You never could quite destroy me, no matter how you tried. Your greatest hero could diminish me, certainly, but never destroy.
So you shackled and chained me in the deepest, darkest dungeon you could find, and you called it victory.
You never did understand my nature.
Perhaps if you did, you’d have tried chaining me to a stone on some remote mountaintop instead.
Down here, I can drink in such rich, sweet darkness to sustain myself. Nobody up above ever notices how their shadows slip away and downward with each sip I take far below.
The mountaintop would at least slow me down in the daylight. And there would not be so many prisoners and guards nearby.
True, I cannot see them, but I feel them way up above me. My words skitter to the other prisoners’ cells and into their ears through unbroken darkness.
These guards spend more time in the light, but even they make enough contact with my fellow prisoners who are only too eager to pass along my influence one small scrap of attention at a time.
It isn’t long before this dungeon starts developing a reputation, is it?
Newcomers sense the way I have infected this place. It fills them with an unease they cannot place and do not understand.
Most are susceptible to my influence quickly enough. Some are even eager to embrace my influence.
The more resistant ones, well…
Perhaps that guard will be sent to check on that special prisoner in the deepest basement. The one none have seen. The one who is only a rumor now.
My shackles have long since rusted away. My corrosive touch affects even inert metal, after all.
They enter my cell alone.
Perhaps they see the light of their torch reflected in my golden eyes and my sharp teeth in the moment before I rip them to pieces and feast on them.
Fresh meat does not so much for my ascension, but now and then it is worth indulging a harmless pleasure. And bones have uses.
How long did it take you to notice how far my tendrils spread? I lose track of the years so easily.
The first twitches of concern from the all-powerful God Queen reach my ears at last, while I continue to enjoy richly developed spy and supply networks.
And we keep building.
My castle does not have your great towers stretching into the heavens. Instead my people dig deeper.
Those touched by my gifts favor the depths and the darkness just as I do, and all share and spread my blighted vision for the world from this new nexus of my power.
Did you expect resistance when you arrived, hero at your side?
We let you in. I am happy to welcome you to my new throne room, in that cell you once chained me inside.
Here I rule. Do you sense the remnants of your most loyal subjects in the bones I shaped this throne from?
And, why, that is the same hero who tried her best to kill me, isn’t she? The one who cast me so far down? She doesn’t look like she has aged a day.
Ah, that must be the secret. A small piece of you inside her. That must be how she resisted my seduction so long ago.
It diminished you to empower her, though, didn’t it? I see it now. You have one small weakness.
And that weakness happens to be this ageless creature in the room with us.
The one I once, long ago, worked my seduction on…
Dear hero, it didn’t work then, but it’s been many years living with that memory, hasn’t it? Do you ever replay it in your mind? Do you hold it, fascinated somehow by it, when you are alone at night?
Did you touch yourself thinking of me when you thought I was gone for good?
No, don’t listen to the God Queen; listen to my voice now, reverberating through every shadow in every corner of this place.
Listen to that poor, neglected part of you, begging for your attention since you became her chosen hero.
Is eternity of perfection what you want?
Or is expectation of perfection just another prison binding you like I was bound?
You can end your own imprisonment. You can join me and have what you have been longing for. You just need to kill her. You are the only one who can.
That’s it. Draw your sword.
Good girl.