His scowl deepened, and it was perhaps a mercy that his thoughts were cut short by the Archivist’s voice.

“There is a gift from Dis, Master.”

As a general rule, any gift in Baator, from anyone, should be regarded with the kind of suspicion reserved to a nest of vipers. But there was only one thing a gift from Dis could mean for Raphael: information. Not given, for nothing was freely given in the Hells, but bought.

Lord Dispater hoarded information like Lord Mammon hoarded gold, courtesy of his consort Lilis’ spies - a complex network only second to the Serpentine Order, and not by a wide margin. A great many of those spies were bent on gathering information in Cania, some at Mephistopheles’ court; a game of lanceboard the two archdevils had been at for time immemorial, clawing secrets from one another’s hands… to Asmodeus’ great amusement, no doubt.

The Iron Duke seldom let any such secrets escape from his grip, but loyalty was not a common trait among the denizens of the Hells - and that included spies. As long as one was willing to pay handsomely enough, some secrets could after all slip. 

On the occasions such a thing occurred, the message that reached the House of Hope would without fail be of utmost interest. He was not keen to pay for second-rate information, and those on his payroll knew as much. Raphael turned his gaze to the Archivist at last, snapping the diary shut. 

“The gift. Now.”

Said gift was a roll of cloth, which unfolded into an exquisite cape of royal blue with golden thread. Raphael gestured for the Archivist to leave - called for all the servants to leave - and only when the door closed behind them did he stand, placing the cape down on the table. He ran his hands over the silk, and bared his teeth in a hungry smile. 

“Tell me your truth.”

The cape rippled for a moment and the golden thread shifted, forming words against the blue silk - a report of happenings all the way down in the Eighth layer. And the more Raphael read, the wider his smile became. 

It seemed his dear father was in trouble indeed, as Asmodeus’ patience may have finally run thin with the endless and frankly unsubtle plots to dethrone him. Mephistopheles had been ordered to present himself before the throne of Nessus within a fortnight, lest the Lord Below assumed him to be in rebellion - and act accordingly, clearly.

The message did not explain why Asmodeus had summoned his sire to Nessus, but that was a blank easily filled. A century past, through endless scheming - which had involved tearing apart the soul of one of Raphael’s half-brothers and keeping half as collateral; truly, he’d been glad he had long since moved his residence to Avernus - Mephistopheles had tried to obtain the divine power of the god Mask.

As was quite often the case, he had been only partly successful. He had been left with only a fraction of divinity, was nearly decapitated, and found himself with an impenetrable cairn of shadow-leaking ice in his kingdom, keeping the body of the mortal he’d torn the spark of divinity from ever out of his grasp. 

Why would Mephistopheles waste time going after a minor god’s power while the Crown of Karsus gathered dust in his vaults was beyond Raphael. The entire scheme had amounted to little in the end, particularly as Asmodeus has since achieved full godhood himself; Raphael had been greatly amused by the thought of what his sire’s face must have looked like when news reached him… although he’d known better than going to Mephistar himself to catch a glimpse.

It seemed that even as a full-fledged god, Asmodeus was no longer amused by the antics of the Lord of the Eighth. The Lord Below knew of the spark of divinity he had himself obtained and now, it seemed, he sought to bring the game to an end; whatever excuses Mephistopheles had been giving to avoid a reckoning had run out. He now had a fortnight to either crawl to Nessus, swear fealty once more and hope it would be enough… or march upon it to take the Lowest throne.

If there is a time for him to use the Crown, it will be now. 

The thought caused Raphael’s smile to fade into a grimace. As much as he mocked his sire for not making use of that incredible artifact - privately, of course, on account of not being suicidal - he was loath to think he might see the same potential he did at last, and make use of it before Raphael could ever get his hands on it. 

But perhaps that would not happen; perhaps Mephistopheles would remain blind to the obvious solution in his vaults. It was something he was known to do, splitting his focus between too many projects and dropping old ones as something new caught his interest. The Pit knew how many times the fool had come within a hair’s breadth to a breakthrough, and would never know. 

Perhaps the Crown would remain well and truly at the back of his mind, and he would seek a different way out of his predicament. Whatever he intended to do, whether or not his plans would succeed, Raphael had to find out. 

After all, he was never one to wait in the wings for long - not when potentially plane changing events unfolded. Fortune favors the bold, and it was high time he paid a visit to Mephistar. 

Raphael made a gesture with his hand, causing the golden thread to go up in flames and destroy the message for good before he headed towards the Chamber of Egress - leaving behind what was now only a pretty cape draped on the table, covering a diary he’d already forgotten all about.

Do not presume you know my fire, I shape my fate, my own desire. You wear my shape, my voice, my flame, Yet it was I who gave you a name. You may find weakness in my flesh, But remain bound to my behest.

***

It took Haarlep approximately six seconds to decide that the fine cape Raphael had so carelessly left on the desk was now theirs. Their little brat wouldn’t mind, surely: for all his flair for dramatics, he was not in the habit of wearing capes. 

His argument, if asked, was that a cape would certainly tangle over his wings and look ridiculous; frankly, Haarlep had the strong suspicion there was a story behind that statement. Specifically a wardrobe dysfunction they never got to witness, to their great sorrow.

“Ah, yes. It would be difficult to pull off,” they’d said instead. “Of course, your sire does have the most ominous cape of the blackest void and none would dare ridicule him. But then again, you are no Mephistopheles.”

Raphael had pouted, of course - it was what he did best - and anybody else would have been punished for the insolence. But even in the early years of their service, Haarlep had known there were limits they alone could push. What were they to do if not take advantage?

Somewhere on their right, the Archivist cleared his throat. “Your Indulgence, that cape was a gift to the master from--”

“Now it is a gift from the master to me. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” Haarlep sing-sang. They were not particularly keen to wear clothing, but there was something to be said about the smooth silk against their back and wings as they fastened the cape. Raphael did not know what he was missing, and Haarlep would make sure not to tell him so he would not demand the cape back.

Behind them, the Archivist’s voice cracked. “If Raphael becomes cross--”

“I’ll make sure he knows you tried really hard to stop me from taking it,” Haarlep cut him off with a wave of their hand - as though that would make a difference to Raphael.

But even as they spoke, the cape was already forgotten about. On the desk was Raphael’s diary, and the sight caused Haarlep’s grin to widen. Well well - did their brat take the time to reply before storming off to attend whatever oh-so-important business he had awaiting him? 

There was more stammering and pleading from the Archivist - “Please, understand, everything in this room is my responsibility--!” - but Haarlep saw no reason to start acknowledging his pleas after ignoring them just fine for well over three centuries. They opened the diary and, to their delight, there was Raphael’s handwriting beneath their own. 

Oh, you silly thing. Do you truly think your weakness is in the flesh alone? Do you really think it is you to shape your desires, and not the other way around?

Haarlep sometimes wondered how Raphael managed to keep his own illusions from collapsing under their weight. He walked through the world as though he were carved from certainty, every gesture sharpened into a performance. He had built himself an image and then chosen to live inside it, as though wrapping himself in grandeur could smother all the quiet truths he refused to face. It would almost be admirable, if it weren’t so transparent.

He mistook theatrics for power and his mask for a face. The irony was that he had worn it so long he seemed to have forgotten it was a mask - forgotten that beneath the polished edges and the immaculate poise there lingered nothing but a hollow ache he refused to name.

But not when he was with them. Haarlep could glimpse the fragile thing beneath; it made him dangerous, yes, but also painfully small.

I see through him, and he knows it. I wear the mask so he can put his own down. 

They were sent to serve him, and was that not a service too - holding a mirror up to him, so he could see all there was to see? What a delight, they thought, to have found a new way to render that specific service.

They did not bother sitting, nor did they bother listening to the Archivist as he begged them to stop. They simply reached for the quill, and penned their own response. It came easier than it did before, too, the grin on their face widening with each word they put on paper.

Oh my little princeling, vain, You hum your name like sweet refrain. Each breath a prayer, each sigh the same, A hymn that burns with your own name. But tell me, Raphael, darling flame, I wear your skin - who takes the blame?

***

After he’d been deemed old enough to be plucked from the Material Plane and taken to Baator - an age not all of Mephistopheles’ offspring born in other Planes lived long enough to see, likely as half-fiends were to be killed early in life - Raphael had spent several years at his sire’s court in Mephistar.

He looked back fondly on precisely none of them and returning did not fill him with delight, but he was not above admitting he’d learned valuable lessons as well as forging equally valuable connections. Although this time, no great connection was needed to know what was going on: the entire court was abuzz with the news that Mephistopheles was preparing his legions to march on the Shadowfell. 

Not all of them: he knew better than to leave Cania unguarded, between the ever-scheming Lord of the Seventh and an increasingly vexed Lord Below. Duke Hutijin was tasked to remain with the two companies of pit fiends at his command - he’d protested and argued he ought to join the battle, some said, but to no avail -  while legions led by General Belagon were to march on the Shadowfell.

Some whispered that Mephistopheles himself intended to take part in the battle; a few speculated on the reason for the attack, and it took no great effort to guess it had to do with Asmodeus’ summoning only days prior. Nearly all, however, lacked knowledge of what connected the two things. Of course, Raphael knew the answer to that: Mephistopheles sought to find and kill a man - a godling, now, once a companion of the man whose body lay in the cairn of shadow ice in Cania - who held another fragment of Mask’s divinity. 

Clearly he hoped to take from him the power he’d taken from his companion, gain as much divine power as possible or perhaps even full godhood, so that he could wield it as he called his banners in revolt and attempted to wrestle the throne of the Nine from Asmodeus. All while, the Crown of Karsus - an artifact capable of turning even a mere mortal into a god without having to chase sparks of divinity across Planes - remained forgotten in his vaults.

The Lord of the Eighth, a fool. Truly, it did not surprise Raphael in the slightest that he could never best the Reigning Serpent at anything. He was beginning to suspect that if a half-murdered god had fallen right on his lap rather than Asmodeus’, Mephistopheles would have forgone absorbing his divinity to carry out the Pit knew what tedious experiments… right up to the moment something else caught his attention.

His vaults were as full of discarded projects as Baator was littered with the bones of his discarded offspring; the Archdevil of Cania sought potential, yet failed to see that which was right under his nose. Raphael was not one to let irony go unappreciated, and could scarcely wait for the day he’d see him bow to him - a discarded son with a discarded artifact gracing his brow. He’d make sure to let him know, then, what a fool he had been.

Stand in my shadow, he’d tell him, and think of how easily you could have had the sun itself.

“How long shall it take for the troops to march on the Shadowfell, do you reckon?”

“Long enough for you to return to Avernus and forget all about this. Whatever you hope to gain from Lord Mephistopheles’ plans--”

Lady Antilia, High Cantor of Mephistar, trailed off when Raphael chuckled and waved a hand. “Please, do give me some credit,” he said. They sat on armchairs facing one another, by a tall window against which ice and snow clattered, carried by a furious wind. Far below in the citadel, he knew, commanders were barking orders for troops to prepare. “I know better than to hope.”

She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “One would think you’d also know better than to meddle with Cania’s affairs.”

Raphael smiled over his cup of wine. “I am observing, nothing more. Just in case I may be of help to my sire.”

Lady Antilia scoffed. Somehow, even that sounded like music from her - but the voice which sang endless hymns for Mephistopheles was almost hushed when she spoke again. 

“Well, let us pretend I do not know better than to hope. In which case I would hope, for your sake, that you are telling the truth,” she said, in the tone of someone who absolutely does not believe a single word they heard to be truthful. Those eyes, green with specks of gold, flickered down to the chalice of blood red wine in her hand. “You know as well as I do he would not hesitate to swat you like an insect if he had any inkling you may pose a problem.”

Raphael’s smile did not waver. One day, he thought, once he wore the Crown of Karsus and made Baator his kingdom, he would demote the entire upper crust of Mephistar… but not her. A High Cantor she’d remain, the High Cantor of all Baator, composing and singing hymns for him and him alone. “Careful. That almost sounded like concern on my account.”

Lady Antilia tilted her head, crowned with great curving horns not unlike his own. She was beautiful as always, clad in silks of green and gold that matched her eyes - but for a moment her voice cut like sharpened Baatorian steel. “Did you not say you know better than to hope, little duke?”

He nodded in acknowledgment. “Touché, I suppose. But let us pretend I don’t know better either - then I would reassure you that I intend to remain well and truly out of my sire’s swatting range.”

“Avernus is out of swatting range. Just about.”

“And I am just about to head back. A happy coincidence,” Raphael replied, and that was no lie. He had garnered all the information there was to garner in Mephistar; remaining longer would be pointless at best and counterproductive at worst, as it might attract attention from the wrong people. 

He had a good idea of what was going on, and the certainty that his sire was not planning to make use of the Crown; for now, that was enough. That was not to say he was not very much interested in finding out whether his sire had any chance of success; if he did gain enough divine power to challenge Asmodeus for the throne of Nessus, it would certainly be a development he’d need to keep into account. 

And if he could sabotage that effort, perhaps take the spark of divinity which Mephistopheles sought for himself… ah, would that not be a victory worth celebrating?

But it was best not to get ahead of himself. He had made sure he would be warned the instant Cania’s forces moved for the Shadowfell; he would await word of developments from the safety of his House of Hope. As he finished his wine and stood, Lady Antilia sighed.

“Do be careful. I would sorely miss correcting the many misguided opinions you so confidently parade on music and poetry, should your sire see fit to destroy you,” she said, causing Raphael to chuckle.

“Far be it from me to contest your right to be mistaken,” he said, and bowed his head briefly before he returned, in a burst of flames, to Avernus - ready to mull over the possible outcomes of Mephistopheles’ desperate move, and what each of them could mean for him.

He strode to his desk, not even wondering what had become of the cape which had borne the message, and reached for his diary… only to pause upon seeing a now familiar handwriting. Raphael read Haarlep’s response, scoffed, and went to turn the page. He had far more important things to think about than that puerile little game, far more important consideration to put on paper… and yet he did not, in the end, turn the page. 

Ridiculous, all of it. So many variables at play, so many potentially game-changing possible outcomes to consider, and yet that insolent incubus’ words gnawed at him. Raphael scowled, and reached for the quill. He’d make it quick, tell Haarlep exactly where they stood, and finally focus on matters that were truly worth his time. 

I love perfection, not its echo, Know your place and play your part. Don’t mistake the heat I give you For the fire in my heart. Y--

The jolt of pleasure was sudden, running up his spine like a bolt of lighting, and Raphael could barely hold back a groan. The quill pressed against the page too hard for a moment, leaving a blot of ink behind. The blot stared back at him, an accusation. Raphael drew a slow breath through his nose and forced his hand to steady, schooling his expression into something suitably composed despite the fact none was there to witness him. 

A passing disturbance, nothing more - nothing he had not experienced countless times while Haarlep pleasured themself in his form - yet the warmth lingered, coiling low and insistent, as if it had found purchase there. Somewhere beyond his sight Haarlep laughed, burrowed in his breath and his pulse, pushed something inside-- thick, flexing, pressing on that spot with too much precision to be anything but their tail-- and the knowledge of it was almost more arousing than the sensation itself. Raphael bit back a groan and leaned over the desk, clenching his teeth and reaching to undo his trousers so that at least he would not soil himself. 

Did Haarlep know he had returned, or had the whim just taken them at random? The thought this might have occurred while he was at his sire’s court was daunting, and yet it caused his cock to throb painfully. He was leaking already, and he could almost see Haarlep’s satisfied grin at the sight, could almost hear their laughter--

How long it went on, Raphael did not know; it felt like hours. It finally came to an end when the presence inside him twisted a final time, then came the phantom sensation of a hand grasping his cock - and that, love, was that. He spilled with a groan low in his throat, breathing hard against the desk. Later, he would not recall how long he remained still, listening to his own breathing and thundering heart… nor would he recall writing more. 

Yet by the time he truly composed himself and looked down, he realized he had, somehow, added words to the page even as he battled for control. 

Yet when you lie in my likeness, When your smile cuts like wine, I see myself in you and I call it divine.

Raphael stared at it for a long moment, taking in how uncharacteristically shaky his handwriting was, and breathed out before he brought the quill down on paper again. His hand was steady again when he wrote more words, more confession than poem, nerves still thrumming with phantom pleasure.

Only the Devil loves the Devil, Only the damned can make him whole. You taste like blasphemy and heaven, Two sides of one black soul.

It was only then that Raphael placed the quill down and reached to tuck himself back in, to brush his hair back with his fingers. He drank some wine from his cup, a rich red, and finally his head cleared.

When he glanced down at what he’d written, he felt in complete control again… and more than a little foolish for indulging in the first place, with the event unfolding both in Cania and in the Shadowfell. He had far more important matters to tend to than an incubus and their antics.

What an effective distraction they make. Mephistopheles chose them well. But their games cannot distract me, not now.

Yet he made sure to turn a couple of pages before he got to work, leaving more than enough blank space for a reply that - unlike you, Haarlep would mock - would not be late in coming.

***

Raphael was late. 

Most unusual, that. In bed, he was usually disappointingly early; out of it, he prided himself in his punctuality. Of course, it was not unheard of for him to leave Avernus on oh-so-important business and not return from days on end - and Haarlep could deal with that, they supposed. But this was different because Raphael was right there in the House of Hope; they knew it for a fact as they lay in the middle of the bed, counting the heartbeats that were not their own. Raphael’s presence pulsed through the House like a constant pressure - steady and unmistakable. 

He was not in danger. He was not occupied beyond reach. He was simply not coming, despite the none too subtle nudge they had given him. Not even a sending spell to let them know he was otherwise occupied - nothing. He was truly acting every bit like the brat he was; that was not unheard of either but oh, it was annoying. Raphael knew better than to neglect them, and he neglected them regardless. 

Of course, it was his right; he was their master, after all. He could ignore them for hours, days, years on end if so he chose. He could vex them all he wanted… at his peril.

And Haarlep was very vexed indeed. Minutes ticked by, then hours. Haarlep was just beginning to consider creative ways to make their displeasure known when they felt it - not the distant awareness of Raphael sitting a few rooms away, but the sharper pull of proximity; the sense of him approaching, unhurried and unapologetic. 

Oh, the brat was doing it on purpose all right. He wanted them vexed, wanted what he knew they could dish out… and had the notion not been so delightful, Haarlep may have been annoyed by the notion Raphael was, in the end, going to get precisely what he wanted.

But I’ll take my pleasure too, master, whether you wish to give it or not.

They were allowing a smile to spread over their features - well, Raphael’s features - when the brat in question finally stepped inside as though he were perfectly on time, as though he had not deliberately made them way. Haarlep watched him stride in without so much looking in their direction, watched him place his diary down. They would have a look at that, later… but now, their focus was elsewhere. Now, they laughed - low, delighted, unkind.

“There you are,” they said, eyes raking over him with open appraisal. The human form again - how delightful. They enjoyed how smaller than them it was, how thin the skin, how prettily it flushed. All that, and no wings to get in the way. “Finally decided I was worth your time?”

Raphael gave them a haughty look, and did not answer quickly enough.

That was his mistake.

Haarlep closed the distance in a blink, fingers curling into the front of his doublet, hauling him forward hard enough to knock the breath from his chest. The fabric protested, seams straining as they yanked him close.

“Hours,” they went on, voice purring with venom. “You left me waiting for hours. Took what pleasure I gave you and returned none, as always.”

Raphael’s face flushed and he got started on his usual indignant sputtering, but Haarlep only grinned wider and shoved him back a step, nails dragging across his chest - tearing the doublet and the skin beneath, too. It got a hiss out of Raphael, but not retaliation. 

Of course not. The little brat was more powerful than a mere incubus by several orders of magnitude; he could destroy them as easily as breathing. The fact he did not lash back if not in words spoke volumes... and, as he’d reminded them in writing, they were bound to his behest. There was nothing Haarlep could do to him unless he allowed it, and he’d only allow what he too desired. And oh, how often did he desire to be brought low!

“There,” Haarlep sneered. “Much better. That pristine little composure of yours was starting to offend me.”

Raphael caught his balance, eyes burning now, jaw tight. “You’re overstepping.”

“Oh, no,” Haarlep replied sweetly, grabbing him again - this time by the collar, pulling him up to their eye level. “You wanted this, sweetling. You don’t keep me waiting unless you’re begging to be reminded who always blinks first, and why.” Their grip tightened, not painful - not yet - but deliberate. Possessive. “You come when I call.” Haarlep let their voice drop to a whisper, silk over a blade. “Or I come to collect. And I promise you, Raphael--” another swipe of their claws, tearing through more fabric to bare his chest. “Restraint has never been my virtue.”

Still in their grasp, Raphael sneered. Those mortal eyes of his seemed darker, and his breathing was faster. “Should I be surprised? The list of virtues you do possess is a short one indee--”

Haarlep did not grant him the courtesy of a warning before they turned suddenly, and slammed him against the nearest column. The back of his head hit the marble with a very satisfying noise that almost entirely covered the gasp when all air was blown out of his lungs. Haarlep let him go and watched him fall forward, dazed, landing on the floor on his hands and knees.

Much better.

“You-- insolent--” Raphael tried to speak, but the attempt was rather hampered by the fact he was trying to suck in breath and struggling to stand - something Haarlep gave him no chance to do. Another swipe of their claws ripped open the doublet across his back… and again, his skin as well. Haarlep laughed at the sight of blood.

“You sweet thing,” they crooned before they ripped through fabric again, making short work of Raphael’s clothing while their master put up no true resistance despite all his groaning and sputtering. “This form of yours always suited you best. Small and thin skinned, literally as well as figuratively.”

By now only clad in scraps of clothing Haarlep would delight in getting off him, Raphael glowered up at him. His teeth were bared in a growl but ah, it did not quite look as impressive as he probably meant to be with those blunt human teeth.

“Every breath you draw,” he spat, “is a gift from--”

The last word faded into a cry when Haarlep grasped his hair, hard, and yanked him up on his feet. They considered kissing him, let him have a little of their venom, but decided against it. Their spittle intensified most sensations, but for what they had in mind… well, it might dull the edge, and that just would not do. Their brat had done nothing to deserve that treat. 

So Haarlep did not kiss him, and instead lifted him almost entirely off the ground by the hair, savoring the pained scowl on his face before reaching down to grasp him. Already hard, and leaking. “And this,” they sneered, feasting their eyes on the sight of Raphael biting into his lower lip as he struggled not to moan, “is a gift from me. One I give you over and over again, yet you refuse to give proper thanks for it. It seems about time I take what I’m owed.” 

And take they would, as soon as they were done unwrapping that delicious present. They rid him of every last scrap of fabric, drawing blood yet again with their claws. Of course Raphael was a brat throughout it - struggling in their gasp, threatening to flay them for this. He almost sounded convincing, all indignant sputtering and glares and bared teeth, which only added to Haarlep’s amusement as they twisted an arm behind him and dragged him out onto the balcony, beneath the red sky of Avernus.

“What do you think you’re--!”

Haarlep did not reply at first: they only grasped the back of Raphael’s neck and slammed him down against the stone railing. The brat had just enough presence of mind to throw forward his free arm to cushion the impact, sparing his face a very unpleasant meeting with the stone. Haarlep ignored the stab of disappointment and looked ahead.

A long way below them, the Blood War raged as always. Minor skirmishes, most likely; the House of Hope could change locations as needed, but it generally remained in the same area. Raphael had chosen a spot unlikely to see major battles; too much Infernal machinery and most of all Infernal towers involved, he’d said once, could pose a risk despite the House’s wards and defences. 

But most of all, the spot he’d chosen oversaw the mountains where, Haarlep knew, the Mirror of Mephistar stood. Lord Mephistopheles’ window on Avernus - did Raphael like to imagine his sire could glimpse at his Avernian residence, and curse the day he let him slip from his control? It would not surprise Haarlep in the slightest; what would surprise them was to find that Mephistopheles was more than vaguely aware of Raphael’s continued existence. 

That was good news, really, but of course Raphael failed to see it that way. Haarlep could still recall the day they were gifted to him, so many centuries ago, and how insulted Raphael had been at the notion Haarlep had been merely sent to keep him entertained. He’d almost hoped, the fool, that his sire would spare him enough thought to actually spy on him.

You spy on a threat but oh, my little duke, you were never even that to him. You were an annoyance, and annoyances only need to be distracted.

“Let go of me this instant, and I may decide to let you live!”

“Ah, still pretending you have any power? How adorable.” Haarlep sneered, and willed their harness to go up in flames, willed themself to harden. They tightened their grip on his arm and leaned in to bite the back of Raphael’s shoulder, breathing in his desperate arousal, the need to be reminded of his place. His hand clenched uselessly into a fist on the stone railing, and whatever threat he intended to utter next was lost into a muffled protest when Haarlep reached over to push two fingers into his mouth. “Ha-ah, behave,” Haarlep warned, their voice rotting honey. “Be a good boy and wet my fingers. Do a good job, sweetling. It’s the only preparation you’ll be gett--”

The bite hardly hurt, truly; those human teeth did not even break skin. Haarlep was just a little startled and then, a mere instant later, surprise turned to delight. 

“Oh, so this is how it is?”

Raphael tried to turn, cursing them out - but words turned into a scream when Haarlep twisted his trapped arm further between his shoulders, raked their claws over Raphael’s side, and snapped their hips forward to take him dry. 

“This is what you get when you’re a brat, Raphael,” Haarlep sing-sang over the scream, delighting in the fact that even now he was not trying to get away. The way he seized in their grasp was no true attempt at freeing himself; he was getting exactly what he deserved, and he knew it. That, and the phantom sensation of Raphael’s cock throbbing and leaking, more than made up for any of the discomfort that they too were feeling. 

But it would fade; they had done that song and dance long enough, they could predict Raphael’s every reaction by the second or almost. Soon, the screams would turn from pain to pleasure; not that there ever seemed to be that much of a difference between the two.

“Ah-- Haarl--” Raphael tried to groan, but Haarlep gave him no chance to speak. They pulled out almost entirely and then sank back into that delicious heat all the way to the hilt. Raphael choked on his words, feeling both sides of the action through the pain - that wonderful sensation of fucking and being fucked that he sought like air - and Haarlep laughed. 

“Keep screaming, sweetling,” they crooned, letting their tail sneak up Raphael’s thigh. They watched his back shudder, watched his hand clutch the railing in a desperate, white-knuckled grip. They thrust again and again; not overly fast but deep and merciless. “Let all of Avernus hear you - the Blood War ought to stop just so that devils and demons alike may hear you as you are. Would your voice reach the Mirror of Mephistar, I wonder? Would the Lord of the Eighth be able to hear what a desperate little whore you still are, for all your posturing and pride?”

“S-stop…!”

There it was, beneath the intoxicating scent of arousal: shame enough to fill a glacier, even as his cock twitched again. And that pesky pride of his, making him clench his teeth and try to bite back the beautiful cries Haarlep had earned. But he would break, of course. Haarlep always knew how to crack him wide open. 

“Naughty, naughty. You so love the sound of your own voice, and now you deny it to me?” They sighed, and allowed themself another thrust before releasing their tail’s grip on his leg. A snap of the fingers, a little bit of magic of their own, just to grease the tip of it and make for a smooth glide--

It took but a moment for Raphael to understand; the sensation of something probing at his already filled hole must be impossible to mistake for anything else. He shuddered, sucked in a breath, and tried to turn. 

“Wait--”

But Haarlep had no intention to wait, and so they did not. They pushed the tip of their own tail inside, pressing against their prostate with practiced ease just as they gave another vicious thrust and finally, Raphael screamed. Long and loud, wordless cries echoing into the red sky of Avernus; it was even more satisfying than the pleasure of getting at least something inside them, even if it was their own tail. 

Haarlep laughed, elated, and took their pleasure with cock and tail, savoring Raphael’s screams as one would a fine vintage. 

“There-- that wasn’t so difficult, was it, sweetling?” they hummed in his ear to be heard over his own, leaning in across his back to let a bifurcated tongue flicker across his cheek. They tasted the salt of his tears like they would good wine, too, and let their free hand slide down his thigh… but they did not take hold of his cock, not yet. For now they were content to keep thrusting into him, keep fucking themself with their tail, knowing he was feeling all of it. 

His screams were breaking up, sounding more and more like sobs. 

“This comes so naturally to you, doesn’t it? So many dreams of conquest, but you were always meant for this. A plaything to be taken and used. Perhaps it is not too late to beg your sire to let you return to his court. You could be the most sought-after courtesan in Mephistar. There are so many who’d love to put you in your place like this! You’d only have to spread your thighs for them, open that pretty mouth, and you’d never be empty again…”

Another bite on the back of his shoulder, a few more thrusts, and Raphael’s cries devolved completely into frantic sobs, groans and disjointed words - yes and please and more and Haarlep. When the incubus smiled again, it was almost fond. Watching him unravel was always a treat, especially when the brat had been particularly haughty. So much effort to climb higher than most cambions could even dream of, and it only made for a longer way to fall.

“You would like that, wouldn’t you?” they murmured, indulging a little more into the fantasy. Their thrusts slowed, the insistent pressure on their prostate eased just a little, the hand on his thigh barely inched towards his cock. “You should have a room of your own, of course, to receive them. All silks and pillows… or perhaps you’d prefer to be the centerpiece of a feast, watch them all squabble over you, to be the first to have you… you would like that, wouldn’t you? To think of nothing but pleasure for the rest of your existence, see nothing but how desired you are…”

“Yes--!”

The word was barely intelligible, but that hardly mattered: Haarlep could smell and taste it, the desperate arousal and the need, the way pleasure coiled in his loins - closer now, closer - and they smiled against his hair. 

“Tell me only one thing,” they sing-sang, tilting their hips in a slow motion, adding just a little more pressure to their prostate. “Would you let them fill you, little whore that you are?”

Raphael trembled beneath them, groaned. “Ye--” he began, and that was enough. Haarlep’s hand reached to grasp his cock and squeezed just as their tail twisted against their prostate, and gave one last powerful thrust before filling him just as he’d asked. 

Hard to tell what precisely pushed him over the edge, but that hardly mattered. What mattered was that once again they felt Raphael come undone beneath them with a hoarse cry, shuddering against stone in the throes of a harsh orgasm. Haarlep laughed, just a little breathless, and turned their head to kiss his temple.

“Good,” they crooned, and smiled when Raphael groaned, tilting his head to press back against their lips. “Very good. But you know I am not done, don’t you? And I don’t plan on stopping until I’m satisfied.”

For an incubus, that could mean just about as much time as they desired; it could be days, if so they wished. In that specific occasion, Haarlep chose to be almost merciful: they kept fucking Raphael for just about about another couple of hours, listening as his cries turned to sobs again. They wrung one more orgasm out of him before he went entirely limp, too weak to even weep.

By the time Haarlep allowed themself to fill him again, Raphael was too overstimulated to form any more words. Haarlep chuckled before they pulled out and stepped back to enjoy the view as Raphael lay limply over the railing, bruised and bloody, covered in sweat and come as his back rose and fell with ragged breaths. 

He seemed barely conscious, and Haarlep briefly considered leaving him there rather than taking him to the healing pool. In the end, they did carry him inside - how well that human form of his fit in their arms! - but not to the healing pool. They lay him on the bed instead, and allowed themself a few moments to watch his face as he fell into a slumber, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear.

Ah, they already savored the moment he’d awaken and scrunch up his nose in distaste after realizing he’d slept filthy with bodily fluids in those nice silk sheets! A small annoyance, sure enough, but it would be enjoyable to watch nonetheless. 

And speaking of annoyance, had their little brat responded to their latest poetic efforts?

He had, as it turned out… and it did not escape Haarlep how his handwriting had changed after those first, haughty lines. The handwriting, and the tone.

“Ah, my little duke,” Haarlep sighed, lifting their eyes from the diary and clicking their tongue at the sleeping form on the bed. “Such a terrible temper, such formidable rage - yet I give you a little pleasure, and you’re once again putty in my hands.”

There was no response - Raphael did not even stir - and Haarlep figured it was as good a time as any for them to give a response of their own. 

Sweet Raphael, you strut, you claim, You cloak your longing under flame. You kiss yourself through lips of mine, And swear it’s me you undermine. Each shiver that you claim from me Confesses what you fail to see.

***

[Back to Chapter 1]

Haarlep ground their teeth, and strained against the weight pinning them down. Splintered masonry bit into their shoulder where the rubble had shifted again, warm blood seeping through dust. They forced another breath in anyway, dragged it through clenched teeth, and tried - again - to pull themself loose.

Rubble began to move, at last. But so did the marilith. 

Six blades hung loose for a moment, as if she were considering which expression of violence would be most efficient. The cambion - the last one - managed a single broken stagger backwards before she decided, almost lazily, that there was no further need for delay.

The first blade went through him cleanly. The second turned him into something less structurally coherent than he had been a moment ago. By the third, he was no longer standing at all; only falling in pieces that did not agree with each other about the direction of gravity. Haarlep exhaled a short, humourless laugh.

Well, there goes the last of the House’s competent help.

The laugh was a mistake, as it turned out. The eyes of three remaining hezrous and the marilith’s all turned to them. And while the marilith was certainly more pleasant to look at, the smile that opened her face promised a unique kind of unpleasantness.

“Ah,” she muttered, barely glancing to the side where her companion had fallen, body now reduced to black ichor. “It seems those pretty horns are mine to claim.”

For a moment, Haarlep wondered if it would make any difference whatsoever if they told her that the horns were borrowed, actually, and would become far less impressive the instant they were removed from their head. The next moment they came to the conclusion the information would not change her mind about killing them, and therefore they may as well save their breath. So they just gave one last push to the broken slab of marble keeping them pinned down, and tried to run.

They were barely able to take a single step when the marilith reacted, lighting-quick. There was no flourish, no warning beyond the tightening of her posture - six arms rebalancing in a single, coordinated snap of intent. The tail came in low and then up, less like a whip and more like a battering ram. Graceful as mariliths may look, there was nothing graceful in the result: heavy, dense muscle tearing through the air to hit Haarlep mid-motion with bone-shattering force.

And bone did, in fact, shatter. Several bones. At first Haarlep heard it more than they felt it as they were driven hard into what remained of the wall, stone cracking outward in a spidering fracture beneath them, breath ripped out in a sound that didn’t quite manage to become a scream. For a heartbeat they were simply pinned there; then the tail retreated enough for them to fall, caught them before they hit the ground, and the marilith’s spires tightened in a vise-like grip.

Agony came all at once, then. Ribs shattered, blood filled their mouth and chest cavity, something in their back snapped like a twig. Something in the shoulder too, already compromised from the collapse, had given way further; their right arm tingled, but they otherwise barely felt it. 

Other parts of them, however, screamed. The world narrowed to a ringing, white-edged blur. With a hoarse cry, they tried to slip away in the only way they still could - to gain at least a little more time.

Except they could not. For the first time, the Ethereal Plane answered with nothing but static. The sounds of battle throughout the House sounded so very distant, now. And no one was coming.

Raphael…!

“Come now, pretty thing,” the marilith called out, voice almost musical, as she dragged them closer. There was a hand grasping one of their horns, lifting their head and tearing a gargling cry from them; faintly, through the haze, Haarlep could see the gleam of a blade. “I’ll make it quick, if you keep still and--”

She trailed off, suddenly, and Haarlep could sense it too despite the agony.  A change, for lack of a better word, like a correction in reality. A wrongness in the air snapping back into alignment so violently that the remaining glass in the chamber trembled without being touched. The pressure in the room inverting, as though something vast had inhaled. 

The Master of the House was coming. 

The realization filled Haarlep with something they were rather annoyed to identify as relief, and a kind of childish glee they were all too happy to indulge in as they watched the marilith rear back, the hezrous looking around frantically.

“Who--” one of them began, and never got to speak another word before the very center of the room exploded into a white-hot inferno. The hezrous standing closest to it were incinerated on the spot; others staggered back with pained cries. Haarlep felt themself being dropped, fell to the ground, and cried out at the flare of pain. They remained still, unable to move, and had to make a supreme effort of will to lift their head and look.

The marilith had been far enough from the inferno to avoid direct harm, but even so she could comprehend what she was looking at - not simple flames, but all-devouring hellfire. It burned so fiercely one could almost believe Mephistopheles himself had deigned to come visit his least favorite bastard after all. Then said bastard’s voice rang out - laced with boundless contempt, the blackest fury, and just about the level of drama Haarlep had come to expect. 

“HOW DARE YOU LAY HANDS ON WHAT IS MINE?”

Just home, Haarlep thought, and already throwing a tantrum over his toys. Such a maddening brat they had been sent to serve… but beautiful, too. Haarlep never saw any point in denying the obvious fact Raphael was handsome, and he’d never looked as handsome in their eyes as he did now, eyes blazing with fury and hellfire coiling around him instead of dispersing as he lifted a hand.

All the way across the House, the Soul Pillars answered. Twisting green ribbons, all that remained of mortal souls, raced to him across the air through the gaps in the shattered door and half-collapsed entrance. He consumed them with an inhale, and his eyes glowed all the brighter. For the briefest instant, the chamber seemed to breathe in with him… then he smiled at the still stunned marilith, all teeth.

“You poor witless thing.”

Three chains erupted from him, molten lengths of hellfire, each link dripping white-hot flame that hissed through the air with the sound of shrieking souls. They lashed across the chamber with terrifying speed; two struck at the last hezrous standing, and the resulting screams only lasted the instant it took for hellfire to take, incinerating them from within until the only thing left to collapse was ash.

The third struck the marilith, who was knocked back - away from Haarlep - with a scream of pain and outrage in equal measure. She did, however, fare better than the lesser demons who'd accompanied her: she landed in a crouch rather than in a heap, scales already blackening where the fire had kissed them. Hurt, but not dead... and very pissed about the turn the fight was taking, Haarlep could tell. She hissed at Raphael, all six swords raised.

“You are picking a fight you cannot win, halfbreed,” she sneered. “However many tricks you may have, you shall not walk out of here a victor.”

Even half-conscious, Haarlep caught the wrongness in that. They stared at the demon as she coiled up, ready to strike, holding onto her blades. Mariliths, Haarlep knew, were very much the tacticians of demonic hordes; far from witless, whatever Raphael had to say about it, and not known to make threats they could not back up with action.

What is she talking about? He commands hellfire, surely she can tell he is no ordinary half-fiend. He outclasses her in every way, doesn’t he? What makes her so certain he cannot win? What does she know that we do not?

It seemed that Raphael was asking himself none of those questions, arrogant little bastard that he was. Instead, he sneered right back at her. “You may amuse me for slightly more than a heartbeat,” he declared. “That much, I shall conce--”

He was still speaking, the idiot, when the marilith sprang into action and steel became a storm. Mariliths did not rage blindly, nor throw themselves forward with the abandon of lesser demons. Every movement had purpose, every strike another piece in a battle they had already played out in their minds in a matter of moments. 

Six blades came at Raphael within instants, with deadly and practiced precision. Dodging every one of them seemed impossible and, as a matter of fact, it was.

Not that Raphael did not make a valiant effort to. He too moved with purpose, as though every angle and trajectory had already been accounted for in his mind. One blade he simply leaned away from by the smallest possible margin, letting it pass so close it stirred the fabric at his throat; the second he ducked beneath, the arc of steel cutting empty air where his head had been a heartbeat before. The third he stopped, a forearm rising up to meet the marilith’s wrist; Haarlep did not think they imagined the pained hiss she let out at the impact… but it did not stop her attack for even a moment.

The fourth and fifth followed in the same breath, and found flesh. Steel bit deep across his side, slicing through velvet and embroidered silk alike, opening a bright line of blood over his ribs. More steel slashed him across a thigh, and his leg buckled; a moment later the sixth blade sang through the air and bit into Raphael's shoulder before he could fully recover his footing, causing him to let out a pained grunt.

“Raphael--!” Haarlep called out, trying to warn him of what they knew was about to follow, but to no avail; his name turned into an unintelligible gargle through blood - and the only result was to make Raphael turn to them, taking his eyes off his opponent. A mistake, that. 

The tail struck, again, like a siege ram. The impact hurled Raphael bodily through a marble column. Stone exploded around him, the pillar collapsing in a deafening roar as he disappeared beneath dust and shattered masonry. For the first time since his arrival, the Master of the House looked less like an incarnation of infernal wrath and more like something that could, perhaps, be wounded.

The marilith lunged after him without hesitation, six swords already descending toward the cloud of dust. For one impossible heartbeat, Haarlep's certainty that Raphael would emerge from the scuffle a victor faltered... but only for that one moment. The next, Raphael made it plain that he was quite far from defeated.

The rubble burst apart in a geyser of white-hot hellfire, throwing the marilith back with a furious hiss. Raphael stepped forward through it with blood running freely from the gashes in his side, shoulder and thigh. There was another crimson streak tracing his temple where flying stone - or perhaps a blade? - had caught him. His clothes were torn, and heat shimmered around him so violently the air itself warped.

It burst outward from his palms in a blinding wave that swept across the ruined chamber. Marble flowed like wax beneath it. Books, shelves and broken furniture ceased to exist altogether. The marilith crossed four blades before herself to weather the blast, skidding backward through molten stone, smoke pouring from between the scales of her crossed arms.

Raphael did not seem all that concerned about his injuries. Slowly, almost absently, he drew a thumb through the blood soaking his side and looked at the crimson smear. He looked up, something flickering in his eyes.

“...You struck me.” The words were soft. Somehow, that made them infinitely more terrifying. “How extraordinarily unfortunate for you.”

At last, the demon looked… not quite scared - she would only return to the Abyss if killed - but not as certain of victory as she had been before, either. So, of course, she tried to bargain. “You still do not know what you’re trifling with,” she said, hissing out each word, only for Raphael to sneer. 

“But I do. I am dealing with rabble who thought they had the right to defile my House of Hope.”

“Leave now with your life, and--”

Whatever she said next, whatever she offered or threatened, Haarlep did not quite hear. Their every breath was becoming more difficult, and they dropped their head against shattered marble with a sound that could pass as a laugh, blood and all. 

Oh, dear. You ought to leave bargaining to devils. 

There was fire, again, and it flared painfully against their eyes even as their vision darkened. They closed their eyes, trying to even their breathing. They noted that more and more of their body was becoming numb, the pressure in their chest greater. They heard the sounds of blades through the air and more roaring flames, they heard screams, but they did not see what followed nor could they tell how long it took. As their ears buzzed and consciousness began to slip away, their form flickering briefly before resuming Raphael’s likeness out of long-held habit, hours and minutes seemed one and the same. 

If they died there because Raphael simply had to play with his food instead of making a clean kill, they decided as they began to sink into nothingness, they would find a way to haunt his dreams to the end of his days. But surely, he would be done with the marilith any moment now and turn his attention where it belonged - on them. 

He would take them to the restoration pool and heal them, and then proceed to be a pain in the ass in all the wrong ways over saving their life. He’d expect their thanks, wouldn’t he, the insufferable brat. And perhaps they would give thanks, if he asked prettily enough. But first, they would have a nap. A little nap as they waited for the demon problem to be sorted. Just… just a little…

“ENOUGH!”

Raphael’s scream dragged them back to consciousness, quite suddenly and rudely as well. Haarlep groaned and opened their eyes just in time to see Raphael bring down his hands with a snarl, conjuring a downward burst of flames on the screaming marilith.

She never stood a chance. For one impossible instant the demon became nothing but a silhouette suspended inside a pillar of incandescent white. Then even that outline collapsed inward, taking the scream with it… and suddenly, the room was silent again. Well, save for Haarlep’s gargling breaths - and then, Raphael’s steps as he hurried past the pile of ashes that had been his opponent.

Right to them, of course. He always did return to his Haarlep, in the end.

“Ah-- there you are, sweetling,” Haarlep muttered, and managed a grin even as blood poured from the corners of their mouth. They had to be a sight; they felt nothing below their waist, but they were rather sure the constriction had also crushed something that might have been vital when it still worked. There were still sounds of battle from elsewhere in the House, but they sounded so distant now. “Fashionably late. Almost…” blood filled their throat, causing their voice to come out as a gargle. “Almost… missed… the fun.”

Haarlep’s vision had begun to swim as they forced out those last words, but they still could see Raphael’s expression going from fury - the gall on those demons, to invade his House! - to confusion and then something remarkably close to alarm. Ah, yes - surely not something he expected to see, his own face and body broken like that. It was not how he liked to see them… or rather, himself.

Well, no matter. A soak in the restoration pool will do the trick, they thought, and opened their mouth to say as much - only for more blood to pour out down their chin and throat and chest, with no intelligible words to accompany it.

Annoying, that, but it seemed Raphael had gotten the message regardless. Haarlep could barely see now, as though looking through a thin black veil, but they could hear his scoff and his shadow moving closer, crouching by their side. 

“Imbecile,” he muttered, the rage still singing in his veins giving his voice a gravelly quality Haarlep may have rather enjoyed in entirely different circumstances. There was an arm around their shoulders lifting them back to a sitting position and a solid shoulder to rest on as their head lolled to the side. “Your idea of fun is questionable to say the very least.”

Had they been able to talk, Haarlep may have said something remarkably predictable about pots and kettles, and how they would not take that sort of criticism from someone who’d only ever bend over for his own cock with so much more on offer. Instead they only grunted and closed their eyes as Raphael’s hand rested across the side of their head and he muttered something. 

They did not catch the words, but what washed over them next was unmistakably a healing spell. It was no full mend, not even close, but it allowed them to snap back into full awareness - of their surroundings, of the situation, of all the pains and aches that came from a near-death battle. Not that they had done any battling, really, but Raphael did not need to know that. They could feel their legs again, too, and that felt like a fair enough trade-off for some discomfort.

For a moment neither of them moved. Raphael knelt there with blood - his own, mixed in now with whatever had transferred from Haarlep's ruined shoulder - drying on his hands, and Haarlep sat propped against him like a puppet with half its strings cut, breathing in slow, careful pulls that no longer ended in a wet rattle. Small mercies. Still…

“... I wouldn’t say no to another healing spell.”

“I’m half tempted to make you beg for it.”

Haarlep grimaced. “Oh, please. You don’t do things by half when it comes to temptation.”

There was a scoff that was almost a chuckle. “I never do anything by half, as a rule,” Raphael informed them, just as he cast another healing spell. More wounds healed, the last pains dulling into aches. “Although this unfortunate mess has forced me to leave a rather promising lead cold well before the final stanza could play out.”

Haarlep sighed, the relief welcome enough that they decided not to point out that Raphael bailing out before things could reach a satisfying conclusion was, in their experience, a nightly occurrence. When Raphael pulled back and stood - not offering to help them up, the brat - they were able to stand as well. They were rather certain a wing was still dislocated, though, and that would make it impossible to fly until it was sorted.

They could still hear the sounds of battle in the rest of the House, and no doubt Raphael would have more demons to wipe out… but before he did, they intended to make one thing plain. “Just to be clear,” they declared, tilting their head towards the flying fortress still wedged into the wall behind them, “this was not my fault.”

It gained them another scoff. “If I’d had any reason to think it was, I’d have annihilated you with the rest of the rabble,” he muttered, and turned to the door. It was half-collapsed, rubble over it to block the way out, but surely it would not be difficult for Raphael to break through. “Now, remain here while I take care--”

“RAAAAAAAAGH!”

The Nine Hells of Baator, and particularly the eternal battlefield that was Avernus, were not short on unpleasant sounds - from the screams of soldiers and hordes to the shrieking of the damned, through the roar of infernal engines and the clash of endless battles. However, few could compare to the bellowing noise that spilled out of the flying fortress before something tore its side open. 

Stone and warped metal shrieked as something vast tore itself free from within. It had to fold itself nearly double to fit through the gap it made, wings like sheets of oil-black flame dragging furrows through the rubble, and when it straightened to its full height the ceiling - or what was left of it - groaned in protest at the sheer presence of it.

Well, Haarlep thought, this just keeps getting better, doesn’t it?

They had only ever seen balors from afar, well out of their reach - which, in their opinion, was the closest anyone should ever come to the very embodiment of demonic fury. About as dangerous as a pit fiend, much more unpredictable… and now there was one towering over them, at least sixteen feet of muscle and flames, a whip of fire coiled in one massive fist and a greatsword wreathed in crackling lightning in the other.

Honestly, Haarlep did not feel the slightest bit of embarrassment when they immediately stepped behind Raphael. They were a lover, not a fighter, and they knew what battles they could pick. This was not one of them.

Not one I’d advise even Raphael to pick, either. But I suspect our guest is not going to give him a choice in the matter. There is no reasoning with a balor.

However, chaos of battle did not follow immediately. For a moment the balor's eyes did not so much as flicker in their direction. They found the ash where the last marilith had been instead; then they found Raphael, standing in the middle of the room with his clothes torn, blood still wet on his hands. In the end he sneered, a great gash of a mouth full of teeth like broken glass.

“Half a mortal,” it rumbled, and the words themselves seemed to singe the air on the way out. “Playing lord in a house of mortal scraps. How precious.”

Standing well behind Raphael, Haarlep could only begin to guess his expression upon being called such; if his voice was anything to go by, though, the bridge of his nose must be scrunching up something fierce. 

“I am no mortal,” he bit, “and I do not recall extending an invitation to whatever remnants the Blood War has relegated to the bargain counter.”

The balor's laugh shook dust from the rafters. The whip uncoiled with a hiss, trailing sparks along the scorched floor. 

“I would tell you it is not wise to stoke my anger, but it never did need stoking,” he said, his voice the rumble that promised a storm the likes of which even Dis had never seen. “My name is Zhalmoxis, and I am going to grind it all to dust. The incubus. Your house. The soul-well beneath it. And you, halfbreed, last of all, so you may watch everything you built become nothing before I finally let you die.”

For one heartbeat, nobody moved. Then hellfire ignited along both of Raphael's forearms and he turned just enough to glance back at Haarlep. His expression had settled into something they had seen perhaps twice before and liked far less than his usual theatrics: a stillness, cold and absolute, beneath which real fury lived.

It was said that Mephistopheles was like that, too; that one ought to fear him most when he grew cold and quiet, the moment before the Lord of Hellfire tore blazing through the veneer of the Cold Lord. The apple and the tree and all that, though Haarlep suspected neither father nor son would be pleased to hear as much.

They also suspected that look was meant to tell them that was the moment to make themself scarce. As much as they enjoyed pushing against Raphael’s wishes, this was one order they were keen to obey.

“... Well. It does feel like I’m intruding. And I am sure you have everything well in hand, sweetling, so I’ll leave you to it. If you could get that door out of the wa--”

Raphael’s hand closed around their good arm before they could finish, and then - with far less ceremony than Haarlep would have liked - he shoved them, hard, sending them sprawling behind the dubious shelter of a fallen column just as the balor's whip cracked forward like a felled tree. It hit with a crack of thunder, tearing a gouge of molten stone through the space they had occupied a half-second before.

“Rude,” Haarlep managed, from the floor, to no one who was listening. And the ruins of the door and wall still blocked the way out. How very irritating. 

Haarlep sat up with a groan - should have asked for one more healing spell - and peered from behind the broken column. Raphael was already moving towards the balor, and the whip was coming down in another blow.

For once, Haarlep found themself hoping the action would be over sooner rather than later.

***

Dodging the first blow had been relatively easy; the whip's second strike Raphael did not dodge so much as he declined - a twist of will and momentum that put three feet of empty air where his shoulder had been, close enough that he felt the concussive heat of it against his skin and nothing else at all. 

Fire had never been permitted to hurt him; Zhalmoxis seemed to register this a half-second too late, the whip already curling back, something like irritation crossing that bestial face.

“You'll want to try something else,” Raphael informed him, almost pleasant about it, “if fire is the extent of your imagination. You’ll find that I save my best work for things capable of appreciatin--”

"SHUT UP AND FIGHT!"

The next strike came from the sword, crackling white-blue along its edge, enough force behind the blow to shatter baatorian steel. Raphael barely avoided it; it came close enough that the electricity licked scorch marks across his ruined coat regardless.

Distantly, some part of him catalogued the damage already done to this body: the gashes still weeping at his side, his thigh, his shoulder - each protest amplified by the balor's proximity like a wound remembering an old grudge. He filed the complaint away for later. There would be time for indulgence; now there was only the arithmetic of survival, and he had never once in centuries of practice found that arithmetic wanting.

He drove a hand forward in answer, hellfire surging at the balor's chest. Fire could not hurt a balor any more than it could hurt him, but hellfire - oh, that was different indeed. It struck true, searing a black, smoking wound across scaled muscle, and Zhalmoxis roared.

It was not enough to stagger him but Raphael felt the small, vicious satisfaction of it regardless and pressed forward. That was, in hindsight, an error.

The whip caught his forearm; flames were harmless to him, but even still it wrapped tight before he could pull free. A pull, with the balor’s full weight behind it, hauled him forward off his feet - directly into the reach of the blade. He twisted barely enough that the sword opened a gash on his already wounded shoulder rather than on his throat, and he swallowed the sound that tried to follow it.

Electricity did not char him as it would anything mortal but it caused his muscles to seize up, pain racing down his arm. Still, he was able to wrench free and a beat of his wings was just enough to carry him out of reach before the next swing landed. The tingling in his arm was not enough to keep him from lifting it and casting again - three chains of hellfire straight at his opponent’s chest, already blackened by the first hit. 

This time it did not merely wound: it caught, licking hungrily along the blackened gash it had already opened… but Zhalmoxis was not thrown back, and he did not stop. 

One massive arm swept around in a backhand blow that had nothing to do with the sword at all - raw mass and muscle, moving faster than something that size had any right to. Raphael had just enough time to get an arm up. 

It did not help. The impact was powerful enough to shatter stone, and would have killed lesser devils on the spot. Raphael was no lesser devil and still the force of it took him clean off his feet. He was thrown through what remained of a bookshelf, splinters and scorched parchment scattering in his wake, and he came up hard against the far wall with the taste of copper flooding his mouth. 

Something cracked in his chest and pain flared across his back. One of his wings drooped uselessly behind him when he forced himself to move, rolling across the floor and out of the way before the fire-wreathed whip cracked against stone where his head had been. 

“You're slower than the marilith,” Raphael wanted to comment, but blood dribbled rather unceremoniously from his mouth the moment he tried and nothing intelligible came out at all. That part, he decided, he would leave out of his retelling of the battle, once he wrote it. But first, he had to end it.

Raphael used the momentum to come up onto one knee, just in time to see the longsword descending, lightning crawling white along its length. He crossed both forearms above his head and caught it. Steel and crackling electricity bit, racing through muscle and bone in a way that left his arms numb and singing, but he held. 

For a few moments, they were locked in the struggle. Zhalmoxis was not laughing anymore; he was trying to press forward through sheer muscle power, whatever amusement the fight had held for it burned away with the first hellfire wound - replaced by the single-minded, unblinking focus of a creature that had stopped playing. 

He snarled. “I have killed dozens of your kind at war with scarcely one blow,” he ground out, flaming eyes narrowing into slits of pure malevolence. “Yet you persist, and wield hellfire.”

Raphael met his gaze, baring bloodied teeth. Whether he meant to sneer or snarl back, he did not know nor did it matter. “There are no other devils of my kind.”

A scoff. “Whose blood are you to wield all this power, halfbree--”

“MY POWER IS MY OWN!”

It was a rare thing for a balor - a being that was the very incarnation of the hatred and fury of the abyss - to be taken aback by another creature’s rage. Yet, it seemed, that was a day of firsts, because he did look surprised when Raphael came up off the ground in a single motion, pushing back with more force than the balor had clearly braced for. 

Zhalmoxis did not step back, but it made no matter; his feet slid across the floor, and Raphael snarled, forcing a step forward, pushing back. “You dare compare me to the rabble you've killed at war! You dare stand in my House, ask after my blood! I’ll have you scream for this, to be allowed to die and return to the wretched abyss that birthed you!”

I owe him nothing. Not this House. Not my power. Not a single ember of what I have made of myself.

The pain from his wounds, the broken wing, shattered ribs, at least one lung no longer working as it should - all of it seemed distant. Raphael shoved the blade aside hard enough to stagger the demon, and instead of putting some distance between them he held up a hand to cast immediately, fury thudding in his temples and obscuring all thought of tactics. 

And it cost him. Before he could cast, the balor had dropped the flaming whip, closed a hand around his throat, and lifted - a solid wall of muscle seeking to find out how much pressure a cambion's neck could withstand before something gave. 

“Agh--!” The spark between his fingers sputtered, and his hands went to his throat instead. Raphael's vision narrowed to a bright, furious point as his boots left the floor entirely, claws scrabbling uselessly at a wrist thicker than his own thigh, flames guttering weakly as he struggled to focus, to call forth more hellfire. It should have come easy as breathing, but now it did not. Neither could he breathe, and he felt the vertebrae in his neck beginning to give--

“Catch!”

Something heavy that looked suspiciously like the Orphic Hammer entered Raphael’s field vision at high speed, but only for one instant before it connected with the side of the balor’s head with an admittedly satisfying crack. Zhalmoxis roared and staggered, dropping Raphael to the floor. He fell on his knees, coughing, hands reaching up to his throat as he looked around, wide-eyed, trying to make sense of what had just happened. 

Standing several feet away, wearing the Gauntlets of Hill Giant Strength and little else, Haarlep grinned.

“Do be more careful, sweetling,” they sing-sang, as though they were in the boudoir with no overwhelmingly powerful demon to contend with. “You’re not done disappointing me yet.”

***

Truth be told - not that they ever did plan on telling - Haarlep had not aimed for the balor’s head. They had meant to throw the hammer at Raphael, expecting him to catch it in mid-air and swing at the Whatshisface’s head himself… but their aim had been just a little off. Which was not too bad, really: it was a good hit they could easily pass off as intentional, after all.

The flipside was that while it had caused the demon to drop Raphael, it had also caused him to turn his full attention - and fury - towards them. Haarlep’s words were barely out when Zhalmoxis’ eyes found them, and their smile froze on their lips.

The roar that followed made them very much suspect that even the gauntlets would not carry them very far in a fight. 

“Now let’s not be hasty here, it was barely a friendly bonk--” they blurted, trying to step back, but the admittedly not brilliant argument in their defense fell on deaf ears. The huge mass of the balor moved frighteningly fast, toppling yet another column on the way, crackling sword lifted to come down as he roared again and--

No, wait. Someone else had roared. And Haarlep knew that roar as well as they knew every other part of Raphael, in any form. 

Well, about time he began taking this seriously. 

They looked past the balor even as the blade descended toward their head, and got a glimpse of three bestial skulls fused together, crowned in hellfire, just one moment before Raphael slammed against the balor like a battering ram. 

As much as Raphael’s ascended form towered above an average devil, it was not quite so vast as the mass of muscle and hatred barrelling toward Haarlep - but he was strong, frightfully so, hellfire licking along dark ridges of his body, and it was enough. The impact drove Zhalmoxis back, causing the sword to fall and slide across the floor.

For an instant, the balor did not even seem to notice he had lost his weapon: he only stared, clearly stunned, at the sight of an ascended fiend crowned in hellfire roaring right back at him as though he, too, embodied the primal fury of the Abyss. Flaming eyes met Raphael’s glowing yellow ones - which set, Haarlep was not certain - and then, at last, the demon bared his teeth. 

“Your heads shall make a fine troph--”

Raphael roared again, wordlessly, but Haarlep was rather sure they could guess what that meant - SHUT UP AND FIGHT - before he threw himself at the balor, all claws and teeth and flames.

After that, Haarlep mostly gave up trying to follow the specifics. They were a little busy trying to keep away from blows that would probably pulverize them on the spot if they just so happened to land on them.

And there were many such blows. It was not a fight so much as a collision, over and over - no thought getting in the way either of them fought now, just fury and instinct and the desire to annihilate. Two beasts clashing across what remained of the Archive with no regard whatsoever for the walls, the shelves, centuries of collected knowledge currently being reduced to ash and splinters beneath them. 

A column went down in one direction; half a bookcase in the other, throwing burning parchment into the air like a flock of startled birds. Haarlep threw themself sideways more than once, more from instinct than any real plan, feet skidding on rubble already slick with boiling blood that could have belonged to either combatant at this point.

At one point Zhalmoxis got a fistful of one sloping horn and used it to slam Raphael bodily into the floor hard enough to crack marble in a spiderweb; Raphael retaliated by driving his claws up into the balor’s unprotected stomach, and the answering scream had a wet, ragged edge that hadn't been there before. He tore Raphael off himself - something seemed to fall out of the opening, sliding wetly onto the burning floor - and threw him clean across the chamber… and through what little remained of the door.

The impact tore the frame apart entirely. Stone and splintered wood collapsed outward, and where the door and rubble had been there was now simply a ragged hole into the corridor beyond - smoke-hazed, but clear. A way out.

As Raphael tore himself from it to launch himself at the balor again, blazing and roaring, Haarlep took a step towards it. Several, really.

But then they stopped.

It was stupid to hesitate; they knew as much. They would accomplish nothing - they had no knowledge of how to wield a weapon, no spell worth casting against something that size. Nothing but a pair of gauntlets that allowed them to throw a hammer with few results, and a smart mouth that had gotten them exactly nowhere thus far. 

Every reasonable instinct told them to run, to get clear, to let the two monsters currently demolishing the Archive finish it without a bystander underfoot. Whatever the situation was in the rest of the House of Hope - had their security dispatched the rest of the invaders, or had they been destroyed? - could not possibly be as dire as this. 

Another step. Then they paused, again, and looked back. 

Perhaps, they told themself without much conviction, it would be wise to see which way the clash went before they left. Just to… just so that…

Haarlep tried to think of an excuse, but their mind remained blank and they could only curse under their breath, standing stock still by their only way out and unable to just go. At least it would not be a long wait. It was clear by now - how long had it been? - that the fight could not last much longer… although it was difficult to tell which way it would go, each roar now a sound of pain as much as of fury as the two opponents kept tearing into each other. 

The last exchange, when it came, happened almost too fast for Haarlep to follow.

Zhalmoxis lunged with what looked like everything he had left - some final, desperate surge of brute strength - and Raphael met it head-on rather than dodging, both clawed hands driving forward into the balor's chest in a single, blinding detonation of hellfire that lit the whole ruined chamber white.

The sound of it was enormous - and then, all at once, it wasn't.

Zhalmoxis went down first, one massive knee striking the floor, then the other - smoke pouring from a chest cavity, his enormous head bowing at last. Raphael staggered back a few steps, and he did not so much collapse as unmake himself - the hellfire guttering out along the ridges of his arms, the three-faced horror of his head folding back down into something smaller and intimately familiar.

By the time he hit the ground, he was simply himself again… and gravely, catastrophically wounded. Bone was visible where his collarbone had given way under some blow, a leg stuck out in the wrong direction below the knee, and there was a gash along his stomach deep enough that Haarlep could see more than they would have liked of what lay beneath, blood pooling dark and fast beneath him on the broken marble. 

Raphael coughed - was that a shard of a broken rib sticking out of his side? - and blood dripped from his mouth. He lifted his head, looking around with just one good eye as the other remained swollen shut, and for a moment he seemed lost.

I call it power when I bleed, he’d written in his silly little diary, but he sure as all Baator he did not look powerful now.

“Haarlep…?” he gargled, and the sound snapped Haarlep out of a state that was very much like stupor. They recoiled and next thing they knew they were moving across the ruined room to kneel beside him, hands hovering, uncertain for once in their long existence where it was even safe to touch. 

“I’m here,” they said, “you absolute, catastrophic idiot.” 

Raphael’s gaze found them, and something that was almost a huff left the wreck of him. Even now, he acted indignant. “Your thanks… would not… go amiss.”

“I’ll thank you when you read dispatches from the frontlines before you go chasing your flights of fancy,” Haarlep muttered, but there was little bite in their words. The most urgent thing, they decided, was finding a way to move Raphael to the healing pool in the boudoir without damaging him more. 

Once their little brat was on his way to full healing, then they would tear him a new one. Figuratively. And possibly literally, if the mood struck them and--

“... Heh. Revolting. Half a devil, twice the fool.”

Haarlep turned to see that Zhalmoxis had lifted his head, just enough. Whatever remained of his face still managed something like a grin - cracked, molten, delighted in the particular way of a creature who knows it has one last card to play and intends to enjoy playing it. 

For one blank second, Haarlep genuinely didn't understand. Then the memory surfaced, unhelpfully late, dragged up from some dusty corner of centuries spent half-listening to war stories they'd never expected to need: balors did not simply die. They detonated, spitefully and gloriously, taking whatever stood nearby down with them before reforming somewhere in the Abyss to lick their wounds. 

And just now the flames wreathing Zhalmoxis were crackling more fiercely, burning hotter and brighter and--

Raphael moved, faster than Haarlep could finish the thought. He pushed Haarlep on the floor against the wall, covering them with his body and spreading his wings just one instant before the blast rang out, replacing all the sound in the world. Heat and force in a single indivisible wave, shattering stone and sending fragments hurtling through the air; Haarlep clenched their teeth, and waited for the pain to hit.

It never did. The blast faded at last, leaving behind only silence. 

Haarlep opened eyes they hadn't realized they'd shut, coughing dust, and found themself entirely unhurt. Not so much as a singed hair. Raphael was on them still, one arm braced against the wall. Then his arm fell bonelessly to his side, his head dropped on their shoulder - and for one giddy, adrenaline-drunk moment all Haarlep could think to do was laugh.

Of all times to get on top…!

“Well,” they managed, grinning. “I have to say, this is the most passionate you've ever held me. Who knew all it took was a fight to the death to get you in the mood?”

Their words seemed to echo in the ruined archive, to no response at all. Haarlep blinked. 

“... Raphael?”

No answer, and that was when it suddenly struck Haarlep how still he was, how limp - and not the kind of limpness they had come to expect from him. They could not feel the heat of his breath against their shoulder, or the thumping of that mortal heart in his chest. 

Haarlep reached up to grasp his shoulders intending to push him away and shake him, but they found they couldn’t. As long as he did not move, as long as they did not turn him over and see, there remained some small, foolish sliver of a world in which this was nothing - in which he was simply being dramatic, milking the moment for sympathy he did not need, and would scoff at them the instant they gave him the satisfaction of panicking.

They gave him the satisfaction anyway.

“Raphael.”

Nothing answered them but silence, the widening pool of blood and the sudden, hollow feeling of realizing that for once in his miserable, dramatic, insufferable existence, Raphael had gone silent as a grave.

“I am merely keeping an eye on developments,” he declared. “Whereas you should keep both of yours far from writings which do not concern you, lest I decide to take them for good.”

A quirk of their lips. “Oh, we both know you wouldn’t. You do so love gazing into your own eyes.”

“A mirror will do just as well.”

“Do let me know when a mirror ravishes you so thoroughly you pass out, lordling, and I’ll concede defeat and pack my bags.” The remark gained them a scoff, but Raphael did not attempt to argue against that. Nor did he try to pull away when Haarlep leaned in to kiss the bridge of his nose. “I’m concerned, that's all.”

“Liar.”

They sighed, pulling away just enough to lean down on the pillows. “I cannot lie to you unless you tell me to, my little brat, as per our contract. I am concerned. I do quite enjoy the cushy position I have here. And the many positions I can put you in.” A light bite on his earlobe, and they smiled at the shaky intake of breath. “I would miss that dearly, I believe.”

“Hmph. I am not the one who’s dancing at the edge of the abyss,” Raphael muttered. He spoke with his gaze fixed on the ceiling as though seeing something on it that Haarlep could not, the beginning of a smirk curling his lips. “How my sire was able to retain his throne after the Reckoning I’ll never know, but it seems the Lord Below’s patience is running thin at last.”

Haarlep hummed, once again threading their fingers through his hair. “Your sire may yet sway him if he pleads humbly enough.”

“He plainly does not intend to do so. He seems to think gathering the remnants of Mask’s divinity that still elude him would give him a chance to call his banners in revolt and win.”

“A great gamble indeed. If he does succeed in absorbing more divine power, there will be no turning back. Either he fights and wins, or even Lady Baalphegor may not be able to keep Lord Asmodeus from disposing of him the way he did with Beherit.”

It was a rare thing for an archdevil to be destroyed; slain, yes - but as a matter of fact, only Asmodeus had the power to destroy one of them so utterly there could be no chance of return, and at some cost to himself. The former Lord of the Sixth - that layer certainly had changed hands more than most - had been one such case, long ago. Despite yet unconfirmed rumors that one of them had somehow survived in a diminished form the fate of Beherit, his consort Batna and their short-lived son had been a cautionary tale ever since.

The mere mention of Beherit caused Raphael’s brow to furrow, the smirk gone. “... It is a risk he must be aware of,” he muttered. Haarlep could see the wheels turning in that pretty head of his as he considered the potential scenarios - whether his sire’s coup would take place at all, whether it would succeed… or fail. “It seems all the more foolish that he is not using the Crown of Karsus.”

Haarlep clicked their tongue. “Have you once considered, sweetling, that the archmage of the Lower Planes may have valid reasons not to use it?”

The scowl deepened and Raphael sat up, swatting their hand away. Touchy as always, the brat. “I have considered a great many things beyond your meager understanding,” he bit, gaining himself a sigh.

“Of course you have,” Haarlep muttered, and sat up themself, rolling their shoulders. “Lucky for you, I suppose, that the Lord of the Eighth lacks your acumen.”

“You can keep your mockery, incubus,” Raphael snapped, and stood to step towards the pool. He was a pleasant sight, still in his human form and naked, the bruises and marks they had left on him still marring that delicate skin. A shame the healing water would erase all of it.

Haarlep tilted their head. “But it truly would be lucky, if the Lord Below destroyed your sire. One less threat for you to contend with, and perhaps the Crown might find its way out of his vaults once he is gone.”

The sudden loss of a ruler means chaos, and chaos is full of possibilities. 

It seemed a sound argument to Haarlep, really, and they expected Raphael to agree. As much as he disliked chaos, he was not blind to the opportunities it may open when bestowed upon others. And yet their words had a peculiar effect on him: he froze mid-stride, only a few steps from the pool, and his back seemed to stiffen. 

When he spoke, his voice was cold. “If he is not an utter imbecile, that will not come to pass. It would vex me to know him such a fool. He has to remain alive to witness me as I step on his melting throne on the way to Nessus, and to bow to me once I seat myself in Malsheem.”

Ah, of course, Haarlep thought. He needs to be alive to see you victorious. He needs to be alive to praise you. You still want that above anything else after all this time, don’t you, you poor half-mortal thing? Empty praise your father will never mean. But you can will yourself to settle for a sweet lie, if it is what you wish to be true.

They knew better than to voice that thought; they were not in the mood for a full-blown temper tantrum right about then. So they sighed, and stretched. “As you say, master. Shall I help you bathe?”

“No.” The response was curt, and the stiffness in his back was still there when he dipped into the water to wash away the remnants of their recent activities - both marks and long-dried fluids. A shame, that, but Haarlep decided not to voice that thought either. They only leaned back once more and watched as the brat finished bathing and stepped out of the water. A burst of flame left him both dry and clothed, and once more in his cambion form.

Unfair, really, how that crude drying method never seemed to leave a single hair out of place. Haarlep almost did remark on that, but Raphael left the boudoir before they could and without bothering to say another word. But he did pick up the diary on his way to the door, and Haarlep suspected his next words would not be long in coming. The thought made them chuckle.

They were really enjoying that little game.

***

You take my hunger for a plea, Yet I kneel by choice, for me. I take the burn; the blaze is mine, I choose the edge, I draw the line. You call it fate, you call it need, I call it power when I bleed.

“Master--”

“Is interrupting me when I plainly do not wish to be interrupted a new pastime of yours? There are more direct ways to beg to be maimed.” 

“I--” The Archivist inhaled sharply before he bowed, muttering the same tired apologies as always. Raphael allowed himself a few moments to savor his fear and to let the ink dry before he snapped the diary shut and looked up.

“Enough. Tell me what you want.”

“The… the latest from the Blood War, master. There is news regarding the movement of troops and new breaches alongside the Styx. And another gift from Dis.”

The gift from Dis was an exquisite, intricately decorated vase which Raphael demanded be brought to him immediately. The Archivist placed it on the desk before him with hands that may have shaken, had he not been too terrified to damage it to allow himself as much. He also placed down some parchment, muttering something about the Blood War and a report, but Raphael waved him off with a scowl. 

“Enough of you. Leave, and take the servants with you,” he ordered, and waited for the last of them to be gone before he looked back at the vase. 

“Tell me your truth.”

The decorations on the vase, which at first glance had seemed to show the signing of the Pact Primeval - the birth of Baator as it was now - began to shift, to change. Within moments they depicted legions of devils, beneath a banner he knew well: his sire’s sigil. They stood before a tall black tower, awash in shadow.

The Canian army, marching upon the Citadel of Shadow. It has begun. 

Things had moved quicker than he’d predicted, which annoyed him - but Raphael had always found little usefulness in annoyance which was not followed by action. His next course of action was clear enough: he had to see what was happening with his own two eyes… and now he knew where to go.

A breath, a burst of flame, and he left Baator behind for the Shadowfell - alongside a vase whose message was already turning into simple decoration once more, his diary, and an urgent dispatch concerning the latest assault on Avernus which he had not bothered to read.

“... All right, I’ll bite. What’s got you pacing this time?”

Korrilla’s voice was halfway between amusement and exasperation, as was often the case when she talked with the Archivist. Who probably had a name once, Haarlep supposed. Unless that too had been sold to Raphael alongside his soul. 

And a good chunk of his sanity, given how easily he worried about inconsequential things - like some kind of dispatch about a war raging far below them and generally a good distance away. Haarlep could count the times a stray demon had made it to the House of Hope on the fingers of one hand, and each time they had been promptly hit by a warding spell or dispatched by security before they could breach the perimeter.  A bit disappointing, that. 

Haarlep would have welcomed the excitement of a little breach, given how consistently Raphael failed to provide any.

The Archivist did not seem to care much for Korrilla’s lack of concern. “I was told in no uncertain terms that the report warrants attention and action. Yet Raphael has been locked in the Archive for nearly three hours, and he has yet to give commands.”

Korrilla shrugged. “Then clearly the report was not that urgent, and didn't warrant such haste. I've never known Raphael to be careless with security. If there was any true danger, he'd have already given orders to move the House elsewhere.”

That was true enough - or at least, it was usually true. But Raphael too, like his sire,  could become distracted… and few things were likely to sway his attention quite as promptly as a chance to spite said sire, or at least a front row seat to witness his failure. 

Unaware of Haarlep’s thoughts, Korrilla waved a hand. “However, if you're that concerned, feel free to knock and ask if he has instructions.”

That gained her a look that was somehow both terrified and annoyed. He straightened himself, as though towering over a dwarf warranted any sort of effort. “Of course I have thought-- but the master has made it clear he does not wish to be disturbed. Why don't you interrupt him?”

Predictably unimpressed by the Archivist’s decision to stand as though someone shoved a staff someplace indelicate, Korrilla shrugged. “Because I'm not concerned, and not an idiot.”

“You--!”

“Oh, quiet now, children. I'll go ask him,” Haarlep sighed, and stepped past both, heading to the door. Two sets of eyes turned to them, as though neither of their owners had noticed their presence right up to that moment. Insulting, almost. Haarlep rather liked to believe their presence was not easily missed.

“Your indulgence, Raphael does not wish--”

“Nonsense. I can disturb him whenever. He told me as much.” Not with words, perhaps, but Haarlep felt it was no lie either and pushed the door to the Archive open, slipping in and closing it again before the Archivist could say anything more.

“Hello, sweetling. That dreadful bore outside wanted to know-- oh.” 

The archive, as it turned out, was empty. The only sign Raphael had been there was a chair pushed away from the desk, and the objects on said desk; a pretty vase, his diary, and a still sealed piece of parchment. 

Well, look at that. He didn't even bother to read it. Where is he at?

Looking back later on, Haarlep would have to admit that was the moment when they should have probably just read the report; if there was anyone in the House of Hope who could get away with breaking the seal or something addressed to Raphael, it would be them. 

But their gaze was drawn to the diary instead, to the quill Raphael had left next to it, and curiosity got the better of them. Did their princeling answer them before rushing off?

As it turned out, he had. Haarlep read through Raphael's response, barely holding back a sigh and a laugh of delight at once. Oh yes, he did draw the line indeed; quite a few of them, which Haarlep pushed often and gladly. Never quite so far as to cross, but far enough it made no true difference in the end. The sealed parchment forgotten about, Haarlep sat at Raphael's desk and reached for the quill. They were getting better at this, if they did say so themself, but they did not have the practice Raphael did and penning a proper response - what rhymed with sweet? - took them some time.  

And in that time the sealed parchment remained untouched on the desk, as the Archivist outside still did not dare to knock, awaiting instructions that would not come.

You posture grand yet break so sweet, A prince undone beneath my feet… 

***

High above the battlefield in the Shadowfell and out of sight, Raphael watched chaos unfold.

It had been orderly at first, the Canian troops marching in formation beneath his sire’s banners - a vast assortment of devils, from spinagons to war devils to gelugons and more. He knew the pit fiend leading them, brandishing a flaming sword and whip, as General Belagon; Duke Hutijin had to accept Mephistopheles' order to remain in Cania, then.

But Belagon too could lead; the troops had been disciplined, following his lead like clockwork as they closed in on the Citadel of Shadow. Then the shadow itself had burst forth; the undead of the Shadowfell and the spectres of what once was Elgrin Fau had rushed to meet the invading army in a spectral haze, clashing with them on the battlefield. 

From then on, the battle was chaotic as any battle Raphael had seen fought in Avernus. And leading that undead army, weaving in and out of the shadows, a man who was no man; Drasek Riven, the once-mortal who held a fragment of the divinity Mephisto was seeking. 

A godling now, he still fought like the assassin he had been; appearing from darkness, striking, retreating again and reappearing several paces away to sink his sabers into another neck. Brutally efficient, yet not without a certain elegance; Raphael could appreciate that almost as much as he appreciated the utter headache he had been giving Mephistopheles for the past century or so. 

Quite a shame, he thought, that among his own many schemes he had not had the chance to grow acquainted with him… but given his involvement in the near-total massacre of the Dark Justiciars in the Gauntlet, he did not wish to spend more time in Shar’s realm than he had to. This visit was the first in a long time, and he may not have dared as much if he did not know the presence of his sire’s army would handily hide his own.

For a time the battle raged on, and Raphael kept watching. He lacked all the pieces of the puzzle, but he knew there was more going on than just an assault against a godling who resided in the Shadowfell to take his divinity; that Riven had plans of his own when it came to reuniting all the fragments of Mask's divinity within the same carrier. 

Plans that, he suspected, involved one of his own half brothers. Magadon Kest had always been underwhelming as far as spawns of Mephistopheles went - all that potential, wasted - but he had caused their sire some grief. Raphael could appreciate that, too, and he'd appreciate it even more if whatever plan they had cooked up presented an opening for him. 

He would not say no to a spark of divinity himself, as an appetizer before the Crown of Karsus finally graced his brow - but neither could he risk exposing himself now. He could not afford to be rash. 

Down below, however, Drasek Riven was being quite rash indeed. He was killing fiends by the dozens, making his way through the battlefield towards the fearsome General Belagon. And yet, Raphael couldn’t help but think the pit fiend was not the true target; the godling was biding his time. By the time they did meet in the midst of battle, trading blows in fire and shadow, Raphael knew he would not need to wait long for his true goal to be revealed.

He was, as was often the case, correct. Almost as soon as Belagon fell, two sabers through his throat, there was a boom through the air; like thunder, but immensely more powerful and dangerous. The battle stilled, and Raphael knew what it meant before he even looked up at the line of fire in the sky which was opening a wound between Planes. A door - and through that door, seeking to claim divine power--

Riven had been seeking to goad his true target into the Shadowfell, and now he had succeeded. Not as keen as he was to draw the attention of said target, Raphael beat his wings to retreat, unseen, further into darkness… but he kept watching as the flaming portal fully opened, letting out smoke and the screams of the damned, and a shadow he knew well.

Mephistopheles was coming.

***

--You’ll beg for crowns and choke on flame, Pretend your lust is not the same. You claim desire, you claim command, Yet all you touch slips through your hand.

“Mmmh. We’re using the word flame a bit too much, aren’t we?”

There was no answer to Haarlep’s musings, which was predictable enough considering no one else was in the archive with them. But to be fair, they probably would have ignored any sort of input: they were no poet, after all, nor did they fancy themself one as Raphael did, and what they had just written would do all right.

Honestly, the brat should be honored they were going through the trouble to insult him so creatively when a simple comment on his performance in bed - or lack thereof - would have done just as well. With a sigh, Haarlep put down the quill and let their gaze wander across the desk. The vase looked unremarkable enough, but that rolled up and sealed parchment-- ah, right. The dispatch on the Blood War that was so urgent - Haarlep had forgotten about it. 

Ah well. I’ll read it now, no harm done. It’s not like Raphael bothered to.

The notion of breaking a seal to read something meant for Raphael’s eyes would give nearly every resident of the House of Hope a stroke, but Haarlep had made a habit of reading writings which were supposed to be private and suffered precisely no consequences for it. 

And honestly, if whomever had sent the report was serious about Raphael alone reading it, they would have used a magic seal. The fact they had not amounted to an invitation, as far as Haarlep was concerned. Then they actually read the content, as Raphael should have done hours earlier, and they suddenly were concerned indeed, for a different reason.

A few hordes of demons were able to take control of three flying fortresses. Two were recaptured, the last was sighted whilst moving away from the front lines in the direction of the region in which your abode dwells. Immediate relocation is recommended until the fortress has been recaptured or runs out of souls to fuel it.

Ah. Well. Perhaps the Archivist was not entirely misguided in his worry; a few demons, or even a horde, was no issue for a flying mansion. But a flying fortress was another matter entirely, as neither height nor warding spells would hold should one of those target the House of Hope. And perhaps they should go tell him as much right about now, so that he could give the instructions to move them all out of harm’s wa--

CRASH

Haarlep was still in the process of standing up when the entire world seemed to lurch with a deafening crash, the sound of shattering stone and cracking marble - and the screech of twisting metal. The floor tilted beneath their feet and Haarlep found themself thrown against a bookcase, alongside the chair they’d been sitting on, the desk, everything on it, and indeed a large portion of what had been the archive’s external wall.

Something very heavy broke through a column to land somewhere by their head, but Haarlep barely paid it any mind: they were a bit too busy trying to stand - which was made exponentially more difficult than it ought to be by the rubble pinning them to the floor. In the end, they were just about able to lift themself up on their elbows and look up.

It was not, predictably, a pretty sight. Not the warped metal of the flying fortress that had been crashed against the side of the House of Hope like a battering ram, nor the small horde of demons getting in through the breach. 

Haarlep could see mostly toad-like hezrous, but also a couple of mariliths who were certainly easier on the eye as well as stinking less… but even more deadly as they held up a blade in each of their six hands, eyes gleaming. The scales on their snake-like bodies gleamed too, and Haarlep briefly entertained the idea of trying to seduce their way out of trouble. Demons they may be, but they were intelligent and perhaps they could be compelled--

“Such pretty horns on this one,” one of them hissed the instant her eyes found Haarlep, tail lashing on the floor with enough strength to crack marble. All around, the hezrous were already taking it upon themselves to cause havoc and grab anything that was not bolted to the floor. “I’ll make such beautiful sword handles out of them.”

“Oh, not if I get them first,” the other replied.

Well. Clearly, that plan was dead. And as Haarlep would truly appreciate not to share its fate, it was about time they did something. So they breathed in, and yelled. “IMPIES!”

Haarlep was under no delusion that the six measly imps which materialized between him and the invading horde would have any chance to take down even a single hezrou, let alone a marilith. But they would serve well enough as meat shields until reinforcements came. Sooner rather than later.

“Where is security when you need it?” Haarlep groaned, and doubled their efforts to get the rubble off themself and stand - while the six imps threw themselves at the demons with an astounding lack of self-preservation the incubus absolutely did not share.

***

Surely, Drasek Riven did have a plan. Surely, he had not simply taken leave of his senses.

Watching godling and archdevil clash in mid-air almost as soon as Mephistopheles emerged from the portal like a dark bird of prey had been a sight; a clash of shadow and hellfire, blades and magic. The sight of blood spurting from wounds - proof that his sire too could bleed - was one that had filled Raphael with admittedly childish glee. But once that subsided, the question remained - what was Riven trying to do?

He could go head to head with Mephistopheles while in the Shadowfell, with shadows and undead at his command, but the Lord of Cania was still a dangerous opponent. A particularly vicious blow sent the godling plummeting to the ground, in the chaos of battle, and he had yet to re-emerge as Mephisto circled the battlefield and screamed, his voice like thunder. “Show yourself, man-god! I’ll rip your godhood from a hole in your throat!”

For a time there was no response, no godling rising up to clash against him again - the first truly wise decision made that day. The battle raged, his sire circled high above screaming his fury. Raphael frowned from his vantage point and looked up, towards the door between Planes which led to his sire’s realm. All that work to goad the Lord of the Eighth into the Shadowfell, he thought, only to stall him there - what was that about, truly? 

The godling may be a match to his sire in the Shadowfell, but the archdevil would not die even if killed there; he could not die as long as he was outside the--

This is not to keep him in the Shadowfell. He’s keeping him away from Cania.

Realization hit like a blow, and Raphael cursed himself under his breath for not seeing it earlier. The shadow-leaking cairn in Cania, the one Mephistopheles could not force his way in, the one Raphael has always suspected was part of a larger plan by Mask to prepare his return - that was what Riven was after, was it not? The plan was in motion, and he was keeping Mephistopheles away from it to give someone else a chance to… to do what? Break in, to uncover what? More fragments of divinity?

And he is not there to seize it, not this time, not like when he snatched the Crown--

That thought was enough to end all hesitation, if there had been any: a chance to grasp some divine power for himself, and return the slight he had suffered that day standing over the ruins of Netheril. So he left his cover of darkness with a powerful beat of his wings and, as his sire kept screaming for the godling to show himself - not looking his way, never looking his way - he hurtled towards the open door between Planes.

***

Korrilla Heartflame was not the type to easily panic.

She’d always been good at keeping a clear head, even as a young girl; someone had to be, with a younger sister as prone to flights of fancy as hers was. After signing her contract with Raphael, that level-headedness had served her well. 

Accepting his offer was the best decision she could have made - she had never had reason to doubt that - but ever since that day she had witnessed a fair amount of what she suspected the sages of Candlekeep would refer to as Some Shit. She had seen less collected people crack for much less, break while she thrived; everything normal on a normal day in the House of Hope. 

This, however, was not a normal day. Being rammed by a flying fortress gone rogue to find herself surrounded by eight feet tall toad-like demons who stank like nothing else she’d ever smelled, and tore through eternal debtors like it was nothing - well, it was a smidge more than she’d have liked to put up with.

Especially since the fuckers seemed to resist nearly all kinds of damage she usually relied on, and seemed intent on wreaking absolute havoc. The slain debtors did exactly what they were meant to do - explode in a fiery ball of fire and turn into infernal creatures to fight the intruders - and the demons had the good grace to take at least some damage. It was killing precisely none of them, but at least it helped stall them until proper security arrived. Well, part of it at least. 

Only four out of six Vengeful cambions, where are the other two? 

Korrilla almost voiced the question to the one by her side, but just then one of the hezrous let out a cavernous bellow - “BE STILL AND LET ME TAKE A BITE!” - and leaped through the air, forcing her to teleport some distance away… and right within reach of another hezrou. Not that she realized as much right away - someone else did.

“RILLA! BEHIND YOU!”

Korrilla twisted on instinct alone, boots scraping against scorched marble as something vast and wet slammed down where she had been a heartbeat before. The impact cracked the floor in a spiderweb of fractures, and the hezrou’s claws snapped shut on empty air.

She didn’t waste the opening.

A flick of her wrist - blade drawn, infernal sigils flaring along its edge - and she drove it into the creature’s side, angling for the seam beneath its rib. The resistance was immediate, flesh like rotten leather stretched over iron, but she forced it through with a snarl.

“Missed me,” she hissed.

The demon roared, backhanding wildly. The blow clipped her shoulder and sent her skidding before she caught herself.

“Oh good, they're stupid. I mean, I have seen stupider. I have also seen smarter.”

Korrilla’s lip curled before she even looked. The projection was just a few paces away - faintly luminous, maddeningly concerned for her sake when no sane person would have been. Another hezrou turned toward her illusion, drawn by the movement. Korrilla immediately took advantage of the distraction to cast, throwing a splash of acid right in its eyes. “I had it handled,” she informed her sister over the demon's resulting howls of pain, over the noises of the full-on battle around them. 

A few paces away one of the guards was sinking its spear in another demon's side, just moments before it was flattened by a flaming sphere with a sickening squelching sound that sounded like music to Korrilla's ears. Infuriatingly, Hope seemed to entirely ignore her comment. She did not even answer: instead she drifted closer to another hezrou.

“HEY, UGLY! THIS WAY!” she screamed, waving her arms. She meant to draw its attention and she did: it lunged for her, jaws snapping through incorporeal light. In that moment of overcommitment Korrilla struck from the side, scorching rays carving deep burning gouges across slimy skin. It made it shriek and falter, but it did not down it. Of course it didn't. 

“They’re pushing toward the inner halls. One made it to the foyer already. Breaking and tearing and smashing,” Hope said, voice tightening. “Rilla - listen to me - this is your chance. While they’re distracted. You just got to run run run, real real reeeeeal fast. The contract--

“Oh, for the love of--”

“You can get to to it any time, you said so yourself--”

“Yes, I said so myself,” Korrilla cut in, parrying a claw with her staff and twisting away from a burst of fetid breath that made her eyes sting. “I could take it any time and make confetti out of it. And I've never done either. Take the hint.”

“You can free yourself! Grab the contract, grab the hammer, smash the--”

“Enough!”

“We can go back home!”

Another hezrou barreled toward Hope’s projection, crashing into a statue and taking down a column on the way; this time it was a merregon - a debtor, once - that landed a blow, leaving a bleeding gash across thick hide. 

“There is no home,” she snapped. “I was not free there! I was as much a prisoner as you are now and you might have noticed, if you’d had eyes for anything but your useless god. I want to stay here. And you'd see why, if you stopped being absolutely insane for once and--”

A deafening crash cut her off, some distance away, down the hallway. Suddenly, Hope went very still. “… Oh no,” she whispered.

Korrilla didn’t miss it. Couldn’t. The sound threaded through the chaos like a wrong note - metal on metal, heavy, again and again. Hope’s gaze snapped away from the fight.

“They’re at the hatch,” she said, and now there was no composure left: only raw, rising panic. Korrilla’s stomach dropped. “They at the hatch, I can hear--”

These demons take no prisoners. They care for nothing but destruction, and she cannot fight in chains. If they break through the hatch, she is done. Truly, for good. 

Part of her, a small voice in the back of her mind, whispered that it may be for the best for her. She would not bend, and neither would she break - a fate worse than death. To just let her die would be a mercy, better than let her remain Raphael’s pet project for eternity. Yet…

“Damn it,” she muttered under her breath. A hezrou lunged again. She didn’t even look at it this time - just sidestepped, drove her blade into its gut to stall it, and tore free in the same motion. 

The next moment she was already moving, already cutting a path through the melee toward the corridor. There was a cry through the chaos of battle, a shout for help; she recognized Haarlep’s voice at once. “I’d appreciate a little help here!”

That almost made her pause. The incubus was no fighter; they would go down quickly if caught in the battle… and Raphael would be displeased if she allowed it to happen. But surely, she told herself, he would also be displeased if Hope died before he could properly break her. So in the end she ignored the call and made a break towards the hatch leading to the prison. “Stay close or stay gone,” she barked at Hope’s projection. “I don’t care which.”

“I-- I’ll distract them. So they don’t come after you.”

“First good idea you’ve had in three decades,” Korrilla muttered, and reached into her pocket without breaking stride. The sending stone hummed between her fingers, and she focused on the message she needed to send, hoping - oh, she was not telling her sister that in a million years - that it reached the recipient, and that it would be enough.

We are under attack. Demons rammed the House in a flying fortress. Heard Haarlep scream, but lost sight of them. GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE.

***

Raphael was so close to grasping something - be it divinity or leverage - that he could almost taste it when the message reached him.

His intuition, as was often the case, had been correct. After hurtling into Cania through the very same portal his sire had come through, he had found himself hovering over the icy, windswept wasteland that was his sire’s kingdom. In the midst of the raging storm, he could make out the outline of Mephistar atop its glacier; and not far from it, there it was. A dark spot amidst the whiteness - the cairn of shadow-leaking ice which his sire had failed to access for the past century. 

It was almost disappointing how little it looked like, merely a mound of frozen ruin bleeding shadows into the snow like ink through water. And yet Raphael could feel it from here, like a pressure behind the eyes and teeth. A resonance that prickled against his skin; whether it was indeed godhood or a sliver of it, or something else altogether, something was indeed there. Something his sire craved.

And of course, so now did he... and mortals too, it seemed. There they were, Raphael's half-brother not among them, crossing the icy plain. Sent to break into the cairn, retrieve whatever was in it while Mephistopheles remained busy in the Shadowfell as the blind fool he was. 

Raphael narrowed his eyes.

They looked so insignificant against the vast white plain and the looming black shape of the cairn. He watched them pick their way over the ice toward it, one carrying a blade that shed shadows in ribbons from its edge. The sword alone warranted attention: he could feel the wards around the cairn recoil from it even at this distance, like flesh shrinking from a hot iron. One of the mortals pointed toward the mound--

Then the sky split with a roar. Raphael’s gaze shifted upward as the great bulk of the flying creature descended through the storm clouds, vast enough to blot out entire swathes of the crimson sky. Even from where he was, the stench rolled off the creature in waves. Its flesh undulated wetly around swollen veins, and the devils riding its back poured from it like parasites abandoning a carcass. Bearded devils, dozens of them. Raphael exhaled softly through his nose. His sire’s patrols, then. Late, but not entirely useless.

The mortals broke immediately into motion. One unleashed a burst of holy radiance that sent the leading devils sprawling over the ice, while the others fled toward the cairn. Not fleeing blindly, though - they knew exactly where they were going. 

Raphael had always found something entertaining about mortals in moments like these. They burned so brightly when pressed near death, every decision stripped raw and urgent. Even in the midst of his service in the Blood War, long centuries ago, Raphael had rarely seen such wonderful desperation. Devils understood inevitability too well to possess that sort of frantic brilliance. One stumbled. Another hauled him upright. Still, they ran. 

The winged monstrosity swept low enough that the mortals hurled themselves flat against the ice to avoid being crushed beneath it, and yet even then they did not abandon the charge toward the cairn. The wards Mephistopheles had placed - if he could not grasp that which was inside, he must have thought, then none should - formed a translucent dome, shivering over the mound beneath layers of shadow. 

Raphael’s gaze sharpened as the swordsman raised the black-bladed weapon and struck.

The ward split. Glowing fissures spread over the dome like cracks in glass before an opening tore wide enough for the mortals to force themselves through. The devils slammed against the barrier moments later, snarling in frustration as only the breach allowed passage. One mortal remained behind with a staff while another drew bowstring after bowstring, holding the opening against Mephisto’s guards. Buying time.

It is now, Raphael thought, or never again. 

He gathered his wings around himself, preparing to dive. Neither bearded devils nor mortals would be a match for him; they would hardly understand what had hit them. Then he’d be in the cairn and whatever was there, whatever those mortals were grasping for - whatever it was his sire so desired - it would be his to--

We are under attack. Demons rammed the House in a flying fortress. Heard Haarlep scream, but lost sight of them. GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE.

“Agh--!”

Korrilla Hearthflame’s voice boomed through his mind, drowning out all other noise, cold and sharp with fear like a shard of ice through his brain. Raphael’s wings snapped open in the air, bringing his dive to an abrupt halt. The jolt made him reel for a moment, and he brought a hand to his head with a snarl. 

For one furious heartbeat, he could not think. Below him, the storm churned around the shattered cairn. Shadows spiraled upward from the ruined mound in vast, twisting plumes, thick enough to stain the snow-black sky. The mortals were little more than silhouettes amidst the chaos now. The devils had fallen back in confusion. Even the great winged horrors circling overhead seemed hesitant to approach.

Something was breaking free, Raphael could feel the shape of it pressing against reality like a blade beneath thin silk. A measure of godhood? A secret? A weapon? A path? Perhaps all of it, perhaps none at all. But for Mask's power to have protected it this long, it must be something of importance. 

And here it was, within reach. The window of opportunity was fast closing, but there was still time. He could descend now, tear through the mortals before they could comprehend his presence. Slaughter the devils if necessary. Seize whatever lay beneath the ice and vanish before his sire ever sensed it. He was fast enough. He could make it quick...

Oh, yes. Ever the quick shot, aren't you?

Haarlep's voice echoed in the back of his mind, and it felt as real as the shrieking of the wind all around, as real as Korrilla's cry of alarm moments earlier. Raphael could just picture the mocking smirk on their lips, the glint in their eye as they savored his humiliation like a fine vintage. How they delighted in bringing him low - but soon they would see him soar higher than he ever had before, soon, if he acted fast--

Would it be fast enough? Will it be too late? Is it already?

Korrilla had sounded afraid. And much like her infuriating sister, Korrilla Hearthflame did not frighten easily. Heard Haarlep scream, she had said. Lost sight of them.

How in all the bleeding Hells had a horde of demons gained control of a flying fortress? How dare they assault his House of Hope of all places? What in the blazes could Haarlep even do against a horde? How long would they last, if at all? Had they been wounded already, or worse? They were no fighter, merely an incubus. A glorified whore. More of a toy, truly. Something of no consequence. Replaceable, as most things were in the hells. 

He could buy another incubus. A better one, one who’d show him the respect he was owed.

Another pulse of power rolled from the cairn beneath him, seductive enough to make his wings twitch toward it despite himself. One chance, whispered the ever-starving part of him, the bottomless pit somewhere at his very core. An easy choice.

The easiest choice one could imagine; so simple, so obvious, any devil worth their salt would scarcely call it a choice. Raphael scowled, gathered his wings around himself once more, and dove towards the cairn. Close, so close, he could almost see, he could almost--

Brat, Haarlep laughed in the back of his mind, and Raphael cursed loud enough for the glaciers of Cania to hear it. Flames burst around him in a violent flare - and then he was gone from his sire’s kingdom, the last embers of his passage swallowed by ice and shadow.

***

[Back to Chapter 2]

[On to Chapter 4]

“Aw, what got you in such a foul mood?” Haarlep sighed, reaching to place their hands on Raphael’s shoulders. They felt him tense, and his right wing twitched as though about to shove them aside… until they tightened their grip, pressing their thumbs against sore muscles, and some of the tenseness melted away. “Did little Hope choose flaying over surrendering her soul again? Did daddy dearest forget your birthday, or your entire existence? Oh, I know - you’re struggling to think up more synonyms for the word cunning?”

Raphael scoffed, again, but he did not reply right away. He leaned into the touch, letting Haarlep’s hands work on the perpetually sore muscle between his wings. “What I am struggling to do is think of any reason not to return you to Mephistar piece by piece.”

“Ah, I see. All of the pieces, or would you keep at least one as a memento?”

This time, the scoff turned into a chuckle halfway. He leaned forward to let Haarlep’s hand massage the back of his neck, wings drooping lower than usual. “One or two, perhaps, I would miss.”

“I’d miss them too, believe me. Perhaps I could remind you how much better they can serve if left attached to the rest of me?” Haarlep grinned and leaned in, resting their head on Raphael’s shoulder. They pressed a kiss on the corner of his mouth, and felt his lips twitch.

“You are curiously eager for someone with so many complaints over my performance.”

Haarlep hummed, letting a hand wander down his chest. There it was, beneath fabric and flesh, that beating mortal heart which all half-fiends tried so hard to bury. Haarlep delighted in making it race. “I’m an incubus, pet. You could not keep up if you tried. Which you do not.”

A scowl. “You are here to serve me, not the other way around. There is no requirement--”

“But I do love riling you up - no toys or soulless dolls respond as beautifully as you do. And you make it so easy, my little brat.” A bite to his earlobe, almost gentle, before they grasped Raphael’s horn to turn his head and claim his mouth. He resisted a moment, but no more than that; he rarely did. He parted his lips with a soft noise, and Haarlep smiled into the kiss. 

They knew then they had won. The taste of his arousal was unmistakable, and yet it was not the best part: any fiend except perhaps a lemure could be aroused. What they treasured, like a rare treat, was the sweet scent of his yearning beneath the musk and cherries.

“Now, will you join me?” they whispered. “I have a few ideas I’d like to try out, pet.” 

“I…” Raphael seemed to struggle to find words, he who usually had too many, and finally cleared his throat. “Let me conclude my work, and I may decide to join you shortly.”

Another smile, one more kiss. “Oh, I am counting on that. And I am counting on you wearing your mortal form when you do. That form and nothing else. I do so love how that skin of yours breaks and flushes,” they added.

To their delight, Raphael scowled. It was so very easy to get under his skin, whatever his form; each time they scowled, they had to fight back the impulse to press their lips to the crease over the bridge of his nose. “You are in no position to make demands.”

“I believe I am the expert when it comes to positions here. But of course, you are the master. You can choose not to do as I tell you to. I rather hope you do, truly, as the brat you are. Putting you in your place is always more fun.” Haarlep grinned, and nibbled at his lower lip just hard enough to draw blood before pulling back and leaving without waiting for a response, stepping over the Archivist on their way out.

And entirely missing the long look Raphael gave their retreating back before he pressed a hand to his bleeding lip and turned back to the desk. He remained still, looking at the blood on his fingers and passing his tongue over the wound for a long minute before he picked up his quill, opened his diary to a blank page, and began to write.

He sent you draped in wicked grace, A smile carved just to take my place. A serpent's gift, a jest, a snare, And still I breathe your name in prayer. You wear my sins, my skin, my hide, A grievous wound upon my pride...

***

Only the Devil loves the Devil, Only the mirror knows his name. You call it lust; I call it mercy, Either way, it burns the same. We dance in fire, in spite and need, You wear my face; I bleed, I bleed.

If questioned later on, Haarlep would declare they had not meant to read that poem: Raphael had simply not been terribly careful to hide his diary and they had just so happened to stumble on it.

… All right, he had put it in the safe, which probably implied he did not want it to be read. But they had its key and Raphael knew it, so their point stood that he should have seen it coming. Plus, they were bored: Raphael had barely been at the house for the past few weeks, since Verillius Receptor had informed him during a visit that his required yearly quota of souls towards the war efforts would soon be going up.

Truth be told, Haarlep was rather certain Raphael had more than enough souls to his name to comfortably meet Zariel’s quota for the next couple of centuries even if he made no more contracts at all; still, he seemed keen to ensure there could be no shortfall. He took immense pride in the fact he had a mansion of his own in Avernus, where he was a duke in all but name with nearly all of Baator between him and his sire’s kingdom; and at least in that one aspect, his pride was more than justified.

It was no surprise that he could not contemplate a scenario where he failed to meet that quota and was told to join the Blood War or leave.

“Well, your father’s court is a more than decent backup plan,” Haarlep had jested. Quite predictably, Raphael had failed to appreciate the jest. 

“Never,” he’d growled as though they’d suggested they relocate in the depths of the Abyss, and that was the last they had seen of him before he’d left to secure more contracts still. 

There had been no visitors in his absence either and ah, what was a poor incubus to do, left to entertain themself all on their lonesome? Soulless dolls and toys had done their part at first. Haarlep had taken some satisfaction in knowing Raphael was feeling all of it, too, wherever he was: they had felt the faint echo of their pleasure reverberating through his body in another Plane.

But that could only entertain them for so long, and soon enough they’d begun looking for alternatives which were simply not there. Korrilla was plainly not interested, her sister gave the boudoir a wide berth even as a projection, the guards were all off patrolling the skies around them, and no servant would dare do a thing without Raphael’s express permission. 

So, of course they’d opened the safe. Of course they’d gone through the diary Raphael had so carelessly left behind… and of course they had found the poem, penned on the very last page he’d filled. A poem about them, no less? They had seen and heard more questionable poetry from their master than any should have to withstand, but this was… new.

“Never thought I’d see the day,” Haarlep muttered, raising an eyebrow to the general direction of Raphael’s closest painting... but not for long. Their gaze was drawn back to the ink on the page, to the words penned in Raphael’s frankly excessive handwriting. 

Only the Devil loves the Devil, he’d written. Of course; Raphael only loved Raphael… but then again, who else would? The most anyone could aim for in the Hells was to be revered. For most true baatezu, that was enough - they did not seek something as foolish as love mixed in with devotion. But halfbreeds, they knew, were a different matter altogether. 

Raphael was a different matter altogether. He wanted with as much intensity as Mephistopheles himself, like a fiend, but part of him was mortal still - no matter how much he’d scowl at the notion. 

I am no mortal, he would snap if he could hear their thoughts… even as the pulsing organ in his chest belied his words. Baatezu held seeds of their future within their form, from lemure all the way up to pit fiend - each promotion earned, proven. Cambions were born with their wings, looking the part of a fiend from their first breath, and ran themselves ragged to keep proving they were worthy of them.

To be fair, Raphael was more successful than most of his kind by several degrees of magnitude… and yet he remained half a mortal. Why else would he have kept them, the only gift his sire ever bestowed upon him, knowing exactly the reason for it? That had never been a secret.

And still I breathe your name in prayer, he’d written, knowing full well that prayers were indeed nothing but wasted breath in Baator. As if even their name was not a lie to appease his ego, too.

A false gift, a lie of love. That’s all you get, my little brat, however much you may pout. 

Haarlep laughed, and almost closed the diary - almost. They read over the poem again instead, and then again before they stood, looking around for ink and quill. They would reveal having read it to Raphael eventually either way, if anything for some easy mockery, to watch his features scrunch up in anger. They may as well have some fun with it. 

Poetry was not something they had ever much bothered with, truth be told - not a talent they needed - but they supposed there could be a first time for everything. And how much talent would one need to match Raphael’s frankly mediocre efforts? Haarlep grinned, a strange mirth seizing them, and took up a quill to add their own handwriting to the page.

***

“I-is there anything more you need, master?”

“For you to make yourself scarce, as long as my fine mood lasts.”

The debtor made himself scarce very quickly indeed after leaving the chalice of infernal wine and the plate of cold cuts on the small table before him. Still in his human form, Raphael let out a pleased sigh and brought the chalice to his lips. He leaned back against the chair and let his gaze wander across the feast hall below, on the disembodied souls spiraling slowly towards the ceiling - a king surveying his kingdom.

A kingdom that none would take from him, that much was certain. He had achieved what he’d set out to do, as he always did, and secured enough contracts to balance out the extra quota of souls he would need to pay to the Archdevil of Avernus from his own reserve.

It had been tiresome and sometimes aggravating business with so little forewarning, but it was over with and he could wind down for a time. He had handed out the new contracts to the Archivist to be filed away, taken some items from his safe - pointedly ignoring Haarlep’s sultry calls to join them in the pool; after nearly making him come undone in the middle of negotiations for a rather interesting contract, they had well and truly earned his cold shoulder - and called for refreshments.  

Food and drink was not the sort of nourishment he needed, of course, but still an indulgence he enjoyed. And why not indulge? He’d earned it. Raphael smiled, took another drink from the chalice, and opened his diary to jot down his thoughts and impressions from the past few days… only for the wine to nearly go down the wrong way.

“What in the blazes--!”

His fury caused everything - and everyone - to still throughout the House for one long instant before they quite hurriedly resumed whatever they were doing some distance away, gazes held low. Raphael was aware of none of it, and heard none of the terrified whimpers. 

All he could hear was the rushing blood in his ears, all he could see was the chicken scrawl where no handwriting but his own should be.

I came wrapped in your father’s laughter, A gift in crimson lace. “Keep the boy busy, my pretty disaster, Teach him his place.” I wore your lovers, your enemies, your fear, But you only called me near When I wore your face.

“The insolent wretch--!”

Raphael stood with enough haste to nearly knock back the chair, causing the chalice to fall with a clatter and spill the wine over his boots, but he hardly noticed. The words on the page seemed to waver and flicker; it took him a moment to realize the air around him was growing hot as the Pit of Flame. He stared down at the page again, pulse thudding like a war drum, as though sheer disbelief might rearrange the letters into sanity. It did not.

Raphael’s teeth ground together and he shut the diary with a sound like thunder. For a moment he only stood there, breathing in the thick, sulfur-sweet air that accompanied his anger. The hall below had grown deathly silent again; the souls had stilled in their slow ascent, as if waiting to see which one of them would be burned for his wrath. The silence that followed was fragile, trembling on the edge of something dangerous. 

And in that silence the rushing blood in his ears sounded different, like laughter. Haarlep’s or his sire’s, it made no difference. The mockery was the same, and he would not tolerate it--

… But of course, that was untrue. He would, he always did. His father’s mockery, he had to tolerate; he had no power to defy him, not yet, not for the Pit knew how much longer. And Haarlep’s… ah, that was the crux of it, was it not? 

He owned them, had the power and authority to put a stop to it any time he wished; he could make them regret ever laughing at him. How many times had he threatened to have them flayed, to have their tongue cut or their vocal chords torn out, or their mouth sewed shut - or all three at once? More than he could count.

Yet he never would and Haarlep knew it, else they would not have laughed at the notion time and time again. They would not have pushed boundaries at every turn, would not have pleasured themself in his form to make him come undone without warning while they knew they were conducting business, would not have dared intrude between his lines.

But they dared, because Raphael dared not use his power against them.

“You know this is your place, don’t you?” they’d purr in his ear, time and time again, pressing him into the mattress or on the floor, bending him over his desk or the balcony’s railing. “Beneath me, to be ground to nothing. It’s all you ever ask, all you ever want. Such power and pride, only to be putty in my hands. Now scream, my little brat - feel nothing but pleasure and let all of Avernus know who truly is the master here.”

They took delight in bringing him low, almost as much as he did in being brought low - in the pain and the pleasure and the laugh in his ear, in the satisfied smirk they gave him as he lay ruined and panting and spent… and which surely had played on their lips while writing the words before his eyes. He could almost see it now, could almost hear their mockery.

“More, my pet? But of course. You always want more, pitiful little thing that you are.”

Raphael’s pulse did not slow, the heat did not leave him. But it was a different sort of heat now, in his loins as well as his head - that heat that would have him drop to his knees and crawl if so Haarlep commanded. And they did command as much, often and gladly.

A curse, that was what they were. The most wretched curse the Archmage of the Lower Planes could have possibly bestowed upon him, capable of making utter defilement feel like the sweetest devotion, the highest act of worship. And the worst of it was that he could not bear the thought of being rid of them. How could he? No other knew him so well, no other understood his wants like they did. No other could wound him so precisely; no other could take the measure of his pride, find the cracks beneath it, and cut through it like a blade. 

They were his undoing, and a mirror he could not stop looking in. The Archduke, all-powerful and in control, ready to grind the Hells beneath his foot. You are mine,  they would say, and he knew it to be true. He owned Haarlep by Infernal law; Haarlep owned him in every way that mattered, by virtue of the power he kept giving them. 

He loathed them for it. He craved them for it. The more he told himself it was hatred that made his hand tremble, the more he knew it was not. The words on the page before him blurred for an instant; he could almost feel the ghost of Haarlep’s breath against his neck.

More, my pet?

It would be so simple to destroy it, tear off the page and let a single spark leap from his fingers to turn it to ash and never speak of it; never give Haarlep the reaction they clearly wanted. But even that, he could not do. In the end he sat again, a hand reaching for the quill as though on its own accord. He did not know what he intended to write until he saw the words forming on the page. 

The first stroke was hard enough to nearly tear through the paper; the second was less forceful, and those that followed smoother still. By the time he put down the quill and looked upon the drying ink, he could already imagine Haarlep’s laugh upon reading his response.

And damn him, damn them both, he wanted to hear it.

***

“Ah, my little brat. There you are. I presume you’re done pouting and in need of my services again? You missed me greatly, didn’t you?”

Sprawled naked in the middle of the bed, Haarlep ran a nail over the inside of their thigh and met Raphael’s glare with a half-smile on their lips. There it was in his hands, the diary - surely, he had seen their own little addition to his questionable poetry. He did not look like he’d much appreciated it… and yet they could almost taste the arousal that came off him in boiling waves. 

Oh, Raphael. Never change.

Unaware of their thoughts or perhaps all too aware of it, Raphael scoffed. “You presume much,” he said, voice velvet over razors. It gained him another smile, a lazy lash of Haarlep’s tail against the mattress. They were in no particular hurry to look chastened - mainly because they were not. 

“I was made for presumption,” Haarlep replied. “And for pleasure. And for you. Your father has such a sense of humor, don’t you think?”

“The Lord of the Eighth is not to be named in this boudoir.”

“Oh, isn’t he?” Haarlep feigned surprise, as unconvincingly as they possibly could. “So terribly forgetful of me. Even in this I’m your perfect copy. You were gone so long, and claim you did not miss me - surely you’d forgotten all about your poor Haarlep. All about your place.”

As much as they loved listening to his indignant protests, Raphael’s answering silence was its own kind of music. Haarlep tilted their head, looking at him through half-lidded eyes. The faintest tremor in his hand betrayed him, the way the diary’s corner bit into his palm. Anger, yes... but hunger too. It was always both with him.

They sat up on the bed, the movement slow and deliberate; invitation draped in insolence. “Come then,” they murmured. “Show me you remember how.”

Raphael’s eyes flashed - golden eyes on his human face, gleaming with hellfire - but his feet were already carrying him forward. Haarlep watched him approach, savoring the way his composure eroded step by step. Beneath the perfect tailoring and the devil’s poise, he was all tension: pride warring with the need to be unmade.

They already knew which one would win out. 

The diary struck the bedside table with a sharp, final sound, and remained there as he stopped before them, close enough for the heat of him to brush against their skin. Haarlep reached out and caught his chin between two fingers. “There,” they whispered, their voice almost tender. “My beautiful contradiction.”

For a heartbeat, Raphael didn’t move. Then with the smallest exhale he fell, rather than sink, on his knees. Haarlep smiled, the expression soft and cruel at once. “That’s my Raphael,” they murmured, thumb brushing his jaw. “Always pretending you fall by accident.”

Raphael met his gaze with those mortal eyes they so loved, skin flushed in that beautiful way it could not in fiendish form. “You do not own me. I own you.”

Haarlep laughed, low and delighted. “Of course, I do not own you. You are mine nonetheless. I am your greatest desire, after all.” 

Raphael blinked, taken aback for only a moment before confusion turned into a scowl. “You are not--” he began, only to trail off when Haarlep pushed their thumb into his mouth, pressing down his tongue. His breathing quickened and his eyes flickered up to Haarlep, full of want and loathing; those blunt, human teeth of his pressed against their skin, but did not break it.

“Who do you see,” Haarlep crooned, pulling their thumb out to let him answer, “when you look at me?”

Raphael licked his lips. “A glorified whore,” he said, the usually smooth voice rough as sandpaper. Haarlep laughed. How unimaginative an insult, and how many times had he said the same! How many times had they done that little song and dance before their little brat finally submitted as he longed to? More than they could count, surely. 

They should have grown bored long ago, and yet they never quite tired of it. 

“Yes - glorified indeed, by you. And what else?”

A long exhale. Some days he would stubbornly refuse to answer, and the game would drag on… but that was not one of those days. It seemed their little exchange through poetry had counted as foreplay after all. How very Raphael, that.

“Archduke,” Raphael whispered, gaining himself a smile that might have almost seemed fond. 

“There, see? Archduke Raphael. Your greatest desire, just as I said. And speaking of desire, you should do something about that, don’t you think, my pet?” They lowered their gaze, and nodded sharply towards his groin. Hardening already, they could tell without looking… but of course they wanted to look. The hand cupping Raphael’s jaw slipped behind his head, to grasp a fistful of his hair and force his head back. They savored his pained hiss almost as much as the taste and scent of his need. “Show me.”

Raphael snarled, glowering up at them. They smiled, sickly sweet as decay, so wonderfully amused and yes, perhaps a little roused as well. They allowed their cock - Raphael’s, at least in form - to harden, too. It seemed only fair that they should match.

“Show me what is so obviously bothering you, my pet, or I won’t so much touch you tonight. Or the next. Never again, perhaps. As you said yourself, I have plenty of toys…”

“I own you. I can order you--”

“You could. And you won’t.”

You remember how it went, don’t you, when you last tried to make me submit? I remember well enough how your prick wilted when I obeyed, like a flower come winter.

Haarlep did not speak aloud their thought, but surely it had to show in the glint in their eyes and the corners of their smiling mouth, for Raphael did not try to argue. He only gave them another glare, and lifted his hand to snap his fingers… only to be interrupted when Haarlep grasped his wrist with their free hand, before he could disappear his clothing in a burst of flame as he so clearly intended to do. 

“Ah-ha, my pet. No need to take everything off just yet, is there? You need only open your trousers, the old-fashioned way.”

Somehow, watching Raphael obey while glaring death at them never failed to taste sweet as honey; it would just be no fun, Haarlep reasoned, if he didn’t put up a fight before capitulating. Did he even think he could win it anymore? Of course not; he was arrogant, but not a complete imbecile. The show of resistance was to protect some measure of his pride, nothing more. 

He may be master of the House - master of all the Hells, perhaps, one day - but in that boudoir, Haarlep owned him utterly. A prince of bargains, he was, and yet he’d given himself to them long ago, capitulated to their every demand. And there he knelt for them, with no crown gracing his bow. And that which he bared to their sight as soon as they let go of his wrist was no Ruby Rod either, but it would do. 

“Do not touch yourself, my little brat, or I’ll break both of your wrists,” Haarlep crooned. Raphael had been known to defy such orders before, and Haarlep had been known to deliver on their promises; the healing pool was no mere decoration, after all. But this time, Raphael did not seem in the mood to add broken bones to their activities; he was hard, the tip of his cock already wet, and his gaze was fixed on Haarlep’s own erection. They smiled. “You want it, don’t you? Go ahead, have a taste. Pouting at it won’t make you come, you know.”

Raphael’s mouth twitched, as though he wanted to reply but then thought better of it. To Haarlep’s delight, he put that mouth of his to its best possible use: he took the head of their - his - cock in his mouth, breathing out through his nose. He shivered at the phantom sensation and looked up. His skin was already glowing flushed, his eyes hungry while gazing up at his own face. 

All he ever wanted to be: the Archduke, sneering, powerful. And merciful, now, because Haarlep was in an uncharacteristically merciful mood… for now.

“Good,” they whispered, and were rewarded with another shudder, a whimper in the back of his throat. They reached to run their fingers through Raphael’s hair, watched his eyes slip shut, hummed approvingly when he pressed his tongue against the slit and trembled with another muffled noise. “Good pet. Go on, you know how you enjoy it - and doesn’t your Archduke deserve pleasure? Don’t you?”

Raphael certainly seemed to think so, and what he may lack in skill - Haarlep’s standards were perhaps unfairly high, but was unfairness not to be expected in the Hells? - he made up for in eagerness. He worked his way down slowly, taking more and more down his throat, stroking it with tongue and lips and hands.

So beautifully focused, their little brat, chasing his own pleasure; of course he did not notice when Haarlep’s free hand reached for the bedside table to open the diary he’d so unceremoniously thrown there, wondering if they’d find a response.

They did. 

You were meant to be my leash, A chain with satin thread. Yet every touch you gave me Fed the hunger in my head. Tell me, is this sin or worship? Kiss me, and I’ll decide, Even devils crave devotion More than pride.

Ah, yes. Devotion, he did crave; but he also craved to kneel. To be exalted and broken down, master and lowliest of servants, son of an archdevil and whelp of a mere mortal; both and neither, forever and never. Always a contradiction - like his sire, however much the comparison would anger both. And who but his Haarlep could give him all he wanted at the same time, the pleasure of being defiled and yet worshipped? 

Truly, Mephistopheles could not have sent a better distraction, even if nothing could truly rein in his ambition. He knew his son better than Raphael ever gave him credit for. Was he not the Archdevil of Contradictions himself? The apple had not fallen far from the tree; a pity, truly, that father and son were too alike not to despise one another.

Haarlep closed the diary and rolled their hips into Raphael’s mouth with a sigh, feeling the pleasure build up in Raphael’s loins, the heated flush across his entire body. They let out a breathy groan before looking down through half-lidded eyes.

Raphael glanced up at the groan, most of their length still in that beautifully pliant mouth; his eyes were glossy with pleasure, with desire, with need, with the humiliation of it. Haarlep could taste all of that on their tongue, smell it in the very air they breathed, and they smiled.

“Worship me.”

And worship he did, hollowing his cheeks and stroking the underside with a feverishly hot tongue. When he looked up again his eyes were full of tears, lips stretched almost at the base of their cock. 

He blinked, and the tears spilled; Haarlep collected them with their thumb, and brought it to their mouth to taste the salt of it.

“What is it, my little brat?” they asked, their voice honey on steel. “Is this not enough for you? It is adoration, lavished on a perfect image of you. Surely it should be all you need to come, is it not?”

It was not, never was, but Haarlep never tired of rubbing it in his face - figuratively and, as they grasped his hair to pull him off them, quite literally as well. Raphael was not far gone enough not to scowl when they smeared spit and precome over his cheek, but he did not voice any protest either. He just hissed through clenched teeth as Haarlep pulled him up by his hair, grinning mouth mere inches from his. 

“What do you need, Raphael?”

He met their gaze, but only for a moment; then his eyes flickered down to their - his - lips, and he swallowed… but no words came out, as though stuck in his throat. Remnants of that pesky pride of his, stubbornly holding out. Haarlep’s grin widened, their grip on his hair tightened. They let their free hand wander to the front of his doublet, tearing it and the shirt beneath open with a single claw to expose his chest.

“A little help, is that what you need now? A little help to loosen up?”

Raphael breathed out, and managed a nod despite their iron grip in his hair. “Yes,” he groaned, and Haarlep leaned in, licking their lips. They could almost taste the arousal, the desperation burning away what little shame was left. Briefly, they turned their gaze to the diary, turned their thoughts to the words their beautiful little brat had penned.

Tell me, is this sin or worship? Kiss me, and I’ll decide.

“What do you want, Raphael?” they asked, and the response came as a rasp. 

“Kiss me.”

Haarlep would usually make him beg for that, for the relief of their spittle, but they could make an exception now. It was their most interesting night in a long, long while, and they could be generous indeed when Raphael wasn’t too stubborn. They closed the little distance between their lips and kissed him, deeply, pushing their tongue in his mouth the instant he parted his lips with a moan in the back of his throat.

Have you decided yet?, Haarlep though, smiling into the kiss.

Their spittle burned through the last of his restraint like fire through paper, and Haarlep's smile widened when Raphael moaned, again - louder, unabashed, grasping their shoulders and pressing himself as close as their grip on his hair allowed. He was trembling by the time they pulled back and cupped his jaw with their free hand.

“There, my pet,” they whispered, running a thumb over his lips. They watched him pant, felt him tremble, looked back at their - his - reflection in the dark pools of those human eyes. He was still hard and leaking; they felt the echo of that throb without even looking down. “Now, tell your Haarlep me what you nee--”

“Defile me.”

It was both order and plea, and Haarlep couldn’t be more delighted. 

“Good,” they crooned, still holding him by the hair, and grasped the tattered remains of his doublet to expose more skin before they sank their teeth into his shoulder, hard enough to draw blood and grind against bone.

Raphael screamed, pleasure and pain mingling in such a tantalizing way it nearly tore a moan out of Haarlep, too. That was how they liked him best, screaming his throat raw and wordless, free of all pretense of control. He fell on his knees the instant they allowed him to, blood soaking his sleeve and dripping down his chest, choking back more screams - and then just choking as Haarlep grasped his head with both hands and used his mouth and throat exactly as they were meant to be used. 

It was deliciously warm, so wonderfully tight. They greatly enjoyed the glide and they were certain that so did Raphael.

“Nnhh--!”

“Oh, but you asked for this, pet.” Haarlep laughed, snapping their hips forward in a vicious thrust, heedless of those blunt human nails sinking into their thighs, trying to push them away. He could push them away effortlessly if he truly wanted, but he would not. They knew he was still hard, closer and closer to his climax. “I know it’s what you need. You know it’s what you deserve.” Another thrust all the way down his throat, more choking. Tears dripped on the floor alongside blood and sweat. “And you’ll get it, to the last drop.”

They did not relent, not for a moment - and when they felt Raphael’s orgasm approach they pushed in to the hilt and stilled. They listened to his choking noises, looked down with a smile. The grip in his hair turned into a caress and still, he did not try to pull back. 

“I am master here,” they growled. “And you’re but one of my toys, little whore that you a--”

They did not feel Raphael’s orgasm quite as keenly as he did, but the sensation washed over them nonetheless. They did not come undone - they were not finished - but it was pleasant nonetheless, and it made them chuckle before they pushed Raphael back. He fell on the ground gasping and coughing, while Haarlep glanced at the floor where he’d spilled himself like an unkempt little brat. They clicked their tongue. 

“Ah, look at that. It will not do. I like my floors clean.” They stood, still hard, and nudged Raphael’s side with a foot. “Go on, pet. On your hands and knees.”

A groan, more coughing. “Please.” Raphael managed to push the word past his bruised throat, but it gained him no sympathy because that was not what he wanted, not really. Raphael would take untold cruelty over the insult of sympathy; Haarlep had always liked that about him. They sneered and prodded his side again, more kick than nudge this time.

“And you act so civilised! Clean up after yourself, Raphael.”

There was more groaning than Haarlep found was strictly necessary, but he did obey. Haarlep waited for him to lift himself to his hands and knees before they grasped his head and slammed his face down onto the soiled floor, causing him to cry out again. Haarlep laughed and raked their claws down his back, leaving deep lines that welled up with blood, before they tore through his trousers just as quickly as they did through his doublet. 

Within moments he was bare before them; then Haarlep was pushing in, forcefully, tearing more cries from his throat. There was some pain for them, too - they felt an echo of Raphael’s agony as well as the uncomfortable friction as they took him dry - but it did not last long. Soon they were fucking him with ruthless abandon, drinking in his cries and broken sobs, inhaling the scent of him, of blood and sweat and come. 

“You’re mine, aren’t you? Say it.”

“H-Haarlep--”

“Say it.” Another vicious thrust, and Raphael screamed. 

“Yes! Yes! I’m yours. I-- I--” A sob wracked his frame. His spend on the floor must have washed away with his tears by now. “Please, I need--!”

He did not have to finish the sentence. Haarlep knew what he needed, and was in a fine enough mood to spare him the indignity of asking. They grinned, pushed in to the hilt, and allowed themself to come and fill him, biting back a moan of their own. Raphael shuddered, too spent to come again but overwhelmed by the echo of their orgasm. 

“There,” Haarlep chuckled, their own breathing a little more labored than they’d have liked it to be. They draped over him, chest to bloodied back. “What do we say, my pet?”

“Thank you,” Raphael slurred, and it seemed to take the last of his strength. Haarlep felt him go limp; only then did they pull out to let him fall on his side in a panting heap, and admired their handiwork. The dishevelled hair and torn clothes, the bloody bite on his shoulder, the claw marks down his back, the bruises on his hips, the come leaking out of him… he made such a pretty picture, Haarlep almost wished he’d let all of Baator see him the way they did.

Just almost, because they rather enjoyed knowing that it was for their eyes alone. Raphael’s stubborn determination to win the Lowest throne in the Hells was a little maddening, really. As far as Haarlep was concerned, that before them now was the only version of him worthy of worship.

“My little brat,” they murmured, and let their hand linger through his hair in a caress a few moments longer than necessary.

***

Raphael slept relatively often, for a devil - yet another reminder he was only half of one - though it was rarely a deep sleep. That seemed one of those times. Haarlep lay beside him, studying the perfect stillness of that human face of his. 

He looked exhausted, face still reddened and eyes swollen even after the water in the pool healed his wounds; he was already unconscious when Haarlep had carried him in the water, and had remained so when they carried him out, back to the bed. 

Haarlep smiled faintly. Their fingers hovered just above his throat; not touching, only feeling the slow rhythm of power there. So fragile, this illusion of peace. It would shatter the moment he woke, and they would go back to their endless games: his anger and lust and longing, their laughter and games - the same dance repeated until eternity grew tired of watching.

Haarlep rolled onto their side, stretching like a cat, and their gaze fell upon the diary left on the bedside table. That alone was invitation enough.

Haarlep sat up, careful not to stir him, and reached to open the diary. They read the poetry they were weaving between them once more, lips curling in a smile, and reached for a quill. 

They did not hurry; they had no reason to, and they liked to savor everything they did. At one point Raphael stirred, a quiet sound in his throat, but did not wake. Haarlep turned to look at him, quill suspended. Something unreadable passed over Raphael’s expression, a hand reaching for the mattress by his side only to find it empty. Ever reaching, even now. For power, for recognition, for a crown, for a throne, for them. 

At least, one of those things was easily obtained. Already his, as a matter of fact.

Haarlep blew on the fresh ink, let it dry, and closed the diary gently. The quill went back in its place and they were back in theirs, sliding beneath the sheets once more and sidling up to Raphael. They pressed a kiss on top of his head, so lightly he might take it for a dream.

“Sleep well, my dear,” they whispered, just above a breath. “You may hate me to your heart's content in the morning.”

Raphael did not answer, of course, but Haarlep knew it would not be long before he picked up his quill to do just that.

***

Tell me how sweet my venom tastes, My prince of longing, pride, and wastes. You crave yourself in every touch, And still you need me twice as much. You worship shadows cast by you, Pretending it is something true.

***