Change was another knot in his noose. He balked, shied, shirked, and never truly welcomed it, preferring the way of stones and mountains. Deimos held too many pieces together to let them fall apart, to let them scatter away into the sovereigns. He avoided drawn out emotions, hovering on sentiments, seeking only quick, rapid action, or analyzing the way of the earth, and adhering to its shattering movements only when absolutely necessary. He eroded and altered like rubble, slowly, gradually, bit by bit, little by little, so his presence still carried the weight of control while his ruminations ventured in other directions, while his cold calculations mired into deeper pits. Slivers of irony always punctured and pierced thereafter, for it took him so long to mold himself into new rivulets and pathways, that the realm seemingly passed him by – he was suddenly complacent, detached, and sunken into the mundane all over again, stuck in his quagmire of aloofness and indifference. The invasion had ended. Their victory had been secured. Thereafter, he stole across lands and wandered around his empire like a vigilant ghost, a constant phantom, a conspiring wraith, twisting and turning over ruins, plotting and planning the next abominations, contorting into a vehement revolution, another molten pariah. Nothing persisted, crackled, or seared down his spine. Nothing crawled, craved, or carved a niche in his chilling foundation; he was a dulled monster all over again, drawn into the corridors of patience and composure. The cycle would eventually whittle away at his bones, drag its wares down his neck, trace and sketch its reverberations through his skull, rant and rave about fate and all of its augured, disgusting notes, its brilliant schemes, and he’d traverse down into one more hellhole for the might of his herd –

The Reaper’s attention was diverted from brooding to the appearance of Ophelia rampaging across the grounds. He stood at attention, nonchalant features cast into varying ranges of interest and apathy, eyes narrowed in rigid speculation, the reasoning behind her confident gaze and the weight of her pause. But as her words rambled, as her phrases clipped, as they shorn away at the chilling winds and the bestial shades of autumn, all he could feel was the incredible pulse of rage suddenly beating against his senses.

Leaving. She was leaving. She was simply wandering off into the midst. As if the Basin was nothing. As if she’d bid her time and decided they were no longer worth all those hours, all those minutes, all those seconds and fragments.

He scarcely listened to her. The beating, boiling, brewing culmination of all his frustrations leeched into his core and spiraled against his membrane like a vicious, vehement haze, blinding, scorching, searing behind his eyes. For the moment, he didn’t care if Gaucho could beat them into a pulp. He didn’t care if she held reservations about Thranduil. He didn’t care if the Throat made ten million armors. In those idle junctures, he was all rage, all poison, all vexation. How dare she were the first thoughts wired and transpired through his cranium, flowing in the heavy breech of silence, scraping into the tense, terse enmity. Where were her bright speeches now? Where were those careful muses, those intricate arts, of dedication, of commitment, of loyalty now? He felt almost partially to blame, listening to her methods, her motivations, sprinting down whatever path she pointed him to (like he’d had no notions of his own, like he’d held no awareness, listless and nothing; some of the fury turned to himself, pricked and poked and lacerated unseen wounds). What had he been doing, listening to her preach and spout her pious declarations, her heartfelt notions, her tender nuances? Was this just a continuation of the same old cycle: thrown crowns and unreliable cretins? Psyche, with her broken horn and her strange, unsettling fragility, Illynx and her disappearance, and now the Forsaken – due to cast aside her throne. Was he the only one capable of remaining, a piece of the summits, a portion of the peaks, too entrenched his carnivore raptures, in his raptorial reveries, in his immoral, rancorous commitment? The wild ire, the fierce friction, the looming abyss drove at his insides and rasped against his annihilating heart, until the arts, the invocations, the spells of his necromancy were allured, enticed, fueled, eager to fester and ruin the cause of all this deceit, all this stupidity, all this great, grand idiocy. He didn’t want to know her reasons. He didn’t want to know her cause. He didn’t want to know her.

The beast just stared in his antagonistic distortion, in his disbelief, in his Mephistophelean depravity. Nefarious inclinations reared their ugly head, bore into his enamel, flagged and flanked the forceful reign of his terror; and he almost wished it was like the old days of the Edge, where he could have pressed just a little more, where he could have arched one more wild, sadistic fervor, and seen her die and wither on the borders. Instead, his brow furrowed, a look of absolute distaste, a glorious, clawing, ripping, hedonistic elation of acrimony and infidels crossed into the damned coil of his features: allowing her to see the shadows of his licentiousness creeping amongst the bestial ardor. He parted his mouth and proffered her the briefest amount of consolation, for all her efforts, for all her methods, for all her manipulations (because they’d brought the Basin to the forefront of success, to relish in the taste of victory, but somehow, someway, they’d also set him further into the caverns, into the caves, so now he was even more lost in the ways of diplomacy, in the acts of consul). “You exceeded my expectations.” The words were clipped, curt, battling over the sinuous savagery building between his veins, and while he wouldn’t allow the malediction to score or scorch, the temptation was there, lurking, present, potent. “Now, you disappoint me.” The Reaper didn’t maneuver any closer, remaining composed, rigid, bound by strength, by diligence, by everything she was choosing to drop aside. The Basin meant naught to her, and it meant everything to him. Why build things, only to abandon them? Why create and mold and sculpt, only to let them wither away? All the queries flooded his mind, and none of them were mustered past his tongue, along his lips. He met her only with disdain, with contempt, with foils and fuels of anarchy, shaking his head in disillusionment. Why were they constantly abandoned? “What the Basin does now is not your concern.”

Then, change bound itself against his frame, and he knew, he knew, he knew, the world was forcing him to alter, to abide, to amend all over again.

He could do it. He could show her. He could pick and choose the new crowns. He didn’t need the Time God to tell him what to do. He didn’t need the pinnacles of destiny to chime and echo and ring; there were already others who’d long since proven themselves.

Smoke and fire and vitriol; her acrimony and petulance was unappealing at best. He listened to her flares, to her molten venom, to all the mania and withering decibels in between, wondered who should be more offended – the brethren she was leaving behind, the remnants of her tempest, or himself. Everything was so tilted, so odd, so skewed, that he was simply the nonchalant, emotionless beast again, the void between storms and anarchies, the hollowed, hallowed portion of monstrous heathens and unsettling cretins. At what point had he made her his opponent all over again? Because he refused to adhere to her guidance? Because he wanted to do something, anything, without her involvement? Because he should’ve been capable, because he was more than a sullen soldier or savage castaway? Because he was so sick and tired of his herd being abandoned time and time and time again to the maelstroms, to the anecdotes, to the flailing missions of its predecessors? To those who seemed to drop it out of the sky, who forgot the glacial peaks, the minarets, the summits, the illustrious, dangerous, treacherous, intrepid wiles? What had she expected? For him to reach out for her, for him to beg her to stay? The moments were incredulous, disbelieving, unwinding and unfurling in ridiculous measures and tones, and he stood, stock-still, a marble statue to the altering affects of the dubious zeal. He ignored her dagger swings, her deepening cuts, her loathsome words (but deep down, something penetrated, and he knew it when his chiseled, nefarious heart ached at the thought that he’d never been quite enough for a herd, for a land, that he cherished beyond reason, that maybe she had done everything and he’d been a mere piece of slate, a brutal sword in chains, awaiting fights, and wars, like a mysterious titan with no name, no future). He settled into the dust and oblivion, scraped away the enamel of wrath and indignation, and pulsed with his chilling wake, with his vicious ardor, with his vehement, ferocious immorality, pondering how he’d become the provocateur when he was not the sovereign renouncing their post, tossing their crown, throwing their throne. Eventually, the Reaper spoke, but to the amount it held, to the use it built, to the necessity it strived, he wasn’t sure – he could be talking into the wind, never heard, never grasped, never held, but likely the only time he’d ever pursue the words coiled and brewing across his tongue. “You are not an enemy.” What vengeance did she need to seek? What had they done to her? He was too perplexed, too befuddled, too confused by the flow of ineptitude, by the shattering of skylines, that he didn’t rankle the edges any further. It’d been done, solidified, and rendered into distant forms quickly, rapidly, swiftly; everything undone, pooled and collected at his feet – and he hadn’t a clue what to do with any of it.

He took the first step to proving his mettle beyond just the battlefield, just the dais of war: the Reaper’s narrowed eyes focused on her ivory frame as it eventually flickered out of the horizon, nodding swiftly to the approaching Thranduil, to the desperate Hotaru. In all of this mess, in all of these follies, the demonic infidel knew he could do right by the two: they’d demonstrated their prowess, they’d manifested their tactics, they’d professed wiles and used them to extreme advantages (plucking armor, ensuing wars, provoking and needling and bending the frames of pinnacles and warlords). Thieves and impersonators, roses and gold, masques and plagues, all winding, all curled, all extended before him; due to be consecrated. They could be what the Basin truly needed, to fill the hole Ophelia had left, to lift and lift and lift the Basin higher and higher until it became more than beasts of an alliance, more than a flicker of triumph, more than a taste of conquest. Maybe he’d never told them about their worth, about their feats, about their strength, and now he could provide the duo with what they truly deserved. The living scythe searched for ways, for social cues, for methods to embark on the ceremonial pursuits, but in the end, it was always blunt, always curt, always only what was absolutely necessary. He spoke towards the horizon first, the faraway fields that once held a Forsaken beast and now conjured only the rise of more bestial flames (phoenix bellows, distorted and corrupted, deep in the corners of his chest), giving information to what they likely already knew and understood. “Ophelia has left the Basin for personal reasons.” He swung his skull, with all its majestic cruelty, with all its poised reticence, with all its bestowed licentiousness, and proffered a fair legion of pride to reach past his brow, along his eyes – for them, for the new crowns he thrust towards their waiting frames, for the polished scepters and the gleaming machinations and the avaricious toils waiting in the wings. Ophelia may have made them great – but maybe, they could be even grander, even wiser, even more imposing. With each of their skills, with each of their potency, there would be reason to fear the north. “Would you two join me in leading this kingdom?” No grand ceremony, no rising pomp and circumstance, but an appeal to crooked agents and rebellious hearts. He wouldn’t balk at this alteration, at this molding – and coveted, for singular, specious moments, that they wouldn’t either.