Deep within the sheltering ribs of the earth,
I, who need not sleep, brood in corpse-like silence.
A pair of eyes fly open.
My eyes.
A voice whispers to the mind behind them;
My voice. My mind.
A smell drifts from the surface; she is in pain,
and more, there are things moving.
Threads of chaos creeping into my perfect tapestry of events, disrupting their pristine sequence.
No, this will not do; not at all.
Below he had sensed it; the rash of pain, the wounding of his elfling, his property, marked by a kiss upon her brow and a symbol they should all have seen by now. No mere scuffle, this, but a struggle of life and death; and a Demon's hands laid upon her.
He would suffer no rival.
Yet the one who had, perhaps unknowing, declared himself a foe to the hidden prince had fled from stalwart foes; and in defeat and flight, Seranos had unleashed many Things from ancient hollows where they slept.
Not Maelhim; mere demons, of some nameless breed, old and cruel and filled with hunger,
Feeding on Myrken's populace
on my precious cattle
who had before as placidly as a lamb before the blade
overlooked the vanishings
the silent culling
of the weak and the weary
the wounded and lost
and lived on unknowing
until now
An insult spat into the face of the one who slowly built his empire beyond the sight of men; a patient spider weaving a complex web, of moment after moment, event after event, each painting a picture of the future that was constantly changing, yet never out of his control.
Until now.
From the rumbling earth he had come forth in power and might for the first time in these lands; a Thing of rushing limbs, howling down long tunnels and tall, tearing stone with myriad claws, slithering tendrils, howling mouths. He had torn his flesh upon jagged stone, and cared nought for the streaming of blood on black feathers.
The utter audacity of a rival he had discounted until this night had driven a rare thing into him.
Rage