Meticulous, unwinding anarchy with nowhere to go claimed even more reclusive reticence, a shadow amongst shadows, drawn in Stygian shades and nocturnal eaves. Through macabre arches and chiseled bunkers, the beast remained monstrous and titanic, behemoth and eldritch, with silent war cries hastened beneath his impassive brow. Unsung chains loosened from his neck, his innards, his pulse, until he was naught but the beating hymn and hum of disaster, entropy snaking and sneaking through pendulum waves, incapable of taking credit for the disorder sinking beyond their bounty. Maelstroms brewed and gathered, and he could do naught but listen to the wails of hushed apathy, of serpentine movements, of heathens dancing outside, and imagine them waltzing through his kingdom, his empire – his jaw clenched, tightened, but once again, he failed to unravel. Forced to recognize an air of ineffectuality with the ghosts clambering about his home, incapable of prying their hands off of rime, summits, and frost, inept at causing their death for another iteration, regarded in the depths of absolution as the lone cretin once more. During all the Reaper’s time within the haven, he only became a far more bitter maelstrom, sowing his scythe through the fields of ruminations, meticulous and calculating, waiting for an opportunity to swing his spear again, to gauge, seize, possess, and maul. Only when a cry erupted from the fathoms of the mighty, dusky cavern, poised for him and the GildedBlade, did he even bother to erupt from his stony partition – dissolving from marble into living, demonic frame – wild, beguiling, vicious and intoxicating. Frenetic energy beckoned, lightning beacons melded only by a deity’s contortions, and though they’d only met once before (amongst those fateful hours spent in the Steppe, battered, beaten, and bruised, unholy scoundrels begging for a home), Deimos bade his call. Perhaps he’d deliver answers, ultimatums, reasons for the fabrications of specters and looters, why hearts of steel were molded into heinous dens, why the earth cracked beneath pressure of insubstantial air and frothing mouths. Upon his arrival, the piercing, lacerating artifice of his gaze hastened towards the heavenly, austere, blue horizon, gazing upon the God of Spark and Time in the same manner of indifference, awaiting news and announcements, and wondering if Illynx would be able to make the journey at all. He conformed to minor reverence with a nod of respect and naught more, formulated no queries, no questions, no meaning beyond formal address, and like so many other moments before, waited destruction to deal him a satanic hand, or contrive to sculpt one himself.