His fingernails carved at the molten sand, forming rivers that ran down the edge of the cliff. He scrambled for something--anything--that could support his weight before he slipped back down the side of the basin. His palm dipped beneath the rust red sands to drag across glass-slick volcanic rock. His nails caught on the edge of a crack in the boiling earth--a sliver, which he held onto as tightly as he could. With a groan of effort that was more theatrical than necessary--somehow, displaying the struggle of his actions made them seem more achievable--he pulled his body to the top of the ridge. His chest slid over first. His arms trembled, a shake that ran up into his shoulder blades. Bezel huffed and lifted his knee, catching the ledge. With a final shove, he fell forward onto his stomach. 

His kris skittered forward out of his grip, moving small mounds of sulfuric earth with the effort.

Sand puffed at his lips, billowing into soft and choking clouds. Bezel flattened his hand under his right shoulder and shoved with enough strength to flip over onto his spine. His golden eyes blinked lazily at the too-distant sky. It seemed almost imaginary from his place in the pits. As if his brain had mashed up the hazy gray fog with what he knew should have been there--sun, stars, maybe some clouds if he was lucky enough. 

Bezel didn't know how long he'd wandered the Tachtadh. If a clock on his wrist had told him five hours, he would have believed it just as much as he would have believed a ripped up calendar announcing the coming of winter or tally marks in the orange sand accumulating to only fifteen days. Time was endless and all consuming. A concept he was most familiar with, in fact. 

"Only a little more," his voice rasped, curling to lick at his sunburnt ears. 

Talking aloud to himself seemed the only hobby to turn the hours--he just hoped it was one he could kick upon his reemergence. He didn't need Mayvalt staring at him like he'd grown four heads--compared to her usual look like he had grown two. 

With a shiver, Bezel rolled over onto his knees and reclaimed his sword with as tight of a grip as he could. Using the tip of his curled blade for balance, he rose onto wobbly legs. Bezel stumbled forward. The sand drank him in to his ankles, slowing his already terrible pace. His muscles strained to pluck his feet up high enough to shuffle forward. It seemed easier to drown in the gravel. 

"A tempting offer, really." He mumbled in an faraway tone. "But I'm late." 

His lips cracked as he talked--yet another incentive to stop, but for some reason, words poured out of him like Beasts out of a torn Trammel. 

A part of him--some incredibly small part--nestled at the back of his skull reminded him that he had a pair of wings much less sunken in the sand than his legs were. But still he trudged forward. He was so close now. What would be the point of switching tactics?

This one was working--wasn't it? It had gotten him so far. With still much further to go--but details, details. He had never had the sort of mind sharp enough to worry over pesky little details. Even when he had had things to worry over. That was what he kept Mayvalt for.

The side of Bezel's sword tapped his leg as he shambled along the cliffside. The air had heated the blade. The tip had begun to glow a soft orange from the flame-kissed metal. When it touched whatever remained of his pants, it smoked and fell away into tatters of aflamed fabric. 

The longer he walked, his muscles contracting and pulling as if on a wire, the more aware of it he became. That somewhere along the gravel, sand, and ash, there had been born two distant halves of Bezel. There was his toiling body. Burn, worn, scathed, vulnerable. And what remained was his mind, numb and restless behind his eyes. Bezel became the part behind his white skull. He withdrew away from the robotic actions of climbing up cliffs and dragging over sand.

He curled up inside his amygdala--because, empty of everything else, it had the most room for him. He licked at his wounds, as content as a snow-soaked dog laid in front of the hearthfire. It was better far away from the scorched earth and smog-filled air. Time continued its pitiful march, even for him there. He didn't know for exactly how much--that didn't change, at least. He only knew when it changed. 

When his limbs finally stopped. His body halted. The momentum of the sudden crash sent Bezel hurling back up into the limits of his skin, blinking from his dry eyes. It was uncomfortable to stretch to fit back into the wide barriers of his body. As if he was too large, made up of too much surface area compared to how much he really was. Like a shipping crate containing only a single red apple. Bezel was sure his conscious ran short, failing to fill down into the tips of his fingers or bottom of his feet. It made him suspicious of the reason he had been forced to return at all. If his mechanical body could function just as well without him--until the reason became painfully obvious. 

There was nowhere left to go. 

Bezel stood at the edge of a jagged cliff fifteen feet below the sky. From so near, he could hear the sounds of wind cutting along the top of the canon. Some if it even dared to creep towards him, thick with the scent of grass, wood, mud, and cool. 

So near--and so unreachable. He had picked his path incorrectly, too dazed and turned around to climb the right ladder. He knew it had to have been possible. He had seen Beasts escape--clearly, so had the wolves. But now he could not recall where. What combination of right steps would take him out of the pit? 

He fit his gaze across the chasm, chasing the walls with his keen golden eyes. From his place, he couldn't find a ledge that went near enough to the top. Finding one meant heading to the bottom, blindly trying routes until one came up successful. He steeled himself, preparing for the descent down. If that was the only way, then-

It is not.

Bezel might have flinched at the voice from the back of his head but he buried it in the action of spinning around on his heels. He had just been there himself--he knew there were no other occupants inside the soft pink of his brain. None worth listening to, he reasoned. He took one laboring step away from the cliff. 

Running out of time-. 

He pressed his jaws tighter, hoping the pressure would condense his squishy brain down into a cube of incoherent tricklings. His skin slid across the heated sand, finding the smooth volcanic rock beneath. His shoes were beyond saving, just scraps around his ankles. 

They need you. The whispering pleaded in a voice too mockingly close to Bezel's own. 

"Get out of my head." He hissed. "You don't think I know tricks when I hear them?" 

The voice said nothing--until Bezel dared another inch forward. 

If they die, it will be your fault. 

Bezel froze. His muscles curdled under his skin, turning to cement on his bones. He inhaled a single smokey breath and exhaled it sharply. It did nothing to fill his lungs. He turned his golden eyes inwards, to what was lurking under his numb flush. It would have been easy to blame someone else. His second eldest brother was the best at it--casting his voice across the thoughts of others to bend them to his bidding. As he had done in New York all those months ago, stirring unease and distrust into all of Bezel's Fauns. Or maybe it was the architect of disaster. Whoever had set them all on this twisted path. Whoever had taken Bezel's soul, had funded power into Mammon's gate--because strong as he was, Mammon couldn't conjure Beasts. It was a realization Bezel had found last summer. 

He had been the first to attempt a gate at Lake Seneca, driven by nothing. As he had been when creating all his other portals. Mayvalt had never understood him, reminding him time and time again that gates would only drain his endless pools of power quicker, bringing short his timeless life. If that had been the point, Bezel didn't know and wouldn't have admitted it. He opened gates pointlessly. They were little doorways only strong enough to allow the bravest Fauns or the most desperate wolves. 

Yet, it seemed that the gate at Lake Seneca had failed. It had snapped at too much of his power too quickly and had backfired into an explosive failure. Failure Bezel was quite accustomed to. It should have been the end. But a gate had been made there--Beasts had begun to rise. Things much larger than Bezel could support. 

His brother had offered him a confusing attempt of an explanation. That he had felt Bezel's attempt to open a portal and had joined his efforts, making a gate. A gate big enough to bring about Beasts. A gate that had two masters--or, two food supplies to fuel its massive energy. 

The story was tempting enough. Although never done before, Bezel had never been told that gates couldn't be made by two Ely. He had just assumed--based on one never having existed, but Ely were distrusting and egotistical. An excursion that bound their powers would have never been high on one's bucket list. 

So, if Mammon had bound himself to Bezel then a gate large enough to bring forth Beasts was possible. Except that Mammon had based his story on two risky bets. One, that Bezel's curse of unfeeling extended into his magic. It did not. Each gate Bezel made, he could feel in some hollow way. A slight awareness that something was tapped into his veins, drinking freely from his blood. And he felt no such leeching line from Lake Seneca.

Secondly, that Bezel wasn't stupid enough to travel through the gate. It might have seemed a certainty that Bezel would never leave New York, the possibility of feeling and loving again. But rationality could not be linked to a creature devoid of feeling any better than a rope could be tied around an oiled pig. Bezel had shattered his brother's magnificent deceit with one single action: following Ira Rule into Hell. Because no matter the loopholes applied--Bezel would not have fit through a doorway that he himself had part in making. 

Which only left the most difficult questions behind. Why had he lied? Why did Mammon wish to take credit for something he could not have done on his own--why did he want Bezel to share in it? Who had truly opened the gate? To that, there were only two possible answers. The First Prince of Hell--who had been missing for much longer than Bezel could recall. Or, the All-King. Not Bezel's father, of course, but whichever pesky sibling had stolen his place. 

Which, as much as it was a terrible idea to take council from Mammon, did align with the trick of stealing Bezel's soul. That had been Ely doing. Not any ordinary Ely, either. The only one with power enough to change to direction of the Heimrian soul was the All-King. 

Had it been the Ely's bidding that Bezel walk himself right back into Hell? In a way, the plan was perfect. He knew it had always ruffled their pristine white feathers to see him so content in Heimr. Bezel only wished it was that simple. If this had all been an elaborate trick to see him surrender a few properties along the Hudson, then the portal under Lake Seneca should have shut immediately after. But it had not. It hadn't ever even flickered. It was still holding--but for what purpose? More and more Beasts funneled up into the boiling waters each second it was maintained. 

Mammon had bent Legion to his will the last time, who could even guess what he had in mind this round? It was a disadvantage to hold onto the gate--not unless it served some purpose. Something more terrible than simply placing a demon back in Hell. 

All this just to distract from what you know you must do now. 

Which brought him back to his current predicament. That little whine pushing him towards the edge, begging for him to leap. Whoever it might have been, lapping at his weakest points. The First Prince, wherever he might be. Mammon. Maybe the All-King himself. 

You know that isn't true. 

"I know," Bezel admitted sourly. 

There was no one around, invisible or not. No one but Bezel himself and all the parts he had fragmented into over the centuries. 

Then you know I'm right, too. We're right.

Bezel forced his rigid limbs to carry him towards the edge, overlooking the foggy red world below. The ground was very distant. From this point, much further than the sky he reached impossibly for. 

"Mayvalt would have a field day with this newfound development. How easily I can be bent and broken into shards--she would grab a clipboard and start scribbling." But the voice didn't say anything and he didn't try to make it. It only existed for one simple reason; to take the blame for what happened next. 

Bezel's sword hand squeezed the handle of his curved blade before releasing. The sword hardly made a sound against the sand where it landed, at Bezel's feet. His fingers rose to the tattered remains of his once expensive suit and peeled apart the wet fabric laid against his freshly grown skin. He discarded the scraps, tossing it over the side of the jagged cliff. He figured littering wasn't the worst crime in Hell. 

Cold air from above pressed into his bare skin, raising goosebumps that came with no shuddering cold. Instinct, he recognized. A body sucking in oxygen it didn't need, exhaling chemicals it failed to produce. Just another leftover mechanism. In that same category, he filed away the following actions. Involuntary--necessary. 

He reached into the space between his ribs, just behind his heart. Where the knot was located. It was such a small thing--only the size of a grain of rice. And yet, sometimes it was the only thing strong enough to keep him alive. Bezel had been careless with his magic. Recklessly passing on blessings of illusions to his Faun, rashly opening gates. On one such night, he had accidentally burned through enough of his own magic to reveal his true eyes. If it had been his last held illusion, he might have faded on the spot. 

Luckily, there had been the grain of rice in the center of his back. It stung when Bezel pressed his fingers to it. Such attention was almost foreign. The magic had grown sharp due to neglect, allowed to fester in the layers of bone and nerves he had buried it in. Bezel had to pull on the invisible strings until he thought his spine might bend--and only then did it begin to unravel. 

The magic was cold. It spilled through his veins, frosting everything it touched as it raced up the lines of his back to the place between his flexed shoulders. The middle of his back burned, twitching as the magic sunk razor sharp teeth into the flesh there. Bezel almost wished it lasted hours. He almost wished it ached for years, like an old scar on rainy days, but the pain was brief. Maybe only half a second--if Bezel could be trusted to remember the duration of a Heimrian second. And then it was blissful nothing once more. Bezel's fingers twitched, creeping over his shoulder to touch. 

Slowly he slid his fingertips down his own smooth human skin. Moving down until he could feel his spine start at the base of his neck. He followed the bones down to--Bezel's stomach flipped as the top of his knuckles brushed the folded flesh. He yanked his hand away as if burned, dropping it to swing lamely at his side. He couldn't feel it now, but he remembered the weight of them dragging against his back. 

Bezel swooped to reclaim his sword. With arms that only shook because of instinct--cold from the wind above, maybe muscle strain from pulling himself higher and higher--he held the silver blade out before him. He angled the length of curved steel until his reflection played out on the mirror's surface. Just over the top of his tensed shoulder, he caught a flash of light. Bezel's eyes darted away from the sword, his teeth clenched tighter. 

When he sought for the little magic he kept safely stored in the muscles of his shoulder blades, as needing as a child in the dark searching for light, he found only bone and skin. 

Tension in his back reminded him why. It hurt to unfurl the curled limbs protruding from his spine. They had been neglected for centuries. Bezel wouldn't be surprised if they had atrophied there, rotten and sour. He could hear the sound of them as they uncurled. As wispy as silk, tugged where the thin skin caught in the fresh wind from the top of the canyon.

Bezel inhaled ash, exhaled smog, and leapt into the rusty red abyss. He plummeted downwards, eyes stinging from the smoke-choked wind. The limbs at his back stretched outwards, slicing through the air until a generous enough breeze caught, snagging painfully at the muscles along Bezel's spine. His sore limbs began to pump, beating against the scorched skies.

There was only one place to go now, along the cool currents towards Mojaere Mountain. Like the smell of salt curling up from the South Sea, all Bezel had to do was follow the winds.