Cousins were sometimes the most annoying things in the world. Especially the deranged, four times removed, flesh-hungry shadow demon kind. All Skalos wanted to do was play games, and he never stopped referring to himself as "we", when he wasn't even a demon soul construct. He was one damned demon. And now Skalos wouldn't leave him alone, and when he did get away for peace and quiet, he was worrying about Eleni. And if Skalos met Eleni, no doubt a fight, or some eating of the other would occur. And then there would be the political fallout, hells forbid, that someone should get eaten or killed. And if Eleni got killed, of course, because of the nature of Skalos, Kirnardaz would get blamed. "Parents do not kill children, children kill parents, it is the nature of demon royalty..." As if Kirnardaz would expose HIS daughter to the world of Daemon politics, and the arguments of royal rights, and the rights of half-demons.
Amongst all this turmoil of Skalos alone, he was finding it hard enough. Now there were reports of revolt in his realm, the populace apparently unhappy that their leader didn't give them enough food, and that there was no chaos in the streets, and that there were too many laws forbidding things like public fornication, instant execution, rule of Markan, and other violent or indecent acts. The rule of Markan hardly ever found play anyways. "If someone murders your spouse or child, you have the right to exact revenge." With the rate of murder in Vorax, it would mean everyone was dead.
And then there was the daily task of making sure Eleni was alright. That was a challenge in itself. And trying to make sure she didn't learn about demon politics. He would NOT be slaughtered in his sleep by his own damn daughter. He was too good for that.
Then there were the teenage demons of his realm, constantly ranting and raving about how unfair their lives were, and the amount of times he had to execute teenagers who had broken laws he had set was astonishing. He had to kill them personally as well. And for some of them, it was easy. For the ones of Eleni's age, he had a lot of difficulty killing them.
And with all the stress on him, he had to try and perform his studies. Purity was a difficult thing to study, hard to find and even harder to observe. But he spent enough time doing it to make progress. In essence, it was a philosophical study as much as a magical study.
And so, he had spent most of the day simply observing this child. A minor island on Thanatos. Perfect. But optical observation gave him nothing. And this child was suffering. For all his cold, calculating manners, children were his weakness. He loved them, and couldn't bear seeing them suffer.
He summoned the energy to enter Earth-realm near the child, and brought himself there.
He approached the child, no armour, just his human appearance.
"Hello? Are you ok?"