Bezel had seen empires fall to fire. He had seen mountains born from the endless seas, rising to become the feet of suns. He had seen death, he had felt death and her cold white talons--and then he felt nothing at all. He had endured more, for longer, than stars in the solar system. In these unending minutes, in these hundreds of thousands of lifetimes--never once had he predicted himself in the situation he now found himself tangled in.

"It's mine!" The Faunish girl snapped, stomping her leather boot against the wooden floor of Bezel's office--a place that, once upon a time, had been a refuge to him.

"That guy was giving it to me!" The boy shouted back, throwing his hands up into the air in bitter frustration.

Bezel sighed, leaning forward on his elbows. He'd assumed a posture to mimic his disinterest, slumped over his desk with his head perched in his open palms, but not even that could stop the arguing.

"Sir!" The girl whined, spinning on her heels to face him. She plopped her manicured nails on her hips, forcing her cowish brown eyes down into a scowl. "Help me out here--I made his drinks all night, but 'cause this sack of sap flirted with him for the last twenty minutes of my shift he thinks he gets my tip? It's unbelievable!"

"You're just jealous, Ruvalt. Flirting is a bartender's bread and butter." The Faun boy shrugged, lifting his slender shoulders up to the platinum waves of his gelled hair. When the Faun had first come to Bezel, his hair had been brown. Undyed, since Avernus had not yet caught up to Heimrian beauty trends. Why Bezel remembered that, he couldn't say. Just as he couldn't find a reason for why he remembered the way his horns had looked, emerging from ordinary brown curls, spires of onyx black. Until Bezel had sealed them behind a thin wall of magic, just as he did for all his Fauns--well, except one in particular who preferred to be exceptionally difficult. 

"That's a disgusting over generalization!" Ruvalt shouted, turning pink in her cheeks. "I will not stoop so low to make a living!"

"Low?" Sevolt, the Faun boy, scoffed. "Are you shaming me? We're literally demons--a little harmless talk is not the worst thing we've done."

"We've done nothing." Ruvalt snarled. "Coming into this world is our right. I pay my taxes!"

"Okay, alright--enough!" Bezel groaned, melting into his desk until his forehead rested on the wood. "I can't take anymore. Why can't you both bother Mayvalt about this? She handles all of my affairs."

"Mayvalt isn't here, sir." Ruvalt quipped.

Bezel perched one oil-black eyebrow, arching it above his narrowed golden cat eyes. His gaze landed on her, with an accompanied tilt of his head. "She's not here? Where is she?"

"I don't know," Sevolt shrugged, "but you're the boss, boss."

"I'm. . . more of the dad to this happy-" he glanced between the two, "-dysfunctional family. If you have a problem, run off and find Mayvalt. The eldest child is always the best mediator."

"I don't get it." Sevolt mumbled. 

"We had fundamentally different childhoods, I see." Bezel remarked dryly. "Fine, split it." 

"Sir!" They both shouted--finally managing to agree on something, it seemed.

Bezel pinched the bridge of his nose, stopping the imaginary migraine from blooming. "Ah, brothers," he cursed, blinking his foxish eyes. He held out his flattened palm, encouraging the passing of the crinkled green paper with a few teasing flicks of his fingertips. Sevolt exhaled from his nose and stepped forward, placing the single note in the base of Bezel's hand. 

"All this arguing over fifty dollars?" He muttered. "Why can't you two just get along? You've been going at each other's throats for weeks." 

Sevolt huffed, turning his wooden gaze down to the slick surface of his polished heels. Ruvalt flicked her ebony-black hair over her shoulder and muttered more faunish expletives. 

"Well, let's see if a little common ground can't be met here." He said, pinching the paper between his fingers. He held it out before his chest, pinning it in the air as he would a butterfly to a corkboard. "Half each. That's plenty agreeable, right?" 

No one seemed happy--least of all Bezel--but they nodded. 

"Good." He smiled, flashing the tips of his pearly white fangs. With a swift flick of his wrists, he tore the note down the middle. 

Ruvalt choked, coughing into her stammering swearing. Sevolt turned white, dropping his jaw until it landed on Bezel's glistening wood panel floors. Bezel stood from his place perched behind his desk. He strolled out into the center of the room, and as promised, handed half to each of them. 

"Sap, sir." Ruvalt muttered, turning her piece over in her palms. "That's not what they mean when they say break a bill." 

"Oops." He shrugged. "Now get out--your squabbling has severely chipped at my brooding time."

Ruvalt glanced at Sevolt. Their eyes met over the tops of their torn halves--forcing a giggle out of Ruvalt's tight lips. Sevolt sighed and then he was laughing, too. Bezel scoffed, "do this team bonding outside of my office." 

Ruvalt saluted, causing another bout of laughter from the Faunish boy. The two turned on their heels and exited the room, leaving the heavy metal door open behind them. In the sudden absence, Bezel's ears were flooded by the base-heavy club music from the dance floor beneath his roost. He sighed, rubbing his flattened palms over his face. 

He could nearly feel his guest when they arrived. Their footsteps were unsubtle on the iron stairs, their heart pounding in the thin skin of their throat. Their presence was dripping with signs of life. Such untouchable things to Bezel. 

"Wow," she chuckled, audible beneath the bone-shaking music. "Wow, that was. . . I mean--did you take a seminar? 'How to properly manage for the emotionally void employer.'" 

"That's all employers, Mayvalt." Bezel muttered. He lifted his head just enough to sneak a glare between his fingers, scowling at her and her signature black leather. "I needed you here."

She shrugged, slipping into the office on her thick platformed boots. She shut the door behind her, sealing them off from the onslaught of music. "You had it handled." 

"I don't know why they feel the need to waste my time with such-" 

"Your time is unique, boss." She cut in. "Impossible to waste." 

"Hilarious." He muttered blankly. "Where were you?"

She paused, her fingertips frozen on the door she had just shut. Mayvalt looked down at her feet, so that all Bezel could distinguish was her peach-pink hair and the golden ring she wore around the base of her antler. It had belonged to her lover, a woman his brother had killed. "The low-streets," she murmured, "helping the displaced."

Bezel's cold heart was incapable of producing guilt. Lucky for him, or the weight of it would have shattered him a long time ago. They were side effects. Casualties of war with still thrumming hearts. The Faun that had gotten stuck in Heimr when Bezel had suddenly shut all his gates during the battle against his nephew. It had been their best--no, only option at the time. Like a supernatural sponge, reabsorbing all the water it had lost over time, Bezel had drawn back all his leaking wounds. Which was disgusting, but fundamentally how gates operated. Ely were the only creatures capable of creating them, opening fissures between the three worlds and keeping them open by steadily streaming energy made of their own magical powers. Therefore, killing the Ely power bank would shut the gate. Which had led Bezel to quite the misunderstanding last summer, when the Progeny had blamed him for opening the gate beneath Lake Seneca. 

 "Ah," he nodded. "I imagine they haven't forgiven me yet?" 

"Not quite." Mayvalt sighed. She crossed his office and flopped down into the soft sofa he kept for her inevitable visits. Her antlers had scratched small breaks into the wallpaper behind the furniture. "Let's focus on the positives for a change. This is good--what we have here, in Eden. The Faun you employ used to be too afraid to even say your name but ever since you stood up against your brother, they've been following you around like docile lambs." 

"Right," Bezel said. "The Progeny encored losses of unforeseen proportions, I locked us all in Heimr, and we lost--with no possible way to ever stop my brother--but, hey, at least I'm less intimidating. Should I be insulted by that? They think less of me, because my nephew beat me." 

Mayvalt grew statue still. Her shoulders tensed beneath the shell of her leather jacket. One rapid sting echoed up from the sound of her pulse, the flinch of her fragile heart. Her lips pressed together, and Bezel did not want to wait for them to open again.

"Don't." He warned. 

"Boss-" 

"For a thousand reasons, Mayvalt." He sighed. "The answer is no." 

"Because you refuse to think any differently!" Mayvalt snapped. "You've given up." 

"Of course I have!" He scoffed. "I have nothing left to offer, Mayvalt! I have no magic-" 

"You do." She interrupted. "If you just took back the blessings." 

"You'd have me rob every single Faun of a chance at a normal life here--just so I could send you to Avernus? For what possible purpose-" 

"There will be no life here at all for anyone if we don't stop Mammon!" Mayvalt shouted. "We don't need all of them--just enough! If I gather up all the displaced, and a couple volunteers-" 

"No." 

Mayvalt slammed her boot into the office floor. She threw her hands up into the air, and then slapped them down against her thighs. "Why not? You are the only one who can save Heimr! And you're just watching it burn?" 

"I'm the only one?" Bezel scoffed fictionally, conjuring images of disappointed parents to help curate his expression. "Last I checked, I had other siblings. All of them in Avernus--with Mammon--and none of them did anything. They let him play with the Trammel, they let him summon Legion. I tried, Mayvalt. I tried more than most--and it wasn't enough. I'm burnt out. I have nothing more to give. It's up to someone else now." 

Mayvalt's lips flinched--matching the trembling feebleness of her stammering heart. "Your siblings might be in trouble, too! Who knows what Mammon has done to Avernus. Even before this, you know the First Prince hasn't been seen since-" 

"Enough." He sighed. "Enough, dear." 

"You sound . . . afraid, boss." 

"Oh, brother." He cursed. "How many times will you seek in me? I'm not the same person you knew. I'm not afraid--I'm not anything. Not anymore. Not without the key, which my little brother took from me and gave to his secret club." 

Bezel's heart hadn't freely beaten in centuries. A curse had been placed on him to punish him for abandoning his people to chase a foolish mortal love with the enemy. His emotions, good and bad, had been given away. Held within the immortal soul of his first love, so that he could only feel when by their side. 

Forever doomed to walk Heimr, chasing the traces of the first soul. Except that, according to Mammon, his soul had reincarnated twenty years ago--and Bezel had never noticed. His connection had been severed by his younger brother, an angel and his enemy. 

If Mammon was to be believed, which might have seemed unlikely if the play did not so much sound like exactly what his younger brother would do, then his soul was something he might never find again. 

"Yeah, the key." Mayvalt repeated, her voice soft as yarn and weak as spider's silk. She always got jumpy around mention of Bezel's first love. Considering, perhaps, that it was her action of turning them into the Rangale that saw Bezel's curse placed on him and his soul burned at the stake by his own comrades. "You're afraid if you leave Heimr, it'll be the end. You'll never find your soul again. You'll get stuck in Hell after you shut Mammon's gate, unable to ever find a more powerful sibling to allow you back into New York." 

"Maybe. How much more do I have to lose--just to fail? Time and time again." Bezel blinked his golden eyes--his tongue had moved on its own, spitting up words made of pretty venom and hollow appeal. He shook his head, pressing his fingers into his inky black hair. "The Faun--I can't make that choice for them. I can't take away their right to live how they please. I can't hold a gate, I can hardly keep my own illusions plastered to my body. Whatever they decide to do--they must decide it within the hour and it will be a choice that stays with them for eternity. Hell, or Heimr. We will all become stuck--and once that gate shuts forever, the ones left here will be hunted without my protection. As I grow weaker in Avernus, as I begin to fade and vanish, so too will my blessings. And then they will be trapped, exposed, and slaughtered." 

"Oh, boss," Mayvalt breathed. She leaned forward, placing her elbows on her knees. Her face sunk into the palms of her open hands. "I'm so sorry, I really am. It's not fair--it shouldn't have to be you--but you can't stay here. What you're trying to prevent is going to happen. Ely can't survive away from their powersource forever. You've been playing it too risky, staying in this magic-less place, burning off too much. You're fading at a rate much faster than you realize. I saw it, boss. Last summer, Belial almost killed you. He's a maggot to you, boss. He never should have gotten close--but he almost killed you. When you die here, they'll all be stuck and exposed. Exactly what you wanted to save them from will be their fate." 

"Avernus-" 

"Has magic. Just enough to give you more time, boss. Sap, maybe enough to give you a kickstart. You could become strong enough again to open gates, to protect the Faun as best you can." Mayvalt pressed a tense breath from between her teeth. "But that. . . sap, none of that matters, Ba'al. And I'm sorry--I swear by the Seven Princes--I am sorry. You're not done. You never will be, because this is your punishment for taking pity on us. For being the only Ely who cared what happened to us demons." 

"I can't be your savior. I couldn't even save my own soul." He muttered. 

"I don't need a hero, boss. I just need you. We need you." He glanced at her, into her cow-eyes rimmed with liquid and salt. "Please, Ba'al, I'm begging you. Please. You have to help us. You have to let go of all that still holds you together and try." 

Bezel glanced down at his hands. At the slender fingers there, tipping in gleaming claws. He knew if he were to look into his reflection, he would find someone inhuman. A man with golden cat eyes behind his dark lashes, with shimmering fangs that poked from behind his lips. He was, down to the marrow of his bones, not a creature that belonged in New York. He could tell at least that much. The weakness of his own being was not one of the feelings that evaded him. His own ending was as clear as snow melting on hot tarmac. Inevitable. Fish couldn't breathe outside of their bowls, and he was very much a guppy to the vastness of the three realms.

He crossed his office, coming to a halt before the wide circular window which filled the entire back wall. From this place, he had a perfect view of the Hudson. Silver skyscrapers cast the oil-black stream in glistening banners of glowing moonlight. Painting the surface of the water with all the colors of night. It was beautiful. It should have moved him, awed him, mesmerized him.

"It's just water." He concluded. 

"Ba'al?" Mayvalt bleated softly. 

It would be water, plain and lifeless, for the rest of his short eternity. Bezel knew he would never feel ignited again. He was tossing it aside, throwing away his only chance to experience relief from his horribly painless existence. Yet he knew why Mayvalt had asked him. If someone had to sacrifice it all, then he was the best one to do it. The loss would never scratch the surface of his being. He would go endlessly on, indifferent. "I assume you have a plan? Or we could just wing it--die in style, perhaps some fiery explosion?" 

Mayvalt laughed. A soft wheezing sound of near insanity. "No explosions, boss. We don't have the CGI budget for that, let's just keep it to some light maiming--enough for cool scars and embellished stories to impress pretty ladies." 

"If I save the world, I hope I won't need any embellishing." 

"Can't blame a lady for having high standards. You gotta be a galaxy system saver now, too many world savers in the dating pool." Mayvalt snorted. Bezel allowed her these simple moments, he knew it eased her. 

"What's the first step of your plan?" Bezel asked. 

She laughed, shaking her head until the golden ring around her antler rattled. "I didn't think I'd ever get you to agree."

"I haven't yet." He muttered.

Undeterred, Mayvalt punched her knuckles into the flat of her palm. "First, I'll get the kid."

"The kid?" Bezel repeated slowly. 

"Yeah, the kid! I told him I'd get him once I got you to agree. But knowing him he's probably running red on patience." Mayvalt explained, slicing up the air of the office with her wild gestures. 

"Oh," the Third Prince nodded. At that description, he didn't need to guess who the kid in question was. "You've been communicating with him?" 

"Of course, boss." Mayvalt shrugged. "We made a great team."

"And how does he feel about your, uh, teamwork?" 

"He's all for it." Mayvalt answered. 

"Really?" Bezel snorted. "All for it?" 

Mayvalt sighed, shaking her peach-toned head. "I know what you're thinking. You can just say it, boss." 

"Gladly." He said dryly. "He's a Bishop. You're a demon. I'm the nationally recognized enemy of his book club. Whatever agreement we came to last time only happened because we had no other options. You can't keep turning to a Heimrian for companionship, darling. Not that Heimrian." 

"Oh!" Mayvalt snapped, clicking her fingers together for added emphasis of her imaginary epiphany. "I didn't realize we had options now, forgive me, boss." 

"May-" 

"We need his help, boss." She interrupted.  

"He's Heimrian. Avernus is a place of demons, of magic, and did I mention demons?" Bezel scowled. "It is entirely absurd to bring him."

"We need him." Mayvalt sighed, dragging her palms down her exasperated expression. "Trust me, I've been working it all out. We need that Vestige--which his book club has possession of. And once down below, we'll need him again to convince that other Deacon to fight with us. Boss, you can make a portal powerful enough for us to cross into Avernus, but only that Bishop can get the Vestige back to the only one granted the ability to use it. And then we'll need the other Deacon to raise it against Mammon. But he doesn't know us, or trust us. Who knows what demons have done to him, a lost Heimrian half-blood in Hell. A familiar face may be the only thing strong enough to get him to fight again." 

"I'll make that Deacon fight with us." Bezel muttered darkly. If he was giving up everything he had left, he wasn't allowing vacation time for anyone else. 

"Boss, threats aren't how you begin a friendship." Mayvalt winced. 

"Nor is centuries of bad blood, dear. Let's say you do take the Bishop. You'll be in Avernus, Mayvalt. Your homeland, full of the very same magic that makes you special here in Heimr. That Bishop might kill you, and he could do it with a pebble he picks up from the ground. He won't need Ossein, he won't need a second chance. He will just do it. Just kill you, and you'll be gone forever. Just over. Do you understand that?" He rattled coldly. 

Mayvalt turned pale, draining of blood in the surface of her tanned skin. "He might struggle-" 

"He will." Bezel swore. "As he battles the ideas implanted in him by his upbringing, as he struggles to find his friend, as he fights against my brother--he will also be suffering against the very nature of his soul. He's Heimrian. He doesn't belong there, Mayvalt. The longer we spend in Avernus, the dimmer his soul will become. It might even fade completely. He could be absorbed into Avernus--killed, Mayvalt, and I can't promise that he will reincarnate." 

Mayvalt grew silent. For so long, Bezel thought moss might begin to grow along the curves of her velvety antlers. Finally, she sighed and pressed her knuckles into her eyelids. "So in summary, if we enter Avernus, you could be forever barred from returning to Heimr, I could be killed by my companion, and he might die from soul-exhaustion. On top of that, the Faun here will have to sacrifice their way of life. Plus, we'll be looking for one lost boy in all of Avernus--and then we have to fight your older brother, who defeated us last time with just a fraction of his power."

"Yes." 

"Alright." She announced, nodding with a stiff jerk of her chin. "But say all that does happen. Say we lose--more than we ever have. Well boss, it still sounds like a better ending than not trying at all. If I'm going to die, I'll do it after I kick in your brother's teeth. He took someone from me. He'll do it again, he'll destroy Heimr. I won't allow it." 

"We're taking on an awful lot of loss here, darling, just for another attempt." Bezel ran his cold golden eyes across the window, once again turning to the sight of the city night. 

"I know." She whispered. "It's not fair, I know. But war is never fair--and that's what we could be preventing." 

"No, dear. That is what we are going into. Head-first, tails on fire. Once we do this, we will have to suffer the consequences." 

"I know." 

"Fine, then." The Third Prince said blankly. "It's not as if I care." 

"Really?" Mayvalt scoffed, making soft barks of laughter. "You're joking right now?" 

"Just summon your Bishop, dear." He dismissed, waving his palm in front of his face to chase off his pesky fly.

Mayvalt nodded, leaping up to her hooves. As she raced towards the door, her heart beat faster than the sounds of her thick black boots against the floor. Her fingers wrapped over the doorknob, yanking it open to expose Bezel to the skull-shaking sounds of the dance floor beneath his office. 

Thump-sting! 

The twist of her pulse gained his attention--and then that he could hear it all above the rush of club music. She froze in the doorway, her hand still grasped on the silver handle. Bezel swung his golden eyes towards her, her form hovering just at the threshold. Her antlers reached up to fill the frame of the door, glowing neon purple from the overhead lights. The horn cuff rested in the base of her frazzled pink hair shimmered brightly, as catching as fish scales. Her black leather jacket appeared, for one moment, as armor. 

Her lips parted, filling up the sudden silence with her shaking words. They had turned off the music--and that, Bezel realized, had only happened once before. So, he didn't need Mayvalt to complete her shocked sentence. He already knew. 

"He's here." She said. 

"The Bishop." Bezel finished. He scowled, running his fingertips over his neat black hair. "Bring him here, before he gets any ideas and begins slaughtering the staff."