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“Be silent, you wretch,” Belial heard Lucilius order through the haze of pain that enveloped his whole body. Obediently, Belial bit his lip and a fresh wave of blood filled his mouth. Trickles dripped down his chin.
Stealing Sari’s wings, Belial conceded as a hard shiver wracked his body, might have been a less-than-optimal choice after all. It had given him the power boost he’d wanted in the moment and taken Sari out of play for the foreseeable future; not a bad outcome, for him or Sari. But the wild fever that now gripped him as his core fought off the infection of Avatar’s power was one of the worst things he’d ever felt- and Belial was well-educated in pain.
Lucilius sat on a piece of the ruined tower, crimson skirts ruined with gray dust, and ignored the primal strung out in agony, smothering whines in his throat with swallows of his own blood. The Astral’s mouth was slanted with something ugly, frustration and cold anger. They could have been back in Canaan, with some new council edict telling Cilius what he could and couldn’t do. Cilius hated to be told what to do.
It wasn’t that Belial had thought that resurrecting Cilius would make the man drop in a grateful swoon into his arms and declare his eternal love. Even Belial would have a hard time selling that one. But he would have settled for Lucilius being mildly impressed that Belial had managed to bring him back from the dead after two thousand years and a beheading. No Astral he’d ever heard of had managed such a feat. (Of course, most Astrals considered necromancy to be a branch of magic that only the lesser races would be interested in, uncouth and unnecessary. Such was the grace of the immortal children of the stars- death happened to other people.)
But when had Lucilius ever been even mildly impressed by something Belial had done?
Seeking tendrils of wrath-pain-despair sought cracks in the hasty partitions Belial had raised to keep Avatar’s power out of the deeper reaches of his core. Belial dropped his forehead to the dusty stone and his own shadow and grounded himself in memory, a thin and precious sliver of time spent weaving five-strand braids into Sariel’s long hair while the archangel listened to him talk directionlessly under the night sky. It was a secret in the dark hours of the night, the core of Belial’s personal magic, and nothing like the thing that was trying to claw into him. He was not going to let himself become just another primal fed to Avatar.
And not a word from Lucilius, not even something about being reckless or how he’d left Belial on top of Pandemonium. Once his recounting of the past two millennia was done, Lucilius had dismissed him from attention.
Two thousand years. A third of his life, that he’d spent away from what remained of his kindred, mingling with the mortal races. Five hundred years since the Astrals had left, slinking away beaten, and those mortals were free to do as they wished. Belial had even fought on the skydweller side.
And in the scant few decades he’d done so, he’d gotten more recognition of his efforts than in the four thousand years he’d spent working for Lucilius. No one had even liked him when he’d been Ash, but they had certainly recognized that a mage of his caliber was why their cell had done as much damage as they had.
Perspective. Context. In his early life, he’d never had anything to compare the Astrals to. Being treated like a sub-sentient creature at worst had made being taken for granted look like respect. He’d known it wasn’t affection even then, but respect had been good enough. Respect would have been good enough.
“I said, be silent,” Lucilius snapped with his usual impatience. “Can’t you even let me think?”
Belial’s mouth was too full of liquid to quip would you rather I not breathe. Which he wouldn’t have done, because Cilius wasn’t in a mood where he would appreciate backtalk; besides, Belial knew the answer.
An Astral was an Astral. Astrals didn’t care about primal beasts, or if they did, it was in the same way that a warrior cared for a blade. Useful, even worthy of maintenance…and to be reduced to component materials once the costs outweighed the benefits.
All that lives changes, Lucifer said in memory.
The dead didn’t change. Lucilius was just the same as he had been before he’d died. The thing that had changed here, the factor that he had never thought to include or account for in his plans and goals…was Belial himself.