"Numb Crucifixion and Putrefaction of Legend"

Being known as the most dangerous individual in the Old West certainly changed one's mindset after a while.

But it wasn't all the certain kind of twisted, blackened sensibility or automatic recognition that a child's eyes snapped to in their monochromatic dream clouds of what they thought fame meant. It wasn't the glamorous beauty of being known, nor was it the ring of a screaming audience, yelling and climbing over one another with the toxic tossing of sharks amongst the waves in which they thrived in the acidic sodium of a soul's ocean. No, the only remaining beauty of being a legend - of being known, of being applauded, of being famous - was the satisfaction of knowing that you only had to be alive for a moment of spotlight before sinking back into the abyss of the guilt you've overcome to get there in the first place.

Naturally, he knew this better than any of the teary-eyed bitches that seemed so succumbed with fame's eternally-passing glance. Even now, as he slid across the ever-changing sands of the Mojave, dull eyes staring ahead without any of the vigor he had craved so desperately…he knew deep within his being that he was fading.

His scales were losing their sheen, now matching the sand they rubbed roughly against, colours bleeding dry into the wind only to be swept away in a gust towards the horizon. His muscles and bones, once considered to be the craft of the devil himself, ached with a spent routine, the hat resting on his crown was dusty, more grey than striking black, torn and gnawed by time's effortless rounds at the brim…even the metal barrels fastened as a redeemed rattler at the end of his form clinked loudly together with loose sounds, hitting one another and scraping together with the gradient of rust: it pained every one of his sensitive webbings of nerves to the point of numbness every time he even thought about shifting in position.

The orange glow of the sun was sinking, already drowned and dying beneath the distant black hills of the Mojave. The dusted python's chest shuddered with a hissing sigh, throat rippling beneath a thinning layer of scale to accommodate the slipping of a black tongue from betwixt his lips. Red, orange, yellow fiery eyes turned themselves to the fading clouds of the sky, drawn together each by a single pencil-thin line of pupil.

Fame wasn't beautiful for this reptilian Grimm Reaper. It wasn't shining with the glitter of fibber's gold, nor was it alive with the breath of willpower keeping its scarred, sacred heart pulsing. His moment of the nonexistent spotlight was ebbing away into nothing, as it did with every gunslinger and posse in this God forbidden ghost desert.

Starving darkness snuffed out the only glint in Jake's eye that remained The spotlight was gone for this old legend.

Now the only thing the Grimm Reaper had left on his regime was to fall into the pit of guises and agony that he had instilled in place of his soul…all the way down he would fall, the godlike flames of Hell licking at his dusty scales and torn brim and rusty rattles and dull eyes until all that would be left was the whisper of a name that was nothing but a faded old legend.