Chapter Text
Misery hung over them all, heavy as the ominous fog that curled through the forbidding trees around them. A great amount of it was the sort of misery that tightens around hearts and brings tears to one's eyes, though not one of them was without some physical agony as well.
The burning cold of the forest was lashed across their backs(the habit of angels being to leave them exposed in the warm sun of the Celestial Realm)by fierce winds that whipped through the trees with a wolf-like howl and violently quaked the leaves around the tiny clearing they'd huddled in. Some of the bothers sat together for warmth and shelter from the wind. For a few, the stinging cold at least offered some numbness from the pain searing through their bodies.
Near the edge of the clearing hunched Lucifer, leaned away from the tree that had caused him agony to press his back against. Feathers filled the clearing like fallen leaves, leaving a trail from where they'd all stumbled through, but the piles of white were particularly dense beneath his ragged and inkstained wings. These wings, at least the four that remained, were curled forwards around the two brothers clinging to him, Asmodeus laying along his right side, Mammon hunched into his left.
Across the clearing, his bitter shadow glared at him, with a thin, plated tail trashing back and forth across the grass behind where he knelt.
Satan seemed resentful of everything from the damp grass to the bright moon, but especially resentful towards Lucifer, and had refused to come near when invited. When Satan first appeared, he had looked monstrous to them all. Forged in a sickly violet storm of magic expelled from Lucifer as he screamed at their creator, Satan was no angel. From the way his almost metallic spine protruded from the skin of his naked back and curled into a long, evil-looking tail, to the twisting horns embedded in his skull, it was been clear to the heavenly spectators back then that he was a being marked with some dark force.
Though, it seemed the others had been poisoned by a similar magic when they fell.
Untold hours ago, Lucifer had begun to feel a stinging on either side of his head. The feeling had quickly worsened, building to an intense, aching pressure that seemed to force his skull outward on either side. He had bit down any sound of his pain best he could, though he had seen the others gaze at his hair in fear or worry more than once.
For him, the agony had eventually faded into a manageable throbbing, now that he bore twisting horns similar to Satan's. They felt far too heavy on his head, and were horribly tender, but he was glad they seemed content at their current length. The others, though, had begun to endure the same process, and he would gladly have taken the pain 5-fold rather than to seem them suffer through it.
Mammon whimpered into Lucifer's chest, hand clenched into the tattered robe there. Though Lucifer hadn't mentioned the budding pain in his head, Mammon had first complained about it awhile ago, and they all had glanced again at Lucifer wearily if they hadn't already been looking, their wings in various stages of transformation or, in Leviathan's case, loss. Mammon had groaned and sobbed every so often over at least an hour as the pressure built in his head.
Lucifer had talked to Mammon as the thin horns crawled up from the top of his head, assuring him in a low and somewhat frayed voice that he was through the worst of it when the shiny black tips finally emerged. Now a few inches long, they continued to grow, but the 2nd brother seemed too exhausted to do much but press into Lucifer's side with an occasional whimper.
Leviathan had screamed, alerting them, soon after the fresh breach of Mammon's horns, to something even more painful happening to him.
He had been sitting near Asmodeus when they first settled into the clearing, but when he started groaning and reaching up towards his head, his younger brother had touched his shoulder, startling him enough to stand and stumble to the other side of the clearing, nearly falling into the small pond there. His wings were already gone, ripped from his body as he tried to catch himself in the air what seemed like days ago, leaving 4 furious red scars in his back exposed as he leaned down over the water. Lucifer had barely managed to catch his waist and Satan's tail to keep them all from free-falling to their deaths, though his own lower wings had torn away in the process.
For a time Leviathan had muttered about nothing being his fault and an aching spine before erupting into a chilling wail that had echoed through the dark trees as the worst of his pain hit.
It was not the emergence of his horns that caused it(though they were soon to follow) but a tail, pushing out from his lower back. Slowly the small nub of bone had snaked out, constantly writing and twisting in on itself like a snake, sliding out of the window for his missing wings and pinned awkwardly to his back near the base by the tie at his waist.
Satan had been the only one to think of a way to offer him comfort, moving over with utter silence and crouching beside Leviathan as his nails clenched deep into the soft soil near the pond.
Leviathan had gasped and tried to pull away when Satan grabbed the tie at his waist, but with a precise twist of his tail Satan had severed the binding and loosened the robe around Leviathan's sensitive lower back. Though the robes fell open, none of them cared, and with another deliberate slice, Satan's tail made a slit down from the window where Leviathan's wings had once been, relieving the last of the pressure from the clothing. Satan's skeletal limb had quickly started to lash again, but he carefully stilled it and wound it along his leg, pressing the tip under his heel to pin it where it wouldn't accidentally harm the trembling fallen angel beside him. He'd offered an arm and Leviathan had finally clutched it as his course, branch-like horns began their appearance and his tail continued to inch out of his back. Satan had tensed at the painfully tight grip, but said nothing and made no indication of moving away.
Asmodeus had tried to save face as long as possible, not daring to think about how many feathers were falling from his once-beautiful wings or how they hurt as the finger-like bones in the joints seemed to lengthen. He had bit his lip as his head began to throb, Lucifer only noticing his discomfort when Asmodeus took his hand and clutched it for a few moments. But not long ago he'd begun to whine quietly, and had whispered to Lucifer that his wings felt like they were rotting.
The first born rested his hand very carefully against his brother's back, guiding him to twist just enough to see. The feathers were gone, and the skin had shrunk and turned black against the finger-like bones, stretched between them, but they were there. More concerning, perhaps, was the feeling of the muscles near their base. As Lucifer's hand pressed against them he could feel them shifting, reforming to better suit wings built to be flapped rather than to glide.
"They're not the same." Lucifer informed him, gentle as he'd been speaking to Mammon. "But I do not think you will lose them."
Asmodeus hummed, accepting the news and slipping back into silence. The moon caught on two black points just starting to emerge from his hair.
If Beelzebub was in great pain, he had given even less indication of it than Lucifer.
He had Belphegor clutched to his chest, having refused to let go of him since catching him. And even though thick horns had already begun to curl forward around his head, he hadn't made a sound. His cheeks were stained with tears, though, and all of them knew the source of them wasn't pain.
Beelzebub kept his tired eyes trained on Lucifer, even as a mercifully sleeping Belphegor shifted in his lap. Occasionally he would look around at the others, as if reassuring himself they were still there, but his eyes always settled back on the eldest and Lucifer could only stare back, too wary to muster anything more than a sad smile as he looked for signs of what Beelzebub was suffering through.
They were all too tired to talk or to move, though Lucifer still forced himself to try and work through the cloudiness and grief in his mind, desperate to conceive a plan that could help ease his brothers' suffering and ensure they all survived. Their changes and pain lasted for hours uncountable in the perpetual, moonlit night, but Lucifer was awake long after the others had settled against each other and fallen asleep. Even Beelzebub had drifted off some time ago, long after Lucifer had realized the strange, iridescent glimmer at his sides were insects' wings.
The firstborn shifted his wings carefully around Mammon and Asmodeus, ignoring the ache of his skull and lower back, and looked up past the moon at the black sky. They had been cast out, dropped nearly helpless to a place even more unfamiliar than Earth, but most of them had survived, and Lucifer pledged to be the only power he would ever allow to stand over his family, ensuring that anyone who wished to harm them would have to destroy The Morning Star to do so.