Cold, murky precision cut through his undulating coils of muscle and sinew, of predator and prowess, of danger and disaster, as he stalked through the hills and valleys of his empire. He wanted nothing more than to settle amidst its threads and bury his weary head in its soil, tug the icy roots and tendrils from his blood, from his veins, from his movements and motions so he could be freed of all the endless frustrations binding his Machiavellian mind – but they never ceased. Like a growing, gnawing, endless ache, the perilous thoughts wrapped their way around his skull, so all he remembered were the barbaric notions of the meeting, the eternal damnation of his flaws, the defects of his throne, and the reality that no matter how hard he tried, no matter how many times he tried to overcome his nature, it still toppled over their chilling pinnacles. He was as mountainous as the peaks themselves – illustrious, chilling, and immovable, pressing harder against the slate of everything threatening to fall apart. He ground his way through their rime, through their glaciers, in hopes of providing protection, power, and might; but when it came down to it, all he had to show were disappointed faces and keen, blunt words.

He, like so many others before him, had seemingly amounted to nothing. Nothing at all.

While the Reaper’s sire had spoken to him, had told him of great Kings and how they could become greater (love from their people, love for their people), Deimos’ actions seemed to prove otherwise. As he fought for them, as he plotted for them, as he bore wounds, lacerations, curses, and invocations for them, they festered and brooded, rotted and seethed, unsatisfied, yearning, thirsting, hungering for something else. He bestowed alliances and they shrieked about dying Sentinels. He told of Gods granting them wolves and they screeched to each other, sounding like banshees, harpies, and hounds, squalling and squawking until his penetrating, piercing glare silenced them all.

He hadn’t inspired anything in them. They were unchanged – like rippling patterns in the sea, like the weeds prospering between rocks and stones. He’d seen them all before in different guises; and he was faltering, stumbling, bumbling his way through the crowd again.

The Lord stared at them across the way – initially intrigued because he’d been born a soldier, a warrior, a piece of armor and sword, and he’d likely die the same way, casting his body and soul for a herd who didn’t care, for a herd who’d sooner bury his bones in a dark corner and forget. But as the meeting trickled on, as the new General tried to glow in her stars and constellations, as his son met the call with bright eyes, everything else seemed amiss too; as if it was one more piece of his world falling apart. No one else came.

Save Albrecht (who he’d gladly use for target practice should the elder wish it), and one of Ki’irha’s children, winged and bumbling around, there was naught. No other warriors in sight. No one slashing against the horizon.

The sight caused rage to build, bristle, bleed along his chest, because they were supposed to be strong, they were supposed to be annihilating, bestial beasts who breathed calamity and chaos.

What were they now? Erebos and Ki’irha? Albrecht and a child? Is this who they were sending out to defend them every time there was an enemy? When there was a threat (and he’d throw himself in front of his son any day, to save him from persecution, from lacerations, from bitter, toxic wounds)? Was this a joke?

He didn’t laugh.

Instead, the great Lord presided closer and closer, until he advanced upon Albrecht, raised his maw to sneer in the other’s ear (because he hadn’t forgotten the ridiculousness of the meeting), lowering his decibels into a sinister bout of unholy, brutal terror – the varnish of what he could truly be, of what he could truly command - “Volunteering for service, Albrecht?” – before maneuvering elsewhere, standing near his son, brooding and irritated at the lack of anything and everything. The beast narrowed his eyes, staring over the emptiness, the vastness, the desolation, the mirror image of what everyone seemed to think the mountains were – hollow and frail. “It appears we have some work to do, General.”