"My- my- my lord." Darth Radix stood on shaky legs before the throne, his black plate rattling all the while. His face was flushed, and his frogdog jowls were teeming with noxious green.

"Speak." Ruin kept his eyes on the tufts of hair in his hand. Once smooth as silk and shiny as solid gold, the strands turned brittle as straw as the cold chewed up what little life they had left. He rubbed one between forefinger and thumb. It snapped between the digits, each gloved in gouges and splotches of deep red the same shade as his robe. "Or must I smell you first?" he asked as he heard the splash of liquid against the stone floor. The smell was rank enough to tear the hoarfrost from his nostrils. For once, he would not have complained if they had stayed shut.

Radix choked back vomit. "You- my lord- you-"

Ruin opened his hand to let the wisps of hair fly free. He bared his rotten teeth in an impish smile. "Let it be known the corporal served well until her last." He looked down at the ragged corpse splayed across his lap. What little remained of Regina Orbus' face stared back at him through a single green eye shadowed by red. The rest of it was little more than scant hunks of flesh hanging limply in strips, broken bone and rent meat raw as any. The other eye was a black hole oozing dark blood and frothy pus. He rested his knuckles on her forehead and looked up at Radix. "You have ought to do. Why do you bother me and piss on my floor?"

"She's here," Radix said through a quivering mouth and closed eyes. "Must I fetch her for you? What if-"

"What if she kills you?" Ruin finished. He kept his eyes on the body. "Do not fetch her, imbecile. She will find her own way to me." He rose to his feet and Orbus' carcass slumped forward onto the floor. A mangled leg caught on one of the edges of the ramshackle throne and a wound reopened. "You, my apprentice, will go to her ship and see it destroyed. We cannot have her leaving again, now can we?"

Radix gulped and tugged at his collar. It was ratty where he tried to patch it up. "Yes, indeed my lord." Weakness flashed in his eyes. "Only, if she is en route here, then how do I avoid her?"

I could do it myself, Ruin thought as he stepped towards the boy. Spare us all the trouble. Then he recalled Orbus. Only, that has gone so poorly of late. He clapped his hand on a lobstered plate shoulder. I can be rid of two pesky birds with a single stone. "You are knighted now, boy, and a fool no longer. When you shed your jester's motley, I would hope you forsook his worries as well." His lips tightened. "Avoid her." Ruin waved Radix off and returned back to his throne.

He watched the fool step out into the void of pounding snow and ice as he carefully lowered himself into the seat. He still bore the scars from each time he had cut himself before. Diligence behooved him now, and the only blood he would let sully this chair now was that which dripped from his hands. He was glad that it was not his and for that, he uttered silent thanks.

He only wished Corporal Orbus had been so diligent. Ruin had thought his reshaping of her mind to be a success, but her constant twitches and penchant for repetition soon began to grate on his ears. Even now, the empty words still echoed: "As you wish. Captain Myrm will tend to the ships. I am here for you." He looked at the body once again and thought he saw her lips mouth them again.

She was trying to undo his tunic when she slashed her hand upon the throne and splashed his face with blood. Ruin remembered little of what happened after. Somehow, Orbus had wrenched herself free enough of his spell to scream, but her eyes stayed soulless. They were empty mires of dark brown peat, crackled and frayed with streaks of red from where her body could not follow the whims of her own mind.

Ruin forgot himself in that moment. He brought her up onto his lap, where the throne carved great gouges in her legs as they writhed and tried to kick away. Every movement became like pulling teeth, and just as bloody. The jagged scrap stabbed them both in equal measure. Ruin's blood intermingled with the burgundy of his robe as Orbus' black and white satins stained with red. She fell free of him on her back, little more than a mess of tattered cloth and flesh. She lay there, whimpering, before easing over onto her belly and trying to crawl away in a trail of blood.

The whimpers drove him mad. His mind still rattled with the echoes of the howling winds outside and the last vestiges of Cronos' voice, as well as the weight of countless years of storm and stress. In his mind's eye, he stood at the edge of a precipice, and ready to fall as he might have been, he would not let himself be pushed.

Orbus burbled, "I am here for you." Each word was punctuated by a gurgle of blood, and with the last she hacked up a great glob of the stuff. Ruin had his head in his hands then, but that drew his eyes up.

He jumped from the ledge.

Failure. He snatched her by the collar. Failure. Failure. Failure. She spat up blood on his boots. Miserable failure. He closed his eyes and heard the squelching of rent flesh. It is yours alone. He heard it again. Yours. Again. Alone. And again.

He did not open his eyes until he heard her slump to the ground. He looked upon the scarlet ruin that was once her face. There might have been a time in the past where Phanius would have shed a tear. That man was dead and gone. Darth Ruin returned to his throne, and dragged his dead consort into his lap for a final rest.

With Radix gone off to die, Ruin was left alone at last, the scents of piss and putrefaction his only companions.

She is here, he thought as he slid his hand to his temple. I feel you now, Lysara. He felt them all: the familiar pang of his Shadow Hand, like a cramp; the gaping abyss that represented Cronos, which pounded and pulsed like a bruise that refused to heal; the burnt out, flickering torch that was Radix. But there was another, and it was close at Cinder's side. A burning sensation of current stung him as he tried to dwell upon it. Raw power.

I feel your whelp, too, Lysara. His bony fingers curled. Each knuckle popped and old bones creaked until a stone cup came to his hand. He set it in his lap, then reached out to grab a silver carafe. He poured himself some wine, drank, and laughed.

Let us pray one of us knows what they must do. The laugh turned to a quivering smile. I trained you well, sweetling. I know you will make the right choice.

The wine was slushy with half-formed ice, but it turned his nose red and warmed his guts all the same. Ruin found himself speaking aloud. "Or you won't." He threw his empty cup at a ruined wall and the stoneware broke to pieces. He drank straight from the carafe. When he set it back between his legs, his hand tightened into a fist. "It matters little. This is all mine. At the end, there is only me." He cackled as the words echoed through the shell of the citadel.

There is nothing. Only me.