"I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist."
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959
“Are you ready yet…”
Dante floated above Ven’s head, a disruption that slowed his progress. He’d never opened his inner world to others, so he needed to figure it out on the fly. Ven ignored the impatient fellow, mind focused inward.
The force from his cores flowed to his command, forced into the shape of a runic door. The most complicated structure he’d ever formed, he poured a trickle of harvested system energy into its construction. Fueled by the dense power source, Ven’s gate snapped into place. Solid and real, it stood within his mind like an anchor.
‘Perfect.’
Ven’s mouth rose into a restrained smile. Now he had to make something to connect it to. Inspired by his success with the gate, a complicated script appeared before him in the air.
“More runes?” Dante peered, face pressed close to the runic light. “These are far more complex… are you sure you can survive such a spell?”
“It will be fine,” Ven’s face tightened as he added more and more layers to his work, until a palm size sun floated before them. “I’m not casting this spell directly, just setting the script in place…”
Sweat beaded on his forehead. It was almost done, the last step was to infuse some of the system's overbearing energy. He dragged a lump of the concentrated force, upwards from the depths of his soul. It tingled, electric against his nerves, a current of power that spilled from his heart and onto his skin.
“What is that power?” Lucifer appeared beside him in a flash of light, a hungry look on his eyes. “It’s so pure!”
“Not now…” Ven placed his hand onto the ball of luminous runes and let the energy flow. Air cracked, pushed from the space as new matter formed. The sun faded into twilight. What remained was a key, fixed into the void.
“Done!” Ven gripped the key. A simple twist of his wrist, the exaggerated thunk of a lock, and a blue white line appeared in the air. A simple, wooden door emerged from the glow, as if it had always stood, frameless in the darkened landscape.
“Another gateway?” Dante tapped at the wood. “Where does this go?”
“To my inner world,” Ven removed the key and pulled open the door. “Head inside, I’m not sure how long it will last without the key in place.”
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“That should be impossible,” Lucifer tilted his head as he circled the doorway. “A cultivator’s inner world is separate from creation until he forges it into a realm.”
“Just get inside,” Ven rolled his eyes. “As soon as you’re through, I’ll carry you past the gate.”
The fallen angel shrugged and stepped through the door. Dante waved as he followed. Ven stood alone in the shadowed fires of the abyss. His temporary doorway vanished as he stepped back into Avalon.
“Now I just make a new door…” Ven inserted the key into the air and another door appeared. He closed his eyes and descended into his inner world. “Are you guys coming?
Lucifer and Dante stood, rooted to the ground. They both gazed to the system star above, disbelief on their faces. The robe that covered Lucifer faded away, six black feathered wings exposed to the light.
“How can you have this…” The marble skinned man caught a scattered fragment of starlight between his fingers, voice soft. “They were all destroyed, except for the titan’s.” A flutter of white spread to his wings, a slight blush that faded as quickly as it arrived. “Who are you?”
“I told you,” Dante cackled. “He really is a man from earth, my nose is never wrong!”
“I was from earth,” Ven shrugged. “But that was a couple of lifetimes ago.” He waved the pair toward his rune gate. “Now get a move on, or I’ll have to open the way again.”
“I would like to study that star, if you don’t…”
Lucifer’s words were interrupted by a rumble from the dark. A wave of pressure pushed the pair of tourists to their knees. The devils strained as the force dragged them to the door, first Dante, then Lucifer, ejected from his immature realm.
“Thanks, system,” Ven tipped his head in a small bow as his awareness returned to the outside world. Lucifer and Dante tumbled from the doorway, which vanished as soon as they cleared the frame. “Welcome to Avalon. If you break your contracts, Cain will spill all of us into space and I’ll shove the gate into my inner world!”
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“Most interesting,” Lucifer swam through the foul smell of the skies. “This wave carries something very much like the Outsiders…”
“It looks that way…” Dante managed to blurt out between gulps. He’d feasted non stop since their arrival, thousands of litres of the strange sky lost to his gluttony. “...but… we won’t know until it gets here!”
Ven swam next to Lucifer and left Dante to his endless meal. The compressed tide of shadow was closer than before. Almost a quarter of the sky, lost to the waves.
“Outsiders?”
“They won’t be a problem, if that’s what’s within the wave,” Lucifer shrugged. “Me and my brothers were born to fight off their incursions, before the minders appeared.” The fallen angel spread his wings, which had shifted to a marbled grey. “They are senseless things, driven by hunger.”
“With the two of us, plus this freakishly stable realm, we should be able to destroy any that discover us.” Dante flipped through the waters like a fish. “But there are a lot of them…”
“Cain and I can help, but even with you guys here I get a bad feeling from that wave,” Ven shoved at his friend with his foot. “What say you, Cain?”
The man had been silent since the devils’ arrival, eyes locked on Lucifer. Ven poked him again.
“Hello?”
“Shut up, I hear you!” Cain swatted Ven’s talon away.
“You’ve got an admirer, Lucy,” Dante laughed. “This fellow is also from earth, you know?”
“Oh, I know,” Lucifer turned his black eyes to face Cain. “We’ve met before, a long time ago.”
“Really?” Dante drifted closer and drew the pair together. “I didn’t think you had any human friends?”
“Get off me!” Cain shook Dante’s hand from his shoulder and flew a distance away. “We’re not friends!”
“Nor are you human, Son of Adam,” Lucifer barked a laugh as he shrugged. “How long has it been, since you crushed your brother’s skull with a rock?”
“SHUT THE HELL UP!” Cain lunged forward, only to freeze in the air. The realm around them trembled, but everything stayed in place. Lucifer loomed before the frozen man, rage on his face.
“YOU DARE SPEAK TO ME OF HELL!”