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"Alright, this has gone on long enough. Get up."
Something solid nudged against his side. Lucio only groaned and buried his face further into the plush pillow in his grip, murmuring something to the effect of 'five more minutes, Valerius' against the fabric. At the moment it didn't occur to him that the refined voice could belong to anyone else.
There was another, more insistent nudge - and when that didn't roust him, a sudden splash of chilled wine splattered across his face.
He yelped and scrambled into a sitting position, scrubbing at his eyes to clear some of the offending fluid before opening them, aiming an indignant glower at the general direction of the assault. A stern ram headed creature dressed in fine robes was glowering back down at him, half filled wine glass in its claws still dangerously close to tipping the rest over him.
In an instant he remembered where he was, and why this creature might be angry with him.
"I pretended not to notice you squatting here in my domain because I thought, once you'd adjusted to no longer having the pressure of someone else's leash around your throat, you would be able to find your own way." The Hierophant said evenly, taking a long, judgmental sip from his weapon. "Instead you've made yourself at home in my gazebo, broken into my wine cellar, wreaked havoc on my vineyards, and just made me ruin my good cushions, which you took from my parlor."
Lucio awkwardly shifted in his nest of stolen pillows, noticing wine stains already forming from the backsplash. "... sleeping on the floor hurt my back."
The beast rolled his eyes and advanced towards him - he was a far cry from the Devil, but his mind saw the combination of horns and hooves and angry and commanded the former Count to cower down in his nest regardless, something that seemed to unsettle his host more than his counts of theft and trespassing, a flicker of something like pity in stern eyes. He didn't want his pity. He didn't know what he wanted.
"You could have just asked me to help you, you foolish creature," The Hierophant sighed. "But of course, you had to take what you wanted and trample over boundaries. It is the natural order of things for you. I suppose I am the foolish creature to have expected anything else."
Without warning he was snatched up by the back of his collar and hoisted to his feet, the creature's grip remaining firm and inescapable as he dragged him towards the entryway. He attempted to dig his heels in, but despite the added weight of a physical form it hardly made a difference, his captor was far stronger than he looked. His mind raced, trying to think of something that would keep him from abandoning him in the wilderness, drawing a blank.
"W-wait, please, you can't-- where will I go??"
"That's no concern of mine," A grim sneer twisted his snout. "However, if you choose to return here uninvited, I will not hesitate to deliver you into Justice's hands alongside your cohorts. He's wanted to speak with you for a long while."
He had a feeling that was a talk guaranteed to end in a long drop and a sudden stop, or however Arcana executed their prisoners.
Golden claws hooked into the nearest support column just as he felt his boots beginning to lift from the floor, hopefully making it that much harder to throw him out without risking damage to his precious gazebo. Warm grass and vast vineyards stretched before him, but he knew better than to trust what he saw - for all he knew there could be an endless chasm waiting below his feet.
"Now you're just embarrassing yourself," Came the laconic voice behind him, and his grip shifted so his other hand could grab for the golden one.
"Listen, maybe we can come to some kind of agreement," Lucio began, forcibly ignoring that remark. "You let me stay here, and I can help you with.. whatever it is you do. Anything at all, just name it, I’ll do it. You say ‘jump’ and I ask how high. Deal?"
He'd felt the grip on his collar slowly beginning to slack - but at that final word his captor's claws clamped down painfully into the back of his neck, the other hand ripping his own claws free and threatening to tear his arm off in the process before bodily hurling him into the grass, hard enough to bounce him a few paces with another startled yelp.
The former Count pushed himself up onto his knees, ghosting his fingers along his neck for blood before whirling indignantly back towards the gazebo.
It was gone.
The vineyards were gone, the gazebo was gone, not a hint of the majestic estate, just a nearly endless field of grass and weeds.
Only upside was that the wine soaked into his hair and cloak was gone as well. Small blessings. A tiny comfort at the cost of every other comfort he'd grown used to over the past.. weeks? Months? Years?? Time flows differently here, something he hadn't improved much by remaining in a survival state - find food, grab wine, curl up to sleep in the gazebo or the vineyards or the cellar depending on where he saw the Hierophant last, repeat. Like a wild animal skulking about in the shadows, feeding on someone else's trash.
Now he didn't even have that.
He suddenly realized that it had been decades since he'd actually had to survive on his own. He’d had his tribe, and then his dogs, and then his mercenaries, and then the whole of Vesuvia. Even as a ghost, eventually he’d snapped and turned to the Devil for help. Even now he found his first plan of action was to buddy up with another Arcana and let them take care of him, at least as long as it took to find a way out of this hellscape.
Assuming any other Arcana wasn’t going to just rudely toss him out of their domain like the Hierophant due to his former connections. He still wasn’t sure what had pissed him off so much, if it wasn’t that.
You know damn well what, a voice like Nadia’s sounded imperiously in his head.
“Shut up, Noddy,” Lucio grunted at nothing, annoyed that he couldn’t find it within himself to be angry at her.
Her voice had been a nearly constant companion out here, angrily buzzing in his mind like a swarm of insects, criticizing him at every turn and misstep, picking up where the real Nadia left off in the Hierophant’s estate, further eviscerating his wounded pride before it had a chance to recover. He hated it.
And yet.. It just made him miss her even more.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, or something. Although she clearly hadn’t grown fonder of him in his absence.
Sometimes he wondered if it would have been better if she had killed him.
With a hiss and a brusque shake of his head, he swiftly pushed himself up onto his feet, knowing he would likely sit there for hours mentally replaying his wife’s - ex-wife’s, dear - final repartee if he wasn’t careful. He could wallow after he found somewhere else to hide squat settle down for a while.
The near-endless field of weeds and grass around him hadn’t changed much since he last looked at it, except that it looked more yellow and dead, and there was a distinct feeling of hostility hovering over the landscape, as if the ground itself was offended by his presence.
He turned from where the gazebo had once been and started forward regardless, making sure to crush a wilting dandelion under his heel in silent defiance. Fuck you too, ground.
“Y’know, Noddy, you could say something nice about me for once,” He mused, idly stepping over a suspicious looking rock, which splintered into several jagged pieces that sunk into the ground. “Shake it up a little, spice up my mental breakdown.”
Nadia’s voice said nothing.
“Not even a backhanded compliment? Insincere flattery? Tsk, you’re no fun.”
Dead grass became dead short brush became a half-felled forest of skeletal trees, not a single one that appeared to be in any shape to turn into a makeshift shelter. He had a feeling this wasn’t what these realms were meant to look like, the landscape camouflaging itself to look extra shitty so he wouldn’t bother to stop here. He didn’t bother to hunt, there was no sign of life besides himself, huffing and puffing like a geezer.
It was like being a ghost all over again, out of sync with reality, hungry and lonely and wondering what he’d done to deserve this - except he hadn’t yet recovered from those past three years alone, had only just begun scrabbling at the walls of normalcy before Nadia kicked him back down, the prospect of another indeterminate amount of time like that deepening the numerous cracks in the weathered fortress of his mind.
He settled to rest on one of the fallen, bone-white trees, only to have it crumble into dust beneath his weight, knocking him flat on his ass in a pile of ash. For a long moment he considered staying there, and not just because his legs hurt.
Something beneath the ash shifted, brittle brush rippling outwards around him like waves.
Lucio immediately leapt to his feet and started walking again at a much more brisk pace, eyes focused dead ahead and not anywhere near the ground until he was sure he was clear of whatever the hell that was, in no shape for a fight right now. Could be something, could be nothing, probably something that would want him dead.
Everything wants you dead, dear, Nadia’s voice said calmly, and he could clearly envision her sipping a cup of tea and not looking up from the morning paper in an elegant hand.
“Yes, thank you, I’ll file that away in a folder called Shit I Already Knew.”
You can put it next to ‘everyone in Vesuvia always hated you’ and ‘your mother was right’.
“Right for the jugular as always, my love.”
The landscape slowly shifted again, trees becoming sparser and sparser until they were gone, brush turning to ashen sand that crunched like tiny bones beneath his feet. Beneath the ash he could see the hint of red, cracked desert hardpan that was dull and lifeless like old blood. Something about it struck him as familiar, though he couldn’t put his finger on it.
That washed out crimson haze blanketed the air around him, air that was dry and dead and empty , like something had drained it of most of the qualities that made it air, leaving just enough to breathe. There was a faint echo of something dark and oppressive, long gone, shadows of a world that moved on.
There was something familiar about that, too. It tugged at him, called for him.
His feet traversed an old beaten path in the ash and dirt only they seemed to know, as if compelled, and he found himself unable to sway the course, if only because this felt so natural to him - almost like coming home. After being pushed around and snubbed by the rest of the world around him, it was a relieving feeling.
He found himself standing before a tall, pointed iron gate, and he realized at once where he was.
This was the Devil’s realm.
His body instinctively tensed, a harsher feeling in these old bones, waiting for the goatman himself to storm out of the gate and punish him for his betrayal. He wasn’t sure how much power he’d cost him by breaking free, but it was likely a lot, too much to consider sparing his miserable life.
And yet.. there was nothing. Not even a flicker of heat through the gate.
The gate itself was in disrepair. Rusted shut, points dulled by the elements, some of the intricate ironwork broken off, a thin coat of ashen dust turning stark black into a hazy gray. It was like it hadn’t been used in centuries. He knew at once if he touched it, it would be ice cold instead of the oppressive near-searing heat of the Devil’s magic.
What happened after he fled to the edges of the Hierophant’s domain?
We killed him, of course. My beloved magician and I struck him down. If I were stronger, I would have done the same to you.
Nadia’s voice was calm but chilling inside his head, ice cold like the iron bars. He wondered why he wasn’t immediately overjoyed at this suggestion.
Against his better judgment, Lucio reached out and rested his golden hand against the gate, intending to start pushing despite the rust sealing it shut - but at the barest brush of metal against metal, the gate immediately swung open with a discordant shriek of ancient rusted hinges, as if it wanted him to go in. He yelped and jumped back, nearly falling back on his ass in surprise.
He should turn back.
That one last shred of sense was telling him to run as far from here as he could and never look back.
But he had to know.
Once proud obsidian spires seemed to have suffered the same fate as the gate, the twisted version of his own Palace crumbling into dark ruins. Cracks spread along the polished obsidian floor like spiderwebs, threatening to give way beneath his weight, the steps up to the dais jagged and uneven like teeth.
At the edge of the dais stood a gray goat-like statue coated in its own fine layer of dust, snout twisted into a snarl of frustration, one arm outstretched, claws reaching for some unseen enemy. It looked far too lifelike to be a replica of the beast, and even now he could feel the faint echo of dark and oppressive energy, radiating out into the ruins towards him.
The former Count blinked, and then laughed.
“Look at you!” He jeered, approaching the statue with perhaps more confidence than he should be allowing himself to have. “I thought I’d had it bad when I lost my other body, but you, you’re a fucking rock !”
The Devil, of course, remained motionless, blindly glowering into oblivion. He briefly envisioned him standing in the midst of his statue garden, curved horns and elegant snout absolutely drenched in bird shit, setting off another round of delirious laughter.
“You’re just-- you can’t even-- you--”
For a long moment he struggled to breathe, pulling in shaky little wheezes and glancing up at the Devil only to start laughing all over again, the sound tinged with the jagged red edges of desperation, turning to broken sobs before he could stop it.
“You were right.”
Everything collapsed in on him at once, crushing his mind beneath its weight.
He was exhausted, starving, lonely, unwanted, powerless, useless , a lion with no fangs, a beetle stripped of its wings and pinned to the wall. He’d spent who knows how long cowering in someone else’s property, slinking about in the shadows with his tail between his legs. His physical body was weighed down by aches and pains and age , more of a hindrance than a help. He was stranded in another reality away from the only other place he’d considered home, a reality that didn’t want him either.
“You were right, I’m nothing without you.” Lucio murmured, finally. “I thought, if I was free.. If Noddy let me help her.. I don’t know what I thought, I just wanted my life back.”
And Nadia had made it abundantly clear he would never have it, crushing that spark of hope beneath her heel as she tore into his pride. Everything he’d worked for, all for nothing. He had been so sure, he never thought of an alternative.
It certainly wasn’t this.
Slowly, gingerly, he stepped the rest of the way up onto the dais, now standing next to the statue, gazing up at the frozen snarl with something like longing and regret. This close, the dark and oppressive energy was so much stronger, enveloping him in its warmth, tugging at him as if it was trying to pull him into the stone.
A far cry from what he remembered, weak and powerless like himself. He could very easily and unintentionally break free of it if he wasn’t careful, like knocking loose a cloak barely draped across his shoulders by simply shifting his weight. The idea that he could just let it drop and walk away never registered in his addled mind.
He found himself leaning further up, gently butting his head up into the outstretched stone hand, as though it would move to stroke his hair, eyes closed in a facsimile of comfort and trust.
It was still warm.
”... I can’t do this anymore. I need your help. Please.”
The Devil, again, remained motionless.
He didn’t know why he thought that would change, or why it hurt so much that it didn’t.
For a long moment he just stood there, awkwardly, head pressed against the statue’s hand, unsure of where to go from here, unable or maybe just unwilling to pull away just yet. He didn’t have anywhere else to go. He couldn’t even stay here, it was too dead and empty.
The gears in his mind had stopped turning, bound up by some tangle of pain and fear. There were no plans, no strategies, not even a half-baked idea. He was just lost and alone - completely alone, he hadn’t heard Nadia’s voice since he’d opened the gate.
His head began to hurt from the pressure, a too warm, throbbing ache that slowly spread down his spine and dug in like onyx claws tearing into his skin. The darkness behind his eyes tinted red, then faded back to black as he reluctantly pulled his head away, massaging at his temples with his flesh hand to no avail.
A low rumbling sound caused him to open his eyes again, just in time to witness the stone begin to crack, black lines drawing from the outstretched fingertips down the arm and across the twisted snout, pieces of the statue crumbling from the edges of fresh wounds.
Lucio cried out and lunged for the nearest part of the statue as though he could catch it before it fell, only left numbly holding one broad broken hand as the rest collapsed in on itself under its own weight, the imposing goat-like form reduced into little more than incomprehensible gray chunks of rubble across the broken dais.
The hand in his grip was cold and lifeless, nothing more than a piece of rock, disintegrating into powder at the slightest twitch of his palm. He couldn’t feel the dark oppressive energy radiating out across the throne room anymore.
It was less like he’d died, and more like.. he’d just left.
Fitting that the Devil would abandon him too.
Dull, red agony still pulsed in the back of his skull, a near-constant pressure like the heavy weight of the stone hand against his neck, firm and inescapable. For a moment he thought he saw the lights in the gaps of his armor take on a reddish hue.
Time to go, dear, Nadia’s voice said, off-kilter and too deep. You have a lot of work to do.