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His twelve-year-old self would laugh in his face if he saw him now. Spittle flying everywhere, doubled over on the floor, crying out for God to please have mercy on him as he would wheeze like an emphysema patient.
Guidance. That is his job. Getting Arch Eve to where she is supposed to be. That is his purpose and he knows that now.
Even so, as Cereza is enveloped in his arms and gazing into his eyes as if he hung the goddamn stars in the sky, Luka isn’t so sure.
In death, in falling down, down, down a rabbit hole of eternal suffering, she is still such a vision. The raven tendrils of her hair seem to levitate as if unbothered by the force of gravity plummeting them both into the decrepit depths of the Trinity, blowing out from her braids in a wide sea of spilled ink. Her daintily gloved fingers, long and slender, cupped the back of Luka's neck, faux golden nails gently grazing the skin there, a pleasantly ticklish feeling. Through the wispy haze of her soul, the dark frames perched perfectly upon her nose seemed to twinkle with something ethereal, like the fairy dust he remembers from Peter Pan, his favourite movie from a younger, simpler time.
What Luka did to deserve Cereza is unknown to him. He has gladly welcomed her in nonetheless, the best surprise he could ever ask for.
Unlike her fate, though, he is not keen on Inferno.
In that moment before, when Gomorrah clawed his horrid talons into her side and threw out her spirit like the weekly trash, Luka thought eternal suffering would be okay if she were there with him the whole way. He did not hesitate to reach out, to use his remaining physical strength to crawl over the split bitumen and cradle her close to him. He did not wait to interlock their trembling fingers, their confident lips.
He took no time to consider the repercussions of Cereza living as a child of the Umbra. One is obliged to commit to one's contract.
“She’ll come for me, you know,” Cereza utters, the curve of her painted lips briefly settling down to a melancholy line. Her voice is barely audible over the cries of dead witches dissolved in the acidic bellies of demons winding in their brains like earworms.
“Butterfly. She’s still in my damn head. I can hear her still.”
Luka's arms squeeze tighter around his lover’s waist, as if doing so would shield her from the inevitable. The swirling crimson hurricane of dripping blood encircling the pair tempts him to assess his surroundings like any sane person would. He dreads her pretty face leaving his line of sight, so despite the bone-chilling sights around him Luka remains steadfast.
“Well, if she even so much as tries to touch you then I’ll slice her to shreds!” Luka's wavering tone of bravado is clear. Cereza catches his bluff with a teasing quirk of her brow.
“No need to be afraid, my dear.” She cups his chin in her palm, gentle. The contrast between her harsh, dominating hand against angels and the sweet caress of her fingertips against his stubble still dizzies him to no end. “We will see each other again.”
Luka finds it hard to believe her.
Hot, sharp breaths squall along the back of his skull, piercing a needle-sharp sense of something other yet completely himself. Set her free, Lukaon utters, she has done enough for this existence and all others beyond the world walls.
It sends a shiver down Luka's spine. The Faerie King knows what he is thinking. Still his logic confuses him – Inferno? Freedom? Are the never-ending cries of the souls of the damned what witches really wish for the most in the afterlife? The mere idea of beings of grotesque and alien nature chasing you for all eternity?
A deep-seated dread settles in his bones, too jagged and cold for the marrow.
“Luka?”
Cereza is going to be eaten. Luka is going to die.
“No.”
“What?”
“I’m not letting you go.”
The needles return, sharper and digging deeper. Lukaon gruffly hums in disapproval. Luka cannot help but wonder if this is what having a contracted devil in your head feels like. Watching, judging, warning.
He ignores the disappointed faerie, deafens his thoughts to his near despondent tone. That King can sulk all he likes. Luka doesn’t care all that much about purpose anymore.
He will be forever lost without Cereza. He will be, unless he acts quickly.
Lukaon is unwilling to provide Luka with greater power at first – they are both all too exhausted from the penultimate struggle against Singularity. Luka reaches deep into the secret nooks and crannies of his mind to find him. A good tug on the ear was all it took for him to cave. He has been unnervingly soft to him ever since the Arch Adams became one.
The magic channels through him, just enough for him to transform into Strider once more. Complete with thick muscles growing tufts of platinum hair, a regal crown and a cape of crooked stained glass, the beast man completely swallows his lover’s weak soul in his form. His blood begins to morph from freezing to boiling with the sheer amount of energy his body generates with the growing chaos magic churning underneath his thickened skin like butter.
Cereza knows what he is doing. Her face goes pale.
Luka's voice is a deep warm murmur that echoes off the echoes of death itself. “Fate brought us here together –”
He is drained before he can stop uttering those words again. A heaving, splitting pain knocks the wind from him as a firm hand pulls him out of the pathway to Inferno by his neck. Strider is gone as quick as it came and Luka is human when he cries out for his heart back.
Cereza's eyes are melancholy. Her smile says otherwise.
___
Hot white pain sears through his nervous system. He almost believes his spine is cracked, a carrot stick snapped in two, until his fingers twitch.
The ground must have a grudge against him for it to be so devoid of feeling. Maybe, he thinks, there is no ground. He cannot sense anything under his belly, no undulating asphalt or crooked floorboards. It almost drives him crazy.
Luka finds there is only white when he blinks opens his eyes. White, and the shape of a hand rippling out from his chest like a blooming water lily atop water.
He swears like a sailor, adrenaline pumping through his limbs as he attempts to leap up and crawl away, as if that would change anything. Scattered, confused and panting hard, he hastily takes hold of two of the fingers sticking out of him and tugs hard until the hand turns into an arm, then a head is revealed, then a torso and a pair of legs and feet. The King’s shimmering, stained glass cape flips up in Luka's face.
Luka crawls further away, wiping the sweat off his dewy forehead. The Faerie King sighs, then stands with his back pin straight.
His legs are weirdly translucent, a wispy blue mist of light and wonder. Luka wonders if he is so powerful that he has no need to walk, only float. He turns to face him. Minus the lack of facial hair, the glowing white eyes and the soft blonde hair, their faces are identical.
Lukaon's voice is so smooth it is uncanny. “Else-fellow. I am certain you are curious of our location –”
“I’ll kill you.”
“Pardon?”
Steaming red rage bubbles up to the surface like a deep-sea volcano. Luka cannot seem to muster a twinge of faerie magic, though his pure strength is handy. He barrels into Lukaon with his arms wrapped around his torso. He fails. The Faerie King does not move one inch. Luka grunts, puts his back into it, squeezes his eyes and arms and hopes for the best.
He does not flinch.
Luka falls back and shoves Lukaon in the chest instead. Lukaon's eyes are wide in surprise, his head cocked slightly to the right. Their gazes meet, and Luka uppercuts the King’s nose with blotchy purple knuckles. His head does not even move with the force. No blood. Nothing.
It enrages Luka further. His teeth are borne in a wolf’s snarl. The beastly fangs are still small like milk teeth, yet they feel too big in his mouth. Everything is too bright, and his blood is too warm, and he can barely feel his knees begin to tremble.
He cries out for someone, anyone. His voice holds no echo.
“Damn you!” Spittle flies everywhere as he is doubled over, howling out for God to please have mercy on his soul. His words are newly sharpened daggers. “I was going to save her!”
Lukaon cannot look at him.
“Why didn’t you let me? Why!?” Luka rams his hands into the ground, clawing at something absent from this world.
The King’s answer is simple, monotone. “You cannot protect a soul from its fate.”
“I could have brought her back! I know I could have! With our powers, we could have survived together! We could have found a way out of Inferno! She would be alive!”
“You would have fallen into death’s cold grasp. The quantity of power that you were intending to use would have gotten you killed.”
“As long as she’s alive… I’d be glad to die!”
“Else-fellow, you cease to understand –”
“You shut up and listen to me!” Luka attempts to push himself off the missing ground with his legs. He fails with a trip, landing back on his aching knees. Despite his gritted teeth, his humiliation is evident in his slumped shoulders. “You don’t get to tell me what I don’t understand. I know what you’re getting at. You wanted me to fail!”
Confusion washes over Lukaon's once calm expression. The stifling air surrounding him seemed to begin moving again. “Do you really believe that I wanted dear Cereza dead?”
The beast-man’s heart finally takes a moment to crack in two.
“You don’t get to call her that!”
Adrenaline floods clumsily through his roiling bloodstream, his heart a hammer slamming into his ribcage. Finding the almost non-existent strength to move, Luka slams himself into the King once more. His rough hands find the whirly golden metal of his variant’s collar, pressing forehead to forehead.
“You don’t get to! You don’t know her! You’ve never known her! You… you can’t… just…”
Everything is spinning now. Lukaon's face seems all jumbled and fuzzy. That accumulation of all that magic back with Bayonetta must have taken a toll on poor Luka.
“Poor beast-man,” Lukaon mutters, as his variant collapses against him with half-lidded eyes.
___
“No, no, please! I don’t want to go back! I can ascend, I swear to you now!”
That man seems so terrified as he pleads for his life, Luka thinks. Waking up to an argument is not what he expected in a place full to the brim with nothingness.
“I prayed to our Goddess for every waking hour in that line! I begged her to take me with her into the heavens once I was finished! I have taken penance for my actions - I've waded through the flames of the seventh terrace, for Paradiso's sake! So please… have mercy!”
An indescribable phrase, a chittering tone speaking in tongues alight with holy flames. The poor man screams though it seems further away now. The echo is dampened. Luka does not know if the sound dissipates in the thick atmosphere, or in his mind.
The air is heady with the prayers of the religious and the groans of the bare-footed. It is too cold for Luka to move his limbs, even with his favourite coat on. He didn't notice it before, not when he was enraged. Now, he has no energy to feel too much of anything except it, melancholy and a painful loss infecting his nervous system like rot.
There is no energy to free himself from Lukaon's piggyback ride, either.
Luka's head is haphazardly hanging off the King's shoulder in a poor attempt to protect him from his shoulder pads and the spiked glassy collar of his cape. His arms dangle lifeless beside him like moving pendulums, stiff and straight. He almost believes the only source of the chill he experiences is Lukaon's lack of body warmth, until the King stops trekking and the surrounding chill bites at his cheeks that much harder.
"Else-fellow! You have awakened." The Faerie King's lilting tone lets him seem almost excited to witness Luka, if not for the way he clearly defines each syllable in a sort of unnatural matter. Maybe, Luka thinks, English is not his first language, and his mother tongue is some garbled chirps and giggles that are barely audible, fit for sneaky, ulterior motives.
Luka orders, "Shut up," though he pronounced it in a hushed whisper with missing vowels. He wants to pry himself off Lukaon's back, fall on his back and lie on the ground while beholding this place's absence of anything and sobbing his eyes out, he really does. Instead, he lifts his head, at once feels dizzy, and sinks his forehead back onto Lukaon's shoulder.
Lukaon scoffs, but not in a judgemental way. "You interrupted me in our prior conversation, so I implore you to let me continue from where we first begun."
Luka grumbles as the King hikes him up further onto his back and begins walking once more, stating, "I am quite sure you wonder of our location, else-fellow."
The beast-man huffs, a silent yet reluctant agreement.
"I knew so. This is a realm of decisions, a world where the scales of humanity and destiny are tipped from balanced. This is where the souls unfit for neither Paradiso nor Inferno reside until they meld themselves into those who do. You heard that man at the front of the line, yes?"
"A… line?"
Only when Luka really squints his eyes and focuses does he see the faint outlines of transparent souls, one after another after another in an ant trail with no end. Without the purple hue, they are harder to identify in this blank slate of a world.
Weirdly, none of the souls bear any facial features, like mannequins. Yet they still shiver and fold their arms against their chest like a cold person would. They feel it too.
As Luka's gaze travels further up the line, there is a point so impossibly far away where there stands a hunched, lanky figure with white-feathered wings and a spear that glows with the golden rays of old Paradisian magic. Before that angel stands a figure in colour, infinitely brighter.
"Angels? Here?" Luka wonders mostly to himself.
"Yes," Lukaon answers, "I am sure you know they are quite far from their true residence in the Trinity, no? They are those who send each soul to their rightful place in the Trinity once their fate is tipped."
"They don't decide it for them?"
"One's fate lends an ear to no one but oneself."
"And not even angels can change it?"
"Not even angels. You have become quite inquisitive, else-fellow."
"Shut. Up."
Lukaon has a cheery air to him now, an old pep in his step. Either he is going to bring Luka to that angel for it to kill him for trespassing into a realm he does not belong to, or the King is just so delighted to see the beast-man suppressing his vexatious anger towards him.
"Why are you carrying me?" Luka blurts out. "Can't you just make me float with your magic or something?"
"Our sorcery is dampened here. I believe it is due to our lack of presence in the Chaos Realm."
"So, you chose to chuck me on your back like a sack of potatoes?"
"Precisely."
"Jesus H. Christ…"
"Who?"
"Never mind. I think I can stand now."
Lukaon clicks his tongue in disapproval. "Tut. Your muscles are weak. Trust in me to guide us to our destination."
"Trust you?" Luka scoffs, absolutely miffed. "As if! I'd rather be ripped apart by the demons down south!"
"I am all you have here, and you are all I have," Lukaon explains, "All that we can reach. We must learn to rely on one another."
"Nope. Not happening."
Lukaon sighs. He keeps walking in silence.
Another soul is thrown to the back of the line, screaming. Their colour drains as if the realm was a vacuum sucking the life out of them. More and more come as time passes. Luka watches, maybe caring a little bit too much. Sometimes a person is enveloped into another realm - gently guided by angels to ascend into the golden-lit, cloud-heavy Paradiso, or violently pulled down by corroding hand into the dark horrors of Inferno.
Still, it seems to Luka that most souls never learn. They keep hoping for a chance to prove themselves yet fail at what opportunity they receive. He asks himself if the same fate will follow him if he ends up here in his death. Luka may be part beast, but God, is he too weak for this?
"Was it possible?"
"Pardon?" Lukaon cocks his head to the side, his ear pointed towards Luka.
"To save her?"
The Faerie King lowers his gaze, stops in his tracks. He seems defeated, almost. "I wished not to tell you this."
Luka's heart begins to ache. He knows what Lukaon is about to say. He squeezes his eyes shut and hides his face in his shoulder as preparation.
Lukaon inhales.
"No."
Luka's exhale turns into watery hiccups.
"No amount of magic can save one from their fate. Not the magic of faeries, nor great gods."
A single tear rolls down Luka's cheek. He cracks a wavering smile. "So, it was… all for nothing?"
Lukaon does not respond. Somehow, that is worse than him saying yes.
Luka cannot muster the energy to cry out. He has screamed and cursed enough. All he does is sit there on Lukaon's back and sob like a baby. Wet splotches on the collar of his shirt do not have the time to dry when more water comes falling.
Cereza is gone. Forever.
The King of Faeries cannot be lying. Not when the pain in his grimace is too true, too evident.
Between sobs, he utters, "Too many times has she saved me from imminent death, but when she dies… I can't do anything. That's too unfair. Stupid. I'm so stupid. It makes too much sense. Why can’t I just think before I do stupid things?"
"Yet your intention was pure. That is admirable, no?" Lukaon's attempt at comfort goes unheard.
"I didn't want her to go. I don't want her to suffer down there. That's Hell, damn it. She's done for and it's all my fault."
"There is nothing you could have done, else-fellow. No fault rests on your shoulders."
"But she's gone."
"And you may mourn her for the rest of your days. Still, you must not give up hope."
Luka scoffs, staring at his quaking hands. "You sound like a damn therapist. What hope left is there?"
Lukaon turns to him, lips curled in a small quirk of a smile. Paradisian light shines bright with enthusiasm to take a soul upwards, but the King's head covers it, forming a graceful halo. "The hope that you will see her again."
"I'd have to die to do that. Fimbulventr is too far and it's by now it's probably been too long."
"Then you must wait. Clearly, it is not your time yet."
"Stop being philosophical and just tell me your damn point." Luka licks the spit from his lips.
Lukaon, finally, sets Luka down on his feet, holding him up by his armpits like a toddler as he stumbles for balance. Once he finds it, the King lets go, but Luka holds his wrists in a vicious grip. Luka did not think for a second. It just happened. Lukaon accepts it nonetheless.
The King's words are rock solid, serious. Still uncanny, though an attempt at emotional expression through stiff articulation. There are some wrong notes, but it is still music. "You were to perish this very day. I could feel it."
"You think?" Luka scoffs, sarcastic. He sniffles, pulls off a fingerless glove and wipes his nose with the back of his right hand.
"Else-fellow."
"Yeah, okay. Just say what you need to."
"Now that all Arch Adams are one through oneself, we share a fate. Arch Adam, the guide, the role, was to die. We were to die. Yet we did not, and I believe I know the answer to why. You were the key, else-fellow. It was your will."
Luka squints his eyes in confusion. "But you pulled me out so I didn't die."
"Only since you forced my hand. You conjured the will to change our fate. Somehow, by the skin of your teeth, you changed an aspect of your predetermined path so we survived. Love must take you many places if all of this was for Cereza's life."
Luka opens his mouth but closes it immediately, a fish out of water. He wonders how exactly he says her name so casually, with nearly the same reverence he does.
"Truthfully," he murmurs, "I'd do anything for that woman."
"I can tell."
There is a long silence between the two. Luka lets go of Lukaon's hands, watching them fall at the King's sides while wiping away the tear tracks lining his own face. His eyes must have a vendetta against him for him to have cried so much. Though somehow, with such closure, the realm seems warmer. The rays of sunrise after a freezing cold night.
"We must travel forward, else-fellow. We should not stay long. This realm is not our own."
"Yeah, alright. Let's go… where are we going?"
"Out."
Lukaon's glowing eyes, once an icy cerulean, turn warm blue as he smiles. He turns with a dramatic flick of his cape, and hovers forward on absent legs. Luka follows willingly, hands gloved and stuffed in his coat pockets.
Along the way towards the front of the line of souls, the environment becomes so boiling hot that Luka has to peel off his coat and vest, though his button-up shirt' fabric still grows darker with patches of foul-smelling sweat. The cold was much better, he thinks, I was so much more prepared for that. Lukaon in all his glory unsurprisingly does not feel a thing. The souls waiting never notice the pair, even when Luka pokes at a soul's face.
When they arrive at their destination after what felt like infinite hours of straight walking, all heat ceases to exist. The air has no feeling whatsoever, an empty temperature. Luka is relieved until his hands turn as numb as his feet, and the sounds of screaming souls being thrown back into oblivion is non-existent. An absence of all senses but sight and of sense itself.
Luka asks, "What the hell is happening?" Nothing comes out. He cannot hear his own voice.
He turns to Lukaon, who turns to him and mouths some silent, jumbled words. Something about trusting in him, if his lip-reading is correct. Luka clutches his sweat-covered coat and vest like a lifeline.
Weirdly, the angel is low denomination. Just a singular Affinity directing souls towards their fated realm of residence. That role seems overwhelmingly important in Luka's eyes but perhaps is simply does not matter what does it in the grand scheme of things. If Cereza were here, she would kill the ugly thing with a straight kick to the groin.
What a billowing screech may sound to anyone else is a domineering sentence chittered in Enochian: "C GNAY IP APILA A-AI-OM."
Luka wonders if being in close proximity with the angel affects a soul's ability to understand it. Lukaon bows to the Affinity. It does not do the same. The King's back straightens, polite as he audibly enunciates, "Geh ils li -"
Just as quick as Luka discovers that Enochian is the key to audible communication, the Affinity jams its bladed staff into the ground, opening a swirling golden portal behind it.
"BABALON LAP."
The conversation ends. The angel turns away, and the blazing heat returns and screams of souls return. To Luka, it seems angels can indeed be merciful.
Something about the entrance's magic enthrals Luka, as if it has a leash round his wrists and is pulling him towards it as if he were its pet. Either way, it smells like home. Crushed rubble and rosemary perfume permeate his heightened senses.
"That was… simpler than I speculated," Lukaon murmurs "Yet, we have arrived."
"Hmm. You sure this isn't a trap or anything?" Luka speculates.
"It is charged with recognisable scents. That is something angels cannot imitate."
"You sure?"
"Quite sure."
"Then what do we have to lose?"
Luka takes a step, his mind goes blank and he takes another two, then five, then nine. Barely an inch away from the portal, Lukaon's hand on his shoulder makes him pause mid-step. Luka is so close that he can almost see the dilapidated streets of Manhattan amid the pure, blaring light.
"Else-fellow. Promise me this."
"Let me go in."
"Promise me."
"Promise you what?"
"Promise me that you will keep walking. Promise me that you will keep moving and never stop."
Luka considers this, only for a moment. Out the corner of his eye, Lukaon's furrowed brow seems so genuine it hurts.
"We'll see."
"That is not good enough."
"I'll get back to you on it."
Luka enters the portal. Lukaon walks back into his soul in sparks of twinkling cerulean.