So it ever was. So will it always be. Such is the nature of evil.
Since that moment when Sarabi had pushed him past a certain limit Underidge had been half feral. He had taken to long absences from the den shared with Paravana despite how comforting her found her beauty. He would gnash his teeth at the warm spring air, offended by the burgeoning heat just as offended as he was by winters cold grasp. The raging thing inside of him, so different from the familiar scaly crawl of the Shade, had calmed midway through winter. Whatever it was that had possessed him left him crazed. He hated her and her craved her; once upon a time they had been inseparable. Then he had crawled into the hole and walked through the flames of hell only to return a shadowy being. An acolyte of his own god.
Everything had been fine until she came to Glorall.
In the haste of his own fury he had forgotten the children that had played at her feet. They had a reprieve if only because he felt a certain amount of... guilt. Self-disgust? All of the above. But what spawn grew in her belly would not. They would thrash beneath his jaws just as those pups in the past had done. Disgusting aberrations.
During this self-imposed time of insanity he had albeit forgotten about Paravana. They had never taken to hunting for each other; if Underidge was not around then she would feed herself and he would as well. Only when he would come collect her would they hunt together, two shadows of death. He had smelled the scent of pregnancy on her all winter but she did not grow like his sister had. She was svelte and she did not cry, she did not complain. He did not acknowledge what would happen, his mind so warped and wrapped up in other things.
The Shade grew insistent as the days stretched and finally he had a mission. He slipped from Glorall and walked all day until he found the chosen target. An old female who had somehow managed to get herself pregnant and had whelped. Two pups - stillborns. She was too old too breed healthy pups and she was too weak to put up a fight. Underidge was especially nasty with her, tearing flesh from bones but not killing her. She bled out eventually, suffering to the very end, and he traipsed back to Glorall without cleaning himself off.
It is with dried blood crusted to his chest, legs, jaw, and cheeks that he finds Paravana. Already Umbra is born and he stands at the entrance with ears pricked, watching her with an eerie sort of stillness, silver eyes rapt on the process. His nose twitches a few times and when the last pup is born she lays down, exhausted. But not weak. Never weak - not his Paravana.
"Matianak."
Where the word, the name, comes from, he does not know. The god within him unfurls, sated, and approves of the litter before him.
Underidge enters as Paravana sleeps and presses his nose unceremoniously into the stinking fur of the children, inhaling and then breathing over them. Then, only once, does he lick each. A mark that they are his.
UNDERIDGE
EIGHT - MALE - NO HEART - STARSHADE'S SOUL
OF GLORALL - ENDERLY X BANSHEE - KILL COUNT (IIII)