Deimos was gratified by the hushed lull of the Basin’s outskirts, the tranquil, listless haze of dominion, power and supremacy, soaking in the ardor of its pinnacles and parlors until the vast land of ice drove its wayward soul home. The quiet fixation of loss and defeat, ties and draws, clambered, crawled and clawed along the entrails of his lacquered regime, numbed, frozen, again. He drenched himself in the enamel of brutality and fed upon the lacquered armaments of calloused miradors, hostile turrets and trenchant minarets. Shame and mortifications were the locked chords woven around his debauched heart, beating like a steady drum of hallowed hollowness, splitting and derailing as the juncture cracked, splintered and frayed, and had he been heroic or virtuous, valiant or righteous - he would have been martyred, torn asunder, by his own audacious threads and bunt failure. But he was not, and would never be, knotted morality or incorruptible bliss, crooning the carnal sanctity of violence, brutal, heinous crimes that lapped at his wounds and writhed in his blood. Were he given the world he would have crushed it in his grasp, allowing the sanctum to crumble, bit by bit, from his apathetic brushstrokes, from his indifferent canvas, witnessing the infernal fires slowly dip the shades of his menace into striking hues of overwhelming destruction and calamity. Yet, the earth was not delivered to him, ashes were not torn from his vices, and the realm, the kingdom, of his capture still stood, and here, he drifted, in the midst and mist of shame, damnation already painted across his Stygian figurine. The devil lavished him with gifts, and he starved the souls of his bestial abyss with the vibrant sinew of malice and contempt. He’d proven his strength and it hadn’t been enough to conquer, devour and unleash the full scale of his contempt, the full anguish of his yearning, his longing, for anarchy, for sedition. Time would only prove if he could find more of the pernicious requiem necessary to consume again, and again, and again, the endless, eternal cycle of puissance, derision and domination.

While he wallowed in the shadows and shade of stars, another approached, rustling the undergrowth, tangling the weeds with excitable ease. When his nefarious eyes pinpointed upon the culprit as it burst beneath the eaves, he found the occasion to be wholly unremarkable: a child languishing its power for curiosity. His experience with the youth, like so many instances of his social knowledge, was severely limited. It smiled and watched, moved and talked, fixated its dual-colored gaze upon him and he stood rigid, firm, unrelenting in the wake his vicious tyranny, wishing to be left alone in the arches of his chaotic foreboding. The filly bumbled and jumbled words, stringing them together in a loose cauldron of babbling nonsense that Deimos remained indifferent about, features rendered stony, impassive, inscrutable. He stared down at the scion and did very little, hoping perhaps that it would leave by the same way it came, enthusiasm and ignorance, for it didn’t sense the looming presence of his dangerous stature. Were all youth so ignorant, so foolish, so ready to take on the world that they would brush against death and draw their last breath before they’d finished their first?

The babe is saved from further scrutiny by his silent, commanding opus as a familiar spirit, the doctor, the Mender, drifted through the meticulous haze of mountain and air. The terrible monster frequently did not enjoy the company of others, but with the burning, scorching pain riddling his figure, he almost didn’t mind the appearance of the healer. He turned his narrowed, savage slits towards the sienna patriot, noted the jaunt of his own stride (off, almost indistinct, but the mark of battle – what had he missed in the trials of capture?), listening for the pitch of his voice as it encountered presumptions the satanic warrior would have to correct. He swiveled his eyes away for a moment, speaking to the wind, gruff, indistinct measures of indignity and humiliation so that perhaps if the world didn’t have to hear it, they wouldn’t consider him folly or fool. “Released.” He remained poised as the medic examined him, formulated the portions of his enchantments to calculate patched, assuaged wounds, but allowed the lids of his tired, haggard gaze to drift closed, once, twice, holding his head high, noble, regal, commanding, against the silhouette of nocturnal horizon and immorality; a silent conviction of ferocity bursting from his limbs. While the other beast worked, tending in a hushed hum, his speech registered, tore against the cloud of pain that had somehow washed over his thoughts, his intuitions, his candor. The exuberant child must have belonged to him, praised and chided in the covenant of the Basin. “Yours?” His voice grated, skull gesturing towards the flicka merely once before remembering torment and anguish, and then the final strings of muted affliction settled over him again, and he remained quiet until the magic had rendered his body whole.

Time, stolen and absconded, wove its weary track over his hide, and like spirits, like ghosts, like wraiths, dissipated the cumbersome arch of a dragon’s flame. When the pressure, the toiling, the scorching tides melted from his frame, he didn’t know how to express gratitude, how to explore the depths of his appreciation, and offered the Mender then a firm nod, a deeper, struggling bow, and felt the fiber of his whispering, crooning death slinking against his veins, the tenor, the opus, of his oeuvre reclaiming vengeance. Hate brewed, hostility incensed, and fury remained locked again, in the solace of disorder, turmoil, and mayhem. The raw, deep tones were summoned anew, sweeping the grounds with the merciless, beguiling indulgences of a dangerous, striking criminal hoping to contort the world into his favored bedlam again. “How goes the Basin?” And then, the puncturing nuance of another’s noise entered his core, fleeting, discarded, but among the rubble of its finery, he promised future upheaval, terrible, horrible, havoc.