The wicked, heinous King stared, watched, examined with such a piercing scrutiny that the odd change from perfection to ruin did not go unnoticed. He’d been a part of this chilling, unholy world for too long to not calculate and examine all angles and possibilities, all shackles and tethers, all strange, unwinding circumstances. But, his eyes didn’t widen, his features didn’t alter, and he gave no claim of noticing anything in particular – stone and marble, iron and sword, slate and rubble, the epitome of control and composure. Meanwhile, his mind curled and coiled, a predacious lunge, a vicious, chaotic swing, pondering over the nature of a changeling in the midst of his borders (a monster, a demon, a morphing delusion?). When naught was said, when there was no explanation unfurled into the cold, frigid void, the Reaper’s skull yearned to pry and require answers, but something else deterred and distracted him from the phantasmal inquisition.
 
The Lord had been the one to bring up Psyche, but the notion continued, fixating on crowns and fiends, pernicious designs, scarred armaments and legacies tarnished by murder and mayhem. He’d never quite found a way to make up for all the dastardly, treacherous sways he’d dishonored the preceding Queen – standing over her fallen form before Mauja made her a pyre wasn’t atonement. She’d been laid to waste more than once, consigned to oblivion, legend, and disaster, and he hadn’t assisted her out of the pit along the way. Perhaps, when they were both ghosts, both wraiths, both floating, withering ethereal beasts, only spun from stories or myths, he’d offer his apologies, his unholy garb, his vicious shield again. He’d once been her sword, the General, stalking and destroying, full of convictions and violence and vehemence, deployed when she saw fit, when she required; before they lost again and everything came toppling down. His vocals, dark and piercing, blunt and keen, unraveled along the depths of their horizon, touching upon the whisper of death and the sinuous, unwinding ways in which their whims had cast them aloft or aside. “The DarkEmpress has died.” He didn’t dishonor her with the ways in which she’d been slain. He didn’t claim how she’d met her end. He didn’t explain that the Moon Goddess bewitched the sand Lord into massacring her, who used to be so strong, so vile, so abhorrent, and countless others, simply because she could. He wouldn’t tarnish the cold-blooded moments left behind.
 
Deimos’ thoughts reeled elsewhere, pinpointing upon this fiend here and now – because Psyche was no longer here, because the asp, the snake, no longer had her reign – and what did this Prometheus wish, crave, or yearn to do? Continue Psyche’s pursuits? Drive his sword through the chests of the weak? Of the inept? Of the foolish? Massacre the ignorant? Prey upon the masses?
 
The sovereign stared at the fellow infidel, hollowed and hallowed, unrelenting and vicious, because he still carried the vigilant, smoldering, seething, vehemence amidst his nefarious soul, his pernicious, licentious design, his Lucifer abyss; and if there were still more, still some, asking for the opportunity, the chance, to show the world what the Basin was truly capable of, he’d grant them their fortitude, their might, and their acceptance. But there were still things mired in between, still coils and threads, still unholy throngs crooning to their honored gallows; he spun another inquiry, just as eldritch and colossal as before. “How do you intend to serve the Basin?”