It hurt how familiar the feeling was. A different forest, a different Beast, a different quest, a different partner--angels, it was a whole different world--but it hurt. Each time Mayvalt caught the corner of his eye, darting swiftly through scraggly branches and over dark brown boulders, it hurt. It reminded him of a time not too long ago--and yet simultaneously what felt like centuries ago--when he had been doing this with someone else. 

Mayvalt didn't talk like him, jabbering away until even worms wriggled under leaves to find some peace and quiet. She didn't pick at all his nerves and fill him with electric eels. Her eyes didn't glow under the evening sun, shimmering as brightly as polished emeralds. She was just there, trotting along at his side in uncomfortable silence. 

Ira cleared his throat. His fingers fell down to the handles of his sister daggers, resting against the wood. "So," he choked, forcing up time wasting pleasantries to ease the turmoil stirring up behind his ribs, "the weather is-" 

"You don't have to do that," Mayvalt snorted, shaking her head in slight amusement. "We can just walk in silence. It's not so bad." 

Ira disagreed. "We might as well make a little noise--we do have to get a Beast's attention." 

"I believe we'll get it no matter what we do." Mayvalt shuddered, wrapping her arms tightly around her chest to insulate against the frigid breeze rolling between the swaying trees. Ira tossed her another one of his expertly crafted 'now explain' looks and she sighed. "The Trammel the Fifth Prince uses. She likened it to a Fetor-" 

"Fetters, right," Ira hummed, "which are?" 

"Fetor." Mayvalt announced clearly. "They're--sap, I don't know. It's something wolves do. Likely related to their Ely ancestry. We talked about this before, remember?" 

Ira squinted his eyes down to narrow the window of his focus before shrugging in half-hearted defeat. "Ze'ev come from some first wolf-" 

"Alukah," Mayvalt agreed. 

"-and she's a daughter of Mammon. So she passed on some angel genetics and now Ze'ev can tap into what angels use to cast illusions, shape reality, and put up Trammels to change their own bodies and to cast. . . Fetor." Ira said. When he was done he glanced at Mayvalt, perhaps seeking her approval. She gave it with a curt nod. 

"Pretty much." She huffed. "So, I'm guessing that the Trammel the Fifth Prince used on us is more like Fetor than a wall. If that's the case--we're up the sap creek with no paddle." 

Ira glanced down nervously at his robe. The fabric was suddenly itchy against his skin. He cleared his throat and held his arms stiffly off to his sides. "And we're more or less cooked--because?" 

Mayvalt choked out an exasperated sigh and shook her head. "Fetor is a powerful way of protecting your inner circle but at a steep risk. The wall is more like a call, Ira. An open line of communication that says; here's what I've got. Face me or flee." 

Ira thought of the Halflings in town, turning pale and shuffling quickly away as they passed by. So, they had decided they didn't have the strength to challenge the Prince. "Wait! Wouldn't a spell like this just invite a bunch of stronger enemies to pick you off? How is this protection at all?" Ira wanted to strip and scrub his skin pink. The robe had taken on a weight he couldn't fathom across his thin shoulders. 

Mayvalt snorted in amusement and nodded. "Key phrase being: a bunch of. Wolves have this reckless ideology they follow. It's better to face the one strongest than the many weakest. As I said, it's a gamble. One we've now partaken. So, great job on that one, bone-snatcher." 

Ira wanted to scoff at her that this wasn't his fault--but it was. So, instead he rolled his eyes and announced, "should have just sold you off to her instead." 

He earned a dagger-sharp glare for that one. He didn't mind. He laughed, and she did, too. Though nothing had been particularly funny. 

"Anyways," he said to shake off the blame she'd stuck to him, "I kind of get it. It's bold, but there's strategy to facing one larger enemy over many smaller attackers"

He thought of Legion. Of the unkillable pigmen swarming from the gate in an endless flood. It hadn't been until the Vestige cut through all those limbs, scorching the hivemind behind the creatures, that they finally turned the field in their favor. But those thoughts strayed much too close to the ones he often tried to dispel so he had to shake his head firmly to keep from diving into everything else that happened that night.

"Let's just hope that our enemy isn't all that much larger." Mayvalt muttered softly. Maybe she meant it to herself, but Ira heard her regardless and shrugged up his shoulders in agreement.

Despite Ira's attempts, that seemed to be the end of their conversation. But like Mayvalt had said--it wasn't so bad. They trailed along, side-by-side, only occasionally passing back warnings about hidden roots or low branches.  Mayvalt was often the one warning, having pulled slightly ahead. Ira's dialog was usually a returned curse after tripping over the very things she had tried to warn him of.

He reasoned that it wasn't entirely his fault. The forest was dim--nearer to black than dusky. The mountains formed a protective shell around the woods, keeping it safely tucked away from the evening sun. What little light did manage to creep over the top of the peaks didn't quite make it past the leaf roof above the treetops. So it was in darkness that Ira's boots trudged over the mulch, root, stone, dirt, and rotten brown vegetation that made up the forest floor.

Mayvalt shivered again at another stray breeze--Ira followed her example as the chill brushed past her to find him. It was becoming clear from the biting wind and the barren branches on twisted oak-like trees that summer had been left behind in New York. Although he had tried, as well as he could anyway, to detach his human assumptions--it confused him and he would have lied to say it didn't. It seemed time flowed differently here. He couldn't really wrap his mind around it, he didn't know if he really fully wanted to. The possibilities it unlocked unnerved him. 

"-a log or something, go around." 

Ira blinked at her warning, just barely managing to clear the haze from his mind before his boots caught on the slick edge of the object she had warned him of. Through the sharp wind whistle that filled his ears on his descent, he distantly heard Mayvalt curse. Which wasn't all that much of a priority to him as he zeroed in on the forest floor. His hands flung forward, flattening to catch on the soft mulch ground. Ira was a reckless hot head more attuned to slicing up demons with daggers than he perhaps should have been. Accidents were kind of his thing. He couldn't even begin to count all the times he had rushed in only to fall flat on his face. He wore little blue bruises like badges over his legs to prove it. Needless to say, he had already fallen plenty since they had begun their trip into the forest. For that reason, he was plenty familiar with the process. His fingers disappeared into the crisp rotten leaves. They sunk until his palms caught up a half a second later, landing with a dull thud against the floor under the cushioning rot. His legs burned with the blunt impact, tangled up at his ankles. The Vestige was a comfortably known weight against his back. 

It was about as ordinary as any other tumble--well, except for the warmth. The cold ground Ira had tangled with before wasn't cold anymore. It was almost cozy. Radiating a dry heat that rushed in to fill Ira's fingertips. If he wasn't so on edge, he might have curled up against it yawning as widely as a sleepy house cat. The temperature ran through all the ground Ira could feel beneath his tangled limbs. It seeped into his stomach, his chest, his knees. It was comparable only to sprawling out across a hot rock--not that the ground was all that stiff. What was beneath Ira's palms was skin smooth and had a slight give to it, like leaning against taunt canvas. 

"Sap, Ira!" Mayvalt snorted, carefully coming nearer. She used her bo as a walking stick, dragging it along the dark ground to uncover snags before they could grasp at her hooves. Maybe Ira should try that--but all he had was the Vestige and that felt entirely inappropriate to use as a cane. "I have never met someone so careless and bullish. Someone besides my boss, I mean." 

"Thanks." Ira grunted. It was hard work suppressing the flinch that begged to rise into his shoulders at being compared to the Third Prince. He knew it was childish to recoil at an ally--but the Prince was still the Prince. And memories of him came with a crushing weight of guilt and heat in his face. He lifted his hands, shaking free all the leaves that had covered him up to his wrists. The removal of his fingers carved a small window to the section of floor beneath the crisp carpet. Ira brushed aside more of the curled brown rot, curious to dig up whatever he had tripped over. It was large enough that he still knelt across it, risen above the rest of the forest floor. Not to mention how strangely warm it was. Ira peeled back layers of leaves, sticks, dirt, and moss. 

The earth he found beneath it all was a rich tawny yellow. Sandstone, maybe? It was smooth as marble except where the layers were ridged. Folded together in plates as wide as Ira's palms to create a surface as chiseled as armor. 

"What's taking so long?" Mayvalt hissed, her voice a whisper from a couple feet to his left. 

Ira shrugged, shaking his head. "It's. . . I don't know. It's weird." 

She seemed to be studying him. Her eyes followed his down to the earth. "What're you? A geologist? Let's just go. Beast to find, remember?"

"Yeah," Ira agreed. How could he forget? "yeah, let-" his voice died in his throat, turning into a startled noise of alarm as the ground beneath him began to tremble. The layered plates rippled, slowly sliding and shifting with shivers--and then it was rising. Ira began to slip. His fingers sought the crevices between the yellow plates, grasping at the sharp edges of the warm keratin-like scaffolding. He cried out as his weight was placed on his fingers. The plates were sharp, slicing into his fingers where he grasped desperately to avoid being thrown to the floor. 

He dug the toes of his oxfords into the shifting mound and yanked at his hips, making lightning quick work of replacing his bleeding hands with sharp Ossein daggers. Ira aimed his knives into the same slits he had pushed his fingers into and stabbed upwards. His daggers resisted for a moment before plunging into something soft beneath the armor-like shell. The earth rumbled. The noise was deep enough that it sent tremors up Ira's arms, rattling his ribcage. 

"Ira!" Mayvalt shouted from the forest floor--a place that was becoming more distant by the second. Trees shook and broke off, tipping over as the ground twisted up towards the sky. The entire forest seemed to be breaking apart. Sunlight, orange and dusky from the late evening hour, rushed to fill the gaps made by the sudden deforestation. 

Ira wished he was a geologist. Or a seismologist. Whatever degree he needed to explain why the woods was splitting into chunks. Unfortunately, all Ira had was a homeschool education and  unopened letters from a handful of New York's finest public colleges sitting on his bedroom desk. And demons. Ira knew demons. Better than he knew dirt, trees, or earthquakes. He knew demons well enough to know that what was rising up from the ground wasn't anything seismic. 

Ira hadn't ever pictured the day he would ride on a Beast's back--so maybe it was fitting that it sprung up before he could even grasp the danger of his own situation. The creature shook free of the soft mulch it had buried itself under--an action that almost flung Ira ten feet downwards. He craned his neck to drink in the full scope of his situation. It seemed that he had placed himself on the tail or neck of the creature. It was hard to tell since Ira couldn't see anything but sleek yellow scales extending fifteen feet in both directions. 

Well, Ira thought bitterly, one problem solved. 

They had found their Beast. Maybe a little too well. The Beast twisted again, flinging its tail or neck or--whatever Ira was clinging to. His bloodied fingers slipped on the wooden handles of his daggers. With a choking gasp, Ira squeezed his fists impossibly tighter. 

"Ira!" Mayvalt screamed from somewhere below the writhing Beast. "Get down!" 

"Angels!" He hissed under his breath. How was he supposed to do something like that? As if to offer him a solution, the Beast jerked again from beneath him. Ira's shoes slipped from the crevices in the scales he had lodged them in. His legs swung through the air, sending up a painful jolt to his spine and shoulders. The muscles in his arms burned from his efforts to hold himself up. His fingers trembled against the handles of his daggers. 

"I'll catch you!" Mayvalt shouted. 

"I don't believe you!" Ira shouted back. His voice was cinched by his clenched jaws. 

"I'll try!" Mayvalt called. 

"Try?" Ira barked. 

"Uh, like really hard!" Mayvalt amended. 

"Ange-" Ira sucked in the rest of his curse, turning it into a wordless gasp as his tanto dagger slipped free from where he had stabbed it into the hide of the Beast. His body swung, his weight tore at his right shoulder painfully. He tried to reattach himself, blindly jabbing his Ossein at the yellow scales. The tanto blade bounced harmlessly off the surface of the armor, stubbornly refusing to so easily catch into the same sliver it had before. Worse still, it was becoming difficult to hold on to his last dagger. The blood oozing from his taxed fingers created a barrier between the polished black handle and his skin. He tightened his white fingers, crying out at the impossible task of holding on. His shoes kicked desperately at the Beast in an attempt to gain leverage. 

He didn't know if he trusted Mayvalt to catch him. He certainly wouldn't have placed a bet on it. But soon the choice wasn't his to make. Ira felt it in his heart when he slipped. The gravity plunged him down--his body at least. His organs rushed upwards, filing his throat with sick. 

His arms came up over his head as he sailed downwards. He crossed his elbows across his face and curled his body inwards for impact. The wind filling his ears churned his stomach. How high had he gone? How many of his bones would break? If he snapped a limb he'd be in a much worse Beast killing position.

Ira landed on his left side. The contact sent a sturdy thump up into his bones, a sort of blunt hit that came with heat and give. The earth wrapped around him, inhaling him into a hold that continued his momentum another few inches. And the earth cussed--spitting up a hiss of pain and a muttered, "sap!" 

They tumbled, spilling into rotten brown leaves and pits of mulch. Mayvalt tightened her grasp on her, locking her hands around his stomach. They must have been sent over the crest of a dip--or maybe Ira's fall was stronger than he thought--because they rolled over each other about four times before coming to a gasping, cursing, heaving, muttering pile at the base of a barren oakish tree. 

Ira blinked the dizzy fog from his eyes and peeled away from Mayvalt. His adrenaline refused to let him lay still--not even long enough for the world to stop spinning. He was on her, his hands pulling at her arms and brushing leaves from her face. "Mayvalt! Are you okay?" 

She coughed, snagging one of his busy arms to use as leverage to pull herself up to a sitting position. She smirked weakly. Her coffee brown eyes were cloudy, as if she was somewhere dazed and far away. "Peachy, kid." She groaned. He didn't correct her about the nickname that time. He figured he could allow her slight grace for saving his life. "You?"

Ira turned his racing thoughts inwards. There was a persisting heat on the skin of his arms. Just scrapes and fresh bruises as far as he could see. His hands were rougher for wear. They bled from deep cuts into the underside of his fingers from where he had held onto the scales. He stared down at his hands, his heart plummeting further and further into the soil. They were empty. He turned his aching neck back the way they had come, where they had churned up the mulch and leaves. 

"Ira!" Mayvalt pressed, leaning over to get a look at his opened palms. "Sap, does it hurt? Can you move your fingers?" 

Ira turned his eyes back to her. She recoiled at the look in them, flinching under her tangled black robe. "Wh-what?" 

"My daggers." Ira choked. "I lost my daggers." 

Mayvalt's jaw dropped before snapping tightly shut again. "It's fine! It's fine. We still have my bo and the Ves-" 

Ira whimpered, pressing his sore palms to his ears to control the noise rushing to fill them. "I can't." He could still hear the rain where it met the surface of the lake. To his back, the sounds of swords clashing and screams of pain. Legion roared from its thousands of piggish maws. Knights dying, bleeding. And Melchior's lungs. How they had rattled before stopping. 

Mayvalt clasped her fingers around the back of Ira's neck, shaking him free from his glue trap mind. "Hey. We don't have time to fall apart. Look lively, bone-snatcher." 

Ira sucked in a greedy gasp of sour forest air, oxygen made bitter by the heavy scent of Beast flesh, and nodded his head. She was right. There would be time later to panic--time he had to guarantee by saving them now. He narrowed his eyes down into slits, turning away anything that did not fuel his focus on the task ahead. His heart began to slow in his chest, his lungs eased in deep and full breaths. The ground beneath his knees trembled. Ira turned on his hips, finding the Beast in the orange glow of the dark forest. 

It rose from the mulch, curling up into a copper spiral. It was wound up like a thrashing coil of wire. Ira could hardly make heads or tails of the Beast--that was until he did find the head. It emerged briefly from the center of the spiral, jaw expanded to flash imposing fangs. The Beast screamed out a roar that sliced the air apart. Flat wings of skin stretched out to form an imposing crown on both sides of its narrow head. Its black eyes settled on Ira. 

"It's a snake." Ira whispered. A snake the size of a train--but a snake still. "It's a bronze snake."

"No," Mayvalt replied hoarsely. "That's him." 

Ira couldn't look away from the Beast as Mayvalt said, voice trembling, "that's the King of the Fields."