“Lucifer.”
“Sol.”
“It’s been too long.”
“It has.”
A wry joke. They had tangled recently. Absolution, A Former God of Wind. Now working for The God-Emperor of The Black Armada, as he had ever since Lamentation Day.
Xex.
Former member of the Prime Triumvirate.
Sol had not come alone. He entered the dank Neutral Territory colony bar on Greasy Knuckle followed by a large squad of Dread Knights – grotesque former people, mutated or augmented, then encased for life in enormous suits of mechanized, cold-fusion powered armor.
He was curious how he had been tracked down so quickly after the recent issues out in Silverton involving The Resistance.
Several Guardian “Eyes” direct from Julian had already been sniffing around already, but easily given the slip.
The Dread Knights wandered out in formation, as might a gang claiming this pub for the night, donning a variety of cruel melee weapons and an assortment of other heavy arms. Fitting considering the common trend towards criminality on the planet. Some had their helmets open, revealing the horrors of the various different surgeries or changes they had each undergone. It ranged widely, from robotic optical replacements, to mutated outer layers of epidermis for the scales or carapace gene toughness boost of a crocodile or beast’s.
They fanned out further, as a few took threatening positions in a semi-circle behind the older man seated at the bar, leveling weapons at the back of his hunched figure leaning over the bar, bearing weight on his elbows.
“So why is Xex’s top plaything hunting down an old retired dog like me, Sol? Do you really think that your power armored goons will help you take me on and tip the scales hard enough to win? Just you and me duking it out mano a mano would flatten most of the neighbourhood and you know it.”
Absolution shook his head.
“These are Dread Knights, not goons. Those so divinely devoted to Lord Xex that they’ve undergone immense physical alteration to serve him at their maximum capability. With the amount of drugs, modifications, enhancements, and other injections they’ve willingly taken, along with being permanently encased within their armor, I wouldn’t classify them as mere goons at all. These are members of The Honor Guard Legion. Storied veterans of decades of combat against The Jailers. And as for your question, why don’t you simply ask him yourself?”
He smirked.
Strange for Absolution to show any outward clues on his eternal poker face.
Xex descended the steps into the subterranean bar right on cue with his usual swagger, a grin spread across his immortal, ancient, handsomely beautiful face.
He wore no shirt, as usual. His extremely overbulked, muscled torso and limbs were also splayed with a few more stylized black ”X” tattoos on the arms and pectorals in a variety of styles. More than Lucy remembered from the last time a century or two ago. Seems he had kept adding infrequently to the ever growing, strange patterning emphasizing his physical form, with the bulging of muscle groups swelling between the various black lines as intended with every flex. His combat boots and tight black pants looked as if they had been through hell, bearing a series of fatigued holes and rips. Knowing Xex’s preference for traditionalism… They were likely a favorite pair in battle.
The platinum blonde hair was the same as always, tousled and wavy, with his bright blue eyes boring holes in Lucifer as he came down the final few steps, arms outstretched in a hug or welcome. What few scars he hosted only seemed to make his natural beauty all the more enticing. Even Lucifer found himself struck, charmed to near instantaneous arousal. Uncomfortable feelings of rising flesh against the inside of worn jeans. Xex was the most beautiful man in existence to a good chunk of the general Central Universe population within The Black Armada colonies of course, so…
Odd for the traitor god who cared so much about public adoration and the stroking of his own ego to look so ruggedly ramshackle. Why did Xex get to be young and beautiful forever, whilst Lucy had been ascended in his mid thirties? Could a beautiful man like Xex love a haggard old god like him?… Maybe…
Lucifer immediately raised his powers with a realization – like a wall slamming from the floor up into the ceiling around him. Started losing his boner simultaneously, as arousal, lust, and irrationality snapped back into logic and self awareness. He shook his head to clear the last of the fogginess of the brainwashing effect, steadying his own powers from exertion into a more sustainable holding pattern of defense. Even just keeping a steady hum of power in the air against Xex as he was passively was felt like a thin concrete dam against entire lake valleys full of water.
The charming mental effect of Xex’s powers were everpresent these days, rippling through the stale stench of old cigarettes and spilled liquor, wine, or beer. The Creator’s energy and power thrummed from him after so many centuries of proximity, reality or spacetime seeming to almost hum in his presence. Xex had been an expert at brainwashing and interrogation with his unique power specializations long before The Holocene, and sucking up a nigh-omnipotent energy being a few centuries ago had only juiced his range, influence, and reserves amongst a thousand other things.
“You’re getting real powerful these days, old man. Used to be that I could feel you pushing in, so I could play a little tennis rally or two.”
Xex smiled at the flattery. Then grinned even wider, mischievously, crossing his thick arms and kicking the floor. They all knew the power differential here, not even beginning to consider The God of Wind or the toy Knights playing bodyguard.
“Wonder how I could spin this… Buy myself a treaty with The Guardians? I could do Serania a favor right here and now… Kill a Dark God! I wonder if she’d be grateful? Or perhaps she’d be furious with me because she wanted to do the deed herself? Or throw you in prison after interrogating you about the locations of other Dark God buddies holding old Guardians of Destiny secrets? Not that we The Black Armada care much about centuries or millennia-old ancient secrets we mostly already know.”
Xex’s grin only widened even further as he spoke, his Cheshire smile openly mocking the man who had yet to even turn from the bar to face him.
Lucy lit himself a cigarette with the tip of his thumb, and took a long, deep, thoughtful drag.
Didn’t even turn his head.
Xex let slip a word of mild annoyance, in some language far older than any that even Lucifer knew.
Then Xex ignored the bartender held at gunpoint to wander behind the bar, pointing at a few of the closer Dread Knights, then to Absolution in offering. All declined with a raised palm.
Huh. Must be sacrilege for a God Emperor to play servant to anybody beneath him. Strange taboo.
He helped himself to a random bottle of top-shelf whiskey, pulling the cork and sniffing it daintily.
Closer proximity to The God of Control forced Lucifer’s walls up even tighter with more exertion. Xex still wasn’t even pushing or exerting himself, relying entirely on the passive aura that followed him. This fucking clown. Lucifer didn’t care if the guy was seventy-something thousand years older. Nor how hot he was. He was still a fucking tool. How many fucking titles did he have by now? The High Warlord of The Black Armada. Emperor of Central. God-Emperor. Former God of Control of the Prime Triumvirate within The Guardians of Destiny. Who gave a shit?
Xex took a swig directly from the bottle. Winced and set it back down on the bar between the two immortals. Gestured again to the entire room towards the bottle. Surprisingly, the grizzled bartender with a shrug, reached to grab the bottle and pounded a good quarter of it before sliding it back towards Xex and Lucy. The Dread Knights behind him bristled their guns, before relaxing as the Emperor seemed unbothered. This poor guy was likely quite used to having guns pulled on him everywhere and anywhere on Greasy Knuckle.
Must not matter much to him who might end up shooting him in the end.
Xex watched the bartender with a mixture of curiosity, amusement, and delight as the man pulled from the bottle, taking another hearty swig himself when the bartender slid it back over towards the most powerful man in the universe.
Xex turned back across the bar to Lucifer, Former God of Death. He was often mistaken as or gossip-mongered into a Former God of Fire, of course.
“Serania would do all of the above, I expect. But you and I both know that trying to kill or escape us right now, unscathed, would be futile. Sol here hasn’t become rusty in his years since coming with me. I’ve kept him busy as you well know. While you’ve lurked around in outer-sphere neutral territory colony bars like this one, he’s been fighting all your old friends.”
The blue eyes twinkled as he cackled heartily. He was taunting the junior immortal.
“You devil, you’re just as full of yourself as ever.”
The older looking man swung halfway around on his stool to partially face the Armada force, his face and hair storied with the start of old age. He still wore the older age he froze in time at, thousands of years ago. What irony that Xex looked so much younger than Lucy whilst being so much older than him.
He kept Xex, Absolution, and most of the Dread Knights all in sight, eyes unfocused off towards the corner to keep everyone in his peripheral vision and avoid direct eye contact with Xex and his brilliant blue eyes, something well-known for centuries to help his power’s charm effects.
For a moment, Lucy wavered. His dark black eyes and muddy irises dilated as he suddenly found himself staring deeply back at the former God of Control. But Xex’s bright blue eyes were unflinching. Even as Xex smoothed back his pristine blonde hair, both crystal blue circles were fixed on the older-looking man, the pupils never moving.
He felt the arousal, one of the telltale signs.
Steadied his power output against the seemingly limitless looming reservoir, still waiting latent within Xex.
“There has to be a reason you came all the way out here hunting for me. This backwater slum world is hardly of any use to the almighty Black Armada. It’s not even worth the G.O.D.’s time to save it from one of your classic invasions, either, because you both have war suppliers on world. It’d be a wash. Plus, I’m sure Absolution has already told you I had little to nothing to do with that little episode out down southwest. Wrong place, wrong time, dodging Guardian Eyes and spooks.”
Absolution moved for the first time since entering, reaching into a pocket on the chest of his combat armor. He pulled out a small data pad, which he then moved and handed to Xex. The Overlord of the Armada took it without breaking his attempt at eye contact with Lucifer, bringing it up to his eyesight rather than use any examples of misdirection or distraction.
“See, Lucy, I’m actually here because I need your help. I know we can still be friends after so long apart. See, The G.O.D. has hired good old Eclipse, AKA Shifter, to develop another new Xex Project iteration to use against me. And despite all the resources I have at my disposal as the sole, future ruler of this Central Universe, I can’t seem to devise a way to rid myself of this one. No, this one seems to break the rules, like X3. Absolution himself has tried and failed on more than one occasion, and has the scars to prove it.”
As Xex handed the datapad back to the behemoth with the cold gray eyes, the man at the bar cackled, and reached over to the ashtray, casually taking his already lit cigarette from it and taking a long toke.
“So if the former God of Wind can’t deal with this new weapon, how do you expect me to succeed? I obviously haven’t been in contact with the Gods since I up and disappeared myself; and I don’t expect or want to work for any immortals, especially not for a bastard like you! I’ve been hired before as a merc to try and assassinate Xex projects, and I’ve failed every time.”
He paused, thinking.
“Besides, why don’t you just get one of your fleets to blow it up?”
Xex bristled at the end of the comment, his ego obviously injured more by the insult hidden within the sentence about the potency of his Armada than by being called a bastard.
“This weapon, codenamed REDEYE. Designed like the rest, specifically to kill me. Absolution can injure it, but the one time he’s fought this thing toe to toe, he was nearly killed himself.”
The man laughed again heartily.
“Oh? Good for this weapon!”
His laughing subsided, his interest obviously piqued. Xex scowled, glancing over at Absolution with a mixture of frustration and disappointment.
“It’s an attempt at a shitty copy of The Creator, but it can use matter to create defensive host forms to hide in, in addition to the various energy shenanigans.”
The man was amused, seemingly belligerently joyous at Xex’s inability to handle this single threat despite the vast fleets and armies at his disposal.
“So you’re afraid that like Jikos, one day it could dissolve you into a spray of molecules, despite your absorption of the Creator? Suck you up right back? You’re too afraid to fight it yourself, and even your hand picked traitor gods can’t take him down, so you turn to me, a washed up old god that went dark several centuries ago? Why don’t you kill him yourself, like you murdered Jikos when you first defected and became a heretic? You’re not that scared of a power mismatch, are you? Fuck knows even your fucking passive aura is suffocating these days.”
Xex glared at the former god as he gestured at the room around him. A stony silence from the Warlord lasting several seconds followed before he replied.
“You know I’m not stupid enough to risk myself, fighting every new godkiller project head-on.”
Lucifer’s grin that had been spreading slowly faded to a bemused smile once more.
“So, how are you going to try to force me to find it and kill it? I hope you know that I’ll kill myself before I let you try to turn me, and I’ll make damn sure I try my best to take you, Sol, and your little toy soldiers with me before that happens.”
It was Xex’s turn to smile again.
“Well, the whole reason you absconded from the Guardians in the first place was in attempts to find and join your brother, was it not? Well, luckily for you, my very own Armada Surveillance Corps, in their attempts to find the new REDEYE research lab location, have discovered the location of your brother and his current little group of ‘Dark Gods.’ I know you want to find Xyphos very much, don’t you?”
Lucifer went “all business” extremely quickly at the very mention of his brother.
“So, if I manage to kill this new G.O.D. Superweapon, or scuttle development, you’re going to tell me where Xyphos is? How the hell would I know you’re not lying to me?”
Xex motioned to one of the Dread Knights behind him, and there was movement from the doorway. Two more Dread Knights clomped down through the door frame almost too small for their armor. They were dragging a limp figure between them, kneecaps and shins banging repeatedly against the concrete stairs.
“Helios… Oh fuck…”
Xex smiled at Lucifer’s sudden loss of composure.
“I infiltrated their means of relaying information to each other, and it was easy for a small Armada strike fleet to intercept him as he moved from one backwater colony hidey-hole to another. To his credit he did try to kill himself, like you threatened, but Absolution made sure he didn’t have that option.”
Absolution nodded solemnly, which drew Lucifer’s attention for a moment.
“God damn you Sol. You used to be a god who cared about honor.”
Lucifer stood, amidst a sudden raising of gun barrels in chorus, then went over to the abused, bleeding immortal suspended between the two monsters, dabbing at him with a kerchief from inside his jacket pocket. Luckily the regeneration from ascension had taken care of most of the major damage by now. Torture was rarely pleasant for immortals, who healed relentlessly.
Lucy spit on the ground towards Absolution’s feet.
“You used to be a good man, Absolution. Now look at you. You’re just his goddamn plaything. He hasn’t even turned you himself and yet you play fetch and roll over for Xex like a damned puppy.”
Absolution tensed his jaw, but said nothing, clearly angered and hurt by the words but simultaneously refusing to take the bait. Xex leaned forwards more heavily across the bar as Lucifer tended to his fellow Dark God.
“Now, I can tell you where your brother is, or rather, Helios can when I release him to you. And I can even promise you that the Black Armada will leave you alone, wherever you and your merry band of misfits go hide across the neutral territories, at least until we crush the G.O.D.”
It was Lucifer’s turn to get defensive.
“And if I don’t want to die fighting this REDEYE thing?”
Xex’s response was brutal and immediate.
“I will bring the entirety of my Black Armada down upon your brother and his refugee gods; taking every step towards their complete and utter annihilation. I will not only kill them, but also obliterate the colonies stupid enough to hide them with extinction from orbit. Crack entire planets in half if I have to. I have already dispatched several small fleets to several systems on patrols, just in the event that you think of denying me. One of them is the right spot, despite Guardian interpretations of what the true purpose of those scouting fleets is. And that is an active threat, I guarantee it to you. So can good Helios.”
Xex waved the datapad tauntingly, beaming again.
Lucifer knew he had no choice but to resign. He didn’t feel like fighting his way through a pack of Dread Knights, let alone Xex and Absolution, all juiced up as this false Emperor was on stolen power from The Creator. And he kept getting stronger with the passing centuries, obviously. Holding up such heavy protection was also pretty draining after a while.
“Fine. I’ll kill this weapon. But if you lay a hand on my brother, Xex, or if you try to betray me, I will not stop until I have brought down your entire Armada and you along with it. I have not searched for my brother tirelessly for these many centuries only to see him snatched away from me by the likes of you. That is also an active threat, I guarantee you right back.”
“Excellent. I am wholly comforted knowing a God of Death is on the case.”
“Former God of Death.”
Xex smirked.
“Young Tarnos is finally worthy of that title now then?”
Lucifer slowly shook his head. Tarnos was almost as old as he was, even if combined they barely added up to a tenth of Xex’s lifespan.
“No, he has always been worthy of that title. He was more than worthy of it when I finished training him. Plus, he’s a Former God of Death now himself. We’re equals. It’s only because I might value my brother more that I would even consider fighting him.”
Absolution finally spoke up.
“He has become even more powerful over the past few centuries. Despite the old remnants of disease.”
Lucifer smiled a bittersweet final smile at the notion. His old protege never stopped training, almost daily in his patterns. Funny that Tarnos had ascended at an even older age than he.
“I don’t doubt it. He actually trains his powers. So are you going to supply me with ships and staff? I can’t exactly waltz my way into inner G.O.D. Space or even around contested Neutral Territory turf like a tourist with the various Guardian and Armada proxy bounties on my head.”
Xex nodded.
“I’ll give you your own task fleet, Lucifer, but don’t worry, I’ll make sure I have someone in direct control of said fleet to keep an eye on you. They’ll answer directly to me.”
Xex gestured to Absolution, who narrowed his eyes at Lucifer. The Dread Knights shifted and bristled.
“I’d be more surprised if you didn’t.”
Xex swung over the bar entirely in an effortless vault, then turned to leave, Absolution turning to shadow him back up the stairs.
“Don’t disappoint me Luce, Serania hasn’t spread nearly enough propaganda slurring your name to let you go into this half-heartedly! I’m ready to write entire fleets off against completing this task.”
The older looking man spun back towards the bar, taking a long drag from his cigarette as the Dread Knights hauled their captive up and out of the bar via a wave of their master.
He gently placed his cig back upon the ashtray, tapping the white ash off the end. As the Dread Knights filed out of the dirty bar one by one to secure the streets outside, Lucifer reached over to the open bottle left sitting on the bar, and poured himself a dark amber drink from within into his empty glass. Stopped just short of drinking it.
He paused there, the drink against his lips; with a thoughtful expression on his face.
Xex seemed to have already lost interest in the exchange. He held a hand out to Absolution, who promptly pulled a large hand cannon from his hip holster to hand him.
“Right! No witnesses, of course.”
“Wait!”
Xex took a few steps forward, and raised the heavy gun. The bartender fell back against the shelves, hands raised.
Lucifer raised his own hand towards the trajectory of the bullet, but Xex pulled the hammer back, and before anyone could actually interfere, splattered the bar, shelves, and even Lucifer with fragments of bone, pieces of brain, and blood.
The bartender’s lifeless, mostly headless body slumped to the ground amidst a shattering of glass, shelves, and bottles.
God-Emperor Xex shrugged, and used the back of his hand to wipe his cheek clean of the drop of blood that had landed there.
Then he handed the smoking gun back to Absolution, sans a single round, and sauntered back up the stairs out of sight.
Lucifer grunted.
Sat back down, defeated.
Didn’t bother trying to fish out the spreading drops of blood in the tumbler with his powers.
Sol simply nodded. Curtly, politely. Then followed his master back outside.
The whiskey burned like hellfire the whole way down.
With hints of iron.
