He narrowed his eyes, deep, hardened bits of rage and ferocity, and her words nearly cause each and every devilish invocation within to stir, to sear, to unfurl and collide with her frame. Why was it that every stranger, every trespasser, felt they had a right to demand upon them? What gave them the notion that they were entitled to command, to order, to direct and decree? The Lord’s eyes ran upon her encroaching, pariah feet, then lifted his barbaric, unholy gaze back to her features. The monster’s voice loomed and boomed with foreboding destruction, a pending malice, a brewing hostility melded and molded into many avenues of acrimony: they all tried his patience, and they all ignored warnings. His soulless void didn’t care about their requests, had no urge to listen to their injunctions and edicts, because he ruled the north, not they. He didn’t have time for their petty circumstances, for their ridiculous follies. If she remained so incredibly unaware of herd boundaries, of rules and regulations, she didn’t deserve the honor of their collaboration. “Intruders do not receive assistance.” Arah’s presence flowed nearby, a loyal, powerful, potent existence, like an unsung menace, like a serpent’s secrets nestled beneath petals and dew, like a virtuous blossom found toxic and venomous – his stare hastened towards her, only once, for he hadn’t imparted his own bidding yet. The stranger was given a chance at life, to crawl back into her hideaway and form another strategy to find her missing dame, because she wouldn’t be located or obtained in the Basin, gathered between glacial walls and Siberian warrens. “She is not here.” This Solanine, a name not striking him as familiar, as noteworthy, as a constant citizen flickering and wandering through their dusk, through their hallowed halls, was likely no around. Perhaps she’d quarreled with the idiot in front of him, and he could see why (there was clearly no sense lodged in her mind), and they’d left at an impasse; but she was neither careening around their ice nor shuffling through their rime. Maybe she’d disappeared, vanished into the abyss like so many others before her, called away to a higher power, or incapable of harnessing their tactics, their mayhem, their glory. “You will have to find her elsewhere.” Deimos foiled back into silence, his words absolute, his schemes completed. The stranger would have to venture away, empty-handed; if she refused, then other situations and contemplations would have to ensue.