Night was hardly a shade darker than daylight had been. With the trees so thick, sunlight seemed to make no great difference at all. Bezel only took note of Ira ahead of him, noticing that his stumbles had begun to win out over his smooth steps. Exhaustion or his Heimrian eyes struggling in a way Bezel couldn't understand, he didn't know. But still, he offered they stop anyway. When Ira puffed up his chest--lips already parting for some biting denial--Bezel quickly added that he was feeling fatigued and slumped against the nearest tree for emphasis. 

Jaeha's piercing golden-green gaze swept from Prince to Bishop, and then up and down as he gave a stern nod of agreement. "I will give us a place." He rasped in his vaguely human voice. Before Bezel could ponder the meaning of that, Jaeha loped off to the left on his three steadier legs. Ira followed, although the pinch of his eyebrows indicated he was lost in the meaning just as much as Bezel. 

Jaeha led them deeper into a tangle of gray-yellow trees. He lowered to his belly and crawled his way beneath the underbrush--Ira followed after a muttered, "angels," and Bezel silently echoed the disdain as he lowered to his own hands and knees and slipped under the grabbing branches. The extra-large Vestige strapped to his back, as well as the travel pack, made the movement slow and awkward. When he finally managed it, Ira was waiting on the other side with a teasing smirk across his lips. 

"I can take it," he offered unsurprisingly, "if it's too much for you."

"Yeah, thanks." Bezel agreed cheerily. As Ira blinked his wide eyes in shock, Bezel seized the moment to pull the travel pack from his shoulders and toss it to him. Ira caught it with an exhaled, "omph!" and glared sourly but didn't protest as he tossed it over his shoulder. The pack hid Bezel's kris from easy view. Which was both appreciated and somewhat disquieting. 

"Companions," Jaeha barked into the dim, "a place for us." 

Bezel brushed past the still-pouting Bishop to meet Jaeha at the point he was positioned further into the scraggly trees. The wolf had found a narrow clearing just beyond the tangled undergrowth, where the elevation had become pitchy and curled rocks stopped the advancement of the dense forestry. He nodded his head excitably before slipping down into the gray crevices. Bezel paused for Ira to catch up, all the while tracking the movement of his golden hair with his acute sight. The knight approached with a cautious step, his palms held up to his sides to guide his descent into the cool gray stones. Bezel followed last, forming the wall that blocked off the mouth of the tight channel from the rest of the Sikker. 

Jaeha's mismatched steps echoed as he guided them down into the rocks. Ira's breathing was slightly louder, likely to his proximity, as it bounced off the walls. The air had an earth-deep chill. Rich with the scent of damp stones, moss, and iron. Jaeha led them a distance from the opening, until they were all sufficiently sunk into the shadows, and then stopped very unceremoniously inside of the shaft. He twisted in the narrow space afforded to them and flopped down onto his belly with a yawning huff. "No reason to go deeper," he answered the unspoken question, "only risks in going deep." 

Ira didn't protest, so neither did Bezel. Ira lowered himself slowly to the cave floor, adjusting until the pack fell from his shoulder with a plop. Bezel stayed standing, his eyes trained on the way they had come. From this distance, the slit in the cavern walls was minimal enough that the entire world was comprised only of the tunnel. 

"We should take shifts." Ira whispered into the dusk. "Like watches." 

"It's fine." Bezel dismissed. "You two sleep, I'll watch." 

"It's fine," Ira doubly dismissed, "I'm not going to sleep much, so you can." 

"I don't sleep." Bezel stated firmly. 

"Me neither." Ira argued. 

"I do." Jaeha barked, tail thumping. "So, if my companions are so content to go without, I shall sleep double for us all." He curled into a smaller ball and closed his glowing eyes. For a few soft flutters of his chest, the wolf was quiet, and then he murmured between his jagged teeth. "Wake me soon, I will place a Fetor. It is too great a risk to stay so long in one place without it." 

"Will we be fine without one?" Ira asked, nervously glancing back the way they had came.

Jaeha grunted in a way that suggested it was remiss to go without one but said,  "No choice. I am. . . very tired, companion. I have exhausted much of my Fetor. I am not quite used to creating so much. My kind usually do not make so many borders. We tend to settle in a place, but I have been using my Fetor to move great distances." 

"It's getting weaker." Bezel confirmed. "Earlier, when you had us lost, there was a moment when clarity came over me. Your Fetor became less concentrated and became the very trail I used to find you." 

Jaeha shifted nervously but bowed his head in humble acknowledgement. "Much thanks for making me aware of this flaw, companion. I still have much to learn, it seems. I had not even considered how that hunter had stayed to firmly fixed to my trail." 

"Well," Ira breathed. "Then we'll make do." 

"Wake me soon." Jaeha said in agreement. 

"Got it." Bezel nodded. 

Apparently satisfied, Jaeha fell more permanently silent after that. Ira adjusted on the cold cave floor, shifting until the kris across his back stop inhibiting his slouch. Bezel tried to look unaffected--no, he was. He was unaffected. It was just stange was all--to see someone else in possession of his sword. Ira's eyes turned to him. Bezel snapped his away, unfortunately too slowly if Ira's sharp inhale was any indication. 

"You know," Ira tested, casting a weary glance at the wolf. Jaeha didn't stir, and so he continued, "I'm still confused about some stuff." 

Bezel hummed, as non-committedly as he could summon. His eyes stayed fixed to the slight opening further down the chute. 

"I prefer to have my arguments and then be done with them." Bezel said into the gray stones, but since they couldn't answer, Ira did. 

"We're not arguing. We didn't argue! We just had. . . different views." Ira muttered bitterly. He paused. They remained in quiet, listening as the faint trail of his voice finally faded off into a distant echo. Then they sat in that new stillness, until finally, Ira muttered a defeated surrender. "Okay, fine. We argued." 

Bezel snorted his cold amusement. "I don't know why my sword interests you so much." 

"Because it's odd." Ira muttered. As he spoke, he pulled the kris from it's leather hide and held it in his hands, staring down at the curved blade like hidden in the carvings were stories and songs he'd heard before. Which was likely nothing more than Bezel's own creative interpretation. Since, in this much dimness, Ira was undoubtedly struggling to even see his hands held in front of his weak Heimrian eyes. 

Bezel shrugged. "It's not European." 

Ira wrinkled up his nose in distaste and scoffed. "That's not what I mean! The sword itself isn't odd--or, well, fine I'd never seen a kris before but--no, it's you." 

"Me?" Bezel repeated, head tilted lazily judgemental. He tore his eyes from the aperture of the tunnel and lowered himself to the cold stone beneath his boots. He stretched his legs across the chute so that he blocked the channel with the length of his body. His back he rested against the smooth stone walls, pressing back just enough to keep his fidgeting appendages from stirring the cloak draped over his spine. 

"Has anyone ever told you that you're. . . strange?" Ira murmured. The question might have been rude by nature, but Ira's soft demeanor was anything but. For once, the Bishop seemed almost docile. 

"More than once or twice." Bezel admitted. "I know that I unnerve others. Even the Faun that I looked after--they, uh, didn't really like me." His quelled the edges of the embarrassment that the words begged him to display. Unnecessary, he thought, to put any more weakness on stage when the night was too dark to see anything--for Ira to see anything. The squint of his Heimrian eyes made that all the more obvious. 

"I thought before that all of your. . . you-ness, I guess, was on account of being a Prince." Ira admitted on a whisper. "But then I met the Fifth Prince and she was. . . unique, certainly, but she wasn't anything like you. For one, her He-Goats seemed to like her. Even in such a sad place, watching as she refused to engage, they at least seemed charmed by her." 

"Thanks," Bezel quipped sarcastically. 

Ira flinched, his features drawing together apologetically even in the pitch. Thinking himself invisible, Ira still reflected his emotions in quick bursts across his face. Because they weren't--they were real. Unlike Bezel's. The reminder was somewhat unwanted, he realized. 

"I didn't mean that as an insult. Maybe, uh, maybe the opposite of an insult." Ira balked. He tightened his grip on the curved handle of the kris cradled in his lap. 

Bezel leaned forward curiously, hands balanced on his flattened legs. "Meaning?" 

"Angels," Ira breathed with a rushed stutter of his pulse. "Just, well, it's easier to do nothing and be accepted for it than to try so hard and be rejected anyway. Isn't it?" 

Bezel's wings twitched against his spine. He disguised the sound of their rustle with a quick clearing of his throat. "I, uh, I see. . . are you asking me?" 

"Who better?" Ira gave a self depreciated laugh that told more than any words could. 

"Oh," Bezel nodded. "This is about your progeny." 

"No!" Ira denied hurriedly. "Uh--okay, I see the similarities, but really this is about you." 

"I'm not this interesting, Ira." Bezel promised with an shuddering exhale. 

"You are to me." Ira said, soft as silk. Then louder, more intentioned, "Be-because I'm a knight of the Sect of Saint Francis. I mean more than a knight. . . if we survive this and make it back I'll be the Cardinal." He hesitated, as if the words made no sense, and then continued. "And that would make you my charged Prince so-" 

"Then you'll have an easy reign." Bezel chuckled humorlessly. "I don't think there's a way out of this for me." 

The sound of Ira's Heimrian heart thudded louder in the dark, his alarm as clear as if he had shouted it. "Are you going to di-" 

"No," Bezel quickled amended. "No, I won't die. I just have no way home--not home. New York. Once we shut this gate, that's it for me. . . I can't use my own gates to travel so." 

"What about the First Prince?" Ira suggested--seemingly before his thoughts could convince him otherwise since he tagged on a hasty, "not that you should come back or anything--I guess that's kinda what my Sect has been trying to accomplish for centuries--but I'm just. . . making conversation? Nevermind. Just forget I said anything. I know the First Prince is missing. Mayvalt told me." 

Bezel sighed wearily, his head rolling back to toss his golden eyes towards the curved rock above them. "I suppose if my brother could be found, maybe I could convince him in some way to let me go back but I fear, or no I suspect, that it would be largely pointless." 

"Pointless?" Ira echoed. "You don't want to go back to New York?" 

"I. . . " Bezel swallowed, knocking free the lump of tangled words that had been petrifying for sometime in the base of his vocal cords, "I had only one reason for staying in Heimr and that reason was. . . removed from the equation." 

Ira's heart pittered. Nearby, Jaeha's fur rustled as he rolled across the stone sleepily. Wind whistled at the opening of their tunnel, carrying in the scent of leaf rot and coming rain. Bezel squeezed his eyes shut and spoke into that passing darkness, hoping that everything he revealed would be washed away by the first oranges of daybreak. 

"I was cursed." The words were. . . easier to say once he had. They began to fall faster, eager to be seen. "For my sins during the war. Funny, I think, that all the blood I spilt became inconsequential. When I was finally punished, it was for the only good thing I ever did in those hundreds of years of pain and terror. Or, second good thing, since I found Mayvalt during that time, too. I fell in love with a Heimrian soldier." 

Ira's pulse jackhammered against his ribs. 

"That surprises you?" Bezel guessed, nodding at his chest like Ira would be able to see him or then understand that he was listening to his pulse. "That a Prince and a knight of the Progeny could be important to each other?" 

"No," Ira croaked awkwardly. As unconvincing as his voice was, Bezel could hear the truth of it reflected in his heartbeat. "I know what you mean. . . I-" he hesitated, pulse laboring, "I have Melchior so. . ." 

"Then you understand." Bezel murmured. 

"I do," Ira whispered. 

"There was a faction of Fauns at the time--before they became Fauns, really. These were Satyrs. They're, uh, more magical? I'm not sure how to describe it in Heimrian terms." Bezel stumbled. 

"You're doing fine." Ira laughed softly. 

Bezel nodded and continued, "they didn't have the power to beat me--no one really does. I don't mean that egotistically, Mayvalt always says I sound egotistical but it was true. It was true at the time. I've become weaker since then so-" he shook his head and forced himself forward, "but the rangale--the Faun--they were smarter. Knew better than to challenging me directly. They took Ha-. . .him. They took him to the other knights, and then they sought me. They said they would tell me where and to which Heimrians he had been returned if I was properly punished. I thought I was smarter, too. I thought I could keep us together if I. . . so I chose my own punishment. I gave up a part of myself--a stupid little thing that I thought I would be fine without--and placed it inside of him instead. And I suppose, most ironically, that it worked exactly as I had intended it. I went chasing after him, following the trail linked between us. I arrived just in time to watch him be burned to death by his fellow Heimrians. Because of me. Because my touch . . . or my love. . . because I had corrupted him in their eyes. I ruined him and he was slaughtered. Just as I did to my mother. My presence is the punishment, Ira Rule, it is as good as damnation."

The silence was cutting. 

"That piece you gave up?" Ira pressed. "What was it?" 

"Put simply?" Bezel laughed--humorlessly. Always humorlessly. "My soul." 

Ira's breath flinched in the space between them. "Then when he--then you lost it?" 

"For a time but-" Bezel scowled, reminding himself as petty rules sent by an even pettier All-King. "I can't talk about it." 

Ira's following laugh was much brighter than any Bezel could have concocted, even as dry and cold as he delivered it. "I know about the rules. I know about my Heimrian gift, too. Mayvalt, again." 

Bezel creased his eyebrows. "She told you?" He questioned. Motor mouth as she was, it couldn't be completely overlooked that she would break one of the laws set by the All-King. 

"Don't blame her." Ira quickly added. "It was an accident. We. . . got into this little fight about Ossein and just--anyways, I know. So you can tell me." 

Bezel surrendered more easier than he perhaps should have. "When he reincarnated for the first time--I felt it. It was like I had suddenly come alive again. Pain was painful. Joy was infectious. Slights became annoying, food filling, water quenching. I could feel them, too. On the other end of this rope between us. I chased it halfway across the globe--and I found them."

Ira leaned forward, tensed and waiting for perhaps a better story than Bezel had to give. 

"I found her but I. . . well, I didn't know what to do. It was my fault. And this was her new life. A chance to be free of me but I'm weak, I suppose. And so, so, so very selfish. And I wanted her. So I became close to her--but she didn't remember me. I knew that. I knew she wouldn't. And I could not tell her. I couldn't tell her a lot of things. Which, she could feel. So she rejected me--which I deserved. I left. I wasn't there when she needed me, when a sickness swept her village. I only knew the moment she had gone again. When the pain of missing her with every breath suddenly evaporated." Bezel ran his fingertips over his chest, where it was cold and empty inside. "I waited. And then there it was again. Never for long. Never in the way we first had. But I suppose--punishments are meant to be painful and I was the fool who thought I could not be hurt." 

Ira's breathing was uneven. "You kept following. . . your soul? All over the globe? What if--what if they didn't love you back?"

"Then I was a friend." 

"What if they hated you?" 

"Then I was an enemy to be rivaled, a fight to look forward to." 

"What if they loved someone else?"

"Then I wished for their happiness." 

"But that was your only chance to. . .to-" Ira bit off his choked revelation.  

"Ira," Bezel sighed, "I can't force someone to love me--not when I understand so completely why it's impossible. To me. . . my Soul was my everything. All my pain, joy, happiness, hunger, and desires. But to my Soul I am just a man--a man who is lying because he is not a man at all. Could you fall in love with such a creature?"

Ira was stone silent for so long Bezel began to worry that his question had placed him in a difficult spell. 

"It was rhetorical, darling. No need to worry your pretty little head." 

"O-of course." Ira choked. "I was just thinking--not about dating you! I-I mean about all you said and--angels! Uh, wait you said that the reason had been taken but. . . have you given up? On your Soul?" Ira squaked awkwardly. 

"Would you classify this as surrender? I don't know. I guess, since I have left Heimr behind with no hope of returning, it might look that way." Bezel admitted. "But truth be told, I think I've just been bested."

"How?" Ira urged. 

"Mammon told me that my Soul had returned, but that our youngest siblings had interrupted the natural flow of Heimrian souls and had placed mine under their guard." Bezel explained. "And yet, even knowing they're in existence, I feel nothing."

"Nothing?" Ira echoed. His blue eyes widened to be ocean big in the cavern. "Wait--you! You feel nothing! That's- it makes so much sense now. That's what I've been feeling from you all this time! Nothing! Angels, that's why you're helping me without a reason! And why you always seem like you're just pretending." 

Bezel lifted his oil-black brows and then enunciated the movement with a scoff of breath. "I thought I was doing pretty well."

"You're terrible." Ira laughed. "You were like Mister Prince Charming for that waitress back in Kett. All wide blinking eyes, fluttery lashes. I thought you got bodysnatched--or had a concussion or something." Ira's radiant laughter echoed in all directions through the tunnels. Jaeha shifted but remained asleep. 

"Was not!" Bezel protested. 

"Were to!" Ira giggled, shushing himself with the press of his palms to his lips. 

"Well it worked." Bezel deflated weakly. 

"It did." Ira said. Bezel accepted it as the olive branch it was clearly intended. 

"I will do better." Bezel offered. "To make the changes between moods go smoother." 

"Oh, c'mon," Ira smirked, "I was just messing around. You, uh. . . you're doing fine. If that's something you want--but you don't need to keep up this act around me. I actually feel better now knowing that you weren't just tricking me." 

Bezel pondered that, rolling his words around in his mind for a moment, but as the meaning continued to evade him he finally cracked. "It doesn't bother you? That I'm. . . nothing." 

Ira cringed backwards. His fingers tightened over the kris momentarily. "You're not nothing, Bezel. You're just you. A you who feels--or doesn't--differently than I do. But that doesn't make you a worse you to be." 

"Ah," Bezel said mutely. 

The silence was thicker after the last of their words faded. Thicker--but no heavier. It was a warm kind of silence, born from a natural lull of conversation. Bezel had just begun to think that maybe the rest of their night would pass as comfortably when Jaeha stirred. He came awake in a startled snap, his teeth gleaming in the trickles of moonlight afforded to them at the back of the tunnel. Bezel shoved himself to his feet, recognizing the spiked panics jolts of Jaeha's pulse. Ira was the last to rise, only leaping to his feet when the echoing claw-scrapes announced that Jaeha had begun to limp back towards the entrance of the tunnel. His furry hide brushed past them both. 

"Jaeha?" Ira hissed into the dark. "Are you leaving?" 

The wolf paused, offering up a comforting whine in his wolf-tongue, maybe then realizing no one present spoke wolf he added. "I scent newcomers." 

Bezel took a testing glance of the cool night breeze, but if there was anything beyond the scent of rotting leaves and damp stones, it was lost to him. 

"Mahan?" Bezel asked. 

Jaeha shook his head with a growl. "No. Tricky--this scent full of. . . misdirection."

"Wolves?" Ira suggested. 

Jaeha whined again and crept towards the opening of their cave. "Waited too long to place a Fetor. I must now."

"What if it's not strong enough yet?" Ira asked. "What if they just use it to find us?" 

"All possible." Jaeha shivered. He sunk lower and lower, pressing his furry stomach to the bottom of the ravine they'd sheltered in. "Perhaps we run?" 

"Maybe we can wait it out?" Ira suggested with a lighthearted shrug. "I mean if it's wolves--okay? Right? We'll run into wolves sooner or later-" 

"No!" Jaeha yelped--his bark lanced across the air, forcing a pained wince from himself and Ira. "I mean," he whined, "I mean. . . this is. . . not wise. Best not caught by. . . by them, companions." 

"Them." Bezel echoed. "Jaeha, you know them. You know who's close. Don't you?" 

Jaeha whimpered, his doggish tone brimming with reproach. "I suspect I am being followed by the-" a snappish snarl followed, "-or the Wolfking's Guard. It would be not in my companions best interest to be caught. Guard are ruthless. Kill first: facts later. They follow the word of the Wolfking without question. Will do anything to bring me back to the Wolfking." 

"But we're already going!" Ira insisted. 

Jaeha winced and shook his head. "No chances will be taken. Will not rest until I am back. They may kill you both, companions, to eliminate distraction from my journey home."

"Why?" Bezel found himself asking. Jaeha turned at the mouth of the tunnel, fixing Bezel with his shining golden-green eyes. Bezel met his gaze--and realized there was a better question. "Who are you?" 

Jaeha's pink tongue flickered past his lips, curling around the jagged edges of his fangs. "I am just Jaeha." 

"The Wolfking seems quite invested in you just Jaeha." 

Jaeha lifted himself to his three paws and turned away. "I have decided. Best we pull ahead." 

Without waiting for agreement, Jaeha slipped from the ravine and sunk back into the yellow-gray trees. Ira hissed one of his colorful Heimrian curses and stumbled off after him, pitching forward uncertainty through the dimness. Bezel swooped to reclaim the travel pack Ira had forgotten--again--and followed them back into the endless forest.