The Reaper craved many things, but rarely put them to name. Instead, he brooded, he brewed, he stared out against heartless abysses and sadistic endeavors, striking out into diversions, schemes, and stratagems, coasting along ghostly pathways, slinking amidst sinuous, seditious realms; looking for distractions from the sentiments binding him to reality. But they’d come up again, sooner or later, drifting across his mind like a set of icy fingertips, like a set of cold, chilling gales, like the unattainable aspects of his life coming to slaughter him whole. He always craved things he could never have again, pieces slid away from his heart, from his soul – like the sound of the waves curling along the Moonlit Tides, like the cascading wail of the ocean meeting the World’s Edge, like the drowning sensation of Huyana’s touch, or the ancient, all-knowing way his father smirked. The world changed, and he lost his chances, his opportunities, to hold, grasp, or clench those pieces in his life: Isilme had long since been buried beneath shadow, he reigned over ice and snow, not foam and surf, the rain had left him seasons before, and his sire had been dead for ages, beaten and broken, embers and ash beneath the wailing skies. They were unreachable shards, impossible goals, and he had to shut his eyes at the delusion of finding them again. They remained buried, deep, deep, deep in the fathoms of his wicked, merciless heart, past the stone walls and the glacial ramparts, roaming beyond the nonchalant fortifications, where every essence of his reveries, of his raptures, remained locked away, guarded, furtive, and secret. There they could stay as memories, as wild, beautiful dreams, freeing him on a moonless night, or a brutal plunge; saving him from becoming completely, utterly obliterated. There no one could touch them, ruin them, find them and use their alluring, spellbinding motions over him; and when no one was around, he could remember, he could pretend, he could delude himself into hearing the cry of the gulls, the rain girl’s sweet songs, or his sire’s unmatchable tones.
 
"I miss d'Artagnan.” - Mauja’s words haunted the winter Lord as he stood along the threshold of his home, as he remained mighty and strong beneath the crumbling, wavering chunks of metal they still called the sentinels. He’d never told his old comrade what he missed because he wanted them for himself, selfish and misguided, plundering and avaricious, keeping them tucked away so no one else could stare at their portraits, tapestries, and canvases.
 
And then he thought of his friends; the very few he could’ve named, all wandering from the rime and glaciers, all maneuvering past the fond echoes of their past, all fleeing from the tempests of war and the delusions of decadence, finding something across the horizon to hold their interest. They no longer yearned to paint themselves in snow and audacity, and he never stopped them.
 
His eyes shifted to the guardians of the borders, to the rusted contortions of metal and brittle chunks flaking away into the vestiges – soon, perhaps they too would depart from their world, and there’d be nothing left to remember the old from the new – except his deadly carcass wandering amongst the grounds, poignant and haunting, reminding every new member what it was like to embody death and desecration. Maybe he did ruin everything he touched. Maybe he did seek to destroy all that mattered in the world. Perhaps each fragment was slow to wither, to decay, to finally succumb, but all that mattered was that it finally took its last breath as he sucked away the last remaining fringes of life.  He’d never learned how to hold onto what mattered, instead of simply letting it go.
 
His maw came to rest against a cold barb of metal, bestowing it a firm pat – watched as it didn’t sink into the void at the stroke, at the caress, of his infernal frame. But eventually…
 
Deimos maneuvered, away from the borders, across the valleys, wandering and winding and coiling his way amongst the runes, the gallows, the primrose paths, lining the world in his vicious rancor. He was persistent, he was monstrous, he was resolute and barbaric, twisting and turning and tracing the hints of twilight and the curling of the dawn, stroking over the chords, the foundations, the mutinous sway of the earth itself. His destination was only the Thistle Meadow through deliberation and calculation, preferring the wide-open space, the immense stature, of the land for what he had to do, for whom he had to call. The beast, the demon, the infidel, ceased his predator movement, his carnivore motions, and reached out with a mighty bellow, with a insurrectionist roar, calling towards the only who could salvage the foreboding decay at their doors.
 
He’d already caused so many other things to die; but the Engineer’s brittle, broken parts were for him and him alone – not to become another wasted object buried in the rubble and snow.

  Perhaps there was a dual surprise from both males – and where the Engineer vocalized it, Deimos registered it with a snort and a narrowing of his eyes – because he hadn’t thought the beast would show.
 
How malicious, how pathetic, how glacial and cold they’d turned out to be.
 
There were many words, phrases, and syllables the Reaper could have directed towards Ulrik. Why did you leave? Why didn’t you say anything? What has become of you? What has become of Illynx? - but they were stuck, mired, brooding inside his cranium, never unleashed past his lips. He wanted to be able to come up with something, anything to pulse together the source of barbarity and brutality they once shared – because it’d been great, glorious power, it’d been supremacy and sinister ambitions, it’d been a brewing convolution of intrigue and disaster – and that’s all they’d ever needed. The world had been so much simpler before he’d ascended to the frigid throne; full of mayhem, full of bedlam, full of blood and battles and sheer, overwhelming hate for the realms beyond their own. It’d been strife and anarchy, revolution and sedition, thundering and booming and callous, everything he could ever crave, yearn, or desire. Now all he seemed to do was make mistake after mistake, falling beneath expectations, wandering down scorching paths, yearning to annihilate but having to hold back because of alliances and repose and peace to save his brethren, and no matter how feral, how ferocious, how vehement his toxic soul was, he was tied and tethered to an overbearing crown and an all-consuming land. Nothing he did was ever enough. His movements were judged. His decisions were criticized. His passions fizzled, his ambitions died, and he wandered, wandered, wandered deeper into oblivion. Even in the last days he’d seen Ulrik, especially at that voracious herd meeting, the Engineer had lost faith in him – and perhaps that was when the ax had truly fallen across his neck and his cold, blackened, shriveled heart wondered where he’d gone awry. When he explained, when he tried to understand, attempted to perceive how he’d scraped and bled and smoldered through the condemnation, all he received in response was silence. He was potent, he was strong, and he was formidable – pernicious power, enigmatic unholiness - but the life he led was slowly swallowing him whole, devouring and swallowing and relishing the taste of death and damnation.
 
Perhaps pride stifled him. Perhaps disappointment haunted him. Perhaps he was too carved with indignation and rubble and ruin to be able to fix anything he’d damaged; he always left the void acrimonious and broken, shattered and unattainable. Maybe if Ulrik had been willing he would have done something else, would have said one of the many tenors striking his mind – but the tethers of savage, lethal entropy gathered too close, and the wounds, the thoughts, of Ulrik being frustrated enough to have left his company, his herd, his empire, didn’t warrant all those seething words to come slithering out. Instead, he was formal, he was stiff, he was everything he always used to be, a hollow vessel, an empty shell, a reserved, reticent blade cycling his way through shadow and storm. He extended a nod, brief and dignified, solemn and silent, tracing his stare over to the cliffs beyond, where the mountains laid stretched out and brooding, acrimonious and pernicious. “Your sentinels are crumbling,” he said into the punctured, pervading tension, gaze sweeping from the horizon and back to Ulrik, where the merest of glimpses into his eyes may have told of those despairing thoughts, those haunting, poignant losses, before he continued. Without you, they are nothing. “If you wish, you may have your metal back.” Then he said no more – waiting for the decision before providing or bestowing anything else.

  He longed to disappear. It would’ve been so easy to peel away, to saunter within shadow and sun, to trace away the foundations of time and space, to recollect old habits. The Reaper was not a man of sentiments, sorrows, and feelings - he’d spent too many hours by himself, in desolation, in isolation, and only rarely did anyone follow. He protected and sheltered, conspired and devoured, from palisades and precipices, from caverns and cliff tops, but rarely in the sanctuary of others. Through the years, he’d become separated further and further away from those surrounding and occupying his home, until their faces were mere shapeless features, blurring from one to the other, and those he’d known, those he’d cherished without telling them, thinking they understood through his actions, through his power, through the source of his ambitions, dissolved into the ice and rime - gone. He knew them all and hadn’t tried to snag and ensnare them back into their chilling shelter, into their avaricious spires, uncertain as to how or why or where he’d venture to bring them home. So he watched them go or felt their void: Mauja, Psyche, Illynx, D’art, Ulrik, Arah, even Huyana – the numbers seemed countless and ongoing, one demolished, abandoned relationship after another, just as dead, just as withered, just as decayed as the rest of his life. When they left, when they crumbled, when they poured and whittled and billowed away from him, he simply sank further, one dagger further into apathy, one hoof further into destruction. Reclusive and inscrutable, callous and impassive, no one dared to touch him, to go near him, to gaze upon him for any length of time. He was their Lord, their King, their immoral, unholy ghost, their augured tempest, their acrimonious sword and shield, but nothing else. He was as unreachable, as unattainable, as the day he’d drifted into the World’s Edge, having seen, having felt, having tasted all the glories of friendship and love, but incapable of holding on to any of them.
 
Perhaps it was pride, perhaps it was cowardice, perhaps it was shame leaving him there, beautiful and chaotic and elegiac, naught more than a rapier, naught more than a cutlass. He’d woven himself in a tethered bounty of traps, snares, and plagues, too ruthless, too decadent, too infernal and malevolent, an additional heathen molding into the horizon. No one dared approach. No one bothered to care. While he didn’t reach out for them, they didn’t reach for him. No creatures stepped outside their paths, their rubbles, their heartless, nefarious regard.
 
But gods, he was so tired of losing everyone and everything to time, or distance, or his failures, his defects, his cruel, obliterating flaws.
 
Neither strayed again. It was the same motion over and over; both could burn, churn, brew, or brood, but the result seemed inevitable. Maybe Deimos had been too late all over again, had felt the weight of loss eons after the motion, too solidified, too barbaric, too condemned on his road to hell. But there was no anger, no tactics, no misguided smirks or snickers, weaponry administered, insults tossed – just the sad finality of what had come to pass and what was meant to be. Maybe they’d always been strangers, only tied to Plagues and creeds, and somehow one of them had slipped and the promises, the oaths, the assurances had been broken; Deimos didn’t know if it had been him or Ulrik. He presumed it’d been the former, a harbinger of destruction and terror, a beacon of immorality instead of solace, a creature who only knew how to consume, swallow, and devour pieces strewn amongst his path.
 
Yet, his voice stretched out into the hollow, into the cracks and crags of the meadow, striving and plucking and diving deep into the veneer of his reticent features, extending, perhaps for the first time, his alms out to someone else. He just wished he’d done it sooner. “Only if you did not want it.” He could’ve saved the metal for the prison, in dire need of rebuilding, but it would’ve just become another item in a long list of mistakes. He’d made enough of those for a lifetime, and was doomed for more, but he didn’t want these intricate, tense moments to be one of them.
 
The question of why hung in the air; he could sense it scraping over his hide, down through his soul, up through his skull, and it echoed, surrounding, blasting, like a raucous din. So he answered, staring at the taller stallion, at the Engineer who’d manifested his power into weapons and designs, crafts and gears, figments and fragments meant to guard them. “I am tired of watching things collapse. Your sentinels deserved more.” So did you. Perhaps they all deserved more than what they’d been given in life – but the personification of the guards, but the reminder of Ulrik’s passion and skills coming into focus every day, solidified how much he’d been, how much he’d done, how much had been taken for granted. Still scrutinizing, still studying, he plucked one more sentiment of arrogance, of conceit, and allowed it to slide away from him, back into the hills and the soil, ghosting over the edges of the Engineer’s ears. “I am sorry you left.” It come across as more than a whisper but less than a shout, a saddening declaration sparked and incensed with rue and rancor and regret; leading down more trails, more ruin, more rubble – then he looked away, off into the trees, off into the forest, apprehensive of what it would all mean thereafter. “Let me know if you require assistance.”