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He was getting close.
It was around here somewhere, he was sure of it. He just had to search… a little bit further…
“Oh,” Luke moaned, “where are you, little soul? I can't save you if I don't know where you are…”
It wasn't a special soul, or even an interesting one. It was just like all the others, small and lonely and afraid, lost somewhere in the terrifying wilderness of the Devildom.
He wouldn't get anything for saving it. No heartfelt praise from Michael, no pat on the back from Simeon, not even a thank you from the little soul itself.
But he had to save it, because he was an angel.
And that's what good angels did.
“Oh… oh! There you are!” He smiled widely at his DDD, just as delighted to have discovered this little soul as he had been for the previous eight-hundred and sixty-seven of them, and swiped a Mononoke ball across his screen.
The pink, cartoon mouse with adorable eyes and extra-long whiskers went right into the ball, and didn't break out once.
“Yay! Hahaha, hello, little spirit! Do you have any idea how long I've been tracking you?”
Mousets were the weakest spirits in the game, but that didn't matter. The stats on this particular one were especially bad, but that didn't matter either. It wouldn't even help complete his Monodex, since he already had thirty-four mousets in his collection.
None of that mattered.
He still gave her a name (MaryMouse), set her as his buddy so he could pet her head and give her a cookie (so she would know she was someplace safe), and introduced her to the rest of his mouset gang. “Everyone, this is MaryMouse. She was a long way from home, so I'm trusting all of you to make her feel welcome. MaryMouse, this is PeterMouse, and JacobMouse, and MatthewMouse, and EveMouse, and…”
Leviathan always hassled him about his beloved collection. “You're not playing it right,” he'd complain. “See, those ones are no good. Dump those, and keep… see, this one here’s decent, it's rare and has pretty good stats, so you can use it when you…”
Luke always let him finish, but never took his advice.
Let Levi hunt the rare ones and the strong ones and the super-special shiny ones.
Someone had to take care of the ones that nobody else wanted.
“…and JosephMouse, and RachelMouse, and DeborahMouse, and MarkMo-"
Something snickered, right in his ear.
“Wahh! How many times do I have to tell you awful demons, don't sneak up on…” He turned around… and all the colour drained out of his face. “Oh!… um… hello,” he squeaked, not unlike a tiny mouset, “who, uh… who are you?”
“Ohohoh… it talkses,” the demon growled, around a garish smile full of sharp, dripping teeth. “How cuuuute.”
It was six feet tall, but so emaciated that every rib was outlined in stark relief against its pallid skin. It was nude, its legs had too many joints and its fingers were three times as long as they should have been. Its eyes were black pits, and it hadn't blinked once.
“The more important quessssstion isssss,” hissed a second voice, again from right behind him, “who are you?”
Luke spun around again, and scrambled away from the hideous pair until he'd backed himself, trembling and breathing much too fast, against a tree.
The second one was even more terrifying than the first. Its skin was green, and rotting away in rancid, pus-filled hunks. Its arms were long, tattered wings, and a scaly tail coiled and writhed at its avian feet. It had an enormous, crocodilian mouth.
But no face.
Luke gagged at the smell of it, and clutched a hand over his mouth. “I… I am… I mean, I'm… My name is…”
He was too terrified to remember how that sentence was supposed to end.
“You don't ssssmell like sssssuiccccide,” hissed the faceless demon, as it smelled the air with a thick, forked tongue.
“S… suicide?!”
“Hmmm… it doesn’t even look dead,” agreed the first. “Is it here by mistake? Ohohoh… Is it lost?” it grinned, as it dragged the tip of one claw across Luke's soft cheek.
“Hey! Don't t-t-touch me! I… I'm an angel, you know! I can s-s-smite you where you s-s-stand!”
Both demons erupted into raucous, jarring laughter. The emaciated one, almost immediately, started coughing, then horked it all back and spat an oozing pile of black slime at Luke's feet. “It thinkses it’s an angel,” it snickered.
“Where are you wingsssss, little angel? I ssssssmell no halo on you.”
With every sentence, they were creeping closer.
The one with the black eyes still hadn't blinked.
A sloppy hunk of steaming skin fell off the other.
Luke cowered against the tree, pale and shivering and overcome with the desperate desire to be back in his own bed again.
“Angels don't belong down here,” the pale one sneered.
“You have no power down here,” the blind one agreed. “Doesssss thisssss look like the Cccccelessssstial Realm to you?”
“…no,” Luke heard himself whisper, with frightened tears welling his young eyes, as he pressed himself harder up against the tree. “I-i-t doesn’t.”
But it didn't look the Devildom he knew, either.
He'd spent so much time searching for a lost little soul, with his eyes glued to the MonoRadar on his DDD, that it had never dawned on him that he'd become one himself.
The ground at his feet was the same flat ochre as the sky, and stretched forever in every direction. Scattered across the endless plain were dead, gnarled trees, each with a single human corpse impaled on its black branches. High overhead, throngs of crow-winged harpies circled and cackled and cawed; as he watched, a trio dove together, alighted in one of the twisted trees, and began peeling its bark away with their talons.
The dead tree screamed, and started sobbing.
Luke watched the whole thing, wide-eyed and terrified. He wasn't supposed to be here. He'd wandered too far away from the safety of Purgatory House, and RAD, and (he was scared enough to admit) the protective eyes of the seven demon lords.
He had no idea where he was…
…but he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that angels didn't belong in this place.
He tried to sneak a text message to Simeon, but the black-eyed demon laughed and clawed his DDD out of his hands. “It’s trying to talks to its friends,” it snickered. “It doesn't need friends, does it? We'll be its friends,” it hissed. “We’ll keep it company, won't we? Forever and ever, we will.”
“Maybe you're a sssssuicide after all,” said the other, as it sank its talons into Luke's shoulder and drove the sobbing angel to his knees, “and all you need… issssss a tree of your own.”
Luke wailed as the blind demon lifted him easily off the ground, then tasted the air again. “It'sssss your lucky day, little angel. Thisssss tree yet bearsssss no ssssoul. It can be all yoursssss,” it grinned, as it positioned Luke's spine above a pair of splintered branches, “forever.”
“N-n-no! P-p-please! I'm n-n-not a suicide! I'm n-n-not supposed to b-b-be down here! It's all a m-m-mistake!”
The branches were pressing hard against his spine, dimpling his flesh and promising, with no words at all, to find a much deeper home than that.
The ginning demon heaved him up, and-
A bestial roar tore through the stagnant air.
Luke winced as a tiny something, flying hard and fast, hit him between the eyes.
…It was a penny.
A shiny, newly-minted penny.
The blind demon screamed, and dropped its prize in the dirt.
Luke covered his eyes, clutched his blood- soaked shoulder, and waited to die.
As badly as he wanted to tune it all out, he couldn't. All he could hear was screaming, and scuffling, and tearing, and snarling, and…
…a familiar voice.
“Yo, Chihuahua! You ok?”
He didn't fall for it. Demons were nasty tricksters, after all, so he didn’t dare open his eyes. If he kept them closed, and hugged himself tightly enough, and mumbled all the desperate prayers that he could… maybe all the bad things might forget he was even there.
“Hey! Luke! Snap out of it!”
“M… m… Mammon? Is it r-r-really you?”
“’Course it's me, dumbass. So quit blubberin' already, and let me take you home.”
Luke finally risked opening his eyes.
The terrifying demons were dead. The blind one wasn’t just missing a face, now.
It was missing its whole head.
The emaciated one had been viciously disemboweled, and its corpse, impaled on two low-lying branches, was leaking hot bile all over the ground.
The white-haired, blue-eyed Avatar of Greed was holding out his hand.
Still shaking so much that he could barely stand up, the sniffling angel hesitantly took the hand of a demon lord.
Mammon squeezed his hand…
…and he'd never felt safer.
“H-h-how did you-"
“Levi's been following ya, in that stupid game. He said you were wanderin' dangerously close to the seventh circle, and that ain't no place for a chihuahua. Come on. I'll take ya back.”
“B-b-but…”
Mammon, covered head to toe in demon blood, quirked an exasperated eyebrow. “Now what?”
“But… demons don't save people,” Luke whispered. “Angels do. Why did you-”
Mammon rolled his eyes. “How long have you been livin' with us, and ya still haven't figured it out? The difference between angels and demons ain't that angels save people, and demons don't. The only difference is that angels have to save everybody.” Mammon hefted the shivering angel in his arms, held him tight against his chest, and, without any fanfare at all, brought him home again. “But demons… well… we only save the people we love.”