#Darksidersweek2023 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lananiscorner · 6 months

Text

The Leviathan's Tail

Summary:

Strife has lost count of the many, many times he has tried to conquer the obstacle course called "Leviathan's Landing". Dis has not. She decides to provide him with a little hint...

Notes:

Yes, I am still alive. This is the first thing I've written in months, so probably rusty as fuck. Anyway, his was written for Darksiders Week 2023, Day 1: Celebrating Genesis. Can't say I liked Leviathan's Landing--quite the opposite in fact, but bless whoever found that little exploit for the third section of it.

Disclaimer: This work was written for publication on Archive of Our Own and my personal Tumblr (lananiscorner) and is not for profit. Any re-publication on for-profit/monetized sites/apps is not authorized or supported by me. If you come across such a re-publication, please leave a comment in my tumblr ask box. Podfics and translations may be authorized upon request.

Fic text beneath the cut.

The platform collapsed under his feet once more, and so did what little was left of his patience. Strife cursed as he fell through the void, seemingly endlessly, before one of the giant, undead snakes that had made its home in there found him and catapulted him back up to the beginning with an unceremonious flick of its tail.

Leviathan’s Landing, Vulgrim had called it, and now Strife finally understood why.

“Have you been attempting this ridiculous excuse of an obstacle course again, brother?”

“Of course not,” Strife scoffed in response. “I just came here for my daily dose of void diving.”

He wasn’t sure if War had been making fun of him or not. It was hard to tell with the big guy, and the fact that he and Strife had not had much to do with each other before defecting from the nephilim did not help. He had been a part of the Crimson Oath—meaning what you say but never saying what you mean had been second nature to Strife, drilled into his very being from the day he took the crimson. War, on the other hand, had been fighting at the front of Absalom’s forces, a vanguard, a bruiser, as brutally effective as gracelessly blunt, and in many ways his demeanor came to match.

Even now, as War raised an eyebrow ever so slightly before turning back towards the serpent hole, Strife was not entirely sure if he had even noticed the sarcasm in his brother’s reply. Strife was going to give him the benefit of the doubt, though. If even one good thing had come out of their third visit to Eden, it was that Strife had learned his younger brother was a lot smarter than one would assume from a front line fighter who had gotten hit in the head a couple dozen of times.

Unfortunately, Strife thought with a sigh as he looked back on the increasingly narrow pillars shooting up behind him, there was a better chance of snow falling in Hell’s furnaces than War helping him with this. As he trudged back to the serpent hole, frustration slowly turned into anger.

He was supposed to be the one who was good at this sort of stuff. Finesse. Swiftness. Sure-footed work under frantic circumstances. This was his element… and yet here he was, sulking after the Creator only knew how many attempts at tackling the damned third section of this utterly insane obstacle course.

He wanted to shoot something. Or even better, punch it.

Perhaps I should ask War to let me borrow that gauntlet for a minute.

The thought had never had more appeal. Unfortunately, the cold, unforgiving universe once more decided to laugh at him.

The serpent hole was where it had always been—or, well, where it had always been since Strife and War had gotten here—for all Strife knew Vulgrim reshuffled and redecorated the place every X number of years—but War was not. Knowing his brother, he hadn’t gone back to Vulgrim and Samael for a chat either, which really left only one sensible option. With a deep sigh, Strife headed towards Dis.

“Brother, I swear by Lilith’s tits, if you went to fight Dagon without me…”

“Then what?” Vulgrim’s ‘associate’ was on him in a hot second, the bauble she had been tinkering with flung carelessly back into the void with a flick of her wrist. The smile on Dis’ face was as unmistakably smug as the tone was tantalizing in her voice. “Will we get to see an epic brawl between two of the last nephilim in existence? I would pay for seats to that show…”

“Aaaaaand you’d be getting ripped off.” Strife smiled underneath his helmet as he brought out his guns. “You wanna see a fight between any number of the four of us? Just ask who should be in charge or claim that one of us is light years ahead of the others, and you’ve got yourself a nice little show.”

Of course, the truth was it probably wouldn’t even take that much. If there were two things that were in a nephilim’s blood, it was to wander… and to fight. In hindsight, perhaps that was why Absalom’s excuse for attacking Eden had always rung so hollow for him.

“A home for our people.”

As if their people were the kind that wanted homes.

As if they would not get bored less than a month into living there and move on to another planet to mess up.

As if any permanent settlement was not only unrealistic and completely out of character for almost all of them, but also an amazing opportunity for one of the many, many, many races who wanted his kind wiped from the universe completely to attack them where it hurt the most.

Except that was us. Strife hated it when the little voice inside his head was right. It was us who wiped them from the universe. Didn’t even need another race for that.

“Hey, Dis, you wouldn’t happen to have seen War, would you?”

There was no point in lingering in the past, no matter how many times its ghosts tried to claw their way back into his mind.

He often wondered how many centuries he was going to have to remind himself of that fact before it finally worked.

“The big guy?” Dis looked up from whatever potion she had been brewing—where had she even been hiding the vials and ingredients?—and nodded towards the serpent hole. “He bought some more trinkets from me before going to the arena. I thought you’d already demolished the place?”

Strife shrugged. “Yeah, pretty sure we did. But then again, War’s the kind that doesn’t mind repetition.”

“But you do?”

“Sure do. It’s boring. And I’ve got better things to do with my time.”

Dis grinned ear to ear. “Like tackling Leviathan’s Landing for the two-hundred and sixty-eighth time?”

Oh you little demon bit— “I have not—”

Suddenly, the temptation to shoot her was almost unbearable. Strife knew the feeling. The itching at the back of his neck. The tingling in his veins. The blood lust that was so common for all of his kind. Too bad all the stuff she sold was useful. And she was kind of cute. For a demon anyways.

“It has not been two-hundred and sixty-eight times.”

“Oh it has.” Dis shook the vial she was holding twice and smiled as it turned from dull gray to vibrant blue. “I counted.” She gave him a quick wink. “Your enthusiasm and tenacity really is quite endearing.”

“I’m gonna shoot you just for that tone in your voice.”

Strife sighed. He wanted to say he couldn’t quite place why it pissed him off so much, but unfortunately he could. That dreadful mixture of cheeky seduction and almost mothering ‘bless your little heart, you tried’ kind of condescension was something every nephilim had known from the day of their creation.

“You know, Dis… if you’ve got nothing helpful to say, maybe say nothing at all.”

“Very well,” Dis scoffed. “Go catch a Leviathan’s tail then, for all I care.”

Whatever warmth had been in her voice had turned into to ice. Strife was hardly surprised. A slighted demon sounded like she wanted to murder him. In other news, fire was hot and Samael could not be trusted. He watched her float back to her books and beakers and whatever else she had stacked up in that makeshift laboratory of hers, took a deep breath and holstered his guns.

There were other demons to kill in the arena. No need to waste his time and ammo on the demon who was supplying him and War with upgrades.

He was just about to enter the arena and find out which section exactly War had run off to, when he caught the glimmer in the distance.

How he had never noticed it before, Strife couldn’t tell. His senses were usually unusually sharp—more so than most other nephilim’s in fact—it had always given him an edge he had sorely needed. Perhaps he had always been to distracted by conversing with War. Perhaps the angle had never been right. Either way, he could see it clearly now—the unmistakable glow of a creature core, and a big one at that. Strife stepped over the serpent hole and headed down the rune-riddled path towards the core instead.

It led him back to the big door. As once before, the keys he and War had found throughout Hell’s realms materialized automatically, shooting forth into their locks, no doubt drawn in by some powerful magic. There were not enough of them, of course. There hadn’t been last time either, and both he and War had agreed to leave the door alone until they had found a sufficient number to open the door.

As much as Strife loved a mystery, right now, the idea of what was hiding behind the gate was not nearly as interesting to him as the glow high above it, little more than a glimmer now that his sight line was blocked by the stone wall shooting up above the door. Strife climbed up one of the torches by the side, hoping to get a better look.

Who would put a stone wall above a door in the middle of nowhere? And who would put a core up there? And what kind of co—Oh.

He found the answer as he was balancing on the edge of the torch, flames licking dangerously close to his dangling scarf. From up here, he could see most of this corner of the void. He could see the entrance to the Boatman’s Labyrinth and Dis’ lab just before that. He could see the serpent hole. He could see the entrance to the Gauntlet. He could see the beginning of Leviathan’s Landing.

The beginning with the first pillars.

And the damned pillars.

And the second portal.

And the floating rocks that curved throughout the empty space like a winding snake.

And the third portal.

And a glimpse of the beginning of thrice-damned path he had just wasted hours on, bending gently in his current direction.

“You have got to be kidding me!”

This was it. This was the Leviathan’s tail. The end of the course. He couldn’t see if from where he stood, but he was as sure that there was one last portal up there as he was sure in his aim with his guns.

“Bless you, Dis, I promise I’ll bring you something really neat from the next vault I crack.”

Strife took a deep breath, then jumped towards the door, shadow-dashing mid air to land on one of the tiny outcrops in the rocky facade. If someone had told him to climb up this wall a week ago, he would have told them to get bent. Now, he was determined to scale this jagged piece of floating rock even if it was the last thing he was going to do.

As it turned out, getting above the door was the easy part. Getting up the wall behind it… Strife cursed under his breath as he tried to scale the rocks. Why did Lilith had to have been so incompetent at creating a hybrid between angels and demons? Where were the wings? You’d think that would be the first thing she would have taken from the angels. The wings. But noooooo. All he had was this stupid shadow wing thing he had gotten from Samael.

He had lost count of the many times his fingers had slipped from cracks to small and thin for a firm hold by the time he felt ready to climb back down again. Even though he was on the scrawny side as far as nephilim went, there was no way to get a good grip here. He almost missed the balancing act that was the pillars in the first section of Leviathan’s Landing.

Balance…

The idea that had sprung into his head was frankly crazy and likely to end with him losing parts he would hate to miss, but when had that ever stopped him? Strife shook the tension and soreness out of his limbs, then tackled the wall again.

This time, he planted one of his twin daggers firmly in the deepest horizontal crack he could find and clambered up onto it with as much care as he could muster. The tempered demon steel bent ever so slightly under his weight, but still, his feet remained steady. He had stood on worse. He just needed to put the thought of an arm’s length worth of razor sharp steel out of his mind.

The second dagger went into another split in the rocks, this time blade up. It was risky, but he could do it.

Strife took a deep breath, jumped up onto the hilt and immediately vaulted even higher, to grab the ledge at the top of the cliff. He hung on by the tips of his fingers, but he was going to be damned if he was going to quit now. With one last huff and a curse, Strife pulled himself to the top.

The core was humming quietly in front of him, its magic vibrating in the air, soft as the buzz of a bee on a warm summer’s day. It almost seemed to mock him with how peacefully it sat there, considering the violence this obstacle course had inflicted on him each time he had tried to get here the ‘right’ way.

“You little sucker…” Strife grabbed the core quickly before the universe could pull some new cruel joke on him and catapult it out of his reach by some contrived shenanigans.

I can already hear War’s response, Strife mused as he climbed down carefully, retrieving his daggers along the way. “You have not only cheated the creator of this course—you have cheated yourself.”

War could get bent. At the end of the day, Strife now had three Leviathan cores and War had none. And that’s what really mattered.

His brother was waiting for him by the serpent hole when he returned. Going by the few bits and pieces of demon that still clung to parts of War’s armor, it had been an entertaining run.

“So… how far did you get?”

“I stopped after the hundred and sixty-fifth wave.” War shrugged ever so slightly. “The arena is starting to bore me.” Then, he nodded towards his older brother. “I assume you tried the leviathan’s trail one more time?”

“Actually,” Strife grinned, even though he was fully aware War could not see it, “I grabbed the leviathan by its tail this time.”

War sighed. “You make as little sense as ever, brother.”

“Thankfully.” Strife thumped him on the shoulder quickly. “Now, shall we return to our regularly scheduled hunt for minor demon lords with delusions of grandeur?”

A rare smile graced War’s usually stern face. “Yes. Let’s go and kill Dagon.”

#Darksiders #Darksiders Week 2023 #Darksiders Week #darksidersweek2023 #Day 1: Celebrating Genesis #my fic #The Leviathan's Tail #Darksiders War #Darksiders Strife #Darksiders Dis

22 notes · View notes