"Do you trust him?" 

The question, put forth by a rasping cough that would have made the crackle of kindling seem wet by comparison, was the first noise to shatter the stone-still silence Ira had folded himself down into. Their damp cell had been dark and quiet since the last of Ira's echoing pleas had disintegrated on the acrid air. 

Ira shifted on his aching hips, stretched his cramped legs. He wiped the slime collecting on the skin of his palms off on the rough starchy fabric of his pants. "Wh-" his throat winced, choking his reply down with a restrictive vice-like squeeze. "What are you talking about?" He tried again. 

"The Prince," the other prince clarified. "He did not seem intent on challenging the Wolfking, do you not agree, companion?" 

"Bezel?" Ira swallowed thickly. "Bezel, uh. He's strange but he. . . he knows how important this is." 

"Important to you." Jaeha mused, his chittering laughter filling the cell. "You need Melchior. Does he?" 

Ira's heart flinched painfully behind the cage of bone in his chest. "Of course! It's a long story but Mel--well, he's the key to reclaiming a Vestige. That's, um, a type of weapon. The only kind of weapon that can stop the Second Prince from destroying my home, so, yeah. We need him." 

"I see," Jaeha barked slowly. His claws skittered across the stones, making a haunting sort of music. "Melchior can help you find this weapon? A weapon that would be the only thing strong enough to kill the Third Prince-" 

Ira's spine snapped rigid, his mouth popping open in protest. "Wait! No! I wouldn't-" 

"So that you can defend a home he has no stake in, correct?" Jaeha finished. 

"You're twisting it!" Ira argued. "You're making it sound like-" 

"As if the Prince, who does not wish to challenge the Wolfking, would have no real motive to do so?" Jaeha chittered. "I suspect Beom will be back soon. To take me to face my father and to escort you out of our land. If he does not kill you, that is." 

"Kill me?" Ira hissed. 

"Challengers are welcome, unharmed until the Wolfking makes it otherwise. But guests. . . well, companion. We do not get guests, you could say." Jaeha explained. 

Ira's fingers lifted to his ears, rubbing anxiously at his lobes and then to the space behind, where he could almost feel his pulse skipping in the side of his neck. "Bezel-" 

"Could be lone gone, companion. If he refused to issue a challenge, he would have been taken back into the Sikker." Jaeha said. 

"He wouldn't just leave me!" Ira disputed. 

"The Wolfking's guard are much better at twisting up Fetor than I, and yet I still managed to confuse you both for a time. He would never find his way back, that I swear." Jaeha's teeth clacked, echoing in the cell almost too well. As if he was only a mere centimeter away, jaws poised at the back of Ira's neck. 

Ira swallowed thickly, his head jerking atop his neck. "Bezel and I. . . it's complicated, sure, but he's not that kind of devil. I. . . trust him. He wouldn't leave me here for anything. He wouldn't run away from the Wolfking." 

"Fine," Jaeha continued in a oily purr, "then maybe he has already been killed by the Wolfking at your orders."

Ira crystalized, processing the whirling dizziness in his head at a painfully slow pace. His heart beat echoed up the veins in his neck, stirring the settling dust inside of his skull. The constant swirling fog made all thought near-impossible. Maybe that was why he asked, tremble annoyingly clear in his weak voice, "Bezel can't . . . he's a Prince." 

"The Wolfking is a king." Jaeha barked. 

"No," Ira whispered, his head heavy with disbelief, "I wouldn't have told him to--I wouldn't just send him into something he's not strong enough for." 

"Inside all things exist weakness." Jaeha growled. "The Third Prince of Hell does not have the strength inside that you do. Fighting for someone--that is a sort of power that the Prince lacks. It is how you will win this fight. It is the only way to save Melchior."

"What do I do?" Ira begged. 

"Challenge the Wolfking." Jaeha said simply. His oily slick voice contorted as if shrugging in the air. 

"Me?" Ira scoffed sharply. "I can't! You said so yourself. No one defeats the Wolfking." 

No one defeats the Wolfking--but he had sent Bezel anyway. Why had the unfairness of it not occurred to him until then?

Jaeha's paws shuffled audibly, his unbalanced three-pawed step paced back and forth in the dark, stone cell. "True, companion. No one could survive a death match against my king. Fortunate then that you do not have to."

"What?" Ira balked. 

"According to tradition, the challenger may change the rules of the game. My father does not always wish to kill those he could banish instead." Jaeha said.

"Oh," Ira whispered breathlessly, "how thoughtful of him." 

"Quite," Jaeha barked. "And advantageous for us. Do not enter a death match, challenger. Prevail against the Wolfking in honest combat and ask for Melchior as your prize." 

"I-" Ira's confession bloomed a sour crimson red in his cheeks, but considering the risk on the table he forced the words ahead anyway. "I'm not, like, the best fighter to be honest. I, um, actually don't win often. I don't. . . I can't win." 

"But you do win, companion." Jaeha huffed humorously, "or you would not have survived to stand beside me today."

"I can't!" Ira snapped. "That's why I asked Bez-" 

Ira's heart twisted painfully sharp. 

"Bezel. . . " his fingers pressed into the sides of his temple, smoothing at the fresh headache there, "he didn't want to fight the Wolfking," and Ira had ordered him to anyway, ". . . he didn't know that he could change the rules. But you--you knew this whole time. Why didn't you tell us? No, I mean. . . why didn't you tell Bezel? You waited until-" 

"I told you not to fight him!" Jaeha snapped, his teeth clacking sharply. "It was not pleasant for me to hear you plot to fight the Wolfking to the death, but I assumed the Prince would see reason if I gave him no choice. I did not wish for it to come this far, but I see no other way for us both to get what we want now that it has. You must challenge the Wolfking in place of your companion." 

"And what," Ira whispered, "is it that you want?" 

"The same as you." Jaeha vowed. "Melchior taken from this place. It is why I brought you along, why I allowed you both into our lands. You spoke his name. You spoke very fondly of him. We are much aligned in regard." 

Ira's breath hitched, stuttering from his throat and his shaking chest. "Angels, he's really here? And you--angels--you know him? Is he okay?" 

Jaeha might have nodded but the darkness of their cell prevented Ira from determining it, only that the wolf was silent for a pause. "I do. I am most familiar with Melchior. Enough to know that he came from a place far from us, a place that he is entitled to return." 

"Home." Ira said. 

"Perhaps," Jaeha agreed sadly, "but he needs help. He can not leave on his own. Not as long as the Wolfking keeps all our kind confined in the Sikker. His journey can not be complete. Staying here, he can not. He can not be allowed to stall his destiny. The. . .  Wolfking holds him back. You must make him see his place is beyond what the crown's reach allows." 

Ira's fingers ached where he locked them together, his hands twisting anxiously. "If I fight the Wolfking, I can see him? You swear?" 

"I vow it, make it heard between us. Should I be proven a liar you may take your piece of flesh." Jaeha swore. The words had weight to them. A hushed seriousness that only came with the sort of ceremonious vows given in the Cardinal's court. 

"I. . ." Ira hesitated, "what chance do I stand against him?" 

"What choice would you find yourself making if it came down to the life of the Third Prince or of Melchior Brisbane? If you had only one to save and keep close. Do you know which it would be?" Jaeha asked.

Ira's mouth opened--instinctually, before his thoughts could even reach the back of his throat. He stammered, mind finally catching up to his thoughtless tongue. When the answer he expected to be clear became murky and slipped through his fingers. "Why are you asking me a thing like that?"

"Because that is the choice you stand on the cusp of making. Would you feed the Prince to the wolves for Melchior? Would you abandon him here so that the Prince can be safe?" Jaeha barked softly.

"No! No I. . . I wouldn't hurt one for the other." Ira winced at the desperation so clearly sewn into each of his words.

Jaeha nodded expectantly. "I knew you would see it clearly. You must be the Wolfking's challenger."

"Well," Ira laughed dryly, "when you put it that way--makes it sound almost noble."

"Is it not?" Jaeha asked, head tilting.

Ira rubbed nervously at the base of his neck, his fingertips digging into the muscle supporting his nape. "I think most actions I take fall firmly under the 'stupid, reckless' category."

"All three things?" Jaeha suggested.

"All three things." Ira nodded. 

"You could turn back. Wait for the outcome to find you. Leave Bezel to the fate of this fight." Jaeha shrugged callously. 

Ira squeezed his eyes shut against the dark, bowing his head. This was his defining moment. It was the edge of a cliff, with churning waves far below. Jaeha was right that Bezel didn't want to challenge the Wolfking--that the motivation he had was cheap and unimportant. That Ira had no right at all to demand it of him. Did the ends justify the means? 

How could it not when Melchior was at stake? The cost was greater than Ira could bear to lose. Again. He refused. He wouldn't. He needed Melchior. Not because Melchior was the one who could save their home, or because Ira owed him a life debt to repay. Not for any reason beyond who he was: he was Melchior. And that was enough. Enough that Ira knew there was no risk worth taking, just as much as every risk worth taking. Ira inhaled. The air inside the stone prison was damp, cool. It soothed his twisting insides and cleared his mind. Melchior was precious--but his value was his own. It couldn't be paid with Prince blood. He opened his eyes with a firm resolve. 

"Take me to the Wolfking." He said. 

"Of course, companion," Jaeha purred into the dark. 

The wolf's unsteady steps echoed past Ira's shoulder. Whisps of rough fur scraped his cheek, driving a shiver down his spine in response. Blind, but unwilling to fall behind, Ira found his own footing and followed Jaeha back towards the mouth of the cell. The slick stone angled up. Ira strengthened his legs to keep from slipping back into the belly of the cage. Jaeha's breathing was soft, the only noise aside from the pulse in Ira's skin. 

"No one watches us above." He whispered between his jagged fangs. "Too quiet." 

"You mean they just left us down here?" Ira scowled. "Unguarded?" 

"They must have correctly assumed I had no where else to go." Jaeha huffed. "And a fight, much more fun to watch."

"Oh, great." Ira huffed sarcastically. 

Jaeha snorted as he moved forward. His tail tickled Ira's throat as he surged past the tangled roots forming their jail cell door. Ira followed, wincing as little wooden tendrils licked his skin and caught his yellow hair. Unwilling to slow, he forced himself forward. His scalp smarted angrily, his clothes were pulled back but left untorn. Ira broke free with a helpful twist of his shoulders, spilling out into the cool gray passageway. His eyes, which had had much time to blink helplessly in the pitch of the root cellar, took to the hall much quicker this time around. He could nearly see each crevice in the gray rocks. He could see the yellow glow of Jaeha's stare and the dark outline of his slumped shoulders, jagged where his fluffy coat had been disheveled by their brief stint. 

Ira's neck twinged as he swiveled each way to check for lurking guards--but just like Jaeha had promised, they were abandoned in the belly of the mountain. 

"There is a place challengers go to duel the Wolfking. No better place than there for us, companion." Jaeha whispered on a whine. "Likely to find the Wolfking there." 

"An-and Melchior?" Ira winced as his question slipped past his trembling lips. Each second of Jaeha's answering silence felt like another needle being plunged into his skin, but eventually the Ze'ev dipped his head in agreement. Ira exhaled painfully quick and swallowed his nerves down into the pit of his gut. "Alright, what are we waiting for?" 

Jaeha allowed him another agonizingly long second to collect his racing thoughts before he scampered down the path. Helpless to do anything else, Ira followed his less than cautious lead through the winding labyrinth beneath the mountain. Jaeha seemed clear on where he was headed--his pointed ears occasionally fluttered and his head remained low to the gray stone, noise twitching.  Maybe because he was sure no one would be near, maybe because being a prince afforded him special confidence, but their travel through the stones was quicker than it was quiet. 

Expecting their footsteps to draw attention sooner rather than later, Ira's fingers rested at the handles of his Ossein daggers. The kris he had appropriated-- or borrowed? Bargained for? The sword slung over his back felt hefty, stiff where his shoulders rolled against it. The strap of the sheath only aided to impair his movements and quicken his nervous pulse, unlike his Avernian clothing which flowed across his chest like rivers of silk, breezily gapping at the neckline. 

Ira scoffed at himself, shaking his head until it freed of thoughts of fabric. Was that all he could think of? Leathers and styles? Truthfully, maybe. Each time his mind turned to the darker sides of his head, his heart jabbed painfully. The way the material rested across his back was a much more pleasant use of brainpower than idly wondering if Bezel had been torn into by the Wolfking. The idea of not finding Melchior beneath the mountain was the scariest of all. 

Mercifully, before he could imagine himself into any more mental pits, the tunnels began to brighten. Jaeha's lopping gallop slowed, his body melded into the sides of the passage where the shadows were thickest. Ira imitated his approach, sliding his shoulders up against the jagged walls. High above their heads, lazily stirring glow worms pulsed out weak flashes of blue. They were reacting to a noise--a distant one echoing from the dark maw of a new chute carved into the rock towards the left of Ira. The braying of a pack. Ira strained to hear it. Growling barks and excited yelps sliced the air, earning brighter patterns of emerald green and rosy pink from the webs. 

"Ar. . . ena," Jaeha snarled carefully, "arena. . . down there. Strength to you companion, I do hope that you win this fight. Melchior's fate is dependent on it." 

"Thank you, Jaeha." Ira said thickly. "I, uh, I owe you quite a debt for bringing me this far. Even if this fight doesn't go my way--well. Still, just. . . thank you." 

Jaeha swallowed, his head bowing to hide his bright eyes. "Do not thank me, companion. There is still much moonlight until the night is finished. You may feel differently under tomorrow's sunlight. When everything is clearer." 

"I can't speak to tomorrow, Prince Jaeha T'kor, I can only say that I'm grateful now." Ira swore. 

"I do not deserve it. I have. . . not been so honest." Jaeha whispered. 

"I'm sure you had your reasons." Ira murmured, his fingers squeezing and releasing the wooden handles of his daggers. 

"None enough to assuage my own guilt," Jaeha answered stoically before his maw relaxed into a doggish grin. His tail gave a tentatively happy thump against the rocky carpet. "Hurry now, companion. We have wasted quite enough time."

Ira nodded again, his tongue suddenly too thick in his mouth to work out any vocal sort of reply around. He flexed his fingers over his Ossein blades and slipped forward into the grotto. Chilled gray stones swallowed him, urging him deeper into the heart of the mountain. Yelping whoops charged the glow worms above. They filtered away the darkness, bursting with yellow sparks like lively stars. The colors swirled every shade of ruby reds to ocean blues as the sound grew stronger, the howls closer and the barking clearer. 

"-bargaining is a devil trick!" A familiar rasp rattled the air, colored by sharp stabs of orange. "He must be given a chance in accordance to our ways!" 

Jaeha winced, his ears flattened to the back of his skull. "Beom." 

"I mean no disrespect, Wolfking, when I say this," another answered, voice warped where it bounced off the walls. Ira's pulse skipped, his eyes widened in the dancing dim. His footsteps quickened to carry him towards the mouth of the tunnel. "But is this whole 'fight to the death' business not a total cliché?" 

Beom snarled, sharp enough to shock the air and turn the worms purple in agitation. Ira ran, leaping past crevices in the uneven rock and jagged stones. Jaeha sucked in a surprised wince before rushing to stay at his heels. 

"Rise to the challenge the Wolfking poses or be treated as the unwanted guest you are, Devil." Beom roared. 

"Alright, alright," Bezel conceded dryly, "no need to get your hackles up. I was merely making conversation." 

The end of the chute was in reach. A carved arch where light leached in, streams of silver moonlight unstained by the bioluminescence of the worms. Ira's boots slapped against the stones, his fingers stretched outwards to catch the light. 

"Then, I challenge the Wo-" 

"Stop!" Ira shouted.

Ira soured past the threshold of the arena, arms windmilling over his head. He was sure he looked the perfect picture of insanity--he was even more sure that he didn't care. Maybe the Third Prince of Hell was a whole lot tougher than he was, his life longer and his skin thicker. Maybe the Wolfking was truly undefeated. Maybe Ira Rule was more stupid kid than holy knight. Maybe being noble wasn't worth being dead--but all Ira knew was that Jaeha was right. To him, Bezel wasn't some pawn to be carelessly slid forward across the board. He was only sorry it had taken him so long to see it. There was only one way left of fixing it. 

"I challenge the Wolfking!" Ira declared, his feet skidding to a shaky halt beneath him. 

Bezel spun on his boots, his golden eyes bright in the dim when they met Ira. Maybe the shock in his gaze was a little more genuine than Ira had ever seen it. "What are you-"

Ira broke the stare he had fixed to him. He found Beom next, looking similarly astonished beside Bezel. His glossy black fur shimmered under the pools of starlight dripping in through the yawning roof of the cave--well, maybe cave was inaccurate since they weren't so underground anymore. Dangling roots wove together to form a loose canopy across the top of the opened ravine, giving enough space for Ira to see the full moon and a selection of dazzling stars. 

The rocky walls were jagged at large enough intervals to support crowds of Ze'ev from the bottom to the top. Groups perched themselves at the edge of ledges, in the dark shadows beneath, and everywhere in-between. Each one watched with wide eyes and eagerly swishing tails. If they wanted a show--Ira was fit to provide it. 

"I challenge the Wol-" Ira squeaked as he was grabbed. Cold palms wrapped around his shoulders, shaking him until his teeth rattled. 

"Would you stop saying that?" Bezel hissed catishly. "You're going to get yourself killed!"

Ira pulled back, not enough to leave the reach of his arms but enough to stop the Prince from shaking him silly. "I was wrong." He said once he was sure opening his mouth would accomplish something more than biting his own tongue. 

Bezel blinked cautiously, his oil dark eyebrows raised emphatically. "And now is the time for such a revelation?" 

"Do you remember what the Cardinal said to me before we left for Hell?" Ira asked, chin tilted upwards in an attempt to meet the Prince's gaze, as far above his own as it was. 

"Not in any specifics," Bezel answered honestly. "Was it important?" 

"He said he wanted me to be the Cardinal because I was the kind of commander who could order soldiers to their death." Ira answered. "I didn't realize that I had done just that until Jaeha reminded me. I don't want to win by cowering behind a shield of bodies, Bezel. I'm tired of winning on luck and cowardice. That isn't how I'll save Melchior, and it isn't how we'll defeat the Second Prince." 

Bezel groaned and rubbed his fingertips against his temples, "again, I ask. And now was the time for this revelation?" 

"Enough!" Beom snapped. "Do we have a challenger or not?" 

The Ze'ev swarming the ring of the arena barked and howled, teeth snapping and spittle flying. The air was electric, full of their excitement and blood lust. 

"No!" Bezel snapped as Ira shouted, "yes!" 

"Darling," Bezel winced, "I appreciate the thought, I really do, but this is serious. This is-" 

"I trust you, Bezel." Ira interrupted. His hands found Bezel's, his warm fingers tangling around the cold skin of his wrists. He squeezed lightly, for only a moment, before letting him go. Ira shrugged his shoulders enough to slip free of the kris' sheath. With steadier hands than he thought he could have managed, he extended it out between them, offering it back to the Prince he had taken it from. "As crazy as that sounds. . . I trust you. So just. . . can't you try to believe in me, too?" 

Stricken was maybe not the most accurate word to explain the blank look painted across the Prince's dark features, but it was as fitting as Ira could manage. His golden eyes were wide, his lips parted to display a hint of pearly white fang. His hesitation, although hardly seconds long in reality, seemed eternal. "Ira," he breathed out, his voice a very faint thing between them. He inhaled woodenly, his head bowing in defeat. "Alright."

Ira could hardly stop the comical widening of his own eyes, even if he had tried. "Al-alright?"

Bezel wrapped his fingers around the fluid leather of his kris' container, accepting it gently from Ira's frozen stiff grasp. "Alright isn't enough?" Bezel asked, eyebrows lifted. "How about good luck, then? Oh, no, sorry. You said you weren't relying on luck anymore." 

Ira found himself laughing softly at the earnest apology in Bezel's rambling. 

"I'll take some luck." Ira agreed with a nervous grin. He would certainly need it. He gave a stiff nod to Beom, who had taken to impatiently huffing. The Ze'ev was stationed near enough that Ira could almost feel the heat of his breaths on his hip. "I challenge the Wolfking." 

Beom tilted his head, good ear lifting towards the sky, in confusion. His eyes flickered in-between the two, and then towards the mouth of the tunnel where Jaeha was leaned against the rock wall. His head straightened then--as if a silent understanding had been passed from prince to guard. 

"State your terms, challenger." Beom rasped.

The Ze'ev lining the ravine walls and the arena floor pinned Ira with their stares. The occasional heckling bark shot out, echoing in-between the stone walls. Ira's neck ached to accommodate the path of his jerking twists. His eyes roamed up and down, side to side, and each centimeter in the middle. He saw Ze'ev of all colors from the richest cream white to the darkest midnight blues, eyes all shade of brown to green, teeth as sharp as daggers and as crushing as stones. They looked back at him with just as much scrutiny, but the one wolf he ached to see never appeared. No beacon of moonlight illuminated him, no sudden eye-catching movement revealed him. 

Ira's throat tensed painfully, working away the knot choking his vocal cords. "We fight until first blood drawn." 

Beom licked his jagged teeth. "Wise, but you will still not win. You will merely lose with your life intact." 

Sharp chittering laughter and whooping howls echoed across the ravine. Ira grit his teeth until they creaked. His shoulders, which had risen to cup his ears, trembled under the thin material of his shirt. 

Beom leapt forward predatorily, his tail wagging in wide sweeping motions. "I see you shaking, little rabbit. Are you frightened?" 

"N-" Ira bristled. 

"No." The interruption echoed across the ravine, and with it came a silence heavy enough to fit in a cathedral. 

The laughter was cut, the barking hushed. In droves, the Ze'ev began to fall. They lowered their chests towards the ground, their heads bowing. Beom followed example eagerly, lowering until his nose touched rock. Jaeha inhaled sharply, sinking backwards into the dark of the tunnel like a child caught coloring on the dry wall. From the blackest reaches of the cavern, moving gracefully forward through the parting crowds, was a demon much larger than any other inside the ravine. He strolled forward with his head held high, pride radiating from his golden brown fur like jewels. The moonlight caught on his left, sparkling where two golden hoops had been hung in the Ze'ev furred ear. The beast lifted his head, his green eyes narrowing in challenge. Ira couldn't help but trace the outline of scars where they ran, swooping from the edge of the wolf's cheek down his throat. As if someone had tried to carve it out. Ira's eyes could only see so much. The input seemed to go nowhere, slammed out from filling his head. He had spent so long chasing memories, seeing ghosts in empty corners, that it was hard to know that he had been wrong. That he had changed. That he'd grown up while Ira wasn't looking.

"That isn't fear," the wolf smirked, "it's anger." 

Everything fell away, bleeding into the background. The stirrings of the Ze'ev filling the air became hardly more that white noise. Bezel's cold presence was distant, displaced. Ira's own heartbeat became a rapids rushing behind his ears. 

"You're. . ." Ira whispered painfully, "it's you. . . you're the Wolfking." 

"Hey, Kitten." The Wolfking said. 

"Mel." Ira exhaled.