A sort of companion piece to Rules

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Tristan accepted his new reality fairly quickly. A devil knows the price of failure and the price of broken commitments.

Plus, his circumstances could be much, much worse.

The loneliness is nothing particularly new, in all honesty. Devils are solitary creatures, and Hell isn’t known for its comforts. And he isn’t treated badly, per se – they can’t kill him in any meaningful way (at least he hopes they cannot), and despite that old-young woman’s threats, they seem to be keeping their word of not turning him into some kind of magical battery.

They even bring him food once he gives in and asks. The young woman listening to his request has a face that loudly says that doesn’t sound right, but I don’t know enough about devils to argue.

That’s fine with him.

They call him Tristan, and he notices no attempts to deduce his real name, which is a relief.

So it’s not bad, really. He even has company sometimes, in the shape of the overly-enthusiastic artifact specialist who is sometimes accompanied by a quiet guy in black glaring at Tristan the entire time, or a large man with multiple swords strapped to his waist and back.

The large man is Tristan’s favorite, because from time to time he brings booze that’s not great, but fairly decent.

Sometimes though, he has to resist the desire to ask for meatballs specifically.

They won’t be as good as Mark’s, anyway.

He requests a blanket, then a tablecloth. The blanket is a little scratchy, and the tablecloth a plain white that could have benefited greatly from some embroidery and a fringe on the edge, but a prisoner has no room for complaining.

He’s already been asking for too much, and he isn’t sure if the detectives have told his captors about Isolde and Mark, doesn’t know if they’d managed to read and decipher the letter he’d sent. He doesn’t know how much leverage he’s given away already in the desperate attempt to keep his life and whatever remained of the work he’d done on this plane, but it’s bound to come bite him back one day.

Perhaps it was for the best, all things considered. After the scale of his failure, perhaps a magicless chamber was his best protection. In the end, he was a good enough liar not to show anyone how much he truly feared the temporary death that would have put him before the archdevil he served.

Tristan wondered if his disappearance has been noticed. Has the bureaucratic machine of Hell realized he wasn’t sending in reports anymore? It’s been months, they must have.

Have Isolde and Mark done anything about their Contract and their mutual aid arrangement? Tristan almost regretted giving them his signed permission to dissolve it in the letter he’s sent. He should have asked for help instead – but it was outside of the scope of the Contract, and he had no desire to owe them anything.

He should ask for a book. Surely, the artifact guy would give him a book?

An eternity in jail is a bleak future, but Tristan lost, and he refuses to do so without grace. Still, he refuses to give up, either.

If once a day comes when someone enters the room that can be convinced, bribed, or deceived into helping him – well.

It will be another game entirely.