The knocking continued as I retrieved my shirt and reentered the living room, snapping at my unwelcome visitor to wait. The rapping didn't pause, and so I yanked open the door and glowered at the person standing on the porch. 

"Took long enough."

A man of average height with unkempt hair and unshaven jawline leaned upon the door frame where his straight, blunt fingers pressed to the wood. His build was strong but round-shouldered, his temples liberally streaked with silver, and there was a collection of hairline scars on his right cheek a less keen observer would miss. 

A silver ribbon meant for a woman's hair was looped about his throat and tied into a lopsided bow. 

"What do you want?" I asked without bothering to conceal my displeasure. "How did you know I was here?"

I'd met the man briefly when I'd first awoken in Amoroth's apartment two months ago. He'd declined to give a name, but in my subsequent interrogation of the Sin of Lust, I'd learned the man went by the name of Cage and was, in fact, a mage. 

I concerned myself little with the affairs of mage syndicates or witch covens, but even my ears had heard rumors and remarks about the black mage Cage before. He was notorious among the others of Terrestria, though I was unsure of the exact nature of his crimes. Last I'd heard of him, he'd been captured by the Blue Fire Syndicate and was being held in Cuxiel's dungeons to await proper transport.

During that internment, he'd somehow become acquainted with my shadeborn. I wasn't sure how such a meeting had come about when the man had been sequestered in the manor's deepest reaches—but I'd long since learned it was foolish to underestimate Sara Gaspard. Simple things like locks or bars or mass murder hadn't deterred her. 

"That's quite a greeting," the mage quipped as he leaned off the door's frame. Quicker than I would have thought possible, his arm shot forward and two of his forefingers thumped against my chest. Arcane energy zinged through my nerves as the unnatural, iron-like scent of the man's magic burnt in my nose and ached in my teeth. I was physically moved two feet from the door, my shoes screeching on the hardwood as they were dragged the distance. 

The mage crossed the threshold as a smirk played across his lips and the door swung shut of its own accord.

"Get out," I demanded as I touched the spot on my chest where he'd struck it and found the skin burnt beneath the shirt. I willed the injury to heal. Nothing happened. 

"Hmm, it's not exactly what I expected." He craned his neck from side to side, his wild hair settling upon his brow. "I thought it'd be messier." The mage straightened the cuffs of his dark duffle coat as he came to stand at the coffee table's edge. He moved his hands with a rapt, unconscious precision and ignored me utterly as he inspected Sara' home. I rubbed at my chest to dispel the sense of unease rising within it. 

"And cleaner." He swept his fingers along the top of a book abandoned on the mantle and grimaced at the dust that came away. "Have you not been cleaning at all?" 

"I've only just arrived." I stepped forward when the mage tried to take the book and slide it into the inner pocket of his coat. Snatching the volume from his hand as I glared, I almost crushed the book in my fist. "Which begs the question as to how you're here at such a...convenient time."

The mage scoffed and was seemingly unconcerned with how I loomed above him with naked affront in my eyes. "Here I thought I was going to be late. Amoroth told me she was going to relocate you last week, though I guess her hesitancy is to be expected. The woman must be lonely after Sloth was killed off."

His casual disregard for Cuxiel only served to further stoke the growing fire of my anger and irritation. 

Cage sunk into the armchair—my armchair—and kicked his feet onto the coffee table. At least, he tried to. The mage was shorter than myself and could only catch the base of his rough shoes on the tabletop, so he bent at the waist with an inelegant grunt to pull the table nearer. 

I hooked a foot around its leg and dragged it farther away as I crossed my arms and lowered myself to the mage's eye-level, my upper lip curling into a sneer. "What is your business here, boy?"

He simpered, mouthing the word "boy" under his breath as he did so. "I came to check up on you, of course. I came to see how the erstwhile Sin of Pride is adjusting to his golden years." Cage started to laugh and his next words warbled from his amusement. "It's as if you're an old man none of his children want to come visit."

His mocking intent was obvious, but I was unfazed. I could admit I was a simple mortal now, but their metaphors and slights held no meaning for me—and never would. I'd been incarnated into a younger man's body, and as such wouldn't grow old for years. I had no intention to ever sire children. If the mage wished to aggravate me, he'd need to deride something I didn't like. I very much enjoyed solitude. 

"What do you want?" I demanded without patience as I shoved the coffee table farther aside to encroach upon the mage's personal space. I saw his light brown eyes flicker despite the continued languor of his posture and knew he was anxious, though I didn't know why. The desire to strike the mage, to mark him with my blunt, human nails and to drown him in his own fear rose and died within me.

I understood the urge and could suppress it with ease. It was the call of a beast left too long in its cage just wanting to get a taste of flesh. For more years than most could count, I'd been shoving that beast into his prison. A mortal body didn't make it harder to suppress the urge. It only made it more desperate and pitiful. 

"Your mind is like so many twists of ivy left to grow wild on the trellis," Cage sighed as he leaned upon his arm and splayed his left hand, where the branded eye that marked him as a once incarcerated black mage shone with ugly brutality. His voice dipped an octave, and the low slant of the setting sun through the window imbued his eyes with shades of orange and red. "There's no rhyme or reason left to it. You'll never understand anything of this world when all your thoughts are lost to the disorder."

I snarled then, because the man was—in essence—calling me stupid. "Get out."

An impish grin spread across his face. "Make me."

I was faster than a normal mortal. While my body may have lost its connection to the Realm and thus its connection to my power, my muscles retained the memories of a greater strength within their sinewy lengths. I snatched hold of the mage's collar faster than he could react and went to physically yank him from my chair.

My fingers curled into the silver ribbon and it began to pull loose.

With immediate, surprising ferocity, Cage wrapped his hand around mine and squeezed, extracting my fingers from the delicate fabric of the ribbon as he twisted my arm and jerked a shout of protest from my mouth. He kicked the inside of my knee and I buckled as the mage continued to put force on my arm until the bones creaked in protest. I hit the floor and rolled to compensate for the angle.

"Pathetic," the mage murmured, hiking my hand up until it was between my shoulder blades. My cheek was pressed to the hearth and my teeth were bared in a grimace as the man came ever nearer to breaking my arm.

Rage filled me, and I wished for the ability to summon flames, to step through the Realm, to allow the mage to shatter bones and have them heal in an instant—but I could do none of these things. I could nothing.

"If you do not learn to adapt, you will never become." His tone was deeper still, familiar—yet strange, as though a second voice had overcome his and it lacked the proper cadences of a Terrestrian accent. It...sibilated. "Your shadeborn taught me that."

"Let go," I snarled into the dusty stone hearth, trembling with the effort to throw him off and rise. The mage was more resilient than he looked. I didn't know if mages were naturally stronger than humans, and that ignorance coupled with the inability to draw essence through myself to banish it was infuriating. 

"Sara wouldn't have stood for this kind of treatment," the mage purred. I tried to grab him with my other hand and the mage whispered a word laced in astringent energy. That hand was pinned to floor by my side as if struck by a red-hot nail and I inhaled my seething frustration.

Death. The mage was writing his own death word by word. I would not abide this.

"She would have let me break her arm before begging me to let go."

"You didn't even know her!"

"I knew her better than you think." He ran the fingers of his free hand through my hair and I felt his nails scrape my scalp. The mage leaned his weight into my back—and suddenly I remembered when I'd last been restrained in such a manner. I recalled the weight of the shackles upon my wrists, the endless chatter of an unending horde—an empire of disembodied voices murmuring in the dark.

I remember the blue fire tearing through me, through my veins, and my screams were met with unveiled laughter. His weight had leaned upon me as Cage's did now, and the dagger glowing with the blazing white heat of that otherworld had cut into my skin over and over.

"Humility," the Baal had whispered, his breath once more at my ear as my skin prickled from the fantasized fire. "It is yet another lesson you must learn if you wish to survive this, Darius."

I surged upright, heedless of the mage's grip, and he released just before the arm could be broken. I breathed heavily, my chest rising and falling with every rapid inhalation as pain alighted across my shoulders and through the over-stretched muscles of my arm.

Humility.

"Nothing to get worked up over. Just having a spot of fun...boy." The mage, despite the discrepancies in our height, was able to give my head a rough pat before he withdrew and wandered into the kitchen.

I stared after him and imagined a hundred different ways to skin a man alive.

"So, is there anything to eat here? I just got back into town and I'm starved." He popped open the refrigerator and the sharp, cold light illuminated his tired features. The moldy smell of abandoned food hit the air in a pungent aroma. "Oh, how unfortunate."

My gaze never wandered from Cage's back as I walked to the kitchen and stopped by the breakfast bar. I was so pissed off I was trembling, but I couldn't remove the mage. He was stronger than I was, and more powerful. 

"I must confess, I thought you wouldn't have survived this long," he said as he began to sift through the cupboards. Tupperware hit the floor and rolled. "The odds were good that you'd have killed yourself, or gotten killed, or your mind would have broken—but I guess young Amoroth took good care of you, though I wouldn't count on life getting easier anytime soon."

He wrangled an open box of crackers from the messy innards of a cabinet and pop open the lid before sticking one of the yellow discs into his mouth.

"How did you escape?"

"'Mrm?"

My eyes narrowed. "How did you escape? Sloth informed me you were picked up and transported by the Blue Fire Syndicate prior to his...end."

The mage grimaced and kept chewing, brushing crumbs from the scruff of his chin. "These are stale."

I came forward and smacked the box from his hands, letting the contents spill over the floor.

"That's just rude. You're going to have ants."

"How did you escape?"

Cage shrugged and laid a finger on the side of his nose. "You wouldn't understand, even if I tried to explain it—what with your narrow conceptions of magekind and our practices. You know what my brethren call you?" He smiled, lips pulling back in a manic display. "The Silent Sin, because of all the Sins, you're the only one who hasn't stooped to bargaining with us."

"Why would I even bother?" I snapped as I ignored the mess on the floor and went back to the counter. "Why would I waste my time trying to learn from your kind?"

Cage shrugged and looked to the smashed crackers. From the corner of my eye, I saw him frown, as if upset. "Why learn anything at all if that's your attitude?"

I continued into the living room, where I took a seat upon my favored armchair and drew my knees to my chest. I perched upon the edge and, as the chair began to lean, grimaced when I yet again recalled the change to my weight. My mind was yet bleak and hollow from the raw, uncomfortable emotion—but I enjoyed filling that void with thoughts of how to kill Cage. Kings above and below, I wanted to, but I couldn't figure out how and that irritated me.

"Your shadeborn was always curious to learn," the mage said from the kitchen. I heard the tell-tale scratching of chalk, but I didn't turn to look at him. I wondered if the man would leave if I simply ignored him. "Regardless if the information was useful to her or not."

"She was not mine," I sneered, lacing my hands together between my knees. No, she hadn't been mine. Sara had belonged to no one but herself. I had laid claim to her soul, and in the end, it hadn't been mine to take. It had been hers to give and use as she saw fit, and she'd given it to me. By willingly feeding her energy into the shard of my own soul held within hers, Sara had given me life. This life. The one I cursed. "I do not want to discuss her."

"Suit yourself." The sound of chalk moving over the wood floors stopped, and was replaced by the low, static hum of energy rising in a slow flood. I wrinkled my nose and lifted my gaze to the ceiling.

Scribe. Augur. Sage. Wizard. Mage magic, it all disgusts me.

Cage clapped once as he came into view, loosing a fine mist of pale blue chalk in the air. I could feel the spell he'd created in the kitchen moving against my skin like unguarded razor, an increment shy of being painful. I should've cared what he'd done—should've been affronted he'd do such a thing in my house, but I didn't. I didn't give a damn.

I didn't care about anything. Even the fleeting thoughts of homicide I'd entertained were already listless and droll.

"Well, what do you say we get some dinner?" the mage asked with a pleasant smile as he rubbed his hands together. "Because there's certainly nothing to eat here."

I didn't want to eat, though knew I needed to, and so I dropped my feet to the floor and rose without a word. I headed to the door and Cage, muttering about cranky demons, followed in my footsteps.

He'd been wrong to say it was Amoroth's care that had kept me alive these past two months. The woman had given me guidance and shelter, but I'd seen little of her in the wake of Balthazar's atrocities. I'd languished in that apartment, sitting in the dark and staring at the walls or the windows or the ceiling. I was a man who cared about nothing, had nothing, and had clung to an existence without meaning for so many eons all I knew was how to survive, not live, and Lust had little influence upon that.

I got up and went on not because Amoroth had helped me. I did it because Sara had given me life with her dying breath, and allowing myself to wither and fade was a damn poor way to repay the woman who'd given my eternity a short-lived purpose.

The mage shut the door behind us and shielded his eyes from the declining light of the sun. "Excellent! Now...do either of us know how to drive...?"