Fanfic / Precious Like Starlight

Precious Like Starlight is a Hazbin Hotel fanfic by LavenderBunbun. Lute could never let it slide that Vaggie let a Sinner live, not even a child one. But when she moved to exact punishment fit for a traitor, she found herself on the wrong end of freshly sharpened steel, severely wounded.

Abandoned in the depths of Hell, surrounded by evil, Lute is ready to burn it all down to the ground if it means returning to Heaven. But when one particular demon saves her from certain death, she also has no choice but to come to terms with the fact that perhaps demons are more multifaceted than she was told for millennia.

The fic can be found here on Archive of Our Own.

This fanfic provides examples of:

• Alien Sea: Turns out that Charlie's "Happy Hotel" is a seaside property, right next to Hell's ocean that appears to be lava but upon closer inspection, is made from faces and eyes. Upon seeing it up close for the first time, Lute imagined it being what remained of all of the dead sinners, pooled up, after all the Exterminations, with her own kills included.
• Adaptational Expansion: The fic gives a full version of Charlie's pitch song from the start of "Hell is Forever" in the show, since Adam isn't around to interrupt her and Lute is too flabbergasted to object.
• Adaptational Intelligence: In the show, Adam only becomes aware that Angelic Steel weapons can kill angels in the Finale of Season 1 when they kill off his Exorcists in droves by the Hazbin Hotel and their allies. Here Adam does know that their weapons are just as lethal to them as to demons and makes it a rule that Exorcists can't use them while sparring against each other, due to the high risk of causing permanent injury.
• Adaptational Secrecy Downgrade: Role-wise. In canon, Vaggie being a fallen Exorcist was a secret to Charlie, and to the rest of Hell who might know of Vaggie as Charlie's number two for three years after that fateful Extermination Day, before it came out dramatically. Here, Charlie realizes what Lute is from the get-go, and it's not much of a secret to Pentagram City's populace that Charlie is harboring a fallen Exorcist.
• Adaptational Villainy: As much of a monster as Adam is in canon, his villainous friendship with Lute appears to be genuine if their consistent closeness and Adam's reaction to seeing her in his dying moments are any indication. In this version, Lute evidently felt their friendship was genuine, but Adam doesn't have any problem with casting her out of the Exorcists and leaving her in Hell to die when he thinks her getting maimed makes her useless to the Exorcists, even mocking her to her face.
• The Alcoholic: Lute recounts the multiple times she had to transport Adam's drunk ass back to his home
• Alien Blood: Hellborn like Charlie have black blood. Angels like Lute have golden ichor.
• Allegorical Character: Lute can be seen as a cultist kicked out of her cult by The Leader who had deemed her to be of no further use to him and is struggling to maintain her fanatical beliefs as she adjusts to life outside the cult she's only known her whole life.
• All-Loving Hero: Charlie, of course, is a truly kind and loving person, going out after every extermination to look for survivors to give them medical care, and having made it her life's goal to give sinners a better lot in life. She even takes pity and cares for a fallen exorcist like Lute, despite knowing that Lute has killed thousands of her people and several times tries to kill her.
• Alternate Universe Fic: A universe where Lute is kicked out of the Exorcists and left for dead in Hell for trying to kill Vaggie and got crippled for her troubles.
• Angelic Transformation: Based on Lute's thoughts and remarks, she wasn't originally born in Heaven but rather she ascended there and was transformed into an Exorcist angel, thousands of years ago. Word of God confirms that Lute and the other Exorcists are not Heavenborn.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: The moment Vox shows up at the Hotel's doorstep and finds Lute, he delivers a sales pitch in order to get her in on the Vees' agenda and when refused the first time, gives her a deadline to make a call to his office before it runs out. Once it do run out due to Lute knowing better than to have anything to do with such a obviously shady deal, Vox delivers on his threat and expose Lute's location to all of Pentagram City in the evening news.
• Anti-Regeneration: Contrary to Lute's belief, Adam explains that her severed arm will remain the Wound That Will Not Heal due to the fact that Angelic steel severs souls and no healer in Heaven or Hell can fix that.
• An Arm and a Leg: Lute's right arm, also her dominant arm, is severed by Vaggie in self-defence with angelic steel, robbing her of her prized fighting prowess.
• Armor-Piercing Question: When Lute affirms to Charlie that angels don't make mistakes, the princess asks her how she ended up stranded in Hell to which the Exorcist can't answer, otherwise she'd have to admit to Vaggie sparing a demon child or that she crippled Lute in self-defense.
• Armor-Piercing Response:
  • When Lute argues with Vaggie that, as Exorcists, it's their duty to kill all Sinners, including children, her fellow angel retorts that those orders are wrong.
  Lute was stunned. Blasphemy. From the lips of the only other Exorcist she had sometimes admired.
  • As Adam and Vaggie are about to go back to Heaven and leave Lute for dead, the now Fallen Angel questions her former leader if he believes Vaggie's word over her's. Adam in his Brutal Honesty admits he doesn't care which of them was telling truth only that Vaggie is more useful to him now that Lute is crippled. Lute is left shell-shocked that despite her Undying Loyalty to him over a thousand years, Adam only ever valued her usefulness.
• Ax-Crazy: Even after she's been kicked out of Heaven, Lute a fanatical General Ripper who will resort to extreme violence with disturbing speed to ensure every demon she sees is dead. She can exercise self-control out of Pragmatic Villainy, but it's clear that she really doesn't want to.
• Battle Amongst the Flames: Lute and Vox get into a fight in the middle of a burning Vees warehouse after Lute sets it on fire. They're pretty evenly matched, though Lute is able to get the drop on him and Vox has to leave when the fire grows out of control.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Lute admits to Vaggie that she always wanted her to get on her level, that she was getting sick of beating her fellow Exorcist when they sparred and wished she could stand high and mighty above the others. Well, Vaggie was not only strong enough to defeat and mutilate Lute but enough for Adam to make her his new lieutenant.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: When Vox first meets Lute, he tries to act like a friendly and charming businessman with grand ideas that he claims will help her. However, it's clear it's just a facade to get Lute to accept a Deal with the Devil with him in order to own a powerful angel as his subordinate and monopolize her. After Lute (quite literally) spits at this offer, Vox retaliates by using his media empire to make her already unpopular status in Hell even worse than before.
• Blatant Lies:
  • When Adam discovers the aftermath of Lute and and Vaggie's fight, the former claims that the latter attacked her first instead of the the other way around. Vaggie calls her out on it, though avoids the reason as to why Lute attacked in the first place.
  • Seviathan, after Lute beats him, tries to claim to Charlie that she assaulted him despite him having been the one to attack her while Charlie was in the room with them. Charlie has no patience for it and tells him to leave.
• Blind Obedience: Vaggie calls Lute out on having this mindset.
  Lute: I’m obeying the orders we were given, just as you should!
  Vaggie: Perhaps the orders are wrong if we’re indiscriminately slaughtering children!
• Break the Haughty: In the first chapter, Lute loses more or less everything when Vaggie maims her in self-defense and Adam casts her out in Hell to die: she's lost her dominant arm, her flight, much of her remarkable fighting prowess, her leader, her home and her grace. She's subsequently left to rely on the mercy and kindness of a demon, one of the very creatures she's spent millennia gleefully slaughtering and believing to be nothing but vile, self-serving monsters, to stay alive and stand any chance of recovery, while Charlie's benevolent personality forces Lute to reconsider her entire extremist worldview. When Charlie first takes Lute in, it's only the desperate self-compromise that she can still prove herself to Adam and be welcomed back at the next Extermination Day that's keeping Lute going.
• Brutal Honesty: When Lute first lays eyes on Charlie's Happy Hotel, she straight-up calls it a "a fucking dump!".
• The Cameo: Verosika Mayday from Helluva Boss appears in chapter 6, and indirectly mentions Blitzø from the same. The car that nearly hit Lute was also the Immediate Murder Professionals van.
• Country Matters: The very first line of the story is from Lute calling Vaggie a "traitorous cunt".
• Dark Action Girl: Lute fits into this trope quite easily despite being an angel, as she is an Ax-Crazy, self-righteous mass-murderer of thousands, possibly millions, of Sinners (most of whom in Hell aren't truly evil).
• Deal with the Devil: Vox shows up at the hotel to offer one to Lute. His pitch is that Lute is currently the most hated person in Hell, but working with the Vees can turn her into a beloved idol and star, with the safety from the mob that entails. Charlie warns her against taking the deal, which was unnecessary because Lute isn't stupid enough to sell her soul in the first place.
• Depraved Bisexual: Verosika Mayday gets rather up close and personal to Lute, calls her a "fine toy," and idly wonders if Charlie would share. Lute is rather uncomfortable and threatens to kill her in response. According to Velvette, she's like this with everyone.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Charlie carries the wounded Lute through Pentagram City openly, not worried about attacks since no one would dare try. She forgets to account for the fact that everyone now knows that Lute is staying at Charlie's, which brings them much trouble in the coming days.
  • Velvette hands Lute a keycard to get into the Vees' tower to beat up Vox a little bit, since doing so wouldn't cause any permanent damage. She forgot to consider that Lute can do a lot more than just beat someone up if she wants to, and their entire storage being lit on fire is a bit harder to repair than Vox.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: Charlie claims that she wouldn't take Lute's soul even if offered, then realizes that came out wrong and assures her that she's sure it's a lovely soul and well worth owning.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Lute initially assumes that Charlie's kindness is an act, but even after realizing it's genuine she resents having to rely on the mercy of a demon, even trying to get her to stop by saying how many of her people she's killed.
• The Dreaded:
  • According to Word of God, Alastor is much more explicitly a figure of terror among the population of Hell than he was in the show after the pilot. Even Velvette, who canonically had no problem sing "Respectless" while Alastor and several other Overlords were in the same room as her, is willing to all but admit that she's afraid of Alastor and wants to avoid his wrath in this version.
  • Lucifer, the King of Hell. As per canon, the rest of Hell's population don't dare antagonize him directly due to him being the most powerful demon among them all by a large margin. Even Lute, a confident and powerful Fallen Angel in her own right, is reduced to trembling in dread when she realizes she's in Lucifer's presence and unarmed, before he's even had the chance to acknowledge her presence.
• Entertainingly Wrong: While Lute is unconscious, Lucifer and Charlie try to deduce what did this to her, and don't quite reach the right conclusions. They figure it couldn't be a sinner, since they would've gone around and bragged about it by now, though Lucifer wonders if they maybe got killed in the attempt. Charlie wonders if it was an angel, but Lucifer doesn't think so since angels don't tend to hurt their own, even if she was cast out. The best they can figure is that she was cast out, then attacked by someone else later.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
  • Lute simply can't understand why Vaggie would spare a demon child on Extermination Day. At one point, she ponders if some demonic influence is afflicting her fellow angel, to bring out her innate desire to sin and rebel against the Exorcist doctrine.
  • Due to her Fantastic Racism towards demons, Lute initially believes that Charlie's kindness towards her is fake and part of some sick game to lull her into a false sense of security before torturing and killing her out of sadism. When it starts to become clear that Charlie is the real deal, Lute figures that the Princess of Hell is simply mentally ill before realizing the truth that she's just that good of a person.
    But demons couldn’t be friendly. [...] Damn it all did they imitate it well though. But they could only scheme. Every action done for a specific purpose to lure in unsuspecting victims. The mask would inevitably come off.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: When seeing Lute missing an arm and with a broken wing, Adam makes a quip about changing her name to Mute as in mutilated. It's because he has this that Lute initially believes him abandoning her alone in Hell was one of his sick jokes until reality sinks in.
• Evil Smells Bad: When she first takes off her helmet, Lute describes the unfiltered scent of Hell as suffocating as the stench of decay and it almost makes her vomit. How Vaggie can stand it it is beyond her. A sign of how she's acclimating to Hell is that she no longer finds it suffocating.
• Exact Words:
  • Vaggie and to a lesser extent Lute when explaining themselves to Adam. Lute says that Vaggie spared a Sinner and then attacked her, leaving out that the latter act was self-defence on Vaggie's part when Lute tried to maim her (not that Adam cares either way). Vaggie says nothing about the spared Sinner but points out that she'd still be killing many more Sinners out there right now if not for Lute "losing her mind" (i.e., taking issue with Vaggie letting a child Sinner go) and attacking her. Vaggie then throws out her suspicions that Lute has always been a Green-Eyed Monster towards her, wording them to make it sound like a motive accusation against Lute.
  • Part of Vox' pitch to Lute is that Valentino can make her a movie star, even musing that she could film some movies with Angel Dust. He of course neglects to mention that Valentino owns a porn studio and Angel Dust is a pornstar. Lute also notices that while Vox's offer promises that not a soul outside of the Vees' control will be able to harm her if she takes his deal, there's nothing saying that anyone inside the Vees' control including the Vees themselves can't hurt her if they wish it.
• Fallen Angel: After Vaggie severs Lute's arm and maims her wing in self-defence (using an angelic steel spear, which renders the damage near-permanent); Adam, seeing any lastingly crippled Exorcist as dead weight, removes Lute's halo and leaves her in Hell to die, casting her out of Heaven without the Seraphim's authorization. After several days in Hell, Lute's body is changing to reflect her sins as it acclimatizes to Hell's corrupted matter, which Charlie states is because Hell affects angels who stay there too long similarly to how it causes human souls to transform into Sinners after they arrive. Lute has grown horns, her yellow irises have expanded to cover the whites of her eyes, and her canines have sharpened into fangs, while the air in Hell which initially burned her airways has become a lot more tolerable.
• Fan Art: Lute's new look by SanaNaryon.
• Fisher Kingdom: Being in Hell turns sinners into demons, and it turns out that it has a similar effect on downcast angels. Within her first week in Hell, Lute's irises expand so that her entire eyes except pupils are yellow, her canines turn into fangs, and she grows a pair of horns. She is horrified when she realizes. On a slightly more positive note, she also finds that the air of Hell that initially burned her and felt suffocating is now comfortable.
• Flipping the Bird: Lute notices Razzle and Dazzle spying on her from the shadows, and responds by flipping them the bird.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Vaggie thinks Lute is this towards her, unable to accept the fact that the day was coming where she would surpass her during an Extermination, so she thought she could take out Vaggie the competition using the fact that she spared a demon child as an excuse.
• Handicapped Badass: Despite losing an arm and breaking her wings, Lute is still a powerful Exorcist angel and can pose a threat to even powerful demons like Seviathan, though it takes a bit more effort on her part.
• Hated by All: Lute is not popular in Hell, to say the least. Every sinner has lost someone they love to the exterminations, and there aren't many who wouldn't like to kill an exorcist for it. Luckily for her, the person who found her was the All-Loving Hero Charlie.
• Hates Being Touched: Lute doesn't like it when demons touch her, though she's slightly more receptive to Charlie doing it.
• Hell of a Heaven: As much as Lute praises the glory of Heaven and how much better it is than Hell, it's clear that she did not have a great time up there as an Exorcist. In large parts because of how much of a jerk Adam is, but she also quietly notes to herself that no one she spent time with was really nice to her, to the point where being with Charlie is the most kindness she's ever received.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Played With by Charlie after she finds a fallen and crippled Lute, and she takes her in at the Happy Hotel as her first guest with a reluctant Lute's permission. More than a few of Hell's denizens seem to incorrectly believe that Charlie crippled and captured Lute during the Extermination, and one of the rumors flying around is that Charlie is keeping Lute under her roof for sex — but because of the setting, and because Charlie has long been regarded by her subjects as a pushover for her virtuous nature beforehand, most demons treat this less with disgust and more with indifference, amusement or even outright approval.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: Charlie is angry and disgusted when Vox insinuates that she was not only the one to cripple Lute but is keeping the Fallen Angel as her personal Sex Slave.
• If Only You Knew: When Charlie gives Lute an estimate on the time it'll take for her body to recover from her dad, the former Exorcist snarks if he’s an expert on Angels... having no ideal Charlie's dad in none other Lucifer himself.
• In Spite of a Nail: The circumstances are very different, but Lute still ends up losing an arm. Instead of ripping her left arm off herself to get out from being trapped under rubble, she loses her right arm in a fight with Vaggie.
• Incoming Ham: Seviathan's Establishing Character Moment is... dramatic to say the least.
• Insistent Terminology: Lute insists to Vox that she's not a fallen angel. Vox glances up at her lack of halo, before indulging her by calling her "forcibly retired."
• Internalized Categorism: It seems that Lute is sapphic herself, despite her homophobia, as she starts to develop feelings for the female demon Charlie.
• Internal Reveal: It takes until the end of chapter 3 for Lute to learn that her host Charlie is actually Charlotte Morningstar, princess of Hell.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: At best Lute refers to the residents of Hell as demons, rarely using their names in her thoughts or out loud. At worst she calls them "it" or "thing", not seeing them as real people.
• Jerkass: Lute is not a pleasant person to be around, but neither are most of Hell's residents with few exceptions.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • After hearing from Charlie she wants to redeem Sinners into Heaven, Lute tells her that even if redemption is possible, not all Sinners would want to do it. One of the examples she uses are the cannibals: eating human flesh is forbidden in Heaven and they've indulged in it in life, and they aren’t going to stop now that there’s a ready supply in the afterlife, even with the looming threat of Exorcists ending their feast permanently. Another example are the Overlords: they wouldn't be too keen on giving up their incredible powers and their lavish lives that come with it. Not to mention the hedonists who won’t be eager to leave behind their eternal lifestyle of debauchery. Charlie agrees with Lute that not everyone in Hell will want or be capable of redemption, but she feels that everyone should be given the opportunity to seek it.
  • Velvette warns Lute that the latter's hostile attitude to every demon she meets that isn't Charlie on the basis that they're demons won't win her over any friends or allies, which are much-needed assets to give oneself a net of defence in a place like Hell. Charlie all but tells Lute the same thing after she's severely antagonized the Vees to further hostility.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Adam. Indefinitely relieving Lute of active duty as an Exorcist when she's been crippled, and keeping the other talented Exorcist who did the crippling onboard because he can't afford to lose two of his best Exorcists in one day, is somewhat rational. Mocking Lute about her fresh injuries, and leaving her in Hell for dead instead of carrying her back to Heaven, and doing this despite Lute having shown him over two-thousand years of staunch loyalty and devotion; on the other hand...
  • Vox performs a somewhat more comical dog-kicking. He doesn't just expose Lute's location to Hell's public and further vilify her as retribution for her rejecting his deal: he takes the same opportunity to spread a sensationalist rumor that Charlie is keeping Lute around as a sex slave, to the princess's mortification.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: When Adam finds Lute with a broken wing and missing arm thanks to Vaggie, he laughs and cracks a joke about her mutilation. It hurts Lute more than the severed nerves of her arm and wing.
• Killer Rabbit: Lute sees Velvette as this: a seemingly harmless young-looking woman who happens to be a powerful Overlord.
• Klingon Promotion: A non-fatal and unintended version. After Vaggie defeats and cripples Lute in their fight, Adam almost immediately makes her his new lieutenant.
• Knight Templar: Lute has a zealous hatred for demons, and believes their yearly Exterminations of them are just and righteous. She also thinks angels are inherently pure and good, which justifies their yearly genocides.
• Laugh with Me!: Adam orders Vaggie to laugh at his joke about Lute's mutilated state. She makes an attempt, but it's not very impressive, and he tells her to work on that.
• Laser-Guided Karma: When Lute tries to kill Vaggie for sparing a child Sinner, not only does the latter fight back well enough to cut off her arm, but, to add salt to wound, Adam gives Vaggie the former's position as his lieutenant and leaves the Fallen Angel stranded in Hell.
• The Loins Sleep Tonight: Vox suggests on live television that Charlie took in Lute as a plaything because her boyfriend can't get it up. Needless to say, no one involved - not Charlie, not Lute, and certainly not Charlie's boyfriend Seviathan - are happy about the accusation.
• Mook Lieutenant: Vaggie becomes Adam's top lieutenant in the Exorcists after Lute gets kicked out.
• Monster Clown: With her red cheeks and pale skin, Lute's first thoughts of Charlie is that she looks like a demon clown. She's rather offended that she'll be done in by a clown, but luckily for her Charlie averts this trope.
• Never My Fault: Lute blames Vaggie for her fall from grace and stealing her job as Adam's lieutenant, who she fully intends to kill when they meet again. However, Lute ignores the fact that she was the one that attacked Vaggie first and Vaggie only cut her arm off when defending herself (something that shocked even her) and never wanted Lute's job in the first place, Adam just gave it to her because he couldn't be bothered to find someone else.
• Noble Top Enforcer: After defeating Lute, Vaggie becomes Adam's new top girl but has a much stronger moral compass than him.
• Not What It Looks Like: After Vox accuses Charlie of being in a sexual relationship with Lute on live television, Charlie's boyfriend Seviathan walks in on Lute pinning Charlie to the couch. Charlie immediately tells him that it's not what it looks like. Lute, on the other hand, fails to realize that it looks like they're having sex, and insists that it's exactly what it looks like — she's trying to kill Charlie.
• Number Two: Vaggie becomes The Dragon to Adam after Lute is cast down.
• Pet the Dog: Despite her overal cynicism and Fantastic Racism against demons, Lute does her best to let Charlie down gently in regards to her Happy Hotel plan. Charlie was so hopeful and optimistic about it that not even Lute could bring herself to step on her hopes.
• Playing with Fire: Angels like Lute can perform a number of minor "parlor tricks," creating fire among them. She uses it to light the Vees' storage on fire.
• Point of Divergence: Unlike in canon, where Lute caught her off-guard after she spared the demon child, Vaggie here is able to defend herself and overpowers Lute in a struggle, resulting in Lute being the one who gets abandoned in Hell.
• Politically Incorrect Villain:
  • She's a Villain Protagonist for now, but not only does Lute have Fantastic Racism against demons (both Sinner and Hellborn), but she has a low opinion on homosexuality as well, despite Emily repeatedly telling her that it's not a sin.
  • Velvette dismisses the possibility of Lute being a model because she's an amputee, refering to her as "a broken canvas." Not that Lute wanted to be a model, but still, it's an ableistic view.
• Positive Friend Influence: Charlie's kindness and boundless compassion is very slowly getting to Lute, who's begun seeing her as the only good part of Hell.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • Vaggie invokes this on Adam and Lute to justify sparing the demon kid: she's killed plenty of other Sinners on this Extermination Day, and would have killed more had Lute not attack her, which satisfies Adam enough to not punish her.
  • Adam makes Vaggie his new lieutenant instead of kicking her off the Exorcists for crippling Lute because he doesn't want to lose both of his best girls in one day, and training anyone else to be as good as them would be too much work.
  • Adam bans his girls from practicing with their angelic steel weapons, not cause he cares about their safety but because he doesn’t want his soldiers injuring themselves and being out of commission for years when worst a normal weapon would cause is a papercut.
  • Lute invokes pragmatism to justify to herself why she doesn't just kill Charlie despite being in a position to do so. Charlie is the only person in Hell willing to give her a chance, and she's unlikely to survive on her own, so she needs any ally she can get.
• Really 700 Years Old: Lute may look like a young woman, but she's over two-thousand years old. The similarly young-looking Charlie is a more modest two-hundred.
• Role Swap AU: Lute instead of Vaggie gets cast out of the Exorcists and taken in by Charlie, while Vaggie remains among the Exorcists as Adam's second-in-command.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: One of the reasons the Exterminations happen is to protect Heaven from infernal insurrections by keeping Sinners in check. When Lute overhears a conversation with Charlie and Lucifer about how angelic weapons can kill angels and Hell has a large supply of them, she fears that the very rebellions they’d been trying to squash before they could start will be on the brink of breaking out if Hell's population finds out.
• Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: When Charlie takes the injured Lute under her wing, the former Exorcist believes the demon girl is acting Faux Affably Evil towards her and her kind-heartedness is just a facade to get her guard down before she goes in for the kill. It takes a couple of chapters for her realize that Charlie's Nice Girl personality is the real deal.
  It was too much. Too sincere. She’d expected the mask to come off, for the demon to show her true self, but she’d never considered the option that this would be the result of that. The kindness a front for an even bubblier persona. It shouldn’t be possible, but this was too elaborate to be entirely artificial.
• The Social Darwinist: Adam shows shades of this, valuing the strength of his Exorcists as much as Undying Loyalty towards him. When Vaggie defeats Lute so badly she loses an arm, he not only gives her Lute's position as his right-hand girl but leaves the latter for dead because she's useless to him now.
  Adam: Sucks to suck. Shouldn’t have lost.
• Spiteful Spit: Lute spits in Vox's hand to reject his Deal with the Devil offer.
• Stunned Silence: Lute is rendered this after hearing Charlie's pitch song.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Despite trying to kill her and her having brought her downfall on herself, Vaggie gives Lute a look of pity before leaving her broken and alone in Hell.
• Tall Poppy Syndrome: Vaggie accuses Lute of attacking her because she couldn't accept the fact that the former was getting stronger to the point that she would soon surpass her, so she thought she could take out the competition and use Vaggie sparing a sinner as an excuse.
• That Came Out Wrong: Charlie assures Lute that she wouldn't take her soul even if offered, before clarrifying that she doesn't mean that because the soul is bad or anything.
• Token Heroic Orc: Lute comes to see Charlie as this after growing past her initial distrust. She still sees Hell and its denizens as irredeemably evil, but realizes Charlie's kindness is entirely genuine and thinks of her as the only good thing to come out of Hell.
• Transformation Horror:
  • Once Lute finds out that her prolonged stay in Hell has begun physically manifest her sins on her body in the form of horns akin the ones on her exorcist helmet, her first reaction is nothing short of pure horror. The fact that she hadn't even noticed the horns until Charlie shows her them in a mirror only adds to the terrifying experience.
  • Charlie says that she was similarly horrified when she transformed into her demonic form for the first time in her youth, not least due to the Sins that her demon form manifests whispering negative thoughts and impulses into her head.
• Trying Not to Cry: Lute tries her best to hold back tears after Adam and Vaggie leave her for dead alone in Hell.
• Tsundere: Lute has elements of a tsundere, clinging to her Fantastic Racism but can't bring herself to hurt Charlie (physically or emotionally) and takes an immediate dislike to Seviathan in part because of how he treats her.
• Underestimating Badassery: Lute does this twice.
  • Lute thought she could take out Vaggie after getting the jump on her, since she always beat her in their sparring matches. Vaggie is able to overpower her superior, and cuts her arm off in her counter-attack. This is one of the reasons Adam decides to give Vaggie Lute's old position as The Dragon to him.
  • Lute initially believes Charlie is a weak demon and dismisses her claims that she can take care of herself in a fight, until she finds out from Vox she's Lucifer daughter. It becomes clear when she tries to kill her that Charlie barely needs to put in any effort to fend her off.
• Unexpected Kindness: Lute initially assumes that any demon who finds her injured and alone in an ally will kill and probably eat her. She's confused and suspicious when Charlie offers her first aid.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Lute had been working alongside Adam for over a thousand years, and been his right-hand for most of that time, doing everything from fighting alongside him to helping him back home when drunk. Yet it didn't take much consideration for him to decide to leave her behind to rot in Hell after being beaten and crippled by Vaggie, whom he gave Lute's old job, without so much as a backward glance.
  Adam: Can’t fly, can’t fight, so what good are you?
• Villainous BSoD: Lute is left shell-shocked when Adam and Vaggie leave her for dead in Hell. She more or less resigns herself to die, only making some weak attempts at fighting back against what she assumes is a murderous demon thinking the best she can hope for is a Mutual Kill.
• Villainous Friendship: Subverted. Lute finds out the hard way that Adam valued her strength first and everything else about her a distant second.
• What If?: Lute fell from grace and was taken in by Charlie instead of Vaggie.
• What Is This Feeling?:
  • As Charlie carries Lute to safety, the angel remarks to herself that being in the demon's arms feels pleasantly warm and doesn't understand why.
  • She's not sure why she finds the idea of Seviathan tempting Charlie to sin against her will to be disgusting and unforgiveable.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Lute sees Charlie as this after getting the Happy Hotel pitch. She thinks the entire thing is doomed to fail, but Charlie's optimism is impressive. Lucifer thinks Hell could use more of her attitude.
• With Us or Against Us: Lute's reaction to seeing Vaggie sparing a demon child during an Extermination is to call her a traitor, and try to kill her. Vaggie calls her out on this mindset;
  Vaggie: What the fuck were you thinking, Lute? I’m considered a deserter because I spared a damned child? That’s all it takes? Is that who we are?
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Lute tried to murder her fellow Exorcist Vaggie because Vaggie spared a demon child from Extermination Day.
• Xanatos Gambit: Velvette hands Lute a keycard to the Vee's tower and lets her go to kill Vox for the simple reasoning that whatever happens it's a favorable outcome; If Lute beats Vox to a bloody pulp, he'll be fine since she doesn't have angellic steel, and they'll have plenty of photage of Lute being violent to scaremonger with. If Vox wins, they have a captured angel to do with as they want. Win-win as far as she's concerned.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: With Seviathan at her mercy, Lute asks him where he got angelic steel bullets. He calls her ignorant, since everyone in Hell knows, to which she responds by loading a bullet and pointing out that if everyone knows then his usefulness is reaching an end.
• You Remind Me of X: Lute at one point remarks that Charlie's cheerful and positive attitude reminds her of Emily: The Seraphim of Joy.