He whittled away the hours by honing his skills; extending his blade through fallen fir or rotting logs, polishing a quick strike, an inevitable blow, a deadly combination of movement and predatory motions through decrepit wares. It was a welcome diversion from all the strange nuances floating about his skull, churning his membrane from his defects, his flaws, his trials and all their heartless errors, to the actions he could concoct in his sleep: steady with a rapier, comfortable with a cutlass. Like a scythe, he dove through the nuances, rising towards dawn and lowering his body, his cranium, until his horn met wooden flesh, swinging it in one disastrous, bloody arch, watching the chips and rubble scatter like pieces of skin, sinew, and pelt. Satisfied for the few, restless moments, he built a crescendo of fire within his jaws, felt the rising pulse, the molten flame, the bestial whims conspiring along his maw, and was about to release it upon a hapless log, when a creature delved into the scene.
 
The King stilled, glancing and glaring at one of the kingdom’s smaller subjects; someone’s companion, recognizable and distinct, but he didn’t have a name to the tiny, deer-like creature. He narrowed his eyes, speculating and pondering, tilting his head for a fraction of a second; because rarely did companions seek him out – it was their guardians, their chieftains, who grasped for his attention. A severe thought came to his mind, and his eyes widened for a time, apprehension and annihilation wrapping a vicious coil around his mind – what if someone was hurt? What if another of his herd required aid? He wasn’t capable of administering any mending contortions, but he could certainly chisel and devour and mutilate anything and everyone intending to harm his comrades – so without delay, as the fawn turned and swiveled along stony paths and tundra corners, he followed as a massacring shadow, as a vehement haze, as a murdering cretin, intending to slay, to persecute, to cut and slash and obliterate a disastrous touch-
 
But they arrived into a clearing, into a familiar world, into naught more than a glade of rubble and ruin. The demon stared at the scene, blinking once or twice, deciphering what was truly in front of him – just the red and white Crafter and the Haruspex, picking apart the stretch of debris and wreckage that used to be the prison. No one appeared hurt. No one was endangered.
 
A low shuddering sigh left his body, and his glare lost its immoral, licentious degree; slipping along the grounds as if he were a tired, lonely king of demolition, and the ground-up turf was all his doing. Curiosity got the better of him as he lingered closer and closer, advancing towards the duo with all the sentiments of an intrigued cretin, an interested fiend, because for a time the dungeon was a cell for their enemies, and now it could only hold specks of dust and grain. But they’d gained new opponents, unfamiliar imbeciles knocking on their doors, and soon, perhaps once they’d managed to reconstruct what they’d lost (isn’t that all he did lately? Try to repair all the things he’d broken down?), it could house the seditious fiends circling their wares. His voice was keen and sharp, cutting through the swarm of stony remains, gaze settling upon one, then the other. “How may I assist?”