Mephisto shrugged. His robes heaved like the techtonic plates above him, rising into mountains before smoothing out to a semblance of calm. Unlike most of his kin, peace bore no malice toward his theologies. Serenity, peace, quiet, all of these human words he understood, though his word for the situation was older, and more complete for expressing the ideas contained in the human word.

He remembered being new. Even in his ancient mind, the first memories were easy to access and contemplate. The world dominated by humans, the world above him, was something he had helped to shape, but the best times had been much before humans were concieved.

At the beginning, the earth had been hot. Like his current home, it boiled and seethed with liquid metal and rock. Sure, the masterful propaganda machine of the host had made the legion's departure from the surface sound like a banishment, and in a way it was, but Mephisto would rather be near the center. Near the liquid rock that still flowed and boiled like fresh water, as it had on the surface. Before the host named him Legion, before anyone was named Legion.

In the beginning, before the first ones invented names, nothing was static. Everything was changing, everything was evolving. Volcanoes sprouted like weeds would in several billions of years. They sprayed liquid rock, which would cool, and form a mountain range where a sea had been.

The first ones were happy. Their origins had always been vague, but each of them knew they came from beneath the liquid rock. They watched the young planet boil and churn, wondering idly what would become of it.

A knock woke Mephisto from his reverie. The ivory throne beneath his demonic form groaned with shifting weight as he rose to answer. His thought-chamber had no windows or doors, but a select few knew how to rouse him from his ponderous slumbers. The chamber itself was a cube, with hewn basalt forming the walls, ceiling, and floor. Light came from mephisto's heavy-lidded eyes, and nowhere else.

He strode quickly to the wall, and reached through it. The wall parted like a liquid, and he grasped the hand of his visitor. The visitor would be Lilith or Lucifer, the prince himself, but they could be anywhere. Real distance between those who wished access and the location of the room was unimportant, as long as they wished to visit they would be dragged through the wall.

It was Lilith, which was unsurprising, since Lucifer conferenced so rarely of late. She had pressing news.

----

End of this short fiction.