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The Lich Queen
Moon
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2025
A hush unfurled across the meadow like a shroud stitched in glass—a silken stillness that doused even the wind's sighs in reverent dread. Dawn's veil, pearl-gray and trembling, clung to the earth like the final breath of a god forsaken.
Then the mist parted, not like a curtain but like skin, flayed by the approach of something… inevitable. Through that pale immolation came the Cerberus Disruptor— a chimeric aberration sculpted from unholiness and lost cause.
Its three visages, leonine yet grotesquely reimagined, bore countenances not of hunger, but of verdict. Each head wore a diadem of warped marrow and matted ruin, their eyes incandescent with ruinous calculus. Twin tendrils, slick and twitching, unfurled from its spine like the proboscises of eldritch parasites, writhing in search of blasphemy to devour.
And upon this mount of ghastliness—draped not in armor, but in unrepentant command—sat Xandera, the Bloom-Queen, the Grand Defilement of Hextor. She moved like a memory buried in trauma, too vivid to forget, too cruel to recall with clarity.
Her skin, burnished bronze tempered in moonlit ichor, shimmered with stolen grace. Her hair—no mere tangle of strands, but an inferno of ember-lit serpents—cascaded around her like a crown in revolt. Each lock whispered betrayal, each curl wept with ancestral agony. With lacquered talons sculpted from obsidian and old sins, she anointed her lips with blood-red glamour.
The act was ceremonial, ecclesiastical—a predator donning her Eucharist. She carried a mirror—not of glass, but of calcified soul, polished by the screams of men—and beneath its bone-carved frame, she drew kohl beneath her eyes, those gold-flamed orbs that had witnessed centuries dissolve like wax, that had watched kings wither and crowns fossilize beneath her bloom.
Her steed moved forward with a gait not of beast, but of dirge—each step a eulogy, each footprint a bane that seared wildflowers into cindered glyphs. The trees bent, not in breeze, but in fear; the loam whispered homilies to the roots in voices made of rot. And the villagers, poor lambs dressed as men, peered from their hovels like dreamers trapped between sleep and scream.
Some looked with awe.
Some with trepidation.
All were correct.
To her, their stares were gnats against cathedral glass. They wondered if she were divine, demonic, or simply decadent. She questioned if they'd shriek when their lungs bloomed with black moss.
"To mistake a storm for a parade," she whispered to her reflection, each syllable silk-wrapped arsenic. At last, she arrived before the tavern—a rotted chapel of ale and regret, its sign hung askew like a noose half-remembered, its walls bewailing the sweat of ghosts.
Her mount growled—a rumble like thunder drowned in molasses—and coiled beside the door, heads poised to judge. Her heels struck the wood of the porch with the poundage of funeral bells. She passed through the door as a comet through parchment—effortless, incandescent, and terminal. Inside, the air grew viscous with unease, thick with the aroma of delinquency and burnt meat.
She didn't glance at the patrons.
She didn't need to.
She occupied every reflection.
With the ease of a queen too tired of mercy to stand, she draped herself at the bar. Her fingers tapped a rhythm known only to grave dirt and execution drums.
"I require a room," she declared—not to a man, but to fate itself. "One with a window... and silence." She did not repeat herself. She never has or will. If the innkeep failed to obey, he'd abide by her decree in death. It wasn't a matter of if, but when. For all things are affixed to entropy's spell and death. And Xandera, she was its mistress.
Then the mist parted, not like a curtain but like skin, flayed by the approach of something… inevitable. Through that pale immolation came the Cerberus Disruptor— a chimeric aberration sculpted from unholiness and lost cause.
Its three visages, leonine yet grotesquely reimagined, bore countenances not of hunger, but of verdict. Each head wore a diadem of warped marrow and matted ruin, their eyes incandescent with ruinous calculus. Twin tendrils, slick and twitching, unfurled from its spine like the proboscises of eldritch parasites, writhing in search of blasphemy to devour.
And upon this mount of ghastliness—draped not in armor, but in unrepentant command—sat Xandera, the Bloom-Queen, the Grand Defilement of Hextor. She moved like a memory buried in trauma, too vivid to forget, too cruel to recall with clarity.
Her skin, burnished bronze tempered in moonlit ichor, shimmered with stolen grace. Her hair—no mere tangle of strands, but an inferno of ember-lit serpents—cascaded around her like a crown in revolt. Each lock whispered betrayal, each curl wept with ancestral agony. With lacquered talons sculpted from obsidian and old sins, she anointed her lips with blood-red glamour.
The act was ceremonial, ecclesiastical—a predator donning her Eucharist. She carried a mirror—not of glass, but of calcified soul, polished by the screams of men—and beneath its bone-carved frame, she drew kohl beneath her eyes, those gold-flamed orbs that had witnessed centuries dissolve like wax, that had watched kings wither and crowns fossilize beneath her bloom.
Her steed moved forward with a gait not of beast, but of dirge—each step a eulogy, each footprint a bane that seared wildflowers into cindered glyphs. The trees bent, not in breeze, but in fear; the loam whispered homilies to the roots in voices made of rot. And the villagers, poor lambs dressed as men, peered from their hovels like dreamers trapped between sleep and scream.
Some looked with awe.
Some with trepidation.
All were correct.
To her, their stares were gnats against cathedral glass. They wondered if she were divine, demonic, or simply decadent. She questioned if they'd shriek when their lungs bloomed with black moss.
"To mistake a storm for a parade," she whispered to her reflection, each syllable silk-wrapped arsenic. At last, she arrived before the tavern—a rotted chapel of ale and regret, its sign hung askew like a noose half-remembered, its walls bewailing the sweat of ghosts.
Her mount growled—a rumble like thunder drowned in molasses—and coiled beside the door, heads poised to judge. Her heels struck the wood of the porch with the poundage of funeral bells. She passed through the door as a comet through parchment—effortless, incandescent, and terminal. Inside, the air grew viscous with unease, thick with the aroma of delinquency and burnt meat.
She didn't glance at the patrons.
She didn't need to.
She occupied every reflection.
With the ease of a queen too tired of mercy to stand, she draped herself at the bar. Her fingers tapped a rhythm known only to grave dirt and execution drums.
"I require a room," she declared—not to a man, but to fate itself. "One with a window... and silence." She did not repeat herself. She never has or will. If the innkeep failed to obey, he'd abide by her decree in death. It wasn't a matter of if, but when. For all things are affixed to entropy's spell and death. And Xandera, she was its mistress.