She came for the same reason they did; hunting, searching, for familiar faces, those who might still thrive within this place of fractured light and kaleidoscopic colors, her keen gaze sweeping over grass and stream to find little and less. Ruined. The construction of an empire, swept to pieces, without a leader to unite, to lead, to glow and glitter with primed crown upon her ashen locks; and it chafes her raw, glacial fury gathering in her withered, shrivelled heart.
Failure.
It seems she is forever condemned, forever damned; swallowed, devoured, by oblivion, obscurity -- her name is sung, as a trouble-maker, succubus, vindictive harlot; but not as a ruler, not as sovereign, not with the power she so craved and desired. Agony; it surges through her oiled veins, roiling, and she crumbles, weakens, her heart burning, a fever scalding her cerebellum -- purge, she tells herself, purge yourself of weakness. Yet that is all she has become; some horrific carnation, symbol, of torment, suffering --------- her mouth sours, and her eyes roll back, and acids spits and drools and slithers from her hideous maw. Legs bend, fold, collapse beneath her, a desire to succumb to death, to annihilation, cessation; she wishes she might be devoured by her own necromancy.
It blooms upon her skin -- circles of rot, precious decay, the pain her deliverance, the agony hers to carry, the torment of which she deserves -- it rattles hoarse from her chest, the death murmur, of which she so often hears heard, a poisoned, corrupt exhale.
I am a failure.
And for the first time in memory, in the entirety of her life, a tear is shed, dampness trickling down her cheekbone, as she feels horror for the lives she has not taken, for the torture she has not carried out, how she has not cleansed Helovia nor united them beneath her black banners -- how they carry on, unknowing of the greater purpose she always sought, how they will never know the feeling of serving one as great as she should have been.
She weeps openly and in silence, her mongrel roaming far, leaving her to the precocious evil of her own thoughts.
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