I won’t let him do this to me. Lilith remembered those words….though Lucifer had been speaking of the False God. He’d been so certain the changes were his fault, that his very creator was doing it to him, punishing him, not only casting him from heaven, but forbidding him from finding happiness anywhere, from making a home anywhere. He’s doing this, Lilith, he’s doing it to me. I won’t let him win. He is not all-powerful and I won’t submit to him. He’d been so determined, so clear in his fight, his fury, in defeating the False God. But still he’d changed, become more and more twisted, his form changing, until the beautiful man she had found, the beautiful angel she had healed, became a monster outside and in.
Lilith realised now that nothing had stopped it because it hadn’t been the False God’s handiwork at all. No one had cursed Lucifer except himself. He’d created Hell not with the desire for a new world as he claimed, but out of a desire to control, a desire to prove his so-called Father wrong, to take from the False God what had been taken from him. Such dark, twisted thoughts powered into such a creation, an entire Kingdom, an entire realm…it had fed what had been inside him. It was fed…and then it flowered, becoming that thing of darkness that looked to Lilith not with love but resentment, his touch cruel instead of gentle. Nothing but an unworthy plaything, a soldier, a servant, to do his bidding.
And she had. Because she’d loved him. She’d been blinded by that love, something she never intended to be again.
“Admirable,” Lilith commented brightly, “But something this….deep rooted is rarely as simple as merely refusing to be taken by it” For all Mr Scratch’s declarations that he wouldn’t let the Dark Lord do this to him, that he wouldn’t be taken, it wouldn’t make a difference. Once that sort of darkness, that sort of power, was under the skin, running through the blood, it wasn’t so easy to get rid of, it wasn’t so easy to beat. Nicholas might not have created Hell, but he’d carried inside him the very fallen angel who had. Undoubtedly, it left a mark.
“It’s true I might have…some ideas as to what needs to be done, how to stop this” She admitted, surprised by his genuine and earnest plea for help, though she hid it well. “I suspect that the little Transference spell wasn’t quite as smooth as Sabrina undoubtedly presumed it would be. I’m not surprised” She admitted with a simple, frank honesty “It’s a complicated spell even for the most advanced witch. And the Dark Lord is never so easily moved from anywhere” Which Lilith knew from personal and long experience.
“I’ll help you,” She finally agreed, “But only because if this isn’t stopped, I have no doubt you’ll be more than a…former flesh acheron. You’ll become a..walking, willing vessel for the Dark Lord himself. Something neither of us want to happen”
This thing had gripped Nicholas from the inside out. It had already tainted him in ways that he couldn't quite form into words but could feel inside of him the way he felt his lungs draw breath or the temperature of his body fluctuate. Something present but happening without his direct consent. He had taken the Dark Lord into him as a form of sacrifice but what had he given up? What was the scope of that loss? His freedom? His future? His life beyond that one last loving moment? All the literature and all the books in the world -- especially the human ones -- spoke of this sacrifice with such ardor and vigor. With such dignity. Nick had wanted to know this love but he had not been privy to its realities.
Everyone talked about making the sacrifice for the ones they loved. No one wrote about what happened after you did it. He had not suffered with dignity. He had not endured such suffering with any sense of ardor. His had been an act of valiant chivalry and the part of him that felt most shameful was the part that acknowledged he did regret what it cost him.
And now, alongside fighting for Sabrina and the Coven, he had to fight for himself too. He was hurting and there was no map forward. There was no direction for his pain. Perhaps that had been the scariest thing for him up until this point. This very moment right here. He'd been so caught up in feeling lost that he had failed to grasp what the Dark Lord could now do with him since he'd been inside of Nicholas.
“Wait, wait...you can't mean...he can choose to possess me now that he's been trapped inside me?” Was that how it worked? Would he now be susceptible to being taken over by the Dark Lord because he'd once willingly let him in? Was it such a revolving door in that way? He didn't want to believe it and didn't want to think it. But there were things about these magicks that even he did not know. He was one of the most studied and advanced students of conjuring and necromancy. Yet when this had happened he was still a student. He didn't know everything. “Or do you mean to say...I would be so twisted by this that I would do his bidding whether I wanted to or not?” A willing instrument for the Dark Lord's will. Another legion in his horde of demons and lackeys. Nicholas had always felt he was destined for something far greater in life. This would be true torture.
Nicholas peered into Lilith's eyes. “What happens when a Celestial takes you over?” he thought of the angel they'd kept from when the school had been invaded. He thought of uses they could have in testing their magical theories. “How do you banish it?” Maybe the same tools one would use to ward off or banish a Celestial could be used to ward off or banish those parts of one from Nick, too. If anyone would have such knowledge it would be Lilith, who had been with the Dark Lord in those early days, so close to his having been excommunicated from Heaven.
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