Death had taken many souls, wandered through grasslands, through empires, through sovereigns and plucked, scorned, dragged the living into its infernal abyss. Most had been wholly unfamiliar to him, lost morsels scattered from various runes, foreign, unknown, pillaged and absconded, and then several had been a part of their own. But as he slunk through the rolling clouds and the pervading warren, he never would have presumed to have seen the Empress, the asp, the venomous wraith who had once so prominently displayed her prowess, extinguished, dissolved, fallen and tainted.

His memories of Psyche were among many measures of General abilities and soldierly sway; he’d been a summoned sword, a beckoned blade, an unrelenting rapier – and he’d orchestrated her bidding, he’d bestowed her prisoners and chained Ladies, he’d cast her wares, and he’d drummed behemoth soullessness at her orders and at his own satanic reverie. It’d been a fine testament and skill to their cause, launching, dividing, lancing, while she plagued and slashed, while she bent and plotted - the poisonous Queen upon her throne. Like days of old, where political structures rallied and fell, where anarchy brewed and quelled, where they were free to maim, rip, tear, because they’d been the ones thrown from their homes, they’d been the ones relinquished of their kingdom. The Reaper could recall the images with bits and pieces of fondness tucked away between the enamel of massacre and ruin, because those fragile moments had been the beginning of their reign, of their namesakes, of their chilling whims.

But as he neared, as he closed in, as he advanced towards the remains of a strong, enduring cretin, only the last time he’d seen her pierced through his cold, calculating shell: after loss, after defeat, where her horn had been in shambles and he’d only watched as the Engineer ripped her away from the icy throne. He carried her scepter now, infernal and scorched, nestled next to his scythe, and in some strange notion, he felt the rancorous edges of regret sear across his molten frame; became another quiet witness as Mauja guarded her corpse, as Sno motioned closer to her father, as the world went on living despite the fact that a once pristine, dark opus fell upon her iniquities. In a lingering, feral amends, the beast said absolutely nothing, because he presumed the structure of his movement would say it all (a bowed, lowered crown, a ceremonial plunge from one licentious fiend to another, allies eternal), and chose to stand guard on the opposing side of the Ice King. Silent and steadfast, muted and constant, no words needed to be exchanged. The beast, the Reaper, would act as another immoral sentinel while the rest of the world meandered through the ripple of scorn and the bastions of loathing curling from their stances.


[Just here for the character development. ;D Deimos is standing on the opposite side of Mauja, also helpfully guarding Psyche’s body. ^_^]