A/N: Everyone, please take a moment to have a look at this:

lunissa. deviantart gallery/ #/ d56mvux

Thank you.

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First Interlude

Unworthy

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"You... You wretches! You blind, twisted freaks! How could you? What were you thinking? Why us, and not him? What made -"

Hastur stopped ranting when a cloud of noxious black smoke came drifting by, and caused him to collapse to the ground, gagging and wheezing, only to jump up again, screaming, when the white-hot sand scorched his unprotected flesh. "Aaagh, you cursed little -"

"Oh, give it over, Hastur," said a weary voice. "It's not worth it, it won't change anything. Just accept it, like I do. You'll be much better off."

For a few seconds, Hastur actually forgot to pay attention to the pain. He could only stare, open-mouthed, at his long-time associate, currently immersed up to the neck in a stream of molten lava, and looking decidedly resigned about it. Then Hastur's face, a face already made even more grotesque than usual by the flickering red light reflecting off the cavern's black walls, twisted into a snarl, and he barked, "Accept it? Ligur, have you gone completely mad? We've been condemned to eternal torture, here in the Pit! Those two could have prevented that, could have kept us out after we died, but no! The only one they chose out of all our endless legions was a bloody murdering psychopath, ten times worse than any of us could ever be! Where's the sense in that, where's the sanity in that? And you want me to clasp my hands together and actually thank them for it? Ha! Oh yes, you have gone mad! You sick little fuckers!" he finished, raging at the bottomless blackness that was the ceiling.

"I didn't say thank them, you know," said Ligur. "And I haven't gone mad. I've just been thinking."

"Same thing," Hastur replied savagely, dancing around to cool the soles of his feet. A great stone came flying out of nowhere, and hit him on the back of the head. He fell upon the sand again, and shrieked, and rolled around in agony.

Ligur continued, as though he hadn't been interrupted. "I've been thinking that maybe, just maybe, those two knew exactly what they were doing. I mean, he was the Son of our Master, and she was... You know. I think..."

"You think, you think!"

"... that people like that have reasons for everything they do. We just can't see 'em. If they didn't keep us out of this place, I s'pose they reckoned we weren't good enough for that. But maybe they, I don't know, saw something in him."

Hastur, who had scrambled back up by now, shook his head in stunned rage. "I can't believe I'm hearing this! So you think they deemed that homicidal maniac worthy of salvation, and two normal, decent demons like us unworthy, because they had good reasons? Well, you're certainly more clever than I am, Ligur," voice dripping with sarcasm, "because I sure as bloody Hell can't see it!"

"We all get what we deserve..."

"Shut up! Just shut up! You're fucking insane, d'you hear, as insane as he was, cracked as an angel, and I'm stuck here with you!"

"...and you might see it, someday," mused Ligur, ignoring his shrieking colleague, and tilting his head back to peer up at the darkness overhead. "Someday... Who knows?"

And above, high, high above the two of them, Three were wandering the plains of a land in ruin.