The Heir of the Fallen

Chapter 3

Prince Beelzebub

Most days, the Prince of Darkness chose to just wander around the realm, which resembled a small town square by his home and the theater. He didn't go beyond there often. Once an individual went beyond this town, it started taking the appearance of a dirty city with high rises, and plenty of violent happenings at every turn. For the most part, as long as everything was kept in check, Beelzebub let them do what they pleased. He used to try and govern them very strictly, but that want had long since faded, and now he was more strict about making sure the mortals were doing what they wanted to do. He knew mortals did not have a high threshold of creativity and there were few things they actually wanted to do. And here, the amount of consequences they faced was basically nothing compared to being alive. These mortals didn't need to eat, sleep, etc. in the afterlife, and with all their extra time, it was not rare to see fires, ongoing torture sessions, orgies... the list goes on and on.

He did not take part in this kind of lifestyle. He had been around enough that he knew he preferred to exist in a much simpler way. Whether that be walking Cerberus, flying with a dragon, or doing both at the same time. Now that always turned a lot of heads. Most people were too fearful to meet his gaze, except for his long-standing constituents, and those were rarer and rarer these days. The older they were, the more likely they were to fade. Mortals faded based on how well they were known, remembered... The longer someone was remembered, the longer they existed. Since a normal lifespan for a mortal was about 80 to 100 years, and their loved ones remembered them that long... they could last more than a millenia in this realm.

And yet, he was as solid as ever.

After leaving the theater and meandering around the town square, he chose to visit one of his other Horsemen. Letum was 'Death.' Ares had been of course named 'War,' and he looked just as intimidating as his Greek ancestors described him to be. Of course, he wasn't a god here. Just a mortal that people had given way too much power. Conquest had been bestowed to Joan of Arc after she had suffered her tragic death and passed on to this realm. The spoils of war were never something she had been able to indulge much in while alive, so Beelzebub felt it had only been the right title for her.

The last one, Famine, was who he was visiting today. Letum might have been his right hand man, but Famine was the one who had the next most power in this realm. He had been in the position so long, no one, not even the Prince knew his name by anything other than Famine. He kept a delicate balance in this realm. It was one that Beelzebub was very grateful for, because any sort of order that he tried to maintain was mostly thanks to Famine. It freed up a lot of his time. But without him, Beelzebub worried that the power that Famine controlled would fall into the wrong hands. Today's visit was a very important one. For once, Beezlebub was a little concerned about his dear friend. The last time he had seen Famine, he looked more corporeal than solid.

Something in the afterlife that many did not know was that while the Prince held immense power and jurisdiction over the realm, the power that Famine had been bestowed by the Prince wouldn't simply just disappear alongside Famine's fading out of existence. The power would have to transfer to a new source, and it could not return to a previous host. Beelzebub learned this long ago, but not before a lot of trial and error. This made any power transfer that he granted to an individual a very important act. If all of Famine's powers transferred to one individual when it was his turn to go without the Prince's knowledge, that could actually cause some trouble for him as well as the realm if not kept under control. So lately, his visits to Famine were more and more common. The more Famine faded, the more imminent the deadline to figure out how to contain Famine's power became.

The distribution of power here was a fickle thing. Before he learned that he couldn't just take someone's power away later on, he had to start actually trusting an individual to give them even a tiny bit of power, no matter what it was. Beelzebub had very few he could trust to respect and not abuse that trust... and he felt like that number was shrinking with every day that passed in this existence. To say he was lonely wasn't even the beginning of it.