Kahl makes a soft yowl-grumble noise in his throat, the tiny punctures healing over as he forces Zerxus's body to heal instead. It stings, the way Kahl does it, harsh and brutal, like being scraped and scoured and stitched, in one bracing slap of a moment. Kahl twitches slightly - not quite enough backward motion to count as a flinch - because it hurts him, too.

He tells himself that Asmodeus wouldn't like it, Kahl erasing his handiwork. He tells himself, truthfully, that he isn't actually fixing any of the hurts that matter. He tells himself that he will come for Asmodeus someday, and that all helps a little. It doesn't feel like a wrenching body blow like trying to bring Una back did. It's just a kind of pain he isn't used to.

He takes Zerxus into his realm, among the brambles and the howling winds, cold implacable rivers and innumerable hidden places. This one is in an odd oxbow lee of a swift dark river, soft deep silt heaped up against a jagged curve of rock, a dark quiet close place. The air is full of salt and iron and ozone, but the little alcove is rough and warm. It is a place - the place - for safety in bitterness, for licking one's wounds unseen. The shush shush of the river it passes nearby feels almost like a great, giant, surrounding purr, not quite in the range of mortal hearing.

Then don't feel nice. And I will be here with you.