The Reaper haunted the chilling rafters, the painted eaves, effaced the divinity of morality and virtue as he stalked the vibrant gates of the Aurora Basin, as he raised the crown of his nettled thorns, as he touched and singed. Unbound and brazen, audacious and coveting calamity, he sought little more than the predatory, savage iniquity surrounding his empire with its dissonant grace, with its licentious abhorrence, with its meticulous, deliberate hollowed and hallowed efforts. Monstrous, consuming, swallowing, shaping and molding the world into his covetous, avaricious grasp, to maelstroms, to bedlam, to chaotic shambles sealing and strangling, smothering and suffocating, the drowning tirades of their humiliations. He’d tip over holy grails, devour ambrosia, claim irreverence and heresy in the choking, asphyxiating cluster of their derisive animosity, plunder, pillage and pluck the wholesome shards of devoted and devout virtues. He’d maim and mutilate, scar and spoil over and over for the opportunity of triumph, of conquest, of crusades established as theirs, to render truth in their pernicious glory, in their infernal prowess, in their diabolical, Machiavellian impudence and defiance. Mutinous boughs, scandalous requiems, and revolutionary impertinence brushed over his merciless, relentless hide, chipped away at the woven apertures of gliding Tallsun dirges and laments, gave rise to the powerful edge of his seething rapier, of his vicious cutlass, of the brandished treachery and danger lurking within the hold of his satanic masterpiece. And amidst this terror, this horror, these slinking, burning, potent whims and aspirations, the wants and the needs, he thought of the things he had. Showers, cascading rivulets, tempered by storms and deluges, gasps and world-weary sighs, besotted and captivated, drowned and deluded, juxtaposing the corridors of his sinuous art, of his bestial, barbaric entity. His carnivore amore, his feral intimacy, the seductive, sensual trance of minatory enticement, the heavens widening, opening, to grace him with finery, with elegance, when he deserved none of it - and he’d take her again and again if she permitted, in heinous bedroom hymns, selfishly toil and tangle with her skin, sin upon the scorching, searing, smoldering waves of ferocity. He’d glide, die, grind on the winds of her valorous, honorable breath, tear and rip her temples down, entrench his menacing dirges into her flesh, grab hold of her repose and swallow it whole. Beguiled and inveigled, tempted and lured, trapped and ensnared by the yearning, by the hot, salacious friction of his statuesque depravity, his reticent desires.

But his name traced the sweltering, noxious air, urgent, desperate, compelling, and suddenly he was released from the containments of taut, rigid, deliberation, swiftly, rapidly, strung by the roaring villainy and viciousness of his movement, pulled in chaotic, fractious measures, unearthly, mordant, trenchant, caustic upon the very lands he reigned. Her voice, insistent, pleading, gave rise to a whole new set of sentiments he’d rather not linger upon, queries that fastened themselves in shambles and collections of murder, massacre, obliteration and mutilation – was she injured? By whom? Did they know he’d kill for her, that he’d slaughtered for much less, that he’d slay and flay every portion of the culprit’s body until it was naught but slivers and fragments, pierced, butchered, decayed and bleached by the sun’s virulent pride? Or was she still a carefully guarded secret, serenity in the twisted, distorted alignment of their carnality? A thousand inquisitions marked his brow, framed the recherché, the savage, nefarious loathing and contempt driving his undulating muscles, his carved atrocities. As he barreled through the melting abyss, his lacerating stare captured the distant swirl of blue, the idle, tranquil embodiment of elements, but no other. Nothing for him to annihilate, nothing for him to butcher, nothing for him to eliminate – and instead, a surprise.

As he rushed towards her frame, as he pressed rapacity and rapidness into seditious absolution, he found naught to mar her, naught to cause concern, naught to crease and fold the edges of her features into apprehension. Deimos was not naïve, but this captured image of Huyana hadn’t been amongst his fiendish expectations. Still enigmatic, still radiant, still hazy and beautiful, intoxicating and ebullient, but where her barrel was once slim, lithe, she’d become swollen, where innocence had been forgotten and given, she was flushed, warm, resplendence and magnificence in corporeal form. He didn’t know what to say or do, staring, gaping, jaw clenching and subsequently unraveling, incapable of forming words. Some portion of his tyranny became instantly territorial, possessive, because she was his, and if another had caused this, he’d swing his scythe over their necks, across their throats, burden the world with the mayhem of his predilection. Then, it quickly fettered away, because if he knew anyone, anything at all, it was the raingirl and her constant faith, everlasting dedication, eternal, unwavering determination and loyalty. So what caused her misgiving, her dread and foreboding? Did she instead, fear his rejection, his refusal, his denial? Such a notion would be set to rights, consigned to oblivion, because if she knew him, she’d realize that he’d long since spread his adherence and passion, ardor and yearning, upon her. Slowly, he lowered his crown, tilted and tipped the skull into a show of curiosity, fondness and placidity, tenderly caressing the image, the layers, of maiden, of nymph and child with a composed gaze, not fractious, not disturbed, not distraught – accepting, coveting, embracing. Before Huyana, there had been desolation, isolation, forlorn, wayward journeys of dishonor, of abominable, atrocious threads, and now, she kept granting him the grandest gestures, watery gifts. The Lord finally found one single syllable to encompass and embody everything he wanted to say, but couldn’t express, couldn’t fathom, couldn’t convey. “Ours?” Death laid to waste, ruin, wreckage, perilously undone by the fragile, demure opulence of rain, the pending affluence of shadows and droplets.