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Lucifer Morningstar had a revelation the day Dream of the Endless arrived at the gates of Hell: she was one of the most powerful beings in all the universes, with an empire to rival that coveted city in the sky, and yet she was utterly alone.
She had Mazikeen, of course, and Lucifer did not rule alone. But Azazel and Beezlebub were poor excuses for sovereigns of Hell, and she loathed their presence. Mazikeen possessed the right amount of loyalty and savageness that Lucifer found invaluable, but her right-hand would always see her as a god, and gods do not make friends with their supplicants.
So the Ruler of Hell stood alone, as she always had, even before the Fall. Once upon a time, Mikha'el might have been the closest thing to a companion she had, but that was before there were stars in the night sky. Taking a consort was out of the question, for there was none equal to her, in power or likeness.
Lucifer had had an eternity to grow accustomed to the isolation. Yet, her wings had never felt heavier.
Footsteps echoed from behind her, light and measured. Mazikeen. "Squatterbloat brings you a visitor, sire." Lucifer regarded the demon, watched the rotted side of her face twist into a grotesque smile of glistening tendons and decaying muscles. "Dream of the Endless."
Lucifer flexed her wings. "So he is free from his prison at last." He is luckier than most, she thought.
"Do you know why he has come, my lord?" asked Mazikeen.
Lucifer stared across the expanse of her kingdom, the smell of burning flesh and sulfur wafting through the air. Open fires burned everywhere. "I have no idea," she said.
Some time later, she saw Squatterbloat pass through the palace entrance, a shadowy figure behind him, frightfully small compared to the giant escorting him. She was still looking out from her balcony by the time they strode into her greeting chamber, and she had to school her expression of excitement before turning around.
At last, there before her, was Morpheus.
He is so very beautiful, Lucifer mused. Is that a hint of fear in his eyes?
The Ruler of Hell grinned at the thought.
"Hello, Dream," she said.
"Greetings to you, Lucifer Morningstar," he replied kindly.
Her curiosity grew tenfold the moment she looked at him and realized that he wasn't nearly as powerful as the last time they met. There were shadows under his eyes, and he was reed thin standing in her hall, wearing a simple coat that served to only make the Endless appear mortal.
"Have you come to join forces then? To ally your realm to ours?" She would be pleasantly surprised if he did. Perhaps being trapped in the waking world humbled the King of Dreams into reconsidering that matter.
He smiled without warmth. “You know my feelings on that, Lightbringer.”
Alas, she was being too optimistic. She listened his plight: how one of her own had his helm. She vaguely remembered it, how delightfully macabre she found that the Dreamlord fashioned his symbol of office from the bones of a dead god. She concealed her amusement as Morpheus made his hollow demands as if he were the host and she a mere guest. It seemed that one hundred years of imprisonment did nothing to erode his trademark arrogance. This would be amusing indeed.
A demon was summoned forth who, unsurprisingly, refused to give up the helmet. Choronzon grinned wickedly at her, and Lucifer was more than willing to play along.
A challenge was declared, one she knew was over the moment Choronzon called upon her to be his victor.
”Apologies, Dream, but the laws of Hell demand that I become his champion. But if you would not fight me . . .”
“I have accepted the terms,” said Morpheus, “Let the challenge begin.”
The helmet or a slave. That was the deal Morpheus agreed to, and Lucifer was trying to decipher his stoic expression as they faced each other. Was he really prepared to be a prisoner again? Did he know what the lords of Hell would do to a creature such as him? It would be nothing compared to what he suffered at the hands of those amateur mortals. And yet, he accepted the challenge without hesitation. Lucifer eyed that glint of determination in Morpheus' watery gaze and noticed the hairline cracks in his cold, elegant mask. Found something bruised and raw.
It was desperation.
Oh, Morpheus, she thought as she made her first move.
Dream was the first to draw blood. Lucifer only heard the hiss of an arrow before pain bloomed across her stomach and blood stained her wolf pelt, a frustrating blow to the fallen angel. She grimaced and snarled at the Endless whose fists were bunched tight at his sides.
He is serpent-cunning, but does he have venom?
She took her turn, lips twitching when the veins in his neck darkened, black ink crawling up that luscious column of pale skin. How she would love to sink her teeth there, feel his heartbeat between her jaws. Lucifer imagined him trapped in his glass cage, a wingless bird left in the darkness. Roderick must have felt like a god, to have such a prize in his basement. An Endless. How Lucifer dreamed of having one as a pet.
Her fantasies were abruptly cut short when talons raked across her face.
She hissed, more out of frustration than pain. She glanced across the room where Morpheus was staring down his nose at her.
A slow death it is then.
She watched her bacteria, small and brutal, drain the life out of him. Morpheus crashed to the floor, face connecting with the marble. His body rotting from the inside out.
Mazikeen smirked on the sidelines. Lucifer just waited.
Then, fainter than a whisper, “I am a world.”
Lucifer was standing in a field, bright and blossoming with color. She felt life hum beneath her feet, activity buzzing in the unpolluted air. It reminded her of the planets she cultivated eons ago, when she wore her creator’s mantle, her halo unbroken. She remembered destroying them, too. For reasons as petty as boring her. Annihilation was, after all, one of the many tools of creation.
A nova, swift and life-ending, set Morpheus ablaze. Lucifer beat her leathery wings, coaxing the fire to burn even hotter and spreading the ashes far and wide.
Yet, charred and weakened, the Endless made his counter, and Lucifer found herself peering into the heart of a universe. Quiet and bright and endless.
It’s peaceful here, she thought. And for a moment, Lucifer lost herself in the stars.
Lightbringer they called her; star-forged and white-winged. Back during a time of creation, of world-building. Of love.
As quickly as that kernel of memory unfurled inside of her, Lucifer snuffed it out with a clawed fist. She glared at Morpheus and bared her teeth. She had a game to play, and so she dealt the hand that would finish it.
“I am anti-life.”
With the snap of her jaws, Lucifer swallowed the universe whole. Dream sucked in a harsh breath, his face spasming before he collapsed, the stars snuffed out of him. Lucifer roared in victory, shaking the darkness that surrounded them, flexing her claws, her maw gaping. She was the dark, she was the beast. The end of everything.
Sweet Morpheus, she crooned, watching him lifeless on her palace floor. Helpless as a newborn, as a god without a worshiper, a bird without wings.
She entered his mind and found herself in a large glass sphere where Morpheus was curled on the floor. In here, she knelt down to Dream, their faces as close as lovers. Lucifer stroked his bloodless cheek, feeling the fine bone there, the slack muscle of his jaw.
She could keep him if she wanted. Win or lose. He was so weak without his tools, it would be nothing to make him hers. The reckoning she would face from his kin if she claimed the Dreamlord would be tremendous. Then again, they didn’t come to his aid when that human mage kept him in his basement for nigh a century, why should they bother now?
How alone he must be. Perhaps Lucifer would have no need for rune circles or glass prisons to keep him here.
“My Dream,” she whispered against his skin, “you fight so hard, and for what? A helmet of bone?” His gaze found hers in the semi-dark, defeated, helpless, and she noticed that the twin stars had fallen from the mantel of his eyes. Lucifer’s attention caught on his trembling lips as he tried to speak, full and winter-pale.
Lucifer couldn’t resist capturing those lips with her own. The only resistance she met was his quiet whimper which was lost between their mouths.
“A crown won't save you from your solitude. I know, I feel it too,” Lucifer said, “Join me here, in Hell, sweet Morpheus. I could make you a king of more than just dreams.” Lucifer ran her fingers through his mess of black hair, softer than anything she could imagine. She had to resist curling her fingers into a fist and having her way with him. “If only you yield.”
Lucifer watched with fascination as his vacant eyes turned glacial. The glass surrounding them began to crack, obsidian shards splintering to the floor around them.
Morpheus rose to his feet, his gaze never leaving hers.
Then the glass exploded into sand.
Lucifer only had time to scoff before the sand rushed at her, drowning her, casting her out of his mind and back into the game.
She staggered, feeling the weight of her own body again. She stared with tight-lipped shock as starlight returned to Morpheus’ eyes and he performed his final metamorphosis.
"I am hope."
Light flooded the chamber, warm and rejuvenating. Behind her, Mazikeen cowered away from it, backing into the shadowed alcoves. Choronzon shielded himself with the helm, pure confusion writ on his ugly and repulsive face.
Color filled her opponent’s cheeks and the look he gave her lit a rage so potent Lucifer felt her very blood boil.
“Hope,” she repeated, mocking. She knew it once, she knew it still. As they gazed at each other they both knew that Lucifer was defeated.
She could barely maintain her composure as she watched Mazikeen retrieve the helm and give it to Morpheus. They could still hear Choronzon's shrieking as the Dreamlord thanked Mazikeen and turned to Lucifer once more.
I could still keep him, a slithering thought whispered to her. She could have Mazikeen take his helm and sand and chain him at her feet. She could cut the arrogance from him and remake him into something more obedient, something unrecognizable.
"Thank you, Lightbringer, the Ruler of Hell is honorable, indeed," Morpheus said, "I will not forget this."
Her nostrils flared. "Honorable?" she croaked, "You joke, surely." She approached him at the edge of the lookout, where she could feel the flames and hear the thundering cries of demons. "Look out there, Morpheus. The billion lords of Hell stand arrayed about you. Tell us, why should we let you leave? Helmet or no, you have no power here." She sneered at him, and watched his eyes narrow and his jaw flex. "After all, what power have dreams in Hell?"
Dream met her stare, a victory few could claim. And Lucifer wanted nothing more than to rip his throat out when he said in a voice softer than a moth's wing, “You say I have no power here. Perhaps you speak truly, but to say dreams have no power in Hell . . . Tell me, Lucifer Morningstar, what power would Hell have if those here imprisoned were not able to dream of Heaven?”
Oh, how clever is he. She wanted to feel amused. To be bested by an Endless and be insulted in her own home by one whose power paled in comparison to hers? Oh, she wanted to laugh. For now, all she did was smile.
“One day, Morpheus, we shall destroy you."
He had the gall to smirk at her. “Until that day, Lightbringer."
As Lucifer watched the King of Dreams sweep out of her hall, she could no longer restrain the vicious creature inside her and hissed at him, "You have lost your power, your authority, your realm. You have fallen into disgrace, yet you dare enter my kingdom and make demands of me? Perhaps there is a reason why none of your siblings came for you." Precise like an expert marksmen, her words hit their target as the Lord of Nightmares flinched. He had his back to her when she prowled towards him, until she was close enough that her breath ruffled his midnight hair. "I could make a slave of you. After what happened, you do not deserve to be king of anything."
A scorching silence. Beside him, his raven stared worriedly at his master.
"Is it not hypocritical of you to forsake your chains yet force them upon another?" Dream asked.
"Careful," she growled.
Morpheus straightened to his full height, his eyes flashing silver when he looked over his shoulder at her. "Better to be a king of nothing than a slave of Hell."
Without another word, Morpheus left the hall. And just as before, she was alone again.
An old ache carved itself a deeper wound inside Lucifer, a knot of scar tissue winding tight in her belly. And she was falling all over again.
"Let him go," she said to Mazikeen as the demon stalked after the Endless.
Mazikeen stared at her in confusion, and Lucifer could feel her indignation. "He has insulted you, sire. He cannot go unpunished."
"And he will not," assured Lucifer. She returned to the balcony and, with a flick of her wrist, the view shifted from the horde of demons raving below to Dream of the Endless passing through the gates of Hell, Squatterbloat sneering at him. Morpheus didn't bother to glance the demon's way.
"Have patience, dear Mazikeen," she crooned, "We are not yet done with our Morpheus."
Later, Dream stood on the edge of the wastelands of Hell, where the borders of Lucifer's domain reared up as black cliffs and volcanic mountains. A bustling wind whipped at his ankles and tousled his hair.
He stared back at the palace, a mere blur through the miles of ash. Yet, he remembered with disturbing acuity every detail of the last hour. The polished black stone of the greeting hall, the roar of the fires. Mazikeen in her polished plated scale armor. Choronzon and his mewling before Lucifer's right-hand threw him into the pit several hundred feat below. The vivid white of Lucifer's robes and the venom of her smile upon his arrival, making him shudder.
He tried not to think of the Ruler of Hell, but it was as if he'd unlatched a floodgate in his mind for his thoughts were swallowed by the memories of her hungry gaze. He remembered Lucifer in his consciousness, the smell of ash about her, her touch, her voice whispering to him like a lost lover. A kiss.
A crown won't save you from your solitude. I know, I feel it too.
And he remembered, with crippling shame, how he considered her offer for one hopeless moment.
Even now, he could feel her hands on him, trying to claim him—break him. Little did she know that there was nothing left of him to break. Dream closed his eyes and saw glass walls and brutal fists. Broken bones and drying blood. The pain he carried in his very essence was like a stain on his soul, a nightmare within a dream. Those invisible scars a reminder of everything he'd lost, of all the things he no longer deserved.
He did not even deserve his helm.
But when he peered down at the thing in his hands, he could only clutch it tighter, his relief so profound he began to weep.
He defeated Lucifer, he won. That must count for something.
Morpheus glanced at Hell one last time before he turned his back. Wiping away his tears, he secured the helm about his head and felt a familiar power surge and meld inside him. Then, he could see all.
The memory of Lucifer's touch was like the pressure of a tempest brewing at the back of his mind, threatening to drown him if he so much glanced its way. But he must put it away, he must not think of her if he wanted to retrieve his third and final tool.
As a cascade of sand enveloped him, Dream promised himself that later—when he was not so ashamed of himself—that he would confront that storm of fire and brimstone. Later, he would look the serpent in the eyes and not flinch under its fangs.
Right now, he had a ruby to find.