Curiosity was one of his stronger virtues (if he had many at all). It bent him in different avenues, in scrutinizing corridors, in long, slithering wakes of labyrinths, mysteries, and quandaries – lending him knowledge through examinations and precise, meticulous schemes. The Reaper was known for calculations, for Machiavellian tendencies, for a layer of coldness creeping over his bones and his thoughts, until the weight of apathy seemed the only thing tilting and turning his crown; but it was always interest first. He yearned to know and why things occurred, how to prevent or ensure it happened again, where he could pluck a particular strain and watch the world vibrate, reverberate, and collapse from the singular barb. He longed to expose weaknesses enemies had managed to display; he enjoyed crafting the measures of exploitation, of vengeance, of revenge. He craved the foundation of strength and power, he desired the taste, the relish, of bases, towers, and pyramids; how he could ensure his empire never fell again. He lived and breathed as a sword, as destruction, as a maneuvering weapon, but even a blade forged in death had to have other merits, credentials, and abilities – his aloofness, his forsaken, isolated mind, remained eternally shifted towards artful, cunning, wily means.
 
The Lord had known naught of the Riptide Isles when he’d first arrived – but he’d been driven to distraction by violence, by bloodshed, by foreign entrails and fallen gods. When he’d challenged Gull, he’d simply paid attention to the sand beneath his daggers and the hot, sticky climate, and his mind had once again been warped by vehemence and destruction. The pattern wasn’t evident along the evening squall, however, as he wandered down from his frozen hilltops and his illustrious, chilling winds for a chance, an opportunity, at digging through more than just dunes and currents. The beast, the demon, the infidel, no matter how deeply entrenched into the snow and mountains, had always been enticed by water, by rain, by the titanic emblem of the sea and Poseidon’s unearthly wake.
 
Even as he stood amongst the shoal and surf, it was nothing like any land he’d seen before. The Moonlit Tides had been soft and ambient, luminescent and cordial, an open invitation to a young, wild, untamed little colt and his kin, matching stride for stride in their distaste for the rest of the world. When he’d grown, when he’d wandered, down amongst the rocky, cliff ramparts of the Edge, there’d only been rebellious coast and threatening, looming treachery. As a wayfaring blade striking out against the Endless Blue, he’d found fire and ghosts, he’d found his daughter forging a future empire, he’d sensed a part of Huyana drifting along the shells and gulls; but here, here in this strange, unpredictable world, he felt naught. There were jagged isles scattered amongst the darkness, there were giant fronds and plumes intertwining their way along the coast, and there were bones of deities tied and tethered to the land in which they’d perished by mortal hands, claws, and knives.
 
And still, Deimos’ intrigue wasn’t sated. He clung to the nestled shadows, to the overbearing gloom, to the nocturnal sway of nefarious predators and jungle entities, staring into the abyss, and wondering just what levels of potency it contained – how he could use it, wield it, for the sake of the Basin.

[Open to anyone! ^_^]

The Stygian silence laid strung over the boughs of palms and the cursed slant of nettles; he kept his eyes narrowed, suspicious, predatory, unwinding past the crashing coast and the vigilant winds. He thought, he perceived, other vultures and rapacious wards lurked within the midnight oils, tied and knotted and gnarled together with their curled, coiled claws and their indignant, vehement sentiments – so he strayed, like another monster in the midst, wondering what sorts of demons lingered in balms and palms. Iniquity and intrigue were blended amidst his infernal, feral, archaic crown, travesties and treacheries, slinking and writhing, wraiths, phantoms, ghouls, and ghosts of a long-lasting tradition, down to the lion tassels of his tail and the cloven marks of his feet. The Reaper, all disaster, all ruin, all desecration and devastation, stayed in the curves of evening enigmas and dusky hollows, one more figment of doom and gloom and damnation. He would have liked to draw and quarter the inept fools sketched on the outlines of the distant plains, he would have liked to shatter the grounds he wandered upon, he would have liked to wreck everything laid out before him for the Basin, for the feuds not yet shed and the battles long since waged. Malicious and foul, nefarious and sinister, he hoped to encounter nightmares and terrors, yearning to ensnare the particles of war, the miscreants of his generation, of his creed, of his terrible, abhorrent regime…

But something shifted, out of line, out of range, flickering on edges and wings, plumes and feathers, and the sinister wake of his stare reached from the shadows and towards the approaching figure. The weight of his gaze, overwhelming and barbaric, brutal and ruthless, as if he’d been carved from the furthest reaches of Hell and had just returned home from its extended, mutinous siege, settled upon the unfamiliar femme – narrowed eyes first glimpsing over the folded quills, on the tufts of smoke blooming from her mouth. Not one of his monsters, perhaps, but unfamiliar all the same. He wasn’t sure what to do with her appearance or presence; his stare grew entirely dispassionate and apathetic, intending to yield to the threatening abyss of the rough, tidal waves or back into the jungle folds. Had she not spoken, he may have retreated further in his nonchalant, reticent passions, gone by the merciless threads of veiled horrors and menacing, foreboding calculations. But instead, her words puffed, like embers, like blooms of incense, because that damned, nestled bundle of intrigue scaled along his brow, arched it out of alignment, out of soulless disregard, so much that his lips parted on a layer of intuition and interest. “Who?” How many more infidels reached across catacombs and tombs? Or how many more were likened in his same stead (and he knew – he knew how his son traveled far and wide, how he embodied more spirit and ebullience than the Lord could ever hope to obtain; did he entangle himself with strange presences even now? Young ladies who breathed smoke in the dead of night?)?

Another emerged, and he grew ever more taut, defiant, fueled to embark back into the threatening channels and funnels of night, the corridors of hell, to merely be left alone with his brooding, antagonistic wiles. He didn’t know who this one was either – but their was a lurking familiarity held and lilting, something or someone he couldn’t quite place, couldn’t quite reach, but should’ve, should’ve known, and that too was an avid frustration. Perhaps they were to be the monsters of the evening, hidden, serpent sirens, carving his weaknesses out one by one until they laid bare at their feet.

He wanted to spin them all away with silence, with hushed, murky disquiet, with obvious, overbearing intimidation. But something flickered against his mind, acerbic, calculating, Machiavellian in taste, and he merely nodded to both, as if he were not the sword of death and damnation, as if they were not walking, waiting spells. “Where are you from?” He questioned both – because if they knew so much of him, then it was only fair to drag information from them.

The Reaper had always granted his children endless freedom. They’d be permitted to wander where their hearts and souls desired, they’d been allowed to travel the world and dictate their own fates. Bestowing this could bring them fortune or failure, further encompassing and emboldening their pursuits, their dedications, without him forcing it upon their wild, untamed nuances and regimes. He’d never fixated them with his bridges and mass of hate, of wrath, of villainy – and simply because he’d been taught to indulge in danger, in disaster, in ruin, in creeds and oaths, did not mean his son or daughter needed to either. They would collect and gather their own enemies, their own allies, their own friends and companions (surely more than he’d ever snag and ensnare), without his overbearing calculations and overwhelming presence; but it was slightly amusing to see his child had made an impression with a Pegasus, with a Captain of the Edge, with a maiden who could fly and stab and curl smoke from her mouth. He’d say nothing of meeting her to Erebos, keep it tucked away as a piece of mirth under the all the queries and speculations, all the chiseled foundations of acrimony and distaste (because what drew his son to her, how, why?). The notion sparked a small chuckle from his throat, easing along in a finite smile, likely looking more like his child than ever (for the boy seemed capable of always grinning, just like his mother). “Then you have met my son.” The beast had a thought, now fully distracted from his pursuits, from his hunts, from his depths into the infernal darkness, to explore about what his child had been up to in the woods and along the isles, and parted his mouth to inquire further, but then the other mare (the one who was familiar, but not, all at once; a sea, a spark of contradictions) proceeded with her questions.

Are you from the Basin? He’d claim to be from nowhere else, except as a once refugee from the bitter, rancorous, broken Edge, where they’d fought for what was theirs and it’d been taken from them anyway. But she continued, before he could even begin to process what to say, delving into bits of her sister Hotaru, and the strangeness, the comprehension of her build, of her stature, made sense. The Queen had never spoken of her siblings, and he’d never done the same for her, but neither of them had openly discussed anything beyond herd matters. He was too far-gone on the icy edges of his empire, of the power, of the prestige, nettled and thorned behind their mountain summits and rising peaks, too absorbed in how they could endure, on how they could conquer, to remember and realize how many of them existed with others branching off elsewhere. As she seemed to end her series of observations and deliberations, the beast tilted his head, a mass of predatory, carnivore existence, a substance of sin and earth, a brutal, barbaric entanglement of dominion and supremacy, warriors deluge and calculating airs. “You are correct.” Oh, he was from the Basin, etched and sketched into its very foundation, chilling and sinister, savage and malicious, an unwinding, choking display of their vehemence, of their hate, of the stories and legends that’d brought them amidst the glacial chasm. He was sewn into its sails and had bled across their banners. He’d do it time and time again too: for the sake of their empire, for the sake of their compatriots, for everything and nothing. “I am its King.” And its servant, its warrior, its guardian.