Death wandered, from cave to cavern, from catacomb to crypt, from mountain to summit. He stopped nowhere in particular, sought no one, and admonished nothing. He simply existed on the parallels of ice and wind, surveying his kingdom with diligence because it was the only thing he could do from dawn to dusk, breathing in duty while everyone kept themselves at bay. A King who didn’t want to sit on his throne, he gave bestowals of savagery and brutality, anointing the wailing winds and the howling peaks with desecration and ruin; a living, breathing sword, a tangible weapon. Like the cliffs, he bore naught and no one, crossing over lines of rime and desolation, carving out more depths of isolation for his soul. He was the perfect depiction, sculpture, essence, image, and entity of starkness, where the bleak, deserted fiends were laid across channels and panels of naught. The Reaper simply didn’t want to see anyone, listen to anyone, or call to anyone – he was disgusted with the realm, disgusted with his brethren, and disgusted with himself.
 
His attention was only severed from mutinous calculations by a stirring near the border; comprehending the broken, whittling layers of the Sentinels and their inability to conquer threats, he edged closer, severe and treacherous, looming and diabolical. For the merest of moments, the beast, the heathen, the despicable, molten cretin, was set on annihilation (and how brilliant it would have been, to set his rapier into the belly of an enemy again).
 
Instead, as his piercing, puncturing gaze settled upon the gathering, he only noted those of his own land. Immediately, he thought to draw away, haunt the shadows again, trace the foundations of his realm one more time and see if he could manage a thought, a nuance, that didn’t set him off into contempt or wrath. Curiosity plagued him further, however, as two bright specks hastened against the ivory backdrop (like stars he thought, then sneered at himself for such a ridiculous notion – because not once had he ever glanced at the constellations, at the heavens, since his father’s death), unknown, foreign, tiny, small, infantile. He watched as the golden Thief grew closer to what could only be their General, and the children, with wings and feathers (his daggers had advanced, unknowingly tracing him further into the midst), danced along the realm as if they owned it, as if it were theirs.
 
The fiend, the devil, the Reaper didn’t invoke destruction in their wake. He merely watched, surveyed, from yards away, a figment of darkness and ferocity. Machinations ran through his skull (the hows, the whys, the whens), but nothing more came from their circling, scavenging, or haunting presence. It was just a bare bones of acceptance, curling and coiling its way through his chest, of worlds so far gone, so lost, and plagues no longer plucking out the stained strands of empires. The poison simply seemed gone. The Lord nodded his head briefly to each, and uttered a single vocal to the General, more than he’d spoke to anyone in his herd in ages (besides Johnny – and even that had been a pathetic attempt). “Congratulations,” he spoke into the wilderness, then shifted, intending to be gone from their sight again; a ghost, a wraith, a phantom of the abyss.