The Reaper’s reclusive nature was under threat by his newfound reign. Where he commonly reveled in shadows, in the decadence of the unknown, in the veil and pinnacles of enigmas, labyrinths and sequestered damnation, he was now constantly forced to respond to creatures loitering and lingering amongst the Basin. Under his General circumstances, he would have disappeared further into the dusk, into the copses of midnight corridors, nocturnal parlors, not seen amongst the valley’s outstretched courtyards, into the mist, into the void, death simmering and smoldering upon the edges of its satanic calamity. His pernicious poise, his vicious, virulent haze, would appear upon stretches of animosity, where trespassing hordes tainted the borders of their treacherous kingdom, when he was training his fractured soldiers and splintered army. Over the last few passing days, he’d been spun into diplomacy, woven into a crown, tossed upon a throne, and concocted more words than he’d ever thought he could speak in one setting, one sitting. The sheen of sovereignty was unsettling, perturbing, ruffling the arcane, reticent chords of his rapier machinations, twisting and distorting the whims of violence into the nefarious arts of restoration; for, despite the grim flaws enameled and lacquered to his figure, to his soul, to his infidel frame, the loyalty to his land was tangible, corporeal, perceptible. Battle hymns and ferocious bedlam, monstrosity and barbarity, intertwined with the devilish opus of his predacious requiems, delved and dove into the plunge and plummet of kings, monarchs and rulers, promising growth, yearning for power, for domination, for supremacy, over the worlds continuing to smite them.

Another beast slunk into the carnivorous pursuits of their land, and he followed the call, the scent, tinged with the barest familiarity. Ghostly, phantasmal, spectral, sinuous steps plagued the entrails of their rim, slunk into the slithering condemnation of his deleterious severity until his piercing stare captured the femme haunting their halls. The hue was another call to his memories, to images of a battlefield, locked in the web of attempting to protect what was theirs, watching as it was pried from their grasp, as it slipped from their gnarled fingers, as they were sent into the frozen wilds and he became winter again. However, a name escaped him, and his stoic, recherché reserve revealed naught of his confusion, stony, marbled, sculpture of Ares in his composed aperture, dreaming of avaricious plumes and covetous war, mercenary brushstrokes and catastrophic crusades. Deimos listened as she spelled out her pursuits into the air, and wondered over another portended, augured fit, casting his heralding into the dirt as the GildedBlade had done, ignorant and unware of unwinding circumstances. His abilities, his prowess, his status and actions gave far more eloquence, far more allegiance, to the tumbling affairs of the Basin and its command. Sliding before the mare, chiseled monolith and impassive cretin, he bestowed the icy, candor of the truth. “Psyche has left.” Would she be another shrieking mare, demanding, commanding, the essence of the Empress’s disappearance, lost and forlorn, abandoning her harem after a disappointing failure upon the battlefield? Or would she accept the loss, search for her sibling off into the distance, flicker and fade in the same way?