The only movement betraying his interest was a swivel, a twist, of his ears, captured and enticed by the first set of her words: prepare yourself and others for a show of force - it was all he’d ever craved, an anarchic rapture, a carnivorous reverie. The Reaper and his brethren could string and strand together potent disaster, pernicious assault, puissant sieges, the simmering, searing, seething predilection of all their faulted trials, all their demonic traces, all their infidel creeds and convictions. How many times were they to be thwarted, condemned, before the gavel fell and they were the swarming heathens once more, driven to onslaught, to terror, to horror and abominations, by the idiocy, by the foolhardiness, of others (like stolen babes, like absconded maidens – he remembered each and every time he guarded their children, and the moments where he couldn’t snag them fast enough). His indifferent mask held none of the zest, the zeal, the fervor, the feverish ardency driven and awakening in his bones, a kindled possession of ferocity, brutality, savagery, darkening the doors, tracing the thresholds, barbing the borders. It would take time, it would take hours and cycles and seasons to drum sense into soldiers, to stoke disorder and turbulence through innocence, to harpoon and holster the strands legacy and legend had granted, given them (was the third time the charm?). In a strange anomaly, the creature he thought would turn winsome smiles and lark crescendos, wrap tinsel and garland over their lands, sprinkle glitter and grandeur amidst tundra blossoms and ruin them through ineptitude, had been the one to grant him permission for condemnation. The Lord almost smirked, almost snickered, almost gave in to the satanic decadence; restored simultaneously from suspicion to triumph, slinking in his veins, in his poisonous, diligent vectors, in the humming, drumming void of persistent invocations – death granted his scythe all over again. But he said naught except for the blunt, hardened agreement, failed to twist his callous features into anything but their constant state of apathy, while he reeled, while he churned, while he burned inside. “Agreed.” Maybe this time they could show the world what crossing the Basin meant. They’d swallow and unearth, maul and destroy, pillage and plunder, until the earth felt icy, chilling catastrophe.

Death, you bring death, and destruction to all that you touch.