For a little while, Kahl stalks him from the shadows. It's harder, without regular invisibility, but not impossible. Yeine and certainly Nahadoth and Nemmer didn't rely on light to see. The trick is in being less, a ghost, a wraith not just in the shadows but in the dead futures wilting off the side of the path of the present, a thing that could have been here, but isn't, outside of what's true. A god whose name no one knew for two millennia, an even more impossible thing in Asmodeus's understanding of the world. And of course, Asmodeus cannot conceive that he might be wrong about the nature of the world; he's too smart to miss something like that. So - there is no Kahl, and Kahl isn't there.

He cloaks himself in the secrecy of things known only to the dead, cut down unfairly and long forgotten. He stalks Asmodeus from Nowhere, and watches to see what he'll do.

The subtlety Kahl doesn't worry about all that much. There are too many, too frequent stampedes on the barge for things like that to fester and grow slowly, not if someone isn't around to nurture them consistently. He even sympathizes, in an abstract way: with the perspective of centuries, it can be hard to really connect with the rhythm of life on the barge. Patience can be a hazard when things change so quickly. You swear vengeance and then someone has a permanent divine guardian, or they disappear forever, or you do.

Asmodeus is used to having all the time in the world to watch, and wait, and find the exact right place to drip poison, to send ripples out into the world and sit at the center of his schemes and wait for the effects to come trickling back, setting up the situation in which he has already won. But he doesn't have aeons, here. He only has days.

He feels like a Niwwah to Kahl, strong and pure in what he is. He doesn't have an Elontid's strength at twisting, inverting, taking on a recklessly opposite strategy when the wind changes just right. Kahl, catlike, waits - and then pounces.

The first time Zerxus reappears, Kahl steps back into reality to catch him as he wobbles, slightly off-balance.

"Do you remember?" Kahl asks.

Kahl opens his mouth, then closes it again.

Yes. No. Yes. No.

"I was watching him the whole time. But I wasn't there, or else he'd have seen me. So I wasn't. But I wasn't there very close. I would have stopped him if he'd tried anything...dramatic," he promises.

He pulls Zerxus into his own cabin, the perpetually dusty room of the ancient buried library of the Ginij, cool and dry in the way of underground places, with the low cot and the little table of oddments beside it, the exact opposite of a shrine, where he keeps odds and ends gifted to him by his worshippers. Some of them have rubies inlaid into them; some are made of old tin cans. He keeps them in the same place.

Kahl steers Zerxus to sit on the bed, frowning pensively.

"I don't think he will. She won't want him to, so he won't. Which doesn't mean he might not cause some damage while imagining he might. But I can lay bindings on him to make sure if you ask the admiral now to take his power. And that way even if I do change, there will be some limits, even if he does have a tantrum about it."

Kahl listens, snorts, then tugs on Zerxus's sleeve.

"And his Divine Inviolability, or - whatever you'd call it. So I can bind him."

Kahl - despite knowing he's the safest target, and despite planning on that convincing Zerxus to accede to the plan at all - still manages to misinterpret the sound.

"I'm not going to torture him while he's helpless or anything." No. His revenge will wait until it will last, on Asmodeus's own home ground.

"And you shouldn't give him self-defense, because he'll just provoke people to get it to kick in, but if you want to make it so he could hurt me back, that'd be - fair."

And it would either have the effect of focusing Asmodeus on him quite narrowly, or else Asmodeus will suspect a trap - which of course it is - and not try to touch him at all.

"...oh."

Well, that's - irritating. Significant. Irritating that he has to actually - consider that.

Kahl scowls.

"Go eat something," Kahl nags him, for lack of any better ideas. "And I'll stay with you until the next flip."

There are so many things he thinks of to say, and so many of them are revealing. Mortals are changeable - his own deep envy, his feeling of powerlessness in his own nature. I offered to release him from my claim - an intimacy and honesty Asmodeus certainly has not earned. He has kept his promises to me - the raw and desperate affection, a corner of Kahl's heart that is childish in truth. I am Retribution, and I know where blame lies heavy, and where it lies light - far, far too much of himself, his obsessions, his preoccupations.

This isn't an arguement he actually needs to win, even if it's the closest any version of Asmodeus has come to tempting him into giving away pieces of himself to try. He doesn't have to prove anything about anyone to this god.

Eventually, he just says, "Well, it's probably good for you. To be surprised sometimes."