The winter Lord followed the lines amongst the sand, chilling, wanton, bold, and ferocious, clinging to particles of mercilessness as the world forced him to change again. Like so many times before, he failed to embrace the act of erosion: he growled, bared his teeth, sought disaster and demolition – concocted pieces and plots of rapier remorselessness and insolent iniquities, and conducted silent loathing within his skull. He resisted, a rock, a stone, a monolith, only twisting and eroding after millennia had touched, scorched, and maimed, planting his feet so firmly into the ground he may have started roots, became one more frozen oeuvre for the Siberian landscape. But the realm shifted, the powers folded and morphed all over again, and despite being one of the firmer, more resolute pieces of the puzzle, once stagnant, once constant, once impenetrable, he was coerced into morphing, into breaking, into restructuring the feeble, flawed portions of his life. Reaching down into the ramparts of his weaknesses, however, was a disturbing motion he’d discovered at a frequent, alarming rate; and the days of simply standing amongst the shadows, brooding, hating, corrupting, and devouring were depleted, finite, finished. The throne he’d presided upon had become all the more confining, chaining, curling over the dominion, the might, the potency he sought, carried, and protected – the more he carried his crown, the more his weaknesses showed. And while all the Reaper yearned to do was bury his defects, imperfections, and deficiencies, the empire had already seen him for what he was worth: death, battles, and blood. Sometimes destruction, debauchery, and devastation were not what the Basin needed, no matter what they, he, and others craved. If he did too little, if he said naught, if he was encompassed further and further into his Stygian wake, then what would he have accomplished? How would he be remembered? He wanted to be feared, and he wanted to be understood, and he somehow wanted to comprehend the others in his herd, however fleeting, however timeless, however intangible the feeling was.

Despite his son’s youthful insistence and exuberant encouragement, the monster didn’t dwell on the notion of making friends. He was likely a poor companion, incapable of much conversation beyond means of war, skills, and strategies; gone were the days of presiding near Huyana and tracing over so many unsaid things (she always knew what he meant, how he felt, but she wasn’t there – so he said nothing to no one, to anything), and it had become the same indulgent pattern – nod, take a name, remember a face, indulge them with a rank, grant them access to the wintry world, stare and protect and recite another silent vow, explain in what little ways he could when they were hurt, when they were angry, when he couldn’t figure out the social meanings and conjectures behind their concerns, their phrases.

Maybe it was too late. Maybe he was too far-gone. Maybe he was meant to be as miserable as the day he discovered his magic, maybe he was meant to be as wretched as the days where he’d learned to channel, harbor, and crave it, and maybe he wouldn’t be able to alter himself into anything but the stony, impassive, nonchalant heathen he’d become. But he still tucked a promise within his frozen chest, within his nefarious heart, to not let his realm, his dominion, fail due to his shortcomings.

His strides were massive beacons of blighted, ravenous movement; he carried himself across the sand and shoal like a tyrannical behemoth, like he owned it, like he cherished it, like he christened and anointed it as his - just as much as the ice, just as much as the glaciers (and he remembered towering mounds of dunes rising from the tides, his sister teasing him further down the lane, his father’s ashen, fiery presence a flickering, beating bulb of light and contentment – it had been his once – and now it was gone). Fleeting and quick, full of iron, of detachment, of battlefield crescendos and warrior hymns, he arched beneath the pressing barbs of the moon and reigned about the darkness, trying to embark upon this new journey without a specific pathway set in mind or matter. Instead, Deimos chiseled his way out of the frozen tundra and into the midst of his past, and while they would never be the Moonlit Tides of Isilme, he wondered, pondered, if they could help him resurrect fragments of olden days, before he was the Reaper, before he was marble, before he was a statue of licentiousness and acrimony.

@[Ashamin]

At another interval the colossus might have conjured malevolent conjectures and thunderous toils, wreaking havoc, courting dissolution, coveting irreverence – cast off into the Stygian pigments of shadow and disaster, swallowing and consuming the lighter, virtuous hues until each luminescent bulb shuttered out. He might have mauled and murdered, flaying and lacerating and plunging with his long, emblazoned knife, casting away all the coiled, meandering merchants of beneficence and repose, throwing away the clamor of the innocent; had the scent of another not lingered amidst the threshold of ocean and tide. For a few moments, he did naught about it – continued in his damning march and decadent stride, reaching across pillars of sand and stone and relishing the devastating power melded and molded from his movements, each a work of Mephistopheles’ sorcery, Lucifer’s brushstrokes, Amontillado’s cask, until they too fizzled in plucked, decayed, prestige. The monster’s skull didn’t twist towards the scent, familiar, not malicious, not abhorrent, but instead lingered, watching the ebb and flow of the serpent waves rolling across the damp shore, picturing pieces of empires beneath their hollowed revolution, pariahs simpering and sinking at the siren’s beck and call, a world beyond their own, touched and tortured by darkness; intangible, unreachable, all the same. In the breadth of the sea’s winter fragments, he posed for the gallows, standing still in a cold, unholy clarity, glaring and staring and seething in the grip and grasp of domination, a supremacist’s prose fighting, aching, longing, and lingering for a nefarious, predacious prize – lonely and miserable all the same. As the ocean pressed, stretched, glimmered in the wake of the lunar torment, he was nothing and everything: Hades forgotten and adrift.

The piercing eyes shifted away from the water’s throng, catching portions and glimmers of the stranger tucked into the abyss, placing his heedless stare upon the distortion amongst the open grove and eaves. He did naught for a stretch of time, breathing faint plumes of chilling air, granting signs of his mortality, penetrating the evening carnage with his acrimony and debauchery, piecing together the forms of recognition: the deer, much like Thranduil’s, but the larger stag not encompassed or bound by gold. Too much silver and sable, streaked together in the whole of the luminescent plume: Ashamin, the Haruspex. The beast whom had talked to their lightning God and received nothing for his efforts, the manifestation of hard work, of determination, of keen skills awaiting their opportunity to embark – and that was all Deimos knew of him – another member of his domain whom he hadn’t touched, whom he didn’t truly know. He could hear Erebos’ words nearly mocking him in their glory, in their hope, in their polished exuberance, as if one day his social skills would somehow rub off on his father, and the pillager, the ravager, the desolate, torn behemoth shifted ever so slightly, becoming whole, not a mirage, not a wraith, not a phantom, embarking closer to the oracle. It was a slow, methodical motion, embarking on the nonchalant, predatory fringes of tidings and ferocity, slinking in taut, rigid contortions to grant and bestow Ashamin an opportunity of escape, should he yearn for one, before settling into the dust and wake of the earth a few yards away, lowering his crown for a brief nod. When he raised the demonic pieces again, he attempted the smallest arts of conversation, struggling not to grimace at their blunt, empty chords. “Evening, Ashamin.”

@[Ashamin]

 The Reaper wallowed and waited in silence, accustomed to the regime, the plunge, the occupancy of its quiet, consuming air. His son would have filled the moments with exuberance and enthrallment, Huyana would have found some gentle comment to lull and pass the time, and Deimos didn’t know what to do but remain completely composed and hushed, another mark of the grave. The sound of the ocean behind him was a rush of treachery, a listless, languid crawl of the deceitful, and portions of his soul itched to return back to its nefarious depths, perhaps to avoid the uncomfortable bite of socializing, the inevitable awkwardness creeping and slithering into his skull. The monster nearly wished for a battle, for a barrage, for an assault or siege to sink his teeth into and gallivant across the horizon as his poised, inevitable self: an infidel amongst the rubble, a sinister opus across the dais of war. To admit these mutinous thoughts was an enduring frailty, flaw, and failing in his pathway, and out of spiteful nuances and belligerent stubbornness, he stayed amongst the gathered bits of inaudible wares. He paid heed to the Haruspex’s bow, the shifting of the companion layered in his sarong, how it seemed to needle and nestle closer, perhaps sensing his dominion, his supremacy, his nefariousness – the beast uttered one insouciant sigh and looked away, as if ashamed he’d kindled fear out of a child. The precariousness of his essence were inevitable foils: either the world was intimidated by him (and he longed for his enemies’ quaking hearts, their torment, their affliction, their shambled virtues and their pummeled bliss) or scorned his flesh (a devil, an infidel, a beast, unholy and discordant); but he’d never yearned for his own to shudder in his wake or sneer at his presence. The patterns always twisted and distorted in the chosen iniquities, where fellow leaders discarded him or familiar patriots shirked at his shadow, and he remained much of the same, tethered back to his bestial shades, to his licentious veils, to his desolate, forlorn turbulence. He’d long since managed and learned how to protect himself amongst the whisper, the chill, of solitude.
 
He tried now though, struggled with the pieces and portions of discourse, scalding his thoughts into small talk or something earth shattering to invoke into the sand. He was not a master manipulator of words or phrases. His machinations were reserved for cold-blooded calculations, where to maim an opponent, how to devastate, when to destroy, but he parted his mouth, turned his piercing eyes back to the painted Ashamin, who seemed keen to try and reward his Lord with something other than trepidation or distaste. “Hn.” The grunt, the snort, the blunt, curt tone of agreement flickered and faltered out of habit. Irritated and irked by his semblance of uselessness, the beast tried again, aiming not to stumble this time. “I enjoy the ocean.” Then he cast his gaze back towards its features, the rolling surf, the rigorous, devout strength, and grew ever more taut and rigid in his nonchalant guard.

@Ashamin

  Sometimes he avoided the world. Sometimes the world avoided him. The lonely arrangement was suitable, simple, and concrete. He didn’t deserve the rites, the practices, the arts of finesse or camaraderie, the semblance of assurances and oaths, for death had bled through his veins for too long, he’d mastered the bitter eloquence of barbarity ages before, and he didn’t believe in second, third, or fourth chances. But in random moments, he’d aspired to courting the opportunity, the vestige, of those virtuous snippets: when the rain had kissed his pelt and scorched his skin and he’d felt free, when the icy mountains reigned supreme, and when the sea rolled across his limbs, reminded him of first homes. Then, for surely he’d overstepped a line, it’d been taken just as quickly, just as swiftly as it’d came, and the dark Lord, with his insouciant brow, with his indifferent shades, with his twisted, nefarious, rancorous heart, would pretend as if everything and everyone was beneath him, because it was easier than nursing the wounds left behind. He lived amongst pretenses and ghouls, wraiths and phantoms, touching over the strokes of memories and the acrid plunges of bestial plains – he wove anarchy through the threads of his savage plumes and the heat of his coiled brawn, and the iniquitous trail led him to slaughter and to ruin and to everything else in between (life: burned and mauled and ripped apart, cords upon cords of dominance, of supremacy). So as the void wrapped itself around his form, as it clung and stuck and webbed over his muscles and his soul, he knew naught more than the rush of danger, than the stench of treachery, than the zeal, the fervor, the ardor, of damnation and strife. To even offer the Haruspex a bite, a taste, a flavor of the realm settled around his satanic skull had been a costly endeavor, and his eyes flickered off towards the rolling horizon, feeling infinitely juvenile and foolish, as if he were a lad again racing against the tide. The notion to disappear, to fade into the backdrop, to bleed back into the shadows, was an overbearing sentiment.
 
So he didn’t take note of the paint’s waning motions, he didn’t take care to heed the approach of the other beast, flicking an ear absentmindedly towards the soft murmuring in response – the Reaper thought to offer naught more, glancing along the line between withdrawing and deciphering, The only thing alerting him to foreboding, to a glimpse of tribulation, was a flailing of the other’s companion, and he maneuvered his cranium rapidly to scrutinize the enigma, catching the fleeting feet of the deer, before Ashamin’s maw came to stretch out before his deadly, lethal, deleterious frame.
 
A sense of panic manifested through his chest, thoughts tumbling over one another in haste to beat the next. What on earth was he doing? Wasn’t the Haruspex aware of his magic, of his abilities, of the toxic, fatal, skeleton he carried with him day in and day out? What was his goal, his purpose, in reaching towards agony and demise? The speck of loyalty he held for the mountains, for the ice, for the glaciers, were always extended towards his kin, even if they didn’t hold in the same regard, he’d never attempt to brandish them with the keen, toxic edge of his powers – what if this one died here, spilled and spoiled against the rocks and the dunes? Marking one of the few instances in his entire life where he aimed to retreat, his hind limbs pedaled backward, sailing against the sand, nostrils flaring, voice exuding a brief inferno of alarm: “Do not-“, before the touch of the diviner’s muzzle came to rest across his shoulder and he wondered just how wise this individual was.