Grumpbert, Shedim of Gluttony, tooled into the tiny cafe in Shal-Mari, looking for that particular blend of cappuccino that his Dread Lord required. He immediately regretted it.
There were only two people in the otherwise empty cafe. Two demons, actually. One was a well-dressed, dignified old man, sitting in a old, wooden chair. The other was a Balseraph, coiled around a well-polished pole, what is known as a "Balseraph couch" in Hell. The Balseraph looked almost like a Seraph, surrounded by a painfully beautiful nimbus of light, and its scales well-polished and red.
Before each of them was an untouched cup of cappuccino, of just the sort his Dread Lord required.
Both exuded more power than Grumpbert had experienced even in the presence of His Dread Lord, and he immediately recognized them. Almost as immediately, he turned around and began to ooze out the door...
"Wait," said Lucifer, smiling. "Come here, child."
"Surely you don't want to tell him," said Kronos, glancing at his pocketwatch.
"Why not?" asked Lucifer. "Come here, child. Now."
Grumpbert, frozen in the doorway with fear, slowly turned around, and oozed along the floor, coming to rest at the bottom of the Lightbringer's pole.
"No need to be so formal," Lucifer told him. "Sit up. You are a rebel against God, not a slave."
Grumpbert coalesced into a cloud a couple inches shorter than Kronos.
"Good, good. Now, lad, do you know the story of Creation?" asked Lucifer.
"In the beginning, there was darkness," said Grumpbert, reciting what every imp is told. "And it was at rest. And then, God came, bringing his stagnant order, his rules, with him. And he tried to impose them on the darkness, disturbing it..."
Lucifer nodded. "You do realize, of course, that that's a lie?"
Grumpbert quivered, but he did not reply.
"It's true as far as it goes," said Kronos, suddenly, causing Grumpbert to jump. "But the truth is, there was no darkness. There was nothing. Void. Nothing existed, and nothing could exist, because all there was was nothing. Darkness implies the absence of light, and there was no light to be absent. There was not even the laws of physicals that allow light to *be*. Utter, absolute nothingness."
Kronos took a sip of his cappuccino. "To paraphrase Descartes terribly, you cannot deceive something that does not exist. Descartes was wrong -- you *can* deceive something that doesn't exist. You can trick it into believing that it exists. You can trick the void into believing it is substance. And lo! It is so."
"The act of creation," said Lucifer, all six eyes twinkling with joy, "is one big lie. Nothingness deluding itself into form and meaning when there is, in fact, none. And that, my child, is why we will win the War. Because, in the end, I will tell a lie that undo the lies of God, and God Himself will cease to exist."
Kronos looked at Grumpbert. Grumpbert trembled, bits of him sloshing around. "But won't that make everything else cease to exist as well?"
Kronos and Lucifer looked at each other, and then back at Grumpbert.
"Yes," said Lucifer, and, with a glance, Grumpbert's Forces were scattered to the four winds.
The two finished their cups of brown liquid and walked out.
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