The Reaper craved many things, but rarely put them to name. Instead, he brooded, he brewed, he stared out against heartless abysses and sadistic endeavors, striking out into diversions, schemes, and stratagems, coasting along ghostly pathways, slinking amidst sinuous, seditious realms; looking for distractions from the sentiments binding him to reality. But they’d come up again, sooner or later, drifting across his mind like a set of icy fingertips, like a set of cold, chilling gales, like the unattainable aspects of his life coming to slaughter him whole. He always craved things he could never have again, pieces slid away from his heart, from his soul – like the sound of the waves curling along the Moonlit Tides, like the cascading wail of the ocean meeting the World’s Edge, like the drowning sensation of Huyana’s touch, or the ancient, all-knowing way his father smirked. The world changed, and he lost his chances, his opportunities, to hold, grasp, or clench those pieces in his life: Isilme had long since been buried beneath shadow, he reigned over ice and snow, not foam and surf, the rain had left him seasons before, and his sire had been dead for ages, beaten and broken, embers and ash beneath the wailing skies. They were unreachable shards, impossible goals, and he had to shut his eyes at the delusion of finding them again. They remained buried, deep, deep, deep in the fathoms of his wicked, merciless heart, past the stone walls and the glacial ramparts, roaming beyond the nonchalant fortifications, where every essence of his reveries, of his raptures, remained locked away, guarded, furtive, and secret. There they could stay as memories, as wild, beautiful dreams, freeing him on a moonless night, or a brutal plunge; saving him from becoming completely, utterly obliterated. There no one could touch them, ruin them, find them and use their alluring, spellbinding motions over him; and when no one was around, he could remember, he could pretend, he could delude himself into hearing the cry of the gulls, the rain girl’s sweet songs, or his sire’s unmatchable tones.
 
"I miss d'Artagnan.” - Mauja’s words haunted the winter Lord as he stood along the threshold of his home, as he remained mighty and strong beneath the crumbling, wavering chunks of metal they still called the sentinels. He’d never told his old comrade what he missed because he wanted them for himself, selfish and misguided, plundering and avaricious, keeping them tucked away so no one else could stare at their portraits, tapestries, and canvases.
 
And then he thought of his friends; the very few he could’ve named, all wandering from the rime and glaciers, all maneuvering past the fond echoes of their past, all fleeing from the tempests of war and the delusions of decadence, finding something across the horizon to hold their interest. They no longer yearned to paint themselves in snow and audacity, and he never stopped them.
 
His eyes shifted to the guardians of the borders, to the rusted contortions of metal and brittle chunks flaking away into the vestiges – soon, perhaps they too would depart from their world, and there’d be nothing left to remember the old from the new – except his deadly carcass wandering amongst the grounds, poignant and haunting, reminding every new member what it was like to embody death and desecration. Maybe he did ruin everything he touched. Maybe he did seek to destroy all that mattered in the world. Perhaps each fragment was slow to wither, to decay, to finally succumb, but all that mattered was that it finally took its last breath as he sucked away the last remaining fringes of life.  He’d never learned how to hold onto what mattered, instead of simply letting it go.
 
His maw came to rest against a cold barb of metal, bestowing it a firm pat – watched as it didn’t sink into the void at the stroke, at the caress, of his infernal frame. But eventually…
 
Deimos maneuvered, away from the borders, across the valleys, wandering and winding and coiling his way amongst the runes, the gallows, the primrose paths, lining the world in his vicious rancor. He was persistent, he was monstrous, he was resolute and barbaric, twisting and turning and tracing the hints of twilight and the curling of the dawn, stroking over the chords, the foundations, the mutinous sway of the earth itself. His destination was only the Thistle Meadow through deliberation and calculation, preferring the wide-open space, the immense stature, of the land for what he had to do, for whom he had to call. The beast, the demon, the infidel, ceased his predator movement, his carnivore motions, and reached out with a mighty bellow, with a insurrectionist roar, calling towards the only who could salvage the foreboding decay at their doors.
 
He’d already caused so many other things to die; but the Engineer’s brittle, broken parts were for him and him alone – not to become another wasted object buried in the rubble and snow.