He lived in ambient chill, a scythe along the sinister coils of sedition, calamity, and insurrection, crooning intimidation, treachery, bloodshed, and mayhem. The King was a piece of the mountains, a fragment given life, given death, given to destruction, devastation, and diabolical corruption. Had he not been born outside Helovian walls, allowed to thrive along a glimmering shade of moonlit waves, one might even think he’d been sculpted from one of the immoral glaciers or sculpted from a tower of discordant marble. A breathing maelstrom, a thriving condemnation, he scaled and scalded the walls of his sovereign with an iron blade and a blackened, nefarious heart – allowing it to feel, to contort, to coil only for those sheltered along his confines. The Tartarean masterpiece, the Machiavellian opus, moved and maneuvered as a glacial behemoth, covered in shadows, veiled in nonchalance, in splinters and shackles of complete reticence, virile and malicious, contorting and ravaging, calling to wreckage, to havoc, as the spirals of winter descended upon them. The demon might have yielded to nothing, not to heaven, not to hell, not to purgatory, had his curious mind not been dipped and scalded by surging iniquity, by daring intrigue, by brutal, searing interest. Through the thickened parcels and piles of snow, the Lord had caught an unfamiliar scent (predatory? Feline?), ensnared its whims, mercurial efforts, capricious pursuits along the borders, and set about catching, snatching, and clawing carnivore inclinations.
 
Did something rummage at his borders, yearning to glimpse, hoping to strike? Did someone think they could wander into their midst, calculate, devastate?
 
The narrowed, piercing, puncturing weight of his gaze settled along the apparition standing on their doorstep, regarding the wraith, the figure, with a brooding, vile examination. While both frames didn’t hint at threats, at mercenary tactics, there was something lurking, lingering, beyond the depths of this silent meeting – as if he’d seen the stranger, or his companion, before – but naught came to mind, no meaning maintained. The infidel was sharp and shrewd, would’ve recalled the ivory gaze (was he blind?) or the vicious slight of the tiger (and why could he only catch the cat’s scent?). The questions and queries immersed in his mind kept a taut, tight leash on his stature, features rekindled in the acrimonious fervor of distance and apathy; sculpted blackguard, heathenous baron, bestial titan. The length of his gaze settled upon the stranger while he afforded and proffered brief, unwinding vocals. “Deimos, Lord of the Basin.” He sliced the air with a short, curt nod, and extended his voice once more. “Who are you? What do you seek here?” There was a tangled mystery, a tethered enigma, slinking amidst the nefarious snares and disastrous coils; and he’d find it, pluck it out, before the day was done – his memories coaxed, vibrant and sure, and one measure of intrigue managed to saunter from beyond his composure and control; stare narrowing, reeling for answers. “You advised Psyche once…” His voice trailed off, tempted by recollections – a meeting after Sinuhe and Africa had ventured into their midst, after they’d been bludgeoned, beaten, and destroyed. Now, years and seasons later, the strange thing had returned?

  The wicked, heinous King stared, watched, examined with such a piercing scrutiny that the odd change from perfection to ruin did not go unnoticed. He’d been a part of this chilling, unholy world for too long to not calculate and examine all angles and possibilities, all shackles and tethers, all strange, unwinding circumstances. But, his eyes didn’t widen, his features didn’t alter, and he gave no claim of noticing anything in particular – stone and marble, iron and sword, slate and rubble, the epitome of control and composure. Meanwhile, his mind curled and coiled, a predacious lunge, a vicious, chaotic swing, pondering over the nature of a changeling in the midst of his borders (a monster, a demon, a morphing delusion?). When naught was said, when there was no explanation unfurled into the cold, frigid void, the Reaper’s skull yearned to pry and require answers, but something else deterred and distracted him from the phantasmal inquisition.
 
The Lord had been the one to bring up Psyche, but the notion continued, fixating on crowns and fiends, pernicious designs, scarred armaments and legacies tarnished by murder and mayhem. He’d never quite found a way to make up for all the dastardly, treacherous sways he’d dishonored the preceding Queen – standing over her fallen form before Mauja made her a pyre wasn’t atonement. She’d been laid to waste more than once, consigned to oblivion, legend, and disaster, and he hadn’t assisted her out of the pit along the way. Perhaps, when they were both ghosts, both wraiths, both floating, withering ethereal beasts, only spun from stories or myths, he’d offer his apologies, his unholy garb, his vicious shield again. He’d once been her sword, the General, stalking and destroying, full of convictions and violence and vehemence, deployed when she saw fit, when she required; before they lost again and everything came toppling down. His vocals, dark and piercing, blunt and keen, unraveled along the depths of their horizon, touching upon the whisper of death and the sinuous, unwinding ways in which their whims had cast them aloft or aside. “The DarkEmpress has died.” He didn’t dishonor her with the ways in which she’d been slain. He didn’t claim how she’d met her end. He didn’t explain that the Moon Goddess bewitched the sand Lord into massacring her, who used to be so strong, so vile, so abhorrent, and countless others, simply because she could. He wouldn’t tarnish the cold-blooded moments left behind.
 
Deimos’ thoughts reeled elsewhere, pinpointing upon this fiend here and now – because Psyche was no longer here, because the asp, the snake, no longer had her reign – and what did this Prometheus wish, crave, or yearn to do? Continue Psyche’s pursuits? Drive his sword through the chests of the weak? Of the inept? Of the foolish? Massacre the ignorant? Prey upon the masses?
 
The sovereign stared at the fellow infidel, hollowed and hallowed, unrelenting and vicious, because he still carried the vigilant, smoldering, seething, vehemence amidst his nefarious soul, his pernicious, licentious design, his Lucifer abyss; and if there were still more, still some, asking for the opportunity, the chance, to show the world what the Basin was truly capable of, he’d grant them their fortitude, their might, and their acceptance. But there were still things mired in between, still coils and threads, still unholy throngs crooning to their honored gallows; he spun another inquiry, just as eldritch and colossal as before. “How do you intend to serve the Basin?”

  What a shame, the strange beast courted, and the Reaper couldn’t help but agree.
 
What a shame the DarkEmpress had wasted away outside their walls. What a shame she was dispatched so quickly, so easily without her soldiers, without her compatriots, alone and tarnished, tainted and ruined, a fading legend. What a shame hardly anyone around the Basin remembered, recalled, or had even known her. What a shame that history rarely spilled from their lips, what a shame Deimos, too nonchalant, too fixated, too god damn reticent never went to see her, find her, and bring her back to where she belonged.
 
His glare swept over the horizon for the barest, briefest of moments, along the raw walls and the intertwining limbs of peaks and valleys; because she’d brought them there, heralded them all from the wretched failure and loss (and then, seasons later, endured a loss herself and threw her broken crown at the Engineer’s feet – and he’d absolutely nothing to stop her). He’d been too chilling then, to focused on their bitter defeat to see beyond the measures of success and triumph; because where he’d excelled, she’d faltered and stumbled, and Ulrik had found his niche to toss it back at her – it’d gone so wretchedly wrong.
 
Deimos didn’t see her again until she was dead.
 
None of these sentiments ghosted from his mouth. None of them were transparent or tangible. They merely whispered along his skull as one of the many regrets and rues layered between Machiavellian tendencies, cold-blooded calculations, and ruthless, conniving plots. They layered themselves in between mercy and forgiveness, usually cluttered and forgotten amongst the villainous throngs pulsing and unwinding their way through his motions, his mind, his soul.
 
The stare was riveted back to the other an instant later, just as soulless, just as composed. He listened as the foreigner heralded over what they needed, then utterly barreled, harpooned into Deimos’s abilities.
 
The infidel had the strange urge to laugh. It nearly ricocheted through his throat – because this creature, this cretin, who hadn’t been there in years deigned to find fault with his rule, wanted to hear boastings, yearned to hear pledges of how the Reaper was either a master of his sovereign, of his empire, or if he’d failed just as Psyche eventually had. Oh, he could likely transcribe a whirlwind of strategies and foils that had fallen at his feet, at the defects and blustered and flaws in his design. He could herald a list of moments he’d concocted in feral acrimony, in twisted, sickening triumph.
 
But the Lucifer sculpture was not a cretin to brag – he was a man of action, of deeds and endeavors, of efforts and conduct. He would not stand there wiling away the hours and characterize the very minutia of his throne. He would not launch into tirades, spells, and concoctions of his brilliance (if there was any to be had). He would not spin the season away gesturing of exploits and prowess, bitterness and defeat. The Lord of the mountains would permit this Prometheus to view the world as it was: whether weak and futile, or determined and enduring. His lips carved a calm, indifferent haze, head gesturing towards the eternal mountains, the pernicious summits. “You will have to see for yourself.”
 
If he was to be condemned by someone who hadn’t even existed in their realm, then so be it.
 
And then he offered his counsel. A part of the beast wanted to spurn, to rebuff, the notion entirely. What and how could the infidel preside in such a position when he hadn’t even lived amidst the snow, the ice, in such a time? How could he rise to a formidable position by doing nothing - simply wandering in as the wind blew his sails?
 
Then, there was the other portion of the King who knew his flaws were grand and barbed, who knew where he failed and stumbled along, who knew what it was like to falter at every turn because he lacked something all good leaders held.
 
So he roamed in the middle, stare fixated on the bold character before him. “We are in need of spies, scholars, soldiers, and crafters.” He tilted his head, predacious and raptorial, a glorified weapon in the hands of the mountains. “If you prove successful in these ranks, perhaps you may grant us counsel again.” They all had to demonstrate their capabilities. If he questioned Deimos of his own, then surely, Deimos could question his.