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Belial could have lived among light and order, the natural cycles of the universe and the ebb and flow of all things, but that was so dull. The world he left behind was nothing but a diorama, one that only gained dimension when his love was there.
Now his love is here, somewhere inside this void of empty skies stretching into an endless dark. There is no border above or below, or even a horizon to look toward, and what colors start to bloom soon become swallowed up by shadow. Patches of iridescence glow dimly, maybe echoes of planets far away, or perhaps his eyes playing tricks on him.
He calls for Lucilius, but there’s no reply. Lucilius isn’t the type that would happily respond, but maybe he might have in this dire situation. Maybe not, the void is vast and far and unforgiving. He can’t say he’s surprised— Lucilius wanted to annihilate everything that the Omnipotent created, so it would only be fitting to seal him in a place where nothing can be destroyed. There’s no ending something that hasn’t begun.
A glimmer catches his eye. It’s no brighter than a newborn star, but here there are no stars. They’re small, like little fragments of glass. He nearly screams when he sees them; small, no larger than the tip of his fingernail, but he knows the chilly blue of Lucilius’ eyes anywhere. Lucilius couldn’t have possibly answered him earlier, because he’d been shattered into countless pieces. Could he be revived like this? As both an Astral and Primal combined, he should have decent regenerative abilities, but he wouldn’t be able to pull himself together if he’d been scattered across the sands.
Nobody is around to hear him howl, not like the rebellion when he found Lucilius’ head and had to bite his tongue to not draw attention to them. A sound builds up in the back of his throat but he pushes it down— no, not now, screaming won’t bring Lucilius back again.
At least he hadn’t been ground into dust. But even then Belial knows that he’d still gather up all the particles, one way or another.
Each piece shimmers, but like the stars, there’s no telling how near or far they are. Space here is absurdly unquantifiable; a piece that looks far away takes only a step to get to, and a piece just out of reach is only in hand once his feet are bleeding. Reassembling Lucilius is a puzzle, but has a puzzle ever stumped him before? He’s long memorized the shape of Lucilius’ body, even the contours he kept hidden under his robes. He’s long memorized Lucifer’s as well, when he searched for weaknesses under those pure wings. He can whisper secrets out of every crevice. This is nothing he can’t manage.
No matter how far he walks, he always makes his way back to where Lucilius is laid out. Time is just as absurd as space is and he has no idea how long it’s been since he started this impossible task. He will sigh away, but Lucilius sleeps there, a quarter whole. His body is stubborn even in this state; as Belial reconstructs veins, the blood inside doesn’t bleed. Brain matter doesn’t ooze from his broken skull. It makes no sense, but Belial’s long figured out to not question what kind of blasphemies Lucilius could make possible. At least it happened in this perfectly dead space, where there is nobody to disturb him, not even a gust of wind to blow the fragments away.
But as Belial turns Lucilius’ fingers whole again, someone else is there.
“Lucifer?” As soon as he says it, he knows he’s wrong; Lucifer never grew his hair out so long. There was always a firmness in his face, not like the soft features of the man before him.
“No, not Lucifer.” They even sound alike, how unsettling.
If it’s not Lucifer, and it’s definitely not Lucilius, then there’s only one option remaining. “The Speaker.”
The man smiles in affirmation. How kind for their jailor to reveal himself.
He shifts slightly, putting himself between the Speaker and his messiah. Even if he’s not done regenerating and wouldn’t stand a chance, the least he could do is make the Speaker’s job a lot harder. Deception is as easy as breathing and he grins. “What a surprise. Did you get lonely in that glass tower?“
The Speaker chuckles, uncapturable as the space around them. “Are you putting him back together?”
“I was, but I’m sure he can wait a little bit. Faa-san's is a patient man. When someone mysterious catches my eye and mm, those clothes of yours leave nothing to the imagination, I’m sure he’ll understand me being a little distracted.”
“You’ll have to be careful, he’s very delicate in that state. If you put the pieces together wrong, that could destroy him for good.”
“Into sadism too? That’s some good play, but you’ll have to get me in the mood first, you know? Breaking Faa-san to pieces isn’t much of a turn-on.”
“Me? No, he did that to himself. He was already wounded, and coming to this place without protection might have caused his core to overload. He had a strong will, strong enough to keep his body intact. Shame, it’s a lot easier to reflect on your actions when you’re whole.” The Speaker sighs, as if reflecting on a stubborn child. “But he can still exist and think, so this isn’t the worst that could’ve happened.”
As expected of Lucilius’ willpower. If it was enough to keep twelve wings together on his back, it was more than enough to keep him from being destroyed. “There’s nothing more alluring than a man that can get what he wants.” There’s a lot he wants to know— why the Speaker of legend looks so strikingly like Lucilius, what really happened in the divine tower, how long will they remain here, but none of that matters now. All except one thing— “And what about you? Are you the type to pin down your desires?”
“If you’re asking me if I’m going to stop you, then no.”
Who knows if he’s telling the truth or not? Belial doesn’t move from his spot. “So if you’re not going to stop me, then the warden’s just here to take a look? Oh, but I’m not a prisoner here, am I?”
The Speaker hums, looking to the side in thought. “You came here willingly, so no. You’re more like…” He claps his hands together. “A live-in visitor.”
That’s all he needs to know. He leaves the robed man behind and continues on with his work.
Lucilius’ head becomes whole before he has shoulders to keep it in place. His lips are the last thing on his face that Belial assembles. He’s slumbering like a sleeping beauty, yet another gamble to see if he can recover from his second impossible nightmare.
The last shard stings Belial, but he laughs. How like Lucilius to do that, even in a half-formed state. He’s tempted to lean down and steal a kiss, but the pressure would destroy his hard work and send the wayward shards stabbing into his mouth.
He imagines that’s what kissing Lucilius would be like, even if he was whole.
The Speaker is back again, trailing behind Belial like a persistent mist. It’s annoying being under observation, but it’s nothing Belial isn’t used to. The Speaker hasn’t tried to steal any of the fragments Belial picks up or cover up the ones he has yet to get to. He thought the puppet of the Omnipotent would at least attempt to obstruct them in some way, so that he hasn't only sends nervous prickles down Belial's spine.
“Not to say that I don’t like the attention, but this might be a little too forward. I’m always down for a quickie, but you have to tell me if you’re interested.”
The Speaker’s voice is the breeze between new leaves. “I’m curious.”
“About?”
“At why you’re working so hard for him. Not that I’m not grateful, he needs company… but he would have reassembled himself eventually. You don’t have to help him.”
“Faa-san’s the most interesting thing in the world. I already waited 2000 years for him, you’re telling me to wait some more? He’s kept me on the edge for so long, any longer and I just might burst.”
The Speaker's eyebrows raise high and his mouth parts. The words don't turn his cheeks rosy. How annoying. “Hm. I think I understand. So your life starts and ends with him.”
Another shard is between stardust turned smoke, what looks like the outline of Lucilius’ collarbone. Belial picks it up and hides it in the palm of his hand, squeezing tight until the edges pierce skin. “Are you sure you're not going to stop me?”
“I don’t think I will.”
In the void there is nothing, and sometimes there is a fallen angel who has learned to take things as they come. Sometimes he is alone with the remnants of his beloved, and sometimes there is pale smoke nearby, lighting up the scattered dust.
Belial’s used to talking to two people with the same face, but he doesn’t know this one. Lucifer’s scent was the dew in the morning and Lucilius' was the hiss of a drawn blade. The Speaker doesn’t smell like anything. “Say, why do you you look so much like them both? Into stealing faces?”
“When my divine master was split in two, both sky and stars needed a speaker. So from the original speaker my master pulled a rib, and created a clone.”
He knows where this is heading. It explains a lot, and Lucilius must have hated it. All those hours Lucilius spent scratching at his skin, only to find out that his skin was never truly his own. “Isn’t that something? Fun revelation. While we’re in the mood, want to tell me the secrets of the universe too?”
“Hasn’t he already told you everything?”
Belial breathes, his fingers distant around another shard as he forces them to tighten. That is their secret and nobody else’s. “Perhaps, perhaps not. Maybe a false speaker has to preach to someone?”
The Speaker presses his lips tight and sighs. “I don’t know where he went wrong…”
Lucilius never went wrong, he was always right. Imagine if Lucilius had been scrubbed as brightly as this man before him, how dull that would be! Belial knows he’d love Lucilius no matter what, but a Lucilius aligned with order, without the dark circles under his cutting eyes or his lips that rarely smiled, would be a stranger. That he shone most brilliantly in the dusk instead of the dawn was how he was meant to be. There was never anyone like Lucilius, whose presence was the gravity of a star and not its light. His very existence was a rebellion, pure defiance against the supremacy of the divine and the order of the constellations. His voice would break spirits and dye the skies, the kind of man that frightens people, even his original.
Belial wouldn’t want to love anyone else.
When all the pieces of Lucilius’ core come together, they fuse and mold into one solid form. It’s a brilliant jewel, dusk and starlight swirling together with clouds of chaos matter. It’s like holding a storm in his palm, a contained nebula about to explode. He’s put together Lucilius before, but that was a head to a corpse. This is Lucilius’ core, his heart, his essence, his life. It pulses mutely, sending vibrations down the inside of Belial’s wrists.
He swallows on his dry throat, trying to keep his blood from pumping into overdrive. Like this, Lucilius is so dangerous, a universe blooming alluringly in the dark, but also so delicate. Belial wants to press the core to his own, feel his love’s thoughts and secrets thrum against him, and ah, what divine pleasure that would be, to experience everything that makes up his messiah at once!
It’s delightfully tempting, but even more pleasurable would be if Lucilius let him do so willingly. He never would, but Belial is willing to wait.
All but Lucilius’ chest cavity is reconstructed when the Speaker appears again. “You did a good job,” he says, drifting over in delight. “He looks like he’s sleeping.”
Belial’s not interested in compliments from someone like him. “Sweet words from that pretty tongue. Sure you don’t want to use that mouth of yours for something else?”
“If you put him back together like this, then everything will return to normal, won’t it?”
The words themselves are fine, but he doesn’t like the pondering look on the Speaker’s face. “I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
The Speaker lets out a low hum, the very edges of his robes dusting the perimeter of Lucilius’ form. “You care for him, don’t you?”
There is no shame in answering. “I do, of course.”
“Then you’d want him to love you back, right?”
It’s not something he’d ever expect to happen, but it would be nice if it did. He moves another shard into place, a slope of an open lung. “I wonder?”
“But he doesn’t, and he probably won’t ever will.” The Speaker has the audacity to look sad, wounded almost. “I can’t read his thoughts, but I can sense these things a little.” He shifts his weight around the slight dip in his side, around the rib he supposedly lost.
Of course he’s aware of the truth. Lucilius is a beautiful anomaly. The irresistible pull of a black hole, swirling silently, infinitely abyssal and brilliant. There’s no telling what would happen if anyone got close to him. Belial knows how arrogant it is to want to ask such a force to be his and his alone, so he’s kept his distance despite the rumbles in his heart.
“But you could change that, you know.”
Belial’s pulse jolts around his brain.
“His head may be still Astral, but his body’s Primal. All you’d have to do is chip off a piece of your core and put it into his. He’d absorb it and well, he’d still be himself of course, but then your cores would be moving at the same time. Even he would become moved by that.” The Speaker claps his hands and smiles, this beautiful monster. “I think some love is exactly what he needs!”
Lucilius is colder than the chaos matter that’s currently keeping blood flowing through his shattered veins. His smile is a slash across his face, the same curve as the scalpel he uses to dissect corpses. He’s never seen Lucilius in a state even resembling love— admiration maybe, fascination another— but those trickles stop just short of his heart. He is unmovable, more sterile than the beakers that used to line the shelves of his lab.
What would he look like if love finally pierced him?
Still cold, no doubt. His mind would work in equations, effortlessly transcending limits as he always does. He would remain fixed on the horizon, waiting to see it all end. Maybe, just maybe, in a muted moment, there would be a flicker of the star that once burned across his lips. It would pass, as all things do, but it might flare up again, a new slow heartbeat.
Maybe he might be lucky enough to see it.
Lucilius’ core hums silently.
“It’s your last chance,” the Speaker tells Belial as he puts the last of the pieces into place. Chaos matter flutters around Lucilius’ core, dancing between the shards but careful not to move them.
“What can I say? Aphrodisiacs make trysts all the hotter, but they’re bad for the long-term. Faa-san would be livid if he found out I drugged him for fun.” Lucilius could cut him up and cut him down, but Belial never wants Lucilius to cut him off.
The Speaker cocks his head. “You’re okay with never being loved?”
“It wouldn’t be him otherwise,” he says, and closes up Lucilius’ chest.
Lucilius’ body isn’t naturally fusing together the way his core did. No matter how perfectly the pieces fit together, no matter how much the chaos matter tugs and pulls, his messiah remains beautiful but shattered. Something has to meld them together, but that would need some source of energy. There is no heat in this prison, and the powdered void dust has no master, leaving Lucilius still deathly dreaming. Belial has waited, whispered, pleaded, but that didn’t work the first time and it’s not going to work now. If no energy exists for him to harness, then he has to force it to exist.
His body is but a cage for a core that could have rivaled Lucifer’s in a dream, one that he tears open with ease.
The Speaker is suddenly before him, gaping. “Wait, don’t do that. You shouldn’t do that.”
“No? Afraid I’m going to rip apart this place?”
“If you detonate your core, you’ll destroy who you are. You’ll never come back.”
Be quiet! This eternal observer has no idea what Belial is willing to do. He will throw himself into a thousand voids if it means that Lucilius will move before him again, and this is the least he could do. He was made by design to be cunning, to be forever deceptive, but it is his choice and his choice alone to follow Lucilius into the dark.
His core heats up, throbbing, ready to burst, and over the roar of his body overheating he hears, “Why would you go so far?”
Why else? Love. Love, of course.
It feels like drowning, or maybe it’s just the inevitable pull of falling asleep for the first time in 2000 years.
A familiar voice mutters, “Useless. I expected better of you,” and Belial finds himself awake again. His chest is open, and his core is still there, fused together. Lucilius is sitting next to him on a crest of dust, frowning down.
“Did you fix my heart? How romantic.”
“Shut up,” rings sharp and beautiful.
When Belial sits up, every nerve screams at once. He’s definitely overtaxed himself, but here there is no time and so they have all the time in the world. “The Speaker was here.”
“And you didn’t even try to slaughter him? I don’t recall making you so lazy.”
“Hey, hey, I know when I’m outmatched. But you know, he told me what you are.”
There is no temperature, but Belial feels a chill prickle his neck. “And what is that?” comes dark and frighteningly cold.
But Belial is used to the cold, so all he does is smile when he says, “Faa-san is Faa-san, of course.”
In the end and beyond, that’s the only thing that’s ever mattered.