I am saying, Steven, that it seems someone is with you. Another in your body — not this person you know from home, but someone new, someone born in this place, perhaps in that very wasteland where they first took control and fed when you would not. There are precedents.

[Or one precedent, at least — in the form of the deer. The smile does not fade, and Diavolo's tail flicks behind him, an unconscious act, infrequent in this form. Angels do not have the same instincts as beasts. But, despite that, sometimes a revelation is tail-flickingly intriguing, and so he allows it.]