The Height of Narcissism

(AO3 Link)

As far as sins went, in The Loremaster’s opinion, Pride was by far the one that was almost too easy to commit: Have a healthy regard of yourself and care for your work and you’re halfway there according to some people. Make your thesis about modern sin thinking you could somehow avoid falling and become a demon yourself while doing it and that was the Hubris subcategory of Pride well covered. She had learned to accept that. Kind of.

But well, that didn’t mean that now that she was already a demon she couldn’t keep studying sin but with a little more style and flair now, did it?

Loremaster had been experimenting with Willpower lately: Everyone had it, she sure had it in spades, but her prime specimen of high octane amounts of it in a single entity, Helltaker, Mister Helltaker whenever she somehow still felt sentimental, who she had witnessed dying in a pillar of light multiple times during his time acquiring demon girls in Hell - and their short stint at having a domestic life - before coming back unscathed, had long since disappeared, hadn’t he?

A shame really. He had also been only human, and perhaps limited in scope in what he could do with his willpower because of it, even if coming back from incineration wasn’t in most human’s wheelhouses.

Now, what more could she do if she boosted Willpower with her own abilities and the knowledge she’d been given by her subjects?

Rewrite time maybe?

That starts as a half baked joke between her and Lucy - or her and Lucy’s death glares - but it’d been based on how at around Subject 20 of the second series they had noticed that especially motivated Subjects would sometimes reappear at the start of her test chambers whenever they got failed: Seemingly unscathed, almost like their injuries had never happened.

They know exactly what that looks like, and Loremaster is not sure what he did was actual time travel, perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn’t. At present getting to witness all this was still just a fun quirk on an otherwise dull experiment: Helltaker wasn’t there to try to explain it anymore and Subject 21 through 25 had still quickly scattered to super-heated dust from the test chamber’s lasers shortly after the first couple of times, leaving them a Subject 26 that hadn’t even displayed the same behavior before succumbing and leaving her fresh out of that week’s hybrid batch.

Also without a viable way to observe the phenomenon once more until the next series finished cooking.

Well, again: Unlike her foes and the human-devil-monster hybrids she had made to be her test subjects, The Loremaster was not limited by such a thing as humanity or having been a devil for long enough that they didn’t feel the power of sheer innocent curiosity any longer.

And sometimes when you want something done right you have to do it yourself.

What follows is perhaps a bit much.

See: The thing about setting up test chambers is that by definition you have to know or mostly know how to solve them yourself, so you have to hand someone control. Justice might have been fine for the task but Loremaster knows she’s sometimes too much of a *softie *towards her. Only Lucy would give her what she needed.

Combine that with how your tsundere maid waifu dearest quite obviously only knows how to flirt by showing how much she wants to kill you, keeps upping the difficulty of the puzzles and the laser beam’s strength - even adding a few holy water fountains made specially for you and far outside experiment parameter scope as revenge over something as tiny and insignificant as usurping the throne of Hell - and you might find yourself in a world of lovely pain.

Still, Loremaster was only seconds away from kicking the last box required to complete the test into place - hope of success was a strong component for Willpower, relentless opposition could focus it. Not to mention that through Pandemonica and Zdrada’s mentorship (Judgement’s too, even if she never pulled her chains tight enough when they weren’t directed at herself) had taught her well about taking pain and bodily harm elegantly: Smile or smirk through it, look directly at your darling CEO-turned-slave and learn how to pitch your breath and voice just so, let your tongue loll out for full effect to let her know how much you love her touch.

Sometimes it gets her to blush and fluster. Just enough to hold still long enough for you to catch your breath and recover between sections, hope to cross the puzzle gates and see how the world reacts.

Sometimes it makes the Morningstar press the big red button that fills the room with divine light strong enough to nearly obliterate you both, scorch your skin, meld your screams in horrendous cacophony, but at least you’re both aware that this won’t be your end just yet.

Such is life. But it definitely was a bit much, perhaps.

It’s not an elegant thing: Falling upwards the way she was falling. And it did feel like that’s what was happening, gravity twisting and passing through Heaven’s clouds’ before landing again,

The clouds are not painful to lay on at all, really, but they are like a too-soft mattress or ill-fitting shoes to her current sensibilities, overstuffed, over-cushioned.

Opposite of her but upside down stands a much younger version of herself, eyes wide and blue, reaching her still intact hand to help her up.

Being able to see the flush in her own face as she gives her a once-over that lingers too long on her horns kind of explains some things about them.

“Who… are you?”

This isn’t a perfect run of the puzzle just yet, absolutely not. This was definitely too far back and Loremaster could feel that light surrounding her again. It’ll probably jerk her back to the present moment in due time and Azazel’s expression gave off that the light was visible to her too.

But there was room to grow from here perhaps, and just in case this was a fluke and she wouldn’t be able to come back in time at all, then…

It’s weird to create memories this circular, but her lips taste so sweet and the wings enveloping them (out of a hurried need for privacy, how adorable of them) feel so soft.

“I think you might find out yourself someday, Azzy.”

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