Bezel didn't mind awkward silence. Not that it felt particularly silent (or awkward) anyway, not to him. His ears were still ringing with the insults Mayvalt had slung at him. She'd screamed at him until she'd run out of curses, and until his skull was full of fuzz--more than it had been to begin with--but he had never relented. He'd left her behind. 

Something that maybe the boy next to him regretted more than he did. His heart was thumping harder than a rabbit's, singing his nervousness for Bezel to hear. He picked at the fabric of his pants, he tapped his fingers against the car door, he shifted his hips every three minutes in the passenger seat. Restless, burning up beneath Bezel's scrutiny. Bezel was content to leave him that way, but the boy broke first. He cleared his throat and dragged his shaking palms through his hay-yellow hair. 

"Why couldn't we bring Mayvalt?" Ira asked. He had a habit of speaking to the space between them. His gaze grew distant, his tone indifferent, as if he was only entertaining the dust floating around the interior of the car. 

Bezel answered anyway. "Why? Am I less fun without her?" 

"Yes." 

"Ouch," Bezel winced playfully. "Hurtful." 

"Somehow," Ira muttered, "I don't think you mean that." 

He was right. Bezel couldn't be hurt by words or by steel--but Mayvalt was flesh and blood, Ossein bone and sensitives that Bezel had not yet mastered his way around. It was for that reason that she had been left behind. She was a weakness--his weakness. One centimeter of gooey pink flesh beneath his impenetrable shell. Her death wouldn't sadden him, but it would certainly be inconvenient. 

"She has her own task." He answered instead. As tactless as he was, he knew the Bishop beside him would flare up if he suspected Bezel didn't trust him. Not that that meant the Bishop trusted him in return--but well, Heimrians were like that. 

"Convincing the He-Goats to give up their blessings and go back to Hell?" Ira guessed, a small shrug rising in his thin shoulders. 

"It's a sacrifice beyond anything you could imagine--giving up their entire way of life. Only Mayvalt could convince them." The atmosphere inside the car frosted at those words, turning from merely stale to outright hostile. Bezel winced with his shoulders, sparing a slight glance at the Bishop beside him. "You don't like them." 

Ira made a show of looking down at his black attire, pausing to trace the red trim of his coat with his ocean-blue eyes, and scoffed. "Isn't that just implied? An occupational hazard?"

"You don't mind Mayvalt." Bezel pointed. To pass the time, his fingers thrumming against the cold leather of the steering wheel. His hollow golden eyes drank in the sights of the heavy New York traffic, absorbing the red tail lights and pedestrians slipping around the sleek black body of his car.

"She's. . . different." He muttered. 

"And doves are just pigeons." 

"No." He corrected, his tone as sharp as rock salt. "She really is different. She saved my life. She fought with me."

"Ah." Bezel nodded. "It's about that then. Last summer."

"Isn't everything?" Ira scoffed. He perched his elbow against the inside of the car door and made his knuckles a bench for his chin.

"It does seem that way, doesn't it?" Bezel sighed. "You blame the Faun for not fighting." 

"Is it that obvious?" He mumbled, folding in on himself against the passenger seat of Bezel's car. 

"You've made no attempts at subtlety." Bezel agreed with a small and fictitious laugh.

The Bishop shrugged apologetically, a gesture that seemed just as genuine as one of Bezel's best imitations. "You're right. I don't like them--I do blame them. It isn't fair. They want New York, but they let us die to save it. They didn't help. They probably wish more of us had been wiped out." 

"They don't want New York. They just enjoy the view. I doubt they had ill intentions. They likely had no intentions at all. Fauns are emotional, cowardly. To join a fight that they could otherwise avoid--well, it's not like them." Bezel said, shaking his head. "And no one can own a realm. It's just a place. So, if they want to live here, you have no right to stop them, either." 

"This place is my home." Ira snapped. "It's where everyone I love is--it's the only place they can be. Your brother is threatening to destroy it--and those demons are sitting by watching it happen with smirks on their faces--and it just isn't fair!"

"No one is smirking." 

"No one is helping either." He scoffed. 

"I'm helping." Bezel groaned. "Mayvalt is helping." 

"Why?" The Bishop scowled.

"My brother killed someone important to her. She wants revenge." He answered. 

"And you?" The Bishop pressed. "What do you want? You didn't seem at all up for this plan--and now all of the sudden, you're the president of team Save-The-World?" 

The words stung like nettles against his iron-strong hide. Bezel shrugged to dislodge their thorns.

"What do I want?" He whispered.

Right, want. Desire, need, ache for, bleed for, die for. What drove him? What hardware could operate the heartless husk of his robotic body? There was nothing beneath the thin layers of his skin--no wires sending messages to the computer core of his being. There were only veins of stilled blood, singing with the last few drops of magic. It did not carry to his unbeating heart. It just sat cooling and congealing beneath the surface of him. He wanted for nothing. Because he knew he deserved even less. 

"I don't want anything." He said finally, truthfully as he could. "I'm helping because it's the right thing to do. And you're right--this plan is awful, and we're likely all going to die."

The Bishop snorted and slumped back in the faux-leather seats. "Angels, thanks for the boost of confidence, Prez. And what is that even supposed to mean? It's the right thing to do? Because it's your big brother knocking over everyone's sand castle? Do you feel responsible?" 

"Mammon has always been reckless. No, his actions are his own." Bezel answered, offering a weak shake of his head.

"Then?" The Bishop pressed, clearly dissatisfied with the answer.

"I. . . don't know." Bezel shrugged. "Because someone has to." 

"That's a stupid reason to risk your life." He chuckled darkly.

"My life has been quite boring for quite a long time." Bezel muttered. 

Ira twisted in his seat, fixing him beneath his softened ice stare. "Well," he sighed into the space between them, "that's an even dumber reason. Buy a yacht if you're having a mid-eternity crisis." 

"Then I'll help because you asked me to." It was the truth, at least it might have been. It had taken courage and equal parts naivete to seek the Third Prince of Hell on behalf of the world. If that Bishop, cloaked in the colors of a killer, could set aside all the gears that made him click, why couldn't Bezel? Just because he felt nothing--did that mean he always had to do nothing, to be nothing? He was the only one with nothing to lose--he was the only one who could put his entire self towards the cause. 

The Third Prince of Hell did not miss the way in which the Bishop's heart flinched behind his ribs, but that sweet sound wasn't meant for him. The proof that others could be alive, warm to the touch, full of breath--it felt so impossibly far away. The Bishop turned pink and sunk his teeth into the skin of his frowning lips. He was caught in a web of his own turmoil, a struggle clearly visible in the red flush of his neck and the music of his thunderous pulse. Bezel knew what he was asking himself beneath the waves of his curled yellow hair--he'd asked it of himself once before, last summer; can I trust the devil himself? 

Bezel knew the answer: that it didn't matter. He had no choice. There were only three things the living survived on: desire, guilt, and conviction. Of these vices, he hadn't quite decided which the Bishop held in his veins. 

"That's the most idiotic reason yet." Ira Rule muttered. 

Bezel shrugged. Together, they went back into silence, basking in the soft comfort of uncomfortable quiet. Bezel forced his dust-filled lungs to inhale, only in an attempt to diffuse the stillness consuming them. When the boy opposite him finally said something, it was as the gothic cathedral of Saint John the Divine filled up a chunk of Bezel's windshield.

And Bezel almost wished he hadn't--that they had finished their drive in that nothingness. But of course, Bezel could not really wish for anything. Nor could those words have been responsible for the unmoving hollowness inside of him.

"We weren't supposed to lose." Ira whispered. He spoke in a voice as soft as snow, his gaze was hundreds of galaxies away--trained on his own hands as they twisted together, writhing like live vipers. 

"Right." Bezel murmured, not quite sure what else to do. For a moment, he thought that maybe he should have brought Mayvalt. She always knew what to say, how to guide him through the minefield he couldn't see. But he didn't have her, and his mouth was as considerate as the rest of him. "Life isn't like those stories where the hero can't die."

"I never saw it that way." The Bishop scoffed softly. "I never claimed to be the hero. I know that my hands are as red in Demon's blood as the Cardinal's cloak."

Bezel blinked, sitting in a hollow imitation of shock. He glanced his golden eyes sideways at the boy and his religious coat. There was very little a Bishop could do to prove they didn't run on a heightened sense of superiority, but admitting that Demon hunting was a killing had come closer than any attempt he had ever seen before. "If not to play hero, then why?"

Ira laughed, bitter as lemon skins. "That's rich coming from you, Third Prince. No, I'm not as noble as you, floating along in any way I'm pushed. I was only ever thinking of myself. I thought if I did as I was told, then my mistakes would be wiped clean." 

"The price to remove your sins is single-handedly saving Heimr?" Bezel questioned, blowing a hollow exhale from his nose. "That's a steep ask. What did you do? Spray paint the cathedral? Key the Cardinal's Kia?" 

Ira rolled his eyes, but his hands made no sudden moves towards concealed Ossein blades, so the joke must have been harmless--or he wasn't armed, but that seemed as impossible as everything else they'd already faced. A Bishop strolling into Eden with empty sleeves, towering pig-men soldiers rising from Lake Seneca, the Prince willingly leaving Heimr. 

Life was teaming with unforeseen impossible possibilities.

"What I did doesn't matter anymore. I don't even know if it's true." Ira said. He bent his slender neck, casting his ice-blue eyes towards the floorboards. A rose-pink flush danced up his pale throat, staining where it climbed. As if sour grape wine had become trapped beneath his snow-white skin. 

"But you're still trying." Bezel pointed. "Too late to turn back?" 

"Yeah," he murmured. "I can't stop now. I need to save this world for my family. And for him--so he has a place to come back to." 

Bezel's unbeating heart twitched behind his ribs. "It might not be that simple. A variation of your friend might still exist, and it may still be Heimrian, but that doesn't leave him a place in this world." 

"No, that doesn't matter. If he's a De-" Ira shook his head. "Even if he's like Mayvalt and the He-Goats, he can just cross back over. We have Ze'ev here, don't we?" 

Bezel didn't find it worth mentioning that no matter what, this Melchior guy was unlike any Ze'ev that had ever existed. He had died in one realm. The parts of him that were Heimrian should have been sent off to be born again, that parts that were Avernian should have faded into nothing. So, this, a perfect place in the middle--it just didn't make sense.

It reminded Bezel too much of the stories Heimrians had built their lives around, of an afterlife that punishes the wicked. It simply didn't happen--human souls didn't go to Hell. And yet--he couldn't deny it. The Vestige still hummed with his strength, his blessing. It had been singing out as Mayvalt and Bezel snuck away from the blood-stained beach. 

This had a rotten stench clinging to it. It sounded like whispers in the halls of the low-streets. This was a part of someone's game--all of it. Mammon's manipulations, his attack. His soul being stolen away by his angelic-sided siblings. Bezel could nearly feel the spider-strings tighten over the thin membrane of his trashing wings. 

Whatever they were walking into, it was already determined. Bezel had the inkling that someone had been watching him--predicting his every movement. Everything had led to this; and to all that came after. So, Mayvalt could have her vengeance. Ira Rule could be reunited with his lost pet. Bezel would even play along. He'd sell them the story that the world needed to be saved. Maybe he could even begin to believe it himself. What was the point of resisting the riptide? No matter what steps he took, he would be met with his fate.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe you aren't a hero. You're just the villain of a story you haven't quite figured out yet." Bezel said, his words hollow as bird bones. 

Ira chuckled dryly. "I don't really know, but I don't think villains put everything they have into saving the world. Not even if there's something in it for them."

"Ah," Bezel noted dryly. "But we haven't."

"Haven't yet." Ira Rule corrected.

"Optimistic, are we?"

"Eh." He shrugged. "It's a new thing I'm trying."

| 𓃦 |

Bezel wasn't a religious man. Well, he wasn't a man either, but that would just be nitpicking. No, it was that he didn't care to bow down unless it was to tie his shoes. And although he knew of several higher powers, creatures who ruled in a Heavenly otherworld with wings as wide as continents illuminated beneath halos crafted of the brightest stars, they had never quite felt royal to him.

His father was just that: a father. As mortal in Bezel's weary eyes as the cashier at his local grocery store. But in that regard, the Heimrian cashier had always been more helpful.

So he, as the only true holy creature in the city, decided he would simply rededicate the gaudy gothic castle to his favorite part-time employee at the mart over in the fabric district. The Cathedral of Sandy--or Susan. Or was it actually Annie? Fine, the Cathedral of the Part Time Employee.

"What are you staring at?" Ira asked, breaking Bezel from his spell. He stood at the cusp of the church, his back turned towards the towering oak entrances. He'd placed his flattened palms against his hips and fashioned his ice-toned eyes down into knife tips of disappointment.

Bezel shook his head. "I didn't really get it before, but with you glaring at me like that, it does suddenly seem like my father's presence still lingers in this place."

"Your fath-" Ira's voice shuddered. His eyes flickered towards the towering church towards his spine. "Wait, your dad is-"

"I am one of your precious angels, aren't I?" Bezel reminded. He lifted a single onyx-black eyebrow into a teasing arch. The gesture might have been too much--the Bishop turned purple and slammed his lips together with a dismissive snarl. Bezel relented with a sigh and shrugged. "My father, the All-King, might have inspired some of your Heimrian folktales--but he wasn't as special as an all-knowing god--capital 'G' or otherwise."

"The All-King?" Ira repeated in a hushed whisper. He seemed to be prying for something. Likely information to feed the all-devouring beast inside men that ached to be the smartest creature in the room. Bezel didn't give in, and Ira turned on his heels and marched into the Cathedral.

He vanished into the thick darkness inside. The air was hollow and heavy, forming a wall just beyond the door frame. Another world. A portal--or just a vestibule. Bezel's polished black dress shoes came to a halt just at the lip of this dimensional rift.

His phantom lungs seized, forcing in a pained gulp of unneeded air. What came through his parched throat was tainted by dust and myrrh.

It was in the darkest nights that the stars seemed most beautiful. Even to Bezel, who stared up at the open oil sky with nothing but blank and unfeeling eyes. That was the useless and childish thought that came over his foggy brain as Ira Rule came back outside.

He stepped through the oak doors, poking his head out into the noise of the busy New York City streets behind them, at the bottom of the grand slab stairs they'd climbed.

From the dreary insides of the Cathedral, he appeared the only source of light. As blinding as the heart of a flickering flame. His golden hair shimmering in the evening sun, reflecting the pinks and oranges brewing on the horizon.

"Aren't you coming?" He snapped, crossing his arms over his thumping heart.

Bezel might have laughed--if he was capable. The reply seemed exactly like him. There was poison in only the most colorful frogs, he reminded himself. "Yes, I was just. . . taking a moment."

"What's wrong?" The Bishop asked, mounting his brow in mock concern. Bezel should take better care at studying the knight. He seemed nearly an expert at playing the part. "Angels! Can you not cross over? Do you, like, need permission to step foot on holy ground?"

Bezel sighed--a venomous knight of the Progeny aside, he was still just a kid. He looked hardly twenty, and he acted stubbornly sixteen. "I'm not a vampire and this isn't a cheap sixty's slasher film. Move, I'll walk in just fine."

Ira raised his palms and stepped aside in the mammoth-wide doorway. Bezel shut his keen yellow eyes, shaking his head to loosen the static playing like jazz in his ears.

He did as he was told, and he followed the Bishop into the belly of the beast.