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His name was Prince Stolas of the Ars Goetia, son of Paimon. Since a young age, he had been the appointed keeper of the Astral Grimoire, and given the responsibility of tracking the motion of the heavens and performing the proper rites associated with them. He was a man of status, wealth and power. He had royal authority, and potent magic at his call. The stars were his to know and command. He could freely traverse the Seven Rings, and even the living world. He could divine potential futures, and bear witness to distant events. All this he could do – but he could not sleep peacefully.

Hours would pass in his cold, dark bedchamber, tossing in the sheets on a bed made for two. He would try to relax, to slow the torrent in his head, but it was hard for him to commit to it. He was afraid to let himself lose conscious control of his thoughts, to let the dreams come.

He was dreaming now, flinching and mumbling in his sleep. He clutched a long pillow tight, his arms and legs wrapped around it like a lover. He unconsciously clung onto the soft mass, his face buried in its silky case. He always found himself holding on with a death-grip to anything he could reach, when she started shouting.

The dream wasn't of any particular memory from his torturous married life; it was more like a collage, drawn from all of them. He was in the greenhouse, holding onto the edge of a table against one wall as Stella screamed at him. Shards of broken pottery and spilled soil lay on the ground about her feet, an uprooted carnivorous plant laying nearby. That was Shelby, Stolas noticed in a detached fashion. He remembered trying to replant her after the event which inspired this part of the vision, but the damage to her root-structure had been too great.

In the peculiar manner of a dream, he simultaneously remembered this moment, and actively participated in it. The white peacock was screaming something about how he had made her look bad in front of a guest who had come without warning. Stolas had been dressed in a light, breezy shirt and shorts, complete with a straw hat, to care for his many plants. “You turned up looking like a gay day-laborer!" she shrieked, pulling a small air-plant down from its hanging mount and throwing it at Stolas.

He managed to dodge, and heard the flower-pot shatter behind him. “Alejandro..." he whimpered, looking back at the plant where it had landed. Every one of Stolas's plants had a name. They were his friends, and some had been with him since he was an owlet. He felt his eyes sting and his throat hitch, but he fought back the urge to cry.

The slightly-smaller Goetia grabbed her husband's shoulder and turned him around fast enough to make his head spin. “'Alejandro?'" she echoed, in a mocking voice. “You still name these bloody things?" She laughed, completely devoid of any sense of actual mirth. Stella's laugh was bitter, spiteful. It made Stolas's feathers stand up, almost as bad as her shrill cries.

Her harsh, mocking laughter turned off like a switch, her face returning to its customary scowl. Stolas opened his beak to attempt to placate her, and she slapped him, hard. He reeled back a step, covering his stinging cheek with his palm and cringing up at Stella. He had bitten his tongue, and there was blood in his mouth.

“You think these fucking weeds are more important than me?" she demanded, taking a step closer. The owl backed up, feeling an instant of ice-cold terror. “It's bad enough my parents married me off to a fucking faggot! The least you can do is try to pretend you're a real man when there are people around!"

She went on ranting, every rant from seventeen years of ranting, committing every act of petty violence and destruction from seventeen years of such. His cheeks stung, His plants died. His fragile pride was crushed, again and again.

The scene abruptly switched, time seeming to have passed. He was in the bedroom. They were in the bedroom. She was there, draining a wine glass as she stomped across the room in her nightgown. “Are you actually going to try tonight?" she demanded, scowling. Stolas just stared, listening to his heart pound in his ears. Stella scoffed, shrugging off her nightgown and climbing up on top of him.

He looked away, toward the wall. His eyes found the familiar little tear in the wallpaper on that spot, and fixed on it. He felt the sheets being moved, felt her moving. Felt her touch him... He felt dirty, like his feathers were covered in something greasy and cold. He stared at the tear in the wallpaper. He tried not to hyperventilate. This was how he got through these nights.

A hand grabbed his jaw, and suddenly the oddly-comforting imperfection in the wall was gone, replaced by two glaring red eyes. “Look at me you limp-dick fuck!" she screamed in his face, holding him so he couldn't pull away. “Look. At. Me."

She started to move. Started to move him. It was happening again. She was doing it again. And he couldn't even look away, couldn't try to convince himself he was somewhere else. There was nothing but the baleful red eyes, and the hate behind them, and the profound sense of being soiled.

He jolted awake, breathing hard and trembling all over. A dream. It was a dream. She wasn't here now. She couldn't hurt him. He looked around at the large, empty bedchamber, his large eyes taking in the features of the room despite the low light. It brought a bitter little chuckle to his throat, when he realized what he was doing. Looking around the room for his ex-wife, like he had looked for monsters as a child, after waking from a bad dream.

He looked down, sighing heavily. He could tell without checking the clock that he hadn't slept long. The bone-deep weariness he had gone to bed with had barely diminished at all. He'd been up all last night avoiding dreams like the one he'd just had. The details had already faded from his memory; all that remained was the fear, the sense of worthlessness – and those hateful, piercing red eyes.

He bundled the sheets around himself, trying to think clearly. He had work to do in the morning. Astrological phenomena, one of the elements of nature which bound Heaven, Hell and the earth together, were his professional territory. That included the more minor events in the heavens, as well as the known yearly rotations. Every time there was a meteor-shower or a visible shooting star, it was Stolas's duty to research it, check it against the texts, and, if it were a genuinely unprecedented event, perform an appropriate ritual.

The research for the latest event was done; the issue was that the demons who had spotted the meteor-shower in question would be arriving in the morning, expecting full pomp and ceremony. Exhausted and emotionally raw was not how he wanted to greet them. He looked over at his body-pillow, pondering.

No, he declared to himself, shaking his head and looking down at his lap again. He was still trembling slightly, and he had to keep glancing around to confirm that he was alone – that he was safe. You swore: never again!

Stolas's Grimoire was a powerful artifact, containing detailed instructions and incantations for spells in his domain of influence. With it, he could go where he pleased, see what he wished, and cast illusions upon the senses of others – or even his own. Appearances were deceiving, and he knew how to control them.

A pillow, for example, was simply an object, when perceived normally. But with the application of a little magic, a rectangle of fabric and stuffing could become something else. It could have arms and legs. It could have a face. A distinctive, familiar, adorable face. To the eye, to the touch, to the taste and smell, a pillow could be his Blitzy. But that was a lie.

Stolas's life was full of lies. The first lies had come when he was a child, from before he could properly remember. The very first was that he was important. He was praised as a child – by his mother – as any child should be praised, and made to feel like the center of the universe for a time. But then she had gone, and he was faced with the realization that this father could not remember his name. He was one of dozens of heirs, neither the first nor the last.

The second lie was that his station in life was something to be envied. The Ars Goetia ruled over Hell alongside the Deadly Sins themselves, equal to the Sinner Overlords in power. As one of them, Stolas had license to do whatever he pleased to the “lesser" races of their society, accountable only to his fellow Nobles. He had more money than any one demon could ever spend. He would never want for shelter, food or luxury. But he was alone.

Throughout his youth, the owlet looked out at a world he felt eternally separated from. He tried to imagine having friends, going on adventures like the characters in his many books, but his imagination could never fill the void. To him, his status only meant that he would remain alone with his books, finding only plants and the sparse house-staff for company.

The short-lived sense that his father genuinely trusted him to carry on the duties of the family had been a lie; Stolas was simply the latest one to receive the Grimoire, with a dozen and more half-brothers in line to take it up should he fail. The notion that his father wanted him to have a friend – and that he might have had a friend, however briefly – were both lies. Blitzo, that talented, funny, confident, unbearably-cute boy he'd spent that one magical day with, had never come back – not until many years later, when they were both adults. His renewed relationship with the imp was a kind of lie, too.

It was a deal, an arrangement. Marked on a schedule, with a clear transaction of favors for favors. It was wrong, and not just morally; it was inaccurate. Stolas didn't want an arrangement, an exchange – and he prayed to the stars that somewhere, deep down, Blitzo didn't either. He wanted a relationship. He wanted love. He didn't want to use Blitzo, not any more. The very thought of it made him feel greasy, threatening to bring him back to the state of mind from his dream.

He was so very tired, though. His head hurt. His joints hurt. His heart hurt. There was something he knew could help him feel better, if only long enough to catch a few hours of proper rest. Using him again, he thought, hating himself. What kind of monster are you? It was the attitude of the Ars Goetia and the other worthies of Hell to disregard the other Hellborn races, to look down on them as little more than tools to be exploited. He rejected that. Imps had shown him more kindness and compassion in his life than any so-called Noble ever had, save his mother. It was not his place to take advantage

But Stolas was not a strong person – not by his own reckoning, at any rate. The things he was feeling threatened to overwhelm him, to leave him a sleep-deprived wreck come the morning. To embarrass himself even more than he already had, in the face of his peers. The least you can do is try to pretend you're a real man when there are people around! a shrill voice echoed in his mind, deepening his frown. In the end, necessity triumphed over nobility. Hating himself was not something he was unfamiliar with, anyway.

He held out his clawed hand, drawing the Grimoire to him without having to reach for it. The book settled in his palm and flipped open, near the section he needed. He flipped a few pages, and found the spell he wanted. He had used this spell before, but he never liked to think about it afterward, let alone try to memorize it. It left him with that dirty feeling, .

He focused on the pillow, holding up a hand and making a series of uncomfortable gestures. He read off the incantation laid out in the book, watching the edges of the body-pillow waver and fade. An object which was little more than the approximate size of the man with whom he was obsessed took on his exact silhouette, lying on his side in a chaise-lounge pose, head resting on his hand, with a risque smirk on his lips.

The simulacrum was perfect, save its inability to speak. It mirrored Blitzo's every proportion, every detail, every aspect of his body-language. Only the eyes gave away the lie. There was nothing there, when Stolas gazed into them. No mischief, no manic glee, no hint of a profoundly-passionate soul suppressed by a hard life. They were the eyes of a doll. Stolas looked away from them, focusing on the parts of the duplicate which could hope to match the real thing.

Just the physical, the superficial. Just like everything else in his life. Just like he'd been with Blitzy, up until now. Shallow and cold and false.

But there was comfort to be had in the facade. If he didn't think too much, if he simply let himself forget and feel, he could pretend this was real. He could pretend Blitzo was here now, that he wanted to hold him. That he wanted to make him feel better. The very thought of it – and the fear that it was as much a fantasy as the rest of this moment – made his eyes sting and water, threatening to break into sobs. He looked at the not-Blitzo – avoiding the eyes – and let himself believe. He put his arms around the smaller figure, feeling it – him – return the gesture. The simulacrum was simply mirroring his action, responding in kind, but Stolas let himself believe it was real.

“Oh, Blitzy!" he sobbed, burying his face in “Blitzo's" neck and finally letting himself break down. He bawled freely onto the shoulder of the shape he let himself believe was his beloved, until he had no more tears to cry. He trembled, and held his precious Blitzy, and finally felt himself beginning to relax. His fatigue started to hit him in the proper way, drawing him toward restful sleep rather than simply teasing him with the possibility of it.

Stella lurked in his subconscious, threatening from the dark, but he had Blitzo at his side, now. Blitzo would protect him. Blitzo would love him, no matter what. He knew it was a lie, that he was moving the not-Blitzo like a puppet and imagining motives for him, but he couldn't help but dive into the fantasy. He was so tired, and it felt so good to have Blitzo's arms around him. It would hurt, come the morning when he found himself once again clutching a tear-soaked pillow, but he accepted that as the price for feeling how he felt right now. He could believe, for now – and so, he could sleep.

A few short words passed through his mind in the instant before sleep took him, spoken in the voice of his beloved. It was something he remembered from a previous full moon rendezvous, from a moment just before sleep, like this one. To this day, he wasn't sure if it had been the start of a dream, or if Blitzo had actually whispered them in his ear. “Nighty night, pretty-bird..."

He awoke to the owl-hoot sound of his alarm clock, feeling more rested than he had in days. The red-tinged light of a bright early morning peeked through the gaps in the drapes, injecting a sort of warmth the room lacked most of the time. Stolas actually found himself smiling a little, as he shut off the alarm and stretched his shoulders. Now that he'd had some proper rest, the prospect of meeting with these amateur astronomers and trying to match their account to the appropriate texts didn't seem so daunting. Especially when he had his...

He looked to his side, expecting a diminutive form under the covers with him. Instead, there was just a silken-cased pillow, sized so the Prince could cling to it at night as he tried to find restful sleep. His smile faded, his eyes downcast. He remembered, now. He'd been indulging again. Pretending. Using the likeness of a person he deeply cared for as a glorified doll. The familiar weight of self-loathing settled upon his shoulders, as he stood up and found his robe.

He went through his morning routine sluggishly, having to consciously will himself on through each step. A quick wash and preening of the feathers, a brushing of his beak. He found his medication, opening the bottle and taking a moment to look at the label on the cap. Happy Pills, it read, in a cutesy pink font. The Sloth Ring was not known for its professionalism or tact, despite being the center of medical treatment for all of Hell. He shook four little pink tablets into his hand, paused, and shook out one more, before capping the bottle. He dry-swallowed them, passing one of his book-shelves on the way to the door.

He paused, turning toward a narrow spot between two books. He raised a palm, and the object between the books levitated into his grasp. A large, felt-covered jewel box. He opened the lid to reveal a gleaming, amber-hued gem, faintly pulsing with a measure of the Lust King's power. An Asmodean crystal, standard kit for Succubi on their way to spread lust in the living world. It would be a powerful tool in Blitzo's hands, allowing him to run his innovative business without having to rely on monthly trysts to keep the necessary equipment.

This crystal would cut through the lies, render them unnecessary. He would have nothing to hold over Blitzo's head any longer, no crass tie of business in what Stolas dearly hoped would become so much more. The crystal was the answer. It would set them both free, one way or another. Stolas shut the box, returning it to its not-so-subtle hiding spot. He brought up the arcane display with the day's date and weather forecast. Three days until the full moon. He would make his play that night – and then he could either die happy, or alone. He would put the choice in Blitzo's hands.