The monster always looked for fellow heathens, those that gathered amongst the licentious creeds, the bold, the fierce, the enlightened brows of tainted anarchy, of iniquitous furor and fervor. Cold, arduous passions settled over stone and iron, distinctions fired and fueled by the veils, the hot oils, of Stygian fuses kindled, incensed to ignite. Heartless, ruthless, invoked and yearned by the threads of relentless entropy, the silent, the deadly, the ravaging and pillaging, the scores of life unsettled and twisted by unholy, ravenous raptures, and, oh, he’d whisper his damned secrets to their captured ears, he’d distort them into the shadows, he’d corrupt and condemn until their virtues were annihilated and all the could taste, all they could touch, all they could divine were the bodies that fell from their infernal, infidel savor, flavor. Their castle walls relished the lacerations of its savage merchants, of its intrepid, blackguard protectors, prospering sanctuary from their bestial, brutal barbarity. Drowning, smothered and suffocated, in the entity of the primordial, the arcane, the reticent cutlass, the insouciant, puncturing, piercing vehemence and violence, his eyes glanced back over to the boy and slid the enigmatic pieces into shape, the cruel, heathenous machinations toying over the chilling void, the glacial empire. The mare was altogether ignored for the runes placed before him, the chiseled, forged child brandished by hell and turning his hands over to the wicked, to the loathsome, to the diabolical and nefarious, eager to be further tarnished, awaiting the day of glory christened and anointed along his scarred features. The rumble of his composed words, harsh, brutal, deep intonations rumbled with acceptance, with the pernicious promise of persecution, the horror, the hallowed, hollowed bits of immorality, of decadence, of all the rich dissolution laying in the chambers of their callous existence. “You may join, Varath.” Then, just as silent as he’d arrived, he slunk away, sliding, bewitching, alluring, death’s hushed warrior, the unreachable, the untouchable, allowing compliance, bestowing confirmation – and the colt could follow, into the atrocious gallows, into the immoral, odious hallways, just as beguiled and tempted by the vicious, by the unscrupulous.