Deimos scalded the shadows, kept to the doldrums, the agonizing, bestial eaves, listened to the distant drums of challenges and upheavals – sought their vigilant violence, and only answered it with indifference. The new Lady caught the eldritch behemoth only moments later, and he met her distant approach with indifferent, recherché features, entangled back into sovereign duties with their deity’s hand picked occupant. If he continued to garner her disapproval, he said or thought nothing of its harpooning devices; his ineptitude had already been established and his pride had already been slashed, he had no will to delve back into their riotous fathoms. The keen edge of his gaze settled upon her dragon nearby, then ghosted back to her presence, a merchant of death pondering over the wiles of others, eternally wishing to be consumed and swallowed into the depths of desecration than spend another moment basking in the lulls of conversation. She chattered and explained in rapid fashion, from one topic to the next, and his skull was buzzing with the swift agendas: spars set up and ready (good, perhaps he could catch one or more of his own, bask in the only symphony he was capable of composing), trades with other herds (noteworthy, they could be in need of devices and materials in the future), and then the last: Hotaru, an impressive sneak, a worthy member, taken by the Throat (vexing, a spark kindled, a flame ignited, an ember brought back to life). Willingly defaulted, absconded in the stead of sand and dunes (he remembered the bloody battle, the shift in some flier’s leg, her, broken, crippled fall to earth – he’d do it all over again, crack and chisel demise into their spines, into their hearts, into their souls), and as he ruminated, clenched his jaw, and formed pathways to subversion, he realized he hadn’t responded at all. “Fine.” The blunt chord segmented off in a hissing tone, a token of the latter information (because Hotaru could spy and hunt and gather, but she’d also been apprehended and before, their children had been preyed upon as well). “It is fine.” He glared, not towards her, but in the direction of the seething horizon and the galvanized scenes, a coil of barbaric muscles boiling, brooding, brewing, uttering one more addition to the diatribe. “What do you need me to do?” Cold-blooded calculations swarmed through his mind, one measure from the next, yearning, itching, churning with the desire for mayhem, for disaster, for anarchy – and if she, someone he presumed peace-keeping and altruistic, granted him permission to unravel, to demolish, to ruin, he’d begin his sculpture of bedlam.

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