“Having attained so much, still I was not satisfied. Having acquired power over the real world, I sought the same over the supernatural. I immersed myself in whatever necromantic lore I could find. But nowhere did I encounter a spell that would render me human. That would make me ‘normal.’ On learning that there was nothing I could do to alter my ugliness in the sight of people, I resolved angrily to surround myself with beauty.” Lifting his head, he nodded as well as he was able.
“The consequences of that obsession you see all around you. This castle, its furnishings, even the attendants and retainers who serve me within its walls; everything has been chosen as much for its attractiveness as for skill. It, and I, lacked only one thing: a consort. Someone to sit by my side, to be my queen. Feeling this great emptiness inside myself, I determined to seek out the most beautiful woman in the world. I found her, and took her from her lackeys and lickspittle suitors, and brought her here. A vain hope, perhaps, but I thought that given time and consideration and honor, she might come to at least tolerate, if not to love, me.”
Kneeling beside him, the Visioness Themaryl took up the refrain. “He stole me away from my home and my family. My anger was boundless as the sea and the land I was carried across. I would neither converse, nor dine, nor sit with him.
“Then in the very late of one evening, when I thought the castle asleep, I stole downstairs in my endless search for a means or route of escape, and caught him slumped over his table, drunk—and unhelmeted. At first I was repulsed. But my constitution is not frail. I approached, and looked into his face that was half unconscious, and I saw the pain there.” She sighed deeply, remembering.