Standing there with his onyx ears flicked in her direction, the black beast listens before a slow grin curls across his lips. His crimson eyes dance with a bit of humor before he slowly nods. Her words about Nyimara were indeed true, but he said nothing on that subject as he let the air hang in between them with no words to disturb it. His dark mind was slowly swirling with ideas, but they were not ones that Marceline would really entertain or enjoy the sound of.

Tilting his head to the side, the black monster listens some more to the painted woman of the Hills. His long black tail flicks out behind him, the lengthy strands splintering off from one another to make a large fan that hit his skin and made the obsidian fur move. His ears slowly flicked when she finished speaking this time around, showing that he had been listening and was now thinking. There were many things he could think of to make this all the sweeter, but for some reason he said none of them for the longest time.

“Tsk, tsk Marceline.” He finally rumbles, his head tilting just a tad more to cause his forelock to fall over the left side of it and cover his eye. He was not sure he was entirely enjoying this conversation now that he had to actually vocalize his thoughts on the matter, but that was something he could deal with later. Instead, the demonic stallion let his little sentence hang before a laugh rumbled from his lips and his head straightened out to stare her directly in the face, his forelock a black streak of knots that lined the center of his face.

Licking his dark lips, the stallion curled them at the left corner to faintly show a yellow canine as he continued to contemplate the woman before him. “There are many things I would like, Marceline. However, I know you won't be able to give me any of them.” And that right there, was a fact the black monster knew and would stand on. “You prided yourself on the Peak as someone to free those that were stuck and controlled while imprisoning someone else to make yourself feel better… no?” Raising a brow then, the brute waited for her to say something before he just sighed. “You can't give me anything if you still think like them. You can't be what we need if you still think like a Prime Minister. I don’t know if you have changed towards a different path.”

Heaving another sigh, the Dunes demon waited a moment as the wind softly tugged at his mane and tail, slowly and gently twisting the strands in a dance only mother nature would understand. He had to wait, he really did, for the next words he wanted to say would really ruin things. Yet, he finally turned to stare at her one last time, this time with seriousness marking every part of him instead of cockiness and spite. He looked everything like a good herd stallion when inside and in the depths of his eyes, one could see the darkness swirling as his demonic side writhed inside its cage and begged to come forth in order to spill blood.

“If you can prove to me it is worth my time to aid you Marceline, I will ask a simple favor in the future. I want you to challenge me to a spar. You come out on top, I work with you without any gruff but I get to keep a future favor as I am going to be giving you one hell of a one with what you wish to accomplish.” Lucifer was actually being a bit more fair with Marceline than he had anyone else in his life, and it made the demon inside of him writhe all the worse. “I win, and I will still aid you, but my favor gains in price. Does that sound like a deal?”