If the GildedBlade had aimed to unravel, to revolutionize, to slander and disparage, her aim had been miscalculated. His abilities, his mayhem, his efforts and pursuits remained recognized, his necromancy and poise remained pernicious, and the confidence, the supremacy, the mastery of his position remained locked in place. If anything had resulted from her turbulent screeches and tumultuous layers, it was the desperate, cloistered ineptitude and ignorance seeping along her tongue, the deliberate, pathetic exploitations of a banshee upset by her companion’s alteration in sovereignty – and because he’d stepped and sat upon the throne, scepter and scythe in hand, she’d cast him as the belligerent foe. But the Reaper had sown the land with his blood, had mauled, contorted, distorted and unraveled intruders, had maimed, provided and proffered his sword to the constituents, to the comrades, incapable of fighting, he’d led them down the severe strands of war, he’d mastered the art of his machinations, and he’d rendered demise and quietus upon the thresholds of their enemies. Behind her fallen Empress’s daggers had been his knife, his cutlass, his rapier, slaying, slashing, severing and slaughtering. He’d commit the same actions over and over again, strike against the onslaught, the divinity, the covenant and convictions of peace, repose, and tranquility until it suffocated and strangled him. What more did she ask of him? What more did she want, did she crave? And why should he provide her with it, when each callous morsel he offered, extended and advanced, was treated like a decadent blemish? He would not alter his course, his convictions, his character, so that her failing queen could be brandished a saint, a martyr, for the cause; failure had blemished them too many times thereafter, molded and carved into their sides, to furnish and dispense empathies, serenities and melancholy laments. Deimos, pernicious, puissant and persecuting, refused to accept defeat, collapse and foundering any longer. He hadn’t been the one to falter.

The monster followed the wavering dips of her scent with slow, meticulous strands, the grinding, fractious knife slithering along glacial, shadowed, veiled halls. If she wished to spew her venom, to sink her asp doldrums into the atmosphere, she could do so here without the notion, the fear, the harm of their patriots overhearing, enticed and trapped by the tedious assaults of a scorned, derisive Lady. Foolishness had, unfortunately, beguiled her into continuing her barrage of nonsense despite his warnings, and only now did she seem to seek resolution from her incomprehension and unawareness. The piercing slate of his stare witnessed as she galvanized the sector of the deepening, lush valley, but didn’t seek to pursue her strides or secrets. Instead, he remained, standing amongst the empire, the kingdom, stretching out his power, his domination, his supremacy, awakening the terror of his desecration with the unattainable presence of his marbled recherché, stoic, impassive, silent, reticent and Tartarean. A beast, a titan, a Reaper, thriving amongst the murmuring, meticulous, malevolent strings of anarchy, sculpted for sedition, for upheaval, for insurrection and annihilation, awaiting to see if he’d have to unleash the siege of cataclysm, turmoil, and mayhem upon one of his own.