Ira snapped upright, flinging himself forward with gasping lungs. The Prince, the lake, the Prophecy. They swirled through his weary mind on tornado strong winds. Slowly, as if waking from a dream, his wide eyes began to understand the scene around him. 

He was in New York. Beneath New York, more accurately. Sat on the white floor of an all too familiar marble hall. He was in the Progeny's catacombs, drinking in the stillness of the hallowed halls, with no recollection of how he'd ended up there. He steadied his feet beneath his trembling legs and slowly climbed to his full height. 

"Hello?" He called. He glanced down the hall, and then behind himself. "Mel? Father Pine?" 

There was no answer. He raised his boot and stomped it as forcefully as he could into the floor, half worried that he looked completely out of his mind--but not greatly concerned that there would be any witnesses. His boot struck the marble with a impactless thump. He walked to the walls and pressed his flattened palms against the smooth colloms. It wasn't cold. It wasn't particularly solid either. 

This place wasn't real.

Ira looked down at his hands. His nails were short, his fingers dirty with blood and grains of sand. They were his hands. This was his own mind. Somehow, that was not entirely comforting. Then he was lost in his own head. Again. He wondered dizzily if all the divine energy flowing through him was cooking his brain into mush. 

From the corner of his eye, hung on the wall he'd just been grappling with, was a portrait. Which was not entirely surprising. The hall to the Cardinal's Court contained nothing but paintings. Each one concealing a hidden door to a larger part of the labyrinth, and each one an image of divine retribution. 

Or, in New York they had been. But this wasn't New York--and he didn't recognize these paintings. They'd been replaced. He took a few steps down the hall, walking obediently to the mirror awaiting him. 

The painting had been framed in carved cedar wood. The symbol of incorruptibility, and for that same reason it was the same wood as his knife's hilt. It was a simple frame for a simple portrait. Forever etched onto the canvas was the sight of a girl.

She had hair the color of straw. It had been braided to each side of her head and hung down to her ribs. Her soft pale skin had been wrapped in a simple blue dress. One Ira could date by it's elaborate layers and useless frills. It was torn at the edges, stained with dirt, grass, and strawberry juices. She'd been crawling in the fields again, playing with her young sister and an old dog.

The strawberry fields, the little sister, and the brown farm dog were noticeably missing from the portrait of the young woman. She was alone, poised under an oak tree on the side of a rolling green hill. But they didn't need to be there--because Ira remembered them.

With trembling fingers, he reached out towards the frame. His skin brushed past the cedar. It felt warm. Like her skin, the sun, and the grass she'd loved to lay in.

"Elsie-"

Ira yanked his hand away and the voice vanished. His heart flipped in his throat before filling with ache and sinking to his ribs. He didn't know why he did it--but he reached for her again. He placed his palm against the center of the lonely scene and let the words drift out into the open air of the hall.

"-are you going to fall asleep?"

"I'm waiting for someone if you mus-"

He clicked open the hinges of the painting and pulled. The girl vanished along with her melodic memories. The frame swung outwards into the hall, but behind it there was nothing but a wall. Ira squeezed his blue eyes shut. Why did it have hinges if it wasn't a door? Did it matter? He wasn't submerged into much reality.

He had to find a door. He had to get out of the hall. 

"I know who you are."

Ira's heart flipped up into his throat and stuck there. Drifting up the hall, like a cold draft leaking in from a rickety basement, was a voice he didn't recognize. And did. He glanced once more at the girl in the blue dress, at the back of her portrait and the blank stretched canvas. Then he turned back down the hall. And he walked.

Down, and down, and down. 

"You're the Third Prince."

Ira turned into stone and held perfectly still in the center of the marble hall. He glanced at the wall to his left. There was a portrait of a boy. He had raven black hair, a pale face, and dark sunken eyes that glared over the top of his oil-bright piano. And he did not know the Third Prince. He did not speak.

Ira turned right. A few feet from the vistage of a sunny hill was a painting of a bright green orchard, apples hung from branches in violent splotched of ruby red. Beneath the fruit-heavy trees was a child reaching for them with a grin across her face. And she did not know the Prince. She did not speak.

He twisted, twirling himself up into a tornado, but none of the pictures opened their mouths. None of them had ever brought to Ira before, in his nightmares, memories of knowing the Prince. Because none existed. Because in no life but his first could he know what he'd done--and not even Ira could recall the first.

Or, he thought.

"The Fly Lord." The voice murmured against Ira's ear, sending shivers across his skin. Ira knew then--he knew where the voice was coming from. It was drifting from the end of the hall, coming from a place so deep Ira could not see it. Drawn forward, a puppet on strings, he began to run, chasing after the trail of a ghost.

Down, and down, and down.

He ran until his still lungs grew breathless and his pale skin slickened with waterless sweat. He ran until the hall began to change. Until it stopped. Where the hall ended, set in the white marble, was a set of doors. Giant double oaks, wide enough for all of Legion to pass through. Ira came to a abrupt stop and stared at the wooden planks blocking his way. He counted the seconds as they ticked by in the silent tomb.

He became so accustomed to the heavy stillness, that the sudden whisper sent a jolt through his spine. Even if it was as quiet as the spring breeze and easing through the cracks in the door.

"Careful," the Third Prince snarled, "I do not take kindly to mockery."

The Prince was on the other side of the door. He was inside of the grand center of the catacombs. Maybe he too stood trial at the Cardinal's Court. Ira blinked, glancing down at his palm. It had begun to sting, sending tingles up into his elbow. He shook his head until the pain faded back into the corners of his mind and turned his blue eyes towards the oak doors.

The Prince was on the other side, and despite not knowing the reason why, Ira felt that he needed to find the Prince. That there was something only he could do--and Ira knew it needed to be done.

Do not touch that door.

Ira extended his fingers. The tips had begun to turn blue--but he didn't know why.

Do not touch that door!

Was the frost extending up his wrist coming from the brass handler, or from Ira's wintry blood?

Do not touch-

The hinges squealed as they swung inward, filling Ira with a sound so eerily similar to a pig in slaughter. So eerily familiar. The wood eased forward, leaving Ira standing in a blank doorway. And he did mean blank. He blinked, and rubbed at his blue eyes, and then blinked again.

The room beyond--the Cardinal's Court--did not exist. There was nothing past the threshold but an abyss as black as space and twice as void. Ira's breath trembled past his lips and spilled out into the room, filling the nothing with the gentle sounds of wind.

"Hello?" Ira whispered, staring down into the nothing. He'd been so sure. He'd heard him on the other side. "I'm looking for-"

Ira's words turned as stiff as a corpse in his throat and plummeted back down into his stomach. The room was not as empty as he'd first thought. Because, just as Ira was looking out--something was gazing back. All that could be seen of the creature was it's glowing eyes, floating in the dark at a height a foot taller than Ira.

They eyes blinked and then widened. The middle of the slit black pupils exploded into circles, consuming the golden edges. And then they began to move. Drifting forward through the nothing was a pair of eyes wild with hunger. And Ira could not move. He was caught beneath the gaze of a creature on the hunt. And he could not move. Not even as the footsteps began to echo towards him, not even as those glowing eyes picked up speed.

It was coming. It was coming fast. And Ira thought, as he watched the monster rush forward through the blackness, that he should not have opened the door.

Sch-ing!

Ira knew that sound. It was the echoing howl of a sword sliding from its' resting place. And then he saw that, too. The glint of silver against the blade in the monster's hand. And he couldn't move. He held still, waiting. Why? To what end? What held him so in place like a mouse drowning in glue? Waiting for the monster to lunge for him--and it did.

The creature flung forward out of the dark, it's sharp white fangs curled in a curious snarl. It's golden cat eyes attuned for the fight. He lurched out of the abyss, raising his iron sword for the killing strike. The man's sword sliced through the air, descending directly for Ira's throat. And he might have laughed--because he'd been right. Because the Prince had been on the other side of the door. Until he was in the hall, until his sword was falling forward towards Ira.

Do not touch the door.

But Ira had done that.

The Prince's arm fell--and Ira yanked as hard as he could. He wretched himself so violently back, he could hear something in his wrist pop. He tipped, windmilling his arms in a last ditch attempt to keep from collapsing on the marble hall. He couldn't--he fell. His back met with cold liquid and it consumed him.

The illusion shattered. The marble hall vanished. Ira blinked with stinging eyes, drinking in the murky bottom of Lake Seneca. He kicked upwards and broke the surface, sputtering with heaving lungs.

"What did you do?" He rasped.

Ira found him, staring at him with wide golden eyes in the dark. His lips had parted. His shock seemed nearly genuine. Ira looked down at his hands. His heart plummeted into his boots.

Do not let go--but Ira had done that, too.

He looked at the Prince, his mouth opened--but what could he say?

The lake emerged into screams. Ira turned, his eyes wide enough to replace to full moon. But he longed to squeeze them shut instead. The frothing lake was full of writhing boars, each one billowing out into smoke where the water touched them. And beneath that steam was fresh pink skin. It wasn't enough. It wasn't enough--and Ira had let go. 

Lake Seneca filled with foam. Slick waves of foul-smelling burnt flesh. It sloughed from the thick bodies of the boars and turned into steam, and where it met the water a thick slurry. Beneath the festering wounds, new hide was quick to grow. It enveloped the bone before the moonlight could even catch along the surface to make it glimmer. 

And Ira had let go. And their nuclear bomb had fizzled out into a whimper--Ira had let go.

He held his breath as the pigs turned. As hundreds of beady black eyes settled on him and the Prince. Ira's fingers twitched at his sides. His breath hitched in his throat and sputtered out across his trembling lips. 

"T-take my hand." He whispered. 

"I can't." The Prince said blankly. 

Ira snapped around to face him. He extended his palm, not even allowing himself a second to pause over the sharp stabbing pain bloomed in his shifted wrist. "Take my hand." 

"I can't." The Prince repeated. "It's over." 

"Just-" Ira choked over the knot in his throat. "Please, please just take-" 

"It's over." The Prince said. "It's over. I'm sorry." 

"No!" Ira snapped, shaking his head. "It's not over! It's not!" 

The Prince sighed and nodded. "Okay, give me your hand." 

Ira extended his swollen wrist across the water, ignoring the tremble in his blue fingers. The Prince took it gently, sliding his finger tips up Ira's arm until they came to a rest above the angry red of his popped wrist. Over his forearm, he clasped his fingers around Ira. 

And nothing happened. 

"Do you get it? It's over. I can't bring it back." He said. 

Ira stared down at his claws, pressing softly into the side of his pale flesh, and said nothing. Because what could he say? Because he'd failed. Because it was his fault. Because he'd let go. He glanced up at the Prince, into his glistening golden eyes. He wished he'd had the strength to ask if what he'd seen was real--but how could that matter anymore. 

Did you kill me? 

No, Ira shook his head. 

Did you kill who I used to be?

He laughed dryly and squeezed his eyes shut tight. He'd get another chance. If the world managed to survive, then so would Ira. Or maybe he'd come back as a cockroach, living in the rubble of New York. Only time would tell. 

A hush had fallen over the Catskills. Ira bowed his head and sunk into the heavy silence of it. The water bubbled and sputtered and grew still. As still as the armies on both side of the lake. And then he heard it. Echoing across the stunned battle field, the dry cackle floating from the beach. 

"Was that your grand plan, uncle?" Belial shouted across the sands. "Was that all you had to offer? Uncle, how far you have fallen is truly painful to witness." 

Ira wanted to sink into his own mind and abandon the beach, but he forced himself to look at Belial. Because he had to see Melchior. One last time before the boars swallowed him. Even if it hurt worse than the hooks in his flesh. 

Standing to his left, his chest rising and falling with the quickness of his breath, was Melchior. His skin was free of injury, his clothes as intact as they had been to start. He was okay. He was alive. For now. For this very moment. But Ira didn't know for how much longer any of them would be. Because he'd failed. Because he'd let go. The world hung in the balance and Ira had let it slip through his fingers. 

Melchior's eyes found him, too. Flushed wide in shimmering green. His bow tumbled from his grip, thudding to the sand at his boots. Ira wished he'd known what was going through his head as he turned his back on Belial and came towards the water. His eyes flickered above and behind Ira's yellow hair. So, Ira followed the line of his sight. He turned to look at the crest of Lake Seneca. Coming over the water was the crown of the sun, leaking a brilliant orange into the oil black sky. The sun was rising. For nearly one full night, they'd managed to beat all the odds. 

In thirty minutes, no maybe twenty, the moon would slip away beneath the cover of the rising sun. And Melchior would have survived for longer than anyone had promised him. Maybe that was the largest victory Ira could claim. 

"Well," Belial sighed, "there has to be consequences for you bending the rules of the game, uncle."

"Bel-" the Prince's voice never made it past the distance to Ira's awaiting ears. 

Belial raised his silver sword into the sky and screamed, "kill them!" 

The beach erupted. Chaos unlike anything Ira had witnessed burst violently forth--and in that panic, Melchior vanished behind a wall of pig hides. 

"Mel!" Ira screamed.

The Prince had been right. Nothing had mattered to Legion. Everything they had witnessed had merely been child's play. In seconds, the wall of knights fell. In puddles of blood, choking out screams with their last words. The knights fell. One by one and then faster--and faster. 

The pigs charged forward, swinging volcanic glass swords through bodies as easily as butter. Limbs to the left and heads to the right. Human men and women became nothing but piles of meat on the sand--and then the real panic began. The soldiers nearest the water turned on their heels, shoving and slashing at their own brethren in a desperate attempt to flee the boars. 

It all happened in flashes. Before Ira could even comprehend the horror before him--the first boar crossed into New York. It's clubbed hooves sunk into the pink sand and it tilted its' head back, howling into the sky with victory. 

Belial cackled. Mayvalt lunged for him with a scream of rage. She swung her Fae-Iron Bo through the air, parting the air with a whistle. Belial smirked--and it was only then that Ira truly realized how hopeless they had always been. He raised his palm, catching Mayvalt's staff as easily as a stray ball. Her entire body froze, and he struck. 

He flung out his silver boot, catching her in the chest. Mayvalt flew back with a heart-shuddering crack! Her body hit the sand and rolled, throwing up a cloud of dust from the force of her landing. At his side, the Prince went still. He watched the beach with cold golden eyes, as if he was witnessing the conclusion of a disappointing movie. 

Belial turned, glaring down at the Third Prince with an amused smile plastered across his identical face. "Aren't you going to come save her?" He mocked, forcing a childish frown across his pink lips. "Or will she be added to your list of those you betrayed?" 

Belial's sword dropped to his side. He stuck the point in the sand and walked leisurely forward, tracing a line in the sand, as he approached Mayvalt's crippled form. "You're running out of time to decide." 

"Okay!" The Prince snapped, his voice as rigid and cold as steel beams. "Wait--I'm coming." 

Pulled into the riptide, a helpless victim to the trap--the Prince leapt to his feet. He tossed a glance at Ira, who could only offer a weak nod of approval. And then he was leaving, rushing out of the water as quickly as the boars. Belial laughed and raised his sword from the sand, pointing the tip at the Third Prince in challenge. And he went to it. With no weapon, all his power fizzled out over the rolling oil black waves. 

And Ira stayed behind, submerged in the bitter tide. Because everything, all the bloodshed and the screams and the agony--all of it was his fault. Because he thought he could fix it without losing. Because he was doomed to always repeat the same mistakes. Forever spitting on the favor of the angels, and suffering the consequences. 

Ira shoved himself up to his boots. He reached for his belt, seizing his cedar knife. His fingers closed over the wood, and instantly his heart sunk even further into the mud. His fingers had closed around an empty hilt. 

The blade had been chewed into broken bits of bone by the weak blast of divine power. He'd been robbed of any ability to take action. What could he do with one functional hand and blades bitten by angelic aftershocks? He stared down at the whittled toothpick in his grasp and breathed in desperate gulps. 

Belial swung, divine blade careening through the air. The Prince stepped left, just barely managing to avoid the deathly collision. His waterlogged shoes caught in the sand, sending his balance tilting half a pace forward. Maybe he was as exhausted as Ira. Maybe it was the injury to his side, slowing his reactions. Maybe he just didn't see the point in prolonging the inevitable--but the Prince hesitated. He stumbled for a second longer than it took to recover his stride--and Belial was on him with a viper-quick strike. 

The sword glanced across the Prince's chest. A spray of red chased the path of the blade. A clean split across his beating chest. His golden eyes did not waiver. They did not widen in shock or flush with tears. They remained perfectly dull. Even as he stumbled back, pressing his flat palm to the gushing wound. 

Ira's mind spun behind the confines of his skull. He felt as dizzy on panic as he did blind. 

What do I do? What can I do? How do I fix it? What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?  What do I-

"Ira!" 

His eyes snapped towards the shallows, jolting free from his shackle-heavy thoughts. His heart skipped a beat before hammering twice as hard against his ribs. 

"Mel," he breathed. 

Surging through the pigs, on a path that none of them would dare stray near, was Melchior. And Ira felt strangely warm. Like, watching the pigs squeal and shove away from him was the proudest he had ever been. 

Melchior screamed, cutting sharply into his mind. "Move!" 

Ira followed the direction of his extended finger, turning just in time to see the sword catch the pink hue of the sunrise. He noticed first the color of the salmon light across the volcanic glass, and then that it was falling towards him at the speed of a streaking comet. The tip of the blade was coming straight for Ira's heart, determined to run him through. 

His blue eyes filled with the reflection of the boar, and of that black glass blade. He had to move, he knew that. Even in the very few seconds he had--that much was obvious. Ira's muscles flinched beneath his skin, just barely strong enough to flutter his eyelids. What if he yanked away with all his strength and it only made things worse?

If you hadn't pulled away. 

It was funny how long a few seconds could seem. As Ira watched the Avernian blade fill his vision, he thought of that. Of how futile his entire wasted life had been, of Father Pine, of Peter, of Melchior. Of the angels' promise. Of the Forgotten Prophecy. 

Those words he'd forsaken. The ones he'd casted aside out of stupid hopefulness. He thought of them last as the blade closed in on his chest. Ira had lived a thousand life times of mistakes. He knew the weight of his regret was immeasurable. And yet--as that sword sought him--never did he regret the choice to leave Melchior alive. 

Melchior. 

Ira's eyes flickered towards him. He was running through the water, he was shouting too but Ira couldn't understand it. He leapt, his arms stretched, desperately trying to reach for him. And Ira reached back--his fingertips just centimeters from his. 

The sword collided. 

Ira's eyes widened. A scream filled his throat, but before he could get out the words, the black glass sword advanced through flesh with a sickening cracking sound. It soared effortlessly forward, as if impaling the boy through his abdomen was just a joke. And Ira wished it was just a joke. 

Ira's heart didn't drop into his boots or leap into his throat. It just stopped. Instantly, it ceased to beat behind his ribs. His words died on his tongue. Because this too--it was his fault. He knew he would never forget the sight of the sword tip bursting through his spine. It emerged though him, tearing an exit into his white T-shirt as easily as it had the rest of him. 

"No, no no," Ira choked. "Mel-" 

The world went silent. 

And then it exploded. 

A flash of white filled Ira's eyes. It stung his skin with heat and flung him back across the water. He landed on his back in the shallows and swallowed a lungful of Lake Seneca. While still coughing and choking on lake water, he shoved himself up onto his knees. He lifted his palms over his eyes, squinting in the blinding lights shooting out across the Catskills. 

It was him. It was all coming from him. From the hole ripped through him--no, Ira realized. From the sword still inside of him, coating in his blood. 

Should he who the angels returned spill the cursed blood, a Vestige his death would make. 

No, Ira would never--but he hadn't needed to. The realization was as sour as spoiled milk and filled him with sick just the same. Melchior's words came back to his mind. His many speeches of fate and how if it was meant to happen, it would. 

And Melchior Brisbane had been meant to die for him. Who held the sword had never mattered. Ira had only ever survived under the illusion of choice, but it had never been there. 

The boar began to scream. An agonizing squeal that dug spikes into Ira's ears. Arcs of light rushed out from Melchior's blood. It danced up the blade and into the hilt. 

The golden strings lurched forward, engulfing the palm clasped over the weapon. The pig released the sword with a yelp of pain and turned its' attention to swinging its' scorched hand wildly in front of its' face. But the flames could not be extinguished. Because they weren't flames. No more than what had burned Ira had been. 

Because this, he realized, was something beyond them. This sight, the boar howling as the light sunk into its' hide, was something divine. The pig burned from the inside out. It tipped its' head back to the sun rising over the lake and screamed until it burst--it popped. The creature's flesh and blood blew outwards in a shower of gore.

Ira blinked, his mind rushed to make sense of what had just happened--and then it happened again. Squealing screams filled New York. First one, and then two, then three--until it was entire clusters of them. They flushed with burning orange light, expanding until they popped with violent cracks. They were burning. Tens at a time--and then hundreds. It was like watching a fuse smolder up into the firework. 

On the beach Belial dropped his sword. He pressed his flattened palms to his ears and fell to his knees, screaming in agony. His golden eyes began to drip with pink tears. Blood pooled in the corners of his mouth and dripped from his nose. 

As quickly as they'd broken onto the sand, they vanished in bloody fashion. Until the beach was soaked in the gore of thousands of pigs and hundreds of knights. Until it all went quiet. Ira spun around, chasing the last of the light as it receded back into Melchior's skin. He shoved himself to his feet and through the water. 

"Mel!" 

He stared down at the black hilt protruding from his stomach, blinking in silent confusion. He wrapped his fingers around the volcanic glass.

"Mel, don't!" Ira yelled too late.

He gripped the sword and pulled. Ira had to squeeze his eyes shut as the blade eased back out of the wound, bringing with it a fresh tide of blood. The hilt slipped from his fingers. It must have been too slick with blood to hold, or he was too weak to, and it fell into the water with a splash. 

Ira tried to call to him, but it was too hard to speak around the knot in his throat. It was even harder to breathe. The boy tipped forward, falling as the halo consuming him faded. It was disappearing as quickly as the full moon and all the stars in the dusky sky. Ira lunged across the distance keeping them apart and extended his arms. Melchior came into them, landing against Ira's chest with a heavy thump. His knees folded beneath them and they dropped into the cold water together.

"Angels," Ira whispered, because he didn't know what else to do. What he could do. His mind was spinning in helpless circles, keeping pace with his erratically pounding heart. Ira pressed his shaking fingers to Melchior's warm cheek. "Mel, look at me. Open your eyes, please. Please. Melchior, look at me!" 

His eyelids fluttered. Ira's sobs caught in his throat. His heart flinched into a hesitating pause--and then his green eyes flickered towards Ira. They glowed as brilliantly as lamplight, filled by the soft orange of the morning sunrise. Ira's sob caught in his throat and turned into a cement lump. He could hardly swallow down his own sick. 

There was a gaping wound torn into his torso, one Ira couldn't even bring himself to look at. His trembling hands found the tear and pressed to it, forming a pack around it. He desperately tried to hold in what was rapidly slipping past his fingers and filling the water. Melchior laid in his embrace, making weak gasping sounds. The echo of his rasping breath was the only sound left in the world. 

Ira couldn't breath--he couldn't breath. His chest rose to half-capacity before slamming into a vice and shuddering. Melchior's fingers brushed past Ira's arm, turning his blue eyes back to meet his half-lidded gaze. 

His mouth parted ever so slightly, and Ira leaned forward. He pressed his ear to Melchior's lips, obediently awaiting. At first, he made no noise. Just a single rasping wheeze--and then Ira heard it. His voice, sounding just as it always had. He whispered to him a secret, and Ira laughed until the tears made it impossible. 

"I think so, too." Ira whispered, glancing at the pink sky. At the last of the moonlight dipping beneath the horizon, taking with it the pittering rain drops. "I think the weather will be nice today, too."

He clutched Melchior to his chest and held on as tightly as he could. He held him so close, he could feel it in his ribs when Melchior went still. Ira's heart pounded against the restraint of his chest cavity, twisting with an aching so terrible he though it might kill him. 

"Please don't go." Ira whispered. "Please." 

He didn't know if Melchior could hear him. He didn't care. The words poured up out of him like a gushing wounds. He bowed his head and pressed his forehead against Melchior's. He breathed in the last of his rasping breaths and pressed himself to memorize the warmth of his skin. 

"I'm sorry." Ira choked around the knot in his throat. "I'm so sorry." 

Suddenly those seemed the easiest words in the world to say. He knew he should have said it earlier. He should have said it a thousand times. For each moment his temper had driven them apart, for each second he'd spent lost in his own mind.

The last thump of Melchior's weak heart echoed up into Ira's skin and stayed there, another ghost dwelling just beneath the surface of him. Ira's tears slipped past his cheeks and fell to dapple across Melchior's pale face, kissing his still lips. 

Ira let it all rush forward. The knives sticking into him so deeply he couldn't even reach them to name them. The horribly agonizing bursting inside of his chest, the churning in his stomach making him sick--all of it. It erupted from him in a rageless scream. New York echoed with the sound of his grief. 

A stillness had consumed the beach. A sense of confusion, of doubt, of worry. Any knight still on their feet stared blankly at the water with distant and dazed eyes, as if waiting for the eruption of the next wave. But it never came. Slowly, they came apart. Swords fell from trembling hands, thudding against the blood-fed sands. 

There would be no celebration for them. Not here. Not standing over the bodies, but Ira could feel it sparking in the air. Relief. From those that had made it. Gladness that it wasn't their entrails soaking the ground. 

Ira squeezed his eyes shut and sucked in a wheezing gasp of heavy air. He couldn't breath. It should have been him. That sword was meant for him--why had he gotten in the way? Why had he come back? Why couldn't he just stayed on the beach? 

"Ba'al!" 

Ira flinched. His tear-filled eyes snapped wide and turned to the beach, chasing the sound of Mayvalt's rasping cough. The Third Prince had fallen to his knees, his flattened palm pressed against the bleeding gash torn across his broad chest. He stared up with unmoving golden eyes, looking at his nephew. 

Belial had risen to his feet. Just barely. He swayed, stumbling on shaking legs. Streams of blood dripped from his ears, tracing down the length of his angular chin. He lifted his sword, pointing the shaking tip at the Prince. 

"You-" the general choked on his words and sputtered. Pink tinged saliva dripped past his jagged fangs. He squeezed his eyes shut and shuddered. His arm fell to his side, and with it his sword. "All you had to do was help your family."

"I am." The Prince said, his golden cat eyes flickering towards the shape of Mayvalt sprawled across the beach. "And I'm stopping you from something you'll forever regret, nephew. If you ever manage to free yourself from your father's manipulation, I will be there to forgive you." 

He snarled and laughed. He tried. Instead, he made a wheezing noise as rough as shattered glass. "This is not over. We will make an army twice the size of Legion. We will raise hell until heaven welcomes us home just to placate us." 

The Third Prince attempted to push himself up on his legs, but made it no further than half a step. He stumbled back to the ground, spilling more rich red blood across the beach. Mayvalt heaved herself onto her hands and knees and slowly crawled across the sand, wincing with each movement. She reached out and grabbed the Prince's shoulder, flopping down beside him beneath Belial's golden glare. 

The general looked down at the silver tooth of his sword and shook his head in disgust. He slid the bloodied blade back into his belt and scoffed, "you're not even worth the effort it would take to wipe your blood from my sword, uncle." 

He turned on his heels and limped towards the lake, as unsteady on his feet as a newborn lamb. His boots passed into the water. Then his knees. He trudged forward, vanishing inch by inch into the waves. 

Ira's fists curled at his sides. He was leaving--he was just leaving! He'd brought Legion here. He'd willed them to slaughter hundreds of men and woman--he'd led them to Melchior. To his Melchior. If that gate had never even been opened, Ira would have never been asked to sacrifice him in the first place. They could have had lives as close to normal as fate would allow them. If he hadn't come here--Ira would not be holding a corpse where the one he loved had been. 

Rage wasn't enough to explain the anger that swelled inside of him. Ira grit his teeth together. His blue eyes flickered towards the oil dark blade sunken beneath the water. His stomach churned. That blade had killed Melchior.

That blade would kill Belial, too. 

He grabbed the hilt, squeezing his fingers tightly around the craftsmanship to keep from trembling. He slipped away from Melchior, easing him down onto his side in the water. It was a pain worse than being pumped full of divine energy to let him go, to watch as the lake engulfed him. 

His head slipped beneath the tide. Ira's heart jolted behind his ribs. He lurched forward, pulling his head back above the water. He didn't know why. Melchior hadn't taken a breath for several minutes.

"I'm going to come back." He swore, pressing a kiss against his cooling cheek. 

Ira held the sword in his fist and pushed himself to his feet. He didn't know where he'd found the strength, it must have been born from his rage. He lunged into the shallows, chasing after the wake of Belial's descent. 

The black sword was heavy in his hands. The weight of it pulled his shoulder. It filled his popped wrist with a burning aching, but he ran forward endlessly. Belial had submerged himself to his waist by the time he heard Ira. He twisted in the water, staring at Ira with golden cat eyes wide in shock. 

"What do you think you-" 

Ira lifted the sword--Belial hissed in surprise and threw his palms up in front of his face. But there was nothing he could do. Ira swung with all the strength left in the fragile fibers of his being. The Vestige arched up into the air and then fell with rapid speed towards the general's flushed throat. 

Clang!

Ira flew back. The sword flung from his grip and sunk into the water. He landed on his back and sputtered for breath. He snapped upright--forcing his wide eyes to find the general. He stood in the water, his mouth parted in plain shock. His trembling fingers touched his unscathed throat. 

"How did you-" Ira choked. "It killed Legion. It's a Vestige! They promised us one if Melchior--they promised." 

Belial's hand retreated from his neck to grasp the hilt of his sword. He coughed up a bitter laugh and forced his lips into a snarl over his bloodied fangs. "Did you think you could use a Vestige that doesn't belong to you?" 

Ira's heart stammered to a halt behind his ribs. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his palms to his ears, reeling in the sudden dizzying realization. The Vestige they'd been promised: it had never been promised to Ira Rule. The only certainty had been Ira's role as Melchior's executioner. The Vestige didn't belong to him. The angels' hadn't favored him, they never intended to. How much more suffering did he need to dream each night to finally understand the full depth of their hatred? 

Then they'd pitied the final act of a demonic child, and upon his spilt blood had granted him his last wish. To protect Ira Rule. 

Belial's sword came from his hilt, making a sound Ira was growing all too familiar with. Steel slicing apart the sky. 

It didn't matter, Ira thought. He'd failed. He would always fail. It was rooted in his nature, increasing in strength each time he'd been born again. His shoulders slumped and his hands fell into the water at his sides. His fingers curled into the soft mud coating the bottom on Lake Seneca. 

"Go on then." Ira said blankly.

Belial stared down at him with unblinking golden eyes. His fingers tightened around his sword's hilt but he remained perfectly frozen.

"Just do it!" Ira screamed. His voice echoed across the lake, filling his ears with more ringing. 

Belial's fingers slackened over his sword and he scoffed from behind his jagged fangs. "It's no fun fighting you when you're like this, Hamlin. I'll find you soon. And when we meet again, drive your own Vestige against me." 

Ira's body went rigid. His head exploded into white stars, stabbing grating spikes dug into his eardrums. 

Hamlin. 

"Who-" 

Belial turned and limped into the waves. Ira watched until his shoulders sunk below the water, and then his oil-dark hair. And he was gone. In minutes, the ripples he'd left on the surface vanished, too. As if he had never been there at all. Ira turned back to face the beach. And that was where he found the evidence of the battle that had befallen them. 

The knights had sunken into ceremony still silence. With eyes dark and horror-filled they watched Belial sink back beneath Lake Seneca. They watched for several seconds more before the moment broke on the whimpers of dying soldiers. 

"Find the wounded!" His voice echoed across the beach, with enough authority to knock even shell-shocked sheep back into formation. He emerged from the clusters, his blood red robes making him immediately obvious. 

His black hair was tangled and stuck to his forehead with blood from a slice across his scalp. One of his arms he dragged lamely at his side. The other still clutched his longsword. Trailing behind him, muttering with annoyance and pressing scarlet cloths to the Cardinal's limp limb was Father Pine. He wrapped the Cardinal's arm with the fabric and tied it, yanking it tight until the Cardinal winced. 

"Identify the dead." The Cardinal barked, brushing Father Pine aside with his shoulder. 

Ira's lungs rasped behind his ribs with his first full breath. Father Pine was alive, and unscatched enough to still be stuck in his favorite position as full-time nanny. And Ira needed him. With fingers nearly frozen solid, he picked up the hilt of the obsidian sword and began to limp back towards the shallows.

Boom! 

The blast sent Ira toppling forward. He fell to his hands and knees, sucking in a gasp from the agony in his torn stitches and from his jostled wrist. The beach once again fell into horror-stricken silence. Every eye still attached turned to the lake, wide with fear. They watched as the first crop of bubbles rose to the surface, each one popping with another gunshot clear bang.

"The gate," the Cardinal said, his voice plain with shock, "the gate is still open." 

Boom! 

The lake trembled. Ira's shoulders slumped. He nearly laid down into the cool water with pure exhaustion. How could there be more? How could it possibly get worse? He wished that noise was only the settling of the lake silt, but he knew the sound of the gate at the bottom of the lake opening. And he knew what it meant when the lake choked and frothed up white foam. Something was emerging.

Ira's eyes drifted shut. It didn't matter. 

"Kid!" 

Hands grasped his shoulders and shook until his weak blue eyes opened once more. Father Pine knelt in the water, his stern gaze meeting Ira's. He sighed and wrapped his arms around Ira's thin chest. "Wake up." 

"How did you get here?" Ira muttered. "You were on the beach." 

Father Pine turned to him with concern etched into his frown. "Don't fall asleep again. We need to get you to a hospital first." 

Ira pressed his eyebrows together. "I didn't fall asleep." He said. "I didn't dream." 

Father Pine sighed. "Ira, just focus on staying awa-"

Boom!

The bottom of the lake shuddered. Ira pressed into Father Pine's side to keep from pitching forward. His fingers curled tighter around the black glass in his grip, while Father Pine's grip tightened around him. He moved them faster, forcing Ira forward like a reluctant animal. He drove him to the sands, until he couldn't anymore. 

Ira dug his heels into the soft mud and twisted in Father Pine's grasp. His eyes flickered towards the water. 

"Mel." 

Father Pine glanced at him, his eyes filled with pity as thick as slurry. Ira grit his teeth together and shook his head. 

"No, no! I have to go get him! I promised I would come back!" 

"Ira-" 

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The Cardinal waved his working arm and pointed with his sword at the swirling lake. "It's coming! Every abled soldier to the front lines now!" 

"I have to go-" 

"Ira." 

Knights drenched in red, so much they all appeared Cardinals, moved towards the edge of the lake with their Ossein weapons held in trembling grips. 

"I have to get him-" 

"Ira." Father Pine's arms tightened around Ira's chest until his stitches ached. He whimpered, the sword slipped from his grip and thudded into the sand by his boots. 

"I promised." Ira whimpered. "Father, I promised. I-" 

The Beast broke through the surface of the lake, throwing back a maw full of spiraling tusks to inhale a gulp of oxygen. With lungs filled, it opened its' mouth and howled into the orange sky. 

"A Behemoth!" A heavy southern voice shouted. Ira tracing his echo, at the end finding a Cardinal soaked in his own blood. Ira drank in the sight of his marred face. Gore had crusted across his gouged left eye. Salamis Cedar had survive, only he appeared as hollow as a corpse.

"Minimal contact! No one goes in the water. I want spears." Ira's Cardinal shouted. 

Upon his orders, fifty of the remaining spearmen slipped up to the bank. They hoisted their poles on their shoulders and stood in stoic formation, grim expressions carved into their faces. 

"Wait." The Cardinal ordered. "Wait until it's in range." 

The Behemoth rose from the water. It lumbered towards the shore, rolling eyes as red as the sand back and forth in it's bludging skull. It was small for a Behemoth. Maybe twice the size of a hippopotamus, but not any larger than an elephant. It had a head as round as a basketball, and a sweeping tail as lengthy as a viper's spine. 

"What are you doing?" 

Ira looked at her. Knelt on the sand, her arm slung over the Prince's shoulders. Her pink hair was drenched in rain and sweat so that it laid flat against her skull. Standing out even more prominently from her curls were her fuzz-covered antlers, and the golden cuff she kept clasped around one of them. Her tea-dark eyes fluttered to Ira amongst the stillness. 

"What are they doing?" 

She was asking Ira. His tongue swelled to fill his mouth and moved no further. He shut his eyes and shook his head. But she already knew.

"Hey!" Mayvalt snapped. "Absalom! Don't hurt it." 

The Cardinal flinched and whirled around to face her. His eyes darkened to a thunderous gray, his lips peeled back over his teeth. "Be quiet, Chital. Can't you see everyone here has been through enough!" 

"That's just a yearling!" She shouted back. The force of her voice popped something in her chest and she gasped in a sharp inhale. "D-don't! It's har-harmless." 

"I won't be taking any chances." He turned back to the water, watching as the Behemoth lumbered forward. Mayvalt pressed forward half a step, but grewing still under the sudden grasp of the Prince's steady palm. He turned his golden eyes to her and shook his head. Mayvalt sucked in a wince, her eyes flooded with tears. 

"It's not fair." She whispered. 

"Nothing that happened tonight was." The Prince replied. 

She sunk down to her knees and let her eyes drift slowly shut. 

"Cripple it." The Cardinal barked. "Bless the water." 

Ira's eyes snapped open. His heart lurched into his throat, expanding to fill the space. He choked on his own pulse--his words tangled up on his tongue. 

Mel. 

Mel is out there.

"No!" Ira pleaded. "Please, don't! Don't! Please, don-" 

The Behemoth tilted its' head back with an agonized howl. Where its' legs held beneath the lake, they began to smolder. Mayvalt cried out and pressed her hands to her ears. The Prince pulled her against his split chest. Gray smoke curled up and off the Beast, filling the sky. 

Ira screamed, he dug his heels into the sand and wretched in Father Pine's grasp. 

Mel, Mel, Mel.

"Now!" 

The speared flew across the shallows and impaled the hide of the Behemoth. One took directly to the center of the creature's skull. The Beast lurched forward and splashed into the water below. As it sunk below the water, all that touched the lake began to melt. Until there was only sputtering columns of steam left.  

The water bubbled and churned. It dissolved into frizzy white sea foam. And when that began to fade and disperse into the water, there was nothing left. There was nothing left but mist and memories. The scent of his skin, the echo of his last heart beat, his voice. Ira sunk to his knees. The strength left him. He curled over in the mud. Tears streamed down his cheeks, mixing with the blood soaked into the tarnished soil. 

And Ira couldn't breath. He sucked in rasps that stuck to the roof of his mouth and blew back out his nose. His lungs shook, his heart pounded, his head swirled. And he couldn't breath. Father Pine fell to his knees and wrapped his arms around Ira's shoulders. 

"Jethro!" 

Ira flinched and press his hands against his ears, trying in vain to drive out the voice. He squeezed his eyes shut and sunk into an thick inky blackness, disrupted only by the shouting drifting past his ears. He slipped to a spot in the back of his head where nothing could reach him. 

"Jethro, is your Deacon alright?" Ishmael asked, his voice heavy with his gasping breaths. "Did you ask him? Where's my brother? Where is-" 

"Why didn't it work?" Salamis Cedar shouted. "Why didn't the Vestige kill the general? I saw it! Don't tell me I didn't see it clearly! I still have one working ey-" 

"The Vestige?" Ishmael whispered beneath his breath, horror clear in his tone.

"-the gate is still open, Absalom." Esther McCloud interrupted. "Why is it open? Will they come back?" 

"No, Legion burned. It was the Vestige!" Said Ahaziah Rust, her voice mixed into the oil black inside of Ira's head.

"The Vestige." Ishmael repeated. Horror, and then understanding. "Melchi is. . . Ira, is he-" 

Ira squeezed his eyes shut tighter and gasped for each breath.

"Why didn't it work against the general!" Salamis snapped. 

"Enough!" The Cardinal roared. "We have soldiers dying! Move into recovery and rescue. It's over." 

It's over. 

We failed. 

And Melchior is- 

"The Third Prince!" Salamis said. "He swore to shut the gate, he-" 

"He's gone!" Esther chirped, shock clear in her voice. 

Ira snapped upright, shaken from the haze he'd gone into. His eyes cut to the space the Prince had been hunkered on minutes before. There was nothing remaining of him but a trail of blood across the already soiled earth. Mayvalt had gone, too. Her and her Fae-Iron Bo. 

"Find them!" Salamis barked. "Bring them back and-" 

"No." The Cardinal interrupted. "I said. . .it's over." 

"Absalom," Salamis scoffed. "The gate is still-" 

"Yes, and whoever opened it will likely send an even greater threat to our doors. And what should you like us to do? Track down the Prince and slice him apart with the Vestige? It was a trick. It was nothing. The Prophecy. . . it's all over." The Cardinal scoffed dryly. "It's all over." 

Salamis turned ashen. He was silent for a long while. When he finally mustered up the ability to speak, it was to himself. "We. . .failed." He whispered. 

"We failed?" Esther McCloud repeated in a daze. "Absalom, what do we do?" 

He sighed. "Find the wounded. And count the dead." 

"And after?" Esther asked. 

The Cardinal turned his neck. His distant gray eyes looked out upon the water. Sparkling as brilliantly as liquid gold beneath the hue of the sunrise, it was truly a sight to admire. Far removed from the horrors dwelling beneath it.

"After?" He murmured. 

His eyes left the lake with much reluctance. They fell to the boy cowered on the beach, drinking in the sight of his tear-streaked face. Ira knew he must have looked pathetic, but no matter how he appeared it was eons less than how pathetic he felt. He'd failed. It was over. And Melchior was gone, replaced by a fleeting Vestige. Exactly as the angels had always planned it to be. The final punishment to Ira's terrible crime. 

"We go on." The Cardinal said. "For as long as we can."