Well, that wasn't true. He knew exactly where it had all gone wrong, did Crowley.
The Italian countryside in the 13th century wasn't his favorite place to be, so far in the last several millennia of Earth's existence, but it wasn't the worst either. It should have been an easy enough job, to get up there and mess with the burgeoning little crusade the French had going on, bunch of young peasants following around some shepherd boy on the notion that they were all going to the Holy Land, misguided by the boy's ridiculous claim that he carried a letter from Jesus Christ. Last time Crowley had seen that poor bugger he'd been on his cross, and hadn't made it back to Earth in person yet from what Crowley'd heard, though his followers were always claiming this or that as a portent for the end times. He knew what his bosses wanted, for the crusaders to reach the Mediterranean and march into the arms of the slave trade business that was thriving in the area. But though Crowley enjoyed a holy crusade dissolving into chaos as much as the next demon, he didn't particularly enjoy the wailing of children, so he diverted the slavers with a few shipwrecks (nasty time of year to be sailing the Mediterranean, he'd tell Hastur, always storms around) and intercepted the crusade near the southern coast of Italy.
It should have been so easy to stop them there--curse this so-called letter, make it so that the next time the shepherd boy tried reading it his flock he'd start gibbering in unholy tongues and they'd likely all run away screaming. All very simple, he thought, until he touched the letter.
It burned like he imagined holy water must feel in those few terrible moments before your body simply combusted and ceased to exist. Except Crowley didn't combust, he just went on and on burning, the blackened scorch-marks and oozing red, raw wounds scoring his palms, crawling slowly up the insides of his wrists, his forearms, beginning to creep past his elbows when he'd taken shelter in some fisherman's hut and collapsed against the brackish-smelling floor. There he closed his eyes and grit his teeth and concentrating on trying to combat it, trying to push the holiness out, curses forcing themselves past his lips as hours crawled by and he managed only to slow the burns' progression.
For sohoangel
Well, that wasn't true. He knew exactly where it had all gone wrong, did Crowley.
The Italian countryside in the 13th century wasn't his favorite place to be, so far in the last several millennia of Earth's existence, but it wasn't the worst either. It should have been an easy enough job, to get up there and mess with the burgeoning little crusade the French had going on, bunch of young peasants following around some shepherd boy on the notion that they were all going to the Holy Land, misguided by the boy's ridiculous claim that he carried a letter from Jesus Christ. Last time Crowley had seen that poor bugger he'd been on his cross, and hadn't made it back to Earth in person yet from what Crowley'd heard, though his followers were always claiming this or that as a portent for the end times. He knew what his bosses wanted, for the crusaders to reach the Mediterranean and march into the arms of the slave trade business that was thriving in the area. But though Crowley enjoyed a holy crusade dissolving into chaos as much as the next demon, he didn't particularly enjoy the wailing of children, so he diverted the slavers with a few shipwrecks (nasty time of year to be sailing the Mediterranean, he'd tell Hastur, always storms around) and intercepted the crusade near the southern coast of Italy.
It should have been so easy to stop them there--curse this so-called letter, make it so that the next time the shepherd boy tried reading it his flock he'd start gibbering in unholy tongues and they'd likely all run away screaming. All very simple, he thought, until he touched the letter.
It burned like he imagined holy water must feel in those few terrible moments before your body simply combusted and ceased to exist. Except Crowley didn't combust, he just went on and on burning, the blackened scorch-marks and oozing red, raw wounds scoring his palms, crawling slowly up the insides of his wrists, his forearms, beginning to creep past his elbows when he'd taken shelter in some fisherman's hut and collapsed against the brackish-smelling floor. There he closed his eyes and grit his teeth and concentrating on trying to combat it, trying to push the holiness out, curses forcing themselves past his lips as hours crawled by and he managed only to slow the burns' progression.