Insurrection lanced and laced upon his own; a crushing, gnarling aperture gnawed at his contemptuous soul, and he granted the hushed, solidified promise of a patriot doomed to vengeance. Immoral and iniquitous, the fuel layered upon the fire bolstered the consuming inferno of his loathing, incited, kindled, rankled the height of its conflagration until he could feel it nestle, croon, murmur, bark in his veins, screech and scream within his chest. It clawed and scraped, longed and yearned for ripped sinew, for peeled-away bones bleached by the wayward sun, for muscles torn and flayed, for heads separated from their infernal carcasses, left to wither, decay, beneath the lacquer of their abhorrence. Demolition, extermination, slaughter, massacres, echoed vicious, virile croons across his undulating core, the sinner’s great gift heightened in the scrawl of seditious splendor, ominous obliteration. They, this Regime, dared to efface and puncture the livelihood of his members, and he wouldn’t rest until he watched their lives turned and plucked, punctured and pierced, corrupted and devoured by the rise of their enmity, the score of their antipathy, their Tartarean guile and demonic art. The seething trace of his meticulous, malevolent might, the plundering, the pillaging, of carnivore puissance, potent, forbidding rampancy, the den of recherché and relentless, simmering, ferocity – they’d crossed the wrong kingdom. They’d delivered the first blow, the first casualty, slunk and crawled through the innards of his followers and left them to bleed, to die, to become untamed sepulchers – but he’d enact so much more. Reticent rapier unsheathed and eager, possessed disdain, finessed horror, terror, sinister, chilling, formidable rancor, ready to polish quietus, demise, unholy, primitive acrimony dripping down the back of his throat. Only the bestial clamor of his deep, devil vocals surged to provide the Impersonator, her children, the smallest of comforts (his disappointment would never settle upon her), a tranquil, hedonistic fury grinding into the trace of his hollowed void. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” He knew the sting of shame, had felt it burn in his blackened heart when he failed his own escape from the clutches of the Edge, but the stirring of his Machiavellian mind grasped and gripped each parcel of information she offered; a stealthy mind never abandoned even in the bludgeoning of herself and her babes.

The Reaper King absconded the whims, the capricious assaults, and took to remembering every single particle: The Regime, a mare of skulls, the Ancient Rotunda, waiting and lurking for herd lands, for victims. The demonic fiend realized full well that others needed to be informed, for the herd to realize dangers lurking beyond those of wraiths and idiots, that inept craniums bounced through shadows and trapped mothers beneath their avaricious designs, for sleuths to be collecting details and intelligence along the void of the opposition’s entrails, for soldiers to be ready for combat at a singular notice. He noted, with a vague circumstance, the healer and her song, and the soldier following, promising aid, and addressed the latter. The penetrating bite of his stare slid to the fellow beast, resolute, chilling, sharpened and keen, wanton for the opportunity to lay another city to dust. “Come with me. We will tell the herd.” A nod was given to Arah, and then he disappeared into the layers of darkness and ash, coiling and sowing the embers of an anarchy doomed to topple.