Desert

As a boy, Asmodeus had never understood his sire's obsession with fathering children with every walking womb he encountered. Children often seemed like more trouble than they were worth, an annoyance at best, an obvious weakness at worst. Even coupling with Nyimara had been borne out of a desire to touch her, to hold her, more than it had been out of a desire to sire a child in her.

But now? Seeing her sleek brown sides swollen with a child of their shared blood? He could see the appeal.

He walked proudly among the herd as they made the transition from bitterly cold Tinuvel to this dusy land, and did his best to hide the wrinkle of a frown from his lips. He had grown up in the lush jungles of Atlantis, and grown to accept the cold mountains of Tinuvel, but this land held little charm for him. The barren space stretched as far as the eye could see. Spots of color - the remnants of the Cove's herd he had once been set to inherit - dotted the space and he eyed them silently, shoving away his own longing. What was done was done, and he would never again be the one to take over for his father.

Even the thought of his sire was enough to set Asmodeus' blood on fire again, and as the aged tobiano came into view, the patchwork male's expression darkened further. He supposed there should be some chagrin in his heart for what he'd done - bedding and siding with an enemy, twisting a knife into his parents' back - but he had none. Solomon had traded him away, and in doing so, had destroyed the ties that bound them. Blood only stretched so far, after all.