He longed to disappear. It would’ve been so easy to peel away, to saunter within shadow and sun, to trace away the foundations of time and space, to recollect old habits. The Reaper was not a man of sentiments, sorrows, and feelings - he’d spent too many hours by himself, in desolation, in isolation, and only rarely did anyone follow. He protected and sheltered, conspired and devoured, from palisades and precipices, from caverns and cliff tops, but rarely in the sanctuary of others. Through the years, he’d become separated further and further away from those surrounding and occupying his home, until their faces were mere shapeless features, blurring from one to the other, and those he’d known, those he’d cherished without telling them, thinking they understood through his actions, through his power, through the source of his ambitions, dissolved into the ice and rime - gone. He knew them all and hadn’t tried to snag and ensnare them back into their chilling shelter, into their avaricious spires, uncertain as to how or why or where he’d venture to bring them home. So he watched them go or felt their void: Mauja, Psyche, Illynx, D’art, Ulrik, Arah, even Huyana – the numbers seemed countless and ongoing, one demolished, abandoned relationship after another, just as dead, just as withered, just as decayed as the rest of his life. When they left, when they crumbled, when they poured and whittled and billowed away from him, he simply sank further, one dagger further into apathy, one hoof further into destruction. Reclusive and inscrutable, callous and impassive, no one dared to touch him, to go near him, to gaze upon him for any length of time. He was their Lord, their King, their immoral, unholy ghost, their augured tempest, their acrimonious sword and shield, but nothing else. He was as unreachable, as unattainable, as the day he’d drifted into the World’s Edge, having seen, having felt, having tasted all the glories of friendship and love, but incapable of holding on to any of them.
 
Perhaps it was pride, perhaps it was cowardice, perhaps it was shame leaving him there, beautiful and chaotic and elegiac, naught more than a rapier, naught more than a cutlass. He’d woven himself in a tethered bounty of traps, snares, and plagues, too ruthless, too decadent, too infernal and malevolent, an additional heathen molding into the horizon. No one dared approach. No one bothered to care. While he didn’t reach out for them, they didn’t reach for him. No creatures stepped outside their paths, their rubbles, their heartless, nefarious regard.
 
But gods, he was so tired of losing everyone and everything to time, or distance, or his failures, his defects, his cruel, obliterating flaws.
 
Neither strayed again. It was the same motion over and over; both could burn, churn, brew, or brood, but the result seemed inevitable. Maybe Deimos had been too late all over again, had felt the weight of loss eons after the motion, too solidified, too barbaric, too condemned on his road to hell. But there was no anger, no tactics, no misguided smirks or snickers, weaponry administered, insults tossed – just the sad finality of what had come to pass and what was meant to be. Maybe they’d always been strangers, only tied to Plagues and creeds, and somehow one of them had slipped and the promises, the oaths, the assurances had been broken; Deimos didn’t know if it had been him or Ulrik. He presumed it’d been the former, a harbinger of destruction and terror, a beacon of immorality instead of solace, a creature who only knew how to consume, swallow, and devour pieces strewn amongst his path.
 
Yet, his voice stretched out into the hollow, into the cracks and crags of the meadow, striving and plucking and diving deep into the veneer of his reticent features, extending, perhaps for the first time, his alms out to someone else. He just wished he’d done it sooner. “Only if you did not want it.” He could’ve saved the metal for the prison, in dire need of rebuilding, but it would’ve just become another item in a long list of mistakes. He’d made enough of those for a lifetime, and was doomed for more, but he didn’t want these intricate, tense moments to be one of them.
 
The question of why hung in the air; he could sense it scraping over his hide, down through his soul, up through his skull, and it echoed, surrounding, blasting, like a raucous din. So he answered, staring at the taller stallion, at the Engineer who’d manifested his power into weapons and designs, crafts and gears, figments and fragments meant to guard them. “I am tired of watching things collapse. Your sentinels deserved more.” So did you. Perhaps they all deserved more than what they’d been given in life – but the personification of the guards, but the reminder of Ulrik’s passion and skills coming into focus every day, solidified how much he’d been, how much he’d done, how much had been taken for granted. Still scrutinizing, still studying, he plucked one more sentiment of arrogance, of conceit, and allowed it to slide away from him, back into the hills and the soil, ghosting over the edges of the Engineer’s ears. “I am sorry you left.” It come across as more than a whisper but less than a shout, a saddening declaration sparked and incensed with rue and rancor and regret; leading down more trails, more ruin, more rubble – then he looked away, off into the trees, off into the forest, apprehensive of what it would all mean thereafter. “Let me know if you require assistance.”