The Reaper valued growth and renewal – though he often looked as if he only eroded, changed, or altered himself every few years. He fixated on the ways in which power seethed and rippled, on how potential and prowess simmered and then fizzled, on when and where and why calculations failed or pulsed, maddening quandaries and enigmas slanting across a dark horizon. The fiend, the devil, Lucifer’s sword, the mountains’ cutlass, could have sculpted a homage to how he yearned, how he craved, how he wished the Basin could be more than it was now – stagnant and stone, endless and eternal, listless and lulling. He wanted it to rise and relish, to taste the notions of damnation and corruption, to coil amongst the monstrous and the defined, to waste away the weak and pathetic, to wreak and claw amongst havoc – be more than a whisper, be more than a forgotten, mercurial whim of chaos and ruin. But the monster had always known better than to merely sit by and wait for something to happen; he was a man of action, of eloquence by endeavors, of purpose and motives. It was foolish to believe the earth would hand anything over to anyone, as if they were entitled, claimed for persecution and might (No, he thought, We have to earn it all over again). The world wouldn’t turn and chisel its head for anyone, not for his deadly incantations, not for their sparring words, forked tongues or savage, demonic desires. Empires and sovereigns were moved and stirred by commitment, by pledges, by oaths that meant something beyond conniving words and phrases – and the King wasn’t about to let his kingdom, with all its brashness, with all its brutality, sink beneath a wave of nothingness.
 
The winter heathen, cloaked and garbed in his formal, nonchalant attire, maneuvered amidst the warming climate, skimming and stalking, hunting and plotting, following over trails of scents amongst the rocks and rubble. There was only intent, only measures, only ministrations galvanizing his frame, his nonchalant stare, his distant unease; moving along the threshold with layered, lacquered purpose, driven by his notions, by his ideas, by his cravings for their capability. He preyed on the vestiges of spring with its tender clamors of absolution, pouring his enmity, his acrimony, through their calm vectors, narrowing his deadly stare over bits and pieces of horizon until he found what he was looking for – the apprentice. The shape ahead was distinct, creamy and delicate, reminding him of broken, fragile things (and how even if she lived here, amongst the spaces and homes of ruffians, barbarians, and twisted, debauched souls, she’d be safe, because he protected his own). The infidel only remembered her briefly from days of sagacity and wisdom, of her nearness, protective nature over a child with wings, of her crucial study beneath Johnny’s strange nature and dutiful enterprise. “Eldala,” he called from the bottom of a knoll, precise and keen, beastly and demanding, a rattling command flowing from his frame without him saying another word. She was a necessity, a vital piece of their chiseled puzzle, a frame in which they could lay more foundations – because lord, they needed it desperately. 

[SURPRISE! ;D]