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Hastur touched down gracefully, the ball of one foot coming neatly down in the snow, and then a shift of weight as he stepped forward on the other. There was no frantic back-beating of the air with his wings like some demons he could name. Over-sized fucking pigeons, he thought, walking along, the crisp new snow crunching with every step. A fellow had his pride, and he was now and had been for all the ageless aeons a commander who demanded precision and grace from his soldiers. He could even manage it himself, when he thought about it.
The air was chill and clean. He looked around. There was absolutely no one else there. A thin smile twisted his lips. Well, there wouldn't be, would there? It was only the top of a bleeding mountain. Humans liked climbing the blasted things, but there weren't any humans for a very long distance. No other demons either, and certainly no angels. He looked up cautiously, just to be sure. No, the sky was clear. Well, then.
He gestured, and the unfortunate set of clothes he was wearing vanished. He peered down at himself with vague interest. Some fellows let themselves go, gorging their appetite on the misery and the substance of the damned. That sort of thing wasn't really for him. Eat to exist, he thought, don't exist to eat. He was thin, but not a bloody flying skeleton like some erstwhile colleagues he could name. He was wirily muscular, and if he were a human his physique might encourage an observer to think he'd had an awful lot of practice in swinging a large, sharp metal object to some precise effect and not a lot of need to build up muscles purely for show. An observer might have a suspicion that having six limbs could just possibly indicate he wasn't actually human, of course. Hastur made his wings vanish, rolled his shoulders, looked round one final time and started to sprint, bare feet leaving shallow footprints in the snow. With a whoop that he kept as close to a growl as he could, he dived headfirst into a deep snowbank. The snow fizzed and melted around him, but it felt great. He didn't get to not feel like he was on fire all that often, and he planned on enjoying every last second. A lot of demons liked the heat - he wasn't worried about it himself, and anyway, after the first eternity a fellow sort of forgot he'd ever had a lower body temperature, not that angels were exactly made of ice, either - but it was nice to get a bit of variety once in a while. He rolled around in the snow till it stopped melting and he felt pleasantly cool.
"Are you makin' a bloody snow angel?" a voice said near his head.
Hastur sighed. No rest for the bleeding wicked, it seemed.
"'Ello, Ligur," he said. "Checkin' up on me, are yer?"
"Nah. I just 'appened ter be in the neighbourhood --"
"Wot? Of the Transantarctic Mountains? Now why in the name of the Mornin'star would you be in this neighbourhood if yer not checkin' up on me?" Hastur said testily, sitting up and opening his eyes.
Ligur shrugged and shifted from foot to foot, peering round. He was wearing a ski jacket that had seen better days, day-glo padded trousers and a really nasty pair of boots with pink leopardskin-print fake fur on the outside that looked like they'd been ripped from the still warm corpse of a girl with absolutely no taste in footwear.
"Ain't you cold?" Ligur asked. "You ain't got no clothes on."
"I'm bloody freezin'," Hastur said with satisfaction. He eyed Ligur grimly. The little bugger had something to say, that much was clear. "Wot's on yer mind, Ligur?"
"This 'ole sneakin' up to Earth wivout me and hangin' round wiv no clothes on," Ligur started in sudden fury, producing a wickedly sharp adamantine sword from behind his back. "Where is 'e? I'm goin' to fuckin' sort 'im out, 'ooever 'e is."
Hastur looked at him in astonishment, then fell back in the snow as dramatically as he could manage, just to emphasise how much he was laughing. He kept a careful watch on Ligur, just in case there was a skewering attempt.
"Put that away before you chop yer own fingers off," he said, when he thought he'd probably laughed at Ligur as much as he could without incurring a sword in the head. "You really fink I'm up here cheatin' on you? You are such a bloody moron, Ligur."
"Yer lookin' for a slicin'," Ligur muttered, bad-temperedly slamming the sword into a grotty scabbard. "Ow, fuck," he continued, sucking at his hand.
"Lemme see," Hastur said, holding out a hand. Ligur must really have cut himself, he thought as the smaller demon unwarily stuck out his injured hand. "S'not so bad," Hastur said genially, holding Ligur's hand up to his face, examining the cut. He bit down, hard. "Now you've something to whine about," he grinned as Ligur howled and aimed a furious set of claws at his eyes.
The fight was a lot of fun, and Ligur gave up soon enough, when he was pinned down with Hastur's foot squashing his head down into the snow, and Hastur's claws removing the ski-jacket.
"Yellow is not yer colour, I've told you that," Hastur said cheerfully, tossing the scabbarded sword well out of temptation's reach. "Had enough? Can we fuck now, or do I 'ave to beat you up some more?"
Ligur said something, but it was difficult to make out, given that his head was under the snow. Hastur hauled him out and found he was grinning.
"Let's melt this bleedin' snow," Ligur said, and then yelped as Hastur bore him over backwards into the snowdrift once more.
"Hastur?" Ligur said, a good deal later. "You ain't cheatin' on me, are you?"
"It's hard enough having one affair," Hastur said idly. "You think I've got the time to have two?" He paused. "Or three, or whatever's rattlin' round in yer excuse for a brain."
"Maybe you should remember I've got a good few legions of the damned at my beck an' call," Ligur said peevishly. "Maybe I'd like you to be polite once in a while. Maybe I'll just have it off with one of my guards. Some of them are good-lookin', you know."
"Good idea," Hastur said. "I'm sure all that salutin' and 'Yes, Yer Grace, at once, Yer Grace' would be a right turn-on in bed. You just pick the guard and I'll eviscerate him. You want jealous, I'll give you jealous."
Ligur poked at the snow, idly forming a snowball, compacting it to ice and taking a curious bite. He cleared his throat.
"You know what the other dukes still call us, don't you?"
"Yer the one who counselled selective deafness," Hastur said. "I'd say I see no evil and hear no evil, only that'd be ridiculous."
"End of the world's comin'," Ligur said.
"Yeah," Hastur grinned.
"When it does -- yer not goin' to change sides on me, are you?"
Hastur looked at him very closely.
"You follow me up here, you act all funny and now you ask me leadin' treasonous questions? Yer not wearin' a wire, are you?"
"I'm wearin'," Ligur said with injured dignity, "half a boot. It's just a question."
"I'm not changing sides," Hastur said clearly. "I am a loyal slave of the Prince."
"Oh, give over. I thought maybe you were sneakin' up here to meet some bright-eyed clear-skinned angel or other. I'm not tryin' to get you into trouble, I just want to know you'll be fightin' at my side."
"'Course I'll be on yer side."
"At my side. Beside me. As in, I turn my head an' I say to myself, 'Oh, look, there's Hastur's ugly face'."
"Oh," Hastur said. "Where else would I be?" He raised an eyebrow. "Meetin' some angel? D'you think I've no taste 'stead of just bad taste?"
Ligur hit him in the face with a ball of solid ice. By the time they'd settled down again the half-boot Ligur'd been left with had joined its fellow in shreds of vibrant pink and they were both enjoying the feeling of their borrowed mortal bodies shaking with exhaustion. Ligur looked far too tired to be jealous any more or to ask any more dangerous, stupid questions, and Hastur thought perhaps he'd let the whole thing slide, and not eviscerate any particularly pretty guards of Ligur's just this once. He looked at Ligur's nasty fangs and unpleasant leer.
Bright-eyed and clear-skinned, he thought with a thin, contemptuous smile. What would he want with someone who looked like that?