With brute force he enters the regal chamber, dripping the dark spoils of combat. The room is white and made all the more sterling by the moonlight flooding in from the balcony. The woman on the bed starts but does not scream.

“The seer queen, milady?” he questions gruffly. She nods. Upon an ornate chair he crudely sits. His eyes search for hers but find only lids scarred shut, sunken and defeated.

“Your name.” It is not a question. It is a demand, as queens are wont to do.

“It matters not, milady. Your…gift?”

She scoffs, a dainty noise, “You wouldn’t understand it.”

A heavy hand wipes across a worn face, and he admits, “Nay, I don’t think I would, but still I would ask of thee one thing. With your gift, all you could know, why this campaign of terror, this movement of destruction?”

She answers not. A hand moves as if to caress her face stained by an ancient violence but returns to the bed sheet.

“Aye, milady. The world took something from thee, so…to repay in kind, I take it?”