Inaction stirred restlessness, scorned wretched holes of apathy and disdain, wrought detached, heedless notions lingering to heathen minds, casting a wicked glow in the indignant portal of specters, wraiths and demons. Treacherous banes and callous scourges, indignant and exposed, controlled and contorted the corrupted visage of abysmal, labyrinth conjectures, until he was nothing more than coiled machinations, simmering, smoldering concoction of brutality and derision. Ire, primitive and arcane, curled and seethed in the unholy fervor of his raptorial carnage, fed and split the runes of horrific oeuvres, convictions of primordial deceit, meticulous divinations, reticent crimes. In this resolute venue, where the earth was parched of serenity, where the realm was starved of virtue, where paragons fell to the slinking tides of scintillating annihilation, he was the formidable, the menace, the terror, the chilling, desolate, hollow heart poised in the flesh of sin, the feral, rampant decadence of intimidation. Brushstrokes of malice, laments of loathing, requiems of rancor, all contained, controlled, in the taut, minute motions of his existence, of his ethereal, deadly brutality – savored, devoured, consumed.

But the hush is vanquished, slaughtered by the choking, sliding hymns of a temptress, and automatically he is immune to her spider silk effusions. She warbled, spinning her web of lies, slinking, an asp, a viper, in the corridors of fiends and monsters, trying desperately to sink her teeth into his insides. A truly disgusting performance, where sanctions of strumpets attempted to display their wares, pronouncing white lies and screaming duplicitous villainy. She purred, layered the sentiments of her crude lips, of her vamp tongue, scorched seduction until any alluring veneer had been washed away, stolen by her arduous demands, by her husky treble. He was not beguiled, not enticed, nor attracted to the runes of her pathetic guise, of her ruined façade, the brush of a coquette, the toxic enamel of a gorgon, Medusa meanderings – too obvious, too pronounced, too pathetic. Wrapped in her childish veil, gaze pinpointed, roaming to his virile physique, to his undulating muscles, to his chords of nefarious damnation, she appeared all the more revolting, repulsive, and abhorrent. His poise, carved from iron, stoic and unyielding, impassive and ravenous, remained unchanged in the wake of her appearance, immobile reserve eternally impenetrable, untouchable, unattainable. The sweeping, piercing gaze of his narrowed slits rested upon her frame, and thought to swing her head from her nape, her tongue from her mouth. She didn’t possess wiles, she merely claimed aggravation: worthless, benign, trifling. A singular demand slipped past his lips, gruff, blunt, harsh, ruthless, the cold-blooded cadence of a rapier, a swift hiss, a haunting creed. “Disappear.” The briefest of warnings, uttered once, and never again, as the fuel of his acrimony slipped into his veins, sought the scythe of his necromancy. How many waves of his toxins could she endure? How many seconds would slip by before her scream spilled against the earth, muffled by the mist, suffocated by the vespers of his curse?

She is saved, for the moment, by the arrival of another from the haunting corridors and murky hallways, granting his attention to the brewing familiarity that still twisted his mind when he glanced upon this colt. What courted such amity from the strange child, of fire, of brimstone, of old worlds that no longer existed, of old legends that few could tell? What caused him, this Machiavellian behemoth, to stare upon the scion and remember so many things, wonder, ponder, other scarce ruminations? What existed in the fabric of the boy to incense this strange curiosity? The notion refused to die, boiling and brimming over the stoic features of Deimos, appearing all the same, aloof, apathetic, insouciant to the demands of some screeching femme and a bold youth, but so encompassed by the audacious affinity. And when the lad spoke, insulting the other individual in their midst, the Stygian creation allowed him to stay, quell in the muck and mire of heartless, ravenous cretins. Isn’t that where you belong? There was not a hint of dismissal, of death, nor heedless commands postured from his mouth at the spawn’s presence. Only the recognition of their former meeting, passed, but not forgotten. ”Learning again?” And what do you seek today – the knowledge of how to kill, how to massacre, how to slaughter?