For many moments, Bezel thought he had died. In a way, well, maybe he had. After all, waking up in Hell was what humans had promised him would be the end to his nearly-immortal life. Unfortunately, he couldn't be so lucky. His senses returned very slowly. The scent of ash was embedded into his nose. The bubbling pain in his flesh was bone deep. His fingers glided through sands hot enough to cook human flesh--luckily Bezel didn't have much of that left--until coming to a rest positioned under his chest. With a groan, he shoved himself shakily upwards. His trembling legs folded, taking the brunt of his weight. 

Bezel's head drooped back, his long throat exposed to the sulfuric air wrapped around his charred skin and exposed bone. His feeble fingers rose to the buttons of his black dress shirt, stumbling as they undid each fastening. Bezel sloughed the dripping wet fabric from his shoulders, wincing at the hissing spitting steam that rolled off whatever remained of his back. 

Freed from the burning biting at his bones, he took a moment to inhale the full scope of his situation. He was alive. That much was evident from each of his melted nerves regrowing only to remind him of his agony. He blinked his weary eyes to scrub them of sand and blinding hot sunlight. Luckily, the thin membrane of his eyelids had been easy to replace. Bezel twisted his neck, ignoring the popping as his joints shifted. He was most definitely in the pit. Far below sea level, in a desert contained at the bottom of a cavernous ravine. The scorched red sands bubbled from the fires beneath Avernus' crust and blistered from the sun hanging millions of miles over head. With no foliage strong enough to survive and only a thin layer of shimmering Trammel between, the sun cut directly down into the heart of the Tachtadh. It almost made Bezel glad for the red smog rolling along the earth, curling to climb up his limbs. 

The air was dense, as if packed down by the weight of the world. Bezel thought it would have been easier to suck in lungfuls of water at the bottom of Lake Seneca than the scorching winds whipping at the regrowing skin stretching across the frames of his bones. The bottom of the cavern was immeasurable. Bezel only knew it did end because there was no horizon--only jagged cliff walls raised up in all directions. He was sitting in the bottom of a massive pit, all right. A hole full of all of Avernus' worst problems--and now him. 

He lifted his golden cat eyes to trace the path of his downward descent. Miles above his head, the shimmering blue lake floated in the sky. It's edges had been worn down to fuzzy rims against the rust toned smoke in the atmosphere of the cavern. The gate was askew, hanging a leap-able distance from the nearest basin wall. With ledges and grooves as wide as football fields cut into the cliff face, it was plenty climbable. He could see how even King Behemoths had made their way up and out of the gate. And given the state of the trap they lived in, he couldn't fully blame them either. Well, no matter what happened next he wouldn't be leaving the pit that way. He had to find the wolves. Somewhere among all the ash and dust.

Bezel rolled his shoulders, wincing from pain he wished he had been mimicking. His leather shoes trembled where he steadied them against the blood-colored earth. Bezel pushed himself upward. His legs held for only a moment before he collapsed, just barely managing to catch himself on his flattened palms. The muscles locked over his spine twitched uncomfortably, alerting him that he had been chewed down to sinew and bone in some places. Bezel sucked in a breath of poison air that didn't even begin to sooth the hollowness in his lungs and exhaled with a shudder that came from no sense of cold. 

He blinked his yellow eyes, dragging them in a labourless manner across the desert grounds. Buried in a mound of orange sand, visible only by the curled talon above the dust, was his kris. He reached for it, gently reclaiming the carved handle with the tips of his fingers. Bezel dragged the blade across the bubbling earth, watching listlessly as the sand was etched into the curved pattern of the keris. The weapon might have been the perfect weight if he could have only felt it in his hands. He laid it over his crumpled legs, taking many more moments than he should have to study the old object. 

"Why are you here?" He whispered, tracing the keris with numb fingers. "Terbang." 

The weight of the keris' name was heavier than all the water in Lake Seneca resting on his shoulders had been. He scoffed and squeezed his cat eyes shut. 

"It seems I've grown too used to Mayvalt being here to listen, now I'm speaking to myself." And lying to myself, he noted. He knew there was a witness, in the form of a kris in his hand. An ordinary hunk of steel coated with so much blood it had begun to take a life of its own. He shook his head--lying again. Not ordinary. Not steel. It seemed those devil habits were much harder to shake than he had realized. 

Bezel collected his limbs, holding them tight to his body, as he tried again to stand. This time, with a tad bit more success. His legs pitched awkwardly, holding himself as steadily as a newborn calf, but holding nonetheless. His keris swung at his side, tapping against the drying fabric of his pants. Bezel bent down with a groan, collecting his discarded shirt. The black material had collected enough red sand to keep Bezel's skin away from the remnants of any water that might have remained--but he could already tell by the way his legs held under his wet trousers--that there was no more magic left in the water drops in his hair or gliding across his boiled skin. It had evaporated as quickly as blood on hot pavement. Angel blessings didn't quite translate to Hell. And for good reason. It would have been a declaration of war across the realms. 

Bezel frowned down at the state of his shirt. He could hardly stand the idea of feeling the mud, sand, and lake water across his freshly grown skin. Luckily, and it bared no need for repeating, but he couldn't feel. Even the pain that had come with the Ely's handiwork was as quick fading as the blemishes across his body. Bezel lifted his arms, sliding them one at a time into the soggy silk. The twisted fabric settled awkwardly in the space between his shoulder blades, restricting the movements in his arms. It would have to do, he figured. Bezel had much more pressing matters than the tattered state of his once expensive suit. He glanced each way he could. Towards the rock wall nearest him, to the blue skies thousands of worlds above, to the desert sands, and to the hazy distance behind and ahead. And it was then, after all his gawking, that a pitiful truth became evidently clear to the Third Prince. He didn't know which way to go to find a wolf. 

Well, maybe up then. To find a vantage point of the acidic wasteland. Hopefully, from a ridge above the rest of the canyon their camp would become obvious. Perhaps they would be flying white flags with strobe lights. One could dream. 

Bezel puffed up a huff of begrudging acceptance and took his first step into the barren desert. His shoe sunk into the torch-hot sands, slowing his snail pace to a crawl. He knew exactly what sort of day he was gunning for then. One in which his numbness was a blessing. He allowed his mind to collapse in on itself, a viper devouring its tail endlessly. His vision became secondary. The sand dragged at his limbs falling even below that. In that perfect nothing, he trudged. 

Through the fog consuming his mind, Bezel occasionally emerged. He noted moments in his travel here and there. When he fell for the first time after stepping into a sinkhole that consumed him up to his chest with scalding sand. As his fingers had clawed at the earth to pull himself out. And then he had faded again into darkness. Wandering. Until the next moment that pulled him forward. Reaching the nearest cavern wall, scaling the cliff face to pull himself out of the sands and onto flesh-cooking rock instead. The bottom of his shoes became soupy, leaving behind scraps of rubber as he walked along the ledges, moving every so slowly towards the distant sky. 

Bezel walked. He climbed up past the portal hanging over the valley below, quickening his past to escape the humming of it. His shoes fell apart, shedding from him with each step. The edges of his pants began to smoke where they occasionally dipped against the cavern stone. Bezel's golden eyes blinked to wipe the heavy smog from the surface of his dried pupils. 

He lost track of time. He had never been good at noting it anyways. He only recalled the moment when it abruptly ended. Bezel's feet stammered to a sliding stop against the slick stone cliffs. He posed his hands on his hips and bent his back to stare down the jagged drop that his convenient ridge had become. Well, he supposed, it made sense. If every pathway in the pit was a way out, the top of the cavern would have been flushed with all manner of Beast pressing against the Trammel. Traffic in New York had been bad--but a nest of thousands of monsters waiting for the moment they could finally pierce the veil. That, Bezel easily agreed, sounded much worse. 

He turned away from the cliff and walked a few paces back down the ridge, choosing to take his vantage point for what it was worth and access the surrounding landscape. He edged towards the drop, craning his keen golden eyes downwards to the pit below. Bezel stared. And blinked. He took five steps down, blinked again, climbed back to the top of his route and stared some more. 

"Well." He finally said to himself. "What a complete waste of time."

There was nothing below but smoke and red smog. Bezel ran his fingers back through his oil-black hair, trying to bide his time before he had to make up for more answers. Bezel lowered himself to his legs, hanging his feet off the side of the cliff. He waited there for many more moments than it had taken him to climb there, scrambling and rearranging the material in his skull to try and find an answer. But it wasn't an answer that came to Bezel. It was the sound of crackling and the vibrations of an tremor rushing through the rock. Maybe it would have made sense to seek downwards, attempting to locate the source of a landslide or a boulder crashing down the ledges. It would have been an easier outcome. One with far less consequences. And well, maybe that was how Bezel knew his issue wasn't terrestrial. That would have been too plain--and Bezel's luck had never let him go so easily. He leaned back on his palms, staring up into the mouth of the pit where the far and distant sky was. 

The shimmering Trammel which hung over the mouth of the pit flickered, sputtering with violent shakes that compressed the air below into something unbreathable. Bezel's ears popped, his stomach dropped--and then the Trammel snapped back into place, sucking up a great inhale of smoke and smog and dust. The debris rushed forcefully upwards, spilling over the lip of the cavern in a rush of air. 

Bezel's eyes drifted slowly shut. He flopped onto his back, bathing in the too-hot sun. "Oh, brother." He murmured. It was a strange lack of sensation. The realizations arose in him so quickly, he had no choice but to dismiss them even faster. After all, laying defeated in the Tachtadh hardly seemed the time or place to deal with the matter. He had wondered after them for so long, it seemed a fitting conclusion that he find his answer so soon after arriving in Avernus. The First Prince had built the Trammel--and its weakness foretold his inevitable end. There was nothing he could do to help, nothing he could do but watch as the Trammel sputtered in the sunlight. It was certainly a day to be glad he could not feel. 

Maybe what followed was an act of pity from forces Bezel couldn't even begin to imagine. His luck, which had never favored him, turned. The scorching winds whipped past his face, stinging his nose with an unmistakable scent. Bezel snapped upright, chasing the breeze with his golden eyes. Among the ash, heat, and smoke--it was the scent of bitter cold ice. 

"Fetor." Bezel whispered. He had found his wolf.