Werewolf the Podcast: The One True Ring (Episode 242)

Satan's Secretary is listening to Belphastus and Astaroth. She is ready to tell her boss what they are up to. Belphastus has to go to work. Maybe for the final time. Lucifer tells the story of the ring of summoning. It’s got nothing to do with Tolkien. Honest.

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Transcript

I am Trudure.

That is Tru–dure.

When you pronounce it, you need to roll it like a curse and finish it like a sigh.

I am a minor demon of... something unimportant, which I have already forgotten about, which is Hell’s way of saying expendable but useful, and I am—by Lucifer’s own irritated admission—her personal assistant. 

Hmm! Maybe secretary?

Or, as she once snapped during a particularly bad millennium, her personal demon.

I am very personable.

Not very... secretarial.

Hmmm! Whatever...Titles matter less when you are very good at listening.

I think.

I am shaped like a small black cat, which was not an accident, a punishment, or a whim. It was a strategy of mine.

As you probably well know.

Cats move between spaces easily. 

All spaces easily.

It’s what Feline kind is built for.

This has been noted by witches, scholars, madmen, and at least three regrettable Popes. 

In medieval grimoires. 

Like the Liber Maleficorum. 

The Malleus Maleficarum.  

In their marginal notes.

That everyone pretends not to have read.

Cats are described as liminal creatures. 

Liminal is a great describer of me... us.

We sit on the thresholds. 

We wander where the walls wear thin. 

We step sideways rather than forward.

Witches did not keep cats because they were cute. 

Well, maybe partly.

They kept cats because cats noticed things before the screams did.

Black cats, specifically, were believed to absorb malign influences, slip between the earthly and infernal planes, and return with information and promises. 

That’s what I do, described with hellish precision.

The superstition that ‘black cats’ are ‘bad luck’ comes from people realising—far too late—that the cat had already seen what was about to happen.

I also have to say being cat-shaped is utterly marvellous.

As a demon, I used to have horns-seven of them.

Do you know how often horns catch on things? 

Doorways. 

Robes. 

Other demons. 

One humiliating ritual tapestry incident I will not revisit. 

Partly spoiled a decade.

Whiskers are vastly superior. 

They tell you when reality is too close. 

I now walk with surety that I can pass through the gaps between places. 

This is personal growth.

On and my fur.

My fur is black and soft like silk poured into shadow. 

No more scales. 

Scales itch. 

Anyone who says otherwise is lying or still... moulting. 

I have retractable claws too—an upgrade demons do not get by default. 

They are utterly wonderful.

Sometimes I wish cats wore clothes by choice. 

We won’t go into the torture that well-meaning owners do to cats when they put a jumper on them.

Those owners are damned, though, for doing such.

But with no horns and retractable claws, putting a woolly jumper on would be relatively easy.

A demon can’t put on an amusing Christmas jumper.

Oh, not for the religious reasons you think. 

I think you even realise we have taken Christmas back. 

Material items are thought of now as Christmas. 

Families are brought together to fight. 

Christianity has little to do with it for most people.

It’s a good time for us. 

Not so much for the birthday boy.

No, they can’t be worn because the claws and horns would rip them up, and they do so when we try to put on our Lidl Christmas jumpers. 

Hell can be so cheap.

What else.

Oh, I must mention my cat eyes. 

Green enough to unsettle saints and make mortals say, ‘Ohhh, kitty.’

They are terrifyingly pretty.

They are my favourite part of this cat’s body.

And they let me see... all!

So as you see.

Everybody thinks I’m adorable.

Think about how you love that little furry psychotic murderer you have at home.

No one suspects they’re listening and that I’m listening through them.

I am an invisible listener.

Which is fortunate, because I am currently perched nowhere at all, observing a conversation between Astaroth—Regent of Hell, Former Goddess, Walking Theological Crisis—and Belphastus, the mortal who thinks ambition is a substitute for survival.

They have no idea I’m here and... listening.

They are speaking in that careful way clever beings do when they believe they are outwitting one another. 

Astaroth offers tasks with velvet menace. 

Belphastus nods with borrowed confidence.

Each assumes the other has missed something... vital.

They have.

Both of them have missed something vital.

Astaroth believes Belphastus cannot complete the third task.

Belphastus believes the Ring of Summoning will let him bind Lucifer and Astaroth.

I listen as Astaroth explains ancient authority, forgotten divinity, thrones taken and lost. 

I listen as Belphastus pretends awe while cataloguing weaknesses. 

It is rather like watching two spiders compliment each other’s webs while standing in the same bathtub with the water running.

Oh, they are very clever.
Just not clever enough.

I flick my tail. 

I purr. 

I record everything.

Lucifer will want to know that Astaroth is enjoying himself.

She is better than both these fools and that Belphastus is lying without lying.

That the Ring is now a focal point for mutually assured damnation.

Yes.

Most of all, Lucifer will enjoy knowing that everyone thinks they are ahead of her.

They are not!

I stretch, claws quietly unsheathing and resheathing as I do so. 

I am already rehearsing how I will tell her. 

She will pretend not to care. 

She will care very much. 

She may swear again.

I cannot wait for that. 

A fleeting glance at the boss losing a fraction of self-control feeds my... Ego?

Hmm!

I slip sideways, through a seam only cats and demons notice, laughing softly to myself.

Oh, this is going to be so much fun.

Belphastus

Travelling back from hell would take me ten minutes to describe, and I can’t be arsed to be honest.

It started, and it ended in a hell of sorts.

Sadly, I was spat out of the travelling portal wormhole gateway thingy onto the rotten vinyl of my rank bathroom floor.

I realised I was late for bloody work the moment I hit the floor and felt the flat smug about it. 

Oh, you might wonder why work is so important to me.

It will become apparent later in the episode. 

The spirits in this shit hole of a hovel are right bastards.

The mould above the sink had that look. 

Oh, you think I can’t tell when the mould has it in for me?

No, I can tell when mould is being a right bastard.

How?

Well, it looks like that. 

Oh, you can’t see it, can you?

Just accept that it is.

A right bastard mould.

The kettle was taking longer than necessary. 

I was watching it do so.

I know a watched kettle never boils, but this bastard was not boiling on purpose. 

Even the floorboard by the door creaked in a way that suggested judgment. 

My bastarding bedsit has opinions, and most of them are about punctuality.

Hell’s throne was vacant.

Lucifer was right proper distracted.

Astaroth thought he were clever.

And I was still arguing with a toaster that only worked if you whispered encouragement to it.

The bast...

Hal had left early for work. 

Of course, he had. 

Hal E. Tosis always left early. 

He believed in arriving before consequences.

He’d taped a note to the fridge with the kind of urgency normally reserved for nuclear evacuation orders.

MASTER-B

‘Gone ahead.
Karen’s already angry.’

She always is, so that’s not news.

‘She said if you’re late again, she’ll fire you. The real kind of way, whatever that means.’

‘Please hurry.’

I laughed. Out loud. A hollow little bark that startled a spider. 

It flashed one of its pedipalps at me. 

Giving me the spider equivalent of the middle finger.

I was confused at this but...

I was right in this reading of Arachnid sign language, as it told me to ‘fuck off,’ very clearly in English with a brummy accent right after to make sure I understood it. 

I smiled. 

I appreciated that this little hairy-toed bastard was at least a bastard to me face. 

Unlike tother spirits in this place.

Anyways, back to the fridge note after me spider side quest.

I laughed rereading it.

Karen threatening to fire someone was always funny when it wasn’t you. 

Well, it wasn’t Karen either that was doing the firing.

Astaroth wears Karen’s skin—five days on, two days off. 

A rotating possession schedule—it adds a certain… gravitas to the phrase disciplinary action. 

Being fired by her didn’t mean unemployment. 

It meant post-mortem career development. 

Well, no. 

That’s not true. 

Being fired by Astaroth meant an eternity of flames tickling the toes of your mortal soul. 

Oh, and possibly a little plastic star on your laminated badge.

I hate those bastarding stars.

Never even had one during me eight years, three months, fifteen days and nine hours service.

Bastards.

I shrugged into my McDonald’s uniform, the cloth clinging to me like it knew I hated it. 

It probably did, though. 

Most things do. 

It felt horrid against my skin, being a classy nylon-polyester mix.

The name badge I stabbed myself a couple of times in the finger and chest with before attaching it to me top, read BEL, because ‘Belphastus the Unclaimed, Breaker of Seals, Future Tyrant of Hell’ was already being used.

No, that’s a lie for comedic value. 

It just would not fit and be of a font size at which you could read it. 

As I tried and tried and finally tied my areshole shoes, the irritation bubbled up in me again.

I am not meant to be in this pathetically poor position.

Does the world not know me?

Well, I have torn holes in reality. 

I have read and written books that made bishops weep blood, and sometimes wee themselves at the same time.

I have negotiated with right orrible entities that don’t experience time so much as chew on it.

And yet—

Ere I wer. 

Minimum wage.

One free meal per shift, under twelve quid, not including milkshakes. 

Not that the milkshake machine ever bastarding worked anyway. 

Am ere. 

All because of Evangeline ‘Ginny’ Mae Picklethorn, Prosperity Witch of New Orleans, third-generation hex specialist, and the pettiest human being ever to weaponise lavender oil.

Oh, and she could... I mean, weaponise lavender oil. 

Her lavender-treated pillows would help you sleep... forever. 

Get my meaning. 

Forever. 

Like dead. 

Like not waking up styley.

Ginny Mae had cursed me for a reason so small it still made my left eye twitch.

I’d corrected her pronunciation of grimoire.

Just once. 

Aye, that’s bloody petty.

She’d smiled sweetly, stirred her iced tea counter-clockwise, and said,

‘Oh, darlin’. You don’t respect labour.’

I think it may be me accent that had upset her when correcting her.

I mean her accent were bad.

Both of us sound silly, I suppose, to others.

Then she’d hit me with The Curse of Honest Toil and Perpetual Rent payment.

What a shit curse, eh?

Sounds soft, huh?

How about the curse of... erm... no skin and living or being born a pretty young boy in the house next door to Gary Glitter?

Nope.

This curse has been the bane of me life.

The terms of it were, in hindsight, diabolical:

I would always need money. 

Real money. 

Coins, notes, bank balances that disappear on me.

I would never keep wealth gained through magic or no.

No one would give me a credit card.

No evil lair could I get a mortgage for.

Any gold, I ad, transmuted into debt. 

Any treasure turned into pocket-washed receipts.

I would be forced to earn income through menial, supervised employment (by bastards, not managers), preferably involving uniforms which were cheap, nasty and embarrassing.

Oh, and laminated rule posters.

I ated them.

What’s a man like meself going to do when ordered to wash his hands after the bog?

If you can guess that, then you won’t be ’Lovin it!’ the next time you’re in and partway through those hand-cooked fries.

*Laugh*

Anways, any attempt to escape the curse would result in more hours, never fewer.

I would always be ALMOST promoted.

And worst of all, I would understand exactly why this was happening.

Note: Could you think of a few ways to say Grimoire Greg?

Grimoire... Grimoire... Grimoire... Bastarding Grimoire.

I’d killed her eventually—the witch.

Set fire to her and her trailer, a remarkably difficult thing to do when they’re situated in a New Orleans Swamp, and she was a Swamp witch. 

Both being right damp as part at course

I salted the ground... erm, mud.

Used three languages no one’s spoken since the Bronze Age to castigate her and send her soul to hell.

I had really buggered her up... but.

The curse had remained, humming contentedly...

Bastard.

I checked my watch.

If I didn’t leave now, I’d be late enough that Karen/Astaroth would smile.

That smile is how Hell recruits.

I grabbed my almost-coat, stepped over the summoning chalk I hadn’t cleaned up properly, and paused at the door.

‘Right,’ I muttered to myself. ‘Trick Lucifer. Outplay Astaroth. Steal a throne. Finish by ten. Cover fries till six.’

The universe, I’ve found, appreciates clarity.

I locked the door behind me. Changed me mind. Unlocked it and opened the door to the street. 

‘Go on, then, rob me. Ya Bastards av got fuck all’

And headed out to earn me wages—because nothing says dark lord in waiting like walking through the drizzle to the Golden Arches while planning the overthrow of damnation.

December's weather had teeth.

Not the picturesque sort you see on cards. 

Ya know, soft snow, tasteful lanterns, a sense of goodwill, perky little Robin Redbreast bastards and the like, no.

But the wet gnawing kind that gets into your shoes and stays there, quietly judging your quality of socks. 

Mine were shit.

The pavement glistened with rain that had given up on becoming snow and instead chose wet shittiness—mixing with the grime and the dogshit of the day.

My breath steamed. 

My McDonald's logo’d wind cheater did nothing useful like cheat the wind. 

So I walked fast, collar up, hands buried in pockets that held lint, a bus ticket from 2019, and anti-insulation.

I needed to take my mind off of the misery.

I needed to think about tothers misery.

It made me right happy it did.

Ah, the ring.

That were it.

The hope.

That were the problem. 

That were always the problem.

Rings are like that—small, circular, and ruinously inconvenient.

I ran through the options as I walked, mind ticking like a bomb with a sense of irony.

There were books about em, of course. 

Even famous fiction ens written by folk who understood em.

What was his face? J R R R R R Tolkein. Fancy aving that many middle names.

Maybe the priest who baptised him had a stutter.`

There were always books. 

Grimoires chained to lecterns. 

Indexes written in blood. 

Entire libraries that screamed if you read the wrong chapter. 

But the obvious ones were useless. 

Too slow. 

Too guarded.

Too likely to eat your soul before page three.

And then there were the experts. 

Dark scholars with more ego than sense.

Dastardly Dastard the Red?

Were he still about?

Necromancers who thought shouting Latin counted as spell casting. 

There were the modern occultists who charged consultancy fees and still got their sigils upside down.

No. No. No.

The ring mentioned in the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum and the Malleus Maleficarum doesn’t want to be found.

It wants to be remembered. 

Aye, that’ll be what it wants.

Which meant whoever had it last didn’t lose it by accident.

Some bastard ‘ll know where the bastarding thing is.

And that was when it landed in me head, heavy and obvious and irritating.

Simon de Montfort.

Ee! He were a right clever bastard wont he?

Oh, course.

The immortal Professor.

A walking occult library with Supernatural GPS. 

A human fucking filing cabinet of eldritch knowledge. 

A man who treated angels like contractual obligations and demons like mildly disappointing students.

If anyone had the ring—or knew exactly where it was and why it should never, ever be touched—it were him.

I smiled to myself, rain dripping off my nose. 

My pointless hood funnelling water down my back.

‘Oh, Simon,’ I murmured. ‘You beautiful, dangerous... bastard.’

Lost in this pleasant realisation, I barely noticed the alley until I was already in it. 

It was on my usual trip to work.

Narrow. 

Damp. 

Smelled like a tramps gooch and chips. 

Worried me that a knew what a tramps gooch smelled like.

A man were sat on the ground, wrapped in layers that had once been clothes, holding out a... a creased McDonald’s coffee cup with a few coins rattling inside it, like embarrassed witnesses.

Had to be a McDonald’s cup, eh?

‘Spare some change?’ he asked.

I didn’t slow down.

‘Go fuck yourself,’ I said lightly, without malice, without even looking at him.

My train of thought never derailed. 

The ring. 

The Professor. 

The timing. 

The delicious symmetry of stealing the key to Hell’s throne from the one man arrogant enough to catalogue it, and thought he could protect it.

I smiled wider as I walked on, pleased with meself in the abstract way one is pleased with a well-executed sin. 

It’s important, I find, to acknowledge your victories, however small.

Then I felt it.

Before I saw the sacred golden arches of despair and processed food.

Before the lights or the smell or the creeping despondency—it was a sensation. 

A pressure. 

A wrongness in the air. 

Like standing too close to a mouth that smiles while planning your death.

McDonald’s.

Some people see it first. 

Others smell it. 

I sensed it, the way prey senses a predator or theologians sense a contradiction. 

A low, greasy hum in reality. 

Fluorescent lighting bleeding into the spiritual spectrum.

And then there it was.

Fucking Bright. 

Fucking Cheerful. 

An Indestructible fucking hell of a kind.

I stopped walking.

For a moment—just a moment—I considered turning around. 

Running. 

Summoning something unspeakable and letting it eat the building. 

But curses are very particular things, and Ginny Mae Picklethorn had been thorough.

One more night, I told myself.

One more shift under Karen’s demoniic watchful, literal infernal gaze. 

One more evening of smiling at customers while Hell audited my performance metrics.

Then I’d have the ring. 

Then Simon would be outplayed. 

Then Lucifer and Astaroth would both discover what it felt like to lose.

Probably.

‘Well,’ I sighed, stepping toward the doors, rain dripping from my coat. ‘All can be damned.’

Literally.

I only had to work out how to get that bloody ring. 

*laugh*

The automatic doors slid open with a cheerful chime that sounded far too much like a hell caused scream.

‘What time do you call this, Belly love?’ Asked Karen.

Rage

Lucifer 

Ah. The magic ring.

Yes, that ring. 

And before anyone says it—no, this was well before Tolkien got my idea. 

Centuries before. 

Millennia, actually. 

If anything, he owes us royalties. 

And if anyone questions that—do remember—I invented irony, contracts, and consequences. 

And I repurposed this very premise for Tolkien himself. 

He reintroduced the world of the fae and magic to the following generations at a time when science was removing it.

Introducing Fairy folk and magic with no... God. 

Just Sauron.

Who, if you have not worked it out. 

Will win in the end. 

And of course.

Represented me. 

Satan.

Rewrite those literary papers, my good but wrong people.

Now. Listen properly.

The ring does not have a name.

That is important.

Names give things boundaries. 

Titles imply function. 

This ring predates the courtesy of being explained. 

It has a beginning, not an identity. 

And beginnings, as any angel will tell you while lying through omission, are where the real damage happens.

It started as nothing.

A band of worked metal hammered out in a street-side forge—dust, sweat, shouting.

Somewhere unimportant. 

Somewhere Godlessly imperial.

Rome used to like to believe every street was eternal; most of them smelled like old fish and sewage.

A goldsmith made it for a rich man who wanted something that looked permanent. 

Love, power, ownership—take your pick. 

Humans are adorably predictable.

Then there was a war.
There is always a war.

The ring was taken from that dying man’s finger by a Roman soldier who did not bother to learn his name. 

He cut it off cleanly, before the man was cold. Well, before he was even dead. 

The delightful thing was that man was one of his own. 

Roman and a soldier. 

A brother in arms. 

In fact, his very saviour... ironically.

A man who sacrificed himself by taking the blow of an enemy that should have felled the... theif.

Before the thief took his ring and his finger.

That theif’s name, since you insist on history, was Gaius Cassius Longinus.

Yes. That Longinus.

And no, he was not a noble. 

The Church tried very hard to sand him down into something inspirational. 

They failed. 

I was there.

The spear he carried was the Lancea Longini. What you now call the Holy Lance, the Spear of Destiny, the thing that Christianity pretended was about mercy. 

It wasn’t.

It was simply a regulation issue spear.

Sharp.

Balanced. 

Familiar in the hand.

Longinus was at Christ’s Crucifixion.

Longinus had already killed that day. 

Many times.

He was tired, bored, and irritated by the noise. 

Crucifixions are meant to be quiet affairs. 

This one wasn’t cooperating.

So when he stepped forward and drove the spear into the side of the man on the cross.

He did it because he wanted to.

Let’s be very clear about that.

Not to confirm death. Not out of duty. Not to fulfil prophecy.

He enjoyed it.

Even I am not that.

Whatever that is.

God’s son’s blood ran down that shaft of that spear. 

That part you know. 

Scripture records it with reverence. 

Blood and water, they say, as if poetry might disinfect the vitriolic act.

What they don’t tell you is that the blood covered the thief’s arm.

Thief of many things.

Lives and belongings.

And that the blood covered the ring.

Gold is a very receptive metal.

The ring absorbed three things at once:

Divine blood.
Mortal cruelty.
And a will with intent.

That last one matters most.

Longinus did not repent in that moment. 

He did not tremble.

He did not look away.

He felt satisfaction. 

The quiet, intimate pleasure of ending something sacred with a single, irreversible motion.

That is not sin, by the way. 

Sin is clumsy. 

This was choice.

And choice is where power lives.

The ring changed.

Not immediately. 

It didn’t glow like in the films.

No trumpets were blaring.

Heaven is terrible at subtlety; Hell prides itself on patience. 

The ring waited.

It learned. 

It remembered the feeling of being present at a boundary—the moment where the eternal touched the finite and bled.

Longinus wore it for years.

He was vicious. 

Efficient. 

Loyal only to escalation. 

Wherever he went, things aligned themselves around him—authority, fear, obedience. 

He didn’t command. 

He expected. 

And the world obliged.

By the time he died, the ring had learned something invaluable:

That Heaven could be wounded by mortals, and that men could enjoy doing it.

And that objects, unlike angels, are very good at holding grudges.

The ring passed on. 

As all cursed things do. 

Taken.

Stolen. 

Inherited. 

Lost. 

Found.

It never asked for worship. It never demanded allegiance.

It only ever did two things.

It travelled through history, and it made summoning possible.

The devil and the demons could be pulled through the plains, as this ring existed on them all, making a doorway I did not want.

Not an easy journey for me. 

Never easy. 

But possible.

You see, blood that touches divinity and is welcomed by cruelty leaves a residue. 

A permission. 

A crack in the rules Heaven pretends are unbreakable.

That ring is not a key because there is no lock.

It is a reminder.

After Longinus died, and came to me. Oh, and how he died badly.

He screamed at shadows he’d trained himself not to see, and he will be doing so. 

Forever at my whim.

After his death, the ring did what all truly dangerous objects do.

It vanished.

Even when I was there and had it in my clawed grasp.

It vanished.

Not dramatically. 

No volcano. 

No choir. 

It simply slipped sideways out of history, like a thought you are absolutely sure you had until you try to remember it. 

Kingdoms rose, fell, burned, converted, rebranded. 

Saints were canonised.

Heresies were tidied away. 

Libraries were lost, found, and lost again.

And the ring belonged to no one.

That was the problem.

Summoning requires ownership. 

Not possession—ownership. 

A locus. 

A claim.

A line drawn in metaphysical sand that says this is mine and I am responsible for what comes next. 

The ring had none.

It passed hand to hand, pocket to pocket, coffin to grave-robber, without ever being wanted for itself.

So I couldn’t find it.

Do you have any idea how infuriating that is?

I can trace crowns through bloodlines, swords through wars, Gods through pantheons. 

I can hear prayers whispered into pillows in hotel rooms at three in the morning. 

But an object that refuses to belong? 

That refuses narrative? 

That refuses to be important?

Invisible.

For nearly seventeen centuries.

I assumed it had sunk out of the realm of people. 

Objects do that. 

They end up at the bottom of rivers, seas, time.

Perfect places for inconvenient artefacts to sulk. I was wrong.

August, 1798.

I was there.

Of course I was.

It was the Battle of the Nile.

Fire on water. 

Cannon smoke like torn clouds. 

The French and British fleets tearing each other apart in Aboukir Bay while history pretended it wasn’t watching. 

Nelson losing an eye to glory, men losing everything else to unfounded patriotism.

And there—there—the ring surfaced again.

Not on a finger. 

Not on a commander. 

On a market stall.

Egypt, you see, has always been very good at holding onto things everyone else forgets. 

Gods. Names. 

Bones. 

The ring had drifted there over centuries—taken by pilgrims, thieves, traders, scholars who mistook it for decoration and never noticed how arguments followed them like feral dogs.

A British sailor found it while on shore leave.

His name was Thomas Brierley.

Able seaman.

HMS Swiftsure. 

Not famous. 

Not clever. 

Not brave in any way history bothers to write down. 

Exactly the sort of man objects like that adore.

He bought the ring for almost nothing. 

Thought it lucky. 

Thought Egypt smelled strange. 

Thought very little at all about it, really. 

When the battle came, he wore it into cannon fire and survived when men better than him didn’t.

When Swiftsure was captured and later reclaimed, the ring stayed on his finger when all else was taken as plunder- like it planned.

Thomas went home eventually. 

Married. 

Drank. 

Aged. 

Died.

The ring stayed.

It passed down quietly. 

Sons. 

Daughters. 

Sold once during a bad winter. 

Bought back during a good one. 

Pawned. 

Retrieved. 

Always returning, like a debt that enjoys patience.

It threaded itself through the family tree without ever drawing attention to itself.

Until it reached Nicha.

Poor, gentle, unremarkable Nicha. 

A man so thoroughly overlooked by the world that even destiny tripped over him by accident.

The ring fit him beautifully. 

Objects like that love people who don’t think they deserve anything.

Makes the claiming easier later.

And then—then—Simon de Montfort decided to be clever.

Do you know how much work it took to arrange that? 

How many nudges, whispers, missed chances, wrong turns it took? 

To get a knife into Nicha’s shaking hand. 

To line up an alley, a lecture, a lie. 

A perfect lie.

To make sure Belphastus walked past at exactly the wrong moment?

Centuries of waiting, and it all hinged on one homeless man finally being angry enough to act.

It makes me smile. 

Not kindly.

What would you expect?

And Belphastus—clever, smug, unbearably pleased with himself—walked right past the solution to his problems and told it to ‘go fuck itself.’

Honestly.

Watching that?

Oh.

This was going to be beautiful.

Now we will see what will be when Belphastus walks home through this alley. 

An alley containing a man with almost nothing.

A man annoyed at Belphastus and the world,  

A homeless man without hope or anything...

Accept...

A sharp, pointy knife.

• Very evil Laughter*