The Reaper watched as she advanced, spun her fickle, foolish web, slithered and slinked across the grounds in strength, diligence and unease – his lacerating, heartless stare narrowed, reveled and revealed naught of the sinister machinations clawing through his mind. Should he maul, maim, twist, distort, and puncture her frame, for denouncing his allegiance, for disregard, disdain, derision and scorn, when every lacquered, callous contempt of his coiled poise, of his sinister silence, had been for the land she stood upon? Should he offer death, demise, an undulating maelstrom of danger, of lethal vignettes and sinister machinations to arrive near her frame, send her quivering, quavering, into the ground? Should he ignore her altogether, remain aloof, impassive, reticent and unattainable, the marbled statue she’d screamed at in front of their brethren and patriots? Had she unleashed further turmoil and asp lies, he would have certainly unfolded the calamity of his desecration, of his malevolence and persecution, of his unholy apathy and villainous enmity; but her cautious forbearance, her residual anxiety, her stifled vocals and naught else, pulled him away from blackguard assailments, molten knives and diabolical cutlasses, the final, decrepit swing of a hot rapier. She offered his namesake and rank, nothing more, pushed the strange appearances, the stifling, hushed munitions back upon him, a beast never yearning for conversation. But somewhere, deep within his reticent being, he knew the demonstrations displayed at their gathering would somehow clamber and rise again, become another shrieking, unholy din resonating into the core of all their icy foundations, and he never yearned for their followers, for their soldiers, menders, and scholars, to see the disjuncture between leaders. It was foolish, inane and ridiculous to feud amongst each other when there were so many others to devastate and massacre, when annihilations breathed down sections of their glacial caverns. He was not one to bicker, to quarrel, because there had never been reasons to; understandings were to be sculpted, molded and composed. Unfortunately, it appeared as though he would have begin the monstrous whittling.

“I have bled for this land.” Death and demise paused, sorted out the fathoms and denizens he wished to warrant. The gilded creature wouldn’t like it regardless, with all of her love and benedictions comprised and composed for a snake sister, but if she questioned his loyalty, his adherence and faithfulness for a world he’d helped to sculpt, she was a far number creature than he took her for. To doubt him, to suspect he’d pierced and stolen a crown, wrested a throne away from serpent coils, to believe he labored over this kingdom to see it falter; she’d remain a silly, inept fool. Would she scream, screech and howl again, drive her venom and vices back into the chilling kingdom, or understand the simplicity of his course? The cold aperture of his mouth wielded its siege once more, and then roamed back into the rims and edges of hushed barbarity. “Not for a fallen Empress.” Psyche had thrown it all away, and left Ulrik and himself to pick up the discarded fragments, hastened into self-pity and humiliation – was that what she remembered from her once emboldened, once powerful, once deceitful, proud leader?