[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/966gkGg.png[/img][/center][hr]It wasn’t the relative heat that was bothersome even so late into the night. It was the stench. Out in the fringes of Los Angeles, a figure floated through the dark without pause. The far off lights of the cityscape kept the night’s eyes closed. The earth too was blocked off, blanketed in a sea of waste: torn bags of garbage, old appliances, roaches and rats tittering about the refuse. It gave off the kind of scent that seemed to stick to the skin and the innards of the nostrils. Low heat emanated from piles as though remnants lingered from the day’s sun.

Reaching a concrete building, a hand waved from the blue cloak, black energy phasing out with a whisper, taking away all color and appearance of worldliness. A metal shutter shrieked and rumbled as it scraped, the ruins of a lock clattering to the ground. The cloak barely tickled the ground as the intruder entered the darkness. One more wave of the hand had a light switch flipped up, bathing the large room and its contents in light. Pallets of crushed soda cans, cardboard bales, empty metal baskets... A few pests skittered out of sight.

The figure lowered her hood, black hair spilling out, a red diamond shaped gem set and gleaming on the forehead. She brushed a hand on a red brooch emblazoned on the front of her cloak before crossing her legs, clad in black stockings with slashes deliberately made throughout. Above the floor, Rachel Roth hovered in meditation, lips painted dark red murmuring other tongues. The air itself seemed to his and twist like lines of heat burned in. A faint red glow spilled from the slight cracks in her eyelids, and she raised a hand, tracing it it the air, the light left behind forming a sigil in the air made of several layered on top of each other as she wrote. Sparks started to fly, but it was not her doing. There was a hiss as something began to carve into the room as a burglar tool through glass through the air itself. Rachel’s mouth slowed to a stop and her eyes shot open, fading from full red to her usual purple tinted blue irises. The sigil dissipated and she unfurled her legs, raising her hands defensively as the portal reached its completion, opening to a space beyond. A pair of feet hopped to the ground, a man of asian heritage in deep red robes looking at Rachel with eyes wide. Two more in gray followed, the portal closing behind them. Their hands glowing as they raised them, matching Rachel’s wariness. She didn’t need to see their expressions and body language to read their hearts: unease, anxiety, confusion, and not nearly enough fear.

The spoke to each other in hushed tones. “Mó fǎ shī zài zhè lǐ gān shén me?” The apparent leader shook his head, not breaking is vision away from Rachel. He began to open his mouth, but the opposer struck first. Three of the man sized metal baskets went dark before being flung through the air. The two apprentices dove to the ground as the iron clattered and bounced across the concrete. Their leader made a circle with his fingers, another portal appearing both above him and by Rachel. She didn’t even have time to process before her own projectile knocked her to the ground.

“What do you think you are trying to do here?!” the mage demanded in English.

Teeth gnashing, Rachel propped herself up. Her eyes shone, and she spat out her chant, [color=7976ac]“A̵̧̦̍̑z̵̩̩͂̎ā̸̢̺r̸͕͂ȧ̵̬̼͆ẗ̴̢͔ĥ̷̖̲ ̴͕͊͝M̴͕̩̋̑ẻ̵̖̻̎t̶͕̓͗ř̷̦̀i̸̳̩͂ò̸̻͎n̸̦̅ ̷͎̪̉Z̴̩̮̍i̵̫͆n̶̝̚t̴͙͓̏̿h̴̺̐ǫ̶́s̸͇͠ͅ!”[/color] She floated upwards, swinging her arms as the room began to shiver. Full pallets bound with steel wire floated upwards before hurtling themselves at the trio. The two apprentices could only run, the pallets bursting when they hit the ground, a deluge of cardboard drowning them, snapped metal wires scratching into the floor. The disciple acted decisively, hopping onto the cardboard bale and leaping from it before it hit the ground underneath him. With a wave of his hands, the moisture in the air hardened into an array of ice blades before launching Rachel’s way. The area around her engulfed in blackness and she sank into the floor, knives shattering about the ground where she’d been. The disciple landed, tucking into a roll before swivelling his head, keeping wits about him. In the moment of quiet, he waved his hands, the unconscious bodies of his allies floating upwards towards a portal he wove into being. Behind him, a shadow loomed, rising up from the ground like a bird taking flight. He turned about, dropping his hand, but it was a moment too slow. A talon formed of dark magic came down on him, tearing through his robe, blood spattering to the ground. He fell, and Rachel rose, hovering over the destruction, head raised in pride.

It didn’t last long. She collapsed to the floor. Shoving her cloak aside, she placed her hand on an ice knife that had dug into her side. The biting cold was agony in her wound, and she couldn’t get a good grip on the offending blade, weak fingers slipping off. She gasped out for air, hand glowing in white as she pressed the limb to the wound. The cut stitched together, but it only caused her worse agony as it tightened on the blade in her flesh. The healing had allowed the blood flow to stem somewhat, but Rachel broke out into a sweat as she tried to run through her options, energy draining with every drop of melted ice. [color=7976ac]“No, no, no! Not like this! I haven’t even managed one!”[/color] she hissed in frustration to no one but herself. Gasping out, she took to the air once again, her levitation unstable as she headed back towards the shutter door. Once again in sight of the L.A. vista, she hesitated, the distance she had to cover seeming vast. Falling back to the ground, she cried out in pain, having stumbled on this first step.

[center]----[/center]
[color=7976ac]“...Six hundred and sixty six?”[/color]

[color=f05a23]“You find this amusing?”[/color]

The deep rumble of her father’s voice shook this realm. It was not a large one: the empty void was a space between space, inhabited by bubbles of dreams in between worlds. It was where Rachel had first met her father roughly 5 years ago. She existed in this void, and far off, impossibly massive, was a many sets of glowing orange eyes, stacked and towering to give the image of a presence beyond eternity. Her heart quivered with admiration, awe, and fear. So much fear.

[color=7976ac]“It’s...a significant number in Christian mythos. The coincidence was...amusing, yes, for reasons hard to explain.”[/color]

He smiled. She didn’t see it, for it was beyond her. She simply knew, and that knowledge offered her no warmth. Rather she felt stripped and transparent to the all seeing gaze of Trigon. A pit came to her stomach as she feared his reaction to her condescending him, as though the idea of overplayed edge and cultural concepts being reduced to memes would somehow be beyond him. But he did not admonish her, he merely explained, [color=f05a23]“Humans take great pride in their sentimentality, their emotion. Spires erected for superstition. Numbers held about as truth even as they are merely a shoddy attempt to reconcile with and understand a reality so far beyond them. It gives me joy to render such vapid assertions asunder. I shall not repeat myself: engrave my sigil on 666 places of magical power on Earth, and I can manifest myself through your form.”[/color] Rachel recalled his description of the eventual, inevitable event, as Earth would be reduced to a wasteland of flame and bone. Her material body would be shed and she would become Trigon’s avatar, her sense of self being erased. It brought her no fear. Failing her father made her fear. Being unable to live up to his expectations made her fear. To imagine the world of fire made her ecstatic. To imagine herself erased to give passage to her father left her with a feeling of peace.

[center]-----[/center]
Rachel lay on the ground in the garbage dump, blurry vision blending the night lights into one mass of white, yellow, and red, shimmering in the shuddering of her eyelids. She seethed. [color=7976ac][i]Let it all burn.[/i][/color]

In the last dregs of her consciousness, kept afloat from the cold pain in her side, she heard a light scampering of feet, no doubt one of the pests out and about. She shuddered, letting out a groan, hair standing up on the back of her neck in disgust, but she was helpless. She flitted her eyelids open and thought she saw a rat, sickly green in the low light. Then she flitted her eyelids again, and she saw a pair of legs kneeling by her side. [color=abd876]“Hey, stay with me! Oh man oh man that looks bad ahhhh I don’t have a phone!”[/color]

Rachel let out a low growl at the annoying prattling. [color=7976ac][i]At least be quiet and let me die in peace...[/i][/color]