Dechaerrim was cursed with a sea of naivete, for his mother Saruth had never given him what some call 'The Talk'. Of course, her excuse was that she was still mentally a twelve-year-old, aging only once every century, while her son had nearly caught up to her and would eventually succeed her age. And so she was still a girl who, while having a fundamental understanding of reproduction, couldn't really talk about it without feeling very embarrassed in the typically girly way, and never had the charisma required of a teacher anyway. So she'd just avoided mentioning the topic to Dech while teaching him everything else that she could (things that didn't make her face go as red as her hair).

So while following and surveying his demonic family members from a distance, in particular his half-sister Teliah (so far one of the few demons who had not attacked him on sight), he had witnessed something that...had stirred a great deal of discomfort for reasons he didn't even yet understand. His father had been threatening her in ways not worth repeating, and then as it seemed the archdemon was about to spring to attack, she'd quietly said something -- Dech couldn't hear what it was, from his distance -- and then, well...Whatever it was that followed after was not violent but somehow its nature felt vastly more disgusting, and Teliah had then fled in tears, alone.

Dech's illusions were certainly being dashed about his father, at least.

Dechaerrim waited until he knew no one else was following Teliah, at which point he followed her himself. He didn't know what it was he wanted to say or do. He never was good at offering comfort, and wasn't the most sympathetic of children, but she was his most likable kin besides his mother, and he wanted to...perhaps just have someone to share his pain with and vice versa. Oh, he didn't know! He was just lonely, as she said.

He lost sight of her for a time, because she was unusually quick, but he picked up her trail and followed her by scent, until discovering a wall made of loosely-packed sand and sediment that she'd apparently squeezed through, and he followed in rather blunderingly.

Teliah gasped and sprang back from him, staring with wide, wet eyes. For a moment she said nothing, and then suddenly broke the silence by shouting, "What are you doing here?!"

"Nothing," he said, feeling defensive. "I just saw what...and..."

"You came to mock me too!" she accused. Her voice was high and thin and she sounded ready to begin crying again at any moment.

"No! I --"

"Then what! Come for, to ask for favors, just like him?! Well I won't! I'll fight you!"

Already her tail, with a stinger like a scorpion's, was raised and ready to strike, and this den was too small for him to get out of range. "I don't want to fight or do anything," he said quickly. He tried to change the subject, glancing down at the drawing on the floor with his third eye, while keeping the other two on Teliah.

She saw his glance and replied before he questioned. "That's...nothing." Her voice and posture sank.

"Did you draw it?" he inquired, curious now.

"It doesn't matter. Just leave me alone."

"Who is it? I don't recogni--"

"Don't touch it!" she shrieked, as he had just then moved closer to see it better. She sprang over and shoved him away with her hands, looking desperate. "It's-- I don't want you to destroy it! I don't want anyone to ever see it, they'll destroy her!"

He backed away and impatiently shook her hands off of him. Somehow she seemed a little repulsive after whatever it was she had done earlier. "I wasn't going to destroy it," he scoffed.

"But you will! You'll tell them and they'll destroy it! That's as bad as if you'd done it yourself!"

"No I won't! Why's it even so important anyway?!"

She lashed her tail, looking highly offended by his question. "Because it's...someone important. Who is dead."

He took a venturing guess. "Your mom?"

Teliah just coiled herself on top of it protectively, silently, and nodded.

Dechaerrim felt very sad for her then, because he could never imagine what it would be like to live without his own mother, especially if only to keep company with the rest of his family. But a slow idea formed, and he tentatively voiced it. "If you don't want to stay with them, maybe, you could...I reckon my mom would let you come with us, instead..."

"I could never replace my strong mother with your stupid, frail, tiny little human mother! Pah! Running away to live like a coward with the prey! No wonder you're so weak, you never had a real demon to teach you how to live!"

That immediately displaced his sympathy for Teliah. He glared. "Don't insult her like that. She's strong enough to live on Ocera for sixty years, even without all your powers. It's not being a coward to stay safe in the tunnels."

"But it means she's weak, and so are you."

"I'm not weak! Neither is she! What is wrong with all of you?! Just because we don't go around hurting each other for fun means we're not strong?! You're completely psychotic!"

"You're the psychotic one if you want to follow us around!"

"Well, you know, I WAS hoping to find someone in the family who was actually nice and normal or something, but I guess you're all rotten after all!"

"Why are you accusing me of being like them?! I don't have someone to whine at when I get hurt, I have to stay with them! You act like leaving is so easy, but what about when Father starts to miss you?! At least he thinks you're dead, he'll never go looking for you if you don't let him see you again! I have to take their shit because I can't escape! Don't pretend you know what it's like, just because he raped you that one time! I've been getting it for decades!"

"I...nuh..." Dech sputtered. How dare she?! He had gone to her, hoping to form some kind of friendship exactly because they'd gone through the same thing, and here she was telling him his pain wasn't valid because he didn't have it happen enough!

"Then why aren't you just used to it by now?!" he spat, knowing full well how much the words would sting. He didn't care; she was a mule-headed brat who obviously didn't care about having any friends anyway, and he was growing furious from his own hurt at her words, and he wanted nothing right now than to make her feel as bad about herself as she was trying to make him!

She uncoiled with a hiss, eyes blazing. "Used to it?! You never, EVER get used to --"

"Well you went along with it, without a fight, just now! What was that?! If you cared about not looking like you liked being in the family, maybe you wouldn't -- "

"I HAD TO! Stupid, you, think you know what it's like, think we have a choice out here, think you're going to survive if all you do is cry, scream, put up a fight, and ask him to stop?! You cry like a human, like every stupid leg-standing flat-tooth empty-headed powerless human bitch he's ever taken, and you know what, I hope you go back and get it again, I hope he rapes you so hard it kills you! Because that's all that's going to happen if you spit like a cockroach whenever he even looks at you!"

"I'd rather die trying to defend myself! I'd rather have some dignity!"

"Because begging for mercy is so dignified, isn't it?!"

"At least I wasn't putting on a show in front of --"

"I didn't choose for a crowd to --"

"They're right, you're just a mindless, stupid whore!"

"Fuck you! You're just an ignorant, unwanted bastard! I bet Father let you be born just so he could have another piece of amusement! I bet your mother never wanted you!"

"Y-you...you...Fuck you!" There was something thrillingly cathartic about using such language for the first time: how harsh it felt to utter, how even without telepathy he could still feel her outraged reaction.

"Get out of here before I tell -- no, you know what?! I will anyway! What do I care what you think of that! Maybe you just need a little more torture!"

"H-- what?"

Teliah was already on her way out, her eyes narrowed to chips of blue ice. It took a moment for him to comprehend what had just been threatened, and another to become aghast that she was serious. He tried to give chase, flinging up bits of rock as he clawed his way over the terrain after her. But her slim, serpentine form wound carelessly over the landscape, carrying her unerringly towards the rest of the pack. Once the distance closed far too comfortably between them and himself, Dechaerrim instead turned and tried to flee, heading in whatever direction took him quickest away.

She was right: once Father knew he was still alive, that was it. Ugh! Why did he keep ignoring everyone's warnings?! His entire life, his mom had told him not to approach his family, and then even the other family members told him the exact same thing, yet still he returned! I deserve this for being such an idiot, he thought to himself bitterly. He knew already that fleeing was useless. He knew that his father could teleport to anywhere on the planet and even to a few other planets. Hell, Dechaerrim would wager that even if you could fly up to the moons and hide on them, you still wouldn't be safe from the Alpha. Dammit! If only he'd kept his temper and not given in to Teliah's argument, even though he knew deep down inside that she was only acting that way out of shame and anger at herself, since that's precisely how he felt, he just --

"Dechaerrim."

He halted, nearly flipping over. There was Father, sprung out of the smoke like a flame.

Dech pressed himself against the floor, pulling his arms and tail close to himself, overcome with such a sickening wave of fear he could not speak, only gasp as his breath shivered in his lungs.

"I'm surprised to see you alive, 'Aerrim. Your visits are always so unexpected! I didn't even have time to plan," the great demon mused musically, as if he was about to pop off and get a cheese platter for a houseguest. His voice dropped in pitch midway, lilting reedily, darkly. "Of course, I made the effort to meet you out here, so I mustn't leave without greeting you, yes? But I can make this quick."

"N-no..." Dech was fear-frozen and unable to flee.

"No? Not quick?" his father said, then grinned. "Funny request, but I can humor you."

"D-don't, not again..."

His father considered something, but it was hard to tell if he had actually heard Dech, or if a new idea had just appeared on its own. In either case, he fixed his eyes again on his son, with a new grin carving his face with yellow light. "Who's your mother again? A human, yes?"

Dech didn't reply.

"Where is she, child?"

Dech gulped, thinking rapidly. "Dead. She's dead, she died. That's why I came back."

"How mournful," the archdemon said, dipping his head and closing his eyes with what almost looked like sincere sadness. Without changing his expression, he then said, "But also a lie." And he laughed with a sound of dry timbers scraping together, bellowing out cinder-flecked smoke. "What a lie!"

"Please don't."

"She was alive when you saw her last...And I will ask you again...And you won't want to lie to me again. Saruth, I would like to know where she is."

Dech knew why that sentence had been phrased so oddly: Ruth's name-sense had been triggered on purpose so that she'd hear his father's words.

"No...I...I'm not going to tell you."

His father considered him, then chuckled with a sound like deep drum-beats. "What a familiar situation, hm, what...Has she ever told you what she's doing here on Ocera?"

"She...said you kidnapped her, and brought her here..." Dech said, unhappy at the new subject, but glad for the delay.

"But did she say why?"

"No."

"So Saruth did not tell you that she knew the location of someone I wanted to kill, and when I asked, she wouldn't tell me? She didn't tell you that I took her here, and I asked her over and over again, and I had to punish her worse each time, because she would never tell me-- and that finally, I punished her by impregnating her with you?"

Dech felt his eyes glaze a bit but he forced himself to respond. "No. She...didn't say any of that," he intoned hoarsely.

"Of course, she had some special magic on her that made it so I couldn't just open her mind to find out where those people were. But you don't, now do you?" Another chuckle. "So where is she?"

"Nnn..."

"Does it hurt?" his father's voice mocked. "You were an accident, just a symptom, of what I did to Saruth. Of course. I wouldn't make half-Theksarsi on purpose, they have no purpose. So does it hurt to know you were made just to make her unhappy?"

"Dechaerrim," came Ruth's voice unexpectedly; as soon as she spoke his name, his far-hearing focused on her voice. "It's alright, whatever you say or do, I won't be mad. Please don't think you have to take responsibility for me. He can find out where I am anyway, he probably already knows."

"Hm, what's this? I think I can hear her in there," his father said, cocking his head as if to listen.

"Dechaerrim, I love you, please don't get yourself hurt..." Her voice was cracked, but forceful. Somehow, as he thought it, this was what her voice always was like. Or maybe, just her personality.

"I'll ask one more time," his father said. "Where is she?"

Dech felt frantic. Even if his father could easily find Saruth, there was no chance that Dech would surrender the information. He was no traitor. But he felt too afraid to show defiance, and only pleaded quietly, "Please don't hurt her..."

"Wrong answer." The archdemon's tail shot out of the darkness beyond and the stinger, javelin-sized, punched through Dechaerrim's torso as if he were made of hot butter. He screamed and seized violently, still skewered like a moth stuck with a pin, and the stinger retracted just as quickly, leaving a spew of blood on either side of him and more pouring out of the gaping causeway just behind his arms.

"She will have it worse, thanks to your stubbornness..." he heard his father's voice growl from far above, and the last thing he saw before the whole cave spun and went dark was his father vanishing into the black mist...