A threat roamed into his kingdom, combed against his senses, forbidding and baleful, coiling and curling into the masses of their sinister wake, a wolf along the fringes, a monster in the hedges. The demonic King should have been permitted to ruin, wreck, ravage and devastate like all the other times before, when inept intruders wandered into his home and spat ignorance, audacity, when foolish, weakened fools traversed into the unknown and came face to face with death, satanic distortion. He should have been allowed the opportunity, the chance, to sink his carnivore animosity into the depths of this persecuting creature, a mere child aching, unwinding for slaughter, press the nefarious reaches of the Reaper’s predilection, cut the beast off from the world, from the living. He was a warrior, a behemoth, a titan, Lucifer’s turbulent sculpture sent to wreak havoc upon the world, stir up maelstroms and conduct bloody oaths, simmer in the chasm of bedlam, swallow and consume the innards, the entrails, of divinity, repose and serenity. But in some cruel twist of fate, in some ironic plunge, demise and quietus were not an option, and pride stung against his veins, stubbornly exonerating that at last he was the vulnerable one. Suddenly attainable, an object close by, sitting high upon the mantle, assured dominance when the derisive lies boiled into his throat and the notion of fleeing had to run through his Machiavellian mind. Escape and liberation gagged him, because it sounded, smelled, flowed through his sentiments like cowardice, when all he yearned to do was plunge his sword into the colt’s chest, watch him cast a final smirk and die in the inhospitable whims of the Aurora Basin – where the strong lived, where the strong reigned, where the strong rose again and again.

But the notion spun toward him again, when he thought of others, and he cursed himself for one elusive moment, yearning for the crushing moments where his blackened heart had not held images of his herd, his blackguards, his brethren or a raingirl and their flower child. It had been so much easier to be the aloof, forlorn, abandoned soul when no one was tearing at his bestial structure. Deimos, you need to take the others with the strange woman, a command he didn’t want to adhere to, broken and rasping over the lips of the GildedBlade, chiseled into an anomaly of vocal structure spilling over the spine of the only one capable of wielding death, and being ineffectual of witnessing its true performance. Reality was a harsh rancor, sliding over the depths of his calculating wiles, because for one small moment he’d thought they could thwart the monster, defeat it, crush it, exterminate it, let its bones bleach out and mold into the fibers of snow and ice, but the distinct ripple of her voice, the transformation from Lady to phantom, ensnared his puncturing gaze, and he was suddenly alone to fend for those in the rime’s distance.

Then she leapt forward, throwing herself into a path of no return, and he bit into his frustration, his vexation, with an iron brutality. He’d offer her one lone opportunity, if she had any left, to bide her time, to dance off into the midst of all her games and ruses. Enchantments called, murmuring sweet, noxious nothings into the horizon, swiftly churning into the corridors of their chaotic fray. While the toxic tombs of their upheaval may not have been warranted full devastation (how does death conquer death, how do the hands, the gifts, of Mephistopheles combat one another), he still longed for a piece, a bite, a relish, of savagery to boil, brew, and effuse from his treacherous wake. His invocations swiftly stoked towards the colt, perhaps, in the grand scheme, in the strange play, they’d instigate a part of sedate, listless phrases, fuse him in a slow, transient haze while he retrieved the rest of his herd, led them to safety while their Lady teetered upon wraithdom. Deimos only gave her a firm nod of confirmation, before giving chase to her demands (perhaps the one and only time he’d abide them), crossing over glaze and frost to secure sanctuary for those yet untouched by the insanity pervading this world.

Then, he’d find a way to conquer the demons sent here and destroy them all.

[Watches Illynx take the hit and sends death magic towards Ode, hoping that it will slow the wraith-child down, then agrees to Illynx’s request and flees to aid his herd.]