Deimos had been acquainted with death since he was a child. He’d recognized its facets from the moment it drummed, beat, a quiet crescendo from within his soul, dreadful and barbaric, a sworn oath to the legions of demons and cretins forged far below.  So he knew when it’d come for him too.
 
Quietus had pulled at him weakly for weeks, combined with exhaustion, with fatigue, with irritation and exasperation, until it seemingly came all at once, peaked and pierced, no ebb, no flow – just savagery and peril. It punctured his lungs first – twisted and conformed, interrupted his sleep with a breathless, restless animosity. It burned down through his chest, where his heart still lay nestled on its pernicious, blackened, scarred precipice, rattled the chains of his vicious decadence until all he comprehended was corruption, all he felt was ferocity. His breath came in quick strokes, furious and emboldened, tightening over his neck like a noose, and from the corner of his fading eyesight, he could’ve sworn he saw the true reaper there, waiting at the gates of Hell to bring him where he truly belonged.
 
He fought against it initially – it was in his nature, in his being, in his callous, tenacious, obstinate soul to challenge, to defy. His bones rattled and his veins throbbed, his mind wandered from fixture to fixture, determined not to crumble in the midst of his final battle; he’d been at war for so long, he’d never truly learned how to hang up his armor, how to surrender his munitions. The beast, the monster, the cretin, pushed himself off of his cave floor, knees immediately crumbling, dragging him back down to the cold, lifeless surface, and he growled, stubborn, refusing to bend to the will of what he deserved. He had too many things to accomplish, had too many patriots to serve, too many armies to lead down the steps of triumph and glory, too many enemies not yet slaughtered. He was made of minatory allure and Mephistophelean discord, scathing, scintillating grinds of sedition – and it was one last roar into the flames, one more act of rebellion, that he should not die in the dungeon of his shelter, miniscule and shambled, weakened and pathetic.
 
He might’ve hissed, he might’ve rasped, he might’ve grated against all the senses, all the severed contortions of his membrane, because everything seemed to run together in a rampant, spiraling hellhole. The infidel could barely turn his head, the stupid skull whose crown had yet to fall, but still chanced a glimpse at the world outside his oubliette, marveling at the sight of rain at the end of winter – stretching out his maw towards the great beyond, towards the showers drifting, splashing at the end of his nose.
 
Deimos, she said; and he tried not to follow the ghost at the end of his gaze, at the flickering blue haze curling against the backdrop of snow and mountains.
 
Instead, he strived to think about anything else: the herd that required him, the protection he proffered, the caustic machinations he hadn’t been allowed to pursue, the apathetic world that never noticed just how much he’d changed, just how far he’d gone, just how many times he’d altered himself for them. In the end, that hadn’t mattered either, because the webs of his cranium reminded him that for all of his efforts, for all of his glory, for all of his shadowy foundations and being a weapon, a shield, a first line of defense, they’d be fine without him. They’d live on, and he’d be a scattered, despondent memory – a piece of flesh that had once only coveted anarchy and revolution, who’d harbored hate and malice and menace, but never to those who truly gave their convictions to the summits and the frost. In time, he’d be a forgotten legend, a fascinating myth to mock and ridicule, something carved from marble and ruin, a barb of cruelty, a tarnished, tainted, foreboding, and unattainable heathen sent back to the forlorn reaches of Acheron.
 
But, just once, he wished he’d told them he was proud of them – for all the things they’d accomplished, for all the ways they’d morphed, for all the beings who’d settled their bones, ash, and dust into the empire and made it grand for those yet to come. He wished he’d had friends, true friends, that didn’t flee or shy away from battle, that didn’t abandon him to other roles and fixations, that carved loyalty from the breadth of their statures and never forgot it. He wished he could see Illynx and they could’ve agreed on something in their lifetimes. He wished he could’ve met with Psyche again before her death, to beg forgiveness for being an idle bystander as her rights were taken away. He wished he could’ve told Mauja he’d been happy to be a sword for him (and that those had been some of the finest hours of his life – simply chasing down whatever enemy happened to be in their way). He wished he could’ve told his children just how blissfully happy they’d made him. He wished for so many other things that he couldn’t list or give name; the regrets and remorse piled against his heart and bled it dry. His breath rattled again, and he thought to call out, but no one would have heard the pathetic wail of a dying fiend.
 
Deimos, she called to him – again, down by the unfreezing lake, between the raindrops and the crisp, chilling dawn. This time, he followed.
 
The Reaper arched once more in antagonistic prose, every bit a piece of abhorrent acrimony, scrupulous and virile, guarded, hushed furor, the picture of a predator, an inauspicious creation dredged up from Lucifer sketches and stoic, eldritch titans. On the final portions of his strength, conjured from depravity, from carnivore rapacity, from the simple, eerie will to not dissolve, he maneuvered from his cavern towards the lake. He drowned beneath the wake of the showers, scarcely felt the cold, the rush of ocean fibers and dulcet whispers, clutched the last images of her to his flickering memory - Huyana, he breathed slowly, in and out, struggling to catch her specter as it danced over the water’s surface, like their son, an echo of her pride, of her joy.
 
There, he sank, down into the embankment, pressing his face into the dirt, soil, and dust, listening to the gentle lapping of the waves; her serene, tranquil voice the last few traces of sound reaching his ears. Come see the Tides, she said, and he nearly laughed; the Moonlit Tides were gone, far, far gone, her too, everyone vanished and vanquished, and he’d been left here to plunge his sword into flesh and to orchestrate bedlam in a constant, never-ending circle. It might’ve been an illusion, an image drawn from a fading monster, but he could’ve sworn he felt her lips caress over his cheek, one cherished, beloved moment between souls that would likely never meet again. He’d descend into Hell, a modern Hades to rest in the domicile of the wicked, and she, virtuous and tender, would return to the heavens, guarding over her flock of clouds and raindrops. Perhaps he’d been lucky with his Persephone, and she’d felt the tug of spring, the fall of winter, and rushed to be there, to watch him fall apart again –
 
Then his last breath came, and he could see the scythe swinging, and all he could think, all he could dream was Take me there.
 
And thereafter, he was gone, still and unrelenting – dead just as he’d lived, wild, feral, and alone.