Nathaniel clenched his teeth, making no other noises. This didn't seem to hurt him, but it did anger him. His eyes started to glow a deep red, his skin pulse from whatever power that pulse from his veins. His body went against the Puppet's power, and he stood. Blood dripped from his nose, and he loomed over the Puppet, growling. "A powerful, ancient entity never stopped me. All the shit you have seen means nothing to me. The only powerful entity that could stop was father, and father is now dead." Moving two fingers up, he forced the Puppet to stare in his eyes. "If you thought I assume since you were 'polite' you wouldn't kill me, you are a total idiot. Now." Nathaniel paused. "Let us stop this petty argument and work on vital matters."
Nathaniel's determination to piss the Puppet off was almost comical.
However, to the Puppet, it was anything but.
With a chittering shriek, the world shatters around the demon king, tossing him into a world of evils and horrors not seen since before even God existed.
Things that not even Nathaniel have seen floated by, contorting in their sleep, twisting and reshaping constantly.
Each of them a Dreamer, dreaming up entire worlds and planes.
"What you do not seem to understand is that I was one of these. One of these Dreamers. I was a being whose power rivaled that of our greatest, and then I got woken up. My powers may have been weakened, but they are still more than sufficient to deal with an uppity little half-demon such as yourself." she snarls, grabbing the offending uppity little half demon by the throat and throwing him.
Nathaniel's eyes dilated, adjusting to the shattered glass around him. Nothing fazed him anymore. But this was a strange beast that he hadn't realized existed. It confused him so. Everything confused him so. But he didn't have long to ponder the strange thing he had witnessed. A hand was around his neck, and that was enough to get him to differentiate between the two realities. Both of his clawed hands gripped onto the one around his throat, nails digging deep into the flesh. The many minutes that passed were a blur until his body ended up on the ground. "If I am such a nuisance to you, then kill me. See what that does. You said you wouldn't hesitate, so do it! Kill the young one who hasn't experienced much life. Kill the young one, whose attempt at speaking the old languages makes the ancients angry. COME ON!" He coughed, staring in the direction of the Puppet. His scythe lay a few feet away from him. "DEAL WITH THE 'UPPITY HALF-DEMON." Nathaniel laughed, his voice cracking. "You need to stop acting as if I care about who you are and what you are."
The Puppet merely dims her eye in a way that indicates it narrowing, then curls a finger.
Blood starts pouring out of every single hole and pore of Nathaniel's face, in a gruesome waterfall of black-red ichor.
"You really should care about who and what I am. Because if the Ancients feared me, you should too."
Nathaniel kept laughing, his laugh getting louder. The blood dripped from his face, pooling on the floor. He kept it from dripping onto his clothing. "Oh please, I am not scared of you. I am not able to feel fear anymore. You are far from scary to me. In fact, you seem rather boring." He smeared some of the dripping blood onto his hand. "You know, I can manipulate blood too." With the snap of his fingers, the blood stopped pouring from his face, leaving a pool on the ground. Color returned to his face.
The Puppet raises an imaginary eyebrow.
"And yet, I have had much longer to perfect my techniques." she replies, fingers curling.
With an almost deafening crunch Nathaniel folds in half vertically.
Nathaniel's eyes widened. He didn't expect to get folded. Blood started to dribble out of his mouth, and he used his abilities to cancel out the Puppet's. He didn't feel like becoming a snapped granola bar. "STOP. Will you stop, goddamn it! What will get you to stop? Me saying I'm afraid of you? Apologizing for my previous statements? Letting you use me?" He reached over for his scythe, grabbing the snath and pulled it closer to him. “Or do I have to cut you up and lock you away?”
The Puppet glares.
"What will get me to stop is you stopping being a rude ass. Try cutting me up. I dare you."
Nathaniel sighed. Wonderful! A demand that required him to think about his words. But if he wanted to stop the pitiful fighting, then he might have to swallow the demand. “Fine.” He growled. “I’ll start acting like a gentleman if it suits you so.” He huffed, pushing his scythe away. “I won’t. I don’t feel like it. Not since you have challenged me to try.”
(HIGH PITCHED DEMONIC SCREECHING)
"Thank you." the Puppet replies, returning them to earth.
"Now, I need a bit of help. Would you mind capturing me a human soul from your realm?" she asks.
Nathaniel spat out blood from his mouth, the peachy, intoxicating scent ravaging his senses. With a haughty sigh, he looked up at the Puppet. His frown said it all. He had had enough of her bullshit. With a wave of his hand, his scythe moved from its current location to his hand. The king stood upon his shaky feet. "From my realm? You want me to get a broken soul from hell? Really? Are you fucking dumb!" A flick of his left hand opened a gate to hell. The floor broke away, falling into the chasm in the Earth. "Capturing? Come on?" He smiled, taunting the Puppet. "They bow to me and cannot do otherwise. The price is too great." A snap of his fingers closed the chasm, and Nathaniel held onto a white orb with red blotches. He scoffed. "'Captured'"
"How am I to know the degree of control a new king has over his realm?" the Puppet replies simply, taking the soul and holding it with a reckless energy.
Nathaniel stifled a gruff cackle. Handing over the soul that was breaking at the seems, Nathaniel wished the poor thing luck, knowing it wouldn't survive in the Puppet's hand. Leaning against the blank walls, bored out of his mind, Nathaniel checked his nails. Blood was caked under the long, broken claws. "I am not really new to my kingdom— not as new as you think." He looked up from his clawed hands, smiling like a madman. "They like me better than father. They know the prices to anarchy against me. I have them wrapped around my thumb." His blue eyes glittered in the dim light, a light of hell giving his skin a faint glow. "Do not underestimate me, Puppet. I can do much more than you may think. It will be your eventual downfall." With a 'innocent smile', he returned to studying his scars and bloodied hands. "I am ever so bored."
"To me, you ascended to the throne mere moments ago. My concept of time is not exactly as linear as yours. And as for your father, I think anybody would like you better than him." the Puppet replies, absent-mindedly striding towards the glass barrier.
"I am not underestimating you. I know your power. But I can take all of it away. So no, it will not be my downfall." she snorts, placing the soul in the ring of teeth of the thing.
The soul seems to shudder, before stabilizing.
The Puppet seems pleased, and opens up her wrist, letting her brackish, oily ichor splatter against the soul and the thing.
The entire structure shrieks, and then contracts violently around the soul.
The Puppet watches, fascinated.
"Are you seeing this, Nathaniel? I have created my first creature, the new dominant race on earth." she says, turning to the demon king and shifting to a properly human looking form, smiling.
“Your time would not be linear, of course. I've been around a lot less time than you have. Unlike me, you ancients are unable to construct a precise timeline of what has occurred. Two years have passed since the ascension, which you prefer to refer to as "mere minutes." Nathaniel huffed while adjusting his tailcoat. Unwanted heat was produced by the extra fabric layers that were layered on top of the linen. Instead of the warmth, he could feel the pressure. With a somewhat annoyed expression, Nathaniel removed his tail coat and held it in his arms. “Oh, I do find it strange that the only thing he and I share are the same last name. To me, we were nothing alike, but I managed to beat him at his own game. Some 'powerful' bitch he was.” A gorgeous wine glass materialized in his grasp with the snap of his fingers. It contained an odd, dark liquid that had the consistency of wine. He put the glass to his mouth and took a sip of the 'wine'. “Don’t you dare take away my power. That will truly be the end of you. Wouldn’t that be a joyous day?”
Nathaniel’s weary eyes panned up to the contraption and the soul. Many emotions reflected in his eyes. Annoyance, cruelness, joy. But from afar, they either seemed dead or worn out. He placed his arm around his waist and leaned his back against a far wall, sipping the wine. He stood up against the wall and regarded the glass door. The king quirked an eyebrow at the sight of the ichor. Such a strange color and consistency. His face twisted at the unpleasant groans of the structure. “Are you hoping for a hunted lab?” He questioned rhetorically. Nathaniel did not appear really amused or intrigued. "I do, in fact, see this. I do possess eyes." He grinned. "You're just a little god, aren't you. Does it bite? Because puppies in training do tend to bite.”
The Puppet's only response to Nathaniel's rant was a casual shrug.
"I know what I'm doing. Souls are simple to deal with." she shrugs.
"I can change that." the Puppet suggests casually.
"Not yet, it doesn't. However. . ." she indicates the structure behind her, which was starting to shake more violently, starting to contort, starting to take a humanoid shape as it releases its hold upon its holding cell.
Slowly, it condenses down into a creature that looks like a cross between the Puppet and Nathaniel, though with no discernable gender.
Nathaniel swirled the wine glass in his hand, spilling some of the dark, viscous liquid over the golden rim of the glass. It sloshed onto the ground, sizzling and burning the material that made up the flooring. He shrugged as a slight drunkenness rimmed his curious eyes as he looked down at the small hole that had grown at his feet. The king was basically drinking a strong acid demons called ‘wine’, but it didn’t seem to bother the king that something so dangerous entered his body without causing damage. In fact, it seemed to amuse him as a smile cracked upon his lips, turning into a wide grin as a crazed giggle came from deep in his chest. Maybe, perhaps, it was just the wine taking its effect. "I'd like to believe you know what you're doing, but it appears to be somewhat—in vain. Souls are not so easy to tame, especially when they’re not willing to go down without a fight.” His gaze landed on the Puppet, smiling like a delusional, drunk man. The wine had quick effects, taking over a demon’s mind quickly until they devolved into a strange, drunken state.
“Oh no. Please, I would love to continue and see. It is important if I want to see the outcome of your little experiment— or its extreme failure.” Nathaniel regarded the structure behind the Puppet. He observed how it shook and how the creature inside clawed for release. “Plus, if you try to blind me, I’ll break your pretty face.” His cheeks grew redder by the minute as heat flushed under his skin, flowing up to the tips of his ears. The creature he watched take shape did not excite him too much, at least not yet. Not until it started to take a humanoid shape. A shape that started to resemble him, well that— that made him tense. The grip he held around the black and gold wine glass tightened, his face twisted with disgust, and his muscles stiffened. “I am not a fan of this creature.” He wasn’t anticipating a creature resembling his own image, despite his blood being part of the equation. “Though the more I think about it, the thought is not so bad. Gods always create stuff in their own image. It’s what they do.” Did he just indirectly call himself a god? Yes. Yes, he did.
Breaking his gaze away from the creature stretching and melding into a being, he breathed a sigh. The smell of alcohol was strong on his breath. It was clear what a glass or two of the stuff would do to a demon. What would it do to a creature like the Puppet? The heat under his skin grew stronger, his cheeks and ears flushing a stronger pink. With the flick of his wrist, purple smoke materialized into a scythe with a black and purple marbled blade. The saith appeared to be twisted layers of wood washed in an ebony stain. Nathaniel used the weapon as stabilization, nearly toppling over without the heavy scythe's help. "I feel stabby stabby. Killy killy." The demon king giggled.
