The Stygian silence laid strung over the boughs of palms and the cursed slant of nettles; he kept his eyes narrowed, suspicious, predatory, unwinding past the crashing coast and the vigilant winds. He thought, he perceived, other vultures and rapacious wards lurked within the midnight oils, tied and knotted and gnarled together with their curled, coiled claws and their indignant, vehement sentiments – so he strayed, like another monster in the midst, wondering what sorts of demons lingered in balms and palms. Iniquity and intrigue were blended amidst his infernal, feral, archaic crown, travesties and treacheries, slinking and writhing, wraiths, phantoms, ghouls, and ghosts of a long-lasting tradition, down to the lion tassels of his tail and the cloven marks of his feet. The Reaper, all disaster, all ruin, all desecration and devastation, stayed in the curves of evening enigmas and dusky hollows, one more figment of doom and gloom and damnation. He would have liked to draw and quarter the inept fools sketched on the outlines of the distant plains, he would have liked to shatter the grounds he wandered upon, he would have liked to wreck everything laid out before him for the Basin, for the feuds not yet shed and the battles long since waged. Malicious and foul, nefarious and sinister, he hoped to encounter nightmares and terrors, yearning to ensnare the particles of war, the miscreants of his generation, of his creed, of his terrible, abhorrent regime…

But something shifted, out of line, out of range, flickering on edges and wings, plumes and feathers, and the sinister wake of his stare reached from the shadows and towards the approaching figure. The weight of his gaze, overwhelming and barbaric, brutal and ruthless, as if he’d been carved from the furthest reaches of Hell and had just returned home from its extended, mutinous siege, settled upon the unfamiliar femme – narrowed eyes first glimpsing over the folded quills, on the tufts of smoke blooming from her mouth. Not one of his monsters, perhaps, but unfamiliar all the same. He wasn’t sure what to do with her appearance or presence; his stare grew entirely dispassionate and apathetic, intending to yield to the threatening abyss of the rough, tidal waves or back into the jungle folds. Had she not spoken, he may have retreated further in his nonchalant, reticent passions, gone by the merciless threads of veiled horrors and menacing, foreboding calculations. But instead, her words puffed, like embers, like blooms of incense, because that damned, nestled bundle of intrigue scaled along his brow, arched it out of alignment, out of soulless disregard, so much that his lips parted on a layer of intuition and interest. “Who?” How many more infidels reached across catacombs and tombs? Or how many more were likened in his same stead (and he knew – he knew how his son traveled far and wide, how he embodied more spirit and ebullience than the Lord could ever hope to obtain; did he entangle himself with strange presences even now? Young ladies who breathed smoke in the dead of night?)?

Another emerged, and he grew ever more taut, defiant, fueled to embark back into the threatening channels and funnels of night, the corridors of hell, to merely be left alone with his brooding, antagonistic wiles. He didn’t know who this one was either – but their was a lurking familiarity held and lilting, something or someone he couldn’t quite place, couldn’t quite reach, but should’ve, should’ve known, and that too was an avid frustration. Perhaps they were to be the monsters of the evening, hidden, serpent sirens, carving his weaknesses out one by one until they laid bare at their feet.

He wanted to spin them all away with silence, with hushed, murky disquiet, with obvious, overbearing intimidation. But something flickered against his mind, acerbic, calculating, Machiavellian in taste, and he merely nodded to both, as if he were not the sword of death and damnation, as if they were not walking, waiting spells. “Where are you from?” He questioned both – because if they knew so much of him, then it was only fair to drag information from them.