His anger was hot as a wildfire. It spun about his core like a wildfire, consuming all reason it touched in him. His lips moved with the bitter vile that built up in him and body began to sway with anticipation. His eyes were already filled with visions of her pained face, of her torn hide, and ultimate defeat. He might have called out her short comings in the name of the Basin but it was far more than that. She had dared insult him. He who could twist your mind and leave you babbling. A king of thieves and shadows. With each title another pieces of his armor melded on him, invisible yet powerful, for it was armor of pride and vanity. How quickly his new position had welded it, and how much trust his put in it. She could have called him fat and slow for all it mattered. Here upon the top stone he was charged and ready. It did not matter who she was or what she said, he had been ready to lay his wrath upon any who spoke ill. His pride not willing to give an inch, but ready to take a mile.

It did not help that she had her protectors. Ulrik, the engineer speaks up, and those burning eyes and pinned harks snap to him. He spits upon the gold, but it is only more logs for the fire. What had he just finished saying?! It was not enough to be there. These events of long ago had happened (he quickly assumed in his anger) in spite of her. Ulrik at least done something for this herd. The fine work at the entrance keeping guard now. And he was defending her?! The golden could not swallow it, he could not comprehend unless it was a softer tie that held the engineer to Arah’s side. The golden a disease? He would show the engineer the true meaning of disease. Now two figure lay before him. But the golden was loosing. The realities of taking on a half the herd burned along with the others, though it would doom him. He stands shifting with the angry fire within him, thinking himself as tall and powerful as Ulrik’s creations, and ready to smite them upon the mountainside.

If they had left it unchallenged it might have been the gold’s pale form left upon the rocks that day. Yet there were those in the herd who were more sensible. Sweet thing broke the electric air, her singsong voice lifting with a prayer of pleading. It was a distraction, a child before the lines of war. One hark lifted to her, his attention distracted. The anger compounding, hand raised back with a sword, ready to strike, but she was in the way. What was she doing in the way? Did she not know that this was the insults signaling war? That their punishments must be handed out for such subordination, for their name now sounded as traitor? Yet she stands like a brave soul among the lost, not against him, not for him. In the middle, a child in the middle. And the longer his pulled back blade waits for her to move, the less powerful it feels. The raging anger, ready to deliver the blow, falters as it fails to make ground, for it will not burn sweet thing.

It left time for the Reaper to step through. His words for a moment fell muffled to him, washed away in the tides of more logs for the fire, trying to regain the ground lost at sweet thing’s feet. But then the demon king turns to him. All of the darkness his soul surrounded with pouring upon the golden, and it broke the his visions of blood and revenge. Crowned head jerks to the reaper. They were but equal now, they dark devil had no sway on him. Head came over high and proud, the golden, flashing for once how much loss of fear had occurred over the seasons. He for a second felt saw the demon as little and lifeless. A soldier of a gone era. That is, at least, how he saw him at first.

But the reaper held more power, and venom than even the golden still guessed. They were, in reality, still not equal. His earth eyes focus away from the blinding light of the flames, from the raging fires of anger. The whisper cuts through the shouting match and the golden pulls himself back, but he finds himself unable to move. This wasn’t a thread in the demon’s words. This was a promise. A command. The golden freezes to hear it. The anger still frozen on his face, but inside the shocks echo through him, cutting across the flame. A child? He was acting like a child?! A cloven hoof silently slams on the rocks, but it’s the only outburst they see, for in it the golden connects the dark reaper’s meanings. Still his proud face shows the good fight he tries throw up, fighting to keep the fires going, but the longer his blow waits, the more hallow it becomes. The last hissed words of the reaper, coming across like equal advice, clears from his eyes the doom promised. Teeth grind against each other and the golden turns away from him. His anger was not finished, no it still burned like a tornado of fire, wreaking havoc and twisting every thought. But the dark lord, coming across with such hissed advice, advice, left the golden without a blade to throw. Perhaps because the words had been able to shift through the dark thoughts of the gold and force him to accept that the reaper, for once, was right.

Not that he would ever admit it. Earth eyes harden in one last gaze, before the crowned horn snorts and turns away, giving ground, and pulling back. But of course there certainly was not an apology in any of it.

A shift of pink on the other side of Deimos catches his eye. Crowned head turns for a moment, the anger still bubbling underneath, but thoroughly cowed, to see Hotaru. That’s right she had been insulted too. He had completely forgotten that. Her quick glance to him gains only a snort like sigh and a turn away as she begin to speak. Her words are calmer, and therefore more powerful than his. The golden though has now almost turned a deaf ear to it all. He pulls inside himself, where there still builds an anger. The threats might have been nullified, the arrows and daggers turned to blades of glass, but it made him all the angrier. The fires may have burned smaller but they grew hotter for there promised in this company no release. Deimos’s words having silenced that. Any warning or compliment now thrown his way was given the same treatment, but overall in the silence he waits, ready to slip away, to let loose the rage that here was blocked.

The reaper speaks up again and the golden turns his head back to the gather, picking it back up, though still a bitter face rested on his features. He unfortunately remembered what was coming. Especially when it came to Arah’s name. Unlike what that pale woman thought, her name had been in great favor. Deimos calls them out and the golden looks on with an emotionless face. He was ready to go, to be done, to let loose the rage inside of him where no others could see, especially Deimos. He waits, like a dog on a leash, forced to sit and not bark. The happiness of promotion, and the signals of heavenly approval did nothing to keep his interest. As soon as the meeting would end and all speak the happy tiding of promotion and wonder at the blessing, he would slip away where he could rage and let loose his damnations. To the shadows.

OOC ::
Summary::
"Speech"