He thinks that he might rule the heavens. He wants to be a great general, like his uncle; a queen like his dam; a god like his grandsire. Since birth has the ambition lain snakelike beneath the grass of his youth, dormant yet breathing, imagined success holding it back. Yet now, all at once, he realizes his failures. The storm rages on, and takes with it his mother's smile. Demonchild turns his head to the wind, ears pressed tight against the massive skull, and stares into the heart of the sky. Whips of salty water lash pleasantly at his hips, deliciously painful reminders of his forced mortality; he is lost here and not up there; he commands no storm clouds, no armies, no nations.

Not yet.

He smells them first. The dragon smells like fire and brimstone, an aching sting against his nostrils that he immediately rejects, snorting loudly and shifting in the waves. Then comes the second warning, a high unholy shriek ripped from the throat of some wounded beast, the call of a life leaving a broken body, louder even than the tearing wind. What is it, he wonders - demon or angel, friend or foe? Nay, it sounds mortal, a wounded rodent waiting for extermination. The demonchild feels a mild curiosity coupled with desire, desire for the power he has lost to the storm, desire to crush and carry and control.

The moon is gone, swallowed by clouds that laugh in the face of this crime-to-be. Demonchild makes no effort at silence, it is not his style; in the darkness and the wind it is still too easy to spot the luminescent bay, the four-horned son of angels and gods. Mane tears wildly at the fingers of the wind, long and leonine tail drifting serpentine upon the surface of the sea; his steps are laborious, but not hurried, for he feels no need to rush to the scene of this destruction. Nay, he savors it, tasting excitment upon a forked tongue, two-toned eyes bright with violence. The world shall be mine, and you shall be first, dragon-friend.

He sees them, outlines in the first drops of rain, equine much smaller than the horned behemoth, dragon still indistinct. Forward he presses, tall form surging through angry waves, nothing threatening yet without ease. He does not speak, not until he stands nearer to them in the sea, a length away; he can smell blood and damaged flesh, and it heightens the excitement in his mind. Excitement that does not show, does not even echo in the beast's dark voice, as he calls out in false care, "You seem injured, friend. Surely you should escape this storm!"

Lies. Lies and secrets are the milk of his mother, the teachings of a serpent on angel's wings that whistle through memories of an absent youth. Falsehoods and secrets will save your life; you must make friends to thwart your enemies, my son. He steps closer now, a smile plastered on the demon's skull- Belial's grin reflects none of his loathing, only a kindness he does not feel. "Let me help you to the shore. There are cliffs not far from here we can shelter under."

Belial the Demonchild
Even the devil was once an angel