Contorted bedlam, feverish persecution, cruelty, villainy, and atrocity in a slinking, slithering wave of death and damnation, the monster crossed over his lands with no intention other than a vicious walk, a piercing, puncturing footfall, a nefarious, nonchalant stroke of his sedition. It was common place for him to wander amidst the pinnacles of annihilation and depravity with no goal in sight except a predacious air, a sinister rapture, an abhorrent return to glimpsing his mountains, his peaks, his valleys, his borders. An unholy crescendo, a wraith, a flame, a pinnacle of demise, he moved with a sinister swing, a vile, distorted crawl, one more shadow occupying the hills and caves, one more illustrious demon, one more infamous infidel dipped by devilish hands. His existence was a constant story, an unyielding myth, of scars and brutality, wreckage and havoc, arrogance and iniquity, and it was so strange, so mind-boggling, so perplexing to him that now, when he’d been on a throne and crowned and still, utterly nonchalant, how much he’d altered, how much he’d morphed and eroded. It’d been slow, stitch by stitch, seam by seam, gradually unraveling until he noted the frayed ends (his failures, his defects, his flaws), the strong, durable covering (the indifference, the reticence, registered along his brow), and everything else laid in between (his emotions, his feelings, the losses and liberations, the deliverances and mercies). Yet, even still, he remained – changed, but still stone, still marble, still pieced together by rapiers and defiance, by calculations and hate, by malice and wickedness. While some left, while some fled, while some forgot or no longer cared or simply became wholly indifferent to the wind, to the storms, to the snow and mayhem, he remained, one more piece of the rock, rubble, and ruin. Ice was in his blood, sewn within his veins, stretching from one muscle to the next, feral and united with quietus, flame, and vehemence.
 
But then – maybe others did hear the call of the tempestuous airs, the heartless void, the glacial veil plucking at their hearts, their entities, their brutal, twisted, nefarious little souls –
 
Because there was Rhiannon, a daughter of the Plague, standing along the horizon, snatching at the lake’s waters.
 
The Lord surveyed the moment in predacious silence, uncertain and unsure of what to say or do. The sentiments harpooning through his mind, however, were choking granules of contentment and satisfaction, because someone had returned, because someone remembered, because someone knew what it was like to call this place home, and no matter how many times they ran off into the void, they still wandered amidst the splendor, the decadence, the iniquitous, devouring kingdom. Rhiannon was a spirit of the past and a potential herald to the future, had immersed herself in sieges, in seas of terror, in horrors and plights and pandemonium, harbored obliteration, achieved devastation, and just simply belonged to this unholy, derisive world. She’d been born into its bloodshed. She’d been brought into its sanctuary, its cruel, criminal haven. She’d been raised into the blackened, barbaric foundation.
 
He wanted to tell her he was glad she was back. He wanted to ask her about what she’d done, what she’d seen, what she’d murdered and ravaged, pillaged and plundered. He wanted to tell her of plans for the future – of unwinding enemies and flaying opponents and snagging, snatching, and absconding everything from the rest of the world, but all he could do was stare, close in on her brindled frame, and delve his deep, crackling vocals over the edges of the embankment. “Rhiannon,” he beseeched, lowering his head towards in chest and returning it back to its position moments thereafter. “You have returned?”