Daniel sat in the backseat of the car, his arms crossed over his chest, gazing outside the window as the world passed by in a blur of colors. His face was etched with the unmistakable look of boredom, and his lips were puckered slightly into a pout. Every now and then, he tapped his fingers on the window, trying to distract himself as best as possible from the intense boredom he felt.
Though it wasn't working the way he wished it would.
He hated sitting in a car, not just because it practically took his parents forever to get to where they were going, but also because he couldn’t write anything while he was stuck there. Every time he tried to think of an idea, it would constantly slip away from him, which was annoying. On top of that, the constant movement of the car made it nearly impossible to think, and it also made him a little woozy. Even more annoyingly, his little sister was sitting right next to him in the backseat, trying and succeeding at getting on his nerves.
She didn't even try to hide what she was doing. Humming to herself, she tapped her feet on the floor, looking at him in the eyes as she did so, in a way that was clearly meant to get under his skin. Every now and then, she would nudge him with her elbow, grinning mischievously whenever he shot her a glare. It didn’t help that she was always asking him to play some game or talk to her, but he wasn’t in the mood to do so, so she just kept trying to annoy him because of that.
“Mother!!” Daniel groaned, throwing his head back against the seat. “She’s doing it again!!”
Sarah let out an exasperated sigh from the front seat, glancing at them through the rearview mirror. "Lily, can you please give your brother a break?" Lily, unfazed, rested her chin in her hands, her mischievous grin spreading wider. "But he's just so easy to mess with," she teased, her voice dripping with playful innocence. Daniel shot her a look of annoyance, rolling his eyes as he turned away, "You're the worst,"
“Am not!”
"You're too!" Daniel yelled back at her. Lily just giggled, her eyes sparkling with amusement as she continued to poke him.
"Come on, Daniel! Play with me!" she chirped, tapping her foot rhythmically against his leg. Daniel closed his eyes for a moment, willing himself to find some patience. He could feel his temper rising, but he also knew giving in would just encourage her.
"No,”
Before Lily could say anything, Paul turned to face them both and said, “Lily, just give your brother some space. Here, take my phone and play around with it for a bit. And Daniel, here’s a book for you. I know you’re a bright kid, always full of ideas, so I’m sure you’ll find something to spark your imagination.”
From there, he didn't really bother to remember much of anything that happened, as he just began to scribble down whatever came into his mind.
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The rich aroma of aged whiskey mingled with the greasy allure of some fried food, that was underscored by the faint tang of rain drifting in from one of the nearby open windows. In the corner, a jukebox murmured an old blues tune, Its soft notes wove through the haze of the dimly lit bar, adding a bittersweet harmony to the atmosphere. One man sat alone at a small table by the window, with a half-empty glass of scotch resting in front of him.
His gaze wasn't drawn to the bustling room or the bartender's overly large ass, but was instead fixated on the small cubic object in his hands as he took another sip of his glass of smoky scotch, before eyeing the stranger who had just slipped through the door.
Throwing the cube in his mouth, he chewed slowly, savoring the slight crunch as the ice melted in his mouth. His gaze shifted to the stranger standing in the doorway, the rainwater on their raincoat dripping onto the scuffed wooden floor. The flickering neon sign outside cast a halo around their silhouette as they scanned the room, their sharp eyes briefly lingering on the lone man by the window.
"Didn't think you'd still be here after all these years," he said, their voice low and gravelly, a hint of a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"And I didn't expect to see one of your kind down here in the underworld," the man at the table chuckled. He swirled the amber liquid in his glass, the ice cube inside clinking softly before dissolving further. "But I guess the underworld has a way of calling those who don't belong anywhere else.”
The surroundings froze. Everyone was stuck, frozen in place, unable to move as the world around them turned into a dull gray color. The nearby sounds of chatter, along with the clamor of activity from everyone in the vicinity, vanished away into silence as the man slowly began to rise from his seat.
"Crowley."
"Didn't think you'd recognize me after all this time," he said, his hand drifting toward the inside of his raincoat.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
"I didn't think I needed to, to be quite honest," he said, his eyes narrowing. "Neither did I really want to, but… fate has a funny way of dragging old ghosts back into the light," he finished, his voice carrying a razor-thin edge of disdain. He leaned forward slightly, the dim light catching the scar that cut across his left eyebrow as he stepped forward.
Crowley's smirk widened, though his hand stayed poised near his coat. "And here I thought you'd be glad to see me. After all, it's not every day you get a visit from an old... friend."
"You don't want this fight."
The false visage he wore that was meant to replicate the appearance of a Middle Eastern man faltered, before sliding off and falling to the ground with a meaty thud as he stepped forward, chunks of his body falling off to the ground. His arms and legs elongated with his neck, his eyes glowing as the surroundings twisted and bent.
"I think I do.”
Crowley was a dangerous demon who had a thing for pretty faces. A long time ago, he made a deal with him that resulted in him selling his soul to it. However, things got nasty when he decided that he loved himself too much to be thrown into an everlasting fire, to be continuously fed to a demon who could never really starve in the first place.
Needless to say, self-preservation instincts kicked in at the wrong time, and now he was royally fucked.
David stood his ground, teeth gritted as he reached for the revolver tucked into the waistband of his jeans, his fingers brushing against the cold steel of his gun, his eyes never leaving Crowley's as he took a step back away from it. After all, he wasn’t an idiot; he knew better than to face down a demon unarmed. But he also knew that even with a gun in his hand, he stood little chance against something like Crowley.
He took a deep breath in, absorbing the nearby ambient mana into his core, his shoulders and muscles relaxing as he stood, carefully eyeing the demon as it skittered across the walls. The multiple faces on the leather satchel it had on its back stared back at him, each one of their expressions twisted in a grotesque blend of malice and amusement, all the while they continued laughing and jeering at him in multiple languages he both understood and didn't understand.
David occasionally took some hesitant steps backward, his heart racing as he drew out his gun, his fingers trembling slightly from the mixture of fear and anticipation in his chest.
“I'm going to kill you, twist your arms in ways you can't imagine before chopping up your face and ripping out those golden eyes of yours and putting them in my collection. I will then use your corpse to create more children of yours and repeat the process with them.” Crowley hissed.
David’s grip tightened on the revolver, his knuckles turning white as he leveled the barrel at Crowley’s shifting form. The demon slithered and contorted, its elongated limbs clicking as its bones reset in an unnatural way, its many faces laughing in discordant echoes that scraped against David’s skull like rusted nails on a broken glass. His breath came slow and steady despite the adrenaline surging through him. His free hand, the one not holding the gun, twitched ever so slightly, drawing the gathered ambient mana into his body.
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“Daniel.” He heard his sister, but her voice barely registered to him. He was too absorbed in his writing, his focus so intense that the world around him faded into the background. His pen scratched furiously across the page, each stroke of the pen on the delicate piece of paper filling in the tiny blanks within the little world in which he was so absorbed into.
For a moment, he paused, tapping the pen against the paper as he gathered his thoughts. Then, with a deep breath, he continued on writing, ignoring the persistent call of his name.
“Alright, kiddo, we’re heading to the store. You’re welcome to hang out here if you’d like, and just give us a call if you need anything. We’ll only be gone for a little while, just grabbing a few things before we head back.” Paul was a good dad, always checking up on his son as a rightful father should. He was kind, loving, and patient.
All qualities that Daniel himself acknowledged from his dear old dad. “Thank you, father. I think I'll be staying back.” Paul nodded before scooping up Lily into his arms, his mother giving him a kiss on the forehead before the three headed off to the supermarket.
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Crwley’s grotesque grin widened. “Still clinging to those little parlor tricks, I see,” it mocked, voice warping and overlapping as if spoken from a hundred mouths at once. "Tell me, David, do you really think your pathetic little tricks will do you any good this time?”
David didn't respond. He knew better than to waste breath speaking to a demon. After all, just because it looks human doesn't mean it has human emotions, so talking to it wasn't a good idea.
The bullet hurtled toward Crowley’s head. For a split second, the bullet seemed to hit its mark until Crowley’s body rippled like water, parting around the projectile before snapping back into place. His features contorted with fury, and with a snarl, she lunged at David.
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Writing with a pen was one of the main things he hated about paper book authorship. Just one little slip-up, and you were automatically cooked, potentially having to restart from scratch just to get a sentence right. Even more annoying was the fact that, despite centuries' worth of technological advancements, no one had ever bothered to figure out a reliable way to erase ink from paper.
That was frustrating.
“Crwley’s,” he repeated, looking at the small grammatical error he had made, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He stared at the offending word, its misplaced letters mocking him from the page. He tapped his pen against the notebook, debating whether to scratch it out and rewrite the sentence above it or just abandon the page altogether.
“This would have been embarrassing if I had actually put it on ShelfSync, especially since I started getting messages from that creepy old guy. He would have been clowning about it all day long.”
Daniel let out a frustrated sigh, his gaze lingering on the misspelled word. He could practically hear his own inner voice mocking him for the careless slip-up. But, in the end, it was just a story. No one would see it. Right?
“Yeah, it's probably best if I don't put it on the site. I'm just going to keep it in my bag for a while as a side story for later, if I decide to get back to it.” His fingers gripped the pen a little tighter, the ink blurring slightly from the tension. But then, he exhaled slowly, letting the breath settle in his chest.
Thinking about it for a little while, he made up his mind and placed the notebook back where his pops had given it to him.
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"Write that down, write that down, write that down!" Larry shouted. Some of the stone golems it had created using its spider threads ran around everywhere to grab as much paper as they could, trying and partially succeeding at replicating the little kids' story into their own original version.
In front of Larry, a tiny mini version of Earth floated before its, its many eyes staring down at the planet as multiple panels of events that were simultaneously happening in the past, present, and future stretched out before it while it observed the little brat it had bitterly decided to consider its rival.
“While you guys do that, make sure he doesn't do anything else while I'm gone. I think it's time I pay him a visit.”
The golems scurried about, fumbling with papers and scribbling words that appeared to be a rough imitation of Daniel’s hastily written ideas. Their movements were jerky and uncoordinated, far from the fluid grace that Larry himself had perfected over the years. He clicked his mandibles together in irritation, watching them try and fail to copy the boy’s work.
All of this reminded him why he needed to figure out a way to create life. The golems did not have a shred of life within them, and the only thing animating their bodies was the meager amount of energy he had poured into the rocks while hastily piecing them together into what briefly resembled a sentinel.
They were more like... what the mortals refer to as ‘'AI,' but without the intelligent parts.
In any case, he better go see the brat before something changes within the timeline.