Labyrinthine figments punctured the air: foreboding, shadowed, and mired with unholy fibers – he knew naught of its filaments but the strange, dire consequences as the world became shrouded in disease and misery. His brethren choked and wheezed, his comrades shuddered and pulsed, and the realm gave only the barest hints of its entropy with new lands forming out of nothing, with Gods battling more demons and monsters, with walls becoming lacerated edges and bruised convictions. It was a startling array of madness all over again – a cycled, resentful plunge of discord from the past (and he remembered the fleeing feet and the annals of destruction brooding and brewing past their underground temples, the listless, immoral twitch of his muscles and the poignant, bitter disquiet). He had no intention of lingering amongst the threshold of lethargy, of helplessness, of heathen, primordial throngs again and again, stumbling and fumbling into further decay: the Reaper’s realm would be protected, guarded, and defiant until the end. He refused to run. He refused to escape. He refused to be tied and tethered into the knots of others’ layered destruction; he’d forge his own beautiful, elegiac ruin.
 
Deimos wandered between lands with bits of apprehension coiled amongst his chest and none displayed across his features: ever stoic, ever proud, harboring pretenses of nonchalance and indifference when every vein was taut, when every bone was inscrutable. Determined, resolute, and vehement, he forged his steps through the waking columns of the summer sun, staring out into the horizon and occasionally landing his gaze upon his followers (Enna, Mender and healer, his son, already a far better creature than he’d ever be), before blending back into puissance and anarchy, chiseling and sculpting his way through a path he knew well, but hadn’t touched in a lifetime.
 
The World’s Edge.
 
A world he’d craved because it reminded him of the washed shores of Isilme. He’d run past its borders and demanded entry: given when his power was deemed fit and suitable for Mauja’s plans. It forced the monster to recall the Moonlit Tides, the crashing, unwavering sounds of the waves molding its cliffs into smooth, embittered stone – but he’d never returned after they lost it. Even when they went to war again and again, he’d gone elsewhere – stole into Throat to inspire its demolition, crashed into the Falls to augur his vehemence, and never again mauled or stepped into the Edge’s glassy fixtures or foggy, warren abyss.
 
And as they neared its borders, it haunted him all over again: the days of frozen lords and icy promises and disastrous oaths, all unraveled, all torn apart, by dragons and thoughts of peace, hypocrisy and inconsistencies maiming what could have been – all their bedlam, all their strife – and then being cast off into the snow; reborn as withered, sinister, nefarious things, desperate for vengeance. In between those minutes, hours, days, and seasons, some of them had disappeared, had left, had died, and naught was ever quite the same. Their paths and trails had been severely altered, hushed or lavished, decadence in abandonment, terror, or alterations. Even he, brutal and sinister, had managed to morph into another figure: King of a frozen sovereign instead of just drifting in its midst.
 
So when they neared, when he ceased all movement, and merely stared, eyes widened in wonder at the poignant, nostalgic lanes, something evocative prodding and pummeling his senses; nares stole and took all the scents, all the memories, all the motions clinging to his brow, piercing them away, over stories untold, over maneuvers rendered incomplete. He ushered a single bellow, unaware and ignorant of who held which position, unsure of what would take place, rooted to the periphery of so many distant memories, snatched and scattered away.

[Basin/Edge alliance discussion/chitchat/exchange of information times? :D
Please allow Enna and Erebos to post first! ^_^]

  Indomitable, unassailable, and unbending, he’d spent years slowly eroding. Desolation and isolation forged almighty fixtures and insouciant strokes deep into the canals of darkness, casting away his faith, his creed, for the guile and edge of violence. His hate, his abhorrence, his wrath had been markers of Lucifer’s reach, a weapon’s subtle emotions; alluring, beguiling, and unwinding the mortal coils of nefariousness, of wickedness. Changes were minute and minimal: the brush of rain unsettling his coat, the strange, unexplained attachment to fellow, loyal comrades, the beginning of his family, a christened girl and then an anointed boy, and the inkling of a smile dusting away the cobwebs of his lips. Lacquered by cruelty and ruthlessness, layered by bloodshed, by violence, by vehemence, had crooned and sculpted him into a devil’s keen, grating opus – but it didn’t provide him with a way to enhance his herd, to provide for his fellow cretins, to abide by the terms of political reins. Days spent amongst the eerie eaves of fog and mist had honed a familiar bounty of indifference and nonchalance, a menacing veil of apathy; and as the seasons waned and whistled, screeched and tore, he’d steadily risen from one of the slithering soldiers harpooned from the Edge, to one more beast carving his throne into the ice of the Aurora Basin. But the Reaper, for all his determination, for all his resolution, for all his power and will and domination, knew he’d failed. He was all too aware of his lack of serpent powers or the tongue for diplomacy, had grown too eager and ready for the fray instead of peace and prosperity, but continued reaching and scouring and searching for an opportunity where he didn’t leave his herd wanting. He’d worn out the shadowy corridors, he’d sculpted trails and pathways down into reticent lures, and now, he had to somehow bear the notion of foreign affairs again and again (for their safety, for their lives), because he was only one beast, one monster, one cretin – and while he could throw himself in front of them all, even his protection, his enchantments, his brutal, callous invocations, had their limits. He would not be their weakness.
 
They stood in the hollowed, haunted folds of the Edge in murky, diligent silence – his narrowed eyes ghosted over the poignant alleys of a world he once guarded – a first home since Isilme, reminding him of those tender barbs of youth and the wild, avaricious crack of the ocean. There was a short, tugging pull on his heart, like a lure, like a thorn, of the realm they’d lost – but he barely reflected on it, forgoing the pain and agony and longing settled upon them in the days after their fall, pulsing and hating and menacing the icy chambers of the Steppe. Instead, his ears twitched and turned, picking out the finite details of a sovereign lost to him so long ago, connecting the unknown patterns and pondering over what, who, would come from the ancient, archaic whims; but the most significant sound reaching him had been a voice chronicling the depths of his past. His skull shifted immediately to the light, penetrating vocals of Mauja, and suddenly, everything seemed right. He released a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, he shifted his entire body to the fragments of ivory and spots, he nearly laughed at the absurdity of it all: shifting thrones, lost souls, forgotten kingdoms, and the ironic turn of events that had somehow led the Frostheart back to where he’d always belonged.
 
He bowed then, a rapier tucked into its scabbard, forgoing all the tension in his frame for a familiar, blunt chord of tenacity and boldness, raising his cranium to reveal the smallest, the softest, of smiles crossing over his mouth. Even the notion of his vocals were not as rigid, not as harsh, not as bitter and rancorous, leaping over the tides of the glassy borders for a piece of what had once been.  “Mauja – you are King again?” Deimos did naught else but stare for a few more seconds, taking in the ways the earth had altered and changed them; he’d seen the spotted foil amongst kin and country, but not since Psyche’s death and burial had they even been close to one another, old souls bonded and tied and tethered to dust and ruin. He showed no apprehension, no ill regard, as the ivory maw came towards his own darkened jaws, extending it with an ease that hadn’t existed seasons before, and pulling away before the touch, the stroke, became a deadly ware.
 
The winter Lord bit back a laugh, a chuckle, and extended the greetings towards his son and compatriot, trying not to forget what they’d wandered here for, why they were nestled and knotted back into a fold of the unknown.  “We come from the Basin for discussions and potential armistice,” but the depths of his eyes told the other frosty stallion the pull of camaraderie was an enticement; to revere and stand in the echo of old friends and new shadows,  “and bring gifts for your land.” He paused briefly, a sense of pride building over the sharpened coils of his chest, placing introductions and formalities within the depths of his still lingering grin.  “This is my son, Erebos, and one of our Time Menders, Enna.” Then he turned back towards his former monarch, absorbed and trapped in the Edge’s spell again. 

  The behemoth watched, listened, and witnessed the particular nuances, the intriguing sentiments: Mauja’s stunned silence, his son’s youthful exuberance, and Enna’s careful, quiet lacquer. His stare became a taut, narrowed study, a thorough examination, as if somewhere he’d done something wrong, as if he’d stepped too far over the ledge, as if one more reviled lack of manners had christened the ceremony abruptly severed. The rest of him was all the more immobile again, features returning to vacant nonchalance, stoked to oblivion, as uncomfortable in the archaic silence as he was in the throngs of his masses. His ears twisted, and he felt confined, shackled, tethered to duty and enigmas, one more ghost dusting the fringes of the World’s Edge, lost and forsaken, forever destined to be one of its forgotten refugees. Then his eyes fell upon the leather strap around Mauja, and he said nothing – nothing at all about how it looked eerily familiar, how it once belonged to their favorite Doctor, and the forbidding creature took his time with spelling out any more secrets. Guarded again, uncertain and calculating, arching a brow as the frosted Lord simply uttered a glimpse, a phrase, tucked back into nothingness.
 
Was this how it was to be then: more brooding, more brewing, and naught passing between them but the time of day?
 
Then more things seemed to fall apart and unravel, and his smile faded away, softer and softer still until it no longer existed, mayhem and rune sparking over the dust of their years apart. I’m sorry I never came to see you.
 
In his cold, blackened, misshapen heart, the beast, the Reaper, knew hardly anyone wanted to come see him.
 
He was revolting and brutal, menacing and ferocious, cursed and stoked and consigned to oblivion; too foreboding, too malicious, too inspired by sedition and upheaval to be much more than a weapon. Maybe he didn’t want to see them either – because they saw his flaws and they realized he was just a piece of death and destruction, no matter how much he tied himself into their frozen lands and bled over and over again for a kingdom that often didn’t want anything to do with him. They glanced and stared at his devilish sway, they adhered to his command, and they loathed behind glaciers and iron walls.
 
Had Mauja been that way too? He wondered briefly, then pushed it aside; all recherché and defiance again, bolstering his harsh malevolence to the surface so the blunt chords didn’t strangle, didn’t choke, didn’t define him for his outcast measures – but for his strength, for his determination. The cold slate of his eyes lowered, and jaw slackened, however, for he wouldn’t allow Mauja to take the full blame. His mouth carved a feral sentiment, a blunt, keen truth.  “I did not come to find you either.” But he hadn’t known where the beast ever was – and so plunged on, sometimes alone, sometimes isolated, sometimes no more than a forbidding, unattainable, living, breathing sword. Then his stare adjusted back upon the spotted stag, remembered the years of being under his command, of reigning as soldier and General, stabbing and lacerating and hiding from diplomacy, carving his atrocious revolution and abominable vehemence: terror, horror, and devilish oeuvres. Thereafter, he was uncertain of what else to say, where to go, how to flicker over their dictated charts; yearning to look over at his son, at the Mender, for advice on how to mend fractured moments and splintered years. His heart felt heavy, burdened, cracked, and dismayed, because this wasn’t how it was meant to be.  “But I am here now.” Slowly, the smile reappeared, very faint, very finite, gathering behind detached ruminations and stitching over old, sadistic wounds.  “Are you well?”