The invisible grip vanished.
Zac fell from the ceiling, crashing onto the ruined war table with a heavy thud.
Belial stood perfectly still, his eyes wide, looking genuinely shocked for the first time since entering the room.
"Rude," Zac said, sitting up and rubbing the back of his head.
"I am sorry," Marchosias quickly said, stepping forward. "I did not mean—"
Belial held up a hand. "Are you telling me that Ose, our deceptive kitten, has brought us... this?"
"Please let me explain," Marchosias said. "This human is-"
"It was not a question," Belial said, his voice dropping to a dangerous purr. "I was saying I do not believe it."
"I know how unexpected this is," Marchosias said, looking down. "But it is-"
"I said be quiet." Belial waved his hand, and the entire warband immediately fell to their knees.
Belial stood over Zac, his rectangular pupils narrowing. "How did you get here, little human? Why aren't you being tortured?"
Zac sat on the edge of the table where he had been dropped. "Well, I was reading Mated to the Four Alphas when a truck hit me."
Belial blinked. "What."
"Oh, it's an instant classic," Zac said, rubbing his neck. "The main character is a twinky bottom who gets adopted by a pack of really buff minotaurs, and they all realize they love him. The sex scenes are so fucking spicy."
"The sex scenes," Belial repeated, his voice flat.
"Oh man," Zac said, his eyes going hazy as he remembered. "In one of them, two of the minotaurs spit-roast the MC on a private jet while the bodyguards all are forced to watch."
"You're such a fucking whore," the ethereal deer Skarg managed to choke out from the floor.
Belial waved his hand again, and Zac was instantly pinned to the table, an invisible weight pressing down on his chest. "How did you get here?"
"I told you," Zac squeaked out. "I got run over."
"I mean why are you here in Marchosias's keep," the goat King bleated, his patience fraying. "Is this some sort of joke? Are you one of March's therapeutic tools for these demonic rejects?"
"He doesn't like being called a tool," Bune's Left Head managed to murmur, even as he was pressed into the floor by Belial's aura.
"I got scammed by that asshole Ose," Zac whispered, the invisible pressure on his chest making his words come out in a thin, airy wheeze.
"And you expect me to believe that?" the goat King growled, his rectangular pupils flaring with a dark, inner fire. "That a President of Hell would waste a contract on a creature that speaks of 'private jets' and 'spicy scenes'?"
"I can prove it," Zac said, his voice hitching as the weight intensified. "Just... let me... breathe."
Fine. Belial flicked his fingers toward Zac.
The crushing weight vanished instantly. Zac gasped, drawing in a huge lungful of the sulfurous war room air and coughing. He sat up on the edge of the ruined table, smoothing out the ruffled fleece of his leopard onesie and glaring at the King.
"And how will you do that, human?" the goat demon asked, crossing his arms over his blood-red suit. "Unless you have a signed affidavit from the Duke of Deception himself, I am inclined to think Marchosias has simply picked up a particularly articulate stray."
"Seeing is believing, Hircine," Zac said, his confidence returning in a rush now that he could draw a full breath.
He stood up on the table, turning his back to the King. With a series of brisk, practiced movements, he reached for the zipper of his onesie.
"What the fuck are you doing?!" Marchosias yelled from his knees, his ears pinning back in total mortification.
"Why isn't it me?!" Nock wailed, clutching his smoking jacket. "The first reveal! It should have been at the Ball! Under the moonlight!"
Zac ignored them. He stepped out of the top half of the onesie, letting the sleeves dangle, and then pushed the fleece down past his hips. He bent over, gripping the edge of the table, and shoved his rear directly toward the King's face.
The room went deathly silent.
Belial didn't move. He stood perfectly still, his regal composure tested by the sight of a human mooning him in the middle of a war council. He leaned in slightly, his horizontal pupils focusing on the pale skin of Zac's lower back.
There, glowing with a faint, pulsing crimson light, was a complex, swirling rune. It was a masterpiece of infernal calligraphy, shifting and writhing as if it were alive. The President's Seal. Ose's unmistakable, permanent mark.
"Hmmm," Belial said, looking quite aggravated as he adjusted his spectacles to get a better look at the 'infernal tramp stamp.' "I see. Ose's mark is truly on you."
He looked up at the back of Zac's head, his expression one of profound, kingly exhaustion. "He really did contract a lunatic."
Belial's fingers twitched, and the invisible weight on Zac's back surged. Zac was slammed chest-first onto the table again, his leopard-fleece-clad legs splayed, his exposed rear pointing toward the ceiling like a defiant, moon-shaped beacon of infernal contracting.
"Marchosias," Belial's voice was like iron. "Why was I not informed that a soul of this... singular nature came into your possession?"
Marchosias didn't lift his head from the floor, his tail tucked so tightly it was practically invisible. "Something like this... it is unprecedented, Your Majesty. I feared that if news of a virgin Avatar leaked, it could reach the ears of those in the Holy City… or worse, the Princes who might seek to disrupt my strategy."
Belial's horizontal pupils burned into the back of the wolf's head. "And why did you not tell me? Am I now considered 'someone who does not need to know' in my own kingdom?"
Marchosias looked up, his amber eyes shimmering with a mix of terror and the stubbornness of a soldier. "You told me it was my job to dismantle the Holy City, my King. You said you didn't care how I did it, only that it was done."
"And you think this pathetic soul can do anything?" the goat King bleated, his tone dripping with aristocratic disdain as he gestured toward Zac's vibrating, exposed butt.
"Without him," Marchosias said softly, his voice gaining a sliver of confidence, "we would not have been able to destroy the simulacrum."
Belial let out a sharp, incredulous laugh. "You claim to have destroyed the clockwork angel? The one who shattered President Glasya-Labolas into ceramic dust? Don't make me laugh, Marquis. My humor is far more expensive than that."
Marchosias looked back toward Halphas. The eagle demon…. pigeon demon, stiffened. He tried to give a crisp, military nod, but the pigeon-body betrayed him, resulting in a series of frantic, bird-like head-bobs.
"Right, sir," Halphas cooed. "I was going to bring the proof to you, but... well, we all just woke up."
Halphas whistled, a sharp, trilling sound. From the broken doors, a dozen oversized carrier pigeons flew into the room. They flew in a tight, labored formation, clutching the corners of a massive bundle wrapped in heavy black silk.
With a collective coo, the birds released their burden. The object landed on the dining room table right next to Zac's head with a bone-jarring thud that made the plates. The black silk fell away, revealing the massive wooden gavel of REPENTANCE. It was still scarred and cracked but it radiated a faint, dying holy light.
Belial went silent. He sighed, a long, weary sound, and rubbed his temples with his gloved fingers. He turned a slow, sweeping gaze around the room, taking in his bandaged, limping, and generally pathetic-looking lieutenants.
"I do not know how you idiots manage to avoid demotion," Belial muttered.
Marchosias pressed his forehead back to the floor. "It is all due to your masterful orders, Your Majesty. We are merely your blunt instruments."
"You know," Belial said, stepping toward the table, "I've never met one who could insult me so thoroughly without even realizing it."
The King pulled a pristine silk handkerchief from his breast pocket. With effortless, terrifying grace, he reached out and gripped the handle of the massive warhammer.
The moment his fingers closed around the wood, the gavel flared with an indignant, holy brilliance. Belial didn't flinch. His rectangular pupils rolled back into his head, leaving only white voids. A dark, oily black aura erupted from his body, swirling around him like a localized hurricane of void-stuff.
Belial began to speak. It wasn't a language Zac recognized, it was a cacophony of overlapping voices, some screaming, some whispering, a glossolalia of the damned. As the King spoke in tongues, the holy glow of the gavel began to dim. It flickered, pulsed, and then turned a deep, obsidian black as the demonic King's power forcibly overwrote its celestial programming.
Belial suddenly let go. The hammer hit the table with a dull clack. The King's eyes rolled back into place, and he stood there for a moment, breathing heavily, his gaze scanning each of the demons in the room with a look of dawning, terrifying clarity.
"I see now," the goat King said, his voice a low, ominous purr. "I see exactly what happened here."