The world seared and seethed behind its choking, strangling veneer, and the sculpted, satanic beast, with his impassive brow, with his hushed demeanor, stoked and finessed the quiet, hushed expanse of swallowed maelstroms. He’d been silent for too long, drenched and cloaked in refuge while chaos loomed without his presence, without his worth, without his scraping, sliding, tyrannical contempt. The realm, however, had thrown it back upon him, glided and mocked, haughty, audacious, brazen, gleaming with the avaricious mouth, the gaping hold, of plucked bedlam. Sin sang its moans, its laments, its dirges and requiems, siren wails and banshee screams, delved deep into unrelenting fathoms, offered him stones and rubble and parcels of eradication. An enticing display of iniquitous edges prospered upon lengths of shoal, of rime, of plains, until the final vestiges began to taint the brims, the folds, the outlines of his home, and he saw the emblem of enmity unravel below the tips of his sword. Minatory villainy, an infernal demolition brooding and brewing from the wiles, the devices, the shrewd calculations of a Mephistophelean composition; a chilling, sinister opus with its stanzas dedicated to corruption. Seeds of enigmatic breaches had been sown, lives forsaken, disappearances whispered, noted, a twisted, distorted haze, murky, foggy, abysmal contortions without answers, fabrications crooned, motives unknown – and the beast, the devil, the demon, had found a niche in its roosting, rooted mysteries. Through the caustic, scathing webs, the sinuous tendrils, the augured, presaged heights, were sullen snares, drifting ruses, beguiling, alluring corridors, carved, conniving subtleties, and with each ominous step, through each wicked movement, he’d settled upon a victim to press, to chase, to ravage and pillage. Amidst the decadence, the Reaper had thrown his scythe into the back of a wandering fool, etched and scorched a mark of loathing amidst rancorous hide, clawed and stole the vibrant artifices and guile of a plotting, conspiring crew. Something, somewhere, had forged insurrection against his kingdom, and he sought to unwind devastation back upon its inept shell, along its maladroit vessel, until the shambles, the remnants, of its life were mere shards, gone and taken into the dust.

The ruthless lord, the heartless king, the diabolical monarch, engraved his immorality into the ground, into the floor, into the heart of his chosen victim. The penetrating, piercing shade of his stare landed along the creature nestled in the back of their designed oubliette, the haunting shroud of his upheaval, of his supremacy, of his dominance rasping, overwhelming, condemning the hold of the well-made prison. Rage, a scintillating combination of his wrath, of his ire, of his contempt, layered and lacquered the inhospitable terrain, a rapacious fire failing to warm the walls. A strangling noose, a scorching blade, an abhorrent cutlass, pressing, lethal, toxic, and indifferent to the plight of the weakened infidel before him (for he’d tasted demise, but not the glide of slaughter, of execution), he lowered his ravenous head, whispered deleterious chords through the decibels of his feral apathy towards their captive. “I require information.” The earth had forged him a new focus, and now he only desired the words, the target, the aspirations, to bleed from the stranger’s mouth. The Basin held a fresh conviction: to scatter the lives of the ones who’d crossed it. Obliteration struck a rapturous note in the keen of his carnivorous brutality and brevity: eager, ready, to devour.