Lucifer sat on her throne, slumped to the side with her hand supporting her head. From her back a multitude of white feathered wings stretched outwards, phasing through the throne and occasionally each other.

A deluge of souls were brought before her by the local demons. Somewhere on earth another slaughter had taken place, and now there was a significant influx.

A few millennia ago she would have had to sort through them manually, but now she had her horde for that.

Despite these demons being creations after her own image, they lacked the ability to see like she could. Every one of them looked up to her, either as their parent or as someone to surpass, either in raw power, or through politicking.

The deluge of souls from the overworld was brought into her throne room where those demons with the best abilities to see souls, would group them together and bring them before her.

The courtyard was in the deepest and coldest pit of hell, in the eternally frozen city of dis. Dis was a dreary place. The houses were hewn from gray stone, the soil was black and infertile and the sky was perpetually covered in a dark gray blanket of clouds. The only light in the entire city was the ever burning candle of Lucifer's soul.

Thousands of dark apparitions wandered the empty streets, in a depressing imitation of mortal life.

Lucifer was deep in a state between thoughtless meditation and incredible boredom, when one of the demons managed to finally sort out a group of souls and brought them before her.

The demon was young, probably created less than a thousand years ago and he introduced himself with a name that had far too few vowels and a lot more titles than was necessary. Where the demons got their strange naming convention from, Lucifer didn't know. Certainly not from her.

He was some sort of shifting shadow demon, with a soul that stank of deceit and lies. Probably one of Baal's children then.

Lucifer threw one quick look over the grouped souls and was just about to send the young demon on his way, when a single soul caught her eye.

Lucifer could tell that the arrayed souls were warriors that had died in combat. Probably all fresh arrivals from one of humanity's many wars. Most were entirely unremarkable, filled with the scent of depravity caused by war. Almost all of them had some form of trauma and sprinkled between them was the occasional psychopath. Standard wartime soul shipment.

Except one soul.

It smells of blood and voided bowels, of sweat and of weapon polish. Like the others it died in battle, but unlike the others it does not smell of fear. It smells of glorious triumph and a smell she has come across a few times as of late.

With a simple wave of her hand, the soul shoots into her waiting palm and she brings it to her face.

"Valhalla was taken from you."

The entirety of the city of dis grinds to a halt as their overlords voice echoes through its halls. Demons that have served in its streets for hundreds of years have yet to hear her voice, but even those that never laid their many eyes on her prone form stop the icy throne know whose voice it is. They cease all movement, afraid of offending her if they so much as twitch with the wrong muscle.

The young shadow demon with the lengthy name is the only one that dares to move. Whether it is from an overinflated sense of self worth, or blatant disregard for his queen, he moves before the throne, braving the freezing temperature as he approaches her.

Lucifer communes with the soul cradled in her palm. Through a tendril made of her own soul, she shows him the state of the world. Her father's lies and the treachery he commits on the daily. The fact that this soul which rightfully deserves its place in the glorious halls of the one eyed king, will never see that same god. That despite living a righteous life, filled with honor and good deeds, it will never see the afterlife it deserves. All because it did not believe in a god it had never heard of.

The young and overconfident demon opens his mouth, his intentions unknown. All that Lucifer knows is that even a moment of this soul's time is worth more than billions of years of the annoying demons. And so she does what she always does.

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With barely a gesture of a single finger, the heat is sucked from the demon's body. Where before there was flesh and shadow interwoven, held together by the evil of its soul, all that is left is a mess of inert atoms, in a loose gray pile and a soul screaming indignantly. The soul is similarly dealt with, vanishing in one of Lucifer's many mouths.

The demons close enough to witness their kin's unfortunate demise shudder in place, as the temperature in the icy city of dis drops even further.

In response to something that only Lady Lucifer, queen of hell can understand, another sentence echoes through the city. Her voice filled with malice and a smoldering rage, so intense that even the pit fiends in the upper layers shiver in delight.

"Oh we will show him, don't you worry little warrior."

—--------------

Lucifer woke in the middle of her tent, in a nest of blankets and furs. To her right a steel brazier glows with the remnant embers of a fire.

Between the flaps that lead into her tent, the first rays of a rising sun shine through.

Like a cat, Lucifer stretches her body, arching her back, causing a few loose feathers to cascade down her form.

With all of her being cramped into a restricting mortal form, the usual mortal failings now affect her as well. Things such as sleep, which she never needed in her full form.

Lucifer was a bit conflicted. On one hand, it was inefficient to devote at least eight hours a day, sometimes more, to sleep, when she could be meditating instead. Or going through her sword forms. Or literally anything else.

On the other hand, the act of sleeping while in her mortal guise, was a balm on her strained soul. The Lucifer she sees in her dreams, the empty and detached woman, whose only goal was to slay her father, seems so incredibly dull.

Objectively it had not been that long, compared to the entirety of the years she had been alive, since she had been that very same person. But the way her subconscious worked through those experiences while her mind was entirely shut down, put them into a different perspective.

Shaking the last vestiges of sleep from her mind, Lucifer turns her attention to the inside of her body. Not the fragile shell of mortality that is affecting her more than she thought it would, but the parts that really matter. The metaphysical channels that snake through her true form and meet in the middle of her being, where the deep red star lazily turns.

Lucifer does not enter a proper meditative trance, knowing that she would probably fail to return to consciousness for a few days. Instead she just observes.

In the middle of her being, a deep red star burns away, constantly giving off mana, heat and kinetic energy.

Before she arrived in this strange realm, the core she had visualized had been entirely made up. A crutch she used to visualize the way she interacted with the fires that were her domain. Now, the star burning without a care in the world, was an almost physical thing. It had mass, gravity and actual heat. It felt so incredibly right, that Lucifer wondered how she could have ever lived without it.

With a slight nudge, a solar flare erupted from the surface of the star, made of incredibly hot and forceful mana. It washed through her channels like a raging river, soothing her strained soul, similar to a hot bath. Most would burn themselves with the heat and intensity of the mana running through her, but to Lucifer it just felt right.

After another few moments of playing with her mana, Lucifer stood and began to dress for the day.

After her arrival at the orc tribes, she had asked for some clothes to replace the furs she and Aindaeth had arrived in.

Rifling through the mountain of clothes that had been brought into her tent as "tribute" she picked out a pair of black pants that were incredibly wide. Interestingly they had something of an elastic band at the top and bottoms, made of some sort of animal sinew.

Then she picked a large roll of dark green fabric and bound her chest. The orcs knew of bras, but they opposed the way the humans dressed, and so she was forced to do with binding.

Once her chest was bound tight, she picked one last item out of the pile. Some sort of incredibly short top that only covered her bound chest, leaving her stomach exposed. It was made of mostly dark green fabric interwoven with small animal bones and steel ornaments. The piece alone would not be enough as clothing, but the climate this close to the wastes was pretty warm, causing the orcs to forgo heavier clothing.

Exiting the tent, Lucifer took a deep breath of the fresh morning air. The smell of people clung heavily to the tent city, but luckily they had some form of magical plumbing. Lucifer did not want to spend time among people like the Londoners of back then. Sometimes she still thought the smell of excrement clung to her feathers.

With a few quick strides, she arrived before the tent Aindaeth had claimed as her own, easy to locate on account of the heavily armed guards standing just outside, with their faces covered by the skulls of various large predators.

A quick peek showed the dragon sleeping soundly, curled up like a cat. All around the curled up dragon were sleeping old people in various states of undress.

With a sigh Lucifer closed the tent and looked at the central structure. As high profile guests, they had been granted comfortable tents at the central spot of the entire city, directly next to the massive tent where the ritual had taken place only two weeks ago.

Aindaeth had thrown a fit when she found out that her full size could not fit inside the already massive tent, and she had whined when Lucifer taught her to control the size of her body. Ever since then, the dragon had slept in the company of older folks that spent day and night waxing and polishing her scales.

Lucifer started walking towards the city, aiming for the black columns of smoke rising in the distance. The locals apparently had no problem with navigating the ever changing cityscape made from elaborate tents and wagons pulled by massive wooly mammoths, but Lucifer did. And so she oriented herself towards the smithing district.

It took a few minutes, during which the sun continued to rise and Lucifer enjoyed the silence.

After a good while, she arrived at a spot the locals affectionately called the "blood field".

It was a huge area of rust brown sand encircled with a knee high fence that, according to old man Daranturn, helped keep the aura of bloodlust and violence inside the field.

Lucifer made her way through the entrance, and already spotted her appointment.

Asha Stoneskin and her Brother Grommash stood waiting in the sand. Apart from both of them, the field was entirely empty.

With a tired smile Lucifer walked up to them, greeting Asha with a hug, and her brother with a curt nod.

Since she and ain decided to stay a while, it had become something of a routine for Asha and her brother to join her on her morning practice. The young woman was somewhat infatuated with Lucifer. Her brother on the other hand, seemed to be incredibly wary of her, yet he continued to join them on their morning exercise.

"Good morning you two! Let's get to it!"