A derisive existence was constantly, caustically met without feeling, without warmth, without deliverance, sanctum or tenderness, fueled and incited by the smothering enmity, by the lacerating, raptorial predilections, the heinous veils of ferocious blends and antipathies. Resting upon animosity, stepping upon seditious flaws and bestial faults, were the few pressing and perennial principles still stored in the heathen abhorrence, malicious presence: brethren, kin and relations, his people, his foundation, settled deep into his core, seethed and hissed in the Reaper’s ear. Family tied down the visceral edges of his macabre creeds, of his pernicious pursuits, of his immoral ideals, reminded and implored the choked essences of things he’d lost and sullied, things he could have savored and relished. Though absolution was never in his favor, though salvation couldn’t be kindled from the inveigling qualities of his menace, there was still the outreaching portion of his life torn away, abandoned, forsaken, left to rot in the decaying ebb and flow of memories. Loyalty administered through action, not benevolence, not divine, scrapings of virtues, but from each labored, ardent stride, for every meticulous, diligent upheaval, each scandalous, Machiavellian design, orchestrated in one malignant, magnificent oeuvre to disrupt, to dismay, to distort for the beasts he favored. But for once in his life, he hadn’t granted death in his vicious touch, in his callous embrace, in his heathen brushstrokes and infidel caresses, and instead, fostered life in the sinking, slipping, sliding days of Birdsong. A slinking fortitude, an unholy subterfuge, a devilish, infidel enigma was suddenly holstered and harpooned into the waves of impending fatherhood, and he swore amongst the silence, over the hushed apertures and the brutal, carnivorous splendor of his hunting grounds, that the predacious opulence of his blackened heart would go to serve the child he’d helped create. The scion would serve as a steady, valorous reminder and calculating endeavor, as a woven, deadly sonnet, a poet laureate’s savage devotion; forcing him to continue consuming, ravaging, protecting, and guiding, as his father, as his mother had done for him.

The storm’s nefarious, haunting cries, its seething maelstrom, wicked and deceitful, didn’t alarm him, didn’t coax him into melancholy, didn’t incite or fester a length of raw sentiment. Deimos stared into the tempest and saw the woven world of might, of power, of feral animosity, of bedlam and chaos as auspicious images of their created heir and successor of his darkened prowess, of its mothers blessed heart; where the serrated points of his wrath met the seraphic rim and froth of Huyana’s rain, gesturing with wild abandon, with audacious glee, with the carnivore amore of death and rivulets. What would this child be, with grandeur and decadence lain at its feet? Would it consume, ravage and maim empires as he sought, or would it become intertwined in its mother’s repose, sing songs and cherish the earth?

The watery mare’s cry came across the horizon, and he wasted no more time dwelling on the notions. There would be plenty of days, hours and minutes to speculate on the prowess of their impending youth, and significantly less time to persuade its arrival. He moved from the shadows, one pursuing undulation to the next, winding and slinking from the cruel depths of showers and gales, squalls and thundering dissonance, beckoning the coming of a vehement rainchild. Pernicious and potent, naught ceased his movement, he didn’t bow to the ardent droplets, became devoured by their persistence, drenched and soused, but unrelenting, undaunted, ceaseless and persistent, he drove each remorseless step into the Stygian conjunctures and the raw enmities, punctured, pierced and lanced any attempts to thwart his motions. He followed her scent, recognizable even throughout the righteous furor, capturing the essence of Huyana’s unwinding location, moving ever closer to the cavern of her toil and exertion. The Reaper, eternally, poignantly silent, slid into the aperture in hushed decadence, became one with the gloom, the twilight, the constant, unwinding predilection of wind and droplets. His penetrating gaze fixated upon her form, laden amongst the chill and cold of the cavern, and sensed no further harm but the impending struggle of motherhood – his appearance alone should fend off any other likely threats. Not daring to tread closer, for fear his proximity would only pursue withering factions, demise and quietus over one of the few souls he’d never wield such satanic powers upon, he stood within the open threshold and blocked the ferocity, tied his pelt towards the untamed barbarity and violence, permitted savagery to knock upon his nefarious figure, of the day’s beckoning propitious, bewitching clamor. Stalwart, staunch and valorous for the creatures he’d come to cherish, he only uttered the finality, encouragement and strength of his entity into the dimness of darkened grotto. “I am here.”

Death, you bring death, and destruction to all that you touch.