Trecius had been beaten so many times in his long life that he could no longer count his individual failures.  For him, the past blended into a string of indignities, each one undeserved.  After all, was he not responsible for the shadow by which God’s light shone the brightest?  Had he not crafted the very thing used by the Heavenly Host to beat back their enemies and punish the sinful?  From his twisted, rotting mind had come one of the most fundamental things about the Way the World Worked, and he had been cast down for it.  Cast down, even as the Light and the Word put -his- craft into Creation.  Death had not even existed in the mind until Trecius thought of it.  Pain was a concept no angel could wrap his head around until the Hellmuse had concieved of it. 

This latest injustice was salt on an old wound.  Twice now he had attempted to trap the Fox, and twice the beast had slipped through his fingers at the moment of his triumph.  This last time he’d had all of them - the Fox, the Fox’s daughter and son, the Fox’s lover - and they had all escaped him, escaped from his own throne room. And now the Light and the Word had sealed the realms, leaving Trecius locked again in Hell like a chained dog.   

The Hellmuse paced the hall like a caged animal, splendid in his madness.  His wings arced behind him, massive and glossy black, a condor’s broad, dark wings.  His flesh seemed to crackle with energy, ripling like a leopard’s pelt as he walked from one end of the room to the other.  Behind him trailed a tide of hyshea, their small black bodies moving as one animal, and they seemed not to sense the danger emenating from their furious Creator. 

Suddenly, Trecius turned and snatched one up and tore it to pieces with a fluid gesture of his long-fingered hands.  Dark, half-formed guts spilled to the marble floor, scattering the hyshea’s fellows.  Ribs cracked and splayed as Trecius pulled the beast apart, and still it meweled in puzzlement, startled by the sudden violence and not truly in any real pain.  Trecius dropped the butterflied carcass atop the pile of entrails and bellowed his rage to no one. 

The senseless destruction of one of his own Creations did little to ease his deep hurts. The betrayal and escape of the Fox’s daughter galled him most of all.  He was certain he had her trapped in his palm, and she had thrust a knife in him as soon as his back was turned.  It was infuriating to be caged in Hell when he ought to be out hunting her down.  The longer she had to burrow away to safety, the harder it would be to find her.  Foxes were terribly difficult to unearth once they’d gone to ground. 

The Hellmuse was determined to have her, though.  If he could not spill her father’s blood, he would spill hers, and this time, she would not escape him.  He had promised her that if she betrayed him or ceased to be useful to him, he would not hesitate to kill her - and when it suited him, Trecius was a man of his word.