Callous and chilling, the meticulous scythe studied the youth, relished the sight, the distorted features of intimidation pressed and clustered over the lad’s face, the structure of a body subdued, persecuted, bending to the reality of his terrorizing onslaught and agonizing fixture, persistent, pervasive, permeating precision and prowess. He’d met many cowards, enjoyed the edge of their sanity, their mania, their tangible trepidation and anxiety, the satisfaction of their broken reveries. He savored fear and rewarded bravery, became witness to the courage and valor sparking upon youth, the bold endeavors of shirking a constant, persecuting flame, dominant and superior, consuming arches, thresholds and corridors, absorbing the finely wrought decadence of each corporeal empire. Sharp, caustic, brutal and barbaric, an omnipresent severity and savagery balancing the weight of winter upon his shoulders, the gravity and graves of nefarious tombs, the slashing, merciless knife unwinding from sinister seams. His piercing eyes slid upon each rogue motion the colt constructed, molding his audacious heartstrings into formulated motions, into touching the earth he’d eternally damned. The Reaper made no movement, stiff, unyielding, dark, stone statue in the midst of haunting dawns and twisting enigmas, prospering no revelations, offering and bestowing no indulgences, no formulated welcomes, no enveloping gratitude. A solid, resolute, relentless and tenacious carving on the horizon, raised for the deadly armaments of the devil’s Tartarean gifts and vices, sins and iniquities, vicious guile, imperial reticence. If the child dared to reach for demise, Deimos was merciless, cruel, vile enough to allow him one last stroke of the living, before quaking, trembling, shivering and shuddering, grasping for breath, gasping for serenity, and was nearly tempted to extend his enchantments, bestow the art of his terror, the laureate’s final monody. But the other beast quivered, limbs wobbling, quivering, and advanced no further; the Reaper still did naught but study, listen, capture the breadth of speech, the alterations of language. Carnesîr, foreign and indistinct, ruffling no memories of specific heritages or bloodlines. Belonging to nothing, a nameless figure wandering amongst the vast wilderness, travailing upon this primrose path. The calculating demon pondered many prompts and queries, postured none across his lips: What ushered the child into these frozen doldrums, into these chaotic, cretin exploits? Or was he seemingly unaware of their strife, of their malice, of their menace? Did he comb the land for approval, for purpose, and if so, would damnation be sparked and incensed from the satanic grasp of their infidel sovereignty?

Then he asked for a story, and Deimos had none to bestow. His brow didn’t move, his impassive face remained in the same stoic balance, not wondering, not bestowing, not holding any information but the harsh reality of his disposition. He was not a beast of contributing tales, his methods, convictions and creeds remained enigmatic, blistering, smoldering until unwound by action, eloquence in battles and blood. There was naught to impart but the sanction of his invocations, the nature of his power, the rhythm of clawing, avaricious fingers, slinking, crawling, crooning for the livelihood of divine souls. “I kill by touch.” I annihilate, I destroy, I ruin and ravage. Simple, unraveling not a single complexity, no ounce of desolation, no scars of forlorn enmities, so the child could put it in his storybooks: the stained, tainted meeting of the Reaper, death and persecution, abhorrence and solitude, contempt and ferocity. Only thereafter did he honor the creature with another query, to advance, to speculate, to place the youth into proper alignment, where he’d grow, where’d he flourish, invoke mayhem and bedlam in the name of their glacial walls. “What do you seek here?” Maelstroms, chaos, anarchy, the sundering of fools, the rendering of superiority – or was there too much peace in his soul, too much weariness in his motivations?