Satan, January 12th

It was only eight in the morning, and few in the red king palace were awake. It was too early for Satan, much less anyone, to be pacing around the castle with endless thoughts, yet here he was. Arsene seemed to be staring. She leaned back on the couch, head resting on her hand.

“I think you’re overthinking this,” Arsene calmly said.

“But what if-”

“It’s a meeting with the queen of The Rainbow kingdom, right? You just need to go and tell her about it so something can be done about Takahiro and Katherina. You’ve barely worried a day in your life, I don’t understand how this is one of the things that gets you so riled up.” Arsene explained.

“I guess because it’s all about Katherina and Takahiro? Ugh, I don’t know, though.” Satan groaned while checking on his phone for the Rainbow Kingdom website, and with a few loud taps from his clawed fingers, he had booked a meeting with The Rainbow Kingdom’s Queen.

So that solved one thing, at least.

Seemingly out of nowhere, young little Phoenix appeared and tugged on Satan’s robes, making him jump.

“Ah, Phoenix! Good morning, did you eat breakfast yet?” Satan smiled as he leaned down to Phoenix’s height and ruffled his hair. Arsene couldn’t help but watch from afar with a lazy smile. She hadn’t seen this specific side of Satan since Crow started becoming a teenager.

“Yeah. Are we gonna start my tutoring sessions again today? I could barely sleep last night thinking about it.” Phoenix said

“I’m not sure if that will happen today. I have to take care of something important to protect the other Ayuzumians.”

Phoenix frowned, “Okay….”

“Hey, I promise that if we can’t have our first tutoring session in a while, I’ll either take you out for ice cream today or take you to IHOP first thing tomorrow, okay?”

“Yay!” Phoenix cheered in response, “auntie Arista, where’s Arete?”

“She’s at her dad’s.” Arista yawned.

“Could I go with her? Please?” Phoenix begged.

“I don’t see why not. I’ll ask.” Arista sat up and grabbed her phone. Satan decided now was as good a time as any to head over to the Rainbow Kingdom. But, just as he readied his magic to transport himself over the Rainbow Kingdom, he was stopped by Eris.

“I know this has nothing to do with the war thing, but I want to see Iris again.” She said.

“How do we know Iris is even free for meetings right now?” Satan asked.

“I don’t know- maybe now would just be as good as a time as any.” Eris sighed.

“Alright, if you’re coming with me, let’s leave now.”

***

Satan waited in a room to the left of the throne room, as the website directed. Unfortunately, Satan found himself easily distracted by the sheer size and beauty of the palace. It seemed almost double the size of his. It was white with rainbow and flower adornments everywhere, representing the first rainbow queen and the current one. The waiting room was nothing special, just a few chairs all in a row. He had to stop staring around and focus on the task at hand. On the other hand, Eris was practically silent, playing with the ends of her shawl. It seemed like it would be hours, but thankfully things played out to be only twenty minutes.

“Mr. Satanel, I don’t think you’ve ever visited the Rainbow Kingdom ever!” The queen greeted.

“I did not expect it to be so beautiful… and hot! I’m sweating to death here.”

“Probably because you're wearing all black…” she trailed off with gritted teeth. Her eyes glanced at Eris and fell into a defensive stance, pointing with shaking hands.

“Don’t worry, she’s with me, and she’s changed. Is Iris available?”

“Yes! Eris, why don’t you come with me for a second?” Auriana quickly pulled Eris aside, and Satan noted how she transported her and Eris away with flowers sprouting from the ground. Magic was quite strange, and seeing how different types of magic functioned and worked was something Satan enjoyed.

“Is that why you came here to see me today or…?” Auriana asked.

“No, it’s about Takahiro. He and Katherina are trying to take back their kingdoms and take over Ayuzuma.”

Auriana’s face withered, and she rushed him into another room. She couldn’t let anybody else hear that name. Satan glanced at the long table with many different chairs, each seemingly decorated to fit the various rulers. He didn’t want to focus on the chairs, though. He had more pressing issues to tackle.

Auriana pulled out her phone and typed quickly.

“What are you doing?” Satan asked.

“Texting the emergency royalty group chat! I could also call everyone if you want.”

“There’s an emergency group chat?”

“Yeah, I thought you were in it?”

Satan pulled out his phone and checked his messages; sure enough, he saw the group chat.

“Oh. Wait, how did you get my number in the first place?

“Crow gave it to me.”

“Oh. Moving on, can we call the other royals? I highly doubt they’d be checking their phones unless they were on break.”

Auriana nodded. They started calling all the ruling kings and queens, but Auriana had much better luck since they recognized her number. Satan was forced to leave messages. Satan opted to use the Rainbow Kingdom’s landline, which worked out much better, but he only managed to call one of the royals as Auriana managed to take care of the rest. He wasn’t too surprised, as the rainbow queen was more trustworthy than him, a king that barely left hell. When he did, it was never for business either. Despite the urgency that Auriana described, it still took an hour for everyone to gather and silence themselves. Finally, Auriana could quiet everyone and get them to sit down.

Auriana rose from her seat at the head of the table, which was rainbow-colored and adorned with flowers. “I’d like to start this meeting by saying that we believe this is a serious issue that we must squash. But I don’t know the details, so I’ll let Satan take it away.”

Oh, I’m already going to talk about this. Satan groaned in his head. Oh well, he supposed he signed up for this when he thought befriending Katherina and Takahiro, two people hated by their respective kingdoms, was a bright idea.

“So as you may know Takahiro and Katherina have recently taken over… well only Takahiro, but they assumed full control of their kingdoms and allied with each other. I have called you all here today because I know exactly what they’re planning. As a former friend of both of them, I’ve learned that they want to control the entire planet and if that goes well, they also want to conquer the entire galaxy.”

The monarch of The Green Kingdom chimed in. “You’ve never interacted with most other kingdoms before this point. Sure they’re both horrible people but how are we supposed to believe you when we’ve never even seen you before? And honestly, Takahiro is just some spoiled rich dude destroyed by grief, and Katherina might’ve cheated on all too many people, but your accusing them of crimes that don’t really match up with the rest of the things they’ve done.”

Satan paused. He slid a folder of papers and documents across the table he brought in case they questioned. The monarchs pawed and glanced at the papers. They found various photos of Takahiro and Katherina’s early plans to take over and texts between Satan and Katherina.

“It’s literally just an allyship at the moment though.” The orange queen argued.

“That’s untrue! Because they’ve denounced the allyship with the rest of our continent, fucking up our relationship with the time gods potentially putting the citizens all throughout Tempest in danger if the time gods are severely displeased. In our talks with our gods, they already aren’t happy, and WE’RE the ones that will have to pay.” The Lime King yelled.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Maybe your gods are just shitty.” The Gray King suggested. The lime king quickly sat up from his chair and slammed his hands on the table, leaning to glare down at the gray king. The gray king smirked, but before anything else could go down, The Rainbow Queen quickly cut in and stopped them.

“Maybe, we don’t need to declare war, but at least something! If we let this go unnoticed we risk letting the smaller kingdoms be taken over.” Satan suggested.

“Fuschia IS one of the smaller countries though, how would it take anything over?” The Cyan King questioned.

“Because she’s allied with one of the major kingdoms, hello? D-does nobody else hear what he’s saying?” The Lime King pointed it out. The remaining royals stopped their counterarguments and realized he was correct.

“Okay, I believe you’ve all arrived at the point we’d like to make. Please raise your hand for those who favor going to war against Fuschia and Black.” The Rainbow Queen directed her fellow royals. Of course, she raised her hand, and so did Satan. She counted white, light blue, yellow, lime, pink, gray, light gray, cyan, purple, blue, brown, green, and- that was everyone, despite how some initially seemed against it.

With everyone in unanimous agreement, they each signed their declaration of war, two so they can send both to both kingdoms. Then, the royals teleported them to the black kingdom palace and the Fuschia kingdom palace, so they knew, and possibly even back down. This was the first step of many, but at least it was something.

Satan watched the other rulers get up from their chairs and start talking. He realized it was customary for rulers to gather like this after big meetings. He watched them from across the room and tried using his blood magic to get home. The actual gathering was a few minutes compared to the hour of waiting, and he didn’t want to dilly-dally anymore. The Rainbow Queen stopped him.

“Are you not going to stay to meet everyone and catch up?” She wondered.

“No, I didn’t expect this to be a social event. I just want to go home,” Satan admitted.

“Oh, alright then, I suppose, tell Crow I said hi if he’s home!” She waved him off. He quickly teleported himself home. He had to admit. It was somewhat draining. But he just needed to get out of there if he wanted to tutor Phoenix. He immediately turned to Arista, who wasn’t glued to the couch as she usually was yesterday.

“Is Phoenix at Arete’s dad’s place?” Arista asked

“Oh, hey, yeah he is. Why?”

“I was gonna bring him home so we can start our tutoring but you know what? He just started living with me at home, one more day of waiting to start tutoring him shouldn’t hurt.” Satan declared. And Arista agreed.

“Wait, where’s everyone else?”

“Nico took the day off to spend it with Bree, poor Nen forced herself to go to work even though I tried to tell her she didn’t need to, Araya went with her to make sure she didn’t overexert herself but she’s healing people along the way, and Lucifer is exploring Ayuzuma. So I guess it just leaves us two! Are you busy normally?”

“Uh, I just declared war on Katherina and Takahiro, so I’m gonna start thinking of possible plans to use against them, for now it’s my usual. Guess I’m just gonna do that now so, uh, bye. Oh, also remember to be careful.”

“I won’t, don’t worry. Lucifer tells me that constantly.”

***

Eris was teleported away to talk to Iris by Auriana. Auriana wished her good luck as she teleported away with her flowers. Eris sighed nervously as she stared at the back of Iris.

Iris turned around. All those years apart, of hatred and confusion, and never seeing each other since Eris shut her out, she looked the same. Her hair was still wavy and color-changing, wings still white and feathery, eyes pink.

Eris bit her lip. What would she say to her?

“It’s been two hundred and thirty one years, old friend. Are you here to talk or to fight me?” Iris asked. Her calm stance of clasped hands said she was ready to talk, but her dagger in hand said she was ready to fight her.

“To talk.” Eris said. Iris motioned towards two seats that sat right across from each other.

“So, what brings you here for our first conversation in a long time?” Iris asked.

“To say sorry. Takahiro seemed nice at the time and he seemed pretty certain you were a horrible person. I should’ve trusted you, who I’ve known for a long time, rather then a guy I only known for, what, a few months? He wasn’t as good as a guy as he seemed to be those first few months. I didn’t realize I was aroace back then either.” Eris looked at the floor. She looked back up at Iris, hoping for something, but she was wordless.

“How long did it take you to realize?”

“Too long.”

For a moment, silence washed over them.

And then, forgiveness, despite everything, despite Eris telling Iris so many years ago how much she hated her. They both became overcome with emotion, tears flowing down their faces as they laughed, cried, and reminisced together for the first time in a long time.

“Oh, you know how the greek gods announced that we’re actually roman gods? What’s technically your birth name?”

“Arcus. Yours?”

“Discordia. Do you use yours?”

“I don’t, I just feel so disconnected from it and everything. It’s just not me. Discordia is a pretty name though.”

“It is. I use it occasionally. It feels uncomfortable for my friends and family on Ayuzuma to call me that as frequently as they did with Eris. Only my family from Mount Olympnos calls me Discordia on the regular really.”

“Isn’t it so crazy that our destinies were basically to follow the ones of the greek gods? It feels like a crime.”

“We should call Justitia to help us with that.” Eris laughed.

***

Late at night, Eris slipped back into the Red Kingdom palace. So much for a quick apology and then leaving swiftly after. She tiptoed through the kitchen and the dining room, trying to make her way to her new room, but she saw Araya.

“Oh hey. Satan said you were still busy by the time he got out so he just went home.” Araya greeted.

“Hey,” Eris said. She continued walking but froze, ‘Araya is back in Ayuzuma. I never got to talk to her before but this is the perfect chance to find out how she feels about Satan since he talked about her a lot.’

Eris turned around and sat at the table across from Araya, who looked up at her.

“I thought you were going to sleep?”

“I realized I needed to ask you something.” Eris’ fingers interlaced, and she rested her arms on the table. She laid her chin on her interlaced fingers, staring at Araya, who seemed to sweat.

“Um… I’m not about to get interrogated or something right?” Araya smiled with upturned eyebrows and crossed her arms, digging into them a little.

“Oh no, not at all! Sorry, I made it seem more serious. We just haven’t gotten a chance to interact just yet, that’s all.” Eris apologized. Araya sighed, letting go of her arms.

“You are Satan are close, right?”

“Yup, I met him when I was twenty one which was like. Quite literally four billion something years ago.”

“Fuck, we’re old. He talked about you a lot, you know.”

“Really?”

Eris thought a second to properly think. “Yeah, he really missed you during those ten years, if I didn’t bring something else up he was talking about you and things you did back in the day. Thinking about it now the day you left he cried, which he never does, much less in front of other people, which I don’t need to tell you but you know. He was upset that you never got to answering his letters and texts too.”

“Wait, he genuinely missed me that much?” Araya jumped up from her seat, leaning on the table.

“Yeah. Now with everything going on I’m worried he’s going to be overworking himself constantly. I don’t exactly have a job anymore so during the day I can look after him but can you look after him after you get off work?” Eris said, which wasn’t a lie necessarily, he didn’t need constant supervision to ensure he didn’t become overworked, but you know. If you convince your best friend and his other best friend to spend more time together, maybe he’ll finally confess to Araya and maybe shut the fuck up a little about Araya. Or maybe he’ll talk even more than before. Russian roulette.

“Yeah, of course, but what happened to your old job?”

“Oh, my old job back in the olden days was to cause discord. When I married Takahiro I retired from the discord thing and did queenly duties, but when my daughter took over I was more just tending to our personal palace, not the Black Kingdom palace and helping him with his rebel stuff and trying to plan ways to get his kingdom back when he was clearly too sad and too much of a mess when my daughter took over but you know.”

“I keep forgetting you have children. I have another question also. I know everyone calls you Eris but Satan says your technical real name is Discordia, is Eris just a nickname?”

“Sorta. The roman gods basically were all taught that we were the real greek gods and the other greek gods were fake so we’ve basically hated each other for the longest time. Quite literally like last year the greek gods pretty much went around to us romans in disguise as greek gods and said, ‘hey so your not a greek god at all you basically existed as a replacement of the greek gods.’ Apparently if a greek god was to die or something when nothing else in the world said they should be dead, they’d kidnap us romans, erase our memories, and we’d take over like nothing happens.”

“What the fuck.” Araya covered her mouth,

“I don’t really get it either, but it does make sense why the romans look and seem a lot like the greeks to begin with. Anyway, what time is it?”

“Shit, it’s like one in the morning.” Araya gasped.

“Fuck, I’m heading off to bed, goodnight. We should find the time to talk more.”

“For sure. Goodnight!”