He stared, statuesque immortality begging and pleading for a chance, for an opportunity, to lay waste in feral decadence, in smoldering havoc, in Stygian mayhem, for one of his own. It’d been so long since he’d roamed animosity and acrimony, since he’d scorched and smoldered, simmered and emboldened, turned his sinful credence and his wretched, vile dissonance upon an enemy; sliding swords into hearts, into minds, into souls. She’d mentioned demons, and he thought of plagues, pestilence, the mordant embrace of his Reaper scythe slashing through their innards and entrails until they were nothing in his deadly elegance, in his scathing, seething rapture. But her words cut along the dagger insights and the predatory madness, because they were of the mind and nothing he could rip, tear, and lacerate for her. It would have to be on her own – a test of strength, a guidance of will, a fiber of strength and endurance through Machiavellian concoctions and invocations. The King wasn’t disappointed by these notions (one day he’d have his nefarious prose again; write, sculpt, and orchestrate the symphonies of devastation), and still proffered his words, his sagacity, his wisdom for the invisible misgivings surrounding her skull. “We always have something haunting us.” He made no inclusion on what carved its way through him, but everyone already knew of his Tartarean decadence, menacing opulence, his vile, heathenous insurrection, the din of sedition rolling between his muscles and polished in his lungs, in his bones, in his craft. “It is how you conquer it that determines your character.” Or how you live with it, he’d wanted to say, but never bothered to give voice to the writhing brutality coiled and curled along him; the deadly enchantments had been a part of him since he was a year old, breathing ferocity, unholy, carnivore sentiments, perennial rapier toils and tribulations, until he finally gave in, until he finally sank into the hollowed bits of hell still pervading his predilections. Maybe Rhiannon was stronger than him, and would never succumb to what ailed her, would never give word to fiends that they’d triumphed over her (because they’d dragged him down, down, down ages, decades, lifetimes ago, and he’d been weak to their deplorable treacheries ever since).
 
The King waited in silence thereafter, dragged and drug into his macabre chords, into his audacious meld and mold, gaze shifting between ice and stripes, witnessing her as she tumbled and rose from the vocals he’d proffered. Her response, when it’d finally emerged from her crooked grin and self-loathing (he wanted to say something to that expression too, but he couldn’t surmount what, why, or how), echoed along his skull and surrounded his ears – and he wished everyone in the land could’ve uttered the refrain, pitch for pitch, line for line, so the realm, the empire, the kingdom, didn’t feel so listless. There is nowhere else I wish to be. He nodded in agreement, and couldn’t offer anything more. The statement said more than he’d ever be able to.
 
Her ties to a rank were another frustrating proposition for her – and he understood that notion quite well too. The monster had longed for days of nothing but the battlefield, all art, all poetry, all finesse driven from savagery and wreckage, havoc and chaos, mayhem and bedlam, especially now, when his moments were made from glacial indifference and chilling politics, driving the ruthlessness in his pariah indignation to an incensed clarity. “Then what do you wish to do?” He queried from his remorseless shell, from his features that had begun to break, whittle away into an infernal bliss; because one iniquitous soul comprehended another, and he thought he knew where the phrases where launching, down into raptorial directions and arcane defiance – allowing them to be themselves for those few, ferocious moments.