A lethal presence, a scheme of corruption, a bounty of heinous elegance, stoked and strove and paid respects to the ways of his reign: forging curiosity and sliding, sinuous ardor through the portended monstrous columns; a borne witness to barbaric qualities, to cretin venues, to merchants and magicians choking, suffocating, and strangling their wicked hymns. With a sibilant grace, with a controlled, composed stride, he composed the tainting, corrupting, devouring customs of devils and infidels, incensing his movements, his motions, into soundless, treacherous wakes, a feast on the heavens, a heedless, callous derision and division of the eaves. The Reaper tarnished where he’d roamed, more than once, more than twice, but this time, this hour, this season, he was resolute and demanding, because there would be no more failures, no more mistakes, no more conundrums begging and pleading and clawing their rasping voices against his skull (the mountains, the peaks, the valleys, deserved everything and anything, and he’d willingly give it the dagger). His vile requiems, his hostile laments, led him down the midnight coils and the archaic parlors, scratching at things left undistorted, rampaging and disregarding, too sunken, too forlorn, too desolate to see if he’d strung abhorrence too far in his presence – bearing all the iniquity, all the sins, all the nefarious, sinister exploits of the world across his taut, rigid shoulders. He heard the Doctor’s interlude of mercenary pursuits, and followed the trail, the ruins, the abominations of their ventures; wanting to know, wanting to see, craving and yearning and wanton for the relish of the battlefield, for the discordant drums of war. He was the most comfortable in rancorous, seditious, scarring, scorching mayhem, where the blistering threads unraveled together into one seething, malicious discord, where the piercing barbs had no end and continued to lay waste to virtuous foes and demonic opponents alike, where the bestial chords could never be broken and the incensed, the strong, the determined, lived on to see another day, another empire unraveled by devastation. The monster thought of consecrated sieges, of bedlam and chaos spread throughout the globe, of his brethren rising, rising, rising to the top of their summit and smirking at the ruin they’d left behind, watching the smoke curl and coil, watching the defeated crumple and fall. A vicious, vehement dream, but one he wove through his rapier, through his membrane, through his corrupted, consumed calculations all the same.

His appearance by D’Art was quiet in its composition, a predator’s stalking, carnivore swing, dedicated to despondency and heralded by hell. The piercing juncture of his eyes roamed over those already gathered, the promise of fortitude and might; the vivid orange of another stung him in both hues and unfamiliarity – a lengthy horn (useful for ranged attacks, for slaying, for flaying, for cutting and lacerating and mauling one’s enemy from a fair distance), a strange obliteration of color – but at least the stag introduced himself, leaving Deimos with something to call him by in future reference. The other, Sialia, had already been a fixture on their battle scenes, on their tarnished, scarred fields, and the beast was content in her answer and might. She’d ascended through the ranks for a reason, persistence and gall and mettle and spirit were due to be rewarded. Before his silence drenched the throng into an uncomfortable lapse, the monster extended a nod of his cranium towards each individual, a brief, curt introduction to the newcomer, Sial, “Deimos, Lord of the Basin,” before arching a singular brow towards the Doctor’s wake. If a smirk emboldened his lips along one of the corners, he said naught about it – maneuvering a few steps behind the newly named General, intent on observing the soldiers one by one.