Don't forget your purpose as a Death hunter.

He hardly counted himself as a Death hunter. No one had ever asked him if he wanted to join the organization, he had sworn no oaths and made no promises ( and like it would have mattered one iota if he had, words were traps for the foolish ). Death division had given him nothing but threats and often actions against his life, and though he did not hold grudges in the same way other people might have he had a sense of inherent balance, they had made attempts against his life and he would ultimately do the same unto them.

He enjoyed Wednesdays, Wednesday was the day when he received messages from America. He took his time ( because time was not an object here in this world of sand and sky ) and savored each line as if it was possible to sift her wonderful emotions from each individual letter, every letter a gesture of those fingers, those hands, the nails which had bitten into his skin and had reached out across the void for just an instant that he might feel.

She called him broken, said that he wasn't a person. He certainly wasn't a person in the sense that other fallible animals were, but he was not broken, he was superior in every single way. It was disappointing to him that she did not understand this simple and obvious fact, but she was of course clouded by her own flaws, the things she clung to that one day he would systematically burn away, flaying off layers of attachments to stupid things until the only consistent thing in her life was him.

When she asked if he believed in heaven he smiled because it felt like it aligned with the pleasure the question gave him. He found the very concept of heaven strange, the idea that one should strive for a more pleasurable life after the present one was difficult to reconcile when pleasure, true pleasure was an unknown quantity.

She said all that was left for him to get more broken, she had no idea that she really meant that he would become wiser and more dangerous. As a child he had been almost broken, unaware of how to cope with the gifts he was given, and had it not been for his stunning intellect he might never have trancended from that larval stage, after all so few people did. But from here on out he would only grow, only learn.

The horsemen had offered him more than Deus ever had, and he did not fear the dangers, he did not fear betrayal at their hands nor that they were attempting to trick him. Tricks were irrelevant when the individual involved had no serious attachment to the reward that was bait and switched. Youth was better than nothing by only the merest margin, but that was enough to make their offer superior to the death that Deus offered.

Dear sweet America spoke of his opportunistic nature as if it was a weakness, and it was enjoyable to watch. She was an opportunist herself, otherwise she would not have fallen into his bed, gathered her basement nation and her small harem of men who did not know better to fall over themselves obeying her whims. He had no doubt the traits she projected onto him were traits she found acceptable in herself.

Her words uplifted his mood as much as it was possible to do so and calling his new pet ( who incidentally Butch loathed, jealousy he surmised ) to go for a walk into the dunes. They wandered for a time, scouting their position, unafraid and learning gradually how to return to camp without getting lost.

The locusts swarmed around them in a vast and awful cloud, but neither Lawrence nor his companion flinched or responded, and as fast as they'd arrived they left. There was no harvest reaped upon barren ground.