The ethereal fatality, the chilling, sinister devil, breathed over his kingdom and watched from its high ramparts, from his plunging gallows, from his wicked, poised tower. When the night dragged on, quiet apart from the nefarious winds, he settled into the brimming recollection of the past days – felt the rise of ire trickle down the back of his throat, felt the bestial, savage frustration climb and clamber along his sinew – because he was too immersed, too detached, too separated from the ways of others to even know where to begin, how to act, what to do, what to say. Instead of launching regrets, rue, or apologies, he would have rather stayed along his castle walls, basking in isolation, in irritation, for seasons to come. Already, however, the world, his brethren, his kin, had proven those actions were a fatal, hollowed flaw. The more he disappeared, the more he clung to the shadows, the more he unknowingly scorched or tore open so many other things; Arah or Ulrik’s loyalty, alliances, and armistices, consuming all the flares, all the sparks they’d already polished and rendered. Did he want to be known as the ghost, as the wraith, as the unknown King of winter, seen but rarely heard, noticed but barely acknowledged, leading by damnation, by dedication, and ultimately, by ruin?

A query led him down his weary path, away from the boleros of destruction, away from the rampant, devouring taste of predilection, of acrimony, of feral, rampant unsung violence: how? How could he become better? How could he be more for a herd he cherished, for a kingdom he beloved, for a world he’d served diligently?

His notions are broken by the presence of his son, and he took a few tender, fatherly moments to watch the child barrel his way through the earth. Perhaps his only ease was the idea that the child had been allowed to prosper, to grow, without too many woes, without too much weight crossing over his shoulders. He’d seen the ghastly ways of the earth (he’d wandered into the hills of murderers’ intentions, he’d seen the way those of their haunted ilk manifested, waned, and withered), but he hadn’t been forced into isolation, into despair, into ruin. He’d grown, he’d flourished, and he’d blossomed. Deimos couldn’t want anything else for the lad.

A piece of the beast wondered if he could’ve been like that too – if his views, if his identity, hadn’t been so swiftly uprooted and altered on his first birthday. If he hadn’t become the devil’s toy, Lucifer’s sword, Mephistopheles’ favored pawn, would he have been like his youthful son, still bounding across chambers, still leaping over revolutions and tribulations?

The Reaper had no answer. He slipped away from the haunting, poignant hush, and prevailed in the formidable, eldritch contortions, trying not to gleam as the tinier beast threaded his way towards him. The contentment rose in the hint of a smile as Erebos recognized his presence, sculpting his way through rime to reach his side, the companion adrift and aloof (recognizing the savagery of death?), the wild, untamed exuberance on full display as they triumphantly swindled to his form. The infidel, the cretin, the Machiavellian beast, lowered his maw to casually loosen a breath of mortal air across his son’s forelock, as close as he dared to touch, before composing a few searing notes for his child. “Erebos.” A nod was performed, and it was like he’d never been damned at all, a boyish grin sliding over his lips, “I am fine. Yourself?”

i'm not here looking for absolution,

because I found myself an old solution

The boy was too much like his mother.

He missed her, terribly, deeply, and all of it went into a murky, dissonant silence (he’d seen her once, recently, he thought, down by the banks of the unfrozen lake, and perhaps then she’d been a mirage too, just a distant, sad, delicate, wayfaring hallucination brought upon by his cruel ambitions and his wanton desires – because she’d said nothing, because she’d done nothing, and he’d been left alone again).

Both of them held all the insight of his flaws, of his characteristics, past all the vicious, acrid sentiments, down into the nefarious, smoldering, blackened heart that beat against his locked oubliette. They persisted, they drove, and they slashed in their artifices, in their kindness, whittling away the adversity clinging to his pelt, clinging to his machinated designs, clinging to the harsh, unrelenting, brutality of his form and frame. The Reaper would likely have it no other way. Only his family could see him for what he truly was, only his family could see him without shields, without swords, without all the grueling, avaricious marks and the acrimonious pursuits, but that also meant all his mistakes, all his conundrums, were theirs to own and comment upon.

He hated to be thought of as weak, as pathetic, in front of his own son, because his child thrived where he could not. The boy smiled and laughed and courted all the necessities of life, radiated and glowed and cherished all the things offered to him, and Deimos kept to the shadows, protective, watching, waiting, ready and eager to proffer and bestow him the fiercest, most devout defense – and the child blossomed without it. He danced in the throngs, he accepted the world, and he rose against all the waves and influences of realms, of empires, assimilating. And still, the Reaper hadn’t found a method, a way, to do the same thing. The monster balked, hesitated, swayed, and stuck to the darkness, to the things he craved, to the mere absolutions devils gave. He pieced together shards and slivers of warfare and debauchery, with hatred and condemnation, with desolation and treachery, not daring to change, afraid to erode from all the careful walls he’d constructed and fortified.

He couldn’t even compel familiars. Did he want any? Is that what he needed? Companions couldn’t be the essence of survival – not when he’d been allowed to exist this long without them. Or was it more loyalty, a grandiose exchange of stories, of mythos, of legends, that he required? He’d held those chains and fetters before, maybe, perhaps, but they’d probably descended too, down into the murky depths, never finding roots. He thought of Arah, and her silence when he nearly felled intruders upon their door, he thought of Ulrik and their mutual silence, he thought of D’art and the doctor’s wily ways, and he thought of Mauja, long since departed into some other venue. Were those connections all gone too, slipped away without his notice? He couldn’t get Huyana to stay.

His piercing eyes found Erebos’ black kitsune, and moved again to stare at his child, at a boy who had grown far beyond his years, at a lad who’d likely do anything his mind committed to – laced, lanced with determination. “I am sure you will find them,” his voice crossed and emboldened across the horizon, and he was suddenly fixated on the stars, on the endless, midnight constellations, rather than trudging too deeply into the mess his query would receive. “How?” And the voice, nearly inaudible, gave the structure one last whisper, to slide along the scion’s ears and nowhere else. “How does one make friends?”

i'm not here looking for absolution,

because I found myself an old solution