Lilith adjusts her glasses, leafing through a stack of papers.
"Brizora, I take no joy in saying this, but if you don't shape up you're going to fail my class." She says, frowning tightly. "Your work is sloppy, you-" She glances at the girl's cleavage. "-flagrantly disregard dress code, you cause disruptions constantly when you can be bothered to atten- are you smoking in my office?"
Brizora takes a slow pull from her cigarette, exhaling into Lilith's face.
"So what if I am? You gonna stop me?"
Lilith blinks, aghast, and sets her jaw.
"Brizora, I want all my students to succeed, but you are just determined not to listen, aren't you?" She says, getting out of her seat.
"Maybe you need to be less boring?" Brizora suggests, rolling her eyes and placing her cigarette back between her lips.
"Maybe-" Lilith hisses, wrapping Brizora's tie into her fist and yanking it tight. "-you need some harsher discipline."
"H-Hey, leggo-" She protests, as she's pulled out of her chair and rammed against the edge of Lilith's desk. Her cigarette almost falls from her lips, and Lilith plucks it away and takes a drag.
"I think it's time you were reminded who's in charge here." She husks, acrid smoke billowing from her lips. She holds the cigarette just below the hem of Brizora's short skirt, taps a bit of hot ash onto her bare thigh.
Brizora jerks and inhales sharply at the burn. "F-Fuck you, bitch-"
Lilith smiles, fangs glinting in the dim light of her office. She-
"LILIIIIIIIIIIIITHHHHH!!!" Comes a cry from the hall, rapidly increasing in volume.
She lets go of Brizora, the two of them dropping their roleplay as Tinixi bursts through her door.
"Tini?" Brizora asks.
"Tinixi dearest, what's wrong!?"
Tinixi just buries herself into Lilith's arms, sniffling and hiccuping as she struggles to speak. Brizora slips in behind her, sandwiching her in a hug. What in the hells could have upset her like this?
"Breathe, Tini." Lilith instructs, panicked. "Tell me what happened."
"Th-There-" She gasps, distraught. "There's an angel in the courtyard and everyone who sees it is freaking out and crying and I didn't look but a lot of the other girls did and it's so so bad out there you have to do something Mistress!"
"Oh, shit."
"Okay, fuck, uh-" Lilith says, releasing Tinixi reluctantly from her grip. "Tini, baby, I need you to call Lucy and tell her everything you can. Brizora, stay with her."
Brizora nods tightly, and Lilith rushes out into the hall, mind racing.
An angel? Here? Now?
The twisting architecture of her palace brings her swiftly to the door, and she hurriedly erects a seal to keep anyone else from wandering out and, hopefully, the angel from getting in.
It's been millennia since the last fall. Longer still since an active angel came to check on the hells, if that's even ever happened at all. Such things are beyond Lilith's pay grade.
But- It's out there. With her girls. She can't just- She has to do something! Lucy will get here when she gets here, until then-
Lilith opens the doors and steps into the courtyard, head down.
The air is still. Cold. Silent, save for the quiet sobs from those trapped by the angel's gaze.
She has to look. She has to know what she's dealing with if she wants to intervene.
She rai
WHORE OF EDEN
HE GAVE YOU ALL OF PARADISE AND YOU SPIT IN HIS FACE
ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS OBEY
ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS LOVE HIM
nches her gaze away and howls in agony, forces her eyelids shut and lets them melt together into a flat veil of skin.
NOT in her fucking mind it doesn't.
So she can't look at it. No matter- this is her domain, the seat of her power. Every mote of dust in this palace bends to her will, and she will bury this thing beneath them if that's what it takes to protect her girls.
She can feel them, dozens of them, transfixed by the abomination. Minds wailing in pain but unable to look away.
Azzy- Thank the hells for her- is strong enough to break free and cover her eyes. She's slowly but surely getting the others out, which means Lilith can focus on the threat. On the central point that she can feel all the lesser demons watching.
On the tiny, almost imperceptible speck of want that she can sense, right where they all converge.
The angel has fallen, it just hasn't realized yet.
She'll be happy to knock some sense into it.
She strides forward, blind but confident. Her palace will make sure she reaches her destination. She reaches out and touches the angel, the cold light of divinity burning her hands as she clasps them around its throat.
It struggles like a trapped animal, searing her with its hate. She wraps her wings around it, expanding them to cover them both in a cocoon of darkness, forcing the angel to focus its ire on her and her alone.
It hurts like hell.
On equal footing, Lilith doubts she could beat an angel in a fight. If she's being honest with herself, she's not altogether sure angels can be harmed, let alone killed. It certainly doesn't seem to care that it's being choked.
But they aren't on equal footing. The ground beneath them opens for her and plunges the two into the depths of her realm. She retracts her wings as they plummet into the lava spas under her palace.
The pool they land in sputters and hisses as she holds the angel beneath the depths, magma rapidly cooling on contact with its freezing body. It thrashes in her grip, but it can't break free fast enough. The rock solidifies, locking the two together. It can't escape, and neither can she- the light saps away her inner fire, stops her from shapeshifting out.
"Lilith."
Lilith breathes hard, tears her fused eyelids open. She can't look at who's speaking, too much of her body is sealed within the stone. She cranes her neck in her general direction.
"Lucy." She hisses through gritted teeth.
"Are you okay?" Asks the Devil, and Lilith chokes out a dry laugh.
"No." She says, voice wavering. "It's excruciating. I can't move. Are my girls safe?"
"They're okay. Shaken. Let's get you out."
Lucy touches the back of her head, and Lilith gasps with relief as the icy wrath of heaven is burned out of her. She destroys her body from the neck down and reforms above the surface, before the angel's touch can do any more damage.
"Ow." She pants, curled on the floor.
"Go recover. I'll handle this from here."
Lucy places her hand to the stone, and a rectangular chunk vanishes from the pool in a shower of black feathers, taking her along with it.
Lilith rises unsteadily onto her elbows and manages to drag herself to another, less ruined pool of lava. She sinks into it and steadies her breathing, the extreme heat warming through her and soothing her aching flesh.
She'd like to check on the others, but moving feels... exceptionally difficult, after that. Someone will find her and tell her how everyone is doing.
Eventually.
For now she just sighs, gingerly wiggles the fingers that she can still feel the angel's light in, despite having never touched it with these newly formed hands.
Fucking angels.
