Red and black fireworks burst and danced overhead without pause.
The star on the left of the cross shone.
His hero. His strength.
The archangel who had announced the birth of another heaven tilted a water jar.
Holy water overflowed from the shadow beneath his feet. The endless world of shadow met a flood without precedent.
Lucifer frowned at the holy water stinging his ankles.
"Holy water like this is no more to me now than a drink gone stale."
Golden light flickered in Lucifer's eyes. The divinity of the Eclipse God pulsed.
Divine flame rose together with the demonic flame. From beneath Lucifer's feet it took the holy water as fuel, and the water was spent faster than its force could swell. Even the vast wave rolling in from afar became fodder for divinity.
A sun took its place behind his back—not the red sun that bestows grace, but a black sun. Sinister merely to look upon, and chilling. Yet the divinity it held was wholly that of a true god.
The western star went out. Heaven's water collapsed.
"Is that your divinity? An eclipse. I can see the firm will to surpass Heaven."
Another One looked at the sun.
A sun darker than darkness.
What it held was a humiliating past. Resentment toward himself, who had made that past, and toward his enemy. A desperate resolve to cover the Heaven of the present. And living alongside all of it were love for his believers, and a righteous will to surpass God.
Demon and sacred, which ought never to mix, occupied a single place. The god's labor to make it so lay transparent to Another One, as if it had fallen into his hand.
True to the name, did he mean to become a sun that covers the sun?
"Fitting for the first pride, the spirit you carry is lofty indeed. But can you manage it? The road you walk is a field of thorns. It is not a path for a devil who rolls his eyes at the mere sight of a single sword."
"I have no mind to refuse the suffering required to become a true god. Suffering profits me, and through it I may learn the statutes of God."
And—
"Those statutes will be my delight, and they will deliver me from destruction."
Clap. Clap. Clap.
"A memorable line. I shall have to take back what I said about you souring."
Another One raised Michael high.
The endless rain of fire went out. The northern star lost its light. The eastern star turned south, and the already darkened stars of north and west flung themselves south as well. The southern radiance drank in the power of the three and became a single pillar of light, pouring down upon Another One.
"A waste, to hear it alone. I fear I have no choice but to call an acquaintance."
Another One let go of the sword.
Michael sank beneath the pillar of light, and that brilliance dyed the world of shadow. It was a baptism of light fierce enough to make even Lucifer shut his eyes for an instant.
When he opened them again, the dark world was gone, and an entirely different world stood in its place. Clouds spread over the ground. The sky was graciously blue.
"……"
Beneath it stood an angel with a head of light and white wings.
Another One patted the shoulder of the expressionless, cold young man.
"Allow me to introduce him. One of my dead acquaintances."
"Michael."
Lucifer closed his eyes before the brother he had not seen in so very long.
"To the very end. You make a fool of me."
"I only staged the scene I thought would be the most entertaining. In the manner of a viewer watching a film."
Who could endure a rematch between Lucifer and Michael? Even the Pope could not sit through this.
"Then I'll end it quickly."
Before he was humiliated any further—!
Lucifer's eyes flashed. He gathered his twelve wings behind him and launched them forward, reaching the puppet of his brother in the space of a blink.
Expressionless Michael moved.
Holy Sword Michael checked Lucifer along a graceful arc.
"Weak. He was never only this!"
"……"
Lucifer drove Michael back by sheer force. The eclipse spat divinity, and the wings beat. White feathers were torn to shreds by the twelve, and the eclipse scored a flaw into the god's sculpture. The angel's armor lost its holiness. Deep blood ran from the corner of his mouth.
A wounded figure he had never seen in life. Even faced with a shape that looked ready to die at any moment, anger and dread outran joy in Lucifer.
"I didn't want to beat you like this."
"……"
"A ruined you should not exist. If you truly died, then vanish as the proper order demands—!"
The eclipse came to dwell in Lucifer.
A black flash flung Michael aside and pierced the false puppet's heart. Blood from that heart soaked Lucifer's head.
"…Hyung."
"……!"
Lucifer lifted his head at the voice he had longed for.
Crunch.
He never saw whose voice it was. His head burst, and a hand that came thrusting out of it seized him by the neck.
"Was the reunion pleasant?"
Another One cast Michael's body aside. The headless corpse was thrown away like trash.
"You bastard—!!!"
"So it was not."
Boom!
Another One slammed Lucifer into the ground. Lucifer's consciousness snapped, then caught again.
"Ghk!"
"I have finished taking the measure of your skill. It is about time, so let us leave it here."
The pure-white world returned to the place it had been.
A balloon rubbed against Lucifer's cheek.
"Lucifer. Allow me one proposal."
"You rotten—!"
"Easy, now. Calm yourself. Ought you not hear a man out to the end?"
Another One closed a hand around Lucifer's throat.
"Kgh—khak!"
"What do you say to an alliance with me?"
"…Take that… bullshit… and shove it…!"
"I understand it lacks persuasion. We have come rather far for words better spoken over tea in a café."
"Then just… kill me…!"
"Do not put your pride forward. You have believers to look after, do you not? Do you truly wish me to kill you?"
"……"
Another One turned his gaze toward a certain door.
"There are two choices. Either Ilshikgyo enters the alliance as an equal, or you alone do."
"……"
Lucifer's pupils shook. Trembling all over with humiliation, he barely forced his mouth open.
"The first… I'll take the first."
"I was waiting for those words."
Another One hauled Lucifer to his feet and held out a hand.
Swallowing tears of blood, Lucifer took it.
"We will speak of what follows another time. I have been terribly rude today. By way of apology, I shall leave that behind."
Another One walked, unhurried, toward the front door.
"Let us do well together, Eclipse God."
And with that, Another One was gone.
Lucifer clenched his fist.
Crrrk.
A sound like bone being crushed rang out.
That—
the holy sword, resting in the puppets' arms, watched.