Hades stewed. Wrath unhinged, fettered and incised, billowed past the torn rapiers, shields and stones, marbled and sculpted across the archaic reticence of his unholy vehemence. A preference for mayhem awakened and roused; the yearning, the longing, the coveted, avaricious gleam of plummeting swords, of scalding arrows, of acrimonious plunges and chiseled wounds, of cruelty and bane, of malice and malevolence, seared past the veneer of his impassive features, plucked the ghostly notes and seditious chords. How would it feel to singe and burn the wraiths smirking and sneering, snickering and gloating, beating a harpoon of scalding flesh against the wreckage of their homes? How would it feel to taste the sinuous beat of their frozen souls and hearts, cold and chilling? How would it feel for a monster to maul a fellow behemoth, eldritch titans against smoking phantoms, crooning the shriek of the atavistic? What would it take to grasp a sinner’s essence and tie it, knotted and gnarled, across the gallows, watch as it bent and swayed to the wind’s relentless embers? How were they to emerge from serenity, from refuge, beat a cataclysm of bones and merciless fury, remorseless ferocity, when the victims were their own flesh and blood? The darkness stoked too many fibers of his meticulous mind, the Machiavellian wheels churned in the midst of shadow and veils, arcane, impenetrable depths absorbing his infidel intrigue and contortions, arms of slaughter and quietus. The more he thought, the more the vexation grew, until frustrations merely fed a barbaric, carnivore vector its favored delicacy: molten ire, licentious villainy. Yet, trapped and buried in the rubble, in the ruin, he was an ineffectual demon, doomed to ineptitude while their castles fell, while their palaces collided, while their kingdoms lost sovereignty and collapsed to destitution. He wasn’t sure what bothered and etched over his skin more – the notion of being stranded to rubble, or being incapable of severing the strands of enemies gathering along his icicle corridors, failing to entangle his war desires to rancorous fruition.

Only when the Reaper had enough of the murky doldrums, the suffocating lethargy, the strangling listlessness, did he move from the nocturnal growth of darkness. A sinuous bind of severity and inflexible distortions, irreverent, wicked and depraved march of the hostile hymns, clawing deep into the gloaming, catching the barest hints of scents, unfamiliar and unfeeling. Nothing to guard, nothing to patrol, defend, left to the riotous plumes of his bedlam strife, and the aspirations of puncturing, lacerating, piercing blades, king of naught but an empty beacon of auroras, gone from his keen sight. Instead of fading into the decibels of inadequacy, he lingered in the deep bowels and innards of condemnation, waiting to be released from the shackles, the shells, the lacquer and varnish of this impenetrable fortress so that he may relish and command some insurgent siege upon the blight, the pestilence of their existence. However, the familiar churning of water, the sensation of rain, the notion of another lurking in this pit and pendulum, safe, secure, distracted him momentarily from the nuances of destruction and insurrection – his pace became the fuel of anarchy, merging into the taut steps, the refined statuesque bleeding of his rapacious form. Deimos knew darkness and all of its grand shapes, the unease, the brooding, diligent bounty of its scarring hazards, the gifts it had granted him, and all the curses threatening to unwind his ichor; but he hadn’t expected to find her within its hold and shelter, away from the light, dimmed and shrouded.

He approached, carnivore amore in the rigid, restless veil, Tartarean and bold, and almost said nothing, simply observed, eyes shrouded in the dismal sway of sweltering exposition. Gaze trailed over the showers, the droplets, the cascades of rain, wondered again how long it would be before she drowned him in her grasp, before he choked on her essence and repose, left to sink in the lady of the lake. Was she in hiding, seeking absolution from the grotto sands and lack of peace, scattered away from the tranquility she’d always craved (that he could never give)? Was she tattered and scorned, frustrated and vexed as he, incapable of the right action, the right course, without his preference for destruction? Or did she know of what to do, and simply bided her time, waited for the correct hour for the world to come tumbling down? The Lord stalked, a cold caress tangled in the midst of their sultry familiarity, heated and brooding, calculating and contorting, an everlasting beat of his treacherous designs. His voice, rough, deep hums of the devil, rarely used or expressed since venturing into the fathoms of discontent, carved incisions into the cave walls, bled a cutlass croon, drank and swallowed remnants of serenity and solitude. “Huyana.” An announcement before the attempted touch, the sensation of his death swing, a soft, airy stroke of his lips over the curve of her hip, tongue silenced and bound before notions of their child slinked along their satanic laureate composition. “Loth?” Lights of his life, tranquil and held in Elysium, would reign over his dissatisfaction for slender seconds – but he had to know and ensure the flower girl’s safety before yielding to Huyana’s brilliant storm and gale.