I'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
He stands apart. Always apart. Their lives are meaningless. Their loves, their losses, the chaos and destruction that they bring down on one another … they mean nothing. It means nothing. Most of them are a blip on the face of their world; insignificant in the eyes of time.
Those gathered thin out as night rises, drawing a blanket of chills and breath vapors over the winter-laden landscape. Motionless, he watches them go from the tree line, lips drawn tight in distaste at the affection with which they bid their goodbyes. There is little point in relationships that gain you nothing but useless emotion. He rolls his eyes, the pupil nearly lost in the dark brown of today’s color choice. As the silence stretches longer, the ground at his feet begins to tremor. The snow cover on the ground is thin, the tightly twined branches overhead heavily laden. The boughs tremble, depositing their burdens on his back, and the lightless spaces in the frozen dirt expand and the hellhound emerges, dark molecule by dark molecule.
This time he is small, no taller than Niklas’ knee. Just as lanky as his master, the shaggy black thing shakes the sulphur dust from his coat. Niklas follows suit, stretching his refined head forward and rolling his shoulders violently, ridding his back of snow. With a wordless glance, the two turn and melt into the welcoming shadows of the Forest.
Set had sent him out from the Isle in search of him. And, of course, like a good little demon, he is complying. His father had learned a thing or two from a certain voodoo priestess the last time they had been home. The binding spell that holds him in Set’s control is one of them. They had disagreed on its necessity on more than one occasion – something about his inability to temper his inherent nature. Rubbish. He moves through the bowels of the Forest without sound, even the snuffle of the hound’s ever-searching nose muffled in the cold silence. Here shadow rules all and here is where they will find him.
“Etherrrrr …,” his voice purrs with promise, systematically searching the nothingness with practiced ease. Come out, come out wherever you are.
Niklas
Hybrid, Black, Set x Anaxarete, Demon