Frustration had ebbed into a hostile flow of acrimony and disdain, constant revulsion, consuming, devouring contempt, imminent loathing and conspiring abhorrence, slinking and brewing from each ancient, arcane, glacial pathway, the North once again daunted and ashamed. Too often Deimos pondered over the mass of quandaries laden at their villainous feet, the calculations, the audacities, the aspirations wound and winding over their nefarious pinnacles, how they strove, how they glorified, and how they sank so readily into their own tangled upheaval. Some cowardly strings had been strung too tight, some callous wounds had been opened too widely, some slithering, crawling anomalies had crossed over their features and disregarded the fuel of their motivations, fleeing, retreating, disembarking from the poignancy of their malice, of their malevolence, of their abominable convictions and creeds. To which end did they conquer now? Where was triumph but in the hands of their enemy, time and time again? Where was the pride of their species? Hadn’t they yearned to rip into the beasts that took their kin? Hadn’t they wished for a moment, a chance, to prove their wicked, iniquitous, diabolical machinations had purpose, had revolution searing, had sedition seething, into the molten pulses of their blood? Hadn’t this been the opportunity to soak their enmity and aversions into the eager opposition? Where was the annihilation, the persecution, the obliteration of the weaker, the inept, and the vacuous? Who possessed more might, more prowess, and more mastery now? Given the opportunity, under poor circumstances, the newfound, demonic King sought to retrieve the essence, the tangibility, of their forgotten stature, of their beaten conquests, remind the world of their puissance, their pernicious discord, their turbulent fixtures and figurines.

So the Reaper’s first act as Lord was not to hold a herd meeting to discuss unwinding, unraveling changes within the icy, chilling cords of their heinous discordancy, not to chain faltering soldiers or wayfaring mercenaries to shackles and oubliettes, but instead, to close the distance between enemy and imprisoned. The monster, the heathen, the Tartarean infidel, was no diplomat, was no emissary, and held not a single political thread within his body – and now, thrust into a sudden position, was forced to assimilate into the role of monarch, ambassador and savage, with only the latter for experience. The barbarity of his motions only gave rise to the vexations corrupting his movements, the stony bombardments of sinuous antipathy, animosity layered and lacquered to the lengthy corridors of open, chaste fields. Were he capable of rupturing, lacerating and severing them all singlehandedly, he would have, slowly slinking massacre into their bones, into their vigilance, into their serene, smug repose, witnessing them waste away into the rocky outcrops of their home. The infidel was no bleeding heart, no knight, no champion, but he’d guarded children from their shadowy hands, he’d defended the alluring, bewitching, tempted bombardments and absconding fingers, but the Edge’s claws had slipped beyond him, had enticed, spellbound, delivered harmless, benign, innocuous beings into the coves of cliffs. They, belligerent monsters, tyrannical demons, had been so heinously drawn, tempted, by the scorching of brethren, by the plucking of youth, and too enamored in cowardice, maligned and ruined by their own inefficient actions. They’d concocted their own undoing. Sown and sculpted by iron, by intimidation, by damnation and cold, vicious entropy, the sovereign of the Basin cast his reticent, piercing glare upon the horizon, and awaited the ignition of his seething, imperial furor, as the shadowy femme answered the minatory friction of his appearance.

@[Mirage]