The Reaper fed on rage, savored vengeance, yearned and craved the heretic croon of violence: wanton for its festering upheaval, coveting its seditious splendor, the crack in the veneer, the chiseled sliver corrupting perfection. At his most vile, he harbored only malicious intricacies, the tumbling of nefarious hearts, the expulsion of divinity and virtue, the extermination and slaughter of those too inept, too weak, to remain upon the earth. It had been so long since he’d been locked, taut, rigid, encased and ensnared in the tangled web of hazardous concoctions, that when he heard the pungent, loosened shackles of the Doctor, he slashed a meticulous, zealous crescendo, listened to the bleeding, aching doldrums, awaited the moment when revenge would unravel and storm across the sea. Chaos, malevolence, bestial, feral interludes of primordial treachery – a taste of devil’s clarity, a feast of forbidding, seething wrath – he felt the heavy, overwhelming, molten consumption of poise, the destruction of precious wares, and wondered how he could assist his dark, twisted friend in his wish for plundering, for pillaging, for devastation. Ignited, kindled, burning and rapacious, the scintillating chords of rampant, simmering revolution sprung through his veins, itched and crawled in the satanic opus of his marbled creation, until he became subsumed with the shadows, watched, studied, examined the corporeal essence of ruin. The swinging, idle haze of his gaze, its seemingly aloof, indifferent stance, concentrated, inquired in silent void, ventured into the collapse of the Mender’s form, the possession of control, the rippling, licentious credence bleeding across the surface. Had the timber he struck failed to offer him his favored intoxicants? Had he lost something meaningful, pressed and watched it die in the anarchic ruin of their world? Had he been vanquished, absconded of vacant prize? Had he forgotten the measures of decadence, the palaces of decay, the blinding hold of Lucifer’s grip? The questions lingered, the recherché demeanor remained, even as the poisoner’s daughter drifted into the midst, pressing her own inquiry into the fumbling world: and the beast, the monster, wanted answers, wanted crimes, wanted action in the face of some unknown enigma. D’art had a story to tell, a mask of revenge, a tale coated in his contempt, in his fury, in his loathing, and the winter King sought its answers; the chance, the opportunity, to harpoon his vicious entropy back into the kingdom. With no more than a quiet stride into the dusky halls, he offered one subtle nod to both individuals, but pinpointed the piercing slate of his stare, the haunting, tempestuous glory of his glare, towards his glass-sworded comrade, uttering the deep gravel of his vocals into the livid air. “What happened?” Somewhere, in the midst, in the hollowed sphere, he chipped an inward smirk, relishing unspoken promises and convictions: and how can I aid?