The prisoner’s pleas, demands, outcries and stories fell on deaf, dispassionate ears. Taciturn, reticent and chilling, the barbs and nettles of the Pegasus’s scorn never struck the layers of insouciance, indifference and nonchalance, for the Reaper knew his own dominion, his own strengths, his own prowess, and clipped words and phrases of a waggling, embittered tongue meant nothing to him. Azzaron wasted his time and breath on a being solely apathetic upon his plight. His heart didn’t stir, his sentiments didn’t flail, and only the sliding, sinister wake of sin spread his nefarious arts further, caustic and sardonic, satanic and demonic. Many lives had been swallowed, devoured, consumed beneath his hooves, crushed along his footfalls, unraveled and decomposed, writhing in the oeuvre of his malice, of his menace, of his contempt and abhorrence – and the foolish beast wished to incite and invoke the rapier brevity of his loathing? Did the beast not possess a single brain cell? Had they been burnt, fried and scorched in the audacity of his words, incapable of conjuring anything else noteworthy or awe-inspiring? Did he wish for death, did he shriek for his demise in his icy catacombs, in his freezing, glacial oubliette? Once he’d finished his long-winded monologue, the General, in terrible, stony discourse and discord, uttered one condemning syllable. “No.” His shackles wouldn’t be erased. His chains wouldn’t be unlocked. He wouldn’t be freed from the long, unwavering chambers of ice and rock, of mountains and valleys. He wouldn’t be released to conjure more vexations, more empty threats, more hollowed fables and myths stretching across a vapid tongue. The only motions he’d be allowed to make were breathing, eating, sleeping and dying. He’d waste in the confines of their pinnacles, of their wrath, of their brutality, and remember his errors, his mistakes, and how much they’d cost him. Freedom and liberation were not to be found in the icy stretches of the Plague; only devastation, only ruin, only persecution.

Deimos turned his unconcerned head away to stare at the latest arrival, offered a brief nod to the mechanic Ulrik, a figure worthy of merit. His uttered promise mirrored the Reaper’s own convictions, eager to string Azzaron amongst their frigid, biting gallows, where the choking threads of their pernicious animosity would force his mouth to shut, would force his lungs to quiver, would force his heart to cease its beating. His lacerating stare swiveled back towards the captive, and the sinuous, unwinding threads of his necromancy whispered, hummed, yearned and desired to embody a warning, a presage, an augured curse. He allowed them a brief deliverance, hastening in quick, snagging cords, light, airy, fluid lines of corruption and havoc, coiling to ravage, demolish and ruin, gliding towards the digging daggers of the Pegasus. Eager to claw at his confined, caged frame, to pluck at his skeleton and draw strength from its marrow, to rasp and grate against sinew, skin and veins, longing to wrap themselves inside his shell and slaughter, massacre, eliminate the vessel from within. The spells were recalled moments thereafter, foreboding omens conjured and summoned back unto their possessor, their crafter, their molder, longing for another pressing moment of peril and puissance. His voice, rough, infidel grandeur, hastened upon Ulrik, granted permission for his own calculations, machinations, brutality and violence. “Do as you wish.”

[Deimos used a very slim amount of magic and aimed it towards Azzaron’s hooves. Also, Dark, you don’t need to tag me for each post. Thank you!]