She is angry.

It pulses through her veins, this sacrilegious and blasphemous rage that does not fade, vehement and poisonous, thudding in her ears and throbbing in her wizened black heart. The passion heats her step and glows in her yellow eye, dementia and rabidity, the madness of a foaming beast trapped inside a cage too small. From the ice-locked arches of the northern tundra she escapes, away from the bitter chill to the abysmal place of forgotten sanctuary, the hollow manor, the decaying shell of a once-home. Has the marsh blossomed without her tainted presence to push it back? Do the flowers, smelling of cloying sweetness, reach out from the wet earth, little hands of color reaching for the eternally dim sky, ever shrouded in a persistent cover of miserable gray clouds? And how are the unholy, living in the rotting halls; do they thrive and grow, or are they fading away, turning to wraiths who stalk the empty rooms? Will Seele welcome back the forgotten mare, a traitor, an oath-breaker, forgiving her abandonment, instead pleased to see the white-skulled face, a fellow murderer, slaughterer, killer?

Confutatis, Lady Death, Queen of Skulls, ambitious dreamer of world domination and huntress of the poor, the blind, the weak, who takes honor in killing the crippled, is returning to the swamplands on the southern lip of Helovia, seeking forgivance. Her! Oh how she has fallen, reduced to begging commoner, praying to Oblivion below that they will take her, the foreigner, so she can steal their golden crown, lead them to greatness. Her machinations, carefully forged, was obliterated, crushed and expelled, shredding paper thrown to the wind, stolen away by the golden-girl. Bitch. How carefully she had poured over her mental blueprints, connecting and teasing apart the meticulously crafted ideas, only to be torn from her incompetent hooves, for she had lost.

It was only through desperation and wild hope that she had salvaged a few last ideas, works that could be fashioned with the Asylum as her helpers. And so, greedy, vain, self-absorbed, conceited and narcissistic, she wends her meandering way, drawn to the murderers by no sense of loyalty, but of self-gain.

Before she set her hooves on the black mud and sucking bog, however, a miracle transpired. The sun began to rise. It was the morning of her twelfth day walking, and the sun peered victorious yellow, at last beating back the bruised black of the night, rising triumphantly above the ebony silhouettes of the barren trees. There came the dawn choir, the singing of the birds high and pure, their twittering chirps a fine melody for dewy-eyed does. At once, Confutatis knew, took it as a sign, cradling the hope close to her heart. It was an omen, that Confutatis would rise, and her name would be spoken softly in terror and fear, screamed and shouted, and that she would lead Helovia to their new age.

Dawn and dusk she walked, sleeping during the day, still preferring the cloak of night.

And at long last, she arrived in the weathered halls, the waters still and tepid as ever, the corpses trapped screaming within still bloated and white, putrid carcasses. Without hesitation she plunges into the cold water, bathing in the frozen wasteland of decimated bodies and butchered pieces of them, hooves stirring clouds of silt from the black bottom. Her eye glows golden in the light of the evening, the setting sun bleeding red over the fog-shrouded world, setting to fire the mist. "Seele!" She calls, her voice ringing and twisting, grating and curling. "Erisssss!"