Excerpts From The Prologue:

With only a long flannel nightgown to cover her, an old woman appeared. She was unable to move or speak, sipped her breath in shallow wisps and was, in Kairos' opinion, due to expire soon. Lord Ashur's aide was an unflappable sort and the shift to surprise was unfamiliar. The feeling continued to heighten when two sets of distant footfalls sounded from the hallway.

[. . . ]

In this short span of time the woman had relieved herself upon the floor. The wettened mess would now present an even more formidable challenge when the time came to clean.

Kairos glanced at Enoch in his peripheral and saw the wizard turn a shade of pink. This woman wasn't the object of immense power that he had promised. She couldn't even control her body.

'My lord!' said Enoch with an abrupt bow.

Straining his neck forward, Ashur asked 'What is it? Is it alive? Could it be human? It looks to have all of the necessary body parts and functions for one.'

Enoch popped to upright and searched for an adequate explanation.

'I believe it is indeed a human, my lord. However, this one seems like said functions will cease soon,' responded Kairos when Enoch floundered.

Lord Ashur inched closer to the woman. 'Don't we normally get humans after they've died? I mean, unless it's a wizard whom you've let in. Is it a wizard?'

'No, sire. She appears quite ordinary,' answered Kairos.

'Enoch, what exactly were you trying to do? And how did you do it without using a spatial gate? And why didn't you wait for me?' pressed Ashur.

Kairos supplied his own simplistic explanation which ended with 'We thought you were busy, my lord.'

A long protracted pause of silence hung heavy in the room before Ashur asked 'What do you propose we do with it?'

The old woman opened her eyes, filmed in pearl, and trained them towards the ceiling. Then, in a tremulous and halting voice she said to no one in particular, 'I am quite … lost.'

She shivered and Kairos saw the monarch's back straightened as his perspective shifted. The 'it' became a person, a woman, someone alive and someone in need. Ashur was like his father in that regard.

'Well, we will just have to keep it. Her. I think. See what she does,' he said.

Kairos gave in and removed his jacket, still crisp from having ironed it yesterday evening, and wrapped the frail form in it. Empty as she seemed, the ability or curse to feel lingered as her brittle inhalations now came at a trilling whisper. It was alien to see to the comfort of a human for much of the business of Hell involved making humans as uncomfortable as possible.
'My lord, again I do not think she will be doing anything much longer,' said Kairos and he heard Lucifer emit a low hum of agreement.

'How long do we have? A few years?' asked Ashur.

'I do not think she will last one year let alone a few.'

The woman's urine began to trickle out from underneath Kairos' jacket and bead into the grooves between tiles. He wondered if the smell of her would linger longer than she would and he predicted that his jacket would never recover.

The woman's eyes now slid in his direction and he found himself unable to meet her milky gaze. He didn't get the feeling that she saw him. Rather, he perceived that she was responding to the sound he made by speaking, by moving. She inched her fingers along the floor, hooking her pink nails between the edges so she might bend her knees up and plant her feet before her knees fell sideways in a slow writhe. Her nightgown slid a ways up her legs revealing translucent skin which hung in folds about her thighs and where the gown was taut, the outline of her skeleton was nearly on full display. Everything exposed indicated that her colouring was now far paler than what it had probably been in prior decades. The woman's hair was a lovely shade of white and well groomed. Someone had been taking loving care of her and Kairos could appreciate their fastidiousness.

[. . .]

It was just as well for Lucifer stepped forward with a glare towards both the wizard and assistant.  The speed of his body and the casting aside of reluctance gave Kairos the idea that Lucifer felt compelled to take up the slack for show rather than attend to the woman with genuine interest. Lucifer knelt down to pick the woman up and placed her upon the sofa, seemingly unbothered by the wetness of her nightgown. A slight smell, the promise of something stronger, reached out to Kairos.

'Humans were not designed to be fixed in the way you desire, my lord. She is merely old and at the end of her life span,' drawled Lucifer, now staring down at the woman.

'Why do they die so quickly?' Ashur asked.

'Because they do. I find little point to them.'

Kairos felt humans had plenty of point after death. With enough prompting and guidance they become the fuel that kept the power on across the realm. He was glad that such a process did not fall under his purview but Asher's brothers. Those three handled an ugliness no others could stomach.

The old woman whimpered and said something so quietly no one but Lucifer could have heard. He reached out and patted her snow-white hair and she stilled.